Published: 03-Jan-2022
It was nice to see many people appreciating Rippling's memo. More founders should try to write down arguments for their business that way - if not for an investor, for yourself. It will help you structure & solidify your own thinking. More on this...
Interestingly, the rules for writing a good investor memo is exactly the same as good/clear writing:
"Crafting strong arguments & tying them up in a clear flow"
I wish more of us in the ecosystem could have discussions around
- how to craft these arguments
- what makes a good argument
- what is a good flow
- how does flow have to change based on situation (btw, your memo flow will be very sensitive to the stage you are at & the situation your industry is in because that will drive what questions an investor first wants answers to)
These questions/techniques are under-discussed things that need to be talked about more. Especially because we don't have the right answers for many of them. I don't even know even there can ever be a right answer. Because there is no formula for these. It requires practice, discussion, & developing a sense of judgement (one of there reasons consultants & bankers are able to extract value for this).
Instead, what I see on discussions around memos is that they typically move in the direction of 'hence, memos greater than decks' and then rest of it is folks fighting over why memos or decks are better. Someone will bring up Amazon's one-pager practice. Or Sriram K's collection of memos (bless him for collecting them). One person will counter with Airbnb's deck. There's no resolution and everyone disperses (I am already seeing this happen today).
I think fighting over 'deck vs memo' is a slightly false dichotomy. I'll come to the 'slightly false' part later. But let me first explain why deck and memo are actually not very different.
Rules of good writing apply whether you are writing a memo or making a deck. Because here's the right process for making a deck (little over-simplified)
- Write a memo
- Put it on a deck
You see, it has to have the same content.
The 'slightly false' part is that a deck is more skim-able than a memo (hence shorter reading time) & is helpful when you are getting in touch with an investor for a first conversation. But effectively, both the memo document & deck have to be born out of the same thought.
So it makes more sense to work on that 'thought' instead of fretting over whether you should write a doc or make a deck. And the way to work on 'thought' is to write.
Using 10 slide templates like 'problem, solution, etc' is lazy thinking. It doesn't force you to stress-test the arguments you are making about your business like you do when you write them as a memo.
So if you don't work on your clarity of thought & flow, whether you write a memo or a deck or make a video for that matter, the investor & you will be none the wiser.
Hence we should have more discussion around what constitutes good writing (from an investor pitch perspective) instead of unhelpful memo vs deck conversations.
