Why this matters even if you are not raising.
The five-question test is not just about fundraising. It is the same lens a buyer uses for an acquisition, a banker uses for a credit decision, and a serious advisor uses to assess whether your business is well-run. Treating your own business as an investor would treat it surfaces problems that internal vision misses.
A useful exercise: schedule a quarterly self-review where you sit with your finance manager and answer the five questions in writing. The act of writing the answer often reveals where your data is weak or your story is unclear. Six months of this discipline, and you are investor-ready without a frantic prep cycle.
Question 1: What is the unit economics?
Unit economics is the profit per unit of activity (per customer, per transaction, per branch, per truckload, etc.). Investors want to see: contribution margin per unit, customer acquisition cost (CAC), customer lifetime value (LTV), payback period on CAC. For an SMB, this often looks like: average order value, gross margin per order, customer retention rate, marketing cost per customer acquired.
A strong answer has specific numbers and a clear narrative: "Our average order value is £55, gross margin is 38 percent, our customer comes back 3.2 times a year for 2.4 years on average, our CAC is £12, payback is under 2 months." Weak answers are vague: "We make good margins, customers come back." Investors hear vague and assume you do not know.
Question 2: What is the working capital cycle?
How does cash move through the business? Cash conversion cycle = days sales outstanding (DSO) + days inventory outstanding (DIO) - days payable outstanding (DPO). Lower is better. A retail business might run at 35 days. A B2B distributor might run at 70 days. A manufacturer might run at 110 days. The number itself matters less than whether you can explain it and whether it is improving.
Investors particularly want to know: can the business grow without burning cash? A growing business with a 90-day cash cycle needs significant working capital to scale. If you cannot articulate how growth is funded, the investor models you as a cash trap and discounts heavily.
Question 3: What is the moat?
Why does your business win versus competitors and why does that continue? Moats for SMBs typically come from: customer relationships and switching costs, brand and reputation in a region, supplier relationships, location/distribution advantage, proprietary processes or technology, regulatory positioning. Most successful SMBs have 1-2 moats; weak SMBs have none.
A strong answer is concrete: "We are the only certified distributor for Brand X across the Pacific Northwest, our network of 240 retailers has 8+ year relationships, and our IT integration with Brand X means real-time stock visibility that competitors lack." Weak answers are aspirational: "We have great service." Investors discount aspirational answers heavily.
Question 4: What are the risks and how are you mitigating them?
Investors are paid to find risks. Investors trust founders who have already found and addressed the risks more than founders who claim there are none. Risk categories: customer concentration (top customer >25 percent of revenue), supplier concentration, key person dependency, regulatory, FX, competition, operational. List the real ones, name the mitigations.
A strong answer: "Our largest customer is 22 percent of revenue and is a 9-year relationship; we have actively grown the second customer to 14 percent over 18 months and have a pipeline of 3 prospects to reduce concentration further. We have a 6-month buffer in inventory for our key supplier dependency." Specific, numerical, mitigation-focused.
Question 5: What is the next 24 months going to look like?
Not the 5-year plan, the next 24 months. Where will revenue, margin, headcount, and cash position be? What are you investing in? What are the milestones? What could derail it? Investors build models off this answer; specificity matters because vague answers lead to vague models that lead to discounted valuations.
A strong answer: "Revenue grows from £8M this year to £12M in 24 months, primarily through 4 new branches (2 launching in 6 months, 2 in 18 months) and online channel growing from 8 to 18 percent of revenue. Gross margin holds at 36 percent through scale offsetting input cost. Net margin improves from 9 to 12 percent as overhead leverages. Cash position improves from £550K to £1.1M after capex of £750K for new branches." Specific, modelable, defensible.
How to score yourself honestly.
Score 1-5 on each question. 5 = answered immediately with evidence. 4 = answered immediately, evidence in 24 hours. 3 = answered in 24 hours with evidence. 2 = need a week to assemble. 1 = cannot answer with confidence. Total out of 25. Above 20: you are investor-ready. 15-20: 60-90 days of prep needed. Below 15: significant work required, do not start meetings yet.
The scoring matters less than the diagnosis. Each question maps to a system or capability your business should have anyway. Unit economics requires good costing and customer data. Working capital requires good AR/AP visibility. Risk requires deliberate planning. The five questions are a forcing function for running a better business, not just a fundraise checklist.
- Q1: Unit economics — contribution margin per unit
- Q2: Working capital cycle — DSO + DIO - DPO
- Q3: Moat — concrete, defensible advantages
- Q4: Risks — named with mitigations
- Q5: 24-month outlook — specific, modelable
How clean books make you investor-ready.
The questions all require data: unit economics needs transaction-level detail, working capital needs accurate AR/AP, risks need clear customer concentration data, the 24-month outlook needs a credible base. With messy books, you cannot answer any of them well. With clean books and decent tooling like Nonari, every question is a query, not a project.
The single best investment in fundraise readiness is not a deck or a banker. It is 12-24 months of clean monthly closes, branch P&L, and disciplined KPI tracking. The deck writes itself when the data is right. The story holds up under diligence when the numbers are reproducible. Start the discipline now even if the raise is two years out.