Fundraising Operations
Startup Due Diligence Questions: Build an Investor FAQ
Prepare answers to startup due diligence questions with an investor FAQ. Track each answer, its evidence, owner, access level, and review date.
What you will learn
- Create a sourced answer register
- Assign unanswered questions to the right owner
- Share approved evidence with appropriate permissions
An investor FAQ turns repeated startup due diligence questions into consistent, source-linked answers. Record the question, the current answer, its evidence, and the person responsible for keeping it accurate. The goal is reliable preparation, not to anticipate every legal request or replace professional review.
Start from actual questions
Collect questions from your meetings and preparation reviews. Group them by business evidence, financial context, team, customer relationships, and operating risks. Keep a legal or transaction-specific request with the appropriate qualified owner. A confident answer without a source can create more work later.
| Question | Useful evidence | Answer owner |
|---|---|---|
| How is revenue defined? | Approved financial definitions and period | Finance owner |
| Why do customers stay? | Dated cohort analysis and permissioned research | Commercial or product owner |
| Who owns the key work? | Current responsibility map | Leadership |
| What remains unproven? | Assumptions register and validation plan | Relevant operator |
| What material can be shared? | Permission and confidentiality review | Authorized owner |
Build a three-layer answer
- Give a short direct answer that matches the question.
- Attach the evidence and its date or explain the unresolved assumption.
- Name the next action if the answer is incomplete.
Illustrative answer: “Our renewal calculation counts paying locations whose contract renewal date fell in the quarter. The approved cohort analysis is linked here. A separate pilot cohort is still being observed and is not included.” This is more useful than “retention is strong” because the reader can understand the claim.
Copyable FAQ register
Question: [exact wording]
Short answer: [approved summary]
Evidence: [document + section + date]
Definition or calculation: [if relevant]
Known limitation: [coverage / assumption]
Owner: [role]
Review state: [open / checking / approved]
Last checked: [date]
Sharing permission: [audience + access]
Follow-up promised: [action + date]An open row is not a failure. It makes missing evidence visible before someone improvises an answer. Review the register after meetings and whenever a source document changes.
Maintain one approved answer
If the pitch, financial model, and FAQ use different periods or customer definitions, reconcile them before sharing. Preserve the previous answer internally when it changes and record why. Do not overwrite a source with an AI-generated approximation.
- Use permissioned access to confidential materials.
- Separate historical results, forecasts, and estimates.
- Remove unnecessary personal details from shared answers.
- Confirm the recipient and version before sending.
- Route specialist questions rather than guessing.
Put the lesson to work
Keep the approved FAQ connected to meeting context and next actions. For folder organization, use the existing startup data-room guide instead of creating another checklist here. Explore meeting preparation.
A Finta Field Guide based on our Fundraising Academy teaching. Worksheets and fictional examples are original educational exercises, not customer results or personalized financial, legal, or tax advice.
Continue with an established guide
This lesson covers a specific exercise. For the broader resource, read Startup Data Room Checklist for Investor Due Diligence.