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How to Prepare for Investor Due Diligence: The Complete Founder's Checklist

You've got a term sheet — or you're about to start fundraising. Either way, investors will scrutinize your company in ways your pitch deck doesn't cover. Preparation is the difference between closing in 4 weeks and losing the deal in 12.

📁 Data Room Essentials

Have these ready BEFORE your first investor meeting:

Financial Documents

Monthly P&L for the last 12-24 months
Balance sheet (current)
Cash flow statement
Bank statements (last 6 months)
Revenue breakdown by customer, product, and geography
MRR/ARR waterfall (new, expansion, contraction, churn)
Financial projections (3-year model with clearly stated assumptions)

Product & Growth Metrics

Cohort retention analysis (monthly cohorts, 12+ months)
Net Revenue Retention by cohort and segment
CAC by channel with payback period
NPS or CSAT scores with trend data
Product usage metrics (DAU, WAU, MAU, feature adoption)
Pipeline report (if B2B) with conversion rates by stage

Legal Documents

Certificate of incorporation and amendments
Cap table (fully diluted, including option pool)
All prior funding documents (SAFEs, convertible notes, equity rounds)
Key customer contracts (top 10)
Employee agreements (IP assignment, option agreements)
Any pending or threatened litigation
IP registrations (patents, trademarks)

Team Documents

Org chart with reporting structure
Founder bios and LinkedIn profiles
Key hire pipeline (who you plan to hire with the raise)
Employee option pool details and vesting schedules

📊 The Metrics Investors Will Calculate

Even if you don't present these, investors will calculate them from your data:

Burn Multiplier = Net Burn / Net New ARR
Magic Number = Net New ARR / Prior Quarter S&M Spend
LTV/CAC and CAC Payback Period
Rule of 40 = Growth Rate + Profit Margin
Gross Margin (and whether it's improving or declining)
Revenue per employee

🎯 Questions You Must Be Ready For

"Why now? What's changed in the market that makes this the right time?"
"What happens if [biggest customer] churns?"
"How do you win against [main competitor] and what's your unfair advantage?"
"Walk me through your cohort retention — are newer cohorts performing better or worse?"
"What's your path to profitability if you can't raise again?"

Pre-Flight Check

Before meeting investors, run a PV Report on your own company. You'll see exactly what quantitative story your metrics tell — and where you need to strengthen your narrative with data.

Make Smarter Investment Decisions

Stop relying on gut feel. Predict Ventures benchmarks every startup against 15,000+ data points and 50 years of exit history to give you a quantitative edge.

Run your first free report →