A traditional cap table is a static snapshot: percentages are fixed upfront and only change through a formal transaction. That works once you have investors, but it's a poor fit for the earliest, most uncertain months of a company — when contributions are unequal and constantly shifting. A dynamic cap table solves the early stage by allocating ownership from real contributions, and the best of both worlds is to start dynamic and freeze to static exactly when you raise.
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A dynamic cap table ties each person's ownership to what they actually contribute — time, cash, IP, resources — rather than to a percentage negotiated on day one. As contributions are logged, everyone's share recalculates automatically, so the split is fair at every moment. It's the cap-table expression of a dynamic equity model like Equafy's engine, popularized by the Slicing Pie framework.
When you lock percentages at incorporation, you're betting on the future with the least information you'll ever have. If one cofounder goes full-time and another stays part-time, or someone invests cash while others contribute sweat, a static split silently becomes unfair — and renegotiating it later is one of the most damaging conversations a founding team can have. A dynamic model removes that fight by construction.
Dynamic equity is ideal pre-funding, but investors price and paper a round against a fixed cap table with a known share count and clear ownership. A perpetually-floating split can't be underwritten, and it doesn't map cleanly to preferred shares, option pools, or a 409A. So at some point every dynamic model has to become static — the question is whether your tool can do that cleanly, or whether you're stuck rebuilding the cap table by hand in a spreadsheet.
Equafy lets you run the dynamic model while you bootstrap, then crystallize it into fixed shares the moment you raise — turning accumulated contributions into a permanent, investor-ready cap table with share classes and a reserved pool. From there it behaves like a classic cap table, with SAFEs, convertibles and a round simulator on top. It is the only tool that runs the complete cycle rather than just one half of it.
The freeze, in one step
Equafy's Dynamic Freeze converts every member's live dynamic share into fixed shares in one click — the exact moment an investor arrives, with a full audit trail. Nothing to re-key, nothing to reconcile by hand.
Each model has a place. The point of a hybrid cap table is that you don't have to choose one forever: you start dynamic, add fixed allocations for founders who want a floor, keep a reserved pool, and freeze to static when the round comes.
| Static cap table | Dynamic cap table | Equafy (hybrid) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ownership basis | Fixed % set upfront | Live contribution tracking | Fixed + dynamic + reserved |
| Adapts to real work | No | Yes | Yes — then frozen when you choose |
| Investor-ready (fixed) | Yes | No | Yes — freeze to static in one click |
| Share classes & SAFEs | Manual / spreadsheet | Not supported | Built in |
| Round simulation | No | No | Built in |
It's a cap table where ownership is calculated from each person's real contributions (time, cash, IP, resources) and recalculated continuously, instead of being fixed as percentages at incorporation. It keeps the split fair while a company is bootstrapping and contributions are still changing.
Yes — that conversion (a "freeze") is the whole point of running dynamic early. Equafy crystallizes each member's accumulated dynamic share into fixed shares in one step, producing a standard cap table you can take into a priced round.
Investors price a round against a fixed cap table, so you freeze the dynamic model into static shares before or at the round. The dynamic phase governs how equity is earned beforehand; the frozen cap table is what investors actually underwrite.
Slicing Pie is the best-known dynamic equity model — the method for turning contributions into shares. A dynamic cap table is where that method lives and is tracked over time. Equafy implements the model natively and puts it on a real cap table.
Equafy is the only tool that starts dynamic, freezes to a fixed cap table in one click, and then handles share classes, SAFEs and round simulation like a classic cap table.
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