Get your data room ready before anyone asks

An investor says yes to a second meeting. They ask for access to your documents. You have two weeks. You spend them hunting for contracts and rebuilding numbers.

This isn't about being organised. It's that a data room reveals what a pitch hides well. What you actually track. And since when.

What it says about you

The contents matter less than three signals.

• Freshness. A file dated last month is reassuring. A file dated eight months ago raises a question.
• Consistency. The revenue in your forecast must match your statements. An unexplained gap costs more than a bad number you own.
• Completeness. A missing folder gets noticed. An empty folder with a name gets noticed more.

An investor isn't looking for good news. They are checking whether your numbers hold when turned over.

The six folders that are enough

At pre-seed and seed, you don't need more.

• Company. Articles, registration, shareholders' agreement if any, an up-to-date cap table.
• Finance. Twelve months of bank statements. Accounts if you have them. The forecast and the runway calculation.
• Commercial. Signed customer contracts, pipeline, revenue by month and by customer.
• Product. What you sell, to whom, and what is left to build.
• Team. Employment contracts, contracted providers, org chart.
• Legal. Intellectual property, disputes if any, insurance.

Order matters

Start with finance. It takes the longest to reconstruct, and it is the first folder anyone opens.

Contracts come next. They often need a missing signature or a forgotten amendment, and that takes days.

The rest comes together in one afternoon.

What costs you weeks

Three classics.

• A cap table that doesn't match the articles.
• Customer contracts with no clear end date.
• Bank statements exported as images, unreadable by a machine and painful for a human.

None of these is serious. All of them take time you won't have when someone is waiting.

What it changes

A ready data room doesn't get you funded. It stops you losing momentum.

Between an encouraging first meeting and a serious conversation, there are often three weeks. Spend those three weeks hunting for documents. You then work on neither your product nor your customers. The investor, meanwhile, has seen two other deals.

Romy runs this calculation on your numbers, and flags what changes when they move.