Carta After the Trust Year: Is It Safe Again?
Carta spent 2024 in damage-control mode after the customer-data scandal. Eighteen months later, the company has rebuilt management, replaced policies, and visibly worked to restore trust. We tested whether the rebuild has worked and whether the product remains the right answer for cap-table management.
In this review
| Criterion | Score |
|---|---|
| Editorial Score | 3.4 |
| Value for Money | 3.5 |
| Implementation Effort | 3.8 |
| Vendor Trajectory | 3.6 |
| Overall | 3.57 / 5.00 |
↑ What works
- +The cap-table product itself remains category-leading
- +Post-scandal governance and data-handling policies have improved meaningfully
- +The competitive alternatives still have real product gaps at scale
↓ Where it disappoints
- −Trust is rebuilt slowly and incompletely after that kind of breach
- −Pricing has hardened and renewal posture has tightened in parallel
- −Migration cost off Carta remains the largest single barrier to switching
Carta spent most of 2024 in damage-control mode after the company's customer-data handling came under scrutiny. The CEO transition, the public commitments about data segregation, the policy changes around how Carta-as-a-data-aggregator and Carta-as-a-platform interact — all of these were the right moves. Eighteen months on, the company has visibly worked to rebuild trust, and the question for the cap-table-management market is whether the rebuild has worked.
We tested Carta against Pulley and AngelList Equity at three companies during Q4 2025: a Series B SaaS company that stayed on Carta through the scandal, a Series A company that migrated from Carta to Pulley in late 2024, and a Series C company evaluating whether to migrate.
Where Carta still wins
Product depth. The Carta cap-table product remains category-leading. The 409A valuation workflow, the integration depth with the major audit firms, the secondary-transaction support, and the broad investor-side network are all features that no competitor matches at the same level of polish. For companies past the Series B inflection — when complex fundraising rounds, secondary tenders, and multi-class share structures become common — Carta's product depth is hard to argue against on the merits.
The compliance and audit-readiness story is the second durable strength. The Big Four audit firms have established workflows around Carta. Migrating to a competitor adds friction to the audit process, particularly for companies past the Series C inflection where audit complexity becomes meaningful.
The product is still the best in the category. The trust thing is a slow burn. Both can be true.
Where the trust gap remains
The data-segregation question has been addressed in policy and is, in our reading, addressed in practice. The visible signals — leadership change, policy publication, board-level commitments — are real. The structural concern that an integrated cap-table-and-secondary-marketplace creates conflict of interest has not gone away. Customers we have spoken with consistently express residual discomfort, and the discomfort matters at renewal time.
Pricing has hardened in parallel. Carta's renewal pricing has tightened over the last 12 months and the willingness to negotiate has decreased. This is, in our view, the wrong posture for a company rebuilding trust. A more flexible renewal posture would do more to restore customer confidence than the policy commitments have.
On the alternatives
Pulley has matured into a credible answer for early-stage companies. The cap-table management is solid through Series A, and increasingly through Series B. Past Series B, the product gaps — particularly around 409A workflow, secondary transaction support, and the broader investor network — become harder to ignore. For companies who are clear-eyed about staying on Pulley through Series B but not beyond, the migration is defensible.
AngelList Equity is the alternative most aimed at the venture-backed-startup ecosystem. The integration with AngelList's broader fund and SPV infrastructure is the structural advantage. The product is competent through the Series A range. Past Series B, the same gaps as Pulley appear.
On migration
Migrating off Carta is real engineering work. The cap-table data is portable in principle but the migration usually requires legal review, board approval, and a 60–120 day handoff window. The cost is meaningful enough that incumbent decisions are mostly decisive — which is, in 2026, the largest factor keeping Carta's customer base intact despite the trust gap.
For companies whose Carta footprint is small (early-stage, simple cap-table, no complex secondary activity), the migration is feasible and the trust math favors leaving. For companies whose Carta footprint is deep, the migration is rarely worth the disruption.
The verdict
Carta's product is still the best in the cap-table-management category. The trust deficit is real and not fully closed. New evaluations should run a serious side-by-side with Pulley or AngelList Equity and price the trust premium honestly. Existing Carta customers should renegotiate at renewal — the vendor's pricing posture has not yet adjusted to its trust posture, and customers who push back will find more flexibility than the AE will initially admit.
- Hugo P.
We're still on Carta and still uncomfortable about it. The product is good. The trust thing is a slow burn.
- Daniela R.
Migrated to Pulley last year. Product gaps are real but acceptable for our stage.
- Priya R. (author)
@Daniela — Pulley is a credible alternative at the early stage. Past Series B, the gaps become harder to ignore.
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