The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you

by Rob Fitzpatrick

The Mom Test: Talk about their life instead of your idea Ask about specifics in the past instead of generics or opinions about the future Talk less and listen more

thumb: If they haven't looked for ways of solving it already, they're not going to look for (or buy) yours.

It boils down to this: you aren’t allowed to tell them what their problem is, and in return, they aren’t allowed to tell you what to build. They own the problem, you own the solution.

If they don’t care enough to try solving their problem today, they aren’t going to care about your solution tomorrow.

Rule of thumb: You should be terrified of at least one of the questions you’re asking in every conversation.

Pre-plan the 3 most important things you want to learn from any given type of person

Rule of thumb: If it feels like they’re doing you a favour by talking to you, it’s probably too formal.

you can only pull this off if you have prepared your list of 3 big learning goals and have an idea of some possible next steps and commitments that you can ask for if the meeting goes well.

you’ve run more than 10 conversations and are still getting results that are all over the map, then it’s possible that your customer segment is too vague,

too few leads, or too few ideas; you have too many. You get overwhelmed. You do a little bit of everything.

Before we can serve everyone, we have to serve someone.

an industry expert can be hugely helpful in providing a taxonomy of the industry.

No! This is a totally worthless segment because it doesn’t help me make better decisions and doesn’t help me find them.

your current list of 3 big questions.

They’ll say something along the lines of, “We just need to be building the darn product, not wasting our time talking to people!”