The Mom Test

• The measure of usefulness of an early customer conversation is whether it gives us concrete facts about our customers’ lives and world views.

• 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.
• 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
• Rule of thumb: Opinions are worthless.
• Rule of thumb: Anything involving the future is an over-optimistic lie.
• Rule of thumb: People will lie to you if they think it’s what you want to hear.
• Rule of thumb: People know what their problems are, but they don’t know how to solve those problems.
• Rule of thumb: You’re shooting blind until you understand their goals.
• Rule of thumb: Some problems don’t actually matter.
• Rule of thumb: Watching someone do a task will show you where the problems and inefficiencies really are, not where the customer thinks they are.
• Rule of thumb: If they haven’t looked for ways of solving it already, they’re not going to look for (or buy) yours.
• Rule of thumb: People stop lying when you ask them for money.
• Rule of thumb: While it’s rare for someone to tell you precisely what they’ll pay you, they’ll often show you what it’s worth to them.
• Rule of thumb: People want to help you. Give them an excuse to do so.
• 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.
• With the exception of industry experts who have built very similar businesses, opinions are worthless. You want facts and commitments, not compliments.
• Rule of thumb: Compliments are the fool’s gold of customer learning: shiny, distracting, and worthless.
• While using generics, people describe themselves as who they want to be, not who they actually are. You need to get specific to bring out the edge cases.
• Startups are about focusing and executing on a single, scalable idea rather than jumping on every good one which crosses your desk.
• Rule of thumb: Ideas and feature requests should be understood, but not obeyed.
• Rule of thumb: If you’ve mentioned your idea, people will try to protect your feelings.
• Rule of thumb: Anyone will say your idea is great if you’re annoying enough about it.
• Rule of thumb: The more you’re talking, the worse you’re doing.
• Every time you talk to someone, you should be asking at least one question which has the potential to destroy your currently imagined business.
• Rule of thumb: You should be terrified of at least one of the questions you’re asking in every conversation.
• Rule of thumb: There’s more reliable information in a “meh” than a “Wow!” You can’t build a business on a lukewarm response.
• 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.
• Product risk — Can I build it? Can I grow it? Customer/market risk — Do they want it? Will they pay me? Are there lots of them?
• 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
• Pre-plan the 3 most important things you want to learn from any given type of person
• Rule of thumb: You always need a list of your 3 big questions.
• Rule of thumb: Learning about a customer and their problems works better as a quick and casual chat than a long, formal meeting.
• Rule of thumb: If it feels like they’re doing you a favour by talking to you, it’s probably too formal.
• Rule of thumb: Give as little information as possible about your idea while still nudging the discussion in a useful direction.
• Rule of thumb: “Customers” who keep being friendly but aren’t ever going to buy are a particularly dangerous source of mixed signals.
• never consider rejection to be a real failure. But not asking certainly is.
• Rule of thumb: If you don’t know what happens next after a product or sales meeting, the meeting was pointless.
• Rule of thumb: The more they’re giving up, the more seriously you can take what they’re saying.
• Rule of thumb: It’s not a real lead until you’ve given them a concrete chance to reject you.
• Rule of thumb: In early stage sales, the real goal is learning. Revenue is a side-effect.
• Rule of thumb: If it’s not a formal meeting, you don’t need to make excuses about why you’re there or even mention that you’re starting a business. Just ask about their life.
• Rule of thumb: If it’s a topic you both care about, find an excuse to talk about it. Your idea never needs to enter the equation and you’ll both enjoy the chat.
• For marginally more effort than attending an event, you can organise your own and benefit from being the centre of attention.
• If you have a reasonably sized and relevant blog audience, lining up conversations is trivial. You just write a post about it and ask people to get in touch.
• Rule of thumb: Kevin Bacon’s 7 degrees of separation applies to customer conversations. You can find anyone you need if you ask for it a couple times.
• On a bit of a tangent, you’d be surprised by the quality of the folks you can get to join your advisory board.
• Vision / Framing / Weakness / Pedestal / Ask
• Willpower is a finite resource. The way to overcome difficult situations isn’t to power through, but rather to change your circumstances to require less willpower.
• Rule of thumb: Keep having conversations until you stop hearing new stuff.
  • Note: Learning from UX
• Rule of thumb: If you aren’t finding consistent problems and goals, you don’t have a specific enough customer segment.
  • Note: Find specific consumer segment
• If there isn’t a clear physical or digital location at which you can find your customer segment, then it’s probably still too broad. Go back up the list and slice it into finer pieces until you know where to find them.
• Rule of thumb: 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.
• When all the customer learning is stuck in someone’s head instead of being disseminated to the rest of the team, you’ve got a learning bottleneck.
• Avoiding bottlenecks has three parts: prepping, reviewing, and taking good notes.
• Rule of thumb: If you don’t know what you’re trying to learn, you shouldn’t bother having the conversation.
• Taking good notes is the best way to keep your team (and investors and advisors) in the loop. Plus, notes make it harder to lie to yourself.
• In either case, add symbols to your notes as context and shorthand.
• Rule of thumb: Notes are useless if you don’t look at them.
• The process before a batch of conversations: 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
• During the conversation: 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
• After a batch of conversations: 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
• Don’t spend a week prepping for meetings; spend an hour and then go talk to people. Anything more is stalling.
• Rule of thumb: Go build your dang company already.
• Rule of thumb: It’s going to be okay.
• Having a process is valuable, but don’t get stuck in it. Sometimes you can just pick up the phone and hack through the knot.
• Key skills: Asking good questions (Chapters 1 & 3) Avoiding bad data (Chapter 2) Keeping it casual (Chapter 4) Pushing for commitment & advancement (Chapter 5) Framing the meeting (Chapter 6) Customer segmentation (Chapter 7) Prepping & reviewing (Chapter 8) Taking notes (Chapter 8)
• 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
• Getting back on track (avoiding bad data): Deflect compliments Anchor fluff Dig beneath opinions, ideas, requests, and emotions
• Mistakes and symptoms: Fishing for compliments. “I’m thinking of starting a business… so, do you think it will work?” “I had an awesome idea for an app — do you like it?” Exposing your ego (aka The Pathos Problem). “So here’s that top-secret project I quit my job for… what do you think?” “I can take it — be honest and tell me what you really think!” Being pitchy. “No no, I don’t think you get it…” “Yes, but it also does this!” Being too formal. “So, first off, thanks for agreeing to this interview. I just have a few questions for you and then I’ll let you get back to your day…” “On a scale of 1 to 5, how much would you say you…” “Let’s set up a meeting.” Being a learning bottleneck. “You just worry about the product. I’ll handle the customers.” “Because the customers told me so!” “I don’t have time to talk to people — I need to get back to coding!” Collecting compliments instead of facts and commitments. “We’re getting a lot of positive feedback.” “Everybody I’ve talked to loves the idea.”
• Results of a good meeting: Facts — concrete, specific facts about what they do and why they do it (as opposed to the bad data of compliments, fluff, and opinions) Commitment — They are showing they’re serious by giving up something they value such as meaningful amounts of time, reputation risk, or money Advancement — They are moving to the next step of your real-world funnel and getting closer to a sale
• Writing it down — signal symbols: :)Excited :( Angry :|Embarrassed ☇ Pain or problem (symbol is a lightning bolt) ⨅ Goal or job-to-be-done (symbol is a soccer/football goal) ☐ Obstacle ⤴Workaround ^Background or context (symbol is a distant mountain) ☑ Feature request or purchasing criteria ＄Money or budgets or purchasing process ♀ Mentioned a specific person or company ☆ Follow-up task
• Asking for and framing the meeting: Vision — half-sentence of how you’re making the world better Framing — where you’re at and what you’re looking for Weakness — where you’re stuck and how you can be helped Pedestal — show that they, in particular, can provide that help Ask — ask for help
• The big prep question: “What do we want to learn from these guys?”