Every one of the best founders I’ve worked with or invested in sends regular updates. The cadence doesn’t matter—whether it’s monthly, quarterly, or something else—they make it a habit. Of course, this doesn’t mean those who don’t send updates are bad founders. Many are doing just fine, but they often hesitate to send updates because they worry investors only want to hear good news.
But that’s not true. If you have an investor who only wants to hear from you when things are going well, that’s a red flag. You should avoid those kinds of investors at all costs.
I always encourage founders to view updates as something they do for themselves and their team. It’s a useful exercise for regularly reflecting on how the company is doing—what’s working, what isn’t, and where help is needed. The earlier you are in building your company, the more frequently you should send updates. That’s because early on, your strategy will likely evolve faster, and it’s a good way to track and manage these changes.
When you’re caught up in the daily grind, it can be hard to see the bigger picture. Investor updates bring in trusted perspectives that can help you identify blind spots. And importantly, they provide an opportunity to ask for help. As a founder, it’s easy to feel isolated or overwhelmed, but there are people out there who can help you. Even if you don’t think your investors can directly solve a problem, they likely know someone in their network who can—and many investors are happy to make introductions or provide support.
If you’re unsure what to include in your updates, don’t overcomplicate it. Here’s a simple format I recommend:
1. Reminder of what your company does.
2. Progress so far: You can break this down into highlights and lowlights.
3. Summary of key metrics.
4. Plans for the next month.
5. Team news.
6. Ask for help.
7. Appreciate past help.
That’s it! Not so complicated, right?
The key takeaway: Investor updates are for your benefit just as much as they are for your investors. Keep them regular, be honest, and don’t be afraid to ask for help. It’ll go a long way in building a strong, supportive relationship with your investors.
To give you an example, here’s an update I wrote to investors back in 2018. Of course, I polished it up before sending it out, but it almost followed this basic structure.
But that’s not true. If you have an investor who only wants to hear from you when things are going well, that’s a red flag. You should avoid those kinds of investors at all costs.
I always encourage founders to view updates as something they do for themselves and their team. It’s a useful exercise for regularly reflecting on how the company is doing—what’s working, what isn’t, and where help is needed. The earlier you are in building your company, the more frequently you should send updates. That’s because early on, your strategy will likely evolve faster, and it’s a good way to track and manage these changes.
When you’re caught up in the daily grind, it can be hard to see the bigger picture. Investor updates bring in trusted perspectives that can help you identify blind spots. And importantly, they provide an opportunity to ask for help. As a founder, it’s easy to feel isolated or overwhelmed, but there are people out there who can help you. Even if you don’t think your investors can directly solve a problem, they likely know someone in their network who can—and many investors are happy to make introductions or provide support.
If you’re unsure what to include in your updates, don’t overcomplicate it. Here’s a simple format I recommend:
1. Reminder of what your company does.
2. Progress so far: You can break this down into highlights and lowlights.
3. Summary of key metrics.
4. Plans for the next month.
5. Team news.
6. Ask for help.
7. Appreciate past help.
That’s it! Not so complicated, right?
The key takeaway: Investor updates are for your benefit just as much as they are for your investors. Keep them regular, be honest, and don’t be afraid to ask for help. It’ll go a long way in building a strong, supportive relationship with your investors.
To give you an example, here’s an update I wrote to investors back in 2018. Of course, I polished it up before sending it out, but it almost followed this basic structure.
##Product##
We began work on changing our frontend stack to web based frameworks and are making great progress on that. At our current pace, we’ll be able to meet our target of having our apps live by the end of March.
In the last month, we made major improvements to our web app and backend infrastructure, breaking up our monolith application into small services that can be called independently. This has made releasing feature updates on our web app a lot easier, the first of which will be going out by the end of the week. With over 17,000 unique visitors monthly, we consider our web app a key product channel and will be releasing/testing new features on it pending the release of our new mobile apps.
We made upgrades to our back-office software with a major focus on fraud detection. There’s still a lot to do, but we are happy with the results so far.
A major hurdle our customers have always faced is having to fund their wallets using existing payment instruments. This has also affected our active usage over time. To solve this, we began talking to Providus Bank to allow us create Wallet linked NUBAN accounts for our customers. This means every Wallet customer get a Providus account number that money gets deposited into and their wallets get funded instantly. We’re in the later stages of this integration and hope to roll it out with our app update in March. We’re positive this will increase active usage of Wallet accounts and we immediately expect to see a jump in transaction value and volume.
A key part of our growth strategy is opening up Wallet to customers outside Nigeria - especially travellers and emigrants. We’ve begun talks with partnership talks with Visa (cards) and Stripe (foreign bank account funding) to provide solutions that help us target this group. If talks continue as smoothly as they’ve gone so far, we’re positive that by the end of the first half of the year, we’ll be generating a lot more revenue.
Still on the subject of growth and new ways to generate revenue, we’ve been in talks with Luno to explore how we can integrate cryptocurrencies into our product offering. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be running a promotion in partnership with Luno that will help us gauge customer interest in crypto. Results from this promotion will determine our next move in this direction.
##Operations##
As we process more volumes, our card funding and bank transaction costs continue rise. This means we’ve seen our unit economics makes less and less sense based on our current model. To fix this, we’ve started renegotiating our existing deals with partners and begun working on new partnerships that help bring down our operating costs and open up new revenue streams.
##Team##
We let go of a couple of people last month, bringing our number down to 9. John and I are learning hiring lessons fast and are particular about ruthlessly editing our team as we grow.
##Key Metrics##
Signups: 2,074 -19.61% MoM
Transaction Value: N1,130,967,343.36 +25.28% MoM
Transaction Volume: 73,413 +26.72% MoM
Revenue: N4,269,153.54 +15.39% MoM
We continue to see a slow down in signups and consider this a correction as the hype over the government’s Trader Moni scheme dies down.
We’re pleasantly surprised by the growth in transaction volume and value as we had feared December was going to be an anomaly due to the expected spike in transactions around the festive season.
##Burn##
N4,478,882
##What do we do?##
Short Term: Wallet is building the digital bank of the future. You can download the Wallet app and open a banking account in seconds. The Wallet app can be used to send money to any bank in Nigeria, pay bills and make payments anywhere on the internet via a virtual dollar card.
Long Term: Wallet aims to be Africa’s foremost borderless digital bank, allowing people transact seamlessly across the continent using any currency of their choice. This means we want people to be able to perform localised financial transactions in any African city Wallet operates in; just like Uber does with the taxi experience.