You reviewed a company like this one two years ago. You remember there was a margin problem, or a channel risk, or a founder question — but the memo is a PDF somewhere and the reasoning behind it is gone. Every deal review starts from a blank page, even when it shouldn't.
Why this keeps happening.
Deal work produces documents — memos, models, call notes — but documents are the output, not the knowledge. The theses you tested, the risks that materialized, the questions that turned out to matter: those live in the reviewer's head, and heads don't scale across a portfolio or a team.
The way of working.
One deal, one project
Each review is a scoped project: thesis, findings, risks, open questions, decision. An Agent keeps the index current, so anyone opening the project sees the state of the review in one screen.
Decisions separated from impressions
A confirmed judgment ("pass — unit economics") is marked as a decision; a hunch stays a labeled assumption. Two years later you know which was which.
The next deal starts with a search
Opening a new review, the Agent searches past deal projects first — comparable companies, sector risks you already mapped, questions that mattered before. Prior work becomes the checklist.
These are the same mechanics we run daily on our own product work — scoped projects, decision integrity, search-before-work. This article maps them to deal review because that is where several of our early users' workspaces already live.
Start here.
Create one project for a live review and follow Organizing Context. The compounding starts with the second deal.