Meeting Title: Brainforge Partner Event Strategy Discussion Date: 2025-10-01 Meeting participants: Jake Nathan, holly condos, Hannah Wang, Uttam Kumaran
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1 00:00:18.070 ⇒ 00:00:19.070 Jake Nathan: Hey, Holly.
2 00:00:19.680 ⇒ 00:00:20.970 holly condos: How are you?
3 00:00:21.750 ⇒ 00:00:25.629 Jake Nathan: Good, how are you? I don’t think we’ve met yet, but I’m Jake, it’s nice to meet you.
4 00:00:25.660 ⇒ 00:00:27.290 holly condos: You too. Where are you based?
5 00:00:27.660 ⇒ 00:00:29.979 Jake Nathan: I’m based in Austin, what about you?
6 00:00:30.380 ⇒ 00:00:35.069 holly condos: I’m in Vermont right now. I also have a house in San Diego.
7 00:00:35.440 ⇒ 00:00:39.559 Jake Nathan: Oh, cool, yeah, it looks like you’re in, like, a cabin, almost, or something.
8 00:00:39.560 ⇒ 00:00:43.369 holly condos: Yeah, the ceiling is very wooded.
9 00:00:43.550 ⇒ 00:00:51.819 Jake Nathan: That’s awesome. Yeah, it looks… looks very cozy in there. How’s… is Vermont… I’d imagine this time of year, it’s, like, as good as it gets.
10 00:00:52.130 ⇒ 00:00:53.669 holly condos: Lots of colors, yeah.
11 00:00:53.770 ⇒ 00:00:57.229 Jake Nathan: It’s not as good as it was last year, but .
12 00:00:57.510 ⇒ 00:00:58.959 holly condos: It’s, it’s pretty good.
13 00:00:59.720 ⇒ 00:01:00.650 Jake Nathan: That’s awesome.
14 00:01:01.150 ⇒ 00:01:01.979 Jake Nathan: That’s really cool.
15 00:01:01.980 ⇒ 00:01:04.210 holly condos: So, how long have you been with Brainforge?
16 00:01:05.090 ⇒ 00:01:12.869 Jake Nathan: This is gonna be my sixth week, so… Okay. Yeah, it’s been… it’s been really fun, yeah, getting to…
17 00:01:13.130 ⇒ 00:01:25.529 Jake Nathan: Yeah, work mostly on the content side, so, like, interviewing different vendors and, even internal team members and turning that into content, so it’s been really fun.
18 00:01:25.680 ⇒ 00:01:27.670 holly condos: That’s great. Hey, Hannah.
19 00:01:28.750 ⇒ 00:01:30.869 Hannah Wang: Hi. How’s everything?
20 00:01:33.180 ⇒ 00:01:34.070 Hannah Wang: I’m…
21 00:01:34.260 ⇒ 00:01:34.640 holly condos: You look.
22 00:01:34.640 ⇒ 00:01:36.480 Hannah Wang: I feel like I’m out of my routine.
23 00:01:36.730 ⇒ 00:01:38.230 Jake Nathan: Sorry, I missed her.
24 00:01:39.680 ⇒ 00:01:48.259 Hannah Wang: Yeah, I’m, like, actually helping some friends, like, film content for their business, at, like, a pumpkin patch.
25 00:01:48.450 ⇒ 00:01:49.000 holly condos: Have fun!
26 00:01:50.060 ⇒ 00:01:57.219 Hannah Wang: a little bit, because it’s more north of where I live, so I just drove earlier, and the traffic is terrible in LA, so…
27 00:01:57.370 ⇒ 00:01:57.750 holly condos: Yeah.
28 00:01:57.750 ⇒ 00:02:04.220 Hannah Wang: I feel all out of, like, rhythm, because usually I work from home, but I’m just like, well, let’s go, but that’s okay.
29 00:02:05.300 ⇒ 00:02:06.090 holly condos: Cool.
30 00:02:10.830 ⇒ 00:02:13.060 holly condos: Are we waiting on UTump?
31 00:02:15.780 ⇒ 00:02:17.079 holly condos: Yeah, I think we are.
32 00:02:17.080 ⇒ 00:02:19.480 Jake Nathan: I think… I think we are. I think he’s pretty…
33 00:02:25.170 ⇒ 00:02:27.560 holly condos: So, are you from Austin?
34 00:02:28.040 ⇒ 00:02:28.890 holly condos: Jake?
35 00:02:29.190 ⇒ 00:02:38.690 Jake Nathan: I am, yes. I was born and raised here, went to the University of Texas, so, I keep saying I’m gonna leave at some point, but I think I’m gonna stick around here for a while.
36 00:02:39.080 ⇒ 00:02:40.970 holly condos: Yeah, it’s a nice, nice city.
37 00:02:41.550 ⇒ 00:02:49.130 Jake Nathan: Yeah, I really… I enjoy it, and yeah, you know, all my friends and family are here, and my fiance, her…
38 00:02:49.130 ⇒ 00:03:02.000 Jake Nathan: Her family’s from here, so, yeah, seems… seems like it’s gonna be home-based, but, we like to travel, so, yeah, maybe we’ll try to pop around a few places. But, yeah, what about you? Are you from Vermont or San Diego?
39 00:03:02.120 ⇒ 00:03:04.189 holly condos: I’m from Colorado, originally.
40 00:03:04.190 ⇒ 00:03:07.569 Jake Nathan: Oh, cool. Man, you’ve lived in, like, every cool place ever, pretty much.
41 00:03:08.270 ⇒ 00:03:12.219 Jake Nathan: Well, I think the best was living in London for 3 years.
42 00:03:12.490 ⇒ 00:03:14.219 Jake Nathan: Oh my gosh.
43 00:03:14.220 ⇒ 00:03:20.179 holly condos: We got to go, like, almost everywhere in Western Europe on the weekends, and it was great.
44 00:03:21.100 ⇒ 00:03:29.569 Jake Nathan: Yeah, that’s gotta be a little bit different when you’re like, oh, let’s go to Germany this week, this weekend, for a weekend trip.
45 00:03:30.020 ⇒ 00:03:39.049 holly condos: It was, it was right before… well, so we came back in 2001, like, right after… or right before 9-11 happened.
46 00:03:39.840 ⇒ 00:03:44.290 holly condos: So, it was kind of a weird, re-entry to the U.S.
47 00:03:44.900 ⇒ 00:03:46.299 holly condos: Because of that, but…
48 00:03:46.300 ⇒ 00:03:47.040 Jake Nathan: Yeah.
49 00:03:47.040 ⇒ 00:03:57.510 holly condos: Yeah, like, we moved a lot of our stuff, like, we had this giant, you know, shipping crate that went on a boat, and it was… it wasn’t a wild experience, but…
50 00:03:58.330 ⇒ 00:04:00.520 holly condos: I would recommend it to anyone.
51 00:04:01.630 ⇒ 00:04:04.859 Jake Nathan: I mean, yeah, that sounds… That sounds incredible.
52 00:04:04.860 ⇒ 00:04:12.529 holly condos: Yeah, just getting out of your comfort zone and seeing how, you know, other cultures approach things, I think it’s really valuable.
53 00:04:14.350 ⇒ 00:04:18.809 Hannah Wang: That’s awesome. Jake, did you say you went to U of T? University of Texas?
54 00:04:19.579 ⇒ 00:04:20.490 Jake Nathan: Huh.
55 00:04:20.820 ⇒ 00:04:27.320 Hannah Wang: Yeah. I don’t know if you’ve talked to Justin, who’s, like, the new PM. Like, I think he worked at that campus for a couple years.
56 00:04:27.760 ⇒ 00:04:28.440 Jake Nathan: ruh.
57 00:04:28.610 ⇒ 00:04:31.470 Hannah Wang: Yeah, so, I think he’s also in Austin.
58 00:04:31.840 ⇒ 00:04:36.709 Jake Nathan: Oh, nice! I’ll have to… yeah, I’ll definitely… I need to talk to him. That’s cool.
59 00:04:38.900 ⇒ 00:04:49.920 Hannah Wang: I… well, I looked at Tom’s calendar. He has, like, meetings before this, so I don’t know if those are running late, but maybe we can give it, like, a minute or two, and then…
60 00:04:50.150 ⇒ 00:04:50.740 holly condos: Sure.
61 00:04:50.740 ⇒ 00:05:00.520 Hannah Wang: I’ll ping him. I don’t really know what we’re… I know we’re talking about MDX, but I don’t know if Tom has, like, an agenda for that, or anything, so…
62 00:05:01.390 ⇒ 00:05:06.289 Hannah Wang: I don’t know. I don’t know if we could run this meeting with Heather. I’m sure we can, but…
63 00:05:06.660 ⇒ 00:05:09.100 Hannah Wang: Anything else?
64 00:05:09.100 ⇒ 00:05:18.720 holly condos: Yeah, I think, Hannah, it was just the context that, you know, we had in Slack, and then what we talked about briefly the other day, just to kind of pick Jake’s brain.
65 00:05:19.020 ⇒ 00:05:27.330 holly condos: on… on what he has so far, or, you know, what he’s thinking, because I want to kind of incorporate that into our partner framework.
66 00:05:30.050 ⇒ 00:05:30.880 Hannah Wang: Totally.
67 00:05:31.090 ⇒ 00:05:34.330 Hannah Wang: Yeah, we… Well, I don’t know if…
68 00:05:34.770 ⇒ 00:05:39.430 Hannah Wang: So, like, the examples that Utam gave in the Slack thread, Polyatomic and
69 00:05:39.920 ⇒ 00:05:45.080 Hannah Wang: blips. Like, those were not necessarily, like, through MDFs or anything, it was just, like, a co-branded…
70 00:05:45.230 ⇒ 00:06:00.340 Hannah Wang: partnership co-hosted event type of thing. But definitely, like, doing something in a more formalized setting with a bigger company that will give us those funds to go run events, like, I think that would be pretty awesome.
71 00:06:00.830 ⇒ 00:06:05.120 Hannah Wang: So, yeah, I don’t, like, I think… Yeah, we’re trying to work…
72 00:06:05.120 ⇒ 00:06:13.160 holly condos: I think it might have also been spurred because I asked, you know, what, what partnerships Brainforge has.
73 00:06:13.670 ⇒ 00:06:21.409 holly condos: because as a partner, you can get MDF with Google, AWS, Azure, So I think he said…
74 00:06:22.080 ⇒ 00:06:25.249 holly condos: AWS and Google, is that right?
75 00:06:26.970 ⇒ 00:06:27.700 Hannah Wang: Perfect.
76 00:06:27.700 ⇒ 00:06:28.660 holly condos: Pretty sure. Here, let me…
77 00:06:28.660 ⇒ 00:06:30.390 Hannah Wang: Or… okay.
78 00:06:30.720 ⇒ 00:06:33.469 holly condos: I know it was AWS,
79 00:06:37.520 ⇒ 00:06:47.490 holly condos: But yeah, I think this… and then it clicked in its head, oh, we should have a call with Jake. So, I think that was kind of how this evolved, was because I asked.
80 00:06:48.600 ⇒ 00:06:49.520 holly condos: Oh, that’s great.
81 00:06:49.520 ⇒ 00:06:50.030 Hannah Wang: Right.
82 00:06:50.350 ⇒ 00:06:51.959 holly condos: Let me see…
83 00:06:56.490 ⇒ 00:07:06.699 holly condos: And at least, you know, on… On the purely organic side, where Brainforge is that partner.
84 00:07:06.870 ⇒ 00:07:17.780 holly condos: I mean, we can look into that, as far as MDF goes, but I’m assuming that, you know, Brainforge is not at the top levels, or at least even
85 00:07:19.240 ⇒ 00:07:24.600 holly condos: Advanced or, Premier, but, you know, that’s certainly something
86 00:07:25.040 ⇒ 00:07:32.880 holly condos: we could look into. But I think, Hannah, to your point, it probably gives us more leverage and makes more sense.
87 00:07:32.920 ⇒ 00:07:45.609 holly condos: in utilizing, you know, who we are and the time we have to, try to get MDF in a co-sell or partner relationship with a bigger company. Okay, here it is, let’s see,
88 00:07:47.310 ⇒ 00:07:50.829 holly condos: Yeah, that was last week. Let’s see…
89 00:07:59.320 ⇒ 00:08:05.519 holly condos: Okay, I see where he said something about MDF, but I don’t know if that was in response to my question. Let’s see.
90 00:08:16.170 ⇒ 00:08:18.729 holly condos: Yeah, it looks like AWS and Google.
91 00:08:20.310 ⇒ 00:08:23.509 Hannah Wang: Is that from, like, a Slack thread somewhere, or Discord?
92 00:08:24.330 ⇒ 00:08:25.529 holly condos: You think so.
93 00:08:26.210 ⇒ 00:08:33.410 holly condos: I think it was on Thursday? Let me just find it, and I’ll copy it and…
94 00:08:34.919 ⇒ 00:08:36.449 holly condos: Paste it over.
95 00:08:36.640 ⇒ 00:08:37.570 holly condos: If you want.
96 00:08:40.140 ⇒ 00:08:41.719 holly condos: See, where was that?
97 00:08:42.770 ⇒ 00:08:51.700 holly condos: Pretty sure it was in Slack, because I tried to move all our combos over .
98 00:08:53.420 ⇒ 00:08:54.090 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
99 00:08:55.780 ⇒ 00:08:56.949 Uttam Kumaran: Sorry about that.
100 00:08:58.180 ⇒ 00:09:00.380 Uttam Kumaran: It’s been running back-to-backs today.
101 00:09:01.390 ⇒ 00:09:01.760 holly condos: Now we’re.
102 00:09:01.760 ⇒ 00:09:02.680 Uttam Kumaran: recently.
103 00:09:03.540 ⇒ 00:09:12.019 Uttam Kumaran: Cool, I guess, yeah, I wanted to bring kind of the four of us together. I sent a little bit of an agenda, I think, last week on some of the topics.
104 00:09:12.160 ⇒ 00:09:16.869 Uttam Kumaran: But mainly today, I just wanted to… To chat about, like.
105 00:09:17.810 ⇒ 00:09:29.849 Uttam Kumaran: if we, you know, if any progress, you know, Holly and hand us, it’s Monday. If none, that’s fine, but I mainly wanted to talk about how we’re… how we can start to take Jake’s work with the vendors to the next level.
106 00:09:30.070 ⇒ 00:09:34.210 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, how we can start thinking about formal partnership
107 00:09:34.340 ⇒ 00:09:53.170 Uttam Kumaran: agreements, you know, especially around marketing development funds, and sort of kind of hear from you, Holly, on, like, since you’re… you’re the subject matter expert here on, like, what we could do, and what would be helpful for a company like ours to do with these vendors and make it a big win-win. But I also ideally get a lot of the expense covered.
108 00:09:53.230 ⇒ 00:10:00.260 Uttam Kumaran: You know, for some of these activities. So we can probably start there if that’s… If that works.
109 00:10:00.450 ⇒ 00:10:06.639 holly condos: Sure, yeah, and I think it would be helpful… I found your Slack now, Utam.
110 00:10:07.370 ⇒ 00:10:12.049 holly condos: But I think it would be helpful, Jake, to understand, like, some of your…
111 00:10:12.860 ⇒ 00:10:17.280 holly condos: What you’ve been finding as far as marketing… joint marketing efforts so far?
112 00:10:18.520 ⇒ 00:10:22.619 holly condos: Yeah. Like, how is it happening? What are we doing?
113 00:10:23.190 ⇒ 00:10:28.100 holly condos: What is the venue or the audience? You know, that kind of info?
114 00:10:29.180 ⇒ 00:10:35.430 Jake Nathan: Yeah, so right now, what I’m doing, like I was saying earlier, is I’m,
115 00:10:35.680 ⇒ 00:10:51.069 Jake Nathan: interviewing different subject matter experts, either internally at Brainforge or with vendors, and then turning that into content. So that’s… that’s what I’ve been working on. So right now, like, in the pipeline, either in progress or finished, we have, like,
116 00:10:51.280 ⇒ 00:11:08.570 Jake Nathan: a RAG piece that we’re doing with Contextual AI. We… I interviewed, Real Data this morning. Yesterday, Utam and I had a conversation with the CEO of Omni, which I thought went really well, and, he… he was…
117 00:11:08.580 ⇒ 00:11:26.420 Jake Nathan: I felt, like, really excited when Uten was asking follow-up questions, and then I also did an interview yesterday with a company called Mother Duck. So those are the four vendors that we have right now. All of them have been really positive experiences so far. We,
118 00:11:26.570 ⇒ 00:11:29.530 Jake Nathan: Contextual is the one that we, have.
119 00:11:29.720 ⇒ 00:11:41.590 Jake Nathan: created our content asset, we sent it, it’s like a PDF, we sent it to them to review, and so we’re waiting to hear back from them, and then the rest of those conversations we just had either yesterday or today.
120 00:11:41.600 ⇒ 00:11:50.320 Jake Nathan: And so, gonna start creating content for that, and then, I think Utam had potentially a vision of,
121 00:11:50.660 ⇒ 00:12:01.859 Jake Nathan: creating an event around, the… almost the content that we’re making. So, for example, for contextual, we’re making a piece about how to implement RAG at your…
122 00:12:02.050 ⇒ 00:12:10.250 Jake Nathan: company, so, like, we could potentially have an event, a RAG-specific event, and then tie in contextual there. So that… that’s kind of…
123 00:12:10.430 ⇒ 00:12:14.280 Jake Nathan: what I’ve gleaned so far, but happy to answer more questions.
124 00:12:14.840 ⇒ 00:12:20.869 holly condos: Okay, so, and that’s great. So, it sounds like,
125 00:12:21.240 ⇒ 00:12:28.010 holly condos: Utam, we’re taking at least these four examples that Jake mentioned from the standpoint of…
126 00:12:28.620 ⇒ 00:12:31.360 holly condos: Let’s organically create an event.
127 00:12:31.720 ⇒ 00:12:34.819 holly condos: Rather than, hey, there’s something that we want to…
128 00:12:35.010 ⇒ 00:12:39.120 holly condos: jointly market together and appear at? Is that fair?
129 00:12:40.190 ⇒ 00:12:47.340 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, I guess I’m open to sort of… you’ve probably seen the gamut of, like, opportunities, but for us,
130 00:12:47.990 ⇒ 00:12:52.119 Uttam Kumaran: Running events and, like, event marketing is a big channel for us.
131 00:12:52.350 ⇒ 00:12:55.940 Uttam Kumaran: It is definitely costly. Yeah.
132 00:12:56.340 ⇒ 00:12:59.009 Uttam Kumaran: So what, what, you know, I, I spoke to…
133 00:12:59.070 ⇒ 00:13:16.470 Uttam Kumaran: someone at a partner company of ours, Glimpse, some sort of about this, and, you know, one of the things, she came from a world where she had very little budget, and now she’s at Glimpse, where they’re trying to run, like, an event a week. And basically what she was like, look, it’s incredibly hard for us to execute these events, and also get the right people in the room.
134 00:13:16.470 ⇒ 00:13:18.660 holly condos: That is something that you guys do well, because…
135 00:13:18.760 ⇒ 00:13:30.350 Uttam Kumaran: we just have connections in these areas, and we curate, and so it’s actually a really high ROI-type thing for them to get their product, especially given Jake and I are here in Austin.
136 00:13:30.350 ⇒ 00:13:44.250 Uttam Kumaran: there is no presence that these companies have here, especially with, like, the people that are both buyers and developers here, so there is a good pitch for them to do that with us. It is expensive, you know?
137 00:13:44.250 ⇒ 00:13:56.119 Uttam Kumaran: And it is something that I want to sort of make sure that we can ride a little bit on their distribution, but also make it worthwhile for them. So when I got introduced to this concept of, like, the MDF,
138 00:13:56.120 ⇒ 00:14:13.989 Uttam Kumaran: maybe, like, 6 months ago from, someone I met at another event we ran, he was sort of telling me about how this is sort of standard practice with a lot of vendors, and so it’s something that I think I would love to explore. I don’t… I don’t particularly… I’m not particularly interested in this becoming, like, a revenue stream for us. Like, I would… I would just like this to be…
139 00:14:14.470 ⇒ 00:14:24.989 Uttam Kumaran: like, basically give us, like, a very low-cost or zero-cost way to get into more… in front of more customers, and run our deployment, you know? Yeah.
140 00:14:26.060 ⇒ 00:14:30.910 holly condos: Okay, so of these four, contextual, Omni, Mother Duck, and Glimpse.
141 00:14:31.320 ⇒ 00:14:32.910 holly condos: Was that the fourth one, Jake?
142 00:14:32.910 ⇒ 00:14:34.069 Uttam Kumaran: Rill was the fourth one.
143 00:14:34.070 ⇒ 00:14:35.230 Jake Nathan: Oh, yeah, bro.
144 00:14:35.800 ⇒ 00:14:40.150 holly condos: I wrote down glimpse for some reason, probably because you said it, Yourself.
145 00:14:40.380 ⇒ 00:14:43.919 holly condos: None of them are, like, enterprise with…
146 00:14:44.350 ⇒ 00:14:49.050 holly condos: existing partnerships with the hyperscaler, right? Is that fair?
147 00:14:49.800 ⇒ 00:14:55.629 Uttam Kumaran: I’m not, contextual, and Omni may have.
148 00:14:56.030 ⇒ 00:14:56.910 holly condos: OmniMite.
149 00:14:57.450 ⇒ 00:15:05.989 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. OmniMite and ContextualMite, they… they are both… like, Omni is a business intelligence tool. They’re often sitting on data that’s in
150 00:15:06.090 ⇒ 00:15:09.029 Uttam Kumaran: One of those hyperscalers, and then contextual.
151 00:15:09.140 ⇒ 00:15:24.770 Uttam Kumaran: they work with Amazon Bedrock, all the core AI APIs, basically, LLM APIs, because they sit downstream of those outputs. They plug into your LLM. They are not like an LLM provider themselves.
152 00:15:24.820 ⇒ 00:15:30.450 Uttam Kumaran: So both of them will have… will… should… should and I can ask, if we could frame the question, I can totally ask.
153 00:15:30.890 ⇒ 00:15:37.769 holly condos: Okay, yeah, so pure MDF, Marketing Development Funds, are typically
154 00:15:38.120 ⇒ 00:15:42.480 holly condos: Earmarked by the hyperscaler, right?
155 00:15:43.040 ⇒ 00:15:52.319 holly condos: Now, there are many enterprises who have marketing budgets. I’m sure you guys know this, right? I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. But,
156 00:15:52.750 ⇒ 00:16:02.680 holly condos: But I think what I’m… Struggling with a little bit is, okay, when we are approaching this group.
157 00:16:04.280 ⇒ 00:16:06.559 holly condos: Are… Jake, are we…
158 00:16:06.690 ⇒ 00:16:12.639 holly condos: Are we saying, hey, let’s do an event together? Or are we saying… like, how are you approaching them?
159 00:16:12.780 ⇒ 00:16:17.700 holly condos: Hey, we have similar synergies, let’s see what we can do together as far as events.
160 00:16:17.700 ⇒ 00:16:18.339 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so let me…
161 00:16:18.340 ⇒ 00:16:19.350 holly condos: leads…
162 00:16:19.700 ⇒ 00:16:29.930 Uttam Kumaran: Let me give you an example, because we did an event with a company called Polytomic, and this was another vendor of ours that we implement a lot with, and I can talk… walk you through
163 00:16:30.030 ⇒ 00:16:34.210 Uttam Kumaran: Sort of exactly, you know, how that went.
164 00:16:34.400 ⇒ 00:16:36.159 Uttam Kumaran: Trying to see if I have…
165 00:16:36.860 ⇒ 00:16:42.129 holly condos: And another question, Uten, do you have paper with any of these yet?
166 00:16:42.920 ⇒ 00:16:46.389 Uttam Kumaran: No, yeah, we actually do,
167 00:16:47.260 ⇒ 00:16:49.669 Uttam Kumaran: We do, but none of the…
168 00:16:50.100 ⇒ 00:16:59.579 Uttam Kumaran: have anything around, like, MDF, they’re all partner agreements, like, mostly referral agreements, so that if we sell their business, we get some kickback.
169 00:16:59.950 ⇒ 00:17:04.150 Uttam Kumaran: Or it’s an… or it includes NDA and stuff like that. So we do have…
170 00:17:05.030 ⇒ 00:17:09.509 Uttam Kumaran: with all of those, except… actually, with all of those, we do. All four of those.
171 00:17:09.510 ⇒ 00:17:24.710 holly condos: Great. That’s good, because you can always… well, two thoughts there. So, in the ones that we have already, we can always tweak those as needed, or, you know, the agreements may be broad enough
172 00:17:24.710 ⇒ 00:17:36.769 holly condos: that marketing activities fall under the general scope? I’m not too worried about that. But second comment, so in the context of our program, right?
173 00:17:36.770 ⇒ 00:17:37.390 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
174 00:17:37.520 ⇒ 00:17:52.990 holly condos: I would recommend an agreement that… and, you know, again, we can play around with this, but I can… but I would recommend having the flexibility with partners, you know, to do various things.
175 00:17:52.990 ⇒ 00:17:53.340 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
176 00:17:53.340 ⇒ 00:18:10.199 holly condos: be straight referral. It could just be, we’re only providing you with leads, and we’re doing the implementation, right? I mean, there are lots of flavors, but I think logistically and workflow-wise, it’s helpful to not have a whole bunch of agreements.
177 00:18:11.120 ⇒ 00:18:12.080 Uttam Kumaran: Totally, I mean, we…
178 00:18:12.080 ⇒ 00:18:14.680 holly condos: recall, but that would be my recommendation.
179 00:18:14.940 ⇒ 00:18:23.690 Uttam Kumaran: No, I agree. And again, we were just limited because when I first went to Aldi’s, I was like, we can implement you, let’s sign something.
180 00:18:23.690 ⇒ 00:18:24.010 holly condos: Yeah.
181 00:18:24.010 ⇒ 00:18:24.879 Uttam Kumaran: That is mainly…
182 00:18:24.880 ⇒ 00:18:26.029 holly condos: Yeah, no, and…
183 00:18:26.030 ⇒ 00:18:28.179 Uttam Kumaran: That’s mainly for me to just get in the room.
184 00:18:28.180 ⇒ 00:18:28.570 holly condos: Sure.
185 00:18:28.570 ⇒ 00:18:46.389 Uttam Kumaran: But, again, for, like, let me give you an example. We ran an event with Polytomic, and we not only did, like, an interview, and this is my backyard, and then we did an event at a house in Austin, where we had, like, probably 25 people come.
186 00:18:46.390 ⇒ 00:18:46.820 holly condos: Huh.
187 00:18:46.820 ⇒ 00:18:57.769 Uttam Kumaran: Polytomic promoted it, they paid for all of it, and we basically did the, like, getting people there, and, like, getting all the people, doing some of the co-branding, doing all the marketing.
188 00:18:58.040 ⇒ 00:19:09.360 Uttam Kumaran: And so a pitch for them was like, look, like, one, you guys don’t have much presence here. Second, they… they don’t really have a strict go-to-market effort, and they wanted to do some stuff like this.
189 00:19:09.820 ⇒ 00:19:20.930 Uttam Kumaran: Of course, what are we good at? I can get a great designed, you know, landing page, a white paper, we can set up the event, I can get people there.
190 00:19:20.930 ⇒ 00:19:21.340 holly condos: A weekend.
191 00:19:21.340 ⇒ 00:19:34.499 Uttam Kumaran: We get it filmed, we get it edited, we get it published, so I can do all that. That’s easy for us. We have great people on the staff to do that. They paid for it, though. They pay the two or three grand for everything, to rent the house and for the food. That’s perfect.
192 00:19:34.650 ⇒ 00:19:40.160 Uttam Kumaran: So… and then similarly for… we did one with, with operating. They are a…
193 00:19:40.250 ⇒ 00:19:52.590 Uttam Kumaran: like an allocation and planning product for consultancies. We use them. And they wanted to do a AI in consulting, and they wanted to interview me at a little fireside.
194 00:19:52.590 ⇒ 00:20:00.509 Uttam Kumaran: And they paid for the whole thing. They rented out this wine bar in Austin, and I just showed up. We got a ton of, like, great leads out of that.
195 00:20:00.510 ⇒ 00:20:02.900 holly condos: I saw that on LinkedIn, yeah. And…
196 00:20:02.900 ⇒ 00:20:17.030 Uttam Kumaran: But what they can’t do is they can’t have me… they have… I’m using AI in my consultancy every day, so it’s extremely rich, and this is a room full of consultants, or ex-consultants, or… right? So, in most of our stuff, we haven’t paid a dime.
197 00:20:17.200 ⇒ 00:20:31.750 Uttam Kumaran: this talk, too. Like, I just talked. We didn’t pay a dime for this. What we do, though, is, like, I know we can get a great video out, I know we can get people hyped about it, and I can get people there. Those are things that sometimes these guys aren’t that good at, and of course, like.
198 00:20:32.110 ⇒ 00:20:36.059 Uttam Kumaran: I can go in and talk and create buzz about whatever we need.
199 00:20:36.320 ⇒ 00:20:40.769 Uttam Kumaran: So, that’s how we go pitch. So, for an Omni or these guys, one.
200 00:20:40.780 ⇒ 00:21:00.489 Uttam Kumaran: like, what is their typical way of doing it? If they even have an event strategy, right? Do they have an event person? Second, they’re gonna try to run a happy hour or something like BS. It’s gonna be useless. So, one is, like, can we identify, like, what they’re trying to push? Is it a new feature? Is it just the fact that they exist? Second, like, can I build a room full of their ICPs?
201 00:21:00.490 ⇒ 00:21:15.640 Uttam Kumaran: that is, like, actually an event that will be memorable for the people there, where they can push their product, but also they have us who are… we implement them in an ecosystem. We implement outcomes. So they need… they love us, because we talk about them as part of a puzzle.
202 00:21:15.640 ⇒ 00:21:17.110 holly condos: Versus, like…
203 00:21:18.630 ⇒ 00:21:20.120 holly condos: Just as another company.
204 00:21:20.120 ⇒ 00:21:29.399 Uttam Kumaran: And the last piece is, like, people are kind of burned off getting sold by vendors. Like, we don’t sell… we… I sell multiple vendors, but I’m… again, I’m talking about a solution.
205 00:21:29.460 ⇒ 00:21:47.049 Uttam Kumaran: And so, I’m… my pitch is way better than their pitch, typically, about why you should buy them. And they… and they noticed that, and they’re like, okay, we should do something. So, that’s sort of, like, what would be the reason. For me, I just want to make sure that we’ve now done a couple of these where we’ve seen that they’re willing to pay for it.
206 00:21:47.280 ⇒ 00:21:57.759 Uttam Kumaran: So can we start to arrange either, again, one, that, like, it doesn’t come out of our budget? Second, maybe something with these guys that we can run more frequently, or we have budget or paper to run more frequently.
207 00:21:57.950 ⇒ 00:22:09.240 Uttam Kumaran: And we really can start to build up our event and marketing arm, which, ideally, we want to be a significant segment of our marketing efforts. I think, like, cold outbound, cold is really, really tough.
208 00:22:09.240 ⇒ 00:22:09.770 holly condos: Yeah.
209 00:22:09.770 ⇒ 00:22:17.460 Uttam Kumaran: form relationships and referral and word of mouth is not, like, sustainable. Events is a huge category that I think
210 00:22:17.830 ⇒ 00:22:26.939 Uttam Kumaran: all it is is scaling our messaging in person, and that’s what we wanna… we wanna do. And the other edge we have is, like, Jake and I are both here.
211 00:22:27.070 ⇒ 00:22:34.449 Uttam Kumaran: in this, like, small, big town, where there’s, like, not a lot of players, and it’s part of, like, the big conference circuit, so…
212 00:22:34.950 ⇒ 00:22:39.220 Uttam Kumaran: we have some reasons why I think this could work, I just want to figure out…
213 00:22:39.470 ⇒ 00:22:41.620 Uttam Kumaran: How it’s part of the program, basically.
214 00:22:42.520 ⇒ 00:22:47.079 holly condos: Okay, all right, so, and that’s helpful, thanks. So, I, I think…
215 00:22:47.310 ⇒ 00:22:53.140 holly condos: What makes the most sense is to just kind of keep doing what you’re doing.
216 00:22:53.140 ⇒ 00:22:55.649 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Right? And…
217 00:22:57.550 ⇒ 00:23:05.850 holly condos: And not so much focus on the traditional MDF, but more what you can leverage from a polytomic, right?
218 00:23:05.850 ⇒ 00:23:06.440 Uttam Kumaran: Sure.
219 00:23:06.720 ⇒ 00:23:10.689 holly condos: Having said that, so… so to drive…
220 00:23:10.980 ⇒ 00:23:24.199 holly condos: repeat events, or more events. So how did you leave it with… with Polytomic? Like, hey, that was great, you know, we got a lot of leads and buzz off this, let’s do it again. Like, where did you leave things?
221 00:23:25.150 ⇒ 00:23:43.470 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, we typically do, like, a little bit of a retro on our marketing team, where we look through how many leads did we get, how many people came, how many impressions we got on social. We all have that all tracked, and yeah, I mean, we could run another one with them. They are a bit of a smaller company, like, this is the CEO, and, like, he’s… so…
222 00:23:43.570 ⇒ 00:23:48.630 Uttam Kumaran: this is where, like, for the reason why I… an Omni, a mother duck,
223 00:23:48.730 ⇒ 00:24:06.089 Uttam Kumaran: a real and a contextual, they all, like, if I was talking about Omni, Contextual, and Mother Duck, they all raised anywhere from 30 million in the last 6 months, and they’re all trying to acquire customers, like, as fast as possible. So, the reason why
224 00:24:06.180 ⇒ 00:24:14.080 Uttam Kumaran: I’m not pushing polyatomic or blue people is because those guys I know, I think they have the highest propensity to be down for this.
225 00:24:14.080 ⇒ 00:24:15.220 holly condos: Yeah.
226 00:24:15.630 ⇒ 00:24:24.520 Uttam Kumaran: And we have… there’s a bunch of other vendors that are kind of in a similar position. So I just think that, one, for us.
227 00:24:24.650 ⇒ 00:24:39.480 Uttam Kumaran: again, like, it’s… the money is actually important, because we have to throw an event where actually the ROI is there. Like, for us to get someone like me, who’s in Austin, to come to an event, it has to be curated, it has to… like, that’s where we have a little bit of an art, and like, how do we throw an event
228 00:24:39.540 ⇒ 00:24:49.699 Uttam Kumaran: worth going to? And then, how do we actually, like, that is just… we’ll just take some cash to do, like, anywhere from 2 to 5 grand to, like, get that all…
229 00:24:49.800 ⇒ 00:24:58.969 Uttam Kumaran: situated, and that’s why I just don’t want to pay for it, and I think they’d be open to paying for it. And then second, again, like, it just continues to expand our relationship.
230 00:24:59.140 ⇒ 00:25:11.389 Uttam Kumaran: we just got on the phone with the CEOs or high in sales at all those places, and so they want, they, like, like us, they want to do more with us, we’re doing some stuff digitally, I think events is the natural, like, next…
231 00:25:12.110 ⇒ 00:25:13.190 Uttam Kumaran: You know, step.
232 00:25:13.780 ⇒ 00:25:14.530 holly condos: Okay.
233 00:25:16.080 ⇒ 00:25:17.639 Uttam Kumaran: My question is kind of like.
234 00:25:18.530 ⇒ 00:25:21.380 Uttam Kumaran: We have not yet approached them with anything.
235 00:25:21.910 ⇒ 00:25:34.219 Uttam Kumaran: I think it’s a natural way for us to promote the assets that we develop out from these interviews. Like, we have a top 10 things to blah blah blah, we have these, like, PDFs and playbooks.
236 00:25:34.540 ⇒ 00:25:41.989 Uttam Kumaran: I would like to… part of this is sort of, like, what is our sales strategy to sell them on this? But I also want to talk about, like, what is the logistics, like.
237 00:25:43.660 ⇒ 00:25:48.760 Uttam Kumaran: again, I would like it to be some sort of standard thing where we’re gonna be… maybe we sign something where
238 00:25:48.990 ⇒ 00:25:55.380 Uttam Kumaran: There’s, like, we put a clear budget in place, because a lot of the stuff we’ve done has been… we’ve sort of, like.
239 00:25:56.150 ⇒ 00:26:07.750 Uttam Kumaran: it’s not been so official, it’s that, like, we kind of, like, work on it, and at some point, we get the courage to be like, can you guys pay for everything? Because we’ll… we’ll handle the rest. And, like, I want to sort of hit that…
240 00:26:07.800 ⇒ 00:26:19.980 Uttam Kumaran: I want to make it, like, we… I want to make it seem like we’ve… we’ve done this before, and that the ROI is really extreme. The other things that we do, again, and again, you may have… you may have noticed this in that,
241 00:26:20.180 ⇒ 00:26:39.559 Uttam Kumaran: B2B SaaS marketing has changed a lot in that there’s a lot of stuff that’s more digital now. YouTube, Shorts, LinkedIn, and a lot of what I want to do is actually show that we’re gonna cut up a lot of the footage from the event, and drive impressions, and drive likes. And this is actually very similar work to what we do for clients, by the way. It’s like.
242 00:26:39.560 ⇒ 00:26:45.069 Uttam Kumaran: show the impact of marketing. And I want it… I want, as a package, to come to them and be like.
243 00:26:45.390 ⇒ 00:26:46.990 Uttam Kumaran: For 5 grand.
244 00:26:47.100 ⇒ 00:26:54.800 Uttam Kumaran: we not only do all the stuff I said we can do, but we’re also gonna do the YouTube shorts, we’re gonna put stuff out on LinkedIn, like…
245 00:26:55.250 ⇒ 00:26:58.529 Uttam Kumaran: It’s well worth you handing that to us to do.
246 00:26:58.700 ⇒ 00:27:12.470 Uttam Kumaran: And we were gonna do that any… and I was gonna do that anyways and bear the cost, so again, it just really, like, it’s cutting a lot of that cost that I would have had to pay for, you know, and people are… our time, and it’s just being like, cool.
247 00:27:12.670 ⇒ 00:27:18.520 Uttam Kumaran: For both putting the event and generating all the assets and buzz, and creating this long tail of content.
248 00:27:18.770 ⇒ 00:27:22.649 Uttam Kumaran: like, 5 grand, 10 grand, can you guys sponsor? You know?
249 00:27:22.650 ⇒ 00:27:33.129 holly condos: Right, right. And I love that. I think that’s great. And I would agree with what you said earlier in the call, that most companies don’t
250 00:27:33.280 ⇒ 00:27:37.770 holly condos: Have the flexibility, the assets, the talent.
251 00:27:37.990 ⇒ 00:27:43.879 holly condos: the agility that you guys do, right? I mean, you can just… you can pop something up quick.
252 00:27:44.030 ⇒ 00:27:44.560 holly condos: Casino.
253 00:27:44.560 ⇒ 00:27:55.309 Uttam Kumaran: And again, like, I’m meeting a lot of people, especially here in Austin, but we have the same connections in SF and New York, like, these guys just won’t be able to get these people in a room.
254 00:27:55.610 ⇒ 00:27:55.930 holly condos: Right.
255 00:27:55.930 ⇒ 00:28:02.800 Uttam Kumaran: Because this is just relationship capital that we have, because we’re just… we’re in the market as consultants, not as vendors.
256 00:28:02.800 ⇒ 00:28:04.120 holly condos: Right, exactly.
257 00:28:04.120 ⇒ 00:28:09.460 Uttam Kumaran: it’s such a win-win for us, because I want… again, this is another added, is like.
258 00:28:09.920 ⇒ 00:28:29.680 Uttam Kumaran: I go say, hey, we’re throwing an event for amazing people, and we DM every amazing people or person that we wanted to meet, and I said, you should come to this event, it’s completely curated, and it’s also, like, this is not another executive roundtable BS. This is not another, like, happy hour. This is, like, me being like, you should come to this.
259 00:28:29.830 ⇒ 00:28:30.160 holly condos: Right.
260 00:28:30.160 ⇒ 00:28:38.829 Uttam Kumaran: We should get a beer or coffee, like, right? So it’s so natural, and it’s such a win for us, and if we get it paid for, it’s even better, you know?
261 00:28:40.390 ⇒ 00:28:52.330 holly condos: So, yeah, I… I think that’s amazing. I’m just thinking it through from a partner perspective, right? So, I think that’s… that’s a really attractive sell.
262 00:28:53.330 ⇒ 00:28:58.249 holly condos: For you to be able to say, hey, we have all this capability, we have…
263 00:28:58.860 ⇒ 00:29:04.499 holly condos: like I said, the assets, we can do this for 2 to 5K. Are you, you know…
264 00:29:04.740 ⇒ 00:29:13.199 holly condos: can you cover this? And most of the time, I think companies are going to say yes, just because of everything that you’ve described.
265 00:29:13.300 ⇒ 00:29:25.790 holly condos: Right? But… but I think where we’re at, if I am putting it together right, based on what you’re all saying, it’s, okay, we did this one time, but now… but now what?
266 00:29:26.890 ⇒ 00:29:27.490 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
267 00:29:27.650 ⇒ 00:29:37.490 holly condos: Right? Do we do another one? Do we wait a quarter? Is that fair? Is that kind of where you’re at in this particular context of…
268 00:29:37.490 ⇒ 00:29:41.150 Uttam Kumaran: Well, where we’re at right now is it’s all been ad hoc, like…
269 00:29:41.150 ⇒ 00:29:41.610 holly condos: Yeah.
270 00:29:41.610 ⇒ 00:29:44.780 Uttam Kumaran: I happen to know the Blue People guys, and they do this event here.
271 00:29:44.920 ⇒ 00:29:49.529 Uttam Kumaran: I knew the Polyatomic CEO, so I was like, are you doing any marketing? He’s like, not really.
272 00:29:49.630 ⇒ 00:29:54.699 Uttam Kumaran: we got approached by VixelCon in Operating because VixelCon is one of our advisors.
273 00:29:54.700 ⇒ 00:29:57.650 holly condos: Yeah. Operating. I also know the guy, the CEO.
274 00:29:57.740 ⇒ 00:30:11.489 Uttam Kumaran: And so, like, in default, like, I know Caitlin, who’s on their product. So, like, these are all been just, like, sporadic. There’s no strategy, and so I want us to get to the point where we’re running… we have plans to run one of these every month.
275 00:30:11.770 ⇒ 00:30:13.670 Uttam Kumaran: And…
276 00:30:14.180 ⇒ 00:30:19.430 Uttam Kumaran: We have that sort of schedule laid out, and then it moves… it moves to even more frequently than that.
277 00:30:19.580 ⇒ 00:30:26.840 Uttam Kumaran: Because this is a huge… even if we had to pay the 5K, the ROI is very big for us.
278 00:30:26.840 ⇒ 00:30:28.170 holly condos: Sure, sure. Agreed.
279 00:30:28.170 ⇒ 00:30:35.420 Uttam Kumaran: But I also think I don’t have to pay that. Like, I think we could get them to pay that, and… but you’re right in that, like, again, to the point of…
280 00:30:35.610 ⇒ 00:30:38.870 Uttam Kumaran: Of, like, eliminating the scope
281 00:30:39.070 ⇒ 00:30:53.109 Uttam Kumaran: I want us to do one with Contextual. If we can do one every quarter, we can do one with Omni every quarter, we can be their go-to people here in Austin to do that. They’re gonna come speak at some conferences here, they’re gonna wanna throw an after-party, an event, like.
282 00:30:53.260 ⇒ 00:30:57.030 Uttam Kumaran: we can just do that with them, but what I want to avoid is that, like.
283 00:30:57.320 ⇒ 00:31:12.799 Uttam Kumaran: I… this is a pure CAC for our… for the Brainforge business, is our goal, like… but I want to make it so obvious to them that, like, we could just take this sort of work off your hands, and they need a partner to run, like, a great event like this, versus just
284 00:31:12.930 ⇒ 00:31:15.669 Uttam Kumaran: Being a title sponsor at another happy hour.
285 00:31:16.400 ⇒ 00:31:17.040 Uttam Kumaran: You know?
286 00:31:17.040 ⇒ 00:31:23.610 holly condos: Okay, yeah, I hear you. Who’s, who’s your marketing team? Are you guys it?
287 00:31:24.170 ⇒ 00:31:31.990 Uttam Kumaran: It’s me… well, Hannah is… has the one been doing a lot of the logistics on all the events. Robert and I usually go do the talking, and then.
288 00:31:31.990 ⇒ 00:31:32.610 holly condos: Yeah.
289 00:31:32.610 ⇒ 00:31:35.530 Uttam Kumaran: getting, like, basically suggesting who to DM, but…
290 00:31:35.600 ⇒ 00:31:54.190 Uttam Kumaran: Again, we’ve put a lot of this on rails, like, we could start a campaign to start inviting people, like, we have a four, two-week, same-week process. We get people. We’ve put together things like this, which is, like, this is what we send to these partners, which is, like, why promote with us? Here’s all the examples of what.
291 00:31:54.190 ⇒ 00:31:58.000 holly condos: Okay, I was gonna ask you, so, so what is the content? Yeah, okay.
292 00:31:58.000 ⇒ 00:31:59.240 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so this is, like.
293 00:31:59.530 ⇒ 00:32:12.019 Uttam Kumaran: all the stuff we’ve done, I think even, Hannah, we just… we still have stuff that’s not on here, right? Like, all of it. We have stuff on YouTube, our shorts, all the metrics around, like, the number of assets that we can produce.
294 00:32:12.030 ⇒ 00:32:18.419 Uttam Kumaran: the look and feel of those, why… and so what I asked the team to do is… is basically put in a one-pager on
295 00:32:18.420 ⇒ 00:32:33.160 Uttam Kumaran: why this makes sense. Like, why it’s great to promote this? Here’s all the examples. Naturally, also, once we start running events, the next biggest thing is someone’s gonna ask us to come on stage at a big conference. That’s where I want to get us to, right?
296 00:32:33.190 ⇒ 00:32:34.250 holly condos: Right.
297 00:32:34.250 ⇒ 00:32:39.640 Uttam Kumaran: I want to get us to the point where we can go to a re-invent and say, you guys need us on stage.
298 00:32:39.880 ⇒ 00:32:48.589 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And then to the point where they’re starting to ask us, like, that is the… those are the degrees, and I think we have to sort of make… we’ve bootstrapped our own
299 00:32:48.700 ⇒ 00:32:54.910 Uttam Kumaran: like, promotions motion here. And this is sort of the asset that we created, is like, why promote with us?
300 00:32:54.930 ⇒ 00:32:57.700 holly condos: So the moment someone comes and says, why promote with us?
301 00:32:57.960 ⇒ 00:33:10.760 Uttam Kumaran: like, we send them this, and I can go get testimonials from all these people that we promoted with. I think we’re missing here another 3 or 4 promotions that we did, like Chop Talk, the Glimpse event.
302 00:33:11.310 ⇒ 00:33:26.530 Uttam Kumaran: we should put all the metrics on how our YouTube’s performing, how LinkedIn’s performing, the outreach, the types of… the types of titles that showed up at our event, like, the amount of leads that came… like, we can just chop… pack this full
303 00:33:26.910 ⇒ 00:33:32.089 Uttam Kumaran: But again, like, the lovely thing is, we’re not a media company, or not an events company.
304 00:33:32.090 ⇒ 00:33:32.800 holly condos: Right.
305 00:33:32.800 ⇒ 00:33:35.080 Uttam Kumaran: And… but I will tell you that, like.
306 00:33:36.180 ⇒ 00:33:45.629 Uttam Kumaran: I have friends that run events companies, and this… they’re… they’re… they’re piss-poor, like, they don’t even put together something like this. So that’s what I want to… that’s what I want to do. Yeah.
307 00:33:45.630 ⇒ 00:33:54.070 holly condos: So, so just to clarify, Are you… You’re not… you’re not… Talking about
308 00:33:54.660 ⇒ 00:33:59.660 holly condos: selling this as a service. You’re talking about using it as a promotion.
309 00:34:00.080 ⇒ 00:34:03.559 holly condos: tool and getting it paid for with a partner, right?
310 00:34:04.380 ⇒ 00:34:09.159 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like, just like any channel, any sales channel we have, there is some cost.
311 00:34:09.280 ⇒ 00:34:10.929 Uttam Kumaran: Right? Sure. Like, for…
312 00:34:10.969 ⇒ 00:34:24.020 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So, for this, this is a typical high-expense sales channel, but the ROI is very big. Right. Like, I… in… if we were to do outbound sales, or if we were to have to
313 00:34:24.050 ⇒ 00:34:35.289 Uttam Kumaran: you know, do other motions. Like, again, I talked about the three motions. We have cold, cold email, we have, like, content, we have, just typical, like, referrals.
314 00:34:35.330 ⇒ 00:34:48.459 Uttam Kumaran: Or, like, let’s just say warm referrals, sort of random, and then we have events. We want to move to almost, like, 60% events, is, like, what we’ve seen as a benchmark from people in this industry.
315 00:34:48.560 ⇒ 00:34:52.229 Uttam Kumaran: As, like, marketing dollars, but, like, just general, like, marketing…
316 00:34:52.659 ⇒ 00:35:06.090 Uttam Kumaran: mindshare. And so we want to move from, like, content, I think we’ve… we’ve now gotten to a place where, yeah, there… it’s… it… we can generate content, but we’re not seeing the success on the lead side.
317 00:35:06.100 ⇒ 00:35:20.869 Uttam Kumaran: Anytime we’ve done an event, we’ve seen tremendous success, because our messaging is really hitting, and especially if someone shakes my hand and wants to talk about AI, high chance they’re gonna get a… they’re gonna wanna… and they have the budget, high chance they’re gonna wanna work with us.
318 00:35:20.870 ⇒ 00:35:24.670 holly condos: Right. And so we were just trying to buy stores out, but the expense is very high, like…
319 00:35:24.720 ⇒ 00:35:34.520 Uttam Kumaran: the expense is very high, and we are small. Like, Brainforge is not a big brand, so partnering with a contextual or Omni, and if they post it on their channels.
320 00:35:34.650 ⇒ 00:35:35.580 holly condos: Like…
321 00:35:35.630 ⇒ 00:35:37.300 Uttam Kumaran: It will be tremendous.
322 00:35:37.300 ⇒ 00:35:39.070 holly condos: Big deal, yeah, agreed.
323 00:35:39.580 ⇒ 00:35:46.509 holly condos: Okay, so I kind of started this before you came on, but… so…
324 00:35:47.350 ⇒ 00:35:50.369 holly condos: Brainforge is an AWS partner, right?
325 00:35:50.860 ⇒ 00:35:53.099 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we have a… I think we’re part of the startup.
326 00:35:53.830 ⇒ 00:35:58.559 holly condos: Oh, that’s right. Part of the startup thing, right. So,
327 00:36:00.270 ⇒ 00:36:10.599 holly condos: I think that… I’m thinking big here, so… not right away, but I think that we should have in our, you know, stretch goal
328 00:36:11.020 ⇒ 00:36:29.499 holly condos: to start promoting some of this that you’re doing, you know, why promote with Brainforge? We should either, upload a case study, or, you know, start to get you some visibility, because that’s what is going to get you on the reinvent stage faster than.
329 00:36:29.500 ⇒ 00:36:29.880 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
330 00:36:29.880 ⇒ 00:36:37.440 holly condos: Right? We need to get… Brainforge in the sale… field salespeople’s minds.
331 00:36:37.440 ⇒ 00:36:37.830 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
332 00:36:37.830 ⇒ 00:36:43.650 holly condos: Now, there’s, as I’m sure you know, there’s a lot to maintaining.
333 00:36:44.030 ⇒ 00:36:44.400 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
334 00:36:44.400 ⇒ 00:36:46.940 holly condos: partnership with a hyperscaler. I mean, it’s…
335 00:36:47.310 ⇒ 00:36:51.510 holly condos: I… I do this just only… that’s all for some.
336 00:36:51.510 ⇒ 00:36:53.590 Uttam Kumaran: No, I know, it’s, it’s a lot.
337 00:36:53.590 ⇒ 00:36:58.090 holly condos: And it’s… I don’t know that that’s where you really want to invest a whole lot of.
338 00:36:58.090 ⇒ 00:37:02.360 Uttam Kumaran: And we haven’t really chosen one yet, so I agree.
339 00:37:02.360 ⇒ 00:37:08.369 holly condos: So, I’m just saying that for the down the road, because of your wanting to be on the re-invent stage.
340 00:37:08.370 ⇒ 00:37:12.180 Uttam Kumaran: That’s just an example of, like, kind of, like, where I want us to shoot for, because I don’t think…
341 00:37:12.180 ⇒ 00:37:13.609 holly condos: I agree. I think that’s great.
342 00:37:13.610 ⇒ 00:37:18.000 Uttam Kumaran: We’re very far, and I think our content is better than all that… most of the content that’s there, so…
343 00:37:18.000 ⇒ 00:37:20.409 holly condos: It’s like, we have a better product for them.
344 00:37:20.410 ⇒ 00:37:22.200 Uttam Kumaran: And… and I think, like.
345 00:37:22.420 ⇒ 00:37:28.019 Uttam Kumaran: why not? You know, I don’t see… I want us to shrink the gap between getting there, you know?
346 00:37:28.150 ⇒ 00:37:32.649 holly condos: Yeah. So, okay, so this discussion, then, is kind of…
347 00:37:32.970 ⇒ 00:37:40.840 holly condos: causing me to… and it’s great. I love it, right? The talking is always best, because stuff comes out.
348 00:37:41.070 ⇒ 00:37:49.299 holly condos: But I’m thinking that… You know, we maybe want to take a wider lens than what
349 00:37:49.500 ⇒ 00:38:01.749 holly condos: I worked on yesterday, as far as the program goes. And that’s okay. I just… I think I’m gonna add in… you know, I had an MDF outline, but…
350 00:38:02.310 ⇒ 00:38:04.729 holly condos: But not the Brainforge way.
351 00:38:04.920 ⇒ 00:38:05.960 holly condos: And…
352 00:38:06.410 ⇒ 00:38:06.780 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
353 00:38:06.780 ⇒ 00:38:12.810 holly condos: It’s unique, and it’s great, and to your point, Right? It… it’s good.
354 00:38:12.810 ⇒ 00:38:16.240 Uttam Kumaran: I’m gonna see many, like, consultancies with, like, this sort of app.
355 00:38:16.240 ⇒ 00:38:16.640 holly condos: No.
356 00:38:16.640 ⇒ 00:38:18.099 Uttam Kumaran: Creative, and, like, the…
357 00:38:18.100 ⇒ 00:38:18.960 holly condos: -
358 00:38:18.960 ⇒ 00:38:24.280 Uttam Kumaran: But, like, Yeah, I agree with that. I just don’t think you’re gonna… that’s why…
359 00:38:24.400 ⇒ 00:38:43.359 Uttam Kumaran: we’re unique in that, like, we really prioritized how… because I know the commercial aspect and the brand aspect really matters, and I think it… events is something that is so big for us that we… but it took us a while, because I knew I could talk, but everything has… we have to sell…
360 00:38:43.450 ⇒ 00:38:47.169 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, these, he’s just standing, looking outside.
361 00:38:47.170 ⇒ 00:38:47.790 holly condos: So cute!
362 00:38:50.440 ⇒ 00:38:56.240 Uttam Kumaran: But yeah, I think, like, we have to think about it a little bit differently, because there’s not many consultancies that…
363 00:38:56.410 ⇒ 00:39:12.669 Uttam Kumaran: They have this capability, but we have the internal design, the kind of eye for, like, what does the event coordinator at these companies care about? Like, they care about reach, impressions, like, they care about being in front of people in a new market like Austin.
364 00:39:12.920 ⇒ 00:39:22.179 Uttam Kumaran: But again, like, this is where I’ve talked to some friends that do this for a living. They’re like, oh, you can make all this money on them, but, like, that’s… I just told them, like, that’s… my business is not events.
365 00:39:22.520 ⇒ 00:39:22.880 holly condos: Yeah.
366 00:39:22.880 ⇒ 00:39:24.020 Uttam Kumaran: Business is brave.
367 00:39:24.020 ⇒ 00:39:25.470 holly condos: I’m not an event vendor.
368 00:39:25.470 ⇒ 00:39:34.719 Uttam Kumaran: we’re not an event, which means we run even better events, because I’m not selling… you guys have to… you guys have to run 10 events a day, and they all suck. Like, we don’t have to do that, right?
369 00:39:34.720 ⇒ 00:39:40.000 holly condos: But I think… but I think it’s an interesting… Partner quality, right?
370 00:39:40.000 ⇒ 00:39:40.580 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
371 00:39:40.890 ⇒ 00:39:41.660 holly condos: unique.
372 00:39:41.660 ⇒ 00:39:42.250 Uttam Kumaran: point, but I guess.
373 00:39:42.250 ⇒ 00:39:49.360 holly condos: quality. And again, not to rehash it, but to your point, Most companies
374 00:39:49.950 ⇒ 00:40:01.450 holly condos: don’t do what you do, don’t have what you have, haven’t done what you’ve already done event-wise, right? So, yeah, I… I’m just thinking, I think we want to leverage that.
375 00:40:01.810 ⇒ 00:40:02.480 holly condos: in the country.
376 00:40:02.480 ⇒ 00:40:07.090 Uttam Kumaran: If the MDF doesn’t… yeah, if the MDF doesn’t make… that’s just the…
377 00:40:07.300 ⇒ 00:40:11.929 Uttam Kumaran: that was just the only thing I stuck out and I heard about in this world of, like.
378 00:40:11.930 ⇒ 00:40:13.110 holly condos: How can we get…
379 00:40:13.330 ⇒ 00:40:16.109 Uttam Kumaran: But for me, again, our constraints is cost.
380 00:40:16.680 ⇒ 00:40:24.230 Uttam Kumaran: It’s not me going and talking, I’ll do that. I’ll go on stage right now in, like, 10 minutes. It’s more about cost.
381 00:40:24.390 ⇒ 00:40:25.080 Uttam Kumaran: Am I?
382 00:40:25.080 ⇒ 00:40:28.719 holly condos: But I think… but I think just what you showed me, and…
383 00:40:29.020 ⇒ 00:40:35.510 holly condos: you know, how Jake is promoting the content, you’re getting the attention, right?
384 00:40:35.950 ⇒ 00:40:36.700 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
385 00:40:36.700 ⇒ 00:40:47.009 holly condos: So… So I think, are all these companies in Austin?
386 00:40:47.420 ⇒ 00:40:49.450 Uttam Kumaran: No, it’s all SPulp SF.
387 00:40:49.610 ⇒ 00:40:51.799 Uttam Kumaran: It’s all gone, yeah, for the most part.
388 00:40:51.800 ⇒ 00:40:55.459 holly condos: Well, that’s good. So you’re not pigeonholed to Texas, or to Austin.
389 00:40:56.300 ⇒ 00:41:03.239 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, no, no, no, definitely. I mean, this is where, like, there’s… those guys are gonna be tired of running stuff in the Bay Area, and it’s completely, like…
390 00:41:03.400 ⇒ 00:41:12.549 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. I mean, a lot of them want to do stuff in New York, so that’s also, like, where we have a lot of people. Austin is, again, it’s just, like, such a small, big town.
391 00:41:12.700 ⇒ 00:41:22.219 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I know everybody that’s doing stuff here, I go to all the events, there’s not stuff… but there’s a lot of buyers here, there’s a lot of developers, and there’s just not enough stuff
392 00:41:22.450 ⇒ 00:41:24.910 Uttam Kumaran: Being thrown for this type of audience.
393 00:41:25.240 ⇒ 00:41:25.950 Uttam Kumaran: Right.
394 00:41:25.950 ⇒ 00:41:26.610 holly condos: Okay.
395 00:41:27.120 ⇒ 00:41:28.050 holly condos: So…
396 00:41:28.050 ⇒ 00:41:35.729 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we’re not married to… we’re not married to… this can be… for example, we had a company like Amplitude that wanted us to go do an event with them in Denver.
397 00:41:35.830 ⇒ 00:41:38.709 holly condos: And yeah, we have clients in Denver, we could go do that.
398 00:41:38.710 ⇒ 00:41:41.890 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t… I’m not married to… Austin is just where we have a local edge.
399 00:41:42.220 ⇒ 00:41:42.660 holly condos: Okay.
400 00:41:42.660 ⇒ 00:41:50.139 Uttam Kumaran: Gotta do something unique and interesting, and it’s… it’s usually on the conference circuit now, and things like that, but…
401 00:41:51.030 ⇒ 00:41:53.039 Uttam Kumaran: you know, I’m just thinking of the pitch.
402 00:41:53.730 ⇒ 00:41:59.980 holly condos: Okay. All right, so my takeaways here are, what do we do next with Jake’s list?
403 00:42:01.470 ⇒ 00:42:05.250 holly condos: Number one. Number two, incorporating
404 00:42:05.680 ⇒ 00:42:12.170 holly condos: the BrainForge MDF, if you will, into our partner program outline.
405 00:42:12.410 ⇒ 00:42:13.110 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
406 00:42:13.560 ⇒ 00:42:20.309 holly condos: And then three, Hannah, and maybe it’s not just you, but, like.
407 00:42:21.430 ⇒ 00:42:27.629 holly condos: Do we want to, in the context of the framework, do we want to kind of think about
408 00:42:29.600 ⇒ 00:42:31.790 holly condos: a campaign.
409 00:42:32.300 ⇒ 00:42:40.400 holly condos: Where, you know, we look maybe 6, 12-month planning. Like, we could start planning it for next year, now.
410 00:42:40.580 ⇒ 00:42:41.460 holly condos: Right?
411 00:42:42.120 ⇒ 00:42:51.439 holly condos: And take all the good essence and the meat on the bones here that you’ve described, and put it into
412 00:42:52.340 ⇒ 00:43:05.330 holly condos: like, its own little thing, its own campaign. Yes, it’s part of the Partner Program, but it really, because it’s so unique, can stand on its own, if you will. I don’t know, I’m spitballing here, guys.
413 00:43:06.290 ⇒ 00:43:16.170 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, I think one, I would like to line up… it would be amazing to line up 6 months of events, and I don’t… I don’t think that’s, like, out of…
414 00:43:16.310 ⇒ 00:43:17.200 Uttam Kumaran: reason.
415 00:43:17.200 ⇒ 00:43:22.200 holly condos: Okay. I want to be very clear, all these guys have raised so much money.
416 00:43:22.200 ⇒ 00:43:27.980 Uttam Kumaran: And all of that is going to R&D, and is going to customer acquisition.
417 00:43:28.220 ⇒ 00:43:39.989 Uttam Kumaran: a majority of it is going to customer acquisition, because all of the industries they play in are… have a lot of big spenders. They’re also competing with the hyperscale, so they need to deploy this capital.
418 00:43:39.990 ⇒ 00:43:42.489 holly condos: Right, they got money to shell out.
419 00:43:42.490 ⇒ 00:43:57.899 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, but what they don’t have is the execution capacity, or the… basically the rigor to make it something worthwhile. So, I think, totally, I think there’s probably another iteration that this Why Promote with Brainforge can go through, where.
420 00:43:58.390 ⇒ 00:44:03.919 Uttam Kumaran: It’s both this notion, but they can probably turn this entire framework into a little deck.
421 00:44:03.990 ⇒ 00:44:21.659 Uttam Kumaran: So that when we go, for example, if you think… if we should roleplay, like, if I’m able to call Omni, get us in front of whoever owns the event budget, or marketing budget, what do we need to… how do we sell that person? They’re going to want to know all the things I mentioned on the call about, like, why we’re unique in the way we do this.
422 00:44:21.660 ⇒ 00:44:22.010 holly condos: Right.
423 00:44:22.010 ⇒ 00:44:25.310 Uttam Kumaran: Second, they’re gonna wanna know about the impact, like.
424 00:44:25.510 ⇒ 00:44:44.800 Uttam Kumaran: on, like, basically what they get, the videos, blah blah blah. I’m also gonna know, like, what is a typical impact? So, those people want to know impressions. These are just marketing people at B2B companies. They’re saying, they want impressions, they want to know all these. And then finally, it’s just like… and it’s 10 grand, and we’ll do… and we can… here’s the slots we have. I think we have to come across, like.
425 00:44:44.910 ⇒ 00:44:48.370 Uttam Kumaran: We’re doing this, we have these slots open for you.
426 00:44:48.490 ⇒ 00:44:48.880 holly condos: Yeah.
427 00:44:48.880 ⇒ 00:45:08.530 Uttam Kumaran: Also, be very clear that we’re not, like, an event company. That’s where I think is the edge, as actually is to go to them, because I want to tell them we are not an event company, like, we are a consultancy, but this is a great channel for us to meet people face-to-face and talk about your solution in your product.
428 00:45:08.550 ⇒ 00:45:16.239 Uttam Kumaran: as part of an outcome that we wanna… we wanna sell them, it’s a huge, like, synergistic way of doing things.
429 00:45:16.240 ⇒ 00:45:27.480 holly condos: Yeah, I agree, and I think you do it from the standpoint of wanting to be a partner, right? Because that cuts off right at the gate, oh, I’m an event vendor.
430 00:45:27.710 ⇒ 00:45:29.200 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, exactly. So, and we already
431 00:45:30.300 ⇒ 00:45:48.119 Uttam Kumaran: for all of those folks, we have some type of partner already, and we already have Slack channels with them, so, like, the relationships are there, and they’ve just been getting deeper, so we do have a good shot on goal at any of these. So I think we should… if you guys want to come back to say, cool, like, for example, we have…
432 00:45:48.280 ⇒ 00:45:56.089 Uttam Kumaran: October, November, December, January, February, March opened, like, and we want to start to try to put people in those slots.
433 00:45:57.490 ⇒ 00:46:13.619 Uttam Kumaran: we can… and then again, on our side, we can come to the event with even more, like, what would the idea for the event be? This is where, Jake, you can strategize a bit on, like, what you heard from each of those vendors, what they would maybe want to theme an event on, and we have no problem getting great people… great people there.
434 00:46:14.860 ⇒ 00:46:16.190 holly condos: Hannah, what do you think?
435 00:46:18.050 ⇒ 00:46:30.200 Hannah Wang: That’ll make sense. I feel like using the playbooks as, like, a call to action at the end of, like, an event that we host with them, like, makes perfect sense. Like, that’s what we’re doing with Corral. Like, we’re writing a PD
436 00:46:30.400 ⇒ 00:46:44.340 Hannah Wang: white paper with them, and we’re planning to do a webinar on the 15th on Robert and Alex, the CEO, and then after that webinar, like, we’ll post it, and then the LinkedIn comment will be, like, a call to action. Like, if you want, like, download this white paper, and, like, etc.
437 00:46:44.340 ⇒ 00:46:45.030 holly condos: Great.
438 00:46:45.030 ⇒ 00:47:03.890 Hannah Wang: So we’re already doing that type of motion, with corral data, so I just feel like doing that with our other vendor partners, it just makes sense, because we already have the playbook, like, we already have the asset made, and Jacob’s doing great work at interviewing people, so that, to me, just, like, makes the most sense progression-wise. Like, it’s just natural to do that.
439 00:47:04.220 ⇒ 00:47:07.100 Hannah Wang: Yeah, and we could, like, put the event together and, like.
440 00:47:07.410 ⇒ 00:47:17.150 Hannah Wang: run the campaign, and scrape all the leads, and just, like, invite people, and do activation stuff, because we’ve been doing that with Wix and Polycomic.
441 00:47:17.150 ⇒ 00:47:21.140 holly condos: Yeah, and I appreciate it’s a lot of work, but I think that’s kind of…
442 00:47:21.580 ⇒ 00:47:23.840 holly condos: That’s kind of where you guys are at, right?
443 00:47:24.570 ⇒ 00:47:41.250 Uttam Kumaran: No, that’s where we also, but again, we have AI’d a lot of it, we’ve put a lot of it on rails. Yeah. Like, we knew, as soon as I heard that, like, okay, this should be a big channel for us, I knew that, like, okay, we have to figure out how to do this scalably. Like, we’re not gonna bring on
444 00:47:41.330 ⇒ 00:47:46.949 Uttam Kumaran: We’re just not gonna have the staff to do that, so… but again, like, that’s what we’ve done, and so…
445 00:47:47.490 ⇒ 00:47:49.610 Uttam Kumaran: I wanna ma- I wanna basically…
446 00:47:50.140 ⇒ 00:47:55.950 Uttam Kumaran: If this is our… if this is a… can be a zero-cost channel for us, it would be amazing.
447 00:47:55.950 ⇒ 00:47:57.560 holly condos: Right, I think that’s the ultimate.
448 00:47:57.560 ⇒ 00:48:08.700 Uttam Kumaran: If you guys get me into 5 events every day, every week, I will go to all five and do it. So there’s no pushback from leadership on, like, we should slow down, or, like, there’s none of that here. It’s actually…
449 00:48:08.820 ⇒ 00:48:11.549 Uttam Kumaran: Like, how many of these can we do?
450 00:48:11.800 ⇒ 00:48:18.580 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, how effective can they be at getting us in the room with people? Because especially in AI,
451 00:48:18.730 ⇒ 00:48:31.349 Uttam Kumaran: people really are wanting to buy from people. I think they’re really tired of the vendor marketing that’s happening. It’s very confusing. People are getting sold products that don’t work. They’re very, very, like, skeptical.
452 00:48:31.390 ⇒ 00:48:39.080 Uttam Kumaran: And the best way to approach that, and this is what I do in person all the time, is for me to just tell them, like, what we’re seeing in the market.
453 00:48:39.160 ⇒ 00:48:42.919 Uttam Kumaran: And then they immediately, they see us as an authority figure, and they want to buy from us.
454 00:48:43.500 ⇒ 00:48:46.640 holly condos: Right. Okay, so a couple more. Are we okay on time?
455 00:48:46.860 ⇒ 00:48:49.999 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I have, I have, 15, or 12 minutes or so, yeah.
456 00:48:50.000 ⇒ 00:48:59.510 holly condos: Okay, so, again, of Jake’s group, Are there any leads?
457 00:49:00.090 ⇒ 00:49:06.790 holly condos: Or co-selling motions coming out of the original marketing effort?
458 00:49:07.210 ⇒ 00:49:09.629 Uttam Kumaran: So this is also, like,
459 00:49:10.510 ⇒ 00:49:17.970 Uttam Kumaran: Part of, sort of, the program where we don’t have, like, an active… Co-selling effort.
460 00:49:18.450 ⇒ 00:49:22.139 Uttam Kumaran: Or, like, a check-in with someone on sales every… like, we don’t…
461 00:49:22.200 ⇒ 00:49:24.439 holly condos: Kind of like what we talked about on Monday.
462 00:49:24.440 ⇒ 00:49:39.050 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like, again, this… this… I’m starting to now think about the program as, like, these different activities with partners. We may have an event, we may have some sort of, like, constant thing going, but part of the reason that… that…
463 00:49:39.210 ⇒ 00:49:46.729 Uttam Kumaran: Jake is doing this is to get back of us into the fray. Because I know as soon as we generate that asset, it’s gonna go to all their salespeople, then we have a moment.
464 00:49:46.780 ⇒ 00:50:00.320 Uttam Kumaran: there to, like, kick things off and, like, start to build these rituals. So we don’t already have any motion with partners on, like, I meet… like, for example, with… with… with Rel, I meet with the head of sales once every…
465 00:50:00.520 ⇒ 00:50:03.190 Uttam Kumaran: Month, and we’re just friends.
466 00:50:03.200 ⇒ 00:50:08.189 holly condos: Right. My friend is starting next week as the head of North America sales at Omni.
467 00:50:08.530 ⇒ 00:50:09.170 holly condos: Oh, nice.
468 00:50:09.170 ⇒ 00:50:23.300 Uttam Kumaran: Just randomly. And at, Contextual, we know Mike is, again, some salesperson, so we have, like, the relationships. We just don’t have, like, a…
469 00:50:23.440 ⇒ 00:50:37.550 Uttam Kumaran: I can get them on the phone, I just don’t have, like, a how do we use that time wisely? Right? Like, how do I get them there to put us in front of their salespeople? Like, is it materials? Is it like, hey, weekly, we need a… or we need to be in your QBR monthly?
470 00:50:37.550 ⇒ 00:50:38.150 holly condos: Like.
471 00:50:38.150 ⇒ 00:50:47.259 Uttam Kumaran: what is it? And, like, how can I pitch that as part of this program? Which is, like, if you’re a vendor and we’re close selling, we need to be in your QBR, we need…
472 00:50:47.400 ⇒ 00:50:49.419 Uttam Kumaran: Some… we… this is what we need.
473 00:50:49.990 ⇒ 00:50:54.039 Uttam Kumaran: You know, in order to do that, right? And we need an event, we blah blah blah. What’s a menu?
474 00:50:54.770 ⇒ 00:50:57.030 holly condos: Another question, G…
475 00:50:57.030 ⇒ 00:50:59.620 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I spoke at Contextual’s QBR, by the way, like, last.
476 00:50:59.620 ⇒ 00:51:00.800 holly condos: Oh, okay, great.
477 00:51:00.800 ⇒ 00:51:07.160 Uttam Kumaran: in front of their entire… I think it was their whole company, I don’t know. I just, like, hopped on. It was, like, so many people on the Zoom.
478 00:51:07.160 ⇒ 00:51:10.350 holly condos: Again, this is also not normal, right?
479 00:51:11.030 ⇒ 00:51:12.229 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t… I don’t know.
480 00:51:12.230 ⇒ 00:51:16.379 holly condos: I mean, it’s great, it’s totally awesome, but it is not typical.
481 00:51:16.650 ⇒ 00:51:18.410 holly condos: To your credit, Uta.
482 00:51:18.410 ⇒ 00:51:24.499 Uttam Kumaran: I appreciate that. Yeah, I… they said, hey, you’re the first partner we’ve worked with that can articulate
483 00:51:24.720 ⇒ 00:51:31.840 Uttam Kumaran: our product and ecosystem, can you come do that? Keep your eyes on it. I’ll do that. I’ll do that whenever, whenever you want us to do that, and so…
484 00:51:32.280 ⇒ 00:51:40.989 Uttam Kumaran: this is where, like, I think we have the cachet now, is just actually being able to… like, what we’re selling is actually working.
485 00:51:41.160 ⇒ 00:51:49.090 Uttam Kumaran: And so I think it’s purely the distribu- like, again, I think we’re, like, a couple of slacks and an email from getting into those salespeople’s hands and getting pitched.
486 00:51:49.510 ⇒ 00:51:50.000 holly condos: Yeah.
487 00:51:50.000 ⇒ 00:51:52.499 Uttam Kumaran: That’s it, like, I don’t think we’re that far, you know?
488 00:51:52.740 ⇒ 00:51:53.180 holly condos: Yeah.
489 00:51:53.180 ⇒ 00:51:55.480 Uttam Kumaran: But it is not, like, as formal.
490 00:51:55.740 ⇒ 00:51:56.639 Uttam Kumaran: You’re right.
491 00:51:57.150 ⇒ 00:51:58.990 holly condos: And that’s okay, right?
492 00:51:59.270 ⇒ 00:52:05.309 Uttam Kumaran: I’d rather us get there first, and then we can… now it’s the formalization of how do we recreate the magic, you know?
493 00:52:05.660 ⇒ 00:52:15.170 holly condos: Right, right, and that’s what I’m trying to frame for you. Yeah. But I’m also, if you haven’t picked it up, I’m trying to be flexible so that we take.
494 00:52:15.170 ⇒ 00:52:15.620 Uttam Kumaran: Totally.
495 00:52:15.620 ⇒ 00:52:20.540 holly condos: Right? Not cookie cutter, because you guys aren’t cookie cutter.
496 00:52:21.100 ⇒ 00:52:22.870 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Brainforges…
497 00:52:23.200 ⇒ 00:52:25.199 holly condos: Arguably very unique.
498 00:52:25.470 ⇒ 00:52:26.080 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
499 00:52:26.210 ⇒ 00:52:29.199 holly condos: You know, yes, you have all your service
500 00:52:29.480 ⇒ 00:52:35.469 holly condos: delivery and all that, you know, all the cool bells and whistles. What I’m talking about is…
501 00:52:35.770 ⇒ 00:52:39.580 holly condos: what you’ve been talking about today and Monday.
502 00:52:39.580 ⇒ 00:52:41.639 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. How you’re approaching.
503 00:52:41.750 ⇒ 00:52:45.340 holly condos: engagement. How are you approaching the messaging?
504 00:52:46.090 ⇒ 00:52:52.300 holly condos: Right? That you’re… you’re… not that you’re forging your own path, per se, but you’re also not going down the.
505 00:52:52.300 ⇒ 00:52:56.139 Uttam Kumaran: No, and it’s a little bit like we didn’t read a book, we didn’t… there was no playbook.
506 00:52:56.140 ⇒ 00:52:56.820 holly condos: Yeah.
507 00:52:56.820 ⇒ 00:53:02.330 Uttam Kumaran: So I kind of, like, know what other consultancies do, and I… I was like, this just kind of sucks.
508 00:53:02.580 ⇒ 00:53:03.120 holly condos: Right.
509 00:53:03.120 ⇒ 00:53:09.469 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t like… I don’t want to do it that way. I have a relationship with someone… like, but again, a lot of these relationships.
510 00:53:09.650 ⇒ 00:53:17.609 Uttam Kumaran: I’m a fan of their products, so I was like, we should be implementing their products, because their products are rock. And it’s very natural, so we should start selling them, they’re great.
511 00:53:17.810 ⇒ 00:53:18.710 Uttam Kumaran: So…
512 00:53:18.850 ⇒ 00:53:28.599 Uttam Kumaran: But I think it’s, like, we need… we… I think what we… what we lack, again, our constraints are time and… time and money. Like, if we had…
513 00:53:28.920 ⇒ 00:53:32.619 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so that’s… that’s the… that’s the tough problem.
514 00:53:32.800 ⇒ 00:53:38.180 Uttam Kumaran: But, like, something is working, we’ve done all this for free, like, or very, very little.
515 00:53:38.180 ⇒ 00:53:40.990 holly condos: Yeah, something is working, and I think,
516 00:53:41.860 ⇒ 00:53:53.140 holly condos: you know, I’m coming back to your whole bank of collateral and all the good content that Jake’s doing, and everything that, you know, you’re just driving so far.
517 00:53:53.140 ⇒ 00:53:53.580 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
518 00:53:53.580 ⇒ 00:53:55.540 holly condos: Right? You just need to leverage that.
519 00:53:55.540 ⇒ 00:53:55.980 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
520 00:53:55.980 ⇒ 00:53:57.610 holly condos: So we need to figure out how to do that, but…
521 00:53:57.610 ⇒ 00:54:01.760 Uttam Kumaran: But again, even if it’s helpful to say, look, like, instead of thinking about a framework.
522 00:54:02.040 ⇒ 00:54:05.120 Uttam Kumaran: Let’s cut everything and just focus on contextual.
523 00:54:05.400 ⇒ 00:54:06.210 holly condos: You think?
524 00:54:07.320 ⇒ 00:54:10.940 Uttam Kumaran: I’m open, again, I’m open, I guess I just don’t want to be…
525 00:54:11.390 ⇒ 00:54:15.209 Uttam Kumaran: I will always try to weigh the options, but for me, again, like.
526 00:54:15.380 ⇒ 00:54:20.059 Uttam Kumaran: I have to… I think that… I think big, I think it’s up to the team to think about what can be done.
527 00:54:20.210 ⇒ 00:54:20.840 holly condos: Right.
528 00:54:21.030 ⇒ 00:54:23.990 Uttam Kumaran: what can be done where we actually achieve our goal? So if we’re like, look.
529 00:54:25.270 ⇒ 00:54:33.349 Uttam Kumaran: I could tell, even at this conference, like, there’s so much opportunity, but if it’s like, look, if we’re gonna do this effectively, we need to focus on two, and we need to first achieve
530 00:54:33.640 ⇒ 00:54:36.180 Uttam Kumaran: October event, November event?
531 00:54:36.850 ⇒ 00:54:41.860 Uttam Kumaran: And that is our first goal. And then let’s start to build a framework around that, we can do that.
532 00:54:43.230 ⇒ 00:54:48.689 holly condos: Well, and I guess where I’m coming from is, along that line, so…
533 00:54:50.140 ⇒ 00:54:56.410 holly condos: Yeah, maybe… maybe we want, because you’ve leveraged this area of…
534 00:54:57.430 ⇒ 00:55:05.219 holly condos: your motion, your sales motion, so well and so easily for very little money. Maybe, you know, we just…
535 00:55:05.380 ⇒ 00:55:07.769 holly condos: Focus on that first.
536 00:55:07.900 ⇒ 00:55:09.220 holly condos: And build it.
537 00:55:10.620 ⇒ 00:55:15.589 holly condos: And maybe we, in parallel, Do the other…
538 00:55:15.920 ⇒ 00:55:22.090 Uttam Kumaran: So that would be my ask, is that, like, the in-parallel framework and strategy building is what we haven’t done.
539 00:55:22.240 ⇒ 00:55:25.790 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. And, like, that is what I’m more worried about. Like, I think…
540 00:55:26.160 ⇒ 00:55:33.389 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. I think you could call contextual and get the event right now, but again, it would be a one-off… it would be just a one-off thing again.
541 00:55:33.390 ⇒ 00:55:33.840 holly condos: Yeah.
542 00:55:33.840 ⇒ 00:55:38.519 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s, like, not… I’m actually not, like, so worried about getting them. I’m, like…
543 00:55:38.860 ⇒ 00:55:43.070 Uttam Kumaran: Can… can we do this repeatedly across every… and book six months events?
544 00:55:43.470 ⇒ 00:55:44.170 holly condos: So, so…
545 00:55:44.170 ⇒ 00:55:46.679 Uttam Kumaran: start getting the business done. You know, that’s something that I can’t…
546 00:55:46.680 ⇒ 00:55:50.810 holly condos: Let’s focus on developing the framework for scalability.
547 00:55:50.810 ⇒ 00:55:51.730 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Right.
548 00:55:51.830 ⇒ 00:55:55.889 holly condos: Because, like you said, you don’t have a problem getting the next event.
549 00:55:56.420 ⇒ 00:56:00.410 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think we’ll get it. Like, I don’t think Robert and I are having issues with that, but…
550 00:56:00.410 ⇒ 00:56:00.870 holly condos: Okay.
551 00:56:00.870 ⇒ 00:56:02.480 Uttam Kumaran: It is the… it is the, like…
552 00:56:03.020 ⇒ 00:56:06.370 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, what are the weekly and monthly rituals we have to do?
553 00:56:06.840 ⇒ 00:56:10.439 Uttam Kumaran: And then, okay, once we have the program, can we run it with one person?
554 00:56:10.640 ⇒ 00:56:27.529 Uttam Kumaran: Then now come expanded to… and then it’s also for this team to tell me, like, what… okay, what is… what is our true, like, capacity, like, to… to run that program with one person? Right. And then I can start to take, okay, once we start seeing ROI, I can start to get us bits more people, or whatever it is, we can start…
555 00:56:27.920 ⇒ 00:56:36.089 holly condos: Again, like we talked on Monday, in that regard. Okay. Yeah. All right, well, I think this was… this is very helpful, and thank you, Jake. It’s nice to meet you.
556 00:56:37.130 ⇒ 00:56:38.389 Jake Nathan: Yeah, it’s nice to meet you, too.
557 00:56:38.460 ⇒ 00:56:46.870 holly condos: I think, Hannah and Utam, if you’re okay, I’d like to just mull on this a little bit, and incorporate it into what I’ve started, and then…
558 00:56:47.200 ⇒ 00:56:50.919 holly condos: launch it in Notion, maybe tonight, or in the morning?
559 00:56:50.920 ⇒ 00:57:03.490 Uttam Kumaran: Sure, and then also, like, this meeting is recorded, so you’ll have the transcript from this meeting, and you can shove this into… I was gonna immediately just shove it to ChatGPT to ask some questions, but, like, feel free to use that, and then…
560 00:57:03.490 ⇒ 00:57:04.450 holly condos: I think…
561 00:57:04.450 ⇒ 00:57:10.309 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I also agree, like, we don’t have to take on work until we’re all comfortable with what the program is.
562 00:57:10.310 ⇒ 00:57:10.850 holly condos: Okay.
563 00:57:10.850 ⇒ 00:57:15.460 Uttam Kumaran: I certainly think that, like, there’s definitely work to do on materials and…
564 00:57:16.090 ⇒ 00:57:21.770 Uttam Kumaran: Who we’re going after, and then what are the sort of milestones we’re going for. But ultimately, it all
565 00:57:21.990 ⇒ 00:57:31.339 Uttam Kumaran: the real true ROI is, do we get a customer, and then did they pay us? So, like, that is, like, the… this one is not as quick as, like.
566 00:57:31.720 ⇒ 00:57:45.300 Uttam Kumaran: running ads and getting good feedback or whatever, but again, like, the odds of those customers that I meet in person converting is very high, especially if they’re qualified. The qualified leads I meet in person, very high chance they convert.
567 00:57:45.310 ⇒ 00:57:52.239 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s what we’re going for. Even if that takes… okay, it takes a month to set up the event, run it, follow up, get that person in a meeting.
568 00:57:52.410 ⇒ 00:57:57.589 Uttam Kumaran: Still, like, our typical sales cycles are 2-3 months, so we’re not, like, too far out of range.
569 00:57:57.590 ⇒ 00:57:58.799 holly condos: No, not at all.
570 00:57:58.800 ⇒ 00:57:59.400 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
571 00:57:59.570 ⇒ 00:58:04.549 holly condos: Okay, that sounds great. Well, I don’t want to keep you, Uten, but,
572 00:58:05.580 ⇒ 00:58:08.370 holly condos: Thanks for the time, guys. Of course. This is very, very productive.
573 00:58:08.370 ⇒ 00:58:09.040 Jake Nathan: Thank you.
574 00:58:09.330 ⇒ 00:58:10.820 holly condos: Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
575 00:58:11.080 ⇒ 00:58:11.760 holly condos: soon.
576 00:58:11.760 ⇒ 00:58:12.540 Hannah Wang: That’s it.
577 00:58:12.540 ⇒ 00:58:13.050 holly condos: Yep.