✨Announcement✨. Today, we are excited to share EquityList’s seed round of $2.2M from @AngelListIndia, @unpopular_vc, @joinrepublic, @HustleFundVC, @Riverwalk_VC, Mana Ventures, and prominent angel investors!.

Startups often default to a 4-year vesting plan with a 1-year cliff. Usually because it’s the norm, not because it aligns with their talent strategy. But should you really follow that pattern?.

3/ 💼 Convertible notes, on the other hand, offer more structure and protection for investors, with features like interest rates and maturity dates. They are commonly used in bridge rounds or by institutional investors who prefer formal terms and clearer timelines.

2/ 🔍 SAFEs are fast, simple, and founder-friendly. Since they don’t accrue interest or come with repayment obligations, they’re easier to manage and model on the cap table. That’s why they’re a popular choice for pre-seed rounds with angels or accelerators.

1/ SAFE or Convertible Note?. If you're raising your next round, you've probably asked this. Or been asked. The truth is: neither is always better. Each works better in different situations.

2/ Without this, if your investor or auditor asked for a point-in-time snapshot of your cap table, you would you be left chasing old files or recreating history in Excel. 📩

1/ Need to view your cap table as it looked during your Series A or when a SAFE converted?. 📆 With EquityList’s “Cap Table As Of” filter, you can view ownership, FMV, and dilution as of any past funding round or date within seconds.

4/This is one of the first workflows we streamlined at EquityList. 🚀 With Scenario Modeling, you can simulate funding rounds, pool expansions, and convertible conversions within minutes. Want a walkthrough?. 📩

3/And then come the follow-ups:. ➡️ “Can you add this too?”. ➡️ “What if we raise $7M instead?”. ➡️ “How much would that dilute the founders?”.

2/If you’re doing this in spreadsheets, it’s never really quick. You’re updating cap tables, rechecking formulas, and digging through old files just to answer basic questions.

1/Founders and finance teams spend a lot of time answering 'what ifs'. - What if we raise $5M at a $25M pre-money valuation?. - What if we expand the ESOP pool?. - What if we convert those SAFEs now vs later?

5/ That said, phantom stock isn’t a replacement for everything. If your goal is to build long-term ownership and accountability across your team, nothing beats actual equity.

4/ Here’s when phantom stock works well:.✅ You want to avoid equity dilution.✅ You prefer cash payouts over ownership transfer.✅ You’re rewarding non-employees.✅ You need plan design flexibility without compliance overhead.

3/ It’s an especially useful tool when you want to incentivize:. ✅ Advisors.✅ Consultants.✅ Contractors. People who usually aren’t covered in traditional ESOP plans.

2/ Phantom stock plans give people a stake in your company’s growth without actual equity. Recipients are granted units that mirror your share value. Once these units vest and/or a trigger event occurs (like an IPO or acquisition), they receive a cash payout.

1/💡If you thought giving equity through ESOPs/stock options was the only way to reward people with the upside of your company’s growth, think again.

5/ 📖 Read the full story:

4/ About Scaler:. Scaler is a tech education company with 1800+ employees, working to bridge the gap between traditional degrees and industry readiness. They are backed by some of the biggest investors like Tiger Global, Rocket Internet, Lightrock, PeakXV and more.

3/ What changed with EquityList:. ✅ Completed the entire migration in one week. ✅ Access to a support team that responds quickly, listens to feedback, and makes adjustments. ✅ Reduced compliance report generation time from 4–5 hrs to minutes with flexible date-range reporting

2/ What wasn’t working:. ❌ Overcomplicated interface. The design wasn't intuitive and added friction to simple tasks. ❌ The lack of local customer support resulted in routine queries going unresolved

1/ When @scaler_official's previous equity management platform was acquired, the company was auto-migrated to an enterprise-grade system it didn’t choose. In @akshayraje's words:. "It was a clunky software with a very nuanced and very detailed UI, fairly like a legacy system."