Being an entrepreneur and knowing how to do your startup’s capitalization table require two different kinds of skills. Capography is a web application that eases the process of creating and keeping an up-to-date cap table. You won’t have to rely on a complicated Excel spreadsheet model you found online.
A cap table lists who owns what in a startup. With each investment round, the valuation of your company changes as more people are involved.
You sometimes have to manage options and warrants for your employees as well. Maintaining a cap table is important to know what everyone gets paid in case of an exit.
“I am currently the CFO of TicketLeap, a ticketing startup in Philadelphia. I wanted to build a product that I had unique knowledge about and that I could be a user of,” said Tim Raybould, founder of Capography. “Capography isn’t a blank slate like Excel. It’s easier to set up, it spoon feeds you the right information, and it’s much easier to share with stakeholders,” he continued.
Instead of filling out a spreadsheet while googling what each term means, founders put their numbers into forms in order to understand how their capital is distributed between shareholders and founders. You pick the type of shares that you are issuing or the type of investment that you are receiving (common shares, options, warrants, equity investment and debt investment) and then you just have to enter the right numbers.
When it comes to complicated financial words, Capography comes with a glossary that explains in a few sentences what each term means. If you have been using Excel in the past, Capography supports copy and paste from Excel.
Capography has adopted a freemium model. You can maintain your cap table for free as long as there are fewer than 20 people on your cap table. When you have more stakeholders than that, you will have to pay $199 per year. It is based in Philadelphia and about 600 startups are using it to manage their cap table.