I wrote earlier this year in The Emotional LIfe of Entrepreneurs  about "Startup Therapy(tm)" (which I trademarked because so many people loved the idea and the name!) 

Yesterday I had the chance to facilitate an interesting team that wanted some help with Startup Therapy, and here is a list of "prompts" I used to help them get off the ground and get talking, plus some additional items that came up during the process.   This worked very well and we were able to identify areas of clear consistency across the team, as well as areas of risk where there were clearly divergent views and vision - which they now have to go work on!

1.             Introduce each person's background and any start up experience (even people we know may have surprising backgrounds- one of my friends used to work for the CIA!) 

2.      2 reasons that being in a startup is interesting to each person.  Money or Getting Rich does not count as one of the reasons!

3.             Where do they want to be personally in 5 years after the startup

4.             Personal strengths and weaknesses for doing the startup, such as risk taking profile, spouse/partner's risk taking profile and personal financial ability to weather downturn

5.       Secret Fears about doing a startup

6.             Each person's vision for the startup and its purpose in the world (i.e. where will the company be in 5 years?  10 years?  when we look back, will we be able to say we accomplished our mission?)

7.             Values of the Company e.g. Google "do no evil", Ben & Jerry's, Whole Foods, etc.

8.             Talent Gap Analysis: assessment of talent they think they need and talent they think they already have and  what resources they might have to help fill in the gaps

9.             Financing strategy - bootstrap/self funded, partner funded, investor funded etc