2025-07-30_brainforge_x_ey_business_strategy_discus_3ad9f4cf

Meeting Title: Brainforge x EY Business Strategy Discussion Date: 2025-07-30 Meeting participants: Uttam Kumaran, Justin Sitzer

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WEBVTT

1 00:01:01.330 ⇒ 00:01:02.949 Justin Sitzer: Hey? How’s it going, man?

2 00:01:11.290 ⇒ 00:01:12.369 Justin Sitzer: Can you hear me?

3 00:01:12.900 ⇒ 00:01:13.910 Uttam Kumaran: Hey? Can you hear me?

4 00:01:14.580 ⇒ 00:01:15.970 Justin Sitzer: Yeah. Can you hear me? Okay.

5 00:01:15.970 ⇒ 00:01:17.570 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, I can hear you now.

6 00:01:17.860 ⇒ 00:01:18.680 Justin Sitzer: Nice.

7 00:01:18.680 ⇒ 00:01:27.649 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, how are you? Sorry? I’m just just finished work. I’m just going for a walk, so spend in front of the laptop for like 10 h. So.

8 00:01:29.616 ⇒ 00:01:30.869 Justin Sitzer: Hear you.

9 00:01:30.930 ⇒ 00:01:31.709 Uttam Kumaran: How’s everything?

10 00:01:31.710 ⇒ 00:01:34.200 Justin Sitzer: Is that a normal work day for you.

11 00:01:36.290 ⇒ 00:01:39.736 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, what’s a normal work day? I don’t know, man, that’s

12 00:01:40.160 ⇒ 00:01:44.380 Uttam Kumaran: depends. On the day. I think I had a normal work day in a while.

13 00:01:44.935 ⇒ 00:01:50.630 Uttam Kumaran: But yeah, usually like, start 7 or 8 these days. It’s a little bit lighter, like

14 00:01:50.850 ⇒ 00:01:53.870 Uttam Kumaran: I could stop working like 6 or 7, but

15 00:01:54.250 ⇒ 00:01:59.000 Uttam Kumaran: I mean I don’t know. For most of this I’ve been working like 1215 HA day, so

16 00:01:59.230 ⇒ 00:01:59.830 Uttam Kumaran: it’s

17 00:02:00.720 ⇒ 00:02:05.569 Uttam Kumaran: It’s what’s necessary. It’s getting better, though it’s not. That wasn’t my goal. I’m not also like

18 00:02:05.850 ⇒ 00:02:08.130 Uttam Kumaran: I’m not someone that’s very addicted to

19 00:02:08.770 ⇒ 00:02:11.609 Uttam Kumaran: doing this many hours. It is.

20 00:02:12.020 ⇒ 00:02:15.433 Uttam Kumaran: It’s just the life right now. So

21 00:02:15.860 ⇒ 00:02:16.460 Justin Sitzer: Yeah.

22 00:02:16.460 ⇒ 00:02:22.080 Uttam Kumaran: But building a lot of systems and delegating a lot. More recently, as the team’s growing so.

23 00:02:22.820 ⇒ 00:02:24.477 Justin Sitzer: That’s awesome. Man.

24 00:02:26.450 ⇒ 00:02:31.130 Justin Sitzer: How long do you think this is? Gonna last this many hours.

25 00:02:32.750 ⇒ 00:02:35.038 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know. I feel like

26 00:02:35.750 ⇒ 00:02:37.649 Uttam Kumaran: It’s not really about like

27 00:02:38.110 ⇒ 00:02:46.140 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t. I don’t know. I don’t. I think probably maybe at least another 6 months. Maybe we’re hiring a lot like. But also I’ve

28 00:02:46.330 ⇒ 00:02:48.979 Uttam Kumaran: I started the company when it was just me. So

29 00:02:49.120 ⇒ 00:02:56.130 Uttam Kumaran: it’s as we grow bigger like it’s new client challenges and new people challenges. But

30 00:02:56.635 ⇒ 00:03:06.910 Uttam Kumaran: it’s actually less about the hours working. It’s like kind of the the sanity, even like outside, like, if I can just be happy about what’s going on or what I got done in the day.

31 00:03:07.180 ⇒ 00:03:19.749 Uttam Kumaran: I can feel good about like being off work. I think it’s probably my next goal is just not checking my phone and like just being content on the weekends and stuff like that versus

32 00:03:19.990 ⇒ 00:03:33.809 Uttam Kumaran: like we’re. We’re pretty optimized during the day, like, I don’t spend a lot of time, and I mean, all of our meetings are pretty important. I don’t spend too much of the day and stuff that’s like irrelevant or unnecessary. So yeah.

33 00:03:34.520 ⇒ 00:03:36.250 Justin Sitzer: Yeah, I hear that.

34 00:03:36.400 ⇒ 00:03:38.929 Justin Sitzer: What about you? What’s up? How’s everything?

35 00:03:39.540 ⇒ 00:03:44.209 Justin Sitzer: Yeah, everything’s good. Man. I’m I’m definitely in like,

36 00:03:46.540 ⇒ 00:03:54.159 Justin Sitzer: you know a little situation right now with with my current

37 00:03:54.570 ⇒ 00:04:06.453 Justin Sitzer: model where? You know, I I left I I was working in business transformation at a top 20 firm, and I left and started my own business and got

38 00:04:07.070 ⇒ 00:04:09.089 Justin Sitzer: ey is my 1st client

39 00:04:09.580 ⇒ 00:04:17.680 Justin Sitzer: turned back and got, you know, my last client or my my previous employer. They onboarded them.

40 00:04:17.870 ⇒ 00:04:23.115 Justin Sitzer: got another really large accounting firm, like a top, 6 or sorry, a top.

41 00:04:23.490 ⇒ 00:04:24.080 Uttam Kumaran: Nice.

42 00:04:24.080 ⇒ 00:04:27.910 Justin Sitzer: And what I found out quickly was.

43 00:04:28.030 ⇒ 00:04:33.033 Justin Sitzer: ui takes all my time, and they also

44 00:04:33.690 ⇒ 00:04:36.359 Justin Sitzer: The way it’s structured is that

45 00:04:36.550 ⇒ 00:04:42.199 Justin Sitzer: they treat me as a single member. Llc. Like, I’m technically not allowed to hire anyone.

46 00:04:42.200 ⇒ 00:04:45.403 Uttam Kumaran: Why not? Yeah. I know I’ve been there. I’ve been there.

47 00:04:45.670 ⇒ 00:04:46.670 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

48 00:04:46.810 ⇒ 00:05:05.759 Justin Sitzer: Because if I had gone like a traditional route I would have gone through a different type of onboarding funnel. And like they’re they’re such a massive company, and like, I think the business case would have been a lot more challenging. I would have been up against like big consulting firms and things like that.

49 00:05:05.760 ⇒ 00:05:06.220 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

50 00:05:06.220 ⇒ 00:05:10.050 Justin Sitzer: They they were. They kind of backdoored. Me, yeah, yeah.

51 00:05:10.420 ⇒ 00:05:15.869 Justin Sitzer: And basically took me on like, I, I just feel like an employee there at this point, you know.

52 00:05:15.870 ⇒ 00:05:16.340 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

53 00:05:16.340 ⇒ 00:05:24.366 Justin Sitzer: And what I did recently was I built a really impactful, cool tool that

54 00:05:25.330 ⇒ 00:05:31.029 Justin Sitzer: leverages AI and and really accelerates the transformation process and

55 00:05:32.770 ⇒ 00:05:54.982 Justin Sitzer: because and and and they they are adopting it fast. And they’re basically putting it as like a key product in their their whole fy 26 strategy and so it on one hand, it’s awesome. But, on the other hand, I started to have conversations about like transitioning from

56 00:05:56.040 ⇒ 00:05:56.380 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, yeah.

57 00:05:56.380 ⇒ 00:06:02.959 Justin Sitzer: Hourly role because it’s such a scalable product like it. It has benefits

58 00:06:03.260 ⇒ 00:06:10.930 Justin Sitzer: across ranks, and, you know, internal usage sales generation all that. So.

59 00:06:11.990 ⇒ 00:06:17.430 Justin Sitzer: I see a real opportunity for this kind of tool in the market.

60 00:06:17.550 ⇒ 00:06:24.020 Justin Sitzer: I’d be interested to hear what you think. I know I haven’t said what the tool is yet. But, be interested to hear what you think about it.

61 00:06:24.020 ⇒ 00:06:29.609 Uttam Kumaran: I guess. Tell me like, what what made you want to leave like with the top 20 that you were at initially.

62 00:06:30.950 ⇒ 00:06:41.299 Justin Sitzer: Well, I had. I’ve always had ambition to start my own business. I don’t really love. You know, being an employee.

63 00:06:41.929 ⇒ 00:06:48.550 Justin Sitzer: and I I just feel as though or think that I’m kind of

64 00:06:49.310 ⇒ 00:06:57.030 Justin Sitzer: built for more of, like a, you know, operating like in my own

65 00:06:57.280 ⇒ 00:07:04.269 Justin Sitzer: way, creating my own systems like you’re doing things like that. That that would be

66 00:07:05.320 ⇒ 00:07:07.879 Justin Sitzer: the the dream for me. I think.

67 00:07:08.870 ⇒ 00:07:09.830 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, okay.

68 00:07:10.050 ⇒ 00:07:16.310 Justin Sitzer: Yeah, I I definitely.

69 00:07:17.410 ⇒ 00:07:22.330 Justin Sitzer: I see a lot of, you know, like, just being an employee for over 10 years like.

70 00:07:22.870 ⇒ 00:07:26.999 Justin Sitzer: it’s just never. It’s been the same everywhere I’ve been and like.

71 00:07:27.340 ⇒ 00:07:32.720 Justin Sitzer: I just think the logical thing is to create my own world essentially not like.

72 00:07:32.720 ⇒ 00:07:33.320 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

73 00:07:33.320 ⇒ 00:07:46.299 Justin Sitzer: That much different in a sense, like creating the environment and the culture and being in control of the decisions and the things that I create. That’s kind of where I I want to be at.

74 00:07:46.480 ⇒ 00:07:47.150 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

75 00:07:47.370 ⇒ 00:07:52.130 Uttam Kumaran: I mean. But you know, even when you set out to get you know your 1st client ui like

76 00:07:52.490 ⇒ 00:07:56.489 Uttam Kumaran: we know, you know, for me when I started this business.

77 00:07:56.750 ⇒ 00:08:11.369 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know. I I you know I follow a lot of business. I think I read a lot about business, but I never sort of had the urge to do my own thing like I didn’t think I could do it. I didn’t know what really went into it, and I don’t know. It wasn’t

78 00:08:11.910 ⇒ 00:08:18.439 Uttam Kumaran: sort of like on my radar. I actually was just, just, you know, kind of abruptly left my last company I was at before, and

79 00:08:18.540 ⇒ 00:08:32.869 Uttam Kumaran: I sort of just went out and was able to get a couple of contracts. But the whole way I I didn’t wanna kind of run this solo. So as soon as I could hire, I tried to, you know, and and can kind of continue to do so since then, I think

80 00:08:33.580 ⇒ 00:08:37.939 Uttam Kumaran: but it’s tough because you have to. For me. I always wanted to build something big like

81 00:08:38.159 ⇒ 00:08:46.399 Uttam Kumaran: this company was gonna be staying on its own like I am but a I’m but an employee. I’m a i i have a role as a CEO, but

82 00:08:46.640 ⇒ 00:08:50.390 Uttam Kumaran: like I’m the CEO of this company like you can’t buy me. You can’t buy

83 00:08:50.580 ⇒ 00:09:04.940 Uttam Kumaran: my time without spending money on for the company. So, but that was something that that didn’t change. I couldn’t demand that until a lot later into this journey, like it took more than a year to get to the point where I could start to be like

84 00:09:05.350 ⇒ 00:09:09.550 Uttam Kumaran: the business and me are not the same thing like, and I’m only behind the business.

85 00:09:10.179 ⇒ 00:09:13.689 Uttam Kumaran: For a while I’m selling myself when people were buying me.

86 00:09:13.960 ⇒ 00:09:20.199 Uttam Kumaran: And then it came to a point where, okay, they’re actually, they’re they’re buying our team. And they trust that I because I’m leading it.

87 00:09:20.350 ⇒ 00:09:21.750 Uttam Kumaran: It’s gonna be

88 00:09:22.130 ⇒ 00:09:30.930 Uttam Kumaran: great, you know, but takes a lot of marketing sales. It just takes like kind of like reps. But it was a slow transition.

89 00:09:31.050 ⇒ 00:09:36.459 Uttam Kumaran: It was like, not something that I I couldn’t. I didn’t have any leverage. I couldn’t command that. No brand.

90 00:09:36.710 ⇒ 00:09:40.720 Uttam Kumaran: you know, no connections. I couldn’t command anything in the beginning, you know. Frankly.

91 00:09:42.440 ⇒ 00:10:06.879 Uttam Kumaran: but you’re in a kind of a jam like I think this is. What happens is that I’ve had clients a bunch of times. Try to offer to hire me or but, like I I that’s not my interest. I don’t. I’m not. I don’t work for anybody but Brainforge like, so I I immediately turn it down. I’m I’m not like for sale, and, in fact, that makes, I think that all that does is make people want to work with us more.

92 00:10:07.480 ⇒ 00:10:07.800 Justin Sitzer: They!

93 00:10:07.800 ⇒ 00:10:14.069 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t typically see that but I tell them like, Look, I’d rather fail trying to do this than like, take a

94 00:10:14.230 ⇒ 00:10:27.170 Uttam Kumaran: a role at a company, I’d be back just where I was before, you know. But you’re in an interesting spot to where I think you’re also seems like, you’re in a product world like for me. It’s your services, and I don’t have any.

95 00:10:27.770 ⇒ 00:10:45.669 Uttam Kumaran: you know. Interest of it within within, like, I mean, this is where I think I talked to Clarence and some other folks. Because some of the stuff we’re building internally for ourselves. I do think there’s probably there’s we could totally probably turn some of that into a product. But it’s playing too many games at once, like, I think the game I’m playing right now is.

96 00:10:45.770 ⇒ 00:10:47.650 Uttam Kumaran: It’s pretty. It’s hard.

97 00:10:48.269 ⇒ 00:10:54.339 Uttam Kumaran: And I kind of want to just crush that which is doing data. And AI consulting

98 00:10:55.660 ⇒ 00:11:01.319 Uttam Kumaran: whether like in the next thing or set some other point. We do product. I think that’s a different question. But

99 00:11:01.460 ⇒ 00:11:10.540 Uttam Kumaran: I’m sort of still focused very sincerely on running a services company, which is not much easier than a pro. It’s like just different type of hard, you know.

100 00:11:12.140 ⇒ 00:11:17.289 Justin Sitzer: Yeah, I mean, that’s super interesting to me, man, like, I think, you know, I

101 00:11:17.980 ⇒ 00:11:24.480 Justin Sitzer: I’m like way I’m like you way back, where, like I’m definitely selling myself. I don’t

102 00:11:25.430 ⇒ 00:11:35.649 Justin Sitzer: a ton of resources like I just have. You know, friends, that I and and colleagues and things like that, that I’ve accumulated over the years, but like

103 00:11:36.630 ⇒ 00:11:40.499 Justin Sitzer: very much. So selling myself, I offer services.

104 00:11:41.402 ⇒ 00:11:46.827 Justin Sitzer: And actually, in the same space as you, too, like data. AI,

105 00:11:47.790 ⇒ 00:11:55.290 Justin Sitzer: I I really focus on process and automation, and and whatever tools are are necessary to accomplish that I

106 00:11:55.450 ⇒ 00:12:05.839 Justin Sitzer: I can adapt them. But I I’d I’d love to like hear how you kind of like

107 00:12:06.090 ⇒ 00:12:07.190 Justin Sitzer: made it

108 00:12:07.500 ⇒ 00:12:15.719 Justin Sitzer: from like from scratch. And and if you even think like a services, business is a good model to to go after now, nowadays.

109 00:12:16.360 ⇒ 00:12:17.100 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

110 00:12:17.100 ⇒ 00:12:17.990 Justin Sitzer: I, yeah.

111 00:12:17.990 ⇒ 00:12:19.910 Uttam Kumaran: No no go ahead! Go ahead! Go ahead!

112 00:12:21.024 ⇒ 00:12:26.190 Justin Sitzer: No, it’s just like things are changing so rapidly, you know, like I I think.

113 00:12:26.820 ⇒ 00:12:27.260 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

114 00:12:27.410 ⇒ 00:12:34.896 Justin Sitzer: Like a a sas model to me is a little bit more scary than a services model.

115 00:12:35.910 ⇒ 00:12:40.299 Justin Sitzer: but services model seems like it’s really hard to build like.

116 00:12:40.300 ⇒ 00:12:41.240 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

117 00:12:41.240 ⇒ 00:12:43.209 Justin Sitzer: So I don’t know. What. What do you think.

118 00:12:43.210 ⇒ 00:12:49.700 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like, so, my, so you know, my whole background is in PC back, Bob.

119 00:12:50.110 ⇒ 00:13:05.530 Uttam Kumaran: like products, and I, I’ve worked for, you know increasingly smaller startups in my career. So I only worked at places where they were raising a lot of money, and they were trying to do something big, and the hair was on fire all the time, like I’ve never worked in a

120 00:13:05.830 ⇒ 00:13:20.259 Uttam Kumaran: and like I’ve never worked at like an ey, or I’ve never worked at like I’ve worked at. I did some internship with some big companies, but I’ve only worked in places where like it’s extremely critical all the time, and but there’s also like a lot of scale. And so

121 00:13:20.806 ⇒ 00:13:29.659 Uttam Kumaran: you know, this is this company when I started, is not that at all like I think there’s a lot of even outside the business model people just start a lot of

122 00:13:29.980 ⇒ 00:13:57.150 Uttam Kumaran: I think it takes a lot of ego to do something on your own, but you quickly need to like use ego for your own advantage versus a lot of businesses. I’ve been a part of the leadership is so like they have ulterior motives, or they don’t listen, or they’re bigger than they think they are. And they typically burn all the money they have, you know, pretty quickly. This is a business I started about 2 years ago with no, with just my personal money. I haven’t raised a single dollar for it.

123 00:13:57.687 ⇒ 00:14:11.952 Uttam Kumaran: You know, but that that means we have a lot different expectations like, I don’t have expectations of of scale. I have expectations of like quality, and making sure I can control my own destiny.

124 00:14:12.500 ⇒ 00:14:16.119 Uttam Kumaran: And we have expectations that the service we offer is

125 00:14:16.582 ⇒ 00:14:31.809 Uttam Kumaran: still top notch but like I don’t know, I think what you get in services is like you get paid immediately, you know, for services rendered unlike Sas, where these days, if you build a software company. And it’s it’s.

126 00:14:32.020 ⇒ 00:14:49.173 Uttam Kumaran: you know, I think labor for basic software related stuff is getting cheaper. But if you’re paying upfront for a lot of that stuff like there’s not. You don’t. A lot of not a lot of people build software where you get pre orders or like, right people raise capital because they need 15 million dollars

127 00:14:49.540 ⇒ 00:15:09.572 Uttam Kumaran: because they need to spend about a million on engineering every month. And that buys you like 10 people in New York, right? So like, that’s ridiculous, right? And so for me, I never. I I realize that like I don’t want to run a business where I raise all that money, and I still don’t have a good shot at winning

128 00:15:10.170 ⇒ 00:15:14.889 Uttam Kumaran: you know. So I I but services business in what you get which is like

129 00:15:15.080 ⇒ 00:15:18.519 Uttam Kumaran: you get cash immediately. Scale is really tough.

130 00:15:19.194 ⇒ 00:15:34.549 Uttam Kumaran: You. It’s very hard to scale like this is a people business. And the peak of our business is Mckinsey Accenture Deloitte. And like that is that is basically like what you go for. And I feel like the

131 00:15:34.760 ⇒ 00:15:47.549 Uttam Kumaran: the challenges is that those businesses. All they prove it is that you just have to keep hiring and hiring and hiring. But what they also prove is that Brand really matters right like, you know, there’s some there’s some saying where it’s like, you’ll never get

132 00:15:47.690 ⇒ 00:15:57.350 Uttam Kumaran: fired for for hiring Ibm or for hiring accenture like that’s the truth. Right? So for me, at the end of the day, Brain Forge is just a

133 00:15:57.590 ⇒ 00:16:13.879 Uttam Kumaran: it’s just a brand and a broker. Frankly, we’re we. We supposed to broker problems between very smart people and very tough problems, right? And and that’s what I think we are in the long term in the short term like it. It’s a little bit murky, I think we.

134 00:16:13.920 ⇒ 00:16:33.569 Uttam Kumaran: I’m still doing a lot of the selling and a lot of it, but I’ll but when I. The way I talk about the business is, I talk about it like a business. I don’t talk about it like I’m gonna be doing any of the work I talk about. We are doing this, and this is our process. And here’s the clients that we’ve helped. Of course, a lot of those are people that I was just running with myself or with one person.

135 00:16:33.630 ⇒ 00:16:37.229 Uttam Kumaran: But we’ve we changed the way we we look at the business.

136 00:16:37.722 ⇒ 00:16:41.520 Uttam Kumaran: But in terms of Saas versus services. I mean.

137 00:16:41.600 ⇒ 00:16:48.840 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know. I think both are hard, and I think you just have to play the game where you know you can win. I think it’s sort of like.

138 00:16:49.440 ⇒ 00:17:06.701 Uttam Kumaran: you know, I think. Yes. Is, could you like? Are the Sas margins really great? Yes, like? Does the money and running an AI product right? Now, look really sexy. Yes. But what you’re gonna see in 2 years is that all those companies are dead because competition is so hard. Hiring is super hard.

139 00:17:07.119 ⇒ 00:17:18.329 Uttam Kumaran: and yeah, like you, I don’t know. I would rather win at any level than lose at a big for a big prize like I don’t care really much about that.

140 00:17:19.450 ⇒ 00:17:29.570 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s sort of why I got into this. I mean, I don’t. I think I equally probably could have gone into building a product and raise money for that. But I didn’t have a product idea in mind.

141 00:17:29.750 ⇒ 00:17:43.849 Uttam Kumaran: I think if anything. I’m so anti competition that I don’t want to be in an arena where there’s people way smarter than me, with way, more money that seems like an absolute nightmare, I think, in my world most other consultancies suck

142 00:17:44.263 ⇒ 00:18:06.680 Uttam Kumaran: and their engineers are not good. And this this stuff they’re implementing is poor. So in that world. I think I compete with the the biggest and the stuff we’re able to do. And then it’s just a matter of like, can we figure out, go to market. Right? Like, that’s a game. I I feel like I can at least play in the upper percentile versus building software and like having to pay all these people. And

143 00:18:07.510 ⇒ 00:18:10.749 Uttam Kumaran: it’s tough, like it’s just. It’s just tough. Both are tough.

144 00:18:13.040 ⇒ 00:18:14.710 Justin Sitzer: Yeah, I could see that.

145 00:18:14.710 ⇒ 00:18:23.999 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, but I think it’s tough to play both like this is where, like my, some people on my team and other people will be like, oh, you build some stuff internally, or you built, why do you guys turn that a product like.

146 00:18:24.140 ⇒ 00:18:29.249 Uttam Kumaran: I only want to play one of these games at a time like running a product company is very different than this.

147 00:18:29.937 ⇒ 00:18:33.810 Uttam Kumaran: We may start to do more like manage services, but

148 00:18:34.660 ⇒ 00:18:36.920 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know I don’t. I don’t. I think this is

149 00:18:37.100 ⇒ 00:18:40.620 Uttam Kumaran: this is going to be a service company, for you know.

150 00:18:41.200 ⇒ 00:19:00.620 Uttam Kumaran: I think this is, we’re we’re not thinking about this as a product at all. But what we are thinking about is, how do we improve our margins through? AI. So I am thinking about, okay, how do I hire less people? How do I enable junior people with AI so that they can start delivering? What more senior people can do? And what do I get is that I get

151 00:19:00.830 ⇒ 00:19:11.899 Uttam Kumaran: more senior type of output for a junior level rate. I think a lot about how do we stay on the cutting edge of like, what needs to get developed in AI and and data

152 00:19:12.449 ⇒ 00:19:23.230 Uttam Kumaran: and then I talk about, how do we use AI to help us on the sales side like, how do we? How can I decrease our cost? Cost of sales and customer acquisition costs, using AI

153 00:19:23.716 ⇒ 00:19:27.869 Uttam Kumaran: and then everywhere, like we use AI and delivery and operations and sales like.

154 00:19:28.340 ⇒ 00:19:44.206 Uttam Kumaran: you know, the benefit of having me. And I you know I use. I use AI to start this business. I’ve used it in our history for 2 years to run. The business is that there’s no question about like there’s no AI committee deciding on when to adopt AI like it’s an it’s an absolute

155 00:19:44.670 ⇒ 00:19:57.749 Uttam Kumaran: must like everybody we interview. I basically they have to have either used AI or been pissed that they couldn’t use AI their last company. Like. I don’t have a really much tolerance for not using it so

156 00:19:58.540 ⇒ 00:20:02.460 Uttam Kumaran: for the folks that are really Gung ho about it like we have a great

157 00:20:02.850 ⇒ 00:20:07.799 Uttam Kumaran: like. That’s where we’re gonna go. And I have like more than 100% belief that that’s gonna be our edge.

158 00:20:08.243 ⇒ 00:20:19.789 Uttam Kumaran: You know, because we’re gonna outpeat other consultancies that are run by people that are gonna debate whether AI is worth investing in for another 3, 4 years. By that time we will have eclipsed them. You know.

159 00:20:20.420 ⇒ 00:20:20.920 Justin Sitzer: Yeah.

160 00:20:20.920 ⇒ 00:20:21.750 Uttam Kumaran: So.

161 00:20:23.680 ⇒ 00:20:24.660 Justin Sitzer: Definitely.

162 00:20:25.650 ⇒ 00:20:34.170 Justin Sitzer: Yeah. And man, I I love that like I I think there’s a serious advantage there. And obviously, you know, there is, too. So I guess.

163 00:20:34.170 ⇒ 00:20:45.899 Uttam Kumaran: It’s kind of weird because you you look left and right, and you’re like there’s no one seeing this, and some people are starting to realize it. But I I work with a lot of business, Ceos, and things like that, and people are not getting it.

164 00:20:46.551 ⇒ 00:20:58.930 Uttam Kumaran: But it. But for me. I just I realize I’m like holy shit. We’re early like, I don’t look at it like I know something you don’t. I’m like, Oh, my God, we’re for some reason on this one. We’re early like.

165 00:20:58.930 ⇒ 00:21:01.809 Justin Sitzer: Yeah, what do we? How do we take advantage of this? You know.

166 00:21:02.485 ⇒ 00:21:10.100 Uttam Kumaran: And that’s the kind of the really. I think the saying is like you dance when the music’s on like. That’s what we’re trying to do right now with AI stuff

167 00:21:10.580 ⇒ 00:21:22.940 Uttam Kumaran: but also we started off as a data company, right? So we, the data stuff is is always gonna be here, and it’s never gonna there’s gonna be a need for reporting and data. If anything. AI is just pulling that forward, you know.

168 00:21:23.490 ⇒ 00:21:24.010 Justin Sitzer: Yeah.

169 00:21:24.570 ⇒ 00:21:25.115 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

170 00:21:26.480 ⇒ 00:21:27.210 Justin Sitzer: Definitely

171 00:21:30.650 ⇒ 00:21:43.200 Justin Sitzer: Can I ask you a question just like, I’m interested in, like the earlier days of your journey to in in terms of like.

172 00:21:43.990 ⇒ 00:21:49.170 Justin Sitzer: what did you prioritize like, I think.

173 00:21:50.400 ⇒ 00:21:53.830 Justin Sitzer: And you know, like, for from that

174 00:21:54.290 ⇒ 00:21:57.089 Justin Sitzer: you know where this is coming from is

175 00:21:58.240 ⇒ 00:22:10.246 Justin Sitzer: I I have some. What I think are really good ideas. And I have a lot of really good experience and things like that. And like one day, I’m like, okay, let me put together.

176 00:22:10.720 ⇒ 00:22:31.390 Justin Sitzer: you know, a business plan. And the next day I’m like, all right, let me really focus on my processes that I want to like use and pricing that I want to go to market and my brand and things like and like. I end up starting some of them. And it’s like, I only have limited time because I’m busy with clients.

177 00:22:31.390 ⇒ 00:22:31.910 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

178 00:22:31.910 ⇒ 00:22:38.150 Justin Sitzer: But, like I, what do you recommend? And what what did you do.

179 00:22:39.080 ⇒ 00:22:45.629 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. So I started this business officially in July of 2023. And so I brought on my 1st

180 00:22:45.860 ⇒ 00:22:51.909 Uttam Kumaran: part-time employee in December, and I. My recommendation is to

181 00:22:52.180 ⇒ 00:23:04.430 Uttam Kumaran: not focus on scaling the company until you need to like. Try your best to see how you could start making enough money in order to bring on someone else, and then delegate your ass off

182 00:23:04.996 ⇒ 00:23:09.260 Uttam Kumaran: like. I don’t know whether there’s like a huge alternative

183 00:23:09.720 ⇒ 00:23:13.700 Uttam Kumaran: to that, like I think, thinking about pricing and things like that are

184 00:23:14.100 ⇒ 00:23:17.940 Uttam Kumaran: important. But my, probably my recommendation there is just to

185 00:23:18.350 ⇒ 00:23:40.470 Uttam Kumaran: whatever you’re thinking, double it and try to get it, and then work your way down from there. But I I what you will find is like what you have in your own skill set and your own market ability you lack in time, and so your maximum amount you could make and keep your own sanity is 8 times whatever rate times 5,

186 00:23:40.640 ⇒ 00:23:43.810 Uttam Kumaran: you know, times 50 times 52, or whatever

187 00:23:43.980 ⇒ 00:23:54.740 Uttam Kumaran: right? Like you’re you can’t. There’s not more hours in the day, I’m telling you like, yeah, you can work a little bit more, but it will start to sacrifice your personal life and everything you’ll have to put on a line.

188 00:23:54.900 ⇒ 00:23:59.500 Uttam Kumaran: So my, probably my number. One thing is like, see how you can

189 00:23:59.670 ⇒ 00:24:08.719 Uttam Kumaran: start to delegate something, whether it’s the execution, whether it’s part of the delivery, whether it’s like planning like.

190 00:24:09.660 ⇒ 00:24:20.759 Uttam Kumaran: But again, this all goes on to like, what do you want? This to be like? Some people run great. One person consultancies right where all they do is monetize their own time. They charge 500,000 an hour.

191 00:24:21.120 ⇒ 00:24:23.339 Uttam Kumaran: or they charge for like packages.

192 00:24:23.530 ⇒ 00:24:25.499 Uttam Kumaran: but they they live a great life.

193 00:24:25.720 ⇒ 00:24:35.589 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t, I guess whatever. And then there’s people like me who I’m like, okay, this has to get big, like, not big in terms of like, we need tons of people, but in terms of revenue.

194 00:24:35.690 ⇒ 00:24:37.210 Uttam Kumaran: And so

195 00:24:38.060 ⇒ 00:24:48.130 Uttam Kumaran: you, if if it’s sort of one, is really deciding on, like what your objective is. Right. And I think if you have it decided on like what it’s going to be long term.

196 00:24:48.340 ⇒ 00:24:55.920 Uttam Kumaran: you don’t want to let someone else decide that for you, especially a customer, because a customer, once they find you to be a problem solver, they’ll pull you in every direction.

197 00:24:56.457 ⇒ 00:25:00.910 Uttam Kumaran: And you may just end up where they want you versus like what you want, you know. So

198 00:25:02.090 ⇒ 00:25:11.180 Uttam Kumaran: Second thing is, the transition from like you to your company is not going to be easy like. I don’t. I won’t sit here and say like that. Would. That was a really easy thing like

199 00:25:11.670 ⇒ 00:25:18.859 Uttam Kumaran: it will take a lot of the trust that you build with your customers to then tell them that, hey? I’m I’m gonna start to do this with a team.

200 00:25:19.640 ⇒ 00:25:35.039 Uttam Kumaran: It’s not only gonna be me, but you’re still gonna get my level of quality and my standards. But I’m here to build a business, and my goal is to build a business. And especially we’re talking to other business owners. They’re gonna get it. They’re, you know, they’re not like they’re gonna understand that

201 00:25:35.150 ⇒ 00:25:38.250 Uttam Kumaran: you’re good at your job and that you want to do something bigger. So but

202 00:25:38.450 ⇒ 00:25:46.589 Uttam Kumaran: some people won’t get it. And that’s where you have to make a decision on what you want to do, you know. But that’s like where I started, like I.

203 00:25:46.710 ⇒ 00:25:54.869 Uttam Kumaran: But also throughout my whole process, like I invest in marketing, I invest in design. I I tried to build a brand around this and

204 00:25:55.368 ⇒ 00:26:04.599 Uttam Kumaran: it wasn’t all like overnight. It was 2 years of trying to just try to do things on the side, and I made a lot of mistakes, wasted a lot of time.

205 00:26:06.200 ⇒ 00:26:16.540 Uttam Kumaran: but, like I, I always tried to delegate and took whatever I could. That was extra, and put it right back into hiring the next person and trying to hand off whatever I was working on.

206 00:26:20.720 ⇒ 00:26:21.590 Justin Sitzer: Yeah.

207 00:26:22.610 ⇒ 00:26:31.200 Uttam Kumaran: But I’m curious like, what do you think now like? How long have you been at it? And like, what are you thinking for the the long term like you have these couple of clients.

208 00:26:31.666 ⇒ 00:26:38.820 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and it’s it’s also good, like you have great logos. They’ll help you get your next one, but I’m sure you’re now like just jammed with work.

209 00:26:40.090 ⇒ 00:26:43.680 Justin Sitzer: Yeah, I my thought is that

210 00:26:44.130 ⇒ 00:27:09.710 Justin Sitzer: like, I’ve tried to do this whole like, build the business in extra hours from you know what I have that I’m not doing client work, and it’s just not materializing the way that I want like I can’t. I can never like sit down and really dig my teeth in for the amount of time that I want, especially the time period I’m in. I’m getting married in like one month. So like there’s a lot going on there.

211 00:27:09.710 ⇒ 00:27:10.070 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

212 00:27:10.070 ⇒ 00:27:20.360 Justin Sitzer: So I really have finite time in the day. I think I operate very efficiently, but, like I still don’t have the time really like my weekends are my time to like.

213 00:27:20.360 ⇒ 00:27:34.819 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Yeah. But dude, that’ll go to dude. It’ll just the same way. It’ll go just the same way you’ll you’ll say I don’t even have time on the weekend dude. It’s not easy, right? Like we’re all human beings. You’re getting married like you have a family. It’s it’s just gets harder like even for me.

214 00:27:34.920 ⇒ 00:27:38.939 Uttam Kumaran: like it took a lot of sacrifice of friends and family. But like

215 00:27:39.170 ⇒ 00:27:44.090 Uttam Kumaran: it’s not easy. And it’s it’s it’s also it’s not sustainable, right like

216 00:27:44.590 ⇒ 00:27:53.939 Uttam Kumaran: you may find a month or a few weekends where you get the freedom. But it’s not something you’re gonna be able to count on. It’s not worth building a business

217 00:27:54.200 ⇒ 00:28:00.909 Uttam Kumaran: like where you just have like weekends to do it right. But this is where, like I felt like I had to delegate right? I had to

218 00:28:01.712 ⇒ 00:28:09.777 Uttam Kumaran: find people that could start to take on the execution work and then chip away at that time where I can spend on the business.

219 00:28:10.350 ⇒ 00:28:16.709 Uttam Kumaran: you know that that’s that’s something that I I tried to do as soon as I had a little bit extra funds.

220 00:28:18.130 ⇒ 00:28:22.199 Uttam Kumaran: whether it’s like a a designer, an engineer, or someone, you know.

221 00:28:22.830 ⇒ 00:28:29.310 Justin Sitzer: Yeah, how much like money? Do you think I’d need to like.

222 00:28:30.910 ⇒ 00:28:40.669 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, I so like to give you a sense. I was probably, I mean when we had 2, like, I thought I had 2 clients I was probably bringing in like

223 00:28:42.024 ⇒ 00:28:46.159 Uttam Kumaran: like 20 KA month, and then I was paying someone like

224 00:28:46.430 ⇒ 00:28:51.060 Uttam Kumaran: 5 K. To then come on and do engineering work and then

225 00:28:51.640 ⇒ 00:28:56.529 Uttam Kumaran: and then, as soon as I was able to, as soon as I got a 3rd company, and then brought in one more person.

226 00:28:56.690 ⇒ 00:29:11.499 Uttam Kumaran: because, like you can’t do any like. And then now we have 3 companies. We have 3 of us. I’m able to move more into like a project manager, client relationship role. I’m still doing some of the harder technical stuff. But at least there’s some other people on the hook.

227 00:29:11.760 ⇒ 00:29:16.080 Uttam Kumaran: And then but then what you’ll find is, oh, shit. Now you’re only making

228 00:29:16.850 ⇒ 00:29:23.950 Uttam Kumaran: 5 k, 8 K, okay, I gotta go get other client. What happens when you get another client. Okay, now I have 4 clients. Damn, that’s a lot to like

229 00:29:24.812 ⇒ 00:29:30.970 Uttam Kumaran: bounce around. And that’s how that’s how it goes, you know. Like, even now, I still think

230 00:29:31.200 ⇒ 00:29:34.460 Uttam Kumaran: our margins are good, but we reinvest a lot like

231 00:29:35.347 ⇒ 00:29:39.479 Uttam Kumaran: because we’re trying to go after bigger, bigger clients, and we’re trying to

232 00:29:39.680 ⇒ 00:29:43.669 Uttam Kumaran: hire like coordinators. So it but I would say, like.

233 00:29:44.550 ⇒ 00:29:46.580 Uttam Kumaran: as long as you’re able to.

234 00:29:47.410 ⇒ 00:29:50.199 Uttam Kumaran: you know, pay yourself whatever you need.

235 00:29:50.550 ⇒ 00:29:55.869 Uttam Kumaran: I would go. But again, this is where, like for me, this business was something I was willing to go all in on like

236 00:29:56.160 ⇒ 00:30:02.800 Uttam Kumaran: I wasn’t scared because I had a career before this. So even if even today, if it doesn’t work out, I’m

237 00:30:02.930 ⇒ 00:30:12.099 Uttam Kumaran: I’m kind of content with it. To be honest, like, I’ve tried everything, and I put everything in it. So, but also my backup plan is going back into industry.

238 00:30:12.240 ⇒ 00:30:18.009 Uttam Kumaran: And now I’m definitely way more expensive than someone who would have hired me 2 years ago, so

239 00:30:18.640 ⇒ 00:30:23.589 Uttam Kumaran: that all that does is make me want to put everything everything I else into it, you know. So

240 00:30:24.030 ⇒ 00:30:28.029 Uttam Kumaran: there is some delusion there. But I I feel like

241 00:30:28.270 ⇒ 00:30:31.789 Uttam Kumaran: I I wanted to leave it all on the table, so

242 00:30:32.263 ⇒ 00:30:37.170 Uttam Kumaran: but I the 1st thing was to start to take on some of the actual delivery work and hand it to someone else.

243 00:30:37.832 ⇒ 00:30:42.668 Uttam Kumaran: That’s like some of the easiest stuff to give off the next thing.

244 00:30:43.300 ⇒ 00:30:48.860 Uttam Kumaran: It’s gonna be like project management, because you’re never. Gonna it’s gonna be very hard to hand off to sales.

245 00:30:50.840 ⇒ 00:30:55.440 Uttam Kumaran: like, that’s just something I learned the hard way we we tried, and it. It didn’t work at all

246 00:30:55.660 ⇒ 00:31:00.229 Uttam Kumaran: to try to get a salesperson or do that instead, like

247 00:31:00.690 ⇒ 00:31:05.818 Uttam Kumaran: what we did is we have like more sales coordinators that coordinate emails and and

248 00:31:06.390 ⇒ 00:31:09.430 Uttam Kumaran: coordinate like meetings and things like that. But

249 00:31:10.220 ⇒ 00:31:14.409 Uttam Kumaran: me and you are still gonna have the most energy about what we do, and so

250 00:31:14.530 ⇒ 00:31:18.090 Uttam Kumaran: you can’t. You’re not. There’s no way you’re gonna be able to replace that. You know.

251 00:31:21.700 ⇒ 00:31:23.020 Justin Sitzer: Yeah, definitely.

252 00:31:24.340 ⇒ 00:31:28.899 Uttam Kumaran: But the delivery stuff is are things that you can definitely govern and

253 00:31:29.050 ⇒ 00:31:31.570 Uttam Kumaran: and try to start to get people to to take on

254 00:31:32.026 ⇒ 00:31:39.209 Uttam Kumaran: and then also again, like it again, it depends on the type of work. But you can find people abroad. You can find people, junior people and

255 00:31:39.830 ⇒ 00:31:43.309 Uttam Kumaran: use AI through the whole process, and they’ll make mistakes. But

256 00:31:43.650 ⇒ 00:31:49.400 Uttam Kumaran: again, like in the path towards like getting you out of working in the business like you have to do that

257 00:31:50.211 ⇒ 00:31:52.739 Uttam Kumaran: like you have to pull the trigger on that.

258 00:31:54.780 ⇒ 00:31:55.470 Justin Sitzer: Yeah.

259 00:31:57.340 ⇒ 00:32:07.959 Justin Sitzer: did you like focus a lot on like I heard of, like an onboarding pitch deck, or like a recruiting pitch deck of like trying to attract talent like, have you?

260 00:32:08.360 ⇒ 00:32:16.799 Justin Sitzer: That’s probably probably like, you know, someone just throwing those words out there to sound nice. But like.

261 00:32:16.930 ⇒ 00:32:19.699 Justin Sitzer: how did you kind of set.

262 00:32:19.700 ⇒ 00:32:25.890 Uttam Kumaran: I just did this dude. I just talked. I just called people, and I was honest with them about like

263 00:32:26.420 ⇒ 00:32:31.069 Uttam Kumaran: what I was trying to do and who I was and the company I was trying to build.

264 00:32:31.310 ⇒ 00:32:34.339 Uttam Kumaran: I got a lot of people that said, no, I got a lot of people that

265 00:32:34.490 ⇒ 00:32:36.850 Uttam Kumaran: we’re like cool. I have a couple hours.

266 00:32:37.060 ⇒ 00:32:40.100 Uttam Kumaran: some people, some of my friends, that were doing favors for me.

267 00:32:40.370 ⇒ 00:32:55.809 Uttam Kumaran: some of my, some of the people that work for us were also working another full time job, because I couldn’t afford to have people like full time for a while. So I was just getting like part time hours from people like 10 HA week, 20 HA week. These are a lot of my friends that are like in industry making a lot of money, and

268 00:32:55.910 ⇒ 00:33:00.409 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t. I can’t afford them full time. But I was like, Hey, if you have 10 h, can you just help me on a client.

269 00:33:00.988 ⇒ 00:33:05.589 Uttam Kumaran: But I even only recently didn’t we start to have more of a formal

270 00:33:05.800 ⇒ 00:33:10.340 Uttam Kumaran: recruiting process, because ultimately people want to work with you and

271 00:33:10.630 ⇒ 00:33:22.620 Uttam Kumaran: like you have to sell as much as they’re gonna wanna work with you. Right? So I don’t. I don’t know. This is maybe cause I’m unique. And you know I worked as an engineer for a long time, and that I know what

272 00:33:22.850 ⇒ 00:33:34.920 Uttam Kumaran: kind of like, what I would want to hear as an engineer, and I know the type of company I’m building for for our team. And so but I just did this like I was just like, here’s really, honestly where we’re at. Here’s what we’re trying to do.

273 00:33:35.030 ⇒ 00:33:46.749 Uttam Kumaran: I would love to have you for, however long, if I can afford you, and what questions you have for me, and that’s kind of like how I recruited only until probably, like 2 or 3 months ago. Now we have a little bit more formal process. I’m

274 00:33:46.960 ⇒ 00:33:51.129 Uttam Kumaran: I’m more on the sales side of the interview, like not so much on the screening

275 00:33:51.682 ⇒ 00:33:56.329 Uttam Kumaran: which is good cause. I don’t think I I made a lot of people mistake as well like, I think.

276 00:33:56.500 ⇒ 00:33:58.000 Uttam Kumaran: as good as I am in

277 00:33:58.120 ⇒ 00:34:02.940 Uttam Kumaran: getting people and getting people convinced to work with us, I tend to just like.

278 00:34:03.140 ⇒ 00:34:08.629 Uttam Kumaran: be like, okay, this person seems good. Let’s let’s try something. And instead, we have a more formal process now.

279 00:34:12.090 ⇒ 00:34:17.909 Uttam Kumaran: But I also think this is a. This is like an employer’s market, like, there are a lot of people looking for jobs.

280 00:34:20.150 ⇒ 00:34:23.649 Uttam Kumaran: So like you, if even if you were to put a job posting up or

281 00:34:24.179 ⇒ 00:34:27.509 Uttam Kumaran: even ask your media network, you’ll get a lot of candidates.

282 00:34:29.600 ⇒ 00:34:30.280 Justin Sitzer: Yeah.

283 00:34:32.859 ⇒ 00:34:33.120 Uttam Kumaran: But.

284 00:34:33.120 ⇒ 00:34:34.099 Justin Sitzer: That’s good to know.

285 00:34:34.100 ⇒ 00:34:35.060 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

286 00:34:36.854 ⇒ 00:34:40.550 Justin Sitzer: Yeah. Man, I think that.

287 00:34:40.550 ⇒ 00:34:41.089 Uttam Kumaran: You’re all in.

288 00:34:41.090 ⇒ 00:34:42.350 Justin Sitzer: My next step.

289 00:34:42.350 ⇒ 00:34:42.980 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think.

290 00:34:42.980 ⇒ 00:34:50.060 Justin Sitzer: Probably within the next one to 2 months. I’m going to probably stop working at Ey.

291 00:34:50.060 ⇒ 00:34:51.120 Uttam Kumaran: Hmm.

292 00:34:51.120 ⇒ 00:34:59.090 Justin Sitzer: And really like, try to build a more scalable model.

293 00:34:59.260 ⇒ 00:34:59.730 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

294 00:34:59.998 ⇒ 00:35:09.409 Justin Sitzer: But I want to be careful. I don’t want to lose that relationship, of course, but I’ve done some really big things for them, and I think, I’ve I’ve really grown my network. There.

295 00:35:09.410 ⇒ 00:35:09.950 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

296 00:35:09.950 ⇒ 00:35:13.119 Justin Sitzer: I think a lot of people would even want to work.

297 00:35:13.120 ⇒ 00:35:14.769 Uttam Kumaran: 100% dude.

298 00:35:14.970 ⇒ 00:35:31.659 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, 100%. In fact, you should ask very formally, you know, when you when you leave, you should say, Hey, is anyone willing to make referrals or give me a testimonial? I can use publicly, or use it without your name like, and just use your title you should do not leave without that. Those that’s a goal.

299 00:35:32.638 ⇒ 00:35:39.069 Uttam Kumaran: Second thing is, is continue to sell like I don’t think you’re ever gonna be able to stop that

300 00:35:39.290 ⇒ 00:35:43.519 Uttam Kumaran: like anyone you meet like in anything.

301 00:35:43.970 ⇒ 00:35:50.920 Uttam Kumaran: Ask them if they know anyone, ask them if they can make an intro like just hustle like. I don’t think there’s any way around that

302 00:35:51.406 ⇒ 00:35:55.559 Uttam Kumaran: the the other thing is like, once you make a sale, you can delay.

303 00:35:55.840 ⇒ 00:36:21.250 Uttam Kumaran: you can delay onboarding, so let’s say you’re like, Oh, shit. Okay. I got a great client. They’re willing to pay a lot, and you’re like, I don’t have anyone, though, and I don’t think I can deliver. Ask, hey? Can we start? In 2 weeks? 3 weeks? You’ll be surprised. People will give you a little bit of time. Then you have to hire. But this is this is kind of the jam is that as soon as you’re on that path someone else’s livelihood depends on you now, and it can be.

304 00:36:21.770 ⇒ 00:36:24.330 Uttam Kumaran: The stakes are higher, like it’s just a different.

305 00:36:24.660 ⇒ 00:36:27.630 Uttam Kumaran: It’s just a different thing, you know. But again, like

306 00:36:27.990 ⇒ 00:36:33.619 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t, I’m some other people, or may give you different advice, like everything is hard.

307 00:36:33.770 ⇒ 00:36:43.389 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t think this has been easy at all. I think this is the hardest thing ever so if something is hard, I think you should almost be a little bit stoic about it, like it’s the way it should be.

308 00:36:43.972 ⇒ 00:36:47.199 Uttam Kumaran: I think the biggest thing is just try to fail

309 00:36:47.570 ⇒ 00:36:50.030 Uttam Kumaran: fast and as cheap as possible. Like

310 00:36:50.240 ⇒ 00:36:55.369 Uttam Kumaran: you’ll you’ll make mistakes on people you’ll you’ll make mistakes on clients.

311 00:36:55.530 ⇒ 00:37:00.490 Uttam Kumaran: Just apologize fast and make it up to them. And

312 00:37:01.029 ⇒ 00:37:13.019 Uttam Kumaran: the last thing is like, I always tell this to my team is like my. My product is my people like, you know, it’s like when you walk into Chick-fil-a, and they say hello to you like, I think my

313 00:37:13.260 ⇒ 00:37:24.249 Uttam Kumaran: my company is closer to a restaurant than we are like an it consultancy like there is real hospitality. There’s real empathy, and I don’t think we’re. We’re nearly as good at that as I want us to be.

314 00:37:24.748 ⇒ 00:37:29.070 Uttam Kumaran: But this is a people business, and people want to buy from people like

315 00:37:29.320 ⇒ 00:37:31.779 Uttam Kumaran: me. And you are not gonna have the luxury of like

316 00:37:32.460 ⇒ 00:37:42.690 Uttam Kumaran: like being an ey where clients just get handed to you because you’ve worked for them for like 5,000 years, like those guys are in another stratosphere, and they’ve earned it, you know, for us, we have to.

317 00:37:43.210 ⇒ 00:37:45.640 Uttam Kumaran: You’ll have to still hustle a lot. But

318 00:37:45.910 ⇒ 00:37:55.045 Uttam Kumaran: the benefit of that is those guys and a lot of other agencies don’t do great work. And so ultimately, if you can compete on the quality of your work,

319 00:37:55.890 ⇒ 00:38:12.670 Uttam Kumaran: and you’re the only one in your own way. You know what what’s in your way is. How many people can I pitch how many case studies can I get. That’s who’s in your way, like I don’t, even when you ask us now, like I don’t think I don’t think there’s anything in our way. I don’t really think about competition.

320 00:38:13.238 ⇒ 00:38:28.819 Uttam Kumaran: You know, because I believe in what we do. I think I’m the only one in our way like this, my time and the amount of time I can work on the business versus working on clients. That’s a 100 limiting factor. It wasn’t like that, though, for a long time, like

321 00:38:28.950 ⇒ 00:38:49.520 Uttam Kumaran: we had a lot of other limiting issues, like people and process and things. But now it’s it’s like 100. How much time do I have to work on the business to recruit, to have that extra recruiting call, or to have that extra sales call or send that extra email like. That’s what that’s what is like in my way, you know.

322 00:38:49.650 ⇒ 00:38:57.749 Uttam Kumaran: But it I don’t know. It took so long dude. It took so long. 2 years is not a long time, but it’s been a long, it’s it’s taken.

323 00:38:58.000 ⇒ 00:39:01.599 Uttam Kumaran: It’s taken like a level of discipline every day, you know, to get there.

324 00:39:02.670 ⇒ 00:39:10.550 Justin Sitzer: Yeah, definitely, man, definitely admire that a lot.

325 00:39:12.510 ⇒ 00:39:15.140 Justin Sitzer: hopefully, I can get there one day, man.

326 00:39:15.140 ⇒ 00:39:23.789 Uttam Kumaran: No, I don’t think I think everyone’s journey on this is is different. Dude like. I think I got lucky in so many ways. I got unlucky in a lot of ways, and

327 00:39:24.040 ⇒ 00:39:27.503 Uttam Kumaran: and that that like we’re able to take a step forward every week.

328 00:39:29.230 ⇒ 00:39:37.620 Uttam Kumaran: But I I don’t. I don’t think there’s an easy path, but it’s clear that you’re someone that’s like really open to learning and listening. And I just think, like

329 00:39:37.750 ⇒ 00:39:40.090 Uttam Kumaran: you just have to continue to bet on yourself.

330 00:39:40.400 ⇒ 00:39:43.260 Uttam Kumaran: but also it’s very isolating, like, I don’t think

331 00:39:44.060 ⇒ 00:39:48.350 Uttam Kumaran: everybody has all the like you. You’ll be able to study how other people do it.

332 00:39:48.861 ⇒ 00:40:14.840 Uttam Kumaran: But there’s gonna be so many nuances that there’s gonna be no one running a company in 2025 going after data. And AI with your background like there’s nobody there. So you’re never going to read a book on like how to do this. But you are going to read it. There are books on hiring. There are great books on consulting. There are, you know, there are resources, and those you should just copy like, I just copy like I’m like Kobe copying like Michael Jordan’s.

333 00:40:15.180 ⇒ 00:40:24.950 Uttam Kumaran: like, you know, shot like I blatantly rip off whatever the best people are doing, but it’s in sales, or it’s in recruiting. It’s like in a narrow area.

334 00:40:25.180 ⇒ 00:40:26.180 Uttam Kumaran: versus like.

335 00:40:26.600 ⇒ 00:40:54.320 Uttam Kumaran: you know, I think like, that’s where I tried to learn a lot. And then you kind of combine all that. And you realize that what you’ll find out is a problem you’re having is what all small business owners have, which is like making the transition from working in the business on the business. I I promise you, if you’ve read anything about this is such a consistent theme. But what happens is that many people can’t get out of that because it’s it, for all the reasons it’s so scary it takes a level of risk.

336 00:40:55.980 ⇒ 00:41:03.320 Uttam Kumaran: and it just forces you to really think about like what you want this to be long term, not people are willing to do that, you know.

337 00:41:06.350 ⇒ 00:41:07.080 Justin Sitzer: Yeah.

338 00:41:09.560 ⇒ 00:41:20.759 Justin Sitzer: do you like have ambition to sell? Or is that like, you’re not even thinking about that yet, like, you just wanna build a business because you believe in like your mission.

339 00:41:21.490 ⇒ 00:41:28.460 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, I don’t know. I sort of have like, probably 2 answers like, I

340 00:41:28.670 ⇒ 00:41:33.879 Uttam Kumaran: don’t like. I don’t really have like a lot of interest in running this forever.

341 00:41:34.637 ⇒ 00:41:42.320 Uttam Kumaran: Like. But also services. Businesses are kind of hard to sell. So like.

342 00:41:42.700 ⇒ 00:41:45.543 Uttam Kumaran: we’re gonna kind of see what’s possible.

343 00:41:46.160 ⇒ 00:41:52.909 Uttam Kumaran: I think the other advice I kind of got was, build a business you want to sell, and you’ll build a business you want to keep.

344 00:41:53.040 ⇒ 00:41:54.000 Uttam Kumaran: you know.

345 00:41:55.590 ⇒ 00:41:56.730 Uttam Kumaran: So

346 00:41:56.940 ⇒ 00:42:06.940 Uttam Kumaran: I like, you know I I won’t lie. And I and I tell this everyone on our team like I want this to be a great outcome for myself, my family, and my team.

347 00:42:08.110 ⇒ 00:42:28.399 Uttam Kumaran: and what timeline I’m not sure but we are trying to stack the deck as many ways as possible. You don’t really wake up one day, and you’re like I’m ready to sell. And you like press a button like it’s and everyone I’ve talked to. It’s a long process, but I think that is like probably the outcome that we we look for.

348 00:42:29.034 ⇒ 00:42:31.049 Uttam Kumaran: That being said like.

349 00:42:31.330 ⇒ 00:42:53.733 Uttam Kumaran: I only know as much as I’ve told you now, which is like, I’m not having conversations with people about it. I’m not putting together due diligence. I’m not like that does not swing. I spend any amount of my time on I’m now lucky enough to be able to look at what’s happening next month, and then sort of focus on the quarter, you know, which is kind of like. Probably as Max as I can go right now.

350 00:42:54.640 ⇒ 00:43:01.570 Uttam Kumaran: And so my job is to grow revenue as fast as possible, hire a sick team and

351 00:43:01.810 ⇒ 00:43:06.189 Uttam Kumaran: get great clients. I think the kind of score will settle itself.

352 00:43:06.723 ⇒ 00:43:19.159 Uttam Kumaran: I do think that it would be amazing to get a windfall for me and my family, and like pay for my parents house, and I’m here in Austin, and it’d be great to buy a house here, but again, like

353 00:43:19.600 ⇒ 00:43:23.390 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know I don’t know. I don’t like. I can’t hooking on to that. At

354 00:43:23.770 ⇒ 00:43:30.845 Uttam Kumaran: some days I wake up like that’s it like, if we’re gonna do that some days, I’m like, well, maybe I wanna like keep doing this, or maybe that’s not even possible. So

355 00:43:31.640 ⇒ 00:43:37.650 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know. I feel like it’s it’s not something I spend too much time thinking about. I use it as like a

356 00:43:37.840 ⇒ 00:43:41.645 Uttam Kumaran: guiding star, something to look forward to. But

357 00:43:42.270 ⇒ 00:43:43.120 Justin Sitzer: Okay.

358 00:43:43.120 ⇒ 00:43:47.099 Uttam Kumaran: It’s it’s not something I I directly take much action on.

359 00:43:48.510 ⇒ 00:43:53.019 Uttam Kumaran: You know. I I think there’s several directions for us to go in this business.

360 00:43:54.910 ⇒ 00:44:00.439 Uttam Kumaran: you know. But but again, like ideally, it’s something we don’t have to sell, that’s all. There’s a lot of work and a lot of

361 00:44:00.600 ⇒ 00:44:09.124 Uttam Kumaran: stuff to do. And you know, even in this conversation, I’m now saying like, maybe we don’t sell like. So I don’t really know.

362 00:44:09.480 ⇒ 00:44:11.309 Justin Sitzer: Maybe I love this man. Yeah.

363 00:44:11.310 ⇒ 00:44:14.660 Uttam Kumaran: You know, like, I’m like, Who am I? Kidding? Yeah, maybe this is it.

364 00:44:14.660 ⇒ 00:44:15.080 Justin Sitzer: Perfect.

365 00:44:15.080 ⇒ 00:44:21.159 Uttam Kumaran: I just think, I think just, I’m happy to kind of be in the game. And a lot of also a lot of other weird doors have opened like

366 00:44:21.310 ⇒ 00:44:24.460 Uttam Kumaran: dude. I didn’t even ask you like how you know, Clarence, but I got put in

367 00:44:24.590 ⇒ 00:44:26.989 Uttam Kumaran: in touch with Clarence because I was out of

368 00:44:27.360 ⇒ 00:44:33.399 Uttam Kumaran: Vc. Event, and I met another friend who knew him like, I just these weird doors keep opening.

369 00:44:33.650 ⇒ 00:44:44.831 Uttam Kumaran: Just cause I’m in the game, and that’s something I never thought, and I never really put a price on. But that’s been insane like I. I met so many amazing people through this

370 00:44:45.260 ⇒ 00:44:51.172 Uttam Kumaran: and a lot of people who are also putting themselves out there. And so that we kind of relate in some way. And

371 00:44:51.870 ⇒ 00:44:54.409 Uttam Kumaran: that’s been amazing, you know.

372 00:44:54.840 ⇒ 00:44:58.399 Justin Sitzer: Yeah, no, that’s that’s awesome, man. That’s really great.

373 00:44:58.940 ⇒ 00:45:01.179 Uttam Kumaran: How did you? How did you meet Clarence? By the way.

374 00:45:03.350 ⇒ 00:45:06.629 Justin Sitzer: I don’t even know how I ended up.

375 00:45:07.700 ⇒ 00:45:16.493 Justin Sitzer: Actually, I kind of do know how I ended up on the AI team. I I had. I had some experience with it, but I met him on the AI team at ey

376 00:45:17.550 ⇒ 00:45:20.490 Justin Sitzer: got pulled into like a client facing

377 00:45:21.314 ⇒ 00:45:31.534 Justin Sitzer: there. We call them wave spaces, and where we basically take clients and show them all of our cool technology and teach them something about AI, and then

378 00:45:32.040 ⇒ 00:45:46.829 Justin Sitzer: hopefully, they buy something from us that’s kind of like their strategy, which is changing a little bit. But Clarence was like the go to market AI guy for ui for for a while, and so that’s how I got plugged in with him.

379 00:45:46.830 ⇒ 00:45:47.719 Uttam Kumaran: Wow. Okay.

380 00:45:47.720 ⇒ 00:45:53.950 Justin Sitzer: Yeah, so, and and we just hit it off. He was. You know.

381 00:45:54.350 ⇒ 00:46:05.080 Justin Sitzer: He’s he’s yeah. He he was somebody that that I wanted to connect with more, so.

382 00:46:06.460 ⇒ 00:46:12.549 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, that’s amazing. No, he he said a lot of great things. And yeah, I mean, he’s been. He’s been incredibly helpful

383 00:46:12.970 ⇒ 00:46:38.100 Uttam Kumaran: to me and to bring forward overall. So it’s I’m happy to anyone that he he recommends. I’m happy to help. And and yeah dude. I feel like I’ve I’ve talked to have met a lot of people that are ahead of me that are at my level, that are sort of just like figuring things out. So I’ve hopefully like whatever I’ve in my experience that I’ve made mistakes I can impart to you. And I also think there’s so much

384 00:46:38.210 ⇒ 00:46:39.620 Uttam Kumaran: opportunity like

385 00:46:39.850 ⇒ 00:46:47.230 Uttam Kumaran: I just think it’s really like for me. I’m I’m more like philosophical about this and that. I think it’s just a lot of resiliency like

386 00:46:47.430 ⇒ 00:46:50.980 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t think you can really guess, and I do think it takes a lot of luck

387 00:46:51.240 ⇒ 00:46:53.649 Uttam Kumaran: to like meet the right people and to

388 00:46:54.210 ⇒ 00:47:07.540 Uttam Kumaran: get the shots on goal. But it’s clear dude like you’ve gotten big clients on your own like without a sales team without recruiting team, without anything. Right? So that shows that there’s something there.

389 00:47:07.976 ⇒ 00:47:16.839 Uttam Kumaran: You know. I think you should take that as a sign of belief, you know, in in the fact that you’ve been able to do do that with

390 00:47:16.980 ⇒ 00:47:21.928 Uttam Kumaran: with nothing. You know, and I don’t. I don’t think that’s

391 00:47:22.410 ⇒ 00:47:29.352 Uttam Kumaran: I think. But I think what will happen is you need to figure out how to bottle that into into a package and a sales pitch, and

392 00:47:29.610 ⇒ 00:47:30.140 Justin Sitzer: Yeah, yeah.

393 00:47:30.140 ⇒ 00:47:33.870 Uttam Kumaran: Like a really clear cohesive, go-to-market strategy.

394 00:47:34.266 ⇒ 00:47:54.530 Uttam Kumaran: But you also, you also have to think about what you don’t want to do and what isn’t giving you energy, and you’ll have to do it for a while, but find a ways to hand that off, because for me, like when I get a lot of energy from the engineering work from the team. Sales is still very hard for me, but that’s something that I just we can’t. I can’t give up, so

395 00:47:54.630 ⇒ 00:48:07.029 Uttam Kumaran: I sort of have to bite the bullet there. But there’s other things in the company like I. I just have to pay someone to do it, because I I after a while, like I was either messing it up procrastinating on it, or like not doing it at all. So

396 00:48:07.450 ⇒ 00:48:15.549 Uttam Kumaran: that’s just those are decisions that you’ll have to make. But you know, for me, I think the biggest thing is like, as soon as you can afford to try to get someone to help you on the delivery side.

397 00:48:17.270 ⇒ 00:48:22.270 Justin Sitzer: Yeah 100% man. That’s that’s like my takeaway here.

398 00:48:24.010 ⇒ 00:48:24.836 Justin Sitzer: I mean.

399 00:48:25.250 ⇒ 00:48:33.280 Uttam Kumaran: So they’re gonna they’re they’re gonna mess up. And you just be okay with it and have some grace. And yeah.

400 00:48:34.102 ⇒ 00:48:46.859 Justin Sitzer: I I’m trying to like, really define a clear process. I think the clearer the processes and the better the technology is to your point, leveraging AI.

401 00:48:46.860 ⇒ 00:48:47.470 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

402 00:48:47.480 ⇒ 00:48:56.820 Justin Sitzer: Every step of the way and making it easy like that’s kind of where I want to get to. I feel I feel like

403 00:48:57.050 ⇒ 00:49:04.000 Justin Sitzer: the process. And the technology is 1st and then the people. Do you think that that’s a fair way to look at it?

404 00:49:05.630 ⇒ 00:49:06.300 Justin Sitzer: Or do you think.

405 00:49:06.607 ⇒ 00:49:09.680 Uttam Kumaran: Like. I don’t know man, because, you know, the only

406 00:49:09.830 ⇒ 00:49:19.759 Uttam Kumaran: the only thing I realized is that every client is different. And this is where again, like, I don’t know too much about how your services work. And so I could just be

407 00:49:19.970 ⇒ 00:49:26.260 Uttam Kumaran: more in my world. But for us every client is different. Not only there are a lot of similarities.

408 00:49:26.773 ⇒ 00:49:32.950 Uttam Kumaran: But there are a lot of differences, not only in like the technology, but also in the stakeholder.

409 00:49:34.730 ⇒ 00:49:40.359 Uttam Kumaran: You know. So we have to treat people differently. Different people will move at different paces, and so

410 00:49:40.710 ⇒ 00:49:45.859 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t. I don’t. I think for me it was actually more of the people.

411 00:49:46.316 ⇒ 00:50:13.779 Uttam Kumaran: Because even if I wrote out every sop and had like really great process, there’s no one to do it, you know. In fact, I think probably what’s best is for you to bring on a person and part of their 1st month is to write those things down, because, just like you mentioned, you’re not. Gonna when are you gonna have time to write that, like, you know, at like 8 o’clock on Thursday, like you’re, I don’t don’t think it happens

412 00:50:14.589 ⇒ 00:50:19.319 Uttam Kumaran: because especially, it’s not the most interesting thing, of course, like

413 00:50:19.480 ⇒ 00:50:31.200 Uttam Kumaran: you have to. If there’s things that are like, impossible to do or like, only take. You have to share that. But this is where, like you want to do the things that you are uniquely talented at which is spending time with the client selling.

414 00:50:31.320 ⇒ 00:50:32.285 Uttam Kumaran: And

415 00:50:34.210 ⇒ 00:50:46.839 Uttam Kumaran: I think you. What you want to do is when you bring on that person, work with them on writing those things down and those processes. But you’re right like I don’t. I think I was way too late in investing in process and sops

416 00:50:47.313 ⇒ 00:50:51.309 Uttam Kumaran: because I just went to sell got more hired, but like

417 00:50:51.510 ⇒ 00:51:06.779 Uttam Kumaran: I never was, you know, I never worked formally in consulting so run books, sops like reusable epics. Like, I just didn’t think about those things because I worked in a in product companies before. We don’t have like multiple clients. We have, like customers of a tool

418 00:51:06.890 ⇒ 00:51:17.399 Uttam Kumaran: for customers, you know, thousands and thousands of them. So I learned that the hard way. So now we’re investing a lot in writing sops and having procedures, and

419 00:51:17.570 ⇒ 00:51:22.800 Uttam Kumaran: but also, like, you know, the cost of that is like our clients tend to. Now. Their clients will get

420 00:51:23.010 ⇒ 00:51:36.249 Uttam Kumaran: probably a more standardized experience which I will start to push back on, because every client is different, like, I want them to feel like special and feel like we’re morphing to them, not like they’re morphing to us.

421 00:51:36.380 ⇒ 00:51:43.190 Uttam Kumaran: and that we’re a partner right? We meet people where they are. And so it’s my job to make sure that, like we don’t become like

422 00:51:43.350 ⇒ 00:51:51.650 Uttam Kumaran: a process company where it’s like, oh, you look like this. So let’s do this. It’s like, have a conversation and find out like what people are really about.

423 00:51:53.390 ⇒ 00:51:58.349 Uttam Kumaran: But I don’t know. Am I would probably lean more on the people side.

424 00:52:00.590 ⇒ 00:52:09.390 Justin Sitzer: Yeah, I’ve I think, like, when I was when I was saying that I meant like.

425 00:52:10.170 ⇒ 00:52:19.200 Justin Sitzer: not that I people aren’t the number one priority, because they 1,000 trillion percent are like, I know that with every

426 00:52:19.500 ⇒ 00:52:29.700 Justin Sitzer: fiber in my bone people, it just like you said, it is a people business, and like, I’ve

427 00:52:30.030 ⇒ 00:52:40.420 Justin Sitzer: you know, I love people, and I’ve you know, learned to love people more as the more that I also realize how much people really run the world, no matter how much AI comes out.

428 00:52:40.420 ⇒ 00:52:40.940 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

429 00:52:40.940 ⇒ 00:52:48.790 Justin Sitzer: Get a technology. It’s people like. So I know it’s a people business. But like, in terms of

430 00:52:48.980 ⇒ 00:52:55.700 Justin Sitzer: taking my 1st steps into like trying to build something that I could scale.

431 00:52:55.700 ⇒ 00:52:56.080 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

432 00:52:56.080 ⇒ 00:53:02.769 Justin Sitzer: I was thinking that like, okay, what like the my, my mind’s

433 00:53:02.940 ⇒ 00:53:09.730 Justin Sitzer: the sequence of events in my mind is like, Okay, what should what service

434 00:53:09.970 ⇒ 00:53:18.840 Justin Sitzer: will I offer, and how? What steps will I take to, or or what will my process be to deliver that service.

435 00:53:18.840 ⇒ 00:53:19.350 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

436 00:53:19.350 ⇒ 00:53:28.050 Justin Sitzer: And what technology will I use to enable that process? And then what people do? I need to

437 00:53:28.360 ⇒ 00:53:31.169 Justin Sitzer: run those machines or run that process.

438 00:53:31.860 ⇒ 00:53:37.730 Justin Sitzer: That’s how I was thinking about it. But do you think that that’s like.

439 00:53:37.730 ⇒ 00:53:43.930 Uttam Kumaran: No, it makes sense, I think, but I think you probably know enough to articulate that. But again, it depends on how

440 00:53:44.350 ⇒ 00:54:05.529 Uttam Kumaran: this is where like, I never thought about scale, because I didn’t think I was gonna even like, make it to the following month for a long time. So I don’t like. You can ask me what I was dreaming about, but that that was it. I was probably just dreaming about it, like in the when I was in the bathroom, or like when I was sleeping like that’s not something I could do I could do anything with, because

441 00:54:05.700 ⇒ 00:54:18.750 Uttam Kumaran: when I was just trying to get an extra 5 grand in the business. That’s what I was thinking about. 5 grand, not like 10 million dollars, or running a like huge business. So I I had these ideas, but

442 00:54:18.920 ⇒ 00:54:32.419 Uttam Kumaran: then someone would call out, sick, or an employee would say, Hey, I’m I decided. I want to leave, or, hey? I want to raise like there’s there’s just too many problems that I just started tapping the firefight that I never really was able to.

443 00:54:32.570 ⇒ 00:54:35.120 Uttam Kumaran: you know. Think about scalability until

444 00:54:35.310 ⇒ 00:54:45.619 Uttam Kumaran: okay, we figure out the sales piece. And there’s probably like 2 books. I think, that were really really transformative for me, that I would recommend reading this book called Business of Expertise.

445 00:54:46.181 ⇒ 00:54:56.289 Uttam Kumaran: Really, really, good book. It’s short. I think you will find it hopefully to be very helpful. It’s a lot of exactly kind of what you said. But.

446 00:54:56.810 ⇒ 00:55:05.650 Uttam Kumaran: it’s very sobering book about like how to do some of this business stuff and how to think about it. So I would recommend that like

447 00:55:05.850 ⇒ 00:55:23.110 Uttam Kumaran: incredibly underrated, I’m not sure if you’re much of a reader. But okay, incredibly underrated book got recommended by like an advisor of ours. But like criminally underrated, I don’t even know nobody I know even like talks about that book. And there’s another book called positioning

448 00:55:23.681 ⇒ 00:55:31.280 Uttam Kumaran: which is really really good. I think it’s actually it’s called not Positioning. It’s called building a Story brand. Actually.

449 00:55:31.794 ⇒ 00:55:45.579 Uttam Kumaran: there’s 2. There’s also a book called Positioning. That’s pretty good. But this book building a story brand. This is more about the sales branding side, but the exercises that they have you do? It forces you to clearly articulate.

450 00:55:45.860 ⇒ 00:55:56.789 Uttam Kumaran: What are you selling? What problems are you solving? Who are you solving it for, and like? Why are you the right person to do it. And I think, like.

451 00:55:56.930 ⇒ 00:56:03.729 Uttam Kumaran: if anything, if you follow that, it’ll help you sell the business to more customers and to whoever you bring on and hire

452 00:56:04.495 ⇒ 00:56:06.869 Uttam Kumaran: both of those books like

453 00:56:07.290 ⇒ 00:56:11.870 Uttam Kumaran: have been like extreme. You’ll crush them like they’re they’re they’re really really good.

454 00:56:12.400 ⇒ 00:56:13.250 Justin Sitzer: Awesome.

455 00:56:15.651 ⇒ 00:56:20.169 Uttam Kumaran: There’s, I mean, there’s a lot of stuff about process and things like that. But

456 00:56:20.390 ⇒ 00:56:28.919 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know. And this is where, like I think it also depends on your tendency. Like I. I know there’s people whose tendency are is to get everything organized first, st like.

457 00:56:29.130 ⇒ 00:56:34.009 Uttam Kumaran: I’m probably because of my background in startups. I’m probably more on the opposite side, where

458 00:56:34.240 ⇒ 00:56:46.329 Uttam Kumaran: I kind of get things close, and I’m kind of constantly juggling and dropping balls, but kind of doing that strategically. And I sort of got okay with that. And I just try to get better every week.

459 00:56:46.823 ⇒ 00:56:52.649 Uttam Kumaran: But I’m also really stoic like, I don’t really have a lot of highs. I don’t really have a lot of lows like.

460 00:56:52.860 ⇒ 00:57:10.639 Uttam Kumaran: because there’s a lot of lows like every day. There’s something wrong. And then there’s also a lot of things that are going right. So if I was to get mad at all the things that are going wrong. If we lose a client or we lose a sale, then I like if I would be so mad, and then but also like, when things go really? Well, if we get a sale, I’m kind of

461 00:57:10.770 ⇒ 00:57:13.830 Uttam Kumaran: it’s like, not, I’m kind of like, okay, cool like, that’s, that’s what we wanted.

462 00:57:13.970 ⇒ 00:57:19.450 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s also kind of gone more stoic, I think over time. With this, but.

463 00:57:22.580 ⇒ 00:57:26.770 Justin Sitzer: Yeah, man, I like that. I think you. Kinda

464 00:57:27.150 ⇒ 00:57:30.060 Justin Sitzer: I think you kind of have to be like that.

465 00:57:30.060 ⇒ 00:57:30.813 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like,

466 00:57:31.190 ⇒ 00:57:31.610 Justin Sitzer: Be.

467 00:57:32.260 ⇒ 00:57:42.549 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, because it could go at any time, and I still feel like it was just me 2 years ago, like I was. I was just toiling away on a laptop emailing at coffee shops like.

468 00:57:42.750 ⇒ 00:57:45.916 Uttam Kumaran: you know, it doesn’t feel like too far away from that. But,

469 00:57:46.490 ⇒ 00:58:01.739 Uttam Kumaran: we’ve definitely grown. And we’re definitely our ambitions because I’ve we got here. It just makes me want to go even further, you know. And every day we’re in business is another day that our clients know we’re going to be in business tomorrow, and that

470 00:58:02.330 ⇒ 00:58:06.490 Uttam Kumaran: we have faith that like when I go talk to a client, and I pitch a huge number that.

471 00:58:06.620 ⇒ 00:58:08.469 Uttam Kumaran: hey? Maybe they’ll go for it, you know.

472 00:58:09.220 ⇒ 00:58:13.859 Justin Sitzer: Yeah, that’s awesome, man.

473 00:58:16.110 ⇒ 00:58:18.080 Justin Sitzer: I’ll I’ll ask one more question.

474 00:58:18.080 ⇒ 00:58:18.780 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, please.

475 00:58:20.280 ⇒ 00:58:29.231 Justin Sitzer: And also I I would really love to like I know you’re super busy and like you don’t have to commit to anything but

476 00:58:29.850 ⇒ 00:58:48.699 Justin Sitzer: I don’t know. Yeah, I I could see. I I think, the way that that you’re thinking about things and and your your actions, and and what you’ve done and what you’re building. I really resonates with me. I’d I’d love to keep in touch like, even if it’s you know, once a month, once every 2 months, 3 months.

477 00:58:48.700 ⇒ 00:59:02.000 Uttam Kumaran: Totally dude, and I’ll I’ll send you my number. And you can text me at any time. And anything text or email is is great, I think, like I mean I I do. I do have time here and there, but it’s kind of all over the place.

478 00:59:02.000 ⇒ 00:59:02.390 Justin Sitzer: Yeah.

479 00:59:02.390 ⇒ 00:59:13.919 Uttam Kumaran: I would love to like. I I’m more than happy to. And and I think also, you know, we didn’t even get a chance to talk much about AI. So like that’s the that’s something that I could go on again for. Probably another.

480 00:59:13.920 ⇒ 00:59:14.290 Justin Sitzer: Right.

481 00:59:14.290 ⇒ 00:59:33.239 Uttam Kumaran: 10 years. So I would love to. And I you know I’m an open book, because, like, I don’t think even if you had all the secrets to this like, I still think it’s pretty hard to do so. I don’t really have nothing we’re doing is like really proprietary. I think it’s it’s it’s actually probably more

482 00:59:33.320 ⇒ 00:59:46.739 Uttam Kumaran: more obvious if you were to look at it. But we’re starting to build some cool things like to help our project managers to help our delivery teams deliver faster. And I have this vision that I want to be, you know, very AI native as a consultancy and

483 00:59:47.680 ⇒ 00:59:55.759 Uttam Kumaran: you know, what was this more of a side project for me is now like kind of a core part of our business, which is, we’ve been really, really cool.

484 00:59:56.270 ⇒ 01:00:03.509 Uttam Kumaran: but I’m more than happy to. And I’ll I’ll I’ll email you my number after this so you have it feel free to send me a text. Of course.

485 01:00:03.510 ⇒ 01:00:07.715 Justin Sitzer: Yeah, for sure. Man. Cool.

486 01:00:09.660 ⇒ 01:00:12.505 Justin Sitzer: yeah. Dude like. And I think,

487 01:00:14.280 ⇒ 01:00:25.160 Justin Sitzer: I don’t know we. I definitely want to talk more on the business side with you, too, because I think like what I do and what I offer could probably synergize really well with.

488 01:00:25.160 ⇒ 01:00:25.640 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

489 01:00:25.870 ⇒ 01:00:36.199 Justin Sitzer: Even though I don’t know exactly what you do. But I know that your client serving and and I’m client serving and like what I’ve seen with the tool that I built is like

490 01:00:36.340 ⇒ 01:00:46.773 Justin Sitzer: transformation teams, and like consulting teams with any why and and the clients that I’ve shown this to like they. They’re just all over it. Because, like

491 01:00:47.480 ⇒ 01:00:57.445 Justin Sitzer: I’m really like going from like what what it’s, what it’s doing is going from natural language, conversation and

492 01:00:58.230 ⇒ 01:01:01.840 Justin Sitzer: to like visual process maps.

493 01:01:01.840 ⇒ 01:01:02.670 Uttam Kumaran: Hmm, okay.

494 01:01:02.710 ⇒ 01:01:22.030 Justin Sitzer: And and really accelerating the transformation process. Like all that upfront work that you have to do to understand your clients, process and systems and things like that. It’s really accelerating that. So you can get to the solution a lot faster and also have, like,

495 01:01:23.230 ⇒ 01:01:38.539 Justin Sitzer: like using that information as a as a starting point, as a jump off point. For like, you know, whether it’s like developing the solution itself like, or or you know, business cases, or.

496 01:01:38.960 ⇒ 01:01:43.470 Uttam Kumaran: Plans things like that thinking about a lot of similar things like for us. We built

497 01:01:43.780 ⇒ 01:01:47.150 Uttam Kumaran: a lot of processes around meeting transcripts.

498 01:01:47.944 ⇒ 01:01:48.389 Uttam Kumaran: Because.

499 01:01:48.390 ⇒ 01:01:52.319 Justin Sitzer: Yeah, like we do a lot with with the Zoom Api.

500 01:01:52.654 ⇒ 01:02:20.630 Uttam Kumaran: Because I want I didn’t really kind of like like fireflies or otters. I thought they were kind of annoying, and the Zoom Api is free like it comes bundled with whatever you’re paying for, zoom. And so we store all of our meetings, and I’ve sort of built our internal platform where we have kind of hubs for every client. And so if you’re an engineer, pm. On a client, you can go to one place, see all the meetings with that client, chat over all the meetings, and also start to do kind of like more helpful tasks, like generate

501 01:02:20.680 ⇒ 01:02:27.930 Uttam Kumaran: scope of work, generate project plans generate, follow up emails like free tickets from a meeting.

502 01:02:28.535 ⇒ 01:02:46.469 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So what I’m kind of trying to do is eat like probably what you would ask a Va to do first? st Right? Which some of these tasks are a lot of time. And what what does that allow me like? What are our Kpis. I just wrote them down today is like, I want us to see our revenue per employee go up.

503 01:02:46.620 ⇒ 01:02:50.179 Uttam Kumaran: I want to see our employee. Nps be high.

504 01:02:51.059 ⇒ 01:03:06.990 Uttam Kumaran: I wanna see that you know the amount of average amount of clients that one employee can take on goes up meaning you can sort of start to take on one or 2 per engineer, maybe 2 or 3 per project manager versus, just like having to be on one or on one and help out another

505 01:03:07.337 ⇒ 01:03:12.540 Uttam Kumaran: and we’re building all these tools to do that. Additionally, we’re building all the tools for the sales side. So like

506 01:03:12.730 ⇒ 01:03:18.320 Uttam Kumaran: when I talk to a lead. I want all the meetings associated with that I want to be to generate, follow up emails.

507 01:03:18.830 ⇒ 01:03:29.920 Uttam Kumaran: So we’re just building this. But again, a lot of it is just dog fooding like I have these problems. I start to use chat, gpt for something. Then I’m like perfect. I figured it out. Let’s now build something that everyone in the team can use.

508 01:03:29.960 ⇒ 01:03:53.739 Uttam Kumaran: And you know you find yourself doing that for like about a year, and then you end up with a platform of of workflows and tools. But I think you where what you see, what I don’t know is like I don’t know. The big consultant world at all right? Like, I don’t know. Major Fortune. 1,000 business. I don’t know that world at all. I know, like data. Like, I know implementing data warehouses, data engineering implementing big data systems. But

509 01:03:53.870 ⇒ 01:04:01.339 Uttam Kumaran: business process transformation. And it’s not a world I come from. I’m an engineer. So I that’s like what I do. But

510 01:04:01.896 ⇒ 01:04:11.869 Uttam Kumaran: that’s where I think we’re probably aiming low just because of that, like, we’re probably not having conversations like we aim for like mid market companies, like typically

511 01:04:11.990 ⇒ 01:04:25.200 Uttam Kumaran: 20 to 100 million in revenue is like, usually where we’re sitting, which I’m proud of, like, I think those are still big companies. But I think for the to get to the next level. We have to think of these like enterprise or enterprise transformational

512 01:04:25.460 ⇒ 01:04:47.220 Uttam Kumaran: type projects that I just don’t like know, like even how to like sell that or the process. And I’m sort of figuring that out as I go. We’re getting those conversations, though. But I probably go to too deep, too fast, and what they probably want is more like a higher level partner to understand all their processes like, I don’t know. That’s kind of like where I’m thinking, you know.

513 01:04:47.780 ⇒ 01:05:04.719 Justin Sitzer: Yeah, no, for for sure. I I totally understand where you’re coming from. And yeah, that’s I think that is a great complimentary thing that we have, too, because, like I, I was kind of born and raised in like the enterprise, transformation.

514 01:05:04.720 ⇒ 01:05:05.550 Uttam Kumaran: Hmm, okay.

515 01:05:05.550 ⇒ 01:05:12.639 Justin Sitzer: And and process transformation. So like working directly with C-suite executives out of, like.

516 01:05:13.560 ⇒ 01:05:16.610 Justin Sitzer: you know, half a billion dollar company.

517 01:05:16.610 ⇒ 01:05:16.980 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

518 01:05:16.980 ⇒ 01:05:19.239 Justin Sitzer: Us right and and like

519 01:05:19.260 ⇒ 01:05:44.337 Justin Sitzer: really looking at like across different departments, and like trying to make the like internal consulting, trying to sell the board of directors on new software that should be adopted or new processes that should be automated, things like that. And helping launch programs like, I launched a generative AI program and intelligent automation program. And like,

520 01:05:44.770 ⇒ 01:06:08.809 Justin Sitzer: you know, I’ve seen like a lot of different types of processes. And I kind of know what what those C-suite level people are looking for in order to make a decision. And so I’ve gotten good at that in my world, at least, like, I have a really high success rate of like, if I have an idea, I typically can get that idea conveyed very well. And like.

521 01:06:08.810 ⇒ 01:06:09.470 Justin Sitzer: yeah.

522 01:06:09.470 ⇒ 01:06:21.119 Justin Sitzer: I think you know from that standpoint, like I’d even be. You know. I’m an open book, too, man like I I’d love to talk to you about like you know.

523 01:06:21.920 ⇒ 01:06:25.090 Justin Sitzer: brain dump on you with with that kind of.

524 01:06:25.090 ⇒ 01:06:25.940 Uttam Kumaran: Totally.

525 01:06:25.940 ⇒ 01:06:26.740 Justin Sitzer: So.

526 01:06:26.880 ⇒ 01:06:32.300 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. And I mean, honestly, even, I’ll probably ask you if you have any recommendations for books, or like

527 01:06:32.520 ⇒ 01:06:35.280 Uttam Kumaran: more canonical resources on that world

528 01:06:35.500 ⇒ 01:06:41.059 Uttam Kumaran: like I would eat that up. So like, yeah, if there’s anything that comes to mind. Like, yeah.

529 01:06:41.060 ⇒ 01:06:45.165 Justin Sitzer: Yeah, I do have some books. i i i’ll give you

530 01:06:45.620 ⇒ 01:07:03.930 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t care if they’re bone dry and boring dude, I would read it. I don’t care. In fact, like those are the books that probably people are like they get 2 pages, and they’re like, after this. This is horrible, like I read like books on, like how to start like consulting firms from like the seventies, just like trying to read. Figure out what it is. This is.

531 01:07:04.950 ⇒ 01:07:09.026 Justin Sitzer: No, definitely. I hear you, man. I I think

532 01:07:09.850 ⇒ 01:07:15.570 Justin Sitzer: So there’s 2 books I’ll give you right now. Ingrain AI.

533 01:07:16.120 ⇒ 01:07:16.920 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

534 01:07:17.150 ⇒ 01:07:18.959 Justin Sitzer: That one. I I

535 01:07:19.240 ⇒ 01:07:44.939 Justin Sitzer: I’m not done with it yet, but that was actually recommended by to me by our head of tax at Ey by the head of financial services tax and and actually, and it was recommended to me. She recommended it to the head of tax technology who recommended it to me. And it’s pretty good. It’s it’s like scalable prompting that’s really like the.

536 01:07:44.940 ⇒ 01:07:45.370 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

537 01:07:45.370 ⇒ 01:07:56.659 Justin Sitzer: It’s like, really, really like. And I think there’s some really good concepts in there. I don’t think they get as granular as I’d like, but the framework that they lay out is

538 01:07:56.660 ⇒ 01:08:18.349 Justin Sitzer: pretty effective, and I’ve implemented it a bit. And and I do like it a lot. And then the business transformation playbook. That one is more I use as like a guide sometimes like, I don’t know if that’s totally relevant for you. But it is definitely that the the systems and

539 01:08:18.500 ⇒ 01:08:32.020 Justin Sitzer: thought processes in that book are definitely more on the Enterprise side, like he’s talking about how to transform like a business like at the Enterprise level. So give those, give those a shot.

540 01:08:32.029 ⇒ 01:08:35.735 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, I will. Next time we talk I’ll let you know what I think.

541 01:08:36.000 ⇒ 01:08:40.460 Justin Sitzer: Yeah, man, and and I’ll definitely read the the books that you recommended too.

542 01:08:40.460 ⇒ 01:08:41.630 Uttam Kumaran: Great Great.

543 01:08:41.630 ⇒ 01:08:44.919 Justin Sitzer: And then just like, I don’t know if you’ve read 5 types of wealth.

544 01:08:45.540 ⇒ 01:08:46.350 Uttam Kumaran: No.

545 01:08:46.359 ⇒ 01:08:47.589 Justin Sitzer: Oh, man! That.

546 01:08:47.590 ⇒ 01:08:48.020 Uttam Kumaran: Good.

547 01:08:48.029 ⇒ 01:08:49.239 Justin Sitzer: I go? Oh, yeah, that’s.

548 01:08:49.240 ⇒ 01:08:57.699 Uttam Kumaran: Dude. I’m a sucker for all these books. It’s just like I did a so much personal like. I read a lot of personal finance. I read a lot of like self-help.

549 01:08:57.700 ⇒ 01:08:58.020 Justin Sitzer: Oh, yeah.

550 01:08:58.029 ⇒ 01:09:06.349 Uttam Kumaran: Growing up and like into my college years. But then I cut you realize, like every book is basically like an adaptation of like 7 habits or.

551 01:09:06.350 ⇒ 01:09:06.890 Justin Sitzer: Yeah.

552 01:09:06.890 ⇒ 01:09:17.760 Uttam Kumaran: How to win friends. So after a while, you’re like these guys are just saying they’re just using curse words now, but like they’re not saying the same thing. So I’m kind of like I feel like I helped myself enough.

553 01:09:18.479 ⇒ 01:09:34.849 Uttam Kumaran: And then I started doing a lot of business books like, but then I also dude. I read a lot of like business crime stuff like there’s a lot of really great like financial crime, and like organized crime stuff that that’s more on, like the realistic fiction stuff, or realistic, like more like nonfiction that I like to read and.

554 01:09:34.850 ⇒ 01:09:35.310 Justin Sitzer: Yeah.

555 01:09:36.014 ⇒ 01:09:36.709 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

556 01:09:40.109 ⇒ 01:09:44.349 Justin Sitzer: Well, what I’ll say about 5 types of 5 types of wealth is like

557 01:09:44.779 ⇒ 01:10:01.010 Justin Sitzer: he has a really good structured framework for explaining the concepts, and like the whole book, is basically about like everyone. Everyone thinks of wealth, they think of financial wealth. But he’s like this is your new scoreboard. Essentially, like, you know, there’s different pillars of wealth like.

558 01:10:01.010 ⇒ 01:10:01.330 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

559 01:10:01.330 ⇒ 01:10:13.870 Justin Sitzer: Social wealth, time, wealth, etc. You know physical wealth, and and so like. He kind of gives you that framework on like how to measure yourself, but like not in a

560 01:10:14.170 ⇒ 01:10:28.900 Justin Sitzer: weird way like it’s it’s very much so like, tell the story like, explain the concept. There’s like 3 pillars within this overarching pillar, and then maybe 3 within those. And then that’s it. That’s the chapter.

561 01:10:28.900 ⇒ 01:10:37.349 Uttam Kumaran: But then, how does he like reflect on doing something like a business? Where for me, you know, I think about like when people say, like you’re in college, you can only like.

562 01:10:37.500 ⇒ 01:10:39.440 Uttam Kumaran: eat, sleep.

563 01:10:39.790 ⇒ 01:10:54.448 Uttam Kumaran: or like, what is it like? Eat, sleep, study, or like socialize, and you get to like, pick what you know, whatever like, how does he does he? Does he talk a little bit about like? Because, you know, you know, when I when I even started this business, you know. I told my my girlfriend.

564 01:10:54.950 ⇒ 01:11:04.129 Uttam Kumaran: I was like, Look, something has to go. And so it’s not gonna be you. And it’s not gonna be my family. So it’s probably my friends, and it’s probably like

565 01:11:04.390 ⇒ 01:11:28.109 Uttam Kumaran: going to the like you have to pick. So it’s like, Do you not sleep? Do you not go to the gym, you know, travel like, and I I was very blunt with like I’m like, here’s what I think it’s going to be, and she’s like, No, no, like you don’t have to do that like. And I’m like, no, it’s actually really helpful for me to like. Say that up front, because when the time comes it’s easier to be like I made a choice, you know, but I don’t. And this is where, like again. I’m not talented enough to do this

566 01:11:28.440 ⇒ 01:11:43.839 Uttam Kumaran: in 6, 8 HA day like or maybe I’m wasting a lot of my time. I’m inefficient, which I’m telling him. I feel pretty hot these days. I feel pretty good like bouncing around meetings. I feel pretty efficient, and I read every book about CEO time, and

567 01:11:44.060 ⇒ 01:11:50.070 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know everybody. All it reads is that one thing they do is they just get up earlier. It seems like.

568 01:11:50.070 ⇒ 01:11:50.680 Uttam Kumaran: yeah.

569 01:11:50.680 ⇒ 01:11:58.989 Uttam Kumaran: And like, I get up at 7, I mean, maybe I gotta get up like David Gaga to get up like 3 Am. Or something like that’s probably the only thing I can do at this point I tried everything. I

570 01:11:59.230 ⇒ 01:12:08.130 Uttam Kumaran: you know I drink green juice every day. You know I do all this stuff, so it’s at some point I think it was. I’m interested to read that, just to understand, like

571 01:12:08.520 ⇒ 01:12:13.220 Uttam Kumaran: you’d be able to kind of compartmentalize, but also understand like what the trade-offs are making are, you know.

572 01:12:13.510 ⇒ 01:12:14.290 Justin Sitzer: Yeah.

573 01:12:15.270 ⇒ 01:12:21.819 Uttam Kumaran: But also I kind of tell her that like, look at this is like a kind of a lottery ticket that I kind of have a little bit of control over the odds.

574 01:12:22.590 ⇒ 01:12:27.769 Uttam Kumaran: And you know I say lottery ticket, because I think it is quite a bit of luck, but

575 01:12:28.070 ⇒ 01:12:32.599 Uttam Kumaran: I feel like every few months or every 6 months. I’m scratching off like another number.

576 01:12:32.740 ⇒ 01:12:35.729 Uttam Kumaran: you know, and that’s how I feel. And so I said, like.

577 01:12:36.000 ⇒ 01:12:38.710 Uttam Kumaran: if you, if this were to hit, and you were to look back.

578 01:12:38.940 ⇒ 01:12:41.109 Uttam Kumaran: who would say that it wasn’t worth it?

579 01:12:41.210 ⇒ 01:12:46.330 Uttam Kumaran: But when you’re in the moment yeah, it seems like what the fuck like it seems really tough.

580 01:12:46.540 ⇒ 01:12:47.410 Uttam Kumaran: But

581 01:12:47.960 ⇒ 01:12:54.000 Uttam Kumaran: I think that’s that’s just the feeling of it, you know. So definitely I’ll I’ll I’ll read that book, and that sounds amazing.

582 01:12:54.420 ⇒ 01:12:57.349 Justin Sitzer: Yeah. Man, just read the 1st chapter time, wealth.

583 01:12:57.350 ⇒ 01:12:58.539 Justin Sitzer: Okay, okay, that’s nice.

584 01:12:58.540 ⇒ 01:13:00.029 Justin Sitzer: And see if you want to keep going. Man.

585 01:13:00.030 ⇒ 01:13:07.979 Uttam Kumaran: I will skip the 1st chapter. I’ll skip just to the money. Well, section.

586 01:13:07.980 ⇒ 01:13:08.779 Justin Sitzer: Man, I’m in it for.

587 01:13:09.223 ⇒ 01:13:13.210 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I’m more of a 1 pillar type. Guy.

588 01:13:18.070 ⇒ 01:13:19.223 Justin Sitzer: That’s good.

589 01:13:20.740 ⇒ 01:13:23.850 Justin Sitzer: Yeah, man dude. I

590 01:13:24.020 ⇒ 01:13:29.216 Justin Sitzer: it’s it’s been. It’s been awesome talking to you. We have. We have a lot more to talk about

591 01:13:30.850 ⇒ 01:13:38.309 Justin Sitzer: I don’t know. How do. How do you want to do this like for me, like I’d love to connect again like next month, or something, or.

592 01:13:38.310 ⇒ 01:14:04.920 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, let’s put, maybe just throw something on the calendar like this same time next month, on the Monday of that week I will let you know what the deal is, if usually that’s like what’s probably best. And then, yeah, my number is also, I think, in my email signature. If not, I will email you but feel free to shoot me a text like, if you text me, I will get back to you at length, like I read everything. It’s just. I literally only have.

593 01:14:05.050 ⇒ 01:14:11.310 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, as I mentioned, I have probably like 1012 h of decent time a day, and usually I’m between like

594 01:14:11.650 ⇒ 01:14:15.239 Uttam Kumaran: 2 to 6 h in meetings. Someday. So

595 01:14:15.480 ⇒ 01:14:28.880 Uttam Kumaran: I’m I. I basically every organizational ounce of my body and every charisma in my body goes to that so I want to make sure I’m I’m alert, and I I can be a good hang. So.

596 01:14:28.880 ⇒ 01:14:33.869 Justin Sitzer: I appreciate you, saying that I would have, I would expect nothing less.

597 01:14:34.173 ⇒ 01:14:46.609 Uttam Kumaran: Like my house is a mess like I gotta go do laundry. I got a vacuum like everything goes to the company, and I’m a fairly organized person like, but that’s why, like our whole company, runs on notion like

598 01:14:46.710 ⇒ 01:14:53.249 Uttam Kumaran: we. We keep things pretty tight, but it’s that’s where everything all my capacity goes.

599 01:14:53.250 ⇒ 01:14:54.830 Justin Sitzer: Are you messing with air table.

600 01:14:55.500 ⇒ 01:15:04.120 Uttam Kumaran: Not really because we don’t do a lot like we use Google sheets for any spreadsheet work. But we build a lot of stuff ourselves like we’ll vibe code. Pretty simple

601 01:15:04.330 ⇒ 01:15:11.570 Uttam Kumaran: front end apps if we need it. I know air table. You can do apps. And I also saw that they sort of released like a bolt kind of product.

602 01:15:12.333 ⇒ 01:15:26.709 Uttam Kumaran: You know, where you could type in whatever you want to make but for us, like, you know we started, we started to get a little better where I have a couple of people on the team now. So if I like to crack idea, we can typically get something, live coded pretty easy and get it going.

603 01:15:28.800 ⇒ 01:15:42.930 Uttam Kumaran: but we use notion for a lot of stuff, and then everything’s all the codes on Github. We use slack for everything. And then we shove all of that into a vector database to put rag over. So you can ask a question about, like the whole company about any specific client.

604 01:15:43.140 ⇒ 01:15:48.759 Uttam Kumaran: So just kind of building a team of agents that are like running around in our slack, basically.

605 01:15:48.760 ⇒ 01:15:49.500 Justin Sitzer: Yeah.

606 01:15:49.600 ⇒ 01:15:50.410 Justin Sitzer: Sick.

607 01:15:50.410 ⇒ 01:15:51.240 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

608 01:15:51.240 ⇒ 01:15:54.179 Justin Sitzer: Nick, man, are you using cursor or.

609 01:15:54.180 ⇒ 01:15:56.070 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Everybody’s using cursor.

610 01:15:56.070 ⇒ 01:15:56.500 Justin Sitzer: Yeah.

611 01:15:56.500 ⇒ 01:16:02.859 Uttam Kumaran: That’s I. I don’t. I think. There, it’s like minimal between windsurf cursor and like aider and stuff like that. So

612 01:16:03.010 ⇒ 01:16:07.010 Uttam Kumaran: whatever pick with cursor stick stuck with it. That’s probably what we’ll use

613 01:16:07.170 ⇒ 01:16:13.430 Uttam Kumaran: unless something’s like way better. But the technical work we’re doing I don’t. It’s not the hardest stuff I’ve done in my career. So.

614 01:16:13.430 ⇒ 01:16:14.140 Justin Sitzer: Yeah.

615 01:16:14.140 ⇒ 01:16:26.860 Uttam Kumaran: It’s pretty good the way it is. But for me, more of the concern is that, like not everyone in my company is like addicted to using it like I am. So more of my job is like showing how to use it, pushing people to use it more

616 01:16:28.430 ⇒ 01:16:36.360 Uttam Kumaran: versus like I feel like I’m good like I get in there. I can do stuff very fast, but other people just have never seen it, you know, because a lot of people we hire like they’re not.

617 01:16:36.550 ⇒ 01:16:58.780 Uttam Kumaran: They don’t come from AI backgrounds or company may prevented them, but they’re interested, so kind of trying to take advantage of the curiosity. But we’re gonna start measuring. Who’s using cursor? Who’s using the agents and like how much like we’re gonna start doing analytics? Probably by the end of this quarter we’ll have analytics on number of meetings, number of tickets, and number of people engaging with the AI who’s engaging with like, we’ll have all that, so it’ll be kind of hard to hide. I feel like.

618 01:16:59.150 ⇒ 01:16:59.990 Justin Sitzer: Yeah.

619 01:17:01.840 ⇒ 01:17:05.880 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s nice.

620 01:17:06.000 ⇒ 01:17:14.500 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, alright dude. I’m gonna run. But yeah, shoot me an email, or or just send me a calendar invite for same time next month, and then, yeah, shoot me a text.

621 01:17:14.500 ⇒ 01:17:18.210 Justin Sitzer: It’ll it’ll probably be like mid August, because I’m getting married like.

622 01:17:18.210 ⇒ 01:17:26.929 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, that’s right. That’s right. Dude. Whenever yeah, focus on that dude, well, focus on your pillars. For now, like I still got them focus on the pillars.

623 01:17:27.320 ⇒ 01:17:32.040 Uttam Kumaran: And yeah, that’s awesome. Dude congrats. Where’s the wedding?

624 01:17:32.370 ⇒ 01:17:35.090 Justin Sitzer: It’s Gonna be in Jamaica. And then we go to Italy for 2 weeks.

625 01:17:35.090 ⇒ 01:17:38.129 Uttam Kumaran: Wow! Let’s go. That’s awesome. Dude.

626 01:17:38.130 ⇒ 01:17:38.520 Justin Sitzer: Yeah.

627 01:17:38.520 ⇒ 01:17:39.029 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, yeah.

628 01:17:39.030 ⇒ 01:17:39.790 Justin Sitzer: Excited.

629 01:17:40.520 ⇒ 01:17:41.700 Justin Sitzer: New. Chapter, man, yeah.

630 01:17:41.700 ⇒ 01:17:44.420 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, that’s great. Always new chapters. That’s good.

631 01:17:44.420 ⇒ 01:17:45.160 Justin Sitzer: Yeah.

632 01:17:45.510 ⇒ 01:17:46.379 Justin Sitzer: Alright. Man.

633 01:17:46.380 ⇒ 01:17:48.629 Uttam Kumaran: Alright dude! Great talking to you. I’ll talk to you soon.

634 01:17:48.630 ⇒ 01:17:49.769 Justin Sitzer: Alright talk soon, bye.