FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE   

REDWOOD CITY, November 14, 2024 - Gunderson Dettmer, the premier global law firm focused on the innovation economy, announced today that it has open-sourced the engine of its cap table integration platform, Cap Express. The firm also announced that integrations with cap table software providers Carta and AngelList are now supported on Cap Express to provide greater choice without sacrificing efficiency for Gunderson’s startup company clients.

Gunderson first announced the launch of the Cap Express application with its initial integration partner, Pulley, on August 30, 2023. Cap Express extracts relevant cap table data from a newly incorporated startup company’s formation documents generated using Thomson Reuters’ Contract Express document automation software. The application then repackages the information into the Open Cap Table Coalition’s open-source cap table format (OCF). The OCF file can then be submitted to any API endpoint set up by providers of cap table software solutions, avoiding the need for manual data entry.

Consistent with Gunderson’s commitment to the success of the Open Cap Table Coalition and its mission of fostering transparency, interoperability, and portability of cap table data within the startup ecosystem, the firm has open-sourced ce₂OCF, the parsing library developed by Gunderson’s legal engineering team that takes Contract Express document variables and maps them to the relevant portions of the OCF data standard.

Gunderson’s Senior Legal Engineering & Data Strategy Manager, John Scrudato, who also leads the Open Cap Table Coalition’s Technical Working Group, said: “This technology can help other tech-focused law firms, many of whom also use Contract Express, to facilitate automated cap table platform onboarding for their newly incorporated companies and cut down on the need for costly many-to-many integrations between law firms and cap table vendors, further incentivizing all stakeholders to adopt the OCF data standard.”

On November 10, 2023, AngelList announced at its annual product conference that it now supports a Cap Express integration for automated onboarding to its cap table solution using the OCF standard. And, today, Gunderson and Carta are announcing that Carta will also now support integration with Cap Express as part of its Launch offering.

“We are delighted to welcome AngelList and Carta to join Pulley as Cap Express integration partners,” said Joe Green, Chief Innovation Officer at Gunderson Dettmer. “We are also very excited to contribute the heart of the Cap Express application to the growing open-source community around cap table data to enable other law firms and more cap table platforms to benefit from the efficiencies to be gained for the entire startup ecosystem by adopting and leveraging the OCF data standard. Our firm is deeply committed to fostering collaboration and innovation in this space.”

About Gunderson Dettmer

Gunderson Dettmer is the preeminent international law firm with an exclusive focus on the innovation economy. The firm serves market-leading venture capital and growth equity investors and pioneering companies through inception, growth and maturity, as well as groundbreaking public companies that result from the global venture capital ecosystem. The firm’s clear-cut focus and well-honed technical skill enables an accelerated pace and unmatched efficiency, delivering best-in-class value at each phase of a client’s business.