Here's the investor deck that $800 million startup Carta used to raise $150 million in venture capital

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Here's the investor deck that $800 million startup Carta used to raise $150 million in venture capital

Carta, Henry Ward

Carta

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  • Henry Ward, CEO of the employment management software company Carta, hopes to bring more transparency to the startup landscape, especially around fundraising.
  • On Thursday, Ward shared an updated version of Carta's investor deck with Business Insider - one that helped him raise an $80 million Series D led by Meritech Capital last December.
  • "I always hate it when people are like, 'I'll show this stuff, but the actual important stuff, I want to hide that'" he told us. "So this is for graphic audiences only. You get to see everything."

When Henry Ward, CEO of Carta, was trying to raise an initial seed round for his software startup back in 2013, he had never seen a successful pitch deck before.

He'd attend pitch competitions throughout San Francisco and read as many Medium posts by startup gurus - like Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham - as could find. But the first slide deck that he knew to have successfully raised venture funding was his own.

Ward, who's since raised nearly $150 million for his equity management software company Carta, hopes to bring more transparency to the startup landscape, especially around fundraising.

Back in 2015, he shared his Series A pitch deck for Carta (which was initially known as eShares) with the public.

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On Thursday, Ward shared an updated version of Carta's investor deck with Business Insider - one that helped him raise an $80 million Series D led by Meritech Capital last December, in a round valuing the company at $800 million.

In the deck, Ward told us that he didn't hold back from disclosing potentially sensitive numbers with the public.

One number in particular that's never been shared is Carta's $50 million annual reoccurring revenue (ARR) it nearly reached by the end of 2018, which is more than double of what the company was doing by the end of 2017 ($23.2 million).

"I always hate it when people are like, 'I'll show this stuff, but the actual important stuff, I want to hide that'" Ward told us. "So this is for graphic audiences only. You get to see everything."

Below is the pitch deck that Carta CEO Henry Ward says helped him raise $150 million:

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Here's the investor deck that $800 million startup Carta used to raise $150 million in venture capital
Here's the investor deck that $800 million startup Carta used to raise $150 million in venture capital
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Here's the investor deck that $800 million startup Carta used to raise $150 million in venture capital
Here's the investor deck that $800 million startup Carta used to raise $150 million in venture capital
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Here's the investor deck that $800 million startup Carta used to raise $150 million in venture capital
Here's the investor deck that $800 million startup Carta used to raise $150 million in venture capital
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Here's the investor deck that $800 million startup Carta used to raise $150 million in venture capital
Here's the investor deck that $800 million startup Carta used to raise $150 million in venture capital
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Here's the investor deck that $800 million startup Carta used to raise $150 million in venture capital
Here's the investor deck that $800 million startup Carta used to raise $150 million in venture capital
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Here's the investor deck that $800 million startup Carta used to raise $150 million in venture capital
Here's the investor deck that $800 million startup Carta used to raise $150 million in venture capital
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Here's the investor deck that $800 million startup Carta used to raise $150 million in venture capital
Here's the investor deck that $800 million startup Carta used to raise $150 million in venture capital
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Here's the investor deck that $800 million startup Carta used to raise $150 million in venture capital
Here's the investor deck that $800 million startup Carta used to raise $150 million in venture capital
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Here's the investor deck that $800 million startup Carta used to raise $150 million in venture capital
Here's the investor deck that $800 million startup Carta used to raise $150 million in venture capital
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Here's the investor deck that $800 million startup Carta used to raise $150 million in venture capital
Here's the investor deck that $800 million startup Carta used to raise $150 million in venture capital
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Here's the investor deck that $800 million startup Carta used to raise $150 million in venture capital
Here's the investor deck that $800 million startup Carta used to raise $150 million in venture capital
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Here's the investor deck that $800 million startup Carta used to raise $150 million in venture capital