Series A Investment Memo: A Founder's 12-Section Template

An investment memo is the internal document a venture partner writes to persuade the rest of the partnership to fund a company. In our view, founders raising a Series A benefit from writing their own version first: it pushes a number behind each claim, surfaces objections early, and gives an interested partner much of what they need to pitch your deal internally.

Your pitch will be debated in a room you're not in. The memo is what gets read there. Writing it yourself is the closest you can get to a seat at that table.

This guide covers what a VC memo contains, why the founder version helps, and an original 12-section template you can fill in, from the summary and deal line to risks and open questions.

Definition: An investment memo is a written recommendation, prepared by an investor for a partnership or investment committee, that sets out the case for and against investing in a specific company on specific terms.

What is an investment memo?

When a partner wants to do a deal, they rarely just say so in the Monday meeting. They write it down. The memo is the partner's argument, in their own words, for why this company could return a meaningful share of the fund. Other partners read it, poke holes in it, and decide.

Length varies by firm: some memos run a few pages, others much longer with appendices. Bessemer Venture Partners has published several of its historical memos, including its 2010 Series A memo on Shopify, which is organized around market opportunity, customers and pricing, product, customer acquisition and retention, competition, team, financials, the deal, and an outcomes analysis.

Three things tend to follow:

The memo speaks the investor's language, not yours. Your deck says "huge market." Their memo says "bottom-up TAM of $2.1B, assuming 40K target accounts at $52K ACV."
The risks often get as much space as the strengths. Few deals have no risks. Investors tend to fund the deals where the risks are named and priced.
The memo is what survives. When the company raises again, someone may reopen it to see whether the thesis played out.

If you can write this document honestly about your own company, you likely understand your business better than many of the investors you'll meet. This guide is the founder's side. For how analysts and partners build theirs, including the return math, see our investor template for the venture capital investment memo.

Why founders should write their own Series A investment memo

A deck is built to get the meeting, which is roughly how we think about pitch decks. A memo is built to survive the debate afterward. Pre-writing one does four things a deck usually can't:

It forces numbers. "Strong retention" reads as thin in a memo. A memo pushes you toward "month-6 logo retention of 84 percent across the first three cohorts."
It surfaces the objections. The risks section is often where you discover you haven't yet answered "why can't the incumbent do this?"
It gives your champion material. A partner who likes you usually still has to sell you internally, often at a venture capital investment committee. A tight founder memo can become the backbone of theirs.
It aligns the team. Co-founders often disagree on the story without realizing it. Writing it down tends to expose that.

Give the team section real care. In a survey of almost 900 venture capitalists summarized by Gompers, Gornall, Kaplan and Strebulaev on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, 95 percent of firms named the management team as an important factor and 47 percent named it the most important.

If you're building toward a Series A and want structured help getting there, 1752vc's Accelerate program invests $100K at a valuation cap of up to $3.5M, runs remotely, and focuses on founder-led sales training, with access to a network of 850+ investors. A memo-quality account of your traction is the kind of thing that network is likely to ask for.

"But the investor is going to write their own memo anyway"

True. No partner will paste your document into their IC deck, and a fund's view of your company should be its own. Some investors are wary of founder-written material, since it's still written by the person selling.

But.

The point isn't to write their memo for them. It's to find your own weak spots before they do, and to make the partner's job faster. A champion who can lift your retention table and your risk list straight into their draft has more time to argue for you. The work also makes you a sharper pitch, whether or not anyone reads the document.

The Series A investment memo template, section by section

Below is an original outline, one reasonable way to structure it. We suggest roughly 2,000 to 3,500 words for the founder version, with headers, bullets and charts, written as if you were the investor.

1. Summary and recommendation (half a page)

One paragraph on what the company does, one on why it could be big, and one on the deal. End with the line a partner would write: "Recommend leading $X at $Y post-money for Z percent ownership."

Write the deal line yourself. It makes you confront whether the round you're asking for works for a fund of the size you're pitching.

2. Team

Who the founders are and, more importantly, why these people for this problem: prior work, domain exposure, and what each person owns. Be honest about gaps and explain how you're filling them.

The investor's question: does this team have an unfair advantage here, and can they recruit?

3. Problem and insight

What's broken, for whom, how expensive it is today, and what you know that others don't. In our view the insight is the core of the memo. Without it, the rest reads like a feature list.

4. Product and how it works

What you've shipped, how customers use it, and what's proprietary. Include one or two screenshots or a short workflow. We'd keep the roadmap for section 9.

5. Traction and unit economics

This section often does the most work. Consider including:

Revenue or usage, monthly, for the whole history (a chart, not a sentence).
Growth rate over the last 3 to 6 months.
Retention: logo and net revenue for B2B, cohort curves for consumer.
Sales efficiency: CAC, payback, and gross margin, even if rough.
Pipeline by stage, if you sell to businesses.

Benchmarks for context: CRV's 2026 guide to Series A metrics says a competitive B2B SaaS raise generally starts at $2M to $5M in ARR, with net revenue retention of 100 percent as a baseline and 110 to 120 percent as competitive. On efficiency, David Sacks of Craft Ventures, who named and popularized the burn multiple (net burn divided by net new ARR), rates anything under 2x as good or better and anything above 3x as bad. We'd treat all of these as ranges, not gates. If you're unsure where you sit, see when to raise a Series A.

6. Market

Bottom-up sizing: number of target customers times realistic annual spend, then the expansion path. Show the wedge and the wider market separately. Many investors distrust top-down numbers lifted from analyst reports.

7. Competition and positioning

A short, honest map of incumbents, direct startups, and the status quo (spreadsheets, doing nothing). For each, say why you win and where they're stronger. A competition section with no strong competitors reads as naive.

8. Go-to-market

How you win customers today, what it costs, and what changes at the next stage. Name the motion: founder-led sales, product-led, channel, or a mix. If you're pre-revenue, describe the first ten customers you'll close and how.

9. Why now, and the plan

What changed in technology, regulation, or behavior that makes this possible today. Sequoia's widely shared business plan outline gives "Why now?" its own section for the same reason. Then the 18-month plan: milestones, hires, and what the money buys.

10. The deal and use of funds

Round size, structure (SAFE or priced), valuation or cap, existing investors, and the ownership the lead would get, with a simple use of funds. Tie this to your cap table so the dilution math is visible. For reference, Carta's analysis of software rounds in the six months to July 2026 found a median Series A of $14.4M at an $80M valuation, with 18 percent dilution.

11. Risks and mitigations

List the 5 to 8 biggest risks and what you're doing about each. Categories that often help: market, product, team, competition, regulatory, and financing. This is the section founders skip and many investors read first.

12. Open questions

List two to five things you genuinely don't know yet. Investors often trust founders who can say "we haven't proven X; we'll know by Q2."

A worked example of a risks section

An illustrative B2B compliance software company at seed might write:

Risk: incumbents add the feature. Mitigation: our wedge is a workflow the incumbent's architecture cannot support without a rebuild; two enterprise buyers confirmed this in reference calls.
Risk: long sales cycles. Mitigation: our current median cycle is 41 days for mid-market; we are avoiding enterprise until Series A.
Risk: founder-dependent sales. Mitigation: first AE hired in month 4 after close, with a documented playbook from our first 20 deals.
Risk: financing. Mitigation: this round gives 24 months of runway at planned burn, and break-even on current customers alone is possible at 60 percent of plan.

Every mitigation carries a number or a fact. Reassurance doesn't move a partnership. Evidence does.

Common mistakes in a founder investment memo

Writing marketing copy. The memo is analytical. Cut the adjectives and keep the numbers.
Hiding the bad month. Investors will likely find it in the data room. Explaining it in the memo first usually lands better.
A thin risks section. Two risks suggests you haven't thought hard enough.
No deal math. If you don't state the lead's ownership, they'll calculate it, and they may not like the answer.
Too long. As a rule of thumb, keep the core to about eight pages and move detail to an appendix.

How to use your investment memo to speed up a Series A

We wouldn't send the memo cold. A common approach is to lead with the deck and a short blurb (see how to write a cold email to an investor). Once a partner is interested, offer the memo as the "everything in one document" follow-up.

It answers the first round of diligence questions in writing and gives the partner a head start on their own write-up, so meetings can focus on the real open issues. It won't replace the fund's own checks. Pair it with a clean data room; the investor-side due diligence guide shows what they'll check.

Update the memo monthly while you're raising, so the traction section stays within about 30 days.

Before any of that, tighten the deck. The Pitch Deck Analyzer gives slide-by-slide feedback and is a quick way to confirm that the story in your memo matches the story in your slides.

The bottom line

A founder memo is an honesty exercise with a side benefit. You find the holes in your own story, and the partner who likes you gets a head start on selling you. Twelve sections, a number behind every claim, and a risks list you'd be comfortable defending.

Your deck opens the conversation. Your memo is what gets debated after you've left the room.

Key takeaways

An investment memo is the internal case a VC writes to justify a deal, and writing your own before a Series A is, in our view, a useful way to find the holes in your pitch.
One approach is to use the same 12 sections a partner would, from summary and team through traction, market, deal terms, risks, and open questions.
Try to put a number behind each claim; the traction and risks sections often do the most work.
Writing the deal line yourself helps you confront whether your round works for the fund you are pitching.
Consider sharing the memo after interest is established, not cold, and keep the traction data under 30 days old.

Frequently asked questions

Should founders write their own investment memo?

In our view, yes, especially before a Series A. Writing your own investment memo pushes you to back each claim with a number, exposes the objections you have not yet answered, and aligns co-founders on one story. It also gives an interested partner a ready-made structure for the memo they will likely write for their partnership.

How is an investment memo different from a pitch deck?

A pitch deck is a visual story built to earn a meeting, while an investment memo is a written analysis built to survive a partnership debate. The memo spends as much space on risks, competition and deal math as on strengths, and it states numbers in full sentences. Founders use the deck to open conversations and the memo to deepen them.

What metrics should a Series A investment memo include?

Many founders show monthly revenue for the full history, growth over the last 3 to 6 months, logo and net revenue retention, gross margin, CAC payback and burn multiple. CRV's 2026 guidance puts a competitive B2B SaaS Series A at roughly $2M to $5M in ARR with net revenue retention of 100 percent or higher, though bars vary by sector.

Can writing an investment memo speed up a Series A raise?

It can shorten the process, but it will not replace a fund's own diligence. A good founder memo answers the standard first-round questions in one document, so partners spend meetings on the real open issues. It works best paired with an organized data room and traction figures that are less than 30 days old.

When should I send my investment memo to investors?

Usually after a first meeting has created real interest, not as a cold attachment. One approach is to lead with a deck and a short blurb, then offer the memo as the complete follow-up once a partner wants to go deeper. It helps to keep the traction section updated at least monthly while you are raising.

Sources

Disclaimer: This guide is for general education only and is not legal, tax or investment advice. Laws, market data and program terms change, so it may not reflect the latest developments or fit your situation. Treat it as a starting point, not a source of truth, and talk to a qualified lawyer, accountant or financial adviser before you make decisions.