1. What are your strengths and superpowers (beyond functional expertise)?

● Committed to making this work. Driven by passion and purpose over anything else.
● People is my natural strength, getting and influencing a founding team will be vital.
● Once I have clarity, shall be able to drive conviction for all.
● Can learn new things/ skills/ expertise quickly- need basis.
● Able to overcome personal limitations by consciously challenging limiting beliefs.
● Aspirational, aiming for bigger bets.
● Transparent and honest in commitment and relationships.
● Can own with a high sense of duty.

2. What are your weaknesses? How do you try to compensate for them?
● At times strong opinions held strongly.
● Without conviction, gets difficult to operate at times (need to work this out).
● EQ can improve further (significant leap over past few months/ years, ongoing growth to happen).
● Sometimes mismatching the energy of room versus my own self.

3. What words would your co-workers use to describe you? What would they want me to know about what it’s
like to work with you?
4. How do you deal with conflict? Describe a time you dealt with it well — and a time you didn’t.
5. What’s the worst interpersonal conflict you’ve dealt with? How did you handle it?
● Overtime have learnt to pause and reflect. Valuing everyone’s opinion is important, sometimes backing
the other person even if you aren’t fully onboarded is needed. Working as a unit is non-negotiable over
individual beliefs held rigid.

6. How do you cope with stress? Depression? Are there any red flags I can help watch out for?
● Manage emotions/ thoughts by journaling, reflecting (super effective).

7. How do you arrive at your convictions? What are some key mental models you use to be creative, solve
problems, or make decisions?
● I like evangelising ideas with critiques, I believe in getting convinced or convincing the other. This helps
me remove my blindspots, build conviction and move forward with better clarity.
● Before initiating actions, I break down problems into comprehensive aspects. I like articulating it over a
document and then initiating actions.

8. Describe your work style. What techniques do you use for personal productivity?
● Milestones for day/week/ month.
● Calendar hours for whichever critical things needs to be thought through.
● Extensive reading (Book summary to draw inspiration)

9. How many hours/week are you willing to work? For how long? What sounds good? What sounds like hell?Do
you have different expectations for different phases of the company’s lifespan? (i.e. willing to work harder in the
beginning)
● With passion driven projects, this question may not hold relevance. Willing to commit next 14-16
months.
10. What would you want your role to be before we reach product/market fit? What would you want your role to
be after we reach product/market fit?
● Pre PMF- All hands on deck: Ops/ Strategy/ Marketing/ Sales.
● Post PMF- Not relevant.
● Post Fund Raise: Fund Raise/ Ops/ Strategy/ Sales (All explorable)

11. How do you see your role changing as the company starts to scale? (Read the Review article on giving
away your Legos.)

12. If your role becomes unavailable entirely (e.g. the board hires a professional CEO or an experienced
executive), what would you want your new role to be?

13. Areas of Responsibility (AoR) Exercise. Rank yourself in these areas (both as an individual contributor, and
as a leader) on a scale of 1-10. Then rate your passion in each of the above areas on a scale of none to high.
(e.g. “I’m an 8 in sales, but hate it so none”):

PART I:
ROLES

SALES
“I’m an 8 in sales, and 8 on passion”
MARKETING
“I’m an 6 in mktng , and 6 on passion”
PRODUCT
“I’m an 8 in Product, and 8 on passion”
STRATEGY
“I’m an 8 in strategy, and 8 on passion”
DESIGN
“I’m an 6 in design, and 6 on passion”
ENGINEERING
“I’m an 0 in eng, and 0 on passion”
OPERATIONS
“I’m an 8 in ops, and 8 on passion”
FUNDRAISING
“I’m an 0 in fundraise, and 10 on passion”
LEADERSHIP
“I’m an 8 in leadership, and 10 on passion”
COMPANY BUILDING
“I’m an 8 in comp build, and 8 on passion”
RECRUITING
“I’m an 8 in recruiting, and 8 on passion”
LEGAL
“I’m an 0 in legal, and 0 on passion”
14. Where should our startup be based? How do you feel about remote or distributed teams?
● Depends on the market. Quite open. Firm believer on work from office for early stage set up.

15. Is there anything I should know that may affect materially

affect your time or legal status as a founder? (e.g. visa, green
card, criminal record)
16. How should founder equity be set? What’s your philosophy on the employee equity pool?
● ESOP- Yes, relevant. Every employee should get ESOP- quantum differs.
● Co-Founder: Only 1- Equal split.

17. What should our approach to employee compensation be, including cash and equity?
18. How much money should we raise? (i.e. “zero” to “as much as we can”) In the range of “bootstrapped small
business” to “go big or go home”, where do you want this startup to go?
● Build product and work this out with small user set. With high confidence on product itself, raise money
(high runway) and scale from there. pre-PMF, high fund raise does not make sense and is not a market
practice either.

19. What matters most in a funder? If you were doing reference checks on a VC or potential board member,
what traits would you be looking for?
● Cultural fitment
● Strategic expertise and involvement
● Background of funded companies and founders.
● Vision and mind space - Long term vs short term exits.

20. What does an ideal company exit look like to you? (i.e. “work on company for 1-2 years and sell for 7
figures” to “work for 10 + years, reach 9 figures in revenue, and IPO”)
● Too early to comment on this. Will have to develop a pov.

21. How do you think about the timeframe and pace of success? Are you willing to take the longer path? How
long is too long?
● 3/4 months to make the idea crystalline, another 4-5 months to get traction (small set and work out
PMF) is a good timeline. Post which it is a conscious call to be taken but getting to PMF is more
important and a 9-12 months runway is good milestone for the same.

22. What number would you sell at? How would that change if you got extra liquidity from your existing
positions?
● Too early to comment on this. Will have to develop a pov.

23. What do we do if we find product/market fit, yet none of the founders are excited about that product?
1. We find PMF- No fund raise: Ideate and pivot.
 2. We find PMF- With fund raise: Ideate to sell product and the concept, if no one wants to take it forward.

24. Can one co-founder fire another co-founder? Can someone else fire a founder?
● Need to learn more on this, can’t comment on my opinion on these nuances today.

Discuss: Do these clusters align with everyone’s expectations, skills, and desires? Do we all agree on the areas
of responsibility for the CEO, CTO, COO, etc? Should chat

25. Why do you want to start a company — in general, and in particular right now?
● Skills, experience and belief is in place.
● Sound network to back the journey.
● Market is very receptive to new ventures.
● Many technology breakthroughs happening, right time for leverage.

26. What is success to you? What motivates you personally?

● Creating impact on users (someone’s life needs to change with you taking the plunge).
● Rising above the current tide and create something bigger than oneself.
● Long term financial incentives need to come out as an outcome.

27. What impact do you want to have? Is your startup objective “getting rich” or “changing the world”? Is control
or success more important? (i.e. Are you willing to step aside if the company is more likely to have a financially
successful outcome or is it important for the founders to stay in control of the company’s destiny?)
● Impact is more important, finances will anyways be an outcome as long as we are not enterprising in
social segment.
● Overtime professional CEOs should take over, if founders cant adapt to 10 to 100.

28. What makes you gritty?

● Purpose and mission. Grit is an outcome of conviction for me.

29. Who do you admire most in your organization/family/friends and why?

30. What are you most proud of in your work career or life to date?
31. When have you taken a chance when others did not? Or when have you been willing to take an unpopular
stance?
● Pursuing state level cricket, despite social pressure from relatives/ society.
● Leaving a chore chemistry career to do something unknown.
● Leaving big role at Swiggy to pursue unknown.
● Hopefully not opting for job and starting up, now!

32. What are some of the products and companies you love, and why?
● Swiggy- Loved & learned 1000 real world ways for customer obsession.
● Headspace- Love the way their communication makes them be seen in a different light, compared to 10
other apps.
33. Is it possible to build a wildly successful company without burning out or damaging other parts of your life
(family, health, etc.)?
● 100%

34. Will this company be your primary activity? Do you have any other time commitments?
● 100%

35. What is your expected time commitment right now? How do you see that changing in the next 6 months? 2
years?
36. What is your personal runway? Current burn rate? Would you invest your own money (ideally retaining
higher equity in return)?
● Runway should be fine. Can do personal investment if need be.

37. What is the minimum monthly salary you need to survive? To be comfortable? To feel like you’ve “made it?”
● Assuming post funding. Not very obsessed, can arrive at this.

38. What should the policy of co-founders advising/consulting with other companies be?
● Would want to obsess with whatever I am building than consult others. No opinion on policy.

39. Complete the sentence: It would make you proud to hear people describe this company’s culture as
Empowering and consumer obsessed. (Values are written words, and your culture is how you actually live those
written words.)

40. What’s your philosophy on how to attract and retain great people? Tactically, how would we make this
happen at our company?
● Inspire for the mission, take care of their long term interest, invest in them. Mutual respect.
● Keep the org objective.

41. What processes or techniques would you use to get the most out of your team? For example, how would
you help them become better managers or achieve their goals?
● Transparent communication, no micro management, delegate goal making and reflection to teams.
● Enable resources and tools to make things happen.
● Financial incentives for people to see the business as their own.
● Build in public (each person should know the ups and downs to address)

42. How much of your time do you hope to spend either working or socializing with coworkers?

43. How important is diversity & inclusion? Concretely, how would you put that into action?

44. Specifically, how are we going to prioritize and make time for our co-founder relationship as we get
increasingly busy with company building?
● Every week an official catch up (¾ hours of general catch-up/ work from coffee shop)
 ● Every week - a meal outside (only co founders)- to discuss aspects beyond the day to day.

45. How would we resolve personal conflict between ourselves? How about stalemates?
● Let a day pass and reconvene.
● Still on stalemates, let the functional expert take the final call (either of the two). And then both commit
fully.

46. In case this becomes part of our partnership’s evolution, how would you go about handling a startup
divorce?
● Onus should be on each of us to be cognizant about the possibilities of this. Hence, I would love to
create a bad day playbook, on how to handle conflict, handle disagreement, handle dissenting choices
to evade any extreme day situation.
● Even if with efforts we arrive at dooms day, we should device a mechanism to honor the divorce.

47. What happens in the scenario where we aren’t growing? How would we diagnose the problem? How have
each of our capabilities and approach contributed to growth failures in our pasts?

48. In every partnership, there are times when a partner might breed resentment if certain dissatisfactions don’t
change over time. How would you deal with a situation like this?
● Good to express and take time off. Commitment on this exploration needs to be for a definite timeline,
12-14 months atleast- this trust we owe each other. During the journey, tough days would be there, we
need to stand up for each other and keep moving forward.

49. How would you think about bringing on a third (or N+1) cofounder?
● Founding team- Yes.
● Founder- Not in near term- happy to change opinions.

50. Wrap up question: Now we know each other’s weaknesses, passions, needs and constraints––how are we
going to make each other successful? What would it take to feel truly partnered in this adventure?
● Mission needs to be something we both feel passionate and driven about.
● Partnership of the two of us is something there needs to be inherent belief in.
● Dissenting opinions is something we both should learn to embrace, however post walking out of the
dissent, things need to resume to day 1- back to normal.
● Distribution of power is the norm which solves part of the above.

If we live by the above ground rules, there is no reason why things will not work. We have to commit to
each other, back each other through thick and thin, the biggest support and confinement we should be
able to find in each other, without fear of judgement. With clarity on ethos that we hold dear to each
other and then respecting that, I feel operating as a unit will lead to our outcomes.

We both need to define outcomes that will lead to success, own parts of them and be a checker for each
other. Work on a high performance bar, till we know, we have made it.