Announcements: Telling People Things
The WhatsApp group replacement. Announcements go to exactly the people you choose - one cohort, one startup, your mentors, or everyone - and unlike a group message you can see who has actually read them.
What you will learn
- How to send an announcement to exactly the right people
- What the five targeting scopes mean
- The difference between visibility and scope
- How to draft, schedule, pin and expire announcements
- How to see who has read what
Why not just use WhatsApp#
Because a WhatsApp message disappears up the scroll, reaches whoever happens to be in the group, and gives you no idea who read it. An announcement here is addressed to a defined audience, stays in one place, carries attachments, and tells you how many people opened it. When a founder later says nobody told them about the deadline, you can check.
The announcements list#
Six state tabs run across the top, so you can see what is live, what is still a draft, and what is queued to go out later. Each announcement shows its priority, visibility, scope, who wrote it, its status, and read statistics.
| Tab | What is in it |
|---|---|
| All | Everything except archived, unless you flip the toggle. |
| Published | Live and visible to their audience right now. |
| Drafts | Written but not sent. Nobody can see these but your team. |
| Pinned | Held at the top of the recipient's list. Use sparingly. |
| Scheduled | Written now, will publish automatically at a set time. |
| Archived | Retired. Hidden unless you turn on Show Archived. |
Writing one#
Create Announcement opens a short form. Title and content are required; everything else shapes who sees it and how prominently.
- Priority - Low, Medium or High. This affects how prominently it appears, not who gets it.
- Expires at - an optional date and time after which it stops showing. Ideal for deadline reminders that stop mattering.
- Attachments - add files with Add File. Useful for the form, the template, the guidelines document.
The five scopes#
Scope is the single most important choice on this form. It decides who receives the announcement, and getting it wrong means either spamming people or missing the ones who needed to know.
| Scope | Who receives it | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Tenant Wide | Everyone at your centre - your incubation team. | Office closures, policy changes, all-hands notices. |
| Program Specific | Everyone attached to one program. | Cohort deadlines, session schedules, program-wide reminders. |
| Startup Specific | One named startup. | Something that concerns them alone but should be on record. |
| Mentor Specific | Your mentors. | Mentor briefings, session round changes, panel requests. |
| Custom | A hand-picked set of recipients. | Anything that does not fit the four above. |
Tip
Default to the narrowest scope that does the job. People who receive announcements that are not for them stop reading announcements - and then miss the one that mattered.
Scope and visibility are different#
These two settings sit next to each other and are easy to confuse. Scope decides which group of people the announcement is addressed to. Visibility decides how openly it is shown - whether it appears publicly or only to signed-in members of your centre.
Good to know
A practical way to hold it: scope is 'who is this for', visibility is 'how public is it'. An announcement can be program-specific and still be publicly visible, or tenant-wide and internal only.
Careful
Check visibility before publishing anything that names a startup, mentions a funding decision or discusses an individual. Once something is published publicly you cannot un-see it, even if you archive it a minute later.
Drafts, scheduling and pinning#
Three features that make announcements less of a scramble.
Save as a draft
Write it now, publish when you are ready. Drafts are invisible to everyone outside your team, so you can leave one half-finished safely.
Schedule it
Set a publish time and it goes out on its own. Write your Monday morning cohort notice on Friday afternoon.
Pin the important one
Pinned announcements sit at the top of the recipient's list. Keep one pinned at a time - pin three and you have pinned nothing.
Set an expiry
Deadline reminders should disappear once the deadline passes. Expiry does that without you remembering to tidy up.
Attach the document
If your announcement says 'fill in the form', attach the form. Every extra step loses people.
Archive when done
Retire old announcements rather than deleting them. The record of what you told people, and when, is worth keeping.
Seeing who read it#
The Stats column on the list shows read tracking. This is the thing a WhatsApp group cannot give you, and it changes how you chase people.
- Low read numbers on an important notice means chase individually rather than sending the same message again.
- High read numbers with no response means the message was seen but was not clear enough to act on.
- Before escalating that a startup 'ignored' a deadline, check whether they actually opened the announcement.
Common questions#
Scope is who the announcement is addressed to - a program, a startup, your mentors, everyone. Visibility is how openly it is shown. They are independent settings.
You can, but people who already read it will not necessarily see the change. For a material correction it is usually better to publish a short follow-up so the correction is itself an event people are notified about.
Check its scope. A tenant-wide announcement goes to your incubation team, not to startups - that is the most common cause. Then check the read stats.
Set a publish time and it becomes Scheduled, going out automatically. Or save it as a draft and publish it manually when you are ready.
Archive rather than delete. The record of what your centre told people, and when, is worth having - particularly if a dispute ever arises about a deadline or a decision.
One. Pinning is a way of saying 'this above everything else'. Pin three and recipients stop treating pinned as meaningful.
