Decide what to build, what to buy, and what to skip entirely.
Two to three weeks. One written memo. A clear answer you can act on.
You've identified a specific operational need where AI might help. Lead routing, document extraction, internal knowledge access, customer support triage. Should you buy a tool already on the market, configure something you're paying for and not fully using, or commission a custom build?
Each path has a different cost curve, a different risk profile, and a different answer about who owns what when the engagement ends. Most owners try to answer this themselves and abandon it after a week. The vendor demos all look good. The spreadsheets multiply. The decision sits open for months while the operational pain it was meant to solve continues running in the background.
The Investment Memo closes that decision in two to three weeks.
An Investment Memo is a focused written assessment of one specific AI investment decision. Not a strategy session, not an audit, not a build. A written document that tells you which path makes sense for your situation, with the cost modeling, risk assessment, and vendor comparison required to defend the recommendation.
The memo reads like an internal investment committee document. Recommendation on page one. Reasoning, comparison tables, and three-year cost models in the body. Specific risks are explicitly named, including those that would change the recommendation if they materialize. You can take the memo to your management team, your board, or your own desk drawer and act on it.
This engagement is built for one specific situation. You have a named operational need. You've already identified two or more possible paths to address it. You're not sure which one is right, and you don't have time to find out by trial.
A vendor is pitching you a €40k annual platform that promises to handle work your existing tools already partially handle. You need to know whether to sign.
You're considering hiring an AI agency to build a custom solution. Their proposal looks credible. You want a second opinion on whether the build is necessary and whether the scope is right.
You already pay for software with AI features you've never turned on. Your team thinks those features might cover the use case. You need someone to actually verify that, and to model what configuration would cost in time.
If your situation looks like one of these, the Investment Memo is built for you.
Two to three weeks. Four deliverables.
Scoping and Discovery
We start with a working session to define the decision precisely. What's the operational need? What paths are on the table? What does success look like one year out? We map your current tooling, workflows, and spend in the relevant area.
Assessment
Each option is evaluated against your operational reality. Buy options get vendor outreach, demo review, and contract red-flag review. Configure options get capability analysis against your specific workflow. Build options get scoping, team sizing, and maintenance modeling.
Memo Drafting and Walkthrough
I write the memo, send it for review, and book a one-hour walkthrough call to answer questions and flag anything in the recommendation that depends on assumptions you'd want to challenge.
What you leave with.
The Investment Memo.
A written document, eight to fifteen pages depending on decision complexity. Recommendation on page one. Reasoning, comparison tables, and cost models in the body. Specific risks named explicitly, including those that would change the recommendation if they materialize.
A three-year cost model.
One spreadsheet with the financial picture for each path — buy, configure, build. You can adjust the inputs and rerun the comparison without me.
A vendor red-flag summary.
If the recommendation involves buying or licensing, you get a one-page summary of contract terms to push back on, common gotchas in that vendor category, and questions to ask before signing.
The walkthrough.
One hour to talk through the memo, challenge the reasoning, and adjust if anything in the writeup doesn't survive scrutiny.
This isn't a strategy session. The Strategy Session is for owners who don't yet know where AI fits in their business at all. The Investment Memo is for owners who've already identified one specific decision and need to make it correctly.
It isn't a built engagement. If the memo recommends building, the build is a separate, scoped engagement. The memo's job is to make the decision, not to deliver it.
It isn't a procurement service. The memo gives you the position. You take it from there.
And it isn't useful if the decision hasn't been formed yet. If you're still trying to identify whether AI belongs in your operation in the first place, start with the Strategy Session instead. The Investment Memo only works when there's a real decision sitting on the table.
$3,500–$6,500.
Depending on the number of options assessed and the complexity of the cost modeling. Every engagement gets a fixed quote before work begins. No hourly billing. No scope drift.
Every engagement begins with a Discovery Call to confirm that the decision is the right shape for this engagement. If it isn't, I'll tell you that, and we'll talk about whether the Strategy Session or the Exposure Audit is the right starting point instead.
A decision worth making is worth making correctly.
Book a Discovery Call. Twenty minutes. No pitch.
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