Knowledge Base: Importing your captable or funding round investors

If you have an existing large captable or you've got lots of investors to invite to the platform as part of a funding round, then we can automate this process to avoid doing it manually line by line.

Our import works in two way - either via the standard FounderCatalyst import or from a SeedLegal import CSV (as exported from the SeedLegal platform). In any event:

• You should not change the structure of the import sheet (ie adding or removing columns) or the import will fail.
• All imported people will be invited to the FounderCatalyst platform via email when we import this data into the captable, so you may want to give them a heads up before
• You should carefully check that each row of the file has been correctly imported and that the existing shareholders and / or the new investors (in Step 2 of the funding round) look as you had intended.

Import a FounderCatalyst standard format

For the purpose of this guide we assume you've create a FounderCatalyst account, added co-founders, setup at least one shareholder on your captable and have reached Step 1 in a funding round.

Whether you want to import existing shareholders or details of new investors, you should follow this process:

• Head to the CapTable page and click the Download CSV button.
• Open this CSV file in Excel (or Google Sheets or whatever).
• You now need to remove the existing rows (other than the header row) and enter details of each captable entry you wish to import. If you want us to import both the existing captable AND new investors, then create two files - one for each and mark both clearly in the filename. The fields for each row need to be entered as follows:
  • Company number - this should be shown correctly in the existing rows and can be copied down to all further rows
  • First name- The forename of the person you are adding shares for
  • Middle name - The middle name, if any
  • Last name - The surname
  • Email - the email address for the shareholder
  • Company name - if the investment is being made on behalf of a company, or SPV, then enter it here - otherwise leave blank. If you enter a Company name then the Forename, middle name, surname and email address of the person that will sign documents on behalf of the company
  • Shares change - the number of shares this person will own
  • Scheme - the scheme - either SEIS or EIS or blank. NOTE: if you are importing someone who has (or will have) a mixture of SEIS and EIS shares, then create more than one row for this person with the SEIS on one row, and EIS on another.
  • Class - the share class this row relates to. Usually this will be 'Ordinary' as a default, but you can add / amend shares class to reflect your companies shares classes if necessary. The share classes will need to exist at the point we attempt to import the file.
  • Per share price - how much was paid for the share.
  • Discount percentage - this should be set to zero in most cases.
  • Round type - this should be set to 'None'
  • Created at - when the shares were issued - this should be in the format "03/02/2021" - which is ""DD/MM/YYYY". Note, where the person is being imported to invest in a current funding round rather than on an existing captable, this date will be replaced by the actual investment date.
• Once you've prepared the CSV file(s), then create a new support ticket and add the subject as "Import CapTable". Attach the file(s) to the support ticket and make it clear whether this is the import of an existing captable or import of new investors into a funding round (or both).
• We will confirm via a response to the support ticket that the import has been undertaken.

Import a SeedLegals CSV format

If you are moving to FounderCatalyst from SeedLegals (and here's a summary of why you should 😄), then

Whether you want to import existing shareholders or details of new investors, you should follow this process:

• Download the CSV from SeedLegals
• Create a new support ticket and add the subject as "Import CapTable". Attach the file(s) to the support ticket and make it clear whether this is the import of an existing captable.
• If you wish to import corporate shareholders (ie companies or SPVs that own shares in your company), the SeedLegals import format doesn't include details of an authorised signatory. For each such corporate shareholder, please include with the ticket details of the authorised signature (full name and email address associated with that individual).
• We will confirm via a response to the support ticket that the import has been undertaken.