Cake Equity: Revolutionizing startup equity and team motivation with Google Cloud
Reduces the time needed to onboard customers to its platform from four days to 10 seconds
Reduces onboarding data error rates from 20% to 1%, improving speed and efficiency
Cuts churn rates by 1% to a market-leading rate for B2B SaaS businesses
Enables team members to act as orchestrators rather than doers, enhancing efficiency and customer experience
Cake Equity used Google Cloud to improve its customer experience by reducing the onboarding time from four days to 10 seconds, together with more effective human involvement and efficient internal processes.
Cake Equity used Google Cloud to improve its customer experience by reducing the onboarding time from four days to 10 seconds, together with more effective human involvement and efficient internal processes.
We needed a reliable system that could pipe data from multiple sources into a central location, and deliver meaningful insights in real time, which was also a light lift in terms of administration. We selected Google Cloud, including BigQuery and Cloud Storage, as the backbone of our new data infrastructure.
Nick Cust
Chief Product Officer, Cake Equity
Founders of startup businesses typically face the same conundrum: how to innovate without access to enough cash, while recruiting the talented people needed for success. In this context, many founders use equity to attract people with the skills their ventures need.
However, according to Nick Cust, Chief Product Officer, Cake Equity, that equity may be awarded and effectively wasted by not being used to motivate teams to deliver growth.
“At Cake Equity, we’re redefining how startups leverage equity to motivate teams while using data-driven insights to scale smarter and faster,” Cust says.
Cake Equity aims to solve this issue with a platform that enables startups to offer equity, simulate funding raises, and manage shareholders anywhere in the world. Founded by a former chief technology officer and a chief financial officer with backgrounds in high-growth startups through to enterprises, the business aims to reduce complexity and demystify these processes.
Qualitative and quantitative data underpins daily decision-making at Cake Equity and helps the organization anticipate the needs and demands of its users. “Our business needs a great infrastructure to manage first-party data that includes capitalization tables listing the entitlements and timings of every shareholder and options holder on a company register, and fundraising-scenario modeling, as well as industry-based data,” said Cust.
As Cake Equity matured, its leadership decided to transition the business away from its complex, clunky systems, and static dashboards that hampered its ability to centralize and analyze data. “We needed a reliable system that could pipe data from multiple sources into a central location, and deliver meaningful insights in real time, which was also a light lift in terms of administration,” said Cust. “We selected Google Cloud, including BigQuery and Cloud Storage as the backbone of our new data infrastructure.”
BigQuery selection a ‘no-brainer’ to elevate data strategy
Cust describes the selection of BigQuery as a ‘no brainer’ in uplifting the business’s data insights and its ability to move in real-time. With the business already using Google Workspace to collaborate with external parties and internally across offices in Australia, Portugal, and the United States, the seamless connectivity between Google Cloud products delivered several early gains. These included connecting BigQuery to Google Sheets to run simple, automated reports for team members who were unable to run SQL queries. “We were sold on the move early on, and the ability to do all these things with a low human capital overhead — it was a big win for us,” said Cust.
With BigQuery, our teams can make decisions faster and operate as orchestrators rather than doers.
Nick Cust
Chief Product Officer, Cake Equity
The business’s move to BigQuery as its analytics data warehouse proceeded smoothly with Cust’s team appreciative of the responses they received from Google Cloud technical support. “The Google Cloud team has always been there to point us in the right direction, help answer questions, and jump on calls at short notice,” said Cust.
With its new data infrastructure established, Cake Equity engaged Google Cloud Partner Aviato Consulting to elevate its usage. This included creating more sophisticated views in BigQuery, building out the organization’s machine learning and artificial intelligence thinking, and refining its data integrity processes. “The most important thing Aviato Consulting helped us with was turning feeds of complex data from fragmented data sources into something we could drop into our platform in just a few clicks,” said Cust. “It’s been a really strong partner for us.”
Cake Equity now ingests data from spreadsheets and complicated data structures into its platform in a format that reduces customer onboarding from four days to 10 seconds and a couple of clicks. This is largely achieved by using ML through Vertex AI to classify documents, match them to predefined definitions, and automatically populate data structures. “This has been the biggest win we’ve had with Google Cloud, BigQuery, and Vertex AI, which are now the backbone of our data strategy,” said Cust.
This success has been achieved in part by automating data handling previously undertaken manually. Onboarding each new customer required a team member to transfer spreadsheet data into the required format, a process that typically took days, and supplementary checks that typically added about 30% to the time required. The automated solution has reduced an error rate that could reach 20% through the manual process to about 1%, allowing the business to maintain hierarchy, access, and trust at its platform backend.
For Cake Equity’s customer base, the biggest change with BigQuery and Google Cloud is faster and more strategic attention from the business’s teams. “With BigQuery, our teams can make decisions faster and operate as orchestrators rather than doers,” said Cust. “They can oversee what’s happening and get onto the front foot. We now have our people managing multiple accounts and dipping in and out when a human touch is needed rather than doing things one by one, which delivers an improved customer experience.”
Reducing churn with BigQuery and ML
Google Cloud has enabled speed and reliability at scale, and internal insight development and reporting.
Nick Cust
Chief Product Officer, Cake Equity
Reducing customer churn is a key priority for Cake Equity, and its new data infrastructure has enabled the business to reduce this by 1% to a market-leading rate for SaaS B2B businesses. “Using BigQuery and ML analysis, we’ve been able to quantify the 10 key events that matter when someone onboards with our platform, and if those don’t happen, we know they’re likely to be a churn risk,” said Cust. ”Then, using BigQuery with Looker dashboards and automations into other platforms, we can put automated measures in place, such as integrations with email and push notifications, to try and get them back on course. We have achieved a one percentage point improvement to date, which is significant in the context of churn.”
With rich benefits available through AI and ML, these technologies are a key focus for the business in 2025 and beyond. “AI has been a critical tool for everyone internally over the last year,” said Cust. “Our ethos has been that all team members should use all tools available to automate their tasks and improve their ability to scale, and AI plays into that.”
With Google Cloud, Cake Equity is realizing its vision of being a source of truth for startups and their equity. “Google Cloud has enabled speed and reliability at scale, and internal insight development and reporting,” said Cust.
Founded in 2018, Cake Equity aims to help motivate startups through equity ownership. The business provides a trusted capitalization table and equity-management platform used by 17,000-plus companies with more than 200,000 stock-option owners, in over 50 countries.
Industry: Financial Services
Location: Australia
Products: BigQuery, Vertex AI, Cloud Storage, Looker, Sheets
About Google Cloud partner- Aviato Consulting
Specializing in technology-driven transformation, Aviato Consulting helps enterprises build, run, and migrate cloud infrastructure to increase their value. With a presence in Australia and India, the firm’s services span cloud foundations, cloud security reviews, AI and ML, and data and analytics.
