Meeting Title: Brainforge Weekly Kickoff Date: 2024-12-30 Meeting participants: Luke Daque, Nicolas Sucari, Uttam Kumaran, Ryan Brosas, Robert Tseng, Miguel De Veyra, Connor Fenn


WEBVTT

1 00:01:10.760 00:01:11.530 Ryan Brosas: Money.

2 00:01:12.020 00:01:13.090 Uttam Kumaran: Hey! Good morning!

3 00:01:13.720 00:01:14.360 Connor Fenn: Right.

4 00:01:30.960 00:01:32.380 Nicolas Sucari: Hey? Guys, good morning.

5 00:01:32.650 00:01:33.300 Uttam Kumaran: And.

6 00:01:38.210 00:01:38.940 Miguel de Veyra: Confirm it.

7 00:01:53.020 00:01:53.830 Robert Tseng: Hey, guys.

8 00:01:54.470 00:01:55.130 Uttam Kumaran: Hey!

9 00:01:56.170 00:01:58.817 Robert Tseng: Yeah, with them.

10 00:02:01.020 00:02:06.670 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool. Let me see if any other folks are joining.

11 00:02:13.300 00:02:16.479 Uttam Kumaran: I think maybe people still may be out right, Miguel.

12 00:02:17.270 00:02:17.869 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know.

13 00:02:18.204 00:02:18.539 Miguel de Veyra: Right.

14 00:02:18.540 00:02:18.870 Uttam Kumaran: I said.

15 00:02:18.870 00:02:25.390 Miguel de Veyra: Yeah, yeah, 30 tomorrow, until I think Wednesday is holiday in the Philippines. So

16 00:02:26.460 00:02:29.019 Miguel de Veyra: yeah, yeah, it looks gonna be out until Wednesday.

17 00:02:29.020 00:02:35.139 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Okay, cool. Alright. Well, I guess I wanted to do a brief introduction to Connor.

18 00:02:36.490 00:02:41.996 Uttam Kumaran: Connor is, first, st a really really good friend of mine, and second,

19 00:02:42.933 00:03:00.849 Uttam Kumaran: has a lot of skill set around client management sales operations. In the real estate sector. He’s gonna be joining us. On the sales side, really leading sales. In terms of basically assisting me and Robert, who have been leading sales on everything from

20 00:03:01.140 00:03:25.051 Uttam Kumaran: deals in the door to closing and so he’s going to be an active member of the team. Sorry, it’s a bit early. I’m trying to think of other interesting things to say. Connor is from New York originally, but he lives here in Austin. Just like down the road from me. Maybe, Connor, I’ll let you give maybe just a brief intro, and I think my only ask would be

21 00:03:25.910 00:03:31.679 Uttam Kumaran: Don’t talk about work so intro outside of work like what you like to do

22 00:03:31.820 00:03:36.239 Uttam Kumaran: stuff like that cause the work stuff we’ll we’ll talk plenty about. So.

23 00:03:36.780 00:03:44.712 Connor Fenn: Sure. Yeah, it’s nice to meet everybody look forward to working together. As far as outside of work

24 00:03:46.190 00:04:02.039 Connor Fenn: kind of really big into crypto. So if any of you guys like that, that’s like my ball game, I could talk about that all day, and I like being outside doing those kind of activities big golfer and wake, surfer and enjoy to cook. Those are kind of my things. So

25 00:04:02.753 00:04:07.760 Connor Fenn: yeah, look forward to getting to know everybody and go from there.

26 00:04:08.600 00:04:13.830 Uttam Kumaran: Nico’s big in golfing. I feel like out of everybody. I don’t know if anyone else is like huge golfer.

27 00:04:14.770 00:04:20.320 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah, I I play golf. But I’m not so good at it right now. I need to practice a lot more. Yeah.

28 00:04:20.870 00:04:22.229 Connor Fenn: It’s okay. Me, too.

29 00:04:24.490 00:04:26.439 Nicolas Sucari: Good. Yeah. Nice to meet you, Carl.

30 00:04:28.550 00:04:34.950 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. So I know we’re coming back from Christmas. I think we’re still probably another week of like

31 00:04:35.060 00:04:38.519 Uttam Kumaran: a lot of planning, but I think we did a lot of really really great

32 00:04:38.640 00:04:41.079 Uttam Kumaran: a lot. We had a lot of great progress

33 00:04:42.300 00:04:45.239 Uttam Kumaran: last week, so I think maybe I’ll just start with, like

34 00:04:45.540 00:04:55.820 Uttam Kumaran: the probably highest priority things is we’re we’re starting on 2 new clients on the data side. A company called Art Helper and a company called Eden.

35 00:04:56.307 00:05:18.242 Uttam Kumaran: Basically even is a company around the selling of glp, one which is like ozempic. You’ve heard of this new class of drugs. They’re sort of in that world. Art helper is like an AI tool for artists. I probably need to learn a little bit more about the product there. But both of them we’re taking on in the data side.

36 00:05:18.990 00:05:24.620 Uttam Kumaran: is Ryan on this call from the data side. Okay, now he’s out, too, so I’ll oh.

37 00:05:25.862 00:05:26.920 Nicolas Sucari: Just joined. Yeah.

38 00:05:27.260 00:05:34.400 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool. Yeah. So in terms of eden. In terms of like assignments.

39 00:05:34.970 00:05:50.280 Uttam Kumaran: But, Luke, you’ll be taking on the ee side of that and I’ll kind of fill you a little bit in with Nico on. You know how many hours and stuff but hopefully, that should keep you pretty well occupied across.

40 00:05:51.570 00:05:56.790 Uttam Kumaran: You know. Fingers crossed that Javi signs again, and then we’ll have Eden pull parts.

41 00:05:57.288 00:06:10.431 Uttam Kumaran: You know, running. We’re also going to be bringing on a new data analyst. So I know. Some of you have worked with pious before. We’ll have one other data analyst joining hopefully this week. I it’s

42 00:06:10.970 00:06:29.760 Uttam Kumaran: as usual, blocked by me figuring out a bunch of stuff. But she’s gonna be starting soon. Her name is Sahana. So she’ll be taking on leading the data analysis for Eden, as well as most likely hopefully taking on the stuff for art helper as well. And then kind of taking on

43 00:06:29.990 00:06:31.839 Uttam Kumaran: some of the new

44 00:06:32.360 00:06:44.240 Uttam Kumaran: any new like data analyst clients while she has more time. So I think that’s gonna be the team we have client channels started. They’re on boarded. I know, Robert, you’re working on getting requirements for that.

45 00:06:44.450 00:06:50.259 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, Nico. Do we want to talk a little bit about that right now? Just like where Robert, how you feel about

46 00:06:50.650 00:06:54.930 Uttam Kumaran: where we are and like the requirement side for both of those.

47 00:06:55.630 00:07:00.470 Uttam Kumaran: I know I was talking to Nico a bit last week on that, and then would love to

48 00:07:01.450 00:07:03.629 Uttam Kumaran: let you guys set up some time with

49 00:07:04.301 00:07:09.909 Uttam Kumaran: Luke and Sahana. Some point said like debrief, them on everything. So.

50 00:07:10.670 00:07:35.369 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah, yeah, I think first, st Robert, maybe we can create a meeting or we we, I think we we said, last week we tend to talk about it in the Brainford leadership meeting later today in order to try to scope down and start writing the requirements and then have a meeting with Sahanna and Luke to go through everything and see if we are ready like to start working on on those things. What do you think, Robert?

51 00:07:36.220 00:07:47.339 Robert Tseng: Yeah. So I already met with before the for Christmas I met with like bunch of their team. And so I’m kind of putting together. A a strategy deck now it should be done by like kind of noon. My time

52 00:07:47.795 00:07:57.869 Robert Tseng: from there, I mean, we have to run it by the exact team to get or to get sign off on it. But basically, even though they I think

53 00:07:58.680 00:08:19.410 Robert Tseng: they have a couple of data people on their team right now, but like nobody’s like owning like the data strategy. So I’m trying to like kind of take it on on our plate to kind of push that forward and get buy in from leadership team. Once that happens, I think, yeah, there’s definitely room to do. They don’t. They’re on Dbt, I think I kind of shared a bit. They’re they’re in bigquery.

54 00:08:20.172 00:08:29.560 Robert Tseng: Their their data engineer currently, just like, has built a bunch of messy materialized views. I think I put some stuff in the notion that I can chat through more specifically.

55 00:08:30.062 00:08:53.529 Robert Tseng: But yeah, I think I’ve identified some of these these gaps that we can go in and fill out. But I think this week is really just like getting organized on the strategy and getting like getting alignment from the client on on timeline. Yeah, I was drafting a message in the 5 needed channel. I think we have 3 notion pages. I think we just have to be clear about who’s owning what?

56 00:08:53.750 00:09:02.369 Robert Tseng: So I kind of like, have a suggestion here, and I’ll send that slack after this call. But yeah, I think that’s kind of how I see this week happening.

57 00:09:03.840 00:09:10.742 Robert Tseng: yeah, I as far as like getting people officially in front of like client, I think that’s something I’m still working out, I think.

58 00:09:11.280 00:09:24.229 Robert Tseng: there! I don’t know what what the confusion was, but it seems like the Vp. Of people like needed to talk to me again about it. So that’s what I’m trying to figure out today, just to get all that back end stuff figured out.

59 00:09:25.260 00:09:34.250 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. Yeah. And a nice thing is, I think this is where we’ve done a lot of organization in the last month, and these are the first, st I think, 2 new clients that are sort of entering.

60 00:09:34.500 00:09:46.830 Uttam Kumaran: given like the new notion organization sort of a lot of changes we’re making on like allocating team. So I think this is gonna be a real. We’re gonna some stuff isn’t gonna work. And I think we just like where there’s friction. Let’s just note down like what

61 00:09:46.990 00:09:53.989 Uttam Kumaran: what we messed up on in terms of like assigning people or onboarding them, and then that way for the next client. We can improve.

62 00:09:54.190 00:10:00.209 Uttam Kumaran: We’re we made a lot of changes. Ia lot of them, of course, are to help streamline this process.

63 00:10:01.510 00:10:05.990 Uttam Kumaran: But, like again, our goal is to sign on a bunch of more clients.

64 00:10:06.367 00:10:20.500 Uttam Kumaran: In the next few months. So we’re gonna be going through this a bunch so as much as we can document here would be really great, especially you guys, Robert and Nico from your angle. And then I’m gonna I’ll talk to Sahana and luke about feedback from their side. So

65 00:10:22.270 00:10:22.605 Robert Tseng: Oh!

66 00:10:23.470 00:10:24.210 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.

67 00:10:25.154 00:10:37.099 Uttam Kumaran: Otherwise. Yeah, we have several other like sort of clients that are in progress, like potential clients that are in progress. That we, you know, are are finalizing. And hopefully we’ll get some over the finish line.

68 00:10:37.738 00:10:47.841 Uttam Kumaran: I think the the main focus for this next week. I think. Still, like some people are out. So I’ve given some instruction to

69 00:10:48.820 00:11:11.710 Uttam Kumaran: to Ryan on the content side about setting some goals, and we spent some time last week, and on Friday, talking about like a larger sort of marketing goals. In particular, we’re focused on a couple of things. One we’re focused on targeting on the SEO side. We’re focused on targeting keywords, not as broad as we’ve been doing, which is people searching for

70 00:11:11.800 00:11:21.221 Uttam Kumaran: technical things, but people searching for technical support, things like Snowflake consultant, dpt, consultant. We’re gonna start to compete on those keywords.

71 00:11:21.830 00:11:46.170 Uttam Kumaran: Ryan has done a great job at putting together like a huge sort of keyword. Competitive analysis about stuff we’ll be going after on the SEO side, so excited for that. The second thing is, I’m having him own sort of a 10 min segment in these meetings where he’ll be going through metrics on the marketing side. So these are gonna be metrics. On a weekly basis of our like Linkedin growth of our website, growth.

72 00:11:47.570 00:11:49.370 Uttam Kumaran: And the newsletter as well.

73 00:11:49.816 00:11:55.830 Uttam Kumaran: We set a preliminary goal of trying to hit a thousand Newsletter subscribers by the end of q. 1

74 00:11:57.260 00:12:04.269 Uttam Kumaran: which I think the feedback already on the newsletter in terms of the structure has been really good. From some people who

75 00:12:04.370 00:12:05.880 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know whether they

76 00:12:06.170 00:12:18.020 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t read any newsletters. So I’ve been getting really good feedback from a bunch of mixed people. So I think that’ll be really great on the marketing side. And then the last thing is, we’re gonna figure out a scalable process

77 00:12:18.140 00:12:23.218 Uttam Kumaran: for me, Nico and Robert, to sort of post on Linkedin.

78 00:12:23.940 00:12:36.030 Uttam Kumaran: all of us I’ve mentioned to Ryan are very short on time, so me and him are working through like what’s a great process for us to sort of batch a lot of those posts and give it to hand it to him to sort of schedule out.

79 00:12:36.423 00:12:52.480 Uttam Kumaran: So we’re working on that that’s gonna be probably the key for everything. But I don’t want to do it one week and sort of have it die the next. So we’re gonna think about a process that that works. We have a lot of stuff that we could talk about a lot of stuff that’s very top of mind for a lot of people.

80 00:12:53.019 00:13:00.829 Uttam Kumaran: And as we start to bring on new clients. We want to turn those into case studies and and sales assets. So really, really excited there.

81 00:13:02.080 00:13:14.140 Uttam Kumaran: on the outbound sort of marketing side. We’re the plan right now is to sort of put a little bit of a pause on stuff for Linkedin outbound and for email outbound while we.

82 00:13:14.160 00:13:36.139 Uttam Kumaran: while I kind of, you know, work with Connor and Robert on sort of like what we want to go after. We sort of had like not a spray and pray approach. But we were tackling a lot of different industries and a lot of different messaging. I think now we’re very. We’re pretty tight on like what we’re going after, how we price the things we’re selling. And so I think we can take another stab at

83 00:13:36.170 00:13:38.520 Uttam Kumaran: where we want to target. You know.

84 00:13:38.730 00:13:56.911 Uttam Kumaran: 10,000 emails a month, or you know, hundreds of Linkedin messages per week. And so I don’t think there’ll be like a huge change in like what happens? But actually, I think in the messaging and who we’re targeting we’ll get a little bit tighter on this was through Erickson’s team.

85 00:13:58.680 00:14:02.390 Uttam Kumaran: otherwise. Yeah. We

86 00:14:03.010 00:14:09.629 Uttam Kumaran: we have a couple of people that are still in flight on the recruiting side. I think. We have a

87 00:14:09.670 00:14:35.340 Uttam Kumaran: I think we have plenty of candidates, both on the Ae. Side and the Dda side for at least the rest of the quarter. I think Sahana was looking forward to taking on a lot of work. I think. Of course, we we talked about Jacob joining as well, so I think he’s probably on the back burner and then we have a couple of people on the Ae. Side that I know would work, so I feel pretty confident that we’ve built a

88 00:14:35.380 00:14:40.520 Uttam Kumaran: good pipeline of folks there. So not as worried as I was

89 00:14:40.740 00:14:47.711 Uttam Kumaran: before as we have. I think we we filled in some gaps. But we’re we’re still gonna be recruiting. And still, we’re gonna take a bunch of interviews.

90 00:14:49.240 00:14:55.521 Uttam Kumaran: and yeah, I think that’s like, honestly, most of what I wanted to talk about.

91 00:14:56.400 00:15:01.310 Uttam Kumaran: I still have not gone to finishing the stuff for the decks.

92 00:15:01.866 00:15:19.609 Uttam Kumaran: But I’ll probably need probably, Connor. I’ll actually probably honestly hand this off to you to take a look at, which is really great, because, we can both sort of look at our sales decks that we wanted to start to put in front of clients. The decks consisted of like an overview deck of like brain forge, and then, like

93 00:15:19.930 00:15:23.850 Uttam Kumaran: specific data, and like AI sort of service offering decks.

94 00:15:24.990 00:15:38.710 Uttam Kumaran: The nice thing is, I spent like 3 h looking at a ton of consulting decks, and I have a lot of links to share on that for us to get inspo but I think that’d be a great thing for me to hand off to you because I have dropped the ball there.

95 00:15:40.160 00:15:46.723 Uttam Kumaran: cool. Anything else we want to talk about.

96 00:15:55.960 00:16:03.080 Uttam Kumaran: Any questions is, if I think I’ll be meeting with Miguel. I’ll be meeting with you today to just chat through

97 00:16:03.220 00:16:09.432 Uttam Kumaran: stuff for AI and then, Nico, I’ll probably chat chat with the broader

98 00:16:09.980 00:16:18.029 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll probably chat with the broader, broader data team later this week, too, with with with Ryan and Sahana.

99 00:16:19.160 00:16:19.800 Nicolas Sucari: Okay.

100 00:16:21.410 00:16:30.339 Nicolas Sucari: perfect. Yeah, no. I think you covered almost all of it. Well, Robert, just left. But yeah, maybe we can create like a

101 00:16:30.810 00:16:44.409 Nicolas Sucari: pre kickoff meeting with Robert Luke. So, Hannah, after we have, like all of the guidelines from Eden, so that we can start like planning on how to to start working on that. And we can create the correct tasks. So that once we start, we have everything

102 00:16:44.956 00:16:48.530 Nicolas Sucari: everything created so that we don’t need to

103 00:16:48.650 00:16:51.839 Nicolas Sucari: go back and do that kind of planning. Okay.

104 00:16:51.840 00:16:53.110 Uttam Kumaran: Can you imagine that? Pick up?

105 00:16:53.110 00:16:55.949 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, can you add that kickoff task to the.

106 00:16:55.950 00:16:56.440 Nicolas Sucari: Yep.

107 00:16:56.440 00:16:57.200 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Cool.

108 00:16:58.170 00:16:58.400 Luke Daque: Now.

109 00:16:58.400 00:16:59.380 Nicolas Sucari: Blood in the data. Yeah.

110 00:16:59.380 00:17:01.229 Luke Daque: For this week. Right?

111 00:17:01.760 00:17:06.759 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, are you? Are you? Are you? Are you off anytime? This you off like tomorrow? Wednesday.

112 00:17:07.140 00:17:11.179 Luke Daque: Yeah, I’ll be fine. I’ll just yeah. I’ll be online, anyway.

113 00:17:11.430 00:17:15.509 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, if you’re not online, then we’ll just we’ll just skip. We’ll just move to later in the week.

114 00:17:16.180 00:17:17.989 Luke Daque: I’ll be online.

115 00:17:18.240 00:17:18.589 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

116 00:17:18.599 00:17:19.386 Luke Daque: Yeah, and

117 00:17:20.490 00:17:22.959 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll be online as usual.

118 00:17:23.810 00:17:29.079 Luke Daque: Yeah, I think like I’ve had too much parties last week, so I should be good now.

119 00:17:30.560 00:17:32.493 Uttam Kumaran: Dude. It’s 1 more week of party.

120 00:17:32.770 00:17:34.560 Luke Daque: I know there’s, you know, but.

121 00:17:34.560 00:17:41.430 Uttam Kumaran: I feel the same way. I can’t like take this much time. I feel like we’re in. We’re like in the game.

122 00:17:41.720 00:17:48.536 Uttam Kumaran: So even last week I was like God, I just need to work on some. So I just went to a coffee shop, and I got like a bunch of stuff done.

123 00:17:48.930 00:17:53.220 Uttam Kumaran: and it was nice because we don’t have meetings. So I was like just doing a bunch of like deeper work.

124 00:17:53.220 00:17:53.880 Luke Daque: Focus.

125 00:17:54.540 00:17:58.692 Uttam Kumaran: But for me, that’s that’s my hobby. So I don’t know

126 00:17:59.210 00:18:03.670 Uttam Kumaran: But yeah, okay, cool. Then. Yeah, I want to kick that stuff off, and then cool.

127 00:18:03.950 00:18:09.279 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, Nico, I don’t. I don’t have much as much context in the our helper stuff. So maybe you can take a lead on that, too.

128 00:18:10.620 00:18:17.390 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah, I think Robert has the lead on everything there, so we need to get some time with him and try to

129 00:18:17.540 00:18:37.199 Nicolas Sucari: gather all of the information that he has, and try to write it down there someplace and start to create the requests. And with that we can start, yeah, obviously this week or next week when we have Sahana, and when we want to start working on the De stuff, I think that will be like the starting point, creating the that kind of kickoff meeting and just

130 00:18:37.340 00:18:39.560 Nicolas Sucari: getting at right up to it. Okay.

131 00:18:40.750 00:18:41.600 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Cool.

132 00:18:43.820 00:18:44.350 Nicolas Sucari: Right.

133 00:18:44.710 00:18:58.919 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. The only other thing is, Connor, I’m gonna try to grab time with you and everybody individually. I’m just gonna book. Some time. I’ll probably just join for like a few minutes, and then I’ll drop off so that way you can meet everybody

134 00:18:59.386 00:19:05.290 Uttam Kumaran: again this week is kind of a little bit of a weird week. So if I can’t put some of that time on today.

135 00:19:05.971 00:19:14.100 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll put it on, probably for Thursday, but at least, I think today, looking at whoever’s on you should at least be able to meet with Luke.

136 00:19:14.837 00:19:16.750 Uttam Kumaran: Ryan and Miguel.

137 00:19:18.450 00:19:20.258 Uttam Kumaran: So maybe what I’ll do is

138 00:19:21.510 00:19:33.070 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll just talk to you on slack about how to book those. And so you can actually attach your Zoom link as well stuff like that. But if you can chat with those 3, I think that’ll give you a lot of context before our call later with me and Robert.

139 00:19:35.330 00:19:38.890 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. And then yeah, for everybody

140 00:19:39.323 00:19:41.749 Uttam Kumaran: feel free to reach out to Connor directly.

141 00:19:42.350 00:19:45.309 Uttam Kumaran: and like offer a hand where possible. So.

142 00:19:47.240 00:19:47.840 Luke Daque: Cool.

143 00:19:49.290 00:19:50.409 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. Okay.

144 00:19:50.410 00:19:51.030 Nicolas Sucari: Perfect.

145 00:19:51.580 00:19:53.060 Uttam Kumaran: Alright. Thank you so much.

146 00:19:53.880 00:19:54.620 Nicolas Sucari: Thank you. Guys. Bye-bye.

147 00:19:55.050 00:19:55.840 Luke Daque: Have a nice day.

148 00:19:55.840 00:19:56.850 Ryan Brosas: Thank you.