These are questions Michael Seibel mentioned that he likes to ask startups as part of his 2018 “Building Product” Startup School presentation:

Problem

What problem are you solving?
What problem will be solved at the end of what you are doing? What do we expect the result to be?
Can you state the problem clearly in two sentences?
Have you experienced the problem yourself?
Can you define this problem narrowly?
Who can you help first?
What can we address immediately?
How do we get the first indication this thing is working?
Is the problem solveable?

Customer

Who is your customer?
Who is the ideal first customer?
How will they know if your product has solved the problem? How often (frequency) does your user have the problem? Who is getting the most value out of your product?
How intense is the problem?
Are they willing to pay?
How easy is it for your customer to find your product? Which customers should you run away from?

Product

Does your product actually solve the problem? Be truthful. How and why not? Which customers should you go after first?

How do you find people who are willing to use your “bad” first versions of your product?
Who are the most desperate customers as how do you talk to them first? Whose business is going to go out of business without using you?

Are you discounting or starting with a super low price? Are you consider this approach? If so, why?

Performance

What are you using to measure how users are interacting with your product?
What 5-10 metrics are you measuring to understand how your product functions? Why those metrics?
When you build a new product or feature, what is the metric that will improve because of that feature/product?
What number do you track to show how well your company is doing?
What is your top level KPI (revenue, usage)?
What are the underlying metrics that contribute to achieving your top level KPI (new users, retention of users, content created => DAUs at Social Cam)?
Which of these metrics are you trying to move this development cycle?

Product Development

How long is your product dev cycle? What is causing it to be that long?
Who is writing down notes at your product dev meeting?
Which category does each of your brainstormed ideas fit: New features/interactions on existing ones; bug fixes/other maintenance; A/B tests?
How easy/medium/hard are they to do?
How can you restate the hard ideas (disaggregate idea into smaller ideas)?
What parts of hard ideas are useless or hard? Are there other options?
Which hard idea will improve act the KPI the most? Which medium? Which easy? What is the spec for the product/feature we want to build?

Problem

What problem are you solving?
What problem will be solved at the end of what you are doing? What do we expect the result to be?
Can you state the problem clearly in two sentences?
Have you experienced the problem yourself?
Can you define this problem narrowly?
Who can you help first?
What can we address immediately?
How do we get the first indication this thing is working?
Is the problem solveable?

Customer

Who is your customer?
Who is the ideal first customer?
How will they know if your product has solved the problem? How often (frequency) does your user have the problem? Who is getting the most value out of your product?
How intense is the problem?
Are they willing to pay?
How easy is it for your customer to find your product? Which customers should you run away from?

Product

Does your product actually solve the problem? Be truthful. How and why not? Which customers should you go after first?

How do you find people who are willing to use your “bad” first versions of your product?
Who are the most desperate customers as how do you talk to them first? Whose business is going to go out of business without using you?

Are you discounting or starting with a super low price? Are you consider this approach? If so, why?

Performance

What are you using to measure how users are interacting with your product?
What 5-10 metrics are you measuring to understand how your product functions? Why those metrics?
When you build a new product or feature, what is the metric that will improve because of that feature/product?
What number do you track to show how well your company is doing?
What is your top level KPI (revenue, usage)?
What are the underlying metrics that contribute to achieving your top level KPI (new users, retention of users, content created => DAUs at Social Cam)?
Which of these metrics are you trying to move this development cycle?

Product Development

How long is your product dev cycle? What is causing it to be that long?
Who is writing down notes at your product dev meeting?
Which category does each of your brainstormed ideas fit: New features/interactions on existing ones; bug fixes/other maintenance; A/B tests?
How easy/medium/hard are they to do?
How can you restate the hard ideas (disaggregate idea into smaller ideas)?
What parts of hard ideas are useless or hard? Are there other options?
Which hard idea will improve act the KPI the most? Which medium? Which easy? What is the spec for the product/feature we want to build?

Doc link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ungItAgriaQk_lDI4aEJNigm...