Last week I received an exciting investor update from one of Collaborative’s portfolio companies. This got me thinking about how investor updates might correlate with a startup’s success or failure. Over the last five years, I’ve received close to a hundred of these updates in my inbox, so I took a moment to identify commonalities.
These observations aren’t 100% scientific given they’re based solely on my inbox, but the results are striking:
- If an entrepreneur puts her investors in the “To” field of the email, she is 50% more likely to succeed than if she bccs (or blind copies) the investors.
- If she includes the word “challenges” or is transparent about obstacles, she is 70% more likely to succeed than if she were to only include positive news.
- When a company has 12 or fewer initial investors, its likelihood of success almost doubles.
- And finally, if the entrepreneur’s name includes 3 or more vowels, she is likely to raise 400% more funding.
Just kidding on the last one.
But in all seriousness, transparency with funding, openness around obstacles, and intimacy with investors create major upswings in a company’s growth and favorable outcome.
Illustration by Sebastien Park.
