Check every figure in your investor deck before an investor does
It is the evening before you send your deck to investors. You have rewritten the story twice and fixed the typo on the team slide. Then you notice the customer count on slide 4 says 1,200 and the traction chart on slide 9 tops out at 1,150.
Neither number is wrong. One is from last month's update and one is from this morning. An investor cannot know that, and the mismatch raises a worse question: what else is out of date?
Run this whenever a deck leaves your hands, whether attached to an email or uploaded to a data room (the shared folder investors review during due diligence). Do it after the final edit, because late changes are where figures drift.
The number audit
- Search the file for each headline figure and confirm it appears identically everywhere, including rounding, since £1.2m on one slide and £1,180,000 on another reads as two numbers.
- Put an "as at" date beside every metric that changes monthly, such as revenue, customers or ARR (annual recurring revenue).
- Label the period on every growth claim, so "3x growth" says whether it means year on year, since launch or over the last quarter.
- Add up every breakdown, such as use of funds, and check the parts equal the total.
- Check that any chart axis not starting at zero is clearly labelled, so a modest rise does not look like a leap.
- Confirm the raise amount and the runway (how many months the money lasts) on your ask slide match the financial model you will share.
- Compare the deck against everything sent with it: the cover email, any one-page summary and the spreadsheets in the data room.
That last item is the easiest to skip, because the deck feels finished and the email feels like admin. But the email is opened first. If it says £40k monthly revenue and slide 6 says £38k, doubt starts before anyone reaches slide 1.
Read the email and deck numbers aloud side by side before sending. If the deck needs rebuilding around clearer figures, Pitch Design can help.
