Collection
The collection of quite interesting memos worth reading.
These are all internal memos that were made available for your perusal that you would likely never see otherwise!
Who doesn’t love learning how the inner workings of famous companies work? We can learn how people actually think and communicate.
I’ve pulled together all the internal memos that got made public for your reading, nerdy pleasure.
A lot of companies are in trouble, check out this Help, We’re Being Disrupted!
Javier Grillo-Marxuach wrote two memos on showrunning (television production). There is a mean version
Steve Martin responds to fans with a template. It’s smart
Mark Twain sent a letter to a snake oil salesperson and was not polite
Google introduced dual-class voting of shares
Prime Minister Winston Churchill, three months into his tenure during WW2 tell people to get to the f’n point!
Brian Graden wrote a 66-page memo on the future of VH1 and how to fix the struggling music channel in the early 2000s.
Chamath Palihapitiya invested into a publicly listed company called Fortress Value Acquisition Corporation. It’s a one page investment memo.
Social Capital Hedosophia II, the blank-check company associated with investor Chamath Palihapitiya, announced that it will merge with Opendoor, taking the private real estate startup public in the process.
Social Capital Hedosophia V, the blank-check company associated with investor Chamath Palihapitiya, announced that it will merge with SoFi, taking the personal financial services company public in the process.
a 13 page memo focused on the value case of Spotify.
Thomas Watson of IBM read a memo during WW2 from the Pentagon regarding not annoying your boss and completing your task. He later shared it at IBM
Steven Sinofsky was a technical assistant to Bill Gates. He writes a memo to explaining the use of the Internet at Cornell University which would lead to Microsoft going all in on the internet
Dave Goldberg emails Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton with his ballsy views on how music labels need to dramatically restructure to become more profitable. The plan is to focus on catalogue revenue and heavily cut costs.
The first resp0nse to fan mail David Bowie made to a fan in the usa at 20 years old
Ray Ozzie the CTO of Microsoft writes a memo imagining a post PC world
Fab’s CEO Jason Goldberg lays out the extent of their screw-up in a secret memo to the exec team
On their way to the dead pool, ecommerce CEO comments on firing over 100 staff in Berlin to try cut their burn
Producers discussing removing offensive text to have a lower film rating including the memorable phrase fart in your general direction
Neal Patterson, CEO of Cerner Corporation sent an email to light the fire under managers to get staff to work harder. It didn’t work out well for him
Ben Horowitz of a16z write about what makes a good, bad, and great product manager at the turn of 2000.
James Damore at Google writes a memo about reverse discrimination and differences between men and women and people lost their minds. He lost his job.
BuzzFeed Founder Jonah Peretti sends a call to arms for staff to save the internet
Leaked memo on how to perform at the leading YoutTube video maker
David Ogilvy’s 1982 memo ‘How to Write’ offers timeless advice: clarity, audience focus, strong headlines, thorough editing, research, and storytelling
Railroad executive Hunter Harrison’s manual on how to run an efficient railroad, originally distributed to Canadian National Railway
Elon Musk published and released his full conceptual design of a modern Hyperloop, in the form of a white paper called “Hyperloop Alpha”
Template for people who get drunk and offend people (Or when sober, cough)
Hulu CEO Jason Kilar posted the following on Hulu’s blog as Hulu announced the return of some Viacom content. He discusses the future of TV and content owners
Leaked internal New York Times report on innovation to survive the changes in news.
11 principles Nike lives by from 1977
Nikola Tesla discovers the foundations of the radio or something
The memo describes in brutal terms how Elop saw Nokia’s business — as an oil rig that’s on fire, forcing workers to jump into the North Sea. Clinging to a “burning platform” only means certain death.
Memo in 1989 on shipping Windows 1.0 with a postmortem of what went wrong given it took 5 years to code
It’s surprisingly short and to the point. It cracks me up to see some of the financial plans in the appendix are done in hand!
Neil McElroy, a junior at P&G sets out the roles and responsibilities of brand men, or brand managers.
Paypal (Confinity) business plan created in 1998 by Max Levchin and Peter Thiel.
Memo to state all staff have to work in the Yahoo office and work from home is dead
The initial pitch the founder Robert Gaskins made to make PowerPoint which was then acquired by Microsoft
A memo written by Nathan Myhrvold at Microsoft on how the internet will disrupt all industries.
Partner at Sequoia shared his investment memo as part of a lawsuit with Viacom
The resignation memo of Sam Hinkie, the former General Manager of the Philadelphia 76ers
Impact on culture, frugality in growth, and lasting corporate lessons
Jeffrey Katzenberg head of The Walt Disney Company’s motion picture division sends a long memo on how to turn around in the wake of a big failed movie.
The full list of who is in consideration to be hired for Star Trek: The Next Generation
It was an itinerary for a top-secret meeting called the Top 100 to be held early the next year, in 2011
Emails on how Steve Jobs won over News Corp’s James Murdoch on eBook pricing
Steve Yegge an employee at Google goes on a rant about the Google+ platform and forgot to turn off the “Public” sharing option.
Zbigniew Brzezinski provided President Carter a strategy memo for his 1978 Camp David Accords
Brad Garlinghouse, former senior vice president of Yahoo talks about spreading themselves too thin
Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz sends a memo to executives to share his concern they are becoming sterile without the warmth of a neighbourhood cafe
CTO Ray Ozzie writes a memo in 2005 that Microsoft needs to focus on web services in the face of competition with free, ad-supported products
Bill Gates declares the internet important and staff need to start focusing on it
1777 war letter using spy technique called steganography. See a real letter, the code and the text that results after
Part 1 and 2 by Elon Musk on how he was to revolutionaries the automotive industy
Oil boss Edward Mike Davis is a grumpy son of a bitch in Houston in the 1970s. Memos were unearthed proving the point
Ben Slivka at Microsoft writes a memo for Bill Gates about the future of the internet which was largely ignored
Harry Markopolos writes to the SEC about the 29 red flags he saw with Bernard Madoff
Steve jobs shites on flash to explain why it is not on the iPhone anymore
See the material used to raise to create the first park
In 1997, Warren Buffett had an interesting email exchange with a 39-year old Jeff Raikes, who was a high-level Microsoft employee. They discussed the competitive advantages of Coca-Cola and Microsoft
Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield sends a motivational email to staff just before launch
Computer development for a critical computer began in 1972 with a document “Why Alto?” Written by Butler Lampson. This is the memo
Only 25% of Yahoo staff were using Yahoo and two senior execs tried to do something about it by sending an email. It got leaked
Bill Gates sends an email to ‘flame’ the appalling inability to install Movie Maker. It’s really funny and illustrates just how hard it is to run such a large software base
J Allard sent a memo in 1994 at Microsoft on how to position themselves for the internet which they were later criticised for as being a plan to take over the internet
Chris Mason at Microsoft wrote a memo on not having any bugs in code
Zynga CEO Mark Pincus justifying their strategy which is in fact being the best, not just ripping off their competition
I’ve collected a collection of memos that I thought were worth reading.
These are across major tech companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo.
There are memos from legacy companies (Such as Nokia), startup memos (Sequoia on Youtube), media (Walt Disney) and more.
The memos were found after a lot of searching on Google and Twitter. It took some time, but was fun to do so!
Yes! Please email me with any interesting memos you have you would like to share! Thanks.
I think you may have misspelled the name of the author of “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber”. You have it as “James Dalmore.” Everywhere I look online it’s spelled: “James Damore.”