LTSE shutters cap table management business (formerly captable.io)

[wmf]

LTSE Equity appears to be kind of a side project of the main LTSE Exchange which is not shutting down.

[mortehu]

Note, however, that only a few hundred thousand shares trade on LTSE each day, for a market share of approximately 0.00%.

https://www.cboe.com/us/equities/market_share/

[lopatin]

So LTSE is like a private investors club for companies with "long term purpose"? But as the FAQ says the companies have to already be listed on the NYSE or Nasdaq. So if you can access LTSE trading, you'll be able to arbitrage the stocks, which sounds completely antithetical to the idea of LTSE but how do they stop it?

[HighFreqAsuka]

By having nearly no volume to begin with. Many US stocks are listed across many of the ~13 US exchanges, so what you're describing is already the status quo. According to RegNMS regulations, traders cannot trade through protected quotes, and so trading firms already have to be aware of the prices on all US exchanges.

But LSTE has so little volume, that you frankly forget they exist most of the time.

[sebastiennight]

They just sent an email sending customers notice that they're offloading the customer base to Astrella.

As a customer I need to figure out whether I want to opt in, by January 31st at the latest.

Luckily, there is an Astrella demo webinar every week ! (And the next one is... on January 31st in the evening).

I would call this a short deadline.

[Gaessaki]

Welp, there goes another SaaS platform in our corporate ops toolchain. Anyone have a recommendation for a tool to handle the cap table for an early-stage cooperative with several hundred members that won’t cost us an arm and a leg? Excel?

[hn72774]

What is your budget? Curious what folks pay for this type of service and how the billing is structured.

It seems like there's a gap to be filled between the recent Carta issues and now this.

[epeate]

Hi @Gaessaki - feel free to checkout cakeequity.com we are suited for early stage companies and provide the tools required without costing an arm and a leg. It's free to get started and check the platform out.

[mifeng]

In which the guy who wrote The Lean Startup builds the most unlean startup possible.

[xtracto]

So, what happens if I have shares in there from a previous company? Would my account be automatically migrated to the new provider? Do I have to contact the company ? :(

[JumpCrisscross]

> what happens if I have shares in there from a previous company?

You never had shares “there.” You have shares. They recorded that fact.

Contrast this with buying Apple stock through Fidelity. Legally, Fidelity owns the stock [1]. (Well, technically probably not [2].) You properly own your stock “through” Fidelity.

Private cap tables are different. The cap table is what the investors and company say it is. To avoid mistakes and have an independent record for disputes, many companies opt to use a third party for administration. But the shares they track aren’t “there.” The cap table manager can go under with zero implication for the value or propriety of your shares. (Not necessarily true for Fidelity.)

As a practical matter, keep an eye out for an update from your company. As long as they have a proper notice address for you, you shouldn’t be subject to anything explosive.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_name_securities

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cede_and_Company

[arthurcolle]

I wonder if this is related to the Carta scandal that recently happened. Just suspicious timing amongst the "startup elite crowd"

[xwowsersx]

Long-ish

[swyx]

editorialized title. this reads like "the LTSE is shutting down" whereas its basically LTSE getting out of their cap table business confusingly called "LTSE Equity", presumably following the Carta drama of a few weeks ago. core LTSE business is fine.

it's also noteworthy that their chairman/founder Eric Reis is now also cofounder of Answer.ai, so perhaps his personal focus is shifting a bit? idk, probably reading too much into a chairman's activities vs company focus.

[hdmoore]

The sell-off of captable.io/LTSE Equity was announced to customers a couple months ago, predating the Carta drama (but many folks picked LTSE specifically because it wasn't Carta).

[shreezus]

I feel like they could have spun it off separately (especially given what's going on with Carta).

[mrobins]

Title edited for clarity