The best customer question never mentions your idea

In The Mom Test, entrepreneur Rob Fitzpatrick starts with a trap: if you ask your mom whether your business idea is good, she'll say yes — because she loves you. But everyone does a softer version of this. Ask any person "Would you use an app that does X?" and they'll be polite, optimistic, and completely useless as a signal.

The fix is counterintuitive: never talk about your idea at all. Instead, ask about the person's actual life — what they did last week, what the problem last cost them, what they've already tried and paid for. "Do you think it's a good idea?" is a bad question; "Walk me through the last time this happened to you" is a good one, because it digs up facts about the past instead of opinions about the future.

Fitzpatrick's rule of thumb: a conversation passes the test only if it would survive being asked to your mom — meaning the questions are so grounded in real behavior that even a biased listener couldn't flatter you into a false positive. Compliments and hypotheticals are worthless data; specifics, commitments, and money are gold.