Meeting Title: Brainforge x Vixel Go-to-Market Strategy Sync Date: 2025-08-26 Meeting participants: Robert Tseng, Jake Nathan, Aater’s Fathom Notetaker, suleman, Sam Melehy, Ryan Brosas
WEBVTT
1 00:00:18.740 ⇒ 00:00:19.520 Jake Nathan: Hey, Robert.
2 00:00:19.770 ⇒ 00:00:21.349 Robert Tseng: Hey, Jake, how’s it going?
3 00:00:21.620 ⇒ 00:00:22.920 Jake Nathan: Good, man, how are you doing?
4 00:00:23.470 ⇒ 00:00:27.720 Robert Tseng: Doing well. I heard you, met with Uten yesterday, in person?
5 00:00:27.720 ⇒ 00:00:30.479 Jake Nathan: Yeah, yeah, we worked at a coffee shop, it was awesome.
6 00:00:30.710 ⇒ 00:00:32.859 Robert Tseng: Oh, do you guys live close to each other?
7 00:00:33.260 ⇒ 00:00:40.750 Jake Nathan: If… I actually didn’t catch where he lived, but if he… I think he lives in the east side of Austin, so he probably lives, like…
8 00:00:41.120 ⇒ 00:00:44.180 Jake Nathan: 20 minutes away… 15, 20 minutes away, so not too bad.
9 00:00:44.470 ⇒ 00:00:45.729 Robert Tseng: Okay, cool.
10 00:00:46.160 ⇒ 00:00:52.279 Jake Nathan: Yeah, man, but I’m pumped, so yeah, thanks again for… for that intro, and yeah, I’ve just been, …
11 00:00:52.420 ⇒ 00:00:57.050 Jake Nathan: and Notion, and the Slack, and just looking through everything, and pumped to get started.
12 00:00:57.490 ⇒ 00:01:16.610 Robert Tseng: Cool. Yeah, no, I think we’re… I mean, obviously, you brought a lot to the table, so I think we were really excited about a couple of the things that you wanted to… you wanted to try with us, and I guess for some context, Vixel is, … we went through their accelerator. They’re actually based in Austin, so they’d be a good contact for you as well.
13 00:01:18.000 ⇒ 00:01:34.489 Robert Tseng: Yeah, because I work with a lot of, B2B services companies like ours, but we went… we went through their accelerator for the first 3 months of this month… of this year, and then this is just kind of, like, a routine check-in. I think specifically we’re just going to be focused on, like, go-to-market strategy.
14 00:01:34.580 ⇒ 00:01:44.160 Robert Tseng: And, I guess, less content-focused, but more, like, on our outbound motion. So, yeah, I guess you’ll just be able to listen in and kind of hear kind of how we’ve been thinking about it.
15 00:01:44.510 ⇒ 00:01:46.599 Jake Nathan: Cool, that’s awesome.
16 00:01:47.980 ⇒ 00:01:49.220 suleman: Hey, Robert. Hey, Jake.
17 00:01:49.220 ⇒ 00:01:50.440 Robert Tseng: Hey, Arthur.
18 00:01:50.440 ⇒ 00:01:51.070 Jake Nathan: Howdy.
19 00:01:51.460 ⇒ 00:01:52.599 suleman: Hey, how’s it going?
20 00:01:53.470 ⇒ 00:01:54.840 Robert Tseng: Doing well, how are you?
21 00:01:55.390 ⇒ 00:02:01.469 suleman: Doing very well. Should we do some quick introductions while we wait for Utam?
22 00:02:01.470 ⇒ 00:02:18.070 Robert Tseng: Yeah, sure. I don’t know if Utam will join for this one, actually, so it might just be me, but, yeah, so Jake is, starting to help us out with content, and, I guess on the go-to-market side, so… just wanted… just kind of letting him sit in on all of our sales and marketing calls, pretty much, and…
23 00:02:18.160 ⇒ 00:02:27.490 Robert Tseng: Yeah, he’s actually based in Austin, too, so I thought it’d be cool to kind of just make the intro, and I guess, Jake, you can kind of just… you can share your bit about yourself.
24 00:02:28.220 ⇒ 00:02:52.019 Jake Nathan: Oh, I appreciate it, yeah, thanks for… thanks for letting me hop on. So yeah, based in Austin, born and raised here. My background’s in, like Robert was saying, is in, content and marketing, so before this, I started my career at Deloitte doing consulting, then I, pivoted to making, cooking videos on TikTok, funny enough, and kind of grew that from zero to a million followers across the different channels.
25 00:02:52.020 ⇒ 00:02:53.589 Jake Nathan: And then I started a…
26 00:02:53.590 ⇒ 00:03:12.369 Jake Nathan: high-protein frozen pizza company, and, got that into Central Market. So that was really the consumer side, and now I’m kind of back on the B2B side, and specifically, like, helping, B2B services companies with their marketing, so kind of blending my B2B background and marketing. So, excited to just…
27 00:03:12.400 ⇒ 00:03:14.400 Jake Nathan: Be a fly on the wall here.
28 00:03:15.210 ⇒ 00:03:31.420 suleman: Awesome. Great to meet you, Jake, and I guess you probably are a little familiar with us already, but yes, Vixel is this… we started an accelerator right here in Austin, to help tech services companies, unlike all of the accelerators that focus on product.
29 00:03:31.460 ⇒ 00:03:38.150 suleman: And, we work with companies like Brainforge, a total portfolio of about 30 companies today.
30 00:03:38.370 ⇒ 00:03:42.509 suleman: And my personal background is actually very technical.
31 00:03:42.520 ⇒ 00:03:55.720 Jake Nathan: Otam’s background, but then have learned business, sales, and marketing over the years. And also with me here is Sam from my team as well. Sam’s been a CEO in the past, have built and sold.
32 00:03:55.720 ⇒ 00:04:01.589 suleman: multiple tech services ventures, and so we’re just really advising Robert and Utam here.
33 00:04:02.190 ⇒ 00:04:07.839 Jake Nathan: Awesome. Yeah, that’s… thanks for giving me your background, and excited to… to see how y’all think about it, so….
34 00:04:08.620 ⇒ 00:04:13.239 suleman: Sounds great. So, Robert, I was just doing a quick,
35 00:04:13.240 ⇒ 00:04:28.780 suleman: catch up on my end from our notes last time. So, one option I think we could do is just go straight into the mutual intro playbook that you guys had created. I think that was one of the possibilities, unless you have some of the other data we had talked about collected that we can look at.
36 00:04:28.780 ⇒ 00:04:45.579 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I guess you told me to kind of build out this flowchart exercise, so I kind of did that for Mutual Intro and Circleback, so I know you mentioned that you guys have some thoughts on, like, how to make Circleback work, and that’d be helpful. And then happy to show you the Mutual Intro stuff. I guess we’re a couple weeks
37 00:04:45.710 ⇒ 00:04:48.170 Robert Tseng: You know, it’s been 2 or 3 weeks since then, and…
38 00:04:48.190 ⇒ 00:05:07.250 Robert Tseng: I still think the mutual intro playbook has been going well, like, we’re… we’re booking, like, like, 3 falls a week since then off of it, and that’s really just from reaching out to, like, 5 to 10 people a day, so, definitely feel like we still have a lot more activation to do from just second-degree connections, on that side, so…
39 00:05:07.380 ⇒ 00:05:12.110 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I guess I’ll… I can share my screen, if that’s helpful.
40 00:05:12.820 ⇒ 00:05:23.099 suleman: Yeah, I’d love to see the flowcharts and the mutual intro campaign, if we can get to it, and then we still have, I think, a couple of other topics we’ll come back to for… if we don’t finish, we’ll come back to it next time, I think.
41 00:05:23.100 ⇒ 00:05:25.950 Robert Tseng: Okay, cool. Yeah, so…
42 00:05:26.180 ⇒ 00:05:39.020 Robert Tseng: I guess, can everyone see my widescreen? I can zoom in a bit more if it’s a bit weird. All right. So yeah, I guess on the left is kind of just the full chart, so I’ll just kind of talk through the different stages, and then we can look at the copy specifically.
43 00:05:39.060 ⇒ 00:05:47.989 Robert Tseng: But the idea is, like, we identify somebody who’s, like, a second-degree connection of, like, a particular ICP profile, so, I guess…
44 00:05:48.230 ⇒ 00:05:51.809 Robert Tseng: We had our coordinator… oops, not this one…
45 00:05:52.460 ⇒ 00:06:08.090 Robert Tseng: kind of has some kind of, like, just basic parameters of, like, the type of person we’re looking for, typically ahead of marketing or products. Even this, I think, is a bit too broad, so, the lead list that I actually have our coordinator working out of are already preset, so she doesn’t really change any of this stuff.
46 00:06:08.230 ⇒ 00:06:09.270 Robert Tseng: …
47 00:06:09.470 ⇒ 00:06:21.340 Robert Tseng: But yeah, I think, you know, they may have been posting on social media some interesting things about AI or data, maybe they’re hiring or something, but… or maybe they’re… yeah, or even if they’re just…
48 00:06:21.360 ⇒ 00:06:33.939 Robert Tseng: have that title, and we prospect their accounts, and, you know, they don’t have data talent, or they are hiring a data person. That’s also, like, you know, some… some triggers that we use to kind of start adding people to a list.
49 00:06:34.070 ⇒ 00:06:48.029 Robert Tseng: And then from there, there’s, like, a few motions. Well, I guess the first one is really just to kind of send out one of these three options. It’s just, like, a pretty open-ended question. Hey, do you know this person? Would you be feel… would you feel comfortable making an intro?
50 00:06:48.420 ⇒ 00:06:55.110 Robert Tseng: And then, you know, they would kind of see, like, 3 possibilities, and they’re saying, yeah, sure, happy to make you an intro.
51 00:06:55.220 ⇒ 00:07:00.819 Robert Tseng: Maybe they just ignore it, or they say no, and it’s like, okay, we just have to find another way in.
52 00:07:00.920 ⇒ 00:07:08.440 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so that’s… I mean, I’ll pause each step and just see if you have any thoughts on that, otherwise I’ll keep going through the sequence.
53 00:07:08.810 ⇒ 00:07:23.239 suleman: No, that makes a lot of sense, actually. So, essentially, you are not really giving a lot of context in the… so this is actually an amazing way to look at it, because it makes a ton of sense. So, the initial ask is a pretty straightforward, like, hey, you know somebody, can you make an intro?
54 00:07:23.240 ⇒ 00:07:35.720 suleman: Not really getting into why, basically, behind the intro. And you may not have the hard data on this, Robert, just curious. How many people are agreeing versus ignoring versus disagreeing, give or take?
55 00:07:36.320 ⇒ 00:07:44.119 Robert Tseng: I would say that every… like, everyone responds, so I’ve actually not had to use anything of the no response point yet, so…
56 00:07:44.180 ⇒ 00:08:01.850 Robert Tseng: I would say that it’s probably, like, 50-50 is my guess on, like, whether or not they agree or not. I think people have different kind of, … and I’m still building this out as I’m getting different responses, like, if they disagree, like, why are they disagreeing? Sometimes it’s, like, …
57 00:08:02.410 ⇒ 00:08:17.229 Robert Tseng: they just don’t know them well enough, or I kind of added a few things. Too long as if they spoke, they don’t know them well enough, or whatever the reason is. In which case, I just kind of think about, like, do we have another way in? And, then we’ll kind of go from there.
58 00:08:17.550 ⇒ 00:08:26.549 suleman: Very cool. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Those would be my two expected, because I get intro requests all the time, and those are my most common responses as well, so not surprised at all.
59 00:08:26.550 ⇒ 00:08:27.950 Robert Tseng: Oh, okay.
60 00:08:28.170 ⇒ 00:08:29.949 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, I…
61 00:08:30.070 ⇒ 00:08:34.300 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I don’t really think there’s much… much more we can do to push after they say that.
62 00:08:34.309 ⇒ 00:08:35.449 suleman: Technically.
63 00:08:35.449 ⇒ 00:08:36.199 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
64 00:08:36.659 ⇒ 00:08:52.639 Robert Tseng: But if they don’t respond, then I do follow up with a check-in. It’s just kind of something very generic, too. This is usually over LinkedIn or email, so I kind of just maybe have our coordinator change up the copy here. But it’s just trying to get them to respond, at least yes or no, pretty much.
65 00:08:52.909 ⇒ 00:09:00.819 Robert Tseng: But if they do agree, I think there’s kind of 3 possible paths. They either go ahead, they make the connection, it’s pretty straightforward, I send them
66 00:09:00.939 ⇒ 00:09:06.129 Robert Tseng: I kinda usually move things to email, so I can, like, … it’s… I feel like it’s…
67 00:09:07.049 ⇒ 00:09:17.869 Robert Tseng: I guess typically people prefer to make those intros over email, and we’re just kind of, giving them an intro blurb. So we have a couple, like, versions of our blurbs here for how we want to be introduced.
68 00:09:18.269 ⇒ 00:09:27.389 Robert Tseng: If it’s just, like, the pretty general, this is a target account, we don’t know exactly how we want to work with them, but this is kind of, like, a simple way to kind of talk about, like, what we do.
69 00:09:27.859 ⇒ 00:09:43.319 Robert Tseng: And then a couple artifacts that we link to them. If it’s product analytics specific, because that is my personal kind of, like, expertise, and so, we may kind of, send something that’s a bit more tailored to that. Yeah, just for context, like.
70 00:09:43.509 ⇒ 00:09:53.599 Robert Tseng: probably, like, half of our clients started off as product analytics-focused engagements, and then kind of along the way, like, that’s been, like, a good entry point to go and learn about other
71 00:09:53.639 ⇒ 00:10:06.369 Robert Tseng: parts of their data stack, that… and just learn about other workflows that maybe need automation, and then that helps with the upsell into a bigger engagement. So that’s kind of one angle that we typically take.
72 00:10:06.369 ⇒ 00:10:13.699 Robert Tseng: And then, I guess I didn’t actually copy-paste the right… copying this, but this is, like, for AI specifically, and this is…
73 00:10:13.779 ⇒ 00:10:29.809 Robert Tseng: you know, we kind of dished this out more when, we’re… and, you know, once again, the copy is probably identical to this one, so I don’t really have a clear, like, differentiator on this one, but typically this is, like, if we’re talking to…
74 00:10:30.109 ⇒ 00:10:34.959 Robert Tseng: Yeah, if we’re talking to, like, a… more…
75 00:10:35.929 ⇒ 00:10:44.529 Robert Tseng: boomer business, I guess, if you want to call that, where they don’t really have reporting, they just have, like… we’re just talking… for example, we’re talking to, like, a…
76 00:10:44.579 ⇒ 00:10:54.139 Robert Tseng: like, a foam brush manufacturer based in California. Big, big manufacturer, they’re kind of in… in all, like, the big distributors that I’ve seen.
77 00:10:54.139 ⇒ 00:11:06.999 Robert Tseng: But, like, they don’t really do, like, you know, traditional BI in the way that we see it in… in this, like, you know, tech… tech-first world. They just… they just have a complex ERP system, they want to get a lot of data out of it.
78 00:11:06.999 ⇒ 00:11:20.189 Robert Tseng: And I feel like that’s probably… the persona’s probably, like, an owner-operator or chief of operations or something, and so we give them something that’s a bit more tailored, that’s less emphasizing, like, the bells and whistles of, like, …
79 00:11:20.189 ⇒ 00:11:30.219 Robert Tseng: being able to do all this, like, data stuff for them, and it’s a lot more focused on workflow optimization, cost savings, or whatever. So that’s kind of what that blurb probably would be tailored towards more.
80 00:11:30.669 ⇒ 00:11:39.509 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I would say, you know, these blurbs, I want to keep adding to this, kind of adjusted for our different ICP types, but, yeah, I think…
81 00:11:39.899 ⇒ 00:11:52.249 Robert Tseng: it’s not reflected in this diagram, but I… if I spent more time with this, I probably would have built out different flows for different types, for different personas as well, because this is pretty, like, a…
82 00:11:52.249 ⇒ 00:12:00.559 Robert Tseng: General, like, playbook that is more operational focused for our team, just to be able to know, like, which path to take, a lead down.
83 00:12:00.739 ⇒ 00:12:03.479 Robert Tseng: But yeah, so that’s kind of a…
84 00:12:03.679 ⇒ 00:12:13.559 Robert Tseng: Small tangent on the blurbs, but that’s kind of what happens if we do get an intro, approved, and then if not, they say… or maybe they did ask the client, they’re like.
85 00:12:13.869 ⇒ 00:12:27.839 Robert Tseng: and the client says no, then we have, like, a… just kind of a sequence for, you know, no worries, like, kind of maybe just find a different way in once again. So we just kind of disqualify from there. And if they go dark, then I’ll just keep messaging them
86 00:12:27.989 ⇒ 00:12:40.139 Robert Tseng: Until they give me a response, pretty much. Then we get to an intro made, and we kind of take it through our typical sales motion from there. So, that’s kind of just the gist of what this playbook is. …
87 00:12:40.239 ⇒ 00:12:40.989 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
88 00:12:41.139 ⇒ 00:12:41.689 Robert Tseng: Like I said.
89 00:12:41.690 ⇒ 00:12:42.649 suleman: Any other thoughts?
90 00:12:42.650 ⇒ 00:12:43.180 Robert Tseng: Hmm?
91 00:12:43.180 ⇒ 00:12:46.509 suleman: You said you’re producing 2 to 3 calls a week from this right now?
92 00:12:46.710 ⇒ 00:13:04.250 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I want… I definitely want the volume to go up more, like, I… we’re only doing this off of me manually adding, like, 5 to 10 people a day onto a… into our lead list to go after. So, I feel like, you know, between the Utam and I, we… in our… in the lead list that I’ve seen, we have, like.
93 00:13:04.300 ⇒ 00:13:15.429 Robert Tseng: probably, like, 10… I guess… okay, maybe not all of them are, but I’ve, like, thousands of additional ones, so I feel like we could… we could… we could keep this one… this campaign running for a while.
94 00:13:17.400 ⇒ 00:13:20.439 suleman: And I guess Yes, I’m goodness.
95 00:13:20.440 ⇒ 00:13:21.020 Sam Melehy: Yup.
96 00:13:21.460 ⇒ 00:13:22.450 Sam Melehy: No, go ahead.
97 00:13:22.800 ⇒ 00:13:27.419 suleman: No, I was just gonna say probably the same thing, which is this is pretty good, actually. It’s a…
98 00:13:27.510 ⇒ 00:13:43.139 suleman: good response rate, the fact that you all have thousands. The only one thing that you can consider adding, Adam, if you haven’t done so, is that, take advantage of AI to select them, so you are not manually doing it every day. That probably sounds like it’s… if there’s a bottleneck, that’s probably the one
99 00:13:43.240 ⇒ 00:13:45.039 suleman: That we are dealing with.
100 00:13:45.390 ⇒ 00:13:45.940 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
101 00:13:46.080 ⇒ 00:13:47.210 Robert Tseng: …
102 00:13:47.430 ⇒ 00:13:55.160 Robert Tseng: I would say, kind of… so we kind of had, like, somebody who was going through it and, like, trying to add to the list.
103 00:13:55.300 ⇒ 00:14:06.550 Robert Tseng: But I feel like there’s a bit of curation to this as well, where I didn’t actually like the way that they had built out some of these lists. I think I already removed them. Yeah, so, like, there were a few that were added to this list that…
104 00:14:06.710 ⇒ 00:14:08.389 Robert Tseng: didn’t really…
105 00:14:08.580 ⇒ 00:14:18.380 Robert Tseng: I mean, oh yeah, so I guess… I’m sure there’s probably some more automation we can build into it, but I think even having a human go and, like, continue to just add stuff to it based on the criteria.
106 00:14:18.510 ⇒ 00:14:24.630 Robert Tseng: she wasn’t really finding, like, the right people that I felt like were a good, good fit for us, so…
107 00:14:24.830 ⇒ 00:14:40.870 Robert Tseng: I feel like only… I mean, it’s not great to say, but I guess only Utam and I, I feel like, have a good sense of who our ICP still is on our team, and I think that’s probably a gap that we need to address in order to get more people involved in building this list.
108 00:14:41.340 ⇒ 00:14:54.259 suleman: Absolutely. By the way, there’s something that you can do in the middle, there, which is to train an AI that it can look at a profile and do a scoring, a yay or nay, that’s how we have done it at.
109 00:14:54.260 ⇒ 00:14:54.880 Robert Tseng: Hmm.
110 00:14:55.410 ⇒ 00:15:08.059 suleman: So while LinkedIn does not allow an API or an automation unless you have, like, a very secretive account, a very simple thing, a human… it’s kind of a human-computer combined solution, where a human can go to a profile.
111 00:15:08.060 ⇒ 00:15:16.220 suleman: Simply just copy-paste it into, like, an agent. So there’s a bit of a human, unfortunately, needed to avoid
112 00:15:16.220 ⇒ 00:15:21.120 suleman: violating licensing terms with LinkedIn. You don’t want to get your account blocked.
113 00:15:21.310 ⇒ 00:15:21.840 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
114 00:15:21.840 ⇒ 00:15:38.140 suleman: at the same time, this actually kind of makes the judgment away from the human, because effectively, you are literally just looking at, … they’re just putting in a profile and getting a score of, say, 7 to 10. That’s how we do it. We are doing it at Vixel right now, so just sharing practical experience here.
115 00:15:38.140 ⇒ 00:15:56.229 suleman: So we scope 1 through 10, we have generally trained an engine that does a decent job. It’s not perfect, but it also saves a lot of time, because then we can do a lot more at the same time. Even if you’re still going for just 10, and maybe you are taking a look at the list once really quick yourself.
116 00:15:56.230 ⇒ 00:15:58.260 suleman: But, like, for an AI to…
117 00:15:58.260 ⇒ 00:16:10.170 suleman: create, like, a score and a quick blurb summary of what they see on the profile that you can put in a spreadsheet. So for you with Notam, it becomes a… simply go and either put a cross or a check mark in a Google Sheet.
118 00:16:10.170 ⇒ 00:16:10.860 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
119 00:16:10.860 ⇒ 00:16:16.599 suleman: That would just, not violate any terms, not require any headaches in terms of automation, but saves you some time.
120 00:16:16.980 ⇒ 00:16:31.740 Robert Tseng: I see. Yeah, I kind of tried to do that, where I had the person kind of, like, write why, but yeah, these summaries were kind of all over the place, so I think it would make more sense to have something that I can easily make a yes or no decision off of, but ….
121 00:16:31.740 ⇒ 00:16:49.039 suleman: Basically, put AI in the core of the decision. That’s the funny part about this, right? Like, let the human do the part that should be automated, because it can’t be automated, but put AI in the core, because AI is very good at summarization. You guys know this way better than we do. So have AI summarize the profile, put it right here for you.
122 00:16:49.040 ⇒ 00:16:57.929 suleman: And … it also saves humans some time, because that part can be automated. The only part the human does is go to a profile, basically, and
123 00:16:57.930 ⇒ 00:17:00.520 suleman: copy-paste it, or download it as a PDF.
124 00:17:00.680 ⇒ 00:17:15.399 suleman: And then just upload it somewhere. So… that’ll speed things up a little, but also start to train a custom GPT that basically will start to take you guys eventually out of the loop. In the beginning, you’ll probably curate it, but this will create a sustainable solution.
125 00:17:15.400 ⇒ 00:17:16.030 Robert Tseng: Right.
126 00:17:17.119 ⇒ 00:17:20.300 Robert Tseng: Okay, yeah, no, that’s, that’s totally valid, yeah.
127 00:17:21.250 ⇒ 00:17:39.820 suleman: Yeah, that’s, … yeah, we actually kind of went through it, so that’s why it’s kind of tip of my tongue, because we went through the similar exercise on our end, and kind of that, seems to be a good way to… good middle ground, basically, to… because that’s the hard part for a human to, frankly, get very good at, right? That developed that intuition, for the lack of a break.
128 00:17:39.930 ⇒ 00:17:45.940 suleman: But AI actually is pretty decent at developing intuition, so take advantage of AI, the way it’s good at.
129 00:17:46.170 ⇒ 00:17:46.690 Robert Tseng: Okay.
130 00:17:46.690 ⇒ 00:17:48.600 suleman: And, just go from there.
131 00:17:48.600 ⇒ 00:17:51.860 Sam Melehy: So, I mean, this is… I’d say this is, …
132 00:17:52.230 ⇒ 00:17:57.139 Sam Melehy: more successful than expected, you know, just looking at the methodology here, right? So I think, …
133 00:17:57.350 ⇒ 00:18:04.150 Sam Melehy: I don’t know what you attribute it to, but it seems like you’ve done a pretty good job in identifying your ICP, right?
134 00:18:04.850 ⇒ 00:18:11.369 Sam Melehy: you know, anything else that comes to mind as to why you’re so successful with this? I mean, I’d… I’d say it’s a pretty good… pretty good hit rate.
135 00:18:11.870 ⇒ 00:18:26.210 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I would also say it’s probably because it’s so manually curated right now, we’re going after people that I do have, like, a higher level of familiarity with that I can… I feel a little confident I can get a response from, at least, so I’m sure once we, like, kind of…
136 00:18:26.590 ⇒ 00:18:30.959 Robert Tseng: stretch it more, like, I expect the performance to kind of drop, but …
137 00:18:31.240 ⇒ 00:18:42.659 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I… yeah, I do think the ICP thing helps, for sure, and especially since it’s just like, hey, can you make me an intro? Yeah, I think, like, it’s… it’s not like I…
138 00:18:43.110 ⇒ 00:18:53.680 Robert Tseng: the mutuals are not gatekeeping as much as you would think, because they’re… you know, we’re not, like, saying, hey, can you help me sell to your friend? It’s just, like, I want to make an intro.
139 00:18:53.680 ⇒ 00:19:01.550 Sam Melehy: The bottleneck on that side, though, is that really, you know, they have no relationship with the person they’re connected to, right? Or haven’t spoken to them in 10 years, right?
140 00:19:01.550 ⇒ 00:19:02.160 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
141 00:19:02.400 ⇒ 00:19:09.610 Sam Melehy: That was what I would expect you to run into more than you’ve run into it, so that’s… that’s really good. It’s remarkable.
142 00:19:10.080 ⇒ 00:19:13.209 suleman: So if we break it down based on the numbers,
143 00:19:13.410 ⇒ 00:19:18.470 suleman: That Robert, you were saying, just to put some numbers on it, that way we can benchmark it over time. Robert?
144 00:19:18.470 ⇒ 00:19:18.990 Robert Tseng: Yep.
145 00:19:18.990 ⇒ 00:19:24.960 suleman: I… if I’m doing the math in my head correctly, it seems like you guys are reaching out to 30 to 40 people a week.
146 00:19:25.440 ⇒ 00:19:25.840 Robert Tseng: Yep.
147 00:19:25.840 ⇒ 00:19:31.719 suleman: About 20 of them are agreeing to, make an introduction.
148 00:19:32.050 ⇒ 00:19:48.070 suleman: And out of those 20 that agreed to make an introduction, you’re ending up with 2 calls, let’s just say 2 or 3 calls, so about 10%. So about 5% from the… you target 40 hand-curated, and you’re getting 2 calls. Would that be a fair statement?
149 00:19:48.070 ⇒ 00:19:51.430 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think that’s… I think that’s pretty… that’s what we’ve been observing, yeah.
150 00:19:52.420 ⇒ 00:20:01.330 suleman: So, hand-curated referrals, and hand-curated customers, and, just a call, nothing, not a sale, 5%.
151 00:20:01.540 ⇒ 00:20:13.349 suleman: is a little higher than your typical, but I think I can see why the… so, Sam, just thinking out loud, actually, to your point. I guess with the… with the hand curation of both parties.
152 00:20:13.680 ⇒ 00:20:15.510 suleman: I think 5% sounds…
153 00:20:15.790 ⇒ 00:20:26.359 suleman: not that high, is what I’m thinking. 2 to 3 would be my expectation, it’s maybe double, but I think it’s not off by a whole lot. That’s just my intuition, though, there’s no data to back up what I’m saying.
154 00:20:28.470 ⇒ 00:20:33.210 Sam Melehy: Here’s another interesting variable you might take a look at. Maybe you’re doing it already.
155 00:20:33.210 ⇒ 00:20:38.529 suleman: Have you considered the quality of the network that… of the person you’re reaching out to? So, for example.
156 00:20:38.750 ⇒ 00:20:55.840 Sam Melehy: You know, I don’t connect with anybody on LinkedIn unless I’ve spoken to them, right? Yeah. Some sort of connection there. Other people don’t view it that way, and they connect with anybody that reaches out to them, and so you’re probably going to see that show up in your performance in terms of the qual… like, how many of those
157 00:20:55.840 ⇒ 00:21:06.810 Sam Melehy: mutual introductions actually show, you know, show any response by the person you’re trying to get to, right? I think that’s a direct correlation of the quality of that person’s network that’s in the middle.
158 00:21:07.650 ⇒ 00:21:12.930 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, that’s… I don’t… we haven’t tried to measure that yet, but yeah, I totally… I totally see that point, though.
159 00:21:12.930 ⇒ 00:21:17.910 Sam Melehy: Because then you go back to the folks that you, you know, that have given you a high batting average, you know, and you just…
160 00:21:18.200 ⇒ 00:21:23.310 Sam Melehy: Try to milk that a little bit more without… without being too annoying.
161 00:21:23.310 ⇒ 00:21:23.950 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
162 00:21:25.690 ⇒ 00:21:32.910 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, right now, I don’t even… we don’t really have, like, any stopgaps either, that, like, if I reached out to somebody, don’t hit them again, you know, like.
163 00:21:33.050 ⇒ 00:21:44.569 Robert Tseng: like, in the next month or something, so we haven’t really run into a situation, because we’re not doing enough volume to, like, be asking the same person multiple times within, like, a couple weeks, but, yeah, I… I’m…
164 00:21:44.780 ⇒ 00:21:47.700 Robert Tseng: I… in the back of my mind, I thought about, like, what…
165 00:21:48.030 ⇒ 00:21:54.570 Robert Tseng: Am I going to exhaust my first-degree connections if I’m asking too much, but have not run into that yet.
166 00:21:54.570 ⇒ 00:21:56.180 Sam Melehy: Yeah, good.
167 00:21:57.200 ⇒ 00:22:08.999 suleman: Yeah, I mean, think of it this way, that even if you can have these calls, and probably none of them are gonna close quickly, but basically creating, like, 100 friends of Brainforge, just to pick a number there, or follow…
168 00:22:09.210 ⇒ 00:22:18.479 suleman: It’s a great Rolodex to have, because eventually, each one of them is going to come up with something. It’s like the 3% rule, right? Only 3 out of 100 is probably in the market right now.
169 00:22:18.880 ⇒ 00:22:38.620 suleman: But, over time, that’s just right now, right now, over time, most of them will join the market, and you guys can actually have a good source of leads. But, point is well taken, though, that there’s actually… in fact, if I may put something a little more forward-thinking, because we have run into this problem at Wixel again, Robert, so just from that perspective, that…
170 00:22:38.790 ⇒ 00:22:39.880 suleman: You guys…
171 00:22:40.010 ⇒ 00:22:47.619 suleman: If I may throw a new term in the middle, right, which is that there is an IRP here as well, an ideal color profile.
172 00:22:48.070 ⇒ 00:23:05.240 suleman: Because some referrals are basically more connected, that’s what Sam is hitting at, right? That some people are more active in their networks and are more selective in their networks. So for us to curate that referrals, there’s one part of it getting better at curation, but the second part is how do we keep adding more referrals? Like, even if you
173 00:23:05.240 ⇒ 00:23:14.019 suleman: When you talk to some of these people, how would you take them from an ICP to an IRP? How do you make them a referrer, even if they don’t become a customer?
174 00:23:14.220 ⇒ 00:23:18.469 Robert Tseng: Right. How does that friendship nurture? So there is probably another path, I think.
175 00:23:18.760 ⇒ 00:23:22.919 suleman: Perhaps another flowchart like this, which goes from intro-made to…
176 00:23:23.140 ⇒ 00:23:39.310 suleman: have a call, and assuming that they’re not a customer today, but then how do you guys maybe invite, like, I’m just thinking very simply, but can you meet them at an event? Can you actually have coffee with them at some point? Kind of nurture that relationship to turn them into a referral.
177 00:23:40.000 ⇒ 00:23:46.779 suleman: slash customer, in that, … basically, I’m worried about your IRPs running out, right? The number of referrals eventually will.
178 00:23:46.780 ⇒ 00:23:47.390 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
179 00:23:47.540 ⇒ 00:23:55.260 suleman: So, how do you make sure that you’re increasing that as well for the future? That’s a 2020… that’ll show up as a problem in 2027.
180 00:23:55.470 ⇒ 00:24:08.619 suleman: So, and the reason I said it’s a Vixel, I’ve seen it a little, so speaking from experience here, is that the Vixel community, particularly the advisor community, was going at a very rapid pace through 22 and 23.
181 00:24:08.660 ⇒ 00:24:18.820 suleman: That was leading to a lot of activity for us on the pipeline. And then 24, we were busy on the pipeline, so the advisor community wasn’t increasing as fast.
182 00:24:19.050 ⇒ 00:24:26.279 suleman: And now that’s starting to show up in 2026 as that side of the channel has slowed down, the further channel has slowed down.
183 00:24:26.290 ⇒ 00:24:31.760 Robert Tseng: So we have… Yeah. So, just kind of pointing that out to you. That is probably not the 2025 problem.
184 00:24:31.760 ⇒ 00:24:36.850 suleman: But starting to think about now and how you’re going to increase referrals, I think, has to be on the agenda as well.
185 00:24:37.430 ⇒ 00:24:56.300 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, that’s interesting that you mention that, because, I mean, what’s not talked about here is, like, we do a similar… I mean, we’ve been… we’ve been trying to grow our friends of Brainforge, or we call it our partner network, right? So, and we do categorize them into different types of partners, and, yeah, I guess it’s not as…
186 00:24:57.540 ⇒ 00:25:08.449 Robert Tseng: We have… we have someone who… her directive, one of her directives is just to, kind of, every week, there are, you know, there are 5 to 10, like, …
187 00:25:08.610 ⇒ 00:25:24.940 Robert Tseng: partners that are either active or just in our pipeline that we need to take an action on. And, like, I just have somebody who’s strategically there to just try to take an action to continue to nurture the partner relationship. I mean, what we’ve found, obviously, is that, like, partner…
188 00:25:25.030 ⇒ 00:25:40.889 Robert Tseng: leads, like, if to kind of rely on partners to end up, like, kind of bringing sales to us, like, it’s not… it’s very unpredictable, and it takes a long time, so, I suppose that we were… we’ve been more focused on, like, kind of trying to operationalize, like, this direct kind of
189 00:25:40.920 ⇒ 00:25:45.139 Robert Tseng: outbound campaigns, but, yeah, I guess…
190 00:25:45.260 ⇒ 00:25:59.059 Robert Tseng: I wonder how important it is for us to continue to grow our partner network at the same time as, like, the way that we’re also, like, going after these ourselves. So, I mean, yeah, so I guess that’s kind of what came to mind when you were describing it.
191 00:25:59.250 ⇒ 00:26:18.490 suleman: No, I think you’re spot on. That’s the idea of the partner network, or the… the other name you might have heard me say, and in the Vixel community, some people use, is just, well, call it a community. So for us, that would mean the advisor community needs to keep going. For you, the partner community needs to keep going, because the partner community growth is what’s gonna…
192 00:26:18.490 ⇒ 00:26:24.300 suleman: Eventually define how many referrals, how many mutual intros you can get next year, basically.
193 00:26:24.620 ⇒ 00:26:25.220 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
194 00:26:26.600 ⇒ 00:26:39.139 Robert Tseng: Okay, that’s… I’m curious, what do you do for your advisor network? I mean, I’m sure you do a lot, but, like, I’m trying to glean some, like… when we do check in with them, a lot of it is just, like, hey, updates on Brainforge is what we’re up to, like.
195 00:26:39.310 ⇒ 00:26:58.239 Robert Tseng: Is there anything that we could be, like, you know, sharing with you, or kind of anybody that we should be talking to in your network? Like, that’s… I feel like we don’t have so much leverage to really, like, be that helpful to our partners, unless it’s really one-off things. I do have noticed, like, we’ve hit this point where there is more saturation, and I’m getting random invites and stuff, like, that I can’t even go to.
196 00:26:58.240 ⇒ 00:27:06.890 Robert Tseng: So let… but, like, yeah, I think that’s… I have seen, like, some effect, but, like, just haven’t really… not really sure how to, like, how to put it in terms of our priorities.
197 00:27:07.700 ⇒ 00:27:26.930 suleman: So, I would say 3… 3 things that, we have done. Frankly, let me… let me break that down into 3 things that we were doing when we were doing it really well. That, like I said, in 2024, we lapsed a little, but, like, 2022, 23, I was very personally focused on growing the advisor partner community, for the lack of a better word.
198 00:27:27.100 ⇒ 00:27:34.210 suleman: So, some of it was, because advisors and referrers are a bit more high leverage.
199 00:27:34.580 ⇒ 00:27:34.940 Robert Tseng: Right.
200 00:27:34.940 ⇒ 00:27:47.539 suleman: So, what that means is that it was worth my time to send them just personalized messages, like, so keeping an eye on them through LinkedIn would often give me a reason to plunge, like, if they make a post.
201 00:27:47.710 ⇒ 00:27:56.479 suleman: On LinkedIn, well, ABC, you can sometimes just leave a comment, like, it doesn’t have to be even a personal outreach, right? Just leave a comment and that reminds them you’re alive.
202 00:27:56.780 ⇒ 00:28:10.749 suleman: Yeah. Just like their post, leave a comment underneath it. One of the easiest ways I’ve done this is if people post, like, when LinkedIn gives them an update about them, they have a new job, just kind of saying, well, congratulations, how’s it going, been a while, we should catch up.
203 00:28:11.090 ⇒ 00:28:17.729 suleman: Yeah. Then, occasionally, if this was a little more selective, but let’s just say, …
204 00:28:17.960 ⇒ 00:28:37.719 suleman: I talked to Sam in that, and then after that, we had a new idea that had something to do with the conversation I had with Sam at that time. For instance, they suggested just reaching out to them, hey, we just launched this new thing, and thought I should thank you for all the advice you gave me that played a big role in us being able to launch this.
205 00:28:37.720 ⇒ 00:28:52.629 suleman: now you have people hooked, like, they are gonna pay attention to you, because they feel like you listen to them, and they feel like they are a part of the journey. So those would be my ways of keeping people in the loop, not very systematic, it was a little more personalized, if you will.
206 00:28:52.630 ⇒ 00:28:53.200 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
207 00:28:53.510 ⇒ 00:29:10.699 suleman: And the way I was doing it… the way I was systematically doing it, again, at the time, and I was very focused on it personally, that I was essentially in the CRM tracking all these contacts, and in front of every contact, there would be a next contact date, which is the date that I would
208 00:29:10.840 ⇒ 00:29:18.069 suleman: I’ll filter every day, and I’ll see these are the people I need to touch today. And then, typically, it’s not spend more than a couple of minutes each.
209 00:29:18.090 ⇒ 00:29:31.909 suleman: But, just go ahead and touch them, like, with something reasonably intelligent. Nothing too intelligent, just mildly sensible and personalized. And the way to go with that was not too different from what you have on the screen, which is, hey, I think you know…
210 00:29:32.010 ⇒ 00:29:46.059 suleman: Chris, who started A, B, and C, could you make an introduction for me? One thing I noticed was that as long as we stayed front and center, a lot of those mutual intros just kept coming as well for the other referrers, because they know from their community, people like themselves.
211 00:29:46.190 ⇒ 00:29:52.190 suleman: connections will come up all the time, where they will say, well, you’ve talked to me, why don’t you talk to this other person? I want to introduce you to
212 00:29:52.990 ⇒ 00:30:04.789 suleman: they will come through. So, I think some of that, as long as I stayed top of mind, some of that growth… growth of the community kept… stayed all… organic, and to stay top of the mind, I was leveraging social media, basically, for the most part.
213 00:30:05.540 ⇒ 00:30:06.170 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
214 00:30:07.200 ⇒ 00:30:20.129 Robert Tseng: Got it. And I guess, if we ever have one more question, at least what I found is, like, yeah, there are a lot of these, like, really highly leveraged, well-connected individuals that may be kind of entrepreneurs or other people, folks like us.
215 00:30:20.130 ⇒ 00:30:34.139 Robert Tseng: But, like, for institutions, like, I don’t know, we’ve been trying to knock on the doors of, like, PE firms, other VC firms and stuff, and, I feel like they’re not necessarily as open to these types of messaging, at least we haven’t been able to find success to any… anybody there.
216 00:30:34.140 ⇒ 00:30:41.039 Robert Tseng: And so there was, like, a thought, like, oh, well, maybe we need to go, like, we have to rely on a partner intro in order to get into
217 00:30:41.040 ⇒ 00:30:51.960 Robert Tseng: that world… I feel like that’s just how that world works, like, I don’t know if you have, like, different tiers of… if you’ve kind of thought about… within your own advisor, kind of, like, outreach, like.
218 00:30:52.150 ⇒ 00:30:59.239 Robert Tseng: I imagine there must be some… there’s some, like, gatekeepers in each… to different circles that maybe you’ve thought about.
219 00:31:00.240 ⇒ 00:31:25.150 suleman: We haven’t faced this much at Wixel, I think just because of the kind of, my LinkedIn profile, right? People don’t… people realize very quickly there’s nothing to… not reaching out to sell them anything. Like, if it’s reaching out to a PE or a VC, my profile says that that’s what I do for a living myself, and also in that category, so they look at me as a peer, so it’s a little less problematic. But at Flux7, we used to run into that all the time, because we were in your shoes.
220 00:31:25.150 ⇒ 00:31:26.560 suleman: Precisely.
221 00:31:27.410 ⇒ 00:31:37.370 suleman: And VCs as well. Sam actually might have a different perspective, but I would actually agree with your reading. I was… I never really targeted PEs or VCs very…
222 00:31:37.450 ⇒ 00:31:55.620 suleman: As a prime target, but in my head, at least, I cannot remember a single PE or VC that I was eventually connected to, which was not through a mutual introduction. Almost always, it was through… either they reached out, or it was a mutual intro. They have reached out purely with an intent to invest or buy Flex7.
223 00:31:55.620 ⇒ 00:32:03.740 suleman: And then it’ll turn into something, and then they will intro somebody else in their community. But I don’t remember ever being able to crack into a VC just by talking to them.
224 00:32:03.740 ⇒ 00:32:04.759 suleman: As a stranger.
225 00:32:06.980 ⇒ 00:32:13.999 Sam Melehy: You know, I think, yeah, it occurs to me that you’re gonna have a lot of trouble, because those guys get approached all the time, but….
226 00:32:14.000 ⇒ 00:32:14.500 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
227 00:32:14.500 ⇒ 00:32:20.770 Sam Melehy: You know, I, I’m thinking your, your mutual introduction …
228 00:32:21.090 ⇒ 00:32:28.400 Sam Melehy: you know, might be, exploitable here. You know, if you can acquaint yourself, at least, with
229 00:32:28.510 ⇒ 00:32:33.780 Sam Melehy: some of those folks that are in the… at those firms, they might be able to introduce you to your ICPs.
230 00:32:34.950 ⇒ 00:32:35.520 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
231 00:32:36.250 ⇒ 00:32:36.600 Sam Melehy: But….
232 00:32:36.600 ⇒ 00:32:37.110 Robert Tseng: Okay.
233 00:32:37.110 ⇒ 00:32:41.879 Sam Melehy: they’re… yeah, they’re… they’re tough. They’re tough to approach. You know, I think,
234 00:32:42.530 ⇒ 00:32:48.289 Sam Melehy: I’d say VCs, especially, are kind of resistant to services, in general.
235 00:32:50.600 ⇒ 00:32:59.130 suleman: So, I do know of one campaign that was ran towards VCs in the portfolio that was very successful. This was a 2-year-old story, Robert.
236 00:32:59.200 ⇒ 00:33:15.830 suleman: Okay. And they actually did get, like, tens of meetings lined up. It was… but it hit… I think this is a general rule, because it actually hit on a problem, like, literally 10 on 10, it was a bullseye kind of a thing. So, essentially, the entrepreneur came up with a very smart insight.
237 00:33:15.830 ⇒ 00:33:21.470 suleman: That, the early-stage angels and early-stage investment firms
238 00:33:21.470 ⇒ 00:33:25.049 suleman: This was 2 years ago, when my funding had just started to dry up.
239 00:33:25.380 ⇒ 00:33:25.760 Robert Tseng: Yep.
240 00:33:25.760 ⇒ 00:33:36.880 suleman: Essentially, a lot of their companies were having difficulty raising the second round of funding, which means that all of those investors were kind of about to see their wealth dissipate, because those companies were going to close down where they had written.
241 00:33:36.880 ⇒ 00:33:37.570 Robert Tseng: Right.
242 00:33:37.570 ⇒ 00:33:43.859 suleman: So they literally ran a campaign saying, looking to increase the runway of your companies.
243 00:33:44.570 ⇒ 00:34:01.800 suleman: try offshore development resources, whereas we can come in and do it for you. Whatever you’re doing, we’ll do it one-third the price. Not that clear, but that was implied. And that campaign worked very, very well, because they actually hit a nerve with everyone, so it was a very, very well-thought-out campaign in that.
244 00:34:01.800 ⇒ 00:34:03.970 Sam Melehy: Guys, I gotta… I gotta drop, I’m sorry.
245 00:34:03.970 ⇒ 00:34:04.580 suleman: here, actually.
246 00:34:04.580 ⇒ 00:34:05.639 Robert Tseng: All good. Thank you, Sam.
247 00:34:06.050 ⇒ 00:34:06.670 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
248 00:34:07.200 ⇒ 00:34:20.629 suleman: Yeah, I need to run as well, just wanted to finish that thought, Robert. So, I think I’ll use your calendar to set up another time. It feels like these conversations could be productive, we can keep having some of these, and just talk through the… next time I want to do the callback.
249 00:34:22.080 ⇒ 00:34:22.830 Robert Tseng: Okay.
250 00:34:22.830 ⇒ 00:34:23.879 suleman: That’s alright with you?
251 00:34:24.159 ⇒ 00:34:41.579 Robert Tseng: Yeah, definitely. I think, what to take away from me was, like, the IRP concepts and, like, really thinking through, like, how do we really score not just, like, our leads, but also on the referral side, like, measuring the quality of their networks and seeing if we can manufacture just higher, higher rates from there. So, I think that’s, that’s a really good point.
252 00:34:41.880 ⇒ 00:34:58.090 suleman: But generally, congratulations, this is a great story building up. I think there will be obstacles, potentially, down the road, but enjoy the success while we are having it, yet we should be thinking about the next steps as well, so… I think that’s the callback campaign, we can discuss it, and then the, how do we increase the referral network, we could…
253 00:34:58.220 ⇒ 00:35:01.600 suleman: Go dive deeper into it as well, in the next follow-up.
254 00:35:01.860 ⇒ 00:35:05.019 Robert Tseng: Okay, sounds good. Thanks, Otter, and thanks, guys. Yeah.
255 00:35:05.020 ⇒ 00:35:06.010 suleman: That’s weird.
256 00:35:06.250 ⇒ 00:35:09.029 suleman: Ryan, by the way, I didn’t get to say hi at all, I guess we’ll catch up.
257 00:35:09.030 ⇒ 00:35:09.930 Ryan Brosas: Next time.
258 00:35:09.930 ⇒ 00:35:10.320 suleman: Just….
259 00:35:10.320 ⇒ 00:35:11.130 Ryan Brosas: Yeah….
260 00:35:12.160 ⇒ 00:35:13.630 suleman: Thank you, guys.
261 00:35:13.820 ⇒ 00:35:14.620 suleman: Thank you.
262 00:35:14.730 ⇒ 00:35:15.360 suleman: Bye-bye.