Steve Schlafman/RRE ventures template

Tl;dr: Steve Schlafman who worked as a VC shared a template investment memo to structure his thoughts in investing in startups.

Steve Schlafman worked as a VC at firms such as RRE and Primary Venture Partners shared a VC investment memo template on Twitter.

I thought it would be useful for:

1. New investors looking to learn, or have a template to use for themselves.
2. Founders trying to understand what the heck investors are looking for when you’re writing your pitch

He wrote:

I rebuilt my investment memo template in notion to help me create more structure and discipline around my decision-making process.

Perhaps Steve will do a video with me to walk through this line by line.

In case he updates it, you can see the working template here.

You can see another here: Point Nine Capital VC investment memo template

RRE Investment Memo Image

Here is his memo in an image:

RRE Investment Memo Text

Company Overview

[What is the company one-liner?]

Mission / Vision

[What guides the organization and team?]

Highlights

• Bullet 1
• Bullet 2

Key Risks

• Bullet 1
• Bullet 2

---

Customer & Product

Target Market / Customer

[Who specifically is the initial customer]

Problem / Need

[What’s the problem or void? How does the team know?]

Product & Wedge

[What is the product? Does it solve the pain point / need? Any dependencies?]

Defensibility

[What is defensible today or in the future?]

Go-To-Market

[What’s the go-to-market? Is it feasible?]

Monetization

[How does the company plan to make money in the short and/or long term?]

---

Market

Why Now / Macro Trends

[What trends make this company and product possible?]

Market Size

[Is the market large, growing rapidly or emerging?]

Competition

[Who is the indirect / direct competition?]

Advantage

[Why do we like this company relative to the field?]

---

Traction

Product

[What has been built and shipped?]

Metrics

[What quantitative progress has been made so far?]

Unique Insights

[What unique insights has the team learned?]

---

Team

Core Team

[Who is on the team?]

Super Powers

[What’s truly unique about the team?]

Core Traits

• [ ] Can they ship and build product? Notes: _________________________
• [ ] Are they leaders? Notes: _________________________
• [ ] Do they understand the customer? Notes: _________________________
• [ ] Do they love to experiment / learn? Notes: _________________________
• [ ] Do they have tenacity, grit, hustle? Notes: _________________________
• [ ] Do they have self-awareness? Notes: _________________________
• [ ] Do they have unwavering conviction? Notes: _________________________
• [ ] Are they on a mission? Notes: _________________________

---

Fundraise

Round Dynamics

[How much is the company raising, what are the terms, who else is involved?]

Roadmap & Milestones

[What are key business and product milestones over the 12-24 months?]

---

Decision Sanity Check

• [ ] Do I have unwavering conviction? Notes: _________________________
• [ ] Will I be proud to be an investor? Notes: _________________________
• [ ] Can this be a category creator or leader? Notes: _________________________
• [ ] Is this already great/awesome? Notes: _________________________
• [ ] Can this be 100x? Notes: _________________________
• [ ] Do I deeply believe in the founders? Notes: _________________________
• [ ] Is this wedge / GTM feasible? Notes: _________________________
• [ ] Can I add value? Notes: _________________________

---

Pitch Notes

[Enter call notes]

---

References

[Enter call notes]

---

Learn more

If you want to learn more about investment memos, you can read this collection of VC investment thesis’.