Twenty free investment proposal templates in Microsoft Word, for raising capital from investors. Before you circulate one, there is a legal point that catches people out — it is the first section below, and it matters more than anything else on this page.
Raising investment is regulated. In most countries, offering an investment in your business is a regulated activity. There are rules about who you may approach, how you may approach them, what you must disclose, and whether an offer has to be registered or fall within an exemption. Breaching them can carry serious consequences, including personal liability, and emailing a proposal to a wide list of people is one of the easier ways to do it accidentally. Take legal advice before you send an investment proposal to anyone. This page is general information about the document, not legal or financial advice.
- Templates20 layouts
- FormatMicrosoft Word
- Opens inWord, Google Docs, LibreOffice
- CostFree, no signup
Which document do you need?
| Document | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Investment proposal this page |
Asks an investor for capital. Sets out the opportunity, the amount sought, what it buys and what the investor gets in return. |
| Business plan | Describes the whole business in depth. Often requested by a lender, or alongside a proposal as supporting detail. |
| Business proposal | Sells your services to a customer. Nothing to do with raising money. |
| Pitch deck | The slide version, used in meetings. Most investors expect a deck first and a written proposal when they are interested. |
The templates
Twenty layouts with the standard sections in place. Use one as a structure and replace the content — investors read a great many of these, and generic phrasing is noticed immediately.
What investors actually assess
Most proposals spend their length on the product. Investors spend their attention elsewhere.
- The team. For early-stage businesses this often carries the most weight. Who has done this before, what they built, why this particular group can execute this particular plan. Name people and say what they actually did.
- Evidence it works. Revenue, customers, retention, signed contracts, pilot results, waiting lists. Any real number beats any projection. A modest figure that is true is more persuasive than an impressive one that is hoped for.
- The market. Who buys, how many there are, and what they currently do instead. Cite sources. “A multi-billion dollar market” with nothing behind it is the most common weak line in these documents.
- The unit economics. What it costs to acquire a customer, what that customer is worth, and when the two cross. This is where an experienced reader will look first for whether the model works.
- Use of funds. Covered below, and routinely the thinnest section.
- The risks. Naming the main three, with how you would handle them, builds more confidence than omitting them. Every investor will think of them anyway; the question is whether you have.
Make the ask specific
A proposal that does not state plainly what it wants forces the reader to work it out, and many will not bother.
- The amount. One figure, not a range that invites negotiation before a conversation has started.
- The instrument. Equity, loan, convertible, revenue share. Each carries very different consequences for both sides, and this is firmly a question for your lawyer and accountant rather than a template.
- What the money buys. Not “growth” — specific milestones. The hires, the build, the markets entered, and how long the funding lasts before you need more.
- What the investor receives, in whatever terms the instrument implies.
- What happens next. A named person, and a clear next step.
On use of funds, be concrete. “Product development, marketing, operations” says nothing. “Two engineers for eighteen months, a six-month paid pilot in two cities, and eighteen months of runway to reach break-even” tells an investor exactly what their money does and when you will next be asking. Break it into a table with amounts.
On valuation, be aware it is the most contested number in the document and the hardest to defend in writing. Many founders leave it for the conversation rather than stating it up front. Whichever you choose, be ready to explain how you arrived at it, and take advice before committing to a figure.
Common mistakes
- Projections with no stated assumptions. A five-year revenue curve is only assessable if the reader can see what drives it — customers per month, price, conversion, churn.
- Claiming no competition. It reads as not having looked. Name your competitors and explain why a customer picks you anyway.
- Hockey-stick charts with nothing behind them. Experienced readers discount these automatically.
- Sending the same document to everyone. Different investors look for different things, and a proposal aimed at nobody in particular reads that way.
- No financial detail. Current revenue, current costs, current runway. Omitting them suggests the numbers are uncomfortable.
- Leaving placeholder text in. Search for square brackets before sending. It happens more often than anyone admits.
Before you send it
-
Take legal advice on the offer itself
Not on the wording — on whether and how you may make the offer at all, and to whom. This is the step people skip, and it is the one with real consequences attached.
-
Have an accountant check the figures
Internally consistent, correctly totalled, and agreeing with your actual accounts. An investor who finds an arithmetic error stops trusting the rest of the document.
-
Tailor it to the recipient
Reference what they invest in and why you approached them specifically. Investors receive a great many generic proposals and can recognise one in a sentence.
-
Send a PDF
File, Save As, PDF. Your layout holds, and the figures cannot be altered in transit. Keep every version you send, with dates and recipients.
Common questions
How long should an investment proposal be?
Shorter than people expect. Ten to twenty pages covers most situations, with detail in appendices. If an investor wants more they will ask, and that conversation is the point.
Should I include a valuation?
It depends on the stage and the investor, and it is genuinely contested. Many founders raise it in conversation rather than writing it down. Take advice before committing to a number.
Do I need an NDA before sending one?
Most professional investors will decline to sign one at an early stage, as a matter of policy. The usual approach is to share enough to be compelling without disclosing what genuinely needs protecting. Our confidentiality agreement templates cover the document itself.
Proposal or pitch deck?
Usually both, in that order: a deck to open the conversation, a written proposal when there is real interest. Keep the numbers in the two consistent.
Do I need Microsoft Word?
No. Upload the file to Google Docs or open it in LibreOffice, then export to PDF before sending.
Can I use these commercially?
Yes, for your own fundraising and client work. You may not resell or redistribute the template files themselves. See our Terms of Use.
