When your startup heads into a merger or acquisition, it’s a thrilling time, but it’s also fraught with complexities, especially around equity. How do you protect your team’s hard-earned shares, ensure fair payouts, and avoid common pitfalls?

Equity splits during M&As are delicate and can dramatically impact your financial outcome. First, there’s the issue of stock options: unvested shares and employee stock options often get tricky, especially if the acquiring company has different policies. Then, there’s ensuring transparency—messy cap tables or unclear vesting terms can stall or even sink a deal. Getting ahead of these problems by cleaning up your cap table early is key. This means clearly understanding vesting schedules, handling early exits, and renegotiating terms as needed.

For example, let’s say your startup is being acquired, and you have employees with unvested options. Do those options accelerate upon acquisition? Will they convert into shares of the acquiring company, or will they lose their value? Having these answers and a clean, organized cap table will put you in a strong position during negotiations.

WE.VESTR simplifies this entire process. Our platform tracks vesting schedules and automates stock option grants, so when an M&A is on the horizon, you can export a clean, comprehensive cap table in minutes. No scrambling for data when it matters most.