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

8 points by rdlecler1 ↗ HN
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.

5 comments

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

rdlecler1
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

FiatLuxDave
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?
danieltillett
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.