May 25, 2023 Benchmarks

What’s new?

• Updated salary, total cash, and equity benchmarks for all job areas and specializations
• Updated US geographic differentials for all metro areas
• New total cash compensation benchmarks for all roles (total cash compensation benchmarks are reflective of employees who receive both base salary and some form of variable compensation)
• 90th percentile data for all roles and elements of compensation. Users can now set their target market position and view 90th percentile data on the Bands page.

Market Trends

Salary and total cash compensation benchmarks have fallen slightly (approximately 1% overall) since last quarter, reflecting a continued down market for startup talent. We’re observing that new hire salaries across many roles are closer to or below our previous benchmarks, causing many salary benchmarks to decrease. On a role-by-role basis, we’re seeing a bit more volatility in this quarter’s data as compared to the last six months. As in previous updates, specialization-level data continues to be more volatile than the broader sample, as sample sizes for these roles are smaller than job area level data.

Equity benchmarks have decreased approximately 9%, less than last quarter’s 15%. Lower benchmarks cut across most roles and levels, though executive equity grants dropped slightly less, and even increased in some cases. 

Looking across updated geographic differential data, most metro areas that moved closer to San Francisco pay levels have maintained their differentials compared to last year. This year, we see more cities outside of traditional tech hubs also moving closer to San Francisco pay levels (in particular metro areas across North Carolina and Florida)

What were the largest areas of movement from these benchmarks?

Salary - Sales, Research, and Strategy roles saw the largest increases, approximately 1-5% versus last quarter. Marketing, Administration, and Project Management roles saw the largest decreases ranging from 5-6%. The decreases for Marketing and Administration are driven by corrections that we have made for how certain roles are being categorized within these job areas. Information Technology also saw a larger decrease, largely due to the small sample size for this job area.

Equity - Support, Human Resources, and Strategy roles saw the largest decreases. Decreases in Product, Finance, and Operations were less pronounced than the overall sample

How do I update my plan to use the new benchmarks version?

You can update your compensation plan to use the latest benchmark versions either by:

Visiting the Plan page and clicking on the "Update available" link in the Active Plan window.

Navigating to the Bands page and clicking on the "Update" bubble in the top left.

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.

What’s next?

Carta Total Compensation is developing benchmarks for new specializations.

What’s new?

Stakeholders that have sold through Carta Inc.’s tender offer feature or Carta Inc.’s public markets product can now view the delivery status of their 1099-B tax document. This new feature allows sellers to determine that their 1099-B for a particular selling year:

• has already been delivered
• will be delivered
• is not applicable for the year and won’t be delivered

How does this improve the stakeholder’s experience?

1099-B forms capture the capital gains reported to the IRS for sales done on Carta. Sellers use the information on their form 1099-Bs to file their taxes.

Not all sales done on Carta Inc.’s tender offer tool or Carta Inc.’s public markets product are reported on 1099-Bs. Prior to the release of this product, stakeholders have reported challenges in determining why they did not receive a 1099-B for a calendar year. This tool allows stakeholders to determine the status of their 1099-B quickly and clearly.

1099-Bs might not be provided for several reasons:

• The stakeholder is not subject to IRS reporting (is under a W-8BEN)
• All sales done are cashless sales and the issuer is using Carta’s Rev Proc 2002-50 functionality
• The stakeholder did not sell anything for the tax year where they were paid proceeds through Carta Inc.’s tender offer tool or Carta Inc.’s public markets product 
• All transactions excluded from filing (a common reason is treating the dispositions as option cancellations rather than cashless sales)

How does it work?

The stakeholder navigates to account:tax documents where all 1099-B documents are stored, and clicks on the “Missing a Form 1099-B” link:

From here, the participant can select the tax year and check the status on that year’s 1099-B:

The tool will indicate that either the 1099-B has already been distributed, or will give the reason that the stakeholder has not received a 1099-B for that year.

What's new?

Carta now supports automated preferred return waterfalls. 

What’s valuable about this change?

If you have a preferred return hurdle, your Fund Admin team will automate and review waterfalls directly in the Carta app. These improvements enable us to process more complex calculations in real-time, resulting in faster book closures, more secure data entry and the ability to view fund metrics in the app as they happen.

What do I need to do?

No action is needed. Your teams will start to calculate this performance hurdle online immediately.  

How do I learn more or get help?

Reach out to your account manager or talk to one of our representatives today. 

What's new?

You can now send a confirmation request to your LPs directly from Carta, allowing them to easily add or confirm their wire instructions prior to a distribution.

What’s important about this change?

We’ve made it easier to confirm the accuracy of LPs' wire instructions.

Prior to a distribution, you can now send a request to an individual LP, a group of LPs, or all LPs in the distribution to update or confirm their wire instructions.

Once the request is sent, your LP will receive an email from Carta prompting them to update or confirm their wire instructions in their LP Portal.

Once updated or confirmed, you will see a new status of Confirmed next to the LP’s name in the Wire Instructions Status column in your Partners tab as well as a complete Audit Trail of who added and confirmed the LPs wire instructions. 

What do I need to do?

After submitting a distribution request in Carta, click Request Wire Instructions. You can also initiate this request at any time by using the Request Wire Instructions button on the Partners page.

Select the individual investors or group of investors you’d like to send a request to. Set a deadline and optionally customize the email message your LPs will receive. Review the contacts that will receive the notification and then click Send.  

Your investors will receive an email asking them to add or confirm their wire instructions are current. After clicking Review wire instructions, they’ll be directed to their LP Portal where they can easily add or update in a few clicks.

Starting today, we are launching a new feature that will reduce the ACH transaction processing time for money movements on Carta by 33%. Previously, most ACH transfers took 6-7 business days to complete. We have made a few infrastructure changes to reduce transfer times by up to 2 business days. 

Who is this for? 

This change will impact all private and public corporations who move money directly on Carta, as well as holders of securities from these firms. LLCs will not be impacted by this change. 

How long will my transfers take? 

There is a slight variation in how long ACH transfers will take depending on what type of transaction the company or holder is making. The estimated processing times for the following transactions are below:

• SAFE Financings transactions: 4-5 business days (previously 6-7 business days)
• Private company exercises: 4-5 business days (previously 6-7 business days)
• Private company ACH repurchases: 3-4 business days (previously 5-6 business days)
• Public market trade settlements: 1 business day (previously 2 business days)
• Public markets options exercise: 4-5 business days (previously 6-7 business days)
• CINC tender offers: 1 business day (previously 2 business days)

I am a company administrator. How do I approve exercise requests in Carta?

Company administrators with the Option exercise approver role are able to individually review the submitted online option exercise requests and historical option exercises from the Transactions > Exercises page on Carta. For detailed instructions, you can check out this support article. 

I am a company administrator. How do I track early exercise requests and 83(b) elections?

Use the Filter function to select Yes for Early exercise to track 83(b) elections from the option holders. The ledger will display a filing status that depends on when the option holder originally submitted the early exercise request and whether or not the option holder explicitly chose to file an 83(b) election. Learn more about the 83(b) election. 

I hold options in a company that uses Carta to manage its equity. How do I exercise options on Carta via ACH? 

Exercising options into shares on Carta via ACH is available to US-based option holders of US private companies exercising ISOs, NSOs, or ISO/NSO split option grants. You can review detailed instructions in this support article. 

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

What are we launching? 

With our new Cap Table Access 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.

Who is this available for?

We are making this available to all companies on Carta as of April 2023. 

Why are we launching this? 

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.

Where do I find my Cap Table Access Settings?

To update your Cap Table Access settings, navigate to Stakeholders > Cap Table Access.

How does it work?

With our new Cap Table Access 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 group of stakeholders with a specific level of access based on their relationship with the company. For example, companies can choose what information founders, investors, employees, 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 Cap Table Access settings 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 be downgraded to Restricted automatically. This means that as stakeholders enter and exit the cap table, their respective levels of cap table access will update automatically.

New Cap Table Access 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 Cap Table Access 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 Cap Table Access page: Individual levels

Edit an Individual's Cap Table Access Settings

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 Cap Table Access page.

View the 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.

What’s new?

Employees will now see videos from our 'Learn' library in their Session recap. The videos shown are recommended by their Carta Equity Tax Advisor, based on the conversation in their 1-1 session. 

What do I need to do?

You can access the new feature by navigating to your Session recap either through email or directly on the 'Tax Advice' page in your portfolio.

Have questions? Contact product@carta.com.

Starting today, we are launching a new feature to make it easier for companies to manage their stakeholders on Carta. Companies with an HRIS integration can terminate up to 25 stakeholders at a time. We are also making the process for performing terminations simpler by removing steps needed to complete this action. This feature is rolling out to select companies today and will be available to all company admins that have set up an HRIS integration on Carta by May 11, 2023.

Who is this for? 

Companies on Carta that have an HRIS integration. If your company does not currently have an HRIS integration set up, you can do so by navigating to your Settings -> Integrations. 

How does it work? 

Companies should take the following steps to terminate 1-25 stakeholders at once: 

• Navigate to Stakeholders -> Stakeholder Changes
• Navigate to the Terminations tab (2nd from the left)
• Select between 1 and 25 employees using the checkbox on the right
• Click Bulk Terminate Stakeholders. If the admin has terminated at least one employee, this button will take them to the Terminate Stakeholder page.
• Check to make sure all data for each employee is correct before selecting Terminate Stakeholder at the bottom.

How is this different from the current experience? 

The current experience allowed for single employee terminations only. Each termination required the company admin to access multiple pages and take multiple steps.  

I do not have an HRIS integration. How do I get access to this feature? 

The best way to access this feature is to add an HRIS integration to your account. Carta supports over 100 HRIS providers. Connecting Carta to your HRIS will help you reduce time spent manually inputting data and ensure data accuracy as your stakeholder information changes over time. You can read more about how to connect your HRIS here. 

I did a bulk termination incorrectly and I need to undo it. Can I reverse these terminations in bulk? 

Not at this time. You will need to reverse each termination individually. You can review the instructions in detail in this support article.

Where do I go to learn more? 

You can review detailed instructions in this support article or reach out to Carta support to learn more. 

What’s new?

We’re excited to announce the release of three new specializations:

• Art & Graphic Design (within the Design job area)
• Product Management (within the Product job area)
• Social Media (within the Marketing job area)

Note: Our sample size for new specializations can be smaller than job area benchmarks, which could result in data volatility as we continue to update the data and grow our overall sample size. 

No other benchmarks have changed in this update.

How do I see benchmarks for the additional specializations?

You can view benchmarks for the new specializations by:

1. Visiting the Bands page and selecting “Design”, “Product”, or “Marketing” under Area. Once the job area is selected, you can select either the Art & Graphic Design, Product Management, or the Social Media specialization by selecting the Specialization dropdown.

1. This will allow you to view salary/equity bands for levels 1 - 8 for Art & Graphic Design or Product Management. For Social Media, data are available for levels 1-6.

1. The above process can be followed for each of the new specializations.

How do benchmarks for the additional specializations affect the Employee Scorecard?

The compa-ratio is a quick way to compare an employee's compensation to your plan's target rate for a given job area, level, and location. The compa-ratios for an employee assigned to the Art & Graphic Design, Product Management, and Social Media specializations will now be calculated using the target compensation for the specialization, not the job area.

How do I update my benchmark version to use new specializations?

You can update your compensation plan to use the latest benchmark versions either by:

1. Visiting the Plan page and clicking on the "Update available" link in the Active Plan window.

1. Navigating to the Bands page and clicking on the "Update" bubble in the top left.
   
   
   

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.

What’s next?

The Carta Total Compensation team is working on our Q2 benchmark refresh for all job areas and specializations

What's new?

You can now bulk download a large volume of documents from the Documents Library.

What's important or valuable about this change?

Admin users can download as many documents as they need to in one go from the Documents Library. This helps speed up tasks around tax season, such as downloading all the Form K-1s.

What do I need to do?

Select the documents you need to download, and click Actions → Download documents.

The zip file will be available for you to download in the Downloads section at the top right.

How do I learn more or get help?

For more information about the Documents Library and distributing K-1s, visit our support site.