Investing in Investor Relations

One of the most common questions I get from founders and CEOs is how much time to invest in investor relations. Now, they don't always say it that way, but the question is like, hey, how much time should I spend with my current investors keeping them in the loop, making sure they understand what we're trying to do with the business? And honestly, I think for most companies it is a really personal decision. Your time as the CEO and founder is really valuable. And it's a question, how much of that time do you want to dedicate and allocate to keeping your investors in the loop? Now, one way to think about this is the gains to keeping your investors in the loop. And doing that before you need their help on a bridge or extension, or talk to them about a pivot or something difficult, it's always better to have that relationship in place before you need it. But truthfully, for most of you, it's really a decision in terms of how much of your own time you want to spend on that versus time spent on product, team, recruiting, or other really valuable uses of your time. Now, one thing I will just say off top is that if you've got side letters that obligate you to provide regular financial or business reporting to your investors, or you've got a board of directors, you have less discretion and you should really honor those commitments that you've made. But for many of you, that's actually not. That's not the situation. You have quite a bit of choice. And so what I would say is it's worthwhile to think about how much of your time you want to spend keeping your existing and even potentially prospective investors in the loop about how your company's doing. I'd argue that a good monthly or quarterly written report that gives investors some sense of what's top of mind for you, how the business is doing, your cash, health, burn rate, Runway, et cetera, is sufficient. Some investors will want more, but that doesn't mean you necessarily have to entertain their desire to spend more time with you. But a really well written report delivered once or twice a quarter can go a long way to making people feel connected and informed about how your company's doing. What I would also say is if you're a founder who's got several institutional investors involved in your company, all of whom expect to get an hour of one on one time with you once a month or several times for a quarter, think about bundling all those conversations into a single meeting where you have all of your institutional or major investors on a single call. Where they can all both hear from you at once and hear from each other. I'd say the advantage of doing it this way is that you have less scheduling and overhead, and all the investors get the benefit of hearing what their peers think about the company. So the one thing I will say is the path to broken relationships is one where you as the founder, are not cognizant or aware of the expectations that your investors have about how they want to hear from you. So I would say choose wisely when you decide how much of your own time and energy you want to spend in keeping your investors up to speed.