How Ledgy made it easy for Wallapop to expand their equity plans

About Wallapop

Founded in 2013, Wallapop is an eCommerce platform that allows people to buy and sell secondhand goods. They currently operate in Spain, Italy and Portugal, and have around 19M monthly active users and over 100 million new listings created annually.

About Anna Viñas

Anna Viñas is General Counsel at Wallapop. After working as an external counsel with them since 2016, she joined Wallapop full time in 2021 to lead the legal function taking care of all IP matters, corporate transactions, commercial agreements, regulatory updates and compliance. One of her and her team’s responsibilities is to manage all legal aspects of Wallapop’s phantom share scheme, making sure everything is carried out in accordance with the plan rules. 

Expansion made simple

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Founded over ten years ago, Wallapop’s cap table and phantom shares have a long history and many transactions. This added complexity to their equity, and even so, Anna and her team had ambitious plans to expand the scope of their phantom share scheme, adding more transactions and stakeholders to the mix. At the time, Wallapop was using another equity management platform, but found it very difficult to use. “It was so complicated for administrators to use and reflect any transaction that happened. We always needed to contact their support team directly, it just didn’t work otherwise.” Anna says. 

In addition, when planning to expand their scheme to more people, it became even more important to put an emphasis on how employees experience their equity. “You give phantom shares because you want people to value them and be aligned with the company’s objectives. If they can’t understand what a phantom share is and how it works, the whole project is useless.” Anna says. “With our previous tool, we just didn’t feel that we were achieving even a basic level of employee understanding.”

That’s when Wallapop decided to switch to Ledgy. “We needed a strong, robust tool and team dedicated to this.” Anna says. “Our team loved Ledgy from the beginning because it had all the security and privacy assurances we needed, but at the same time it was so intuitive and easy to use. It was clear it wouldn’t require a lot of effort from the admin or employee side which was key for us.” she continued. 

A delightful experience 

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When Wallapop’s team decided to make the switch, Anna was expecting their equity’s complexity and long history to make for a cumbersome migration process, but she was pleasantly surprised by Ledgy’s supportive team. “All migrations are painful, and we have a lot of technical complexities, but I have to say this one was much better than I expected. The most important thing, and something we have consistently felt with Ledgy until today is that Ledgy’s team is always there for us, at every step.” she says. 

Wallapop’s team then felt confident to present Ledgy to the company, expand their employee equity plan and invite them to use the platform. Even with a much larger scope, Wallapop has found Ledgy to be user-friendly and straightforward. “The scope has changed drastically to include hundreds of stakeholders and more than 4000 transactions.”  Anna says. “There’s a lot of volume, so we love that we can manage it all with their bulk functionalities. Everything that has to do with a large input volume is nice and easy with Ledgy.” she continued. 

Anna and her team use Ledgy about once a week, uploading new grants, checking the equity pool, offboarding employees, and more. Every interaction feels effortless, which they really value. “Even if it is the first time you are using Ledgy, you know intuitively how to use it. It’s so straightforward.” she says. 

Valuing equity like never before 

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Since switching to Ledgy and expanding their plan, Wallapop found that their efforts to make equity available to more employees was not in vain, and people are engaged with it. “When we presented it for the first time, employees were super excited to see the employee dashboard with the visuals and all the information.” she says. “We’ve noticed that our employees are consistently engaged, they like to check what is going on and play around on the dashboard. That’s what it’s all about for us.” Anna says. 

This is notable even after their employees decide to pursue new opportunities outside of Wallapop. “Before, if employees left the company, they didn’t ask about their equity. It was like they didn’t remember or realise they had any phantoms at all.” Anna says. “Now, when employees leave, they ask about their phantom shares. For us this is huge, because it means they have their equity in mind and they value it, even when they decide to leave.” she continued. 

Excited about new challenges ahead

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As she looks towards the future, Anna is excited that Wallapop has Ledgy to help manage their equity through it all. “There are different peaks when it comes to equity management: the initial migration, when you do a big set of new grants, a founding round and, at some point, a liquidity event. If we ever go through a liquidity event, it will be another moment for Ledgy to show me that they are up to the level that I believe they are in.” she says. 

As a part of the legal team at Wallapop, she anticipates that her and her team will have many new challenges as regulations in the eCommerce space evolve constantly. “There’s a lot going on in Europe, we have new regulations to implement every year. It’s a challenge but it’s exciting to think about how to apply these regulations in a way that enhances the product and the company.” she says. “The secondhand market is blooming, and I love coming to work everyday feeling like I am contributing something to society.” 

Read more stories about Ledgy’s customers here. 

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