Cairnul and Fidelity Private Shares both support private companies with fundraising and equity-related work, but they are designed around different levels of the company lifecycle.
Cairnul is an agentic, document-centered platform for first-time founders running early fundraising rounds. It connects SAFEs, investors, advisor agreements, documents, governance, compliance, and the cap table in one workflow built around the first 12 to 18 months of a company's equity life.
Fidelity Private Shares is a broader private-company equity platform covering cap tables, governance, fundraising, financing documents, data rooms, equity administration, and company workflows from inception through exit.
Choosing between them
Neither product is universally better. Cairnul is more focused on the early fundraising workflow and the records around that raise, while Fidelity Private Shares provides broader equity, governance, financing, and company-lifecycle infrastructure.
At a glance
| Category | Cairnul | Fidelity Private Shares |
|---|---|---|
| Best fit | First-time founders running an early fundraising round | Private companies needing broader equity, governance, fundraising, and company-lifecycle infrastructure |
| Primary focus | Fundraising workflow and early equity lifecycle | Equity management, corporate governance, financing, and private-company operations |
| Fundraising | Round-centered workflow connecting investors, SAFEs, documents, governance, compliance, and equity information | Financing workflows connected to cap table data, term sheets, documents, approvals, and closing |
| SAFE management | Four standard, unmodified SAFE forms connected to the Round, Investor, documents, funding, and equity records | Financing workflows supporting SAFE and note conversion within broader equity infrastructure |
| Investor management | Investors connected directly to the fundraising round and related records | Investor dashboards, financing information, stakeholder access, and private-market workflows |
| Cap table | Three connected ledgers covering issued stock, advisor grants, and SAFEs, each linked to the documents behind it | Dynamic stock ledger and cap table linked to documents and equity activity |
| Governance and compliance | Board authorization with a computed and pinned signer set, accreditation evidence, Rule 506(b) and 506(c), Form D preparation, and state notice filings | Board and corporate governance workflows, Rule 701, Form 3921, ASC 718, and broader equity administration |
| Documents and Data Room | Fundraising, governance, compliance, and company documents connected to workflows, with per-recipient watermarking and founder-approved downloads | Financing documents, legal records, data rooms, and documents linked to equity records |
| Company lifecycle | Early fundraising and equity lifecycle | From company inception through exit |
| AI and automation | AI Startup Advisor with document-aware assistance and a fixed set of bounded actions | Automated equity, financing, document, and connected-record workflows |
| Pricing | Free until you open a round. Then $110 a month billed yearly, or $130 monthly, per company. The investors and advisors you invite pay nothing to take part, and Cairnul takes no percentage of the raise. | A free tier is offered for early-stage companies, with paid plans as the company scales; full platform pricing is not published |
| Product scope | Early fundraising and equity workflow | Broader private-company equity and corporate infrastructure |
Pricing, features, availability, and product offerings can change. Please confirm current pricing, features, and terms directly with each provider.
Nine differences
Cairnul
Cairnul organizes the fundraising round as the central workflow. The Round holds the exemption, the target, the board-approved ceiling, and the authorized term sets, and each investor moves through accreditation, signature, a cooling-off window, funds confirmation, and countersignature, which is the point a position forms.
Each of those is a gate rather than a status. The SAFE cannot be sent before the board authorization is effective, the investor can withdraw during cooling-off, and the founder confirms funds have arrived rather than the system inferring it from a signature.
Fidelity Private Shares
Fidelity Private Shares also supports a connected financing workflow, including round modeling from current capitalization data, term-sheet monitoring, document generation, approvals, signatures, and closing, working directly from the company's underlying equity records.
The difference is scope. Cairnul makes the early round the organizing center of the product and covers post-money SAFEs under Rule 506(b) or 506(c) only. Fidelity Private Shares embeds fundraising inside a much broader equity-management system that follows the company well past that.
Cairnul
Cairnul's cap table is built from three ledgers: issued stock, advisor grants with their own vesting, and SAFEs tagged to the round and exemption they were sold under. Each line traces back to the document that created it, and updating shares or the option pool requires a supporting document attached as justification.
That constraint is the point. Ownership is never a number someone typed; it is the consequence of an agreement, a consent, and an issuance that can each be opened from the line itself, which is what a diligence reviewer asks for first.
Fidelity Private Shares
Fidelity Private Shares uses a dynamic stock ledger and capitalization table as a broader system of record, linking equity data with documents and supporting ongoing transactions such as grants, exercises, transfers, financing events, and other ownership changes.
Both link the record to its documents, which makes this the closest overlap between the two products. The difference is coverage: Cairnul's three ledgers stop at SAFEs and advisor grants, while Fidelity Private Shares carries employee equity, transfers, exercises, and later financings that Cairnul does not handle.
Cairnul
Cairnul treats documents as evidence behind the fundraising and governance workflow. Fundraising documents, approvals, compliance records, and supporting materials stay connected to the people and processes they relate to, and every fact carries its provenance: whether the founder declared it, a document proves it, or the founder confirmed what the system read.
Access is controlled at the same level of detail. The Startup Profile and Data Room are separate grants that can each be withdrawn at any time, including from someone holding an active position, documents are watermarked per recipient, and downloads happen only when the founder approves them, while what a person signed always stays visible to them.
Fidelity Private Shares
Fidelity Private Shares deliberately links the cap table with data-room documents and other company records, supporting financing documents, legal records, governance materials, and secure information sharing within a connected workspace
The practical distinction is that Cairnul organizes documents around one workflow and controls disclosure at the level of the individual recipient, while Fidelity Private Shares connects documents to a company-wide equity and governance system used by many stakeholder groups.
Cairnul
Cairnul computes who signs each consent from the board roster as it stood on the action date, shows that signer set to the founder for confirmation before generating the document, and pins it to the action, so a later change to the board never rewrites what a past approval meant. If an investor or advisor is also a director, the consent routes to the disinterested directors instead.
Alongside that sit the securities steps: the exemption locked at opening, accreditation held as a ledger of dated evidence records on the investor's account, verification before acceptance under 506(c), and Form D and state notice filings driven by where each investor lives rather than where the company is incorporated.
Fidelity Private Shares
Fidelity Private Shares extends governance and compliance into ongoing equity administration, supporting board workflows, Rule 701, Form 3921, ASC 718 reporting, and related corporate and equity processes.
These are two different compliance surfaces. Cairnul covers the securities work attached to one offering and the authorizations behind it. Fidelity Private Shares covers the reporting obligations that accumulate once employees hold equity, which Cairnul does not address.
Cairnul
Cairnul covers advisor equity as a full sequence rather than a document. An advisor signs the standard FAST, the board consent authorizing the grant is generated and signed, the restricted stock or option agreement follows, and the position then carries its own vesting schedule, its formation date, and its 83(b) task where one applies. One advisor can hold several grants in the same company, each with its own documents, terms, and schedule, never merged.
The reason for that structure is that a signed FAST issues nothing. Stock is issued only by board authorization, so without the consent in between there is a grant nobody authorized, and years later nobody can show how the advisor came to hold what they hold. Option grants carry one more prerequisite: the option pool has to be recorded, with the document behind it, before the grant can complete.
Fidelity Private Shares
Fidelity Private Shares extends into ongoing employee equity administration, including option grants and exercises, vesting, employee self-service, stock transfers, repurchases, and related equity reporting.
For a founder with a raise and a few advisors, Cairnul goes deeper on how each grant was authorized. For a company managing employee and investor equity together, Fidelity Private Shares covers ground Cairnul does not, and employee equity is outside Cairnul entirely.
Cairnul
Cairnul is intentionally focused on the early equity lifecycle, particularly the first 12 to 18 months, and it is explicit about the boundary. A priced round, preferred stock, employee equity programs, secondaries, and later reporting all sit outside it.
Fidelity Private Shares
Fidelity Private Shares positions its platform for private companies from inception through exit, with workflows spanning formation, fundraising, equity management, governance, investor collaboration, and later company events.
The decision therefore depends partly on horizon. Cairnul is centered on the immediate fundraising journey, while Fidelity Private Shares is designed to remain relevant across a much longer one, and a founder who would rather not migrate later may reasonably start there.
Cairnul
Cairnul's close is a defined event with a document behind it. A round opens on a signed board authorization and closes on a Round Closing Record, and closing the round ends the offering without closing the individual SAFEs inside it, each of which has its own closure event and its own termination documents.
That distinction is the one most easily built wrong, and it is why the two are separated in the product. A closed round with active SAFEs inside it is the normal state of affairs, not an inconsistency.
Fidelity Private Shares
Fidelity Private Shares provides a more transaction-oriented financing workflow, including round modeling, term-sheet monitoring, document preparation, stakeholder approvals, and closing processes, with the platform describing financings designed to close in a short window.
For founders, the difference is less about whether either supports fundraising and more about what surrounds it. Fidelity Private Shares is built to move a financing to close quickly across many parties. Cairnul is built to make sure that what closed can be explained afterwards.
Cairnul
Cairnul keeps the fundraising participants and records connected around the Round, and it is deliberately asymmetric. The founder works in a Workspace with the full record, while investors and advisors have a Portfolio holding only what they themselves hold, and no board material appears in it at all.
That boundary is a design decision rather than a gap. Board actions, consents, rosters, and committee membership are founder-side only, so the existence of a consent is never visible to someone whose grant it authorized.
Fidelity Private Shares
Fidelity Private Shares supports a wider group of company stakeholders, including founders, employees, investors, board members, legal teams, and other collaborators, with investor-facing workflows connected to broader equity records.This makes Fidelity Private Shares more relevant when the company needs a shared environment for many stakeholder groups, including the board and outside counsel. Cairnul is deliberately narrower, and its board layer is for the founder alone.
This makes Fidelity Private Shares more relevant when the company needs a shared environment for many stakeholder groups, including the board and outside counsel. Cairnul is deliberately narrower, and its board layer is for the founder alone.
Cairnul
Cairnul has a free tier and a paid one, and the round is the line between them. Free is where you build the cap table, invite the people involved, and see what the raise will need. Nothing is charged until you open a Round. The paid plan is $110 a month billed yearly, or $130 a month for a short round without an annual commitment.
It is priced per company, never per stakeholder and never as a cut of the raise. The investors and advisors you invite pay nothing to take part, and the money never passes through Cairnul at all: it moves directly from the investor's bank account to yours
Fidelity Private Shares
Fidelity Private Shares offers a free tier for early-stage companies, with paid plans as the company scales. It does not publish a full pricing schedule for the broader platform and directs companies toward its sales process, so what a paid tier costs depends on scope and stage.
That free tier is worth weighing directly. A founder raising on SAFEs may be able to run a cap table and data room on Fidelity Private Shares at no cost, which is a genuine reason to start there. Cairnul's free tier shows you the same map without opening a round, and its paid plan is published rather than quoted, so you can see the whole cost before committing to either.
The real world
A first-time founder posted in r/startups, partway through raising a friends and family round on a 506(b) offering. They had already missed their 83(b) election at incorporation and some California state filing deadlines, and were trying to work out how much of a first raise is pitching and how much is paperwork nobody warned them about.
It is a common position to be in. Most fundraising advice covers the pitch. Very little of it covers what has to be in order before anyone says yes.
First-time founder, already started to raisereddit.comhow much of it was pitching versus documents? And is there anything you'd get sorted before you start rather than during?
A solo hardware founder asked whether they could raise a small round from friends and family on a standard YC post-money SAFE, or whether everyone involved had to be an accredited investor. They had read contradictory answers and could not work out which was right.
The replies did not settle it. One said the SAFE only works with accredited investors. Another pointed out that Rule 506 permits up to 35 non-accredited investors. A third said it was a non-issue. All of it from people who had raised.
Can you raise money from family and friends with a YC post-money SAFE?reddit.comI keep hearing mixed things, some people are saying I cant raise from friends and family via a Y combinator SAFE and they must be accredited investors.
Whether you want one system for the whole lifecycle or one that goes deep on the early round, the obligations in these threads exist either way.
Questions founders ask
Cap table management is core, but the platform extends into fundraising, governance, data rooms, financing documents, employee equity, compliance, and broader company-lifecycle workflows.
It offers a free tier for early-stage companies, with paid plans as the company scales, and it does not publish a full pricing schedule for the broader platform. Confirm what is included, and when the free tier ends, directly with Fidelity Private Shares.
Yes. It provides financing workflows including round modeling, term-sheet monitoring, financing documentation, stakeholder approvals, and closing, connected to the company's capitalization data.
It computes who has to sign from the board roster as of the action date, shows that set to the founder to confirm before generating anything, and pins it to the action afterwards. No SAFE can be sent until that authorization is fully signed, and if the investor is also a director the consent routes to the disinterested directors.
No. Cairnul does not perform valuations and does not require one. What it requires is the option pool, recorded with the document behind it, before an option grant can complete. If a valuation document is already in your workspace, Cairnul can read the value and prefill the exercise price for you to review; if not, you enter it yourself, and the grant records which of the two it was.
No. It covers advisor equity through the FAST agreement, the board consent authorizing the grant, and the resulting restricted stock or option agreement with its own vesting. Employee option programs, exercises, transfers, and the reporting that follows are outside it.
When the company needs ongoing cap table administration, employee equity, board workflows across multiple stakeholder groups, financing management beyond SAFEs, compliance reporting, or investor collaboration that extends past the first round.
Your first financing creates more than a cap table entry. It creates investors, documents, approvals, funding records, compliance steps, and ownership changes.
Keep the work around your raise connected with Cairnul.