The Mom Test

Outline

The Mom Test (2013) is a short, practical guide to customer conversations. Rob Fitzpatrick shows why friends, family and investors cannot help being kind about your idea, and lays out three rules that make honest answers almost automatic: talk about their life instead of your idea, ask about specific things that happened in the past, and talk less than you listen. The book explains how to tell good data from compliments and vague promises, why real interest shows up as commitment rather than praise, how to narrow your customer to someone you can find this week, and why casual conversations beat formal interviews. It has become a standard text in start-up accelerators and university entrepreneurship courses around the world.

• Friends, family and investors tend to be kind about your idea, so their praise tells you very little.
• Talk about the other person's life and problems instead of pitching your own idea.
• Ask about specific things that happened in the past, not what people might do in the future.
• Real interest shows up as commitment, not as compliments or vague promises to try it someday.
• Narrow your customer to someone you can find this week, and keep conversations casual rather than formal.

Rob Fitzpatrick is a British-based entrepreneur, author and educator. He co-founded the advertising start-up Habit, which was backed by the Y Combinator accelerator, and later taught customer development and sales to founders through programmes with universities and accelerators in the United Kingdom and Europe. His other books include The Workshop Survival Guide and Write Useful Books.