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1Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsAsk questions in this order: clarify what you just saw, identify the customer and painful problem, test evidence of demand, understand alternatives, explore execution risks, and learn why this team is suited to the job. A good booth conversation is not a surprise investor interrogation. It is a short attempt to separate a working product from a mock-up, a real user need from a broad claim, and observed traction from an attractive percentage.
Start from the founder’s demonstration and request specific examples, dates, and definitions. Let the answers determine which thread deserves a follow-up. TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield materials emphasize working functionality, a meaningful problem, differentiation, early traction, thoughtful execution, market understanding, and founder experience; those criteria are useful organizing principles, not an official question list or scoring formula.
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Begin with what the demo actually showed
Ask what works today
Open with: “What part of what you showed is working in the product today, and what is still a prototype or planned?” This is a fair clarification, not an accusation. A polished demo may combine a live product, prepared data, simulated steps, and roadmap features. You need to know which is which before drawing conclusions about the company.
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Use a concrete follow-up
When the answer is vague, ask, “Could you show me the part a customer can use without your team stepping in?” You are checking the boundary between a product capability and a service demonstration. Note whether the founder answers directly, demonstrates the limitation, or changes the subject. The response is more informative than a general claim that the system is “almost ready.”
Find the customer and the painful problem
Identify the most urgent user
Ask: “Who has this problem most urgently?” A precise answer should name a role, organization type, or situation rather than “everyone.” You can then ask what makes the problem urgent: lost revenue, staff time, safety exposure, regulatory risk, missed opportunities, or another consequence that causes someone to act.
Request a recent incident
Follow with: “Can you tell me about a recent time a customer ran into it?” A recent story connects the pitch to an actual workflow. Listen for what happened, who noticed it, what it cost, and how the customer responded. If the founder can discuss a situation without disclosing confidential details, you learn more than you would from a list of market-size claims.
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Map the current workaround
Ask: “How do those customers handle it today?” The answer may be an incumbent software product, spreadsheets, an internal team, a manual process, outsourcing, or doing nothing. “Nothing” can be a genuine alternative when the pain is infrequent or not yet expensive enough to justify a purchase. Understanding the current workflow tells you what behavior the startup must change.
Test demand without demanding one magic metric
Ask what evidence exists
Use: “What have you seen so far that makes you believe people will keep using or pay for this?” Then ask what changed in the last few months. Depending on the business, useful evidence could include repeat usage, paid contracts, renewal behavior, active pilots, a shrinking sales cycle, customer referrals, or a measurable improvement in the customer’s work. Do not assume that a consumer app, an enterprise platform, and a hardware company should prove demand in the same way.
Put every number in context
When a founder cites growth, ask: “What exactly does that number measure, who is included, and over what period?” A percentage without a starting base, cohort definition, or time window cannot tell you whether usage is broad, retained, or concentrated in a single pilot. Ask whether the figure is users, activated accounts, paying customers, revenue, transactions, or another measure, and whether it is cumulative or recurring.
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TechCrunch lists early traction as a consideration for Startup Battlefield, but it does not publish a universal threshold or required metric. Your goal is therefore to understand the quality and direction of the evidence, not to force every founder to produce the same dashboard.
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Ask whether people merely expressed interest, agreed to a pilot, deployed the product, paid, or renewed. Those stages represent different levels of commitment. A waitlist can indicate curiosity; repeated use or payment shows that the product survived a real decision. The founder may not be able to share confidential figures, but should be able to explain what the reported milestone represents.
Explore alternatives and meaningful differentiation
Ask who the customer compares you with
Instead of only asking, “Who are your competitors?”, ask: “What do customers compare you with?” This wording includes an incumbent, an internal process, a neighboring category, or no action. Then ask: “Where do you win, and where does the alternative still work better?” A credible founder can describe both sides of that trade-off.
TechCrunch’s official FAQ states, “Saying you have no competitors is a red flag.” The point is not that every startup must name a direct clone. It is that every customer has an alternative use of money, time, attention, or inertia. A founder who acknowledges those choices gives you a clearer basis for judging the product.
Translate features into a customer outcome
Ask: “What changes for the customer enough to make switching worth the effort?” Faster setup, lower error rates, improved compliance, or a new capability may matter; a longer feature list does not automatically create a reason to change. Ask which outcome has been observed and for whom. If the advantage depends on a future capability, label it as a hypothesis rather than current differentiation.
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Find the unexpectedly hard part
Ask: “What has been harder to build or deliver than you expected?” This reveals whether the team has encountered real constraints in technology, data access, manufacturing, distribution, regulation, or customer onboarding. A thoughtful answer can include a problem that remains unresolved; candor is more useful than a claim that everything has gone according to plan.
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Ask what must be true at ten times the current scale
Use: “What would have to be true for this to work at ten times the current scale?” The founder might mention infrastructure cost, support staffing, supply capacity, model performance, sales coverage, or a regulatory approval. Follow up on the single dependency that could stop growth. You are learning how the team prioritizes risks, not asking for a polished five-year forecast.
Clarify the next proof point
Ask: “What is the next milestone that would change your mind about the current plan?” A useful answer identifies a test, a time frame, and a decision rule. It shows whether the team treats assumptions as measurable questions. If the founder cannot name a falsifiable next step, the strategy may still be mostly narrative.
Understand why this team is pursuing the problem
Look for firsthand insight
Ask: “What experience gave you a close view of this problem?” Experience can come from working in the affected industry, building adjacent systems, conducting repeated customer research, or personally encountering the problem. You are not looking for a particular résumé; you are looking for specific knowledge that improves product decisions.
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Ask what changed their mind
Follow with: “What did you learn that changed your original idea?” A founder who can describe a changed segment, workflow, pricing assumption, or technical approach demonstrates learning rather than attachment to the first concept. TechCrunch says it considers founder experience, insight into the problem, and why the team is positioned to build the company.
Close by offering a useful next step
End with: “What kind of feedback or introduction would be most useful right now?” This lets the founder state a need instead of assuming that an investor introduction, pilot, or social-media share is wanted. If you offer help, be specific about what you can actually provide and avoid promising access you do not control.
How to tell whether a startup demo is real
A booth conversation cannot replace product testing or due diligence, but you can check the evidence boundary quickly. Work through these questions:
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- What was live? Ask the founder to identify the exact demonstrated workflow and any simulated or pre-recorded element.
- Who can use it? Clarify whether the product is available to customers, limited to a pilot, or still internal.
- What remains manual? Ask where employees supply data, review outputs, or complete steps outside the software.
- What has been observed? Request the customer type, measurement, cohort, and period behind each traction claim.
- What is planned? Separate roadmap promises from capabilities available at the event.
A limitation is not automatically a failure. Early products often rely on manual operations while the team learns. The important distinction is whether the founder describes the limitation plainly and has a credible plan to test or remove it.
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Use a consistent frame when you visit several booths
When comparing demos, write the same short notes for each company. Consistency prevents a charismatic presentation or elaborate booth from dominating your judgment.
| Axis | Question to ask | What to record |
|---|---|---|
| Problem | Who experiences the pain, and how often or severely? | The user, triggering situation, and consequence. |
| Product evidence | What worked in the demonstration? | Live functionality, manual steps, and roadmap items. |
| Customer evidence | What have real users or buyers done? | Usage, payment, renewal, pilot status, cohort, and period. |
| Alternatives | What does the customer choose today? | Incumbent, internal process, substitute, or inaction. |
| Differentiation | Why would someone switch? | Customer outcome and known trade-offs. |
| Execution | What dependency could block the next stage? | Technical, operational, regulatory, or distribution bottleneck. |
| Founder insight | Why does this team understand the problem? | Relevant experience and evidence of changed assumptions. |
These axes are derived from TechCrunch’s stated selection considerations, not a published scoring rubric. TechCrunch says there is no single formula, so use the notes to structure your thinking rather than produce a false numerical ranking.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.A practical 10-minute booth conversation
If the line is moving or the founder has only a few minutes, use this compact sequence:
- Open on the demo: “What is live today, and what is still planned?”
- Identify the user: “Who has this problem most urgently?”
- Request an example: “What happened the last time a customer faced it?”
- Map the alternative: “How do they handle it now, and what do they compare you with?”
- Test demand: “What evidence shows they will keep using or pay for it, and over what period?”
- Surface a constraint: “What has been hardest, and what must be true at ten times your current scale?”
- Learn the founder’s edge: “What experience gives you insight into this problem?”
- Offer a next step: “What feedback or introduction would help most right now?”
You do not need to ask every question. Choose the next question that resolves the largest uncertainty created by the previous answer. If the founder has already explained the customer and evidence clearly, spend the remaining time on execution or the team’s insight.
Questions that create awkward or misleading conversations
Replace generic praise with an observation
“Great idea” ends the exchange. Instead, mention the specific workflow you saw and ask what is live. This gives the founder something concrete to answer and prevents you from endorsing a claim you have not checked.
Do not demand confidential customer names
Ask for an anonymized role, industry, time period, and outcome. A refusal to disclose a customer’s identity may be responsible confidentiality rather than evasiveness. Judge the specificity of the explanation within those limits.
Do not turn one metric into a verdict
A high growth rate, a large waitlist, or a famous pilot can be meaningful but incomplete. Ask what the metric includes, how it was measured, and what happened afterward. Avoid declaring a company validated or doomed based on a single booth answer.
Do not imply that a short conversation is diligence
A demo establishes what the founder chose to show. It does not establish retention, unit economics, security, legal compliance, or commercial viability. Treat your notes as a starting point for further investigation, not as a substitute for evidence.
Useful context about Startup Battlefield and past questions
TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield brings companies to Disrupt to exhibit, pitch, and demo before a live question-and-answer session. Its official materials describe selection considerations that include working product functionality, a meaningful problem, differentiation, early traction, thoughtful execution, market understanding, and the founding team’s experience and insight.
The official Startup Battlefield page reports more than 1,700 companies in the program, $32 billion in total funds raised as of January 2025, and approximately 250 total exits as of January 2025. Those are aggregate alumni figures, not outcomes for the company you just met, and they do not show that selection caused those results.
Historical stage questions can inspire your own phrasing, but they are not current judging rules. Axios reported that, during a 2017 Startup Battlefield session, Shawn Carolan asked: If there was one job your product can do that you can’t do with any other existing solution, what would it be?
The question is useful because it forces focus on a job and a distinctive outcome.
Axios also quoted Sam Altman, identified in that 2017 report as a founder of Y Combinator, asking: As you grow your company, and its impact increases upon its city, its nation, and the world: will it be a force for good?
That is a values-and-impact prompt, not a replacement for asking how the product works, who needs it, and what evidence exists.
What a brief demo conversation can—and cannot—tell you
The best outcome is a sharper set of questions: what is functioning, whose behavior is changing, what evidence supports continued use or payment, which alternatives remain strong, what constraint threatens execution, and why this team has useful insight. Keep your conclusions tentative. A founder may be constrained by confidentiality, a very early product stage, or the event’s time pressure.
Ask respectfully, listen for specifics, and let the founder’s own priorities shape the final exchange. That approach gives you a more reliable read than generic praise or an improvised miniature investment committee.
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