Startup Investor Updates (If Necessary, Use Words)

I recently had a first board meeting with a talented startup team. The deck was not overly lengthy. The meeting did not last more than 2 hours.

We spent most of the time looking at the first slide, which wasn’t even a slide, but was a real-time screen showing 20 different KPIs that the management team looks at numerous times a day. Each of the board members has a link to this screen to pull up whenever they want. These KPIs may change here and there as the months progress, but their Investor Update exists all in one graphic.

Well done.

I’ve written on how to give investor updates in the past but I am giddy with the teams in which Promus Ventures has been privileged to invest that speak almost entirely with data.

Numbers don’t lie. You can’t hide from the data. The teams that embrace that things don’t progress linearly are the teams that win. These teams are not afraid to show the number of enterprise meetings that have resulted in a no, the downturn that a product has experienced, or the increase in burn for the month with little to show for it.

Well you say, what about the company-wide outings and happy hours and weight-loss goals? The team is coming together so well! Those are good things too (mostly), but if the numbers aren’t moving up and to the right than it really doesn’t matter how physically fit the company is?

Putting all important real-time numbers on one screen accessible to all insiders dictate what everyone in every seat should be striving toward. It updates the entire startup and investors on the health (or sickness) of the business. There will be good months and bad months, but the process and adventure taking ground together is valuable. Open and detailed communication will bring a team and investors together greater than any weekly happy hour ever could.