Raising Funds: Technical Checklist to Convince Investors

70% of startups see their raise fail or delayed due to technical issues. Here's the complete checklist to prepare your technical due diligence and reassure investors.

Why Tech Matters in Fundraising?

The 3 Investor Risks

1. Technical Debt: Hidden cost of refactoring (€100K-500K)
2. Scalability: App crashes at 1000 users
3. Founder Dependency: Unreadable code = risk

"We rejected 15 out of 20 deals because of the tech" - Seed VC

Technical Due Diligence: What VCs Check

Phase 1: Document Analysis (1-2h)

Requested Documents:

• Architecture diagram (infra + data flow)
• Detailed tech stack (versions, libs)
• Technical roadmap 12-18 months
• Tech budget (infra, tools, hiring)
• Metrics (uptime, performance, bugs)

Phase 2: Code Review (2-4h)

What They Look At:

• GitHub: regular commits, branches, PRs
• Tests: coverage >60%
• Documentation: README, API docs
• Code quality: no // TODO, named variables
• Security: no hardcoded secrets

Phase 3: CTO Interview (1-2h)

Typical Questions:

• "Why this stack choice?"
• "How do you scale to 100K users?"
• "What's your biggest technical risk?"
• "Tech hiring plan 12 months?"

Pre-Raise Technical Checklist (8 Weeks)

Week 1-2: Internal Audit

Action: Identify red flags

Major Red Flags:

• ❌ Monolith >100K lines undocumented
• ❌ Dependency on 1 person (bus factor = 1)
• ❌ No tests
• ❌ Manual infra (no IaC)
• ❌ Unencrypted customer data
• ❌ No monitoring

Deliverable: Prioritized list (impact x urgency)

Week 3-4: Quick Wins

Objective: Fix 80% red flags

Actions:

• Setup CI/CD (GitHub Actions)
• Critical tests (auth, payment)
• README + architecture documentation
• Basic monitoring (Sentry + Uptime)
• Secrets → Environment variables
• HTTPS + basic encryption

Budget: €5K-10K if external help

Week 5-6: Investor Documentation

Create:

1. Technical One-pager (1 page)

   • Stack
   • Architecture
   • Metrics (uptime, performance)
   • 12-month roadmap

2. Data Room (folder)

   • Architecture diagram
   • Detailed tech stack
   • Q1-Q4 roadmap
   • Tech budget
   • Metrics dashboard

3. Demo Video (5min)

   • User journey
   • Key features
   • Performance

Week 7-8: Pitch Preparation

Practice:

• 3min technical pitch (for fund's tech partners)
• Answers to 20 typical questions
• Live demo (video backup)

Architecture Diagram: Template

┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│         FRONTEND (Next.js)              │
│  - Web app (React 19)                   │
│  - Mobile web (responsive)              │
│  - Hosted: Vercel                       │
└─────────────┬───────────────────────────┘
              │ HTTPS/API
              ▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│         BACKEND (Node.js)               │
│  - API REST (Express)                   │
│  - WebSocket (real-time)                │
│  - Queue (Bull + Redis)                 │
│  - Hosted: Railway                      │
└─────────────┬───────────────────────────┘
              │
    ┌─────────┴─────────┐
    │                   │
    ▼                   ▼
┌────────┐          ┌────────┐
│Database│          │ Storage│
│Postgres│          │   S3   │
│Supabase│          │  (AWS) │
└────────┘          └────────┘

Format: Lucidchart, Excalidraw, or Figma

Tech Stack: What VCs Like

✅ Green Flags (Reassuring)

Modern Stack:

• Next.js, React, Vue (not jQuery)
• Node.js, Python, Go (not PHP 5)
• PostgreSQL, MongoDB (not MySQL without reason)
• AWS, GCP, Vercel (not personal server)

Best Practices:

• TypeScript (type safety)
• Automated tests (CI/CD)
• Monitoring (Sentry, Datadog)
• Up-to-date documentation

Scalability:

• Modular architecture
• RESTful or GraphQL API
• Cache (Redis)
• CDN (Cloudflare)

❌ Red Flags (Worrying)

Outdated Stack:

• PHP <8, jQuery, Angular.js
• MySQL without reason (vs Postgres)
• Bare metal server (not cloud)

Code Smell:

• Monolith >50K lines
• No tests (0%)
• Commented code everywhere
• Variables a, b, tmp

Security:

• Hardcoded secrets
• No HTTPS
• Possible SQL injections
• No rate limiting

Tech Budget: Presentation Template

Year 1 (€)

Item	Monthly	Annual
Infrastructure
Hosting (Vercel Pro)	100	1.2K
Database (Supabase)	50	600
Monitoring (Sentry)	30	360
Email (SendGrid)	20	240
Tools
GitHub Teams	40	480
Figma Pro	15	180
Notion Team	10	120
Hiring
Senior fullstack dev	5K	60K
Junior frontend dev	3K	36K
Total	8.3K	99K

Note: Budget excluding founder salaries

Year 2-3 Projections

Year 2 (+50%): €150K

• +2 devs
• Infra scale (multi-region)

Year 3 (+100%): €300K

• Team 8-10 devs
• Data engineer
• Dedicated DevOps

Technical Roadmap: OKR Framework

Q1: Foundations

Objective: Stable and scalable tech Key Results:

• KR1: Uptime >99.9%
• KR2: Load time <2s (p95)
• KR3: Test coverage 80%

Initiatives:

• Complete monitoring setup
• Migration to modular architecture
• Automated CI/CD tests

Q2: Growth

Objective: Support 10x users Key Results:

• KR1: API handles 1M req/day
• KR2: Database <100ms latency
• KR3: Zero downtime deploys

Initiatives:

• Redis cache
• Database sharding
• Blue-green deployments

Q3: Features

Objective: Product-market fit Key Results:

• KR1: 5 major features delivered
• KR2: Time-to-market <3 weeks/feature
• KR3: Technical NPS >8/10

Q4: Team

Objective: Autonomous team Key Results:

• KR1: Hire 3 senior devs
• KR2: 100% up-to-date documentation
• KR3: Onboarding <2 weeks

Investor Questions: Preparation

Category: Stack & Architecture

Q: "Why Next.js and not pure React?" A: "SEO critical for acquisition. Next.js gives us SSR + ISR out of the box. Saves 2 weeks dev vs React + custom SSR."

Q: "Why Vercel and not direct AWS?" A: "Time-to-market. Vercel = 1-click deploy, auto-scaling, global CDN. AWS = 2 weeks setup + full-time DevOps. Equivalent cost <50K users."

Category: Scalability

Q: "How many users does your app support?" A: "Current architecture: 10K concurrent users. Q2 plan: microservices migration + cache = 100K users. Cost: €20K migration."

Q: "Worst outage case?" A: "September 2024: database overload at 2K users. Fix: read replicas + query optimization. Since: 99.95% uptime."

Category: Security

Q: "GDPR compliant?" A: "Yes. EU data (Frankfurt), encryption at-rest + in-transit, GDPR consent, external DPO. Annual audit planned."

Q: "Security tests?" A: "Q4 2024 pentest: 0 critical vulnerabilities. OWASP Top 10 covered. Bug bounty planned post-Series A."

Category: Team

Q: "If your CTO leaves tomorrow?" A: "Risk mitigated: documented code, clear architecture, 2 trained senior devs. CTO recruitment takes 2-3 months."

Q: "Tech hiring plan?" A: "Year 1: +3 devs (2 fullstack, 1 mobile). €180K budget. Active pipeline: 50 sourced profiles."

Real Examples: Successful vs Failed Raises

✅ Success Case: HealthTech (Seed €2M)

Setup:

• Stack: Next.js + Node + Postgres + AWS
• Tests: 85% coverage
• Monitoring: Datadog + Sentry
• Docs: Complete (architecture + API)

Technical DD: 3h, 0 red flag Result: Term sheet in 2 weeks

❌ Failure Case: Marketplace (Seed rejected)

Problems:

• Stack: WordPress + custom plugins
• Code: Monolith, only 1 dev knows everything
• Tests: 0%
• Security: XSS vulnerabilities

Technical DD: 6h, 12 red flags Result: Rejection (too high technical risk) Refactor Cost: Estimated €200K → too expensive vs startup value

Pre-Raise Audit Budget

Option 1: Light Audit (2 days)

Deliverable: Red flags list + priorities Price: €2K-3K Ideal For: Pre-seed, <€500K raise

Option 2: Complete Audit (5 days)

Deliverable:

• 30-page technical report
• 8-week action plan
• Correction budget estimate

Price: €5K-8K Ideal For: Seed, €1M+ raise

Option 3: Fundraising Support (3 months)

Includes:

• Audit + corrections
• Investor documentation
• Technical pitch coaching
• DD presence if needed

Price: €20K-30K Ideal For: Series A, €3M+ raise

Conclusion

A fundraising round is prepared 8 weeks in advance on the tech side. Investors don't forgive technical debt or security red flags.

Investing €5K-10K in an audit + corrections can gain you €500K-2M in valuation and accelerate the raise by 2-3 months.

Pre-raise technical audit: Book a call to assess your technical maturity.

---

About: Jérémy Marquer has accompanied 12 startups in fundraising (Seed to Series B). Success rate: 90%.