Vault IndexFundraising
The fundraising room checklist investors actually work through
Ten folders, in the order diligence tends to open them, and the three documents founders leave out too often.
Vault Index desk / 21 August 2026 / 8 min read
The order that matches how diligence reads
Investors do not read alphabetically. They check that the company exists and is properly owned, then that the numbers are real, then that the revenue is contracted, then that the people and the intellectual property are tied down, then everything else.
Mirror that: corporate and constitutional documents, cap table and previous rounds, financial statements and management accounts, the current model, customer contracts and pipeline, team and employment terms, intellectual property assignments, technology and security summary, legal and regulatory, then a folder of prior board packs.
What founders leave out
Signed founder agreements with vesting. If the equity split has never been papered, that comes up in diligence and it is a slow fix under time pressure.
Intellectual property assignments from contractors. Code written by a freelancer without an assignment clause does not belong to the company, and buyers of your next round will ask.
The unflattering month. A management accounts folder that skips the quarter revenue dipped reads worse than the dip itself. Include it with a one line note.
Two rooms, not one
Run a first room that any credible investor can enter after a verified email, holding the deck, the headline numbers and the corporate basics. Keep a second room, granted per party at term sheet stage, for the customer contracts, salary detail and anything commercially sensitive.
That structure keeps early momentum without handing your contract terms to a fund that passes in week two and happens to back a competitor in month nine.
Hygiene that saves a week
Name files so a stranger can sort them: date first in ISO order, then a short description. Flatten scanned PDFs so they are searchable. Put a one page index at the top of the room. Set link expiry to the length of the process rather than forever, and check the analytics for the investor who claims never to have received the deck.
Sources and further reading
- 99 Data Rooms, fundraising data room checklist
- British Business Bank, guidance for growing businesses
- Companies House, filing and statutory records
Vendor figures rechecked 1 September 2026