📒 Summary + Notes

Chapter 1: The Mom Test

🎬 Takeaways

• Useful conversation basics
  • Customer conversations need to give concrete facts about customers ⇒ use these facts to make inferences to niche down customer base
  • Questions cannot be self-affirming
    • Cannot blatantly ask if customer would buy your product ⇒ need to ask indirect questions testing different hypotheses
• Mom Test: Generic rules to guide customer conversations
  1. During conversation, talk about their life instead of business idea
     • Try to see how your product or service can add meaning to their lives
  2. Don't talk about generics
     • Ask specific questions about previous ways or methods potential customers used to deal with problems etc
  3. Talk less listen more
• Using the Mom Test
  • Questions should not try to impose problem on customers
  • Questions about how to build product should not be asked
  • The purpose of the questions is to confirm and become more aware of customer problems so you can create a good product that fits the needs of customers
• Good Questions vs Bad Questions
  • Questions that ask for opinions are worthless because customers often do not really know what they want
  • Don’t ask questions about the future
    • Ask about specific instances and problems of the past
  • Ask questions to figure out constraints and motivations about the customer
  • Ask questions which you cannot infer answers from observing customers
    • No questions about stats or number you can search up
    • Try to extract unique and intangible information
  • Don’t look for problems where there aren’t any
    • If customer didn't put in extra time to solve problem then they don't care
• Potential good questions to ask
  • Good Product Development Questions
    • Ask about methodology for developing and choosing a specific solution
  • Good Pain Point Questions
    • Ask about what specific problems in the past customers faced
    • Ask what customer did to cope with problem
  • Good Price Point Questions
    • Ask about how much problem is currently costing customer
      • From this can gage how much they spend and how they value the problem
    • Ask customer where their budget for dealing with the problem comes from
  • Good Customer Preference Questions
    • Ask about constraints and limitations with problem
    • Ask about customer motivations for solving the problem
    • Ask about goals the customer has with solving the problem
      • “Why do you bother trying to _?”
  • To gain more leads ⇒ ask customers at the end of conversation who else they would recommend talking to

🥊 Action Items

• Have an open mind
  • Need to be okay with possibility that there is no problem for you to solve
• Know mission goal of creating business
  • Understand what value you bring to customers through providing your business
  • Understand why specifically YOU must create the business
    • Why not your mailman or your overpaid fortune teller
  • Create a mission statement for business
• Determine what you are hoping to gain from business conversations
  • Trying to learn the problem or test hypotheses for a business idea
  • If learning the problem, simultaneously conduct online research and direct research (talking to potential customers) to figure out pain points
  • If testing hypotheses, understand what type of questions would help you validate or reject hypotheses
• Conduct a lot of online research prior to conversations
  • Identify your opportunity area (specific area/industry you want to create business within)
  • Research different customer demographics you can cater to
  • Read online customer reviews or browse through subreddits to get a more informal view but still be aware of biases

Chapter 2: Avoiding Bad Data

🎬 Takeaways

• Types of Bad Data
  1. Compliments
     • Avoid compliments by not mentioning business idea at all and trying to revert back to other questions centered on customer problems
     • Always try to seek truth NOT self-affirmation in testing hypotheses
  2. Hypotheticals, Generics and Future Related questions (Fluff)
     • 3 Types:
       • Generic claims (I usually/always)
         • Bring back to specifics such as how they last death with it
         • Change conversation from what usually happens to what actually happens
       • Future tense promises (I will)
         • Don't ask vague open-ended questions such as would you ever
       • Hypothetical maybes (I might)
         • Figure out how they dealt with problem in the past and then test to see if it is actually a problem they care about ⇒ Past > Future
  3. Ideas
     • When customer requests ideas keep them in potential idea list but stay focused on your main business model and objectives
     • Need to understand exact problem, motivations and constraints of customers to see if actual demand for the product
     • Dig into feature requests and emotional signals by asking about motivations
       • Always ask why
• Tips to avoid bad data
  1. Don't seek approval seek the truth
  • if seeking approval revert back to specifics of the customer’s experiences
  1. don't pitch
  • circle back to previous discussion
  1. talk less
  • if customer sharing their insight let them speak and correct them later

🥊 Action Items

• Try to recall any real data about customer preferences to make sure you’re not veering off in conversation
• When asking questions, constantly need to be assessing what you am gaining from each question