A cap table is a breakdown of your startup's ownership. It is considered the most valuable currency you have regardless of which stage of company you are in. However, without cap table management, you cannot reward stakeholders accordingly. Thus the incentives between stakeholders are not aligned.
There're many ways a startup founder can manage its cap table. A more experienced founder might be able to collect it with just an excel spreadsheet. However, most founders have to either rely on CFOs or cap table management software. In addition, you don't want to make mistakes in the cap table; it will cost many legal fees to fix it.
I wrote an article on cap table management on our company's blog if you want to maximize the value of your startup equity. Check out below for the article!
https://www.smbfinance.co/post/everything-about-startup-cap-table-management