Announcing: Stack Equity Management

Founders, lawyers, and investors prefer to work with simpler cap tables. However, most equity management software products are incentivized against making cap tables simpler because of pricing that increases with the amount of investors (stakeholder-based pricing).

In the current market, startups need to raise from a larger number of investors to complete their round. When startups use equity management software that charges per stakeholder, they can pay 10–40% of an investor's check to their provider over the lifetime of the company.

Stack Equity Management is a team member-based equity management solution designed to replace stakeholder-based equity management software. Today we're making Stack Equity Management available to U.S.-based C Corporations.

The End of Stakeholder-Based Pricing

Most equity management software charges per stakeholder, which means anyone on your cap table, including SAFE investors, can cost hundreds of dollars per year. In practice, investor information rarely changes beyond when it’s issued, yet providers today continue to charge startups in perpetuity for storing this data.

From our own experience starting companies and countless conversations with founders, the value of equity management software comes from the equity grants to team members, managing and visualizing vesting, and exercises. Accordingly, Stack pricing is based on the number of team members holding equity grants, with plans ranging from free for new companies to $300/mo+ for scaling startups (existing Stack customers will enjoy Stack’s Base plan for free through July 8, 2023). Stack does not charge for investors on the cap table. The per team-member pricing makes it easy to predict costs as your startup grows.

Startups that have moved off stakeholder-based equity management solutions in favor of Stack Equity Management each saved thousands of dollars a year in fees.

"We switched from Carta to Stack for the better user experience, especially the ability to keep a cleaner cap table with RUVs, and to get away from expensive stakeholder-based pricing,” said Motif CEO Marie Schneegans, who reduced her annual equity management software fee by 58% switching to Stack.

To calculate how much your company will save with Stack pricing, visit our new pricing page.

Moving Roll Up Vehicles Onto Stack

Roll Up Vehicles (RUVs) are special purpose vehicles that allow founders to collect investments from up to 250 LPs with a single line on their cap table. To date, startups using RUVs have collectively saved over $40M. Around half the savings are due to stakeholder-based equity management pricing.

While stakeholder-based equity management providers aren't incentivized to make your cap table cleaner, Stack integrates RUVs directly into the equity management product to help founders keep a cleaner cap table.

Founders using Stack can easily spin up RUVs and access No-Fee RUVs (based on the plan chosen).

For founders not using Stack Equity Management, RUVs can save tens of thousands of dollars over the lifetime of the company. For more on pricing for non-Stack startups, click here.

Stack: Fundraising, Banking, and Equity Management

Founders using Stack Equity Management benefit from a comprehensive suite of tools to manage their cap table:

• A full cap table management suite with digital stock certificates and grant issuance
• Simulations and reporting features
• Employee equity grants with standalone employee dashboards
• Electronic stock issuances and standalone investor dashboards
• Grant issuance with e-signing, standalone employee dashboards, and online exercise payment
• Advanced reporting for compliance and accounting
• Board management with board consent generation and e-signatures
• SAFE fundraising with document generation and e-signature collection
• 409A valuations
• Annual cap table cleanup and dedicated customer support (for certain plans)

In addition to equity management functionality, founders have access to the full suite of tools available in Stack:

• Fundraising: Instant closes, single-link SAFE signing, data rooms, real time valuation data, and investor updates
• HR integration: Dynamic employee offer letters, integration with third party HR systems to support international and domestic employees.
• Legal tools: Board consent generation and e-signature tool, support for foreign qualification and other legal services*, and a library of legal templates.

The End of Stakeholder-Based Pricing

Our goal is to change the practice of stakeholder-based pricing permanently.

Stack offers frictionless concierge onboarding for companies currently subject to stakeholder-based pricing on popular equity management software providers. To move your cap table onto Stack, click here.