# Business research memo — template

> A repeatable way to size up a company like an investor.
> Fill each section. Keep things visibly separate by how solid they are:
> **Fact** (with a source + date), **Company claim** (from the company, unverified),
> **Estimate** (reported or estimated, not confirmed), plus your own **Assumption** and **Interpretation**.
> A reported headline is a lead, not a fact — chase it to a primary source before you rely on it.
> If you don't know something, write "unknown" rather than guessing.

**Company:** ____________________     **Product:** ____________________
**Prepared by:** ____________________     **Date reviewed:** ____________________

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## 1. What does it sell?
In one plain sentence, what does the product do for someone? Describe it the way a customer would.

-

## 2. Who pays?
Who is the customer, and who signs the cheque? (Individual / team / enterprise — they're
different businesses.) List the pricing tiers you can verify today, and note the billing basis
(monthly vs annual).

- Buyer:
- Pricing (as checked on ____):

## 3. Why do they need it?
What painful, expensive, or repetitive thing does this remove? Would the customer miss it
if it disappeared tomorrow, or is it a nice-to-have?

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## 4. How does it find customers? (distribution)
How does it reach people — word of mouth, free-to-paid, enterprise sales, paid ads?
*Distribution* just means how a company gets in front of customers. One that can reach them
cheaply has more room to make money, so this often matters as much as the product.

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## 5. Why would customers keep choosing it?
Why might this still be winning in three years? (Switching costs, data, brand, owning more
of its own stack, network effects.) Be honest about which of these actually apply.

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## 6. What could stop it growing?
The risks that matter. For AI companies, always check:
- **Dependence on someone else's model** — does it rely on OpenAI / Anthropic / Google? What
  happens if access, price, or terms change?
- **Unit economics** — what does it cost to serve $1 of revenue? Is gross margin positive?
- **Competition** — including from the model providers themselves.
- **Legal or regulatory risk** — lawsuits, licensing, or rules that could change what it's
  allowed to sell. (This is the question that decides Suno in the worked example.)

-

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## The economics (revenue is only the start)
> Two terms: **gross margin** is revenue minus the direct cost of serving customers (it does
> *not* include salaries, marketing, etc.). **Retention** is whether customers keep paying
> over time. "What it keeps" here means gross margin — a starting point, not the bottom line.

| Question | Your answer |
|---|---|
| Roughly how much revenue? (source + date) | |
| What does it cost to *serve* that revenue? | |
| Is gross margin positive, negative, or unknown? | |
| Do customers keep paying? (retention) | |
| What does the business actually *keep* (gross margin)? | |

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## Evidence ledger
| Type | Statement | Source + date |
|---|---|---|
| Fact | | |
| Company claim | | (from the company, unverified) |
| Estimate | | (reported / estimated) |
| Assumption | | (your reasoning) |
| Interpretation | | (your call) |

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## My one-line take
> In a sentence: is this a great product, a great business, both, or not enough information
> yet — and what's the one thing you'd need to be true (or the evidence you'd need) for it to work out?

____________________________________________________________

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*Educational template, not financial advice. Do your own verification against primary sources
before making any decision. Free to use and adapt for your own work; please don't resell it.*