Whats New

We've made it easier to quickly add LPs to Carta's Closings tool. Using a new spreadsheet in Carta you can now easily input details about each LP or simply paste information from another spreadsheet or tool. 

How it Works

There's a new "Bulk add partners" button on the closings tool that will open up the new spreadsheet where you can add LPs. You'll need to fill in the following information about each LP: 

• Partner name: The name of the individual or entity that is subscribing.
• First and Last Name: This will be the name of the primary contact for the LPs commitment. The LP can always update this and add additional contacts when they’re filling out subscription documents.
• Email: The email address of the individual who will be filling out subscription documents for the partner.
• Commitment amount: The amount the LP will be committing to the fund or SPV. You must enter a commitment amount but this can be updated at any point prior to the LP signing. 

Additional Resources

Here's a support article that walks through the step-by-step process of adding LPs to the closings tool. 

Who this affects

This is now available to any fund managers using Carta's Closings Tool. Our Closings Tool gives LPs a quick and easy way to fill out Fund and SPV subscription documents. 

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
   
   
   

What’s new

We're updating firm permissions to be more granular for larger firms, while keeping them easy to manage for emerging managers.

Fund Admin clients on Carta will now have the ability to grant users on their accounts access to only the information they need: Investments, Limited Partner information, Fund Admin, and Fund performance data.

How it works

Admins on a VC firm account have the ability to add users and update their permissions. Permissions are controlled under Settings on a firm account. Non-admins can go to the Settings page to see who the admin on their account is.

Basic VC firm accounts on Carta will be able to grant users Admin or Investments access.

Firms that use Carta for additional services have the ability to grant users additional permissions for each fund in the firm.

Defaults

For each user, an Admin can grant them “default” access to the firm. Defaults will automatically give users these permissions for new funds that are added to the account.

Additional Resources

• Support article

Who this affects

This update affects all VC firm users on Carta. Users will not see a difference to their existing access with this change, but going forward Admins can update permissions.

Timing

We are rolling this out to a small number of firms starting on August 30 and plan to roll out to all firms within a few weeks.

Carta is making it easier to get the answers our users need, when they need them. Introducing our one-click Help Center.

Who does this affect?

Company administrators and viewers, law firm users, and personal portfolio holders

What’s new?

Users can now access Carta's Help Center in one click by going to the dialog balloon icon at bottom right of the screen, where they can ask questions about the platform's workflows, products and features.  

Email Cases created through this workflow leverage user's session data and context to quickly route the Case to Subject Matter Experts, leading to faster resolution times. 

When Phone is selected as the preferred method, the most appropriate phone number is displayed based on the user's type and question, ensuring users get connected to the right Support Agent for their need, without inconvenient call transfers. 

Learn more about Carta's Help Center

What’s new?

Portfolio Insights clients now have a more granular view of the requests for information they send to their portfolio companies. The request for information dashboard has been upgraded to include document type and status for each portfolio company, as well as a timestamp of the portfolio company’s last submission.

Along with making the request for information (“RFI”) dashboard more granular, it’s possible to configure exactly what is requested of each company, lessening the burden on portfolio companies and ensuring a streamlined process. Click here to learn more about RFI configuration.

It’s also now possible to cc multiple people on RFIs, ensuring anyone and everyone from your team is kept apprised of the quarterly collection process.

Questions?

For more information regarding the RFI dashboard, or Portfolio Insights, please reach out directly to your Portfolio Insights account manager or portfolio-kpi@carta.com.

What’s new?

Fund Managers are now able to set up a fundraising data room as part of our VC fundraising process. The Carta platform makes it easy to run the entire fundraising process in one place – from creating your data room to closing your fund with our subscription document process.

Key features of this data room include:

• Integration with fundraising and subscription document experience
• Easy control of access for GPs
• Tracking documents viewed and visits to data room by user
• Watermarking documents
• Ability to require NDA signing 

How it works:

The fundraising data room is integrated into the Closings process. Any fund on Carta can use this data room with or without our subscription documents.

Setting up a fundraising data room

1. Carta staff will create a fund and turn on Closings for you. On the Closings tab, the user will see the option to set up a data room
2. 
   After clicking Set up, users will see more information about what the data room offers. Then users can set a name and choose which settings to apply to this data room.
3. 
   After the data room is created, documents and folders can be uploaded to the data room.
   

Viewing / Removing access

Firm users can see which users have access, which partner they are associated with, and the option to remove access from the Access section of the data room.

Viewing Potential Investor Activity

Firm users can view LP activity, which is often an indicator of how interested they are in the fund, by looking at the Activities section of the data room.

Watermarking

If funds turn on the watermarking feature in data room, all downloading PDFs will have a watermark containing the user's name, email, and time of download.

LP access to data room

LPs can are invited to the data room through the Closings tool. They will receive an email invitation to view documents in the data room.

LPs can use the Request subscription documents button to request documents from the fund. When LPs are done viewing the data room, they can click Dismiss task to remove the task from their tasks section.

Who can use this?

All investment firms on Carta. Contact your fund administrator or investorservices@carta.com to turn this on for your fund. Read more about the details of how to use this on our support site.

Timing:

This is available to all investment firms as of July 21, 2021

What’s new?

Our Portfolio Insights clients can now easily request information from their Portfolio Companies. We’ve created the flexibility to select file types, KPIs, or information about the portfolio companies’ upcoming financings.

How it works

1. Navigate to Manage RFIs under Settings and select which companies from your portfolio you’d like to make edits to:

   1. Enabled: Will request data from Portfolio Companies
   2. Fiscal Schedule: Control if your request is a standard quarter end, or +1 or +2 month end (e.g. Q2 fiscal schedule of July 30 or August 30)
   3. FND: Ask if Portfolio Company will be raising funds in the next year, if so, by when and how much.
   4. AER: Do you want to send automatic email reminders if the Portfolio Companies did not reply.
   5. Period: Request income statement figures for the last 3 months, 6 months, or 12 months

   6. Requested Files: Request between:

      1. Articles of incorporation and Cap Table (for companies that don’t manage their cap table on Carta)
      2. Financials
      3. Forecast and Board Decks.
   7. Requested KPIs: Select from the list of 40 industry standard KPIs (Users, ARR, Web Traffic, etc). Enable KPIs individually or in industry-specific batches.

1. Toggle data collection, tailor the documents to be requested, and enable various KPI fields for a more intuitive RFI preparation process

1. Save preferences and send your next portfolio RFI during your typical request cadence.

1. Portfolio company upload portals will be customized accordingly, ensuring you’re only requesting exactly what you need from each logo

Suggestions

We recommend limiting KPIs to 3 or 4 to keep portfolio company upload portals from becoming overwhelming. 

Limitations

Custom KPI (i.e. those that don’t exist in our drop down) functionality is scheduled to be available late Q3 2021.

Timing

The configuration page is currently released and enabled for all Portfolio Insights clients.

Questions?

For more information regarding RFI configuration, or portfolio insights, please reach out directly to your portfolio insights account manager or portfolio-kpi@carta.com.

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