The Mom Test

the mom test actually

Continuous discovery habits by Teresa Torres https://www.producttalk.org/2021/05/continuous-discovery-hab... (https://www.producttalk.org/2021/05/continuous-discovery-habits/) And The mom test Are the ones I’ve used the most as a product manager trying to talk to customers every week.

I think The Mom Test stands out as a favorite just because it really made me realize I had no idea what I was doing. Making Users Awesome guided me towards the mindset shift needed to build product better, and Deploy Empathy gave me the exact questions to ask in customer interviews when I was stuck.

Have heard so many good things about the mom test Definitely will give it a read! :)

- The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick - Deploy Empathy by Michele Hansen - Badass: Making Users Awesome by Kathy Sierra

2nd mom test. Such a classic

“The mom test” maybe?

The Mom Test teaches you how to ask the right questions to make sure potential customers actually have a need for and will pay for what you are building vs. lying to be polite. The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you https://a.co/d/8rxZlJ7

My list: 1. The mom test (already mentioned) - idea validation 2. Zero to one by Thiel - contrarian original thinking 3. The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz - Operating lessons 4. Paul Grahams essays and pretty much all content put out by YC Beyond this it’s all about the nature of the founder and where /how you see value

I think you need to be careful thinking that the books will be the most valuable input you can get as a Startup. The most basic skill of any business is to "Sell what people want to buy", as Paul Graham puts it. If you just sit and think about that, it encapsulates almost everything that is important about a business: To sell, people need to know about the product/business (marketing), you have to build it (development) and you have to sell it (sales). But you put good people in those roles and they will do their jobs but still not make much money. Why? People need to want to buy it and the main driver for that is a balance of a Customer-focussed Product Manager as well as a DNA of what the company is about and what it is offering. You want to make things customers want but they don't always know what they want and you might be selling something different, in which case your marketing message might be off. The books might say "Always be closing" or "Marketing is everything" or "Deliver junk and iterate" and these are all partial truths but they can also come at a cost to other more effective parts of the business.…

Strong +1 - the book is also very concise and full of practical advice. I wish we've put the learnings into practice even earlier in the process of building fragmentapp.io

It depends on your startup's stage. If it doesn't exist yet (and based on your submissions, it doesn't), you can start after reading The Mom Test. You might also want to read The Lean Startup. However, you can read a dozen books and still be stuck in the research phase. Reading alone doesn't create your startup. If you understand The Mom Test and apply its knowledge, you're ready to start. Be cautious of advice from people who have read hundreds of books on starting a startup - they may not have had the time to actually create one. Go validate your idea, and (hopefully) start building. Good luck!

I second this recommendation for early startups. We learn from tons of lean books that customer discovery is crucial to not build the wrong thing, but this book gives very practical ways to do that well. Most recent useful read for me. Still in the lean canon, a great complementary read could be lean marketing, as validating your sales channel is of an equal importance of validating your PMF.

I was going to mention The Mom Test when I saw the title of your Ask HN, so I'll dive a bit deeper because it's IMHO the most important book I read when starting my current startup[0] and it's what took us to first sale before the MVP was even available. > before investing in your idea, talk to potential customers to see if anyone wants it or not. I would reframe this a bit, otherwise someone not familiar with the book will take from your quote the exact opposite lesson from the one taught in The Mom Test. I believe the main lesson from the book is: - Don't talk to people about your ideas - Ask people about their actual use cases and frustrations - Figure out where they're struggling, investing effort and money. Let them talk - Don't ask people about your idea and don't ask them if they want it or not. You're only trying to validate the problem. Questions to ask: What's the hardest thing about [doing this thing]? Tell me about the last time you encountered that problem... Why was that hard? What, if anything, have you done to try to solve the problem? What don't you love about the solutions you've tried?…

I also think this is a must-read for would-be entrepreneurs. Probably nine times out of ten when someone tells me about their startup idea looking for advice I point them to this book first because they haven't done the basic validation yet and want to jump right into building something that no one actually wants.

* Crossing the Chasm * The Mom Test * The Almanack of Naval Ravikant * The Cold Start Problem

I absolutely recommend it.

I can't recommend this book enough. Even if you have a lot of experience with early stage customer development, you'll learn things from The Mom Test

- The Mom Test - 4 Steps to the Epiphany - The Personal MBA (Josh Kaufman) - Lean Analytics - Good Strategy Bad Strategy

Everyone even thinking about creating a startup should read "The Mom Test" first.

I’m currently reading Peopleware which is simultaneously very insightful and very obvious. It’s also a bit of a marker in time of how software development worked. I’d say a lot has improved with remote work, at least for some companies. I found The Mom Test pretty helpful for honing a product mindset. I’ve fallen into the trap of writing code simply because I find it less daunting than talking to users. The Mom Test is a good reminder on priorities.

You should read the book that was recommended. Mom Test is about how to talk to customers without doing what you did. It’s also the most practical business book I’ve ever read. It actually tells you how to execute the ideas than just the ideas.

Besides all the typical startup recommendation, I’ll advocate for something about talking to customers. Everything else is secondary. - Mom Test

Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick. Found it to be a very well written book with simple but useful todos.