Most entrepreneurs arrive at business consultations with excitement and vague direction. They know something should exist, but they struggle to articulate what, why, or how. The gap between “I have an idea” and “here’s exactly what we’re building” stops more ventures than funding shortages or technical limitations.
Traditional startup methodology encourages diving immediately into product development, building minimum viable products based on unexamined assumptions. This approach produces the costly pivots and failed launches that plague the entrepreneurship ecosystem.
A more effective approach invests time upfront in diagnostic conversation, extracting the essential truths buried beneath surface-level concepts before any development begins. This structured methodology, sometimes called a “clarity interview,” transforms ambiguous ideas into executable strategies through systematic questioning across three distinct layers.
Pablo Gerboles Parrilla developed a different framework after conducting hundreds of diagnostic conversations across his technology ventures. The Spanish entrepreneur, who transitioned from Division I professional golf to founding multiple seven-figure companies, observed consistent patterns in why some ventures launch successfully while others struggle despite adequate resources.
“It all starts with clarity,” Gerboles Parrilla explains. “Even if the idea feels abstract, we help the founder define why it matters, what problem it solves, who it’s for, and how it fits into the market. Once that’s clear, we reverse-engineer the steps needed to bring it to life.”
The clarity interview operates through three distinct layers, each serving a specific diagnostic function. The structure moves from philosophical to practical, ensuring both vision alignment and operational feasibility before any development begins.
Layer One: Understanding the Founder’s True Intentions
The first layer explores questions most entrepreneurs never ask themselves directly. This stage probes beyond the business concept to understand the founder’s actual motivations and readiness for what success demands.
Gerboles Parrilla examines where founders want to live, how far they want to scale, and whether they’re prepared for rapid success. “Where do they want to live? How far do they want to go? Are they prepared for what success actually looks like when it comes fast?” he notes. “Because the truth is, not every CEO is ready to run a big company overnight.”
These questions reveal critical misalignments. A founder claiming to want aggressive scaling might reveal through deeper questioning that they actually value lifestyle flexibility. Another might articulate ambitions requiring capabilities they haven’t acknowledged needing.
Key questions include: What does success actually look like in your daily life three years from now? What are you willing to sacrifice, and what’s non-negotiable? What happens if this grows faster than expected?
Gerboles Parrilla’s philosophy of “stay small long enough to become big enough” stems from observing founders who scaled before establishing the maturity required. “Too many businesses grow too fast without the internal maturity to support that growth, especially in B2C industries where a poor customer experience can destroy a brand quickly,” he observes.
Layer Two: Defining the Market Problem with Precision
Once founder intentions are clarified, the methodology shifts to market reality. This layer focuses on defining the specific problem with enough precision to guide product development.
Abstract concepts like “making things easier” get dissected into concrete pain points. The process pushes founders to identify who experiences the problem, when they experience it, what they currently do about it, and why existing solutions fail.
Questions become increasingly specific: Who has this problem right now, today? What are they currently paying for inadequate solutions? What do they do when this problem occurs at 2 AM? What would need to be true for them to switch from their current approach?
This layer often reveals that founders have identified real problems but targeted the wrong customer segment, or they’ve found legitimate customer pain but proposed solutions that don’t address root causes.
Gerboles Parrilla uses his experience across software development, DevOps infrastructure, and marketing to stress-test problem definitions against market realities. If a founder struggles to answer these questions with specificity, the concept requires more validation before development begins.
Layer Three: Mapping the Execution Pathway
The final layer translates validated problems into actionable plans. Here, the methodology maps the minimum viable version, identifies technical requirements, and establishes clear success metrics.
“We don’t waste time overthinking every little detail,” Gerboles Parrilla explains. “We map out the MVP, build fast, test faster, and get real feedback early. The goal is not to build something perfect; it’s to build something that works and evolves.”
This layer produces concrete deliverables: a prioritized feature list, technical architecture decisions, team structure requirements, and a timeline for getting to market. Questions shift from exploratory to definitive: What’s the absolute minimum version that solves the core problem? What capabilities must exist on day one versus month six? Who needs to be on the team to build this?
His athletic background influences this stage significantly. “In golf, you’re playing a long game, every decision matters, and the smallest mistakes can compound,” he notes. “Startups are the same. You need patience, strategic thinking, and the discipline to keep executing even when results aren’t immediate.”
The Reverse-Engineering Methodology
Once the three-layer interview concludes, Gerboles Parrilla employs reverse-engineering: starting from the desired outcome and working backward to identify every necessary step.
This approach differs from traditional planning that starts with current resources and projects forward. By beginning with the end state, the methodology surfaces gaps, dependencies, and requirements that forward-looking planning often misses.
The process creates a roadmap showing not just what needs to happen, but in what sequence and why each step depends on previous ones. For a software product, this might reveal that certain technical infrastructure must exist before feature development can begin. For a service business, it might show that operational systems need establishment before marketing launches can succeed.
The Speed Paradox: Slowing Down to Move Faster
The clarity interview appears to contradict the emphasis on rapid execution common in startup culture. The paradox resolves when recognizing that clarity enables velocity while ambiguity creates false starts.
“Speed without clarity is chaos. But clarity without speed is just a nice idea that never happens. You need both,” Gerboles Parrilla observes. “Clarity tells you where to go; speed gets you there before the opportunity passes.”
The time invested in clarity interviews gets recouped many times over through eliminated pivots and prevented false starts. Entrepreneurs who skip this diagnostic phase often spend months building products that miss market needs or don’t align with their actual goals.
The interview typically requires several hours of intensive conversation, sometimes across multiple sessions. This investment feels slow in the moment but enables rapid, confident execution that follows. Teams operating from clarity make faster decisions, encounter fewer fundamental disagreements, and maintain momentum through obstacles.
Gerboles Parrilla’s companies can move from concept to operational business in months precisely because the clarity phase eliminates the ambiguity that causes most delays. “The market moves fast, and timing is everything, especially in tech and emerging industries,” he notes. “We move quickly, but we don’t guess.”
Practical Implementation for Entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurs can apply this methodology independently by conducting structured self-interviews before pursuing new ventures. The key is answering questions honestly rather than providing aspirational responses that sound impressive but don’t reflect reality.
The process works best when responses get documented for future reference. Writing forces precision that mental processing alone doesn’t provide. For founders working with partners or teams, conducting clarity interviews collectively surfaces misalignments before they become operational conflicts.
The clarity interview doesn’t guarantee success, but it dramatically increases the probability that effort gets invested in ventures with genuine market opportunities, executable plans, and alignment between business outcomes and founder intentions.
For entrepreneurs struggling to translate excitement into action, Pablo Gerboles Parrilla proves that systematic questioning across intention, market fit, and execution pathway builds solid foundations rather than shifting assumptions that require costly corrections later.