Most investment memo templates you find online are either too generic or written by people who’ve never had to sit in front of an IC and defend a recommendation. Here’s what I’ve learned from writing them at Lead Invest.

What a memo is actually trying to do

A good memo does one thing: help the investment committee decide without having to dig through the data dump themselves. You’re not showcasing your research. You’re making a case.

The structure I’ve settled on:

1. The one-liner — What does the company do, who for, and what’s the insight that makes this interesting. If you can’t do this in two sentences, you don’t understand the business well enough yet.

2. Why now — Market timing matters more than most founders admit. What has changed in the last 12-18 months that makes this specific moment the right one to build? Could be a regulation, a tech unlock, a behavioral shift post-pandemic.

3. The team — Not just resumes. Do they have specific insight into this problem that a well-funded competitor can’t easily acquire? Domain expertise, founder-market fit, or a distribution advantage they already have.

4. The unit economics — CAC, LTV, payback period, gross margin. For early-stage, you’re often projecting these, which means you need to be explicit about your assumptions and benchmark them against comparable companies.

5. Competitive positioning — Where does the company sit on the landscape? What’s the moat thesis? Network effects, switching costs, cost advantage, intangibles? Be specific. “First mover advantage” is not a moat.

6. Risks and red flags — The IC will find them anyway. Better that you surface them and show you’ve thought through the downside. The ones that kill deals: unclear path to profitability, a founder who can’t explain their own numbers, a market that’s too small even at optimistic assumptions.

7. The valuation and entry — Is the entry price fair? What multiples are you paying on ARR or GMV? What does the cap table look like? What are the liquidation preferences?

8. The recommendation — Clear. Pass, conditional pass, or invest. And why.

The most common mistake I see in memos — including ones I’ve written earlier — is hedging. Saying “there are risks but also opportunities.” That’s not useful. The IC can see the risks themselves. Your job is to tell them whether the opportunity is worth those risks and at what price.

Write to the sceptic in the room, not the optimist.