Internal Comms & Meetings

How to run a monthly business review as Asset Management Founders

Internal Comms & MeetingsFor Asset Management Founders5 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Every quarter you promised LPs a monthly update. Every month you spend two days pulling numbers from Plaid, reconciling them against QuickBooks, formatting a deck in Google Slides, writing a narrative that doesn't make your burn rate sound alarming, and sending it from your personal Gmail. You don't have an analyst. You don't have an EA. You have a Notion doc from six months ago and a spreadsheet that drifts the moment you touch it. By the time the email goes out, the numbers are already a week old and you've spent time you should have spent on deals or LPs.

Build this on Starch → See the apps used

Internal Comms & MeetingsFor Asset Management Founders5 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A live Monthly Business Review package — financial metrics pulled directly from Plaid and Stripe, narrative drafted by Starch, formatted into a polished deck — ready to review and send in under 90 minutes instead of two days.

A consistent LP-ready format: burn rate, runway, portfolio highlights, risk flags, and competitive context, all in the same structure every month so your LPs can track progress quarter-over-quarter.

An automated post-MBR workflow: meeting notes from your LP calls captured and archived, action items extracted and assigned, and the next month's template pre-staged with actuals the moment the books close.

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Investor Reporting Runway Analysis Scenario Analysis Meeting Notes Presentation Agent

Data sources & config

Starch syncs your Plaid bank feed and Stripe revenue data on a schedule — transactions, balances, charges, and subscriptions update automatically so your MBR numbers are always current. QuickBooks entity-level data (invoices, bills, vendors, journal entries) also syncs on a schedule. For LP contact management and email history, Starch connects directly to Gmail on a schedule and pulls contact and deal data from HubSpot live from Starch's integration catalog when your reporting app runs.

Prompts to copy

Pull my Plaid transactions and Stripe revenue for the last 30 days, calculate net burn and runway, and draft a monthly LP update covering burn rate, cash position, MRR trend, top portfolio wins, and one key risk. Match the tone of my March update.

Show me two scenarios side-by-side: current burn pace vs. a 15% expense reduction. How does runway change for each, and what's the break-even date under each assumption?

Build a 10-slide monthly business review deck for my Q2 close — include a cash summary, runway chart, portfolio company highlights, and a 'what's next' slide. Export as PDF and a shareable link.

Transcribe my LP call with [Partner Name] from today, extract all action items, and add them to my running investor CRM notes.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect Plaid and Stripe in Starch — both sync on a schedule, so your bank transactions, balances, and revenue data are live before you start building. This takes about five minutes and you never upload a CSV again.

2 Connect QuickBooks for entity-level detail — invoices, bills, vendor payments, and journal entries sync automatically. Note: QuickBooks report views (P&L, Transaction List) are temporarily unavailable pending a connector fix, but entity-level data comes through normally.

3 Open the Runway Analysis app from the Starch App Store. It reads your Plaid and Stripe data and shows net burn, 6-month historical trend, and 24-month forward projection. Confirm the numbers match your expectations before you build the narrative.

4 Open Scenario Analysis and describe the assumptions you want to model — for example, 'show me runway if I cut two portfolio support hires in Q3 and revenue grows at 12% instead of 18%.' Starch uses your actual Plaid and Stripe baseline so you're not starting from a guess.

5 Open Investor Reporting and type your monthly prompt — what happened this period, any portfolio news, key risks you want to flag. Starch drafts the full narrative: burn rate, runway, MRR growth, wins, risks, and competitive context pulled from the web.

6 Review the draft. Edit the narrative for anything Starch couldn't know — a co-investment you're closing, a portfolio founder who's struggling. This is the only step that needs your judgment; everything else is assembled for you.

7 If you want a polished deck for your LP meeting or board presentation, open the Presentation Agent (currently in beta — request access) and describe the slides: 'A 10-slide monthly business review with cash summary, runway chart, and portfolio highlights.' Export to PDF or a shareable link.

8 Send your LP update from within Starch or copy the draft to your Gmail. Starch connects directly to Gmail on a schedule so your sent history stays in sync with your CRM notes.

9 Run your LP calls. Open the Meeting Notes app before each call — it transcribes in real time, generates a summary with key decisions, and extracts action items automatically. No more losing track of what you promised which LP.

10 After calls, review extracted action items and archive the meeting notes. When someone asks 'didn't we discuss a co-invest in March?' you search Meeting Notes and find the exact moment.

11 At month-end, stage next month's MBR. Starch's Investor Reporting app remembers your format and tone — the next draft starts from your actuals, not a blank doc.

12 Optionally, connect HubSpot from Starch's integration catalog for LP relationship tracking. The agent queries it live when your reporting app runs, so your contact notes and deal history stay alongside your financial data.

See this running on Starch

Connect your tools, describe what you want, and the agent builds it. Closed beta is free.

Try it on Starch →

Worked example

May 2026 Monthly Business Review — Emerging Fund, $18M AUM

Sample numbers from a real run

Cash position (Plaid)	2,140,000
Net burn (30-day, Plaid)	-87,000
Management fee revenue (Stripe, annualized)	360,000
Portfolio support expenses (QuickBooks bills)	41,000
Runway at current burn	24

In the May close, Starch pulled $2.14M in cash across three operating accounts from the Plaid sync and matched it against $87K in net burn — a number that accounts for $41K in portfolio support expenses synced from QuickBooks bills, not just the bank outflows. Management fee revenue of $30K/month ($360K annualized) is tracked through Stripe. Runway Analysis showed 24 months at current pace. Before drafting the LP narrative, the fund manager ran a Scenario Analysis: 'What if we add one more portfolio support hire at $120K fully loaded and revenue stays flat?' Runway dropped to 18 months — enough of a delta to mention in the LP update as a hiring decision pending Q3 fundraising close. The Investor Reporting app drafted the full narrative in about four minutes: burn rate trend (burn was flat vs. April, down 8% vs. Q1 average), MRR growth (+6% month-over-month), two portfolio company highlights pulled from notes, and a risk flag on one portco that missed its revenue milestone. Total time from opening Starch to sending the LP email: 80 minutes, down from the prior average of two days.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Net burn rate (monthly, not averaged) — the number LPs ask about first

Runway in months at current pace and at two stress-test scenarios

Management fee revenue vs. fund operating expense ratio

LP update delivery rate — did you actually send the update this month

Action items closed from prior LP calls vs. open items aging past 30 days

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

Juniper Square / Addepar / iLevel

Built for established fund ops teams with dedicated admins; pricing starts at $50K+/year and assumes you have someone whose job is running the platform. Starch is built for the fund where that person is you.

Google Slides + Notion + manual QuickBooks export

Free but costs you two days per MBR cycle, drifts the moment actuals change, and produces a different format every month because there's no enforced template.

ChatGPT + manual data entry

You still have to pull the numbers yourself and paste them in — the AI only helps with the writing, not the data assembly. Starch connects to your actual sources so the numbers are already there when you start.

Visible.vc

Good purpose-built investor update tool with KPI tracking, but locked to its own data model — you can't describe a custom metric or build a new view in natural language, and it doesn't connect to your full financial stack.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — investor reporting, runway analysis, scenario planning all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Does Starch connect to QuickBooks for fund accounting, or only bank feeds?

Both. Starch syncs your QuickBooks entity-level data on a schedule — invoices, bills, vendor payments, journal entries, and more (50K records per entity). One current limit worth knowing: QuickBooks report views like P&L and Transaction List are temporarily disabled pending a connector fix. Entity-level data comes through normally, so your MBR numbers are accurate; you just won't see a formatted P&L report pulled directly from QuickBooks until that fix ships.

Can Starch handle the LP reporting format my investors actually expect?

Yes. The Investor Reporting app generates a narrative with burn rate, runway, MRR growth, wins, risks, and competitive context. You describe the format and tone you want — or paste in a prior update as a reference — and Starch matches it going forward. If your LPs want a PDF deck, the Presentation Agent (currently in beta) builds slide-format output from the same data.

What if my fund uses Xero instead of QuickBooks?

Xero is available from Starch's integration catalog — connect it and the agent queries your accounting data live when your reporting app runs. It's not a scheduled sync the way QuickBooks is, so you won't get automatic daily refreshes, but your MBR workflow can pull current Xero data on demand.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? My LPs may ask about data security.

Not yet. Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified today. If your LPs or compliance team requires SOC 2, that's an honest constraint to know upfront. It's on the roadmap, and Starch will update when certification is complete.

Can I use Starch to automate sending the monthly update to my LP email list?

Yes. Starch connects directly to Gmail on a schedule, so once your draft is reviewed, you can trigger a send to your LP list from within the platform. If your LP contacts live in HubSpot, connect it from Starch's integration catalog and the agent queries your contact list live when the automation runs.

What if some of my data lives in a tool Starch doesn't have a direct connection to?

Starch connects to 3,000+ apps through its integration catalog, plus any website through browser automation. If your data is in a web-based tool — even one with no formal API — Starch can automate it through your browser. No API needed. Describe the workflow and Starch builds it.