Hi! I’m glad you’re here. You’ve made it to issue #85 of VC Demystified🪄.

My name’s Nicole - I’m a Principal at an early stage venture fund, and I know firsthand that VC can often be a black box. Breaking into the industry may feel daunting and resources can seem scarce and inaccessible. I wanted to put together a newsletter to give others the playbook I wish I had when I first started.

Today’s deep dive: A practical guide to writing investor updates that build trust, improve decision-making, and unlock real support from your cap table

^{My personal mission is to open as many doors as possible for other people and this newsletter is just one avenue to do that. As always, I will continue to post VC insights daily for free across my socials. This newsletter may contain paid partnerships or affiliate links.}

Read time: 6 minutes

A practical guide to writing investor updates that build trust, improve decision-making, and unlock real support from your cap table

Most founders underestimate how powerful a well-structured investor update can be.

An investor update isn’t something you send because your cap table expects it.

It’s a system for building clarity, aligning stakeholders, creating accountability, and unlocking help when you need it most. The best founders I work with send consistent, structured updates because writing them forces them to truly understand their business: the numbers, the bottlenecks, the momentum, and the tradeoffs.

Industry sources like Carta and Visible highlight the same pattern: founders who send regular, data-driven updates raise follow-on capital at higher rates and get more targeted support from their investors. Not because the update is long or impressive, but because it demonstrates operational rigor and keeps the company top of mind.

The truth is simple: investor updates don’t just inform. They compound.

Below is the full template I recommend to every early-stage founder. It’s adapted from a real investor update and reorganized into a clean, founder-friendly structure that gives investors exactly what they need with none of the noise.

Why Investor Updates Matter

1. They improve decision-making
Founders who track metrics weekly and synthesize them monthly understand their business at a deeper level.

2. They create trust and transparency
Investors don’t expect perfection. They expect honesty, clarity, and consistency.

3. They unlock targeted help
If your investors know what you need, they can step in quickly, for introductions, hiring support, customer intros, product feedback, fundraising guidance, and more.

4. They increase your odds of raising capital
Regular updates keep you top-of-mind. They also show investors that you operate with discipline, which is especially important during fundraising.

The Investor Update Template

This is the exact structure I recommend using monthly. Short, structured, and actionable.

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