Interview

Questions for Gathering Information

Would you tell me about yourself before you stared your first venture:

· Were your parents, relatives, or close friends entrepreneurial? How so?

· Did you have any other role models?

· What was your education/military experience? In hindsight, was it helpful? In what specific ways?

· What was your previous work experience? Was it helpful? What particular “chucks of experience” were especially valuable or irrelevant?

· Did you have a business or self-employment during your youth?

· In particular, did you have any sales or marketing experience? How important was it or a lack of it to staring your company?

How did you start your venture?

· How did you spot the opportunity? How did it surface?

· What were your goals? What were your lifestyle needs or other personal requirements? How did you fit these together?

· How did you evaluate the opportunity in terms of the critical elements for success? The competition? The market? Did you have specific criteria you wanted to meet?

· Did you find or have partners? What kind of palling did you do? What kind of financing did you have?

· Did you have a start-up business plan of any kind? Please tell me about it.

· How much did you take from conception to the first day of business? How many hours a day did you spend working on it?

· How much capital did it take? How long did it take to reach a positive cash flow and break-even sales volume? If you did not have enough money at the time, what where some ways in which you bootstrapped the venture (bartering, borrowing, and the like). Tell me about the pressures and crises during that early survival period.

· What outside help did you get? Did you have experienced advisors? Lawyers? Accountants? Tax experts? Patent experts? How did you develop these networks and how long did it take?

· How did any outside advisors make a difference in your company?

· What was your family situation at the time?

· What did you perceive to be your own strengths? Weaknesses?

· What did you perceive to be the strengths of your venture? Weaknesses?

· What was your most triumphant moment? Your worst moment?

· Did you want to have partners or do it solo? Why?

Once you got going:

· What were the most difficult gaps to fill and problems to solve as you began to grow rapidly?

· When you looked for key people as partners, advisors, or managers, were there any personal attributes or attitudes you were especially seeking because you knew they would fit with you and were important to success? How did you find them?

· Are there any attributes among partners and advisors that you would definitely try to avoid?

· Have things become more predictable? Or less?

· Do you spend more time, the same about of time, or less time with your business now than in the early years?

· Do you feel more managerial and less entrepreneurial now?

· In terms of the future, do you plan to harvest? To maintain? To expand?

· In your ideal world, how many days a year would you want to work? Please explain.

· Do you plan ever to retire? Would you explain?

· Have your goals changed? Have you met them?

· Has your family situation changed?

· What do you learn from both success and failure?

Questions for Concluding

· What do you consider your most valuable asset – the thing that enabled you to make it?

· If you had it to do over again, would you do it again? In the same way?

· As you look back, what do you feel are the most critical concepts, skills, attitudes, and know-how you needed to get your company stared and grown to where it is today? What will be needed for the next five years? To what extent can any of these be learned?

· Some people say there is a lot of stress being an entrepreneur. What have you experienced? How would you say it compares with other “hot seat” jobs, such as the head of a big company or a partner in a large law firm, or accounting firm?

· What things do you find personally rewarding and satisfying as an entrepreneur? What have been the rewards, risks, and trade-offs?

· Who should try to be an entrepreneur? And who should not? Can you give me any ideas there?

· What advice would you give an aspiring entrepreneur? Could you suggest the three most important lessons you have learned? How can I learn them while minimizing the tuition?

· Would you suggest any other entrepreneur I should talk to?