[Remote Mom Test 1] Reminder of the Mom Test and intro to remote custdev

[@WonieSong]

Came here after reading the book! Thanks for the gem. Made me realize a lot of mistakes I kept repeating when trying to talk to customers

[@robfitzpatrick]

Glad it was helpful!

[@joaquinpatroncostas5910]

Hi Rob! thanks for your invaluable work, I think phone calling in remote conversations is better than video calling to maintain informal conversations.. what is your experience?

[@robfitzpatrick]

An interesting question, and I don't know the answer. I've been doing it all via video calls recently (made easier by building a community of my customers where they ask questions and talk about their problems). I have learned, however, that it's extremely important to frame the conversation (create a space for learning and asking about their life), since otherwise video calls need an agenda/purpose, and that purpose always ends up being a pitch unless you make it something different.

[@dr.fabrizioprado1361]

Great book! I am also interested in something like a mom test for online surveys, not for direct conversations. Do you have knowledge or tips about that too?

[@robfitzpatrick]

The best I've seen for surveys is in chapter 2 of Making Websites Win (www.amazon.com/Making-Websites-Win-Customer-Centric-Methodology/dp/1544500513). In general, surveys are better for *existing* customers and less-so for non-customers, but I think you'll find the above book helpful in either case.

[@dr.fabrizioprado1361]

@@robfitzpatrick Thank you :)

[@nuchojm]

Great 🙌🏽, thanks

[@raghavbudhraja5391]

What will be the examples of scary questions? Only thing I couldn’t apply from Mom Test book

[@robfitzpatrick]

Some business ideas won't have them (or won't have many), but scary questions are generally the ones that could completely invalidate the whole idea. This could include asking for a commitment (intro to boss, lawyer, budget information, payment, etc), which is almost always a "scary question" since it gives them a clear opportunity to reject you, but it can also happen in the discovery stage via asking something like, "It sounds like this is a pretty big problem; may I ask why you haven't already done something to fix it?" Since that gives them a chance to show you that they actually don't care. Or it might be something like a food startup asking a big grocery store how they pick suppliers/partners to work with, only to hear that the supply chain is pretty rigid and doesn't allow for random startups to enter. Scary questions are quite company-specific, so it's hard to generalize, but they're basically single questions that would disprove your entire business model and force you to pivot, and we tend to flinch away from asking them since we know the answer could be so disheartening.

[@raghavbudhraja5391]

@@robfitzpatrick Thanks Love this Rob looks like you really care about "MOM Test Community". I'm 21 Indian in YC SS. Founder of PeakPals, How can i help you in what you're doing. Convo w users or any other thing?

[@robfitzpatrick]

@@raghavbudhraja5391 I'm doing alright at the moment, so the best thing you can do is to keep building your skills and/or business and let me know if you run into more questions :). Thanks for the support.

[@nerdycode]

Thanks for the book and these follow-up videos. Do you ever think there is a situation where offering an incentive like a gift card makes sense? I've heard of people doing this before, but I'm wondering how it might change the dynamic of the conversation.

[@robfitzpatrick]

Incentives are fine for stuff like user testing where it's about action rather than conversation, but I wouldn't generally advise using incentives for pure custdev convos, since it can obscure or bias a bunch of important signals. (Including the all--important signal of whether they care enough about the issue to be excited to talk about it in the first place.)

[@nerdycode]

@@robfitzpatrick thank you!

[@vivayo4588]

Man, are you in Spain living la vida loca en quarantina?

[@robfitzpatrick]

A long delayed response, but yes. This video was from my place in Barcelona, and moved up to the sub-Pyrenees mountains once the first lockdown eased up.

[@atthismoment3006]

why does this person look SO DIFFERENT every time-