Starting today, Carta is enabling you to easily determine how much equity to grant employees and when to grant it via new tools such as the Hiring Planner, Refresh Grant Planner, and Equity Pool Forecast.

Only Carta can help you: 

• Minimize manual work using a single platform
• Take a proactive approach to thinking about impacts of equity grants on your equity pool
• Conduct accurate forecasting using integrated benchmarks from Carta Total Compensation

What’s new?

With our new suite of Employee management tools, administrators have access to four new features:

1. Manage Employees hub: See the tools, required steps, and resources to help you hire, manage and retain your team.
2. Hiring Planner: Add potential new hires to see recommended equity and cash compensation based on market data, and export plans to share with your team and investors.
3. Refresh Grant Planner: See which employees are completing vesting soon, and plan out refresh grants to tenured employees to help retain top performers
4. Equity Pool Forecast: Visualize your equity grants, hiring, and retention initiatives and their impact on your equity pool over time.

Who is this available for?

All Corporation founders and administrators who can view their company’s cap table.

How do I use it?

You can access these flows by going to your Carta account, and going to Manage Employees in the side navigation. From there, you can easily access all of the additional tools.

View a demo walkthrough of this feature.

Anything else I need to know? 

If there is anything you wish to see here, use the feedback form that will show up when you first visit the Manage employees page. If you have already responded and have additional feedback, or cannot find the form, you can reach out to your CSM or provide feedback via Carta Community.

What’s new?

We are introducing a new page available to Launch customers - Carta Insights. This page will provide both education and data that we believe will be helpful to Founders as you build your company.

The information we’re including today is built around compensation. Carta Insights will provide you with:

• Educational materials on how to think about setting up your compensation program
• Data on typical option pool sizes and equity grants for your first employees
• Salary and equity benchmarks for Engineering and Marketing roles

How can I access the Carta Insights?

1. Select “Carta Insights” from the side navigation bar
2. Click on the section of Carta Insights that you would like to access

Questions?

If you have any questions about this new report, please reach out to launchsupport@carta.com.

What’s new?

Carta Launch companies can now complete their Corporate Transparency Act report directly in Carta.

What is the Corporate Transparency Act?

The Corporate Transparency Act is a new Law that came into effect on 1/1/2024 that requires companies to report their company and ownership information to the Financial Crimes and Enforcement Network (FinCEN). Many companies registered or doing business in the US are required to comply within 90 days of incorporation and provide continuous updates whenever the company or ownership information changes.

Why is it valuable?

Non compliance with the Corporate Transparency Act has both civil and criminal penalties for companies and their owners. Carta helps simplify the filing process using your data that’s already on Carta.

Who is this product available to?

This is currently only available for companies that are incorporated on or after January 1, 2024 and are using Carta’s free Launch product but it will be made available to all companies in mid 2024.

How does it work?

1. Navigate to the CTA reporting page under the Compliance & Tax tab
2. Review and verify the pre-filled company and ownership information
3. Provide any missing information (e.g owners or company applicants)
4. Submit your Corporate Transparency Act report

Where can I learn more?

Additional information about CTA and how Carta can help you comply can be found here

What’s new? 

Today, we’re releasing the Communication Center to all Carta customers, which gives you the ability to easily provide updates to your stakeholders from a central location using advanced messaging functionality. 

How does it work? 

You can now use the Communication Center to: 

• Send a message as a one-way announcement to your stakeholders, or enable two-way communications so that recipients can leave comments and start a tread 
• Limit access to sensitive messages for a specific period of time
• Keep track of open and read statuses
• Enable PDF Analytics to see page views and drop-offs
• Apply watermarking
• Send communications to recipients who are not on the cap table yet (for example, prospective investors)

How do I access the Communication Center? 

Ready to send a company update? Log-in to your Carta account and head to the Communications tab on the left-hand navigation. See how it works.

We’ve made some improvements

Beginning in May 2023, we are launching a new navigation experience - making it easier than ever to navigate your cap table, create and issue new securities, and manage relations with your stakeholders.

We are testing this experience with a select list of companies. Companies in this test will now navigate Carta’s equity management platform from the left-hand side. We are using this test to iterate on any improvements that need to be made and hope to roll out to 100% of new and existing companies by Summer 2023.

The new menu can also be collapsed for an optimized viewing experience by clicking the menu icon to the right of the Filter text box once you’ve landed in the right spot.

Finding what you need just got easier

The new navigation will make it easier for you to find what you’re looking for and complete critical tasks, with menu categories that are more intuitive and organized according to the type of task that needs to be completed within Carta. 

Terminology that just makes sense

We have also updated some of the terminology that appears throughout the Carta platform to clarify specific tasks and workflows. The changes that we’ve made are outlined in the table below.

FAQs

Why is Carta making this change? 

Carta offers a wide range of products and services, and users sometimes get  lost as they look through menu items in an effort to find the workflow or platform page they need to access. We understand that time is money, and the less time you spend locating the resources you need frees up more time for you to spend growing and managing your company. The new left-side menu enables users to have an immediate comprehensive view of Carta’s functionality with clearer verbiage, menu filtering, and collapsible dropdowns. 

Can I revert back to the old navigation experience? 

No. Our research has shown that our new navigation menu is not only more intuitive for users, but also faster. Beginning in May 2023, Carta is fully migrating away from the top navigation menu. We plan to be rolled out to 100% of companies by July 2023.

How do I use the new navigation experience to find what I’m looking for? 

The new navigation experience includes a filter to assist you in finding what you’re looking for. The menu will responsively pare down as characters are entered in the text box.

Additionally, left-side navigation enables you to expand and collapse multiple dropdowns at the same time, allowing for a more comprehensive overview of Carta’s functionality at a glance.

Did Carta remove any features? 

No. While the new menu may look more compact than in our current experience, all of the features that you have come to rely on are included in the new navigation. The goal of this initiative is not to change the functionality of Carta’s cap table, but rather, to make that functionality easier for you to find.

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. 

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.