# 11 — Startup interviews, in the field

The third interview pack, and the only one where **a human does the interviewing**.

| Pack | Who interviews | Who is interviewed | What comes back |
|---|---|---|---|
| `09__interviews/` | ChatGPT, by voice | somebody outside, at their desk | material for an article |
| `10__editor-interview/` | ChatGPT, by voice | the editor of record | direction for an agent |
| **`11__startup-interviews/`** | **you, with a recorder** | **a founder, at an event** | **a dataset, and articles** |

## Why it is different

Pack 09 assumes half an hour and a quiet room. A summit gives you five minutes, standing, in a hall
with a PA system, with somebody who has a meeting at the top of the hour. Different constraints,
different instrument: **four fixed questions and a short pool of follow-ups**, not a conversation
that finds its own way.

## The four fixed questions, and why they are fixed

1. In one sentence, what do you make, and who pays for it?
2. What can you do today that you couldn't do eighteen months ago?
3. What's the hard part — technology, money, or people?
4. What does everyone say about AI in Portugal that doesn't match what you see?

Asked identically, in the same order, to everybody. **That is what turns twenty conversations into
something you can count**, and counting is the only thing this newsroom can do that a blog cannot.
Improvising the spine feels better in the moment and destroys the comparison.

The closing question — *"who else here should I be talking to, and why them?"* — draws the map.

## The pieces

| File | What it is |
|---|---|
| `01__the-questions.en.md` | The question card, English. What you actually hold at the event |
| `02__as-perguntas.pt.md` | The same, Portuguese, for founders who prefer it |
| `03__from-recording-to-article.md` | Transcript → claims → article, and the language split |

## The rules, unchanged

A recorded founder is a **primary source about their own company and nothing else**. Their numbers
about the market are leads to verify, not facts. Three fields per person — listed role, listed
organisation, where it came from. No contact details in any file. The interviewee approves, and the
editor of record publishes; two decisions, neither replacing the other.

**And one rule that is new**, because this is the first content born in English and published in
Portuguese: the transcript is never translated, a translated quotation carries its original or stops
being a quotation, and the person approves the Portuguese and not only the English.