In simple English
Starting a company means tracking who owns shares and options. Different legal software uses different ways to save this ownership list. Changing providers often means manual data entry or lost history. This project provides a universal file format for that ownership data. It costs nothing to adopt, but you need technical skill to generate the files.
What it is
Open Cap Format (OCF) is an open source data standard for company capitalization data. It uses structured JSON files (a plain text format for storing data) to define shareholders, share classes, and stock option pools.
What it is good for
Founders and lawyers who want to export their startup cap table out of one platform and import it into another without losing data.
- Prevents vendor lock-in for your company ownership data.
- Backed by an industry coalition of legal and financial firms.
- Well-defined schemas ensure data consistency across tools.
- Requires writing code or using specific software to generate the schema files.
- Custom licence terms require careful review before commercial use.
- Not an end-user application, so you still need a tool to view the data.
Proprietary formats used by closed legal software platforms
JSON schema validators
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Download the repository or clone it to inspect the JSON schema files and documentation.