investors at DD time and help demonstrate you have some grip of how to run a business; 24. Create a 12 month budget and five year financial projections. Many people just ask for three, but some ask for five. The worst thing in the world is having to add two years to projections you have already spent way too long on. Just do five from the start; All the projections are complete rubbish. They will all be wrong. Give it your best shot anyway. It will help you understand short term capital requirements -- and hopefully give your investors the big carrot of oodles of cash at the end of the rainbow; Assume you will spend more than you will. Easy things to forget (for a UK start-up) include: directors indemnity insurance, employee AND employers' National Insurance, VAT on sales and the accountant's and legal bills; 25. Check that your projected capital structure still makes sense now that you have thought more about the numbers -- update if necessary -- at this stage you still can. 26. Check again that you still have team alignment on all the previous 25 points. This is as much to clarify to you and your team plans and direction, as it is for investors; No more than three points on each slide, it is a sales tool, not an exhaustive biography of your product or market analysis; 28. Appoint an accountant. Early stage bootstrapping is all about saving money, but a rubbish accountant now