It’s a fascinating exercise, because the due diligence pack is a synthesis of your business story told in a variety of ways, in various formats.

And this all got me thinking about the anatomy of the business story.

Those formats span two axes: length and depth, for want of better descriptions. Length is about the level of detail, and depth spans emotion and logic, heart and mind.

I had a bash plotting some of the key business documents on these axes of depth and length, right here:

The first thing which jumps out at me is that there there is empty space in the top right quadrant: high on emotion and high on detail. I suppose you might place a feature film or a Netflix series in this quadrant, but it’s unlikely your due diligence pack would contain either.

Investors are known traditionally to be a bunch of hardheaded financiers. Obviously they care deeply about your numbers, and they will want to see them both in summary and in detail — understanding, for example, the assumptions you have made in your forecast, and the levers of growth.

But investors also want to understand you , what makes you tick, what you’re trying to do with your business, and how it connects emotionally with your customers.

Let’s not forget the adage — “people buy with emotion and justify with logic”. And to some extent, the same as true for your investors: before they buy part of your business, they need to buy into you and what your business is doing.

So in the same way that much of your marketing material will lean heavily towards the emotional side of buying, do not neglect the emotion in the due diligence pack.

And finally, all of these components must hang together to tell the same story of your business, simply via different angles. Any dissonance between any of these articulations will reduce the impact and resonance of your business story.

If you find that there is indeed some dissonance between any of these storytelling components, then there may be some misalignment within your team, and that’s why your executive team should break down the silo mentality which can build within an organisation.

Does this resonate? What am I missing in the business story? Let me know!