Financial planning for the second half of your tech career.

A boutique fee-only RIA for senior tech professionals navigating equity, taxes, and the shift from earning to keeping. Thoughtful planning, not product sales.

Fee-onlyNo commissions, no product sales
FiduciaryYour interest, always, in writing
Based in Mill Valley, CAServing clients nationwide
Who we work with

A specific kind of client, served deliberately.

Most of our clients are PMs, designers, sales executives, lawyers, marketers, and operators at companies like Google, Meta, and Apple. They're ten years or more into their careers, have built real wealth (mostly in employer equity), and want a thoughtful fiduciary partner. Not basic education, and not another investment manager.

  • Senior roles in product, design, sales, marketing, legal, BD, or operations at large tech companies.
  • $2 to $10M in net worth, much of it concentrated in employer equity (RSUs, ISOs, NSOs, or pre-IPO stock).
  • Smart with money, deliberate about decisions, but want a sounding board for the bigger ones.
  • Navigating Bay Area complexity. AMT planning, real estate decisions, tender offers, the occasional move that creates multi-state issues.
What we help with

The three things our clients ask about most.

Comprehensive financial planning is the wrapper. These are the conversations that actually fill the meetings.

01

Equity compensation

RSU withholding gaps, ISO exercise timing, AMT planning, tender offers, 10b5-1 plans, concentration risk. The decisions that move your after-tax outcome by six figures.

02

Tax planning that actually moves the needle

AMT exposure, charitable strategies, Roth conversions, capital gains harvesting, multi-state situations when they apply, and the year-end moves most people don't make in time.

03

Real estate & lifestyle decisions

Bay Area buy-vs-rent at your wealth level, remodel financing, vacation homes, 1031 exchanges, and the "can I actually afford this?" calls. Permission to spend, with the math behind it.

Bill Promes, founder of Austin Creek Capital
Who runs Austin Creek

Bill founded Austin Creek after twenty years at Charles Schwab and a deliberate pivot into advisory work.

For nearly two decades, Bill worked in technology at Charles Schwab, most recently as Managing Director leading a team of fifty that supported the firm's Corporate Risk Management function. He spent those years inside one of the largest names in the industry, watching how financial services actually operate. Where firms serve clients well, where even good advisors fall short with sophisticated audiences, and how few of them genuinely understood the tech employees they were trying to win as clients. The equity grants, the AMT traps, the specific decisions that move the after-tax outcome by six figures.

After that long look from the inside, Bill made a deliberate pivot into advisory work. Austin Creek exists to bring rigorous, fee-only fiduciary planning to senior tech professionals who deserve more than a cookie-cutter portfolio. A small, intentional client base. No product sales, no commissions, and a perspective shaped by two decades in the financial services industry.

PreviouslyManaging Director, Charles Schwab
BasedMill Valley, CA
Talk it through

Twenty minutes is enough to know if we're a fit.

No pitch, no pressure. A short call where we ask what's actually on your mind right now, and you decide whether you want to go further.

Book a 20-minute call See the resources first