Haris OdobasicRevOps helps you raise capital by making your revenue numbers provable, with a forecast investors can trust, clean CRM data, efficient go-to-market costs and an ARR history you can trace contract by contract. When due diligence starts, that preparation turns weeks of digging for data into a data room that is already built.
Investors test the numbers behind the growth story. In the fundraises we support, they look closely at costs, efficiency and the path to profit, and at whether the forecast and the ARR history hold up line by line. Investors also rate RevOps highly. In our survey of 24 VC and PE investors, PE respondents scored its importance to portfolio company growth at 4.86 out of 5 and VC respondents at 4.47 (Revenue Wizards, RevOps as a strategic priority).
What can startups do to prepare for the next investment round? Invest in Revenue Operations (RevOps). Let's explore how RevOps can help.
Revenue forecasts investors can trust
Investors are interested in accurate growth forecasts. When we speak with VCs, the common theme is that they look closely at the forecasting methodology. They want to make sure that they can trust the data.
RevOps helps by looking at the revenue architecture from end to end, from acquisition all the way to churn. For example, take the Bowtie model by Winning by Design. This model allows us to understand the growth potential of a business accurately.
A good RevOps function understands your revenue models thoroughly. This understanding provides a competitive advantage, because it allows a closer connection to the business and a comprehensive view of it. Interpreting data and narrating a coherent story are also crucial.
A CRM data foundation investors can rely on
A robust data foundation is essential for precise forecasting. It ensures the reliability of CRM data, and that reliability is crucial for investors. The data foundation covers four areas.
- Database design
- Duplicate management
- Accuracy
- Integration of data sources
The role of RevOps is to set up this data foundation so that it harmonises data from all revenue teams and the product, especially if you run a product-led motion.
Sales processes that produce reliable CRM data
Forecasting is based on your data. But most of the data that is entered into the CRM comes from your revenue teams. You need effective processes that capture accurate data in order to use it for reporting.
We once spoke with the CFO of a Series A company. She was working on her Series B deck and said that she had to dig out the data herself. Why? She could not trust some of the data. There were no processes in place, nor did she have RevOps on her side.
If that sounds familiar, a fixed-scope CRM and GTM Health Check shows which of your revenue data you can trust today and fixes the biggest gap first.
RevOps has a holistic view of the revenue teams. This allows us to understand the customer journey from end to end and turn this journey into processes. Effective processes produce robust data, as well as a better customer experience and alignment between teams.
Finding revenue opportunities in funnel and product data
The holistic focus on data and processes gives RevOps an edge in identifying revenue opportunities, as the next two examples show.
Full-funnel velocity
A full-funnel velocity analysis is one way to identify gaps. It shows whether certain conversion rates are behind, and it allows us to dig into why something is not performing and to propose improvements.
Commercial and product data
Your combined commercial data (for example, sales call recordings) and product data (for example, usage) are a revenue gold mine. Too often these two data sources are siloed. Together they unlock revenue opportunities such as an improved product roadmap, better pricing and a better value proposition. All of these factors affect revenue.
How can RevOps reduce GTM costs?
Investors look closely at GTM costs. RevOps has several options to reduce them.
- Consolidating tools that have similar or the same use case (platforms like Sastrify help with this)
- Moving to new tools that are more affordable
- Increasing adoption of tools to increase ROI
2) Create efficiencies
- Processes that drive alignment across teams and give clarity
- Less admin work for revenue teams (for example, making it faster to log activities in the CRM)
- Automation that reduces manual work
3) Enablement
- Enablement that shortens ramp-up time and reduces follow-up questions (for example, live training, documentation and clear communication)
- Avoiding information silos (sharing systems between sales, marketing, product and customer success)
The power of good enablement is that you can do more with less. Investors value that.
Reaching profitability before your next funding round
The best a startup can do before going into the next funding round is to become profitable. This clearly improves your negotiating power, because you will have a proven business model.
Profitability is a path we have seen many bootstrapped companies take, and some companies with initial funding also reached profitability before taking their next investment.
Reaching profitability requires commitment from the whole business. RevOps can drive a large part of it and be a key stakeholder on this journey.
Focus your GTM execution on what already works
The previous points on data foundation, processes, revenue opportunities and cost reductions still apply to your journey to profitability.
The most important thing is a laser focus on your GTM execution. You reach profitability by doing more of what is working. It is not a time for experiments.
Show investors product-market fit, not only growth
Investors also want evidence that customers value the product enough to stay and expand. Product-market fit is not a binary state but a spectrum, and getting further along it takes alignment. The client-facing teams depend on product to sell, and product depends on their insights to keep building the right thing. Two RevOps practices make that evidence visible.
Set up customer feedback loops
Sales and customer success talk to your customers day in and day out, and they drown in feedback. RevOps organises how that information is captured and shared, so that you
- keep track of what customers appreciate, their frustrations, feature requests, bugs and suggestions;
- make sure feedback reaches the right person and is followed up;
- turn it into data points everyone can use.
This feedback loop steers product development in the right direction and brings you closer to the stage where you can scale.
Build shared data for product and commercial teams
Over time you sit on a small mountain of valuable data that needs to be exposed, analysed and interpreted. RevOps is one of the few operational roles that speaks both the product and the sales language, so it can answer questions like the ones below.
- What are sales by product line?
- What is the value of open, won and lost opportunities related to a feature or product?
- Which products have the highest win rate?
- Which customers are about to churn, based on feature usage?
- Which features are underused but could add a lot of value, and which could lead to an upsell?
In due diligence, this is the evidence behind the retention and cohort numbers investors ask for.
Go-to-market due-diligence checklist for your data room
Legal checklists such as Y Combinator's Series A diligence checklist and Cooley's sample VC due diligence request list cover corporate records, IP, securities and material contracts. Y Combinator notes that having this information together in a data room before you sign a term sheet can cut as much as a week off closing, and that closing a Series A can take more than a month (Y Combinator; Cooley GO).
Investors also test the revenue engine itself. These are the commercial items we see requested most often, grouped so RevOps can prepare them.
Revenue and ARR
- An ARR waterfall by quarter, showing beginning ARR, new, expansion, contraction, churn and ending ARR, built customer by customer. Here is how to build ARR reporting in your CRM.
- ARR reconciled to signed contracts and invoices, with recurring and one-time revenue separated.
- Multi-year contracts split by contract year, so total contract value never counts as ARR.
- Net and gross revenue retention, and logo churn.
Customers
- Cohort retention by start quarter and by segment, including ideal-customer-profile customers versus the rest.
- A signed contract for every customer in the ARR base, with renewal dates, notice periods and price-increase terms.
- Customer concentration, meaning the share of ARR that comes from your largest customers.
Pipeline and forecast
- Pipeline by stage, segment and source, with coverage against next year's plan.
- Forecast versus actuals for recent quarters, so investors can judge your forecast accuracy.
- Written stage definitions and stage-to-stage conversion rates.
Unit economics and capacity
- CAC, CAC payback and customer lifetime value, by segment and channel.
- Sales capacity in terms of headcount, ramp time and productivity per rep.
- Go-to-market tool spend and what each tool is used for.
Definitions and reporting
- A metric dictionary agreed with finance that defines bookings, ARR, revenue, churn and activation.
- Monthly budget versus actuals, and board packs that show trends over the last four to five quarters.
- Known data gaps and how you fixed them. A documented fix lands better than a surprise.
Our Five Dots guidance on board reporting applies here as well. Curate five to seven metrics, show trends rather than snapshots, pair each lagging number with the leading indicator behind it, and lock one source of truth with finance before the first slide is built.
The gaps that slow diligence down are predictable. In the raises we have supported, revenue could sometimes be verified only against contract PDFs, invoices carried no recurring or one-time flag, classifications lived in side spreadsheets, some contracts or invoice schedules were missing, and dashboards showed different numbers for the same metric because they used different filters.
If you want to find what an investor would find before they do, our CRM and GTM Health Check ranks the gaps in your CRM data and fixes the first one.
Frequently asked questions about RevOps and fundraising
How does RevOps help with fundraising?
RevOps makes your revenue numbers provable. It builds the data foundation and processes behind a forecast investors can trust, reduces GTM cost, produces an ARR history you can trace contract by contract, and prepares the commercial part of the data room before due diligence starts.
What revenue data do investors ask for in due diligence?
Investors typically ask for an ARR waterfall with new, expansion, contraction and churn, net and gross retention, cohort retention by segment, pipeline and forecast against actuals, unit economics such as CAC payback, and signed contracts that reconcile to ARR. They also expect agreed definitions for bookings, ARR and revenue.
When should we start preparing the data room?
Start well before you expect a term sheet. Trend views need several quarters of clean history, and fixing definitions or missing contracts after the fact takes time; Y Combinator notes that a data room ready before the term sheet can cut as much as a week off closing.
Do investors care whether a startup has RevOps?
Yes, according to our survey of 24 VC and PE investors. PE respondents rated RevOps' importance to portfolio company growth at 4.86 out of 5 and VC respondents at 4.47, so a working RevOps function is part of the story you tell, not just back-office plumbing.
How does RevOps help prove product-market fit?
RevOps connects what customers say with what they do. Feedback loops route sales and customer success insights to product, and shared product and commercial data show win rates, usage and churn risk by product or feature, which is the evidence behind the retention and cohort numbers investors examine.
