Screen-Sharing Privacy for Executives and Founders
Sharing a board deck, a financial model or an investor update on a call risks exposing the numbers next to the one you meant to show - runway, the cap table, employee comp and unreleased strategy. Here's how to present one slide or one tab without leaking the rest.
When you share a board deck, a model or an investor update, you have to protect the numbers sitting right next to the one you're presenting - revenue and runway, the cap table and ownership splits, employee comp and headcount plans, live M&A or legal matters, and strategy you haven't announced. The safeguard is to blur the rows, cells and slides you're not presenting before you share, so scrolling a spreadsheet or advancing a deck never exposes something a candidate, a partner or one investor should never see. At the exec level a single leaked figure - a comp number, a runway date, an ownership percentage - can reset a negotiation or a relationship.
What's at stake when a founder shares a screen
- Revenue and runway - MRR, burn and the months-of-cash line in your model, sensitive with employees, recruits and most investors.
- Cap table and ownership - who owns what percentage, option pools and preferences, in Carta, Pulley or a spreadsheet appendix.
- Employee comp and headcount plans - salaries, equity grants and a hiring plan that names roles you haven't opened or people you might let go.
- M&A and legal - an acquisition conversation, a term sheet, or litigation that isn't public.
- Unreleased strategy and roadmap - the pivot, pricing change or launch that hasn't been announced internally or externally.
- Investor names and terms - a cap-table or update tab that reveals who's in, at what valuation, on what terms.
The riskiest moment: one slide out of a board deck
The everyday scenario is showing one thing from a document built for a different audience. You want to walk a candidate through the go-to-market slide, or show a partner a single chart from the model - but the board deck also has a comp slide and a cap-table appendix a few pages on, and the model has a runway line and a headcount tab one scroll away. Advancing a slide too far, scrolling to the wrong row, or a notification about the live acquisition talk is all it takes to expose a number that changes the conversation. Blurring lets you present the one slide or chart you mean to and keep the rest of the file frosted.
How to share a deck or model without oversharing
- 1
Share one tab and silence alerts
Present from the browser - a web deck, an online spreadsheet or a dashboard - and share that single tab, not your whole screen. Turn on Do Not Disturb so Slack and email notifications about deals, comp or hiring don't surface.
- 2
Blur the sensitive rows and columns of the model
With BlurFirst, drag a box blur over the runway line, the comp table, and any headcount or salary rows before you scroll near them. The blur stays anchored to that region as you scroll, and because it's painted into the page as real pixels, Zoom, Meet, Teams, Loom and OBS all capture it.
- 3
Element-blur cap-table and comp cells
In Carta, Pulley or a cap-table sheet, click to blur individual ownership percentages, share counts and dollar figures while leaving the structure visible. In a deck, blur the comp slide or an unreleased-strategy callout. Click again to reveal one figure if you choose to disclose it.
- 4
Keep panic blur ready
If you advance to the wrong slide or a notification about M&A appears, press Ctrl/⌘ ⇧ H to blur the whole page instantly, fix what's on screen, then reveal only what you meant to show.
- 5
Save a profile for recurring dashboards
For the metrics dashboard or model you present on every board call, save a per-site profile (Pro) so the same blurs re-apply automatically and survive the app's re-renders.
What to blur in each tool
| Tool | Blur before you present |
|---|---|
| Google Sheets / Excel on the web (the model) | Runway and burn line, comp and headcount rows, scenario tabs, investor tab |
| Google Slides / web board deck | Comp slide, cap-table appendix, M&A or legal pages, unreleased-strategy callouts |
| Carta / Pulley (cap table) | Ownership percentages, share counts, option pool, individual holder names and figures |
| Investor update / email | Prior updates in the thread, distribution list, ask amounts and terms |
| BI dashboard (Looker / Metabase / Power BI) | Revenue tiles, cohort and churn figures, customer names in charts |
Honest limits
- BlurFirst blurs content inside a browser tab. A model open in desktop Excel or a deck in desktop PowerPoint or Keynote is a native app it can't reach - so present from a web spreadsheet or web deck when you need blurring (a desktop app is in development).
- The one-click Scan detects patterns - emails, phone numbers, card numbers, SSNs and API keys - locally. It does not recognize free-text names or dollar figures as sensitive, so blur comp, runway and cap-table numbers with box or element blur yourself.
- Blurring controls what's visible during a live share; it doesn't replace access controls on the underlying files, or the judgment to keep the most sensitive material out of a shared document entirely.