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?

Early stage founders can get self-onboard onto Carta Launch faster than ever before. Founders with up to $1M raised or 25 stakeholders or fewer can now create an account and onboard company data with ease, speed, and confidence for free.  

Carta Launch is live on Product Hunt! We'd so appreciate your upvote!

How it works

Sign up and create your account

1. On carta.com/launch, click “Get Free Access” 
2. Fill out a simple form with your company information to create your account.

Guided onboarding

1. We designed the new onboarding experience to be friendly and guide you through each step

1. With just Incorporation Documents and Common Stock Purchase Agreements, you can enter information about your Company, Founder Shares, and Users & Roles to complete your onboarding.
   
2. Once you’ve reviewed and activated your account, you’re all set to get started on Carta.

1. Your free Carta Launch plan is suited to fit your immediate fundraising and equity needs and set your company up for success as it scales.
2. 

Additional resources 

• For step by step instructions for how to get started find our video guide here. 
• For more information about what is included in Launch, check out this video or check out our most recent blog post. 
• For any additional questions, please reach out to partners@carta.com or get help through our in-app support. 

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

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.