Hi all,
I'm building a startup that is developing a cap table management software for PE portfolio companies. If you work in PE and spend a lot of your time managing the MEP manually in excel, please comment below what are some of the pain points that you have. Alternatively, feel free to drop me a PM on what features would you like to have in such a software.
I've been in PE for a couple years now and still pretty surprised that 95% of portfolio management work still exists in excel.
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I spend a ton of time on cap table/waterfall related stuff across multiple portfolio companies (each with unique quirks). I'm 7+ years into PE so consider myself pretty well-versed. Happy to chat live if helpful.
VCs use a product called Carta for this. I would check them out and see what features you could add to differentiate yourself.
Feels more like a feature than an app. Nice side project but would caution the TAM is pretty small here.
Agree with the comment about Carta above. Carta is pretty ubiquitous in the VC world and I know some PE funds that use it as well. Agree with you that a lot of the management of things seems to be done in excel, but folks identified this problem about a decade ago. Not to say your idea isn't unique, but I'd make sure you have an angle that Carta and the other tools aren't addressing.
Carta cannot handle anything mildly complex. It's very specific to VC/startup cap tables. For example, no hybrid equity, debt stacks, non-vanilla mgmt incentives, earnouts, etc. You also have to hardcode any valuation inputs into it. If you're building a product, it should integrate to- or, ideally, contain- the valuation files and PortCo reporting template(s) too. Otherwise, it's easier to leave the cap table in as an integrated sheet in your bigger workbook.
Biggest pain point is getting my lazy Gen Z twink of an associate to take a break from doom scrolling finapiration influencers and declining staffings because the company doesn’t meet his corporate responsibility standard to open Carta and do his job.
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