Protect your founder equity from day one
Set up founder vesting in minutes to safeguard ownership, align co-founders, and signal long-term commitment to investors—all seamlessly managed in Cake.
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How Cake simplifies founder vesting
Founder vesting ensures that equity is earned over time, protecting your company from early departures and misaligned incentives. Cake lets you attach vesting schedules to founder share issuances in a few clicks—no spreadsheets, no manual tracking.
You can customize cliffs, cadence, and acceleration events while Cake automates the entire process. For growing startups, documented RSU workflows with e-signing and templates are available on Growth and Pro plans, ensuring your governance scales with your business.
Get started todayTurn founder equity into a lasting commitment
Founder equity tools that set your company up for success
Prevent equity disputes
Automatically recover unvested shares if a founder leaves early.
Investor-ready cap table
Show investors a clean, updated cap table without "dead weight".
Automated vesting
Easily manage cliffs, milestones, and vesting updates.
Flexible for growth
Adjust vesting terms as your team expands and agreements evolve.
Real-time tracking
Monitor how equity is vesting across founders and stakeholders.
Audit-ready reports
Export complete, investor-friendly records with a single click.
Manage your founder shares, from grant to growth
Manage your founder shares, from grant to growth
Issue founder shares
Allocate shares with your agreed vesting conditions.
Customize your vesting conditions
Set a vesting start date, add a cliff, and set milestones. You can create multiple time-based or milestone-based vesting events
Keep documents in one place
Store signed agreements, compliance docs, board approvals, tax filings, and cap table history in a central, secure repository.
Track and manage vesting
Monitor vesting milestones over time and adjust or repurchase shares if a founder leaves before fully vesting.
Your questions, answered
Need help? Visit the Help Center.
Which plans include founder vesting?
Basic share issuance with vesting ticked on is available on Starter plans and above.. For documented RSA plans with full e-signing workflows and agreement templates, you'll need Growth or Pro plans.
Can I customize vesting schedules and acceleration?
Yes, Cake supports fully flexible vesting including custom cliff periods, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly vesting, milestone-based vesting.
What's the standard vesting setup for founders?
Most investors expect a four-year schedule with a one-year cliff—this ensures long-term alignment and protects company equity.
What happens if a founder leaves early?
Unvested shares are typically repurchased or forfeited, keeping your ownership structure fair for active founders and future hires.
Equity doesn't have to be complicated. Join Cake and see for yourself!
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