What do investors want to know about your business?

If you've already read our guide to what investors look for, you'll have a pretty good idea of what you'll need to do to convince one of more of them to invest in your business. Here, we take a look at the detail behind the scenes. Because preparing a plan, kicking off a pitch discussion and gauging initial interest is just the start of your investor relations journey.

Not all of the questions included in this guide will be relevant for all businesses, and some investor relationships will be a lot less involved and intensive (for example, if you're raising money with a non-specialist crowdfunding platform or you're undergoing a friends-and-family round with investors who know you well and are already persuaded they want to invest in you).

While we can't provide an exhaustive list of everything that you could be asked, the 10 themes we've identified, together with the 4 different categories of supporting materials that are likely to be relevant and helpful to answer the questions contained in each of them, should prepare you really well for what to expect and enable you to reassure your target investors that you know what you're talking about.

1. Key business materials

These include materials that you'll definitely need information from, e.g.:

a. Your latest business plan (with all figures and any supporting references updated)

b. Your constitutional docs, including your articles of association, any shareholder agreements (or their equivalent, if you're not set up as a private limited company), potentially also board minutes and resolutions

c. Details of who's on your board and their bios (or the bios of your management team if no formal board, as yet)

d. Details of who is on your advisory committee (if you have one) and brief bios

e. List of your existing shareholders and your cap table, (including dates and details of all fundraising rounds)

f. Copies of any regulatory applications and approvals

Other materials that may be useful or requested include, for example:

g. Management team contracts

h. Key supplier or other business partner contracts, including joint ventures and other forms of collaboration

i. Leases or other property - or asset-related commitments and/or evidence of ownership (including IP registrations and on-going applications)

2. Your financials and any risk indicators

You'll definitely need to be prepared to share these materials or key information from them:

a. Your management accounts (or equivalent, containing your P&L, balance set and cash-flow statement). The required period for these will depend on how long your business has been running. As a rule of thumb, if you've been operating, including at a pre-revenue level, for less than 2 years, ensure you can provide the accounts for each month that you've been in business.

b. Your forecasted P&L for the next 3-5 years

c. Your budgeted spend against your P&L forecast

d. Details of any debts, loans and contingent liabilities (like an ongoing legal dispute)

Other materials that may be useful or requested include, for example:

e. Your bank statements

f. Your credit rating

g. Confirmation of whether you are handling overseas payments or receive any transfers of money from overseas

3. Sales and marketing-related materials

For example:

a. A list of your key customers (if you're already generating revenue)

b. Sales ledgers, contracts or heads of terms/letters of intent (as relevant)

c. Your sales projections and strategy (including a breakdown of revenue by each revenue stream within your business)

d. Your marketing strategy, rationale for and breakdown of spend by medium/channel/activity, including projected dates for each

e. Details of key marketing relationships and their cost and value to the business

4. People and HR

For example, your team/employee organisation chart (including details of budgeted and imminent hires to follow and indicating where people are located)

If you've got the relevant materials to hand, then you're ready to take a look at the common questions that investors want to know. We've grouped these into 10 themes.

These are indicative of the questions that you may expect to hear, and you should be prepared to answer them as truthfully as you can:

1. What does your business do and in which market?

2. What problem does it address and how?

3. How big is the market for your proposed solution and what is its value?

4. How much of that value do you envisage capturing in the next 3-5 years?

5. What is your current status (e.g. are you already launched and generating revenue?), and how will that change?

6. Can you be copied and are there any barriers to entry that will either challenge you or give you competitive advantage?

7. Do you need to be regulated and if so, have you sought and gained the relevant approvals?

8. Do you own any IP, have you properly protected it (if so where) and how critical is it to your business?

9. How long have the business been running, and what are your key milestones/achievements?

10. Who's on your management team and why are they the right people to build/run this business?

11. Where do you see the business in 3-5 years? (What are the main growth drivers, and what could derail you?)

12. Can we see copies of your key business documentation, e.g. articles of association and annual compliance statements filed with Companies House?

1. Are you taking a segmented approach to the market (e.g. targeting/supplying/prioritising any particular groups of customers?

2. If so, why are you focusing on them?

3. Who is your ideal customer and why?

4. How confident are you about the demand for your product/service from your target customers?

5. Is there any 3rd-party research that supports your position (and can we see it)?

6. How do you/will you reach your customers in order to sell to them?

7. Do you have any existing customers and what revenue do they represent? (If you only have letters of intent rather than contracts, please provide these)

8. What are your contract terms and can we see them? Do they vary between customer?

9. Are you collecting customer feedback? How? What do they say? Can we see it?

10. Will you expand to other customer segments and/or locations?

11. Do you have competitors?

12. Who are the closest 3?

13. How does your proposition compare with your competitors? How will you distinguish your proposition?

14. What is your existing market position as compared with these competitors?

15. What and/or who is your biggest competitive threat?