Book · ~80 pages (free PDF available)

Talking to Humans

Giff Constable · talkingtohumans.com Freemium Beginner

A short, practical field guide to customer discovery: who to talk to, how to find them, and how many. Pairs perfectly with The Mom Test, Fitzpatrick teaches the questions, Constable teaches the logistics.

  • Decide who you need to learn from before you start.
  • Recruiting interviewees is a skill, scripts and channels included.
  • Get out of the building; patterns emerge faster than you expect.
Open on talkingtohumans.com ↗

It answers 25 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. Isn't doing things that don't scale a waste of time, shouldn't I automate from day one?
  4. How do I validate an idea without building anything?
  5. Where do I find the very first people to even talk to about my product?
  6. Where do I find people to interview when I have zero audience?
  7. How do I run customer discovery as an Indian founder building for Indian users?
  8. How do I show a prototype to users without biasing their reaction?
  9. How do I get honest answers when the person I'm interviewing is a friend or someone in my network?
  10. How do I find my first 10 customers to sell to when I have zero network and no inbound?
  11. What's the difference between a customer saying they'll pay and actually pulling out a card, and how do I test the real one early?
  12. What should my very first sales pitch actually say, and how long should it be?

And 13 more across the hub.

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. 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
  3. 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)
  4. 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
  5. The idea that started the lean movement, from the person who coined it. No business plan survives first contact with customers,... steveblank.com Article · ~8 min read Get Out of the Building Steve Blank
  6. 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
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