Meeting Title: Brainforge x Lilo Project Sync Date: 2025-12-10 Meeting participants: Mustafa Raja, Uttam Kumaran, Pranav, Surf’s iPhone
WEBVTT
1 00:00:29.930 ⇒ 00:00:30.970 Uttam Kumaran: Hello, guys.
2 00:00:31.820 ⇒ 00:00:33.069 Pranav: How’s it going?
3 00:00:33.470 ⇒ 00:00:34.870 Uttam Kumaran: Good, dude, how are you?
4 00:00:35.350 ⇒ 00:00:37.040 Pranav: I’m pretty good, I’m pretty good.
5 00:00:39.290 ⇒ 00:00:54.160 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, I texted Sir… let’s see who’s gonna have, but let me go ahead and just add you to… let me add… I’ll add both of you to this repo, and then, yeah, Pranav meet Mustafa. Mustafa, meet, Pranav.
6 00:00:54.840 ⇒ 00:00:56.760 Mustafa Raja: Hey… How you doing?
7 00:00:56.760 ⇒ 00:00:57.280 Pranav: issue.
8 00:00:57.450 ⇒ 00:01:00.940 Pranav: I’m good, I’m good. I think, .
9 00:01:00.940 ⇒ 00:01:01.750 Mustafa Raja: Yeah, we’ve met.
10 00:01:01.750 ⇒ 00:01:04.140 Pranav: I had, like, an interview, like, a long time ago.
11 00:01:04.140 ⇒ 00:01:06.750 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, great, great, great.
12 00:01:07.150 ⇒ 00:01:09.710 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, never mind, then you all know each other. Good.
13 00:01:09.710 ⇒ 00:01:10.070 Mustafa Raja: Yep.
14 00:01:10.270 ⇒ 00:01:11.360 Uttam Kumaran: Just a little bit.
15 00:01:12.010 ⇒ 00:01:18.659 Uttam Kumaran: Awesome. Well, let’s see, I texted surf, but I think
16 00:01:19.660 ⇒ 00:01:26.519 Uttam Kumaran: three of us can at least, you know, go through and talk about the project. Let me just get both of you
17 00:01:26.700 ⇒ 00:01:32.790 Uttam Kumaran: into the repo, and then we can go from there. Mustafa, can you send me your, Git username as well?
18 00:01:33.700 ⇒ 00:01:35.130 Mustafa Raja: Yeah, I’ll send you in the chat.
19 00:01:37.400 ⇒ 00:01:42.290 Uttam Kumaran: Alright, it’s just there, it’s there, rebels.
20 00:01:53.090 ⇒ 00:01:54.429 Mustafa Raja: Yeah, it’s in the Zoom chat.
21 00:01:59.530 ⇒ 00:02:00.470 Uttam Kumaran: What do you think?
22 00:02:20.150 ⇒ 00:02:23.030 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, you guys should have been invited to…
23 00:02:23.370 ⇒ 00:02:30.440 Uttam Kumaran: A new repo called at lilo-Social slash ditch dash platform.
24 00:02:32.200 ⇒ 00:02:35.039 Uttam Kumaran: Here, this is the linked,
25 00:02:35.310 ⇒ 00:02:41.419 Uttam Kumaran: Usually what I do is, like, I just go to the click on the right, you click on their profile and go to Organizations.
26 00:02:41.810 ⇒ 00:02:45.810 Uttam Kumaran: in GitHub, and then you can just basically accept, yeah.
27 00:02:45.810 ⇒ 00:02:47.110 Mustafa Raja: Yeah, I’ve accepted.
28 00:02:47.970 ⇒ 00:02:48.600 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
29 00:02:49.390 ⇒ 00:02:50.939 Pranav: It’s making it two-factor.
30 00:02:52.070 ⇒ 00:02:54.959 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it… yeah, definitely.
31 00:02:56.060 ⇒ 00:02:58.520 Uttam Kumaran: And then I’ll also make sure you’re in our.
32 00:03:15.570 ⇒ 00:03:17.370 Pranav: Cool, yep, just accepted it.
33 00:03:22.330 ⇒ 00:03:32.680 Uttam Kumaran: And then let me give you guys both, a second to read through… This… Project Docker.
34 00:03:33.590 ⇒ 00:03:38.519 Uttam Kumaran: I should have sent this ahead of time, but it’s been a busy day.
35 00:03:38.820 ⇒ 00:03:41.310 Uttam Kumaran: So I just sent this over Zoom.
36 00:03:41.540 ⇒ 00:03:46.010 Uttam Kumaran: Take a look, give it, a read.
37 00:03:46.340 ⇒ 00:03:49.130 Uttam Kumaran: And then…
38 00:03:49.670 ⇒ 00:03:55.969 Uttam Kumaran: Let me know when you got… take your time, like yourself, I think. It’s… generally will give you the scope of, like, what the…
39 00:03:56.990 ⇒ 00:03:58.630 Uttam Kumaran: What the project is.
40 00:03:59.210 ⇒ 00:03:59.790 Pranav: Cool.
41 00:04:56.120 ⇒ 00:04:56.770 Surf’s iPhone: Nope.
42 00:04:58.430 ⇒ 00:04:59.120 Uttam Kumaran: Yo, dude.
43 00:04:59.970 ⇒ 00:05:01.149 Surf’s iPhone: Talk to me, too.
44 00:05:02.000 ⇒ 00:05:08.229 Uttam Kumaran: I’m, just letting, Pranav and Mustafa go through the project doc.
45 00:05:08.610 ⇒ 00:05:10.959 Uttam Kumaran: And then maybe we can…
46 00:05:11.820 ⇒ 00:05:16.590 Uttam Kumaran: We can then kind of chat where you want me to plug in. Yeah.
47 00:05:16.590 ⇒ 00:05:18.359 Surf’s iPhone: Sam couldn’t make this meeting, right?
48 00:05:19.110 ⇒ 00:05:20.519 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, he’s sick today.
49 00:05:20.830 ⇒ 00:05:27.159 Surf’s iPhone: Alright, cool. See, I can give you what he sees, because I know, because me and him have been chatting forth, maybe me, him, me, you.
50 00:05:27.320 ⇒ 00:05:28.509 Surf’s iPhone: Maybe all…
51 00:05:28.510 ⇒ 00:05:29.260 Uttam Kumaran: Duh.
52 00:05:29.260 ⇒ 00:05:30.559 Surf’s iPhone: Get into that same channel.
53 00:05:31.550 ⇒ 00:05:31.980 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
54 00:05:31.980 ⇒ 00:05:34.679 Surf’s iPhone: took it out as well, but I can give you guys the high-level updates.
55 00:05:35.460 ⇒ 00:05:37.840 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, how’s the, well, how’s the week, dude?
56 00:05:38.640 ⇒ 00:05:42.480 Surf’s iPhone: The week’s been crazy. I basically built an entire.
57 00:05:42.480 ⇒ 00:05:45.670 Uttam Kumaran: When is the answer… when is the answer gonna change?
58 00:05:45.670 ⇒ 00:05:54.810 Surf’s iPhone: Dude, this eating thing is terrible. Not terrible, I can handle it, but it’s just like…
59 00:05:55.130 ⇒ 00:06:00.730 Surf’s iPhone: We built an entire team this week. We now have… 1, 2, 3…
60 00:06:00.850 ⇒ 00:06:11.850 Surf’s iPhone: 4, 5, and then an entire team in India. So I helped them hire 5 people, plus build… bring on an entire dev team that’s gonna scale up to 10.
61 00:06:13.020 ⇒ 00:06:13.850 Uttam Kumaran: Damn.
62 00:06:14.180 ⇒ 00:06:24.799 Surf’s iPhone: Yeah, dude, it’s wild. So, yeah, they’ve been, they’ve been keeping me busy. It’s a good one.
63 00:06:24.800 ⇒ 00:06:30.999 Uttam Kumaran: I think you’re gonna be, like… are you bringing on PMs? Are you bringing on more senior people? It’s all just, like, engineers.
64 00:06:31.300 ⇒ 00:06:41.760 Surf’s iPhone: it’s, mostly senior engineers right now, like, all the other… like, it’s me and 3 seniors that I all brought on, then we brought in 1 PM,
65 00:06:41.890 ⇒ 00:06:43.279 Surf’s iPhone: But we had to field them out.
66 00:06:43.280 ⇒ 00:06:45.120 Uttam Kumaran: It’s all people… it’s all people you know.
67 00:06:45.550 ⇒ 00:07:04.089 Surf’s iPhone: No. Two of them I know, one of them I help them hire, and then the PM I help them hire, and then they know a guy who does basically this GCC model. Remember the company that I sent you? The, soft deaf people? I want to feel them out, because the dude who’s leading it, he’s super competent.
68 00:07:04.120 ⇒ 00:07:10.839 Surf’s iPhone: But, like, they’re gonna basically be hiring and building them out a team, and I’m like, oh, that could be really cool if we need to, like, spin out entire dev clubs.
69 00:07:10.840 ⇒ 00:07:11.720 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
70 00:07:11.940 ⇒ 00:07:12.970 Surf’s iPhone: Yeah, so…
71 00:07:14.600 ⇒ 00:07:19.069 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we need a good… we need a good product… we need a good product manager, dude.
72 00:07:19.240 ⇒ 00:07:19.809 Uttam Kumaran: But someone.
73 00:07:19.810 ⇒ 00:07:20.340 Surf’s iPhone: yearly.
74 00:07:20.340 ⇒ 00:07:21.560 Uttam Kumaran: States, I think.
75 00:07:22.060 ⇒ 00:07:31.489 Surf’s iPhone: Yeah, agreed. That… that’s the dime a dozen position right there. If you get a good project manager, I keep everything really rolling. That’s a… that’s a toughie.
76 00:07:31.490 ⇒ 00:07:32.060 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
77 00:07:32.300 ⇒ 00:07:33.060 Uttam Kumaran: passed.
78 00:07:33.830 ⇒ 00:07:34.410 Surf’s iPhone: Oops.
79 00:07:35.840 ⇒ 00:07:45.249 Uttam Kumaran: Cool, yeah, we’ll let you… we’ll let these guys just have a little bit more of a read. And then I’m gonna work… I’m gonna work tonight on the larger PRD.
80 00:07:45.350 ⇒ 00:07:48.990 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll buy us some more time, I can meet with them tomorrow to go through that.
81 00:07:49.250 ⇒ 00:07:54.850 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. You know, for the… for the revenue, sort of, product.
82 00:07:56.730 ⇒ 00:07:59.990 Uttam Kumaran: And then, basically, I’m… there’s… we have one…
83 00:08:00.150 ⇒ 00:08:07.710 Uttam Kumaran: PM on our team, but he PEPMs our internal AI platform, and I’m trying to convince him to come on full-time to
84 00:08:08.100 ⇒ 00:08:15.649 Uttam Kumaran: basically be PM… the product manager for, for this. And then, dude, you know, you know CES?
85 00:08:20.500 ⇒ 00:08:21.969 Surf’s iPhone: Say that question one more time, Mutant?
86 00:08:22.400 ⇒ 00:08:23.640 Uttam Kumaran: You know CES?
87 00:08:24.430 ⇒ 00:08:25.720 Surf’s iPhone: CES?
88 00:08:26.120 ⇒ 00:08:27.339 Uttam Kumaran: Like, the conference?
89 00:08:27.700 ⇒ 00:08:29.419 Surf’s iPhone: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s huge.
90 00:08:30.070 ⇒ 00:08:31.659 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, they’re one of our clients.
91 00:08:32.230 ⇒ 00:08:33.039 Surf’s iPhone: What?
92 00:08:33.760 ⇒ 00:08:34.350 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
93 00:08:34.640 ⇒ 00:08:35.919 Surf’s iPhone: Doing what?
94 00:08:36.559 ⇒ 00:08:40.299 Uttam Kumaran: We’re doing all… we’re doing all… we’re doing a bunch of data stuff for them.
95 00:08:40.639 ⇒ 00:08:43.459 Surf’s iPhone: They have, like, no reporting and analytics.
96 00:08:43.459 ⇒ 00:08:45.729 Uttam Kumaran: But the woman loves us.
97 00:08:45.869 ⇒ 00:08:50.349 Uttam Kumaran: And… Proposed two more projects for us to help them on.
98 00:08:50.980 ⇒ 00:08:55.990 Surf’s iPhone: Dude, all of those event companies make a dang of money, and they don’t have shit.
99 00:08:56.270 ⇒ 00:08:59.839 Surf’s iPhone: Right, like, I remember when, when, the…
100 00:08:59.920 ⇒ 00:09:16.299 Surf’s iPhone: Tom, he was talking about, like, there’s, like, this huge conference for wealth managers, and, like, they charge people, like, $30,000 to be at the event, and then they’re, like, they just send them spreadsheets of all the emails of people who signed up, because they can’t even, like, figure out who.
101 00:09:16.300 ⇒ 00:09:20.009 Pranav: Can we read into Phase 2 and Phase 3 right now, too, or…
102 00:09:20.010 ⇒ 00:09:22.890 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, yes, read-ins above… read-ins of both of those, yeah.
103 00:09:23.070 ⇒ 00:09:23.610 Surf’s iPhone: No.
104 00:09:24.240 ⇒ 00:09:29.980 Surf’s iPhone: So, yeah, that stuff is nuts. Like, those event companies, they’re making a gang of money, doing a whole lot.
105 00:09:31.550 ⇒ 00:09:37.500 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, dude, they also… well, we’ve just been, like, really good partners with them, and they want us to help something on, like.
106 00:09:38.320 ⇒ 00:09:41.289 Uttam Kumaran: the Okta side,
107 00:09:42.170 ⇒ 00:09:48.779 Uttam Kumaran: Cool! And they want us to build them a, like, kind of, like, fix their Shopify store that they’re using to sell…
108 00:09:49.040 ⇒ 00:09:51.819 Uttam Kumaran: digital files, and maybe help them move to Stripe.
109 00:09:52.410 ⇒ 00:09:58.709 Uttam Kumaran: But that’s the thing, like… I’m like, can I call surf? But you’re busy with Remo.
110 00:09:58.710 ⇒ 00:10:00.880 Surf’s iPhone: Yeah, I’m really busy with Remo.
111 00:10:01.030 ⇒ 00:10:02.920 Surf’s iPhone: He must, he must killin’ me.
112 00:10:03.210 ⇒ 00:10:13.229 Surf’s iPhone: I can… I can play… like, again, me and Sam, I feel, have a really good rapport, like, I can play… I can skyhawk over it if I got some good people doing the delivery, but…
113 00:10:13.230 ⇒ 00:10:17.530 Uttam Kumaran: That’s the thing, I wonder, like, how much you and Sam compare to take on, like, at least…
114 00:10:18.670 ⇒ 00:10:20.880 Uttam Kumaran: you know, Lilo and one more.
115 00:10:21.110 ⇒ 00:10:21.730 Uttam Kumaran: But…
116 00:10:21.730 ⇒ 00:10:37.809 Surf’s iPhone: So that’s the thing. So I… I built the library, and basically open-sourced it, and then sent it to Sam, and I was like, you should build it into this model. So then he kind of took that, looked through that, and then he started running with their stuff, and he’s gonna kind of kibosh them together.
117 00:10:37.930 ⇒ 00:10:51.299 Surf’s iPhone: So, like, I already have the stems for us to be able to create, like, a monorepo, front-end, back-end database, all of that sort of stuff, React, all of the nice fix-ins, auth, all of that, in, like, one thing.
118 00:10:51.590 ⇒ 00:10:59.459 Surf’s iPhone: And then, from there, like, we could build… like, when you have net new clients who don’t have anything, build right off of that stack.
119 00:11:00.400 ⇒ 00:11:10.189 Surf’s iPhone: Okay. So, like, I can, like, that’s what I mean, like, I can earball in, like, that stuff, and then, like, even when he’s working through the repo, because there’s not a lot there, like.
120 00:11:10.320 ⇒ 00:11:19.829 Surf’s iPhone: help from, like, a layer of, oh, you just need to put this with that, that kind of thing. It’s just, I can’t get nitty-gritty into it, because I’m nitty-gritty into Remote.
121 00:11:20.520 ⇒ 00:11:33.639 Surf’s iPhone: Okay. But, like, the plan is, after the two months, because I even talked… well, the Remo guys talked to me about it. They’re like, they actually said they don’t want me in the code. They want me running the larger team, and they see the larger team at, like, 30 people.
122 00:11:33.980 ⇒ 00:11:41.060 Surf’s iPhone: And I’m like, cool. Like, like, I think we all get that, but, like, right now, you need all hands on deck, because you’re doing crazy shit.
123 00:11:41.470 ⇒ 00:11:43.919 Surf’s iPhone: And you need it done in 2 months, which is just insane.
124 00:11:44.660 ⇒ 00:11:45.760 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. So…
125 00:11:46.430 ⇒ 00:11:49.530 Surf’s iPhone: Yeah, once the team’s fully built out, I should have more time, but…
126 00:11:49.940 ⇒ 00:11:57.340 Surf’s iPhone: It’s just chaotic right now. And then the dude, Cameron, he’s back. So, it’s just all sorts of crazy.
127 00:11:58.000 ⇒ 00:11:59.090 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, really?
128 00:11:59.410 ⇒ 00:12:04.430 Surf’s iPhone: Yeah, he’s… he’s now giving us the code, so we’re waiting on that.
129 00:12:05.080 ⇒ 00:12:14.099 Surf’s iPhone: So… he was supposed to give it to me today, but then he pushed back again to tomorrow. So now I’m waiting on tomorrow, but the codebase is completely different from the current codebase.
130 00:12:14.400 ⇒ 00:12:21.579 Surf’s iPhone: So, like, we’re working with old code until he gives us the new code, so that’s what I mean. It’s just, like, it’s all over the place.
131 00:12:23.790 ⇒ 00:12:24.710 Surf’s iPhone: It is wild.
132 00:12:24.710 ⇒ 00:12:25.240 Uttam Kumaran: Huh.
133 00:12:25.620 ⇒ 00:12:26.500 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, huh?
134 00:12:27.250 ⇒ 00:12:32.110 Surf’s iPhone: Whatever. I’ve wrangled harder situations before, so… It’ll be okay.
135 00:12:37.020 ⇒ 00:12:37.680 Surf’s iPhone: Sorry.
136 00:12:37.680 ⇒ 00:12:38.780 Uttam Kumaran: Guys, what do you think?
137 00:12:42.480 ⇒ 00:12:45.849 Uttam Kumaran: I’m on Phase 2, and… Okay, okay.
138 00:12:46.070 ⇒ 00:12:46.970 Mustafa Raja: Yeah.
139 00:12:47.620 ⇒ 00:12:48.270 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
140 00:12:48.270 ⇒ 00:12:50.299 Surf’s iPhone: I’m in a rush, I got time.
141 00:20:13.880 ⇒ 00:20:15.130 Uttam Kumaran: How we doing, guys?
142 00:20:16.380 ⇒ 00:20:20.000 Mustafa Raja: Yeah, I’m just, looking at the success metrics.
143 00:20:21.980 ⇒ 00:20:23.069 Pranav: I think I’m good to go.
144 00:20:24.060 ⇒ 00:20:24.810 Mustafa Raja: Yeah.
145 00:20:26.060 ⇒ 00:20:27.719 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool.
146 00:20:28.050 ⇒ 00:20:44.900 Uttam Kumaran: So, yeah, I mean, basically, and I think, for both of y’all, I’ll send you a little bit of, like, a visual of, you know, our initial conversations with the client as well, but they’re an e-commerce agency, and they want to build, sort of, their own, like, forecasting and, like.
147 00:20:45.060 ⇒ 00:20:47.610 Uttam Kumaran: chat with Forecast Data Tool.
148 00:20:47.810 ⇒ 00:20:50.740 Uttam Kumaran: That they’re gonna use to manage their clients.
149 00:20:51.070 ⇒ 00:20:54.249 Uttam Kumaran: So right now, they…
150 00:20:54.850 ⇒ 00:21:10.370 Uttam Kumaran: we’re using another sort of company for engineering support, and they kind of, you know, dropped the ball, and so we’re coming in to sort of, you know, pick things up, and sort of this is our… a little bit of our phased approach. So far, Sam and CERF have sort of been leading
151 00:21:10.390 ⇒ 00:21:24.549 Uttam Kumaran: And I think, for Pranav and Mustafa, I think it’ll be sort of up to them, about, you know, where they want to weave y’all in, but sort of, like, if you were to just talk about, like, the overall structure of the project.
152 00:21:24.550 ⇒ 00:21:33.979 Uttam Kumaran: kind of the way I’m seeing it is, Surf and, you know, Sam kind of lead and also lead, sort of a lot of stuff on the client-facing side.
153 00:21:33.980 ⇒ 00:21:52.099 Uttam Kumaran: I think where we definitely need some support right now is just, you know, of course on the engineering side, but, also Pranav, I think on just, like, getting things organized in terms of, like, we have a little bit of a Gantt chart of the project, also tickets, and then just, like, basically helping keep
154 00:21:52.230 ⇒ 00:22:11.200 Uttam Kumaran: the, you know, kind of project on track. So that’s kind of how I think this… this squad could best run. And it’s something that we’re starting to do across a lot of projects at Brainforge, is just, you know, try to not bring on dedicated PMs, and instead just have time from every single person, you know, dedicated either to
155 00:22:11.300 ⇒ 00:22:16.759 Uttam Kumaran: interacting with a client, or to just helping on, like, the overall planning and the engagement.
156 00:22:16.920 ⇒ 00:22:23.890 Uttam Kumaran: And so, Surf, I don’t know if you want to give a little bit of context on, like, where we’re at. I think for Pranav and Mustafa, a lot of
157 00:22:23.980 ⇒ 00:22:41.340 Uttam Kumaran: clarity will come from watching some of the, introductory calls we had with the client, but this was basically a direct outcome of those calls. And then I’ll let, sort of, you know, Sam and CERF lead, like, where they want the
158 00:22:41.820 ⇒ 00:22:43.539 Uttam Kumaran: you know, you guys to plug in.
159 00:22:45.140 ⇒ 00:22:45.620 Mustafa Raja: Cool.
160 00:22:45.970 ⇒ 00:22:47.109 Surf’s iPhone: I can take over.
161 00:22:47.470 ⇒ 00:23:01.020 Surf’s iPhone: Cool. So this one is a relatively straightforward one, I actually believe. I don’t know if I’ll give it light intro, me and Utam have worked.
162 00:23:01.100 ⇒ 00:23:13.730 Surf’s iPhone: Together at a bunch of different companies, and we’re usually the guys who get called in when stuff gets really complex. Like taking over an old application where the original engineers built it in a weird way.
163 00:23:13.850 ⇒ 00:23:16.719 Surf’s iPhone: Fixing that, getting it up and running, that sort of thing.
164 00:23:16.930 ⇒ 00:23:30.749 Surf’s iPhone: Lilo is one of those situations, but the nice part is they never really went live with the application built from the other company. The application built from the other company is a…
165 00:23:31.410 ⇒ 00:23:44.729 Surf’s iPhone: Express… on the back end as a sideloader, so like a mini, weird express app, then a…
166 00:23:44.980 ⇒ 00:23:49.370 Surf’s iPhone: giant authentication app, which… like…
167 00:23:49.600 ⇒ 00:24:04.489 Surf’s iPhone: actually, the dev company that built it, it was their own internal project. So it didn’t really have anything to do with the project, for Lilo, they kind of just, like, jammed it in there. And then, like, a…
168 00:24:04.610 ⇒ 00:24:09.500 Surf’s iPhone: very, like, lightly done Angular app.
169 00:24:09.830 ⇒ 00:24:21.139 Surf’s iPhone: So, like, if you look at the actual code in the codebase, there’s not a lot there. So… me and Sam kind of categorize it as a net new build.
170 00:24:21.280 ⇒ 00:24:38.459 Surf’s iPhone: Where we just need to, like, copy the code over to a new space. Ideally, I think I talked to you a little bit about this, Pranav, but I think high level, I want to start thinking about the Brainforge engineering team as, like.
171 00:24:39.480 ⇒ 00:24:45.110 Surf’s iPhone: A Swiss army knife around specific tooling.
172 00:24:45.230 ⇒ 00:24:52.889 Surf’s iPhone: Right? So, like, out of the box, we can just give our… anyone who works with us, especially with the net new build, a bunch of very specific tooling.
173 00:24:53.000 ⇒ 00:25:05.629 Surf’s iPhone: So, like, things like Mixpanel, things like PostHog, things like, a database, a front-end, a back-end, that sort of thing. Like, anyone can come to us and they get that immediately.
174 00:25:05.750 ⇒ 00:25:06.640 Pranav: Right?
175 00:25:06.640 ⇒ 00:25:21.640 Surf’s iPhone: So what that spun off is, I opened sourced, basically, a repo for that, where it’s, like, it’s a monorepo for a front end and a back end. The front end is Next.js, using, ShadeCN.
176 00:25:21.730 ⇒ 00:25:30.100 Surf’s iPhone: As the primary component library, so you kind of just get the look and feel and all that stuff, like, super easy. And then the back end is a Nest.js app.
177 00:25:30.210 ⇒ 00:25:44.639 Surf’s iPhone: So you get, like, really clean, nice, open AI, open API semantics, everything kind of ready to go. And then you can hook it up to any database you want, like, and again, it’s just, like, change a bunch of environment variables.
178 00:25:45.030 ⇒ 00:25:47.710 Surf’s iPhone: Deploy, and, like, the thing just loads up.
179 00:25:47.860 ⇒ 00:26:06.330 Surf’s iPhone: Primarily, I’m a Postgres person, but you can link it to MySQL, you can link it to whatever the hell you want, it really doesn’t matter. But I think if we all adopt a frameworking like this, then it becomes easy to bring on other engineers onto the project, because, like, having good frameworks
180 00:26:06.530 ⇒ 00:26:22.739 Surf’s iPhone: sets us up for everyone coding in, like, the same locations, or with the same style, so it’s easy to swap people in, swap people out. Especially when you’re talking about the world of JavaScript, where people kind of, like… everyone writes it, but everyone writes it differently. Yeah.
181 00:26:22.740 ⇒ 00:26:30.029 Surf’s iPhone: It’s always kind of good to have some frameworks kind of, like, built in to just have everybody on the same page.
182 00:26:30.380 ⇒ 00:26:42.379 Surf’s iPhone: So, where we are now is Sam’s deployed the application, the old Angular application, and he’s looking at it from the perspective of, alright, how do we…
183 00:26:42.580 ⇒ 00:26:51.630 Surf’s iPhone: turn the functionality, not really the design, because the design’s not great, how do we turn the functionality into React?
184 00:26:51.800 ⇒ 00:26:55.560 Surf’s iPhone: More or less, which shouldn’t be hard.
185 00:26:56.030 ⇒ 00:26:58.569 Surf’s iPhone: Yeah, I think that’s everything in a nutshell.
186 00:27:01.390 ⇒ 00:27:02.490 Mustafa Raja: Any questions?
187 00:27:02.490 ⇒ 00:27:03.190 Surf’s iPhone: Yeah, this is…
188 00:27:03.860 ⇒ 00:27:07.909 Mustafa Raja: I’ve worked with Shadshian before, and I love the library.
189 00:27:09.040 ⇒ 00:27:10.939 Surf’s iPhone: Yeah, I have as well. Yeah.
190 00:27:11.670 ⇒ 00:27:24.339 Surf’s iPhone: Cool, so yeah, I’m a back-end engineer by trade, so I’m not the best with design, so I tend to like to pull in a design library, because, like, I’m like, designers thought about this, I just want to hit…
191 00:27:24.390 ⇒ 00:27:34.579 Surf’s iPhone: load, login page. And if some great design people built it, I’m pretty sure it’s fine. And then if you point me at designs, I can be like.
192 00:27:34.700 ⇒ 00:27:45.669 Surf’s iPhone: Cool, make them look like that. I have not very many fields on the UI, UX side, but very many fields on the backend side.
193 00:27:47.530 ⇒ 00:27:48.220 Pranav: Sweet.
194 00:27:49.650 ⇒ 00:27:55.010 Pranav: One thing I noticed, too, in the repo, like, there was very little code.
195 00:27:55.680 ⇒ 00:28:10.110 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so I’m actually going to… I’m gonna… you should just see it now, I’m just, like, pushing a lot of the legacy stuff into there. Basically, they had, like, 7 or 8 different repos in, like…
196 00:28:10.260 ⇒ 00:28:14.110 Uttam Kumaran: the, sort of, like, Lilo,
197 00:28:14.700 ⇒ 00:28:23.030 Uttam Kumaran: in the Stitch ecosystem, and, like, some of them are used, some of them are not used, so, I’m gonna… I’m gonna push a lot of that code
198 00:28:23.620 ⇒ 00:28:26.470 Uttam Kumaran: now, and so you’ll see…
199 00:28:26.690 ⇒ 00:28:28.209 Uttam Kumaran: Quite a bit of that come in.
200 00:28:28.770 ⇒ 00:28:29.990 Pranav: Okay, cool.
201 00:28:31.100 ⇒ 00:28:31.690 Surf’s iPhone: Yeah.
202 00:28:31.860 ⇒ 00:28:35.670 Surf’s iPhone: I mean, most of that repo is the NPCs, which we… I talked about Utah, we probably.
203 00:28:35.670 ⇒ 00:28:35.990 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
204 00:28:35.990 ⇒ 00:28:39.129 Surf’s iPhone: Because, like, they could just be, like, prompts.
205 00:28:40.500 ⇒ 00:28:48.050 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so let me just… let me get… let me get all of that in now. You guys can see it while we have it up.
206 00:28:53.380 ⇒ 00:28:54.630 Uttam Kumaran: It was.
207 00:28:54.630 ⇒ 00:29:07.149 Pranav: So, sir, you mentioned how, like, you already kind of… have already built in the past, like, that boilerplate, like, repo with, like, front-end, like, boilerplate code, like, back-end, just basically, like, the overall design.
208 00:29:07.400 ⇒ 00:29:07.730 Surf’s iPhone: Yep.
209 00:29:07.730 ⇒ 00:29:12.400 Pranav: and then the current status is like, okay, we’ve spun up that Angular app.
210 00:29:12.520 ⇒ 00:29:22.219 Pranav: We see what they were trying to do, we’re trying to just, like, work out, like, what functionality we want to bring into the new app, and is that kind of…
211 00:29:22.350 ⇒ 00:29:29.770 Pranav: the overall, like, end state of Phase 1, or do we also want to add new functionality?
212 00:29:30.930 ⇒ 00:29:33.880 Surf’s iPhone: I think the overall end state of Phase 1 is
213 00:29:34.190 ⇒ 00:29:45.429 Surf’s iPhone: get the new housing up and running with the old code migrated over, and then that’s the end of State 1. So we haven’t deployed it, and we haven’t migrated all of the stuff yet.
214 00:29:45.790 ⇒ 00:29:56.849 Surf’s iPhone: So that’s still where we are in Phase 1, but that should be Phase 1. Yeah, no net new build is basically copy… copy and paste, but again, it’s not direct copy and paste, because, like.
215 00:29:56.920 ⇒ 00:30:11.379 Surf’s iPhone: It’s an Angular app, so we have to, like, make those components not Angular, which we could probably, like, plod code our cursor, like, it shouldn’t really be that hard. And then, what’s the next part?
216 00:30:11.380 ⇒ 00:30:19.800 Surf’s iPhone: And then, for the light backend work that they did, copy over the Express app.
217 00:30:20.110 ⇒ 00:30:34.419 Surf’s iPhone: Right? And that should be easy, it should literally just be, like, copy and paste and make this into, like, nest endpoints. And then the only thing that actually does need a little bit of consideration, is the authentication.
218 00:30:34.440 ⇒ 00:30:40.379 Surf’s iPhone: So the authentication is built into… I don’t know if you guys are looking at it right now, it’s built into the BNZ app?
219 00:30:42.300 ⇒ 00:30:43.020 Uttam Kumaran: Anyway…
220 00:30:43.020 ⇒ 00:30:45.100 Surf’s iPhone: Which is… Yep, shoot.
221 00:30:45.720 ⇒ 00:30:46.730 Uttam Kumaran: Go, I go, I go.
222 00:30:47.100 ⇒ 00:30:58.869 Surf’s iPhone: Yeah, the authentication is built into the BNZ app, and that’s an actual, like, actual application, but it’s because it’s the application that the dev company actually uses as
223 00:30:59.380 ⇒ 00:31:02.830 Surf’s iPhone: off, and I’m guessing they’re doing that to, like, lock…
224 00:31:03.080 ⇒ 00:31:11.549 Surf’s iPhone: all of the companies that work them… work into them, into, like, working with them, because there’s no reason to have your own custom off, like, it just doesn’t really make much sense.
225 00:31:11.700 ⇒ 00:31:21.390 Surf’s iPhone: So, integrated into the repo that I created is better off.
226 00:31:21.710 ⇒ 00:31:37.950 Surf’s iPhone: So, you can basically get auth, kind of, for free, so you can do Apple sign-in, Google sign-in, X sign-in, everything is built into it. There’s, like, a wrapper, a library around auth, and it’s already built-in native, ready to go. It has email, password, the whole thing.
227 00:31:38.090 ⇒ 00:31:45.200 Surf’s iPhone: So you could just kind of choose which providers and just go. So we’re gonna use that instead.
228 00:31:45.600 ⇒ 00:31:54.349 Surf’s iPhone: And I would just solve the auth problem, and then I know that I spoke to… what’s the guy’s name that we were speaking to at the time?
229 00:31:55.160 ⇒ 00:31:55.920 Uttam Kumaran: Zach.
230 00:31:56.430 ⇒ 00:32:00.519 Surf’s iPhone: Alright, cool, because I’ve adopted the ELT, I just called everybody ELT now.
231 00:32:01.080 ⇒ 00:32:10.140 Surf’s iPhone: So I’ve spoken to Zach, and there’s some minor… authorization stuff?
232 00:32:10.290 ⇒ 00:32:23.230 Surf’s iPhone: But not too big of a deal. Like, ideally, they want him and the other founder to be, like, admins, and then everybody else at the company to be, like, users that can only see certain things. Again, it’s not crazy.
233 00:32:23.230 ⇒ 00:32:33.180 Surf’s iPhone: But he even said it’s okay for the first iteration for everybody to just be admin level and can see everything as we figure out the authorization part later.
234 00:32:33.180 ⇒ 00:32:33.540 Mustafa Raja: Yep.
235 00:32:33.540 ⇒ 00:32:52.449 Surf’s iPhone: Because basically, he’s like, they work with 60 clients, and I think they have 60 employees, and, like, an employee might work only on 3 clients, so it might be annoying logging in and seeing 60 when you only care about 3, but there’s a bunch of different ways you could solve that, and that’s where, like, let’s call that a after-phase 1, Phase 1.2.
236 00:32:52.560 ⇒ 00:32:55.639 Surf’s iPhone: some, like, authentication. I mean, authorization.
237 00:32:57.120 ⇒ 00:32:57.970 Pranav: Gotcha.
238 00:32:58.490 ⇒ 00:32:59.500 Pranav: Yeah.
239 00:32:59.500 ⇒ 00:33:02.560 Surf’s iPhone: Go, go, no, you guys go.
240 00:33:02.560 ⇒ 00:33:09.039 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I sent you guys the, I’m just… this coffee shop Wi-Fi is fast, but I just sent you guys the,
241 00:33:09.210 ⇒ 00:33:14.739 Uttam Kumaran: The repo, the old… the existing codebase zipped up.
242 00:33:14.770 ⇒ 00:33:26.969 Uttam Kumaran: those are all separate repos, and the BRNZ platform, you’ll see, is there. Surf mentioned, like, half these things are MCPs, and, like, don’t work, so I kind of don’t care about those much.
243 00:33:26.970 ⇒ 00:33:35.340 Uttam Kumaran: It’s the other code that really should show you off and things. I guess initial question, sir, is where… do you know where Sam’s working, or is he working all locally?
244 00:33:36.530 ⇒ 00:33:40.940 Surf’s iPhone: Sam is working all locally, and he’s working on specifically the…
245 00:33:41.090 ⇒ 00:33:44.649 Surf’s iPhone: The stuff you just zipped up, like, getting it up and running.
246 00:33:44.930 ⇒ 00:33:51.490 Surf’s iPhone: So, like, he’s actually spun up the, the web app, Locally.
247 00:33:52.600 ⇒ 00:34:04.770 Surf’s iPhone: And that’s why he sent those pictures where he’s like, his version of the app looks different from their version of the app from the video, because they might have given us a little bit of old code, but again, nothing was working anyway, so it’s just like…
248 00:34:06.480 ⇒ 00:34:10.719 Surf’s iPhone: how far off are we, really? And, like, that’s why I’m like.
249 00:34:10.860 ⇒ 00:34:21.839 Surf’s iPhone: before we can formulate the questions, Sam’s still doing a little bit of his discovery around it, so that we can, like, really get good questions in, so that we can make that meeting, like, productive.
250 00:34:31.010 ⇒ 00:34:36.880 Pranav: I have a quick question on, for, like, infrastructure, so…
251 00:34:37.780 ⇒ 00:34:40.090 Surf’s iPhone: Yup. Right now, did they…
252 00:34:40.360 ⇒ 00:34:48.149 Pranav: Well, from what I read, like, there was some stuff built on, like, their previous… I guess,
253 00:34:48.560 ⇒ 00:34:52.639 Pranav: like, DevShop’s, like, AWS account.
254 00:34:52.909 ⇒ 00:34:55.009 Pranav: Is that right?
255 00:34:55.530 ⇒ 00:34:56.090 Surf’s iPhone: Yeah.
256 00:34:56.389 ⇒ 00:34:56.749 Pranav: Okay.
257 00:34:56.750 ⇒ 00:34:57.520 Surf’s iPhone: answer that.
258 00:34:59.660 ⇒ 00:35:04.100 Surf’s iPhone: So… The founders of this company are non-technical.
259 00:35:04.420 ⇒ 00:35:08.600 Surf’s iPhone: I guess that’ll help with what I’m gonna say next.
260 00:35:09.010 ⇒ 00:35:21.429 Surf’s iPhone: Usually, people will say whatever they were told to say. So the original dev shop used AWS, so they assumed they needed their own AWS, which is probably why you saw AWS in the doc.
261 00:35:21.530 ⇒ 00:35:38.900 Surf’s iPhone: But I very quickly was like, hmm, yeah, we don’t need all that. Because, like, like, again, if you don’t have a DevOps team, AWS sounds cool until something breaks, and then everyone’s freaking out. So I was like, hmm, get us a railway. So they gave us access to Railway.
262 00:35:38.900 ⇒ 00:35:39.440 Mustafa Raja: Oh.
263 00:35:40.260 ⇒ 00:35:48.070 Surf’s iPhone: And I’ve already deployed the, like, the monorepo, to Railway, it’s super simple.
264 00:35:48.070 ⇒ 00:35:48.550 Pranav: Oh, yep.
265 00:35:48.550 ⇒ 00:35:57.429 Surf’s iPhone: So, yeah, so we’re probably gonna just use Railway. Yeah. Everyone’s like simple, not have to worry about DevOps, that sucks.
266 00:35:57.580 ⇒ 00:36:00.260 Surf’s iPhone: And build a map really, really quickly.
267 00:36:01.790 ⇒ 00:36:04.940 Mustafa Raja: Yeah, deploying on these new frameworks is also very easy.
268 00:36:05.180 ⇒ 00:36:07.830 Mustafa Raja: Comparing to, you know, AWS and all.
269 00:36:08.300 ⇒ 00:36:08.859 Surf’s iPhone: Yeah, agreed.
270 00:36:08.860 ⇒ 00:36:15.870 Uttam Kumaran: And then, I’ve invited you guys to the OnePass vault for Lilo. In there, you’re gonna see,
271 00:36:16.920 ⇒ 00:36:23.850 Uttam Kumaran: you should see the Gmail account, like, stitch at lilosocial.com. You could use that for…
272 00:36:23.970 ⇒ 00:36:30.289 Uttam Kumaran: for Railway, like, if you log in with Gmail. And then also, we can invite your Brave Forge, but…
273 00:36:31.020 ⇒ 00:36:33.060 Uttam Kumaran: Feel free to just use that… that account.
274 00:36:33.060 ⇒ 00:36:33.640 Mustafa Raja: Okay.
275 00:36:37.940 ⇒ 00:36:43.879 Pranav: For that vault, would we see it in the 1Pass account itself? I don’t see a notification.
276 00:36:47.520 ⇒ 00:36:50.859 Uttam Kumaran: You should honestly just get, like, immediately added.
277 00:36:51.440 ⇒ 00:36:51.920 Mustafa Raja: Yeah.
278 00:36:51.920 ⇒ 00:36:52.790 Pranav: Oh, okay.
279 00:36:53.730 ⇒ 00:36:57.809 Uttam Kumaran: like… If you just go to your vaults, you should see that you’re…
280 00:36:58.150 ⇒ 00:37:04.140 Uttam Kumaran: Because we just use all groups there, so I added you to the… Lilo Social Group.
281 00:37:05.040 ⇒ 00:37:09.400 Uttam Kumaran: And then it will give you access to Brainforge Real Social.
282 00:37:09.860 ⇒ 00:37:10.600 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, if you.
283 00:37:10.600 ⇒ 00:37:11.270 Pranav: God.
284 00:37:13.370 ⇒ 00:37:17.290 Pranav: Okay. I’ll do some… Digging your.
285 00:37:17.290 ⇒ 00:37:20.889 Uttam Kumaran: We’ll just share… share… share what you’re seeing, I could, we could just, like, dig through it.
286 00:37:20.890 ⇒ 00:37:22.079 Pranav: Okay, yeah, perfect.
287 00:37:27.830 ⇒ 00:37:36.440 Uttam Kumaran: We just, like, are… we are managing a lot of clients, so we’re starting to get better, but I know for everybody’s, like, first day, there’s, like, a thousand accounts, but, like.
288 00:37:36.680 ⇒ 00:37:45.109 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so, actually, one thing I would suggest is go to 1Password.com, the, the, the,
289 00:37:45.770 ⇒ 00:37:53.129 Uttam Kumaran: The extension can sometimes, like, not be, just, like, lose connection.
290 00:37:53.250 ⇒ 00:37:56.230 Uttam Kumaran: It just won’t have… it just won’t refresh, basically. It’s weird.
291 00:37:57.230 ⇒ 00:37:58.320 Pranav: Gotcha.
292 00:37:59.710 ⇒ 00:38:01.979 Uttam Kumaran: And then they also have, like, a desktop app, but…
293 00:38:16.770 ⇒ 00:38:17.490 Pranav: Okay.
294 00:38:18.790 ⇒ 00:38:20.599 Pranav: Oh, okay, cool. Yep.
295 00:38:20.600 ⇒ 00:38:23.850 Uttam Kumaran: There it is, yeah, so… so that Gmail…
296 00:38:24.300 ⇒ 00:38:33.710 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so the other thing that’s kind of… I don’t know if you’re on a Mac, but I have one past the desktop app, and there’s something that it does with the browser extension, so it, like, stays in sync, but that’s…
297 00:38:33.880 ⇒ 00:38:39.370 Uttam Kumaran: OnePass is kind of sh… it’s just, like, there’s not, like, a really great tool, but they’re the best and the worst, so…
298 00:38:39.860 ⇒ 00:38:47.429 Uttam Kumaran: But since we just have, like, so many clients, we just use them, and then basically, we’ll add you to groups for the client, and then you’ll get added to their ball, basically, as we know.
299 00:38:47.910 ⇒ 00:38:51.340 Pranav: Perfect, that sounds good. You said you like the desktop app, or it’s…
300 00:38:51.340 ⇒ 00:38:56.229 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I would use the… I would totally just install the desktop app. Cool.
301 00:38:56.880 ⇒ 00:39:01.580 Uttam Kumaran: And maybe that’s something I can tell Rico to add to the onboarding stuff. Yeah, it’s nice.
302 00:39:02.330 ⇒ 00:39:03.010 Pranav: Nice, nice.
303 00:39:04.500 ⇒ 00:39:16.000 Uttam Kumaran: And then the other thing is, in the, client relo, let me see… So the other thing is, you’re gonna see in the repo, you’re gonna see, like, a bunch of other, like, kind of, like.
304 00:39:16.160 ⇒ 00:39:26.720 Uttam Kumaran: just, like, the agendas, transcripts. So one thing that we’re starting to do for all clients is start to store a lot of project-related information in the repo, too.
305 00:39:26.760 ⇒ 00:39:40.140 Uttam Kumaran: So that, it actually, just as you use… as you rip Cursor for stuff, it’s actually just have, like, way more context on, like, what it is we’re doing. And I’m also using Cursor to write, like, PRDs and project plans, so we’re sort of trying to centralize
306 00:39:40.230 ⇒ 00:39:44.429 Uttam Kumaran: Tons and tons of, like, the project details and cursor, so that’s what you’re gonna see.
307 00:39:44.580 ⇒ 00:39:55.149 Uttam Kumaran: In there. This is a kind of new way we’re trying to run some of these projects. And then I think, basically, tomorrow, you can ask,
308 00:39:55.460 ⇒ 00:40:14.029 Uttam Kumaran: kind of, like, work with Sam to see, like, how much of his stuff he can start to push, and, like, what the project sort of plan is. I think one thing that would be helpful, here, though, is, Pranav, if you can start to own, like, the creation of, like, basically, like, tickets and…
309 00:40:14.130 ⇒ 00:40:21.209 Uttam Kumaran: You know, just making sure that… that things are sort of organized, in terms of, like, what the…
310 00:40:21.780 ⇒ 00:40:25.699 Uttam Kumaran: sort of plan is, I think that would be a huge help for… for this team.
311 00:40:26.550 ⇒ 00:40:27.460 Pranav: Yeah, sure.
312 00:40:27.460 ⇒ 00:40:28.400 Uttam Kumaran: If that works.
313 00:40:28.840 ⇒ 00:40:36.670 Pranav: Totally. So, I think where you guys are doing most of that, like, project management is… is that, linear?
314 00:40:37.320 ⇒ 00:40:38.030 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
315 00:40:38.360 ⇒ 00:40:48.430 Pranav: Okay, cool. And so, is there already, like, a project built for, like, or just, like, a… I haven’t used Linear before, but is there already kind of, like, a…
316 00:40:48.790 ⇒ 00:40:51.540 Pranav: I don’t know, a project in there, I guess, for…
317 00:40:51.540 ⇒ 00:40:58.689 Uttam Kumaran: It will be for Lilo. Yeah, and so anything about tooling, or if you’re like, hey, like, is there one? I would just hit Rico. He’s in…
318 00:40:59.110 ⇒ 00:41:12.320 Uttam Kumaran: me and him are basically in, like, every single channel, so you can just hit him anywhere, and he’ll… he’ll just make sure you have access to all the right stuff. But yeah, there should be… there will be already a Lilo linear project. There may not be anything in it, because this is sort of, like.
319 00:41:12.450 ⇒ 00:41:17.839 Uttam Kumaran: we’re kind of a week and a half in. Yeah. But ideally, what we’re kind of hoping for…
320 00:41:17.930 ⇒ 00:41:29.200 Uttam Kumaran: Is that, yeah, if you can just sort of, like, start to create tickets for, like, the tasks, and then right now, we’re running, like, we basically run, like, two stand-ups in the morning, one for…
321 00:41:29.260 ⇒ 00:41:43.039 Uttam Kumaran: data engineering, and sort of, like, AI engineering, and then… and, like, kind of, like, full-stack stuff, and then we run a second one for strategy, analysis, and, like, some of the analytics work. I’m in the… like, a bunch of us are in the first one in the morning, and we sort of, like.
322 00:41:43.130 ⇒ 00:41:46.070 Uttam Kumaran: Roundtripped through our core clients.
323 00:41:46.170 ⇒ 00:41:51.709 Uttam Kumaran: So I’ll add you there, and Sam and… and Surf are there, but I don’t know, Surf, if, like, you think…
324 00:41:51.940 ⇒ 00:41:56.320 Uttam Kumaran: I guess it’ll… it’ll be up… that meeting is starting to get a little big, so we can carve out
325 00:41:56.720 ⇒ 00:42:00.280 Uttam Kumaran: AI and app to another one if we want to, but…
326 00:42:00.920 ⇒ 00:42:04.370 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe let’s just, like, keep going in there for now and see what happens.
327 00:42:05.530 ⇒ 00:42:10.419 Uttam Kumaran: So I’ll make sure you’re in there, Pranab, but that’s the only kind of scheduled meeting we have.
328 00:42:10.610 ⇒ 00:42:19.180 Uttam Kumaran: Right now, and then we… as you start to get onto this project, probably next week, I’ll invite you to the… to the client meetings, and then…
329 00:42:19.710 ⇒ 00:42:27.589 Uttam Kumaran: at that point, we should be kind of in good shape. I think, like, I’ll… I’m gonna work on sort of the product requirements for the…
330 00:42:28.010 ⇒ 00:42:36.179 Uttam Kumaran: for that Phase 2, and then work with them to sort of get approval on, like, what the scope is, and then once we do that, we can kind of work with you to get it ticketed, and then…
331 00:42:37.180 ⇒ 00:42:48.160 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we kind of… we kind of do have a bunch of time to get this done, so I think we can get it done. You know, right now we have, like, 3 months booked to, like, get all this done. I feel like we’re gonna kind of probably end up doing this a lot faster.
332 00:42:48.970 ⇒ 00:42:54.169 Pranav: Cool. Yeah. That’s awesome. So, kind of…
333 00:42:54.440 ⇒ 00:43:03.849 Pranav: how I can kind of think about this is I can run being a, like, the project management, building out these tickets, working with Sam, kind of…
334 00:43:04.720 ⇒ 00:43:09.770 Pranav: fact-checking, maybe, kind of, like, my ideas for, like, how to break up tasks with, like, Surf and Sam.
335 00:43:09.930 ⇒ 00:43:15.819 Pranav: For the rest of this week. Is that kind of what you’re thinking as well?
336 00:43:16.530 ⇒ 00:43:23.329 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking, and so I think kind of how it’s gonna happen is probably Surfer Sam is gonna play… are gonna play, like.
337 00:43:23.450 ⇒ 00:43:33.599 Uttam Kumaran: technical point on, like, running the client meeting, and then if you can play point on, like, creating, like, tickets and just making sure Linear is in a good spot.
338 00:43:33.770 ⇒ 00:43:42.079 Uttam Kumaran: Gotcha. And then you’re gonna, you’re gonna see that in the morning meeting, Awash sort of just goes through each team and pulls up linear and just kind of gets updates.
339 00:43:42.130 ⇒ 00:43:57.760 Uttam Kumaran: And I, you know, I think that should be, you know, a good way. I don’t think for… sort of the way we’re thinking about it is, like, for managing, for preparing and running client meetings and, like, for managing linear and stuff, should only be, like, probably 20-30% of your time, like, that you’re…
340 00:43:57.780 ⇒ 00:43:59.219 Pranav: on the project. Gotcha.
341 00:43:59.220 ⇒ 00:44:05.430 Uttam Kumaran: So, I’m not expecting you to go, like, OD on project management, but it’s just helpful to have, like, one person
342 00:44:05.560 ⇒ 00:44:10.660 Uttam Kumaran: on the team that’s, like, hey, I’m in charge of just making sure Linear is, like, Set off.
343 00:44:11.460 ⇒ 00:44:21.669 Pranav: Totally. Yeah, that makes sense to me. So it’s like, making tickets, maybe they’re tickets for not just me, but they’ll always be tickets for me to do for dev… actual dev work.
344 00:44:22.240 ⇒ 00:44:28.460 Uttam Kumaran: Exactly, and so I think Sam and Surf will kind of decide, like, assignments and, like, pacing.
345 00:44:28.650 ⇒ 00:44:32.559 Uttam Kumaran: And then you’ll assist on just, like, keeping everybody on track.
346 00:44:32.810 ⇒ 00:44:35.819 Uttam Kumaran: And then they’ll also own, basically, the…
347 00:44:36.380 ⇒ 00:44:40.350 Uttam Kumaran: you know, running the client meetings, which Surf has done the last two weeks.
348 00:44:40.620 ⇒ 00:44:50.920 Uttam Kumaran: And then we’ll see, like, these clients evolve, so, like, Leela wants to work with us for a long time, so as we kind of progress and we sort of set up, we’ll kind of see, like, what the pacing…
349 00:44:51.080 ⇒ 00:44:53.499 Uttam Kumaran: Looks like, what their expectations are, and…
350 00:44:53.610 ⇒ 00:44:57.709 Uttam Kumaran: will kind of ebb and flow. I think this model of, like, having
351 00:44:57.860 ⇒ 00:45:10.679 Uttam Kumaran: you know, just, like, one thing that we’ve tried in the company before is, like, we had a moment where we were like, okay, every project gets, like, a PM, and it’s a PM coordinator, but just found, like, those people not being technical
352 00:45:10.920 ⇒ 00:45:12.920 Uttam Kumaran: just, like, sucked. Like.
353 00:45:13.360 ⇒ 00:45:20.649 Uttam Kumaran: And we just felt like, okay… and you’ll also learn, like, there’s other… we have a lot of, like, internal AI tools.
354 00:45:20.760 ⇒ 00:45:26.889 Uttam Kumaran: That can help you, you know, create tickets and interact with project plans and stuff like that, so team will walk you through that, but…
355 00:45:27.120 ⇒ 00:45:33.319 Uttam Kumaran: We just found that, like, giving the engineer… folks on the engineering team a little bit of that ownership
356 00:45:33.450 ⇒ 00:45:36.500 Uttam Kumaran: Just, like, helps… is way better than…
357 00:45:36.870 ⇒ 00:45:40.619 Uttam Kumaran: having to have, like, a dedicated PM who, like, is non-technical.
358 00:45:40.770 ⇒ 00:45:44.230 Uttam Kumaran: To run these, especially when it’s just, like, 3- or 4-person pods, you know?
359 00:45:44.900 ⇒ 00:45:48.909 Pranav: Yeah, yeah, no, I think that’s actually a really good idea.
360 00:45:49.110 ⇒ 00:45:57.540 Pranav: I have another quick question, too, about just Phase 1. So I know we said, like, 2-4 weeks. Was that starting this week? Was that…
361 00:45:57.870 ⇒ 00:45:59.380 Pranav: Starting on Monday.
362 00:45:59.380 ⇒ 00:46:06.509 Uttam Kumaran: Starting this week. Okay, cool. So that’s starting us. If you’re down to the start tomorrow, then yeah, you can start banging stuff out. I think…
363 00:46:08.550 ⇒ 00:46:22.060 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I feel like I’m… kind of what you’re gonna see the way we… we kind of work is sort of just, like, run your own ship and run your own pod. And so, I… I kind of… what I’m expecting is that you, you know, you, Sam.
364 00:46:22.190 ⇒ 00:46:32.649 Uttam Kumaran: And Servfar sort of attached on the hip. I kind of looped in Mustafa here, just to kind of observe in case we need to loop him in, but I’ll… I think that
365 00:46:33.050 ⇒ 00:46:38.029 Uttam Kumaran: I’m kind of looking to you, Sam, and Surf to just let me know, like.
366 00:46:38.400 ⇒ 00:46:53.289 Uttam Kumaran: you know, how much… what is the pacing, how much we’re gonna get done, and, like, what is the… what is the ultimate, like, you know, where we’re gonna end up at the end of the month for this client? I’m not going anywhere, like, I’m… I know the whole scope and everything, but, yeah, like, that’s kind of, like, what we’re…
367 00:46:53.970 ⇒ 00:47:01.689 Uttam Kumaran: that’s kind of, like, what we’re… what we’re expecting here. So I think it’ll take probably another day or two for you to sort of get into everything, and so we’re not expecting, like.
368 00:47:02.080 ⇒ 00:47:10.769 Uttam Kumaran: to do tons of stuff, but I feel like this project is pretty contained in that it is somewhat of, like, let’s just bring something up that is clickable with off.
369 00:47:10.770 ⇒ 00:47:11.190 Pranav: Right.
370 00:47:11.190 ⇒ 00:47:13.770 Uttam Kumaran: Like, in the next 2 weeks.
371 00:47:14.120 ⇒ 00:47:20.270 Uttam Kumaran: And then let’s work on the, forecasting, like, product, basically.
372 00:47:20.840 ⇒ 00:47:27.620 Pranav: Totally. Yeah, that makes sense. I think Phase 1’s actually a pretty good, way for me to ramp up, just based.
373 00:47:27.620 ⇒ 00:47:27.940 Uttam Kumaran: Exactly.
374 00:47:28.180 ⇒ 00:47:46.779 Pranav: the description of things. Like, yeah, speaking of Phase 1, is the idea for the deliverable to be kind of in production for the client, so then they can, like, start using it? And so, like, when we’re into Phase 2 right after that, we’re gonna be also…
375 00:47:46.790 ⇒ 00:47:51.479 Pranav: I guess, playing a support role in case things are to break, or…
376 00:47:51.590 ⇒ 00:47:54.089 Pranav: Anything coming about, like, the application?
377 00:47:54.090 ⇒ 00:47:59.770 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’s a great question. Yeah, so, I would think of the phasing as, like.
378 00:48:00.100 ⇒ 00:48:12.350 Uttam Kumaran: we are… and this is sort of gonna get into, like, how we do, like, product requirements, but basically, the way I like to do product requirements is just do, like, POC, MVP, like, V1, V2.
379 00:48:12.420 ⇒ 00:48:26.710 Uttam Kumaran: And so, ideally, for the… we have some requirements for Phase 2, but overall, those are things that, like, we came up with. So we have a lot of flexibility to help them think through, like, what features are in or out of scope.
380 00:48:26.880 ⇒ 00:48:33.819 Uttam Kumaran: So ideally, what I’m hoping is that I’m gonna build out the requirements, and then pass it to y’all to tell me, like.
381 00:48:34.090 ⇒ 00:48:40.170 Uttam Kumaran: okay, like, roughly, we can get this done on timing. I don’t expect them to push back, because we’ve already done
382 00:48:40.310 ⇒ 00:48:42.870 Uttam Kumaran: We’re already, like, doing really well.
383 00:48:42.980 ⇒ 00:48:45.849 Uttam Kumaran: And then, yes, we will basically…
384 00:48:46.190 ⇒ 00:49:00.170 Uttam Kumaran: we’re gonna work with them and basically kind of be their development team. So what’s gonna happen is we’re gonna both maintain their forecasting sort of module, they’re gonna… there’s gonna be follow-on work for that.
385 00:49:00.200 ⇒ 00:49:11.069 Uttam Kumaran: there’s gonna be this, like, foreplay API with the image generation, and then they have, like, 4 or 5 other sort of modules they want to build to support,
386 00:49:12.240 ⇒ 00:49:16.819 Uttam Kumaran: the company. So we’re just… we’re just basically their engineering team.
387 00:49:17.000 ⇒ 00:49:29.630 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, this isn’t… this isn’t… this… our expectation for this client isn’t, like, oh, 3 months, and then we’re, like, done. They… they want, like, a long-term, basically, engineering partner to not only do, like, product.
388 00:49:29.810 ⇒ 00:49:32.720 Uttam Kumaran: Design and product requirements, but also build.
389 00:49:34.120 ⇒ 00:49:39.859 Uttam Kumaran: So, yeah, and that’s, like, most of our engagements are these types of things. We don’t… we don’t take on a lot of work where it’s, like.
390 00:49:40.010 ⇒ 00:49:43.410 Uttam Kumaran: they come in and build this in depth. Like, all of our stuff is…
391 00:49:43.890 ⇒ 00:49:52.730 Uttam Kumaran: like, hey, we need, like, a partner to come do this as we, like, grow our company. And these guys were like, we’ll work with you, like, basically, until we run out of ideas, so…
392 00:49:53.790 ⇒ 00:50:07.289 Pranav: Gotcha, gotcha. Okay, so how I’m kind of understanding that as well is, like, after these 4 weeks, it’s not necessarily, like, they need to be at, like, this place, and maybe have, like.
393 00:50:07.360 ⇒ 00:50:14.749 Pranav: Or maybe there is, like, some… there’s obviously some progress they want to see in terms of, like, what we described in this, in this document, but…
394 00:50:15.510 ⇒ 00:50:20.579 Pranav: They don’t need the application necessarily to be, like, completely handed off to them.
395 00:50:20.690 ⇒ 00:50:23.020 Pranav: Because that’s not what we’re trying to do.
396 00:50:23.760 ⇒ 00:50:37.150 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s exactly right. I mean, like, I think on any of our projects, we are, like, think about it, like, if we were to get rolled off next week, what documentation should we have? So, like, consistently try to document and keep tests and, like…
397 00:50:37.560 ⇒ 00:50:45.509 Uttam Kumaran: like, do great engineering work, but we’re not, like, there’s no expectation that we roll off after the 3 months, it’s just the agreement that we signed.
398 00:50:46.280 ⇒ 00:51:01.110 Pranav: Gotcha. Okay. That makes sense. I think, yeah, the one thing when I saw the two to four weeks that I think is cleared up now is, like, when Surf mentioned, like, we don’t need to deploy to AWS, I was like, okay, that is… that’s a good sign, because, like Surf said, like.
399 00:51:01.170 ⇒ 00:51:11.849 Pranav: you know, if you don’t have a dedicated, like, DevOps team, that could be, like, horrible and, like, take a lot of time, so… and it seems like it might be overkill as well here, so… Okay, I like the…
400 00:51:11.850 ⇒ 00:51:12.740 Uttam Kumaran: Exactly. Yeah.
401 00:51:12.740 ⇒ 00:51:14.720 Pranav: This is how we scope things out.
402 00:51:16.490 ⇒ 00:51:35.629 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think, like, what you’re gonna see, like, with all of us is that we’re all, like, we all kind of… we all kind of get the gist, and the biggest thing here is that the client is not technical, so really over-explain and over-communicate in the client channel. Once you’re comfortable, I’ll loop you into the client channel, and basically, I think for…
403 00:51:36.150 ⇒ 00:51:41.599 Uttam Kumaran: where everybody on this project is just spam and Slack, and make sure that your work is seen, and…
404 00:51:42.090 ⇒ 00:51:45.630 Uttam Kumaran: I’m gonna do a little bit of that too, but,
405 00:51:46.180 ⇒ 00:51:48.629 Uttam Kumaran: It’s… it’s just gonna be tough, like…
406 00:51:48.750 ⇒ 00:51:51.559 Uttam Kumaran: We’re gonna do… we do weekly demos with them, but…
407 00:51:51.690 ⇒ 00:51:58.499 Uttam Kumaran: as we’re shipping code or features or whatever, just send screenshots into the Slack and, like, engage with them, because
408 00:51:58.720 ⇒ 00:52:08.750 Uttam Kumaran: this is what… the reason why… the one thing that hurt the last development partner is that they just didn’t communicate well at all. I mean, and they sucked, but, like, they also didn’t communicate well.
409 00:52:09.000 ⇒ 00:52:14.370 Uttam Kumaran: So I don’t want to get dinged for the same thing when we’re also doing, like, way better.
410 00:52:14.480 ⇒ 00:52:27.660 Uttam Kumaran: So CERF already sent some screenshots, Sam’s doing a good job of that, so that’s probably the only thing to keep in mind. If this was a more technical partner, then, of course, like, they would… they’d probably be on PR reviews and stuff, but these guys are mainly gonna be…
411 00:52:27.980 ⇒ 00:52:36.250 Uttam Kumaran: think about them, they’re like, just, like, have no idea, like, what’s going on in the code, so they’re just waiting to see output, basically. So, in the meantime, we just try to share stuff there.
412 00:52:37.380 ⇒ 00:52:39.340 Pranav: That makes… that makes total sense, yeah.
413 00:52:48.480 ⇒ 00:52:49.809 Uttam Kumaran: Great. What else?
414 00:52:50.240 ⇒ 00:52:56.200 Uttam Kumaran: Pranav, do you see this, I added you to the stand-up tomorrow?
415 00:52:57.710 ⇒ 00:53:00.540 Pranav: Let me… Check.
416 00:53:01.700 ⇒ 00:53:07.699 Pranav: Yes, I see, like, the DEAI stand-up. Correct.
417 00:53:07.700 ⇒ 00:53:08.150 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
418 00:53:08.150 ⇒ 00:53:08.650 Pranav: Okay.
419 00:53:09.740 ⇒ 00:53:16.490 Uttam Kumaran: So, you’ll meet everybody else, you’ll meet kind of, like, our whole, like, Data engineer, full stack folks.
420 00:53:16.780 ⇒ 00:53:20.109 Uttam Kumaran: And then, yeah, they’ll just be… we’ll just…
421 00:53:20.260 ⇒ 00:53:22.259 Uttam Kumaran: I’m gonna talk through what the plan is for…
422 00:53:22.710 ⇒ 00:53:41.420 Uttam Kumaran: For Lilo there, and then… I mean, you’re free to book as little as much time as you want with Sam and Surf, so I’ll kind of let you guys just get organized. I think my expectation is I’m gonna book a meeting with Zach now for Friday. I would love to kind of have a little bit of an understanding of, like, what we’re gonna present.
423 00:53:41.600 ⇒ 00:53:45.090 Uttam Kumaran: Tomorrow night, sometime.
424 00:53:45.540 ⇒ 00:53:50.080 Uttam Kumaran: We don’t have to do decks or anything for this client, but…
425 00:53:50.270 ⇒ 00:54:08.729 Uttam Kumaran: we do want to come in with, like, something to share, or if we don’t have any, like, UI to share, something to explain. For this week, I’m gonna be… I’m gonna have, like, a thorough product requirements doc for the revenue forecasting product, so we’re a little bit saved this week.
426 00:54:08.900 ⇒ 00:54:11.339 Uttam Kumaran: Cause I could talk a little bit about that, but…
427 00:54:11.630 ⇒ 00:54:16.069 Uttam Kumaran: They’re just… they just want to hear about how we’re building stuff, so as much as we can share, that would be great.
428 00:54:18.250 ⇒ 00:54:19.040 Pranav: Cool.
429 00:54:19.410 ⇒ 00:54:26.009 Pranav: Yeah, maybe that’s something Surf, Sam, and I can talk about tomorrow, like, how do we actually wanna…
430 00:54:26.050 ⇒ 00:54:40.510 Pranav: show progress in that meeting, on top of, like, what you’re already gonna show. But yeah, before that, I have to probably just talk to Sam and see, like, where the app is currently at. And so, yeah, I’ll, set up some time with Sam tomorrow.
431 00:54:41.140 ⇒ 00:54:41.800 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
432 00:54:42.260 ⇒ 00:54:47.890 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Oh yeah, Mustafa, just, just be a fly on the wall and stuff, in case the team wants to pull you in.
433 00:54:49.740 ⇒ 00:54:50.800 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, sorry, go ahead.
434 00:54:51.570 ⇒ 00:55:08.070 Pranav: Yeah, yeah, Mustafa, I’ll ask… I’ll, add a meeting tomorrow with, all four of us. But I was also gonna ask, too, like, is everyone else working 40 hours a week, or are there certain other schedules that I should be, like, looking at? Are there, like, is there, like, a schedules, maybe, like.
435 00:55:08.450 ⇒ 00:55:12.850 Pranav: Calendar on… There is a…
436 00:55:12.850 ⇒ 00:55:20.099 Uttam Kumaran: there… everybody here, like… yeah, there… I would say, for the most part, everybody in the next meeting is…
437 00:55:20.340 ⇒ 00:55:28.009 Uttam Kumaran: full-time. There is somewhere in Notion where people’s time zones and, like, where they’re located is. Okay.
438 00:55:28.260 ⇒ 00:55:38.279 Uttam Kumaran: But the people on this call are always on, including me, so I feel like Sam starts early and ends, like, around 5. Three of us are sort of on most of the day, so…
439 00:55:39.020 ⇒ 00:55:39.830 Pranav: Perfect, perfect.
440 00:55:39.830 ⇒ 00:55:42.359 Uttam Kumaran: But also good… but also good question for Rico.
441 00:55:43.040 ⇒ 00:55:47.829 Surf’s iPhone: I work 9… I work 9 to 9, so… text me whenever, put me in a room.
442 00:55:48.300 ⇒ 00:55:48.870 Pranav: 9 to 10.
443 00:55:48.870 ⇒ 00:55:50.470 Surf’s iPhone: I do need to get off a lot, but…
444 00:55:50.470 ⇒ 00:55:54.349 Uttam Kumaran: I work 12 to… I work 12… I work 12 to 12.
445 00:55:54.350 ⇒ 00:55:55.220 Pranav: Yeah.
446 00:55:55.670 ⇒ 00:55:56.420 Surf’s iPhone: for that.
447 00:55:58.050 ⇒ 00:56:04.629 Surf’s iPhone: Me and Utom need to figure out lives, but whatever.
448 00:56:05.420 ⇒ 00:56:06.550 Surf’s iPhone: Cool, cool.
449 00:56:08.760 ⇒ 00:56:13.359 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Perfect, guys. Appreciate it. And then, yeah, you know, hit me with any questions.
450 00:56:14.220 ⇒ 00:56:16.359 Pranav: Totally. Awesome, guys. Thanks.
451 00:56:16.360 ⇒ 00:56:17.070 Mustafa Raja: Thank you.
452 00:56:17.070 ⇒ 00:56:18.670 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Thank you.
453 00:56:19.190 ⇒ 00:56:20.130 Surf’s iPhone: Talk to me soon.
454 00:56:20.860 ⇒ 00:56:21.770 Mustafa Raja: Bye.