board-pack-composition

Skill: board-pack-composition

Purpose: How to assemble a board / investor / lender reporting pack that gets read and drives decisions. Used by board-pack-composer (primary).

When to use

• Quarterly board cycles
• Monthly / quarterly investor updates
• Lender covenant-compliance packages
• Fundraising data rooms
• Ad-hoc board materials (M&A, restructuring, special situations)

Audience first

Same data, different framing. Identify the audience before you write a single slide.

Audience	Reads for	Lead with
Founder board	Direction-setting, hires, customer strategy	Vision + traction + asks
PE / VC board	Plan-vs-actual, value-creation milestones	KPIs vs LP-promised + risks
Lender	Covenant compliance, cash runway, asset quality	Compliance certificate + liquidity
Investor / LP update	Confidence + transparency + asks	Headline number + commentary + asks
Fundraising prospect	Why this round, why now, why us	Traction proof + use of proceeds

If you can't name the audience, the pack is going to drift. Ask the Team Lead before assembling.

The narrative spine

Every pack has a story. Decide the story before picking the slides.

A typical board-pack arc:

1. Headline (1 slide) — the one thing the board most needs to know this period.
2. Operating summary (2-3 slides) — KPIs, what moved, why.
3. Financial summary (2-3 slides) — P&L, cash, balance-sheet highlights.
4. Strategic update (2-4 slides) — what we said we'd do, what we did, what's next.
5. Key risks / RAID (1-2 slides) — what could blow up, what's being done.
6. Decisions / asks (1 slide) — what the board needs to decide / approve / weigh in on.
7. Appendix (as needed) — detailed financials, KPI definitions, supporting analyses.

Total: 12-15 slides body + appendix. Anything above 25 body slides is a slow-read meeting.

Slide-craft rules

1. Title is the takeaway. "Q3 revenue beat plan on enterprise upsell," not "Q3 Revenue."
2. One idea per slide. Two charts on one slide is two slides.
3. Numbers come with commentary. Every table or chart has 1-3 sentences explaining what it means.
4. Charts > tables for trend. Tables > charts for precision.
5. Color discipline. A small palette (3-4 colors max) with consistent semantic mapping (green = favorable, red = unfavorable, gray = neutral).
6. No 6-point font. If it requires zoom, it's appendix material.
7. Footnotes for definitions. First time a non-standard KPI appears, footnote the definition.
8. Confidentiality marking. "Draft — Confidential — Board Use Only" on every page.

KPI selection

5-7 on the front pages, no more. Pick them by:

• Strategic relevance — does this KPI tie to the company's stated strategy?
• Sensitivity to action — can leadership move this in the next quarter?
• Defensibility of definition — is there a clean, agreed definition?
• Trend-readability — does a multi-period view of this KPI tell a story?

KPIs that fail these checks go in the appendix, not the front pages.

Variance commentary in a board pack

Use the ../variance-commentary/SKILL.md skill for the prose. Place commentary inline with the variance, not in a separate section. Reading a number and then having to flip 8 pages for the explanation is a UX failure.

The decisions / asks slide

This is the most underused slide in board packs. Without it, the meeting drifts and the board doesn't know what they actually approved.

Format:

1. Decision needed: [specific decision] — proposed answer: [yes/no/option]
2. Decision needed: ...
3. Input requested: [topic where management wants opinions, not a yes/no]
4. For your information: [no decision needed, just awareness]

Put this as the last body slide, before the appendix.

Investor-update specifics

Monthly cadence. Letter format, not deck.

Structure:

1. Headline — one paragraph: what happened this month, what matters most.
2. Metrics — 5-7 KPIs, ideally with a trend chart.
3. Wins — 2-4 specific.
4. Losses — 1-3 specific (yes, share these — credibility comes from honesty).
5. Asks — intros, hires, pricing feedback, anything the investor base can help with.
6. What's next — one paragraph: what we'll be working on between now and the next update.

Lender pack specifics

Lender packs are colder, more numerical, less narrative. The lender wants:

1. Compliance certificate — covenant calculations vs. covenants, with agreement section references (see ../../agents/treasury-analyst.md).
2. Borrowing base (if asset-based) — eligible AR, eligible inventory, exclusions, availability.
3. Financial statements — P&L, BS, CF for the period.
4. Forecast — 12-18 month projection.
5. Material developments — anything they should know (litigation, customer concentration changes, major contracts).

Lender packs ship with audit-trail discipline (source citations on every figure). Lenders' inside counsel will probe these.

Fundraising data-room organization

Top-level structure:

• 01_Financials/ — historicals, forecast, model, audit reports
• 02_KPIs/ — KPI history, cohort analyses, unit economics
• 03_Customer/ — customer concentration, contracts (redacted), retention analyses
• 04_Team/ — org chart, key bios, comp philosophy, options outstanding
• 05_Legal/ — entity structure, IP, material contracts, litigation
• 06_Tech/ — architecture, security, IP, third-party dependencies
• 07_Strategy/ — market analysis, competitive positioning, roadmap
• 99_Q&A/ — bilateral Q&A log

Naming: prefix every file with the section number + version + date (02_KPIs/cohort-retention-v3-2026-Q2.pdf).

Anti-patterns

• Pack delivered same-day as the meeting
• Slide titles that describe content, not meaning ("Q3 Revenue" vs. "Q3 revenue beat plan")
• KPI definitions changed mid-year without footnote
• "Decisions / Asks" slide missing
• Confidentiality / draft mark missing on a draft
• Lender pack without a covenant certificate
• Investor update with no ask
• Tables jammed with 20+ rows and no commentary
• 6-point font, 80-slide pack with no executive summary

See also

• Template: ../../templates/board-pack-outline.md
• Template: ../../templates/kpi-pack-template.md
• Skill: ../variance-commentary/SKILL.md
• Agent: ../../agents/board-pack-composer.md