How can a cap table help in understanding a company's financial health?

Some best practices for maintaining an updated cap table include: keeping it simple and organized, regularly updating it after every financial event such as funding rounds or stock option grants, ensuring accuracy by double-checking calculations and entries, using cap table management software for efficiency, and seeking legal advice to ensure compliance with laws and regulations.

A cap table, or capitalization table, is a spreadsheet or table that shows the equity capitalization for a company. It provides a detailed record of all the company's securities and who owns them, including equity shares, preferred shares, options, warrants, etc. It helps in understanding the equity distribution in a company by showing the percentage of ownership, equity dilution, and value of equity in each round of investment by founders, investors, and other owners.

Some tools to create and manage a cap table include Captable.io, Carta, and Gust Equity Management. These tools provide features for cap table management, scenario modeling, and equity plan administration.