Equity can be confusing for all of us. Both to manage, but sometimes even to talk about! Capdesk’s got you covered on both fronts: you already know we save you time, money, and a ton of headaches by streamlining your equity management, but now we’re also helping out with the talking about equity bit. Here’s our list of essential equity definitions, kept short and sweet to support you through puzzling conversations about ownership across time and space. Just keep this equity cheat sheet in your back pocket and take a quick sneak peak anytime you need a refresher on equity terms (we won’t tell!). 

A few months ago we changed the game of digital equity management, by enabling private UK companies to execute option grants 100% online. But think we forgot about companies like yours based elsewhere in Europe, or operating in multiple jurisdictions? Guess again! We've now made grant execution even more flexible on Capdesk, so you can issue them compliantly, no matter where in the continent you're issuing them. 

Got offered a grant by your employer company but not sure how it works? We've got you. Capdesk explains stock vesting, how vesting schedules work, when you can exercise your options, and more - in simple terms as usual!

The Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) and Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) are two of the UK government’s most generous - and hence most popular - initiatives to encourage investors to fund early stage businesses. Considering that - in theory at least - newer companies present a higher investment risk, many a founder have applied for one or both of these schemes, hoping to attract investors. 

Beginning September 14th, 2019, your bank may require additional authentication of your credit card when making payments on Capdesk. This extra security check by various banks has been introduced to comply with an EU payments regulation requiring banks to sometimes perform customer transaction authentication through identity verification. 

A common question among EIS/SEIS beginners, as all the relevant paperwork can get hard to keep up with! Capdesk comes to the rescue once again, with an easy-to-digest account of everything you need to know before you submit your application. Let's dive in. 

EIS is a great way for early stage businesses to attract potential investors and accelerate their growth. Unfortunately, it involves quite a bit of paperwork, served with a generous side of EIS terminology! But worry not - this guide was specifically designed to give you a good overview of what you need to know about the scheme, without getting lost in all the mumbo-jumbo! Let’s take a look.

With almost £2Bn pounds invested in UK startups through EIS last year, it’s clear that EIS can be a goldmine of a scheme for early-stage startups. Unfortunately, it comes along with quite a bit of paperwork. But, as you know, we’re all about the paperless life here at Capdesk, so we’re bringing you one step closer to it by letting you store EIS documents on Capdesk for your investors to stay informed about your application status, and making EIS3 signing and distribution digital to save you tons of admin time. Let’s put a smile on your investors’ faces!

We take your data privacy seriously. That's why we've now built an optional two-factor authentication feature on Capdesk, for those of you who want to be extra sure that no one else can access your account. Two-factor authentication can be enabled on an individual level by you, the user, or set as a requirement by the company for all the users it invites on the platform. It's a simple as 1-2-3. Just make sure you've got your phone nearby! 

You know we always try to make equity life as easy as possible for you - that's why we're giving you the option to export an overview of all the information relating to each type of security you might be using. So whether you want to share an overview of your options, warrants, phantom shares, or growth shares with an external party you don't wish to invite on Capdesk, all you need to do is use a coupe of clicks to export your data in spreadsheet form! 

We have big news! Capdesk is partnering with payment experts Shieldpay, to make digital option exercises possible! Upon termination of employment, your employees can choose if and how many of their vested options they would like to exercise through Capdesk. Shieldpay will ensure the transaction is safe for both you and your employee, by retaining the transfer money in an escrow account until the transaction process is completed and fully verified on Capdesk.

If you're one of the many companies who grant options to employees over issued shares, we have good news for you. You can now do so on Capdesk, with just a few clicks. It just got easier than ever to issue and monitor your grants!

So you just had to cancel some shares you previously issued - what's the next step? Well, you'll have to file a form known as 'SH06' to Companies House. Not sure what an SH06 is? Stay calm, we're here with some expert advice. Familiar with the form, but tired of all the manual work of filing to Companies House? We'll also tell you about how Capdesk makes filing your SH06 a whole lot faster. We're just natural problem solvers! 

Not sure how to file your CS01 at Companies House? Or just tired of spending too much time on filing your annual confirmation statements? Either way, we've got you covered. Here's some confirmation statement guidance and a bit about how Capdesk makes filing it to Companies House a lot, lot faster! 

We're thrilled to announce that we just raised £1.5 million from London-based VC fund Fuel Ventures and angels to digitise and provide liquidity to the billions of pounds’ worth of employee shares in unlisted European companies. We'd like to thank all of you who have supported us this far, and share with you what our goals are for these exciting next few months for Capdesk. 

If you're reading this, you've probably just put a share split or merge (aka consolidation or subdivision) behind you. Amazing!

Now all you need to do is let Companies House know, by filling out an SH02 form. This would normally take some time, to double check you got all the numbers down right. But with Capdesk, you actually don't need to worry about it: we autofill the form for you every time you make a share adjustment! Here's how. 

Remember the old, cumbersome days of manually trying to do share splits or merges on that usual spreadsheet? The long hours spent sorting out the adjustment of ratios for shares, options, convertible notes, and all sorts of equity - for each of your different share classes! Not to mention the new share certificates you had to issue, or updating your shareholder register, or filling out SH02s for Companies House for that matter.

Well you guessed right, all of this can now be done on Capdesk with a couple of clicks, and only takes a couple of minutes. Thank God for the digital age. 

In the private business world, the reasons for giving equity to employees are more than thoroughly discussed among founders, investors, and managers alike. But how often do you get to hear your employees’ thoughts on those grants you issued them? Are you making the most out of your option pool to incentivise staff, or are you just giving away equity with little or no impact?

We caught up with... let's call him Ben, a current option grant holder, to get an honest account of how an average grant is issued and communicated to employees, and what determines their effect on employee performance and loyalty.

Xtrac is a world-leader in the design and manufacture of high-performance transmission systems and driveline components, supplying virtually all the world's top motorsport teams. Its Employee Benefit Trust, established in 1997 continues to impress today. After winning the ESOP Centre's 2018 'Best All-Employee Share Scheme' award Xtrac's Finance Director, Stephen Lane, talks to Capdesk about why employee share plans matter, what can make or break them, and what the future of employee ownership holds. 

Share plans are one of the most important things a company can do to recruit, retain and motivate its staff. A properly managed share plan can align employees, managers and shareholders to work together to achieve the company’s financial and strategic goals. But – occasionally – they can also go wrong. So what should you think about when setting up a share plan? And what should you avoid to prevent problems?

Great news for all statutory register enthusiasts out there - we've made yours even better on Capdesk! That's right, we just turned your old, lengthy excel export into a majestic PDF document with a sharper look. We also expanded its content to include several recommended documents as well - namely, your register of issuances (allotments), transfers, and reorganisations (adjustments). 

Hooray!

Let's take a look.

At Capdesk, we're serious about cap tables. That's why we've updated our exports to give you even more comprehensive reports on the data you keep on the platform. Get better insight than ever into your shares, and stay on top of who owns what with the new stakeholder category tags.

If you've ever had to give share certificates to shareholders after issuing out shares or completing a funding round, you know what serious hassle means. Manually filling out information on share certificate templates, printing them out, signing them by hand, and then scanning (or even mailing!) them to be sent to the share holder. Not to mention the filing process of paper certificates that keep piling up or getting misplaced... Well, great news is we've made this all ancient history! 

Here at Capdesk we're extremely excited to announce that, for the first time ever, we've made grant issuance entirely digital! The grants are electronically executed as deeds, following legal best practises. This means that it's not only faster and easier for you to execute grants, but that you're also remaining compliant from the start and avoiding potential legal headaches in the future. 

If you are  Capdesk admin and, for whatever reason, wish to export the data you've been storing on the platform to save them on a personal device, it's now possible to do so with just a few clicks. Here's how:

If you run a growing, dynamic company you may be considering an initial public offering (more commonly known as an “IPO” or a “listing”) for your company i.e. floating your company on the stock market. This is the last of a three part series about IPOs.

If you run a growing, dynamic company you may be considering an initial public offering (more commonly known as an “IPO” or a “listing”) for your company i.e. floating your company on the stock market. This is the second of a three part series about IPOs.

At Capdesk, we continually work to accommodate your own particular needs. This is why we've updated Capdesk's access settings to make them more customisable, giving you full control over what kind of access each user in your company has to the platform. Let's take a closer look.

If you run a growing, dynamic company you may be considering an initial public offering (more commonly known as an “IPO” or a “listing”) for your company i.e. floating your company on the stock market.

This is the first of a three part series about IPOs. The first summarises the advantages and disadvantages of doing an IPO. The second outlines which of the several UK markets you could consider. The third is perhaps the most important as it gives some guidance about what you should be aware of before you start.

It’s that time of the year again. 6th of July is almost here and, for those of us dealing with HMRC, this can only mean one thing: it’s time for another ERS Annual Return Filing. We thought you might need a refresher on this, so we've put together a little ERS Annual Return guide (it's what we do best, after all) on how to file an EMI Annual Return to HMRC the old-school way, or digitally through Capdesk.  

Every time your company issues a new grant as part of your EMI scheme, you need to notify HMRC through an EMI notification. If you’ve used Capdesk before, you probably know by now that the platform can generate and automatically fill out an EMI notification for you. If not, take a brief look at our blogpost on that and come right back!

Whether you’ve had an EMI scheme for a while, or just started setting one up, making EMI notifications for HMRC is always one of those tasks that take up more time than you’d like. This process requires you to either manually enter all of the grant recipient’s and issued shares’ details on the HMRC website, or to upload a spreadsheet of your own where you’ve been keeping track of this information.

“Lawyers will tell you it’s about incentivisation, accountants will tell you it’s about making sure people stay as long as possible, but for me it’s actually about giving back to the team who are giving us precious years of their lives.”

If you’ve set up an employee share plan or are considering doing so, you’ve probably read plenty about the topic, including several contributing articles in Forbes. One of those in particular, argues categorically against offering equity to employees. However, we think its author only tells half the truth about employee equity.

A shareholder register is a common requirement for private companies in numerous countries, including but not limited to the UK, the US, and Denmark. Countries such as Sweden, Australia, and Finland keep an equivalent share register. The register consisting of a list of the company's shareholders, which was historically kept in a loose-leaf or bound book. Even today though, newly formed companies continue to use and manually update a hard-copy, despite the electronic version often being easier to maintain and just as acceptable from a legal perspective.

Nokia is one of the many organisations who believe in the potential of employee share plans. We caught up with Lisa West, Program Manager Long Term Incentives at Nokia, to talk advantages and pitfalls of ESPPs, how she sees the future of employee ownership, and 'Share in Success' - the employee share plan that won Nokia an ESOP Centre award for 'Best All-Employee International Share Plan' in 2017.

Allotting new shares is a common way for a company to increase its share capital, providing funds for expansions or advancements of the business.

Capdesk now supports investments via investment vehicles, such as certain forms of fund, trust or nominee setups.

Once you’ve found your investors, you think all the hard work is done and the money will be in the bank within hours. It ought to be like that, but reality is, however, that the fundraising process is often surprisingly lengthy and costly. The primary reason for this is that there is no standardised process for completing a funding round. Most funding rounds are done manually - with each lawyer or fundraising platform doing it differently. On Capdesk you won’t get any help finding the right investors for your round. But we strive to streamline all the boring paperwork, which really shouldn’t be costly.

There are numerous schemes and plans out there to attract and incentivise employees, and more are certain to see the light of day. Some have tax advantages, such as EMI and CSOP. Others, such as unapproved options, do not, but are also less limited by legislative requirements.

We're proud to announce that our API is now live! This means applications and companies can use Capdesk data on their own systems. First application to use the Capdesk API is Fundstack. Fundstack is a deal workflow tool for PE and VC. Through the API, Fundstack customers will be able to see their portfolio registered on Capdesk while working in the Fundstack app.

When setting up employee incentive schemes, such as a series of share option grants to key employees, vesting conditions are an important component. Vesting schedules basically express how the employee can earn more or more equity as employment continues and, in some cases, performance milestones are met.

As any company issuing employee incentive schemes will recognise, the profit/loss accounting of (and external reporting of) the liabilities such schemes represent in the corporate finances can be complex.

Companies are becoming increasingly dependent on the quality and motivation of their employees. Employee share plans are an excellent tool to ensure motivation.

When I designed the very foundation of Capdesk, I decided to make it ready for blockchain technology.

At Capdesk, we value you, and your choice to rely on Capdesk for equity and portfolio management, stakeholder relations, and much more. We work hard and continuously to earn your trust.

Hope you had an excellent beginning to 2018. At Capdesk we have been off to a flying start. So busy that our January brief had to be postponed to February. Anyway, here it is - your monthly brief of the latest platform updates and releases with a particular focus on warrants and draft mode.

First of all, thank you for being part of Capdesk. 2017 has been a great and eventful year for us. We are now supporting +200 companies with a combined shareholder base of +30,000 in 6 countries. This is happening because of you and all customers who have trusted and supported us from the beginning. Thank you!

Hope you are doing well and coping with the cold November. First snow of the season came to London this morning. Our strategy for keeping warm is staying busy. The latest months we have increased the speed of feature releases dramatically. Now delivering minimum one big release per week. Here are some of my favourites from November:

One of my good friends, a lawyer, has a saying “If you think getting good advice is expensive, you have never paid the price for bad advice“. That especially applies to keeping a clean and updated cap table.

As a millennial and digital native who has entered the world of registrars and equity management in unlisted UK companies, I have often been surprised by the lack of digitisation. Share certificates are on the top of my list.

We are very happy to present an easter egg outside easter in this quick summary of the latest Capdesk features!

Have you noticed the difference? Capdesk just got a massive makeover and that’s just one of many news this September.

This Founder Series post features Pyynikin, award-winning brewery, funding innovator and long-time Capdesk user. Based in the city of Tampere, Pyynikin is on a mission to bring Finnish craft beer to the World. To date, they have attracted more than 2000 investors to become part of the company. I spoke to co-founder Rauno Pere about their journey. Read and be inspired for alternative ways to finance your business.

While you been enjoying summer and holidaying on the beach, we have spent July grinding in the lab to bring you improvements, bug fixes and new features on Capdesk.

 This blog post is the first of a series where we are interviewing founders of Capdesk user companies about their entrepreneurship stories. We will cover successes, failures, strategies of business and most importantly topics around ownership and investor relations. In this blog post we spoke to Capdesk user Primo Toys (Solid Labs Ltd.) about scaling a business through crowdfunding, administrating a startup with 340 shareholders, their current Kickstarter campaign and upcoming Series A.

It has been a busy Spring at the Capdesk office and we are very excited to announce the release of the new version of Capdesk.

We are super excited at the Capdesk office at the moment. Spring has come to London, or at least visited a couple of times, and we are almost ready with a complete new version of Capdesk!

Fintech (financial technology) is booming. In the startup community, everybody is talking about the new cool kid in town stealing business from the establishment. You can store money on a mobile-app-bank, invest or lend directly into promising business all over the world. Why not get your own cryptocurrency and buy drinks at your local hipster coffee place? You can even order pre paid cards for your children tracking their spending and allowance. Banks are going down and everything is changing! At least that is what I thought until a recent experience allowed me to have a sneak peak behind the curtain. Here is the story: Last year I invested in a private company through an investment platform and got lucky. 6 months after my investment, the company was acquired by an established player and I got my first startup exit. Hurray! I was super excited to follow the exit-process and what would happen after the company was sold! My excitement, however, was quickly put on hold in utter surprise of the process that followed.

For most startups, fundraising is a complicated and unpleasant task. The entrepreneur has to meet with investors, strangers, who are asking questions, criticizing and saying no all the way until a match is made with the right investor.

To me, equity crowdfunding is one of the most fascinating types of alternative finance to emerge. For those not yet familiar with the term, equity crowdfunding is when a company raise funds from many (“a crowd of”) small investors using an investment platform.

The Danish startup Capdesk – a social shareholder platform that makes investments in private growth companies accessible to all – has set the goal to conquer London. Christian Gabriel (25) and Casper Arboll (28) are the founders of Capdesk, launched in November 2015. Within the last 2 months, Capdesk has already reached more than 1.200 users and customers all over Scandinavia, including some of the largest law firms.

The concept of Fintech got a breakthrough in Denmark in 2015, reaching both the press and the political environment. However, the scene is not mainstream yet, and it can be difficult for outsiders to maintain an overview of the scene. In this short piece of writing, I have tried to map out the most relevant players within the Danish fintech industry. I am aware that some companies might be missing, but I have had to prioritize. Ping me if I have missed your company.

Crowdinvesting has contributed to the development of new organizational forms that in particular affects entrepreneur – investor relations. In this new reality, it is normal for startups to have an average of 125 investors. A potential burden for small founder teams, but also a potential opportunity that can help to leverage the growth of the company.

I have been deeply involved in the equity crowdfunding movement the last three years. First, as part of FundedByMe and since as founder of the crowd consultancy HeartReacher. During this time, equity crowdfunding has grown and matured from trend into an established form of investing.

Crowdfunding is a new source of entrepreneurial finance allowing a wider audience to invest in startups for equity in the venture. While investment crowdfunding as a vehicle for financing early stage ventures is gaining momentum on a global basis it remains in its infancy. Our research on crowdfunding has been augmented by information gleaned from interviews of twenty different crowd investors from three different platforms including; Seedmatch, FundedByMe and Seedrs.