Investor Relations

How to build a board meeting deck as CPG Founders

Investor RelationsFor CPG Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Every quarter you spend a week you don't have assembling a board deck. You're pulling Stripe MRR out of one tab, Plaid burn out of another, typing velocity numbers from your Shopify admin, estimating deduction impact in a spreadsheet your bookkeeper emailed you three days late, and trying to remember what you told the board last quarter so this deck is consistent. Then you format it in Google Slides at 11pm on a Sunday. CPG boards want gross margin by channel, velocity per point of distribution, inventory turns, and runway — none of which live in the same system. By the time the deck is done, the numbers are already a week stale.

Build this on Starch → See the apps used

Investor RelationsFor CPG Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A live financial foundation — burn rate, runway, and MRR pulled automatically from Stripe and Plaid — so every board deck starts from numbers that are already current

A repeatable investor update workflow that drafts narrative, highlights wins and risks, and formats the financial section consistently with your prior updates — no blank-page problem each quarter

A polished board-ready presentation built from a text description, with data visualizations and layouts you can iterate on and export to PowerPoint or PDF before your Sunday deadline

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Runway Analysis Investor Reporting Presentation Agent

Data sources & config

Starch syncs your Stripe data (charges, invoices, subscriptions) and Plaid data (categorized transactions, bank balances) on a schedule — these are the financial backbone for both Runway Analysis and Investor Reporting. For channel-level revenue detail from Shopify or wholesale marketplaces, connect them from Starch's integration catalog and the agent queries them live when your deck runs. Presentation Agent builds the slide deck from the drafted content; export to PowerPoint or PDF before your board call.

Prompts to copy

Connect my Plaid bank feeds and Stripe account, then show me a runway dashboard with real net burn calculated over the last 6 months, projected 24 months forward, and expenses broken down by category — flag any month where burn spiked more than 15% vs the prior month

Draft my Q2 2026 board update using my Stripe and Plaid data. Include MRR growth, net burn, current runway, gross margin trend, top three wins this quarter, top two risks, and a one-paragraph competitive context note on the better-for-you snack category. Match the tone and structure of my Q1 update.

Build a 12-slide board meeting deck for a CPG brand. Slides should include: company snapshot, Q2 financial summary with burn and runway, revenue by channel (DTC vs wholesale), gross margin bridge, velocity and distribution update, inventory health, top wins, risks and asks, and 12-month roadmap. Use our brand colors and export to PowerPoint.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect Plaid and Stripe as scheduled-sync providers in Starch. Starch syncs your bank transactions and payment data automatically so your burn and revenue numbers are current before you open the deck template.

2 Open the Runway Analysis app and confirm your burn calculation looks right — check that expense categories are mapped correctly (COGS, co-packer fees, freight, broker commissions) so net burn isn't inflated by pass-through costs.

3 If you sell on Shopify or through wholesale portals (UNFI scan data, Faire), connect them from Starch's integration catalog so channel-level revenue is queryable when you build your financial slides.

4 Open Investor Reporting and run a Q2 draft. Tell Starch what happened this quarter — a new retail account, a velocity win, a deduction dispute you resolved, a SKU you rationalized — and it layers your narrative on top of the live financial data.

5 Review the generated narrative for gross margin accuracy. CPG gross margin calculations vary depending on whether freight, co-packer fees, and broker commissions are above or below the line — tell Starch exactly how you define gross margin for your brand and it applies that definition consistently.

6 Add your velocity and distribution metrics. These often live in a retailer portal or a spreadsheet your broker sends. Paste them in or, if the portal is web-accessible, Starch can automate pulling that data through your browser — no API needed.

7 Open Presentation Agent and describe the deck you need: number of slides, sections, data to visualize, brand colors, and export format. Starch builds a complete draft in minutes.

8 Iterate on individual slides — if the gross margin bridge slide needs a different chart type, or the runway slide needs a scenario view (current burn vs hiring plan), describe the change and Starch rebuilds it.

9 Review the deck as a whole against last quarter's version. Check that runway assumptions are explained, that any one-time items (a large PO, a co-packer deposit) are called out so the board doesn't ask about the spike.

10 Export to PowerPoint, do a final read for anything board-specific (open asks, follow-up items from last quarter), and send the deck to the board at least 48 hours before the meeting.

11 After the board meeting, update Investor Reporting with any commitments you made — new asks, updated runway assumptions, revised hiring plan — so the Q3 draft starts from an accurate baseline.

12 Set Investor Reporting to run on a monthly cadence for between-board investor updates so the board deck isn't the first time investors hear your numbers each quarter.

See this running on Starch

Connect your tools, describe what you want, and the agent builds it. Closed beta is free.

Try it on Starch →

Worked example

Q2 2026 board deck — better-for-you snack brand, $2.1M ARR

Sample numbers from a real run

DTC revenue (Shopify)	87,000
Wholesale revenue (UNFI + Faire)	88,500
COGS incl. co-packer + freight	114,750
Gross profit	60,750
Gross margin	35
Net burn (quarterly)	142,000
Cash on hand (Plaid)	680,000
Runway at current burn	14

Starch pulled Q2 Stripe and Plaid data automatically. Total revenue was $175,500 — DTC and wholesale nearly even at 50/50 channel mix for the first time. COGS came in at $114,750 (65% of revenue) after a co-packer price increase in May that hit the back half of the quarter; gross margin was 35%, down from 38% in Q1, and the Starch draft flagged this delta automatically so the board slide included a one-line explanation without the founder having to remember to add it. Net burn was $142,000 for the quarter — $47,333/month — against $680,000 cash on hand per Plaid, giving 14 months of runway. The Investor Reporting draft included a competitive context paragraph on category velocity trends in the better-for-you snack segment based on publicly available data. The founder added three lines about a new Sprouts authorizations win and a deduction dispute resolution that recovered $12,000. Presentation Agent built a 12-slide deck from the drafted content; the gross margin bridge and runway chart were generated automatically. Total time from 'open Starch' to 'deck exported': under two hours.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Net burn per month (COGS, freight, co-packer, and broker commissions correctly bucketed, not blended)

Runway in months at current burn vs fundraise-scenario burn

Gross margin by channel (DTC vs wholesale, because blended gross margin hides the wholesale margin compression from deductions and freight)

Velocity (units sold per store per week) and weighted distribution points — both required to tell the retail expansion story credibly

Accounts receivable aging from wholesale distributors, specifically deductions outstanding vs resolved

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

Google Slides + manual spreadsheet pull

Costs you 6-10 hours every quarter copying numbers between tabs; the deck is stale by the time it's formatted, and there's no audit trail showing the board the same gross margin definition you used last quarter.

Notion board update template

Good for narrative, but Notion doesn't pull live Stripe or Plaid data, so you're still manually entering financials and doing the burn calculation yourself.

Pitch or Beautiful.ai

Excellent slide design tools, but they have no connection to your financial data — you're still exporting numbers from somewhere else and pasting them in, which means the deck takes the same time even if it looks better.

Carta or Finta investor update tools

Built for cap table and fundraising, not CPG operational metrics like velocity, channel mix, or deduction reconciliation — you'll still need to add those sections manually.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — runway analysis, investor reporting, presentation agent all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

My gross margin calculation is non-standard — I include freight and broker commissions above the line. Can Starch handle that?

Yes. Tell Starch exactly how you define gross margin — 'include outbound freight, co-packer fees, and broker commissions in COGS' — and it applies that definition when calculating and displaying gross margin in your deck. You're not locked into a standard P&L template.

My wholesale revenue lives in UNFI's scan data reports and a Faire portal, not in Stripe. Can Starch pull that?

Shopify connects from Starch's integration catalog and the agent queries it live. For UNFI or Faire portals, Starch can automate pulling data through your browser — no API required. You'd describe the workflow and Starch navigates the portal the same way you would.

Will the board deck look polished enough to actually send, or will I still need a designer to fix it?

Presentation Agent — note: currently in development, request beta access to get notified when it launches — is built to produce a deck you can send without a designer. You can iterate on individual slides, swap layouts, and export to PowerPoint. That said, if your brand has very specific design standards, plan time for a final review pass.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? My board includes institutional investors who will ask about data security.

Not yet — Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified today. That's an honest answer worth knowing before you connect bank feeds and Stripe data. If SOC 2 is a hard requirement from your investors or co-packers, it's a real constraint right now.

I use QuickBooks for my books. Can Starch pull P&L data for the board deck?

Starch syncs QuickBooks entity-level data on a schedule — invoices, bills, vendors, payments, journal entries — and that data feeds the financial section of your deck. One honest limitation: QuickBooks report views like P&L summary and Transaction List are temporarily disabled pending a connector fix. Entity-level data syncs normally, so you can build a P&L from components, but canned QuickBooks report exports aren't available today.

What if I only do a board deck quarterly but want to keep investors updated monthly in between?

Set up Investor Reporting on a monthly cadence. It emails a polished update to your investor list automatically, pulling fresh Stripe and Plaid data each time. The board deck becomes a quarterly version of the same workflow — same data sources, deeper narrative. Investors who get consistent monthly updates ask fewer questions at the quarterly board meeting.