Meeting Title: GM Exploration at Brainforge Date: 2025-11-07 Meeting participants: Shannon Swenson, Robert Tseng, Uttam Kumaran, Uttam
WEBVTT
1 00:01:36.220 ⇒ 00:01:37.489 Robert Tseng: Hi, Shannon.
2 00:01:38.250 ⇒ 00:01:39.289 Shannon Swenson: Hey, there you are, Robert.
3 00:01:40.000 ⇒ 00:01:42.200 Shannon Swenson: Came into focus there. How are you?
4 00:01:42.200 ⇒ 00:01:43.479 Robert Tseng: Good, how are you?
5 00:01:43.650 ⇒ 00:01:47.499 Shannon Swenson: I’m in an attic in Austin, Texas, so how about that?
6 00:01:47.500 ⇒ 00:01:47.930 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
7 00:01:47.930 ⇒ 00:01:50.820 Shannon Swenson: It gets warm. I’m good.
8 00:01:51.480 ⇒ 00:01:52.070 Robert Tseng: Okay.
9 00:01:52.360 ⇒ 00:01:56.150 Robert Tseng: I’m in New York, I know you talked to you, Tom, earlier this week.
10 00:01:58.230 ⇒ 00:02:08.070 Shannon Swenson: Yeah, I’ve enjoyed getting to know him this year, just in passing at a, at a conference in, or the meetup, that, meetup that you folks had with,
11 00:02:08.340 ⇒ 00:02:22.319 Shannon Swenson: Lori and the operating app. Right. And yeah, we’ve stayed in touch. I’m super impressed with him, and what you guys are building, and yeah, had a really good lunch this week, and he thought you and I… it’d be good for you and I to chat.
12 00:02:22.790 ⇒ 00:02:25.809 Robert Tseng: Sure, yeah, I mean, he kind of shared some notes with me from his…
13 00:02:27.070 ⇒ 00:02:44.950 Robert Tseng: It was lunch with you. I know we’re trying to, like, figure out, like, if there’s a role here for you in the go-to-market side. I’d love to kind of hear if you’ve put any more thought into that, and I mean, I have a couple different things I’d like to talk about, too, but I just want to kind of pick off… pick up where you left off with him.
14 00:02:45.640 ⇒ 00:02:46.960 Shannon Swenson: Yeah,
15 00:02:47.600 ⇒ 00:02:55.390 Shannon Swenson: Yeah, I mean, I have lots of thoughts. It’s, just, first of all, just very exciting for me, because…
16 00:02:55.460 ⇒ 00:03:15.349 Shannon Swenson: One thing about my conversations with Utem is, like, he’s articulating some things, that I’ve long thought about, but hadn’t articulated in the same way. I mean, I went to Macomb School of Business, like, on our executive track a long time ago, and, you know, then you just jump into the world of consulting, but sometimes the lingo is.
17 00:03:15.350 ⇒ 00:03:29.310 Shannon Swenson: has updated, and one of those examples is this GM idea, where you folks might potentially scale by bringing in, people that give them some accountability and give them some
18 00:03:29.310 ⇒ 00:03:46.610 Shannon Swenson: opportunity to chase the upside. I’ve been… I’ve been doing a similar thing, but I didn’t call it that. I didn’t call it a GM role, and in my last two places I was at, though, we would craft something kind of similar, where
19 00:03:47.120 ⇒ 00:04:04.080 Shannon Swenson: one person might come in and own, like, a product offering, or another one would come in and own a segment, and and kind of… the idea was to turn them loose and, you know, see what they could grow. I, in both cases, didn’t get buy-in from my leadership.
20 00:04:04.210 ⇒ 00:04:10.509 Shannon Swenson: Because, you know, you gotta give them the upside as well, and tend to… in more,
21 00:04:10.560 ⇒ 00:04:27.760 Shannon Swenson: long-term businesses, you know, people want to be a little more protective of these things, and that’s… it’s a little… maybe I’ve been a little bit too novel for… of an idea for companies. But you guys are obviously in a startup phase, and… and it sounds like getting quickly to a scale-up, and…
22 00:04:28.080 ⇒ 00:04:36.799 Shannon Swenson: So, I’m just excited about that, put some kind of language around that, Utem was helpful to me. Anyway, he and I riffed, quite a bit.
23 00:04:37.280 ⇒ 00:04:40.350 Shannon Swenson: That, you know, on all kinds… partnerships,
24 00:04:40.580 ⇒ 00:04:44.019 Shannon Swenson: Little bit of on sales, but yeah, go-to-market, and…
25 00:04:44.300 ⇒ 00:04:45.879 Shannon Swenson: What we might do for you.
26 00:04:46.380 ⇒ 00:04:58.450 Robert Tseng: Sure, yeah, I guess, you know, every time just messaged me, he’ll jump on when he can, he’s coming from another call, but, yeah, I mean, I… yeah, whether we call it GM, or I mean, yeah, whatever we label it, yeah, I think.
27 00:04:58.450 ⇒ 00:04:59.070 Shannon Swenson: Yeah, yeah.
28 00:04:59.070 ⇒ 00:05:10.430 Robert Tseng: right. I think that’s, that’s something we’ve been talking about, like, what does this next kind of phase look like for us? If we just run the traditional delivery model, like.
29 00:05:10.550 ⇒ 00:05:25.410 Robert Tseng: we know what the structure is, we know that, like, we have pods of 3 that can handle another 5 clients, like, we could just keep growing that way, but that’s neither of our interests. I think we want to think about, like, well, how do we kind of…
30 00:05:26.360 ⇒ 00:05:35.790 Robert Tseng: bring the best of what we’ve learned from, like, the product side of the world, where we were both kind of strong operators, I would say, having led teams at various companies before.
31 00:05:36.130 ⇒ 00:05:54.649 Robert Tseng: consulting, and there’s always kind of, like, this idea of, like, there’s a founding opera… like, there’s founding operators within, like, early stage, like, product startups, that kind of function as GMs over, different, like, business functions, right? And,
32 00:05:54.950 ⇒ 00:06:01.819 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think, like, You know, at least in our… at least in this… in this model, the…
33 00:06:02.350 ⇒ 00:06:13.249 Robert Tseng: everything kind of has to tie into, like, our service… our delivery folks, they are the product, I guess, and we start to be constrained by,
34 00:06:14.370 ⇒ 00:06:17.810 Robert Tseng: their output, so as much as, like.
35 00:06:18.030 ⇒ 00:06:23.340 Robert Tseng: We can enable them to, use…
36 00:06:23.980 ⇒ 00:06:27.440 Robert Tseng: the AI tooling that we build out internally to.
37 00:06:28.100 ⇒ 00:06:36.210 Robert Tseng: make their delivery process more efficient, they can handle more scale. That’s how we unlock these, like.
38 00:06:36.580 ⇒ 00:06:40.949 Robert Tseng: You know, innovative margin opportunities in this business model.
39 00:06:42.470 ⇒ 00:06:51.199 Robert Tseng: And then also kind of enabling on the sales side, which, you know, is mostly… I mean, it’s all just Utam and I closing deals right now. Yeah.
40 00:06:51.760 ⇒ 00:07:06.990 Robert Tseng: yeah, we’ve, like, kind of run different campaigns, we know what’s working, what’s not, to some extent. Like, we could just diversify our channels and just hire a traditional, like, marketer to kind of come in and grow that, but we do think that, hey, there’s maybe, like.
41 00:07:06.990 ⇒ 00:07:12.650 Robert Tseng: There’s a better… there might be a better way to do this with somebody who’s more integrated.
42 00:07:12.650 ⇒ 00:07:29.600 Robert Tseng: with kind of, like, the core operations of our business as well, who has a delivery background, like, in consulting, I mean, some sort of consulting background, and isn’t just going to run the same playbook, kind of here, you know, here and there, and…
43 00:07:29.610 ⇒ 00:07:41.350 Robert Tseng: yeah, like, I guess that’s… that’s kind of what we were… we’re trying to assemble, at this point. So, I guess, like, my role… yeah, I mean, I run Brainforge with UTAM.
44 00:07:42.340 ⇒ 00:08:00.949 Robert Tseng: I run GoToMarket, which is basically sales and marketing underneath it, and so I guess, you know, when Utam told me, like, about your background and where we could put you in, it was more having you on the sales side, I would say, and just being able to, kind of.
45 00:08:00.950 ⇒ 00:08:01.450 Shannon Swenson: Okay.
46 00:08:01.450 ⇒ 00:08:10.190 Robert Tseng: there. Obviously, like, maybe this conversation changes and delivery ends up being something you’re more interested in, but it would be one or the other, is kind of what…
47 00:08:10.190 ⇒ 00:08:15.550 Shannon Swenson: Well, that’s the beauty of, companies of your size, isn’t it? Yeah. Like, it’s… it’s… you can come in and…
48 00:08:15.810 ⇒ 00:08:20.219 Shannon Swenson: See what’s… where you can make an impact and… and re-evaluate.
49 00:08:20.870 ⇒ 00:08:23.610 Shannon Swenson: Yeah. Pivot, yeah. That’s exciting.
50 00:08:24.800 ⇒ 00:08:36.519 Robert Tseng: Cool. So yeah, I mean, I think, like, where I would like to go with this conversation is basically to figure out, like, what’s, like, an initial, like, kind of scope that we can…
51 00:08:36.520 ⇒ 00:08:51.100 Robert Tseng: bring you in for. Like, I know that you’re kind of at a place where you want to consult agencies as well, and you’re figuring out what your capacity looks like, but also, you know, I think
52 00:08:51.420 ⇒ 00:08:53.219 Robert Tseng: You know, we… we have some…
53 00:08:53.380 ⇒ 00:08:57.300 Robert Tseng: I mean, we just have to kind of start you somewhere, I guess, is kind of.
54 00:08:57.300 ⇒ 00:08:57.880 Shannon Swenson: Yeah.
55 00:08:57.880 ⇒ 00:08:58.380 Robert Tseng: with these.
56 00:08:58.380 ⇒ 00:09:20.479 Shannon Swenson: That’s exactly where Otem and I, were going. I mean, my availability, I’m sure he relayed to you, because I walked into that lunch and was like, wow, wasn’t expecting this, but I’m available. The last place I was at, it’s supposed to be a 3-year investment in me, and these guys kind of pulled the ripcord early, and,
57 00:09:20.480 ⇒ 00:09:37.709 Shannon Swenson: And, you know, things weren’t as they seemed. We’re parting as friends, we’re… everything’s amicable, but, I am… I am available. And it is a kind of one of those inflection points where I’m like, what’s next? And I really know the agency side, but I’ve also been…
58 00:09:37.710 ⇒ 00:09:52.130 Shannon Swenson: top sales guy at a large SaaS that was embedded within Automatic, the people behind WordPress. It’s kind of a unicorn. I did quite well there, lots of marketing background from, places like FinTech.
59 00:09:52.130 ⇒ 00:10:09.869 Shannon Swenson: healthcare, advertising. I think a lot of this is just a function of getting older, and my career is just kind of tracked along as digital has grown, so I’ve got a lot of flexibility on where I can plug in. The classic
60 00:10:10.130 ⇒ 00:10:16.330 Shannon Swenson: Consultant would be, like, asking about where does it hurt, what keeps you up at night, those kinds of things.
61 00:10:16.940 ⇒ 00:10:21.279 Shannon Swenson: I… that feels like… like, if you’re gonna discern that question.
62 00:10:21.330 ⇒ 00:10:38.849 Shannon Swenson: Maybe that could be a place, also, that I could plug in and just take… start to take some things off of either of your plates, or other people that may be, getting blocked, or go solve something very specific. That could be more of an, you know, kind of a…
63 00:10:38.930 ⇒ 00:10:47.409 Shannon Swenson: Sprint consult, feels like a good place to start. Ultimate offered to…
64 00:10:47.570 ⇒ 00:10:56.560 Shannon Swenson: just, like, you know, come in and look around, and I was the one that said, look under the hood in my email there, but, that’s… that’s another approach, just…
65 00:10:56.680 ⇒ 00:10:59.370 Shannon Swenson: just play observer, for a bit.
66 00:10:59.420 ⇒ 00:11:19.110 Shannon Swenson: And, that’s a little more nebulous. I know sometimes, and you folks have a… have a KPI culture, we’d want to be, you know, intentional about what the heck I’m… who is this guy, and what am I actually doing? I recognize that. I’d probably look to you two, to help me shape that, but…
67 00:11:19.870 ⇒ 00:11:23.800 Shannon Swenson: Yeah, that, it’s, it’s kind of wide open,
68 00:11:23.950 ⇒ 00:11:25.280 Shannon Swenson: As far as I see it.
69 00:11:25.660 ⇒ 00:11:36.319 Robert Tseng: Okay. Yeah, well then let’s start to kind of, like, talk more in the direction on the go-to-market side, and, like, where we can kind of put you in there. Yeah, I think obviously bringing you in, catching you up,
70 00:11:36.440 ⇒ 00:11:43.930 Robert Tseng: You know, is… we have, different… I mean, I already have, like, a list of, you know.
71 00:11:44.660 ⇒ 00:11:51.580 Robert Tseng: Definitely early in the week is when we do a lot of our planning functions, and so I think having you kind of come in and sit in on those is probably helpful.
72 00:11:51.600 ⇒ 00:12:06.909 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, we don’t… our documentation isn’t super great, but we have everything. People can point you in different directions, we have all of our meetings recorded, and so we have, like, different ways of being able to just share knowledge with you async.
73 00:12:07.100 ⇒ 00:12:22.729 Robert Tseng: I think, like, I mean, I wrote the… I build our go-to-market playbooks, and, like, kind of, I’m kind of building out our… in the process of building out our service offerings, and so I think I would like assistance there on… I mean, I kind of view it as…
74 00:12:22.930 ⇒ 00:12:37.670 Robert Tseng: you know, ones like sales enablement, kind of offer construction, building, kind of matching our services, being able to create, kind of, like, the… the different modules that we… I guess we have packages,
75 00:12:37.970 ⇒ 00:12:45.389 Robert Tseng: But the only ones that can really articulate it are probably me and Utam, and so I think that’s probably what keeps us from being able to scale up our sales motion.
76 00:12:45.390 ⇒ 00:12:46.940 Shannon Swenson: Yeah, it’s very common, yeah.
77 00:12:46.940 ⇒ 00:12:59.850 Robert Tseng: yeah, it’s, you know, we’re constrained, you know, just by he and I closing deals. So right now, like, the main metric that we’ve been looking at is, like, meetings booked. We know that if we book meetings,
78 00:12:59.880 ⇒ 00:13:16.189 Robert Tseng: I mean, our goal is really just book 10 meetings with us a week, and yeah, depending on, like, the type of qualified lead, we kind of know how to bucket them, and we know what the… we know what the numbers will look like. Like, we… we do… we do enough volume to at least have some direction on… Wow.
79 00:13:16.540 ⇒ 00:13:21.320 Shannon Swenson: Is the volume primarily coming in through your website? Is that your main demand gen?
80 00:13:21.320 ⇒ 00:13:22.080 Robert Tseng: No, it’s actually not.
81 00:13:22.080 ⇒ 00:13:23.370 Shannon Swenson: partners, or…
82 00:13:23.370 ⇒ 00:13:32.189 Robert Tseng: And Jen, inbound for us comes in a few ways. I would say, partnerships is one, which is why we have another kind of
83 00:13:32.800 ⇒ 00:13:39.989 Robert Tseng: kind of more senior advisor, kind of someone like you, who we’ve been trialing in this type of GM role on the partnership side.
84 00:13:39.990 ⇒ 00:13:41.390 Shannon Swenson: Oh, okay.
85 00:13:41.720 ⇒ 00:13:48.779 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so she’s been great so far. Also, Austin-based, we can make intros, but she’s,
86 00:13:49.210 ⇒ 00:13:57.040 Robert Tseng: Yeah, we’ve been, like, dabbling more into, like, longer-term RFP proposals, and so that’s kind of her… that’s her world. She was, like, kind of.
87 00:13:57.040 ⇒ 00:14:11.809 Shannon Swenson: Yeah, oh, I love that. You know, so many people dismiss RFPs. I’m getting all excited, because I couldn’t convince my last guys, like, I developed rubrics and, like, had, I had a, like… and I’m getting all excited here on that, because, like.
88 00:14:12.030 ⇒ 00:14:20.070 Shannon Swenson: you know, our piece kind of suck, and they’re hard… they’re hard to sell against, but I have… I have had success. The… I closed a…
89 00:14:20.300 ⇒ 00:14:39.200 Shannon Swenson: It was a three-year, multi-year deal with Mayo Clinic. It was, like, $750,000 a year from an RP. And yeah, it took time to get that deal, you know, tightened up, but anyway, it got all excited there, but I agree with you. I think you’ve got a strong instinct.
90 00:14:39.570 ⇒ 00:14:40.350 Shannon Swenson: Okay. God.
91 00:14:40.590 ⇒ 00:14:45.280 Robert Tseng: Great, yeah, I mean, I think that’s what your exact… your anecdote checks out, like, I think.
92 00:14:45.280 ⇒ 00:14:46.020 Shannon Swenson: Yeah.
93 00:14:46.020 ⇒ 00:14:57.499 Robert Tseng: We’re like, well, these are, like, minimum $500K a year deals, so, like, you know, it’s gonna take a long time to close, could be 3 to 6 months, possibly. I mean, people say up to a year, even. But yeah, I think that’s, like.
94 00:14:57.590 ⇒ 00:15:07.879 Robert Tseng: She’s kind of helping us, like, kind of, break new ground on what we need to do to kind of win those deals. I would say, like, week to week, our…
95 00:15:07.890 ⇒ 00:15:30.899 Robert Tseng: what fills our pipeline is really, you know, through… we have a direct outbound motion that’s primarily through LinkedIn and email. Okay. These are activations around events, so we kind of, like, construct experiments around different ICPs on a… and we’re just testing it. We’re still in a place where we don’t have one that we’re always hitting. Like, I think,
96 00:15:31.230 ⇒ 00:15:48.889 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so, like, you know, we… the past… the past few months, we’ve selected 3 ICPs, and we’ve basically just kind of discussed, like, where are these people, like, what events are they going to show up at, like, how do we, like, get in front of them? And we’ve been running, kind of, like, outbound campaigns against… against them. So…
97 00:15:48.890 ⇒ 00:16:12.840 Robert Tseng: just from that alone, that probably gets us, like, 6 meetings a week, I would say, like, 5 or 6 meetings a week. Then, like, inbound comes in, I was saying, through content, through referrals from partners, like, so vendor partners, so we, you know, we’re an IT services company, so we work, you know, quite broadly across a different set of BI… we’re pretty agnostic to what BI tool we use.
98 00:16:12.840 ⇒ 00:16:30.659 Robert Tseng: data warehouse, ETL tool. So, yeah, UTAM’s definitely a lot closer on that and has helped build up a good partner network for us, that’s able to bring us leads that way. We do have a few service provider partners, but it’s always kind of a dance to kind of figure out what’s… whether or not what they pass us is.
99 00:16:30.660 ⇒ 00:16:30.990 Shannon Swenson: Yeah.
100 00:16:30.990 ⇒ 00:16:33.120 Robert Tseng: bid and to work together, so that’s the…
101 00:16:33.120 ⇒ 00:16:34.730 Shannon Swenson: And who does what, and, you know.
102 00:16:34.730 ⇒ 00:16:41.350 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so that’s kind of like partnership… partnership land on that side. Sorry.
103 00:16:41.850 ⇒ 00:17:01.770 Shannon Swenson: Can I probe a little bit more about… there’s another, class of partners and… agencies, and I’m curious your thoughts, opinion, experience partnering with agencies, because it’s my understanding… I mean, we’ve had a couple of lunches here, I don’t know your business too intimately yet, but…
104 00:17:02.190 ⇒ 00:17:13.560 Shannon Swenson: You effectively… my takeaway is that you folks effectively sell into marketers, but you sell… from a… from a technologist or analy… Excuse me, data…
105 00:17:13.560 ⇒ 00:17:29.149 Shannon Swenson: you kind of solve that piece, which may be a mystery for marketers in general. Even really good marketers, recognize that they’re not quants, they’re more marketers in their, kind of, their, persona. And so.
106 00:17:29.540 ⇒ 00:17:40.150 Shannon Swenson: agencies, typically creative agencies, I’m talking, like, marketing services and or, you know, more traditional design-build, type of shops.
107 00:17:40.150 ⇒ 00:17:51.560 Shannon Swenson: they have those relationships, and they have access to various initiatives through, you know, fall planning and these kinds of things. They have insight into opportunity, but…
108 00:17:51.560 ⇒ 00:17:58.660 Shannon Swenson: the… the, you know, what are we gonna do with AI is the perpetual, you know, question for the last couple, two, three years.
109 00:17:58.660 ⇒ 00:18:13.460 Shannon Swenson: And, it seems to me like if you folks came in to help enable their creative and or upsell their work, that could be a channel. You may have… I may be over…
110 00:18:13.970 ⇒ 00:18:24.260 Shannon Swenson: stating everything, and you may have rolled all that up into service providers, I don’t know, but have… I’m curious of your experience working with agencies. Very long-winded question.
111 00:18:24.500 ⇒ 00:18:30.830 Robert Tseng: No, that’s a good question. I think, yeah, sorry every time I saw your message, I was… we were just talking, so… Yeah.
112 00:18:30.830 ⇒ 00:18:31.800 Uttam Kumaran: I waited.
113 00:18:31.890 ⇒ 00:18:33.119 Shannon Swenson: I see you, man.
114 00:18:33.120 ⇒ 00:18:43.640 Robert Tseng: Yeah, with agencies, so, I mean, yeah, there’s, like, the creative agencies, or, and, like, paid media, or kind of marketing, traditional marketing agency.
115 00:18:43.640 ⇒ 00:19:00.289 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, inevitably, whether or not they bring us into a client, whenever we get into a situation, we’re always kind of, like, working adjacent or alongside them anyway. So, that has always been on my mind, that we should be able to develop a stronger partner offering there. I would say that, like.
116 00:19:00.300 ⇒ 00:19:11.610 Robert Tseng: what is… which we’ve entered a couple deals like that before. What I don’t like about it is that we don’t own the relationship, ultimately, and
117 00:19:11.910 ⇒ 00:19:27.430 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think, well, that’s, you know, that’s one thing not to like about it, but they do get us into doors that we wouldn’t be able to on our own, which I think is helpful. They can be very disappointed about, like, the problems that we solve, and so that’s… that’s… it is… it is, like, worth continuing to build that.
118 00:19:27.460 ⇒ 00:19:39.060 Robert Tseng: I don’t really think our AI offering is really designed… was packaged well enough to be able to go in front of a creative agency and be like, this is how our work really enables you.
119 00:19:39.280 ⇒ 00:19:43.150 Robert Tseng: I would say our stickiest clients are the ones where we’re really, like.
120 00:19:43.410 ⇒ 00:19:47.899 Robert Tseng: owning their data infrastructure at this point. So, like, there’s kind of, like.
121 00:19:47.900 ⇒ 00:19:49.250 Shannon Swenson: I see, I see, okay.
122 00:19:49.250 ⇒ 00:20:01.259 Robert Tseng: push and pull of our business, where, yes, we want to keep pushing AI, because I think that’s kind of, you know, that’s where our upside is, and that’s where a lot of our attention is going to.
123 00:20:01.260 ⇒ 00:20:14.929 Robert Tseng: But when clients… what retains us with clients is really kind of, like, our data expertise, our ability to help them make decisions, which I think is what I think is the most important. We’re not quants, we’re not finance, like.
124 00:20:14.930 ⇒ 00:20:24.510 Robert Tseng: specific people either. But what we are able to do is help people to wrangle data and help them make decisions off of it in a tangible, like.
125 00:20:24.510 ⇒ 00:20:37.629 Robert Tseng: way that they can see it in their books. And, like, that’s the narrative that we’ve been able to share with them. So, I think, you know, this is something you would understand a bit more if you came, you know, when you come into our business.
126 00:20:37.630 ⇒ 00:20:38.900 Shannon Swenson: Yeah, of course, yeah.
127 00:20:38.900 ⇒ 00:20:58.889 Robert Tseng: you’ll see that, like, hey, you know, the AI side actually, I think, is, like, it’s a little bit more… it’s less… it’s less developed than our data offering. So, I think that’s something that, you know, if I were to make, like, a 10X bet for 2026, like, that’s what’s going to, like, triple to 5X our growth
128 00:20:58.890 ⇒ 00:21:06.740 Robert Tseng: If we can really get that in order, and, like, have our AI, offerings kind of be at the forefront of, like, what we do.
129 00:21:07.370 ⇒ 00:21:16.160 Uttam: Yeah, Shannon, like, maybe one point on that. Nobody, does both of these things. There’s a lot of people that do this type of data work.
130 00:21:16.450 ⇒ 00:21:21.999 Uttam: There are a lot of, like, solo and big companies that do the AI work.
131 00:21:22.480 ⇒ 00:21:39.840 Uttam: But fundamentally, a lot of AI is beta engineering, and their AI work cannot succeed without really great structured data, and so we’re in, like, a very great position to solve both of those, where we have, like, a very little, like, capabilities gap.
132 00:21:39.950 ⇒ 00:21:43.229 Uttam: But we haven’t not packaged it as such.
133 00:21:43.470 ⇒ 00:21:48.340 Uttam: You know, mainly just because it’s, like, yeah, it’s just not,
134 00:21:48.470 ⇒ 00:22:00.439 Uttam: We just… the data stuff was so easy to package, because the packaging is, like, both of our resumes, and so we started there, but I think there’s a huge opportunity on the AI side, especially given
135 00:22:00.580 ⇒ 00:22:03.940 Uttam: like, that’s where the directive is. There’s not as many…
136 00:22:04.060 ⇒ 00:22:17.539 Uttam: I would say, like, yes, there’s a lot of, like, data directives, but at least we know every company that’s serious right now is thinking about AI, and at least they would have probably tried to hire, or tried to do themselves, and probably failed at this point.
137 00:22:17.730 ⇒ 00:22:19.579 Uttam: You know, so there’s a huge opportunity to kind of.
138 00:22:19.580 ⇒ 00:22:20.070 Shannon Swenson: Yeah, yeah, actually.
139 00:22:20.070 ⇒ 00:22:22.080 Uttam: do work there.
140 00:22:22.480 ⇒ 00:22:25.639 Uttam: Versus even just, like, 7, 8 months ago.
141 00:22:26.630 ⇒ 00:22:35.060 Shannon Swenson: Yeah, that… yeah, that rings… that reminds me of our very first conversation when I met you, because that’s where I kind of learned how you think about a data stack.
142 00:22:35.360 ⇒ 00:22:43.440 Shannon Swenson: And, applying, analysis to that, and visualization, and then ultimately the AI layer.
143 00:22:43.600 ⇒ 00:22:44.680 Uttam: Yes.
144 00:22:45.530 ⇒ 00:22:55.370 Shannon Swenson: I… the… I’ll tell you just anecdotally, what comes to my mind is, like, I… when I started one of the first web agencies here in Austin.
145 00:22:55.630 ⇒ 00:23:01.649 Shannon Swenson: we had to convince people to, like, about the web. Like, you need a website, and…
146 00:23:01.730 ⇒ 00:23:15.770 Shannon Swenson: of course, who knew that the web would become, like, it would… everybody would become a driver, and, you know, they’re delivering food and people to… to places that’s kind of… as… as the web has evolved. This…
147 00:23:15.950 ⇒ 00:23:22.379 Shannon Swenson: this feels very similar to me. Like, you win by being teachers and…
148 00:23:22.430 ⇒ 00:23:34.739 Shannon Swenson: Coaches and cheerleaders, and thought leadership, and you’re, like, just kind of looking at your website and what you are putting out into the world will win.
149 00:23:34.740 ⇒ 00:23:43.409 Shannon Swenson: Because it’s so new, and then that unique proposition that you have, Utem, that you just articulated, bridging that gap.
150 00:23:43.850 ⇒ 00:23:48.899 Shannon Swenson: will help with it. It’ll strengthen that position. It puts you in place to…
151 00:23:49.330 ⇒ 00:23:55.699 Shannon Swenson: Define the offering, pricing, tiering, all kinds of exciting things, so…
152 00:23:56.050 ⇒ 00:24:00.900 Shannon Swenson: Anyway, don’t know where I’m going with that, but that’s awesome. Yeah.
153 00:24:02.070 ⇒ 00:24:02.750 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
154 00:24:03.830 ⇒ 00:24:21.089 Robert Tseng: So yeah, I think, you know, just to kind of wrap that conversation on the agency, so what a brand agency looking… a creative agency looking to work with an AI-only company, what they’d be able to get is they’d be able to get somebody who’s doing some, like, basic work on, like.
155 00:24:21.090 ⇒ 00:24:34.059 Robert Tseng: you know, what they call GEO, or, like, GPT Engine, like, or, like, you know, optimization. So, kind of how you rank on, like, on GPT search. They’d be able to do some, like, light,
156 00:24:34.080 ⇒ 00:24:45.330 Robert Tseng: like, AI-assisted reviews of creative, being able to, like, provide some, like, light labeling on it, and, like, that’s pretty much it. That’s the extent of, like, AI, like, AI-assisted, like, work that I.
157 00:24:45.330 ⇒ 00:24:46.040 Shannon Swenson: Right.
158 00:24:46.040 ⇒ 00:25:03.590 Robert Tseng: agencies. We have a lot more depth, to, like, the AI engineering capabilities we have. Okay, so, I mean, there’s… I left out of maybe a couple other things, but I don’t need to digress on that. And, yeah, I just… I think that that’s kind of, like, being able to, like, match, like, capable to…
159 00:25:03.850 ⇒ 00:25:06.579 Robert Tseng: To… to build out that offer and say.
160 00:25:07.860 ⇒ 00:25:22.429 Robert Tseng: you know, this is what differentiates us as, like, an AI engineering partner, being, like, a data-first AI engineering partner. Like, yes, a lot of the narrative, like, lives with Utam and I as we’re, like, describing it, but, like, getting more of that out into the wild, and…
161 00:25:22.430 ⇒ 00:25:30.910 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like you said, there may be an education gap, which is why we have a workshop product that we’ve pitched and executed with a few
162 00:25:31.810 ⇒ 00:25:55.950 Robert Tseng: buyers, but then the leads, or the sales cycle is just longer on AI. Like, there’s, like, they need to learn what it can do, they need to know what… pick an area that they want to solve, and then it kind of ends up being something more like a traditional software engineering kind of a delivery cycle, where there’s an expectation for some sort of pilot or demo, that we have to spin up for them, and then
163 00:25:55.950 ⇒ 00:26:00.150 Robert Tseng: And then we can… then we can move into the purchase. So, some way of, like.
164 00:26:00.150 ⇒ 00:26:03.160 Robert Tseng: Yeah, needing, like, some leadership around being able to
165 00:26:03.200 ⇒ 00:26:22.570 Robert Tseng: understand… deeply understand the AI sales cycle to shorten it. Like, I could tell you everything on the data side on, like, how we… on how we… how we sell right now. So, I think, like, you know, if this is an area of interest for you, and something that you want to kind of spearhead, yeah, I mean, I’d encourage you, like, especially if we kind of bring you in to…
166 00:26:22.570 ⇒ 00:26:27.430 Robert Tseng: Look around to, you know, To, to really… that, that, that could be…
167 00:26:27.430 ⇒ 00:26:31.450 Robert Tseng: Like, kind of your, that could be where you start.
168 00:26:31.660 ⇒ 00:26:32.510 Shannon Swenson: Okay.
169 00:26:32.510 ⇒ 00:26:44.119 Robert Tseng: I think, like, you know, obviously your background is, you know, you’ve worked in a variety of different technical agencies. Seems like you know what it’s like being at the start of, like.
170 00:26:44.140 ⇒ 00:26:55.979 Robert Tseng: of… of an emerging technology and being able to kind of be the educator and service provider in that… in that article. So, I think… It’s fun. That’s, that’s really what…
171 00:26:55.980 ⇒ 00:27:05.079 Robert Tseng: what the times are kind of calling for right now, and… Yeah. Yeah, I think that that sounds like, if we were to kind of define it, like, something that we could start you in.
172 00:27:05.950 ⇒ 00:27:11.760 Shannon Swenson: That sounds right to me. It… it… Any sense of,
173 00:27:12.060 ⇒ 00:27:18.039 Shannon Swenson: like, timing? Is this for a couple of sprints, do you think? And then we kind of regroup, and… or…
174 00:27:18.140 ⇒ 00:27:20.020 Shannon Swenson: Yeah, I’m open.
175 00:27:20.280 ⇒ 00:27:22.209 Robert Tseng: Yeah. How you might like the engagement.
176 00:27:22.340 ⇒ 00:27:23.220 Shannon Swenson: Do you have any thoughts on that?
177 00:27:23.220 ⇒ 00:27:30.159 Robert Tseng: Utamai, we can kind of, like, talk about this a bit more offline, too, but, you know, maybe something… I mean, we typically…
178 00:27:30.980 ⇒ 00:27:50.570 Robert Tseng: you know, this would be, like, a 10-hour a week for maybe, like, 2 to 4 weeks. I mean, we could speed it up and do more hours in 2 weeks or whatever, but, something like that, I think, would be… could be a good trial, to see if this is gonna, you know, if we like where things are headed on both sides.
179 00:27:50.570 ⇒ 00:27:51.220 Shannon Swenson: Okay.
180 00:27:51.540 ⇒ 00:28:02.719 Shannon Swenson: That sounds right to me. There, you know, we’re up against the holidays here, and we’re gonna start losing people to the, you know, and schedules.
181 00:28:02.720 ⇒ 00:28:03.810 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
182 00:28:03.870 ⇒ 00:28:10.520 Shannon Swenson: So, I kind of like that idea, just to sprint… let’s see, Thanksgiving is the, what, the week is, the 27th, so…
183 00:28:10.740 ⇒ 00:28:13.610 Shannon Swenson: Start as soon as next week and the following week.
184 00:28:13.890 ⇒ 00:28:24.059 Shannon Swenson: And… and maybe do a… kind of a wrap-up early the week of Thanksgiving, if you guys are around. Yeah. I’ll let y’all talk, but I’m just flaring an idea here.
185 00:28:24.060 ⇒ 00:28:29.360 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, I mean, if you don’t mind a weekend message, I think that feels right, to be able to.
186 00:28:29.860 ⇒ 00:28:30.420 Shannon Swenson: Okay.
187 00:28:30.560 ⇒ 00:28:39.630 Robert Tseng: while this is top of mind for everyone, just, like, kind of run this for two weeks and kind of see what happens. Yeah, if not, then we’d probably push it to after Thanksgiving, is kind of how I do.
188 00:28:39.630 ⇒ 00:28:56.710 Shannon Swenson: Right, right. Yeah. Okay, well, I’ll let you two visit on that. Yes, weekend, evenings, weekends. I mean, I’m kind of an always-on guy. I was, like, an executive the last couple places I’ve been. It’s kind of expected. So that’s fine with me. And I also know the stage of your business.
189 00:28:56.760 ⇒ 00:28:59.969 Shannon Swenson: Do you… do you guys, are you guys…
190 00:29:00.200 ⇒ 00:29:04.499 Shannon Swenson: Always on, or are you, you pretty good about setting some boundaries.
191 00:29:04.500 ⇒ 00:29:05.949 Uttam: Robert’s better than me.
192 00:29:06.600 ⇒ 00:29:07.960 Shannon Swenson: It’s setting boundaries.
193 00:29:07.980 ⇒ 00:29:20.189 Uttam: Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, well, we all, you know, we all have our faults. I think both of us care just a lot, and we have pretty high expectations for delivering work that is an ROI to our clients.
194 00:29:20.610 ⇒ 00:29:21.490 Shannon Swenson: Yeah.
195 00:29:21.510 ⇒ 00:29:29.090 Uttam: and also… I don’t think we have a problem of, like, we want to micromanage, or we want…
196 00:29:29.330 ⇒ 00:29:40.730 Uttam: both of us really want to hand off, like, every single aspect. We just have not had the right people in the place, or the right budget, or what have you.
197 00:29:40.800 ⇒ 00:29:53.319 Uttam: Or, you know, to do that. And, you know, we’ve gotten a… we have a great team of people that are really great executors. We have a couple of them that may elevate to, like, be able to actually, like, own and create a roadmap.
198 00:29:53.400 ⇒ 00:29:56.400 Uttam: And then this is where, like, we kind of go out and see, like, okay.
199 00:29:56.520 ⇒ 00:29:59.330 Uttam: who can fit, but I don’t know, like, in the last…
200 00:29:59.520 ⇒ 00:30:04.829 Uttam: few months, in the last 6 months, our business has changed a lot, and so the opportunity is, like.
201 00:30:05.050 ⇒ 00:30:07.909 Uttam: Just sitting there, so it’s… it is hard to log off.
202 00:30:08.020 ⇒ 00:30:09.440 Uttam: You know, cause it’s like…
203 00:30:09.440 ⇒ 00:30:09.770 Shannon Swenson: Yeah.
204 00:30:09.770 ⇒ 00:30:12.090 Uttam: We are probably, like, for example.
205 00:30:12.520 ⇒ 00:30:20.960 Uttam: Robert and I, this week, we didn’t get to it, but we wanted to kind of look through all of our past leads. I’m sure we are 3 emails away from another 30 grand a month.
206 00:30:21.450 ⇒ 00:30:26.199 Uttam: Right? And that is as easy and as hard as that sounds.
207 00:30:26.700 ⇒ 00:30:46.230 Uttam: It’s hard because both of us are the only people that know all of the people that we’ve talked to, yes, in our CRM, but we’re probably the only two people that can go look… look back at the video, figure out what we talked about, find the email, structure a follow-up message, hey, how’s it going? I know we last talked in Q2, are things the right way? Send it.
208 00:30:46.410 ⇒ 00:31:01.179 Uttam: I’m sure if we sent 100 emails, especially given how fast our materials have changed, our case studies, all of that, we would get some hits. But again, like, that is just another thing that both of us are the only people that are capable of doing, so that’s…
209 00:31:01.360 ⇒ 00:31:07.940 Uttam: That’s the tough part, but again, it’s better than… it’s better than not. Like, we’ve talked to now hundreds and hundreds of people.
210 00:31:08.290 ⇒ 00:31:12.020 Uttam: People are just texting me that they want to work with us every day.
211 00:31:12.320 ⇒ 00:31:17.829 Uttam: And so it’s like, it’s a completely different environment than where we were 6 months ago.
212 00:31:18.600 ⇒ 00:31:32.849 Shannon Swenson: That’s another area I could help. That’s incredible, you’ve got a pipe that’s absolutely flowing, sounds like maybe overflowing. It’s… I’m a sales guy at heart, right? So, just keep that in mind. Obviously, you would need to understand
213 00:31:32.850 ⇒ 00:31:39.699 Shannon Swenson: The, you know, the positioning and messaging framework and everything else you’ve… you’ve got, and what wins and how.
214 00:31:39.800 ⇒ 00:31:45.120 Shannon Swenson: And I wouldn’t expect to come in to take any of that off your plate, but that is just another area
215 00:31:45.480 ⇒ 00:31:58.339 Shannon Swenson: It’s quite common, actually, I’ll come in and I’ll start there. Let’s just put some deals… let’s put some points on the board, and I’ll fast learn, kind of, the offering, the landscape, etc, the buyer.
216 00:31:58.630 ⇒ 00:32:02.250 Shannon Swenson: So, just something to consider when you two reconnect.
217 00:32:02.590 ⇒ 00:32:03.140 Uttam: Cool.
218 00:32:03.680 ⇒ 00:32:04.370 Shannon Swenson: So…
219 00:32:05.520 ⇒ 00:32:06.969 Uttam: Okay, great.
220 00:32:07.270 ⇒ 00:32:07.690 Robert Tseng: Cool.
221 00:32:07.690 ⇒ 00:32:08.410 Shannon Swenson: Alright.
222 00:32:08.960 ⇒ 00:32:09.850 Shannon Swenson: Likewise.
223 00:32:09.850 ⇒ 00:32:11.150 Robert Tseng: Time? .
224 00:32:11.150 ⇒ 00:32:19.129 Shannon Swenson: Yeah, likewise. And no matter what, I mean, you guys, I mean, this is awesome, what you’re doing. I’m just incredibly impressed by it, so…
225 00:32:19.130 ⇒ 00:32:20.149 Uttam: I appreciate it.
226 00:32:20.520 ⇒ 00:32:27.830 Shannon Swenson: Yeah, okay, well, that’s probably a good place to leave it, right? And then I can just wait for a follow-up email.
227 00:32:27.830 ⇒ 00:32:28.280 Robert Tseng: Yep.
228 00:32:28.280 ⇒ 00:32:30.449 Shannon Swenson: Is that, okay?
229 00:32:30.710 ⇒ 00:32:32.420 Shannon Swenson: Perfect. That works for me.
230 00:32:33.280 ⇒ 00:32:34.710 Robert Tseng: Okay. Alright.
231 00:32:34.710 ⇒ 00:32:37.209 Shannon Swenson: Alright, you guys have a good one. It was great chatting with you. Bye.
232 00:32:37.210 ⇒ 00:32:38.000 Uttam: You too. Bye.