What's the easiest way to migrate an existing cap table to a new platform?

The easiest way to migrate an existing cap table is to follow a structured six-step process: export your current data, clean it, import it into the new platform, reconcile the totals, verify every record, and lock the history.

When you treat it as a controlled data exercise with clear checkpoints, migration is far less risky than most founders expect.

The fear around migration is understandable — your cap table holds the most sensitive ownership data your company has. But most of the risk founders imagine comes from doing it manually. With a structured process and a concierge service handling the data work, the common snags (vesting schedules, SAFEs, pro-rata rights) get caught at reconciliation before anything goes live.

Why migration is easier than founders expect

The fear around cap table migration usually comes from founders who tried to do it manually by copy-pasting between spreadsheets, or from hearing a horror story from someone who did.

Modern cap table platforms have built structured import tooling because migration is a common event. Most companies switch at a meaningful inflection: a Series A, a new CFO, a 409A provider change, or the realization that a spreadsheet is slowing down routine equity tasks.

What makes migration manageable is that your ownership data is structured: share classes, certificate numbers, issue dates, vesting schedules, strike prices, grant agreements. That structure means errors are findable. A reconciliation step will surface them before they cause problems.

What you need to do vs. what the new platform handles

Most platforms offer a migration service, although they can vary in what's included. Understanding the division of labor upfront removes most of the anxiety.

What the platform typically handles: exporting your data in the right format, importing it into the new system, and reconciling the numbers so totals match your existing records.

What you need to do: review the reconciled output before going live and confirm everything looks right. You know your equity history better than anyone. The platform surfaces the data cleanly, your job is to spot anything that doesn't match your records.

Most founders who've been through it say the actual effort on their end was lighter than expected.

The migration process

Step 1: Export

Pull a complete data export from your current platform or spreadsheet. Most platforms offer a CSV or Excel export. If you are on a legacy system, a PDF ledger plus manual extraction will work, but flag this early because it adds time to the clean phase.

What you need in the export: all security types (common, preferred, options, warrants, SAFEs, convertible notes), cap table ledger with certificate numbers, grant agreements, vesting schedules with start dates and cliff terms, and any investor-specific side letters or pro-rata rights.

Step 2: Clean

Before you import anything, clean the export. Duplicate rows, missing certificate numbers, vesting schedules that do not roll up to the correct pool total, and terminated employees who still show active grants are the most common issues. Fix them in the source file, not after import.

For most cap tables, this step is lighter than founders expect. Complex tables with multiple financing rounds may take more time. If you're using a concierge service, they'll flag these issues for you.

Step 3: Import

Upload the cleaned data to your new platform. Most modern platforms offer a structured import template with field-level validation that flags errors during upload. Fill the template column by column rather than reformatting your export to match it, which usually introduces new errors.

Step 4: Reconcile

Run a reconciliation check: total shares authorized, total shares issued, fully diluted share count, and option pool available versus granted. Compare these numbers against your last board-approved cap table and your most recent 409A report. They should match exactly.

If they do not, the discrepancy is almost always in one of three places: a round with a pro-rata exercise that was partially applied, an option grant that was not fully reflected in the authorized pool increase, or a SAFE that has not yet converted but is included in some fully diluted calculations and excluded from others.

Step 5: Verify

Verification is different from reconciliation. Reconciliation checks totals. Verification checks individual records. Pull a sample of ten to fifteen stakeholder records at random and confirm that the vesting start date, cliff, and grant size match the original grant agreement. For SAFEs, confirm the valuation cap, discount rate, and pro-rata right are captured correctly.

Ideally, do not verify alone. You have been looking at this data long enough to have blind spots. A second person, ideally a co-founder, CFO, or outside counsel, will catch errors you have stopped seeing. Have them check the highest-value records independently and compare findings.

Step 6: Lock

Once you confirm the new platform matches your source of record, lock the old platform. Revoke editing access and set the old system to read-only. Running two editable cap tables simultaneously is how split-of-record errors happen: an option exercise gets recorded in the old system, the new system misses it, and the next 409A is based on stale data.

What concierge migration looks like with Cake, and how long it takes

At Cake, what we see most often is founders who come to us before a financing round, ready to be fully operational before the next equity event. Our concierge migration team gets your cap table live in 2–5 business days.

Our team handles the data work from export through import and reconciliation. Cake matches everything against your exported spreadsheet data so the numbers are clean before you review.

Before anything goes live, you confirm the reconciled output looks right: a focused review, not a line-by-line rebuild from scratch. Our team knows where the common snags are and flags them during reconciliation. Note: document uploads (grant agreements, 409A reports) are added to your Documents section separately after migration.

The founders who run into problems are almost always the ones who import and go live without the verify step, and discover six months later that a single SAFE was not captured correctly."