Building a Simple Cap Table Using Excel or Carta

A hands-on walkthrough for anyone who has been handed cap table ownership without a finance background: HR and L&D teams issuing ESOPs, treasury and finance-adjacent staff maintaining ownership records, and startup founders tracking their own equity. Starts with what a cap table actually is and the terms that trip people up (authorized vs issued vs outstanding vs fully diluted), then builds one from scratch in Excel, layering in founder equity, an ESOP pool with vesting, and convertible instruments like CCPS and SAFEs. From there it covers how a priced funding round changes the numbers and how to model dilution across rounds, before closing with when and how to move the whole thing into Carta and keep it audit-ready.