The ask
Instrument, amount, ownership, timing, and the exact authority being requested from the committee today.
For investment committees and deal teams
A committee can only vote on what the memo made visible.
Bring the ask, the workstreams that tested it, the case against with an owner on it, and the diligence still open into one revisable Decision Update. Name the authority the memo is requesting, and the meeting it returns to if the committee will not vote today.
Request accessAccess is limited. A person reviews every request.
The decision problem
The vote is the easy part. The reconstruction is not.
A memo is an argument, and an argument built to carry a room is not the same object as a record that survives being read three years later by an operational diligence request, a valuation committee, or a post mortem. What goes first is the open item with a date on it, the assumption nobody could source, and the partner who was against it.
- 01
Before the pre read goes out
The ask sits in the first two paragraphs. Instrument, amount, ownership, and the conditions attached to it. Every number carries whoever produced it, so the committee can tell a third party bridge from a management add back.
- 02
Where the thesis meets the workstreams
Each claim that has to be true is set against the workstream that tested it, commercial, financial, legal, tax, or operational, and against the ones nobody has reached yet, with a date on each.
- 03
The case against, with an owner
The bear case is not a paragraph of hedges at the back. Someone owns it, the assumptions it attacks are named, and the disconfirming evidence stays beside the recommendation rather than in an appendix.
- 04
When the motion is to wait
A committee that declines to vote is deciding, not deferring. The record says what has to arrive, who is bringing it, and which meeting it comes back to, because that is the motion that was actually carried.
The reviewable artifact
A Decision Update the minute can be written from
The memo persuades once. The record answers for years, to people who were not in the room and are entitled to ask how the committee got there.
What has to be true
The claims the return case rests on, the workstream that tested each, and the ones no workstream has reached.
The case against
The bear case with a named owner, the sensitivity that breaks the base case, and the evidence that would change the recommendation.
Conditions and open items
Approval conditions, remaining diligence with owners and expected completion dates, and the meeting it returns to.
Example of a held verdict. Not a customer record.
Held. No motion today. The committee requests additional information before action may be taken.
Missing proof
- The quality of earnings draft has not landed, so the adjusted earnings bridge is unverified and the add backs remain management asserted.
- The cohort file behind the net revenue retention claim is not in the data room, and gross retention has never been shown by cohort.
- Two customer reference calls were cancelled and not rescheduled, so the concentration in the top three accounts is untested.
A held verdict is a refusal to settle with the missing proof named. It is the state most tools cannot represent, and it is what makes a Decision Update worth reading when the answer is not ready.
What this does not decide
It does not vote, does not value the asset, and does not write the minute. It holds the memo, the workstreams, the case against, and the open items where the committee can see all four at once, and the committee still carries the motion or it does not.
What to bring: Bring the memo as it stands, the workstream reports you have and the ones you are waiting on, the model with its assumptions exposed rather than buried, and the reference list including anyone the sponsor did not offer. Keep confidential material inside the authorized deal team.
Access
Start an account, or request access to the cohort.
Request access for a bounded cohort bringing memos to committee with the open diligence items still visible at the moment of the vote.
An account is the door to the product as it stands today. Availability of the limited alpha is a separate question: a request is reviewed by a person and does not grant admission, an invitation, an account, a Room, entitlement, or payment access.