I love this HackerNews item on the key questions you’d use when programming a Paul Graham bot to dispense startup advice. Here are the questions/phrases:

“Who needs it?”
“Who uses it?”
“Who *really* needs it?”
“What problem does this solve?”
“Does that problem *really* need to be solved?”
“What is the worst problem in your life?”
“In any given day, how many people use it? Do they return?”
“What do you do for them once they get to your site?”
“Why do they need you? What’s special about you?”
“Beat a chicken and egg problem with a tiny subset of the market that’s small but *driven*.”
“No, who *needs* it?”
“I worry… I worry…”

I love the fact that of the 11 true questions, seven are about the user, three are about the problem, and one is about the market. You can’t go wrong when you ask yourself, “Who *really* needs it?”…or for that matter, if you say to yourself, “I worry… I worry…”