Prompt · Newsletter
Founder note for a small SaaS list
Get the reader to read to the end. The click is a side effect, not the point.
- Email type
- Newsletter
- Business
- SaaS
- Tone
- Friendly
- Length
- 200-280 words
The newsletter email prompt
Write a monthly plain-text founder letter about [PRODUCT], in first person, signed by [SENDER]. Words only — no HTML, no layout notes, no section dividers. Three beats in this order: [WHAT SHIPPED], then [WHAT BROKE], then [WHAT IS NEXT]. Rules: - 200 to 280 words total. Three or four paragraphs. Let them get shorter as the letter goes on. - Open on the substance. No greeting about the month, no "hope you are well", no throat-clearing. - The shipped paragraph explains why it matters to the reader, not what the feature is called. - The broke paragraph is the one that earns the next open. Say what went wrong plainly, without apology theatre and without making it a lesson. - The next paragraph is one sentence. Do not promise a date I did not give you. - At most one link, written inside a sentence. This letter is read, not clicked. Do not add a postscript full of links. - No headers, no bullet lists, no bold. This is a letter. - Never invent a number, statistic, growth figure or customer count. If a number belongs, leave [XX] and I will fill it in. - No exclamation marks. No emoji. Sentence case. Write a subject line under 45 characters that names the month's actual subject rather than "[PRODUCT] monthly update". Return subject, preheader, body, sign-off.
What to fill in first
[PRODUCT]- What you build, in the words a customer would use.
[WHAT SHIPPED]- The one thing worth a paragraph. Not the changelog — the changelog goes in a link.
[WHAT BROKE]- Something that did not go well this month. This is the paragraph that earns the next open.
[WHAT IS NEXT]- One thing you are working on. Vague is fine, absent is not.
[SENDER]- Your name. A founder note is signed by a person or it is not a founder note.
[XX]- Leave as written. The placeholder for a figure you supply, never one the model supplies.
When to send it
Monthly, on a date you can actually hold. A founder note that arrives twice in March and then not until July is worse than no founder note — the cadence is the product here, and the letter is the proof you kept it. If you have nothing for the middle beat, that is a signal to send anyway and say so, not a reason to skip.
What to change first
[WHAT BROKE]. It is the beat every founder letter drops and the only one that makes the next issue
get opened. Most of these read as a changelog with a signature, which is a changelog. The month you
write honestly about an outage, a bad call or a feature nobody used is the month people start
replying.
What good output looks like
Subject: The import we had to roll back
Preheader: What shipped, what did not, and what August looks like.
Bulk import went out on the 4th. If you have ever pasted a hundred rows in one at a time, that is the hour of your life we were trying to give back.
Then we rolled it back on the 9th. Files over [XX] rows were timing out silently, which is the worst way to fail — you think it worked. It is back now, with the limit raised and a progress bar so you can see it working.
August is one thing: making the editor usable on a phone. It has been the top request for a year and we kept not doing it.
— [SENDER]
The prompt writes the words. Bring them here and the studio builds the campaign — branded, dark-mode safe, and ready to import.
Generate your ownIn the studio
A model writes copy. It does not write email.
Production HTML that survives Outlook, dark mode and a Gmail clip is a different job from writing the words. Describe the send once and export it to Mailchimp, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign or MailerLite.