Meeting Title: Brainforge Recruitment and Role Discussion Date: 2025-10-09 Meeting participants: Kaela Gallagher, Uttam Kumaran
WEBVTT
1 00:03:38.720 ⇒ 00:03:43.810 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, how’s it going? Give me one second, my camera now is, like, pointing to the ceiling.
2 00:03:44.030 ⇒ 00:03:45.990 Uttam Kumaran: Holy crap.
3 00:03:48.300 ⇒ 00:03:49.540 Uttam Kumaran: How’s everything?
4 00:03:50.790 ⇒ 00:03:52.000 Kaela Gallagher: How are you?
5 00:03:52.190 ⇒ 00:03:55.959 Uttam Kumaran: I’m good. Busy week, as usual, down here.
6 00:03:56.170 ⇒ 00:03:57.260 Uttam Kumaran: And let’s go.
7 00:03:57.260 ⇒ 00:04:00.539 Kaela Gallagher: I have one right above me, as well.
8 00:04:00.540 ⇒ 00:04:08.509 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, thank you! Yeah, this is, like, I have so many of them, and I… and I propagate a bunch of them, and this one’s massive.
9 00:04:08.710 ⇒ 00:04:10.440 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, that one looks great.
10 00:04:10.440 ⇒ 00:04:14.779 Uttam Kumaran: And it, like, it looks like a jungle, and here’s gray. I, like, love it, so… yeah.
11 00:04:14.780 ⇒ 00:04:16.579 Kaela Gallagher: Me too.
12 00:04:16.589 ⇒ 00:04:18.399 Uttam Kumaran: How’s the week going?
13 00:04:18.749 ⇒ 00:04:21.799 Kaela Gallagher: It’s going well! How’s yours?
14 00:04:22.140 ⇒ 00:04:30.399 Uttam Kumaran: It’s good, we’re, we’re growing steadily, so that’s good. I think Robert and I are both still pretty busy with, like, client work.
15 00:04:30.580 ⇒ 00:04:33.279 Uttam Kumaran: But, like, we’re no longer…
16 00:04:33.410 ⇒ 00:04:52.449 Uttam Kumaran: worried about, like, getting the work done, as we are more about, like, organizing the company, and then, of course, like, recruiting, you know, smart people, so that’s, like, where my mind is a lot of these days, but yeah, finally, we’ve come a long way in just a few years, so just, like, every week trying to, like, get a couple percent better, and it starts to compound, so…
17 00:04:52.450 ⇒ 00:05:02.379 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, that’s an exciting, exciting place to be in, and after talking to Robert, it seems like, yeah, you guys have a really, like, exciting trajectory ahead of you.
18 00:05:02.380 ⇒ 00:05:03.200 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
19 00:05:03.200 ⇒ 00:05:06.049 Kaela Gallagher: I appreciate that. How did you guys get connected?
20 00:05:06.170 ⇒ 00:05:22.800 Uttam Kumaran: So, we did the same program in college. So, I’m sure you’re familiar, but kind of moving around to different universities every year, and there’s only, like, 40 people per cohort, so the alumni network is pretty strong. I want to say.
21 00:05:22.880 ⇒ 00:05:36.289 Kaela Gallagher: we connected maybe 4 or 5 years ago, initially, when he was in more of, like, a supply chain capacity, and I had taken a supply chain course and was really kind of interested in learning more, and… Okay.
22 00:05:36.290 ⇒ 00:05:44.030 Kaela Gallagher: yeah, just more… more recently reconnected and, mentioned I was on… on the hunt for something new, and he was like.
23 00:05:44.030 ⇒ 00:05:44.620 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
24 00:05:44.620 ⇒ 00:05:47.049 Kaela Gallagher: Chat about Brainforge, so here we are.
25 00:05:47.050 ⇒ 00:05:58.649 Uttam Kumaran: Great! So yeah, tell me how that conversation went, and, like, just curious, like, what were some of your takeaways or, questions? Like, this is completely casual, by the way, so I’m happy to, of course, answer those
26 00:05:58.720 ⇒ 00:06:10.550 Uttam Kumaran: any question about brain force, so the tougher the question, the better. And yeah, I can totally tell you about, like, our delivery structure, how we’re doing on even beyond delivery on, like.
27 00:06:10.630 ⇒ 00:06:19.169 Uttam Kumaran: sales, marketing, whatever, but totally open book. And… but yeah, I’m just curious, like, how that conversation went, and, like, kind of, like, anything that you were left with.
28 00:06:19.750 ⇒ 00:06:34.079 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, we talked a lot about, like, where you guys are at now, and kind of where he sees the company going in the next, you know, 6 months and 2 years. He also did kind of…
29 00:06:34.080 ⇒ 00:06:44.970 Kaela Gallagher: frame, like, a position that he’s… he’s looking to fill, and… Yeah. …kind of give some, like, basics of it. I know he wanted to kind of go,
30 00:06:44.970 ⇒ 00:06:58.079 Kaela Gallagher: further and, and build a job description down the line, but, yeah, I definitely have some questions about you, some follow-ups. I’ve been, I’ve been thinking about, chatting, chatting with Robert.
31 00:06:58.080 ⇒ 00:07:13.970 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, please, go ahead. I mean, I sort of have a little bit of a brief from him also on, like, what you guys talked about. I know he started… he probably talked a little bit about our delivery structure, where we have, like, engineers and analysts, we have project managers, we also have, like, solution architects.
32 00:07:14.190 ⇒ 00:07:19.139 Uttam Kumaran: But yeah, fire away, and, I’ll… I won’t bore you with the,
33 00:07:19.350 ⇒ 00:07:23.590 Uttam Kumaran: what is Brain Forge, what do we do, stuff? So you already should hopefully know a bunch of that.
34 00:07:23.590 ⇒ 00:07:39.199 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, I… I guess my first question for you, on the topic of Brainforge and kind of what you guys are doing, I’m curious where you see the company headed in the next, you know, 6 months or 2 years, kind of your idea.
35 00:07:39.200 ⇒ 00:07:44.420 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, it’s a good question. So, we’ve only been in business 2 years, so it is definitely tough.
36 00:07:44.440 ⇒ 00:07:50.530 Uttam Kumaran: to think about 2 years from now, hopefully way bigger, way better, way easier.
37 00:07:51.130 ⇒ 00:07:56.090 Uttam Kumaran: I like… and if I can talk about, you know, sort of 6 months, so,
38 00:07:56.350 ⇒ 00:08:06.860 Uttam Kumaran: Right now, we have around, like, 12 clients, with a pretty healthy pipeline of sales coming, and we’re about, like.
39 00:08:07.290 ⇒ 00:08:15.079 Uttam Kumaran: 15-ish people, most of which is engineering, and then we have, like.
40 00:08:15.300 ⇒ 00:08:19.679 Uttam Kumaran: Couple people who are, like, part-time… who are, like, split between sales and marketing.
41 00:08:20.030 ⇒ 00:08:21.250 Uttam Kumaran: And then…
42 00:08:21.580 ⇒ 00:08:34.249 Uttam Kumaran: like, yeah, like, I’m sort of recruiting, operations, stuff like that. I know you mentioned that you had a kind of a background in recruiting as well, so I’m our head of recruiting as well. So,
43 00:08:34.250 ⇒ 00:08:44.950 Uttam Kumaran: But I… so we do have, like, a bunch of… but our core focus has always been, like, deliver the best for clients. So, we… our budgets and everything are going towards
44 00:08:44.950 ⇒ 00:09:04.420 Uttam Kumaran: servicing those, so servicing revenue as well as bringing more revenue into the company, and then servicing it efficiently. So, we have targets for margin, we have targets for delivery efficiency, for client success, as well as for sales. I would say the biggest sort of milestone for Robert and I is
45 00:09:04.430 ⇒ 00:09:17.780 Uttam Kumaran: how we can move our time out of delivery. Because every additional hour we get for sales and recruiting allows us to bring in way more revenue and allows us to recruit way better people than us.
46 00:09:17.780 ⇒ 00:09:32.860 Uttam Kumaran: And so, it’s actually kind of, like, every additional hour we get to do that, the linear impact to both of those areas is quite tremendous. The more time we spend on delivery, the less there is to grow… to work on the company.
47 00:09:32.860 ⇒ 00:09:46.579 Uttam Kumaran: And so that’s, like, the overarching theme of, kind of, like, our life right now, is, like, thinking about how… and it’s not like we won’t work up with clients and stuff, but even the mission of getting towards that, where we can trust that there are clients where
48 00:09:46.580 ⇒ 00:09:56.299 Uttam Kumaran: We’re not spending every day working on, or maybe we just check in once a week with them, or show up kind of like in a managing partner sense to those meetings, is ideal.
49 00:09:56.300 ⇒ 00:10:09.290 Uttam Kumaran: The other thing is, like, if I… right now, like, our… also our goal is to go after bigger and bigger clients and expand scope. For me to go sell a client that’s, like, 100 grand a month, we have to have serious chops internally, right? It’s… I don’t think…
50 00:10:09.420 ⇒ 00:10:28.369 Uttam Kumaran: I think I could go sell that, but can I be confident selling that is a different story, right? So that’s also what we’re thinking a lot about, is, like, how do we build a really robust client delivery team? But the other piece, you know, that I’m really passionate about is we use AI, like, throughout the entire company, and so we are building a really, really…
51 00:10:28.630 ⇒ 00:10:29.630 Uttam Kumaran: like.
52 00:10:29.630 ⇒ 00:10:48.709 Uttam Kumaran: there’s AI and, like, it’s been in our DNA since I started the business. We use it every single nook and cranny in the company to make people’s jobs way easier, to help us run the business efficiently, and it’s… it’s just our advantage. Right now, we are up against a lot of, like, boomer companies, and, like.
53 00:10:48.840 ⇒ 00:10:53.269 Uttam Kumaran: Boomer Consulting people that have no idea how to use this stuff, and.
54 00:10:53.270 ⇒ 00:10:53.710 Kaela Gallagher: Wow.
55 00:10:53.710 ⇒ 00:11:05.650 Uttam Kumaran: they are, we’re gonna run them over. And so that’s, like, that’s our… also big thing. And then the last piece is, like, we’re completely remote. We’re… we do a lot of writing, and we have people kind of all across the world, so…
56 00:11:06.080 ⇒ 00:11:15.299 Uttam Kumaran: efficiency in writing and communication and having standards around that, and how we operate the business is really important to us. So, over the next 6 months, I want to see our time
57 00:11:15.380 ⇒ 00:11:28.199 Uttam Kumaran: in delivery sort of go down. I want us to spend more time selling bigger engagements, recruiting better people, and, like, improving… continuing to improve, like, internal operations. That’s, like, generally the… the theme.
58 00:11:28.410 ⇒ 00:11:43.240 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah. On the note of AI, I saw you guys made a post recently about implementing that specifically within project management. I hire a lot of product managers, that’s definitely one of my focuses in recruiting.
59 00:11:43.240 ⇒ 00:11:43.570 Uttam Kumaran: gap.
60 00:11:43.570 ⇒ 00:12:03.319 Kaela Gallagher: So I’m talking to project managers every single day, and just seeing the ideas that you guys have around that, and how you’re implementing it is so exciting, and I can only imagine, like, how much that would help the people I chat with every day, and how that’s going to make big impacts on businesses moving forward.
61 00:12:03.320 ⇒ 00:12:04.980 Kaela Gallagher: So, yeah, you guys are doing it.
62 00:12:04.980 ⇒ 00:12:14.020 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, no, I… so my background… so I was an engineer by trade, and then I got into product management, so I was a product manager, and then I led product at a startup before this, so I’m…
63 00:12:14.280 ⇒ 00:12:23.370 Uttam Kumaran: done project management for a number of years now, and it’s extremely excruciating, and it is not that fun. But it is a thankless role, and you only…
64 00:12:23.400 ⇒ 00:12:35.339 Uttam Kumaran: get credit when you mess something up. So, it’s a tough gig, but it needs to become something more than just, like, someone that manages tickets. Like, that person is, like, the glue between everything.
65 00:12:35.350 ⇒ 00:12:46.420 Uttam Kumaran: And so, I… it’s easy for me to break down, like, what is the day in the life of the project manager? Well, you have to run stand-ups, you have to run grooming, you have to run sprint planning, you have to run retros, client reviews.
66 00:12:46.430 ⇒ 00:12:55.070 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so that’s just, like, running meetings, right? So that’s already, like, a bunch of stuff. Then you have to, like, create tickets, room tickets, apply when people are delayed.
67 00:12:55.170 ⇒ 00:13:07.070 Uttam Kumaran: But all those things, like, AI can actually impact all those SOPs, and so what we’re doing is kind of systematically going through the day in the life of a PM and building automations against each of those common tasks.
68 00:13:07.080 ⇒ 00:13:15.700 Uttam Kumaran: Because I want PMs to spend time with customers, and to build a healthy backlog, and then for the tickets that are in flight, find out the risk.
69 00:13:15.700 ⇒ 00:13:28.569 Uttam Kumaran: That is a true, like, great PM that most PMs never get a chance to do, because they’re spending every day just in JIRA. And, like, that’s not… we’re not gonna hire people to do that. I won’t do that, right? And so…
70 00:13:28.660 ⇒ 00:13:44.690 Uttam Kumaran: that’s where it’s like, how can I take great PMs, them come to Brainforge, remove all that sort of, like, busy work through AI, or, like, augment it, and then have them actually do what you want, which is, like, go spend time at the fire, or go spend more time with the client.
71 00:13:44.690 ⇒ 00:14:02.249 Uttam Kumaran: Versus, like, in Jira or stuff like that. So that’s, like, how we’re thinking a lot about it. And so that’s the kind of concept, but we’re doing that role by role by role. So, like, for engineers, for example, in our recruiting process, we use AI to help us orchestrate a lot of different things. In our sales, we use a lot of AI.
72 00:14:03.790 ⇒ 00:14:06.489 Uttam Kumaran: Like, every part of the company, we’re like.
73 00:14:06.670 ⇒ 00:14:21.230 Uttam Kumaran: just trying to use it as much as possible, because we’re a completely bootstrap company, and we want to build, like, an actual, like, healthy comp… like, we’re not a VC-backed star, we just burn money, like, this is, like, probably closer to, like.
74 00:14:21.490 ⇒ 00:14:25.760 Uttam Kumaran: a small business, like, it’s closer to, like, just a normal business than it is, like.
75 00:14:25.760 ⇒ 00:14:26.180 Kaela Gallagher: Wow.
76 00:14:26.180 ⇒ 00:14:38.419 Uttam Kumaran: But we are in high tech, and so it can be very expensive to recruit smart people, and so I would rather spend the money getting the best people, ideally paying them more to be here, but using AI to, like.
77 00:14:38.540 ⇒ 00:14:45.460 Uttam Kumaran: Take care of a lot of the low-level work that they may have to take on, or we’d have to hire even more people to do, you know?
78 00:14:45.460 ⇒ 00:15:00.900 Kaela Gallagher: Right, right. Yeah, that’s awesome. The clients that you’re working with, I know you mentioned having about 12 right now. How long are your engagements with these clients, typically? Or are they kind of… they don’t have, like, an end date?
79 00:15:01.160 ⇒ 00:15:09.999 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so… it’s… it is tough to know, like, the LTV of some of these clients in our business. We’ve only been in business 2 years, and, like, for the first…
80 00:15:10.700 ⇒ 00:15:23.499 Uttam Kumaran: year, it was, like, 2 clients. So, we don’t have, like, a ton of, like, history. I… that being said, we typically… I would say our estimate is to stay with clients anywhere from 6 months to a year. Probably a healthy estimate.
81 00:15:23.760 ⇒ 00:15:36.630 Uttam Kumaran: most of our clients we do really well on, and so they just sign on for follow-on renewals. AI and data is, like, kind of like a never-ending challenge, but not in, like, a bad way where we come in and we, like, gatekeep a bunch of stuff.
82 00:15:36.630 ⇒ 00:15:47.949 Uttam Kumaran: it’s actually, like, there just unlocks more and more opportunity. So, as long as we nail it, we see people renew with us pretty healthily. I would say the only time when we see churn is, like.
83 00:15:48.020 ⇒ 00:15:56.739 Uttam Kumaran: if a client, like, if a customer, like, fails, like, their business fails. So that’s why we don’t work with a lot of, like, startups anymore, frankly.
84 00:15:56.870 ⇒ 00:16:09.279 Uttam Kumaran: And sometimes we mess up, right? But we’re getting much better, so, like, our churn… our, like, what we say, like, regrettable churn is going down, like, we’re getting better and better, and then we just don’t… we’re just really…
85 00:16:09.330 ⇒ 00:16:21.179 Uttam Kumaran: qualify clients better, so that we’re not working with, like, crazy startups, because they pay late, and they tend to fail, and they’re very demanding. And my whole background is in startups.
86 00:16:21.390 ⇒ 00:16:27.440 Uttam Kumaran: And they’re very tough clients, so we now have the leverage to not work with many of them, unless
87 00:16:27.670 ⇒ 00:16:32.119 Uttam Kumaran: they have to fit… we have, like, multiple criteria. One of them, we have to… they have to be a friend.
88 00:16:32.500 ⇒ 00:16:35.339 Uttam Kumaran: And you have to have raised a lot of money.
89 00:16:35.340 ⇒ 00:16:37.919 Kaela Gallagher: Otherwise, we won’t work with them, because I have a lot of friends.
90 00:16:37.920 ⇒ 00:16:52.059 Uttam Kumaran: who don’t have a lot of money. There’s a lot… and there’s a lot of clients that raise a lot of money, but we just don’t know them well, so the startups we do have in our portfolio of clients fit both of those criteria, so we decided to, like, go with them.
91 00:16:52.060 ⇒ 00:16:55.019 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, they have to pay, the friendship is on the line.
92 00:16:55.020 ⇒ 00:17:03.719 Uttam Kumaran: No, I know, but it matters, because I… if they don’t pay, I have to text or call and be like, what’s going on? And… and you’d be surprised, it’s, like, just all drama all the time.
93 00:17:03.720 ⇒ 00:17:17.219 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah. Okay, okay, cool. I guess right now, with Brainforge being, you know, 15 to 20 people, how would you describe the company culture?
94 00:17:17.680 ⇒ 00:17:27.480 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’s a good question. So, I’ve worked in, like, increasingly smaller startups. Like, I started my career at WeWork, and then I worked
95 00:17:27.630 ⇒ 00:17:36.130 Uttam Kumaran: I had, like, a company when I was, like, employee number, like, 30, and then it grew, and then I was a founding pet of product at the company, and then I started this, so…
96 00:17:36.250 ⇒ 00:17:40.539 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve always been very opinionated about culture, but I’ve never really been…
97 00:17:40.620 ⇒ 00:17:58.189 Uttam Kumaran: in, like, the seat to impact a lot of it until now. But also the way culture works is that you don’t set it, it, like, sets itself. So, in our company, we are, like, a global company. We are extremely, like, async, and, like, we do a lot of writing.
98 00:17:58.190 ⇒ 00:18:11.999 Uttam Kumaran: But also, there are, like, no… there’s, like, no, like, yelling or, like, toxicity at this business. Like, that we just can’t… like, we just don’t let that… that just, like, doesn’t make it in. Because I’ve worked with that type of energy my entire career, and, like.
99 00:18:12.050 ⇒ 00:18:16.829 Uttam Kumaran: it’s completely against any progress, and so…
100 00:18:16.950 ⇒ 00:18:34.840 Uttam Kumaran: typically, if I was to describe, the people you’ll see are more of, like, Robert and I, where I would say we’re probably the heaviest business people in this company. Most of the people are very passionate about their role, like, they’re very, very good on operations, very good at marketing, very good at engineering, but nobody is, like, super…
101 00:18:35.210 ⇒ 00:18:37.430 Uttam Kumaran: Allowed or super, like…
102 00:18:37.610 ⇒ 00:18:51.790 Uttam Kumaran: critical, like, everything, everybody’s pretty empathetic. In fact, if anything, I think people should be talking more, is probably my feedback for most of our team, in that, like, in general, I think most of our team is pretty chill. In terms of the culture.
103 00:18:51.860 ⇒ 00:19:02.379 Uttam Kumaran: This is something that, like, we’re impacting every day. I mean, I would say only in the last 6 months have we had the affordability to then, like, spend time thinking about, like, what is the culture we’re building.
104 00:19:02.420 ⇒ 00:19:16.289 Uttam Kumaran: But a lot of it is, like, one, we’re not a big team, so how can I build team camaraderie? Two, like, we’re not an office, so I need to find ways to, like, have people interact with each other and, like, create that, like, chemistry, either through, like.
105 00:19:16.710 ⇒ 00:19:21.809 Uttam Kumaran: Getting people to do, like, a coffee meeting with someone new them that way, like, once every week.
106 00:19:21.920 ⇒ 00:19:33.229 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, we’re open to trying all that. We meet as a company every, like, two weeks on Fridays, where we do, like, demos, and we present the health of a business, but…
107 00:19:33.340 ⇒ 00:19:35.250 Uttam Kumaran: I talk to everybody in the company.
108 00:19:35.570 ⇒ 00:19:38.410 Uttam Kumaran: Every… at least every 48 hours, and…
109 00:19:38.740 ⇒ 00:19:47.210 Uttam Kumaran: I have a personal relationship with everybody, like, I know everything about, like, their families and where they’re… so, it’s, like, it’s not a impersonal environment at all.
110 00:19:47.330 ⇒ 00:20:02.789 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s sort of the culture. I don’t… I don’t see us having, like, a need to grow. Like, we really don’t want to grow linear to revenue, meaning, like, we want the people here to be what you would describe as, like, 5X, 10X, meaning
111 00:20:03.090 ⇒ 00:20:15.039 Uttam Kumaran: like, we hire people that can take on new scope and change with us, versus, like, okay, we’re just gonna throw 100 people at every problem. So we recruit, very mindfully,
112 00:20:15.470 ⇒ 00:20:27.870 Uttam Kumaran: And we’re getting better and better at that. Like, we’re trying to filter for people that fit our culture, can execute on exactly what we need, and number one, our bar raisers. And this is what I think a lot of people
113 00:20:27.900 ⇒ 00:20:46.070 Uttam Kumaran: can sometimes get nervous about when you’re at a company and you hire people that are better than you. People will start to be like, oh, like, am I gonna get let go? Or, like, they get sort of insecure, and, like, I’ve really tried to root that out from everybody, which is, like, when we go into the market to bring people on, we need to bring people on that raise the bar.
114 00:20:46.140 ⇒ 00:21:03.490 Uttam Kumaran: if we’re hiring people just like us, then there’s no change, right? And so… and certainly we can’t hire people that are not as great as us, because then they’ll bring us down. And so, that is something that I’ve instilled in everybody, which is, like, when we go to recruit, our objective is to bring people on that know more than us.
115 00:21:03.490 ⇒ 00:21:12.279 Uttam Kumaran: But there’s also a balance. Like, we don’t bring on people that are, like, 10 steps ahead, super corporate, because they’re not gonna be able to do the work here.
116 00:21:12.280 ⇒ 00:21:14.350 Kaela Gallagher: We also don’t bring people on.
117 00:21:14.350 ⇒ 00:21:31.320 Uttam Kumaran: that are, like… I don’t look at other consultancies, our stage, and like, cool, let’s get… because they’re at our level, we’re already there. And so, we look for specific skill sets where people could broaden what we could do, but everything we do at the company has a sense of urgency, so, like, I… I’m not gonna say that we’re, like.
118 00:21:31.610 ⇒ 00:21:49.549 Uttam Kumaran: everything’s, like, so relaxed. There is urgency, and it’s critical that we get work done, but there’s not, like, a blame game, there’s not, like, a fear-based mentality at all with this business. I think everything… everybody’s actually very self-reflective and very critical of their work in order to, like, service our clients better.
119 00:21:49.630 ⇒ 00:21:55.520 Uttam Kumaran: Because we are a client service business, right? We’re not selling a product, we are a service company, and so…
120 00:21:55.710 ⇒ 00:22:01.190 Uttam Kumaran: Whatever we need to do well by our clients is what really, really matters, so…
121 00:22:01.540 ⇒ 00:22:16.760 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, I… I am really excited at the idea of being an environment where, I’m around really smart people, people that know things that I don’t. I… I think that’s a great opportunity to learn and
122 00:22:16.760 ⇒ 00:22:32.500 Kaela Gallagher: and get better, and just from seeing Robert’s LinkedIn, like, seeing you guys attend different events and conventions, I think shows that, like, even at the top of the company, like, you guys are always seeking to learn, and I think…
123 00:22:32.560 ⇒ 00:22:37.909 Kaela Gallagher: that will, and probably has, propelled through your culture, so I think that’s great.
124 00:22:38.070 ⇒ 00:22:39.170 Uttam Kumaran: I appreciate it.
125 00:22:39.170 ⇒ 00:22:43.780 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, I guess moving, like, into the position, the role that
126 00:22:43.960 ⇒ 00:23:01.229 Kaela Gallagher: Robert had kind of outlined for me, would be part kind of on, like, the analyst and consulting side, doing some of the client-facing work, but then also partially on the internal side, helping him kind of on the sales and marketing
127 00:23:01.230 ⇒ 00:23:05.889 Kaela Gallagher: team, helping kind of run the team and build the team.
128 00:23:07.480 ⇒ 00:23:16.709 Kaela Gallagher: I guess, with that being said, what kind of skills would you see as, like, keys to success in that position?
129 00:23:17.240 ⇒ 00:23:25.429 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I guess, like, maybe I’ll probably ask that back to you, and then, like, tell me what those… from what you’ve learned from the positions, like.
130 00:23:25.550 ⇒ 00:23:36.700 Uttam Kumaran: I would… it would be great to hear, like, what you think would… what is part of the analyst part of that, and then what you know about the go-to-market part of that, and I can kind of help you flesh out, because even for us, this is one thing you’ll learn about us, is
131 00:23:36.770 ⇒ 00:23:50.299 Uttam Kumaran: we know a lot about how the industry typically does things, but we take what we want from that, and we do a lot of things our way. Like, you won’t meet a lot of companies that are run like us, that are as organized as us, but are also, like.
132 00:23:50.720 ⇒ 00:23:54.960 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t want to hire people anymore that can only do, like, one thing.
133 00:23:55.180 ⇒ 00:24:04.930 Uttam Kumaran: We want to hire, like, player-coach type people, we want to hire, like, multifaceted people, because that’s who we were. And many companies that we worked at previously didn’t…
134 00:24:04.930 ⇒ 00:24:15.929 Uttam Kumaran: take advantage of that. They had us in, like, one role, when clearly we could do a bunch of things. And I also think a lot of people at our company like that about us, because we take engineers, and we have them help out on
135 00:24:15.930 ⇒ 00:24:31.870 Uttam Kumaran: broader client strategy, come on to sales calls, and we want to expand, and it’s helpful for the company, too, because that way, we have people that are able to do multiple things, and we can keep a smaller crew. And then, also, I can, for people who want to gain more experience and broad experience.
136 00:24:31.870 ⇒ 00:24:37.560 Uttam Kumaran: This is a great place, because you can do that all on our dime, and we are facing, like, very, very serious
137 00:24:37.610 ⇒ 00:24:49.599 Uttam Kumaran: like, high business class problems every day. So, yeah, I guess, like, I’m kind of interested in, like, what you learned about the analyst piece, and what you learned about the go-to-market piece, and then I can help you kind of, like, shake that a bit.
138 00:24:49.600 ⇒ 00:24:59.959 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, yeah. I guess on the analyst side of things, that what I would see as most important, being in, like, a client-facing role, would definitely be,
139 00:25:00.080 ⇒ 00:25:19.019 Kaela Gallagher: driving influence and creating influence amongst your clients, and kind of reading between the lines on, you know, if they’re asking a question, what are they really asking? I guess on that influence piece, I would say, I think I definitely have experience there.
140 00:25:19.020 ⇒ 00:25:28.300 Kaela Gallagher: I worked at Target right out of college in management, so I had a team of 75 people, I hired, recruited, built my team.
141 00:25:28.430 ⇒ 00:25:42.439 Kaela Gallagher: And, you know, created schedules, and did a lot of business analytics and, kind of driving the business forward, and a lot of that, in terms of driving the business forward, was creating influence.
142 00:25:42.440 ⇒ 00:26:05.690 Kaela Gallagher: I remember we had Starbucks get added to our drive-up teams, and people thought it was the end of the world. The teams were freaking out, Starbucks is on the other side of the store. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, I think at that point, it’s like remembering the why. Like, why are we here? What is our greater goal? It’s to create a great guest experience, and if we do that.
143 00:26:05.690 ⇒ 00:26:19.489 Kaela Gallagher: we’re driving sales, and we’re doing our jobs well, and we’re gonna have jobs in the future. So, I think kind of, you know, bringing the team back to the Y, and tying in how Starbucks added to Drive Up was gonna support that.
144 00:26:19.750 ⇒ 00:26:22.740 Kaela Gallagher: Was really important, and then…
145 00:26:22.890 ⇒ 00:26:32.849 Kaela Gallagher: In my current role, I’m in, like, a recruiting capacity, which is maybe by nature more of, like, an individual contributor position, but
146 00:26:32.850 ⇒ 00:26:46.470 Kaela Gallagher: I… I’ve definitely still found ways to create influence in the office. I have been invited into, like, all of the leadership meetings, regional and office level, and I’ve been tasked
147 00:26:46.470 ⇒ 00:26:56.259 Kaela Gallagher: to create some influence, like, within the office. So, one of the things recently that… that we’re doing,
148 00:26:56.300 ⇒ 00:27:05.219 Kaela Gallagher: We’ve hired a lot of new people, a lot of them kind of fresh out of school, and so it’s kind of like building strong foundational basics, and so…
149 00:27:05.220 ⇒ 00:27:19.990 Kaela Gallagher: Even a couple days ago, I started a conversation, and all the recruiters were slowly kind of gathering around, and we got into this big debate over, you know, how you should start your… your call, and so I think it’s exciting to, like, create those
150 00:27:19.990 ⇒ 00:27:23.039 Kaela Gallagher: conversations and kind of drive that influence within.
151 00:27:23.040 ⇒ 00:27:39.870 Uttam Kumaran: I guess I’m kind of curious on, like, the actual, like, business analytics piece. Like, describe a couple of, like, either the tools that you use, or… you know, again, for us, that is a huge thing of what Robert excels at, and it’s something that I think the company, like, that’s what we lack a lot in capacity right now.
152 00:27:39.870 ⇒ 00:27:46.200 Uttam Kumaran: And so, definitely, I think he’s interested in bringing people on. But the thing is, you have to really… you do have to have some…
153 00:27:46.380 ⇒ 00:27:54.649 Uttam Kumaran: technical experience, and that’s something that we can fill in. But you also do have to have, like, a curious mind about businesses and how business models work.
154 00:27:54.720 ⇒ 00:28:07.950 Uttam Kumaran: Like, we may go into a big company where they’re running 5 different marketing channels, and maybe they’ve done basic analysis already on, like, which one works better, but they’re like, hey, we’ve tried a bunch of new campaign types, and we’re not able to, like.
155 00:28:08.100 ⇒ 00:28:10.240 Uttam Kumaran: improve our CAC, like…
156 00:28:10.530 ⇒ 00:28:26.289 Uttam Kumaran: what do you think? And that’s, like, all you’re given, right? So you have to have the curiosity to go down several paths of hypothesis, like, understand, like, okay, who may know the answer? So let me go find out, like, who’s the gatekeeper of some of this data?
157 00:28:26.300 ⇒ 00:28:32.129 Uttam Kumaran: And then you sort of, like, come up for air and, like, share with the team, okay, like, this is generally what I think.
158 00:28:32.240 ⇒ 00:28:34.180 Uttam Kumaran: But also have an understanding of, like.
159 00:28:34.620 ⇒ 00:28:47.029 Uttam Kumaran: why, like, a retail company is gonna be different than, like, an e-commerce company gonna be different than, like, a B2B software company, right? So, there is some of that, so I guess, like, if you could talk a little bit about any of that.
160 00:28:47.240 ⇒ 00:28:54.449 Uttam Kumaran: Sort of an analytics that you did in the past, especially when it… when it comes to, like, having an open-ended question to, like, go discover.
161 00:28:54.850 ⇒ 00:29:01.650 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, yeah. I definitely dug in a lot to analytics at Target. We were using a lot of…
162 00:29:01.650 ⇒ 00:29:21.010 Kaela Gallagher: internal tools there. One of the problems that I faced… so I kind of worked in a consulting capacity, moving to different stores in the region, and so every time I moved to store… a different store, I would have a new problem to solve, and usually a very short time period to do so.
163 00:29:21.210 ⇒ 00:29:37.349 Kaela Gallagher: So I got to one store at one point where there was an issue with, scheduling. There were certain parts of the day where there were just huge wait times, we weren’t able to, you know, address the wait time at checkout, we were always calling for backup.
164 00:29:37.350 ⇒ 00:29:41.459 Kaela Gallagher: So, at that point, it was really kind of digging in deeper to…
165 00:29:41.680 ⇒ 00:29:54.250 Kaela Gallagher: The scheduling, we had some internal tooling that could show, like, predictions of when the store’s gonna be busy, what your peak times are gonna be, how many people you should have at certain times. But…
166 00:29:54.290 ⇒ 00:30:08.550 Kaela Gallagher: the predictions were not always right, I very quickly realized, and so at that point, it was about reaching out to other resources that might have figured out how to address that problem.
167 00:30:08.550 ⇒ 00:30:17.530 Kaela Gallagher: So, I took a look at, like, who has the best wait time ratings in the district, and I need to reach out to them.
168 00:30:17.780 ⇒ 00:30:35.279 Kaela Gallagher: So, partnering with them to figure out, like, how do you write your schedule to address these, these, Saturday at 2 p.m. wait times? And yeah, our scores got significantly better. Obviously, you write the schedule two weeks out, so there’s a little bit of a waiting period.
169 00:30:35.280 ⇒ 00:30:35.960 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
170 00:30:35.960 ⇒ 00:30:53.160 Kaela Gallagher: to see the results, but, it was really exciting, like, the way that we were able to, address that and improve that within the store, and that, schedule stayed very consistent. Even after I left. They were able to kind of maintain those changes.
171 00:30:53.260 ⇒ 00:30:59.340 Kaela Gallagher: Another one that I had… another issue that I had was, drive-up times at…
172 00:30:59.340 ⇒ 00:31:13.619 Kaela Gallagher: a store. I had a 6-week assignment at the store, and I was a bit nervous to go in, because everything was, like, flaming red, all of their metrics. Yeah. So I knew I was walking into definitely some disorganization there.
173 00:31:13.810 ⇒ 00:31:36.369 Kaela Gallagher: The drive-up time was significantly over goal. The goal was 3 minutes. I want to say they were at 3 and a half when I got there. I only had 6 weeks to make a change, but I very quickly realized that, there was not a focus or really a care in the building from a leadership level, so I needed to kind of influence that change from leadership down.
174 00:31:36.620 ⇒ 00:31:47.879 Kaela Gallagher: Made a few, a few tweaks, like how much time the leaders actually spent with the drive-up team, and, different methods of communication.
175 00:31:48.090 ⇒ 00:31:58.569 Kaela Gallagher: to kind of, yeah, really, like, improve that process. By the time I left, I want to say we were consistently at, like, 2 minutes and 45 seconds, so within…
176 00:31:58.850 ⇒ 00:32:04.789 Kaela Gallagher: 6 weeks, we’re able to really impact the team there. Yeah.
177 00:32:04.790 ⇒ 00:32:12.499 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, I would say, like, our life is like that, except we’re walking into not only, like, multiple targets, but we’re walking into, like.
178 00:32:12.990 ⇒ 00:32:17.599 Uttam Kumaran: a mom-and-pop, like, shop. We’re walking into a factory, we’re walking into, like.
179 00:32:17.620 ⇒ 00:32:18.580 Kaela Gallagher: Yes.
180 00:32:18.580 ⇒ 00:32:27.750 Uttam Kumaran: like, a fashion retailer e-com, or walk into, like, a healthcare clinic. So, it is really fun, but it does take this, like.
181 00:32:28.470 ⇒ 00:32:44.540 Uttam Kumaran: you have to have a really, like, empathetic sense of, like, what do these people really care about? Like, if I was running this business, like, what would matter? And then… and then we do what we do best, is, like, we use data to isolate the problem, and then help them make decisions. But you’ll also be surprised in that, like.
182 00:32:44.990 ⇒ 00:33:01.610 Uttam Kumaran: you know, if a company like Target, with all their resources are challenged, imagine a company with, like, no data team, but they’re still making 20, 30, 40, 50 million dollars a year, right? And so the impact that we can have on just simple optimizations is very high. Like, one thing you’ll learn
183 00:33:01.610 ⇒ 00:33:07.759 Uttam Kumaran: is that we’re not, like, doing, like, rocket science analytics, we’re not doing heavy data science, we’re not doing machine learning, we’re doing, like.
184 00:33:07.780 ⇒ 00:33:11.789 Uttam Kumaran: Basic trend analysis, year-over-year periodic analysis.
185 00:33:11.790 ⇒ 00:33:15.549 Kaela Gallagher: Okay. But what we are doing more of is telling the story.
186 00:33:15.550 ⇒ 00:33:19.600 Uttam Kumaran: And our… it’s not that our folk… the folks we work for
187 00:33:19.690 ⇒ 00:33:39.289 Uttam Kumaran: like, they could run a line chart and stuff like that, but what they… what they lack is, like, they’ve never used data in their business before, or they’ve… they’ve used it, but they… they’ve never had it presented in a way, or they just have, like, a data team throw up a dashboard, they’re like, use the dashboard, right? So, the CEOs, the CMOs, the folks we work with.
188 00:33:39.310 ⇒ 00:33:41.819 Uttam Kumaran: They just, like, lack that, like, human…
189 00:33:41.990 ⇒ 00:33:49.029 Uttam Kumaran: like, explaining, like, okay, I went and dug in, and here’s a story I found, here are a couple paths we can go, like, what do you think?
190 00:33:49.590 ⇒ 00:33:51.620 Kaela Gallagher: And that’s where also, like.
191 00:33:51.620 ⇒ 00:33:59.189 Uttam Kumaran: There’s a difference between, like, engineering, which is, like, do this task, execute this pipeline, build this thing, versus, like, that’s more of, like.
192 00:33:59.310 ⇒ 00:34:16.220 Uttam Kumaran: exploratory, like, you’re… you’re… you have to… that’s… so there’s, like, two brains on the data side, and most of our folks now, I think, are, like, brain one, and we’re trying to bring on people that have that, like, okay, I’m walking into a situation, like, who are the players involved? What have you guys done before? Okay, like, from my experience.
193 00:34:16.300 ⇒ 00:34:29.710 Uttam Kumaran: I sort of can pattern match, like, for example, we have a clinic business. They’re, like, opening up a health clinic. Okay, so I just went to the doctor recently. Okay, so what was my experience? Yeah, I got a text message before to check in. I came in, I paid there.
194 00:34:29.760 ⇒ 00:34:39.740 Uttam Kumaran: they had to print out a receipt instead of… so you… emailing, okay, I gotta follow… so you kind of, like… it’s a lot of actually built on, like, your own experience in these businesses. It’s not like…
195 00:34:40.190 ⇒ 00:34:42.509 Uttam Kumaran: I… but for… even for that role, like, look, I…
196 00:34:42.690 ⇒ 00:34:49.049 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t want to go hire someone that’s expert in clinics. We’re never going to have that. I need to get people on our team that
197 00:34:49.179 ⇒ 00:35:01.910 Uttam Kumaran: can just learn… whenever you walk into a new business, we figure it out. That’s, like, that’s what… that’s what we need, right? Robert and I, a lot of the stuff we worked for, we’ve never worked in these businesses before, like, I’ve never… we have, like.
198 00:35:01.980 ⇒ 00:35:14.460 Uttam Kumaran: we have different industrials companies, like, I’ve never worked in manufacturing, but doesn’t mean, like, we can’t figure it out, and you find out what rhymes with other businesses we have done, and then you also use that to isolate, like, what is unique.
199 00:35:14.460 ⇒ 00:35:31.720 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, they’re very seasonal, they’re very geographically concentrated. Okay, they’re constrained on team resources. Nobody in their company can use a dashboard, right? Or, like, the CEO just wants updates via email. So that… those are, like, the kind of constraints that, like, we’re working with, you know?
200 00:35:31.720 ⇒ 00:35:47.780 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, but that’s a really cool position to be in, because even though you might have situations like that, where nobody’s seen a dashboard, or the CEO only communicates in a certain way, like, I think that that is also an opportunity for an even, like, bigger impact, so…
201 00:35:47.780 ⇒ 00:35:53.439 Uttam Kumaran: Totally, totally. And I think most consultancies, they would try to take that customer and, like, mold them.
202 00:35:53.590 ⇒ 00:35:54.200 Kaela Gallagher: Versus we.
203 00:35:54.200 ⇒ 00:36:08.189 Uttam Kumaran: We, like, really do a good job of meeting people where they are. Whatever messed up system, Microsoft Teams, like, wherever they are, we sort of find them, and then we show them, like, kind of the light on, like, how to actually use data, so…
204 00:36:08.220 ⇒ 00:36:16.489 Uttam Kumaran: So yeah, I mean, that’s kind of, like, a lot on the client analytics side, and I know you talked a little bit about the go-to-market leadership, so to give you kind of a sense of that, like, we…
205 00:36:16.540 ⇒ 00:36:21.140 Uttam Kumaran: Again, we’re selling these kind of large,
206 00:36:21.610 ⇒ 00:36:39.599 Uttam Kumaran: business-to-business contracts, either for materials or, like, fixed costs. And so, in terms of, like, the way we did… our business was purely built on relationships, so completely word of mouth, completely relationships. We are moving to have to have stuff that is working without Rob and I just, like, knowing people.
207 00:36:39.600 ⇒ 00:36:46.220 Uttam Kumaran: Because that’s not sustainable, it’s not predictable either, right? Like, I don’t know that, like, a friend from, like, 2 years ago is gonna come back
208 00:36:46.370 ⇒ 00:36:55.479 Uttam Kumaran: text me today being like, hey, we need data. It happens, but I don’t know, like, I can’t… we can’t build a business on that. So, we need predictable go-to-market channels.
209 00:36:55.490 ⇒ 00:37:06.990 Uttam Kumaran: We do a lot of event stuff, so a lot of our marketing budget, time, and money budget is gonna go towards events, because if you meet Robert and I at an event, and we can talk to you about our solutions.
210 00:37:07.040 ⇒ 00:37:26.620 Uttam Kumaran: it’s very, very powerful, and so we’re trying to drive towards that. We’ve seen that be a winning channel for us, but there’s also a lot around that. Like, if we go to an event, we look through all the attendees and the speakers, we send them an email or a DM before. When we go to the conference, we try to shake hands with those people, the people who are in our ICP.
211 00:37:26.660 ⇒ 00:37:38.449 Uttam Kumaran: And then after was follow-up sequences to get them on a meeting. Our sales process is typically, like, one to three months for folks, but, like, these are folks that we may have, like.
212 00:37:38.480 ⇒ 00:37:48.000 Uttam Kumaran: ran into at a conference six months ago. And so, like, it takes a lot of time to sell one of our deals. It may seem quick, but that’s because, like.
213 00:37:48.360 ⇒ 00:38:00.640 Uttam Kumaran: we had done all this legwork, and that’s sort of what’s been compounding now. A lot of the stuff we did early in spring is actually, like, working out to drive sales now. And so, one of the things is, like.
214 00:38:00.930 ⇒ 00:38:02.550 Uttam Kumaran: Building playbooks.
215 00:38:02.730 ⇒ 00:38:19.199 Uttam Kumaran: as Robert probably mentioned, like, clarifying goals, we have… we of course have, like, design stuff we’re working on, we have marketing stuff, we have brand stuff, so it’s sort of all open. I think what we’re lacking right now is, like, we don’t have, like, one lead for go-to-market and sales.
216 00:38:19.390 ⇒ 00:38:29.629 Uttam Kumaran: We have, like, a really amazing designer, we have really amazing, like, automation people and campaign creation people, like, people who can manage our CRM.
217 00:38:29.740 ⇒ 00:38:33.959 Uttam Kumaran: But no one in their right, like, can lead that function.
218 00:38:34.150 ⇒ 00:38:35.570 Uttam Kumaran: Which means, like.
219 00:38:35.600 ⇒ 00:38:45.550 Uttam Kumaran: Accepting what our OKRs are, making sure that the team is driving towards those, understanding, like, repeatable playbooks on the go-to-market side.
220 00:38:45.550 ⇒ 00:38:56.860 Uttam Kumaran: And basically, in its, like, a nutshell, setting Robert and I to just sell, like, as much business as we humanly possible. You know, our goal is to be in, like, 10 meetings a week.
221 00:38:56.950 ⇒ 00:39:14.340 Uttam Kumaran: You know, with leads. And so, like, how do we accomplish that? How do we… how do we set and host one event, like a Brainforge co-sponsored or sponsored event once a month? And then we ladder… we take those goals and we ladder them into the goals that Robert sets for sales, which is, like, revenue.
222 00:39:14.440 ⇒ 00:39:18.119 Uttam Kumaran: backlog revenue, things like that. So that’s, like, a lot on the…
223 00:39:18.730 ⇒ 00:39:23.470 Uttam Kumaran: Like, go-to-market leadership, you know, side of things.
224 00:39:24.180 ⇒ 00:39:34.000 Kaela Gallagher: Got it, got it. Yeah, that was a part that, Robert hadn’t maybe gone into in as much detail, so definitely helpful to…
225 00:39:34.060 ⇒ 00:39:44.389 Kaela Gallagher: Here you kind of outline that. It seems like the main thing that you guys are looking for there is, like, somebody to kind of create a lot of structure for you guys, and.
226 00:39:44.390 ⇒ 00:39:44.960 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
227 00:39:44.960 ⇒ 00:39:47.979 Kaela Gallagher: You make your… your jobs easier.
228 00:39:47.980 ⇒ 00:39:58.580 Uttam Kumaran: And I think it kind of give you, like, what we’ve tried, right? Because I would say one thing we do well is we try, often. We just don’t often get it right, but we learn a lot. And so, in the go-to-market side.
229 00:39:58.630 ⇒ 00:40:08.039 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve… Robert has been sort of leading sales, and I… again, I have a project management background, so I can come in and sort of get everything organized, but what I lack is time.
230 00:40:08.110 ⇒ 00:40:17.019 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So, for me, one thing we’re looking for in that team, we have great people on design, marketing, sales, but, like, on sales coordination, but…
231 00:40:17.020 ⇒ 00:40:32.259 Uttam Kumaran: none of those people want, like, can, like, have the capability to, like, lead a meeting or, like, make sure that what we distilled or what we learned can get reflected into new process. So, definitely is, like, who is the single owner of, like, that crew of folks?
232 00:40:32.290 ⇒ 00:40:49.920 Uttam Kumaran: But we also have things, like, we’re doing stuff with partnerships. We’re doing stuff, as I mentioned, with events. And so, like, how do you even take on a new… like, for example, Robert and I may meet someone that’s like, hey, they want to co-sponsor an event. What are the next steps of, like, getting that to the finish line? How do we measure that that actually impacted our sales pipeline?
233 00:40:49.920 ⇒ 00:40:59.949 Uttam Kumaran: So, in the past, we’ve tried to bring on some folks that are, like, sort of content-minded, but they didn’t know a lot about, like, our world in the B2B sort of, like, consulting, sales side.
234 00:41:00.050 ⇒ 00:41:18.370 Uttam Kumaran: of course, there’s a lot of… there’s a lot of people who just want to sell, but, like, they’re very expensive, and that’s all they can do is just, like, sell, and we realized that we tried to bring some of those people on, and it’s really hard for them, because we’re… we know our business inside and out, and we can sell really well. It’s actually just, like, getting us into more meetings to do that.
235 00:41:18.370 ⇒ 00:41:21.019 Uttam Kumaran: Is the… is the limiting factor now.
236 00:41:21.090 ⇒ 00:41:29.550 Uttam Kumaran: And then it’s just our… kind of, like, our bandwidth to put out fires in the company. There’s always, like, a bunch of stuff going on, and so we want to make sure that
237 00:41:29.810 ⇒ 00:41:39.970 Uttam Kumaran: sales and go-to-market is one area where there is someone who is like, I got this, and can escalate to us from there. So, I don’t… I’m not necessarily concerned with
238 00:41:40.200 ⇒ 00:41:44.270 Uttam Kumaran: you don’t, I don’t think, necessarily have to have, like, a strict sales background.
239 00:41:44.280 ⇒ 00:41:56.939 Uttam Kumaran: What we’re more looking for is, of course, like, the ability to learn, like, you know, what is, like, the sales world in terms of metrics and operational playbooks, and then kind of be able to just, like, own that area.
240 00:41:56.940 ⇒ 00:42:04.899 Uttam Kumaran: But also, sales is a relationship thing, so there are a lot of people involved, right? There’s a lot of, like, the way we sell to one person’s different than the way we do the other.
241 00:42:04.900 ⇒ 00:42:07.720 Kaela Gallagher: We’re trying these new things on the event side.
242 00:42:07.720 ⇒ 00:42:23.239 Uttam Kumaran: One thing you’ll also notice about us, in terms of us versus other IT consultancies, is that we decided to try to build a brand very early on. We decided to do a lot of stuff on the content side that you won’t see… you’ll only see from companies that are, like, 10 times our size.
243 00:42:23.240 ⇒ 00:42:25.489 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah. And so we invested a lot.
244 00:42:25.490 ⇒ 00:42:40.859 Uttam Kumaran: in that, because I realized that at the end of Brain… like, at the peak for Brainforce, we’re just connecting people to, like, really tough problems. And so brand is, like, the way we have to drive that forward. And so there’s all these, like, nuances to sales that I think
245 00:42:41.010 ⇒ 00:42:48.580 Uttam Kumaran: Are things that that person would definitely have to… have to learn, but it is a lot of project management, like, operational stuff.
246 00:42:48.810 ⇒ 00:43:06.309 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, yeah, that’s definitely an area that I’m interested in pursuing. I think when I initially reached out to Robert, the kind of two main things I’d outlined was, like, project management and consulting, and it seems like this role could do, both, which is really exciting.
247 00:43:06.310 ⇒ 00:43:24.930 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, in terms of the sales side, I’m, you know, super eager to learn. I think I’m a person… I consider myself a doer, and also, you know, a lifelong learner. I’m always, going out of my way to try and learn new things, whether it’s, you know, listening to different…
248 00:43:24.930 ⇒ 00:43:30.560 Kaela Gallagher: podcasts or watching really niche YouTube videos,
249 00:43:30.600 ⇒ 00:43:45.220 Kaela Gallagher: But on the sales side, like, I may already have familiarity with some of the things that you guys are going for. My role right now is recruiting, but half of the business is on the sales side, and sitting in the leadership meetings, like, we are going through.
250 00:43:45.370 ⇒ 00:43:58.630 Kaela Gallagher: you know, metrics and numbers, related to both sides of the business and, you know, setting goals and targets there. So, definitely something I might have already touched, but also very open to learn and jump in.
251 00:43:58.830 ⇒ 00:44:15.410 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and on the recruiting, like, it’s… recruiting is sales, too. Like, you’re thinking about people in pipeline, time to close metrics, you’re trying to look at, like, what… what characteristics of people show that they… like, how do you qualify, disqualify faster, all the negotiations, so it’s the same thing, like…
252 00:44:15.410 ⇒ 00:44:33.030 Kaela Gallagher: Right, and I’m… I’m selling roles to candidates, but I’m also, like, trusted by the salespeople in my office. They bring me into the meetings with the hiring managers to sell my candidates as well. So, always in those kind of, like, client-facing sales positions, for sure.
253 00:44:33.030 ⇒ 00:44:41.449 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so that’s very similar to, like… again, it’s just the cycle for us is different. We’re selling, like, B2B services.
254 00:44:41.450 ⇒ 00:44:41.830 Kaela Gallagher: Right.
255 00:44:41.830 ⇒ 00:44:58.520 Uttam Kumaran: But the metric side, it’s all very, very similar, and like, again, project management, I think, is what we need… is what we need there. And again, we have all this stuff set up, like, our… our sales team are all… and again, like, it’s… sales team is me, Robert, selling, and we have a couple people internally that are just helping to, like.
256 00:44:58.520 ⇒ 00:45:09.629 Uttam Kumaran: do designs, or play… or design, events, or help us, like, update our CRM. So you have… you actually do… you have all the… the resources to, like, execute all the things.
257 00:45:09.630 ⇒ 00:45:19.309 Uttam Kumaran: we just need, like, one person who’s like, I can run this, like, I can drive towards achieving these OKRs, and I can report on our progress towards them. Like, that is…
258 00:45:19.480 ⇒ 00:45:24.340 Uttam Kumaran: I’d say, like, similarly on the delivery side, we… I’m actually happy, if you just put me in 8…
259 00:45:24.530 ⇒ 00:45:42.920 Uttam Kumaran: back-to-back sales meetings a day, I’ll just go do that. I don’t mind, right? But that’s what we need, and that’s what the company needs me to do. The company doesn’t need me figuring out, like, HubSpot workflows, or, like, you know, doing some stuff. That’s not a great use of the company’s time for me. And so that’s where it’s almost like, how do we…
260 00:45:42.950 ⇒ 00:45:48.939 Uttam Kumaran: how do we put us in the highest leverage position to close more deals, is really that side.
261 00:45:48.940 ⇒ 00:45:57.669 Kaela Gallagher: And Robert, I think he had mentioned, like, you already have somebody kind of on the sales side, like, going after leads and building that out for you.
262 00:45:57.670 ⇒ 00:46:10.690 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so, I mean, we have all the capabilities to, like, build lead, like, lead lists, like, isolate a conference and, like, go find everybody that’s attending, like, and we use AI for a lot of that, so we have all the, like…
263 00:46:10.960 ⇒ 00:46:24.110 Uttam Kumaran: the SOPs, or at least the ability to do all those things. I think what we lack is, like… we just lack, like, someone to spend a couple hours just, like, organizing all that. So we do it in, like, our spare time, you know, because…
264 00:46:24.110 ⇒ 00:46:28.069 Kaela Gallagher: And that’s… that’s the… that’s the challenge, you know. Yes, because you don’t have any spare time.
265 00:46:28.070 ⇒ 00:46:46.830 Uttam Kumaran: No, there’s no… yeah, I don’t do it, there’s no spare time, I just do it… we can get around to it, we get organized. But right now, we meet once a week as, like, a go-to-market team. Okay. And then, like, we have one person, Rico, on our team, who’s, like, a coordinator who, like, creates tickets and keeps people a little bit organized, but I think he just is more, like.
266 00:46:47.490 ⇒ 00:47:05.430 Uttam Kumaran: just creating organization around people, but nothing on, like, leading a leadership… leading go-to-market, or, like, kind of understanding what have we done in the past, what’s been working, what should we do in the future. And again, I don’t think you need to have, like, an ex… neither of us had experience selling
267 00:47:05.430 ⇒ 00:47:15.260 Uttam Kumaran: B2B consulting services before 2 years ago, and really, I don’t think I had… I was good at it until, like, recently. So, like, I don’t believe… I’m not a big credentials person, I’m not a big, like.
268 00:47:15.380 ⇒ 00:47:21.829 Uttam Kumaran: prior experience and anything person, I am a big, like, aptitude and, like, curiosity, because…
269 00:47:22.060 ⇒ 00:47:27.499 Uttam Kumaran: This is… this… the way of our world may be this way today, and in 6 months, it may be completely different.
270 00:47:27.630 ⇒ 00:47:43.170 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, everybody has to move… and I’m telling you, I’ve changed my role at this company every 3 to 6 months. The company changes that often, and so, like, everybody has to mold to, like, whatever the next challenge is. So that’s, like, more of what we’re biasing towards.
271 00:47:43.170 ⇒ 00:47:45.580 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, awesome, very exciting.
272 00:47:45.580 ⇒ 00:47:46.090 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
273 00:47:46.090 ⇒ 00:47:51.130 Kaela Gallagher: Any, like, any other questions for me, or anything I can…
274 00:47:51.130 ⇒ 00:47:56.560 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I guess, like, I’m curious, like, why you’re interested in, like, in, like.
275 00:47:56.820 ⇒ 00:48:02.710 Uttam Kumaran: consulting, or, like, what is interesting about, like, technical consulting? Because I guess it is kind of similar to the role you played
276 00:48:03.580 ⇒ 00:48:17.660 Uttam Kumaran: at Target, and, like, kind of going through these different things, but, like, I guess what’s interesting about… because ultimately, again, like, our business is client service. We are… there are these internal challenges, and there is executing, but, like, sort of curious about, like, what about…
277 00:48:18.100 ⇒ 00:48:31.190 Uttam Kumaran: Because I will tell you, like, I didn’t think I was going to be a consultant, even just a few years ago. Like, I actually don’t really like consultants, but I guess I am one now. But I feel like we have a different way of doing things, and we are very honest about
278 00:48:31.480 ⇒ 00:48:33.930 Uttam Kumaran: How we consult, and, like, we’re not just, like.
279 00:48:34.260 ⇒ 00:48:39.749 Uttam Kumaran: Billing randomly for useless stuff. But, yeah, just, like, interested in, like, how you think about it.
280 00:48:39.980 ⇒ 00:48:42.950 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, I think consulting is…
281 00:48:42.950 ⇒ 00:49:06.140 Kaela Gallagher: interesting to me for two reasons. One is, you know, being on the client-facing side of things. I’ve always loved the people aspect of business. I wrote my senior thesis on kind of a similar topic, and I definitely consider myself a people person. Like, the role that I’m in now, I talk to people all day, every day, and I love doing it.
282 00:49:08.510 ⇒ 00:49:20.299 Kaela Gallagher: The other side of consulting, though, that is really of interest to me is the ability to make things better. I think that’s the goal at the end of the day, and…
283 00:49:20.360 ⇒ 00:49:39.789 Kaela Gallagher: I grew up as a military child, like, moving around every two years around the whole world, and then obviously continue that in WBB, and going through so much change all the time. I… my goal was always to, like, leave things or the people I met in a better place than when I… when I first arrived, and I think that that’s…
284 00:49:39.790 ⇒ 00:49:48.970 Kaela Gallagher: an opportunity and something that you get to do with consulting and making things better, and I really like the strategy side of things, I really like thinking on the level, and like.
285 00:49:48.970 ⇒ 00:49:53.499 Kaela Gallagher: trying to make processes better, and so I think that’s,
286 00:49:53.840 ⇒ 00:49:57.209 Kaela Gallagher: Innate to consulting, and something that’s really exciting.
287 00:49:57.350 ⇒ 00:49:59.679 Uttam Kumaran: Cool, yeah, I mean, I think,
288 00:49:59.940 ⇒ 00:50:07.260 Uttam Kumaran: I think, like, we’re a great company to, like, learn this whole game alongside us, and also, I think.
289 00:50:07.520 ⇒ 00:50:24.399 Uttam Kumaran: this kind of role, how we’re trying to frame it, it won’t be there for long, meaning as the company grows, we will have people that are just doing, like, one thing. Like, it… but I think, naturally, in a company our size, a lot of people wear multiple hats, which I think is, like, a feature.
290 00:50:24.510 ⇒ 00:50:30.149 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and we want to attract people that see that as a feature, and see that, like, oh, there is, like.
291 00:50:30.210 ⇒ 00:50:42.740 Uttam Kumaran: the opportunity to lead go-to-market, and we’re, like, now over a million dollars to sort of lead that and take us to 5. And then there’s also, like, I can also walk into $100 million businesses and implement
292 00:50:42.740 ⇒ 00:50:59.370 Uttam Kumaran: like, data strategy and optimizations. So for me, like, I… that’s, like, crazy. I wish someone… I never got offered, like, a job. I mean, our job… my job now is sort of similar, but it’s… I don’t know, I feel like it’s really, really cool, so I appreciate you even, like, showing interest, and I won’t say it’s, like, gonna be easy.
293 00:50:59.390 ⇒ 00:51:01.720 Uttam Kumaran: by any means, but I do think that…
294 00:51:01.910 ⇒ 00:51:20.009 Uttam Kumaran: for someone who is interested, who is used to a lot of change, and used to just, like, walking into a situation, man, okay, with, like, a glass-half-full attitude, like, whatever it is, we’ll figure it out, that’s what we need. I would say the people that have struggled at the company is, like, people who, like, need, like, a very perfect
295 00:51:20.050 ⇒ 00:51:25.609 Uttam Kumaran: setup, or, sort of want to have, like, everything fleshed out.
296 00:51:25.690 ⇒ 00:51:29.280 Uttam Kumaran: Or just people that, like, don’t have urgency, you know, like…
297 00:51:29.330 ⇒ 00:51:44.340 Uttam Kumaran: Even you just, like, following up on, like, hey, can we get this meeting booked? Like, that’s the sort of stuff that we need a lot of in the company, because if we don’t push it, like, we don’t change, and that’s where I think you’ll see that we’re a lot different than most companies, that we really do…
298 00:51:44.340 ⇒ 00:52:01.069 Uttam Kumaran: improve every week, we get better. Not, like, every 3 months, or, like, quarterly, or, like, this is, like, a… every week, I’m like, we’ll change everything to get better. There’s nothing that’s set in stone here. So that’s… that’s sort of all, like, kind of, like, how we operate.
299 00:52:01.510 ⇒ 00:52:12.549 Kaela Gallagher: Cool. I… one follow-up question, actually, on the split here between, like, the analyst side and the go-to-market side. What percentage of time do you think would be spent
300 00:52:12.710 ⇒ 00:52:13.770 Kaela Gallagher: In each category.
301 00:52:13.770 ⇒ 00:52:18.500 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, I think most of where we need help is on the analyst side.
302 00:52:18.500 ⇒ 00:52:18.830 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.
303 00:52:18.990 ⇒ 00:52:19.840 Uttam Kumaran: column.
304 00:52:19.990 ⇒ 00:52:28.430 Uttam Kumaran: like, I mean, we just frankly are, like, we’re just having… we’re… we’re… we have… we’re at a lot of clients now for the amount of people we have, and if…
305 00:52:28.690 ⇒ 00:52:30.010 Uttam Kumaran: If, like.
306 00:52:30.570 ⇒ 00:52:48.540 Uttam Kumaran: I’m excited for a couple more deals to close, and if they do, we’re really screwed, because I have to go find great people. And again, like, I recruit… I do all the recruiting here, so we have a couple people in mind, but, like, I… I kind of don’t like just plugging people in part-time to stuff, like, we want to invest
307 00:52:48.540 ⇒ 00:53:02.649 Uttam Kumaran: and the right people, but I do think that in Robert, you have a great mentor to learn everything you need to know about doing rich analysis, but it would probably be, like, 60-40 or 70-30 more on the client consulting side.
308 00:53:03.300 ⇒ 00:53:07.870 Uttam Kumaran: And then, I think, again, like, as time goes, you’ll have the ability to sort of, like.
309 00:53:08.390 ⇒ 00:53:18.889 Uttam Kumaran: see which way we want to go. Our business is always going to be on behalf of clients, so delivery is going to be the biggest… cost center, it’s gonna be the biggest part of the business.
310 00:53:19.130 ⇒ 00:53:19.570 Kaela Gallagher: like, safe.
311 00:53:19.570 ⇒ 00:53:26.180 Uttam Kumaran: is the ability to get more clients, recruiting is the ability to get more people, and the operations is just holding it all together, but…
312 00:53:26.310 ⇒ 00:53:39.050 Uttam Kumaran: those, like, you don’t want… those are all cost centers. Like, they’re a cost of bringing in more money, and they’re not delivering for our clients directly. So, my mind as the business owner is always to see, like, okay, like.
313 00:53:39.300 ⇒ 00:53:48.230 Uttam Kumaran: We’re never gonna, like, have, like, a 100 people sales team or 100 people operations team, because those don’t direct… those… those have to directly impact our client satisfaction.
314 00:53:48.600 ⇒ 00:53:50.530 Uttam Kumaran: And so, like, I think…
315 00:53:50.770 ⇒ 00:54:03.399 Uttam Kumaran: we’re gonna have… we have some people that are dedicated to those, but we’re not immediately, like, that’s not the first thing that’s gonna grow. As more business comes in, delivery is the one thing that… that will scale with it.
316 00:54:03.750 ⇒ 00:54:22.649 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, we’re gonna have people in those orgs that, naturally, they’re like, hey, I want to help Brainforge grow, and so they’ll help us on a little bit of the sales side, a little bit of operations. Everybody contributes to recruiting now as well, so that’s kind of, like, how we operate, but we’re also not, like, aware of three hats and get burned out, like, so we’re pretty honest about, like.
317 00:54:22.740 ⇒ 00:54:27.030 Uttam Kumaran: Where people’s time is going, and for people that are contributing internally.
318 00:54:27.210 ⇒ 00:54:38.049 Uttam Kumaran: Like, that’s all built… that’s all billable time to brain forge, and then that’s all, like, carved out, so it’s not, like, that’s a… that’s, like, not a second job, it’s, like, all within, you know, one time period.
319 00:54:38.050 ⇒ 00:54:39.349 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.
320 00:54:40.160 ⇒ 00:54:41.000 Kaela Gallagher: Cool.
321 00:54:41.460 ⇒ 00:54:49.420 Kaela Gallagher: I don’t think I have any other questions for you besides, just curious, like, what next… next steps would look like.
322 00:54:49.420 ⇒ 00:54:52.309 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so I want to connect you,
323 00:54:52.420 ⇒ 00:55:03.470 Uttam Kumaran: with, I think, probably two people on our internal team, probably one person on our… who is on our go-to-market team, and then one person
324 00:55:04.950 ⇒ 00:55:16.890 Uttam Kumaran: on our analysis team that probably works closely with Robert, who could talk a little bit about some of the analysis work that we’re doing. I think that’ll give you a little bit of an ability to
325 00:55:17.010 ⇒ 00:55:28.999 Uttam Kumaran: see, like, what a day in the life is in, like, a client-facing, you know, analyst, you know, for strategy work. And then also someone on our internal sales side who can probably shed a little bit of light on, like, what their
326 00:55:29.080 ⇒ 00:55:43.360 Uttam Kumaran: day-to-day is. I have, like, two great people for you to talk to. I guess, like, I know you’re, like, just in the market, like, search, like, what’s your timeline on stuff? I don’t know if you already chatted with Robert about this, but yeah, like, what do you… how are you thinking about your search right now?
327 00:55:43.870 ⇒ 00:55:54.659 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, just kind of starting my search right now, wouldn’t say, like, I need to be in a huge rush at this point, but definitely, like.
328 00:55:54.660 ⇒ 00:56:07.949 Kaela Gallagher: willing to make a move sooner rather than later. I do have a very minor procedure that I need to get on calendar in, like, 3 to 4 weeks from now, so I would say maybe starting after that would be the most ideal.
329 00:56:07.950 ⇒ 00:56:18.060 Uttam Kumaran: Sure, and then how open are you to, like… for all of our folks, we try to offer, like, start part-time for a little bit, just to even, like, get a sense of working at the company, and that’s something that
330 00:56:18.230 ⇒ 00:56:29.620 Uttam Kumaran: Again, like, you know recruiting is very hard to suss everything out in an interview process, so we almost let people, like, hey, if you want to come do, like, a paid one or two weeks part-time with us.
331 00:56:29.910 ⇒ 00:56:48.420 Uttam Kumaran: and, like, either shadow on one client, or, like, work on some stuff internally. That way, you get a sense of, like, what it is to work with us without, like, fully committing, and then kind of same thing on our side. If that’s something you’d be interested in, like, that’s… we usually offer that to everybody. I know some people, they want… they’re like, no, I need a full-time commitment.
332 00:56:48.490 ⇒ 00:56:53.639 Uttam Kumaran: Which is just hard for us to do, we’re a small company, and so we want to make sure every additional person we’re bringing on is, like.
333 00:56:53.820 ⇒ 00:57:03.299 Uttam Kumaran: the greatest person we can bring on. But if that’s something you’d be open to, like, that’s, like, kind of, like, our… our strategy, typically.
334 00:57:03.550 ⇒ 00:57:14.319 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, yeah, definitely something we could explore further. I am, like, full-time employed right now, so would need to kind of, yeah, figure out how that could work with.
335 00:57:14.320 ⇒ 00:57:14.930 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
336 00:57:14.930 ⇒ 00:57:15.490 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah.
337 00:57:15.760 ⇒ 00:57:33.150 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay, perfect. Okay, cool, so let me plan on connecting with those two people, and I’ll try to get that, like, later today. And then just message me if you have any questions about anything we talked about today, or the company. Again, I’m, like, happy to answer anything, so yeah, let me know.
338 00:57:33.150 ⇒ 00:57:37.650 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, awesome. Thanks, thanks for your time, and thanks for spending extra time with me. I appreciate it.
339 00:57:37.650 ⇒ 00:57:39.969 Uttam Kumaran: Of course, of course, yeah, no problem. Thank you so much.
340 00:57:39.970 ⇒ 00:57:41.900 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, great meeting you.
341 00:57:41.900 ⇒ 00:57:44.190 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, thank you. Bye.