CIM & Teaser Analysis

A teaser or Confidential Information Memorandum is a sales document. It is written to make a business look attractive, so the work is not just to read it but to separate what is stated from what is implied, and to surface the questions a careful buyer would ask. Claude is genuinely good at this: it reads the whole document at once, holds the structure in view, and gives you a clean first screen far faster than working through forty pages by hand.

When to use this

Reach for this workflow at the top of the funnel, when an advisor sends a teaser or a CIM lands in the data room and you need a fast, structured read to decide whether the opportunity is worth a first call or a proper diligence effort. It is for the initial screen, not the final verdict. The judgment on whether to proceed stays with you.

The workflow

1. Open a deal Project and upload the document

   Work inside a deal Project so the CIM, the teaser, and anything else for this target live in one siloed space. Upload the file to the Project knowledge so it is available to every conversation, then start a fresh chat for the screen itself.

2. Ask for a structured one-page screen

   Use the prompt below. The four-heading shape (business, financials, thesis, risks) gives you something you can paste into a screening note without reshaping it, and the scrutiny instruction makes Claude flag the soft spots rather than glossing over them.

3. Separate the spin from the facts

   A CIM blends hard numbers with advisor framing. Ask Claude explicitly to split the two, so you can see which claims rest on stated figures and which rest on the seller’s narrative.

4. Build the management question list

   Ask Claude to turn every gap and vague claim into a numbered list of questions for management. This is often the most useful output of the whole exercise, and it costs one extra line in the prompt.

5. Verify the figures against the source

   Claude will cite page numbers if you ask it to. Check the headline figures (revenue, EBITDA, growth, margin) against the page it points to before any of it reaches a colleague. Fluent output can still be wrong.

The core prompt

This is the prompt to keep. It has a role, a clear task, a fixed format, and a scrutiny instruction, and it produces a screen you can use as it stands.

You are assisting a private equity associate screening Project Atlas, a mid-market B2B field-service software target (around $60m revenue, mid-20s percent growth, high 70s percent gross margin). I have attached the CIM.
Task: produce a one-page initial screen so I can decide whether this is worth a proper diligence effort.
Constraints: rely only on the attached document. Cite the page number for every figure you quote. Do not pull in outside market data.
Format: use these four headings, each with short bullets:

Business overview: what they do, who they sell to, and how they make money
Financial highlights: revenue, EBITDA, growth, gross and EBITDA margin, customer concentration
Investment angle: why this could be attractive to a PE buyer
Key risks and open questions
When unsure: if the CIM does not state something, write “not stated” rather than estimating it. At the end, list every claim that rests on the seller’s narrative rather than on a stated figure.

Once you have the screen, the natural follow-up is to harden it into a question list.

Using the same CIM, turn every gap, vague claim, and “not stated” item from your screen into a numbered list of questions for management.
Group the questions under three headings: commercial, financial, and operational. For each question, note in brackets the page or section that prompted it, or write “(not addressed)” if the CIM is silent on it.
Keep each question tight enough to put straight into a first meeting agenda.

What Claude does well, and what to check

Claude is strong at the reading and structuring work and weaker at anything that needs a number to be exactly right. Treat the split below as your standing rule for this task.

Where to go next

The whole point of a good screen is to reach the go or no-go call faster, with the soft spots already marked for diligence. To see this exact prompt run end to end on a real target, follow Project Atlas through its first screen. When the screen says proceed, the natural next move is Due Diligence Review.