After you’ve raised funds, you might forget what it takes to keep your capital providers satisfied. Your investors want to know if you managed to meet your short-term goals, how far the development of your new product feature is and how you’ve dealt with the problem you faced a while ago. They are, just as your employees are, part of your company, and so you will have to take their wishes and preferences into account too. Today, we’ll present you 4 ways to keep your capital providers happy.
Send regular updates to your shareholders
This is the most obvious one and is the basis for a good relationship with your capital providers. Keep your shareholders informed, telling them how things are going. Once a month is often enough, and you can send them an extra update in case of a noteworthy event, for example when you launched a new product. Give them a short and to-the-point overview of what happened the past period- don’t write a two-page long story (!!) and use numbers to support your points.
Share good, and bad news
It is great to share good news with your investors, to proudly present them what you have achieved the recent past. However, don’t hesitate to the share a less positive- read: bad news too. Be honest, even though they are not going to like what they will hear. And, if possible, present a solution at the same time. Hereby you show that you are not reluctant to admit something went wrong but that you’re able to cope with these setbacks too.
Tell them what it is you’re struggling with
Besides the capital your investors brought in your business, they will also bring a lot of knowledge and experience into your company. Due to their knowledge and experience gained in all those years being an entrepreneur themselves, just ask them for advice if you’re struggling with something. As they care about your business too, they will be more than happy to help you out.
Be organized for them
The life of an investor is extremely busy. They are running their own business and spend time supporting startups with high potential. Therefore, it is your task to make sure all correspondence is organized and available when your investor needs it. If you refer in an email to a document that you shared a couple of weeks ago, include that document in your email too, so investors don’t have to search their full computer to find that particular document. Keep documents, previous updates, financial figures and other information they might need at one place where they can access it easily.
One investor will be more involved than another and they probably have different preferences on how to communicate. Important to remember here, is to keep it personal. You, as an entrepreneur, are one of the reasons your investors support your business. They want to keep in contact with a person, not with a robot. Of course, you can standardize some of your communication, especially when you have many shareholders, but never forget to keep the human touch.
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