Why Memos > Decks, and how to write them

We’re soon graduating the latest cohort of the Latitud Fellowship — our program that assembles top pre-founders across the region and gives them an eight-week retreat with, tbh...

Lots of fun. Though instead of mojitos and beach towels, they get existential market questions and Notion docs.

1 question that keeps popping from the fellows:

“What’s the best way to present my startup to investors this early? A slick demo? A polished deck?”

It depends a little bit on how early. But let's suppose you already got through the discovery phase and now you have a thesis, or at least a glimpse of it.

So our answer is even simpler:

Write a memo.

Decks are hot. Memos are honest.

When you're still ideating, testing, and tweaking, your story is raw and messy.

That’s beautiful.
But more than that, it’s valuable.

And that’s why decks usually fail at this stage: they flatten what is still taking shape. Force into polished boxes what’s still in motion.

Demos are sexy — if you have something to show at this stage.

Decks are shiny —if you want back up on a stage instead of the soul of your thinking.

When your thesis is still forming and your gut is doing most of the heavy lifting — neither of these will carry your true weight.

Because you're not pitching a product: you're pitching a way of seeing the world that no one else has spotted yet.

The best investors know that. At this point, they aren't really investing in your current prototype or pretty slides, sometimes not even in your market.

‍They’re investing in you.

Why memos eat decks for breakfast

Memos can really help you clear your mind in this messy ideation stage, putting things on paper. But that's just the beginning.

1. Memos help investors do their job

No matter how excited they are, all VCs need to overcome the same hurdle: successfully pitching you to the rest of the team.

Guess what they’ll do?

Write an internal memo.

So make their life easy: send yours first.

When you forward a clear, compelling memo, you’re giving them ammo and saving them time at the same time.

👉 You’re making it stupidly easy for them to back you, using your own words. You’re not just pitching them, but arming them to pitch you.

2. Memos let you control the narrative

If a deck gives you a format that everyone follows, a memo gives you the mic.

You walk the reader through your thinking, your insight, your master plan — on your terms. You decide what to emphasize, what to skip, and how the story flows.

👉 You're not hoping they get you and your idea. You're making it impossible for them not to.

3. Memos answer real questions before they’re asked

Decks often leave us investors with a pile of follow-ups. And the founders have to be like, ooops sry no time to answer questions, next slide pleeease.

On the other hand, with memos, you can clearly lay out:

• Your unfair insight: what do you know that others don’t?
• Why you? Why now? Why this market?
• What does the future look like if all of this works?
• Psst, more on what you should talk about in your memo later ;)

👉 Done right, a memo addresses concerns upfront and builds trust. Shift the convo from “Tell me more” to “Let’s talk about how we scale this.”

(Bonus: you skip that basic back-and-forth we all secretly hate anyway.)

4. Memos are fast, scalable, founder-friendly

Stop wasting weeks tweaking slides: take a weekend to write your memo.

Memos don’t need:

• Design.
• Animations.
• Perfect flow.

All they need:

• Clarity and narrative.

You can also reuse this fundraising material for recruiting, internal team alignment, go-to-market conversations, yada yada yada.

Best of all? Memos travel well between all parts: they get forwarded, copy-pasted, and re-read with ease.

👉 The end result? Your voice travels fast and wide while staying intact – even when you’re not in the room.

askWhat we think is a good memo

Ok ok, I think I made my point on why memos are better than decks.

Now let me pull back the curtain for a second:

As investors, we’re constantly trying to connect the dots — see signals of whether this thing can be massive, building conviction and therefore reducing risk.

Here are some questions we ask ourselves while reading memos:

1. What’s your unfair insight (what do you know that others don’t)?
2. Who feels this pain the most?
3. How painful is the problem? Is it a painkiller or a vitamin?
4. How did you find this problem (did it punch you in the face)?
5. How deep in this rabbit hole are you?
6. Why are you the one to build this?
7. How is your idea different (not just better) than competitors?
8. What’s your go-to-market edge?
9. How are you thinking about moats and defensibility?
10. What’s your vision for the future — and is it believable?
11. How will you make money?
12. How much could you make if it works?
13. Are you obsessed with the problem, or married to your current solution?
14. How ambitious are you, like really? Are you ready to eat glass for 10 years?
15. How do you think, period?
16. Why is this a compelling investment opportunity?
17. Do you have any early proof (quotes, MVPs, interviews etc.)?
18. What are the biggest risks in your thesis — and how do we de-risk them?
19. Why is now the right time?
20. And the kicker: what do we lose if we don’t invest now?

Yeah that’s a lot. But are we looking for perfect answers to all of our questions? Nope.

At this stage, we know we’re investing through the fog. That’s just early-stage venture capital for you: risk is part of the deal.

If your memo helps us answer some of the questions, or at least shows us you’re wrestling with them, you’re already ahead of 90% of founders out there.

👉 Your job isn't to eliminate all the risk but to tip the scale.

Make the upside feel worth the leap. Make us more excited about the opportunity than we are scared of the risks. That’s what a good memo does.

When to make your memo?

Now is the time to dot the i's and cross the t's.

First things first: a memo won't raise money for you.

You, the CEO, still need to put in the hard work: create your life's narrative, get warm intros, schedule calls, explain how you think, convince the investor that you see the world differently, make the investor excited about you and your idea

The memo fits before and after all that:

Before, the memo can help you organize your thoughts in this messy phase and make your ideas more concrete. Help you with some key early hires. Help you sell your vision and make it more tangible, for you and for others.

After the difficult part of getting investors’ attention and telling your story successfully, you will send them the memo. Only then the memo can and will be your BFF (together with the investment analyst) helping you with all those points above.

The memo structure we recommend to our founders

Now that you know why memos rock and what’s your goal with them… Of course we saved the best for last. Scroll down.

Here’s your memo structure, rockstar.

Steal it. Run wild. Write boldly. Send early. Make us wanna be on the journey, glass-eating and all.

Vamos LatAm,

The Latitud Team