Cap Table Strategy: A Playbook for Early-Stage Founders

When you’re raising your first rounds, every cap table decision can echo for years. Give away too much equity early, lock yourself into restrictive pro rata rights, or over-optimize for valuation — and you may find yourself boxed in just when your company starts to grow.

Pulley co-founder and CEO Yin Wu has seen these mistakes firsthand. In this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, she offers practical, founder-first strategies for structuring and managing your cap table so you can attract top talent, keep your options open, and stay in control of your startup’s destiny.

We also discuss how to compete with entrenched incumbents, why her LinkedIn profile says she works in Customer Success, and how founders can shift their role as the company scales.

RUNTIME 38:44 EPISODE BREAKDOWN

(2:46) Why her LinkedIn profile says she’s in “customer success,” not CEO/co-founder.

(5:43)  How much time passed between Day Zero and serving Pulley’s first customer?

(9:48) “ You're trying to market the product, and then you're also playing the role of customer success at the same time.”

(10:04) The number-one cap table mistake founders make? “Being too greedy.”

(13:55) Why are startups sticking with four-year vesting schedules when it takes 7-10 years to exit?

(15:14) How founders should think about pro rata rights in early rounds.

(19:04) Taking money out in a secondary “ actually releases some of the pressure and allows founders to focus.”

(21:04) Founder-preferred shares “are becoming increasingly popular.”

(24:15) CEO/founders need to remember “ the soft power that you have as a leader of the company.”

(26:45) How Yin defines “founder mode.”

(30:50) “ Every successful company has been a response to some incumbent’s worldview.”

(33:38) Why going public “ can actually make it tough for companies to be able to innovate.”

(34:04) The one question she’d ask the CEO if she were interviewing for a job with an early-stage startup.

LINKS

• Yin Wu
• Pulley
• How to Scale a Startup in Just 3 Months, Pulley
• Employee Equity, Sam Altman
• Will the Blockbuster Deal for Wiz Spur an M&A Wave in Cybersecurity?, WSJ Pro VC

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Thanks for listening!

– Walter.