The Mom Test – How to talk to customers

Heya, author here. Fun to see this.<p>I wrote the book after becoming hugely frustrated as an introverted technical founder trying to &quot;talk to customers&quot; but finding zero books about sales&#x2F;interviews&#x2F;etc that spoke to my context. That first company (yc s07) failed just as I started to figure it all out, but the casual approach proved useful (and comfortable) in my future businesses, so I wanted to document it for other folks like me.<p>If it&#x27;s helpful for anyone, I&#x27;ve been answering reader questions with little youtube videos that touch on some of the common misunderstanding and sticking points.[1]<p>Also, back when covid started, I also did a short series (5x 5min videos) about adapting the approach to remote interviews.[2]<p>[1] Q&amp;A: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;playlist?list=PLvHabB7atz2uWPZN5m7z3-8czZ_Q-TYoh" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;playlist?list=PLvHabB7atz2uWPZN5m7z3...</a><p>[2] Remote: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;playlist?list=PLvHabB7atz2tOjQs1OMzjaDPziat0aVry" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;playlist?list=PLvHabB7atz2tOjQs1OMzj...</a>

Best book on early stage startups period. And it&#x27;s barely 100 pages long.<p>My favorite quote from it:<p><i>“Someone should definitely make an X!”<p>“Have you looked for an X?”<p>“No, why?”<p>“There are like 10 different kinds of X.”<p>“Well I didn&#x27;t really need it anyway.”<p>Long story short, that person is a complainer, not a customer. They’re stuck in the la-la-land of imagining they’re the sort of person who finds clever ways to solve the petty annoyances of their day.</i>

Although not quite the same, this reminds me of a very simple trick many blind people are taught during training on how to navigate the city: Never <i>ever</i> ask &quot;Is this line 4&quot; if you want to know which tram just arrived. Ask &quot;which line is this?&quot; Simply because the first version will make many people answer &quot;yeah yeah&quot; without even looking. The second version forces them to actually answer your question with something other then yes&#x2F;no.

I&#x27;ve been wondering on the pros and cons of interviewing customers vs. just putting something out there and seeing the reaction&#x2F;getting a commitment.<p>There&#x27;s a great book about the latter called &quot;The Right It&quot; by Alberto Savoia (a guy who used to work at Google to test business ideas). There he describes 8 different ways to test a biz idea:<p>- The Mechanical Turk – Replace complex and expensive computers or machines with human beings.<p>- The Pinocchio – Build a non-functional, “lifeless”, version of the product.<p>- The Minimum Viable Product (or Stripped Tease) – Create a functional version of it, but stripped down to its most basic functionality.<p>- The Provincial – Before launching world-wide, run a test on a very small sample.<p>- The Fake Door – Create a fake “entry” for a product that doesn’t yet exist in any form<p>- The Pretend-to-Own – Before investing in buying whatever you need for your it, rent or borrow it first.<p>- The Re-label – Put a different label on an existing product that looks like the product you want to create.<p>A ques to the author (I saw he commented here). What do you think are the pros and cons of interviewing people using the MOM framework vs. just putting something out there and getting feedback? Often people give very different feedback when you ask them questions vs. present something and ask for skin in the game.

Rob&#x27;s book is fantastic. I remember reading a very early version when it first came out. I&#x27;m very pleased to see that it has steadily become more popular over the years.<p>Another great new book on the same topic is Deploy Empathy by Michele Hansen. Michele goes even deeper with lots of practical tips, scripts, and templates. I highly recommend it, especially if you liked The Mom Test - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;deployempathy.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;deployempathy.com</a>.

There have been a handful of books like this that I think are so key and probably not very contraversial but then I see so many companies who fail because they don&#x27;t approach things in this way - perhaps they don&#x27;t know about the book, perhaps they think they know better etc.<p>It would be great imho to replace the venerable but probably overpriced and ineffective MBA with a modern equivalent that takes on board the sort of training and experience you would get from places like YC, some of the well known investors etc. so that we would end up with something that we could say, &quot;if you want to start a business, you really need to go on this course&quot;.<p>It could be distance&#x2F;part-time&#x2F;whatever but it would ensure that business people have the correct skills and tools for the job so that they give themselves the biggest chance of success.

The Mom Test, the entire book, is a couple hour read... honestly if you have any interest at all in selling or building (or simply work at a startup) it&#x27;s worth reading the whole thing, and not a summarized recap... the book itself is summarized.

The mom test is one of those books that have a lot of good advice. Most summaries are quite bad and led me to think the book itself was bad, but thankfully, this is a good one.

Nice read thanks!<p>In the same vein of gathering good data and finding the resonating solution to customers problems, Small Data[1] by Martin Lindstrom is another great read with a sociological approach, focused on branding but nonetheless on entrepreneurship also.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Small_Data" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Small_Data</a>

It&#x27;s a great book, I really enjoyed it. I made some concise notes on each chapter on my blog <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;johnmathews.is&#x2F;mom-test.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;johnmathews.is&#x2F;mom-test.html</a>

One useful thing about summaries for good high information density books like Rob&#x27;s[0] is that they&#x27;re a good way to help anchor information found in the book. Which will help you remember the key points in context.<p>They also present you with alternative takes which can sometimes help in seeing the information from an alternative viewpoint which can also be really valuable.<p>So from that perspective even though there&#x27;s some ground covered by a summary, I don&#x27;t think of them as a replacement for a well written book.<p>-[0]: It&#x27;s a good book, if you&#x27;ve not done so read it! <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;momtestbook.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;momtestbook.com&#x2F;</a>

Talking to Humans is another great book in this genre. Short and succinct, with useful examples.

If you have no sales skills, asking if someone would by it or how much they’d pay merely soothes your ego.<p>If you understand what the customer needs, the customer has money, and you know how to sell then you are going to make money. If you have no sales skills then no amount of assurance will result in sales.<p>I met a young founder who had an obviously bad business plan. I asked if she had customers. She said “no, but businesses said they’d buy it”. I told her to go get a check from those customers, refundable if she didn’t deliver. Not one gave her money. I’m sorry that wake up call came so late in development for her.

I&#x27;ve actually added The Mom Test to my recommended reading list for direct reports, since it helps a lot in requirements gathers from both internal and external customers.

I did a summary of my own here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.chestergrant.com&#x2F;summary-the-mom-test-by-rob-fitzpatrick" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.chestergrant.com&#x2F;summary-the-mom-test-by-rob-fit...</a><p>Well more like highlights that I found interesting. It is definitely on my top list of books for entrepreneurship. You should get a copy and read at least once a year, very insightful.

what is better than talking to customers is shutting up and watching them. they will tell you X and then do Y.

The mom test is the product validation book I get the most recommendations about. This is a lovely summary of it

I definitely recommend reading this one. It helped me how to talk to my clients and also how to talk with other people. It totally changes your perspective and how you tackle conversations.

this assumes that your business can only succeed if you solve a problem. you don’t need to solve a problem to make a lot of money. people buy things they don’t need all the time. all you need to do is make something they want and whether they want to pay for it. this might not need any conversation with customers at all.

We used the blueprint within this group to learn from 6000 signups. It led to us (Budibase) pivoting and saving countless hours and money, but most importantly, it&#x27;s helped us reduce stress, build a better product, and deliver exactly what our users need.<p>Huge appreciation - thank you! Joe (cofounder of Budibase)

Fantastic read, I highly recommend it if you are trying to talk to customers.

It&#x27;s tragic that we have to resort to these techniques because our culture has become so averse to offering honest feedback. It wasn&#x27;t always this way.

Naming something &quot;The Mom Test&quot; in the current political environment is a choice.