How to ask good questions in an AMA (with 30 examples)

To ask good questions in an AMA, anchor each one in a specific situation, ask about a decision or trade-off rather than a general opinion, and make it something only this guest can answer from experience. "How do you prioritise?" gets a textbook reply. "When you had to choose between fixing churn and shipping the feature sales promised, how did you decide?" gets a story you can use. Prepare two or three questions in advance, keep each under 30 seconds to say, and save one follow-up for when the answer gets interesting.

Key takeaways

• The best AMA questions are specific, grounded in a real situation and about how the guest decided, not what they think in general.
• Use a simple formula: one line of context, the tension you face, then the question. Skip your life story.
• Ask what only this person can answer. If Google or a framework blog can answer it, it wastes the slot.
• Follow-up questions are where most of the value is. "What would you do differently?" and "What did that cost you?" are two of the best.
• Good etiquette (short questions, no pitching, respecting what is shared off the record) is why guests open up.

What is an AMA?

An AMA ("ask me anything") is a session where one experienced person answers questions from an audience, live or in writing, with no set talk or slides. The format was popularised by Reddit's r/IAmA and is now common in communities, companies and podcasts.

For product managers and founders, an AMA is one of the few places you can hear how someone made real decisions, including the messy parts that never make it into a conference talk or a LinkedIn post. That only happens if the questions are good enough to earn honest answers.

Why most AMA questions get weak answers

Sit through a few AMAs and the same problems come up:

• Too broad. "What is your advice for aspiring PMs?" has a thousand answers, so the guest picks the safest one.
• Searchable. "What is a North Star metric?" is a definition. You can read our guide to the North Star metric in five minutes.
• A speech with a question mark. Two minutes of background, then "so, thoughts?" The guest has to guess what you want.
• Asking for a verdict on your startup. The guest has thirty seconds of context and no data. Any answer is a guess.
• Hypotheticals. "What would you do if you were the CEO of Zomato?" invites opinion, not experience.

A good question does the opposite. It is narrow enough to answer in two or three minutes, it draws on something the guest has actually done, and its answer is useful to more people in the room than just you.

How to ask good questions: a simple formula

Most strong AMA questions follow the same shape:

Context (one line) + the tension or decision + the question.

1. Context. Who you are and the situation, in one sentence. "I'm a PM at a Series A B2B SaaS company with four engineers."
2. Tension. The real trade-off or the thing you are stuck on. "Sales keeps closing deals on features we haven't built."
3. Question. Ask how the guest handled something similar, or how they would decide. "When you faced this, how did you decide which promises to honour?"

Then stop talking. Do not add a second question to the same turn.

Some question openers that reliably get stories rather than slogans:

• "Tell me about a time when…"
• "How did you decide between X and Y?"
• "What did you believe early on that turned out to be wrong?"
• "What would you do differently if you did it again?"
• "What did that cost you?"
• "How did you know it was working, before the numbers showed it?"
• "Who pushed back, and how did you handle it?"

These work because they ask for memory, not opinion. People remember decisions in detail, especially the ones that went badly.

Bad vs good AMA questions

How to prepare for an AMA

Ten minutes of preparation is the difference between a forgettable question and one the guest remembers.

1. Read up on the guest. Look at their past roles, products they shipped and anything they have written or said publicly. Avoid asking what they have already answered in public.
2. Pick your one theme. What do you most want to learn from this person in particular? Their career path, a hard product decision, a fundraise, building a team?
3. Write three questions. Use the formula above. Rank them so you know which to ask if you only get one turn.
4. Cut each to 30 seconds. Read it aloud. If it takes longer, cut the context.
5. Prepare one follow-up per question. Usually "What would you do differently?" or "How did you know?"
6. Submit early if questions are collected in advance. Early, well-written questions are more likely to be picked.

30 good AMA questions to ask a PM or founder

Use these as starting points. Each is stronger if you add one line of your own context.

Career and growth

1. What was the first moment you felt you were actually good at product management, and what had changed?
2. Which skill did you underrate early in your career that you now hire for?
3. How did you decide when to move from IC product manager to managing PMs, and what surprised you?
4. What is a job you turned down, and why?
5. If you were an APM in India today, where would you spend your first two years?
6. What did your best manager do that you still copy?

Product decisions and craft

1. Tell me about a feature you killed after launch. How did you decide, and how did the team take it?
2. How do you decide when user research is "enough" to make a call?
3. What is a product decision you made on instinct that data later proved wrong, or right?
4. How do you write a spec when the problem is still fuzzy?
5. What is one thing about your onboarding or activation that took years to get right?
6. When have you said no to your CEO, and how did you do it?

Metrics and outcomes

1. What metric did you track for a long time before realising it was the wrong one?
2. How did you pick your team's North Star metric, and did it change?
3. How do you know a feature is working in the first two weeks, before the numbers are clear?
4. When an experiment result surprised you, what did you do next?
5. How do you report progress to leadership when the important outcome is a year away?

Teams, stakeholders and leadership

1. What did you do in your first month that earned trust with engineering?
2. How do you handle a stakeholder who keeps escalating around you?
3. What is the hardest piece of feedback you have given a PM, and how did you deliver it?
4. How do you run a planning cycle without it eating a month of the team's time?
5. What do you look for in a PM interview that most candidates miss?
6. How has the way you work with designers changed over your career?

Founders, startups and fundraising

1. When did you know you had product-market fit, and what did it feel like day to day?
2. What would you tell yourself about your first hire?
3. How did you decide what to build before your first funding round, and what did you leave out?
4. What did investors push back on most, and were they right?
5. When did you hire your first product manager, and what did you want them to take off your plate?

Failures and lessons

1. What is the most expensive mistake you have made, and what system did you put in place afterwards?
2. What advice do you hear often in product that you think is wrong?

If you are preparing to sit in front of investors rather than a peer, our guide on how to prepare for VC office hours covers a different set of questions.

Follow-up questions: where the real answers are

The first answer to any question is usually the polished version. The follow-up gets the real one. Research backs up the social side of this too: in studies of live conversations, people who asked more follow-up questions were better liked by their conversation partners (Huang et al., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2017).

Good follow-ups to keep ready:

• "What would you do differently now?"
• "What did that cost you, in time, money or trust?"
• "How did you know it was the right call at the time?"
• "Who disagreed, and what was their argument?"
• "What would have to be true for the opposite approach to work?"
• "Can you give an example?"

In a large live AMA you may only get one follow-up, or none. In that case, note the thread and follow up afterwards, briefly and politely, if the guest is open to it.

AMA etiquette: how to be the person guests remember well

• Keep it short. One question per turn. Context in one line.
• Do not pitch. An AMA is not the place to sell your product or ask the guest to invest. If there is a fit, it will come up later.
• Do not ask for a job in the session. Ask a good question, then follow up privately if it is appropriate.
• Respect what is said in the room. Guests share more when they trust the audience. Do not quote them publicly without permission.
• Let others ask. If you have already asked, wait until everyone else has had a turn.
• Say thank you. A short note afterwards about what you took from the session, and what you will try, means more to guests than you would expect.

After the AMA: turn answers into action

Most people forget an AMA within a week. Three habits stop that:

1. Write three lines within an hour. What was said, what surprised you, and one thing you will try.
2. Try the one thing. Use the planning trick, the stakeholder script or the interview question at work within two weeks.
3. Share what happened. If you follow up with the guest, tell them what you tried and how it went. That is how a single question turns into a relationship. Our guide to networking for product managers covers how to keep that going without being pushy.

The same skill transfers. Asking about specific past behaviour rather than opinions is also the core of good customer interviews.

Practise asking better questions every week

Like most skills, asking good questions gets better with reps. Product Circle runs a weekly AMA: 45 minutes with a PM or founder, with questions from members answered live. The idea is simple: bring the questions you can't ask at work. Members can also book office hours with VCs and founders and pick a 20-minute slot. If you would like to be part of it, here is how to join.

Frequently asked questions

What are good questions to ask in an AMA?

Good AMA questions are specific, grounded in a real situation and ask about decisions the guest actually made. For example: "When you killed a feature after launch, how did you decide and how did the team react?" Avoid broad advice requests and anything you could find with a quick search.

How long should an AMA question be?

Aim for something you can say in under 30 seconds: one line of context, the tension you face and one clear question. If you need more context, the question is probably too big for an AMA and better suited to a one-to-one conversation.

How do you ask a good follow-up question?

Pick up on something specific the guest just said and ask about cost, alternatives or what they would change. "What would you do differently now?" and "Who disagreed, and why?" work in almost any AMA.

What should you not ask in an AMA?

Avoid questions that ask the guest to judge your startup with no context, requests for jobs or investment, hypotheticals about companies they have never worked at, and anything they have already answered publicly. Avoid stacking several questions in one turn.

How do I prepare for an AMA with a founder?

Read about their company and past roles, decide what you most want to learn from them specifically, and write three ranked questions using the context, tension and question formula. Prepare one follow-up for each, and submit early if questions are collected in advance.

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