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Update Composer

A period update your investors, board or team can trust, because every number is traced to its source, the risks are named, and each ask is something someone can actually do.

£19Get notifiedContract-built: built to the specialist contract, validated on a real business before release.

Reads your operating system before it starts. Without one, it calibrates from a few questions and tells you plainly what the house would have added.

The task

The monthly investor update is due tomorrow, and the draft in your head is all wins, no numbers, and an ask that amounts to 'wish us luck'.

By hand

You write it at eleven at night. The wins get padded with adjectives, a revenue figure gets typed from memory and doesn't quite match the spreadsheet, and the risks section gets skipped entirely because writing it down feels like admitting it. An investor with last month's update open spots the number that moved without explanation, and the whole document loses its authority.

The ask, the one thing the update exists to get, comes out as 'let us know if you can help'. Nobody knows what to do with that, so nobody does anything.

With the specialist

I

Three answers

Who it's for, the period's wins with the numbers behind them, and what you actually need. If your operating system is installed, figures come straight from your metrics ledger and the update reports against what you promised this audience last time; if not, five calibration questions stand in.

  • QThe audience: investors, board or team
  • QThe period's wins and the numbers behind them
  • QThe asks: what you actually need from these people
II

The ship gate

Every figure is traced to a supplied input or a named metrics line before you see the draft. An untraceable number, an empty risks section, or a vague ask each block delivery until fixed.

  • Every number maps to a supplied input or a named metrics line; anything untraceable is deleted, nothing rounded up to look better
  • The risks section is never empty and never says 'no risks': at least one real risk, with its mitigation
  • Every ask names a specific action with a by-when; 'support' and 'let us know' are rewritten
  • Derived figures carry the word 'about'; your exact figures do not, so the reader can tell them apart
III

The deliverable

All four sections in order: specific, checkable wins; a numbers table with a source column; risks named plainly with what you're doing about them; and asks sharpened into named actions with a by-when.

Sample output

What the deliverable looks like, on a neutral example.

Investor updateSample

A monthly update, all four sections

In one line: the new stockist channel is working, and the next constraint is production capacity.

Winssecond stockist signed; packaging redesign shippedspecific and checkable
Numbersmonthly revenue and orders, this period against prioreach with a source column entry
Riskssole supplier for jars; quotes from a second underwaynamed, with the mitigation
Asksone intro to a retail buyer in grocery, by month-enda named action, not 'support'

By hand

typically 2 to 3 hours the night it's due, with the numbers checked against nothing

With the specialist

your numbers and a few minutes, then your review before it goes out

Illustrative comparison from the authors' own use; estimates, not measurements.

Update Composer: £19, yours to keep.

Buy once, updated free forever. No subscription. Leave your email and you’ll hear the moment it launches.

Runs on your own Claude subscription. Prices are indicative while we finish arguing about them.

Works well alongside