Founders & Small BusinessFree
Investor Information Request Response Memo
Every line of the request sorted into what your financing documents already require, what is a priced courtesy, and what cannot go at all.
River reads the request next to the documents you signed with whoever sent it, then sorts every line into three lanes before anything gets built. What comes back is a sheet holding one row per requested item, with the lane, the date already attached to it, the hours it costs, the basis each figure was computed on and its source system. Alongside it sits the reply itself, with context written in beside anything that reads badly at first glance.
A nine-line request does not contain nine questions. It contains three that your paperwork already answers on a date you agreed to, five that would need something built from scratch, and one that belongs to somebody else. The model agreement most venture financings start from is explicit that a company is not obliged to create new information or materials to satisfy an inspection request. So the expensive half of a request is usually the optional half, and nobody sorts it before starting.
Written for a founder who has raised, owes something to people on the cap table, and has a business to run in the same week. Reach for it when a request lands with a date on it and a list you did not write. If the same figures get asked for every quarter, the fix upstream is a recurring update on pinned definitions, and the exhibit that sits under one is investor update financials.
One item was 42% of the request
Ledbury Fieldworks got nine items from its Series A lead on 6 November, wanted in a week. Answered as written they cost 26.25 hours. Three were already owed on dates the paperwork set: quarterly statements inside 45 days, audited annuals inside 180. Those three cost an hour, because two of them existed. The other five were courtesies needing new material, and they carried 19.25 of the 26.25 hours. One of the five, a 24-month cohort table by signup month, was 11 hours on its own.
Asking what the cohort table was for turned out to matter: the lead needed one line on whether retention was improving, which the six-month view Ledbury already ran answered in 24 minutes. The bigger trap was a single word. Contracted, run-rate and collected readings of ARR at 30 September were $4,182,000, $3,948,000 and $3,606,000, a spread of 16%. The SEC asks a filer to publish a clear definition of a metric and how it is calculated next to it.
March's update had said $3,410,000 on the run-rate basis. Sending the contracted figure implies 22.6% growth; the comparable one implies 15.8%. So the reply carried the bridge instead: new $742,000, expansion $196,000, contraction less $118,000, churn less $282,000, landing exactly on $3,948,000. Retention read 94.0% across the whole March book and 100.3% once nine accounts on a plan Ledbury itself withdrew came out, same $3,206,000 on top. That figure then travels, because LPs ask their funds for portfolio company data.
How it works
Forward the request
Paste it exactly as it arrived, including the date they gave and who signed it.
Add the paperwork
The rights agreement, any side letter, and whether this holder clears the major investor threshold.
Add what they hold
Past updates and statements you already sent them, so each new figure has a starting point.
Send the reply
Read the lanes, approve the substitutes, then send what is owed and calendar the rest.
What you get
- Every requested item sorted into owed with its date, priced courtesy, or cannot go
- Hours estimated per item before any of it gets built, so the expensive ones get negotiated
- Each figure carrying the population it was computed on and the system it came from
- A bridge from the last number that investor already holds to the one you are sending
- Anything that reads alarming answered in the same message, with the population split beside it
- Substitutes offered for the costly items, answering the question actually behind them from what exists
Common questions
Do I have to answer everything they asked for?
Your own signed documents decide, not this page and not the request's tone. The model agreement most venture rounds start from lists specific deliverables on specific dates, and separately says a company is not obliged to create new information or materials for an inspection. Read your copy, because the thresholds and the deadlines get negotiated in every round.
They asked for ARR. Which number do I send?
Whichever one you sent last time, plus a line naming it. Ledbury's three readings of the same date sat $576,000 apart, which is 16% of the smallest. The risk is not picking the wrong basis. It is picking a different basis from the one already in their file, then having the gap surface when the audit lands.
One of the numbers looks bad. Do I lead with it?
Put it in the same message as its population. Ledbury's retention was 94.0% on the whole book, and 100.3% once the nine accounts it had deliberately withdrawn came out. Both are true, and the numerator is identical. Sending only the flattering one invites a call; sending only the alarming one invites a worse call.
Can I refuse an item without damaging the relationship?
You can if the reason is specific and the substitute is real. Three of Ledbury's top twenty customers had agreements barring disclosure of the relationship, so those three went as sector and contract value without names. What the clause actually says is worth reading before you decide, which is a customer contract review.
Why does the request always arrive with a deadline?
Usually because it is a pass-through. Your investor reports to their own investors on a clock, and LPs have long asked funds for portfolio company data in bespoke formats, which is what ILPA's template exists to standardise. Asking what the figure feeds and when it is needed frequently moves half the list to next quarter.
They want a cap table. Is that the same as the financials?
It is a separate deliverable in most rounds, and often on its own clock, so check which of your holders it goes to and by when. If notes or SAFEs from earlier rounds are still outstanding, what the table shows depends on assumptions you have to state, which is a SAFE and note conversion model.
How do I stop getting these requests?
Send the figures before they are asked for, on definitions that do not move. Ledbury's whole request was answerable from two systems it already ran; what it lacked was a standing cadence. The board-facing version of the same discipline is a board meeting pack. If it has been months since the last one went out, start with an investor update backfill.
Investor Information Request Response Memo
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