It forces the target to either confirm or deny a hypothesis to fill the void.
In order to answer your question about handling visibly intimidated founders, the instruction provided at at the [17:05] timestamp are critical to understanding their methodology.
The speaker advises utilizing "tactical rapport building" disguised as genuine empathy.
Intimidation is actually counter-productive for the advisor initially; it triggers the founder's threat-detection system, causing them to maintain their rehearsed pitch...
To get ground-truth data on operational vulnerabilities, the advisor must first lower the founder's defenses.
By "making them feel comfortable" the advisor calms the target's fight-or-flight response, securing a temporary baseline.
Only then do they apply the Socratic stress-induction, catching the founder off guard and securing an unfiltered look at their psychological resilience.