Why this matters
Everything you claim in a pitch gets checked in diligence. Numbers that don't reconcile re-price deals, kill them late, or — at the extreme — become fraud claims. Getting them straight now, before you build the investor list, is far cheaper than explaining them later.
What "done" looks like
- Bookings, revenue, and cash are tracked as three different things
- Gross margin includes the real cost of delivering the product
- You know monthly burn and runway cold
- Every headline metric reconciles to your accounting and bank statements
- You can answer "how is that calculated?" for any number in the deck
How to do it
- Separate bookings, revenue, and cash. Investors will, so do it first.
- Compute true gross margin — hosting, payment fees, support, and delivery costs included.
- Nail burn and runway to the month, from actuals, not intentions.
- Reconcile to the bank: QuickBooks or Xero tied to statements, with clean monthly closes.
- Define each metric once — MRR, churn, CAC — and use the same definition in deck, data room, and conversation.
- Write the "how it's calculated" note for anything an investor could question.
Common mistakes
- Quoting an annualized run-rate from your single best month as "revenue"
- Stuffing MRR with one-time or heavily discounted deals
- A deck that disagrees with the data room — the fastest way to lose trust
Real-world examples
- JPMorgan's $175M acquisition of the startup Frank unraveled when its claimed user numbers proved fabricated, and the founder was convicted of fraud — the extreme end of "investors will check."
- Standard diligence reconciles claimed revenue against bank statements and accounting exports; discrepancies routinely re-price or end deals.
From a founder's point of view
Numbers a stranger can verify are an asset; numbers that need a story are a liability. Clean books say more about how a company is run than the pitch does — and they compound, because every future raise starts from this one's diligence file.
Rule of thumb
Every number in your pitch should survive being checked against your bank account by a skeptical stranger.