The mom test
How to talk to customers and learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you
by Rob Fitzpatrick · first published 2014
81% recommend18% neutral1% critical
Why HN recommends it
Practical guide to customer discovery interviews: how to ask about problems, not your idea, so people give honest answers instead of polite praise. Suits founders and engineers validating an idea before building.
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Fellow aspiring solo founder here! Here are a few books/resources I've found helpful: --- The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick This book stresses the idea of starting with customer interviews before you build anything and how to ask questions of prospective customers to get meaningful information when people's…
on “Ask HN: Books giving practical advice on starting a solo SaaS business?” ↗…even.) Lying For Money (lots of fun!) Great Answers To Tough Interview Questions (what it says on the tin) Traction (good overview of marketing tactics) Lean Customer Development (pretty good) The Mom Test (eye opening) Lean B2B (solid playbook) Principles (instant classic)
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2018?” ↗Fantastic post. Lots of weight on the problem discovery area which is the right move and engineers turned entrepreneurs skip this step a lot. I know I did. A book recommended by YC's Aaron Epstein is The Mom Test[0]. The first 50-60% of the book is dedicated to how to discover problems with end clients/users that are worth tackling. I have used the techniques personally and it's great to see what users say is…
on “How to brainstorm great business ideas” ↗…distribution channels, and pricing, and how each of these four things fit together. I imagine them as four wheels on a car. It's better to have 4 mediocre wheels than 3 great ones and a flat. * Book: The Mom Test.[2] Amazing book about how to talk to customers to research your ideas without being misled, which is a step I've stumbled on before. * Tool: Notion. I just discovered it recently. I use it for all my…
on “Ask HN: What things do you wish you discovered earlier?” ↗My favorite book on customer development is "The Mom Test"[0], by a YCombinator alum. The name is terrible, but the content of that book is golden. He tells the terrifying story of talking to customers constantly as they wasted a million dollars building something…
on “Argue with your customers” ↗…will pay to have solved, and whether or not your product actually solves that problem. How do you do that? Talk to customers. All of this stuff is in the Steve Blank book. Also consider reading The Mom Test[1] by Rob Fitzpatrick. [1]: https://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=the+mom+test&inde...
on “Ask HN: 4 months after posting my project on HN, it has 0 users. Has it failed?” ↗Righteous Mind, Why good people are divided by politics and religion by Jonathan Haidt (also applies to classic nerd feuds like Mac vs windows vs Linux) 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 (worst title ever, book is great)
on “Ask HN: Favorite nonfiction books of 2018?” ↗…https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Owners-Manual-Step-Step/dp/09... and/or https://www.amazon.com/Business-Model-Generation-Visionaries... and/or https://www.amazon.com/You-Build-Will-They-Come/dp/047056363... and this: https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone/...
on “Ask HN: How would you validate an idea for SaaS product?” ↗There's a pretty great book on this called The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick: https://amzn.to/383bo92 It talks at length about the challenges, especially, of getting _honest_ feedback from prospective users. And it has a lot of ideas to that effect.
on “Ask HN: How to effectively get feedback from users?” ↗…and you will never get a straight answer, in the same general vein as corporate feasibility studies basically seldom ever returning a 'no, this isn't feasible'. I recommend r. fitzpatrick's book "the mom test" about that subject. After people reply (if they reply) to this thing, you will have learned nothing about whether people would actually pay for it. Go and learn that fact in actual viable ways.
on “Ask HN: If I build it, will you pay? (CRM for home buyers)” ↗I've heard "The Mom Test" is a good book around that, but I've never read it. https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone/...
on “Story: “It would be career limiting..."” ↗I read an amazing book on customer development: The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick - https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone/... The first few pages blew my mind. It was a great read all the way through.
on “Listen to Your Customers, They’ll Tell You What to Build” ↗Highly recommend the Mom Test which is exactly about this. https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone/...
on “Ask HN: How to actually “talk to your customers”?” ↗“The Mom Test” by Rob Fitzpatrick is in my mind the most revolutionary and essential business book for indie hackers in the last 20 years. It would have saved me $1.4 million in my attempt to beat craigslist at its…
on “What are the most indispensable books for indie hackers?” ↗…like a neat idea" to "oh my god, I literally spend 1 hour a day on this and I've been looking for a solution to this since forever. I (or my boss) would pay for this in a heartbeat!". I've found "The Mom Test" by Rob Fitzpatrick to be great for guiding you along this process step by step. When asking friends, there's the risk of running into something called "interviewer bias", where they will rate your idea…
on “How do you validate B2B startup ideas?” ↗