A Chat With Tomas Milar: What Startups Should Look For In A Cap Table Management Platform

Tomas Milar is a fintech founder focused on building the financial infrastructure for private markets. As founder of Eqvista, he’s leading the company’s vision to make private company equity more transparent, explainable and actionable, from issuance and cap table management through valuation, price discovery and shareholder liquidity.

Eqvista serves more than 25,000 companies and powers Eqvista Real-Time Company Valuation, an always-on valuation engine covering approximately $9 trillion in company value. Tomas believes private markets are entering a new phase in which companies need more than static cap tables and one-time valuation reports, and infrastructure that helps them understand what their shares are worth, communicate that value clearly and create structured paths to liquidity.

Tomas has also launched and scaled ventures across the US and Southeast Asia, including Startupr, IncParadise and Cheqly, a digital banking platform for startups. Across his companies, his wider focus is on simplifying traditionally complex financial processes and building infrastructure that supports private companies from formation and banking through equity management, valuation, fundraising and liquidity.

Why has cap table management become more complicated for startups, particularly as they grow?

Most cap tables start simple. Two or three founders, a few investors, maybe an option pool. The complexity comes gradually, which is exactly why founders tend to underestimate it.

You raise another round. You issue SAFEs or convertible notes. Employees join and leave. Options vest or get exercised. New share classes appear. Suddenly, you aren’t managing a list of shareholders anymore. You are managing years of decisions that all affect ownership.

The difficult part isn’t getting the cap table right on the day you close a financing. Everyone is paying attention then. The difficult part is keeping it right during the months and years between those events.

And mistakes compound. Something that looks minor today can become a much bigger problem during the next financing, a 409A valuation, due diligence or an exit. That’s why I think founders should start treating the cap table as financial infrastructure much earlier than they typically do.

What should founders consider before choosing a cap table management platform?

I would start with one question: Would I trust this system during my next financing or due diligence?

Features matter, but accuracy matters more. If the underlying ownership data is wrong, a beautiful dashboard doesn’t help you.

Then I would think two or three stages ahead. A platform that works when you have five shareholders also needs to work after several financing rounds, an employee option pool, different security types and potentially hundreds of stakeholders.

Founders should look at how the platform handles equity grants, vesting, option pools, different share classes, SAFEs and convertibles, dilution modelling, reporting and valuations. They should also look at how easy it is to get their data out and what kind of support exists when something becomes complicated.

I would also look beyond what the provider offers today. Your needs will change as the company grows. You may start with a simple cap table and a 409A valuation, but later need more complex business valuations, financial reporting valuations, transaction support or liquidity solutions.

So I would ask whether the provider is building for those future needs. Is it expanding its capabilities? Is it adapting to changes in the private markets and to what its customers actually need? A platform can have the right feature list today and still be the wrong partner three years from now.

You’re choosing where your equity records may live for many years. Don’t choose only for the company you have today. Look at whether the provider can evolve with the company you’re trying to build.

What does Pulley’s shutdown tell us about the cap table management market?

Pulley was a strong competitor to Eqvista, and I have a lot of respect for Yin and what they built. They came into a market dominated by Carta and proved there was room to challenge the incumbent. Competition like that pushes everyone to build better products.

But I think Pulley’s shutdown also highlights something people outside this industry can underestimate: building good cap table software is only part of the challenge. You also have to build a sustainable business around it.

You’re managing some of the most important records a private company has, often for many years. That requires more than software. It requires expertise, support and the ability to keep evolving as both your customers and the market change.

That’s something we think about a lot at Eqvista. We learn from our clients every day, not just about what they need now, but what they will need next as their companies grow. That also means keeping the human side of the service strong. When something gets complicated, clients need access to people who understand it. For valuations, for example, our clients can work directly with the analysts handling their valuation when they need expert input.

We combine those conversations with where we see the private markets heading and use both to decide what we build next, whether that’s new valuation capabilities, financial modelling, compliance or liquidity solutions.

For me, that’s the bigger lesson. A cap table provider shouldn’t just solve today’s problem. It needs to keep learning, adapting and building for where its customers are going.

Is there a meaningful difference between cap table management and equity management?

Yes. A cap table is fundamentally an ownership record. Equity management is broader.

A cap table can tell you that someone owns 2% of the company. Equity management needs to understand how they got there, what type of security they hold, what is vested, what happens after another financing round and how future grants or transactions change everybody else’s ownership.

That distinction becomes much more important as a company grows.

This is why I don’t think the future of this category is simply putting spreadsheets online. The real opportunity is connecting the cap table with valuations, modelling, compliance and eventually liquidity.

At that point, the cap table is no longer just a record of what happened. It becomes part of the financial infrastructure companies use to make decisions about what happens next. That’s how we’re building Eqvista: not simply as a place to maintain ownership records, but as infrastructure connecting equity, valuation and the broader financial needs of private companies as they grow.

How does valuation fit into equity management?

Valuation gives context to the ownership recorded in the cap table. You can know exactly who owns 10% of a company and still have a very different understanding of what that 10% is worth depending on when and how you measure it.

There’s also a tendency to talk about “the valuation” as though there’s only one number. A 409A valuation, a financing valuation and the value implied by a transaction can all be different because they serve different purposes.

But I also don’t think valuation needs to be as static as it has traditionally been. With Eqvista Real-Time Company Valuation®, we now track private companies representing more than $9 trillion in value and show how valuations evolve as company performance, market data and relevant news events change. That includes developments around the company itself and its competitors, because those events can change the context in which a private company is valued.

I think that’s where this is heading. Instead of looking at valuation only at specific moments, private companies will increasingly be able to see how their value is evolving between those moments and use that information alongside their equity data to make better decisions.

And that’s really the value of connecting all of this. When the cap table, valuation, market data and financial decision-making are part of the same infrastructure, you can start doing things that simply aren’t possible when each piece lives in isolation.