2025-09-23_brainforge_sales_and_delivery_sync_3edad047

Meeting Title: Brainforge Sales and Delivery Sync Date: 2025-09-23 Meeting participants: Uttam Kumaran, Justin Breshears

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WEBVTT

1 00:00:13.770 ⇒ 00:00:14.850 Justin Breshears: Hey!

2 00:00:19.920 ⇒ 00:00:20.870 Uttam Kumaran: Hello!

3 00:00:22.230 ⇒ 00:00:23.460 Justin Breshears: How are you, sir?

4 00:00:23.890 ⇒ 00:00:28.810 Uttam Kumaran: Good. Just, working at a coffee shop today. It’s been good.

5 00:00:29.250 ⇒ 00:00:34.030 Uttam Kumaran: Getting, like, getting, like, deeper work.

6 00:00:34.540 ⇒ 00:00:40.510 Uttam Kumaran: done, and Amber’s working on some budget stuff, and we’re getting, like, two proposals out today, so…

7 00:00:40.610 ⇒ 00:00:42.269 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s been good. How about you?

8 00:00:42.820 ⇒ 00:00:47.619 Justin Breshears: That’s a good day. I saw, you were working on that Shyness Day one. I feel like that one went…

9 00:00:47.830 ⇒ 00:00:49.070 Justin Breshears: Quick, through the process.

10 00:00:49.070 ⇒ 00:00:51.130 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that one, they…

11 00:00:51.480 ⇒ 00:00:56.080 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, they asked me about something that we just heard about from a bunch of different

12 00:00:56.310 ⇒ 00:01:03.540 Uttam Kumaran: leads, and I just had all the right answers in that call, and they were like, okay, go for it, send us a proposal.

13 00:01:03.710 ⇒ 00:01:06.630 Uttam Kumaran: So, I don’t know, it’s just…

14 00:01:06.930 ⇒ 00:01:11.959 Uttam Kumaran: It’s just been reps on the sales side, like, I feel like nothing has helped more than just

15 00:01:12.480 ⇒ 00:01:18.109 Uttam Kumaran: doing it every single day, like, trying to be out in the market selling, you know? So…

16 00:01:18.110 ⇒ 00:01:21.059 Justin Breshears: It’s really helped, like, how do we tighten up our messaging?

17 00:01:21.060 ⇒ 00:01:28.069 Uttam Kumaran: how do I take a customer through the entire, like, journey on… in just 30 minutes, from who we are.

18 00:01:28.160 ⇒ 00:01:41.320 Uttam Kumaran: like, what our, sort of, morals, ethics are, why we’re an authority, and then trying to help them see… I try and help them, like, put words to their problem, and then…

19 00:01:41.590 ⇒ 00:01:45.940 Uttam Kumaran: Eventually saying, we’re the ones to solve their problem, and doing that in…

20 00:01:46.110 ⇒ 00:01:49.470 Uttam Kumaran: 25 minutes, you know? No matter what.

21 00:01:49.470 ⇒ 00:01:50.590 Justin Breshears: That’s an art form.

22 00:01:50.870 ⇒ 00:01:55.330 Uttam Kumaran: No matter what, without knowing the problem ahead of time. Yeah.

23 00:01:55.560 ⇒ 00:02:00.630 Justin Breshears: I feel like that’s half the battle with consultancy, because, like, clients don’t know what they want. Like, you gotta be.

24 00:02:00.630 ⇒ 00:02:01.190 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

25 00:02:01.190 ⇒ 00:02:07.750 Justin Breshears: Hear… hear what they’re talking about and their problems, and then, like, identify what they need a lot of times.

26 00:02:08.430 ⇒ 00:02:16.459 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and also it’s… it’s… we have varying degrees of that, like, we have some people that are like, oh, I can do it myself, like, why do I need you?

27 00:02:16.720 ⇒ 00:02:26.410 Uttam Kumaran: And I’m like, well, there’s a reason, like, we’re on the call, like, we didn’t just both decide to get on this call. Someone didn’t get the other person. And then, so sometimes it’s just, like.

28 00:02:26.620 ⇒ 00:02:34.850 Uttam Kumaran: it’s just a… it is engineering, like, it’s… it’s a… for me, I look at it like an engineering puzzle, like, there are… there’s a set of objections that everybody has, there is a…

29 00:02:35.050 ⇒ 00:02:46.440 Uttam Kumaran: a couple of, like, boxes we need to tick that we’re getting better at ticking. Some we’re able to tick now ahead of time. Some we’re able to get done on the call, because I’m… I just… I’m not nervous anymore.

30 00:02:46.730 ⇒ 00:02:49.220 Uttam Kumaran: And, and then…

31 00:02:49.570 ⇒ 00:02:55.839 Uttam Kumaran: Our game is to get to the point where they’re convinced that we’re the right people, and then for us to figure out how much it’s worth to them.

32 00:02:56.090 ⇒ 00:03:03.320 Uttam Kumaran: So for Shinesty, we… we nailed it, and then they want to move fast.

33 00:03:03.450 ⇒ 00:03:09.700 Uttam Kumaran: And so, for me, it’s like, okay, now it’s the… it’s the sort of art of, like, getting this deal over the line, which is…

34 00:03:10.110 ⇒ 00:03:22.210 Uttam Kumaran: I have a little bit of understanding of, like, their size. I kind of could tell that they are in a pinch for this issue. I can tell that they’re very pro-AI and automation, kind of very similar to how we think about it.

35 00:03:22.580 ⇒ 00:03:23.680 Uttam Kumaran: And…

36 00:03:23.820 ⇒ 00:03:30.180 Uttam Kumaran: I was kind of… I thought a lot about what you said, what we talked about yesterday, about fixed versus…

37 00:03:32.080 ⇒ 00:03:39.270 Uttam Kumaran: Hourly, based on, like, our understanding of the problem and the deliverables, so that helped me sort of, like, quickly move into, like, cool.

38 00:03:39.560 ⇒ 00:03:59.419 Uttam Kumaran: let’s go for it. But, you know, the also thing is the execution piece, like, I can have Hannah put together a designed SOW in, like, 30 minutes, and we can use AI plus my commentary to do all the copy. So, like, we can get a really sophisticated, feeling, thorough proposal out in 48 hours, you know?

39 00:03:59.690 ⇒ 00:04:06.530 Uttam Kumaran: Which is, like, not what happens, typically, you know? Yeah, that’s huge.

40 00:04:06.530 ⇒ 00:04:10.269 Justin Breshears: just to beat everybody to the punch. I use the example all the time with, like.

41 00:04:10.550 ⇒ 00:04:19.259 Justin Breshears: hey, your toilet’s clogged, and you call a plumber, right? Who’s the plumber that you hire? It’s usually the first person that picks up the phone and.

42 00:04:19.260 ⇒ 00:04:19.820 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

43 00:04:19.820 ⇒ 00:04:20.680 Justin Breshears: Right?

44 00:04:20.680 ⇒ 00:04:21.200 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

45 00:04:21.289 ⇒ 00:04:28.419 Justin Breshears: Because I’ll call 3 or 4 of them, they won’t answer, and then the fifth one does, and that’s the one that gets my business, right?

46 00:04:28.420 ⇒ 00:04:35.170 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and so in a commodity service business like plumbing or roofing.

47 00:04:35.380 ⇒ 00:04:37.990 Uttam Kumaran: You know, it’s just being the first to the punch.

48 00:04:38.260 ⇒ 00:04:45.080 Uttam Kumaran: Or winning that word-of-mouth client that really matters, but, like, guess what? The moment that a storm hits Austin.

49 00:04:45.310 ⇒ 00:04:51.729 Uttam Kumaran: What do you see on the road? You see all the tree trimmers, you see the roofing companies everywhere, right?

50 00:04:52.010 ⇒ 00:05:04.050 Uttam Kumaran: And so their ability to capitalize on the demand when it’s there is really important. Similar for us, what we’re seeing on the data and AI side is our ability to capitalize on that demand right now.

51 00:05:04.210 ⇒ 00:05:06.090 Uttam Kumaran: Matters a lot, so…

52 00:05:06.280 ⇒ 00:05:16.920 Uttam Kumaran: Partly is, like… and… but also, it’s even deeper, which is, like, most consult… like, when you engage with consultant, most people are used to a very laborious, slow…

53 00:05:17.100 ⇒ 00:05:24.309 Uttam Kumaran: like, difficult process. And they… they painstakingly sign whatever the consultant wants from them, because

54 00:05:24.540 ⇒ 00:05:28.300 Uttam Kumaran: They may not have another option, like, they may not have the resources to hire.

55 00:05:28.520 ⇒ 00:05:40.139 Uttam Kumaran: maybe they don’t even know where to start, and I want them to know that if they took the time to call us, that we are the right people, and I want them to be happy throughout the entire process, like.

56 00:05:40.460 ⇒ 00:05:55.309 Uttam Kumaran: I want them to be so confident going through the engagement that we set the delivery team up for wins, because that is actually… I’m not… I’m more confident we can get anything done versus the sales part. Like, our engineering team will crush it. And so…

57 00:05:55.780 ⇒ 00:06:07.069 Uttam Kumaran: I think for me, it’s like, okay, what is there we can challenge? Well, most consultancies, they get on a call, they do a little pitch deck, they introduce a bunch of people, they talk to somebody who’s super junior, like.

58 00:06:07.070 ⇒ 00:06:18.669 Uttam Kumaran: that’s not what happens. You talk to me, I’m the CEO of the company, I know everything about what we’ve done, where we’re going, I generally give you a sense of, like, why we started consulting business, and why we are here to help, and I think

59 00:06:18.950 ⇒ 00:06:22.589 Uttam Kumaran: We’ve challenged a lot of the ways that people typically get sold to.

60 00:06:22.730 ⇒ 00:06:25.220 Uttam Kumaran: Part of that is messaging, part of that is our pace.

61 00:06:25.400 ⇒ 00:06:40.120 Uttam Kumaran: And all of that sort of helps us do… get these deals over, you know? Even when we have no professional, like, basically professional sales talent, you know? Or like, we don’t follow the… we don’t follow the rules at all.

62 00:06:40.540 ⇒ 00:06:41.580 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. I follow

63 00:06:42.020 ⇒ 00:06:48.710 Uttam Kumaran: them, but some of them are built by people that, like, they have to follow the rules, and I don’t want to do that, you know? So…

64 00:06:50.290 ⇒ 00:06:59.169 Justin Breshears: I can tell you that iCustomer proposal was impressive, like, the level of detail in there, it’s not… that’s not typical, I can tell you that.

65 00:06:59.760 ⇒ 00:07:00.110 Justin Breshears: I agree.

66 00:07:00.740 ⇒ 00:07:08.189 Justin Breshears: I had some… some closed-contract SOWs come to me with less information than that.

67 00:07:08.350 ⇒ 00:07:12.669 Justin Breshears: Before, so… Yeah, I feel like y’all are doing something right.

68 00:07:14.280 ⇒ 00:07:19.950 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and trying to use AI everywhere, right? You know, one thing that we’re working on with Amber right now is budgets, and…

69 00:07:20.470 ⇒ 00:07:29.830 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and mostly, as we talked about, like, businesses like ours, they typically… it’s even hard for them to get 20-30% cost of goods.

70 00:07:29.940 ⇒ 00:07:34.750 Uttam Kumaran: And then also, it’s really hard for them to keep sales and operating expenses down.

71 00:07:34.920 ⇒ 00:07:45.770 Uttam Kumaran: But for us, the AI availability is really what’s gonna help us. Like, we could have got there with pure grit, and just, like, running an extremely lean, painful situation.

72 00:07:45.880 ⇒ 00:07:53.020 Uttam Kumaran: But the AI piece is what’s gonna allow us to do a little bit of, like, running lean and understanding where we run lean.

73 00:07:53.170 ⇒ 00:08:08.030 Uttam Kumaran: But it’s also going to allow us to get another 5 to 10 points of margin. And in that situation, that is purely, can we be the first to the punch, and can we innovate on our business model? Can we innovate on our org structure? Can we innovate on the people we hire?

74 00:08:08.220 ⇒ 00:08:14.070 Uttam Kumaran: that is, like, I think the fun in this business, in running a business like this right now.

75 00:08:14.250 ⇒ 00:08:26.539 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and that’s why it’s important that we… when we bring on people, we bring on people that aren’t threatened by it, but are, in fact, like, oh, I can actually work on the things that are better, and ideally, for me as a business owner, I can pay people more.

76 00:08:26.770 ⇒ 00:08:32.630 Uttam Kumaran: You know, like, that is, like, what I’m… I want to pay… I want to pay less people more.

77 00:08:32.830 ⇒ 00:08:38.800 Uttam Kumaran: And, that’s… that’s, I think, what the AI piece is really unlocking for us.

78 00:08:40.070 ⇒ 00:08:47.339 Uttam Kumaran: And… look, there’s things we can’t get out of, like, we have to spend money to go get money, like, we have to spend money on sales, and…

79 00:08:47.470 ⇒ 00:08:53.009 Uttam Kumaran: And we are pretty light on that, like, we’ve done a lot with very little resources, but,

80 00:08:53.190 ⇒ 00:09:05.150 Uttam Kumaran: that’s… this is where, like, I don’t want to look left to right and sort of look at what other companies are doing, because we will just… there’s not much to learn there at our stage. But we… it’s actually helpful that we don’t know the rules.

81 00:09:05.310 ⇒ 00:09:10.749 Uttam Kumaran: At some situations, because we… We… we just know where we need to go.

82 00:09:10.910 ⇒ 00:09:23.640 Uttam Kumaran: And there’s good and bad things, like, there are some areas that we need to follow, you know, some of the rules on. There’s some areas that, like, if we’re gonna hit… if we’re gonna try to aim for 60% margins in the service business.

83 00:09:24.100 ⇒ 00:09:28.030 Uttam Kumaran: Some rules have to get… like, we have to do some things a new way, you know?

84 00:09:29.570 ⇒ 00:09:30.400 Justin Breshears: For sure.

85 00:09:31.190 ⇒ 00:09:31.830 Uttam Kumaran: Wow.

86 00:09:31.830 ⇒ 00:09:32.740 Justin Breshears: Absolutely.

87 00:09:33.010 ⇒ 00:09:40.750 Justin Breshears: I think the… It all just speaks to my soul, because I’m just, like, a big fan of efficiency.

88 00:09:40.860 ⇒ 00:09:47.079 Justin Breshears: Even in my, just, personal life. So, yeah, you can make every person that you end up paying

89 00:09:47.280 ⇒ 00:09:52.599 Justin Breshears: That much more efficient than an equivalent person at another company, like, you got an advantage right there.

90 00:09:52.980 ⇒ 00:09:53.790 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

91 00:09:55.270 ⇒ 00:09:57.060 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so, it’s,

92 00:09:57.410 ⇒ 00:10:06.949 Uttam Kumaran: It’s tough because, like, you know, our… even our… you know, we’re learning a lot about what we… what we can go move faster, but some things are tough, like, we can’t get paid faster.

93 00:10:08.710 ⇒ 00:10:14.989 Uttam Kumaran: certain parts of the deal just take a while. Like, the bigger the client, the long… we… a lot of it gets out of our hands.

94 00:10:15.280 ⇒ 00:10:16.350 Uttam Kumaran: Right.

95 00:10:16.650 ⇒ 00:10:27.190 Uttam Kumaran: But whatever is in our hands, I want to make sure gets done fast, and the moment we do it twice, we need an SOP, and then the next thing is get it automated, so…

96 00:10:27.580 ⇒ 00:10:30.770 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so that’s kind of ironing.

97 00:10:31.750 ⇒ 00:10:32.579 Justin Breshears: For sure.

98 00:10:33.290 ⇒ 00:10:38.380 Justin Breshears: Speaking of process, I’m curious that for today with Remo.

99 00:10:39.570 ⇒ 00:10:43.630 Justin Breshears: like, I realized, like, I have no idea what our kickoff process is.

100 00:10:43.630 ⇒ 00:10:44.110 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

101 00:10:44.110 ⇒ 00:10:48.549 Justin Breshears: So Robert’s like, hey, can we get this kicked off? What does that look like here?

102 00:10:48.550 ⇒ 00:10:49.260 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

103 00:10:50.190 ⇒ 00:10:53.389 Uttam Kumaran: So, this is where… this is where, like.

104 00:10:53.560 ⇒ 00:11:08.110 Uttam Kumaran: this is how the state of the world was before we have a process. So, in this situation, my goal is, like, delivery needs to step in and basically give the salesperson the confidence that, hey, we’ll take it from here.

105 00:11:08.350 ⇒ 00:11:12.619 Uttam Kumaran: And he’s… he’s gonna do what we usually do, which is just, like.

106 00:11:12.930 ⇒ 00:11:15.939 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, we got it signed yesterday, like, let’s go, you know?

107 00:11:16.050 ⇒ 00:11:32.920 Uttam Kumaran: And the part of the problem is, like, on the sales side, this deal has been lagging a lot because they’ve been playing contract tag on their side, so nothing materially has changed in, like, 2 weeks. So the moment it gets assigned, the client… and also because this is a… it’s sort of like a cousin…

108 00:11:33.050 ⇒ 00:11:47.620 Uttam Kumaran: it’s like a sister company to an existing client. They just already have been asking us about it. So, there are these, like, sales dynamics at play, but my recommendation is for y’all to just take over and do what your plan is on delivery. Like, you’re gonna get no pushback on that.

109 00:11:49.170 ⇒ 00:11:55.440 Uttam Kumaran: So, yeah, like, I think we should just run it through our normal stuff. I think the biggest thing is to just give Robert that confidence, and he’ll be fine.

110 00:11:55.440 ⇒ 00:12:08.819 Justin Breshears: Right. But, like, what have y’all done historically for kickoffs? Have you had, like, a… an official, like, kickoff call with the client, where you, like, kind of lay out the project or anything, or y’all just kind of start working, and then just, like, start communicating, like…

111 00:12:09.110 ⇒ 00:12:10.240 Justin Breshears: What is… what is that?

112 00:12:10.240 ⇒ 00:12:13.340 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s sort… it’s sort of like,

113 00:12:15.420 ⇒ 00:12:19.219 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think it’s… it’s,

114 00:12:19.470 ⇒ 00:12:30.150 Uttam Kumaran: We typically do have, like, a kickoff call, but usually it’s around getting access to things, and then just choosing our first, like.

115 00:12:30.540 ⇒ 00:12:33.859 Uttam Kumaran: Set of tasks we’re gonna work on, and, like, agreeing on that.

116 00:12:34.000 ⇒ 00:12:42.319 Uttam Kumaran: but not much more formal than that. And again, it’s because, like, we’re… Robert and I are leading it, so we…

117 00:12:42.440 ⇒ 00:12:46.579 Uttam Kumaran: We’ve sold the deal, and then we’re like, let’s get started so we can start

118 00:12:46.710 ⇒ 00:12:57.560 Uttam Kumaran: we can make sure we can bill for this, versus let’s get started and make sure that we nail it. It’s more of like, we’re not gonna nail it anyway, so we might as well just start on something.

119 00:12:57.660 ⇒ 00:13:07.139 Uttam Kumaran: So, there has to be… we should start doing formal kickoffs. I don’t think anybody has any pushback on that. And actually, for this client, given how scatterbrained they are.

120 00:13:07.270 ⇒ 00:13:19.559 Uttam Kumaran: it’s like a… I would require it. Like, I wouldn’t start anything until we get a very clear understanding of what we’re doing for them, and if it’s still… if it’s still pretty in line with what we scoped them.

121 00:13:20.710 ⇒ 00:13:21.390 Justin Breshears: Cool.

122 00:13:21.860 ⇒ 00:13:27.529 Justin Breshears: That’s good, because that, yeah, that’s probably the next part of the process that I need to, like, build out, because, like.

123 00:13:27.800 ⇒ 00:13:40.260 Justin Breshears: kind of written down, like, sales to delivery handoff, you know, we need to see that in action, but at least that’s, like, codified at this point. And then, yeah, that taking… once we’ve handed off to delivery, then delivery, taking a run with it towards the kickoff.

124 00:13:40.380 ⇒ 00:13:47.519 Justin Breshears: is definitely the next step, so it’s good to know. I’ll try to build out what that looks like here.

125 00:13:48.060 ⇒ 00:13:49.550 Justin Breshears: Get that circulated.

126 00:13:50.200 ⇒ 00:13:54.520 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think the biggest thing for us on the sales side, especially because

127 00:13:55.060 ⇒ 00:14:07.559 Uttam Kumaran: these are… it’s all relationships, it’s just, like, we need to give whoever our signee is the confidence that, like, yeah, team’s got it, I’m going. Usually because we’ve been on the hook for picking off.

128 00:14:07.960 ⇒ 00:14:16.679 Uttam Kumaran: that’s… that’s, like, our natural rhythm, is to be like, great, things are signed, like, let’s go. Everybody just go on some… go on something. So when you send something over.

129 00:14:16.840 ⇒ 00:14:21.080 Uttam Kumaran: We don’t have to do that anymore, we don’t, like, yeah, we don’t have to do that anymore.

130 00:14:21.360 ⇒ 00:14:28.209 Justin Breshears: That’s the whole idea. With the sales-to-delivery handoff process, that should be the time where you get to hand it off. You are done at that point.

131 00:14:28.280 ⇒ 00:14:45.269 Justin Breshears: I mean, obviously, you’re gonna check in, like, you’re the account owner still, like, all that stuff, but, like, you’re not responsible for delivering at that point. That’s the idea, is, like, at that moment, delivery now has everything that they need. They will then take it, run with it, schedule a kickoff, get everything started, as far as…

132 00:14:45.570 ⇒ 00:14:52.179 Justin Breshears: They’re concerned. And I guess that’s, like, When do you start billing?

133 00:14:52.980 ⇒ 00:15:02.360 Justin Breshears: So, like, you sign a, monthly contract, like a fixed contract. Are you starting at, like, the date of signature, or are you starting at the date of kickoff?

134 00:15:03.030 ⇒ 00:15:23.030 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so let me give you a sense of sort of how our contracts are, right? So, when we started the company, we were foolish in that we did net 30 at the end of the month. So, we would commonly not get paid for 60 days, and it cooked us in a lot of ways. So, most of our clients now for fixed contracts are now start of month.

135 00:15:23.150 ⇒ 00:15:27.549 Uttam Kumaran: for the work that’s gonna be in that month, net 15.

136 00:15:27.890 ⇒ 00:15:37.069 Uttam Kumaran: So, if we do… for Remo, for example, it’s $5,000 for… it’s 10K over 2 months, starting the 22nd.

137 00:15:37.310 ⇒ 00:15:47.799 Uttam Kumaran: we… for finance team, what they… what they’re gonna do is actually send a bill now, for the 22nd, to,

138 00:15:48.150 ⇒ 00:15:57.649 Uttam Kumaran: to… I think what we agreed on, I have to check what I said in Slack. Either they’re gonna do 22nd to 22nd, 22nd to 22nd, or they’re gonna do 3, 22nd to 1st.

139 00:15:57.930 ⇒ 00:15:58.770 Uttam Kumaran: First.

140 00:15:59.110 ⇒ 00:16:07.469 Uttam Kumaran: To the 31st, and then… 1st or the 22nd, because it’s… right now, our project is slated to start

141 00:16:08.280 ⇒ 00:16:17.360 Uttam Kumaran: this data that they got it signed, mainly because it’s been delayed. So we don’t… we haven’t been baking in any gaps into our contracts.

142 00:16:17.560 ⇒ 00:16:23.939 Uttam Kumaran: Which, again, there’s been no delivery voice in the room, so it’s like, we’re gonna start Monday, usually.

143 00:16:25.870 ⇒ 00:16:35.940 Uttam Kumaran: And so, we typically start… I would say for the most part, unless it’s, like, a contract like this, where we’ve been sitting on this for 2 weeks, we would start the following Monday, usually.

144 00:16:37.050 ⇒ 00:16:37.430 Justin Breshears: Okay.

145 00:16:37.430 ⇒ 00:16:47.049 Uttam Kumaran: And so, for fixed contract… for fixed contract, I bake… we bake that in. Like, for example, if we’re… if we sign a 2-month deal, and we’re gonna start next Monday.

146 00:16:47.140 ⇒ 00:17:00.709 Uttam Kumaran: I would have us go until the end of November, right? So it may be, like, a day and a couple days. Like, I try to line it up with the months. If it’s hourly, then it’s as soon as we start billing, you know, so…

147 00:17:00.710 ⇒ 00:17:01.310 Justin Breshears: Right.

148 00:17:01.510 ⇒ 00:17:03.980 Justin Breshears: Yeah, that really takes care of itself.

149 00:17:03.980 ⇒ 00:17:12.330 Uttam Kumaran: So, on the hourly side, the way we try to engineer it is, for default, for example, we’re hourly, but we bill twice a month.

150 00:17:12.650 ⇒ 00:17:16.929 Uttam Kumaran: Which is, like, this is the golden contract. It’s like, we literally bill…

151 00:17:17.069 ⇒ 00:17:19.270 Uttam Kumaran: At the 15th and the 1st.

152 00:17:19.800 ⇒ 00:17:28.189 Uttam Kumaran: We build at the, yeah, the 15th for 1st to 15, and the 1st for the second section, and it’s net 15.

153 00:17:29.390 ⇒ 00:17:49.200 Uttam Kumaran: like, in an ideal world, we would get paid when… the minute we do the work, right? So, like, but again, we have… on my side, on the finance team, I have to make sure that we get the cash in, and so that’s what we did, is, like, our… our perfect contract on hourly is bi-monthly… bi-weekly, net 15, you know?

154 00:17:49.380 ⇒ 00:17:54.170 Uttam Kumaran: That way we’re not waiting, that… we’re not… We’re not 60 days

155 00:17:54.340 ⇒ 00:17:57.600 Uttam Kumaran: From the longest, like, hour getting paid out.

156 00:17:57.750 ⇒ 00:18:05.329 Uttam Kumaran: We are at max 15. We’re at max… we’re at max 30, right? But increasingly going down.

157 00:18:05.520 ⇒ 00:18:09.260 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s the optimization there.

158 00:18:10.190 ⇒ 00:18:11.020 Justin Breshears: Good to know.

159 00:18:11.020 ⇒ 00:18:20.090 Uttam Kumaran: So this is… yeah, I guess my last point there, is this is where, like, there is a little bit of a positive to the fixed contracts.

160 00:18:20.260 ⇒ 00:18:21.840 Uttam Kumaran: Due to cash flow.

161 00:18:22.380 ⇒ 00:18:24.529 Uttam Kumaran: And so…

162 00:18:24.530 ⇒ 00:18:27.660 Justin Breshears: A lot of positive to fixed contracts. I prefer them.

163 00:18:27.880 ⇒ 00:18:28.500 Justin Breshears: Yeah, yeah.

164 00:18:28.750 ⇒ 00:18:30.559 Justin Breshears: As long as you get the scoping right.

165 00:18:30.560 ⇒ 00:18:40.619 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so this is where, like, in the past, in order… because, again, we built this business from nothing, cash flow has been important versus

166 00:18:40.830 ⇒ 00:18:43.510 Uttam Kumaran: Mailing this… nailing the margin.

167 00:18:44.510 ⇒ 00:18:44.960 Justin Breshears: Right.

168 00:18:44.960 ⇒ 00:19:01.439 Uttam Kumaran: like, nailing our benchmark on the margin. So, we’ve made the trade-off, right? And this is where, for us, I make a holistic trade-off across all factors. Like, yes, I get that we may lose margin, but I need… because we may need to hire somebody, I need the cash now.

169 00:19:01.580 ⇒ 00:19:06.949 Uttam Kumaran: this is where, like, financing will have a vote. They’ll tell me, like, They’ll, they’ll ask, they’ll ask.

170 00:19:07.330 ⇒ 00:19:21.169 Uttam Kumaran: for… they’ll just purely look at the numbers, and everybody will have a stake in there, and that’s where, like, for us, we make a decision. But at some point, we will have… we will have somewhat of a discount rate, like, hey, what is our… what is the risk factor, typically, if we move to fixed?

171 00:19:21.300 ⇒ 00:19:29.849 Uttam Kumaran: like, on average, how often do we get it right? How often do we get it wrong? And then that’s how we sort of discount the bill, right? And we understand what the risk is.

172 00:19:29.850 ⇒ 00:19:30.460 Justin Breshears: Yeah.

173 00:19:30.460 ⇒ 00:19:31.479 Uttam Kumaran: You know, so…

174 00:19:32.700 ⇒ 00:19:33.350 Justin Breshears: Yep.

175 00:19:33.700 ⇒ 00:19:34.759 Justin Breshears: That makes sense?

176 00:19:34.760 ⇒ 00:19:46.099 Uttam Kumaran: But getting, like, 50 grand in early is meaningful right now. Like, waiting 60 days for it is, like, brutal. It’s like dying a slow death.

177 00:19:46.240 ⇒ 00:19:53.910 Uttam Kumaran: So it’s important, it’s still important for us, and like, it’s still something that I consider, even on a company like Shinesty, where

178 00:19:54.030 ⇒ 00:20:08.530 Uttam Kumaran: I generally heard a lot of, like, what we need to do. Do I have, like, 100% understanding? No. Do I have, like, 50%? Yes. So, like, it’s probably still not the barometer that I think delivery would like me to make a fixed contract.

179 00:20:08.680 ⇒ 00:20:09.850 Uttam Kumaran: bet on…

180 00:20:09.950 ⇒ 00:20:17.649 Uttam Kumaran: But, like, I could use the 10K to get you some money, to get other people some money, like, you know, so that’s the… that’s the play we make.

181 00:20:18.980 ⇒ 00:20:19.450 Justin Breshears: For sure.

182 00:20:19.450 ⇒ 00:20:20.410 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah.

183 00:20:20.960 ⇒ 00:20:24.499 Justin Breshears: Well… And, I mean, that’s fine…

184 00:20:25.190 ⇒ 00:20:31.140 Justin Breshears: Until, you know, then you will agree to KPIs of 40% margin.

185 00:20:31.360 ⇒ 00:20:31.750 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

186 00:20:31.750 ⇒ 00:20:32.560 Justin Breshears: Z.

187 00:20:32.780 ⇒ 00:20:33.420 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

188 00:20:34.030 ⇒ 00:20:34.810 Justin Breshears: Yeah.

189 00:20:35.230 ⇒ 00:20:50.200 Justin Breshears: So, I mean, on those type contracts where you’re like, hey, I know we’re gonna hit a margin, take a margin hit on this, you know, project or whatever, it would be good to denote those for future KPIs that we just set, like, 40% as the… as the delivery metric, so…

190 00:20:50.200 ⇒ 00:20:55.380 Uttam Kumaran: And so the way I will bias is, if I know that I’m gonna make a bet, I will just charge higher.

191 00:20:55.680 ⇒ 00:21:06.180 Uttam Kumaran: Right, so I discounted the other way. So, like, 10K for what we’re doing for them, we’ll probably figure out that whole process. We’ll probably end up figuring out that whole process for less than 5K.

192 00:21:06.360 ⇒ 00:21:07.510 Uttam Kumaran: If I’m guessing.

193 00:21:08.020 ⇒ 00:21:12.930 Uttam Kumaran: It won’t take much time from… for Casey or Masafa, so… That’s where, like.

194 00:21:13.660 ⇒ 00:21:22.919 Uttam Kumaran: our pricing… like, I will do our best, if I’m gonna make a bet on that, to just get us a higher price. Like, we’ll never do both. I’ll never discount and take fixed anymore.

195 00:21:23.360 ⇒ 00:21:24.180 Uttam Kumaran: Like.

196 00:21:24.180 ⇒ 00:21:24.520 Justin Breshears: Sure.

197 00:21:24.520 ⇒ 00:21:28.330 Uttam Kumaran: We’re not doing, like, 5K deals anymore, like, I keep pushing our prices.

198 00:21:28.580 ⇒ 00:21:30.089 Uttam Kumaran: Ethics, for the most part.

199 00:21:30.740 ⇒ 00:21:31.610 Justin Breshears: That’s good.

200 00:21:31.620 ⇒ 00:21:32.529 Uttam Kumaran: That’s true.

201 00:21:33.710 ⇒ 00:21:38.649 Justin Breshears: Okay, well, yeah, appreciate you meeting. I know it’s from you.

202 00:21:38.920 ⇒ 00:21:53.569 Justin Breshears: I’m sprung on you, you know, late on this one, but I think I’ve got… we’ll meet in person the next two days, and then I’ve got one scheduled for Friday, and then at some point, I’ll put some time on for next week, but anything else for me today?

203 00:21:54.410 ⇒ 00:21:57.389 Uttam Kumaran: No, I think that’s it. I mean, I actually… I think…

204 00:21:57.470 ⇒ 00:22:10.860 Uttam Kumaran: again, like, for me, I think it’s helpful just to reinforce patterns and make sure you’re confident going into, like, your meetings. I think… I wanted to listen in on the meeting earlier, and I sort of selectively interrupted just to move things forward, but…

205 00:22:10.890 ⇒ 00:22:28.349 Uttam Kumaran: one thing you’re gonna notice, and you know this at working with engineers, is that folks are shy, and folks tend to just, like, I don’t know, like, maybe. So, ultimately, like, we want our engineers to help us out, and give us what the actual answer is. In that situation, I was like, yo.

206 00:22:28.530 ⇒ 00:22:45.649 Uttam Kumaran: guys, make a call, like, give, give Justin something to work with here. You’re telling… you’re saying yes, no 100 times. And so, I don’t… I don’t… I wouldn’t worry about… I would just… I would worry… worry less about being direct. I would just do it kind of in the way I did it, which is just, like.

207 00:22:46.120 ⇒ 00:23:02.589 Uttam Kumaran: be positive and be like, hey, we’re… we gotta figure something out. I would say nobody on our team, and again, this is something that, like, a lot of… I know a lot of product people have to… project people have to break sometimes, is that, like, we don’t have anybody… no… no engineers on a team are particularly bad.

208 00:23:02.820 ⇒ 00:23:15.360 Uttam Kumaran: You know, we have had that, and we do a good job rooting that out, but at this current moment, everybody’s very, very capable, so the… their issues will not be from, like,

209 00:23:15.770 ⇒ 00:23:18.579 Uttam Kumaran: not being smart, right? For the most part, they’re just…

210 00:23:18.980 ⇒ 00:23:29.339 Uttam Kumaran: they’re thinking about something. So, I think that’s a good bias as well, is, like, everybody’s actually open to very direct communication, so I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t worry… I would actually…

211 00:23:29.350 ⇒ 00:23:39.049 Uttam Kumaran: I wouldn’t worry at all, and I think your goal of having 15 minutes stand-ups and people setting up their stuff on time before that is actually really, really positive and totally achievable.

212 00:23:39.050 ⇒ 00:23:52.890 Uttam Kumaran: there will be opportunity, there will be times where people get to the company, and they don’t hit the bar, and that’s where I think you, the delivery team working directly with engineering leadership, which, again, is Awash and Sam, y’all will root that out.

213 00:23:52.930 ⇒ 00:24:03.339 Uttam Kumaran: And we have no problem making decisions on people and giving them direct feedback, but we’re in a rare moment. We haven’t had a moment like this in the company where everybody that’s in the company is actually

214 00:24:03.670 ⇒ 00:24:22.520 Uttam Kumaran: on the delivery side is actually very, very capable, so, like, you hopefully won’t have a problem, especially if you’re working with Mustafa, Casey, and Sam, like, those guys will… will be just pushed through anything. So, they’re all… those guys are also starting to do data work, so I can’t… I’m trying to throw stuff at them that’s, like, really difficult, and they’re taking it on, so…

215 00:24:22.690 ⇒ 00:24:26.380 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’s probably… that’s probably my only reflection.

216 00:24:29.260 ⇒ 00:24:37.659 Uttam Kumaran: from today, I would say, like, I think, yeah, you kind of, like, are giving you a lot of free rein on as much as you want.

217 00:24:39.000 ⇒ 00:24:40.200 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

218 00:24:40.200 ⇒ 00:24:42.730 Justin Breshears: I appreciate it. I… yeah, this morning was…

219 00:24:42.900 ⇒ 00:24:48.380 Justin Breshears: like, I think we have the opposite problem that I had at Kalent, where I think at Kalent.

220 00:24:48.510 ⇒ 00:24:54.599 Justin Breshears: the PMO was a lot more sophisticated and held to a higher standard than our engineers were.

221 00:24:54.740 ⇒ 00:24:56.080 Justin Breshears: I think that’s the…

222 00:24:56.080 ⇒ 00:25:00.500 Uttam Kumaran: What do you think about that? Like, I… I don’t… I think, like, you can…

223 00:25:00.640 ⇒ 00:25:05.260 Uttam Kumaran: You… what you will save is your headache if you just hold the engineers to a higher standard.

224 00:25:05.540 ⇒ 00:25:07.750 Justin Breshears: Exactly, that’s what I’m saying, I… this is the optic.

225 00:25:07.750 ⇒ 00:25:13.059 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, you hold both the high standards. You hold both the high standards, duh, but, like, I think.

226 00:25:13.060 ⇒ 00:25:13.600 Justin Breshears: I…

227 00:25:13.600 ⇒ 00:25:19.819 Uttam Kumaran: PM tends to overcompensate for the… for just bad engineering communication.

228 00:25:19.820 ⇒ 00:25:27.709 Justin Breshears: Yeah, well, I mean, you’ll learn about my style, like, I’m not going to do the work for people, so, like, I’m gonna hold down to, like, hey, you know.

229 00:25:27.710 ⇒ 00:25:45.110 Justin Breshears: make sure your tickets are right, like, estimate them, you know, I’m gonna hold you to the work that you, you know, have in front of you this week, and, you know, all this stuff, so… I was saying all that to say, like, I think this is a better situation, because you want the people that are, like, doing the actual, like, client work.

230 00:25:45.570 ⇒ 00:25:55.489 Justin Breshears: to be really good at what they do, so… Yeah. It’s a… it’s an easier problem to solve, I think, just like project governance than it is, like, the actual work.

231 00:25:56.080 ⇒ 00:26:04.370 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and I don’t, like, again, I don’t think we’re… I think we just have a… I just have a very high bar, and I was an engineer before, so I don’t,

232 00:26:04.480 ⇒ 00:26:09.379 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t generally be like, oh, that’s just, like, engineers being nerds and, like, bad communicators, like.

233 00:26:09.950 ⇒ 00:26:22.180 Uttam Kumaran: like, who am I then? You know, I was just… I was working 8-12 hours a day sitting in VS Code every day for a lot of my life. So, it’s not, like, impossible, and I’m not, like, a random business person. Like, chalk it up to, like, engineers being weird.

234 00:26:22.290 ⇒ 00:26:28.969 Uttam Kumaran: that’s not gonna happen. So, we… we’re gonna hold… also, you know, this is part of what… if we’re… we’re sort of, like.

235 00:26:29.300 ⇒ 00:26:44.199 Uttam Kumaran: one of… what’s… if we’re out of topics, I think one thing on my mind is if I was to ask you, like, okay, how do we get… if I was to say how the delivery team moves from 40% to 50% margin, what do we need to see happen, right? And I don’t think…

236 00:26:44.820 ⇒ 00:26:46.280 Uttam Kumaran: This is where, like.

237 00:26:46.600 ⇒ 00:26:53.760 Uttam Kumaran: I think we have to see engineering start to take on some of the very low-level project management tasks.

238 00:26:54.120 ⇒ 00:27:00.150 Uttam Kumaran: creating tickets, making sure tickets are up to date, like, those things that would typically come out of PM.

239 00:27:00.390 ⇒ 00:27:04.959 Uttam Kumaran: And I think we need to somehow see, like, get an understanding of, like.

240 00:27:05.600 ⇒ 00:27:09.429 Uttam Kumaran: how many clients each PM can take, and then how do we…

241 00:27:09.720 ⇒ 00:27:28.129 Uttam Kumaran: how do we sort of, like, scale the PM crew, honestly? Like, I totally… you know, and this is where, like, I think you’re also doing a job and not saying immediately, like, I don’t have the people I need, but I could tell… I for sure understand that we don’t have… we don’t have the perfect crew, and I think there… we will improve that over time, but…

242 00:27:28.280 ⇒ 00:27:30.080 Uttam Kumaran: I also want to…

243 00:27:30.560 ⇒ 00:27:50.210 Uttam Kumaran: continue to say, like, this isn’t a place where, hey, you’re stuck with 3 PMs, and we’re going to… and 2… two of them are gonna be the only client-facing ones, and they’re gonna PM 10 clients themselves, each. That’s not gonna happen, right? That’s not a possibility. And so I’m not… I’m not selling that vision. What I am selling is…

244 00:27:50.820 ⇒ 00:28:03.999 Uttam Kumaran: Do you think you could do that with 3? Do you think you could do that with 4? Do you think that you could do that with 2 senior, 2 junior? Do you think you could do that with 2 senior, 1 junior, one, like, kind of, like, ops coordinator?

245 00:28:04.140 ⇒ 00:28:09.529 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, that’s where I kind of want Would Love You to play, and see, like.

246 00:28:09.890 ⇒ 00:28:12.959 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, like, what can we really, like.

247 00:28:13.330 ⇒ 00:28:17.770 Uttam Kumaran: What… and can we actually continue to achieve, like, our quality results, you know?

248 00:28:17.770 ⇒ 00:28:28.130 Justin Breshears: Right, I think that’s the question that influences, like, the answer to your question, is what level of expectation are we putting on the pianos? You know, because if…

249 00:28:28.820 ⇒ 00:28:31.810 Justin Breshears: and we went through this at K-Lent, where initially.

250 00:28:32.170 ⇒ 00:28:39.209 Justin Breshears: initially, when I got there, we… we had a lot lower, like, Not standards, but, like…

251 00:28:39.440 ⇒ 00:28:44.670 Justin Breshears: level of responsibility for the PMs, and we would staff them at 20% allocations.

252 00:28:44.870 ⇒ 00:28:49.289 Justin Breshears: And so we’d have 5 projects each on campus for the most part.

253 00:28:50.720 ⇒ 00:28:52.810 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. At that level.

254 00:28:53.060 ⇒ 00:29:00.540 Justin Breshears: it’s hard to go in-depth on any of those given projects. Like, you’re basically, like, doing a baseline

255 00:29:00.910 ⇒ 00:29:04.340 Justin Breshears: Across 5… Then we decided that…

256 00:29:04.520 ⇒ 00:29:07.990 Justin Breshears: The problems that we were having that were blowing up our margins.

257 00:29:08.260 ⇒ 00:29:26.450 Justin Breshears: could be solved by more attention on, like, project governance. So, like, risk management, things like that. So then we upped our minimum allocations to 30%, to where, like, the max number of projects anybody can be staffed on was 3, if you had 3, 30%. So we did a 30, 50, 100.

258 00:29:26.650 ⇒ 00:29:28.170 Justin Breshears: allocation split.

259 00:29:28.580 ⇒ 00:29:31.480 Uttam Kumaran: Say that again? Yeah, say it with the time?

260 00:29:31.720 ⇒ 00:29:38.010 Justin Breshears: We would… we would staff PMs at an allocation of 30, 50, or 100%, depending on the project.

261 00:29:39.190 ⇒ 00:29:40.130 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t get it.

262 00:29:40.320 ⇒ 00:29:41.900 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, give you an example.

263 00:29:42.840 ⇒ 00:29:54.870 Justin Breshears: Well, so, the… like we talked about yesterday, so target utilization across the board was 75, right? So, everybody was, you know, supposed to be staffed over that threshold, so…

264 00:29:54.870 ⇒ 00:30:03.030 Justin Breshears: Your… your project breakdown, if you got a 30% allocation and a 50, you’re at 80%, that’s a full project workload.

265 00:30:03.030 ⇒ 00:30:04.840 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, I see, I see, I see.

266 00:30:04.840 ⇒ 00:30:12.710 Justin Breshears: If you have 330s, you’re at 98% as a full project workload, so the max you could have is 3, because you…

267 00:30:12.710 ⇒ 00:30:20.170 Uttam Kumaran: That was, like, ideal, like, roughly those splits. Like, to give you an example, we’ve sort of arrived at, like.

268 00:30:20.210 ⇒ 00:30:33.250 Uttam Kumaran: PM and PM light. It’s clear this probably needs to be, like, either PM heavy or PM no sugar, right? So there’s probably one more that needs to be hit. Probably, I would say it’s PM heavy, probably has to be, like.

269 00:30:34.060 ⇒ 00:30:43.819 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, I would sell… I would say, like, if we’re gonna go sell, like, a $100,000 a month contract, probably needs a PM heavy, but I guess this is where, like, do you think that 30, 50…

270 00:30:44.050 ⇒ 00:30:45.920 Uttam Kumaran: What was it, 30, 50, 70?

271 00:30:46.340 ⇒ 00:30:47.470 Justin Breshears: 30, 50, 100.

272 00:30:47.470 ⇒ 00:30:51.540 Uttam Kumaran: 30, 50, 100, do you think that was roughly… write.

273 00:30:51.540 ⇒ 00:30:52.150 Justin Breshears: So, we…

274 00:30:52.150 ⇒ 00:30:52.820 Uttam Kumaran: brilliant.

275 00:30:53.140 ⇒ 00:30:56.280 Justin Breshears: No, because we then… we then…

276 00:30:56.380 ⇒ 00:31:06.860 Justin Breshears: morphed it to 25, 50, 100. So 25 ended up, I think, being more correct, so that the max would have been 4 that you could be staffed at.

277 00:31:08.030 ⇒ 00:31:09.000 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, okay.

278 00:31:09.000 ⇒ 00:31:12.119 Justin Breshears: And it was all dependent on project complexity.

279 00:31:12.380 ⇒ 00:31:21.580 Justin Breshears: Who decided on the complexity? It was a… mainly a sales thing, where it was based on, like.

280 00:31:21.690 ⇒ 00:31:40.420 Justin Breshears: size of the deal, size of the pipeline, and qualifications of, like, the business itself. So, like, it’s a $500 million a year business, like, it would go into a portfolio that had a higher touch, so the allocations for the PMs were

281 00:31:40.780 ⇒ 00:31:41.380 Justin Breshears: you know.

282 00:31:41.380 ⇒ 00:31:42.020 Uttam Kumaran: I see.

283 00:31:42.020 ⇒ 00:31:43.910 Justin Breshears: rich, and things like that, so…

284 00:31:44.060 ⇒ 00:31:56.859 Justin Breshears: the… the way that customers and projects were sorted was sales-driven, and then they were placed in these portfolios depending on size. You had, you know, your… what we call, like, named portfolios, which are, like, enterprise-level

285 00:31:57.040 ⇒ 00:31:57.770 Justin Breshears: That had, like.

286 00:31:57.770 ⇒ 00:31:58.689 Uttam Kumaran: Those are all the 100s.

287 00:31:58.690 ⇒ 00:31:59.660 Justin Breshears: service.

288 00:31:59.660 ⇒ 00:32:01.839 Uttam Kumaran: It would be, on average, closer to hundreds. Okay.

289 00:32:01.840 ⇒ 00:32:08.350 Justin Breshears: Yeah, you would either have 250s or just 100, but I don’t think we have any of those projects here. I think…

290 00:32:08.560 ⇒ 00:32:12.629 Justin Breshears: 25 is probably where we’re at, but it’s like…

291 00:32:13.190 ⇒ 00:32:17.739 Justin Breshears: you can also, like, change that, because it all depends on, like, what are you asking the PMs to do?

292 00:32:17.740 ⇒ 00:32:23.879 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I would say a def… I would say Eden could, like, let’s say… let’s say… and this is where, like, my head’s going, is…

293 00:32:24.090 ⇒ 00:32:29.759 Uttam Kumaran: And I… and this is actually very helpful, because I had this concept in mind of, like, PM ratio.

294 00:32:29.930 ⇒ 00:32:32.940 Uttam Kumaran: But it’s now actually, like, given those are, like.

295 00:32:33.240 ⇒ 00:32:39.190 Uttam Kumaran: kind of, like, what you got while we’re hitting, like, I have some good ideas. So, I think, like, an Eden is, like, a 50.

296 00:32:39.510 ⇒ 00:32:44.459 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I think Amber is probably not doing enough.

297 00:32:44.600 ⇒ 00:32:53.210 Uttam Kumaran: And so she’s… she’s able to roughly run Eden probably 10 to 15 hours. I think if she follows all of your processes, there’s probably an extra 5 hours, easily.

298 00:32:53.210 ⇒ 00:32:53.530 Justin Breshears: Yeah.

299 00:32:53.530 ⇒ 00:33:02.600 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, I think Eden is probably a 50. Interlude is definitely, like, a 25. A default.

300 00:33:02.910 ⇒ 00:33:05.100 Uttam Kumaran: Probably, like, given…

301 00:33:05.420 ⇒ 00:33:13.270 Uttam Kumaran: the money we’re gonna make from them, I think it should be, like, a 50. Like, I think we can help them in a lot of ways, but like I said.

302 00:33:13.270 ⇒ 00:33:21.039 Justin Breshears: Because that’s another… that’s another, like, consideration for it, is, like, not only, like, what is the current workload, but, like.

303 00:33:21.310 ⇒ 00:33:36.970 Justin Breshears: how much, like, white love service do you want them, because of the opportunity, right? The pipeline down the road. So, that is an important consideration. And so, if we’re talking about in those terms, like, we’re already, like, over capacity, because if you’re looking at Ricoh being just internal.

304 00:33:37.460 ⇒ 00:33:38.120 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, I.

305 00:33:38.210 ⇒ 00:33:51.259 Justin Breshears: You’ve got two client-facing PMs, and Amber being on, like, what you would consider a 50 in Eden, yeah. But I think we haven’t gotten those expectations up yet to the PMs on, like, what we’re… so, like.

306 00:33:51.470 ⇒ 00:34:07.480 Justin Breshears: the expectations should be running the rituals, like daily stand-ups, the client communication expectations, like, the project prep expectations, and things like that that aren’t existent right now. Once we implement, like, those expectations yet, then the allocations need to increase.

307 00:34:07.660 ⇒ 00:34:15.589 Justin Breshears: So that there’s time for them to actually do it, because… and then you add in, Amber’s also doing a bunch of other stuff, non-project related, too. Yeah, yeah, she’s a… yeah.

308 00:34:16.119 ⇒ 00:34:18.339 Uttam Kumaran: She’s… she’s good at a lot of things.

309 00:34:18.639 ⇒ 00:34:29.229 Justin Breshears: She’s doing a lot. That’s why, like, I literally told her today, earlier, I was like, when I think about, like, all the things that I need to do for Brainforge, my mind starts to just…

310 00:34:29.230 ⇒ 00:34:31.090 Uttam Kumaran: Dude, think about me!

311 00:34:31.090 ⇒ 00:34:32.330 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I know, I know.

312 00:34:32.330 ⇒ 00:34:34.899 Uttam Kumaran: Nobody asks me how I’m feeling.

313 00:34:34.909 ⇒ 00:34:39.599 Justin Breshears: Dude, I already know, I already know how you’re feeling. You were messaging at 1AM last night.

314 00:34:39.600 ⇒ 00:34:42.499 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, you don’ Boy, well, I…

315 00:34:42.770 ⇒ 00:34:49.840 Uttam Kumaran: I had… well, dude, I, like, my to-do list is so long, and I finished all my meetings in, like, 5, did, like, an hour or two of work, and then…

316 00:34:50.070 ⇒ 00:34:56.429 Uttam Kumaran: my girlfriend’s 6, so I was, like, just chilling with her, and I fell asleep, woke up at 10, I was like, I need to, like.

317 00:34:56.570 ⇒ 00:35:02.719 Uttam Kumaran: I just feel bad if you think it’s so much, because we’re also gonna be out Thursday, and yeah. But that’s the thing, it’s like, I also know that…

318 00:35:02.860 ⇒ 00:35:18.339 Uttam Kumaran: there is, like, our ideal state, there is where we are now, but totally, like, the amount of… what you’ll find in this business, given how small we are, and… and how transparent we are, is that it will come at a cost, like, the context low. Like, but this is the thing, is that…

319 00:35:18.430 ⇒ 00:35:38.149 Uttam Kumaran: I want all of our team members to rock what they own, and generally be aware of everything else, right? Because that’s everything else, even though, like, in delivery there is a lot, but you can get inundated easily here if you’re like, hey, I want to go help here. The answer is, like, go for it. But the answer isn’t… the answer isn’t, like.

320 00:35:38.770 ⇒ 00:35:48.020 Uttam Kumaran: just do… like, I don’t like running a business where it’s like, no, you stay there, and you do that. Like, if you’re like, hey, I want to go run a workshop in Houston on how to use AI and PM,

321 00:35:48.170 ⇒ 00:36:04.140 Uttam Kumaran: oh, yeah, huge, let’s set it up, let’s go. But then if you also come to me, like, damn, I ran that workshop, and now I’m like, my week is cooked, I’d be like, we didn’t need to do the workshop, you know? And so I think part of this, in this company, there’s a lot of self-governance that’s getting better as we

322 00:36:04.250 ⇒ 00:36:11.910 Uttam Kumaran: build processes, but I had, like, two sort of follow-up questions. I think one of my question is,

323 00:36:15.530 ⇒ 00:36:25.050 Uttam Kumaran: I guess… I guess probably the better question to ask first is, like, between what were the roles… what were the levels of expertise in PM? Like, did you have junior and senior?

324 00:36:25.270 ⇒ 00:36:26.100 Uttam Kumaran: Like, what, maybe.

325 00:36:26.100 ⇒ 00:36:26.540 Justin Breshears: We had…

326 00:36:26.540 ⇒ 00:36:29.790 Uttam Kumaran: I think they should be, and, like, how did that change the…

327 00:36:29.790 ⇒ 00:36:30.340 Justin Breshears: Yeah.

328 00:36:30.340 ⇒ 00:36:35.730 Uttam Kumaran: their percentages, basically. Or, like, their… basically their… was it, like, their capacity change?

329 00:36:35.730 ⇒ 00:36:36.310 Justin Breshears: Boy.

330 00:36:36.310 ⇒ 00:36:41.029 Uttam Kumaran: Was it that, yeah, yeah, I guess if that had any impact.

331 00:36:41.640 ⇒ 00:36:52.740 Justin Breshears: Yeah, we had junior, senior, and principal, and we would basically staff them based on, like, the categorization of the customer, so,

332 00:36:53.120 ⇒ 00:37:03.969 Justin Breshears: your enterprise-level customers would typically get the principal PMs, and so on and so forth down there. That didn’t always work out. Sometimes you had a senior that was staffed to a

333 00:37:04.090 ⇒ 00:37:12.580 Justin Breshears: pretty easy, you know, low-lift project, because utilization overall was more important than, like, having them twirl their thumbs and.

334 00:37:12.580 ⇒ 00:37:13.159 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

335 00:37:13.160 ⇒ 00:37:20.710 Justin Breshears: For the right project, but the general idea was to have that, you know, breakdown where juniors would take your

336 00:37:20.870 ⇒ 00:37:24.989 Justin Breshears: You’re more templatized, like, quick-hitter projects.

337 00:37:24.990 ⇒ 00:37:33.930 Uttam Kumaran: Well, based on complexity, they wouldn’t be… you wouldn’t staff the juniors on, like, 50% and change the allocation, so you’d still have to try to hit allocation across the board.

338 00:37:34.660 ⇒ 00:37:35.690 Justin Breshears: Yeah.

339 00:37:35.690 ⇒ 00:37:36.959 Uttam Kumaran: based on complexity.

340 00:37:37.180 ⇒ 00:37:44.280 Justin Breshears: Most of the time, juniors would have, like, a breakdown of 3 or 4 25ers, then, like, a couple 50s, yeah, and you would.

341 00:37:44.280 ⇒ 00:37:44.810 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay.

342 00:37:44.810 ⇒ 00:37:51.110 Justin Breshears: Some clients would be tagged as strategic, too, so, like, maybe… maybe the project that they introduced

343 00:37:51.290 ⇒ 00:37:57.999 Justin Breshears: like, to us is a two-week assessment of, like, whatever they want to do. That is… That’s where I’m at.

344 00:37:58.730 ⇒ 00:38:04.010 Justin Breshears: Yeah, like, that’s… that’s a very, like, simple project, but the customer’s strategic, like, we want.

345 00:38:04.010 ⇒ 00:38:07.160 Uttam Kumaran: This is insomnia. This is insomnia cookies, by the way.

346 00:38:07.160 ⇒ 00:38:07.720 Justin Breshears: Really?

347 00:38:07.720 ⇒ 00:38:10.749 Uttam Kumaran: The shit we’re doing for them is actually, like, not crazy.

348 00:38:10.860 ⇒ 00:38:16.700 Uttam Kumaran: But they are, like, an extremely large business that would be so nice to have as a logo.

349 00:38:16.930 ⇒ 00:38:31.399 Uttam Kumaran: So I… my thing is, like, nail it at all costs, like, you know, versus, like, an inter… like, an interlude is, like… an interlude is… it’s at my friend’s company, it’s a design agency, they’re paying us 5K, and, like.

350 00:38:31.540 ⇒ 00:38:41.869 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t see them paying us more than, like, 10K a month, unless their business dramatically changes. So, for them, I’m like, just nail it, and get… hit our targets, and get the money in.

351 00:38:42.010 ⇒ 00:38:47.300 Uttam Kumaran: Versus insomnia, the… the elast… they have a… they’re very elastic, like.

352 00:38:47.460 ⇒ 00:38:54.570 Uttam Kumaran: We could exec… we started eating at, like, 5K, and now they pay us 30K, and Robert is still getting… trying to get this to $40.

353 00:38:54.720 ⇒ 00:38:59.420 Uttam Kumaran: Same with Insomnia. They’re, like, we can get in that business, and…

354 00:38:59.610 ⇒ 00:39:06.810 Uttam Kumaran: Like, like a, you know, like a disease in a good way, we will start to solve problems for them, and, like.

355 00:39:06.860 ⇒ 00:39:19.279 Uttam Kumaran: just bring that in. And so they’re… in that company, the opportunity for delivery-led… delivery source ops is super big, and their budget is so massive, and they work so slow. It is like…

356 00:39:19.300 ⇒ 00:39:31.469 Uttam Kumaran: It is, like, the best combination of clients for us. Because… because… and the only reason you’d be like, oh, so why don’t we only have these clients? Because we’re absolutely nobody, like, meaning we had no brain… we had no…

357 00:39:31.470 ⇒ 00:39:48.490 Uttam Kumaran: Like, we had no way of getting into these folks before, but this is, like, our target. Large, multi-hundred-million dollar, slow businesses where we can come in, take a small piece, absolutely demolish it, show them what real delivery is like, show them what real engineering’s like.

358 00:39:48.530 ⇒ 00:39:57.140 Uttam Kumaran: And moving from 10 to 40 for them is, like, nothing. Moving from 10 to 40 to… for a company like our size is a lot.

359 00:39:57.380 ⇒ 00:40:02.880 Uttam Kumaran: You know? And so, that’s also the thing. And so, I… we… I think this is where, like.

360 00:40:03.900 ⇒ 00:40:19.160 Uttam Kumaran: as we start, this will be con… just sales being in line with delivery. As we move, this will all be properties in HubSpot, basically. Like, we mark it as, like, what the hell this is, so there’s no… there’s, like… you may look at this company, like, I’ve never heard about applied industrials.

361 00:40:19.340 ⇒ 00:40:30.189 Uttam Kumaran: And you’ll be like, and we’re working a two-week 5K thing, and I’d be like, this is the number one, like, plunger company in the world. We should mail it for them now. Yeah. You know, exactly.

362 00:40:30.700 ⇒ 00:40:34.509 Justin Breshears: Yeah, white glove tag because their pipeline is massive. They’re potentially.

363 00:40:34.510 ⇒ 00:40:34.890 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

364 00:40:34.890 ⇒ 00:40:35.760 Justin Breshears: Yeah.

365 00:40:35.760 ⇒ 00:40:41.539 Uttam Kumaran: So I guess… so that answers my question, is that the… The average…

366 00:40:41.770 ⇒ 00:40:51.330 Uttam Kumaran: allocation for client for juniors is lower than that for senior and principal, meaning, like, principals on average are probably, like, 250s.

367 00:40:51.560 ⇒ 00:40:59.870 Uttam Kumaran: Or, like, 100, versus the juniors are… low complexity tends to… low complexity tends to be in line with

368 00:41:00.190 ⇒ 00:41:04.210 Uttam Kumaran: low allocation, and so. Okay, so that gives me a good sense.

369 00:41:04.210 ⇒ 00:41:09.029 Justin Breshears: Or… because the project just needs more coordination than it needs consulting.

370 00:41:09.090 ⇒ 00:41:17.990 Justin Breshears: Where you… where you start getting higher allocations is when you need also consulting. Like, you need somebody to really lead a client.

371 00:41:17.990 ⇒ 00:41:30.109 Justin Breshears: And that just takes more effort and time spent on that client, so you increase the allocation there. If you’re just talking about scheduling meetings and running a 15-minute daily stand-up and pushing linear tickets along to get it done.

372 00:41:30.480 ⇒ 00:41:32.780 Justin Breshears: That should be a low allocation project.

373 00:41:33.370 ⇒ 00:41:38.470 Uttam Kumaran: Alright, so then now I have two more… I have two more questions. So, my original first question was.

374 00:41:39.290 ⇒ 00:41:44.300 Uttam Kumaran: let’s say… AI accomplishes what you think it can accomplish.

375 00:41:45.070 ⇒ 00:41:48.210 Uttam Kumaran: From what you’ve seen from us, and what you generally know.

376 00:41:48.440 ⇒ 00:41:54.090 Uttam Kumaran: Do you think that gets us to, like, the smallest increment is 20%?

377 00:41:54.410 ⇒ 00:41:58.740 Uttam Kumaran: Do you think that gets us to, like… like, there will be a threshold on, like.

378 00:42:00.060 ⇒ 00:42:05.790 Uttam Kumaran: people cannot… can people realistically do 5? I don’t know, like… Also, like, I’m a different…

379 00:42:06.100 ⇒ 00:42:13.539 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, I don’t want to bias on what Hymoss are able to do, versus, like, what we may get. Like, for example, I think our barometer should be, like.

380 00:42:13.940 ⇒ 00:42:23.689 Uttam Kumaran: our worst PM, what can they handle, right? I want to really bias towards a conservative, gloomy case, versus, like, if we’re all able to take 6 clients, because we’re all rock stars.

381 00:42:23.840 ⇒ 00:42:32.999 Uttam Kumaran: we win. But, like, I can’t… I can’t, like… that’s not our goal, because that’s most likely not gonna happen. So, I’m sort of thinking about…

382 00:42:33.170 ⇒ 00:42:39.800 Uttam Kumaran: for the worst PM in a very… for the worst PM that ends up here at an AI… in an AI-enabled brain forge.

383 00:42:39.920 ⇒ 00:42:43.110 Uttam Kumaran: Do we find the increments moving towards

384 00:42:43.770 ⇒ 00:42:50.260 Uttam Kumaran: like, what do we… what do we see those increments moving towards? Like, do we ever find somebody that’s allocated 100% anything?

385 00:42:50.640 ⇒ 00:42:56.320 Uttam Kumaran: Do we ever… and then, yeah, I guess, like, maybe, like, play that hypothetical in your head.

386 00:42:57.230 ⇒ 00:43:11.350 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I think we could start at 20. I think 5 might be the max, because if you go… if you go any more than 5 projects on a PM, like, you’re just… you’re not getting any kind of, like, quality on any one of those.

387 00:43:11.460 ⇒ 00:43:26.300 Justin Breshears: you’re getting somebody just pushing checklists to ask a lot. So I would say, like, 5 is the max that I would do, but I think you can do that for the projects that we have right now, because you also need to put more on the engineering side, like.

388 00:43:26.450 ⇒ 00:43:28.510 Justin Breshears: Ticket and backlog?

389 00:43:28.840 ⇒ 00:43:31.860 Justin Breshears: Like, ownership should be on the technical side.

390 00:43:32.020 ⇒ 00:43:34.130 Justin Breshears: Because…

391 00:43:34.330 ⇒ 00:43:45.300 Justin Breshears: quite frankly, like, I can’t take, like, what the client is talking about in most of these projects and translate it into a backlog myself. I need input from the technical side anyway. And so I think, like… But I guess that’s…

392 00:43:45.300 ⇒ 00:43:56.379 Uttam Kumaran: But I guess in my situation, I would consider that part of the 5%. Like, AI-enabled is not just, like, what can… given only what RPMs are doing today, what can we remove? It’s almost like…

393 00:43:56.590 ⇒ 00:44:04.510 Uttam Kumaran: If we were able to move tasks onto less project management-trained people, like tech leads, or like the individual engineers.

394 00:44:05.060 ⇒ 00:44:10.920 Uttam Kumaran: can the sum of that plus our PMs being good at AI get us to the 5? It’s like…

395 00:44:10.920 ⇒ 00:44:11.490 Justin Breshears: Yeah.

396 00:44:11.910 ⇒ 00:44:12.400 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

397 00:44:12.400 ⇒ 00:44:25.499 Justin Breshears: Yeah, it can. We just need to use it better, because right now, what I’ve seen is the PMs currently taking and using AI for, like, backlog creation has not been effective, because it’s resulted in 75% flat.

398 00:44:25.500 ⇒ 00:44:37.710 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, and they also, like, again, like, that’s… this is where, like, it’s… it’s gonna be on you guys to work to build a system that works for you. Like, the system we have now is one day I was like, look, I’m using ChatGP to create all my tickets.

399 00:44:38.340 ⇒ 00:44:57.739 Uttam Kumaran: Because I would put in my transcript all my very rich thoughts, and then, like, my only limitation is, like, it’s gonna take me an hour to type this in linear. I don’t want to type this in linear. That’s actually what I was optimizing for. I wasn’t optimizing for come up with the tickets at all, but again, like, you give someone a hammer, like, everything looks at a nail, so, like, that’s,

400 00:44:57.800 ⇒ 00:45:04.210 Uttam Kumaran: that’s the… that’s the problem there, but… okay. So if you… so then… so then what… what that shows me is that

401 00:45:05.160 ⇒ 00:45:05.940 Uttam Kumaran: Life.

402 00:45:06.260 ⇒ 00:45:13.260 Uttam Kumaran: if 20 is the smallest increment, do you think it moves the middle increment at all? Like, do you think it moves…

403 00:45:14.510 ⇒ 00:45:17.800 Uttam Kumaran: Like, do you think there will ever be a world where someone is just on, like.

404 00:45:18.920 ⇒ 00:45:22.000 Uttam Kumaran: To clients that aren’t, like, the biggest ever.

405 00:45:24.010 ⇒ 00:45:31.189 Justin Breshears: I mean, I’ll frame that back to you. Do you think if we had two Eadens, that that would be enough for 1PM?

406 00:45:35.740 ⇒ 00:45:36.649 Justin Breshears: Because you can’t even…

407 00:45:36.650 ⇒ 00:45:41.450 Uttam Kumaran: It depends on how… it depends on how far you want me to think, like… I’m a…

408 00:45:42.830 ⇒ 00:45:54.670 Justin Breshears: the answer to all these questions lies somewhere in just, like, where’s the level of responsibility that we’re holding a PM to? And if we have that level, like, then we can figure out how much time they need to dedicate.

409 00:45:54.670 ⇒ 00:46:03.140 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, no, I actually totally think so, because to give you a sense of why, the reason we’ve struggled on Eden is just because

410 00:46:03.370 ⇒ 00:46:12.979 Uttam Kumaran: it’s been a lot of communication, and it’s been a lot of, like, is this done yet, and did you send it to the right person? For that reason, I think, yes. Also.

411 00:46:13.320 ⇒ 00:46:14.440 Uttam Kumaran: again, like.

412 00:46:15.520 ⇒ 00:46:27.879 Uttam Kumaran: given the power of, like, hey, you have something that’s listening to every meeting that can give you the tickets, that can proactively flag, like, let’s say we just accomplished the roadmap of, like, AI, PM, things we want to build for your team.

413 00:46:28.560 ⇒ 00:46:30.630 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t see why not. Like…

414 00:46:30.630 ⇒ 00:46:31.070 Justin Breshears: Yup.

415 00:46:31.070 ⇒ 00:46:35.679 Uttam Kumaran: But this is where, again, like, I don’t want to go overboard and be like.

416 00:46:36.330 ⇒ 00:46:42.619 Uttam Kumaran: It needs to go 6, 7 people, because again, if the minimum standards are run stand-ups every day, running 5,

417 00:46:42.970 ⇒ 00:46:46.490 Uttam Kumaran: 50-minute stand-ups, just for any human being, is a bit rough.

418 00:46:46.760 ⇒ 00:46:50.099 Uttam Kumaran: But then my chal- my challenge will then be, like.

419 00:46:50.590 ⇒ 00:47:05.160 Uttam Kumaran: do we… for what clients do we need to stand up? Like, for what clients… right? So this is where, like, we’ll start to innovate on, like, given we have AI, are all the rituals… that’ll be the next optimization I look to poke at you with, which is, like.

420 00:47:05.550 ⇒ 00:47:13.439 Uttam Kumaran: what rituals in an AI world are required. That is, like, something we can’t… we can’t look… we have no… we’ll have no benchmark for.

421 00:47:13.560 ⇒ 00:47:21.480 Uttam Kumaran: Like, we will have to… we’ll have to really think about it, but you’re right. So I… so, yeah, I mean, that’s the joy, like, that’s the fun in this, right?

422 00:47:21.890 ⇒ 00:47:22.500 Justin Breshears: Yeah.

423 00:47:22.500 ⇒ 00:47:23.130 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

424 00:47:23.130 ⇒ 00:47:28.239 Justin Breshears: Well, I started off, like, on insomnia, just doing two twice-a-week syncs, it wasn’t enough.

425 00:47:28.620 ⇒ 00:47:34.200 Justin Breshears: We need a daily standpoint. And then, like, today, on Default Interlude, like.

426 00:47:34.420 ⇒ 00:47:41.840 Justin Breshears: It’s painfully obvious that we need, you know, a daily. And so I think there will be very few, if any, projects that we can run without a daily.

427 00:47:41.840 ⇒ 00:47:42.719 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, okay.

428 00:47:42.720 ⇒ 00:48:02.579 Justin Breshears: I just… they’re so valuable, because that’s when you, like, make sure that you’re on track, and, like, get all the… I mean, you’re gonna spend that 15 minutes doing it anyway, async, and you’re probably gonna spend longer doing it async, because of the amount of times you have to, like, check back and everything. So then I guess the other… you’ll see, like, in future stand-ups, my stand-ups usually last 5 minutes.

429 00:48:02.580 ⇒ 00:48:03.130 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

430 00:48:03.130 ⇒ 00:48:12.169 Justin Breshears: Because it’s very quick, like, what are you working on? Okay, you’re on track, like, you need anything? Yeah. Okay, no, boom, go.

431 00:48:12.400 ⇒ 00:48:12.950 Justin Breshears: So…

432 00:48:12.950 ⇒ 00:48:16.450 Uttam Kumaran: So then, yeah, I guess, like, that’s… so that’s a good thing to hear.

433 00:48:16.570 ⇒ 00:48:28.219 Uttam Kumaran: And again, like, I’m gonna question everything, but I agree with you. I feel you. Then the optimization that is another possibility is we can get junior people plus AI that basically

434 00:48:28.350 ⇒ 00:48:38.250 Uttam Kumaran: can start to act like more senior people traditionally would, which, frankly, is honestly more of where I’m heading, which is, like, can we take somebody that

435 00:48:38.380 ⇒ 00:48:43.450 Uttam Kumaran: In a normal environment, would be classified as a junior person, and would have to take

436 00:48:43.630 ⇒ 00:48:45.779 Uttam Kumaran: 3 or 4 25s.

437 00:48:46.090 ⇒ 00:48:48.060 Uttam Kumaran: Can that person take a 50?

438 00:48:48.310 ⇒ 00:48:49.650 Uttam Kumaran: Given AI.

439 00:48:50.190 ⇒ 00:48:57.470 Justin Breshears: I almost think it’s the opposite. I almost think you have to take a senior-level PM, give them AI to make them efficient.

440 00:48:57.470 ⇒ 00:48:58.580 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, God.

441 00:48:58.580 ⇒ 00:49:15.489 Justin Breshears: projects than they normally would have, because what is the difference between a senior and a junior PM? It’s not the amount of those low-level AI tasks that they can do, it’s the level of, like, client management, risk management, it’s the soft skills that they have.

442 00:49:15.490 ⇒ 00:49:19.969 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so that’s a good… that’s a good point to make, is that the soft skills are what you’re actually buying.

443 00:49:20.150 ⇒ 00:49:20.870 Uttam Kumaran: And…

444 00:49:20.870 ⇒ 00:49:21.400 Justin Breshears: Yes.

445 00:49:21.770 ⇒ 00:49:24.650 Justin Breshears: That’s what separates a senior PM over a junior, is…

446 00:49:24.650 ⇒ 00:49:37.829 Uttam Kumaran: So you would vote to have a group of… I mean, this is where, like, you know, there’s a lot of discussions happening about, like, what does an org structure look like, given you have AI everywhere? Is it… is it fewer senior people, more junior, plus AI, or is it more senior people

447 00:49:38.270 ⇒ 00:49:47.099 Uttam Kumaran: you were junior, or even just, like, for example, if I was to get you, like, a coordinator, or someone with, like, an operations background to help delivery team, but they have AI,

448 00:49:47.640 ⇒ 00:49:49.140 Uttam Kumaran: Like, that’s gross.

449 00:49:49.140 ⇒ 00:49:58.789 Justin Breshears: That’s how I would do it. I would do a few senior people, give them a coordinator and AI, and you can pretty much conquer the world.

450 00:49:58.790 ⇒ 00:50:01.899 Uttam Kumaran: for example, I would… one of the things that we’re debating

451 00:50:02.140 ⇒ 00:50:08.620 Uttam Kumaran: Is basically giving all of our senior leadership, like, almost like VAs.

452 00:50:08.790 ⇒ 00:50:14.550 Uttam Kumaran: But then, basically, your job is to have your VA, like, that person just gets AI for everything.

453 00:50:14.780 ⇒ 00:50:19.610 Uttam Kumaran: So you get a VA, or you get, like, just a basic operations person.

454 00:50:20.060 ⇒ 00:50:25.500 Uttam Kumaran: that person, plus all of our SOPs, plus AI, plus, like, some of our bespoke tooling.

455 00:50:26.450 ⇒ 00:50:37.989 Uttam Kumaran: supercharges you. And I go back and… I go back and forth on it, because I… I built the business through the… I don’t know what I said first, but through the one senior person, all AI.

456 00:50:39.510 ⇒ 00:50:51.640 Uttam Kumaran: we’ve also had success with folks like Amber and Rico, who could take more, but again, we had no… we had no judgment on quality. We had some judgment on quality, but our bias was more of, like, we just didn’t have the catch, so…

457 00:50:51.640 ⇒ 00:50:53.400 Justin Breshears: I see how we could’ve… we could’ve…

458 00:50:53.400 ⇒ 00:50:55.139 Uttam Kumaran: We could have just been blind to that.

459 00:50:55.340 ⇒ 00:51:00.219 Uttam Kumaran: And you know, the other thing is just, like, look, I would much rather have

460 00:51:00.500 ⇒ 00:51:05.170 Uttam Kumaran: this is where, like, our brand KPI maybe has to be, like.

461 00:51:05.440 ⇒ 00:51:11.579 Uttam Kumaran: revenue per employee, because then it’s more like, if you would rather have 3 junior people or 3 senior people, I’d take the senior.

462 00:51:12.240 ⇒ 00:51:14.799 Uttam Kumaran: But then, where does the money come from? Is that…

463 00:51:15.230 ⇒ 00:51:33.800 Uttam Kumaran: Instead, if the option is we need 3 senior people and 2 junior people, I would rather be like, well, you get 3 senior, you get as much AI as you want, and you each get a coordinator, you get one coordinator that helps across the board, right? Handling even the most minute, busy work that, like, you guys would have to take on, and then that

464 00:51:34.140 ⇒ 00:51:35.540 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like, that’s an interesting.

465 00:51:35.540 ⇒ 00:51:39.090 Justin Breshears: I’ll show you an example of that, like… the…

466 00:51:39.350 ⇒ 00:51:46.979 Justin Breshears: the coordinator… so, at Kalent, when I got a project, I already had stuff like this built out by the ops team.

467 00:51:46.980 ⇒ 00:51:47.700 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, yes.

468 00:51:47.700 ⇒ 00:51:58.250 Justin Breshears: It was like, here’s the Notion page for the client. I mean, what I look at in our client Notion pages right now is, like, literally nothing. Like, this is… Yeah, because we… I don’t even know what this is.

469 00:51:58.250 ⇒ 00:52:02.970 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, because who would… the other thing was, like, who would… who was gonna build it? It’s either gonna be me… Yeah.

470 00:52:03.490 ⇒ 00:52:04.439 Justin Breshears: Who’s the building?

471 00:52:04.440 ⇒ 00:52:07.059 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and then who’s gonna build it, and then… yeah, and then…

472 00:52:07.060 ⇒ 00:52:26.830 Justin Breshears: And so you’re telling me how many… how many projects can our PMs take? I will say, how many of these type tasks are we asking them to do, you know? Okay. If you got a coordinator that did this, they can take more projects, and then what you’re asking the PMs to focus on is the client, like, what the client needs, consulting, like.

473 00:52:26.830 ⇒ 00:52:45.040 Justin Breshears: making sure, like, they’re getting what they need, or whatever, the higher level stuff, which is also going to lead to expansions and renewals, because you’re focusing on the stuff that’s making the client happy, versus having the PM have 5 projects, and then they’re spending all their day bouncing between, like, these type tasks, like.

474 00:52:45.040 ⇒ 00:52:55.210 Justin Breshears: making sure that this documentation is up to speed, and these linear tickets are pushed along, or whatever. So, you give me a few senior people that know how to… how to consult, and how to manage a client.

475 00:52:55.210 ⇒ 00:52:55.930 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

476 00:52:55.930 ⇒ 00:53:01.710 Justin Breshears: and then you give me just a coordinator that can do those things. I mean, look at the way y’all are running sales. Y’all are running.

477 00:53:01.710 ⇒ 00:53:04.950 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, I know. No, we’re doing that that way.

478 00:53:04.950 ⇒ 00:53:05.489 Justin Breshears: We’re doing it.

479 00:53:05.490 ⇒ 00:53:24.779 Uttam Kumaran: that’s… that’s how we want to do it, because in sales, it’s a lot of parallel, where I can’t hand off being in the meeting. Like, I have to dance, but it’s just how much… how many hours a day can I dance? And I would rather do that, I’d rather go back… I’ll go back-to-back 30-minute sales meeting, but it’s everything around it that I can’t. Like, I… for me to go from a transcript to

480 00:53:25.020 ⇒ 00:53:44.390 Uttam Kumaran: to an SOW, to getting it designed in 2 hops in 30 minutes, that used to be, like, 4 or 5 hours of work that I used to do, right? And now we have Hannah, who doesn’t have any formal sales background, and Justina, who’s on coordination. So that’s also something we’re thinking about. So I think one thing that’s helpful as you go into this quarter is even if it’s just a running list.

481 00:53:44.540 ⇒ 00:53:49.960 Uttam Kumaran: So just think about what those… the lowest, like, ideally the quadrant is, like.

482 00:53:50.420 ⇒ 00:53:58.299 Uttam Kumaran: very, like, this could be done by anybody, and it is the most painful, or it takes the most time, and that is what I want to attack.

483 00:53:58.390 ⇒ 00:54:12.029 Uttam Kumaran: we will first attack that with… with people, and then those people will get forced to use AI, and then eventually it’ll get… it’ll… it’ll scale to AI. And so, the other thing is, like, in… it’s getting very hard

484 00:54:12.550 ⇒ 00:54:17.269 Uttam Kumaran: it’s… it’s… I think it’s already hard. It’s just gonna… it’s just getting harder to hire great people.

485 00:54:17.470 ⇒ 00:54:20.569 Uttam Kumaran: And I don’t know… I don’t know how much I’m gonna be able to, like.

486 00:54:20.930 ⇒ 00:54:24.539 Uttam Kumaran: get an edge there. Like, I think it’s,

487 00:54:25.870 ⇒ 00:54:36.269 Uttam Kumaran: It’s very time-consuming, and getting great people is just as hard as it’s ever been. So the supply of people at the lower level is much higher.

488 00:54:36.490 ⇒ 00:54:44.260 Uttam Kumaran: It’s much higher, and I would rather just get a few absolute pillars, than…

489 00:54:44.930 ⇒ 00:54:48.009 Uttam Kumaran: Just mid-level people, you know, that are just okay.

490 00:54:48.010 ⇒ 00:54:53.399 Justin Breshears: Why… why do you think it’s hard for us to hire good people? What’s the biggest blocker?

491 00:54:55.170 ⇒ 00:55:02.029 Uttam Kumaran: There’s a couple… I have a couple of hypotheses, like, I don’t know…

492 00:55:02.570 ⇒ 00:55:05.580 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, I… I would say some of this, like.

493 00:55:05.960 ⇒ 00:55:14.449 Uttam Kumaran: it’s a bit anecdotal, but I’ve hired, like, throughout my career, across engineering, and then sort of more in, like, business, and also marketing design, like.

494 00:55:14.630 ⇒ 00:55:25.370 Uttam Kumaran: I think we’re… one, we’re seeing a lot of change in, like, white-collar industry in the last, like, year. I think a lot of it is due to the… probably a lot of people in companies way bigger than us.

495 00:55:25.450 ⇒ 00:55:35.620 Uttam Kumaran: are having conversations like this, which is, like, how can we get more out of people now that AI is coming? And they’re doing what I’m doing, which is, like… and I think I’m pretty forward, but some of these companies have

496 00:55:35.760 ⇒ 00:55:42.700 Uttam Kumaran: they can… they can see what the… like, I’ve no… this is why people, since I started this company, have always asked me, like, about AI stuff, and…

497 00:55:42.830 ⇒ 00:55:50.780 Uttam Kumaran: It’s really gonna be quite disruptive, because if a company our size is having conversations about optimizing, and we have zero budget, and, like.

498 00:55:50.940 ⇒ 00:56:05.850 Uttam Kumaran: sort of something that we’re… like, there are full companies where they’re spending millions of dollars on this problem, just internal optimization, right? So they’re seeing this truth, what we arrive at. So I think you’re seeing just a lot of people on the market. Second, I think…

499 00:56:06.600 ⇒ 00:56:17.149 Uttam Kumaran: The wages in white collar, especially fueled by technology, have gone up really high, and the demand for people to stay at those wages, when they actually ultimately never

500 00:56:17.470 ⇒ 00:56:32.490 Uttam Kumaran: should have been paid that, because they were never even that good, right? And I’m not talking about you at all. There are a lot of people who we’ve interviewed where I’m like, I don’t know how you got paid this at another company, but it just does… that was the going rate for data scientists.

501 00:56:32.860 ⇒ 00:56:37.199 Uttam Kumaran: But that is happening a lot, so it’s hard for me to filter

502 00:56:37.540 ⇒ 00:56:52.820 Uttam Kumaran: those people out. Like, I’ve interviewed people from every major company where you would say everybody from that company is great, and they suck. Like, it’s not a good barometer at all. So it’s not… our filtering process isn’t getting much easier. We’re making inroads, like, we did the Loom thing.

503 00:56:52.960 ⇒ 00:56:58.270 Uttam Kumaran: I generally try to hire from my network somehow, like, we’re cheating, like, the way we usually do, but…

504 00:56:58.820 ⇒ 00:57:04.720 Uttam Kumaran: I’m running out of, like, there’s not many ideas for us there. So, the supply is just getting higher.

505 00:57:04.900 ⇒ 00:57:23.180 Uttam Kumaran: And finding good people, I think, because of that is just getting tougher. And it’s not like we have more time to recruit. Like, I recruit every week, like, I have interviews every week with new people, even though we’re not hiring. Just like when you’re like, hey, what happens when we get 5 clients? I have… I have people that we’ve already basically verbally closed.

506 00:57:23.250 ⇒ 00:57:31.130 Uttam Kumaran: But that takes a lot of time, so I don’t know, I just think… but this is where, like, again, my ultimate hypothesis is that

507 00:57:31.640 ⇒ 00:57:36.509 Uttam Kumaran: and this is why I talk to a lot of friends, is just that I think those people that are at white collar.

508 00:57:36.840 ⇒ 00:57:43.830 Uttam Kumaran: Some of the people that didn’t… weren’t actually… that were let go for performance reasons because they were a low performer, they were average.

509 00:57:44.090 ⇒ 00:57:47.220 Uttam Kumaran: They will now take the next rung job.

510 00:57:47.320 ⇒ 00:57:51.660 Uttam Kumaran: Right? They will now go somewhere where They will, at some point.

511 00:57:52.130 ⇒ 00:58:06.919 Uttam Kumaran: something will run out in their cash or their ego, and they will go take that junior PM gig, and then that junior PM who’s gonna take that gig, where does that person go? And so, I think the… I think on some timetable, the average junior person will actually

512 00:58:07.240 ⇒ 00:58:09.370 Uttam Kumaran: Get better, but also…

513 00:58:09.500 ⇒ 00:58:26.150 Uttam Kumaran: for people that are hustling with AI, they actually can go even… they can jump a few rungs. So I think for an employer like us, I think it’s important for us to understand who is going to be very pro-AI, which tend to be younger people.

514 00:58:26.270 ⇒ 00:58:29.889 Uttam Kumaran: Those tend to be more junior people.

515 00:58:30.460 ⇒ 00:58:38.610 Uttam Kumaran: And I think we’re gonna find that our ability… and that supply is way higher, because there’s people coming up, and people coming down.

516 00:58:38.960 ⇒ 00:58:40.640 Uttam Kumaran: You know.

517 00:58:40.640 ⇒ 00:58:41.330 Justin Breshears: Yeah.

518 00:58:41.590 ⇒ 00:58:49.489 Justin Breshears: I don’t think that works to your advantage when the supply… No, it does. It’s very much a pro-business labor market right now. Yes.

519 00:58:50.150 ⇒ 00:58:55.430 Uttam Kumaran: But it goes to the fact that, like, I think senior people… like…

520 00:58:55.840 ⇒ 00:59:02.080 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, I still think we will recruit, and we will find them, and we will get those, like, dime a dozen people.

521 00:59:02.190 ⇒ 00:59:09.250 Uttam Kumaran: But we will do them just like we’ve always been doing it. Like, I don’t think they’re naturally… I don’t think we’re naturally gonna, like, get more of them.

522 00:59:09.400 ⇒ 00:59:17.890 Uttam Kumaran: But I think our ability to bring on people fast that are, like, in the low-level operations, junior, really AI-enabled.

523 00:59:18.330 ⇒ 00:59:23.810 Uttam Kumaran: For many parts in the world, that’s… that’s changing a lot.

524 00:59:23.950 ⇒ 00:59:31.670 Justin Breshears: The good news is you don’t need a ton of those rock stars, as long as you can have people and processes and things free them up from the.

525 00:59:31.670 ⇒ 00:59:44.780 Uttam Kumaran: Yes. No, I truly believe it’s, like, a 10X… you know, in engineering, they talk about, like, 10X engineering, right? They talk about how people are… good people are not just, like, one or two times better, like, the metaphor is that they’re 10 times better. I believe that is in every role.

526 00:59:44.960 ⇒ 00:59:56.449 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I don’t think it’s… and I don’t think that necessarily scales with salary, right? But I also think that those people, we need to set up things, like.

527 00:59:56.710 ⇒ 01:00:12.310 Uttam Kumaran: performance-based variable comp and roles that don’t have that. We need to still continue to have, like, challenging problems, and we need to have a company that, like, is just no drama, because those people, like, you know, I felt like I was sort of, like, one of those people, and

528 01:00:12.380 ⇒ 01:00:28.290 Uttam Kumaran: you tend to realize what you’re worth, and then you tend to try to shop. And so for us as Brainforge, I think a lot about what keeps those types of people here. So my… my problem with them is more of, like, I think I… we can identify and bring them in, and it’s like, what… what keeps them? But again, my ability to keep them is…

529 01:00:28.290 ⇒ 01:00:35.930 Uttam Kumaran: is the more money we make per employee, the more I can pay everyone, and I can pay everyone more than what… what they… you know? And so that is…

530 01:00:35.950 ⇒ 01:00:46.049 Uttam Kumaran: that is what I think we want to do, and so we’ve kind of gone back and forth on this idea, but, you know, we’ve… we have a lot of recruiting partners that recruit here and, like, in LATAM, in the Philippines, that

531 01:00:46.120 ⇒ 01:00:51.170 Uttam Kumaran: I think we may go for this sort of strategy of, like, Few, very senior people.

532 01:00:52.060 ⇒ 01:00:53.389 Uttam Kumaran: And then just…

533 01:00:53.580 ⇒ 01:01:00.670 Uttam Kumaran: at minimum, give everybody, like, a VA or something, and then ideally, there’s some internal, like, AI crew that is just, like.

534 01:01:01.360 ⇒ 01:01:12.120 Uttam Kumaran: like, a trash compactor, taking those, like, small things, figuring out that we can optimize, like, automate that, and then doing it. And then… and then it slowly eats itself, right? That’s the feedback loop, is like.

535 01:01:12.390 ⇒ 01:01:20.430 Uttam Kumaran: what I’m hoping for happens, and then I really would like to… I just want to have people work here a long time, make a life-changing amount of money, and…

536 01:01:20.660 ⇒ 01:01:24.850 Uttam Kumaran: Like, that’s… that’s why when you’re like, okay, the extra 5 points matter.

537 01:01:25.530 ⇒ 01:01:33.170 Uttam Kumaran: I’m like, okay, so then 10 points is, like, close… close ahead of that, you know? I’m like, that’s where I’m like, okay, if we can hit 50% margin.

538 01:01:33.290 ⇒ 01:01:34.949 Uttam Kumaran: And the site is there.

539 01:01:35.180 ⇒ 01:01:43.809 Uttam Kumaran: then how far are we from 60, right? And, like, that’s where we really can… when we move even 5 points of margin in this type of business.

540 01:01:43.970 ⇒ 01:01:55.339 Uttam Kumaran: The enterprise value changes quite dramatically, because there’s not many companies that can do that, and that means we’ve either figured out a market positioning, or we figured out, an internal process thing.

541 01:01:55.340 ⇒ 01:02:04.050 Uttam Kumaran: That nobody else in the market has figured out, because in an industry like this, there’s a lot of pricing competition. So if we found that extra margin, and we know that that’s, like.

542 01:02:04.170 ⇒ 01:02:11.820 Uttam Kumaran: serious margin that isn’t just, like, a one-time thing dramatically changes the enterprise value, you know, of the business, for sure.

543 01:02:12.530 ⇒ 01:02:14.409 Justin Breshears: Yeah, couldn’t agree more.

544 01:02:14.410 ⇒ 01:02:15.040 Uttam Kumaran: map.

545 01:02:15.360 ⇒ 01:02:20.989 Uttam Kumaran: So… Well, thanks for entertaining me, it’s a good conversation. I don’t know, I’ve just had all these questions on, like, how these big companies are…

546 01:02:21.160 ⇒ 01:02:22.650 Uttam Kumaran: Are doing these types of optimizations.

547 01:02:22.650 ⇒ 01:02:23.040 Justin Breshears: Oh, that’s.

548 01:02:23.040 ⇒ 01:02:24.100 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

549 01:02:24.100 ⇒ 01:02:35.329 Justin Breshears: I think these conversations have been good, and need to continue to happen, because this is where we’re gonna make decisions, like you said a few days ago. It’s like, we need to make decisions quickly. As fast as possible.

550 01:02:35.330 ⇒ 01:02:36.070 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

551 01:02:37.940 ⇒ 01:02:38.780 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so tell me what…

552 01:02:38.780 ⇒ 01:02:39.630 Justin Breshears: Anyway, with all of this.

553 01:02:39.630 ⇒ 01:02:40.020 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

554 01:02:40.020 ⇒ 01:02:44.360 Justin Breshears: Do you have a… a proposal for me?

555 01:02:45.050 ⇒ 01:02:49.259 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, Robert messaged me that he was…

556 01:02:50.140 ⇒ 01:02:52.630 Uttam Kumaran: Looking at it, like, an hour ago.

557 01:02:53.410 ⇒ 01:02:59.090 Justin Breshears: It’s okay if it’s not rated right now, we can talk about it. He’s just, he just put feedback in, can I just…

558 01:03:02.050 ⇒ 01:03:03.109 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, can I check…

559 01:03:03.110 ⇒ 01:03:03.760 Justin Breshears: winner.

560 01:03:03.950 ⇒ 01:03:10.830 Uttam Kumaran: And then, I’ll get it sent to you tonight, hopefully, and then we can at least hash it… sorry, how about?

561 01:03:11.140 ⇒ 01:03:11.970 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

562 01:03:11.970 ⇒ 01:03:13.590 Justin Breshears: Yeah, yeah, good there.

563 01:03:14.510 ⇒ 01:03:16.699 Uttam Kumaran: No? Okay, okay. I don’t know my connection.

564 01:03:16.700 ⇒ 01:03:17.150 Justin Breshears: Saturday, man.

565 01:03:17.150 ⇒ 01:03:18.820 Uttam Kumaran: a little bit.

566 01:03:18.820 ⇒ 01:03:19.250 Justin Breshears: Yeah, they’re gonna.

567 01:03:19.250 ⇒ 01:03:25.410 Uttam Kumaran: There’s a big delay right now. Okay, I’ll talk. Let me talk, and then I’ll pause.

568 01:03:25.460 ⇒ 01:03:42.499 Uttam Kumaran: I… yeah, I just saw, he just sent me some feedback right now, so let me get to it and try to get it to you within the hour, so you can review, and then… I think we can still talk over Slack, and then, yeah, I would love to have a conversation tomorrow, about it in person, and ideally, like, arrive at… arrive at the conclusion, so, yeah.

569 01:03:43.330 ⇒ 01:03:43.709 Justin Breshears: Sounds like a.

570 01:03:43.710 ⇒ 01:03:44.280 Uttam Kumaran: Explain to me.

571 01:03:44.280 ⇒ 01:03:48.470 Justin Breshears: I appreciate it. I’m not trying to bug you on it, but I’m just… you know.

572 01:03:48.790 ⇒ 01:03:51.730 Justin Breshears: just gotta… gotta see what it is so that I know.

573 01:03:51.730 ⇒ 01:03:52.349 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, no.

574 01:03:52.350 ⇒ 01:03:53.230 Justin Breshears: stand, you know?

575 01:03:53.230 ⇒ 01:03:55.969 Uttam Kumaran: It’s not, it’s not bugging at all. Like, we’re…

576 01:03:56.090 ⇒ 01:04:10.340 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s just something to do. So, yeah, I appreciate it. And then tell me what time you’re thinking about coming in tomorrow. I may… I may see if Justina’s interested also in coming to do dinner. We can… she’s a little bit north… she’s in Georgetown. Yeah, you know the…

577 01:04:10.530 ⇒ 01:04:17.799 Uttam Kumaran: the geo, so, like, I may ask her if she wants to come. So, Thursday, I’m actually traveling, like.

578 01:04:18.050 ⇒ 01:04:25.879 Uttam Kumaran: I’m… I have a flight, like, around 4 or 5, so I may leave the conference, like, a tad bit early. I’ll be there… this conference starts at 8,

579 01:04:25.900 ⇒ 01:04:38.689 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, we’ll be there all day, and then I may leave a bit early, but you’re free to, like, again, you’re free to… the house will be empty, so if you want to leave your stuff, or if you want to pack your stuff, or whatever, it’s totally fine.

580 01:04:38.760 ⇒ 01:04:46.419 Justin Breshears: I’ll pack up, when we go to the conference, and then just kind of heading out from there, because, yeah, I want to get back home in a decent time anyway, so…

581 01:04:46.420 ⇒ 01:04:50.189 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. Yeah, so then that’s… so then that’s perfect, and then…

582 01:04:50.660 ⇒ 01:04:59.740 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I think I was planning on getting her into Austin, you know, right before dinner time, so I think if I just want to set up a time for a dinner and a place, then I’ll just meet you there.

583 01:04:59.830 ⇒ 01:05:08.079 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay, perfect. So let me, let me coordinate that now, and I’ll send it into our Slack channel. And then, yeah, I think it’s… I think roughly these conferences are usually just, like.

584 01:05:08.340 ⇒ 01:05:13.829 Uttam Kumaran: Pretty business casual. I mean, it’s a lot of consultants, so they’re gonna suit up. I don’t…

585 01:05:14.180 ⇒ 01:05:22.819 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t usually do it, because I don’t care, but I will wear a sweater, probably, or something… something nice.

586 01:05:22.820 ⇒ 01:05:24.410 Justin Breshears: I’ll look presentable, I’ll do my best.

587 01:05:24.410 ⇒ 01:05:30.359 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah. I should… I don’t know, I feel like I should… I should… I need to get a… I need to get my suit retailored, and…

588 01:05:31.160 ⇒ 01:05:35.230 Uttam Kumaran: I usually just throw on a nice sweater, and nice shoes, and nice pants.

589 01:05:36.740 ⇒ 01:05:42.170 Uttam Kumaran: There’s a lot of ill-fitting suits at these things, too, so on some people, I’m like, you would have been better off wearing a…

590 01:05:42.290 ⇒ 01:05:49.200 Uttam Kumaran: a sweater. Like, some people, I’m like, when’s the last time you wore that jacket? Or that looks like, you know, your pants are hitting the ground.

591 01:05:49.610 ⇒ 01:05:54.470 Justin Breshears: the classic Patagonia sweater vest consulting look, you know?

592 01:05:54.620 ⇒ 01:05:58.179 Uttam Kumaran: Well, you need merch! You know, I have a whole, I have a whole, like,

593 01:05:58.410 ⇒ 01:06:02.520 Uttam Kumaran: idea around merch that is completely a waste of time, but .

594 01:06:02.520 ⇒ 01:06:07.570 Justin Breshears: Yeah, we would… if we do merch, it’s gonna be really, really nice. It’s gonna be…

595 01:06:07.570 ⇒ 01:06:10.059 Uttam Kumaran: thing. It was gonna be like, oh, I… it should…

596 01:06:10.270 ⇒ 01:06:19.749 Uttam Kumaran: be first, a nice piece of clothing, second, like, oh, that’s my company’s merch. You know, and I just have a lot of designer friends who would totally design it for us.

597 01:06:20.200 ⇒ 01:06:24.659 Uttam Kumaran: But what a luxury that would be, to have hats and sweaters and…

598 01:06:25.960 ⇒ 01:06:28.280 Justin Breshears: Then you wear it at these conferences, that’s the.

599 01:06:28.280 ⇒ 01:06:45.150 Uttam Kumaran: Totally. Like, I would get us, like, our own… our own… our own dress shirts, like, everything would just be branded us, because I would be a walk… I’d be a walking billboard for us. I’m a walking billboard for vans right now, you know, why not us? So… There you go. Yeah.

600 01:06:45.150 ⇒ 01:06:46.100 Justin Breshears: I’m with you.

601 01:06:46.260 ⇒ 01:06:53.909 Justin Breshears: Well, hey, I’ll let you go, cool. But yeah, just let me know about tomorrow, and I’ll, you know, make the right plans to get there.

602 01:06:54.130 ⇒ 01:06:55.109 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, perfect.

603 01:06:55.470 ⇒ 01:06:55.940 Justin Breshears: And I’ll…

604 01:06:55.940 ⇒ 01:06:56.280 Uttam Kumaran: Thank you.

605 01:06:56.280 ⇒ 01:06:59.430 Justin Breshears: I’ll keep an eye out for the proposal tonight, hopefully.

606 01:06:59.750 ⇒ 01:07:01.490 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. Okay. Thanks, Sue.

607 01:07:01.490 ⇒ 01:07:02.760 Justin Breshears: Appreciate you. Bye.

608 01:07:02.760 ⇒ 01:07:03.770 Uttam Kumaran: Alright, bye.