Bessemer Venture Partners has released memos showing why they invested in small companies that later made it big like LinkedIn, Twitch, and Shopify

"Like the knight's sword, the firefighter's hose, and the lumberjack's ax, venture capitalists courageously wield the memo."

So begins a recent blog post from VC heavyweight Bessemer Venture Partners that gathers the memos its partners sent in years past requesting funds for startups that later hit it big.

In these actual memos, the partner takes a frank look at the company's strengths and weaknesses and then makes the case to the rest of the firm on why these then-small companies were deserving of investment.

"Shopify was my first lead investment as a partner, so I was incredibly nervous," partner Alex Ferrara noted in an present-day annotation of a memo he wrote in 2010 requesting $7 million in Series A funding for Canadian startup Shopify. "It took me three round trip flights to Ottawa before I finally decided to present Tobi [Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke] a term sheet."

The full list of startups is Pinterest, Twilio, Sendgrid, Twitch, Wix, Yelp, Dropcam, Mindbody, PagerDuty, Fiverr, LinkedIn, and Lifelock.

Got tips about startups or venture capital? Email Max Jungreis at mjungreis@businessinsider.com, DM him on Twitter @MaxJungreis, or contact him on encrypted messaging app Signal at (907) 947-0299.

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