# Great articles - [10 Hacks to Have Happier Investors | SaaStr](https://www.saastr.com/10-hacks-to-have-happier-investors/) - **Send out Monthly Investor Updates — 48 Hours After the Month Ends**. This is your best hack. The key here is not to spend a ton of time on it. You should already know your MRR, cash burn, NPS, all your key metrics almost immediately after the month ends. So send it out! List your top few key metrics (MRR, growth, cash burn, NPS, etc). Do a full bullets on What Went Well, What Didn’t, and Where We Could Use Your Help. And make sure this Monthly Investor update isn’t a huge burden. It has to pass the 20 Minute Test. A quick, month-end update shouldn’t take longer than 15-20 minutes to assemble. Save that for board meetings, quarterly updates, etc. - **Get Board Meeting Materials Out 3 Days Before the Board Meeting**. - **Have Clarity on, and Share, your Zero Cash Date**. - **Have Your Team Present More, and You Less**. All-hands meetings, board meetings, whenever. Yes, you are the CEO. But everyone hears from you all the time. Your investors and others will learn a lot more hearing about sales from your VP of Sales, your CTO co-founder … and not you. - **Regularly Ask Your Investors How Happy They Are on a Scale of 1-10**. At least, the ones you might want a second check from. You don’t have to do this every week. But learn your Investor NPS. - **Transparency is Key, But Stay Positive**. I sort of made this mistake, as do many driven founders I work with. It’s easy to be self-critical. But if your growth is OK, make sure to have as many positives and negatives. Even investors need positive reinforcement. They need the truth, but both the good and the less-than-good. - **Invest More Time In The “Heavy Lifter”.** VCs have this annoying term of “heavy lifter”, by which they mean the one investor or board member that does most of the “work”. As founders you can snicker at this, as if being an investor or board member is so much work. - **Don’t Expect Another Check from Any of Them.** This will de-stress a lot of relationships right there. - **Bring Your Investors Together.** You want them to be aligned when you need something from them. Do an “investor meeting” once a quarter even if you don’t do board meetings. It’s worth it. You need to bring all your teams together, at least once a quarter. External and internal teams. - **Most Importantly — Do Not Hide Bad News.** This is the #1 mistake I see. Communication and updates tail off during tough times. That’s backwards. Professional investors are OK losing money. Professional investors can even write off any given investment if they have to. What stresses them out are surprises. Any bad news you have, they’ve already seen before in another start-up. Share it, and share it without judgment. - [Raising Your First VC Round? 5 Tips to Managing Your VCs Afterwards | SaaStr](https://www.saastr.com/raising-your-first-vc-round-5-tips-to-managing-your-vcs-afterwards/) 1. Remember you have to prove yourself, still. (Fair or not) 2. Remember the Board meetings are as much or more about your team as they are about you. 3. Be extremely transparent and data-driven. Initially, your VCs won’t really know how transparent you are — or if you are hiding things. 4. But don’t share all your fears. Maybe 80% is enough. Highlight risks for your VCs, but even with them, don’t let them see you sweat. If they see you sweat, they’ll get scared/nervous too, and it will spiral downward. 5. Take all the VCs’ feedback, but be careful what you implement. Listen respectfully, and don’t openly disagree. But if you don’t think their advice is worth acting on, let them know later 1-on-1 why. # Monthly Investor Update - Templates - [Yet Another Monthly Investor Report Template. That Works. Super Well.](https://medium.com/kima-ventures/yet-another-monthly-investor-report-template-that-works-super-well-c194f6e77da4) - [Has anyone seen good examples of templates for startups to provide monthly email investor updates, e.g., KPI? -- SaaStr](https://www.saastr.com/anyone-seen-good-examples-templates-startups-provide-monthly-email-investor-updates-e-g-kpi/) - [#074: Investor Update Template, The Story of Roofer.com, vSaaS Benchmark Report](https://www.newsletter.lukesophinos.com/p/074-investor-update-template-the) # Running board meetings - [Sequoia - Preparing a Board Deck](https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/preparing-a-board-deck/) - [How To Run Great Board Meetings -- Kima Ventures -- Medium](https://medium.com/kima-ventures/how-to-run-your-board-meetings-30b613668b21) - [Board Deck Template for SaaS Companies](https://www.slideshare.net/serenacapital/saas-company-board-decktemplate) - [The First Three Slides of a SaaS Board Deck, with Company Key Metrics | Kellblog](https://kellblog.com/2020/05/10/the-first-three-slides-of-a-saas-board-deck-with-company-key-metrics/)