The Mom Test

How to Talk to Customers & Learn If Your Business Is a Good Idea When Everyone Is Lying to You

By: Rob Fitzpatrick

Narrated by: Rob Fitzpatrick

The Mom Test is a quick, practical guide that will save you time, money, and heartbreak.

They say you shouldn't ask your mom whether your business is a good idea, because she loves you and will lie to you. This is technically true, but it misses the point. You shouldn't ask anyone if your business is a good idea. It's a bad question, and everyone will lie to you at least a little. As a matter of fact, it's not their responsibility to tell you the truth. It's your responsibility to find it, and it's worth doing right.

Talking to customers is one of the foundational skills of both customer development and lean startup. We all know we're supposed to do it, but nobody seems willing to admit that it's easy to screw up and hard to do right. This book is going to show you how customer conversations go wrong, and how you can do better.

©2013 Robfitz Ltd (P)2019 Robfitz Ltd

Set yourself up for success when talking to users

As a Product Manager, I’ve come back to The Mom Test multiple times and at various stages in my career. Each time, I have been able to glean new and different insights from it. When I was first starting out doing customer interviews, the framework presented in The Mom Test helped me to avoid leading questions and research bias.

Later in my career, doing discovery for a 0 to 1 product, the chapters on where and how to find the right customers to talk to were invaluable. User research techniques are often highly formal in order to make the data collected more “scientific” but Fitzpatrick makes a case for the importance of informal, yet highly focused talks.

The audiobook is narrated by the author himself, and while he’s not a professional voice actor, his passion for the subject matter really shines through. There are places where as a listener you can tell he’s self-correcting, and while I would find that a sign of poor editing in an audiobook narrated by someone other than the author themselves, the informality and ease of delivery almost makes this feel like an extended TED Talk.

Suffice to say, I really enjoyed The Mom Test and am interested in checking out the author’s other works.

VFPA

Recommended from a friend, and what a great listen this was! Absolute gems throughout. I wish everyone, in every business would read this before doing research. Imagine if everyone didn't waste my time and grew and learnt from every meeting - apply this, use Vision, Framing, Pedestal and Ask to further your conversations, use the Mom Test to get your Ego out of the way and solve real problems! Fantastic read. Highly recommended.

Incredible

This 1 book changed my costumer interview skills from mediocre to very good. Thank you!!

Engaging, but should be adapted to GenAI era

The Mom Test is a must-listen for any Product Manager. The author’s casual tone and narration make it easy and enjoyable to follow. However, I wish the book had a bit more structure and included updated advice for the AI-driven era, particularly regarding automated note-taking tools. Despite these minor points, it’s still packed with valuable insights.

The learnings

It’s a great book if you are launching a new business and want to know how to stage questions to new customers and keep your team involved