Founders Tips #1

It’s tough being a founder. They don’t teach it in school, incubators and accelerators notwithstanding. The only sure path to being a good one is having the capacity to learn quickly on the job. You have to unlearn a lot too – you have to stop being an expert at everything and pretty good at a lot of things. Like Marketing, Sales, Product Development, Hiring, Legal, etc.

One big blind spot for founders is investor relations. It’s a skill to manage your existing investors and potential investors without distracting too much from your core mission of listening to your customers and building a great product.

Here’s one hot tip that can help manage the clutter: send an email once a week to investors and potential investors.

Using email or a service like mailchimp.com, create a great template and send out a weekly or bi weekly email to your investors detailing key wins, successes, problems, challenges. In that email outline areas where you need help, status on key milestones and specific next steps on crucial issues. If this email takes more than an hour to construct, you’re doing it wrong and you’re not in command of your business. Now take that email, excise confidential information and send it out to your potential investors for a double shot using a single investment!

This simple habit will win you a lot of favors and will count as effective ‘investor tending’. And make your life so much easier.