You should still care. The startups that handle a raise or exit smoothly are almost always the ones that kept their books and structure clean the whole time, not the ones scrambling to fix them once the moment arrived. Growing is the state you're in most of the time, and it's the one that decides how the other two go.
It's tempting to treat clean books as something you deal with when you actually need them: right before a raise, right before an exit. The problem is that both of those are the worst possible time to start, because a term sheet or an LOI doesn't wait around for you to get current.
What staying ready actually looks like: a monthly close that's genuinely monthly, not a backlog you'll deal with once a quarter, and not something reconstructed once a year for taxes. Current books mean you always know where you stand, and diligence becomes a formality instead of a fire drill.
It also means getting straight guidance on what the numbers are telling you, not just the numbers themselves: burn trends, whether your structure still fits now that you've grown, whether something changed that should trigger a decision. And it means catching credits and elections as they become relevant instead of retroactively, which is really the whole advantage of being in the books continuously rather than reconstructed later by someone who's never seen your business.
This is also, not coincidentally, the cheapest time to do any of it. Fixing structure or catching a missed credit during a normal month costs a conversation. Fixing the same thing during a raise or an exit costs a deadline.
Add your revenue and website for a full diligence brief, reviewed by a CPA who ran EY's West Coast R&D Tax Credit practice for 13 years.