While most of Goldman Sachs' staff was watching New York's leaves turn orange this October, the firm's global head of private banking, Nishi Somaiya, was sitting poolside in the middle of the sunny Montage Healdsburg vineyard, just an hour north of Silicon Valley.
Fresh off a quarter that saw her division generate more than $750 million in revenue, Somaiya and Goldman Sachs’ investment banking advisor Susie Scher, had gathered a group of hand-picked founders beneath a wooden pagoda to talk. They were there to discuss a new pipeline, launched in April, that helps founders who are ultra-rich on paper, but cash poor, turn the illiquid stakes in their companies into yachts, jets, and cold, hard cash.
