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Prep Work & the Investor Data Room

Rows of empty desks and chairs arranged in a large, modern conference room with bright windows and blank projection screens at the front.
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THE PITCH →

You’ve made the decision to incorporate and it’s time to fundraise. The first step is to build an investor data room and craft your pitch. To prepare these you’ll dive deeper into many of the topics that we included in the founder readiness checklist in Section 1.1.

Investors will expect you to have clear, confident answers to foundational questions such as the ones listed below. These inquiries will likely come up in every conversation, whether you’re talking to a VC, an accelerator program director, or even a potential scientific advisor. We recommend exploring them deeply before you hit “go” on your fundraise. If you can answer most of these with confidence and clarity, you’re ready to start!

Business Foundations

  • Are you building a platform company or an asset-focused company?
    • This impacts all kinds of factors, from capital needs to VC fits
  • What is your primary value creation timeline?
    • How long will it take to generate the clinical data that drives a potential liquidation event (e.g. acquisition, IPO, revenue inflection) that your early investors are targeting?
  • How will your product ultimately make money?
    • Be specific – who pays, how much, how often, and when?
  • What kind of exit are you aiming for?
    • IPO (“going public” – Note: The biotech IPO market is essentially nonexistent in 2025)
    • Acquisition (Big acquisitions are making splashy news)
    • Partnering/licensing strategy (asset dilution is still the most common path for private biotechs)​

Market & Strategic Landscape

  • Do you deeply understand your target market?
    • What are the unmet needs in this space? What’s the regulatory path?
  • Do you know the competitive landscape?
  • Do you know who your downstream strategic partners might be?
    • Which pharma or device players might care about your work? What’s their current pipeline or BD strategy? Having a compelling business strategy that will provide early investors an exit opportunity is essential. Part of this strategy is estimating how much early-stage VC money you need to raise to reach the milestone that will convince everyone that you have a commercial product in hand. In other industries that are faster to market this would be equivalent to customer engagement. Document conversations you have with other companies and build a case to illustrate that the industry is waiting for what you are developing.

Company Model & Structure

  • What is your short-term operating model?
    • Will you build your team in-house or rely on CROs/CDMOs and external collaborators?
  • Are you a good candidate for an incubator or accelerator program?
    • What specific gaps could they help fill, such as lab space, mentorship, visibility, connections?
  • Have you explored non-dilutive funding sources?
    • Such as NIH programs, translational funding, family offices

Your Fundraising Strategy

  • What round are you raising?
    • Pre-Seed? Seed? Series A?
    • As a priced round or SAFE/convertible note?
  • How much are you raising, and what’s your target valuation?
    • Do your ask and valuation align with market norms and your current traction?
    • How long will this funding round last? How are you planning to time the next rounds?
  • What specific milestones will this financing unlock?
    • Outline exactly what progress you’ll make over the next 12 – 18 months with this round, and how this will help you raise the next round

Your People

  • Who is on your founding team? And are you aligned?
    • This means clarity about vision, roles, ownership and pace
    • Align on a strong story on why THIS is the winning team to work on exactly this challenge
  • Who are your next hires?
    • Once this financing comes in, who are your next key hires to make this succeed? Do you have potential people in mind already, or can tap into your connections/ a talent pool?
  • Do you have strategic advisors?
    • How are they supporting you? Are they active and willing to support your raise?

If you went through these questions and found some gaps or sticky spots, that’s normal. Now is the perfect moment to slow down and get clarity on any open questions before you start your sprint towards raising capital. It’ll save you time later and help you show up to investor meetings calm, credible and in control.
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Once you start having early conversations with investors, you’ll notice something: While the first meetings are all about vision, story, solution and the founder-market fit, if there’s interest, the next step can move very fast, and you’re already in due diligence! So it’s important to have your data room ready.

The Investor Data Room

Your data room is a curated, well-organized set of documents that give investors deeper insight into your science, business model, team and traction. It’s your way of showcasing: “We’ve done the work. We know where we’re going. We’re ready for this to take off.”

Having your data room ready early is vital, as it shows your investor that you’re prepared, thoughtful and moving with intention. It also avoids scrambling later when momentum is building and a VC asks for follow-up materials “by next week”.

You can host your data room on any secure, easy-to-access platform (Google Drive, Dropbox, DocSend etc), but make sure permissions are set correctly, files are clearly labeled, and the navigation is intuitive. It can be useful to have a non-confidential and confidential version of your data room.

Every company’s data room will look a little different, depending on your stage and business model. Here’s a standardized starting structure you can adapt to your needs:

Folders:

  1. Investment Pitch
    1. Full deck (+ appendix which could include a technical deep dive, key de-risking next-steps, a roadmap and milestones to achieve)
  2. Science & Product
    1. Key scientific background and data
    2. Any platform details or information not covered in the full deck
    3. Research papers (published or in preparation)
    4. Technical white papers or protocols
    5. Regulatory strategy (if applicable)
  3. Team & Advisors
    1. CVs or LinkedIn profiles of current team
    2. List of roles to fill in the short-term (if any remain)
    3. Org chart with future hiring plans
    4. List of key roles to fill and rationale
    5. Table of strategic advisors, with functions and expected involvement
  4. Intellectual Property
    1. Filed or granted patents (or provisional filings)
    2. Trademarks, copyright registrations (if relevant)
    3. Forward-looking IP strategy and milestones
  5. Business Development & Partnerships
    1. Any Letters of Intent, Commercial Agreements, Quotes, or NDAs signed for in-licensing or potential downstream partners
    2. Competitive Landscape
    3. Market Landscape (feedback from future users, prescribers, and payers)
    4. BD plan
    5. Outreach tracker (optional)
  6. Company Information & Legal
    1. Company Formation (Certificate of Incorporation)
    2. Cap Table
    3. Lab Space Agreements
    4. Key Vendor Agreements
  7. Financials
    1. Financial Model (i.e. Budget or Forecast)
    2. Use of Proceeds for current raise (very high level summary of budget)
    3. Historical and projected runway
    4. Investment agreements (SAFEs, notes, priced rounds)
    5. Grants (include all key grant documents)
  8. Optional: FAQ
  9. Optional: 2 min video
  10. Optional: Further Reading Information (e.g., links to articles highlighting relevant social and reproductive healthcare trends)
  11. Optional: Letters of support or endorsements from KOLs, advocacy groups, or community stakeholders
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