Cap table platform Pulley is shutting down, referring customers to Carta

Pulley, a cap table management platform, announced this week on its website that it is shutting down, with its final day of operations set for December 8. In an unusual arrangement, the company said it has partnered with its rival, Carta, to move its customers over, and is also redirecting prospective clients to Carta.

Yin Wu, a serial founder and former Microsoft employee, started building Pulley in 2020 and went on to raise over $50 million from investors including General Catalyst, Stripe, and Founders Fund.

Pulley did not offer a reason for the shutdown. A former employee speculated online that Pulley wasn’t so much competing with Carta as it was with spreadsheets, and that startups can now easily use AI to keep, improve, and maintain their own spreadsheets instead of paying for a dedicated platform.

In a statement posted to LinkedIn, Wu thanked her team and backers, writing that “though this is the closing of one chapter, I, along with many of our strongest team members, have no intention of riding off quietly into the night.” She added: “There has never been a better time to solve big problems. Thank you again to everyone who supported us over the years.”

Why it matters

A well-funded cap table startup handing its customers directly to its main rival, rather than winding down independently, points to how hard it has become to compete in back-office software categories where AI tools are lowering the cost of building in-house alternatives.