An investor update is a short, regular email or page to the people who put money or time into your company: investors, angels and advisors. They read it in a few minutes between other things. What they want to know is simple: is the company growing, how long is the runway, what went wrong, and how can they help. The page above is a finished example for Fernhill, a made-up bookkeeping company for small agencies, with real-looking numbers. Below it, each section is explained with what to write and what to avoid.
This template follows the monthly investor update format that YC partners recommend: metrics first, then highlights, lowlights and asks. It adds one thing that keeps founders honest: last month's goals, scored. The guide to writing an investor update covers cadence, bad months and what investors skip.
What goes in each section
The headline
Two lines at the top that a busy investor can stop after. The first names the company and the month. The second gives the two numbers that matter most, usually runway and growth. Example: "Runway 18 months, MRR up 12%." Mistake to avoid: a headline that only reports good news when burn went up. If the month was bad, the headline says so.
01 · The numbers
Four stat tiles and a three-month table. Fernhill shows MRR ($84.2K, up 12%), paying customers (412), net revenue retention (118%) and net burn ($142K, up from $121K), then a table of MRR, customers, logo churn and cash for July, August and September. Below it, a short funnel shows where customers come from: 1,940 trials, 610 connected a bank account, 96 paid.
Use the same metrics every month and define them once. Mistake to avoid: switching metrics when one looks bad. Investors notice when churn disappears from the table.
02 · What happened
Two or three highlights and two or three lowlights, each with a number. Fernhill's highlight: "14 partner firms now refer clients; they brought 41% of new revenue." Its lowlight: "Tickets per customer rose 30%. Bank sync errors cause most of them." If a number moved the wrong way, add a short note on why. Here it explains that burn rose because two engineers joined to fix bank sync.
Mistake to avoid: lowlights so soft they read as highlights ("we are learning a lot about support"). Write what went wrong in plain words.
03 · Asks
Up to three requests, each specific enough that an investor can act on it in one email. "Intros to accounting firms with 10–50 staff that serve agencies or studios" gets replies. "Any intros welcome" does not. Asks are the part of the update that pays you back, so keep them near the top of the reader's attention and name the exact kind of person.
04 · Goals
Last month's goals in a table with the result and a yes or no, then next month's goals. Fernhill hit MRR ($84.2K against $82K) and missed the other two. Three goals is enough. Mistake to avoid: setting next month's goals but never scoring them. The scored table is what makes the next update believable.
How often and how long
Send it monthly, in the first week, once the books are closed. Keep it to one page: four to six metrics, three highlights and lowlights at most, three asks at most. Most founders need under an hour once the first one is done, because the structure does not change. End with the date of the next update so investors know when to expect it. For the quarterly board meeting, the board pre-read takes the same numbers further.
How to use this template
- In Obsidian: install the free myone.page plugin, run New page from template and pick Investor update. Every placeholder says what goes there.
- With AI: paste your notes and numbers into ChatGPT or Claude with the prompt from myone.page/ai, or use the Claude skill. It writes the page in this format.
- By hand: copy the Markdown of the example and replace the numbers. It is a plain note; any editor works.
Where myone.page helps
Most founders paste the update into an email. That works. If you also want one link that renders the tables and tiles, lets a co-founder fix a number in the browser, and keeps your Obsidian note as the source, share the page from the plugin: edits in the browser come back to the note, and the page is end-to-end encrypted, so the server never sees your numbers. A dedicated tool like Visible is a better fit if you need an investor CRM and to see who opened each update.