Meeting Title: Lauren <> Brainforge: Kickoff! Date: 2025-11-03 Meeting participants: Lauren Ford, Rico Rejoso, Uttam Kumaran
WEBVTT
1 00:00:43.000 ⇒ 00:00:43.689 Lauren Ford: There we go!
2 00:00:45.020 ⇒ 00:00:46.180 Uttam Kumaran: Hello!
3 00:00:46.730 ⇒ 00:00:47.690 Uttam Kumaran: Good to see you!
4 00:00:47.690 ⇒ 00:00:49.380 Lauren Ford: Good to see you, too!
5 00:00:49.380 ⇒ 00:00:51.650 Uttam Kumaran: How’s everything?
6 00:00:51.900 ⇒ 00:00:55.200 Lauren Ford: It’s going pretty well, just like,
7 00:00:55.340 ⇒ 00:00:59.910 Lauren Ford: it’s just wildly busy for being unemployed. How about yourself?
8 00:00:59.910 ⇒ 00:01:12.469 Uttam Kumaran: That’s good! I feel like you probably do a good job of keeping yourself busy. I’m wildly busy, yeah, and somehow still employed. I don’t know, it’s just crazy around here, like…
9 00:01:12.630 ⇒ 00:01:20.999 Uttam Kumaran: we… but it’s all getting slowly better, like, we’ve been looking for a lot of help, especially me and Rico.
10 00:01:21.000 ⇒ 00:01:23.600 Lauren Ford: Yeah. On the operations side, and…
11 00:01:23.710 ⇒ 00:01:32.219 Uttam Kumaran: I can tell, like, we’ve done a good job at getting, you know, the right people, but definitely our team could use more support on a lot of the things that we talked about, you know?
12 00:01:32.220 ⇒ 00:01:32.560 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
13 00:01:32.560 ⇒ 00:01:38.980 Uttam Kumaran: Last week or the week before, so… and I know you, you got a chance to talk to some of the folks. Hope those conversations were interesting.
14 00:01:38.980 ⇒ 00:01:55.389 Lauren Ford: Yeah, they were great, particularly the last one with Hannah was really cool. It was good to hear somebody who has a similar, kind of non-traditional trajectory to myself. I was like, yes, I totally know how you ended up,
15 00:01:55.800 ⇒ 00:02:01.719 Lauren Ford: You are, even though you started somewhere wildly different. So that was cool. It seems like an exciting time, for sure.
16 00:02:01.720 ⇒ 00:02:03.649 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and
17 00:02:04.100 ⇒ 00:02:08.400 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I don’t know, I just have… I sort of spent a little bit of time yesterday just, like.
18 00:02:08.720 ⇒ 00:02:10.839 Uttam Kumaran: jotting down where I think we can.
19 00:02:10.840 ⇒ 00:02:11.230 Lauren Ford: Yes.
20 00:02:11.230 ⇒ 00:02:20.620 Uttam Kumaran: some immediate help. I mean, I know that you’re… I know you have, kind of, a decent amount of time this week, but maybe I’ll just… like, I just wrote a list of, like.
21 00:02:20.620 ⇒ 00:02:20.980 Lauren Ford: Yeah!
22 00:02:20.980 ⇒ 00:02:38.760 Uttam Kumaran: if I could wave a wand and these things could get helped with, that would be great, but also, I am so open to you kind of seeing everything, and then also being like, hey, did you… have you guys ever thought of doing this? Or, like, you know… and there’s also, of course, like, what I remember from
23 00:02:38.910 ⇒ 00:02:44.170 Uttam Kumaran: your time at Flowcode, like, certainly we need help on even just a couple, like, fun things, like.
24 00:02:44.170 ⇒ 00:02:44.690 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
25 00:02:44.690 ⇒ 00:02:48.999 Uttam Kumaran: We wanna… we wanna put together something to, like, have people do coffee chats each week.
26 00:02:49.220 ⇒ 00:02:49.660 Lauren Ford: Nice.
27 00:02:49.660 ⇒ 00:02:50.620 Uttam Kumaran: That’s a great idea.
28 00:02:50.620 ⇒ 00:02:51.640 Lauren Ford: Yeah, awesome.
29 00:02:51.640 ⇒ 00:03:01.760 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and just, like, thinking through… I’m sure you have some ideas on, like, Slack automations or things like that, so I think as you poke around.
30 00:03:02.420 ⇒ 00:03:05.370 Uttam Kumaran: You know, there’s probably some room to…
31 00:03:05.860 ⇒ 00:03:09.120 Uttam Kumaran: to kind of affect more, but maybe what I’m gonna do is I’m just gonna put…
32 00:03:09.670 ⇒ 00:03:14.210 Uttam Kumaran: just open up a Notion, and just, like, jot down
33 00:03:14.640 ⇒ 00:03:18.040 Uttam Kumaran: Some ideas, and then we can just chat through them.
34 00:03:18.040 ⇒ 00:03:19.130 Lauren Ford: Amazing.
35 00:03:20.310 ⇒ 00:03:26.840 Uttam Kumaran: So, this is the operations team so far, and operations, I would say, encompasses
36 00:03:27.180 ⇒ 00:03:33.810 Uttam Kumaran: Kind of recruiting, also, like, Like, new client onboarding.
37 00:03:33.960 ⇒ 00:03:42.159 Uttam Kumaran: It’s new employee onboarding and offboarding, sort of Notion, Slack.
38 00:03:43.080 ⇒ 00:03:55.760 Uttam Kumaran: core system organization. This team also handles contracts, so these are, like, contracts to people and to companies. We interface directly with sales.
39 00:03:55.940 ⇒ 00:04:01.090 Uttam Kumaran: And then we interface with finance. We have an outsourced, sort of, finance group that helps us.
40 00:04:01.340 ⇒ 00:04:09.080 Uttam Kumaran: But probably me and Rico are probably the most online on Slack people at the company, so…
41 00:04:09.080 ⇒ 00:04:09.750 Lauren Ford: Awesome.
42 00:04:09.750 ⇒ 00:04:12.539 Uttam Kumaran: We tend to just pick up whatever crumbs are, like.
43 00:04:13.070 ⇒ 00:04:21.839 Uttam Kumaran: left. But I… I think it’s… ultimately, I just think it’s because it’s just two of us, we tend to do, but we have distinct, sort of, like, areas
44 00:04:21.940 ⇒ 00:04:27.910 Uttam Kumaran: In the company, and so maybe one thing I’ll do is I’m just gonna start a doc here that’s just…
45 00:04:31.350 ⇒ 00:04:43.060 Uttam Kumaran: And I think… I think you may have access to your Brainforge email, and so you’ll be able to log in and see this, but I’m just gonna put in, like, Lauren, onboarding plan.
46 00:04:43.210 ⇒ 00:04:44.070 Lauren Ford: Amazing.
47 00:04:44.070 ⇒ 00:04:51.600 Uttam Kumaran: And I’m just gonna… I’ll just copy and paste some things that I… sort of wrote down.
48 00:04:51.910 ⇒ 00:05:01.930 Uttam Kumaran: But I think, kind of, like, overall, I would say the goal is, like, twofold, is one is, like, there’s some immediate low-hanging fruit
49 00:05:02.230 ⇒ 00:05:09.190 Uttam Kumaran: like, objectives, to accomplish, and then I think also,
50 00:05:09.350 ⇒ 00:05:17.469 Uttam Kumaran: the broader goal is I would love some help to put together a roadmap around, like, recruiting.
51 00:05:17.630 ⇒ 00:05:24.429 Uttam Kumaran: like, sort of internal operations, and I would say operations, like, sort of…
52 00:05:24.650 ⇒ 00:05:29.309 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll… I guess I’ll say operations sort of remote, and then…
53 00:05:29.930 ⇒ 00:05:34.200 Uttam Kumaran: The other piece is, on, like, onboarding.
54 00:05:34.930 ⇒ 00:05:37.169 Uttam Kumaran: Like, this isn’t… this is team onboarding.
55 00:05:37.850 ⇒ 00:05:43.820 Uttam Kumaran: Which you’re getting to start to get a taste of, and then,
56 00:05:44.600 ⇒ 00:05:47.850 Uttam Kumaran: The last piece I was thinking was, like, learning and development.
57 00:05:48.090 ⇒ 00:05:48.680 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
58 00:05:48.680 ⇒ 00:05:50.329 Uttam Kumaran: So, this is where I think…
59 00:05:50.950 ⇒ 00:05:54.239 Uttam Kumaran: I sort of like to have both, like, okay.
60 00:05:54.720 ⇒ 00:06:09.950 Uttam Kumaran: short term, I think there’s a couple things that we need, and then longer term, okay, can we start to put together a little bit of a roadmap together on each of these areas that, you know, even if you’re only working, some time per week, like, Rico and I can continue to execute on, and then.
61 00:06:10.120 ⇒ 00:06:13.179 Lauren Ford: Absolutely. You know, I more utilize your experience.
62 00:06:13.290 ⇒ 00:06:18.570 Uttam Kumaran: to just help dictate the roadmap, you know, and that would be helpful. So that’s, like, kind of, like, how…
63 00:06:18.770 ⇒ 00:06:20.240 Uttam Kumaran: I’m seeing things.
64 00:06:20.240 ⇒ 00:06:32.610 Lauren Ford: That’s great. And I like that you’re talking from the level of, like, what problems you’re trying to solve, because that’s how I always think. That was always one of the things that was hard with Tim, is he’d be like, I want a giant pencil that says create, and I never knew.
65 00:06:32.610 ⇒ 00:06:33.090 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
66 00:06:33.090 ⇒ 00:06:35.499 Lauren Ford: Is it literally, or… you never.
67 00:06:35.500 ⇒ 00:06:36.150 Uttam Kumaran: I know.
68 00:06:36.150 ⇒ 00:06:40.669 Lauren Ford: No problem. So, I love that you’re starting with the, what we’re solving.
69 00:06:40.670 ⇒ 00:06:46.570 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and for each of these, I can… for each of these items when we go through, I’ll label the problem.
70 00:06:46.570 ⇒ 00:06:47.040 Lauren Ford: Great.
71 00:06:47.040 ⇒ 00:06:50.110 Uttam Kumaran: you know, I’ll label the problem down,
72 00:06:50.230 ⇒ 00:06:59.349 Uttam Kumaran: But even just a couple of other, like, maybe housekeeping things, and I’ll share my whole screen. So one is, like, you’ll now… you’ll get added into Slack, so…
73 00:06:59.350 ⇒ 00:07:00.140 Lauren Ford: Yes.
74 00:07:00.270 ⇒ 00:07:07.779 Uttam Kumaran: We’re, like, super deep into Slack, everything runs there. Great. Barely organized, like, I just decided on naming conventions, like.
75 00:07:07.780 ⇒ 00:07:08.600 Lauren Ford: Great.
76 00:07:08.600 ⇒ 00:07:09.320 Uttam Kumaran: We have…
77 00:07:09.740 ⇒ 00:07:16.410 Uttam Kumaran: So, that environment works. We also have Notion. The other thing that I’ll share is we also have, like, an internal platform.
78 00:07:16.690 ⇒ 00:07:17.090 Lauren Ford: Oh!
79 00:07:17.090 ⇒ 00:07:19.820 Uttam Kumaran: Go see all… Meetings.
80 00:07:19.820 ⇒ 00:07:20.280 Lauren Ford: Cool.
81 00:07:20.280 ⇒ 00:07:33.510 Uttam Kumaran: We record most of our meetings, and so, for example, this meeting will get recorded, so you don’t have to, like, worry about, am I gonna catch everything? Instead, you can kind of go… you can go and click on a meeting that you were part of.
82 00:07:33.510 ⇒ 00:07:36.740 Lauren Ford: chat with it, and, like, get the transcript, or chat GPT.
83 00:07:36.740 ⇒ 00:07:37.539 Uttam Kumaran: Or whatever you need.
84 00:07:37.540 ⇒ 00:07:38.320 Lauren Ford: Yeah, Hannah was.
85 00:07:38.320 ⇒ 00:07:38.729 Uttam Kumaran: Thanks so much.
86 00:07:38.730 ⇒ 00:07:43.689 Lauren Ford: utilizes that a lot with, like, ChatGPT to get the action, like, the takeaways.
87 00:07:43.690 ⇒ 00:07:46.990 Uttam Kumaran: Exactly, a lot of workflow people go here, copy the transcript.
88 00:07:46.990 ⇒ 00:07:51.490 Lauren Ford: Great. And we built it so it gives the transcript in, like, a much more compressed form, so you can, like.
89 00:07:51.490 ⇒ 00:08:05.469 Uttam Kumaran: Copy multiple. You can also chat directly with the meeting here, and there’s, like… we’re developing this a little bit, but again, it’s just very helpful because now we can focus the meeting on just, like, let’s make sure at least one of us says everything out loud.
90 00:08:06.150 ⇒ 00:08:07.439 Uttam Kumaran: You know, so… 100%.
91 00:08:07.540 ⇒ 00:08:18.660 Uttam Kumaran: So those will kind of be the core things. We also use Figma for, like, all of our, design and for, like, sales, like, designs. Everything else is on Drive.
92 00:08:23.590 ⇒ 00:08:26.739 Uttam Kumaran: everything else, we use 1Password, yeah.
93 00:08:27.120 ⇒ 00:08:30.390 Uttam Kumaran: And… we have a ton… yeah.
94 00:08:30.390 ⇒ 00:08:38.139 Lauren Ford: Do you use Notion to map to the areas in Drive that you use, or is Drive fairly organized and you can find things fairly.
95 00:08:38.140 ⇒ 00:08:45.390 Uttam Kumaran: Drive is fairly organized, although it is something that, like, I think, like, I basically did the first pass.
96 00:08:45.390 ⇒ 00:08:49.010 Lauren Ford: Amazing. Amazing. But we could probably go through and just, like.
97 00:08:49.010 ⇒ 00:08:52.310 Uttam Kumaran: if you go through and walk through and you’re like, hey, I think we can combine these.
98 00:08:52.310 ⇒ 00:08:52.660 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
99 00:08:52.660 ⇒ 00:08:55.969 Uttam Kumaran: Then we can totally do that, so… It’s… it’s all, like.
100 00:08:56.250 ⇒ 00:09:03.820 Uttam Kumaran: fairly organized. I would say where… where we are… could use a lot of help, and maybe we can talk about that, is, like, kind of just on, like.
101 00:09:04.200 ⇒ 00:09:05.490 Uttam Kumaran: Notion?
102 00:09:06.220 ⇒ 00:09:14.909 Uttam Kumaran: And maybe, like, I could talk about, like, the problem. So, kind of, like, the overall problem here, is that we have, like.
103 00:09:15.110 ⇒ 00:09:20.220 Uttam Kumaran: Client notions, we have internal team notions.
104 00:09:21.100 ⇒ 00:09:28.300 Uttam Kumaran: we have also, like, several different types of documents, like SOPs versus notes, like running notes, So…
105 00:09:28.700 ⇒ 00:09:30.319 Uttam Kumaran: I think it would be helpful
106 00:09:30.960 ⇒ 00:09:34.490 Uttam Kumaran: to just have some opinion. We did kind of, like, one big…
107 00:09:34.590 ⇒ 00:09:43.909 Uttam Kumaran: Notion re-architecture, like, maybe 7 or 8 months ago. Yeah. But, like, for example, if you were… and it’s all… again, it’s… it’s not like…
108 00:09:44.070 ⇒ 00:09:45.729 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve seen way worse.
109 00:09:45.950 ⇒ 00:09:52.079 Uttam Kumaran: if you, like, go… if you go, like, to, like, the Brainforge homepage, for example.
110 00:09:52.140 ⇒ 00:09:53.440 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
111 00:09:53.500 ⇒ 00:09:56.979 Uttam Kumaran: You’ll see, like, we have each kind of core area.
112 00:09:56.980 ⇒ 00:09:57.460 Lauren Ford: Awesome.
113 00:09:57.460 ⇒ 00:10:00.339 Uttam Kumaran: I think the biggest part is, like, for example, you go into sales.
114 00:10:00.470 ⇒ 00:10:02.429 Uttam Kumaran: There’s just, like, a lot here.
115 00:10:03.320 ⇒ 00:10:05.490 Uttam Kumaran: And so…
116 00:10:05.710 ⇒ 00:10:13.379 Uttam Kumaran: Part of it is, like, it just has to be easy to find everything, but also, this sort of just gets attitude, attitude, attitude, like.
117 00:10:13.600 ⇒ 00:10:17.840 Uttam Kumaran: these videos are just, like, in a table, for example, like, should they be in a database? So…
118 00:10:17.840 ⇒ 00:10:18.460 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
119 00:10:18.460 ⇒ 00:10:21.320 Uttam Kumaran: There’s just, like, questions on that,
120 00:10:21.490 ⇒ 00:10:25.359 Uttam Kumaran: The other piece I’ll share is, like, we have, like, our OKRs.
121 00:10:25.470 ⇒ 00:10:32.459 Uttam Kumaran: in this sheet called, like, Management Operations, so this is a good one that I’ll send over for you to just to get a good sense of, like.
122 00:10:33.040 ⇒ 00:10:37.489 Uttam Kumaran: our goals, of how we’re tracking. Awesome. Again, like.
123 00:10:37.840 ⇒ 00:10:47.759 Uttam Kumaran: we’re a data company, and I feel like I love this stuff, so, like, we try to do as much of this as possible. It’s hard at our size to, like, track this week to week, but…
124 00:10:47.760 ⇒ 00:10:48.580 Lauren Ford: Yeah, yeah.
125 00:10:48.720 ⇒ 00:10:50.570 Uttam Kumaran: We’re getting better at this.
126 00:10:50.710 ⇒ 00:10:56.090 Uttam Kumaran: And there are some things that directly affect our operations team.
127 00:10:56.370 ⇒ 00:10:56.840 Lauren Ford: I’m like.
128 00:10:56.850 ⇒ 00:11:06.749 Uttam Kumaran: part of our ability to, for example, one of the big operational tasks we have is, like, at the end of every week, we have to make sure everybody’s hours are in. And so that is something that…
129 00:11:09.650 ⇒ 00:11:11.489 Lauren Ford: Oh, you cut out for some reason.
130 00:11:13.160 ⇒ 00:11:14.520 Uttam Kumaran: Might be my inter…
131 00:11:18.660 ⇒ 00:11:20.420 Lauren Ford: Let me see if it’s my internet.
132 00:11:21.550 ⇒ 00:11:23.339 Rico Rejoso: No, we think we thumb got cut off.
133 00:11:23.340 ⇒ 00:11:25.270 Lauren Ford: Oh, oh, okay.
134 00:11:27.810 ⇒ 00:11:34.339 Lauren Ford: I always assume it’s me, but we did recently upgrade our internet, so it should be better than it has been.
135 00:11:35.150 ⇒ 00:11:36.900 Rico Rejoso: Rico, where are you based?
136 00:11:37.330 ⇒ 00:11:38.489 Rico Rejoso: I’m in the Philippines.
137 00:11:38.490 ⇒ 00:11:41.539 Lauren Ford: Oh, cool! Okay, Utam, you’re back with us, I see you’re moving.
138 00:11:41.540 ⇒ 00:11:42.739 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, I’m back.
139 00:11:42.740 ⇒ 00:11:47.969 Lauren Ford: Okay, the last thing I heard you say was you’re struggling to get people to put their hours in, and they.
140 00:11:47.970 ⇒ 00:11:48.490 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
141 00:11:48.490 ⇒ 00:11:49.749 Lauren Ford: weekly basis, right?
142 00:11:49.750 ⇒ 00:11:54.849 Uttam Kumaran: They do that on a weekly basis, so it’s one of the big SOPs that this team owns.
143 00:11:54.850 ⇒ 00:11:57.890 Lauren Ford: If you go into, like, the operations…
144 00:11:57.990 ⇒ 00:12:01.710 Uttam Kumaran: area, we have a lot of SOPs for different things, so…
145 00:12:01.710 ⇒ 00:12:04.880 Lauren Ford: Hopefully, like, this is kind of more familiar, which is just, like.
146 00:12:04.880 ⇒ 00:12:13.100 Uttam Kumaran: For example, like, what is our, process for adding new users into different tools? What is our process for time?
147 00:12:17.040 ⇒ 00:12:17.830 Lauren Ford: -Oh.
148 00:12:19.770 ⇒ 00:12:21.660 Lauren Ford: He cut out again, right, Rico?
149 00:12:21.680 ⇒ 00:12:22.350 Rico Rejoso: Yep.
150 00:12:22.470 ⇒ 00:12:24.129 Lauren Ford: Okay, not just me.
151 00:12:25.800 ⇒ 00:12:29.730 Lauren Ford: What’s the time difference for the Philippines? I should know, but I… I don’t.
152 00:12:31.020 ⇒ 00:12:32.480 Rico Rejoso: Like, the time zone where…
153 00:12:32.940 ⇒ 00:12:33.780 Lauren Ford: Yeah, how, how…
154 00:12:33.780 ⇒ 00:12:34.939 Rico Rejoso: 14 hours ahead.
155 00:12:35.360 ⇒ 00:12:36.640 Lauren Ford: Oh, wow.
156 00:12:37.140 ⇒ 00:12:40.949 Lauren Ford: Wait, so it’s… 3 in the morning where you are?
157 00:12:41.720 ⇒ 00:12:42.450 Rico Rejoso: Oh, yeah.
158 00:12:42.850 ⇒ 00:12:43.700 Lauren Ford: Oh, wow.
159 00:12:44.790 ⇒ 00:12:48.019 Lauren Ford: Okay, well, welcome. Thank you.
160 00:12:48.420 ⇒ 00:12:52.440 Lauren Ford: Utam, you’re sorta… you unfroze, and now you’re frozen again.
161 00:12:55.900 ⇒ 00:12:57.449 Lauren Ford: Your screen’s moving.
162 00:12:58.290 ⇒ 00:12:58.880 Uttam Kumaran: I think it’s working.
163 00:12:59.490 ⇒ 00:13:02.029 Lauren Ford: Do you want to turn your camera off and see if that helps?
164 00:13:02.030 ⇒ 00:13:02.580 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
165 00:13:02.580 ⇒ 00:13:04.170 Lauren Ford: feed it all? Okay, cool.
166 00:13:04.170 ⇒ 00:13:06.730 Uttam Kumaran: How’s… how’s this? Can you at least hear me?
167 00:13:06.990 ⇒ 00:13:08.179 Lauren Ford: I can hear you great.
168 00:13:08.520 ⇒ 00:13:19.970 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay. So, like, we have all of our core SOPs in here, and so that’s something that Rico and I have tried to do, is, like, we built an SOP template, and we have, sort of, like.
169 00:13:20.070 ⇒ 00:13:27.190 Uttam Kumaran: different SOPs that are either started or were in the process of starting. For example, this is for payroll, so, like.
170 00:13:27.340 ⇒ 00:13:36.930 Uttam Kumaran: How do our contractors all, you know, onboard and track their time? Awesome. So this is, I think, a great area to just see
171 00:13:37.630 ⇒ 00:13:44.440 Uttam Kumaran: like, everything that our team is kind of doing. And so maybe to get… kind of get back to just, like, what we were…
172 00:13:44.560 ⇒ 00:13:49.730 Uttam Kumaran: Originally talking about is… I think we just have a kind of a problem with just, like.
173 00:13:49.870 ⇒ 00:13:52.170 Uttam Kumaran: having an opinion on organizing Notion.
174 00:13:53.800 ⇒ 00:14:08.820 Uttam Kumaran: like, and, like, kind of being able to search. And this is depending on, like, who you are, right? So, like, the team versus, like… like, basically, like, all company versus team.
175 00:14:08.970 ⇒ 00:14:09.610 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
176 00:14:09.610 ⇒ 00:14:20.040 Uttam Kumaran: Versus, client team, right? So there’s kind of those different problems. Priority-wise, like, I would say this is, like, on the lower end, though, but it is something that’s…
177 00:14:20.710 ⇒ 00:14:25.209 Lauren Ford: It seems like you… you have a good setup and good bones to it, so that’s great.
178 00:14:25.210 ⇒ 00:14:26.300 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
179 00:14:26.300 ⇒ 00:14:30.260 Lauren Ford: The only thing that I guess would be an urgent thing is, do you have…
180 00:14:30.280 ⇒ 00:14:47.439 Lauren Ford: Notion is one of the intranets that I have not worked with in depth. I did, like, several demos on it. Do you have whatever level that you’re able to get pretty granular with your client invites? Like, are they only able to see what you want them to see, or is it sort of that sort of a security issue at present?
181 00:14:47.880 ⇒ 00:14:53.760 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, right now, so right now, what we do, for example, is, is, like, let’s say we go to our client, like.
182 00:14:53.980 ⇒ 00:14:55.989 Uttam Kumaran: Eden,
183 00:14:57.400 ⇒ 00:15:06.220 Lauren Ford: we… we have, like, all of our clients here… sorry, I’ve just switched to Wi-Fi’s, and then what you can do is… Oh, yeah. You’ll click… you’ll click on a specific client, and we just share.
184 00:15:06.330 ⇒ 00:15:08.580 Uttam Kumaran: That client’s stuff with…
185 00:15:08.580 ⇒ 00:15:09.240 Lauren Ford: Great.
186 00:15:09.240 ⇒ 00:15:11.209 Uttam Kumaran: the people from that client. So they’re not, like.
187 00:15:11.340 ⇒ 00:15:18.800 Uttam Kumaran: they’re not given, like, a broader view of the company. However, I do think that we probably need also some process of doing, like,
188 00:15:19.200 ⇒ 00:15:27.599 Uttam Kumaran: an audit of all access, like, once a month. Yeah. Yeah, I would say that’s definitely, like, something both,
189 00:15:28.110 ⇒ 00:15:35.770 Uttam Kumaran: I’m sure we can save some money, because we can change licenses for people that don’t need stuff, but also, yeah, like, basically reviewing access.
190 00:15:36.150 ⇒ 00:15:37.960 Lauren Ford: Awesome. Okay, cool.
191 00:15:40.870 ⇒ 00:15:57.170 Lauren Ford: So right now, Notion is a little bit… it’s a low priority, but right now, Notion is a little bit, like, each team lead is kind of doing it whatever way, and there isn’t, like, a source of truth on how to do it, right? Or it hasn’t been decided yet. No, there is some consistency, but I just think that, like, it’s not…
192 00:15:57.900 ⇒ 00:16:09.670 Uttam Kumaran: written down, necessarily, and it’s mainly been me and Rico sort of developing it on the fly. So I think, like, once you take a look at stuff, you may have some ideas.
193 00:16:09.840 ⇒ 00:16:27.470 Uttam Kumaran: Great. And if you think, like, actually, this is 90% of the way there, we could just clean up these core pages. I would say I don’t… what I’m hoping for is that everybody in the company, no matter if it’s Hannah, or Sam, or us, when they open Notion, they’re confident that they know where to go to get what they need.
194 00:16:27.710 ⇒ 00:16:33.910 Lauren Ford: That’s awesome. That’s kind of the heuristic, right? So, whether we solve that by, like, hey.
195 00:16:33.910 ⇒ 00:16:42.240 Uttam Kumaran: If you don’t know where you need to go, start here, and there’s, like, a page about how to find what you need. There’s multiple ways to kind of solve that problem, right? So…
196 00:16:45.160 ⇒ 00:16:52.320 Uttam Kumaran: So, I think a couple of other things that I think are higher priorities. One, I would love some help to…
197 00:16:52.460 ⇒ 00:16:54.690 Uttam Kumaran: Create, like, a leveling guide.
198 00:16:56.300 ⇒ 00:17:02.790 Uttam Kumaran: Both a leveling guide and, like, a compensation guide, especially given that we recruit globally.
199 00:17:03.370 ⇒ 00:17:04.069 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
200 00:17:04.560 ⇒ 00:17:05.490 Uttam Kumaran: So…
201 00:17:06.849 ⇒ 00:17:15.479 Uttam Kumaran: I… that’s kind of the… so kind of the… the problem is there is, like, when we hire, we sort of decide
202 00:17:15.980 ⇒ 00:17:23.309 Uttam Kumaran: Rates on the fly, based on, sort of, like, high-level budgets?
203 00:17:23.990 ⇒ 00:17:31.630 Uttam Kumaran: But certainly… Like, we should have levels… And
204 00:17:32.270 ⇒ 00:17:34.820 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we should have… we should have basically levels and…
205 00:17:35.100 ⇒ 00:17:39.059 Uttam Kumaran: A concise, like, org chart we’re mapping to.
206 00:17:39.830 ⇒ 00:17:42.950 Uttam Kumaran: Even for roles that we don’t have in the company right now, right?
207 00:17:42.950 ⇒ 00:17:44.340 Lauren Ford: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
208 00:17:45.130 ⇒ 00:17:45.850 Uttam Kumaran: So…
209 00:17:46.360 ⇒ 00:17:51.509 Uttam Kumaran: that’s where, like, I haven’t done one of these before. I think the biggest thing that I’m looking for is, like, when…
210 00:17:51.660 ⇒ 00:17:57.439 Uttam Kumaran: We need some way of saying, like, okay, here’s a leveling guide, across both
211 00:17:58.140 ⇒ 00:18:01.430 Uttam Kumaran: Like, our delivery organization and internal?
212 00:18:02.690 ⇒ 00:18:09.390 Uttam Kumaran: Plus, how to take, like, our USD rates and map To another country, right?
213 00:18:09.390 ⇒ 00:18:09.850 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
214 00:18:09.850 ⇒ 00:18:14.199 Uttam Kumaran: Like, based on, like, whatever, like, the cost of living.
215 00:18:14.650 ⇒ 00:18:22.509 Lauren Ford: Yeah. I know, like, Facebook and other companies have versions of this. Yeah. We started something like this, too, so I have some…
216 00:18:23.110 ⇒ 00:18:27.209 Uttam Kumaran: Helpful resources, so you don’t have to start this fresh, but this is where, like.
217 00:18:27.460 ⇒ 00:18:29.729 Uttam Kumaran: I think this is a concise, like…
218 00:18:30.410 ⇒ 00:18:34.579 Uttam Kumaran: spreadsheet or document or something that we just need. Yeah.
219 00:18:34.960 ⇒ 00:18:38.049 Uttam Kumaran: You know, that I think would be a really, really amazing thing.
220 00:18:38.560 ⇒ 00:18:45.180 Lauren Ford: Does JustWorks offer any kind of resources for that sort of thing? Because they might have more insights than…
221 00:18:46.030 ⇒ 00:18:47.730 Uttam Kumaran: I feel like they should, I don’t.
222 00:18:47.730 ⇒ 00:18:48.049 Lauren Ford: I don’t know.
223 00:18:48.050 ⇒ 00:18:48.560 Uttam Kumaran: I have no.
224 00:18:48.560 ⇒ 00:18:50.209 Lauren Ford: Okay, I’ll find out. Okay.
225 00:18:50.210 ⇒ 00:18:50.900 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
226 00:18:51.380 ⇒ 00:18:56.750 Uttam Kumaran: So, and then the, you know, the other… the other thing here is that we…
227 00:18:57.240 ⇒ 00:19:00.889 Uttam Kumaran: We’re mostly contractors, so not everybody’s W2.
228 00:19:00.890 ⇒ 00:19:01.270 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
229 00:19:01.350 ⇒ 00:19:06.469 Uttam Kumaran: And so that’s gonna be the thing, is, like, most of our people are hourly or fixed rates.
230 00:19:06.730 ⇒ 00:19:12.690 Uttam Kumaran: But we need some way of being like, okay, for, a level 1…
231 00:19:12.900 ⇒ 00:19:16.870 Uttam Kumaran: software engineer here, the equivalent in Spain.
232 00:19:17.040 ⇒ 00:19:21.110 Uttam Kumaran: the rates are this, right? Yeah, yeah. And at least we have some guidance.
233 00:19:21.230 ⇒ 00:19:24.079 Uttam Kumaran: Got it. Versus now, it’s a little bit, like.
234 00:19:24.210 ⇒ 00:19:29.190 Uttam Kumaran: we sort of debate right at the end, versus I’d rather be able to
235 00:19:29.800 ⇒ 00:19:34.550 Uttam Kumaran: recruit and say, like, this is our range, basically, and be kind of, like, fair for people, so…
236 00:19:34.920 ⇒ 00:19:42.590 Lauren Ford: That makes sense. Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah, I… that… that makes a lot of sense. And…
237 00:19:43.160 ⇒ 00:19:54.119 Lauren Ford: while we probably can’t do it for the entire world, we can at least start with the countries you know you’re in already. Totally, 100%. Yeah, exactly. Okay, yeah, because I’ve done…
238 00:19:54.510 ⇒ 00:20:02.670 Lauren Ford: I’ve never done exactly that, but I… and Corden’s was in 3 countries, but it… and then a bunch of contractors, but…
239 00:20:03.060 ⇒ 00:20:05.420 Lauren Ford: That was all… it was… it was…
240 00:20:06.070 ⇒ 00:20:15.169 Lauren Ford: everything there was done backwards, because we were M&A, so it was, like, we acquired people at rates, as opposed to defining them from the get-go, so it was all kind of weird, and…
241 00:20:15.300 ⇒ 00:20:19.750 Lauren Ford: all over the place, and eventually you will want to think about,
242 00:20:19.880 ⇒ 00:20:32.570 Lauren Ford: you can get in a… you can get… you can get very sued for, calling folks contractors if they should be labeled W-2, and it becomes, like, a whole thing. You’re too small to worry about that right now.
243 00:20:32.570 ⇒ 00:20:49.990 Uttam Kumaran: Also, why everywhere you’ll see it’s mostly labeled as team members. Perfect, perfect. Like, we’re not calling anybody employees. Perfect, yeah, yeah. I mean, I don’t know, I mean, I should see, like, we… some places, probably, we should change, but for the most part, we… if you’ll see how we talk about it, it’s all team.
244 00:20:49.990 ⇒ 00:20:53.379 Lauren Ford: Yeah. No, it’s more like if you can’t discern the.
245 00:20:53.380 ⇒ 00:20:54.300 Uttam Kumaran: difference between…
246 00:20:54.300 ⇒ 00:21:00.669 Lauren Ford: a W-2, you’re probably totally fine right now. It’s just something to think about once you’re, like, 200%.
247 00:21:00.670 ⇒ 00:21:03.100 Uttam Kumaran: bigger. Okay, okay.
248 00:21:03.990 ⇒ 00:21:05.150 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah
249 00:21:06.080 ⇒ 00:21:12.259 Uttam Kumaran: Another issue is, like, yeah, we just… I mean, we’re a remote team, so we need to have some better, like, remote fun.
250 00:21:12.320 ⇒ 00:21:15.080 Lauren Ford: things for people to get to know each other, so I think…
251 00:21:15.470 ⇒ 00:21:21.579 Uttam Kumaran: Like, how to build team camaraderie, I don’t know.
252 00:21:21.580 ⇒ 00:21:22.060 Lauren Ford: Nice.
253 00:21:22.060 ⇒ 00:21:22.770 Uttam Kumaran: that.
254 00:21:23.100 ⇒ 00:21:26.619 Uttam Kumaran: In a remote org, so…
255 00:21:26.880 ⇒ 00:21:35.480 Uttam Kumaran: Like, to kind of give you a couple things that, like, things we’ve done, like, we’ve done, like, Holiday Party, we’ve done, like…
256 00:21:35.690 ⇒ 00:21:44.069 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll get everybody dinner, let’s just, like, hang out. We’ve done, like, GeoGuessr, but I guess I’m just trying to think about, like, ways…
257 00:21:44.810 ⇒ 00:21:50.680 Uttam Kumaran: like… and… but the thing is, as my time gets busier, like, that’s… that really drops, like, I just have no time to think.
258 00:21:50.890 ⇒ 00:21:52.220 Uttam Kumaran: About that, and…
259 00:21:52.220 ⇒ 00:21:52.990 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
260 00:21:52.990 ⇒ 00:21:53.630 Uttam Kumaran: I mean…
261 00:21:53.870 ⇒ 00:21:57.720 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so I think that’s something that we’ve gotten feedback from people, is that they do want to
262 00:21:58.700 ⇒ 00:22:02.480 Uttam Kumaran: Spend time meeting others and building, like, Sort of one-on-one.
263 00:22:02.840 ⇒ 00:22:04.660 Uttam Kumaran: relationships, but I also think…
264 00:22:04.830 ⇒ 00:22:11.279 Uttam Kumaran: There is some way we can build a little bit of a schedule on something fun to do weekly, or monthly, or on holidays.
265 00:22:11.450 ⇒ 00:22:16.810 Lauren Ford: Awesome. It’s like a weekly thing. Yeah, I know you’re really, really great at thinking about that, so…
266 00:22:16.810 ⇒ 00:22:18.259 Uttam Kumaran: I love that stuff, so I’m happy.
267 00:22:18.260 ⇒ 00:22:19.510 Lauren Ford: Happy to jump into that.
268 00:22:19.510 ⇒ 00:22:28.649 Uttam Kumaran: And everybody on the company is super, like, remote digital, so they… they think totally, like, ideas here could be, like, at least, like, a weekly…
269 00:22:28.650 ⇒ 00:22:29.090 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
270 00:22:29.090 ⇒ 00:22:30.900 Uttam Kumaran: Like, one-on-one coffee chat.
271 00:22:30.900 ⇒ 00:22:33.170 Lauren Ford: One of those little roundtable apps.
272 00:22:33.580 ⇒ 00:22:35.980 Uttam Kumaran: We meet as a company.
273 00:22:36.200 ⇒ 00:22:41.200 Uttam Kumaran: Like, twice every other week, like, on Fridays.
274 00:22:41.560 ⇒ 00:22:47.650 Uttam Kumaran: And then, I mean, I… we end up seeing everybody during the week, but we usually just do an all-hands every other Friday.
275 00:22:47.650 ⇒ 00:22:48.080 Lauren Ford: Nice.
276 00:22:48.080 ⇒ 00:22:52.350 Uttam Kumaran: So… That’s something where we can think about
277 00:22:52.800 ⇒ 00:22:56.320 Uttam Kumaran: How we want to run those, or if there’s other things fun we want to do.
278 00:22:56.780 ⇒ 00:23:03.610 Uttam Kumaran: I just want to put more care into it and make sure… because we have also, like, we have people that are more outspoken, we have people that are more shy.
279 00:23:04.000 ⇒ 00:23:09.460 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, I think the one-on-one setting of, like, a coffee chat or something with a prompt may be good, or…
280 00:23:09.460 ⇒ 00:23:13.769 Lauren Ford: Yeah. I don’t know. Do you think I’ll get a sense of them just from looking at your Slack?
281 00:23:14.580 ⇒ 00:23:15.330 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, for sure.
282 00:23:15.330 ⇒ 00:23:23.999 Lauren Ford: Okay, perfect. Once I have that, then I can also… yeah, do you… do you have any, like, overviews of the full team, so I know, like.
283 00:23:24.430 ⇒ 00:23:25.330 Lauren Ford: Like.
284 00:23:25.330 ⇒ 00:23:27.180 Uttam Kumaran: We… yeah, we do. Yeah.
285 00:23:27.180 ⇒ 00:23:28.190 Lauren Ford: Oh, perfect.
286 00:23:28.190 ⇒ 00:23:37.650 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so I can… so, Rico can probably get you that. Awesome. And then… and then, certainly, one other thing we need to do is, like.
287 00:23:37.780 ⇒ 00:23:42.410 Uttam Kumaran: Like, how to keep… An up-to-date org chart.
288 00:23:42.650 ⇒ 00:23:43.160 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
289 00:23:43.360 ⇒ 00:23:47.130 Uttam Kumaran: We did one in Figma before.
290 00:23:47.480 ⇒ 00:23:54.530 Uttam Kumaran: but, like, we have our… we have operational spreadsheets with, like, everybody’s rates and contracts, but I think some type of visual…
291 00:23:55.020 ⇒ 00:23:59.170 Uttam Kumaran: Org chart could be nice, and we have a first version of this
292 00:23:59.380 ⇒ 00:24:02.759 Uttam Kumaran: So, it would just be maybe some cadence at which we keep this updated.
293 00:24:02.760 ⇒ 00:24:08.320 Lauren Ford: Yeah, I mean, Organimi is free for orgs under 25, so you should… we can… I can help you build that for.
294 00:24:08.320 ⇒ 00:24:09.660 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.
295 00:24:11.580 ⇒ 00:24:15.030 Uttam Kumaran: We’re gonna be… Okay, yeah, perfect.
296 00:24:15.200 ⇒ 00:24:18.609 Uttam Kumaran: So yeah, I always kind of put this under, like.
297 00:24:19.220 ⇒ 00:24:22.110 Uttam Kumaran: Also, like, how do we want to run, like, a better…
298 00:24:22.330 ⇒ 00:24:24.710 Uttam Kumaran: for a Friday meeting, like, I think we…
299 00:24:24.950 ⇒ 00:24:34.150 Uttam Kumaran: I can also share… this is probably a little bit lower priority, I can share, like, what we do, what we talk about, but this is where I could use your help in thinking about, like, how do you build
300 00:24:34.420 ⇒ 00:24:41.820 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, I just think about how do we make sure people, build those, like, trusted relationships with people at work, and they can get.
301 00:24:41.820 ⇒ 00:24:42.210 Lauren Ford: Fantastic.
302 00:24:42.210 ⇒ 00:24:47.129 Uttam Kumaran: feedback out, like, whether it’s… this is another thing for us to think about,
303 00:24:47.400 ⇒ 00:24:53.460 Uttam Kumaran: maybe I’m just gonna move, kind of, like, this all to ideas here, which is, like, do we want to do, like, an anonymous survey?
304 00:24:53.650 ⇒ 00:24:58.560 Lauren Ford: Yeah. Like, I think a lot about maybe we should do, like, an ENPS survey…
305 00:25:00.000 ⇒ 00:25:10.000 Uttam Kumaran: or feedback form… Friday question form, stuff like that. Yeah. All things that I’ve used before, but totally open.
306 00:25:11.460 ⇒ 00:25:20.670 Uttam Kumaran: But let me move these two up a little bit… And then…
307 00:25:21.420 ⇒ 00:25:34.219 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think the other, kind of, probably the piece that would be really helpful is I actually started doing this thing, which is just called, like, AORs, which is Areas of Responsibility, and I could certainly use help, like.
308 00:25:34.960 ⇒ 00:25:36.420 Uttam Kumaran: finishing this?
309 00:25:37.140 ⇒ 00:25:39.969 Uttam Kumaran: And I think this would…
310 00:25:40.860 ⇒ 00:25:45.649 Uttam Kumaran: would basically see every single… ideally, my hope is that every single…
311 00:25:46.370 ⇒ 00:25:52.369 Uttam Kumaran: like, basic responsibility in the company’s mapped here. And the goal of this is for us to assign
312 00:25:52.570 ⇒ 00:25:57.589 Uttam Kumaran: to see, like, what are… what is open, who is taking on too much, like, ideally what you’ll…
313 00:25:57.590 ⇒ 00:26:06.820 Lauren Ford: I mean, not ideally, but what you will see is my name is probably listed way too many places, and, like, that should go to say, okay, if we’re hiring for someone, what responsibilities should they take on?
314 00:26:06.820 ⇒ 00:26:11.599 Uttam Kumaran: How does that affect our AORs? And then for every AOR, we want to have backups.
315 00:26:11.950 ⇒ 00:26:19.079 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, who can do this thing if one person’s out? That way we have redundancy, and so we know that, like, okay.
316 00:26:19.260 ⇒ 00:26:22.840 Uttam Kumaran: And then my last hope was that when things like this are
317 00:26:23.010 ⇒ 00:26:28.219 Uttam Kumaran: related to, like, if there’s a clear responsibility, we can map it directly to an SOP.
318 00:26:28.220 ⇒ 00:26:30.090 Lauren Ford: And so… Yes, yeah.
319 00:26:30.090 ⇒ 00:26:40.029 Uttam Kumaran: I think sort of taking this to, like, the finish line, like, I’ve sort of started it, is probably a lot of, like, asking people questions in the company. Hey, like.
320 00:26:40.380 ⇒ 00:26:43.689 Uttam Kumaran: what else do you… what else do we do? I’m actually less concerned
321 00:26:44.520 ⇒ 00:26:51.790 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, yeah, I guess this is basically every single part of the company, but for example, there’s start… there’s stuff on finance and legal that…
322 00:26:51.860 ⇒ 00:27:05.889 Uttam Kumaran: we just have to write down, and then I want to map out, like, hey, these are external folks that are doing it. So it just gives us a really great overview of, like, every core responsibility of the company. And in a company our size, like, it’s totally doable. Like, you can get everything on paper, you know?
323 00:27:08.420 ⇒ 00:27:12.870 Uttam Kumaran: So this is a fun thing, like, I’ve been wanting to get this done, we’ve started it, but
324 00:27:13.430 ⇒ 00:27:19.760 Uttam Kumaran: It should really indicate where people are overloaded, or where there’s nobody handling,
325 00:27:20.220 ⇒ 00:27:38.119 Uttam Kumaran: an AOR, right? And, like, DRIs, like, who’s a district? And then also, like, setting expectations really clear that, like, this person is directly responsible for this. That way, when you come in, you’re like, you are responsible for these things, it’s really easy for us to see whether people are handling it or not. And if people are out of office, who can take that on, things like that.
326 00:27:38.430 ⇒ 00:27:39.100 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
327 00:27:41.590 ⇒ 00:27:43.729 Uttam Kumaran: I will put this here, too.
328 00:27:44.670 ⇒ 00:27:45.500 Lauren Ford: That’s awesome.
329 00:27:46.970 ⇒ 00:27:59.070 Uttam Kumaran: So, I’ll just kind of put, like, the issue, which is, like, Tracking… All areas of responsibility… AOR…
330 00:28:04.190 ⇒ 00:28:10.919 Uttam Kumaran: Tracking all and creating cadence for keeping this up to date.
331 00:28:13.020 ⇒ 00:28:19.249 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and I guess I was gonna also ask, like, your experience using, like, Zapier, other, like, automation tools for stuff.
332 00:28:19.670 ⇒ 00:28:23.930 Lauren Ford: Yeah, I’ve looked into Zapier…
333 00:28:24.720 ⇒ 00:28:26.450 Lauren Ford: So many times, and I never.
334 00:28:26.450 ⇒ 00:28:26.819 Uttam Kumaran: Oh my gosh.
335 00:28:26.820 ⇒ 00:28:39.680 Lauren Ford: the budget approved for it, so I never got to actually use it, even though it would have been so cheap. But, I’m familiar with it. Like, I tried to start setting up some zaps and then ran into stuff, because it was, like, a permissions thing with other.
336 00:28:39.680 ⇒ 00:28:44.979 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so you… so this is… so you have every… access to everything here, basically, and there’s.
337 00:28:44.980 ⇒ 00:28:45.410 Lauren Ford: Cool!
338 00:28:45.410 ⇒ 00:28:49.930 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we’re… I just… we need to zap, like, 100,000 things around here, so… Yeah.
339 00:28:49.930 ⇒ 00:28:50.430 Lauren Ford: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
340 00:28:50.430 ⇒ 00:28:52.480 Uttam Kumaran: I think, kind of, there’s a couple of, like.
341 00:28:52.800 ⇒ 00:29:03.899 Uttam Kumaran: Zapier things that Ricoh has been working on, but for example, like, reminding everybody to upload their hours, like… Yeah. Ideally, this can come from, like, a Slack bot that, like, hits everyone up.
342 00:29:04.230 ⇒ 00:29:04.830 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
343 00:29:04.830 ⇒ 00:29:10.300 Uttam Kumaran: Even every day. And so, these are also things that we can measure, like, the KPI here is, like.
344 00:29:10.530 ⇒ 00:29:26.910 Uttam Kumaran: We can look at the time at which everybody updates their hours, and is that starting to shrink, right? We also have tasks like moving… we want to move some of… like, we have every… we have all the contract information for clients in a spreadsheet, like, can we move that into HubSpot?
345 00:29:27.020 ⇒ 00:29:28.089 Uttam Kumaran: So there’s, like.
346 00:29:28.220 ⇒ 00:29:37.119 Uttam Kumaran: sort of, like, I don’t know who that would… it would typically fall under, like, sales operations, maybe, but it’s… it kind of just falls to us to, like, figure that out. Yeah.
347 00:29:37.120 ⇒ 00:29:37.560 Lauren Ford: Yeah, yeah.
348 00:29:37.560 ⇒ 00:29:38.130 Uttam Kumaran: So…
349 00:29:38.530 ⇒ 00:29:46.440 Uttam Kumaran: those are kind of, like, the biggest things. And then, like, we also have, like, ideas on the recruiting side, where we could use help as well, like.
350 00:29:46.660 ⇒ 00:29:56.529 Uttam Kumaran: where we… Rico and I, and one person on sales, we kind of think about recruiting campaigns, and that’s somewhere where, again, if you’re interested in
351 00:29:56.760 ⇒ 00:30:00.970 Uttam Kumaran: Trying to do more on the recruiting side, like, we can all brainstorm some of those together, so…
352 00:30:00.970 ⇒ 00:30:15.699 Lauren Ford: Yeah, for sure. That could be really interesting. I mean, yes, I would love to, as we get closer to that, like, understand… because you started to speak to it a little bit about, like, what kind of employees work really well, and what kind of folks kind of get lost in the.
353 00:30:15.700 ⇒ 00:30:16.470 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
354 00:30:17.020 ⇒ 00:30:18.720 Lauren Ford: lost in it. So, I was just…
355 00:30:18.720 ⇒ 00:30:21.760 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll just loop you in as we have recruiting conversations.
356 00:30:21.760 ⇒ 00:30:22.120 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
357 00:30:22.120 ⇒ 00:30:28.499 Uttam Kumaran: And then as you… as we start to onboard more people, I think you’ll see, sort of, what their recruiting process is.
358 00:30:28.660 ⇒ 00:30:29.020 Lauren Ford: Awesome.
359 00:30:29.020 ⇒ 00:30:32.009 Uttam Kumaran: again, like, I think a couple of, like, maybe on the…
360 00:30:32.130 ⇒ 00:30:39.150 Uttam Kumaran: on the longer-term side, like, in terms of team onboarding, Rico, can you link the,
361 00:30:39.420 ⇒ 00:30:46.599 Uttam Kumaran: remember we worked on, like, the day 1, day 30, day 60 plan? Like, this is where I feel like
362 00:30:46.890 ⇒ 00:30:50.659 Uttam Kumaran: We could really use your help is thinking about, like, what is the…
363 00:30:51.050 ⇒ 00:30:57.580 Uttam Kumaran: First day, week, month look like for every team member, and how do we, like, structure that?
364 00:30:57.740 ⇒ 00:31:04.310 Uttam Kumaran: So I consider that, like, onboarding and… Sort of, like, success.
365 00:31:04.540 ⇒ 00:31:04.860 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
366 00:31:04.870 ⇒ 00:31:19.079 Uttam Kumaran: But also, like, we have clear milestones where that person and their manager, which for the most part will be me or my business partner, Robert, we meet and we say, like, is… are things going well? Like, are we doing all the things that we need to do? Do you need access?
367 00:31:19.150 ⇒ 00:31:26.369 Uttam Kumaran: You need whatever. And so, like, that’s something I think we typically throw people in the deep end, and I would like us to have a more…
368 00:31:27.020 ⇒ 00:31:30.259 Uttam Kumaran: Nuanced, like, approach to bringing people on.
369 00:31:30.500 ⇒ 00:31:31.210 Lauren Ford: Perfect, yeah.
370 00:31:31.210 ⇒ 00:31:36.160 Uttam Kumaran: that their first whatever time with us is success, or we identify that it’s not working out, you know.
371 00:31:36.160 ⇒ 00:31:39.479 Lauren Ford: Yeah. Help them… help them ramp faster, all of that.
372 00:31:39.480 ⇒ 00:31:39.870 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
373 00:31:39.870 ⇒ 00:31:41.760 Lauren Ford: Okay, makes sense, totally.
374 00:31:41.870 ⇒ 00:31:48.040 Lauren Ford: And do you have a section of Notion that’s dedicated to that right now, or is that completely…
375 00:31:48.040 ⇒ 00:31:52.840 Uttam Kumaran: We do not. Awesome. We just have a desk.
376 00:31:52.840 ⇒ 00:31:54.260 Lauren Ford: Yeah, that for sure.
377 00:31:54.260 ⇒ 00:31:58.220 Uttam Kumaran: We just have a deck that is, like, welcome to Brave Forge, here’s how to do everything.
378 00:31:58.490 ⇒ 00:32:01.769 Uttam Kumaran: We probably need something that’s, like, a getting started here.
379 00:32:02.100 ⇒ 00:32:08.259 Uttam Kumaran: thing. And then the last piece, I think this will be more longer term, is, like, thinking about learning and development, like.
380 00:32:08.260 ⇒ 00:32:12.419 Lauren Ford: There’s some certifications we’d like people, some people to get, like, how do we think about…
381 00:32:12.420 ⇒ 00:32:17.170 Uttam Kumaran: continuous education, I… I… I certainly have…
382 00:32:17.540 ⇒ 00:32:22.540 Uttam Kumaran: Put budget towards people buying books and stuff like that, but you can kind of formalize that more.
383 00:32:22.760 ⇒ 00:32:28.070 Uttam Kumaran: And again, like, just make sure that when people join, or people that are existing, they get reminded of these
384 00:32:28.190 ⇒ 00:32:30.489 Uttam Kumaran: Programs that we have, like, you know, once a…
385 00:32:30.900 ⇒ 00:32:33.299 Uttam Kumaran: Once a month, or once a quarter, so…
386 00:32:33.650 ⇒ 00:32:37.930 Lauren Ford: Cool. I think low-hanging fruit, but it’s something that, like, I don’t want people to be like.
387 00:32:37.950 ⇒ 00:32:48.609 Uttam Kumaran: buying a book that they’re using for work, when we should have just paid for it, right? These are all things that, at past companies, I was, like, nervous to ask. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, you should just ask, like, but you don’t have a policy around it, like…
388 00:32:48.790 ⇒ 00:32:52.259 Uttam Kumaran: Some people are not, like, that forward, you know, so…
389 00:32:52.260 ⇒ 00:32:57.679 Lauren Ford: Yeah. Well, it is… it does get really complex when you get into the global thing, too, because then.
390 00:32:57.680 ⇒ 00:32:58.440 Uttam Kumaran: True.
391 00:32:58.440 ⇒ 00:33:02.790 Lauren Ford: all of the, like, conversions are just so different, so I understand why, like…
392 00:33:02.790 ⇒ 00:33:03.260 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
393 00:33:03.260 ⇒ 00:33:07.480 Lauren Ford: It’s hard… sometimes you keep it a little bit gray because you’ve got so many different.
394 00:33:07.480 ⇒ 00:33:09.710 Uttam Kumaran: Totally. Variables.
395 00:33:09.860 ⇒ 00:33:23.620 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and then the other piece is, like, you know, another example of this is, like, we have… we have, we’re gonna come… start having 3 people in LA. Wow. I wanted to get them to have… go to a WeWork once a week, and they can all work in one place, and I’m like, I’ll pay for that.
396 00:33:23.620 ⇒ 00:33:25.260 Lauren Ford: Aww, nice.
397 00:33:25.260 ⇒ 00:33:31.460 Uttam Kumaran: And so I want to, like, I don’t know if we need to write, like, a po- we probably need to write a policy, share that out with them.
398 00:33:31.690 ⇒ 00:33:33.870 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And so, like, those are things that…
399 00:33:34.420 ⇒ 00:33:38.140 Uttam Kumaran: I just need help, like, to do those things.
400 00:33:38.140 ⇒ 00:33:44.209 Lauren Ford: Awesome! That sounds good. How would you like me to, as I’m executing this, like.
401 00:33:44.210 ⇒ 00:33:50.260 Uttam Kumaran: Should I be checking in with… how much do you want me to check in versus just, like, take a stab at it?
402 00:33:50.410 ⇒ 00:33:50.880 Lauren Ford: And then…
403 00:33:50.880 ⇒ 00:34:06.130 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so, I would say… I would always urge towards just take a stab at stuff. Okay. Like, there’s really no making mistakes. I think the biggest thing is just we’re all in Slack, and like, again, like, Slack is the easiest spot.
404 00:34:06.630 ⇒ 00:34:09.109 Uttam Kumaran: I… we… me and Rico typically meet
405 00:34:09.219 ⇒ 00:34:13.130 Uttam Kumaran: Monday morning, just to do a really hardcore, like.
406 00:34:13.280 ⇒ 00:34:20.299 Uttam Kumaran: what is going on in operations. So, Rico, I’ll probably… let me just pull up, like, our operations, like, weekly.
407 00:34:20.489 ⇒ 00:34:35.279 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, we… we ran through, like, here’s a… we ran through this today, where we just make sure, like, okay, are there new team members joining? Are there new contracts that need to get signed? Are there new clients that are onboarding? So we go through, like, each function.
408 00:34:35.280 ⇒ 00:34:39.130 Lauren Ford: And sort of, like, what are the things? Okay, something’s waiting to get signed.
409 00:34:39.159 ⇒ 00:34:48.259 Uttam Kumaran: this person’s waiting on something, we need to onboard this tool, and so we just go through and, like, we do this once a week, and so today, your contract was… was on here.
410 00:34:48.260 ⇒ 00:34:49.090 Lauren Ford: Yes, nice.
411 00:34:49.090 ⇒ 00:34:49.780 Uttam Kumaran: So…
412 00:34:50.350 ⇒ 00:34:58.629 Uttam Kumaran: this is something that we do once a week. If you’re here, we can do another one more often. It’s just because Rico and I talk, like, all day, so…
413 00:34:58.630 ⇒ 00:34:59.350 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
414 00:34:59.350 ⇒ 00:35:03.840 Uttam Kumaran: we tend to get a lot done in Slack. I don’t have a preference either way. I would say…
415 00:35:04.150 ⇒ 00:35:11.839 Uttam Kumaran: my time is really short, so as much as we can do through Slack, or through Looms, or voice message is, like.
416 00:35:11.840 ⇒ 00:35:12.539 Lauren Ford: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
417 00:35:12.730 ⇒ 00:35:13.670 Uttam Kumaran: the best, like…
418 00:35:13.670 ⇒ 00:35:14.319 Lauren Ford: Okay, cool.
419 00:35:14.320 ⇒ 00:35:26.329 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, I have no preference, and again, we’re a big, like, writing culture anyway, so you can ask questions to everybody, and we just try to keep everything in, like, public channels, so if you ask in a question in, like, the team channel.
420 00:35:26.470 ⇒ 00:35:30.060 Uttam Kumaran: Two or three people will respond with, like, where you need to go and things like that, so…
421 00:35:30.940 ⇒ 00:35:32.590 Lauren Ford: Awesome. Okay.
422 00:35:33.060 ⇒ 00:35:33.960 Lauren Ford: Great.
423 00:35:33.960 ⇒ 00:35:38.719 Uttam Kumaran: So I know that’s a lot, but yeah, I don’t know, I think there’s just no better way than to just…
424 00:35:38.720 ⇒ 00:35:40.589 Lauren Ford: This is good! Oh, I see.
425 00:35:40.970 ⇒ 00:35:47.220 Lauren Ford: I see the email invite now for Google, so that’s great. That was the one I missed so far, so that’s good.
426 00:35:48.010 ⇒ 00:35:53.479 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and then I’ll just… I’ll send this into our… I just sent this talk into our Slack as well.
427 00:35:53.480 ⇒ 00:35:54.090 Lauren Ford: Awesome.
428 00:35:55.630 ⇒ 00:36:02.619 Uttam Kumaran: And yeah, then, oh, the last piece is, like, we use… we use linear a lot, if it helps to, like, ticket some of these out.
429 00:36:02.760 ⇒ 00:36:07.660 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I know Ricoh uses, like, the operations board to track.
430 00:36:07.830 ⇒ 00:36:11.149 Lauren Ford: Oh, cool. Different things. Yeah. If it helps to do that, like.
431 00:36:11.440 ⇒ 00:36:13.290 Uttam Kumaran: That’s perfect. Okay.
432 00:36:13.670 ⇒ 00:36:18.049 Uttam Kumaran: like, as you see here, there’s a ticket to… for your contract, so… Great.
433 00:36:18.370 ⇒ 00:36:29.649 Uttam Kumaran: I would prefer that. I think that just keeps everything, like, pretty clean, so it’s like, hey, I have these 5 things, let’s just create a ticket for each five. Given… because it’s our team, we’re internal, it doesn’t really matter, like.
434 00:36:30.530 ⇒ 00:36:47.030 Uttam Kumaran: in engineering, you’re supposed to have, like, really great ticket descriptions and stuff like that. I don’t… I just want to make sure that we… in our world, we’re dealing with too many things to do, and so I just want to make sure that, like, there’s some stuff that’s urgent, there’s some stuff that’s, like, recurring and ongoing, and we just have, like.
435 00:36:47.090 ⇒ 00:36:52.330 Uttam Kumaran: a track, and then that way, it also gives me an understanding of, like, what is our capacity, right? Like, what are the responsibilities that
436 00:36:52.460 ⇒ 00:37:00.959 Uttam Kumaran: the three of us have, and then what are all the things we’re doing, and then is there ways to either automate some of those? Do we need more support?
437 00:37:01.400 ⇒ 00:37:05.080 Uttam Kumaran: That’s… that’s kind of what helps, just to keep everything tracked, so…
438 00:37:05.470 ⇒ 00:37:06.290 Lauren Ford: Awesome.
439 00:37:06.650 ⇒ 00:37:07.550 Lauren Ford: Okay.
440 00:37:07.710 ⇒ 00:37:11.469 Lauren Ford: Cool. So, this is all very good.
441 00:37:11.700 ⇒ 00:37:20.900 Lauren Ford: For this week, it’ll obviously be different once I transition into the new role, and then I’m doing, like, weird off hours, but for this week, do you…
442 00:37:21.130 ⇒ 00:37:27.580 Lauren Ford: Do you want me to just do as many hours as I can, stopping at that 20 as the…
443 00:37:27.750 ⇒ 00:37:35.189 Lauren Ford: Yeah, that’d be… that’d be perfect, yeah. Okay, cool. And do you have an overview on where I’m doing the hours? I’m sure there’s an SOP on that, right?
444 00:37:35.190 ⇒ 00:37:38.519 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, Rico will get you invited to Clockify.
445 00:37:38.520 ⇒ 00:37:39.560 Lauren Ford: Okay, perfect.
446 00:37:40.050 ⇒ 00:37:40.630 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
447 00:37:41.980 ⇒ 00:37:42.910 Lauren Ford: Awesome.
448 00:37:44.520 ⇒ 00:37:52.050 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, this is great. Yeah, these are all things that, like, everybody needs, and nobody typically owns, and it’s, like, just been on… on our, like.
449 00:37:52.560 ⇒ 00:37:53.709 Uttam Kumaran: To-do list, so…
450 00:37:53.710 ⇒ 00:38:02.630 Lauren Ford: Yeah. How soon are you… so I can, like, sort of label urgency, how soon are you bringing on new people for the leveling guide?
451 00:38:03.080 ⇒ 00:38:06.179 Uttam Kumaran: I would say…
452 00:38:06.290 ⇒ 00:38:11.600 Uttam Kumaran: like, if I was to say, like, probably, like, let me just organize things into, like, high priority.
453 00:38:11.600 ⇒ 00:38:13.949 Lauren Ford: That’s great, that’s great, actually, yeah, yeah, yeah.
454 00:38:13.950 ⇒ 00:38:19.860 Uttam Kumaran: Just because I could tackle them. I don’t really like medium priority, because it doesn’t really mean anything.
455 00:38:20.550 ⇒ 00:38:25.729 Uttam Kumaran: So, I would say, like, this is some… like, these are… these are things that we can do…
456 00:38:25.870 ⇒ 00:38:30.909 Uttam Kumaran: Like, the moment you give me, like, something… well, the moment you give me, like.
457 00:38:31.410 ⇒ 00:38:36.040 Uttam Kumaran: what we want to do, or how to do this, we can put into place, right? So I feel like there…
458 00:38:36.330 ⇒ 00:38:48.409 Uttam Kumaran: like, if you’re like, hey, we just need to go ahead and do this, then we’ll just go ahead and do this. This is, like, sort of something where I think, especially going into, like, we have a bunch of holidays, these are things that we can act on, like, if you’re like, hey, we should start doing this.
459 00:38:48.510 ⇒ 00:38:53.799 Uttam Kumaran: we can act on them immediately. I think… I think also,
460 00:38:55.260 ⇒ 00:38:58.879 Uttam Kumaran: Like, the leveling guide is not the highest priority.
461 00:38:58.880 ⇒ 00:38:59.580 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
462 00:38:59.580 ⇒ 00:39:03.320 Uttam Kumaran: As this… meaning, like, it’s just gonna take a little bit of time.
463 00:39:03.340 ⇒ 00:39:04.490 Lauren Ford: Yeah. To do.
464 00:39:04.500 ⇒ 00:39:09.209 Uttam Kumaran: But I would say, like, the AORs is a good… That being said…
465 00:39:09.210 ⇒ 00:39:10.919 Lauren Ford: It’s a high priority. Okay. Yeah.
466 00:39:11.410 ⇒ 00:39:16.329 Lauren Ford: Great. Because ideally, we’re mapping those AORs to the people that we hire, so I don’t…
467 00:39:16.350 ⇒ 00:39:27.899 Uttam Kumaran: to give you a sense, like, I don’t want to hire anymore without understanding what open AO… what open AORs are there. Great. Instead of just having, like, a gut feeling, like, oh, we need support somewhere, I want to be like, okay, what responsibilities…
468 00:39:28.020 ⇒ 00:39:38.429 Uttam Kumaran: are being dropped or overextended, so I would say, like, this is important, and then this is something that I think it just should be on radar, and we should try to do as soon as we can get to.
469 00:39:38.690 ⇒ 00:39:39.070 Lauren Ford: Awesome.
470 00:39:40.130 ⇒ 00:39:50.389 Uttam Kumaran: So I think this is a good place to start, yeah, and then, again, like, anything you need over Slack, like, we’re totally available, and even this week, we can, try to chat again, probably on…
471 00:39:50.700 ⇒ 00:39:54.270 Uttam Kumaran: even tomorrow for 15 minutes, or Wednesday for a half hour, or something, just…
472 00:39:54.270 ⇒ 00:39:55.479 Lauren Ford: Yeah, for sure.
473 00:39:55.480 ⇒ 00:39:56.050 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
474 00:39:56.600 ⇒ 00:40:03.109 Lauren Ford: That’s great. Okay, thank you so much. This is super, super interesting, and I’m… I’m excited to… to get going. I feel.
475 00:40:03.110 ⇒ 00:40:11.520 Uttam Kumaran: I know it’s pretty broad, so, like, in case you’re, like, I’m jumping around too many things, like, what is the one thing I should do? I’m happy to help prioritize, so…
476 00:40:12.170 ⇒ 00:40:17.819 Lauren Ford: Well, I’ll, like, get some context first, and then I can start figuring out
477 00:40:17.890 ⇒ 00:40:35.020 Lauren Ford: where… yeah, I guess, like, if you had to say that the three things that you would make the biggest difference for this week, it would be just, like, knock out some of the low-hanging fruit, do the org chart, and the AOR could be tied to that, basically.
478 00:40:35.020 ⇒ 00:40:35.840 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah.
479 00:40:35.840 ⇒ 00:40:36.540 Lauren Ford: Great, great.
480 00:40:36.540 ⇒ 00:40:40.329 Uttam Kumaran: Like, this is something where if you’re like, hey, we should go ahead and turn on a couple of these Slack things.
481 00:40:40.850 ⇒ 00:40:47.259 Uttam Kumaran: And next Friday, we should plan to do these activities. Great, perfect, like, we’ll knock that out.
482 00:40:47.260 ⇒ 00:40:47.630 Lauren Ford: Awesome.
483 00:40:47.630 ⇒ 00:40:52.809 Uttam Kumaran: So… and yeah, again, even if there’s areas where you’re, like.
484 00:40:52.940 ⇒ 00:41:05.749 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve never done this, or I’m not sure. As long as you’re thinking about it, then you would have been the first person to really put some serious thought into any of these, so… it’s like, I’m not too worried about nailing it, I’m actually more worried about doing something.
485 00:41:06.040 ⇒ 00:41:08.110 Uttam Kumaran: You know, so…
486 00:41:08.430 ⇒ 00:41:13.689 Lauren Ford: Okay, sounds good. I can definitely think on this in, like, Start pitching you some stuff.
487 00:41:13.890 ⇒ 00:41:15.930 Lauren Ford: Pretty immediately, so that’ll be good.
488 00:41:16.150 ⇒ 00:41:16.980 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay.
489 00:41:16.980 ⇒ 00:41:17.380 Lauren Ford: Okay.
490 00:41:17.380 ⇒ 00:41:17.900 Uttam Kumaran: music.
491 00:41:17.900 ⇒ 00:41:18.650 Lauren Ford: Great!
492 00:41:18.650 ⇒ 00:41:19.900 Uttam Kumaran: Thank you, Lauren, I appreciate it.
493 00:41:19.900 ⇒ 00:41:20.710 Lauren Ford: That’s you!
494 00:41:20.710 ⇒ 00:41:21.230 Uttam Kumaran: Excited.
495 00:41:21.230 ⇒ 00:41:23.169 Lauren Ford: Yes, me too, this is great.
496 00:41:23.170 ⇒ 00:41:26.470 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, perfect. Okay. Alright. Thanks, everyone.
497 00:41:26.470 ⇒ 00:41:27.550 Lauren Ford: Thank you!
498 00:41:27.550 ⇒ 00:41:28.230 Uttam Kumaran: Bye.