The Mom Test

Good questions: "Talk me through the last time that happened", "Talk me through your workflow", "What else have you tried?", "How are you dealing with it now?"

Avoid opinion-based questions, such as "Would you pay X for a product which did Y?”

Avoid leading questions, such as "Do you think it's a good idea?”

Plan the length of your customer meetings and keep them short.

Make sure your conversations are casual and conversational.

Be sure to ask questions that are clear and concise.

Focus on gathering feedback from customers by asking them open-ended questions.

Ask specific questions about the customer's experiences to gain actionable insights.

Talk to customers about their past experiences instead of your idea.

Start conversations by asking questions that are open-ended and avoid yes or no answers.

Anchor fluff and dig beneath opinions, ideas, requests, and emotions.

Deflect compliments.

Talk less and listen more.

Ask about specifics in the past instead of generics or opinions about the future.

The more you’re talking, the worse you’re doing.

Trying to learn from customer conversations is like excavating a delicate archaeological site. The truth is down there somewhere, but it’s fragile.

The Mom Test: 1. Talk about their life instead of your idea 2. Ask about specifics in the past instead of generics or opinions about the future 3. Talk less and listen more.

People know what their problems are, but they don’t know how to solve those problems.

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

Common wisdom is that you price your product in terms of value to the customer rather than cost to you. That's true. And you can't quantify the value received without prodding their financial worldview.

They own the problem, you own the solution.

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.

When you hear a request, it’s your job to understand the motivations which led to it. You do that by digging around the question to find the root cause.

You’re searching for the truth, not trying to be right. And you want to do it as quickly and cheaply as possible. Learning that your beliefs are wrong is frustrating, but it’s progress.

Every time you talk to someone, you should be asking a question which has the potential to completely destroy your currently imagined business.

A good conversation: You: “What are your big goals and focuses right now?” Products which solve problems on this list are infinitely more likely to get bought.

Learning about a customer and their problems works better as a quick and casual chat than a long, formal meeting.

When you fall into a premature zoom, you can waste a ton of time figuring out the minutia of a trivial problem. Even if you learn everything there is to know about that particular problem, you still haven’t got a business.

Successful startups tend to depend on multiple failure points. In this case it is both the needs of the teachers and the ability of the schools to pay us. If any of these conditions doesn't exist, we have to significantly overhaul our idea.

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.

Compliments are the fool’s gold of customer learning: shiny, distracting, and entirely worthless.

Rule of thumb: The more they’re giving up, the more seriously you can take their kind words.

Rule of thumb: It’s not a real lead until you’ve given them a concrete chance to reject you.

Rule of thumb: People want to help you, but will rarely do so unless 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.

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? Will they keep using it? Market risk — Do they want it? Will they pay? Are there enough of them? You don’t want to overlook one or the other.

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.

Learning from customers doesn’t mean you have to be wearing a suit and drinking boardroom coffee. Asking the right questions is fast and touches on real issues.

In early stage sales, the real goal is learning. Revenue is just a side-effect.

The only thing people love talking about more than themselves is their problems. By taking an interest in the problems and minutia of their day, you’re already being more interesting than 99% of the people they’ve ever met.

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.

People like to help entrepreneurs. But they also hate wasting their time. An opening like this tells them that you know what you need and that they'll be able to make a real difference.

These conversations are easy to screw up. As such, you need to be the one in control. You set the agenda, you keep it on topic, and you propose next steps.

The truth is down there somewhere, but it’s fragile. While each blow with your shovel gets you closer to the truth, you’re liable to smash it into a million little pieces if you use too blunt an instrument.

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

You always need a list of your 3 big questions.

The most precious resource a startup has is its founders’ time and attention. You have to put yourself where you matter most.

You aren’t trying to minimise your failure rate; you’re trying to get a few conversations going.

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, allow us to improve our business.

There is a significant difference between: “Yeah, that’s a problem” and “THAT IS THE WORST PART OF MY LIFE AND I WILL PAY YOU RIGHT NOW TO FIX IT.

Watching someone do a task will show you where the problems and inefficiencies really are, not where the customer thinks they are.

While using generics, people describe themselves as who they want to be, not who they actually are.

Startups are about focusing and executing on a single, scalable idea rather than jumping on every good one which crosses your desk.

Learning that your beliefs are wrong is frustrating, but it’s progress. It’s bringing you ever closer to the truth of a real problem and a good market.

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.

Deciding what to build is your job. The questions to ask are about your customers’ lives: their problems, cares, constraints, and goals.

The premature zoom is a real problem because it leads to data which seems like validation, but is actually worthless. In other words, it’s a big source of false positives.

Every meeting either succeeds or fails. You've lost the meeting when you leave with a compliment or a stalling tactic.

The more they’re giving up, the more seriously you can take their kind words.

It’s not a real lead until you’ve given them a concrete chance to reject you.

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.

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.

If you aren’t finding consistent problems and goals, you don’t yet have a specific enough customer segment.

Avoid creating (or being) the bottleneck. To do that, the customer and learning has to be shared with the entire founding team, promptly and faithfully.

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.

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

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

Prepare a list of 3-5 questions to ask each customer.

Spend up to an hour writing down your best guesses about what the person you’re about to talk to cares about and wants.

Taking good notes is the best way to keep your team (and investors and advisors) in the loop.

Disseminate learnings to your team as quickly and as directly as possible, using notes and exact quotes wherever you can.

It only takes 5 minutes to learn whether a problem exists and is important.

A meeting has succeeded when it ends with a commitment to advance to the next step.

The more they give us, the more we can trust what they say.

First customers are crazy. Crazy in a good way. They really, really want what you’re making.

If you don’t know what happens next after a product or sales meeting, the meeting was pointless.

The truth is our goal and questions are our tools. But we must learn to wield them. It’s delicate work. And well worth learning. There’s treasure below.

Opinions are worthless.

Anything involving the future is an over-optimistic lie.

It’s called The Mom Test because it leads to questions that even your mom can’t lie to you about.

People will lie to you if they think it’s what you want to hear.

You just need to get to the truth.

The world’s most deadly fluff is: ‘I would definitely buy that.

If you’ve mentioned your idea, people will try to protect your feelings.

You can’t build a business on a lukewarm response.

You’re searching for the truth, not trying to be right.

The premature zoom is a real problem because it leads to data which seems like validation, but is actually worthless.

If you’ve got heavy product risk, then you’re not going to be able to prove as much of your business through conversations alone.

Learning that your beliefs are wrong is frustrating, but it’s progress.

Conversations are infinitely easier when you get an intro through a mutual friend that establishes your credibility and reason for being there.

If you start too generic, everything is watered down. Your marketing message is generic. You suffer feature creep.

The framing format I like has 5 key elements: Vision, Framing, Weakness, Pedestal, Ask.

Keep having conversations until you stop hearing new stuff.

Owning the customer conversations creates a de-facto dictator with 'The customer said so' as the ultimate trump card.

Rule of thumb: If you don’t know what happens next after a product or sales meeting, the meeting was pointless.

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.

You want the truth, not a gold star. Some of the most informative (and thus best) responses you can get are along the lines of, “Umm, I’m not so sure about that” and "That's pretty neat." Both are lukewarm responses which tell you they don’t care.