In conversation with Adam Dooley.

Adam Dooley is the founding principal of Belay Global Partners, and the conversation below traces his view of what a sponsor-led listing should do — and refuse to do — in the cycle ahead. It was edited for length and clarity, and recorded at Belay's Irvine office in early 2026.

Why frame what Belay does as "sponsor-led" rather than as a traditional underwriter relationship?

An underwriter moves a transaction through a distribution window and is paid for the placement. A sponsor sits on the other side of the table: co-owner of the outcome, responsible for the cap table we help construct, accountable to the board we help build, present through the first year of public reporting. The two postures look adjacent from the outside and are not the same on the inside. An underwriter's job ends when the book is covered. A sponsor's job begins there. I spend most of my time on what happens after the bell, because that is where the sponsor's work actually compounds or fails.

What does "founder-aligned" mean operationally, not as a tagline?

Four measurable things, and each one appears in a document a founder can read. A promote structure that earns through performance rather than vesting at close. Lock-ups that run on the same schedule for sponsor and founder. Board composition rights that give the founder a defined set of nominations and a voice on the independent chair. And a named, scheduled operating plan for the first annual reporting cycle — IR, audit, disclosure, with people and end dates attached. If those four are not visible in the governing documents, the phrase is marketing. If they are visible, a founder and their counsel can verify alignment without taking anyone's word for it.

How do you underwrite readiness before you underwrite a transaction?

We run the diligence in a specific order. Readiness first, transaction second. That means we look at the finance function, the audit posture, the disclosure controls, the board's working rhythm, and the management team's capacity to operate inside the public reporting cadence before we look at the combination math. If the company is not ready, we say so early, and we either propose a time window and a plan to close the gap or we pass. The companies that perform well in the first year public are the companies that walked in ready. The diligence order has to reflect that. If the order is reversed — transaction first, readiness assumed — the post-listing period becomes the place where unreadiness finds you.

What disqualifies a candidate?

Unresolvable governance gaps, usually. An audit function that cannot produce a clean public-company financial package inside the timeline the SEC requires, without adding capacity that the company is unwilling to add. A board that cannot accommodate the independent seats and committee structure a listed company needs. A management team that views the public reporting cadence as a tax rather than a discipline. Any one of those, on its own, is not a reason to walk away if the company is willing to address it. All three together, usually, is. The discipline of saying no early is the single most underrated part of this work. We pass more often than we proceed. That is the point, not the exception.

What changes in the first ninety days after the bell?

Everything and nothing. The operating fundamentals do not change — the company that was underwritten is the company that has to perform. What changes is the cadence around it. IR is live on day one, not month three. The audit committee meets inside the first thirty days. The first earnings call should have been rehearsed — script, Q&A, dry run, dress rehearsal with the chair — before the bell, not after. Analyst onboarding runs on a scheduled working calendar, not on ad-hoc introductions. None of that requires additional capital. It requires treating the period as a cadence shift rather than a victory lap, and staffing to that shift before close.

How do you think about the period between listing and the first earnings call?

As the one period in which the company has a controlled narrative advantage and the market is still forming its view. The first earnings call sets the reference point for every call that follows. Coverage initiations built in that window tend to be the coverage you live with. Relationships built with the audit committee chair and the governance committee chair in that window define how the board will operate for its first full year. Companies that treat that period as continuous work — not as the lull between two events — walk into the first reporting cycle with a model of the business that is accurate and a set of relationships that are already working. Companies that treat it as a pause walk into the first call rebuilding things that should have been in place.

What do you want the next decade of sponsor-led listings to look like?

Narrower, more disciplined, and less rhetorical. Fewer vehicles, better vehicles. Sponsors who underwrite one transaction at a time and carry the consequences of that transaction visibly on their book. Terms that can be read and verified in the governing documents, not inferred from marketing. Founders who evaluate sponsors the way they evaluate any other long-horizon counterparty: on the quality of the documents, the depth of the readiness work, the credibility of the board-construction plan, and the willingness to say no. If the next decade produces a smaller number of listings that perform well through their first three reporting cycles, the product will have earned the framing. Governance before growth. Readiness before capital. One transaction at a time. That is what I want the record to look like ten years from now.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

INTERVIEWS · 24 FEB 2026 · 6 MIN READ · A.D.