10/08/2026
A physician we work with, a hospitalist who also advises a health-tech startup, came to us holding stock options nobody had ever clearly explained to her.
She'd been granted them two years earlier as part of her advisory role. Nobody mentioned there was a narrow window, tied to exercising early, that could have meaningfully changed how those options were eventually taxed. By the time she started working with us, that window had already closed on her earliest grants.
This isn't rare. Physicians increasingly sit on advisory boards, consult for medtech companies, or hold equity from a practice sale, and most financial guidance aimed at physicians never touches equity compensation at all, because it's assumed to be someone else's problem.
If you're holding any kind of startup equity or options alongside your medical career, has anyone actually walked you through the mechanics, or did it just arrive in an email you filed away?
