Meeting Title: ReadMe <> Brainforge Check-In Date: 2026-01-29 Meeting participants: Robert Tseng, Greg Stoutenburg, Phoebe Miller
WEBVTT
1 00:00:15.820 ⇒ 00:00:16.670 Greg Stoutenburg: Hey!
2 00:00:16.910 ⇒ 00:00:17.740 Robert Tseng: Hey, Greg.
3 00:00:23.440 ⇒ 00:00:23.700 Greg Stoutenburg: It’s.
4 00:00:28.050 ⇒ 00:00:36.389 Robert Tseng: I’m, like, double-booked on a different client call, so I’m hoping this will not take the 30 minutes. Probably just gonna… I don’t…
5 00:00:36.390 ⇒ 00:00:36.790 Greg Stoutenburg: I don’t.
6 00:00:36.790 ⇒ 00:00:37.960 Robert Tseng: I wish I don’t care.
7 00:00:38.720 ⇒ 00:00:40.129 Greg Stoutenburg: I don’t see how it could.
8 00:00:40.130 ⇒ 00:00:40.820 Robert Tseng: Okay.
9 00:00:42.460 ⇒ 00:00:42.980 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
10 00:00:44.190 ⇒ 00:00:45.060 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay.
11 00:00:56.970 ⇒ 00:01:00.179 Robert Tseng: Everything all good on Eden? I know I didn’t really get to hear from you.
12 00:01:00.370 ⇒ 00:01:01.630 Robert Tseng: Earlier today.
13 00:01:02.350 ⇒ 00:01:05.629 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, I mean, Eden’s fine. I’m,
14 00:01:06.190 ⇒ 00:01:14.260 Greg Stoutenburg: I’m working with them on campaigns and need to give them a revised experimentation roadmap and some resources that I want to suggest they use.
15 00:01:14.390 ⇒ 00:01:24.150 Greg Stoutenburg: one of the things that I see already is that they use a prioritization framework that doesn’t include how many customers will be affected, and so we’ll damp on that a little bit.
16 00:01:24.630 ⇒ 00:01:26.680 Robert Tseng: Okay, okay, cool, good to hear.
17 00:01:27.160 ⇒ 00:01:27.720 Phoebe Miller: Yep.
18 00:01:28.040 ⇒ 00:01:29.430 Robert Tseng: Hey. Hey, how’s it going?
19 00:01:29.480 ⇒ 00:01:31.019 Greg Stoutenburg: Jed, how are you all?
20 00:01:32.050 ⇒ 00:01:32.440 Greg Stoutenburg: To well…
21 00:01:32.440 ⇒ 00:01:33.259 Robert Tseng: Doing well.
22 00:01:34.230 ⇒ 00:01:34.840 Phoebe Miller: Great.
23 00:01:36.640 ⇒ 00:01:41.170 Greg Stoutenburg: You have the owl even in the wallpaper. That’s, that’s clever. Just saw that.
24 00:01:41.340 ⇒ 00:01:41.850 Phoebe Miller: Yep.
25 00:01:42.300 ⇒ 00:01:46.999 Phoebe Miller: Custom, custom wallpaper in our New York City office. The owl is everywhere.
26 00:01:51.830 ⇒ 00:02:07.300 Robert Tseng: Cool, well, yeah, I just thought we could, get into it, and I don’t think this needs to take the full 30 minutes, just wanted to see, yeah, like, what do we… what can we figure out, like, while we’re on this call to… I mean, to make… to come to a decision here.
27 00:02:08.009 ⇒ 00:02:13.859 Phoebe Miller: Yeah, it’s… it’s tough, because, like.
28 00:02:14.009 ⇒ 00:02:21.289 Phoebe Miller: I understand we’ve been off the books, for a while, which is not ideal for you all. That being said, like, we haven’t…
29 00:02:21.899 ⇒ 00:02:28.519 Phoebe Miller: also ask for any work, so I think that’s okay, as we’re, like, figuring out what the next phase looks like.
30 00:02:28.779 ⇒ 00:02:32.829 Phoebe Miller: What’s tricky for me is…
31 00:02:33.009 ⇒ 00:02:36.339 Phoebe Miller: like, I’d be better off… at 10K a month, like, I’d be better off…
32 00:02:37.059 ⇒ 00:02:47.379 Phoebe Miller: like, hiring someone, or at least, like, finding a different contract. The other… so we have a few people doing QA, I think I mentioned this to you. We have…
33 00:02:48.899 ⇒ 00:03:01.069 Phoebe Miller: we brought on a contractor to, like, lead QA, who has a QA background. He’s gonna be, like, sitting across the top of it. And then the plan was to have you all represent, kind of, like, the user experience
34 00:03:01.069 ⇒ 00:03:13.099 Phoebe Miller: And then we have, our support team, which is based in the Ukraine. They’ll also be hands-on doing QA, and that’s gonna be more, like, technical QA, since they’ll be…
35 00:03:13.099 ⇒ 00:03:19.409 Phoebe Miller: They have, like, the rights to go into, our staging environments and things like that.
36 00:03:21.379 ⇒ 00:03:29.819 Phoebe Miller: they are all, like, the folks in the Ukraine are, you know, under 30 an hour. The, the,
37 00:03:29.939 ⇒ 00:03:33.529 Phoebe Miller: individual running the QA process is, like, 60 an hour.
38 00:03:33.629 ⇒ 00:03:49.599 Phoebe Miller: And then, so, for you all, like, as being, like, not the only party, but, like, an additional party, at 10K a month, it’s, like, really, really hard to justify for us.
39 00:03:49.929 ⇒ 00:03:56.749 Phoebe Miller: Now I know, you know, the plan is for you all to do additional things in addition to QA,
40 00:03:57.379 ⇒ 00:04:08.469 Phoebe Miller: But at least for the first month, which is, like, what I anticipate the QA lasting, like, I just… I can’t really justify it. And I’ve, you know, run up the flagpole, like, it’s just…
41 00:04:08.729 ⇒ 00:04:11.069 Phoebe Miller: It’s a no-go.
42 00:04:11.500 ⇒ 00:04:20.429 Phoebe Miller: that being said, like, I want to keep working with you all, so if there are other creative ways we can structure the agreement, like, I’m all ears, but I… I just can’t…
43 00:04:20.570 ⇒ 00:04:31.600 Phoebe Miller: like I said, there’s gonna be, like, multiple people doing QA, so as… if you were the only party, like, maybe, but I… I can’t… $2.50 an hour or 10K a month, like, it just doesn’t make sense for us.
44 00:04:32.890 ⇒ 00:04:49.590 Robert Tseng: Okay, yeah, yeah, I mean, I think I hear you, that makes sense. I… I think we’re kind of at a point where we don’t… we don’t view ourselves the same, like… I mean, yeah, obviously we’re working across a bunch of other clients, so… Yeah. Obviously, the scope got trimmed down, so it was just QA, but we don’t want to position ourselves that way, so…
45 00:04:49.590 ⇒ 00:04:50.000 Phoebe Miller: Yeah.
46 00:04:50.110 ⇒ 00:04:58.679 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, we’re not gonna come down to 68 hours, it just, like, doesn’t make sense, like, both of our hours are way higher than that at this point, so,
47 00:04:58.680 ⇒ 00:05:13.509 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and, like, you know, we feel like this is the team to… to go… like, yeah, we have more junior folks on the team, but, like, we weren’t planning to staff them on this client, or on this project, so, yeah, since it’s just, like, me and Greg’s time, like, you know, this is… this is kind of…
48 00:05:13.510 ⇒ 00:05:21.120 Robert Tseng: this is the best offering that we have now. So, totally understand if that doesn’t really make sense for you guys right now, but,
49 00:05:21.300 ⇒ 00:05:23.910 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, I just… I don’t… I think…
50 00:05:24.700 ⇒ 00:05:31.840 Robert Tseng: When we were doing, like, smaller, kind of, like, hourly contracts, yeah, it would pretty much just be, like, we’re just kind of…
51 00:05:32.110 ⇒ 00:05:49.400 Robert Tseng: It’s a staff augmentation model. We’re just kind of taking orders from the client. We’ve just seen historically that we don’t actually get to the outcomes we want to achieve, and then we also don’t have the autonomy that we need in order to bring what we have to the table. So, yeah, I think it’s not just like a, you know, pricing choice, but it’s also just like a…
52 00:05:49.400 ⇒ 00:05:55.009 Robert Tseng: from a positioning perspective, it just doesn’t… I don’t really… I don’t really see our team,
53 00:05:55.510 ⇒ 00:05:58.430 Robert Tseng: that way, so, yeah. Yeah.
54 00:05:59.740 ⇒ 00:06:05.050 Phoebe Miller: And… is it the type of thing where you wouldn’t be interested in doing…
55 00:06:05.400 ⇒ 00:06:15.130 Phoebe Miller: one month at the QA rate, and then… or, like, at a reduced rate, and then, given that the tasks and activities are probably…
56 00:06:15.300 ⇒ 00:06:22.300 Phoebe Miller: Like, and I don’t know, it could be someone else from the team, doesn’t have to be either of you, given I know you’re quite senior.
57 00:06:22.620 ⇒ 00:06:30.589 Phoebe Miller: Doing that for… given that’s what we need in, like, the next, probably, 4 weeks, and then revisiting,
58 00:06:30.710 ⇒ 00:06:32.040 Phoebe Miller: After that?
59 00:06:32.910 ⇒ 00:06:40.169 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I guess we can… we can consider that. I think my hesitancy is just, like, yeah, just…
60 00:06:40.770 ⇒ 00:06:54.379 Robert Tseng: when we started kind of working together, you know, more than 6 months ago, like, the kind of thought was, like, alright, we’re starting small so that we can kind of build up to something. I mean, whatever kind of things went… ran their course, and so, like, less, like.
61 00:06:54.600 ⇒ 00:06:57.020 Robert Tseng: less…
62 00:06:58.080 ⇒ 00:07:11.679 Robert Tseng: I’m just maybe more… more hesitant to do that, again, because that’s more of, like, a dis… a kind of discounting thing that we were doing before to, like, try to get… make it easier to get started with clients.
63 00:07:11.680 ⇒ 00:07:12.810 Phoebe Miller: Yeah.
64 00:07:12.810 ⇒ 00:07:16.910 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I… I don’t… I think I would probably need a… need a… need a…
65 00:07:17.200 ⇒ 00:07:36.749 Robert Tseng: probably bring it back to the team, really talk, see our engineering staff, look at utilization. Honestly, go find our most junior person who can still actually do the work, so maybe Mustafa or someone who… who was, like, working on this client before, because he has some context, and see if we can make it work, but I… I don’t think there’s a… there’s a… like, I wouldn’t be able to give you an answer right now.
66 00:07:37.430 ⇒ 00:07:39.100 Phoebe Miller: Okay. Yeah.
67 00:07:39.100 ⇒ 00:07:40.869 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, it’s just, it’s really hard, like.
68 00:07:41.870 ⇒ 00:07:49.740 Phoebe Miller: At 40 hours a month, it’s hard to justify the… the 10K, it’s like…
69 00:07:50.470 ⇒ 00:07:51.970 Phoebe Miller: Right? It’s like, for us.
70 00:07:52.130 ⇒ 00:08:07.950 Phoebe Miller: I don’t know if all we’re… if all the team’s gonna be doing, at least for the first… first month, is QA, which is what we’re asking of you, like, the 10K is hard to justify. Beyond that, when the team picks up more, then yeah, I think I can see the value for 10K, but…
71 00:08:07.950 ⇒ 00:08:11.650 Robert Tseng: Yeah. I think in the short term, it doesn’t really align with what we’re thinking.
72 00:08:11.930 ⇒ 00:08:19.200 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, I do. It’s kind of a weird kind of, we obviously wanted more scope than what you guys ended up giving us with.
73 00:08:19.200 ⇒ 00:08:33.940 Robert Tseng: I mean, we already kind of adapted it to what… tried to parrot kind of what the needs were, but we just don’t really… didn’t really have, like, a clear, like, path forward for… for… to do that right now, because I don’t think we’re just, like, a QA firm. So,
74 00:08:33.940 ⇒ 00:08:35.740 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think,
75 00:08:35.950 ⇒ 00:08:51.419 Robert Tseng: I think I can get you an answer by the end of the day on whether or not, like, my… someone else on our staff is willing to kind of come onto this project, at least for the first month, but I guess if that were to happen, then…
76 00:08:52.050 ⇒ 00:09:00.299 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think it would only be, like, a month that we would probably need… then we would want to have, like, a closet there to basically
77 00:09:01.700 ⇒ 00:09:18.300 Robert Tseng: figure out what the path forward is for the other… other… for the… for the rest of the contract. So, still a 3-month… still a 3-month agreement. Possible, like, we swap out Greg for just someone junior who’s just gonna go in and knock out tickets, pretty much. Yeah, and then…
78 00:09:18.380 ⇒ 00:09:23.700 Robert Tseng: it’s… we can basically kick this conversation in a month and see if things change. Like, I…
79 00:09:23.700 ⇒ 00:09:24.200 Phoebe Miller: Right.
80 00:09:24.350 ⇒ 00:09:29.639 Robert Tseng: I’m… I think that… yeah, yeah, is that… is that something that we… you want to explore?
81 00:09:29.970 ⇒ 00:09:31.480 Phoebe Miller: Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m describing.
82 00:09:31.780 ⇒ 00:09:32.570 Robert Tseng: Okay.
83 00:09:34.490 ⇒ 00:09:35.820 Robert Tseng: Greg, any thoughts?
84 00:09:35.820 ⇒ 00:09:53.029 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, yeah, just one question here. So, as this QA work is being done, by the Ukraine team and the stateside team, what then happens with those insights? Like, would you be interested in our input on strategic direction based on those things that are coming in?
85 00:09:53.130 ⇒ 00:09:57.380 Greg Stoutenburg: Or is that something that will be handled internally, and then you’ll figure out next steps, and…
86 00:09:57.550 ⇒ 00:09:58.550 Greg Stoutenburg: And then lunch.
87 00:09:58.870 ⇒ 00:10:16.050 Phoebe Miller: I don’t anticipate the, output of QA to be, like, strategic conversations. It’s… I’m hopeful that it’s just there’s tickets that are created, and then our engine team has to make technical fixes, and then we launch.
88 00:10:16.230 ⇒ 00:10:21.780 Phoebe Miller: Unless… I mean, if you have… experience…
89 00:10:21.920 ⇒ 00:10:28.699 Phoebe Miller: with something like this, where you’ve seen, like, strategic conversations come out of QA? I just can’t envision what that would even be.
90 00:10:28.700 ⇒ 00:10:35.230 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, okay, maybe strategic was too strong of a word. UX fixes that are bigger than,
91 00:10:36.340 ⇒ 00:10:44.439 Greg Stoutenburg: solely engineering fixes, is more what I was thinking. So often, when there is a new flow stood up for, you know, say.
92 00:10:44.840 ⇒ 00:10:49.929 Greg Stoutenburg: the things we’ve talked about, I know all the changes that are gonna go into the user flows for the new product,
93 00:10:50.090 ⇒ 00:11:06.530 Greg Stoutenburg: there’s work that has to be done to interpret what the significance of the QA findings is, and then ways to figure out ways to improve the user experience based on that. So, my thought was maybe we could go ahead with the service agreement we’ve been talking about.
94 00:11:06.530 ⇒ 00:11:18.859 Greg Stoutenburg: And maybe if Brainforge is not doing the QA stuff, we can still be there as a partner to help figure out ways to improve those flows that are being tested by the QA folks.
95 00:11:22.780 ⇒ 00:11:28.429 Phoebe Miller: I think we’re… we’re… what’s more likely…
96 00:11:28.600 ⇒ 00:11:44.829 Phoebe Miller: is a month from now, after QA’s been done and the new pricing has gone out, if we’re still seeing conversion problems, it’s like, then we come back to the table and discuss what needs to change.
97 00:11:44.880 ⇒ 00:11:51.190 Phoebe Miller: Because, like, I… and it’s possible that our problems are all…
98 00:11:51.910 ⇒ 00:11:55.750 Phoebe Miller: you act… I just don’t think… I feel like that’s, like, somewhat…
99 00:11:56.250 ⇒ 00:12:06.670 Phoebe Miller: narrow-minded, of, like, I think there’s probably, like… and that’s why I was… your initial proposal was intriguing to me, because, like, I am interested in doing the work of, like.
100 00:12:07.520 ⇒ 00:12:24.660 Phoebe Miller: the retention analysis, and, like, looking at the various cohorts of the features they have and don’t have, and who converts, and more likely to convert based off of those things. That’s all interesting to me. It’s work that I want to do. I think it’s, like, somewhat…
101 00:12:24.720 ⇒ 00:12:29.369 Phoebe Miller: it’s related to the pricing, but I think it’s, like, it’s its own body of work.
102 00:12:29.480 ⇒ 00:12:32.260 Phoebe Miller: Like, the pricing change is gonna happen.
103 00:12:32.410 ⇒ 00:12:39.670 Phoebe Miller: kind of regardless of all that other stuff, and I don’t think the user experience of, like, managing your plan
104 00:12:40.580 ⇒ 00:12:43.260 Phoebe Miller: Requires a ton of strategic input.
105 00:12:44.070 ⇒ 00:12:45.800 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay. Yeah, fair enough.
106 00:12:46.060 ⇒ 00:12:52.560 Phoebe Miller: you all may feel differently, but, and if you do, like, I’d… I’d want to hear it.
107 00:12:52.830 ⇒ 00:12:55.820 Phoebe Miller: But I just… I don’t know, I’m having trouble, like, thinking through what…
108 00:12:56.290 ⇒ 00:13:01.830 Phoebe Miller: and maybe strategic’s the wrong word, like you said, but I’m having trouble thinking through what… what you all could even help with.
109 00:13:02.610 ⇒ 00:13:06.849 Phoebe Miller: On this particular project, besides QA.
110 00:13:07.150 ⇒ 00:13:10.570 Phoebe Miller: Given that it’s, like, it’s pretty, like, it’s, like, fully baked, you know?
111 00:13:15.730 ⇒ 00:13:16.400 Greg Stoutenburg: Hello?
112 00:13:16.400 ⇒ 00:13:16.970 Phoebe Miller: Peppa.
113 00:13:16.970 ⇒ 00:13:19.600 Robert Tseng: I mean, cliched out for a sec, Greg, but yeah, I think we…
114 00:13:19.690 ⇒ 00:13:26.900 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay, alright, yeah, okay, yeah, my computer is showing me the batteries, like, On its last legs,
115 00:13:27.630 ⇒ 00:13:38.989 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, okay. I think I’m back. Yeah, no, I hear you on that. No, I was thinking more about my experience doing things like figuring out where users were getting stuck, and then figuring out how to get them unstuck.
116 00:13:38.990 ⇒ 00:13:53.199 Greg Stoutenburg: has tended to not be a problem with code, it’s tended to be a problem with user experience. Yeah. And, so I was sort of just floating that as a way that we might be able to still weigh in with some expertise that goes beyond, you know, sort of clicking through screens alone.
117 00:13:53.430 ⇒ 00:13:57.090 Phoebe Miller: Yeah, and I… for sure,
118 00:13:57.400 ⇒ 00:14:03.020 Phoebe Miller: That… I… that may touch pricing. I… I don’t… I don’t know.
119 00:14:03.510 ⇒ 00:14:11.120 Phoebe Miller: Like, to me, is that not something that would come up in QA? I guess not because you don’t have the user data.
120 00:14:11.280 ⇒ 00:14:15.319 Phoebe Miller: So it’s like, that’s even then, though, it’s like, that’s probably a couple weeks out.
121 00:14:19.400 ⇒ 00:14:19.990 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
122 00:14:21.290 ⇒ 00:14:28.940 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I think the QA is a little bit… I mean, QA alone just seems more short-sighted. I think we’ve kind of, like… Right. Yeah, so.
123 00:14:29.590 ⇒ 00:14:39.910 Phoebe Miller: But the work that you all are… and again, correct me if I’m wrong, but the work that you all are really good at, my understanding, you two specifically, I don’t know about the rest of your team, is, like, analyzing
124 00:14:40.170 ⇒ 00:14:44.759 Phoebe Miller: And coming up with, strategic…
125 00:14:45.270 ⇒ 00:14:53.130 Phoebe Miller: Visions for, like, user experience, user data, like, actually digging into the people using our product.
126 00:14:55.360 ⇒ 00:15:07.960 Robert Tseng: Yeah, especially when it’s more of a multidisciplinary effort, because there is, like, the qualitative UX side, like, we… you’re basically… I mean, we… from our experience is really just that triangulating, like, from across multiple
127 00:15:08.320 ⇒ 00:15:29.729 Robert Tseng: like, work streams, like, that’s kind of what we’re… what we’re there for. And then, you know, like, Greg’s on a project right now where he’s basically, like, helping one of our clients basically start, running more experiments. Like, they want to increase your experimentation output by, like, 4x is kind of the goal of the quarter. So, finding what levers to do that, where they’re actually running tests,
128 00:15:29.730 ⇒ 00:15:37.340 Robert Tseng: And, yeah, we’re kind of, like, pushing more, like, strategic initiatives like that. So, yeah.
129 00:15:38.320 ⇒ 00:15:51.739 Robert Tseng: I mean, obviously, we have the… we have the bench to, like, do the technical implementation, you know, if we needed to do… if we needed to actually code the telemetry ourselves, we have people to do that. QA, obviously, we do it ourselves in our own work streams, but if we need to
130 00:15:52.070 ⇒ 00:15:58.599 Robert Tseng: dedicated person to QA, we do have the staff for it. It’s just kind of, yeah, whether or not we, you know.
131 00:15:59.290 ⇒ 00:16:10.560 Robert Tseng: with the… with the limited time that we have. I just… I need to… I just, like I said, I need to go and look at our utilization for some of our junior folks, and if I think there’s a way to put them in for a month,
132 00:16:10.800 ⇒ 00:16:15.860 Robert Tseng: Yeah, then I… I think… I think I’m willing to do that. But yeah, I would have to take a look.
133 00:16:16.320 ⇒ 00:16:20.670 Phoebe Miller: Great, yeah, that… that’s… I think that there’s value to the work that
134 00:16:21.450 ⇒ 00:16:32.930 Phoebe Miller: Greg described, and you’ve described, it’s just, it’s… we’re not there yet, right? Because it’s, like, we’re in the phase where we’re launching the change, not the, like, analyzing of the change just yet.
135 00:16:32.930 ⇒ 00:16:33.500 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
136 00:16:33.940 ⇒ 00:16:44.750 Robert Tseng: Okay, cool. I’m good with that. I did kind of get double booked today, so I would probably want to jump back to another call, but I hear you, and yeah, we’ll get back to you.
137 00:16:44.750 ⇒ 00:16:47.080 Phoebe Miller: Okay, sounds good. Thanks. Okay, thanks. Bye-bye.
138 00:16:47.080 ⇒ 00:16:48.190 Greg Stoutenburg: Thanks, y’all. Talk soon.