The Mom Test 2nd Edition
How to talk to customers and figure out if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you
About the Book
This 2nd edition has three main goals:
1. Modernize all examples and clarify common points of confusion
2. Address the AI question (tldr: substantially faster process around conversational core)
3. Improved resources for teachers, trainers, and students
Contents
How customer development has changed with the accelerating pace of agentic software development.
How to ask good questions, avoid bad data, overcome bias, and use what you learn to accelerate product.
The core blunder of customer learning, and how to fix it.
A more rigorous justification of how foundational understanding accelerates product iteration, plus clearer comparison against other tools for learning.
A major rewrite of the previous Bad Data chapter, including a clearer framework, a more structured toolkit of solutions, and better examples.
Crafting questions that are not just unbiased, but also strategically important.
Finding and framing the conversations is every bit as important as what you ask. Substantially expanded coverage of the efficiency issue raised by the accelerating pace of agentic development.
How to send invites, start the meeting, find the people to talk to, and make them want to talk to you in return.
Formality as a source of bias, and how to solve it at every level, from the meeting's context and environment to your mindset and note-taking.
A radical rethinking of how much formality and structure is really required, and the cornerstone of marketing-native custdev.
A mix of new and updated material, covering practical essentails (like note-taking vs. transcription), expanding the process beyond founder-led learning, and making decisions based on what you've learned.
How to integrate customer learning into sales-driven processes, for team-wide learning at scale
How to integrate customer learning into marketing-driven processes, for team-wide learning at scale
Additional examples, templates, cheat-sheets, and more.
Workshop outlines, classroom exercises, slide decks, discussion prompts, and more.
What readers say
One of the few great practical books I've ever read. Whoever has an idea to build something, please read it before even wasting your resources.
Ounce for ounce, there's no better way to learn what customers want and will buy than this wonderful little book. If you want your new product or new business to succeed, start here.
Read this short book! We believe this is the best and most accessible book for entrepreneus who are seeking product market fit.
[The Mom Test] book is awesome. We've been recommending it to all YC founders since last batch.
If you aren't sure about how to ask the "right" questions to ascertain whether there is real customer pain, the best book on the subject is The Mom Test. I highly recommend it.
Early stage founders - Please read The Mom Test.