Memos/decks with depth

Published: 12-Jan-2022

I really hope more founders write about the problem they are solving with as much depth as Binks founder Aamna Khan wrote in their memo. Apologies beforehand in case you couldn’t get your hand on the memo. I understand you may not have a reference point for the point I am making. In that case, please use Rippling memo as a reference point instead.

I takes a lot of effort to write such an in-depth memo. No denying that. Pretty sure Aamna/Parker would have spent months on this. And countless iterations. But I feel it's worth it.

Benefits of an in-depth memo/deck

Raises chance of convincing investors

Can convince larger pool of investors, not just those pre-educated about the sector

Just the journey of writing this gives more clarity to founder

How do you cover a problem in depth in your memo/deck?

You need to be able to answer all the following questions (or whichever relevant for you)

The shift in the world that makes current solution/situation the old game?

What's the resulting gap/problem?

Why the old game has continued to stay?

Who exactly is facing this problem?

What's the core need that's not being satisfied? (this requires some bit of thinking & right framing. You need to pick one vector even if you are solving multiple things. This is nothing but your strategy)

Why this core need is so important to be solved for this target customer group?

How current solutions are unable to address this core need? (subtly covers your competition)

Why are they are unable to solve?

What has changed that enables you to solve?

Parting thoughts

Even if you are not making a deck/memo, it's a useful exercise to write down answers to these questions and run them by your mentors/investors to stress-test your answers. You always end up getting something helpful out of it.

If you crack this core narrative, it's not just your clear pitch to investors. Slightly different variants of it becomes your pitch to potential employees and potential customers/partners.