How Often Should You Meet With Your Investors?

“Yep,” I said. “I’m worried you’re going to spend way too much time preparing for your meetings with your investors instead of running the company. It would be great if they would back off.”

“What do you think the right amount of interaction is my investors?”

 

You need to have regular board meetings, but just not too often.

 

“I would see if you can scale this (your board meetings) back to six weeks. Ideally, I’d love to see this be once per quarter, but that’s a stretch,” I said.

“Will every six weeks instead of four weeks make a big difference?”

“Hell yes,” I said. Here’s the problem with meeting with your investors too often. It would take me about one week to properly prepare for my board meetings.

“You have to review to presentations of your team. You have to meet with the board members 1:1 before the meetings. And, you have your own presentation to prepare.”

 

You gain back a lot of your time by reducing the number of interactions with your investors.

 

I continued on with my reasoning. “All of this takes away from running the company. You gain back about a month of your time by meeting every six weeks instead of every four weeks.”

“That makes sense,” Kevin said to me. “But my investors aren’t going to go for it.”

Build trust with your investors and they will pull back on their need to meet with you.

“Let’s see if can solve the problem longer term,” I said. “I’ll accept that your investors want to work this way. And, it’s their money, so it’s tough to argue.

“However, if you execute. And by execute, I mean you’re hitting your numbers every month, I think you can ask them to reduce the number of meetings you’re having.”

“What numbers do I need to hit?” Kevin asked.

“If you’re hitting your revenue numbers, cash, and hiring goals, your investors should be okay with backing off,” I said. “That what I did. When we started, we had board meetings every six weeks, but I was able to move that to every eight weeks.”

 

Never surprise your investors, and, in doing so, they will gain even more trust and confidence in you.

 

“I have one final piece of advice for you,” I said. “You’ve heard me say this before but never surprise your investors. Ever.”

“Remind me,” Kevin said. “What does that mean?”

“This is why I’m suggesting you schedule a one on one with each investor and board member before every board meeting. You can update them on what you’re going to talk about in the board meeting.

“Plus, you can share any bad news they need to know about in this setting. Your investors will appreciate hearing the bad news early, and it will keep them from being surprised in front of the other investors.”

“And that works?” Kevin asked.

“Yes,” I said, laughing. “Your investors know that mistakes and problems will occur. What they don’t want is to not hear about the significant problems, so telling them builds trust….just make sure you have a proposed solution (to the problem).”

 

Send your angel investors an update at the same intervals as your board meetings.

 

“I have several smaller investors who put in the first money,” Kevin said. “What do I do with them?”

“I’d send them a newsletter update every time you have a board meeting. That should be enough,” I said.

“Okay,” Kevin said. “Let’s see if all this takes some pressure off me.”

It took about one year, but Kevin was able to convince his investors to scale back board meetings from once per month to once every two months. That’s a lot of time saved.

Kevin certainly had his share of problems, but he hit his numbers, and his early communication with his investors continued building trust.

 

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