Capdesk

Avantages

we moved from spreadsheets and pieces of paper to Capdesk - it was like night and day. It also highlighted gaps and issues we had so was a great health check also. Investor relations tools useful also.

Strongly recommend if you want an easier life!

Inconvénients

Software is great for running your capable etc - the what-if models are downloads in Excel - is good but I would like to see in the tool itself.

Avantages

A really simple and connected platform that allows us to manage our shareholders and optionholders with ease.

Inconvénients

Getting this set up was quite intensive but that was mostly because of the maturity of our business - I wish I had onboarded it sooner!

Avantages

Really easy to use and run round simulations, and export cap table.
Good ability to create different vesting on EMI etc.
Options management is great, haven't yet implemented it fully.

Inconvénients

Quirky UI, bit difficult to always find what you want.
Setting up new bearers is a bit cumbersome.
No ability to create custom reports.

Alternatives envisagées 

Avantages

Supports option management.
Allows electronic option grants
Supports UK filings at HMRC and Companies House.

Inconvénients

Some of the usability and views are a bit clunky but they are improving and adding new features all the time.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à Capdesk

Avantages

Like many small business owners, in my first startup we managed the cap table in excel. When we exited the business, this led to a lot of detail-oriented admin during due diligence. I said that in my next company, we would use proper software. We chose Capdesk.

Inconvénients

I'd like it to automate a few things better (e.g. annual EMI / ERS returns) and have hit a few odd limitations around e.g. conditional vesting schedules, but overall, have found it to be excellent.

Avantages

It has helped me to organise 30 years worth of statutory registers, transfer books, spreadsheets and a multitude of other actions in our share scheme into a simple to use and read format. It is clean, easy and effective in what it does.

Inconvénients

Due to the complexity of our business and share scheme there have been a few little bugs to sort out however the customer support team has been fantastic and we have worked through every issue together with fantastic results!

Avantages

As a hypergrowth company managing the company share option scheme and captable had become hugely time consuming and manual, the integration with our HR system meant that share option grants became automated and reduced manual work drastically.

Inconvénients

there are some limitations on scheme rules, although that is probably more the vagaries of our scheme rather than a product issue.

Avantages

My favorite feature about Capdesk is the ease it brings with options management. You no longer need to worry about piles of paperwork and organizing them and misplacing them physically, Capdesk integrates with Docusign and allows this to be organized digitally. Editing and adding records is seamless. Calculations are extremely simple and straightforward. Cap table can be shared externally, does not need to be via the platform.

Inconvénients

It is a bit pricey as there is no free trail and there are alternative platforms that offer similar features at a lower cost. Must be checking email constantly, as everything that is exported/changed is done via email notification.

Avantages

Capdesk takes all the pain away from managing our options and cap table. At Duco, everyone has options but that means paperwork for everyone. The integration with Docusign makes this really easy for us. Board reporting is also great, we just click a button and we get our cap table and options report for the board. Finally, saves us plenty of time reporting to the government on lapses, annual returns etc

Inconvénients

Curious to see what else the team can add as the product grows. Having the round modelling in a spreadsheet is great, maybe having it in the UI would be good. For me, anything else that can be done that helps employee engagement would be top of the wishlist. Explaining to employees consistently how much their options are worth is important, and not easy.

Avantages

Capdesk gives me comfort that the shares and options we issue are collated in a single repository with all the relevant documentation. The onboarding process allowed us to identify and correct errors made by previous staff.

Inconvénients

The export into Excel could be more immediate in your browser rather than waiting for an email.

Avantages

It is a single source of the truth when it comes to your company capital - invaluable if you raise multiple round, have an employee option pool, have multiple shareholders etc. I nor my [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] have to field questions from investors on the current share price, their holdings, last valuation etc. You can also use the software to do all of your filings. In essence is it so much better than spreadsheets and dropbox files which is what we use to use and is worth every penny. I should also say that my account manager is exceptional - always there to help because lets be honest this stuff isn't always straight forward and its the thing you always leave until last on your to do

Inconvénients

You need at least a basic understanding of share classes, dilution, cap table mechanics etc to use the software, but you would always need that. The account management system capdesk offers goes someway to helping with this as they often do a lot of the explaining or heavy lifting for me so that i get it right.

Avantages

Once set-up, it's very simple to use in a regular basis. Routine tasks are very easy, such as issuing share certificates, exporting the cap table, adding new shareholders etc

Inconvénients

Documentation is very light. It's rarely obvious why something doesn't work the way you first expect, so troubleshooting is very hard. Refreshing a template doesn't always result in new version of documents being created. Support is generally good, but also very necessary.

Alternatives envisagées 

Avantages

Makes managing a large cap table much easier. To have all share issuances in the same place and being able to review/edit is useful. Storing EIS docs with share issuances is also useful. If all shareholders would be on Capdesk it would be even better.

Inconvénients

The options tools are improving but still don't flexible enough to cover all use cases. I can understand there is no easy fix, but e.g. we needed an option to accelerate vesting in two ways. One was to bring forward vesting days, another was to add functionality where equity value was above a certain value. If Capdesk would understand this and reflect in exit modeling it would be very cool.

Avantages

Easy to add and amend records, full featured, reporting is easy to obtain and well formatted.

Useful mailing features and self help for users once set live

Inconvénients

Some areas are not intuitiveand the built in assistance is not always as clear as required. The help provided via a direct contact is superb though.

Avantages

It's really easy to use and everything is fairly intuitive.
Supports UK HMRC filings.

Inconvénients

Direct filing into HMRC would be great.
Set up can be a bit onerous but this was largely down to us and the support team were great at turning everything quickly.

Alternatives envisagées 

Avantages

Simple functionality that allows you to get the most from a share management software

Inconvénients

The UI/design isn't the best but it's functionality is great and fantastic value - the witnessing of documents could be explained slightly better and definitely made a little more user friendly but it definitely beats printing etc

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à Capdesk

Avantages

Helps to simplify even the most complex of CAP Tables and shareholder management becomes easy and efficient which helps to save a huge amount of time.
Allows employees to understand their options better
The user experience is easy to understand and intuitive
Allows us to streamline our communication with investors and they are more engaged as a result

Inconvénients

Inviting investors to join Capdesk could be a little bit more bespoke. i.e. to be able to edit the subject of the email and to personalise it a bit and be a bit more selective with regards to who receives invitations and who doesn't.

Avantages

That the cap table can be shared with external parties, that there aren't multiple versions of a cap table on an outdated spreadsheet, that we can do calculations such as waterfall easily.

Inconvénients

It is a bit expensive but I haven't used all available features so this is possibly why I feel I am not getting value for money.

Avantages

Only tool with end to end digital signing - massive advance

Inconvénients

Adding features all the time so mitigated but some features were missing.

Avantages

The ease at which the transactions were rebuilt within the software to generate our shareholder registers and records from day one
The ease with which we can execute share transactions

Inconvénients

It would be great if there was a way to interact directly with HMRC and Companies House for reporting. Although the ability to generate suitably compatible file formats makes this less of an issue.

Avantages

Having everything in one place, can easily extract data and update data. No more manual errors and numerous spreadsheets. Saves so much time.

Inconvénients

All has been positive to date and the support team are really helpful.

Avantages

As an angel investor, I struggle to deal with many investments and work on the cap table. Capdesk has made everything much simpler. The web-based software is very easy to use (albeit it's a technical matter) and works great for scaling companies. I highly recommend it although it comes with a cost and requires all the shareholders to use it with someone might be not so keen on digital stuff.

Inconvénients

The price might be lower or better tiered.

Avantages

Capdesk allowed us to move the cap table from Excel to an enterprise platform where each shareholder can see their own holdings online, receive automated company updates, see their share certs, etc. The secondary share market link is an interesting value add that I am sure most share holders will appreciate.

Inconvénients

No obvious issues found yet. The only thing that would be nice is to have a mobile app.

Avantages

1) Well tailored to growing unquoted companies needs
2) Handles increasing cap table complexity
3) Useful to a range of stakeholders - issuer, management , staff and shareholders - in terms of both records-keeping and communications

Inconvénients

Minor technical issue on share investment valuation; got resolved quickly with Capdesk support

Avantages

An easy way to keep track of the overall Cap Table, manage key documents and prepare HMRC filings

Inconvénients

Can be relatively complicated because it covers so much