The update goes out to a few angels and a fund or two every month or quarter: an email with the numbers, or a PDF attached to one. From the moment you press send you know nothing. Not who opened it, not whether anyone reached Runway, not whether anyone read the Asks, the section the update exists for.
This guide is the template, the sections in the order investors read them, and a different way to send it: as a page with an email gate, so you see who read which section. Hostus is the option we put first, and the category matters: best if the update is a page with an email gate, you see which investor opened it and which section they read, next month is a new version on the same link, and an investor can ask the update a question. It is a page you host, not an investor CRM and not a data room. Visible, Carta, a Notion page, DocSend and a plain email are covered below, with what their sites said today.
What the investor gets
Here is a Q3 investor update, live: a fictional startup's quarterly update with the eight sections of the template below and an MRR chart drawn in SVG. The company does not exist and the numbers are illustrative. It opens from the link on a phone, and the chart is drawn by the page, not a screenshot.
Two things on it are not in an email. The investor can ask the update a question ("what was churn in August?") and get an answer from what the page says, with the section cited, no account. Ask reads; it does not compute, so if the update does not state net burn, Ask will not derive it. And the investor can reply on a section ("the runway line assumes the hire slips, does it?"), which reaches you by email, anchored to that section, in a thread only the two of you see. Both are on by default.
Why the emailed update tells you nothing
An email gives you, at best, an open: a tracking pixel that fires when the mail client loads images, which some clients do for everyone and some for nobody. A list tool turns twelve investors into an open rate for the batch. Neither can tell you that one partner read Metrics twice and never opened Runway, the one thing that would change your follow-up.
A PDF attached to the email tells you less. Replies are the only real signal, and they come from the two investors who always reply. The other ten are the ones you want to know about.
The report guide covers putting an HTML file that already exists on a link. This page is about writing the update as a page from the start, with a structure reading by section can measure.
The structure of a good update: the template
The sections below are the template, in the order investors read them, each a heading with an id so reading by section has something to anchor to.
summary: the TL;DR. Five lines: the number that defines the period, what went right, what went wrong, runway in months, the ask in one line. Most investors read only this; write it last.metrics: a table with this period, last period and the delta. MRR or revenue, customers, net churn, cash, burn: three to six rows, the same every month, so the delta means something.chart: one line, the number that matters, six months back. Drawn in SVG inside the file: a few kilobytes, opens on a phone.highlights: two or three, with a number in each. "Signed two customers" is a highlight; "signed Meridian and Bramble, $4,200 MRR together" is one an investor can repeat to a partner.lowlights: the same count, and what you are doing about each. An update with no lowlights is read as one with hidden ones.asks: numbered and specific. An intro to a named company, a candidate for a named role. "Let me know if you can help" gets nothing; "who knows the head of ops at Northwind?" gets a reply.runway: cash, monthly burn and the month it runs out, in one sentence, plus the assumption behind the burn; the section investors re-read before replying.team: who joined, who left, who you are hiring. Short.
Monthly or quarterly, your call; the same day each time and the same rows in the table.
The prompt
With the Hostus connector on, this writes the page from your numbers, publishes it and gives you the link.
Here are my numbers for the Q3 investor update (pasted below): six months of MRR, customers, net churn, cash, monthly burn, hires, two wins, two misses, and three asks.
Write it as one investor update page with these sections, each a heading with an id: summary, metrics, chart, highlights, lowlights, asks, runway, team. Summary is five lines at most. Metrics is a table with this quarter, last quarter and the delta. Chart is a small SVG line of MRR over the six months, drawn in the file, no chart library. Asks are numbered and specific. Runway states cash, burn and the month it runs out, in one sentence. Use only the numbers I pasted; if one is missing, leave a visible placeholder instead of inventing it.
No external scripts, no tracking, no backend, no localStorage, one HTML file, mobile first.
Publish it to Hostus and give me the link.The page is born private: in the Hostus dashboard, switch it to email-gated and restrict it to your investor list (their addresses, or their fund's domain), so each investor types an email to open it and you see who. Ask and Reply are already on. Next month, paste the new numbers and say "update the same page".
The gate and reading by section: who opened, Metrics versus Runway
The investor types an email and the update opens: no account, no app. You see who typed one and when. From there:
- Reading by section. Which sections each reader opened and for how long: one partner spent most of the time on metrics and never opened runway, another read asks twice. The second one gets a call.
- Questions. Every question an investor asked the update is listed for you, with whether the page could answer it. The unanswered ones ("what is the sales cycle now?") are what next month's update should say.
- Replies. Each conversation is private between that investor and you. Two partners at the same fund do not see each other's notes. You answer from the dashboard or through Claude.
With the connector on, ask Claude "who opened the Q3 update and what did they read": it reads the reading-by-section data, the questions and the replies (hostus_attention, hostus_questions, hostus_replies) and can draft the follow-up. Use what you learn to choose whom to call, never as something to say.
Next month, same link
Upload the new file to the same document, or tell Claude to update the same page. The link from last month now shows this month, and last month's update stays in the version history. Nothing to resend. A wrong MRR figure spotted six hours after sending is fixed in place the same way.
Keep the section ids the same every month and put the period in the heading, not in the slug, because the slug is the link. Reading by section belongs to the document, not to a version; if you want each quarter as its own record, publish each as its own page and group them in a folder.
Visible, Carta, a Notion page, DocSend, a plain email: pick it if
Hostus first, for the case this page is about: an update that is a page on your link, with the gate and the reading signal, on a free plan. Facts were read on each vendor's own site on 2026-10-18; where a page did not load or did not say, this guide says "check their site" rather than a number.
- Visible. Pick it if you want a dedicated investor-update tool with a contact list, templates and email sending. Its pricing page lists Starter at $0, "free forever", no card, with unlimited updates and "Send monthly updates to 100 investors"; Base is $59 a month billed annually ($69 monthly) for 250 investors, Core $129 ($149) for 500, Growth $199 ($249) for 1,000. Its investor updates page says "Send your update as an email, a link, a Slack message, or a PDF, whatever fits" and "Know Who Opened It and What They Clicked", with templates including "the Y Combinator template". Reading per section is not described; check their site.
- Carta. Pick it if your cap table is on Carta and you want the update where investors already see their holdings. Carta's product and pricing pages did not load for us today, so check their site for plans and prices. Its release notes, some of them years old, say Investor Updates went "to companies in the Growth and Enterprise plans", that recipients "access the update from their Carta portfolio", and that companies can "keep track who has viewed updates"; a later note on the Communication Center says it went "to all Carta customers", with "open and read statuses".
- A Notion page. Pick it if your investors live in Notion and you do not need a gate. The Free plan is $0 with basic page analytics, "a list of page viewers"; Plus is $10 per seat per month. No email gate, nothing per section, and a viewer can set their view history to "Don't record".
- DocSend. Pick it if the update is a PDF and you want per-visitor analytics on it. Its pricing page did not load for us today, so check their pricing page; our reading is on the DocSend alternatives page.
- A plain email. The baseline: Gmail to twelve addresses, or a Mailchimp list. Free, and every investor already reads there; you get an open rate at best. Keep it as the envelope: two lines and the link.
Side by side
| Tool | Investor needs an account | You see who opened and which section | Same link every month | Investor can ask the update | Free plan | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hostus | No; the gate asks for an email | Yes: who, when, per section, plus questions and replies | Yes, history kept | Yes, on by default | Yes: 20 docs, 2 MB, no clock | A page you host |
| Visible | Not stated | Opens and clicks; per section not stated | Not stated | Not stated | Yes: Starter, 100 investors | Investor update tool |
| Carta | Read from the investor's Carta portfolio (release notes) | Views, open and read statuses (release notes) | Not stated | Not stated | Check their site | Cap table platform with updates |
| Notion page | To be listed as a viewer, yes | A list of page viewers; nothing per section | Yes, it is a live page | Not stated | Yes, $0 | A doc in a workspace |
| DocSend | Check their site | Per-visitor analytics | Not stated | Not stated | Check their pricing page | A PDF with analytics |
| Plain email | No | An open rate at best | No, you resend | No | Free | An email |
The last column is the split: Visible and Carta are tools with the update as one feature, DocSend is a tracked file, Notion is a doc in a workspace. The page on your link is the update itself.
Good to know before you switch
The gate is by email, not by a password, and it does not verify that the typed address belongs to the person: an allowlist of addresses or a fund's domain only limits what can be typed in. A Hostus page is not a data room: no NDA flow, no e-signature, no cap table. The numbers are yours to check before you publish, because Ask repeats a wrong figure as confidently as a right one.
The free plan is 20 documents and 2 MB of storage in total, images counting: an SVG chart is fine, a screenshot of a dashboard is not; 200 MB on paid. Reader questions are 20 a day across your account on free, 200 on paid. Pages carry a noindex meta and are not indexed by Google, which for an update is what you want. There is no custom domain: the link is your-slug.hostus.page, and every page carries a small "Published with Hostus" pill in the bottom-right corner. No card, no clock.