Key takeaways
- Ask the same core questions of every founder at a stage, so answers can be compared.
- Ask for definitions and examples, not adjectives.
- Judge the substance of answers, not accent, fluency or polish.
- Never ask about age, family, religion or health.
Founder interview questions to copy
The traction questions do the most work: they turn a slide into a definition you can check later.
FOUNDER INTERVIEW QUESTIONS Pick five or six for a first conversation. Ask each founder the same core questions for the same stage, and write down what each answer was based on. PROBLEM AND CUSTOMER 1. Who has this problem most acutely? Describe a specific customer you have spoken to. 2. How do they deal with it today, and what does that cost them? 3. What did customers tell you that changed your view of the problem? PRODUCT 4. Walk me through what a customer does in their first week with the product. 5. What have you decided not to build, and why? 6. What is hardest for a competitor to copy, and how long would it take them? TRACTION AND EVIDENCE 7. Pick your most important number. How exactly is it defined, and for which period? 8. How many customers pay you today, and how many are on pilots or free plans? 9. Tell me about a customer who left or didn't convert. Why? MARKET AND COMPETITION 10. How did you size the market? Which assumption are you least sure of? 11. When you lose a deal, who do you lose it to? GO TO MARKET 12. How did you win your last three customers? What did each cost you in time or money? 13. Who signs the contract, and who can stop it? TEAM 14. Why are you the people to build this? What do you know that others in this market don't? 15. How do you split decisions between founders? Tell me about a disagreement and how you resolved it. 16. Which role do you most need to hire next? THE ROUND 17. What will this round let you prove, and by when? 18. What would make you raise again sooner than planned? FOLLOW-UPS (use when an answer is vague) - What is that number based on? - Can you give me an example? - What would we see in the data if that were true? - What changed since the deck was written? DO NOT ASK Age, family or plans for children, religion, health, nationality beyond what is legally required, or anything else unrelated to the company. Do not judge accent, fluency, appearance or presentation polish.
When to use these questions
Use them for a first call, or as the written or spoken questions in a recorded interview before a call. Choose the questions the deck left unanswered: if the deck has clear revenue definitions, skip question 7 and spend the time on go to market.
What to change
- Add one or two sector questions, for example regulatory approval in health or unit costs in hardware.
- At pre-seed, drop the churn question if there are no customers yet and ask about design partners instead.
- For accelerators, add questions about commitment to the programme dates.
- Write down why each question is on your list, so the team asks it the same way.
What to leave out, and how to assess fairly
Questions about a founder's personal life tell you nothing about the company and can be unlawful in some places. Presentation style is not evidence either: a nervous founder with a precise answer has given you more than a confident one with a vague answer. Score answers against what was asked, and record the evidence for each score.
Asking them with or without Delsivo
The list works in a call, a form or an email. Delsivo's founder interviews, planned for the first release, are a live call the founder starts when it suits them: a screen-share pitch of about 5 minutes, then an AI interviewer asks the fund's fixed questions and follow-ups out loud, within a cap the fund sets of 15 to 20 minutes. A text interview is always available. Only the transcript is assessed, on substance and evidence; accent, fluency, polish, appearance and background are excluded, and analysts decide who advances.