Do’s and don’ts of startup investor reporting

It’s easier if you start out the right way from the beginning but we can all improve our reports

At the beginning of your startup journey, when it’s just the two of you and you’re working in each other’s inbox all day, its rare to see much rigour in reporting (or even much reporting at all) because you both already know everything about what’s going on and aren’t really sure of what your goals might be.

But in the process of raising investment for your startup, you’ve almost certainly done some goal-setting, to give investors a sense for how much progress you can make with the capital they’ve lent you to get there.

Once those investors are SAFE note holders or shareholders, you now have loosely-engaged stakeholders who aren’t in the loop on every decision you make, every plan that changes, and the setbacks you face along the way. But because they’re expecting you to make progress towards the goals in your investor pitch, they will start to get increasingly anxious if they don’t hear back from you about your progress on a regular basis.

The easiest way to raise your next round is to raise it from the people who invested in your previous round but anxious, excluded investors are unlikely to do that. So if you want to make the next round easier to raise, you need to keep your current investors up to date.

What should be in my reports?

Title: startup name, reporting period (e.g. Aug 2025)

Subtitle: very brief reminder of what the startup does.

This helps investors retain and polish their own brief pitch about your startup. Minimise buzzwords, use plain language, focus on the outcome for the customer.

Always include the URL for your main landing page (you’d be surprised how often investors need a reminder of how to find your product or service, and again, you want them to be able to tell their friends).

Metrics

Metrics don’t have to be financial but they must be measurable and specific. Footnote an explanation of metric labels if you’re using abbreviations (e.g. CAC or LTV).

Show the previous 2–3 reporting period’s metric as well, to give more context to the current period’s metric.

Forecast the next reporting period’s metric and consider that a goal to aim for.

When you’ve failed to hit a forecast goal, explain why you think that was, and explain what you’ll change, either in the way by which you’ll achieve change in that metric, or in the way you’re forecasting future metrics.

The Good, Bad and Ugly

Good: things that happened that you’re proud of, positively surprised by, excited about. Where they relate to something measurable, frame them with numbers, but don’t limit yourself to numbers, cover new partnership discussions, candidates offered roles, office moves and photos of office pets. Don’t be afraid to make some of these about the people in the team and their lives (investors aren’t robots, they will bond with people they gradually get to know and will care more about trying to help). Talk about what you’re going to do next to create more goodness because of what you’ve learned.

Bad: things that you tried that didn’t work out, unexpected setbacks and delays, competitive threats. Things that you have the resources to address. Explain what happened, but more importantly, outline the steps you’re taking to address them. Convey realism without giving the impression that things are out of control.

Ugly: unexpected or serious issues that you don’t yet have the resources to address or have no control over. Highlight those with potentially serious consequences. Why share these with investors? Because bad news received early is better than bad news received with too little notice to try to help. Think: regulatory challenges, significant delays in product development, key team losses, or cash flow issues. Include your plan on how to respond, even if it’s just to say more time is needed to find a solution.

Keep it concise

A one page report is usually enough. Aim for a high-level summary of each point, with data backing the Good and clear action plans in the Bad and Ugly. Bullet points can work, but if your investors prefer narrative-style updates, keep paragraphs short and focused. It’s OK to ask your lead investors what they prefer.

Regular cadence

Decide on a consistent schedule for delivering GBU reports – monthly or quarterly works well, depending on your investors’ expectations. The regularity will help your investors feel consistently informed and avoid nasty surprises down the road.

Have an ask

At the end of the report, ask for any feedback or assistance you might need. For instance, if you’re seeking intros, additional funding, or strategic advice, this is the perfect place to ask for it. The more specific the ask, the more likely an investor is to act on it – “we need intros to large hospitals” is much less likely to get a response than “we need an intro to someone who might know someone who manages the surgical registrar WhatsApp group at Royal North Shore Hospital”.

What do I create it in?

Images (like graphs and diagrams) are often great for high-level comprehension but can sometimes be misunderstood and can be expensive/time-consuming to do well. Unless you’re a video startup, don’t send out a video update (they’re harder to skim, take longer to produce, and generally seem to get a lower open rate from investors I speak to). Narrative (typed words) is still king in startup reporting.

Google Docs and Notion seem to be the leaders at the moment. Docs encourages simpler formatting, exports clean, small PDFs, and is a distraction-free interface. Notion’s ‘roll-up/roll-down’ interface lets you present a high-level summary that investors can click down into if they wish. Both platforms make it easy for you to collaborate with your team members if your reporting requires input from the team, and both allow investors to comment inline (but watch out for that because other investors will be able to see those comments too).

What do I send/store reports in?

In a perfect world you’d be able to copy your report out of your editing tool, paste it into the body of an email and send it to a circulation list of your investors without any trouble, but we don’t live in a perfect world and there often seems to be one important investor whose email client munges the formatting of the report every time.

I recommend saving your report as a PDF and attaching it to the email, so that if someone has trouble reading the report in the body of the email, they will still be able to read the PDF attachment.

Notion no longer lets you export as PDF and if you copy your report out of Notion into Word or Docs you’ll need to spend too much time reformatting it back into something clean. So if you go with Notion, accept that you’ll have to send investors a lengthy Notion link to your latest report and you’ll have to make sure each of them has access to that page in Notion without seeing everything else you keep there for internal use.

Where do I save them?

It’s quite likely you setup a ‘deal room’ on GDrive, Box or similar as part of your capital-raising process, so save yourselves some time and just keep saving each report to a new Investor Reports folder in your deal room. You’ll need a copy of them there when you set out to raise again. But here’s a critical tip: don’t forget to remove deal room access from investors you granted access to back when you were raising, if they decided not to invest. Otherwise you’ll have a bunch of strangers able to follow your progress from the inside.

How often should I send a report?

The earlier the startup, the faster things change, and the more helpful investors are likely to be. I suggest reporting weekly while you’re in an accelerator program, fortnightly during capital raises, monthly when you’re post-pre-seed, and quarterly when you’re post-Series A, but again, don’t be afraid to ask your mentors, board members or lead investors what they recommend.

Who should receive my report?

Current investors, obviously. But also consider making it (or a less detailed version) available to investors who you want to court in future rounds.

How do I find the time?

Reporting to investors needn’t be hard or time consuming, but because it sits firmly in the quadrant of important-but-not-urgent tasks, it’s often hard to get done on a timely basis. A regular schedule of imperfect reports is better than an irregular schedule of perfect reports because regular reports build trust with investors who you need to back you in the next round.

I’m writing this post in what I call Content Hour – a weekly, no-excuses speed run through a first draft of a new piece of content. I jump on a video call with a founder or founders, we spend a minute quickly checking in and outlining what we’re going to write about, and then we all go on mute and get writing as fast as we can. The goal is not to be perfect, it’s to get from ‘blank page’ to ‘first draft’ in a short period of time and hold each other accountable for getting it done.

You could use that Content Hour approach if you’re having trouble sticking to a reporting schedule.

Got different ideas? Suggestions? Questions? Lived experience? I’d love you to leave them in the comments below. Thanks!