Appendix: List of Questions

QUESTION 1:
Do you (really) want to start a company?

QUESTION 2:
What do you expect your company to look like in 5 years?
($1 million, $10 million, or $100 million in sales? How many employees?)

QUESTION 3:
What do you personally want to be doing in 5 years? 3 years? 2 years? Next year?
(CEO, CTO, sales, product development, advisor to the company, etc.)

QUESTION 4:
Are you prepared to quit your current job and work at the new company full-time?

QUESTION 5:
Do want to be rich, famous, both, or neither?

QUESTION 6:
At work, what makes you happy? Excited? Eager to start a new day?

QUESTION 7:
Do I start this company alone, or seek a co-founder?

QUESTION 8:
Do I seek a mentor, set of advisors, incubator and/or accelerator?

QUESTION 9:
Are you passionate about your idea?

QUESTION 10:
What problem are you solving?

QUESTION 11:
Who are the people whose problem you are solving?

QUESTION 12:
Are you solving an important problem?

QUESTION 13:
Will your solution create more problems than it solves?

QUESTION 14:
Can you describe the problem, customer, and solution in 10 minutes or less? Without a single word of jargon?

QUESTION 15:
Who is the person responsible for buying your product?

QUESTION 16:
What is the minimal set of features required to get the first few customers to buy your product?

QUESTION 17:
Are you ready to launch your minimal viable product (MVP)? If not, when?

QUESTION 18:
How many customers need your product?

QUESTION 19:
How many copies of your product will each customer buy?

QUESTION 20:
How many customers can each of your sales people close?

QUESTION 21:
How long does each of those sales take?

QUESTION 22:
At scale, how many customers do you expect will buy your product per year?

QUESTION 23:
High-price/high-service, small number of sales, or
Low-price/low-service, large number of sales?

QUESTION 24:
What is the selling price of your minimal viable product?

QUESTION 25:
What is your target price of your beyond-minimal product?

QUESTION 26:
How big is this opportunity?

QUESTION 27:
After reviewing the opportunity size, do you need to revisit the market sizing or pricing, or look for additional customers, or go all the way back and to the beginning and change the product?

QUESTION 28:
Is the opportunity worth the effort?

QUESTION 29:
What other companies are solving the same problem?

QUESTION 30:
How does your product compare to the competition? How does it compare feature by feature?

QUESTION 31:
How does the price of your product compare to the competition? Which pricing model are they using (high-price/high-service or low-price/low-service)?

QUESTION 32:
What is unique about your solution?

QUESTION 33:
What is your long term, sustainable, competitive advantage?

QUESTION 34:
How many people do you need in your company?

QUESTION 35:
What is each person responsible for?

QUESTION 36:
Who will develop your product? Who will do the marketing? Who will do the sales? Who will run the company?

QUESTION 37:
Which roles will you fill, and which will you hire?

QUESTION 38:
How will your customers know your company exists? How will they know the benefits of your product?

QUESTION 39:
What do you call this company?

QUESTION 40:
What is your sales process?

QUESTION 41:
What are you going to do to keep your customers happy, once you have customers?

QUESTION 42:
Can this be a profitable venture?

QUESTION 43:
When will this company be profitable?