Draft Investor Update

Draft investor update

The monthly update is one of the highest-leverage things a pre-seed/seed founder writes. This skill makes the draft reliably good in 5 minutes instead of unreliably-okay in 90.

When this skill fires

• 1st of the month (scheduled via cron)
• Founder asks "@investor-relations draft this month's update"
• After a major event (new customer signed, hire made) — for a one-off update

Shape of a good update (cited from real seed founders)

1. Headline number — one number that tells the story (e.g. MRR, design partners signed, runway)
2. 3-5 KPIs with trend — actual vs last month, never just absolute
3. Wins (1-2) — be specific (customer + value + timeline)
4. Struggles (1-2) — be specific (what's blocking + what we're trying)
5. People moves (hires, departures, advisors added)
6. Asks (1-2) — concrete asks: intros, customers, hires, expertise
7. Next 30 days — top 3 priorities

The shape

1. Read context:

   • wiki/business/<slug>.md for current stage + funding
   • wiki/owner/voice.md for tone match
   • All wiki/decisions/?category=investor for what we committed to share
   • wiki/research/?kind=customer-call for the past month (wins / struggles material)
   • wiki/orgs/?entity_type=client — counts by status (paying / trialing / churned)
   • Any financial entry in wiki/finance/ for last month (burn + runway)

2. Compute metrics (don't invent — if the data isn't in the wiki, say so):

   • Active accounts / paying customers / MRR
   • WoW or MoM growth on the top metric
   • Burn + runway

3. Pick 1-2 wins: scan customer-call notes + findings for the past month, pick the most concrete + relevant

4. Pick 1-2 struggles: be honest. Investors smell BS. "Activation is at 32% — we want 50%; here's what we're trying"

5. Identify 1-2 asks: look at open commitments to investors + open hiring roles + customer-shaped needs

6. Draft in the founder's voice:

   • Numbers first, context second, asks last
   • Australian English
   • No corporate buzzwords
   • 400-600 words total (one-screen email)

7. Save the draft to wiki/research/<YYYY-MM-DD>-investor-update-draft.md with frontmatter kind:investor-update-draft, status:draft

8. Notify boss to review + send

Tone examples (matching Sarah's voice)

Hi all — quick update for May. Some good news this month: we signed our second paid design partner (Redgum Psychology, $1,500/mo) and shipped the SOAP auto-classification feature that's been the #1 ask. MRR is now $2,400.

NOT:

Dear stakeholders, I am pleased to report continued momentum across multiple business dimensions...

Anti-patterns

• Drafting from training data ("startups usually have X") instead of the wiki
• Hedging on numbers ("activation is around 30%-ish") — be specific or omit
• Five paragraphs of preamble before the actual update
• Vague asks ("any intros welcome") — concrete asks land

After the draft is sent

• Mark the draft entry as status: sent, sent_at: <date>
• Log the send as a commitment-fulfilled (you said you'd send monthly; here's May's)
• Update wiki/decisions/monthly-investor-cadence.md last_updated