waterfall-scenarios

Waterfall Scenarios

Fetch saved exit scenario models and present them with meaningful context, not just the per-holder table.

Prerequisites

You need the corporation_id. Get it from list_accounts if you don't have it.

Workflow

fetch("cap_table:get:waterfall_scenarios", {"corporation_id": corporation_id})

The command returns each completed (status == "DONE", non-draft) scenario with a per-holder breakdown of cost basis, payout value, share count, and return multiple.

How to Present

Don't just show the table — frame each scenario:

• Lead with the exit value and what it means: who gets paid out, at what multiple, and whether any holders are underwater
• Highlight the biggest winners and losers by return multiple — a 1.0x return means a holder barely breaks even; anything below that means a loss
• If there are multiple scenarios, compare them: how do payouts shift as exit value changes? At what exit value does the common stack start to see meaningful returns?
• Note liquidation preference effects: if preferred holders take a large share at lower exit values, say so plainly

After the per-holder table, render an ASCII bar chart of payout by holder (sorted descending by payout). Scale bars to max width 40 chars:

Payout Distribution — $50M Exit

Lead Investor      ████████████████████████████████████████ $18.2M  3.7x
Founder            ████████████████████                     $9.1M   1.8x
Common Holders     ██████████                               $4.5M   0.9x

Each bar width = (value_of_holdings / max_value) * 40. Show return multiple after the dollar amount.

Flag anything notable:

• Any holder with return multiple < 1.0x (loss scenario)
• Large gap between pref payout and common payout at a given exit value
• Scenarios that are very close in exit value but have very different common distributions

Custom Exit Values

If the user asks to model a specific exit value not in the saved scenarios:

"There's no saved model at that exit value. To model a custom exit, create a new scenario in Carta's scenario modeling tool, then come back and I'll pull it up."