Postcards From the Edge: Email Templates for Updating Your Key Stake Holders, Investors, and Advisors

“Hey we got a business here!” Danielle’s First Visit to Luminar’s Orlando Manufacturing Center.

Updated: Feb 6, 2023

Many companies we work with are new to investor relations.

Truth be told, they’re often new to everything that has anything to do with running a business. That’s why we support our teams through a lot of firsts: first customer, first fundraise, first hire, first fire. If we’re doing our jobs well, we’re the first call for them when they need a sounding board.

Just-in-time advice is always helpful, but outside of emergencies, we like to establish a review every other month as a baseline for keeping up to date on how our teams are doing and how we might be able to provide them with resources. Depending on their needs, founders can speed that up or down. We also have a weekly coffee session with our portfolio founders so that they can help each other. Founders always have hyper tactical advice!

Danielle describes our approach as buffet-style: you get as much as you want. Her go-to quote about this is, “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.” If we aren’t up to date, it’s harder for us to help you. And if you’re looking for more funding, the more up to date we are, the easier it is for us to make a follow on investment decision.

Of course, written words are never enough to convey what you’re doing — materials are 2D and you’re a 3D person. It’s exciting for us to chart a startup’s growth, to see it go from two people in a co-working space to a full team with hundreds of employees. Sometimes that feels surreal to us, but that word doesn’t quite capture the positive side of the emotion. Maybe awestruck is better. Maybe it’s kinda like being an aunt and uncle. At any rate, the main aim of these updates and visits is to let us know how we can best help. Often these meetings involve thinking about experts we can connect the company to, investors we can make warm intros to, or brainstorming key hires we might be able to help with.

Remember, your investors are not just sources of money, but should also add some expertise to your work. Reaching out regularly for support is a great way to keep investors engaged and help you with what you need.

“The Best Way Out Is Always Through” — Robert Frost

Be bold in putting out what’s working and where you need help, because the only way out is through. Some teams have trouble with this. It’s fair to say some investors are not comfortable hearing about the behind the scenes disasters (“The CTO quit and lit all the workstations on fire!!”). The more inexperienced the investor, the more likely they can’t handle the drama and conflict well. We want to hear these stories; we’ve seen it all and it’s pretty hard to surprise us at this point. So call us any time, promise!

“I’m always home. I’m uncool,” Michael answering the phone at 1am to talk through a cofounder fight.

Still, we understand that even with regular updates, some problems aren’t surfaced until a crisis. It happens.

Why You’re Tempted to Not Update Your Investors

There’s a tension for startups that involves a push to make appearance triumph over reality. Appearing cool and exciting may generate some momentum. A charitable reading would categorize this as faking it until you make it. Less generously, it’s straight-up startup douchebaggery.

Although being vulnerable can feel terrifying, if you are honest and authentic, we promise, good things will happen. At a minimum, you will deepen your relationships. And at best your tighter connection to reality will help you improve it. As Lester Bangs says in Almost Famous, “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.”

Other teams avoid updating stakeholders not because they fear what investors might think about the struggle, but mainly because it feels like a distraction or like flossing your teeth — a nice habit to have, but not directly tied to living a good life. All we can say to that is this is not like flossing your teeth at all. It’s about getting the help you need when you need it, which at critical moments, may decide the fate of a company hanging in the balance.

In case others might find it useful, we want to share below a couple of the email templates a few of our companies use for updates. The main takeaway, no matter how you structure your update, is that great updates reflect on how and what is happening — it’s a narration and a reflection on the metrics and ongoings.

Also, when you’re sharing something that’s not going well, you also want to write about what you’ve learned from the experience and how it will inform your strategy going forward (rather than just writing down what a clusterjam it was full of exclamation points and fire and poop emojis).

Reflecting makes you a more capable founder and will help you see the larger patterns beyond the day to day. In addition, it keeps your investors from feeling like they just set money on fire.

Feel free to use your own tone or style in your update. One of our companies will put a funny quote of the week from one of the founders, or include an employee of the month section to showcase other people on the team. We personally love visuals and love to learn what founders are reading or watching outside of their startup. Remember, your investors are backing you — not just your company.

We also believe that simple and straightforward trumps a super nicely designed newsletter. Make it readable on the go!

A Word of Caution

Remember not to let your metrics master you, especially while your job is to figure out what your focus is. Fake scientific rigor can distract you from making a great product or lead you down the wrong path, maximizing what you shouldn’t. It bears repeating that what gets measured isn’t always worth measuring. So one important piece for getting this right is for you to structure your updates based on your own long term goals, rather than blindly filling in an investor dashboard with misleading metrics. An email template like those below is a place to start, but make it your own.

We don’t offer dashboards for companies because we think initial key performance indicators or “KPIs” are at-best a guide, and will often change over time as the company searches for product-market fit. From the pre-seed through the Series A stage of your company, your job is to discover a repeatable, inimitable, and scalable business model. So don’t stick to old KPIs that become irrelevant or at worst lead to focusing on the wrong problem. You, not your numbers, are in control of your narrative. Did you pivot to a new product? Great, write about it. Looking at new metrics? Awesome, write it down. Have new employees on board? Show us in a picture.

Your customers and your team are your best feedback loops — use your updates to showcase what you’re learning with those feedback loops.

Here are two outlines that we’ve found to make for great updates:

Template One

[Greeting]

[Intro paragraph — often includes highlights of what you’re most excited about]

[Picture of the team] (Call us cheeseball, but we love to see your team grow and be able to put faces to names)

I. Asks/Needs

• [Intro] Introduce us to company X. We’re looking for a contact at company X.
• [Intro] Speakers for Event Y. We’re looking for people who have an expertise in ____.
• [Funding] Seed Raise. We’re beginning to close out our seed round and are looking for $X. Please introduce us to anyone who might be interested.
• [Help] We need help with….

II. Operating Overview

• Last Month:
• Hiring Plan:
• Hiring (Current):
• Engineering/Product:
• Sales:
• Press:

III. Operating Metrics (remember that a narration about what is happening here is way more interesting than just the numbers)

• Revenue (if applicable):
• Current Cash Balance:

IV. Priorities for Next Month

• Announcing the Seed Round:
• Sales:
• Engineering:

V. Fun Fact/Moment/Books Read/Podcasts Listened to (reflect on something fun — humor or interesting reads work to make your updates a treat to dig into)

[Closing]

Template Two

Hi Everyone,

As per usual, highlights for tl;dr.

Asks/Needs

• Nothing this week! We’re laser focused on finishing up the last bits of prep for the pilot.

Accomplished This Week

~ Ops ~

• Thanks to ______ we were able to get ______.
• Working with several packaging companies to develop final packaging.
• Started developing Standard Operating Procedures for sales & franchisees.

~ Product ~

• The most basic functionalities are working! All they need is a pretty UI. Some of these features include:
• Creating a new account.
• Purchasing apps.

~ Design ~

• After developing ads, we tested them. We took that initial feedback, re-tweaked the posters, and are going back out to test again tomorrow.
• Successfully designed, tested, and printed the booth banner & associated on-site signage.
• Worked on “My Account” app UI.
• Started social media campaign leading up to launch. Posts are getting love.

Shortcomings This Week

• Engineering fires prevented _____. We learned that ______. And in the future we would do ______ based on this experience.
• Signing on our first customer is taking longer than expected. We learned that ____. And in the future we would do ____ based on this experience.

Next Week

• Ops: Finalize Standard Operating Procedure and develop list of sales hypotheses to test, and get lawyers to create ____.
• Product: Finish “my Account” app and setup wizard integration.
• Design: Finish “My Account” app mockup, have posters for sandwich boards finalized and mounted, finalize copy for ads.

[Picture of the team]

Are you a young founder, hacker, or maker looking to build your future? Set up a call with us today — we offer a lot more than just venture capital investment and respond to most inquiries!