Video Transcript

In the Q&A portion of Startup Shop Talk, our weekly interactive livestream show on YouTube, a viewer asked why customer feedback can be positive pre-launch, and yet lackluster post-launch.

Using this as a springboard to talk about customer validation, Dan and JDM chatted about the difficulty of knowing if customers are telling you the truth, or just telling you what you want to hear. They recommend using the "mom test" in customer discovery — meaning asking questions in a way that even your own mother would have no choice but to tell you the truth. It's about emotion and empathy.