Meeting Title: Brainforge Project Management Interview Date: 2025-08-18 Meeting participants: Justin Breshears, Amber Lin, Shreya Chowdhury
WEBVTT
1 00:05:28.330 ⇒ 00:05:29.340 Justin Breshears: Hello!
2 00:05:31.000 ⇒ 00:05:33.309 Justin Breshears: Oh, cannot hear you.
3 00:05:39.520 ⇒ 00:05:40.699 Justin Breshears: Hey, can you hear me?
4 00:05:40.700 ⇒ 00:05:41.730 Amber Lin: Yeah, I can hear you.
5 00:05:41.730 ⇒ 00:05:43.060 Justin Breshears: Oh, okay, there you are.
6 00:05:43.240 ⇒ 00:05:44.399 Justin Breshears: How are you, Amber?
7 00:05:44.400 ⇒ 00:05:48.720 Amber Lin: Yeah, I’m good. I’m glad to talk to you. I saw the loom you sent in last week.
8 00:05:48.720 ⇒ 00:05:49.430 Justin Breshears: Yeah?
9 00:05:49.850 ⇒ 00:05:56.390 Justin Breshears: That was a fun little deal. I don’t think I’ve ever done a video screen for an interview before.
10 00:05:56.390 ⇒ 00:05:57.350 Amber Lin: Oh, really?
11 00:05:57.350 ⇒ 00:05:58.060 Justin Breshears: Yeah.
12 00:05:58.280 ⇒ 00:06:03.520 Amber Lin: Wow. Yeah, we started doing video screens recently, because it was just…
13 00:06:03.640 ⇒ 00:06:10.180 Amber Lin: The bigger we grow, the more applications we get in, and it’s hard to tell who’s good from who’s not, and a quick…
14 00:06:10.510 ⇒ 00:06:14.919 Amber Lin: 5-minute video, saves a lot of time during the interview as well.
15 00:06:14.920 ⇒ 00:06:27.120 Justin Breshears: Yeah, for sure. I love it, because, yeah, I mean, I feel like your resume can get lost in the crowd. A way to get… to stand out is actually get to talk, you know, and actually get somebody to be able to see you, so I loved it.
16 00:06:27.290 ⇒ 00:06:30.160 Justin Breshears: But super happy to get a chance to chat with you today.
17 00:06:31.120 ⇒ 00:06:40.390 Amber Lin: Okay, I think so for this first interview, it’s just to get a sense of who you are, and then for you to get a sense of who we are like.
18 00:06:40.440 ⇒ 00:06:59.489 Amber Lin: And if we decide to move on to the next round, there will be more technical screens on talking about, okay, what is, the situation you saw before, maybe we have case studies, and then if we move to the final round, you’ll get to talk to our CEO, whose name is Utam, and you can learn a lot more about what the company is like.
19 00:06:59.490 ⇒ 00:07:03.829 Amber Lin: What the current needs are and what vision he foresees for the company.
20 00:07:04.490 ⇒ 00:07:05.659 Justin Breshears: Sounds like a plan to me.
21 00:07:05.660 ⇒ 00:07:14.920 Amber Lin: Yeah, we can start off with a quick intro, so I’ll quickly introduce myself. My name is Amber. I’ve been at Brainforge for about 4 months now. I started
22 00:07:15.080 ⇒ 00:07:25.560 Amber Lin: in March, and I started as a project manager, and right now I’m helping Brainforge build out the PMO, and that also includes
23 00:07:25.620 ⇒ 00:07:36.739 Amber Lin: Training the new coordinators that we hired, and also looking for someone to help lead the department, or, have… or someone who has more senior experience to be on the team.
24 00:07:36.820 ⇒ 00:07:40.649 Amber Lin: And I would love to hear some, quick intro from you as well.
25 00:07:41.110 ⇒ 00:07:45.939 Justin Breshears: Yeah. Well, I’m Justin, I live in Richmond, Texas, so, …
26 00:07:45.950 ⇒ 00:08:02.939 Justin Breshears: about an hour outside of Houston. I’ve been in project management, and especially in the tech space for a good number of years now. I’ve done everything from AWS cloud consulting, which is what I’m doing right now, to
27 00:08:02.950 ⇒ 00:08:11.319 Justin Breshears: Helping scale a real estate SaaS startup, and, worked in IT infrastructure monitoring.
28 00:08:11.380 ⇒ 00:08:15.639 Justin Breshears: All sorts of different tech roles. And, …
29 00:08:15.790 ⇒ 00:08:28.509 Justin Breshears: have done everything from what you’re doing right now is, like, building out a PMO, and building out an organization, you know, for a startup, and from kind of from the ground up, to, you know, working with some of the top companies in the world, like…
30 00:08:28.640 ⇒ 00:08:44.570 Justin Breshears: I’ve worked with, like, Coca-Cola, Chipotle, the Minnesota Vikings, Johnson & Johnson, just a bunch of the big companies as well. So, kind of a full range there. And really, I like building, so I kind of like the smaller.
31 00:08:44.630 ⇒ 00:08:58.149 Justin Breshears: scrappier companies that are building things from scratch, because that’s just who I am. So, but I live here with my wife and my two kids. I have a 5-month-old and a 2-year-old, so they keep me pretty busy.
32 00:08:59.430 ⇒ 00:09:01.300 Justin Breshears: That’s a little… little bit about me.
33 00:09:01.300 ⇒ 00:09:08.420 Amber Lin: Okay, thank you for that. Our company is actually found in Texas, and Utum is based in Austin, I don’t know if you saw that.
34 00:09:08.420 ⇒ 00:09:09.130 Justin Breshears: Yeah, dear.
35 00:09:09.130 ⇒ 00:09:16.319 Amber Lin: have a chance, if we do move on to the final rounds, I would love you to have… to be able to meet in person, if that’s possible.
36 00:09:16.320 ⇒ 00:09:24.150 Justin Breshears: That would be great, yeah, and that was one of the things I liked, because, one, I lived in Austin for, like, 8 years before I moved here. We moved to be a little bit closer to my wife’s family.
37 00:09:24.620 ⇒ 00:09:28.660 Justin Breshears: I love Austin, so any excuse to go back there would be just fine with me.
38 00:09:28.790 ⇒ 00:09:39.609 Amber Lin: Okay, that’s awesome. I saw the Loom video that you sent. I know, I remember what motivates you, you said, was to….
39 00:09:42.830 ⇒ 00:09:44.260 Justin Breshears: In the Loom video, you mean?
40 00:09:44.260 ⇒ 00:09:44.930 Amber Lin: Yeah.
41 00:09:45.070 ⇒ 00:09:45.950 Justin Breshears: …
42 00:09:46.200 ⇒ 00:09:58.899 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I mean, kind of like what I just touched on, like, I like building new things, I like, you know, creating, you know, organizations, systems, processes, like, I’m a builder, like I said. So, yeah, I…
43 00:09:58.900 ⇒ 00:10:08.810 Justin Breshears: I’ve done those jobs where I’ve worked with some of the biggest companies, but honestly, like, a lot of that is just status quo. It’s, you know, keeping things rolling and not rocking the boat, and, you know.
44 00:10:08.810 ⇒ 00:10:20.339 Justin Breshears: catering to enterprise customers and stuff like that, which is fine, but I like building things, and that’s what really got me excited about Brainforge. Like, y’all are building something, and you’re doing it in an industry and a…
45 00:10:20.810 ⇒ 00:10:35.930 Justin Breshears: an area that I think is just the future. You’re doing it in data, you’re doing it in AI, like, that’s what excites me about it. So to be able to help build something in an industry like that, in an industry like that, would be amazing.
46 00:10:36.100 ⇒ 00:10:36.630 Amber Lin: Okay.
47 00:10:36.880 ⇒ 00:10:41.619 Amber Lin: Do you have any experience with the data industry… with data or with AI?
48 00:10:41.660 ⇒ 00:11:00.479 Justin Breshears: I do, yeah. So, like I said, right now I do cloud consulting with an AWS partner at Kalen, so, you know, half of what we do at this point is building out AI solutions for companies, you know, cloud-native AI solutions, so we’re doing a lot of generative AI projects,
49 00:11:00.610 ⇒ 00:11:20.010 Justin Breshears: and a lot of it is, you know, heavy, you know, on data part of it. Like, we have… I’m working with a lot of machine learning engineers and architects and big data architects, on a lot of those projects, and so that’s why I’m excited about this, because I’ve gotten exposed to it through what I’m doing right now, because we have, like.
50 00:11:20.100 ⇒ 00:11:33.759 Justin Breshears: the applications practice, and we have the architecture and infrastructure practice, but really the data engineering practice is, like, what… the kind of project that gets me excited. So I’ve had a lot of familiarity with running those type of projects, and kind.
51 00:11:34.220 ⇒ 00:11:34.770 Justin Breshears: Still.
52 00:11:34.770 ⇒ 00:11:37.290 Amber Lin: That was with Clayland, right?
53 00:11:37.290 ⇒ 00:11:37.900 Justin Breshears: Yeah.
54 00:11:38.030 ⇒ 00:11:46.610 Amber Lin: Gotcha. Are those… is Clayland and Logic Monitor… are they, agencies, or are they a product company? What is it like?
55 00:11:46.610 ⇒ 00:11:52.880 Justin Breshears: Yeah, so Kalent is an AWS partner, so we’re a third-party consultant, so basically.
56 00:11:53.100 ⇒ 00:12:07.119 Justin Breshears: XYZ client wants to set up, you know, a data lake on AWS. They don’t know how to do it, right? They would hire us to come in and help out, so we’re a third party that helps, you know, get
57 00:12:07.120 ⇒ 00:12:15.190 Justin Breshears: companies set up on AWS. Logic Monitor was a SaaS company that had their own product, so Logic Monitor was infrastructure monitoring.
58 00:12:15.190 ⇒ 00:12:21.669 Justin Breshears: So like a Datadog, Datadog’s the big player in that space, pretty much a competitor to them.
59 00:12:22.150 ⇒ 00:12:34.280 Amber Lin: Gotcha. Yeah, I think that that’s great, because we’re looking for someone who has overlapping industry experience and overlapping experience with agency, because it operates on a very different model. It’s very different of…
60 00:12:34.350 ⇒ 00:12:52.679 Amber Lin: as a project manager, and for delivery, our goals are very different than if it’s a product or if it’s an internal team, so a big part for us is about not only quality work, but also quality service, and also managing different requests from different… different…
61 00:12:52.720 ⇒ 00:12:57.789 Amber Lin: stakeholders on the client teams, but that’s… that’s something that we’re looking for. I’m glad to hear that.
62 00:12:57.790 ⇒ 00:13:13.309 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I mean, that’s what I do now, and it’s also what I did at Builder’s Update, was a very, like, service-oriented. So we had our SaaS platform that, you know, we built out and we ran, but, like, my job was, you know, working hand-in-hand with the clients and serving them white glove style, so…
63 00:13:13.350 ⇒ 00:13:18.560 Justin Breshears: What I do right now is service delivery. We don’t have a product, we are… our product is our people and our service.
64 00:13:18.560 ⇒ 00:13:35.979 Amber Lin: I hear you. I’m looking at… so from Builder’s update to Logic Monitor and to now, you… I do see that you kind of transitioned from operations. What was the… where did you start in your career, and how come you ended up here?
65 00:13:36.200 ⇒ 00:13:51.970 Justin Breshears: Yeah, so… Director of Operations was kind of an umbrella term at Builder’s Update, because it was… I mean, we were a 10-person organization when I joined, and so my job was… I reported to the CEO, and I was his second in command, and I… my job was to build out the whole organization, so…
66 00:13:52.310 ⇒ 00:13:57.839 Justin Breshears: Operations was a, like, just a very broad term that we put on it, but I did…
67 00:13:57.900 ⇒ 00:14:15.690 Justin Breshears: pretty much everything in there. So, I, you know, worked with sales and led that organization. I was the product manager that led our product development teams and things like that. I did the technical side of things. I was heavily involved with our clients and serving them.
68 00:14:15.690 ⇒ 00:14:26.750 Justin Breshears: And then building out all of our systems, processes, and organizations and stuff. So, with that, that’s kind of where I fell in love with project management, was, you know.
69 00:14:27.340 ⇒ 00:14:32.710 Justin Breshears: example there is we needed a CRM to manage all of our leads, our clients, and everything.
70 00:14:32.840 ⇒ 00:14:35.290 Justin Breshears: So my project was…
71 00:14:36.000 ⇒ 00:14:52.420 Justin Breshears: build the CRM, implement it, like, get our stuff built out, you know, and train everybody on how to use it and all that. And, like, that’s just an example of one of the projects that, you know, I was in charge of, and so I really loved it. When I got the chance to jump to Logic Monitor, you know, that’s why project management
72 00:14:52.420 ⇒ 00:15:01.569 Justin Breshears: really stood out to me, and … I was the first senior project manager hired there, and, you know, hired there to help build out the PMO, and do all that stuff, so…
73 00:15:01.870 ⇒ 00:15:12.099 Justin Breshears: got PMP certified, got all the certifications and the education that gave me the credibility on there while I was there, and …
74 00:15:12.240 ⇒ 00:15:14.649 Justin Breshears: You know, just project management has been…
75 00:15:15.000 ⇒ 00:15:21.060 Justin Breshears: kind of my passion since then. It just lines up with who I am, I think. I kind of run my own life that way.
76 00:15:21.430 ⇒ 00:15:34.119 Amber Lin: I see. Is that… so I’m just trying to understand where you want to go in your career, because there… if you wanted to do the same type of work you did at Builder’s Update, it’s still pos… it’s also still possible in our company, so I was wondering what….
77 00:15:34.120 ⇒ 00:15:38.870 Justin Breshears: what do you… where do you want to go towards… I know you’re capable of….
78 00:15:38.890 ⇒ 00:15:52.459 Amber Lin: doing, say, building up the company, setting up departments, is that something you want to do, or is that… or do you want to go very deep in PM and build out a very functional PM work? What… what makes you interested and what doesn’t interest you?
79 00:15:52.460 ⇒ 00:15:53.530 Justin Breshears: I think…
80 00:15:54.070 ⇒ 00:16:08.100 Justin Breshears: I am the type of person that’s, like, a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none kind of person, where, like, it all is interesting to me, but I actually think that, like, if you were to pick one, my passion would be in helping build
81 00:16:08.240 ⇒ 00:16:15.909 Justin Breshears: a company such as yours up, and leave it better than I… than I found it, right? So, …
82 00:16:16.380 ⇒ 00:16:19.619 Justin Breshears: yeah, I mean, if there’s operational, you know.
83 00:16:19.810 ⇒ 00:16:39.140 Justin Breshears: opportunities and stuff, I’d be very interested in those too. I’m also very interested in project management and building that out as well. So, kind of both, but if I had to pick one, you know, and you were saying, hey, we need help building out the organizations and the structures at Brainforge, I’d be all over that.
84 00:16:39.740 ⇒ 00:16:43.120 Amber Lin: Okay, I see. Yeah, I… because we have…
85 00:16:43.260 ⇒ 00:16:54.349 Amber Lin: our sales department is also getting billed. We have, go-to-market stuff and then partnership stuff that we’re also looking for someone to help with. I think…
86 00:16:54.480 ⇒ 00:16:57.909 Amber Lin: We’re also building up processes. Recently, I’m working on
87 00:16:58.000 ⇒ 00:17:16.450 Amber Lin: I think the same thing that you did for Builder’s Update is to look at, okay, what can we… what standards do we need to set for service quality, for the quality of work, and how projects operate? So I think our main focus right now is delivery, and then the next in line would be sales. So…
88 00:17:16.839 ⇒ 00:17:30.199 Amber Lin: I would love to relay that to Utam. I think he’ll be interested to know more about that, because up until now, we’ve looked at you as a project management candidate, but I didn’t know that you were interested in the other parts as well.
89 00:17:30.200 ⇒ 00:17:32.610 Justin Breshears: Very much so, and I would love to do that, because
90 00:17:32.690 ⇒ 00:17:52.430 Justin Breshears: that’s where, like, the jack-of-all-trades thing becomes my superpower, is I can work with this group, in this group, right? Like, I feel like I can speak the language of sales, and speak the language of technical teams, and project managers, and all those things, so being able to work with them and build out all of the systems that each one of these departments needs, like.
91 00:17:52.500 ⇒ 00:17:54.340 Justin Breshears: That’s where I thrive.
92 00:17:54.520 ⇒ 00:17:57.569 Amber Lin: Okay, that’s very exciting to hear.
93 00:17:57.700 ⇒ 00:18:09.709 Amber Lin: you talked… you touched upon your strength. What would you say is your weakness, or is something that you… you don’t want to work in? I think that’s equally as important as strengths.
94 00:18:09.710 ⇒ 00:18:13.189 Justin Breshears: Very much so, and I touched on it earlier, it’s…
95 00:18:13.920 ⇒ 00:18:18.040 Justin Breshears: Just managing a status quo, and just, like, things being the same, like, if…
96 00:18:18.590 ⇒ 00:18:24.390 Justin Breshears: And it’s a little bit, like, where I’ve kind of fallen into right now, is just churning out, like.
97 00:18:24.540 ⇒ 00:18:32.159 Justin Breshears: my projects, you know, in and out, but, like, I’m not really getting to scratch that itch of, like, building out something, you know? So, I love…
98 00:18:32.580 ⇒ 00:18:51.010 Justin Breshears: building something and being… working towards a goal and, like, seeing it build up. When I’m just in charge of managing things and just keeping them running, I can get bored. So that’s where I’d say is a little bit weaker on me. I’d like to be tackling, you know, bigger projects and, you know.
99 00:18:51.410 ⇒ 00:18:52.570 Justin Breshears: being…
100 00:18:52.880 ⇒ 00:19:05.639 Justin Breshears: I don’t know if stimulated is the right word, but mentally stimulated in the right way, you know, by doing something challenging, right? So yeah, I can… I can get a little bit bored just, on the mundane day-to-day.
101 00:19:06.620 ⇒ 00:19:14.130 Amber Lin: I see. So, is that why you’re looking for a new job and looking to leave Clayland?
102 00:19:14.130 ⇒ 00:19:16.050 Justin Breshears: Yeah, cause I, I think…
103 00:19:16.870 ⇒ 00:19:33.539 Justin Breshears: looking at, like, growth opportunities to do something that I would rather do at here is… there’s not a lot of opportunity for me to do that right now, and so that’s why I kind of looking elsewhere, and again, why I got so excited seeing Brainforge, because I’m like, okay, a young company, small, in the field that I want to be in.
104 00:19:33.630 ⇒ 00:19:38.970 Justin Breshears: it would be awesome to, like, get a chance to be a part of that, so… yeah, that’s exactly why I’m here.
105 00:19:39.380 ⇒ 00:19:47.019 Amber Lin: I see that. How big is Clayland? I see here is, is this 500 to 1,000 employees?
106 00:19:47.020 ⇒ 00:19:48.719 Justin Breshears: We just crossed 700.
107 00:19:48.720 ⇒ 00:19:49.550 Amber Lin: Oh, gotcha.
108 00:19:49.550 ⇒ 00:19:57.379 Justin Breshears: Like, a couple months ago, yeah, and I was higher, like, 3-something, so we’ve, we’ve exploded in growth.
109 00:19:58.290 ⇒ 00:19:59.150 Amber Lin: Gotcha.
110 00:19:59.620 ⇒ 00:20:00.570 Amber Lin: …
111 00:20:02.800 ⇒ 00:20:15.589 Amber Lin: Great. Thank you so much. I think, I just want to note down, for Builder’s Update and for Logic Monitor, what the reason was when you thought about leaving those two companies as well.
112 00:20:16.110 ⇒ 00:20:20.789 Justin Breshears: Yeah, Builder’s Update, was…
113 00:20:21.370 ⇒ 00:20:28.700 Justin Breshears: It was a situation where, I worked directly for the CEO, And… he was a very…
114 00:20:29.040 ⇒ 00:20:39.160 Justin Breshears: eccentric guy, I’ll just say. And, you know, after a few years working for him, there was, … it was kind of obvious that
115 00:20:39.520 ⇒ 00:20:51.970 Justin Breshears: I was gonna be kind of stuck there as well, and just kind of doing what I was doing, and that there wasn’t a ton of, like, you know, opportunity there, and so I ended up finding the opportunity at LogicMonitor to go, and so I took it.
116 00:20:52.150 ⇒ 00:20:55.289 Justin Breshears: At Logic Monitor,
117 00:20:55.570 ⇒ 00:21:01.910 Justin Breshears: I was just more of an individual contributor, just kind of doing my own projects, and again.
118 00:21:02.160 ⇒ 00:21:16.810 Justin Breshears: I can do that, but I get kind of bored doing that, and so then going to Kaylin, I had opportunities to build out a team, and run a portfolio, and all of this stuff, which has been great. But yeah, I mean, again.
119 00:21:17.110 ⇒ 00:21:20.600 Justin Breshears: looking at an opportunity like Brainforge is, like, really where I want to be at.
120 00:21:21.070 ⇒ 00:21:24.449 Amber Lin: I see. So it sounds like you would like to…
121 00:21:24.590 ⇒ 00:21:31.710 Amber Lin: more manage a team and, not as an individual contributor, and also….
122 00:21:31.710 ⇒ 00:21:32.740 Justin Breshears: necessarily.
123 00:21:33.080 ⇒ 00:21:33.949 Justin Breshears: I didn’t mean to cut you off.
124 00:21:34.130 ⇒ 00:21:35.510 Amber Lin: No, okay, go ahead.
125 00:21:35.820 ⇒ 00:21:43.439 Justin Breshears: I was gonna say, not necessarily, like, I’m totally fine being an individual contributor, but like I said, my passion is really just, like, building up things, …
126 00:21:43.560 ⇒ 00:21:45.890 Justin Breshears: So… It’s…
127 00:21:46.680 ⇒ 00:21:53.929 Justin Breshears: if it’s managing a team, great, I can do that. I think I’m a great leader of teams, but if it’s just, you know.
128 00:21:54.060 ⇒ 00:21:58.660 Justin Breshears: Individual contributing, but, like, working cross-functionally, also great for me.
129 00:21:58.660 ⇒ 00:22:01.079 Amber Lin: I hear it. I think…
130 00:22:01.940 ⇒ 00:22:11.859 Amber Lin: Let’s see… I’ll note down… I’ve noted down a few questions, but a little bit short on time, because I have to hop in about 2 minutes.
131 00:22:11.860 ⇒ 00:22:12.480 Justin Breshears: Oh, okay.
132 00:22:12.480 ⇒ 00:22:20.050 Amber Lin: I want to leave some space for you to ask questions, so I’m just gonna use those… use the remaining time. If you have any questions, I can answer them.
133 00:22:20.050 ⇒ 00:22:24.720 Justin Breshears: No problem, I wanna respect your time if you… if you’ve gotta go. You know, I can always….
134 00:22:24.920 ⇒ 00:22:30.710 Amber Lin: ask more questions if I were to move along in the process of others, but, ….
135 00:22:31.540 ⇒ 00:22:38.669 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I mean, we’ve got about a minute left if you have to jump at the 20-minute mark, so I don’t… I don’t want to take up any more of your time.
136 00:22:39.560 ⇒ 00:22:43.630 Amber Lin: I think we have space for one question, if you have anything pressing on your mind right now.
137 00:22:43.630 ⇒ 00:22:55.210 Justin Breshears: Okay, cool. Yes, I have a ton of questions then, about the company specifically. You’ve mentioned that you’ve been there for 4 months. I think the company’s only, like, two and a half years old, is that right?
138 00:22:55.210 ⇒ 00:22:56.989 Amber Lin: Almost 2 years old, yeah.
139 00:22:56.990 ⇒ 00:23:01.109 Justin Breshears: Okay, cool. How many people are there now, employees?
140 00:23:01.110 ⇒ 00:23:03.700 Amber Lin: We have around, I would say, 15 people.
141 00:23:03.880 ⇒ 00:23:13.000 Justin Breshears: 15 people, awesome. And then, I know you’re more on the services side of it versus, like, a product, …
142 00:23:13.130 ⇒ 00:23:20.719 Justin Breshears: you know, What exactly does the model look like for what you’re doing with data analytics, with your customers?
143 00:23:21.170 ⇒ 00:23:25.629 Amber Lin: You mean our business model, or do you mean….
144 00:23:25.630 ⇒ 00:23:30.420 Justin Breshears: you’re not selling, like, a product, right? You’re doing services, but, like, what kind of… services are you….
145 00:23:30.420 ⇒ 00:23:32.290 Amber Lin: We’re….
146 00:23:32.290 ⇒ 00:23:32.920 Justin Breshears: Terrific.
147 00:23:32.920 ⇒ 00:23:47.879 Amber Lin: Yeah, we’re a consultancy, so the customer usually has some problems that their internal data team wasn’t been… wasn’t able to solve, or didn’t get around to it, or they just don’t have an internal data team, and then we act as that purpose, so we serve the whole pipeline of
148 00:23:47.880 ⇒ 00:24:02.159 Amber Lin: if they need help with ingestion from different sources, if they… if sometimes they’re modeling, how they set up their models was not up to standard, it’s causing a lot of problems, we help them adjust that. And then it goes on to analytics engineering. If they have…
149 00:24:02.160 ⇒ 00:24:11.439 Amber Lin: If they need to change anything when it goes and feeds into the dashboard, we help change that, and we have analysts that looks at the dashboard. So it’s more of a…
150 00:24:11.620 ⇒ 00:24:24.659 Amber Lin: Acting as a data team for the clients is so… so that we’re not really delivering any products. We don’t have a preference in terms of what products we use for the clients. It’s more of
151 00:24:24.780 ⇒ 00:24:32.860 Amber Lin: Is this best for the client? Financially, service-wise, and then, we help them decide, and we help them
152 00:24:33.070 ⇒ 00:24:35.000 Amber Lin: execute, so that’s what we do.
153 00:24:35.370 ⇒ 00:24:47.430 Justin Breshears: Okay, cool, that makes sense. Yeah. So it’s more like staff fog, you’re coming in and augmenting their current staff, you know, accelerating the bandwidth that they have to tackle whatever they want to tackle, right?
154 00:24:47.430 ⇒ 00:24:58.730 Amber Lin: Yeah. And from that, we can… we usually spin off from a task that they need help with to a more strategic, long-term engagement, so there’s a life cycle of projects for us as well.
155 00:24:59.130 ⇒ 00:25:04.770 Justin Breshears: Yeah, for sure. I mean, you gotta probably identify a ton of ways that y’all can help beyond the initial, right?
156 00:25:05.240 ⇒ 00:25:06.140 Justin Breshears: …
157 00:25:06.260 ⇒ 00:25:16.969 Justin Breshears: Is it, like, mainly, you know, cloud-native that you’re working with them, or is there a lot of, like, legacy and on-prem systems that y’all are helping them out with?
158 00:25:17.350 ⇒ 00:25:32.339 Amber Lin: Depends on what the client has, and then we… so I’m not the most familiar when you say cloud-native or legacy systems. I don’t exactly know which one you’re referring to, but a lot of times it depends on,
159 00:25:32.410 ⇒ 00:25:44.919 Amber Lin: what they are currently using, and Utam, who’s our CEO, he was a very senior data engineer, and then we… and then he helps them architect and helps them understand where they can go best.
160 00:25:45.570 ⇒ 00:25:53.300 Justin Breshears: Yeah, that makes sense. So, as far as, like, the AI piece of it, I know you’re doing a lot of data analytics, but are you building out, like.
161 00:25:53.480 ⇒ 00:25:57.389 Justin Breshears: generative AI products for the… with the clients, or anything like that?
162 00:25:57.600 ⇒ 00:26:10.950 Amber Lin: It depends on what the client wants, so it ranges from simple automations to AI agents, which is one of the projects I’m managing right now, and usually it ends up being a mix of data and AI, because
163 00:26:11.090 ⇒ 00:26:29.229 Amber Lin: we’ll help them build AI, and in the process, the client, and we know that this will happen, the client will realize that their data system is not up to date, and therefore, they cannot create good AI solutions, so that usually ends up being a combination of automation and data services.
164 00:26:29.580 ⇒ 00:26:34.259 Justin Breshears: So you’re doing, like, a lot of data cleanup from maybe some people that have
165 00:26:34.790 ⇒ 00:26:46.549 Justin Breshears: not the best data. Yeah. Oh, that’s cool. What is, like, the typical duration, budget size, like, team size for some of these projects?
166 00:26:46.550 ⇒ 00:26:49.199 Amber Lin: I’ll answer this, and I have to drop. I have to….
167 00:26:49.200 ⇒ 00:26:52.060 Justin Breshears: Yeah, no worries. I told you, I could keep going for….
168 00:26:52.060 ⇒ 00:27:10.249 Amber Lin: Good, I’m happy to answer these questions. The team size usually is from 2 to 4 people, maximum 5, so we can run pretty agilely. And then, the budget, we usually start from 5K as a POC, or those test projects, and then when they respond.
169 00:27:10.250 ⇒ 00:27:15.109 Amber Lin: When they expand, it goes to, say, 3- or 6-month projects.
170 00:27:15.110 ⇒ 00:27:20.030 Amber Lin: That’s probably around, I would say, 10 to 30K in that range.
171 00:27:20.430 ⇒ 00:27:21.290 Justin Breshears: Alright, cool.
172 00:27:21.330 ⇒ 00:27:40.729 Justin Breshears: Well, I want to respect your time, I appreciate you staying on and answering, you know, a couple of questions there, but… I mean, this is exactly what I do right now. Like, we’re a services company, we do this exact thing, so it’d be something that I could take my experience and help build out something new. It would be really awesome. So, would love to get a chance to move forward, if….
173 00:27:40.730 ⇒ 00:27:45.799 Amber Lin: Okay, awesome. Yeah, I’ll share this with Utam, and then we’ll see a decision from him.
174 00:27:45.800 ⇒ 00:27:47.760 Justin Breshears: Okay, thanks so much, Ambrose, nice to meet you.
175 00:27:47.760 ⇒ 00:27:49.160 Amber Lin: You too. Have a good one.
176 00:27:49.160 ⇒ 00:27:49.700 Justin Breshears: Bye.
177 00:27:49.920 ⇒ 00:27:50.520 Amber Lin: Bye.