Meeting Title: Brainforge Weekly Project Check-in Date: 2025-09-18 Meeting participants: Awaish Kumar, Rico Rejoso, Uttam Kumaran, Amber Lin, Hannah Wang, Robert Tseng
WEBVTT
1 00:02:28.710 ⇒ 00:02:30.020 Uttam Kumaran: Hello.
2 00:02:33.070 ⇒ 00:02:34.510 Rico Rejoso: Hi, Tom, how are you?
3 00:02:35.620 ⇒ 00:02:36.949 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, good, how are you?
4 00:02:38.140 ⇒ 00:02:38.870 Rico Rejoso: Dude.
5 00:02:54.010 ⇒ 00:02:56.589 Uttam Kumaran: Are people in the Friday prep meeting, maybe?
6 00:03:08.570 ⇒ 00:03:10.410 Rico Rejoso: Let me try to think Amber.
7 00:03:14.050 ⇒ 00:03:14.870 Rico Rejoso: Excuse me.
8 00:03:18.760 ⇒ 00:03:19.960 Amber Lin: Hello!
9 00:03:42.510 ⇒ 00:03:44.219 Amber Lin: Hello, can you guys hear me?
10 00:03:46.330 ⇒ 00:03:46.890 Rico Rejoso: Yep.
11 00:03:47.550 ⇒ 00:03:48.780 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, can you hear me?
12 00:03:49.240 ⇒ 00:03:50.759 Amber Lin: Hi, yeah, I can hear you now.
13 00:03:50.760 ⇒ 00:03:51.980 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, perfect.
14 00:03:52.960 ⇒ 00:03:54.280 Amber Lin: Alright.
15 00:03:54.510 ⇒ 00:03:58.559 Amber Lin: Do we want to do the usual and fill out the form, or do we just want to talk?
16 00:03:59.310 ⇒ 00:04:05.080 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, maybe I’ll… I just… I know we haven’t done… we didn’t do Mondays, maybe I just would love to hear from you guys how everything’s gone.
17 00:04:06.240 ⇒ 00:04:11.850 Uttam Kumaran: And I can get some updates about how the conference is going, and then, a couple other things. So, yeah, go ahead.
18 00:04:12.260 ⇒ 00:04:13.060 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, hold on.
19 00:04:13.140 ⇒ 00:04:28.409 Amber Lin: I updated the margins report. I sent a screenshot in the project management channel. In terms of margins, we’re actually doing really well. The lowest one’s 40, but the higher ones are, like, 80. For…
20 00:04:28.700 ⇒ 00:04:39.480 Amber Lin: last week only. I didn’t do… I didn’t do August, so I want to see how it goes this week. I’m gonna make the report tomorrow. Just want to make sure that everyone’s hours are up to date.
21 00:04:39.930 ⇒ 00:04:52.089 Amber Lin: So I’ll ask tomorrow for people to update their hours. The only thing that’s… the only project that’s not performing well in terms of margins is ABC, because if we’re at…
22 00:04:52.150 ⇒ 00:05:10.859 Amber Lin: $6,500 a week, a month, then per week we only have 1,700. And Sam last week spent about, I think, 12 hours? And I know part of it is for the upsell, but still, his 12 hours took up most of our
23 00:05:11.170 ⇒ 00:05:18.370 Amber Lin: Budget, so that was, 1200, so…
24 00:05:18.370 ⇒ 00:05:19.060 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
25 00:05:19.810 ⇒ 00:05:21.310 Amber Lin: That is…
26 00:05:21.960 ⇒ 00:05:28.010 Amber Lin: quite a bit of our margin, so that’s the… that’s the thing I want to point out on ABC.
27 00:05:29.510 ⇒ 00:05:33.709 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, this is where I think, like, I probably will take…
28 00:05:34.060 ⇒ 00:05:48.530 Uttam Kumaran: the fall for that, and that, like, I requested that we do that for this expansion. I still think we should… I still think we’re… basically, I wanna… I wanna pitch it, but I think roughly…
29 00:05:48.760 ⇒ 00:05:54.369 Uttam Kumaran: we should find ways to kind of just, like, wrap that up. I think Sam got.
30 00:05:54.370 ⇒ 00:05:54.850 Amber Lin: all the information.
31 00:05:54.850 ⇒ 00:06:04.250 Uttam Kumaran: he needs yesterday, I would… I would… I would say from the project management side, I don’t want to spend more time on the standalone UI until we get
32 00:06:04.470 ⇒ 00:06:05.970 Uttam Kumaran: Sort of an approval.
33 00:06:06.140 ⇒ 00:06:07.280 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
34 00:06:07.640 ⇒ 00:06:09.539 Uttam Kumaran: I would also love to…
35 00:06:09.650 ⇒ 00:06:24.490 Uttam Kumaran: So I sent some notes about, like, that proposal in the project management channel, or, I don’t know where I sent it, or an ABC, so if you guys can address that, and then also, as part of that, could you also put in a little bit of, like, how many…
36 00:06:24.780 ⇒ 00:06:31.450 Uttam Kumaran: Or a general sense of, like, how many hours it takes, like, like, excluding the,
37 00:06:32.240 ⇒ 00:06:35.170 Uttam Kumaran: Excluding the standalone UI work.
38 00:06:35.940 ⇒ 00:06:49.160 Uttam Kumaran: how many hours our team is spending on ABC a week. I would like to indicate that to Matt, so that that way when, if he’s like, okay, but why not just, like, use the… just use your existing hours to build this, I’m gonna tell him, well.
39 00:06:49.360 ⇒ 00:07:07.270 Uttam Kumaran: all of our hours right now, these are the hours we’re spending, they’re all going to just maintaining and improving the existing system. This would be add-on work. So, I would like to make a pitch in that way, but if you can finish up that proposal, then I… I’m sort of just waiting on that to kind of make the next move.
40 00:07:07.440 ⇒ 00:07:11.390 Amber Lin: Okay, yeah, sounds good. I’ll have time to do that after this meeting.
41 00:07:14.460 ⇒ 00:07:22.810 Amber Lin: Okay. And then… similarly, on a similar note on upsells, I know on Eden, we’re trying to make an upsell,
42 00:07:22.910 ⇒ 00:07:31.410 Amber Lin: for Zoran and Andrew’s tracking work, because it’s eating up our original budget and margin, so…
43 00:07:31.580 ⇒ 00:07:44.260 Amber Lin: I think Robert’s talking to… I think Soran or the team today, and then I’m talking with him tomorrow, so we can make a case for an upsell. I think Robert’s…
44 00:07:44.650 ⇒ 00:07:48.549 Amber Lin: Robert should be meeting Henry in person tomorrow? Not sure.
45 00:07:48.710 ⇒ 00:07:52.749 Amber Lin: So we’ll… us three, we’ll talk about… I wish if you want to be there, too.
46 00:07:53.240 ⇒ 00:07:54.190 Amber Lin: Taco Bell.
47 00:07:54.810 ⇒ 00:07:56.560 Amber Lin: I see, okay.
48 00:07:56.690 ⇒ 00:08:00.399 Amber Lin: But tomorrow, we’ll just use the retro to talk about…
49 00:08:00.610 ⇒ 00:08:01.180 Awaish Kumar: Yep.
50 00:08:01.180 ⇒ 00:08:02.960 Amber Lin: The upsell case.
51 00:08:21.850 ⇒ 00:08:23.189 Amber Lin: Let’s see…
52 00:08:23.340 ⇒ 00:08:30.599 Amber Lin: Okay. Oh, Rico, do you mind sharing the slides for tomorrow’s meeting, so we can fill it in, if we can?
53 00:08:30.600 ⇒ 00:08:33.780 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, I posted it on Culture channel.
54 00:08:33.780 ⇒ 00:08:34.429 Amber Lin: Okay.
55 00:08:34.679 ⇒ 00:08:35.720 Amber Lin: Sounds good.
56 00:09:12.240 ⇒ 00:09:13.200 Amber Lin: Hello.
57 00:09:14.380 ⇒ 00:09:17.430 Uttam Kumaran: Hi, I’m back, sorry, my laptop just died.
58 00:09:17.430 ⇒ 00:09:18.390 Amber Lin: All good.
59 00:09:18.860 ⇒ 00:09:21.280 Amber Lin: I mean, we were saying that…
60 00:09:21.540 ⇒ 00:09:22.080 Uttam Kumaran: Bye.
61 00:09:22.080 ⇒ 00:09:34.749 Amber Lin: Yeah. Yeah, we’re saying that tomorrow, the Eden team is going to talk about upsells for the tracking work, because Andrew and Zoran’s, hours are eating into our budget.
62 00:09:35.080 ⇒ 00:09:37.290 Amber Lin: Because they’re both quite expensive.
63 00:09:37.980 ⇒ 00:09:42.799 Amber Lin: Okay. And they’re taking off some hours, so we’re gonna make a case to Eden.
64 00:09:43.110 ⇒ 00:09:43.730 Awaish Kumar: Negative.
65 00:09:43.730 ⇒ 00:09:44.230 Uttam Kumaran: Fuck.
66 00:09:44.950 ⇒ 00:09:46.639 Awaish Kumar: Almost half of the house.
67 00:09:48.050 ⇒ 00:09:48.670 Amber Lin: Yeah.
68 00:09:50.230 ⇒ 00:09:50.810 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
69 00:09:51.470 ⇒ 00:09:53.370 Amber Lin: Those are teammates, essentially.
70 00:09:53.810 ⇒ 00:09:56.980 Amber Lin: If we count Andrew, that’s 4 people.
71 00:09:57.500 ⇒ 00:10:01.129 Amber Lin: Excluding Robert, so they are half our hours.
72 00:10:02.040 ⇒ 00:10:05.939 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so I think, I think,
73 00:10:06.890 ⇒ 00:10:14.219 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think Robert is gonna make a distinction on, Andrew versus Henry stuff, so…
74 00:10:14.220 ⇒ 00:10:14.800 Amber Lin: Hmm.
75 00:10:14.800 ⇒ 00:10:15.980 Uttam Kumaran: You mentioned that today.
76 00:10:21.190 ⇒ 00:10:29.620 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, for ABC, like, I have a feedback, like, It seems like, 3…
77 00:10:29.990 ⇒ 00:10:34.930 Awaish Kumar: Basically just have to make the team Hello.
78 00:10:35.750 ⇒ 00:10:36.400 Amber Lin: Hi.
79 00:10:37.230 ⇒ 00:10:39.400 Amber Lin: Wow, hello!
80 00:10:39.400 ⇒ 00:10:42.509 Uttam Kumaran: I can pop that up whenever I check out the phone.
81 00:10:46.040 ⇒ 00:10:49.409 Amber Lin: Hi! That’s so cool!
82 00:10:55.440 ⇒ 00:10:56.630 Uttam Kumaran: You wanna pop in?
83 00:10:57.030 ⇒ 00:11:03.190 Uttam Kumaran: Well, I guess we can’t… I don’t want to put on speaker, it’s gonna be, like, mad loud. You wanna just, like, so do you want to sit over there? Okay.
84 00:11:04.100 ⇒ 00:11:05.310 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay, okay.
85 00:11:08.700 ⇒ 00:11:10.540 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, Robert’s gonna hop in in a second.
86 00:11:11.170 ⇒ 00:11:11.790 Amber Lin: Okay.
87 00:11:22.380 ⇒ 00:11:26.900 Uttam Kumaran: But yeah, I guess, like, let’s… maybe let’s leave… we’ll leave eating for a sec.
88 00:11:27.070 ⇒ 00:11:29.909 Uttam Kumaran: We can keep going Robert gets on.
89 00:11:31.070 ⇒ 00:11:40.790 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, I was just saying regarding ABC, right, it’s just that the people who are working on ABC are not aware of, maybe their allocation.
90 00:11:40.960 ⇒ 00:11:58.769 Awaish Kumar: it doesn’t seem to me that they are really no, like, they need to work, how many hours per week? Like, for example, Casey, he started working on ABC, and he kept on building MVP, and then this and that, and, like, he’s, like, he spent so much time on that.
91 00:11:58.980 ⇒ 00:12:04.649 Awaish Kumar: Maybe we should make them aware that that’s what’s their capacity.
92 00:12:04.860 ⇒ 00:12:09.889 Awaish Kumar: Per week on this plan, and that way, like, we can just keep it in control.
93 00:12:11.450 ⇒ 00:12:25.500 Amber Lin: Yeah, we… I think when we allocated, Casey had around, say, 15 hours, or 10 to 15 hours on ABC. I… I was a little bit less concerned about Casey’s hours, just because his rate is comparably a lot lower, than…
94 00:12:25.740 ⇒ 00:12:32.709 Amber Lin: than, say, Sam on that project. Like, Casey last week spent 9 hours, and that’s 81.
95 00:12:32.820 ⇒ 00:12:33.730 Amber Lin: Total.
96 00:12:34.230 ⇒ 00:12:37.210 Amber Lin: So, it’s a lot less than…
97 00:12:37.940 ⇒ 00:12:40.160 Amber Lin: Say, the amount of my hours…
98 00:12:40.290 ⇒ 00:12:46.179 Amber Lin: That will contribute to the cost, or Sam’s hours. So I try to leverage him as much as possible.
99 00:12:47.040 ⇒ 00:12:48.540 Amber Lin: But you make a good point.
100 00:12:48.540 ⇒ 00:12:49.050 Uttam Kumaran: everything.
101 00:12:49.050 ⇒ 00:12:50.440 Amber Lin: Think about the.
102 00:12:50.440 ⇒ 00:13:03.079 Uttam Kumaran: kind of the normalization on what Awish is saying is sort of, like, if we… we’re trying to go towards both the actual margin, but also hit our billable rate target, right? So that’s, like, sort of the other side, which is.
103 00:13:03.720 ⇒ 00:13:06.190 Uttam Kumaran: even if Casey is cheaper.
104 00:13:06.570 ⇒ 00:13:15.190 Uttam Kumaran: Like, we still want to make sure that we hit the, like, when you divide it by the total
105 00:13:15.470 ⇒ 00:13:17.490 Uttam Kumaran: Hours, we’re still hitting our…
106 00:13:17.490 ⇒ 00:13:23.059 Amber Lin: Yeah. It’s 150, right? So… You’re right, because ABC’s billable rate is the lowest right now.
107 00:13:23.060 ⇒ 00:13:26.120 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so kind of the theme across the board is
108 00:13:26.300 ⇒ 00:13:30.609 Uttam Kumaran: I think the engineering team just needs guidance on when to…
109 00:13:30.910 ⇒ 00:13:33.040 Uttam Kumaran: The sequence in which you do things, and when to not.
110 00:13:33.040 ⇒ 00:13:33.639 Amber Lin: Huh.
111 00:13:33.640 ⇒ 00:13:35.089 Uttam Kumaran: When to stop, basically.
112 00:13:35.670 ⇒ 00:13:36.300 Uttam Kumaran: You know?
113 00:13:38.140 ⇒ 00:13:46.259 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, it’s just, like, better… An announcement of these, like, when we do that planning and,
114 00:13:47.420 ⇒ 00:13:51.090 Awaish Kumar: Like, planning meeting?
115 00:13:52.950 ⇒ 00:13:55.220 Awaish Kumar: Great the team, and then,
116 00:13:55.650 ⇒ 00:14:02.230 Awaish Kumar: And then, like, just like we do for Eden, like, we just use it for ABC, only bring in the tickets.
117 00:14:02.530 ⇒ 00:14:15.529 Awaish Kumar: based on each individual’s capacity for that week, and the location for that week, and that’s all, like, that will just force them to work on… only on these tickets.
118 00:14:16.290 ⇒ 00:14:20.250 Amber Lin: Yeah, good point. I’ll start doing that next week, and I’ll see… we’ll see if it improves.
119 00:14:22.810 ⇒ 00:14:28.420 Amber Lin: Yeah, I think Eden this week went pretty well in terms of hours, which, I think…
120 00:14:29.060 ⇒ 00:14:32.859 Amber Lin: the biggest thanks to Awasht for bringing that up constantly.
121 00:14:35.850 ⇒ 00:14:43.639 Amber Lin: Oh, Robert, since you’re here, do you want to talk about the upsell case about for…
122 00:14:43.810 ⇒ 00:14:47.049 Amber Lin: The tracking work, or do you want to just talk about it tomorrow?
123 00:14:49.150 ⇒ 00:14:55.730 Robert Tseng: I can say something quick for the team, but basically, yeah, if,
124 00:14:56.490 ⇒ 00:15:05.969 Robert Tseng: I mean, between Andrew and Jerron, I still… it’s still not the hours that they’re spending, that tagging and tracking work and movements is not…
125 00:15:06.080 ⇒ 00:15:15.280 Robert Tseng: Absolutely original, so… Once that stabilizes, like, that should not be, in the long term, part of our, like.
126 00:15:15.380 ⇒ 00:15:32.749 Robert Tseng: I’d like to go back to ELT and be like, oh, they’re taking, you know, 720 hours, like, a week, this is how much we need to increase by, because that’s basically a backfill to this actual CCR that’s not supposed
127 00:15:33.120 ⇒ 00:15:34.630 Robert Tseng: kind of outdoor expansion.
128 00:15:34.750 ⇒ 00:15:39.640 Amber Lin: So, that’s basically the exercise that I want to do.
129 00:15:39.640 ⇒ 00:15:46.990 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I feel like we’ve had enough time to kind of see what those hours have looked like roof over roof.
130 00:15:47.360 ⇒ 00:15:55.600 Robert Tseng: And I’ll, yeah, so hopefully by… by tomorrow, when I check in with… with, UMT, I can… I can follow.
131 00:16:02.850 ⇒ 00:16:07.180 Robert Tseng: So yeah, we should talk about it more, when we… when we ask the windows and rambled.
132 00:16:10.800 ⇒ 00:16:11.940 Awaish Kumar: Okay.
133 00:16:20.600 ⇒ 00:16:22.610 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I guess anything else, Amber?
134 00:16:22.610 ⇒ 00:16:24.339 Robert Tseng: You’re back to my customer, by the way?
135 00:16:24.910 ⇒ 00:16:31.689 Uttam Kumaran: We did not. I didn’t send a follow-up. We didn’t hear anything back yet.
136 00:16:32.000 ⇒ 00:16:32.670 Robert Tseng: Okay.
137 00:16:33.460 ⇒ 00:16:36.579 Uttam Kumaran: It seemed like their timeline was pretty fast.
138 00:16:36.990 ⇒ 00:16:38.470 Robert Tseng: That’s true. My legs.
139 00:16:39.140 ⇒ 00:16:42.880 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it seemed like they had a 30-day timeline on something, but…
140 00:16:43.720 ⇒ 00:16:47.180 Uttam Kumaran: Also, like, I don’t know what they said versus, like, what’s real, so…
141 00:16:47.380 ⇒ 00:16:49.090 Uttam Kumaran: I can send him a note tomorrow.
142 00:16:52.070 ⇒ 00:16:59.750 Amber Lin: Other things on my side, so for project management, Justin’s creating a lot of, SOPs, and we’re gonna review that, I think.
143 00:17:00.610 ⇒ 00:17:15.549 Amber Lin: Either Friday, we have a meeting together, we’ll review that there, or next week with Alex in there. And then on the… the switching of projects, because Rico’s gonna manage the internal project, and Justin’s gonna manage the client projects.
144 00:17:15.550 ⇒ 00:17:27.110 Amber Lin: I think Justin’s decently onboarded, I just need to confirm with him if he’s comfortable tomorrow when I meet. And then, on the internal projects, we met with both the AI team and then…
145 00:17:27.109 ⇒ 00:17:36.280 Amber Lin: Sales, I mainly just met with Hannah, and Utam also looked over the doc and confirmed, and I think next week, Rico will start PMing those two clients.
146 00:17:36.470 ⇒ 00:17:44.860 Amber Lin: sorry, not two clients, those two teams, and I was thinking, if we need extra help on the go-to-market side,
147 00:17:45.240 ⇒ 00:17:51.379 Amber Lin: Because I think right now it’s just Robert looking over the… all the sales tasks.
148 00:17:54.760 ⇒ 00:18:01.010 Amber Lin: And do we need more help there? Because Sam is on the AI team, and he can help give more guidance there.
149 00:18:01.820 ⇒ 00:18:11.859 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I just think that, like, what we’re finding on the AI side and on the sales side is, like, we just don’t have a good sense of, like, the capacity.
150 00:18:11.980 ⇒ 00:18:25.039 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And so, what I’m sort of hoping from you, Rico, and from the whole PM team is that for both of those teams, because they’re internal, we really have to manage the amount of time we’re spending. We have to make sure that the time is going to the highest ROI,
151 00:18:25.210 ⇒ 00:18:27.310 Uttam Kumaran: activity. So for AI,
152 00:18:27.920 ⇒ 00:18:39.000 Uttam Kumaran: for example, this is probably what’s happening. I ask for stuff on the AI team all day, but it doesn’t mean that it has to get done immediately. There’s no, like, there’s no fighting,
153 00:18:39.450 ⇒ 00:18:42.819 Uttam Kumaran: Factor, you know, there’s no, like, pushback on anything.
154 00:18:43.230 ⇒ 00:18:46.899 Uttam Kumaran: Which means, if I, on a whim, just ask for something to get made, and we…
155 00:18:47.280 ⇒ 00:18:49.130 Uttam Kumaran: Spend a ton of time doing that.
156 00:18:49.290 ⇒ 00:18:51.899 Uttam Kumaran: Like, that was not… that was a mistake, right?
157 00:18:52.190 ⇒ 00:19:03.190 Uttam Kumaran: But it’s like, I… if… so that’s why I think we need project management there. Second, there’s just a lot of stuff where I don’t think the AI team is as organized.
158 00:19:03.210 ⇒ 00:19:14.110 Uttam Kumaran: they’re getting organized on, like, how to execute, they’re not getting organized on, like, what to execute, and for who, and making sure it works. And so, they certainly need help. On the sales side.
159 00:19:14.670 ⇒ 00:19:18.349 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, in an ideal world.
160 00:19:18.650 ⇒ 00:19:33.090 Uttam Kumaran: like, things are getting tracked there, too. That is the fastest-moving team, though, and the tickets are, like, sometimes 15 minutes to 30 minutes, mostly. So…
161 00:19:33.740 ⇒ 00:19:39.700 Uttam Kumaran: you’ll have to figure out, like, how to track it all, but I also think, like, I know…
162 00:19:39.840 ⇒ 00:19:47.699 Uttam Kumaran: you know, for Hannah’s sake, for Rico’s sake, for Ryan, and for Justina, I think they would benefit from the tracking.
163 00:19:47.820 ⇒ 00:19:51.330 Uttam Kumaran: But the pace is… the pace is high.
164 00:19:51.560 ⇒ 00:19:52.460 Uttam Kumaran: you know.
165 00:19:52.820 ⇒ 00:19:55.800 Amber Lin: Like, it’s a lot of small things always happening, but…
166 00:19:56.400 ⇒ 00:20:08.669 Uttam Kumaran: I would prefer for Rico to sort of be able to make a decision on how much to manage. The one thing on the sales side is we… we’re not going to be able to let project management limit the pace.
167 00:20:09.040 ⇒ 00:20:17.400 Uttam Kumaran: Like, so that’s something I want to be careful of. Like, on the AI side, I don’t mind if, like, we get organized before we start building stuff. On the sales side…
168 00:20:18.020 ⇒ 00:20:21.440 Uttam Kumaran: It’s… it’s gonna continue to be, like.
169 00:20:21.630 ⇒ 00:20:26.209 Uttam Kumaran: hey, we just sent this follow-up, or this thing happened, or this thing happened. You almost, like, do first.
170 00:20:26.530 ⇒ 00:20:33.189 Uttam Kumaran: track in parallel or later, versus an AI team, I’m totally open for that to go through project management, and I think
171 00:20:33.380 ⇒ 00:20:40.670 Uttam Kumaran: Honestly, you should treat the AI team like one of our clients. In this situation, Brainforge is the client.
172 00:20:41.080 ⇒ 00:20:46.879 Uttam Kumaran: the PM team is, like, who… Brainforge is a client of the AI team, you know?
173 00:20:48.360 ⇒ 00:20:59.400 Amber Lin: Yes. I’m looking at the spend for the marketing and content team for last week. We spent… I think we’ll spend about, like.
174 00:21:00.160 ⇒ 00:21:06.640 Amber Lin: $1,800, including Raymond, I forgot his rates. So…
175 00:21:07.130 ⇒ 00:21:12.719 Amber Lin: For… what’s our current MRR? Is that, like, 80-something?
176 00:21:13.460 ⇒ 00:21:19.849 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so this is something that I’m also, like, I sent some notes, is that I… and this is what,
177 00:21:20.390 ⇒ 00:21:27.369 Uttam Kumaran: Megan’s working on is basically budgets for sales and budgets for OPEX.
178 00:21:29.040 ⇒ 00:21:36.880 Uttam Kumaran: As a good, like, sort of, like, rule of thumb, we want to sort of aim for, like, 20%,
179 00:21:37.420 ⇒ 00:21:39.020 Uttam Kumaran: Revenue, basically.
180 00:21:39.320 ⇒ 00:21:41.670 Uttam Kumaran: Ideally.
181 00:21:41.670 ⇒ 00:21:42.350 Amber Lin: Total inter…
182 00:21:42.350 ⇒ 00:21:43.650 Uttam Kumaran: our, our baseline.
183 00:21:43.930 ⇒ 00:21:46.989 Uttam Kumaran: For… no, no, for just sales and marketing expenditures.
184 00:21:46.990 ⇒ 00:21:49.230 Amber Lin: Oh, okay, okay.
185 00:21:49.780 ⇒ 00:21:53.760 Uttam Kumaran: So that should be our monthly run rate for people and for…
186 00:21:53.760 ⇒ 00:21:54.320 Amber Lin: Yeah.
187 00:21:54.320 ⇒ 00:21:57.459 Uttam Kumaran: Software, and for events, and everything.
188 00:21:57.720 ⇒ 00:21:58.820 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
189 00:21:59.420 ⇒ 00:22:00.359 Uttam Kumaran: you know.
190 00:22:01.130 ⇒ 00:22:12.380 Amber Lin: Yeah, I… I’m missing solid odds rates, but I think for sales last week, we are within that 20%.
191 00:22:13.930 ⇒ 00:22:15.580 Amber Lin: Divide by…
192 00:22:20.350 ⇒ 00:22:35.130 Amber Lin: 20%. Because, 20% of, say, 80 MRR in each week, that will be around, $3,700? Yeah. And we are well within that range.
193 00:22:36.180 ⇒ 00:22:37.230 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay.
194 00:22:37.230 ⇒ 00:22:37.700 Amber Lin: You’re off.
195 00:22:37.790 ⇒ 00:22:39.959 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s something I just think that…
196 00:22:40.190 ⇒ 00:22:44.550 Uttam Kumaran: There’s some… like, there’s some leakage somewhere, meaning…
197 00:22:45.310 ⇒ 00:22:47.280 Uttam Kumaran: If I assume we are…
198 00:22:49.420 ⇒ 00:22:59.239 Uttam Kumaran: One is, like, the expenses are basically hovering around, like, 70,000. So one of the things that I want to find out is, like, where… how do we reduce that?
199 00:22:59.390 ⇒ 00:23:13.159 Uttam Kumaran: But we can’t do that in a, like, cut expenses everywhere. I actually want us to know, like, what is our benchmark? Like, what is… what are the amounts that we can spend for sales? And for inter… like, AI is, like, basically considered internal R&D.
200 00:23:13.250 ⇒ 00:23:25.980 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So what are… what is the amount that we should be spending for that, for internal R&D, and for tools, software, legal, finance, miscellaneous, basically?
201 00:23:26.460 ⇒ 00:23:30.440 Uttam Kumaran: So… That’s…
202 00:23:31.240 ⇒ 00:23:37.739 Uttam Kumaran: that’s sort of, like, what I… what I want to budget, because that… then you guys can say, cool, sales has this many points.
203 00:23:37.990 ⇒ 00:23:44.019 Uttam Kumaran: Right? Like, you kind of just want to get a sense of, like, what is the total amount of points available for both those teams to take on.
204 00:23:44.450 ⇒ 00:23:48.720 Uttam Kumaran: You can go more narrow and do blended rates, or, like, figure out, like, okay, pull for…
205 00:23:49.650 ⇒ 00:23:54.979 Uttam Kumaran: one type of work versus another. I care less about that, I just care about setting the budgets and making sure we don’t go over.
206 00:23:55.450 ⇒ 00:23:58.720 Uttam Kumaran: And then, one thing that has to happen is, as…
207 00:23:58.880 ⇒ 00:24:02.779 Uttam Kumaran: we asked more stuff from both those teams. Once we hit the cap.
208 00:24:03.320 ⇒ 00:24:17.840 Uttam Kumaran: there has to be a decision made between the PM and Robert, or the PM and me on the AI side, which is, like, how should we prioritize? Right now, there’s been no conversation about prioritization, because there’s no cap being enforced.
209 00:24:20.780 ⇒ 00:24:21.450 Uttam Kumaran: Right.
210 00:24:22.010 ⇒ 00:24:22.610 Amber Lin: Yeah.
211 00:24:22.800 ⇒ 00:24:29.039 Uttam Kumaran: So I kind of eyeball, and I’m like, okay, well, I think the AI team can take, like, two things a week, but, like.
212 00:24:29.140 ⇒ 00:24:33.029 Amber Lin: again, like, that’s not good, like, that’s not… I shouldn’t be doing, it’s not good enough.
213 00:24:33.030 ⇒ 00:24:36.540 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I can continue to add to our backlog, right?
214 00:24:36.760 ⇒ 00:24:43.239 Uttam Kumaran: And then it’s up to the PM on that team to just be like, cool, we will get that done, but here’s the thing we’ll get done this week.
215 00:24:45.060 ⇒ 00:24:45.880 Amber Lin: Okay.
216 00:24:45.910 ⇒ 00:24:55.299 Uttam Kumaran: Sounds good. Yeah, so maybe… so maybe I think I want to take the work that you did, and look at some of the work that Megan did. Maybe tomorrow afternoon?
217 00:24:55.570 ⇒ 00:25:02.279 Uttam Kumaran: like, I’m kind of gonna be done at some point tomorrow, and maybe we can look at that. Like, I know we’re talking at… Yeah.
218 00:25:02.280 ⇒ 00:25:02.820 Amber Lin: I…
219 00:25:03.620 ⇒ 00:25:22.049 Amber Lin: Yeah, I looked at the P&L that Megan created, it’s not the clearest, clearest to me, hence why I went with the hours, but I do want to check the other tooling costs and the, non-cogs cost, and want to check that.
220 00:25:22.880 ⇒ 00:25:27.810 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay. So yeah, maybe let’s just, like, bust through, like, we can spend 2 hours on internal…
221 00:25:27.960 ⇒ 00:25:34.640 Uttam Kumaran: finance reporting, too, and then I’ll also… I can see whether I can get QuickBooks data into Omni for you tomorrow during our session.
222 00:25:34.640 ⇒ 00:25:36.020 Amber Lin: Yeah, that’ll be great, because I…
223 00:25:36.020 ⇒ 00:25:38.360 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know if I can log in.
224 00:25:38.360 ⇒ 00:25:39.120 Amber Lin: book.
225 00:25:39.490 ⇒ 00:25:52.280 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and also, every… we go through Megan for stuff, it’s just, like, I don’t think she has an understanding of, like, the nitty-gritty in our business, and I just don’t want to… I want them to make sure things are categorized right, and then we can go… we can take it from there.
226 00:25:52.660 ⇒ 00:25:59.510 Amber Lin: What? Okay. Yeah, I wanna… I wanna play with… well, not play with it, I wanna do that too, so that’s very interesting.
227 00:25:59.990 ⇒ 00:26:01.729 Amber Lin: Okay, sounds good.
228 00:26:02.660 ⇒ 00:26:09.689 Amber Lin: Few action items from what I hear is ABC having capped hours, making sure that
229 00:26:09.800 ⇒ 00:26:18.949 Amber Lin: the PM ownership transition goes pretty smoothly. We’ll have a meeting tomorrow, for the finance stuff.
230 00:26:19.130 ⇒ 00:26:22.419 Amber Lin: And then figuring out the caps for the internal teams.
231 00:26:24.410 ⇒ 00:26:25.730 Amber Lin: Yep. Okay.
232 00:26:26.970 ⇒ 00:26:31.680 Awaish Kumar: But, you know… Far, from the engineering, like,
233 00:26:32.120 ⇒ 00:26:37.600 Awaish Kumar: Like, two main things which I discussed with,
234 00:26:37.880 ⇒ 00:26:47.899 Awaish Kumar: engineering leads and Casey were, like… one is basically, tracking all our efforts, where they are going, per client.
235 00:26:48.080 ⇒ 00:26:58.040 Awaish Kumar: Like, are we working on a new data pipeline, or a new model, or a dashboard, or… or is it going… how much we are,
236 00:26:58.390 ⇒ 00:27:03.390 Awaish Kumar: Spending on, fixing bugs.
237 00:27:03.800 ⇒ 00:27:07.990 Awaish Kumar: Edoc, and all of the different categories.
238 00:27:08.380 ⇒ 00:27:15.780 Awaish Kumar: Second one was regarding, how I’ve been working with KCA to…
239 00:27:16.040 ⇒ 00:27:24.129 Awaish Kumar: basically optimize how ITER does the scorecard, fill in, that has, like.
240 00:27:24.270 ⇒ 00:27:40.720 Awaish Kumar: According to him, like, he just worked on today after the optimization, and it seems like he said he has done it in 30 minutes today, and we are still looking into it, because there are, few, there are sources which are, like, still
241 00:27:40.880 ⇒ 00:27:45.840 Awaish Kumar: Quite manual, and there needs to be automated, and
242 00:27:46.700 ⇒ 00:27:52.999 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, so, like, that will reduce it to maybe 10 to 15 minutes each range.
243 00:27:53.260 ⇒ 00:28:01.749 Awaish Kumar: Apart from that, I also, like, had a… today we had all engineering session, where, like,
244 00:28:01.960 ⇒ 00:28:06.730 Awaish Kumar: we just talk to each other about what we are doing, and in that discussion, I…
245 00:28:06.920 ⇒ 00:28:19.220 Awaish Kumar: I basically talked with Casey and Mustafa, and they both had, few issues with the texture. The way it is deployed right now, it’s kind of very serverless, so…
246 00:28:19.500 ⇒ 00:28:32.130 Awaish Kumar: We are just using DexterCloud, basically, to deploy all our things, and that has some limitations. Like, when we want to install some system-level packages, like Git or whatever.
247 00:28:32.340 ⇒ 00:28:49.529 Awaish Kumar: we can’t do it, and Dexter don’t offer it in any way, so we have to go with another way of deployment in Dexter, which is available. We just have to figure out how it will be done. So I might be working on that next.
248 00:28:49.530 ⇒ 00:28:50.030 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
249 00:28:51.530 ⇒ 00:28:53.860 Awaish Kumar: Apart from that.
250 00:28:54.830 ⇒ 00:29:00.279 Uttam Kumaran: Do you ever, question? Do you ever find out, like, how much Dagster costs? Like, I know we’re sharing threads right now.
251 00:29:01.530 ⇒ 00:29:06.720 Awaish Kumar: how much tax it costs. I think last time you shared with me, it was, like, a $100…
252 00:29:06.920 ⇒ 00:29:08.870 Awaish Kumar: Around $100 per month.
253 00:29:10.230 ⇒ 00:29:15.849 Uttam Kumaran: I guess, like, right now, but we can only have 3 users right now, so do you know what it is when we get to…
254 00:29:16.450 ⇒ 00:29:20.760 Awaish Kumar: Like, I think it depends on how many pipelines, like, what is the time of…
255 00:29:20.940 ⇒ 00:29:24.309 Awaish Kumar: Execution time, right? It doesn’t depend on the users.
256 00:29:25.460 ⇒ 00:29:26.320 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
257 00:29:26.470 ⇒ 00:29:29.230 Uttam Kumaran: Hello, guys, I’m sorry.
258 00:29:29.230 ⇒ 00:29:32.600 Awaish Kumar: So, yeah, it was around 100.
259 00:29:33.290 ⇒ 00:29:35.840 Awaish Kumar: Per month, and
260 00:29:37.600 ⇒ 00:29:42.580 Awaish Kumar: Apart… yeah, apart from that, I’ve worked on a few things on linear, like,
261 00:29:42.860 ⇒ 00:29:45.549 Awaish Kumar: Now, we could easily see,
262 00:29:45.860 ⇒ 00:30:00.679 Awaish Kumar: due dates, and the completion within due dates, and things like that for our OCRS reporting, and number seems very, doesn’t seem really, what you say, exciting, like, so we are only, like.
263 00:30:01.100 ⇒ 00:30:04.129 Awaish Kumar: around 25%,
264 00:30:04.690 ⇒ 00:30:11.260 Awaish Kumar: Within due date completion, and that’s… that’s really bad. So, yeah, I will be next to us.
265 00:30:11.260 ⇒ 00:30:13.130 Uttam Kumaran: Alright, at least you know the answer, though.
266 00:30:13.970 ⇒ 00:30:22.530 Uttam Kumaran: No. That’s first starts. The second thing is… Honestly, it’s probably… even higher.
267 00:30:22.860 ⇒ 00:30:26.889 Uttam Kumaran: Like, that number’s probably even higher, because people… you can change the due dates.
268 00:30:27.880 ⇒ 00:30:28.320 Awaish Kumar: Yeah.
269 00:30:28.320 ⇒ 00:30:31.409 Uttam Kumaran: So, one of the things I wanted to mention is, like.
270 00:30:31.580 ⇒ 00:30:38.190 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know if linear provides us with the OG due date, or how we should consider that, but…
271 00:30:38.300 ⇒ 00:30:42.779 Uttam Kumaran: Could be something worth thinking about, but either way, that seems probably about right.
272 00:30:42.900 ⇒ 00:30:48.300 Uttam Kumaran: The second piece is, we could also think about auto-labeling.
273 00:30:48.450 ⇒ 00:30:50.850 Uttam Kumaran: Tickets that are over due date.
274 00:30:51.020 ⇒ 00:30:56.690 Uttam Kumaran: But I guess, like, you’re… you can create a simple filter in linear, right? Just look at things that are overdue days, or…
275 00:30:57.120 ⇒ 00:31:01.019 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, but it’d be great to, like, get that number, basically, somewhere.
276 00:31:02.700 ⇒ 00:31:06.719 Awaish Kumar: Okay, yeah, I can… I can look at, the things, like,
277 00:31:06.920 ⇒ 00:31:12.060 Awaish Kumar: If we can get the data about, like, if someone changes the due date.
278 00:31:14.030 ⇒ 00:31:24.229 Awaish Kumar: Like, how many tickets has… been, like, been changing the due dates for, things like that, but…
279 00:31:25.150 ⇒ 00:31:30.649 Awaish Kumar: For auto-labeling, like, I… Like, we have to…
280 00:31:31.430 ⇒ 00:31:34.700 Awaish Kumar: integrated, like, linear with something to…
281 00:31:35.740 ⇒ 00:31:40.159 Awaish Kumar: Like, that will be some… somebody I work in the AI team, and…
282 00:31:40.430 ⇒ 00:31:46.039 Awaish Kumar: So they will look at the… look at the description and figure out what label needs to be assigned.
283 00:31:47.140 ⇒ 00:31:49.350 Awaish Kumar: In the linear, if you want to do it linear.
284 00:31:49.350 ⇒ 00:31:54.420 Uttam Kumaran: We don’t want to… What else did you find, like, when you’re looking at the data?
285 00:31:57.200 ⇒ 00:31:58.610 Awaish Kumar: Linear data?
286 00:32:00.710 ⇒ 00:32:01.300 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
287 00:32:02.460 ⇒ 00:32:08.510 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, like… So, yeah, number one was due dates, like, we…
288 00:32:12.410 ⇒ 00:32:19.900 Awaish Kumar: Like, around… we are above 50% regarding, like, the tickets where we are assigning due dates.
289 00:32:20.180 ⇒ 00:32:25.500 Awaish Kumar: And then… There are, like,
290 00:32:25.920 ⇒ 00:32:28.000 Awaish Kumar: I’m just saying, I can open you.
291 00:32:29.000 ⇒ 00:32:30.659 Awaish Kumar: Put one sheet here.
292 00:32:33.510 ⇒ 00:32:43.720 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, like… for Eden, I can see that, like, 70… like, it’s not ideal, because we don’t have the…
293 00:32:44.190 ⇒ 00:32:45.070 Awaish Kumar: Right.
294 00:32:45.300 ⇒ 00:33:04.969 Awaish Kumar: the better way of maintaining the execution time with, allocated time, like, like, right now, the clockifier, timing is basically not linked to any linear ticket. I… I’m working on it to propose some suggestions on how…
295 00:33:04.970 ⇒ 00:33:13.370 Uttam Kumaran: Basically, what you should do first is just join on… Just join on, like… Day and client.
296 00:33:14.160 ⇒ 00:33:15.050 Uttam Kumaran: like…
297 00:33:15.840 ⇒ 00:33:16.610 Awaish Kumar: Yeah.
298 00:33:16.610 ⇒ 00:33:17.850 Uttam Kumaran: And roughly, roughly.
299 00:33:18.270 ⇒ 00:33:22.799 Uttam Kumaran: You’ll see, like, this time? Yeah. And then you can start to get a little bit deeper.
300 00:33:23.690 ⇒ 00:33:32.349 Awaish Kumar: I have done that, and by seeing that, I can see, on median, like, 75% of work is done within the allocated time.
301 00:33:32.730 ⇒ 00:33:37.119 Awaish Kumar: Like, I’m matching the hours allocated versus…
302 00:33:37.240 ⇒ 00:33:47.110 Awaish Kumar: the time we actually spend, so 75% of the work, which we said, like, we will do it in our, like, maybe I would say, like, I…
303 00:33:47.420 ⇒ 00:34:00.469 Awaish Kumar: I have 10 hours of capita Eden, I will do that in 10 hours, but maybe I spent 12. So, by using that logic, I found out, like, 75% of work we are doing for Eden is… is within the time.
304 00:34:00.850 ⇒ 00:34:02.509 Awaish Kumar: allocated.
305 00:34:02.810 ⇒ 00:34:09.900 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, so, like, another way of putting it… another way of putting it is our estimates are accurate 75% of the time.
306 00:34:10.360 ⇒ 00:34:11.260 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, yeah.
307 00:34:14.830 ⇒ 00:34:19.730 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, but also Eden is our most heavily PM’d project, so…
308 00:34:19.739 ⇒ 00:34:20.399 Awaish Kumar: Yeah.
309 00:34:20.400 ⇒ 00:34:23.560 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe ABC, also.
310 00:34:23.850 ⇒ 00:34:26.530 Uttam Kumaran: But, like, yeah, I expect the numbers to be…
311 00:34:26.760 ⇒ 00:34:31.510 Uttam Kumaran: Good, where we actually have the most support. You know.
312 00:34:31.960 ⇒ 00:34:35.499 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, but, like, we were… I mean, by the way.
313 00:34:35.500 ⇒ 00:34:48.829 Amber Lin: Oh yeah, I… I realize. I think most of the time, it’s… people are overconfident about what they can do. We will… we always ask, can you reasonably do this? And people will say, yes, I can, they cannot.
314 00:34:49.540 ⇒ 00:34:52.409 Amber Lin: So I think we’ll have to be stricter on that.
315 00:34:53.159 ⇒ 00:35:01.019 Uttam Kumaran: But I want the data to prove that, right? Like, when the data proves that, either you can do two things. One, any… you can basically create a buffer for…
316 00:35:02.139 ⇒ 00:35:05.479 Uttam Kumaran: like… The incorrect guesses.
317 00:35:05.629 ⇒ 00:35:10.709 Uttam Kumaran: So that you as a PM, even if people say yes, you assume that every time you’re gonna get 20% off.
318 00:35:12.540 ⇒ 00:35:20.920 Uttam Kumaran: And then, ideally, that also goes back to, like, we should be training people to estimate a little bit better, you know? But this is where, like, I don’t think we need to be…
319 00:35:21.210 ⇒ 00:35:30.080 Uttam Kumaran: And this is where you should ask Justin and Alex, like, what the… what… actually, what kind of benchmark this, but, like, I don’t think we need to be 100% on. I would like us to be 80% accurate.
320 00:35:30.400 ⇒ 00:35:33.580 Uttam Kumaran: like… That is actually, I feel pretty comfortable with.
321 00:35:33.920 ⇒ 00:35:38.340 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like, if… and 80% of the time, if we’re… if we’re, like.
322 00:35:38.660 ⇒ 00:35:45.290 Uttam Kumaran: within… we guessed it’s gonna take this long, and it’s usually there. Another way of putting it is that
323 00:35:45.470 ⇒ 00:35:53.820 Uttam Kumaran: like, for that 20%, too, I don’t think we’re gonna… we’re ever gonna be off by, like, more than a few hours. The actual biggest problem here
324 00:35:53.940 ⇒ 00:35:59.040 Uttam Kumaran: And this is a way, I think the next thing for you to find out is, what were the things that we estimated
325 00:36:00.020 ⇒ 00:36:07.789 Uttam Kumaran: where it actually took way longer. Like, what is the highest Delta tickets? Those are the first things to go after.
326 00:36:07.920 ⇒ 00:36:15.600 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t care whether it’s, like, we estimated 4 to 5 or 6, or, like, whatever. It’s actually where the net delta is the highest.
327 00:36:15.790 ⇒ 00:36:21.059 Uttam Kumaran: Where we estimated it was gonna be 3, and it ended up taking 8, or 20.
328 00:36:21.260 ⇒ 00:36:26.470 Uttam Kumaran: Alright, that’s where we’re gonna… that’s where we’re gonna eat enough, and so to see whether you can find any patterns there.
329 00:36:27.270 ⇒ 00:36:33.279 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, I will be… Suggesting ways to figure that out. Next.
330 00:36:34.060 ⇒ 00:36:44.319 Awaish Kumar: Apart from that, so yeah, like, Damilade met with Hannah also to share one of the local case studies.
331 00:36:44.510 ⇒ 00:36:54.190 Awaish Kumar: have also requested to have one more for our ETL cleanup, so maybe we’ll have that also in the.
332 00:36:54.480 ⇒ 00:37:03.109 Hannah Wang: I think we’re combining Looker and ETL, by the way, into just one case study, so I think the one that I sent for review should combine both.
333 00:37:04.520 ⇒ 00:37:10.169 Awaish Kumar: Okay, yeah, but these are two diff… can… these can be, like, these are basically two different.
334 00:37:10.560 ⇒ 00:37:11.470 Awaish Kumar: call.
335 00:37:11.470 ⇒ 00:37:15.979 Hannah Wang: Oh, I don’t know, Utam, you said to combine it, so I don’t… I don’t really know.
336 00:37:15.980 ⇒ 00:37:20.060 Uttam Kumaran: And you… Send the link.
337 00:37:20.660 ⇒ 00:37:21.090 Hannah Wang: Yeah.
338 00:37:21.090 ⇒ 00:37:23.039 Uttam Kumaran: I probably had a good reason.
339 00:37:28.580 ⇒ 00:37:39.189 Awaish Kumar: So, basically, regarding contributions… on technicalities, I’m also working on one, we’ll… Should it,
340 00:37:39.820 ⇒ 00:37:48.720 Awaish Kumar: By tomorrow, maybe, and then… Only one thing which I am thinking of is conducting one engineering
341 00:37:49.350 ⇒ 00:38:01.720 Awaish Kumar: review meeting, this month, and I will be preparing that Notion doc, which you shared, the template, sometime in next week, and then maybe
342 00:38:04.170 ⇒ 00:38:08.140 Awaish Kumar: move for first meeting, and I will be doing it with, maybe…
343 00:38:08.410 ⇒ 00:38:11.380 Awaish Kumar: I’m not there, like, that’s the only question right now.
344 00:38:11.710 ⇒ 00:38:12.979 Awaish Kumar: In data, Dean?
345 00:38:14.450 ⇒ 00:38:15.150 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
346 00:38:16.930 ⇒ 00:38:20.000 Uttam Kumaran: And then, but where are you… are you doing this all in RHEL?
347 00:38:21.780 ⇒ 00:38:25.500 Awaish Kumar: So yeah, yeah, most of the,
348 00:38:26.320 ⇒ 00:38:42.069 Awaish Kumar: linear tickets, the dashboard is in the real, in the same dashboard. I have added a few more metrics. Basically, you can select… maybe some of them are hidden for you, I don’t know. You can basically select the… on the real dashboard what metrics you want to see.
349 00:38:43.550 ⇒ 00:38:45.070 Uttam Kumaran: So, I think it’s like…
350 00:38:45.810 ⇒ 00:38:51.910 Uttam Kumaran: Amber, maybe we just, like, tomorrow… oh, wait, I’m just gonna bring everything into Omni for you.
351 00:38:51.910 ⇒ 00:38:52.650 Awaish Kumar: Okay.
352 00:38:52.650 ⇒ 00:38:56.010 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I don’t know.
353 00:38:56.220 ⇒ 00:39:01.700 Uttam Kumaran: Although I really love grill, I’m starting to fall in love with the hum. It’s really, really good.
354 00:39:04.380 ⇒ 00:39:15.170 Uttam Kumaran: So yeah, I think we’re gonna probably just start to do a lot of dashboarding in there for internal. And then nicely, when we go… when we go demo for clients, I’m gonna pull up our dashboards, because
355 00:39:15.440 ⇒ 00:39:35.179 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll basically say we’re running on Omni, right? And so, I think that’s gonna be really positive. So tomorrow, I’ll help you load all that stuff in. We have a lot to learn, there’s a lot of stuff in Omni, but I think we can… I’ll load in all of our basic data, and then you can start joining things there. And then ideally, for example, like, Justine, I can start… once… if I load in the HubSpot data.
356 00:39:35.580 ⇒ 00:39:45.940 Uttam Kumaran: If we bring in HubSpot and the revenue data, Justina can start making sales dashboards. You can start working on this dashboard. Sam can bring in some of the… he’s gonna… he’s starting to…
357 00:39:46.250 ⇒ 00:39:49.640 Uttam Kumaran: Today, he just mentioned he’s gonna be a postdog on our internal platform.
358 00:39:49.810 ⇒ 00:40:03.170 Uttam Kumaran: So that we can start measuring usage of the internal platform, like page views, what people are using, so we can bring in that data. So, I think Omni is probably going to be the place, and we have it for free, because we are pitching them.
359 00:40:03.730 ⇒ 00:40:07.970 Uttam Kumaran: It’s an expensive tool. So, that’s nice.
360 00:40:08.640 ⇒ 00:40:25.289 Uttam Kumaran: It’s funny, because I, a lot of our free trials that I got last year are expiring right now, and it’s so painful, like, linear. It just expired, it’s like 600 bucks a month. We’ve been getting it for free for the whole year, because I applied for their startup program.
361 00:40:25.990 ⇒ 00:40:26.620 Amber Lin: Oh.
362 00:40:26.620 ⇒ 00:40:29.880 Uttam Kumaran: Same with GitHub. GitHub is $400 a month.
363 00:40:30.140 ⇒ 00:40:30.820 Uttam Kumaran: And we’ve had.
364 00:40:30.820 ⇒ 00:40:31.500 Amber Lin: Nice!
365 00:40:31.500 ⇒ 00:40:32.270 Uttam Kumaran: So…
366 00:40:32.740 ⇒ 00:40:33.260 Amber Lin: Fine.
367 00:40:33.260 ⇒ 00:40:37.650 Uttam Kumaran: figuring out, like, what we can do. That’s why I sent you that linear thing. Some stuff we can’t avoid.
368 00:40:37.870 ⇒ 00:40:40.640 Uttam Kumaran: But, while.
369 00:40:40.640 ⇒ 00:40:41.070 Awaish Kumar: He’s…
370 00:40:41.070 ⇒ 00:40:43.329 Uttam Kumaran: free, like, take advantage of it.
371 00:40:44.070 ⇒ 00:40:49.189 Awaish Kumar: So, like, what, like, is… I think for small teams, Bitbucket was free.
372 00:40:50.640 ⇒ 00:41:01.410 Uttam Kumaran: Dude, I don’t think we’re gonna move off GitHub. I just don’t think I’m gonna wanna use GitHub. What we’re gonna do is… I may move us… we’re on GitHub Enterprise. I don’t think we need to be.
373 00:41:01.760 ⇒ 00:41:10.179 Uttam Kumaran: The other one, I think, is just, like, a couple bucks a user, so we’ll probably get this towards 100 bucks a month, but Rika and I are gonna talk on Monday.
374 00:41:10.450 ⇒ 00:41:16.889 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool. I guess, anything else, Awash, on engineering? Like, how was it… how was it on OKRs?
375 00:41:17.110 ⇒ 00:41:19.249 Uttam Kumaran: Like, with Angelides this week.
376 00:41:20.530 ⇒ 00:41:22.519 Uttam Kumaran: How do you feel about those?
377 00:41:23.190 ⇒ 00:41:25.899 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, like, just basically…
378 00:41:26.070 ⇒ 00:41:30.779 Awaish Kumar: I just filled in, and you were in the same or in some other call.
379 00:41:32.610 ⇒ 00:41:44.459 Awaish Kumar: Shia and I joined, and Shia basically just updated on… gave… gave an update on his task, and then mostly I talked about these leveling and tracking our work efforts, and…
380 00:41:49.330 ⇒ 00:41:54.620 Awaish Kumar: And I have filled in, basically, my… like, all the values which I just discussed in the Google Sheet, too.
381 00:41:56.000 ⇒ 00:41:56.610 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
382 00:41:58.210 ⇒ 00:41:58.940 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
383 00:41:59.620 ⇒ 00:42:00.440 Uttam Kumaran: Great.
384 00:42:00.790 ⇒ 00:42:05.660 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe since we have Hannah and Rico here, I guess both of you want to give a click.
385 00:42:06.350 ⇒ 00:42:13.640 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, if no news, then good news, but anything you want to sort of highlight, or any sort of issues to flag on your side?
386 00:42:21.130 ⇒ 00:42:23.139 Uttam Kumaran: there’s a lot going on, I feel like.
387 00:42:23.900 ⇒ 00:42:31.230 Uttam Kumaran: I guess my first question is, like, you feel… Do you feel like it’s…
388 00:42:31.430 ⇒ 00:42:38.840 Uttam Kumaran: a lot, but we’re, like, organized. Like, I think we’re more organized than last time. Things got really… Like…
389 00:42:39.340 ⇒ 00:42:42.300 Uttam Kumaran: a lot, but I don’t know. I guess, like, what is your… what’s your feeling?
390 00:42:42.720 ⇒ 00:42:52.149 Hannah Wang: I mean, I think capping it, or I guess getting your input, you and Robert’s input about the campaigns to prioritize was helpful, because then…
391 00:42:52.150 ⇒ 00:42:52.700 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
392 00:42:52.870 ⇒ 00:42:59.140 Hannah Wang: Before, I would just kind of go after whatever, but now I think I understand.
393 00:42:59.360 ⇒ 00:43:03.000 Hannah Wang: more what to do, and then I can also kind of help Ryan.
394 00:43:03.280 ⇒ 00:43:19.079 Hannah Wang: too, because, yeah, I think… I kind of try to nudge him in different ways, and kind of look at the feedback that you give him, and then I try to give it, on behalf of you guys, so hopefully that’s helping a little bit, but,
395 00:43:19.560 ⇒ 00:43:33.239 Hannah Wang: Yeah, I think every kickoff meeting, just prioritizing which campaign to focus on for go-to-market is helpful, and then, I think we can all kind of, like, execute there, and then…
396 00:43:33.360 ⇒ 00:43:38.450 Hannah Wang: Yeah, with Justina, like, I think she’s doing well.
397 00:43:38.450 ⇒ 00:43:39.100 Uttam Kumaran: F.
398 00:43:39.100 ⇒ 00:43:43.570 Hannah Wang: Or at least, like… not to, you know, call out anyone, but better.
399 00:43:43.570 ⇒ 00:43:45.130 Uttam Kumaran: I know what you’re gonna say. Yes.
400 00:43:45.130 ⇒ 00:43:53.649 Hannah Wang: Yeah, yeah, so she’s a lot more receptive, like, I hopped on a bunch of calls with her, and I think she’s starting to understand stuff.
401 00:43:53.650 ⇒ 00:43:54.000 Uttam Kumaran: God.
402 00:43:54.000 ⇒ 00:44:05.040 Hannah Wang: And I think, yeah, onboarding Sid and Sol helped me onboard Justina, so I kind of know, like, what to tell her. So, yeah, I see her, like, giving updates on Slack, so that’s good, and…
403 00:44:05.430 ⇒ 00:44:15.679 Hannah Wang: Yeah, I know Robert wanted, like, a review by Friday, by tomorrow, so I’ll kind of give my spiel then, and kind of evaluate, but I think she’s good for now. I mean…
404 00:44:15.820 ⇒ 00:44:20.960 Hannah Wang: I don’t really have a baseline. Like, she’s better than the other people, so I don’t really know.
405 00:44:20.960 ⇒ 00:44:24.029 Uttam Kumaran: No, and I think, I think a measure one is, like, you want to see that
406 00:44:24.620 ⇒ 00:44:33.720 Uttam Kumaran: Again, ideally, we want to see that you wouldn’t describe the day-to-day as, like, there’s too much going on or it’s too chaotic, right? We want to find that when people join.
407 00:44:33.850 ⇒ 00:44:38.450 Uttam Kumaran: they’re able to absorb that. Second is we want to see the bar get raised.
408 00:44:38.570 ⇒ 00:44:48.039 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So we want to see, like, the quality of the things we do, the pace at which we do them, and the results all go up. But I think now we’re seeing that, like, I think
409 00:44:48.230 ⇒ 00:45:06.790 Uttam Kumaran: someone’s… she’s now just kind of a sponge. She’s absorbing probably all this stuff that, like, nobody was doing. What I’m hopeful to see, and again, this is my expectation for everyone, is, like, as people ramp, they’re not only absorbing, but they’re, like, actually improving the existing process speed, and we’re able to do more, right? Like, ideally.
410 00:45:06.880 ⇒ 00:45:09.290 Uttam Kumaran: Every person on this team
411 00:45:09.550 ⇒ 00:45:17.830 Uttam Kumaran: like, who we add, we want that to result in X amount of revenue added, right? And sales is one of the key drivers for that.
412 00:45:17.900 ⇒ 00:45:30.929 Uttam Kumaran: the delivery team works on making sure we secure the revenue, and we secure it at a reasonable margin. The sales team is all about increasing revenue, right? And increasing… giving that delivery team more things to deliver on.
413 00:45:31.020 ⇒ 00:45:42.279 Uttam Kumaran: So sales is really something, when we bring on a salesperson, the ROI has to be really, really significant. So I think I’m okay… I think for everybody, we… I think we tend to give, like, a few weeks
414 00:45:42.780 ⇒ 00:45:47.540 Uttam Kumaran: Figure out, although our spidey sense and our, like, gut instinct is getting better.
415 00:45:47.730 ⇒ 00:46:02.209 Uttam Kumaran: I think what’s also getting better, though, is that we’re not just relying on the gut instinct, which is usually correct, we’re also relying on evidence from peers and teams, right? And I think that’s the route we’re gonna go, is, like, usually Robert and I,
416 00:46:02.600 ⇒ 00:46:10.889 Uttam Kumaran: We’ve worked enough people in our career and in this company to kind of get a sense of, like, okay, this person’s gonna nail it, even if there are some hiccups.
417 00:46:11.060 ⇒ 00:46:14.179 Uttam Kumaran: It’s when the people aren’t showing those promise is when
418 00:46:14.290 ⇒ 00:46:19.800 Uttam Kumaran: For me, these days, what’s… I’m so super happy about is I can go to this crew and say, what do you think?
419 00:46:20.030 ⇒ 00:46:29.310 Uttam Kumaran: Like, how do you… how would you evaluate their work? Do we even have a way of evaluating this work? And that way, we don’t…
420 00:46:29.460 ⇒ 00:46:33.270 Uttam Kumaran: We don’t, like, go to someone and say, hey, you’re struggling, and we don’t have any, like.
421 00:46:33.400 ⇒ 00:46:52.229 Uttam Kumaran: fact-based way of sharing that. Also, it’s not the fact that we go to someone and say, you’re struggling, see ya. It’s like, you’re struggling, and here’s some ways that we can help, and then we then put in the next checkpoint, right? Before, it was tough. I think we had people do stuff for so long, and I… we never intervened.
422 00:46:52.500 ⇒ 00:46:56.500 Uttam Kumaran: I think we’ve also made the mistake sometimes of intervening too soon.
423 00:46:56.690 ⇒ 00:47:14.399 Uttam Kumaran: We’re never gonna get it right, but, like, I’m much more comfortable with our current process of giving feedback, and everybody who we’ve given feedback to, it has been effective, meaning it was either received well or not well, and that is effective. Like, both those outcomes are effective, you know? So, yeah.
424 00:47:14.540 ⇒ 00:47:26.879 Uttam Kumaran: So I hear you. I think, kind of, like, probably for you to sort of think about as just in the ramps, is to see that our outcomes are getting faster and better, that the bar is getting raised.
425 00:47:28.350 ⇒ 00:47:30.780 Hannah Wang: Yeah, I mean, I think she’s already, like.
426 00:47:31.220 ⇒ 00:47:46.500 Hannah Wang: she’s a lot quicker at picking up the things that, like, the follow-up stuff, and just, like, HubSpot, like, keeping everything tracked in HubSpot, even, like, her ICP notes. Okay, that’s, like, yeah, you went above and beyond, and you were, like, collecting notes and making it easier for other people.
427 00:47:46.500 ⇒ 00:47:52.139 Hannah Wang: Like, who joined the team to know this information and have knowledge transfers, so…
428 00:47:52.140 ⇒ 00:48:03.420 Hannah Wang: Yeah, I’m… yeah. Anyway, I have a gut instinct, but I… it’s not really trained, so I’ll give my feedback tomorrow, but for… for now, it’s… it’s good, yeah.
429 00:48:07.160 ⇒ 00:48:07.680 Uttam Kumaran: Great.
430 00:48:07.680 ⇒ 00:48:11.490 Hannah Wang: And then I also think having Drake is super helpful.
431 00:48:11.520 ⇒ 00:48:12.889 Uttam Kumaran: Right. In terms of, like.
432 00:48:12.890 ⇒ 00:48:22.369 Hannah Wang: other go-to-market aspects of, like, SME playbooks, and I think he’s also, like, super proactive and, like, follows up with everything, so, like.
433 00:48:22.450 ⇒ 00:48:35.479 Hannah Wang: not that we’re, like, doing similar work, but I think just having him also be there, like, feels… it feels like a support system, and it, like, helps the go-to-market team, I feel like, feel more, like, smooth.
434 00:48:35.570 ⇒ 00:48:39.770 Hannah Wang: And, yeah, I think he’s… he’s great, so…
435 00:48:40.560 ⇒ 00:48:48.250 Uttam Kumaran: one of the things I think you’re starting to see, and it’s what other people in the company are starting to see, is when you move from 2 to 3 people.
436 00:48:48.370 ⇒ 00:48:51.179 Uttam Kumaran: Like, what, like, team dynamic changes.
437 00:48:51.300 ⇒ 00:48:57.650 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, I could tell you it was one person, and then it was, like, one person per team.
438 00:48:57.730 ⇒ 00:48:59.820 Uttam Kumaran: Per role for a long time.
439 00:48:59.880 ⇒ 00:49:12.949 Uttam Kumaran: And then it was 2, and then now it’s three. 3 is… something changes when there’s three, where there’s some sort of self-organization that happens. I think, Amber, you’re seeing this on PM. I think, Awash, you’re now seeing this on, like.
440 00:49:12.950 ⇒ 00:49:27.229 Uttam Kumaran: sort of, like, more senior engineering, right? Before, it’s just, like, kind of me and you. Now that you have at least Sam, you kind of talking to Treya, like, Henry, there’s at least some more senior people. I think on AI, they’re seeing that as well, right? Now you have Sam, Mustafa, and Casey.
441 00:49:27.380 ⇒ 00:49:32.860 Uttam Kumaran: That’s, like, enough for someone to run stand-up, two people to stay, and for it to rotate, right?
442 00:49:33.520 ⇒ 00:49:44.259 Uttam Kumaran: So that is a huge thing to eclipse. I don’t… I don’t think necessarily, like, 3 to 4, 3 to 5 really, like, does much, but the 2 to 3 is, like, really, really impactful. So…
443 00:49:44.490 ⇒ 00:49:55.720 Uttam Kumaran: there are still teams that we don’t have that, right? And that’s probably where we’re gonna continue to struggle, like, operations doesn’t have that, and it’s just me and Rico right now. I also think,
444 00:49:55.780 ⇒ 00:50:09.509 Uttam Kumaran: sales, like, outbound sales. It doesn’t have that in a really bad way, meaning it’s just really, like, me and Rhee and Robert. But the sales team now has that, like, you have Ryan, Justina, and Hannah helping with sales stuff.
445 00:50:09.510 ⇒ 00:50:25.510 Uttam Kumaran: Marketing, of course, I think, has been blessed to have that for a while. Like, you kind of had, Ryan, you’ve had Hannah here, Ann’s been there, and so I think that team, of course, I feel like they’ve benefited a lot from having a crew of people that.
446 00:50:25.510 ⇒ 00:50:25.840 Hannah Wang: Yeah.
447 00:50:25.840 ⇒ 00:50:39.800 Uttam Kumaran: now are seeing. So, I’m really happy to hear that. I think what I continue to push for is that, like, self-organization. Like, hearing that you’re meeting directly with Justina is great.
448 00:50:40.160 ⇒ 00:50:43.850 Uttam Kumaran: And seeing that happen across teams is really, really nice.
449 00:50:45.410 ⇒ 00:50:46.520 Hannah Wang: Yeah, I think it’s…
450 00:50:46.520 ⇒ 00:50:47.550 Uttam Kumaran: I think…
451 00:50:47.680 ⇒ 00:50:59.330 Hannah Wang: the team is getting better, at least, like, marketing and, like, go-to-market, they’re getting better at reaching out directly to people other than you, and I, like, try to push that still, too. So I think that’s…
452 00:50:59.510 ⇒ 00:51:01.710 Hannah Wang: getting better. Hopefully you’re getting.
453 00:51:01.710 ⇒ 00:51:02.370 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
454 00:51:02.370 ⇒ 00:51:05.329 Hannah Wang: Less pings, but… yeah.
455 00:51:05.330 ⇒ 00:51:09.270 Uttam Kumaran: The thing is, I’ve… if I have getting less things, I just start sending… I start sending more
456 00:51:09.610 ⇒ 00:51:26.309 Uttam Kumaran: that I get paid for. So I would… I’m okay with that. I think more of what I… what you’ve seen me do is I loo people in, and I, like… these days, I’m trying less to, like, be like, this is the answer, I’m more of, like, what do you think we should do? Like, how does it… how do we form the principles so that you can come to the…
457 00:51:26.430 ⇒ 00:51:31.360 Uttam Kumaran: roughly 80% same decision that I probably would have… would have came with.
458 00:51:31.530 ⇒ 00:51:34.910 Uttam Kumaran: You know, similarly, like, I think on HubSpot stuff, I’m like, I…
459 00:51:35.120 ⇒ 00:51:50.220 Uttam Kumaran: we’re… I don’t think we’re opinionated about how our HubSpot set up, so I’m kind of, like, just, you know, whatever you recommend, let’s do, right? And I think in another… like, I do know a lot about setting up CRMs and doing that, but this is where, like, if I set it up, then it’s not someone… someone else will feel like it’s not there.
460 00:51:50.270 ⇒ 00:52:08.690 Uttam Kumaran: process of their tool, they won’t take ownership of it. So I’m trying to, like, give everybody on the team a little bit more sense of, like, oh, I devised this process, and it’s mine to run and own. And then if I have a question about something, of course, I think one of us can answer, or we’re, like, one phone call away from answering.
461 00:52:08.780 ⇒ 00:52:17.830 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, that’s the beauty, is that now, like, when Jake came on, I easily can connect him with you, and with a bunch of other assets, and he ramped in, like, 3 days, right?
462 00:52:17.830 ⇒ 00:52:18.819 Hannah Wang: Yeah, literally.
463 00:52:18.820 ⇒ 00:52:30.500 Uttam Kumaran: but just seeing it, like, what you guys are seeing in our company in terms of how fast people ramp is not the situation in most businesses. Like, most businesses usually ramping, especially on the business side, is, like.
464 00:52:30.690 ⇒ 00:52:34.359 Uttam Kumaran: 2 months. On the engineering side, it can be four months.
465 00:52:34.570 ⇒ 00:52:43.950 Uttam Kumaran: For us, this is, like, I’m like, we’re, like, 2 weeks, right? And that’s, like, by design. Because we want to find out fast whether people can do this.
466 00:52:44.360 ⇒ 00:52:50.959 Uttam Kumaran: Or if they can’t, you know? And and then also, like, I want to double down on the best people, so that’s what I think
467 00:52:51.080 ⇒ 00:52:55.490 Uttam Kumaran: What’s a little bit unique compared to most companies about how we benchmark our onboarding time?
468 00:52:55.660 ⇒ 00:53:10.019 Uttam Kumaran: And I think that kind of, like, maybe, like, goes back to one other piece of the feedback I gave this week, which is on the onboarding slides. I think we’re learning, you know, and I know, like, we’ve all talked a lot about
469 00:53:10.280 ⇒ 00:53:28.910 Uttam Kumaran: the things we learned about how to operate in a company like this versus, like, past experiences. There’s a lot around how we communicate proactiveness that I don’t think comes naturally to a lot of people. Certainly didn’t come naturally to me, I learned through this business, but it’s also something that I want to
470 00:53:29.010 ⇒ 00:53:34.690 Uttam Kumaran: be very transparent and clear about on day one, you know? And I think that… that…
471 00:53:35.250 ⇒ 00:53:47.960 Uttam Kumaran: onboarding document that I asked Rico to present. Ideally, everybody on their first day at Brain Forge, they run through those slides with Rico, they get access to everything, and it’s really clear the expectations for communication.
472 00:53:48.120 ⇒ 00:53:56.189 Uttam Kumaran: The nice thing is, I don’t think it’s actually that hard at the end of your day to send a, here’s what I did today. I just think it’s uncommon.
473 00:53:57.020 ⇒ 00:54:06.330 Uttam Kumaran: And that’s what I want to set the expectation super, super clear from day one, that that’s what we were hoping for people. And so…
474 00:54:06.510 ⇒ 00:54:17.070 Uttam Kumaran: you know, that onboarding doc is the culmination of it. For me, seeing more than 30 or 40 onboardings at this company, and seeing how bad we’ve done it. But also, I’m hopeful that you guys also
475 00:54:17.490 ⇒ 00:54:24.549 Uttam Kumaran: and give your feedback on that, Doc, and think about when you onboarded onto Brainforce, like, what the situation was like, so…
476 00:54:25.010 ⇒ 00:54:29.049 Amber Lin: Yeah, I read that one, I also sent in a Notion doc.
477 00:54:29.050 ⇒ 00:54:34.899 Uttam Kumaran: I think I need to just sit down at the trail. Okay, okay.
478 00:54:35.620 ⇒ 00:54:36.560 Uttam Kumaran: Sorry, go ahead.
479 00:54:36.560 ⇒ 00:54:55.330 Amber Lin: Yeah, I was saying, I sent in a Notion doc on communication guidelines. I think it’s better to just have, can you check these boxes each day, and especially on onboarding, to have a checklist that they check off every day of, today you have these meetings, you need to send these messages, you need to get these things done. I think that gives people a lot more security.
480 00:54:55.440 ⇒ 00:55:05.319 Amber Lin: I think we should have the slides and then, like, an onboarding Notion doc per person. I don’t know if you guys saw the communication notion that I sent.
481 00:55:08.170 ⇒ 00:55:10.870 Amber Lin: It’s in the same thread where you sent the slides.
482 00:55:15.830 ⇒ 00:55:25.589 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, I can take a look at it after this, but yeah, I think, like, I just want to… because the other thing is, like, I want to make sure people understand that, so that when we do give feedback.
483 00:55:25.760 ⇒ 00:55:39.750 Uttam Kumaran: it’s not like, oh… usually the case is, like, I’m like, why didn’t people convene again? Like, we never asked. It’s actually usually as simple as that. So, I want to, like, avoid that, and be really, really, like, forward with what we expect.
484 00:55:41.060 ⇒ 00:55:52.419 Uttam Kumaran: And also, in that meeting, I want people to log their first hour, log into ChatGPT, send their first update message in their channel, create their first ticket, right? Like, skip through all those hurdles.
485 00:55:52.640 ⇒ 00:55:54.910 Uttam Kumaran: So… Yeah.
486 00:55:59.000 ⇒ 00:55:59.870 Uttam Kumaran: Both.
487 00:56:00.140 ⇒ 00:56:05.980 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, and the last person, Rico, I guess, like, do you have any feedback about how everything’s going? What do you think?
488 00:56:06.540 ⇒ 00:56:07.859 Rico Rejoso: Yeah,
489 00:56:08.950 ⇒ 00:56:23.470 Rico Rejoso: This week, we’re more, like, of a transition since I was introduced to the AI team as well, and I’ve been heavily communicating with Justin in regards to how to better PM, especially, I’m taking on the internal department.
490 00:56:23.500 ⇒ 00:56:32.110 Rico Rejoso: as well, and I’m getting a clear perspective, like, on how things should be done, since,
491 00:56:32.710 ⇒ 00:56:48.990 Rico Rejoso: you know, I’m new for project management, or for coordinating and stuff, but yeah, he’s trying to give me the breakdown on how things are done, so I think it’s been helpful as well to have Justin onboarded, or have help us on the PM side as well.
492 00:56:49.030 ⇒ 00:56:58.249 Rico Rejoso: But, yeah, Amber was there to provide all the documents and everything. Justin was just giving me the advice on how we can do more stuff smoothly at the same time, convenient on my end.
493 00:56:58.520 ⇒ 00:57:08.730 Rico Rejoso: So I think that’s been a big deal for me. And right now, we’re just planning off on how we can close the week and transition better for next week, since default and interlude will be on Justin’s side by then.
494 00:57:11.260 ⇒ 00:57:12.860 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Awesome.
495 00:57:16.990 ⇒ 00:57:23.160 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, I think that’s kind of it. I think the other thing I’m thinking about is,
496 00:57:23.880 ⇒ 00:57:29.839 Uttam Kumaran: Two things that I think I want to sort of send out for the delivery team to continue to think about is, one.
497 00:57:30.160 ⇒ 00:57:32.150 Uttam Kumaran: delivery source opportunities.
498 00:57:32.510 ⇒ 00:57:48.499 Uttam Kumaran: how can we start turning… similarly, like, on ABC, we turn customer service reps into revenue generators. How can we start taking our folks that are on the ground with clients and turn them into people that are forcing new opportunities for us? The second,
499 00:57:49.400 ⇒ 00:57:55.210 Uttam Kumaran: The second piece is really around these monthly, sort of, project reviews. I’m sending a message to Zach.
500 00:57:55.430 ⇒ 00:58:09.459 Uttam Kumaran: I want to send… I want to kind of use my time with Matt from ABC for this, I’m gonna do this with default, and I want this monthly is a chat between the AE on an account, the PM,
501 00:58:09.750 ⇒ 00:58:15.290 Uttam Kumaran: and the person that’s signing our checks, basically. We can also include the
502 00:58:15.950 ⇒ 00:58:27.010 Uttam Kumaran: tech lead, but, like, not super necessary. And I would like us to meet with those people once a month. I think it’s… it’s healthy, so that’s another thing I think Justin
503 00:58:27.370 ⇒ 00:58:41.409 Uttam Kumaran: get feedback on that we’ll start to institute. I finally feel at the point where I actually have time to do that, and we can crush those. And I think what we’ll… the KPIs that that will affect are renewal rates, renewal upsells.
504 00:58:41.760 ⇒ 00:58:45.800 Uttam Kumaran: The length of the renewal, things like that. So, direct ties into revenue.
505 00:58:48.350 ⇒ 00:58:49.250 Uttam Kumaran: Of course.
506 00:58:49.470 ⇒ 00:58:50.260 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
507 00:58:50.450 ⇒ 00:58:52.570 Uttam Kumaran: That’s all I had.
508 00:58:53.750 ⇒ 00:58:55.110 Amber Lin: Alright, I’ll be back.
509 00:58:55.110 ⇒ 00:59:02.690 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll be back… yeah, I’ll be back home tomorrow morning, and then… yeah, I think we can spend the afternoon kind of getting all this data stuff set up, so…
510 00:59:02.690 ⇒ 00:59:09.159 Amber Lin: Okay, yeah, and Rico sent the slides and the cultural channel, so if we can fill that out before tomorrow’s meeting, that’ll be great.
511 00:59:11.020 ⇒ 00:59:14.160 Hannah Wang: Lynn, if you could send a dashboard
512 00:59:14.330 ⇒ 00:59:22.519 Hannah Wang: photo, or let someone find it for us using Gorgeous, I think, as the dashboard for one of the Javi case studies.
513 00:59:23.030 ⇒ 00:59:24.299 Uttam Kumaran: Oh. Huh.
514 00:59:24.870 ⇒ 00:59:27.399 Hannah Wang: If we have one. If not, it’s fine.
515 00:59:27.400 ⇒ 00:59:29.640 Awaish Kumar: I sent a message to a patient.
516 00:59:30.100 ⇒ 00:59:36.189 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, yeah, I don’t know if we have one anymore, so we may need to find one in their product docs.
517 00:59:37.370 ⇒ 00:59:42.990 Hannah Wang: Okay, I can just grab, like, something from their website if you can’t find it, but just let me know. Yeah.
518 00:59:44.400 ⇒ 00:59:45.490 Hannah Wang: Thank you.
519 00:59:49.030 ⇒ 00:59:51.150 Amber Lin: Bye. Bye!