Context Engineering Blog

The Mom Test validation isn’t about asking if people like your idea. It’s a battle-tested framework for discovering if your product is a must-have or a nice-to-have before you write a single line of code. Data shows that up to 42% of startups fail because they build something nobody wants. The Mom Test is your insurance policy against becoming one of them. It’s about getting past polite nods to find the cold, hard facts that prove your idea is a business, not just a hobby.

Hypothesis-driven development (HDD) is a methodical approach to product creation that replaces guesswork with scientific rigor. Instead of building features on a hunch, teams formulate a testable hypothesis, build the absolute minimum required to test it, and use empirical data to drive decisions. This methodology is no longer a niche practice; industry reports indicate that over 90% of high-performing product teams leverage some form of hypothesis testing to de-risk their roadmaps and focus on customer value.