Price Ownership
Startup Cap Table Basics
Issued shares, a fully diluted view, options, and convertibles.
Short answer
What should a cap table show before a financing process begins? Capital Bearings treats this as an education and preparation question. The route may involve legal, tax, lender, portal, or agency decisions that require the relevant professional or official process.
Use this guide to identify the trade-off, then compare it with the startup funding options comparison and the source named below. It does not select a route for a particular company.
Start with the constraint, not the label
What should a cap table show before a financing process begins? A useful first pass is to write down the business constraint, the evidence already available, and the obligation that would be hardest to reverse. That keeps a financing label from doing more work than it can support.
The relevant comparison is not a generic ranking. It is the fit between the company’s next milestone, its cash pattern, its ownership tolerance, and the documentation a counterparty or program requires.
Continue the route