Meeting Title: Brainforge_Connor Fenn_SDR Opportunity Date: 2024-12-17 Meeting participants: Robert Tseng, Uttam Kumaran, Connor Fenn
WEBVTT
1 00:02:53.570 ⇒ 00:02:54.740 Connor Fenn: Hey! Good morning!
2 00:03:01.060 ⇒ 00:03:01.540 Uttam Kumaran: Yo dude.
3 00:03:07.060 ⇒ 00:03:08.229 Connor Fenn: How are we?
4 00:03:08.230 ⇒ 00:03:09.620 Uttam Kumaran: Hey! Good!
5 00:03:10.000 ⇒ 00:03:11.609 Connor Fenn: Yeah. Good morning.
6 00:03:12.000 ⇒ 00:03:13.420 Uttam Kumaran: Good morning!
7 00:03:15.370 ⇒ 00:03:16.720 Connor Fenn: Is that the new place.
8 00:03:16.970 ⇒ 00:03:19.739 Uttam Kumaran: This is the new place. Yeah, this is the office room.
9 00:03:20.060 ⇒ 00:03:21.520 Connor Fenn: I gotta come check it out. One of these.
10 00:03:21.520 ⇒ 00:03:23.894 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, dude this week, I think.
11 00:03:24.790 ⇒ 00:03:29.509 Uttam Kumaran: I think Thursday should work honestly, I have usually Wednesdays. I try to keep
12 00:03:30.110 ⇒ 00:03:33.380 Uttam Kumaran: that just like, actually get like, really, a lot of work done.
13 00:03:33.380 ⇒ 00:03:33.770 Connor Fenn: Yeah.
14 00:03:33.900 ⇒ 00:03:35.970 Uttam Kumaran: Thursday should work really really great?
15 00:03:37.850 ⇒ 00:03:38.750 Uttam Kumaran: Or Friday.
16 00:03:38.750 ⇒ 00:03:43.280 Connor Fenn: Settled in, and everything now, or are you still doing the place stuff to the place?
17 00:03:44.223 ⇒ 00:03:45.290 Uttam Kumaran: Wait! What do you mean?
18 00:03:45.440 ⇒ 00:03:48.909 Connor Fenn: Are you like fully settled? Are you like doing anything to the place or.
19 00:03:48.910 ⇒ 00:03:57.430 Uttam Kumaran: No, it’s yeah. It’s fully settled. I mean, I I still have some work to do, like in the yard, but into internally. Yeah, it’s all settled, and my girlfriend’s dog.
20 00:03:57.430 ⇒ 00:04:00.873 Connor Fenn: Wait. I was. Gonna say, wait a second. You got a dog.
21 00:04:01.160 ⇒ 00:04:04.780 Uttam Kumaran: It’s a it’s Jess’s dog. His name is Finn.
22 00:04:05.571 ⇒ 00:04:07.179 Connor Fenn: But he stays with me.
23 00:04:07.620 ⇒ 00:04:13.370 Uttam Kumaran: We have joint custody now. No, it’s nice to have him here, otherwise I’m usually all alone.
24 00:04:13.570 ⇒ 00:04:16.959 Uttam Kumaran: so he she’ll nag me, and then
25 00:04:17.940 ⇒ 00:04:21.090 Uttam Kumaran: he’ll he’ll just chill behind behind the camera.
26 00:04:21.350 ⇒ 00:04:26.260 Connor Fenn: Yeah, that’s awesome. I’ve thought about it a couple of times. I’m like, do I get one? And
27 00:04:26.410 ⇒ 00:04:31.260 Connor Fenn: I don’t know. That’s a that’s a big commitment, hey, Robert.
28 00:04:31.260 ⇒ 00:04:32.240 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, Robert.
29 00:04:32.750 ⇒ 00:04:34.389 Robert Tseng: Hey, Connor, how are you, Tom? Sorry I’m late.
30 00:04:34.720 ⇒ 00:04:35.719 Uttam Kumaran: No, you’re good.
31 00:04:36.240 ⇒ 00:04:41.519 Uttam Kumaran: awesome. Well, I I think I’ve given both of you guys a lot of context. But I’m super super pumped
32 00:04:42.332 ⇒ 00:04:44.079 Uttam Kumaran: for this meeting.
33 00:04:44.808 ⇒ 00:04:50.029 Uttam Kumaran: One, you know. Anytime we get to, you know, brag about what we’re doing and
34 00:04:50.240 ⇒ 00:04:57.510 Uttam Kumaran: and sort of where we’re going and what the opportunity is, I think it. It feels really awesome. I think. You know.
35 00:04:57.790 ⇒ 00:05:27.190 Uttam Kumaran: Robert, what I’ve told a lot of Connor about is sort of where we are in our larger sales cycle. And how we’re we’re moving towards, you know, sort of these smaller contracts to try to do more things at the strategic level. I don’t think Connor comes from a particularly technical background, but I works in a lot of different technical sectors. So I don’t think really grasping a lot of the stuff that we do will be much of a challenge. But yeah, just wanted to kind of like, get the 3 of us
36 00:05:27.522 ⇒ 00:05:39.670 Uttam Kumaran: together to maybe answer Connor any of your questions, and would love for you to maybe give a brief introduction to Robert. But then, of course, Robert, I mentioned. So me and Connor both live here in Austin. We just connected through
37 00:05:39.800 ⇒ 00:05:41.830 Uttam Kumaran: a bunch of friends. So
38 00:05:41.990 ⇒ 00:05:55.330 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, maybe, Connor, I’ll let you take it away. And then, yeah, this can be pretty casual conversation. I mean, in particular, we want to talk about you know this possibility for a sales role here. But with that in mind, I think I’ll I’ll kick it to you, Connor.
39 00:05:55.750 ⇒ 00:05:56.320 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
40 00:05:56.660 ⇒ 00:06:02.052 Connor Fenn: Yeah, I appreciate it. Nice to meet you, Robert. I guess 1st things 1st is
41 00:06:03.780 ⇒ 00:06:23.690 Connor Fenn: tell you a little bit about just my history and background went to school at Coastal Carolina University graduated with finance degree, came out of school kinda uncertain, and what I wanted to do, but ended up going down the real estate kind of path did. Commercial real estate investment brokerage for a little while
42 00:06:24.250 ⇒ 00:06:39.259 Connor Fenn: wasn’t entirely interested with the real estate itself. And so I actually moved into tech sales for a little bit I was doing I was working as a account executive for Shi. It’s like a 3rd party sales company. I don’t know if you’ve heard of them.
43 00:06:39.970 ⇒ 00:06:52.690 Connor Fenn: did that for a little while, and kind of just wanted to explore different options. So I moved and started working for a real estate consulting firm called Serious. That’s where I’ve been.
44 00:06:53.830 ⇒ 00:07:07.429 Connor Fenn: Geez about 2 years now. Essentially what we do. Instead of the buying and selling side of things we go into organizations that already exist and kind of help them with their
45 00:07:07.560 ⇒ 00:07:12.910 Connor Fenn: organizational and operational flow. So if you can imagine
46 00:07:13.260 ⇒ 00:07:18.379 Connor Fenn: large companies such as like Bms or Cisco, things like that
47 00:07:18.930 ⇒ 00:07:22.449 Connor Fenn: they have, you know, thousands of locations all over the world
48 00:07:23.300 ⇒ 00:07:26.959 Connor Fenn: for us. What we’ll do is we’ll go in and
49 00:07:27.270 ⇒ 00:07:32.499 Connor Fenn: see how they’re operating, as far as like facility management services and things along those lines.
50 00:07:33.180 ⇒ 00:07:43.730 Connor Fenn: and kind of help them umbrella all those services under 1 3rd party. So we’ll do a lot of like contract work as well as just like
51 00:07:45.120 ⇒ 00:07:48.549 Connor Fenn: overall analyzation of the flow of that process.
52 00:07:50.750 ⇒ 00:07:53.130 Connor Fenn: Little bit. Personally, I,
53 00:07:54.780 ⇒ 00:08:03.000 Connor Fenn: for probably about 4 years now got pretty big into crypto and kind of the tech AI space. And that’s kind of what drew me to this position.
54 00:08:03.685 ⇒ 00:08:09.389 Connor Fenn: I kind of wanted to see myself in an opportunity that has.
55 00:08:09.710 ⇒ 00:08:25.720 Connor Fenn: you know, a 20 year path, and I think that’s what excites me about. This is all the new tech which is something I wasn’t necessarily exposed to, but have been exposed to by myself, and I want to continue to learn that. So that’s kind of where I am.
56 00:08:26.660 ⇒ 00:08:31.180 Robert Tseng: Cool. Yeah, no thanks for the intro, I think. Maybe I’ll introduce a bit of myself to you.
57 00:08:31.617 ⇒ 00:08:40.222 Robert Tseng: And then we can kind of like chat like some some thoughts on kind of what this role, or from my perspective, what I think we’re looking for.
58 00:08:40.789 ⇒ 00:08:52.527 Robert Tseng: yeah, I mean I it’s kind of similar to you. I studied business and undergrad. So I’m not. And I think a lot of people don’t really. They don’t like the data background is really something you just pick up on the job.
59 00:08:52.910 ⇒ 00:09:13.869 Robert Tseng: yeah. Cause the the space is changing so so much, you know. Obviously, AI, the past couple of years. But even like the data tooling that we’re using like didn’t exist when I was in college. So you know, like all of the all the things that we’re doing are kind of at the cutting edge and like in the services business, as I’m sure you know, like we’re really just trying to bring.
60 00:09:14.160 ⇒ 00:09:37.229 Robert Tseng: like the cutting edge, or as close to it to like more people making it more accessible. And so a lot of the time. It’s just like breaking down things that are complex, being able to go into areas of ambiguity and say it can be done, and then just figuring it out as we do it, and I feel like that’s kind of just in my nature as well like, I’ve kind of dabbled in a lot of different areas. And
61 00:09:37.800 ⇒ 00:09:46.289 Robert Tseng: I’m kind of like late to the data game as well. To be honest like, I don’t really think my career and data has been that long. It’s been like, maybe 3 or 4 years.
62 00:09:46.928 ⇒ 00:09:52.300 Robert Tseng: So yeah, I mean, I think in in running, you know.
63 00:09:52.570 ⇒ 00:10:15.299 Robert Tseng: like kind of doing kind of independent consulting, and then eventually, like working together with Tom over the past couple of years it’s been exciting that we’ve been able to bring in like dozens of clients, you know, just like the not something I would have imagined when I 1st started couple of years ago, I always just thought it was gonna be, you know, find one or 2 clients, and then just kind of like.
64 00:10:15.360 ⇒ 00:10:31.449 Robert Tseng: stay with them kind of like I don’t know in my mindset was like it’s kind of just like having one or 2 employers and just kind of riding that for however long we could. But yeah, it turns out there’s a lot. There’s a lot more opportunity. And the more that we’ve kind of been at it. Like.
65 00:10:32.000 ⇒ 00:10:53.700 Robert Tseng: yeah, I think we’ve we’ve been really excited about the momentum that we’ve been building, and and seeing that we’re actually very well positioned. In this in in this journey so far. So I don’t know how much your time has shared with you. But yeah, you know, I guess, like like you mentioned. Generally, we offer like AI implementation services and data services.
66 00:10:54.290 ⇒ 00:11:08.789 Robert Tseng: I think our core offering is still on the data side, because that’s just like, you know, as we’ve been been in business longer like, that’s what most of our revenue is really tied to. But the AI work that we’ve come is really like kind of taken off on the past couple of quarters
67 00:11:08.840 ⇒ 00:11:29.029 Robert Tseng: is great like it’s, you know, there’s a lot of hype around it. We’re we’re getting into conversations with executives at companies that like we have no business talking to otherwise. And so it’s been. It’s been exciting to kind of see that kind of grow as like a big like magnet for us to to get into, get into doors. So
68 00:11:29.436 ⇒ 00:11:52.389 Robert Tseng: to me, like, yeah, I mean, neither of us are sales background people sounds like you have a experience like you are. You’ve built process. And a lot of, you know, more technically complicated businesses as well. And I think that’s like, yeah, fundamentally like what we’re doing as well like trying to build process to something that’s not super straightforward.
69 00:11:52.808 ⇒ 00:12:17.209 Robert Tseng: And yeah, we’re happy to pass knowledge and kind of get you to understand the language we use to talk through things. But I think, yeah, I do believe that this is something that you know. If you have interest in learning like we could, we could definitely kind of pass on some knowledge. And you you can. I’m sure you can bring like a level of of of hustle and kind of like.
70 00:12:17.410 ⇒ 00:12:22.840 Robert Tseng: yeah, just your own. Your own kind of way of doing things that would would could be helpful for us as well.
71 00:12:23.170 ⇒ 00:12:23.740 Robert Tseng: So
72 00:12:25.820 ⇒ 00:12:41.720 Robert Tseng: so I mean, I I think that’s that’s kind of my initial spiel. I don’t know if you have any like specific questions. I know things kind of seem pretty open ended right now. So I wanna be able to kind of chat through what would help you kind of better frame the opportunity in your mind.
73 00:12:41.990 ⇒ 00:12:57.899 Connor Fenn: Yeah, for sure. So yesterday Utam had me kinda do some research. Just he just sent me over a few things as far as like snowflake amplitude. Dbt, and 5 trend. This can kind of like.
74 00:12:59.110 ⇒ 00:13:05.309 Connor Fenn: Give me kind of a layout of how all this is put together, so I’ll I’ll show you.
75 00:13:05.920 ⇒ 00:13:07.010 Connor Fenn: Here, let me.
76 00:13:07.820 ⇒ 00:13:14.689 Connor Fenn: I was looking through the services, and I noticed that like a lot of them weren’t like built out yet. So I was kind of just
77 00:13:14.920 ⇒ 00:13:18.170 Connor Fenn: putting together some like initial notes for myself.
78 00:13:18.440 ⇒ 00:13:18.770 Robert Tseng: Yep.
79 00:13:18.990 ⇒ 00:13:21.300 Connor Fenn: Figure out what all this was.
80 00:13:21.820 ⇒ 00:13:23.130 Connor Fenn: And so
81 00:13:24.060 ⇒ 00:13:32.080 Connor Fenn: this is kind of my, I didn’t get through all of the services. I pretty much only did the analytics one. So I had times for at the moment. But
82 00:13:32.880 ⇒ 00:13:37.469 Connor Fenn: from my understanding, is basically, are we taking these?
83 00:13:37.790 ⇒ 00:13:51.390 Connor Fenn: Or I guess tools right here and then essentially depending on what it is, using those to build out and utilize these services. So kind of the framework, I’m more understanding.
84 00:13:51.390 ⇒ 00:13:54.239 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, yeah, like, 100%
85 00:13:54.840 ⇒ 00:13:57.619 Connor Fenn: And so for me.
86 00:13:57.850 ⇒ 00:14:07.730 Connor Fenn: I think the the biggest thing that’s like helps me understand, is actually writing things out myself and kind of piecing them together.
87 00:14:07.950 ⇒ 00:14:10.260 Connor Fenn: Yeah, noticed that.
88 00:14:12.310 ⇒ 00:14:13.590 Connor Fenn: And
89 00:14:16.460 ⇒ 00:14:24.753 Connor Fenn: sales and the services we kind of have, like the basic outlines. But we don’t have the nitty gritty of each thing.
90 00:14:25.130 ⇒ 00:14:25.500 Uttam Kumaran: Totally.
91 00:14:26.470 ⇒ 00:14:30.730 Connor Fenn: I think that’s just the biggest thing for me to start is understanding
92 00:14:31.040 ⇒ 00:14:41.279 Connor Fenn: what really is in each of these. To understand the bigger picture of what we’re trying to accomplish, because I think once I understand those, and you know.
93 00:14:41.860 ⇒ 00:14:45.719 Connor Fenn: get that idea. Then I can start to like
94 00:14:45.850 ⇒ 00:15:02.589 Connor Fenn: visualize the bigger picture, and like the process of all those flowing together. So I guess that’s just my question is like, How how can we start to put that together where I can understand the biggest picture, the bigger picture. Would it be easier if maybe, I continued.
95 00:15:02.590 ⇒ 00:15:07.090 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, I think your scratch pad is honestly what we were gonna get towards anyways.
96 00:15:07.340 ⇒ 00:15:10.290 Connor Fenn: Okay, is it that I was actually gonna ask you, is this.
97 00:15:10.290 ⇒ 00:15:19.729 Uttam Kumaran: This is, yeah, like, we were. So basically, the way I think about services, there’s like, there’s like the implementation piece, which is like, technically like, what are we doing? And then there’s like
98 00:15:19.890 ⇒ 00:15:25.140 Uttam Kumaran: the pain. And then the outcome, which is more about like the sales piece, right? So like, how can I go
99 00:15:25.170 ⇒ 00:15:50.189 Uttam Kumaran: to a CEO and quickly figure out like what their pain is? Oh, you! You’re like not able to do complicated analysis because you don’t have the right tooling. Oh, your data is not up to date. Oh, you’re not able to implement your custom definitions into your data. You’re kind of stuck with whatever a tool gives you. Those are all like pain points. Right? Then, the outcome is.
100 00:15:50.300 ⇒ 00:16:10.819 Uttam Kumaran: you know, somewhat like, okay. Imagine you can get data in front of you every day to make decisions. Okay, imagine, your your custom definition for what your customer segments are. Pop up in your dashboard every day. That’s the outcome. That’s like the feeling, right? The feeling is making more decisions, having more data. The the way we do it is, of course.
101 00:16:10.980 ⇒ 00:16:33.070 Uttam Kumaran: these are the. These are the sort of the services and the the tools we use to do those services. I would say, data. There’s not like a ton of tools like, I think, in back end front end. There’s like a such a wide array, I think in data, it’s a little bit more limited in particular for our firm. We are primarily focused on the tools that I sort of sent you, plus a few more
102 00:16:34.520 ⇒ 00:16:40.060 Uttam Kumaran: we will. We will likely expand in order to cover, like
103 00:16:40.260 ⇒ 00:16:57.120 Uttam Kumaran: the way the way typically things work is. Sometimes we go into companies where they haven’t made a decision on what tools to bring in. Sometimes we go into companies where they’ve already brought on Snowflake and 5 train, but they just don’t have the talent right? And so what we really are is for some people we’re purely like, Hey, we need people.
104 00:16:57.630 ⇒ 00:17:20.750 Uttam Kumaran: Can you do you guys have anyone that’s experienced in Dbt, okay, cool. We have a person that’s more called like staff augmentation. You might have seen it in our sort of pricing, right. The another thing that we do is more like full stack analytics. So a company will hire us and say, like, we just need you guys to handle our data platform. Okay, cool for us. That may involve data engineering data modeling bi
105 00:17:21.127 ⇒ 00:17:42.110 Uttam Kumaran: but for them they may not really care about, like all the flows, and for them to go hire those 3 to 4 distinct roles. Close them. All of them have a great experience, doesn’t. It’s like very, very difficult. So then we have a great offering in that you bring us on, and we kind of handle the full stack as well as more strategy.
106 00:17:42.476 ⇒ 00:17:46.070 Uttam Kumaran: And stuff like that. But again, all that has an underlying layer of
107 00:17:46.330 ⇒ 00:17:54.550 Uttam Kumaran: the service offerings which is within each big area. Are sort of the things we do. And then within those are the actual like.
108 00:17:54.690 ⇒ 00:18:03.940 Uttam Kumaran: what tools we use to do them. You know, how’s our engineering actually accomplishing that sort of stuff? But I would say we were gonna land at something like what you have. Basically here.
109 00:18:04.340 ⇒ 00:18:06.789 Connor Fenn: Okay, perfect. So that’s why I put it together. I was just gonna.
110 00:18:06.790 ⇒ 00:18:08.662 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we’re just gonna steal this, basically.
111 00:18:08.930 ⇒ 00:18:10.009 Connor Fenn: No, that’s perfect.
112 00:18:10.820 ⇒ 00:18:12.439 Uttam Kumaran: That’s it.
113 00:18:12.440 ⇒ 00:18:33.619 Connor Fenn: Honestly for me. Building this out would not only help you, but it helps me in the process. And then I, my thinking originally, when I did it in the scratch pad is like I would get it to a point where, like it was all generalized off of what I could find and then sync up with you guys and ask questions and be able to tailor it specifically to what you want to talk about.
114 00:18:34.160 ⇒ 00:18:34.870 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
115 00:18:35.310 ⇒ 00:18:38.599 Connor Fenn: And I think, on the technical side, to just say one thing.
116 00:18:38.870 ⇒ 00:18:55.169 Uttam Kumaran: It’s a lot of this is gonna be like surface level. Like, okay, I kind of get what Aba testing is. But then how do you actually like? Do that like? What is the actual technical steps you do? That will take a little bit of time like I would. I would love to have you join
117 00:18:55.390 ⇒ 00:19:09.910 Uttam Kumaran: our engineers and kind of shadow and see that process that will take a little bit of time to actually see what the implementation is but to talk about these, and to talk about the pain and talk. Talk about the the feeling of accomplishing it. I don’t think
118 00:19:10.330 ⇒ 00:19:28.999 Uttam Kumaran: you necessarily need to know exactly. And in the sales process, if someone has a question about that one I would love, want me, or Robert, or someone would love to talk to them about that. Rarely do we get questions about like super technical things. For the most part, you’d be surprised people.
119 00:19:29.270 ⇒ 00:19:39.629 Uttam Kumaran: They just wanna they want to hear some jargon, but for the most part they want to know that you can work with executives, and that we’ve done this for other people. If people do end up pressing
120 00:19:39.900 ⇒ 00:19:41.849 Uttam Kumaran: on technical aspects.
121 00:19:41.950 ⇒ 00:19:51.219 Uttam Kumaran: love to schedule a follow up and talk to them about that, because that’s what I want. Would rather talk about in general. So that’s where I think that
122 00:19:51.360 ⇒ 00:19:57.270 Uttam Kumaran: the sales process for this. And you know, maybe, Robert, you can talk a little bit about like how we qualify people
123 00:19:57.563 ⇒ 00:20:23.119 Uttam Kumaran: to just talk about our process. But the sales process for this is, it’s a lot of relationship building. It’s a lot of understanding the pain points. But at the same time it’s like momentum. It’s like quickly moving people from identifying the problem to then saying, Okay, like, let me let me say, let’s let’s pitch you on this package. Here’s what we can solve to say, okay, good. Let’s sign the contract. Let’s get started. I don’t know, Rob, if you want to talk a little bit about other like sort of ways, we
124 00:20:23.430 ⇒ 00:20:30.430 Uttam Kumaran: we kind of qualify people, and we kind of understand, maybe who is or isn’t sort of good for us to take on.
125 00:20:30.690 ⇒ 00:20:31.660 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah.
126 00:20:31.660 ⇒ 00:20:35.959 Connor Fenn: So your process would be great, just of like, where, how you’re going through it all.
127 00:20:36.490 ⇒ 00:20:49.346 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think this is good. I’m actually have a call in like, 20 min or so. So we had an inbound that came in yesterday. It’s like a CEO of like a Ecom company. And
128 00:20:49.840 ⇒ 00:21:02.580 Robert Tseng: I think. You know, they gave me a couple of notes on tools that they already use. And so I’m prepping for this call. By just thinking through. Okay, I know the different tools that they’re that that they’ve that they’ve touched.
129 00:21:03.384 ⇒ 00:21:15.059 Robert Tseng: They. They have a couple of requests for tools that they think they need. And you know, I think that’s that’s kind of like where they. That’s how they think about it from from his, his perspective. He’s just like.
130 00:21:15.240 ⇒ 00:21:40.189 Robert Tseng: yeah, these are the tools we’re using. This is the budget. This is how much I spend on my data team, or whatever like everything is just purely in terms of financial terms. And so I’m trying to prep for this call by going in there. Kind of asking, like, the those kind of discovery level questions kind of like what we Tom was suggesting, like trying to. I want to come out of this call figuring out what are those specific outcomes that he’s looking for like? Why does he feel like.
131 00:21:40.290 ⇒ 00:22:06.010 Robert Tseng: I mean, sounds like it’s he’s trying to scale down his his data, his data team because he feels like he wants to replace his head of data. He he’s like, I don’t know. I don’t exactly know what I’m gonna be thrown into on this call, but I just those are kind of the signals that I’m picking up that he thinks like, basically the Roi on his data. Data. Investments aren’t aren’t paying out. So I think I need to figure out quickly within that call, like
132 00:22:06.010 ⇒ 00:22:12.550 Robert Tseng: what are like the main things that he thinks would be the highest value, that his data team currently is not able to put out
133 00:22:14.070 ⇒ 00:22:22.609 Robert Tseng: And then, like I, I’m trying not to like jump straight into tooling conversations unless he starts to ask about it towards the end. So
134 00:22:23.028 ⇒ 00:22:28.500 Robert Tseng: I think you know, with the 30 min that I have blocked with them, like I imagine, the 1st
135 00:22:28.780 ⇒ 00:22:53.439 Robert Tseng: 1520 min we’ll be really talking about like some of those core objectives. Maybe he will name things that are similar to what you’re seeing on the service offering. So maybe he’s telling me. Yeah, you know, like I, I don’t really feel like I. You know, our team is able to run any sort of experiments effectively. Like, it just seems like we’re flying in the dark, and we don’t really know what what this looks like. Then to me like.
136 00:22:53.650 ⇒ 00:23:00.149 Robert Tseng: you know, I can look at the end service, and I know, like, what are the tools that will go into supporting that service.
137 00:23:00.546 ⇒ 00:23:04.550 Robert Tseng: Already. And so I I really only want to get the sense of like
138 00:23:04.700 ⇒ 00:23:20.556 Robert Tseng: from this service menu, which ones are are the ones that he’s talking about the most, and then, like in the conversation, I’ll be able to work backwards into the tools that I would suggest that we would that we could, that we could do more further.
139 00:23:21.050 ⇒ 00:23:27.600 Robert Tseng: That we could talk about more like in the proposal, or in a follow up call, So
140 00:23:28.130 ⇒ 00:23:37.310 Robert Tseng: yeah, hopefully, that just gives you like a like a peek into how I how I’m approaching like. And this is my 1st call with them.
141 00:23:38.320 ⇒ 00:23:44.070 Robert Tseng: And because I I think they’re, you know what they’re asking for is bigger than like a
142 00:23:44.240 ⇒ 00:23:50.679 Robert Tseng: there. There are some. There are some of our things that end up just being like a 1 call close like
143 00:23:50.980 ⇒ 00:24:20.650 Robert Tseng: we get one call, and we just send like a proposal for like an audit, because that’s they don’t fully know what they want yet. And we just really need to, you know, peek under the hood and and go and look at some of the things our ourselves. And maybe all they’ve told us is like, Hey, this data is, looks looks off. It’s something’s broken. We’re not able to link this to that. We need someone to come in and figure that out, so that to me would just be a clear like. All right, let’s just
144 00:24:20.710 ⇒ 00:24:47.331 Robert Tseng: let’s just do something really quick with them. Run an audit that like takes like a week or 2 weeks, and that’s all. I wouldn’t spend too much time on it. But when it’s but yeah, what I’m describing with the call I’m having soon. It’s more. It looks like he’s thought through it a lot more. There’s more complexity, like there are 5 people are. Gonna be on this call. So like I, I know that it’s not gonna be like a 1 call close. And so I need to like gather as much contact as I can in the 1st call,
145 00:24:48.130 ⇒ 00:24:48.940 Robert Tseng: yeah.
146 00:24:49.780 ⇒ 00:24:54.480 Connor Fenn: Makes sense. And how are you guys? Essentially, you know, I was looking at
147 00:24:56.840 ⇒ 00:24:59.729 Connor Fenn: some of these different pages as far as
148 00:25:03.930 ⇒ 00:25:17.010 Connor Fenn: like target industries, the outbound marketing, and just like partnerships pages. Can you kind of walk me through like what we’re doing now, as far as like leads contacting people initially.
149 00:25:17.250 ⇒ 00:25:18.630 Connor Fenn: things like that.
150 00:25:20.960 ⇒ 00:25:21.750 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean.
151 00:25:21.750 ⇒ 00:25:22.790 Connor Fenn: I’m sorry.
152 00:25:23.350 ⇒ 00:25:30.220 Robert Tseng: I think. I’ll have Tom speak to the outbound side, because he’s really been the like. The mastermind behind that
153 00:25:30.762 ⇒ 00:25:50.477 Robert Tseng: part of the industry is honestly something that we’re figuring out. We’ve kind of like said yes to a lot of things broadly. And so now that we have like a bunch of case studies, and we know where we’ve we’ve been able to succeed at. We may like be more narrow in, like the messaging and branding that we put out there.
154 00:25:50.880 ⇒ 00:26:04.760 Robert Tseng: I would say, as far as partnerships and sales goals like that’s maybe more like my domain, and where I’ve been thinking about. So like I talk about inbound. Or, you know, partner, partner channels so like trying to find the strategic
155 00:26:04.940 ⇒ 00:26:07.444 Robert Tseng: areas that we can
156 00:26:08.160 ⇒ 00:26:36.940 Robert Tseng: like, either through through partners that pass us leads or we get on certain platforms. To and and you know, we have vendor. We have vendor partners because we implement a lot of these tools. And so we get preferred status with a few of the ones that we’ve done a lot of work in, and so they pass us leads as well. And so it’s kind of I mean, I don’t. I don’t think I’ve set clear objectives on like
157 00:26:37.000 ⇒ 00:26:51.419 Robert Tseng: how many partners, or like all that. But that’s something that I’ve been really building out and trying to like. Cast a wide net from, and and get that preferred vendor network. So that we can be given leads.
158 00:26:52.740 ⇒ 00:27:07.069 Robert Tseng: yeah. And the on the sales side, I think we’re yeah. I mean, now that we have both inbound and outbound efforts. It’s really just about standardizing, like, what does that 1st call look like? Even as I’m telling you.
159 00:27:07.890 ⇒ 00:27:35.450 Robert Tseng: How do we like build process out to help someone assess within, even before you get on a call? Is this gonna be like, what size of a of a contract is this gonna be? Is it gonna be a longer sales cycle that we need to pay discovery for, or like? Maybe someone’s like so desperate that they’re knocking on our door kind of like what I think this call I’m having is gonna be like, so yeah, I think people just come to us in different stages, and
160 00:27:35.450 ⇒ 00:27:48.470 Robert Tseng: we just need to have like a way of being able to meet them where they’re at and then moving them into the next stage. So yeah, a lot of this, like, maybe kind of tribal knowledge in our heads right now. And
161 00:27:48.490 ⇒ 00:27:52.870 Robert Tseng: and we’re just like starting to put it out. But I think that’s why it’s helpful
162 00:27:53.020 ⇒ 00:27:57.689 Robert Tseng: cause you’re like asking the questions. It’ll kind of force us to document some of these things.
163 00:27:59.160 ⇒ 00:28:19.399 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think across for me and Robert. Both of us are the key, like salespeople. Both of us also are used to just like doing whatever it takes. So documentation is, if it doesn’t help us, it’s usually put to the back burner. I feel like for a lot of the business. We’ve done a decent job, I think, on sales.
164 00:28:19.845 ⇒ 00:28:43.860 Uttam Kumaran: Where it involves more people we’ve documented. But of course we’re just figuring out like, what is a scalable process. So this is also what I’m really excited, you know, hopefully, for for you to handle is as we sort of turn this sort of art into something more scientific. Nothing. What we described is anything out of the ordinary for a normal sales firm. I don’t think this is a place where.
165 00:28:43.890 ⇒ 00:28:57.059 Uttam Kumaran: like closing leads isn’t a place, I think, where we have. We’re gonna have like a ton of doing it our own way. I think the the mix of where we get our leads from and the marketing and the way we execute on work, there’s definitely a lot more art.
166 00:28:57.060 ⇒ 00:29:20.510 Uttam Kumaran: But this I think we’re gonna try to do a little bit more scientifically, and one understanding where all of our leads are coming from. Right. We have. We have leads coming from outbound. We have leads coming organically through search. We have folks coming that they just know me or Robert that they see some content. So one is like tracking where everything comes from which we’re starting to do. The second thing is, we have a daily sales meeting where we’re basically we go through every lead that’s open.
167 00:29:21.710 ⇒ 00:29:43.100 Uttam Kumaran: right now. We have a lot of open ones. But a lot of them, you know where we’re really looking to close. The second thing is also partnerships. We have a lot. It’s kind of what I’m you know. I think I may have mentioned is we just have a lot of friends in the industry. So not only just friends like non money, related friends, people who can make intros for us. The second thing is
168 00:29:43.130 ⇒ 00:29:55.890 Uttam Kumaran: partnership. So actually finding ways where we can scratch backs of vendors, other consulting firms, things like that. That’s something. I think we have a big opportunity to tap into and, as you know, like a warm lead.
169 00:29:56.000 ⇒ 00:30:00.080 Uttam Kumaran: you know, the conversion rates on. Those are going to be way better than something that’s cold.
170 00:30:00.270 ⇒ 00:30:03.630 Uttam Kumaran: But I like to have this like multi strategy. Because
171 00:30:03.800 ⇒ 00:30:12.079 Uttam Kumaran: if, if, like me or Robert have an off day, then sales dies. Basically. So that’s that’s the thing we’re trying to avoid here is that there is.
172 00:30:12.370 ⇒ 00:30:38.090 Uttam Kumaran: there is multiple channels. Some channels are harder to build another like an SEO. A search based channel is really hard to do. It’ll take us a while where we’ve already started, and it’s slowly working. Same with outbound marketing. It’s taking a little bit, and the conversion rates are low, but everything helps like someone comes to like, knows me from a friend. They Google brain Forge. They see there’s content. They find a content, and they take the meeting with me. That sort of attribution is a little bit.
173 00:30:38.190 ⇒ 00:30:42.219 Uttam Kumaran: you know, tougher for us to do, but it’s happening. Because anecdotally, we we ask people.
174 00:30:42.440 ⇒ 00:31:00.509 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s the stuff that we’re trying to invest in like having these multiple strategies. But yeah, in terms of the goals. We’re also just working on a lot of that. So this is sort of, I think, a big period for us to really document. We’re doing a lot of documentation and notion and notion is basically like the operating system, you know, for our company right now.
175 00:31:01.000 ⇒ 00:31:01.330 Connor Fenn: Okay.
176 00:31:01.330 ⇒ 00:31:08.589 Uttam Kumaran: Where everybody in the team is leaning into putting process there and on the sales side, for sure.
177 00:31:10.180 ⇒ 00:31:16.439 Connor Fenn: So let me ask you, this is like for me, like coming on and helping you guys where like, do you see me
178 00:31:16.740 ⇒ 00:31:22.229 Connor Fenn: like? Where can I bring the most value starting out for you like, where do you want me to start?
179 00:31:22.350 ⇒ 00:31:26.259 Connor Fenn: I obviously learned the services and things like that. But where?
180 00:31:26.940 ⇒ 00:31:29.300 Connor Fenn: Where? The expectations right now at.
181 00:31:29.700 ⇒ 00:31:32.977 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, Robert, maybe I’ll kick it to you, cause I kind of want
182 00:31:33.660 ⇒ 00:31:35.959 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t. Yeah, I’ll just kick it to you.
183 00:31:36.230 ⇒ 00:31:37.230 Uttam Kumaran: What do you think.
184 00:31:39.200 ⇒ 00:31:40.025 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
185 00:31:41.680 ⇒ 00:31:43.614 Uttam Kumaran: And we can think about it more, too. But
186 00:31:43.830 ⇒ 00:31:48.709 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, no. I mean, I think, there’s there’s gonna be this like.
187 00:31:51.500 ⇒ 00:32:05.030 Robert Tseng: yeah, I mean, I I would think, having Connor like help us, especially in this period of time, when we’re kind of, you know. Finalize these service offerings like this is the stuff I mean, we already.
188 00:32:05.470 ⇒ 00:32:21.129 Robert Tseng: I mean, we’re, you know, like, we’re, we’re already trying to publish this onto the website into our sales docs and everything like, I think this is a good time to actually like, really like, get in there and like, be part of the way that the language is kind of comes together as well.
189 00:32:21.726 ⇒ 00:32:38.593 Robert Tseng: And so maybe like in the beginning. And it’s really just like us, you know, if I were to create distinct categories like as you’re learning about our service offerings. And like, it’s more of like a Sales Ops kind of like role where he’s
190 00:32:40.330 ⇒ 00:32:58.680 Robert Tseng: Ultimately, we’re selling to people that a lot of that they don’t know the data world as well, too. So I think, like having somebody like Connor like be able to be another perspective and make sure that the language that we’re using is precise and understandable is is helpful to. So to be a partner with us on that as we finish that.
191 00:32:59.420 ⇒ 00:33:08.509 Robert Tseng: and then also I would like, you know, obviously, we want him in front of leads as well like I want to be able to ask him like
192 00:33:08.921 ⇒ 00:33:32.590 Robert Tseng: leads, for, like some of the smaller, more predictable, like contracts, like the ones that are you know, like 5 k. Under, or whatever that take like one or 2 weeks like those are. Those are. I feel like ones that he can. He can hop on a call, and they can close within, within the first, st within within one call. I think that would be a great like motion to build out first.st
193 00:33:32.690 ⇒ 00:33:57.990 Robert Tseng: The other ones are probably more complex and high touch, and we can keep sharing like transcripts. And kind of, you know, do retros on those calls like, I’ll record the one that I’m having in 10 min, and we can kind of like, you know, I think we should all be learning from those calls as well. But yeah, that’s kind of how I see things kind of maybe starting out but I don’t know what. What do you think.
194 00:33:58.340 ⇒ 00:33:58.990 Connor Fenn: Okay.
195 00:33:59.770 ⇒ 00:34:01.380 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, what do you think about that, Connor?
196 00:34:01.900 ⇒ 00:34:22.360 Connor Fenn: No, I like that. So what? When? Why, you’re saying? That is what I’m thinking in my head is essentially keep going with the how I’m learning the services. But I can. Actually, if you guys want, I can add them into the actual services tab, and then we can work through them together. Once I have the outline together, and then kind of build a plan.
197 00:34:23.150 ⇒ 00:34:32.380 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, let’s do that. I think I totally agree with Robert, and that picking off some of the low hanging fruit does 2 things. One, I think, for me and Robert, our time is like very
198 00:34:32.900 ⇒ 00:34:56.690 Uttam Kumaran: like valuable, but also very sparse, meaning, like 1 h for me spent with like design, or spend on sales is like really high leverage. The thing that I think we want to try to move ourselves out of is the stuff that is something that we can teach someone else, and especially the things where, yeah, these are these like one and done meetings where we can basically move directly to contract I think.
199 00:34:56.690 ⇒ 00:34:58.509 Connor Fenn: Places are those typically.
200 00:34:58.510 ⇒ 00:35:00.543 Uttam Kumaran: Under product, analytics and strategy.
201 00:35:00.950 ⇒ 00:35:02.470 Connor Fenn: That’s off the.
202 00:35:02.470 ⇒ 00:35:21.119 Uttam Kumaran: So some of them, some of them. So we can add there, like basically the pricing models, for some of them are like one and done. Some of them are longer. But let’s take that. Let’s take kind of like what we talked about on initially, and then maybe we can come up with like a little bit of a plan. I’ll I’ll put together something with you, Connor, about like next steps.
203 00:35:21.670 ⇒ 00:35:26.930 Uttam Kumaran: And then we can sort of have a meeting. Dear Robert.
204 00:35:28.190 ⇒ 00:35:28.900 Connor Fenn: Sounds good.
205 00:35:29.830 ⇒ 00:35:33.439 Uttam Kumaran: I think we can sort of have a meeting and talk through.
206 00:35:34.530 ⇒ 00:35:51.009 Uttam Kumaran: basically, I don’t want you to take on too much. And this some of the services sort of stuff I think you asking these questions initially will give us a lot to think about. So before throwing you into like actually having calls with people. I think definitely nailing. This is like the number one.
207 00:35:52.320 ⇒ 00:35:52.890 Connor Fenn: Just keep going.
208 00:35:52.890 ⇒ 00:35:58.420 Uttam Kumaran: So definitely, I think what you can probably do is either throw all your stuff somewhere in this page.
209 00:35:58.680 ⇒ 00:36:06.110 Uttam Kumaran: and then maybe we can, or or, if you want to add stuff directly to services, go ahead, and then me and Robert can basically edit
210 00:36:06.230 ⇒ 00:36:07.470 Uttam Kumaran: and make sure that
211 00:36:07.986 ⇒ 00:36:17.809 Uttam Kumaran: everything is aligned. And then let’s talk about like I think this month, maybe let’s try to agree on like a q. 1 plan between me and Robert about like goals.
212 00:36:18.334 ⇒ 00:36:21.379 Uttam Kumaran: We already need to have a meeting about sales goals.
213 00:36:22.550 ⇒ 00:36:32.929 Uttam Kumaran: as you can tell, there’s just a lot of stuff that we need to do this one. But we need to do something around sales goals for next year, so would love for you to be involved in that
214 00:36:34.290 ⇒ 00:36:45.349 Uttam Kumaran: And then I think once we sort of nail the services, I think slowly, understanding like what each of those are. And then also, I think, even just being able to watch some of the sales meetings that we do.
215 00:36:45.993 ⇒ 00:36:48.660 Uttam Kumaran: You know, not only like
216 00:36:48.820 ⇒ 00:36:50.700 Uttam Kumaran: how we pitch, but just like
217 00:36:50.900 ⇒ 00:36:59.694 Uttam Kumaran: what people care about what they’re generally thinking about. And Robert, really has has a really great process for this. I’m more like off the cuff
218 00:37:00.310 ⇒ 00:37:21.829 Uttam Kumaran: like. I’m probably not the best person to try to replicate, because I I don’t think I really have a great plan. He’s very methodical, and like the way he structures those meetings. And he will most likely. He’s gonna be leading sort of all of your goals around sales. A lot of my time is going to be spent more on engineering and like recruiting.
219 00:37:22.292 ⇒ 00:37:31.329 Uttam Kumaran: So I definitely want you to spend time with him before the year ends. And and then the 3 of us sort of can nail this services. World.
220 00:37:33.030 ⇒ 00:37:35.089 Uttam Kumaran: So yeah, I think we can plan for that.
221 00:37:35.810 ⇒ 00:37:42.319 Connor Fenn: Sounds good, should I? Just essentially kind of wait on him to hear you guys talk and figure out.
222 00:37:42.320 ⇒ 00:37:47.600 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, let me chat. Let me catch up with him today. We’re. I’ll put together a little notion with
223 00:37:48.038 ⇒ 00:37:53.669 Uttam Kumaran: like notes from this meeting, and then sort of like a plan for this month and a plan for q 1.
224 00:37:54.060 ⇒ 00:38:15.100 Uttam Kumaran: We’ll both just give the go ahead. Cause. I also want to talk to him about like what we talked about for money and stuff like that. So I want to get him. I wanna I wanna make sure everything is lined up there before, but but one dude. What you set up already, and yesterday, I think, is already super impressive. I mean, it’s something that we wanted to do for a while. I think definitely like.
225 00:38:15.680 ⇒ 00:38:20.470 Uttam Kumaran: if you’re like a process oriented person, this is a great place to be, because everything is going to be.
226 00:38:20.780 ⇒ 00:38:21.550 Connor Fenn: It’s.
227 00:38:21.550 ⇒ 00:38:24.110 Uttam Kumaran: And process oriented.
228 00:38:24.110 ⇒ 00:38:27.000 Connor Fenn: So like organizing all the like. I.
229 00:38:27.000 ⇒ 00:38:27.590 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
230 00:38:27.590 ⇒ 00:38:35.699 Connor Fenn: We’re serious the with the like. 1st couple of weeks I did there. I reordered our whole entire dropbox because I was like this is not working.
231 00:38:35.700 ⇒ 00:38:49.939 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so so we have a full time person that just manages notion. By the way. And we actually just built out the entire sort of like mind map of how all the different pieces departments connect to each other. Because, for example, we have.
232 00:38:49.940 ⇒ 00:38:59.290 Connor Fenn: It’s actually cool. I’ve never like did a little just when you sent it like months ago, but like nothing crazy. I I’m starting to like it as I use it more.
233 00:38:59.290 ⇒ 00:39:11.809 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. So so if you look at like here, clients, there’s a different clients, page and then clients link to services, services linked to pricing models leads linked to demo. So everything is kind of linked databases.
234 00:39:11.840 ⇒ 00:39:35.250 Uttam Kumaran: We also have all of our team in here process, so everything will kind of run through this operating system. Meaning like, we don’t want any tribal knowledge like everything needs to come out of my brain and out of Robert’s brain into something that is scalable, and then also it allows us to debate that like, if if we have a meeting, if we if we take 10 meetings and none of them close. Then, like
235 00:39:35.390 ⇒ 00:39:44.932 Uttam Kumaran: you start to debate semantics, we want to say like, Hey, let’s look at our process like what broke down in the process. But if you never write the process down, then you know we can never,
236 00:39:45.370 ⇒ 00:40:03.668 Uttam Kumaran: you know, have that conversation. So I’ll I’m actually really happy that you’re motivated on the organization side because, I don’t know. I’ve dealt with a lot of people that like are less so. And we’re gonna put every fucking thing in notion. And everything’s gonna be hyper organized.
237 00:40:04.440 ⇒ 00:40:23.359 Uttam Kumaran: because, like again, it just saves everybody such an amount of time. And most companies don’t have anything like this already. Right? So I would say we. And that’s why I invested in having a person full time, basically managing like how we run meetings, basically managing like operational efficiency, you know.
238 00:40:23.855 ⇒ 00:40:37.419 Uttam Kumaran: And then I think we’ve we haven’t even talked about like how we’re gonna use like AI for a ton of stuff like, for example, this meeting gets recorded. I will get a message in slack with like what we talked about.
239 00:40:37.680 ⇒ 00:40:39.849 Uttam Kumaran: This will also get sent to notion.
240 00:40:39.990 ⇒ 00:40:48.359 Uttam Kumaran: There’ll be a meeting. All the notes from this meeting will get sent there. And then we’re gonna start to basically automatically push this into the different areas like
241 00:40:48.520 ⇒ 00:40:52.459 Uttam Kumaran: AI will know that this was a sales related meeting. It can push it to the sales
242 00:40:52.790 ⇒ 00:41:13.130 Uttam Kumaran: department. And so like, we’re gonna start, we’re we’re, we’re basically once we have everything organized in notion. Then we layer on AI because you could actually use it. If you if you’re just like, Go, what do I use? AI for is really hard. But then we’re like, cool well, every morning someone has to go and move the meetings, the sales meetings to the sales department. We now have AI sort of doing that.
243 00:41:14.580 ⇒ 00:41:22.660 Uttam Kumaran: so yeah, let me take on. Let me I’m gonna talk to Robert later today, and sort of just like try to circle back on like a plan for this
244 00:41:23.281 ⇒ 00:41:24.790 Uttam Kumaran: and maybe let’s go from there.
245 00:41:25.050 ⇒ 00:41:27.879 Connor Fenn: Sounds good. I’ll just keep working out what I’m doing.
246 00:41:27.880 ⇒ 00:41:35.810 Uttam Kumaran: Okay? And then, just like, yeah, I’m gonna just like message me for any questions. Hopefully, we got to some of them. I know we talked through like a lot of stuff.
247 00:41:35.810 ⇒ 00:41:37.780 Connor Fenn: Yeah, yeah, there’s a lot.
248 00:41:38.110 ⇒ 00:41:40.640 Connor Fenn: Do I have access to slack? I’ve never used it.
249 00:41:41.100 ⇒ 00:41:44.950 Connor Fenn: Yeah, I’ll get you access to slack so that we can throw all of us.
250 00:41:45.050 ⇒ 00:41:48.780 Uttam Kumaran: In here. And then the other thing is like.
251 00:41:49.850 ⇒ 00:41:52.299 Uttam Kumaran: a good thing to Google,
252 00:41:58.390 ⇒ 00:42:01.349 Uttam Kumaran: is let’s see
253 00:42:10.030 ⇒ 00:42:15.010 Uttam Kumaran: if you Google, the term modern data stack
254 00:42:16.339 ⇒ 00:42:21.369 Uttam Kumaran: definitely to read read some of the blogs and posts about this.
255 00:42:21.640 ⇒ 00:42:35.960 Uttam Kumaran: This is a lot of sort of like what we build and and the images should help in terms of diagrams as well in terms of how we actually move data from source systems into snowflake, transform it, and then build analyses.
256 00:42:36.450 ⇒ 00:42:44.580 Connor Fenn: Actually, I’m a little familiar with that process. Just because working at the tech company, we were a 3rd party solution. So we sold everything like.
257 00:42:44.580 ⇒ 00:42:45.260 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, okay.
258 00:42:45.260 ⇒ 00:42:47.819 Connor Fenn: Data center to end user devices, secure.
259 00:42:47.820 ⇒ 00:42:49.320 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, nice. Okay. Okay.
260 00:42:49.320 ⇒ 00:42:52.169 Connor Fenn: I know the basic outline.
261 00:42:52.740 ⇒ 00:43:11.690 Uttam Kumaran: This is. This is honestly great, because it’s actually very compact, like, there’s not a lot of pieces. There are a lot of tools, but the the 5 or 6 tools that I sent you will cover. Basically like you’ll actually, you’ll just get a sense of like, okay, what is amplitude? Okay, what is? Dbt, okay, what is snowflake?
262 00:43:11.690 ⇒ 00:43:18.180 Connor Fenn: I was already getting that as I was reading through some of the services I was like, Oh, okay, so this makes sense. They must use this for that.
263 00:43:18.180 ⇒ 00:43:43.309 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, yeah. And there’s Clones like Snowflake. There’s competitors. But you can think of, don’t you? Just think of them as the same thing. The only reason we, we have an opinion about what tools we implement, mainly because one that’s like our experience to, they’re very easy to use the 3rd actually more interesting thing that we’ll start to do as we do more and more implementations. We have an opportunity to partner with those vendors themselves. We’re bringing them a lot of business.
264 00:43:43.633 ⇒ 00:43:53.386 Uttam Kumaran: And so that’s something. I think later next year. I have a lot of relationships with a lot of those vendors that will actually be able to engage with and and sort of bring those people
265 00:43:55.680 ⇒ 00:44:00.200 Uttam Kumaran: You know, to help us to send us leads things like that, or to work with us on that. So
266 00:44:01.370 ⇒ 00:44:14.480 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, just keep going. I mean, Dude. I like. I’m really impressed already that you like kind of got a grasp of that. I think. I’m sure. Robert was very happy to see that. And so let’s just keep going. I’ll try to get you something, and then maybe let’s plan for like.
267 00:44:15.110 ⇒ 00:44:18.310 Uttam Kumaran: like, maybe if you want to come work from my place on Thursday.
268 00:44:19.560 ⇒ 00:44:21.170 Connor Fenn: What’s your Thursday like?
269 00:44:23.360 ⇒ 00:44:24.119 Connor Fenn: Let’s do it.
270 00:44:24.320 ⇒ 00:44:27.739 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, I just have like couple of things in the afternoon. That’s it.
271 00:44:27.880 ⇒ 00:44:35.790 Connor Fenn: I had a couple of questions for you actually think about it. One. I was thinking about the AI like email thing that you were talking.
272 00:44:38.050 ⇒ 00:44:55.220 Connor Fenn: Would it be? I was thinking about that as far as partnerships that might be interesting to find like I feel like in Austin I’ve got. I’ve had to met a few already, people that like freelance website, design and stuff partnering with those guys and having themselves like those little services would be
273 00:44:56.050 ⇒ 00:44:57.480 Connor Fenn: thing thing to think about.
274 00:44:58.500 ⇒ 00:45:01.880 Uttam Kumaran: So. So this is a thing also, it’s like, when we consider
275 00:45:02.330 ⇒ 00:45:07.750 Uttam Kumaran: the the only thing to consider when we’re doing that is, we have to consider contract sizes right like for us.
276 00:45:08.260 ⇒ 00:45:13.650 Uttam Kumaran: Making $5,000 a month is no longer is no longer the priority.
277 00:45:13.800 ⇒ 00:45:18.879 Uttam Kumaran: So so meaning like we can go after deals that are like
278 00:45:19.410 ⇒ 00:45:26.040 Uttam Kumaran: 5,000. The problem with those is like, if we spend more than 3 4 meetings talking to them.
279 00:45:26.420 ⇒ 00:45:35.119 Uttam Kumaran: then it’s it’s like it starts to get expensive. And because, although it’s 2,000 on that.
280 00:45:35.510 ⇒ 00:45:39.279 Connor Fenn: I just wasn’t sure how fast that kind of like processes. If it’s just like.
281 00:45:39.280 ⇒ 00:45:39.710 Uttam Kumaran: I.
282 00:45:39.710 ⇒ 00:45:45.699 Connor Fenn: And paste kind of situation that works throughout. You know, multiple websites. It’s an interesting kind of subscription.
283 00:45:45.700 ⇒ 00:45:54.889 Uttam Kumaran: I think if you have an example, if you have an example of a person, or if even if we want to schedule a meeting with our AI team. And you’re like, Hey, I have this client.
284 00:45:55.100 ⇒ 00:45:57.150 Uttam Kumaran: for example, if you if you call them. And you’re like.
285 00:45:57.540 ⇒ 00:46:14.320 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, do you guys have you guys interested in this? What’s your if you get a sense for their budget then, or even just like a timeline? Or if they want to see a demo. We can certainly work on something and have put together the I definitely don’t. Yeah, I don’t. I don’t know yet whether some of this is like totally copy paste.
286 00:46:14.600 ⇒ 00:46:17.699 Uttam Kumaran: I think. Partly, it does require some implementation.
287 00:46:18.120 ⇒ 00:46:18.730 Uttam Kumaran: Okay?
288 00:46:19.340 ⇒ 00:46:22.630 Connor Fenn: And then. So I’ve been actually just thinking about like
289 00:46:22.820 ⇒ 00:46:30.980 Connor Fenn: people that I know that own businesses that, like, I know, are just behind as far as like advanced technology and things.
290 00:46:30.980 ⇒ 00:46:31.750 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
291 00:46:31.750 ⇒ 00:46:34.560 Connor Fenn: Have like a handful, that I think would be pretty cool.
292 00:46:34.560 ⇒ 00:46:35.090 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
293 00:46:35.457 ⇒ 00:46:46.100 Connor Fenn: To talk about. But one in particular, I was thinking, is actually his name is Michael Apolito. He used to be the executive chairman of Newmark night. Frank.
294 00:46:47.305 ⇒ 00:46:58.620 Connor Fenn: But he ended up I so I had a summer internship with him. I did like a private thing, and he ended up going and starting his own like kind of Vc. Firm.
295 00:46:58.900 ⇒ 00:47:11.499 Connor Fenn: And what they do is they essentially buy like manufacturing industrial plants, and then them back to whoever owned them.
296 00:47:12.060 ⇒ 00:47:18.089 Connor Fenn: So like he like he makes bread do like 1020 mil plus. Okay,
297 00:47:19.910 ⇒ 00:47:25.629 Connor Fenn: Essentially, he would. He like started by buying, like all the Pepsi plants and then
298 00:47:26.100 ⇒ 00:47:28.560 Connor Fenn: them back to them. So they’re off their books.
299 00:47:28.740 ⇒ 00:47:42.949 Connor Fenn: But I was curious. Is all that like kind of work you did for the real estate firm, like, kind of specifically to them. Or is there a way we could kind of sell that as a service, too? Because I I’m just thinking of, like people to reach out to them.
300 00:47:42.950 ⇒ 00:47:44.320 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so so here’s.
301 00:47:44.320 ⇒ 00:47:45.850 Connor Fenn: Started with this like AI.
302 00:47:47.220 ⇒ 00:47:49.860 Uttam Kumaran: So here’s the art. There is one is like
303 00:47:51.630 ⇒ 00:47:54.420 Uttam Kumaran: one. If you go, if you go into our leads.
304 00:47:55.730 ⇒ 00:48:03.369 Uttam Kumaran: If you go into our leads. Crm, these are everybody that we’re if you go into active.
305 00:48:03.760 ⇒ 00:48:05.149 Uttam Kumaran: the active tab.
306 00:48:07.080 ⇒ 00:48:09.460 Uttam Kumaran: These are like everybody that we’re currently like
307 00:48:09.800 ⇒ 00:48:13.970 Uttam Kumaran: talking to or have talked to recently or like have to circle back.
308 00:48:14.080 ⇒ 00:48:19.199 Uttam Kumaran: or are like basically waiting for proposals, or have sent them a proposal.
309 00:48:20.770 ⇒ 00:48:31.190 Uttam Kumaran: So take a look at, cut some of these ones, and you should have all the notes here, too. The biggest thing is one when to think about. Like as I have a lot of that stuff, too. One is thinking about timing.
310 00:48:31.470 ⇒ 00:48:46.809 Uttam Kumaran: Do they have the problem right now? Is there? Do we do? I have enough info to articulate the pain point to them, because for some people they’re like, they just don’t believe in data. So no matter how much we sell a data solution, they may not give a shit, but they may be interested in the AI stuff. So it’s 1.
311 00:48:47.110 ⇒ 00:48:50.538 Uttam Kumaran: I think this is actually a great exercise, because
312 00:48:51.830 ⇒ 00:49:09.730 Uttam Kumaran: one it’ll I actually would would hope that you make that pitch to them, because then you can get a sense of all the different services we have. The second thing is thinking about, what could they be interested in? Right? So that’s where it requires a little bit of like homework, which is like you look at their business, and then maybe we all can meet and even come up with ideas about like, okay, maybe you should
313 00:49:10.040 ⇒ 00:49:17.290 Uttam Kumaran: pitch them on like AI here, or data here, and then it’s and then it’s just getting us. And then when you’re in the meeting, you figure out like
314 00:49:17.580 ⇒ 00:49:36.829 Uttam Kumaran: you kind of get a sense like, okay, you show them a demo, or you explain to them something. You see that people perk up. And then you’re like, Okay, cool. That’s the pain point. Then, as soon as you know, they’re on the hook, you basically figure out 2 things, one like, what’s your timeline like? Is this like a priority for you right now? Is this something that you want to kick to later? And then you understand, like budget like.
315 00:49:36.890 ⇒ 00:49:48.719 Uttam Kumaran: do you guys already contract with other data people? Do you guys have full time data staff? You kind of dance and try to figure out that. And then it’s just like, okay. And then our homework, then is figuring out, Okay, what’s the package for them?
316 00:49:50.030 ⇒ 00:49:54.829 Uttam Kumaran: The the only the only tough part, and this is where I have a lot of I I’m
317 00:49:55.140 ⇒ 00:49:58.039 Uttam Kumaran: I have. Some difficulty is sometimes people.
318 00:49:58.500 ⇒ 00:49:59.330 Uttam Kumaran: They
319 00:49:59.500 ⇒ 00:50:17.709 Uttam Kumaran: they really love us, but then they want us to do something that’s outside of our skill set. And so that’s why. And it’s hard. Because before I used to say yes, and I would figure out how to do it like I have friends. I could do whatever I’d bring them on, and we do it. Now we’re we’re trying to be a little bit more strict about the services that we do. However.
320 00:50:17.860 ⇒ 00:50:21.640 Uttam Kumaran: if the money’s right, like we, we could consider other stuff.
321 00:50:22.071 ⇒ 00:50:33.059 Uttam Kumaran: But the money has to be very right these days. We’re getting less because the problem in this business is focus. The more we do like if we do full stack thing here. If we do like a random thing here.
322 00:50:33.190 ⇒ 00:50:41.420 Uttam Kumaran: then they don’t. They don’t have any cohesion. And we can’t start to build up like case studies. And so right now, we’re focused on like
323 00:50:41.650 ⇒ 00:50:51.569 Uttam Kumaran: data. And AI break those down into the different services. That’s our like main focus. All of our branding marketing case studies all gonna be oriented towards there.
324 00:50:53.220 ⇒ 00:50:56.390 Uttam Kumaran: But that’s sort of how I would think about that client is.
325 00:50:56.500 ⇒ 00:51:02.550 Uttam Kumaran: you know, think about like where they may need one or more of our services. Think about what the pitch could be.
326 00:51:02.720 ⇒ 00:51:05.220 Uttam Kumaran: And then, yeah, we just try the play out. Basically.
327 00:51:06.640 ⇒ 00:51:12.549 Uttam Kumaran: And the nice thing is dude. It’s like, if that they don’t, it doesn’t work. It’s fine, right? So the part of this is like shots on goal.
328 00:51:12.690 ⇒ 00:51:17.070 Uttam Kumaran: But it’s also like, I would say, 6 months ago we were missing
329 00:51:17.450 ⇒ 00:51:32.080 Uttam Kumaran: 95% of shots. Now, we miss a lot little bit less. But but actually, it’s not like we couldn’t do the work back. Then it’s just the messaging needs to be right. What do you? What exactly do you guys do? What industries do you work with? Do you guys have case studies? Can I see a demo?
330 00:51:32.380 ⇒ 00:51:36.499 Uttam Kumaran: All those objections were basically like ticking off, like.
331 00:51:36.660 ⇒ 00:51:44.679 Uttam Kumaran: you know? And so that’s another thing I think we’re gonna work on is basically creating like an objections database
332 00:51:44.790 ⇒ 00:51:53.140 Uttam Kumaran: where like, if you’re in a meeting or a client comes back to you with like, Hey, do you have this? Here’s like what you should do. So almost like, what’s the? It’s just basically creating like a playbook
333 00:51:53.440 ⇒ 00:51:56.930 Uttam Kumaran: right like, how do we run the sales playbook
334 00:51:57.180 ⇒ 00:52:05.690 Uttam Kumaran: like for a new client, for a renewal for this sort of industry? We just have those things like very written down, so we don’t have to think too much.
335 00:52:05.690 ⇒ 00:52:09.350 Connor Fenn: Cool if once you had it written down.
336 00:52:09.770 ⇒ 00:52:11.589 Connor Fenn: and I don’t know if this is possible.
337 00:52:11.590 ⇒ 00:52:12.899 Connor Fenn: I agree. And I know what you’re gonna say
338 00:52:12.900 ⇒ 00:52:16.060 Connor Fenn: it’s like once you had it written down.
339 00:52:16.060 ⇒ 00:52:19.040 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, the meetings are already recorded.
340 00:52:19.040 ⇒ 00:52:19.859 Uttam Kumaran: We’re gonna do this.
341 00:52:19.860 ⇒ 00:52:21.080 Connor Fenn: Chat, bot.
342 00:52:21.370 ⇒ 00:52:21.840 Uttam Kumaran: We’re gonna do.
343 00:52:22.092 ⇒ 00:52:25.119 Connor Fenn: Time. Tell you what to do. Is that what I’m getting at.
344 00:52:25.120 ⇒ 00:52:26.519 Uttam Kumaran: Well, we’re gonna do
345 00:52:26.870 ⇒ 00:52:29.270 Connor Fenn: Cause that would be, for, like sick.
346 00:52:29.270 ⇒ 00:52:53.429 Uttam Kumaran: Well, we’re gonna start with. One thing is, once we write the process down any new lead, we will use AI to tell us one review, how we did like give feedback on like, how did that go? Given our sort of like process? The yeah. So that way, it sort of automates the the way of like, okay, this is good. This is bad. Here you should. How you could improve. The second thing is, how should you? What’s next.
347 00:52:53.600 ⇒ 00:52:56.180 Uttam Kumaran: So here’s ideas about how you should respond.
348 00:52:57.480 ⇒ 00:53:03.580 Uttam Kumaran: so. Ca, if I can, I show you one example of something that we I just did. So I just got an inbound from a
349 00:53:04.144 ⇒ 00:53:09.595 Uttam Kumaran: like a a this company that’s trying to build some AI for
350 00:53:13.940 ⇒ 00:53:19.089 Uttam Kumaran: Dealerships. It looks like so I’ll just share this. I just, I literally just did this.
351 00:53:21.060 ⇒ 00:53:25.399 Uttam Kumaran: So we got an inbound from these guys. They want to build chat bots for sales.
352 00:53:25.510 ⇒ 00:53:29.320 Uttam Kumaran: Looks like they sell Stas
353 00:53:32.050 ⇒ 00:53:42.330 Uttam Kumaran: software to dealerships. What I did is I, we have an internal AI agents channel.
354 00:53:42.600 ⇒ 00:53:44.440 Uttam Kumaran: Basically, they’re just like.
355 00:53:44.440 ⇒ 00:53:45.700 Connor Fenn: Is this on slack.
356 00:53:45.700 ⇒ 00:53:46.800 Uttam Kumaran: This is on slack.
357 00:53:46.930 ⇒ 00:53:47.530 Connor Fenn: Okay.
358 00:53:47.830 ⇒ 00:54:00.080 Uttam Kumaran: We just have, like a bunch of like agents in here that you can just chat with. So I sent it like lead researcher. I sent it the website, and I sent the person. It then responds to me with
359 00:54:00.640 ⇒ 00:54:02.230 Uttam Kumaran: everything about the company.
360 00:54:02.690 ⇒ 00:54:07.050 Uttam Kumaran: Here’s the company. Here’s a person here’s like recommendations on like what I should do.
361 00:54:08.260 ⇒ 00:54:08.810 Connor Fenn: Wow!
362 00:54:08.810 ⇒ 00:54:37.890 Uttam Kumaran: And this is this is our own. We built this. And so for the sales team. What I’m thinking about is, how do we want to improve this. But I want to start asking, we want to start building the lead researcher to also have access to the current leads in progress. So when these guys, when I meet these guys, I want to be able to put in the meeting notes and say, like, Hey, tell me what else we should do like is this totally lost? So with but it all the AI stuff benefits from having a distinct process. So we need to. We need to know what our process is, and what our criteria is
363 00:54:38.050 ⇒ 00:54:40.167 Uttam Kumaran: before using a lot of the
364 00:54:41.310 ⇒ 00:54:44.290 Uttam Kumaran: before being able to use AI super super effectively.
365 00:54:44.590 ⇒ 00:54:46.110 Connor Fenn: Sure. No, that makes sense.
366 00:54:46.360 ⇒ 00:54:50.660 Uttam Kumaran: But yeah, we’re gonna do something like that. And then I got a demo.
367 00:54:50.660 ⇒ 00:54:52.430 Connor Fenn: Hold that up for a second.
368 00:54:53.060 ⇒ 00:54:54.670 Uttam Kumaran: The slack thing.
369 00:54:54.670 ⇒ 00:54:56.420 Connor Fenn: Yeah, I just had a question for you.
370 00:54:56.420 ⇒ 00:54:57.200 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
371 00:54:58.420 ⇒ 00:55:01.489 Connor Fenn: This is kind of not relevant. But I saw
372 00:55:03.300 ⇒ 00:55:09.540 Connor Fenn: how did you get your well, you had one more tab on the left like that. How did you.
373 00:55:09.540 ⇒ 00:55:11.468 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, so this is
374 00:55:12.960 ⇒ 00:55:15.530 Uttam Kumaran: This is this like browser called Arc.
375 00:55:15.800 ⇒ 00:55:16.599 Connor Fenn: Park, now.
376 00:55:16.600 ⇒ 00:55:20.910 Uttam Kumaran: Try it. You actually might like it. If you’re you’re like an organization fiend.
377 00:55:21.350 ⇒ 00:55:27.500 Connor Fenn: Well, I’ve seen people use it on discord where they have, like 4 different channels, open at a time. I never knew how they did that.
378 00:55:27.500 ⇒ 00:55:32.160 Uttam Kumaran: You should use this. So one you can have pinned sort of like
379 00:55:32.650 ⇒ 00:55:40.449 Uttam Kumaran: links here. So, for example, I always use, like figma, I go to notion often. And then the second thing I have a I have a different
380 00:55:40.560 ⇒ 00:55:42.419 Uttam Kumaran: tab page for every client.
381 00:55:42.770 ⇒ 00:55:51.250 Uttam Kumaran: So this is like our my brain forge one. This is one for sales. This is one for one of our clients, another one for another client.
382 00:55:51.430 ⇒ 00:55:56.750 Uttam Kumaran: And it’s basically hold your bookmarks. And then also, the nice thing is, I can go to like Google.
383 00:55:56.930 ⇒ 00:56:03.530 Uttam Kumaran: and then I can go here. I can, I can say, add, split view. And I can say, like, go to this
384 00:56:03.710 ⇒ 00:56:07.969 Uttam Kumaran: and like, it’s just very nice, like, it’s just way.
385 00:56:07.970 ⇒ 00:56:11.440 Uttam Kumaran: just like it’s, but it’s built on chrome. So it’s it’s like basically chrome.
386 00:56:11.620 ⇒ 00:56:14.950 Uttam Kumaran: But you should have it.
387 00:56:15.260 ⇒ 00:56:16.240 Uttam Kumaran: It’s free.
388 00:56:16.670 ⇒ 00:56:18.390 Connor Fenn: Yeah. But you said, it’s ARCNET.
389 00:56:18.390 ⇒ 00:56:19.539 Uttam Kumaran: It’s arc.net.
390 00:56:20.010 ⇒ 00:56:20.680 Connor Fenn: Environment.
391 00:56:20.900 ⇒ 00:56:23.779 Uttam Kumaran: Try it. Yeah, it’s the it’s the best browser right now, for sure.
392 00:56:24.930 ⇒ 00:56:29.469 Connor Fenn: Definitely gonna try it, sweet. But yeah, show me whatever you’ll see, we’re in about it.
393 00:56:29.750 ⇒ 00:56:34.230 Uttam Kumaran: I think that’s that’s really it. So yeah, we’re we’re gonna layer on AI for like.
394 00:56:34.340 ⇒ 00:56:39.089 Uttam Kumaran: But to the front the thing is as humans. We have to figure out the process first, st
395 00:56:39.760 ⇒ 00:56:43.620 Uttam Kumaran: because if I go to the AI team and I give them like a vague requirements.
396 00:56:44.170 ⇒ 00:56:47.339 Uttam Kumaran: they’re gonna they’re they’re gonna be fucked like they’re not gonna be able to figure it out. So.
397 00:56:47.690 ⇒ 00:56:54.800 Connor Fenn: Okay, it’s all cool. I’m looking forward to figuring out how all this gets put together.
398 00:56:55.030 ⇒ 00:56:56.030 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Dude.
399 00:56:56.400 ⇒ 00:56:56.800 Connor Fenn: But.
400 00:56:56.800 ⇒ 00:57:03.690 Uttam Kumaran: I appreciate it. I appreciate the time today. And yeah, let’s plan. On Thursday. I’ll get back to you with as much stuff as I can before then.
401 00:57:03.980 ⇒ 00:57:05.500 Connor Fenn: Okay. Sounds good.
402 00:57:05.790 ⇒ 00:57:06.310 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
403 00:57:06.310 ⇒ 00:57:06.949 Connor Fenn: Talk to you soon.
404 00:57:06.950 ⇒ 00:57:08.909 Uttam Kumaran: Alright dude talk soon bye.