The Three Questions

3 is a magic number

I spent some time brainstorming on what kind of writing format I could come up with that would make sense to try in a Substack context, and think I came up with something worth trying.

I am calling the format “The Three Questions” (abbreviated TTQ). My intention is to create a series of The Three Questions posts, and each TTQ post is about a single startup that I am an investor in via my job as a Y Combinator partner, and thus have personal thoughts on the team/product/etc. In addition to constraining things to companies that I worked directly with, my intent is to keep things focused on companies that are >6 months post the YC batch.

I hope this format could work and make all constituents happy - it makes me happy because I have a straightforward, fixed format to work within that is hopefully not too much work. It should make the founders of the companies I write about happy because they will have said they wanted to be in the post. It hopefully makes theoretical readers happy because they might like seeing extra details about the company, or maybe they never really noticed the company before because it got lost in the noise.

Here are The Three Questions:

• What does [company x] do?

• What do I, Dalton, like about [company x]?

• Why should people care about [company x]?

Hat-tip to UsesThis. I always thought the format of UsesThis was a compelling evergreen concept for a blog.