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Investor reporting tools for startups

When an investor asks for numbers, most founders assemble a spreadsheet or a deck by hand, or lean on a service. Economico produces investor-ready reports — balance sheet, income statement, month-by-month P&L, and a SaaS-metrics dashboard — straight from the live ledger your agent keeps, and shares them as an unguessable capability link the viewer opens without an account. Here is how it compares with Carta, Pilot, and doing it in spreadsheets, and where each of those is the better tool.

The short answer

Investor reporting has two parts: producing accurate financials, and getting them to investors safely. Carta owns equity — cap table, 409A, fund administration, and LP/investor communications around ownership. Pilot prepares books and reporting as a managed service with human CFO guidance. Spreadsheets are free and flexible but manual and easy to get wrong. Economico's angle: the reports come from the same double-entry books your agent already keeps, always current, and each share is a revocable capability URL — no viewer login, optionally scoped to a scenario, optionally expiring.

How the options compare

	Economico	Carta	Pilot	Spreadsheets
Balance sheet, income statement, SaaS metrics	✅	◐	✅	manual
Generated live from your own books	✅	❌	partial (service-prepared)	manual
Shareable via unguessable link, no viewer login	✅	◐	❌	◐
Revocable / expiring / scenario-scoped share	✅	❌	❌	❌
Cap table, 409A, fund administration	◐	✅	❌	❌
Human CFO review	❌	❌	✅	❌
Run by the AI agent you already use	✅	❌	❌	❌
Built for	Founders sharing live financials	equity & investor-of-record comms	outsourced books + CFO	DIY

Where each fits

Carta is the right tool for the equity story — cap table, option grants, 409A valuations, and fund/LP administration — and it's the standard there. Pilot is strong when you want humans preparing your books and CFO-level reporting for you. Spreadsheets win on flexibility and cost when you're happy to assemble numbers by hand. Economico's niche is the financial-statements-and-metrics side: reports that are always live because they come from the ledger, and a sharing mechanism built for distributing them without accounts. Economico also keeps a basic cap table (share classes, SAFEs, issued shares), but Carta remains the deeper equity platform.

Choose another tool if…

Choose Carta if the reporting you need is about equity — ownership, 409A, fund admin, investor-of-record comms. Choose Pilot if you want a service to keep the books and prepare reporting with human CFO review. Choose spreadsheets if a hand-built model is genuinely enough for now. Carta wins on equity depth; Pilot wins on human-prepared assurance.

Choose Economico if…

Choose Economico if you want investor financials that are always current because they're generated from the books your agent keeps, and a clean way to share them: a capability-URL link granting read-only access to a chosen set of reports — balance sheet, income statement, month-by-month P&L, and the SaaS-metrics dashboard — with no viewer login, optionally scenario-scoped or expiring, and revocable anytime. See investor reporting.

Frequently asked questions

How do I share financials with investors without giving them a login?

Economico mints an unguessable capability URL that grants anonymous read-only access to the reports you choose. The link is the access control — no accounts, and you can revoke or expire it anytime.

Which reports can I share?

Balance sheet, income statement, month-by-month income statement, and the SaaS-metrics dashboard (MRR, ARR, NRR/GRR, burn, Rule of 40), in your chosen currency, optionally scoped to a planning scenario.

Is Economico a Carta alternative?

Only partly. Economico keeps a basic cap table, but Carta is the deeper equity, 409A, and fund-administration platform. Economico's strength is live financial statements and metrics, and sharing them.

Are the reports up to date?

Yes — they're generated from the live ledger, so a shared link reflects the current books (or a chosen scenario) each time it's opened.

How do I connect an agent to Economico?

Point an MCP-capable host at economi.co/mcp or install the @economico/cli. The setup guide is at economi.co/skill.md.