Investor Relations

How to build an investor kpi dashboard as DTC Brand Founders

Investor RelationsFor DTC Brand Founders3 apps11 steps~22 min to set up

Your investor KPI dashboard is a Google Sheet that lives in a folder called 'Board Stuff' and gets updated the night before a check-in call. You pull Shopify revenue manually, screenshot your Meta Ads ROAS, copy Klaviyo open rates, and try to remember where you stored last month's numbers. Your bank balance is in one tab, your ad spend is in another, and your contribution margin math breaks every time you add a new SKU. You spend two to three hours before each investor call just getting the numbers to agree with each other — and they still don't reflect returns, net revenue, or how your CAC has trended over the last six weeks.

Build this on Starch → See the apps used

Investor RelationsFor DTC Brand Founders3 apps11 steps~22 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A live investor KPI dashboard that pulls Shopify revenue, Stripe payouts, Plaid bank transactions, and ad spend into one place — updated daily, no manual work

An automated monthly investor update that drafts your narrative, formats your burn rate and MRR growth, and emails your cap table on a schedule you set

A runway view that shows real net burn and forward cash projection using actual bank feed data, so you can answer 'how long is your runway?' in under ten seconds

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

Investor Reporting Runway Analysis Growth Analyst

Data sources & config

Starch syncs your Stripe data on a schedule (charges, subscriptions, payouts) and your Plaid bank feed on a schedule (transactions, balances) — both update daily without manual uploads. Connect Shopify and Meta Ads from Starch's integration catalog; the agent queries them live when the dashboard or automation runs. Google Ads and Klaviyo connect from Starch's integration catalog the same way. Your investor email list is handled through Gmail, which Starch syncs on a schedule for read and send.

Prompts to copy

Build me an investor KPI dashboard that shows monthly net revenue (Shopify orders minus returns), blended CAC from Meta and Google Ads spend divided by new customers acquired, MRR from Stripe, net burn from Plaid, and runway in months. Let me add a short narrative each month about what drove the numbers.

Every first Monday of the month, pull last month's Stripe MRR, Plaid burn, and Shopify revenue, draft an investor update with a burn chart and top three wins and risks, and email it to my investor list. Use the same tone I used last month.

Show me a weekly digest of my CAC by channel, conversion rate from ad click to Shopify purchase, and which campaigns drove the most new customers versus returning buyers this week.

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

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect Stripe in Starch — Starch syncs your charges, subscriptions, and payouts on a schedule so MRR and revenue are always current without you touching anything.

2 Connect Plaid — Starch syncs your bank transactions and balances daily. This is where your real burn rate comes from, not a QuickBooks estimate or a spreadsheet average.

3 Connect Shopify from Starch's integration catalog so the agent can query orders, returns, and customer counts live when your dashboard runs.

4 Connect Meta Ads and Google Ads from Starch's integration catalog — the agent pulls spend, impressions, and click data live to calculate blended CAC against Shopify new customer counts.

5 Start with the Investor Reporting app from the App Store. Fork it and tell Starch what metrics your specific investors ask about — contribution margin, inventory turns, refund rate, whatever came up on the last call.

6 Add the Runway Analysis app from the App Store. It uses your Plaid bank feed and Stripe revenue to calculate net burn and project forward 24 months. You get a number that updates daily, not once a month when your bookkeeper closes.

7 Tell Starch: 'Build me a KPI dashboard that shows net revenue (Shopify gross minus returns), blended CAC, Stripe MRR, Plaid net burn, and runway. Add a section where I can write three sentences of context each month before the update goes out.'

8 Set the Investor Reporting automation to run on the first Monday of each month — it drafts the narrative from your numbers, you review and edit for five minutes, and it sends to your investor list via Gmail.

9 Wire the Growth Analyst app to pull your weekly channel performance — CAC by source, conversion rate changes, top referrers — so you have the data to explain week-over-week swings when investors ask follow-up questions.

10 Tell Starch: 'Every Friday afternoon, Slack me a summary of this week's CAC trend, net new customers by channel, and whether we are tracking above or below last month's revenue pace.' Set the automation and let it run.

11 Before your next board call, open the dashboard, read the pre-drafted narrative, make your edits, and send. The numbers are already reconciled — Stripe, Plaid, and Shopify are all sourced from the same place.

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

Q1 2026 investor update close — April 7

Sample numbers from a real run

Shopify gross revenue (March)	312,000
Returns and chargebacks	-24,600
Net revenue	287,400
Meta Ads spend	41,200
Google Ads spend	18,500
Total ad spend	59,700
New customers acquired	1,840
Blended CAC	32
Stripe MRR (subscription SKUs)	44,800
Plaid net burn (ops + COGS + salaries)	-68,300
Cash in bank (Plaid balance)	1,140,000
Runway at current burn	1,140,000

On April 7, Starch pulled March data automatically. Net revenue came in at $287,400 — $312K Shopify gross minus $24,600 in returns, a return rate of 7.9% driven almost entirely by one colorway of the hero SKU (you noted this in the narrative field). Blended CAC was $32.50: $59,700 in combined Meta and Google spend divided by 1,840 new customers, down from $38 in February because the Meta creative test on the bundle offer outperformed. Stripe MRR from subscription bundles hit $44,800, up 11% month-over-month. Plaid net burn was $68,300 — actual bank outflows, not an estimate — giving a runway of 16.7 months on $1.14M cash. Starch drafted the investor email with a burn chart, the CAC trend line, and a three-bullet wins/risks section. You spent eight minutes editing the risks section to mention the inventory delay on the new SKU, then sent it to your twelve investors. Total time from opening Starch to hitting send: eleven minutes.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Blended CAC by channel (Meta, Google, organic) — especially whether it's trending up as you scale spend

Net revenue after returns — because gross Shopify revenue is a vanity number when your return rate is above 5%

Net burn from actual bank transactions (Plaid) — not bookkeeper estimates, not QuickBooks YTD

Runway in months at current pace — the number investors will ask first on every call

Stripe MRR from subscription or replenishment SKUs — the part of revenue your investors actually want to see compound

Comparison

What this replaces

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

Google Sheets + manual exports

Free and flexible, but you're rebuilding it every month, the numbers drift whenever someone touches a formula, and it never sends itself to investors.

Looker Studio connected to Shopify and Google Ads

Good for ad performance visualizations, but it doesn't know about your bank balance, Stripe subscriptions, or burn rate, and it won't draft your investor narrative.

Forecastr or Mosaic

Purpose-built for investor-facing financial models, but they cost $500-$1,000/month, require a dedicated setup session, and don't pull your ad spend or DTC-specific metrics without custom work.

Klaviyo + Triple Whale + a finance tool (the stack)

Each tool does one thing well, but none of them talk to each other and you're still stitching the investor update together yourself the night before the call.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — investor reporting, runway analysis, growth analyst 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

Does Starch connect to Shopify? That's where all my revenue data lives.

Yes — connect Shopify from Starch's integration catalog and the agent queries your orders, customers, and returns live when your dashboard or automation runs. It's not a scheduled sync the way Stripe and Plaid are, but for a dashboard that refreshes daily or an automation that runs monthly, live query is the right pattern.

My burn rate in QuickBooks is always wrong because we have accruals and timing issues. Will Starch have the same problem?

Starch uses Plaid bank feed data — actual cash in and cash out — not an accounting ledger. That means the burn number reflects what actually left your account this month, not what got accrued or categorized. For a 'how much cash do I have and how long will it last' question, bank feed math is more reliable than a P&L. If you need GAAP-accurate financials for an audit, that's a different tool; for a daily runway number your investors trust, Plaid is the right source.

Can Starch pull Meta Ads spend so I can calculate CAC without exporting a CSV?

Yes — connect Meta Ads from Starch's integration catalog; the agent queries your spend, impressions, and clicks live. Same for Google Ads. You tell Starch how to define a new customer (first Shopify order, no prior purchase in the last 90 days, whatever your definition is) and it does the CAC math when the dashboard runs.

Is my financial data stored somewhere? I'm not comfortable with bank credentials sitting in a random SaaS.

Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified yet — that's the honest answer. Plaid handles the bank connection using the same OAuth flow as every major fintech app, so your actual bank credentials never touch Starch. But if your investors or your CFO require SOC 2 before you put financial data in a new tool, that's a real constraint to weigh today.

What if I want to add a metric that's specific to DTC — like contribution margin per SKU or inventory weeks on hand?

Describe it to Starch. Tell it: 'Add a contribution margin section that takes Shopify revenue by SKU, subtracts COGS from a Google Sheet I'll link, and shows margin by product.' If your inventory data is in Shopify, the agent can query it live. If it's in a spreadsheet, connect Google Sheets from Starch's integration catalog. You're not locked into a fixed template — the Investor Reporting app is a starting point you customize to match what your specific investors actually ask about.

Will Starch automatically send the investor update or do I still have to hit send?

You control that. You can set the automation to draft and email on a schedule, or to draft and wait for you to review before sending. Most founders do the latter: Starch drafts it on the first Monday of the month, you read it and make edits in five minutes, then it sends via Gmail. If you trust the output and want hands-off, you can set it to send automatically. The cadence, the review step, and the recipient list are all yours to configure.