Setting up your equity to scale: How Audiomob did it with Ledgy

About AudioMob

Founded in 2020 by Christian Facey and Wilfrid Obeng, AudioMob is a media technology company helping developers monetise games with non-intrusive audio advertising. AudioMob began life in London and also operates a satellite office in Abu Dhabi.

In late 2021 AudioMob raised a $14 million Series A round, partnering with investors including Google, Makers Fund and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Previously, AudioMob raised a seed round led by Supernode Global.

About Christian

Christian Facey is AudioMob’s CEO. Before founding AudioMob in 2020 he worked as a strategist at Google and latterly as a science partner at Facebook. He has overall responsibility for AudioMob’s marketing, operations, people and finance functions.

The early days of equity

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When Christian started AudioMob with his co-founder Wilfrid in 2020, he took equity into consideration right from the start. However, the early equity decisions Christian and Wilfrid made were quite…informal. "I would definitely not recommend this to everyone, but the first few agreements we came to on equity were effectively agreed with handshakes and little else," says Christian.

Although Christian managed to keep the founding team and early employees aligned on equity without dedicated software, that changed when AudioMob attracted its first external investors. Christian says, “We really were like deer in headlights at the beginning, and needed resources to find out the answers to basic questions like ‘what is a term sheet?’”

Christian signed up to SeedLegals to manage AudioMob’s initial funding round, which set the stage for the company’s growth through 2021.

Scaling up the cap table

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While raising any funding round is an intense experience, lots of seed investing can focus on the core idea and the early team’s potential, with fewer hard financial and operational expectations. Christian knew that as AudioMob progressed towards its Series A round, the infrastructure surrounding the cap table and share ownership had to be more rigorous.

The strategic priorities behind Christian's decision to switch platform were clear: “We were suddenly entering discussions with some of the world’s foremost media, gaming and entertainment investors, and we needed a growth-stage cap table management platform to deal with the questions they were going to be asking us.”

As well as the range of features that Ledgy was able to offer, the product’s speed and intuitive nature meant Christian had confidence that he could access granular information at pace when required during the fundraising process.

Equity at AudioMob today

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As he was raising a successful Series A round from top investors, Christian was taking steps to implement more structure to equity at AudioMob. “Everyone working at AudioMob has share options in some form – we have an approved EMI scheme for full-time employees, and advisors and some very high-value contractors are granted options under a parallel scheme,” says Christian. Christian has also set precedents by establishing templates for the amount of equity employees are granted, depending on their level of experience and salary. “We’re also building equity into the promotion strategy too, so we can use equity to further support our team members as they grow and develop,” says Christian. “We’re definitely getting to this a little earlier than lots of companies, as we still have fewer than 50 employees, but we know we have extremely fast growth ahead of us and we really want to start as we mean to go on.”

The future of equity as AudioMob grows

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Even with templates and standards for equity clearly established, the way AudioMob handles share ownership over time will inevitably change. In the future, Christian may well be less hands-on with equity: “Running so many functions has been very helpful in one way as it’s given me a very set view on who needs to do what as we mature. In a year or two, the share ownership program will probably be run by a Head of People rather than me owning every detail.”

AudioMob’s growth plans include internationalization – the company has a new office in Abu Dhabi, and “we’re really looking forward to exploring the management of our equity plans across markets, with Ledgy’s support,” says Christian.

Supported by Ledgy, AudioMob has developed a sophisticated structure for share ownership that can scale alongside Christian and his team. Read more stories from Ledgy's customers here.

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