Meeting Title: ABC Project Scope and Renewal Planning Date: 2025-09-15 Meeting participants: Henry Zhao, Justin Breshears, Samuel Roberts, Rico Rejoso, Uttam Kumaran
WEBVTT
1 00:07:45.500 ⇒ 00:07:46.610 Justin Breshears: Hey, hey!
2 00:07:52.390 ⇒ 00:07:58.980 Justin Breshears: I see. Sorry, Henry, if you were just waiting on us. Several of us were jumping over from the other meeting.
3 00:08:02.460 ⇒ 00:08:05.019 Justin Breshears: I stepped away, he was tired of waiting on us.
4 00:08:08.880 ⇒ 00:08:13.900 Justin Breshears: Also, hey Sam, I don’t think we’ve gotten a chance to introduce ourselves yet.
5 00:08:13.900 ⇒ 00:08:14.820 Samuel Roberts: No, I don’t think so.
6 00:08:15.180 ⇒ 00:08:17.450 Justin Breshears: Nice to meet you. Good to meet you. Yeah, you as well.
7 00:08:18.740 ⇒ 00:08:19.890 Samuel Roberts: Welcome, welcome.
8 00:08:20.620 ⇒ 00:08:25.580 Justin Breshears: Thank you. Still trying to get to know everybody. I’ve only been one week into it, so…
9 00:08:26.130 ⇒ 00:08:27.740 Justin Breshears: Yeah, it’s another thing.
10 00:08:27.740 ⇒ 00:08:28.370 Samuel Roberts: Totally.
11 00:08:34.799 ⇒ 00:08:35.649 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, guys.
12 00:08:38.929 ⇒ 00:08:45.899 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. So yeah, maybe we can talk about, ABC first.
13 00:08:46.609 ⇒ 00:09:00.709 Uttam Kumaran: But probably in this meeting, kind of like most of our, like, sort of delivery PM meetings, Justin, I’ll kind of get your feedback on, like, how… what is the best process for both of these conversations?
14 00:09:01.109 ⇒ 00:09:03.139 Uttam Kumaran: You know, I don’t think we’ve… Sounds good.
15 00:09:03.699 ⇒ 00:09:11.189 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, kind of the formality to date on, like, discussing renewals or discussing expansion has been…
16 00:09:11.619 ⇒ 00:09:26.589 Uttam Kumaran: I call Robert, I’m like, yo, I think we can get an extra 5K here. Okay, what should… So, we need to not… we need to do something where other people can be involved, and also, these happen on a more formal basis, so…
17 00:09:27.120 ⇒ 00:09:37.700 Justin Breshears: Yes, and to expand on, like, Utam and I have talked about in, like, the process of me coming on, we talked a lot about, like, this delivery sourcing opportunities,
18 00:09:37.880 ⇒ 00:09:48.279 Justin Breshears: to me is, like, hey, the people delivering the project are the ones that, like, intimately know what’s going on with the client and their systems and all this stuff, right? It should be, like.
19 00:09:48.640 ⇒ 00:09:56.520 Justin Breshears: fairly straightforward for the delivery team to be able to identify opportunities that we can, like, help out with in the future, right? So if we’re helping out with…
20 00:09:56.700 ⇒ 00:10:08.859 Justin Breshears: XYZ over here, and we happen to notice, like, oh, there’s an opportunity there that we could step in. Like, that’s stuff that I think would be great to start, like, notifying Uten or Robert, whoever’s the account owner.
21 00:10:08.940 ⇒ 00:10:18.329 Justin Breshears: So that we can, like, they can swoop in and then have those conversations about, you know, closing those deals. So, that was one of the things that I, you know, I was talking with them about, and…
22 00:10:18.570 ⇒ 00:10:23.490 Justin Breshears: Would open up to… to the whole team to kind of figure out, like, how…
23 00:10:23.900 ⇒ 00:10:27.970 Justin Breshears: how do we start, like, sourcing those opportunities, and… because I’m…
24 00:10:28.220 ⇒ 00:10:37.909 Justin Breshears: not as technical as I would like to be, so I need help on the technical front of, like, you know, during those projects, where can we find those opportunities, but then…
25 00:10:38.030 ⇒ 00:10:42.010 Justin Breshears: Bringing it up and being loud about it so that we can secure new business.
26 00:10:44.390 ⇒ 00:10:49.920 Uttam Kumaran: Perfect. So for… for ABC, we are proposing a new scope.
27 00:10:50.080 ⇒ 00:10:58.080 Uttam Kumaran: And I will just share this link, here, and… Slack, are here in Zoom.
28 00:10:58.190 ⇒ 00:11:03.670 Uttam Kumaran: So if you take a look at this, this is, like, Basically, we’re…
29 00:11:03.850 ⇒ 00:11:22.149 Uttam Kumaran: we’ve developed this solution for ABC. It’s primarily in Google Chat. We want to create another interface for them that’s outside of that environment, that improves a bunch of functionality, and ideally furthers our ability to reach our outcomes that we promised them. However, it’s, like, gonna be quite a bit of work.
30 00:11:22.270 ⇒ 00:11:29.230 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, Sam, if we ended up putting here the amount of hours, or where we talked about that.
31 00:11:29.350 ⇒ 00:11:30.199 Uttam Kumaran: Can we add that?
32 00:11:30.820 ⇒ 00:11:33.060 Uttam Kumaran: Here, somewhere, I don’t know where that is… where that was.
33 00:11:33.060 ⇒ 00:11:35.720 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, it might just be in Slack, I can pull that over.
34 00:11:56.040 ⇒ 00:11:59.580 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, if you can just paste that in, but roughly, I want to get a sense of
35 00:12:00.030 ⇒ 00:12:02.210 Uttam Kumaran: How many hours it’s gonna take.
36 00:12:03.260 ⇒ 00:12:09.560 Uttam Kumaran: like… High-low, and then we can put a… basically…
37 00:12:09.960 ⇒ 00:12:11.859 Uttam Kumaran: put a price on it that I can pitch to them.
38 00:12:11.860 ⇒ 00:12:12.440 Samuel Roberts: Right.
39 00:12:18.750 ⇒ 00:12:25.490 Samuel Roberts: What’d I say? 150 hours… Where’s, like, an up?
40 00:12:25.820 ⇒ 00:12:27.170 Samuel Roberts: Little bit up, but yeah.
41 00:12:36.920 ⇒ 00:12:42.289 Samuel Roberts: Right, yeah, I think that’s what I was thinking. I will say, now that I’ve been in 8x8 a little bit, their API is…
42 00:12:42.950 ⇒ 00:12:48.360 Samuel Roberts: not… the best. Things aren’t working the way the documentation says they should be working.
43 00:12:48.540 ⇒ 00:12:50.630 Samuel Roberts: We do have a call with them.
44 00:12:51.820 ⇒ 00:12:53.390 Samuel Roberts: on Wednesday.
45 00:12:53.810 ⇒ 00:12:54.300 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
46 00:12:54.300 ⇒ 00:12:57.639 Samuel Roberts: So, I’m probably putting a lot of this… I was… I was…
47 00:12:57.790 ⇒ 00:13:00.930 Samuel Roberts: I’ve been spinning my wheels a little bit trying to figure this out now.
48 00:13:01.180 ⇒ 00:13:07.319 Samuel Roberts: And get the right transcripts and everything. I’ve got it kind of set up, but I can’t get the right data out of the API.
49 00:13:07.450 ⇒ 00:13:11.760 Samuel Roberts: So, I’m hoping after that call, I’ll have a better sense of…
50 00:13:12.310 ⇒ 00:13:14.790 Samuel Roberts: what’s actually possible, because I’m not able to, like…
51 00:13:14.910 ⇒ 00:13:20.370 Samuel Roberts: actually identify transcripts by, like, user and time, which is hard to then match with the ANDI data, if that makes sense.
52 00:13:20.370 ⇒ 00:13:23.139 Uttam Kumaran: But I guess, like, I guess, can we get a rough, like…
53 00:13:23.240 ⇒ 00:13:27.850 Uttam Kumaran: Do you… is this… is this whole thing, like… 50 hours of work.
54 00:13:28.040 ⇒ 00:13:35.520 Uttam Kumaran: like, even if we can get somewhere where we can start to price this, that’s what I would need to start having conversations with Matt this week.
55 00:13:35.850 ⇒ 00:13:36.770 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
56 00:13:40.650 ⇒ 00:13:45.930 Uttam Kumaran: Or if you can’t, I guess this is where I would probably be, like, you should work directly with Amber.
57 00:13:46.060 ⇒ 00:13:50.959 Uttam Kumaran: To try to get towards something that, like a scope with ours.
58 00:13:52.400 ⇒ 00:13:55.340 Uttam Kumaran: on the sales side, I can start to put a price against.
59 00:13:56.950 ⇒ 00:13:58.810 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
60 00:13:59.250 ⇒ 00:14:05.770 Samuel Roberts: So, I mean, a web-based interface for Andy is good. There’s the 8x8 stuff that’s really messing me up here, in terms of estimating.
61 00:14:12.300 ⇒ 00:14:13.590 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, but I guess, like.
62 00:14:13.590 ⇒ 00:14:14.470 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, sorry, go ahead.
63 00:14:14.470 ⇒ 00:14:16.999 Uttam Kumaran: Just my… my feedback was, if you can’t…
64 00:14:17.200 ⇒ 00:14:19.679 Uttam Kumaran: Do, if you can give an estimate today.
65 00:14:20.070 ⇒ 00:14:23.260 Uttam Kumaran: Can you meet with Amber, and then when can we expect one?
66 00:14:24.980 ⇒ 00:14:27.210 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I mean, I’m… I…
67 00:14:27.690 ⇒ 00:14:38.430 Samuel Roberts: I can meet with Amber, I think, like I said, the Wednesday meeting, if 8x8 can actually tell me, like, can I get this info out of there? That’s a big question on the 8x8 stuff. The other stuff, I think I can probably give you a better estimate on, I don’t know if I can do it.
68 00:14:39.830 ⇒ 00:14:49.810 Samuel Roberts: better right now, but, the real-time voice, I’m not figuring… I haven’t been able to even figure that out from their API, so I’m… it’s kind of… there’s a big question mark there until we have a meeting with them on Wednesday.
69 00:14:50.610 ⇒ 00:14:51.300 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
70 00:14:52.050 ⇒ 00:14:52.950 Uttam Kumaran: But I guess.
71 00:14:52.950 ⇒ 00:14:54.080 Samuel Roberts: Gonna meet with him sooner?
72 00:14:54.820 ⇒ 00:15:00.760 Uttam Kumaran: No, but I guess, for example, lightweb web interface, chat-based features, integration with.
73 00:15:00.760 ⇒ 00:15:01.390 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
74 00:15:01.390 ⇒ 00:15:03.360 Uttam Kumaran: None of those are 8x8 related.
75 00:15:03.360 ⇒ 00:15:07.880 Samuel Roberts: No, sometimes I think I can probably estimate better these guys, even with Amber, then.
76 00:15:08.180 ⇒ 00:15:20.719 Uttam Kumaran: Well, so that’s, I guess, my question, and I don’t know, Justin, if you have thoughts on this. For me, like, if I’m on the salesperson on this side, I need to know what scope is really pri- like, critical…
77 00:15:21.170 ⇒ 00:15:38.140 Uttam Kumaran: what are we trying to stuff in to maybe expand a little bit more? I need to know how much time, high and low, it’s roughly going to take, so then I can think about what am I going to pitch them, and then what is my minimum that I want to get out of it. But I need those details in order to go talk to Matt, who’s a CFO.
78 00:15:40.710 ⇒ 00:15:45.779 Justin Breshears: Would it be helpful to create, like, a… like a cell…
79 00:15:46.380 ⇒ 00:15:53.430 Justin Breshears: not, like, the SAL template, but, like, pre… before the South, like, scoping template, I guess?
80 00:15:54.000 ⇒ 00:15:57.799 Justin Breshears: Yeah, but I would assume that just, like, our normal project planning.
81 00:15:57.830 ⇒ 00:15:59.970 Uttam Kumaran: Right? Because this is… this would just be…
82 00:16:01.150 ⇒ 00:16:05.060 Uttam Kumaran: An extension of, like, our normal project plans, right?
83 00:16:09.180 ⇒ 00:16:16.529 Justin Breshears: Yeah, something more on the lines of, like, new opportunities that don’t necessarily relate to what we’re currently doing, but yeah, I mean…
84 00:16:16.740 ⇒ 00:16:17.340 Samuel Roberts: Hmm.
85 00:16:17.340 ⇒ 00:16:20.559 Justin Breshears: Closely relates to what we’re doing right now, then…
86 00:16:20.940 ⇒ 00:16:23.780 Justin Breshears: That should be fairly simple to…
87 00:16:24.050 ⇒ 00:16:25.809 Justin Breshears: Put together that info for you.
88 00:16:26.380 ⇒ 00:16:32.429 Uttam Kumaran: So for this… so for this doc right now, My ask would be…
89 00:16:33.100 ⇒ 00:16:38.330 Uttam Kumaran: before Wednesday, if we can get those things that I mentioned.
90 00:16:39.370 ⇒ 00:16:45.730 Uttam Kumaran: That way, on Wednesday, we can close out the 8x8 piece, and then Thursday, I can have a conversation with Matt.
91 00:16:48.060 ⇒ 00:16:50.339 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, but, like, I guess my…
92 00:16:50.340 ⇒ 00:16:53.149 Uttam Kumaran: My ask, and I guess this is, again, like.
93 00:16:53.710 ⇒ 00:17:11.980 Uttam Kumaran: Justin, is this something that, like, tech lead and PM should just collaborate on… on executing? I don’t think I necessarily have… because once… as long as I know the hours, and I can tell you, and what’s… what, like, we can’t do without, then I have enough context to… to sell.
94 00:17:12.359 ⇒ 00:17:20.199 Justin Breshears: 100%. I think that should be on the tech lead and PM to come up with. I would almost, like, pretend that you aren’t technical, Tom, and we’re just doing.
95 00:17:20.200 ⇒ 00:17:21.859 Uttam Kumaran: No, that’s what I’m trying to do here, because I…
96 00:17:21.869 ⇒ 00:17:23.149 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, yeah, definitely.
97 00:17:23.150 ⇒ 00:17:31.359 Uttam Kumaran: I’m trying to do this because I could… I know I could go… I could go pitch this whole thing and wrap this up, but I want to go through, like, a process, so…
98 00:17:31.360 ⇒ 00:17:31.800 Samuel Roberts: Totally.
99 00:17:31.800 ⇒ 00:17:50.479 Justin Breshears: Oh, that’s exactly how I’m thinking about it. It’s like, I’m thinking about, if our salesperson was not a technical person, you know what, we would present the information to them to then go and close the deal. That’s how I would think of this. So I think the process should be, yeah, tech lead and PM on the current project.
100 00:17:50.800 ⇒ 00:17:55.149 Uttam Kumaran: We’ll scope it out, the extension or the new proposal.
101 00:17:55.480 ⇒ 00:18:03.360 Justin Breshears: And there should be some kind of template or format that we can get you, like, the stuff that you just listed out, right? Like…
102 00:18:03.470 ⇒ 00:18:18.019 Justin Breshears: the stuff that you need to then go to the CFO and start pricing out, right? If we created some kind of, like, scoping template for that, TechLeadPM comes together, fills that out, gets it over to you. That’s an efficient process.
103 00:18:19.460 ⇒ 00:18:20.120 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
104 00:18:20.330 ⇒ 00:18:23.379 Uttam Kumaran: So, Sam, if you can work with Amber on that, that’s kind of, like, what I.
105 00:18:23.380 ⇒ 00:18:24.080 Samuel Roberts: Totally.
106 00:18:25.760 ⇒ 00:18:30.779 Justin Breshears: Whatever y’all, like, come up with, let’s just turn that down into a template, like…
107 00:18:30.910 ⇒ 00:18:34.479 Justin Breshears: Instead of duplicating the export, like, write it, and then…
108 00:18:34.980 ⇒ 00:18:38.669 Justin Breshears: Like, we’ll take out the specific info and then create a template based off of it.
109 00:18:39.080 ⇒ 00:18:40.100 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
110 00:18:40.480 ⇒ 00:18:41.480 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, great.
111 00:18:41.660 ⇒ 00:18:52.670 Uttam Kumaran: And then, let’s talk about, default, so… We’re basically…
112 00:18:54.510 ⇒ 00:18:59.230 Uttam Kumaran: towards the end of their contract, which is the end of this month, I’m… I want to have conversations with
113 00:18:59.430 ⇒ 00:19:08.569 Uttam Kumaran: their CTO about what options there are for expansion, but also, like, ideally move us to something that’s more
114 00:19:09.140 ⇒ 00:19:16.410 Uttam Kumaran: fixed, but again, I kind of want to see. So, for me, I… I didn’t prepare…
115 00:19:16.920 ⇒ 00:19:22.220 Uttam Kumaran: I think I wanted to… I think what we did before is we prepared a little bit of, like, a…
116 00:19:22.450 ⇒ 00:19:27.630 Uttam Kumaran: Let me just try to pull this up. I think we’ve prepared a little bit of a doc on this.
117 00:19:28.040 ⇒ 00:19:34.310 Uttam Kumaran: But I would like to kind of have probably Rico work on…
118 00:19:36.640 ⇒ 00:19:40.530 Uttam Kumaran: any… any updates to this. So let me try to pull together…
119 00:19:40.950 ⇒ 00:19:46.400 Uttam Kumaran: Rico, do we have a, like, renewal? Oh, this is August review, okay.
120 00:19:47.110 ⇒ 00:19:59.500 Uttam Kumaran: defaults… Okay, so… we have… this doc… So, basically,
121 00:19:59.860 ⇒ 00:20:04.909 Uttam Kumaran: basically, this is just what I think I worked with Rico to have… to put together, but…
122 00:20:05.560 ⇒ 00:20:12.000 Uttam Kumaran: Sort of looked at, like, what our key wins are, and the work streams in progress.
123 00:20:12.610 ⇒ 00:20:17.159 Uttam Kumaran: We have, like, 3 work streams right now.
124 00:20:17.760 ⇒ 00:20:20.609 Uttam Kumaran: the total log, so I think, kind of like.
125 00:20:22.080 ⇒ 00:20:25.989 Uttam Kumaran: I feel like I have enough to work with… I have, like.
126 00:20:26.390 ⇒ 00:20:33.569 Uttam Kumaran: I seem like seemingly I have enough to work with here, which is just, like, what are our core near-term roadmap options?
127 00:20:33.820 ⇒ 00:20:38.969 Uttam Kumaran: Probably the bigger thing that I need is I just need, like, more of a breakdown on this.
128 00:20:39.560 ⇒ 00:20:41.289 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I want to see it by week.
129 00:20:41.710 ⇒ 00:20:47.689 Uttam Kumaran: So I can kind of give them… get a sense of, like.
130 00:20:48.010 ⇒ 00:21:00.980 Uttam Kumaran: Currently, we’re billing you $250 an hour. If we want to move, like, if we want to move to something more fixed, here are our options. I don’t know, kind of, like, what their way they’re gonna head, although they’ve been really happy with our work.
131 00:21:01.220 ⇒ 00:21:03.429 Uttam Kumaran: But I want to almost have, like.
132 00:21:03.700 ⇒ 00:21:10.299 Uttam Kumaran: I’m sort of trying to debate, like, how we model this. To give you a sense of a similar client, Eden.
133 00:21:10.420 ⇒ 00:21:23.949 Uttam Kumaran: there’s a lot of stakeholders, and we bucket all the hours into one. What I don’t like about that is that one team kind of competes with the other, so they’re like, I want to have, sort of, hours towards each work stream, of which we have, like, three.
134 00:21:24.270 ⇒ 00:21:30.929 Uttam Kumaran: So, what do you think the best, like, path forward is to try to get something like this
135 00:21:31.180 ⇒ 00:21:35.379 Uttam Kumaran: the whole plan in place tomorrow, because then I can go tee up the conversation.
136 00:21:35.840 ⇒ 00:21:38.009 Uttam Kumaran: We can get the hours by week.
137 00:21:39.020 ⇒ 00:21:44.810 Uttam Kumaran: At that point, is it helpful to start to allocate hours towards a work stream, or, like, what’s…
138 00:21:45.230 ⇒ 00:21:47.099 Uttam Kumaran: What do we think is, like, best here?
139 00:21:50.630 ⇒ 00:21:52.650 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, Rico, what do you think?
140 00:21:54.220 ⇒ 00:21:57.700 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, I think it’s better if we,
141 00:21:58.060 ⇒ 00:22:14.630 Rico Rejoso: Because right now, we don’t have the project for Workstream, so it’s kind of like, if you look at all the tickets as well, we can really identify the, progress for Workstream. This is all based on the tickets that we have done previously, even before I was part of default.
142 00:22:14.700 ⇒ 00:22:22.860 Rico Rejoso: Or I was giving default. So maybe if we can try to categorize it more, we can identify, efficiency more, and maybe just go from there.
143 00:22:24.240 ⇒ 00:22:29.240 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. I think I’m… I’m certainly able to…
144 00:22:29.460 ⇒ 00:22:34.599 Uttam Kumaran: give you the… like, I can give you my perspective on how much time I’ll need for
145 00:22:34.950 ⇒ 00:22:40.470 Uttam Kumaran: reporting, like, on a product reporting side, I think what I’m hoping for is that Sam
146 00:22:40.580 ⇒ 00:22:49.000 Uttam Kumaran: And Henry can give a little bit of context on, like, how much time is necessary to achieve what outcomes on the product analytics side.
147 00:22:49.190 ⇒ 00:22:59.649 Uttam Kumaran: And then similarly, on the go-to-market signal side, like, what are the objectives we’re going for, and how much time is going to be necessary to…
148 00:22:59.830 ⇒ 00:23:01.160 Uttam Kumaran: To achieve those.
149 00:23:08.750 ⇒ 00:23:14.129 Uttam Kumaran: So, Rico, what I think would be really helpful, and I don’t know, Henry, did you have… have you seen this talk before?
150 00:23:14.130 ⇒ 00:23:15.339 Henry Zhao: No, I haven’t.
151 00:23:15.340 ⇒ 00:23:30.199 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool. So I think, Rika, one is, like, I want to get the tech lead’s feedback on, like, what the goals are, right? So Henry can totally put in what his goals would be for, like, a sophisticated product analytics environment.
152 00:23:30.310 ⇒ 00:23:31.270 Uttam Kumaran: And, like.
153 00:23:31.790 ⇒ 00:23:42.110 Uttam Kumaran: basically start to tell a little bit of, like, how much time it will take to get to each of those. Again, that allows me to get a sense of, like, how to price this, and what conversations to have.
154 00:23:42.110 ⇒ 00:23:52.690 Uttam Kumaran: Similarly, I think for Sam, I know I’ve been working closely with Mustafa on the, go-to-market sell, but kind of in the effort of playing just sales.
155 00:23:52.690 ⇒ 00:24:07.460 Uttam Kumaran: it would be great for you to also work with him and work with Rico to put together, like, what are the goals we would want to achieve there, based on, like, what’s currently known. Again, I can fill in gaps, but I would like you guys to take a first stab at that.
156 00:24:07.590 ⇒ 00:24:17.860 Uttam Kumaran: And then I can pull… I can put together, Rico, what it’s… what the scope is going to be like for just broader data strategy consulting.
157 00:24:18.200 ⇒ 00:24:23.200 Uttam Kumaran: But those are probably my two expectations. So similarly to ABC,
158 00:24:23.370 ⇒ 00:24:31.810 Uttam Kumaran: We would want to see, like, what are the core outcomes for each of those work streams? How much time we propose for it.
159 00:24:32.090 ⇒ 00:24:35.239 Uttam Kumaran: You know, in order to achieve those. And then…
160 00:24:35.550 ⇒ 00:24:40.380 Uttam Kumaran: Like, what is a reasonable, and then what is a reasonable amount of hours?
161 00:24:40.810 ⇒ 00:24:48.470 Uttam Kumaran: To give you a sense of, like, why this is a little bit different, every… some clients are very aware of what it takes to get somewhere. Some clients are not.
162 00:24:48.770 ⇒ 00:25:03.549 Uttam Kumaran: this is a client where they’re technical, but, like, they’re new to data, so they’re gonna go by what our expectations are. It’s not clear they have, like, strict budgets for this, so I want to give them some options. So I wouldn’t worry too much about, like.
163 00:25:04.000 ⇒ 00:25:18.070 Uttam Kumaran: oh, this is gonna get done in 6 months versus 3 months. Focus less on that, focus more on, like, how much… how many hours you think is necessary to achieve an objective. I will then take that and create multiple options for them. Like.
164 00:25:18.070 ⇒ 00:25:33.680 Uttam Kumaran: ideally, of course, they want everything tomorrow, and then they pay us the max amount of money they have, right? So that will be one start. There will also be, like, a very, very slow version. That’s the dance that I will do on the sales side, but I need to know, kind of, like, for each of these work streams.
165 00:25:33.760 ⇒ 00:25:37.859 Uttam Kumaran: how much time we need to dedicate. The worst thing we want to do is
166 00:25:38.010 ⇒ 00:25:46.379 Uttam Kumaran: Like, basically sell them that we can achieve an outcome for very little time, and then we end up having to spend more of our money on it.
167 00:25:46.710 ⇒ 00:25:50.359 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So, that’s… that’s what I would… I would push for.
168 00:25:50.440 ⇒ 00:26:07.040 Uttam Kumaran: So I think, Sam, you’re kind of the through line on both of these, but Rico, it’s kind of a similar conversation to what I’m expecting for ABC. You know, and I don’t think it should take probably more than an hour to get all this, so maybe if you guys can meet, and then…
169 00:26:07.450 ⇒ 00:26:12.459 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe we can… Aim to have something here, like, tomorrow.
170 00:26:12.690 ⇒ 00:26:22.829 Uttam Kumaran: That I can sort of poke at and give feedback on, and then I’m… in the meantime, I’m gonna go ahead and tee up a conversation with Victor on default team, like, Thursday, probably.
171 00:26:24.140 ⇒ 00:26:24.880 Rico Rejoso: Got it.
172 00:26:28.020 ⇒ 00:26:29.679 Uttam Kumaran: You guys okay with that, Henry Sam?
173 00:26:30.070 ⇒ 00:26:34.810 Henry Zhao: Yeah, so we should be a little bit more conservative in our estimating of hours, right?
174 00:26:36.180 ⇒ 00:26:43.430 Uttam Kumaran: I wouldn’t be conservative. I would actually do the opposite, like, I would overactive.
175 00:26:43.430 ⇒ 00:26:44.040 Henry Zhao: Yeah.
176 00:26:44.040 ⇒ 00:26:44.600 Uttam Kumaran: A little bit.
177 00:26:44.830 ⇒ 00:26:48.720 Henry Zhao: That’s what I meant, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Conservative, yeah, for them.
178 00:26:48.720 ⇒ 00:26:51.969 Uttam Kumaran: Like, don’t… don’t take it as, like, oh, every… anything, like…
179 00:26:52.530 ⇒ 00:26:55.580 Uttam Kumaran: Like, don’t take it as, we’re going to overbill.
180 00:26:55.820 ⇒ 00:26:56.420 Henry Zhao: Because I…
181 00:26:56.420 ⇒ 00:26:59.089 Uttam Kumaran: You can’t ask them for, like, a million dollars.
182 00:26:59.090 ⇒ 00:26:59.700 Henry Zhao: Yeah. But…
183 00:26:59.700 ⇒ 00:27:06.210 Uttam Kumaran: Roughly, we want to be accurate over fast. Like, if we are able to do it fast, that’s great.
184 00:27:07.200 ⇒ 00:27:26.390 Uttam Kumaran: this is the first renewal conversation we’ve had with them. We started this purely hourly, so I’m gonna give them a couple options, like, they can stay hourly. I… I’m fine with it, because given the rate we’re hitting, I don’t care. I’m down to do hourly. Also, if they want to move to something more fixed towards a budget, I will give them those options. So that’s… that’s what I want to kind of get to.
185 00:27:26.460 ⇒ 00:27:27.130 Henry Zhao: Cop.
186 00:27:27.560 ⇒ 00:27:28.330 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
187 00:27:29.230 ⇒ 00:27:31.169 Samuel Roberts: Can you share this talk in the chat real quick?
188 00:27:31.170 ⇒ 00:27:31.970 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
189 00:27:42.790 ⇒ 00:27:45.290 Uttam Kumaran: So, maybe, Rico, can you put, like, a…
190 00:27:45.810 ⇒ 00:28:01.969 Uttam Kumaran: placeholder meeting, like, we don’t have to put a Zoom link, but just so everybody… we have, like, a deadline sometime tomorrow to hit this, and it’s on everybody’s calendar. So… and then for ABC, same thing, I think, Sam, if we can get everything but the 8x8-related stuff.
191 00:28:02.500 ⇒ 00:28:06.469 Uttam Kumaran: There, that would allow… and again, like, this is where…
192 00:28:06.740 ⇒ 00:28:19.180 Uttam Kumaran: there… there’s things that I can estimate as a salesperson, even without all the details, because guess what? All these contracts we did with no context on how long it’s gonna take, so it’s not, like, impossible. In fact.
193 00:28:19.180 ⇒ 00:28:19.710 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
194 00:28:19.710 ⇒ 00:28:30.560 Uttam Kumaran: we’re here, so it’s not like we have to be 100% accurate, but it needs to be, like, 60% for me to actually go do the dance. If I go into that meeting without
195 00:28:31.030 ⇒ 00:28:34.219 Uttam Kumaran: Understanding what the angles are, I’m gonna get jammed.
196 00:28:34.330 ⇒ 00:28:50.050 Uttam Kumaran: So, that’s sort of, like, what I need. So it’s always gonna feel like we don’t have, like… you can’t estimate perfectly, don’t worry about that. 60% is a good barometer, because to date, I’ve been going to many of these with zero, you know, and so we’re able to close, so…
197 00:28:50.090 ⇒ 00:28:54.610 Uttam Kumaran: The more we have, the easier it is for me, especially when it’s an established relationship, you know.
198 00:28:55.310 ⇒ 00:28:58.629 Uttam Kumaran: And for the happy thing about both these clients is they really like us.
199 00:28:59.020 ⇒ 00:29:00.110 Uttam Kumaran: So…
200 00:29:00.220 ⇒ 00:29:14.190 Uttam Kumaran: That’s great. The next part will… unfortunately or unfortunately, at this point, most of our clients really appreciate our work. We’ve lost some clients for the reason… for other reasons. So, I think over the next month.
201 00:29:14.540 ⇒ 00:29:29.859 Uttam Kumaran: there… we expect there to be unexpected churn in our business, of course, but our goal is to identify and find out why, right? So there’s certainly some clients where we messed up estimating, and so we lost a client because of that.
202 00:29:29.870 ⇒ 00:29:36.419 Uttam Kumaran: Or we just didn’t keep the momentum up, because that’s more delivery side, or we… we botched thinking we could do something we couldn’t, so…
203 00:29:36.500 ⇒ 00:29:48.590 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, right now, we don’t have one of those scenarios. I wish we… I wish I could bring some of those back, because we lost some free money, but yeah, that’s sort of, like, what… what I’m hoping that these conversations. And the last thing is, like… yeah, go ahead, Justin.
204 00:29:48.820 ⇒ 00:30:06.189 Justin Breshears: I was just gonna say, that’s a perfect segue to kind of what I’ve been thinking this whole time, is, like, having a regular cadence for checking in and getting, like, satisfaction and, like, feedback from our clients, because I know when we talked previously, you were like, you kind of only have those conversations when it comes renewal time, and I think.
205 00:30:06.190 ⇒ 00:30:06.680 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
206 00:30:07.700 ⇒ 00:30:08.800 Uttam Kumaran: That’s almost too late.
207 00:30:08.800 ⇒ 00:30:12.859 Justin Breshears: It was too late, right? And so, yeah, like, that’s what I want to help.
208 00:30:12.860 ⇒ 00:30:20.480 Uttam Kumaran: What do you think, like, now that you kind of see these meetings that we’re having, like, what is a good… like, should we do that in the meeting we just had before this?
209 00:30:20.830 ⇒ 00:30:22.730 Uttam Kumaran: Like, or… I don’t know, what do you think?
210 00:30:22.730 ⇒ 00:30:28.699 Justin Breshears: I’m talking about with the clients, like… Oh, okay, okay. Like, external check-ins, like…
211 00:30:28.700 ⇒ 00:30:29.250 Uttam Kumaran: Fair.
212 00:30:29.250 ⇒ 00:30:36.590 Justin Breshears: Outside of, like, normal, like, delivery structure, with the decision makers, with the people who are signing the bill, you know?
213 00:30:36.730 ⇒ 00:30:41.629 Justin Breshears: And so if it’s, like, a 3-month contract, I think it makes sense to monthly check in.
214 00:30:41.630 ⇒ 00:30:42.130 Uttam Kumaran: I’m playing.
215 00:30:42.130 ⇒ 00:30:52.980 Justin Breshears: If it’s, you know, a one-month contract, then, you know, obviously, that’s not necessary. But, like, anything over one month, I think, like, a monthly check-in cadence with
216 00:30:53.400 ⇒ 00:31:05.810 Justin Breshears: the decision makers is, like, how we make this time a lot easier for you. Yes. Because they will also tell us what opportunities there are to, like, help them out.
217 00:31:05.810 ⇒ 00:31:13.160 Uttam Kumaran: For both of these clients, I would like to do that alongside the renewal call. I don’t mind, because they’re both friendlies.
218 00:31:13.410 ⇒ 00:31:16.479 Uttam Kumaran: But for all of our actual clients.
219 00:31:16.660 ⇒ 00:31:19.079 Uttam Kumaran: We should totally get that booked.
220 00:31:19.530 ⇒ 00:31:20.450 Justin Breshears: Yes.
221 00:31:22.100 ⇒ 00:31:23.469 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, perfect.
222 00:31:24.350 ⇒ 00:31:26.810 Justin Breshears: Yeah. And so, I think it…
223 00:31:27.560 ⇒ 00:31:34.589 Justin Breshears: who does that is kind of a question that’s still up in the air to me, because I don’t think it should be anybody that’s…
224 00:31:34.720 ⇒ 00:31:38.000 Justin Breshears: A part of the big delivery team.
225 00:31:38.510 ⇒ 00:31:46.860 Justin Breshears: Yeah. On a daily basis, because it needs to be kind of about them, not facilitated by them. So I don’t know if it’s, like.
226 00:31:47.380 ⇒ 00:31:48.870 Justin Breshears: You… you were wrong.
227 00:31:48.870 ⇒ 00:31:49.599 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, it’s coming in.
228 00:31:49.600 ⇒ 00:31:50.020 Justin Breshears: No, no, no.
229 00:31:50.020 ⇒ 00:31:51.750 Uttam Kumaran: Sales and PM is, like.
230 00:31:51.750 ⇒ 00:31:52.559 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I think so.
231 00:31:52.560 ⇒ 00:31:54.299 Uttam Kumaran: Is, like, ideal.
232 00:31:54.540 ⇒ 00:31:56.210 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know if we should, like…
233 00:31:56.860 ⇒ 00:32:15.940 Uttam Kumaran: I think, like, I don’t even know whether we need, necessarily, like, tech lead on that. I think sales and PM is fine. The… the problem, what you’re gonna have is that we… Robert and I are still delivering here and there, but it’s a lot less, and, like, I could just play… I’ll just play that role, like, I don’t mind. But,
234 00:32:16.480 ⇒ 00:32:21.290 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think sales and PM, and it’s like a one-two punch, right? Like.
235 00:32:21.520 ⇒ 00:32:38.999 Uttam Kumaran: We come in, and I want to really hear the feedback. I want to have someone… the PM, ideally, can talk to anything about how the client is going, and then I can… I can dance. And then that’s a good thing for us to… for me to go ask what other opportunities are there, what else are you thinking about in your business?
236 00:32:39.110 ⇒ 00:32:45.160 Uttam Kumaran: And then, if it goes south, and the clients are like, well, this is frustrating, the PM is right there to get that feedback, you know?
237 00:32:45.810 ⇒ 00:32:59.830 Justin Breshears: Yep. And the idea is to do it regularly so you have time to correct it before renewal comes up, and then you don’t have that churn. So that’s the whole point with this, is check in, you know, course correct, you know, make these renewal times a lot easier.
238 00:33:01.160 ⇒ 00:33:01.900 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
239 00:33:02.660 ⇒ 00:33:11.490 Justin Breshears: So I’ll write up, kind of, some thoughts on that, and make it a process for the PMs to schedule and bring y’all in at those times.
240 00:33:11.490 ⇒ 00:33:12.410 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay.
241 00:33:12.930 ⇒ 00:33:13.780 Uttam Kumaran: Correct.
242 00:33:14.460 ⇒ 00:33:21.629 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool. So I feel good about this. Yeah, and I think… I think, again, monthly, like, we need some sort of cadence around
243 00:33:21.830 ⇒ 00:33:30.090 Uttam Kumaran: delivery-led opportunities or renewals. Like, we’re… at any moment, we are in the phase of discussing renewal.
244 00:33:30.330 ⇒ 00:33:35.070 Uttam Kumaran: or proposing expansion. In fact, I think we just do too less of that, like.
245 00:33:35.300 ⇒ 00:33:46.680 Uttam Kumaran: these are all happening, like, kind of as just I’ve decided one day, like, we should think about this. So, again, there’s some rituals around each of the things that we’ve talked about, which is…
246 00:33:47.100 ⇒ 00:33:56.040 Uttam Kumaran: delivery excellence, which is looking at a lot of the margins. Something around just, like, what is the qualitative feedback? Like, that’s all a quantitative.
247 00:33:56.140 ⇒ 00:34:05.669 Uttam Kumaran: financial, like, engineering. There’s also something around, like, are we doing a good job with these guys, and have they said that out loud? And then there’s something around this renewal…
248 00:34:06.130 ⇒ 00:34:08.760 Uttam Kumaran: and, expansion.
249 00:34:09.159 ⇒ 00:34:10.440 Uttam Kumaran: And like…
250 00:34:11.060 ⇒ 00:34:25.629 Uttam Kumaran: honestly, like, yeah, and then the last meeting is almost like churn prevention, right? So, I don’t… I don’t mind sitting in as many hours of meetings to make sure that these things happen. That’s why in the last meeting, I was like, we still have… I want to get to everything. This is not a checkbox-type meeting.
251 00:34:26.090 ⇒ 00:34:27.159 Uttam Kumaran: But, like…
252 00:34:27.590 ⇒ 00:34:34.979 Uttam Kumaran: I want to make sure that we’re talking about this more often than not, because Robert and I are discussing these
253 00:34:35.199 ⇒ 00:34:45.799 Uttam Kumaran: all the time, and I feel like we’re sitting on money just because it only happens when there’s an issue, or when the opportunity’s, like, staring us in the face. There’s a lot of room in between there, you know?
254 00:34:45.800 ⇒ 00:34:46.300 Justin Breshears: Yeah.
255 00:34:46.300 ⇒ 00:34:47.169 Uttam Kumaran: We’re not catching things.
256 00:34:47.170 ⇒ 00:35:05.930 Justin Breshears: I think we can just, like, build that into these, like, monthly check-in cadences as well, is, you know, internally, right ahead of the monthly check-in, we can talk about new opportunities, so that when we come to the check-in, we’re not only gathering, you know, satisfaction scores, or however we want to, like, get feedback.
257 00:35:06.550 ⇒ 00:35:10.629 Justin Breshears: But then we’re also talking to them about, like, future opportunities at the same time.
258 00:35:11.060 ⇒ 00:35:12.050 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay.
259 00:35:13.700 ⇒ 00:35:14.700 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, great.
260 00:35:16.060 ⇒ 00:35:22.970 Uttam Kumaran: Alright, cool. Well, if everyone here is okay on these two, then these… yeah, this is kind of, like, what’s top of mind for me right now.
261 00:35:24.750 ⇒ 00:35:32.950 Uttam Kumaran: So yeah, kind of excited to see if we can get… this would be… I mean, default is turning out to be a big client, and I want to see if I can get at least another 5K.
262 00:35:33.250 ⇒ 00:35:38.599 Uttam Kumaran: Monthly out of, ABC, if not more, so let’s see what we can do.
263 00:35:40.450 ⇒ 00:35:41.710 Justin Breshears: Heck yeah, love it.
264 00:35:42.010 ⇒ 00:35:42.620 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
265 00:35:43.010 ⇒ 00:35:47.029 Uttam Kumaran: So… Alright, thank you guys. Slack me if you need anything.
266 00:35:49.060 ⇒ 00:35:49.930 Justin Breshears: The yup.
267 00:35:50.190 ⇒ 00:35:50.940 Uttam Kumaran: Bye.