{"id":5962,"date":"2020-02-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-18T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www-staging.carta.com\/sg\/blog\/join-carta-launch\/"},"modified":"2021-03-05T06:56:29","modified_gmt":"2021-03-05T06:56:29","slug":"join-carta-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www-staging.carta.com\/sg\/blog\/join-carta-launch\/","title":{"rendered":"Join Carta Launch-a free version of Carta for early-stage companies"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

We’ve been running an open beta of Carta Launch<\/strong><\/a>-a free version of Carta for early-stage companies available through law firms-for several months. Launch allows early-stage companies to join and utilize Carta for free until they raise over $1M or pass 25 security holders.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

This month, we’ll see our thousandth company sign up for Launch.\u00a0 These companies have already raised over $200M (in aggregate), and we’re now opening the beta to work with all law firms on Carta, so if you’re a founder working on something new, it’s now even easier for you to join as one of the next 1,000 companies we serve on Launch!\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Why we started Carta Launch<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I joined Carta after a decade as a Silicon Valley corporate lawyer and start-up operator. Along the way, I’ve worked with scores of founders on hundreds of transactions, raised institutional venture rounds, cleaned up equity messes, and audited more cap histories than I care to remember. When I first joined Carta, I traveled around listening to our customers and partners-including law firms, outsourced CFO shops, and venture funds.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It became clear that Carta needed to welcome founders from the start, allowing them to keep a clean cap history from the very beginning. <\/strong>Doing this would help many thousands of companies, as well as our partners.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Here’s why companies should join Launch:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Onboarding earlier is better than later\u00a0<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
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“Even if you’re a one-person company, it’s worth getting on Carta Launch. The longer you wait to get properly organized, the harder it becomes.”<\/p>\r\nGeorge Simons, Co-founder, Solosuit<\/cite><\/blockquote>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Getting onto any robust cap management solution requires an implementation that includes accurate data for the company’s entire cap history. The earlier a company joins, the more straightforward this process will be<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Launch allows companies to join Carta before cap complexity proliferates. It’s an ideal option for tracking founder shares and early equity grants, as well as convertible notes and SAFEs-providing transparency for all holders.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Companies that onboard via Launch will never need to complete a traditional implementation down the road.<\/strong> As your company matures and wants to access 409A valuations<\/a>, scenario modeling, and more, you can seamlessly upgrade to a premium plan<\/a> at any time and even upgrade online and receive your first Carta 409A in less than a day-no onboarding spreadsheet required.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Prevent unnecessary clean-up\u00a0<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It’s far too common to hear that a company’s first institutional round (often Series A) was delayed due to cap table clean-up. However, virtually all clean-up work is avoidable.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

With Launch, companies can have perfect provenance on their cap histories from the start. If a company starts out on Launch, security issuances either happened in Carta, or they didn’t happen. The company’s entire cap table history is audit-tracked and documented-bullet-proof from a diligence perspective.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Launch opens Carta’s powerful tracking, board approval, and built-in compliance features to new companies, for free. This allows founders to move faster and close rounds more quickly.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Carta is becoming the industry standard<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Many leading law firms, venture funds, and accelerator programs have taken notice of how Carta benefits their companies. Carta helps them perform critical work-from serving clients to tracking their positions-and they are working to standardize their organizations’ workflows around Carta as their centralized database of ownership information.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Historically, our pricing model often prevented companies from joining Carta until their initial fundraising events. This pushed young companies to use other-often unscalable-options, or a plethora of Excel files floating around inboxes or cloud folders, and then migrate to Carta later on.\u00a0 Launch lets founders benefit from the use of Carta before they raise<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Improve important working relationships<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

We’ve seen how much Carta benefits important working relationships across our ecosystem.\u00a0 To give a few examples:\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n