BoardWorks · Planned 2027
The boardroom and the cap table, in one place.
BoardWorks is a planned governance suite that brings the board portal, the capitalisation table and statutory reporting together — so meeting papers, ownership and the numbers under discussion stop living in three unconnected systems.
- Board
- Equity
- Reporting
- Compliance
- Audit
- Stage
- Planned
- Portfolio bay
- Bay 09
- Focus area
- Quality & Assurance Lab
- Part of
- The Collective Foundry
The problem
Why BoardWorks exists.
Board papers live in one system, the cap table in another, and the financials in a third. Someone reconciles them by hand before every meeting, and a board ends up discussing a snapshot that was already out of date when it was pasted in.
Who it's for
Founders, company secretaries, CFOs and boards of growing companies who are running governance across a board portal, a cap-table tool and a spreadsheet.
The opportunity
The market BoardWorks is built for.
The category is deliberately split today: board portals such as Nasdaq Boardvantage and Convene on one side, cap-table managers such as Carta on the other, and financial reporting somewhere else again. BoardWorks is positioned on the join — one place where the meeting, the ownership and the numbers reconcile — rather than on beating any one of them at its own specialism.
The numbers
What the category is worth.
-
Board portal software
$3.7B (2026) → $7.2B (2032)
11.8% CAGR
Source: Research and Markets
Several houses cluster at 11–12%, so this category is comparatively well bounded.
-
Equity and cap-table software
$2.1B (2026) → $4.1B (2031)
14.6% CAGR
Source: Mordor Intelligence
A separate purchase today, which is the thesis. 2026 estimates range $0.8B to $2.1B by scope; shown separately, never added to the line above.
These categories overlap. They are shown separately as indicators of adjacent economic activity, and are never added together — a sum of overlapping markets does not describe a real opportunity.
Why now
The timing behind it.
- 01
Companies reach real governance obligations far earlier than they used to, and with smaller teams to carry them.
- 02
Equity structures are more complex than a spreadsheet safely holds, well before a company is large.
- 03
Boards increasingly expect current figures in the room rather than a pack assembled weeks earlier.
What it does
The capabilities inside BoardWorks.
Board and meeting portal
A secure home for agendas, papers and minutes, with voting, signature workflows and task tracking.
Cap table and shareholders
A live equity ledger: ownership, funding rounds, share register and shareholder communications.
Compliance and reporting
Statutory and financial reporting with an audit trail, and notice of governance deadlines before they pass.
Financials in the room
Accounting data flows through, so the board sees current position and KPIs during the meeting.
Where we start
The smallest valuable first step.
- Who it is for first
- Founders, company secretaries and CFOs of growth companies
- The first thing it does
- Board workflow and the cap table in one record, so the ownership numbers in the pack are the ownership numbers of record.
- Likely commercial model
- Per company, tiered by board size and entity count
- What has to be proven
- That the join is worth switching two incumbent tools for.
What makes it innovative
Why BoardWorks is different.
One record, not three
Meeting papers, ownership and reporting reconcile because they are the same source.
Current by construction
Financials flow through rather than being pasted in, so the pack cannot silently go stale.
Audit trail throughout
Decisions, votes and ownership changes are evidenced as they happen, not reconstructed later.
The usual way
A board portal, a cap-table tool and a spreadsheet, reconciled by hand before every meeting.
The foundry way
One governance record where the meeting, the ownership and the numbers already agree.
How it compares
BoardWorks against the board and ownership tools companies currently buy separately.
Every competitor cell below is drawn from that vendor's own official site on the date shown. Where a capability was not documented there, it is marked Not publicly verified rather than Not available — absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
| Capability | BoardWorks Not built — scoped for Wave 1 | BoardPro Premium / Ultimate (AI, voting and e-signature sit in the higher tiers) | Diligent Enterprise (Boards plus Entities) | Carta Grow and above (409A sits at Grow or higher) | Pulley Published plans |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Running the board Agenda, board packs and distribution Table stakes. Worth comparing on depth, not on existence. | Planned Depth 0/5 · target 4/5 Parity target. Board packs are table stakes and not where this wins; matching the category is enough. | Advanced Shipped Depth 5/5 Cloned agendas, compiled pack with hyperlinked contents, secure distribution | Advanced Shipped Depth 5/5 Smart Builder drafts a board book from source files; Smart Book Summary condenses it | Not publicly verified Depth 1/5 | Not publicly verified Depth 1/5 |
| Running the board Minutes, decisions and action tracking The record a board is legally judged on, and the most automated part of the category. | Planned Depth 0/5 · target 4/5 Parity target. BoardPro and Diligent are both strong here; being equal is the bar. | Advanced Shipped Depth 5/5 Live minuting per item, searchable decision register, actions with reminders, AI first draft | Advanced Shipped Depth 5/5 Smart Minutes, plus dashboards on action completion and committee health | Not publicly verified Depth 1/5 | Not publicly verified Depth 1/5 |
| Running the board Resolutions, voting and e-signature Separates a document store from a system decisions actually pass through. | Planned Depth 0/5 · target 4/5 Parity target, with the difference that a resolution should update the register it affects. | Higher tier Shipped Depth 4/5 Documented, but voting, e-signature and flying minutes sit in Premium and Ultimate | Included Shipped Depth 4/5 Entity documents route into Boards for approvals and e-signature | Limited Shipped Depth 3/5 Board consents are documented, but scoped to equity and 409A approvals rather than the board agenda | Limited Shipped Depth 2/5 Signature collection is documented for SAFE issuance, not for board resolutions |
| Who owns what Cap table and share register The stickiest record a company owns, and today a different vendor entirely. | Planned Depth 0/5 · target 5/5 Must match a dedicated platform, because a company will not move its register for anything less. The hardest row to earn. | Not publicly verified Depth 1/5 | Not publicly verified Depth 1/5 | Advanced Shipped Depth 5/5 The category reference point | Advanced Shipped Depth 5/5 All equity types, custom and performance vesting, validation rules against over-issuance |
| Who owns what Scenario and dilution modelling Whether ownership can be reasoned about, not merely recorded. | Planned Depth 0/5 · target 4/5 Carta and Pulley are deep here. Matching the common cases is realistic; exceeding them is not the plan. | Not publicly verified Depth 1/5 | Not publicly verified Depth 1/5 | Advanced Shipped Depth 5/5 Sensitivity and breakpoint analysis, waterfall, side-by-side term sheets, pro-forma tables | Advanced Shipped Depth 5/5 SAFE stacking, pro-rata, side-by-side what-ifs exportable as board presentations |
| The numbers in the room Current financials in the board pack Whether a board discusses live numbers or a snapshot pasted in weeks earlier. | Planned Depth 0/5 · target 5/5 A differentiator. Only Diligent evidences this, via one accounting integration; current numbers in the meeting is a core claim here. | Not publicly verified Depth 1/5 | Included Shipped Depth 4/5 NetSuite integration flows cash, AR and AP into board-ready reports | Not publicly verified Depth 1/5 | Not publicly verified Depth 1/5 |
| The record of record Entity and statutory records Where a group of companies, not just a board, has to be administered. | Planned Depth 0/5 · target 3/5 Deliberately not a target. Diligent owns multi-entity administration and this is not the wedge. | Not publicly verified Depth 1/5 Sub-committees are documented; statutory entity records are not | Advanced Shipped Depth 5/5 Group structure generated from ownership data, filterable by jurisdiction; AI entity reports | Not publicly verified Depth 2/5 | Not publicly verified Depth 1/5 |
| The record of record One record across board, ownership and financials The whole thesis: whether the pack, the register and the accounts can disagree. | Planned Depth 0/5 · target 5/5 The thesis. If board, ownership and financials are not one record, the product has no reason to exist. | Not publicly verified Depth 1/5 | Limited Shipped Depth 3/5 Board and entity records are genuinely joined; the equity register is not part of it | Limited Shipped Depth 2/5 Ownership and valuations are one record; the board cycle sits outside it | Not publicly verified Depth 1/5 |
Who each tool is actually best for
- BoardWorks Not built — scoped for Wave 1
Not a buying option. Every row below is target specification, with an achieved depth of zero, because nothing is built.
- BoardPro Premium / Ultimate (AI, voting and e-signature sit in the higher tiers)
Small and mid-sized boards that want the meeting cycle — agenda, pack, minutes, actions — run properly without enterprise weight.
Source: Features — agendas, packs, minutes, actions , AI Minutes — transcript to structured draft , AI Assistant — answers cite their source documents
- Diligent Enterprise (Boards plus Entities)
Large and regulated organisations administering many entities and jurisdictions, where governance, risk and the board calendar are one programme.
Source: Diligent Boards — GovernAI suite, Smart Builder, Smart Minutes , Diligent Entities — group structure, AI reports, approvals into Boards , Subsidiary Governance Agent and AI Board Member
- Carta Grow and above (409A sits at Grow or higher)
Venture-backed companies that want ownership, valuations and equity administration handled by the category leader.
Source: Finance — scenario modelling, waterfall, pro-forma cap tables , Post-fundraising setup — board consent templates and approval workflow , 409A valuations for late-stage private companies
- Pulley Published plans
Founders who want SAFE stacking, pro-rata planning and dilution modelled against live equity data rather than a spreadsheet.
Source: Cap table management — equity types, vesting, validation rules , Cap table for every stage — SAFEs, signatures, 409A, ASC 718
How this comparison is made
- Comparative claims follow ACCC guidance: they must be accurate, fair and supportable on reasonable grounds, judged on the overall impression rather than line by line.
- A competitor capability is only marked as present where its official site documents it. Where it was not documented the status is “Not publicly verified” — not “Not available”. This is a desk review of published material, not a hands-on benchmark.
- Board portals and cap-table platforms are not rivals of each other; they are two separate purchases a company makes today. Showing them in one table is the argument BoardWorks is making, and the rows where each side is unverified are the gap it would close.
- BoardWorks is not built. Every one of its cells shows delivery “Planned” and an achieved depth of zero. A target depth beside it is the specification being built toward, never a claim about today.
- Depth scores (0–5) are our own analytical assessment of how deep a capability runs. They are not vendor-published figures, and they are separate from the evidence status beside them.
- A target is published only for our own column, and only with a stated reason. Two rows are deliberately not top-targeted: entity records, which Diligent owns, and dilution modelling, where matching Carta and Pulley on the common cases is the realistic ambition.
The approach
How we build it.
BoardWorks is a planned governance platform combining a board portal, capitalisation-table management and compliance reporting in one place.
It covers the administration around a board — scheduling, agendas, papers, minutes, votes and signatures — alongside the share register, funding history and ownership changes.
Because the equity ledger and the accounting data sit behind the same portal, the numbers a board discusses are the numbers of record rather than a pasted snapshot.
The outcome
What changes when it's in place.
- Board papers and the cap table stop disagreeing.
- Governance deadlines are seen before they are missed.
- A board meeting runs on the numbers of record.
What could go wrong
The risks, named.
-
Diligent and BoardPro are mature, and board software is a trust purchase with long cycles.
Do not compete on board packs. Compete on the join across board, ownership and financial record, which neither currently spans.
-
Cap tables carry legal weight, and errors in them are expensive.
Position as the operating and workflow layer, never a substitute for lawyers, auditors, company secretaries or a registry.
-
Jurisdictional compliance differs by market and is costly to maintain.
Start in one jurisdiction properly rather than several approximately.
The open questions
What would need to be true.
-
A company will move its cap table, which is the stickiest record it owns.
How we would know: Measure how many adopters migrate ownership rather than only board papers.
-
The unified record is worth more than two best-of-breed tools.
How we would know: Test whether boards actually use live financials in the meeting, or revert to a static pack.
A scenario
What this could become.
$15M–$30M
at $5M ARR, on 3–6× ARR
A scenario, not a valuation, a forecast or an offer. It states what the venture might be worth IF it reached the revenue shown, at multiples other private SaaS businesses have transacted at. Nothing here has revenue today.
Published private-SaaS transaction benchmarks, checked 2026-10-12: private deals broadly transact at 2–7× ARR, with medians around 3–5×. These come from advisory firms and marketplaces rather than audited transaction data.
How it fits the foundry
A venture, not a department.
BoardWorks moves through the whole foundry — discovery, design, engineering, quality and launch — like every venture we build. It's most visible in Quality & Assurance Lab, where its business purpose is sharpest.
- Discover
- Define
- Design
- Build
- Assure
- Launch
- Learn
- Scale