How Forecastr quickly funded a major product relaunch with Carta Deal Closings

Forecastr, a financial planning and analysis software provider, wanted to close quickly on a $5 million funding round. The company, which is remote-first and has founders based in Louisville, KY, was relaunching its platform, rebuilding the entire backend in response to customer feedback and other demand signals. 

Forecastr Chief of Staff Brandon Moynihan was able to finalize Forecastr’s funding without any trouble because of Carta Deal Closings, Carta’s workflow tool that automates most of the administrative tasks required to close a financing round. 

As a result, Forecastr saved time on investor relations, signature tracking, and wire tracking, obtaining the capital to meet customer demand, while Moynihan stayed focused on steering the company into its next growth phase.

Carta Deal Closings earned Moynihan’s trust right away by performing as he expected, a scenario he says is rare when using new software.  

“Carta has definitely given me peace of mind, knowing that all of the logistics around the deal closing were in one central location,” he said. “Previously, when doing closings, I’ve found myself looking at multiple disjointed spreadsheets, but with Carta, there’s just one centralized dashboard or operating system. It’s great to get the high level view: Where are the wires? Where are the signatures? How do we add more documents? Carta provides a single source of truth. As a company that makes decisions based on data and numbers, that’s a very strong proposition for us.”

Lining up capital for product development

For Moynihan, timing was critical. He worked to align Forecastr’s finances with product development milestones, raising capital alongside Forecastr’s Co-Founder and CEO Steven Plappert.

“As it relates to capital, we knew our options were to just keep building on the current platform—or we could make a shift that really supported the backend,” said Moynihan. “Listening to our customers drove our desire to launch an improved version and that led to us needing another round of capital that fit our timeline.”

Carta Deal Closings helps businesses like Forecastr respond to market shifts quickly by streamlining efforts to close funding rounds. Moynihan used Carta’s dashboard to track the entire closing process and forecast when funds would be available. The visibility let him plan and adjust Forecastr’s launch timelines as needed. 

After the round closed, Carta automatically updated Forecastr’s cap table, reducing administrative work and providing more time for Moynihan to support the team leading product development.

“This next iteration of the software meets customer needs better. It’s more flexible and scalable and lets us build foundational features we know we want to build,” he says. “We’ve been using the capital from our most recent raise to make sure the launch goes really smoothly. It’s an exciting time.”

Choosing Carta Deal Closings was an easy choice for Moynihan because Forecastr already works in Carta. Deal Closings provides Forecastr with extended value, connecting more of its fundraising activities with its equity management in one place. 

“It was easy for me to say, ‘If this platform is actually legit, we will definitely pull the trigger,’ because I had never seen a company use a platform for a deal closing. Every company I’ve ever seen custom-built their process for closings,” said Moynihan, “but it makes sense that Deal Closings lives in the same space where you track your equity, because closings are just a step upstream in the process from equity management. It’s a no-brainer to manage closings within Carta’s ecosystem.”

Moynihan also credits his fast decisioning in part to his startup experience. He was an investor before he joined Forecastr and is a co-founder at a startup legal firm. He understood right away that Carta could save Forecastr time and money and advises other founders to consider the costs of not using Deal Closings. 

“I had a decent understanding of what it takes to go through a closing, but some entrepreneurs may be like, ‘Oh, a platform versus doing it myself? I’m going to save myself money or I’ll have my lawyer do it.’ They may not realize it could cost thousands of dollars just for lawyers to update signature blocks and then track the signatures.”

Freeing up time for opportunities

Carta’s efficiency translates to hours saved and mental energy to spare, so Moynihan can focus on Forecastr’s opportunities. 

“Usually, there’s so much back and forth at deal closing. For example, if signature blocks need to get tweaked, it changes your whole tracking system. The automatic update of statuses may seem like a trivial piece of the puzzle, but the mere fact of having things update in real time is great. Even for things that aren’t updated in real time, like wire tracking, it’s a really straightforward experience. Just having everything in one area really helped. All the documentation is there, and it’s able to be sent out to the right parties without thinking.” 

The result, he said, is increased bandwidth. “I probably personally saved 20 hours by eliminating back and forth with investors. And they have near-zero feedback on the process. Carta lets me preserve that bandwidth in my own mind and reserve it for more strategic thinking about Forecastr’s growth.”