When an investor passes, most of the time, their answer will be some derivative of “not now”. This means you should keep them updated, as they may want to be an investor in a later round. Here’s a template to keep those investors updated on your startup’s progress — with the hopes of having them invest later.
Update Template
Hi [Investor Name],
I hope all is well with you and family. [Personalized message]. Despite the pandemic, Acmecorp has seen some incredible growth in 2020:
- Over the last 6 months we’ve averaged 36% monthly growth and we’re approaching $300k ARR.
- We now have 12 customers with a strong pipeline for Q2 2021 (up from 6 last quarter). Here’s a recent case study from [Customer X] on how Acmecorp is changing their business [link to pdf/blog post].
- Last week our second engineer joined, to focus on customer data integrations, bringing the team to 5 full-time. [Engineer Name, link to LinkedIn] joins us from [Megacorp] and has years of experience in the field.
- Our existing investors have asked to increase their allocations, so we’re considering raising a small round next month, mostly for investors we already know well.
If you’d like a more detailed update, I’m available at [Time A], [Time B] or feel free to book a time here [Auto calendar booking link].
Look forward to chatting.
— —
[Signature with link to homepage, recent news, and other assets]
Update Structure
Personalize — Starting with the investor’s name is the bare minimum. If you can, add a little more, perhaps calling back to previous conversations you’ve had with them.
Plain Text — Keep the email simple and free of graphics, this reduces the chance of an investor’s inbox classifying your message as a mailing list promotion or spam.
Email Length — Be brief and use bullet points to emphasize the key information. Most investors won’t read your email for more than 30 seconds.
Links for More Information — Avoid large attachments which may stop the email being received and use links to PDFs on your cloud platform, or services like DocSend.
Easy Meeting Booking — Offering the investor specific times and a way to search for their own availability, maximizes the chances of a meeting being scheduled right away without a time consuming back and forth.
Frequency — Send the update out to your list every month or quarter. This allows you enough time to make adequate progress for an interesting update and you still benefit from the recency bias of being on their mind.
Sending regular updates to potential investors is one of the best ways to get your next fundraising round filled. When you hear a “not now”, use these tactics to turn the lead into a “yes”.
Thanks to Kaego Rust and Rebecca Clyde for their help with this article.
Photo by Victória Kubiaki.
Sterling Road invests in pre-seed B2B startups based in the US and Canada.
Full process here: sterlingroad.com/process.
You can reach me here: ash@sterlingroad.com
