When it’s just you and one engineer, "discovery" tends to quietly disappear — there’s no headcount to protect it. We built a lightweight system that ran alongside shipping, not instead of it.
The 20-minute rule
Every customer call was capped at 20 minutes, scheduled back-to-back on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Short calls are easier to book, easier to run consistently, and force you to ask the sharpest version of your question.
Forty short, focused calls beat ten long, meandering ones — every time.
The unlock wasn’t a tool or a process. It was treating discovery as a standing calendar block with the same protection as a sprint ceremony.
Comments (2)
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Log InTania Ahmed
Aug 3, 2026The 20-minute cap is such a simple lever. Trying this next week.
Farzana Rahman
MentorAug 4, 2026Curious how you kept notes consistent across two interviewers — that’s usually where this breaks down for us.
Imran Kabir
MentorAug 4, 2026Shared a single Notion template, five fixed fields, filled in during the call not after. No exceptions.