questions.txt

Section: Critical Questions
What are you working on?
Who would use your product?
How do you know customers need what you’re making? How do you know people want this?
How will you make money? How much money could you make per year?
Why isn’t someone already doing this?
Why will you succeed over others? What do you understand that others don’t?
What have you learned so far from working on your product?
How much does customer acquisition cost?
How many users do you have?
Where do new users come from? How do users find out about you?
How are you meeting customers?
What is your distribution strategy? How will you grow?
What makes new users try you?
Why do the reluctant users hold back?
What is your growth like?
What is your user growth rate?
What’s the conversion rate?
How many users are paying?
Who is going to be your first paying customer?
What resistance will users have to trying you and how will you overcome it?
How are you understanding customer needs?
What are the top things your users want?
What has surprised you about user behavior?
What’s new about what you make?
What problems and hurdles are you anticipating? How will you overcome them?
Six months from now, what’s going to be your biggest problem?
Section: Important questions
Why did you choose this idea? Why did you pick this idea to work on?
Where is the rocket science here?
How does your product work in more detail?
What do you understand about your users? What domain expertise do you have?
What are the key things about your field that outsiders don’t understand?
What’s an impressive thing you have done?
How did your team meet?
Why did your team get together?
Who in your team does what?
Who would you hire or how would you add to your team? Who would be your next hire?
What part of your project are you going to build first? What are you going to do next? What is the next step with the product evolution?
If your startup succeeds, what additional areas might you be able to expand into?
Who are your competitors? Who might become competitors? What competition do you fear most?
What is your burn rate?
How long can you go before funding?
Have you raised funding?
What will you do if we don’t fund you?
Would you relocate to Silicon Valley?
Who is “the boss”? 
Section: Trouble questions
How do we know your team will stick together? Will your team stick at this?
What else have you created together?
Are you open to changing your idea?
Someone just showed us an idea like this right before you guys. I don’t like it. What else do you have?
Section: Softballs
What systems have you hacked?
Tell us about a tough problem you solved?
In what ways are you resourceful?
What is something surprising you have done?
What’s the funniest thing that has happened to you?
What’s the worst thing that has happened? What’s the biggest mistake you have made?