Crash Test for Startups: Answer These 40 Questions and Strengthen Your Project

When an entrepreneur begins his or her journey in the startup world, it is easy to get lost among ideas, metrics and goals. Having an innovative idea is only the first step. The hard part is transforming it into a solid, scalable business. That's where the strategic thinking process comes in. The questions you ask yourself (or are asked) can be the difference between the success and failure of your startup.

For years, Y-Combinatorone of the world's most prestigious startup accelerators, has established a set of questions that challenge entrepreneurs to think deeply about their projects. These questions not only help assess whether a startup is ready to receive investment, but also serve as a guide for founders to ground their ideas, identify weaknesses and strengthen their business model.

In this article, we compiled Y-Combinator's 40 key questions to "crash-test" your startup. These questions will force you to think about real problems, customers, product, performance and product development. If you are an entrepreneur looking to improve your project, these questions can help you anticipate the challenges you will face along the way.

Answering them will allow you to:

• Validate your business idea: Are you really solving an important problem?

• Better define your target customer: Do you know who needs your solution and how to find them?

• Optimize your product: Does your product solve the problem you promise?

• Measure and improve your performance: Are you measuring the right metrics to grow?

The 40 questions of Y-Combinator

A) Problem

1. What problem are you solving?

2. What problem will be solved at the end of what you are doing?

3. What do you expect the result to be?

4. Can you define the problem clearly in two sentences?

Have you experienced the problem yourself?

6. Can you define this problem more specifically?

7. Who can you help first?

8. What can we address immediately?

9. How do we get the first indication that this is working?

Is the problem solvable?

B) Customer

11. Who is your customer?

12. Who is the ideal customer to start with?

13. How will they know that your product has solved the problem?

14. How often does your user have the problem?

15. Who is getting the most value from your product?

16. How intense is the problem?

17. Are they willing to pay?

How easy is it for your customer to find your product?

19. Which customers should you stay away from?

C) Product

20. Does your product really solve the problem? Be honest - how and why not?

21. Which customers should you target first?

22. How do you find people willing to use the first ("bad") versions of your product?

23. Who are the most desperate customers and how do you talk to them first?

24. What business will go out of business if they don't use your product?

25. Are you offering discounts or starting with a very low price? If so, why?

D) Performance

26. What are you using to measure how users interact with your product?

27. What 5-10 metrics are you measuring to understand how your product is performing? Why these metrics?

28. When you launch a new product or feature, what metrics should improve because of that feature/product?

29. What number do you follow to show how well your company is doing?

30. What is your main KPI?

31. What are the underlying metrics that contribute to achieving your main KPI?

32. Which of these metrics are you trying to improve in this development cycle?

E) Product Development

What is the development cycle of your product and why does it take so long?

34. Who takes notes in your product development meetings?

35. To which category does each of your ideas belong? (New features, enhancements to existing features, bug fixes, maintenance, A/B testing).

36. How easy, medium or difficult is it to do these ideas?

37. How can you break down complicated ideas into smaller, more manageable ideas?

38. What parts of these complicated ideas are useless or difficult? Are there other options?

39. Which complicated idea will improve your KPI the most? Which will be the easiest to execute?

40. What is the specification of the product/function we want to build?

Answering the Y-Combinator questions can be an eye-opening exercise for any entrepreneur. These questions lead you to analyze essential aspects of your startup that often go unnoticed, such as the clarity of the problem you solve, the profile of your ideal customer or key performance indicators. They also help you identify risks and areas for improvement before presenting to investors or entering an accelerator. At the end of the process, you will be better prepared to build a solid, scalable startup that is aligned with real market needs.

Use these questions as a practical tool to reflect on your startup and strengthen your value proposition. Often, the answers you get not only consolidate your idea, but also help you anticipate future problems and stay one step ahead in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.