# Investment Memo Template A reusable structure for a seed/early-stage investment memo, with a weighted scorecard and a written verdict. This is the same six-section structure used in the worked example at https://stratengineai.com/investment-sample (the original AirBed&Breakfast seed deck, analyzed against what was knowable at the time). How to use it: replace the bracketed prompts with your own analysis. Keep the four-part structure inside each section — separating **what the deck claimed** from **what you verified independently** is what makes a memo decision-grade rather than a summary. --- ## Header | Field | Value | |---|---| | Company | [Name] | | Stage | [Pre-seed / Seed / Series A / Series B] | | Sector | [Sector] | | Geography | [Geography] | | Date of analysis | [YYYY-MM-DD] | | Recommendation | [Advance / Watchlist / Pass] | | Composite score | [0.00] out of 5.00 | **Thesis in one line:** [The single sentence a partner would remember. What kind of bet is this?] **Executive summary:** [3–5 sentences. What the company does, the strongest evidence for advancing, the most significant open risk, and the recommendation. Written so a partner who reads nothing else can still take a position.] --- ## Weighted scorecard Score each section 1–5. Multiply by the weight to get the weighted contribution. **The weights below are a starting point, not a standard.** They should change based on two things: **Company stage.** At pre-seed and seed there is little evidence of anything except the people and the market they have chosen, so team and market carry most of the weight — traction barely exists yet, and scoring it heavily just penalizes companies for being early. By Series A and B the balance inverts: traction and business model become the load-bearing sections because there is now real data, and a strong team with flat numbers is a different proposition than a strong team with no numbers yet. Re-weight deliberately as stage moves; carrying seed weights into a Series B review will systematically overrate charisma and underrate performance. **Your investment philosophy.** A fund that backs technical founders in deep tech should weight team and product differently than one making category bets on market timing. If you believe most returns come from picking the right market, say so in the weights. If you believe execution beats market, say that instead. The weights are where your thesis becomes explicit and checkable — two partners who disagree about a company often turn out to disagree about the weights, and that is a more productive argument to have out loud. Whatever you choose, decide the weights *before* you score, not after. Setting them afterward turns the scorecard into a justification for a conclusion you already reached. | Section | Score (1–5) | Weight | Weighted | |---|---|---|---| | 01 Team | [ ] | 30% | [ ] | | 02 Product | [ ] | 20% | [ ] | | 03 Market | [ ] | 25% | [ ] | | 04 Traction | [ ] | 15% | [ ] | | 05 Business Model | [ ] | 8% | [ ] | | 06 Risk | [ ] | 2% | [ ] | | **Composite** | | **100%** | **[ ]** | **Verdict bands** (set these in advance and hold to them): - **Advance** — proceed to partner meeting / deeper diligence - **Watchlist** — not now; define the specific milestone that would change the answer - **Pass** — with the reason written down, so the decision is auditable later --- ## Section structure Repeat this four-part structure for each of the six sections. The separation is the point: it prevents a confident-sounding deck from being mistaken for verified fact. ### [Section number and name] · Score [ ]/5 **Claims from deck** [What the deck asserts. Report it faithfully and without editorializing — this is the input, not your judgment of it. Include specific numbers and dates as stated.] **Research findings** [What you verified independently, and how. Name the source for each check. Critically: state what you could *not* verify. "Founder-reported; no third-party confirmation available" is a finding, not a gap in your work.] **Comparison & gaps** [Where claims and findings diverge, and what that divergence means. What's missing from the deck entirely? What would you need to see to move the score up or down?] **Score justification** [Why this score and not one point higher or lower. Reference the evidence above. A reader should be able to disagree with your conclusion while understanding exactly how you reached it.] --- ## The six sections **01 · Team** — [Founder backgrounds and whether credentials verify. Relevant domain experience. Prior execution under constraint. Completeness of the founding team for this stage: is the core product surface covered? Retention/commitment signals.] **02 · Product** — [What it actually does today versus what's roadmap. Differentiation that isn't easily copied. Technical or design defensibility. Evidence users prefer it to the alternative, including the alternative of doing nothing.] **03 · Market** — [TAM, and how it was derived — reject top-down percentages of a large number. Timing: why now and not three years ago. Structural tailwinds. Competitive density and who else is funded here.] **04 · Traction** — [Growth metrics with their measurement window. Triangulate against third-party sources where any exist. Distinguish organic from paid, and retained from acquired. State plainly where numbers are founder-reported and unverifiable.] **05 · Business Model** — [Unit economics as understood today. CAC structure on both sides if it's a marketplace. Whether margins improve with scale or merely hold. Whether the economics are venture-scale or good-business-scale — these are different answers.] **06 · Risk** — [The principal risk that could break the thesis, named specifically rather than hedged. Regulatory exposure and its likely timeline. Concentration risk. Key-person risk. What would have to be true for this to be a zero.] --- ## Notes on using this well - **Score before you write the summary.** Writing the narrative first tends to produce scores that justify a conclusion you already reached. - **A "Pass" memo is worth as much as an "Advance" memo.** The value of the archive is being able to revisit why you passed when the company later raises at 10×. Fred Wilson's public account of passing on Airbnb is instructive precisely because the reasoning was recorded. - **Unverified is not the same as false.** Mark it as unverified and score the uncertainty. Treating every unconfirmed founder claim as a negative systematically penalizes early-stage companies for being early. - **Consistency across memos matters more than precision within one.** The same deck read on two different days by the same person should produce close to the same score. If it doesn't, the rubric is doing too little work and intuition is doing too much. --- Template by StratEngine — https://stratengineai.com Worked example: https://stratengineai.com/investment-sample Free to use and adapt.