What’s new?

Up until now, all equity benchmarks in Carta Total Compensation have been based on fully diluted ownership percentage. While it’s common practice for most early to mid-stage startups to base their equity grants on percentage ownership, later stage companies tend to denote their equity grants in dollar values.

To better serve those companies, equity benchmarks based on notional value are now available on the Benchmarks page. These new benchmarks are available for the $500 million - $1 billion and Greater than $1 billion post-money valuation peer groups. These benchmarks reflect 4-year new hire grants calculated based on number of shares multiplied by preferred price on the date of grant.

How can I access the new notional value benchmarks?

1. Navigate to the Benchmarks page in Carta Total Compensation
2. After selecting either the $500 million - $1 billion or Above $1 billion peer group, in the Equity Unit dropdown menu, select “Notional Value”

For this initial release, these benchmarks are only available on the Benchmarks page. We will be integrating notional value benchmarks into other parts of Carta Total Compensation in the coming months.

Questions?

If you have any questions about these new benchmarks, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager.

What’s new?

We’ve launched a new Partners Dashboard that gives Fund Administration customers firm-level visibility into their LP relationships. You can now group your LP investments, assign them custom tags, and see consolidated performance metrics (TVPI, IRR, DPI, etc…) and investment data (commitment amount, capital activity details, NAV, etc…) across all your LPs in your firm.

How does it work?

Access the New Partners Dashboard: The dashboard is a brand new page that can be  accessed via the Partners tab on your left-hand navigation bar in Carta. Click here for a walkthrough.

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LP Grouping: Organize your LP investments into custom groups to mirror how your firm views LP relationships. Learn how to use groupings here.

Tagging: Customize your view by creating custom tags for LPs such as LP type, geography, or any custom tag your team uses to categorize LPs. You’ll also be able to filter based on tags and see consolidated LP metrics across your tags. Learn how to use tagging here.

Custom Views: Apply filters based on tags or entities, add/remove columns of data, and save your custom view(s) so you can quickly access specific filtered dashboards of data you care about. You can also export these filtered views to excel. 

Partner Detail Pages: Click into each LP group to see the details of each LP investment within that group. On this page we show various levels of aggregated metrics as well: by the entire LP group, by each of the LPs legal entities, and by entity they’ve invested in for scenarios where they’ve invested in one of your entities through multiple legal entities. 

How do I learn more?

Here’s a support article and some recorded walkthroughs for an overview of the Partners Dashboard, instructions on how LP Grouping works, and how to set up LP Tagging. If you have any questions or feedback, reach out to your dedicated Account Director to schedule a call.

We’ve made it easier to find the tools and information you need in your Carta Fund Administration software.  So far, we have rolled navigation changes out to a small group of customers and will continue the roll out through October.  Here’s an overview of the most important changes:

We've deprecated the Overview tab so you can easily find Entities, Investments and Partners.

• Subtabs such as fund performance, capital activity, statements, accounting, etc  (previously located in the Overview tab) will now be found in the Entities tab.
• Entities, Investments, and Partners tabs will now be found in the left-hand navigation menu.
• The left-hand navigation menu will be reordered with key tabs at the top and add-ons, settings, and tools in the section below. 

The Activity tab is now the Dashboard

• The Activity tab will now be named “Dashboard” and will be your new homepage when you login.

We’ve improved  Entity Selection.

• A persistent "choose entity" selector will be at the top right of the Dashboard. This way, when you select an entity, you can navigate to different subtabs while keeping the selected entity.

Cap table access is essential for understanding your investment portfolio, but companies often wait for a request before granting it. Our goal is to equip investors and portfolio companies with the tools to request and grant access securely. With our latest release, investment firms now have robust tools to manage cap table requests, ask for the specific data levels they need, and follow up with companies to secure access.

What’s new?

We’re making it easier for investment firms to request and manage cap table access from their portfolio companies. :

• See how many portfolio companies are on Carta, your access status, and any open requests. Sort and filter by access level, company name, date, holdings, and status.
• Send bulk or individual requests and reminders for cap table access in two clicks.
• Export reports with access levels, request details, company status, and contact info for investor questions.

Who is this available for?

All users with “admin” permission in your investment firm.

How do I use it?

To access the page, navigate to your investment firm account, click on "Tools and services" in your sidebar, and select "Cap table access." You may also receive a prompt from the Investments Overview page to request access.

Anything else I need to know?

If you are not sure what levels you will need access to, Advanced is the most common level we see granted for investors. Portfolio companies can always choose to respond with Basic access, if they do not want to grant advanced.

If there are additional enhancements you would like to see here, you can provide feedback via Carta Community.

What’s new

The new fundraising feature helps founders, working collaboratively with their law firm and investors, close a priced round end to end on Carta. It provides a workflow and centralized hub that facilitates administrative tasks related to closing a deal.

Founders and their law firm will have a dashboard that provides 

• real-time fundraising benchmarks
• a snapshot of the status of their round letting them run closings-related tasks such as generating signature paperwork, building pro formas and managing the round
• ability to track signature status, send reminders and view the wire status

Investors will also get their own convenient dashboard to view the deal timeline, sign paperwork, view deal docs and wire instructions.

And after you complete a priced round, we automatically update your startup’s cap table to reflect the new investment, and issue certificates to investors.

Why this matters

Today running a priced round is complex and incredibly manual. A deal is closed mostly offline using a mix of spreadsheets, emails, phone calls, and signature applications to complete the work. There are also a number of moving parts such as signature page drafting, collecting signature blocks, sending out documents and reminders to investors, collecting signature pages from convertibles, tracking, and updating status, confirming wires etc.  

It requires a great deal of manual work by the law firm, and lacks transparency for founders and investors. Not to mention the high cost of priced rounds for all parties involved.

How can I access it

You can access the Deal Closings feature by navigating to the “Raise funds” navigation menu item if you’re on Carta’s free plan. Or navigate to “Fundraise”-> “Priced rounds” navigation item if you’re a paid Carta customer. Read more on how to use this feature here

What’s new? 

Carta has released a new tender offer issuer dashboard for company administrators, exposing the most critical actions and information during periods when sellers are placing orders.

This dashboard highlights the following information:

• Aggregate sell orders placed relative to buyer demand: emphasizes situations where sell orders exceed quantities to be purchased and must be reduced algorithmically for settlement
• Rate at which eligible sellers across customizable stakeholder categories view the offering and place orders
• Sell orders placed over time, highlighting spikes in trade activity or large order cancellations
• Better organization and management of in app seller data

How do I use this tool?

Log into your Carta administrator account during an active tender offer order period and navigate to the Secondaries menu. Select an active tender offer event and you will land on the dashboard.

What’s next?

This release covers the issuer experience for the  period during tender offers when sellers can enter orders. In the near future, we are expanding this dashboard to provide an improved issuer experience both before a tender offer launches and after it closes:

• Pre launch: information and configuration experience prior to the start of a tender offer
• Post close: key transaction information and improved administrator experience

Questions?

If you have any questions about Carta liquidity, please contact us at company_coverage@carta.com

What’s new?

We have updated salary, total cash compensation, and equity benchmarks for all job areas and specializations across both valuation and headcount based peer groups. 

Benchmark Trends

In aggregate, salary and total cash compensation benchmarks are slightly higher than our last release, increasing by 1%. These increases were consistent across all valuation peer groups and levels. Similar to previous updates, specialization level data continues to change more than the broader sample, as sample sizes for these roles are smaller than job area level data.

Equity benchmarks are increasing in aggregate, showing about a 2% increase versus last quarter. This quarter’s increases are fairly tightly correlated with company valuation, with higher valuation benchmarks seeing the largest increases.

Updated headcount based benchmarks show larger than typical increases or decreases compared to our initial release for a number of roles. This is a result of additional data, improvements to our underlying models, and feedback from customers.  Going forward we expect these benchmarks to be less volatile over time (similar to our valuation-based benchmarks)

What were the largest areas of movement from these benchmarks?

Salary - Salary benchmarks for most job areas and specializations are within 2% of last quarter’s data. 

Equity - Equity benchmarks are generally within 5% of last quarter’s benchmarks. Roles that are increasing by more than 5% are Product Marketing, Admin, Project Management, Support, and UX Design

How do I update my benchmark version?

You can also preview the new benchmarks on your Scorecard by navigating to the Benchmarks page and clicking on the "Preview benchmarks" bubble in the top left.

Here you will have the opportunity to preview the new plan with the updated benchmarks version and assess their impact on your Scorecard before accepting the new plan.

Questions?

If you have any questions about these new benchmarks, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager.

Manage your investor relationships through the new Investor Relations page! 

What’s new? 

The Investor Relations page consolidates common workflows for company admins who are responsible for managing investor relationships. The page offers a detailed ledger for each investor and keeps track of any information requests they've sent your way, so nothing gets missed. 

Who is this available for? 

This is available for all companies who receive requests for information from their investors through Carta. Admins with company editor or full access privileges can view this page. 

How do I use it?

Log into your account on Carta and navigate to the Investor relations menu item. 

You'll be able to re-submit or edit your submission through the ledger until the request is marked as completed by the requestor. 

What’s new?

Board members, investors, and company executives need to to ensure, from a governance perspective, that equity is being used responsibly by the company. To support this need we are launching a new set of benchmarks to help companies evaluate their equity usage versus peers:

1. Option pool size - the percentage of fully diluted shares reserved to grant to people in the future
2. Equity burn rate -  the percentage of fully diluted shares granted over the last 365 days

How can I access the new Equity Plan Benchmarks?

1. Navigate to the Benchmarks page in Carta Total Compensation
2. Navigate to the “Option pool & Burn rate” tab on the Benchmarks page 

The appropriate benchmarks, based on your company’s valuation, will be highlighted on the page.

Questions?

If you have any questions about these new benchmarks, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager.

What's new?

Fund managers can now require two approvers to authorize payments before processing.

What’s important about this change?

This feature provides enhanced controls over releasing payments, ensuring that VC and PE firms can adhere to their audit procedures while maintaining control over their financial operations.

How does it work?

Select Firm Settings in the left hand navigation, then click Settings. Within the Settings tab, click People, then scroll to the bottom to the new Payment approval section.

Here you can set how many approvers are required (up to two) and the threshold amount. Only users with Admin permissions can update this section. If you need to update who the approvers are, scroll to the People section at the top of the page.

You’ll also have the ability to track the progress of active payments and view the history of completed payments, including who approved them and when they were approved in your Activity tab.