Name the fork: exit or yield

Every venture eventually reaches a fork: it scales toward a liquidity event, or it matures into a strong business with a ceiling. Both are wins. Most early-stage capital pretends only the first path exists, because the second is harder to charge fees against.

Forcing an exit narrative onto a yield business to justify an introduction is how trust dies — slowly with the founder, instantly with the investor who figures it out. There are two investor temperaments, growth and income, and both are legitimate; the dishonesty is pretending a company is one kind when the evidence says it is the other.

Name the fork before the money moves. Write down which track the evidence currently supports, revisit it on a cadence, and let capital self-select. Every party at the table earns from an outcome they actually signed up for.