Book · ~130 pages

The Mom Test

Rob Fitzpatrick · momtestbook.com Paid Beginner

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.

  • 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 on momtestbook.com ↗

It answers 210 questions

  1. What does 'validating an idea' actually mean?
  2. I want to start a startup but I don't have an idea. Where do I even begin?
  3. How big does my market need to be for this to be a real business?
  4. What is founder-market fit and how do I know if I have it?
  5. How do I talk to customers without them just telling me what I want to hear?
  6. What is an ideal customer profile and how do I define mine?
  7. What actually counts as an MVP, and what's the smallest one I can get away with?
  8. Which no-code tool should I use to build my first product?
  9. I'm non-technical, do I actually need a technical co-founder?
  10. How do I decide what to build next?
  11. How do I actually get my first 10 customers when nobody has heard of me?
  12. I'm a technical founder and I hate selling, do I really have to do sales myself?

And 198 more across the hub.

Read with it

  1. 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
  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. 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 essay that put 'product-market fit' into the startup vocabulary. Read it for the gut-level description of what PMF feels... pmarchive.com Essay · ~15 min read The Only Thing That Matters Marc Andreessen
  6. Video · ~13 min How to Plan an MVP Michael Seibel (YC)
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