I quickly realized that trying to manage everything manually or with basic spreadsheets was too risky and stressful, so I switched to using Carta. One thing that helped me save a little on the subscription was checking for offers like Carta Discount before committing. It’s the kind of tool that scales with your company, so even as we added more investors and issued more SAFEs, the platform kept everything organized and easy to understand. I really appreciate the automation for onboarding new equity holders, and the dashboards make it easy to see valuations, equity ownership percentages, and even future projections. The reporting tools also helped when preparing for audits or investor updates, and the support team has been responsive whenever I had a tricky question.