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Carta

Carta: Expertise in capitalization table management and valuations technology.

Carta enables users to start businesses, manage their equity, and make investments in emerging firms. The company’s goal is to make equity ownership more accessible to more individuals in more locations.

Carta
Image Source: siliconangle.com

For over two million people worldwide, Carta maintains over two trillion us dollars in equities. More than 30,000 enterprises, over 5,000 investment funds, and 500,000 employees rely on the corporation for capitalization table managing, liquidity venture capital services, compensation management, etc.

About the Company

Formerly known as eShares, Carta is a software company that focuses on capitalization table management and valuations technology. To assist businesses, investors, and employees in managing their equity and to provide a real-time image of firm ownership, the company digitizes paper stock certificates, together with share options, warrants, and derivatives.

Additionally, the business runs the private stock exchange CartaX and publishes studies emphasizing the gender parity gap in several industries. The company is headquartered in San Franciso, USA. The company purportedly tracked more than $2.5 trillion in corporate equity as of August 2022 and has enabled $13 billion in supplementary sales. Slack, Coinbase, Casper, Tilray, and Affirm are a few of its clients.

History

Henry Ward, an entrepreneur, and Manu Kumar, a seasoned investor, started Carta in 2012 as eShares. Ward was appointed CEO, while Kumar was named corporate chairman. When the founders recognized a requirement for venture-backed businesses to electronically handle equity, sell securities, and monitor their cap tables, they founded the company. In 2015, Spark Capital led a $17 million Series B financing for eShares.

In order to offer stock management to Zenefits’ platform, eShares teamed with the cloud-based human resources startup Zenefits in 2016. In 2017, eShares acquired Silicon Valley Bank Analytics, a competitor’s valuation firm. The company later changes its name to Carta. In 2021, the company developed a private stock market named CartaX to enable owners and staff to sell private equities before an acquisition or IPO. The company sold under $100 million of its individual shares on CartaX in February. In 2022, Carta purchased UK rival Capdesk for an unknown amount.

Products and Services

Carta’s software helps assist businesses in maintaining their capitalization charts, which display the ownership percentages, stock dilution, and equity value for every round of funding by inventors, founders, and other owners. Customers can monitor their valuations, portfolio investments, and equity plans online with the aid of the company’s software.

The software from Carta enables business owners to issue digital share certificates to stock option-eligible parties like investors, employees, and others. Additionally, it creates a single dashboard that allows issuers to monitor shareholding, the timing and cost of securities issued, and the willingness of owners to sell. The portfolio management software from Carta is widely used by venture capital organizations.

The company also runs the private stock exchange CartaX, which allows staff members and investors to sell their shares ahead of the company’s IPO or acquisition. Table Stakes is a group of equity gap studies that were produced as a result of the company’s emphasis on capitalization tables. In a range of industries, namely high tech, the surveys identify equity inequalities between company employees and founders in terms of gender, color, ethnicity, and region.

Founders: Henry Ward; Manu Kumar

Henry and Manu Kumar pointed out in 2012 that investing in a business was the same whether it was a railway or a cryptocurrency start-up: Stock certificates were physically issued, and businesses used spreadsheets to keep track of capitalization tables. It was a cumbersome approach that makes it challenging to transmit information and can result in expensive mistakes. This resulted in the formation of the company in 2012.

Nithin Kamath

Nithin Kamath: Entrepreneur who made the stock market easy for millennials

Zerodha Broking Ltd. provides financial services including retail and institutional brokerage, bonds, currency and commodities trading, and mutual funds. The company was established in 2010 by Nithin Kamath and has offices in many significant Indian cities. Its headquarters are in Bengaluru.

Nithin Kamath
Image Source: livemint.com

Early Life

Nithin took over his father’s brokerage account when he was 17 years old. He worked for himself as a propriety broker from 1997 to 2004 while continuing his college studies. Due to a shortage of trading cash, he spent three years working at a call center after investing a significant amount of time as a stock broker.

He traded throughout the day and worked nights doing telesales. From 2001 to 2004, he was employed by Senior Telesales Executive, a business that specialized in call centers. When Nithin joined Kamath Associates as a propriety trader, he began his professional trading career as a sub-broker. It essentially served as Reliance Money’s franchisee.

Additionally, he inferred portfolio advisory services. He was employed by the firm from January 2004 until January 2010, a period of six years. By the end of 2010, Nithin Kamath and his younger brother Nikhil established their own stock trading company, Zerodha.

Success Story

Nithin Kamath is the co-founder and CEO of Zerodha, India’s largest trading firm. Since common traders rushed to stock markets during the pandemic, its platform now facilitates over 15% of India’s retail trades. Kamath was a school dropout and started trading at the age of 17. He started stock trading after being inspired by his older brother, Nithin, and self-taught himself while doing so. It went well, and soon the two were making investments for friends and family.

However, they discovered that the method was too complicated along the road. The Bangalore-born brothers got to work and invested their savings in the creation of a straightforward and cost-effective brokerage platform for regular investors. In 2010, the established Zerodha. Today, the company has not accepted any outside investment, unlike the majority of startups.

Since then, as India’s thirst for assets outside of gold and real estate has increased, Zerodha has expanded by word-of-mouth. All of that, however, changed in 2020 due to the pandemic when the company’s customers reached over four million. In 2020, the Zerodha platform’s average investor’s age dropped from 32 to 30 years old.

This has been compared to the American trading app Robinhood, which saw a comparable increase in young users during the pandemic. This has been compared to the American trading app Robinhood, which saw a comparable increase in young users during the pandemic. The Kamath brothers joined the Forbes India Rich List in October 2020 with a combined net worth of $1.55 billion, Zerodha entered the “unicorn club” in June 2020 with a self-evaluation of roughly $1 billion.

The ESOP buyback exercise that the business did was the basis for this valuation, which valued each stock at more than four times the market price of Rs. 700/share. Zerodha established an early-stage fund Rainmatter in 2014 with a capital of Rs. 50 Crore.

The fund concentrated on risk mitigation but focused on funding start-ups in the area of innovative technology and novel product development by limiting the ticket value to under $ 1 million for each investment. Some significant start-ups in which Rainmatter has invested include Smallcase, Cred, Finception, and Sensibull.

In 2019, Zerodha introduced True Beacon, an AIF that uses a defensive investment approach to deliver returns in choppy markets. In its first year, the $2 million minimum investment fund was able to achieve a return of more than 13%. Zerodha submitted a license application in 2020 to establish an AMC mutual fund in India.

Goldman Sachs

The Founding Story of Goldman Sachs: Investment Banking Giant

Goldman Sachs is a well-known name in the investment banking, securities, and investment management industry.

About the Company

It is a global investment bank and financial services company. It was established in 1869 and has regional offices in Warsaw, London, Bangalore, Hong Kong, Salt Lake City, and Tokyo in addition to offices located in other major global financial hubs.

Goldman Sachs
Image Source: peoplematters.in

The company has its headquarters in Manhattan, New York. As per revenue, it is the second-biggest investment bank in the world. It is also placed 57th among the 500 largest American companies on the Fortune 500 list.

History of the Company

Marcus Goldman established Goldman Sachs in 1869 in New York City. Samuel Sachs, the son-in-law of Goldman, started working there in 1882. Goldman brought his son Henry and son-in-law Ludwig Dreyfuss into the company in 1885, and the company then took on its current name, Goldman Sachs & Co. The company entered the NYSE in1896 and was a pioneer in the utilization of commercial paper for business transactions.

The company’s capital was $1.6 million in 1898. By putting Sears, Roebuck, and Company on the public market in 1906, Goldman debuted the IPO market. Henry Goldman’s personal acquaintance with Sears owner Julius Rosenwald made the deal possible. Continental Can and F. W. Woolworth were among the next companies to go public.

Henry S. Bowers was the first person outside of the founding family to join the company as a partner and get a portion of the earnings in 1912. Henry Goldman resigned from the firm in 1917 as a result of mounting pressure from his fellow partners over his pro-German stance. Before Waddill Catchings joined the corporation in 1918, the Sachs family had complete control of the business. Waddill Catchings was Goldman Sachs’s partner with the single-largest ownership position in the company by 1928.

In 1928, the company introduced the closed-end fund Goldman Sachs Trading Corp. During the 1929 stock market crash, the fund failed amid claims that Goldman had been involved in insider trading and share price manipulation. Goldman Sachs opened its first overseas office in London, United Kingdom, in 1970. To increase its presence in the UK, it also established a fixed income and private wealth unit in 1972.

It bought the commodities trading business J. Aron & Company in 1981, traded in coffee, precious metals, and foreign exchange. Through the acquisition, it was able to get access to the market in South America which boosted the company’s growth in subsequent years. It established Goldman Sachs Asset Management in 1986, a business that still oversees its hedge and mutual funds today.

Goldman Sachs was one of the companies that profited from the U.S. Treasury’s rescue of financial institutions during the financial crisis as a component of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The US Treasury invested $10 billion in the company in 2008. In the type of $318 million in dividends and $1.418 billion in warrant redemptions, Goldman reimbursed the money with a 23% interest.

Services Offered

Goldman Sachs offers services in areas like investment banking (advice for acquisitions and mergers and reorganization), securities underwriting, asset and wealth management, and prime brokerage. It also trades credit products and mortgage-backed and insurance-linked assets. It is a key trader in the market for Treasury securities issued by the United States.

It offers custodian bank and clearing services. Goldman Sachs Personal Financial Management, offers wealth management services. It runs hedge funds, real estate and credit funds, and private equity funds. It builds sophisticated, specialized financial products. Additionally, it owns a direct bank Goldman Sachs Bank USA. It trades both for its own account and on behalf of the customers (flow trading).

Founder: Marcus Goldman, Samuel Sachs

Marcus Goldman was an American banker, entrepreneur, and financier. Goldman Sachs, which he founded, is now among the biggest investment firms in the world. Goldman changed the company’s name to M. Goldman & Sachs in 1882 and extended an invitation to his son-in-law Samuel Sachs to assist him in the company.

Konami

Konami, a global video game developer that started as a jukebox renting company

Konami Digital Entertainment is a top international video game developer that publishes games for mobile devices as well as gaming consoles like the Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 4.

Konami
Image Source: asgam.com

Among the top franchises produced by the company include Pro Evolution Soccer, Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, Castlevania, and DanceDanceRevolution. Additionally, Yu-Gi-Oh! TRADING CARD GAME, which has sold over 25 billion cards globally, is also produced by them.

About the Company

Video game developer and entertainment firm Konami Group Corporation is based in Japan. It not only creates and sells video games but also anime, trading cards, arcade cabinets tokusatsu, pachinko machines, and slot machines. They run health and fitness facilities across Japan and own casinos all over the world. It is the world’s nineteenth-largest( by revenue) game developer.

Kagemasa Kozuki, who is still the company’s chairman, founded the company in 1969 as a jukebox renting and maintenance business in Japan. The three founding members’ names—Kagemasa Kozuki, Yoshinobu Nakama, and Tatsuo Miyasako—were combined to create the name Konami. The company is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It runs its video game division in California and its casinos division from Paradise in Nevada in the United States. The company has 22 consolidated subsidiaries worldwide.

History

Konami was established in 1969, and in 1973, it was formally incorporated under the company name Konami Industry Co. Kagemasa Kozuki, the company’s founder and chairman, had a jukebox renting and maintenance business in Toyonaka, Osaka, before expanding it to become a producer of amusement devices for video arcades.

After releasing the first ever coin-operated video game in 1978, they started distributing products to the US the following year. Scramble, Frogger, Super Cobra, Time Pilot, Roc’n Rope, Track & Field, and Yie Ar Kung-Fu marked the beginning of Konami’s popularity with arcade games during the early 1980s. For US distribution, several of their early games were licensed to firms including Stern Electronics, Sega, and Gremlin Industries. In 1982, they founded Konami of America, Inc., their American subsidiary.

After a brief stint of releasing video games on the Atari 2600 for the American market in 1982, Konami started growing its gaming business into the home consumer sector at this time. In 1983, the business produced a series of games for the MSX home computer system, and in 1985, it did the same for the Nintendo Entertainment System. During this time, Konami established a number of successful franchises on both platforms and in the arcades, including Twin Bee, Gradius, Ganbare Goemon, Castlevania, Metal Gear, and, Contra, in addition to hugely popular licensed titles like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT).

Controversy

In 2015, The Nikkei slammed Konami for its improper treatment of its employees. In 2017, The Nikkei published more information about Konami’s ongoing disputes with Kojima Productions. These conflicts have prevented the studio from obtaining health insurance, and Konami has made it challenging for former employees to find new employment.

In particular, they are not permitted to mention their time spent working for Konami on their resumes. Additionally, Konami began complaining about other game developers who employed former Konami personnel, which led to a well-known large game developer cautioning employees against doing the same.

An ex-Konami employee claimed that if an ex-employee is interviewed by the mainstream press, the corporation will send that individual notice through a legal adviser, in some instances implying that Konami is prepared to take them to court. Another ex-Konami worker claimed the company pressured them into shutting down their new business.

Founder and Chairman – Kagemasa Kōzuki

Konami, a Japanese entertainment corporation, was founded by industrialist Kagemasa Kozuki, who also serves as its chairman. His other name is Kaz Kozuki. In 1969, Kagemasa Kozuki established Konami Industry Co. In 1973, the business started creating amusement equipment for arcades.

dylan field

Success Story of Dylan Field: A College Dropout who built a $20 billion Company Figma

Dylan Field is an American technology professional and co-founder of the internet-based vector graphics editing software startup Figma. In 2012, Field and Evan Wallace, whom he had met while studying computer science at Brown University, established Figma. Dylan Field was awarded a Thiel Fellowship in 2012, a $100,000 grant contingent upon his quitting school and starting a full-time job with the startup.

dylan field
Image Source: forbes.com

Wallace and Field relocated to San Francisco, where they worked together for four years to get the software ready for its initial general release in 2016. Field was included on the Forbes 30 under 30 list in 2015. According to estimates, he held 10% of Figma’s equity, which was worth $20 billion when Adobe acquired the company in 2022.

About the Company

Figma is an online tool for collaborative interface design that also has offline functionality made possible by desktop programs for Windows and macOS. With a number of vector graphics editors and prototyping tools, Figma’s feature set concentrates on user interface and interaction design with a strong emphasis on real-time collaboration. Real-time viewing and interaction with Figma prototypes on smartphones and tablets are made possible by the Figma smartphone app for iOS and Android.

Early Life

Dylan Field was raised in Penngrove, California. His mother was a resources specialist educator at Thomas Page Elementary School, while his father was a respiratory specialist at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. Field excelled at arithmetic as a child and began studying algebra at the age of six. From a young age, Field was fascinated by computer science and took part in FIRST Robotics.

Field completed his high school education at Technology High School, a STEM magnet school located on the Sonoma State University campus. Field created machines and websites for buddies in high school. Danah Boyd, a social media researcher with whom he collaborated, ended up writing one of Field’s recommendation letters for college.

Field joined Brown University in 2009 to study computer science there. Field was an active participant in Brown’s department of computer science. He co-chaired the department’s undergraduate group beginning in late 2011 and organized a hackathon in 2011 wherein 150 students took part.

Success Story

In exchange for dedicating a break from college, Field received $100,000 after being selected as a Thiel Fellow in 2012. In 2011, the Thiel Fellowship program got going. The Thiel Fellowship was created at the time with the intention of choosing 20 “creative and driven young individuals” under the age of twenty each year. Each recipient received $100,000 to work on their proposals as start-up businesses during the two years they were out of college.

Together with Evan Wallace, who joined Dylan after earning his computer science degree that spring, Field co-founded Figma in the summer of 2012. Figma’s original goal was to make it possible for anyone to be creative by developing free, straightforward, in-browser tools. Before deciding on internet graphics editor software, Field and Wallace tested out several concepts, such as drone software and a meme generator.

The initial focus of the business was hazily defined as “a technology venture that will allow people to artistically express themselves online” in an opinion piece by The Brown Daily Herald. According to that article, the company’s initial concepts centered on the creation of 3D content, while later concepts emphasized photoshop work and object segmentation. Late in 2015, Figma released its initial beta version. Later that year, it made its first product available to the general public.

Figma raised venture capital in April 2020, valuing the corporation at $2 billion. Figma had already signed on Microsoft, GitHub, Airbnb, Square, Uber, and Zoom as clients. Adobe announced on September 15, 2022, that it had reached an agreement to buy Figma for roughly 20 billion dollars in cash and equity.

aman gupta

Aman Gupta: Co-Founder of Billion Dollar Company boAt

Before creating the chic consumer electronics company boAt, Aman Gupta worked as a regular employee. In 2016, he and his business partner Sameer Mehta established an audio brand Indian company that offers everything including headphones to earbuds and portable chargers. He is currently one of India’s most successful businessmen, and his top ear-worn company generates annual sales of more than Rs. 1000 crore.

aman gupta
Image Source: marksmendaily.com

While the company has held every market position imaginable since its inception, Aman Gupta rose to fame after joining Shark Tank India as a judge aka shark. He has accomplished a lot already at age 37. He is a well-known businessman who owns a flourishing enterprise.

boAt Success Story

After only two years of operation, boAt has generated Rs. 100 crores in revenue. A power cord and charger for Apple iPhones were among the first products sold by boAt. These Apple chargers later became one of the best sellers on Amazon. The boAt became a market leader in the earwear sector in 2019, and Aman Gupta was named the Entrepreneur of the Year in the Consumer Durables sector the following year. India is currently home to around 5000 boAt flagship devices.

boAt devices have so far been sold to almost 20 million people worldwide. Aman Gupta strongly believes in making money rather than spending it. Since its inception, boAt has evolved into a lucrative business that has achieved success. Selling things that are fashionable, affordable, and long-lasting has always been Aman and Sameer’s top priority.

In 2020, boAt was recognized as the fifth-largest wearables company worldwide. The company collaborated with actress Jacqueline Fernandez and sportsmen Hardik Pandya and KL Rahul as marketing ambassadors. Due to the dedication of both Aman and Sameer, boAt as a business has reached new heights in just five short years.

Early Life

Aman Gupta was born in New Delhi. He studied at Delhi Public School in R.K. Puram. Later, he graduated from Delhi University with a commerce bachelor’s degree. He pursued Accounting and Financing at the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India after receiving his bachelor’s degree.

Before establishing his own business, he worked as a Chartered Accountant. Aman worked in a variety of fields for a considerable period of time before creating boAt. Just after finishing his education, he began working for Citi Bank as an Assistant Manager for two years. In 2005, Gupta established Advanced Telemedia, where he worked as a consultant for a number of multimedia businesses, such as Telex, Beats Audio, Sennheiser, etc.

He then became a senior management consultant in KPMG‘s Strategy Services Group in 2011. In the same year, he completed his master’s degree in business administration at Kellogg School of Management. Later, he held the position of director of sales at HARMAN International where he oversaw the commercial expansion of companies like Nokia, Apple, Micromax, etc. Finally, he and Sameer Mehta established boAt in 2016.

Lessons Learnt

Being from a lower-middle-class household, Aman Gupta is perhaps the most inspiring entrepreneur in the nation. Through his consistent efforts, he was able to realize his dream of prosperity. Aman has had a very successful life. He was raised in a middle-class household in India, although his schooling was not conventional. At the age of 19, Aman began working for an online business.

He rapidly came to the conclusion that he had a knack for entrepreneurship, and shortly after that, he founded his own company. The company began in 2009 with just one product and has since grown to offer a wide range of goods and services. The life of Aman Gupta is one of achievement and talent. His devotion to his business has contributed to its success. His success story demonstrates how one can take advantage of chances when they arise.