What to include in an investor data room

An investor data room is the single, permissioned place where you keep everything an investor needs to say yes. Done well, it removes a week of email ping-pong from your diligence process. Done badly — a shared drive folder with 60 unlabelled files — it introduces doubt at the exact moment you need confidence.

Below is the checklist we see work for pre-seed through Series A. Build it once, keep it current, and reuse the same room for every conversation.

1. The narrative layer

• Pitch deck (the version you actually presented, dated in the filename)
• One-page executive summary for partners who never open the deck
• Short product demo video or a link to a sandbox account
• Founder bios with links, so the team slide can stay clean

2. Financials

• Historic P&L and balance sheet (monthly, since inception)
• Bank statements or an accounting export for the last 12 months
• Financial model with clearly labelled assumptions — one tab per scenario
• Current burn, runway, and the use-of-funds table for this round

3. Traction and metrics

• KPI sheet: MRR/ARR, growth rate, gross margin, churn, CAC and payback
• Cohort retention table, even if it's only six cohorts deep
• Pipeline or customer list (redact names if you must, but keep the shape)
• Two or three customer references or case studies

4. Cap table and corporate

• Current cap table, fully diluted, including the option pool
• SAFEs, convertible notes, and their conversion terms
• Certificate of incorporation and any amendments
• Board consents and shareholder agreements

5. Legal, IP, and people

• IP assignment agreements for every founder and early contractor
• Trademarks or patents filed
• Standard customer contract and any non-standard enterprise agreements
• Employment agreements, offer letter template, and the option plan document
• Data protection posture: sub-processors, DPA template, security overview

What to leave out

Don't put anything in the room you wouldn't want forwarded. That means no unredacted customer PII, no employee salaries by name at first-meeting stage, and no half-finished model tabs. Stage your room: a light version for first calls, a deeper one gated behind an NDA once a term sheet conversation starts.

Three things that slow diligence down

1. A cap table that doesn't reconcile with the SAFEs in the legal folder.
2. A model whose top-line doesn't match the deck's top-line.
3. Missing IP assignments from a contractor who wrote the first version of the product.

Structure beats volume

Name folders the way an associate thinks: 01 Company, 02 Financials, 03 Metrics, 04 Cap table, 05 Legal, 06 Product. Number them so they sort. Put a single README-style summary document at the top with a two-line orientation and your contact details.

In SendRoom you can build this once as a room template, then clone it per raise. Each investor gets their own link, so you can see who opened the cap table and how long they spent on the model — and revoke access the moment a conversation ends.