Meeting Title: Brainforge Weekly Client Planning Date: 2025-10-27 Meeting participants: Uttam Kumaran, Awaish Kumar, Samuel Roberts, Demilade Agboola, Robert Tseng, Rico Rejoso, Henry Zhao, Amber Lin
WEBVTT
1 00:02:10.520 ⇒ 00:02:11.609 Samuel Roberts: Can you guys hear me?
2 00:02:12.130 ⇒ 00:02:13.399 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, can you hear me?
3 00:02:13.400 ⇒ 00:02:16.179 Samuel Roberts: Yes, oh, right, my headphones are an issue.
4 00:02:16.290 ⇒ 00:02:18.480 Samuel Roberts: I had that issue just now on another call.
5 00:02:19.620 ⇒ 00:02:21.210 Samuel Roberts: Ugh, always.
6 00:03:01.730 ⇒ 00:03:04.930 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, waysh, Demolati. I don’t know, I’m thinking we should have, like…
7 00:03:05.310 ⇒ 00:03:09.920 Uttam Kumaran: You know, we talked about this even before, but I think now it’s probably more important. It’s like, we should have
8 00:03:10.110 ⇒ 00:03:11.880 Uttam Kumaran: one consistent…
9 00:03:11.990 ⇒ 00:03:17.860 Uttam Kumaran: tool we use, and ideally, we just, like, manage different versions of it. Like, Metaplane was the thought there.
10 00:03:18.370 ⇒ 00:03:19.529 Uttam Kumaran: But, like…
11 00:03:20.360 ⇒ 00:03:30.049 Uttam Kumaran: every client of ours is gonna have data quality issues as we start to push things, so I want, like… Insomnia’s a good example, right? Insomnia, we… randomly, someone will be like, hey, this is not updated.
12 00:03:30.610 ⇒ 00:03:35.940 Uttam Kumaran: like, F me, like, I don’t know even how… why did… why… how do we even know if they’re…
13 00:03:36.160 ⇒ 00:03:37.489 Uttam Kumaran: Right or wrong.
14 00:03:37.730 ⇒ 00:03:40.039 Uttam Kumaran: Urban sounds like the same thing, right? So…
15 00:03:40.790 ⇒ 00:03:46.539 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t want to have the conversation about buy Metaplane first to get the data quality, we should just implement something.
16 00:03:46.720 ⇒ 00:03:49.769 Uttam Kumaran: And then, like, if it gets too crazy or too expensive, we should…
17 00:03:50.990 ⇒ 00:03:58.450 Demilade Agboola: If… if… If the issue… is source freshness. We could always do that directly with dbt.
18 00:03:58.450 ⇒ 00:04:01.660 Uttam Kumaran: It’s not usually freshness, I think. I mean…
19 00:04:01.660 ⇒ 00:04:07.339 Demilade Agboola: Expressions is a huge concern. We can always do that easily with dbt, because I’m just thinking about, like.
20 00:04:07.870 ⇒ 00:04:15.599 Demilade Agboola: if there are other issues around, like, data explosion, yeah, then dbt might struggle to catch that, or tend to struggle to catch that.
21 00:04:15.600 ⇒ 00:04:23.389 Uttam Kumaran: One thing, like, I would rather us pick the tool that works, and then we can move, like, if it ends up being, like… like, I don’t care about price.
22 00:04:23.730 ⇒ 00:04:26.390 Uttam Kumaran: as much as I care about having…
23 00:04:26.600 ⇒ 00:04:35.360 Uttam Kumaran: catching issues before clients do. We can always then be like, okay, all Monte Carlo is doing is running selects, let’s move it to dbt. But, like.
24 00:04:35.850 ⇒ 00:04:38.650 Uttam Kumaran: The risk right now is too high, though.
25 00:04:38.960 ⇒ 00:04:39.650 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know.
26 00:04:40.380 ⇒ 00:04:42.359 Uttam Kumaran: We can think about it.
27 00:04:42.920 ⇒ 00:04:47.549 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool, so let’s, let me just get set up on my end, and we can run.
28 00:04:49.280 ⇒ 00:04:52.380 Uttam Kumaran: Today’s meeting…
29 00:05:12.720 ⇒ 00:05:14.200 Uttam Kumaran: Okay…
30 00:05:20.910 ⇒ 00:05:26.020 Uttam Kumaran: Enrico, if I can get your help a little bit in the delivery meeting dock.
31 00:05:26.570 ⇒ 00:05:29.699 Uttam Kumaran: To just kind of help me take notes as we go, that would be great.
32 00:05:30.480 ⇒ 00:05:37.150 Uttam Kumaran: Okay So, let’s… talk about… Clients this week, so…
33 00:05:39.470 ⇒ 00:05:46.509 Uttam Kumaran: Why is this so jacked up? So let’s… maybe we’ll just start first at talking through, like, big renewals.
34 00:05:47.250 ⇒ 00:05:54.020 Uttam Kumaran: Coming up this week, This is lovely that this is loading…
35 00:05:54.420 ⇒ 00:05:59.270 Uttam Kumaran: But, so we secured, sort of, verbal approval on Hype extension, which is great.
36 00:05:59.630 ⇒ 00:06:03.420 Uttam Kumaran: So, thanks, Robert, that was huge. We…
37 00:06:03.620 ⇒ 00:06:06.309 Uttam Kumaran: are talking to Ellie this week.
38 00:06:06.850 ⇒ 00:06:13.760 Uttam Kumaran: up in the air. I think we, we have a deck ready for…
39 00:06:13.940 ⇒ 00:06:17.920 Uttam Kumaran: For Ellie… I mean, yeah, for Ellie…
40 00:06:18.660 ⇒ 00:06:21.649 Uttam Kumaran: Which is just around, like, the data strategy.
41 00:06:22.960 ⇒ 00:06:26.019 Uttam Kumaran: It’s… this is also just gonna be on Robert to…
42 00:06:27.030 ⇒ 00:06:34.929 Uttam Kumaran: Or, like, Steph Curry from half court on this one. So, we haven’t done a lot of what we initially wanted to do with them.
43 00:06:35.280 ⇒ 00:06:49.729 Uttam Kumaran: Partly our fault, partly they just, like, need a lot of handholding, and partly, we actually… actually, it’s mostly our fault. That’s actually not… now that I’m thinking about it, it’s mostly our fault. So…
44 00:06:50.610 ⇒ 00:06:55.980 Uttam Kumaran: I, like, I guess I want to get comments from you, Robert, on, like, what else you need in this deck.
45 00:06:56.200 ⇒ 00:07:08.730 Uttam Kumaran: That way, me and Amber and Rico can just, like, make this happen for you. I think we do have a lot of… I want to get a deck… I wanna get a slide in here related to the work that Zoran did. I think at minimum, we’ve shown that, like, we can…
46 00:07:09.030 ⇒ 00:07:10.300 Uttam Kumaran: Hammer that out.
47 00:07:10.550 ⇒ 00:07:13.550 Uttam Kumaran: We met also a couple other, like, data people today.
48 00:07:13.550 ⇒ 00:07:15.870 Robert Tseng: Yeah, how was that? I was gonna ask, like…
49 00:07:17.110 ⇒ 00:07:19.850 Uttam Kumaran: They don’t know… they’re… I don’t know who these people are.
50 00:07:20.260 ⇒ 00:07:27.320 Uttam Kumaran: But, like, I had… just had some basic things about Azure, and they were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, like, I don’t even know what you’re talking about.
51 00:07:27.580 ⇒ 00:07:29.099 Robert Tseng: Isn’t he the CTO?
52 00:07:30.440 ⇒ 00:07:43.940 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, but… dude, like, they… they… they couldn’t… they couldn’t even talk through the basic things that we needed, which indicates to me that they have no idea. And they roll up to finance, so they’re maybe just the tech bros, like, at the company.
53 00:07:44.290 ⇒ 00:07:48.070 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I don’t think they have a CTO then. It’s probably… I think… I think it all sits under finance, you’re right.
54 00:07:48.070 ⇒ 00:07:54.519 Uttam Kumaran: It’s all… it sits under finance, and I… again, I think they’re… these guys are just, like, the IT bros. Like, I don’t think they’re, like, really…
55 00:07:55.280 ⇒ 00:08:10.619 Uttam Kumaran: Is that call recorded on our side? Maybe I’ll go and look at it. Yes, yes. Yeah, okay, cool. I mean, like, it wasn’t like… yeah, you just can get a sense of who we’re talking to. So, you still have this stuff open, like, this stuff is kind of completely open. I still think that…
56 00:08:10.900 ⇒ 00:08:20.629 Uttam Kumaran: If you can get anything, it would be great here. Like, even if you can get a small scope around analytics, I think we could take that and actually deliver it.
57 00:08:20.790 ⇒ 00:08:22.050 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Like, we…
58 00:08:22.050 ⇒ 00:08:24.009 Robert Tseng: I’m gonna pare it down, yeah.
59 00:08:24.010 ⇒ 00:08:36.159 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we completely messed up for a bunch of reasons that are no longer the case, and so I do think that even if you can get, like, 5K for, like, one thing, I feel like in the crew today and how we’re operating, we can
60 00:08:36.419 ⇒ 00:08:37.979 Uttam Kumaran: deliver it, so…
61 00:08:38.730 ⇒ 00:08:50.100 Uttam Kumaran: Let’s see. You can also… if you… if you want to do it more outcome-based, too, and have it be, like, something where we call our own shot, could be worth it, too. Like, I don’t think the work for them is that much.
62 00:08:50.240 ⇒ 00:08:55.599 Uttam Kumaran: I just think, like, weed completely… Bungled it, so… yeah.
63 00:08:56.080 ⇒ 00:08:56.750 Robert Tseng: Okay.
64 00:08:57.150 ⇒ 00:09:01.009 Uttam Kumaran: But that’s kind of, like, would be my… 2 cents there.
65 00:09:01.730 ⇒ 00:09:07.180 Uttam Kumaran: These… they’re just… they’ve… this client is great, because they paid on time, and their… their stuff is so chill.
66 00:09:07.300 ⇒ 00:09:10.510 Uttam Kumaran: So, I don’t know, I feel like it’s a great fight. I want to work with them, yeah. Yeah.
67 00:09:10.900 ⇒ 00:09:15.660 Uttam Kumaran: See what you can do, like, I wouldn’t let price get in the way on this one, because I just think the work is actually super easy.
68 00:09:15.680 ⇒ 00:09:16.910 Robert Tseng: Okay.
69 00:09:16.930 ⇒ 00:09:26.209 Uttam Kumaran: for README, I owe you… we owe, like, stuff, takeaways from last meeting, and, like, some significant progress in the next 3 days.
70 00:09:26.210 ⇒ 00:09:27.279 Robert Tseng: Yeah. On this? Yeah.
71 00:09:27.780 ⇒ 00:09:31.029 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s what I’ll try to have for you by Wednesday.
72 00:09:32.320 ⇒ 00:09:36.280 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know whether you’re gonna get a price increase?
73 00:09:36.380 ⇒ 00:09:39.200 Uttam Kumaran: But I would still say, like, if you can…
74 00:09:39.700 ⇒ 00:09:42.170 Uttam Kumaran: At least outline what the initiatives are.
75 00:09:42.400 ⇒ 00:09:45.939 Uttam Kumaran: And then get… we can price those out, and then you can…
76 00:09:46.190 ⇒ 00:09:50.860 Uttam Kumaran: Basically say, like, what would you like us to focus on? Plus some wins this week.
77 00:09:51.100 ⇒ 00:09:53.290 Uttam Kumaran: I think that would be setting you up well.
78 00:09:53.490 ⇒ 00:09:55.710 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, we have our… are you gonna…
79 00:09:55.920 ⇒ 00:10:01.010 Uttam Kumaran: grab time, are we gonna just do this on our Thursday call with them, or what do you think is the deal?
80 00:10:01.360 ⇒ 00:10:08.080 Robert Tseng: Yeah, Thursday, we have a weekly Thursday with them. I mean, I think, obviously, in light of, kind of, their
81 00:10:10.880 ⇒ 00:10:16.879 Robert Tseng: yeah, their messages today, I feel like we should try to send them a message, you know, today, tomorrow.
82 00:10:16.880 ⇒ 00:10:17.980 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
83 00:10:18.310 ⇒ 00:10:24.700 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I mean, I don’t think… I don’t think I have time to… to… I… I might… I might block off some time tomorrow morning.
84 00:10:24.700 ⇒ 00:10:29.740 Uttam Kumaran: Well, that’s the thing, yeah, can, like, me and you just do this for, like, 2 hours tomorrow, and just close this out?
85 00:10:29.740 ⇒ 00:10:31.250 Robert Tseng: When are you free tomorrow?
86 00:10:32.390 ⇒ 00:10:33.330 Robert Tseng: Or when were you gonna work on it.
87 00:10:33.330 ⇒ 00:10:33.890 Uttam Kumaran: this.
88 00:10:34.680 ⇒ 00:10:35.690 Robert Tseng: Oops.
89 00:10:35.880 ⇒ 00:10:40.160 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I’m free before… 10 Eastern your time, if you’re.
90 00:10:40.160 ⇒ 00:10:40.510 Robert Tseng: Okay.
91 00:10:40.510 ⇒ 00:10:41.260 Uttam Kumaran: Morning.
92 00:10:41.260 ⇒ 00:10:42.770 Robert Tseng: Okay, yeah, I’m gonna do it in the morning.
93 00:10:43.520 ⇒ 00:10:47.900 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, let’s just do it in the morning, let’s just bang out this whole thing as much as we can.
94 00:10:47.900 ⇒ 00:10:48.810 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
95 00:10:49.080 ⇒ 00:10:50.970 Uttam Kumaran: That way we can deliver something.
96 00:10:51.110 ⇒ 00:10:58.280 Uttam Kumaran: And then… Yeah, let’s see what we can do. So, we have the head of product, Every other week.
97 00:10:58.390 ⇒ 00:11:02.699 Uttam Kumaran: But we have to get a… we have to get paper signed this week, so…
98 00:11:02.700 ⇒ 00:11:03.060 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
99 00:11:08.590 ⇒ 00:11:12.950 Uttam Kumaran: So we’ll see what’s possible. Okay?
100 00:11:13.180 ⇒ 00:11:22.199 Uttam Kumaran: Doesn’t look like anything else. I am having an expansion conversation with ABC today.
101 00:11:23.350 ⇒ 00:11:26.130 Uttam Kumaran: I would actually like to maybe just flash that up.
102 00:11:26.500 ⇒ 00:11:31.830 Uttam Kumaran: if we have a call, and kind of shout out to, Amber for helping me with this.
103 00:11:32.390 ⇒ 00:11:39.550 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, is it the calls first one, Amber?
104 00:11:41.240 ⇒ 00:11:43.139 Amber Lin: Let me send that to…
105 00:11:43.140 ⇒ 00:11:44.620 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s this one, yeah.
106 00:11:44.620 ⇒ 00:11:45.180 Amber Lin: Okay.
107 00:11:45.980 ⇒ 00:11:48.070 Uttam Kumaran: Can we rename it to something, like…
108 00:11:48.490 ⇒ 00:11:52.930 Uttam Kumaran: This is… I would just consider this, like, project, but basically,
109 00:11:54.710 ⇒ 00:12:10.709 Uttam Kumaran: We’re, like, pretty deep into ABC, and they are struggling with a lot of things, and I’m trying to take this opportunity to find a great delivery source opportunity where we can come in and actually, like, deliver on a couple other areas. We’re using this
110 00:12:10.890 ⇒ 00:12:19.180 Uttam Kumaran: One thing they came to us with is that they’re having a really hard time understanding, and giving feedback on calls to their customer service reps.
111 00:12:19.260 ⇒ 00:12:20.220 Uttam Kumaran: Like.
112 00:12:20.290 ⇒ 00:12:34.719 Uttam Kumaran: And we have all the transcripts, and we initially proposed them, like, a little UI to help them sort of, like, understand all their calls, the volume, which calls are good, bad, provide feedback. But I actually wanted to take this time to sort of, like, expand and say, like, actually.
113 00:12:34.720 ⇒ 00:12:43.480 Uttam Kumaran: you guys know that we come in, we crush work, we’re super AI-forward. Where else in your company are there problems? Like, is this call thing…
114 00:12:43.500 ⇒ 00:12:50.670 Uttam Kumaran: like, where you want us to focus, but, like, I want to use this moment where we’re debating, working on something else to debate
115 00:12:50.780 ⇒ 00:12:56.140 Uttam Kumaran: working on anything, and I… and I’m really clear with Matt, who is the CFO, and ABC is a huge…
116 00:12:56.350 ⇒ 00:12:57.750 Uttam Kumaran: Huge company, like…
117 00:12:57.960 ⇒ 00:13:10.920 Uttam Kumaran: if I walked outside right now at my house, I would see an ABC truck, like, go by, like, a huge company. But they’re so dated, and they have such legacy garbage in there, and so I want to go to them and basically say this, which is, like.
118 00:13:11.010 ⇒ 00:13:25.600 Uttam Kumaran: I want to make sure that every dollar spent on us gets you, like, great KPI outputs. I know that CallSource is not great, and CallSource is this tool they’re using for call monitoring, but also, I’m like, call source is just one thing we can do.
119 00:13:25.660 ⇒ 00:13:33.360 Uttam Kumaran: are there… what else is there within ABC, and can we price in a way that’s win-win? We’ve done… and this is where I think, like.
120 00:13:33.540 ⇒ 00:13:42.309 Uttam Kumaran: part of what we want to do, and I guess this is my question for you, Robert, and for the other sort of, like, senior folks, is I think each week, part of this
121 00:13:42.530 ⇒ 00:13:55.000 Uttam Kumaran: meeting I want to take to carve out time for delivery source opportunities, where we can look through each client and find out, not only we look at, like, what’s going wrong, and I think for the most part, we’re getting better, so we’re, like.
122 00:13:55.330 ⇒ 00:13:56.300 Uttam Kumaran: I, like.
123 00:13:56.580 ⇒ 00:14:10.909 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve, like, pulled us out of that hole somewhat. The next poll that we’re going on is, like, not only delivering what we said we were gonna deliver, that is the hole we’re in right now, but in, like, 2 weeks, I want this meeting to be more talking about what else can we do for people.
124 00:14:10.910 ⇒ 00:14:18.710 Uttam Kumaran: And how can you… how can this team enable Robert and I initially, and then other folks to go source, scope, and propose
125 00:14:18.710 ⇒ 00:14:24.179 Uttam Kumaran: new opportunities. And so, one thing that we’re going in with is, like, me and Amber did some thinking.
126 00:14:24.280 ⇒ 00:14:34.810 Uttam Kumaran: Their current inbound funnel sucks, and one of the things that Matt, the CFO, has mentioned is that they have inbound, and they have outbound, and they have customer service-related calls.
127 00:14:35.260 ⇒ 00:14:36.609 Uttam Kumaran: And I was like, cool.
128 00:14:36.660 ⇒ 00:14:51.350 Uttam Kumaran: I just wanted them to talk about what are your inbound, outbound performance to date on web and phone? What are your KPI goals? Like, why did you even bring on a tool like CallSource? What’s been the ROI? And so, like, I’m gonna change some of these questions, but basically, I’m, like, getting them to articulate
129 00:14:51.350 ⇒ 00:15:02.550 Uttam Kumaran: issues in the company. Of course, I’m gonna tell Matt, hey, we’ve only been involved in customer service, and I’ve only heard inklings about sales. Of course, there’s a ton of stuff in that business.
130 00:15:02.550 ⇒ 00:15:16.930 Uttam Kumaran: So I want to just come to them and be like, we are Navy SEALs, you just point me to where the core problem is, I will tell you where we can solve them. And so, I want… I want to sort of pause there and come to the… be like, tell us the problems. I then also
131 00:15:17.080 ⇒ 00:15:34.499 Uttam Kumaran: My assumption is that even if that conversation gets derailed, and we don’t get anywhere specific, I have a proposal. And our proposal is that your inbound funnel sucks. Horribly. Like, you go to the homepage, there’s no way to find out where to book, it takes 5 steps, we put in your zip code.
132 00:15:34.500 ⇒ 00:15:40.180 Uttam Kumaran: Doesn’t take you somewhere where you can book. You then go to this janky form, and then someone finally calls you.
133 00:15:40.340 ⇒ 00:15:57.079 Uttam Kumaran: This is, like, horrible. And so one question I don’t know is, like, I don’t know how many… I… like, ABC’s very well known here, so people are probably looking them up. They’re not able to book a call, they’re calling directly, so there’s… one, there’s probably missed volume, there’s probably missed triage opportunities,
134 00:15:57.300 ⇒ 00:16:00.720 Uttam Kumaran: And they’re probably losing business just because of how high friction this is.
135 00:16:00.750 ⇒ 00:16:18.449 Uttam Kumaran: So, I want to talk to them about, like, how are they tracking outbound? How are they tracking… all these questions, I want them to feel almost, like, embarrassed that, like, none of this is figured out. And then I want Matt to put a number on it. Like, okay, what can we… like, how can we basically do this? Like, how can I actually
136 00:16:18.670 ⇒ 00:16:29.979 Uttam Kumaran: provide you with a solution that affects one of those KPIs. So this is the conversation I’m having with them at 3.30, and so we’re gonna sort of try to find a way to expand. Ideally.
137 00:16:30.110 ⇒ 00:16:48.509 Uttam Kumaran: they say, hey, we have this problem here, and then we put together a scope on affecting a KPI. Ideally, they pay us upfront for it. Where this may naturally land is some type of outcome-based pricing that, Robert, I think we’ve been talking a lot about, where, hey, give us a KPI that I can then scope around in an effect.
138 00:16:48.820 ⇒ 00:16:51.309 Uttam Kumaran: And so, we’re doing this for ABC today.
139 00:16:51.670 ⇒ 00:16:54.960 Uttam Kumaran: Any questions about this?
140 00:16:56.830 ⇒ 00:17:07.090 Robert Tseng: I mean, this… I mean, this solution here ends up being… I mean, it’s basically like a CRO exercise, so, like, conversion rate optimization, so…
141 00:17:07.319 ⇒ 00:17:14.859 Robert Tseng: I mean, we’re either gonna be redesigning their inbound flows, or, like, building the new landing pages, like… I mean, it’s… it’s…
142 00:17:15.980 ⇒ 00:17:26.640 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s… it makes sense, like, it’s a high… high leverage, easy project. It’s not really within our current.
143 00:17:26.640 ⇒ 00:17:29.419 Uttam Kumaran: Competency, but .
144 00:17:30.000 ⇒ 00:17:35.239 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I’m curious if that… if they want to, maybe we should go find a CRO partner.
145 00:17:36.290 ⇒ 00:17:38.699 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I guess I’m also curious about, like.
146 00:17:38.990 ⇒ 00:17:42.019 Uttam Kumaran: I doubt that they even have a lot of this measured.
147 00:17:42.470 ⇒ 00:17:45.550 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s even probably what I’m trying to get at, is like.
148 00:17:45.600 ⇒ 00:17:48.790 Robert Tseng: Sure. I don’t even think they’re looking at this in this way.
149 00:17:48.910 ⇒ 00:17:53.140 Uttam Kumaran: is my assumption. If they are, then I’ll find out, and then, yeah, then it’s more like…
150 00:17:53.370 ⇒ 00:17:57.940 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, do we want to be doing… Landing page inbound optimization.
151 00:17:57.940 ⇒ 00:17:58.350 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
152 00:17:59.580 ⇒ 00:18:05.620 Uttam Kumaran: But I guess even my question for you, Robert, is, like, when you… if you were to look at a company like ABC, how do you… how do we even, like.
153 00:18:05.730 ⇒ 00:18:20.600 Uttam Kumaran: structure an exercise of, like, finding more opportunities like this. Like, this was just one thing that I was like, okay, we might as well just come to a meeting with something. Yeah. But, like, I’m wondering, like, how you break down an active client
154 00:18:20.850 ⇒ 00:18:24.650 Uttam Kumaran: You know, we sort of listed, like, the different areas.
155 00:18:24.870 ⇒ 00:18:32.439 Uttam Kumaran: But yeah, I’m just curious, like, how you would… like, do you… do you try to do it all through this, like, interview-style process?
156 00:18:32.610 ⇒ 00:18:35.040 Uttam Kumaran: Or, like, I don’t know, what do you think?
157 00:18:35.920 ⇒ 00:18:38.190 Robert Tseng: I guess…
158 00:18:40.510 ⇒ 00:18:54.569 Robert Tseng: I kind of… well, we’re… we’re on the operational side right now, right? So, I think, like, I feel like expanding where we’re already currently playing is probably the easier…
159 00:18:55.900 ⇒ 00:18:57.250 Robert Tseng: Thing to do.
160 00:18:57.550 ⇒ 00:19:03.689 Robert Tseng: I do think we should have an opportunity, we should have… we have, we should have, like, an adjacent,
161 00:19:03.840 ⇒ 00:19:19.189 Robert Tseng: function to go support, so if it’s… if it is outbound sales, and, like, I don’t know if that’s how they bring in their business, like, I don’t really know how much of their business is through inbound versus outbound, or whatever. But yeah, then… then I think we should just, you know, we should have
162 00:19:19.450 ⇒ 00:19:23.270 Robert Tseng: We should pick things that are easy for us to serve.
163 00:19:23.290 ⇒ 00:19:36.170 Robert Tseng: That are, like, high leverage. I do think CRO makes sense, like, that’s why there’s so many CRO agencies, like, it’s very low risk, we’re not directly affecting their operations.
164 00:19:36.170 ⇒ 00:19:48.459 Robert Tseng: We’re not… you know, your landing pages are… they could be hosted on a separate domain, and… and, like, it’s just, like, a purely design exercise of just, like, making their… the questionnaire, or…
165 00:19:48.460 ⇒ 00:20:01.449 Robert Tseng: whatever, like, the… the landing page a little bit smoother, so I think that’s… that’s why I think it’s pretty easy to do. So yeah, I mean, I would… I would kind of look at it for more, like.
166 00:20:01.640 ⇒ 00:20:15.519 Robert Tseng: There are opportunities everywhere, but, like, what are the ones that are the easiest for us to serve, either with our current capabilities, or if we just need to bring… if we have a partner that we can bring in to serve it, then we can, like, pitch their… their service.
167 00:20:16.320 ⇒ 00:20:16.940 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
168 00:20:17.200 ⇒ 00:20:17.860 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
169 00:20:18.040 ⇒ 00:20:37.090 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, the only reason is, like, all of their stuff is all phone-driven right now. Yeah. And so, they do some outbound, but they have a lot of inbound, because they’re just a big logo here. But, like, they have no web presence, and I think the story is clear, but, like, yeah, I guess you basically bundled into CRO,
170 00:20:37.180 ⇒ 00:20:38.550 Uttam Kumaran: If that makes sense.
171 00:20:39.030 ⇒ 00:20:39.700 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
172 00:20:41.050 ⇒ 00:20:41.590 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
173 00:20:42.280 ⇒ 00:20:48.270 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and it is kind of adjacent, just given the phone situation. Like, we’re already in a lot of their phone systems.
174 00:20:48.400 ⇒ 00:20:52.150 Uttam Kumaran: Like, thinking about flows, and there’s a lot of the same people.
175 00:20:53.560 ⇒ 00:21:05.180 Robert Tseng: Another one that’s easy for us to do is, because we hear all of their customer service support calls, we could… we could do, like, a voice-of-the-customer, kind of project for them, where basically.
176 00:21:05.360 ⇒ 00:21:16.920 Robert Tseng: You know, combing through their, their transcripts, and then rolling up, like, service or product feedback to them, and telling them, like, these are the
177 00:21:17.170 ⇒ 00:21:28.099 Robert Tseng: you know, you could measure things like, you know, NPS, or, whatever, and, like, be able to give them service or product feedback through that channel.
178 00:21:28.460 ⇒ 00:21:32.159 Uttam Kumaran: Is that, like, a four… like, a four-week project, basically?
179 00:21:32.580 ⇒ 00:21:36.509 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, just to set up that pipeline, I think it could be a four-week project.
180 00:21:37.440 ⇒ 00:21:46.329 Robert Tseng: And then it ends up just being, like, a monthly review thing. Like, I feel like at other companies I’ve worked with, there was always, like, this… it’s like a routine thing where
181 00:21:46.640 ⇒ 00:21:55.200 Robert Tseng: feedback from the customer ends up making it onto the product roadmap. Yeah, so that could just be, like, a perennial project for us.
182 00:21:55.540 ⇒ 00:21:56.100 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
183 00:21:56.460 ⇒ 00:21:57.070 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
184 00:21:57.980 ⇒ 00:21:58.780 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool.
185 00:22:00.680 ⇒ 00:22:12.500 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, look, what I want to hear from Matt is, like, where is the money coming from, and then where is it going? And I want to attack… where is the opportunity? So, like, customer service is a huge cost center for them.
186 00:22:12.660 ⇒ 00:22:20.340 Uttam Kumaran: And their whole business isn’t… is as big and as great as it is because they have great customer service. So, it’s a huge priority for them.
187 00:22:20.880 ⇒ 00:22:24.909 Uttam Kumaran: I just know, given, like, how their business runs, that they’re not, like.
188 00:22:25.000 ⇒ 00:22:38.619 Uttam Kumaran: all… they’re not doing anything close to nearly what our, like, e-com and anybody are doing in terms of sophistication. Like, I’m not even saying change the landing page. I’m just saying have the zip code thing go to something that is a real zip code map. Like, it doesn’t go anywhere.
189 00:22:38.620 ⇒ 00:22:46.399 Uttam Kumaran: I’m saying replace this with, like, a much smoother form. Like, a couple of simple things, and then do a before and after, right? And so…
190 00:22:47.060 ⇒ 00:22:52.109 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like, I, I totally hear, I totally hear you. And then we set up the measurement.
191 00:22:52.110 ⇒ 00:22:55.999 Robert Tseng: It’s just, like, a chat co-pilot right now, right?
192 00:22:56.000 ⇒ 00:22:58.319 Uttam Kumaran: Yes. For internal. Internal.
193 00:22:58.320 ⇒ 00:22:59.219 Robert Tseng: Yeah, for internal.
194 00:22:59.440 ⇒ 00:23:10.870 Robert Tseng: So, I mean, it’s just an expand… expanding within the CX, like, kind of category itself. You know, we have the chat agents, we could… I don’t know if they’re open… I mean, we’ve… maybe you’ve pitched them voice agents.
195 00:23:10.870 ⇒ 00:23:22.779 Robert Tseng: Yes, yeah. Something, like, email-related, too, because I’m sure, like, some of the more complicated escalations need to go into email, so there’s probably some work we can do there. That’s just, like, kind of repackaging what we do internally.
196 00:23:23.880 ⇒ 00:23:44.260 Robert Tseng: like, workforce management, I don’t know if you’ve looked into that, like, how do they really manage their team? Like, any workflows around there, I think that’s… that’s easy expansion for us, too. So I would probably pick… pitch the CX, expansion work, because already kind of where we’re playing. I think there are a lot of things that we could do there still, and then you can pitch the CRO and voice customer or something.
197 00:23:44.260 ⇒ 00:23:44.980 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
198 00:23:44.980 ⇒ 00:23:51.660 Robert Tseng: Yeah, but I think workforce… workforce management, and then something around email, probably, I feel like could be… could be helpful.
199 00:23:52.660 ⇒ 00:24:01.559 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so for voice, I would basically say, like, Can the agent take like… 80% of the…
200 00:24:02.210 ⇒ 00:24:07.060 Uttam Kumaran: Simple calls, scheduling, blah blah blah. And what impact would that make?
201 00:24:07.570 ⇒ 00:24:08.140 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
202 00:24:09.340 ⇒ 00:24:10.410 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, great.
203 00:24:10.720 ⇒ 00:24:15.320 Uttam Kumaran: Cool, okay, so I have enough to kind of finish this up, Amber, today.
204 00:24:15.710 ⇒ 00:24:25.480 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. Any other clients where we want to talk about, like, expansion opportunities.
205 00:24:26.710 ⇒ 00:24:29.990 Robert Tseng: How did their Urban STEMS, conversation go?
206 00:24:29.990 ⇒ 00:24:31.630 Uttam Kumaran: It’s happening on Thursday.
207 00:24:31.630 ⇒ 00:24:32.430 Robert Tseng: Oh, okay.
208 00:24:33.080 ⇒ 00:24:41.170 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so… This is where, if I can just maybe briefly pull this up…
209 00:24:44.510 ⇒ 00:24:50.570 Uttam Kumaran: Basically, I asked Emily, who’s, like, our counterpart internally, for some feedback.
210 00:24:50.680 ⇒ 00:24:55.990 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, I think we’ve done some good wins. Really, this week, we need to get
211 00:24:56.230 ⇒ 00:25:00.280 Uttam Kumaran: a lot of stuff into Looker, and that’s been a big challenge.
212 00:25:00.440 ⇒ 00:25:15.489 Uttam Kumaran: one of the things I’m trying to articulate to Zach is that Emily is really the key gatekeeper between our work getting into Looker and it getting absorbed by the company, because we don’t have, like, time budget for other stuff.
213 00:25:15.850 ⇒ 00:25:20.619 Uttam Kumaran: And so… I’m trying to basically do what…
214 00:25:20.730 ⇒ 00:25:25.390 Uttam Kumaran: We talked about, which is, like, Look at these opportunities.
215 00:25:25.730 ⇒ 00:25:31.650 Uttam Kumaran: We had… we talked about inventory optimization, marketing, revenue, loss prevention, customer insights.
216 00:25:31.980 ⇒ 00:25:36.870 Uttam Kumaran: The other thing I want to basically highlight, though, is that, like, look.
217 00:25:37.690 ⇒ 00:25:42.190 Uttam Kumaran: They just lost a key, like, analyst member of their team, and…
218 00:25:42.560 ⇒ 00:25:48.159 Uttam Kumaran: like, our stuff is not getting adopted, so, like, we have to spend more time there, like, so what’s the thing? I want to have.
219 00:25:48.160 ⇒ 00:25:48.490 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
220 00:25:48.490 ⇒ 00:25:56.680 Uttam Kumaran: conversation about their goals, and then, like, I can have a further conversation about minimizing looker costs, I think.
221 00:25:56.860 ⇒ 00:26:00.740 Uttam Kumaran: But, like, This is roughly our, like, our pitch here.
222 00:26:02.270 ⇒ 00:26:02.940 Robert Tseng: Okay.
223 00:26:04.160 ⇒ 00:26:08.039 Uttam Kumaran: So, I guess my ask would be, like, if there’s anything here…
224 00:26:08.190 ⇒ 00:26:11.810 Uttam Kumaran: Or if you have any other further asks that I can… we can do.
225 00:26:14.550 ⇒ 00:26:30.590 Robert Tseng: I mean, I’d be curious to know, like, where… what do their analysts even do, so we can kind of find white space there? Like, I mean, I’m on their website right now, like, it seems like they’ve been really trying to promote their subscription business. I’m sure it’s probably a small percentage of their business, but…
226 00:26:30.590 ⇒ 00:26:31.150 Uttam Kumaran: S.
227 00:26:31.150 ⇒ 00:26:46.309 Robert Tseng: if that’s something that we can come in and say, yeah, we’ll grow your subscription business, I mean, we work with subscription customers, like all our other companies, our CPG companies do subscriptions, so we could recycle a lot of the same work, there, which is…
228 00:26:46.730 ⇒ 00:26:48.720 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
229 00:26:49.630 ⇒ 00:26:50.340 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
230 00:26:50.340 ⇒ 00:27:01.230 Demilade Agboola: And moving to that end, like, yeah, we just got subscriptions data, like, we just, like, ingested subscriptions data, so that is a touchpoint for us to expand on.
231 00:27:01.570 ⇒ 00:27:16.150 Demilade Agboola: So yeah, inventory, subscriptions, and revenue are, like, the three points that we can come in on and just try and help them see, like, okay, beyond just the high-level numbers, how can we help optimize in, like, strategy and business decisions in that regard?
232 00:27:19.510 ⇒ 00:27:20.110 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
233 00:27:21.920 ⇒ 00:27:28.790 Uttam Kumaran: So one thing I’m gonna add here is… let me add the, subscriptions…
234 00:27:30.010 ⇒ 00:27:36.770 Uttam Kumaran: And then, basically, I’m gonna play, like, increase… Like, subscription, revenue.
235 00:27:38.640 ⇒ 00:27:41.789 Uttam Kumaran: by X percent or something like that.
236 00:27:43.430 ⇒ 00:27:50.180 Uttam Kumaran: So yeah, I mean, I think high… I also agree, like, I wanna… I guess I wanna understand… this is the problem, though, is Zach is…
237 00:27:50.510 ⇒ 00:27:54.879 Uttam Kumaran: Kind of on the product side, so he’s not the direct analyst stakeholder.
238 00:27:55.210 ⇒ 00:28:02.559 Uttam Kumaran: So, but basically, I want to tell them, like, look, I think we’re in a good groove, we can push models out, we’ve… we’ve basically right-sized their entire system.
239 00:28:04.040 ⇒ 00:28:22.279 Uttam Kumaran: we’re starting to get into Northbeam stuff here, so there’s opportunities for us to go more into marketing, which I kind of don’t want to do. Like, I think, Robert, this is a great client worth a ton of inventory issues, ton of, like, they substitute products in and out, and just, like, revenue analysis work.
240 00:28:22.850 ⇒ 00:28:26.629 Uttam Kumaran: It’s the exact work that I think we need, like, customer segmentation, revenue analysis.
241 00:28:27.060 ⇒ 00:28:30.479 Uttam Kumaran: Like, that being said, like.
242 00:28:30.930 ⇒ 00:28:37.280 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know whether there’s anyone on our team that could do this right now, like, if it would be…
243 00:28:37.860 ⇒ 00:28:43.429 Uttam Kumaran: I mean… It would have to be, like, a mix of you plus Damelata, you plus a Wish.
244 00:28:43.680 ⇒ 00:28:44.440 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
245 00:28:44.440 ⇒ 00:29:00.620 Uttam Kumaran: You know, but, like, to kind of strategize and come up with a hypothesis, but I think this is the natural next step for us. Like, I don’t want to be… we’ve done everything in terms of, like, the infrastructure becoming a lot better, and we will achieve our goal of that by the end of the contract, which is next month.
246 00:29:00.940 ⇒ 00:29:03.860 Uttam Kumaran: So I want to get into the… Blake.
247 00:29:04.750 ⇒ 00:29:11.430 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, we have to… I want to continue doing that, like, there’s still stuff to do there, but I want to add on this, like, I want us to get to the business.
248 00:29:12.740 ⇒ 00:29:25.220 Robert Tseng: Okay. Yeah, I feel like I need to just spend, like, a day or two days in their data, and I should be able to, like, build out a whole roadmap thing like I did for Insomnia. But obviously, I will not focus on the marketing work.
249 00:29:25.230 ⇒ 00:29:33.249 Robert Tseng: I mean, I’m looking at their website, and I already see some… some things. Like, they don’t even list all their best sellers at the front. Like, there’s just, like, easy optimizations they could do, but…
250 00:29:33.250 ⇒ 00:29:39.439 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so I want to kind of get… my meeting on Thursday is to get approval to then do that analysis.
251 00:29:39.620 ⇒ 00:29:40.020 Robert Tseng: Okay.
252 00:29:40.020 ⇒ 00:29:41.930 Uttam Kumaran: Do that, like, little, like, discovery.
253 00:29:42.290 ⇒ 00:29:43.099 Robert Tseng: Yeah, it’s all the.
254 00:29:43.100 ⇒ 00:29:43.679 Uttam Kumaran: But, yeah.
255 00:29:43.680 ⇒ 00:29:44.460 Robert Tseng: That’d be great.
256 00:29:44.940 ⇒ 00:29:49.360 Uttam Kumaran: Like, we could come into this company and bang it out, like, this is, like.
257 00:29:49.460 ⇒ 00:29:56.169 Uttam Kumaran: And they’re doing a shit ton of volume in flowers, which is… it’s very… it’s kind of complicated. Heavy inventory.
258 00:29:56.170 ⇒ 00:29:56.780 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
259 00:29:56.780 ⇒ 00:30:05.520 Uttam Kumaran: Heavy inventory flows and heavy, like, normal e-com stuff, and a lot of volume, so, like, really rich data. And they have 10 years of data, dude.
260 00:30:06.310 ⇒ 00:30:08.039 Uttam Kumaran: Great, yeah. Yeah.
261 00:30:08.190 ⇒ 00:30:09.090 Uttam Kumaran: So…
262 00:30:10.410 ⇒ 00:30:30.370 Uttam Kumaran: If anything, I mean, the one… one objective here is just to make sure that we continue with them, so that’s what I kind of need to get his, like, reading on. Second is if we do continue with them, I want to tell him that either you’re gonna take part of our scope and move it to there, or I want to layer it on top. Ideally, it’s the second one.
263 00:30:30.510 ⇒ 00:30:31.220 Uttam Kumaran: So… Yeah.
264 00:30:31.660 ⇒ 00:30:33.709 Uttam Kumaran: That’s kind of, like, what I’m hoping for.
265 00:30:35.430 ⇒ 00:30:41.449 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, customer service, Mark, yeah, but I think this is something that we’ve talked about a ways, is that just, like.
266 00:30:41.600 ⇒ 00:30:45.099 Uttam Kumaran: For customer service, nobody ever cares.
267 00:30:45.610 ⇒ 00:30:51.199 Uttam Kumaran: And… I think the voice of the customer piece is probably the clear through line.
268 00:30:51.380 ⇒ 00:30:59.710 Uttam Kumaran: between CS and revenue, but, like, generally doing Zendesk tickets and shit, like, I think we decided, like, not to…
269 00:31:00.900 ⇒ 00:31:04.630 Uttam Kumaran: Just not to touch it, because nobody cares, like, they’re just like…
270 00:31:04.890 ⇒ 00:31:09.020 Uttam Kumaran: I think if we can help them, like, on the side, as, like.
271 00:31:09.190 ⇒ 00:31:14.750 Uttam Kumaran: a nice thing to do, I would do it, but I can’t pitch Zach on it. It’s not driving… gonna drive revenue.
272 00:31:15.520 ⇒ 00:31:22.939 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, and ultimately, because we can see when things were canceled, when orders were canceled, or when there was a false upgrade.
273 00:31:22.940 ⇒ 00:31:38.660 Demilade Agboola: We can kind of see patterns that allow us to know, like, customers were not happy, or there were a lot of canceled orders on this day, or there were a lot of, you know, forced upgrade orders, so we couldn’t meet what they requested for, so we had to give them something in return.
274 00:31:38.660 ⇒ 00:31:42.829 Demilade Agboola: That may have been above the price of what they paid for.
275 00:31:43.310 ⇒ 00:31:43.920 Demilade Agboola: So we can.
276 00:31:43.920 ⇒ 00:31:44.250 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
277 00:31:44.840 ⇒ 00:31:47.310 Demilade Agboola: Viruses and kind of make, you know.
278 00:31:49.210 ⇒ 00:31:58.289 Demilade Agboola: We can flag those points and be able to say, you know, there was an inventory problem on these days, or there was a… you know, just point out those issues.
279 00:32:02.860 ⇒ 00:32:10.700 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so that’s… that’s a couple things I can highlight there, which is, yeah, basically, I think the goals are, one.
280 00:32:11.270 ⇒ 00:32:15.039 Uttam Kumaran: Confirm future scope in general.
281 00:32:15.980 ⇒ 00:32:21.779 Uttam Kumaran: Push to add analysis scope plus DE scope.
282 00:32:22.210 ⇒ 00:32:29.630 Uttam Kumaran: If anything… Leave with analysis, plus… the East.
283 00:32:30.010 ⇒ 00:32:31.530 Uttam Kumaran: name. Size.
284 00:32:35.210 ⇒ 00:32:36.720 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, great.
285 00:32:37.640 ⇒ 00:32:40.610 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
286 00:32:42.590 ⇒ 00:32:47.310 Uttam Kumaran: Let’s talk about, let’s just talk about…
287 00:32:48.090 ⇒ 00:32:52.789 Uttam Kumaran: We talked a little bit about client goals for this week. Is there anything…
288 00:32:53.800 ⇒ 00:33:00.650 Uttam Kumaran: Else, like, on a client-by-client basis that we want to… Flag.
289 00:33:01.710 ⇒ 00:33:03.709 Uttam Kumaran: So, if I was to say.
290 00:33:04.100 ⇒ 00:33:06.370 Uttam Kumaran: This was last week’s goals, right?
291 00:33:07.150 ⇒ 00:33:11.240 Uttam Kumaran: I still don’t think we have, like, the rest of the Q4 roadmap on Eden.
292 00:33:11.750 ⇒ 00:33:17.500 Uttam Kumaran: I would like us to kind of try to have something like that for next week.
293 00:33:17.920 ⇒ 00:33:26.979 Uttam Kumaran: I think by this week, I want to get this, like, whatever, this, like, these small BS items. We had a great… you’re… hopefully, we’ll have a great win with this, like, extra scope.
294 00:33:27.310 ⇒ 00:33:32.960 Uttam Kumaran: And we… I really… now that I’m sort of involved, I want to get us to, like, really great wins.
295 00:33:33.170 ⇒ 00:33:37.639 Uttam Kumaran: Really great analysis pumping out across, like, as many clients as possible.
296 00:33:37.770 ⇒ 00:33:42.680 Uttam Kumaran: So I think that’s… kind of remains… The goal for this week.
297 00:33:45.560 ⇒ 00:33:54.890 Uttam Kumaran: Are there… is anything else on Eden, like, that we have to get done this week? I mean, we talked about, like, the workstream goals, but, like, any goals on this, in terms of this overall client?
298 00:33:56.820 ⇒ 00:34:14.289 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I’m just, you know, tomorrow we have the… hopefully it’s the final call, but I’m hoping to get that new contract signed. So, I feel like after they sign it, then I’ll build… I’ll build out the roadmap, but now I’m just gonna keep putting whoever I need to in the room to make them sign… sign that increase, so…
299 00:34:14.290 ⇒ 00:34:14.630 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
300 00:34:14.639 ⇒ 00:34:16.829 Robert Tseng: It’s kind of what I’m thinking this week, yeah.
301 00:34:17.840 ⇒ 00:34:18.409 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
302 00:34:19.260 ⇒ 00:34:19.960 Uttam Kumaran: Raymaster.
303 00:34:19.960 ⇒ 00:34:27.830 Robert Tseng: Of course, Q4 Roadmap, I… yeah, I mean, we will… and it’s just taking the opportunities that we’ve already outlined in the deck, and then really just starting to…
304 00:34:27.830 ⇒ 00:34:35.999 Uttam Kumaran: We have not gone after, like, significant Eden analysis in, like, over 2 months, I feel like. Yeah. And that is a complete failure for me.
305 00:34:36.170 ⇒ 00:34:38.109 Uttam Kumaran: like, I… like…
306 00:34:39.170 ⇒ 00:34:47.929 Uttam Kumaran: That’s… yeah, so I’m gonna just… we need to divert resources and start doing that. That outcome should dictate the models we build, not the other way around.
307 00:34:48.210 ⇒ 00:34:50.369 Uttam Kumaran: Right, and that’s what I want to move towards.
308 00:34:51.540 ⇒ 00:35:06.400 Uttam Kumaran: if, as part of an analysis, we need to build new models, then we can go do that while we continue to chip over what we’ve done, but we have all the data on this client is already, like, there sitting, so I think there’s ways for us to do things here.
309 00:35:06.540 ⇒ 00:35:13.900 Uttam Kumaran: And I want to kind of move… shift our resources there. Okay, so… Remo, like, same drill.
310 00:35:15.810 ⇒ 00:35:16.450 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
311 00:35:16.820 ⇒ 00:35:18.480 Robert Tseng: I mean, they’re…
312 00:35:18.700 ⇒ 00:35:24.589 Robert Tseng: I think the most… the more likely outcome is they’re just gonna pay us the same rate for another month.
313 00:35:24.820 ⇒ 00:35:36.120 Robert Tseng: And that product is not… is not ready. It’s supposed to be delivered by next week, or end of week, but, there’s still not a deployed solution for… for,
314 00:35:37.560 ⇒ 00:35:38.910 Robert Tseng: preserve the…
315 00:35:39.300 ⇒ 00:35:46.229 Robert Tseng: to test, I guess. So, like, I… I… we’re just… we’re not… we’re not really doing anything. We’re just meeting with them every now and then.
316 00:35:46.470 ⇒ 00:35:49.740 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, I think, I think a… a…
317 00:35:50.690 ⇒ 00:35:55.660 Uttam Kumaran: nice outcome also is, like, Surf can get more involved, like, he can start building stuff for them.
318 00:35:55.900 ⇒ 00:35:58.009 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I want, I want that, yeah.
319 00:35:58.010 ⇒ 00:36:09.439 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so, I don’t know, I would say keep throwing him at them to talk to them, like, he’s a very likable guy, and really knows his shit in terms of building full-stack apps, so…
320 00:36:09.580 ⇒ 00:36:12.070 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe he kinda gets more involved.
321 00:36:12.210 ⇒ 00:36:17.279 Uttam Kumaran: like, I would prefer to do that under Brainforge, but if it becomes, like, too out of scope, then we can…
322 00:36:17.480 ⇒ 00:36:19.580 Uttam Kumaran: Signed some referral thing with him, so…
323 00:36:19.780 ⇒ 00:36:20.410 Robert Tseng: Okay.
324 00:36:21.880 ⇒ 00:36:28.009 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, we’ve… I don’t wanna… we don’t have to rehash. README, Insomnia,
325 00:36:28.330 ⇒ 00:36:30.100 Uttam Kumaran: We have the same goals, like.
326 00:36:30.720 ⇒ 00:36:38.430 Uttam Kumaran: I feel, like, pretty good. I know I don’t want to keep rehashing the same things every week, so every… we already talked about this this morning, is there… if there’s anything else?
327 00:36:39.150 ⇒ 00:36:43.790 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think the tickets are in a good place. Like, I think it’s what we need to work on this week, so…
328 00:36:44.180 ⇒ 00:36:48.319 Uttam Kumaran: And then tell me, like, what happened with the marketing… what was the marketing person drama?
329 00:36:48.350 ⇒ 00:36:51.339 Robert Tseng: Cmo got fired, so…
330 00:36:51.670 ⇒ 00:36:52.719 Uttam Kumaran: Is there a reason?
331 00:36:53.250 ⇒ 00:36:56.799 Robert Tseng: Oh, well, I think… This past quarter, like.
332 00:36:56.960 ⇒ 00:36:59.639 Uttam Kumaran: How long has… how long have they been with the company?
333 00:36:59.640 ⇒ 00:37:01.319 Robert Tseng: 6 months.
334 00:37:01.320 ⇒ 00:37:01.710 Uttam Kumaran: Ugh.
335 00:37:01.710 ⇒ 00:37:07.489 Robert Tseng: it’s not really for… I think there are headwinds at play, but, you know, if… when…
336 00:37:07.490 ⇒ 00:37:12.179 Uttam Kumaran: Dude, I walked by… I walked by Insomnia that is packed, so I don’t know what headwinds there are.
337 00:37:12.180 ⇒ 00:37:16.490 Robert Tseng: Well, the new retail locations, like, they’re, they’re.
338 00:37:16.490 ⇒ 00:37:19.349 Uttam Kumaran: It was around… it was 8 PM, too. It was, like, packed.
339 00:37:19.650 ⇒ 00:37:25.589 Robert Tseng: Well, that’s… that’s their thing. Crumble gets all the sales during the day, and then Insomnia gets all the sales at the night.
340 00:37:25.790 ⇒ 00:37:28.020 Robert Tseng: So… Yeah.
341 00:37:28.160 ⇒ 00:37:37.080 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I think overall, like, their business is shrinking year over year, though, so it’s not… it’s not… it’s not great, so…
342 00:37:37.460 ⇒ 00:37:38.200 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
343 00:37:38.920 ⇒ 00:37:43.240 Uttam Kumaran: But you don’t think that’s, like, an effect on our stuff?
344 00:37:43.240 ⇒ 00:37:56.549 Robert Tseng: Yeah. All it does is she, you know, she sponsored the contract through end of the year, so, you know, now if the CEO is in place, we basically have to win him over, and then… I mean, I was hoping to get a bump before the end of the year, but it may just stay the same.
345 00:37:56.550 ⇒ 00:37:58.620 Uttam Kumaran: Why don’t you go see that guy on Thursday?
346 00:37:59.140 ⇒ 00:38:04.759 Robert Tseng: Yeah, well, they’re… they bring every… they’re bringing people on site. Well, I don’t want to just go there and just…
347 00:38:04.980 ⇒ 00:38:07.510 Robert Tseng: I want to go there when I’m ready to just, like.
348 00:38:08.210 ⇒ 00:38:18.920 Uttam Kumaran: I know, but dude, if they don’t have a… if they don’t have… if everybody’s not in the room the week after, then it’s… this is just a… yeah, we just have to ball up for Thursday.
349 00:38:18.920 ⇒ 00:38:22.210 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I mean, I might go Thursday, yeah.
350 00:38:23.040 ⇒ 00:38:28.139 Uttam Kumaran: I would rather us just grind to get you stuff for Thursday than, like, not have that shot.
351 00:38:28.590 ⇒ 00:38:29.250 Robert Tseng: Okay.
352 00:38:29.700 ⇒ 00:38:31.040 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, it’s my vote.
353 00:38:31.470 ⇒ 00:38:40.819 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, he’s early in, he’s, like, kind of involved for now, so this is, like, the time to make the impression and kind of get him to buy into what we’re doing, so that’s kind of how I see it.
354 00:38:43.700 ⇒ 00:38:44.430 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean.
355 00:38:44.430 ⇒ 00:38:49.019 Robert Tseng: They are gonna try to backfill… backfill here, so I also don’t really know if I’m, like.
356 00:38:49.430 ⇒ 00:38:56.100 Robert Tseng: what’s the point of winning him over? He’s gonna assign someone else, and then I’m gonna do the same thing again with the next person. But I don’t know what the timeline is for.
357 00:38:56.100 ⇒ 00:38:58.620 Uttam Kumaran: He’s the ultimate… he’s the ultimate, like, decision maker.
358 00:38:58.620 ⇒ 00:38:59.680 Robert Tseng: Yeah, it is, yes, yes.
359 00:38:59.680 ⇒ 00:39:01.990 Uttam Kumaran: I would… Yeah, and…
360 00:39:02.160 ⇒ 00:39:07.320 Uttam Kumaran: As you know, like, he… they want to see, like, flashy stuff that leads to decisions.
361 00:39:07.320 ⇒ 00:39:07.950 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
362 00:39:08.750 ⇒ 00:39:18.390 Uttam Kumaran: So I think it’s good, and we’ll have some stuff this week that’s worth sharing. I mean, some good news and some bad news, but then you can… now, you also have a… you all… you just have someone to blame it on, which is the person who left.
363 00:39:18.560 ⇒ 00:39:31.280 Uttam Kumaran: That’s also great, right? So, like, every… it gives everybody a scapegoat. This is what happens, like, during company restructurings, what you’ll see is that they’ll fire, even someone who’s, like, well-liked, they’ll fire, just so that they can, like.
364 00:39:31.680 ⇒ 00:39:35.419 Uttam Kumaran: Throw all of the, like, negativity out the door with that person.
365 00:39:35.540 ⇒ 00:39:40.049 Uttam Kumaran: And so it’s a good opportunity to just be like, that was the old.
366 00:39:40.480 ⇒ 00:39:44.479 Uttam Kumaran: We’re part of this new thing, and we want to set the new person up for success.
367 00:39:44.790 ⇒ 00:39:47.480 Uttam Kumaran: Like, that’s the… that’s a… that’s a narrative, you know?
368 00:39:48.670 ⇒ 00:39:49.410 Robert Tseng: Okay.
369 00:39:50.000 ⇒ 00:39:54.330 Robert Tseng: Yeah, then I’ll probably make the trip down to Philly.
370 00:39:57.250 ⇒ 00:39:58.090 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool.
371 00:39:58.740 ⇒ 00:40:11.590 Uttam Kumaran: So then, yeah, I think biggest thing this week for… for Amber, for Demolade, and then I think I want to find out what other analysis needs to get done. Like, should we prioritize Casey’s work? Casey had that, like, what other…
372 00:40:11.880 ⇒ 00:40:13.570 Uttam Kumaran: What other factors affect.
373 00:40:14.350 ⇒ 00:40:23.220 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think that’s… that’s a… that’s a good… that’s… I don’t think that’s a one and done, I think that’s just going to be an always kind of conversation thing, but it’d be good to get a next phase of that.
374 00:40:24.780 ⇒ 00:40:30.940 Uttam Kumaran: So Amber has analysis on Doop revenue plus, the campaign timing. Yep.
375 00:40:31.240 ⇒ 00:40:33.549 Uttam Kumaran: And then we have, like.
376 00:40:33.870 ⇒ 00:40:44.439 Uttam Kumaran: taxonomy. So I think the biggest thing is, like, see how we can get as organized as possible, and then, yeah, I’ll have… I’ll ask Casey to work on… on that stuff, and then we’ll also have, like, the architecture stuff ready.
377 00:40:44.750 ⇒ 00:40:45.950 Robert Tseng: Okay, great.
378 00:40:46.200 ⇒ 00:40:46.980 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
379 00:40:47.160 ⇒ 00:40:48.010 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
380 00:40:48.410 ⇒ 00:40:52.160 Uttam Kumaran: Great. So, I feel like this is more green now.
381 00:40:54.520 ⇒ 00:40:58.950 Uttam Kumaran: I would say this is… more red.
382 00:40:59.760 ⇒ 00:41:01.619 Uttam Kumaran: I find a red circle.
383 00:41:05.880 ⇒ 00:41:08.689 Uttam Kumaran: This one, we’re just gonna have to see what happens this week.
384 00:41:09.100 ⇒ 00:41:15.370 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, for all of these, yeah, for Interlude, like, we’re off contract with them.
385 00:41:16.070 ⇒ 00:41:18.820 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t really care, they kinda didn’t, like…
386 00:41:19.060 ⇒ 00:41:35.119 Uttam Kumaran: they didn’t really, like, give us enough love during it, and so… but, like, he’s… he’s a good dude, Matt, and so I’m gonna kinda see, like, what they want. I mean, like, at this point, I don’t want to sign… I don’t want to sign fixed contracts with them. I’m just gonna sign hourly so that we get… we make sure we get paid.
387 00:41:35.280 ⇒ 00:41:37.509 Uttam Kumaran: And then I’ll ask him if, like, we can…
388 00:41:37.650 ⇒ 00:41:40.650 Uttam Kumaran: Continue, like, in some sort of fractional capacity.
389 00:41:41.500 ⇒ 00:41:43.209 Uttam Kumaran: This is a case where, like.
390 00:41:43.440 ⇒ 00:41:47.009 Uttam Kumaran: Lot of opportunities, but startup, so we got…
391 00:41:47.670 ⇒ 00:41:49.070 Robert Tseng: Where do they come from again?
392 00:41:49.790 ⇒ 00:41:55.809 Uttam Kumaran: He’s a friend through, I don’t know if you’ve ever met Nick Trimmer, he helped us with content stuff.
393 00:41:55.810 ⇒ 00:41:56.570 Robert Tseng: Oh, okay.
394 00:41:56.570 ⇒ 00:41:58.750 Uttam Kumaran: He got… he referred them to us.
395 00:41:59.140 ⇒ 00:41:59.480 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
396 00:41:59.480 ⇒ 00:42:03.079 Uttam Kumaran: But we’ll see. I mean, there’s just… they were just, like, 5K a month.
397 00:42:03.130 ⇒ 00:42:03.909 Robert Tseng: I don’t know.
398 00:42:05.440 ⇒ 00:42:10.370 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so Hype, I feel good, Urban Sense, I feel good, ABC, I feel good. Default, I feel good, like…
399 00:42:10.770 ⇒ 00:42:15.409 Uttam Kumaran: I would only say the only thing for default is that I need analysis help.
400 00:42:16.190 ⇒ 00:42:17.340 Uttam Kumaran: So…
401 00:42:17.590 ⇒ 00:42:30.729 Uttam Kumaran: I guess one thing I kind of want to talk about, if we just talk about, like, allocations right now, so, like, the clients that have significant analysis work are Insomnia.
402 00:42:30.840 ⇒ 00:42:39.529 Uttam Kumaran: default… What else? Eden… And README, right?
403 00:42:39.770 ⇒ 00:42:40.390 Robert Tseng: Yep.
404 00:42:40.390 ⇒ 00:42:45.950 Uttam Kumaran: And then we have upcoming, so I’m just gonna put, now…
405 00:42:49.270 ⇒ 00:42:56.140 Uttam Kumaran: And upcoming, we may have, like, ABC, Urban Stems…
406 00:42:56.490 ⇒ 00:43:01.239 Uttam Kumaran: like, if we can get the LE scope, right? So all of these are now transitioning to, like.
407 00:43:02.170 ⇒ 00:43:05.869 Uttam Kumaran: Somewhat… sometimes dashboarding, sometimes just, like, go after questions.
408 00:43:06.020 ⇒ 00:43:12.940 Uttam Kumaran: It’s clear that, like, Amber is helping on insomnia,
409 00:43:14.340 ⇒ 00:43:16.649 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t really have help right here.
410 00:43:17.280 ⇒ 00:43:21.070 Uttam Kumaran: This 2 is kind of open, this 2 is kind of open, so…
411 00:43:21.320 ⇒ 00:43:25.789 Uttam Kumaran: I guess I’m sort of like, what do we want to do, like, allocation-wise, like…
412 00:43:26.020 ⇒ 00:43:32.310 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe I’ll just set the stage for, like, kind of a conversation that I was having with Robert, is I think on every client.
413 00:43:32.730 ⇒ 00:43:44.459 Uttam Kumaran: what we have to think about doing is having this, like, this, like, three-legged stool, basically, where we have this, like, a strategist, which is sort of just, like, leading the engagement. We have, like, a solution architect.
414 00:43:45.340 ⇒ 00:43:48.129 Uttam Kumaran: And then we have, like, engineering, right?
415 00:43:48.320 ⇒ 00:43:51.900 Uttam Kumaran: And so, for, like, an insomnia, for example.
416 00:43:52.040 ⇒ 00:43:56.900 Uttam Kumaran: Right now, we have, like, Robert filling in as strategist.
417 00:43:57.260 ⇒ 00:44:04.080 Uttam Kumaran: I’m sort of helping out on the solution architecture side, and then everybody else is sort of on the engineering side.
418 00:44:04.200 ⇒ 00:44:16.419 Uttam Kumaran: So, I think one of the things that we’ll be talking a little bit about this week is sort of, like, how do I get… how can we set the expectation clear, in particular for the folks on this call? So, Sam, Awash.
419 00:44:16.530 ⇒ 00:44:35.480 Uttam Kumaran: Demolade, Doron, and Henry. Like, I expect you guys to be at this level. So, the first thing to do is just say, like, what do we mean by this level? I think there’s… we floated out a lot of different things. We used to do a lot of people management, blah blah blah, like, I think here at the engineering level, this is, like, Casey, Sam…
420 00:44:35.650 ⇒ 00:44:39.940 Uttam Kumaran: This is a Casey, Mustafa… Amber…
421 00:44:41.110 ⇒ 00:44:45.590 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know if I’m missing anybody, but roughly you guys get the gist, and then this is, like.
422 00:44:46.290 ⇒ 00:44:53.639 Uttam Kumaran: where we are. And so, the problem with our analysis workstream is that we don’t have
423 00:44:54.140 ⇒ 00:44:58.520 Uttam Kumaran: Solution architects with, like, deep analysis expertise right now.
424 00:44:58.780 ⇒ 00:45:00.940 Uttam Kumaran: And so we need to find a way
425 00:45:01.250 ⇒ 00:45:03.370 Uttam Kumaran: We need to find a path forward.
426 00:45:03.650 ⇒ 00:45:05.449 Uttam Kumaran: I… I think Amber…
427 00:45:05.840 ⇒ 00:45:16.640 Uttam Kumaran: like, if we talk about, like, the folks that can do great analysis, and you guys correct me if I’m wrong, like, I think Amber, Demolade, Awash, you guys have shown that you can
428 00:45:17.910 ⇒ 00:45:22.149 Uttam Kumaran: You can run queries for figure, like, kind of, like, run analysis, figure it out.
429 00:45:22.310 ⇒ 00:45:23.160 Uttam Kumaran: I think…
430 00:45:23.450 ⇒ 00:45:35.159 Uttam Kumaran: Amber, I’ve seen you put together, like, the actual decks. I think Demi and Awash, like, you guys will have to grow a little bit there, but that’s something that, as long as we have the insights, we can form the decks pretty well.
431 00:45:35.310 ⇒ 00:45:43.519 Uttam Kumaran: But that’s sort of where we’re at, in that I think we’re still kind of limited on, like, true analysis horsepower. I do see Casey and Mustafa
432 00:45:43.640 ⇒ 00:45:44.980 Uttam Kumaran: Like, growing here?
433 00:45:45.740 ⇒ 00:45:52.619 Uttam Kumaran: And I do see them getting better at, like, getting… learning a little bit about this, but they need, like, significant direction.
434 00:45:53.740 ⇒ 00:45:59.599 Uttam Kumaran: And so that’s kind of, like, where we’re at, where all these clients right now need support, and so I guess…
435 00:45:59.890 ⇒ 00:46:02.369 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll kind of, like, leave it there for discussion.
436 00:46:03.400 ⇒ 00:46:08.269 Uttam Kumaran: Does anyone have thoughts on, like, how we can… Think about it, at least…
437 00:46:08.550 ⇒ 00:46:13.600 Uttam Kumaran: For the next few weeks, supporting these clients, For analysis work.
438 00:46:25.360 ⇒ 00:46:32.699 Henry Zhao: Yeah, obviously, I want to help with the analysis work, but, honestly, I want to have a one-on-one, either with Robert or with you, Utam, just to kind of…
439 00:46:32.960 ⇒ 00:46:36.740 Henry Zhao: understand concerns, and figure out how I can help out here.
440 00:46:36.860 ⇒ 00:46:41.349 Henry Zhao: you know, Given, kind of, the things that happened the past week, you know?
441 00:46:41.710 ⇒ 00:46:42.350 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
442 00:46:42.900 ⇒ 00:46:44.359 Henry Zhao: Just trying to be very honest here.
443 00:46:47.190 ⇒ 00:46:59.890 Amber Lin: I would help, but I don’t think my ability… I’m not that confident in it yet, especially with the queries, and I’m picking back up SQL and Python, so if I get better at it, I will be able to do more.
444 00:46:59.890 ⇒ 00:47:07.220 Amber Lin: But at least for this week, I can only say that I can do insomnia, I don’t want to over-promise. But in the future, I would love to help.
445 00:47:07.310 ⇒ 00:47:08.879 Amber Lin: Because I have capacity.
446 00:47:10.440 ⇒ 00:47:19.650 Henry Zhao: And, like, one thing I’m obviously very confident in is my SQL abilities, so what if maybe Amber and I team up over the next few weeks to kind of go through SQL and some analysis together?
447 00:47:20.100 ⇒ 00:47:24.120 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, the problem with these clients is we can’t make mistakes.
448 00:47:24.320 ⇒ 00:47:30.299 Uttam Kumaran: So I’m not willing to take these clients… I’m not willing to take any clients as, like, training exercises anymore.
449 00:47:30.610 ⇒ 00:47:33.560 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, an insomnia, right.
450 00:47:33.670 ⇒ 00:47:50.060 Uttam Kumaran: the reason why Amber is able to succeed is there’s a lot of support. At minimum, both me and Robert are talking about it, which is already too much, and we have, like, everybody here is aware of insomnia. So, think about it, you’re in, like, a… you’re in, like, a bouncy house. You can’t get damaged.
451 00:47:50.180 ⇒ 00:48:00.429 Uttam Kumaran: I’m talking about it every day. You’re not gonna go wrong. Like, I’m… it’s like the best bowling alley situation. You just won’t ever gutter. That’s not the case on some of these other clients, guys.
452 00:48:00.550 ⇒ 00:48:05.560 Uttam Kumaran: like, there is risk here, and so I can’t have…
453 00:48:06.250 ⇒ 00:48:12.120 Uttam Kumaran: We can’t… especially on, like, a default, where we’re billing hourly, we have a few hours.
454 00:48:12.400 ⇒ 00:48:24.799 Uttam Kumaran: if we go to a meeting and we bomb it, it’s, like, it’s really risky. Eden is even worse. README is, like, we’re there at this point. So… so what I… God, what I want to say is, like.
455 00:48:25.180 ⇒ 00:48:37.949 Uttam Kumaran: I actually… I just think I want to have understanding of, like, what we can do in the short term. Like, for example, if I was to… if I was to have a vote, like, I think Demolade and Awash, like, you guys can totally…
456 00:48:38.450 ⇒ 00:48:54.570 Uttam Kumaran: help me on doing some basic analysis for default and for README, but where we’re gonna have to supplement is that I think Robert and I have to still be involved in those clients, at least on the delivery aspect, like, putting together decks, and then sharing the output.
457 00:48:54.570 ⇒ 00:49:12.219 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, like, that’s my question, like, what… what do we mean by analysis? Like, we have been doing analysis in the past, like, we got some ad hoc queries, we go in, run some analysis, and share the findings with the client, and then there is, like.
458 00:49:12.250 ⇒ 00:49:15.939 Awaish Kumar: creating a whole new Tableau dashboard.
459 00:49:16.020 ⇒ 00:49:19.330 Awaish Kumar: For deliveries, and, like, what…
460 00:49:19.330 ⇒ 00:49:28.650 Uttam Kumaran: I’m not saying dashboarding. In fact, like, I think, like, the dashboard stuff is, like, has mostly been, like, helpful to, like, get stuff out for people, but, like.
461 00:49:28.650 ⇒ 00:49:29.210 Awaish Kumar: Beautiful.
462 00:49:29.210 ⇒ 00:49:41.640 Uttam Kumaran: our ROI for our clients is gonna be on, like, really sincere, like, analysis end-to-end, where we take a question, we come up with, like, what does it affect, and then we come up with the…
463 00:49:42.730 ⇒ 00:49:49.439 Uttam Kumaran: we just run through the scientific method, basically, on that. And so, I don’t know, like, where’s your, where is your…
464 00:49:49.440 ⇒ 00:49:49.830 Awaish Kumar: So what.
465 00:49:49.830 ⇒ 00:49:52.920 Uttam Kumaran: analysis deck, amber…
466 00:49:53.640 ⇒ 00:49:54.700 Awaish Kumar: Oh, this one.
467 00:49:54.700 ⇒ 00:49:59.729 Uttam Kumaran: Like, this, like, I would… let’s take an example. This is an example of, like, an analysis output
468 00:50:00.140 ⇒ 00:50:04.709 Uttam Kumaran: That we would expect, like, a great analysis, an analyst to put together.
469 00:50:04.830 ⇒ 00:50:16.100 Uttam Kumaran: you come up with a hypothesis, there’s a question. What is the magnitude of duplicate conversions? Amber goes, runs a shit ton of SQL, comes up with all the data, summarizes it somewhere clearly.
470 00:50:17.000 ⇒ 00:50:21.220 Uttam Kumaran: explains it to, like, a C-level very clearly in a deck.
471 00:50:21.490 ⇒ 00:50:27.390 Uttam Kumaran: Puts together a recommendation for how to solve, and then delivers this to the strategist.
472 00:50:27.830 ⇒ 00:50:33.880 Uttam Kumaran: Ultimately, I… yeah, ultimately, I… we want everybody to be able to eventually
473 00:50:33.990 ⇒ 00:50:40.750 Uttam Kumaran: Present this to the client, and then we’re just on those calls. But right now, that is the sort of manufacturing process.
474 00:50:40.890 ⇒ 00:50:45.090 Uttam Kumaran: So right now, to date, it’s been challenging to get this.
475 00:50:45.340 ⇒ 00:50:48.160 Uttam Kumaran: for any of our clients. Like, and this is where I think…
476 00:50:48.260 ⇒ 00:50:53.049 Uttam Kumaran: Capabilities-wise, you have a couple things. You have, one, the ability to, like, take a question like this.
477 00:50:53.200 ⇒ 00:51:03.310 Uttam Kumaran: and boil it down to, like, what are the queries I need to run? You have the capability to run those queries, then you have the capability to, like, pull that up into, like, some type of concise, I found it.
478 00:51:03.510 ⇒ 00:51:06.080 Uttam Kumaran: Then it’s put the deck together, right?
479 00:51:06.340 ⇒ 00:51:08.310 Uttam Kumaran: Those are, like, the key outputs.
480 00:51:09.760 ⇒ 00:51:17.959 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, so, and one of my questions is, who will be finding these questions? Like, who will just fit
481 00:51:18.340 ⇒ 00:51:21.780 Awaish Kumar: Explore the data, come up with questions, and then…
482 00:51:21.780 ⇒ 00:51:25.269 Uttam Kumaran: I have a hundred questions on every… I already have the questions, don’t worry.
483 00:51:25.680 ⇒ 00:51:29.669 Uttam Kumaran: On all of these clients, I have 10 years’ worth of analysis questions.
484 00:51:29.880 ⇒ 00:51:38.649 Uttam Kumaran: So it’s not… so we don’t have a shortage of, like, the questions to go after. We have a shortage of, like, the first part, which is, like, take a question.
485 00:51:38.810 ⇒ 00:51:41.509 Uttam Kumaran: Boil it down, like, go discover.
486 00:51:41.920 ⇒ 00:51:55.260 Uttam Kumaran: come back to air with, like, okay, for example, this is why we have this… with this analysis outline, right? Like, let me show you another example. Casey went ahead and did some of this, but we have this, like, analysis,
487 00:51:56.040 ⇒ 00:51:57.150 Uttam Kumaran: outline.
488 00:51:57.910 ⇒ 00:52:03.319 Uttam Kumaran: for example, this is something that Casey put together, which is, like, predicting revenue beyond email sends.
489 00:52:03.430 ⇒ 00:52:04.730 Uttam Kumaran: Here’s the question.
490 00:52:05.070 ⇒ 00:52:06.390 Uttam Kumaran: Here’s the outcome.
491 00:52:06.640 ⇒ 00:52:10.939 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, here are some hypotheses. I still think that
492 00:52:11.520 ⇒ 00:52:29.230 Uttam Kumaran: this was not… he did… he… I think he probably, like, worked with AI to figure these out, but, like, he didn’t question any of the data, we didn’t have access to that point. But I would want to see, like, I run these 5 queries, I generally, like, these are kind of some of my hypotheses, here’s my plan, and then this is what, like, is the first checkpoint.
493 00:52:29.270 ⇒ 00:52:31.650 Uttam Kumaran: So Robert or I, basically, is like, cool.
494 00:52:31.810 ⇒ 00:52:34.210 Uttam Kumaran: Run, run and run towards the answer.
495 00:52:38.640 ⇒ 00:52:50.450 Uttam Kumaran: This is different than, like, the fixed model this data or create this dashboard. Like, I would say that is, like, very well defined. This is undefined in, like, you have to do this discovery process.
496 00:52:50.560 ⇒ 00:53:03.770 Uttam Kumaran: And then second, there’s not only the discovery process, there’s also this presentation aspect. So I want to separate those out, right? Because there’s some people who I think will be very good at one thing, and then be learning the presentation. And I can deal with
497 00:53:04.200 ⇒ 00:53:14.170 Uttam Kumaran: I think the presentation aspect, if I was to be honest, is something that I think we can support, but the going after problems and, like, pushing that out, that’s where, like.
498 00:53:14.300 ⇒ 00:53:17.199 Uttam Kumaran: It’s something that we do need a lot of help on.
499 00:53:19.670 ⇒ 00:53:24.889 Awaish Kumar: Okay, like, so far, we have been delivering on,
500 00:53:25.010 ⇒ 00:53:33.409 Awaish Kumar: Like, we haven’t thought of this, like… like you have explained right now. Yeah. But I think it’s pretty doable, and I’m okay with it.
501 00:53:36.750 ⇒ 00:53:39.419 Uttam Kumaran: I just wanna… I just… I… yeah, Demolade, go ahead.
502 00:53:40.340 ⇒ 00:53:45.410 Demilade Agboola: I was just gonna ask, like, What would the…
503 00:53:45.730 ⇒ 00:53:53.089 Demilade Agboola: prioritization of analysis B versus, like, actual, like, modeling another request that come in, ad hoc requests that are coming.
504 00:53:55.200 ⇒ 00:53:58.069 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, this is where, like, I will,
505 00:53:58.900 ⇒ 00:54:06.799 Uttam Kumaran: One is, like, look, if it’s an urgent ad hoc request, like, it should be debated at stand-up whether it makes it to the sprint, but that is the policy.
506 00:54:07.060 ⇒ 00:54:11.269 Uttam Kumaran: I would say we need to bias more towards analysis work.
507 00:54:11.770 ⇒ 00:54:14.639 Uttam Kumaran: And the modeling work should follow the analysis.
508 00:54:15.510 ⇒ 00:54:26.600 Uttam Kumaran: And this is where, like, I think I’ve… we haven’t done a great job of making that super clear. In addition, we’ve always… we’ve gone into environments where we were sometimes never allowed to do the analysis work.
509 00:54:26.740 ⇒ 00:54:31.870 Uttam Kumaran: But the analysis work is the true, like, gem of what this unlocks.
510 00:54:32.120 ⇒ 00:54:36.820 Uttam Kumaran: Right? Without the analysis work, we can model forever. Nobody ever uses this stuff.
511 00:54:37.020 ⇒ 00:54:39.720 Uttam Kumaran: And so, I would… I want us to be…
512 00:54:39.900 ⇒ 00:54:45.179 Uttam Kumaran: I want the folks on the team that are used to doing more modeling to get into this layer.
513 00:54:45.440 ⇒ 00:54:49.900 Uttam Kumaran: Because you’ll… you have the superpower of being able to model to support this work.
514 00:54:50.350 ⇒ 00:54:52.460 Uttam Kumaran: Which is… that’s how it should be.
515 00:54:53.120 ⇒ 00:54:56.450 Uttam Kumaran: You know, so there will be modeling tasks that come up, but I want them to…
516 00:54:56.730 ⇒ 00:55:13.270 Uttam Kumaran: for the clients that have matured, like, Eden has matured, Insomnia, like, we’re slowly getting there, like, Insomnia needs a lot of modeling work. But Demolata, you will understand what work… what to model by doing some of this analysis, like, okay, we need campaigns, we need users, we need transactions, right?
517 00:55:13.270 ⇒ 00:55:20.710 Uttam Kumaran: Like, that’s, I guess, what I’m saying, is I think, naturally, what that’ll push you to do is you’ll be able to… you’ll know the requirements for the modeling side.
518 00:55:20.910 ⇒ 00:55:21.910 Uttam Kumaran: yourself.
519 00:55:22.240 ⇒ 00:55:29.540 Uttam Kumaran: this is kind of similar to saying what we were even talking about this morning. It’s like, I want to get you, some of you guys, higher upstream in the value chain.
520 00:55:29.680 ⇒ 00:55:33.979 Uttam Kumaran: Right? Because typically the analysis work is dictating your work.
521 00:55:34.130 ⇒ 00:55:36.540 Uttam Kumaran: And so, if you guys get involved in the analysis work.
522 00:55:36.850 ⇒ 00:55:47.250 Uttam Kumaran: you’ll be more aware of how to build the models to support that moving forward. And I think that’s, like, what needs to happen. Like, truly get a little bit… we need to just get a little bit more full stack.
523 00:55:55.520 ⇒ 00:55:56.499 Uttam Kumaran: What do you think?
524 00:56:00.790 ⇒ 00:56:06.999 Demilade Agboola: Personally, I have no problem with, like, analysis, or doing analysis.
525 00:56:08.260 ⇒ 00:56:12.610 Demilade Agboola: Just want to be clear on, like, the prioritization, as well as, like.
526 00:56:13.660 ⇒ 00:56:17.370 Demilade Agboola: all these things will work on projects, yeah.
527 00:56:18.170 ⇒ 00:56:24.669 Demilade Agboola: Especially with… some of the… I mean, Eden has matured, but some products that are quite fast-paced.
528 00:56:24.850 ⇒ 00:56:28.900 Demilade Agboola: Right, it even had a period where it was quite fast-paced.
529 00:56:29.110 ⇒ 00:56:38.649 Uttam Kumaran: to give you a reason why is, like, I can’t… we… on the sales side, it’s very hard for us to buy more bandwidth without these short-term analysis wins.
530 00:56:39.770 ⇒ 00:56:42.299 Uttam Kumaran: And that is just optics. That is just, like.
531 00:56:42.770 ⇒ 00:56:59.060 Uttam Kumaran: how teams see data teams, and they don’t see a lot of this behind-the-scenes modeling work, but in order for us to fight and continue to get scope for that, we need to do. But this is why on Urban Stems, I didn’t push for this until recently, right? Until now, where truly, like, because before we had nothing.
532 00:56:59.800 ⇒ 00:57:01.009 Uttam Kumaran: And… but…
533 00:57:01.140 ⇒ 00:57:18.579 Uttam Kumaran: now I want to start to get into it, but also, like, let’s take a default, for example. There’s no model data, but we do have, like, a couple tables, and so we just need to… and I’m just saying, like, answer a couple of questions, like, who are their most valuable clients, and how does it relate to their usage in the platform? That’s two tables, one join.
534 00:57:18.770 ⇒ 00:57:20.370 Uttam Kumaran: Couple queries, right?
535 00:57:21.050 ⇒ 00:57:29.900 Uttam Kumaran: And then you propose, hey, in order to do this better, more recurring, we need these models, then I can go get us that work. Like, that’s… that’s how this needs to shift a little bit.
536 00:57:32.870 ⇒ 00:57:35.249 Demilade Agboola: Oh, okay, that sounds good. Yeah.
537 00:57:36.010 ⇒ 00:57:52.730 Uttam Kumaran: So one, I just want to say out loud that I think we will have, like, models and infra versus analysis competing, and so we can… I think we hold those debates for stand-up and for planning. I’m fine with that. But I guess what I want to share is that I think I want to move…
538 00:57:53.730 ⇒ 00:58:01.629 Uttam Kumaran: I think we need to move towards something that’s more of this structure. In addition, on the data side, a lot of our work needs to be
539 00:58:01.880 ⇒ 00:58:03.470 Uttam Kumaran: closer to…
540 00:58:04.110 ⇒ 00:58:11.129 Uttam Kumaran: what I would… what I would say is this, like, hypothesis, like, proactively going after ways to impact the business through data.
541 00:58:11.370 ⇒ 00:58:14.839 Uttam Kumaran: And then we will use that win
542 00:58:15.400 ⇒ 00:58:18.780 Uttam Kumaran: in that meeting, to then bias scope for… for models.
543 00:58:18.900 ⇒ 00:58:20.850 Uttam Kumaran: Which it will, 100%.
544 00:58:25.400 ⇒ 00:58:39.980 Uttam Kumaran: So I think… and then, I think my last, kind of, piece is, like, for this crew, I think, for Sam, I know you’ve been mostly on the AI side, I know Zoran has been mostly on the marketing tech side. All of these folks, I want to make sure we have the ability to do
545 00:58:40.120 ⇒ 00:58:55.300 Uttam Kumaran: at least support on this, like, scientific method of figuring out a problem. Whether you have the experience in data or not, and I told a similar thing to Zoran, is, like, it doesn’t really matter. As a senior person, as a solution architect.
546 00:58:55.330 ⇒ 00:59:13.659 Uttam Kumaran: you are the person that walks into a fire and just always knows the 10 questions to ask in order to get to the plan. And that’s it, right? And so what our customers are looking for… we often don’t know exactly what’s going on, but we do need to plan, and we do need to be able to…
547 00:59:13.850 ⇒ 00:59:31.020 Uttam Kumaran: set the stage well for the engineers that are going to execute, and then be able to ideally take their work and put it into a presentable manner that we can then go bang out for the clients. And this is the kind of, like, way that we want this crew to sort of move up the ladder.
548 00:59:31.190 ⇒ 00:59:38.770 Uttam Kumaran: And so… I think if we were to talk, again, just to close out, for this week,
549 00:59:39.050 ⇒ 00:59:44.250 Uttam Kumaran: like, I would say, Amber, I could just use your help on… on default, or I could…
550 00:59:44.830 ⇒ 00:59:51.480 Uttam Kumaran: Or I could run it with somebody else, but I’m just trying to think about, at least for Eden, like, how we should do this.
551 00:59:52.190 ⇒ 00:59:53.030 Uttam Kumaran: I think…
552 00:59:54.960 ⇒ 01:00:04.690 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I don’t know, I feel like I need some… I need some other support for me on… with… on default. I think just… it’s just me and Mustafa right now, it’s kind of hard, but I guess I’m open to what everybody thinks here.
553 01:00:09.110 ⇒ 01:00:16.790 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, I have context into some of the clients, like Insomnia, Default, Eden, ABC, and Album Stamps, so…
554 01:00:17.010 ⇒ 01:00:21.079 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, I’m open to, like, involved in any one of them.
555 01:00:21.470 ⇒ 01:00:22.070 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
556 01:00:25.250 ⇒ 01:00:28.430 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, how do you… how do you… I guess my question is for…
557 01:00:29.020 ⇒ 01:00:34.439 Uttam Kumaran: like, how do you feel on bandwidth, Awash? And, like, Demolata, you’re now on 3 clients.
558 01:00:34.800 ⇒ 01:00:37.540 Uttam Kumaran: Right, so I guess, like, how do you both feel on bandwidth?
559 01:00:39.790 ⇒ 01:00:47.220 Awaish Kumar: I think I do have, like, a… On Eden’s side, like, now…
560 01:00:48.820 ⇒ 01:00:54.019 Awaish Kumar: like, we have… like, I don’t… I don’t think there’s a lot of tasks which I have, so…
561 01:00:54.140 ⇒ 01:01:02.420 Awaish Kumar: It’s, like, under 10, or maybe around 10, or… Maybe less art than, urban stems.
562 01:01:05.340 ⇒ 01:01:10.209 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I guess, okay. Yeah, so I think, I think I have 5… maybe, maybe 5-10 hours…
563 01:01:12.140 ⇒ 01:01:14.439 Uttam Kumaran: What about you, Demolade? How do you feel?
564 01:01:14.790 ⇒ 01:01:16.030 Uttam Kumaran: After last week?
565 01:01:19.400 ⇒ 01:01:28.680 Demilade Agboola: I think there… there’s bandwidth. I also think prioritization will be just key. Okay. Like, that’s probably more important.
566 01:01:28.890 ⇒ 01:01:36.259 Demilade Agboola: In terms of that, like, yeah, there is a little bit of bandwidth to… to spare on some other spaces, or some other clients.
567 01:01:36.730 ⇒ 01:01:37.360 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
568 01:01:39.960 ⇒ 01:01:47.929 Uttam Kumaran: So, I think, like, for these clients, we need to kind of decide, so I think it’s probably, like, Demolade plus Amber here.
569 01:01:48.210 ⇒ 01:01:50.460 Uttam Kumaran: I think maybe this is, like…
570 01:01:52.080 ⇒ 01:01:56.450 Uttam Kumaran: I think we’ll have to see, like… I mean, the problem is, like, README is the…
571 01:01:56.710 ⇒ 01:02:02.400 Uttam Kumaran: Client, we really need urgent help on, but okay, let’s… let’s just decide. So I’m gonna…
572 01:02:03.010 ⇒ 01:02:04.959 Uttam Kumaran: I’m gonna kinda think like this…
573 01:02:06.320 ⇒ 01:02:10.359 Uttam Kumaran: I think right now we have Demolade on here, but we don’t have, like, another…
574 01:02:13.220 ⇒ 01:02:16.179 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I’ll have to think about Eden and README today.
575 01:02:16.300 ⇒ 01:02:19.209 Uttam Kumaran: But roughly, I think this is a good start.
576 01:02:19.530 ⇒ 01:02:20.420 Uttam Kumaran: I think…
577 01:02:20.600 ⇒ 01:02:26.910 Uttam Kumaran: Demolati, you can start to get a sense of the architecture and everything, and then Amber can execute on just, like, a raw horsepower on the…
578 01:02:27.300 ⇒ 01:02:28.609 Uttam Kumaran: analyst side.
579 01:02:28.740 ⇒ 01:02:36.319 Uttam Kumaran: And then similarly, I wish I can get some of your help with default, and then Mustafa can execute a lot of that. So what I don’t want to happen, though, is, like.
580 01:02:36.740 ⇒ 01:02:48.380 Uttam Kumaran: the solution architect folks, like, I want you guys to really think about delegation heavily. Your brain is most served in this layer in between, and so that’s what I want to think about.
581 01:02:48.450 ⇒ 01:03:01.179 Uttam Kumaran: I’m almost like… maybe even Sam, like, me and you could… me… you and Mustafa could do this for default, too. But I think what I’ll decide is, like, where… what I need to decide today is, like, where is Henry?
582 01:03:01.290 ⇒ 01:03:04.439 Uttam Kumaran: Sam, and Zoran.
583 01:03:04.710 ⇒ 01:03:06.640 Uttam Kumaran: Like, where are you guys gonna land?
584 01:03:06.820 ⇒ 01:03:17.699 Uttam Kumaran: So I think I’ll… maybe I’ll talk to you guys individually and kind of get your app… get appetite for what type of work. I know, Sam, you’re probably coming in net new on the data side.
585 01:03:17.810 ⇒ 01:03:22.820 Uttam Kumaran: But, like, I still… I don’t think this is anything you won’t be able to grasp, so we can figure it out.
586 01:03:23.060 ⇒ 01:03:35.580 Uttam Kumaran: So I know we’re just a little bit over, but a couple things I want to talk about. So, is there… out of office? So, I know, Henry, you’re out, Wednesday and Friday. Is there any other out-of-office
587 01:03:36.350 ⇒ 01:03:39.189 Uttam Kumaran: rico, did we get anything that came in?
588 01:03:43.140 ⇒ 01:03:44.580 Rico Rejoso: Yes.
589 01:03:45.190 ⇒ 01:03:46.790 Rico Rejoso: Then we just bundle up.
590 01:03:52.060 ⇒ 01:03:55.390 Uttam Kumaran: And then I may take Friday off.
591 01:03:57.060 ⇒ 01:03:59.200 Uttam Kumaran: Everybody’s life.
592 01:03:59.360 ⇒ 01:04:01.100 Uttam Kumaran: No, it’s my birthday.
593 01:04:01.100 ⇒ 01:04:01.960 Robert Tseng: Yay!
594 01:04:01.960 ⇒ 01:04:05.229 Uttam Kumaran: It’s my birthday on Thursday, so I was gonna try to take the day off.
595 01:04:08.660 ⇒ 01:04:09.480 Awaish Kumar: Okay.
596 01:04:13.530 ⇒ 01:04:14.469 Rico Rejoso: Oh, for the.
597 01:04:14.470 ⇒ 01:04:18.590 Robert Tseng: Don’t worry, you take Friday off, dude, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll do mine.
598 01:04:18.590 ⇒ 01:04:22.859 Uttam Kumaran: This week’s looking good, dude, I feel pretty good, and I think I’ll…
599 01:04:23.160 ⇒ 01:04:30.429 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I’ll just… I’m just gonna absolutely burn myself out on Thursday, and then I’ll be good. We’ll be good. No, I just, like…
600 01:04:30.550 ⇒ 01:04:34.730 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’d be nice. I’ll still think about work, don’t worry, everybody.
601 01:04:38.100 ⇒ 01:04:40.699 Uttam Kumaran: Rico, go ahead, is there anyone else?
602 01:04:41.080 ⇒ 01:04:45.270 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, we don’t have any out-of-office scheduled for this week.
603 01:04:45.480 ⇒ 01:04:46.300 Rico Rejoso: Is there anything next week?
604 01:04:47.040 ⇒ 01:04:52.260 Rico Rejoso: Next week, yes, just for the marketing side. For the engineering side, none.
605 01:04:52.870 ⇒ 01:04:53.450 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
606 01:04:53.550 ⇒ 01:04:57.010 Uttam Kumaran: I guess just a reminder for everybody if you’re taking time off.
607 01:04:57.460 ⇒ 01:05:04.610 Uttam Kumaran: try to do two weeks in advance, and I just thought about taking Friday off yesterday, so I will try to do that today.
608 01:05:05.370 ⇒ 01:05:12.879 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, great. This was really productive. We didn’t get to a couple of action items, but… and, like, we didn’t get to allocations, but…
609 01:05:13.820 ⇒ 01:05:22.279 Uttam Kumaran: I think Amber, me, and you could probably follow up later today and try to look and get allocations to everybody. Any other points to make?
610 01:05:26.300 ⇒ 01:05:27.060 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
611 01:05:27.600 ⇒ 01:05:31.399 Henry Zhao: Are you still setting up a separate meeting for the solution architects?
612 01:05:31.680 ⇒ 01:05:32.400 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
613 01:05:32.400 ⇒ 01:05:33.080 Henry Zhao: Okay.
614 01:05:33.080 ⇒ 01:05:36.980 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I’ll probably end up doing it, tomorrow.
615 01:05:37.770 ⇒ 01:05:39.630 Uttam Kumaran: See if I can get this stuff. Okay.
616 01:05:40.180 ⇒ 01:05:41.010 Uttam Kumaran: Alright.
617 01:05:41.130 ⇒ 01:05:42.299 Uttam Kumaran: Thank you, everyone.
618 01:05:42.720 ⇒ 01:05:43.429 Uttam Kumaran: Talk to you soon.
619 01:05:44.840 ⇒ 01:05:45.400 Uttam Kumaran: Bye.