Most founder updates are too long, too fluffy, and too forgettable. If you're raising money and want to keep investors warm between meetings, your monthly update needs to create FOMO with facts. Here's how.
Keep it to one screen
At Flyer One Ventures, I get a ton of these. The ones I actually read take me ten seconds on my phone. They’re practical. I can open it anywhere, get the full picture, and move on.
A lot of founders are afraid that a short update will look like they have nothing to show. So they overcompensate by paragraphs about a new onboarding flow, a redesigned settings page, and a "vision section."
The best updates I've seen look more like this:
- Shipped AI-powered search — top client request since January
- Revenue $67k, up 35% MoM
- Retention 94%, churn down to 3%
- 2 new pilots signed, 1 converting to an annual contract (if B2B)
- 12 investor meetings this month, 2 in DD
- Hired ex-Stripe eng lead as CTO
- Team of 7, fully automated ops pipeline
Six-seven bullet points. That's the whole update, and it tells me everything I need to know.
Show you're moving fast
Investors want to feel like things are moving. Mention what you test, what you deploy, and what happened.
Bad: "We updated our CI/CD pipeline and refactored the auth module, improved loading times by 200ms, and added dark mode."
Sexy: "Shipped two features our biggest client blocked on. Onboarding time dropped from 8 mins to 2."
See the difference?
Show growth
Revenue, clients, LOIs, pipeline — anything that goes up and to the right. And if the numbers are confidential, you may use percentages or multipliers. Nobody's going to be mad at you for saying "3x" instead of the actual number.
Bad: "We've been having a lot of great conversations with potential customers, and the feedback has been very positive."
Sexy: "Closed 3 new contracts. Pipeline 2x vs last month."
Name the clients if you can. Drop specific numbers wherever possible. Remember that VCs invest in facts.
Show real investor interest
Almost every update has some version of "lots of investors are excited about us." But how many? Who exactly? Without specifics, it tells me nothing.
Bad: "We've been getting a lot of inbound interest, and several investors have told us they love what we're building."
Sexy: "14 investor meetings in May. 3 moving to DD. Conversations with Flyer One Ventures on lead."
When an investor reads that and they haven't committed yet, their brain goes, "wait, this might fill up without me."
Highlight strong hires
Early-stage teams are small, so every hire matters. If you landed someone impressive, put it in the update.
Bad: "We're growing the team and excited about our culture."
Sexy: "Hired David, ex-Palantir ML lead, as Head of Product."
It tells me you can attract talent, which is one of the hardest things to do at the earliest stages.
Lean team
If you can show that your small team of eight builds what others need forty for because you automate everything, investors love that. Their money goes further with you.
Dull: "We believe in efficiency and have implemented several productivity tools."
Sexy: "Team of 8. Fully automated customer onboarding, billing, and reporting. Zero ops hires."
That makes an investor think, "wait, eight people are doing all this?"
Kill the vanity metrics
I don't care about your X followers. I don't care that you were featured in some newsletter. Unless it directly ties to revenue or growth, leave it out.
Don't add stuff just because the update feels too short. And don't waste time on design. Nobody cares how it looks as long as it reads well.
Thin and factual is the whole point.
