Book · ~240 pages

Lean Customer Development

Cindy Alvarez Paid Intermediate

A hands-on companion to The Mom Test with more structure on who to talk to and how to run the process. Alvarez is strong on separating what customers say they want from what they actually need and will pay for. Practical scripts and a repeatable five-step loop.

  • Find customers and their problems before building.
  • Distinguish wants from needs.
  • Build continuous learning into how you work.
Open on cindyalvarez.com ↗

It answers 8 questions

  1. How do I talk to customers without them just telling me what I want to hear?
  2. What questions should I actually ask in a customer interview?
  3. How many customer interviews do I need before I trust the signal?
  4. How do I talk to customers without getting false positives?
  5. How do I keep talking to users while I'm heads-down building?
  6. How many people should I talk to, and how do I find them?
  7. How do I validate an idea when I'm building outside the big startup hubs and don't have easy access to target users?
  8. How do I run a customer interview without leading them to the answer I want?

Read with it

  1. The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past... momtestbook.com Book · ~130 pages The Mom Test Rob Fitzpatrick
  2. Video · ~25 min How to Talk to Users Eric Migicovsky
  3. Turns the vague feeling of product-market fit into a number you can move. Ask users how they would feel if they could no longer... First Round Review Article · ~20 min read How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product/Market Fit Rahul Vohra
  4. A deep conversation on why direct questions fail and how story-based interviews surface real behaviour. Torres names the common... Lenny's Newsletter Podcast · ~75 min Teresa Torres on how to interview customers Lenny Rachitsky and Teresa Torres
  5. A step-by-step guide to running discovery when you have almost no data, aimed squarely at first-time founders. It is practical... First Round Review Article · 15 min read A Founder's Guide for Successful Early-Stage Customer Discovery Jeanette Mellinger
  6. A YC partner turns 'talk to users' into a repeatable 5-question interview script you can use this afternoon. It's The Mom Test... YC Startup Library Video · ~25 min How to Talk to Users Eric Migicovsky (YC / founder of Pebble)
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