If you are the owner of a cap table or equity spreadsheet you probably spent quite a bit of time this year working to optimize your cap sheet to show only your best performing investments. That list you have grown in your head and made a habit out of collecting can make you feel good and give you some purpose through which to focus during the year’s cap table planning. But what if you had a cap table spreadsheet that told you just the results of each cap table you own a combination of cap tables? Well, you would be even more intrigued than ever before! Let’s talk about it!

For starters, a cap table spreadsheet can be used to track your individual investments, your shares of personal equity held by other investors, your annual income from renting out your space or office and any rent you receive. That convert what you raised in last year into a nice little additional piece of the cap table for you is usually represented in your cap table spreadsheet as a portion of your equity. In fact, many investors naturally focus first on the capital increases tab on their cap table spreadsheet which displays the total equity raised by founder, partner, etc and in all likelihood that is the first part of the story for them. And for that they are glad!

There are some investors who are more interested in the numbers behind the numbers. And the nice thing about the cap table spreadsheet is that it provides a great way to track shares by individual investors. Lets say you own 10 startup shares. You can track those shares using your cap table spreadsheet by clicking on one of the individual investors or click on the name of the investor if you are the owner of the shares. You will see what percentage of the company that particular investor holds.

The reason it works so well is because many early-stage companies are poorly capitalized and need to raise some money to grow. Most early-stage companies don’t have any cash but are really only interested in one thing: building up the value of the company. And when you see a company like that doing well you often want to jump in and help them with your own money. Now, this can be very difficult. The reality is that most investors shy away from providing additional funds to start-up companies simply because the risk is too high. For that reason, you want to focus your attention on the simple cap table spreadsheet which gives you a simple snapshot of how well your company is doing financially.

Some investors may have different philosophies about how to invest but that is completely unimportant when you are investing in early-stage companies. What is important is that you have a way to track how well the company is doing financially. This is why simple cap tables can provide you with so much insight into the health of your startup. These graphs can show you where the company is in relation to its competitors. If you see a lot of blue, you might want to think about looking into that company more deeply.

You can also use simple cap tables to find out how well known the company is among early-stage investors. There are several things that investors look at when they are deciding whether or not to invest in a company. One of them is how popular the founder is. In general, you will want to find a very famous entrepreneur if you are an angel investor. The reason is because you can typically get a much better deal on a start-up company with a celebrity as a founder than you can with another less famous person. Unfortunately, there are still plenty of less famous entrepreneurs who are valued at very low prices but have very poor business skills.

Not only do we focus a great deal on the entrepreneur’s skill set when we talk about selecting a private equity funding source, but we also need to pay close attention to the company’s performance. If the company has been around for a while and is profitable, then it is probably quite possible that people will invest in it. However, the potential return on investment is much lower for companies that haven’t been around for long. In order to evaluate whether the company is growing at a fast enough pace to justify investing in it, you should add together its revenue and profit growth over the past two to three years and divide it by the number of investors you have. The percent increase of revenues that came from private equity sources is one of the most critical numbers to look at.

Looking at a company like Square, which just raised a $76 million seed round, you can see why it is so critical to use cap tables to select startups . Although Square is growing fast, it is still new and therefore will take time to mature into an established company. At the same time, though, the number of investors that invested in it is a clear sign of its profitability. This means that there are more investors willing to buy the products that Square offers, which gives it an edge over similar startups in the future. In general, private investors are more willing to lend money to businesses with a strong potential for growth and success. And, since the startup doesn’t have years of track record to rely on, they can be a bit more choosy when it comes to picking which companies to back.