Ask HN: VCs, what are your favorite questions you ask entrepreneurs?

8 points·rdlecler1··5 comments

Ben Horowitz asked entrepreneurs to give them an example about overcoming adversity because he wanted to know the entrepreneur had grit. Peter Thiel asked about founder salaries because he saw a positive correlation between Low founder salaries and successful outcome.

View on HN

I am just an Angel investor, but my favourite is "How are you going to make a profit?"

It is amazing how many entrepreneurs have either no idea or such a bad response to this question that it shows they have not thought about it for more than 5 minutes. I don’t even mind “no idea” as long as it is backed up by all the things they have considered.

Peter Thiel had another one: tell me something that’s true that no one else agrees with you on.

Others:

-What’s changed, why now?

-What’s your competitive moat

I've always thought that is a really interesting question (your first one, that is). I first ran across it being used by John Brockman (https://www.edge.org/responses/what-do-you-believe-is-true-e...). I wonder if Peter heard it from John, or or vice versa, or if they both got it from a common source?

The tell me something you believe that nobody else believes is there is nothing non-trival that I believe that someone out there doesn’t also believe. I have always thought the closely related question of "what do you believe to be true than almost nobody else does” is better.

What's something that happened in your career that changed your way of thinking?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com