Ideas & Opportunity

How do I talk to customers without getting false positives?

A starting point

Never pitch your idea in the interview, it invites polite lies. Ask about their real life and past behaviour: the last time they hit the problem, what it cost them, what they've already tried and paid for. Facts about the past predict the future; opinions about your idea don't.

Go deeper

Watch

▶️ Video
Free Beginner

How to Talk to Users

On YC Startup Library by Eric Migicovsky (YC / founder of Pebble) ~25 min

Why we picked it

A YC partner turns 'talk to users' into a repeatable 5-question interview script you can use this afternoon. It's The Mom Test compressed into a lecture, perfect if you want the method fast before reading the book.

  • Don't pitch your idea, you'll bias every answer.
  • Anchor on the last time they hit the problem, and what they did about it.
  • If they've done nothing to solve it, the problem may not be painful enough.
Open ycombinator.com →

Read

📖 Book
Paid Beginner

The Mom Test

From momtestbook.com by Rob Fitzpatrick ~130 pages

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.

  • 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 →
📖 Book
Freemium Beginner

Talking to Humans

From talkingtohumans.com by Giff Constable ~80 pages (free PDF available)

Why we picked it

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 talkingtohumans.com →

People also ask

What does 'validating an idea' actually mean? Validation is gathering real-world evidence that a specific group of people has a painful problem AND will change their behaviour (pay, sign up, sw... Beginner 3 resources → How do I know if my idea is any good? Judge it on the problem, not the solution: is it a real, frequent, painful problem for a reachable group of people, and are you unusually well-plac... Beginner 4 resources → How do I validate an idea without building anything? Replace the product with a conversation, a manual service, or a landing page. Interview people about the problem, hand-deliver the outcome yourself... Beginner 3 resources → How many people should I talk to, and how do I find them? Aim for enough that patterns repeat, often 15-30 focused conversations before signal stabilises. Find them by going where the problem lives: your o... Beginner 3 resources → What is an MVP and what's the smallest one I can build? An MVP is the least you can build (or fake) to learn whether your riskiest assumption is true. Often it isn't software at all: a manual service, a ... Beginner 3 resources → How do I run a landing-page / 'fake-door' test? Put up a simple page that describes the offer as if it's real, drive a bit of targeted traffic to it, and measure whether people take a costly-to-t... Intermediate 2 resources →