How does your equity compare? Help build the benchmark

Getting ready to raise? Wondering how your cap table compares to companies like yours?

You're not the only one asking. Ownership questions tend to surface at pivotal moments: heading into a raise, building out a team, or quietly second-guessing your own stake.

The trouble is, there's no real benchmark to check yourself against. The data exists of course. It's just not disclosed.

What do you want to know about equity at companies your size? Tell us, and you'll be first to get the benchmark that doesn't exist yet; real data from similar-stage companies, so you can negotiate, hire, and raise with confidence.

Complete the form

Why we’re doing this

Right now, founders make equity decisions in the dark. We're here to switch the lights on.

BGV is Europe’s leading tech for good VC, backing ambitious founders using technology to create positive impact at scale.

For mission-led founders, who holds a stake matters as much as what the business does. That's why B Lab wants 40% of B Corps owned by non-executive employees.

Vestd is a ShareTech platform which thousands of companies like yours use to distribute equity with confidence.

Together, we're building the first ownership dataset for early-stage tech-for-good founders, so you're no longer guessing. Ground your decisions in comparable data from companies at a similar stage, industry, and team size.

We have some proprietary data, sure. The average employee option pool represents 16.7% of a company's total equity, for instance, and a typical vesting schedule runs four years with a 12-month cliff.

But that still doesn't paint a full picture.

Why now

It's a good moment to ask. In the tax year ending 2024, 20,370 UK companies operated tax-advantaged share schemes, double the number a decade ago, with more on the way as the EMI scheme expands.

Employees pocketed an estimated £790m in Income Tax relief and £500m in NIC relief as a result.

Companies are staying private for longer (median IPO age of 14 years in 2024, up from four in the dot-com era), which means employees and investors are waiting longer to see any return on their shares.

That's pushed more people towards informal secondary sales, with volumes hitting $240 billion globally in 2025, up 48% year on year.

PISCES, the government's new framework for private share trading, is a direct response to that liquidity gap, giving shareholders, employees included, a more regulated way to sell.

Ownership is shifting fast. It's happening in plain sight, but the details stay out of reach.

Help us build the benchmark

Two minutes of your time helps build something founders everywhere will use to make smarter calls on equity. The more of you who take part, the stronger that benchmark becomes.

Complete the form, and you'll be first in line for the results.

Register your interest

Know another founder who'd want in on this? Send it their way. Questions, or want to get involved another way? Drop alicia.p@vestd.com a line.

Thank you.

In partnership with Bethnal Green Ventures.