What we ask on the first call (and what makes us walk)

We take first calls on Thursdays when we can. It keeps the rest of the week for people already in the work. The call is 30 minutes. If it needs a deck from us, we have already failed the format.

Founders sometimes expect a pitch. What they get is a set of questions. We are not being coy. We are trying to find out whether there is a product in the room, or a wish that wants a body shop.

This is the most recent version of a list we have been editing since the studio started taking work seriously. It will change again. The point will not: we would rather lose a polite opportunity than win a foggy one.

The questions

1. What did a customer or operator try to do last week that the current system made slow, wrong, or impossible?
2. What happens if you do nothing for six months? Not in slogan form. In revenue, risk, or hours.
3. Who will live in the software on a Tuesday — and will they be in the weekly review with us?
4. What must not change? A regulator, a partner contract, a data residency rule, a founder’s taste. Say it now.
5. Who decides when the first slice is good enough? One name. A committee is a delay with calendar invites.

If those five have answers, we can talk about shape: a 90-day slice, a team, a commercial model. If they do not, we will not invent a roadmap to fill the silence. That is how you get a beautiful backlog and a product nobody wanted.

We take notes in the call, not after. The phrases people use for the blocked person are usually the product language. “The WhatsApp group handles it” is sloppy and precise at the same time. “Digital transformation” is neither.

What makes us walk

We are a small studio. Walking is not a performance. It is how we stay able to take the next call seriously.

• The brief is “build us an AI platform” with no workflow attached. We will help find the workflow. We will not staff a slogan.
• Nobody from the operating side will be available. Software for an abstract user is how you get a second rewrite.
• The timeline is a conference date and the scope is a platform. Pick one. We can sprint to a date. We cannot invent physics.
• They want us to replace an internal team that has not been told. We will not be the surprise.
• The data cannot be shown, even scrubbed, and the problem is in the data. Then we would be guessing in public.
• Payment depends on a verbal “phase 2” that is three times the size of phase 1. We have seen that movie.

Walking is a short email. We say what we heard, why we are the wrong team, and who might not be if we know one. We do not send a 12-page “thoughts” document to soften it. That document is a proposal you are pretending is a favour.

What a good first call sounds like

Someone says: our onboarding drops at step four, we think it is the document check, here is last month’s funnel, legal will not let the files leave Mumbai, and I can put the ops lead in the weekly. That is a project. We can be useful by Monday.

Someone else says: we need to look innovative for the board, can you send capabilities. That is a brochure. They already have our website.

A third pattern we like: a CTO who is tired, has a seam in mind, and wants a team that will argue with them. We can work with tired. We cannot work with vague.

Who should be on the call

Someone who owns the outcome and someone who has done the job in the last month. A founder plus an ops lead is a good call. A founder plus a sales engineer who has never sat with ops is a worse one. A procurement lead alone is not a first call. We will do commercials after the page exists.

If the only person available is a consultant who will not be there in week six, we say so. We have delivered into a vacuum that looked senior on Zoom. It is how you get a product the operator quietly ignores.

Time zones are fine. Silence is not. If the operator can only join once, we will take that once and we will watch them work, even for twenty minutes. A recorded screen of the real tool beats a polished brief.

What happens after, if we continue

We send the one-pager draft within two business days. Not a contract. A page. If they rewrite the 90-day sentence, good — that is the work starting. If they send a 40-page RFP in return, we will extract the five answers or we will stop. We do not bid on documents that will not name an owner.

Commercials are simple on purpose. A fixed first slice when the seam is clear. A monthly studio engagement when the work is a product, not a project. We will not staff a blended rate that hides who is actually in the room.

If you write to us this month, you do not need a polished brief. You need one blocked person and one number you care about. We can do the rest of the page together. We will not pretend a stack choice is the hard part. It almost never is.