Artificial intelligence was not used in the generation or editing of this blog post.

‘The Mom Test’ by Rob Fitzpatrick is a book about startup idea validation with guidelines for user conversations. You should never pitch your idea (including to your mom) until you’re ready to push for commitments that can ensure the survival of your business. Only the market can tell you if your idea is good.

Deflect compliments and lukewarm responses and instead navigate the conversation around user pain points. Focus on having early stage customer conversations that give concrete facts about your customer’s lives and world views which then lead to commitments which validate your idea.

Conversations not interviews

Keep it casual! Don’t think of them as interviews, but conversations. Formality is expensive not just from a scheduling perspective, but reduces your chance of insights and referrals for more conversations. Conversations will likely be pleasant since you’re curious about their problem. If it feels like they’re doing you a favour, it’s probably too formal!

Prepare important questions (or hypotheses)

Search out the scary questions you’ve been unintentionally avoiding. You can identify an important question when the answer could completely change or disprove your business.

What are the three big things you’re trying to improve or fix right now? Make sure these are highlighted before starting a conversation. Imagine the company has failed, ask why? Imagine the company succeeded, what needed to happen for it to be true? Be terrified of at least one question.

Having conversations

Use your important questions to prepare a script of conversation prompts. If it’s possible to verify information about the user online beforehand, do it so you can focus on extracting insights from the discussion.

Don’t mention your idea and focus on them and their life. You’re looking for emotional signals which indicate there’s a problem that needs to be solved. Don’t pitch your idea, until you’re ready to ask for commitments.

Try to stay flexible. If you’re stuck, ask about specific stories or situations in their past, and in general keep the conversation on them by asking open ended questions. Talk less and listen more.

The following doesn’t give you concrete data and can be misleading:

  • Compliments: a confirmation without a commitment, it’s also an indicator that the conversation could finish prematurely
  • Generics or hypotheticals: again, a confirmation without commitment. You’ve likely asked a bad question that doesn’t give you any sold data
  • Ideas or feature requests: there’s no commitment anchoring the decision, so you never know if it will be successful or not

Instead, deflect them and politely redirect the conversation back to talking about them and their problem. Keep having conversations until you’re not learning anything new. If you keep getting new information, your customer segment is likely too big.

Making conversations worth it

Take notes! Make sure to pay specific attention to:

  • Strong emotions: use this to find pain points for product opportunities
  • Exact quotes: useful for marketing language, fundraising decks, and resolving arguments
  • Specific people or company names: good for building context and follow up conversations

Make sure to share these notes and update your information repository in whatever form that is. It’s important to share findings within the team, and also make sure their questions have been answered. Talk with them about meta-level questions, which ones worked and which didn’t?

Be flexible with your note taking and do whatever works. Sometimes you might use your laptop, other times you might think it’s too formal, or have to take scrappy notes on a napkin. Whatever method you use, make sure to condense and share the information with your team!

Commitments

Once you’ve done enough user conversations, you’ll start converging on a problem that needs a solution. If you’re not, then maybe your customer segment is too broad and you can’t find consistent problems and goals. A good indication is if there isn’t a clear physical or digital location where you can find customers. It’s probably too broad!

In addition to finding a problem that needs solving. Ensure your customers are:

  • Reachable
  • Profitable
  • Personally rewarding: you’re about to dedicate a large portion of your life to thinking and interacting with these people. Make sure you’re fighting the same fight!

Strive to find early adopters

Early customers that commit to your startup are crazy. They’re trusting you with their hard earned cash when you have no track record, and also willing to put up with buggy MVPs. Actively search for these people since it’s essential for validation and context for developing the early stages of your product.

When having conversations, if you find someone that: has the problem, knows they have the problem, and has the budget to solve it. Try and push for a commitment from them.

Commitments are usually in the form of:

  • Time: Agreeing on a clear next meeting with known goals, sitting down to give feedback on wireframes, using a trial of the product for a non-trivial period
  • Reputation: Introduction to peers, team or decision makers, public testimonial or case study
  • Money: Letter of intent, pre-order, deposit

Finding conversations

This is all great stuff! But how do I start having these important conversations in the first place? Why, that’s a great question!

The key to sourcing conversations is to be flexible and utilise different sources. Immerse yourself in where you would normally find your customers, and don’t be afraid to bust out the notepad to take notes. Seize serendipity, and don’t overformalise things!

Conversations in person are preferable since people try to squeeze phone calls in between other important life events. ‘Jumping on a call’ automatically seems more formal which means your responses won’t be as candid and also decreases your chance of getting referrals.

Bring them to you!

If you’ve maximised out all known existing channels. Bring them to you! Being the instigator immediately gives you credibility, and ensures the theme stays on topic. Some ideas:

  • Organise meetups
  • Blog
  • Create warm intros
  • Leverage industry advisors

If you’re still out of ideas. Resort to cold conversations, but keep in mind that the goal of cold conversations is to stop having them by transitioning to warm conversations via referrals.

At the end of conversations, make sure to ask for referrals of people with similar problems! If the conversation went well, and you were focused on them and their problem, they should be jumping at the chance to introduce you.

Conclusion

Flipping your perspective on early user ‘interviews’ so that they’re more like casual conversations means you can be more flexible and guide the discussion about their pain points. Following rules like not pitching until you’re ready to ask for commitment, as well as indicators for your first potential early adopters starts your company off on a strong product focus.