Book · ~90 pages

Pretotype It (free PDF)

Alberto Savoia · pretotyping.org Free Beginner

A free, short predecessor to The Right It for when you want the method without buying a book. It lays out cheap experiments (fake buttons, manual concierge, pre-orders) that reveal whether people will act, not just nod. Worth reading before you spend a single rupee on building.

  • Test the core experience with the smallest possible time and money.
  • Watch what people do when asked to commit, not what they say.
  • A single well-run experiment can kill or confirm an idea in a day.
Open on pretotyping.org ↗

It answers 7 questions

  1. How do I talk to customers without them just telling me what I want to hear?
  2. How do I honestly test my founder-market fit before I quit my job?
  3. How do I test whether people will actually pay, not just say they like it?
  4. What are the questions that quietly ruin an interview by leading the person to the answer I want?
  5. How do I turn a vague hunch that something is broken into a sharp, testable idea?
  6. Is a waitlist with a lot of signups actual proof of demand?
  7. How do I validate demand in India when people love a free product but won't pay for it?

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. The cleanest distillation of the one framework that turns a customer chat into a relationship instead of a survey. The three... Sachin Rekhi's Blog Article · 10 min read A Primer on Talking to Customers From Rob Fitzpatrick's The Mom Test Sachin Rekhi
  4. The definitive essay on where good ideas come from: notice problems you personally have, don't force it. Use it as the lens for... paulgraham.com Essay · ~20 min read How to Get Startup Ideas Paul Graham
  5. The permission slip to recruit users by hand, do things manually, and deliver 'insanely great' experiences to your first few... paulgraham.com Essay · ~15 min read Do Things That Don't Scale Paul Graham
  6. 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
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