/pitch-memo

name: pitch-memo
description: Drafts and critiques a text-first investor pitch memo for pre-seed and seed founders, structured around the 15 questions every investor asks. Use as an alternative or complement to a pitch deck — memos are faster to iterate, harder to hide weak thinking inside, and serve as the script for walking through a deck in a meeting. Triggers on "pitch memo," "investment memo," "fundraise memo," "memo for investors," "pitch document," "alternative to deck," "memo not deck."

Pitch memo

Source: Josh Constine's *Fundraising & Pitch Deck Guide* — specifically his 15-question memo template — plus Kramon's BLUF rule, Konrad's "tell me a secret about the future," and the existing `pitch-coach` framework.

Why a memo (not a deck)

For pre-seed and seed companies, a memo can outperform a deck:

• **No design wrangling.** No fiddling with slide layouts or hiring a designer.
• **Pretty design can hide weak thinking; a memo can't.** If the founder can't write the 15 answers cleanly, they're not ready to pitch.
• **It's the deck script.** Even if you eventually build a deck, the memo is the narrative spine — write it first, design slides to support it, not the other way around.
• **Decks leave investors with questions; memos answer them upfront.** Less follow-up email cycle.

A memo replaces a deck for: pre-seed, founders who think in text more than imagery, and any raise where you're competing on *substance* over *presentation*. A memo complements a deck for everyone else.

The 15 questions (Constine)

Every investor asks the same 15 things. A memo that answers all of them in order is the most efficient possible pitch artifact.

1. Company name

Ideally, if you hear it you can spell it; if you read it you can pronounce it. You should be the top Google or App Store result for your name + a relevant keyword.

2. Tagline

One-line description. Plain English. No buzzwords. *"AI co-pilot for notaries."* / *"Forward-deployed engineers, but as software."* / *"Stripe for healthcare data."*

3. Problem

• What's wrong with the world?
• How acute is the pain?
• Who specifically has it? (A must-have for a small niche beats a nice-to-have for a wide market.)
• Show emotional resonance — your own first-customer story or a named person's story, not abstractions.

4. Solution

• Core functionality of the product
• How did you come up with it (origin story matters)
• How does it make a few people's lives a lot better, or a lot of people's lives a little better?
• One screenshot or a short demo video walking the most common use case
• Why is this *exponentially* better, not linearly better?

5. Big vision

• If you succeed, how does the world change?
• What's the path from beachhead → $10B company?
• Why is this your legacy?
• Why do you want to spend the next 10 years on this?

6. Team

• Specific roles + companies for each founder (not just logos)
• LinkedIn for each
• Why are you the best team in the world to tackle this?
• The "superhero origin story" — the personal arc that means you'll never quit
• Co-founder dynamic (this is what kills early-stage startups)
• Advisors only if they're high-quality — max 2 or 3, never lean on their credibility

7. Market size

• Serviceable Addressable Market — bottom-up, not vague TAM
• TAM only as a layer for adjacent products you'd launch later
• How fast is the market itself growing?
• How much are people spending on or losing because of the problem today?

8. Business model

• How do you earn money?
• Pricing model
• Margin
• What's your affordable customer acquisition strategy?

9. Go-to-market / customer

• Who specifically do you sell to (named segments, not "SMBs")?
• Demographic
• Channels — direct, partnerships, PLG, etc.
• Who on the team owns sales/growth?
• Marketing strategy
• How does the product grow itself?

10. Traction

• Current state — customers, users, revenue, growth rate
• Day-30 / Day-90 retention
• Dollar and logo retention
• Top customers + spend + room for expansion
• Pipeline
• Focus on the **north-star metric**, not vanity metrics

11. Competition

• Direct startups attacking the same problem
• Big incumbents who could move in
• Status quo / old-school way customers solve this today
• 2×2 matrix or differentiation checklist
• **The graveyard** — what have you learned from past failures in this space? (See `graveyard-historian` skill.)
• Why is this a winner-take-all or winner-take-most market?
• Your defensible moat / accruing advantage as you grow

12. Why now

• Tech, behavior, macroeconomic, or regulatory shifts unlocking this
• Why couldn't this have been built 5 years ago?
• What changed in the last 18 months that makes the timing work?

13. Raise history

• Total raised to date, round by round
• Lead investors, angels, valuations, SAFE vs. priced
• Most helpful people on the cap table
• Burn rate and runway

14. Raise

• How much you're raising
• SAFE or priced round
• Ballpark valuation cap (or no, if you'd rather investors price it)
• What you're looking for in your investors (operator help, recruiting, GTM, regulatory expertise, etc.)

15. What's next

• Hiring plan
• Key hires that complement founders' skillsets
• Specific milestones you'll hit before raising the next round
• Common targets: $200K ARR before seed, $1M before A, $9M before B, then doubling

Writing rules — apply across all 15

These come from `points/` and apply to every section of the memo:

• **BLUF.** Each section opens with the conclusion, not the buildup.
• **Specific over abstract.** "47 of 100 PMs interviewed" beats "many people we talked to." Use `vividness --mode noun-level`.
• **Banned jargon.** No synergy/leverage/drive/strategize/empower/at the intersection of. Use `style-tells --target jargon`.
• **No em-dashes in the deliverable.** Use commas, periods, colons. (See `style-tells --target em-dashes`.)
• **Show, don't tell.** Quote a customer with attribution, don't paraphras