2025-08-12_brainforge_x_ab_consulting_project_plann_cd30190a

Meeting Title: Brainforge x AB Consulting Project Planning Date: 2025-08-12 Meeting participants: Uttam Kumaran, nbromber, abie, Robert Tseng

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WEBVTT

1 00:00:41.450 ⇒ 00:00:42.330 nbromber: Hello.

2 00:00:42.830 ⇒ 00:00:43.770 Uttam Kumaran: Hey!

3 00:00:43.770 ⇒ 00:00:44.970 nbromber: Hey, Tom, how are you?

4 00:00:44.970 ⇒ 00:00:46.269 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, good, how are you?

5 00:00:46.520 ⇒ 00:00:47.400 nbromber: Okay.

6 00:00:49.670 ⇒ 00:00:51.059 Uttam Kumaran: How’s life this week?

7 00:00:52.020 ⇒ 00:00:55.830 nbromber: Nice! Hot up… it’s hot up here.

8 00:00:55.830 ⇒ 00:00:59.239 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, yeah, and it’s always, it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s…

9 00:00:59.570 ⇒ 00:01:03.450 Uttam Kumaran: Like, 105 up down here, so….

10 00:01:03.450 ⇒ 00:01:08.529 nbromber: Well, I say hot, I’m talking about, like, 90, but still… warm.

11 00:01:08.890 ⇒ 00:01:09.750 Uttam Kumaran: Nice.

12 00:01:12.090 ⇒ 00:01:13.929 nbromber: There is AB.

13 00:01:13.930 ⇒ 00:01:16.769 abie: Hello! Let me get on camera.

14 00:01:18.060 ⇒ 00:01:21.689 abie: No, I’m in my office, so I can actually… How you guys doing?

15 00:01:21.690 ⇒ 00:01:22.620 Uttam Kumaran: Good!

16 00:01:23.480 ⇒ 00:01:24.619 Uttam Kumaran: How are you?

17 00:01:24.620 ⇒ 00:01:25.710 abie: Good.

18 00:01:26.770 ⇒ 00:01:28.450 nbromber: AB, how’d the move go? Good?

19 00:01:32.440 ⇒ 00:01:40.620 abie: I’m, I’m, I, I’ve alerted the children that I am not the only,

20 00:01:41.150 ⇒ 00:01:45.329 abie: I’m not the only landlord here in the mix of this whole situation, so….

21 00:01:45.360 ⇒ 00:01:48.050 nbromber: No, don’t tell them that there’s another family.

22 00:01:48.050 ⇒ 00:01:51.420 abie: So, I don’t know if you told, Utem the backstory here.

23 00:01:51.420 ⇒ 00:01:52.330 Uttam Kumaran: No.

24 00:01:52.520 ⇒ 00:01:53.450 abie: …

25 00:01:53.650 ⇒ 00:02:05.650 abie: My children live in New Jersey, my daughter and her husband live in New Jersey, and the apartment they were in, the landlord decided to sell it, so… and they had to get out.

26 00:02:05.890 ⇒ 00:02:23.140 abie: And so they… and they couldn’t find another apartment, except that we found out there was another apartment in the same complex being sold by the same guy. So we ended up, … Neil and I ended up buying that apartment, and my children are all landlords, and I am getting calls.

27 00:02:23.140 ⇒ 00:02:24.110 nbromber: We are not. Like….

28 00:02:24.110 ⇒ 00:02:28.550 abie: Like, every 2 minutes. Like, ….

29 00:02:28.550 ⇒ 00:02:30.849 nbromber: As a landlord or as a father?

30 00:02:30.850 ⇒ 00:02:41.360 abie: Well, it’s like, you know, well, we wanted to make sure you were aware that, you know, the tile on the floor… we didn’t do it, but

31 00:02:42.260 ⇒ 00:02:44.240 abie: It’s like….

32 00:02:44.240 ⇒ 00:02:46.669 Uttam Kumaran: You need property managers.

33 00:02:46.670 ⇒ 00:02:54.409 abie: You know, Niels is part of this whole deal, too. No, so anyway, well, I said, you know, you have to… I said to my daughter, listen.

34 00:02:54.540 ⇒ 00:02:59.410 abie: Think of me now as your landlord. By the way, rent is due, okay?

35 00:02:59.410 ⇒ 00:03:00.810 nbromber: It may be, by the way.

36 00:03:00.810 ⇒ 00:03:03.340 abie: I know, I know, I know. I gotta, I gotta sword back.

37 00:03:03.340 ⇒ 00:03:04.030 nbromber: active.

38 00:03:04.030 ⇒ 00:03:15.559 abie: Yeah, and … and only call me when you would have called… about this when you would have called your previous landlord. Otherwise, I don’t want to hear about it, okay? So…

39 00:03:16.080 ⇒ 00:03:17.440 abie: So, anyway…

40 00:03:18.380 ⇒ 00:03:28.190 abie: That’s, hopefully this will not… well, we ended up learning some things about the apartment, that Neil and I didn’t know going into this closing.

41 00:03:28.190 ⇒ 00:03:28.620 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

42 00:03:28.620 ⇒ 00:03:29.490 abie: So, ….

43 00:03:29.490 ⇒ 00:03:41.920 Uttam Kumaran: the case, I feel like. Yeah, I’m renting this house here in Austin, but … yeah, for me, it’s the business first, and then we’ll have to figure out buying a house and everything once this gets into some sort.

44 00:03:41.920 ⇒ 00:03:48.709 abie: You want to buy a house. I can just tell you, when you can buy a house, you want to buy a house, because you’re putting money into somebody else’s pocket, right?

45 00:03:48.710 ⇒ 00:03:53.179 Uttam Kumaran: No, 100%, yeah, I would love to, and I love where I live here in Austin.

46 00:03:54.070 ⇒ 00:04:01.120 Uttam Kumaran: the… it’s actually one of the most interesting real estate markets. The prices here have sunk so much.

47 00:04:01.120 ⇒ 00:04:02.100 abie: Really?

48 00:04:02.100 ⇒ 00:04:12.739 Uttam Kumaran: And yeah, it’s kind of like the fastest dropping, just as fast as it went up during COVID, it’s dropped even below where it was pre-COVID.

49 00:04:12.960 ⇒ 00:04:27.069 Uttam Kumaran: And for a couple reasons. One, they’ve zoned… over the past few years, they did a great job with zoning, in addition to the fact that Texas builds really fast. So, there’s so much supply of, …

50 00:04:27.210 ⇒ 00:04:40.990 Uttam Kumaran: sort of affordable housing coming online. So, one-bedroom studios, two-bedroom, all these big sort of apartment buildings, yet people aren’t moving in at the same rate. And so, it’s actually a great time to be here and

51 00:04:41.610 ⇒ 00:04:44.099 Uttam Kumaran: In buying homes, because the price is….

52 00:04:44.100 ⇒ 00:04:49.550 abie: are just, like, really, really broad. That’s amazing. It’s not like the rest of the country. Are you anywhere around the university?

53 00:04:49.800 ⇒ 00:04:56.690 Uttam Kumaran: I’m just east, so, like, it’s not that far, it’s maybe… Six, seven minutes away, but….

54 00:04:56.690 ⇒ 00:04:57.440 abie: Oh, wow.

55 00:04:57.440 ⇒ 00:04:58.629 Uttam Kumaran: On the east of the highway.

56 00:04:58.630 ⇒ 00:05:05.580 abie: And that doesn’t help, the university, the kids not, you know, wanting close, close-by apartments? I mean, do they have enough dorms? Do they have….

57 00:05:05.580 ⇒ 00:05:23.269 Uttam Kumaran: There is enough doors, but there’s also enough apartment buildings. Like, the supply is really insane. Around me, they’re just opening these big… because they started building these two years ago when the demand clip was awesome, is like… and it is still a big place, but here they can keep going, like, they keep going.

58 00:05:23.290 ⇒ 00:05:25.609 abie: Ouch. It’s like San Antonio, which.

59 00:05:25.610 ⇒ 00:05:28.800 Uttam Kumaran: There’s no, yeah, there’s no general, like.

60 00:05:28.800 ⇒ 00:05:31.229 nbromber: It’s Texas Sprawl. Texas Sprawl.

61 00:05:31.230 ⇒ 00:05:40.260 abie: But they said, San Antonio did the same thing. San Antonio, I think, is one of the largest cities, you know, geographically, one of the largest cities in the country, just for that reason. They just kept moving the border.

62 00:05:40.390 ⇒ 00:05:47.959 abie: I used to travel to San Antonio a lot for business, so I know, I know the area. Okay. So, how are things going, Tom?

63 00:05:48.240 ⇒ 00:05:53.380 Uttam Kumaran: things are… things are busy, so you have on… also on the call Robert. Robert is my….

64 00:05:53.380 ⇒ 00:05:53.780 abie: Hi, Robert.

65 00:05:54.060 ⇒ 00:06:02.730 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, both of us, run Brainforce together. Robert is in… is in New York, actually, lives near Columbus Circle in the city.

66 00:06:02.890 ⇒ 00:06:05.750 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, Robert, if you want to say a quick hello.

67 00:06:05.750 ⇒ 00:06:21.709 Robert Tseng: Yeah, hey, hey guys, sorry, I’m like… I mean, I’m not in a little flattering area, let’s jump into this, … No, no problem. I was just at a… at a lunch, so… yeah, I mean, I’m in New York, I’ve been working with you, Tom, …

68 00:06:22.410 ⇒ 00:06:38.559 Robert Tseng: I mean, officially under Brainforge since, I think, almost a year now, but we’ve been… we worked together on a couple of our bigger clients when we were both starting out, kind of running our own consultancy separately, and yeah, I think we just figured we could

69 00:06:38.680 ⇒ 00:06:52.419 Robert Tseng: conquered more territory together, and it’s been a good journey so far. We’ve said great things about, I guess, Clarence, who you guys know, and then also, just like, yeah, just hype me up for this call, so I’m excited to get to know you guys, and…

70 00:06:52.530 ⇒ 00:06:55.409 Robert Tseng: Yeah, just share more about where we’re at.

71 00:06:56.920 ⇒ 00:07:02.150 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so I would say we’ve been very busy. We have…

72 00:07:02.250 ⇒ 00:07:07.989 Uttam Kumaran: The slew of issues that are… come with running a company like this, but also we’re growing.

73 00:07:08.310 ⇒ 00:07:18.040 Uttam Kumaran: You know, we’ve had some great, client conversations this week. I would say our pipeline and the amount of clients that we’re taking on are all growing. You know, last time I think we talked.

74 00:07:18.070 ⇒ 00:07:32.280 Uttam Kumaran: I sort of gave a brief overview of the business, but I’m happy to kind of go deeper onto any area. But really, you know, I think one reflection I had was… was how, Chris, you asked it, Neil, which is, okay, what do you guys need?

75 00:07:32.510 ⇒ 00:07:48.630 Uttam Kumaran: You know, that’s kind of what I talked to Robert about, and it’s more like, okay, what don’t we need? But I think where we are is, one, our number one goal is growing revenue. We’ve done a good job at hitting our, like, gross margin targets on our

76 00:07:48.960 ⇒ 00:07:52.040 Uttam Kumaran: Existing client engagements, …

77 00:07:52.150 ⇒ 00:08:09.389 Uttam Kumaran: And right now, I think we’re having, kind of, two kind of problems in terms of scaling. One is we’re trying to do a lot on the go-to-market side, deciding how we actually drum up business, get new leads in the door, build up, sort of, the cohesiveness between marketing and…

78 00:08:09.390 ⇒ 00:08:12.880 Uttam Kumaran: you know, sales, and Robert is really leading a lot of that.

79 00:08:12.880 ⇒ 00:08:19.640 Uttam Kumaran: I lead a lot of, sort of, the technical execution, kind of more opinionated on the delivery side.

80 00:08:19.640 ⇒ 00:08:30.520 Uttam Kumaran: But really, we’re also struggling in that we’re probably the more senior operators in the company, and so we… I think we’re lacking, sort of, probably two key…

81 00:08:30.590 ⇒ 00:08:37.919 Uttam Kumaran: decision makers, one, on the go-to-market side, and also on the delivery side. Someone to come in and really just

82 00:08:38.090 ⇒ 00:08:54.800 Uttam Kumaran: like, understand the services that we offer, and sort of be able to actually run some of these engagements that allow us to start to continue to do sales, which we’re not going to be giving up anytime soon. But also continue to do what we do best, which is recruit great talent and,

83 00:08:54.900 ⇒ 00:08:57.160 Uttam Kumaran: You know, continue to grow these accounts.

84 00:08:57.400 ⇒ 00:08:58.200 Uttam Kumaran: …

85 00:08:58.250 ⇒ 00:09:16.560 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s, like, probably my, like, two things. I think we’ve done a good job in that I think we’re… we’ve always held a high standard for the type of work we do. We’ve always punched above our weight in terms of, I think, the clients that we’ve been able to get. You know, I’ve only been running this business for 2 years, but, you know, if you look at our client list.

86 00:09:16.590 ⇒ 00:09:24.569 Uttam Kumaran: And a lot of the growth we’ve had in the last, you know, 6 months working together, I think you’d see that we’re onto something for sure.

87 00:09:24.820 ⇒ 00:09:36.460 Uttam Kumaran: And then the last piece is really, like, all the work that we’re doing internally to try to run, like, an AI native consultancy. I think that is both, I think, the… a huge opportunity, but also

88 00:09:36.570 ⇒ 00:09:42.060 Uttam Kumaran: Kind of always is coming secondary to the work we do for clients, because the clients pay the bills, you know?

89 00:09:42.220 ⇒ 00:09:58.719 Uttam Kumaran: And that’s something where I’m really passionate about, and I’m most involved in, is like, how do we run… how do we see how we can extract another 10, 20 points of margin in running that, and then maybe also, you know, improve how many employees we have to have to actually run this type of business, but…

90 00:09:58.820 ⇒ 00:10:00.140 Uttam Kumaran: That’s sort of a lot.

91 00:10:00.780 ⇒ 00:10:01.460 Uttam Kumaran: You’re away.

92 00:10:01.700 ⇒ 00:10:05.499 abie: It’s funny, because this is the second time today I am here.

93 00:10:05.900 ⇒ 00:10:10.690 abie: our head of infrastructure, is, is leaving, and I just got

94 00:10:11.570 ⇒ 00:10:26.169 abie: So we… I mean, we have a lot of infrastructure, we got data centers, we run data… one of the things we do is we have our own data centers, and we’re moving… and now we’re moving one to CoreSight, which is a well-known data center provider, and the guy who’s supposed to be responsible for it is leaving.

95 00:10:26.330 ⇒ 00:10:36.520 abie: And I just got tapped on the shoulder to take that on, which will be fun. But one of the things he said is exactly what you’ve said, which is he has spent so much time

96 00:10:36.570 ⇒ 00:10:51.100 abie: on, you know, dealing with issues that our customers have that he hasn’t created the efficiencies in the way he operates the team that would have actually, if he would have focused in on that, would have made the space for dealing with those other issues, right?

97 00:10:51.190 ⇒ 00:11:02.910 abie: So it’s the second time today I’m hearing that same, because that, you know, that’s one of the things, you know, I’ve always, you know, you gotta create the efficiencies, otherwise you’re never gonna… you’re always gonna just continue to fall behind the eight ball.

98 00:11:02.910 ⇒ 00:11:11.690 abie: further and further, right? And you can’t keep up. So that’s… it’s really key to figure out how, even if sometimes it means bringing consultants.

99 00:11:12.000 ⇒ 00:11:25.679 abie: Like I said, I do that here. I’ll bring in consultants to sort of just get ahead, you know, make the progress on some things while the rest of the team is dealing with day-to-day issues, because otherwise we’ll never get to a place where they can catch up.

100 00:11:25.790 ⇒ 00:11:37.429 abie: And do things the way that need… that they need to be done. And best practices, all that kind of stuff. That’s the other thing that, you know, sometimes people can bring to the table that might not even be obviously around the time to figure out the best practices, because

101 00:11:37.610 ⇒ 00:11:45.810 abie: That’s, you know, that might be an area that some folks, you know, specialize in, or have just been practicing so well for a while that they could just help implement it quickly.

102 00:11:45.970 ⇒ 00:11:57.539 abie: capture the SOPs, you know, how do we, you know, how do we need to run this stuff? And then the team just has to pick up on it and take that forward. But it’s just funny that I’ve just heard the same conversation not long ago today.

103 00:11:57.900 ⇒ 00:12:15.510 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, I think we… you know, I always wanted to invest in, sort of, this, like, platform approach, and I think we did a really good job, and, you know, actually, a lot of what we did for ourselves, we turned into revenue, and then we went and sold it as AI services. That’s great. We learned how to do that because we did it for ourselves, you know?

104 00:12:15.510 ⇒ 00:12:18.269 abie: In that sense, I think it was ROI positive, but….

105 00:12:18.360 ⇒ 00:12:32.019 Uttam Kumaran: as soon as we start selling them, then we have all these clients, and I think we’re just, like, we’re in this, like, limbo where we get another client, and then we have to, like, hire one more person, and then we’re never getting me and Robert out of anything in order to kind of make bigger moves.

106 00:12:32.180 ⇒ 00:12:37.279 Uttam Kumaran: We’re still here project managing some clients, we’re still here doing some work here and there.

107 00:12:37.710 ⇒ 00:12:42.890 Uttam Kumaran: And, yeah, I think we can slowly climb our way up, but we’re sort of, like, struggling in this rut.

108 00:12:43.180 ⇒ 00:12:51.499 nbromber: You’re the equivalent to partners at a firm that don’t have the pyramid underneath them. Yeah.

109 00:12:51.700 ⇒ 00:12:54.620 nbromber: And that… that’s not a scalable…

110 00:12:55.130 ⇒ 00:13:06.060 nbromber: Obviously, that’s not a scalable business model. You know, I obviously came from the bigger firms. The bigger firms will hire hundreds of people at entry level every year.

111 00:13:06.580 ⇒ 00:13:12.840 nbromber: With the assumption that 50% of those entry-level people aren’t going to make it past 3 or 4 years from there.

112 00:13:12.840 ⇒ 00:13:32.819 nbromber: But the other 50% of the people, right, they go from staff to senior to manager to senior manager to eventually partner or manager director, which is relatively flat, if you think about it from an organizational perspective. But by the time you get to the level of, like, manager, which is kind of 4 years into your career, you are perfectly capable of running a day-to-day project.

113 00:13:32.820 ⇒ 00:13:33.320 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

114 00:13:33.320 ⇒ 00:13:34.720 nbromber: With limited oversight.

115 00:13:34.970 ⇒ 00:13:48.910 nbromber: Right? And for the bigger projects and the bigger clients, that’s where the senior managers come in. Those senior managers usually have a couple managers under them, right? Yeah. You’re never going to be able to grow out of, kind of, that manager, senior manager, day-to-day position, even though you’re also the partner.

116 00:13:49.130 ⇒ 00:13:49.870 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

117 00:13:49.870 ⇒ 00:14:07.499 nbromber: Which, you know, requires a lot of your time, I would bet, to, number one, run the business efficiently, run the operation efficiently, as well as chase down leads, take care of marketing, take care of your employees, care and feeding of them, and all those things that you need to do. Impossible to do that if you are actually stuck

118 00:14:07.800 ⇒ 00:14:15.699 nbromber: And I don’t say stuck in a bad way, stuck delivering project. Now, obviously, most of the clients that hire you probably want to see you regularly.

119 00:14:15.940 ⇒ 00:14:27.430 nbromber: Right? Which… which is another challenge, which is how do you actually turn to the point where you’re a brand, they recognize that you’re not there, but your fingerprints are all over everything.

120 00:14:27.840 ⇒ 00:14:28.460 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

121 00:14:28.920 ⇒ 00:14:34.300 nbromber: Right? Yeah, and that, that’s, that is definitely a growing pain that you…

122 00:14:34.300 ⇒ 00:14:50.489 nbromber: that you are going to, … it’s probably going to take a while for you to get out of that. So, going back to the question, Tom, I mean, you mentioned a lot of things. How would you prioritize it? And then, you know, really, I think what AB and I are interested in is how can we help you, you know.

123 00:14:50.870 ⇒ 00:15:07.370 nbromber: you either think this through and, you know, get involved. You’ve given more thought to that? Because I had categorized it last time, and I talked about the idea of, is this an investment issue? Are you looking for investment? Are you looking for our years of expertise?

124 00:15:07.380 ⇒ 00:15:19.299 nbromber: In both the sales, marketing, delivery areas. We talked last about… last time about your infrastructure, which allows you to run your internal operations efficiently.

125 00:15:19.530 ⇒ 00:15:23.479 nbromber: Right? And the idea of maybe that is a product where you can take out

126 00:15:23.660 ⇒ 00:15:33.109 nbromber: Right? Product… productizing something is obviously a lot more scalable than the idea… scalable, a lot more scalable more quickly than the idea of…

127 00:15:33.220 ⇒ 00:15:37.000 nbromber: Trying to onesie-twosie build a consultancy.

128 00:15:37.250 ⇒ 00:15:37.570 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

129 00:15:38.170 ⇒ 00:15:44.120 nbromber: So, those are the areas that we talked about last time. You mentioned pretty much all of those things just now in your.

130 00:15:44.120 ⇒ 00:15:45.150 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, yeah.

131 00:15:45.490 ⇒ 00:15:49.059 nbromber: The question is, if you were to prioritize it, right?

132 00:15:49.610 ⇒ 00:15:51.890 nbromber: Where would you prioritize first?

133 00:15:52.550 ⇒ 00:15:56.549 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, for me, part of it is, like.

134 00:15:56.550 ⇒ 00:16:14.510 Uttam Kumaran: One, I think we are, and I hate to blame, sort of, people, but I think we are missing, sort of, one or two people in the middle management world that are, like, two to three steps ahead where we are, have an interest in coming and running a big part of a company like this.

135 00:16:14.510 ⇒ 00:16:16.640 Uttam Kumaran: And taking us to, like, what would be…

136 00:16:16.640 ⇒ 00:16:22.140 Uttam Kumaran: two to three times revenue from where we’re at. Like, we… I think we have… like, we don’t need help on, like.

137 00:16:22.150 ⇒ 00:16:32.900 Uttam Kumaran: producing case studies, we don’t need help on executing engineering, like, it’s actually the fact that it’s solely happening. We need, like, shrinking the time between.

138 00:16:33.450 ⇒ 00:16:34.080 nbromber: Right.

139 00:16:34.080 ⇒ 00:16:46.410 Uttam Kumaran: closing deals, and then also, like, I think me and Robert are still extremely skilled at going and getting sales. We’re able to get in front of people and do that. It’s actually just, like, closing those, and then making sure those run well.

140 00:16:46.410 ⇒ 00:16:56.359 Uttam Kumaran: And then third, it’s like, I need to go focus on running the business, right? The actual operations and the entirety of the business. So that’s one. I think it’s the expertise there.

141 00:16:56.360 ⇒ 00:17:14.490 Uttam Kumaran: or being able to say, hey, we have, like, for example, if you guys say, hey, I have a perfect person for this, they would come in and they could run some part of this. That would be really interesting. I think second, investment is, like, also an interest. You know, I don’t… we haven’t raised any money for this business. It’s completely bootstrapped.

142 00:17:14.910 ⇒ 00:17:19.399 Uttam Kumaran: And, you know, I haven’t really, to date, been interested in raising

143 00:17:19.660 ⇒ 00:17:23.239 Uttam Kumaran: Money from venture or anything, where it’s sort of just, …

144 00:17:23.530 ⇒ 00:17:30.459 Uttam Kumaran: we have another boss, right? For me, it’s like, the part of it is that I think we’ve been able to get to this point

145 00:17:30.620 ⇒ 00:17:37.050 Uttam Kumaran: And just sort of pulled money out of thin air and built all this, and so it’s a good show of, like, what’s possible, but for me.

146 00:17:37.280 ⇒ 00:17:45.720 Uttam Kumaran: could we… could we start to double in 5 years, maybe? But what if we could try to do that another 6 months, right? Like, what would that take? And we’re still having the classic…

147 00:17:46.190 ⇒ 00:17:58.059 Uttam Kumaran: like, building problems of, we have cash flow, like, we have contractor payments that need to go out, we have stuff that needs to come in, that’s always a challenge every month, like, you know, stuff like that. It’s just….

148 00:17:58.060 ⇒ 00:17:58.750 nbromber: stuff.

149 00:17:58.790 ⇒ 00:18:12.529 Uttam Kumaran: You know, but my options are, like, go to the bank, or… it’s like, I’m not interested in… I’m interested in doing stuff that’s strategic, where we can get… we can move fast, you know? So… but again, I’m…

150 00:18:12.850 ⇒ 00:18:18.289 Uttam Kumaran: Overall, I think we’re… we’ve gone this far, but we’re missing a couple of, like.

151 00:18:18.970 ⇒ 00:18:30.509 Uttam Kumaran: we’re missing someone who’s seen a little bit of this middle management piece. I don’t think we have a challenge with selling, and I think Robert can attest to, like, our pipeline, and I think we’re doing a good job there, but…

152 00:18:31.060 ⇒ 00:18:40.109 Uttam Kumaran: Something around managing these projects and bringing in, kind of, like, a head of go-to-market or head of, sort of, managing the service lines is where my head is at, but…

153 00:18:40.580 ⇒ 00:18:42.079 Uttam Kumaran: Again, I could be wrong.

154 00:18:43.490 ⇒ 00:18:47.369 abie: So, can I just ask… and this is an exercise, if you haven’t.

155 00:18:47.690 ⇒ 00:18:52.040 abie: I’d suggest. At the end of the day, you know.

156 00:18:52.330 ⇒ 00:19:01.390 abie: I know it’s sometimes hard to take the time to do these kinds of things, I don’t know if you do it, but sometimes it’s useful to sit down and write down, what are the things I had to do today

157 00:19:01.700 ⇒ 00:19:04.570 abie: That really, I think somebody else needs to be doing.

158 00:19:05.230 ⇒ 00:19:06.929 abie: Right?

159 00:19:07.230 ⇒ 00:19:13.870 abie: those things are getting in the way of your doing the things you actually really want to do, and should be doing, right? So I don’t know if you’ve…

160 00:19:14.270 ⇒ 00:19:15.779 abie: Had a chance to do that.

161 00:19:15.780 ⇒ 00:19:21.870 Uttam Kumaran: We do have a little bit of that, … I can try and just pull up kind of a version of that.

162 00:19:22.360 ⇒ 00:19:29.020 Uttam Kumaran: … Where we’ve basically done what we call the AORs, like, Area of Responsibilities.

163 00:19:29.580 ⇒ 00:19:35.010 Uttam Kumaran: Which is, like, okay, what are kind of all the core processes in the business?

164 00:19:35.560 ⇒ 00:19:42.419 Uttam Kumaran: and, like, the more you see Robert and I’s name, the worse it is, right?

165 00:19:43.020 ⇒ 00:19:45.340 nbromber: I see a lot… I see a lot of Bhutam and Rob.

166 00:19:45.340 ⇒ 00:19:51.979 Uttam Kumaran: Yes. Well, some of these are, like, executives. Okay, so this is… this area I’m okay with, but some of these areas, it’s like…

167 00:19:52.910 ⇒ 00:20:06.369 Uttam Kumaran: Especially on some of the technical pieces, a lot of the delivery pieces, and you can see some of these are unfilled. But yes, we’ve begun to sort of go through that and say, like, okay, where… who’s owning these pieces?

168 00:20:07.580 ⇒ 00:20:12.080 Uttam Kumaran: But also, it’s like, some of these are, like, we… you know, I think one of the struggles we have is

169 00:20:12.360 ⇒ 00:20:18.579 Uttam Kumaran: We have people that can do the work, but not people that can, like, think about what work needs to be done.

170 00:20:18.950 ⇒ 00:20:30.640 Uttam Kumaran: We’re filled… like, that’s what our company is filled with, I think. Part of it is inexperience, part of it is just, like, people that we’ve had in the business. And so we’re still the bottleneck

171 00:20:31.070 ⇒ 00:20:33.889 Uttam Kumaran: For what is the next thing to do?

172 00:20:34.350 ⇒ 00:20:38.480 Uttam Kumaran: Versus here’s a strategy that we own.

173 00:20:38.770 ⇒ 00:20:40.929 Uttam Kumaran: Go figure out the next thing to do.

174 00:20:41.120 ⇒ 00:20:44.170 Uttam Kumaran: However, It’s… it’s…

175 00:20:44.530 ⇒ 00:20:59.910 Uttam Kumaran: we sort of had to do that to get to this point in the business. There was no strategy until we can afford to start thinking about strategy, right? But now that we have a lot of strategy, and I think we’re able to take bigger hits, that’s what we’re… what we’re lacking is that

176 00:21:00.120 ⇒ 00:21:10.710 Uttam Kumaran: folks are still like, okay, what do I do next? And I’m like, well, we have a strategy here, you need to go execute the strategy, whatever way that means, right? And it seems like it’s mostly an inexperience issue.

177 00:21:10.760 ⇒ 00:21:23.409 Uttam Kumaran: But also, again, in talking to folks like Clarence and speaking to other folks in consulting, I feel like some of the problems we’re having are not unique to our business at all, you know? And so…

178 00:21:23.480 ⇒ 00:21:25.490 Uttam Kumaran: That’s where we’re kind of in a jam.

179 00:21:26.040 ⇒ 00:21:33.120 abie: So, is there… so, I’m just looking at the first, first one here that says unfilled. Defined performance, … was that the one? Yeah.

180 00:21:33.120 ⇒ 00:21:33.830 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

181 00:21:33.830 ⇒ 00:21:50.080 abie: Okay, so define performance benchmarks for prompt engineering, retrieval, and semantic search. Do you have someone on the team who would look at that and know what actually to do for that, or is there a brainstorming session about that? Is there a… like, what is…

182 00:21:50.190 ⇒ 00:21:58.010 abie: Because, you know, the one-liner may not, you know, it may mean a lot to you, it doesn’t necessarily mean something to somebody you want to actually do it.

183 00:21:58.360 ⇒ 00:22:04.129 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and so that’s the case, and at the moment, no. I don’t think there would be anyone opinionated enough, or…

184 00:22:04.280 ⇒ 00:22:10.579 Uttam Kumaran: who could say, like, I’m gonna own this, you know, and make sure that anytime we do this implementation, we have

185 00:22:10.700 ⇒ 00:22:11.910 Uttam Kumaran: We have these.

186 00:22:12.430 ⇒ 00:22:14.790 Uttam Kumaran: So part of it is, like, deeper…

187 00:22:15.000 ⇒ 00:22:23.199 Uttam Kumaran: subject matter expertise on the technical side. But additionally, for example, like, on… on sales, if we have

188 00:22:23.330 ⇒ 00:22:30.790 Uttam Kumaran: Like, we even only recently were able to get people to help us with follow-ups, emails.

189 00:22:30.900 ⇒ 00:22:34.430 Uttam Kumaran: But to execute, like, a larger go-to-market strategy.

190 00:22:34.720 ⇒ 00:22:48.180 Uttam Kumaran: And make sure that we’re hitting metrics week after week for LinkedIn, or for emails, or for events, right? It takes a little bit more than just someone waking up and kind of taking on tasks. Someone has to drive that heartbeat forward.

191 00:22:48.490 ⇒ 00:22:51.210 Uttam Kumaran: And right now, it’s Robert and I both doing that.

192 00:22:51.660 ⇒ 00:22:57.000 Uttam Kumaran: … And so… and for a lot of these, it’s actually just… it’s all one person.

193 00:22:57.150 ⇒ 00:23:01.949 Uttam Kumaran: So there’s not much redundancy … You know, in this.

194 00:23:06.090 ⇒ 00:23:11.340 nbromber: Yeah. Well, forget redundancy, it’s key person dependency, right? I mean…

195 00:23:11.480 ⇒ 00:23:17.689 nbromber: If… if Rico goes away, Utom, you immediately have seven times as much responsibility, right?

196 00:23:18.280 ⇒ 00:23:18.950 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

197 00:23:20.260 ⇒ 00:23:24.720 nbromber: And you’re basically the backup person for… for all of them.

198 00:23:24.720 ⇒ 00:23:29.259 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, both of us are default backup across the board.

199 00:23:30.040 ⇒ 00:23:35.890 Uttam Kumaran: But see, this is the thing, I think we can keep subbing in people at the bottom, like, as you mentioned, entry-level people.

200 00:23:36.150 ⇒ 00:23:37.630 Uttam Kumaran: But, …

201 00:23:37.770 ⇒ 00:23:49.580 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, part of, like, what I think our challenge is, is we don’t have, sort of, a general manager or someone in the middle who is, like, the manager of managers, right? Like, the… who is above… who’s in between us and the lieutenants.

202 00:23:50.240 ⇒ 00:23:50.990 Uttam Kumaran: …

203 00:23:52.900 ⇒ 00:24:04.349 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, which is a challenge, because I… because, yeah, and I think the next challenge is going to be… we’ve done a good job at explaining to clients that, yes, we are a team, and it’s sort of our fingerprints are on stuff, and I think we’ve

204 00:24:04.850 ⇒ 00:24:20.249 Uttam Kumaran: done better at that. Like, we made that transition, and we’re not selling as a business. Like, people now, they… it’s not… we’re not, like, selling us, and then we’re like, oh, you know, we’re actually doing a good job at saying, we are… we are Brainforge, you’re hiring us.

205 00:24:20.470 ⇒ 00:24:25.179 Uttam Kumaran: But getting to this next level, it’s been really challenging to get out of the day-to-day.

206 00:24:26.030 ⇒ 00:24:36.219 abie: So let me ask, these folks that you have listed here, Rico and Hannah, do they have the bandwidth to do these things, or are they already also at full capacity?

207 00:24:36.390 ⇒ 00:24:42.949 abie: So, like, if they had a better understanding as these things come onto the list as to what it is that needs to be done, is there capacity to do it?

208 00:24:43.110 ⇒ 00:24:43.650 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

209 00:24:43.760 ⇒ 00:24:47.789 Uttam Kumaran: So these are actually just the existing responsibilities now.

210 00:24:48.420 ⇒ 00:24:51.519 Uttam Kumaran: And they all have capacity to do… to do these, for sure.

211 00:24:51.520 ⇒ 00:24:52.280 abie: Okay.

212 00:24:52.280 ⇒ 00:24:52.950 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

213 00:24:53.700 ⇒ 00:25:05.310 abie: So, which are the ones on here that are falling off, that need to come off your plate? And assuming you could get them to these folks, do they have… would they have more capacity, or do you want to bring more people in to also do that work?

214 00:25:05.310 ⇒ 00:25:09.699 Uttam Kumaran: I also think this isn’t, like, it’s not a good indicator of, like, if this is being done well.

215 00:25:10.460 ⇒ 00:25:10.970 nbromber: Huh.

216 00:25:10.970 ⇒ 00:25:20.800 Uttam Kumaran: So, what you see here is, like, who’s assigned today, and what you don’t see is a little bit of, like, what are the status of these. We just kind of built this in the last few weeks.

217 00:25:21.210 ⇒ 00:25:34.049 Uttam Kumaran: But I would say our number one thing that has to get handed off is… is project… is project management, and sort of, like, basically understanding our portfolio of projects, and making sure that they’re all

218 00:25:34.490 ⇒ 00:25:38.439 Uttam Kumaran: they’re all on rails. It’s not something that we can… we’re, like….

219 00:25:38.440 ⇒ 00:25:41.310 abie: We’re there, still in the background. Yep, yep, yep.

220 00:25:41.310 ⇒ 00:25:45.270 Uttam Kumaran: It has to be someone else that is the throat to choke on that.

221 00:25:45.520 ⇒ 00:26:01.399 Uttam Kumaran: Because ultimately, none of these people, they’re all individuals, either the project manager, or the engineer, or the solutions architect, but they don’t, like, it’s not clear that any of them care, or, like, they don’t need to about the entire project. They’re just one piece.

222 00:26:02.380 ⇒ 00:26:02.980 nbromber: Right.

223 00:26:03.620 ⇒ 00:26:09.530 abie: Got it. And are there handoffs? I mean, so I don’t know, are there handoffs between them, and then… and that’s it?

224 00:26:09.530 ⇒ 00:26:27.120 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so we’re running… we’re running Agile between… for all of our projects, like, we’re running, like, mostly Sprint for a lot of stuff, like, we have everything, but still, like, I think Robert and I are… in case a project isn’t driving forward, and everybody’s pointing at the other person, we’re still the ones to be like, what’s going on here?

225 00:26:27.120 ⇒ 00:26:27.720 abie: Yeah.

226 00:26:28.280 ⇒ 00:26:34.000 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s… that’s one thing. So I think for me, it’s around project management, and then it’s around…

227 00:26:34.230 ⇒ 00:26:35.750 Uttam Kumaran: It’s around go-to-market.

228 00:26:35.750 ⇒ 00:26:44.439 abie: Yeah, so that’s the overall delivery manager, role, right? Somebody needs to really be responsible for overall delivery management of these things.

229 00:26:44.640 ⇒ 00:26:45.720 abie: ….

230 00:26:45.950 ⇒ 00:27:02.769 Uttam Kumaran: But that’s even where I think for our, you know, this would… I don’t even know what the role is that does that, right? Even to articulate that, and to understand, like, where should we go find that person, what sort of background should they have, what are… what’s the comp for that? How do we measure them?

231 00:27:02.840 ⇒ 00:27:06.860 Uttam Kumaran: That’s, like, that’s invaluable for us, because that’s what we need, right?

232 00:27:07.100 ⇒ 00:27:07.850 Uttam Kumaran: …

233 00:27:08.020 ⇒ 00:27:13.299 Uttam Kumaran: Because it’s like, how do we go from managing now 10, 15 clients to 30, 40? What is the path

234 00:27:13.610 ⇒ 00:27:19.100 Uttam Kumaran: way between that. And right now, there’s not a clear path towards that that doesn’t include

235 00:27:19.430 ⇒ 00:27:21.400 Uttam Kumaran: You know, me exploding, so….

236 00:27:21.400 ⇒ 00:27:38.270 abie: Yeah, and I would say that role also, presumably, has some, you know, customer interaction, because it’s… they need to, one, make sure… get input from the customer to ensure they’re satisfied as things are happening,

237 00:27:38.730 ⇒ 00:27:51.910 abie: And they also need to project the company, to the customer in terms of how… like, you know, I don’t know these folks that you have listed here, but often I don’t want my technical folks talking to my customers, right?

238 00:27:51.910 ⇒ 00:27:52.480 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

239 00:27:52.480 ⇒ 00:28:05.110 abie: Because they’ll get into weeds on things that the customer doesn’t even have to know about, and all of a sudden there’s a panic, right? So you need somebody who actually can monitor and really have a good sense of how things are going at a higher level.

240 00:28:05.180 ⇒ 00:28:20.650 abie: And really share what’s important with the client, and share… and not share what’s not important with the client, and just make sure the customer is comfortable, that things are moving in a way. Do you typically have payment milestones on these things? Or, like, or is it, you know, how does that work when,

241 00:28:20.650 ⇒ 00:28:25.120 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so most of our… most of our engagements are, like, fixed monthly.

242 00:28:25.450 ⇒ 00:28:26.010 abie: ….

243 00:28:26.630 ⇒ 00:28:28.470 Uttam Kumaran: And then some of them are hourly.

244 00:28:28.620 ⇒ 00:28:33.159 Uttam Kumaran: And then we… we kind of go into a typical project management motion as soon as we sign the clients.

245 00:28:33.480 ⇒ 00:28:46.879 abie: And are there SLAs? Are there, you know, what is… you know, are there metrics for measurement of quality on a monthly basis to ensure that when the customer pays, that they’re happily paying?

246 00:28:47.870 ⇒ 00:28:54.389 Uttam Kumaran: For us, internally, not really. Like, I know what they are, but we’re not… see, this is where it’s like, there’s no…

247 00:28:54.390 ⇒ 00:29:10.009 Uttam Kumaran: there’s nobody that owns the metric, because for me, I care about most, okay, how much did we… what’s going out, what’s coming in? Are we hitting margins on these projects? Similarly, I think Robert and I are the core account owners on every account, it’s either one of us, so…

248 00:29:10.130 ⇒ 00:29:21.479 Uttam Kumaran: we… you would consider us probably individual delivery managers, but we have the pulse on the client, but we’re probably the only person, except for Amber, who’s our only project manager right now, with a pulse on that.

249 00:29:22.860 ⇒ 00:29:23.520 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

250 00:29:24.260 ⇒ 00:29:34.419 abie: Can you remind me the numbers? You know, what are you guys looking at right now, revenue-wise, and then what’s the… I think you said you were, like, 20-25% profitability, is that right?

251 00:29:34.420 ⇒ 00:29:39.860 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so we’re run… we’re at about, like, a million, a million and a half, like, run rate revenue.

252 00:29:40.280 ⇒ 00:29:48.729 Uttam Kumaran: We’re all contractors in the company, so there’s, like, we haven’t hired any W-2, everybody’s contracted.

253 00:29:49.200 ⇒ 00:29:56.550 Uttam Kumaran: It’s a global workforce, so we’ve done well on maintaining pretty good cost of goods. We are achieving 40%

254 00:29:56.750 ⇒ 00:30:01.400 Uttam Kumaran: gross margin, and we have about 25% in, like, OPEX that we

255 00:30:01.920 ⇒ 00:30:19.309 Uttam Kumaran: kind of push down. I mean, we’ve been extremely scrappy in running this business. Like, we haven’t spent a dime on paid advertising. It’s all started as word of mouth, and now we’re sort of doing some more AI-driven and manual-driven go-to-market motions in order to get clients.

256 00:30:19.650 ⇒ 00:30:31.670 Uttam Kumaran: But that’s what the business is at right now. You know, our goal is to try to… our goal for this quarter is to try to get to about $110K in monthly recurring revenue.

257 00:30:31.670 ⇒ 00:30:41.319 Uttam Kumaran: By the end of the quarter. Right now, we’re at about 80. But we have the pipeline to do that, we have the metrics in place of what we need to hit to get there.

258 00:30:41.420 ⇒ 00:30:52.740 Uttam Kumaran: And that should give you a little bit of, like, what the scale is. In terms of our customers, you know, right now, we’re really focused on mid-market, like, typically this is, like, 20 to 100 million in revenue, private businesses.

259 00:30:52.900 ⇒ 00:30:55.039 Uttam Kumaran: Not saying we wouldn’t go larger, but…

260 00:30:55.450 ⇒ 00:31:01.419 Uttam Kumaran: We would just need, like, we would need bigger muscle to probably get some of the larger ticket things.

261 00:31:01.550 ⇒ 00:31:04.949 abie: So I… okay, so I’m hearing a couple things, …

262 00:31:05.500 ⇒ 00:31:08.639 abie: Are you guys pulling money out of this thing, or out of the business right now?

263 00:31:08.640 ⇒ 00:31:09.430 Uttam Kumaran: A little bit.

264 00:31:11.830 ⇒ 00:31:20.580 abie: Okay, I guess you gotta live, you gotta eat, you gotta pay rent, although it sounds rent might be pretty cheap where you are, in, in Austin over there.

265 00:31:21.450 ⇒ 00:31:29.579 abie: … So, I, … How do I ask this? So…

266 00:31:29.910 ⇒ 00:31:43.100 abie: Are you looking for financial help to bring on people who can do some of the roles, or do you think you’ve got the finances to already cover the roles? You just need help finding those… finding those people who can do the role?

267 00:31:44.110 ⇒ 00:31:49.360 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, I think what we would have to do is… it would… it would depend. Like, for me, if…

268 00:31:49.510 ⇒ 00:32:01.710 Uttam Kumaran: If we take on financial investment, and it accelerates or allows us to take a bigger risk on people, or try a couple people fast, that’s huge, because the pace at which we can do that now is really slow. We can only bring on

269 00:32:01.860 ⇒ 00:32:04.640 Uttam Kumaran: one or two of these pretty senior U.S. folks.

270 00:32:04.820 ⇒ 00:32:08.979 Uttam Kumaran: You know, slowly, right? And that’s really what this revenue goal is hitting.

271 00:32:09.100 ⇒ 00:32:09.880 Uttam Kumaran: …

272 00:32:10.940 ⇒ 00:32:21.029 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s… that’s kind of, like, where we’re at. We are… we are right now sourcing a senior project manager. I mean, certainly, I think we’ll have to go after someone on the… on the delivery side.

273 00:32:21.130 ⇒ 00:32:27.179 Uttam Kumaran: It’s something that I think if we continue to scale, we could do in, you know, 3, 4, or 5 months.

274 00:32:27.390 ⇒ 00:32:43.439 Uttam Kumaran: But I think it’s how do we pull that forward and take advantage of the opportunity? I think we are seeing the demand side, though. Like, we are getting into a lot of conversations with great clients that need the work that we’re doing on the AI and data side. So I don’t think it’s been a question of, like, do we have…

275 00:32:44.610 ⇒ 00:33:03.859 Uttam Kumaran: service market fit, you know? And are we able to actually consume that and go to market with something that people want to buy? Can we close that business? It’s the delivery that’s really been… that’s… I would… I don’t know, Robert, if you have a thought, but that’s… that’s what I would say keeps me up at night and is a huge struggle for us to kind of get out of

276 00:33:04.250 ⇒ 00:33:05.840 Uttam Kumaran: Get out of the day-to-day.

277 00:33:07.260 ⇒ 00:33:10.959 nbromber: You can sell it, but then you have to stress out about delivering.

278 00:33:12.400 ⇒ 00:33:13.095 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

279 00:33:13.790 ⇒ 00:33:15.389 nbromber: Yeah, alright, I hear ya.

280 00:33:16.840 ⇒ 00:33:31.520 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, we’ve already run our go-to-market kind of strategy by some folks, and I mean, there’s… execution is just getting smoother and smoother on that front, but whenever there’s a fire on the delivery side, go-to-market gets paused, and, you know, it’s just like…

281 00:33:32.280 ⇒ 00:33:35.469 Robert Tseng: I don’t… I feel like if we could literally just…

282 00:33:35.690 ⇒ 00:33:43.269 Robert Tseng: spend unprotected time on that front, like, we’re gonna keep bringing in business, like, we know what leverage to move there, so…

283 00:33:43.320 ⇒ 00:33:55.919 Robert Tseng: I think we are on stack to hit our new targets, so we’ve been open higher, but, you know, what’s gonna burn each time and eye out on the back end is just, like, not having the delivery, buttoned up without us being heavily involved.

284 00:33:56.720 ⇒ 00:33:59.290 abie: Hey, Tom, can you bring that list back? The, ….

285 00:33:59.290 ⇒ 00:33:59.940 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, sure, sure.

286 00:33:59.940 ⇒ 00:34:03.849 abie: a project planner. Was that ClickUp? What tool are you using?

287 00:34:03.850 ⇒ 00:34:05.799 Uttam Kumaran: This is just… this is just sheets, but I mean.

288 00:34:05.800 ⇒ 00:34:07.070 abie: Oh, so, okay.

289 00:34:10.690 ⇒ 00:34:17.390 abie: And yeah, this is out of a book I was reading. Basically, this is just, like… This is Smartsheets? Oh, this is Google Sheets. This is Google Sheets, yeah. Google Sheets, okay, got it.

290 00:34:18.060 ⇒ 00:34:21.379 abie: Okay, so if you were on here, right now.

291 00:34:21.820 ⇒ 00:34:33.959 abie: what is it that is on this list that you’re doing that you think somebody else needs to be doing? I see your name in a lot of places. Yeah, like, you also see a lot of, like, practicing everything around project management is something that I’m still pretty….

292 00:34:33.969 ⇒ 00:34:42.339 Uttam Kumaran: involved in, or we have very limited. Like, I’m still managing two projects, And, …

293 00:34:43.029 ⇒ 00:34:52.419 Uttam Kumaran: So one is just simple, just project manager expertise. Second, I think it is sort of that delivery manager that can manage the portfolio. It also is on the hook for measuring

294 00:34:53.159 ⇒ 00:34:58.479 Uttam Kumaran: You know, tasks completed, hours spent, margin, velocity.

295 00:34:59.089 ⇒ 00:35:05.029 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, kind of coming up with a status per client that we could probably review a weekly basis on what clients need help.

296 00:35:05.189 ⇒ 00:35:10.699 Uttam Kumaran: Because I don’t mind going in and parachuting to a client and saving, that’s fine, it just is like…

297 00:35:11.109 ⇒ 00:35:16.409 Uttam Kumaran: there needs to be a level built between that, you know? …

298 00:35:17.089 ⇒ 00:35:25.809 Uttam Kumaran: And that’s where I think we’re struggling. Like, spending time on the data side and AI side, like, we can recruit engineers just fine. I haven’t had a problem with that.

299 00:35:26.189 ⇒ 00:35:29.859 Uttam Kumaran: … you know, and I think the marketing side.

300 00:35:29.999 ⇒ 00:35:34.099 Uttam Kumaran: We’ve done enough over the past 6 months that a lot of this is fine, but.

301 00:35:34.100 ⇒ 00:35:34.650 abie: Okay.

302 00:35:34.650 ⇒ 00:35:41.940 Uttam Kumaran: Robert is right, is that the moment a client fire happens, everything on our sales side starts to get shaky, because

303 00:35:43.130 ⇒ 00:35:44.429 Uttam Kumaran: You know, that’s….

304 00:35:44.430 ⇒ 00:35:46.740 nbromber: I have to drop it and make sure the client’s happy.

305 00:35:46.740 ⇒ 00:35:47.370 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

306 00:35:48.160 ⇒ 00:35:54.219 abie: So this is the sales engineer, like, you know, so, like, a lot of, like, organizations have the sales engineer.

307 00:35:54.800 ⇒ 00:36:11.019 abie: who’s there… it depends on… some companies, will love them stick around for longer, but typically they’ll get the sale to happen. Somebody else then comes in, takes over the client, carries them forward, and then sells them here, is now working on the next set of… next set of potential clients, right?

308 00:36:11.390 ⇒ 00:36:12.480 abie: …

309 00:36:12.590 ⇒ 00:36:20.529 abie: It sounds like that doesn’t happen for you guys, meaning you guys get pulled into… we got… we got a client, now everybody’s focused on the client, we’re not selling.

310 00:36:20.690 ⇒ 00:36:23.080 abie: We’re not focused in the same way on the selling.

311 00:36:23.860 ⇒ 00:36:37.710 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and you know, we try to sort of get ourselves out of the sales process in terms of, like, the actual speaking to leads. I don’t know if that’s gonna happen, I don’t know if it needs to happen. We’re kind of the most passionate about the business, I think, can articulate what we deliver.

312 00:36:38.000 ⇒ 00:36:38.730 Uttam Kumaran: ….

313 00:36:38.730 ⇒ 00:36:42.049 nbromber: Well, I don’t think that’s the right place for you to remove yourself from.

314 00:36:42.050 ⇒ 00:36:46.670 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I agree, you know, and I think that’s… that’s our competitive advantage, is that we…

315 00:36:46.880 ⇒ 00:36:52.519 Uttam Kumaran: We can pitch… pitch ourselves, but the delivery is… is really where…

316 00:36:52.800 ⇒ 00:36:55.869 Uttam Kumaran: It’s… it’s struggle in that we have people with

317 00:36:56.080 ⇒ 00:37:03.389 Uttam Kumaran: you know, we have… I think we have good people that can execute, like, people… young people that are hungry, but we’ve yet to find

318 00:37:03.760 ⇒ 00:37:17.109 Uttam Kumaran: someone who can kind of be that middle management here, that can basically run… be the GM or whatever, and, like, run the delivery side of the business across our 10, 15, and we’re growing, like, you know, I think…

319 00:37:17.230 ⇒ 00:37:20.789 Uttam Kumaran: For the past 6 weeks, we’ve signed almost 1 new client every week.

320 00:37:21.500 ⇒ 00:37:27.970 Uttam Kumaran: … And those… all those expand into… into new… into bigger engagements over time, so…

321 00:37:28.350 ⇒ 00:37:34.300 Uttam Kumaran: It’s also tough, because again, the money comes in when it comes in, and then to reinvest.

322 00:37:34.460 ⇒ 00:37:36.930 Uttam Kumaran: That’s… it’s… it’s tough.

323 00:37:37.190 ⇒ 00:37:41.359 abie: what’s the best way? So, Neil and I both have a lot of experience on

324 00:37:41.540 ⇒ 00:37:48.909 abie: delivery, like, large project delivery. I mean, I’ve done this my entire life. Neil’s done it, I think, also for his entire life.

325 00:37:48.910 ⇒ 00:37:52.599 nbromber: Yup. What’s the best way for us to….

326 00:37:52.700 ⇒ 00:37:58.530 abie: Get a better feel for the deliver… for, you know, what is the current process.

327 00:37:58.530 ⇒ 00:37:59.050 Uttam Kumaran: Darren.

328 00:37:59.050 ⇒ 00:38:03.260 abie: for a project, that we could understand enough.

329 00:38:03.460 ⇒ 00:38:03.940 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

330 00:38:03.940 ⇒ 00:38:11.990 abie: That we can then take that away and think about, one, what we could bring in, whether it be ourselves, or whether it be others, or whether it be money.

331 00:38:11.990 ⇒ 00:38:12.330 Uttam Kumaran: Sure.

332 00:38:12.330 ⇒ 00:38:13.130 abie: ….

333 00:38:13.290 ⇒ 00:38:21.899 Uttam Kumaran: So we… so we have, like, a, a PMO sort of full document on how we do delivery. Happy to just share that.

334 00:38:22.020 ⇒ 00:38:26.520 Uttam Kumaran: With you, and it has everything about how we’re planning on

335 00:38:26.640 ⇒ 00:38:29.329 Uttam Kumaran: executing projects. Again, but this is really, like.

336 00:38:29.600 ⇒ 00:38:36.400 Uttam Kumaran: This is all related to delivery and project management, but not so related to, …

337 00:38:37.160 ⇒ 00:38:46.010 Uttam Kumaran: the individual services, although I can… I can get you that as well. But this doc, and I can get a few more docs that are built from our project management team.

338 00:38:46.880 ⇒ 00:38:49.310 Uttam Kumaran: Around, like, how we execute on projects.

339 00:38:49.920 ⇒ 00:38:57.430 abie: I would love it if you could share it with us, and I’m happy to sign an NDA, I’m happy to, if you want to do something in advance. Sure.

340 00:38:58.170 ⇒ 00:39:02.559 abie: But I would… I think it would give us insight to your model.

341 00:39:03.060 ⇒ 00:39:10.310 abie: And then, presumably open up, thoughts whether we ourselves could help.

342 00:39:10.520 ⇒ 00:39:20.980 abie: Whether we would find others who can help, and what, you know, it basically would help us, between ourselves, talk through what we think we can do to help you guys.

343 00:39:21.270 ⇒ 00:39:21.960 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

344 00:39:22.330 ⇒ 00:39:33.660 abie: So yeah, if you’re willing to share that, and, you know, maybe we’ll take it for a crack, we’re probably gonna have questions, and maybe even need you to walk through some of it with us after we’ve had a chance to look at it. …

345 00:39:35.040 ⇒ 00:39:36.339 abie: But I, you know.

346 00:39:36.340 ⇒ 00:39:42.020 Uttam Kumaran: One of the things, you know, one of the things I even was talking to Clarence about was… like…

347 00:39:42.220 ⇒ 00:39:55.960 Uttam Kumaran: you know, there’s kind of two paths. One, maybe we should go find somebody who’s had an EY or at a large consultancy that wants to come and run the delivery for someone like us, where, again, we’re at 10, 15 clients now, but quickly see a path

348 00:39:56.130 ⇒ 00:40:11.319 Uttam Kumaran: towards that doubling, and it’s a great place. If that person’s interested eventually to run their own consultancy, it’s a great place to figure that out, you know, lower-risk way. But also, if they want to come in and run that portfolio, it’s a great opportunity. Like, if that’s the right person to go after.

349 00:40:11.570 ⇒ 00:40:22.350 Uttam Kumaran: You know, I don’t know, that’s sort of who I was talking to him about, which was like, hey, do you have folks in your network that maybe that’s the right move for them career-wise? But I don’t know, this is where I’m like, I’m curious.

350 00:40:22.350 ⇒ 00:40:22.790 abie: Yep.

351 00:40:22.790 ⇒ 00:40:23.640 Uttam Kumaran: think about….

352 00:40:23.640 ⇒ 00:40:31.430 nbromber: I spoke to a guy yesterday, he used to work at EY, he’s bounced around a little bit, he’s been at Pfizer for the last four and a half years.

353 00:40:31.600 ⇒ 00:40:35.659 nbromber: He is a professional project manager, that’s what he’s been doing there.

354 00:40:36.680 ⇒ 00:40:41.110 nbromber: And he doesn’t… he doesn’t like the large corporation, because he thinks it’s stifling.

355 00:40:41.320 ⇒ 00:40:44.299 nbromber: No flexibility, no creativity to what he’s doing.

356 00:40:44.600 ⇒ 00:41:01.089 nbromber: That’s the type of personality I think you’re looking for. Now, the question, obviously, Tom, will all come down to, you know, can you actually compensate him in a way that makes sense? I mean, you’re talking, you know, when you get to somebody that’s 15 years into their career.

357 00:41:01.090 ⇒ 00:41:04.680 nbromber: And they are making a New York salary.

358 00:41:04.820 ⇒ 00:41:08.710 nbromber: It’s probably going to be hard to entice them into it without

359 00:41:08.970 ⇒ 00:41:10.970 nbromber: Some promise in the future, right?

360 00:41:11.360 ⇒ 00:41:11.970 Uttam Kumaran: Sure.

361 00:41:12.400 ⇒ 00:41:17.989 abie: What are you guys seeing right now for those kinds of project ma- like, the person you have right now, what are you guys.

362 00:41:17.990 ⇒ 00:41:25.550 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, so she’s really junior, she’s less than 100 grand. We’re seeing anywhere from $100to$150 for, like.

363 00:41:26.070 ⇒ 00:41:28.400 Uttam Kumaran: Fairly seasoned PS.

364 00:41:28.400 ⇒ 00:41:30.840 Robert Tseng: We’re asking for 160 to 180.

365 00:41:31.040 ⇒ 00:41:35.620 Uttam Kumaran: Some people are asking how, but that’s because they, they, like, they see AI, and they….

366 00:41:35.620 ⇒ 00:41:35.970 Robert Tseng: Alright.

367 00:41:36.410 ⇒ 00:41:40.130 Robert Tseng: I think they’re an AIPM, and that gives them a premium, and like, you know….

368 00:41:40.130 ⇒ 00:41:47.650 abie: Right, so what are they bringing to the table that’s the reason they’re deserving? I mean, are there… are PMPs? Are they, you know.

369 00:41:47.650 ⇒ 00:41:53.299 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so we try to look for PMPs, but again, it’s like being a project manager.

370 00:41:53.300 ⇒ 00:42:00.319 abie: I’m not sure I believe in that, by the way. I gotta be honest with you, I’m not sure I believe in that. I’m not a PMP, I can manage projects.

371 00:42:00.320 ⇒ 00:42:16.250 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t believe… I never was credentialed to do any job in my career, so I don’t know. But it is a filtering mechanism. If people make it past that, then I don’t care either way, also, because I was a product manager, I managed all of our projects, and I don’t have any certification, so….

372 00:42:16.250 ⇒ 00:42:17.810 nbromber: I have none. I have zero.

373 00:42:17.810 ⇒ 00:42:19.839 Uttam Kumaran: So, I do it as I go.

374 00:42:19.840 ⇒ 00:42:35.160 nbromber: I didn’t take any Six Sigma, I’m not a black belt or a green belt, I’m not a PMP. I don’t think project management needs… frankly, I’ve found that the people that are more rigorously educated in project management tend to be horrible project managers.

375 00:42:35.420 ⇒ 00:42:53.819 abie: I gotta tell you guys something. I took, this is about 6 years ago. I took, an ITIL course to be, to be certified, EIDL certified. But I didn’t take the course, actually. I mean, we brought some people in to give the course. I could… I was so busy, I couldn’t take the course. Other people took the course, and I just came in for test day, okay?

376 00:42:53.970 ⇒ 00:42:54.810 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

377 00:42:54.870 ⇒ 00:43:13.629 abie: I got 100. Two people failed, and the rest of the class, like, did, you know, like, 60s, 70s, and 80s, right? And I got 100, and not having taken a… My only point is, there’s nothing like real experience, because, you know, all this stuff is logical, and then you understand, when you read a question, what’s the…

378 00:43:13.660 ⇒ 00:43:28.810 abie: what’s the most practical way, and, you know, under the circumstances they present to you, what makes best sense, right? And just the, you know, so I just, I say this from a PMP perspective. I’ve seen a lot of PMPs who probably couldn’t manage their way out of a paper bag in reality.

379 00:43:28.970 ⇒ 00:43:33.280 abie: It’s just, you know, they took some courses. So….

380 00:43:33.720 ⇒ 00:43:48.109 Uttam Kumaran: So, the other things we’re looking for is, like, ideally prior consulting or agency experience, right? So, we’re not trying… as much as possible, I don’t want people that I work in-house as a PM. It’s much different when the people on the other side are not on your team, or maybe, like, you know, so….

381 00:43:48.110 ⇒ 00:43:48.710 abie: Totally.

382 00:43:48.710 ⇒ 00:43:50.940 nbromber: No, the client service, the client service.

383 00:43:50.940 ⇒ 00:43:51.760 Uttam Kumaran: I serve it on the.

384 00:43:51.760 ⇒ 00:43:54.379 nbromber: is a critical skill. It’s a critical skill.

385 00:43:54.380 ⇒ 00:43:54.810 abie: Right.

386 00:43:54.810 ⇒ 00:43:55.400 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

387 00:43:55.750 ⇒ 00:44:01.170 Uttam Kumaran: But also, there’s a difference between that person, who can come manage a couple projects, and someone to run

388 00:44:01.410 ⇒ 00:44:15.549 Uttam Kumaran: a little bit of larger engagement. So, for now, we’ve only been looking for that, like, lead PM, and I’ve been sort of, like, asking around for someone that could fit that mold, but those guys, again, you may have a disgruntled, big four person that’s, like.

389 00:44:15.550 ⇒ 00:44:34.169 Uttam Kumaran: I want to go around a bigger piece, and… or you may have some… you know, so that’s where I… we kind of need help even thinking about, like, who… who that person would be, but it’s also a great opportunity because we’re doing sort of leading-edge AI work. We’re doing a lot of… continue to be really great AI analytics and data work.

390 00:44:34.190 ⇒ 00:44:37.050 Uttam Kumaran: So it’s not boring stuff, it’s actually great.

391 00:44:37.100 ⇒ 00:44:38.090 Uttam Kumaran: work.

392 00:44:38.090 ⇒ 00:44:53.329 nbromber: And it’s a leaping-off point, because you see, you know, you talked about the fact that, oh, they’re going to be an AI consultant, and they want to be compensated accordingly. I think your selling point for some of these people in there is maybe you don’t have the AI experience right now. That’s something we know. We’re going to give it to you.

393 00:44:53.790 ⇒ 00:44:56.310 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, exactly. 100%.

394 00:44:56.310 ⇒ 00:45:01.259 nbromber: And they’re contractors anyway, right? You’re still not looking to hire W2 people.

395 00:45:01.500 ⇒ 00:45:06.430 nbromber: Because, by the way, then your operations go to a whole new level of complexity.

396 00:45:06.430 ⇒ 00:45:07.300 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. ….

397 00:45:08.120 ⇒ 00:45:17.449 abie: But the flip of it, Neil, on that is the person will care a lot more if they’ve got skin in the game because they’re part of a company that’s doing this, and I think…

398 00:45:17.600 ⇒ 00:45:24.229 abie: You want someone who is thinking about, you know, especially if holistically they’re responsible for the delivery.

399 00:45:24.580 ⇒ 00:45:37.780 abie: I think you just want somebody who’s got, you know, skin in the game in a bigger way, right? Because they’ll really care. Because they know they’re building, you know, they’re building a, rapport with the customers, they’re building.

400 00:45:37.780 ⇒ 00:45:43.070 Uttam Kumaran: reputation for this company. They’re not just doing a little contract and moving on to the next thing, right? Right.

401 00:45:43.070 ⇒ 00:45:53.979 abie: And that’s… and there’s real value for the organization in that, right? Because at the end of the day, you want these customers to want to bring you guys back in for the next thing, and for them to refer you to others.

402 00:45:53.980 ⇒ 00:46:11.869 nbromber: question, and Tom, maybe you said this, but I don’t think I… I must have missed it, which is, you typically sign people, they’re all contractors, do they sign on for a specific period of time? How do you structure their contract to ensure that you’re not basically throwing the knowledge away?

403 00:46:12.240 ⇒ 00:46:21.040 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so no, these are all fairly long-term contractors, like, they’re… it’s mostly contract in the fact that we’re not trying to bring on W2 folks.

404 00:46:21.040 ⇒ 00:46:24.819 nbromber: But we build a lot of camaraderie in the business, so for the most part.

405 00:46:24.910 ⇒ 00:46:42.070 Uttam Kumaran: the work we do and the way we treat people, like, people want to work here. That’s been a… it’s been a problem, and we’re not… we’re no longer getting, like, people that are doing this as a side gig, or part-time. Like, everybody’s… we’re ramping up to 40 hours and trying to be 4 parts. They’re… they’re contractors on paper.

406 00:46:42.070 ⇒ 00:46:50.919 Uttam Kumaran: So, in that sense, yes, at any moment, could they walk away? Yes. Don’t think they would do that. We’re pretty good for what we do.

407 00:46:50.940 ⇒ 00:46:51.690 nbromber: out.

408 00:46:51.690 ⇒ 00:46:58.390 Uttam Kumaran: like… but also, look, if they go somewhere else, they go somewhere else, what can I do? It’s… it’s sort of on us as the, you know?

409 00:46:58.390 ⇒ 00:47:02.229 abie: Do you have any kind of non-compete arrangements with these guys? Non-disclosure, non-competes?

410 00:47:02.230 ⇒ 00:47:05.389 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we have, like, we have all… we have all that with everybody.

411 00:47:06.560 ⇒ 00:47:08.699 Uttam Kumaran: For what we can… if we can accomplish it, yeah.

412 00:47:08.700 ⇒ 00:47:09.320 abie: Yep.

413 00:47:13.450 ⇒ 00:47:14.040 nbromber: Cool.

414 00:47:14.040 ⇒ 00:47:14.680 abie: ….

415 00:47:14.680 ⇒ 00:47:21.930 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, you know, we haven’t had a really difficult time getting engineers, one, because Robert and I both come from the technical world.

416 00:47:22.280 ⇒ 00:47:23.200 Uttam Kumaran: And I think

417 00:47:23.490 ⇒ 00:47:39.299 Uttam Kumaran: you know, when we talk to people, and we talk about the work that we do, and the way we structure the company, it’s pretty fair towards the folks that weren’t… it’s not, like, a really chaotic business. And you have the ability as an engineer to come work on multiple different types of things, and work on AI stuff. You know.

418 00:47:39.530 ⇒ 00:47:44.390 Uttam Kumaran: in a real… in a real way. So that hasn’t been a struggle, thankfully.

419 00:47:44.970 ⇒ 00:47:47.770 Uttam Kumaran: Like, we’ve been able to recruit pretty effectively, and…

420 00:47:47.790 ⇒ 00:48:05.820 Uttam Kumaran: But again, for this, it’s recording at different levels, right? Like, we want someone bought in, you’re totally right, at this higher level, and I would much rather have promoted from internally if we could, but just no one’s stepping up to bad, and I think we’re gonna have to sort of find someone that maybe fits for this, but it has to really be a…

421 00:48:06.450 ⇒ 00:48:09.270 Uttam Kumaran: a perfect person, you know? It’s a big role.

422 00:48:10.500 ⇒ 00:48:15.170 abie: So I’m gonna suggest, … I’d like… if you can send me the….

423 00:48:15.170 ⇒ 00:48:15.590 Uttam Kumaran: Sure.

424 00:48:15.590 ⇒ 00:48:19.139 abie: However you want to do this. I mean, I can send you an NDA, or you can send me an NDA….

425 00:48:19.140 ⇒ 00:48:20.810 Uttam Kumaran: And Ian, I can get you all this stuff.

426 00:48:20.810 ⇒ 00:48:31.149 abie: And then I’d really like to go through stuff, because I’d really like to better, like, more deeply understand how this, you know, how the operations work today, and I think Neil and I really can talk offline.

427 00:48:31.340 ⇒ 00:48:38.670 abie: And brainstorm, and come back to you guys. We may want to actually first go through some of that material with you to really make sure we understand it.

428 00:48:38.970 ⇒ 00:48:43.709 abie: And then we can, come back to you guys with some thoughts.

429 00:48:43.710 ⇒ 00:48:44.240 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

430 00:48:44.240 ⇒ 00:48:51.069 abie: on, you know, I mean, we may… I mean, I’ll be frank, I mean, I have a… I wonder if, you know, either financially or actually

431 00:48:51.370 ⇒ 00:49:01.399 abie: really getting in… we may… we may have, after seeing that, have an interest in, one, learning more about the business, but then ourselves getting involved, if that’s something you guys, … Yeah.

432 00:49:01.560 ⇒ 00:49:03.170 abie: Guys have an interest in.

433 00:49:03.400 ⇒ 00:49:10.780 abie: … We’re always looking for, you know, Other things to do.

434 00:49:10.780 ⇒ 00:49:25.110 Uttam Kumaran: That’s also my question, is like, what is… after hearing this, after our first conversation, like, what is interesting to you guys? Like, why continue to invest your time, or, like, what is an interesting project, or, like, what is the ROI on something like this?

435 00:49:25.110 ⇒ 00:49:31.209 abie: So I’ll be… I’ll be frank. You know, I’m right now doing a lot… we’re starting to do some Gen AI stuff.

436 00:49:31.920 ⇒ 00:49:39.250 abie: But a good portion of the workforce we have are not ones here, where I’m at right now, who will…

437 00:49:39.490 ⇒ 00:49:48.019 abie: jettison it in a way, you know, that I would… and I think that there’s a lot of opportunity. You know, we’ve… we’ve been, you know, we’ve been talking to Clarence.

438 00:49:48.490 ⇒ 00:50:00.379 abie: We’re talking to you guys, there’s a lot of much faster-moving opportunity out there, I believe, that we could, we could be engaged in pushing and driving.

439 00:50:00.470 ⇒ 00:50:18.050 abie: And see financial, you know, financial benefit from. You know, I think that, you know, a lot of the, I’ll say, older, traditional companies are trying to do this stuff, but they’re not, they’re not getting it. And they’re not doing it the way that, you know, I’ll say the younger generation, if you will.

440 00:50:18.240 ⇒ 00:50:22.169 abie: Is, … Is really, ….

441 00:50:22.170 ⇒ 00:50:28.710 nbromber: I mean, just to be more specific, I’ll give you two examples of one, a former client of mine, who’s now the CI…

442 00:50:28.940 ⇒ 00:50:30.960 nbromber: I think he’s a CIIO.

443 00:50:31.140 ⇒ 00:50:33.839 nbromber: Of an insurance brokerage, and…

444 00:50:33.970 ⇒ 00:50:47.300 nbromber: you know, I’m in the midst of signing a contract with him. So he’s the chief information and innovation officer of an insurance brokerage, which is, you know, a billion dollar, billion dollar business, does not have an AI strategy, doesn’t know where to start.

445 00:50:48.010 ⇒ 00:50:56.119 nbromber: recognizes that as the Chief Information and Innovation Officer, that if he doesn’t have anything in place in 6 months, he is going to be out on his ass.

446 00:50:56.160 ⇒ 00:51:08.149 nbromber: Right? Everyone’s asking, can’t I just get the AI? Right? And no, that’s not how it works. So, look at it from that perspective, just to start. This is a company that’s had significant cybersecurity issues.

447 00:51:08.150 ⇒ 00:51:26.239 nbromber: It’s a country that has not integrated multiple businesses that it’s actually purchased. It’s got a significant amount of… right? And he’s about to get an $80 million transformation budget. He doesn’t know how to do it. He’s got a lot of people on his executive team, so he has the opposite problem. He’s got a lot of executives, and none of them are change people, they’re all

448 00:51:26.520 ⇒ 00:51:35.649 nbromber: kind of run-the-shop people, if you know what I’m saying, right? Maybe your infrastructure guy, he’s got a whole bunch of these infrastructure guys, he’s got not one person that understands how to actually.

449 00:51:35.650 ⇒ 00:51:45.610 abie: And I mean, and to be frank, I won’t say this loudly here, a lot of people are scared of it, and so it doesn’t move for that reason alone, okay?

450 00:51:45.610 ⇒ 00:51:49.840 nbromber: That’s number… number one example is the one I just gave you, right? A company that has no idea.

451 00:51:50.060 ⇒ 00:52:01.579 nbromber: Company number two, I just mentioned, I was speaking to an old colleague that’s at Pfizer right now. He says, sure, they rolled out AI. He goes, they rolled out some kind of scaled-down version of Copilot. You can’t do anything with it. He goes.

452 00:52:01.580 ⇒ 00:52:02.179 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

453 00:52:02.180 ⇒ 00:52:16.810 nbromber: Who would roll out Copilot? And Copilot doesn’t even interact with the applications that it’s supposed to be integrated into. Like, you ask Copilot to go ahead and write something in Word, it tells you, I can’t actually interact with your document. I’m like, what good are you? So you’re a fancy version of help on the side that’s… he says.

454 00:52:16.810 ⇒ 00:52:25.599 nbromber: the AI is so vanilla, watered-down, internal, right? I would imagine Pfizer’s got a lot of intellectual property, they don’t want stuff getting out there.

455 00:52:25.600 ⇒ 00:52:26.230 nbromber: Kayla.

456 00:52:26.230 ⇒ 00:52:31.599 nbromber: public domain, but the downside of that is you’ve created something which is basically an echo chamber.

457 00:52:32.040 ⇒ 00:52:32.660 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

458 00:52:32.660 ⇒ 00:52:45.540 nbromber: So, you’re not getting the benefits of actually AI by rolling out your own internal AI, because you basically have created, you know, a bunch of people that know this stuff, right? It’s all internal, so you’re not getting any external point of view on it.

459 00:52:45.590 ⇒ 00:53:01.899 nbromber: Right? And you’re assuming that what you’re… what you’re seeing is, like, when you go home and you use Claude, but that’s not what you’re actually getting out of that, right? So there’s example number two. Another example of a guy I actually spoke to over the weekend was telling me, no, we’re not… the AI is dangerous, man, it’s just dangerous.

460 00:53:02.080 ⇒ 00:53:06.600 nbromber: It’s just dangerous, nothing good’s gonna happen. They’re still on the Skynet philosophy.

461 00:53:06.600 ⇒ 00:53:07.810 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah.

462 00:53:07.810 ⇒ 00:53:14.680 nbromber: And they’re like, I don’t know if that makes any sense for my business, you know, because it’s… it’s all gonna take over the world. He’s dead. Right?

463 00:53:14.680 ⇒ 00:53:16.569 abie: He’s dead. He’s dead.

464 00:53:16.570 ⇒ 00:53:19.980 nbromber: And you can’t pull the plug on it, and….

465 00:53:19.980 ⇒ 00:53:26.939 Uttam Kumaran: When you ask him, like, what other opportunity he has to find, like, 20-30% efficiency in the business? What else?

466 00:53:26.940 ⇒ 00:53:34.310 nbromber: And then I… and then I spoke to one… one of my friends who run… he runs, basically, a second, …

467 00:53:34.580 ⇒ 00:53:47.949 nbromber: he basically, crowdsourced investments for, for small businesses, and he runs this whole thing. He said he spent 7 figures to entirely retool his operation. It is all AI-generated, all AI-run.

468 00:53:48.030 ⇒ 00:54:03.170 nbromber: Right? He said, look, I invested the seven figures, but I immediately saw a tremendous number of operational gains. He goes, everything I have right now, basically… and he’s basically running the company. He lives in Israel while the company runs over here in the United States.

469 00:54:03.630 ⇒ 00:54:13.330 nbromber: And he’s like, I would never be able to do that if I didn’t have, kind of, all of these tools in place. He goes, so… he goes, the million… the million and change investment was well worth it.

470 00:54:13.330 ⇒ 00:54:20.809 Uttam Kumaran: No, I mean, we wouldn’t be where we are now with the type of sales… we’re using AI across the board, and that’s the only way… What an excuse!

471 00:54:20.810 ⇒ 00:54:24.759 nbromber: started the right way, right? It’s always easy to start from….

472 00:54:24.760 ⇒ 00:54:25.270 Uttam Kumaran: Right, yeah.

473 00:54:25.270 ⇒ 00:54:33.649 nbromber: Definitely, definitely. Right? And by the way, I was looking at the documents here. That’s impressive stuff, considering you’ve all… you said you’ve been doing this, what, 2 years?

474 00:54:34.130 ⇒ 00:54:35.569 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, 2 years, 2 years.

475 00:54:35.570 ⇒ 00:54:43.189 nbromber: But that’s pretty impressive. You can go into some of the biggest consultancies out there, they don’t have a framework and a methodology like the PDF that you actually.

476 00:54:43.190 ⇒ 00:54:47.700 Uttam Kumaran: No, I’ve read every book about how to run, we’ve done… we’re doing everything we can.

477 00:54:47.770 ⇒ 00:54:50.760 nbromber: Yeah, half of those books were written by AI.

478 00:54:50.760 ⇒ 00:55:07.579 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I know, and I read the books about how they started every com… it’s… and so we’re doing the right things, which is… that’s such a challenge, but, you know, I also think that, just as you showed, where people are still not getting the picture on the AI piece, it is… it is only becoming more obvious that it is…

479 00:55:07.580 ⇒ 00:55:14.160 Uttam Kumaran: the way to go, and I think a lot of these teams are gonna need a partner like us that is their automation team for hire, or they’re, like.

480 00:55:14.160 ⇒ 00:55:25.499 Uttam Kumaran: someone to come in and just stab the knife in and figure out what happens, right? And for me, we don’t… I don’t have any baggage from the politics, I only know what I know, but all we do is read about this stuff.

481 00:55:25.500 ⇒ 00:55:26.510 nbromber: Yeah.

482 00:55:26.710 ⇒ 00:55:39.500 Uttam Kumaran: we’ve already got a lot of great wins that we go to companies and share with them, and they’re like, oh my god, I never even knew. Someone said, we’re just doing our own company. I share, and they’re like, I have no idea, you know, and they’re asking for our inputs and things like that, so….

483 00:55:39.500 ⇒ 00:55:45.500 nbromber: That goes back to my, you know, keep in the back of your mind. Don’t get rid of the idea of productizing.

484 00:55:45.850 ⇒ 00:55:53.880 nbromber: You know what’s funny? There are going to be, and you’ve probably seen it already, about a thousand.

485 00:55:54.190 ⇒ 00:55:58.530 Uttam Kumaran: new AI consultancies every week. Yes. Oh, there are, there are.

486 00:55:58.530 ⇒ 00:56:07.980 nbromber: Everyone’s an AI consultant at this point. Everyone wants to be an AI consultant. And there’s two challenges they really run into, right? So, first thing they run into is

487 00:56:08.540 ⇒ 00:56:12.050 nbromber: And don’t take this the wrong way, most of the people that are doing this are very young.

488 00:56:12.350 ⇒ 00:56:14.779 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, that’s true, there’s only bits, yeah, 100%.

489 00:56:14.780 ⇒ 00:56:18.860 nbromber: Okay. And they’re trying to sell it to a generation of people that are…

490 00:56:19.220 ⇒ 00:56:25.230 nbromber: Seasoned business professionals, 20-plus years of experience, that are afraid of this stuff, that…

491 00:56:26.060 ⇒ 00:56:28.570 nbromber: you know, watch Terminator growing up?

492 00:56:28.820 ⇒ 00:56:43.419 nbromber: and are terrified of it, wouldn’t know where to start. Yeah. I mean, my father, who was a technology guy, and punch cards and that generation, he looks at this stuff, he goes, I don’t understand why this is any different than Google.

493 00:56:43.790 ⇒ 00:56:44.850 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

494 00:56:44.850 ⇒ 00:56:49.909 nbromber: I said, he says, does it know who hit the most home runs in the Major League? DAI?

495 00:56:50.100 ⇒ 00:56:57.270 nbromber: I said, yeah, but you don’t need to ask the AI that. You can use Google, it’s perfectly fine. He says, so I don’t even understand what I do with it.

496 00:56:57.410 ⇒ 00:57:04.589 nbromber: So, I mean, the real key, by the way, is going to be continuing to bridge that gap, right? Yes.

497 00:57:04.590 ⇒ 00:57:05.550 abie: Totally, ….

498 00:57:05.550 ⇒ 00:57:07.459 nbromber: generational gap, which I think is….

499 00:57:07.460 ⇒ 00:57:10.949 Uttam Kumaran: But that’s also why I was, you know, my point in that we need

500 00:57:11.090 ⇒ 00:57:17.700 Uttam Kumaran: I think we need someone who is a few steps ahead, but also is… wants to kind of ride this new wave.

501 00:57:17.700 ⇒ 00:57:18.220 nbromber: Well, yeah.

502 00:57:18.220 ⇒ 00:57:35.320 Uttam Kumaran: Perception is… perception is reality, and it is… it is totally, like, a sales thing. If you’re buying… people are still buying from people. You know, Brain Forge, there’s no… nobody knows this company, so they’re only buying because they speak with us, and they see our energy, and it’s all about that, you know, and… but….

503 00:57:35.720 ⇒ 00:57:49.029 nbromber: Well, let me finish the one thought out. So what I was saying is a thousand of these AI consultancies are starting up every day. Most of the people are younger, most of the people are very technical in nature, and not necessarily people that know how to run a business.

504 00:57:49.030 ⇒ 00:57:52.069 Uttam Kumaran: You’ve created an infrastructure and a product

505 00:57:52.180 ⇒ 00:57:55.049 Uttam Kumaran: that is saleable to those people. True.

506 00:57:55.050 ⇒ 00:58:01.609 nbromber: Yeah. And if you can figure out how to market that to people that are claiming to be quote-unquote AI consultants.

507 00:58:01.820 ⇒ 00:58:07.860 nbromber: Right? You then have a product and another revenue stream, which definitely helps you stabilize.

508 00:58:07.860 ⇒ 00:58:08.410 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

509 00:58:08.410 ⇒ 00:58:11.319 nbromber: So that you have the room to grow on the consulting side.

510 00:58:11.510 ⇒ 00:58:25.050 nbromber: And… and that would be the equivalent… so if you look at all of the major, major consulting firms, right? The major… the big four is an example, right? They’ve always used their audit business to be the stable base of cash flow and revenue.

511 00:58:25.670 ⇒ 00:58:31.859 nbromber: Doesn’t grow a lot, but it’s a stable base, and in most cases, all the big four, it’s at least 50% of the business.

512 00:58:32.000 ⇒ 00:58:51.649 nbromber: The consulting business is like this. It has great years and it has bad years, and then depending on which firm it is, the tax practice definitely has, you know, kind of enough cachet to add to the revenue. And it doesn’t go as much like this as the consulting business, but, you know, it certainly does that. So don’t…

513 00:58:51.750 ⇒ 00:59:00.209 nbromber: Don’t discount… don’t discount the idea of potentially creating a package for people that want to be AI consultants.

514 00:59:00.210 ⇒ 00:59:00.540 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

515 00:59:00.540 ⇒ 00:59:03.669 nbromber: You’ve done the homework already, you might as well actually monetize it.

516 00:59:03.670 ⇒ 00:59:15.430 abie: And make them become your sales channel for you. I mean, it’s like, all of a sudden you’ve got a distribution… potential distribution channel of, you know, I gotta run because I have a hard stop at 3.30. You guys can continue.

517 00:59:15.430 ⇒ 00:59:31.119 nbromber: I’ve got to go also, but let’s, Utam, you could send, you know, anything you’re willing to share, and if you want to sign an NDA on it in advance, you know, that’s great too. I mean, I have no intention of taking anything that anyone gives me anywhere.

518 00:59:32.000 ⇒ 00:59:33.020 nbromber: But, ….

519 00:59:33.020 ⇒ 00:59:38.649 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll send you a bunch of stuff, and yeah, just tell me what you guys think, you know, I’m really curious, and….

520 00:59:38.650 ⇒ 00:59:39.360 abie: back.

521 00:59:39.360 ⇒ 00:59:45.150 nbromber: Okay, thank you very much. Good stuff. Robert, nice meeting you. Nice meeting you guys, nice meeting you. Thanks, guys. See you next time.

522 00:59:45.150 ⇒ 00:59:46.150 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we’ll….

523 00:59:46.150 ⇒ 00:59:46.730 Robert Tseng: I do.

524 00:59:47.020 ⇒ 00:59:47.910 nbromber: Take care, everybody.