Case Study
CapTable by Coronation
Shareholder & Investment Management
Recently, African start-ups have been attracting local and foreign VC funding. However, multiple fundraising rounds can mess up their capitalisation tables, leaving companies at risk. Hence, it is crucial for founders to understand who owns what at each stage of the business. Capitalization Table software automates equity management by organizing and tracking changes in equity structure, informing financing decisions.
Role
Product Designer / Scrum Master
Timeline
12 months
Platform
Web Application
Team
Product manager, UX/UI designer, software developers, QA tester, business analysts
01 — OVERVIEW
Project Overview
A brief intro to the origin of this journey
CapTable by Coronation is a web-based software that allows startups to manage/track equity growth of their business by availing them with equity information of their company; total volume of shares, the value of their shares, and the equity ownership of all shareholders, for more informed capital raising/financing decisions. The software also monitors changes in the shareholding structure with respect to investments and changes in valuation.
Client: Coronation Registrars
Project Duration: 12 months
Team: Product manager, UX/UI designer, software developers, QA tester, business analysts
Objectives: Design a Capitalisation Table solution to help startups track and manage their equity better,
My role: Product & Market research, User flow, Visual design, Hi-fi prototype, User testing, Design hand-off, Manage daily scrums
The Minimum Viable Product MVP project lasted for about a year before it was launched and within that year till now I have had the opportunity of working with a fantastic Team of Software Developers, QA Engineers and a Product Manager. I was the sole Product designer for the project and I also worked in the capacity of a Scrum Master, Managing the Teams daily stand-ups and tasks to ensure project delivery, I also worked with the Product Manager and Engineering Manager to break tasks on the jira board and come up with acceptance criteria’s.
02 — PROBLEM STATEMENT
The Problem
The majority of equity throughout Africa is still stored, tracked, and updated using paper certificates, manual processes, and fragmented databases. This could lead to discrepancy and many other problems such as:
- Manual tracking can lead to errors and inconsistencies, resulting in inaccurate data on ownership and valuations.
- Managing equity ownership manually can be time-consuming and take away from critical business operations.
- Lack of a real-time cap table solution can lead to a lack of transparency among stakeholders.
- Making informed decisions about funding rounds, equity grants, or potential exits becomes challenging without a cap table solution.
- Keeping accurate records is essential for regulatory compliance, and a cap table solution can help.
- Managing equity ownership becomes more challenging as startups grow, and a scalable cap table solution is necessary for growth.
"Design a Capitalisation Table solution to help startups track and manage their equity better."
03 — GOALS & SUCCESS METRICS
Design Goals
- Project Goals: CapTable by Coronation serves as a critical tool for managing equity-related matters, fostering transparency, and enabling effective decision-making. By achieving these goals, CapTable by Coronation contributes to the smooth operation and growth of a start-up while maintaining trust and alignment among stakeholders:
- Ownership Clarity: CapTable by Coronation aims to clearly show ownership percentages of founders, investors, employees, and stakeholders to avoid any confusion or disputes over ownership. One of our goals was to create a platform that would allow Founder's and Startups get a clearer picture of ownerships within their Company.
- Equity Tracking: CapTable by Coronation aims at recording all equity-related activities, ensuring accurate and up-to-date ownership data.Lack of a real-time cap table solution can lead to a lack of transparency among stakeholders.
- Scalability: Managing equity ownership becomes more challenging as startups grow, and a scalable cap table solution was necessary to aid growth in these startups.
04 — DESIGN
Design
Requirement Gathering Phase
Feels a bit generic, but to start off the project my Team and I had to go through a number of meetings with Internal Stakeholders. This phase helped us map out what we needed to do, basically giving the process more of a defined direction.
Opportunity
As earlier mentioned most Startups in Africa monitored their equity and shareholders through manual processes & spreadsheets and in most cases most Startups weren’t too conversant with Capitalisation table solutions. We took advantage of this opportunity to create a Capitalisation table platform that was easy to use and also served as single source of truth for Founders and Startups regarding their company, adding extra features that would also prove extremely useful to Startups and Founders when making financial decisions, helping them carryout useful valuations and modelling at an affordable price. With adequate research and interviews CapTable by Coronation is primed to take hold of these opportunities.
Market Research
My Team and I conducted thorough research on the capitalisation table market globally, looking at products like Carta, Eqvista, Ledgy etc, analysing trends, market dynamics, and emerging opportunities. This analysis gave us a clearer picture, a scope to bridge the gap on possible opportunities. After our analysis we were provided with valuable insights into the current state of the industry and helped identify areas where our marketplace could provide the most value.
User Research
We also made endeavours to gather as much information from our target users, we attended a number of tech events so we could get feedback, possible pain-points and possible opportunities we could take advantage of to ensure our product was viable and profitable. We were able to speak to a number of Tech Founders and Financial experts to get as much information as possible
Through these interactions, we uncovered valuable insights into the challenges Founders face in creating their annual corporate filings, drafting a financial model, predicting scenarios etc. The most common insight was on the need for creating a financial model in a simple and straightforward way.
Competitive Analysis
Our User research presented a new challenge to myself and my Team:
Myself and my team had a number of brainstorming sessions. We had to first of all understand how a financial model works, we contacted a Financial Modelling Expert to put us through and breakdown the processes involved in creating a financial model.
After we got a basic understanding of how a financial model works, the next stage was for me as a Product Designer, I had to figure out an intuitive approach to capturing and representing the financial modelling data would work, And I had to complete this task within a week so the developers can start working on it for the next sprint which was supposed to start the following week. Within the day I started creating sketches to piece what I had in my head together and I used an excel document prepared by the Financial Modelling Expert as my guideline to better understand the metrics I was especially meant to prioritise and work with.
The Design Phase
After getting our requirements and understanding the problem, I tried to come up with a way to translate the solution to these problems to design, especially a key feature for financial modelling.
The design phase followed an iterative process of usability testing sessions with our primary to validate whether the design solution solved their problems and understanding their various pain points, while walking them through user scenarios and actions.
"Our platform is easy to use overall, and the sign up process is simple and straightforward"
"The interface is intuitive and easy to understand and navigate"
"The Financial Modelling design was done, comments on the experience were really encouraging"
Usability Testing. The solution went through various round of user testing with multiple users at both the prototype testing phase, First of all we went through a User Acceptance test with key Stakeholders of the Product. We also carried out more testing on our Financial Modelling prototype to ensure the solution catered to the needs, We tested with Financial experts at African Fintech Foundry(AFF), a few Founders, an Financial Experts and within the Team to make sure Users could use the feature with ease and minimum assistance. Positive Findings. A number of our already existing features were found useful to some Founders.Keeping accurate records is essential for regulatory compliance, and a cap table solution can help. A number of Founders are eager to use our Financial modelling & Scenario modelling feature.
How do we give founders a clearer picture of ownership?
Solution
CapTable by Coronation aims to clearly show ownership percentages of founders, investors, employees, and stakeholders to avoid any confusion or disputes over ownership.
How do we record and track all equity-related activities?
Solution
CapTable by Coronation aims at recording all equity-related activities, ensuring accurate and up-to-date ownership data.
How do we make financial modelling accessible to non-experts?
Solution
The most common insight was on the need for creating a financial model in a simple and straightforward way, so we worked with a Financial Modelling Expert and translated that process into an intuitive product experience.
How do we scale with growing startups?
Solution
Managing equity ownership becomes more challenging as startups grow, and a scalable cap table solution was necessary to aid growth in these startups.
Concerning Findings
- Most Founders didn’t find a lot of the existing features useful.
- Founders were concerned with admin privileges within the product
- Existing competitors in the market.
The Colours, Icons, and Typography are all consistent and in line Coronation’s Visual identity for their Business to Business Products.
Typography: The font family used was Lato. Lato is a sans serif typeface family started in the summer of 2010 by Warsaw-based designer Lukasz Dziedzic ("Lato" means "Summer" in Polish)
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