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Pulley is a great cap table tool — for startups managing employee equity. If you're a GP managing a fund with LPs, capital calls, and a portfolio, you're looking at the wrong product category entirely.
Credit where it's due. Pulley is one of the best products in its category.
Pulley has genuinely the cleanest, most modern interface in cap table management. If you've ever used Carta's clunky UI, Pulley feels like a breath of fresh air. Fast, intuitive, thoughtfully designed.
Starting at $50/mo with a generous free tier for early-stage companies, Pulley undercuts Carta's $600+/mo significantly. For a pre-seed startup managing an option pool, the value is hard to beat.
Pulley bundles 409A valuations into their plans — something Carta charges extra for. If you need to set the strike price for employee options, this alone can save you $2,000-5,000/year.
Option grants, vesting schedules, exercise windows, employee portals — Pulley handles the full lifecycle of startup equity with a level of polish that even Carta can't match.
Pulley is the right tool for the right user. Here's who that is.
Pre-seed to Series A startups managing equity for 2-50 employees with simple cap tables
Founders issuing stock options who need 409A valuations, vesting schedules, and an employee equity portal
Startups migrating from Carta who want the same features at a fraction of the price with better UX
Companies with straightforward cap tables common stock, preferred rounds, option pools — no complex fund structures
YC-backed startups Pulley's network in the YC ecosystem means tight integrations and community support
Notice what's missing? Fund managers. GPs. LPs. Capital calls. Distributions. Carry. That's because Pulley is a startup equity tool, not a fund operations platform. If you Googled “cap table tool” and landed here, the distinction matters — a lot.
They share a name. That's about it. Here's how they actually differ.
| Dimension | Startup cap table | Fund cap table |
|---|---|---|
| Who owns equity | Founders, employees, investors | LPs (limited partners) and GP |
| Key instruments | Common stock, preferred stock, SAFEs, options | LP commitments, capital calls, distributions |
| Valuation method | 409A, last-round pricing | NAV, TVPI, DPI, IRR |
| Dilution events | New funding rounds, option grants | New LP commitments, co-invest vehicles |
| Payouts | Exits (M&A, IPO) | Distributions (return of capital + gains) |
| Regulatory focus | SEC, state securities, 409A compliance | Form D, ADV, LP reporting, AML/KYC |
| Tax implications | 83(b) elections, AMT, capital gains | K-1 distribution, carried interest, UBTI |
Pulley handles the left column. Archstone handles the right.
Different products for different problems. Both have checkmarks where they should.
| Feature | Archstone | Pulley |
|---|---|---|
| Fund-level cap table (LP ownership, waterfall) | — | |
| LP management & communications | — | |
| Capital call automation | — | |
| Distribution & carry tracking | — | |
| Data room with analytics | — | |
| Deal flow pipeline / CRM | — | |
| Portfolio company tracking | — | |
| Compliance module | — | |
| AI-powered fund operations | — | |
| Quarterly LP reporting | — | |
| Startup equity / option pool management | — | |
| 409A valuations included | — | |
| Employee equity plans | — | |
| Carta import tool | — | |
| Free tier for early-stage startups | — | |
| Starting price | $297/mo | $50/mo |
| Built for | Fund managers | Startups |
You don't need employee stock option management. You need this.
Track every LP from prospect to funded. Manage commitments, capital calls, distributions, and K-1 delivery from one place. Pulley has no concept of LPs.
Calculate pro rata amounts, generate call notices, track wire receipts, and process distributions with waterfall logic. These workflows don't exist in a startup equity tool.
Your cap table isn't about stock options — it's about LP ownership percentages, co-invest allocations, carry waterfalls, and management fee offsets. Fundamentally different math.
Track ARR, burn rate, runway, and valuations across every company in your portfolio. Aggregate fund-level TVPI, DPI, and IRR. Pulley tracks a single company's equity.
Share LPAs, PPMs, quarterly reports, and deal memos with granular permissions and view tracking. Pulley has no document sharing infrastructure for fund operations.
Tell Archie 'send a capital call to all committed LPs' and it calculates amounts, drafts notices, and queues for review. Fund workflows that a cap table tool can't touch.
Here's the pattern we see. You started a fund, Googled “cap table software,” and landed on Pulley because it's affordable and well-reviewed. Then you realized.
Reasonable instinct. You need a cap table, Pulley does cap tables. But you quickly discover it's built around startup equity — stock classes, option pools, vesting schedules. None of that maps to LP commitments and fund ownership.
DocSend for your data room ($45/mo). Visible or a spreadsheet for LP reporting. Streak or Affinity for deal pipeline ($100+/mo). A Google Sheet for portfolio tracking. Another spreadsheet for capital calls. Suddenly you're managing 5-6 disconnected tools.
The core of fund operations isn't equity management — it's the GP-LP relationship. Capital flows, reporting, compliance, portfolio monitoring. The cap table is one output of that system, not the foundation.
Archstone replaces the entire stack: data room, LP portal, deal pipeline, portfolio tracker, compliance module, cap table, and AI operations. One platform, one login, one source of truth for your fund.
Pulley is designed for startups managing their own equity — employee stock options, option pools, and 409A valuations. It has no features for fund-level operations like LP management, capital calls, distributions, or carry tracking. If you're a GP managing a fund, you need a fund operations platform, not a startup equity tool.
They solve different problems. Pulley is excellent at what it does: affordable, modern cap table management for startups. Archstone is a fund operations platform for VCs. If you're a startup founder managing employee equity, use Pulley. If you're a GP managing a fund with LPs, use Archstone.
A startup cap table tracks equity ownership among founders, employees, and investors — common stock, preferred stock, option pools, SAFEs, and convertible notes. A fund cap table tracks LP ownership, commitment amounts, capital call schedules, distribution waterfalls, management fees, and carried interest. Different entities, different math, different regulatory requirements.
Yes, and some GPs do. You might use Pulley (or Carta) for your portfolio companies' individual cap tables, while using Archstone for fund-level operations — LP management, capital calls, portfolio tracking, and reporting. They're complementary, not competitive, because they operate at different levels.
Pulley starts at $50/mo for startup cap table management — a single-function tool. Archstone starts at $297/mo and replaces your entire fund operations stack: data room ($99/mo), LP portal ($150/mo), deal pipeline CRM ($100/mo), portfolio tracker, compliance tools, and AI operations. You're comparing a screwdriver to a workshop.
No. 409A valuations are a startup need — they determine the fair market value of a company's common stock for tax purposes when issuing employee options. As a GP, your valuation needs are fund-level: marking portfolio companies to market, calculating NAV, and reporting TVPI/DPI/IRR to your LPs. Archstone handles the fund math.
Use both. Pulley for your startup's employee equity and 409A. Archstone for your fund's LP management, capital calls, and portfolio operations. Most GPs separate these entirely — your fund's operations are a different entity with different compliance requirements.
Archstone tracks your fund's cap table — LP ownership percentages, commitment amounts, capital called vs. uncalled, distribution waterfalls, carry calculations, and co-invest allocations. It's the fund-level equivalent of what Pulley does at the startup level, but built around the GP-LP relationship and fund accounting standards.
14-day free trial. No credit card required. If you're managing LPs and a portfolio, this is the platform that was built for your actual workflow.
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