Key Principles (from The Mom Test)

• Be genuinely interested in the people to open their hearts
• The measure of usefulness of early customer interviews is whether they give us facts about our customer's lives and world views
• "Talk me through the last time [it] happened" — great question promoting show don't tell
• The big mistake is to mention your idea too soon rather than too late
• Customers own the problem, builders own the solution

Detecting Signal vs. Noise

• Be wary of bad data: compliments and fluff
• Banned verbs: would/could/might — these indicate hypothetical situations, not reality
• Cut down fluff by anchoring to the real
  • Don't prematurely zoom in unless you're pretty sure you're zooming into the right thing
• Plan the most important three things you want to learn from each person

Finding the Right Customers

• Look for deep emotions — keep close people who say "This is the worst part of my life and you can help me fix it"
• Customer segments are who-where pairs
• Customer segmentation as a tool not to drown in options
• Before we can serve everyone, we must serve someone
• Ask: "What are the user and customer actions that drive business results?"

Connecting Research to Outcomes

• Understand what customers are doing that drives the results we care about
• Use customer journey maps to visualize behavior (which relates to outcomes)
• After visualizing, ask "what behaviors at each step predict failure/success"
• This helps define boosters/blockers for desired outcomes
• The goal of early stages is learning; revenue is a side-effect