Meeting Title: Brainforge Monthly Services Strategy Meeting Date: 2025-10-01 Meeting participants: Samuel Roberts, Justin Breshears, Robert Tseng, Awaish Kumar, Henry Zhao
WEBVTT
1 00:01:00.750 ⇒ 00:01:01.770 Robert Tseng: Hey guys!
2 00:01:03.470 ⇒ 00:01:04.120 Justin Breshears: Hey, hey.
3 00:01:04.129 ⇒ 00:01:05.239 Samuel Roberts: Oh, hey.
4 00:01:15.770 ⇒ 00:01:19.980 Robert Tseng: A lot of context switching today. I am. Pull up my…
5 00:01:21.710 ⇒ 00:01:26.319 Robert Tseng: I mean, this is my last internal meeting that I’m gonna actually go back to heads-down work.
6 00:01:28.430 ⇒ 00:01:37.429 Justin Breshears: I know, I’m finding it funny at Brainforge that my meetings throughout the day are usually with the same people, just different contexts every single time.
7 00:01:37.630 ⇒ 00:01:40.790 Robert Tseng: Yeah, we don’t have enough people that you’re meeting with
8 00:01:40.930 ⇒ 00:01:44.660 Robert Tseng: You’re meeting with different teams, but all the teammates are the same.
9 00:01:45.640 ⇒ 00:01:46.820 Justin Breshears: It’s helpful.
10 00:01:47.360 ⇒ 00:01:47.900 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
11 00:01:49.360 ⇒ 00:01:56.439 Robert Tseng: I’m gonna be off-camera for a bit while I multitask eating some lunch. No, all good, I just… I just ate a bite, so no worries.
12 00:01:57.620 ⇒ 00:01:58.500 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I got it.
13 00:01:58.500 ⇒ 00:01:59.070 Justin Breshears: my wife.
14 00:01:59.070 ⇒ 00:01:59.810 Samuel Roberts: At some point.
15 00:01:59.810 ⇒ 00:02:02.440 Justin Breshears: My wife made a bunch of homemade tortillas, so…
16 00:02:03.260 ⇒ 00:02:04.880 Justin Breshears: Of tacos right now.
17 00:02:04.880 ⇒ 00:02:06.059 Samuel Roberts: Sounds from Ace.
18 00:02:06.420 ⇒ 00:02:07.320 Robert Tseng: Amazing.
19 00:02:08.150 ⇒ 00:02:10.400 Justin Breshears: Why you marry Latinas?
20 00:02:12.950 ⇒ 00:02:17.730 Robert Tseng: My wife just came back from business travel, This morning, so…
21 00:02:18.180 ⇒ 00:02:24.290 Robert Tseng: I, like, had a meeting, then I ran out to the subway station to go get her, because she had, like, a couple really heavy luggages.
22 00:02:24.290 ⇒ 00:02:25.140 Samuel Roberts: Oh, yeah.
23 00:02:25.140 ⇒ 00:02:29.779 Robert Tseng: Now she’s just… recovery, I guess, so…
24 00:02:30.100 ⇒ 00:02:30.909 Justin Breshears: What does she do?
25 00:02:31.490 ⇒ 00:02:36.819 Robert Tseng: She works for HelloFresh, actually, so, they’re like a meal delivery service.
26 00:02:37.370 ⇒ 00:02:38.130 Justin Breshears: Yeah.
27 00:02:38.320 ⇒ 00:02:38.920 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
28 00:02:39.820 ⇒ 00:02:42.040 Justin Breshears: Do y’all get free HelloFresh delivered?
29 00:02:42.260 ⇒ 00:02:43.690 Robert Tseng: It’s not free, it’s $85.
30 00:02:43.690 ⇒ 00:02:44.060 Samuel Roberts: Excellent.
31 00:02:44.060 ⇒ 00:02:47.570 Robert Tseng: It’s definitely cheaper than groceries, so…
32 00:02:47.570 ⇒ 00:02:48.709 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, at that point.
33 00:02:48.910 ⇒ 00:02:55.679 Robert Tseng: I would basically just use it as a grocery box, and then she usually just comes up with her own recipe with ingredients.
34 00:02:58.060 ⇒ 00:02:58.890 Justin Breshears: Clutch.
35 00:02:59.310 ⇒ 00:02:59.930 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
36 00:03:00.340 ⇒ 00:03:06.100 Robert Tseng: So if you guys ever want to have a free box, like, just let us know, we can… I can always get you… ship you a free box.
37 00:03:06.800 ⇒ 00:03:07.530 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
38 00:03:07.530 ⇒ 00:03:16.780 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I was using one of those in London, because my wife was working… my wife works nights, she was a nurse, so dinners are kind of weird, but in London, she was on day shift, so it was perfect having those, and I could have dinner ready
39 00:03:17.140 ⇒ 00:03:18.040 Samuel Roberts: We got home.
40 00:03:18.040 ⇒ 00:03:20.079 Robert Tseng: And then we’re back in the US, and…
41 00:03:20.150 ⇒ 00:03:23.880 Samuel Roberts: She gets home in the morning, and I don’t know if she wants breakfast or dinner half the time.
42 00:03:23.880 ⇒ 00:03:24.400 Robert Tseng: Wow.
43 00:03:24.400 ⇒ 00:03:25.170 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
44 00:03:25.600 ⇒ 00:03:31.060 Samuel Roberts: I don’t know how she does it. 12-hour, 3 nights a week is crazy to me.
45 00:03:31.220 ⇒ 00:03:32.200 Robert Tseng: That’s tough.
46 00:03:32.560 ⇒ 00:03:39.880 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, she loves it, though. You know, like, nurses were very… they were complaining in London that they weren’t getting their long shifts initially, because the way they were scheduling it.
47 00:03:40.220 ⇒ 00:03:44.829 Samuel Roberts: And I was like, what do you mean you want a long shift? You want… but they, you know, she has Thursday, Friday off.
48 00:03:45.080 ⇒ 00:03:50.539 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think people… I mean, that’s pretty nice. I would have grinded out a few days and then have.
49 00:03:50.540 ⇒ 00:04:00.639 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I feel like I could do it, but I couldn’t do the nights, and the nights are part of why it’s a nice benefit not having to do the other two days, because everyone else is on, like, a rotation schedule and stuff.
50 00:04:00.880 ⇒ 00:04:01.550 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah.
51 00:04:01.550 ⇒ 00:04:07.859 Samuel Roberts: She’s the only one on nights, and they gave her the benefit of three nights a week, and no weekends, and it’s… she’s a night owl.
52 00:04:08.090 ⇒ 00:04:09.519 Samuel Roberts: I am not.
53 00:04:10.060 ⇒ 00:04:10.820 Robert Tseng: Wow.
54 00:04:10.820 ⇒ 00:04:12.260 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, works for her.
55 00:04:13.830 ⇒ 00:04:14.400 Robert Tseng: Cool.
56 00:04:15.140 ⇒ 00:04:25.859 Robert Tseng: I guess I’ll just get started with that recap. I don’t want to take the full hour as well, so… Okay. I just kind of blocked off this time. It’s kind of a monthly thing. If anything, I’m going to ping Henry, see if he can join, because I…
57 00:04:27.760 ⇒ 00:04:28.630 Robert Tseng: Here.
58 00:04:28.960 ⇒ 00:04:38.369 Robert Tseng: But yeah, I guess, like, we’re starting to… I know we have a lot of, like, lead meetings, and this group particularly has a bunch of meetings, so some of the stuff might consolidate, but the purpose of this…
59 00:04:38.600 ⇒ 00:04:58.049 Robert Tseng: monthly meeting, specifically, is I wanted to kind of give a forum for, like, every… like, all the… when we consider you all of our senior, senior folks here, to just, like, know the services, like, how we pitch services currently, and on the sales side, and then, yeah, like, I think some of you come…
60 00:04:58.950 ⇒ 00:05:09.460 Robert Tseng: some of you were opinionated about, like, hey, I used to work in whatever industry, like, or, like, I used to do this cool work, and you would want to see more of it done at Brainforge.
61 00:05:09.670 ⇒ 00:05:14.859 Robert Tseng: And, yeah, so I think I want to be able to, like, create some sort of feedback
62 00:05:15.030 ⇒ 00:05:26.600 Robert Tseng: kind of loop where we’re able to, like, get ideas for the services and how we package it from this group as well. If you look at our business currently, like, we’re, like, pretty much
63 00:05:27.620 ⇒ 00:05:34.870 Robert Tseng: close to 50-50 CPG and SaaS, because that’s dumb in my background, like, I’m… I’m…
64 00:05:35.180 ⇒ 00:05:38.320 Robert Tseng: I just… I’m able to get CPG clients, and then…
65 00:05:38.460 ⇒ 00:05:55.759 Robert Tseng: you know, his background, he was able to get SaaS clients, so, like, I think, and we have, like, some mix, some overlap. It’s not like we’re that, like, kind of… I don’t think we’re that fixed on these things, but, you know, we’re not… we haven’t sold any fintech, we haven’t sold entertainment, or, like, media, and other industries.
66 00:05:55.790 ⇒ 00:06:03.450 Robert Tseng: And I’m not saying we want to fan out too much, like, I think we’re going to be very, like, kind of targeted about, who we’re selling to, because
67 00:06:03.620 ⇒ 00:06:05.660 Robert Tseng: Obviously, like, you know.
68 00:06:05.910 ⇒ 00:06:21.940 Robert Tseng: we can’t cover everything under the sun, but, like, I think there is, you know, room for us to better lean into, like, our strengths as a team overall, and then that’ll help us to better understand, okay, when we go get new folks, like, who do we actually…
69 00:06:21.940 ⇒ 00:06:26.980 Robert Tseng: need. I think something that we’re moving away from now is just, like.
70 00:06:28.140 ⇒ 00:06:46.989 Robert Tseng: oh, we have a… we have a random niche skill gap, let’s go find someone to just do that one skill. Like, I feel like, from a skill perspective, we’ve got the best coverage that we’ve ever had so far at this point. So, yeah, even though, like, people kind of, like, churn, or, like, here and there, like, internally, we’re able to, like, kind of cover… cover each other in that.
71 00:06:47.270 ⇒ 00:07:03.780 Robert Tseng: And so, I think that’s… that’s good news to me. That gets us out of, like, one of our initial problems, which was just, like, I don’t think we could deliver on work. But now it’s, like, not just doing the minimum, it’s, like, what work can we really crush? And, yeah, just be able to…
72 00:07:03.850 ⇒ 00:07:04.600 Robert Tseng: like…
73 00:07:04.610 ⇒ 00:07:14.269 Robert Tseng: get… get more business, for… for… for… for everyone. And, yeah. So, which I may or may not have mentioned in various one-on-ones, but, like.
74 00:07:14.270 ⇒ 00:07:24.820 Robert Tseng: I think particularly because this group is kind of on delivery, especially, like, how we’re trying to incentivize this, like, bring your A-game to work kind of behavior is, like.
75 00:07:24.950 ⇒ 00:07:29.099 Robert Tseng: Well, we want to introduce, like, variable comp for everybody, so…
76 00:07:29.150 ⇒ 00:07:42.930 Robert Tseng: On the delivery side. So, like, when clients are, you know, when they renew, when we’re able to upsell them on things that we do, we want you to get a cut of that, you know? We’re kind of, like, out of the…
77 00:07:42.930 ⇒ 00:07:47.940 Robert Tseng: oh, I don’t know if Brain Forge is gonna be around next month, kind of like FaZe, and, you know, we have…
78 00:07:47.940 ⇒ 00:08:07.990 Robert Tseng: you know, the lifeline is there for at least the next 6 months, based on, like, some of the contracts we’ve already signed. Sure, like, there could be dips, and, like, some people might probably be impacted, but, like, this group generally will not be, like… yeah, it’s not… it’s not really… that’s… that’s… these are not the people that I would, move around first, so…
79 00:08:08.410 ⇒ 00:08:09.590 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, I think…
80 00:08:09.810 ⇒ 00:08:11.739 Robert Tseng: And so that being said, like.
81 00:08:12.560 ⇒ 00:08:30.460 Robert Tseng: you know, want you to be able to feel like when you’re able to bring your, you know, bring ideas, be proactive with clients, that, like, there is, there is a, there is some sort of, like, seal, like, kind of reward that you get from that. So, I think that’s, like, kind of one of our big, big initiatives that we’re trying to roll out this, this quarter.
82 00:08:31.170 ⇒ 00:08:39.390 Robert Tseng: So yeah, I think that’s… that’s kind of just the context that I wanted to give before I share my screen, and I’ll… I’ll kind of, like, go through what we have so far.
83 00:08:39.650 ⇒ 00:08:44.390 Robert Tseng: I guess any, any questions or kind of reactions to kind of things that I’ve said so far?
84 00:08:44.650 ⇒ 00:08:49.550 Robert Tseng: I know Henry just joined, but I guess he’ll kind of catch up on the conversation as we keep going. No worries.
85 00:08:49.550 ⇒ 00:08:51.079 Henry Zhao: Keep in my work, forgot about the meeting.
86 00:08:51.630 ⇒ 00:08:52.360 Robert Tseng: Okay.
87 00:08:53.800 ⇒ 00:08:59.550 Justin Breshears: On that note, just to expand, because I’ve had a lot of conversations with Utam on this topic, is…
88 00:08:59.680 ⇒ 00:09:07.630 Justin Breshears: Like, we need to have the mindset going into every single project, where it’s not just, hey, how do we deliver on the work that is currently ahead of us, but also…
89 00:09:07.980 ⇒ 00:09:15.460 Justin Breshears: thinking to the next step, too. Because a lot of our contracts are shorter term, you know, limited scope.
90 00:09:15.470 ⇒ 00:09:24.530 Justin Breshears: There’s probably tons of opportunity in every single client that we have, and so the cost of acquiring a new logo
91 00:09:24.530 ⇒ 00:09:38.730 Justin Breshears: is a lot higher than it is landing and expanding on our existing clients. And so, some of the things that, you know, I’m looking at is, you know, how can we expand existing clients, and how can we limit churn? So those two things are…
92 00:09:38.820 ⇒ 00:09:50.249 Justin Breshears: key in that, you know, limiting churn is delivering really well in the current work, and then expanding is, you know, identifying future opportunities. And so, I’m gonna be working on getting more, you know, knowledgeable
93 00:09:50.680 ⇒ 00:10:07.729 Justin Breshears: technical side of, like, what we’re delivering, but for now, really will rely on you technical folks to, you know, have those conversations along the way. We’re reviewing clients, you know, in month one of a three-month contract, and seeing, like, okay, well, how’s it going? Like, what opportunities have we seen
94 00:10:07.960 ⇒ 00:10:16.619 Justin Breshears: you know, to where we could, you know, pitch the next contract with them. And so, that’s gonna be a lot of the conversations that I’ll have with y’all along the way.
95 00:10:18.490 ⇒ 00:10:32.179 Robert Tseng: Yeah, great. Yeah, so I think that that’s kind of one reason why we’ve… one big reason why Justin’s kind of here, to really help kind of steer our delivery team more in that direction. And I will say on the sales side, like, I don’t have the exact numbers for you yet, but, like.
96 00:10:32.180 ⇒ 00:10:47.760 Robert Tseng: I think Q3, we had a good, much more rigorous kind of, like, way of measuring, like, our sales efforts, and kind of how that, you know, the outcomes there. And so, actually, something I want to share first that I wasn’t planning to share, but now I think is probably a good way
97 00:10:47.960 ⇒ 00:10:50.070 Robert Tseng: Frame what we’re doing here.
98 00:10:50.750 ⇒ 00:10:53.990 Robert Tseng: Let me… Cold.
99 00:10:54.730 ⇒ 00:11:03.380 Robert Tseng: nathan models… Occasion.
100 00:11:08.590 ⇒ 00:11:11.210 Robert Tseng: It’s fair.
101 00:11:12.610 ⇒ 00:11:23.169 Robert Tseng: Yeah, we haven’t, like, rolled out our Q4 OKRs to everyone yet, so, you know, this is your first time seeing, kind of, this model, like, you’ll probably… it’ll be reinforced in a couple different ways.
102 00:11:23.490 ⇒ 00:11:30.980 Robert Tseng: When I built out this, like, forecast model for our business. I’ve started Q3, just to better understand, like, what are the different inputs?
103 00:11:31.520 ⇒ 00:11:36.700 Robert Tseng: that go into our business, and then, like, what do we get out of it? So,
104 00:11:37.070 ⇒ 00:11:55.040 Robert Tseng: I’m gonna go to market perspective, this is pretty much like how Q3 turned out. So, we started over Q3 around, like, $60K month MRR, and then we made some assumptions about what our churn were. I actually put churn as, higher. I put churn at 25%, but we actually don’t churn as much as I thought we did.
105 00:11:55.150 ⇒ 00:12:04.440 Robert Tseng: I think the number of new projects per month that we take on, I kind of… I ballparked it at higher. I thought it would be more like 5, but it was actually probably closer to 2 or 3.
106 00:12:04.730 ⇒ 00:12:19.319 Robert Tseng: And then just, like, you know, just made some assumptions around, like, okay, average project size, or whatever. And, you know, we didn’t exactly end up at 85. Our goal for the quarter was to get to 110. We didn’t hit it. We got closer to, like, 89.
107 00:12:19.370 ⇒ 00:12:34.309 Robert Tseng: So this isn’t, like, I wouldn’t read this as, like, exactly our performance, like, you can… there’s other views for that. This is just meant to be a simple, like, inputs, outputs kind of thing to better understand, like, what are the different levers that move our business? And, yeah, so I guess, like.
108 00:12:34.680 ⇒ 00:12:41.699 Robert Tseng: Obviously, this team impacts a few things, specifically churn, right? And then also, like, kind of…
109 00:12:42.060 ⇒ 00:12:51.720 Robert Tseng: project to retainer. So, like, I think this is, like, of the new projects that we have, do they convert into a longer-term contract? It would typically start off with a client, and it’s a one-month thing.
110 00:12:52.230 ⇒ 00:13:10.329 Robert Tseng: either it’s a strategy, or it’s, like, some sort of setup sprint, and then, like, after that, we’d renew to a 3-6 month contract. And, yeah, I mean, I would say this is actually lower than I thought it would be as well. I thought we were maybe doing, like, 1 in 4 renewing, but I think, kind of, just, like, looking at it, it’s probably more like 1 in 5.
111 00:13:10.490 ⇒ 00:13:25.300 Robert Tseng: So, I think the two numbers that this team specifically impacts are, you know, churn and Retainer. So, you know, if this is our starting point now, and, like, kind of, you know, assuming all else stays the same, like, I don’t know, I could probably go back down.
112 00:13:26.690 ⇒ 00:13:33.209 Samuel Roberts: Is that new project to retainer, like, specifically, like, longer-term contracts, or is it… and not just, like, monthly renewals, I assume?
113 00:13:33.210 ⇒ 00:13:34.349 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah.
114 00:13:35.100 ⇒ 00:13:39.999 Robert Tseng: So let me just say that. So, let’s do that. If we were to say.
115 00:13:40.210 ⇒ 00:13:45.100 Robert Tseng: Yeah, you know, like, if we did nothing, let’s say, let’s start here.
116 00:13:45.340 ⇒ 00:13:53.989 Robert Tseng: If we… if nothing about our business changed, by the end of Q4, I would expect the business to grow another, kind of, like, 20%, probably hit 100K, I guess, if nothing else changed.
117 00:13:54.290 ⇒ 00:14:13.899 Robert Tseng: So I think, you know, in order to do that, we need to keep continuing to do good work, because then, otherwise, you know, obviously, if churn goes up, then our business starts to shrink. If churn goes up 25%, then we… then, you know, our business has shrunk. So, that’s definitely, like, something that I want to… we have to keep at least 15, but if we drop it, let’s say we, you know, we…
118 00:14:13.910 ⇒ 00:14:32.269 Robert Tseng: fewer clients churn. That’s a big… that’s a big… that’s a big movement already off of nothing. That’s already a 20% kind of impact on our monthly revenue. And then, if we’re able to get more clients to renew, let’s say we go from 1 in 5 to 1 in 4, then that also has, like, a, you know, tangible impact on the business. It’s not as significant, but
119 00:14:32.580 ⇒ 00:14:39.580 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think those are the two things. But those are the… obviously, we’re not just keeping things the same. What we actually are doing is we’re,
120 00:14:41.910 ⇒ 00:15:00.789 Robert Tseng: try to go back to where I was before. Yeah, our… we’re not signing any contracts under $5K at this point. Okay, I’ll caveat that. There are some that just start off as, like, hourly, but our rates continue to go up. So, I’m confident in saying that nothing we’re signing is up there. So, from a pricing perspective, we’re already moving upmarket.
121 00:15:01.100 ⇒ 00:15:10.360 Robert Tseng: retainer sizes are increasing as well. So, those are the levers that, like, Utam and I are going to continue to press on as we are pitching and selling, like, we’re going to keep pushing higher.
122 00:15:11.180 ⇒ 00:15:21.139 Robert Tseng: And yeah, and so if we do that, and we’re able to, you know, if we’re able to retain more, and we’re able to, you know, and we reduce churn, let’s say.
123 00:15:21.290 ⇒ 00:15:25.419 Robert Tseng: Like, bam, like, our business has easily doubled in a quarter, just for, like.
124 00:15:25.950 ⇒ 00:15:35.520 Robert Tseng: Just from pricing changes, and then… sorry, actually, I needed to keep, pipeline the same. So it hasn’t actually… hasn’t actually doubled, but it’s increased by 50%, right?
125 00:15:36.460 ⇒ 00:15:58.659 Robert Tseng: on the go-to-market team, which you guys aren’t really talking to, like, their responsibility is to keep pipeline up. Like, you can see how, like, if we just have more leads coming through the door, we’re booking more meetings, then we’re gonna have more shots on hold, and that’s gonna have a, you know, impact on the deals that we’re closing. And you can tell, like, the velocity has definitely increased. You know, we closed, like, 3 or 4 deals in the past week, so, like.
126 00:15:58.660 ⇒ 00:16:01.269 Robert Tseng: Sometimes that’s just kind of how this business is, like.
127 00:16:01.450 ⇒ 00:16:17.689 Robert Tseng: I think everybody kind of tends to sign deals at the end of a quarter, or, like, kind of in the middle, so, you know, realistically, we’re not that, like, consistent month to month. It’s more lumpy, like, at the beginning and end of the quarter, and we’ll get better at forecasting that. But anyway, I just wanted to kind of, like.
128 00:16:18.000 ⇒ 00:16:27.740 Robert Tseng: kind of show you guys, like, that this is, you know, this is how we think about what are the levers that we have for moving… moving the business. And so…
129 00:16:28.380 ⇒ 00:16:29.530 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think…
130 00:16:30.200 ⇒ 00:16:39.689 Robert Tseng: you know, other than that, it’s pretty self-explanatory. You can go in and you can play around with this if you want. But, yeah, any questions on this?
131 00:16:41.390 ⇒ 00:16:58.389 Justin Breshears: So I know we have an idea that business, you know, lumps at the beginning and end of quarters, but do we have any kind of other indicators on, like, seasonality of business? Because I know, like, going into the holiday season at the end of the year, things probably slow down, and then looking at, like.
132 00:16:58.540 ⇒ 00:17:10.460 Justin Breshears: you know, budget projections for fiscal years for companies, like, we want to get on the… on the budget, you know, for those, so do we have any more, like, idea of kind of a… on a yearly basis, what…
133 00:17:10.800 ⇒ 00:17:13.590 Justin Breshears: Times of the year are better than others?
134 00:17:13.859 ⇒ 00:17:26.969 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I didn’t write it out into the sheet, but just from, like, you know, we’ve been doing… we’ve been in business for 2 years now, and so what I can say is CPG companies, they’re not really signing deals at, you know, towards the end of Q4. Like, that’s when they’re, you know.
135 00:17:26.979 ⇒ 00:17:34.699 Robert Tseng: Black Friday, Cyber Monday, like, and holiday season, they’re locking in. So, we do have a couple that are in pipeline that we’re really trying to push on.
136 00:17:35.019 ⇒ 00:17:43.179 Robert Tseng: That, you know, if we could sign the next week or two weeks, then I think we have something for the rest of the year. But after that, I expect the door to close on CPG.
137 00:17:43.729 ⇒ 00:17:51.039 Robert Tseng: For SaaS, I think it’s year-round. I think they’re always signing deals, so I think we will continue to see stuff coming through.
138 00:17:52.419 ⇒ 00:18:01.579 Robert Tseng: on that side, but yeah, I think that’s also why we can’t, you know, we want to also diversify our portfolio, so that we can continuously… we know the seasonality
139 00:18:01.809 ⇒ 00:18:08.349 Robert Tseng: Of different… of different businesses. Like, banks, probably not signing anything Q4 either, so I would say most industries
140 00:18:08.589 ⇒ 00:18:10.489 Robert Tseng: There’s definitely a slowdown.
141 00:18:10.659 ⇒ 00:18:28.039 Robert Tseng: But yeah, so that’s… that’s one part of it. I don’t really expect any deals to be signed in December, so whatever we’re doing, you know, October, November, we’re just trying to really push hard on the sales side, and then, you know, I think the business quiets down in December. So, at least that’s what we’ve seen so far.
142 00:18:28.610 ⇒ 00:18:32.280 Henry Zhao: But does it pick back up, like, strongly, then, again in January?
143 00:18:32.520 ⇒ 00:18:39.440 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think Q1, people come out, they’re ready to sign deals. Q1 is typically, like, the time when we experience the most growth.
144 00:18:40.040 ⇒ 00:18:42.150 Henry Zhao: Budget, right? Like, you get a new annual budget? Yeah.
145 00:18:42.620 ⇒ 00:18:54.289 Robert Tseng: Yeah. But what I will say is, like, yeah, there are people that we’re talking to that were like, okay, it didn’t work out, they didn’t get budget for… for this, for this, year. So let’s say, like, Ellie, one of our active clients right now.
146 00:18:54.290 ⇒ 00:19:08.220 Robert Tseng: we were trying to get, like, a 20K, like, contract, a month contract out of them. They only approved us for 10K, because she just didn’t have more budget. And she’s like, okay, well, I basically struck down part of our scope, and was like, okay, well, we can’t do this work then.
147 00:19:08.330 ⇒ 00:19:25.220 Robert Tseng: And she’s like, okay, that’s fine, like, I’ll try to go get budget in Q1. So, that to me is like, we can still have those conversations where, you know, where I’m keeping track of, like, okay, that’s potential budget that we can go get, we’ve already discussed, there’s a clear scope already, we got pretty close to the finish line, she just couldn’t sign the deal.
148 00:19:25.220 ⇒ 00:19:29.139 Robert Tseng: So I still think that there are, you know, we can… we can do some…
149 00:19:29.140 ⇒ 00:19:35.880 Robert Tseng: We can still get pretty close to the finish line, and if it’s just a matter of getting budget approval, it may get pushed to the new year.
150 00:19:40.620 ⇒ 00:19:41.390 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
151 00:19:42.820 ⇒ 00:19:45.339 Robert Tseng: Any other questions? Waish, go ahead.
152 00:19:46.150 ⇒ 00:19:47.739 Awaish Kumar: No, no, I just said, okay.
153 00:19:48.130 ⇒ 00:19:49.270 Robert Tseng: Okay, great.
154 00:19:49.490 ⇒ 00:20:04.309 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so anyway, that’s… that’s that. So where I wanted to spend most time was really on this, like, services page. I guess, yeah, there’s a lot in here, but I’ll just kind of go through section by section. Actually, I want to reshare my screen to be a bit more focused on this.
155 00:20:05.650 ⇒ 00:20:21.440 Robert Tseng: Yeah, kind of the way that this is structured is, like, okay, well, what, like, how do we position, like, what we’re doing? So, I guess when you guys are talking to us about services that you want to do, or when you’re, like, working on projects, even in the projects you’re working on right now.
156 00:20:21.590 ⇒ 00:20:35.730 Robert Tseng: I think, like, these are… these kind of represent the outcomes that we’re really trying to drive for our clients. You know, I think simply it’s, like, grow revenue, increasing margin, if there’s, like, some sort of cost reduction, because we’re making things more efficient.
157 00:20:35.730 ⇒ 00:20:46.309 Robert Tseng: Then, like, I think that’s… those are really the things we want to hear from the work that we’re doing, and that helps us to communicate back to clients, like, okay, this is how our work is directly impacting the business. So…
158 00:20:46.310 ⇒ 00:20:57.539 Robert Tseng: I’ll use, like, one existing client example. You know, I know Henry’s been doing a lot of work on Eden, partnering with their new lifecycle lead. I think, you know, kind of what I had mentioned to him was, like.
159 00:20:57.540 ⇒ 00:21:02.850 Robert Tseng: Look, like, this, this, like, work that we’ve been doing, and giving them, like,
160 00:21:03.340 ⇒ 00:21:17.739 Robert Tseng: you know, doing all the CDP work, getting the golden customer data set, being able to push, like, you know, new… new fields into customer… customer I.O, and helping them to launch more, personalized campaigns to their… to their customers.
161 00:21:17.740 ⇒ 00:21:27.590 Robert Tseng: that’s… that has a direct impact on… they’re able to… they’re going to be able to retain more users, or to drive more repeat purchases. That has a very clear, like, revenue impact.
162 00:21:27.590 ⇒ 00:21:38.389 Robert Tseng: And, you know, I want us to be able to, like, get some credit for that as well. So, that’s, you know, whenever I check in with Henry on that project, I’m always going to be asking about that, and…
163 00:21:38.390 ⇒ 00:21:40.090 Robert Tseng: You know, are we able to measure it?
164 00:21:40.090 ⇒ 00:21:58.709 Robert Tseng: We know what it was at before. I think they were at something like a 70% repeat purchase rate before. If we could move that up to 75% for a $100 million business, that’s huge. Like, that’s a… that’s millions of dollars that we should be getting a percentage of. So, like, stuff like that helps me to go back to the client and be like, hey.
165 00:21:58.710 ⇒ 00:22:07.100 Robert Tseng: you shouldn’t just be paying us for our time. Like, the concept of the billable hour, I think we’re already, like, kind of near the max. Like…
166 00:22:07.190 ⇒ 00:22:20.789 Robert Tseng: Unless we kind of have more, big, like, kind of industry, or, like, very niche expertise, which we will continue to explore that, but honestly, I don’t think we’re going to get much higher than 250 an hour at this point.
167 00:22:20.830 ⇒ 00:22:36.100 Robert Tseng: And so, the only other way to really, like, move up is to, like, tie our compensation with clients to the outcomes that we’re bringing. And so, I think this is where I really want to try to push… push us to be thinking about, like, how our work is able to impact this work.
168 00:22:36.380 ⇒ 00:22:45.379 Robert Tseng: So there’s some language around here about, you know, metrics that, like, leaders care about, kind of the way that we talk about the business, especially on the AI side, because
169 00:22:45.380 ⇒ 00:22:58.510 Robert Tseng: that’s been traditionally… or, like, there isn’t really a traditional view of, like, how this directly impacts, kind of, these metrics, and so we’ve tried to articulate some of that there. This is kind of like an older document, but something that Utam had written before.
170 00:22:58.690 ⇒ 00:23:06.469 Robert Tseng: But yeah, so I would encourage you guys, you know, in your time when you’re… especially when you’re going into those other meetings with us, like.
171 00:23:06.620 ⇒ 00:23:14.220 Robert Tseng: yeah, like, try to kind of have this in your mind when you’re communicating to us your ideas, because I think this is something that we will really, kind of, like, index on.
172 00:23:14.650 ⇒ 00:23:19.679 Robert Tseng: The second part is on ICP and industries, you know, I kind of went… mentioned, like, well.
173 00:23:19.840 ⇒ 00:23:31.339 Robert Tseng: we can’t focus on everything, like, obviously, we just have to pick a few bets and go after it, so I think, like, you know, we’re… this is a pretty rigimentary doc, like, I’ve just kind of throwing a lot of thoughts on it right now, but…
174 00:23:31.800 ⇒ 00:23:47.300 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I feel like it’s definitely on me, I think, to be able to better communicate who our ICP is to the team, or ideal customer profile. And, yeah, I think for now, you know, you can think about it, like, I, you know, this quarter particularly.
175 00:23:47.400 ⇒ 00:24:01.809 Robert Tseng: Cpg brands, I mentioned, they are not… they’re not buying, but we are actually in talks with, like, two… two or three private equity firms, which are basically holding companies that go and buy up CPG brands, and they… and…
176 00:24:02.690 ⇒ 00:24:08.899 Robert Tseng: Try to turn them around, or, like, if they feel like they can help a brand grow faster, they’ll just buy them up.
177 00:24:09.000 ⇒ 00:24:20.649 Robert Tseng: Those guys are doing deals right now. And so, we’re, you know, in Q4, we’re not gonna sell to the brands directly, we’re gonna go up, up one notch, try to go after these private equity partners.
178 00:24:20.650 ⇒ 00:24:29.770 Robert Tseng: So, I kind of tagged Sam and Henry on, like, a proposal we sent out yesterday, which went well. I think we’re going to be moving forward with a pilot.
179 00:24:29.770 ⇒ 00:24:38.649 Robert Tseng: They’re gonna give us a brand that’s, like, doing 50 million in revenue, specifically in the kitchenware kind of segment, and then, you know, we’re gonna do some work around that.
180 00:24:38.650 ⇒ 00:24:56.509 Robert Tseng: So, that’s one way that I’m trying to keep the CPG, like, deal flow kind of open by, like, just going after, like, a different stakeholder in that ecosystem, right? So, that’s that. Digitally native healthcare providers, I think, is one as well. I’ll zoom a bit more. Why, you know.
181 00:24:56.510 ⇒ 00:25:02.009 Robert Tseng: why I think this is a good target for us. If you look at our current portfolio, we have Eden, which is a…
182 00:25:02.150 ⇒ 00:25:17.159 Robert Tseng: a health e-com company, so health products, specifically. We’re working with Ellie, they’re a telehealth company, they’re a services, like, health services company. And then we’re also working with HIP Access, which, is as a health… a physical health clinic.
183 00:25:17.450 ⇒ 00:25:27.899 Robert Tseng: They literally are opening a clinic here, like, a few, like, 10 blocks down from where I live, in April, and we’re basically working with them to help them, get ready for that. So, we’re kind of already…
184 00:25:28.000 ⇒ 00:25:42.600 Robert Tseng: like, developing this kind of industry expertise where we’re working at, like, a lot of different places in this healthcare segment. So, I guess where we stand out is, like, you know, these are not, like, these are not the Kaisers and…
185 00:25:43.030 ⇒ 00:26:02.620 Robert Tseng: I don’t know, like, I don’t know what local providers you guys have in your places, but let’s just say Kaisers. These are not the Kaisers of the world. These are just, like, start… these are startups, clinics, healthcare providers that have started in the past 5 years that are completely platformed on a new set of tools that are, like, either completely digitally native.
186 00:26:02.620 ⇒ 00:26:17.699 Robert Tseng: Or, you know, yeah, it’s just, like, a lot of… that’s kind of why we’re able to kind of go in and bring something new there. So, I think, we’re doing some good messaging around there. We’re actually putting out a white paper. You can go and look at it.
187 00:26:18.030 ⇒ 00:26:24.239 Robert Tseng: as well as, like, kind of called HIPAA compliance, as a bit of lever,
188 00:26:29.740 ⇒ 00:26:34.899 Robert Tseng: Okay, I forgot where… what the title of the doc is, I’ll share it out in this group.
189 00:26:34.900 ⇒ 00:26:58.390 Robert Tseng: But we’re basically, co-authoring a white paper with one of our partners that specifically goes after healthcare clients. Eden uses them right now, CorralData, and we’re gonna, like, do a webinar just to try to, like, push on that a bit more, and try to position ourselves as, like, as an expert in this, in this, in this industry. So, that’s one angle that we’re taking.
190 00:26:58.460 ⇒ 00:27:18.480 Robert Tseng: And then I think this is just kind of like the perennial, any fast-growing SaaS company, like, that wants to do product analytics work with us, or, you know, the default, the default is a good example of this. I think we’ve worked with quite a few others. README came back, and they’re starting up with us again today.
191 00:27:18.480 ⇒ 00:27:27.430 Robert Tseng: So, yeah, I mean, these are not actually people that I go out and out of my way to target, but, you know, just through mutual connections, or like…
192 00:27:27.430 ⇒ 00:27:37.509 Robert Tseng: I don’t know, somehow we get an intro to these companies, and I still don’t think that this will be the core of our portfolio. I think these guys are risky. I mean.
193 00:27:37.740 ⇒ 00:27:50.789 Robert Tseng: it… when they’re going well, they’re going well. Like, default is able to pay us $250 an hour because they just got a bunch of money from, like, VCs, but honestly, they do less revenue than we do at Brainforge, and they have, like, 50 people. So, like, they are, like.
194 00:27:50.790 ⇒ 00:28:14.599 Robert Tseng: they’re hemorrhaging money. If they don’t grow, they’re gonna die in a year or two years. So, I think, like, it’s not really, like, where we want to, like, specialize in, I would say. I think we’re learning a lot of things along the way, and so, like, the work that Sam does, and, like, kind of doing AI platform work, and, you know, these are all helpful conversations, because we’re able to go to them and be like, hey, look, this is how we run our business, and they’re, like.
195 00:28:14.600 ⇒ 00:28:25.180 Robert Tseng: oh, like, that’s interesting, like, we’d like to, you know, create some budget to go and do that. And then, obviously, Henry and I both kind of have more expertise in product analytics, and so we’re able to kind of advise there.
196 00:28:25.270 ⇒ 00:28:33.830 Robert Tseng: So, yeah, I think this will continue to be a part of our business, but not something I’m, like, heavily leaning into, from, like, a go-to-market perspective.
197 00:28:35.040 ⇒ 00:28:41.010 Robert Tseng: I know that was a lot, but yeah, I’ll just kind of pause there. Any kind of, like, thoughts on what I shared there?
198 00:28:42.020 ⇒ 00:28:56.450 Justin Breshears: One of the things I’ve been talking with Utam about is partnerships, developing relationships with… and the specific area that I came from was cloud providers, where they will funnel business to us directly, and
199 00:28:56.530 ⇒ 00:29:04.220 Justin Breshears: you know, basically just exponentially increase, you know, our sales and marketing capabilities by just bringing deals to our laps, right? So…
200 00:29:04.300 ⇒ 00:29:18.950 Justin Breshears: I think that’s a worthwhile endeavor, is to figure out how we can get on these, like, partner networks with some of these. I know there’s different programs with each of the cloud providers, for example, that you can get on, like AWS.
201 00:29:19.090 ⇒ 00:29:24.000 Justin Breshears: Actually, funding projects, and specifically hot ones right now are, like.
202 00:29:24.290 ⇒ 00:29:31.420 Justin Breshears: AI strategy projects for these, you know, companies that really don’t have a clue of how they want to implement AI, but…
203 00:29:31.430 ⇒ 00:29:50.940 Justin Breshears: it’s a hot topic right now, so they’re all talking about it, right? And I’ve seen multiple hundred thousand dollars worth of contracts just around AI strategy and stuff, for example, and so they’re hitting these deals to partners of theirs, and so I think it’s worthwhile to, you know, explore how we could position Brainforge
204 00:29:51.040 ⇒ 00:29:53.939 Justin Breshears: As a partner to some of these providers.
205 00:29:55.460 ⇒ 00:30:15.280 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think that’s, I mean, obviously, we want to, kind of learn from what we can from you, Justin, as we kind of go after that as well. We have tried the partner network thing, AWS, Snowflake, like, we’ve tried to get in their networks. The general kind of, like, our first pass at it was, like, these are pretty…
206 00:30:15.280 ⇒ 00:30:26.129 Robert Tseng: mature, partner networks already, it’s really hard to get attention from them, which is why we’re kind of, we’re biased towards, like, I think Mother Duck, or, like, is kind of, like, one
207 00:30:26.260 ⇒ 00:30:42.949 Robert Tseng: one, provider that we’re like, they’re up and coming, like, I think if we just get a deal with them, which we are, like, for two of our leads, so one, like, FoamPro that Awash kind of helped put together a proposal for, we basically are going to platform them on, on Mother Duck, or, yeah, if they haven’t…
208 00:30:42.950 ⇒ 00:30:56.779 Robert Tseng: they haven’t signed yet, I think there’s a little bit of a delay on the accounting side, but, I expect them to sign, and, like, that could be one way for us to get on their early radar. We’re also doing, like, an interview with their CEO, some webinar there, so, you know, we kind of basically have to catch the wave.
209 00:30:56.870 ⇒ 00:31:13.569 Robert Tseng: But with these more mature networks, like, I still think that there could be a way in, which is why we brought in Holly, who’s, like, an advisor through our Vixel network, who exclusively did, like, partner sales, I guess. So, you know, between her and Justin, and, like, I guess Utam’s kind of more thinking about partnerships there, like.
210 00:31:13.570 ⇒ 00:31:19.529 Robert Tseng: maybe you guys can be able to find us another way into AWS or Snowflake or something.
211 00:31:19.530 ⇒ 00:31:21.269 Robert Tseng: So, I hear you on that.
212 00:31:22.170 ⇒ 00:31:27.550 Justin Breshears: Yeah, that’s good to be thinking about, you know, the big providers may be, you know, like you said, too…
213 00:31:27.700 ⇒ 00:31:38.389 Justin Breshears: mature right now for where we’re looking, but those individual, you know, companies like Mother Duck, would be great targets for us. And I mean, the private equity thing is exciting, because.
214 00:31:38.390 ⇒ 00:31:38.940 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
215 00:31:38.940 ⇒ 00:31:41.709 Justin Breshears: Those guys are buying up new brands all the time, and we’ll bring.
216 00:31:41.710 ⇒ 00:31:44.960 Samuel Roberts: That’s what I was gonna ask about, was how are those going, and does that look like a…
217 00:31:45.500 ⇒ 00:31:47.900 Samuel Roberts: There’s a lot of brands there, potentially, that they could…
218 00:31:48.740 ⇒ 00:32:08.150 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so, like, the doc that I had you guys look at review yesterday, that company has 12 CPG companies in their portfolio. I got connected to John because he’s actually trying to buy Ruggable, and I was at Ruggable before, so whatever, like, intro, intro, intro, like, he was just kind of asking… he first was asking me, like, hey, like.
219 00:32:08.150 ⇒ 00:32:10.520 Robert Tseng: How’s… should I buy a rocket pull?
220 00:32:11.090 ⇒ 00:32:24.879 Robert Tseng: I mean, I’ve been so out of it, I haven’t been able to… I didn’t give them an answer, but I was like, hey, but if you’re doing this work, like, maybe you just let us, like, help you to evaluate which brands are better to… or which brands you should buy. And there’s kind of, like, a…
221 00:32:24.880 ⇒ 00:32:34.549 Robert Tseng: yeah, that was, like, kind of the angle that I went at with him with, and he was open to that. So, yeah, I think we’re gonna try to find more of these types of individuals, but yeah, I think,
222 00:32:34.550 ⇒ 00:32:35.460 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
223 00:32:35.460 ⇒ 00:32:52.789 Robert Tseng: The last thing I’ll say on the AWS thing, you know, Justin, if you want to hear more, and we can make intros, but, like, our… the accelerator we went through, Vixel, they were an AWS partner, early AWS partner. They got one deal through… through them, through AWS, John Deere, and that’s kind of how they took off.
224 00:32:52.790 ⇒ 00:32:59.639 Robert Tseng: they basically were, like, doing, you know, half our revenue for, like, 3 or 4 years, and then they got John Deere as a client, and then…
225 00:32:59.920 ⇒ 00:33:10.509 Robert Tseng: AWS kind of just, like, started to promote them, and bam, that was, like, that was it. They were able to run with that for 5 years. They sold the business. By the end, like, they were charging, like.
226 00:33:10.510 ⇒ 00:33:32.139 Robert Tseng: 1,000 an hour for their workers, insane. But they were literally just doing AWS services. And so we thought that they would be a good, partner to, like, kind of teach us how to do it, but we found is, like, I actually think that they just got lucky in a lot of ways. Like, they don’t actually know how to make us… they have no leverage in AWS. They could not bring us into AWS.
227 00:33:32.140 ⇒ 00:33:38.330 Robert Tseng: And they haven’t really been that helpful in introducing us to other partners. So I do feel like there is kind of, like, a…
228 00:33:38.330 ⇒ 00:33:58.290 Robert Tseng: well, we just kind of have to… yeah, it’s really just, like, riding… riding the right wave, right? Riding the right wave. So I think, that’s… that’s kind of, like, been, like, a journey that we’ve been on with them. But yeah, I mean, happy to kind of have you, you know, be… you could pick their brains more directly, like, I think they’re… they’re pretty open, as well.
229 00:33:58.550 ⇒ 00:34:17.989 Justin Breshears: Yeah, there’s pros and cons to that, for sure. You definitely don’t want to go, like, exclusive, and I think in the example of AWS, like, they probably want you to exclusively promote their platform, so there’s pros and cons to using that. It is, like, more of a all-eggs in one basket kind of bet when you go all-in with one, so…
230 00:34:18.260 ⇒ 00:34:18.800 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
231 00:34:20.409 ⇒ 00:34:32.090 Robert Tseng: Okay, cool. I think the next parts will be, I’ll have reason, so this is just, like, principal stuff. It’s kind of, like, ways of, like, framing, like, how do we talk about our services, you know, I think…
232 00:34:32.350 ⇒ 00:34:37.729 Robert Tseng: Especially since most of us were in-house roles before, some of us more from consulting already.
233 00:34:38.159 ⇒ 00:34:42.250 Robert Tseng: yeah, I think it’s… it’s less about, like.
234 00:34:42.429 ⇒ 00:34:48.860 Robert Tseng: hearing a question from a client immediately, like, doing something about it. We’re not just, like, fixing problems. Like, we have to take the long view.
235 00:34:49.389 ⇒ 00:34:50.469 Robert Tseng: of, like.
236 00:34:51.120 ⇒ 00:34:58.290 Robert Tseng: when we’re solving a problem, yes, there’s usually, like, a short-term fix, but then we have to, like, be able to… can we solve this problem? Like.
237 00:34:58.480 ⇒ 00:35:08.899 Robert Tseng: in a repeatable way, and, like, yeah, like, it is something that we can package and solve multiple times, you know? And so, like, there’s work that’s, like.
238 00:35:09.030 ⇒ 00:35:25.989 Robert Tseng: I know analytics and AI can be complicated, but there are… there are parts of our job which have been… become pretty, cookie cutter, and it’s, like, low effort for us to… to execute, but it’s really high value for the client. Like, that’s… that’s… those are… those are the kind of, like.
239 00:35:25.990 ⇒ 00:35:28.680 Robert Tseng: I think those are the types… the, the, the…
240 00:35:28.680 ⇒ 00:35:51.679 Robert Tseng: those are the nuggets that we want to be able to find from the work that we’re already doing. So, for example, like, the product analytics work, especially, like, tracking and setup, it’s cake at this point. Like, we have templates, event data design, tracking templates. Sure, there’s a little bit of, like, manual work to it, but, like, I think with anybody who needs product analytics work, like, I know how to pitch them, and I feel like our close rates are very high with that work.
241 00:35:51.920 ⇒ 00:36:08.210 Robert Tseng: But for other types of services, I don’t necessarily think we’re… we have that level of clarity, and so we’re, you know, just to skip down, we’re trying to, like, build out, like, a services catalog, these types of documents. I don’t want us to be spending so much time in documentation, but it’s kind of like…
242 00:36:08.360 ⇒ 00:36:13.189 Robert Tseng: I mean, you know, look through what we do have, and, you know, a lot of this stuff is in progress.
243 00:36:13.510 ⇒ 00:36:26.930 Robert Tseng: But, like, so much as we can, like, articulate what exactly goes into an offer, so, like, the product analytics works I talked about, we call it the accelerator, there’s an event model, tracking plan, like, a couple core dashboards.
244 00:36:26.940 ⇒ 00:36:30.750 Robert Tseng: yeah, like, that’s the SOP that we kind of run into it, and so…
245 00:36:30.750 ⇒ 00:36:49.249 Robert Tseng: you know, anytime we go and we run with the client, it becomes, like, a pretty predictable, like, playbook that we’re able to run. Like, that’s the kind of stuff that we want to be able to do. I know Oasis already kind of, like, has that for the data warehousing and dbt modeling side. But yeah, you know, those are really our only two, like.
246 00:36:49.250 ⇒ 00:36:55.239 Robert Tseng: offers that we can really put a fixed price around, because I think it’s, like, very predictable to us, like, how that works.
247 00:36:55.630 ⇒ 00:37:11.809 Robert Tseng: Maybe some of this other stuff on, like, lead research or whatever. So, anyway, like, this is more… I know you guys are already kind of working through some of this, so I’m not going to talk through it on this call. But yeah, these… those principles are just kind of there to kind of, like, for you to think through as you’re kind of,
248 00:37:12.070 ⇒ 00:37:14.720 Robert Tseng: building out some of these services. Yep.
249 00:37:14.720 ⇒ 00:37:18.390 Awaish Kumar: Are we looking to, like, add more… more services, like…
250 00:37:18.870 ⇒ 00:37:33.690 Awaish Kumar: For example, one of the data engineering tasks, and most of the companies, I think they look for is migration of data pipelines from on-prem to cloud, something like that. So they… mostly people are on databases, and they want to
251 00:37:33.760 ⇒ 00:37:43.329 Awaish Kumar: now want to move to cloud-based services. This is one of the service in data engineering, which is, like, a lot of companies basically hoped for.
252 00:37:43.520 ⇒ 00:37:46.769 Awaish Kumar: Are we looking to add more here, or we are just…
253 00:37:47.830 ⇒ 00:37:59.869 Awaish Kumar: Great. I think that’s a great… yeah, so that’s a great example of Wish. So yeah, I mean, I know that this… this call is very much more of a kickoff, but, like, I would like, on a monthly basis, for us to go, and we’re not going to go through every service catalog.
254 00:37:59.870 ⇒ 00:38:05.279 Robert Tseng: But I want to have a roundtable, and I want to turn the… turn it back to you guys in the next call… you know, next month.
255 00:38:05.480 ⇒ 00:38:21.659 Robert Tseng: you know, you guys are gonna have maybe one or two things that you’re gonna be like, I want to pitch this service. And you’re basically gonna try to convince us to go and sell your service, right? So if that… if you feel like a way that that’s, like, something that we should package and be pushing for, then yeah, I want you to be able to bring that into this conversation.
256 00:38:21.750 ⇒ 00:38:42.859 Robert Tseng: And we’re gonna basically, you know, we’ll… I think we’ll be… we’ll do a better job of, like, kind of showing what’s already, like, what’s already live. We’re gonna… we’re gonna sunset some stuff, and we’re gonna have room to create more. So, like, I think there’s, like, some portfolio mix of, like, you know, I can’t be pitching 20 things at the same time. So, like, I don’t know, maybe it’s, like, 10, and then, you know, if we’re gonna remove 2, and, like.
257 00:38:42.860 ⇒ 00:38:47.210 Robert Tseng: You guys are all gonna kind of try to basically pitch us on, like, how we’re gonna fill those two.
258 00:38:47.380 ⇒ 00:39:01.139 Robert Tseng: And then for you, the incentive is, like, obviously, if we pitch your service and you’re involved on that lead, you’re gonna get the credit for it. So, this isn’t really something I want you to pour yourself into and, like, you know, at the expense of our clients, because I know all of you guys are working on client work.
259 00:39:01.140 ⇒ 00:39:13.949 Robert Tseng: But since, you know, all of you are kind of either on the way or already kind of, like, full-time with us, like, I think this is kind of the, like, well, if you want some upside in, like, kind of what you’re… in what you’re doing, and you want to stay on, like.
260 00:39:13.950 ⇒ 00:39:18.480 Robert Tseng: a roadmap for services, like, I think this is what… this is exactly, kind of.
261 00:39:18.480 ⇒ 00:39:25.519 Robert Tseng: the type of, you know, discussion I want you to be a part of, and we’ll, I’ll create more space for that next time.
262 00:39:25.520 ⇒ 00:39:40.369 Henry Zhao: Yeah, and Robert, I know we talked in Chicago about, like, the trade-offs of, like, specializing in some things, and then, like, being more of, like, a Swiss Army Knife, where we offer all different kinds of services. I do think that there’s the benefit of, if we offer more services, it might help us close deals where…
263 00:39:40.370 ⇒ 00:39:48.650 Henry Zhao: if the client is looking for a specific service to be able to close the deal, right, to just knock out all the birds with one stone, I think that can help us there.
264 00:39:48.650 ⇒ 00:39:51.220 Robert Tseng: While we can continue to also specialize in things.
265 00:39:51.220 ⇒ 00:40:07.959 Henry Zhao: And I think while we’re doing the sales process, we can also make note of, like, what are some services that would be lacking that could, you know, close the sale better. For example, right? Like, product analytics might be cookie cutter or might be safe, but maybe we can close more deals of that if we can also offer, like, the implementation services.
266 00:40:08.110 ⇒ 00:40:12.980 Henry Zhao: So that they don’t need to hire some sort of engineer or anything like that. So, just some thought.
267 00:40:13.390 ⇒ 00:40:17.570 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, I definitely have run into that, and a lot of these ideas come from, like.
268 00:40:17.680 ⇒ 00:40:24.459 Robert Tseng: Like, when I first started this, like, I was literally just doing Google Tag Manager as a service.
269 00:40:24.460 ⇒ 00:40:41.129 Robert Tseng: And then, like, I would… I didn’t know anything else, I just, like, talked to people, and then they were asking for all this other stuff, and that’s kind of how we ended up with our catalog. So it is very much, like, we’re learning from, like, the calls that we do, and, you know, some of you are gonna be… you want to be evolved on the business development side, so I’m gonna be…
270 00:40:41.130 ⇒ 00:40:56.369 Robert Tseng: you’re gonna be… you’re gonna be involved in the sales process, too. Like, I know, Henry, I’m trying to make… bring you to a couple intros. So, like, yeah, you’ll also be able to kind of, help us kind of discern, like, what… what we want to pull into this. But yeah, you know, I think what I will say is…
271 00:40:56.440 ⇒ 00:41:00.140 Robert Tseng: the, I think…
272 00:41:00.760 ⇒ 00:41:17.100 Robert Tseng: Yeah, being able to cover a lot of ground, and be able to say we can do a lot of things, and just hoping that, like, something sticks, and that ends up closing the deal, that is… that is one way to do it. I will say that this is a very, like, SaaS product approach. Like, if you think about it, a lot of the platforms that you use.
273 00:41:17.340 ⇒ 00:41:20.859 Robert Tseng: You know, you end up signing the deal because you like one feature.
274 00:41:21.190 ⇒ 00:41:33.740 Robert Tseng: And so, like, that’s why SaaS companies, they try to build out a bunch of features, but they’re just hoping that they’ve, like, built up enough… a big enough basket that, like, one or two things will really stick with you, and you’re gonna convert off of that.
275 00:41:33.890 ⇒ 00:41:42.659 Robert Tseng: But then, you know, then… then, you know, you don’t really stick with that product very long, because you’re like, okay, well, I don’t know, like, segment. It’s like, oh, well, actually.
276 00:41:43.330 ⇒ 00:41:56.850 Robert Tseng: I don’t actually need their connector products, like, they’re charging us too much. Let’s just, like, kind of cut that off. And you start to, like, fuck things off, or whatever. And, you know, I think product companies are constrained that way, because they have to be turnkey, and, like, it has to be very customizable.
277 00:41:56.850 ⇒ 00:42:19.610 Robert Tseng: Whereas for us, like, I don’t really care if they don’t use us for… I want them to use us for stuff that we know that we’re going to crush, and, like, they’re gonna get really good results out of it. So, even if they need something that, like, we’re not offering, like, for example, even, like, some implementation work, I stay away from, because it’s, like, it’s very hard for us to just build and maintain. Like, I think that’s the thing on engineering’s side that’s, like.
278 00:42:19.610 ⇒ 00:42:29.729 Robert Tseng: the hardest to, like, quantify on, like, how much it’s gonna cost us is the maintenance side, right? Like, I’m sure y’all, like, you know, Sam and Waish are building great solutions.
279 00:42:29.730 ⇒ 00:42:45.580 Robert Tseng: But then, like, I don’t know, who’s maintaining it? Like, we either have to hand off to someone internally there, or, like, it ends up becoming a cost center for us. So, I think, like, those are… you know, when you come with ideas, those are the types of questions that I would be pushing back on. I would be like, okay, you want to bring in
280 00:42:45.580 ⇒ 00:42:53.389 Robert Tseng: product analytics implementation, we basically need someone who’s gonna go into client, codebases and be able to implement JavaScript.
281 00:42:53.620 ⇒ 00:43:09.860 Robert Tseng: you know, we do have a lead right now, iCustomer, that basically wants us to do that. They’re a platform company, and they’re basically like, we don’t want to have a professional services arm, we just want you guys to go into our… and do the dirty work with our customers, and help them get ready for our product.
282 00:43:09.860 ⇒ 00:43:18.140 Robert Tseng: you know, we’re, like, kind of exploring that with them, but I’m, like, I’m not really that, you know, excited about that work, because…
283 00:43:18.590 ⇒ 00:43:31.199 Robert Tseng: you know, there’s a reason why those companies don’t want to do it. It’s not scalable. Like, for us, we’re gonna just end up having this, like, oh, we have to go hire this one or two people just to do this, like, one thing kind of approach. And I don’t know if that’s, you know.
284 00:43:31.230 ⇒ 00:43:45.839 Robert Tseng: money is money, and we’ll take what we can get, but, like, I think, yeah, I think those are some of the, kind of, you know, things that I would be thinking about. Not to say that we wouldn’t do it, but, like, you know, I’m just using that as an example of, like, kind of discussion we could have about it.
285 00:43:45.840 ⇒ 00:43:46.860 Henry Zhao: Yup, that’s a good point.
286 00:43:47.020 ⇒ 00:43:47.820 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
287 00:43:48.500 ⇒ 00:43:58.919 Robert Tseng: Okay, cool. Last thing I’ll say, then this is maybe more relevant to the analytics folks, so, like, this is something that I’ve been thinking about, of, like.
288 00:43:59.460 ⇒ 00:44:03.289 Robert Tseng: And I won’t go into this too much, but…
289 00:44:07.270 ⇒ 00:44:14.829 Robert Tseng: you know what, I’m not ready to… I’m not ready to talk about this yet, so maybe I’ll not… it’s still, like, kind of living in a bunch of, like, random diagrams that I haven’t really, like.
290 00:44:15.300 ⇒ 00:44:21.660 Robert Tseng: fully put together, but where I was headed with this was, I actually don’t want to call it product analytics anymore.
291 00:44:22.350 ⇒ 00:44:25.120 Robert Tseng: And, I do think, like, the need
292 00:44:25.340 ⇒ 00:44:34.030 Robert Tseng: the needs have shifted, and I’m trying to figure out how to, like, incorporate our AI work into this framework, but I guess my point is, like,
293 00:44:34.690 ⇒ 00:44:51.669 Robert Tseng: where I thought, because my background, my last in-house role at Ruggable, I was… I was, you know, leading product data specifically, not really working with marketing data. I was helping the company decide what new products to launch, how to forecast, like, kind of, like, our new… our… the product launches, and, like, basically.
294 00:44:51.670 ⇒ 00:44:57.249 Robert Tseng: kind of doing everything on the operational and product side. But what I found from a consulting perspective.
295 00:44:57.470 ⇒ 00:45:17.360 Robert Tseng: you know, they already have… a lot of teams already have in-house teams doing that, like, slower, deeper work. And actually, what we end up having is… there’s a lot more opportunity on the marketing side. And the marketers, they don’t necessarily need something super slow and, like, thorough, they just need, like, directional insights to kind of keep pushing forward, because they already, like, operate under a lot of ambiguity.
296 00:45:17.360 ⇒ 00:45:28.530 Robert Tseng: And so, like, kind of this idea of, like, marketing needs speed, not deep analysis, and where we’ve really done well with some of our clients is that we’ve been able to move way faster than the people that they’ve had internally.
297 00:45:28.530 ⇒ 00:45:41.269 Robert Tseng: And so, you know, I’m just thinking, you know, I don’t want to call it marketing analytics either, because it’s not really exactly that. So I’ve been trying to, like, play around the language. I’m calling it houseperience Optimization. I’m not really sure, so, like.
298 00:45:41.270 ⇒ 00:45:51.559 Robert Tseng: something about how I feel like product analytics or kind of the needs, have kind of, like, shifted. It’s not really this, like, slow, research-driven work, that we’re able to do for our clients.
299 00:45:51.710 ⇒ 00:45:56.490 Robert Tseng: Oh yeah, sorry. Oh, did I only put 45 minutes on this?
300 00:45:59.020 ⇒ 00:46:09.660 Robert Tseng: Okay, I will wrap up in the next 30 seconds. Yeah, so anyway, so there’s, like, something about, kind of trying to, like, change the narrative about how we talk about… how we categorize the service, even.
301 00:46:09.660 ⇒ 00:46:20.930 Robert Tseng: And then the other one is really just, like, focused on revenue. So, anyway, yeah, feel free, just to kind of close, you guys look through, you know, some of you already have started on these services.
302 00:46:20.970 ⇒ 00:46:37.960 Robert Tseng: And then the offers, I will say that, you know, Utam and I are kind of responsible for kind of putting these together. I want to kind of whittle this down to, like, you know, 10 or less, and be like, these are the only offers that we’re really pitching right now, and so you can kind of always think about, like, how we’re… you can always see, like, how we’re… how we’re trying to pitch… pitch your work.
303 00:46:37.960 ⇒ 00:46:42.609 Robert Tseng: And then as far as, like, services catalog, these are more internal, like, SOPs, kind of.
304 00:46:42.610 ⇒ 00:46:44.599 Robert Tseng: Runbooks and things that we’re…
305 00:46:44.600 ⇒ 00:47:03.750 Robert Tseng: you know, if we were to actually sell one of these offers, we would, you know, be, you know, picking one of these services to actually go and execute. And I want you guys to be able to pitch, and we can discuss this in our next call. So that’s kind of, like, how we would structure this on a monthly basis. If we end up liking this, and we want to do it more frequently, I might do bi-weekly.
306 00:47:03.750 ⇒ 00:47:08.720 Robert Tseng: But just to, like, not put too much obligation on you guys, like, I’m just gonna call it monthly for now.
307 00:47:09.110 ⇒ 00:47:19.639 Robert Tseng: Okay, that’s it. Yeah, sorry for going a little over on this. Hopefully this was helpful. Come back to the recording if you want. But yeah, I think this is, this is what we got.
308 00:47:20.700 ⇒ 00:47:23.179 Justin Breshears: Super helpful. I think it’ll be beneficial for us.
309 00:47:23.950 ⇒ 00:47:26.150 Robert Tseng: Okay, great. Thanks, guys.
310 00:47:26.330 ⇒ 00:47:27.770 Henry Zhao: Yeah, thank you, Robert.
311 00:47:28.010 ⇒ 00:47:28.889 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, thanks so much.