Book Review: The Mom Test

TLDR

Separating the wheat from the chaff – just because a customer says something is a problem doesn’t necessarily mean it is, and asking the right questions is crucial in distinguishing genuine issues from irrelevant ones. This book made me realize some of my mistakes in past startups.

Strengths

• Short and sweet at 134 pages.
• Compelling examples drive the message home.

Weaknesses

• Some of the examples are contrived and hard to apply.
• It could be a shorter book with the removal of extraneous filler sections.

Who should read this book?

Anyone starting or running v1 projects – founders, managers, product managers, and entrepreneurs.

One big lesson

Startups don’t starve; they drown. Know the specific customer you are targeting.

Amazon link – The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you Paperback.

Chapter Notes

Caveat: I excluded chapters I didn’t find particularly intriguing.

Chapter One: The Mom test

• If customers haven’t already looked for ways to solve a problem, they are unlikely to look for (or buy) yours.
• People stop lying when you ask them for money or commitment.

Chapter Two: Avoiding bad data

• Compliments, fluff, and ideas are insufficient sources of data.
• If you don’t know how your idea will change a person, but they say they like it, you got a compliment, not a true answer.
• When someone avoids making a decision, challenge them to make a choice. If they continue to refuse, chances are that the problem doesn’t matter to them.
• Differentiate complainers from customers.
• Understand the motivation behind requests so you can solve them cheaply.
• Keep your ideas and ego out of conversations; focus on the person you are talking to.
• Anyone will say your idea is great if you are annoying about it.

Chapter Three: Asking important questions

• You should be terrified of at least one question you are asking customers.
• Learning that your beliefs are wrong is frustrating but also progress.
• Understanding product vs customer risk.

Chapter Five: Commitment and advancement

• Ask for commitments as a signal of true belief in the idea; commitments can be time, reputation, or financial.

Chapter Six: Core risks of Software projects

• Don’t dwell on failure rates (e.g., lack of responses to cold emails); instead, focus on the positives (one response is all you need).
• Keep setting up meetings until you stop hearing new stuff.

Chapter Seven: Choosing your customers

• Startups don’t starve; they drown. You have to be as specific as possible.
• Before we serve everyone, we have to serve someone. Narrowing down the target customer eliminates distractions and allows us to quickly focus on effectiveness.
• If you aren’t finding consistent problems and goals, you don’t have a specific enough customer segment.
• If there is no clear physical or digital location to find your customers, it is probably too broad.
• Good customer segments consist of who-where pairs.

Chapter Eight: Running the process

• Avoid being such a bottleneck that all information resides only in your head, forcing people to rely on your input.
• Customer conversations are a waste of time if done wrong. E.g. engaging in customer conversations despite not knowing what you are trying to learn.
• Don’t outsource customer conversations to consultants – you want to hear the hard truth from the horse’s mouth.
• Notes are only helpful if you review them.

Conclusion

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