Financing Round for Startups
A financing round is an event when a new valuation can be set, a capital injection can be recorded, and its impact on the cap table can be traced.
To add a financing round and get a reliable overview of your company's transactions and equity, you first need to ensure you have added all the previous transactions (e.g., incorporation, earlier financing rounds). Without the data on earlier transactions, the representation of your company's equity will be misleading and incorrect.
Here is what you need to know about incorporation: a step-by-step guide to adding incorporation.
If you have already added the incorporation but want to edit it: go to Ownership > Transactions > Find the section "Incorporation" and use the Edit button or click on three dots to edit individual sub-sections.
After successfully saving the incorporation transaction, make sure to add all the transactions between the incorporation and the current financing round. To do so, go to Ownership > Transactions > + Add Transaction or edit the existing ones.
STEP 1: Ownership > Transactions
STEP 2: Ownership > Transactions > + Add Transaction
STEP 3: Ownership > Transactions > + Add Transaction > Financing Round
How to Add a Financing Round - Video.
1. If you know the pre-money valuation at which investment will be made, the steps will be the following:
- Add the pre-money valuation (you can keep it auto-filled based on the existing data from previous transactions, or you can specify the new pre-money valuation).
- Add the date at which the financing round takes place.
- Add the name of the financing round (e.g., pre-seed, seed, etc.).
- Choose the type of shares that will be issued or create a new share class under the section “Share class”.
- Specify the price per share of the company at this point in time. You can be keep it auto-filled based on the existing data.
Then, on the spreadsheet:
- Add the names of stakeholders (investors/SPVs/trustees).
- Add their email addresses.
-
Add the names of individual investors in case of SPVs or trustees (you can also refer to our guide to adding SPVs/trustees on Capboard).
- Specify the investment amount. In case the share price and the investment amount are mentioned, the number of shares issued to each stakeholder should be calculated automatically.
- Discounts can be used if a stakeholder receives a discount when purchasing shares. In that case, specify the percentage discount (ranging from 0%-100%).
In the settings section below the spreadsheet, you can round the investment amount automatically and add a share numbers column that will specify the numbered shares each stakeholder receives.
Moreover, on the bottom left of the screen, you can choose to invite stakeholders, so after the financing round is saved, Capboard will automatically send the invitation emails.
At the bottom, you will also see the number of post-money shares (the total amount) and the post-money valuation.
2. If you know the post-money valuation at which the investment will be made:
Use the following formula to compute the pre-money valuation and follow the instructions above.
Pre-money valuation = Post-money Valuation - Investment amount
When you have added all the data on the financing round, compare the post-money valuation you got at the bottom with the one you have.