Meeting Title: Brainforge Interview: Product Analytics Roles Date: 2025-11-25 Meeting participants: Greg Stoutenburg, Robert Tseng
WEBVTT
1 00:00:51.870 ⇒ 00:00:53.510 Robert Tseng: Hey, Greg.
2 00:00:53.510 ⇒ 00:00:55.120 Greg Stoutenburg: Hey, Robert, how are you?
3 00:00:55.430 ⇒ 00:00:56.439 Robert Tseng: Good, how are you?
4 00:00:56.710 ⇒ 00:00:58.219 Greg Stoutenburg: Doing alright, thank you.
5 00:00:59.350 ⇒ 00:01:04.650 Robert Tseng: Yeah, you’re based on the East Coast, your time said?
6 00:01:04.650 ⇒ 00:01:08.540 Greg Stoutenburg: Yep, Eastern Time, yep, 10 p.m. Nice.
7 00:01:08.650 ⇒ 00:01:09.649 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, aren’t they?
8 00:01:09.650 ⇒ 00:01:13.859 Robert Tseng: I’m jumping on a call. Yeah, I’m in Hong Kong right now, I’m usually in New York.
9 00:01:13.860 ⇒ 00:01:14.360 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, okay.
10 00:01:14.360 ⇒ 00:01:16.600 Robert Tseng: Coming back on Friday, so…
11 00:01:16.600 ⇒ 00:01:21.139 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, okay, alright, nice. Yeah. Thanksgiving in Hong Kong, is that the plan?
12 00:01:21.380 ⇒ 00:01:30.569 Robert Tseng: Yeah, my in-laws are here, and so, you know, my wife and I, we alternate Christmas or Thanksgiving every year, so this year it happened to be Thanksgiving.
13 00:01:30.570 ⇒ 00:01:37.720 Greg Stoutenburg: Yep, got it. Got it. Yeah, makes sense. Yeah, cool. Well, thanks for, squeezing me in then, since it’s your holiday week as well.
14 00:01:37.720 ⇒ 00:01:44.920 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, no worries. I think, you know, we’ve been eagerly trying to Find people in this,
15 00:01:45.330 ⇒ 00:01:52.889 Robert Tseng: I guess I’m… I’m curious what… how, how Tom kind of pitches it, but, you know, there’s a few roles we’re hiring for. One is, like, kind of a…
16 00:01:53.830 ⇒ 00:02:01.230 Robert Tseng: like, a head of… head of delivery, I guess. And, you know, I guess, that’s more… kind of…
17 00:02:02.350 ⇒ 00:02:05.609 Robert Tseng: Kind of overseeing, all of the different…
18 00:02:05.630 ⇒ 00:02:30.290 Robert Tseng: you know, we’re juggling, like, 15 clients right now, so, like, how do we actually take, the way that we service clients and, like, kind of to scale that in terms of process and running better just project management? I think your expertise, I kind of took a quick peek at Utam’s, like, recap of his call with you, but, seems like it’s on the product analytics side, and so, yeah, I think, you know, that’s a good chunk of our business, so…
19 00:02:30.290 ⇒ 00:02:42.440 Robert Tseng: kind of a lead product analyst role is also something that we’re… that we’re hiring for. And then, you know, there’s a couple more, like, business-facing roles, like our go-to-market lead for us, so…
20 00:02:42.440 ⇒ 00:02:50.660 Robert Tseng: you know, all the business that we close is just through Utom and I, so wanting, like, someone else who can kind of come in and lead… kind of lead there with us.
21 00:02:50.660 ⇒ 00:02:52.030 Robert Tseng: And then just
22 00:02:52.030 ⇒ 00:03:14.579 Robert Tseng: BizOps, like a BizOps lead. So, those are really the roles that we’re hiring for. I know that maybe the first two are the ones that are more relevant to kind of what you’re expecting, but I’m curious just to kind of get on the same page, like, after your call with you, Tom, kind of where you feel like things left off, and then I can kind of share kind of what, you know, my perspective on where we can kind of take this call.
23 00:03:15.010 ⇒ 00:03:26.330 Greg Stoutenburg: Sure, cool, yeah, sounds good. So yeah, well, so the way that it worked is I… I’m a member of the Amplitude Slack community, and I posted my resume in there, and I was like, you know, hey, looking for
24 00:03:26.330 ⇒ 00:03:35.810 Greg Stoutenburg: whatever the next thing might be, and he sent me a DM, and said, you know, hey, you know, here’s my company, and here’s a little bit about what we do, love to have a conversation, and…
25 00:03:35.940 ⇒ 00:03:55.169 Greg Stoutenburg: And then we did. So, actually, even… even the… the specific titles of the roles that you just mentioned, we… we didn’t really talk about that as much as we talked about what Brainforge does, and, and, well, specifically where he thought that I could help out the team.
26 00:03:55.170 ⇒ 00:03:55.530 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
27 00:03:55.530 ⇒ 00:04:03.060 Greg Stoutenburg: do this. When I did get around to saying, so, you know, what made you message me? And he said, you know, it was more those… it was more of those things where I was connecting
28 00:04:03.060 ⇒ 00:04:16.979 Greg Stoutenburg: analytics to, here are insights that I then did something with, and here was the result, where, you know, we improved conversion by this much, or revenue went up this much, or here’s how this process was standardized, increasing efficiency in this way.
29 00:04:16.980 ⇒ 00:04:18.029 Greg Stoutenburg: That kind of thing.
30 00:04:18.420 ⇒ 00:04:32.449 Greg Stoutenburg: Sure. Okay, great. So, yeah, yep. So, some analytics, you know, some go-to-market, those things have been, in my experience in the last handful of years, have been overlapping a lot. So, yeah, that’s how that went. Good conversation.
31 00:04:33.070 ⇒ 00:04:40.959 Robert Tseng: Great, yeah. Okay, well, I mean, I think what I could share here is just more tactically, kind of how the rules are kind of defined. I’d probably share more about the first two.
32 00:04:40.960 ⇒ 00:04:56.539 Robert Tseng: And then, yeah, kind of give you some time to ask questions, and we can kind of discuss, like, I, you know, I mean, obviously, we’re… we’re a small team, we’re, like, less than 15 people, you know, we don’t… we don’t really have HR, like, recruiting process, it’s really making decisions, so,
33 00:04:56.540 ⇒ 00:04:58.020 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I think…
34 00:04:58.310 ⇒ 00:05:23.220 Robert Tseng: you know, we… this… you know, I want this to be more, kind of, when we have flexibility to figure out, like, how to start. I think typically, you know, by the end of a couple conversations with folks, especially at your level, oftentimes the best way is just to kind of give you the keys and come in, and you can, you know, we do something fractional, let you start kind of 10 to 20 hours a week. You get to kind of… we just kind of figure out, like, a narrowly scoped project that you can come in
35 00:05:23.220 ⇒ 00:05:31.259 Robert Tseng: and learn about our business, how we approach it, and also just to see if it’s a good fit. And then, you know, usually within
36 00:05:31.290 ⇒ 00:05:42.459 Robert Tseng: I guess we’ve converted within as… as fast as within 2 weeks. We, you know, went really well, and we just kind of brought them on full-time, or, you know, we do it usually, like, a month, typically.
37 00:05:42.460 ⇒ 00:05:43.030 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay.
38 00:05:43.210 ⇒ 00:05:54.650 Robert Tseng: So, I don’t know what your timeline is, and I’m sure you’re kind of talking to other folks as well, so… but just wanted to let you know that’s typically how we interview and kind of get work… get started with folks.
39 00:05:54.650 ⇒ 00:05:55.370 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, Tensible.
40 00:05:55.370 ⇒ 00:05:57.319 Robert Tseng: Does that sound okay for you?
41 00:05:57.320 ⇒ 00:05:59.249 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, that sounds right. Yeah.
42 00:05:59.250 ⇒ 00:06:07.510 Robert Tseng: Alright, yeah, then I guess let’s kind of talk a bit more about, both on the delivery side, and then also kind of, product analytics, so…
43 00:06:07.510 ⇒ 00:06:07.890 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay.
44 00:06:07.890 ⇒ 00:06:19.000 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so on the delivery side, the way we structure our engagements, yeah, I think every, every client has pretty much, we, we staff at least 3 people, and we call it, like,
45 00:06:19.350 ⇒ 00:06:44.159 Robert Tseng: strategist, architect, engineer. So the strategist currently is just either me or Uten. And yeah, I think our book of business, you could think of it, like, half of it is, like, SaaS, which is maybe more what you’re used to. We work with post-Series A SaaS companies, that are just standing up their data stack. Usually, we’re not doing a full build-out, and it’s usually… maybe it’s just bringing in amplitude
46 00:06:44.290 ⇒ 00:06:53.369 Robert Tseng: or Mixpanel. Those are the two product analytics tools we bring in the most. That’s my background, I’ve done a lot of work there. And then for those that…
47 00:06:53.380 ⇒ 00:07:12.200 Robert Tseng: you know, maybe a bit further along, like, we actually build out… we help them land their data into a data warehouse. We’re a Snowflake partner, but we also kind of do everything else. It’s typically Snowflake or BigQuery, and then we have, like, our engineering… we have data engineers that kind of help, land the data, build out dbt.
48 00:07:12.200 ⇒ 00:07:27.380 Robert Tseng: you know, SQL modeling, dbt, and then any sort of, like, the general business intelligence reporting kind of comes… comes out of that as well. So, yeah, I… I mean, that’s very, very high level, like, kind of how… how we get started, with… with… with our clients.
49 00:07:27.430 ⇒ 00:07:52.190 Robert Tseng: And so, for this delivery person, I guess, like, we’re wanting this person to basically step in and basically be, like, a strategist-level type of leader as well, where you can kind of think about it, you know, as we’re scaling this consultancy, you know, we haven’t really put the language on paper yet, but it’s kind of thinking through, okay, well, how do these bigger consultancies scale? There’s kind of, like, a partner model, where every strategist ends up becoming
50 00:07:52.190 ⇒ 00:07:56.160 Robert Tseng: A partner, you know, of managing their own book of business, pretty much.
51 00:07:56.550 ⇒ 00:07:57.770 Robert Tseng: And…
52 00:07:57.770 ⇒ 00:08:21.110 Robert Tseng: yeah, you know, I think the emphasis is probably on just, like, managing our existing business, but, you know, assuming that, you know, this person onboards within 3 to 6 months, like, they have a good handle, they want to grow their accounts as well, then they can kind of be looped into our sales motion as well. So, yeah, I think that’s kind of one direction that I feel like we could go in if, you know, that’s really kind of your interest.
53 00:08:22.070 ⇒ 00:08:32.230 Robert Tseng: yeah, I guess maybe I’ll just pause there, kind of see, you know, is that something that you’re interested in exploring more, or we can kind of go more in the… I can just share the other… the other direction for us, so we can kind of.
54 00:08:32.230 ⇒ 00:08:45.100 Greg Stoutenburg: Sure, yeah, yeah, I mean, I want to hear all of it, so this is, yeah, this is great. Like I said, Utam and I did not… didn’t talk about roles specifically that much, as much as we talked about, you know, sort of where some of the value adds were, so yeah, I’d love to hear all of that.
55 00:08:45.810 ⇒ 00:08:55.659 Robert Tseng: Great. So, let’s say, you know, you don’t want to be the strategist, like, you know, you’re not… you don’t really have an interest in basically learning how to be, like, like a…
56 00:08:55.660 ⇒ 00:09:18.109 Robert Tseng: like, to run a consultancy, like, book of business or whatever. You want to just focus on, you know, being excellent at what you do and your skill set? Maybe, like, you know, product analytics is your role. Yeah, then I think, you know, in our structure, it’s less of a strategist, maybe you’re, like, an architect-level person. And I don’t want to emphasize the hierarchy so much, it’s more kind of, like.
57 00:09:18.110 ⇒ 00:09:32.079 Robert Tseng: three different, you know, spheres, and it’s not really that the strategist is over the architect engineer. But anyway, like, the architect, let’s say you end up basically being the architect across all of our SaaS clients.
58 00:09:32.080 ⇒ 00:09:38.970 Robert Tseng: So, you know, that’s, you know, let’s call it, like, 5 or 6 clients that are all kind of, like, going through,
59 00:09:39.530 ⇒ 00:09:54.719 Robert Tseng: similar motions of, like, PLG growth, where… I mean, it’s either PLG or, like, account-based, like, kind of, like, a sales, sales motion, right? And, like, for the bigger SaaS clients, they maybe have, like, a flavor of both. And so,
60 00:09:54.720 ⇒ 00:10:02.510 Robert Tseng: yeah, I guess, like, that would involve, like, actually, you know, giving direction to the engineers, the people, you know.
61 00:10:02.550 ⇒ 00:10:18.539 Robert Tseng: building out, kind of, the reporting in… in… in Amplitude and Mixpanel, and, you know, basically trying to create the playbooks for, like, how we’re actually going to use these… these tools to, you know, drive, you know.
62 00:10:18.540 ⇒ 00:10:28.590 Robert Tseng: it’s usually some… drive engagement, or drive, drive some sort of, like, revenue impact using these tools. So, yeah, I guess that’s… that’s kind of, like.
63 00:10:29.780 ⇒ 00:10:42.389 Robert Tseng: And then you would pretty much just be working on, with clients, and the internal team, would be client-facing, but then you pretty much just wouldn’t be, kind of, participating in…
64 00:10:42.790 ⇒ 00:10:54.990 Robert Tseng: the other initiatives in the business of, like, actually going to buy new business… get new business, helping us create offers, or whatever. Like, this is really more just, like, a delivery-centric role.
65 00:10:55.230 ⇒ 00:11:11.579 Robert Tseng: Yeah. So, that’s kind of how I see it, in terms of, like, the two different directions that we could go in. Yeah. Yeah, curious, kind of, like, what… what do you feel like… what are you looking for in your role, next role, and, like, which direction do you feel like is better to spend our time kind of discussing more?
66 00:11:11.580 ⇒ 00:11:18.129 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, good question. So when I talked to Utam, I, you know, I said… something I was thinking about just a couple years ago is.
67 00:11:18.440 ⇒ 00:11:34.080 Greg Stoutenburg: I’ve been doing this product-led growth stuff, I’ve been doing this PM stuff, but there are just… there are parts of the job that I like a lot more than others, and something that’s more in the direction of, like, a product analytics consultancy is…
68 00:11:34.160 ⇒ 00:11:42.869 Greg Stoutenburg: is definitely of interest, and so I feel like both of the things that you just mentioned, touch on that, just in different ways.
69 00:11:42.870 ⇒ 00:11:57.329 Greg Stoutenburg: So, that’s… yeah, that’s… that’s exciting. Could you say… so, I mean, the part that feels more familiar to me is what you describe as the architect role. Yeah. So, tell me more about the strategist role.
70 00:11:57.870 ⇒ 00:12:01.140 Robert Tseng: Okay, sure. Yeah, so I guess,
71 00:12:01.400 ⇒ 00:12:20.239 Robert Tseng: a strategist would be, you know, as soon as, like, we close a client, I would say early-stage product analytics. Like, I have a motion that I’ve built out, and we can kind of… I can show you some stuff, and we can deliberate on it some other time as well, but, you know, it involves, you know, either they’ve…
72 00:12:20.240 ⇒ 00:12:20.840 Robert Tseng: If…
73 00:12:20.840 ⇒ 00:12:45.429 Robert Tseng: it actually, whether… regardless of if they’ve, set up Amplitude or Mixed Panel, or they’re starting from scratch, I would go through the same exercise. And so it’s really just kind of three… three steps. Like, one is there’s an event data design, so, it involves kind of doing, like, some workshops with probably the PM, like, the in-house PM, and figuring out what are those core workflows, mapping them to kind of the events that we want
74 00:12:45.430 ⇒ 00:12:56.100 Robert Tseng: to actually be tracking. Philosophically, my approach is, like, at the early stage, like, you know, it’s more important getting clarity on, like, what are those key milestones in the workflows that you’re trying to track.
75 00:12:56.100 ⇒ 00:13:20.339 Robert Tseng: Obviously, Amplitude and Mixpanel, they have, like, the SDK out of the box. You could do auto-tracking, it’s the fastest way to get started, but the fidelity is really low, and then, like, the… it gets really noisy. So, you know, I think this is more of just kind of, like, a business framing exercise, part of the discovery, to understand, like, does this product even have, like… are they even clear on, like, what users are trying to do? And, like, can we articulate what is that, like.
76 00:13:20.340 ⇒ 00:13:25.079 Robert Tseng: first full funnel of, like, a core workflow that we care about, so… Yeah.
77 00:13:25.080 ⇒ 00:13:49.259 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think that tends to be a really helpful discovery exercise. You know, we spend anywhere between, kind of, like, 5 to 10 hours just, like, really getting, kind of, those business requirements and showing that. And then, like, you know, we typically will translate that into a tracking plan. Maybe you’ve seen something like that. It’s, like, just like an artifact for an engineer to be able to take and be able to go and exec… execute on the code.
78 00:13:49.260 ⇒ 00:14:14.099 Robert Tseng: We have a team… we have… we don’t have a team in-house, but we have partners in our network that will be able to go and do the implementation. More often than not, we find that, the clients that we work with, they have their own engineering resources that they prefer to use to… to do that, because… yeah, anyway, so, so yeah, I think that would be kind of the next phase. And then we kind of build out some reporting, just to kind of get them started, and maybe it’s…
79 00:14:14.100 ⇒ 00:14:22.819 Robert Tseng: You know, something along the lines of, like, yeah, trying to find, like, the activation moments, of, like, you know.
80 00:14:22.820 ⇒ 00:14:46.930 Robert Tseng: are users using… how are users engaging with, like, kind of the core workflow that we’ve defined? And this ends up becoming, like, an iterative process where we’re running at one objective. Maybe it’s just, like, measuring engagement of core features, or maybe it’s just, like, look at just user growth by, you know, various segments that they mentioned. But kind of deciding which direction to take it in, and, like, kind of building out the strategy for that, you know, as…
81 00:14:47.180 ⇒ 00:15:03.430 Robert Tseng: in that initial phase, like, that’s… that’s crucial. You know, the way this typically all wraps up within a month, and, you know, we’ve… we’ve been converting, we probably do, like, 3 to 5 of these a month, and we convert, like, 60% of them to a renewal.
82 00:15:03.520 ⇒ 00:15:22.489 Robert Tseng: Where we’re able to basically sign, like, another 3-6 month contract, where, we actually have, like, some swim lanes that we can… we’ve carved out that we can run with, or… where maybe it’s like, hey, looks like, you know, you have a… you have a CRO problem, like, you know, from this core… from this initial funnel that we’ve built out for you.
83 00:15:22.880 ⇒ 00:15:33.099 Robert Tseng: You know, you can see, like, a significant drop-off from, like, users that, like, kind of hit your site, that, like, as they go through the sign-up phase, they’re just not really going through on…
84 00:15:33.100 ⇒ 00:15:57.919 Robert Tseng: you know, they’re not making it through even your sign-up funnel, and so, like, that ends up being, like, a direction you could go in. But let’s say it’s, like, they could actually sign up, they’re just not really doing anything interesting in your app. So then, you know, that’s more onboarding problem, right? Right. Or it’s like, okay, they, you know, they go through these parts, but we don’t really know why they’re not converting to paid, and that ends up being more
85 00:15:57.920 ⇒ 00:16:02.089 Robert Tseng: More of, kind of, like, emotions to try to… to… to… to…
86 00:16:02.570 ⇒ 00:16:08.469 Robert Tseng: I guess that’s the most open-ended one, to be honest, like, driving more engagement, trying to figure out how to,
87 00:16:08.580 ⇒ 00:16:27.190 Robert Tseng: turn for users into paid users, right? Yeah. So, just giving you a few examples of, like, kind of the different phases that we go through, and what a strategist would kind of be expected to, to, like, kind of, like, lead… lead a client through. Yeah. So, I guess I’ll pause there, kind of see what your thoughts on that.
88 00:16:27.190 ⇒ 00:16:34.880 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, no, that’s cool. And so, there, the strategist role, beyond onboarding and the initial, like, one month.
89 00:16:35.000 ⇒ 00:16:44.180 Greg Stoutenburg: period that you mentioned when they’re… they’re a new sign-up. It sounds like it’s… it becomes a relationship that’s driven by whatever it is the customer is saying that they need.
90 00:16:44.180 ⇒ 00:16:44.720 Robert Tseng: Yep.
91 00:16:44.720 ⇒ 00:16:48.780 Greg Stoutenburg: Am I hearing that correctly? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right.
92 00:16:49.160 ⇒ 00:17:14.119 Robert Tseng: So on the long tail, like, we’ve… we’ve had clients that have stayed with… specifically on this front, that have stayed with us for, you know, 9 months, and they go and they raise their next round, right? And so I feel like we’ve done this enough for companies in that stage of, like, Series A to Series B, where we know what are the critical metrics they need to hit to raise their next round. We kind of know what that next growth looks like. But yeah, that’s pretty much it. Like, I think, you know, given you
93 00:17:14.119 ⇒ 00:17:18.060 Robert Tseng: Your experience in product analytics, and maybe you’ve worked at bigger companies.
94 00:17:18.060 ⇒ 00:17:26.069 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I want our, you know, product analytics offering to be more than just, like, Series A to Series B. Like, I do think that there’s…
95 00:17:26.069 ⇒ 00:17:43.049 Robert Tseng: to me, this is like a… there’s no… yeah, there’s no… there’s no… there could be, like, a lot more opportunity to, like, carve out, like, a full… full… like, we haven’t fully scaled product analytics from, like, startup to enterprise before.
96 00:17:43.050 ⇒ 00:17:43.990 Greg Stoutenburg: Which, yeah.
97 00:17:43.990 ⇒ 00:18:02.139 Robert Tseng: maybe it’s kind of a pie in the sky, and it takes a long time or whatever, but, you know, just, you know, obviously I would like to bring in somebody who knows more than I do, and would be able to, like, actually, you know, use, like, kind of build upon the foundation that we’ve already had, from, like, a product analytics strategy perspective.
98 00:18:02.140 ⇒ 00:18:05.690 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah. No, that’s great.
99 00:18:06.090 ⇒ 00:18:10.709 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, very cool. No, I understand the direction there, yeah.
100 00:18:11.930 ⇒ 00:18:18.529 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, I think I can help there. I mean, something that I have been… something I’ve been just becoming more keenly aware of, especially, like, in the last
101 00:18:18.810 ⇒ 00:18:28.109 Greg Stoutenburg: year, year and a half or so, is how much, you know, again, speaking to that balance of where do you want your responsibilities to go,
102 00:18:28.110 ⇒ 00:18:43.359 Greg Stoutenburg: how much I enjoy customer-facing work, and how little of it I’ve gotten to be able to do, since, you know, since moving into the kinds of roles that I’ve been taking. So, yeah, that does sound exciting to me.
103 00:18:43.410 ⇒ 00:18:44.340 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
104 00:18:45.030 ⇒ 00:18:48.870 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay, so…
105 00:18:49.990 ⇒ 00:18:56.660 Greg Stoutenburg: Well, I don’t know if I have another question about that right now. I mean, I think… I think something I would want to say is that I,
106 00:18:57.070 ⇒ 00:19:06.279 Greg Stoutenburg: I have thrived when I’ve had to make analytics actionable. There have always been people who are more sophisticated on the analytics themselves than I am.
107 00:19:06.280 ⇒ 00:19:06.610 Robert Tseng: Sure.
108 00:19:06.610 ⇒ 00:19:23.889 Greg Stoutenburg: So, you know, did want to mention that just in case. But, you know, you said that you’ve got engineers on the team that do things like the tracking plans and so on. Yeah. And this is more of, you know, that lead who does the discovery, understands what the customer needs, and puts together a plan to get them there and walk them through it.
109 00:19:23.890 ⇒ 00:19:36.720 Robert Tseng: Yeah, let’s talk about more, kind of, like, how you’ve, kind of, driven action from these reports, because I, I mean, I’m just transparently, like, because, you know, the curse, I would say, of, like, being a consultant is, like, you’re not, like.
110 00:19:37.520 ⇒ 00:19:39.770 Robert Tseng: you’re not…
111 00:19:40.470 ⇒ 00:19:52.219 Robert Tseng: I think you’re kind of just treated as an outsider to some extent, where… yeah, like, we can press the recommendations, but oftentimes, it’s, like, we’re… we’re, like, shackled to, like, the pace at which that team is working on, you know, like.
112 00:19:53.150 ⇒ 00:20:07.520 Robert Tseng: We have a client that we just worked with, we were, like, running with their head of product for a while, she just got, like, cut, like, two weeks ago, and so that whole thing stopped, and so, you know, our deadlines get pushed back, so, like, the project ends up kind of dragging out longer, and a lot of it is not really in our control.
113 00:20:07.650 ⇒ 00:20:29.769 Robert Tseng: yeah, the levers that we’ve been able to use, you know, we do weekly check-ins, we do deck readouts, we use async videos like Looms, and we… all we can really do is, like, book meetings, get on calls with people, but yeah, I mean, I think, you know, obviously those are the… those are the mediums of, like, how we can do it, but, you know, curious from your perspective, like, how do you, like, you know, have you run into these…
114 00:20:30.020 ⇒ 00:20:39.059 Robert Tseng: kind of roadblocks before, when you’re drawing out insights from, like, product analytics work, and how do you, yeah, like, drive change management, like, through that?
115 00:20:39.550 ⇒ 00:20:47.650 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, like, so, rephrasing, when I see what looks like, for example, a gap in a funnel, what do I do about it? Yeah. Yeah, sure.
116 00:20:47.760 ⇒ 00:20:49.770 Greg Stoutenburg: Well, so I’m…
117 00:20:49.880 ⇒ 00:20:58.969 Greg Stoutenburg: The first part is taking a look at the funnel, seeing where it looks like the drop-off is, and as compared to where we would expect it to be, or rather, you know.
118 00:20:59.120 ⇒ 00:21:01.960 Greg Stoutenburg: we think that the Golden Path is going to be one way.
119 00:21:02.190 ⇒ 00:21:21.539 Greg Stoutenburg: the data suggests that users are not following that golden path, so identifying the drop-off point is critical. Now, to be able to do that, you have to have that, again, you have to have the golden path defined, so I’m beginning with the assumption that the customer has that already, and so we see the deficit. Yeah.
120 00:21:21.540 ⇒ 00:21:24.989 Greg Stoutenburg: So then, well, then I experiment to see what it is
121 00:21:24.990 ⇒ 00:21:40.520 Greg Stoutenburg: I collect all the data that I can, and then experiment to see what it is, we’ll close it. And I don’t mean to oversimplify, but, you know, for example, I see a gap in some step. I would do things like watch session replays of users who get to the first step, and then see.
122 00:21:40.590 ⇒ 00:21:47.330 Robert Tseng: what else they’re doing, because somehow they’re not getting to the next step. They’re not performing the next action that we expect them to perform.
123 00:21:47.330 ⇒ 00:21:59.859 Greg Stoutenburg: And look for any patterns that I can there, and see… see what’s going wrong, and propose resolutions. So, I mean, just… just to give an example of, like, a… a failure point, sure. I was in…
124 00:21:59.920 ⇒ 00:22:07.779 Greg Stoutenburg: I was looking at the sign-up flow for an application, and I was finding that users were,
125 00:22:08.080 ⇒ 00:22:16.189 Greg Stoutenburg: creating a team… so what I saw was data was a team is created, and users have to go on teams. A team is created, but then a user isn’t created.
126 00:22:16.250 ⇒ 00:22:22.310 Greg Stoutenburg: And instead, what happens is an event is triggered to resend an email to a user who’s attempting to sign up.
127 00:22:22.310 ⇒ 00:22:40.149 Greg Stoutenburg: So it’s like, what’s going on? Somehow, we’re getting this glut of vacant teams being created, and users that don’t match them. So I went back and watched session replays, and what I saw is that at the step where they’re supposed to verify their email, they’re… they’re not doing it. They’re not putting in their email address. I’m like, well, I’m like, alright.
128 00:22:40.280 ⇒ 00:22:56.719 Greg Stoutenburg: the only hypothesis I could come up with after watching a bunch of videos is that the user is entering their email address on one screen, and then on the very next screen, forgetting which email address they put in. And so then, I watched enough videos where someone typed in a different email address than the one they typed in before.
129 00:22:57.010 ⇒ 00:22:57.360 Robert Tseng: Oh, boy.
130 00:22:57.360 ⇒ 00:23:01.429 Greg Stoutenburg: well, I think that’s it. So we need to remind them what they just typed in.
131 00:23:01.630 ⇒ 00:23:03.160 Greg Stoutenburg: And then that problem went away.
132 00:23:03.470 ⇒ 00:23:12.310 Greg Stoutenburg: I see. Now, I don’t know how to… I don’t know how to translate that into a strategy that just applies in every case, except to say.
133 00:23:13.040 ⇒ 00:23:18.000 Greg Stoutenburg: have a golden path, And that’s just a decision, what you think the user should do.
134 00:23:18.000 ⇒ 00:23:18.520 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
135 00:23:18.520 ⇒ 00:23:30.810 Greg Stoutenburg: have that path, look at the funnel, find the break, study the break, and go from there. Usually, once you’ve found it, I think the hypothesizing is a lot easier.
136 00:23:31.190 ⇒ 00:23:31.810 Robert Tseng: Sure.
137 00:23:31.810 ⇒ 00:23:56.019 Robert Tseng: Okay, no, I like that. It’s a good structure. Yeah, I mean, I will, like, kind of just caveat in that, sure, I think, sometimes we do have to develop an earlier point of view, and let’s say session replay hasn’t been set up because we walked into a situation where, yeah, instrumentation is just a mess, and they do just need to kind of have, like, some early signal of, like, what the gap in the funnel is. I think you would still be able to do it, you know, without it, but I would, you know.
138 00:23:56.060 ⇒ 00:23:59.939 Robert Tseng: letting you know that that’s… that’s probably… that’s pretty… that happens pretty often as well.
139 00:23:59.940 ⇒ 00:24:00.260 Greg Stoutenburg: Sure.
140 00:24:01.200 ⇒ 00:24:24.850 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I was kind of clicking around in, like, kind of your most recent, kind of, company, FlowFuse, just seeing, kind of, okay, I think this is actually quite similar to some… we’ve worked with, like, manufacturing, kind of, like, software platform before. They’re, like, tied to, like, the third largest steel manufacturer in the country, so they’re actually a big client of ours. So this would actually be an interesting one, if you have a few minutes to kind of walk through, kind of, like, your work specifically there, kind of.
141 00:24:24.910 ⇒ 00:24:29.570 Robert Tseng: Yeah, kind of walk me through, like, the projects that you kind of took on,
142 00:24:29.670 ⇒ 00:24:39.190 Robert Tseng: there. I know there’s a few lines in your, in your resume that kind of, maybe talked about the, the impact, so if I could just…
143 00:24:39.380 ⇒ 00:24:47.489 Robert Tseng: maybe pick a couple, so one would be, like, around pricing. I’m interested in kind of exploring that. Maybe we’ll just start there and see if we have time to do another one.
144 00:24:47.690 ⇒ 00:24:56.390 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, sure. So let me… let me look at my own resume. So, okay, you’re looking at restructured pricing and feature offerings for self-serve tiers.
145 00:24:56.390 ⇒ 00:25:01.019 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Yes, so what I did there, so we had.
146 00:25:01.240 ⇒ 00:25:07.860 Greg Stoutenburg: when I signed on… yeah, when I signed on, we had… they had just introduced 3 tiers.
147 00:25:07.860 ⇒ 00:25:21.359 Greg Stoutenburg: Enterprise tier being sales purchases only, Starter, and what was then called Team being the ones that you could elect by self-service. And both Starter and Team were priced by the number of Node-RED instances you purchased.
148 00:25:21.360 ⇒ 00:25:36.759 Greg Stoutenburg: And think of it like an N8N individual workflow that you can build a bunch of stuff in. Like, one Node-RED instance is basically equivalent to, like, one workflow. And they were priced by not runs of the workflow, but just, like, the existence of that.
149 00:25:36.770 ⇒ 00:25:42.829 Greg Stoutenburg: thing. Running. This turns out to be… now, it turns out that you can
150 00:25:42.830 ⇒ 00:26:06.880 Greg Stoutenburg: you can run a lot of stuff in one container. So, this turns out to be a very low-value way of pricing, something that users can get an awful lot of value for. And, so one thing that I did was immediately institute, like, a platform fee, so there’s sort of a minimum purchase. You’ll always be paying for, for example, on the team tier, you’ll always be paying for the equivalent of 5, whether you use 5 or use 2.
151 00:26:06.960 ⇒ 00:26:19.349 Greg Stoutenburg: And, and for starter tier, I basically came around to, you’re always going to be paying for one, and anything beyond one, you can, you can have as an add-on.
152 00:26:19.610 ⇒ 00:26:36.719 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. Now, to justify that approach, I looked at, I looked at what had previously been the limits of how many instances you could purchase on a tier, and found that even when there was a minimum bundle that had been purchased, including on Enterprise.
153 00:26:36.720 ⇒ 00:26:51.719 Greg Stoutenburg: teams almost never touched them. They almost never got that close. So, what that says is that, our users are satisfied with just however many instances it is they need. They’re not trying to max them out.
154 00:26:51.810 ⇒ 00:26:56.060 Greg Stoutenburg: But they will try to minimize them if they’re being charged
155 00:26:56.440 ⇒ 00:27:10.690 Greg Stoutenburg: per instance. So, I needed to institute a floor. So that’s one thing that I did. Another thing that I did is just looked at what competitors were charging for the equivalent output, and, and used that as a data point.
156 00:27:11.370 ⇒ 00:27:14.900 Greg Stoutenburg: And then, finally, I looked through
157 00:27:14.900 ⇒ 00:27:32.069 Greg Stoutenburg: at this… at the time, the company was small enough that I could do this. I looked through our cloud customers, I looked at every single one of them, I logged in, looked at their main flows and what they were doing, figured out what… what they seemed to be optimizing for, what it is they seemed to be trying to deliver, and then made sure that the…
158 00:27:32.070 ⇒ 00:27:36.560 Greg Stoutenburg: feature offerings that we were putting with each tier enabled them to do that.
159 00:27:36.630 ⇒ 00:27:42.710 Greg Stoutenburg: But not too much more than that without paying for it. So.
160 00:27:42.710 ⇒ 00:27:43.170 Robert Tseng: Got it.
161 00:27:43.170 ⇒ 00:27:55.640 Greg Stoutenburg: I managed to, for, you know, I mentioned pricing and feature offerings for self-service tiers, I managed to, you know, increase the value per customer by quite a bit with
162 00:27:56.200 ⇒ 00:28:08.310 Greg Stoutenburg: almost no churn. Ceo’s feedback was, I should have charged more. And made ARR go up, you know, almost 3X in that period of time.
163 00:28:09.110 ⇒ 00:28:09.780 Robert Tseng: Got it.
164 00:28:09.920 ⇒ 00:28:24.500 Robert Tseng: Okay, that makes sense. I think that’s a… that’s a good exercise. Yeah, as far as, like, yeah, being able to set thresholds for limits, and, yeah, being able to, like, advise on, like.
165 00:28:24.500 ⇒ 00:28:43.790 Robert Tseng: how… how they should set their… kind of experimenting on pricing. I think, you know, this is a very common, kind of ask once, like, the initial setup happens, so I think you would be doing this, like, yeah, this would be a very relevant, kind of project for some of our clients. We have time, I’m just curious about the account-based marketing campaign, so…
166 00:28:43.940 ⇒ 00:28:44.980 Robert Tseng: Yep.
167 00:28:45.290 ⇒ 00:28:48.190 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I would say, you know,
168 00:28:49.980 ⇒ 00:28:53.639 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I just want to kind of better understand, like,
169 00:28:53.980 ⇒ 00:29:05.850 Robert Tseng: from a go-to-market perspective, I mean, account-based marketing to me is, you know, more… maybe your more traditional, like, enterprise, like, B2B SaaS motion, like, I guess, like, to us, it’s important that
170 00:29:05.940 ⇒ 00:29:14.249 Robert Tseng: you know, we were able to kind of advise on both, like, the PLG growth motion and also on the sales motion, so I just wanted to hear a bit more on there.
171 00:29:14.450 ⇒ 00:29:16.840 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this was,
172 00:29:16.840 ⇒ 00:29:41.009 Greg Stoutenburg: this was something that I worked on with our, with our marketing, but even before marketing, with our sales leader, because what we found is that we were getting low-quality inbound leads, and so all the work that was being done, all the pipeline that we were generating was outreach directly from sales, and it’s a very small team, so it was a lot of work, and the leads that were coming in were sort of lousy.
173 00:29:41.010 ⇒ 00:30:05.999 Greg Stoutenburg: But then this led to a puzzle, because we know that there are lots and lots of customers in our ICP that are out there using Node-RED who would really benefit from our solution, and if they were aware of it, we think would love it. So, so what I did was figured out what the, sort of, 3 really basic use cases for our software, and consider this, this is, this is sort of
174 00:30:06.000 ⇒ 00:30:09.430 Greg Stoutenburg: Like, this is the, the problems track.
175 00:30:09.430 ⇒ 00:30:09.880 Robert Tseng: hooked.
176 00:30:09.880 ⇒ 00:30:28.379 Greg Stoutenburg: And… and then went, alright, let’s find customers who are out there, who are in our ICP, and we’re just, you know, getting this from visitors, harvesting information from Clay, getting their, you know, getting email addresses, getting LinkedIn contacts where we can get it, getting company data where we can get it.
177 00:30:28.380 ⇒ 00:30:37.579 Greg Stoutenburg: and then putting them into an audience in HubSpot, and then going, alright, now we’re gonna surface up to this… to this person.
178 00:30:37.580 ⇒ 00:30:51.990 Greg Stoutenburg: you know, one of three different campaigns. Let’s just try out edge connectivity. Let’s see how it goes, see if they engage with this. So, we’re pushing ads on edge connectivity, we’re pushing ads on, data integration, we’re putting… pushing ads on
179 00:30:52.260 ⇒ 00:31:12.010 Greg Stoutenburg: what was the third one? I always forget the third one. Oh yeah, building UNS systems. And then sort of see where they bite, and then if it looks like we’re getting some engagement on something, then we… then we move them up a level, right? So first, it was just bare awareness. FlowFuse has this, right? Or… or… or better. You have this problem. Well, FlowFuse has that.
180 00:31:12.020 ⇒ 00:31:13.970 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay. Yeah. They bite on that.
181 00:31:14.080 ⇒ 00:31:20.810 Greg Stoutenburg: go up… now… now they’re an audience in… in… part of the audience in the next stage of the campaign, where…
182 00:31:20.810 ⇒ 00:31:45.690 Greg Stoutenburg: They’ve not only gotten the impression from the ad, because LinkedIn agrees that they were relevant to it, but now they’ve… they’ve seen something that’s a little bit richer. Here’s the way that FlowFuse solves this. And then they’ve clicked on it, right? Okay, now they’re getting, they’re moved up, they’re increasingly warm. And when you’re doing this on the account side, right, it’s, you know, it’s all the emails that match the, some handful of titles that are on that account.
183 00:31:45.990 ⇒ 00:31:49.060 Greg Stoutenburg: Moving through the workflow before sales ever reaches out.
184 00:31:49.340 ⇒ 00:31:54.550 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. So, I guess the… To make this actionable.
185 00:31:54.730 ⇒ 00:32:13.759 Greg Stoutenburg: what was the valuable experience that I think I got from that is being really precise about defining what your user problems are, and this applies to pricing, too. Defining what user problems are that put users into different segments, and I think if you can do that conceptually, then the rest is just, like, it’s like clicking buttons in HubSpot.
186 00:32:14.370 ⇒ 00:32:17.820 Greg Stoutenburg: Or whatever, you know, whatever CRM is, and LinkedIn.
187 00:32:19.550 ⇒ 00:32:20.320 Robert Tseng: Great.
188 00:32:20.430 ⇒ 00:32:24.270 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, I think, okay, yeah, that makes sense to me. I think,
189 00:32:24.840 ⇒ 00:32:37.969 Robert Tseng: you know, whether it’s… yeah, I mean, I’m all for, like, you know, indexing, at least at this level, at the stratist level, I’m indexing more for, kind of, like, the way that you approach problems, and trying to understand, like.
190 00:32:38.090 ⇒ 00:32:44.829 Robert Tseng: you know, regardless of the stack, whether it’s a Salesforce, or HubSpot, or LinkedIn ads, or Google Ads, whatever, like.
191 00:32:44.830 ⇒ 00:32:45.340 Greg Stoutenburg: Right.
192 00:32:45.340 ⇒ 00:33:04.329 Robert Tseng: you know, does this person have, like, kind of the, like, ability to kind of still strategize and advise, like, clients, you know, on any of these different motions? So, I mean, I think just hearing from your kind of way that you talk about these problems, like, you know, I’m sure we could say a lot more, but I think this, this, this makes sense to me.
193 00:33:04.330 ⇒ 00:33:09.630 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, I just want to kind of spend a couple minutes just thinking about, like, next steps then, so… Sure.
194 00:33:09.630 ⇒ 00:33:20.530 Robert Tseng: Yeah, you know, curious, like, what’s your… yeah, what’s your, like, recruiting timeline looking like right now? Yeah, like, kind of what are we…
195 00:33:20.530 ⇒ 00:33:33.819 Robert Tseng: like, are we working against a clock right now? I kind of… what do you… what’s… what’s, like, your minimum? Like, are you okay with, like, the whole starting part-time thing? Or, like, yeah, I just wanted to understand, like, what works for you, and if you were to move forward.
196 00:33:34.180 ⇒ 00:33:47.000 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, I’m fine with some, you know, some contracts or, you know, part-time, whatever you said, 10 to 20 hours a week for a month. Yep, that would work for me. You know, holidays coming up.
197 00:33:47.000 ⇒ 00:33:55.779 Robert Tseng: fill out that role right now? Is that… or kind of, like, hours, or what’s your… would your availability be? Like, what would your availability look like if you were to start part-time? Yeah.
198 00:33:55.960 ⇒ 00:34:18.710 Greg Stoutenburg: So it would… I mean, I could take on a, like, a very small project in the next couple weeks, but then I’m gonna be away for the second half of December. I’ve already got out of office time booked, so… Yeah. If there’s, you know, if there’s a lot of enthusiasm on your side that you want to get something going very quickly, then I could do it, but it’d have to be pretty light, otherwise we’d be talking in January.
199 00:34:18.710 ⇒ 00:34:22.319 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. And so, you know.
200 00:34:22.320 ⇒ 00:34:26.200 Greg Stoutenburg: third week of January or so would be an ideal time to start.
201 00:34:26.199 ⇒ 00:34:27.429 Robert Tseng: Sure.
202 00:34:28.600 ⇒ 00:34:30.130 Greg Stoutenburg: I forget your other questions.
203 00:34:30.340 ⇒ 00:34:31.190 Robert Tseng: No, yeah, I think that’s.
204 00:34:31.199 ⇒ 00:34:31.759 Greg Stoutenburg: That’s me a question.
205 00:34:31.760 ⇒ 00:34:38.519 Robert Tseng: Okay. So, I’m gonna try, you know, if we’re gonna try to do something in the next couple weeks.
206 00:34:38.520 ⇒ 00:35:02.069 Robert Tseng: I mean, this one client that I mentioned to you that’s also in the manufacturing SaaS space, like, that seems like the best one to maybe start you on, like, just for domain knowledge, and yeah, so let me just talk to them and see if we can bring you in. Yeah, knowing that, you know, it’s just a couple weeks, do some discovery, and yeah, I think it would be good, you know, that’d be enough time for us to kind of talk through strategy and roadmap, kind of heading into the new year.
207 00:35:02.070 ⇒ 00:35:17.459 Robert Tseng: And, yeah, see if we’re kind of… we’re, you know, I’m looking to grow that account. They’ve been with us for, like, 6 months, so, yeah, I think that would be a great, you know, test for me to kind of see, like, you know, is… are you interested in coming in and growing that account?
208 00:35:17.460 ⇒ 00:35:18.120 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah.
209 00:35:18.120 ⇒ 00:35:26.679 Robert Tseng: Great win. And then, as far as, like, mid-January onwards, that’s good. That gives us time. Let’s stay in… let’s stay in contact.
210 00:35:26.680 ⇒ 00:35:27.250 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
211 00:35:27.250 ⇒ 00:35:39.839 Robert Tseng: Slack there with you. Yeah, I mean, I think what I would like to do, kind of, between now and then, is just, like, just start sharing, kind of, like, how we’re thinking about the product analytics side of the business, and.
212 00:35:39.840 ⇒ 00:35:47.999 Greg Stoutenburg: You know, regardless if you come and work with us or not, if you’re interested in doing, kind of, consultancy work, you know, we’ve been doing this for two and a half years, we’ve…
213 00:35:48.170 ⇒ 00:35:58.399 Robert Tseng: grown a team, and, like, you know, maybe we have a way of thinking about offer construction and different, like, and, like, how we… like, from an account management perspective, like.
214 00:35:58.400 ⇒ 00:36:11.220 Robert Tseng: you know, how do you just take, like, that… you know, I’m sure you’re good at pulling out actionable nuggets, but, like, how do you actually design, like, an engagement around that? Right. You know, I would like to be able to run some things by you, you know, we’re putting together some
215 00:36:11.270 ⇒ 00:36:35.270 Robert Tseng: we continue to evolve, like, the docs that we have and the way we talk about the business, and so, you know, I think that would be a great way for you to kind of stay in touch with what we’re doing, and, you know, it’d probably be helpful for you, if you want to contribute, and like, or if you want to just kind of give feedback on some of our stuff, like, yeah, that might be a good way to kind of get this continued to warm up for the time in January.
216 00:36:35.580 ⇒ 00:36:36.280 Robert Tseng: Sure.
217 00:36:36.280 ⇒ 00:36:37.190 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, sounds good.
218 00:36:37.190 ⇒ 00:36:38.460 Robert Tseng: Does that sound okay?
219 00:36:38.600 ⇒ 00:36:39.529 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, it does.
220 00:36:39.530 ⇒ 00:36:40.140 Robert Tseng: Sure.
221 00:36:40.140 ⇒ 00:36:40.670 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
222 00:36:41.070 ⇒ 00:36:50.960 Robert Tseng: All right, well, yeah, really appreciate your time, Greg. Yeah, no, this was… this was great. Pleasantly surprised, like, I… I wasn’t really sure, because Utam put this on pretty late last minute for me, and I was like.
223 00:36:51.910 ⇒ 00:36:54.259 Robert Tseng: Okay, well, I’ll talk to him, but this was…
224 00:36:54.260 ⇒ 00:36:55.760 Greg Stoutenburg: Here we go! Right.
225 00:36:56.550 ⇒ 00:37:10.929 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s great, great call. We covered some good stuff, the roles you’ve described sound great. Yeah, so let me know… let me know how your… your follow-up conversations go with Utam, and, we’ll be in touch.
226 00:37:11.190 ⇒ 00:37:12.540 Robert Tseng: Okay, sounds good. Thanks, Greg.
227 00:37:12.540 ⇒ 00:37:13.700 Greg Stoutenburg: Cool. Thanks, Robert. See ya.
228 00:37:14.660 ⇒ 00:37:15.230 Greg Stoutenburg: Right.