If you are looking for investments for your startup but not sure what pieces of information investors will need, READ THIS ARTICLE!!!! We will be going over documents needed for investment submissions and making sure your more than ready for potential investors. To begin, we will be looking on how to share this type of confidential data with investors.
Data Rooms
To share documents and confidential information about your startup what you will need is a “Data Room,”this is a very safe location that is created by the seller where important data is placed to be viewed strictly by the investor or anyone else who is significant. These data rooms can be created virtually and many firms provide them. Datarooms.com, Drooms, etc. are just some of the few that provide safe due diligence with information like this. In addition to this, you also want to make sure you can track open rates, so then your data is actually being useful to investors. If you see a file being opened more frequently then others than make sure that file is your priority and ensure it is updated frequently.
Documents
1. Historical Financial Statements
(Here is a Template)
This information is important to investors as it provides a means of analysis and helps evaluate your startup’s financial performance. Your historical financial statements also help determine future trends as well as future expectations on your financial runaway for your startup. However, different financial statements relay different types of information. For example, a Balance Sheet will state your assets and liabilities and represent what the company is actually worth. Income Statements will state your income and how much things are costing you; this is very important for investors as they would like to see growth. There are many different financial statements you can have, but it is good to have a wide range of them in order to be more transparent with investors. Below are examples of a Balance Sheet and Income Statement from Walmart.
2. Business Forecast
(Here is a Template)
What this is, in essence, is a prediction of future developments in your current startup through many aspects. Whether this may be in a sales aspect, technology advancement, or anticipated expenses, this all helps with budgeting and giving an investor a better understanding on what to expect in the upcoming years. It also helps them gauge the potential future growth according to anticipated business environment changes. There are a few places you can check out to see how exactly to create your own business forecast, Chron, JumpStart, and Entrepreneur.com. Below are also snippets of brief business forecast’s to give you a general idea of what investors expect.
3. Customer List
(Here is a Template)
A great way to begin talking about this is by describing what exactly is a “Customer List.” This is a intangible asset which means it is a non physical, non financial asset. Investors would like to this because they may find the demographics of the customers very helpful in making their decision. For example if your product was designed and made for teens but majority of your customers are middle aged people, then there is a mismatch and something is off. They want to see a realistic market potential sized and addressable market. It is mostly for transparency within your startup and making sure that your product or service is indeed reaching it targeted market. Although you may be reaching your sales or profit goal, analysing the customer list may tell investors that you are hitting a different and maybe a smaller market; in fact, it may decrease long term growth and potential. In addition to this, keeping the privacy of your customer lists is also very important and should only be provided to serious investors, do not post or upload customer lists online as it is a breach of your customers privacy. Below is a mock example of a very brief customer list example for general needs.
4.Customer Contracts
(Here is a Template)
A “Customer Contract” is a legal agreement between you and the consumer by whom the service or goods will be received. In addition to this, the customer must be paying for the goods or services. Signing a partnership with another company is not a customer agreement if there is no monetary exchange for a good or service. An example, to represent this would be if Facebook partnered with Uber and created a new database of information. This is a partnership, not a customer engagement because there was no monetary exchange whatsoever. On the other hand, if Facebook paid Uber for all their data, then this would be a customer contract. As you can see, it is important for investors to know about these customer contracts as it may have potential growth for your startup in the future. Only include customer contracts that consist of big amounts of money relative to your startup and ones you may feel are appropriate.
In addition to this, letters of intent are also great ways to show customer agreement with the service or product you are offering. Check out this article to learn more about it in more detail.
5.Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)/ Churn (SaaS)
(Here is a Template)
MRR = Revenue/ month
Churn Rate= # of clients lost in period/ # of total customers at the beginning of period
Let’s begin off by diving into MRR ( Monthly Recurring Revenue). MRR is essentially a measure of your revenue stream on a monthly basis. This is applicable to companies who operate on a subscription basis and get recurring revenues and also companies who also make regular single transactions that may not necessarily reoccur. Examples of a recurring revenue type of model is Bell, Netflix, Spotify, etc. A startup with monthly recurring revenue is also more attractive to investors as there most likely is stronger retention rate. For companies who have regular one time transactions the MRR can be calculated using the average amount for each month.
Moving on, the “Churn Rate” refers to the percentage of clients who stopped and discontinued commitment to the service they signed up for. An easy way to remember this is through an equation.
(Churn Rate= # of clients lost in period/ # of total customers at the beginning of period)
Sample Charts
6. Employee Contracts
(Here is a Template)
This is a signed agreement between an employer and employee; it is vital in protecting employee rights and also employer liabilities. Aspects such as salary, general responsibilities, duration of employment are all addressed in this document. Investors maybe be interested in this info as they want to know what type of team your startup consists of and if it is well balanced. For example if you had a high paying programmer compared to other programmers in the startup, investors would like to if it makes sense especially if the startup isn’t as widely scaled yet. Every dollars matters and it matters even more when it’s the investor’s dollar. In addition to this, a “Non-Disclosure Agreement” would also be in the employee contracts and this is very important to include. This prevents any vital information regarding the startup to leak out to the public or competitors who may utilize for their own profit.
Below is a very brief employee contract meant just for example purposes.
7.Details on Competition
(Here is a SWOT Template)
Competition is present in every industry in the world and there is a good chance you have a good set of competitors in the field your startup lies in. It is important to address these competitors for both yourself and investors as you want to be as unique as possible to order to differentiate. You can analyze your competitors in a number of ways but a common way is to complete a SWOT analysis on potential competitors. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. What this analysis does is that is looks at competitors through internal and external aspects and makes sure you are being able to differentiate them. Accept your weaknesses as a startup and continue building upon your strengths. Identifying and sharing threats early on ensure transparency and makes investors more aware of the whole market situation. Below is an example of a SWOT analyse on a pie company.
8.Cap Table
(Here is a Template)
This is one of the most important documents an investor is interested in and one document you should not miss in your submission. The “Capitalization Table” shows ownership segments within the company, including shares, options, and equity. Everyone who has a stake in your startup MUST be in this document so then valuation of an investment is valid and accurate. This is a table which also has to be updated regularly. In essence, every line you add to the table should add value to the company because it shows investors, employees, and partners that there is indeed a successful vision which they also believe by. Furthermore, there isn’t necessarily a proper way to format this table, just make it simple, organized, and easy for investors to understand.
9.Option Pool Information
An option pool helps to acquire top talent for your startup and entice people to stay with your company. This is done by offering them stake in your company. Where does this stake come from you may ask? There is actually a dedicated percentage of your startup dedicated to your employees, obviously if you opt in to do it. A scenario to represent this could be as such, you start up your own company in the field of creating innovative energy sources. You want top talent, so you hire a few grad students and someone who also has worked at other places to guide your startup the right way. In the beginning of their time at your company you can offer each of them a certain percentage of the company stake, this can be in the form of stocks assuming you are a public company. Let’s assume each year they get 200 individual stocks for each person which they can buy at the price at which they first joined the company at ($5 dollars). If they leave, they do not get to redeem any of the stocks they have. Over time, they tend to work harder and harder to make the company more successful essentially increasing the stock price. After 4 years each of them has quantity of 800 stock parts and the stock price is now $50 dollars. If they sold the stock at this point in time they would have made an instant profit of $36,000. {(800*50)- (800*5)}= 36,000. This is what drives employees and creates an urge to join your startup compared to others. Investors want this information because they want to know that dedicated percentage that you allocated to your employees and seeing if it makes a difference.
The final step investors are going to do is call many large vendor customers and ensure there is indeed a legitimate business taking place. The investor wants to make sure his money is going towards the right investment and think of this call as a reference check. They want to know how the customer feels about you first hand and how their experience has been with you. Depending on the industry, investors will also ask customers if the product or service has made their job easier and if it is something sustainable.
You must understand that for a investor their money is very important and will want to know everything and anything their money is going towards. It’s best to be transparent with investors and provide adequate financial details with strong analyse on your competition. Investors have been through this many times and being prepared with all this information puts you ahead of the curve.
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VenturX is a web platform that helps entrepreneurs through their journey from idea to launch and beyond. VenturX uses data-driven analytics to score and connect startups and investors at Seed and Series A financing.
