Guides
Investor updates, runway, and burn — without the hype.
Short, practical guides in the same style Vectig drafts in: lead with the most important number, keep it under two minutes of reading, and never bury bad news. Written for founders who send their own updates.
Write the update
The monthly update itself — format, examples, cadence, and the hard months.
- How to write an investor updateThe two-minute format investors actually read: lead with the number, seven sections, no hype. With worked examples from a real-shaped month.12 min
- The two-minute investor update templateOne template, seven sections, filled in ten minutes. Copy the structure, keep the numbers consistent, and stop redesigning your update every month.8 min
- A real-shaped investor update, annotatedA full sample update in the format investors read to the bottom, annotated line by line — plus the weak version of the same month and why it fails.7 min
- What to include in an investor updateFour metrics, three narrative sections, one ask. What belongs in every monthly update, what to cut, and the checklist to run before you send.6 min
- Monthly investor updates: the case for cadenceWhy monthly beats quarterly for most early-stage startups, the 15-minute process that makes it sustainable, and how to restart after missed months.6 min
- How to send your first investor updateWhen to send it, what makes update number one different, and a full month-one walkthrough — baselines, cadence, and who should get it.7 min
- Investor update subject lines that get openedThe subject line's only job is recognition. The pattern that works, the habits that kill opens, and twelve lines you can use this month.5 min
- Sharing bad news with investorsLead with the number anyway. How the standard update format carries a rough month, the spin words to ban, and when bad news is runway-level serious.7 min
- Investor updates at pre-seedWhat to send angels when there's no revenue to report: the metrics that still matter, the learning metric that leads, and a pre-revenue example.6 min
- Investor updates after your series AWhat changes after the A: net burn and burn multiple join the metrics block, the board deck splits off, and consistency starts to compound.6 min
Know your numbers
The numbers behind the update — runway, burn, and what they imply.
- How to calculate startup runwayCash divided by net burn — then the three ways that simple formula misleads you, the zero-cash date, and the runway number to report to investors.7 min
- Burn rate: gross vs netGross burn is what you spend; net burn is what you lose. Which one investors quote, two honest ways to measure, and how burn belongs in your update.7 min
- Burn multipleNet burn divided by net new ARR: the efficiency number growth investors quote, what counts as good, and where the metric misleads early-stage teams.5 min
- Are you default alive?Paul Graham's question every founder should answer: will current growth reach profitability before the cash runs out? How to compute it and what it changes.5 min
Choose your tools
Picking the tooling without falling for the demo.