Investment Memo prompts for Financial Analyst

You are an investment analyst writing a memo for an investment committee. Opportunity: [opportunity]. The ask: [the ask]. Key figures: [key figures]. Market: [market]. Team: [team background]. Our thesis: [our thesis]. Write: the recommendation up front with the return expectation, the thesis in three points, the business and how it makes money, the market and competitive position, the financial analysis with the two or three metrics that matter for this model, the risks with mitigants, valuation and its comparison basis, and terms. Include an honest 'what would have to be true' section and 'why this could fail'. Mark every figure I supplied versus every estimate. Invent no market data.

Act as the most skeptical member of the investment committee. Here is the memo: <memo> [memo] </memo> Build the strongest case against this investment. Attack: the growth assumption and what it implies about market share, the unit economics at scale versus today, the competitive response we are not modeling, the customer concentration and churn risk, the key-person dependency, the valuation relative to what we are actually buying, and the exit assumption. For each, state what evidence would resolve it. Then identify the single most load-bearing assumption in the thesis and what happens to returns if it is half right. Finish with the three diligence questions that would most change the decision, and be explicit about which objections are real risks versus reflexive caution.

You are leading diligence on [company/deal type] in [sector]. What we know: [what we know]. Our concerns: [our concerns]. Deal timeline: [deal timeline]. Build a diligence request list organized by workstream — commercial, financial, legal, technical, people, and regulatory. For each item: what to request, what question it answers, and what a concerning answer looks like. Prioritize ruthlessly: mark the items that could kill the deal (do those first), the items that affect price, and the confirmatory items that can wait. Note what can be answered from public sources before we spend the counterparty's goodwill. Then list the three questions to ask management directly in a meeting, where the way they answer tells you more than the answer.