Your investors can be your biggest cheerleaders. Keeping them informed and upbeat can really help your business succeed. They’re a goldmine for connections to future investors, potential customers, and partners, not to mention a great source of advice. It’s smart to send them monthly or quarterly update emails, and here’s why:
- Your company stays top of mind - Literally just by getting into their inbox and having them see your name, makes them much more likely to consider opportunities to help you and your company as they go about their daily lives. It also makes them much more likely to help you when you need them most because they’ll feel more like part of your team.
- Transparency builds trust and goodwill - Include KPIs and tangible metrics in your updates, giving them a bit more personalized color and detail than you would a stranger at dinner party. It demonstrates transparency and accountability to your investors and will further build your rapport.
- It helps you see the bigger picture - Day-to-day, your job can feel like a dog fight. And long periods of time can pass before you, the CEO, pick your head up and take stock of the bigger picture even though you know you should be doing that regularly. It’s a common trap we’ve fallen victim too many times. Picking your head up to work on a regularly scheduled investor update requires you to zoom out. Think of it as a nice forcing function to help you reset once in a while in case you’ve forgotten to.
Investor update email template
To make it easy on yourself and so your investors can also easily track progress, use a consistent format for each of your emails. A sample investor update email could look something like this:
Dear Investors,
We smashed it in Q1 (insert a couple sentences on highlights). And we’re continuing to work through some challenges (insert a couple sentences on headwinds). But overall, I’m really proud of our progress. Please read down below, including a few “asks” we have for you. Look forward to catching up soon. Just hit reply, call or text.
KPI’s
Q4 2023 | Q3 2023 | |
Revenue: | $Xmm vs. budget of $Xmm | $Xmm vs. budget of $Xmm |
Burn: | $XX vs budget of $XX | $XX vs budget of $XX |
Cash on Hand: | $Xmm vs. budget of $Xmm | $Xmm vs. budget of $Xmm |
Runway: | X months vs. plan of X months | X months vs. plan of X months |
Total Paying Users: | XX vs. plan of XX | XX vs. plan of XX |
Churn: | X% | X% |
Team Size: | X FTEs vs. budget of X FTEs | X FTEs vs. budget of X FTEs |
Business Overview:
Quick update on the business. Sprinkle in other relevant metrics and give an overall snapshot of the business.
Current Concerns:
Quick summary of challenges or things that you are most concerned about.
Team and Hiring Update:
Overview of the current state of the team. Plans for new hiring, state of existing teams
Product Update:
Quick update on product and what the team is working on next
Asks:
Ask your investors for introductions or specific help on small problems.
Thank you:
Publicly shout out any investors that helped you in any way either between this email update and the last. This incentivizes folks to help as they know they will be acknowledged if they do.
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