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Startup Failing? You Might Be Asking The Wrong Questions (fastcolabs.com)
50 points by nate on Nov 16, 2013 | hide | past | favorite | 3 comments


This is so spot on. Asking questions is completely different than asking good questions. Conversion Rate Experts, who are pretty much the leaders in conversion rate optimization, talk about using questions to light up different areas of a user's motivations and mindset (they call it a psychogram, that's their branded term).

I like that mental model, because if you think about questions as tools to illuminate different areas that you are blind to (whether in your business or customer mindset) you ask different and more insightful questions.

If you want to figure out churn, and you're trying to figure out what you're blind to with your churn numbers you have a more investigative mind set and end up with better insights.

They dive more into it here: www.conversion-rate-experts.com/questions/


Many startup entrepreneurs don't have the experience to even know what questions to ask or whether they are asking the right questions. Many times they are solving problems that don't even exist. Any many times the mentors and investors don't care.


If a curated, less bloated, startup dictionary like investopedia existed: then people would learn what to ask.




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