Investor Readiness Scorecard
Find out what an investor will find.
A good pitch gets you the meeting. Diligence is what comes after it: your accounts, your cap table, your contracts and your customer numbers.
This assessment scores how ready your business is for that examination, across the six areas an investor looks at, and tells you what they will see.
- About eight minutes
- Free, no account needed
- Pre-seed to Series A
What carries the score
- Financial Integrity20%
- Revenue Quality20%
- Capital Readiness18%
- Governance & Structure16%
- Team & Execution14%
- Market & Moat12%
Financial Integrity and Revenue Quality together carry 40% of the score, because these are the areas where African rounds most often come apart during diligence.
Six dimensions · thirty questions
Six areas, weighted the way an investor weighs them.
Financial Integrity
How well your financial records would stand up to examination. Weak or incomplete books are one of the most common reasons a process stalls after a good first meeting.
Revenue Quality
The quality of your revenue, rather than the size of it. An investor looks at how concentrated it is, whether customers come back, and how quickly you get paid.
Capital Readiness
How well prepared you are to run a raise. This covers your financial model, your runway, how you arrived at the amount you are asking for, and the materials you can share today.
Governance & Structure
Whether the company itself is in a state an investor can invest in. This covers your legal structure, your cap table, your filings, and who owns the intellectual property.
Team & Execution
Who is running the business, what they have done before, and whether the team delivers against the plans it sets itself.
Market & Moat
How well you understand your market and your position in it. This covers how you sized the opportunity, the evidence behind the problem, your unit economics, and how you win customers.
Structural blockers
Five answers cap the score.
Each of these is a structural problem rather than a weakness, and diligence tends to stop at them. Any one caps the score at 55, however strong the rest of the business looks, and is set out at the top of the report.
- 01
No formal financial records
- 02
Company and personal money are commingled
- 03
Runway is unknown
- 04
No investable legal entity
- 05
No documented cap table
An investor who finds one of these will usually stop there. The report tells you which ones apply to your business and what each one means to them.
How it is scored
Four bands, set at a demanding standard.
Investor Ready
78 to 100
Your business would hold up well under examination. The work now is choosing the right investors and running a tight process.
Nearly Ready
60 to 77
The business is in reasonable shape. There are two or three gaps that are likely to slow the round down or weaken your position on terms.
Building
40 to 59
The foundations are there, but several areas need work. Most businesses at this level need three to six months of preparation before opening a round.
Foundation
0 to 39
There is groundwork to do before approaching investors. Going out now would use up introductions you are likely to want later.
Most accelerator assessments treat 66% as ready for investment. The thresholds here are higher, because a score is only useful if it holds up once an investor examines the business behind it.
Eight minutes