Un-complicate Your Startup’s Pitch Deck and Data Room
5 data points you need to track for investors (and only 5)
Recently, I answered a question about investor data from a founder who is well on their way to potentially great things, but since it’s their first time leading a company, they keep running into complications around some of the more unnecessarily complicated startup concepts.
Un-complicating startup concepts is my wheelhouse.
I’ve done starting up from all sides. I’ve done it on my own and self-funded to exit. I’ve done it teaming up with repeat founders and repeat investors in IPO-or-bust type ventures.
Most of my education in business is self-taught. I have an engineering degree, not a business degree, and I lucked into my first startup without even knowing what a startup was. Even so, by that time I had already started two “small businesses” — one in college and another in the fifth grade.
So like anyone in my position, the first time someone who wasn’t my fifth-grade teacher asked to see all the data on my startup, I freaked out, because I didn’t have any data on my startup.
After that, I started learning everything I could get my hands on about how startup investment worked. I also started tracking all the data about my…