How PE-backed Whistic uses Carta to drive precision and manage equity

Whistic, a Utah-based vendor security and third-party risk management platform, is closely focused on financial performance as it grows between funding rounds. The company, founded in 2015, raised its Series B funding in 2022 and relies on Carta to help with decisions that shape its strategy and keep it running efficiently.  

Kit Lloyd, Whistic’s Director of Finance & RevOps, and Allie Waite, VP, People & Culture, collaborate regularly to adapt to Whistic’s changing needs. Each is a team of one at the startup, which has approximately 70 employees. Together, they make complex decisions on equity and other headcount expenditures.

With Carta, Whistic has real-time visibility into its cap table, waterfall modeling and financial reporting, so Lloyd and Waite can stay in strategic lockstep to optimize growth. 

Whistic joined Carta in 2021 with an equity plan already in place, but when the company closed a $35 million investment round led by growth equity firm JMI Equity in June 2022, it became even more important to manage its finances precisely. 

Carta provided the tools and information Whistic needed to evolve its operations. In the Carta platform, teams can access accurate, traceable financial data, including calculations and underlying formulas for individual review as needed. This information gives Whistic real-time visibility and control when making decisions. 

“Carta helps us innovate on how we manage our financials so that we can provide a great return on investment to our investors,” says Waite. 

Whistic started optimizing costs with Carta Total Compensation, standardizing compensation levels company-wide. Total Compensation provides access to private-market benchmarks for salary and equity compensation. 

“Total Compensation was super valuable to us. Competing solutions didn’t measure up. They didn’t include the right roles for tech startups or they delivered inflated benchmarks,” says Waite. “Now, we have accurate target ranges for each position and level at Whistic.” 

Carta also played a key role in helping Waite design an equity refresh, providing detailed reports and other enablement resources to guide her strategy. Waite used this intelligence to analyze Whistic’s equity issuances and make clear recommendations for grants to employees at different compensation levels.   

As Whistic’s finance director, Lloyd’s role is to determine how ideas and actions, like the company’s financial strategy, impact its financial power. He sees Carta as instrumental to keeping Whistic on track financially.

“Putting a solid employee compensation program in place, backed by the equity data available to us in Carta, has allowed us to become more precise and efficient than we originally anticipated,” says Lloyd.

The information in Carta also helps Lloyd manage investor relations. As Whistic’s only finance-team employee, it’s vital that he can meet expectations without distracting from his other responsibilities, which include budgeting, forecasting, planning, and go-to-market support.

“Some of our investors take advantage of integrations with Carta, so they can log into the platform and have access to reporting. This completely removes the burden on me to provide that information,” says Lloyd. 

“Other investors want me to provide the information for them—and it’s not just providing it quickly. I have to provide certain levels of detail and insight. Carta helps with this, too. I can run cap-table reports at summary, intermediate, and detailed levels that drill down to individual names and vesting schedules.”

Carta’s real-time data and insights help Whistic stay lean across growth stages. By aligning around Whistic’s cap table, Waite and Lloyd can operate and collaborate strategically, saving cash, time, and effort while creating value for the company, its employees, and investors.  

“Allie [Waite] and I both have to be efficient all the time, because, combined, we cover a lot of ground at Whistic,” says Lloyd. “Carta has been a great tool for us to take a collaborative approach.”

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