Basic Concept of The Mom Test in Developing Business Ideas

Basic Concept of The Mom Test in Developing Business Ideas A. Definition of The Mom Test People say you should never ask your mother whether your business idea is good or not. Technically it is correct to do so, but it misses the point. You basically should not ask anyone whether the business idea we want to do is a good idea. At least not with such direct words. Your mother will be the one who lies to you the most (she does it only because she loves you), but that means bad because the question asked will invite everyone to lie to you at least a little. Because of that, it is not the responsibility of others to show us the truth. It is our responsibility to find it. We do it by asking good questions. Therefore, the Mom Test is defined as a set of simple rules for formulating good questions that even your mother can't lie to you. B. Mistakes in Doing The Mom Test Many business people fail to do the mom test when testing whether their business idea is feasible to be developed or not. The businessman believed the results of the mom test he did, felt right and sure then quit his job and risked all his savings on the business idea he believed in. In the end, the business idea he implemented failed, which made him wonder why the business application he did failed, no users wanted to use it, even his mother. However, making mistakes when first building a business idea is normal, we tend to be careful in taking steps. But at the same time holding false positive beliefs, it's like convincing a drunkard rather than fixing the mistakes that have been made. Therefore, it is very important to pay attention to how to compile questions for user interviews through the mom test. Because the results will directly affect the business idea that will be implemented. C. Conducting The Mom Test The measure of the usefulness of an early customer conversation is whether or not it gives us concrete facts about the customer’s life and worldview. These facts, in turn, allow us to refine and develop the business idea we are going to pursue. For example, the initial business idea we want to develop looks like this: parents would love cookbooks and iPads. Based on that, we are going to create a cookbook for iPads. This is a general business idea, meaning that many entrepreneurs have done the same thing and will do it. There are thousands of possible variations on this business idea premise. With this vague idea, an entrepreneur cannot answer hard questions like which recipes to include in the app they are going to develop or how people will use the app. Until we get a little more specific about the business idea, it will always seem like a good idea to develop. After just one conversation (with a mother or a parent, or with everyone), we have a higher vision of the target market we want to develop. Business people now see that there are at least 2 customers in a particular segment who may be the target market that they want to target as users of the business application they want to develop, each of whom needs a slightly different product. We have also identified several key risks that must be addressed before a business person develops their business idea further: 1. How does a business person reach or reach the desired target market? How do you let the target market know about the business application being developed? Will you promote it through social media or e-magazines? 2. Will the target market be willing to pay for the application being developed? Is the target market willing to use a new application compared to an old application of the same type that already exists? Based on the discussion above, it can be seen that to find out whether a business idea is feasible to develop or not is by asking open questions related to the life of the target market you want to target. Open questions given related to the user's personal life or the life related to the user will indirectly direct us to what we should do to the application so that it is in accordance with the user's wishes or expectations based on the answers given by the user. There are three (3) rules that must be followed when conducting the mom test, including: a) Give open questions related to the target user or potential application user rather than discussing business ideas openly b) Give specific questions related to the business idea that you want to develop, avoid giving general questions that are not related to the business idea, or you can also ask questions about user expectations regarding the business idea that you want to develop 3. Give the target user the widest possible answer regarding the questions give. Therefore, this is called the mom test, because by asking this type of question, even mothers will not be able to lie about their answers just to satisfy our egos. When the mom test is done properly and correctly according to the rules, the target users will not know that we are conducting the mom test on them.