Comment by sebastiennight | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sebastiennight | Hacker News Reader

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?

[0]: https://www.onetake.ai (an autonomous AI video editor for SMBs)

>don't ask them if they want it or not

After reading the book my understanding was to not even ask this question. See if they have already tried to solve the problem by looking for another app or going to excruciating lengths to solve it another way. If yes, then they will probably buy your product.

You are saying the same thing as the quote :)

Not knowing the book, but this sounds a lot like a scientific mindset where people try not to bullshit themselves.

This is good advice, many people who start out only see what they want to see. Yet, this can go into the other direction as well, where people tie themselves to the result of one poll or survey as they have lost touch with their customer base completely.

As always: if people tell you about their problems aand things they dislike those things are real even if they don't make sense. If they tell you how to solve it they are most likely wrong.

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

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.

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