Here at First Round, we’re always searching for advice that gets overlooked or goes unshared, hoping to find the stones that company builders don’t even know to turn over. 

Whether it’s through in-person events, online discussions on First Round Network (our internal Quora-style platform), or the articles and interviews we share here on the Review, we’re driven by an ambition to create the space founders and startup leaders need to exchange that “

And in those spaces, we’ve seen time and time again how the conversation inevitably drifts back to a single topic. Whether it’s a 

There’s no shortage of challenges that could benefit from a dose of outside perspective, from 

When you’re scaling quickly, moving at warp speed, and sitting on 

 hiring panels, interviewing can seem like a task you just need to get through. 

But it’s worth pausing to remember that the decision to hire someone is an expensive and far-reaching one. And since you’re forced to make it after spending (at most) a few hours together

, maximizing what you can learn about candidates in those precious few minutes becomes all the more crucial.

Of course, we’ve shared a fair amount of interview best practices in the past here on the Review. (Two particular must-reads come to mind: 

the seven characteristics that help you hire a top performer

interview questions previously scattered across the Review archive

But given the high-stakes nature of every hire, interviewing chops are always in need of sharpening. And that means our hunt for a crazy-good interview question is never over. We’re endlessly fascinated by the go-to inquiry in everyone’s back pocket, the kind that makes you want to steal it for your own hiring toolkit.

To that end, we’ve spent the past few months reaching out to some of the smartest and most thoughtful operators in our network to pose a simple question:

 What’s your favorite interview question and why?

The responses we got back were first class. What follows is an exclusive list of 40 interview questions, sent to us by the sharpest folks we’ve met or just outright admire. Some of the questions are (deceptively) short and sweet, some are probing and unexpected, others hinge on targeted follow-ups. Broken down by topic, they tackle everything from how candidates understand the role and process feedback to their first summer job, worst boss, and the last time they changed their mind. Most importantly, these incredible founders and company builders break down 

 they lean on these questions — and what to look for in the answers you hear.

We hope this collection serves as a rich jumping off point that you can leverage as you design your own process, whether you’re building it from scratch or looking to give it a refresh as you double-down on hiring. Let’s get started.

Got a favorite interview question of your own? Tell us on Twitter or

. We’ll compile the best submissions and share them with

First Round Review newsletter subscribers

QUESTIONS TO HELP UNPACK PIVOTAL TRANSITIONS:

1. What do you want to do differently in your next role?

 usually sees two kinds of responses — and there’s one camp that the best candidates usually fall into.

“I find that the best answers highlight what they’re running 

 in their current job. If they launch into what they don’t like about their boss or current company, that tells you a lot. It tests whether they’re a positive person and how they handle adversity,” says Mullen.

“I also can often pick up on what interests them about our company specifically, and get a sense for how much research they’ve done. Finally, it gets into motivations — if they bring up how they’re looking for a more challenging opportunity, you can probe how they want to make an impact or the types of problems they’d love working on,” he says.

2. Imagine yourself in three years. What do you hope will be different about you then compared to now?

 is a favorite of ours for a reason. The VP of Product Design at Facebook quite literally 

wrote the book on how first-time managers

 can approach building out their teams. She’s graced the pages of the Review before as well, sharing her well-honed perspective on 

essential (and unique) questions every manager

“At a growing organization, hiring well is the single most important thing you can do,” she writes in her book. “The most important thing to remember about hiring is this: 

 to be solved but an opportunity to build the future of your organization

When we followed-up with Zhuo recently to find out what floats to the top as her favorite question after 

 over the years, her response had a similar focus on the future. “Asking a candidate to describe her vision for her own growth in the next three years helps me understand the candidate's ambitions as well as how goal-oriented and self-reflective she is,” says Zhuo.

3. For the last few companies you've been at, take me through: (i) When you left, why did you leave? (ii) When you joined the next one, why did you choose it?

 likes to walk through a candidate’s recent career history with a unique lens. “I love this question because it helps me understand how they think through big decisions,” says the co-creator of the 

 crytpocurrency and VP of Product for Calibra at Facebook.

Weil finds he learns a lot about underlying motivations by unpacking why people leave and join companies. “What were they optimizing for that the career move maximized? Are they looking for safety, or are they eager to take risks?” he says. “Are they trying to develop new skills, or perfect existing ones? Has their goal been to scale their management experience, or dive back into execution to get their hands dirty?”

Weil recommends paying special attention to how candidates cobble an answer together. “It’s interesting to see whether they weave the answer into a narrative arc or outline a series of distinct decisions,” he says. “Do they think big picture? Are they a great storyteller?”

I find that it’s in the space between jobs when people have to make decisions entirely independently

,” he says. “There's no team member they can steal credit from or that can do work for them. It's the only time in their career when you can get incredibly deep insight into how they think and what motivates them. Then you can evaluate their answers against the characteristics you believe are required to succeed against the role.”

Get candidates to tell you about the transitions between jobs, rather than about each one. That’s a better window into what they value and how they make decisions.

4. Among the people you've worked with, who do you admire and why?

On its face, this question might not seem to be designed to uncover motivations. But that’s exactly what 

 is digging for when he asks it in interviews. 

’s growth and monetization team and co-founder of 

, Walter stays busy pursuing the causes he cares about — and he’s interested in learning more about the values that drive folks who want to join his team.

“I want to uncover a candidate’s values, but I’ve found that asking about that directly isn’t as effective,” he says. “This question pulls out those drivers in a more subtle, yet honest way. What they admire in others tells you a lot about what they find important.”

You’ll learn a lot more about a candidate’s values by asking her who she admires. It’s a telling glimpse into the qualities she’s striving to cultivate herself.

5. Tell me about a time you took unexpected initiative. Follow-up: Can you tell me about another?

 is something of a growth guru. As the former VP of Growth at 

shared the answers to the toughest growth questions

tailoring strategies from zero all the way to IPO

So it comes as no surprise that his go-to interview question helps him uncover those candidates who push the bounds of their own personal growth. “I’ve found that the best people on your team consistently take initiative, even when it’s not expected of them,” says Rothenberg. “

But after they give one example of initiative in action, it’s critical to follow up by asking for another

I want to see a pattern, whether it’s at work, school, or any other place

6. What’s something great about your current or previous job? Why?

 is a fount of company building wisdom. Across the course of her career, the co-founder and CEO of 

 (and former engineering leader at Reddit and Facebook) has shared insights on everything from 

troubleshooting troublemakers in startup culture

“Asking this question in interviews tells me two different things,” says Blount. “First, I learn what someone loves and values — what's important to them. Second, they nearly always follow up with a qualifier,” she says. “They’ll often say something like ‘But that doesn't make up for…’ and so they’re also telling me something they don't love. I find that second piece to be very instructive. It helps me understand where they feel uncomfortable, unsupported, or generally unhappy.”

, former Senior Director of Engineer at Coinbase (where he had front-row seats to the company’s wild ascent and came through the other side with a 

valuable collection of lessons on scaling

“On its face, it’s a simple question for the interviewer to ask. But it requires a tremendous amount of thought and introspection from interviewees,” says Srinivasan. “I’ve found the asymmetric nature of it unlocks valuable discussion. 

Great candidates will be able to articulate their intrinsic motivators and reflect on why they've worked at startups before — or upack why they want to break in. Less-than-stellar candidates won’t wade into that self-inquiry.

 They’ll provide surface level answers such as ‘I like hard technology challenges.’”

 opts for a similarly open-ended question: 

 “I find that asking questions like these makes the candidate pause and think,” says Braswell. “That helps drive a more organic and free-flowing conversation where I get to know the interviewee and what drives her on a deeper level compared to going through her resume.”

8. Looking back on the last five years of your career, what’s the highlight?

, this question is more powerful than it seems. “It tells me what type of person they are, what matters to them and how they think,” says the former COO of Venmo and current EIR at 

“For example, if they tell me about a personal accomplishment, then I know personal career development is a huge area of focus. If they tell me about the accomplishment of a direct report or the team, then I know they care about developing people,” says Vaughan. “If they tell me about a company feat, then I know that they tie their own success to the company's success — which is a great mentality for weathering the early stages of a startup.”

9. What are you really good at, but never want to do anymore?

, is a fan of this question because it gets candidates to do three things:

•Reflect on what they've learned about themselves.

•Test their ability to speak with humility about being “good” at something

•Talk about stuff you may find valuable on their resume, that they in fact no longer want to do.

“It’s amazing how often people answer saying they never want to do exactly what I’m hiring for in this role,” he says.

There are incredible candidates who excel at exactly what you’re hiring for. The trouble is that they don’t want to do it anymore.

10. What’s the difference between someone who’s great in your role versus someone who’s outstanding? 

 is on the lookout for a keen understanding of the difference between A+ performance and what he calls “A+++”.

“I always follow-up with: 'Can you give me some specific examples of this in your career and the results you saw?' I look for how they answer the question just as much as the content of the answer itself,” he says. “The best candidates can answer almost immediately, maybe even with a wry smile because they know exactly what I’m getting at and they’re proud of doing something that was truly above and beyond.”

11. How did you prepare for this interview?

 is testing for three things: proactiveness, resourcefulness and passion.

“Those qualities are critical for almost any position,” says the CEO of 

 (a First Round-backed company). “I also like that this multi-purpose question is so open-ended. It gives room for candidates to show how concise, creative, and clear they are.”

12. What do you believe you can achieve with us personally or professionally that you can't anywhere else in the world?

 and former VP of Product at Spotify) typically asks this question at the tail-end of an interview cycle.

“I like it because candidates reveal their individual motivations, creativity, and commitment to our mission all in one response,” says Rajaraman. “Often, they haven't really thought about our company or capabilities deeply. The answers here can be revealing as to whether we are truly the best fit. It also helps cement that we are a special place for the person to thrive. Most importantly, if a candidate is able to articulate her ambitions and how we can help her achieve them, we are one step closer to closing her.”

Questions about why someone wants to work here and take on this particular role may seem routine, but they’re incredibly important. Often, candidates are fleeing something else and haven't thought deeply about what they want next.

As the Corporate Communications Manager at 

put tremendous thought and care into bringing new people on board

 similarly recommends digging into what makes candidates passionate about the specific opportunity in front of them. “I always ask candidates, ‘

 someone is drawn to your company and believes they’ll succeed in a given role are often overlooked. It’s incredible how many times I’ve seen people fall down when it comes to answering these questions in interviews.”

13. What are the three most important characteristics of this function? How would you stack rank yourself from strongest to least developed among these traits?

 is hiring for WeWork’s Product team, he’s hunting for candidates that have both a deep understanding of the function they're in and an appreciation for the spots in which they still need to grow.

“I use this question when hiring product managers, but it can work for other functions,” he says. “I’ve found that it forces the candidate to be introspective and provide examples of how they’re a student of their craft.”

14. Tell me about your ideal next role. What characteristics does it have from a responsibility, team, and company culture perspective? What characteristics does it not have?

’s seller and developer business units, 

 has her hands full, so the ability to quickly uncover alignment — or misalignment — in the hiring process is critical. Rather than asking directly about a candidate’s interest in a particular role, she’s found it helpful to abstract out to their 

 next role, a scenario that captures what they’re really after.

“This two-part question helps determine if there’s a match in expectations for the role. Particularly when you hear the answers to what they’re 

 looking for, sometimes you realize that the candidate is actually a better match for a different role,” she says. “But my favorite part is that it gives you the selling points you need to hit on when it comes time to close the candidate. You already know what they value, which makes it easier to tailor your pitch.”

15. It's September 5, 2020. What impact on the business have you made in the year since you’ve joined?

 wants to get candidates talking about the future, what the world will look like once they get the job, settle in and start making an impact.

Here’s what he’s able to learn from this question:

 “I’ve found that it provides visibility into how long the candidate thinks things should take,” says Desai. “Folks coming from larger companies assume things take longer than they should, while someone from a smaller, scrappier startup might want to go faster than they should.”

 “You can learn a lot from how they describe their hypothetical impact. Are they results-oriented, using numbers to describe their impact?” says Desai. “Maybe they’re more process-oriented, describing their impact in terms of the systems they’ve successfully set up. Candidates who are more people-oriented will talk about how the org will have grown and how the team will have developed.”

 If a candidate is way off-base from your expectations when describing what they’d hope to achieve, that’s telling in a different way. “It tests the extent to which they have internalized this role and what the company is asking them to solve for,” says Desai.

The work to overcome other misunderstandings about the role and the hiring manager’s expectations doesn’t stop once a candidate officially joins the team. To continue strengthening relationships and getting to know each other, Desai relies on an incredibly tactical framework that provides a bedrock for productive employee/manager relationships — 

16. Tell me about a time you strongly disagreed with your manager. What did you do to convince him or her that you were right? What ultimately happened?

When we surveyed our network of thoughtful founders and operators, several mentioned this as their favorite interview question. Since they each had different points of emphasis and takeaways, we’ve combined a few perspectives here to highlight why this question packs such a punch.

 as the 28th employee and first business development hire. In addition to joining First Round’s 

, she’s since led multiple teams across Business Development, Financial Partnerships, Partner Engineering and Diversity & Inclusion functions — which means she’s done her fair share of hiring.

And this question has become her go-to in interviews for a few reasons. “It shows me how far someone will go in order to do what they believe is right,” says Cordova. “The way candidates choose to unpack the anecdote also shows me 

 they convince others in the face of obstacles. Do they use data? Do they gather support from others?” Asking about what ultimately happened is also particularly illustrative. “How they speak about not getting their way tells you a lot about whether they're willing to disagree and commit to execution,” she says.

Current Head of People and Development at 

 leans on this question as well. “I’m looking to see how candidates 

,” she says. “Do they openly address it and see their difference in opinion as a strength? Or are they unable to see the other person's perspective? Do they try to resolve it or silently let it bother them? This tells me a lot about their ability to communicate effectively and how they will handle disagreements with others at work.”

 is also a fan of diving into how candidates handle disagreements in interviews. “I like this question for a few reasons,” says Curtis. “First, it's hard to give a fluff answer to. I also find it gives me great signal on the candidate’s personality in a number of dimensions, and it serves up useful data points that can be used in reference checks later on.”

Curtis probes deeper into the topic with targeted follow-ups that really get into the weeds of how the disagreement with their boss went down:

•What arguments did you find compelling in favor of the decision?

•What was your reasoning and most compelling arguments against?

In addition to sharing more of his go-to questions (“Think of a time you had to cut corners on a project in a way you weren’t proud of to make a deadline. How did you handle it?”), Curtis lays out tips for focusing interviews on culture and character, as well as

advice for busting bureaucracy before it starts in this Review article.

17. Tell me about the best and worst bosses you’ve ever had, specifically, in your career. What was the difference?

Favorite Interview Questions.jpg

Given the high-stakes nature of every hire, interviewing chops are always in need of sharpening. We’ve spent the past few months reaching out to some of the most thoughtful company builders in our network to pose a simple question: What’s your favorite interview question to ask and why? Here are their answers.

40 Favorite Interview Questions from Some of the Sharpest Folks We Know

— a startup building the fastest email experience in the world.

We’ve all heard that product/market fit drives startup success — and that the lack thereof is what’s lurking behind almost every failure.

For founders, achieving product/market fit is an obsession from day one. It’s both the hefty hurdle we’re racing to clear and the festering fear keeping us up at night, worried that we’ll never make it. But when it comes to understanding what product/market fit 

 to get there, most of us quickly realize that there isn’t a battle-tested approach.

In the summer of 2017, I was waist-deep in my search for a way to find product/market fit for my startup, 

. Turning to the classic blog posts and seminal thought pieces, a few observations stuck out to me. Y Combinator founder Paul Graham described product/market fit as when you’ve 

 it as when users spontaneously tell other people to use your product. But of course, the most cited description comes from this passage in Marc Andreessen’s 2007 

“You can always feel when product/market fit is 

 happening. The customers aren't quite getting value out of the product, word of mouth isn't spreading, usage isn't growing that fast, press reviews are kind of ‘blah,’ the sales cycle takes too long, and lots of deals never close.  

And you can always feel product/market fit when it

 happening. The customers are buying the product just as fast as you can make it — or usage is growing just as fast as you can add more servers. Money from customers is piling up in your company checking account. You're hiring sales and customer support staff as fast as you can. Reporters are calling because they've heard about your hot new thing and they want to talk to you about it. You start getting entrepreneur of the year awards from Harvard Business School. Investment bankers are staking out your house.”

For me, this was the most vivid definition — and one that I stared at through tears. 

We had set up shop and started coding Superhuman in 2015. A year later, our team had grown to seven and we were still furiously coding. By the summer of 2017, we had reached 14 people — and we were 

 coding. I felt intense pressure to launch, from the team and also from within myself. My previous startup, 

 by LinkedIn in less time. Yet here we were, two years in, and we had not passed go.

But no matter how intense the pressure, I wasn’t ready to launch. Common practice would be to "throw it out there and see what sticks,” which may be fine after a few months of effort when the sunk cost is low. But the “launch and see what happens” method seemed irresponsible and reckless to me — especially given the years that that we had invested.

Further compounding the pressure, as a founder, I couldn’t just tell the team how I felt. These super-ambitious engineers had poured their hearts and souls into the product. I had no way of telling the team we weren’t ready, and worse yet, no strategy for getting out of the situation — which is not something they would want to hear. I wanted to find the right language or framework to articulate our current position and convey the next steps that would get us to product/market fit, but was struggling to do so.

That’s because the descriptions of product/market fit I found were immensely helpful for companies 

. If, after launch, revenue isn’t growing, raising money is tough, the press doesn't want to talk to you and user growth is anemic, then you can safely conclude you don't have product/market fit. But in practice, because of my previous success as a founder, we didn’t have problems raising money. We could have gotten press, but we were actively avoiding it. And user growth wasn't happening because we deliberately choosing not to onboard more users. We were pre-launch — and we didn’t have any indicators to clearly illustrate our situation.

The descriptions of product/market fit all seemed so post hoc, so unactionable. I had a clear understanding of where we stood, but I had no way of conveying that to others — and no plan for the part that should come next.

So I racked my brain for an answer on how to travel the distance between where Superhuman was and the high bar that we needed to hit. And I eventually started to wonder: 

what if you could measure product/market fit?

 product/market fit, then maybe you could 

 product/market fit until you achieved it.

Reoriented around this purpose and reinvigorated by the new direction, I set out to reverse engineer a process for getting to product/market fit. Below, I outline the findings that followed, specifically unpacking the clarifying metric that made everything fall into place and the four-step process we used to build an engine that propelled Superhuman forward on the path to finding our fit.

ANCHORING AROUND A METRIC: A LEADING INDICATOR FOR PRODUCT/MARKET FIT

On my quest to understand product/market fit, I read all I could and spoke with every expert I could find. Everything changed when I found 

, who ran early early growth in the early days of 

 and later coined the term “growth hacker.”

The product/market fit definitions I had found were vivid and compelling, but they were 

 indicators — by the time investment bankers are staking out your house, you already have product/market fit. Instead, Ellis had 

just ask users “how would you feel if you could no longer use the product?” and measure the percent who answer “very disappointed.”

After benchmarking nearly a hundred startups with his 

, Ellis found that the magic number was 40%. Companies that struggled to find growth almost always had less than 40% of users respond “very disappointed,” whereas companies with strong traction almost always exceeded that threshold.

Ask your users how they’d feel if they could no longer use your product. The group that answers ‘very disappointed’ will unlock product/market fit.

 in a 2015 open research project. 51% of these users responded that they would be very disappointed without Slack, revealing that the product had indeed reached product/market fit when it had around half a million paying users. Today, this isn’t too surprising, given Slack’s 

Inspired by this approach, we set out to measure what the responses would be for Superhuman. We identified users who recently experienced the core of our product, following Ellis’ recommendation to focus on those who used the product at least twice in the last two weeks. (At the time we had between 100 and 200 users to poll, but smaller, earlier-stage startups shouldn’t shy away from this tactic — you start to get directionally correct results around 40 respondents, which is much less than most people think.)

 survey asking the following four questions:

1. How would you feel if you could no longer use Superhuman?

A) Very disappointed 
B) Somewhat disappointed 
C) Not disappointed

2. What type of people do you think would most benefit from Superhuman?

3. What is the main benefit you receive from Superhuman?

4. How can we improve Superhuman for you?

With the responses collected, we analyzed the first question:

With only 22% opting for the “very disappointed” answer, it was clear that Superhuman had not reached product/market fit. And while this result may seem disheartening, I was instead energized. I had a tool to explain our situation to the team and — most excitingly — a plan to boost our product/market fit

FROM BENCHMARK TO ENGINE: THE FOUR-STEP MANUAL FOR OPTIMIZING PRODUCT/MARKET FIT

Determined to move the needle, I became singularly focused on ways to improve our product/market fit score. The responses to each survey question would be key ingredients in what became the framework for fulfilling our goal.

Here are the four components that comprised our product/market fit engine:

1) Segment to find your supporters and paint a picture of your high-expectation customers.

With your early marketing, you may have attracted all kinds of users — especially if you've had press and your product is free in some way. But many of those people won't be well-qualified; they don't have a real need for your product and its main benefit or use case might not be a great fit. You wouldn't have wanted these folks as users anyway.  

As an early-stage team, you could just narrow the market with preconceived notions of who yo

 the product is for, but that won’t teach you anything new. If you instead use the "very disappointed" group of survey respondents as a lens to narrow the market, the data can speak for itself — and you may even uncover different markets where your product resonates very strongly.

For me, the goal of segmenting was to find pockets in which Superhuman might have better product/market fit, those areas I may have overlooked or didn't think to scope down to.

To start, we grouped the survey responses by their answer to the first question (“How would you feel if you could no longer use Superhuman?”):

We then assigned a persona to each person who filled out a survey.

Next, we looked at the personas that appeared in the very disappointed group — the 22% that were our biggest supporters — and used those to narrow the market. In this simplified example, you can see we focused on founders, managers, executives and business development  — temporarily ignoring all other personas.

With this more segmented view of our data, the numbers shifted. By segmenting down to the very disappointed group that loved our product most, our product/market fit score jumped by 10%. We weren’t quite at that coveted 40% yet, but we were a lot closer with minimal effort.

To go even deeper, I wanted to better understand these users who really loved our product. I hoped to paint as vivid a picture of them as possible, so I could galvanize the whole team to serve them better.

 as a tool to do just that. Supan notes that the high-expectation customer (HXC) isn’t an all encompassing persona, but rather the most discerning person within your target demographic. Most importantly, they will enjoy your product for its greatest benefit and help spread the word. For example, Airbnb’s HXC doesn’t simply want to visit new places, but wants to belong. For Dropbox, the HXC wants to stay organized, simplify their life, and keep their life’s work safe.

With this in mind, I sought to pinpoint Superhuman’s HXC. We took only users who would be very disappointed without our product and analyzed their responses to the 

second question in our survey: “What type of people do you think would most benefit from Superhuman?”

This is a very powerful question, as happy users will almost always describe themselves, not other people, using the words that matter most to them. This lets you know who the product is working for and the language that resonates with them (providing valuable kernels of insight for your marketing copy as well). 

Using our customers' words and Supan’s tips for building a profile, we crafted a rich and detailed vision of the Superhuman HXC:

Nicole is a hard-working professional who deals with many people. For example, she may be an executive, founder, manager, or in business development. Nicole works long hours, and often into the weekend. She considers herself very busy, and wishes she had more time. Nicole feels as though she’s productive, but she’s self-aware enough to realize she could be better and will occasionally investigate ways to improve. She spends much of her work day in her inbox, reading 100–200 emails and sending 15–40 on a typically day (and as many as 80 on a very busy one). 

Nicole considers it part of her job to be responsive, and she prides herself on being so. She knows that being unresponsive could block her team, damage her reputation, or cause missed opportunities. She aims to get to Inbox Zero, but gets there at most two or three times a week. Very occasionally  —  perhaps once a year  —  she’ll declare email bankruptcy. She generally has a growth mindset. While she’s open-minded about new products and keeps up to date with technology, she may have a fixed mindset about email. Whilst open to new clients, she’s skeptical that one could make her faster.

With our HXC in mind, we had a tool to focus the entire company on serving that narrow segment better than anybody else. Some may find this approach too limiting, arguing that you shouldn't narrow in on such a specific customer base early on.

It’s a commonly held view that tailoring the product too narrowly to a smaller target market means that growth will hit a ceiling — but I don’t think that’s the case.

“When a startup launches, there have to be at least some users who really need what they're making — not just people who could see themselves using it one day, but who want it urgently. Usually this initial group of users is small, for the simple reason that if there were something that large numbers of people urgently needed and that could be built with the amount of effort a startup usually puts into a version one, it would probably already exist. Which means you have to compromise on one dimension: you can either build something a large number of people want a small amount, or something a small number of people want a large amount. Choose the latter. Not all ideas of that type are good startup ideas, but nearly all good startup ideas are of that type.”

, he drives this point home even further:

“In theory this sort of hill-climbing could get a startup into trouble. They could end up on a local maximum. But in practice that never happens. … The maxima in the space of startup ideas are not spiky and isolated. Most fairly good ideas are adjacent to even better ones.”

In essence, it's better to make something that a small number of people want a large amount, rather than a product that a large number of people want a small amount. In my view, the product/market fit engine process of narrowing the market massively optimizes for a product that a small number of people want a large amount.

2) Analyze feedback to convert on-the-fence users into fanatics.

New to The Review? Start here:

40 Favorite Interview Questions from Some of the Sharpest Folks We Know

How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product/Market Fit

How to Become Insanely Well-Connected

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This 90-Day Plan Turns Engineers into Remarkable Managers

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