Every startup founder faces the same issue — how do you manage your cap table and equity plans in a transparent and lightweight manner? If you’re based in the U.S., chances are you’re using an equity management solution like Carta. But if you’re not based in the U.S., you don’t have a ton of options.
Ledgy wants to become the ownership management tool for the rest of the world. Based in Switzerland, several well-known European startups are already using Ledgy, such as Wefox, Kry, Bitpanda, Gorillas and Trade Republic.
The company recently closed a $10 million Series A funding round led by Sequoia Capital. Other investors in the round include Xavier Niel, Harry Stebbings, Visionaries Club, UiPath's Daniel Dines and Front's Mathilde Collin. Some of Ledgy’s existing investors also invested once again, such as Myke Näf, Paul Sevinç, btov Partners, Creathor Ventures and VI Partners.
A few years ago, when Ledgy co-founder and CEO Yoko Spirig talked with an entrepreneur, the founder showed her how he managed ownership. He opened an Excel spreadsheet and scrolled, scrolled, scrolled… “Each line represented a share. You can imagine how error-prone it is,” she told me.
While the implementation was odd, most companies in Europe are still using Excel spreadsheets to manage ownership. And Ledgy wants to convince those companies that switching to a software solution that has been specifically designed to solve this issue could be beneficial.
“The key has really been to focus on the software infrastructure. What we do is that we have implemented automation workflows that are adaptable depending on countries,” Spirig said. “We’re not focusing on one regulation and we’re really offering the infrastructure layer,” she added.
That’s why Ledgy already supports 32 countries. It has tweaked its product even more specifically for Germany, Austria and Switzerland. There will be more country-specific releases in the near future for startups based in the U.K. and France. 1,500 companies are using Ledgy right now.
When you switch to Ledgy, there are three main advantages. First, like other software-as-a-service products, Ledgy acts as a single source of truth for all stakeholders — the HR team, the finance team, investors, lawyers and employees.
The second selling point is that you can automate some of the most tedious tasks. For instance, Ledgy can automatically generate documents based on templates and different variables. Signed documents are stored on Ledgy. You can export data every quarter or every year for compliance reasons.
Third, it fosters transparency across the company. Employees can check the value of their options. They can see how much their options could be worth if the leadership team is in the process of raising a new round of funding.
With today’s funding round, Ledgy plans to expand into new markets. The company also plans to roll out support for public companies so that some of its existing customers can go public and keep using Ledgy.