Meeting Title: Uttam <> Abigail Date: 2024-08-16 Meeting participants: Abigail Zhao, Uttam Kumaran


WEBVTT

1 00:00:31.950 00:00:32.720 Abigail Zhao: Hi.

2 00:00:32.720 00:00:34.015 Uttam Kumaran: Hey? How’s it going.

3 00:00:34.340 00:00:39.560 Abigail Zhao: Sorry. I’m like, I’m like in the middle of like moving in to this apartment. So yeah, sorry about like.

4 00:00:39.560 00:00:41.830 Uttam Kumaran: Good. You’re good. No problem. How’s everything?

5 00:00:42.030 00:00:43.340 Abigail Zhao: Yeah. It’s been good.

6 00:00:44.320 00:00:46.930 Uttam Kumaran: Nice. Where? Where are you in? La.

7 00:00:48.820 00:00:49.850 Abigail Zhao: like

8 00:00:50.160 00:00:56.440 Abigail Zhao: next to Usc, cause that’s like where I’m going to school. So yeah, I just moving in here before school starts. Yeah.

9 00:00:56.440 00:00:57.160 Uttam Kumaran: It’s.

10 00:00:57.630 00:00:58.600 Abigail Zhao: Yeah.

11 00:00:58.600 00:01:01.379 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, nice. Okay, cool. Do you know them like before?

12 00:01:01.550 00:01:04.949 Abigail Zhao: Yeah, we were. We were all friends before. We like found this place together.

13 00:01:04.950 00:01:06.589 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, nice. Okay, solid.

14 00:01:06.940 00:01:14.450 Uttam Kumaran: nice. Well, thanks for dealing with all the delays. It’s been kind of a insane month for us. Just had a bunch of

15 00:01:14.520 00:01:31.087 Uttam Kumaran: like changes and like a couple of people join and like a cup, some movement. So stuff’s been good. So I kind of wanted to brief you. I guess we’ll just jump right into things kind of brief you on like what our main focus is right now, and like, I think where we could use a ton of help. So

16 00:01:31.790 00:02:01.339 Uttam Kumaran: At the moment, the biggest thing that, like a lot of people at the company are focused on is like on a on a ton of sales. Automation related things. So we’re building automations. On everything, from like automating, like meeting summaries to automating like to do lists for folks to automating things like moving certain people from our Crm system into email campaigns. And there’s a couple of people on the team that are like helping me basically do that.

17 00:02:01.675 00:02:09.240 Uttam Kumaran: Right now, we’re like the business wise. We have a couple of clients. But our whole focus is is shifting kind of towards

18 00:02:09.289 00:02:13.420 Uttam Kumaran: beefing up our like sales and marketing. So a lot of where we need help is

19 00:02:13.802 00:02:40.170 Uttam Kumaran: using some like automation tools like Zapier to like kind of hook things up. And then also leveraging like AI tools like Gpt, and like some of the image editing tools to basically help pump out like more marketing. So there’s like a wide range of like stuff we’re working on. I think Monday’s meeting that I invited you to. If you can make it would. Probably we’ll probably go through like

20 00:02:40.230 00:03:03.219 Uttam Kumaran: like everything that we’re kind of like trying to do on the automation side. And in particular, we’re gonna break down kind of like the key tools that we’re using the sales side. And then where we need some help on the automation. I think a lot of the initial role will be working with me. A guy named Patrick, who’s on our team as well as another person named Ryan on basically like hooking up some of these automations.

21 00:03:03.220 00:03:26.129 Uttam Kumaran: Basically, what we’re doing is we have several outbound channels by which we do marketing like email Linkedin and then we also do email. We also do campaigns based on multiple different industries. So I kind of just need help on a wide array of things like setting up new email content. Kind of helping Patrick run some new automations. We’re gonna move people from our Crm system into a campaign

22 00:03:26.488 00:03:36.360 Uttam Kumaran: and then kind of just like figuring out how we like do sales from like scratch. The nice thing is like I’ve done. We’re like, have the basics down. And like.

23 00:03:36.460 00:03:45.699 Uttam Kumaran: I know what generally good email copy is, we know the tools that we’re using to send stuff out. But I think a lot of this role initially will just be

24 00:03:45.700 00:04:12.640 Uttam Kumaran: like understanding how we can use some of these AI tools to automatically generate some copy how we can use it to automatically, like summarize different meetings and like basically building workflows for us. Because we’re not planning on really hiring like someone in sales anytime soon. I think. Kind of like down the line as we kind of get this motion going. I think we also have a lot of opportunities to start to automate some things on the management side and on the engineering side. So that’ll be like the next

25 00:04:12.730 00:04:39.459 Uttam Kumaran: focus but right now, like that’s mainly like where we’re at so that’s been like a lot of my time. The last few weeks since I talked to you in New York like really ramping up our sales. We’re sending like 30 or 40 emails a day that needs to kind of move up to like hundreds of emails a day. And then we’re also gonna start to build some like linkedin sequences. The nice thing is we have all the tools we need to do it. So I’ll kind of just be handing over the keys to you and a couple of people just to like

26 00:04:39.840 00:04:44.339 Uttam Kumaran: play around and like research and see like what’s possible.

27 00:04:45.070 00:04:50.439 Uttam Kumaran: kind of like. What I’ll talk about on Monday is like from the marketing side, like

28 00:04:50.500 00:05:17.289 Uttam Kumaran: basically dissecting how we build an outbound campaign like what our brand voice is, how we’re actually targeting and where, how we’re sending people to our website. And then the goal will be for us to kind of group and dissect different parts of that challenge. And then, just like, kind of assign out work like, Hey, automate. How this data piece moves here. Automate. How maybe write this next campaign. Like, organize some certain thing and things like that. So

29 00:05:17.580 00:05:34.549 Uttam Kumaran: should be good. It’s kind of like it’s kind of brand new for me. So I’m even a little bit nervous. But, the nice thing is like I’m trying to use AI, and like every single part of the company. And this is the 1st time where we’re going really like balls to wall in terms of automating like as much of the sales process as possible, so.

30 00:05:36.170 00:05:44.120 Abigail Zhao: Okay, yeah, no, that sounds that’s really helpful. Is there anything that like, I would specifically need to do like

31 00:05:44.740 00:05:48.779 Abigail Zhao: like right now, or do you think I should just like wait till Monday for the meeting, and like, get the whole rundown.

32 00:05:48.780 00:05:59.449 Uttam Kumaran: I think. Wait till Monday for the meeting. I’m going to let me give you access to notion, so that if you do have time this weekend. You can just poke around our notion board. Have you used notion before.

33 00:06:00.180 00:06:00.720 Abigail Zhao: Yeah.

34 00:06:00.720 00:06:03.799 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s just like for notes and documents and stuff.

35 00:06:03.800 00:06:04.440 Abigail Zhao: Or.

36 00:06:05.117 00:06:08.300 Uttam Kumaran: But let me give you access to that.

37 00:06:15.560 00:06:17.650 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, I actually did invite you already.

38 00:06:17.700 00:06:20.480 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, okay, now check. If you got a.

39 00:06:21.010 00:06:22.440 Abigail Zhao: Okay, yeah.

40 00:06:23.730 00:06:24.770 Abigail Zhao: Me?

41 00:06:36.390 00:06:38.210 Abigail Zhao: Oh, yeah, okay. I see it.

42 00:06:39.400 00:06:44.150 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. So log in there and then just let me know once you’re in there. And then I’m also going to

43 00:06:44.340 00:06:55.920 Uttam Kumaran: like, I’m gonna start creating a little bit of like how to learn about kind of like the various tools that we’re using. Basically, we’re using a tool called Apollo and a tool called instantly

44 00:06:56.207 00:07:19.480 Uttam Kumaran: and we will be probably using a tool called Hubspot, basically to kind of like, manage all of our sales motion. And of course, like I’m sure you’ve used Chat Gpt or Claude for stuff we’ll be using like some of the Apis there and then, Zapier, so I’ll just. I’m just gonna put in kind of save a bunch of links about like how to like, use these tools and like kind of sharing a little bit about like.

45 00:07:19.640 00:07:31.819 Uttam Kumaran: like overviews of like how to learn and how to click around. And things like that. I’m also learning myself. But I know everybody has different learning strategies like me. I just like learn by like fucking around. Some people like to

46 00:07:31.830 00:07:40.099 Uttam Kumaran: like go through webinars or read, so I’ll have, like all the kind of knowledge base about how to kind of like, get started with with each of these tools.

47 00:07:40.441 00:08:05.360 Uttam Kumaran: And like, hopefully, really, the goal is we’ll set some goals on Monday, but we will some metric goals that we want to hit, which is like email sent per industry. We’ll also look at conversion, how to look at the website analytics. We’ll also walk through how to how we’re gonna set up like Linkedin outbound and then, you know, there will be a creative aspect that, like

48 00:08:05.460 00:08:10.530 Uttam Kumaran: again, I’ve been doing. But kind of how we write these outbound marketing emails.

49 00:08:11.980 00:08:39.031 Uttam Kumaran: and so yeah, I basically today, like, move some people from some clients just to direct some of the engineering staff to work directly on kind of our basically building our sales organization. So that’s what our focus is gonna probably be on until like the drum starts beating there. And we start to see leads. And then after that, we’ll kind of turn more into like, okay, like moving people towards working on some of these clients.

50 00:08:39.370 00:08:52.319 Uttam Kumaran: but yeah, it’s so like, actually, really, really technical work. So we’ll be. This tool called Zapier. Zapier is like, have you used any tools that are like if this happens and do this thing like any of those kind of connecting tools or no.

51 00:08:53.400 00:08:54.050 Abigail Zhao: Not.

52 00:08:54.050 00:08:55.720 Uttam Kumaran: Like workflow automation.

53 00:08:55.720 00:08:58.670 Abigail Zhao: Oh, like very, very lightly.

54 00:08:58.670 00:09:18.100 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, that’s pretty basic. But it can get really advanced like, for example, it’ll be like, if if we get a new inbound email, then add it to like this notion database, or like stuff like that. So we’ll be building processes like that and then also, I’m gonna invite you to our figma. Have you used figma before.

55 00:09:18.100 00:09:19.020 Abigail Zhao: Hmm, yeah.

56 00:09:19.230 00:09:20.860 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, Sigma.

57 00:09:21.030 00:09:22.911 Uttam Kumaran: we just have, like a lot of

58 00:09:24.250 00:09:26.260 Uttam Kumaran: like notes and stuff in there.

59 00:09:26.260 00:09:26.940 Abigail Zhao: No problem.

60 00:09:29.550 00:09:42.824 Uttam Kumaran: But yeah, I’m actually very excited to get like help on this. And then I again, my goal is like ideally. I’ll give you an opportunity as soon as we get more clients to actually work on some client work, and then hopefully, like that’ll turn into some paid work.

61 00:09:43.410 00:09:46.399 Uttam Kumaran: But you know. I, this is actually like.

62 00:09:46.750 00:09:50.089 Uttam Kumaran: very seriously the the most important thing that we need right now.

63 00:09:50.090 00:09:51.039 Abigail Zhao: Yeah, yeah, for sure.

64 00:09:51.422 00:09:55.630 Uttam Kumaran: So I’m very, very excited to have you on the team.

65 00:09:55.630 00:09:57.100 Abigail Zhao: Excuse me, too.

66 00:09:57.876 00:10:01.580 Uttam Kumaran: Any other questions for me, while I just invite you to

67 00:10:02.090 00:10:03.040 Uttam Kumaran: Sigma.

68 00:10:03.601 00:10:09.798 Abigail Zhao: I think, for right now I should be good. If any other questions come up, I’ll like slack you or something.

69 00:10:10.080 00:10:13.149 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, I mean, I’ll be on all weekend for the most part, just like

70 00:10:13.880 00:10:15.846 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll be organizing some stuff.

71 00:10:16.410 00:10:21.960 Uttam Kumaran: So if you need anything. Just let me know. I’m going to

72 00:10:21.990 00:10:24.807 Uttam Kumaran: see if I can make this happen.

73 00:10:31.730 00:10:32.720 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, here’s

74 00:10:54.870 00:10:56.659 Uttam Kumaran: okay. I just invited you.

75 00:10:56.660 00:10:58.020 Abigail Zhao: Hmm, okay.

76 00:11:11.300 00:11:14.040 Abigail Zhao: okay, yeah. I got it. I just have to connect

77 00:11:14.360 00:11:18.209 Abigail Zhao: kind of this email to stigma. Okay.

78 00:11:18.360 00:11:19.959 Abigail Zhao: But yeah, I should

79 00:11:20.170 00:11:21.240 Abigail Zhao: be good.

80 00:11:21.830 00:11:22.310 Abigail Zhao: Okay.

81 00:11:23.076 00:11:24.609 Uttam Kumaran: And then

82 00:11:25.070 00:11:27.430 Uttam Kumaran: I’m just gonna slack you

83 00:11:27.680 00:11:35.720 Uttam Kumaran: a couple of things. You have it, and then before Monday I’ll probably have a more formal, doc that everybody can go through.

84 00:11:35.730 00:11:39.290 Uttam Kumaran: But these are like some of the tools that we’re using.

85 00:11:39.410 00:11:42.359 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s Apollo. Instantly.

86 00:12:10.450 00:12:12.850 Uttam Kumaran: Instantly, Apollo

87 00:12:13.370 00:12:17.160 Uttam Kumaran: and you’ve used you. You’re like good with navigating around notion right.

88 00:12:17.394 00:12:19.500 Abigail Zhao: Yeah, yeah, I’ve used it before. So I should.

89 00:12:19.500 00:12:20.990 Uttam Kumaran: For like school or stuff.

90 00:12:22.500 00:12:26.359 Abigail Zhao: not really more just for like personal like.

91 00:12:26.500 00:12:29.719 Uttam Kumaran: So I, yeah, I like, I basically have, like my whole life in there. For like.

92 00:12:29.720 00:12:31.770 Abigail Zhao: Yeah, yeah.

93 00:12:31.930 00:12:33.699 Uttam Kumaran: But then it became like too much.

94 00:12:34.386 00:12:35.073 Abigail Zhao: Yeah.

95 00:12:38.880 00:12:42.790 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so there’s that. And then, oh, yeah, it’s out here.

96 00:12:54.210 00:13:06.729 Uttam Kumaran: So yeah, if you get us like this weekend, just walk through a couple of days, and then on Monday, we’ll talk. And then probably next week, like, what? What’s your like? Usual schedule like next week, cause I’m gonna try actually to

97 00:13:06.820 00:13:10.280 Uttam Kumaran: sit with the team like a couple of the days like, and we’re just probably just like

98 00:13:10.928 00:13:14.241 Uttam Kumaran: be on zoom and like work through some things.

99 00:13:16.288 00:13:29.030 Abigail Zhao: If you want. I could like literally just send you a picture of like my class schedule, and then like, that’ll be like days when I’m like for sure, like times when I’m for sure busy and then, like I’ll fill in any of the gaps of like where I may have like something else that’ll keep me busy. But.

100 00:13:29.030 00:13:34.670 Uttam Kumaran: Better yet if you on your Brainforge calendar, can you just that.

101 00:13:34.670 00:13:35.559 Abigail Zhao: Yeah, I can do that, too.

102 00:13:35.560 00:13:38.999 Uttam Kumaran: Put that in that way. When I book a meeting, it’ll tell me like.

103 00:13:39.000 00:13:41.049 Abigail Zhao: Oh, yeah, okay, yeah, for sure. I’ll do that.

104 00:13:41.050 00:13:42.952 Uttam Kumaran: So if you can do that, and then

105 00:13:43.680 00:13:49.969 Uttam Kumaran: The other thing that I will do in notion is, I will give you like a little area.

106 00:13:50.797 00:13:52.880 Uttam Kumaran: That you can take notes in.

107 00:14:24.020 00:14:25.925 Uttam Kumaran: Of course you have. Like your

108 00:14:27.050 00:14:29.192 Uttam Kumaran: you have like your area. But

109 00:14:30.780 00:14:35.479 Uttam Kumaran: I just wanna make sure that you have, like you can put anything in notion in here.

110 00:14:36.136 00:14:38.279 Uttam Kumaran: So let me share this with you.

111 00:14:39.630 00:14:43.089 Uttam Kumaran: and then I’m also gonna make sure you’re in the right group.

112 00:14:49.788 00:14:57.730 Uttam Kumaran: And then there’s actually 2. There’s actually 2 other interns. There were 2 others there, like one graduated.

113 00:14:58.080 00:15:00.769 Uttam Kumaran: One kind of like dropped out, and then

114 00:15:01.164 00:15:04.729 Uttam Kumaran: there’s still 2 active. One goes to the U. Of I,

115 00:15:04.780 00:15:14.710 Uttam Kumaran: Illinois, and then another. He’s actually in India, and he’s in his senior year right now. So there are a couple of other people like I wouldn’t say they’re like

116 00:15:14.750 00:15:16.339 Uttam Kumaran: so outgoing. So.

117 00:15:16.340 00:15:17.300 Abigail Zhao: Okay.

118 00:15:17.579 00:15:20.089 Uttam Kumaran: Going out of every out of all the interns.

119 00:15:20.090 00:15:21.769 Abigail Zhao: Okay, which is good.

120 00:15:21.770 00:15:25.800 Uttam Kumaran: It’s actually great cause, like, I sometimes like, I hate the radio silence. And I.

121 00:15:25.800 00:15:26.550 Abigail Zhao: Yeah.

122 00:15:26.550 00:15:30.549 Uttam Kumaran: I talk all day, and so if people are in meetings and silence, I get kind of like.

123 00:15:30.550 00:15:34.429 Abigail Zhao: Yeah, it can also be awkward, too, with like the remote, like, everything being remote, too.

124 00:15:34.430 00:15:38.319 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, like, I’ve been working remote for so long, so like and

125 00:15:38.400 00:15:43.559 Uttam Kumaran: like, nothing in my life is awkward anymore. But I just need if people are like. Like nodding. I like.

126 00:15:43.560 00:15:44.099 Abigail Zhao: Yeah.

127 00:15:44.640 00:15:53.849 Uttam Kumaran: I’m like, what can you like? Tell me whether like say yes or no, or like? I’m confused. Could be anything. Because I move like a million miles an hour.

128 00:15:53.850 00:15:54.370 Abigail Zhao: Yeah.

129 00:15:54.370 00:16:00.889 Uttam Kumaran: But actually, unfortunately, on your case, I actually moved at 0 miles an hour. But I’m doing my best.

130 00:16:01.200 00:16:02.160 Abigail Zhao: Yeah, you’re good. Don’t worry.

131 00:16:02.160 00:16:08.230 Uttam Kumaran: But okay, so you have your notion. Page you can feel free to like spruce that up. However, you want

132 00:16:08.910 00:16:10.260 Uttam Kumaran: I basically

133 00:16:10.270 00:16:14.340 Uttam Kumaran: typically, actually, what I’m gonna do is just make sure that you have your like

134 00:16:14.440 00:16:17.340 Uttam Kumaran: contact info here. Yeah.

135 00:16:17.690 00:16:20.940 Uttam Kumaran: that way. Actually, here, I’m just gonna copy.

136 00:16:21.420 00:16:25.869 Uttam Kumaran: I’m just gonna copy this stuff in here from another person’s.

137 00:16:26.590 00:16:29.340 Uttam Kumaran: and then you can delete it

138 00:16:30.290 00:16:31.549 Uttam Kumaran: that way. If

139 00:16:32.830 00:16:39.888 Uttam Kumaran: folks wanna connect with you on Linkedin or contact you, they have it. And then we also, we’ll add you to like our database of like people.

140 00:16:53.220 00:17:03.710 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and we basically use Google Calendar for everything. So like, if you’re gonna be out or like busy, just throw it in there. But again, also, we’re like a startup. So it’s totally chill. If you’re like

141 00:17:04.180 00:17:05.863 Uttam Kumaran: need to run to stuff.

142 00:17:06.380 00:17:29.989 Uttam Kumaran: it’s it’s not gonna be too big of a deal cool. But yeah, if you can make that Monday meeting, and then, basically, we’ll try out the week with everyone. I’m sure we’re not gonna get to cover everything on Monday. But I at least want to make sure that everybody has like resources for learning Apollo instantly, Zapier, and then probably Hubspot. Whatever we decide on Monday we were, gonna we’re gonna go through basically.

143 00:17:30.380 00:17:42.649 Uttam Kumaran: each of the industries that we’re targeting. How like I get like for how we move someone from like a prospect to a lead, and how we send them outbound emails and things like that. And then we’ll kind of

144 00:17:42.910 00:17:44.490 Uttam Kumaran: break up like

145 00:17:45.020 00:17:49.400 Uttam Kumaran: tasks for everybody in the team to take on, and we’ll track everything in notion, so it should be pretty clean.

146 00:17:49.610 00:17:51.099 Abigail Zhao: Okay. Yeah. Sounds good.

147 00:17:51.270 00:17:53.910 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Cool. Anything else.

148 00:17:54.692 00:18:04.209 Abigail Zhao: I think I’m good on my end. I’ll just like take a look at everything this weekend sorry. Make sure I’m like pretty well versed on

149 00:18:04.380 00:18:05.670 Abigail Zhao: the things that are.

150 00:18:05.670 00:18:12.590 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool. I’m gonna also send you like a formal offer letter. That way. You have that. And then if you

151 00:18:12.610 00:18:18.731 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, if you need anything else for me. Let me know, and then I’ll send you also send you an nda, and that’ll come in on Monday.

152 00:18:18.950 00:18:20.320 Abigail Zhao: In time.

153 00:18:24.480 00:18:53.669 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, this is the only other thing we’ll probably do is sometime in the next 2 months, like, I’ll probably have people post on Linkedin, like you guys and some other folks. But I want to use that to like drive people to the business. So like you could do it if you want, but also you can wait, cause I’ll give everybody like a little blurb on like posting that way. Well, everybody in the company will like like it, and it’ll just like it’ll just get a lot of attention. And then you can drive people to the site and stuff so.

154 00:18:53.920 00:18:55.350 Abigail Zhao: Okay, yeah, that’s good.

155 00:18:55.350 00:18:56.259 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, okay.

156 00:18:56.520 00:18:58.860 Uttam Kumaran: alright! How we go! Well, let’s talk on Monday.

157 00:18:58.860 00:19:00.540 Abigail Zhao: Yeah, okay, thank you.

158 00:19:00.540 00:19:01.260 Uttam Kumaran: Thanks, bye.

159 00:19:01.260 00:19:02.400 Abigail Zhao: Hi! Everyone.