NEW YORK and PALO ALTO – Morgan Stanley at Work today announced it has partnered with premier technology legal firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati to develop a new application programming interface (“API”) that allows equity information for mutual clients to pass seamlessly between law firm and equity management provider. This industry-first API integrates Morgan Stanley at Work’s Shareworks platform (“Shareworks”) and Wilson Sonsini’s new proprietary software platform Neuron, which will read and write capitalization data directly into Shareworks upon any updates in real time.
For the past decade, the startup ecosystem has struggled with how to manage increasingly siloed capitalization tables. To streamline the startup journey and facilitate open data sharing in the industry, this integration will enable the next generation of startups and founders to get up and running faster. From incorporating a startup to issuing employee stock options to closing an angel or venture financing, this integration creates a single source of truth between Wilson Sonsini, Shareworks and their mutual clients for the first time, providing an integrated digital experience that reduces the equity share issuance process to minutes, minimizes transactional errors, and provides startups with access to equity data in real-time.
“We are excited to partner with Wilson Sonsini to raise the bar for the industry and deliver a modern digital experience for clients to manage their equity information and data,” said Kevin Swan, Co-Head of Global Private Markets for Morgan Stanley at Work. “As startups stay private longer, the need for more dependable and seamless digital solutions to manage cap table data is becoming absolutely critical. With this API, we hope to remove the friction private companies experience in managing their cap table and stock plans with stakeholders, partners and service providers.”
“Startup clients don’t have time for manual data entry and sending around updated spreadsheets to ensure all parties are working with the same capitalization data every time a new employee is hired or new funds are secured,” said David Wang, chief innovation officer at Wilson Sonsini. “With this API, Wilson Sonsini and Morgan Stanley at Work are helping startups and founders accelerate growth with an open data ecosystem built on our intelligent Neuron platform. We’re proud to make the first tangible step in the industry toward a better future and client experience resulting from sharing cap table data across all stakeholders.”
Earlier this year, Morgan Stanley at Work announced an agreement with Wilson Sonsini that enabled privately-held companies using Wilson Sonsini’s proprietary capitalization management software to migrate to Shareworks capitalization and stock plan platform.
This past July both Morgan Stanley at Work and Wilson Sonsini announced their participation in the Open Cap Table Coalition, a consortium of technology providers and Silicon Valley law firms that aims to make it easier for startups to manage their cap table by increasing data portability and interoperability between all stakeholders in the tech ecosystem.
Wilson Sonsini announced the launch of Neuron, a proprietary software platform that streamlines, automates, and digitizes common legal processes across a company’s lifecycle - changing the way it delivers legal services in a paradigm way. The Neuron platform enables attorneys to automate routine processes so they can spend more time delivering high-value services to founders and startups, and this latest integration with Shareworks allows Wilson Sonsini to continue to deliver on this mission.
Shareworks is a part of the Morgan Stanley at Work suite of financial solutions, which spans Equity (including E*TRADE Equity Edge Online), Retirement and Financial Wellness Solutions. Morgan Stanley at Work combines cutting-edge planning and risk management software, Morgan Stanley intellectual capital and financial education delivered through multiple channels to assist employees in building a holistic plan to help them achieve their financial goals. Morgan Stanley at Work currently has offices in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia Pacific.
About Morgan Stanley
Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) is a leading global financial services firm providing investment banking, securities, wealth management and investment management services. With offices in more than 41 countries, the Firm's employees serve clients worldwide including corporations, governments, institutions and individuals. For more information about Morgan Stanley, please visit www.morganstanley.com.
About Wilson Sonsini
For more than 60 years, Wilson Sonsini has offered a broad range of legal services, focused on solving challenges faced by the management and boards of directors of business enterprises. The firm is nationally recognized as a leader in the fields of corporate governance and finance, mergers and acquisitions, private equity, securities litigation, employment law, intellectual property, and antitrust, among many other areas of law. Wilson Sonsini’s Emerging Companies Practice (ECP) is a global leader in representing start-up companies from formation to IPO and beyond. Over the past six decades, the ECP has advised hundreds of thousands of companies, through various stages of growth and liquidity events. Companies leverage the ECP’s deep experience, top legal resources, and a global network of VCs and industry relationships to scale through all stages of their life cycle. The ECP has over 400 attorneys worldwide focused on delivering high quality legal services to the emerging companies ecosystem. For more information, please visit ecvc.wsgr.com.