📖 Business
The Mom Test Rules
The Mom Test is a set of three simple rules for having customer conversations that produce honest, useful information — even if you are talking to someone who loves you and wants to be supportive. The core insight: people lie in customer interviews, not because they are dishonest, but because they are polite. If you ask "is my idea good?" everyone says yes. If you ask "would you use this?" everyone says probably. The solution is not to find more honest people — it is to ask better questions. Questions that extract facts about the customer's real life, real problems, and real behavior, rather than opinions about your hypothetical product.
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+45
XP
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How It Works
- Rule 1: Talk about their life instead of your idea. The conversation should be about the customer's world — their problems, workflows, frustrations, and current solutions. Your idea should barely come up. Bad: "Would you use an app that does X?" Good: "How do you currently handle X? Walk me through the last time."
- Rule 2: Ask about specifics in the past instead of generics or opinions about the future. People are terrible at predicting their own future behavior. They are reasonably accurate at reporting what they have actually done. Bad: "Would you pay for this?" Good: "How much have you spent trying to solve this problem in the last year?"
- Rule 3: Talk less and listen more. If you are talking more than 20-30% of the conversation, you are pitching, not learning. Every minute you spend explaining your idea is a minute you are not learning about the customer's reality
- The Mom Test "passes" when: you learn facts about the customer's life that are true regardless of whether your product exists. These facts are durable — they will not change based on the customer's mood or your pitch skills
- Questions that fail the Mom Test: "Do you think this is a good idea?" "Would you buy a product that does X?" "How much would you pay for X?" All of these invite the customer to be polite rather than honest