If you want to increase your chance of getting money from an investor, study their due diligence checklist and prepare a due diligence data room properly.
If you don’t intend to grow your startup into an 8 or 9-figure company, you can save time. This post is not for you.
I’ve helped hundreds of founders prepare their pitch decks and financial models. These are the pre-requisites to making contact with investors.
I’ve also spent countless hours extolling the virtues of preparing a due diligence data room BEFORE they begin investor outreach.
This advice falls on deaf ears in 99% of the cases.
However, there is a method to my madness! Why prepare an enticing deck and model, hook an investor, and then proceed to lose said investor because you took 4-6 weeks to provide them with due diligence documents?!
I could cut and paste something into this blog and pretend it is my own. The fact is, these checklists have been around for as long as the Venture Capital Industry has been. That’s like seventy years. I’m 62. Go figure!
Sooooo, as always, it pays to NOT re-invent the wheel.
I have used this company myself, and have recommended them to many of my startup portfolio companies.
They have created this due diligence checklist page, which I highly recommend you read.
James Spurway is an Angel Investor, Mentor, Advisor, Speaker, former Commercial Pilot, and Author who specialises in raising debt and equity capital. He strives to model diversity, equity, and inclusion in the founders he agrees to invest and work with. He has paused his angel investing activity to focus on raising his first US$ 50M venture capital fund, which will invest in startups that can accelerate the achievement of net zero emissions. James spent the past 33 years living in Hong Kong, Vietnam, Germany, Switzerland, Monaco, the USA, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, and Australia, his country of birth. In that time, he started 10 businesses, exited from seven, shut down two, and kept one. He has invested in a total of 50 startups since 2001 and had six successful exits.
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