One of the highest ROI 20 mins I spend every month is writing Warp's investor update. Open-sourcing our investor update format below. Feel free to copy/paste.
Why write monthly investor updates?
Not sending regular company updates is one of the biggest unforced errors startup founders make. Updates help you cut through noise and focus on core business activities. And they keep investors warm/updated on your company.
If you don't send updates, your investors will assume you're dead or in the process of dying. It is more important to send updates during bad times than it is sending when you're crushing it.
Our investor update format is based on the excellent template provided by Y Combinator. You can tweak it as needed, but I would strongly recommend not deviating too much.
Why?
Because bad startups hide behind verbose updates. It is easy to think you can fool people by writing long prose and convincing them your company is doing great. That never works. Investors can just tell.
So, lead with metrics. Even if they're looking bad.
A great investor update:
- is short
- includes full body of text in the email (no clicking away required)
- leads with summary and metrics
- includes lots of numbers, and not too many words
Updates are also a great way to leverage your investors -- ask them for customer or new hire intros. Make the ask specific or you're not gonna help. Include shout-outs to investors who have helped last month.
Our Update Format in Full
Warp’s mission is to build the best payroll, compliance, and benefits platform for startups.
EXEC SUMMARY
- We crossed $XX MRR, growing YY% MoM.
- Hired Sarah Bai as our first Customer Success Manager.
- Nov-Dec is generally slow for sales, but we are doing well.
METRICS
- Revenue: $XX MRR (up from $YY last month, +ZZ%)
- NRR: 1XX% average at Month-6
- Cash: $X Million
- Burn: $YY/month
- Runway: XX months
HIGHLIGHTS
- Sarah has joined the team and is already making a huge impact taking over everything from onboardings to ongoing support as well as building out much better CX infra, documentation, and playbooks.
- We significantly increased our DEMO (S2) -> ONBOARDING SCHEDULED (O1) conversion rates, converting XX% of demos to onboardings. Of these, XX% already paid, rest are scheduled to onboard over next 2 weeks.
LOWLIGHTS
- There’s a lot more work to be done re Ops, especially going into the end of Q4 + end of year. Not strictly fun, but important that we handle it in a timely manner.
SHOUT-OUTS
- Jordi Hays for intro to Sarah Bai leading to closed hire.
PRIORITIES FOR NEXT MONTH
- Primary focus this month is Internal – improve internal product, automations, admin panel, releasing new marketing pages on our website, and CS infra.
- Revenue: goal is to onboard all scheduled onboardings, and then hopefully some more.
Thank you,
Ayush
If you are a founder looking to run payroll, get started with Warp now.
