Pulley is shutting down, and customers now have an unexpected decision to make about where their ownership records go next.
Pulley says it will cease operations and services on December 8, 2026. The company has entered into an exclusive partnership with Carta and is offering qualifying customers an assisted transition to the platform.
Carta may be the right destination for some companies.
But it isn't the only option.
If you're being forced to move anyway, this is a good time to ask a bigger question: What do you actually need from your next ownership platform?
For some companies, the answer will be another straightforward cap table tool. For others - particularly established private companies where ownership has become more complex - the answer may involve considerably more.
Before signing another agreement, here's what Pulley customers should know, preserve, and consider.
What happened to Pulley?
Pulley has announced that it is shutting down after seven years in business.
Its website now tells customers that all operations and services will cease on December 8 and that the company has entered into an exclusive partnership with Carta to provide continuing equity management services. Existing Pulley customers may qualify for a limited-time Carta offer and assisted migration.
For Pulley customers, that creates a compressed timeline for a decision most weren't expecting to make this year.
According to the transition information currently available, there are three dates worth paying attention to:
- November 30, 2026: Carta transition-offer deadline
- December 8, 2026: Pulley operations officially end
- January 31, 2027: Limited access to Pulley data ends
The immediate priority is making sure your company doesn't lose access to information it will need later.
The next priority is deciding where that information should live.
Do Pulley customers have to move to Carta?
No.
Carta is Pulley's selected transition partner, and Pulley is actively directing customers there. But Pulley customers remain free to choose another cap table provider.
That distinction matters.
An assisted migration and limited-time offer can make the default route attractive, particularly when there's a deadline hanging over the decision. But the easiest migration today isn't necessarily the platform you'll want to be using several years from now.
And for companies that originally chose Pulley because they didn't want Carta, reluctantly moving back may feel like the opposite of a choice.
You have one.
Use the transition to evaluate it.
What should you preserve before Pulley shuts down?
Start here.
Before worrying about feature comparisons, demos, or pricing, make sure you have your own copy of the ownership records currently stored in Pulley.
What needs to be preserved will depend on your company and how you've used the platform, but that may include:
- Current cap table and stakeholder ledger
- Complete transaction history
- Securities, grants, and vesting schedules
- SAFEs, notes, warrants, and equity plans
- Signed agreements and equity documents
- Stakeholder contact information
- Share-class and entity details
- Valuation and 409A records
- Audit logs and historical reports
- Copies of every other available export
Don't assume that selecting a replacement platform means everything will automatically migrate in exactly the form it exists today.
Keep your own source records.
Software should make ownership easier to administer. It shouldn't be the only reason your company can explain who owns what and how they got there.
You're choosing more than a new home for your cap table
For an early-stage startup, the decision may be relatively straightforward.
You need somewhere to maintain the cap table, administer grants, handle valuations, and keep financing records organized.
But ownership doesn't always stay that simple.
Companies grow. Employees become shareholders. Investors come and go. Shares move into trusts. Family members inherit ownership. New entities appear. Multiple share classes accumulate. Distributions need to be made. Documents go out. Shareholders need information. Votes happen. Someone eventually wants liquidity.
At some point, the problem changes.
You're no longer just maintaining a cap table.
You're running an ownership operation.
If your company has reached that point, replacing Pulley with whichever cap table platform is easiest to migrate to may solve the immediate problem without solving the larger one.
What should you ask a potential Pulley replacement?
You could build an enormous feature comparison.
We wouldn't start there.
Start with the work your team actually does.
Can it handle the ownership structure we have today?
Not the ownership structure you had five years ago.
Look at your entities, share classes, stakeholders, securities, trusts, grants, transfers, and historical transactions.
Then consider what's likely to change over the next several years.
A platform migration is painful enough that you probably don't want to repeat it because you outgrew another system.
What happens beyond the cap table?
This is particularly important for established private companies.
Where do shareholder documents live?
How are communications distributed?
How do shareholders access information?
How are distributions handled?
What happens when you need signatures?
How do you conduct a shareholder vote?
What happens when the company offers a redemption or liquidity opportunity?
If the answer to most of those questions remains some combination of spreadsheets, email, shared drives, e-signature tools, and manual reconciliation, you've moved your cap table.
You haven't necessarily improved the way you manage ownership.
What can shareholders do themselves?
A shareholder shouldn't necessarily have to email your CFO, controller, legal team, or ownership administrator every time they need a document or basic information about their holdings.
Consider what shareholders will actually see after the migration.
Can they securely access relevant ownership information?
Can they find historical documents?
Can they access communications in one place?
Can appropriate information be updated without creating another email chain for your team?
The shareholder experience is part of the ownership operation too.
Can the system preserve what happened?
Private-company ownership has a long memory.
A transaction that looks routine today may need to be explained years from now.
Your next system should make it easier to understand not only the current ownership position, but also the history behind it: transactions, transfers, documents, votes, redemptions, and other material activity.
The question isn't just whether the cap table is correct today.
It's whether you'll be able to explain why it's correct later.
Who actually handles the migration?
“Assisted migration” sounds reassuring.
Ask what it means.
Who reviews your existing records?
Who maps the data?
Who identifies inconsistencies?
Who reconciles the resulting cap table?
What information can be imported automatically?
What needs manual work?
What won't migrate?
And after the implementation is finished, who do you call when something complicated happens six months later?
A platform migration isn't just a file upload.
Nth Round isn't the right Pulley alternative for everyone
We mean that.
If you're an early-stage startup primarily looking for an inexpensive cap table bundled with 409A valuations, Nth Round may not be the right fit.
That's not the part of the Pulley market we're trying to chase.
Nth Round is built for established private companies where ownership has become an ongoing operational responsibility.
That may mean multiple entities or share classes. A growing employee, family, or multigenerational shareholder base. Recurring distributions, transfers, redemptions, or liquidity events. Shareholder documents and communications spread across different systems. Or simply an ownership structure that has accumulated enough history that maintaining the cap table is only one part of the job.
Nth Round brings together the ownership record and the workflows surrounding it: shareholder administration, secure access, documents and communications, reporting and audit history, distributions, redemptions, voting, signatures, and private-company liquidity.
And the implementation isn't treated as a handoff to software. Our team works alongside customers through migration, reconciliation, implementation, and ongoing ownership administration.
That's a different proposition from simply finding somewhere else to put your Pulley cap table.
A forced transition can still be an intentional one
Nobody chooses to have a software provider shut down.
But if Pulley's closure means you're moving regardless, don't waste the opportunity to look at what hasn't been working.
Look at the spreadsheet someone still maintains alongside the cap table.
The shareholder documents scattered across folders.
The distribution process that gets rebuilt every time.
The emails asking for information shareholders should already be able to access.
The ownership history that only one person on the finance or legal team really understands.
The vote that requires three systems and a lot of checking.
Those things tell you more about what your company needs next than a 70-row feature comparison.
Carta may ultimately be the right answer.
Another cap table provider may be the right answer.
Or you may discover that your company has grown beyond the problem those tools were originally designed to solve.
The important thing is that you have options beyond Carta.
Before signing the default agreement, make sure you're choosing the platform your company needs - not simply the platform someone else selected for you.
If your ownership has become more complicated than your cap table, see whether Nth Round makes sense as your Pulley alternative.
