How late is too late to call?

The useful threshold is around nine months of cash. Below that the options narrow quickly and the counterparties you would want to approach start pricing the situation rather than the asset. Below six months the conversation is usually about which version of stopping is least destructive, which is still a conversation worth having properly.

Is a bridge from insiders a good deal or a bad one?

Neither on its own. It is a price, and a price is only readable against what the alternatives cost. An insider bridge at a fair number buys time cheaply. The same bridge with a ratchet attached can take more of the company than the down round you were avoiding, and the conversion mechanics are where that happens quietly.

Can this be done without the whole company finding out?

The diagnostic, yes. It looks like a planning exercise because it is one. Implementation cannot be quiet and should not try to be. The version that leaks in fragments over six weeks does more damage than the version announced once, with the reasoning attached.

You will run out of money before the next readout.

By the time the gap is obvious, the cheap options have expired. The work is to see it early and price every route out.

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Whether this is you

The arithmetic is usually known to one person before it is known to the board. What varies is how much room is left by the time it is said out loud.

The model says eleven months and you do not believe it, because it was built from the plan and never from the contracts.
The readout that was supposed to unlock the next round has moved by a quarter.
An insider has offered a bridge and you cannot tell whether the terms are a rescue or a repricing.
Everyone on the executive team knows which program should be cut and nobody wants to be the one who says it.

What the work is

I rebuild the burn, cut the programs that will not move the value, and give the board a real choice between restructuring, bridging, and stopping. Then I help you defend whichever one you pick.

There are three answers here: restructure, bridge, or stop. All three are survivable, and usually only one of them is being discussed. The job is to cost all three to the same standard and put them in front of the board early enough that choosing is still possible. I led a $1 billion corporate restructuring end to end, covering the P&L, the workforce, the operating model and the financial communication around it, which is mostly an education in how much cost sits in decisions nobody revisits.

How it runs

The real burn: The model rebuilt from signed contracts and committed spend rather than from last year's plan. The gap between the two runs to about a quarter of runway in either direction, and it is almost always the CRO and CDMO commitments that move it. You cannot triage a pipeline against a number you do not trust.
What to stop: The programs that will not reach a value inflection before the cash does. This is arithmetic before it is judgment. A program needing eighteen months with fourteen months of money has no funding at all, only a slower way of running out, and continuing it spends the runway of the programs that could have made it.
The three options: Restructure, bridge, or stop, each costed to the same standard so they can be compared. That includes the option nobody prices, which is doing nothing for another quarter and arriving at the same decision with less leverage and fewer counterparties still interested.
The board case: The recommendation, written so it holds up in the meeting and in the one after it. Boards rarely reject restructuring plans because the plan is wrong. They reject them because the number underneath has not been made believable, and that is a document problem as much as an analysis problem.

What you end up with

Everything rests on a burn model rebuilt from contracts and committed spend, with the difference from your current plan shown line by line. A pipeline triage ranks programs against the cash each needs to reach its next inflection. The three routes, restructure, bridge and stop, are then costed to the same standard and to the same date. The board pack and the written recommendation follow from those. If the answer is restructuring, there is also an implementation sequence: the order of operations, and what each step costs to reverse.

Scope and fee

Runway work moves faster than the rest of the practice, because the options expire. It usually begins with a 30-day diagnostic covering what is working, what is overweight and where the cash actually goes, then continues into roughly 90 days of implementation alongside the CFO and the COO. The deliverables are operational rather than slideware. Where the board needs only the diagnostic and the three options, that is a fixed fee and it stops there. Pricing follows the first call. Hourly billing suits neither of us on work this compressed.

When not to call me

Turnaround management is a different job, and an interim officer role is one I do not take. Where the company needs a chief restructuring officer with signing authority, that is a separate appointment and I will say so on the call. Insolvency belongs with counsel; below a certain line this stops being a strategy question and becomes a fiduciary one. And if the decision is to keep going and find out, I would prefer not to spend your remaining months documenting it.

Questions founders ask

How late is too late to call?: The useful threshold is around nine months of cash. Below that the options narrow quickly and the counterparties you would want to approach start pricing the situation rather than the asset. Below six months the conversation is usually about which version of stopping is least destructive, which is still a conversation worth having properly.
Is a bridge from insiders a good deal or a bad one?: Neither on its own. It is a price, and a price is only readable against what the alternatives cost. An insider bridge at a fair number buys time cheaply. The same bridge with a ratchet attached can take more of the company than the down round you were avoiding, and the conversion mechanics are where that happens quietly.
Can this be done without the whole company finding out?: The diagnostic, yes. It looks like a planning exercise because it is one. Implementation cannot be quiet and should not try to be. The version that leaks in fragments over six weeks does more damage than the version announced once, with the reasoning attached.