Meeting Title: Brainforge x Telezma Partnership Discussion Date: 2025-09-25 Meeting participants: Uttam Kumaran, Holly Condos, Hannah Wang
WEBVTT
1 00:01:58.030 ⇒ 00:01:58.670 Holly Condos: Hey!
2 00:01:58.670 ⇒ 00:02:01.020 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, Holly. Hey, how are you?
3 00:02:01.950 ⇒ 00:02:03.690 Holly Condos: Is the conference crazy?
4 00:02:03.900 ⇒ 00:02:19.970 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, no, conference was really great. I… I’m just headed to Maryland, actually, for the weekend to visit a… to visit a friend of mine just had a newborn, like, 6 months ago, so… That’s great. Yeah, we’re… we’re… we’re gonna go visit them, and…
5 00:02:20.010 ⇒ 00:02:25.959 Uttam Kumaran: It’s just, it’s just trying to get out of this… trying to get out of the city early a little bit, so…
6 00:02:25.970 ⇒ 00:02:27.810 Holly Condos: Are you in Chicago?
7 00:02:28.450 ⇒ 00:02:29.660 Uttam Kumaran: In Austin.
8 00:02:29.660 ⇒ 00:02:31.510 Holly Condos: Austin, okay, okay.
9 00:02:31.510 ⇒ 00:02:32.100 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
10 00:02:32.100 ⇒ 00:02:36.769 Holly Condos: I thought, oh, maybe was that last week when you and Robert were at…
11 00:02:37.970 ⇒ 00:02:57.290 Uttam Kumaran: That’s correct, yeah. Last week was the ShopTalk conference, and this week, it’s nice, because it’s… conference is just at home, so it’s not bad, but it was really good, and you know, we’ve hired two people here in Texas, so we have one person that’s just in North Austin, and then one person that’s just outside of Houston, so both of them were able to come.
12 00:02:57.290 ⇒ 00:03:06.030 Uttam Kumaran: Which is amazing. I mean, it’s… it’s a… it’s really, really nice to have some FaceTime with people. Yeah.
13 00:03:06.490 ⇒ 00:03:09.130 Holly Condos: Cool. Alright, so, are you driving?
14 00:03:10.290 ⇒ 00:03:20.079 Uttam Kumaran: No, I am in line at TSA, probably looks like it’s gonna be, like, at least 15-minute line, 20-minute line, and then if we don’t get to everything, I could just hop back on, so…
15 00:03:20.330 ⇒ 00:03:30.560 Holly Condos: It’s all good, so I’ll just… I’ll just walk you through, and… and I won’t do this all the time, but just starting out, I want to make sure that, you know, I’m representing
16 00:03:30.880 ⇒ 00:03:35.750 Holly Condos: Brainforges policies and positions and… right, so that we’re all on the same page.
17 00:03:35.750 ⇒ 00:03:45.880 Uttam Kumaran: Totally, and I know we just sort of threw this thing at you, so I’m also happy to give… happy to give a ton of context on whatever the business case is if you need it, so…
18 00:03:46.150 ⇒ 00:03:54.629 Holly Condos: Well, yeah, so maybe just a little bit about the relationship, like, how did you guys meet? Like, do you already know them? Sure.
19 00:03:56.820 ⇒ 00:04:11.110 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so let me give you a little bit of background. So, Aaron Schwartzberg is brothers with the head of go-to-market at the company I used to work at, Flowcode. And his brother David, David Schwartzberg, is a good friend of mine.
20 00:04:11.110 ⇒ 00:04:15.809 Uttam Kumaran: And these days, when anybody in my past life thinks about AI,
21 00:04:15.810 ⇒ 00:04:33.130 Uttam Kumaran: And if someone asks them, like, hey, do you know anything about AI? They usually get points at me. So, his brother just became head of U.S, basically a U.S. business for this company, Telezma. The CEO famously ran the company Blackboard. I don’t know if you’re familiar, it’s like the educational
22 00:04:33.280 ⇒ 00:04:36.620 Uttam Kumaran: like, whiteboarding tool. You may have heard of that company before.
23 00:04:36.620 ⇒ 00:04:38.380 Holly Condos: I have heard of it, yes.
24 00:04:38.650 ⇒ 00:04:53.140 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so they’re really, you know, famous in education technology, and primarily in, you know, selling technology to educational institutions. But that’s the background of the CEO, and they recently, you know, he recently, that CEO, came and took over this company, Telisma.
25 00:04:53.530 ⇒ 00:05:09.689 Uttam Kumaran: And they basically are a development firm, an engineering development firm for… primarily working for educational institutions. So, and more recently, you know, they’ve been starting to do a lot of Gen AI-related implementations for, educational, so colleges.
26 00:05:09.690 ⇒ 00:05:19.860 Uttam Kumaran: For-profit universities, you know, school districts, things like that. So, the reason we got called is one of the things that they’re having challenges with, they’re a pretty big organization.
27 00:05:19.860 ⇒ 00:05:30.629 Uttam Kumaran: And they’re finding… what we’re finding is that a lot of the clients, you know, their potential clients, are just struggling to even understand, like, where to adopt AI in their business, let alone.
28 00:05:31.060 ⇒ 00:05:40.320 Uttam Kumaran: contract with a huge firm on, like, a… what they typically do is, like, six-month, year-long development projects, right? And what they’re finding is what we… we’re finding, and where…
29 00:05:40.320 ⇒ 00:05:53.489 Uttam Kumaran: And which is, like, people don’t even know where to start, so you can’t pitch them on anything that’s huge. And so our… our sort of remedy to that, and what I told Aaron, is that we’re starting to do, like, workshops and proof of concepts, and we move very, very fast on those, so…
30 00:05:53.490 ⇒ 00:06:07.979 Uttam Kumaran: We can come in, and in two weeks to a month, deliver something that works, and then sort of get our claws in, and that’s what Teleisma really lacks. And so the reason for the partnership, you know, for them, is that they want to partner with someone that’s, like, very nimble, like us.
31 00:06:07.980 ⇒ 00:06:21.229 Uttam Kumaran: That they can tap in on engagements that seem to be, like, need to start at a much smaller level. And then, what is in it… what is in it for… for them is that at the point where it becomes large, or we can sort of pitch an expanded scope.
32 00:06:21.230 ⇒ 00:06:29.409 Uttam Kumaran: their engineering team can come deliver that. And these are, hopefully, deals that it’s gonna… it would be very hard for us to…
33 00:06:29.410 ⇒ 00:06:39.540 Uttam Kumaran: sort of execute and deliver on some of these large-scale engagements at our size. And then where do we… where do we benefit? It’s like, we have no skin in the education market at all.
34 00:06:39.540 ⇒ 00:06:40.150 Holly Condos: Right, right.
35 00:06:40.150 ⇒ 00:06:53.800 Uttam Kumaran: They’re a very well-known, you know, figure in that market. They have a lot of connections there. And again, like, I think, you know, to partner with companies… they’re also trying to expand their U.S. presence.
36 00:06:54.070 ⇒ 00:07:08.059 Uttam Kumaran: And so there seem to be a lot of synergies, and again, like, nothing… we haven’t collaborated on any deals, and really the big blocker so far has been getting this… this… this damn document out of the line. But I would say this is the first time we’ve gotten something that’s been this in-depth.
37 00:07:08.680 ⇒ 00:07:19.069 Uttam Kumaran: And I roughly, you know, gave my perspective. They send a lot of edits over. Some of the terms, I’m like, I kind of don’t know what the angle is, or I’m like, I’m not sure.
38 00:07:19.070 ⇒ 00:07:37.629 Uttam Kumaran: what can bite us, so that’s sort of where we are now. We also… we have standard, you know, partnership documents, and this was born from one of those, but they’ve… they’ve… they’ve added a lot to there, and so I think this is a good, you know, exercise for us to start. I think… hopefully, I think what we’ll learn from you is, like, what are the standard terms? We should just bake into our
39 00:07:37.630 ⇒ 00:07:42.739 Uttam Kumaran: Our normal stuff, and, you know, just like any contracts, like, what can we be flexible on versus not?
40 00:07:43.270 ⇒ 00:07:45.120 Holly Condos: Right, right, exactly.
41 00:07:45.120 ⇒ 00:07:46.520 Uttam Kumaran: That’s a little bit of context.
42 00:07:46.730 ⇒ 00:07:55.629 Holly Condos: Okay, that’s great, that’s helpful. So, I’m just gonna focus on, the things that either you weren’t sure about, or…
43 00:07:55.740 ⇒ 00:08:06.329 Holly Condos: that, are reasonable from their perspective, but again, you know, let’s talk about what… what our position is. So,
44 00:08:06.790 ⇒ 00:08:13.020 Holly Condos: they… Don’t want to have their commission payment suspended.
45 00:08:13.300 ⇒ 00:08:19.949 Holly Condos: If… They are in noncompliance with anything in the agreement.
46 00:08:20.200 ⇒ 00:08:25.199 Holly Condos: And usually, You know, unless it’s, like.
47 00:08:25.400 ⇒ 00:08:30.030 Holly Condos: Terrible, like willful misconduct or negligence or fraud.
48 00:08:30.150 ⇒ 00:08:34.819 Holly Condos: You usually give… The other side, like, a cure period.
49 00:08:34.950 ⇒ 00:08:36.010 Holly Condos: to fix.
50 00:08:36.320 ⇒ 00:08:50.480 Holly Condos: Okay. Before… before you restrain their… their commission payment. But in this case, right, so I’m just trying to… that’s why the contest is helpful. So they’re going to basically refer leads to Brainforge, right?
51 00:08:50.790 ⇒ 00:08:51.679 Uttam Kumaran: That’s correct.
52 00:08:52.470 ⇒ 00:09:02.479 Holly Condos: And Brainforge is going to give them some sort of referral fee, like, whatever it is, 10% of the revenue or something like that, right?
53 00:09:02.480 ⇒ 00:09:08.140 Uttam Kumaran: That’s correct, and the bulk of the money should be made on the actual execution of the deal.
54 00:09:08.140 ⇒ 00:09:23.089 Holly Condos: Right. Which is normal. That’s usually… usually the way, but… so… so my recommendation would be… they’re asking to remove all of that, and I think our counter is that we’re not going to remove it, but we’ll…
55 00:09:23.200 ⇒ 00:09:32.039 Holly Condos: Revise it so that if there is a major breach or material breach of the contract, that will give them
56 00:09:32.310 ⇒ 00:09:44.980 Holly Condos: unless it’s one of those cutouts that I just mentioned, then we’ll give them a cure period. So it’s kind of a middle ground, right? It’s going from what you had in the agreement, to them saying, take it all out, to…
57 00:09:45.160 ⇒ 00:09:46.510 Holly Condos: Middle ground.
58 00:09:47.080 ⇒ 00:09:51.339 Holly Condos: But, again, your call. If you don’t want to go with that middle ground.
59 00:09:51.630 ⇒ 00:09:55.429 Holly Condos: And you want to be firm, then we can argue that.
60 00:09:57.940 ⇒ 00:10:02.319 Holly Condos: And I can put all of this in writing for you. I understand that talking about it
61 00:10:02.630 ⇒ 00:10:08.650 Holly Condos: Without looking at the document in a… is in a vacuum, so I just wasn’t sure…
62 00:10:08.760 ⇒ 00:10:17.429 Holly Condos: how you wanted to do it, but obviously, we gotta be flexible. So, I can just do, like, a little,
63 00:10:17.650 ⇒ 00:10:23.930 Holly Condos: like, a little spreadsheet, and put that into Slack, so that you can just, you know, review it quickly.
64 00:10:23.930 ⇒ 00:10:27.299 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’s perfect, you know, I’m actually…
65 00:10:27.490 ⇒ 00:10:31.209 Uttam Kumaran: I… that’d be… that’d actually be very, like, probably the best route.
66 00:10:31.340 ⇒ 00:10:35.949 Holly Condos: And then we also have it documented, right? Yeah. I try to document it.
67 00:10:35.950 ⇒ 00:10:36.779 Uttam Kumaran: For the most part, I think I’ll
68 00:10:37.900 ⇒ 00:10:45.230 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and I’ll mostly support your… probably the way you end up going, but it’ll be helpful that if there’s anything I disagree with or amuse about, I’ll just list it there.
69 00:10:45.230 ⇒ 00:10:46.040 Holly Condos: Absolutely.
70 00:10:46.040 ⇒ 00:10:47.649 Uttam Kumaran: We sort of have an SOP.
71 00:10:48.100 ⇒ 00:10:50.869 Holly Condos: Absolutely. Are you going to Maryland tonight?
72 00:10:51.110 ⇒ 00:10:54.410 Uttam Kumaran: Yes. So, but I’ll be working, like, the rest of…
73 00:10:54.590 ⇒ 00:10:54.940 Holly Condos: Okay.
74 00:10:54.940 ⇒ 00:11:04.849 Uttam Kumaran: the rest of the, sort of, my time in the airport, and then also, I can pop back on the phone in, like, 5 minutes, or if you want to just send it to me, I can just check it all over the next hour, basically.
75 00:11:05.180 ⇒ 00:11:06.150 Holly Condos: You want to do it that way?
76 00:11:06.150 ⇒ 00:11:07.530 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’s fine.
77 00:11:07.930 ⇒ 00:11:23.540 Holly Condos: Okay, I also created a new version just to retain their original comments. I… you know, kind of like how you do Google revisioning anyway. I did…
78 00:11:24.030 ⇒ 00:11:27.190 Holly Condos: what they… proposed?
79 00:11:27.310 ⇒ 00:11:30.760 Holly Condos: Because they didn’t redline it in, they just put it in a comment.
80 00:11:30.990 ⇒ 00:11:35.340 Holly Condos: So, I took most of what they proposed.
81 00:11:35.340 ⇒ 00:11:35.940 Uttam Kumaran: And stuck it.
82 00:11:35.940 ⇒ 00:11:40.779 Holly Condos: In, right, to kind of alleviate some of the red line bleeding.
83 00:11:42.110 ⇒ 00:11:44.950 Holly Condos: Okay, why don’t I…
84 00:11:44.950 ⇒ 00:11:45.430 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
85 00:11:45.430 ⇒ 00:11:49.410 Holly Condos: Why don’t I do the overview, and I’ll also send you
86 00:11:49.540 ⇒ 00:11:56.869 Holly Condos: the link of the document in case you want to look at it itself. There’s not too many things, there’s maybe 3 or 4 things.
87 00:11:57.090 ⇒ 00:11:59.209 Holly Condos: So, I think we’re a lot better there.
88 00:12:00.700 ⇒ 00:12:01.210 Holly Condos: And you’ll see there.
89 00:12:01.210 ⇒ 00:12:18.880 Uttam Kumaran: not, like, this isn’t some type of, it’s not a crazy negotiation or anything, so tomorrow, Aaron’s, like, Aaron’s the nicest guy, so I think, for me, I was stalling, because I’m like, I don’t know, and he was like, well, I don’t really know, and I’m like, okay, well, give me some time, figure it out.
90 00:12:18.880 ⇒ 00:12:28.229 Holly Condos: Yeah, no, all good, and this is… I do this all the time, every day. I’ve done it for a year, so it’s kind of a good fit, but like I said, you know, I want to…
91 00:12:28.440 ⇒ 00:12:34.960 Holly Condos: I never come in like the bull in the china shop and say, oh, you have to do this. It’s, you know, there are a lot of factors.
92 00:12:34.960 ⇒ 00:12:37.709 Uttam Kumaran: wash your water bottles are in. Oh, that’s perfect.
93 00:12:37.710 ⇒ 00:12:44.939 Holly Condos: But the terms need to be, you know, a win-win for both sides, so it’s not in a vacuum, it’s…
94 00:12:45.280 ⇒ 00:12:47.880 Holly Condos: Tailored to the deal, to the relationship.
95 00:12:48.600 ⇒ 00:12:50.450 Holly Condos: Trying to do, what the goals are.
96 00:12:50.450 ⇒ 00:13:03.370 Uttam Kumaran: Definitely. Yeah, and then, you know, I’ll still send some more questions. You know, I don’t know if… I’m sure you might have, but I don’t know if you’ve ever worked on, like, marketing development funds or anything, like, we’re thinking about partnerships. Okay, cool. I have, like.
97 00:13:03.370 ⇒ 00:13:04.529 Holly Condos: on all of that, yeah.
98 00:13:04.530 ⇒ 00:13:18.560 Uttam Kumaran: I have a host of questions on that, because we’re doing this, like, playbook-style partnership with some of our vendor partners, and I think there’s an opportunity to do a lot of co-marketing, and they all have pretty big budgets and pretty low execution power.
99 00:13:18.820 ⇒ 00:13:19.189 Holly Condos: do some of that.
100 00:13:19.190 ⇒ 00:13:24.120 Uttam Kumaran: so we want to take advantage of it, but I have a couple questions that maybe we can…
101 00:13:24.590 ⇒ 00:13:30.419 Uttam Kumaran: also talk about that, and I can send you some of the stuff we’re doing. Jake on our team is sort of reading that, so, yeah.
102 00:13:30.420 ⇒ 00:13:35.079 Holly Condos: That sounds good, and then Hannah gave me the go-to-market spreadsheet.
103 00:13:35.460 ⇒ 00:13:36.429 Uttam Kumaran: Great, okay.
104 00:13:36.430 ⇒ 00:13:52.289 Holly Condos: the weekly metrics one with the partners and sales. Yes. So, what I suggested to her in the context of, and what I said to you in Slack, that, you know, I could put some little, like, workflow
105 00:13:52.540 ⇒ 00:13:55.220 Holly Condos: Couple options together, as far as…
106 00:13:55.490 ⇒ 00:13:59.759 Holly Condos: how to manage, but I’m not sure that’s really what you want.
107 00:14:00.490 ⇒ 00:14:11.869 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think more of it is, like… I think we… I think I would like to share… we have some Notion documents about the types of partners we’ve been going after. I think it would be great to get your opinion on, like.
108 00:14:11.970 ⇒ 00:14:15.139 Uttam Kumaran: If we were to focus on one this coming quarter, like.
109 00:14:15.500 ⇒ 00:14:17.400 Uttam Kumaran: What we sh- what should we do and why?
110 00:14:17.450 ⇒ 00:14:36.969 Uttam Kumaran: Like, we’re constrained by resources, we’re not constrained by the number of partners we could theoretically have. So for us, it’s like, how do we drive as fast as possible? And the OKR we have is one partner-driven close per month, right, is what we want to try to aim for. And so.
111 00:14:36.970 ⇒ 00:14:37.770 Holly Condos: Yeah, yeah.
112 00:14:37.770 ⇒ 00:14:46.790 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we have a slew of different partner types, and some of them are close, some of them are… we’re not so close with, some of them are bigger, some of them are smaller, so, like.
113 00:14:47.100 ⇒ 00:14:57.300 Uttam Kumaran: We… I think we haven’t had… we… everybody’s appreciated what we do, and, like, wants to work with us. I think, given our resources, we have to go a little bit smaller, and I think…
114 00:14:57.820 ⇒ 00:15:07.549 Uttam Kumaran: trying to do things like the Marketing Development Fund and doing some interesting things creatively, I think is where we’re gonna stand out as service partners for a lot of these companies.
115 00:15:07.900 ⇒ 00:15:17.380 Holly Condos: Yeah, I agree. Okay, that sounds good. And then the, shoot, it was the one.
116 00:15:17.380 ⇒ 00:15:19.889 Hannah Wang: real quick, but Holly, the…
117 00:15:19.890 ⇒ 00:15:20.240 Holly Condos: Hey, Hannah.
118 00:15:20.710 ⇒ 00:15:28.129 Hannah Wang: Hi, I joined a bit late, but the notion that, Utam mentioned, I shared that with you, yes.
119 00:15:28.130 ⇒ 00:15:29.819 Holly Condos: I think I have that, yeah.
120 00:15:29.820 ⇒ 00:15:32.960 Hannah Wang: Yeah, that’s the notion that Utahan’s referring to.
121 00:15:33.110 ⇒ 00:15:33.790 Holly Condos: Okay.
122 00:15:34.410 ⇒ 00:15:41.259 Uttam Kumaran: I’m just running through security, so I can hop back on in probably, like, 2 minutes, or if we’re good, then I can just follow up on Slack.
123 00:15:41.710 ⇒ 00:15:47.759 Holly Condos: One last question. Anything to follow up on McCaw? McGaw? I saw his response.
124 00:15:47.760 ⇒ 00:15:49.490 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I responded to him, just based.
125 00:15:49.490 ⇒ 00:15:49.810 Holly Condos: Yes.
126 00:15:49.810 ⇒ 00:15:57.349 Uttam Kumaran: saying, like, yes, I think we have one deal we can collaborate on, but that’s another one where, again, I kind of want you to get a lay of the land for us before I
127 00:15:57.680 ⇒ 00:16:02.509 Uttam Kumaran: Before I just keep pushing anywhere where it’s, like, not worth it, you know? So I’ll kind of give you a sense of…
128 00:16:02.620 ⇒ 00:16:05.279 Uttam Kumaran: how the Magawa relationship came about, you know.
129 00:16:05.720 ⇒ 00:16:14.220 Holly Condos: That sounds good. Okay, so I’ll just put everything together for Talisma, I’ll send it to you, and then feel free to call me, or Slack, or whatever.
130 00:16:14.220 ⇒ 00:16:15.839 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay, perfect.
131 00:16:15.840 ⇒ 00:16:17.990 Holly Condos: Alright, and then I’ll talk to you both in the morning.
132 00:16:18.030 ⇒ 00:16:19.809 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, thank you both.
133 00:16:19.810 ⇒ 00:16:20.350 Hannah Wang: Okay.
134 00:16:20.350 ⇒ 00:16:21.130 Uttam Kumaran: See ya.
135 00:16:21.410 ⇒ 00:16:21.980 Uttam Kumaran: Bye.