Planned Close Date
Definition
Calendar date by which the round is expected to close (final wires received, definitive documents signed). Compared against `finance.runway_months` to detect a fundraising-against-the-clock situation. Common pitfall: planned close dates routinely slip 30–90 days in practice (collected founder postmortems on First Round Review) — boards should ask for both an "expected" and a "no-deal" date and watch the gap to actual runway exhaustion.
Why it matters
Single most-important fundraising deadline — drives urgency, board cadence, and bridge-financing decisions. Slippage here is the leading indicator that the round is in trouble.
How it's calculated
Calendar date. Not derived — set by management. Compare to today + `finance.runway_months` to surface runway-versus-close risk. How to interpret it
When the planned close date is within 2 months of runway exhaustion (i.e. `runway_months` ≤ months_to_planned_close + 2), the board should be in active conversation about bridge financing or scope cuts. A slipping date should be paired with explicit re-baseline of runway.
Source
imboard Editorial
Stage relevance
Typically owned by
Related KPIs
Current phase of the active fundraising round on a coarse state machine (e.g. not-started, in-progress, term-sheet, closing, closed). The board reads this to know which playbook applies — pipeline-building, diligence, closing, or post-close communications. Common pitfall: the field drifts when a round stalls or pivots, so treat each phase change as a board-update trigger. The PhasePlaybook widget binds to this enum and surfaces the appropriate phase guidance read-only beside the editor.
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.
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.
Estimated number of months the company can operate at the current net burn before unrestricted cash reaches zero, holding everything else constant. The single most consequential survival input for venture-backed companies — it sets the urgency of every fundraising, hiring, and cost decision. Common pitfall: runway is often quoted off `finance.total_cash_in_bank` and a single-month spot-burn instead of operationally-available cash and a 3-month-trailing burn — the result is a runway that looks 2–4 months longer than it actually is when working capital tightens. Boards should ask which cash and which burn went into the calculation.
Track these KPIs with your board
I'mBoard helps startup CEOs report the metrics that matter, track resolutions, and run better board meetings.