The Mom Test
Summary
TLDRThe Mom Test is a set of rules for asking better questions to validate business ideas. Instead of seeking validation from loved ones, like your mom, who might give biased feedback, it teaches you how to gather valuable insights by focusing on the customer's real experiences. By asking about their life, not your idea, you gain honest, practical feedback. The script contrasts two conversations, showing how to shift from pushing an idea to understanding user behavior, helping refine ideas based on real needs rather than hypothetical approval.
Takeaways
- 😀 The Mom Test is a strategy for asking questions that even your mom, who loves you, cannot give biased answers to.
- 🤔 It's important to avoid asking about opinions on your business idea, as people may give you answers based on love or politeness.
- 💬 Craft questions around customers' lives and past experiences, not about your product or hypothetical scenarios.
- 🔍 Focus on discussing specifics in the past rather than abstract ideas about the future.
- 👂 Talking less and listening more to your customer will reveal more valuable insights.
- 🛑 Don't pitch your idea in a way that leads to biased positive feedback—ask neutral, fact-based questions instead.
- 📱 The conversation with your mom in the first scenario led to overly supportive feedback that was not helpful for the business idea.
- ❌ In the first conversation, focusing on the app idea and its features failed to gather any useful insights from the customer (mom).
- ✅ In the second conversation, asking about mom’s real behavior and habits with her iPad helped uncover valuable information.
- 🎯 The goal is to gain customer insights by understanding how they live, work, and use products, not by seeking validation for your idea.
Q & A
What is the 'Mom Test' about?
-The 'Mom Test' is a set of rules for crafting good questions that encourage honest feedback, even from people who love you and might otherwise lie to protect your feelings, like your mom.
Why is it a bad idea to ask your mom directly about a business idea?
-It's a bad idea because your mom loves you and may be biased in her response, likely telling you your idea is good even if it's not.
What mistake was made in the first conversation with the mom about the business idea?
-The mistake was focusing on the business idea itself and asking leading questions, which made the mom give positive but not necessarily useful feedback.
Why is it important to ask about someone's life rather than your business idea?
-Asking about someone's life provides insights into their actual behavior and needs, which are more valuable than their opinions about a hypothetical product or idea.
What type of questions should be avoided when testing a business idea?
-Avoid questions that lead the person to agree with you, focus on hypothetical situations, or ask for opinions about the future. Instead, ask about specific past behaviors.
How does the second conversation with the mom differ from the first?
-The second conversation focuses on the mom’s current behavior with her iPad, exploring what apps she uses, how she finds them, and why she might not use certain apps, rather than pitching the business idea directly.
What insights were gained from the second conversation with the mom?
-The insights included understanding how the mom finds new apps, her disinterest in new cookbooks, and her specific app usage patterns, all of which are valuable for refining the business idea.
Why is it important to focus on specifics from the past rather than opinions about the future?
-Focusing on past specifics reveals actual behaviors, which are more reliable indicators of future actions, whereas opinions about the future are often speculative and less dependable.
What does the phrase 'leading down the garden path' refer to in this context?
-It refers to asking questions in a way that leads someone to give you the answers you want to hear, rather than the truth, which can result in misguided decisions.
How does listening more and talking less help in validating a business idea?
-Listening more allows you to gather authentic insights into people's actual needs and behaviors, which helps in refining your business idea based on real data rather than assumptions.
Outlines
🤔 Asking Mom for Business Advice
The script begins with the advice to avoid asking your mom if your business idea is good because she’ll likely say yes out of love. However, the 'mom test' offers rules for asking questions that ensure even your mom can't simply agree without providing useful feedback. This sets the stage for two contrasting conversations that demonstrate how to ask better business questions.
📱 The First Conversation: The Wrong Way
In this hypothetical conversation, the person asks their mom if she would buy an app that serves as a cookbook for her iPad. The mom, naturally supportive, agrees enthusiastically and praises the idea, even though her answers don’t provide real insight into whether the idea is viable. The conversation highlights how easy it is to be led down a misleading path when the focus is on the idea rather than the mom’s real-life behavior and needs.
🧐 Understanding the Mom Test
The 'mom test' encourages entrepreneurs to discuss customers’ lives rather than their ideas, focusing on past behavior instead of hypothetical future scenarios. It stresses the importance of listening more and talking less, so as to avoid receiving biased or overly optimistic feedback that doesn’t accurately reflect the market or real-world needs.
💬 The Second Conversation: The Right Way
In this revised conversation, the person engages their mom by asking about her actual experiences with her iPad, including what she uses it for and how she discovers new apps. The mom reveals that she gets most of her apps from a Sunday newspaper feature and doesn’t need more cookbooks, which provides valuable insights into her real habits and interests. This conversation illustrates how focusing on the user’s life can reveal critical details that were missed in the first approach.
💡 Key Takeaways from the Mom Test
The final section concludes with the idea that if you can extract useful business information from your mom, you can gather it from anyone. The 'mom test' proves that by focusing on the user's experiences and behavior, rather than pitching an idea, you can gather valuable insights that help refine and improve your business concepts.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡The Mom Test
💡Business Idea
💡Customer Feedback
💡Leading Questions
💡Specifics vs. Generics
💡Talking Less, Listening More
💡Past Behavior
💡App Usage
💡Market Research
💡Bias
Highlights
The 'Mom Test' advises against asking loved ones for feedback on business ideas because they may be biased due to their affection for you.
The 'Mom Test' is a set of rules designed to help entrepreneurs ask better questions that yield honest, useful feedback, even from biased sources like family.
The first conversation illustrates the wrong approach, focusing on leading questions and future predictions that lead to biased, unhelpful feedback.
In the first conversation, the entrepreneur presents their idea directly, leading to a positive response from the mother, which may not be reliable or truthful.
The lesson from the first conversation: Don't discuss your idea in a way that prompts affirmation; instead, focus on understanding your customer's behavior and needs.
The 'Mom Test' emphasizes talking less about your business idea and more about the customer’s current behaviors and past experiences.
In the second conversation, the entrepreneur focuses on understanding how the mother uses her iPad and what apps she actually engages with.
The second conversation reveals that the mother mainly uses her iPad for reading news and keeping up with friends, not cooking or looking up recipes.
By asking what the last activity the mother did on her iPad was, the entrepreneur discovers she used Google to search for holiday accommodations, highlighting her usage habits.
The mother finds new apps through the Sunday paper, indicating that she doesn't actively seek out cooking apps, which could be crucial market insight.
The discussion about cookbooks reveals that the mother receives them as gifts but rarely uses them, questioning the necessity of another cooking resource.
Key insight: the customer’s past behavior (e.g., receiving but not using cookbooks) is more reliable than speculative questions about future purchases.
The second conversation highlights that asking about real-life habits yields more actionable feedback than asking hypothetical questions.
The 'Mom Test' encourages asking open-ended questions that explore the customer’s life, rather than pitching the idea directly.
The overall lesson: honest and useful business insights can be obtained from any conversation if approached with the right questions, even from biased sources like family.
Transcripts
we're told don't ask your mom if your
business idea is a good one she'll just
say yes because she loves you of
course the mom test is a set of simple
rules for crafting good questions that
even your mom can't lie to you
about let's have two conversations and
see what we can
learn mom I've got a business idea can I
tell you about it
of course dear you like your iPad right
do you use it a
lot
yes okay so would you ever buy an app
which was like a cookbook for your
iPad
H and it only cost
£20 that's cheaper than your hardbacks
on the Shelf well and you can share
recipes with your friends and there's an
iPhone app which is your shopping list
and videos of that celebrity chef you
love yes dear that sounds
amazing2 is
fine will it have pictures of the
recipes yes
definitely thanks Mom I'm going to quit
my job and put all my savings into my
new
startup won't you have some
lasagna that conversation led us down
the garden path the mum test is about
talking to your customers about their
life not your idea it's about discussing
specifics in the past instead of
generics or opinions about the future
it's about talking less and listening
more let's do it again right this
time hey Mom how's the new
iPad oh I love it I use it every day
what do you usually do on it oh you know
read the news play soku catch up with my
friends what's the last thing you did on
it but Dad and I are off on
holiday I was looking where to stay did
you use an app for that no I just used
Google what app should I
use how did you find out about the other
apps you have the Sunday paper has a
section on the apps of the
week makes sense by the way I saw a
couple of new cookbooks on the Shelf
where did those come from oh they're one
of those things you just end up getting
at Christmas I think doring gave me that
one haven't even opened it as if I need
another lasagna recipe at my
age M time to refine my my
idea we discovered many insights in that
conversation to help us adjust our
idea it just goes to show if you can get
useful business information from Mom you
can get it from
anyone the mom test
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