A startup digest your people will actually open
A startup digest is a short, regular update to the people who follow your company. Here is a plain template, a cadence you can keep, and what to leave out.
A startup digest is a short update you send on a regular schedule to the people who care about your company. Advisors, early customers, angels, former colleagues, the person who made one useful intro two years ago.
Most founders know they should send one. Most do not, or they send one and it goes nowhere. This post is a plain way to do it without it becoming a second job.
The scenario: 40 people, one messy month
Imagine you are a founder with a small company. You have about 40 people who would be glad to hear how things are going. This month you shipped a feature, lost a pilot, signed a small customer and hired a part-time designer.
You open a blank email. You think about attaching the deck, the metrics sheet and the roadmap doc. Then you close the tab, because it feels like too much, and a month later you have nothing to send.
The problem is rarely the writing. It is that your company lives in five places, and every update means gathering them again.
Start with one link, not an attachment
Before you write a word, decide where the current version of your company lives. One link, always up to date, that you can send to anyone.
That link does the heavy lifting. The digest email becomes a short note that points to it. Attachments go stale the day you send them. A link can be updated after the fact, and you can fix a typo without sending a correction.
This is the idea behind StartupCorners: your site becomes one clean link, built from your company website. It is free and in beta. But the habit works with any page you control. What matters is that it is current and that it is yours.
A template you can fill in 20 minutes
Keep the same shape every time. People learn where to look.
1. One sentence on the month
Write one honest line. For example: "We shipped the new onboarding, lost one pilot, and are focused on getting three customers live before the next update."
If you cannot say it in one sentence, the month was not clear to you yet. That is useful to know.
2. What moved
Three bullets at most. Things that actually changed.
- A customer went live.
- A feature shipped.
- A hire started.
Use your real numbers if you have them, and name the period they cover. Leave a number out rather than rounding it into something flattering.
3. What did not move
This is the section most founders skip, and the one readers trust most. One or two bullets on what stalled and why.
You are not confessing. You are showing that you see your own company clearly.
4. One or two specific asks
Make asks small and concrete. "Do you know anyone who runs payroll for a 20 person logistics company?" is easy to answer. "Any intros welcome" is not.
Ask for one thing at a time. Do not promise anything in return that you cannot control, and do not pressure anyone.
5. The link
End with your one link: "Everything current is here." That replaces the pile of attachments.
Cadence: pick one you can keep
Monthly works for most early teams. Weekly is too much unless you are in a sprint. Quarterly is long enough that people forget who you are.
Pick a day, put it on your calendar, and treat it like payroll. A short digest sent every month beats a perfect one sent twice a year.
If a month is quiet, send a shorter one. "Nothing dramatic, here is what we are working on" is still a signal that you are alive and paying attention.
Who should get it
Not everyone needs the same version. A rough split:
- Close circle: advisors, mentors, early backers. They get the full note, including what did not move.
- Customers and partners: they care about what shipped and what is coming. Trim the internal talk.
- Wider network: a quarterly version is enough.
Send each person only what is useful to them. A short, relevant note is read. A long one is archived.
What to leave out
- Long metric tables pasted into the email. Link to the current page instead.
- Vague optimism with no facts behind it.
- Several asks at once.
- Anything you would not want forwarded. Assume it will be.
- Fundraising pressure. A digest is a relationship, not a pitch. If fundraising is happening, say so plainly in one line, once.
Knowing whether it landed
Sending an update into silence is discouraging. You do not know if anyone opened it, or if the link you sent was the one they wanted.
If you send individual links to different people, you can see whether each one was opened, how much time was spent and which tabs were viewed. That is all it shows. It does not show where anyone is, and it does not tell you what they thought.
Treat it as a light signal. If your advisor never opens the update, maybe the ask was off, or maybe they are busy. Do not read more into it than that. A short, friendly follow-up question is a better test than a guess.
What we do not do
We do not write your update for you, and we do not send the email. You write the digest in whatever email tool you already use. We give you the page it points to and, if you choose, tracked links for individual people.
We also cannot promise that anyone replies, makes an intro or invests. A good digest keeps people informed and makes it easy for them to help when they want to. What they do next is up to them.
A short checklist
- Decide where your current company page lives, and make sure it is up to date.
- Write one sentence on the month.
- List up to three things that moved and one or two that did not.
- Add one specific ask.
- End with your link.
- Send it on the same day each month.
That is 20 minutes, once you have done it twice. The second digest is always easier, because the first one already told you what to track.
Create your link
If your company does not yet have one current page you can point everyone to, start there. Create your link for free. It is built from your company website, which is why you sign up with your work email, and it takes a few minutes. Then write your first digest and put the link at the bottom.