Investor Materials

Build investor-facing materials that are consistent, credible, and easy to defend.

When to Activate

• creating or revising a pitch deck
• writing an investor memo or one-pager
• building a financial model, milestone plan, or use-of-funds table
• answering accelerator or incubator application questions
• aligning multiple fundraising docs around one source of truth

Step 1: Two Upfront Questions

Before touching any document, ask:

1. Who is this for?

• "Is this for your own company or a client?"
• If a client: gather their facts, don't assume any numbers

2. What type of investor?

• Angel / pre-seed
• VC (seed to Series A)
• Accelerator (YC, Techstars, etc.)
• Strategic / corporate

This changes tone, depth, and what to lead with:

Investor Type	Lead With	Depth
Angel	Story + team + why now	Light on metrics, heavy on vision
VC	Metrics + market size	Detailed model, defensible assumptions
Accelerator	Answer the exact question asked	Brevity wins, no puffery
Strategic	Synergy + partnership value	Focus on their business problem

Step 2: Establish the Narrative

Before touching any numbers, answer:

"What is the one-sentence reason this company exists right now?"

This is the why-now. It must be specific and time-bound:

• Bad: "We help companies grow faster"
• Good: "Post-GPT, every company has an AI coding tool but none have a way to prevent sensitive data from leaking into it — we built that"

The narrative anchors every other section. If the user doesn't have one yet, help them develop it before drafting anything else. Ask:

1. "What changed in the last 12–24 months that makes this possible or urgent now?"
2. "What would a customer lose if they waited another year to solve this?"
3. Combine the answers into a single sentence: "[Trigger] means [audience] now face [problem] — we solve it with [approach]."

Golden Rule

All investor materials must agree with each other.

Create or confirm a single source of truth before writing:

• traction metrics
• pricing and revenue assumptions
• raise size and instrument
• use of funds
• team bios and titles
• milestones and timelines

If conflicting numbers appear, stop and resolve them before drafting.

Core Workflow

1. Establish mode (own company vs client) and investor type
2. Lock the narrative (why-now sentence)
3. Inventory the canonical facts
4. Identify missing assumptions
5. Choose the asset type
6. Draft the asset with explicit logic
7. Cross-check every number against the source of truth

Asset Guidance

Pitch Deck

Recommended flow:

1. company + wedge
2. problem
3. solution
4. product / demo
5. market
6. business model
7. traction
8. team
9. competition / differentiation
10. ask
11. use of funds / milestones
12. appendix

For Angels: spend more slides on story, problem, and team. Keep the model light. For VCs: spend more slides on market, traction, and model. Team is assumed from the deck itself. For Accelerators: lead with traction and insight. Cut everything that doesn't answer their question directly.

If pre-revenue: replace the traction slide with pipeline signals and design partner commitments. Replace revenue projections with milestone-linked assumptions (e.g., "X paying customers by month 6 at $Y/month"). Be explicit that these are projections, not actuals.

If the user wants a web-native deck: once the deck outline is approved, explicitly tell them — "Invoke the frontend-design skill and paste this outline as your input." Do not proceed to build the visual deck yourself — frontend-design handles that.

One-Pager / Memo

• state what the company does in one clean sentence
• show why now
• include traction and proof points early
• make the ask precise
• keep claims easy to verify

Financial Model

Include:

• explicit assumptions
• bear / base / bull cases when useful
• clean layer-by-layer revenue logic
• milestone-linked spending
• sensitivity analysis where the decision hinges on assumptions

Accelerator Applications

• answer the exact question asked
• prioritize traction, insight, and team advantage
• avoid puffery
• keep internal metrics consistent with the deck and model

Red Flags to Avoid

• unverifiable claims
• fuzzy market sizing without assumptions
• inconsistent team roles or titles
• revenue math that does not sum cleanly
• inflated certainty where assumptions are fragile
• why-now that is vague or evergreen (could have been said 5 years ago)

Quality Gate

Before delivering:

• every number matches the current source of truth
• use of funds and revenue layers sum correctly
• assumptions are visible, not buried
• the why-now is specific and time-bound
• investor type is reflected in tone and emphasis
• the story is clear without hype language
• the final asset is defensible in a partner meeting