How to Validate Startup Ideas Using "The Mom Test"
One of the biggest challenges entrepreneurs face is validating their startup idea. How do you know if your idea is truly solving a problem people care about? How do you avoid building something nobody wants? Enter The Mom Test, a framework for asking the right questions to get honest, actionable feedback that even your mom can't lie to you about.
Whether you’re a first-time founder or a seasoned entrepreneur, this guide will help you navigate the early stages of idea validation with confidence.
What Is The Mom Test?
The Mom Test is a set of rules for crafting questions that even your mom can’t lie to you about. The premise is simple: like your mom, people are naturally polite and don’t want to hurt your feelings. If you talk about your idea, they’ll tell you what you want to hear, not the truth. This leads to false positives and wasted time building the wrong product.
The solution? Stop talking about your idea and start talking about your customers’ lives. By focusing on their problems, behaviors, and experiences, you can uncover real insights to guide your business decisions.
The 3 Rules of The Mom Test
People don’t care about your idea—they care about their own problems. Ask questions that help you understand their world, not questions that seek validation for your solution.
2. Ask about specifics in the past instead of generics or opinions about the future.
People are terrible at predicting their future behavior. Instead of asking hypothetical questions, focus on what they’ve actually done in the past.
3. Talk less and listen more.
The more you talk, the less you learn. Your goal is to gather facts, not opinions. Let your customers do the talking.
How to Ask Good Questions (and Avoid Bad Ones)
The quality of your questions determines the quality of your data. Here’s how to craft questions that pass The Mom Test:
Bad Questions to Avoid
- “Do you think it’s a good idea?”
Opinions are worthless. People will say yes to be polite, even if they’d never buy your product. - “Would you buy a product that did X?”
Future-tense questions are unreliable. People often overestimate their willingness to pay or change their behavior. - “How much would you pay for X?”
People will lie to avoid hurting your feelings. Instead, ask about their current spending habits. - “What would your dream product do?”
While this can be a good starting point, it often leads to feature requests that don’t address the root problem. Always dig deeper into the why behind their answers.
Good Questions to Ask
- “What are you currently doing to solve this problem?”
This reveals their existing solutions, pain points, and willingness to invest time or money. - “How much does this problem cost you?”
Understanding the financial impact helps you gauge the value of your solution. - “Talk me through the last time this happened.”
Specific, past-focused questions uncover real behaviors and frustrations. - “What else have you tried?”
If they haven’t tried anything, they might not care enough about the problem to pay for a solution. - “Why do you bother with this?”
This helps you understand their motivations and priorities. - “Who else should I talk to?”
Warm introductions are gold. This question helps you expand your network of potential customers.
Avoiding Bad Data: Compliments, Fluff, and Ideas
Even with the right questions, you can still end up with bad data. Here’s how to spot and avoid it:
1. Compliments
Compliments are the fool’s gold of customer validation. They feel good but provide no real value. If someone says, “This is a great idea!” deflect the compliment and dig deeper. Ask, “Why do you think it’s great? How would it fit into your workflow?”
2. Fluff
Fluff includes generic claims, hypotheticals, and future promises. For example:
- “I usually…”
- “I would definitely buy that.”
- “I might use it someday.”
To anchor fluff, bring the conversation back to specifics. Ask, “When’s the last time that happened?” or “Can you show me how you’re dealing with it now?”
3. Ideas
Customers often suggest features, but these ideas are misleading. Customers aren't very good at solving their own problems; that's your job. Instead of taking requests at face value, dig into the motivations behind them. Ask, “Why do you want that? What would it let you do?”
Asking Important Questions: The Elephant in the Room
Every startup has potential failure points. To avoid wasting time and money, you need to address the “elephant in the room”—the biggest risks to your business. These typically fall into three categories:
- Customer Risk: Can they pay? Are they easy to sell to?
- Market Risk: Do they want it? Are there enough of them?
- Product Risk: Can you build it? Will they keep using it?
For example, if you’re building a mobile app for local bars, the market and customer risks might be low (bars want more customers, and they’re willing to pay). But the product risk is high: can you attract enough users to make the app valuable to bar owners?
Keeping It Casual: How to Have Productive Conversations
Formal meetings can feel stiff and unnatural, making it harder to get honest feedback. Instead, aim for casual conversations. Here’s how:
- Don't make it feel like they're doing you a favour: If it feels that way, it’s probably too formal. Try to reduce your interview process to a few key questions that can be asked in a casual chat.
- Keep it short at first: Early conversations can be as short as 5–10 minutes. Chats grow longer as you move to more specific industry issues.
- Avoid pitching: The more you talk about your idea, the more biased their feedback will be. Make sure that you don't talk about your solution; just ask about the problem itself.
Commitment and Advancement: Separate Real Leads from Zombies
The ultimate goal of customer conversations is to validate your solution. To do this, you need to push for commitments—actions that show they’re serious about your product. These commitments can take the form of:
- Time: Setting up a follow-up meeting or using a prototype in their workflow.
- Reputation Risk: Introducing you to their boss or team.
- Money: Signing a letter of intent or making a pre-order. This is probably the most telling signal.
If someone isn’t willing to commit, they’re probably not a real lead. Don’t waste time on “zombie” customers who are friendly but never buy. Push for either a commitment or a rejection from them.
Finding and Framing Conversations: Where and How
Getting in front of potential customers can be challenging, especially in the early stages. Here are some strategies:
- Cold outreach: Start with cold calls or emails, but aim to transition to warm introductions.
- Immerse yourself: Attend industry events, join communities, and engage with your target audience.
- Create content: Blogging, speaking, or teaching about your industry can attract potential customers and establish credibility.
Avoid turning customer meetings into unproductive sales pitches. Frame the conversation to keep the focus on their insights, not your idea:
- Vision: Share the specific problem you're trying to solve (e.g., “We’re trying to solve X”).
- Framing: Clarify you’re in the learning phase and have nothing to sell yet.
- Weakness: Highlight the specific problem you need their help with.
- Pedestal: Explain why their expertise is valuable.
- Ask: Directly request their help.
How Many Meetings?
There’s no fixed number—keep having conversations until you stop hearing new insights. If feedback is inconsistent, your customer segment may be too broad and needs refining.
Choosing Your Customers: Segment and Slice
To get consistent feedback, you need to focus on a specific segment. For example, instead of targeting “small businesses,” focus on “small e-commerce businesses with 10–50 employees.” This specificity makes it easier to find patterns and validate your idea.
Customer slicing involves breaking a broad customer segment into smaller, more specific groups to identify who to target and where to find them. Start with a broad segment and ask:
- Who wants it most? Narrow down by motivations (e.g., goals, problems).
- Where are they? Identify behaviors and workarounds they use to achieve their goals.
- Prioritize: Focus on the most profitable, reachable, and rewarding subgroups.
For example, for a public-speaking app, start with “people who want to improve communication skills” but slice further into subgroups like “first-time wedding speakers” or “salespeople,” then find where they seek advice (e.g., Google, specific websites). Good segments are who-where pairs: keep slicing until you know exactly who to target and where to find them.
You also want to avoid talking to the wrong people, which mainly happens in 1 of 3 ways:
- Segment too broad: Talking to everyone means many won’t fit.
- Missed segments: For example, an app for kids must also target parents who control what apps their kids can use.
- Overlooked stakeholders: In B2B, consider all decision-makers (e.g., partners, distributors).
Running the Process: Avoid Bottlenecks
Customer discovery is a team effort. Don't become a learning bottleneck where your team has to rely solely on your subjective interpretation of customer feedback. To avoid this:
Prep together
Decide on your top 3 questions and hypothesize your beliefs about your target customer and industry before each conversation.
Review together
Share key takeaways and update your beliefs and 3 big questions as a team after each conversation. Also review the meta-level of the conversation itself, like which questions worked and which didn’t.
Take good notes
Capture exact quotes and specific behaviours to ensure objectivity. It's good to audio/video record, but combine this with good notes to avoid overwhelming the team. Capture the specific insights as well as the emotions conveyed by the customer in your notes.
One useful way to capture emotions and specifics is using shorthand symbols
Have 2 people sit in
As a rule of thumb, have 2 people in the meeting: one to talk and one to take notes. The second person can spot missed signals or poor questions and step in to help. Avoid more than 2 people to prevent overwhelming the interviewee.
The Customer Conversation Process
Before Conversations:
- Choose a focused, findable customer segment.
- Define your top 3 learning goals with your team.
- Plan ideal next steps and commitments.
- Identify who to talk to and make educated guesses about their priorities.
- Use desk research to answer any preliminary questions.
During Conversations:
- Frame the discussion around their problems, not your idea.
- Keep it casual and ask questions that pass The Mom Test.
- Deflect compliments, anchor fluff, and dig into motivations.
- Take detailed notes and, if appropriate, push for commitments or next steps.
After Conversations:
- Review notes and key quotes with your team.
- Store insights systematically and update your beliefs and plans.
- Define the next 3 big questions to explore.
Final Thoughts: Validation Is a Continuous Process
Validating your startup idea isn’t a one-time event—it’s an ongoing process. By using The Mom Test, you can gather honest feedback, avoid bad data, and build a product that solves real problems. Remember, the goal isn’t to prove your idea is right; it’s to find out if it’s wrong as quickly and cheaply as possible.
So, get out there, ask the right questions, and listen carefully. Your customers will tell you everything you need to know—if you let them.
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