Patterns

Mom Test Question Rewrite

When to use: before asking any question, or when reviewing an interview script. How: flag questions about your idea, the future, or generic habits. Rewrite each one to ask about a specific recent event or current behaviour. “Would you buy X?” becomes “How do you deal with X now? What did it cost last time?” Trade-offs: you sometimes need a slight nudge toward your topic. Leading is acceptable only when you’re about to end the conversation anyway.

Deflect a Compliment

When to use: whenever you hear praise for you or your idea. How: apologize if you pitched, then ask “How are you dealing with this at the moment?” Ignore the compliments that keep appearing at the end of later answers. Trade-offs: it can feel rude to ignore kind words, but the alternative is collecting false positives.

Anchor Fluff

When to use: on hearing “usually”, “always”, “never”, “would”, “will”, “might”, or “could”. How: “When’s the last time that happened?” → “Can you talk me through that?” → “What else have you tried?” Trade-offs: fluff-inducing questions are fine as openers, as long as you don’t value the answers.

Dig Beneath a Request or Emotion

When to use: on a feature request, a new idea, or strong anger, embarrassment, or excitement. How: “Why do you want that?” “What would that let you do?” “How are you coping without it?” For emotion: “Tell me more about that.” “What makes it so awful?” “Why haven’t you been able to fix this already?” Trade-offs: write requests down but don’t obey them. Find the motivation and solve that.

Recover from Pitch Mode

When to use: when you notice you’ve been monologuing about your idea. How: “Whoops — I slipped into pitch mode, sorry. You were telling me that…” If they want the pitch, promise it at the end. Trade-offs: none. The longer you pitch, the less they tell you.

Start Broad, Then Zoom

When to use: when you aren’t sure the person cares about your problem area. How: open with “What are your big goals and focuses right now?” Zoom in only on topics they raise themselves, or on areas known to be a top-three problem. Trade-offs: it’s slower when you already know the problem is a must-solve, so zoom immediately in those cases.

Painkiller or Vitamin Probe

When to use: when someone complains, but you can’t tell whether they’d pay. How: ask how seriously they take it, whether they make money from it, how much time they spend on it weekly, which tools they pay for, what they’re doing to improve it, and what their top 3 fixes are. Trade-offs: some of these questions are generic, so anchor on the signals they produce.

Scary-Question Finder

When to use: when preparing your list of 3. How: imagine the company failed and ask why. Imagine huge success and ask what had to be true. List every failure point, including product risk. If you’re avoiding a question, imagine delegating it. Trade-offs: conversations can’t remove product risk. Build earlier when risk is mainly in the product.

List of 3

When to use: before every batch of conversations, for each type of person. How: with your team, write the three murkiest or most important questions. Update them after reviews, and skip questions you already have solid data on. Trade-offs: don’t agonize over picking the “right” three. They will change anyway.

Push for Commitment

When to use: at the end of any product or sales meeting. How: decide in advance what to ask for. Time: a next meeting with goals, wireframe feedback, a real trial. Reputation: an intro to their boss or team, a case study. Cash: an LOI, a pre-order, a deposit. Trade-offs: the stronger the request, the more rejections you’ll get. Rejections are good data.

Make Vague Promises Concrete

When to use: on “I’ll intro you when you’re ready” or “let me know when it launches.” How: ask who, what “ready” means, and why not now. Then ask for a commitment you can get today. Trade-offs: don’t be pushy. You’re separating real offers from polite gestures.

Raise the Cost of a Trial

When to use: when a trial costs the customer almost nothing. How: ask for a case study after two weeks, a team rollout for a week, or their card with a free cancellation within 30 days. Trade-offs: fewer trials, but each one tells you more.

Customer Slicing

When to use: when your segment is broad or feedback is inconsistent. How: ask who in the group wants it most, why, whether everyone shares that motivation, and who else does. Repeat until you can name where to find them. Then pick by profitable or big, easy to reach, and personally rewarding. Trade-offs: narrowing feels like losing options. You’ll broaden later.

VFWPA Meeting Request

When to use: requesting a meeting through a warm intro. How: Vision (the problem you’re working on, not your idea), Framing (your stage, nothing to sell), Weakness (where you’re stuck), Pedestal (why them), Ask. At the meeting, repeat the framing and ask your first question straight away. Trade-offs: it doesn’t work well for cold emails.

Advisory Flip

When to use: whenever you feel needy or salesy going into a meeting. How: privately treat the meeting as checking whether they’d make a good advisor. Don’t announce it. Trade-offs: it’s only a change in mindset, so you still need the list of 3.

Generate Warm Intros

When to use: once your first cold conversations are done, or when you’re stuck at a low response rate. How: organise a meetup for the segment, teach or blog, ask everyone you know (and a room full of strangers), use advisors, professors, and investors, and reply to old “keep me in the loop” emails. Trade-offs: cashing in old favours can burn bridges, so use it rarely.

Two-Person Meeting with Signal Notes

When to use: in every conversation where you can take notes. How: one person talks while the other notes exact quotes in quotation marks, using one card per signal with symbols (☇ pain, ⨅ goal, ☐ obstacle, ⤴ workaround, ＄ money, ☆ follow-up). The note-taker steps in to fix bad questions. Trade-offs: never more than two of you. Going solo is fine once your notes are concise.

Prep and Review Loop

When to use: around every batch of conversations. How: prep with the whole team (up to an hour of best guesses, desk research first, “What do we want to learn from these guys?”). Review notes and quotes together, discuss which questions worked, then update your beliefs and big 3. Trade-offs: an hour of prep, not a week. Anything more is stalling.

Hack It

When to use: when planning to learn something takes longer than learning it would. How: find the single direct action (a call, a request) that answers the question, and do it now. Trade-offs: not every question can be answered this way, but it’s worth checking first.