Discussion

• @casey.langwith Casey on threads

  🚩ICYMI (I did): major drama over the last few days between founders & Carta, a cap table solution, happening on X. tl;dr from a friend: 1.  Carta reached out WITHOUT consent to founders' angel investors and funds' LPs asking if the investors want to sell shares to Carta's buyers …

• @henrysward Henry Ward on x

  Karri, you are free to share our conversation.  What I remember is that you appreciated we made a mistake that affected you and two other companies.  Thank you for understanding.  🙏 We fucked up and I'm sorry we fucked up.  I hope you will forgive us.

• @karrisaarinen Karri Saarinen on x

  Getting back to this now. Was making dinner (American beef stew by Kenji btw) Henry if you insist I'm happy to share details or my version of the call. This is why I hate doing these calls because everything becomes I said/you said. First of all, I posted this publicly because...

• @karrisaarinen Karri Saarinen on x

  This might be the end of @cartainc as the trusted platform for startups. As a founder it feels kind shitty that Carta, who I trust to manage our cap table, is now doing cold outreach to our angel investors about selling Linear shares to their buyers. [image]

• @henrysward Henry Ward on x

  @karrisaarinen @cartainc Hi Karri and everyone, I'm appalled that this happened. We are still investigating but it appears that Friday morning an employee violated our internal procedures and went out of bounds reaching out to customers they shouldn't have. Henry

• @carnage4life Dare Obasanjo on x

  @buccocapital I assume their business must be in rough shape so they have to keep using these shady tactics which is why instead of just giving a straightforward response about not doing it again, he went on a rant about people trying to destroy Carta. Definitely not a good look.

• @alex @alex on x

  Carta makes biz software for cap tables how tf is it always in trouble for some stupid shit

• @danprimack Dan Primack on x

  Carta CEO @henrysward just put out a statement. Still leaves many things unsaid/unclear. Have tried all day to engage w/ him or the company, but to no avail. Will dig into for https://getprorata.axios.com/ tmrow... https://henrysward.medium.com/ ...

• @karrisaarinen Karri Saarinen on x

  - Carta knows who have shares and how much. - At what price they bought it and when - What other transactions have happened and when. - Legal docs, compliance docs - Headcount, revenue & other information if you have connected it

• @henrysward Henry Ward on x

  @karrisaarinen @cartainc This impacted Karri's company and two other companies. We have contacted the other two companies and are continuing to investigate. If you have any other information please reach out to me directly at henry.ward@carta.com to let me know while we continue …

• @anothercohen Alex Cohen on x

  This is crazy. Looks like Carta is doing a similar thing on the fund admin side. Emailing LPs (without consent) to be LPs in other funds [image]

• @rishmishra James Mishra on x

  Carta just emailed my wife about other men who could be better husbands than me.

• @karrisaarinen Karri Saarinen on x

  Btw this angel is someone (family member) who we have never mentioned publicly and they have not published their investment in Linear anywhere either They are hardly online. Somehow Carta was able to find their email address and the fact they own Linear shares.

• @ashleymayer Ashley Mayer on x

  The funny thing about crisis comms is that the path forward is usually pretty simple, but emotions get in the way of clear thinking. Figure out what the end is and get there as soon as possible. For Carta: an apology, an explanation of what happened, new policy + safeguards.

• @buccocapital BuccoCapital Guy on x

  Carta CEO self-immolating in front of all of us is exhibit 1,946 of why PR/Comms is criminally underrated in business, if for nothing else than to keep CEOs from doing ridiculous, self-destructive things when they are emotional

• @lulumeservey Lulu Cheng Meservey on x

  Next steps for Carta: 1) Immediately pivot to the future. Focus on future changes and commitments. There's no win scenario in focusing on the past, and those facts are not in your favor. Briefly and truthfully explain what happened and move on to why it won't happen again 2) If..…

• @mitchellh Mitchell Hashimoto on x

  Don't use Carta. Just don't. I don't recall the details of my experience many years ago and no longer have access to my corp email to dig it up anyways, so I'm just going to say trust me, you do not want to be using Carta. (Reminded due to the recent Carta drama)

• @sm Sara Mauskopf on x

  So has Carta emailed all its customers yet to explain why, as cap table management software, they will solicit the members of your cap table to sell their shares? Or are they just gonna stay silent this time?

• @rishmishra James Mishra on x

  The Carta CEO has to be the worst enterprise CEO in the business. There is a scandal basically every nine months, and his responses lack all sense of media training. The product is a spreadsheet with unit tests. It doesn't need to be that dramatic.

• @anothercohen Alex Cohen on x

  Something is definitely not adding up here with this Carta drama.  If I had to guess I'd say the sales team at Carta has full access to cap tables to do outbound and drive growth for their liquidity offering and was getting away with breaching trust like this for a while.  This p…

• @anothercohen Alex Cohen on x

  Henry, I've been a fan (and user) of Carta for years but this is such a weird response.  > Claiming Karri posted this for exposure > Deflecting from his actual concerns by insinuating he would be responsible if Carta shut down > Publicly admitting you fucked up but still no clari…

• @rexsalisbury Rex Salisbury on x

  ~3 years ago Carta updated their privacy policy to be quite permissive... [image]

• @joshelman Josh Elman on x

  Twitter for Tech (Carta private data), Finance and Higher Ed (presidents and plagiarism) is more gripping gossip than TMZ for entertainment right now 🍿🍿🍿

• @kevinleeme Kevin Lee on x

  If you are still using Carta for cap table management, consider switching to @AngelListStack. We're in the process of switching over now. Rationale below: 1/ AL Equity will always be significantly cheaper (for us, it's 65% cheaper vs. Carta) because they don't increment your...

• @carnage4life Dare Obasanjo on x

  Every startup plays fast and lose with user privacy until they have a come to Jesus moment which marks their transition into becoming a big company. That Carta's sales teams use the private data in your cap table to nag your investors to sell their shares should be that moment.

• @josephjacks_ @josephjacks_ on x

  Hey @henrysward — I'm continuing to call for an immediate (migrate as fast as possible within compliance constraints) exit of your platform until you provide categorically irrefutable proof that Carta has never systematically used cap table data to drum up business for your...

• @carnage4life Dare Obasanjo on x

  As if to prove me wrong, here's a great long tweet. It's worth bookmarking as an example of excellent market size analysis. The TL;DR is Carta needs to become a secondary market for selling startup shares to justify valuation but this is at odds with what startups want from them

• @howardlindzon Coronado ‘Porch’ Lindzon on x

  this would be much worse if @cartainc was doing this...I will be checking into this with my LP's.

• @karrisaarinen Karri Saarinen on x

  Not true. - I have 7 Linear investors now confirming they were contacted with the same solicitation in the past months. I have screenshots. - I have heard from close to 10 companies who had this happen to them. - The issue is not resolved. This blog post or Henry never gave... [i…