How Serial Entrepreneur Nathan Mintz (CX2, Spartan, Epirus) Uses Standard Metrics to Improve Investor Relations

Nathan Mintz has been a three-time Standard Metrics user as a founder at defense technology companies Epirus, Spartan and, now, CX2. As a long-term entrepreneur, Mintz has worked with over 50 different investors from angels to small shops to larger institutional funds. As the size and maturity of his companies have varied, he’s turned to Standard Metrics to support different parts of the investor relations process.

Powering a centralized source of truth at Epirus

Mintz’ first experience with Standard Metrics was during his role as CEO and founder at Epirus, a defense company primarily focused on counter-electronic and counter-drone applications. After the company’s Series A funding round, Epirus already had a cap table of around 15-20 investors. This meant that every quarter (and sometimes even more frequently) Mintz was swamped with information requests from associates across his investor-base. The response process was also inefficient: he had to regularly scan his email to make sure that he wasn’t missing requests and, for each request, had to check he was sending the correct metrics in the correct format via email to meet each of his investor’s individual needs. 

With Standard Metrics, Mintz was able to hold all of his financial data in one centralized place. Mintz took advantage of Standard Metrics’ accounting integration, where Epirus’ financial information was instantly ported into the Standard Metrics platform from their general ledger and used to populate investor reports. Standard Metrics also parsed, cleaned, and transferred requested financial information from the Epirus documents to some of Epirus’ investors. 

Standard Metrics became a source of truth for the many different parties asking for Epirus’ data. Mintz only had to upload documents once and could then send different cuts of the data to all of his investors in just a few clicks.

“Being able to keep track of our financial metrics in one place made everything easier,” said Mintz. “It would have been murder without Standard Metrics.”

Streamlining investor updates for Spartan

Mintz’ next role was as a CEO and founder at Spartan, a radar technology company for commercial vehicles. At Spartan, Mintz was searching for an easier way to update investors on company progress all at once, as well as an easier way to make requests to investors when help was needed. 

Standard Metrics’ investor updates feature fit the bill. With it, Mintz was able to send quarterly data and updates to all investors simultaneously. Asks like recruiting and customer introductions were prominently featured at the top of updates with a one-click “yes” mechanism for investors to signal their willingness to help. 

“Sending updates to our investors from Standard Metrics saved us from the back and forth of sifting through 45-plus emails,” said Mintz. “Standard Metrics takes away brain damage from the quarterly reporting process.”

Impressed by the platform’s impact during his time at Spartan, Mintz became an angel investor in Standard Metrics’ Series A round – underscoring his belief in the platform’s value and its potential to reshape how founders engage with investors.

Building data into CX2’s DNA

Last year, Mintz founded CX2, a defense technology company. Given the company’s early stage, Mintz was searching for a way to both understand and easily visualize the company’s financial performance metrics and highlight success to investors.

Standard Metrics offers in-platform visualizations of early-stage metrics like headcount, runway, and burn on a monthly basis, making it easy to contextualize performance. “Currently, I use Standard Metrics about twice a month,” said Mintz. “It’s an easy way to view trends.”

An added bonus? The majority of investors in CX2 are already customers of Standard Metrics, making these visualizations even more powerful at enhancing conversation between Mintz and his investors.

The impact of Standard Metrics

Across three companies — Epirus, Spartan, and CX2 — Nathan Mintz has consistently turned to Standard Metrics to simplify and strengthen investor relations. From streamlining financial data sharing and investor reporting to enabling real-time insights, Standard Metrics has scaled with Mintz’s ventures at every stage. 

By embedding consistent, centralized visibility into the financial DNA of each company he founded via Standard Metrics, Mintz has improved operational efficiency and deepened trust and engagement with his investors. Mintz’s continued reliance on Standard Metrics highlights how the tool can evolve throughout the founder journey – empowering founders to have more time to focus on building while engaging and keeping investors up to date along the way.

Problem

As start-up veterans, the founding team at Azra Games knew that it was crucial to keep their investors updated on a regular basis. However, they found their process not only time-consuming but also inefficient.

The team created a Word template to be re-used each time for consistency. But while working on an update, the leadership team would have to send each other the latest version over Slack so they could work on it together, which limited real-time collaboration. They needed to log into accounting and banking systems to include the most recent metrics, which also added complexity in terms of ensuring everyone was working on the latest document with the latest data. The team would experience slight anxiety every time they hit send on an investor update worrying if there were any mistakes or issues.

Solution

A few weeks after Azra’s seed round, an investor initiated monthly information requests through Standard Metrics. After responding to the investor, the Azra team started exploring the platform to understand how Standard Metrics could streamline their investor updates process.

First and foremost, through a drag-and-drop report builder, the team gained flexibility not offered by the Word template and no longer had to worry about formatting issues or multiple versions. Since Azra Games had already responded to an information request from an investor, the latest metrics were on the platform and any relevant data could be pulled into the investor update in a single click. Once the team created their first update, they test-sent it to themselves for final review, and prepared for distribution by adding all of their stakeholders to Standard Metrics. By duplicating the update and removing critical financials depending on the audience, Azra Games started sending monthly investor updates not just to its investors, but also to its advisors, employees, and potential investors.

Results

In the past four months, Azra Games has been using Standard Metrics to deliver its company vision and build close relationships with both existing and potential investors. Staying true to its values around transparency, Azra has been sending monthly updates to all company employees as well, resulting in strong internal alignment and high morale. The leadership team is saving 5+ hours each month while fully eliminating issues relating to outdated data or formatting. Finally, the team feels confident when sending updates!

What’s Next

Azra’s investor update streamlining experience has turned the team’s attention to further IR optimizations. Now that two of Azra’s investors are using Standard Metrics to make information requests, centralizing more data on-platform is the next logical move. Azra Games will use Standard Metrics’ pre-built integrations with Quickbooks and Silicon Valley Bank to ingest financials and centralize it alongside operational metrics. From that point, the team will be able to quickly auto-fill and respond to any number of investor information requests, scaling its investor relations function without scaling its team.