Start writing memos.

White Stag is the private newsletter club for operator-investors hunting the principles of brand narrative design—from language and taste, to story and originality.

I decided the best way to communicate the principles of brand narrative design in all forms—language, taste, story, infrastructure—is to do so through memos.

I want to do this because it’s important to remind you that this is written, researched, and curated by a human, not a machine—and it matters to me that you feel that first greeting before you sip this with your coffee.

It’s late in the afternoon where I am. I’m writing this with a heartache-inducing amount of tabs open, a rather bullish to-do list in my notepad—been trying to write down more notes by hand, lately—and I’ve already done quite a bit of reflecting.

Reflecting on some of my side quests the last couple of weeks diving into history’s most beautiful and impactful pieces of storytelling in venture capital, brand, and beyond.

(Give or take a few moments of doubt, overthinking, and persistently carving away at the sculpture I believe White Stag can become as a newsletter, community, and private club for the people that give a damn)

This includes—as you’ve likely guessed—memos.

As someone who’s interested in money but not really the numbers, some of what I came across wasn’t that interesting.

They were impressive, sure.

Most milestones worth talking about are, regardless of their magnetism factor.

Despite that appreciation, as someone who finds almost anything interesting—boredom is a choice, after all—I had to really force myself through some of these classic, by-the-numbers memos that some new investors and founders were penning from their tables somewhere unknown and, hopefully, accompanied with good lighting.

I won’t say they were terrible. This is, in some ways, a matter of perspective. Some people don’t need anything amazing in their memos. Some do.

The problem in these memos that I found were consistent:

Not enough storytelling, or stakes, or anything to keep me deeply interested as a distant viewer in the stadium.

Some of these memos made me curious, and determined to read more, but never quite “hooked.” I never felt truly compelled to keep every detail in mind by the time I would finish the memo.

Then, I found a few special cases.

Investment memos that went straight into perspective-based storytelling that inspired me to open and read from beginning to end. With a grin, not a grimace.

So, imagine my delight when I came across Oaktree Capital’s collection of memos, authored by the legend Howard Marks.

There were several memos I could’ve picked, but there’s an intelligence and subtle magic to these memos in particular that gave me pause. It wasn’t just the subject matter that intrigued me found in each memo, but how the individual voice was so strong. I could feel the shape of every word.

There’s a way Marks talks about various markets, industry shifts, and even topics like deep thinking made me pause and consider the person behind the memo more than any other memo I’d scraped from the internet.

I only needed to read one to realize that a memo is one of the more powerful ways you can communicate your deepest, most critical, most creative, and most helpful ideas to the very lucky group of individuals you’re trying to build relationships with.

It’s not just a piece of writing, but an opportunity.

It’s less the door-opener and more the moment you sit down with the voice of said memo for a coffee. As the writer, you’re creating that relationship through trust, your unique perspective, and the promise that you’re someone these people can look to for inspiration. Most importantly, the memo provides those crucial insights into how you think—and how you think gravely matters, no matter which stage the world is in.

It doesn’t matter what kind of relationship you’re trying to build right now.

Whether you’re on a mission to court founders or LPs into the growing—or changing—ring of your fund, how you think and how you perceive the world as a venture capitalist will dominate their minds.

They’ll constantly question how your perception will shape their future decisions.

How you think is the dealmaker.

Or, the dealbreaker.

You know this, because you invest in people, not businesses, and you know many personal cases where you had to say no to a great idea because the way the founder thinks probably didn’t measure up to your standard.

The same can be said about you.

This means you can’t just go to Claude and prompt it to write a memo for you and expect magic to happen.

If you haven’t noticed, most people who outsource their thinking to AI sound like 90% of other investors, founders, and even operators doing exactly the same thing. They worship the technology so vehemently that the clear, tired voice of their “writing” gets completely ignored. They are slowly losing their ability to tell the difference and remember what it feels to write something original, straight from the source.

This is a disaster that’s already planted its seeds, and shows no sign of stopping anytime soon. It likely won’t. Especially not with how broadly it’s celebrated.

Unfortunately, as someone who’s on LinkedIn frequently for myself and my business, I see investors of many shapes and sizes use AI to communicate.

Not as an assistant, but a glorified corruption of what makes them unique.

When I come across these posts, articles, or comments, I automatically think less of them, and how intelligent they are, simply because they would rather a robot do a poor imitation of how they speak vs. an accurate, truly felt creation through their own fingers.

The reason I tell you this is simple:

I encourage you, with all the urgency I can muster, to avoid using AI at any cost when it comes to writing personal materials.

Your memos are a diamond of a chance to truly speak through your unique, completely unpolished voice.

This is a strength and a differentiator, not a hindrance.

It does take more effort, but aren’t most things in life—especially when it comes to business—worth that effort?

Now, about Howard Marks.

If you somehow don’t know who he is, Howard Marks is the cofounder of Oaktree Capital Management. He’s known for his contrarian takes on risk management, investing, and his unique strategies behind both categories.

He’s also known for his legendary memos.

It takes a powerful storyteller to be able to craft memos this bloodlettingly good. My experience reading and truly trying to understand the craft and depth of these memos—at least, the couple I’d read—was sinking its teeth into me. I knew the grip wouldn’t loosen until I understood the underlying message:

There is no more powerful way to communicate than through a completely human-written account of how you perceive, create, and think.

Your philosophies, ideologies, the companies you back, the founders you believe in, the trends you dismiss, the deeper themes connecting all of those figments of tissue together—those are the meat. Those are the priceless details. Those are where the gold is buried.

As one example,

If you’re new to this letter, the story is where the river flows. It’s what you recognize most. Brand narrative design is how the river functions. Why it flows the way it does. The depth of the riverbed. The way the weather changes its build. How the forest around it influences its perception to visitors, both seasoned and fresh-faced.

A memo that stands out to potential partners should bring the best of you forward. Written with intentionality. Framed with taste. Supported by a vision only you can call yours.

I read several memos that stood out to me. I wanted to talk about all of them, in some way. They’re all worth reading, and if you haven’t taken the time to truly sit down and read one or more of these from front to back, you should.

(My personal favorite is The Realist’s Creed)

I’m not going to break apart these memos the way you probably expected.

That’s not very helpful.

I would even argue it’s useless.

I believe this to such an extent that to dissect and break apart these memos like they’re cadavers slapped on a surgeon’s table would actually be a disservice to you.

You might disagree.

I don’t want you to take my word as gospel.

Instead, I encourage you to use this body of work—these memos, these ideas, these concepts—as inspiration to go on and create your own memos.

This isn’t something that only Howard Marks names and claims.

Bessemer have a few famous memos. Not my particular taste, but they’re well-written and extremely respected among founders. Leila Hormozi writes a weekly internal memo for her team, and then distributes that brief, reflective piece of writing through newsletter. I read them every week.

It’s not surprising to me at all that these highly influential and successful people and ventures—who, in their own right, are sought-after for how they think and view the world—started using their ability to think in public to help others. Without expectation.

This is why White Stag Club is the way it is.

It originally started as a brand teardown letter focused on language, taste, and building infrastructure. Those elements are important, and I still want to talk about them—but to do so while tearing down other brands instead of giving personal insights into how you can truly create something wildly timeless and inspirational (while accruing brand equity, which is its own form of capital)—but not through the conventional means everyone else tries to do.

This is not the point. The point is owning a perspective—and palate—you can forge entirely on your own values and belief systems. Things that make you the person you are, not just the operator, the VC, or even the founder.

This letter was meant to drop once a month, talking about all kinds of brands from many different angles and expert points of view. I thought this made the most sense, even though I wasn’t particularly excited to write about it.

As of today, it’s now a place for me to tell you directly and intimately—the hunter, the seeker, the operator, the investor, the founder who’s subscribed to learn how to build (or fund) a White Stag of your own—the principles of brand narrative design.

As I see it, know it, claim it, and predict it.

Now, to circle back on the importance of crafting memos…

The art and science of a memo worth reading is to acknowledge that it’s not written for the masses. It’s written to serve through individual ideas and concepts that only you can speak about.

Yes, focus on what’s happening in the world.

But, go deeper. Don’t create another Substack. Don’t create another “newsletter.” This is not about everyone else. This is about the people you serve.

Similar to how I plan on serving you.

Talk about them openly. Think in public, but steward privately. Dare to challenge yourself as well as others. Treat your daily, weekly, or monthly memo as a ritual to communicate your deepest learnings and hard-earned perspectives to the stakeholders. If you’re not an investor and you don’t write investment memos, fine—write the memo anyway. Write it for yourself. Write it for your significant other. Write it for your cofounder. Write it for your old relationships.

Whatever opportunity you have, you must use your personal, educated and interesting opinions (and stories) to create that connective tissue between you and your firm.

Otherwise, you’re wasting your presence.

Building credibility for yourself is powerful. More importantly, it compounds into the projects you’re building. Your portfolio companies, venture fund, collaborative projects, personal work, etc. are all deeply affected by the credibility you funnel into yourself.

Why not use those opportunities to expand on the story only a private memo to your investment partners and founders could create?

To be original, you must have your own voice.

You could pump every Howard Marks investment memo into Claude, ask it to scrape through the prose, and request it spit out something slightly similar to an idea of the work, but nothing remotely close to the final, polished product.

Try as you might with all the AI tools you want, you will never access the point of where the genius begins without one specific ingredient: yourself. Because a well-written memo—or any good writing, really—never begins halfway. It has a starting point, and that starting point should be the idea borne from your brain.

The originality starts with you.

There is no shortcut. You must learn how to state your convictions, opinions, and hypotheses clearly. This is a skillset I fear many new entrepreneurs and investors alike struggle to adopt. They get overexcited about the tools at their disposal and outsource everything they can, including their thinking.

When you read a memo from Howard Marks, you don’t think only about the end result.

You think about where it began.

From now on, you’ll be receiving one to two memos from me every week, walking through a myriad topics you can glimpse below the P.S.

Short. Long. Medium. They’ll be as long or as short as they need to be to get a point across in the field of brand narrative design.

Because in order to build the White Stag, you must embody it.

Mind. Heart. Soul.

Keep hunting, my friend.

- Taylor

P.S. If you liked today’s memo and you think it could provide value to someone in your network, forward it to them. I take your personal palate seriously—that’s one of the reasons you’re here, after all—so the people you recommend are likely perfect for entry.