NextView Ventures is a hands-on seed venture capital firm based in Boston. The team at NextView makes 10-12 investments a year so its fair to say they’ve seen their fair share of investor update email templates. David Beisel, Partner at NextView, recently put together a great seed investor update template for startup founders.
As David Beisel, partner at NextView Ventures, wrote in his investor update post, “First and foremost, investors (whether they say it or not) prefer over communication of what’s happening at the company, both the good and the bad. And a regular update with candor about what is going well and what is not signals an orientation towards transparency, which in turn engenders trust. This trust can yield benefits later on if the company faces a challenging situation in which it requires to raise more capital outside a position of strength.”
By building trust, this will only unlock further benefits down the road. When you stay top of an investor’s mind they will be more inclined to help with networking, hiring, fundraising, decision making, and more. You can check out the NextView seed stage update template below or continue reading for a deeper breakdown of the template.
The Seed Stage Investor Update Template
As David writes in his post, “In terms of form, we recommend an update email that is short and sweet. After all, the goal is to have investors actually read it!” The seed stage investor update template from NextView is similar to the other seed stage templates we have seen in the past. The template is largely broken down into the easily digestible sections below:
TL:DR;
The TL:DR; section is used to give a short and sweet overview of the entire update. This can include a sentence or two overview of the last period with a bullets highlighting key initiatives and specific areas where you need help.
Highlights
The highlights section is exactly what it sounds like; a section to showcase your team’s wins over the last period. Make sure to share goals that you achieved or other company and team initiatives that are moving your company forward.
Core Metrics
Include 3 to 5 key metrics that are related to the success of your business. Your investors should be familiar with your metrics and should know what to expect here. With each metric be sure to include a chart or visualization and a brief recap of the last period’s performance.
Challenges
Arguably the most difficult section to craft, this can also be one of the most important sections for your investors. Mentioned where you missed the mark and what your plans are for improving this moving forward. Investors know that building a startup is hard and are fully expecting challenges and road bumps along the way.
Goals
This section should lay out your major company goals over the next few weeks or months. You will want to be sure to revisit these goals in a future update.
Asks and Thanks
Use this section to call out specific people, investors and teammates, that went above and beyond over the past few weeks or months. This will not only make the person feel good but will also motivate others to help in the future.
Finances
Share the vital metrics to your companies financial health. David encourages founders to share cash in bank, runway, and burn rate. If anything unexpected happened over the past period, be sure to call it out. Bonus points if you include a financial document or link to a spreadsheet.
We hope this template is helpful. To learn more about best practices for sending regular investor updates, check out our template library here.
