Foundersuite
p/foundersuite
Modern software for raising capital - over $17B raised
Nick Haase
Investor Updater — Simple, beautiful workflow tools for investor updates
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Investor Updater is a tool to build monthly or quarterly progress reports to send to investors. Use it to build relationships with prospective investors, and to leverage and activate your existing investors. Research shows that founders who send regular updates have a 200% greater chance of raising your next round. Investor Updater makes you a pro.

Replies
Adam Lieb
Looks great! I think I was one of the first few alpha? users of FoundSuite. I've tried something LIKE this before for investor updates and has one major problem. Investors (by-and-large) don't want to be on-boarded to some new platform just to receive an update. They want to get the information as fast as possible with the least amount of overhead. Your layout + structure is compelling. It looks like it would have me a bunch of time and let me present something beautiful + consistent. Big Q for you. Are you planning any export or email functionality? I can obviously take a screenshot of the report now, but I'd call that less than ideal. Anything that requires my investors to leave their email is a dealbreaker for me. Would love your thoughts! Great work on continuing to innovate in this space. @sailornathan
nathan beckord
@adamslieb Hi Adam, yes I remember you from waaaay back! Hello again! :) So, to your first point, investors do not need to create an account or on-board to receive the founder's update. The investor simply receives a custom URL to click (though if he/she wants, the founder can "make it private" and require the investor to enter an email address).
nathan beckord
@adamslieb Having said that, we are creating a (separate) structure for investors to be able to cluster all their companies and all the updates in one central hub.
nathan beckord
@adamslieb Regarding your second question about exporting...if we can get away with NOT having export (for example to a PDF), we feel that's better for all parties involved. Part of our vision is that the end-to-end process will be hosted online and the report is "dynamic" and can be controlled, edited or updated by the founder, vs. a PDF or slide deck that is out of your control once you attach it and hit send. Keeping it online also enables future features like an investor-to-founder Q&A and investor leaderboard and other interactive features. But realistically, we may need to add export simply because some people want it (just like some people still like to print and file copes of their bills, for example :)
Adam Lieb
@sailornathan makes sense. I agree completely and would prefer everything to be on web. I just struggle to get people to click links and 'check new things out' that are outside their typical flow. Not just an investor problem, sort of an internet user problem. Either way very cool, I definitely want to check it out.
Spencer Fry
Cool tool. Back in May I wrote an article on how to write a perfect investor update: http://www.spencerfry.com/how-to...
nathan beckord
@spencerfry Good article! I like your process -- it's actionable -- and you get into some of the more nuanced "whys" of doing regular investor updates such as time for reflection (so rare in startup land) and team morale. Thanks for sharing! :)
Spencer Fry
@sailornathan Thanks, Nathan! It's all about the whys... :)
Mike Preuss
Glad to see more players in the space & tackling the problem!
nathan beckord
@mikepreuss Likewise, Mike! :)
Andy Cook
Congrats on the launch. Big fan of FounderSuite's products. We used the Investor CRM to help us stay organized while raising almost $1M for Tettra.co. What really sold me was the AngelList integration. Made it super easy to add new investors to the pipeline with a quick search. Is there a sample investor update we can check out to see this product in action before signing up? Also, how did you come up with the template structure for the updates? I've seen quite a few different suggested structure so would love to hear the story about how you chose your sections to include the in the product.
nathan beckord
@andygcook Hey Andy! Congrats on the successful seed round-- super exciting. Here is a sample investor update: https://foundersuite.com/reports... This was made before we released the KPI builder feature (just last week), so it doesn't include that.
nathan beckord
@andygcook As for how we chose the template structure, it was a balancing act between including all the various report options vs. keeping it simple and clean. We tended toward the latter. In short, we read a ton of blogs, articles, etc on the subject and consulted with several VCs and angels on what they wanted to see in an update, and then put together the "minimal viable report" -- but with the flexibility to customize it around your own needs.
Nicolai Wadstrom
Really like this idea, would like to get our portfolio companies to use something like this. Can you tell me how I would use it as an investor?
nathan beckord
@nicolaiwadstrom Hi Nicolai, a couple ways: i) you can be a "member" of each of your portfolio companies' Investor Boards, which allows you to add investor leads, tag yourself as connector, and in general help them work on their round; you can also toggle between your portfolio companies; and, ii) we have an alpha of an "Investor Dashboard" that will let you track all your companies in one place, see their funding status, and request progress updates.
nathan beckord
@nicolaiwadstrom That's what we have at present for investors, but we have a pretty robust game plan to improve the lives of both founders and investors. What would be on your "wish list?" :)
Edward Marks
Looks great! Congrats on the progress!
Tom Frazier
Can you share some of the reports that you've included?
nathan beckord
@tomfrazier Hi Tom! So, the reports are comprised of customizable "elements" that can be dragged-and-dropped into the template builder. The standardized Text elements include: Company Summary, Financial Summary, Challenges, How You Can Help, Shout Outs and Thank Yous, Other / Optional (product releases, marketing highlights, key hires, etc). Each text element by default comes with examples of what to write. There's also a KPI table builder and the ability to add images and attachments.
David Rodríguez
Hey man! That's really useful. @sailornathan What is the final output? We'll get a PDF? Url? Btw, you said that by default we can see templates for each piece, but once edited we can save for future revisions, right?
nathan beckord
@davidrodriguezc The final output is a unique URL that you as the founder can send to your investors. Right now there's not an option to export to PDF (and we have reasons for wanting to keep the report hosted entirely online-- namely, so the report is "dynamic" and can be controlled, edited or updated by the founder, vs. a PDF or slide deck that is out of your control once you attach it and hit send).
nathan beckord
@davidrodriguezc Oh, and to your other question-- yes, you can create and save templates for future revisions. For example, some of our users have a template for "Current Investors" (folks who have already put in $) and "Prospective Investors" (folks you're still trying to build a relationship with). The former is usually more detailed and has more sensitive info.
Chris D
Does it track views, as in, can I confirm who has read it?
nathan beckord
@chrisgeniusly Hi Chris, yes there is the option to "mark report as private" and require the recipient to enter their email to view it. This is how we currently track who has read it.
Kevin Siskar
This is fantastic! Founder to investor communication is often under-rated, but time and time again I see it as one of the most effective ways to get the great help and support most startups need! Anything that makes that easier is a big win! Nice work @sailornathan
Dan Driscoll
Really love this product, Nathan and his team are fantastic and this saves so much headache for founders
nathan beckord
@dbdriscoll Dan, blushing :) Thanks for the kind words, always nice to hear.
Derek Andersen
Great product and team. Well done on the release guys.
nathan beckord
@derekjandersen Thanks Derek! Your feedback has always been awesome and super useful!
ronsheridan
I've often envisioned the need for this product. I recently spoke to an IR manager who was in complete agreement of the need for startups to use this kind of tool. I have a FounderSuite account and will be trying it out. hope it's not too expensive to use :)
nathan beckord
@ronsheridan Hey Ron, thanks for the kind words. I would love to hear your feedback after you try it out (keep in mind this is basically V 1.0). It's definitely not too expensive, in fact it's FREE to create unlimited update reports and templates. Only certain features, like view tracking, are on the paid plan.
Mike Suprovici
This looks like an awesome addition to FounderSuite @sailornathan! Do investors need to create a Foundersuite account to access the update link?
nathan beckord
@msuprovici Hi Mike, no sir-- investors do not need to create an account to access the update. However, some founders may require the investor to enter their email to be able to view their report (this is at the option of the founder). Having said that, we are working on some tools for investors to better track their portfolios (pay attention, @ak_launchleader :) which will require account creation. But we can save that for a future Product Hunt post :)
Arlo Gilbert
Similar to AngelSpan
nathan beckord
@arlogilbert Hi Arlo, I haven't used that product; care to elaborate?
Steve Bennet
I sure as hell hope all of my portfolio company CEOs start using this tool. With dozens of active angel investments, it is really hard to keep up with updates. Being able to access the latest info at my convenience would be great. It's also got to make life easier for founders to not have to respond to a bunch of pesky emails from investors. (Full disclosure: I'm an investor in FounderSuite and know Nathan will be using the investor updated religiously).
nathan beckord
@professorvc Hi Steve! Yes, exactly. That's the plan. And stay tuned...we will be announcing a product to help you keep on top of multiple portfolio companies simultaneously.
john frankel
It's is crazy how difficult it is to see investor updated in one place. Just not possible without FounderSuite. Well done @Nathan in bringing your vision to fruition.
Max Pelzner
This is very comparable to https://visible.vc/ 💸
nathan beckord
@whoismaxpelzner Hi Max, I have not directly used Visible myself, but I think the goals are similar-- to improve and streamline founder and stakeholder communications. It's an area with plenty of room for improvement (and multiple players, of course! :)
nathan beckord
Big thanks to @nickatloot for hunting us! Investor Updater helps founders create beautiful progress reports to send to investors. The idea came from our users. We launched our first product, Investor CRM back in March, and since then, 2k+ startups have used it to improve their fundraising workflow. For these users, either: i) they raised money and thus needed to start reporting progress to their new VC overlords, or: ii) they were told “too early, but keep in touch” and they needed to start sending periodic updates. Diving in, we found that the investor updates / reporting / relations space was a really inefficient and broken corner of the startup landscape. Founders didn’t know what info to send, and investors were dealing with info spread across their inbox, Google drive, Dropbox and half a dozen other sites in half a dozen formats. It was (and is) a mess. With Investor Updater, we are taking a shot across the bow to clean it up, standardize the process, and make life easier for all parties involved. That’s our mission — to improve startup-to-investor relations. Happy to answer any questions, and I would love your feedback, ideas, suggestions. Thanks guys! Nathan ps for those of you who would like a longer overview, I posted more about our story on Medium: https://medium.com/@foundersuite... pps: if you login as a first-time Foundersuite user, the default view is our Investor CRM product. To get to the Investor Updater, click the navigation bar on the left side. :)
Ashok Kamal
As a founder, I find this useful to organize my thoughts and process. As an angel running a group with a large portfolio, I love the idea of streamlining and normalizing our updates from companies. Investor updates are one of the overlooked but critical tasks running a startup. This reduces friction for both sides, freeing up time for getting back to building the company. Nice work!
nathan beckord
@ak_launchleader Thanks Ashok, preaching to the choir here :) I can foresee a day when updates are totally "normalized" (and maybe semi-automated) and folks will wonder how people ever did them back in the olden days...