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

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.

There are three types of bad data: Compliments Fluff (generics, hypotheticals, and the future) Ideas

Accidental approval-seeking is what I call “The Pathos Problem.” It happens when you expose your ego, leading people to feel they ought to protect you by saying nice things.

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

Another way to miss the important questions is by obsessing over ultimately unimportant nuances. We let ourselves get stuck in the details before understanding the big picture.

Firstly, when someone isn’t too emotional about what you’re doing, they are unlikely to end up being one of your crazy first customers. Keep them on the list and try to make them happy, of course, but don’t count on them to write the first check. Secondly, whenever you see the deep emotion, do your utmost to keep that person close. They are the rare, precious fan who will get you through the hard times and give you your first sale.

You’ve got the ultimate excuse if you have a PhD student on your founding team. “Hello, I’m doing my PhD research on the problems around X, it would be a huge help if I could ask you a couple questions for my dissertation.” If you’re really desperate, you can always be “writing a book” and hoping to interview them.

It’s the fastest and most unfair trick I’ve seen for rapid customer learning. As a bonus, it also bootstraps your industry credibility.

Blogging about an industry is also a good exercise to get your thoughts in a row. It makes you a better customer conversationalist.

7 degrees of bacon

The first conversation with a good advisor looks similar to the first conversation with a flagship customer: you get along and are talking about a space you both care about. You can sometimes poach killer advisors from your early customer conversations.

Keep having conversations until you stop hearing new stuff.

Don’t plan and theorise forever about this stuff. Just spend a few minutes to reach to a concrete initial segment so you can go find a few of them and move the business forward. As we mentioned, you’ll broaden your segment

Good customer segments are a who-where pair. If you don’t know where to go to find your customers, keep slicing your segment into smaller pieces until you do.