Ask HN: Experience Transitioning Captable Tools? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Experience Transitioning Captable Tools?

I've heard people start with cost-efficient tools like captable.io [1] and later transfer to premium options like Carta [2]. Anyone with experience? Is the transfer (export to CSV, and import into new tool) painful?

This post is useful to compare captable tool options: https://www.capshare.com/blog/gust-vs-carta-vs-capshare

[1] https://captable.io/pricing (free)

[2] https://carta.com/pricing (inquire for details, but annually > $2000)

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Captable.io product owner here. We serve tens of thousands of startups at different stages. When you do need to switch, say you're doing an international expansion, we offer many export options to Shareworks, Carta and raw data, because we believe that your data should be portable so you can choose what works best for you. Our partner Solium makes Shareworks that's used by pre and post-IPO companies like Nextdoor and Dropbox. We can work with Solium to level you up. Happy to answer any questions.

Thanks for the comment! I'm wondering specifically about transferring to Carta, as that is what my lawyer prefers using. My concern is it will be more involved than `captable.io export data to csv` followed by `carta import data from csv` -- i.e. it will take a long time and expensive lawyer hours to setup Carta.

Sure thing! Who's your lawyer? When does she anticipate that you need to switch? As a founder, I always lean towards solving the problem today vs. problems 5 years down the road. Also all major law firms have trained staff on hand to serve startup clients with Captable.io.

Regarding Carta onboarding, there's an involved process and associated fees. You can check out the few dozen help articles they have on the subject matter here: https://support.carta.com/category/415-onboarding---private-.... I recommend reaching out to their team to discuss further.

I can share more war stories we run into - ping me at ray at ltse dot com.

Following up in email (thanks!), but for others peeking on this thread...

> I always lean towards solving the problem today vs. problems 5 years down the road

Are you alluding to the problem of setting up w/ Carta, suggesting to bite that bullet now vs five years from now?

If so, the former calls for paying a few grand for the same capabilities of a free captable service, but the latter could a pain b/c the captable/stakeholders would be much more complex in several years.

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