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At Vestd we are always looking for ways to make it easier for founders to create and manage share schemes.
Our customer success team spends a good portion of their time working with customers, listening to their feedback, and liaising with our developers to ensure that the Vestd app is doing everything it possibly can to make everyone’s lives easier.
In response to this feedback, we have been working on giving greater flexibility when using our agreements.
Changes have been made to the platform to give clarity to one of the more ambiguous areas of share schemes: Good Leaver/Bad Leaver clauses.
While we understand that thinking of team members leaving when setting up your scheme might seem counterintuitive, it is vital to ensure that you have dotted the Is and crossed the Ts in your agreements so that a clear recourse is in place for when people do leave your business.
In an ideal world, a good leaver would part ways with the portion of their options that have vested. That seems like the equitable thing to do. They have worked to help grow the business, and people do eventually move on.
Ultimately this is a founder’s decision to make, and relying on board discretion each time a team member leaves can be a real headache. Also, grey areas don’t work for anyone involved, so a strong dose of clarity is needed here.
That’s why we have added a simple dropdown menu to the setup form on the Vestd app. This means that when setting up or digitising your scheme, adding a Good Leaver/Bad Leaver clause to your agreements is as easy as choosing from a dropdown.
Another update that we’ve been busy making is the option to accelerate vesting on exit.
What if the company is sold midway through your vesting period? Should recipients walk away with the proportion of options that have vested, or should vesting be accelerated so that they receive their full allocation?
As with the leaver conditions, this can now be decided at the outset, so you have all bases covered if and when an exit happens. Simply make a selection on our scheme setup form, and we’ll make sure it is written into your agreements.
Finally, while we provide customers with everything they need to setup and manage their share schemes, sometimes it is the case that they have already invested considerable time and money in creating agreements with a lawyer.
This is totally fine, and through the app you can now add your existing agreements to your newly digitised share scheme in the blink of an eye.
We are always looking for new ways to improve, so please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you can see something that Vestd could be doing better for you.
If you aren’t already on board but need help with managing your equity then give us a shout. We’re always happy to help.