Upstream Control Over Trust Formation

The real fight is over who gets involved before the trust exists, because the advisor who builds the founder’s equity, tax, and liquidity plan usually gets to choose every downstream provider. Compound already tracks startup equity, QSBS timelines, and legal documents inside a founder’s main wealth dashboard. Savvy’s advisors already sell holistic planning that includes estate and tax work. That puts both in position to route trust formation to a partner, or absorb it themselves, while keeping the primary relationship.

• Dynasty’s product is sticky after setup because it serves as trustee, files taxes, handles valuations, and then earns much higher fees once paper wealth turns into cash. But that stickiness only starts after someone decides to create the trust, which makes the pre trust planning moment the key control point.
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• Compound sits earlier in the workflow. It catalogs a client’s full balance sheet, connects to Carta and Shareworks, alerts on QSBS timelines, stores 83(b) forms and K 1s, and helps model diversification and liquidity choices. That is exactly where a founder decides whether a trust should be part of the plan.
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• Savvy attacks the same relationship from the advisor side. Its advisors pitch clients on one place for investments, tax strategy, estate planning, held away assets, and business owner planning, while Savvy gives those advisors software and back office support. That makes trust work a natural add on product, even if fulfilled by an external trust company.
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Going forward, the likely winners will be the firms that package QSBS trust creation into a broader founder planning workflow instead of selling it as a standalone legal and trust task. If Compound or Savvy make trust formation one button inside an existing planning relationship, Dynasty becomes infrastructure unless it can own distribution as well as administration.