eShares offers a subscription-based platform that manages cap tables, issues stock electronically, handles corporate governance and compliance, and facilitates secondary transactions. The company serves about 6,000 companies, including customers such as Slack, Flexport, and Funding Circle. eShares has expanded via product hires (including an acqui-hire from a Silicon Valley Bank division) to push into investor valuation and portfolio management. Leadership says the company aims to blur the lines between public and private markets and ultimately support companies through the IPO process, potentially replacing underwriting bankers. eShares competes with Nasdaq Private Market for secondaries and with Ipreo and Solium for investor and shareholder-management services. The business runs on a subscription model and seeks to bring liquidity and transparency of public markets to private-company ownership. eShares provides a platform that digitizes paper stock certificates, stock options, warrants and derivatives to produce a real-time cap table and simplify transfers. The service lets employees self-exercise options by linking a bank account, wires proceeds to companies and issues new certificates. The Mountain View–based, 42-person company currently maintains cap tables for roughly 1,500 companies, including Slack and Blue Bottle Coffee, and is adding about 200 companies per month. eShares has also won the trust of roughly 35 law firms, which serve as important adoption channels. The company charges roughly $159/month (about $1,900/year) for ongoing valuations, plus $20 per grant and $20 per exercise, with larger customers often on all-you-can-eat annual plans. Management is focused on expanding beyond Silicon Valley into small- and mid-size businesses and Middle America, and is exploring secondary-market workflows with Industry Ventures. eShares provides an application that allows businesses to offer share certificates in electronic format, digitizing paper stock certificates. The platform is used by over 1,500 top companies, investors, and law firms. The company was founded in 2012 by Henry Ward and Manu Kumar and is based in Mountain View, Calif. Financially, eShares had previously raised $1.8 in seed funding and has now closed a Series A (amount undisclosed). The Series A was led by Union Square Ventures with participation from Spark Capital. The article does not disclose revenue, valuation, or detailed use of proceeds. eShares provides a centralized, SEC-registered transfer-agent platform that converts private companies' paper stock certificates and options into electronic shares and manages cap tables. Companies set up accounts, designate authorised issuers, and eShares handles the workflow of entering existing shares into the system. Shareholders and option-holders receive notices that their paper certificates have been replaced and can view holdings in an eShares portfolio. The company offers issuing and share-management services for free while exploring monetization through nominal fees for issuing options and managing cap-table events like option redemptions. eShares sells primarily through startup law firms and also goes direct to companies and investors; the platform aims to enable easier secondary sales and greater liquidity for private-company shares. The company has raised $1.8 million, is based in Palo Alto, and currently has a five-person team.

Total raised

$61M

Funding rounds

4

Latest round

Series C

Latest activity

Oct 2017