What the Pulley Startup Program Gives You
Pulley's startup program offers up to $500 in credits toward Pulley, the cap table and equity management platform that holds your ownership record, issues securities electronically, and models what a round does to everyone's percentage before you sign the term sheet.
AI Perks tracks it in the Finance category alongside $7.7M in credits across 194 companies.
$500 is a small number, and reading it correctly matters more here than in most categories. Cap table software is not metered by how hard you use it but by how many people hold equity in your company, and that count only moves in one direction.
So the credit is worth most at exactly the moment the invoice looks least worth paying: when your register is two founders and a handful of early holders. Eligibility depends on stage and funding, listed per program on getaiperks.com.
What Pulley Does That a Cap Table Spreadsheet Cannot
A cap table platform keeps three things as one object: the legal record of who owns what, the signed documents that prove it, and the math that connects them. A spreadsheet keeps the math and drifts away from the other two.
The spreadsheet does not fail at incorporation. It fails at the first priced round, when four things have to be true simultaneously:
- Every SAFE and convertible note converts on its own cap, discount and trigger
- The option pool is topped up before the round closes, so existing holders fund it rather than the incoming investor
- Multiple share classes carry different liquidation preferences and anti-dilution terms
- Each grant carries its own strike price, vesting start, cliff and post-termination exercise window
Those inputs interact. Move one and every ownership percentage in the file moves with it.
Pulley's positioning has leaned on modelling and on lighter adoption than the incumbent, with scenario and exit-waterfall tooling sitting beside the register itself. Feature sets and tiers move, so confirm what your plan includes.
The second thing you buy is diligence speed. At your next round, somebody else's counsel reconstructs your ownership history from source documents. A clean record shortens that to days; a broken one becomes billable legal hours when you have least leverage.
How Cap Table Software Costs Behave as You Grow
Pulley, like the rest of the category, prices on stakeholder count and plan tier rather than usage. That makes it the opposite of an API bill: nothing you do inside the product moves the number, and you cannot optimise your way back down.
Pulley has historically published a free tier for the smallest companies, with paid tiers rising as holders and features accumulate. Those boundaries change, so verify current figures against Pulley's pricing page.
| What gets metered | What drives it | Why it ratchets upward |
|---|---|---|
| Stakeholder count | Every person or entity holding equity, options or a note | Departed employees who exercised stay on the register permanently |
| Securities outstanding | Each financing adds instruments to maintain | A party round of SAFEs becomes a dozen holders at conversion |
| Plan tier | Feature gates, not volume | Board-ready reporting and modelling usually sit above the entry tier |
| 409A valuation | Refreshed annually or after a material event | A new round triggers one before the twelve months are up |
| Add-on modules | Scenario tools, expense reporting, transfers | Switched on for one board meeting and never switched off |
Run it forward. Two founders, eleven SAFE holders, fourteen employees with grants and two advisors is twenty-nine stakeholders before a Series A or a second office. Equity is not handed back when someone leaves, so that count is a floor.
That makes the credit a timing instrument rather than a discount: it covers the window where the bill is smallest and a clean record is cheapest to establish. The Finance listings at getaiperks.com show how the category lines up at the same stage.
The Dilution Math the Software Is Really For
The reason to model before signing is that the option pool top-up and the SAFE conversion usually come out of the founders alone, not out of the incoming investor. Most founders discover the size of that effect after the term sheet rather than before.
Here is an illustrative round. A company with two founders and no other holders takes $500,000 on a post-money SAFE with a $5,000,000 cap, then raises $3,000,000 at a $12,000,000 post-money valuation, topping the unissued option pool up to 10% of the post-money company.
| Who holds it | Share after the round | Where the percentage came from |
|---|---|---|
| New investor | 25.0% | $3M at a $12M post-money valuation |
| Post-money SAFE holder | 10.0% | $500k against a $5M cap, shielded from the pool top-up |
| Option pool (unissued) | 10.0% | Topped up pre-money, so existing holders fund it |
| Founders | 55.0% | The residual, after absorbing both of the rows above |
The founders go from 100% to 55% on a round that sold 25% of the company. The other 20 points are the SAFE and the pool, and under the standard post-money SAFE the SAFE holder is protected from the pool increase while the founders are not.
Pre-money SAFEs, multiple caps and a differently sized pool all change these numbers, so model against the documents you actually signed. That modelling is the part worth paying for, and worth doing before the negotiation. AI Perks lists the equity and finance programs that subsidise it.
What Pulley Credits Stack With
Equity credits stack cleanly because the bills around a company's back office have hard edges. The cap table platform, the bank, the payroll provider, the accountant and the law firm are five separate invoices, and most of those vendors run a startup program.
Forming a company and hiring your first ten people touches a predictable set:
- Incorporation and legal credits cover the entity and the financing documents Pulley then records
- Banking and treasury credits cover the account the round lands in
- Accounting credits cover the ledger where stock compensation expense gets booked from your grant data
- Payroll and HR credits cover the same employees whose grants sit on your cap table
- Cloud and AI credits are an unrelated bill on an overlapping calendar
What does not stack is two cap table platforms. Hold grants from Pulley and a competitor at once and one expires unused, because nobody keeps two systems of record for ownership. Which programs rule each other out is why AI Perks is a tracked list rather than a bookmark folder.
What Founders Get Wrong About Cap Table Credits
The expensive mistake is treating the platform as a filing cabinet instead of the system of record. Then the credit paid for storage while the real ownership history lived in three places that disagree.
Five patterns, roughly in order of what they cost.
Keeping a second cap table "for modelling." A parallel spreadsheet drifts within a quarter. Whichever version counsel relies on at diligence becomes the real one, and it should be the version with signed documents attached to every line.
Issuing securities outside the system. Verbal promises, unsigned side letters and a SAFE in someone's drafts folder are how cap tables get reconstructed under deadline pressure. Every instrument should exist as a signed record before the money moves.
Granting on a stale 409A. A 409A valuation sets the strike price on employee options, and US companies generally refresh it annually or after a material event such as a priced round. Grant below fair market value and the tax problem lands on your employee, not on you.
Missing the 83(b) window. A US holder of restricted stock has 30 days from the grant date to file an 83(b) election, and there is no extension. Software will remind you. The filing is still yours.
Choosing the platform on the size of the credit. $500 against a multi-year record is not the deciding variable. Migrating a cap table means re-verifying every security against its source document, the hardest back-office move there is. Decide on fit, then take whichever program that vendor runs. Compare the Finance category at getaiperks.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much is the Pulley startup program worth?
Up to $500 in credits toward Pulley's cap table and equity management platform. Because the subscription is sized by stakeholder count rather than usage, that credit stretches furthest while your register is small, which is also when the habit of keeping a clean record is cheapest to form. Current amounts and eligibility are tracked at getaiperks.com.
Is Pulley a real alternative to Carta for an early-stage company?
Yes, they solve the same problem and differ in emphasis and price shape rather than in category. Pulley has positioned itself around modelling and lighter adoption at the early stage. The deciding question is which one your counsel and investors can work with comfortably, because they read the record too.
Does the Pulley credit cover a 409A valuation?
Treat the credit as applying to the platform subscription, and check whether valuation work is included at the tier you land on, since that varies by plan and by vendor. A 409A is an independent appraisal setting option strike prices, refreshed annually or after a material event for US companies.
When does a startup actually need cap table software?
Before the first priced round, not on day one. Two founders and clean vesting fit in a spreadsheet. The breaking point is when SAFEs convert, a pool is topped up and a new share class arrives at once, which produces numbers nobody can reconcile against signed documents under deadline.
Can I stack Pulley credits with other startup credits?
Yes, and finance credits stack well because the invoices do not overlap. Incorporation credits cover the entity, banking credits cover the account, accounting credits cover the ledger your grant data feeds. You cannot stack two cap table platforms. AI Perks tracks $7.7M across 194 companies at getaiperks.com.
What happens when the Pulley credits run out?
You inherit a subscription sized by a stakeholder count that has only grown since you signed up, on the one system that is genuinely painful to migrate. Price the unsubsidised bill at your projected holder count while the credit still runs, then pick the tier you would sign at that number.
Keep the ownership record clean from the first grant. Let someone else fund the software that holds it.