Investor Relations

How to build an investor kpi dashboard as Small Investor Relations Teams

Investor RelationsFor Small Investor Relations Teams2 apps10 steps~20 min to set up

You're a two-person IR team producing quarterly LP letters, KPI decks for the GP, and ad-hoc capital call updates — all from data living in QuickBooks, NetSuite, Stripe, Plaid, and at least one LP portal you have to log into manually. Every board-prep cycle, someone spends half a day copying numbers out of QuickBooks into a spreadsheet, rechecking them against Plaid transactions, and reformatting the whole thing for a Notion doc that's already stale by the time the GP reviews it. The institutional IR platforms cost $50k+ per year and assume you have a dedicated IR-ops analyst. You don't. You need a KPI dashboard that refreshes itself, not another tool to maintain.

Build this on Starch → See the apps used

Investor RelationsFor Small Investor Relations Teams2 apps10 steps~20 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A live KPI dashboard pulling portfolio metrics from QuickBooks, NetSuite, Stripe, and Plaid — updated on a schedule, no manual exports required

An investor-ready reporting surface that formats burn rate, revenue growth, and commitment pacing into a shareable view the GP or LP can open without asking you to re-pull numbers

An automation that detects when key metrics cross defined thresholds (runway below 12 months, MRR growth decelerating) and alerts you in Slack before the GP asks

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

Data sources & config

Starch syncs your QuickBooks data on a schedule (invoices, bills, payments, vendors, journal entries), syncs your NetSuite data on a schedule (income statements, balance sheets, journal entries), syncs your Stripe data on a schedule (charges, subscriptions, payouts), and syncs your Plaid data on a schedule (categorized transactions, balances). LP portal data from platforms like Intralinks or DocSend is automated through your browser — no API needed. Slack is connected from Starch's integration catalog for threshold alerts.

Prompts to copy

Build me a KPI dashboard for LP reporting that pulls MRR and net revenue retention from Stripe, cash balance and net burn from Plaid, and operating expenses by category from QuickBooks. Show a 6-month trend for each metric, a 24-month forward runway projection, and flag any metric that moved more than 10% month-over-month.

Add a commitment pacing tracker that shows total capital committed, called to date, remaining uncalled, and projected next call date. Pull the cash movement data from Plaid and let me manually input the fund commitment schedule.

Every Monday at 7am, check if runway has dropped below 14 months or if MRR growth has decelerated for two consecutive months. If either is true, send me a Slack message with the current numbers and the last time we reported this metric to LPs.

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

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect QuickBooks and NetSuite as scheduled-sync providers — Starch pulls 20+ entity types from QuickBooks (invoices, bills, vendors, payments, journal entries) and full income statement and balance sheet data from NetSuite on a recurring schedule.

2 Connect Stripe and Plaid — Starch syncs Stripe charges, subscriptions, and payouts alongside Plaid bank transactions and balances, so your revenue and cash data come from the same source of truth rather than two separate spreadsheets.

3 Start from the Investor Reporting app in the App Store — it's pre-wired for Stripe and Plaid with burn rate, runway, and MRR growth already built in. Fork it to add your QuickBooks and NetSuite layers on top.

4 Tell Starch: 'Add operating expense breakdown by category from QuickBooks to the Investor Reporting dashboard, grouped by department, with a month-over-month variance column.' The agent builds the view from your synced data.

5 Add the Runway Analysis app — it gives you a live 24-month cash projection and 6-month historical burn trend from Stripe and Plaid. This becomes the source of truth when LPs ask about commitment pacing or when the GP wants a current runway number before a board call.

6 Build the commitment pacing tracker by telling Starch: 'Create a tracker showing total fund commitments, capital called to date, uncalled capital remaining, and a projected next call date. Pull cash movement data from Plaid; I'll input the commitment schedule manually.' Starch builds the surface; you paste in the fund schedule once.

7 Connect Slack from Starch's integration catalog and set up your threshold automation — describe the conditions (runway below 14 months, MRR deceleration two months running) and Starch builds the scheduled check and the Slack message format.

8 For LP portal data — Intralinks, DocSend, or a fund admin portal with no API — Starch automates the login and data extraction through your browser. Tell Starch: 'Log into our Intralinks portal every Friday and pull the most recent capital account statement for each LP. Add their current NAV to the dashboard.'

9 Set up the GP-facing dashboard view — a read-only surface with the five numbers the GP actually checks before board meetings: MRR, net burn, runway months, capital called YTD, and portfolio company count. No login required for the GP; you share a link.

10 Before each quarterly LP letter, open the Investor Reporting app, answer the prompt about what happened this quarter, and Starch drafts the narrative against the live metrics already in the dashboard — burn rate, runway, MRR growth, top portfolio events — in the tone you used last 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

Q1 2026 LP Reporting Cycle — March 31 Close

Sample numbers from a real run

MRR (from Stripe)	487,000
Net burn (Plaid, March)	-182,000
Cash on hand (Plaid)	4,100,000
Runway projection (Starch)	22
Capital called YTD (manual input + Plaid)	3,200,000
Uncalled commitments remaining	6,800,000
Operating expenses — payroll (QuickBooks)	310,000
Operating expenses — software and hosting (QuickBooks)	47,000

On March 31, your Starch dashboard shows $487K MRR (up 8% from February, Stripe-sourced), net burn of $182K (down from $201K in February, Plaid-sourced), and $4.1M cash on hand — 22 months of runway at current pace. QuickBooks synced payroll at $310K and software at $47K, so the GP can see exactly where the burn is coming from without asking your CFO. Capital called YTD is $3.2M against a $10M fund commitment, leaving $6.8M uncalled — the commitment pacing tracker flags this is two quarters ahead of schedule and will surface the note in the Q1 LP letter draft. You tell Starch 'Draft the Q1 investor update using the current dashboard metrics. Highlight the burn reduction from February, note that runway has extended by 3 months since the last update, and flag that capital call pacing is ahead of schedule. Match the tone of the Q4 2025 letter.' Starch produces a full draft in the same format your LPs are used to, with every number sourced from the synced data. What used to take a day and a half of copying numbers takes about 20 minutes of review and editing.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Net burn rate (monthly) and runway months remaining

MRR and net revenue retention (NRR) from portfolio companies

Capital called vs. total fund commitment (pacing against schedule)

Operating expense breakdown by category (payroll, COGS, software, G&A)

LP update cadence compliance — number of days since last formal investor communication

Comparison

What this replaces

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

Juniper Square / Addepar / iLevel

Purpose-built for fund administration and LP reporting at scale, but costs $50k+ per year, assumes a dedicated IR-ops analyst, and gives you fixed report templates rather than custom surfaces you can describe and build yourself.

QuickBooks + Stripe + manual Excel model

Free beyond your existing subscriptions, but someone on your two-person team spends 4-6 hours per reporting cycle pulling exports, reconciling numbers, and reformatting — and the deck is stale by the time the GP opens it.

Notion + Google Sheets dashboard

Flexible and low-cost, but requires manual data entry or fragile Zapier pipes to stay current; you're the refresh mechanism, not the tool.

Q4 Inc. (public company IR platform)

Strong for public-company investor relations and earnings calls, but built for larger IR teams with dedicated investor comms staff — not a two-person team producing LP letters for a mid-size fund.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — investor reporting, runway analysis 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 replace our fund administrator or our ERP?

No. Starch connects to QuickBooks, NetSuite, Stripe, and Plaid to pull the data you already have in those systems. Your fund admin still handles capital accounts and audit-ready reporting; Starch builds the working surfaces your team actually uses week-to-week on top of that data.

QuickBooks is our source of truth for expenses. Will Starch see our full chart of accounts?

Yes — Starch syncs 20+ entity types from QuickBooks including invoices, bills, payments, vendors, and journal entries, up to 50,000 records per entity. One honest limit: QuickBooks report views (pre-built P&L, Transaction List, Vendor Expenses) are temporarily unavailable due to an upstream connector issue, but all the underlying entity-level data syncs normally and Starch can build your P&L view from that data directly.

Our LP portal (Intralinks / DocSend / a fund admin web portal) doesn't have an API. Can Starch still pull data from it?

Yes. Starch automates your LP portal through your browser — no API needed. It logs in, navigates to the reports or statements you need, and extracts the data into your dashboard on whatever schedule you set.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? Our LPs ask about data security.

Starch is not currently SOC 2 Type II certified — that's worth knowing if your LPs or compliance team will ask. It's on the roadmap. For now, Starch uses standard OAuth for all integrations, and your fund admin or ERP remains the system of record.

Can the GP or an LP view the dashboard without a Starch login?

You can share a read-only link to a dashboard surface. The GP doesn't need to be a Starch user to see the five numbers you want them to see before a board call.

We're on NetSuite, not QuickBooks. Does that change anything?

No — Starch syncs NetSuite data on a schedule with the same depth: invoices, expenses, journal entries, balance sheets, and income statements. The Investor Reporting app is pre-built for this combination.

How is this different from just building a Notion dashboard with embedded Google Sheets?

The difference is who does the refreshing. A Notion/Sheets setup requires someone to pull exports, paste data, and reformat — that someone is you. Starch syncs QuickBooks, NetSuite, Stripe, and Plaid on a schedule automatically, and you describe the dashboard you want in plain language rather than building and maintaining formulas.