Don’t Let Your Data Room Become a Superfund Site
When I first worked in a restaurant, the first lesson learned is “clean as you go.” Watch the best chefs and they are tidy AF at their stations. Fast forward, and today I give the same training to early stage founders…when it comes to you company data, clean as you go. Don’t wait for guests—or the consequences of their judgment—to prep and organize the materials that tell the full story of your company.
Making sure that your foundational documents are neatly, safely, and easily ready for review isn’t just about fundraising, even though that is when many founders finally get around to the thought. My advice? Even if you are not actively seeking capital, get your sh!t in order. The same data you share with investors can win a contract, sign a strategic, prep for a board meeting, or save the day in the face of a catastrophe. Just a few months ago, a founder I know (and adore) lost her cofounder when he passed away unexpectedly. You cannot begin to imagine what you must have on hand in that moment to cope.
But surely when it comes to seeking capital, having your data house in order is essential. If we are considering an investment in your company and things get serious, I 100% am going to ask you to share a bunch of perfunctory info. If it’s already organized and ready to share, this process will be faster, smoother and more pleasant for all involved.
Next week—at Tech Crunch Early Stage 2024 on April 25 in Boston—I am co-hosting a session with Fidelity’s Kristen Craft and Gunderson Dettmer’s Laura Stoffel on exactly this topic.
Kristen, Laura and I will do everything we can to help attendees will walk away with actionable guidance on tacking this task. It’s not rocket science, but for a busy founding team—especially and early stage one—it is yet another task, atop of mountain tasks, that somehow must get done.
But don’t let perfection be the enemy of the good. Your “data room” doesn’t need to win a beauty pagant. It shouldn’t strive to do anything more than represent your current business in the best, most transparent light possible. So, beware obsession with “punch lists” that describe every possible thing that might be a data room. If you don’t have someone on that list, maybe you just haven’t reached a stage of maturity where that item is necessary or relevant.
I will end with this: cleaning up a mess is harder and slower than cleaning as you go. Don’t let your foundational info become a toxic waste dump of google doc links and broken spreadsheets. When your data room doubles as a Superfund site, it then takes days and days of remediation before you can successfully leverage that data…time you don’t have when a moment of opportunity or crisis presents itself. Trust me.
On the upside, when I was first starting my entreprenurial career there were very few tools or technologies to enable this activity unless you had VERY deep pockets and could afford one of the big company data platforms (for example, rhymes with “farta.”) That’s not true anymore. Really, there’s little excuse or rationale for not making fiscal hygiene a part of your operations from the get-go. Today, there are affordable tools that make this work far easier and more automated than ever before.
If you are in Boston on April 25, some join the convo with us—it’ll be worth the hour of your time.
More about me here.
More About RevUp Capital
RevUp Capital invests in B2B and B2C companies that are revenue-driven and ready to double down on growth. We deploy cash and capacity to help companies grow from $1-3M to $10-30M, quickly and efficiently, using a revenue-based model. Companies enter our portfolio with $500K-$3M in revenue, a strong growth rate, and a team that’s ready to scale. Our typical investment range is $300K-$500K.
More at www.revupfund.com