Most founders miss the #1 way to get more value from investors. Founders typically focus on investors as sources of capital, but this overlooks the significant value investor can provide post-investment.

From my experience, early-stage startups tend to under communicate with investors.

This likely happens due to 1) a lack of awareness (”I never thought to ask my investors for things other than money!) and 2) the (false) perception of busywork (“writing investor updates takes forever and isn’t the best use of my time!”). In reality, learning how to systematize investor engagement creates a huge advantage for smart founders. It’s no surprise that the most proactive, communicative founders in my portfolio also have the best performing companies.

Founders generally have three categories of investors:

Naturally there are some investors you will communicate with more frequently (and surprise, small check investors can be more involved/valuable than larger check investors).

Think of investor communications as a chance to inform, but also to put out the "bat signal" — and ask for support. The bigger your network, and the more you know about it, the better your results will be.

This is the reason why many founders love to have numerous angel investors: they angel often can bring technical expertise, operating experience and their own robust networks to the table. It’s also why I have observed the trend of founders of opening a more public version of investor updates to supporter networks, and even investors who initially passed.

It doesn’t really matter whether you use a fancy platform, or regular old email to keep investor apprised. The fact that you do it at all tends to separate one startup from another. The best advice I have for updates is to keep it simple and metrics focused:

There are many templates and examples of investor updates on the web, but the best template is the one that you will send. As long as you are including a few key things, investors will be happy. Offering up too much information is unnecessary.

Metrics-wise, most investors want to see:

Here is a great example investor update from Emergence Capital. Here’s another.

Most startups don’t need anything more than this.

That said, one of portfolio companies, Levels Health, takes investor updates to a new level. CEO Sam Corcos is well know for his operational acumen and the updates reflect this. Levels also keeps a public archive of all their investor updates. I would say my favorite aspect of Level’s updates are not the depth of detail, but the consistency (I also love the Loom overview).

You can view Levels’ investor updates here:

Here is a great MorningBrew podcast with Sam on investor updates:

Your investors are ready to help, but the process must be as low friction as possible.

Consider three different approaches to asking for a customer introductions:

Forwardable emails are gold. The practice greatly reduces friction for investors/supporters and allows you to control the message. For details on how to properly use forwardable emails, check out these resources:

There are lots of platforms out there to send investors updates, but as I said before, the best tool is the one you will actually use. Examples:

Sometimes, a little motivation goes a long way:

Effective investor updates are an art form. They should be concise, clear, and action-oriented. Include forwardable requests — specific, easy-to-act-on items that investors can share within their networks. This approach turns your updates into a powerful tool for networking and resource mobilization.

→ An overview of Cabal, plus general best practices on activating investors to help:

Daniel Gross’ Original Investor Update Post (via WayBack Machine)