A seed fund decides once or twice a year which of its companies get a second cheque out of the reserve, and the partner arguing for yours builds that case out of the monthly investor updates you write, six or eight of them read in one sitting, in the order they arrived. You are not in the room, you do not know the meeting is happening, and you hear about it only if the answer is yes.
That is the audience the update is for. A partner defending a company upstairs can use a number with a date on it, a definition that has not moved since the last time it was quoted, and a problem the founder named before diligence found it. Adjectives do not survive the trip.
The five blocks, in this order
- Subject line: company name, month, one signal.
- The summary: cash, runway, the month's one number, the ask.
- The metrics: the same three to five numbers, each with last month's value beside it.
- The lowlights: what went wrong or went slower.
- The highlights and the asks: what shipped, what closed, what you need next.
The ordering is the part people get wrong, because the instinct is to lead with the wins and put the problem after them where it reads as a footnote. An investor who learns about a churned anchor customer on a diligence call six weeks after it happened now has two facts to write down, the churn and the delay in hearing about it. The second one is the one that goes in the memo, and it is the one that makes a partner quieter in the reserves meeting.
Cash, runway and the burn they are computed at
Cash on the last day of the month, net burn for that month, and the month the account empties at that burn. A runway figure computed on last month's actual burn and a runway figure computed on the plan are two different claims, and the update says which one it is quoting. The same goes for the hiring you have signed but not started: a runway number that ignores three accepted offers is a number your investor will recompute.
The numbers you freeze the definition of
Three to five figures, every month, in the same order, with the previous month beside each. Which figures depends on the stage. Before revenue they are usage, pipeline and burn; after the first paying customers they are revenue, growth rate, gross margin and retention.
Write the definition of each one in a document you keep, and do not edit it without saying so in the update that carries the change. Annual recurring revenue that includes a paid pilot in March and excludes it in November is two different series under one name, and the person who spots the discontinuity is reading twelve updates at once, months after you stopped thinking about it. A figure that appears for three months and then disappears reads as a number that turned.
Asks somebody can act on
An ask is answerable when the reader can finish it in one email without coming back to you with a question. That means the type of buyer named by role and company size, the hire named by seniority and location, the decision you have already framed and want a second reading of. Give the reason it is you asking: the fund's own portfolio, the partner's last two deals, a person you know they sat on a board with.
A seed lead can hold twenty companies at your stage and owe none of them a board seat, which is why the standing reporting expectation is an email and not a meeting. That fund also reports to its own limited partners on a quarterly cycle, the rhythm written into Invest Europe's professional standards, so your figures leave your update and land in a document you never see.
The list, and what each person on it is owed
A SAFE holder is not a shareholder. Y Combinator's post-money SAFE, published in 2018 and used across European pre-seed rounds since, converts at the next priced round and grants no information rights before that happens, so an angel who bought one has no contractual claim to anything in your update. In a priced round the information covenant in the subscription agreement sets out what is owed and when: management accounts within a fixed number of days of month end, annual accounts, a budget before the financial year opens. The monthly update does not discharge that covenant, and founders who assume it does find out during the next diligence.
So the list is a courtesy, which is an argument for keeping it simple. One list, blind copied, the lead and the smallest angel reading the same text. Anything you would tell one of them alone belongs in a call with that person.
The year read in one sitting
Twelve updates get read end to end exactly once, by the associate preparing the next round before the partner meets you. The first thing that read checks is whether the headline number means the same thing in November as it meant in March, and the second is whether the problems in the file were named by you or discovered by them.
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