The No-Memo Truth-Seeking Process
Kill the investment memo and the pre-sell so decisions surface unbiased truth instead of persuasion.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 80%
Most venture firms build decisions around a written investment memo — a document that, however useful for clarity, doubles as a persuasion tool and quietly injects the writer's bias and ego into the room. Benchmark's Monday partner meeting removes memos entirely. Partners instead relay what they actually heard on calls with founders, unfiltered, and the group has an open-ended discussion with no fixed agenda or time limit. A companion rule bans 'pre-selling': no partner is allowed to lobby colleagues in the hallway before a deal is discussed at the table. The mechanism forces the group toward truth-seeking — is this company one of the rare extraordinary ones — rather than toward whoever argues best.
Origin
Extracted from Acquired
Core principles
- 01Written memos can encode ego and bias, not just clarity
- 02Truth-seeking beats persuasion
- 03Relay raw notes, not conclusions
- 04No pre-selling allowed
- 05No fixed time limit for real signal to emerge
How to run it
- 1
Ban hallway pre-selling
No partner may build support for a deal outside the meeting; opinions are shared only at the table.
Watch out If you catch a colleague pre-selling, call it out immediately — it corrupts the group's independent judgment.
- 2
Skip the written memo
Come to the meeting with a blank sheet instead of a polished document; a memo can fill gaps the entrepreneur never actually said.
- 3
Relay raw calls and notes
Each partner reports exactly what they heard and discovered from founder calls, without spin or thesis-fitting.
Pro tip Say 'this is what I've discovered,' not 'here's why we should do this.'
- 4
Keep the discussion open-ended
Don't cap the conversation with a fixed time slot; let it run until the group actually reaches clarity.
Watch out Skipping this step to save time reintroduces the rushed, agenda-driven bias the process is meant to avoid.
- 5
Apply the single test
Ask only: does this company have a chance to be one of the few extraordinary companies of the decade? If yes, you don't need to sell it.
In the wild
When a question comes up mid-meeting, the partners simply call the founder or an industry contact and put them on speaker in front of everyone, rather than relying on a stale memo.
→ Founders are struck that the whole partnership engages together, reinforcing trust and giving Benchmark fresher information than any memo could.
A partner who joined from another firm expected to discuss pipeline and updates on their first Monday, as they would have at a traditional GP meeting. Instead, conversation roamed freely with no memo and no fixed topic list.
→ The topic of substance eventually surfaced naturally, without being forced onto an agenda.
Common mistakes
Writing a memo anyway
A memo functions as a sales artifact as much as an analysis, quietly pre-selling the deal and injecting the writer's bias.
Lobbying colleagues beforehand
Pre-selling in hallway conversations undermines the group's ability to reach an independent, unbiased view.
Rushing to a decision
Capping discussion time forces premature consensus instead of letting real signal and doubts surface.
Is it for you?
Best for
Small investment committees or leadership teams that want unbiased, high-trust group decisions.
Not ideal for
Large organizations needing documented audit trails or asynchronous decision-making.
From the transcript
“our one rule was no pre-selling a deal like you can't walk around the hallway and say like hey I'm super excited about this one…”
“it's a it's a it's a nice search this is phrase which is truth seeking which I think is a really good one”
“not having a memo does not replace work and does not replace the calls and does not replace the conversations”
From the episode
Benchmark Part II: The Dinner