No offense but if candidate has a credible answer to "2. If you were given $100,000 VC capital and told to build a revolutionary new thing how would you build it?" wtf would she/he work for you :)?
Another reason why this is an excellent question is that it forces people to follow a very simple single instruction. If a candidate can't even do that, such as getting in irrelevant discussions about financial burdens, why would I want to hire them?
Frankly, I find your strategy for making new hires to be absolutely absurd.
> how would you build it?
Following simple instructions is hardly absurd.
"You're a skinny little nerdy freshman in high school with no social circle. How do you get the hottest, most popular senior cheerleader to go out with you by the end of the year?"
to:
"How do you ask a girl on a date?"
Interviews are a two-way street Michael. I'll call you.
The inability to understand a simple question and provide a valid response is a problem, but fortunately you don't have to hire that problem.
The question is rhetorical, so what does this matter? It is part of a job interview. It is not a VC pitch. If this confuses a candidate and they answer a question not asked I would not hire them. Interpreting and following instructions are important skills.
You are select for the "can bullshit people on short notice" ability. It is very likely not correlated with other abilities required for the job, thus, if it is not required, you will very likely fail the stronger candidates because of that.
Where is the complexity in the question and how is it poorly communicated?
Do you expect the candidate to talk about some tech stack and/or development process to you? Do you expect the candidate to describe what they'd work on (then why don't you ask that?)? Do you expect the candidate to to treat the question as "if you could work on whatever you liked", or is it "what kind of product would you build", and then talk about the process? Do you expect the candidate to ask for clarification, or is that a bad sign already (since they were to dumb to understand your "simple question")?...
There are a lot of candidates who need to have their hands held by a parent authority or are hopelessly incapable of forming original ideas. This is a means of identifying such people so that they can be removed from consideration.
> Do you expect the candidate to ask for clarification, or is that a bad sign already (since they were to dumb to understand your "simple question")?
If I had to answer the question for the candidate, then yes, I would consider that a bad sign. It is a simple hypothetical question demanding a hypothetical response.
Attempting to bullshit past the spirit of the question with deflections and non-answers are easily identifiable failures.
It may not be important to the person asking the question, but it's actually quite central to being able to have a coherent answer.
A better question, if the “what” isn't important, is to identify a concrete thing rather than a “revolutionary idea”; if “what?” isn't important, don't ask a question which fundamentally requires having an answer to “what?”.
> Attempting to bullshit past the spirit of the question
Asking a poorly framed question and blaming the person questioned for bullshitting for not correctly deducing the intended spirit certainly reflects negatively on someone, just not the interviewee.