Orange County's startup base is in the Irvine Business Complex, the Spectrum, the research park beside UC Irvine, and Costa Mesa — and it builds regulated, capital-intensive products rather than consumer software. Long development cycles mean long option holds, real AMT exposure for early employees, and a genuine chance of meeting the § 1202 holding period, which makes California's refusal to follow that section unusually expensive here.
Where founders and startup employees are in Orange County
The Irvine Business Complex — the dense grid of mid-rise offices and flex buildings between the 405 and John Wayne Airport — is where most of it sits, with the Irvine Spectrum carrying a newer generation further south along the 5. UC Irvine's research park and its applied innovation programme feed both, particularly in medical devices and biotechnology. Costa Mesa holds the county's best-known defence-technology company, and the medtech cluster that has grown up in Irvine over four decades is the deepest in Southern California. Aliso Viejo, Lake Forest and Foothill Ranch carry smaller device, diagnostics and electronics firms. Anduril · Rivian · Edwards Lifesciences · the medtech guide.
What that industry mix does to equity is the whole point of this page. A device company cannot ship until a regulator agrees, and a defence programme moves at the speed of procurement. So companies here stay private longer, employees hold options for years rather than months, and grants made at low strike prices sit unexercised while the fair market value climbs. Three consequences follow: the AMT exposure on an eventual ISO exercise is larger because the spread has had longer to grow; the five-year federal holding period under § 1202 is realistically achievable rather than theoretical; and the company is more likely to have been a domestic C corporation from the start, because that is what its investors and its regulatory path required.
The capital and the professional services sit a few miles west, in Newport Center and along Von Karman and MacArthur — the law firms, accountancy practices and investment offices that serve this ecosystem. That matters practically: an Orange County founder can generally assemble a CPA and securities counsel who have done this before within ten minutes of the office, which is not true everywhere in California.
What changes locally
Here is the local wrinkle stated plainly. The longer a private company stays private, the more likely its early holders are to satisfy the federal holding period — and the more valuable the California non-conformity becomes as a problem. A founder in Irvine who holds qualifying stock for six years may exclude the gain federally under IRC § 1202 and still owe California tax on every dollar of it, because the Franchise Tax Board's instructions say the state does not conform to §§ 1045 or 1202 and direct you to report the entire gain. There is no California workaround on this page, because there isn't one; there is only the instruction to model the real, combined after-tax number with a CPA before a transaction is agreed, instead of the federal number everybody quotes at the demo day.
The second local reality is that Orange County founders mostly live where they work — Irvine, Newport Beach, Tustin, Aliso Viejo, Mission Viejo — and often own a home purchased with equity from an earlier company. There is no municipal conveyance tax here of the kind the City of Los Angeles imposes, so a house sale is a cleaner transaction, but the concentration is worse: the same regional economy holds your salary, your equity, your house and frequently your spouse's employer. From Norwalk we are 15 to 50 miles depending on whether you are in Buena Park or San Clemente, and the 5 at 4pm is its own argument for video.
What we do about it
The first meeting is inventory, not advice. Every grant with its type, dates, strike, vesting, expiry and post-termination exercise window — the last of which catches more device and defence employees than anything else, because a company that takes eight years to reach an exit is also a company people leave along the way, and a departing employee typically has a short window to exercise or forfeit. Then the question your CPA has to answer before you act: what does exercising do to your AMT for that year, given the 2026 exemption of $90,100 single or $140,200 joint and its phase-out above $500,000 and $1,000,000. We do not answer it and we do not recommend exercise timing.
Second, the QSBS file. If the company might qualify, the evidence is documentary and it lives with the company: C corporation status, original issuance, the active-business test, and aggregate gross assets at or under $75 million ($50 million for stock issued on or before 4 July 2025). Ask for an attestation while the people who know are still there — after an acquisition the records get harder to obtain, and the taxpayer carries the burden. That file goes to your CPA. So does the California half, which is not optional.
Third, the money that is not equity, which is where we actually earn the fee. A portfolio deliberately built to look nothing like a medical device company, funded on a schedule regardless of what the cap table is doing. A written sell-down plan agreed before liquidity exists rather than during it. Tax-loss harvesting on the diversified side so realised gains have something to offset. And if the exit happens and the next thing is a consultancy or a new company, the plan structures that let a profitable one-person business defer far more than an employee ever could. Solo 401(k) · cash balance.
The structures that apply: ISOs / NSOs / RSUs, 83(b) election, QSBS § 1202, Solo 401(k), Cash balance post-exit. The full guide for founders and startup employees goes through each one, and here is the same audience in Los Angeles County.
Fifteen minutes, no charge
We are in Norwalk, which is inside Los Angeles County and minutes from the Orange County line. Come to us, we come to you, or we do it by video — evenings by video.
Your city
Orange County has 34 incorporated cities and about 3.1 million residents. These are the ones where founders and startup employees concentrate, each with its own page:
- Financial advisor in Aliso Viejo
- Financial advisor in Lake Forest
- Financial advisor in Mission Viejo
- Financial advisor in Anaheim
- Financial advisor in Santa Ana
- Financial advisor in Laguna Niguel
All 89 cities we publish a page for →
Our fees, published
No competing advisor page in this area publishes its fees. Here are ours.
| What | Fee |
|---|---|
| Investment management | 1.5% to 2.0% of assets per year; Advisers may set a rate below the standard schedule, as low as 0%, at their discretion — and whatever rate applies to you is disclosed in writing before you engage. Our Form ADV Part 2A, Item 5, states the fee as up to 2.00% of assets per year, subject to negotiation; the firm may waive all or part of it. Generally billed quarterly in arrears |
| Account minimum | No minimum account balance |
| Commissions and product fees | None — we are fee-only |
| Solicitor compensation | May be received or paid under disclosed arrangements |
| Initial conversation | Free, 15 minutes, no obligation |
Complete fee details in our Form ADV Part 2A, Item 5.
Questions
Does it matter that our company is in Irvine rather than Palo Alto?
Not for the federal test, which looks at the corporation's form, its gross assets, the originality of the issuance and the nature of the business rather than its address. It matters enormously for the state answer, because you are a California taxpayer either way and California does not follow the federal exclusion. It also matters practically: this county's companies stay private longer, which changes when your decisions actually arrive.
I am employee twelve at a device company with ISOs granted years ago.
Then you are the person this page was written for, and there are three dates you need in front of you: the grant date, the expiry date, and the length of your post-termination exercise window. Options expire — commonly ten years from grant — and the window after leaving is frequently short. What exercising would do to your AMT, and whether the shares could ever qualify under § 1202, are questions for a CPA with the numbers in hand. Our part is making sure those numbers exist in one document and that you are not deciding in the last week before an expiry.
Our company was acquired for stock in a public company. What now?
Then the concentration problem became liquid, or partly liquid, and the clock on fixing it started. Expect a lock-up, expect trading windows if you have taken a role at the acquirer, and expect the tax character to depend on the deal's structure — which your CPA will read out of the closing documents, not out of a press release. The planning question we can help with is the one nobody assigns to anybody: over what period does this position get reduced, and to what.
Is there a minimum account size?
No. Zero to open, $50 a month of continuing deposits after that, and the fee schedule is published on the site. That is deliberate — a founder with a modest salary and a large illiquid position is exactly the client most firms' minimums are designed to turn away.
I work in defence technology and cannot discuss what my company does.
You do not need to. Nothing in this work requires programme details — grant documents, dates, strike prices, vesting terms and the plan document are enough, and they contain no classified information. If a piece of paper cannot leave your building, we work from the figures you can state.
Half the county's founders live in Newport Beach. Does that change anything financially?
Only through concentration. There is no municipal transfer tax here comparable to the City of Los Angeles', and the state income tax is identical in every California city, so moving within the state changes nothing about the rate. What it does change is how much of your life rides on one regional economy — the company, the house, and often the spouse's employer are all inside a ten-mile radius. The portfolio is the only part of that you can deliberately point somewhere else.
Can you work with our CPA and our attorney rather than replacing them?
That is the intended arrangement. We do not provide tax or legal advice; we assemble the facts, model the investment consequences, and sit in the meeting so that the equity decision, the tax model and the household plan are made with the same numbers on the table.
What does this cost, and is there a minimum?
There is no minimum to open an account. We ask for $50 a month of continuing deposits, because a plan you do not fund is not a plan. Investment management is 1.5% to 2.0% of assets per year, billed quarterly, and it is published on the site — which is more than most firms in this market will tell you before a meeting.
Do I have to have a lot saved already?
No, and that is deliberate. Most firms set a minimum precisely to avoid people at the start of this. We built the opposite: $0 to open, and the same fiduciary standard whether the account is four figures or seven.
¿Atienden en español?
Sí. Atendemos en español, y buena parte de nuestro material existe en español, escrito originalmente, no traducido por máquina.