Best practice on adding angels to Carta?

Is it generally recommended to add all angels to Carta immediately after they invest (even for small checks / early rounds), or do most teams wait until a certain milestone (priced round, lead investor, cleanup phase, etc.)?

I see this play out across hundreds of early‑stage companies, and the pattern is surprisingly consistent: the earlier you get angels into Carta, the cheaper and cleaner your long‑term cap table becomes.

If the angels signed SAFEs or notes, adding them early has real advantages:

• You avoid the "mystery SAFE stack" problem that shows up right before a priced round

• You catch errors in valuation caps, MFN, pro rata rights, or discount terms while memories are fresh

• You prevent the scramble of trying to reconcile 10–20 agreements under time pressure

Teams that wait until the priced round often end up paying more-both in time and in legal fees-because cleanup becomes a project instead of a workflow.

The admin overhead is usually overstated. Adding a SAFE holder takes a few minutes, and once they're in, they're in. The real overhead comes from not adding them:

• Missing signatures

• Wrong versions of agreements

• SAFEs that don't match the wire amounts

• Investors who can't find their documents later

• Confusion during pro‑forma modeling

Early hygiene compounds in your favor.

The most common things I hear:

• "I wish we had added everyone as we went instead of doing a giant cleanup."

• "We didn't realize how much the SAFE terms mattered until the priced round."

• "Our lead investor asked for a cap table export and we weren't ready."

• "We found errors in old SAFEs that would've been caught if we added them earlier."

No one ever says, "I wish we had waited longer."

If you're using Carta already, add angels as soon as the SAFE or note is fully executed and the funds clear.

The goal should be no surprises when diligence starts.