The shape of the sprint
This is a composite pattern drawn from several engagements. The point is not the specifics — it is the cadence.
- Week 1: Locked the problem brief and the riskiest belief.
- Week 2: Ran 12 problem-discovery calls, distilled into 3 personas.
- Week 3: Built a clickable probe and a paid waitlist side by side.
- Week 4: Closed the waitlist after the first 50 paid intents.
- Week 5: Built the smallest version that could deliver one outcome end-to-end.
- Week 6: Onboarded the first cohort and shipped publicly.
Speed did not come from skipping steps. It came from running the steps in parallel rather than in sequence.
What made it work
- One decision-maker per question, with a 48-hour clock.
- A single artifact per week, shared externally — no internal-only docs.
- Willingness to pay was tested before any production code was written.