Key takeaways
- A thesis has hard limits (stage, geography, cheque size) and softer preferences.
- It should state beliefs you could be wrong about, not only a list of sectors.
- Written down, it lets an analyst screen the way the partners would.
- Date each version, so you know which thesis a past decision was made under.
What goes into an investment thesis
- Hard limits: stage, geography, cheque size range, ownership target and any legal restrictions in the fund's documents.
- Preferences: business models, customer types or founder backgrounds the fund leans towards, with a sense of how much each matters.
- Beliefs: the market changes the fund is betting on, written so that evidence could prove them wrong.
- Exclusions and exceptions: what the fund never does, and the rare cases where it will bend a limit.
- Questions: what the fund always wants answered before a first meeting.
An example thesis
Northwind Seed, a fictional fund, writes: "We lead or co-lead pre-seed and seed rounds in B2B software companies selling to mid-sized logistics and manufacturing firms in Europe. First cheques are €250,000 to €750,000. We believe these firms will buy software that replaces manual planning once it pays back within a year. We don't invest in hardware or consumer apps." Each sentence can be checked against a deck.
How the thesis shows up in a fund's process
The thesis is the first filter on inbound deal flow, the opening section of most investment memos and the honest reason in many pass emails. Kept as criteria rather than prose, it also lets a fund see when a missing fact, not a mismatch, is holding a deal back.
Delsivo's thesis screening, planned for the Pilot release, stores a thesis as versioned hard rules, weighted preferences, exceptions and questions. Each criterion returns Met, Mismatch or Unknown with a source, and Unknown becomes a question for the founder, never a failure. People decide what happens next.
Common confusions
- Thesis versus deal thesis: the fund's thesis covers every deal; a deal thesis in a memo is the case for one company.
- Thesis versus mandate: the fund's legal documents may set binding limits. The thesis usually sits inside them and is narrower.
- Thesis versus sector list: "fintech and climate" names areas but says nothing about stage, customer or belief.