I tried getting my co-founder (a serious old-skool sales guy) to read it, but he refused because he didn't need to be told anything about sales. Then he made exactly all the mistakes you talk about in the book when talking to our prospects. It was my first clue that maybe having a good salesperson as co-founder wasn't going to be the great experience I was anticipating. 2 years later the project died because we didn't get any customers.
I recommend the book to everyone now. If they don't immediately go "this is awesome!" then I'm suspicious ;)
Plus you lose half your equity right off the bat and you are dependent on someone and you aren't really sure what they're going to do for you.
VCs and investors are the only ones who like co-founders because then they can fire one of you that will later on if you're not doing what they want.
In particular, stuff like digging beneath requirements & feature requests to understand the root cause and their current behavior. And probably also the general idea of opening up a safe space for open learning at the beginning of each conversation (which is also a common idea in other sales approaches like SPIN Selling).
Also, it would be more useful while scoping out a new product/market, and less useful for products that are already mature/defined.
So my guess is that you'd get a couple useful ideas, but not a book's worth.
Just a small technical issue: I just tried to buy the book on http://momtestbook.com/ via Gumroad, and Chrome refuses to autofill the credit card number in the Gumroad widget because the site is http-only. I circumvented that by copying the link from the "Buy on Gumroad" button, but it might be hurting your sales. Consider adding SSL certificate or just make the button click open the Gumroad site.
(If anyone else needs it, the direct/secure gumroad PDF link is https://gum.co/momtest, and the paperback/ebook are on Amazon.)
So with that caveat out of the way, my top-of-mind career advice for entrepreneurial introverts is:
1 // Learning how to talk to (and listen to) people is probably the highest-leverage career skill you'll ever learn, even if you only go from "terrible" to "functional." There's a tremendous amount of discomfort while learning it, but that discomfort is temporary. I'll never "like" talking to strangers, and I'll always need to manage my energy levels, context, and recovery time. That being said, the ability to do so when useful to my career (like custdev or sales or fundraising) or life (like making friends in a new city or negotiating with an angry plumber) has been transformational. The pain is temporary and the benefit is profound.
2 // Journal each morning. Braindump your frustrations/goals/fears onto paper. Your brain likely works differently from most "successful" people, which means that the common advice won't fully resonate with you, and you'll need to chart more of your own path. This requires thinking, and for a lot of introverts, writing is the clearest way to think (but if you're different, use what works for you). Similarly, run every piece of advice you hear (well, the compelling bits anyway) through a personality filter, normalize it for personality/context, and then decide whether it's likely to be right you. Common example: "Go to that conference and meet some customers!" Maybe that works for other people, but it has a 0% chance of working for me. But there's a valuable core concept to that advice (go engage with new customers) that can perhaps be adjusted to a context I'm comfortable in.
3 // Cultivate relationships with strong potential cofounders long before you need them. You'll never be as quick on the draw in conversation as others, so you need the important relationships built ahead of time. For potential cofounders (the most important network available), the way to do that is by collaborating on small, time-constrained side projects. Allows both parties to evaluate what each other bring to table outside of an "urgent" situation, and without relying on quick talking.
4 // Don't let anyone press you into "right now" negotiations or decisions. Use live conversations to gather data, and then use your time alone to process it and come to a decision about next steps. Repeat if necessary. Nobody will give you this time by default, but nobody will deny it to you once you ask (and if they do, you probably shouldn't work with them anyway).
There's probably more, that's just top of mind, but it's what feels important to my brain right now.
My feeling has always been that if a book can be sufficiently summarized in a blog post, then it should be a blog post ;). And if someone reads the summary and fully "gets it," they probably would have been frustrated by the full book, since they probably already had a lot of the foundational knowledge in place. So it's better if they don't buy it in the first place. And different people will read the summary, want the extra detail, and grab the full book, which is great too.
Even with piracy of the full book (which is currently #1 on google for various fairly guessable searches), I still feel that it ends up coming back to me via word of mouth. Piracy probably hurts "bad" books that are propped up by PR, but it definitely helps books that people find useful, since they end up recommending it to other folks who may pay.
I revisit it often
1. You can still do full "discovery" (i.e., understanding what they're already doing and why, decision-making, current workarounds, etc.), which gives you a better foundation of understanding from which to come up with product ideas
2. But it's MUCH harder to do conversation-only "validation" (i.e., getting confirmation that they're going to buy and use your specific thing before it exists)
So in B2C (and also if building something deep into the future, like 3D Printing), you basically do your discovery as normal and then skip the commitments/validation, jump straight to a quick prototype, and follow the normal iterative product-first learning approach.
A couple Q&A videos (<5min each) that might be relevant:
- You can't learn everything, but can learn more than nothing: https://youtu.be/O16IefIu1zc
- Situations where you need a prototype to keep learning: https://youtu.be/EZGiaIxB0HA
- Traps and solutions to 'nice-to-have' validation: https://youtu.be/yxQoRp01HuQ
Thank you for writing the book, I recommended it many times.
Too many authors seem to forget that readers pay for every book twice: once with the cover price and then again with their time.
(And for most business/tech books, the second price is orders of magnitude more costly than the first.)
Anyway, happy it has proven useful and many thanks for the support.
Couldn't agree more.
The idea is great. Lean books should be a thing.
Just a tiny recommendation: Could you sync the Kindle book with the audible book? I love buying both and read the book while I am listening to it. That would be awesome!
I used its guidance at my big tech job when trying to build a new tool for researchers, and it helped me better understand how to understand what they need, iterate, and better tailor the sales pitch afterwards. Who would have thought that talking to customers is the single most valuable thing you can do!
But if the problem is undefined/unknown (like much future tech), or if the product is a nice-to-have or "10x improvement" (like many B2C apps or UX improvements), then you basically have to validate via a prototype (or some other sort of creative v1).
(You can still do your discovery/understanding via conversation in either case, of course.)
Please release that book on dating. Not that I'm interested in the topic, but I'm more interested in reading something entertaining.
I doubt I'll ever release it as a book (since it needs a full rewrite and my enthusiasm for it was very tied to that moment in my life), but maybe a couple of the ideas will slip out eventually.
I wrote the book after becoming hugely frustrated as an introverted technical founder trying to "talk to customers" but finding zero books about sales/interviews/etc that spoke to my context. That first company (yc s07) failed just as I started to figure it all out, but the casual approach proved useful (and comfortable) in my future businesses, so I wanted to document it for other folks like me.
If it's helpful for anyone, I've been answering reader questions with little youtube videos that touch on some of the common misunderstanding and sticking points.[1]
Also, back when covid started, I also did a short series (5x 5min videos) about adapting the approach to remote interviews.[2]
[1] Q&A: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvHabB7atz2uWPZN5m7z3...
[2] Remote: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvHabB7atz2tOjQs1OMzj...