In early November my son was born (first child!) which explains a lot of why we haven’t had more releases recently. This will change now as I get my feet back under me and figure out how to get solid blocks of coding time again.

We’ve got some cool changes that are in testing right now, we’ll get them live as soon as we’re confident in their quality.

New Features

• Breadcrumb bar: You can see where you are in the product and easily navigate around. Particularly useful when looking at scenarios.
• Firm profiles now have a Sponsored By field, so startup accounts sponsored by service providers or investors will have the sponsoring firm’s link and logo. More coming on this!
• We’ve now got an XML importer, we’re using it for our own tests but also hope to build on it to make importing data from existing spreadsheets easier.

Bug Fixes

• Some annoying behavior with tooltips sticking around when they shouldn’t, particularly when changing values in the cap table. Made it more consistent and correct.
• Exit adjustments and liabilities table now updates correctly when items are added/deleted.
• Add liabilities and adjustments to the waterfall running total so the numbers add up correctly again.
• A fix for liquidation calculation to not adjust dividend amounts by the liquidation preference.
• A fix for charts on IE 9.
• More fixes for dates so if you say 1/1/12 it will understand that’s 2012 not the year 12, but it also goes backwards to understand that 98 is 1998 not 2098.
• Fix a performance issue related to dates (specifically ones deep in the past).
• Significant fixes for display issues on tables, particularly firm and scenario histories.
• Fixed an issue with anti-dilution being triggered by warrants based on PPS rather than strike price.

New Features

• Sponsored Accounts! Firms can provide startup company accounts for their client/portfolio companies and have that sponsorship prominently shown in the profile page of that company.
• Public Example Companies! Users can mark worksheet companies as Public Examples, they will be visible to anyone, logged in or not, who can then modify them like our normal example companies without making changes. Have an idea about how a recent M&A went down? Play with the numbers and share it with others!

Bug Fixes

• Tooltips in previous rounds weren’t updated if you made changes to valuation etc. Fixed so they refresh properly.
• Disable create account button while trying to create accounts, prevents multiple database entries and gunk like that.
• Better handling of convertible notes with warrant coverage to update warrant coverage values in real time and not require page refresh.
• Fix handling of straight debt with scenarios, wasn’t being added to liquidation stack.
• Fixed investors not being editable in scenarios. Now if you’re only viewing one scenario, you have edit permissions for the scenario, and the investor has only invested in scenario rounds, you can change/rename them.
• Fixed a case which could cause errors on a user’s home page and cleaned up the database to fix it for those few users who had already run into this situation.

Features

• Convertible Note Caps – If the financing round that sets the price for conversion has a pre-money valuation higher than the cap, the note will convert as if the valuation equaled the cap instead.

Bug Fixes

• No longer require you to be logged on to see example scenarios and firms.
• The Pick Time Window dialog was not very reliable, I did a lot of work to improve it and the ability to view historical versions of the cap table.
• If you’re looking at the cap table of multiple scenarios applied to a company and click the ‘View Waterfall’ link in the exit header it will now properly preserve the full list of scenarios you’re viewing in the waterfall.

Features

• Debt supported in Scenarios, both Convertible and normal
• Warrants supported in Scenarios

Bug Fixes

• Setting bad dates (for rounds, as an example) could get the UI in a bad state, now it reverts to the old date
• Update investment numbers in rounds with anti-dilution protection if later rounds change so the AD provision values can be reflected.
• Fixed a few calculations in the Waterfall view to take into account option vesting properly.
• Properly handle empty email addresses and validate that emails are valid on the server
• Fixed a layout issue when adding rounds and investors to scenarios
• Adding Service Providers to a company account was not working, it now is. Note: To add a service provider they must have an active Firm Account.
• When first adding a Scenario round adding investments would yield strange results (which would be fixed by refreshing the page), this should all work as expected now.
• Lots of work making option pool numbers add up correctly, particularly around vested vs. unvested shares on exit. Waterfall values all add up now in those situations.
• Option Pool tab totals update on the fly now as you change option grants.
• Fix a bug in granting permissions to other users, probably not noticeable by users.
• More consistently enforce that the cap table is read only when you’re viewing multiple scenarios at once, should not be any changeable values.

This release took longer than we expected (by about a week) but we felt it was important to take the time to make sure it was as high quality as possible.

If you have questions, feedback, or need help using the product please let us know on our Get Satisfaction page.

New Features

• Improvements to Option Grants and Warrants:
  • Vesting Schedules
  • Vesting Termination Date (for example, employment termination)
  • Differing Grant Date vs. start of vesting date (doesn’t affect anything, just there for record keeping purposes)
  • Track number of options/warrants exercised.
• Better UI for the default home page to explain what we do and how our accounts work. Still not there, but better. Any advice/ideas on this greatly appreciated.
• Add ‘edit’ link for investors so you can change your display name or change the display name for funds (you must be an administrator for the VC firm that owns the fund).
• More details in investment tooltips, particularly to show how much was received in an exit from Common.

Bug Fixes

• More improvements to make sure accounts work right, particularly after one has expired.
• Make the first round (which shows Common) add up all the entries (like convertible debt that converts to common, etc.) for more clarity. Display change only, all the calculations around this were correct.
• Fix tooltip for investments of convertible stock to correctly show whether or not they converted. Display change only, calculations around this were correct.
• Fix to liquidity cap calculations (we found corner cases that handled them incorrectly).

The big new feature is the ability to value a financing round based on a desired post-equity stake for the total investment in the round.

Let’s say that your syndicate puts in a total of $4,000,000 and you want that to give a 40% stake in the company post-equity. Now you can enter in the investments as usual, edit the Round information, and set the value for Post Equity Stake of this Round, and we will calculate the best PPS/pre-money valuation to get the stake as close as possible.

For normal rounds this means you can set either the price per share, the pre-money valuation, or the post equity stake. For scenario rounds, you also have the choice of valuation increase percentage. Only one of those values can be set for any round.

Thank you to Eric Ferraro, Jeffrey Drake, and Jonathan Rubens at LeClairRyan for the feature request.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a number of refresh issues, the values were all correct but the display wasn’t redrawing.
• Added a scroll bar for exit editing so the adjustments/fees/carve-outs table won’t be hidden.
• Selection in the adjustments/fees/carve-outs table was weird, fixed that and also the display of the buttons for deleting liabilities and adjustments.
• Setting valuation increases for scenario round valuations didn’t always work.
• Weirdness around selecting users where clearing out the old one (either by backspacing or hitting the X button) would get the user selection box into a bad state.
• If you delete a sandbox company we will now correctly update your account values without requiring a refresh.
• Redid the warrant/option grant editing UI to match the rest of the styles and be more reliable, added the ability to set the instrument for them (still defaults to common).
• Fixed zeroing of investments in scenario rounds so it doesn’t give an error.
• In pre-money valuation calculation do not take into account any anti-dilution that’s kicking in.
• Most embarrassingly, the warrant table wasn’t showing the warrants.
• A few fixes around VC firm funds.
• Add option pool shares to round totals, this wasn’t working right for founding/common column.

Thank you! Your comments, requests, ideas, and bug reports are very appreciated.

Loading recent activity on your home page has been dramatically sped up, it was by far our worst problem. There should be some slight speed improvements across the board, too.

We’ve also flatted the account structure to just three basic types of accounts.

• Individual Accounts – The default level is free and there is an additional level for those who need more companies, scenarios, or shares.
• Company Accounts – This is the account type for startups and other private companies that you want to model. Once the company has a full, paid account it can show up in the profiles of its investors, service providers, etc.
• Firm Accounts – This is the account type for VC Firms, Law Firms, Accounting Firms, and so on who either invest or are service providers to the startup companies.  With a paid firm account firms can show up as service providers and investors in their portfolio companies, and they get much higher limits for listed firm members’ accounts.

We’re always looking for feedback, please let us know what you think about our product, what you’d like to see, and where you think our rough spots are!

New Features

• Edit page for normal cap table exits (not just scenario exits)
• Added Liabilities support within exits.  You can assign categories and subcategories, amounts, and the percentage to be assumed by the buyer.  Any liabilities assumed by the selling shareholders is removed from the exit amount.
• Added Adjustments/Fees/Carve Outs, these are removed from the exit in the specified order and each acts as its own liquidation stack item.  You can specify based on dollar amount or percentage of the remaining exit total.
• You can now go directly from a cap table to view the Waterfall analysis of that exit, whether it is scenario based or normal company exit.
• The Home page now has multiple items on the left side to show either recent activity or info about the product.  We intend to add more and better information here, including videos to help you come up to speed on the product faster.
• We’re adding help links throughout the product to explain either the product or the concepts we’re modeling.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a major bug in the calculation of convertible preferred stock conversion.  Previously there were situations where the round would convert and the investors would end up with less of a return than if they hadn’t, due to conversions by following (in the order of liquidation) rounds.  We now make sure that the round does not convert in those cases.
• There is now one way to delete an exit for both scenarios and companies: edit the exit, select delete.  This also makes it consistent with how you delete rounds, debts, grants, etc.
• A couple of infrastructure bug fixes that should make everything more reliable and stable.
• No longer name new rounds “Future Series X” by default unless they’re part of a scenario.
• Fixed a few situations where entering information about exit amounts or founding round dates would not persist.

We’re really excited about the beefed-up support for exit analysis, let us know what you think!

First, here are some changes that were in the release at the end of April:

• Lots of fixes for selecting investors — this was the major work of the release by far.
• Handle permissions to read/write/administrate companies much better.
• Fixes for adding option grants in scenarios, and for that matter allow option grants in scenarios!
• Add tabs when you’re viewing a single scenario so you can see option grants, history, permissions.
• Remove ‘account settings’ link for users who have not created a Spreedly.com account yet.  You can go to your home page and select upgrade to create one, but if you don’t have an account there’s nothing yet to manage.

We were very happy with the improvements for that version but I hadn’t gotten my act together yet on posting, which I will attempt to do every time we release a new version.

Here are some of the changes we just released:

• Scenario option grants were not being shown properly in the cap table, now they are.
• Fix the layout of the waterfall so there’s a little bit more space between the borders and the text. Purely cosmetic.
• Fix Service Providers, they are now shown properly for companies and can be edited.
• Fix the investor selection dialog so hitting OK will always work as expected.
• Invites!  If you enter an email address for someone not in our system we will prompt you to invite that person to VCHub, they will then be sent email.  Please let us know if you have feedback, this is early and bare bones.
• In your settings page there is now UI for managing multiple email accounts associated with your VCHub account.
• Fixed a bug that could cause founding round setting changes not to persist.
• Upgrade to the new GWT 2.3 release.
• We will only match users by email on email addresses that they have verified.
• Fixed an issue or two with email verification emails not being sent and the verification page not showing up properly.
• Fixed the profile page for VC Funds to show the link to the VC Firm.

I think that’s the highlights. I’m being thorough so if you’ve run into a problem you can have a good idea on whether the new release resolves it or not.  If not, please let us know about the issue on our Get Satisfaction page!