It’s been an exciting summer here at Carta. We announced our Series G round of fundraising. We kicked off a new podcast series called How to Raise a Round, consisting of conversations with early-stage founders about their fundraising experience. In Singapore, our newest team celebrated Singapore’s 56th birthday last month, as well as the 100th startup to sign up for Carta Launch Asia—a free equity management and fundraising platform for early-stage founders.
Carta Launch Asia was created to help founders better manage their company’s ownership from day one. With this platform, they can avoid using spreadsheets to manage their equity—which too often can be incomplete or out of date during the most critical moments in a company’s life, such as fundraising.
In talking to our first 100 founders, we identified three primary reasons they’re using the platform.
The three reasons founders joined Carta Launch Asia
1. Fundraising
Early-stage companies are almost always in fundraising mode. Many of our first 100 founders saw value in the various ways Carta Launch Asia can add value to their fundraising efforts:
- SAFE and convertible note modeling: The math related to SAFE and note conversions can get complicated quickly—especially when you have several at different terms. Our SAFE and note calculator helps founders easily and accurately understand possible changes to individual ownership and equity dilution.
- SAFEs and convertible note administration: SAFEs and convertible notes are becoming more and more common among early-stage startups. With Carta, founders can draft, issue, and collect signatures 100% electronically. When you close a priced round, those notes can be easily converted into digital shares certificates—giving you a clean, auditable financing history.
- A data room: Founders see value in being able to manage investor due diligence for a fundraising in a familiar platform that already houses much of the ownership and corporate information they will need.
2. The Carta network
Carta supports more than 21,000 startups worldwide. This reach has created tremendous familiarity among early-stage investors, both individual and institutional. Many founders we spoke with felt that using Carta to track and manage their ownership would be seen favorably by prospective investors who already know of, use, and trust Carta.
3. Investor and employee relations
Communicating with employees and investors about their ownership takes up more and more time as a company grows. Individual Carta accounts that let security holders log in and access their own equity information were seen as a way to improve communication and transparency while also minimizing the number of questions a company’s leadership, finance, and HR teams need to facilitate.
As equity compensation becomes a more important piece of the overall compensation package in Southeast Asia, startups will continue to look for different ways to retain top talent. For this reason, many founders are looking for ways to highlight the equity they’re awarding to their employees as well as educating them about the potential impact it could have on them financially.
Announcing the APAC startup stack
Today, we’re excited to announce what we hope to be the fourth major reason founders sign up for Carta Launch Asia. We call it the APAC startup stack, a compilation of discounted products and services aimed at helping startups more efficiently grow their business. These offers are available to startups of any size and stage (including Carta Launch) once you go live on Carta.
If you, or anyone you know, is interested in being one of the next 100 founders, we’d love to talk. Feel free to send us an email or simply claim your spot in our onboarding queue by filling out the form (remember, it’s free if you’ve raised less than $3M USD).
A special thanks to all the universities, accelerators, and early-stage VCs who have helped spread the word to your founder networks here in Southeast Asia and beyond. We couldn’t do it without you.
