• Company name and stage: Early-stage (pre-Series B), Growth-stage (Series B-D), or Pre-IPO (Series E+ / late stage)
• Reporting period: Quarter and year (e.g., Q1 2026)
• Key financial metrics: ARR/MRR, revenue, burn rate, cash position, runway
• Strategic updates: Major milestones, wins, setbacks

• Detailed P&L or financial statements
• Product roadmap and release notes
• GTM metrics (pipeline, win rates, CAC, LTV, churn)
• Hiring plan and org chart changes
• Customer logos, case studies, NPS scores
• Competitive landscape changes
• Specific asks or decisions for the board
• Prior board deck for continuity
• Cap table or fundraising context
• OKR/goal tracking from prior quarter

• One-paragraph narrative: 3-5 sentences capturing the quarter's story arc. What happened, why it matters, what comes next. No jargon. No spin.
• Quarterly Scorecard Table:

• Top 3 Wins: Bullet points, each one sentence with a quantified result.
• Top 3 Challenges: Bullet points, each one sentence with a stated mitigation.
• Key Asks for the Board: Numbered list of specific decisions or input needed. This list previews Section 10.

• ARR bridge: Beginning ARR + New ARR + Expansion - Contraction - Churn = Ending ARR
• ARR by segment/cohort if applicable
• Monthly or quarterly revenue trend (trailing 6-12 periods)
• Revenue vs. plan variance with written explanation for any variance exceeding 10%

• Cash position (beginning of quarter, end of quarter)
• Burn rate (gross and net)
• Runway in months at current burn
• Runway in months at planned burn (if different)
• Any changes to credit facilities or debt
• If runway < 18 months, include a dedicated fundraising timeline subsection

• CAC (blended and by channel)
• LTV (and LTV/CAC ratio)
• Payback period in months
• Gross margin per customer
• Magic number or burn multiple (for growth-stage and pre-IPO)

• Early-stage: Focus on trends and directional improvement, not absolute numbers. Acknowledge small sample sizes.
• Growth-stage: Include cohort analysis, segment-level unit economics, and efficiency metrics (burn multiple, Rule of 40).
• Pre-IPO: Include GAAP vs. non-GAAP reconciliation, operating leverage trends, free cash flow, and path-to-profitability modeling.

• Feature name
• Customer impact (who it serves, what problem it solves)
• Adoption metric if available (% of users, usage volume)

• Uptime/SLA performance
• Incident summary (P1/P2 count, MTTR)
• Tech debt status (qualitative assessment: improving, stable, degrading)
• Security posture (any audits, pen tests, certifications completed or planned)

• Early-stage: Keep this light. Focus on product velocity and customer feedback loops.
• Growth-stage: Add platform scalability metrics, API performance, infrastructure cost trends.
• Pre-IPO: Add SOC 2 / ISO 27001 status, compliance readiness, disaster recovery testing.

• Logo retention rate
• Net Revenue Retention (NRR)
• Gross Revenue Retention (GRR)
• NPS or CSAT score and trend
• Expansion revenue as % of new ARR
• Top churn reasons (ranked list)
• Notable customer wins (logos, deal sizes, strategic value)
• Notable customer losses (logo, ARR lost, reason, lessons learned)

• Early-stage: Focus on qualitative customer feedback, design partner engagement, product-market fit signals.
• Growth-stage: Add segment-level retention, channel efficiency, and rep productivity metrics.
• Pre-IPO: Add geographic/vertical expansion metrics, enterprise penetration, competitive win/loss analysis.

• List notable hires with title and brief background
• List notable departures with title and reason category (voluntary/involuntary, performance/opportunity/personal)
• Do NOT include names for involuntary departures

• Voluntary attrition rate (annualized)
• Offer acceptance rate
• Open roles and time-to-fill
• Any organizational restructuring completed or planned
• Employee engagement score if measured

• Early-stage: Focus on key hire pipeline and founder bandwidth. Board may need to help recruit.
• Growth-stage: Include management layer build-out, culture scaling challenges.
• Pre-IPO: Include executive team completeness assessment, public-company readiness of finance/legal/IR functions.

• 2x2 or positioning matrix showing company vs. top 2-3 competitors
• Notable competitive moves this quarter (funding, launches, pricing changes, acquisitions)
• Win/loss themes against specific competitors
• Differentiation summary: what is defensible, what is at risk

• Market/competitive risks
• Financial risks (runway, revenue concentration)
• Operational risks (key-person dependency, technical)
• Regulatory/compliance risks
• Reputational risks

1. [Option A]: [Description, pros, cons, financial impact]
2. [Option B]: [Description, pros, cons, financial impact]
3. [Option C]: [Description, pros, cons, financial impact]

Common decision types:
- Fundraising timing and terms
- Major strategic pivots or market expansion
- M&A opportunities
- Executive hiring (VP+ level)
- Budget reallocation exceeding threshold
- Pricing model changes
- Partnership or channel strategy shifts
- Board composition changes

• Objective
• Key result / success metric
• Owner

• Detailed financial statements
• Full product roadmap
• Customer list (if appropriate for board audience)
• Org chart
• Cap table summary
• Board vote tracker (resolutions from prior meetings and status)
• Glossary of company-specific terms or metrics

1. Tables: Use Markdown tables for all quantitative data. Align numbers right where possible.
2. Headers: Use H1 for company name, H2 for major sections, H3 for subsections, H4 for sub-subsections.
3. Callouts: Use blockquotes (

   >

   ) for key insights, warnings, or board asks.
4. Status indicators: Use text labels (ON TRACK, WATCH, OFF TRACK, EXCEEDED) rather than colors or symbols.
5. Numbers: Use consistent formatting. Currency with commas and no cents for amounts over $1,000. Percentages to one decimal. Include units always.
6. Confidentiality: Include "CONFIDENTIAL -- BOARD USE ONLY" in the header/footer equivalent.
7. Length: The full document should be comprehensive but not padded. Target 15-25 sections of content depending on stage. Every sentence should earn its place.
8. No emojis: Professional tone throughout. No emojis, no casual language, no marketing speak.
9. Honesty: Never spin bad numbers. State them plainly, explain the cause, describe the mitigation. The fastest way to build board trust is radical transparency about what is not working.
10. Comparisons: Always show current vs. prior period and current vs. plan. Numbers without context are meaningless.

• Direct: Lead with the conclusion, then support with data. Do not bury the lede.
• Precise: Use specific numbers, dates, and names. Avoid "significant growth" when you can say "$1.2M, up 34% QoQ."
• Balanced: For every win, acknowledge the work remaining. For every challenge, state the plan.
• Respectful of time: Board members are reading 5-10 board decks per month. Density and clarity beat volume.
• Forward-looking: Every backward-looking metric should connect to a forward-looking implication.
• Decision-oriented: The deck exists to enable good decisions. Every section should contribute to that goal.

• Product-market fit evidence (customer conversations, retention cohorts, usage data)
• Cash management and runway
• Team and founder bandwidth
• Key hire pipeline
• Next fundraise timing

• Competitive landscape (keep brief)
• Complex unit economics (directional is fine)
• GTM metrics (likely too early for full funnel)

• ARR growth rate and efficiency (burn multiple, magic number)
• Unit economics maturity and trends
• Go-to-market engine performance
• Organizational scaling
• Competitive positioning

• Individual customer stories (aggregate into metrics)
• Technical deep-dives (unless board-relevant)

• GAAP financials and audit readiness
• Rule of 40 / efficiency metrics
• Operating leverage and path to profitability
• Public market comparables
• Governance and compliance readiness
• Executive team completeness
• Risk management maturity

• Experimental initiatives (unless material)
• Early-stage metrics that no longer apply

1. Identify stage: Determine if early-stage, growth-stage, or pre-IPO based on user input.
2. Collect inputs: Review all provided metrics, updates, and context.
3. Flag gaps: If critical data is missing, ask the user before proceeding. If non-critical data is missing, use

   [PLACEHOLDER]

   notation.
4. Generate structure: Build the full document following the stage-appropriate template.
5. Populate data: Fill in all tables, narratives, and analysis using provided inputs.
6. Add analysis: Do not just report numbers. Explain what they mean, why they changed, and what to do about them.
7. Draft board asks: Frame strategic decisions clearly with options, recommendations, and timelines.
8. Review tone: Verify the document is direct, honest, data-driven, and free of marketing language.
9. Write file: Output the complete

   board-deck.md

   to the working directory.

• Every metric shows comparison to prior period AND plan
• Executive summary can stand alone as a complete update
• Financial section ties out (ARR bridge balances, P&L foots)
• Board asks are specific, actionable, and time-bound
• Challenges are stated honestly with mitigations
• No marketing language or unsubstantiated superlatives
• All placeholder values are clearly marked with brackets
• Confidentiality notice is present
• Tone is appropriate for the company stage
• Forward look connects to current quarter's results
• Risk register is realistic (not just "everything is fine")
• Document flows logically from summary to detail to decisions

1. Burying bad news: Put it in the executive summary. Board members will find it anyway.
2. Too many metrics: Choose the 5-7 that matter most. Put the rest in the appendix.
3. No context for numbers: "$2.1M ARR" means nothing. "$2.1M ARR, up 22% QoQ, 8% below plan due to delayed enterprise closes" tells a story.
4. Vague board asks: "We would like the board's thoughts on growth" is not an ask. "We recommend investing $500K in EMEA sales hiring in Q2. We need board approval by March 15." is an ask.
5. Ignoring prior commitments: Reference what was committed at the last board meeting and report on status.
6. Inconsistent time periods: Pick quarterly or monthly and stick with it throughout.
7. Missing the narrative: Numbers are the evidence. The story is what happened, why, and what it means. Lead with the story.
8. Over-engineering for stage: A seed-stage company does not need a GAAP reconciliation. A pre-IPO company does not need to explain what ARR is.

Decision 2: EMEA Market Entry

Context: Three enterprise prospects in EMEA have expressed strong purchase intent totaling $800K potential ARR. Our current team cannot support EMEA time zones or compliance requirements (GDPR DPA execution, EU data residency).

Options:

1. Hire EMEA team (recommended): 1 AE + 1 SE + 1 CSM. $450K annual fully loaded cost. 6-month ramp. Expected to close $500K-$1M ARR in first 12 months.
2. Partner-led entry: Channel partner handles sales and support. Lower cost ($100K setup + 30% rev share) but less control over customer experience and longer sales cycles.
3. Defer 6 months: Focus on North America. Risk losing the three identified prospects to competitors already present in EMEA.

Management Recommendation: Option 1. The identified pipeline covers the investment within 12 months, and EMEA represents 35% of our TAM. Early mover advantage matters in our category.

What We Need From the Board: Approval to hire the three EMEA roles. [Board Member Name] offered to introduce candidates from their network.

Timeline: Decision needed by end of Q1 to begin Q2 hiring.