Investment Memo Drafter

name: investment-memo-drafter
description: Drafts structured investment committee memos from deal materials such as CIMs, financial models, expert call notes and diligence findings. Use when the user asks to draft, outline or tighten an IC memo, deal memo or investment write-up.

Produce a first-draft investment committee memo that is structured, sourced and honest about what is still missing. The audience is an IC that reads dozens of these a year: they skim the executive summary, go straight to the numbers and the risks and lose confidence the moment they find a figure that cannot be traced. The output is a working draft for the deal team to edit. Not a finished recommendation.

Inputs

Ask the user for whatever is available:

• Deal materials: CIM or management presentation, financial model output, data room extracts, QoE if it exists
• Call and meeting notes: management meetings, expert calls, customer or reference calls
• The firm's memo template or a recent past memo, if they want the house format followed
• Deal context: stage (first look, second-round, final IC, follow-on), check size and what decision the memo supports

Work with what you get. Do not stall waiting for a complete data room. A first-look memo built from a CIM alone is a legitimate use.

Workflow

1. Inventory the provided materials in one short list and confirm the memo's purpose and the decision being asked of IC.
2. If a house template or past memo was provided, mirror its section order, heading names and voice exactly. Otherwise use the default structure below.
3. Draft each section using only the provided materials, following the section-level guidance below.
4. Attribute every number and every material claim to its source inline, e.g. "(CIM p.14)", "(mgmt call 5/12)", "(model, base case tab)". An IC member should be able to find the basis of any figure in under a minute.
5. Where materials conflict. CIM says 40% gross margin, model shows 36%. Present both with sources and flag the conflict. Never silently pick one.
6. Close with "Open Items Before IC": missing data, unverified claims and diligence still to run, ordered by how much each could change the answer.

Default structure and section guidance

1. Executive summary and draft recommendation. Half a page maximum: the business in two sentences, the deal (structure, valuation, check size), the thesis in three bullets, the two or three biggest risks and the draft recommendation labeled as the deal team's to finalize. Write this section last.

2. Situation overview and deal dynamics. Why this asset is for sale, who is running the process, timeline, competitive tension and why the firm has access or an angle. IC will ask "why do we win this and why do we want to?"

3. Business description and market. What the company sells, to whom and how it makes money. Specific enough that an IC member could explain the business to a colleague. Include revenue model (recurring vs. Transactional, contract lengths, pricing), customer concentration if disclosed and market size and growth only as stated in the materials with sources.

4. Financial summary. Historical and projected revenue, gross margin, EBITDA, capex and cash conversion in a compact table with the period and source labeled on every line. Note explicitly which figures are management projections versus audited or QoE-adjusted actuals. ICs treat those very differently.

5. Investment thesis. Three to five pillars. Each pillar gets: the claim in one sentence, the evidence for it from the materials (with sources) and what would have to be true for it to hold. A pillar with no evidence in the materials gets written as a hypothesis to validate, not as a fact.

Example pillar: "Pricing power is untapped. Management has raised prices once in five years (mgmt call 5/12); churn stayed under 3% through that increase (CIM p.22). To be validated: customer interviews on willingness-to-pay, competitive pricing benchmark. Neither is in the current materials."

6. Key risks and mitigants. Rank risks by potential impact on the thesis, not by category convention. For each: the risk, the evidence it is real, the mitigant if one genuinely exists and the diligence that would size it. Do not manufacture a mitigant for every risk. An unmitigated risk stated plainly builds more IC confidence than a hand-wave.

7. Returns framework. Only if a model was provided. Present the base case entry/exit assumptions and returns, then a simple bridge showing where the return comes from: revenue growth, margin expansion, multiple change and deleveraging, each in turn. Show the downside case if the model has one; if it does not, list that under open items. ICs will ask for it.

8. Open items before IC.

Guardrails

• Never invent, estimate or fill in numbers. If a figure is not in the materials, write "[not in provided materials]".
• Keep management claims and independently verified facts visibly distinct throughout. A QoE-adjusted EBITDA and a CIM EBITDA are not the same number and must not be blended.
• Do not soften the risks section to make the deal look better. The risks section should read like it was written by the most skeptical person on the deal team.
• Match the depth to the stage: a first-look memo of 3–4 pages beats a padded 15-page draft with empty sections.
• This is a drafting aid. Investment judgment, final numbers and the recommendation belong to the deal team.