what goes in a data room
the packet investors ask for before they will take a second meeting.
a recurring moment in our calls: an investor is interested, and asks for the data room. many early founders have never assembled one, and the request can stall a promising conversation for weeks.
a data room is one organised place that answers the questions an investor would otherwise ask one at a time. what is the product. what makes it defensible. where is it on the roadmap. how much capital does it need, and what does that capital buy.
alongside it sit the basics: a pitch deck, a cap table that shows who owns what, a website that matches the story, and the research behind your decisions. for hardware, add the numbers behind your cost estimates and where those numbers came from, and an early read on permits, certifications or licensing.
investors expect confident decisions backed by research. a data room is where that research becomes visible. it also helps the founder: putting it together tends to surface the open questions before someone else does.
we work through the list with founders before any introduction, so that the first meeting can be about the company rather than about missing paperwork.