Committed Amount
Definition
Capital that investors have agreed to invest — including both soft commitments (verbal / handshake / IOI) and hard commitments (signed term sheet or executed subscription docs). Treat this as the round-progress odometer. Common pitfall: soft commitments are notoriously squishy — every published fundraising postmortem (per First Round Review and Bessemer founder essays) warns that founders over-count soft commits. Board-best-practice is to track soft vs hard separately or to define a haircut convention (e.g. 50% of soft) at the start of the round.
Why it matters
Primary leading indicator for whether the round will close on target and on time. Pacing against `target_raise` and `planned_close_date` tells the board whether intervention is needed.
How it's calculated
Sum of all investor commitments (soft + hard). Define and document the soft-vs-hard convention per round — some companies report only hard commitments to the board, others report a blended number with footnote. How to interpret it
Healthy rounds typically hit 50% committed at the round midpoint and 80%+ before final closing mechanics begin. A committed amount stuck below 30% past the midpoint usually signals a re-pricing or scope-cut conversation with the board.
Source
imboard Editorial
Stage relevance
Typically owned by
Related KPIs
Target gross capital the company intends to raise in the currently active round (the "ask"). This is the headline number the CEO walks investors through and the board uses to sanity-check dilution and runway implications. Note the distinction from `total_round_size` (which can include third-party participation beyond the company-led ask) and from `minimum_close_amount` (the floor at which the round can close). Common pitfall: the target is updated mid-process when investor demand or strategy shifts — every change deserves a board note.
Cash that has actually been wired and cleared the company's bank account from investors in the current round. This is the cash-in-the-bank version of `committed_amount`. Common pitfall: commitments do not pay the bills — wiring can lag commitments by weeks to months for the second / third closes, and a committed-but-not-received delta of $5M+ can quietly extend the runway forecast incorrectly. Reconcile this against `finance.total_cash_in_bank` increases each period.
Progress of the round expressed as committed capital divided by target. Read alongside `round_status` and elapsed-time-in-round to detect stalls. Common pitfall: percentage progress is misleading when measured against a shifting `target_raise` — when management lowers the target mid-round, the percentage jumps without any new commitments arriving. The board should always be told when this is a target revision vs. a real progress event.
Count of distinct investors actively engaged in the current round — defined as taken a first meeting and not yet declined or fully committed. Effectively a fundraising-funnel "qualified leads" number. Common pitfall: rosy pipelines that include investors who ghosted weeks ago — best practice (echoed across NfX, First Round Review, and Bessemer founder essays) is to age-out any investor with no contact in 14+ days. Track separately from total intros taken and from hard commitments to make the conversion math legible.
Floor — the smallest amount of committed capital required to legally close the round (often set in the subscription agreement) or the strategically smallest amount management would accept before re-pricing or pausing. Common pitfall: a `target_raise` of $10M and a `minimum_close_amount` of $4M tells a very different story than a target of $10M and a minimum of $9M — boards should always see both. Per common practice (NVCA Model Documents allow flexibility here), the minimum is typically 50–75% of target at seed, 70–90% at A+.
Track these KPIs with your board
I'mBoard helps startup CEOs report the metrics that matter, track resolutions, and run better board meetings.