Cake already made managing equity simple.
Cap tables, 409As, option grants, the compliance maze — you turned the most error-prone job in a startup into something a founder can actually run. That’s the hard part, and you nailed it. But all of that is built for the people who manage equity. The employee — the person whose equity it actually is — gets a leftover, read-only portal: a number they don’t understand and never open twice. The part you haven’t designed: making the equity people own feel like something.
I’m Carl. I run Sunday, product design for fintech, ex-Swedbank. I kept thinking about how Cake could turn that dead employee number into a stake you understand and feel — so I redesigned it. It’s live, just below.
The concept, running
It’s live. Drag the slider, click through it.
How I’d make the equity people own finally worth understanding.
The platform is the moat — you own the cap table. But the employee side is where it’s thin: a dollar figure that means nothing, a portal nobody returns to. The fix isn’t a new product. It’s redesigning the employee experience — what your stake could become, how the number is figured, watching it grow, and exercising without the panic — on the surfaces Cake already owns. The tell: you already built a ‘what could it be worth’ calculator. You just buried it in a side panel.
Four decisions, and why:
Your stake could be worth
$585,600
29×the $20,250 you’ve vested today.
See what you’re building toward
Cake opens an employee on a balance they don’t understand. I open on the one question that matters: what’s this worth to me? Drag the exit valuation and your stake updates live — the abstract number becomes a future you can feel, the moment you arrive.
How that’s figured
- Share price at exit
- $50.00
- 12,000 shares, gross
- $600,000
- Cost to exercise
- −$14,400
- Your net
- $585,600
The number, made legible
An equity figure with no math behind it is just a claim. So every stake shows its work — share price at exit, your shares, the cost to exercise, your net — in one glance. The employee stops trusting a number they can’t check and starts understanding what they own.
Your equity over time
$20,250 today
Watch your stake grow
A static balance feels like nothing. So I plot your equity’s value over time — vesting plus the company’s growth — from your grant to today to where it’s headed. It stops being a number in a portal and starts feeling like something that’s becoming.
Vesting
6,750 of 12,000 vested
Vesting and exercise, demystified
Exercising is where equity gets scary — strike prices, AMT, deadlines. So the hardest moment gets the clearest design: what you can exercise, what it costs, what it’s worth, and the tax — explained before you commit, never assumed. The intimidating part, made calm.
Any cap-table tool can show an employee a number. The work is making the equity they own feel like the reason they joined.
A bit about me.
I’m Carl. I run Sunday, a product-design studio for fintech. Before this, Swedbank, one of the Nordics’ largest banks. I work embedded, like part of the team, from first research to the final interface. No handoffs.
I built this from the outside, on your product and positioning alone — no brief, no access. You’re clearly product-led and brand-strong, so take it as a conversation-starter, not a critique. With your real users and data behind it, it gets a lot sharper.
“He champions user-centered design without ever losing sight of how it drives real business outcomes. That balance is rare.”
Joackim Zwahlen — UX Lead, Swedbank
That’s the idea.
I made this because the problem stuck with me — the person whose equity it is shouldn’t get the worst seat in the product. If it’s useful, grab 30 minutes below and I’ll walk you through where I’d take it. If you want it real, a two-week sprint makes the employee layer production-ready in Cake. If not, no hard feelings — I’ll be rooting for you either way.