Cairnul vs. Rocket Lawyer

Cairnul

Cairnul organizes the fundraising round as the central workflow. Investors, SAFEs, documents, approvals, governance, compliance records, funding information, and equity positions remain connected to the same Round, and each investor moves through a defined sequence with a visible next action.

The consequence is that the raise has one operating record rather than a folder of finished documents. A founder can see who is at which step, which side is being waited on, and what still stands between a signed SAFE and a formed position.

Cairnul

Cairnul generates the fundraising documents rather than offering templates to fill in. It fills four standard, unmodified SAFE forms from a term set the board has authorized, generates the consents that authorize each action, and keeps each document attached to the investor, the round, the evidence behind the sale, and the position it created.

Because the forms are fixed, the numbers are the only variable, and Cairnul handles the parts founders get wrong. The founder enters the discount they mean; the document carries the discount rate, which is a different number, and every label the founder sees states it the way they entered it.

Cairnul

Cairnul's contribution to signing is deciding who has to sign. The signer set is computed from the board roster as it stood on the action date, shown to the founder for confirmation before the document is generated, and pinned to the action so a later board change never rewrites what a past approval meant.

What follows is a gate rather than a reminder. A consent becomes effective on the last required signature and never the first, no SAFE can be sent until the round's authorization is effective, and directors sign without ever creating an account. If the investor is also a director, the consent routes to the disinterested directors instead.

Cairnul

Cairnul begins at incorporation, and it begins by reading the formation paperwork. Documents are uploaded during onboarding so they can assist the questionnaire, categorized into the Data Room, and used to propose the entity record for the founder to confirm, with low-confidence extractions left empty rather than guessed. The action by sole incorporator seeds the board roster, which determines who signs the company's consents later.

It also only works for one kind of company. Cairnul supports Delaware C-Corps incorporated on or after July 1, 1996, because Delaware applies different committee rules to corporations formed before that date. Entity type and state are eligibility gates rather than fields, so an LLC or a corporation formed in another state cannot use Cairnul at all.

Cairnul

Cairnul's compliance work is tied to the raise. The exemption is chosen when the round opens and locks for its life, accreditation is held as a ledger of dated evidence records on the investor's account, verification is required before acceptance under 506(c), and Cairnul prepares Form D and the state notice filings that follow from where each investor lives rather than from where the company is incorporated.

Those filings have their own clocks, and Cairnul distinguishes between a date a regulator set and a date it chose itself. Only the first can make a task overdue, because only the first has a consequence outside the product.

Cairnul

Cairnul's AI Startup Advisor opens as a side panel on whatever page the founder is working on and is given that page and its object as context, so a question about the round being configured or the consent awaiting signature does not have to be explained first. It works from a fixed, defined set of actions, and it never signs, approves, or files anything.

That ceiling is shown rather than assumed. The permission screen displays the three acts no setting reaches, so a founder can tell the difference between something switched off and something the product will not do under any configuration.

Cairnul

Cairnul is explicit about its own limits, and names them at the point the founder hits them. It ships standard, unmodified industry templates rather than authoring custom forms, so a founder who needs negotiated terms is told to work with their own lawyer. If the bylaws restrict committees, Cairnul explains that a bylaw amendment is needed first and stops. If a round was authorized outside the product and no authorization exists, it flags the governance gap and says to consult a lawyer rather than generating a self-serve fix. If an interested transaction would need a committee of two or more disinterested directors the company does not have, it blocks that SAFE and says why. It does not give tax advice, and tax-relevant steps such as the 83(b) election prompt the person to speak to their accountant.

That is the honest version of what a founder gets: a product that runs the ordinary path properly and tells you clearly when you have left it, rather than one that improvises around a legal question.

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, so a round made of twenty small cheques costs the same as one made of two, and the money never passes through Cairnul at all: it moves directly from the investor's bank account to yours.