Meeting Title: Brainforge Team Restructuring Discussion Date: 2025-11-11 Meeting participants: Henry Zhao, Robert Tseng
WEBVTT
1 00:00:42.630 ⇒ 00:00:43.980 Robert Tseng: Hey, Henry.
2 00:00:48.450 ⇒ 00:00:49.519 Robert Tseng: Can you hear me?
3 00:00:49.520 ⇒ 00:00:51.839 Henry Zhao: Yep, hey, how’s it going? Sorry it’s the news.
4 00:00:51.840 ⇒ 00:00:52.630 Robert Tseng: How are you?
5 00:00:53.030 ⇒ 00:00:54.990 Henry Zhao: Good. Things are going well now.
6 00:00:55.860 ⇒ 00:00:56.620 Robert Tseng: Nice.
7 00:00:57.550 ⇒ 00:00:58.769 Robert Tseng: They all moved in.
8 00:00:59.340 ⇒ 00:00:59.990 Henry Zhao: Yep.
9 00:01:01.010 ⇒ 00:01:01.710 Robert Tseng: Okay.
10 00:01:03.210 ⇒ 00:01:07.920 Henry Zhao: Alright, thank you. Anything you want to talk about first?
11 00:01:08.830 ⇒ 00:01:15.480 Robert Tseng: I guess, like, a couple things to come your way. I know that you’re still, like, Bye.
12 00:01:15.720 ⇒ 00:01:20.139 Robert Tseng: I mean, we have you on Honey Stinger, and I guess, you know.
13 00:01:20.280 ⇒ 00:01:32.020 Robert Tseng: You had mentioned to me a couple weeks ago that you thought you were full-time. I thought you were full-time, Utah, you’re hourly, so I… I mean, I want to just acknowledge that that’s still something we’re…
14 00:01:32.500 ⇒ 00:01:49.189 Robert Tseng: you know, obviously, if you… if this client ends up being consistent, I think, you know, effectively, you are full-time, so… but, I mean, I don’t really want that to be the kind of uncertainty that you have anyway, so… I mean, something that I’m talking to you, Tom, about, probably, like, later today.
15 00:01:49.470 ⇒ 00:01:53.929 Robert Tseng: we’re actually, like… or I’m kind of proposing that we…
16 00:01:54.860 ⇒ 00:02:03.800 Robert Tseng: do some restructuring. I mean, not in a drastic way that, like, we just did, but basically, like.
17 00:02:04.870 ⇒ 00:02:14.110 Robert Tseng: I kind of want to have, like, a founding ops team, or like a… kind of… you know, we’ve been structuring this organization more like a services org.
18 00:02:14.240 ⇒ 00:02:19.019 Robert Tseng: And sure, we’ve kind of, like… you know, I was reflecting, because,
19 00:02:19.870 ⇒ 00:02:24.859 Robert Tseng: October was our best month, you know, revenue-wise, but then also, like.
20 00:02:25.190 ⇒ 00:02:27.759 Robert Tseng: Well, if we just kept doing this.
21 00:02:28.180 ⇒ 00:02:38.219 Robert Tseng: kept this model that we have. Every 3 clients, every time we get 3 new clients, I would need to increase the team by another, like, 3 people.
22 00:02:38.500 ⇒ 00:02:39.960 Henry Zhao: And.
23 00:02:39.960 ⇒ 00:02:47.860 Robert Tseng: Yeah, it just ends up feeling like it’ll… we’re just, like, building, like, a bigger organization, but that’s not really what
24 00:02:48.100 ⇒ 00:02:55.429 Robert Tseng: I want, personally. So… Yeah, I’m trying to, like, figure out how we can…
25 00:02:55.880 ⇒ 00:03:15.339 Robert Tseng: I mean, I think we still have a ways to go to really maximize, like, our current team. I think we still have probably 30… 20 to 30% of unused capacity, so I still think we could probably grow another 2 or 3 clients without taking anyone on. But yeah, I think I’m trying to…
26 00:03:17.040 ⇒ 00:03:18.730 Robert Tseng: re… I kind of…
27 00:03:19.640 ⇒ 00:03:30.150 Robert Tseng: think about it more from, like, a SaaS organization perspective, where… I don’t know if you’ve worked at, like, Seed Stage or Series A companies, but there’s typically, like, a…
28 00:03:30.680 ⇒ 00:03:36.750 Robert Tseng: founding ops kind of team. So, like, in my experience, when I was, like, employee, like.
29 00:03:37.040 ⇒ 00:03:38.939 Robert Tseng: 18 at a startup.
30 00:03:39.090 ⇒ 00:03:53.740 Robert Tseng: I was, like, the first BizOps hire. So there’s business operations, there was, like, go-to-market operations, there’s product operations, like, there was, like, a few different things. And, like, operator was always kind of, like, a turn-off, I guess, for technical people.
31 00:03:53.900 ⇒ 00:03:59.120 Robert Tseng: I mean, I guess I wasn’t that technical coming into my career, but I think my…
32 00:03:59.680 ⇒ 00:04:09.970 Robert Tseng: perspective is that even though functionally, you may be doing a lot of the same thing, like, the split is still gonna be, you know, if you… in this, like, hypothetical ops role, like.
33 00:04:10.050 ⇒ 00:04:25.589 Robert Tseng: you know, I would be calling it a delivery ops, like, you would be… I mean, obviously, your time still needs to be billable, so, you know, at least 60% of your time is still going to be billed to clients. But then, there’s… there are some internal outcomes that you’d be able to better own, rather than it feeling like…
34 00:04:25.750 ⇒ 00:04:33.460 Robert Tseng: Oh, okay, well, whatever unused time you have, we just, like, assign you stuff that’s, like, internal-facing, or, like, you know.
35 00:04:33.920 ⇒ 00:04:36.140 Robert Tseng: adjacent, and… or just, like.
36 00:04:36.210 ⇒ 00:04:46.929 Robert Tseng: You know, I’ve said, involve you in sales, involve you in kind of, like, building on offers. It could just… I feel like everybody on the team has been assigned and given those opportunities, but, like, it’s not…
37 00:04:46.930 ⇒ 00:04:57.640 Robert Tseng: really, like, core to their… to their role, and so they don’t really, like… they don’t really own it. And that’s, like, the problem I’m trying to solve for. So, I’m thinking of, like, trying to…
38 00:04:57.730 ⇒ 00:05:00.710 Robert Tseng: Pick, like, 3 or 4 people, and to…
39 00:05:01.000 ⇒ 00:05:07.080 Robert Tseng: Call them delivery ops, go-to-market ops, product ops, and
40 00:05:07.340 ⇒ 00:05:10.800 Robert Tseng: I guess the fourth one is still up in the air.
41 00:05:10.980 ⇒ 00:05:30.739 Robert Tseng: So yeah, that’s, like, something I’m thinking through. I feel like you could be a candidate for one of those, probably delivery ops. But anyway, I’m just kind of letting you know that’s something I’m thinking about more. If you’re curious to read, like, I’ve read a bunch of stuff on this already, and I’m running it by our advisors, and, like, running it through UTAM, but yeah, I think that’s…
42 00:05:30.960 ⇒ 00:05:37.319 Robert Tseng: one… internal projects that I’m working on, other than the sales and delivery stuff.
43 00:05:37.610 ⇒ 00:05:40.430 Henry Zhao: So what would you consider Delivery Ops’, like, role?
44 00:05:40.780 ⇒ 00:05:50.860 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so… I guess it’s not fully codified yet, but… Basically, it’s…
45 00:05:51.470 ⇒ 00:06:01.070 Robert Tseng: owning, kind of, like, delivery speed and consistency across the org, so, actually, let me see if I can just share the org, because I’m gonna…
46 00:06:01.840 ⇒ 00:06:05.750 Robert Tseng: I’ll, share my screen with something I’m putting together.
47 00:06:12.590 ⇒ 00:06:17.219 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and then I’ll only take a couple minutes. After that, we’ll kind of go back to the other thing.
48 00:06:17.450 ⇒ 00:06:29.270 Robert Tseng: So, yeah, I mean, this is still kind of work in progress, but, you know, I kind of have this delivery ops kind of thing. I mean, there’s, like, a light notes here, but basically, this is, like, our…
49 00:06:29.400 ⇒ 00:06:43.969 Robert Tseng: organizational, like, areas of responsibility kind of, like, chart. And so, obviously, like, there’s a lot of things here. I would say, I mean, I still need to kind of, like, backfill this. It’s still unclear, like, where the delivery Oz person slots into this, so…
50 00:06:44.140 ⇒ 00:06:48.859 Robert Tseng: I don’t really want it to be, like, all over project management, so…
51 00:06:49.100 ⇒ 00:06:58.600 Robert Tseng: Anyway, like, I think the product ops and BizOps and go to market ops roles seem clear to me. I’m still trying to figure out what this should be, but we do have, like, these…
52 00:06:58.820 ⇒ 00:07:16.419 Robert Tseng: responsibilities here that are all kind of, like, PM-related right now. I mean, PM, like, Hutam kind of runs it, I guess, at this point. He runs the standouts, but at some point, like, I think that should just kind of be inherent, and anybody should be able to run it. Like, it should… he should be building a system that doesn’t require him to run it.
53 00:07:16.570 ⇒ 00:07:19.349 Robert Tseng: And so, you know.
54 00:07:19.680 ⇒ 00:07:27.019 Robert Tseng: Owning, kind of, like, delivery speed and consistency is, like, generally what it is across our projects, like,
55 00:07:28.180 ⇒ 00:07:36.890 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I guess there’s… I… anyway, like, I… I think it’ll be some selection of these responsibilities.
56 00:07:37.190 ⇒ 00:07:44.440 Robert Tseng: And then there’s probably something around, like, AI and data as well to interact with.
57 00:07:44.600 ⇒ 00:07:49.000 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I… I guess…
58 00:07:51.310 ⇒ 00:08:01.539 Robert Tseng: I… I mean, if you… if you were asking me about any of the other ones, I think I’d be able to explain that a little bit better, but this is kind of where… where things are currently, so…
59 00:08:01.600 ⇒ 00:08:19.779 Robert Tseng: I’m not sure if this is… I mean, I do… it does make sense to me that we need to split it up as, like, delivery, sales, something internal, and then this is, like, around the internal tooling that we’re building that assists the delivery team. But the idea is that all of them should really, like, know the business, like, and…
60 00:08:19.780 ⇒ 00:08:33.869 Robert Tseng: you know, I want to be able to, in an ideal world, be able to tell the delivery ops person… basically, he’s, like, head of client services at this point, as if you, you know, I’m just trying to use, like, normative language to kind of have some sort of standardization across these roles.
61 00:08:34.020 ⇒ 00:08:53.610 Robert Tseng: But to know, like, how we execute projects, for the different service offerings that we have, we have, like, we have a portfolio, right? There’s, like, there… each engagement is in a different stage, so you kind of need to know, like, depending on the stage of engagement, kind of, like, how… how to run those things,
62 00:08:54.090 ⇒ 00:09:11.360 Robert Tseng: Right? So, like, there’s, like, the early… early stage engagements, like, yes, they’re maybe lower value, but they’re actually more high touch, because we’re establishing all the processes, whereas, like, later stage engagements, like, I don’t know, like, the Urban Stems one, we’ve been working with them for 6 months, it’s pretty, like.
63 00:09:11.360 ⇒ 00:09:14.750 Robert Tseng: rinse and repeat at this point. Like, the scope is very defined.
64 00:09:14.930 ⇒ 00:09:30.140 Robert Tseng: things don’t really change so much week to week. Eden is kind of an anomaly, because, like, we do own so much scope there, and, like, you know, they’re just a massive client, like, you know, annually, they’re paying us a lot of money. So, that one is maybe a little bit of the outlier, and…
65 00:09:30.140 ⇒ 00:09:45.639 Robert Tseng: I don’t frankly know if I want that many more Eden’s, or if I want to, like, move on from Eden a year from now, but just for now, they are an anchor client to us, they’re, like, 30% of our revenue, which is not great. Like, they… I don’t want any client to be more than 20%, but for now.
66 00:09:45.640 ⇒ 00:09:46.000 Henry Zhao: That’s true.
67 00:09:46.000 ⇒ 00:09:51.900 Robert Tseng: the situation we’re in. So yeah, I don’t know, it’s just like, that… But you’d rather… Yeah.
68 00:09:51.900 ⇒ 00:10:00.160 Henry Zhao: But you’d rather have, like, new clients inflowing all the time, potentially churning, and, like, having that uncertainty, rather than having anchor clients, and then being able to fill
69 00:10:00.740 ⇒ 00:10:02.730 Henry Zhao: The space with smaller clients?
70 00:10:03.180 ⇒ 00:10:22.019 Robert Tseng: Well, I’m okay with having anchor clients, but, like, they gotta be enterprise. Like, I think Eden’s kind of in this weird spot where we… we catered to them as an SMBS first, and obviously they’ve grown over time, and now they’re paying us kind of what I would expect an enterprise client to pay us, but, like.
71 00:10:22.260 ⇒ 00:10:30.029 Robert Tseng: they’re… they… they’re… the priorities, like, change… change too much. It’s, like, actually very inefficient to run. So…
72 00:10:30.090 ⇒ 00:10:55.080 Robert Tseng: You know, if we land this Port Authority engagement, you know, it’s a two-year contract. They pay, like, 50% of it up front. It’s a $500K project up front. Like, that to me is enterprise. Like, Eden, at their current rate, annualized, is about the same, but it’s, like, the level of effort to serve in Eden versus, like, a Port Authority is, like, night and day. So, I mean, we don’t have an enterprise sales motion.
73 00:10:55.080 ⇒ 00:10:58.259 Robert Tseng: Like, we don’t have any enterprise, really, clients at this point.
74 00:10:58.330 ⇒ 00:11:00.739 Robert Tseng: But but yeah, I think…
75 00:11:00.980 ⇒ 00:11:09.999 Robert Tseng: you know, we can… we can keep growing by getting a bunch of small ones that are… or kind of this very, like, scattershot approach, but I don’t really think that
76 00:11:10.270 ⇒ 00:11:16.620 Robert Tseng: At our stage now, we kind of need to have, like, clearer, like, more,
77 00:11:17.550 ⇒ 00:11:25.680 Robert Tseng: I guess, control over, like, who we let in and, like, the mix of our portfolio currently, or, like, moving forward. So,
78 00:11:26.020 ⇒ 00:11:40.579 Robert Tseng: Yeah, otherwise there’s gonna be no predictability, we’re always gonna be reactive in the business, we’re always gonna be not playing to our strengths and, like, kind of feeling like we’re in a bind and, like, having a talent deficit. Like, it’s hard to really design an organization
79 00:11:40.580 ⇒ 00:11:46.539 Robert Tseng: that doesn’t really know the type of customers that it’s bringing in. Or, like, it’s… yeah, right? So,
80 00:11:46.580 ⇒ 00:11:51.590 Robert Tseng: Anyway, like, I think that’s… that’s kind of why there needs to be some more standardization on that front.
81 00:11:53.000 ⇒ 00:11:53.800 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
82 00:11:54.650 ⇒ 00:11:57.680 Robert Tseng: So, that’s kind of the, you know.
83 00:11:58.100 ⇒ 00:12:02.420 Robert Tseng: this is very… might seem very abstract right now, but I’ve… I’m…
84 00:12:02.640 ⇒ 00:12:10.759 Robert Tseng: pushing those conversations forward, like, I have, like, 3 hours of meetings in the next 2 weeks, like, to try to, like, get some approval around this.
85 00:12:10.760 ⇒ 00:12:14.159 Henry Zhao: With the folks that are helping us make this decision.
86 00:12:14.160 ⇒ 00:12:29.319 Robert Tseng: I mean, obviously, I mean, I put your name there tentatively just to have an archetype for us to have this conversation internally, but, I mean, you know, obviously, you know, if this is something that’s interesting to you, or you disagree with it, like, you can give me feedback on it as well. But…
87 00:12:29.800 ⇒ 00:12:32.370 Robert Tseng: just letting you know that this is kind of what I…
88 00:12:32.830 ⇒ 00:12:39.000 Robert Tseng: stuff that I’m thinking about that could impact you, you know, in the… near future.
89 00:12:39.280 ⇒ 00:12:39.800 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
90 00:12:39.800 ⇒ 00:12:41.059 Henry Zhao: Okay, makes sense.
91 00:12:41.250 ⇒ 00:12:41.890 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
92 00:12:42.590 ⇒ 00:12:51.650 Henry Zhao: Yeah, my focus has been for the last few weeks, to kind of earn back Utam’s trust, and being able to get back to 40 hours, right? Like.
93 00:12:51.880 ⇒ 00:12:52.210 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
94 00:12:52.350 ⇒ 00:13:00.080 Henry Zhao: that we already have. So… yeah, I’m glad that he’s looping me into the Looker stuff today. Hopefully, I can make… make some… give some help there.
95 00:13:01.360 ⇒ 00:13:17.400 Henry Zhao: And then Honey Stinger, I’m gonna make sure that, you know, I’m top of the things there, as well as the delivery dash that we just went over with Amber and Mustafa. And I’m really happy about that, because I always wanted to learn Snowflake, I’ve told you that since the day when we met. Yeah. So, good to kind of get some experience there.
96 00:13:17.960 ⇒ 00:13:23.000 Henry Zhao: So yeah, that has been my focus, to prepare for my visit with Utam in Austin in December 15th.
97 00:13:23.480 ⇒ 00:13:24.100 Robert Tseng: Great.
98 00:13:24.270 ⇒ 00:13:30.920 Henry Zhao: And then December 17th, I’ll be in New York, so if you want to do another off-site where we kind of, like, go to Fordham and just talk about stuff.
99 00:13:31.090 ⇒ 00:13:33.289 Henry Zhao: I’m open to that as well.
100 00:13:33.470 ⇒ 00:13:35.000 Henry Zhao: It’s just kind of…
101 00:13:35.290 ⇒ 00:13:40.499 Henry Zhao: Go over how, you know, the last few months went, and how you’re thinking going into 2026.
102 00:13:41.240 ⇒ 00:13:47.920 Robert Tseng: Yeah, cool. I mean, like, the stuff that I showed you is probably more, like, I’ll be ready for that in a month, I think.
103 00:13:48.080 ⇒ 00:13:52.870 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, that’ll probably be, like, you know, it’s probably a better time to talk.
104 00:13:52.970 ⇒ 00:14:00.220 Robert Tseng: Yeah, because I don’t really think this is ready to share broadly yet. Yeah, okay, cool.
105 00:14:00.220 ⇒ 00:14:10.840 Henry Zhao: Because I don’t think… because what worried me when you said, like, whenever we bring on 3 clients, we need to bring on more people to the team. I think we can better utilize our team over time to be able to handle those additional clients.
106 00:14:11.780 ⇒ 00:14:19.980 Robert Tseng: Yeah, well, so, like, the thing is, like, I… I… we… we believe that, but I don’t actually think that that’s been happening.
107 00:14:21.160 ⇒ 00:14:23.390 Henry Zhao: Yeah, some of this takes time.
108 00:14:23.570 ⇒ 00:14:40.840 Henry Zhao: Like, some of this was, like, learning pains, but I think now that we’ve learned… I mean, I’m not gonna say there’s nothing else that needs to be learned, but we figured out, kind of, like, the weak points, and we’ve been working on that so that by the time it’s 2026, I think we’ll be ready to have a strong team of people that we trust.
109 00:14:40.890 ⇒ 00:14:44.019 Henry Zhao: And kind of can operate more smoothly.
110 00:14:44.920 ⇒ 00:14:45.610 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
111 00:14:46.110 ⇒ 00:15:04.330 Henry Zhao: And so maybe what it looks like is in 2026, for example, you bring on 3 new clients that have, like, technical needs that, like, I can fulfill and that I can manage delivery on, and then Eden becomes, like, a more well-oiled machine, so we put more junior people on Eden, and I train them up to kind of keep Eden going, and you either cut Eden by the end of the year, and then those junior people get more
112 00:15:04.770 ⇒ 00:15:14.940 Henry Zhao: other clients that have now been more matured, you know what I mean? Like, just, like, repurposing instead of bringing on new people. They might not work out, they might be another person that we keep for 2 weeks, and then off-board.
113 00:15:15.310 ⇒ 00:15:15.770 Robert Tseng: Bam.
114 00:15:15.770 ⇒ 00:15:35.100 Henry Zhao: there’s inefficiencies to both ways, right? I think people that are successful at Brainforge need a little bit of time to kind of onboard and understand each client’s working style, what they’re demanding, get that context, so I think there’s more efficiency to be had by keeping people that are more senior and, like, giving them time to adapt and get used to the clients.
115 00:15:35.710 ⇒ 00:15:54.210 Robert Tseng: Sure, and I think, like, you know, to that point, I think that’s why this ops team is important to me, because there aren’t enough people that touch multiple clients that understand the business. Like, nobody sees the business the way that we talk about I do, which is, you know, just the way that it is now, but for us to really unlock
116 00:15:54.510 ⇒ 00:16:02.740 Robert Tseng: like, I mean, we can’t be the bottlenecks for, like, the efficiencies that we’re supposed to be unlocking, so I think, that’s why…
117 00:16:03.460 ⇒ 00:16:12.170 Robert Tseng: having this… having more… I mean, we kind of know at this point who’s been doing well or good enough on, like, different clients, like, I…
118 00:16:12.240 ⇒ 00:16:20.150 Robert Tseng: not just on a single client. Like, single client people, they’ll just stay on delivery. And, like, I don’t think there’s really… I’m not gonna, like…
119 00:16:20.200 ⇒ 00:16:36.439 Robert Tseng: we… for a while, we were trying to pull everyone to come and work on the business. I just don’t believe that that’s… that’s true. Like, I think some people will just only be doing, like, client stuff, which is fine. But the people that do want to actually, like, be a part of, like, the…
120 00:16:36.660 ⇒ 00:16:53.189 Robert Tseng: next phase of, like, okay, like, actually operationalizing things and building… building the organization. From a valuation perspective, like, this… our business as it is, I mean, it’s… I mean, we’re early stage, but, like, it’s… it’s still, like, we need to build something that’s…
121 00:16:53.530 ⇒ 00:17:04.270 Robert Tseng: that’s, like, that’s different from what’s out there. Like, I don’t think any of us are interested in just, like, running a regular consultancy, like, I think…
122 00:17:04.780 ⇒ 00:17:07.810 Robert Tseng: If that were the case, I… I think I would probably just…
123 00:17:08.790 ⇒ 00:17:23.979 Robert Tseng: I mean, I would probably be taking it in a different direction. I’d, focus a lot more on optimizing for, like, labor costs, like, we’d probably go all offshore, or, like, mostly offshore.
124 00:17:24.290 ⇒ 00:17:31.429 Robert Tseng: And we’d do… we’d take on anything that’s staff augmentation, and, like, we’d be… we’d be kind of just…
125 00:17:31.900 ⇒ 00:17:50.660 Robert Tseng: trying to drive, like, a volume game there. But I don’t actually think that that’s our DNA and, like, what… kind of what… what’s… what’s done… what’s gone well for us so far. So, yeah. Anyway, like, there’s… there’s this kind of, like, blend of, like, service and products, kind of.
126 00:17:50.810 ⇒ 00:17:58.389 Robert Tseng: organization that we’re… that we’re trying to knock on here, especially after we departed from, like, the traditional PMO office. Like, we’ve had
127 00:17:58.450 ⇒ 00:18:14.570 Robert Tseng: multiple people come in to try to, like, lead PM here, and, you know, earlier this quarter, we were just like, forget that, we’re not gonna do it that way anymore. So, I think we kind of need to lean into that and accept, well, then maybe we run this more like a product org.
128 00:18:14.820 ⇒ 00:18:20.310 Robert Tseng: Knowing that we’re still a services business, and so I think, anyway, like, I…
129 00:18:20.490 ⇒ 00:18:30.399 Robert Tseng: I… I’m… I’m just kind of repeating back to you, like, what I’m… what I’m thinking about already that’s maybe related to what you’re sharing, but but yeah, so…
130 00:18:31.780 ⇒ 00:18:43.559 Henry Zhao: Yeah, and I was reflecting today, I totally forgot that I have a friend who actually, for the last 10 years, has been doing, like, kind of like a mini Brainforge type of thing, where it’s not AI-related, but she just provides data consultancy services to a bunch of companies.
131 00:18:44.260 ⇒ 00:18:58.629 Henry Zhao: And she hired a team of, initially, like, people from the University of Texas that went to school with me, but then she started minimizing for labor costs. I just hired a bunch of, like, offshore people that, like, couldn’t find job opportunities, to just help with the easy data stuff, and that she was going to coach them.
132 00:18:58.730 ⇒ 00:19:07.819 Henry Zhao: To take on bigger and bigger clients, and she was very focused on bringing a lot of new clients and minimizing costs, but it didn’t really work out, like, the quality of work wasn’t there because she had.
133 00:19:07.820 ⇒ 00:19:08.230 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
134 00:19:08.230 ⇒ 00:19:09.370 Henry Zhao: training.
135 00:19:09.740 ⇒ 00:19:23.030 Henry Zhao: and people were just not communicating. It kind of, like, felt like the first few months at Brainforge with Eden and all that stuff. Yeah. I spent so much time, like, managing this team that it didn’t work out for her. Like, she was working 24-7 and not.
136 00:19:23.030 ⇒ 00:19:23.650 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
137 00:19:23.650 ⇒ 00:19:27.659 Henry Zhao: money, because it all went to, like, the margin and training and things like that.
138 00:19:27.660 ⇒ 00:19:28.150 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
139 00:19:28.150 ⇒ 00:19:29.159 Henry Zhao: Learnings from that.
140 00:19:30.330 ⇒ 00:19:38.240 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s… that’s that, like, cycle that people get trapped in. Starting a consultancy, you can pick up a couple clients pretty easily.
141 00:19:38.240 ⇒ 00:19:58.909 Robert Tseng: But then, like, being able to get to… I mean, what our… I mean, we’re… we did 500K to the 1.5K million kind of route, like.
142 00:19:58.990 ⇒ 00:20:08.889 Robert Tseng: at that point, like, the organization has to just be run differently. Unless you continue to just go the sweatshop approach, and you just become, like, the go-to person for everything, like, DevOps.
143 00:20:08.890 ⇒ 00:20:24.729 Robert Tseng: I don’t know, I’m just picking, like, one random niche thing, and you hire the cheapest people, and you just have, like, 50 DevOps engineers, and you gobble up every DevOps contract, like, and you’re an AWS Gold partner, then you can somehow… and we have somebody in our… in our accelerator cohort that’s, like, somewhat like that.
144 00:20:24.730 ⇒ 00:20:39.210 Robert Tseng: Yeah, he has a team of 50 people, like, whatever, he’s, like, running another thing. His revenue is, like, probably around $2 million a year. I mean, it’s, like, it’s great, like, his margins are lower than ours, but, like, he runs, like, such a big operation for such a, like, small company, to be honest. So…
145 00:20:39.210 ⇒ 00:20:57.339 Robert Tseng: I’m like, that is not interesting to me. I do not want to be running a 50-person company. This seems like a lot of just management chaos, so I would rather not do that and figure out how we can continue to just, like, stay lean and serve more. But to your point…
146 00:20:57.340 ⇒ 00:20:59.059 Henry Zhao: what you said. Yeah. Go ahead.
147 00:20:59.290 ⇒ 00:21:16.100 Robert Tseng: No, I was just gonna say, but Brainforge, you know, hiring is tough. I think that’s also kind of why we have another thing problem, but, like, I don’t think we’ve had A players on our team. I mean, I don’t want to, like, label people this way, but it’s just an easier framework, but, like, I feel like we’ve hired a lot of C-level people that we have,
148 00:21:16.180 ⇒ 00:21:24.289 Robert Tseng: mostly C-level people that, through coaching and tooling and whatever, like, we’ve been able to help them operate at a B-level.
149 00:21:24.300 ⇒ 00:21:26.439 Robert Tseng: There are very few people who are
150 00:21:26.450 ⇒ 00:21:45.659 Robert Tseng: I mean, there’s less than a handful of people here that I consider to be, like, an A level that can really just, like, run on their own, and we’re not even fully maximizing them yet. And, you know, I consider you part of that group, and I… but, like, I don’t… I no longer believe we can coach a C person to an A person. Like, I…
151 00:21:45.660 ⇒ 00:21:57.010 Robert Tseng: I guess, like, that’s… that’s another, like, philosophical shift, that I’ve made in the past year. Like, I used to believe that we could… we could do that, but I don’t actually think we can, so…
152 00:21:57.480 ⇒ 00:21:58.250 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
153 00:21:59.430 ⇒ 00:22:14.140 Robert Tseng: So, I do think that they’re… you know, to me, it’s like, you have, like, a strong foundational core of, like, A players, and then you can, like… the rest can be contractors that you kind of, like, have on the bench, and we kind of, like, kind of,
154 00:22:14.290 ⇒ 00:22:17.180 Robert Tseng: Can dial up and down based on our capacity.
155 00:22:17.270 ⇒ 00:22:23.970 Robert Tseng: Right now, we’re not completely… we’re not structured like that, and I think we’re gonna run into… that’s why we’re running into issues where
156 00:22:24.060 ⇒ 00:22:43.460 Robert Tseng: I don’t feel like you’re, like, fully maximized. I don’t feel like Sam is fully maximized. Like, I think you guys could, you know, there could be… it’s a lot more you can contribute, and, you know, instead, like, you’re on the… you have some time on the bench, he has some time on the bench, and we are fully maximized on other people that are like, why are we… why are they full-time? Or, like, why are they…
157 00:22:43.460 ⇒ 00:22:48.389 Robert Tseng: fully maximized. So, like, I… I’m trying to, like, sift through all of that, and… and,
158 00:22:48.400 ⇒ 00:22:58.839 Robert Tseng: make the full-time… or anyway, like, I guess that’s… I see the same… I saw those problems that you’re talking about from your friends. We kind of, like.
159 00:22:58.940 ⇒ 00:23:02.829 Robert Tseng: Went that direction, and we still have, like, legacy organizational, like.
160 00:23:03.750 ⇒ 00:23:15.890 Robert Tseng: chunk that we have to clean up from… from… from us heading in that direction, and eventually kind of getting to where we are. Yeah, so I… I think that’s… that’s definitely something we have to think with… we have to work through.
161 00:23:16.520 ⇒ 00:23:26.410 Henry Zhao: I also think when people were in, like, traditional jobs where they were in the office, one client only, it’s easier to coach C to become A. When it’s remote, with multiple clients, I think it’s harder.
162 00:23:26.410 ⇒ 00:23:31.410 Robert Tseng: Yes, the remote, for sure, and yeah, I guess multiple clients, multiple contact switching.
163 00:23:31.490 ⇒ 00:23:35.780 Robert Tseng: It’s hard, yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean, for… I think,
164 00:23:35.840 ⇒ 00:23:54.819 Robert Tseng: Amber, for example, first job out of college, she’s never been in a SaaS and CPG company. I see her conflate the two industries all the time in her work. I’m not saying she’s a C-rape, I’m just saying, like, dang, it’s hard. To me, it’s a good epoxy of, like, she’s a sponge, she can learn a lot, but, like, the learning in this environment is so, like.
165 00:23:54.860 ⇒ 00:23:56.470 Robert Tseng: Not linear, that, like.
166 00:23:57.400 ⇒ 00:24:05.979 Robert Tseng: in order… like, it’s really hard to coach in this environment. Yes, so I’m not saying it’s a knock on the people, I think it’s the business, it’s our process and everything, yeah.
167 00:24:06.360 ⇒ 00:24:08.190 Henry Zhao: And you speak Chinese, right? But it’s, like, it’s kind of.
168 00:24:08.190 ⇒ 00:24:08.509 Robert Tseng: I do.
169 00:24:09.360 ⇒ 00:24:14.419 Henry Zhao: The saying we have with GE Feinstein, like, people have to be able to GE Feinstein.
170 00:24:14.770 ⇒ 00:24:18.020 Robert Tseng: Oh, I’ve never heard of that before. What does that mean, Jew concept?
171 00:24:18.020 ⇒ 00:24:21.369 Henry Zhao: Like, if I teach you one thing, you should be able to apply that to three similar things, right?
172 00:24:21.370 ⇒ 00:24:22.350 Robert Tseng: Sure.
173 00:24:22.350 ⇒ 00:24:32.029 Henry Zhao: like, when you coach a person who’s level C on Eden, they apply it to that, but then it’s like, when they have to make a deck for another different client, it’s like a different set of skills that now you need to coach them on.
174 00:24:32.500 ⇒ 00:24:33.550 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah.
175 00:24:33.550 ⇒ 00:24:38.230 Henry Zhao: I think that’s why… It’s been hard in this situation to coach people from C to A.
176 00:24:38.560 ⇒ 00:24:39.880 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah.
177 00:24:40.270 ⇒ 00:24:41.050 Robert Tseng: Yep.
178 00:24:41.270 ⇒ 00:24:42.210 Robert Tseng: So…
179 00:24:43.550 ⇒ 00:24:48.969 Robert Tseng: Anyway, sorry, we took up a lot of the time. I don’t know if you had anything you wanted to talk about, but…
180 00:24:48.970 ⇒ 00:25:00.189 Henry Zhao: No, I didn’t have much, just wanted to give you an update that I finished the pharmacy visit with Eden. A lot of work to be done there, so I’m gonna be focusing on that, and then attribution should be done today, because all the stuff that’s Ron worked on is done.
181 00:25:00.710 ⇒ 00:25:19.800 Robert Tseng: Okay, great. Yeah, well, I mean, you and Zerone are kind of the leads there at this point, so I just kind of been there still to kind of insulate from the ELT, like, beatdowns, I guess, but eventually, like, I… I will have you talk to them directly. I know you’re already, like, messaging Adam and stuff directly, which is… which is good, but .
182 00:25:19.800 ⇒ 00:25:24.250 Henry Zhao: I already told them, like, my weakness is, like, doing decks. I…
183 00:25:24.690 ⇒ 00:25:28.789 Henry Zhao: don’t like, and also, I don’t think I’m good at making decks for, like, ELT and…
184 00:25:29.220 ⇒ 00:25:32.049 Henry Zhao: showing value of our work, so it’s something I want to work on.
185 00:25:32.280 ⇒ 00:25:37.520 Robert Tseng: Yeah, which is fine. I think that’s kind of what I’m… I’m… I’m here for, so…
186 00:25:37.520 ⇒ 00:25:42.409 Henry Zhao: Yeah, like, maybe eventually after data and analysis office hours, you could do, like, deck office hours.
187 00:25:42.410 ⇒ 00:25:45.790 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I know, like, the data analysis office hours, I’ve kind of, like.
188 00:25:45.980 ⇒ 00:25:50.220 Robert Tseng: whatever, the past couple weeks have been inconsistent. I need to get back into it, but .
189 00:25:50.610 ⇒ 00:25:57.350 Henry Zhao: Awash and other people… I think Awash and some other people also have expressed interest in having, like, a deck, office hours.
190 00:25:58.560 ⇒ 00:26:05.489 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, I… yeah, okay, that’s a… that’s a good point. Maybe I should consider that instead. Okay.
191 00:26:05.670 ⇒ 00:26:10.799 Robert Tseng: Cool. Well, I mean, I do… I have a call at 4 minutes, I can stay on until then, but
192 00:26:11.180 ⇒ 00:26:12.319 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I guess…
193 00:26:12.650 ⇒ 00:26:25.350 Robert Tseng: you know, hopefully, yeah, things feel more stable for you. Yeah, I mean, I just wanted to let you know what we were thinking, so you don’t feel like, you know, you’re still in limbo. I think you’re taking the right steps, so, yeah.
194 00:26:25.350 ⇒ 00:26:38.119 Henry Zhao: I just want to make sure I gain back trust from Utum to be able to go to 4D starting in January, maybe take on new clients if I have that trust, and then be able to pass Eden off to, like, be in maintenance mode, so we have better margins, and because…
195 00:26:38.250 ⇒ 00:26:42.460 Henry Zhao: I think once we have attribution done and this pharmacy work done, as well as the mixed panel stuff.
196 00:26:42.640 ⇒ 00:26:49.559 Henry Zhao: I don’t… now, I always say this, and then it’s not true, but, like, I don’t foresee there being that many big rocks always coming in forever, you know?
197 00:26:49.950 ⇒ 00:26:51.140 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah.
198 00:26:51.770 ⇒ 00:26:57.150 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, I mean, I don’t think every week should be chaos. If it is, it’s very hard to be sustainable, so…
199 00:26:57.150 ⇒ 00:27:01.820 Henry Zhao: Yeah, and I only… I took on Tableau from Annie, like, all of a sudden, right? So that has been…
200 00:27:01.820 ⇒ 00:27:18.669 Henry Zhao: getting to a better place, and eventually, those should be maintainable, and I’ll know all the Tableau dashes, and be able to train someone on that, so… I just think by January, Eden should be more smooth-flowing, which is also why I kind of freaked out in the end of October when you were like, I don’t want to have Eden anymore. I was like, I feel like Eden will get better, like, if we just give it some time.
201 00:27:19.130 ⇒ 00:27:28.799 Robert Tseng: Okay. Well, I mean, you know, like, my long-term outlook on Eden is, like, if we are still in business, like, a year from now, I don’t think we will have Eden. Like, I just…
202 00:27:28.990 ⇒ 00:27:30.099 Robert Tseng: I just don’t… I don’t think…
203 00:27:30.100 ⇒ 00:27:38.499 Henry Zhao: Maybe because there’s just no more… not enough work for us to provide that much value, so they might even want to downgrade the contract, or just be like, we’ll reduce your hours to just maintain certain things.
204 00:27:38.730 ⇒ 00:27:44.219 Robert Tseng: Yeah, which, yeah, it’s like, I don’t really want our team doing maintenance, like, I think that’s… that’s not, like…
205 00:27:44.220 ⇒ 00:27:44.650 Henry Zhao: Yeah, exactly.
206 00:27:44.650 ⇒ 00:28:01.939 Robert Tseng: it’s good, like, lifeline for us, but it’s not the direction we want to head in. So, but for now, like, I think it’s still an anchor client, they’re the biggest client, take it seriously. Obviously, that’s why I gave the whole spiel this morning. It’s like, dude, if I was paying $50K a month, like, I’d expect the dashboards to be up, so, like, we have to figure it out, so…
207 00:28:01.940 ⇒ 00:28:04.979 Robert Tseng: You know, we do have to… we do have to…
208 00:28:04.980 ⇒ 00:28:05.360 Henry Zhao: Okay.
209 00:28:05.360 ⇒ 00:28:06.700 Robert Tseng: Give them a high-level service.
210 00:28:06.700 ⇒ 00:28:11.060 Henry Zhao: How much is the world paying AWS? And they were down for, like, a whole day, and, like, ruined my life.
211 00:28:11.480 ⇒ 00:28:12.529 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
212 00:28:12.530 ⇒ 00:28:15.030 Henry Zhao: That’s true, too. Yeah.
213 00:28:15.610 ⇒ 00:28:28.760 Robert Tseng: Yeah, but, like, this one is, like, you know, we… if it’s… if it is an AWS error, we find the answer very quickly, and we tell them, okay, it’s someone else’s fault. But, like, the fact that it was just, like, a Google Ads connector is just…
214 00:28:29.040 ⇒ 00:28:41.840 Robert Tseng: Really sad. I mean, the ELT does not know that, and I will not tell them it was that simple. I just told them that, like, it took us a while to find the problem, but, like, really, like, it was… it was not a hard problem. We could have figured that out within an hour.
215 00:28:42.440 ⇒ 00:28:43.190 Henry Zhao: Okay.
216 00:28:43.500 ⇒ 00:28:44.200 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
217 00:28:44.470 ⇒ 00:28:45.270 Robert Tseng: So…
218 00:28:45.700 ⇒ 00:28:55.119 Robert Tseng: I mean, anyway, I don’t have to rehash the same points. Like, I do think that it’s part of just, like, owning the outcomes and, you know, whatever, so I think,
219 00:28:55.590 ⇒ 00:29:01.270 Robert Tseng: you know, at this, you know, we’ll get better. I think people… people just got a little complacent, so…
220 00:29:01.720 ⇒ 00:29:02.560 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
221 00:29:03.300 ⇒ 00:29:04.840 Robert Tseng: Okay, cool, okay.
222 00:29:04.840 ⇒ 00:29:05.380 Henry Zhao: Thanks, Robert.
223 00:29:05.810 ⇒ 00:29:07.390 Henry Zhao: Talk to you later. Bye.