Memos

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I'm fascinated by interesting memos written for an internal audience - a company, a campaign or even for the President. Raw, not smoothened over for PR departments, they help shed light on how people really think inside institutions.

These are challenging to find. They typically seem to come into the public domain in one of three ways: through being really old, being part of some lawsuit/legal process or, sadly, being part of a hack.

Each of the below are 'interesting' which I define broadly as either the impact they had, the quality of their writing or just helping shed light on how communication works in a different domain. If you know of an interesting memo in the public domain (or you have permission to share), drop me a note at sriram@sriramk.com

Business

Memos from various business settings. I've split out memos from specific companies below when there's several of them.

Sports

Some surprisingly fun memos from the sports world!

Sam Hinkie's resignation letter Sam Hinkie's famous resignation letter to the owners of the 76ers. Trust the process!



David Griffin to the Cavs David Griffin's famous memo to the Cavs team when they were down 1-3 in the NBA finals - which they would come back to win in one of the greatest comebacks in NBA finals history.



Government/Political memos

Various memos from government, politics and the armed forces.

Microsoft memos

Due to a combination of my early time at Microsoft, my fascination with their history and their dominance over tech in the 90s, there's a lot of interesting memos from Microsoft. Collected a few notable ones here.

Facebook memos

Zuck on the messenger ecosystem Mark Zuckerberg outlines how he thinks FB messenger should be monetized.



Andrew Bosworth on FB ads Andrew "Boz" Bosworth's strategy memo on how FB should approach ads. This is a personal favorite for multiple reasons - Boz is a personal friend and ex-colleague and this showcases his strategy skills. And more importantly, this memo lead to some of my work later on in the audience network.



Mark Zuckerberg on the thesis for why Facebook should buy Unity From Blake Harris's "History of the Future", Zuckerberg lays out his reasoning for why Facebook should buy Unity.



Mark Zuckerberg negotiating with Kevin Systrom over the Instagram acquisition I love this to see two of the great product founders of our time negotiate/describe how they think about the world during the course of a historic deal.



Newsletter: I write about once a week on startups, product, building great companies and some unnecessary movie trivia. When there's a new memo added here, I'll talk about it in the newsletter too. I write about once a week on startups, product, building great companies and some unnecessary movie trivia. When there's a new memo added here, I'll talk about it in the newsletter too.

A few Facebook memos have come online recently. I've tried to highlight interesting memos don't involve me directly. :)