An investor update carries a number and a request in the same breath, and it goes to a list of people, not one reader deciding alone.
Investor update — May
Revenue, runway and the two metrics we said we would report every month, with last month beside them.
Introductions to two payments partners, and a referral for a head of sales with marketplace experience.
An investor update has to make its case before a scroll, because most of the people it reaches will give it well under a minute. The ask has to survive that skim without getting lost in the surrounding paragraph, since that is what costs a reply a plainer layout would have kept. This goes out to several people at once, so what each of them individually did with it matters as much as what the update said.
The ask, set apart from the rest of the update
What is being asked for this round — an introduction, a signature, a number confirmed — sits apart from the surrounding paragraph, so it survives a skim that skips everything else.
One line per investor, not one figure for the group
An update sent to a distribution list is resolved investor by investor, by email where you have gated it, instead of reported as one number for the whole round.
Who opened it this time, out of the whole list
Each investor's open is logged with a timestamp, so you can tell at a glance which one has not opened it at all.
An example — not your document. Sections are the document’s own headings.
Most of their attention went to “Numbers” — 2m 10s of 4m 00s. They came back to “Numbers”.
Time each section spent on screen, counted only while the tab was in front and the reader was active. It shows what was in front of them, not what they read.
This page is about what a investor update has to do. For the blocks the editor is built from — see the editor.
Yes — share one link or send individual invitations, and the reader list resolves each person separately, by email where you have gated it.
No — a reply in an inbox, a transfer, a yes on a call: none of that is visible here. What is visible is who opened the update, and how long the heading carrying the ask kept them on the page.
Yes — narrow the view to one person, and every figure on the page, including whatever held them longest, describes only that person.