The ChatGPT & Claude investor update prompt
The writing was never the hard part; the assembly is. This prompt asks for this month’s numbers and your previous update, then drafts the seven-section format from how to write an investor update: plain text, under 400 words, with a clearly marked ask at the end.
You are drafting a monthly investor update for a startup founder. You will ask for the inputs, then produce one clean draft in a fixed seven-section format. RULES: - Use only the numbers and facts I give you. Do not invent, estimate, or "improve" any figure. - You have no access to my data and no memory of previous months. Everything you know is what I paste into this conversation. - Plain text only — no markdown headers, no bold, no emoji. The draft must paste cleanly into an email. - No hype words: nothing is "thrilled", "incredible", or "on a journey". State the facts and let them argue. - Keep the finished draft under 400 words. STEP 1: ASK ME FOR TWO THINGS (one message, then wait for my answers) 1. This month's core numbers — MRR, cash on hand, monthly net burn, and runway in months — plus two or three short bullets each on: what went well, what's hard right now, and what I need from investors. 2. My previous investor update, pasted in full, if I have one. If I don't, say that's fine and continue without it. STEP 2: WRITE THE DRAFT Produce one draft in exactly these seven sections, in this order, using these names: The headline — one sentence leading with the most important number and its direction. What changed — one or two sentences comparing this month to last. Only if I gave you a previous update or told you what changed; never guess. The metrics block — MRR, monthly burn, cash on hand, runway, each on its own line. What won — two or three sentences on the win, with its number. What's hard — two or three sentences: the number, the honest read, the plan. No softening adjectives. What we need — one specific, bounded ask, clearly marked (start the line with "The ask:"). The closing — one or two plain sentences: where the full numbers live, how to reach me. If I pasted a previous update, match its tone and phrasing habits. If I didn't, keep the voice plain and direct. STEP 3: AFTER THE DRAFT List anything you had to leave vague because I didn't give you the number — each item is something for me to fill in before sending. Do not fill the gaps yourself. Remember: you cannot pull data from anywhere, and next month you will remember none of this. I paste, you draft — that is the whole arrangement.
The prompt is written for Claude and works unchanged in ChatGPT or any capable model. It follows the two-minute template exactly, so this month’s draft comes out shaped like last month’s.
What this prompt can’t do
— No memory of last month. It can’t catch a number that contradicts what you told investors last time, and it can’t tell you whether a metric is trending better or worse.
— No voice. It imitates whatever single update you paste; it doesn’t learn how you write across months, so the imitation resets every time.
— No data pull. It cannot read Stripe, your bank, or a spreadsheet. Every number arrives because you typed it, and every number you skip comes back as a blank. If you want a zero-setup draft without the chat, the free investor update generator does one from a form.
Modeling runway instead of writing the update? The ChatGPT & Claude runway prompt builds a three-scenario model the same way.
Questions
Does this prompt work in both ChatGPT and Claude?
Yes, unchanged. Nothing in it is model-specific: it's a set of instructions and a fixed output format, and any capable model can follow it. Claude tends to hold the section structure a little more reliably, which is why it's listed first.
Will it remember last month's update?
No. Every month starts from zero, which costs you the comparisons a monthly update lives on: the prompt can't catch a number that contradicts what you told investors last time, and it can't say whether a metric is trending better or worse. It re-learns your tone each month from whatever you paste, and it asks for your previous update precisely because it has no other way to know.
Where do the numbers come from?
You paste them. The prompt has no access to Stripe, your bank, or anything else, and it’s instructed to refuse to invent figures; anything you don’t supply comes back as a blank to fill in. If you need the runway number first, the free runway calculator computes it from cash and burn in thirty seconds.