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 measure of usefulness of an early customer conversation is whether it gives us concrete facts about our customers’ lives and world views. These facts, in turn, help us improve our business.

If you just avoid mentioning your idea, you automatically start asking better questions. Doing this is the easiest (and biggest) improvement you can make to your customer conversations.

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

How to fix it: Just like the others, fix it by asking about their life as it already is. How much does the problem cost them? How much do they currently pay to solve it? How big is the budget they’ve allocated? I hope you’re noticing a trend here.

The “why do you bother” question led to “so we can be certain that we’re all working off the latest version.” Aha. The solution ended up being less like the requested messaging tool and more like Dropbox. A question like “why do you bother” points toward their motivations. It gives you the why.

"What are the implications of that?" Good question. This distinguishes between I-will-pay-to-solve-that problems and thats-kind-of-annoying-but-I-can-deal-with-it “problems”. Some problems have big, costly implications. Others exist but don’t actually matter. It behooves you to find out which is which. It also gives you a good pricing signal.

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

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. Before

Questions to dig into feature requests: “Why do you want that?” “What would that let you do?” “How are you coping without it?” “Do you think we should push back the launch to add that feature, or is it something we could add later?” “How would that fit into your day?”

Doing it intentionally is fishing for compliments. In other words, you aren’t really looking for contradictory information. You’ve already made up your mind, but need someone’s blessing to take the leap.

To deal with The Pathos Problem, keep the conversation focused on the other person and ask about specific, concrete cases and examples.

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

you’ve sunk your retirement savings into opening a cafe and it doesn’t work, that’s bad. If you hustle together $50k to start your business and spend all $50k on your first idea only to see it fail, that’s bad. On the other hand, if you have $50k and spend $5k to learn you’re running down a dead end, that’s awesome. You can use the rest to find a viable path to your goal, with the advantage of all the extra things you now know.

We go through the futile process of asking for opinions and fishing for compliments because we crave approval. We want to believe that the support and sign-off of someone we respect means our venture will succeed. But really, that person’s opinion doesn’t matter. They have no idea if the business is going to work. Only the market knows.

The worst thing you can do is ignore the bad news while searching for some tiny grain of validation to celebrate. You want the truth, not a gold star.

The classic error in response to a lukewarm signal is to “up your game” and pitch

To have a useful conversation, you need to zoom back out to ask about my blog in general, rather than marketing my blog.

problem is a must-solve-right-now (e.g. you’re selling a painkiller) or a nice-to-have (you’re selling a vitamin),

“How seriously do you take your blog?” “Do you make money from it?” “Have you tried making more money from it?” “How much time

Rule of thumb: Start broad and don't zoom in until you’ve found a strong signal, both with your whole business and with every conversation.

What all this does mean is that if you’ve got heavy product risk (as opposed to pure market risk), then you’re not going to be able to prove as much of your business through conversations alone. The conversations give you a starting point, but you’ll have to start building product earlier and with less certainty than if you had pure market risk.

You know how to deal with compliments by now: deflect, ignore, and get back to business.

You’re an entrepreneur trying to solve horrible problem X, usher in wonderful vision Y, or fix stagnant industry Z. Don’t mention your idea. Frame expectations by mentioning what stage you’re at and, if it’s true, that you don’t have anything to sell. Show weakness and give them a chance to help by mentioning the specific problem that you’re looking for answers on. This will also clarify that you’re not a time waster. Put them on a pedestal by showing how much they, in particular, can help. Explicitly ask for help.

It’s not about “how many” meetings. It’s about having enough for you to really understand your customers. You want to talk to them enough that know them in the same way you know your close friends, with a firm grip on their goals, their frustrations, what else they’ve tried, and how they currently deal with it.

Rule of thumb: Keep having conversations until you stop hearing new stuff.

Rule of thumb: If you aren’t finding consistent problems and goals, you don’t have a specific enough customer segment.

As we mentioned, you’ll broaden your segment back out later. But your learning will go faster (and be more useful) for now by choosing someone who is specific and who also and meets the three big criteria of being reachable, profitable, and personally rewarding.

Rule of thumb: If you don’t know what you’re trying to learn, you shouldn’t bother having the conversation.

If you’re shy and have no cofounder to take the lead, call in a favour with a friend to come to your first couple conversations with you. Play the more passive role of the note-taker until you’re comfortable. If there’s no workaround and you have to bite the bullet, remember that confidence is domain-specific

If you haven’t yet, choose a focused, findable segment With your team, decide your big 3 learning goals If relevant, decide on ideal next steps and commitments If conversations are the right tool, figure out who to talk to Create a series of best guesses about what the person cares about If a question could be answered via desk research, do that first

Frame the conversation Keep it casual Ask good questions which pass The Mom Test Deflect compliments, anchor fluff, and dig beneath signals Take good notes If relevant, press for commitment and next steps

With your team, review your notes and key customer quotes If relevant, transfer notes into permanent storage Update your beliefs and plans Decide on the next 3 big questions