Users with holdings in public companies will now have the ability to view their holdings for both public and private companies straight from the Carta iOS app. Shareholders can now track market values, view total holdings value and more.

Who this affects

Shareholders with holdings in public companies.

Supported platforms

• iOS (Android coming soon)

What's new

With an aim to provide functional and streamlined experiences for shareholders, we’ve brought the ability to view public holdings on the Carta iOS app. Public company cards will now be present among private companies on the home screen. The following information will be displayed for each public company card with the ability to view further details when clicked:

• Total number of shares held
• Total holdings value
• Net holdings value

We are making it easier for companies to keep employees, investors, and other stakeholders informed about their holdings and company changes. 

Companies have historically been able to grant viewing permissions to their stakeholders via our Cap Table Sharing page and features. This experience, however, was burdensome for many company administrators who found themselves having to change sharing settings as new stakeholders were added to their cap table or existing stakeholders changed their relationship to the company, such as an employee leaving the company or an investor exiting their position.

With our new Shareholder Experience page, company administrators can designate what type of information they want to share with their different stakeholders and set rules based on these preferences. By setting permissions by rules instead of a stakeholder-by-stakeholder process, we make it easier for company administrators to get the right stakeholders the appropriate information and reflect their information sharing philosophy.

Companies can choose to enable a specific shareholder experience based on the relationship of the stakeholder to the company. For example, companies can choose what information founders, investors, employees, and former employees, and other stakeholders access on Carta. We’ve renamed, updated, and simplified our access levels to Restricted, Basic, Advanced, and Full Details. We include a “Recommended” level for different relationships (e.g. Investors = Advanced) to help guide founders and other company administrators on setting up their Shareholder Experience based on user feedback. 

We’ve also added a new rule where former stakeholders--those who no longer have an active investment or holding in the company--will automatically be downgraded to Restricted automatically. This means that as stakeholders enter and exit the cap table, their respective shareholder experience will update automatically.

New Shareholder Experience page: Group levels

We know that sometimes it’s important for company administrators to create experiences specific to a single stakeholder or user. The new Shareholder Experience feature allows companies to set overrides for specific stakeholders in the “Individual levels” tab. We also provide information on that stakeholder’s relationship and holdings information.

New Shareholder Experience page: Individual levels

To help ensure company administrators set access levels that best fit the needs of their stakeholders, our access level guide is clickable from either the Group Level or Individual Level views of the new Shareholder Experience.

Access level guide

We appreciate our users’ feedback on how to make this page clearer and easier to use. We hope these improvements save company administrators valuable time and help them mirror their company information sharing philosophy in our software.

Who is this available for?

The cap table sharing page is available currently via a limited release to select Carta companies. In the coming weeks, we will begin to allow additional companies to migrate to the new Shareholder Experience feature set. This new product is not limited by subscription tier.

Companies with the new Shareholder Experience features enabled can visit Stakeholders > Shareholder Experience. 

If you’d like to enable the new Shareholder Experience page for your company, you can also contact us.

Non-individual Limited Partners who complete subscription documents on Carta can now be KYC’ed instantly.

What’s New

This release is a follow-up to our KYC for Individual LPs feature. If your fund leverages Carta’s KYC/AML service and you have non-individual Limited Partners (LPs) completing subscription documents in Carta, these LPs can now be instantly KYC’ed on the platform. Carta instantly KYCs the LP's control person and beneficial owner(s) in addition to the LP entity itself.

Carta’s instant KYC feature is made possible by Carta integrations with identity and verification databases like LexisNexis, Ekata, Socure, and more.

Limitations

• For this release, only US-based LPs are supported for instant KYC. Future releases will extend support to non-US LPs

How it Works

1. As an LP completes their subscription documents, non-individual LPs (for funds that avail of Carta’s KYC/AML service) will see a dedicated Know Your Customer section. Upon landing here, LPs will first be asked if their control person and beneficial owner(s) are all US persons - 

   
   

   
   
   
   

   
   

2. If the control person and beneficial owner(s) are all US persons, then the LP will be shown forms to enter KYC information for these individual(s) -
   
   

   
   
   
   
   

   
   

   
   
   

   
   

3. Finally, the LP is also able to upload any entity formation documents and photo IDs here:
   
   
   
   
   
   

4. Once subscription documents are signed by the LP, the following are instantly KYC'ed: the LP entity, control person, and beneficial owner(s). If all pass KYC, this is immediately reflected in the Carta UI and General Partners are notified to countersign -
   
   

   
   
   

   Timing: Rolled out to all on Aug 31, 2021

   Audience: US-based Limited Partners, General Partners
   
   
   

Users with holdings in private companies can now view their holdings details straight from the home screen for easy access.

Who this affects

Shareholders with holdings in private companies.

Supported Platforms

• iOS & Android

What’s New

With an objective to provide insightful experiences, we’ve redesigned the home screen on the Carta app to display important holding details for each company. Company cards will now present the following information with the ability to view further details when clicked:

• Total number of options held, number of options vested and exercised 
• A vesting progress bar comparing the number of vested and exercised options to the total options granted
• Summary of securities displaying types and quantities for each held

What’s new?

Public company stakeholders can now download share activity reports that capture their transaction activity and change in shares held during any period.

How it works:

By clicking on the new Statements tab, public company stakeholders enter in the start and end date that they would like to analyze:

The resulting report captures holdings at the beginning and ending of the period, and captures any transactions that cause an increase or decrease in the number of shares the participant holds.

Overall change in ownership is tracked in the Portfolio at the end of period section. Holdings are separated into shares originating from ESPP (Employee Stock Purchase Plan) and non-ESPP sources. The section shows holdings in these categories at the beginning and end of the period.

The Equity transactions in period section captures all transactions to equity (non-ESPP) shares during the period.

The following transactions are captured in this section, including the net effect of the transactions on a stakeholder's holdings

• Option exercises, including the effect of any shares sold to cover option cost and taxes
• RSU settlements, including any shares sold or withheld to cover taxes
• Shares sold
• Shares transferred in to Carta
• Shares transferred out from Carta

The ESPP (Employee Stock Purchase Plan) transactions in period section captures all transactions that affect ESPP holdings.

This section captures the transactions below, including the net effect of the transactions on a stakeholder's holdings

• ESPP purchases
• Sale of ESPP stock
• ESPP shares transferred in
• ESPP Shares transferred out

The report also captures transactions that have been entered into Carta for record-keeping purposes. These transactions do not affect holdings and typically reflect transactions where shares are held or sold at an outside brokerage. 

Transactions in this section include:

• Option cashless sale or hold transactions facilitated by outside brokers (where shares are sold or held outside of Carta)
• Option exercises where shares are delivered or held outside of Carta
• RSU settlements where shares are sold or held by outside brokers

Who can use this?

All public company stakeholders

Timing:

Stakeholders will be able to access this report through their portfolios starting 7/9/2021

Announcing a new survey to collect demographic information for Table Stakes

Carta users can now elect to provide their demographic information under the user profile section of their accounts.

Why is this important? 

In 2018, the #ANGELS hypothesized that the gender equity gap was worse than the salary gap. Carta collects the data to help track and analyze what they called #TheGapTable. Together, we created the first ever report on equity distribution by gender and have continued to create it every year since. Equity is the largest lever for wealth creation in Silicon Valley and beyond; we believe it should be distributed equitably. This year we are focused on bringing that data into our application and making this demographic survey more powerful than ever.

What’s new?

When stakeholders navigate to their user profile they will now have a link to a demographic survey that will be used to power the data analysis for Carta’s Table Stakes in December 2021. We encourage all users to participate as each data point contributes to a more powerful analysis.

Navigate to your name in the top right corner and then “Profile and Security” before selecting “Fill out your demographic information”

Who this is available to

All users located in the US. Users who have opted out of communications or have asked to be added to our “do not analyze” lists will not be included in Table Stakes or other analyses.

Posted on behalf of Jessica Ray who led this project.

Limited Partners completing subscription documents on Carta can now be KYC’ed instantly.

What’s New

If your fund leverages Carta’s KYC/AML service and you have Limited Partners (LPs) completing subscription documents in Carta, these LPs are now instantly KYC’ed on the platform. 

Carta’s new instant KYC feature is made possible by Carta integrations with identity and verification databases like LexisNexis, Ekata, Socure, and more.

Limitations

• For this first release, only individual (as opposed to entity) LPs are KYC’ed. Future releases will support KYC for entity (non-individual) LPs as well. This includes KYC for the LP entity, LP control person, and LP beneficial owners
• For this first release, only US-based LPs are supported. Future releases will extend support to non-US LPs

How it Works

1. As an LP completes their subscription documents, individual LPs (for funds that avail of Carta’s KYC/AML service), will now see a dedicated Know Your Customer section. Here, LPs can input the additionally required information for KYC -

   
   
   

2. Once subscription documents are signed by the LP, the LP is instantly KYC’ed. If the LP passes KYC, this is immediately reflected in Carta and General Partners are notified to countersign -
   

   
   
   

   Timing: Rolled out to Limited Partners on July 1, 2021

   
   

   Audience: Limited Partners, General Partners

Users can now access their exercise history across their entire portfolio in one spot. This makes it easy to review their activities over a defined time frame - like a tax year! 

Who this affects:

• Shareholders who have exercised a private company option grant

What's new:

• Find all exercise details in one location - Within Exercise History you can see a report of all your exercises across your entire portfolio. This makes it easier to get an at-a-glance view of your exercises activity.
  
   
• Filter for specific companies or date range - Narrow your report by company or date range to customize your report.
  
  
  
  
  
• Customize your report - Choose which fields are relevant for a given report.
  
  
  
  
• Export your report - Download and view your report in a portable CSV format.
  
  
  
  
  

Timing:

• Released March 2021
• Support for all public company exercises coming Q2 2021

Where to find Exercise History

• When viewing your portfolio, select the Account drop down menu to find Exercise History
  
  

Who this affects:

Public company stakeholders

What's new:

Public company stakeholder portfolios now feature share lot details and transaction details tabs, capturing information about shares that are held and shares that have been sold.

Share lot details tab:

The Share lot details tab shows the stakeholder’s share lots. Stakeholders can view their acquisition date and cost basis for all share lots, as well as the source of the shares. For share lots linked to ISO awards or employee stock purchase plans, this view shows a qualifying date capturing the earliest date that the share lot can be sold in a qualifying disposition. The FMV at acquisition is also captured in the table to facilitate tax analysis.

Transaction details:

The second tab features transaction details for any sold lots. Stakeholders can view their sold share lots and their related cost basis and acquisition dates. This view also shows the disposition type if the share lot is linked to an ISO exercise or ESPP purchase. The view captures the proceeds for each liquidated share lot.

Stakeholders can now view details about their public RSU settlements in the RSU settlement history view.

Who this affects:

Public company stakeholders with RSU awards

What’s new: 

From the portfolio view, stakeholders can navigate to each individual RSU grant and view a comprehensive settlement history:

The settlement history shows the settlement type, shares sold or withheld for taxes, and the net shares that the stakeholder receives. 

Stakeholders can download a Settlement details report capturing the breakdown of their taxes related to the RSU settlement, asl well as shares sold or withheld for taxes: