As an early employee at a startup from seed through a healthy Series B last year, I would have serious concerns about the company’s bookkeeping and how-up-to-date the shareholder information is if it were kept in an excel spread sheet on Google drive.

Carta and Pulley, etc. do a solve a valuable concern here for non-executives who are compensated with stock options and want to keep track of stock vesting, exercises, and shares in a transparent way, I’d say.

Once you get past a handful of grants, every Excel cap table I've seen has been an absolute disaster. Use a software product. Both Carta and Pulley offer free versions, until you exceed certain limits (e.g. for Carta Launch, until you exceed $1M raised or 25 stakeholders). If you are over those limits, even more reason to use a software product and not Excel.

Some VCs will withhold investment until you use a product like Carta or Pulley. Cap table in Excel carries major risk.

(And yes, Carta/Pulley are often portcos of those VCs pushing you to use them)

I have a competitive product and excel is a very valid option but if you want automation for anything like this, you really need something like us hit me up on DM if you want a demo