Capital Waterfall Model

Planning a Corporate Financing or M&A?

Then you might benefit from model analysis that calculates future payouts to security holders after investors have exercised their legal rights.

Hint: It may not be what you expect from fully diluted.

The Challenge

Understand the Financial Ramifications of Term Sheet Agreements

If you're estimating your expected payout based on fully diluted ownership, you could be in for a surprise. When your cap table includes convertible notes, preferred stock, warrants, and options, the math gets complicated fast.

We Supplement Other Cap Table Management Tools

Most cap table software handles ownership tracking well, but complex legal provisions require specialized modeling.

We Support Legal Counsel

Understanding the legal provisions is essential, but translating them into accurate financial projections requires a different skill set.

We Help You Make Decisions with Scenario Planning

We can help you evaluate 'what-ifs?' across different valuations, term sheets provisions, and more.

Use Cases

Two Situations. One Solution.

Whether you're selling your company or preparing a funding round, reports from the Capital Waterfall Model shows exactly what consideration each security holder will ultimately receive after factoring in investment document provisions.

M&A Analysis

How much cash will you put in your pocket if you sell the company?

  • Distribution waterfall by valuation scenario
  • Fully diluted vs. actual payout comparison
  • Security class distribution charts
  • Stakeholder-level breakdowns

Financing Analysis

How will this potential financing deal impact your future payout?

  • Sell now vs. finance & sell later comparison
  • Dilution impact by security holder
  • Term sheet scenario modeling
  • Board and stakeholder approval reports
Benefits

Make Better Deals with Better Analysis

Avoid Bad Deals

The deal you make today determines what you put in your pocket later.

Gain an Information Advantage

Be confident in what you're agreeing to before you sign.

Reduce Deal Costs

Validated data supporting each report reduces back-and-forth with advisors.

Optimize Deal Structuring

Understand the impact of each provision on stakeholder payouts.

Accelerate Closings

Build consensus from key stakeholders with clear, accurate reports.

Professional Deliverables

Reports designed to support your entire deal team, from board to counsel.

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

TILT Analytics is a professional services firm delivering the most accurate and comprehensive reports to guide senior executives and/or their advisors in financing transactions and M&A deals. Our Capital Waterfall Model is configured with your company's actual securities data and legal provisions so that our proprietary Rational Investor Algorithm can predict how each security holder will apply their legal rights to maximize their own economic return.

Our Rational Holder Algorithm simulates what happens at the closing table with each party vying to maximize their share of the proceeds by applying their legal rights. The model automatically and concurrently applies for every security the impact of accrued interest & dividends, conversion ratios, anti-dilution adjustments, vesting, net-exercise calculations, and more. As a result, we accurately model the actual proceeds each security holder receives, which can be far different than assumed based on fully-diluted percentages.

We work with executives of late-stage venture backed companies, partners of law firms, and other corporate advisors. We focus on businesses that have completed multiple rounds of financing where different investors have complex and conflicting rights and interests. If your cap table includes convertible notes, preferred stock with preferential treatment, warrants, or options vesting, then fully-diluted ownership is likely a misleading metric.

The Capital Waterfall Model is most relevant when planning a new financing capital raise (because the deal you make today has ramifications when the business is sold) or when evaluating a possible M&A transaction.

Popular cap table management software systems are capable of running projections for companies with simple cap tables, but when there are multiple financing rounds involved with each investor entitled to certain legal rights, such as preference payments, anti-dilution, dividends, debt to share conversions, these existing tools are unable to properly calculate the impact of such provisions on how much cash you put in your pocket.

Simply export your company's security data from Carta, Pulley, or other cap table management software to Excel and send it to us. We can load your securities list into our scenario modeling engine, and our legal review team can work with you or your law firm to discuss security class attributes and buried legal rights.

We understand that deal leaders need accurate information that can be clearly reviewed by counsel and deal advisors. We provide supporting validation reports showing the calculation logic used in generating each deal report. These reports enable the entire deal team to drill down and verify any assumption that impacts who gets what and why in the distribution waterfall.

The implementation cost depends on the complexity of the cap table, the quality and organization of the investment documents, and the number of unique formulas to be configured into the Capital Waterfall Model. We can provide a proposal based on these factors. Schedule a free call to discuss your specific situation.

Let's Discuss

Schedule a free consultation to discuss your cap table and see how we can provide clarity for your next financing or M&A transaction.

What You'll Get

  • Free 1-hour consultation
  • Quick turnaround on drafts & modifications
  • High efficiency working relationship
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