Meeting Title: Brainforge Project Overview and Blog Planning Date: 2025-09-08 Meeting participants: Demilade Agboola, Jake Nathan
WEBVTT
1 00:00:11.840 ⇒ 00:00:12.340 Demilade Agboola: Hi, Joe.
2 00:00:12.340 ⇒ 00:00:15.110 Jake Nathan: Hey, good. Hey, good morning, how are you doing?
3 00:00:15.410 ⇒ 00:00:16.670 Demilade Agboola: I’m pretty good, how are you?
4 00:00:17.600 ⇒ 00:00:20.220 Jake Nathan: I’m good. Thanks for making time to meet.
5 00:00:20.420 ⇒ 00:00:21.999 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, welcome to the team.
6 00:00:22.920 ⇒ 00:00:26.489 Jake Nathan: I appreciate it, yeah. How long have you been at Brain Forge for?
7 00:00:27.100 ⇒ 00:00:34.859 Demilade Agboola: Since March, but, you know, definitely long enough for me to… for me to tell you welcome, so…
8 00:00:35.670 ⇒ 00:00:45.470 Jake Nathan: Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, it’s it’s been really fun working with the team so far, and yeah, I appreciate you being flexible and willing to
9 00:00:45.470 ⇒ 00:00:57.380 Jake Nathan: to hop on quickly. So, yeah, I’d love to hear, I mean, I guess before we get started, like, me asking you questions, I’d love, just to hear a little bit of background on what you…
10 00:00:57.550 ⇒ 00:01:05.260 Jake Nathan: do for Brainforge, and kind of some of the projects you’ve been working on, just at a high level, and then I can, start asking you some questions.
11 00:01:06.080 ⇒ 00:01:13.640 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, so, I currently have worked on two main projects with…
12 00:01:14.170 ⇒ 00:01:19.140 Demilade Agboola: bring forward. One is the Urban Sands project, the other one is the Eden Project.
13 00:01:20.160 ⇒ 00:01:33.949 Demilade Agboola: So for the, Eden project, I have largely been the products person, so I’ve done a lot of modeling around products, product categorization, ad revenue, ad spend.
14 00:01:34.200 ⇒ 00:01:44.540 Demilade Agboola: being able to model the NCAC cost, like, cost of acquisition, customer acquisition, NRAS, like, return on ad spend.
15 00:01:44.790 ⇒ 00:01:48.070 Demilade Agboola: Things around that.
16 00:01:48.410 ⇒ 00:02:01.109 Demilade Agboola: And also, just, like, being the person who helps them either solve the problems, like, get them the answers to certain questions, or propose, like, architectural solutions that could help with
17 00:02:01.370 ⇒ 00:02:15.640 Demilade Agboola: the problems that they have. So, like, hey, if you keep having this issue with getting this data, it might be helpful to create an API that does this, this, this, this, and that helps us solve some of the issues that we are currently experiencing.
18 00:02:15.810 ⇒ 00:02:18.820 Demilade Agboola: So that’s for Eden. For Urban State.
19 00:02:19.040 ⇒ 00:02:23.860 Demilade Agboola: it’s been a bit phased. So the first phase was us trying to get
20 00:02:24.950 ⇒ 00:02:33.160 Demilade Agboola: close to real-time data on their inventory systems, so I basically led that phase of the project.
21 00:02:33.270 ⇒ 00:02:36.829 Demilade Agboola: Because that’s for Mother’s Day, and Mother’s Day accounts for about…
22 00:02:37.360 ⇒ 00:02:41.609 Demilade Agboola: between Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day, it accounts for, like, 40% of their yearly revenue.
23 00:02:41.950 ⇒ 00:02:44.490 Demilade Agboola: So it’s huge for them.
24 00:02:44.830 ⇒ 00:03:04.329 Demilade Agboola: Yeah. Basically, being able to give them access to their inventory so they could see what was happening and what needed to be, you know, happen in the week leading up to Valentine. And so Mother’s Day was really important. And in this, second phase, it’s been more of, like, consolidation on what we’ve built, making it more robust.
25 00:03:04.610 ⇒ 00:03:13.780 Demilade Agboola: Handling more edge cases, but also still building out the infrastructure for their new revenue system and revenue mart, so that they can have
26 00:03:14.100 ⇒ 00:03:21.159 Demilade Agboola: the numbers that they need. So this phase has been integrating, like, Shopify data, Loop data.
27 00:03:21.570 ⇒ 00:03:33.800 Demilade Agboola: And then trying to ensure that those numbers are as accurate as can be, and handle all the weird edge cases that they have, because Urban Stems is a flower delivery company, I don’t know if you know them.
28 00:03:33.800 ⇒ 00:03:34.890 Jake Nathan: Yeah, yeah.
29 00:03:34.890 ⇒ 00:03:47.180 Demilade Agboola: So if, effectively, they have, like, a lot of edge cases about things dying, you know, buffers, how do you… care packages, like, there’s a lot that goes on with them in that regard.
30 00:03:47.320 ⇒ 00:03:51.060 Demilade Agboola: How do you factor all those numbers in? So, yeah, that’s kind of…
31 00:03:51.210 ⇒ 00:03:55.550 Demilade Agboola: what I have been doing with both people so far, both projects so far.
32 00:03:56.530 ⇒ 00:03:59.739 Jake Nathan: Gotcha. And both of those, it sounds like, are,
33 00:04:00.340 ⇒ 00:04:03.039 Jake Nathan: Kind of e-commerce related, would you say?
34 00:04:03.870 ⇒ 00:04:06.650 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, e-commerce related would be… Okay.
35 00:04:06.770 ⇒ 00:04:19.450 Jake Nathan: Yeah, because I know, yeah, I was doing just research on the… on the clients, and yeah, I know Edita and Urban Stibb are both e-collabor, so that… that makes a ton of sense. So yeah, thanks for that background,
36 00:04:19.589 ⇒ 00:04:21.270 Jake Nathan: I guess, from…
37 00:04:21.510 ⇒ 00:04:33.790 Jake Nathan: Utom’s perspective, what he gave me, he said you were awesome on the analytics engineering side, data modeling side, and he’s just, he kind of has me wanting to interview different
38 00:04:33.850 ⇒ 00:04:43.680 Jake Nathan: people at Brainforge, and coming up, like, basically, I would turn this interview that we’re having into some sort of helpful, you know, blog post, or…
39 00:04:43.960 ⇒ 00:04:56.100 Jake Nathan: piece of content that, he can use to, like, if he’s, trying to find another e-com company to work with, he might, you know, send this blog post along of, hey, like, here’s,
40 00:04:56.220 ⇒ 00:05:07.770 Jake Nathan: you know, like, you might send the founder of that e-commerce company this, blog post that I would be making to help them, like, in the sales process. So,
41 00:05:07.920 ⇒ 00:05:22.079 Jake Nathan: what’s been helpful, like, what I’ve been doing is I’ve been trying to pick a particular topic just based on what you feel like you’re an expert at, and so, to me, like, specifically, like, I mean, I…
42 00:05:22.410 ⇒ 00:05:29.719 Jake Nathan: Love to get your feedback, but, if you’re… if you kind of have that analytics, engineering, and data modeling background, like, do you think…
43 00:05:29.800 ⇒ 00:05:44.230 Jake Nathan: like, something as simple as, like, hey, what are three… like, you’ve been in these two projects, and I’m sure you’ve been in a bunch of other projects, like, are there three common pitfalls of, like,
44 00:05:44.850 ⇒ 00:05:54.610 Jake Nathan: for analytics engineering for e-commerce or something, like, do you think you could come up with, like, 3 things, and I could just… we could kind of riff and ask each… you know, I could ask you questions?
45 00:05:55.880 ⇒ 00:05:57.160 Demilade Agboola: Like, right now.
46 00:05:58.360 ⇒ 00:06:10.319 Jake Nathan: If… or if you wanna, like, we can totally… this can just be, like, kind of a check-in, and then we could schedule it for later in the week, if you want to take some time… more time to think about it.
47 00:06:13.140 ⇒ 00:06:17.019 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, I think more time to think about it would be great, because I could probably come up with…
48 00:06:17.150 ⇒ 00:06:27.159 Demilade Agboola: you could give me, like, maybe two topics or three topics right now. You mentioned 3 common analytics engineering mistakes in e-commerce, that’s a good one, I could think of that.
49 00:06:27.160 ⇒ 00:06:27.830 Jake Nathan: Okay.
50 00:06:27.970 ⇒ 00:06:32.150 Demilade Agboola: We could probably think of something along the lines of,
51 00:06:42.790 ⇒ 00:06:43.810 Demilade Agboola: I’ll try.
52 00:06:43.810 ⇒ 00:06:47.739 Jake Nathan: Yeah, yeah, I’m What’d you say?
53 00:06:47.740 ⇒ 00:06:49.430 Demilade Agboola: How technical do you want it to be?
54 00:06:50.450 ⇒ 00:07:00.480 Jake Nathan: We can go as technical as, like, I honestly think that more technical, the better, just because it shows, you know, like, a lot of people… yeah, so I think,
55 00:07:00.650 ⇒ 00:07:03.000 Jake Nathan: It can be super technical, that’s fine.
56 00:07:03.670 ⇒ 00:07:04.520 Demilade Agboola: Oh, okay.
57 00:07:07.000 ⇒ 00:07:07.940 Demilade Agboola: Alright, so…
58 00:07:07.940 ⇒ 00:07:08.500 Jake Nathan: Like…
59 00:07:09.660 ⇒ 00:07:22.760 Jake Nathan: I’m… I’m just brainstorming with you, like, if there’s, like, you were mentioning a few different data sources that you use, like, even if you wanted to pick a specific piece of tech that you work with, like, I don’t know if it’s…
60 00:07:22.780 ⇒ 00:07:34.290 Jake Nathan: specifically on, like, importing Shopify data, or Looker Studio, or, like, any sort of tool you use, that… that could be another area, or…
61 00:07:35.060 ⇒ 00:07:39.029 Jake Nathan: Yeah, just any sort of common thread amongst the…
62 00:07:39.190 ⇒ 00:07:41.980 Jake Nathan: projects that you’ve worked on. Like, you said, the…
63 00:07:42.190 ⇒ 00:07:47.950 Jake Nathan: you mentioned for Urban STEM, like, Mother’s Day is, like, a huge part of their revenue, so, like,
64 00:07:48.750 ⇒ 00:07:53.819 Jake Nathan: you know, like, Black Friday is coming up for, I know, like, a lot of e-commerce companies, so, like, that…
65 00:07:54.420 ⇒ 00:08:00.480 Jake Nathan: I don’t know if there’s, like, what to prepare for when preparing for, like, a tentpole.
66 00:08:00.710 ⇒ 00:08:02.900 Jake Nathan: event.
67 00:08:02.900 ⇒ 00:08:04.209 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, that’s a mess.
68 00:08:04.450 ⇒ 00:08:10.640 Demilade Agboola: That’s a good one. Tempo… like, a tempo event will be… or a high-intensity event will be very,
69 00:08:11.370 ⇒ 00:08:12.630 Demilade Agboola: Will be a good one.
70 00:08:12.940 ⇒ 00:08:17.150 Demilade Agboola: So that would be stuff around the infrastructure you need to have.
71 00:08:17.310 ⇒ 00:08:22.650 Demilade Agboola: The ability to… for it to withstand, like, for your data to come in quickly.
72 00:08:23.210 ⇒ 00:08:23.720 Jake Nathan: Huh.
73 00:08:24.040 ⇒ 00:08:26.659 Demilade Agboola: See that as close to real time as possible.
74 00:08:27.040 ⇒ 00:08:32.900 Demilade Agboola: And just being able to ensure that the…
75 00:08:33.190 ⇒ 00:08:40.470 Demilade Agboola: Basically, all your resources are ready to handle that, basically, and the models are as precise as possible.
76 00:08:41.380 ⇒ 00:08:44.340 Demilade Agboola: That could be a topic.
77 00:08:44.490 ⇒ 00:08:46.159 Demilade Agboola: for that one.
78 00:08:47.160 ⇒ 00:08:52.090 Demilade Agboola: Let’s see…
79 00:08:55.380 ⇒ 00:08:59.809 Demilade Agboola: So we can also talk about, like.
80 00:09:00.730 ⇒ 00:09:12.289 Demilade Agboola: product categorization, which is something we do in Eden. So in Eden, like, the… I didn’t be…
81 00:09:13.420 ⇒ 00:09:18.239 Demilade Agboola: We should have the product list, but we don’t necessarily get a product list.
82 00:09:23.610 ⇒ 00:09:27.809 Demilade Agboola: Also, we use this, like, regex form, like, regex to be able to catch
83 00:09:28.180 ⇒ 00:09:31.850 Demilade Agboola: The sales they make, and categorize it back to…
84 00:09:32.970 ⇒ 00:09:37.270 Demilade Agboola: The high-level, product categories, basically.
85 00:09:37.490 ⇒ 00:09:46.419 Demilade Agboola: So we can go, like, this was sold, we see the product name, and we have a regex function to capture it and go, hey, this was actually, like.
86 00:09:46.530 ⇒ 00:09:49.150 Demilade Agboola: Injectable sema.
87 00:09:50.240 ⇒ 00:09:50.800 Jake Nathan: Huh.
88 00:09:50.980 ⇒ 00:10:04.290 Demilade Agboola: semi-gummies, or this was, you know… so that’s semaglutide. Actually, I say… when I say semi… so semaglutide gummies, or injectable semaglutide, or… You know, it’s not, like…
89 00:10:04.290 ⇒ 00:10:04.900 Jake Nathan: Yeah.
90 00:10:04.900 ⇒ 00:10:09.940 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, just basically that’s how, like, part of what we do for them, and it just helps them to be able to…
91 00:10:10.320 ⇒ 00:10:15.980 Demilade Agboola: categorize it, because what they were doing before was very, like, static, and because
92 00:10:16.130 ⇒ 00:10:21.590 Demilade Agboola: If they didn’t get the new data, it would go out of sync. So our numbers are way more accurate than what we were getting before.
93 00:10:23.340 ⇒ 00:10:24.360 Jake Nathan: That makes sense.
94 00:10:24.500 ⇒ 00:10:25.230 Demilade Agboola: Yeah.
95 00:10:25.230 ⇒ 00:10:30.240 Jake Nathan: Cool. Well, yeah, I think…
96 00:10:32.220 ⇒ 00:10:37.390 Jake Nathan: I feel like… so, yeah, we have… Like, you know, thro-
97 00:10:37.680 ⇒ 00:10:53.009 Jake Nathan: One is three most common analytics engineering mistakes in e-commerce. I think that’s good. The what to prepare for high intensity, and then, like, you were just saying, what you just said. I think… I think that gives us, like… I don’t want to make this too complicated for you, so I think, like.
98 00:10:53.010 ⇒ 00:11:02.280 Jake Nathan: I’ll just send that to you in a group chat with you, me, and Utom, and just make sure that he feels good about, like, the topic, and then if so.
99 00:11:02.730 ⇒ 00:11:06.009 Demilade Agboola: If he kind of gives us the go-ahead, then yeah, you can just kind of…
100 00:11:06.130 ⇒ 00:11:11.000 Jake Nathan: Think on… on what you want to say, and then we can schedule another…
101 00:11:11.070 ⇒ 00:11:26.500 Jake Nathan: call, and for the call, you know, it truly can be, like, you don’t have to come super prepared with, like, exactly, like, super organized or a script or anything like that. That’s kind of my job, is to take what you say and turn it into…
102 00:11:26.700 ⇒ 00:11:33.020 Jake Nathan: an organized article. So, really, if you just come prepared with more of, like, the…
103 00:11:33.540 ⇒ 00:11:52.720 Jake Nathan: the insights, whether it’s, like, specifically, like, a project that you worked on, or, yeah, just, like, the… the more personal stories, narratives, the… the easier it is for me, and then I can kind of organize everything. So, yeah, what I’ll do is I’ll just basically send this to Utam.
104 00:11:52.720 ⇒ 00:11:59.960 Jake Nathan: In a group chat with us, and then once he gives us the go-ahead, then, you wanna just find… we can just try to find a time on the calendar for…
105 00:12:00.080 ⇒ 00:12:06.010 Jake Nathan: Later this week, and do another… it’ll take, you know, 30 minutes, 45 minutes or so.
106 00:12:06.660 ⇒ 00:12:10.549 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, it sounds good. I’ll probably… I’ll probably set a call up for, like, Wednesday. Wednesday is a good time.
107 00:12:11.180 ⇒ 00:12:31.049 Jake Nathan: Okay, perfect. That sounds good. Well, yeah, I appreciate… I know you, have a lot going on, so I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but thanks for giving me the background, and I’ve definitely learned more about what you’re doing now, and yeah, thanks for the welcome to the team, and excited to… to work on this together. I think it’ll be fun.
108 00:12:31.510 ⇒ 00:12:33.690 Demilade Agboola: Okay, sounds good, look forward to that as well.
109 00:12:34.350 ⇒ 00:12:36.089 Jake Nathan: Alright, sounds good, I’ll talk to you later.
110 00:12:36.330 ⇒ 00:12:37.760 Demilade Agboola: Alright, talk to you later. Bye.
111 00:12:38.050 ⇒ 00:12:38.590 Jake Nathan: Bye.