The Mom Test — Customer Interviews That Don't Lie to You

SKILL.md

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name: the-mom-test
description: "Activate when: a founder is about to talk to customers/users to validate an idea; 'I asked people and they loved it', 'how do I run customer interviews', 'is there demand for this?', pre-PMF discovery. Do NOT activate when: the question is quantitative A/B testing on an existing product (use analytics), or the decision needs no customer input."
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# The Mom Test — Customer Interviews That Don't Lie to You

## Overview
The Mom Test (Rob Fitzpatrick, 2013) is a way to talk to customers so that even your mom can't give you a false positive. The rule: **ask about their life and past behavior, never about your idea.** Compliments, hypotheticals ("would you buy?"), and pitch-then-ask all generate flattering noise founders mistake for validation. Good interviews collect facts about what people already do, pay for, and struggle with.

## When to Use
- Before building, to test whether a problem is real and painful
- When early "positive" feedback isn't converting to usage or revenue
- Choosing between problems/segments to pursue

## The Process
1. **Talk about their life, not your idea.** Never mention the product first. Ask what they're trying to get done and how they do it today.
2. **Ask about specifics in the past, not opinions about the future.** "When did you last hit this problem? Walk me through it." not "Would you use X?"
3. **Dig for the three currencies of commitment:** time, reputation risk, money. Real pain shows up as workarounds already paid for.
4. **Anchor vague claims to reality.** "Always" → "how many times last month?" "I'd pay a lot" → "what do you pay now?"
5. **Shut up and listen.** Talk <30% of the time. *Gate: if you pitched or they complimented the idea, that data is contaminated → discard it.*
6. **End with a real advance,** not a compliment: an intro, a pre-order, a follow-up meeting, access to data. *Gate: no advance offered = you learned nothing actionable → the interview failed.*

## Applying It Well
- The best signal is an existing workaround they already spend on.
- "That's interesting / I'd definitely buy that" = fluff; treat as zero.
- Talk to people about a problem you can watch them have, not a demographic.

## Red Flags
- Leaving the interview happy (usually means you fished for compliments).
- Feature requests taken literally instead of tracing the underlying problem.
- Only talking to friends/supporters.

## Verification
- [ ] Idea was NOT mentioned until the end
- [ ] Every claim anchored to a specific past instance
- [ ] Existing workarounds + what they cost identified
- [ ] A concrete commitment (time/reputation/money) requested

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*Part of **deciqAI Knowledge Skills** — 223 open-source thinking skills that make rigor executable for AI agents. The same skills power every deciqAI agent, which runs them autonomously to operate your company. **See it run → https://www.deciqai.com/c/the-mom-test** · ⭐ Star the repo → https://github.com/deciqAI/knowledge-skills · Contributions welcome.*