Carta CEO Henry Ward: The Path to $500M ARR
Raising $1B, Why PE Is The Future, & Peter Thiel’s Influence
“Competition is for Losers”
Henry Ward, CEO of Carta, joins Sourcery to share how the company scaled to nearly $500M in ARR, raised $1B across seven rounds, and evolved from a startup serving cap tables to a platform targeting massive markets like private equity & private credit.
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Ward discusses the Peter Thiel-inspired strategy of dominating small markets before expanding, the importance of focusing on inputs over outputs, the challenges of selling to both hoodie-wearing founders and Midtown CFOs, and Carta’s AI-driven future. This wide-ranging conversation dives into scaling lessons, product innovation, network effects, and why private equity is the future.
FWIW Carta was a classic → 3x, 3x, 2x, 2x, to $100M in Revenue & are now growing 20%+ at scale.. Not bad.
Special thank you to Tess for the introduction! This was a conversation filled with tons of wisdom & thoughtful lessons from 10+ years building Carta.
Highlights
Raising $1B to date, approaching $500M in ARR, & growing 20%+ annually
Strategic shift from VC into larger asset classes like PE & private credit
Peter Thiel’s “competition is for losers” philosophy → shapes Carta’s market-entry strategy
AI as both a customer-facing differentiator & an internal productivity engine
Scaling up to delivering million-dollar enterprise solutions for institutional private equity & private credit
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Inside Carta’s Next Chapter: Henry Ward on Growth, Strategy, and the AI-Driven Future
Few companies in the private markets space have grown with the speed, scope, and adaptability of Carta. From its beginnings digitizing stock certificates to managing trillions in equity value, Carta has become a critical piece of infrastructure for startups, funds, and now institutional players.
In this conversation, CEO Henry Ward reflects on the company’s journey, the philosophy guiding its biggest moves, and why private equity, AI, and network effects will define its next decade.
Top 15 Takeaways:
1. Competition is for Losers
Ward embraces Peter Thiel’s contrarian philosophy:
“We’re big fans of Peter Thiel’s ‘competition is for losers.’ If a lot of people are doing something, don’t do it. Do the thing that nobody else is doing… By definition, anything we go after, because nobody else is interested in it, everybody thinks it’s a bad idea.”
2. Carta’s Growth: Approaching Half a Billion ARR
“It’s fantastic. It took us 10 years to get here… We’re on the second half of an S-curve in venture, but the beginning of an S-curve in private equity and private credit… If we get to a billion bucks, it’s because we caught fire in private equity.”
3. $1B Funding Journey & Board Evolution
Carta has raised $1 billion across 7 rounds, graduating from seed funds to top-tier PE investors like Silver Lake.
“The evolution of a board over a company’s growth… is something you don’t get to do very often. It’s pretty amazing when you look at the board at an early stage and the board at late stage and pre-IPO — it’s a very different dynamic.”
4. Measuring Success: Inputs vs Outputs
Ward avoids chasing vanity metrics:
“Those are the outputs of the business… We spend all our time talking about the inputs and the various flywheels of Carta… If you just keep driving those things, the outputs will come.”
5. Peter Thiel’s Influence & Growth Strategy
“Cap tables was one small market. Nobody cared about it… We could quickly win because we were the only ones that cared… Then you concentrically grow out of it.”
6. Expanding from Small Markets to Big Impact
“We call them ‘n of one’ markets where there’s one and only one winner. Then can you use that as a base to expand the TAM?… So far it’s worked.”
7. Entering Private Equity & Credit
“The market size of private equity is six to eight times the size of venture… Private credit is another three or four times that. Then you can go to infrastructure and real estate — you just start knocking down these dominoes.”
8. Network Effects: Global vs Local
“In venture… you get this complex web of a global topology. In private equity, it’s different… There’s what we call a local network effect — we have to win firm by firm.”
9. Product Market Fit & Building a 10X Product
“If you have a 2x better product, it’s not enough. It’s gotta be a 10x better product… Once you get there, it just sells itself.”
10. Relationship with Mark Andreessen
“I usually get an hour a quarter with him… I’ve never met somebody that understood the founder journey better… Almost every problem I have, he’s seen before.”
11. Company Building vs Product Building
“It’s hard enough to build a product people want. It’s even harder to build an institution that can build products people want… That’s where I try to spend a lot of my time.”
12. AI at Carta: Internal & Customer-Facing Innovations
“We’re both — building AI into products and using AI internally… One rule: create a differentiated customer experience that couldn’t exist before AI. And no prompts.”
13. The Impact of AI on Jobs & Workflow
“It’s never happened in history that a great new technology reduced jobs… The same will be true of AI. The question is, will people learn it? How quickly will they adapt?”
14. Personal Motivation & Performance
“I would do this for free… Don’t do startups for the money. You have to do it for the love of the game.”
15. Looking Forward: New AI Products & Excitement for the Year
“Our product is already 5x better than what exists today…
With what’s in the hopper, it’s going to be 15x better.
There’s no better feeling than seeing customers’ eyes light up.”
Closing Thoughts
Henry Ward’s vision for Carta blends a founder’s instinct for spotting overlooked opportunities with a disciplined approach to scaling infrastructure businesses. From adopting Peter Thiel’s “competition is for losers” mindset, to reframing success around inputs rather than outputs, to pushing into markets 6–8x the size of venture, his strategy reflects a long-term, compounding ambition.
With AI now woven into both its product suite and internal operations, Carta is positioning itself not just as a platform for managing ownership — but as a technology company defining the future of private markets.
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