It’s not anyone else’s responsibility to show us the truth. It’s our responsibility to find it. We do that by asking good questions
If you’ve ever sat in a customer interview and walked out thinking “OMG, that went great!” only to realise months later that nothing you learned was actionable, this book is for you!
Rob Fitzpatrick’s The Mom Test teaches you how to talk to customers without getting lied to (intentionally or not). The rules are quite simple:
- Connect with customers (ask about their life, what they like/dislike),
- Get specific examples,
- And listen more than you talk.
The book breaks down why most customer interviews fail and how to fix them, with simple, practical tips.
Who should read it?
- Product managers, leaders, and founders refining early ideas.
- Product teams in discovery mode who want to avoid building features nobody needs.
What is the Mom Test?
The Mom Test focuses on how to overcome lies when talking to customers. Remember, customers don’t lie because they want to trick you, but because humans are wired to be polite, supportive, and optimistic (just like your mom or your friends).
Why most customer conversations fail
Doing it wrong is worse than doing nothing at all. When you know you’re clueless, you tend to be careful, but collecting a fistful of false positives is like convincing a drunk he’s sober: not an improvement.
Simply “talking to customers” doesn’t guarantee useful insights. In fact, most teams do it wrong. They often ask leading questions (“Would you buy this?”), chase compliments (“That sounds great!”), or accept hypotheticals (“I would totally use that”) as evidence.
These create dangerous false positives that trick them into believing they have validated an idea, when in fact they are just hearing polite noise.
To avoid this, Fitzpatrick introduces the idea that only facts from the customer’s real past behavior can be trusted, and everything else is distraction.
The three rules of good questioning
The world’s most deadly inaccuracy is: ‘I would definitely buy that.’ It sounds concrete, and as a founder, you desperately want to believe it’s money in the bank. But people are wildly optimistic about what they would do in the future.
The solution is captured in three simple but powerful rules, Fitzpatrick calls “The Mom Test*”*:
Talk about their life, not your idea.
Focus on customers’ experiences and problems rather than pitching. The moment you describe your solution, customers start imagining hypotheticals instead of describing reality. They become consultants trying to help you rather than sources of truth about their own behaviour.
Focus on their world instead. What are they trying to achieve? What obstacles do they face? How do they work around those obstacles today? These questions keep the conversation grounded in facts rather than speculation.
Ask about specifics in the past, not opinions about the future.
"Would you use this?" tells you nothing. "When did you last face this problem?" tells you everything. The first question invites optimism, whereas the second demands memory. Only the second reveals whether this problem is significant enough to take action.
If someone can't describe a specific instance from the last month, the problem is probably not urgent. If they can't remember how they tried to solve it, it's not painful enough to matter.
Talk less, listen more.
Make sure you are the person talking the least in a customer conversation. The more you talk, the more likely you are to introduce bias and the less you are likely to learn.
Every word you speak introduces bias. When you explain context, offer examples, or guide the conversation toward your hypothesis, you contaminate the data.
The best discovery conversations feel one-sided, where the customer does 80% of the talking. Your goal is to mostly ask short, open questions and wait.
From these rules, Fitzpatrick shows how to spot and fix bad data:
- Compliments should be deflected.
- Fluff should be anchored with specifics (“When was the last time this happened?”).
- Ideas and requests should not be taken at face value, but be unpacked for motivation.
The goal is to gain a deep understanding of the customer’s world (their constraints, pains, and goals) so you can determine whether the problems they have are worth solving.
Turning truth into commitment
Commitment: they are showing they’re serious by giving up something they value such as time, reputation, or money.Advancement: they are moving to the next step of your real-world funnel and getting closer to a sale
There is one last step once you have uncovered the truth about customers’ problems: turning insights into validation.
Every conversation should aim to answer a “scary” question that could potentially kill your idea (“Why do you bother solving this at all?”, “What happens if you don’t?”). These tough questions help separate must-solve problems from minor annoyances. Bad news are progress: a clear “no” is infinitely more useful than a polite “maybe.”
But even when you find a strong problem, enthusiasm isn’t enough. Real validation comes from commitments and advancements:
- Time (agreeing to a follow-up meeting).
- Reputation (making an introduction).
- Money (pre-orders, budget allocation).
A pipeline of concrete commitments is the only reliable signal that you’re on the right track.
Misdjuging customers’ statements
A few years ago, one of our consultants was working on marketing tools, helping B2C companies automate social media conversations with an AI chatbot. He had run extensive customer discovery and identified a key problem mentioned by most interviewees: semantic analysis of social media chats.
The pain: companies needed to have an understanding of their customers’ emotional state to better understand their buying intentions. As we moved forward with the feature, everything looked great: customers kept saying they were excited, they agreed in principle to launch, and every conversation ended with “We love this idea, let’s do it soon.”
But weeks passed, then months, and the pilot never launched. Each time, they had a new reason to delay (waiting for budget approval, aligning schedules, integrating with another system, …). Eventually, we discovered the uncomfortable truth: they didn’t actually need this**.** The “problem” it solved wasn’t painful enough for them to act, and the delays were just polite ways of avoiding saying “no”.
Looking back, if he had grounded our discovery in questions like “Tell me about the last time this issue came up” or “How did you try to solve it?”, the red flags might have popped up earlier. As there were no real stories, no expensive workarounds, no emotional frustration, we realised the problem simply didn’t matter enough.
How to apply the Mom Test in problem framing
At dualoop, we structure product work through our execution flow that moves from problem framing to solution discovery to market impact. The Mom Test principles live in the first phase, where teams define what problem is worth solving.
Most teams rush this phase: they assume the problem is obvious, or they accept the first articulation they hear. But problem framing is where the leverage is. Get this wrong, and everything downstream compounds the error.
Here's how we use The Mom Test to sharpen problem framing.
Ground every conversation in a recent situation.
"Tell me about the last time this problem came up." This question anchors the discussion in reality. You hear what really happened, not what might happen, and see whether the problem is frequent or rare, disruptive or just annoying.
Unpack the workaround.
"How did you try to solve it?" This reveals whether they care enough to act. If they have built a manual process, created a spreadsheet, or paid for a partial solution, the problem matters. If they shrugged and moved on, it doesn't.
Identify the cost of inaction.
"What happens if you ignore it?" Some problems feel urgent in the moment but disappear when left alone, and others compound. This question separates inconveniences from blockers.
Map the stakeholders.
"Who else was involved, and how did they react?" Problems that affect one person rarely justify investment, but problems that cascade across teams or departments create urgency. This question reveals scope.
One thing to remember
Rule of thumb: opinions are worthless, behavior is everything.
Talking to customers is essential for building a great product, but it’s also full of traps (biases, false signals, and polite lies) that can easily steer you in the wrong direction if you don’t know how to handle them.
The core lesson: unless your customers can describe a real, recent story of how they solved (or failed to solve), a painful problem (yesterday, last week, last month) and they won't commit (time, reputation, or money) to testing a solution, you can’t be sure it’s a problem worth solving.
Your job isn't to hear what you want to hear. It's to find out what's true, even when the truth is that your idea doesn't solve a problem worth solving.
