Having spent the last several years in the automotive space building Ford’s cloud connectivity layer for their vehicles, the founding team at Mantle understands the intricate landscape of industries with complex, expansive, and varied data models. We also recognize the challenges of fostering collaboration among suppliers, manufacturers, and developers to align on a unified data model – essential for achieving interoperability.
In these endeavours, hurdles often arise as stakeholders must embrace change for the collective benefit, transcending individual competition. Game theory and the prisoner’s dilemma are always at play in moments like these, so when we started Mantle and entered the equity management space, discovering the Open Cap Table Coalition (OCT) and its esteemed founding members was a defining moment on how we approached our platform.
Streamlining Complexity to Simplicity
Capitalization tables are the simplicity that is found at the end of complexity. Originating from legal agreements and corporate filings, they distill vast data into a concise spreadsheet telling you Who owns What. Seeing the end result is one thing, being able to trust that result and prove to anyone else that the result is correct is a topic that can accrue countless billable hours from legal teams whenever startups undergo financing rounds or acquisitions.
Part of the challenge is that legal documents – with long-form text containing unstructured data – are the source of truth. This is one hurdle that Mantle is keenly aware of, as that data needs to be extracted and structured for consumption and computation. The other half of the challenge is communication – being able to communicate that information to multiple parties involved. This is where OCT and its Open Cap Table Format (OCF) and Open Cap eXport (OCX) come in.
By reliably extracting and standardizing data from documents, the need for numerous spreadsheet interactions across all parties involved fades away. The shift enables parties to refocus on core business objectives and value delivery. This is something that get cap table nerds like us excited because we have bigger goals for how we can help evolve the practice of equity management – beyond hashing out what our cap table spreadsheet exports should look like. By signing onto the Coalition as a governing member, integrating OCF into our platform’s data model, and adopting OCX as our standard cap table format, we commit to paving the way for a more seamless and productive future for startups, investors, and all ecosystem participants.
To learn more about how Mantle is revolutionizing the equity management space, book a demo here.