The Mom Test, How to Talk to Users

AirBnb founder spent one week with first customer before he even had a product.

Users and customer keep you honest

Build personal connection with your users.

100% of employees are people. 100% of customers are people. 100% of investors are people. If you don't understand people, you don't understand business.

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Some people do this for a living! Their skillset is gold for startup founders.

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Don’t be afraid of rejection.

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Understanding motivations is critical.

Don’t only understand what they’re saying, but what they’re doing, their behaviour

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Their job is to tell you about their problems, your job is to figure our features and solutions.

Focus on problems, not features.

If users ask for features, try to understand the deeper problem.

Don’t over-intellectualise.

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Pick someone who is not into your industry, not an expert, and you get more honest feedback.

If you have multiple kind of users, like a two-sided marketplace, you gotta talk to both, separately. The motivations of the people on one side will be very different from the motivations of the people on the other side.

If you have more than 2 separate kind of users, you gotta prioritise.

If you think some users are using your product, try to understand whether and how they’re actually using it.