Meeting Title: Ben __ Brainforge Date: 2024-09-23 Meeting participants: Nicolas Sucari, Uttam Kumaran, Ben Iphone
WEBVTT
1 00:00:25.010 ⇒ 00:00:25.730 ben iphone : Hello!
2 00:00:28.900 ⇒ 00:00:30.479 Nicolas Sucari: Hi, Ben! How are you?
3 00:00:30.540 ⇒ 00:00:31.170 Uttam Kumaran: Done.
4 00:00:31.550 ⇒ 00:00:32.719 ben iphone : Good! How are you?
5 00:00:34.070 ⇒ 00:00:35.190 Nicolas Sucari: I’m doing good.
6 00:00:38.420 ⇒ 00:00:39.709 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, Ben? How’s everything?
7 00:00:42.060 ⇒ 00:00:43.840 ben iphone : No complaints
8 00:00:45.470 ⇒ 00:00:47.849 ben iphone : needed to get some fresh air, so I just
9 00:00:49.480 ⇒ 00:00:51.260 ben iphone : took a drive to
10 00:00:51.760 ⇒ 00:00:58.239 ben iphone : the beach in my town, and it started raining literally the moment that I parked my car, so
11 00:00:58.825 ⇒ 00:01:03.700 ben iphone : I don’t know what to do. I was excited to take a walk all, and
12 00:01:04.150 ⇒ 00:01:08.846 ben iphone : I’m just watching raindrops hitting my windshield, and I’m just like, Come on! How how could.
13 00:01:10.456 ⇒ 00:01:17.360 Uttam Kumaran: You can wait it out. It’s here. It’s like I’m waiting in Austin for it to even get like a little bit cold, but
14 00:01:17.450 ⇒ 00:01:19.524 Uttam Kumaran: it’s still like, yeah, 100 degrees
15 00:01:20.460 ⇒ 00:01:21.600 Uttam Kumaran: every day.
16 00:01:22.350 ⇒ 00:01:28.960 ben iphone : Unbelievable, unbelievable. Well, let let’s get into it. We don’t. We don’t need to make this a long one. I just want to hear what’s going on.
17 00:01:29.650 ⇒ 00:01:35.939 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, maybe go for Nico. I know we shared some updates. But yeah, we have a bunch of stuff actually.
18 00:01:36.750 ⇒ 00:01:51.819 Nicolas Sucari: Yes, of course I can start I sent a meeting agenda for today. But let’s go on. Everything that we’ve been working on these past weeks. We’ve been talking a lot with Kim and Chuck. We have regular meetings, weekly meetings with them.
19 00:01:52.337 ⇒ 00:02:15.209 Nicolas Sucari: So every week we are trying to show them some progress and and work on what they are asking for, and they need so 1st of all, we’ve been working with Kim a lot on having the accurate information of all of the conversions of each of the different sources. This is Amazon, Facebook, Google, direct mails.
20 00:02:15.210 ⇒ 00:02:36.849 Nicolas Sucari: And yeah, trying to have all of the conversions from each of the different channel, and aggregating a number, so that we can have, like accurate measures on how we are doing for Cpa cost per click conversions, conversions value and that kind of stuff. After a few yeah. After some weeks of work trying to identify each of the
21 00:02:36.870 ⇒ 00:02:48.290 Nicolas Sucari: values for each channel. We we validated with her last week that we are reaching to the correct numbers. So we are just doing some fine tuning on the
22 00:02:48.864 ⇒ 00:02:58.589 Nicolas Sucari: on the numbers, and we will be able to share everything on real again. We’ve already been updating a lot of the dashboards there, and we will continue to
23 00:02:58.730 ⇒ 00:03:06.110 Nicolas Sucari: to send the updates through real and yeah, validate with Kim each time we have any change, so that we are
24 00:03:06.488 ⇒ 00:03:09.770 Nicolas Sucari: positive that the numbers that we are sharing are okay.
25 00:03:10.420 ⇒ 00:03:26.410 Nicolas Sucari: So that’s with Kim. Then we will. Yeah, we need to start talking about. If if you or or did, if you agreed on working on, have doing some new direct mail campaigns into a specific zone.
26 00:03:26.450 ⇒ 00:03:42.330 Nicolas Sucari: we can start to work towards that. I know we talked about that a few weeks ago. But then we post that. So if there is something that you or yeah, you you wanna go ahead and work and let us know that we can work on. Just let us know. Okay.
27 00:03:45.250 ⇒ 00:03:49.309 ben iphone : Nothing new right now. I think there will be some stuff probably coming. But
28 00:03:51.530 ⇒ 00:03:52.599 ben iphone : I don’t wanna
29 00:03:52.670 ⇒ 00:03:54.730 ben iphone : put the cart before the horse.
30 00:03:54.920 ⇒ 00:04:03.550 ben iphone : for now, just I think we should probably be continuing on this path, and I think ours and effort, probably, you know, should reflect a reduced
31 00:04:03.640 ⇒ 00:04:08.477 ben iphone : ask from us. I think it probably will come back up soonish. But
32 00:04:08.930 ⇒ 00:04:09.940 ben iphone : yeah, it’s a
33 00:04:10.560 ⇒ 00:04:15.610 ben iphone : we’re working on some things. So it should be sort of quiet right now supporting Cam and them.
34 00:04:16.610 ⇒ 00:04:43.010 Nicolas Sucari: Excellent. Okay, yeah. And then with Chuck, we’ve been working also a lot on trying to understand all of the unit shipments and every every shipment that we’re doing on how it’s impacting and having that data we’ve been talking to Unis because they change some of the information that they were sharing with us. When they when we when we started using the new connector
35 00:04:43.373 ⇒ 00:05:06.630 Nicolas Sucari: so we are still trying to entitle a little bit there. We already asked them to include again the Po number that was missing, so that we can have the correct information, and that that to the real dashboards, too. And then we’ve been working with Jack on other staff regarding the tax tax mapping issue that was between unleashed and 0 platform.
36 00:05:06.680 ⇒ 00:05:18.970 Nicolas Sucari: We already contacted Pamela from your team, too. And discuss a little bit on what was going on there. We identified where the issue was coming from. And we’re gonna do some tests so that we can
37 00:05:18.990 ⇒ 00:05:29.080 Nicolas Sucari: try to fix that and finally close the loop of the order in unleashed, so that you can start viewing the correct inventory on on the platform.
38 00:05:30.010 ⇒ 00:05:36.030 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah, that should start working this week. Oh, I think we lost him.
39 00:05:39.616 ⇒ 00:05:40.450 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, yeah.
40 00:05:40.490 ⇒ 00:05:42.039 Uttam Kumaran: okay, you just dropped.
41 00:05:42.590 ⇒ 00:05:43.690 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah.
42 00:05:58.970 ⇒ 00:06:00.600 ben iphone : Sorry. Can you hear me?
43 00:06:01.490 ⇒ 00:06:03.240 Nicolas Sucari: We can hear you. Ben, yeah.
44 00:06:03.730 ⇒ 00:06:04.410 ben iphone : Okay.
45 00:06:04.780 ⇒ 00:06:05.779 ben iphone : Sorry. Go ahead.
46 00:06:05.780 ⇒ 00:06:06.085 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah.
47 00:06:07.080 ⇒ 00:06:25.189 Nicolas Sucari: yeah, sorry I was talking about. Yeah, what? We we what we were working with? Chuck? So yeah, we are still working on reflecting all of the new shipments from different warehouses. We are getting the new shipments from Alessandro and Ronald facilities, so we are trying to add that to the to the dashboards
48 00:06:25.200 ⇒ 00:06:30.090 Nicolas Sucari: that should be resolved. Once Unis, add the po number to the reports again.
49 00:06:30.637 ⇒ 00:06:44.190 Nicolas Sucari: And then we we also worked with him some ad hoc analysis that he was needing to place the new purchase orders, for I think it’s for next year so we provided him with that information.
50 00:06:44.550 ⇒ 00:06:56.980 Nicolas Sucari: And yeah, we are still also doing some changes on the dashboards that we are starting to share with him so that he can validate that the information or the numbers that we are sharing are reflecting the reality.
51 00:06:57.589 ⇒ 00:07:02.389 Nicolas Sucari: But yeah, most of it is is about that if there is anything
52 00:07:02.560 ⇒ 00:07:10.009 Nicolas Sucari: or any analysis that you would like. Also regarding equipment or logistics, let us know, and we can obviously work on it.
53 00:07:10.550 ⇒ 00:07:12.127 ben iphone : No, no, that’s good. I think
54 00:07:12.710 ⇒ 00:07:16.254 ben iphone : Unis has been difficult. I don’t know how else to say it.
55 00:07:16.900 ⇒ 00:07:19.110 ben iphone : There’s a lot of issues with them with.
56 00:07:21.290 ⇒ 00:07:27.210 ben iphone : I don’t know. I guess their business model with regard to the actual shipping, not the warehousing
57 00:07:27.532 ⇒ 00:07:31.660 ben iphone : in the State of Florida. We’re having a lot of problems to the point where we are
58 00:07:31.940 ⇒ 00:07:36.119 ben iphone : actually like eliminating them from that chain. And we’re
59 00:07:36.610 ⇒ 00:07:49.729 ben iphone : either filling up a truck in New York and sending it south, or we’re sending somebody that lives in Orlando to go to Jacksonville units and pick up, you know, 15 heaters and drive them
60 00:07:49.910 ⇒ 00:07:50.660 ben iphone : around.
61 00:07:50.660 ⇒ 00:07:51.190 Nicolas Sucari: Okay.
62 00:07:51.190 ⇒ 00:07:53.360 ben iphone : For solving their last leg
63 00:07:53.930 ⇒ 00:07:58.040 ben iphone : piece, and we’re using them for warehousing. Obviously Texas and California.
64 00:07:58.802 ⇒ 00:08:03.389 ben iphone : This is just an Eastern sea, you know Eastern seaboard solution. But
65 00:08:05.150 ⇒ 00:08:10.199 ben iphone : that’s really good. And then what? We’re good. There’s this consultant that I know who
66 00:08:12.480 ⇒ 00:08:21.979 ben iphone : we basically are considering, you know. Do we scale this operation of having independent drivers do pickup and delivery for us instead of Eunice, because
67 00:08:22.360 ⇒ 00:08:26.020 ben iphone : Eunice basically takes no responsibility. They basically
68 00:08:26.060 ⇒ 00:08:27.430 ben iphone : helped find
69 00:08:27.940 ⇒ 00:08:31.830 ben iphone : people to pick up and and drop off at homes.
70 00:08:33.140 ⇒ 00:08:33.510 Nicolas Sucari: Okay.
71 00:08:33.510 ⇒ 00:08:41.959 ben iphone : One of the companies went bankrupt, and then units just started shipping more expensively than we can ship from our own warehouse.
72 00:08:42.230 ⇒ 00:08:44.329 ben iphone : And it’s just crazy. So
73 00:08:44.370 ⇒ 00:08:49.879 ben iphone : we’re gonna see if we’re gonna have this guy. See if maybe it makes more sense for us to do that
74 00:08:49.950 ⇒ 00:09:00.259 ben iphone : which it probably does but there’s more internal stuff. So I think there’s gonna need to be a lot more stuff that we do on this data side with as we get going with it. But
75 00:09:00.560 ⇒ 00:09:02.830 ben iphone : all the things you’re doing with Eunice are good.
76 00:09:04.291 ⇒ 00:09:07.540 ben iphone : They’ve just. There’s what you have no control over.
77 00:09:07.830 ⇒ 00:09:08.390 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
78 00:09:08.390 ⇒ 00:09:15.140 ben iphone : Shipping. Yeah. They have been brutal. They have been brutal there, brutal. They’re awful.
79 00:09:17.050 ⇒ 00:09:21.560 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, the nice thing is, I think we now know enough on our side that if we need to integrate
80 00:09:21.810 ⇒ 00:09:24.360 Uttam Kumaran: with someone else, I mean it just.
81 00:09:24.360 ⇒ 00:09:24.620 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah.
82 00:09:24.620 ⇒ 00:09:27.560 Uttam Kumaran: Like, we’ve seen everything that could go wrong. Basically
83 00:09:28.213 ⇒ 00:09:34.570 Uttam Kumaran: so especially on like the tagging and all that stuff like, now that that’s all working. And
84 00:09:34.620 ⇒ 00:09:41.050 Uttam Kumaran: we own that logic, you know, separately. So it’s it’s really easy to modify all those changes that we made.
85 00:09:41.070 ⇒ 00:09:50.409 Uttam Kumaran: We basically, we had this, the whole automation thing in ship, station and otherwise. And we like really centralize that. It’s like a custom script that’s running. And
86 00:09:50.720 ⇒ 00:09:54.519 Uttam Kumaran: whenever orders come in based on the zip we assign a tag and
87 00:09:55.262 ⇒ 00:09:57.219 Uttam Kumaran: that’s like working great now. So.
88 00:09:58.100 ⇒ 00:10:03.540 ben iphone : Yeah. So I I think it’s all good. We’re we’re just trying to figure out all these things, which is why we’ve been so busy but
89 00:10:03.984 ⇒ 00:10:10.850 ben iphone : and and sort of out of touch. But I think that it’s all gonna come back into focus in the next, probably 6 weeks where we’ll
90 00:10:11.070 ⇒ 00:10:12.220 ben iphone : need to
91 00:10:12.580 ⇒ 00:10:17.090 ben iphone : build some stuff or whatever track some stuff. I don’t know exactly what we’re gonna need to do. But
92 00:10:17.100 ⇒ 00:10:19.650 ben iphone : between that and our
93 00:10:21.930 ⇒ 00:10:24.849 ben iphone : trying to work more collaboratively with our.
94 00:10:24.880 ⇒ 00:10:37.589 ben iphone : you know, internally, with Dan’s father in Law’s company. We’re gonna need to centralize some data. So things are gonna bubble up. But we need to do a lot of the legwork to like, just get these things in order now. So
95 00:10:37.750 ⇒ 00:10:40.550 ben iphone : I think we’re good for now. Is there anything else on your mind?
96 00:10:42.410 ⇒ 00:10:45.864 Uttam Kumaran: Thing, Nico, I think we can talk about. So we actually did this
97 00:10:46.140 ⇒ 00:10:55.669 Uttam Kumaran: for another client. We we actually started doing this automation, that maybe we can. I can try to explain it. But it’s also probably something visually we could share. But
98 00:10:55.690 ⇒ 00:11:02.070 Uttam Kumaran: basically they needed to scrape some like product listings that were. They’re selling stuff through
99 00:11:02.150 ⇒ 00:11:08.370 Uttam Kumaran: through target. And they needed to scrape like some listings and look at some attributes like is the product in stock.
100 00:11:08.430 ⇒ 00:11:26.210 Uttam Kumaran: and like which stores are they in stock? And it reminded me of you guys like in case there’s anything internally that you know of, where you’re like looking up a site to see if like a product is in stock. Or I know, even before we were script, we were looking at some stuff on the Google, the Google shopping side.
101 00:11:26.220 ⇒ 00:11:32.110 Uttam Kumaran: like we, just, we’re started using some new technology that just makes scraping like super super easy.
102 00:11:32.210 ⇒ 00:11:35.329 Uttam Kumaran: So in case there’s anything on your side that sounds like
103 00:11:35.360 ⇒ 00:11:41.299 Uttam Kumaran: there’s some problem with like, Hey, we need to go to this site and like, grab some data or like, go to the site and like, look something up
104 00:11:41.627 ⇒ 00:11:50.519 Uttam Kumaran: especially around like products or inventory. We just did a project like that. And the technology is like, really really easy. So just thought I’d bring that up.
105 00:11:50.950 ⇒ 00:11:52.780 ben iphone : Alright good to know
106 00:11:53.541 ⇒ 00:12:01.520 ben iphone : I’d be curious to see if if you could like redact some. If you could do like anything really where you could redact. We can get a sense of how we could. Maybe.
107 00:12:01.520 ⇒ 00:12:02.240 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
108 00:12:02.240 ⇒ 00:12:03.630 ben iphone : Figure out how.
109 00:12:03.790 ⇒ 00:12:06.039 ben iphone : because we have talked at times about
110 00:12:06.530 ⇒ 00:12:08.490 ben iphone : what we could do with scraping
111 00:12:08.750 ⇒ 00:12:11.829 ben iphone : sort of in a defensive capacity.
112 00:12:11.850 ⇒ 00:12:15.129 ben iphone : You know things that we might forget to look at.
113 00:12:15.190 ⇒ 00:12:22.590 ben iphone : and also offensively. Kind of what insights can we glean out there that could make us sell some more stuff.
114 00:12:23.340 ⇒ 00:12:48.929 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so I think, yeah, maybe we can put something together, Nico, because we recorded a video. But maybe we can just redact some stuff and share. But basically, there’s a concept called a headless browser. Now, which is basically like you can spin up browsers that can go scrape certain things. And we just use this technology in the last few weeks. And it was so easy compared to like what it was like even a year ago. And basically, yeah, if you’re
115 00:12:49.240 ⇒ 00:12:56.649 Uttam Kumaran: looking to check like competitors, listings or competitor sites for like changes, or, you know, look up
116 00:12:56.870 ⇒ 00:13:01.610 Uttam Kumaran: full parts inventory on a certain site or a certain like, you know certain details.
117 00:13:01.620 ⇒ 00:13:05.199 Uttam Kumaran: and then do that on like a schedule. It’s now like, really, really
118 00:13:05.420 ⇒ 00:13:06.820 Uttam Kumaran: easy to do so.
119 00:13:07.730 ⇒ 00:13:08.450 ben iphone : Sounds good.
120 00:13:08.450 ⇒ 00:13:09.370 Uttam Kumaran: Something over.
121 00:13:09.370 ⇒ 00:13:16.520 ben iphone : Yeah. Don’t spend too much time, just just, you know, so I can get. I can get the gist of it, and then I’ll I’ll think I’ll it’ll give me enough to understand.
122 00:13:16.950 ⇒ 00:13:17.390 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
123 00:13:17.390 ⇒ 00:13:17.970 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah.
124 00:13:18.170 ⇒ 00:13:19.020 Nicolas Sucari: okay.
125 00:13:19.260 ⇒ 00:13:23.260 Nicolas Sucari: perfect. Then, after that, I don’t think we have a lot of
126 00:13:23.873 ⇒ 00:13:42.060 Nicolas Sucari: stuff. We’ve been talking with Pamela. We’re gonna do some tests to try to fix that inventory issuing a list, and I think there might be some opportunity then to start looking into doing some inventory report if you’d like to. But yeah, I think that’s it.
127 00:13:43.000 ⇒ 00:13:43.960 ben iphone : Sounds good.
128 00:13:45.290 ⇒ 00:13:51.439 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool. So let’s let’s get that update over. And then I think, after we’re gonna we meet with Kim and Chuck on Thursdays.
129 00:13:51.480 ⇒ 00:14:00.690 Uttam Kumaran: But yeah, we had a bunch of dashboard updates that we’re sharing with them. And then we’re working on a little. Another map thing for Chuck. So we’ll just keep sending that stuff over in slack.
130 00:14:01.570 ⇒ 00:14:15.260 ben iphone : Sounds good. Sounds good. Yeah, a lot. Chuck has a lot going with these new, these 2 drivers that we got. He’s definitely we gotta put some tools to make it all simpler, especially if I if we continue on this path, which I think we should
131 00:14:16.096 ⇒ 00:14:18.660 ben iphone : of these independent drivers, so we don’t.
132 00:14:18.750 ⇒ 00:14:25.760 ben iphone : We don’t have to deal with the bankruptcies. And whatever of these middle sized companies are too affected. They’re too affected by.
133 00:14:26.730 ⇒ 00:14:31.829 ben iphone : They’re too affected by the economy, I think. And and I think that they’re losing to these Independents just
134 00:14:32.260 ⇒ 00:14:34.370 ben iphone : you know, they just are lighter. So
135 00:14:34.606 ⇒ 00:14:37.849 ben iphone : I think we have to go in that direction, so we’ll need some real real.
136 00:14:37.850 ⇒ 00:14:40.530 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I wonder like, if they need any sort of OP like
137 00:14:40.550 ⇒ 00:14:45.920 Uttam Kumaran: to even like orchestrate all that like, yeah, I mean, we can talk to chuck on Thursday about like what the like
138 00:14:46.290 ⇒ 00:14:49.760 Uttam Kumaran: automation or the operation side of that is in terms of getting
139 00:14:50.040 ⇒ 00:14:51.139 Uttam Kumaran: the data.
140 00:14:51.540 ⇒ 00:14:55.096 ben iphone : Yeah, yeah, we’re we’re definitely gonna have to get there at some point.
141 00:14:55.390 ⇒ 00:15:03.889 ben iphone : once. We just gotta validate it a little bit further, and then then we’ll. And you know, once we’ll once we figure out, that’s the direction so that we don’t have to rely on the units
142 00:15:03.920 ⇒ 00:15:13.350 ben iphone : further shitty shipping capabilities then we’ll have to, you know. It’ll be in a much more of an internal wait, you know, so
143 00:15:14.400 ⇒ 00:15:15.500 ben iphone : we’ll get there.
144 00:15:17.380 ⇒ 00:15:18.710 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Awesome.
145 00:15:19.100 ⇒ 00:15:21.760 ben iphone : Alright, gents, good stuff! I’ll talk to you soon.
146 00:15:21.990 ⇒ 00:15:23.099 Uttam Kumaran: Thanks, man, talk to you soon.
147 00:15:23.100 ⇒ 00:15:23.860 Nicolas Sucari: Once again.
148 00:15:24.110 ⇒ 00:15:24.960 Nicolas Sucari: bye, bye.