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Investor Updates

Investors typically expect a monthly update as part of the normal reporting cycle. The following structure is both lightweight and communicates all important points that investors need to know to be supportive.

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Make sure to establish a monthly reporting process which is adequate for the stage of your company - the earlier the lighter.

Updating investors may sound time-consuming and painful. However, having set up a suitable reporting process will be very valuable once it's set up. The two main results are: 1) Keeping your investor base active and engaged and 2) review and reflect on what has happened during the month.

Please find some helpful resources and best practices below.

Format

As there is not only one way to set up an investor reporting, there can be different formats:

  • E-Mail (written text)
  • Notion
  • Presentation
  • Ledgy

Talk with your investors about which format they prefer. Most are fairly indifferent as long as they get alerted via email when new reports become available.

You can find a template for a written update (Mail / Notion / Ledgy) here:

Template - Investor Reporting

Core Elements

  • High- and lowlights of the reporting period: How’s it going? Any major things to note? Churn, Big wins, what’s working / not working?
  • KPI dashboard
    • b2venture required KPI's (needed for our internal fund reporting)
      • Revenue
      • EBIT(DA)
      • Liquidity (cash) end of month
      • # of FTEs
    • Company specific KPIs that are tailored to your business model
      • SaaS: MRR/ARR, # of seats, ACV
      • Marketplace: GMV, avg. take rate
    • ESG related KPIs
      • Carbon footprint
      • Employee turnover, NPS
  • Plan / Outlook: What are you currently working on? Milestones?
  • Help needed: any requests
  • Attachments
    • Monthly BWA
    • KPI tracking sheet (budget vs. actuals)

When you use a equity management and reporting system such as Ledgy, it's often easy to provide a nice visual report with KPI charts without any additional overhead.