Investor update email (SSE Business Lab)

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Dive into crafting compelling Investor Update emails that engage and inform, securing support for your venture.
Published/Updated on Jul 21, 2021

The Investor Update Email

By Julia Delin, CEO at SSE Business Lab

Landing Your First Investment: The Investor Update Email

Key Points Template

[DISCLAIMER] Remind the recipient why they are getting your email.

[PITCH] Remind the recipient about what you do — people tend to forget, and you want them to be able to pitch you easily for the next person.

[SUMMARY] If this is all they read — this should include everything they need to know.

[KPIs] Include 3–5 important metrics that you follow here. Some important areas to measure monthly include monthly recurring/net revenue, growth, and engagement. In addition to product metrics, it’s good to mention your monthly burn rate, run rate and how much cash you have in the bank. If you have separate departments for Product, Sales, Marketing etc., you should include some of the KPIs the Heads-of are measured on. Below is a good summary of great KPIs to use depending on what business you run (ActionMetrics).

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[SUCCESSES] Include 1–5 successes during the month. This should include what you are very proud of or would like to brag about to future investors.

[NEXT STEPS/MILESTONES] Include 1–3 things you’re currently working on achieving or milestones ahead to let the recipient understand how the successes are in line with long-term goals and vision.

[CHALLENGES/ASKS] Include 1–3 challenges you have that you believe is of interest to potential investors. Remember that the people on this list are not yet “invested” in your business, so don’t include information that will have your company make headlines in the local newspaper. This section is important to give your recipients an understanding of what phase you’re in and encourage them to give input where they can. Challenges and Asks can also be two separate key points if you have challenges that don’t need external support and/or other asks.

[GRATITUDE] Always finish off on a good note. This is a great opportunity to thank the people around you who’ve been important for your startup during the last month. The people who’ve taken the time to give advice will be encouraged to do it again and the people who didn’t, want to be included next time — hopefully.

[END] Finish your email off by opening up for a discussion, comments or a meeting.

Example Template:

"Headline: Company — June 2018

Hi First name,

[DISCLAIMER] You’re receiving this email because you asked to be included on the progress we’re making with Company XYZ.

[PITCH] Company XYZ is a powerful online platform to do certain things and build other stuff.

SUMMARY:
During June, we kept working on our deliveries from last month and managed to finish for our deadline the 30/6. Although we hit some obstacles, we still think we can get the product out in September, just one week late. Our next step and the major milestone of July is to start alpha tests with a few customers we’ve signed on already. Our biggest obstacle is that the recruiting of another engineer is slowing us down. We need the extra set of hands but recruiting takes time. Do you know anyone? Send them our way!

KPIs
Product/Sales/Marketing:

  • Net revenue: slightly below target (69K in June — Target Dec 150K)

  • Growth: way above target (153K registered users in June — Target Sept 130K) — our influencer campaign really paid off.

  • Engagement: slightly below target (29K in June — Target Sept 35K).

Finance:

  • Burn rate: slightly below target (280K in June — Target June 300K)

  • Cash flow: 1.4M SEK left in the bank

  • Run rate: with current revenue, we have 5 months left before we need to close the round.

SUCCESSES:

  • The influencer campaign we did performed great and we’re way above target for new users! 📈

  • Although we’re understaffed, we managed to implement feature X (target for June) which meant that Customer A and Customer B finally signed up to Alpha test! 🎉🏆

  • The whole team has committed to working through the summer if we have Fridays off. This will mean a lot for our launch/sales timeline! 🙏💪

NEXT STEPS:

  • Alpha tests starting in July

  • Product 1.0 ready in September

  • Loan application/Pre-seed/Seed round closed by October

CHALLENGES/NEEDS:

  • It’s difficult to find engineers. Would you mind sharing our ad in your networks? Or connect us with anyone you think would be a good fit for our team? This is the link: doyouknowanengineer.com

  • We’d like to get another alpha test customer onboard for July, but Swedish summer vacation is killing us! Do you know someone who’s spending July in the office and would be willing to be a part of our test? We need a 100+ employee company looking to solve their problem with this in their sales organization. Hit reply!

GRATITUDE:

  • A shoutout to Potential Investor A for introducing us to New Employee, she is a great addition to the operations team and we’re already seeing results 👩‍💻

  • Thank you to Potential Investor B for the intro to the TechCrunch journalist, she will be writing about our alpha launch next week 📈

[END]

Let me know if you need more info or a break down of the KPIs. And as always, we appreciate this information to be used with care.

Thanks!

Best,

Your name"

Finally

Keep it short and sweet, send emails monthly (and be consistent) and remember that you’re communicating with people who are not invested in your business yet, so be honest but not too transparent.