How Aervivo picked ‘more mature’ Carta over Pulley to support company growth

For Aervivo, rapid growth cycles are vital to success. The cloud-based platform enables communities to solve connectivity challenges locally by becoming their own internet service providers.

Carta helps Aervivo accelerate platform implementation with quick cap table management and board consents that keep business moving. Close customer support means Aervivo can focus on creating value for its own customers and future investors.

Better features for growth

“Carta has been incredibly helpful as we’ve gone through significant milestones,” said Founder and CEO Mike Hart, who with his team developed Aervivo’s technology at an earlier internet provider and bought the platform to productize it.

Those milestones include Aervivo’s fundraising journey.

“We raised a traditional seed round in 2021,” said Hart. “Prior to that, we had been managing everything right in an Excel spreadsheet with convertible notes. And it was kind of fine, right? But the minute we went through that seed round, we realized that having to manage a spreadsheet would be a major distraction for us.

“We were looking at Pulley, but we were going to close the round and we just looked at it on a feature-for-feature basis, and Carta was so much more mature.”

Keeping up with market conditions

Hart’s decision was also based on his growth strategy. Even though Aervivo is nearing profitability, Hart’s recurring revenue goals are designed to prove product-market fit and go-to-market proficiency. The team works its pipeline aggressively so Aervivo can continue to raise capital and multiply growth.

These ambitions require agility, especially when market conditions change. Aervivo experienced a major challenge after the collapse of one of its banking partners in March 2023. With its cash inaccessible, it struggled to make payroll.

The scenario was a wakeup call for Hart, who rethought Aervivo’s readiness for a Series A round and decided to undergo a seed recapitalization with Carta’s help.

“That’s a pretty painful process, but we had great support from the backend Carta team. We were able to tell the team what we needed. They did all the work and sent it over to me in a sandbox, so I could check it was all correct.

“There were a couple of things we iterated back and forth on to get right. And then they were able to release it out of the sandbox into the true production environment, and it was done.”

Automated board consents

Hart appreciates that he can reduce his effort with board consents, too. With Carta, the entire process of issuing options is done on the platform and automatically updates cap tables. This eliminates manual back-and-forth and ensures accuracy.

“That saves me a lot of time and money that I can get consents together from those templates,” said Hart. “Carta’s board consents can cover a lot of the business we do outside board meetings as well, which is great. For me, it’s actually one of the most valuable pieces of the platform.”