Why Startups Need To Prioritise Data Hygiene & Documentation

As a founder, having strong data hygiene and documentation isn’t just a minor admin task — it’s a game-changer.

From making fundraising smoother to unlocking growth opportunities, clean, organised data is essential for scaling and success.?

In this month’s Founder newsletter, we explore how getting your data in order from day one can set you up for success.

1. How it makes fundraising easier?

Picture this: you’ve managed to win over investors with your pitch, with a term sheet landing in your inbox.?

But now literally hundreds of items are being requested of you from investors and you’ve realised you’re not ready for this due diligence.

This is why I’ve always encouraged founders to get their ducks in a row pre- raise and pre-scale; collateral, legal docs, KPIs, unit economics etc. – everything an investor could ask for. This will give them so much confidence in your ability to manage and scale your startup, helping you secure future funding rounds.

Trust me, making this a non-negotiable from day one will make navigating fundraising 100 times easier as it should only take you a week max at this stage.?

Leave it too late, and it’s very time consuming and you won’t be able to focus on other areas of the business as much. The smaller your exec team, the harder it will be to do DD alongside your day to day.?

2. Data inconsistencies will scale inconsistencies with your business

Solving data inconsistencies in the early days where you have a small group of customers and a team will be very straightforward.?

But you have to nip it in the bud from there and stay on top of it, else it’s going to be a much bigger problem a year down the line.

Also, if you maintain clean data from day one, you'll be better positioned to identify growth opportunities as they emerge. Consistent tracking and documentation of user behaviour or market trends will allow you to pivot quickly when an opportunity arises.?

This makes it easier to show investors the potential and validation behind your growth metrics.

This article from one of Airbnb’s Data and Engineering team members highlights how they introduced the MIDAS process back in 2020 to tackle their diminishing data quality and re-architect their most critical models, causing a dramatic increase in their ability to deliver key reports on time and as well as their data hygiene.

3. Growth Opportunities and Risk Mitigation

Well maintained, organised data also allows you to easily spot growth trends and areas for expansion.?

Whether it’s customer behaviour, development of unit economics, product-led growth loops, product usage metrics, or market insights, clean data allows for actionable analysis.?

This gives you an edge in identifying which customer segments are driving the most value, where product improvements are needed, or when a pivot could unlock new markets.

One of Slack’s Senior Engineers Mike Demmer shared how thanks to their clean data, they were able to analyse users’ interactions and quickly bolster their data architecture to keep up with the growth in usage (they’d grown from 2 million active users a day to 8 million active users a day in just two years!)

4. Knowledge Transfer and Internal Efficiency

Growth opportunities aren’t the only internal benefit of having good data hygiene and thorough documentation, but it also allows your internal team to operate smoothly.?

We’re all aware how fast the startup ecosystem moves, with loads of movement with new team members joining (or moving on) fairly often.?

Strong data architecture and well-documented process flow allow new team members to get up to speed faster and prevent knowledge loss when key employees leave.

Bonus - our measurement stack:

Metabase

Pendo

Hubspot

HotJar

LaunchDarkly

Brandwatch

Getting your data hygiene and documentation in order from day one isn't just about making life easier—it’s about setting your startup up for long-term success.?

Take it from the companies that have scaled successfully—like Airbnb and Slack. They didn’t wait until it was too late. If you make this a priority now, you’ll thank yourself later when the pressure is on, and your business is ready to scale with ease.

Let’s keep building responsibly and with the future in mind!