How To Write Impactful Investor Updates
Updated by Xtensio
Investor reports share key qualitative and quantitative data with your financial investors, including important information about recent wins, the state of finances and other relevant insights. These reports are meant to give investors a high-level view of what’s going on in your business over time. Use this step-by-step guide to create your investor updates reports, easily.
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Your guide to creating powering investor updates reports
It’s important to maintain a healthy relationship with investors and key stakeholders by providing regular portfolio updates. You need to build relationships so you can build trust, transparency, and long-lasting partnerships with your investors. Investor reports highlight important information about recent wins, the state of finances and other relevant insights, and are meant to give investors a high-level view of what’s going on in your business over time. These reports will help you maintain a healthy relationship with investors and key partners. Here’s how:
- Provide investors with an ongoing glimpse of your company’s performance over key metrics.
- Build trust with VC firms and angel investors by making it easy for them to make decisions about actions they might take with their portfolio.
- Increase your chances of receiving help, time and introductions from investors.
Your investor updates report should take only a few minutes a month and will create an everlasting impact on your business and future endeavors. Xtensio’s free monthly investor updates report template makes it easy to keep track of productivity, roadblocks and deadlines. Check out our product tour to learn more about Xtensio.
1. Create your investor updates report header and highlight monthly achievements
Introduce your investor updates report by adding your company name, the project name and the name of who prepared the report. You will also want to add the date so it’s easy to go back and reference these reports for your investors, partners and stakeholders. You can also update the logo, the folio color scheme and background to match your company branding.
QUICK TIP: Once you set up your header section and update the color scheme and background to match your brand, you can save a custom template to easily repurpose for your ongoing investor reports.
2. Give a high-level overview of business initatives and metrics your investors care about
Highlight key stats – number of employees and locations, monthly/annual revenue growth, or other important stats your investors would want to know about. Some factors to think of when using the stoplight report:
- Monthly growth — Highlight key growth info from the start so investors get a clear overview. What major sales did your team make this month?
- Product development — Did you introduce new products or services this month? Showcase what your team accomplished in terms of launching new product features and/or services.
- Marketing initiatives — Here’s your chance to show stakeholders what you’ve done to attract new customers. Did you start a monthly webinar series, launch a new workshop or campaign?
- Company wins & losses — Give an overview of any awards, accomplishments or major lists you were included in this month. Were you ranked on the top place to work? Do you have high customer satisfaction?
3. Detail your financials and KPIs
Highlight important KPIs to show your company’s growth (or identify where you need improvement). Are you reaching your monthly recurring revenue goals? How long will it take you to reach the next growth milestone?
Use charts and graphs to highlight key financial data.
- Revenue — Being able to generate revenue is essential to a business. How much did you grow this month? How many new customers did you bring in? What’s your monthly profit margin? However you determine to measure revenue should be kept consistent from month to month. For example, don’t share bookings one month and revenue the next.
- Cash & burn — Cash is king and investors expect to see some insight into how their capital is being managed and used in your organization. Use a line chart to highlight your funding revenue month over month. And pie charts will help detail your cash flow and expenses.
- Margins — Generating solid margins is a must for any successful business. While this is more important during fundraising, sharing your margins will help investors evaluate your COGS and acquisition costs.
4. Ask your investors for help
Arguably, this is the most important part of the investor report – especially for your company. Highlight 1-3 ways the investor can help you get to your next milestones or exit more swiftly. Are you looking for introductions to important connections? Or maybe you’re looking for capital to reach a specific milestone this month:
- Introduction to a digital marketing agency
- An in-house graphic designer (new hire)
- Funding for new product development
5. Showcase new hires, important projects and give credit to key players
Put a face to your company by introducing key hires you made this month. Add a photo, their name and title. What is their background? How did they come to start or join this company? What are they responsible for?
Did you start (or complete) any major projects this month? Describe what you achieved in each project and how it highlights your growth goals.
Lastly, give credit to employees, partners, clients and investors. Tell them how much their support and dedication has helped your company reach this month’s growth goals. Questions? Comments? Concerns?
Share your investor updates report as a link, monitor, evaluate & iterate
Remember, these are just guidelines for what information goes into your investor updates report. You’ll want to focus your monthly report on what matters the most to your investors, stakeholder and partners.
When you’ve finished creating your investor updates status report with Xtensio’s editor, you can send the live link to your folio to share it as a responsive webpage (and add password protection), export a PDF or present it as a slideshow during an investor meeting. The monthly investor updates report is adaptable just like other Xtensio tools, it can and should be repurposed, revisited, and revised regularly.
