Opening Cutscene and Save Point (about 1 minute). Take notes, then recap out loud: client, goal, numbers confirmed. Over video, 60 and 16 sound alike.
Dialogue Tree (2 to 3 minutes). Ask three to five questions: business model, scope, target metric, gaps in your notes. Put a dodged question in your map.
Pause Menu, then Quest Map (2 minutes head down, about 3 to deliver). Ask for two minutes each time. The coaches said any trained Player 2 expects it. Draw four regions with three quantified quests each, then renumber them by priority.
The variable middle. Expect Number Cruncher rounds (about 2 minutes to structure, 3 to solve and share) and Idea Hydra rounds (3 to 4 minutes), in any number and any order.
Final Boss: The Chairlift (about 1 minute). Ask for 30 seconds, then deliver a one-sentence recap, the recommendation before its support, the least-supported assumption, and next steps.
Add: line up the zeros, add from the left, say each subtotal out loud.
Subtract: round the number you are taking away up to a clean figure, subtract, then add back what you over-subtracted: 500 minus 198 is 500 minus 200, plus 2, so 302.
Multiply: strip the zeros, multiply the small numbers, put the zeros back: 400K units times $150 is 4 times 15, then six zeros, $60M.
Divide: factor the divisor: 84K divided by 6 is half of 84K, then a third, about 14K.
Big numbers: carry the unit (K, M, B, T). Thousands times thousands make millions.
Percents: find 10% by moving the decimal, then scale: 15% is 10% plus half of it.
The Fraction Scroll
Fraction
Percent
1/2
50%
1/3
33.3%
1/4
25%
1/5
20%
1/6
16.7%
1/7
14.3%
1/8
12.5%
1/9
11.1%
1/10
10%
1/11
9.1%
1/12
8.3%
1/15
6.7%
1/20
5%
1/25
4%
1/30
3.3%
1/40
2.5%
1/50
2%
1/80
1.25%
1/100
1%
The 1/80 trick. Give an 80-year lifespan an even spread and each year of age holds 1.25% of the population. People 65 and over span 15 years: 15 times 1.25% is about 19%. K-12 spans 13 grades: 13 times 1.25% is about 16%. The Atlas figures run lower (60M and 50M), so use the trick for a first pass and the Atlas for the final number.
Three rounding tricks.
Round inputs to clean divisors and say so: Germany's 84M becomes 80M, and 3.5M Utahns at 3.0 per home become 1.2M households.
Round one factor up and the other down so the errors offset: 48 times 21 becomes 50 times 20, or 1,000 (true: 1,008).
Round last and name the direction: 16.8K units times $2,000 is $33.6M, so say "about $34M, rounded up" and keep $33.6M on the page.
Carry these in your head: US population, your city, the interview city, two countries or a continent, and your target firm's sector headline. Ask Player 2 for the rest.
Build the four regions from this prompt, quantify each quest, and attach a "so that." Use your Compass, the hypothesis, to pick the region you start in.
Profitability: Revenue (price, volume, mix), Cost (fixed, variable). Split each into external causes (demand, competitor moves) and internal causes (capacity, recent changes) with no overlap. Add what you suspect, such as a rival's price cut.
Growth: Market, Product, Customer, Company. Or run the product-market matrix, current or new product by current or new market, and size each cell.
M&A: Standalone value of the target, Synergies (revenue and cost, each sized), Deal economics (price against value, payback), Risks (culture, regulators, key people). Close with a binary answer: buy or pass.
Pricing: Cost floor (unit economics), Customer ceiling (willingness to pay, elasticity), Competitor reference prices, Strategy and channel (skim or penetrate, dealer margin).
Operations: Map the process, find the bottleneck, then Cost per unit, Capacity and utilization, Quality and waste, Speed (cycle time, on-time-in-full delivery).
The Sizing Dungeon, five floors: (1) population, households, or businesses, (2) three or four segments, (3) percent who own or buy, (4) purchase frequency, under one per year for durables, (5) average price. True up 10% to 20% for fleets, rentals, and businesses. Market size means revenue per year unless Player 2 says otherwise. Utah e-bikes, all brands (the Wasatch Wheels case): 1.2M households, 72K on the Wasatch Front plus 12K rural for 84K, 14K a year, 16.8K with fleets, $33.6M.
