5 years ago1/21/2021

Carta HRIS Integrations now available to Carta admins

Carta integrations to HRIS (Human Resources Information System) Providers are now available to all users with HR Administrator or above Carta access. The HRIS Integrations we have today are one-way data synchs from either BambooHR, Namely, or Workday into Carta.

Who this affects:

HR Admins, Company Editors, and Legal Admins for all companies

What’s New:

Carta HRIS integrations are now available to users with HR Administrator, Company Editor, and Legal Administrator access. Carta HRIS integrations can:

• Flag Terminated Employees. Employee terminations made in the HRIS appear as pending termination events in Carta
• Flag Existing Stakeholder Updates. Employee profile updates made in the HRIS will appear as pending stakeholder profile updates in Carta

Carta HRIS integrations functionality can be enabled via the Company > Settings > Integrations page. The data pulled by the HRIS integrations is then shown in the Stakeholders > Stakeholder Updates page where, you can find:

1. Pending HRIS employee profile updates for stakeholder profiles that already exist in Carta

2. Pending terminations for employees who were terminated in the HRIS but not in Carta

Learn more about setting up each HRIS integration here:

• BambooHR
• Namely
• Workday

Lastly, for Enterprise companies, Carta also supports flat file integrations with HRIS Providers that support automatic report uploads via SFTP. Contact your Carta Account Manager if you want access to the flat file integrations feature.

Steven Camina

5 years ago1/19/2021

International exercising - submit and settle your exercise with Carta

Non-US optionholders at US private companies will now be able to initiate and pay for option exercises through Carta.

Who this affects:

• 🌐 Non-US optionholders at US private companies that have enabled this feature

Supported platforms:

• 💻   Web
• 📱   Android and iOS

What's new:

• Submit exercises on Carta - When enabled by your company, option exercises can be initiated within Carta.

• Submit payment to Carta - After admin approval, pay for your exercise with a wire transfer to Carta. Once Carta receives the full cost of the exercise, funds are transferred to the issuing company.

• Exercise and payment status - Track exercise and payment status within Carta. Be notified of any issues with your payment.

• Immediate certificate generation - After receiving the funds for your exercise, a stock certificate is immediately generated for company officers to sign.

Timing:

• This feature is being made available to US private companies gradually throughout 2021.

Resources:

• [Support article] Exercise options via wire

Gwynne Burgess

5 years ago1/19/2021

Option exercise settings for exercises initiated and settled on Carta

Managing option exercising is now easier than ever.

All exercises are now settled through Carta—US optionholders pay via ACH, Non-US optionholders pay via a wire transfer. Carta conveniently manages payment reconciliation and payment issues such as insufficient funds or overpayments. US private companies can centrally adjust exercising via the Transaction Settings page.

Who this affects:

• 🇺🇸  US private companies

What's new:

• 💸 All exercises are settled with Carta - No matter where your optionholders are located, Carta will receive all funding for on-platform exercises. US holders pay for their exercise via ACH and non-US holders pay for their exercise via a wire transfer to Carta. Company admins will no longer need to mark exercises as paid.
• ✉️ Communication with optionholders - Carta communicates directly with optionholders to resolve payment issues, letting them know of an outstanding balance for an exercise or facilitating a refund for overpayment.
• ❌ A uto-cancel unpaid exercises - If a wire exercise is unfunded or underfunded for 30 days after admin approval, the exercise will automatically be canceled.
• ⚙️ Clear transaction settings- Control option grant exercisability easily in one central location

Timing:

• To be rolled out to all customers by the end of 2021

Action required:

• Visit Company > Settings > Transaction Settings to opt in
• Once your company has access to this feature, you must opt in within 30 days otherwise online exercising will be disabled
• If you do not yet have access, reach out to your Customer Support Manager to get immediate access

Resources:

• [Support Article] Enabling online transactions
• [Support Article] Exercise options via wire
• [Release notes] Exercising as non-US optionholder

Gwynne Burgess

5 years ago1/14/2021

Limited Partner Onboarding flow

Limited partners now confirm that their information is accurate when viewing new investments on Carta. This will help ensure accurate information for tax season.

Who this affects

Limited partners with fund investments on Carta and funds using Carta's fund admin and LP portal products

What's new

Limited partners can now review and update their information in the onboarding flow for their fund investment.

• Limited partners can confirm or update their address information
• If a new address is added, they can use that for all of their fund investments

Timing

This was released for Limited Partners on January 14, 2021

Ashley Chang

5 years ago1/6/2021

Limited Partner Settings

The new Limited Partner Settings page allows Limited Partners to control their information across fund investments on Carta.

Who this affects

Limited partners with investments into funds on Carta.

What's new

Limited Partners can now manage and share their information across fund investments. Previously, Limited Partners had to contact their fund admin or the Carta support team to update their information. Now they can update their address and other information used for taxes and distributions in Settings.

• Limited Partners can choose to use an address for individual fund investments or apply to all investments
• When updating an address, a Limited Partner can choose to make that their “default” address to be used for any new investments added to Carta.
• Partners investing through multiple entities can swap between entities and assign the correct information to each fund investment.

Timing

This went live to all Limited Partners on January 6, 2021

Ashley Chang

5 years ago12/30/2020

Exercise flow improvements

Optionholders at private companies will now see an improved exercising experience where they can clearly see fair market value (FMV), exercise spread, and option income.

Who this affects:

• Optionholders exercising option grants from private companies

What's new:

• Current fair market value (FMV) - Optionholders can see the current fair market value the issuing company has on file, which determines the tax implications of their exercise.

• Exercise spread on option grant - Optionholders can see the per-grant spread when selecting a grant to exercise. This shows the difference between exercise price and fair market value.

• Overall gain/loss - When selecting the quantity of shares to exercise, optionholders can see the overall gain/loss for their exercise. This is useful for understanding tax implications of an exercise.

• Tax implications - Optionholders will be able to see tax implications more clearly. If the exercise is taxable and the issuing company has provided tax rates for the jurisdiction of the holder, the holder will see a table of the relevant taxes for their exercise.

Gwynne Burgess

5 years ago12/30/2020

Carta now supports performance conditions for grants with custom vesting schedules

Performance conditions can now be set at the tranche level for vesting schedules that have been customized for an individual grant. Administrators can create custom schedules for individual participants and attach vesting tranches to performance conditions.

With this enhancement, performance awards can now be attached to grants without vesting templates. This compliments our existing performance award functionality that allows for performance awards to be attached to vesting template tranches.

To create a custom performance vesting schedule, first select Custom vesting in the vesting schedule column when drafting an award:

This selection will bring up a vesting schedule creator. If the vesting schedule is unique to this particular grant, click Custom one time schedule.

Note: if the vesting schedule for the grant is not unique, we recommend clicking Create schedule as template. Creating a template will allow multiple grants to use the same vesting pattern.

After clicking Custom one-time schedule, enter the vest dates and quantities. If a performance condition applies to one or more of the tranches, select it in the Performance Condition column.

Following the creation of the custom performance vesting schedule and the drafting of the grant, the grant’s vesting schedule and payout will be governed by the performance condition. From this step, the performance condition’s achievement and payout function in the same way as grants with standard and custom performance vesting templates:

Bryan Wells

5 years ago12/15/2020

Carta now supports multiple performance conditions on a single grant

Performance conditions for performance awards can now be individually set per vesting tranche. Administrators can control the payout of performance conditions, including payouts greater than or less than 100% per vesting tranche.

Creating performance conditions using custom vesting templates

When creating a custom vesting template, performance conditions can be set at the vesting tranche level. These performance conditions are controlled through the performance module and administrators can set payout percentages upon condition achievement.

Performance conditions will apply to every grant attached to the performance vesting template.

Performance awards can also be added on to milestone vesting templates. These act as a second performance condition in addition to the achievement of the milestone event. Milestone vesting templates can be used with or without performance conditions:

Achievement of a performance condition will flow back to all grants tied to vesting tranches set up with that condition:

Bryan Wells

5 years ago12/11/2020

Email customization for document sharing

This month we released a new feature on Carta to allow users of a fund to customize the email sent to LPs when sharing documents. This feature is available for all Fund Administration and LP Portal customers. To use the feature:

1. Select ‘Share documents’ on the Documents page.

2. After select Share documents you will have three options for sharing documents: Send with daily digest, Send immediately, No notification.

3. When ‘Send immediately’ is selected you will have the option to

Open email editor.

4. The email editor will allow you to:

• Customize the subject line
• Customize the header
• Customize the email body
• Include dynamic fields in your text
• Send a preview email to yourself before sending

5. After completing the email customization, you will be able to share the documents to your LPs.

Jordan Agnew

5 years ago12/10/2020

Performance Awards in Custom Reporting

You will now be able to see data related to performance awards in our custom reporting suite.

These fields include:

You'll see these fields in these reports and are able to add them as optional fields in other custom reports:

Alex Chen

5 years ago12/8/2020

Improved Equity Plan Balance Report

We're excited to release a new Equity Plan Balance Report for our Private Market customers. This report allows you to see your plan balance across all equity plans and better reflects the effects of plan pour overs and transactional events on securities.

You'll notice some improvements:

1. All equity plans will be included - you no longer need to select a equity plan while exporting the report
2. Pour over calculations are more accurate - overdrawn balances are reflected on plans clearly
3. RSAs are now tracked under "Equity Grants" - we'll be consistently tracking RSAs its an equity award in future reports

You can find this reports under top menu at Capitalization > Reports.

We'll be retiring the older version of the equity plan balance report as part of this release.

Alex Chen

5 years ago12/8/2020

Subscription Document Signing for Carta SPVs

Investors can now quickly and efficiently close SPVs on Carta!

General Partners invite prospective investors to their fund, those investors can read and complete the subscription documents, and GPs can close the fund –– all in one simple tool.

This product currently works with Carta SPVs using standard subscription documents.

Over the next few months, we'll expand this to allow full funds to close on Carta using their own documents and to pre-fill data for LPs that already have a Carta account.we'll

Ashley Chang

5 years ago12/7/2020

Information Clarity in the Equity Awards Ledger

What’s coming: The "Quantity" column shown in the "Options" tab of the Equity awards ledger will be re-labeled to "Original quantity" to more accurately reflect the information in this column.

We're highlighting this small change because it comes in anticipation of some improvements to Carta's transactional workflows that will reinforce the dynamic nature of option grants and their quantities.

Who this affects: All companies

What’s better: Information clarity

Timing: Live for all customers December 7th

Vince Lo

5 years ago11/30/2020

Roll-forward Reporting for Transaction Modeling

With Carta's new customizable ledger reports, you can easily calculate important values to determine key quantities in potential future transactions.

The fields below are available in all of the customizable ledger reports ( Learn more about customizing reports).

Adjust the as-of date to run the report for a future date. Carta will use existing information, such as vesting schedules, to project future quantities.

Alex Chen

5 years ago11/6/2020

Exercisability settings for non-US companies

Non-US, private companies in supported regions now have the ability to enable exercising workflows for their optionholders. Optionholders can access wire payment instructions within Carta after exercise approval to send funds directly to the company.

Who this affects:

• 🇰🇾   private Cayman Island companies
• 🇨🇦   private Canadian companies
• 🌐   + more locations in the future!

What's new:

• Supported non-US, private companies can enable offline wire exercising, allowing their optionholders to initiate and track an exercise request within the Carta platform.
• Company admins can manage payment instructions that are provided to optionholders after an exercise is approved.
• Company admins can toggle exercisability on and off, as well as select which grant types are exercisable.

Action required:

• Company admins must visit the Transaction Settings page to enable exercising
• Companies must have a valid fair market value (FMV)

Resources:

• Support article: Exercise workflow for optionholders
• Support article: Overview of option exercising via the offline wire exercise workflow

Gwynne Burgess

5 years ago11/4/2020

Preferred shareholders can request ownership when accepting securities

What's New:

• Preferred shareholders can now request ownership details (like fully diluted share count or detailed cap table information) when they accept certificates. Previously this request action was available only after the stakeholder's account had been set up and a security accepted. This change helps empower company admins to set the correct respective access levels for investors more effectively. This helps both companies and their investors get the most out of the Carta platform with clearer information sharing workflows.
• The information management workflow for companies remains the same. Company admins can still select the appropriate level of data sharing access for each stakeholder. For our summary of these levels, we've detailed them here.

Accept screen for preferred shareholders accepting preferred shares:

We will be rolling out these changes during the week of November 2nd.

Ry Sullivan

5 years ago10/20/2020

Using Custom Spreadsheets When Adding New Stakeholders in Bulk

What’s coming: Admins can now upload new stakeholder information using data stored in custom spreadsheets/reports

Who this affects: All companies

What’s better:

For companies that use HR Providers to store their stakeholder/employee information, their company admins can now upload new hire information into Carta in bulk using the HR Provider's report (xls, or xlsx) with minimal modifications.

This workflow is an enhancement to the existing Bulk Add Stakeholders flow, with a new step for users to map the columns in the report to Carta data fields.

Timing: Live for all customers Oct 20.

Steven Camina

5 years ago10/20/2020

Changes to Watermark Styling

We've listened to your feedback on watermark styling obstructing the readability of the documents and we've made a few changes to address those concerns. We'll continue to iterate on our watermarking capabilities and tools in the coming months and we are starting with the following changes.

Here's a sample document with the old watermark styling

Here's the same sample document with the new watermark styling

Specifically, we've made the following changes with this iteration:

• Reduced opacity of the watermark text
• Updated alignment between the rows
• Fewer repetition

Who these changes affect?

All Carta users who choose to apply watermark on their documents. These changes will be rolling out to all users today.

Amol Patil

5 years ago10/14/2020

Rule 701 Worksheet Updates

Recently, we've made updates to the Rule 701 worksheet to improve the calculation methodologies. Here are a few changes we hope you'll find useful.

1. Ability to a reporting date range - regardless of whether your company uses a rolling or fixed reporting period for Rule 701, you have full control over the securities to include in the report. By default, we show a 12 month rolling period. Change dates to review historical data or model out future issuances.

2. Report calculation methodology detailed -

• We do not include canceled or expired securities in our Rule 701 check
  • Securities that are canceled as part of a transfer or repurchase will remain included in the report
    • The resulting balance certificates from the transfer or repurchase stock are excluded
• Common certificates resulting from the exercise or settlement of Rule 701 equity awards are included
  • The exercised portion of the equity award is moved from ‘Common shares issuable upon exercise of Rule 701 option grants/RSUs’ to ‘Common shares issued under Rule 701’ to avoid double counting and enable accurate tracking of Rule 701 shares after an exercise.
• The aggregate sales price for RSUs is set to the FMV value at grant
• We define outstanding shares as securities that were not issued under Rule 701

Alex Chen

5 years ago10/14/2020

New Equity Reporting Page and Custom Reporting

What's new

• Custom reporting - set filter criteria and add, edit, and remove data columns
• Preview of ledger-based reports
• Unified reporting page - see Carta-provided reports and your custom reports

How you can access the experience

In the last few months, we've been introducing a new reporting experience and the ability to create custom reports. We hope this update will help you become more efficient in exporting the Carta data you need, in the format you need. If this experience is enabled for your company, you'll be able to access the page by clicking on Capitalization > Reporting in the top menu.

From top of the classic reporting page, you'll see a banner allow you to switch between the new and old reporting pages.

Once you've landed on the new page, you always have the option to head back to the classic reporting page at any time, by using the banner in the top navigation.

How to run a Carta-provided report

From this new page, you'll be able to access the same reports that you are familiar with. For example, clicking on the cap table report will surface a modal, allowing you to input the parameters necessary to generate the report

Some reports now support in-app preview and customization, these are denoted by a purple customizable badge. Clicking on the report name brings you directly to the report preview. You're able to adjust parameters, see the filters applied, and a preview of the data before exporting the report.

Customizing a report

You can make modifications to this report and save it as a custom report by clicking Copy and edit in the top navigation. From here you can make adjustments to filtering criteria and add, remove, or reorder columns.

Once you're happy with your changes, you can Save and run the report or export it to share.

Alex Chen

5 years ago10/12/2020

Inline tags for Company Investments

Who this affects: Investors with company investments on Carta

What's new: Investors can now see and add tags inline on our Company Investments page. This will allow users to filter their investments by tags.

How it works:

Tags are completely customizable. Users create a tag category and then add a the tags relevant to their investment strategy.

To see all tags for each investment, hover over the tags column.

To add new tags to an investment, users click the "edit tags" button. They can then search their tags or add a completely new tag.

Ashley Chang

5 years ago9/30/2020

Exercise Simulator on Mobile!

In an aim to make exercising simple and easy to understand, we are excited to support simulation tools on iOS and Android apps.

This release will allow any option holder on iOS or Android app to view the estimated cost and taxes by simulating an exercise before performing it.

There are three different scenarios available through the simulator depending on the type of the grant(s).

• All Vested Options
• Early Exercise all Options
• Customize your exercise

While All Vested Options and Early Exercise All Options allow users to simulate a fixed number of options based on the selected date, Customize your Exercise allows users to manually enter the number of options they plan on exercising.

Once the preferred scenario is selected and additional tax information has been provided, the cost and taxes for that exercise are calculated.

Hassan Waheed

5 years ago9/25/2020

Portfolio Merging

Goal: Allow users to merge their portfolios and view holdings in one view.

Audience:

• Users: Equity holder, Employees, Investors (Corporations), Investors (Fund Admin), LP
• Companies on Launch, Starter, and Growth
• Platforms: Web, iOS and Android

What’s New: Users will now be able to merge multiple portfolios into a single one using the self-serve portfolio merge tool.

• Organization: Organize and view different company holdings in a single portfolios
• Customization: Customize portfolio views by selecting which portfolios to merge

Timing: Rolled out on 09.24.2020

Resources: https://support.carta.com/s/article/merging-portfolios

Hassan Waheed

5 years ago9/24/2020

Performance Awards

Corporations Early Access

Carta now supports performance awards with variable payouts

What’s New: Here are the highlights for Carta’s updated performance award module.

• Manage performance awards from a single, unified modal
• Support variable payouts
• Streamline award management with updated UX
• Updates to vesting modals for admins and participants
• (Coming soon) Custom vesting schedules with performance conditions
• (Coming soon) Milestone vesting with performance conditions

Manage performance awards from a single module

Carta’s new performance award functionality allows administrators to manage performance criteria and payout from a single module. Performance criteria can be created and applied to multiple vesting schedules and many grants at once. Awards sharing the same performance criteria are all managed from a payout perspective from a single action:

Support variable payouts

Carta now supports variable payouts for performance awards. Performance awards can be configured to allow for payouts at greater than or less than 100% of target.

Note: Carta will initially reserve shares from the plan’s share pool at the maximum payout amount.

Streamline award management with updated UX

Performance conditions can now be created and tied to vesting tranches:

Performance conditions now can have both variable (pay out at greater than or less than 100%) or non variable payouts. Performance conditions can be attached to multiple vesting schedules; achievement is governed by managing the condition itself and flows back to all affected tranches for vesting:

The performance condition(s) are then tied to a vesting schedule or individual vesting tranches:

Associating grants with a performance vesting schedule will allow administrators to manage condition achievement by evaluating the condition itself. Performance tranches on the award will not pay out until the related performance criteria are achieved:

Updates to vesting modal for admins and participants

Prior to achievement of a performance condition, the vesting modal will show no shares vested for tranches tied to performance conditions. The progress table will indicate the performance condition that is tied to each tranche, and will show the potential amount that can be earned.

Following the evaluation of the condition, tranches that have met both the time and performance conditions will show as vested and will allow exercise (if options) or release (if RSUs). The following screenshot shows the condition “Liquidity Event” as achieved on 9/16/2020, allowing the tranches that have met both the time and performance based conditions to vest:

Coming soon

While this initial release covers performance awards and standard vesting templates, we will soon release additional functionality. This includes the ability to associate performance conditions with custom vesting templates and schedules, as well as combining performance conditions with milestone vesting events. An upcoming entry will cover these items.

Bryan Wells

5 years ago9/24/2020

Improvements to the exercise approval screen

What's coming:

Make more informed decisions when reviewing and approving option exercise requests with key information at your fingertips

Who this affects:

Users with the "Option exercise approver" role in companies issuing stock options with online exercising enabled

What's better:

• The ability to approve or reject exercise requests
• Information about the option grant and stakeholder is readily available
• Clearer presentation of information

New exercise approval screen:

Previous exercise approval screen:

Timing:

• Rolling out to 10% of customers on September 28, 2020
• Release percentage will slowly increase to 100%

Vince Lo

5 years ago9/24/2020

83(b) elections for Profits Interest Units

What’s coming:

A simple way to manage 83(b) elections for Profits Interest Units

Who this affects:

• LLCs
• US-based equity holders who are issued Profits Interest Units

What’s new:

• 83(b) file management

Equity holders and admins now have a dedicated place for 83(b) elections for Profits Interest Units. On the PIU modal, users will see an 83(b) elections tab where they can access the generated 83(b) election form and upload a signed copy for their issuing company and personal records.

• 83(b) template for PIUs

Carta generates a PDF template based on the information in the platform.

• 83(b) reminders

Timeliness is important for 83(b) elections. Equity holders will see various reminders in-app and by email highlighting 83(b) eligibility.

• Filtering on 83(b) filing status

For company administrators, it is easy to filter PIUs based on the 83(b) filing status.

Gwynne Burgess

5 years ago9/23/2020

Safe & Convertible Note Calculator

What’s coming:

• This scenario modeling tool helps founders predict the future impact of Safe and Note ownership when converted at a future priced round.

Who this affects:

• Users: Equity administrators, Law firm partners
• Packages: All packages (Launch, Starter, Growth, Scale, and IPO-Ready will receive this calculator)

What’s new:

• View pre and post-money dilution before and after a future priced round, visualizing your ownership at multiple future valuations.
• Model multiple Notes or Safes and a priced round to account for all anticipated fundraising activity between now and the completion of a future priced round.
• Assess the potential impact of different types of convertibles, including pre-money Safes vs. post-money Safes.

Timing: In September, all companies received access to this calculator.

Calculation Definitions For Reference:

Option Pool Increase

(Target Available Pool % *  Post-Money Fully Diluted Shares) - Available Options

Post-Money Valuation

Preferred Price Per Share * Post-Money Fully Diluted Shares

Preferred Price Per Share

Pre-Money Valuation / (Current Fully Diluted Shares + Option Pool Increase+ Converted Shares)

New Fully Diluted Shares

Current Fully Diluted Shares + New Money Preferred Shares + Option Pool Increase + Converted Shares

Conversion Price Per Share (Convertible Notes and Pre-Money Safe)

Lower of:

• (1 - Conversion Discount) * Preferred Price Per Share
• Valuation Cap / (Outstanding Shares + Outstanding Options +Available Options + Option Pool Increase)

Conversion Price Per Share (Post-Money Safe)

Lower of:

• (1 - Conversion Discount) * Preferred Price Per Share
• Valuation Cap / (Outstanding Shares + Outstanding Options + Available Options + Converted Shares)

Safe/Notes Ownership:

• Convertible Note Converted Shares / New Fully Diluted Shares
• Safe Converted Shares / New Fully Diluted Shares

Safe/Note holders post-priced round

Converted Shares / New Fully Diluted Shares

New investors post-priced round

New Money Preferred Shares / New Fully Diluted Shares

Your post-priced round ownership

Founder Shares / New Fully Diluted Shares

Dilution of Founder Shares

(% change in Founder Ownership / Current Fully Diluted Shares) * 100

Value of your shares post-priced round

Founder Shares * Preferred Price Per Share

David Zhang

5 years ago9/23/2020

Improvements to our login screen

What’s coming: We've made a few changes to our login screen to help users get access to their Carta account. We want to make sure your first interaction with Carta is clear, simple, and secure.

Who this affects:

• All Users accessing the login screen.

What’s new:

• Added a new link to help troubleshoot log in issues and contact support.

• Updated the show password toggle to an icon to simplify the page layout. This is consistent with our designs also on our registration page.

New log in page

Previous log in page

Maxwell Estes

5 years ago9/22/2020

Drafts V2 - Early Access

What’s coming:

• Drafting securities enhancements: in-app spreadsheet and data validations.
• Option grant and RSU drafting available now. Certificate drafting coming soon.

Who this affects:

• Users: Equity administrators, Law firm partners
• Packages: All packages (Launch, Starter, Growth, Scale, and IPO-Ready will receive this new drafting flow)

What’s better:

• In-app bulk actions for large data sets: This new and improved drafting and issuance workflow includes an in-app spreadsheet.
• Built-in data validation: We’ve built advanced validations into the product to improve data accuracy and completeness of your entire cap table.

Timing: So far in 2020, about 12,000 customers have received access to Drafts V2.  All remaining clients will be enabled in Q4 2020.  If you'd like to learn more or to request access sooner, email us at draftsfeedback@carta.com

David Zhang

5 years ago9/22/2020

Material event making your 409a stale?

What’s coming: Let your employees know your 409a is out of date and their taxes may be impacted if exercising.

Who this affects:

• Users: Equity administrators and option holders
• Packages: Starter, Growth, Scale, and IPO-Ready will receive this functionality.  Any customer with 409a in their subscription.

What’s better:

Proactive, in-app communication: When enabling this functionality, all option holders, upon exercising, are shown a disclaimer that the FMV is stale and this could impact their taxes. See the full disclaimer below in “Option Holder view”.

Equity Administrator view:

Option Holder view:

Timing: Rolling out to all 409a customers on September 30th.

Connor Bathen

5 years ago9/15/2020

Additional checks for the ISO 100k limit

What's coming: Carta will automatically check for the ISO 100k limit in additional workflows and features across the app

Who this affects: Companies issuing ISOs

What's better:

Based on some inputs (FMV, number of options granted, etc.), Carta automatically detects whether or not any grants for a given stakeholder are in violation of the ISO 100k limit. If any ISO grants are in violation of this rule, Carta will automatically change the award type from ISO to ISO/NSO:

Carta already runs this automated check any time a new award is issued. We've added this automated check in a few more places, so companies will no longer need to work with Carta staff to manually run the check when making common types of award modifications.

Timing: Live for all customers on September 15th

Vince Lo

5 years ago9/15/2020

Post Exercise Experience on Mobile

We are excited to announce the release of the Exercise History screen, and an update to the Exercise Status Indicator on both iOS and Android mobile apps.

The Exercise History Screen

Holding an objective to provide more humble, human, and helpful experiences; we have decided to take this opportunity to redesign the post-exercise submission process. Within the Option Details screen, we now allow shareholders to view a full history of their past and ongoing exercise submissions. Providing an exercise history empowers shareholders to easily maintain the organization of their equity within Carta.

How do I use it?

In order to access the Exercise History screen on mobile, install the latest version of the Carta app. Once installed, you can navigate to your securities and tap one to find yourself inside of the Option Details screen.

From here you will see an interactive card titled “View Exercise History”. Tap the card to see all of your past and present exercises. You will see all of your exercises organized from top to bottom by date. The states of your exercise will be dependent on your exercising activity in Carta.

From the Exercise History screen, tap a list item to view the Exercise Status Indicator, and Exercise Overview screen.

The Exercise Status Indicator

Our newest iteration the Exercise Status Indicator primarily focuses on how we contextually use effective language. We are doing this by properly breaking down each step with clear actions and concise information regarding both ACH and Wire payment processes. Beyond contextual updates, we have also taken this opportunity to redesign the Exercise Status experience. In order to narrow the disparity between both mobile and web products, we have taken inspiration from the web and reimagined the experience to fit within the confines of your mobile devices.

How do I use it?

Once you’ve navigated to find the details of your security, tap on the Exercise History card. From the list of past and present exercises, tap one to reveal the Exercise Status Indicator. The Exercise Status is a five-step indicator that can track the ongoing status of your exercise request. We’ll also send you regular updates on the status of your exercise by email.

The new indication of Payment Status provides more context into the common support question “Where is my money?” by displaying a three substep process.

These substeps also provide more detailed information on ACH failures and error cases. The new alerts (R01-R33) are universal codes used by banks internationally. By using these universal codes we can provide better context into why there is an issue, and how it can be resolved. In cases where it is absolutely necessary, we will direct users into the Payment Information screen, or prompt users to call Carta Support.

For Non-US shareholders, we provide context into Wire Transfer. This substep will enable users to view their wire instructions or submit a wire confirmation from the Exercise Status Indicator.

Hassan Waheed

5 years ago8/31/2020

Bulk Add Stakeholders

Carta now supports adding multiple stakeholders in bulk.

Previously, adding new stakeholders to Carta was done on an individual basis within the Stakeholder ledger -- Manage Stakeholders > Add stakeholder. While this works perfectly well for a single stakeholder, it becomes time consuming for multiple stakeholders. For this reason, we’ve released a new Bulk Add Stakeholders feature. Here’s how to use it --

1. Go to the Stakeholder ledger - Manage Stakeholders > Bulk Add Stakeholders. You will see something that looks like this -

2. Use the “Download spreadsheet” button to download a blank xlsx file where you can input all your new stakeholder information

3. Fill in the xslx spreadsheet with your new stakeholder data. These will typically consist of recent employees who have joined your company

4. Go back to the Carta app to upload the spreadsheet containing the changes

5. Click the “Submit updates” button, and if there are no errors found with the data, you’re done! If there are errors, you will see a screen similar to what’s shown below. Click the “Download errors spreadsheet” button to download an annotated spreadsheet that calls out the errors.

6. Correct the errors in the resulting spreadsheet, re-upload the updated sheet, and submit the changes again. That should be it! The new stakeholders contained in your file will now be added as new stakeholders in Carta.

Steven Camina

5 years ago8/31/2020

Announcing (new and improved) Release Notes

Over the last few months, we’ve been listening to your feedback on our changelog and identified usability and customization as two areas for improvement. Today, we are announcing our new and improved Release Notes in order to provide you with up-to-date information and news on Carta product changes.

Key features of our Release Notes include:

Filter by label

You can now filter out notes to only include the ones you care about most. You will be able to filter by Carta product area (Corporations, Investor Services, Platform, and CartaX), customer type (Employee, Equity Administrator, Board Member, etc. ), or release stage (General Audience, Preview, etc.)

You can filter by label on the right hand side of the screen by selecting the label you’d like to see notes on.

Subscribe for recurring product updates

Curious to know about all the great things we’re releasing on a regular basis? Subscribe to our Release Notes. You will get an email to your inbox whenever we post a new update. You can find the subscribe button at the top of the Release Notes page.

Mara Pritchard

5 years ago8/18/2020

Voiding fully approved board consents

Legal admins can now mark a previously approved board consent as “Void”. Voided board consents will no longer be visible to the company’s admins or board members; however, for data integrity purposes, the data will be preserved in Carta’s audit logs.

Note that board consents approving 409A reports or new option grants cannot be voided, as those cap events are linked to the consent itself. If an admin requires assistance with a consent of this nature, they should work with Carta Support.

Nabila Hadwani

5 years ago8/14/2020

Wire Instructions Request Email

Fund admins can now trigger an email to request that Limited Partners update their wire instructions ahead of a distribution. The primary on the LP account and any users who have been granted wire instruction permission will receive an email letting them know its time to update.

The link on the email will bring them directly to the wire instructions tab for that fund, where they can confirm or update their instructions.

To request wire instruction permission, contact our support team at investorservices@carta.com.

Ashley Chang

5 years ago8/5/2020

PWERM Valuations, In-app

We’ve released a new feature that helps our staff value late stage private companies. The feature allows staff to conduct a “PWERM” valuation in-app, eliminating the need for them to rely on excel spreadsheets and saving them time on your 409A or ASC 820 valuation.

PWERM stands for P robability W eighted E xpected R eturn M ethod. This methodology is often relied upon in the valuation community when there is a possibility of several future outcomes for the Company being valued. For example, Airbnb has said its resuming plans to IPO. However, real world events could come up, such as a global pandemic, that could stall these plans. Due to this uncertainty, a PWERM valuation methodology could better simulate real world outcomes where companies could either continue business as usual or could reach an exit event.

EJ Jacoby

5 years ago8/4/2020

Exercise Status Snapshot

After an equity holder has submitted an exercise, they can now easily see the status of an exercise request from their Portfolio Holdings page.

To see additional details about the exercise, equity holders can click ‘View details’ to see relevant information about their exercise request.

Gwynne Burgess

5 years ago8/3/2020

In-app Wire Instructions for Limited Partners

Limited partners with fund investments on Carta can now securely update their wire instructions through our portal.

When a limited partner logs into Carta, they’ll see a Wire Instructions tab within each of their fund investments. There, limited partners can see any wire instructions that have been previously added and make updates.

Wire instructions are visible for the primary user on any fund investment. Please reach out to your fund administrator to give updates to any additional users.

Ashley Chang

5 years ago7/31/2020

Updated stakeholder termination reminder for repurchases

The repurchase workflow will no longer remind users to terminate the stakeholder if the stakeholder’s already been terminated in Carta.

Unvested shares from equity grants are typically repurchased from stakeholders once they’ve been terminated in Carta. The recently released repurchase workflow was reminding users to terminate the stakeholder even if the stakeholder was already terminated in Carta. We’ve updated the workflow so that the blue reminder text and “Terminate stakeholder” button only appear if the stakeholder to which the certificate belongs hasn’t yet been terminated in Carta.

Thank you to the Carta admin users who reached out and provided this product feedback. Please continue reaching out and letting us know how we can make the product better for our corporate customers.

Vince Lo