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The Mom Test – How to talk to customers

sandro.volpee.de

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Re: The Mom Test – How to talk to customers

#71

Post by lcrz »

robfitz wrote: post #23

Heya, author here. Fun to see this. I wrote the book after becoming hugely frustrated as an introverted technical founder trying to "talk to customers" but finding zero books about sales/interviews/etc that spoke to my context. That first company (yc s07) failed just as I started to figure it all out, but the casual approach proved useful (and comfortable) in my future businesses, so I wanted to document it for other…

Could you please not hijack clicking on text on your website? That's extremely unfriendly to visitors.

Re: The Mom Test – How to talk to customers

#72

Post by robfitz »

heymax054 wrote: post #70

I've been wondering on the pros and cons of interviewing customers vs. just putting something out there and seeing the reaction/getting a commitment. There's a great book about the latter called "The Right It" by Alberto Savoia (a guy who used to work at Google to test business ideas). There he describes 8 different ways to test a biz idea: - The Mechanical Turk – Replace complex and expensive computers or machines w…

> pros and cons of interviewing people using the MOM framework

I gave a fuller answer elsewhere in the thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28669204), but it's highly reliant on the specifics of your idea/industry/bizmodel.

B2C and '10x improvement' style ideas tend to need to lead with a prototype (although you ideally first do enough discovery conversations to understand what they're already doing and why). The early product iteration is what Uber got right and Segway got wrong, and it's why the best videogame studios (like Blizzard 10+ years ago) always begin with prototypes of isolated core game mechanics, iterating those ruthlessly until they feel "crunchy" (the game industry term for immediately rewarding interactions).

Whereas ideas that are solving a well-defined, unsolved problem (which is way more common in niche B2B and the sorts of ideas that you'd bootstrap toward) can be pretty fully validated with ONLY conversation, which is obviously extremely quick and quite advantageous.

Apart from those two big categories, there are a million edge cases where the whole suite of approaches you mention can feel like a (somewhat situational) superpower.

Re: The Mom Test – How to talk to customers

#73

Post by [deleted] »

lcrz wrote: post #71
robfitz wrote: post #23

Heya, author here. Fun to see this. I wrote the book after becoming hugely frustrated as an introverted technical founder trying to "talk to customers" but finding zero books about sales/interviews/etc that spoke to my context. That first company (yc s07) failed just as I started to figure it all out, but the casual approach proved useful (and comfortable) in my future businesses, so I wanted to document it for other…

Could you please not hijack clicking on text on your website? That's extremely unfriendly to visitors.

[deleted]

Re: The Mom Test – How to talk to customers

#75

Post by alistairSH »

mlang23 wrote: post #4

Although not quite the same, this reminds me of a very simple trick many blind people are taught during training on how to navigate the city: Never ever ask "Is this line 4" if you want to know which tram just arrived. Ask "which line is this?" Simply because the first version will make many people answer "yeah yeah" without even looking. The second version forces them to actually answer your question with something…

Also applies to buying used cars and other high value things.

Has it been regularly serviced?

Vs

Where do you take it for service? What date was it’s last major service?

Re: The Mom Test – How to talk to customers

#76

Post by louisswiss »

iamstupidsimple wrote: post #56
michaelt wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk hbeckpdx fears is: 1. Someone hasn't read the book and only glanced at the title. 2. That someone assumes the book says "test things on your mom, because there's nobody less tech-savvy than an older woman, yo momma so dumb she thinks a hamburger menu is something you get at McDonalds" 3. That someone, hoping to be an ally in the fight against gender and age discrimination in tech, takes offence at what they…

Call it the 'dad test' then. Or even the 'sibling test' - because they're probably not technology experts. It literally means 'regular person test'...

> It literally means 'regular person test'...

The whole point is that it doesn't mean "regular person test'...

It means "person who isn't the target customer and who probably cares about you too much to give unbiased feedback" test.

Re: The Mom Test – How to talk to customers

#77

Post by mritchie712 »

macando wrote: post #7

Best book on early stage startups period. And it's barely 100 pages long. My favorite quote from it: “Someone should definitely make an X!” “Have you looked for an X?” “No, why?” “There are like 10 different kinds of X.” “Well I didn't really need it anyway.” Long story short, that person is a complainer, not a customer. They’re stuck in the la-la-land of imagining they’re the sort of person who finds clever ways to…

You might like Traction [1] by DuckDuckGo's founder. It has a similar no nonsense feel to it, but a broader scope of all around growth. I liked it so much I built an app [2] around the framework from in the book (with Gabriel's permission).

1 - https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Cu...

2 - https://www.wax.run

Re: The Mom Test – How to talk to customers

#79

Post by wwarek »

robfitz wrote: post #44
tmarice wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking forward to reading the book, looks great. Just a small technical issue: I just tried to buy the book on http://momtestbook.com/ via Gumroad, and Chrome refuses to autofill the credit card number in the Gumroad widget because the site is http-only. I circumvented that by copying the link from the "Buy on Gumroad" button, but it might be hurting your sales. Consider adding SSL certificate or just make the butto…

You're totally right — it's one of those things that's always on the list but never feels like the day's top priority, and then one day you wake up and it's on HN and you feel like a dummy ;). Probably some sort of lesson for me to learn here. (If anyone else needs it, the direct/secure gumroad PDF link is https://gum.co/momtest , and the paperback/ebook are on Amazon.)

I'd just like to add, and it was important for me, that gumroad also has epub and mobi, not only PDF. I've almost skipped buying the book because mobi was supposedly only available on Amazon. Fortunately I clicked on gumroad just to find out that epub and mobi are also there.

Re: The Mom Test – How to talk to customers

#80

Post by moosebear847 »

robfitz wrote: post #23

Heya, author here. Fun to see this. I wrote the book after becoming hugely frustrated as an introverted technical founder trying to "talk to customers" but finding zero books about sales/interviews/etc that spoke to my context. That first company (yc s07) failed just as I started to figure it all out, but the casual approach proved useful (and comfortable) in my future businesses, so I wanted to document it for other…

As an author of the book that's summarized, how do you feel about in-depth summaries of your book in terms of it affecting sales and providing publicity? I've always wondered how authors feel about it.
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