Investors require lots of information to make an informed decision about investing in your startup. The more information they have, the faster they can look over it and make a decision. You should have all of the essential documents in your data room before you begin to talk to investors (or as soon as you can).

In addition to the key investment documents you’ll need for any due diligence, founders should include their most recent investor presentation, basic financials for past performance and projections, cap table, and company organization/formation documentation (including business certificates, articles of incorporation, tax information, etc.). Having these readily available in your investor data room will enable investors to quickly and easily assemble an agreement memo or exchange of information between their partners which could lead to the making of a term sheet.

A deal attribution analysis is a useful document to include in your investor data rooms. It demonstrates how your team invested in other startups and will to reassure potential LPs that you’re capable making smart investments. You may also want to include additional information, including intellectual property information, supplier and customer contracts, market research and more.

While you can add additional documents to your investor data room at any time but it www.dataroomproducts.com/what-is-due-diligence/ is important to only give access to documents if the investor is determined to move towards a term sheet. If you give an investor access to your data room before they are ready, it could slow the process down and could cause investors to reconsider investing.