Managing a growing cap table

Founders often query how large their cap table should be.

How many investors is too many?

In this article we break down the complex topic of growing cap tables - something unique to each company’s goals and circumstances. Keep reading to discover strategies to keep your cap table tidy and agile, or to clean it up if it’s already spun out of control.

A growing cap table

The number of stockholders on your cap table will increase because:

• You’re raising capital, and new investors become stockholders, or
• You’re offering ownership to employees, and those employees are becoming stockholders.

The speed at which the cap table will grow can really depend on how you’ve approached the above. For example, if you’ve raised capital from lots of individual family and friends, or lots of small-scale angel investors, you may quickly gain 30+ stockholders. Alternatively, if you’ve only taken investment from large investors who can take up your entire round, your cap table will be relatively small.

Likewise, if you’ve issued stocks directly to employees (rather than having set up an ESOP) this will speed up the growth of your cap table. If you’ve set up an ESOP instead, and clearly communicated to the employees that they have the ability to hold off on ‘exercising’ their options until an Exit Event, your cap table may remain more lean.

What are the rules?

In some countries, there is a limit on the number of stockholders a private company can have, before it’s required to become a public company.

Public companies are generally subject to more stringent rules and compliance regulations This can often be a burden for a start-up focused on growth. Compliance costs will also increase, and directors and founders can lose various aspects of ‘control’.

To find out more about the limits on shareholders, Cake has expert legal partners in your jurisdiction who we can connect you with in a heartbeat. Just reach out to us!

Implications of a big cap table

There are other practical implications to consider if your cap table is growing.

Resolutions and documents being signed

Under most stockholder agreements (and constitutions), there are a number of matters that require stockholder approval. Most start-ups will get approval by way of a ‘circulating resolution’, rather than holding a stockholders meeting. This requires the stockholders to all sign a document confirming their vote.

If a start-up has 30+ stockholders, this can be a tedious process. This can be especially frustrating when you need quick approval.

Keep in mind that for each stockholder, you may require multiple signers (ie, two directors of the investment entity).

Cake is able to streamline this process by allowing you to send members resolutions through the platform, and to track and follow up those signers. This will also avoid you needing to compile multiple copies of one signed resolution.

We often see customers with 40+ stockholders have their members' resolutions signed within days, instead of weeks.

Cooks in the kitchen‍

Depending on who your investors are, they may want to have an active input into the business. While this input is often appreciated, it can become tricky where there are too many parties (cooks) involved. For example, if you have 30 small stockholders all wanting a say in how the company should be run, it can get distracting.

Investor attraction

Venture Capital and larger angel investors often prefer ‘clean and concise’ cap tables. This is because they know the company can be more agile, and that it won’t risk being restricted by a large number of small stockholders when it matters.

While a big cap table won’t necessarily be a ‘deal breaker’, it’s still worth keeping this point in mind during your early days.

Cap table strategies

Below are a few strategies you can implement to keep control of your cap table size.

Minimum raise amounts

When starting a raise round, you can set minimum investment amounts per investor. For example, you could say an investor must invest at least $50k. This way, you’ll just have the 1 stockholder on your cap table for that investment, rather than 10 investors at $5k each.

Investment vehicles

Some groups of small angel investors may be able to invest as one entity through their own investment vehicle. Sometimes, an angel may also be able to join a pre-existing investment vehicle to get involved in the round.

Exercising stock options

Communicate clearly with your option holders, so that they understand how they may be able to hold off exercising their vested options.

On Cake, we generally only see options exercised when:

• An Exit Event is likely, or
• The employee is leaving and is required to exercise before that.

Otherwise, the employees often leave the options as vested but unexercised options.

Planning ahead

Decide on your company strategy before starting your round. For example:

• Decide how many investors you’d ideally like to have on your cap table in the long term. Not all companies can request a $50k minimum, so perhaps put a cap on the number of small investors in the seed round, with the aim to implement the minimum investment amount in later rounds.
• Consider what role you want those investors to play. For example, will they be passive or active investors?
• Keep in mind that your Convertible and SAFE Notes will convert to stockholders too.

What if my cap table is already tricky?

It’s pretty normal for a start-up to grow their cap table way quicker than they expected. And when this happens, they often won’t feel the pain of having a ‘big cap table’ until it’s too late.

Below are a few suggestions if you are looking to reduce that pain.

Stock buy-backs

It’s possible some of your investors are willing to sell their stocks back to the company, for a return on their investment. Keep in mind this will require the approval of the other stockholders, and of course the company will need the cash on hand to facilitate it.

Bare trusts

Bare Trusts are a funny creature, and worthy of a separate guide! Here's a deep dive on bare trusts if you like to know more.

As a summary, a Bare Trust can allow a number of investors to be counted as one single stockholder on a cap table.

This is done by having the legal ownership of stocks for a number of investors transferred to a Trustee, who holds those stocks on trust for the individual investors. Not only does this avoid any stockholder limits, but it can make it much easier to get things done quickly. For example, the trustee could sign resolutions on behalf of all beneficial holders.

This agility can be very attractive to companies that have been getting bogged in admin.

We would highly recommend seeking legal advice before going down this route, as there are a number of things to consider. Our legal partners can chat with you and help to set this up if it’s suitable and applicable in your jurisdiction.

Agile stockholder agreements

Your lawyer could amend your stockholders Agreement so that

• Stockholder approval is only needed where absolutely necessary, and
• Minority votes can be aggregated into a single vote.

This can again reduce the pain point in chasing signatures during a transaction, where timing is critical. If you’d like to chat to a start-up lawyer about this, let us know.

Every company is different

For some companies, a large cap table may not be a problem.

For example, if a company was expecting to list in the near future, having more stockholders while private may not be a problem. Similarly, if a company was in frequent contact with its stockholders and had an agile stockholders agreement, it may not feel the pain.

The key is often to focus on your company goals and objectives first, and then your cap table process and strategy can follow.