How Kapitable is organised

Project, company, shareholder — what each one is, where you actually spend your time, and the three things people get wrong.

Overview

Three objects, nesting outwards from the thing you work in every day. Get the shape right once and every later lesson has somewhere to attach — most of the questions that start "where do I find…" are really questions about this model.

There is no click path in this lesson. It is the model, plus the three corrections that save the most time.

What you'll learn

What each of the three objects represents
Why a project is the one you will spend your time in
The three things people get wrong, and what to do instead

The model

Project — the workspace for the LBO as a whole, and where you will spend your time. One project holds the entire structure of one LBO: its companies, its shareholders, its events, and its running processes.

Company — a legal entity inside the project's structure. A typical build-up project holds the BidCo and one or more ManCos, and grows as add-ons arrive.

Shareholder — an individual or legal entity that holds, or is about to hold, securities in one or more of the project's companies.

The three things people get wrong

Shareholders belong to the project, not to a company. There is one shareholder record per person or entity for the whole LBO, listing the companies they hold in. This is deliberate: a participant subscribing across three ManCos is one person with three positions, not three records. Each company also has its own shareholders view — that is the same people, filtered to that company.

A project is one LBO, not one company. It is tempting to read "project" as "company", because a project usually carries the platform company's name. The BidCo and every ManCo are companies inside one project. If you find yourself about to create a second project for a ManCo, what you want is a second company.

Your role does not follow you between projects. Project roles — Admin, Editor, Viewer — are scoped to the specific project. The same person can be an Editor in one project and a Viewer in another.

What you will not see

Projects are provisioned for you, and you arrive in one already made. When you sign in you see the projects you have rights to — so the first object you meet is the project, and that is the one worth understanding.