We have found it to be the easiest to display each round of increasing stock on the x-axis. This way the development for each participating party is visible easily.
I want to share my latest template (heavily influenced by @MaxClaussen) which I use to show the results of our financing on the distribution of shares when I negotiate valuation, ESOP and investment amount. I just recently used this way of displaying equity distribution for a Series A and a Seed deal.
Feel free to use either the Excel or the Google doc version. Add more financing rounds to the right if needed. Turn ESOP increase before or after the financing to 0 if you don’t plan to increase the option pool.
Excel Series A Cap Table Template (pay with a tweet)
Please note, the Excel Version includes some VBA code that adds or removes the ESOP rounds and updates equity distribution based on your settings.
For later stage financing, you will need to add more stock classes, and more financing rounds. I will provide an updated version which includes convertible notes soon.