Investments are a vital part of startup life, and today we want to give you templates and TextExpander snippets that will help you begin or level up your Investment Updates.
Click here to join our Startup Investment Updates Public Group of ready-made Snippets.
Why Do Investment Updates Matter?
It’s an exciting part of your business’ journey when someone believes in you enough to commit financially, with the likelihood of skyrocketing your future.
It can also be a whirlwind transition. This is the stage where your dream becomes a reality, with hopeful but critical eyes now fixed on you and your work. In early startup days, we only have ourselves to be accountable to, but finding the right investors can change that overnight. Sharing investment Updates are how you build up trust with your key investors and stakeholders, as clear communication is needed in a crucial business relationship.
Great communication to your investors also boosts the possibility of further investments, which is one of the main reasons we set up these convenient snippets for you.
Your Investment Updates should:
- Be consistent. We recommend monthly as the minimum to keep you top of mind for your investors.
- Be concise. Don’t waste investors’ valuable time with extraneous and unhelpful data; give them what they need to know.
- Include relevant data. Find the numbers that will depict your last month accurately.
- Discuss your KPIs. Include how you’re performing against the metrics you have set.
- Be personable. While it’s important to remain professional, don’t be afraid to allow some personality to shine, avoiding a totally dry report.
Above all else, Investment Updates should be an honest reflection of where your business is at. Your investors are integral to your success and can only move forward with you if they have complete transparency on how you are doing.
Use A Customized Opening in Your Investment Updates
Make sure to join the public group of our Investment Update snippets here! You can use these snippets individually, or we’ve made you a master version that contains all of them together. Add them to your library and customize them as you go.
Our first snippet is your Investment Update opener and we’ve set it up so that you can select whether you’re updating on a weekly or monthly basis. When starting out with your Update, it can be a nice touch to acknowledge the support of your backers by opening with a brief thank you. We’ve added a fill-in snippet that’ll let you add your company name to the template, for a customizable thank you.
Your intro also is a good place to indicate whether you’ve seen positive results since your last Investment Update, giving investors a sense of the direction of the coming report. We’ve gone for “exciting”, “challenging”, and “busy” to choose from. “Exciting” is a good choice for a positive period, “challenging” can be used for a negative one, while “busy” is helpful for a mix of the two.
Discuss Your Highlights
Humans have a strong negativity bias. This means starting out with the highlights gives them a chance to shine before moving on to any struggles you need to discuss. Remember, honesty is critical to an investor relationship, but your wins deserve to have their moment of recognition in an Update.
In our highlights snippet we’ve included some prompts to get you started, so get thinking about:
- Which KPIs or goals have you exceeded, by how much, and how far ahead of schedule?
- Which new clients have you signed on, and how much revenue will they bring in?
- Who have you hired, from where, and what is their area of expertise?
- Where have you been published recently, that would be of interest to investors?
Sneak tip: including your highlights is especially important if you are planning to send your Investment Update to prospective investors. We love the idea of using these Updates as a kind of “marketing”, so getting in those successes is essential.
Address Your Challenges
Your investors will expect to be clued in to what’s not working, as well. That should include the goals that you said you would reach prior to this update but haven’t yet hit, and we would encourage you to include what you have learned from the experience as well as what you’ve put in place to resolve it.
Of course, it’s not possible to resolve every challenge in time for an Investment Update. Make sure to mention any issues that you are still working on a solution for. The accountability of sharing this is great motivation to tackle it and avoid discussing it in your next Update.
Lastly in our snippet, we recommend including any team members that have left the team. This sets you up to ask for help hiring replacements in the “Needs” section of the Update, and also means that investors are aware if any team member they know well has moved on.
Share Graphs Of KPIs Or Other Metrics If Relevant
Clarity is key when sharing any graphs or data. We suggest sharing relevant bullet points underneath your graphics to highlight the details investors should know. Include what has increased or decreased since when. If there’s anything relevant to investors that has stayed the same, include that, too.
Include Your Startup’s Needs To Ask For Investors’ Help
Your investors are there to help you, but they can only step up when they know the problem. You might be looking for more funds to get a specific project off the ground, so let them know in case they’d like to help. Further than that, investors have a network that will exceed your own, so they are great people to ask for help with new hires, publicity, or anybody else who would serve your business.
Give Thanks To Specific Investors And Team Members
A general thank you is a must, but go one step further and acknowledge specific names in your Investment Update. We would include specific investors, more relevant when you have multiple, and specific team members. Mentioning specific investors can subconsciously motivate others to become more involved to gain their own recognition, while valuing team members boosts their morale tenfold. Startups can be hard work for all involved, so be sure to give thanks for those pushing you forward.
Join Our Investment Updates Snippets Group
Don’t forget that we’ve formatted all these snippets into a Public Snippets Group available on TextExpander. We’ve created individual snippets for each of these sections to update an existing template you use already, as well as a full-length version that includes all of the above. Let us know if you join and if you have suggestions on what to add next, drop us a line.
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Takeaways
- Investment Updates are a chance to communicate to your valued investors and stakeholders
- Great communication with them builds trust and increases the chances of follow-on funding
- Your Investment Updates should be consistent, concise, cover your KPIs, and contain relevant data in an accessible tone of voice
- Make sure you subscribe to our Public Group on TextExpander with all the Investment Update templates and snippets you need
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