Digital therapy and coaching platform HelloSelf was founded by Charles Wells in 2018, with the goal of improving access to mental healthcare and wellbeing support. Since then, the startup has gone from strength to strength, expanding its team along with its customer base.
Until 2021, HelloSelf’s cap table lived on an Excel spreadsheet that was manually updated after every funding round, share issuance and option exercise. Meanwhile, employee equity administration was split between several tools – including DocuSign and Mail Merge.
This approach was just about manageable at the seed stage. By Series A, however, HelloSelf needed a more scalable solution to handle its growing headcount and increasingly complex cap table. After considering a few different providers, CFO Neil Bannister put his trust in Carta.
Three years and a $19.6 million Series B round later, HelloSelf continues to rely on Carta to manage and track company ownership. We caught up with Neil to understand how various stakeholders – from investors to employees – benefit from the platform.
Meeting investors’ expectations
To secure venture capital funding in today’s hyper-competitive market, startups are expected to demonstrate maturity and growth potential. In practice, this typically means implementing formal processes and building out a reliable tech stack.
As Neil recalled, cap table management was front of mind for many of the VC funds he spoke to during HelloSelf’s Series A fundraise. “The fact we weren’t using industry-standard software at this stage was frowned upon by some of the potential investors,” he admitted.
Thankfully, the fundraising diligence process was much smoother after HelloSelf joined Carta. “Having a reputable platform in place before heading into the next round gave our Series B investor more confidence in our ability to keep track of our equity positions across multiple stakeholders.”
Neil also highlighted how the platform’s user-friendly design makes it easier to keep individual and institutional shareholders up to date. Instead of waiting for him to send out the latest cap table and explain any changes, investors can simply log into their Carta account to find information on their holdings and view company updates.
Neil BannisterWhen we raised our Series B round, using Carta made it so much easier to pull all of the information together for investor reporting and due diligence.
CFO, HelloSelf
Granting equity with ease
At HelloSelf, equity isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s a core part of the employee compensation and retention strategy. Today, over 70% of the team hold options, and Neil hopes to continue offering annual equity awards to both new hires and current employees.
Before using Carta, the downside to this approach was how much time and effort it took to maintain, especially as the company expanded.
“I used to dread opening grant windows when there were only five or six employees, because I had to do everything manually. Now, I can issue options to over 30 employees in just a few hours, which would have taken me several days without Carta.”
Granting equity at scale wasn’t the only challenge Neil faced. Most HelloSelf employees receive tax-efficient options through the company’s EMI scheme; however, the share plan rules vary depending on grant date, which leaves Neil juggling different vesting schedules and documentation types.
“Being able to manage such a complex share plan in one place is the biggest advantage of Carta,” he said. “It’s much easier and more secure than relying on me working late at night, worrying about accidentally sending documents to the wrong people.”
Empowering employees
The added benefit of using a centralised platform is that employees can access their individual grant details and documents at any time, without needing to ask Neil or HelloSelf’s HR team.
“Before Carta, no one really understood how their options worked,” Neil recalls. “Even though I ran equity workshops for employees, 90% of them still contacted me to ask about grant value, exercise price and vesting periods.”
Now, thanks to Carta, Neil can focus his attention on more urgent questions and business-critical tasks. The information readily available on the platform allows the HelloSelf team to educate themselves about equity in general, and about the performance of their own awards.
Neil BannisterBeing able to see their grants vesting and increasing in value over time is really incentivising for employees. It’s great from a retention perspective, too.
CFO, HelloSelf
HelloSelf’s decision to replace a manual and time-consuming process with a single digital tool has transformed the equity experience for everyone involved. Now that everything from issuing and exercising options to signing documents can be done through Carta, each stakeholder has a convenient, autonomous way to manage their equity.
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