How to write the asks section of an investor update

What the asks section is for

A monthly investor update has a short section near the end called asks. It is the only part of the update that requests anything, and for a company doing its own sales it is where most customer introductions should start.

It is also the section most often skimmed. Investors read a lot of updates, and an ask that says "intros to fintech companies welcome" reads like a sign-off rather than a request. The fix is partly in how each ask is written and partly in what you do after the update goes out.

Write each ask as a person, a reason and a next step

An ask an investor can act on has three parts:

• A named person at a named company, or, if you do not know the name, the exact role at a named company.
• One line on why. What makes the conversation timely, or useful to them and not only to you.
• The next step. Usually a twenty-minute call, sometimes a question you would like answered.

Compare "intros to sales leaders at mid-market software companies" with "Jordan Ellis, VP of Sales at Clearpath. They are rebuilding forecasting this quarter, and we would value twenty minutes on how they run pipeline." The first asks every reader to search their memory. The second asks one question that a reader can answer yes or no in a few seconds.

Customer introductions belong at the top of the list. They are the asks investors can do fastest, and for a company selling its first contracts they are worth the most. Hiring referrals and narrow advice questions can follow.

How many asks to include

The advice on this disagrees. Kapwing quotes Erik Torenberg of Village Global recommending five to ten asks per update, on the reasoning that more options give each investor more chances to help. Others cap it at three, arguing that a long list lets readers pick the easiest item, which is rarely the most valuable.

Both are right about different things, and the disagreement goes away once you notice that the update is a broadcast. Everyone on your list reads the same asks. A longer list does give more readers something they recognise. But a broadcast ask is easy to leave for someone else, because every reader can assume another investor is closer to the person.

So treat the list in the update as a menu, and keep every item on it specific. Five named people is a better menu than ten vague categories. Then do the step that most templates leave out.

Send the follow-up to the backer who knows them

For each ask, work out which of your investors or advisors actually knows the person, and send that one backer a short separate note. Two lines and a forwardable paragraph: who you would like to meet, why, and the text they can paste. This is the request the update was preparing for.

Keep these notes to one or two per backer at a time. Each introduction spends some of their credit with the person they know, and a backer who receives three direct requests in a week will start to feel like a contact list. How to write the note itself, and how to keep the asks rare, is covered in how to ask your investors and advisors for customer introductions.

The broadcast and the note do different jobs. The update tells every backer what you need this month, so the person who knows Jordan Ellis is not surprised when you write. The note gives that one person a direct question, which is much harder to leave unanswered than a bullet in a group email.

Finding which backer knows the person

The follow-up depends on knowing who to send it to, and the update cannot tell you. Sometimes a reader replies to say they know someone, and that is the easy case. More often the person who knows your target never connects the name to their own network.

By hand, start with LinkedIn: check your mutual connections with the target and whether any of your backers is a first-degree connection. Look at your investors' portfolio companies and your advisors' past employers, since those are the people they still talk to. Then ask the most likely backer directly about the named person, which gets a more reliable answer than asking about the company.

NetworkOS does this from the founder's side. You invite your advisors and investors, they connect their accounts, and you can search everyone's network at once in plain English, with each result showing who knows the person and why they matched. You see a contact's name, role, company, location and LinkedIn profile, never their email address, notes or message history, and your request goes to the advisor, who reviews the drafted emails and sends from their own Gmail, on double opt-in by default. The limits are that sign-in is Google only, and a backer's network is searchable only after they join and connect their accounts.

Report back in the next update

The update after an introduction should say what happened. One line under a heading such as "from last month's asks" is enough: the call took place, the prospect is in a trial, or it went nowhere and you learned something.

This line does two things. It thanks the backer who helped in front of the others, which costs nothing and is remembered. And it shows every reader that asks in your update turn into meetings, which makes them more likely to act on the next list. An asks section with no visible results trains investors to skim it.

A short example

An asks section for a company selling to sales teams might read:

Asks this month

1. Jordan Ellis, VP of Sales at Clearpath. They are rebuilding forecasting this quarter. Twenty minutes on how they run pipeline.
2. Anyone who leads revenue operations at Harbor Software. We would like to show them our forecast view.
3. Fifteen minutes from anyone who has priced a per-seat product for sales teams.

From last month's asks. Thanks to Maya for the introduction to Brightline. We start a pilot next week.

Then, the same day, a direct note to Maya about Jordan Ellis, because she is the one who knows him.