Yes those questions are a great start. But it takes some expertise to interpret the answers. If you're new to the space all investors are new to you. You get ra

Yes those questions are a great start. But it takes some expertise to interpret the answers. If you're new to the space all investors are new to you. You get random hangers-on claiming to have invested in skype. 'useful for people' is also hard to check. A company's product may be useful to a niche you have no experience with. 'Describe to my mom' seems to bias people towards consumer startups - it's hard to explain companies that occupy a niche in a specialized eco-system. But many of those are very valuable. In the end it's an arms race. Crap companies are out there improving their posturing everyday. Bullshit coevolves with bullshit detectors. Which is why this should be the perennial question to discuss every few months. "Ask HN: any crap companies out there?" "Ask HN: anybody fed you a new line of bullshit?" "Ask HN: new questions to ask startups?" (I don't attribute malice to 'crap companies'. A company is crap if it mistakes the map for the territory, if it focuses on its 'positioning' without changing its product. Other such levels of incompetence.)