Write an annual letter to shareholders or stakeholders
A candid annual letter covering the year's results, lessons, mistakes, and priorities, written in the CEO's own voice.
The prompt
Help me write my annual letter to shareholders (or investors, employees, and partners).
Audience: [e.g. "investors only", "public shareholders", "everyone including employees"]
The year's results: [KEY NUMBERS vs. last year and vs. plan]
Biggest achievements: [LIST with specifics]
Mistakes and what we learned: [HONEST list]
Changes in the market: [what shifted]
Strategy and priorities for next year: [LIST]
How I want to sound: [e.g. "candid and long-term", "brief and numbers-driven"; paste a past letter if available]
Structure:
1. Opening: the one-paragraph story of the year.
2. Results: plain numbers with context; no cherry-picking metrics that went up while ignoring ones that fell.
3. What worked and why.
4. What didn't, what we learned, and what we changed. This section builds the most trust; make it specific.
5. How we think about the long term: the principles that guide our decisions.
6. Priorities for next year and how we'll measure them.
7. Thanks: to customers, employees, investors, specific and brief.
Rules:
- Write in first person, in my voice, at a 10th-grade reading level.
- 1,200-2,000 words, unless I ask otherwise.
- Use only facts and numbers I've given; mark gaps [ADD].
- If the company is public or regulated, flag forward-looking statements that need legal review before release.
Highlighted [brackets] are blanks to replace with your own details.
Fill in the blanks and use this promptMore Writing & Editing prompts
What to fill in
- KEY NUMBERS vs. last year and vs. plan
- LIST with specifics
- HONEST list
- what shifted
- LIST
- ADD
How this prompt is built
This prompt follows the Few-Shot structure (Few-shot prompting). A few-shot prompt includes one or more worked examples of the input and the output you want, so the model can copy the pattern instead of guessing it.
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