Everything from

momtestbook.com

1 resource from momtestbook.com we point founders to, and the questions each answers.

📖 Book
✓ Link checked Paid Beginner

Why we picked it The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past behaviour, not your idea, so you can't be lied to. If a founder reads one thing before talking to a single customer, it's this.

The Mom Test

From momtestbook.com by Rob Fitzpatrick ~130 pages

  • Talk about their life, not your idea.
  • Ask about specifics in the past, not opinions about the future.
  • 'That's so cool, I'd totally buy it' is a compliment, not data, dig for commitment and evidence.
Open momtestbook.com
Answers How do I talk to customers without getting false positives? How do I talk to customers without them just telling me what I want to hear? What questions should I actually ask in a customer interview? How do I show a prototype to users without biasing their reaction? How do I know when to stop researching an idea and just start building? I am a domain expert but not a builder, is my idea real or just insider bias? How do I test whether people will actually pay, not just say they like it? How do I validate an idea in an industry I have no background in? How do I run a customer interview without leading them to the answer I want? How do I honestly test my founder-market fit before I quit my job? How do I turn a trend I've noticed into an actual product idea I can build? How do I get honest answers when the person I'm interviewing is a friend or someone in my network? What are the questions that quietly ruin an interview by leading the person to the answer I want? How do I find my ICP when I'm selling to Indian SMBs who don't fit clean B2B categories? How do I define my ideal customer when I'm a domain expert who thinks everyone in my industry needs this? My ideal customer can't afford my product. Did I define them wrong? How do I test whether a niche is real before I commit months of building to it? How many customer interviews do I need before I trust the job I've found is real? Customers say they want feature X, but is that the job or just a solution they've imagined? How do I write survey questions that surface the job instead of just confirming what I already believe? As a solo technical founder, how much time should I really spend understanding the job before writing any code? How do I know if the job I'm solving is a painkiller people will pay for or just a vitamin they'd like? I'm a non-technical founder validating an idea. How do I map the job before I've built anything to demo? How do I set up analytics and feedback in my MVP so I actually learn something, without over-engineering tracking? My MVP works but nobody sticks around after signing up. How do I diagnose whether it's a product problem or an onboarding problem? How do I turn vague feedback like "the app feels clunky" into specific design changes I can actually make? Every user interview gives me a different feature request. How do I turn messy feedback into a real prioritisation decision? My first 5 customers were friends who signed up to be nice. How do I know if any of them actually want the product? What are the biggest mistakes founders make trying to land their first customers that I should avoid? I keep getting warm interest and 'this is great' but no one pays. How do I turn the first yes into money? I keep tweaking the landing page instead of launching. How do I tell polishing from procrastinating? How do I find my first 10 customers to sell to when I have zero network and no inbound? How do I cold email people at big enterprises when I'm a small unknown startup from outside the major hubs? I'm a technical founder who hates selling. Can I distribute without doing sales? My users churn silently and never reply to emails, how do I find out why they actually left? How do I get customers to pay upfront or annually so I can bootstrap on their cash instead of my savings?