$55B in deal volume now runs through Papermark

Today we are sharing a new milestone: $55B in deal volume now runs through Papermark.

Every day, thousands of teams use Papermark, the secure, modern data room, for their most important deals. A week after we reached $3M ARR, we wanted to look past revenue and at what our customers actually do with Papermark. So we looked at insights from 5,000 customers and users.

Here is what $55B looks like, deal type by deal type.

1. Founders closing a round

The average round targeted by startup founders on Papermark is $11M.

Founders often start with a pitch deck link and move to a fundraising data room once investors ask for due diligence. Page-by-page document analytics show which investor read the financials and which one stopped at the team slide.

How a founder sets up a fundraising room in Papermark:

1. Create the room. Click Create Data Room, or describe the round and let AI generate the folder structure.
2. Add folders. A common structure is Pitch, Financials, Legal and Team. Put the cap table and the financial model in Financials.
3. Create groups. For example, one group for lead investors who get every folder and one for early conversations who only see Pitch. Set this per group under File permissions.
4. Create one link per investor firm. Turn on Require email to view and Require email verification, turn off downloads under Download permissions, and set an Expiration date for the end of the round.
5. Read the analytics. Open the room's Analytics to see which firm opened which document, for how long, and page by page.
6. Keep it current. Upload a new version of a document when the numbers change. The link stays the same, so every investor sees the latest file.

2. Funds raising Fund I, II and III

Funds run the biggest deals on Papermark, with an average raise of $46.7M.

Emerging and established managers use a fund data room to share the PPM, track record and legal documents with LPs during the raise, then set up a separate room for quarterly reporting once the fund closes.

How a fund manager sets up a fund room in Papermark:

1. Create the room and add folders such as PPM, Track Record, Legal and Due Diligence Questionnaire.
2. Add an NDA. Under NDA agreement on the link, require LPs to accept or sign your NDA before they see any document.
3. Create a group per LP or per tier, and use File permissions so each group only sees what it should, for example side letters in a folder only that LP can open.
4. Invite LPs by email. On the room's Permissions tab, open the link's menu and choose Send Invitations to email the link with a personal message.
5. Turn on Q&A conversations so follow-up questions are asked next to the relevant document, with a full record of what each LP asked.
6. Watermark every page. Turn on Dynamic watermarking so each page shows the viewer's details.
7. Export the audit log. Under Analytics, then Audit log, click Export visits for a CSV of every view, download and login.

3. M&A teams running acquisitions

The average M&A transaction run through Papermark is $32M, and it grows month over month.

Sell-side and buy-side teams set up an M&A data room with separate granular permissions for every bidder, so each party only sees what it should. Our M&A data room report goes deeper into how big these rooms get and who reads them.

How an M&A team sets up a deal room in Papermark:

1. Create the room from the M&A due diligence template, or generate the folder structure with AI. Turn on the automatic index so bidders and advisors can navigate a large room.
2. Create one group per bidder. Set File permissions per folder and per file, and add folders later as the process moves to the next round.
3. Lock down the links. Use Require email verification, Allow specified viewers to limit access to each bidder's email domain, Dynamic watermarking, Screenshot protection and an NDA agreement.
4. Run diligence in the room. Use a Request List to track outstanding requests by category, assignee and due date, and enable file requests so the other side can upload documents into a set folder.
5. Answer questions with Q&A conversations, so every question and answer stays inside the room's access controls.
6. Compare bidders. Detailed data room analytics show engagement per document, per folder and per visitor group, so you can see which bidder is doing the deepest work.
7. Close the room. After signing, freeze the data room on Data Rooms Plus to end all visitor access and keep an archive of documents, audit logs and Q&A.

4. Sales teams closing large deals

Sales is the fourth-largest use case on Papermark, adding up to $2B in deal volume.

Sales teams share proposals, security documentation and contracts in a sales data room, and see in real time which stakeholders on the buyer side are engaged before the next call.

How a sales team sets up a deal room in Papermark:

1. Create a room per prospect with folders such as Proposal, Security and Contract.
2. Brand it. Add the logo, brand colour and an introduction page, and share from your own custom domain.
3. Create one link per buyer organisation with Require email to view, so you know which stakeholder opened what.
4. Get notified. Connect Slack to get view notifications in the deal channel.
5. Follow up on the data. Use page-by-page analytics to see whether the security team read the security documents and whether finance opened the contract, then plan the next call around it.

5. How founders raise

We also looked at 200 startup fundraises to see what the founders who close their rounds do differently.

For the numbers behind investor behaviour, our fundraising report measures how investors read pitch decks across 24,541 decks and 358,672 investor views: how long they read, where they stop and when to follow up.

6. What $55B means for us

A data room holds the most confidential documents a company has: cap tables, financials, contracts and employee data. $55B in deal volume means customers trust us with those documents at the most important moment for their company.

That is why we keep investing in security first. Every room comes with encryption, granular permissions and a full audit log. Read more on our security page.

Thank you to everyone who trusts Papermark with their deals. If you are preparing your own, start with a secure, modern data room for M&A, fundraising or due diligence, from $99/month on our pricing page.

Create a data room