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Silicon Valley Bank Data Project (view source)
Revision as of 15:20, 1 March 2011
, 15:20, 1 March 2011→The CapMx Data
The CapMx data is a electronic collection of firms' capital tables. In theory it contains the fully detailed capital structure for each firm in the database. The bank works with various law firms, including [http://www.orrick.com/ Orrick] and [http://www.gunder.com/ Gunderson], who 'stored' this data in Excel sheets, as well as venture capital funds and the companies themselves (who 'stored' this data on paper). The bank responded to this situation by creating and maintaining the CapMx database, to store the data on behalf of their various clients, and to facilitate various transactions on this data.
You can fill out a [http://www.svb.com/Products-and-Services/SVB-Analytics/capmx-demo-equity-tracking/ form to view a demo] of the [http://www.eprosper.com/ online interface] into the CapMX data (though I had problems playing with it [EJE]). This online interface provides users with access to their data, and allows the users to conduct a limited number (and range) of transactions on it. The database can accomodate data on the the authorized capital of the firm, individuals/entities associated with this capital, and details on the firm itself. However, there is little to no incentive for the firms or representatives of the firms to fill out any data beyond that which is required to record the capital structure at a particular moment in time. The original capital structure of the firm is inputted by staff at SVB. There is an 'upload template' to guide the staff in this process, and data is sourced from the certificate of incorporation (or certificate of authorization for later issues). However, the input suffers from a number of issues:*There is free text input for the class of stock, so that COMMON, Common, COM, Common1, etc, are all possible ways of recording a Common Stock entry.*It is not possible to close out a series of stock *There is no standardization on the naming of series (SERIES A, etc), and in the case of recapitalizations or reorganizations it is possible to have two series named say SERIES A and SERIES 1.*Preferences may not reflect the most recent series*Preferences are often recorded as a static value (taken from the certificate)*Likewise, the conversion ratio is often recorded as a number, rather than an formula (1:1 conversions are less problematic)*There may be issues with the recording of preference priorities, participation, and payment-in-kind clauses*It would be highly problematic to record capital structures for firms organized as LLCs or LPs (or anything other than a C-CORP or S-CORP).
