Meeting Title: Brainforge x Contextual Date: 2025-10-24 Meeting participants: Mike Klaczynski, Hannah Wang, John Marini, Uttam Kumaran, Holly Condos
WEBVTT
1 00:01:00.260 ⇒ 00:01:01.320 Hannah Wang: Hello.
2 00:01:06.180 ⇒ 00:01:07.000 Mike Klaczynski: Hi, Hannah.
3 00:01:09.060 ⇒ 00:01:10.019 Hannah Wang: How are you?
4 00:01:10.460 ⇒ 00:01:12.030 Mike Klaczynski: I’m good. How are you?
5 00:01:13.100 ⇒ 00:01:14.160 Hannah Wang: Doing well.
6 00:01:15.770 ⇒ 00:01:17.260 Mike Klaczynski: Where are you based out of?
7 00:01:18.360 ⇒ 00:01:19.580 Hannah Wang: I’m in LA.
8 00:01:20.500 ⇒ 00:01:23.750 Mike Klaczynski: LA, okay, nice. I’m up in Washington State.
9 00:01:24.000 ⇒ 00:01:27.539 Hannah Wang: Oh, okay, so same time zone. I feel like it’s…
10 00:01:28.410 ⇒ 00:01:36.120 Hannah Wang: Most people, or I feel like a lot of people at Brainforge work Central or Eastern, so I’m always, like, the last person to…
11 00:01:36.250 ⇒ 00:01:39.639 Hannah Wang: sign on, and then sign off, so I’m sure.
12 00:01:39.840 ⇒ 00:01:48.519 Hannah Wang: It’s similar for you guys. I don’t know if you’re a pretty remote company, or everyone’s based in Washington State.
13 00:01:49.460 ⇒ 00:01:51.450 Mike Klaczynski: Yeah, our headquarters is in Mountain View.
14 00:01:51.790 ⇒ 00:01:53.499 Hannah Wang: Okay. And.
15 00:01:54.000 ⇒ 00:01:57.560 Mike Klaczynski: I would say most people are based out of there,
16 00:01:57.900 ⇒ 00:02:01.309 Mike Klaczynski: But we do have some folks on the GTM side.
17 00:02:01.660 ⇒ 00:02:11.629 Mike Klaczynski: Primarily salespeople that are on… in Chicago, New York, London, Amsterdam, distributed, but…
18 00:02:11.840 ⇒ 00:02:14.199 Hannah Wang: Otherwise, most of the company’s in the Bay.
19 00:02:14.670 ⇒ 00:02:15.310 Hannah Wang: Nice.
20 00:02:16.630 ⇒ 00:02:26.329 Hannah Wang: I love Washington. I go there not often, but when I did go, I always visited Mount Rainier and all the national parks, and I really love it there.
21 00:02:28.330 ⇒ 00:02:31.200 Mike Klaczynski: Yeah, yeah, I mean, we have… we’ve got some really, really nice sun…
22 00:02:33.770 ⇒ 00:02:34.390 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, everyone.
23 00:02:34.390 ⇒ 00:02:38.159 Mike Klaczynski: I’m gonna end now.
24 00:02:38.710 ⇒ 00:02:39.660 Mike Klaczynski: You, Tom.
25 00:02:39.660 ⇒ 00:02:40.570 Uttam Kumaran: Hey.
26 00:02:41.780 ⇒ 00:02:43.199 Uttam Kumaran: Hey John, how are you?
27 00:02:43.930 ⇒ 00:02:44.450 John Marini: Good.
28 00:02:47.470 ⇒ 00:02:50.909 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. I think we’re waiting for… Polly, Hannah.
29 00:02:50.910 ⇒ 00:02:51.850 Mike Klaczynski: Thanks for jumping.
30 00:02:52.570 ⇒ 00:03:01.490 Uttam Kumaran: No, thank you, I appreciate the time on a Friday. I feel like this is the only time I’ll get any headspace to, like, have conversations like this, so it’s, it’s great.
31 00:03:04.330 ⇒ 00:03:05.130 Mike Klaczynski: No worries.
32 00:03:05.250 ⇒ 00:03:06.060 Mike Klaczynski: Thanks for…
33 00:03:06.170 ⇒ 00:03:15.510 Mike Klaczynski: We’re proposing the agenda, and… and, yeah, yeah, really, really appreciate it. That, white paper turned out pretty good.
34 00:03:15.510 ⇒ 00:03:17.579 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I’m excited to sort of…
35 00:03:17.580 ⇒ 00:03:18.460 Mike Klaczynski: on it.
36 00:03:18.910 ⇒ 00:03:23.049 Uttam Kumaran: Cool, yeah, I’m excited to sort of, like, get that,
37 00:03:23.670 ⇒ 00:03:29.039 Uttam Kumaran: out into the wild, and, like, I think that’s kind of part of some of the stuff we wanted to talk to today.
38 00:03:30.580 ⇒ 00:03:43.879 Uttam Kumaran: But yeah, I mean, like, our team loves the product, and I feel like we… I think we’ll go through it today, but, like, how we talk to customers, but I feel like there’s a lot more we could do to… to sort of bring some… some promotion your way. So yeah, maybe we’ll… we can kick it off, I think…
39 00:03:43.970 ⇒ 00:03:52.860 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll just share my screen and kind of drive, and then, of course, please feel free to… to interrupt, or… again, this is a conversation between us, so…
40 00:03:53.010 ⇒ 00:04:05.389 Uttam Kumaran: kind of today, we wanted to do a little bit of a refresher on our partnership with y’all, but also talk a little bit about, yeah, our partnership program as a whole. I mean, probably nothing,
41 00:04:05.390 ⇒ 00:04:16.320 Uttam Kumaran: new to you, Mike, but, you know, for us, I think partnerships has been one of the key ways we’ve grown our business, and we’ve made a lot of friends in the industry that we’ve successfully converted into
42 00:04:16.320 ⇒ 00:04:26.150 Uttam Kumaran: you know, positive business relationships, and it’s something that we’re investing more time and effort into. So kind of the onus for this chat is just seeing how we can do more together.
43 00:04:27.350 ⇒ 00:04:44.240 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and so, on this call, maybe I just do a refresher, so, for John, hey, my name is Utah, I’m the CEO of Brainforge. We’re a data analytics and AI consultancy. Been in business about 2 years, worked with, you know, more than 40 clients so far, and sort of growing pretty quickly.
44 00:04:44.290 ⇒ 00:04:50.830 Uttam Kumaran: You also have Hannah and Holly on the call, maybe if you guys just want to give a brief introduction.
45 00:04:52.340 ⇒ 00:05:02.260 Holly Condos: Sure, hi, John. Holly Condas, I’m fairly new to Brainforge. I bring a lot of… Tech…
46 00:05:02.680 ⇒ 00:05:13.390 Holly Condos: Public sector and commercial experience, partnerships, contracts, service delivery projects,
47 00:05:13.740 ⇒ 00:05:19.650 Holly Condos: And happy to be helping the Brainforge team get their partnership ecosystem off the ground.
48 00:05:22.380 ⇒ 00:05:24.470 Mike Klaczynski: I’m Hannah. Nice to meet you.
49 00:05:24.470 ⇒ 00:05:37.279 Hannah Wang: Oh, sorry, I interrupted you, Mike, but, yeah, I’m Hannah, I’m basically the marketing lead, so I help with design, a lot of go-to-market campaigns, and I kind of bleed.
50 00:05:37.450 ⇒ 00:05:46.759 Hannah Wang: yeah, design and branding for Brainforge, so, yeah, all the white papers and all the collateral that we’re gonna make together, I will help spearhead those.
51 00:05:47.600 ⇒ 00:06:00.680 Uttam Kumaran: Cool, and then, yeah, kind of my counterpart on the business side is Robert Tsang, so he leads a lot of our sales, and we basically run, you know, the business together, and then Rico, who kind of, like, helps coordinate, and sort of get…
52 00:06:00.840 ⇒ 00:06:15.979 Uttam Kumaran: keep the engine running in a lot of different ways. So that’s sort of our team, and I know on your side, Mike, we’ve spent a lot of time together. John, we’re just meeting for the first time. We’ve also worked with several of the solution architects and some of the folks on the engineering side who aren’t listed here, who have been really, really helpful, so we’ll definitely
53 00:06:16.060 ⇒ 00:06:22.730 Uttam Kumaran: get them onto this slide. But sort of, just to set the stage for our side is just… like.
54 00:06:22.830 ⇒ 00:06:38.790 Uttam Kumaran: our goal for, like, our partners, and so… not… you know, we are a service company, and so we do implement a lot of different software, but beyond that, we are an outcomes company for our customers. Like, we’re not just, hey, we have 100 people somewhere and throw us at tickets. Like, the way we…
55 00:06:38.830 ⇒ 00:06:44.070 Uttam Kumaran: Engage with our customers is driving towards really key, measurable outcomes, and…
56 00:06:44.280 ⇒ 00:07:00.020 Uttam Kumaran: our kind of core focus areas are in data and AI. And data is really, like, our backgrounds and how we built the company, but in the last two years, we’ve done a lot with AI internally, and we have a lot of success with customers in implementing agentic workflows.
57 00:07:00.060 ⇒ 00:07:05.700 Uttam Kumaran: you know, the end-to-end, RAG systems, and…
58 00:07:06.060 ⇒ 00:07:20.819 Uttam Kumaran: explaining the value and showing the ROI to our ICP, which, I think is… there’s a lot of opportunity in the types of people that we actually go after, for… for both of us right now.
59 00:07:21.610 ⇒ 00:07:39.280 Uttam Kumaran: I guess one thing maybe I skipped is, I know, I know Mike, you may have met, Hannah before, but maybe John would love to just hear from you about, sort of your, your role at Contextual, and, yeah, just to, hear a bit more about, like, how we can collaborate.
60 00:07:40.700 ⇒ 00:07:46.369 John Marini: Yeah, so, in my role, I own basically everything around building awareness and driving
61 00:07:46.750 ⇒ 00:07:51.330 John Marini: We need to pipeline to our sales team from the marketing sources, so…
62 00:07:51.700 ⇒ 00:07:55.130 John Marini: Obviously, partnerships drives leads and pipeline, as well as…
63 00:07:55.640 ⇒ 00:08:02.580 John Marini: But from a marketing perspective, everything that lives in awareness building and lead gen lives in my part.
64 00:08:02.580 ⇒ 00:08:03.220 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
65 00:08:03.950 ⇒ 00:08:16.640 John Marini: So, it’s like a team of one person, so that includes all of our field and event marketing, all of our digital marketing, our website. The new rebrand was kind of something I championed, as well.
66 00:08:16.820 ⇒ 00:08:21.909 John Marini: And… yeah, so it’s a lot, but, you know, obviously, who’s looking to…
67 00:08:22.090 ⇒ 00:08:25.070 John Marini: Do more and find, you know, areas of opportunity.
68 00:08:25.720 ⇒ 00:08:30.000 John Marini: I would say… For us, this year, we have found
69 00:08:31.290 ⇒ 00:08:35.099 John Marini: In-person, real-world events, trade shows, conferences is probably one word.
70 00:08:35.360 ⇒ 00:08:43.270 John Marini: the top 5 pipe gen sources, so those have been… Very time-consuming this year, because… Who knows?
71 00:08:43.270 ⇒ 00:08:44.290 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s a lot.
72 00:08:44.460 ⇒ 00:08:50.000 John Marini: But, we are working to get our digital expanded and can kind of see a little bit more traction.
73 00:08:50.200 ⇒ 00:08:51.300 John Marini: motivations.
74 00:08:51.770 ⇒ 00:08:54.230 John Marini: Well, so… Yeah.
75 00:08:55.340 ⇒ 00:09:08.630 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. I mean, I would say, like, we found to kind of reached the same exact conclusion, and it’s kind of something we’ll talk about, which is just, like, the impact that in real IRL events has had in our ability to actually, like.
76 00:09:08.670 ⇒ 00:09:26.810 Uttam Kumaran: put a face to, like, a solution, you know, that is as complex as some stuff in AI, you know, and so that’s something definitely that we found a lot of success with. But the brand looks great, by the way, and so, you know, we took a lot of, I’m sure, your work and how we did the design for our playbook together, and so, yeah, I’m, like, excited to…
77 00:09:26.810 ⇒ 00:09:32.720 Uttam Kumaran: to collaborate. So this is a little bit about our, sort of, partner ecosystem. I’m sure none of this should be…
78 00:09:32.720 ⇒ 00:09:43.540 Uttam Kumaran: unfamiliar, but, you know, we have several different types of partners, and again, for our business that’s young, you know, all this arrived at just, like, trying to work with the people that
79 00:09:43.540 ⇒ 00:09:53.679 Uttam Kumaran: that also work to support our customers. And so, for us, the client and the success for the client is number one, but it is a huge win-win for our clients when we have tight relationships
80 00:09:53.680 ⇒ 00:10:08.090 Uttam Kumaran: With the tools that we are implementing for them, both from the support side, from the understanding pricing, and being able to, you know, fight for them for getting deals that align to their budgets, but also making sure that
81 00:10:08.090 ⇒ 00:10:14.549 Uttam Kumaran: for the software vendor that their tools actually get implemented, it doesn’t sit as vaporware, or it doesn’t, like, get sold, and then…
82 00:10:14.550 ⇒ 00:10:34.310 Uttam Kumaran: the person leaves and, you know, nothing happens. But it’s also… this is, like, a rising market, and so how can we do things on the awareness side, to actually share people that these types of solutions exist? And our story is so aligned with tools and an ecosystem attached to a solution, so I think we have something unique.
83 00:10:34.350 ⇒ 00:10:38.720 Uttam Kumaran: When we… when it goes to clients to explain, you know, how we typically work.
84 00:10:38.950 ⇒ 00:10:49.410 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, we have several different, sort of, partners. I mean, we have a lot of different software partners, a lot of different agency partners, that we work with to support our clients, so…
85 00:10:49.410 ⇒ 00:11:03.019 Uttam Kumaran: Really excited to have Contextual on there and to do more with y’all, but again, we work across the entire data and AI stack, so these are product analytics, ETL tools, data warehouse tools, data modeling tools.
86 00:11:03.150 ⇒ 00:11:19.949 Uttam Kumaran: probably missing a bunch, but yeah, like, again, and for our customers, even having to deal in an ecosystem with this many options, and again, I’ll kind of go through who our ICP is, it’s very difficult, and so they are really appreciative when they have a partner like us who can help navigate
87 00:11:19.950 ⇒ 00:11:25.739 Uttam Kumaran: what is the best of the best, and, like, what is the best in class, which we really believe Contextual is.
88 00:11:25.740 ⇒ 00:11:32.979 Uttam Kumaran: within, you know, RAG as a service is kind of, like, how I describe it. And so, like, I’ll kind of talk a little bit about what we’ve done
89 00:11:32.980 ⇒ 00:11:33.849 Uttam Kumaran: to date.
90 00:11:33.850 ⇒ 00:11:53.820 Uttam Kumaran: I know I spoke a little bit at one of the QBRs recently in another internal meeting. I know we’ve developed this playbook that I think, John, we can send over if you haven’t already had a chance to take a look at, that we’re finalizing, and I think today we can talk a little bit about how we can maybe align with some of your awareness goals to bring this to life.
91 00:11:53.890 ⇒ 00:12:12.729 Uttam Kumaran: We’ve also developed several demos internally that we continuously pitch to prospects and existing clients, demoing the contextual tool and the benefits. And then, of course, we have, you know, sort of signed, you know, paperwork on, you know, our partnership and NDAs and things like that, so that’s sort of where we are.
92 00:12:12.750 ⇒ 00:12:17.710 Uttam Kumaran: I guess, Mike, is there anything else to add so far before I kind of, like, continue?
93 00:12:18.520 ⇒ 00:12:25.380 Mike Klaczynski: Yeah, yeah, so the one thing that, we need to get you guys caught up on is our roadmap items. Great. In the next,
94 00:12:25.490 ⇒ 00:12:36.580 Mike Klaczynski: two to six weeks, we’re gonna have several big releases that are really gonna push forward our capabilities. Advanced Context Layer is one of them, the other one is Log.
95 00:12:36.580 ⇒ 00:12:53.240 Mike Klaczynski: log analysis, and then also, data entity extraction. So, it’s back to scheduling time with Raj to run through that. We, we updated one partner yesterday, and they were super excited for it, and so I’d love to set up a session for you guys as well.
96 00:12:53.650 ⇒ 00:12:55.800 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, perfect. Amazing.
97 00:12:56.220 ⇒ 00:12:58.529 Uttam Kumaran: And so, on that note, maybe I’ll just…
98 00:12:58.690 ⇒ 00:13:04.669 Uttam Kumaran: refresh, kind of, like, who our ICPA is, and I think, Mike, I presented a little bit about this in the QBR, but I think this is a…
99 00:13:04.770 ⇒ 00:13:15.620 Uttam Kumaran: more concise slide of, like, who we work with. I mean, we typically pitch C-suite, VPs, directors, head of growth, sort of, either
100 00:13:15.730 ⇒ 00:13:32.199 Uttam Kumaran: At smaller firms, you know, like, let’s say sub-10 million in revenue, this can often be the C-suite. At bigger than that, it’s typically that, like, second layer, really the core operators in the business who have KPIs and OKRs they need to hit, and for whom data, analytics, AI transformation is
101 00:13:32.200 ⇒ 00:13:36.670 Uttam Kumaran: Like, on their roadmap this quarter and this next year.
102 00:13:36.670 ⇒ 00:13:38.100 Uttam Kumaran: And so, we…
103 00:13:38.170 ⇒ 00:13:52.799 Uttam Kumaran: our top-down… we have a top-down approach, where we don’t typically sell to the engineering org, although we are a group of engineers. We get buy-in from the business side, we get buy-in from where the budget is coming from, and we look to help
104 00:13:52.800 ⇒ 00:14:01.639 Uttam Kumaran: these folks achieve their goals. And so, our ability to do that, of course, is people, process, and tools like Contextual.
105 00:14:01.650 ⇒ 00:14:07.650 Uttam Kumaran: And so, I feel like this is a… for me, this is where, like, we have a lot of passion.
106 00:14:07.650 ⇒ 00:14:27.189 Uttam Kumaran: in differentiating ourselves as a service vendor, when we come in, we need to make sure that there is a goal that we’re trying to push, and that our job is to help them achieve it through many of the different tools that we have. Picking the right tools is just one part of that. There’s a lot of process improvements, there is a lot of people improvements.
107 00:14:27.190 ⇒ 00:14:43.959 Uttam Kumaran: That we look to make. But for us, this has been the most fun, being able to actually walk into a company and do what we think is, like, true consulting, you know, on the technical side, which is take a problem and isolate several different solutions to solve. We’ve done a lot of work in e-commerce.
108 00:14:43.960 ⇒ 00:14:51.949 Uttam Kumaran: And CPG and SAS, just by nature of my background and Robert’s background. But we’ve also done a lot of great work recently in health.
109 00:14:51.950 ⇒ 00:15:11.100 Uttam Kumaran: And several other B2B sort of sectors, including services, like home and commercial services, legal. And so, we have a little bit of a broad set of experiences, but these… these… the top four here are really where I think we have a ton of expertise. You know, my background is in venture-backed startups.
110 00:15:11.170 ⇒ 00:15:25.799 Uttam Kumaran: But that’s actually not who we typically work with. In fact, most of our clients are usually $20 million in revenue and up, typically, like, medium to large-sized private businesses. Which we feel for a lot of our software partners is a…
111 00:15:26.020 ⇒ 00:15:31.160 Uttam Kumaran: a unique place, because commonly you have the, you know, high-flying startups that
112 00:15:31.190 ⇒ 00:15:49.319 Uttam Kumaran: really understand the lay of the land, maybe have the best people, but of course, they’re budget-constrained, or they’re not, like, the best customers because they don’t adopt really quickly. You also have, like, the largest Fortune 1000, the huge enterprises, where of course, it’s a different game selling to them. We’re sort of playing a little bit in the middle, probably more towards
113 00:15:49.320 ⇒ 00:15:54.920 Uttam Kumaran: the larger side these days, where we’re coming into situations where, because they don’t have the right
114 00:15:54.920 ⇒ 00:15:59.629 Uttam Kumaran: like, leadership capabilities on the data or AI side, meaning
115 00:15:59.640 ⇒ 00:16:01.700 Uttam Kumaran: of the COO, or the head of growth.
116 00:16:01.770 ⇒ 00:16:15.460 Uttam Kumaran: their OKRs just have data and AI within them. They don’t have the right tooling, in particular, in them. Like, someone has made tooling decisions or infrastructure decisions in the past that they’re sort of dealing with, and they need some understanding of, like.
117 00:16:15.460 ⇒ 00:16:32.100 Uttam Kumaran: digital transformation, change management, in one way or another, either moving from old to modern tools, or just implementing any tool. And then it’s also just, like, the cadence of working, like, true, great engineering work, applying sprints, agile methodologies, all the stuff that we bring to the table.
118 00:16:32.210 ⇒ 00:16:45.329 Uttam Kumaran: And we go into companies where there’s no opportunity for them to… to do this. Like, they’re not gonna attract the best talent. They’ve also maybe been sold a solution by a vendor that… that just… that sold them, and now they’re stuck.
119 00:16:45.410 ⇒ 00:16:58.889 Uttam Kumaran: And they’re really finding it hard to find those extra points of revenue or profit. And so we don’t come into situations where there’s a huge, like, cost-cutting guidance. It’s all related to revenue growth and profit… profitable growth.
120 00:16:59.400 ⇒ 00:16:59.760 Mike Klaczynski: Interesting.
121 00:16:59.760 ⇒ 00:17:02.050 Uttam Kumaran: So this is a… yeah, this is a little snapshot of that.
122 00:17:02.820 ⇒ 00:17:06.150 Mike Klaczynski: Yeah, that group is definitely underserved, I mean…
123 00:17:06.319 ⇒ 00:17:09.980 Mike Klaczynski: Right now, there’s just a massive skill gap everywhere.
124 00:17:09.980 ⇒ 00:17:10.310 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
125 00:17:10.310 ⇒ 00:17:17.709 Mike Klaczynski: It’s not just an implementation side, but it’s, like, the strategic side of, okay, what is AI? How does AI gonna impact.
126 00:17:17.710 ⇒ 00:17:19.350 Uttam Kumaran: You’re right, it’s even at that level.
127 00:17:19.359 ⇒ 00:17:20.810 Mike Klaczynski: What are the use cases? Yeah.
128 00:17:20.819 ⇒ 00:17:21.459 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
129 00:17:21.639 ⇒ 00:17:32.279 Uttam Kumaran: We’re finding the same thing, you know? That’s why even by the time I get to talking about contextual, there’s so much education that needs to happen. But I think we’ve spent the last
130 00:17:32.279 ⇒ 00:17:52.209 Uttam Kumaran: you know, year and a half, and even beyond, like, I had to do the education just in our own company, right? And, like, training our staff and everything to use AI, let alone when we go into a new company, and there is, a head of growth who’s kind of, like, running around this AI problem with their head cut off, and how do they actually come up with a thesis?
131 00:17:52.209 ⇒ 00:17:57.129 Uttam Kumaran: set KPIs, and then again, use people, process, and tools to achieve it.
132 00:17:57.129 ⇒ 00:18:13.899 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, tools is, like, one huge pillar of that, where we are very opinionated about the tools that we use, the partners that we promote, because, like, ultimately, if we… if we implement the, like, a worse tool, our job gets very hard, and the client will not succeed.
133 00:18:13.900 ⇒ 00:18:14.230 Mike Klaczynski: Yep.
134 00:18:14.230 ⇒ 00:18:20.200 Uttam Kumaran: the lovely thing is, is, like, there are world-class tools in each market that I just think that
135 00:18:20.270 ⇒ 00:18:34.499 Uttam Kumaran: sometimes the companies aren’t aware of, or someone else has just gotten into them and is selling something. They’ve only seen maybe one or two pitches, and they don’t have the, sort of, the breadth of how to choose even a vendor, how to measure, right, how to do a proof of concept, all those things.
136 00:18:35.610 ⇒ 00:18:39.079 Mike Klaczynski: Yep. Yeah, I think that’s… that’s the other challenge is…
137 00:18:39.560 ⇒ 00:18:54.030 Mike Klaczynski: There are so many different technologies and tools out there that are using similar language, but the… you know, it creates a lot of noise, and you don’t realize whether they work or not until you’ve tried them.
138 00:18:54.130 ⇒ 00:19:00.880 Mike Klaczynski: And so sometimes, you know, you could waste a couple months testing and POCing different technologies, and…
139 00:19:01.080 ⇒ 00:19:03.330 Mike Klaczynski: the proof’s really in the pudding, so…
140 00:19:03.330 ⇒ 00:19:16.070 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, who do you guys usually find? And this… and again, I’m… I guess… I know, like, where you guys fit in the stack, but who do you guys usually find that customers are, like, confused about you versus someone? Are there any, like, common…
141 00:19:16.330 ⇒ 00:19:17.800 Uttam Kumaran: Usual suspects.
142 00:19:19.510 ⇒ 00:19:25.880 Mike Klaczynski: Good question. It really depends on who we’re talking to, whether it’s the technical group or the business group.
143 00:19:26.120 ⇒ 00:19:33.430 Mike Klaczynski: Because the technical folks, in many cases, they’re doing DIY, so they’ll use, like, a Langsmith.
144 00:19:33.430 ⇒ 00:19:35.720 Uttam Kumaran: I guess I’d be more focused on the business side.
145 00:19:36.310 ⇒ 00:19:40.130 Mike Klaczynski: Yeah, yeah, and then on the business side, you know, they’re getting pitched, like.
146 00:19:40.260 ⇒ 00:19:57.370 Mike Klaczynski: Agent Force from Salesforce, or if they’re on Google, they’re getting pitched Gemini Enterprise and Vertex, and on AWS, it’s gonna be QB Business. So, it really depends, but I think, you know, what really stuck with me, as you said, you guys sell outcomes.
147 00:19:57.430 ⇒ 00:20:03.400 Mike Klaczynski: And that’s the same thing with us, and the reason why a lot of these initial customers have come to us is
148 00:20:03.600 ⇒ 00:20:18.719 Mike Klaczynski: They don’t want… just want to buy technology, and they don’t want to dig around. They actually have a use case that they need to solve for, and we’re able to… and we’ve, you know, we’re able to do that, and we’ve demonstrated actually being able to deliver that and put things into production.
149 00:20:20.230 ⇒ 00:20:31.520 Mike Klaczynski: you know, on the smaller side, there’s, like, Vectara and a bunch of these other small startups that are kind of coming up. They’re building fancy UIs, but their underlying technology isn’t necessarily that good.
150 00:20:31.520 ⇒ 00:20:36.339 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, are you coming up against Glean, or, like, there’s, like, Unstructured, like, some of these guys?
151 00:20:37.250 ⇒ 00:20:45.529 Mike Klaczynski: Yeah, so Glean was a big deal about a year ago. We kept hearing that anywhere we went and had conversations. People were like, oh, so you guys are like Glean.
152 00:20:45.700 ⇒ 00:20:51.110 Mike Klaczynski: But, that’s… I haven’t heard much, anything like that.
153 00:20:51.150 ⇒ 00:20:54.850 Uttam Kumaran: I was thinking about them this morning, I was like, I wonder what happened to them.
154 00:20:55.760 ⇒ 00:21:05.920 Mike Klaczynski: Yeah, so I have some background context. My former boss, he actually went over to Glean to lead their sales, and then they recently had a falling out, and he left.
155 00:21:06.040 ⇒ 00:21:11.480 Mike Klaczynski: Because of the direction Glean’s trying to go, or the senior leadership,
156 00:21:12.030 ⇒ 00:21:20.070 Mike Klaczynski: And I’ve talked to some customers that have used it, and they’re like, hey, it’s super promising, we all have access to it, but you just get dumped with a bunch of…
157 00:21:20.480 ⇒ 00:21:21.420 Mike Klaczynski: Potentially…
158 00:21:21.420 ⇒ 00:21:22.220 Uttam Kumaran: really hard.
159 00:21:22.220 ⇒ 00:21:23.190 Mike Klaczynski: But you have to…
160 00:21:23.190 ⇒ 00:21:23.930 Uttam Kumaran: Titch of that.
161 00:21:23.930 ⇒ 00:21:24.570 Mike Klaczynski: self.
162 00:21:24.570 ⇒ 00:21:26.260 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, the pitch of that product…
163 00:21:26.450 ⇒ 00:21:31.790 Uttam Kumaran: like, for me, I look at that, I’m like, there’s no way this is, like, happens on day one, or even, like.
164 00:21:32.030 ⇒ 00:21:37.820 Uttam Kumaran: Day 30. This is a very complicated problem, you know, shoving all of your enterprise business contacts into something.
165 00:21:37.980 ⇒ 00:21:44.870 John Marini: But what Gleam did, though, really well, is for $40,000, people got to say that they were doing something with AI, so…
166 00:21:45.440 ⇒ 00:21:46.110 Mike Klaczynski: Yep.
167 00:21:46.150 ⇒ 00:21:47.500 John Marini: Checking the box.
168 00:21:48.330 ⇒ 00:21:53.460 John Marini: AI very much is a tops-down thing right now, which is very interesting, right? So it’s not being driven bottoms up.
169 00:21:53.820 ⇒ 00:22:05.210 John Marini: you can talk… I go to all these events, I talk to people, I’m like, why are you doing something with AI? If they’re anywhere below the C-suite, it’s because the top is telling them to do it. It’s either coming from the board or the C-suite, and they’re trying to figure it out, and so…
170 00:22:05.660 ⇒ 00:22:14.699 John Marini: Lean was in a really good spot, because Top is saying, do something with AI. IT’s like, okay, what can I buy that says I did something with AI? Lean’s super easy. Has, like.
171 00:22:14.980 ⇒ 00:22:17.750 John Marini: kind of promise, but I think then once installed.
172 00:22:17.990 ⇒ 00:22:22.610 John Marini: devil really is in the detail. What we’ve heard… what I’ve heard at events is…
173 00:22:22.960 ⇒ 00:22:33.540 John Marini: beyond a few data sources, it really starts to break down, and people are really struggling to see value from it, so I actually think they may be up against a lot of churn,
174 00:22:33.860 ⇒ 00:22:36.589 John Marini: Which is interesting, because that’s actually an opportunity, right?
175 00:22:37.270 ⇒ 00:22:51.770 John Marini: who haven’t seen the value, who are now like, okay, I actually need AI that can deliver an ROI, I understand better what I need. So I actually think Lean could be up against a lot of churn. And then, concurrently, Microsoft, Google.
176 00:22:52.100 ⇒ 00:22:58.569 John Marini: they own the workspace, and so Copilot has gotten a lot better. They just had a big release, I think it was yesterday, and.
177 00:22:58.570 ⇒ 00:22:59.060 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
178 00:22:59.250 ⇒ 00:23:01.490 Holly Condos: Yeah, yesterday. I saw that too.
179 00:23:01.760 ⇒ 00:23:07.680 John Marini: So… They’re coming hard at Glean, and kind of those, like, thin, kind of veneered AI across the line.
180 00:23:07.680 ⇒ 00:23:09.629 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, great description, yeah.
181 00:23:10.570 ⇒ 00:23:14.980 John Marini: So, you know, don’t count them out, but they’re under a lot of pressure.
182 00:23:15.300 ⇒ 00:23:19.749 John Marini: For sure, like, and they do come up, I mean, they come up, you know,
183 00:23:20.430 ⇒ 00:23:25.149 John Marini: And then you asked about, like, unstructured Lambda index… You know, there’s…
184 00:23:25.760 ⇒ 00:23:38.400 John Marini: other parsing tools, so I think the challenge for us is, like, we have all the components, we have those things, so we would compete with them in that way. But then we also have, like, a broad horizontal platform, and then we have, like, a lot of other stuff, so…
185 00:23:38.400 ⇒ 00:23:39.000 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
186 00:23:39.170 ⇒ 00:23:46.440 John Marini: We have a lot more com… for the size of the company we are, we have an exceedingly large amount of complexity in what we’re doing.
187 00:23:47.130 ⇒ 00:23:56.970 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I see that as a feature. Like, I don’t see that as a comp… I just think that if you’re… the problem with pitching at the… to the engineering teams is there’s so many options, and everybody’s getting…
188 00:23:56.980 ⇒ 00:24:08.179 Uttam Kumaran: their source of news from, like, Twitter and all the same places where it’s just a lot of competing voices. Like, as I’m in those things, and I know how hard it is, how hard it was to find, like, you guys.
189 00:24:08.210 ⇒ 00:24:23.240 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And then, so… but for us, it’s like, I think you’re right on the fact that businesses have now, who were trying it, have tried something. Definitely, it’s not worked out for the most part, and maybe those are, like, the right people to go after for, like.
190 00:24:23.310 ⇒ 00:24:25.539 Uttam Kumaran: Because at least they have a framework on, like, what…
191 00:24:25.720 ⇒ 00:24:39.159 Uttam Kumaran: at some point, they would have decided, like, what is the ROI equation here? What is the KPI we’re trying to affect? Versus a year ago, they… we wouldn’t even have… we couldn’t even have those conversations. Nobody had even put any thought or even a dollar amount to what it was worth.
192 00:24:39.470 ⇒ 00:24:40.770 Uttam Kumaran: Attacking, you know.
193 00:24:41.120 ⇒ 00:24:41.700 John Marini: Right.
194 00:24:43.520 ⇒ 00:24:52.750 John Marini: I don’t know if you saw the ShipBob case study, probably not, we just published it yesterday, so it’s up on our site. It’d be a good one to read, because they kind of fit closer… they’re in your target industry, e-comm, sort of.
195 00:24:52.750 ⇒ 00:24:53.410 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
196 00:24:53.960 ⇒ 00:24:59.320 John Marini: It’s a good case saying they’re doing something really, really compelling and interesting that I don’t think…
197 00:24:59.750 ⇒ 00:25:02.970 John Marini: People fully walk and understand.
198 00:25:02.970 ⇒ 00:25:03.510 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
199 00:25:03.690 ⇒ 00:25:06.099 John Marini: is… They’re actually in…
200 00:25:06.340 ⇒ 00:25:21.899 John Marini: They have all these disparate data sources, then they’ve built an agent on top of that, but what they’re doing is they’re figuring out where the agent doesn’t have the right answers, and then they’re actually going and enriching the data sources, which is now creating compounding value for the organization, so compounding knowledge.
201 00:25:22.040 ⇒ 00:25:27.249 John Marini: Which… I don’t know exactly how you put an ROI figure on that, but they’re saving…
202 00:25:27.470 ⇒ 00:25:39.749 John Marini: what they’re looking at is in terms of hours saved, and they’re saving, you know, tens of… I think they’re in the 10,000 plus hours now. And of course, that improves customer sat… because it’s used by customer satisfaction, customer service. Great.
203 00:25:39.860 ⇒ 00:25:47.260 John Marini: case study, I think one that fits pretty sweet to your size, and kind of the industries that you go after, and the way that…
204 00:25:47.410 ⇒ 00:25:48.230 John Marini: accommodate.
205 00:25:48.580 ⇒ 00:25:59.979 John Marini: isn’t just like, hey, I can get a quick answer across a corpus of information, but I’m actually solving a very, very important business problem, and my AI system is getting better over time.
206 00:26:00.390 ⇒ 00:26:01.220 John Marini: So…
207 00:26:02.440 ⇒ 00:26:03.090 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
208 00:26:03.350 ⇒ 00:26:05.259 Uttam Kumaran: That’s helpful, we’ll check that out, for sure.
209 00:26:05.440 ⇒ 00:26:08.869 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we’ve… we’ve also… okay, yeah, that’s really helpful.
210 00:26:08.870 ⇒ 00:26:13.169 John Marini: Any customer that… Has a customer success team, like, that’s a good…
211 00:26:13.510 ⇒ 00:26:14.500 Uttam Kumaran: Exactly.
212 00:26:14.510 ⇒ 00:26:15.800 John Marini: Here’s a problem.
213 00:26:16.100 ⇒ 00:26:27.090 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, the only… for the customer success… like, we’ve done a lot of work in customer success, it does usually land here. The problem with customer success, we found it’s, like, just always thought as, like, as a cost center.
214 00:26:27.090 ⇒ 00:26:29.329 Holly Condos: And, like, never gets, like, the revenue.
215 00:26:29.350 ⇒ 00:26:34.860 Uttam Kumaran: side of the business. There is, like, a revenue retention churn mitigation aspect.
216 00:26:35.070 ⇒ 00:26:54.679 Uttam Kumaran: But for us, I think even… we have… we have customers where we go into, and even just within the operational workflows of, like, filling out ERP, like… like, order forms, like, a lot of our customers have big ERPs where they have tens of people’s staffed just to fill out, like, manual order forms coming in via email or PDFs.
217 00:26:54.710 ⇒ 00:27:14.340 Uttam Kumaran: just… it’s literally just structuring this… it’s like a perfect use case, and that is purely on the number of things they can handle, mitigating the errors, and there’s very clear ROI, and that directly affects the speed of sales, you know? And, like, sort of hinging again towards… some of the companies we’re going are still on their, like, basic
218 00:27:14.640 ⇒ 00:27:25.019 Uttam Kumaran: modernization journey. Like, they’re just getting from, like, clicking UIs and ERP to something that’s even… like, we need an ETL tool, right? It’s, like, so bad.
219 00:27:25.060 ⇒ 00:27:34.319 Uttam Kumaran: And this is, I feel like, really great as a… just an accelerator, because they’ve already thrown consultants, they’ve thrown vendors, and AI, naturally, is something where
220 00:27:34.360 ⇒ 00:27:46.280 Uttam Kumaran: You have these agentic workflows that are working, they’re monitorable, everybody can use it, and it’s very quick for us to build camaraderie and trust from, like, the core decision makers with some of these solutions that work.
221 00:27:46.340 ⇒ 00:27:49.249 Uttam Kumaran: You know, within, like, a month or two.
222 00:27:49.350 ⇒ 00:28:02.829 Uttam Kumaran: You know, but we don’t go in and pitch, like, hey, you can slap this and it’s gonna work, like, we have to build golden data sets, we have to build, like, clear KPIs that we measure, we have… so it’s all, like, we really bear hug, you know, the customer.
223 00:28:06.680 ⇒ 00:28:08.609 Mike Klaczynski: That’s what it takes to be successful.
224 00:28:08.860 ⇒ 00:28:20.839 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I know, I know, it’s definitely, takes a lot of energy. It’s not a… it’s not a platform, it’s not a, hey, buy our platform, everything is good. But, yeah, I mean, it’s…
225 00:28:20.980 ⇒ 00:28:28.819 Uttam Kumaran: That’s what it takes, you know, and that’s why, you know, our customers stick, and I feel like, for us, when I describe to our team, when we come into a meeting.
226 00:28:28.950 ⇒ 00:28:37.909 Uttam Kumaran: at the end, I mean, the client should be like, okay, I’m so… like, they should have a breath, like, a sigh of relief. Like, okay, problem’s taken care of. And that’s what we’re seeing with our customers, you know?
227 00:28:39.350 ⇒ 00:28:41.419 Holly Condos: Yeah, we engage on the journey, right?
228 00:28:41.660 ⇒ 00:28:53.330 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it is a journey for all these folks, and so these are, like, some of the snapshots, some of the clients that we worked with. Again, wide variety, a lot in SaaS, e-comm, health, and, you know, continuing
229 00:28:53.500 ⇒ 00:28:54.800 Uttam Kumaran: The grow here.
230 00:28:56.470 ⇒ 00:29:05.430 Uttam Kumaran: And yeah, I’ve sort of already talked through this about how we pitch contextual, but I feel like, for us, I’ve always demonstrated the level of, you know,
231 00:29:05.810 ⇒ 00:29:20.620 Uttam Kumaran: engineering expertise that the team has, the breadth of the solution, but also, I think it is narrowly attacking a part of the stack that if anyone has tried to do, it’s very obvious how much complexity there is.
232 00:29:20.620 ⇒ 00:29:28.420 Uttam Kumaran: And so, this is something that I don’t want our customers to build on their own. Similarly, in the data world, we don’t build
233 00:29:28.420 ⇒ 00:29:34.550 Uttam Kumaran: Python, you know, ETL solutions anymore. We go to a Fivetran or a Polyatomic.
234 00:29:34.550 ⇒ 00:29:48.360 Uttam Kumaran: Like, that is something they should offload to the best of the best. And so we talk about contextual. We’ve built really rich demos demonstrating the retrieval functionality. I’m excited to get the new demos and put that in front of clients, so the…
235 00:29:48.360 ⇒ 00:29:55.429 Uttam Kumaran: the visual aspects, especially when we talk about our business owner, like, our business leader, ICP,
236 00:29:55.440 ⇒ 00:30:12.880 Uttam Kumaran: visually, it needs to be compelling, and that’s where I think we’ve been able to build on top of Contextual to show, like, the retrieval, the, the references, things like that. That’s really powerful. And of course, like, I’m not worried about any of the stuff on the API or SDK side, you know, and that’s what we…
237 00:30:13.010 ⇒ 00:30:30.809 Uttam Kumaran: that’s where sometimes it’s hard for our stakeholder, if you don’t have something more visual or something that’s clearly, like, a thing they can feel. It’s tough to pitch sometimes, but for y’all, it’s… I think we’ve been able to do that really well. So, that is something, again, also, John, I think, like, when we talk about awareness of this solution.
238 00:30:30.810 ⇒ 00:30:44.520 Uttam Kumaran: I think you guys have a very great, like, visual… like, you build a lot of tooling that supports a great UI, and so that’s something that we want to try to promote as well, like, via YouTube or more visual webinars or something about, like.
239 00:30:44.590 ⇒ 00:30:53.610 Uttam Kumaran: you know, clicking through it… clicking through a retrieved element, going back to the document where there’s a bounding box, and I’m sure there, you know, there’s a bunch more that we can highlight as well, so…
240 00:30:55.180 ⇒ 00:31:12.609 Uttam Kumaran: So yeah, I mean, a couple things, like, and I think, you know, this is sort of more about, like, how we’re structuring, how we do partner motions right now, is we do events, so we’ve done a bunch of events with a variety of different partners that have… that have all done really well, that are small form, you know, as you mentioned, John, that are, like, people leave with
241 00:31:12.640 ⇒ 00:31:29.730 Uttam Kumaran: with, like, some impact that they can know that they met a great person, they understood a technology better, and then, of course, ideally, they want to work with us in the future, in one capacity or another. And then also, again, we’re working with customers that their businesses have been in business for a while, and they’re going to, and so
242 00:31:29.730 ⇒ 00:31:33.429 Uttam Kumaran: we build very long-term relationships. A lot of our clients we’re getting now
243 00:31:33.430 ⇒ 00:31:57.890 Uttam Kumaran: We’ve talked… we’ve been talking to them for 9, 12 months, and just met them through this event. Sort of, they move to a new company, or they finally get budget, and we’ve just been a trusted partner with them the whole way. And so because, you know, we are a bootstrapped, small agency, we can focus on building those longer-term relationships, and the LTVs on those can be pretty high. So we’ve done a variety of different activations that we all have a digital component to, whether
244 00:31:57.890 ⇒ 00:32:01.849 Uttam Kumaran: It’s video, LinkedIn, email,
245 00:32:02.000 ⇒ 00:32:11.599 Uttam Kumaran: And we’ve done a lot on social, even for how small we are. We have a great SEO program. We’ve done a lot with the different partners on getting backlinks and things like that, so I feel like…
246 00:32:11.980 ⇒ 00:32:26.609 Uttam Kumaran: we’ve done, you know, a pretty good job at establishing this, and it’s something that we want to continue to do. You know, I think LinkedIn is really where our audience lives, in addition to probably YouTube and a couple different keyword searches, and so that’s where we found a lot of success.
247 00:32:26.610 ⇒ 00:32:40.540 Uttam Kumaran: in co-promoting, putting together, you know, different white papers, things like that. Here are some highlights. I know we have the one that we’re working on together. But this is something easily we can put behind a landing page, put as a call to action on posts.
248 00:32:40.630 ⇒ 00:32:43.189 Uttam Kumaran: Put as an association with an event.
249 00:32:43.340 ⇒ 00:32:46.589 Uttam Kumaran: So, lots of options here.
250 00:32:47.770 ⇒ 00:33:01.480 Uttam Kumaran: And then, yeah, I guess, like, really, I just want to kind of talk, maybe kind of open the floor up to, like, where we can kind of engage this quarter, and sort of hear, now that I’ve kind of given you, like, where we live and where we play as a company, like, how we can
251 00:33:01.640 ⇒ 00:33:03.690 Uttam Kumaran: work together. I mean, of course.
252 00:33:03.890 ⇒ 00:33:17.449 Uttam Kumaran: I think for us, the game is revenue and getting new logos, but I think for us, it’s not as much as signing up, like, every business, it’s actually finding businesses where we can make impact, or that’s measurable, and that we can expand.
253 00:33:17.490 ⇒ 00:33:36.749 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and so we’ve done this several times, I think we have some proven playbooks in data and AI, but yeah, I’m curious, Mike, if anything from, you know, today’s presentation sort of hit home, and, like, what we can talk about, you know, doing even in the next few months as we end the year, but also, like, sort of going into Q1.
254 00:33:38.050 ⇒ 00:33:52.089 Mike Klaczynski: Yeah, the big thing for us is pipeline. And our sellers are now really focused on big deals, but there is still quite a bit of inbound that we get that we don’t necessarily have
255 00:33:52.520 ⇒ 00:33:56.519 Mike Klaczynski: Time and energy to nurture well?
256 00:33:56.650 ⇒ 00:34:13.250 Mike Klaczynski: So I know we’ve had some of our SDRs build little nurture campaigns and whatnot, but I think we could do a better job there. And then the other thing is your industry and vertical specialization, right? Retail CPG, that’s not something we’ve done much in. And then I think you also mentioned healthcare.
257 00:34:13.250 ⇒ 00:34:13.710 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
258 00:34:15.059 ⇒ 00:34:31.039 Mike Klaczynski: or that sector. So, part of it, I think, is healthcare, but part of it is also life sciences. A lot of data there, a lot of documentation. So, you know, something we should definitely engage and explore. There’s a couple customers that,
259 00:34:31.489 ⇒ 00:34:36.149 Mike Klaczynski: We got inbounds on, but again, we’re not experts in that field, so…
260 00:34:36.409 ⇒ 00:34:39.899 Mike Klaczynski: you know, maybe something we can collaborate on.
261 00:34:40.179 ⇒ 00:34:42.649 Mike Klaczynski: And then as for the go-to-market motion.
262 00:34:44.309 ⇒ 00:34:46.589 Mike Klaczynski: you know, I think we can work with John.
263 00:34:46.789 ⇒ 00:35:02.719 Mike Klaczynski: and Ezra’s our new product marketer. I guess not so new, he’s been around for a while now, but, you know, maybe leading with that white paper, but then also doing some videos and some promos. Our presence on YouTube is quite light, and I’ve…
264 00:35:03.089 ⇒ 00:35:15.869 Mike Klaczynski: I’d love to… to do more, maybe with our developer relations team, so that would be Nina or Raj, and put together, you know, some, like, 3-minute little quick starts of, like, hey, look how quickly you can…
265 00:35:15.869 ⇒ 00:35:26.599 Mike Klaczynski: you know, get to value on XYZ, just to build more awareness in the space, and then also, that becomes collateral that you can send to your clients, right? And say.
266 00:35:26.600 ⇒ 00:35:27.400 Uttam Kumaran: Exactly.
267 00:35:27.400 ⇒ 00:35:34.770 Mike Klaczynski: We’re gonna come in and help you with the solution, but part of it is this platform also then enables you to go and build your own agents over time.
268 00:35:35.470 ⇒ 00:35:37.790 Mike Klaczynski: And…
269 00:35:38.150 ⇒ 00:35:47.309 Mike Klaczynski: we don’t have that much content for people to be able to self-start and really learn and build their own skill set, so I think that would be interesting.
270 00:35:48.010 ⇒ 00:35:58.400 Mike Klaczynski: And then on that thought leadership, again, back to that… that RAG slash context engineering whitepaper, I think we could definitely do a webinar around that as well. Not sure who from our side…
271 00:35:59.190 ⇒ 00:36:06.499 Mike Klaczynski: we could recruit, but, you know, maybe even Dow. I think that could make for a fun 25-30 minute webinar.
272 00:36:08.930 ⇒ 00:36:20.950 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and yeah, curious on your thoughts, John, but one thing we’ve also found success is, like, I’m here in Austin, like, Robert’s in New York, and I mean, both of us have ties back to the Bay.
273 00:36:20.950 ⇒ 00:36:30.570 Uttam Kumaran: But we found that this audience in our ICP is rarely engaged by the best-in-breed software vendors these days. Like, I feel like there’s still a big gap.
274 00:36:30.630 ⇒ 00:36:31.590 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I think…
275 00:36:32.040 ⇒ 00:36:48.609 Uttam Kumaran: the, like, engineers, and I go to a lot of these where there’s software vendors hosting things, but again, for the CIO, for the head of growth that is just starting this journey, that’s the stuff where we like… we play, and so we’ve thrown events here where we’ve gone really rich.
276 00:36:48.620 ⇒ 00:36:59.409 Uttam Kumaran: Attendees had great discussions, and of course, like, done it with both of our businesses, and it’s very… it’s been very, very high alpha.
277 00:36:59.570 ⇒ 00:37:16.659 Uttam Kumaran: And those… like, it… I feel like this is so confusing to the folks that we are pitching commonly that, like, it needs that level. And I think, kind of on our side, John, like, you mentioned, it is complex to throw an event and do a lot of that, and one thing that we’ve, I think, done well is…
278 00:37:16.840 ⇒ 00:37:22.090 Uttam Kumaran: Like, we were able to actually navigate everything on the logistics side of that.
279 00:37:22.170 ⇒ 00:37:38.289 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, we’ve handled doing invite lists, getting spaces, doing that, and that’s kind of a key way that we’ve grown. And so, for a lot of our software vendors, I know it is usually, like, a one- or two-person team that’s just trying to throw as many events or attend as many events as possible, and that’s where we also like to support
280 00:37:38.400 ⇒ 00:37:53.060 Uttam Kumaran: our counterparts there, and that, like, we actually have the capabilities as a partner to handle those logistics, and we’ve done that many times, whether just ourselves and with partners, and so that’s something totally that I think we can collaborate if that’s interesting.
281 00:37:53.250 ⇒ 00:37:54.190 John Marini: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no.
282 00:37:54.190 ⇒ 00:37:56.870 Mike Klaczynski: Don, are we… are we ready to do a roadshow?
283 00:37:58.380 ⇒ 00:38:02.589 Holly Condos: John’s like, no!
284 00:38:02.590 ⇒ 00:38:04.520 John Marini: I have it on the 26th.
285 00:38:04.690 ⇒ 00:38:11.989 John Marini: what would be RFY27 was an idea, Mike, I don’t know if it’s gonna get approved, depended on Uncle Austin,
286 00:38:13.230 ⇒ 00:38:14.900 John Marini: So,
287 00:38:16.150 ⇒ 00:38:22.400 John Marini: Yes, so I think before we have to do a roadshow, though, I do think IRL is pretty easy to…
288 00:38:22.580 ⇒ 00:38:34.449 John Marini: to execute on if you guys are able to handle some logistics of your GEO, and obviously you know GEO well. So, like, Raj, who’s, you know, title is Chief Evangelist, he’s up in near Chicago, he could fly down,
289 00:38:34.450 ⇒ 00:38:35.100 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
290 00:38:35.550 ⇒ 00:38:50.299 John Marini: Right? So, yeah, we just need to coordinate on the goals and kind of, you know, how we want to organize that, if we want to co-sponsor, but I’m kind of with you, like, right now it is that kind of face-to-face, getting people together, seems to be generating a lot of pipeline. I do think
291 00:38:50.510 ⇒ 00:38:55.760 John Marini: co-webinars, But we do a co-webinar, my insight…
292 00:38:57.130 ⇒ 00:39:11.940 John Marini: is… it needs to be very, very specific to a very specific use case, and how the software is being applied to that use case. We’ve done some higher level ones, we’ve done higher level workshops, we’ve done higher-level webinars, both,
293 00:39:12.380 ⇒ 00:39:14.929 John Marini: We get a lot of tire kickers, we get a lot of sign-ups, we get a lot of interest.
294 00:39:14.930 ⇒ 00:39:15.650 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
295 00:39:15.880 ⇒ 00:39:33.000 John Marini: but people are very much in this market, they’re in learn mode, so I think for a webinar to be effective from a pipe gem perspective, it’s gonna have to be more bottom… more down the funnel to where you’re isolating a use case. You’ll have a smaller amount of attendees, but you’ll have better attendees and more likely going to
296 00:39:33.250 ⇒ 00:39:39.839 John Marini: for a subsequent conversation to move out of that. So, if we can support that, I think Nina or Raj would be…
297 00:39:40.040 ⇒ 00:39:42.599 John Marini: The right person for… for what gratitude.
298 00:39:43.450 ⇒ 00:39:59.469 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I feel the same way. We’ve done several webinars. I mean, I think the benefit, partly, of course, is, like, you could just do it from sitting here. Like, we can prepare everything digitally, and it turned… like, we… we, of course, we turn that into a slew of assets after the fact.
299 00:39:59.600 ⇒ 00:40:06.989 Uttam Kumaran: But I’m with you, John, like, I think it’s all… especially in our audience, it is a ton of in-person,
300 00:40:07.370 ⇒ 00:40:21.230 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, in Austin in particular, like, that’s where, you know, I live, and I’m very connected on the… in the technical, where, like, a lot of my friends and stuff are all… throw all the big tech events here, and there is a lot of,
301 00:40:21.460 ⇒ 00:40:30.480 Uttam Kumaran: there’s a lot of room to play here. There’s not a lot of, you know, the biggest players doing events, and doing things IRL, like.
302 00:40:30.850 ⇒ 00:40:35.940 Uttam Kumaran: it’s all still in that, like, happy hour around AI, or hosted by co-working, like…
303 00:40:36.020 ⇒ 00:40:42.579 Uttam Kumaran: very, like, low, low signal, like, low alpha for RICP.
304 00:40:42.580 ⇒ 00:40:56.709 Uttam Kumaran: I think SF in New York has the biggest players, like, the biggest vendors are there throwing events. Of course, you also get a wide variety of people. Like, I think here in Denver, in some of these mid-market areas, there’s a lot of… there’s a lot of opportunity. Even Chicago.
305 00:40:56.940 ⇒ 00:41:05.290 Uttam Kumaran: you know, for those folks in, like, who are these, like, large private business CIOs, head of growth, where they can come to stuff like this, so…
306 00:41:05.290 ⇒ 00:41:08.329 John Marini: I used to ask, how do you guys think about the dreaded South by Southwest?
307 00:41:08.880 ⇒ 00:41:16.210 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, I go to… I go to a couple things, but most of them are, like, my friends are hosting an event, and I’m like, I’ll just…
308 00:41:16.400 ⇒ 00:41:23.820 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll help you get the word out, or I’ll help you with your sign-up desk, or whatever. I really stopped going to a lot of tech events.
309 00:41:24.050 ⇒ 00:41:35.890 Uttam Kumaran: after starting this business, because one is… one is like, I’m only gonna go to events where our customers are there, or we can pitch Brainforge or a partner, but I just am not impressed by stuff.
310 00:41:35.930 ⇒ 00:41:50.299 Uttam Kumaran: I’m very unimpressed by, like, the fact that some of these events are just not thrown with a key goal, there’s not a clear outcome for people that attend, and commonly, it’s like a resume show for engineers. Like, I can’t go to those… I can’t go to those things anymore.
311 00:41:50.300 ⇒ 00:41:56.319 Uttam Kumaran: And so, I want to go to rooms where there are peers, where it’s not like a pure play, like.
312 00:41:56.470 ⇒ 00:42:05.030 Uttam Kumaran: vendor is here to sell you, and like, can I stand up and pitch my… like, those are corny, you can’t do that. I’m not interested in that, and… and I’m interested in… in…
313 00:42:05.410 ⇒ 00:42:07.709 Uttam Kumaran: In having, like, locked invite lists.
314 00:42:07.740 ⇒ 00:42:21.299 Uttam Kumaran: very targeted, hey, like, we think you’re… you’re gonna get a lot out of this. There’s no pressure, but I think, like, you’re gonna be in a room with at least your peers, and at least a couple of experts. I think you’re gonna find that this hour or two hours is worth your time, and, like, that’s…
315 00:42:21.310 ⇒ 00:42:36.900 Uttam Kumaran: where we like to be. And again, we… like, our goals are aligned to making that hour or two hours really, really high value for those folks, and we’ve proven that, like, they come back around, even if it’s not immediately after, that they come back around, they have us in mind.
316 00:42:36.930 ⇒ 00:42:43.200 Uttam Kumaran: And that it usually trans… translates to business, or they end up referring us business. You know, it’s,
317 00:42:43.410 ⇒ 00:42:46.510 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I don’t know, it’s been… it’s worked out really well for us.
318 00:42:46.840 ⇒ 00:42:51.620 Mike Klaczynski: What a dinner series? Would that be something interesting, John?
319 00:42:51.620 ⇒ 00:42:55.830 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we’ve… we’ve done some… we’ve done some dinners as well. I think…
320 00:42:56.230 ⇒ 00:43:09.599 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, again, whether it’s a dinner, we’ve also done things where we rented a house here in Austin, we had food there, we did, like, a little bit of mingling for, like, an hour before where everybody met, and then we just did, like, a little bit of a Q&A, and it was kind of, like, more of a…
321 00:43:09.640 ⇒ 00:43:20.990 Uttam Kumaran: group discussion on a topic, where I’d be like, hey, today we’re discussing, like, how do you actually apply AI and, like, data workflows? And it’s not, like, two people talking, and it’s, like.
322 00:43:21.120 ⇒ 00:43:34.149 Uttam Kumaran: or, like, because we’ve met everybody in the room, and it’s only 20 people, I can ask people and call on people, and, like, we had someone from Strava explain, like, how they’re doing stuff. We had someone from, like, Rocket Mortgage that is explaining how they’re applying AI.
323 00:43:34.150 ⇒ 00:43:45.699 Uttam Kumaran: And it’s just a group discussion, it’s not, like, some type of hierarchy thing, and it did not come across as a pitch to anybody. But in fact, it was a… it, like, that’s what actually got us a lot of, you know.
324 00:43:45.910 ⇒ 00:43:48.319 Uttam Kumaran: A post… post-event activation, so…
325 00:43:50.640 ⇒ 00:43:58.189 John Marini: Yeah, so, yeah, I mean, I think we’re open, you know your market well, so, you know, we can find some ways to support you there.
326 00:43:58.670 ⇒ 00:44:08.970 John Marini: And help kind of get the word out. I would say one thing that you did mention is something you can think about in terms of you did mention your audience on LinkedIn, so, as you do actually start getting more
327 00:44:09.070 ⇒ 00:44:20.680 John Marini: use cases and case studies around how you guys have used professional AI. Like, you know, you could put out a post, and we could actually promote that, you know, thought leader post, so there’s some ways that we can
328 00:44:20.890 ⇒ 00:44:33.900 John Marini: you know, co-promote, where you’re talking about how you’re using the Connectual AI platform to deliver value to your end customer, we could amplify that through thought leadership promotion on LinkedIn, which has been a win-win.
329 00:44:34.440 ⇒ 00:44:36.640 John Marini: For both of us, and especially within, like.
330 00:44:37.030 ⇒ 00:44:43.880 John Marini: you know, some of the target geo… target markets that you really want to go after. Like, I was just working on ad audiences today on LinkedIn, and…
331 00:44:44.090 ⇒ 00:44:51.790 John Marini: It’s very much what you described for us, actually very bifurcated, high-growth startups that want to embed our technology into their product, and then larger…
332 00:44:52.070 ⇒ 00:44:58.669 John Marini: Who are doing, you know, much more complex engagements, where we’re putting forward deployed engineers.
333 00:44:59.010 ⇒ 00:45:15.830 John Marini: in the banks and things like that. So, I think that’s, from a spend perspective, we’re actually kind of spending more in those areas, and less in this kind of middle market, where we find that, you know, folks like you are more well-suited. They still need hand-holding, but maybe a little less technical
334 00:45:16.360 ⇒ 00:45:21.200 John Marini: So there’s kind of a sweet spot for us to do something, which I’ve come across on digital as well.
335 00:45:21.900 ⇒ 00:45:22.510 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
336 00:45:23.150 ⇒ 00:45:26.580 John Marini: So, just an idea, and that doesn’t require any travel or anything.
337 00:45:27.710 ⇒ 00:45:28.520 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
338 00:45:28.730 ⇒ 00:45:36.679 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool, so I feel like, I know we’re coming up, we’re just a little over, I feel like we have pretty good next steps, so I know there’s, kind of conversations on getting this
339 00:45:36.680 ⇒ 00:45:52.059 Uttam Kumaran: the asset that we’ve created out, me putting together some type of activation around that, so that’s, I think, totally valid. I can kind of share, you know, what we would think about if we were to do an event here. And certainly, I think there’s a huge… we’re planning on doing some more video work.
340 00:45:52.060 ⇒ 00:46:01.900 Uttam Kumaran: And I would love to do a video, with the contextual team on, like, just highlighting even the space. It could even be associated with our, with the, you know, playbook that we put out.
341 00:46:01.900 ⇒ 00:46:17.080 Uttam Kumaran: But that is something that we want to do, and that, again, lives forever, and is very easy to make. I’m actually gonna turn up one of my rooms in my house into, like, a little studio to record a bunch of this stuff next week, so we should totally get that on the agenda.
342 00:46:17.080 ⇒ 00:46:26.320 Uttam Kumaran: And then, yeah, maybe we can follow up, Mike and John in Slack about some of these things. I think the next thing is just talking a little bit about, like, cadence. Like, I would love to at least
343 00:46:26.700 ⇒ 00:46:39.900 Uttam Kumaran: chat even for, like, 15-20 minutes, like, once a month, ideally, if that works for you guys. I know we can… we’re all really busy, so I can just throw something on that at least gives us some cadence of, like, working and trying to…
344 00:46:40.690 ⇒ 00:46:48.050 Uttam Kumaran: you know, keep things… keep momentum high, especially when we’re going into winter, so… this is a good opportunity for us to even push a lot of stuff while people are gonna…
345 00:46:48.410 ⇒ 00:46:50.269 Uttam Kumaran: You know, finalize budgets for next year.
346 00:46:50.590 ⇒ 00:46:52.330 Mike Klaczynski: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
347 00:46:52.670 ⇒ 00:46:53.250 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
348 00:46:53.250 ⇒ 00:46:55.760 Mike Klaczynski: We can do bi-weekly, too, to kick things off.
349 00:46:56.210 ⇒ 00:47:00.710 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, perfect. So yeah, we’ll get that booked. I guess, Holly or Hannah, anything else?
350 00:47:00.920 ⇒ 00:47:01.899 Uttam Kumaran: Wanna cover?
351 00:47:02.640 ⇒ 00:47:07.979 Holly Condos: I was just curious about how many partners you currently have, or that you’re working with.
352 00:47:08.410 ⇒ 00:47:09.590 John Marini: But I’ll let my…
353 00:47:09.750 ⇒ 00:47:10.620 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Thanks, John.
354 00:47:10.620 ⇒ 00:47:11.390 Mike Klaczynski: Yeah.
355 00:47:11.580 ⇒ 00:47:15.569 Mike Klaczynski: On the SI side, we’re… I think we’re just north of 20.
356 00:47:15.570 ⇒ 00:47:16.930 Holly Condos: Oh, wow, okay.
357 00:47:17.100 ⇒ 00:47:23.050 Holly Condos: Okay and Mike, do you guys respond to RFPs at all? We were just curious.
358 00:47:24.260 ⇒ 00:47:30.390 Mike Klaczynski: Depends. So, a large… Clients we’re working with.
359 00:47:31.000 ⇒ 00:47:34.029 Mike Klaczynski: they’ll throw some sort of RFP towards us.
360 00:47:34.360 ⇒ 00:47:45.730 Mike Klaczynski: So, yeah, we’ll do those. We try not to do those for small clients, because it’s quite a bit of work. Or we’ll just throw it in, like, a Claude or a Gemini and have it auto-fill it out for us, but…
361 00:47:47.340 ⇒ 00:47:47.890 Holly Condos: Great.
362 00:47:48.150 ⇒ 00:47:57.219 Holly Condos: So, yeah, I think… I think that we’ve got a lot of, as Utam said, a lot of momentum going forward. We’ll just get the cadence set up, and then look at
363 00:47:57.670 ⇒ 00:48:00.690 Holly Condos: Doing a couple of the things that we talked about, and…
364 00:48:01.230 ⇒ 00:48:04.360 Holly Condos: I, I think it’s, it’s very promising.
365 00:48:04.520 ⇒ 00:48:05.890 Mike Klaczynski: Yeah. Absolutely.
366 00:48:06.010 ⇒ 00:48:20.430 Mike Klaczynski: Yeah, yeah, so I think for next step, it’d be really beneficial to get Raj to do another roadmap session with your team, because that’s going to paint the picture of what’s coming in 4-6 weeks, which is what we’ll want to build messaging and positioning and events and collaboration.
367 00:48:20.430 ⇒ 00:48:39.799 Uttam Kumaran: Exactly, that’s totally, like, what I’m missing. I want to… one of the things we had here is, like, I want to be able to promote… every time you guys do a major release, or you guys do another capital raise, or whatever you guys are pushing messaging for, our stuff should totally align. We’d love to piggyback and help comment or promote that on LinkedIn or wherever. So that’d be great.
368 00:48:40.280 ⇒ 00:48:41.740 Mike Klaczynski: Absolutely. Okay.
369 00:48:42.570 ⇒ 00:48:43.390 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, great.
370 00:48:43.670 ⇒ 00:48:49.360 Uttam Kumaran: Alright, perfect. Well, thanks for going a little bit over, Mike, and yeah, we’ll get stuff booked, and we’ll just chat in Slack.
371 00:48:49.820 ⇒ 00:48:56.910 Mike Klaczynski: Sounds good. Yeah, I’ll, I’ll look at Raj’s calendar, maybe we can get something scheduled for next week, but we’ll chat over Slack, figure that out.
372 00:48:56.910 ⇒ 00:48:57.999 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay, perfect.
373 00:48:58.220 ⇒ 00:48:58.920 Holly Condos: Have a good weekend.
374 00:48:58.920 ⇒ 00:49:01.239 Mike Klaczynski: Thank you, buddy. Thank you. Nice to meet you. Talk soon.
375 00:49:01.240 ⇒ 00:49:01.790 Holly Condos: Yeah.
376 00:49:01.790 ⇒ 00:49:02.370 Uttam Kumaran: Bye.