4 ms·

Can anybody explain the fundamental issue with the original reach out from the Carta employee? Barring something within the shareholder agreement (between the

by cco 3y ago

Can anybody explain the fundamental issue with the original reach out from the Carta employee? Barring something within the shareholder agreement (between the startup employee and the startup) that bars the employee from selling those shares on Carta's platform, what's the issue?

theogravity 3y ago
I think it messes up the valuation depending on the price the shares were sold at.
j4yav 3y ago
They are hooking up potential buyers with private pricing info to help the buyer get a good deal, which makes the sale more likely and helps ensure Carta gets to take a nice cut.
- x0x0 3y ago
  And it opens the door to unhappy wondering about just who within Carta has this info, and who outside Carta are they sharing it with.
weeblewobble 3y ago
I think a rough analogy would be: You’re a startup who keeps a payroll spreadsheet in Google Sheets and the Google recruiting team accesses that data to recruit your employees and decide how much to offer them. There’s nothing wrong with Google trying to hire your employees, but it’s wrong for them to use your confidential data from another business unit to do so.
- cco 3y ago
  I must be still confused. The startup employee knows what their strike price was and here Carta was offering to hook them up with a buyer for those shares at price $X (which I presume is/was different than the strike price of the employee). Maybe I'm misunderstanding? But that doesn't seem like they're sharing cap table data with anyone. They've found a buyer for the employee's shares at some price. Is it implied that they shared the cap table info with that buyer (i.e. the third party investor)?
  - weeblewobble 3y ago
    The information that person X owns Y shares is private cap table info. Carta breached that privacy by using it for lead generation
    - siegel 3y ago
      I think "privacy" here is the wrong word. Carta owes some obligations to companies that sign up or their services (though they are vague and ambiguous). But I hope people wake up to what they are agreeing to when they sign up as a user for Carta. Carta makes you agree that they owe you NO duty of confidentiality with respect to any information you submit into the service.

by cco 3y ago

theogravity 3y ago

I think it messes up the valuation depending on the price the shares were sold at.

j4yav 3y ago

They are hooking up potential buyers with private pricing info to help the buyer get a good deal, which makes the sale more likely and helps ensure Carta gets to take a nice cut.

x0x0 3y ago
And it opens the door to unhappy wondering about just who within Carta has this info, and who outside Carta are they sharing it with.

weeblewobble 3y ago

I think a rough analogy would be: You’re a startup who keeps a payroll spreadsheet in Google Sheets and the Google recruiting team accesses that data to recruit your employees and decide how much to offer them. There’s nothing wrong with Google trying to hire your employees, but it’s wrong for them to use your confidential data from another business unit to do so.

cco 3y ago
I must be still confused. The startup employee knows what their strike price was and here Carta was offering to hook them up with a buyer for those shares at price $X (which I presume is/was different than the strike price of the employee). Maybe I'm misunderstanding? But that doesn't seem like they're sharing cap table data with anyone. They've found a buyer for the employee's shares at some price. Is it implied that they shared the cap table info with that buyer (i.e. the third party investor)?
- weeblewobble 3y ago
  The information that person X owns Y shares is private cap table info. Carta breached that privacy by using it for lead generation
  - siegel 3y ago
    I think "privacy" here is the wrong word. Carta owes some obligations to companies that sign up or their services (though they are vague and ambiguous). But I hope people wake up to what they are agreeing to when they sign up as a user for Carta. Carta makes you agree that they owe you NO duty of confidentiality with respect to any information you submit into the service.