Investor View: The Fundraising Documents Nobody Has Ready

A founder once came to me a few days after meeting an investor at a conference. The initial conversation had gone well enough that the investor wanted to learn more, and the founder now needed to send over a teaser and other documents, and prepare for a more formal conversation.

That gap, between a good conversation and the formal meeting, is where a potential deal could be won or lost. An interested investor doesn’t need a perfect pitch twice. They need evidence that the enthusiasm from the conversation holds up on paper; that the founder knows their business as well as they presented it.

By then, several things should already have happened: the business model interrogated, the market deeply researched, the revenue assumptions tested, the ownership picture accounted for. The documents are where that thinking, or its absence, becomes visible.

Which is really what I’m reading for.

As an investor, I’m usually trying to answer a few fundamental questions: Is this potentially the unicorn idea of the decade? If it is not, is it still a very good business capable of earning attractive returns? What makes it meaningfully different? Can I understand how it makes money? Is there a credible pathway for investors to eventually get their money back? And, perhaps more personally, would I one day be proud to say I was one of its earliest investors? 

The documents that typically follow — the teaser, the financial model and, eventually, the cap table — should largely answer these questions.

The Teaser

The teaser is a test of compression and clarity. Can the founder explain the problem, the solution, the market, the business model, the team, and the capital requirement without needing 20 slides to do it? 

A strong one-pager, sometimes extended into two or three pages, gives me enough to discuss the opportunity with another investor or an internal partner. It should include a few carefully selected numbers: 

• The market the company could address;

• The portion it can realistically serve;

• A small number of outputs from the financial model. 

What I am reading is the founder’s ability to distinguish what is important from what is merely interesting.

The Financial Model

The financial model answers a different question: how does this idea become an economic system?

At the idea stage, I don’t expect the precision of an established company. Pricing may change. The customer profile may sharpen. One revenue stream may turn out to be three. But uncertainty doesn’t remove the need for financial reasoning. A useful model clearly explains:

• How the company expects to earn revenue;

• What it will cost to deliver;

• What operating expenses will be required;

• What assumptions are driving the projections — assumptions that should be visible, researched and defensible.

I want to see the gross margin because it tells me whether the core activity creates economic value. And the net income margin because it shows what remains after the broader cost of operating. Both eventually flow into cash, and cash is what an investor actually gets. 

The model should also show how the capital raised will be used, and what becomes possible afterward that isn’t possible today. Five-year projections are usually enough to demonstrate the logic; 10 can help for longer development cycles. The goal is to prove that the founder has thought about how the future could work.

The Cap Table

Then, there is the cap table. Despite its importance, it is rarely the first document asked, particularly at the true idea stage. A formal cap table matters most once there are investors, options, or ownership promises outside the founding team. A simple spreadsheet can state:

• Who owns the company;

• In what proportions;

• What has been issued;

• What has been promised, with the numbers adding up. 

By the time I’m seriously considering an investment, I’ll need to know whether I’m entering a clean structure or inheriting complications.

Finally, across all three documents, I’m also reading the team. Are the strengths of the founding combination well articulated — domain expertise, someone who understands the finances, and, if technology is central, someone actually steering it? Experience, exposure and ecosystem advantage all matter. 

Conviction comes through in conversation, and documentation reveals whether that conviction has been translated into disciplined thought.

In the same vein, there’s a quality no spreadsheet fully captures: founder grit. Building is hard, and when the early excitement fades, investors need to believe the founders will keep fighting for the company and the capital entrusted to them. Conviction comes through in conversation, and documentation reveals whether that conviction has been translated into disciplined thought.

Document content will change over time. At the idea stage, what matters is that it is honest, clear and ready. A founder who can produce it quickly is demonstrating that they know what they’re building, how it could earn, what it requires, and what remains unanswered.

Chrissie Kayode is the Founder of The X Element and a Member of the Advisory Board at Village Capital. She works directly with founders in the FRWRDx IDEA Program.

The documents Chrissie describes are what Milestone 7 of the FRWRDx IDEA Program is designed to help founders prepare. The pitch is the conversation. The documents are what has to hold up after it.

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