I left my last company and had 90 days to buy my options. The day after I left the company (January) I exercised. The total I had to pay was about $20k. I didn’t think a lot about it after that.
6 full months later I get an email from Carta. It says my bank account transfer was unsuccessful. They had tried to pull the $20k from my account 6 months after I authorized it with absolutely no warning, and it had overdrafted my checking account by $1k (I don’t keep a ton of cash around).
Ok no big deal, I’ll move the money around and try again. Nope, Carta decided that after a single failed attempt at payment my options were PERMANENTLY canceled. Like, I no longer have the right to exercise them ever. No equity in the company for me, sorry.
After going back and forth with Carta they insisted they “had” to do this even though that’s BS. There’s no reason they couldn’t have attempted a second time to draw payment, they’d already waited 6 months.
To get the equity I had worked multiple years for I had to go to the CEO of my former company and beg personally. He got the board to back-date an equity offer for me of the same amount so I could exercise again. If I had left under left friendly terms I’d have been screwed.
So yeah, don’t use Carta.