Reporting

What is an Investor Update? An investor update is a document that includes recent wins and losses, financials, team updates, customer wins, and core metrics. They are typically shared via email but can also be shared via PDF, deck, or link. For many startup founders, investor updates are shared every month but can also be shared on a quarterly (or more frequent) basis. Learn more about why and how to create investor updates for your business below: Why Send Investor Updates? Step into the shoes of your investors and it will help understand the importance of investor updates. Put simply, an investor’s (venture capitalist) job is to deploy limited partners’ capital by investing in startups, generate excess returns, and pay back their limited partners with the hopes of doing it again. This means that an investor’s success hinges on the success of their portfolio company. Put simply, your investors need you to succeed. Your investors likely have other investments and can’t be expected to know exactly where to help each company. In a crowded space building, strong relationships centered on trust and transparency is an easy way to stand out amongst other startups. By sending regular investor updates you can stay top of mind for your investors and tap into their knowledge, resources, and capital to continue to grow your business. Below you will find our guide to help you write the perfect investor update by understanding what metrics and data to share, properly asking for help, sharing big wins and losses, and raising additional capital. We’ve also included 7 of our favorite investor update templates. Related resource: What is a Capital Call? Essential Communication We believe that regular communication with investors and important stakeholders is key to a startup’s success. If your investors don’t know what’s going on in your business, they don’t know how to help. Building a reporting cadence with your investors is a great way to promote transparency and build a relationship focused on trust. Related Reading: Should You Send Investor Updates? Follow-On Funding One of the biggest reasons to report to your investors is the increased likelihood of follow-on funding. In our own research, we have found that companies that regularly communicate with their investors are twice as likely to raise follow-up funding. Try Visible to find investors, track your raise, share your deck, and update investors. Give it a free try for 14 days here. Networking Opportunity Generally speaking, investors' networks often have had experience as an operator and investors. Tapping into their network can be an easy way to find introductions to investors, partners, potential hires, and mentors. Getting an investor to go to bat for you will likely carry a bit more weight. As Tomasz Tunguz, VC at Redpoint Ventures, states; “Investors network frequently, work together, and have long-term relationships with each other so a referral should go a long way.” Finding Talent In hand with tapping into their network, investors are a great resource when it comes to hiring top talent. Between their other portfolio companies and previous experience most investors likely know a number of solid candidates to fill a role. If they don’t have someone in mind for the job, they can at least help talk you through the different candidates you are weighing for an open position. Knowledge and Experience Between their own experience and other portfolio companies, investors have seen just about anything. If you have an operational or tactical question investors are a great resource and can lend experience and knowledge. Related Resources: Our 15 Favorite Newsletters for Startup Founders How to Write the Perfect Investment Memo 3 Tips for Cold Emailing Potential Investors + Outreach Email Template Accountability & Reflection One of the often overlooked benefits of sending monthly investor updates is the reflection and accountability it offers founders. Investor updates can be a great forcing function for founders to look back at the previous month or quarter and better understand what is and is not working for their business. Related Resource: Investor Relationship Management 101: How to Manage Your Startups Interactions with Investors Tips For Writing Investor Updates Investor updates can be a tricky balance between informing investors and keeping things succinct and digestible. Most things boil down to keeping your updates consistent and regular. Keep the Cadence Consistent If you commit to sending a monthly update, you'll want to make sure you stick to sending an investor update every month. Skipping an update when times are tough can be a negative signal to investors. Keep Metrics the Same Make sure to keep the metrics you are tracking stay the same from month to month. For example, if you are calculating net new MRR using a certain formula, keep that consistent from month to month. Stick to a Format When creating an update, sticking to a regular format or template is a great way to help get the ball rolling every month. If you're not sure where to get started, we studied our data to understand the most popular components included in Visible Updates, check it out below: 81% of Updates include “Highlights” 47% of Updates include a “Team” section 42% of Updates include “Product Launches” 42% of Updates include a “KPIs” section 39% of Updates include a “Fundraising” section Investor Update Templates: Examples For Your Next Update Sending your first investor update can be a daunting task. We believe that the best place to learn is from someone who has been there before. Luckily, countless founders and investors have shared their templates and best practices for sending investor updates. We suggest starting with a template you like and tweaking it to your needs (more on this later). Once you’ve found your format, it is all about making sure you keep tabs on the data and context so you are not scrambling when it is time to send. A couple of small steps when sending your first Update: Gather your data — As you should be sharing other a few metrics with investors, it is important to keep tabs here. These should be vital to your business and something that you have on hand at all times. Review the month — A perk of sending an investor update is the ability to look back at the previous month. Think about any major highlights, lowlights, areas you need help, so you can start to craft your Update. Add context — Sharing your data without context can be dangerous. Do your best to explain any metric movements. Send it — Getting your update sent out a consistent basis is a win. If you’re looking to get an idea of when founders using Visible send their Updates, check out our post, “Most Popular Times to Send Your Investor Update.” 1. Techstars Minimum Viable Update In the “Minimum Viable Investor Update”, Jens Lapinski, Former Managing Director of Techstars METRO, lays out 3 items that he finds most useful in his portfolio early-stage company monthly updates. 2. Founder Collective “Fill-in-the-Blank” Investor Update Email Template An investor Update template for busy founders put together by the team at Founder Collective. Simply fill out the bolded sections and have your investor Updates out the door in no time. 3. Kima Ventures Investor Update Template An Update template put together by Jean and the team at Kima. Quickly fill in the quantitative and qualitative data Kima finds most useful. 4. GitLab Investor Investor Update Email Template A 6 part template put together by the team at GitLab. Built for investors to quickly read and locate the information that is most relevant to them. 5. Y Combinator Investor Update Template An investor update template from Aaron Harris of Y Combinator. Aaron recommends highlighting repeatable key performance indicators (KPIs) and major asks for your investors. 6. Shoelace: Investor Update Email Template A template based off of Reza Khadjavi’s, Founder & CEO of Shoelace, investor update email used to wow investors. 7. The Visible “Standard” Investor Update Email Template Our Standard Monthly Investor Update template put together from best practices and tips from Visible users. For more ideas, check out our investor update template library here. Related Reading: 4 Items to Include in Your Next Investor Update (If You Want to Drive Engagement) 8. Bread & Butter Ventures Update Template Bread & Butter Ventures is an early-stage VC firm based in Minnesota investing globally while leveraging their state and region’s unparalleled access to strong corporate connections, commercial opportunities, and industry expertise for the benefit of our teams. Learn more about what Brett Brohl of Bread & Butter Ventures likes to see in an Update below: Sharing Metrics and Data Determining what metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to share with your investors can be tricky. There are a slew of different key metrics and different investors may have their eyes on different things. Changing metric names or what you are reporting can be an easy way to break trust with investors. At the end of the day, it is most important that you share the same metrics from month to month. And as we’ve discussed before, it is okay to share bad months! We suggest sharing a handful of key performance indicators (KPIs) with your investors. Depending on your relationship, some may only want to see 3 metrics while others may want to see 10. Talk with your investors and discuss what types of key metrics they’d like to see. A couple of examples are churn rate, number of active users, monthly recurring revenue (MRR), burn rate, and more. Related reading: Startup Metrics You Need to Monitor Every company has missed the mark and any investor is aware that this happens. Building a company is hard! With that being said, we do have a few areas where investors would expect some data: Revenue Being able to generate revenue is essential to a business. However, you determine to measure revenue should be kept consistent from month to month. For example, don’t share bookings one month and revenue the next. For SaaS companies, including your monthly recurring revenue (MRR) and the movements are always good to include as well. Cash Flow Cash is king. Cash is the lifeblood of your business and investors expect some insight into how their capital is being managed and used. This is also a great way for you as a founder to stay accountable and on top of your spending as you continue to grow your business. Burn Rate As we mentioned above, cash is king. By tracking and reporting your burn rate, you will be able to avoid surprises with investors. A common mistake we see founders make is surprising their investors when their cash balance is low and months to 0 is nearing. Sharing your burn rate is an easy way to build trust with your investors and give them a better idea of when you’ll need to raise a new round. Margins Generating solid margins is a must for any successful business. Except the “gig economy,” Frank Mastronuzzi of Greenough Consulting Group suggest that every business should have at least a 55% margin. While likely more important during a fundraise, sharing your margins will help investors evaluate your COGS and acquisition costs. Number of Active Users Depending on your company goals and KPIs, the number of active users could be valuable to understanding growth. Churn Rate Being able to keep your burn rate under control is an easy way to grow your business. In the early days, some investors may want to keep close tabs on burn rates to understand what part of your funnel may be lacking. Customer Acquisition Costs Being able to efficiently acquire and expand customers is a surefire way to grow. Without a sustainable way to acquire new customers, a business will struggle to grow or even exist. Related Reading: Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): A Critical Metrics for Founders Sharing Wins and Losses One of the most exciting aspects of being a founder is sharing and celebrating your victories. As we all know, with every victory comes plenty of losses. Investors are keyed in on your success so it is important to stress both wins and losses equally. Sharing Wins/Highlights With Investors Sharing your company’s accomplishments is generally pretty straightforward. Share why and how you accomplished your goal and carry on. Investors generally won’t be able to move the needle for your wins but is best to keep them informed so they can signal to their network of your successes. Most important is to call out individual contributors when it comes to sharing major accomplishments. All employees like to be recognized for their contributions and there is no greater place to do so than in front of your outside stakeholders. Along the lines of sharing individual kudos, it is also a great time to highlight new hires. A shout-out to new hires will make offer them a warm welcome and the chance to open up to investors. Sharing Losses/Lowlights With Investors The most dreaded and arguably the most important aspect of an investor update; sharing losses. Startups are hard and everyone involved with the process knows this. It is vital that you key your investors into any troubles you are facing and why you are facing them. We find it best to layout the lowlight and offer a solution to improve this moving forward (If you do not have a solution read on to the “Asking for Help” section below). Generally speaking, nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems. Sharing bad news is an easy way to strengthen your relationship with investors and they know you’ll be open and honest with them moving forward. Most importantly, this gives your investors an opportunity to step in and help to keep you moving in the right direction. Related Reading: How to Deliver Bad News to Investors Asking Investors for Help Last but certainly not least is asking your investors for help. While every section mentioned above lends itself to asking questions, it is most important to lay out actionable questions where you believe your investors can help. By laying out a pointed list of areas you could use help, you can easily tap into your investors’ network, resources, experiences, and capital. A couple of key areas we see founders have the most success: Related Resource: Navigating Investor Feedback: A Guide to Constructive Responses Closing Deals From our article, “You Should be Asking Your Investors for Help. Here’s How.” “At its core, building a VC-backed business is about generating revenue. The biggest value add for a business? Closing more deals. Your investors are in the “deal-making” business and likely have a knack for closing deals. Use your investor’s professional networks to make an intro, set a meeting, or bring in the necessary backup to close a large deal. If you see your investor has a specific connection you’re looking for, don’t beat around the bush. Ask the investor for the exact intro you’re looking for and tell them how they can be of most value.” Help With Hiring Talent is the resource every company is in competition for on a daily basis. Any tool or resource you can use to find top talent for your business is worth leveraging. Investors generally happen to help fill an open role and often have an extensive network to do so. Be specific as possible about the role, as well as items like the experience level required, and target compensation to make it low-maintenance for your investors. Pro tip: Include a direct link to a LinkedIn search that fits the criteria of the person you’d like to hire to make it easy as possible for investors. Fundraising One of the main reasons to send investors monthly updates is the increased likelihood of raising follow on funding. If you have properly communicated with investors, chances are they will be more enthusiastic to invest in your next round. We have found that companies that regularly send investor updates double their chances of raising follow on funding. When it comes down to it and an investor has to make a decision between 2 investments; 1 that has been communicating and 1 that has not been communicating. It is easy to go with the one that has been transparent and has made an effort to build a relationship. Even if your investors are not interested in committing follow-on capital, they may be able to introduce you to other investors they know. Investors know other investors. Venture capital is a tight-knit community and one positive recommendation can make waves. Related Resource: 9 Tips for Effective Investor Networking Pro tip: Include a light version of your pitch deck that investors can circulate with investors they can make an intro to. Recommended Reading: How to Write the Perfect Investment Memo Investor Update Template Real Life Example If you’ve browsed through our investor update template, you’ve probably noticed they share a lot of similarities. Most of the Updates include the sections listed above. Of course, every business is different. The size, stage, and relationship with your investors will impact your Update template. In order to help you best write an Update, let’s use a real-life example. Let’s say we are a seed stage SaaS company that has recently raised $1M and we are starting to scale revenue: The Intro First things first, we need to write an introduction. This can be as personalized or informal as you’d like. We suggest something like the following: “Hey Investor Name — Hope all is well! I can’t believe August is already in the books. We had a great month that we’ll dig into below. As always, feel free to reply back to this email with any questions or give me a call at 123.456.7890.” Highlights We suggest starting with highlights. This will set the tone for the Update and give investors a quick rundown of what is going well for your business. This should include things like new hires, product updates, and growth (always try to quantify if you can!). Here is an example of some company highlights: We just hired person X to head up our sales team. They bring 10+ years of experience in the space and are going to be a great fit. You can connect with them on LinkedIn here. We have finally gotten New Product Y out of beta and into the hands of our users. Early signs show a big opportunity. We’ve increased usage by 50% week over week and have already exceeded our quarterly goal of Y users. Our sales team is on fire! We’ve closed our largest 2 clients to date — Big Name A and Big Name B. Both are great logos and are our largest contracts to date. Lowlights Sharing lowlights is never. However, it is a crucial part of building trust with investors so they can help you overcome pain points. Including steps for how you plan to fix the problem is always appreciated. Check out an example below: We have been struggling to find a customer success leader. We’ve opened up our search to new job boards and are offering a bonus to anyone who refers a new hire. If you know anyone that fits these parameters, please send them our way. New trials have been lagging behind pace. In order to help get this back on track, we are bringing in an SEO specialist to help us increase website traffic and website-to-trial conversion. Asks Ask are potentially the most beneficial aspect on an investor update. As you are requesting help from your investors, be as pointed and direct as possible to make it easier on them. Here are some examples: Here is our target list of investors for our Series A round and our most up to date fundraising deck. We’re looking for introductions to any of the investors listed in the ‘Research’ stage. We’re looking for introductions to candidates for this [specific job title] in the [specific industry]. Ideally, this person would work at a company with at least X employees and control his own budget. Do you know someone I should meet in [specific city]? I’ll be traveling there next month and am trying to fill my calendar. Metrics As we mentioned above determining what metrics to share is up to you and your investors. For our example, we’ll focus on a couple of key metrics every company should be tracking. Here is an example of how you might present that data: KPI 1 As we mentioned earlier, revenue has been cruising this month. It is our best month to date and we’ve closed our largest customers. KPI 2 As you know, our team has been rallied around improving our True North KPI. Our recent product pushes and GTM campaigns have really paid off as shown above. KPI 3 I feel great about our cash position. We have 18+ months of runway so I can stay focused on building the business and don’t have any immediate need to raise capital. Try Ranking Your Investors Just as investors are comparing you to their other investments don’t be afraid to rank your investors relative to their peers. As Brock Benefiel, business author writes, “Ranking investors can be an intimidating idea, but when done right can provide a useful way for founders to spur increased engagement from their investors and better illustrate their additional needs from the board. To handle it in the most tactful manner, focus less on creating a zero-sum, Game of Thrones-style battle between investors for the top spot and instead provide up-to-date developments on how investors have made a specific impact on the business.“ Related Resource: Investor Relationship Management 101: How to Manage Your Startups Interactions with Investors Related Resource: How to Find Investors Related Resource: 6 Helpful Networking Tips for Connecting With Investors Get Started with a Visible Update Template Getting in the habit of sending monthly investor updates is a surefire way to help with fundraising, hiring, and growing. To get started, pick a template from our library and tailor it to your business. Just remember that at the end of the day, sending anything is better than sending nothing at all. Related Resource: Best Practices for Creating a Top-Notch Investment Presentation Visible allows founders to update investors, track key metrics, and raise capital all from one platform. Try Visible for free to send your next investor update. To learn more about sending your first update with Visible, check out our guide (with videos).

As Matt Blumberg, CEO of Bolster, put it, “Leading a world-class board is one of the single most important things startup CEOs can do to help their businesses thrive and become industry leaders.” A crucial part of managing a board is the recurring board meeting. Many aspects impact a meeting but a well-crafted board deck can help strengthen a board meeting and empower the board and leadership team to make better decisions. Related Resource: How to Create a Board Deck (with Template) Learn more about crafting a SaaS board deck for your next board meeting below: The Power of a Well-Crafted SaaS Board Deck A well-crafted board deck can elevate a board meeting from good to great. A board is a valuable resource for founders and should be supported by founders as such. By properly preparing for a board meeting, founders and board members can leave the meeting with clear next steps, an understanding of impending challenges, and objectives for the board and team. Key Components of a SaaS Board Deck Every business and board is different. Different board members will likely want to see different discussion items and formats. Founders need to work with their board to find a format that works best for their team. Related Resource: Tips for Creating an Investor Pitch Deck However, there are some typical components that most founders and board members can expect to hit on in a SaaS board deck: 1. Executive Summary (CEO Update) Most board members will want to see an executive summary or CEO update. This can be a simple breakdown of highlights, lowlights, areas of focus, and any major news on your mind. This sets the tone for the meeting. When sharing lowlights, we recommend tying them into later discussions and working sessions. Pro tip: Take a look back at your investor updates from the month or quarter to help take a look back on the period. Related Resource: How to Get the Most Out of Your Next Board Meeting 2. Department Updates Next, we recommend spending a few minutes on department updates. This can be any major changes to hiring and headcount, open job positions you are actively looking to fill, and any highlights or changes related to company culture. 3. Product Roadmap Developing products is crucial for SaaS companies. Most board members will want insight into your product roadmap and how you are approaching monetization. This can include a recent product that was released with early usage data and a vision of where your product is headed over the next quarter. Board members might not be pros in your product/market so keep things high level and don’t spend too much time getting into the weeds — unless you have board members that will be able to offer insight into the market or product. 4. KPIs and Metrics Overview Board members will also want a look into KPIs and metrics. These should be metrics that stay consistent from meeting to meeting and are something that board members are familiar with. Similar to sharing a product roadmap, you’ll want to ensure you are not sharing too granular of data that can lead to confusion and loss of focus on the main objectives of the meeting. Pro tip: If you are regularly tracking your key metrics with a dashboarding tool it should be easy to pull data and metrics to prepare your board deck. 5. Financials and Projections The financial health of your business is crucial to board members. They will want a thorough understanding of your cash position and the financial health of your business. If you are consistently sharing updates with your investors and board members, there should be no surprises here. Board members will also want to look into your projections and understand how you are thinking about growth. 6. Working Sessions Lastly, board members can offer strategic help and advice when it comes to different aspects of your business. You can leverage working sessions to tap into their experience, network, and knowledge to help address potential challenges and risks that your business faces. Best Practices for Crafting a SaaS Board Deck Founders are busy. On top of the day-to-day duties of building a business, building a board deck can fall by the wayside. However, there are a few tips that founders can use to concisely craft a board deck. Check out a few best practices and tips below: Keep It Concise Yet Comprehensive As we alluded to above, you will want to find the balance of giving enough detail while keeping things clear and concise. Board members typically spend time with other companies and their careers so they will not understand your business at the same level that you do. However, you want to strap them with the information and data they need to help them succeed as a board member. Incorporate Data Visualization Wherever Possible Board meetings are full of a lot of information and data. Making the data and information as digestible and clear as possible to crucial to a strong meeting. We recommend leveraging data visualizations when possible. However, some visualizations can be confusing and lead to further questions. Keep your visualizations clear and simple. Storytelling Is Key Finding a flow and rhythm to your board meeting can be done with strong storytelling. Strong storytellers can tie in their data, challenges, customer stories, etc. to help board members stay engaged and get a good understand of the state of your business. Design and Aesthetics While the content of the board deck is what matters most a well-designed board deck certainly does not hurt. Finding the balance between a well-designed board deck and time is tricky. You will want to present your board deck in a polished and professional manner but do not want to take time away from critical business operations. At the end of the day, you want to make sure that your board deck portrays crucial information in an easy-to-interpret way. Start Your Funding Journey with Visible Running a successful board meeting can be a high-leverage activity for your startup. The easiest thing you can do is come prepared and ready to have a strategic conversation with the people who matter most to your business. Let us help prepare for your next board meeting or fundraising event. Raise capital, update investors, and engage your team from a single platform. Try Visible free for 14 days.

Startup founders are pulled in a hundred different directions on any given day. On top of building a product, hiring a team, fundraising, selling, and more, founders are responsible for managing relationships with investors and board members. Why is a Board Deck Important? Oftentimes, preparing for a board meeting can get buried in the list of to-dos. However, when leveraged correctly, your board members and meetings can be a high-leverage activity for success. As Matt Blumberg, CEO of Bolster, puts it, “​​Leading a world-class board is one of the single most important things startup CEOs can do to help their businesses thrive and become industry leaders.” To help you prepare for your next board meeting, we’ve put together a list of resources and tips to help you build and share your board deck. Learn more below. Related Resource: Our Downloadable Board Deck Template What Should You Include in Your Board Deck? The goal of a board of directors can be boiled down to helping a company achieve its goals. While there are certainly more areas, a board, especially for startups, is fit to help in a few key areas: Hiring and recruiting employees Provide direction and strategy for the company Represent other investors and members of the business Build a governance system Maintain relationships with CEO and executives To make sure that you are getting the most out of your board of directors, coming to your board meetings prepared is vital. One of the key aspects to help you guide your meeting and highlight key talking points is having a well-thought-out board deck. Learn more about what should be included in your board deck below: 1) A High-Level Update From the Founder To kick off any board meeting or board deck, there should be a quick high-level overview from the founder and/or CEO. The purpose of this is to set the tone for what is to come and a general overview of how the past period (month, quarter, etc.) went for the business. Be sure to share any big wins from the previous period or quickly hit on things that might be negatively impacting you and your company. Think of this as the “big picture” for both the previous period and the company as a whole. Using the sections below, you can use the high-level update as a time to quickly hit on each of those to set expectations for what is to come throughout the meeting. Related Resource: Crafting the Perfect SaaS Board Deck: Templates, Guidelines, and Best Practices 2) A Section on KPIs and Metrics Next, dig into the KPIs and metrics from the previous period. The purpose of this is to give everyone the proper data and context they need to understand decisions that will be made later in the meeting. These metrics and KPIs should be agreed upon beforehand and everyone in the room should understand what they mean and how they impact the business. It is important to keep these metrics consistent from meeting to meeting. This helps everyone focus on what truly matters and will build trust with investors. It is worth noting that this could include qualitative metrics as well — customer stories or quotes are always great to share! 3) An Update on the Team and Organization as a Whole After digging into your KPIs and metrics, spend some time on your org chart and hiring plans. One of the places boards are best suited to help with is hiring and finding key talent so making sure you make the most of this section is vital. We recommend starting with a current org chart so investors and board members can understand where your headcount lies. From here, we recommend hitting on what teams need additional talent and walking through the roles you are hiring for. Be prescriptive as possible so they can reach out to their networks and find candidates for your company. 4) Product Development Update At this point, you’ve likely hit on the organization as a whole and how the business is performing as a whole. Next, you will want to dig into the product development and status of any new features or products you’ve released or been working on since your last meeting. This can be a time to give additional metrics or share stories of how a new feature might be impacting your business. This can be used to further working/strategy sessions towards the end of the meeting. 5) An In-Depth Section on Organizational Strategy and Product Strategy Towards the end of your meeting is the true “meat and potatoes” of your meeting. This is a strategy or working session that should give you concrete steps and plans to take away from the meeting. It is generally recommended that this section should take 50%+ of your meeting time. This section can cover just about any issues you are facing as a founder (keeping in mind what your board members are best suited to help with). For example, if you are facing hiring challenges, highlight those and discuss what you want your org chart to look like. You can use it to plan a fundraising or financial event in the coming months. Or you can use this as a time to build a higher-level product roadmap. No matter what you use this for, make sure you have your talking points prepared so you can make the most of this section. 6) A Miscellaneous Chapter As always, save some time for miscellaneous or other topics. This can be official board business or governance. This might cover things like board resolutions, appointments, stock options, and more. Related Resource: What We’ve Learned From Investors About Running a Board Meeting Tips for Creating a Board Deck While there is no one-size-fits-all template to help you knock out your next board meeting deck, there are resources and best practices that you can use for your next meeting. Use a Template As we mentioned earlier, there are ~6 key areas you will likely want to hit on throughout a board meeting. Of course, the specifics and structure will vary from business to business. To help you select what is most important to your business, we’ve put together a board deck template. This template aims to help you structure the meeting and build your agenda. Give the board deck template a try here: Keep Slides Simple The goal of a board meeting is to prompt conversation. To do this, it is important to make sure your slides are simple and easily digestible. Make sure your slides are not full of unnecessary words and context. Use bullets and your narrative to help board members with any additional context they might need. Share Deck Materials Early To have the best conversation possible at your board meeting, you need to make sure everyone on your board is well prepared. To do so, make sure you are sending your board materials in advance so they can have an understanding of the past period and will be able to dig into tactical questions. As we wrote in our post, How to Get the Most Out of Your Next Board Meeting, “Most founders/CEO have found it best to send over their pre-meeting report/packet at least 4 days in advance.” Depending on your meeting cadence, you will want to send over things like your agenda, important matters, metrics, and more before your next board meeting to set the stage. Check out an example of what to send below: Related Resource: Pre-Board Meeting Update Template Use Visuals Ultimately the content of your deck is what matters most but having polished visuals certainly does not hurt. We suggest using concise and repeatable visuals in your board decks. For example, if you include a certain chart style/format, try to keep it consistent from deck to deck. There are also opportunities to improve your board with simple visuals and charts to help your board members visualize your company's status. Common Mistakes to Avoid When Creating a Board Deck Finding the right board deck format and style will likely take a few reps. As you sit through more board meetings, you should hear feedback and suggestions to help improve the actual format and content of your board decks. However, there are some common mistakes you can avoid from the get-go — check them out below: Not Having a Deep Understanding of Your Audience Board members want to see that you have an understanding of your audience — both themselves as stakeholders and your customers. Make sure that you are hyperfocused on your key stakeholders. This will help board members build conviction and trust in how you operate your business. Not Having a Clear Objective What do you want your board to accomplish after reading your deck? Do you want them to make a decision? Approve a new project? Provide feedback? Once you know your objective, you can structure your deck accordingly. Overloading the Deck With Information Your board deck should be concise and to the point. Avoid including too much information, as this can overwhelm your board and make it difficult for them to focus on the most important points. Too much information can also lead to questions and concerns about unrelated points/problems that you are trying to solve. Using Too Much Industry Jargon or Technical Language While your board should be familiar with your business, they are likely helping many other companies. To make sure everyone is on the same page, make sure to avoid technical language — it may seem obvious to see but is not always the case for someone not involved in the day-to-day. Start Your Funding Journey With Visible Running a successful board meeting can be a high-leverage activity for your startup. The easiest thing you can do is come prepared and ready to have a strategic conversation with the people who matter most to your business. Let us help prepare for your next board meeting or fundraising event. Raise capital, update investors and engage your team from a single platform. Try Visible free for 14 days.

There are not many people who have been in the role of a startup founder. For many startup founders, this means taking on new roles and responsibilities that they might not have experienced before. When facing these challenges, it helps to have someone guide you along the way — this can be an investor, peer, mentor, or someone else with experience. Soliciting feedback from the investors around you is a great way to tap into their network and experience to keep moving forward. Investors typically have had experience as operators themselves or the other founders in their portfolio. Understanding the Value of Investor Feedback As Seth Godin wrote in Beware of Experience Asymmetry, “There are things you’re going to do just once… In these situations, the institutions and professionals you’re dealing with have significantly more experience than you do…In these asymmetric situations, it’s unlikely that you’re going to outsmart the experienced folks who have seen it all before. It’s unlikely that you’ll outlast them either. When you have to walk into one of these events, it pays to hire a local guide. Someone who knows as much as the other folks do, but who works for you instead.” Many of the roles you face as a founder can fall into this bucket — raising capital, going through a merger or acquisition, going through legal counsel, etc. When facing these new roles and challenges, it often helps to find someone around you who does have experience. If you have investors, this can typically be a great place to start. Many investors have experience as operators but if they don’t, they typically have a large network of founders and other investors. This means that they’ve likely seen the challenges you’re facing, directly or not, before. Why Does Investor Feedback Matter? As we mentioned above, investors typically have experiences and a network that will lend useful feedback when it comes to fundraising, hiring, company strategy, etc. Related Resource: How to Build Trust Through Investor Feedback Investor feedback can be particularly important when it comes to raising venture capital. At the end of the day, you are pitching investors so welcoming feedback can be a great way to tweak your pitch for future investors. However, just because an investor offers feedback does not mean it is right for your business. Remember that you know more about your business than any investor so be critical about what feedback you put to use. Core Principles for Constructive Responses As we mentioned above, not all feedback will be relevant to your business. However, welcoming a conversation and hearing out their point is a great way to strengthen your investor relationships. Check out a few key principles for constructive responses to investor feedback below: Active listening If you are going to solicit feedback from an investor it is important to be respectful and actively listen. This includes hearing out what they have to say, even if you do not agree, and asking follow-up questions as you see fit. Reflecting and analyzing Just because an investor offers feedback does not mean you need to take it. At the end of the day, you know your business the best. It is important to reflect and analyze the feedback you receive. Seeking clarification Instead of assuming feedback means one thing it is important to seek clarification if there is any confusion. This will not only help you get to the bottom of their suggestion but will demonstrate to them that you are taking their feedback and time seriously. Collaborative problem solving If you are seeking feedback from an investor it should be someone you trust and value. By them offering feedback it is an open door to further the conversation and collaborate on the problem you are solving. This can not only lead to a better outcome but a strengthened relationship for future conversations. 5 Strategic Ways to Collect Investor Feedback Write a transition paragraph that introduces the next section. Feel free to add/remove/adjust the below techniques for gathering feedback 1. One-on-one meetings One-on-one meetings are likely reserved for investors with whom you have existing relationships. This means that they likely have some familiarity with your business and will be able to offer sound feedback. Advantages No bias from other investors or people in a meeting. Make specific asks based on their own skillset/experience. More personal and genuine feedback. Related Resource: The Complete Guide to Investor Reporting and Updates 2. Pitching and Events Pitching inventors or attending events can be a great way to get feedback from investors who are outside of your network. While they might be new to your business they can offer valuable feedback on how outsiders view your business and your pitch. This will allow you to tweak and improve your communication for future pitches. Advantages Receive feedback based on your pitch and presentation. Pitch feedback will help you improve your pitch for future meetings. Investors you are pitching are likely new to you and can offer a new perspective. 3. Investor Updates Regular investor updates are a great way to get into a rhythm of regularly asking your network of investors for feedback. This will not only allow you to solicit feedback but will help you strengthen relationships and become top of mind with your current and friendly investors. Advantages You can be targeted in asking for what areas you are asking for feedback. Anyone receiving your investor updates is likely invested in the success of your business and will offer honest feedback. You can stay top of mind with investors by asking for honest feedback. Related Resource: How To Write the Perfect Investor Update (Tips and Templates) 4. Board Meetings Board meetings are an important tool for startup founders. This is your chance to dig into several problems your business is facing and dig into them with your most trusted partners. Board members should know your business well and should offer pointed feedback that is worth hearing out. Advantages Board members are the most invested in the success of your business and will offer feedback that is best for the business. Board members know your business well and can offer feedback on factors specific to your business. You can set the agenda and lead the conversation and areas you need feedback at a board meeting. 5. Email & Phone Communication Email or phone communication is a great way to get real-time feedback and suggestions. This is typically less formal and allows investors to share honest and raw feedback that will lead to further conversation and collaboration. Advantages Someone you are willing to email/call is likely someone you trust/have a good relationship with. You can receive honest and real-time feedback when working with someone directly. This leads to easier conversation and digging deeper into the problem you are facing. Find Out How Visible Can Help You Connect With the Right Investors Visible is your hub to improve investor relationships. From sending investor updates to sharing a pitch deck to monitoring ongoing investor conversations — we’ve got you covered. Get started with Visible and give it a free try for 14 days here.

Sending investor updates is a surefire way to tap into your current (or potential) investors' knowledge, capital, and experience. Investor updates keep your company top of mind and improve your odds of getting help with fundraising, hiring, strategy, and other issues that arise as a founder. However, sitting down and writing an update can be challenging for many founders. By leveraging AI, you can get over the cold start problem and get a head start on your next update with just a few data points. Integrating ChatGPT can further enhance the reporting process by adding depth, analysis, and narrative context to the raw metrics. Here’s how founders can do it. Related Resource: AI Meets Your Investor Updates Data Preparation Begin by exporting the key metrics and data points you want to share from Visible. This could include charts, graphs, or tables related to sales, customer growth, churn rate, financials, etc. Ensure your data is well-organized and accurate so you can share the results with your generative AI model of choice. Have specific numbers on hand for quick reference, such as revenue growth, churn rates, user acquisition costs, etc. Prompt Tips Review & Personalize Take the insights and analysis from ChatGPT and integrate them into your investor update. Adjust the language or depth of analysis to match the preferences and knowledge levels of your investors. Incorporate Visuals Visible already offers compelling visual data representation. Ensure that the written context provided by ChatGPT complements these visuals. For instance, a chart showing revenue growth coupled with a ChatGPT-derived narrative can provide a comprehensive view of financial health. Fact-Check & Verify Always double-check AI-generated content for accuracy. Ensure that the insights and interpretations align with your understanding and are factually consistent with the data from Visible. Feedback Loop After sending out the investor update, gather feedback. This will help you adjust the depth, tone, and content for future communications. By integrating ChatGPT's narrative capabilities with Visible's data representation, founders can create rich, insightful, and highly contextual investor updates that not only inform but also engage stakeholders in meaningful ways. Related resource: How AI Tools are Reshaping Venture Capital: Tools to Know Benefits of Using ChatGPT for Investor Updates Utilizing ChatGPT or other advanced AI language models can significantly enhance the process of crafting investor updates in several ways: Data Interpretation Insightful Analysis: AI can quickly process and analyze large datasets, highlighting important trends, anomalies, and patterns that might be missed with manual analysis. Contextual Comparison: By comparing your metrics with known industry benchmarks or historical data, AI can provide contextual insights into the company's performance. Narrative Creation Cohesive Storytelling: ChatGPT can help craft a narrative around raw data, turning numbers into a compelling story that communicates the company's journey, challenges, and triumphs. Consistent Tone: AI ensures that the tone of the update remains consistent throughout, whether it's formal, friendly, or somewhere in between. Time Efficiency Quick Turnaround: Drafting updates can be time-consuming. ChatGPT can rapidly generate well-structured drafts based on provided data, which founders can then review and adjust as necessary. Multi-version Generation: AI can generate multiple versions of an update, tailored to different investor personalities or preferences. Content Suggestions Comprehensive Reporting: AI can suggest relevant content to include, ensuring that critical aspects are not overlooked. This might include operational updates, financial highlights, or market trends. Personalized Updates: ChatGPT can generate updates tailored to specific investor groups or individual stakeholders based on their interests or investment focuses. Error Reduction Grammar & Syntax: ChatGPT ensures that the language used is grammatically correct and professionally composed. Fact-Checking: While AI isn't a replacement for manual fact-checking, it can help identify inconsistencies or potential errors in data presentation. Feedback Analysis Interpret Responses: If founders receive feedback or questions from investors, ChatGPT can help interpret and suggest appropriate responses or clarifications. Iterative Improvement: By analyzing feedback over time, the AI can refine the style and content of updates to better meet investor expectations. Scalability Handling Volume: For founders managing multiple ventures or reporting to a large number of stakeholders, ChatGPT can scale the update creation process without sacrificing quality. Template Generation Standardized Reporting: ChatGPT can help create templates for regular updates, ensuring consistent reporting structures while still allowing for customization based on the period's specifics. While ChatGPT and similar AI models offer numerous advantages in crafting investor updates, it's crucial for founders to remain actively involved in the process. The authenticity of the founder's voice, combined with the analytical power of AI, can create powerful and impactful communications. Prompts for Crafting an Investor Update with ChatGPT There are a few ways to approach ChatGPT as a source to help with your investor updates. Individual Section Prompts On one hand, you can enter each individual update section into ChatGPT and use a prompt for each section. For example, let’s say you have the following highlights from the last month: Hired 2 new sales reps — Brett & Amanda Grew 50% quarter over quarter to hit $1M in ARR Launched Big Product X You can enter the above into a prompt like this example "Briefly recap our company's highlights..." and carry on with this approach for each individual section of your update. Check out the most common content sections in Visible Updates below: One Prompt On the other hand, you can take any individual data points, qualitative or quantitative, from the previous period and enter them into ChatGPT with a prompt like the following: "Turn the following into an investor update with additional context around the month-over-month KPI data and an intro of 40 words or less [Copied in Update Contents]" Before ChatGPT Using the prompt above, we took the follow update points and turned it into an Update Highlights Hired 2 new sales reps — Brett & Amanda Grew 50% quarter over quarter to hit $1M in ARR Launched Big Product X Lowlights Blake, our lead developer, has quit KPIs Product Launches Big Product X has been a success. We have signed up 1,000 users in the first week and $10,000 in revenue Asks We are looking for users for Big Product X. Ideally they are a marketing professional with a team of 5 or more Looking for a lead developer that is based in Chicago with 8+ years experience Fundraising Efforts We are kicking off our seed round. Need intros to SaaS, Seed stage investors in midwest. Thank Yous Thanks to Kelley from Venture Fund X for making introductions to Big Company Y, our biggest customer yet. After ChatGPT In October, our journey marked significant achievements amid a few challenges. Let's delve into the details: Highlights Team Expansion: Welcomed Brett & Amanda to our sales team, enhancing our capabilities. Impressive Growth: Achieved a 50% QoQ growth, hitting $1 million in Annual Recurring Revenue. Product Success: The launch of Big Product X was a triumph, securing 1,000 users and $10,000 in revenue within a week. Lowlights Talent Loss: Unfortunately, our lead developer, Blake, departed. KPIs - A Closer Look September 2023: Revenue: $100,000 Cash Balance: $1,000,000 Gross Profit: -$10,000 Headcount: 12 October 2023: Revenue: $150,000 Cash Balance: $1,100,000 Gross Profit: $100,000 Headcount: 14 Asks User Acquisition: Seeking users for Big Product X, particularly marketing professionals with a team of 5 or more. Talent Search: In pursuit of a lead developer based in Chicago with 8+ years of experience. Fundraising Efforts We are launching our seed round and would greatly appreciate introductions to SaaS and seed-stage investors in the Midwest. Thank Yous Our heartfelt thanks to Kelley from Venture Fund X for the introductions that led to Big Company Y becoming our largest customer to date. Your continued support is invaluable, and we look forward to sharing more accomplishments in the months ahead. Sincerely, [Your Name] [Your Title] [Your Contact Information] Learn More About Visible Updates With Visible you can find investors, send monthly Updates, share your pitch deck, and manage relationships with our CRM. Give Visible a free try for 14 days here.

Raise capital, update investors and engage your team from a single platform. Try Visible free for 14 days. Startup founders are responsible for many duties. — from hiring top talent, building and selling a product, fundraising, communicating with stakeholders, and everything in between. Founders often get pulled in many directions so overlooking certain roles or duties can be easy. When done right, an investor relations strategy can take up little time every month and pay off with added help with hiring, fundraising, strategy, and more. Related Resource: Investor Relationship Management 101 Learn how to get started with an investor relations strategy below: What is an investor relations strategy? As put by the team at Investopedia, “The investor relations (IR) department is a division of a business whose job it is to provide investors with an accurate account of company affairs.” Investor relations are typically associated with publicly traded companies to help investors make a decision to invest in a company. As you’ll notice in the definition above, they use a “division or department” whereas at a startup this is typically a department of 1 — the founder or CEO. However, an investor relations strategy can be a lever for success for startups and privately held companies. An investor relations strategy will help founders tap into their current investors’ capital, time, network, and experience to help scale their business. Challenges in investor relations Building relationships with investors is easier said than done. Building a startup is full of ups and downs so approaching the individuals and firms that are invested in your business can be intimidating. Like all things related to building a business, there are some challenges when it comes to investor relations: Sticking to a schedule Sharing bad news Finding the right information and data to share Learn more about overcoming these challenges in our post, The Complete Guide to Investor Reporting and Updates. Why an investor relations strategy is crucial for startups As we previously mentioned, keeping up with all of the roles and responsibilities can be difficult. Having an investor relations strategy is a good way to tap into your existing stakeholders to unlock help when it comes to hiring, fundraising, strategy, and more. Builds trust and credibility First things first, investors need to trust you and your business so you can lean into them for help with your business. Investors are a well-networked community so word will get around quickly how you communicate with investors. Something as quick as a monthly update to existing investors, will put you ahead of the majority of startup founders and help you stand out from the pack. Attracts and retains investors As put by Laurel Hess, the Founder of Hampr, “Taking the time to review your business with your stakeholders is actually a really great opportunity for growth – if you view it that way, there is a ton of potential to unlock. I have gained the following from my regular updates: Intros to potential investors Additional capital for a round I’m working on Intros to new verticals for expansion Advice on strategy for a problem we are working on Intros to new mentors/advisors to unlock the next phase of growth All this for just 1 hour of my time each month? That is the definition of “no brainer.” This 1 hour of monthly work can pay dividends when it helps to raise a new round of capital from existing investors or asking for introductions to potential investors down the road. Helps with hiring, fundraising, and strategy Startup investors are likely investors in 10s or 100s of other businesses and have a professional background of their own. Because of this, they are typically well-networked in the “startup world” and are able to help when it comes to hiring, fundraising, company strategy, and more. In order to tap into their network, they need to trust you and be willing to put their reputation with their network on the line. As put by Elizabeth Yin of Hustle Fund, “If you don’t write regular updates, your investors won’t want to help you. It’s hard to help a company and put your own social capital on the line with your network when you have no idea what is happening in your own portfolio company.” Essential components of an investor relations strategy An investor relations strategy will look different for every business. However, there are a few key components that most founders will benefit from including in their investor relations strategy. Communication plan Communication is at the core of any relationship. By sticking to a regular communication plan you’ll be able to strengthen relationships and build trust. For many early-stage founders a communication plan might look something like: Regular monthly updates at the start of the month Quarterly board meetings (in person or over Zoom) One-off communication and phone calls as needed Your mission, story, and vision Investors need to buy into your company’s mission, vision, story, and values. This is typically done during the fundraising process but it is important to continually hit on your mission and vision. Financial reporting and disclosures Of course, investors need to know how your business is performing. At the end of the day, if investors are not aware of your financial position and core metrics, they will not be able to help where needed. Check out the most common metrics that VCs expect from their portfolio companies below (read more here): Investor relationship management As we previously mentioned, investor relationship management will look different depending on the founder or investor. However, when it comes to communicating and sharing information it typically helps to include some or all of the following: Wins and mosses Key metrics Make specific asks Stay consistent Respond promptly Learn more about the importance of investor relationship management in our blog, Investor Relationship Management 101: How to Manage Your Startups Interactions with Investors. Crisis management and contingency planning A core part of an investor relations strategy is crisis management and contingency planning. For many startups, this will come to life during board meetings. However, having a plan for how to deal with a crisis is important. For some founders, this could be a one-off phone call to board members or the most engaged investors. It could come in the form of email, in-person meeting, etc. At the end of the day, having a plan in place for when emergencies hit is important. Investor feedback and engagement For an investor relations strategy to truly work, your investor needs to be engaged. An investor relationship requires work from both the founder and the investor. Sticking to a plan and regular communication schedule will lend its way to investors engaging and offering feedback. Being pointed about where you need help and how you can help investors is a great way to spur engagement. Another pro tip is to publicly call out the investors who are going above and beyond to help your business – this will help gamify your investor relations and encourage other investors to speak up. Related Resource: Investor Outreach Strategy: 9 Step Guide Maximize your investor relations strategy with Visible Visible is the home of investor relations for thousands of startup founders. Use our Updates tool to reguarly share your key qualitative and quantitative data with investors. Build relationships with potential investors using our pitch deck sharing and data room tools and ultimately keep tabs on interactions with every investor using our investor CRM. Give Visible a free try for 14 days here.

Best-in-class founders use investor updates to help with hiring, fundraising, strategy, and more. To help understand what is included in their Updates, we took a look at our own data. The Most Common Content Blocks We recently launched Content Blocks for Updates. Content Blocks allow you to pick different text sections to build out an investor update template. The following have been the most commonly used Content Blocks: 81% of Updates include “Highlights” 47% of Updates include a “Team” section 42% of Updates include “Product Launches” 42% of Updates include a “KPIs” section 39% of Updates include a “Fundraising” section At the end of the day, sending investor updates on a regular basis is what matters most. Every business is different so be sure to use the content and data that is most relevant to your business. Send an Update with Visible Start crafting your investor update using content blocks below: Send an Update

Investor Reporting Meaning & Definition Put simply, the definition of investor reporting is the act of sharing key qualitative and quantitative data with your financial investors. Investor reporting can look different for different companies, depending on the company stage and vertical. A pre-revenue company may share a light, qualitative investor report, while a publicly traded company is obliged to share an in-depth report covering everything from executive compensation to granular financials. Whether a company is just 2 founders in a garage or 30000 employees spread across the globe, investor reporting is a vital part of running a successful business. Investor reporting can also take place outside of a physical report. The function of investor reporting, or an investor relations team, also covers board meetings, press conferences, releasing financial data, etc. For a publicly traded company, the meaning of investor reporting involves more regulation and knowledge of government policy. Whereas a startup will communicate directly with their investors, an investor reporting team at a publicly held company primarily deals with analysts who are responsible for providing an opinion to the public on the potential of investment in said company. At a startup, or privately held company, the meaning of investor reporting slightly changes. Instead of focusing on sharing financial and legal information for the public to make an investment decision, privately held companies often focus on engaging and leveraging their investors. Unlike a publicly held company, a privately held company is not legally obliged to report to their investors. However, the numbers show that companies who have taken on venture capital it is beneficial to practice investor reporting. According to our data, companies that regularly communicate to their current investors are twice as likely to raise follow-on funding. Outside of the increasing the likelihood of raising follow on funding reporting to your private investors has other benefits. Chances are if you have accepted venture capital, the venture capitalist and partners at the firm can offer you a wealth of knowledge, experience, and introductions. By practicing investor reporting, founders can build a relationship with their investors and increase their chances of receiving help, time, and introductions from their investors. Related Resource: How to Build a Strong Investor Relations Strategy Investor Reporting Software While most startup founders and leaders know they should be sending investor reports, it can often get lost in the shuffle of building a great product, repeatable sales process, and attracting top talent. To help combat this, there are several solutions and products that help relieve the stress of investor reporting and build a professional and repeatable investor reporting process. The most common investor reporting solution is a simple email update template. These are generally sent on a monthly or quarterly basis and include a recap from the previous period, important company key performance indicators, big wins, losses, and asks for your investors. Visible Updates are a solution to bring a professional, beautiful, and engaging touch to your investor updates. Visible allows you to connect your key data, build beautiful charts, and add qualitative data to create beautiful investor updates. Send your Visible Investor Updates via email, slack, or PDF. In turn, we’ll provide engagement statistics to see how your investors are interacting with your Updates. Visible also allows founders to segment different groups of investors and different stakeholders. For example, a founder may want to send a more in-depth investor report to their board members and maybe a liter version to their less engaged investors. Investor reports can also be used as a means to nurture potential investors. No matter how you define investor reporting, it can be a vital—and often overlooked—aspect of building a strong venture-backed business. Investor Email Templates and Examples Investor Relations Examples As mentioned above, investor relations and reporting can take different forms. Investor relations examples vary greatly from public to private companies, and from early stage to growth stage companies. We’ve highlighted a few of our favorite investor relations examples below. For the examples, we’ll share they are generally intended to be sent on a monthly basis. We’ve also created a library of great investor relations examples. Related Resource: Investor Relationship Management 101: How to Manage Your Startups Interactions with Investors Monthly Update Email Templates Our standard startup investor reporting example The standard investor reporting template by the team at Visible. What we have found to be best practices for investor reporting collected from our users and investor thought leaders. Techstars Minimum Viable Investor Update Email Template In the “Minimum Viable Investor Update”, Jens Lapinski, Former Managing Director of Techstars METRO, lays out 3 items that he finds most useful in his portfolio company updates. Founder Collective “Fill-in-the-blank” Investor Update Email Template An investor Update template for busy founders put together by the team at Founder Collective. Simply fill out the bolded sections and have your investor Updates out the door in no time. Jason Calacanis Investor Update Email Template A 10 part monthly update email template put together by famous angel investor, Jason Calacanis. Simply include the sections you have content for and wow your investors with your update. Kima Ventures Investor Update Email Template A monthly update email template put together by Jean and the team at Kima. Quickly fill in the quantitative and qualitative data Kima finds most useful. GitLab Investor Update Email Template A 6 part monthly update email template put together by the team at GitLab. Built for investors to quickly read and locate the information that is most relevant to them. Shoelace: Investor Update Email Template A monthly update email template based off of Reza Khadjavi’s, Founder & CEO of Shoelace, investor update email used to wow investors. Coding VC: Investor Update Email Template A monthly investor update email template from Leo Polovets, the general partner at Sosa Ventures, consisting of 5 sections that can be repeated on a monthly basis. Y Combinator Investor Update TemplateA monthly investor update email template from Aaron Harris of Y Combinator focusing on major KPIs and asks for your investors. Other Monthly Update Email Templates Outside of regularly sending your investors monthly email templates, founders will also want to send other stakeholders email reports. This can include your team, individual business units, advisors, clients, etc. We’ve highlighted a few of our favorite stakeholder update email templates below: The CEO Note Template An Update to share information across your company using different methods and styles used by leaders like Marc Benioff, Scott Dorsey, and Kyle Porter. Fred Wilson: The Weekly Update Email A template based off of Fred Wilson’s Weekly Email intended for founders to share what’s on their mind, what happened the past week, and what’s on the schedule for the upcoming week. All-Hands Team Update Email Template An Update template intended to share before your next All-Hands meeting or share after to summarize the meeting. Largely based off of Square’s Town Hall meetings and is broken into 3 major categories; The Team, Mission & Goals, and Agenda & Questions. Pre-Board Meeting Update Email Template A Pre-Board Meeting Update Template that you can share with your board to help you make the most of your meeting time. By sending over a quick packet before your next meeting it will allow everyone to have time to prepare and come ready to discuss the topics that truly matter to the business. V2MOM Monthly Update Email Template V2MOM is a management process and acronym standing for vision, values, mission, objectives, and measures. Portfolio Management Software for Investors While it falls on the shoulders of founders and company operators to report to their investors, it is also important for investors to engage their portfolio companies and transform their portfolio company data into valuable information. A quick reminder from investors to their portfolio companies can help increase the odds of receiving an investor report or data from portfolio companies. Staying on top of portfolio companies allows investors to lend a hand to help the company with their challenges, in turn increasing their portfolio companies’ value. To help investors stay on top of their portfolio, and report to their own investors, there is portfolio management software for investors. At Visible, we have created our own portfolio management software for investors, Visible for Investors. Using portfolio management software, investors can easily lend a hand to their companies and turn their data into actionable reports that can be shared and used across the portfolio. In turn, investors can use this to manage their own investors or limited partners. Investor software generally operates like a traditional customer relationship manager with the customer being their portfolio companies and founders. Our Portfolio Management Software. Visible for investors is investor software to help stay engaged with your founders right from your pocket. Using portfolio management software be the value-add investor that you want to be. Tap into your experience, network, and resources to jump in and help your investments when you see indicators that they may be struggling. Managing an entire portfolio can be tough. Using our portfolio management software easily centralize all of your vital information in one place. From sentiment to investment memos, you’ll be able to customize your Visible instance to your needs. Using automated update request, create your own unique investor report to your firm. Automatically send update requests to your portfolio companies, with scheduled follow-ups, to receive consistent data across your portfolio. Prompt for key metrics, files, operating information and qualitative updates. Investor Management Software Everything we build at Visible is focused on the founder. To help complete the investor Update request founder’s can take advantage of our existing investor management software to tap into our learnings and resources. Easily use our integrations and API to automatically fulfill any investor request. Investor reporting has never been easier with the combination of our investor engagement software and portfolio management software for investors. What is Investor Relations? According to the National Investor Relations Institute, “Investor Relations is a strategic management responsibility that is capable of integrating finance, communication, marketing and securities law compliance to enable the most effective two-way communication between a company, the financial community, and other constituencies, which ultimately contributes to a company’s securities achieving fair valuation.” As we discussed earlier, investor relations can take different forms depending on the owners of the business. Investor relations for a publicly held company will greatly vary than the investor relations for a privately held, venture-backed business. While not required, the benefits of investor relations for a privately held company are instrumental in the growth and health of the company. Sending a simple email update, or creating an investor relations website, allows privately held companies to tap into their investors’ network, experience, knowledge, and ultimately additional capital. At a publicly traded company investor relations is legally obliged to have an internal investor relations team, meet certain requirements, and have the information audited. Often a larger team, the investor relations department is responsible for hosting an investor relations website for the public to access their key information to gather as much information as possible before investing. According to Investopedia, “IR teams are typically tasked with coordinating shareholder meetings and press conferences, releasing financial data, leading financial analyst briefings, publishing reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and handling the public side of any financial crisis.” Benefits & Importance of Investor Relations On the public side, the importance of investor relations is pretty clear. The role is to provide the analyst with vital and required information who in turn who provide public opinion on the company as an investment opportunity. By creating internal audits and becoming the source of truth between all business units. IR can manage an analyst’ expectations in turn influences the overall investment community showing the importance of investor relations in a big way. On the flip side, we have investor relations for privately held companies. In the total opposite fashion, privately held companies are in no way obliged to release their financials and meet any requirements from their investors. However, the benefits and importance of investor relations for a startup can be monumental in the company’s growth and health. The biggest benefit of investor relations is the likelihood of raising additional capital. Venture-backed businesses who send their investors monthly reports are twice as likely to raise follow on funding. As Jason Calacanis, famous angel investor, puts it; “There is another really awesome reason to keep investors updated: they didn’t give you all of their money — they have more! They want to give you more!” Another benefit of investor relations? The investors have likely been in the same situation or encountered it with other investments. At the end of the day, an investors job is to make investments that generate returns for their investors. By using investor relations to share bad news, your investors can step in and help get your company back on track with their depth of knowledge, experience, networks, and capital. All in all, the importance of investors relations at a venture-backed company is vital when it comes to attracting additional capital and talent. Investor Relations Salary and Jobs Since the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act, was passed in 2002 the marketplace for investor relations jobs has greatly increased. An investor relations manager job can cover different facets of a business, but generally involve supporting the release of financial information, investor reports, and legal diligence. Investor relations responsibilities are vital to the life of a business from both the legal and operational standpoint. Investor relations jobs are often found as a subset of the companies public relations or finance department. From a legal standpoint, an investor relations manager is responsible for fulfilling legal requirements and financial documentation. Investor relations managers take company financials and data to turn them into compelling data stories that can be shared with analysts and eventually the public. Investor relations managers need to determine what data will affect the public shareholders and present that in an understandable and compelling way. From an internal standpoint, an investor relations manager is responsible for managing crisis and collecting feedback and passing that along to upper management. As CFI puts it, “Communication is also a two-way street; the IR department is also responsible for forwarding input from significant stakeholders of the company to management. During times of crisis (financial or otherwise), the IR department will advise management with a goal to preserve the company’s relationship with its investors, as well as to mitigate any damage to share prices.” According to Salary.com, an investor relations managers salary typically falls between $100,000 and $140,000. Of course, investor relations salary fluctuates depending on experience, education, certifications, etc. On the flip side, there are also investor relations firms that publicly traded companies can use to take on their investor relations responsibilities. The investor relations salary at a company or at an investor relations firm tend to be in the same range. A couple of popular investor relations firm include, KCSA Strategies, Liolis, and Al Petrie Advisors.

The biotech industry has always been an attractive sector for VCs to invest in, and 2023 is no different. With high potential for returns, a rapidly growing industry, and advances in technology, biotech is a favorable investment for VCs. One of the main reasons for this is the high potential for returns. Biotech companies that successfully develop and commercialize new therapies and medical devices can generate significant returns for investors. This is particularly true for companies that develop therapies for diseases with high unmet needs, such as cancer, rare genetic disorders, and chronic diseases. The biotech industry is also expected to grow significantly in the coming years, driven by advancements in genomics, stem cell research, and regenerative medicine. This presents a significant opportunity for investors to participate in the growth of this industry and benefit from its expansion. Advances in technology such as gene editing, AI, and digital health are also making it easier for biotech companies to develop new therapies and medical devices, which can improve their chances of success. Additionally, the growing interest in personalized medicine is also a favorable trend, as precision medicine is gaining more traction in the industry. This approach, which is based on the genetic makeup of each patient, has the potential to lead to more effective and efficient treatments for a wide range of diseases, including cancer and rare genetic disorders. Governments around the world are also investing in biotech research and development and are offering various incentives for biotech companies, which can help to reduce the financial risks for investors. The high demand for healthcare, driven by the increasing aging population and the growing burden of chronic diseases, is also driving the demand for new and more effective therapies and medical devices. Set up Your Biotech Company for Success Biotech startups have a lot to consider as they work to develop and commercialize new therapies and medical devices. There are several key steps that biotech startups can take to increase their chances of success. Identify unmet medical needs Successful biotech startups begin by identifying unmet medical needs in the market, and then developing products or therapies that directly address these needs. By doing so, they are able to differentiate themselves from competitors and demonstrate a clear value proposition to potential customers and investors. Build a strong team A strong management team with a diverse set of skills and experiences is crucial for biotech startups. This team should be able to lead the company through the complex and dynamic biotech landscape, and make strategic decisions that will help the company grow. Leverage technology Advances in technology such as gene editing, AI, and digital health are making it easier for biotech companies to develop new therapies and medical devices. Leveraging these cutting-edge technologies can give startups a competitive edge and improve their chances of success. Create a clear path to commercialization Developing a clear path to commercialization and having a strong business model in place are essential for biotech startups. This helps them to attract investment and partners, and to scale their business. Build partnerships Building strong partnerships with key stakeholders in the industry, such as pharmaceutical companies, academic institutions, and government organizations can provide access to resources, expertise, and networks that can help the startup to excel. Have strong regulatory compliance Successful biotech startups are aware of the regulations and compliance requirements in the biotech industry and they have the necessary processes and procedures in place to ensure compliance. This helps to avoid delays and ensure a smooth commercialization process. Adapt to market changes Successful biotech startups are agile and adaptable, and able to pivot their strategies and business models in response to market changes. This helps them to stay ahead of the curve and capitalize on new opportunities as they arise. Biotech Metrics to Include in Investor Updates Some specific metrics that biotech companies may include in their investor update include: Clinical trial progress: The number of patients enrolled in trials, the phase of the trial, and any regulatory milestones that have been achieved or are upcoming. Pipeline development: This includes compounds or products in development, as well as their potential for revenue or commercialization. Intellectual property: Patents filed or granted, as well as the strength and potential value of the company’s intellectual property portfolio. R&D expenses: The progress of research projects to investors. Scientific publications and presentations: Scientific publications or presentations in which the company or its scientists have participated, as well as the level of visibility and impact of these publications and presentations. Manufacturing and production: Updates on the progress of their manufacturing and production processes, including capacity and scalability. Product development: Status on the development of a product, including the progress of preclinical studies, clinical studies, and commercialization. Market size and potential for growth: The size of the target market for a product and its potential for growth, as well as the competition in the market. Regulatory: Progress of regulatory approvals and submissions, including FDA, EMA, and other regulatory authorities. Financial metrics: Such as revenue, operating costs, and burn rate. The management team and Board of Directors: Any changes or updates to the management team and Board of Directors. Partnerships and collaborations: New partnerships or collaborations that have been established or are in progress. Depending on the stage of the company, some of these metrics may not be applicable or relevant and will vary from company to company or industry. The Future of Biotechnology The biotech industry is expected to continue to grow and evolve in the coming years, driven by advancements in technology and research. Biotech startups that are able to stay ahead of the curve and capitalize on trends will be well-positioned for success in the future. A few of these key trends are Gene therapy, Regenerative medicine, Personalized medicine, Digital health, and Artificial Intelligence. Gene therapy is a promising new approach to treating genetic disorders and diseases by directly targeting the underlying genetic causes. Advances in gene editing technology, such as CRISPR, have made it possible to precisely target and repair disease-causing mutations, leading to the development of new gene therapies for a wide range of conditions. Regenerative medicine is the practice of using cells, tissues, and organs to repair or replace damaged or diseased parts of the body. This field is rapidly advancing, with new therapies being developed for conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, and spinal cord injuries. The use of precision medicine is gaining more traction, this approach which is based on the genetic makeup of each patient, has the potential to lead to more effective and efficient treatments for a wide range of diseases, including cancer and rare genetic disorders. The integration of digital technology into healthcare is increasingly becoming a reality, enabling real-time monitoring and data collection, which will help to improve treatment outcomes. Biotech companies are now investing in digital health solutions, including wearable devices, mobile apps, and telemedicine, to improve patient care. AI is becoming increasingly important in the biotech industry, with companies using machine learning and deep learning to analyze large amounts of data, including genetic data, to identify new drug targets and develop new therapies. VCs Main Focus Areas in Biotech Depending on the VC firm’s investment strategy and the portfolio the focus may vary but some general areas of interest include: Biotechnology: Startups working on developing new drugs, therapies, and diagnostics, as well as those working on advancing biotechnology platforms such as gene therapy, CRISPR, and synthetic biology. Medical Devices: Such as implantable devices, diagnostic tools, and digital health technologies. Digital Health: Telemedicine, virtual care, and remote monitoring technologies. Biotech IT: This includes startups working on developing new software and IT solutions to support the biotech industry, such as bioinformatics, computational biology, and data analytics. Biotech Services: Such as contract research and development, clinical trial management, and regulatory consulting. Biotech Agriculture: Startups working on developing new tools and technologies to improve crop yields, reduce waste, and improve food safety. Biotech Energy: New biofuels, renewable energy, and sustainable materials VCs Investing in Biotech Companies 8VC Location: San Francisco, California, United States About: 8VC aims to transform the technology infrastructure behind many industries. Investment Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B, Growth Recent Investments: Oula Anduril Loop Check out 8VC’s profile on our Connect Investor Database Arch Venture Partners Location: Chicago, Illinois, United States About: ARCH Venture Partners invests primarily in companies co-founded with leading scientists and entrepreneurs, concentrating on bringing to market innovations in information technology, life sciences, and physical sciences. ARCH currently manages five funds totaling over $700 million and has invested in the earliest venture capital rounds for more than 90 companies. ARCH investors include major corporations, financial institutions, and private investors. Investment Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B, Series C, Growth Recent Investments: Synchron FogPharma Treeline Biosciences Check out Arch Venture Partners’ profile on our Connect Investor Database 5AM Ventures Location: Menlo Park, California, United States About: 5AM Ventures is a California-based venture capital firm that aims to finance seed- and early-stage life sciences companies. Investment Stages: Series A, Series B, Growth Recent Investments: Escient Pharmaceuticals CAMP4 Therapeutics Dianthus Therapeutics Check out 5AM Ventures’ profile on our Connect Investor Database Atlas Venture Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States About: Atlas Venture is the leading international early-stage venture capital firm, investing in communications, information technology and life sciences companies. Atlas Venture investments are evenly divided between the United States and Europe. Founded in 1980, Atlas Venture has organized six international funds, and currently manages more than $2.1 billion in committed capital. Investment Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B, Growth Recent Investments: Nimbus Therapeutics Be Biopharma Triana Biomedicines Check out Atlas Ventures’ profile on our Connect Investor Database Forum Ventures Location: New York City, San Francisco, and Toronto, United States Thesis: B2B SaaS; Future of Work, E-commerce enablement, Supply Chain & Logistics, Marketplace, Fintech, Healthcare Investment Stages: Pre-Seed, Seed Recent Investments: Sandbox Banking Tusk Logistics Vergo Check out Forum Ventures profile on our Connect Investor Database OrbiMed Location: New York City, United States About: We have been investing globally for over 20 years across the healthcare industry: from early-stage private companies to large multinational corporations. Our team of over 100 distinguished scientific, medical, investment, and other professionals manages over $17 billion across public and private company investments worldwide. Investment Stages: Series A, Series B, Series C Recent Investments: Pathalys Pharma Amolyt Pharma MBX Biosciences Check out OrbiMed’s profile on our Connect Investor Database Polaris Partners Location: Massachusetts, United States About: Polaris Partners ​has a 20+ year history of partnering with ​entrepreneurs and innovators improving the way we live and work. Investment Stages: Series A, Series B, Series C Recent Investments: Jnana Therapeutics FOLX Health CAMP4 Therapeutics Check out Polaris Partners’ profile on our Connect Investor Database Third Rock Ventures Location: Boston, Massachusetts, United States About: Telescope Partners is an active growth equity firm partnering with best in class entrepreneurs across the technology landscape. We invest ourselves and our capital in companies building long-term, sustainable businesses. Investment Stages: Series A, Series B Recent Investments: Corvia Medical Terremoto Biosciences MOMA Therapeutics Check out Third Rock Ventures’ profile on our Connect Investor Database Versant Ventures Location: San Francisco, California, United States About: Versant Ventures caters to the healthcare sector with early and later stage venture, private equity, and debt financing investments. Investment Stages: Pre-Seed, Seed, Series A, Series B, Growth Recent Investments: iECure Jnana Therapeutics Nested Therapeutics Check out Versant Ventures profile on our Connect Investor Database Sofinnova Partners Location: London, United Kingdom About: Sofinnova Partners is a venture capital firm that invests in the life sciences sector, from seed to later-stage. Thesis: We invest in people and science to create opportunity. We commit to long-term partnerships with entrepreneurs who are as passionate as we are about pushing the frontiers of innovation to contribute to a better future. Investment Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B, Series C, Growth Recent Investments: Amolyt Pharma Micropep Prometheus Materials Check out Sofinnova Partners’ profile on our Connect Investor Database F-Prime Capital Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States About: F-Prime grew from one of America’s great entrepreneurial success stories. Fidelity Investments was founded in 1946 and grew from a single mutual fund into one of the largest asset management firms in the world, with over $2 trillion under management. For the last fifty years, our independent venture capital group has had the privilege of backing other great entrepreneurs as they built ground-breaking companies, including Atari, Ironwood Pharmaceuticals and MCI. Investment Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B Recent Investments: Neumora Therapeutics Elicidata Ashby Check out F-Prime Capital’s profile on our Connect Investor Database Start Your Next Round with Visible We believe great outcomes happen when founders forge relationships with investors and potential investors. We created our Connect Investor Database to help you in the first step of this journey. Instead of wasting time trying to figure out investor fit and profile for their given stage and industry, we created filters allowing you to find VCs and accelerators who are looking to invest in companies like you. Check out all our investors here and filter as needed. After learning more about them with the profile information and resources given you can reach out to them with a tailored email. To help craft that first email check out 5 Strategies for Cold Emailing Potential Investors and How to Cold Email Investors: A Video by Michael Seibel of YC. After finding the right Investor you can create a personalized investor database with Visible. Combine qualified investors from Visible Connect with your own investor lists to share targeted Updates, decks, and dashboards. Start your free trial here.

Raise capital, update investors and engage your team from a single platform. Try Visible free for 14 days. 2022 has been a challenging year in the startup world. After a hot start to the year, funding and growth has slowed. As Tomasz Tunguz pointed out in the chart below, funding has collapsed since October. At Visible, we’ve spent 2022 building tools to help founders update investors, raise capital, and track key metrics. With the help of these 6 new features, founders will be able to level up their investor relations and strike when the funding iron is hot. Check them out below: Share and Comment on Fundraising Pipelines You can now share a fundraising pipeline via link. This allows you to ask current investors or peers for introductions or information about investors in your pipeline. In turn, your investors or peers can leave a quick comment to help make an introduction to investors they know. Customize Fundraising Columns and Properties Our fundraising pipelines have become more flexible so you can further tailor your pipeline to match your fundraise. With customizable fundraising columns and properties, you will be able to select the properties you would like to see at the pipeline level. Check out some of the most popular custom fundraising properties below: Min & max check size Who can make/made a connection? Data room shared? Investor type Will they lead? Log Emails with Potential Investors in Visible With our BCC tool, founders will be able to simply copy & paste their unique BCC email address into any email. From here, the email will automatically be tracked with the corresponding contact in Visible. This is great for cold emailing investors, nurturing investors, and staying in touch with current investors. To learn how to get BCC set up with your Visible account, head here. Automatic Fundraising Follow-up Reminders Over the course of a fundraise, most founders should expect to communicate with 50-100+ investors. In order to best help you stay on top of their ongoing conversations, you can now set email reminders for when to follow up with potential investors. This is a great way to speed up the fundraising process and get back to what matters most — building your business. Pitch Deck Branding and Custom Domains Control your fundraise from start to finish. With Visible Decks, you can share your deck using your own domain. Plus you can customize the color palette of your deck viewer to match your brand. You can check out an example here. Include Pitch Decks in Updates Keeping current and potential investors in the loop is a great way to speed up the process when you are ready to raise capital. In order to best help nurture current and potential investors, you can now include your Visible Decks directly in Updates. This can help when kicking off a raise, nurturing potential investors, or sharing a board deck with your board members. Custom Properties as Merge Tags in Updates As we mentioned above, updating current investors and nurturing potential investors is a great way to speed up a fundraise when the time is right. To best help you customize your Visible Updates, you can now use custom properties as merge tags in Updates. For example, if you’re tracking the city in which your investors live you can use that in an Update. Improved Dashboard Layout and Widgets If you’re sharing Visible Dashboards with your team or more involved investors, you can now customize the layout and include additional widgets (like text, tables, and variance reports). This will allow you to give additional context to any of the data your key stakeholders might be looking at regularly. Our mission at Visible is to help more founders succeed. Over the next 12 months, we’ll be building more tools to help you do just that. Raise capital, update investors and engage your team from a single platform. Try Visible free for 14 days.

A few years ago we interviewed Lindsay Tjepkema, Founder of Casted, about starting a podcast. One of her key tips was to “wring out your content.” If you’re going to take the time to record a podcast, you should take the time to repurpose and distribute that content on different channels. How to Repurpose Investor Updates The same is true for investor relations and fundraising. If you’re going to take the time to send an investor update, you can “wring out” your metrics, big wins, asks, audience, etc. to fuel other fundraising materials. An investor update can be re-purposed to help build out other fundraising assets — for example: Potential Investor Monthly Updates — For a simple hack, take your normal investor update and edit it down to a few key metrics and wins to nurture potential investors. Pitch Decks — If you’re sharing data in your investor updates, this can be used to help build out the different metrics and data you’ll need in a pitch deck. Data Rooms — Data rooms are a combination of all of the data and assets you’ll share over the course of a fundraise. Including past investor updates is a surefire way to show potential investors your history of regular communication. Cold Emails to Investors — Investor updates can be a starting point for crafting a cold email to potential investors. Board Decks — There is likely a lot of crossover between the content in an investor update and a quarterly board meeting. Investor updates can be a great backbone for building out the different slides in a board deck. Team Updates — A modified version of your investor update is also a great way to keep your team in the loop and build trust. Investor communication is no easy feat for founders. Taking the time to send monthly updates already puts you ahead of 50% of portfolio companies — taking the few minutes to wring out your investor updates will help you speed up your next raise when you are ready. Reading List How to Handle: Keeping Your Investors Updated Brett Brohl of Bread & Butter Ventures breaks down the 5 components he likes to see in investor updates. Learn more Investor Outreach Strategy: 9 Step Guide On the Visible Blog, we share a 9 step guide to help founders develop a plan to reach out to potential investors. Read more Why You Should Always Send Your Investor Updates Kera DeMars of Hustle Fund makes the case why founders should send investor updates. Read more

The world has been consumed by data and metrics — startups are no exception. Founders need to leverage their key data and KPIs to fuel growth, build products, create interest from potential investors, and more. At Visible, we have a tool built for VC funds to collect data from their portfolio companies and enable GPs to report to their investors (LPs). In order to better help founders determine what metrics they should be tracking, we analyzed our data and found the most common metrics VCs are collecting from their portfolio companies. Check them out below: The Most Common Metrics Revenue Cash Headcount Customers / Users Total Operating Expenses The 5 metrics above are high level metrics that might sound obvious. However, great founders are able to recall them at anytime. Not knowing your key operating metrics is a ????. These can be used as the backbone for investor updates, board meetings, and determining more granular metrics to track. P.S. 75% of investors are collecting anywhere between 1 and 10 metrics so chances are your own investor updates should land in the same range. Reading List Key Insights from High Alpha’s Finance Leaders The team at High Alpha shares key takeaways from the finance leaders in their portfolio — they share why efficiency metrics are key in the current market, how data storytelling can be a differentiator, and more. Read more Time to Refine Your Metrics: Defining Growth and Success at a PLG Company Mikaela Gluck of OpenView Ventures highlights the key metrics that product-led companies should be tracking. Read more 6 Metrics Every Startup Founder Should Track On the Visible Blog, we share 6 basic metrics that every founder be tracking and sharing with their stakeholders. Read more

The following is a guest post from the team at Sendspark. Use Sendspark to connect with customers, investors, team members, and other stakeholders. Learn more here. Communicating with investors is a skill all founders should hone. Regular and predictable communication is a surefire way to build trust and improve your odds of unlocking an investor’s capital, network, experience, and more. Learn how you can leverage video + email updates to communicate with your investors below: Why Send Videos in Investor Updates Whether you’re pitching new investors or updating existing ones, sending videos to investors can help you build investor relationships. Here are some ways it can help you: Stand out from the crowd Build a personal relationship Show, rather than tell Save time Have great communication skills Let’s dive into the best use cases and strategies that are going to help you close your next round! When to Send Videos to Investors 1. Investor Outreach A strong video in your investor pitch can help you get that first conversation. One question that comes up a lot is should you make a personalized video when pitching investors? And the answer is a bit nuanced. The world seems to be changing, but right now, I’d still recommend getting a warm introduction to an investor (even if that means cold emailing one of their portfolio founders), and using a video as a supplemental material in your “forwardable email”. This helps you play it cool, while still getting valuable information across in your blurb and video. Personalized videos become significantly more important after the first meeting, on your way to closing the deal. 2. Investor Follow Up Sending a video recap after an investor conversation is a great way to lock in key points. Investors might have had 10 other conversations with strong founders that day, so this short video can remind them what they liked most about you. It can also help you stand out among the competition. A video recap will give investors a shareable clip to pass around to other partners or decision makers at the firm who didn’t get to speak to you directly. This way, the wonderful aspects that make your pitch unique won’t get lost in translation. For this video, I’d 100% recommend making it truly personalized to the investor you spoke with. Don’t try to include everything about your business, just the key points that you found best resonated with them during the call. 3. Diligence When it comes to diligence, video messages can help you speed up the process. Here are some ways you can use video to get to a “yes” faster: Record over your usage dashboards or product metrics Request video testimonials from customers who can advocate for your product Respond to any objections or concerns thoroughly 4. Investor Updates An investor investing is the first step in a long partnership. Great investor communication over time will help you build a strong partnership, help investors help you, and lead to subsequent checks in future rounds. Just like in B2B Sales, it’s easier to get your existing customers to pay more than to close new customers. Never take your investors for granted, and continue to keep them informed and excited about what you’re building. Here are some ways you can strengthen your investor updates with video: Record yourself discussing your current initiatives Show off a new feature or product launch Introduce a new team member or advisor Request a video from a customer to share why this matters to them How to Send Videos in Investor Updates You can send videos in investor updates using Sendspark and Visible together. First, create a free account with Sendspark to easily record videos of yourself or your product. Sendspark is great for this because… It’s super fast to record a video of yourself or your product — no editing needed! Videos will automatically look polished and professional with your own branding and logo You can add calls-to-action for investors to schedule a meeting, reply with video, or take another next step You get insight into who’s watching your video, how far they watched, and what actions they’re taking After creating your video, just paste your video URL into your investor update on Visible. You’ll see the video preview automatically appear in your email, giving you a super polished and professional-looking update. Check out an example below: Give Visible a free try for 14 days here. Send investor updates, manage your fundraise, and keep tabs on your most important metrics — all from one platform. Tips for Making Great Investor Videos Be clear and concise. When it comes to pitching investors, Aaron Blumenthal, Director of Global Accelerator Programs at 500 Startups, says, “every 10 seconds buys you your next 10 seconds.” You need to keep your viewer engaged for the entire length of your video — so make it easy for yourself and keep your video to 20-30 seconds. Give the gift of information. Whether it’s a pitch, a recap, or an update, reward your viewer with a nugget of information that makes them feel great that they watched the video. That being said, remember rule #1 and don’t try to put everything in the video. Just discuss 1-2 points that are better said or shown than written. Be conversational. Even if you are recording a video for multiple investors at once, each one is viewing alone, so use singular words like “you” instead of “y’all” to make the experience more intimate and personable. Imagine you are speaking 1×1 to an investor via Zoom — not pitching a room full of people at Demo Day. Know your video will be shared. This has two implications: (1) don’t put confidential information in your video that you don’t want floating around, and (2) use this knowledge to your advantage with soundbites that you want shared – your vision, your asks, your unique spark, etc. Don’t include content that you wouldn’t want shared among different audiences. Don’t overthink it. Remember: we are our own harshest critics (especially us founders ????). Investors — especially those who have already invested — love getting these more personal updates. They are not judging you nearly as hard as you are judging yourself (especially if your numbers are up and to the right). Final Thoughts When fundraising, and running a business in general, you see a lot of “shoulds.” You should do this, you shouldn’t do that. All great founders do this, and if you don’t, you’ll never succeed. However, that’s not the point of this post. You don’t HAVE to use video when emailing investors. Rather, it’s a great option to have in your arsenal. My belief is that the founders who win lean into their strengths and indisynchronies. What makes you special? What makes you unique? Video can help you tap into that – and easily communicate who you are, what you’re doing, and why it’s important – in far less time than text. I hope Sendspark helps you have fun and enjoy the ride.

Building a startup is incredibly difficult. Leading an early-stage startup can almost feel impossible. On top of building a product, successfully selling and marketing a product, hiring top talent, and more – a founder is responsible for engaging with stakeholders across the board (team members, investors, board members, mentors, etc.) Related Resource: The Complete Guide to Investor Reporting and Updates Investors might simply seem like a source of capital. However, they can offer so much more. Investors can offer future capital, their own experience, and network to help move your business forward. It is your responsibility as a founder to have a game plan to place to communicate and leverage your investors. Learn more about building an investor relationship management plan below: What is Investor Relationship Management? As we previously mentioned, investors can offer much more than capital. Venture capitalists and startup investors have likely been operators themselves. They will be able to offer future capital, takeaways from their own experiences (and their other investment experiences), and their own network to help with hiring and finding early customers. Related Resource: The Complete Guide to Stakeholder Management for Startup Founders At the end of the day, investors are human and value relationships. It is a founder’s duty to properly communicate with investors and strengthen relationships. While each and every founder <> investor relationship is different, a strong relationship management system looks something like this: Monthly investor updates sent via email Quarterly board meetings (in person or via Zoom) One-off calls and conversations Related Resource: How to Create a Board Deck (with Template) Of course, all of these are business-centric meetings so it is important to make sure to build personal relationships along the way. Learn more about the key components and benefits of strong investor relationship management below: Key Components of Investor Relationship Management Relationships require work. A founder <> investor relationship is no different. The components of building a relationship with investors will vary from person to person but we generally suggest leveraging the following tools as a backbone for your investor relations. Related Resource: How to Build a Strong Investor Relations Strategy 1) Monthly Investor Updates At Visible, we have found that companies that regularly communicate with their investors are 300% more likely to raise follow on funding. A monthly investor update can go a long way when it comes to building relationships with investors. Related Resource: How To Write the Perfect Investor Update (Tips and Templates) Monthly updates should take no more than a few minutes of your time and can pay dividends down the road. You’ll be able to regularly surface challenges you are facing to get your investors to help on the fly. Check out a few popular monthly updates for inspiration below: The Visible “Standard” Investor Update Template Visible Lite Monthly Update Y Combinator Investor Update Related Resource: How to Write the Perfect Investment Memo 2) Quarterly Board Meetings Monthly updates are great for keeping investors in the loop and getting their input on the fly. Quarterly board meetings are a great opportunity to look back at the quarter and shape your future roadmap and decisions with your board. Quarterly board meetings will allow you to sit down with vital stakeholders and spend valuable time digging into future decisions and strategies. However, it is important that you as a founder come to a board meeting well prepared and make the most of the time. We recommend sharing some information beforehand so investors can prepare as well. 3) One-Off Meetings Monthly investors and quarterly board meetings should be the minimum when it comes to building investor relations. Inevitably there will be conversations and questions that arise that will not fit into either. With that said, it is important that you reach out to individual investors for one-off conversations and meetings as needed. On top of being an opportunity to tap into a specific investor’s capital, network, experience, etc. a one-off meeting is an opportunity to strengthen your personal relationship with them. 4) Tools and Management At Visible, we oftentimes compare a fundraise and investor relations to a traditional B2B sales and marketing funnel. At the top of your funnel, you are bringing in new investors (leads), building relationships throughout the middle of the funnel, and closing and delighting them at the bottom of the funnel. Just as a sales and marketing team has dedicated tools we believe the same should for investor relations. With Visible you can find investors, send monthly Updates, share your pitch deck, and manage relationships with our CRM. Give Visible a free try for 14 days here. Related Resource: Investor CRM: Seamlessly Manage Relationships and Finances Related Resource: Why a CRM is Essential for Investor Relations Related Resource: How to Find Investors Best Practices: Investor Relationship Management Edition As we’ve previously mentioned, every founder and investor relationship is different. We find that the stage, geography, focus, etc. might impact how to best communicate and build relationships with investors. However, there are a few best practices that generally stay consistent from relationship to relationship. Check out a few best practices for managing relationships with investors below: Include Wins and Losses First things first, investors need a pulse on how your business is performing so they know where they can best help. We suggest sharing both your wins and losses with investors on a monthly basis. Sharing wins is easy and investors want to help celebrate your accomplishments. Sharing losses is what differentiates okay from great communication. By being able to be transparent and share things you are struggling with investors will be able to build trust with you and your business and help you work through them. Share Key Metrics Investors will also want a quantifiable pulse on your business. Sharing a handful of key metrics is a great way to keep investors in the loop. We always recommend working through the specific metrics with your investors. Once you decide what you are going to share, make sure the metrics you are sharing stay consistent from month to month. Related Resource: 6 Metrics Every Startup Founder Should Track Make Asks Arguably one of the most beneficial parts of sending investor updates is the opportunity to make an asks. Investors likely have been in your shoes before (or are working with other companies in a similar position). Use this as an opportunity to make targeted asks to tap into their capital, experience, and network. We recommend being as specific as possible and making the job as easy as possible for the investor. Stay Consistent Keeping things predictable and consistent from month to month is a great way to strengthen trust with investors. For example, you’ll want to make sure you are calculating metrics the same way from month to month or are sharing your Updates around the same time of the month. Inconsistencies might trigger a red flag and investors will question if something is going south. Respond Promptly to Investors Being responsible can go a long way in any relationship. Be sure to respond to your investors as quickly as possible. Even if you do not have an answer being responsive is a great way to strengthen your relationship. What is an Investor Relations Strategy? At the end of the day, investor relations mirror any relationship. By communicating with investors and having a strategy in place, you’ll be able to set yourself up for future success. Related Resource: 6 Helpful Networking Tips for Connecting With Investors Manage Your Investor Relationships with the Help of Visible With Visible you can find investors, send monthly Updates, share your pitch deck, and manage relationships with our CRM. Give Visible a free try for 14 days here.

Every startup is aiming for a high valuation for their business. In business, valuation is the process of evaluating the present value of the asset in hand, in this case the overall value that a startup is worth. For startups, there are a variety of popular methods folks use to evaluate a business and determine its overall valuation. Different valuation methods are used for different reasons. To help break it down, we’ve outlined 10 popular methods for valuing startups. Related Reading: Pre-money vs Post-money: Essential Startup Knowledge + 409a Valuation: Everything a Founder Needs to Know 1. The Berkus Method Startups are risky. Less than 10% of startups make it past the first year of existence so determining the valuation of a startup, especially a brand new one with only months of lifespan can be extremely challenging. The Berkus Method is an attempted way to assess value without the traditional revenue metrics that many methods take into account for more mature organizations. The Berkus Method quantifies value by assessing qualitative qualities instead of quantitative ones. Value is assessed in the Berkus Method with five main elements. The elements considered within the Berkus Method include value business model (base value), available prototype to assess the technology risk and viability, founding team members and their abilities or industry knowledge, strategic relationships within the space or team, existing customers or first sales that prove viability. A quantitative value can be tied to each relevant quantitative factor with the Berkus Method. Source: Angel Capital Association Pro Tip: When To Use This Method The Berkus Method should be used pre-revenue. It can be a valuable valuation method when a new startup is formed with expert founders or former successful startup leaders at the helm or when a strong, viable product is in place. In these examples, there is enough qualitative information at hand to justify a quantitative value. Related Resource: What is Pre-Revenue Funding? 2. Comparable Transactions Method This valuation method at the highest level is essentially valuing the business based on what consumers would currently pay for it. This is one of the most conventional methods of valuation. To make a comparable transaction valuation, an investor or evaluator will look at companies of a similar size, revenue range, industry, and business model and see what they were valued at or sold for. This method is looking at validation from what others were willing to pay for similar companies in an acquisition or merger and use that to make a fair, or comparable, offer on the company seeking valuation. Pro Tip: When To Use This Method The most common scenario where the Comparable Transaction Method might be used is through a big M&A (Merger and Acquisition) deal. 3. Scorecard Valuation Method When a company hasn’t produced any revenue yet, as an early-stage startup, it can be hard for investors to make a solid bet on the probability of their investments’ success. The Scorecard Valuation Method is one method that relies on the past investments of others taking similar bets and risks on pre-revenue startups. Similar to the comparable transaction method, the scorecard valuation method looks at similar startups or companies in the company at questions’ industry. This valuation method looks at these similar companies and sees what types of valuation they received by other investors. From there, the median will be calculated from the value of all the similar companies’ valuations and this median will determine the average value of the target company. In addition to the median value placed on the competitive landscape, scorecards are looking at the strengths and weaknesses of the market as assessed by other investors and scoring their investment in question weighted with the following criteria compared to the other companies in the space: Board, entrepreneur, the management team – 25% Size of opportunity – 20% Technology/Product – 18% Marketing/Sales – 15% Need for additional financing – 10% Others – 10% A company may be valued higher than the median with the scorecard method if the size of opportunity or board/management team is exceptional quality or vice versa, maybe docked if the tech is strong but the leadership is assessed as in-experienced. Pro Tip: When To Use This Method This method may be used by a startup that is in a crowded space such as marketing tech, sales tech, fintech etc.. and is pre-revenue; With a lot of similar or adjacent companies raising rounds and receiving valuations, a scorecard can be used successfully because there are is a lot of adjacent validation in the market. 4. Cost-to-Duplicate Approach Startups are a risky investment for many reasons, but one big one is that it typically takes a lot of capital to run and scale a business and many startups struggle to manage their run rate and burn rate efficiently. The Cost-to-Duplicate Approach to valuation considers all costs and expenses associated with the startup. The costs and expenses reviewed include the development of the product and the purchase of physical assets. A fair market value is then determined based upon all the expenses at hand. The negative of using this type of valuation approach is that it does not consider the future growth and potential of the company, only the current efficiency based on expense and it also doesn’t take into account intangible assets such as the talent of the leadership team, brand, patents, etc. Pro Tip: When To Use This Method The Cost-to-Duplicate Approach might be the right approach to asset valuation when the product is simple and won’t require a lot of expensive development, the team is lean and the burn rate of capital is extremely slow or even non-existent. Lean startups with one or two folks at the helm, or with a founding team that isn’t taking a salary yet could use this method to justify their first infusion of cash to start taking a salary or start making bigger financial moves. 5. Risk Factor Summation Method Every venture capital fund or any investment firm is spending time unpacking the potential risks of each and every new investment they make. The Risk Factor Summation Method is used with risk as the primary method for evaluation. This approach values a startup by taking into quantitative consideration all risks associated with the business that can affect the return on investment. An initial value is calculated (possibly even using one of the other methods discussed in this post) and then the risks are assessed, deducting or adding to the initial value calculation based on said risks to the return. Some of the different kinds of risks that are taken into account are management risk, political risk, manufacturing risk, market competition risk, investment and capital accumulation risk, technological risk, and legal environment risk. Pro Tip: When To Use This Method This method is often used by investors when looking at a new space or as a second pass on assessing the value of a potential investment. 6. Discounted Cash Flow Method This method is predicting the valuation of a company based on its assumed future cash flows. The hope is that the DCF (Discounted Cash Flow) is above the current cost of investment resulting in projected positive return and higher valuation. A discount rate is used to find the value of present future cash flows. For example, the discount rate might be the average rate of return that shareholders in the firm are expecting for the given year. That percent (maybe 5%, 10%, etc.) is then used to make a year-over-year assumption. This hypothetical informs investors that based on the current cash flow and discount rate chosen to asses, the expected cash flow can be anticipated from this investment. Pro Tip: When To Use This Method This is a great valuation method to use for a company that has relatively predictable and stable up and to the right growth up until the time of investment. 7. Venture Capital Method This method is one of the most common, if not the most common method used for evaluating startups that are pre-cash flow and seeking VC investment. The VC Method looks at 6 steps to determine valuation: Estimate the Investment Needed Forecast Startup Financials Determine the Timing of Exit (IPO, M&A, etc.) Calculate Multiple at Exit (based on comps) Discount to PV at the Desired Rate of Return Determine Valuation and Desired Ownership Stake Its ultimately a quick, rough estimate informed by as much information as is available based on the market, comps, any existing quantitative and qualitative info from the company at hand, and an assumed amount of risk from the VC Firm. Related Resource: A User-Friendly Guide on Convertible Debt Pro Tip: When To Use This Method Most startups should expect that this valuation method will be applied when seeking early rounds of funding, especially from popular venture capital funds. 8. Book Value Method The Book Value of a company is the net difference between that company’s total assets and total liabilities. The idea of this valuation method is to reflect what total value of a company’s assets that shareholders of that company would walk away with if that company was completely liquidated. Book Value is equated to the carrying value on a balance sheet. To calculate book value, look at the total common stockholder’s equity minus the preferred stock and then divide that number by the number of common shares in a company. Pro Tip: When To Use This Method This valuation is extremely helpful in determining if a company’s current stock value is under or overpriced when attempting to determine overall valuation. 9. First Chicago Method Named after the VC arm of The First Chicago Bank, this valuation method uses a combo of multiple-based valuation and discounted cash flow to make a valuation of a company. Essentially, this method allows you to take into account many different possible outcomes for the business into the valuation – to keep it simple, you can think of this method as taking into consideration the business’s best case scenario, worst-case scenario, and average scenario. Looking at all 3 scenarios, an estimate is made as to how likely each scenario is. Next, you multiply the probabilities by their respected values and add them up. This gives you a weighted average valuation from the combo of the 3 most likely scenarios – valuing the business on the average of what will probably happen. Pro Tip: When To Use This Method This valuation method is recommended for dynamic, early-stage growth companies. It’s used when companies have a future with many possible outcomes that could come about based on the next decisions made. 10. Standard Earnings Multiple Method A multiple is a fraction in which the top number (the numerator) is larger than the bottom number (the denominator). The earnings of a business are defined as income or profit. The Standard Earnings Multiple Method looks at the earnings of the business over an industry-standard multiple. Every industry and sector may have a slightly different average multiple. Pro Tip: When To Use This Method One common scenario where this method is used is to measure stock pierce earnings with price/earnings ratio, which measures stock price to earnings. P/E ratio tells what the market (stock buyers) are willing to pay for the company’s earnings with a higher ratio indicating that people are willing to pay more. Share Your Startup Valuation With Visible Use Visible to communicate with your current investors. Raise capital, update investors and engage your team from a single platform. Try Visible free for 14 days. Related Resources: A Complete Guide on Founders Agreements Who Funds SaaS Startups? 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