The cap table is the most sensitive document in any private company. It tells the story of who owns what, who believed early, and what everyone's work is worth. Founders trust their cap table provider with this data the way they trust their bank with their money.
And just like a bank, the moment that trust is violated, it's gone forever.
In January 2024, Carta — the dominant cap table platform used by roughly 73% of VC-backed companies — was caught using confidential cap table data to cold-contact investors about selling their shares. Without asking. Without permission. The CEO's response was to blame the whistleblower. Carta shut down its secondary trading business within 72 hours, but the damage was done.
That was the moment we decided to build DealCycl.
Why us
My co-founder and I spent our careers in security, privacy, governance, risk, and compliance — working with the biggest banks on Wall Street. We also built, scaled, and sold an enterprise software company, and went through the full lifecycle as founders ourselves. We raised angel rounds, took VC money, hired an investment banker, and ultimately sold to a PE-backed acquirer. We lived the cap table problem from both sides.
When the Carta scandal broke, we were stunned — not that a data breach happened, but that the entire industry lacked a platform built by people who actually understand data security at an institutional level. So we're building one.
Our commitment is simple and non-negotiable: we will never use your data for anything other than serving you. Your cap table exists to serve your company — not our revenue targets. That's not a marketing line. It's the reason this company exists.
Phase 1: DealCycl Company
We're starting where the pain is sharpest: founders and their teams.
If you're a founder or CFO at a private company, you know the drill. You spend hours every week building waterfall reports, updating financial spreadsheets, and packaging company metrics for your investors — then you email it all in an unencrypted attachment and hope for the best. One of our investors used to call us every Friday afternoon demanding an update. If we'd had an agreed-upon set of metrics flowing automatically, he could have just looked at his dashboard and only called when he had real questions.
DealCycl Company eliminates this drudgery. Cap table management, corporate governance documents, SAFE modeling, scenario planning, investor reporting, waterfall analysis, option grant tracking for employees — all in a platform where the company controls who sees what, and data export is always one click away.
Pricing that respects founders
We believe pricing should be a feature, not a trap. The incumbent charges per-stakeholder fees that scale punitively — a company with 200 stakeholders can pay $16,000 to $40,000 a year. They make it nearly impossible to cancel. They raised prices with no warning.
Here's what DealCycl costs:
Founder Edition — $0 forever. Full cap table management for pre-priced-round companies. Not a trial. Not a teaser. The real product.
Startup Edition — $499/year. Everything in Founder plus electronic issuance, legal templates, and board consent tracking.
Growth Edition — $1,499/year. Add ASC 718 reporting, investor reporting, advanced waterfall modeling, and 409A valuation eligibility.
Scale Edition — $4,999/year. Custom reporting, API access, priority support, and multi-entity management.
No per-stakeholder fees. No surprises. No dark patterns.
The DealCycl Promise
We're publishing this as policy, not just marketing copy:
3-year price lock. Your rate is guaranteed for three years from the day you sign up. One-click cancellation. No mandatory meetings. No phone calls. No conveniently unavailable calendar slots. Full data export, anytime. OCF, CSV, JSON, Excel — your data is yours, and we will always make it easy to leave. 30-day money-back guarantee on every paid plan.
We believe that if you have to trap your customers to keep them, you've already lost.
What comes next
This is Phase 1. Phase 2 launches later this year: DealCycl Fund — the investor side of the platform. When companies and their investors connect on DealCycl, something powerful happens: a single source of truth, with the company in control of the data and the investor getting the visibility they need. No more Friday afternoon phone calls. No more emailing spreadsheets into the void.
The long-term vision is bigger still. We're building the investment lifecycle management platform for private markets — from first check to final exit. The cap table is where it starts. It's not where it ends.
Join us
We're opening early access now. If you're a founder who's been burned by the incumbent, or one who simply wants a cap table platform you can trust — we built this for you.
Sign up at dealcycl.com
Your deals. Your data.
Chris Goodwin is CEO & Co-Founder of DealCycl.