Allocate capital across competing bets in my company
A comparison of investment proposals on return, risk, and strategic fit, with a recommended portfolio and funding stages.
The prompt
Help me decide where to put limited money and people across competing initiatives.
Budget available to allocate: [AMOUNT and/or HEADCOUNT]
Proposals: [for each: what it is, cost, people needed, expected payoff, time to payoff, sponsor's confidence]
Company strategy and priorities: [WHAT we're optimizing for]
Cash position and runway: [DETAILS]
Current spend we could redirect: [initiatives that might be cut or shrunk]
Do this:
1. Put each proposal on the same basis in a table: Investment | Cost | Expected return (range, not point estimate) | Time to payoff | Strategic fit | Reversibility | Key assumption.
2. Classify each as core (protect the existing business), adjacent (extend it), or option (new bet), and show the current and proposed mix.
3. Stress-test the payoff assumptions: which ones are sponsor optimism, and what evidence exists. Do not add numbers I haven't given; mark gaps [ADD].
4. Recommend a portfolio within the budget, including what's funded fully, funded in stages with a milestone gate, or not funded.
5. For staged bets, define the milestone, the date, and the evidence that unlocks more money or stops the bet.
6. Compare against keeping cash in reserve, given my runway.
7. Show what we're giving up by not funding the rest.
Return the table, the recommended portfolio, and a short memo I can share with my leadership team explaining the choices.
Highlighted [brackets] are blanks to replace with your own details.
Fill in the blanks and use this promptMore Finance & Accounting prompts
What to fill in
- AMOUNT and/or HEADCOUNT
- WHAT we're optimizing for
- DETAILS
- initiatives that might be cut or shrunk
- ADD
How this prompt is built
This prompt follows the RTF structure (Role, Task, Format). RTF tells the model who to be, what to do and what shape the answer should take. It is the quickest structure that still gives noticeably better results than a bare request.
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