Deals: Working the Pipeline
A deal is the container for everything about one opportunity - the notes, the documents, the meetings, the questions you asked the founder and the answers you got. This page covers moving one from first look to closed.
What you will learn
- The nine stages and the only legal moves between them
- What each tab on a deal is for
- Asking a founder for information, and getting it back
- Sharing documents without leaking your own notes
- Closing, passing, and why the reason matters
The pipeline#
Deals are laid out by stage, so the shape of the pipeline is the first thing you see. Filter by stage or priority to narrow it.
Tip
A pipeline where everything sits in one column is not a pipeline. If Sourced never empties, the problem is triage rather than sourcing.
The stages#
The stage machine is deliberately linear. From any stage you can move exactly one step forward, or Pass. You cannot skip, and you cannot go back.
| Stage | What it means | Where it can go |
|---|---|---|
| Sourced | You have found it. | Screening or Passed |
| Screening | First filter - is this even a fit? | First meeting or Passed |
| First meeting | You have met the team. | Deep dive or Passed |
| Deep dive | Serious work on the business. | Due diligence or Passed |
| Due diligence | Formal diligence. | IC review or Passed |
| IC review | In front of the investment committee. | Term sheet or Passed |
| Term sheet | Terms issued. | Negotiation or Passed |
| Negotiation | Terms being agreed. | Closed or Passed |
| Closed | Done. Terminal. | - |
| Passed | You declined. Terminal. | - |
Careful
Closed and Passed are both terminal - there is no way back out of either. Pass deliberately, and record why: a pass with a reason is useful in a year's time, and a pass without one is noise.
Good to know
Every stage move is recorded with who moved it and when, and shows up on the deal's Timeline.
Inside a deal#
Open a deal and the tabs across the top are the deal's working surface. Which tabs you see depends on your investor type - an Angel has no IC tabs, for instance.
Notes
Your team's private thinking. Never visible to the startup.
Documents
Files you hold about the deal. Private unless explicitly shared.
Shared
The two-way channel. What you put here the startup can see, and vice versa.
Requests
Structured asks to the founder - documents or written answers - that they respond to from their own portal.
Meetings
Scheduled conversations, kept against the deal rather than in a calendar nobody else can see.
Tasks
Who owes what, by when.
Term sheet
Issue terms and track the founder's response.
Timeline
Everything that has happened, in order. The audit trail.
Important
Notes and Documents are private; Shared is not. The separation is the point - put your reservations in Notes and the data room material in Shared, and never mix them up.
Asking the founder for things#
Requests turn 'can you send me your cap table' from an email into a tracked item with a state. Two kinds: a document you want uploaded, or a question you want answered in writing.
- 1
Create the request on the Requests tab
Be specific about what good looks like. A vague request produces a vague answer and a second round trip.
- 2
The founder answers from their portal
Documents come back as uploads; questions come back as written answers. Both attach to the deal.
- 3
Chase from the same place
Outstanding items stay visible, so the follow-up does not depend on somebody remembering.
Creating a deal#
- 1
From a deal room startup
Open the startup and Create deal. Sector and stage carry over.
- 2
From an inbound application
A founder who pitched you can be converted straight into a deal.
- If an active deal already exists for that startup, the portal refuses and says so rather than creating a duplicate.
- 3
Give it a real title and a real ask
The title is how you will find it in six months, and the ask amount feeds your pipeline totals.
Good to know
Your investor type caps how many deals you may create per month. The dashboard shows the ceiling.
Closing#
- 1
Move to Closed
You are asked for the amount actually closed, which is often not the amount originally asked for. That number is what your portfolio and returns are built on.
- 2
Add the holding to your portfolio
Closing the deal records the decision; the portfolio records the asset. They are separate steps.
- 3
Release the money
If your type includes disbursements, that is where tranches are set up and paid.
Common questions#
The stage history is meant to be a record of what actually happened. If a deal genuinely regresses, note it on the deal rather than rewriting the trail.
That is a known rough edge for Angel-type investors: the path to a term sheet runs through the IC review stage even when the IC tabs are not available to you. Move through it - the term sheet stage is reachable and nothing blocks you.
No. Only what you put on the Shared tab.
Passed is terminal. Create a fresh deal for the same startup - the old one stays as a record of the pass.
Set a lead member on the deal so the answer is written down rather than assumed.
