How to migrate your cap table from Carta to Cake

Every week I help founders migrate their cap tables from Carta to Cake. Most of them spent months sitting on the decision — not because they wanted to stay, but because moving felt scary.

But more and more founders switch to Cake anyway. And every single one of them says the same thing after: they wished they'd done it sooner!

Why founders are leaving Carta

Carta built a great product for a certain kind of company — large, complex, well-staffed enough to manage enterprise software. But most seed-to-Series A founders aren't that company. And they're paying like they are.

The cost doesn't match the value

A healthcare tech company in Colorado, was staring down a $16,000 annual Carta bill before switching to Cake. Jana Gendron, their Supply Chain Controller, put it plainly: "The cost was just not making any sense for us." After moving to Cake, they cut that bill by 40%. A video production company with nearly 200 employees, saved $3,000 a year simply by switching to a platform sized for their actual needs.

📌 Across all switchers, the average saving when you switch from Carta to Cake is 48%.

The complexity is a feature you didn't ask for

Lauren Humphrey, Co-founder and CEO of The Mintable, had a simple equity structure — a US entity, an Australian subsidiary, a small team. Carta kept getting in the way. "Carta has a lot of bells and whistles, but I didn't actually really need any of them," she said.

Employees aren't engaging

Equity is only motivating when people understand it. Dave Christianson, Legal Counsel at Tracksuit, put it plainly: "Unless people actually understand it and know what it means to them, there's actually no point in having it." On Cake, employees get monthly vesting emails, interactive dashboards, and real-time scenario modelling — at Tracksuit's Series B, the entire team logged in to see their updated equity values in real time.

What data migrates

When Cake's team moves your cap table, nothing is left behind and nothing needs to be re-entered manually.

• Cap table history — every transaction, round, and ownership change
• Option grants — ISO, NSO, grant dates, exercise prices, vesting schedules
• RSUs and RSAs — all existing awards and terms
• Digital share certificates — transferred without requiring shareholders to re-sign
• Investor and stakeholder records — contact details, ownership percentages, pro-rata rights
• SAFEs and convertible notes — outstanding instruments and conversion terms
• 409A history — prior valuations and documentation

Sonny Thadani of Robin had one of the larger migrations. "One of my biggest concerns is how do you transition something so important to cost, which is always a founder's concern."

"I was nervous. There's a lot of financial data, there's a lot of individual names, and the transition to your platform was seamless. Was done rather quickly. I think I was told 48 hours, but it seemed like in two hours it was all done and complete. And I saw the complete cap table on the [dashboard] right away."
^{—Sonny Thadani, Founder & CEO of Robin}

Like other switchers, Robin's transition from Carta to Cake was smooth—a critical factor for any founder worried about switching providers. All data were accurately migrated and ready to use in than 2 days.

Pre-migration audit checklist

Before you export anything, spend 30 minutes making sure your Carta data is clean. A tidy export makes the migration faster and avoids back-and-forth.

• Confirm all stakeholder details are current — names, emails, addresses
• Check for any unsigned or pending grants — resolve or cancel before exporting
• Verify vesting schedules are accurate — start dates, cliff dates, accelerations
• Reconcile share counts — total issued + outstanding options should match your authorised share pool
• Download your most recent 409A report — have it ready to share with Cake
• Note any unusual instruments — SAFEs with side letters, MFN provisions, warrants
• List all equity plan documents — stock option plan, form of option agreement, board resolutions
• Flag any international shareholders — different jurisdictions may need additional documentation

You don't need to fix everything before migrating — Cake's team will flag anything that needs attention. But the cleaner your starting data, the faster you'll be live.

Step 1: Export from Carta

Log into Carta and pull your cap table export. You're looking for two files:

1. CSV export — your full cap table with all transactions and stakeholder records
2. Excel export — the formatted cap table summary Cake uses to validate share counts

To export from Carta: go to Cap Table → Export, select Full cap table export (CSV), and also export any option grant ledgers and certificate registers if prompted.

Tom Hakel, Founder and CFO at CXO Strategies, had used Carta for 12 years before switching. His export experience: "It literally was an export to Excel and CSV files." That's it. The scary part doesn't exist.

Step 2: Hand off to Cake's team

Send your export files to Cake's Customer Success team. You can do this via your onboarding call or by uploading directly to your Cake setup portal.

Cake's team does all of it — loading, validating, and cross-checking your cap table against your export until every share, grant, and certificate is accounted for. When discrepancies appear (they sometimes do), Cake flags them for you to review rather than guessing. The result is a cap table you can trust, handed back to you clean.

"All I had to do was physically upload some data to the folks at Cake, and they did all the onboarding for me."
^{—Lauren Humphrey, The Mintable}

"The transition to Cake's platform was seamless!"
^{— Sonny Thadani, Robin}

"It's a massive file, massive data. I was worried. After the transfer, everything was good."
^{—Jana Gedron, Vaporox}

Step 3: Verify in Cake

Before you go live, Cake gives you a review window to confirm everything transferred correctly.

• Total shares outstanding match your most recent board-approved records
• Option pool — granted, exercised, and available counts are correct
• Individual grants — spot-check 3–5 grants against the original agreements
• Stakeholder list — all investors, employees, and advisors are present and correctly attributed
• Vesting schedules — confirm cliff dates and acceleration clauses carried over
• Certificate numbers — if relevant, check that certificate series match

Cake's team stays on hand during this stage. Once you sign off, you're live.‍

What changes for stakeholders

Equity management isn't just an admin task — it changes how every stakeholder experiences their relationship with your company.

CEOs who finally own their own cap table

‍Tom Hakel noticed the shift at CXO Strategies almost immediately: "Our CEO would always ask me the question. Now she logs on to Cake herself and looks at everything. So it's a big change."

Employees who get excited about equity (not confused by it)

‍Equity stops being abstract. Monthly vesting emails arrive automatically. At Tracksuit's Series B announcement, employees logged into Cake in real time to see their updated equity values. Dave Christianson: "There was a lot of excitement... people just really enjoy Cake 'cause it's so simple and intuitive."

Investors who stop waiting on you for updates

‍Self-service access replaces email requests. Lauren Humphrey's investors: "For many of them, they just said, oh, cool. All we've actually got to do is go into our Cake dashboard."

Cross-border teams running on one platform

‍Tracksuit operates across multiple countries. The Mintable runs US and Australian equity plans simultaneously. Both work without friction.