Guided Deal Input

Score My Deal

Enter what's true today. Every figure is unit-checked — MRR vs ARR, percentages vs decimals — so the score is never built on a typo.

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The Business

Terminology key — terms defined for beginners

B2B / B2C / DTC: Who you sell to: businesses (B2B), consumers (B2C), or direct-to-consumer online (DTC) without retail middlemen.
Pre-revenue: You have a product or prototype but no paying customers yet.
Runway: How many months your cash lasts at your current monthly spending. Cash ÷ monthly burn.
Bootstrapped: Funded by the founders and revenue — no outside investors.

Company name

Category

What do you sell, in one or two sentences?Plain language. This is the sentence an investor repeats to someone else.

How long have you been selling? (months)

Whole months since your first paying customer.

How much of your own money have you put in? ($)

Founder capital, not loans from investors.

Outside capital raised to date ($)

Friends, family, angels, venture, or crowdfunding. Enter 0 if none.

The Numbers

Terminology key — terms defined for beginners

Revenue: Total money customers paid you, before any costs. Also called sales or top line.
COGS: Cost of Goods Sold — what it directly costs to make/deliver one unit (materials, manufacturing, direct labor).
Landed cost: The FULL cost to get one unit from the factory into your warehouse or onto a store shelf — manufacturing + freight + customs/duties + receiving. Sharks always check landed cost, not just the factory price.
Gross margin: (Revenue − COGS) ÷ Revenue, as a %. 60% margin means you keep $0.60 of every sales dollar before overhead.
Retail vs wholesale price: Retail is the shelf price a consumer pays; wholesale is what a store pays you — usually about half of retail. Sharks ask for both, so know your numbers at each.
Net profit: What's left after ALL expenses — COGS, rent, salaries, marketing, taxes. The bottom line.
Monthly burn: How much more cash goes out than comes in each month. Negative cash flow.
CAC: Customer Acquisition Cost — total marketing + sales spend ÷ number of new customers gained.
AOV: Average Order Value — typical dollar amount of one customer order.
LTV: Customer Lifetime Value — total profit one customer generates over the whole relationship.
LTV:CAC ratio: Lifetime value ÷ acquisition cost. Above 3:1 is healthy; below 1:1 means you lose money on every customer.
TTM / Trailing 12 months: The last 12 months of results added up — investors use it to smooth out seasonality.
MRR / ARR: Monthly / Annual Recurring Revenue — predictable subscription income. ARR = MRR × 12.
Repeat purchase rate: The % of customers who come back and buy again.

Revenue basisApplies to both revenue fields below. Monthly figures are annualised (×12) before scoring — Sharks always talk in trailing 12 months.

Trailing 12-month revenue ($)

Accepts 1,200 · 1.2k · $1.2M.

Revenue last month ($)

Your most recent single month, exactly as it landed.

Prior 12-month revenue ($)

Same basis as above. Used to compute growth.

Lifetime revenue ($)

All-time sales since launch. Must be ≥ trailing 12 months.

COGS ($ / trailing 12 months)

Landed cost of everything you sold. Cross-checked against your gross margin.

Cost to build ONE unit ($)

Landed cost per unit: manufacturing + freight + customs. This is the first number a Shark asks for.

Sell price per ONE unit ($)

What a single unit sells for — retail price if you sell direct. Cross-checked against unit cost and your margin.

Net profit ($ / trailing 12 months)

After every cost. Negative is fine — enter -40,000.

Monthly operating expenses ($)

Rent, payroll, software, ads — everything below the gross-profit line.

Monthly cash flow ($)

Cash in minus cash out in a normal month. Negative is fine.

Average order value ($)

Total revenue ÷ number of orders.

Customer acquisition cost ($)

All-in cost to win one customer, per customer — not per campaign.

Lifetime value ($)

Gross profit per customer over their life, not revenue.

Gross margin (%)

Whole number 0–100. (Price − landed cost) ÷ price × 100.

Repeat purchase rate (%)

Whole number 0–100. Share of customers who buy again.

Profitability

The Valuation & The Ask

Terminology key — terms defined for beginners

Valuation: What you say the whole company is worth. On Shark Tank: Ask ÷ Equity offered.
Implied valuation: The valuation your ask implies. $100K for 10% = $1M valuation.
Pre-money / Post-money: Company value before vs. after the investment. $1M pre-money + $250K invested = $1.25M post-money.
Revenue multiple: Valuation ÷ annual revenue. Asking $2M with $400K revenue = a 5× multiple.
Comparable (comp): A similar company's sale or funding price used as evidence for your valuation.
Equity: Ownership percentage of the company you give an investor in exchange for money.
Dilution: Your ownership % shrinking when new shares are issued to investors.
Royalty deal: Investor gets paid per unit sold (e.g. $1 per item) until repaid, instead of (or plus) equity.

Investment asked ($)

The check, not the valuation.

Equity offered (%)

Whole number 0.1–100.

Use of fundsLine items, not "growth and marketing."

Your current valuation ($)

What you say the company is worth. Cross-checked against ask ÷ equity.

Cap table is clean (no silent or absent partners)

Product vs. Business

Terminology key — terms defined for beginners

Business model: How the company reliably makes money: who pays, for what, at what margin, acquired how.
Repeatable sales process: A way to win customers that works without the founder personally closing every deal.
Unit economics: The profit math of ONE sale: price − COGS − CAC. Positive = each customer makes you money.
Scalability: Revenue can grow much faster than costs — selling 10× more doesn't require 10× the people.

A product makes sales. A business makes sales again, without you in the room.

I have a product or service in market todayI have paying customersI have a repeatable, measurable way to acquire customersThe company generates revenue without me personally doing every transactionThere's a business model beyond selling this one product (subscription, licensing, wholesale, platform)

The Market

Terminology key — terms defined for beginners

TAM / SAM / SOM: Total Addressable Market (everyone who could ever buy) → Serviceable Available Market (the slice you can reach) → Serviceable Obtainable Market (what you can realistically win).
Target customer: The specific buyer you serve best — "everyone" is a red flag, not a market.
Category: The type of product customers compare you against (e.g. meal kits, fitness apps).
Incumbent: The established company currently winning your customers' money.

Who specifically buys, how big it is, why now, and why you over the alternative.

Who specifically buys?A person and a moment, not a demographic slice. "Everyone" scores zero.

Addressable market ($ / year)

Bottom-up: buyers × price × purchase frequency. Not a research-firm headline.

Why now?

What alternatives exist?Include "doing nothing" — it wins more often than competitors do.

Why would customers choose you?

Traction

Terminology key — terms defined for beginners

Traction: Proof it's working: customers, revenue, growth, retention, signed deals — not just interest.
MoM / YoY growth: Month-over-month / Year-over-year growth rate. Investors want a trend, not one good month.
Retention / Churn: Retention = % of customers who stay; churn = % who leave. High churn kills subscription businesses.
Pipeline: Deals in progress that haven't closed yet — LOIs, purchase orders being negotiated.
LOI: Letter of Intent — a non-binding written signal that a buyer or retailer plans to purchase.
Purchase order (PO): A binding order from a customer/retailer. Much stronger proof than an LOI.

Customers, growth, retention and pipeline — the evidence behind the story.

Customers to date

Distinct paying customers, not orders or followers.

Retention rate (%)

Share of customers (or revenue) still active a year later.

Pipeline / committed orders ($)

Signed POs and near-certain contracts. Forward evidence, not hope.

Partnerships & retail relationships

The Offer

Terminology key — terms defined for beginners

Value proposition: The one-sentence reason a customer buys from you instead of doing nothing.
Willingness to pay: Evidence customers actually pay your price — preorders and sales beat surveys.
Price point: What you charge. Sharks check it against margins and competitor prices.
Painkiller vs. vitamin: Painkillers solve an urgent, expensive problem; vitamins are nice-to-have. Painkillers sell.

Clear offer, expensive problem, obvious transformation, real evidence of demand.

The offer, in one sentenceIf it takes a paragraph, the room is already gone.

What the problem costs your customer ($ / year)

Expensive problems get paid to go away. Cheap ones get ignored.

The before/after transformation is obvious to a stranger in 10 seconds

Evidence people want it

Investor Readiness

Terminology key — terms defined for beginners

Due diligence: The investor's fact-check after the show — every claim you made gets verified.
Use of funds: Exactly what the investment buys (inventory, hires, marketing) and what it unlocks.
Downside: What happens if it fails — how much money is lost and why the risk is acceptable.
Exit: How investors get their money back: acquisition, buyback, or dividends.

If someone challenged your business for ten minutes, could you defend it?

I could defend this business through 10 minutes of hostile questioningP&L, cap table, contracts and IP filings are ready for diligence

The toughest objection you'll face — and your answer

Moat & Founder

Terminology key — terms defined for beginners

Moat: What stops a bigger company from copying you and crushing you with their budget.
IP / Patent: Intellectual Property — legal protection. Utility patents cover function; design patents cover appearance.
Trademark: Legal protection for your brand name and logo.
Provisional patent: A cheaper 12-month placeholder filing — weaker than a granted patent.
Barrier to entry: Anything that makes it hard for competitors to start doing what you do.

Protection

What stops a big brand copying you in 90 days?

Scales without my personal laborI'm full-time on this businessI've built or sold in this space before

Investor Reality Check

Terminology key — terms defined for beginners

Sales cure all: Revenue solves nearly every other problem. No sales = no deal.
Killer instinct test: The question behind the question: "What makes you the one to win this?" — investors back preparation over passion.
Commodity risk: If anyone can source the same product, the only competition is price — investors walk.

In a category active investors focus on (health & wellness, consumer tech/AI, sports & fitness, food with velocity)Involves MLM, unsubstantiated health claims, or a vice category

Which specific investor door or relationship do you need opened?