CARTA BLOG
Whether you’re getting your first option grant or managing a fund, our blog is the best place to learn about ownership, equity, and the Carta product.
There’s a ton of advice out there for startup founders on how to raise money, set up business infrastructure, and track performance in the early stages of a company’s life. But there’s not as much guidance for managers of new venture funds.
Two years ago, Harry Stebbings invited our founder and CEO, Henry Ward, on The Twenty Minute VC podcast. We’ve grown a lot since then, and Henry recently joined Harry again to chat about a range of topics.
As your company grows, things change quickly. You need to keep your investors up to date but that can be tedious and time-consuming. Carta makes this easier with our newest feature—investor updates.
We first shared our pitch deck in 2015, when we raised our Series A (we were then known as eShares). The deck we’ve shared here is our Series D deck, which evolved from our Series B and C decks. Numbers are through Q3 2018, with estimates for Q4. We hope you’ll check it out, and see how our story, business, and brand have evolved.
To achieve our goal of creating more owners, while increasing transparency and liquidity between them, we’ve raised additional capital. In 2018, we raised $80 million dollars and closed our Series D, led by Meritech and Tribe Capital, with participation from existing investors. With this new capital, our investors now value Carta at $800 million.
Execute is a podcast documentary about the history of Carta and a blueprint for anyone who wants to build a startup. It covers the ups and downs of fundraising, the cultural challenges that result from scaling headcount, and the overall transition from a small, focused team into a legit, revenue-producing company.
In 2018, tech news has been dominated by seemingly endless stories of another “unicorn” raising a colossal round. These valuations are fueled by VCs raising huge funds earmarked for late stage companies. With increased access to capital, companies find staying private longer increasingly attractive. We decided to take a look behind these headlines and dig into the data.
Much has been said about the gender pay gap, but most publicly available research focuses on only one part of compensation: salary. But in startups, wealth is created through equity ownership on the cap table.
Tracking the marketwide performance of US private companies and startups is difficult. Private companies are not required to disclose performance or valuation information to the public.
There’s a ton of advice out there for startup founders on how to raise money, set up business infrastructure, and track performance in the early stages of a company’s life. But there’s not as much guidance for managers of new venture funds.
In 2018, tech news has been dominated by seemingly endless stories of another “unicorn” raising a colossal round. These valuations are fueled by VCs raising huge funds earmarked for late stage companies. With increased access to capital, companies find staying private longer increasingly attractive. We decided to take a look behind these headlines and dig into the data.
If employees exercised incentive stock options (ISOs) last tax year, your company needs to file IRS Form 3921. Companies must file one form per employee, and if they miss the deadline or ignore IRS reminders and fail to file, they could end up paying expensive fines.
As your company grows, things change quickly. You need to keep your investors up to date but that can be tedious and time-consuming. Carta makes this easier with our newest feature—investor updates.
Private companies today have more financing and liquidity options than ever. With the option to stay private longer or go public on a growing number of exchanges, it can be hard for companies and their investors to figure out which exit or funding scenario is best for them. So, we built scenario modeling tools on Carta that show you the impact of future financing rounds or possible exits in seconds.
As your company scales, and you begin to think about going public or other liquidity options, your reporting requirements increase. We provide a range of reports to help you stay compliant, audit-ready, and on top of your company’s performance as you scale.
Two years ago, Harry Stebbings invited our founder and CEO, Henry Ward, on The Twenty Minute VC podcast. We’ve grown a lot since then, and Henry recently joined Harry again to chat about a range of topics.
Today, Carta is at a scale where we can offer liquidity every 12–18 months. All employees with vested shares are eligible.
Cap tables are a necessary evil for every startup founder, CEO or CFO. Excel spreadsheets are usually riddled with mistakes. Carta is changing that.
Execute is a podcast documentary about the history of Carta and a blueprint for anyone who wants to build a startup. It covers the ups and downs of fundraising, the cultural challenges that result from scaling headcount, and the overall transition from a small, focused team into a legit, revenue-producing company.
Carta’s culture is built on a single principle: always be helpful. We encourage our engineers to help each other solve challenging problems and our account managers to go the extra mile for customers. But it doesn’t and shouldn’t end inside Carta’s walls. We aim to extend “always be helpful” to our neighbors and communities as well.
We recently travelled to all of our offices to capture what it’s like to work at Carta. Get a closer look at our company culture.
Tilray is the first Canadian cannabis company to file for an initial public offering on a U.S. stock exchange, raising $153 million at $17 per share. We chatted with Tom about Tilray’s road to IPO, and their decision to choose Carta as a partner on this path.
1stdibs, the world’s largest online luxury marketplace for one-of-a-kind high-end items, utilized Carta for their recent tender offer.
Sunaina Seelam, the VP of finance at Scoot Networks, talked to Carta about shifting to a rental business after working in the automotive industry.
© 2019 ESHARES, INC. DBA CARTA, INC.