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Carta is making it too difficult to cancel subscriptions, some founders say

techcrunch.com

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Re: Carta is making it too difficult to cancel subscriptions, some founders say

#31

Post by kstrauser »

thephyber wrote: post #2

Execs blaming the timing issue on a staffing change, but those same execs approved the workflow that requires the meeting before cancellation and didn’t have a redundant position in case the primary “customer success manager” was unavailable. This is the same any-consumer behavior that makes people hate companies. Gotta love that Carta’s competitors are selling that they don’t have the same cumbersome cancellation po…

That's right. "We didn't have enough people to schedule a meeting" is identical to "we failed to employ enough people to have the meeting". Lack of staff isn't an excuse, it's a root cause analysis.

Re: Carta is making it too difficult to cancel subscriptions, some founders say

#32

Post by asdasdsddd »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #14
thot_experiment wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Execs should be to blame for everything a company does. That's how leadership is supposed to work. Culturally we should not be okay with someone having power without the consequent responsibility. Hopefully we see that shift.

I actually think the opposite should happen. I think currently that much too much success of a company is attributed to its leadership, which is why execs are paid so insanely disproportionately compared to everyone else. When you start saying "You have to take the blame for everything that happens in a company", it actually ends up concentrating even more wealth at the top of the pyramid. As a somewhat macabre examp…

The risk/reward scale with the stakes. If billions are at stake, then it's fine if CEOs make millions. But yea, if you lose billions and destroy the company, the C suite should personally get cleaned out and creditors should be able to garnish their wages for the rest of your life like alimony. This stuff should be written into contracts to weed out grifters.

Re: Carta is making it too difficult to cancel subscriptions, some founders say

#33

Post by dogboat »

duskwuff wrote: post #18
dogboat wrote: post #10

This is r/assholedesign Big shout out to Plausible Analytics. You click unsubscribe and you are taken to Paddle (I think). One more click and you are done. You get a follow up email which you can reply to or not. You are done. Anyway. Startups - use Airwallex or similar and create multiple cards. Easy to cancel anything. Then if they wanna chat in April 2025 about it then sure.

TBF, the nature of the services Carta provides (equity management) are rather different from a web analytics company. Offboarding isn't necessarily as simple as shutting off the company's account.

Ok then ask for that shutdown money in advance. (Or write it off if someone churns).

Or make the recurring payments quarterly or annual.

Re: Carta is making it too difficult to cancel subscriptions, some founders say

#35

Post by duskwuff »

dogboat wrote: post #33
duskwuff wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBF, the nature of the services Carta provides (equity management) are rather different from a web analytics company. Offboarding isn't necessarily as simple as shutting off the company's account.

Ok then ask for that shutdown money in advance. (Or write it off if someone churns). Or make the recurring payments quarterly or annual.

I'm not sure you understand what I'm getting at here. Carta manages things like employee stock options. If a company has issued equity to employees or investors, they can't just shut off their Carta account and be done with it - those obligations need to be managed somewhere, and part of the offboarding process needs to be a managed handoff of that information.

Re: Carta is making it too difficult to cancel subscriptions, some founders say

#37

Post by chinesepapa »

br13n444 wrote: post #25
itake wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pulley had a big layoff recently. not sure what their finances are like or how long they will be around.

Bad leadership and rudderless product. I’d avoid like the plague if I were SWE/potential client.

[dead]

Re: Carta is making it too difficult to cancel subscriptions, some founders say

#38

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

paultopia wrote: post #26

This is the sort of thing that a decent corporate lawyer ought to be able to handle. Obviously not giving legal advice to anyone's specific situation here (and I don't have a current bar card, though I am a law professor), but generally there's an implied contract law duty of good faith.[1] Dirty tricks like writing a contract that says something like "you can cancel at the end of a term, but you have to have a meeti…

I really, really think folks are overthinking this.

This isn't a Comcast subscription. This is an enterprise software deal that costs many multiple thousands of dollars. Anyone that thinks that Carta was ever going to go "Oh, sucks to be you, you couldn't schedule your cancellation meeting before the renewal date, well, tough cookies, you have to pay us $18k for your next contract year" simply doesn't know how enterprise software deals work. There is no need to get a lawyer involved because all you have to do is call up Carta and say "Your shit is broken, there are no cancellation meetings for weeks."

To emphasize what I put in some of my other comments, sure, Carta needs to fix their shit, and I think the Techcrunch article is making it more about the fact that you have to have a cancellation meeting in the first place (which is a valid compliant), but this idea that it's some deliberate form of "dark pattern gotcha" just belies a misunderstanding of how enterprise software subscriptions work.

Re: Carta is making it too difficult to cancel subscriptions, some founders say

#39

Post by ethbr1 »

asdasdsddd wrote: post #32
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think the opposite should happen. I think currently that much too much success of a company is attributed to its leadership, which is why execs are paid so insanely disproportionately compared to everyone else. When you start saying "You have to take the blame for everything that happens in a company", it actually ends up concentrating even more wealth at the top of the pyramid. As a somewhat macabre examp…

The risk/reward scale with the stakes. If billions are at stake, then it's fine if CEOs make millions. But yea, if you lose billions and destroy the company, the C suite should personally get cleaned out and creditors should be able to garnish their wages for the rest of your life like alimony. This stuff should be written into contracts to weed out grifters.

> If billions are at stake, then it's fine if CEOs make millions.

Not least, because the incentive to steal from your employer scales with the difference between your compensation and potential gains.

Do we really want someone making $50k a year also making decisions that could easily be corrupted to get millions in kickbacks?

Re: Carta is making it too difficult to cancel subscriptions, some founders say

#40

Post by saghm »

paultopia wrote: post #26

This is the sort of thing that a decent corporate lawyer ought to be able to handle. Obviously not giving legal advice to anyone's specific situation here (and I don't have a current bar card, though I am a law professor), but generally there's an implied contract law duty of good faith.[1] Dirty tricks like writing a contract that says something like "you can cancel at the end of a term, but you have to have a meeti…

> This is the sort of thing that a decent corporate lawyer ought to be able to handle.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but given that plenty of quite small companies seem to use Carta for handling their shares, it seems pretty ridiculous to have to pay for a lawyer to be able to cancel a subscription. Do early startups really need to keep a lawyer on retainer or be forced to pay by the hour for something like this?

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