Module 5 — After and Around the Raise · Lesson 5.1
The Board and Investor Relations After the Close
Reporting that builds the next round, and a board that earns its seats
What you'll learn
- List the information rights a priced round typically grants and their deadlines
- Write a regular investor update with a consistent structure and honest numbers
- Ask investors for specific help in the areas they report providing it
- Run board meetings around decisions rather than status
The next round starts the day this one closes. The investors you just signed will be asked by the next lead what they think of the team, and the answer will rest on how they were treated in between: whether they heard from you regularly, whether the news was honest when it was bad, and whether you asked for help in ways they could give it. Investor relations is not a courtesy. It is the pipeline for the next raise, already half-built.
What you owe: the information rights
A priced round puts the obligations in writing. The NVCA model Investors' Rights Agreement, updated October 2025, gives Major Investors — holders above a negotiated threshold — information rights. In the model form, the company delivers annual financial statements within 180 days after the fiscal year ends; within 45 days after each quarter, unaudited statements of income and cash flows, a balance sheet, and a statement of the shares and convertible securities outstanding; optionally, monthly unaudited statements within 30 days; and an annual budget and business plan, prepared before the year it covers. At a Major Investor's reasonable request, the model contemplates delivering this through a portfolio management platform.
Treat those deadlines as the floor, and the monthly option as the norm if you can sustain it. Build the reporting from the same metric dictionary you used to raise (Lesson 3.2), so the numbers investors saw before they invested are the numbers they see afterwards.
Writing the update
A regular update — monthly at early stages, at least quarterly later — does more for the relationship than any meeting. A structure that stays the same each time makes it fast to write and fast to read. Kavanah's suggested shape, not a standard: the headline in one sentence; the key metrics against last period and plan; what went well; what went badly and what you are doing about it; cash and runway; and specific asks.
Two rules matter more than the format. Report bad news early and plainly, with the plan; investors who learn of a problem from the update can help, and investors who learn of it from someone else stop trusting the update. And keep the numbers defined the same way every time; a metric quietly redefined between updates reads as concealment, even when it was not.
Investors are not all the same audience. Major Investors have contractual rights; smaller angels and SAFE holders usually do not, but they are often the people who introduce the next round's investors. Send the update to all of them.
Ask for the help investors give
The 2016 survey of venture capitalists by Gompers and co-authors asked what they do for their companies after investing. Strategic guidance came first, cited by 87 percent, followed by connecting the company with other investors (72 percent), connecting customers (69 percent), operational guidance (65 percent), helping hire board members (58 percent) and helping hire employees (46 percent). Asked what generates their returns, most rated post-investment value-added as important, though fewer called it the most important factor than deal selection.
The list is a guide to what to ask for. 'Let me know if you can help' produces nothing. 'We are hiring a head of sales in Chicago and want two introductions to people who have built enterprise teams in healthcare' produces introductions. Put one or two specific asks in every update, and say thank you, by name, when someone delivers.
A board that decides
The model Voting Agreement — updated in June 2026 — fixes how the board is elected: directors designated by named preferred investors while they hold a threshold of shares, and common directors, which in the model's examples include a seat for the chief executive. Lesson 4.3 covered the arithmetic of control. Once the board exists, the question is how to use it.
Boards that work spend their meetings on decisions and judgement, not on status. Send the materials — the update, the financials, the decisions needed — several days ahead, so the meeting is not a reading session. Open with the two or three decisions or problems where the board's judgement is wanted. Keep minutes that record what was decided. And talk to directors between meetings, so that nothing important is heard first in the room.
For a placement agent or fund manager the parallel is the issuer or limited-partner relationship after a close: the investors who came into one deal are the first call for the next, and the reporting they receive in between is what makes that call welcome.
Make the update a routine the agent prepares and you send
- 1
Keep the investor list on the closed round
The closed round's deal in /deals already lists every investor as a contact. Use the per-deal status to mark who is a Major Investor and who holds a board seat, so the reporting list is the round's record rather than a separate spreadsheet.
- 2
In /ai-agent, create a monthly scheduled run that gathers the month's progress recorded in your workspace — tasks, deals, notes — and emails YOU a draft update in your standard structure. You add the financials, edit it and send it yourself from /inbox.
- 3
Put the reporting deadlines on the calendar
Add the information-rights deadlines from your Investors' Rights Agreement — 30, 45 and 180 days after period end in the model form — and board-meeting dates, with the materials due several days before each.
- 4
If you are regulated, archive what goes out
A broker-dealer or adviser workspace can turn on compliance archiving in Settings → Audit logs → Archiving (owner only). Every outbound email from the workspace — including reports Kavanah sends to outside investors — then carries the archive BCC to your archiver.
Investor relations health
- Updates sent on schedule
- Share of planned investor updates sent within a week of their due date.
- Healthy signal: 100% — a Kavanah operating suggestion. Silence is read as bad news.
- Asks fulfilled
- Share of specific asks in updates that produced at least one introduction or answer within a month.
- Healthy signal: Rising over time. If asks go unanswered, they are probably too vague or aimed at the wrong investors.
- Contractual deadlines met
- Information-rights deliveries made by the dates in the Investors' Rights Agreement.
- Healthy signal: All of them. A missed contractual delivery is a breach, not a delay.
Key takeaways
- ·A priced round brings written information rights — in the NVCA model, annual, quarterly and optionally monthly reporting plus a budget.
- ·Send a regular update with a fixed structure, honest numbers, early bad news and specific asks.
- ·Ask investors for what they report doing: strategy, introductions to investors and customers, hiring.
- ·Use the board for decisions, with materials sent ahead and minutes kept.
Founders raise every year or two. Fund managers raise constantly, from a different kind of investor, under different rules. The next lesson is for them.
Sources
- 1.NVCA Model Investors' Rights Agreement
National Venture Capital Association · NVCA Model Legal Documents (updated October 2025) · 2025
Major Investors' information rights: annual statements within 180 days, quarterly within 45 days with a capitalization statement, optional monthly within 30 days, the annual budget, and delivery through a portfolio management platform on request.
- 2.NVCA Model Voting Agreement
National Venture Capital Association · NVCA Model Legal Documents (updated June 2026) · 2026
Board composition by designation: preferred directors held while a share threshold is met; common directors, including a CEO director in the model's examples.
- 3.How Do Venture Capitalists Make Decisions?
Paul Gompers, William Gornall, Steven N. Kaplan, Ilya A. Strebulaev · NBER Working Paper 22587 · 2016
Post-investment services: strategic guidance 87%, connecting investors 72%, customers 69%, operational guidance 65%, hiring board members 58%, hiring employees 46%; value-added rated important by most but most important by fewer than deal selection.