Issuing Shares to Founders – Onboarding

Here is a step by step process to issue shares to founders on Eqvista

Step 1: Once you have created your profile on Eqvista, you would be prompted to create a company. There are three steps to create a company profile, out of which the third step helps you to add the founder profile and issue shares to the founder during the process.

Let us say that you have just created your profile on Eqvista. You would be then directed to create a company profile on Eqvista, as shown below:

In the first step, you would have to fill in details including the company name, company type, incorporation date, country of origin, and currency. Once you have done this, click on “Save and continue”.

Step 2: After this, you would need to add the number of shares in your company. When you register your company and obtain the incorporation certificate from the government, it comes with the number of shares that your company has. For this, you can check your Articles of Incorporation.

Add this number to the space provided along with the price per share at the time of incorporation (mostly if you have just incorporated your company). If your company has been in the market for a long time, the share value might have changed. Ensure that you add the exact number of shares and the share value while creating a company profile on Eqvista as shown below:

Once you have filled in all the details, click on “Save and continue”.

Step 3: After you click on the “Save and Continue” button, you will be directed to the next page. In this step, you would be asked if you are a founder or not. In case you are a founder, you can click on “Yes” and move on to the next step. And if you are not, you can click on “No” and then click “Add a Founder” and move on.

As mentioned above, there are two choices here, and each has been explained below.

SITUATION 1

By clicking on “Yes”, a drop-down page will appear allowing you to add your details as a founder of the company.

It is important to note that this step does not just help you add a founder’s details to the cap table, but also it would help you issuing the shares to them from the founder equity class.

If you have already issued shares to the founder(s) you need to mention the same details while filling this. The details include the:

• Email of the founder – This is the email that is used to invite the founder to view the cap table and handle their shares owned in the company. If you clicked on “Yes” for ”Are you the Founder?” then an email would have already come filled in, on your own email that you used to create the Eqvista account.
• Legal Name – This is the name of the person who is getting the shares. Ensure that the name is written properly and with the correct spelling. Again, in this case, since you chose that you are the founder, the name would be filled in.
• Date of Issuance – This is the date when the shares were issued. Ensure that you add the right date for this. 
• Number of Shares Issued – This is the number of shares that the person is offered. 
• Price per Share – This is the price of a share of the company at the time of issuance.
• Share Name – This is the certificate number being issued to the shareholder. Every certificate has a number. If the person has already been issued a paper certificate, ensure that the number entered here is the same as the number on the certificate.

After you have added all these details, you can also add another founder, if there is more than one founder in the company. For that, you can click on the option “Add a founder” and put in their details just like you did for the first founder.

SITUATION 2

If you select the option where you are not the founder, the same page will open where you can add the name of the founder of the company. To explain better, we have selected the option “No” for the question “Are you the founder?” and displayed the process below:

By selecting “No”, you would get the option to “Add a Founder”. Click on it to reach the following page where you would need to add the details of the founder.

When you are adding the shareholder here, you will first have to select if the shareholder is an individual or a company. In this case, we selected the option “individual”.

For this, you will have the details of the shareholder according to the fields available.

As you can see, you will have to add the first name and the last name of the founder along with their other details to issue the shares to them from the founder stock.

In case you select the option of a “Company”, these are the fields you will have to fill, as shown below:

You will have to add the company name, while the rest of the details are the same as the ones shared above.

Once you are done adding the founder details, click on “Save and Continue”.

When you click on this, you would then be directed to the main dashboard for your company on the Eqvista platform and you can see the founders of the company along with the shares that they have been issued.

If you have any doubts or want to know more, check out the other support articles here or contact us!