Mock Interview
This mock interview is for founders who have already been offered an interview by YC.
- Email your YC application to we@886studios.com to schedule a 30-minute call.
- Use our Interview Question Database to practice and prepare.
- We will ask 3-5 questions from the database below during the call.
- After the call, we will share our feedback via email.
Interview Question Database
TEAM
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- How did your team meet?
- Who are the other founders? (If you have <10% ownership founders)
- How do you all know each other?
- Who in your team does what?
- Who is “the boss”?
- Why did you pick this idea to work on?
- Why are you uniquely qualified to work on this?
- What domain expertise do you have?
- What do you understand that others don’t?
- In what ways are you resourceful?
- Why do you want to dedicate your life to working on this?
- What have you learned so far from working on this idea?
- What’s an impressive thing you’ve done?
- Tell us something surprising you have done?
- What systems have you hacked?
- What’s the funniest thing that has happened to you?
PRODUCT
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Product Background
- What are you making?
- How does your product work in more detail?
- Where is the rocket science here?
- What are other ways people solve this problem?
- What’s new about what you make?
- Why isn’t someone already doing this?
- How is your product different?
- What, exactly, makes you different from existing options?
- Who might become competitors?
- What part of this are you going to build first?
USER
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- Who needs what you’re making?
- How are you understanding customer needs?
- What are the top things users want?
- How do you know customers need what you’re making?
- How do users know they need this?
- How will customers and/or users find out about you?
- Who were your first customers?
- How many users have ever engaged?
- Who is going to be your first paying customer?
- Are your customers one-and-done, or do they come back?
- What is your user growth rate?
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- What are the top things users want?
- How are you meeting customers?
- What has surprised you about user behavior?
- How are you understanding customer needs?
- What makes new users try you?
- Why do the reluctant users hold back?
- How many users are paying?
- What is your user growth rate?
MARKET
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- How will you make money?
- Why is your product priced the way it is?
- How much money could you make per year?
- How does this become a billion-dollar company?
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- Motivation
- Why do you want to be part of YC?
- Commitment
- Will your team stick at this?
- How do we know your team will stick together?
- Would you relocate to Silicon Valley? (maybe not relevant anymore)
- Flexibility
- Are you open to changing your idea?
- Next Steps
- Why haven’t you made more progress?
- What are you going to do next?
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- What’s the worst thing that happened?
- What’s the biggest mistake you have made? What problems / hurdles are you anticipating? How will you overcome them?
- What will be the biggest challenge two years from now?
- Who are your competitors?
- Who do you fear the most?
- Won’t [big company] just launch a [whatever your company does] feature and kill you?
- How many users do your competitors have?
- How much are your competitors making?
- How much time and money do users in your target market waste before switching to your product/service?
- What keeps you up at night?
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- If your startup succeeds, what additional areas might you be able to expand into?
- How do you think about your ASP (average selling price) over time? Do you think this will go up, down, or stay about the same? Why?
- What could you do to expand your TAM?
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- How big is this market, really?
- How do you know that this isn’t just for [subculture or niche user base]?
- How fast is the market growing?
- What are some trends in your target market, and related markets?
- What side of the marketplace is harder, demand or supply?
- Is it harder to find suppliers to list [whatever good or service], or buyers to buy?
- How do you plan to build the marketplace from scratch?
- How would it work to expand geographically?
- Why is your commission so high/low?
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- Expense
- What is your burn rate?
- How much does customer acquisition cost?
- What is the average price of a [purchase, subscription, etc]?
- Traction
- What is your growth like?
- What’s the conversion rate?
- What’s the repeat buyer rate?
- What’s the churn rate?
Email us at we@886studios.com to schedule your YC moc!