🎯 Why Most Pitch Decks Fail Without This | Full Send CFO

💡 You spent 40 hours on your pitch deck… but only 4 minutes on your balance sheet.
Bad news: investors are more interested in your financials than your fonts.

In this episode of Full Send CFO, we break down:
• Why messy financials kill deals (even with a beautiful deck)
• The 4-step financial prep playbook before raising capital
• How to build investor-ready financials that actually get funded
• What founders get wrong about KPIs, forecasts, and capital strategy

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⏱️ Chapters

00:00 – Why Pretty Pitch Decks Don’t Raise Capital
00:30 – The Truth About Fundraising: Your Numbers Matter Most
01:20 – Problem: Most Founders Can’t Answer Basic Financial Questions
02:00 – Investors Want Proof, Not Just Potential
02:45 – The Consequences of Poor Financial Preparation
03:10 – ✅ Step 1: Clean Up Your Financials (P&L, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow)
04:00 – ✅ Step 2: Build a 12-Month Model (Focus on Assumptions + Burn)
06:00 – ✅ Step 3: Know Your KPIs Cold (CAC, LTV, Margin, Retention)
07:00 – ✅ Step 4: Map Your Capital Strategy (How Much, Why, and What If You Don’t Raise)
08:30 – How to Handle “What If You Had $0” Questions from Investors
09:00 – Spreadsheets Over Slides: Show Me, Don’t Just Tell Me
09:30 – Final Takeaway: Investors Don’t Invest in Decks. They Invest in Proof.

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💡 Key Takeaways

✔️ 65% of Early-Stage Investors Say Messy Financials Are a Dealbreaker
Don’t lose a deal over unclear numbers. Audit your financials before the pitch.

✔️ The 4-Step Pre-Fundraising Financial Prep Playbook
1. Clean Historical Financials: 24 months of clean P&L, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow
2. 12-Month Forecast: Focus on cash burn, runway, and capital deployment
3. Master Your KPIs: Know metrics like CAC, LTV, Gross Margin, Retention cold
4. Capital Strategy: Why this amount? Why equity vs debt? What if you don’t raise?

✔️ Design Isn’t a Substitute for Data
An investor-ready spreadsheet builds more trust than any template or AI-enhanced slide deck.

✔️ Demonstrate, Don’t Just Declare
Investors are from the “Show Me State.” They want proof, not projections without support.

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📌 Next Steps
• Review your P&L and clean it up.
• Build a 12-month cash model with clear assumptions.
• Prep for questions like: “What’s your CAC?” “What happens if you don’t raise?”
• Forward this to your co-founder, CFO, or accountant. They need to hear it too.

🔗 Learn more at thefullsend.com

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#FundraisingTips #StartupFinance #FullSendCFO #SeriesA #CFO #FinancialModeling #RaiseCapital #VentureCapital

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