What I Learned Reading 1k Investor Reports

https://collabfund.com/blog/i-read-1-000-investor-reports-last-year-heres-what-i-learned/

by gmays • 3 years ago

333 38 3 years ago

drx• 3 years ago

Pretty good overview from the investor side. I find it's a helpful forcing function to be disciplined about retrospecting regularly – it's as much for the benefit of the investors, as you the CEO.

yodon• 3 years ago

Great template for regular update report to send to your investors

random3• 3 years ago

I've been experimenting with a few different formats. Think the best updates don't take longer than a few hours to write because they should have been in the making for the whole time. It's like "closing the books".

Need to wrap our next update. Think I'll start with this format.

synergy20• 3 years ago

Great template, will use it. Thanks!

Brajeshwar2• 3 years ago

This is awesome.

Here is another good template - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v6o_1QjEacnniHhPWWIPGuVy...

A good article on why "regular updates" - https://www.fastcompany.com/90812499/how-to-turn-investor-up...

Also, I really need robots that plant trees.

choppaface5• 3 years ago

The virtue-signaling in this article is pretty intense. It's like somebody tested all the burritos in Silicon Valley and wanted to remind founders to wrap their burritos in foil and serve them warm. I mean, I'm sure there are founders who absent-mindedly deliver burrito bowls or the occasional tacos two days late. But near the end:

Never miss a date. (bold) The rigor of this commitment will have an outsized effect on your ability to manage the business and engage your investors to help you. in his experience, founders who cc their entire investor list have proven to be more successful than those who don’t.

Translation: Please be prompt in generating high-quality reports, no matter if the news is good or bad. As an investor, I need to know as soon as possible if I'm going to need to sell for a loss, or if it's time to flip for a gain. I know what is best for my capital.

Also, whenever I tell you a story that has clear survivorship bias, I am reminding you that my favorite founders are those who listen and tell me thanks for the very constructive feedback.

Oras• 3 years ago

What is high quality in these few lines? I found it quite clear to follow, and it has value not just for investors but for founders, too. They are learning to summarize their month in a few clear lines. Isn't that the basics of communication?

choppaface5• 3 years ago

It’s about investors hiding the consequences that are not visible to founders and/or whoever does not have access to these reports. Should all founders be capable of these reports? Yeah! I bet most non-founder employees could even write them too (and in fact do in most cases).

ThisIsTheWay• 3 years ago

I quite like the inclusion of the help needed section. I work for a publicly traded company so I don't know if it has much application for our size, but for a pre-IPO company it seems like a great opportunity to leverage the skills of their smaller investor base.

I also like the transparency of sharing it with ALL investors, and would add that it needs to be shared with all employees as well. Our publicly traded company is in the midst of an acquisition and a lot of detail has been shared with our investors. The issue is that most employees are not signed up to our investor alerts or monitoring SEC filings. It has resulted in some employees remarking that they felt left in the dark by leadership because they hear about acquisition details from the press (who pay attention to IR and SEC docs) instead of their own company leaders.

choppaface5• 3 years ago

Some founders do actually share these updates with the employees! With some redactions of course. Wouldn’t want the employees to know about impending layoffs or what inspired them.

talentedcoin• 3 years ago

Why is notion the tool all the cool kids seems to like for this stuff? (Serious question)

amccloud• 3 years ago

Marketing?

mrcsno• 3 years ago

Just a guess, but I assume it's because of attractive UI/UX.

Notion templates, and general interface, guides people into presenting information in a fashion that doesn't follow the utilitarian manner and standard practices of business centric software like Microsoft Office.

Also, there's been a trend to "back to the basics" in information dissemination lately. Newsletters and static site generators have been making a comeback. In design, boutique firm architects I've spoken to have told me they've been moving away from fancy auto CAD renditions of projects to hand made watercolors and sketches. This unique approach has allowed them to bag contracts from under larger firms. In a way it mirrors the Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th century as a reaction to industrialization.

csomar• 3 years ago

You can send a text email. But that’s not “professional” enough because it’s not about the text, it’s about presenting it.

So you can make a portal (ie: website behind auth) where you investors login to view their investors dashboard and update it regularly.

But that’s a lot of work and you barely have anyone in your “tech startup” that can setup such a thing.

Notion helps here because you can add all the gadgets you want but you don’t need to setup/host/code a website yourself.

MuffinFlavored• 3 years ago

you can’t make revisions to an email

1123581321• 3 years ago

It’s a nice mixture of text editor, wiki and low code app builder.

Plus, it communicates to investors, candidates and other outsiders that “we’re smart but too busy doing the important things to optimize our docs system.”

Five years ago Notion wouldn’t have communicated that, but it’s easier to reach for now so doesn’t signal too much thought about which tool. If that makes any sense.

Brajeshwar2• 3 years ago

I really like Notion and use it for many scenario. However, I'd be very careful of not having your own format and/of the content that you should be able to walk out without much pain.

I have heard of some people who have moved bag and baggage to Notion to even replace the likes of Dropbox and Google Drive. I'd be extra careful of being so tied to something you can't switch easily or walk out to another platform/tool.

Please do keep in mind how Evernote went from a plan of a 100-year note-taking to "what went wrong with that company".

daydream• 3 years ago

Notion has pretty extensive export options and the relatively new API is another way to get your data out.

Do you have any concerns with either of these options? Genuine question - one reason I chose Notion was the ability to get my data out if I needed to.

I agree that Notion isn’t and shouldn’t be used as a replacement for Dropbox or other file sync services.

umeshunni• 3 years ago

Presumably because they are all investors in Notion.

choppaface5• 3 years ago

Because investors value their time very highly and using a single platform makes it easier for them to aggregate data and stack-rank the companies.

paradox242• 3 years ago

I would have learned that I wanted to kill myself rather than ever do that again.

yeknoda• 3 years ago

Chapter 1 of the Bureaucratic Startup.

choppaface5• 3 years ago

Investors like to see certain boxes checked. Best to get the chores out of the way so there’s time to avoid being the Bureaucratic Startup.

KerryJones• 3 years ago

Reminds me of Paul Graham saying that it was the founders he stopped hearing from (when he was running YC) that he started to worry about. The ones that stopped sharing were usually in trouble -- which is the time that has the most potential to be gained so investors can help.

iamsanteri• 3 years ago

I guess you have to keep it ultra brief in order to not contribute towards over bureaucratization of everything. If investors don’t ”help you” after half a year of sending these monthly, you might as well stop sending them? Perhaps a quarterly meeting face-to-face would be more productive then…

bangelo• 3 years ago

read early amazon shareholder reports. contain none of these. the leaders that matter talk about the product 5-8 years from the time of writing. what differentiates a CEO from a leader

mym19902• 3 years ago

Survivorship bias.

soerxpso• 3 years ago

What? That's literally the point. Why would you want to imitate startups that don't survive?

avemuri• 3 years ago

A public company is a little different

moremetadata• 3 years ago

investor reports = structured blogs = ‘asks’ for investors.

FailMore• 3 years ago

Thank you for a concise article

chiefalchemist• 3 years ago

Those founders who are so comfortable sharing their ups and downs and who desire discourse and advice across the cap table are clearly the ones who are in it to win it.

So comfortable? Maybe. A start up is about leaving your comfort zone, whether you want to or not.

Practical and smart? Absolutely. Aside from adding (experienced) voices to your talent pool, such "marketing" helps with any future needs for more money. Being less transparent and asking for more simply isn't a reasonable expectation.

As a side note, this format reminds me of the comms framework in the book "Smart Brevity."

onos• 3 years ago

My favorite lines here:

"I’ve got a 25 year operating background. Shit goes wrong all the time. I’m concerned if you don’t have any lows."

This is a helpful reminder that this is normal...

voicedYoda• 3 years ago

As a former sole founder, and engineer at start ups, i find the candidness, communication, and seeking of advice the most useful ingredients for success. Sharing the highs boats morale, sharing the lows shows humility and an interest in searching for alternatives.

thecleaner• 3 years ago

But this has no actual learning. How do you know that founders who share updates with everyone on the cap table are more successful from getting investment reports ?

What I Learned Reading 1k Investor Reports

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