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Cap Table vs Portfolio Tracker: What Angels Need After the Wire
Cap table vs portfolio tracker is the mix-up that hits after you wire, not before. The company’s cap table is the issuer’s ownership book. Your portfolio tracker is the investor’s cash book: SAFE rows, SPV slices, secondary lots, dates, and cost basis. Search often uses issuer language. The work you need is angel bookkeeping. Start with the wire ledger in https://raziel.co/learn/safe-note-tracking, then keep this page as the comparison.
This is not legal, tax, or investment advice. Raziel Inc. does not provide it.
What a company cap table is for
A company cap table answers who owns what of the issuer: common, preferred, option pool, convertibles outstanding. Founders and counsel update it when rounds close, options vest, or stock is issued. Tools like Carta and Pulley are built for that issuer job. When a founder sends you a PDF or a portal link, they are showing the company’s view of ownership, not your personal return math.
That export can be useful. It is not your book. It does not know which bank account funded the wire, which SPV sat between you and the company, or which lot you bought on a secondary. Treating the issuer file as your portfolio is how double-counting and missing cash dates begin.
What an angel portfolio tracker logs
An angel portfolio tracker logs the instruments you hold and the cash that created them. At minimum: company, instrument type, purchase amount, currency, wire date, and the documents you can defend later. Add conversion events, follow-on SPVs, secondary lots, and distributions when they happen. IRR and MOIC need those cash dates. A valuation mark without a cash history is a guess, even when a dashboard prints a number.
Angel-facing systems such as AngelHub, Signed, and Pinion sit closer to this investor job than a pure net-worth aggregator. Kubera-style tools roll up wealth across accounts. They are not the same product as a deal ledger for SAFEs and SPVs. Do not treat any one roundup as proof Raziel “wins.” Pick the system that keeps your rows honest.
SAFE and SPV rows the issuer never shows you
A SAFE lives as a note until conversion. Your tracker should hold the purchase amount, cap or discount, and the original wire date so IRR does not restart when preferred shows up. Conversion is a close-and-open event: SAFE closed, preferred opened, same cash line. The packet for that step is on https://raziel.co/learn/safe-conversion-tracking.
An SPV is worse to collapse. You subscribed into a vehicle. That vehicle is the shareholder of record. Fees, carry, and the K-1 sit on the SPV, not on the startup’s cap table export. Log the SPV and the company as linked records so you do not post the same dollars twice. Post-close SPV work is covered in https://raziel.co/learn/syndicate-spv-tracking.
When secondaries break a single cap-table export
A secondary lot has its own purchase price, seller, transfer paperwork, and often a different share class or restriction schedule. The company’s latest fully diluted table may show the buyer after the transfer. It will not carry your lot cost or the day you wired. Track the lot as its own row, linked to the company, instead of overwriting an earlier SAFE or SPV line. Lot tracking lives at https://raziel.co/learn/secondary-stock-lot-tracking.
How to keep both without double-counting
Keep two layers. Layer one is issuer context: the notice, the cap table you were sent, the portal PDF. Attach those files. Layer two is your ledger: one cash history per instrument, parent-and-child links for SPV to company, closed SAFE pointing at opened preferred. Roll company exposure up from the links. Never paste the same outflow onto both the vehicle and the underlying company.
A practical checklist after every wire or notice:
Create or update the instrument row (SAFE, SPV interest, preferred, or lot).
Post cash only when money moved, with the real date.
Attach the notice or deal page. Do not rebuild share counts from a headline valuation.
If an SPV or follow-on SPV is involved, open a vehicle row and link the company. Do not overwrite the first vehicle.
If the company sent a cap table, store it as a document. Do not replace your cost basis with their fully diluted chart.
Light Raziel close
Raziel’s startup tracker (https://raziel.co/products/startups) is the investor book those instruments sit on: cash dates, documents, IRR, and unrealized gains. Investor plan is a 14-day free trial, then $49/month, and $199/month after 30 companies. Founders sending IR updates use https://raziel.co/founders. Investors starting the ledger: https://app.raziel.co/sign-up.
Cap table vs portfolio tracker stops being confusing when you name the jobs: the company owns the ownership chart; you own the cash book. Keep both. Count the dollars once.
