
Ask HN: Questions For & About Startups - LukeG
Hey folks, Luke from Startuply here. We're going to start a new series of posts designed to help figure out what it's actually like to live and work at different startups. How, you may be asking yourself, are we going to figure that out? By asking the people that work there.<p>We need your help come up with a set of questions that we can trick (jk) our favorite startup folk into answering. So, what do you want to know about a company when you're considering applying for a job, or pondering whether to accept an offer or not? We're going to try to stay away from basic product info - as in "what do you make" - and focus more about the life &#38; times of the team itself. So, help us out by suggesting some tough, interesting questions that you want real answers to, and we'll work on pinning down sneaky execs for long enough to get a straight answer out of them.<p>Fire away in the comments, and vote on suggestions that you like.
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evanlong
How did you meet the people you work with in your startup (past jobs, school,
randomly, etc...)?

How do you solve disputes within the team?

If you were not doing startups or technical things, what types of things would
you pursue?

Was the original idea for the startup the one you stuck with?

Was there any AHA moments within the team that were notable?

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paulgb
How many monitors do the programmers use?

Not because I need a bunch of monitors, but it seems like a rough indicator of
how much programmers are valued in the company. A company looking for code
monkeys isn't going to find the marginal return of another monitor worth the
investment.

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alex_c
I used to work at a company where the programmers got basically whatever scrap
monitors could be found - usually a single 15" or 17" CRT - while some of the
secretaries had dual 19" LCDs. That was as recently as a year and a half ago.
(I think things got better since then, but I didn't stick around).

So, yes. Excellent question.

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cperciva
This might be a very difficult question to get answered, but I think it could
be very interesting: In retrospect, how closely (or not) did the allocation of
ownership (between founders, and also founders vs. employees) match the
contributions people ended up making to the company?

Bonus points if you can ask several people at a company and get different
opinions about the relative values of each other's contributions. :-)

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emmett
I think this question is fascinating, and it's one I've asked several people
at various startups I know. Because you're comparing extremely different types
of work to each other, it's very hard to answer.

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LukeG
OK, honestly, what kind of schedule & hours do you guys (and ladies) really
keep?

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jasonlbaptiste
Most consistently 10-8 ish. If there's a big design or feature being worked
on, ill probably get reeeled back in from 12-3. Very easy to get lost in
photoshop.

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marketer
Why would someone sacrifice their secure job with good benefits and plunge
into the startup world?

Have you ever watched Scoble interview startup founders? It's completely
unscripted, yet he does a remarkable job (in my opinion). You can tell he's
passionate about discovering neat technology, and he always gets excited over
some cool features. It's very authentic. You might want to check out his
style. This is a good example:

[http://www.fastcompany.tv/video/a-really-useful-way-take-
not...](http://www.fastcompany.tv/video/a-really-useful-way-take-notes)

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fallentimes
What was your biggest time waster?

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viggity
news.ycombinator.com ;)

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rokhayakebe
1- how will you make money? What if that doesn't work? What about your plan C
to generate revenue?

2- What is your exit strategy?

3- What if Yahoo, Google or Microsoft launchs a competitive product?

4- What would you do if you were not startupping?

5- What other startup do you like?

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DenisM
Which advice have you ignored at the outset, only to regret it later?

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maryrosecook
Do you hang out together outside work?

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mooders
In retrospect, did you do it the hard way, or the easy way (whatever each
constitutes in your context)?

What will you do differently next time?

How transparent are the founders in their info-sharing?

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aneesh
If you have paying customers, how did you find them? And how are you planning
to get more?

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robdor
What a great question. I'm particularly interested in the marketing and
customer gathering methods of startups who have gone the bootstrap route
instead of receiving investor money.

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mace
1\. Why did you start your company(ie. what problem are you trying to solve)?

2\. Has your original idea/product changed over time?

3\. Have you started a company before?

4\. What are your funding goals (if any)?

5\. Where do you see your startup in 1 year?

6\. What is your best advice to other entrepreneurs?

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watmough
Some more questions:

1\. How do you ensure that ideas are listened to?

2\. How do you find technical, business and recruiting talent?

3\. What are the 1 - 3 central tenets to your business? What do you do if
people stray from these ideas?

4\. Are people expected to work 12 hours a day, or is there a work-life
balance?

5\. Will the company make a reasonable effort to accommodate the requirements
of techies, such as a quiet office, or are you expected to sit in a bullpen
next to salespeople or tech support?

6\. Do I get my own printer / second monitor / fast pc / team morale budget /
software budget / 20% time etc.?

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anamax
(1) What are you doing? (2) What is important to you?

If (1) doesn't directly contribute to (2)....

For CEOs, "What are the last three important things about
engineering/development that you didn't hear from the VP-Engr?

For VP-Engr/managers, "What are the last three important things about the biz
that you heard from your reports?"

In both cases, the followup is "What did you do with that information?"

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ALee
1) What are the weaknesses of your startup?

2) How do you manage between letting people have a say in product versus
micro-management?

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edw519
What keeps you up at night?

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cmos
What was your biggest mistake? We want the gory details.

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netcan
DO you have an exit strategy?

If so, when did you formulate it?

If early on, how has it affected your product?

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DenisM
Man, these are awesome questions.

Talk about success story in crowd-sourcing.

