Over the last few years, I have invested as an angel in 18 startups. My own startup now has several prominent angels. Speaking from this experience, do you know what’s the simplest thing a founder can do to build trust & long term relationships with early investors? (THREAD)

Sending a business update email with some cadence (quarterly, at the minimum). To date, I haven’t found any compelling rationale for why any investor, who has given your fledgling startup even a single $, doesn’t deserve to get periodically updated on your business?

From my investing & operating experience, I can share that only a low single-digit % of founders send ANY sort of periodic business update to early angels. In fact, several founders tend to go completely incognito, post 6-12 months of first angel check. Seen a lot of this!

VCs, of course, are treated differently. They get formal information rights via legal agreements. Also, regular board meetings & informal dinners/catch-ups are arranged for them. But the people who take the most “risk”, often at idea/ paper plan stage, are treated disposably.

With this attitude towards angel stage investors, founders shouldn’t expect them to go above-and-beyond with any sort of tactical help, high-leverage intros, personal $$ bridges, or basically putting their reputations on the line or opening up their networks for the startup.

Rather than one-shot equity transactions, early investors need to be viewed as life-long relationships. Startups are multi-shot games, where odds of success go up with each attempt. You need these relationships by your side in each attempt. That’s how their value compounds.

For sure, I will make tons of mistakes as I build @workomo. But this is one I will actively avoid. And it’s super-easy to do so-just send periodic business updates & proactively communicate both good and bad news with intent. Builds trust, invites more wisdom on key challenges.

PS: I owe a lot of my own training on stakeholder communication, trust & consensus building, & driving outcomes via these written memos, to 2 specific individuals.

First is @sudhirksethi, who I saw doing this so well at IDG Ventures with LPs, co-investors, founders & other strategic individuals in the ecosystem. And second is Guru Gowrappan @FixerGuru, who did this cross-culturally across US-China-India at Alibaba, internally & externally.