Carta expands into private markets

Carta’s resilience came from turning a one product startup tool into a broader private markets back office. Its cap table software still supplied the majority of revenue in 2023, about $250M of $373M ARR, but fund administration had already reached about $100M and private equity software about $20M, giving Carta more ways to grow even as venture deal activity cooled. That expansion works because the same ownership data that starts on a startup’s cap table can also power investor reporting, fund accounting, and workflows for larger private companies.1 3 4

• Fund administration is the clearest second act. Carta uses its position as the system of record for startup ownership to pull investors into its software, then sells those same firms tools to run funds, track portfolio positions, produce LP statements, and handle accounting and tax work.1 3 4
• The move into private equity was not a random adjacency. The product roadmap had long aimed beyond venture backed startups toward larger private companies and GP workflows, and the fund admin market was attractive because much of it still ran on incumbents like eFront, Investran, and Ipreo plus manual processes.3 4
• This also changed Carta’s competitive set. On cap tables it replaced spreadsheets and older equity tools. In fund admin and private markets operations it increasingly ran into Juniper Square and AngelList, both of which sell software for fund managers, investor reporting, and administration rather than startup equity alone.4 5 6

The next phase is deeper expansion from record keeping into the full operating system for private ownership. If Carta keeps converting cap table relationships into fund, investor, and private equity workflows, growth becomes tied less to new startup formation alone and more to the much larger base of assets already sitting inside private markets software.1 3 4