Introducing Investor Updater
Workflow tools for startup investor relations.
Raising capital is a chaotic, confusing, and messy process. We believe it needn’t be so.
We took our first stab at bringing order and structure to fundraising when we released our Investor CRM in March of 2016— think of it as a “kanban board for raising money.” Since then, startups using the platform have raised over $110M in funding, which is encouraging :)
But we quickly realized there is a lot more “pain” and inefficiency in the process that can be improved with software. Most notably, investor reporting is an area that is ripe for disruption.
Founders often don’t know what information they should be sending to their investors. As a result, many don’t send regular updates at all, which causes friction. It also means founders aren’t fully leveraging their investors; these are owners in the company, and have a vested interest in supporting the team — but they can only do so if they know what’s going on, and how they can help.
On the other side of the coin, investors struggle because there is no standardization around the process, and the updates they do get are spread across their inbox, Google drive, Dropbox and half a dozen other sites.
Clearly, there has to be a better way.
We are taking a stab at bringing efficiencies to the process with our new Investor Updater product, which is launching on ProductHunt.com today.
This is a purpose-built workflow tool that features three movable and customizable elements: Text, Images and KPIs.
Not sure where to start? No problem — we provide several standard Text sections such as Company Summary, Financials, Ask For Help, etc. and we give you suggestions for what you should write about.
You can import pictures of your team, product, or even a screen shot of your metrics or forecast. You can also use the KPI table builder which lists a dozen of the most commonly reported key metrics (more coming soon).
Notably, we built some “accountability” into the product by tracking who has viewed the report. It answers the question: are your investors paying attention?
Finally, since we released the beta version a few months ago, we discovered users were doing a couple interesting things we hadn’t planned on:
- They are using it to send regular updates to prospective investors. In many cases, these are investors who the CEO pitched and got the response: “sounds interesting, you’re too early for me, but I’d love to keep up with your progress.” Regular updates keep these investors in the loop.
- They are using it to host their pitch decks. By simply removing the text blocks and using only image elements, users found that the tool is actually quite easy to load up with an entire pitch deck. This generates a link that can be included in an intro email.
SUM
We have an extensive roadmap ahead — there is a LOT of room for improvement in the investor updates and reporting world.
But it’s exciting to see the adoption thus far, and there’s nothing I love more than when a user says they were able to top off their seed round or elicit a response from an elusive investor after sending updates built on our platform.
Thanks for reading — I would love your comments, feedback and ideas: nathan@foundersuite.com
Nathan Beckord, CFA
CEO, Foundersuite.com
ps — if you are new to Foundersuite, you can find Investor Updater by logging in and expanding the navigation bar on the left hand side (the default view is our Investor CRM product). Email me if you need help.
