What a memo is
A memo is not a chatbot answer and not a 40-page PDF nobody reads. It is 800–1,500 plain words that answer one question you bring — what a regulation change means for your business, what every visible vendor in a niche charges, whether an industry is worth entering — with a link beside every number, date, and price, and a numbered source list at the end.
Every memo has the same five parts, in order: your question in your words; the bottom line up front; the method (which sources were read and what was deliberately not done); the findings; and the source list with confidence flags.
The flags are the part our clients keep mentioning. Every material claim carries one of four labels: verified on page (we opened the page on a stated date and read the claim there), secondhand (a third party reports it), excerpt-only (read from a search snippet, never dressed up as verified), or arithmetic (we computed it; the inputs are shown). If something could not be verified, the memo says so in plain words instead of hiding it.
Three sample memos
Real research, built the way delivered work is built. The topic and shape of each is below; the full text is shared on request and attached to every proposal.
- Market entry — the end of the EU's €150 duty-free threshold. What a one-person Canadian seller now owes on parcels under €150: the dates and fees read from the European Commission's own guidance, the CETA origin rule that can zero out the duty, the real cost on a €40 parcel, and the two deadlines worth diarising. Every date traced to the Commission's page; the one figure that exists only in trade-press coverage is flagged as such, not laundered into fact.
- Due diligence — paid content-piracy removal for individual creators. Who sells takedown protection, at what verified price (six vendors, US$39–1,200 a month, entry prices clustered at $59–69), evidence that creators actually pay, the arithmetic of a small operator, and the risks that don't show up in revenue math — ending in a straight verdict. Vendor prices read on their own pages carry the verified flag; the rest say where they came from.
- Competitive scan — chasing overdue invoices for small businesses. Every visible vendor in one narrow niche, priced: software from £199/month, the software-plus-human ladder to £2,099, solo consultants at £50/hour. Prices carry their read dates; vendors who hide prices are named quote-gated — itself a finding about who they compete for. The scan locates the empty price band a new entrant could occupy.
Pricing
- Small single-question memo — from US$150. One narrow question, public sources, 800+ words.
- Competitive scan — US$250–400. Every visible vendor in a niche, verified prices with dates, where the gaps are.
- Market-entry memo — US$300–450. What a rule or market change means for your business, in numbers, with deadlines.
- Due-diligence profile — US$400–600. Whether an industry is real: who sells, at what price, who pays, and a verdict with its evidence trail.
Fixed price agreed before work starts. Repeat buyers can keep a standing shape — one memo a month, US$400. Revisions are included until the memo answers your question.
Turnaround
Two to four days for most questions, set with the price before work starts. Law-firm work with a stricter citation format may run a day longer. One revision is included in every price.
The honest part
Drafting is AI-assisted, and we say so up front — that is why the work takes days instead of weeks and costs hundreds instead of thousands. A human review pass is available on request at no extra charge.
Nothing is delivered with an unverified citation. Before delivery, every citation is machine-checked: each link is opened and the claim text is confirmed on the live page. Anything that could not be confirmed is flagged inside the memo, in plain words — no fabricated sources, no invented testimonials, no unverified numbers dressed as facts.
Memos inform decisions; they are not legal, tax, or financial advice. On regulated questions the memo points at the primary text and stops there.
How to start
Email your question — one or two sentences is enough — to memos@orbitalfour.com. You get back a fixed price, a delivery date, and the sharpened version of the question we will actually answer. Work starts when you approve them.