Carta Launch: Free startup tools for early-stage founders

Author:

The Carta Team

| Read time:

4 minutes

Published date:

August 16, 2021

Carta Launch is a platform with free startup tools to help founders raise funds, issue equity, and hire effectively.

What can you do with Carta Launch?

Embarking on a startup journey involves mastering crucial milestones: creating a cap table, developing an equity and compensation strategy, fundraising, and forecasting financial runway. Carta Launch gives you the tools and resources you need to get your startup running efficiently from the start.

Fundraise with confidence

Run an informed fundraising process using fundraising insights and scenario modeling based on data from over 40,000 cap table customers.

Use that data to understand market caps, valuations, and specific terms before you meet with investors. Access it in real time to run a more informed fundraising and negotiation process. Model your round and understand the potential future impact and dilution before you raise. Avoid undervaluing and over-diluting your company. Don’t leave money on the table.

“Carta helps us benchmark the valuation we’re thinking of against actual deals happening in the market. It’s crazy helpful, and will likely help us save millions of dollars that we may lose without that context. Every entrepreneur should be using this.”—Conner Wilson, Founder/CEO, Pilot

Close your round quickly using automated SAFEs

SAFEs usually involve a lot of email back and forth with investors. Use our automated SAFEs feature to generate and track your SAFEs all in one place, streamline communication with investors, and automate the signing process. It also automatically updates your cap table. Save time for yourself and your investors.

“I have made about 25 direct investments, and the easiest to get done from commitment to wired are the companies using Carta’s SAFE generator. Signed, wired, and received my stock certificate in minutes. Can take days or weeks via other options. So well done!” —Andrew Gluck, general partner, irrvrntVC

Instantly issue equity to your team members, and make it easy for them to accept it

No matter whether you have 40 employees or just one, every founder needs to be able to issue and manage equity—and employees need to be able to easily access it and know its value. We get you started on the world’s best cap table software for free.

“I love being able to see my options vest on the Carta mobile app each month. Being able to log in and keep track of my ownership is a reminder of why I joined my company and what I’m working towards.”— Aileen Comer, senior product manager, Clearcover

Make competitive job offers with Carta Insights

No more polling Twitter or your favorite Slack community to figure out how other founders are compensating their employees.

Carta has the largest set of private market equity and compensation data, and with Carta Insights we’ve made it easy for you to determine how much to offer your first few hires. You’ll see data tailored for early-stage companies so you can be confident that you’re paying your people well from the start—while not overspending.

Carta Insights can help you:

• Determine your option pool size based on funding stage
• Get salary benchmarks for key roles
• Decide how much equity to grant your first five hires
• Learn best practices for hiring, rewarding, and retaining your first employees
• Get the latest trends on hiring, salary and equity compensation, and advisor and board member equity

“Competitive compensation is a moving target. Carta Total Comp helps make sure our salary and equity compensation is best in class relative to the ever-changing market.” —Charles Harrison, COO and general counsel, Synthesis

It’s your company. Own it with Carta Launch.

You might just have the seed of an idea. Or a few family members who’ve invested. You might not have an accelerator or a network or investors to lean on. You might not even consider yourself a founder—but you are! And you deserve access to the resources you need to bring your idea to life.

You might have sketched your idea on a napkin last night or closed your first customer last week. Or you may be hustling to overcome a lost deal or a rejection email from an accelerator. Regardless of where you are in your journey, you deserve access to the resources you need to build the next big thing.

Carta Launch is available to early-stage founders with 25 or fewer stakeholders and less than $1M of total capital raised. If you’re ready to get started, it’s never been easier to self-onboard or have your law firm do it for you. And if you’re interested in staying connected and hearing about new features as they are released, follow Carta on Twitter and explore our Founder Resource Center.

Get free tools to help your fundraise

Carta Launch has the free tools, educational resources, and support you need to go from incorporation to your first round.