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Carta
What is Carta?
Carta is the leading, all-in-one equity management platform that drives the venture ecosystem forward. Since 2012, Carta has helped private companies efficiently manage their cap tables and issue securities electronically. Carta is always evolving and has built cutting edge tools that grow with your company and help with valuations, tax filings, and equity compliance. In 2021, Carta joined the fund administration space and proudly services investors and public markets. Since then, their offerings have expanded to include a host of solutions tailored to different entities and business needs. Today, Carta supports more than 40,000 companies and 2.3M+ equity holders. They have valued over $2.5T in private assets.
Who Uses Carta?
Carta manages equity for 40,000+ customers, helping companies manage their cap tables, valuations, portfolio investments, and equity plans.
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Reviews of Carta
Super easy to keep track of my stock options
Comments: Overall it is simple and easy to use and makes it easy for a company with a large number of employees to keep track of which people have which vested stock options.
Pros:
Love how Carta automatically updates me as to when I have more vested options and shows a progress bar as to how far I still have to go for all of my stock options to vest.
Cons:
No complaints but I probably haven't used this software at a deep enough level to truly find anything difficult or something to dislike about this software.
Alternatives Considered:
Essential Tool in Equity Management
Comments:
- Investor equity management
- Employee equity option management
- Cap table management
- 409A valuation
Pros:
- In-depth knowledge database that gets you started quickly - Easy to use interface that allows for efficient navigation - Carta combines equity and salary compensation benchmarks and adjusts for size, location, industry - Well structured reports, funding overviews, cap tables, and ability to create a data room for investors - Free annual 409A valuation report
Cons:
- Expensive for startups - Salary compensation tool should be included in base subscription - More comparative details with similar companies (benchmarking functions)
Great, but it can scale up more
Comments: Overall experience with Carta is great, but it would be great if Carta becomes more than just tracking stocks/stock options tool
Pros:
As start up COO, Carta has been saving lots of time to grant stocks or stock options. Before using Carta, we always had to go through the attorney and it was hard to track.
Cons:
It would be great if Carta has option to sell or exercise stock options directly. Then, it automatically sends the emails to existing shareholders and among them, if there are who are interested, they have options to purchase
Love-Hate Relationship with Carta
Comments: I have nothing else to compare Carta to, so I don't even know how to respond. On a positive note, I suppose I can list 'Carta' as a skill on my resume, though I don't know whether I would want to deal with Carta ever again if I seek different employment.
Pros:
When I have issues with this software (which is often), Carta's support team is usually very responsive and will work with me on the issue. The software itself works fine, I guess, as it rarely has technical problems. The offered tutorial does help, and I appreciate the Carta team for putting the tutorial together.
Cons:
Not very intuitive to use! A major part is requiring a good foundation in securities and stock options knowledge, which I clearly do not have. One HUGE gripe I have with Carta is that there is no quick way to bulk update a set of option grants, but rather I have to go into EACH option grant, upload the document I need to upload, add a note of what I am updating, wait for 5 seconds for the update to occur, and repeat with the rest of the 1000+ option grants. I have been uploading/updating these option grants for a few days now while trying to do my other work, and I am still updating as I write this review on a Saturday evening. I don't know whether to keep on updating while cursing at the Carta screen, or just call it quits for the day. Also, the update generates an email notification for the option holders, and of course a good amount of them send me questions afterwards despite our team having already prepared a mass message for our Chief Sales Officer to send out that explains these notifications. I'm at the point where I'm inclined to curse out the next sales employee that asks me what these Carta notifications are for.
Carta - all-in-one Equity management for privately held companies
Comments: 5-star. I have a been a Corporate Securities Attorney for 20+ years (15+ years in house) and Carta is my favorite application for privately held entities. It has saved countless hours in spreadsheets, providing a turnkey solution that is accurate and easy to administer for the Board, Investors, and Employees.
Pros:
Equity management is turnkey. Ability to share with our Attorneys and Accountants. Ability to quickly pull data and reports for outside Funds and Auditors. Self-serve option portal for Employees.
Cons:
Some of the nuances are complex, but the Software works. It takes some training, but the effort is worth the time to keep all your Equities in a single ledger.
