A capitalization table, or cap table, is the official record of a startup's ownership. It lists every shareholder and the number and type of securities they hold (common stock, preferred stock, options, warrants, convertible instruments like SAFEs and notes), maintained as the single source of truth for what each person would receive in a financing, sale, or liquidation event. It's the document that gets pulled, scrutinized, and recalculated at every meaningful moment in a company's life, every financing round, every 409A valuation, every secondary sale, every acquisition, every IPO.
The structure of a typical cap table:
By security type: