What to Replace When You Replace Pulley

Migrating off Pulley? Story.law's Aegis platform rebuilds your cap table, data room, and equity practice from your actual documents. Try free for 7 days.

Pulley shutting down forced a lot of founders into a question they were not expecting to answer this quarter: what do you actually need in a cap table platform, and what have you been paying for that you never used? We have spent the last several weeks on back-to-back calls with founders working through the migration, and the same questions keep coming up. This guide is the long-form version of those conversations. It walks through the components of a working cap table, what you actually need to replicate when you leave Pulley, and how Aegis, the legal operations platform from Story LLP, handles each piece as an AI-native law firm rather than a software vendor you still have to hire lawyers to operate correctly.

What a Cap Table Actually Is

A cap table is not a spreadsheet. It is the running ledger of who owns what in your company, backed by the documents that make each row legally effective. Every share, option, SAFE, warrant, and convertible note on your cap table exists because a specific document was signed by specific people on a specific date, and those documents together form the capitalization history of the company. When founders say they need to replace Pulley, they usually mean they need to replace the visualization on top. What they actually need to replace is the underlying event ledger, the document library that supports it, and the practice of keeping both current. At Story LLP, we build that ledger from your documents rather than asking you to type it in.

Why Replacing Pulley Correctly Matters Right Now

When a cap table platform goes away, founders have a narrow window to move their data somewhere that will not corrupt it in transit. Investors, acquirers, and future counsel will rely on this record for years. A bad migration surfaces as a diligence problem two years later when someone cannot find the board consent that authorized a specific option grant, or when a converted SAFE shows the wrong price per share. The pressure to pick a replacement fast is real, but the cost of picking one that requires you to keep paying a lawyer $700 an hour to update it correctly is worse. Aegis was built because founders kept asking us to update Carta and Pulley for them the right way, and we opened those products and could not justify the workflow they impose. We built the alternative from the documents up.

Common Challenges in Replacing Pulley and How Aegis Handles Them

Most of the pain in a Pulley migration is not the cap table numbers. It is everything attached to them. Here are the challenges we hear on almost every call.

Key Problems Founders Encounter During Migration

Document sprawl across tools: Signed documents live in Pulley, DocuSign, email, Slack, Rippling, and a shared drive. There is no single source of truth.
Manual data re-entry: Most replacement platforms ask you to retype every stakeholder, security, and transaction. That is where errors get introduced.
Board consents that got skipped: Option grants issued without a matching board consent, or SAFEs converted without proper documentation, show up as unresolved rows.
Convertibles that were never fully mapped: SAFEs and notes with MFN provisions, discount rates, and valuation caps that no one has tracked across rounds.
Terminations that never propagated: Employees who left but whose vesting was never stopped, or whose post-termination exercise window was not enforced.
Warrants and unusual securities: Investor warrants adapted by counsel that do not fit a standard template.

Aegis handles these by treating your documents as the source of truth. You export the zip file from Pulley's data room function, drop it into Aegis, and we ingest everything. Our lawyer-in-the-loop process figures out what each document is, what the key dates are, whether the right people signed it for it to be legally effective, and only then uses it to build your event ledger and data room. AI makes a first pass on content and extracts it into a graph. Humans review. That is why onboarding takes about one to two days for every 50 material documents, and we do not charge onboarding fees during the current Pulley migration window.

Key Components of Your Cap Table You Must Replace

When founders ask what they need to look for in a Pulley replacement, the honest answer is that they need every one of these components, backed by documents, and updated as new documents get signed. Missing any of them creates a diligence problem later.

The Components That Actually Matter

Stakeholder ledger: Every founder, employee, contractor, investor, advisor, and safeholder, with their contact details and their relationship to each security they hold.
Security types supported: Common stock, preferred stock, RSAs, NSOs, ISOs, SAFEs, convertible notes, warrants, and options plan tracking. Aegis supports every kind of startup security we have seen in a twenty year practice.
Transaction history: Issuances, exercises, repurchases, contributions back, SAFE conversions, secondary sales, terminations, and vesting acceleration.
Vesting schedules with a data visualization: Cliffs, monthly vesting, acceleration triggers, and current vested versus unvested for every grant.
Convertible instrument mapping: SAFEs and notes with valuation caps, discount rates, MFN provisions pulled out and tracked so a conversion is not a scramble.
Document library tied to every row: The original option agreement, the exercise agreement that turned it into stock, the board consent that authorized it, the equity incentive plan, the current 409A. Every row must trace back to the document driving it.
Board consent generation: A working practice for authorizing new grants without asking you to draft the consent, attach it separately, and hope nothing duplicates.
Pro forma modeling: Scenario modeling for new rounds, exit waterfalls, and dilution analysis when a raise is on the horizon.
Counsel access: A dedicated window into the company for your lawyers so they are not digging through email for files, which cuts billable hours.
Excel export in a lawyer-friendly format: On demand, whenever an investor or counsel asks.
Termination handling in one action: Terminate the employee, stop vesting, and generate a severance agreement from the same button, rather than as three separate maneuvers.

Aegis covers all of these because the cap table surface sits on top of a graph database where each document exists as a node with relationships to every stakeholder and every security. The visualization is downstream of the data. That is the opposite of how Carta and Pulley work, and it is why we can promise less onboarding work and less ongoing maintenance.

How Founders Transitioning off Pulley Use Aegis

We have run the same migration dozens of times over the last several weeks. Here is how it actually works when you move from Pulley to Aegis.

Document ingestion from anywhere: Upload directly, email documents to your dedicated inbox, connect Slack to send documents through chat, or connect Linear so tasks automatically become matters.
Pulley zip export into Aegis: Export everything from Pulley's data room, drop the zip into Aegis, and our team runs the processing.
Automatic document sorting and renaming: Each file gets classified, renamed, and checked for legal effectiveness before it powers the cap table or lands in the data room.
Data room built to investor diligence structure: We use the structure of a due diligence request list from investor counsel we work with, so what you build is diligence-ready by default.
Cap table and data room from one dataset: Common stock remaining, plan stock remaining, vesting visualizations, and every driving document are one click away for you and for counsel.
New grants end to end: Issuing options runs a full process. Aegis checks that you have an equity incentive plan and a current 409A, warns you if you do not, offers a fixed fee to fix it, and then drafts the option grant, the board consent, and prepares everything for signature. E-signing is built in as a click-through agreement, which is the most enforceable form our lawyers will do short of paper and pen.
Matter management for everything else: A timeline view of every matter, documents attached, tasks assigned to your lawyer, ping counsel for an update inside the app.

The difference is that we are engaged as your law firm to do this work. Aegis is the practice, not just the interface. Software handles operations, lawyers handle judgment.

Best Practices for a Clean Pulley Migration

We have watched founders get this right and get this wrong. Here is what separates the two.

Export everything, not just the cap table CSV: The documents in Pulley's data room are the record. Take the zip.
Do the migration during your Aegis 7-day trial: Upload, see how it looks, and decide before you are charged. If you need more time, we extend Pulley migrators up to six weeks.
Keep a current 409A on file: A 409A expires annually. If yours is 12 months old or more, refresh it before you try to issue new grants. Aegis offers 409As on a flat fee basis when you need one.
Reconcile before you cut over: Take the free call with us, look at the ingested output together, and flag anything that does not match your understanding. Fix it once, not every quarter.
Record terminations through the platform: Click the terminate button once. Vesting stops, post-termination exercise windows start, and a severance agreement can be generated from the same action.
Use the counsel access instead of forwarding files: Give your lawyers the window into the company. They stop billing you to hunt for documents.
Prepare rather than pay later: A small amount of ongoing hygiene during the year prevents a scramble that costs ten to twenty times more at a raise or acquisition. Aegis works well for founders who would rather prepare than pay later.

Advantages of Running Your Cap Table Through Aegis

The measurable difference between a cap table platform and an AI-native law firm running your equity practice shows up in three dimensions we track for every client.

Money saved: We are 70% more affordable than BigLaw for the same work. Break-even happens on one avoided mistake, whether that is a mispriced SAFE conversion, a missed board consent, or a post-termination exercise window that did not enforce.
Time saved: Board consents that take 30 minutes to draft in-house take 30 seconds in Aegis. Onboarding an employee, checking prerequisites, issuing options, and generating the board consent runs as one process rather than three.
Anxiety eliminated: You stop worrying about whether the cap table matches the documents, because the cap table is built from the documents. You stop worrying about whether a lawyer is going to catch the error at diligence, because a lawyer is in the loop already.
No data resale: We treat your data the way a law firm treats it. Extra privileged, extra confidential. We are never selling it.
Cancel anytime: This is not a Carta situation where you have to send a 90-day notice novel. Cancel the subscription whenever it stops working for you.
Direct founder access: You are talking to Jessica and the lawyers who built this, not a support queue.

How Aegis Replaces the Pulley Practice, Not Just the Interface

Aegis replaces Clerky, Carta, DocuSign, ChatGPT for legal questions, and BigLaw ad hoc work in one practice. The core difference is that we do not ask you to tell the software what your documents are. We figure it out. Your document, including its component parts, exists as a node in a graph with relationships to all of your stakeholders and every kind of security you have issued. That graph is the base for the cap table visualization, the data room, and the pro forma modeling on higher-tier packages. What you do is give us your documents. What we do is everything else. That is why the differentiator against Carta and Pulley is that Aegis is built from your documents' reality, not your best guess or your sweat.

Pricing is straightforward. A cap table only package runs $199/mo ($2,000/yr). Our suggested startup package, Aegis Start, is $349/mo, or $320/mo ($3,839/yr) on the annual plan with two months free. Aegis Raise, which adds pro forma modeling and heavier support, is $1,000/mo, or $10,000/yr on the annual plan with two months free. For Pulley migrators specifically, we are waiving the standard $1,000 onboarding fee and extending the trial up to six weeks so you can move over while your Pulley subscription runs out.

Design your perfect package at story.law.

Final Thoughts on Replacing Pulley

If you are the kind of founder who would rather prepare than pay later, Aegis works. If you would rather take the risk and pay ten or twenty times more to fix it during a raise, we are not the right fit and we will tell you that on the call. There is a small amount of ongoing work to keep the record current, and it saves massive amounts of legal bills for you and your investors down the line. Replacing Pulley is a chance to stop treating your cap table as a visualization you pay a lawyer to update, and start treating it as the legal record of your company, run by a firm that dogfoods the product every day.

Try it free for 7 days at story.law.

FAQs About Replacing Pulley With Aegis

What is Aegis and how does it replace Pulley?

Aegis is the legal operations platform from Story LLP, an AI-native law firm. It replaces Pulley by rebuilding your cap table from your actual documents rather than from data you retype. Upload your Pulley data room export, and Aegis ingests, classifies, and structures every document into a graph with relationships to your stakeholders and securities. The cap table, data room, and pro forma modeling all sit on that graph. Unlike Pulley or Carta, Aegis includes lawyer-in-the-loop review, so you are not paying a separate firm to operate the software correctly.

Why do founders need a full practice, not just cap table software, after Pulley?

Because every row on a cap table is only valid if the document behind it is legally effective. Founders who replaced Pulley with another software-only vendor still had to hire counsel to review each issuance, draft board consents, and manage terminations correctly. That is a hidden cost that runs into thousands per month at BigLaw rates. Aegis is 70% more affordable than BigLaw and includes the lawyers in the subscription, so board consents that used to take 30 minutes take 30 seconds.

What are the key components of a cap table Aegis rebuilds during migration?

Aegis rebuilds the full stakeholder ledger, every security type including common, preferred, RSAs, NSOs, ISOs, SAFEs, notes, and warrants, the full transaction history, vesting schedules with data visualization, convertible instrument mapping including MFN provisions and valuation caps, the underlying document library tied to every row, board consent generation, counsel access, Excel export in a lawyer-friendly format, and termination handling as one action. Pro forma modeling and exit waterfall scenarios are available on the Aegis Raise package for founders preparing to raise.

How long does migrating from Pulley to Aegis actually take?

About one to two days for every 50 material documents you upload. For a small company, that is often within a business day. For a company with 6,000 documents, it is three to four days on our end. We recommend planning for one week end to end. Aegis includes a 7-day trial, and for Pulley migrators specifically we extend that up to six weeks so you can run both systems in parallel until the transition is clean. We are also waiving the standard $1,000 onboarding fee for Pulley migrators.

Does Aegis support warrants, RSAs, NSOs, ISOs, and SAFE conversions?

Yes to all of them. Aegis supports every kind of startup security we have seen in a twenty year practice. Warrants are supported as long as you have them. Drafting new warrants is custom lawyer work, but ingesting and tracking existing warrants, including ones adapted by investor counsel, is standard. SAFEs get mapped with their MFN status, valuation cap, and discount rate. When you run a conversion, Aegis handles it as a documented transaction that flows through to the cap table and the data room automatically. The only edge case we do not automate is highly unusual recapitalizations where counsel moved shares into a random trust structure.

How does Aegis handle 409A valuations and equity plan prerequisites?

Aegis offers 409A valuations on a flat fee basis. Most founders do not need a marked-up bundled 409A, so we do not force everyone to pay for one. You want a current 409A within 12 months at all times. When you go to issue options, Aegis checks that you have a Delaware C-Corp, an equity incentive plan, and a current 409A on file. If you are missing any of these, we warn you and offer a fixed fee to fix it through our system. If you already have them, they are fulfilled the moment you upload the documents during migration.

What does Aegis cost compared to Pulley or Carta?

A cap table only package is $199/mo or $2,000/yr. Aegis Start, our suggested package for most companies, is $349/mo or $320/mo ($3,839/yr) on the annual plan with two months free. Aegis Raise, which adds pro forma modeling for companies preparing to raise, is $1,000/mo or $10,000/yr with the same two months free on annual. Compared to running a practice through Carta plus BigLaw ad hoc work, Aegis is 70% more affordable than BigLaw and break-even happens on one avoided mistake. Cancel anytime. Design your perfect package at story.law.