A data room is an online platform that permits businesses to conduct due diligence, share documents, and organize Q&A data room sessions in a safe, controlled environment. It’s used by a range of industries and is an important tool in M&A transactions as well as fundraising, IPOs, joint ventures, and legal actions. Data rooms are usually used to store and share large, private files with multiple parties.

The information you put in a dataroom can vary depending on the purpose of your data room, whether it’s to raise funds, expand your market share, or communicate information to customers. It also depends on the overall narrative you’re promoting. There are some best practices that you can follow to create a compelling data room presentation.

Be careful not to divulge confidential information to those who shouldn’t have access to it. This is one of the founders “worst nightmares,” and it can happen if you’re not careful. If you’re trying raise funds for a Series A, make sure you don’t divulge your entire investor information to people who don’t want to invest. This will slow down the process and could sour the momentum.

Make sure that your platform is accessible and consider using a provider of data rooms that supports PCI-DSS. This is a standard in the industry that requires strict security measures that include secure data storage access control, encrypted transmissions and regular security testing. It is also critical to keep track of who has access to what. Document versioning is the most simple and most effective method of doing this.