Monthly investor update
📋 Template · 🎯 Post-close → Series A · ~400 words · email-ready
Send on the 1st of the month, every month. Same five sections every time so investors learn to scan. Forwardable, BCC-able, signed-with-flaws beats polished-and-late.
The skeleton
Subject: [Company] — [Month YYYY] update TL;DR (3 lines) + [One sentence of good news — closed customer, hire, product launch] - [One sentence of what's hard — honest, specific] ? [One sentence ask — what would help right now] Numbers (same KPIs every month — never change them; if you swap one, footnote it) - [Metric 1, e.g. ARR]: [number] · [growth rate vs last month] - [Metric 2, e.g. retention]: [number] - [Metric 3, e.g. paid logos]: [number] - Cash: [USD] · Runway: [months at current burn] Shipped this month (5 bullets max) - [New customer]: [logo / industry / ARR contribution] - [Hired]: [role + name + start date] - [Product]: [what shipped, in one line] - [Partnership / GTM win]: [...] - [Recognition]: [press / award / certification] What's hard (the most-skipped, most-valuable section) [Pick one real challenge. State it specifically. State what you're doing about it. State the test you'll know-it-by-when.] Example: "We lost a 6-month healthcare pilot to a CDSCO classification we hadn't anticipated. Postmortem: validation gap pre-pilot. Putting in a regulatory fit gate at SQL stage. Test: by [next month], we'll filter out 80%+ of regulatory-misfit leads earlier in funnel." Asks (specific, not vague) 1. [Specific ask 1, e.g. "Hiring a Head of GTM with healthcare experience — anyone in your network?"] 2. [Specific ask 2, e.g. "Series A target Q4 — open to early conversations with growth-stage funds"] 3. [Specific ask 3, e.g. "Need warm intros to RBI compliance counsel"] [Sign-off — first name only, no signature block. Investors are skimming, not reading bizdev.]
The "send-it-with-flaws" rule. An update with a typo and last month's BI numbers (because the dashboard's broken) sent on the 1st is worth ten times a perfect one sent on the 17th. Cadence beats polish.
What NOT to include
- Vanity stats. "LinkedIn followers up 23%" — investors don't care. KPIs only.
- Long product paragraphs. Investors aren't your users. Bullets, not prose.
- Forward-looking promises. "We'll close $5M ARR by Q4" — share targets only after you've cleared 50%.
- Photos every month. One team photo per quarter. Otherwise: text.
- Generic asks. "Always open to intros" gives investors nothing to act on. Be specific.
Tools
A plain email to a BCC list is the most-used tool by experienced founders. Visible-but-not-interactive works fine. If you want analytics: DocSend, Pulse, or PocketFund's investor-update feature (rolling out Q3).