Three YC office hours questions to drive progress: What's holding you back from moving faster? What are your goals for the next two weeks? Did you hit your goals for the last two weeks, and why?
Podcast: Summary: Lessons from working with 600+ YC startups | Gustaf Alströmer (Y Combinator, Airbnb)
These questions are from how Y Combinator (YC) runs its office hours. YC uses two types of office hours: regular and group, each with different goals and questions.
Regular office hours are typically held by one or two YC partners with a startup, occurring weekly or bi-weekly. The primary question asked in these sessions is: "What's holding you back from moving faster?" They don't want to focus on general updates or strategy discussions. They want to help founders pinpoint their true priorities.
Oftentimes, the founders don't immediately know what is slowing their progress. Therefore, the office hours are designed to discover the root causes by identifying obstacles and bottlenecks that are not obvious when the founders are heads down building the product.
On the other hand, group office hours are with multiple startups, typically six or seven. The main questions in group office hours are: "What are your goals for the next two weeks?" and "What were your goals for the last two weeks, and did you hit them?
These two questions, along with the accountability structure, encourage founders to set clear objectives and make progress, as they don't want to appear stagnant in front of their peers. The goal is to provide a supportive and productive environment where founders can hold each other accountable.
Even if you cannot join YC's office hours, you can still ask yourself these questions to examine your progress or, even better, form your own peer group to hold each other accountable and drive progress.