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

Check out the exciting new updates we’ve made to Bands, Scorecard and Admin pages 

Next Twelve Months (NTM) Equity Ratio

Equity Ratio is now being calculated using Next Twelve Months (NTM) equity rather than Total Equity granted to the employee. The new formula for Equity Ratio is as follows: 

An employee’s next twelve months (NTM) equity divided by the target annual equity for a new hire today.

Why did we make this change? 

The Carta Total Comp Scorecard is designed to provide a clear view of the compensation health of your business. In order to build a score that better highlights attrition risk, we’ve changed the calculation for equity ratio to be based on unvested equity that will vest in the next twelve months. 

Employees compensated below market rate are at risk of attrition, as they would be paid more in a new role than if they were to stay in their current position. 

Vested equity does not incentivize employees, because it is already earned, and therefore does not help drive retention; put another way, vested equity is already “in the bank.” Calculating a health score that includes vested equity could lead to overlooking employees who are mostly vested and therefore at risk of going to work elsewhere. 

The additional benefit of NTM is that it allows you to compare equity compensation on the same annualized timeframe as salary. 

Additional Details

While Equity Ratio will be calculated by using NTM going forward, we will continue to show Total Equity on the company and employee Scorecard. 

Scorecard Export

You can now easily download a CSV of the entire scorecard by clicking on the “Export” button. The CSV will contain all of the available columns, regardless of whether they are enabled in the column selector.    

Admin Page

Review and modify employee details from the new Admin Settings page. This page has a complete view of all employees synced from the HRIS and cap table. 

What’s changing?

Navigate to the Admins page from the Carta Total Comp top navigation bar. From there you can access the “Roles and permissions” tab along with the “Employees” tab

New Bands Version

You can now see the date of the most recent Benchmark version in the Plan and Bands page. With the Preview plan feature, you can review the impact that updated benchmarking data has on the Scorecard prior to applying the new Plan. 

Why did we make this change? 

When benchmarking data is current, it better enables you to be competitive in today's market with the offers you take to candidates and employees. 

Job Area Descriptions and Example Job Titles

Our Roles and Levels are now defined in-app. 

Why is this important?

Carta's leveling framework provides a foundation for your company to provide career pathing for employees and to review pay fairness for each job area and level. Without consistent leveling, companies can not accurately compare their employees to market rate data, limiting their ability to effectively hire and retain talent. 

To help our customers ensure accurate and consistent leveling, we are now providing further descriptions for each job area we support, so users can make more informed leveling decisions based on commonly used job titles.

What’s changing?

We have added a “Learn more” link in the "Example title" column in the "Bands" tab. This link will launch a modal where you can see sample job titles and descriptions for roles in each job area. 

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.

General partners now have the ability to view and track capital calls from the Carta iOS app. Investment firms can now track the progress of on-going and completed calls along with investor details, on the go, straight from the Carta app.

Who this affects

• Fund administration clients

Supported platforms

• iOS (Android coming soon)

What's new

Fund Administration clients can now access their capital call details and investor information from the Carta app.

• The home screen now provides a summary of active capital calls with the ability to view individual call details.
• Navigating to a capital call allows you to view further call and investor details along with a full investor list which can be filtered by Paid and Unpaid calls.
• The Fund Details page now also provides a capital summary and the ability to view a list of Active, Drafted, and Completed calls.

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

Post-termination exercise period (PTEP) refers to the amount of time an option holder has after termination to exercise their options. It is now possible to change the PTEP to give employees more or less time to exercise. This can happen on a one-off basis, or across many grants at once. 

What is new with this release?

It is now possible to enter an effective date for the post-termination exercise period in Carta. This is needed to track changes over time and to have more accurate financial reporting.

Modifying the PTEP 

The PTEP can be modified for a specific grant by selecting ‘Modify post-termination period’.

The original grant and the current PTEP values are visible on the left side of the ‘Modify port-termination exercise period screen’. 

Select ‘Add Modification’, then enter an effective date for this change, select a modification reason, select the new modification details, then select ‘Save this modification’.

It is also possible to update the PTEP across multiple grants at once. 

More information is available in this support article. 

Note: Changing the post-termination exercise periods can have tax and accounting consequences and may need board approval, so consult your legal administrators before making any changes.

Users: Option holders of public companies
Platform: Web (iOS and Android coming soon)

With an objective to unify the cash exercising experience between private and public companies, we've enhanced the Public "Cash" Exercising flow on Web to make the steps more seamless, intuitive and easy to follow. Implementing these changes to the exercising workflow allows users to review all the important details relating to their option grant exercise in a step-by-step manner, eliminating confusion about tax withholdings and allows them to better understand the stages of their exercise.

While our previous Cash Exercising workflow for public companies got us some great mileage, our processes and their caveats have evolved, which called for a cleaner, simpler and an overall better user experience. Below are some of the highlights that the new Cash Exercising workflow will introduce:

1. Step-by-step procedure: Intuitive and easy to follow, allowing the user to fully understand the process
2. Improved tax estimation/information: Targeted tax withholdings information provided to user with respect to the option grant type being exercised
3. Cleaner UI: Revamped headings, body text, call to action, helpful support links and more!