Meeting Title: Brainforge x Greg: Opportunities Date: 2025-12-03 Meeting participants: Uttam Kumaran, Greg Stoutenburg, Robert Tseng, Awaish Kumar
WEBVTT
1 00:00:04.000 ⇒ 00:00:06.729 Uttam Kumaran: Hey guys, sorry, I was just on… on an interview.
2 00:00:07.920 ⇒ 00:00:08.959 Greg Stoutenburg: Hey, how’s it going?
3 00:00:09.100 ⇒ 00:00:10.010 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, good.
4 00:00:10.460 ⇒ 00:00:11.370 Greg Stoutenburg: Good to see you again.
5 00:00:11.740 ⇒ 00:00:12.750 Uttam Kumaran: Good to see you again.
6 00:00:17.870 ⇒ 00:00:19.060 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, Rob, are you there?
7 00:00:28.210 ⇒ 00:00:29.580 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe.
8 00:00:35.980 ⇒ 00:00:36.800 Robert Tseng: Hey guys.
9 00:00:37.420 ⇒ 00:00:38.210 Uttam Kumaran: Hey.
10 00:00:38.210 ⇒ 00:00:39.229 Greg Stoutenburg: Can you hear us?
11 00:00:39.780 ⇒ 00:00:40.370 Robert Tseng: Yep.
12 00:00:40.880 ⇒ 00:00:41.670 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool.
13 00:00:43.380 ⇒ 00:01:02.010 Uttam Kumaran: Cool! So I just wanted to kind of get everybody on the line again, and kind of think through, okay, what is, like, a first, you know, engagement that we can start to loop Greg in? We have a couple of, you know, product analytics-related clients right now, and we are, you know, actively selling a few more.
14 00:01:02.110 ⇒ 00:01:07.709 Uttam Kumaran: I think in particular, Robert, we wanted to talk about, like, README as a potential first
15 00:01:07.850 ⇒ 00:01:12.509 Uttam Kumaran: opportunity. Yeah. Kind of the way, you know, I’d like to set the stage is.
16 00:01:12.510 ⇒ 00:01:28.260 Uttam Kumaran: just to think about, okay, what is, like, a one- or two-week set of deliverables that we can drive towards together? Of course, we would… we would pay for any hours that’s worked, and that way you kind of get a sense of, like, our cadence and the way that our team is working. You get a sense of, like.
17 00:01:28.310 ⇒ 00:01:34.520 Uttam Kumaran: how the DE team works, and how that supports analytics. You kind of understand a little bit about how we’re
18 00:01:34.600 ⇒ 00:01:37.550 Uttam Kumaran: We’re thinking about delivering and communicating for…
19 00:01:37.690 ⇒ 00:01:41.170 Uttam Kumaran: And so those are all things that I would like to…
20 00:01:41.310 ⇒ 00:01:48.759 Uttam Kumaran: sort of, you know, kind of drive towards. I know you’re out to, like, end of the… end of the month, right? Is that right?
21 00:01:48.760 ⇒ 00:01:50.119 Greg Stoutenburg: Last two weeks of the month, yeah.
22 00:01:50.120 ⇒ 00:02:00.280 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so I know we do have some time between now and then, but yeah, maybe I can just set the stage there. Does that sound, like, roughly good with you? Okay.
23 00:02:00.280 ⇒ 00:02:00.870 Greg Stoutenburg: Yep.
24 00:02:01.760 ⇒ 00:02:02.690 Greg Stoutenburg: Cool.
25 00:02:02.690 ⇒ 00:02:09.250 Uttam Kumaran: Then, Robert, I think… I think we could talk about README if that’s what you feel is the most fair and easiest to sort of, like.
26 00:02:09.419 ⇒ 00:02:10.580 Uttam Kumaran: have Greg’s support.
27 00:02:10.580 ⇒ 00:02:10.970 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
28 00:02:11.440 ⇒ 00:02:12.220 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
29 00:02:12.440 ⇒ 00:02:26.050 Robert Tseng: Sure, I guess… How can I… Let me open up something… I’m going to…
30 00:02:27.200 ⇒ 00:02:30.040 Robert Tseng: Log into a couple things.
31 00:02:34.300 ⇒ 00:02:47.059 Robert Tseng: So, I guess what I’m pulling up is I’m gonna pull up the README product. It’s a technical docs company, and then there’s this deck that, our main stakeholder has kind of put together. You’ll get a sense of, like, kind of…
32 00:02:47.180 ⇒ 00:02:55.189 Robert Tseng: they’re very early on in, like, kind of very low maturity in terms of how they’re measuring their business, so…
33 00:02:56.030 ⇒ 00:02:57.790 Robert Tseng: Yeah, let’s see…
34 00:03:01.980 ⇒ 00:03:04.360 Robert Tseng: So I’ll do that, and then…
35 00:03:05.310 ⇒ 00:03:09.350 Robert Tseng: I’ll show a couple things that we have in Amplitude already.
36 00:03:23.360 ⇒ 00:03:26.979 Robert Tseng: Sorry, single sign-on’s, like, not really working for me.
37 00:03:30.920 ⇒ 00:03:31.820 Robert Tseng: Okay.
38 00:03:34.680 ⇒ 00:03:39.050 Robert Tseng: This phone booth is hot. Like, the fan’s not…
39 00:03:39.050 ⇒ 00:03:45.649 Greg Stoutenburg: You know, the same thing. I live in an old house, it’s very poorly insulated, so if it’s cold outside, it’s cold inside. If it’s hot outside, it’s hot inside.
40 00:03:46.110 ⇒ 00:04:02.660 Greg Stoutenburg: So I’m, the way that I’m dealing with the current, roughly, I don’t know, it was, like, 20 degrees out this morning, is I’ve just, I’m surrounded by heaters, but then the net effect by 3PM is there’s just a bunch of dry, hot air all around. I’m like, as soon as the call started, I’m like, oh.
41 00:04:02.660 ⇒ 00:04:06.140 Greg Stoutenburg: I desperately wanted to just rub my eyes for minutes. I should turn off one of these.
42 00:04:09.470 ⇒ 00:04:15.780 Robert Tseng: Yeah, the winter always comes with these inconveniences. We can’t really regulate temperature very well.
43 00:04:16.190 ⇒ 00:04:16.899 Greg Stoutenburg: Nope.
44 00:04:17.180 ⇒ 00:04:23.910 Robert Tseng: Okay. So, yeah, a couple things here. This is just, like, a… I’m just gonna flash, like, the Reme product, so…
45 00:04:23.990 ⇒ 00:04:42.250 Robert Tseng: This is already a logged-in version. You go in, and you can… I guess there’s a lot of paywall stuff, but you basically set up API docs here, and then… I mean, they have a lot of features that they’ve shipped in their product, but really, like, the focus of this engagement is to drive more, like, paid conversions in their PLG funnel, so…
46 00:04:42.640 ⇒ 00:04:56.419 Robert Tseng: You know, that means they’re testing out new pricing, they’re focused on their onboarding flows, and then we are just starting to, like, kind of push them to measure some of the experiments that they’ve been running. So…
47 00:04:56.500 ⇒ 00:05:01.000 Robert Tseng: I’ve kind of been working with the… the main stakeholder as a…
48 00:05:01.050 ⇒ 00:05:05.530 Robert Tseng: kind of, like, head of BizOps, you can kind of… head of operations, if you want to call that.
49 00:05:05.560 ⇒ 00:05:09.430 Robert Tseng: And yeah, there are these initiatives where
50 00:05:09.440 ⇒ 00:05:25.909 Robert Tseng: these are different feature experiments, or different experiments that they’ve kind of, like, logged in the past few months, and then, just asking us to build reporting and amplitude to measure, just measure success. And, so I guess, like, things that I kind of…
51 00:05:26.070 ⇒ 00:05:35.779 Robert Tseng: I basically was telling them what’s a standardized metric they should measure across all of their experiments, so that they can actually
52 00:05:35.780 ⇒ 00:05:46.799 Robert Tseng: like, benchmark whether one experiment is moving the needle more than the other. And then within the experiment itself, like, what are some metrics that we need to be looking at to see
53 00:05:47.140 ⇒ 00:05:56.759 Robert Tseng: that are specific to that experiment itself. So, like, this, for example, is, like, one feature in the onboarding flow. They launched it in July.
54 00:05:56.870 ⇒ 00:06:01.809 Robert Tseng: You know, wanted to see, did it actually impact, paid conversions in any way?
55 00:06:01.970 ⇒ 00:06:13.890 Robert Tseng: And then we wanted to see, well, is it actually driving people to kind of complete onboarding more effectively, right? So, like, that’s just one example. I’m sure you could think of more, but it’s very, very basic stuff.
56 00:06:14.110 ⇒ 00:06:25.749 Robert Tseng: And so, this is a pure amplitude engagement, where we already have, like, some… we’re working on a pretty basic plan, we have a few dashboards kind of set up, and, like, kind of…
57 00:06:25.870 ⇒ 00:06:41.370 Robert Tseng: we have an engine… we have an analyst on our team who’s kind of going and cranking out these reports, and so, you know, you’d be able to leverage this person to be able to help you actually go and build this stuff out. But obviously, just, like, giving them strategic direction, making sure that, like, this roadmap
58 00:06:41.370 ⇒ 00:06:47.590 Robert Tseng: But, you know, that we’re able to take these requirements from, kind of, the business stakeholder and
59 00:06:47.590 ⇒ 00:06:56.120 Robert Tseng: And one, you know, turn it into tickets for our engineers to execute on. You know, there’s some, like, there’s some project management in that.
60 00:06:56.150 ⇒ 00:07:13.459 Robert Tseng: Kind of in kind of translating those requirements into tickets, but then also being able to give that strategic feedback and advise, like, these are the metrics you should be looking at, this is how you think about this experiment. That type of strategic
61 00:07:13.460 ⇒ 00:07:28.640 Robert Tseng: feedback, we don’t really have anybody else on the team that’s been able to give that apart from… apart from me on this client… on these clients. So, I think that’s probably more so what I’m… more so what we’d be interested in, kind of, having you,
62 00:07:28.640 ⇒ 00:07:50.110 Robert Tseng: like, kind of at least be in the background and advise on the project management stuff, like, obviously with limited hours and you’re not working real time with us since you still have your day job, may not actually be, you know, I’m not too concerned about you being able to, like, actually deliver on that side, but it is, like, part of the scope, you know, assuming that you want to step into this type of role. So…
63 00:07:50.110 ⇒ 00:07:58.300 Robert Tseng: Yeah, anyway, I’m just kind of giving that as, like, a pretty simple primer of, like, how, like, a pure amplitude engagement typically works.
64 00:07:58.320 ⇒ 00:08:10.759 Robert Tseng: I will say it took us a couple steps to get here. One is they weren’t tracking anything, and so one, it was, like, doing an event data design, tracking plan template, working with their engineering team to, like, be able to track
65 00:08:10.760 ⇒ 00:08:20.649 Robert Tseng: what, you know, users are doing on their product. That was all set up a few months ago, but that’s usually step one to an engagement where we’re starting net new.
66 00:08:20.650 ⇒ 00:08:32.290 Robert Tseng: And then, obviously, after some time, there’s some data, and then just kind of advising them, what are some of the initial reports to look at? So, top, like, kind of funnel… we talked about funnel on our call last week.
67 00:08:32.289 ⇒ 00:08:42.950 Robert Tseng: But yeah, you know, just sign-up funnels, onboarding. We look at some of, like, the early signals for engagement to try to, like, figure out what is, like, you know, the activation moment look like.
68 00:08:42.990 ⇒ 00:08:46.939 Robert Tseng: You know, in this case, specifically, like.
69 00:08:47.080 ⇒ 00:09:06.369 Robert Tseng: we… I mean, we already kind of ran some of these ad hoc analyses and got them, like, kind of thinking through, okay, this is how you… this is what your current funnel is, like, trying to establish, like… like, basically teaching them, like, how do you look at some of… some of these? Obviously, these numbers don’t look great, like, it’s like a 1% kind of, like, conversion. I think…
70 00:09:06.430 ⇒ 00:09:26.329 Robert Tseng: some of these numbers have actually changed over time, so this is not the best view. But yeah, anyway, so, like, that’s… so that’s usually step two. And then now, we’re kind of, like, moving towards, like, okay, you want to be running regular experiments and knowing, like, how to actually measure those, and so that’s kind of, like, to, like, kind of phase three now.
71 00:09:26.390 ⇒ 00:09:28.060 Greg Stoutenburg: So.
72 00:09:28.060 ⇒ 00:09:39.099 Robert Tseng: you know, I mean, that’s… I’m just kind of giving you that as, like, over… the overall, like, life cycle of, like, how this engagement has gone. Yeah, I’ll just kind of pause there. Does that kind of…
73 00:09:39.600 ⇒ 00:09:45.700 Robert Tseng: What do you think of, like, the current state? Any questions about the, kind of, the previous steps that we already took with them?
74 00:09:45.780 ⇒ 00:09:58.990 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, that’s all… that’s what I was gonna ask about. So as far as the previous steps, I mean, I get the initial conversations that led to setting up that tracking plan, getting those events created and things. As far as… I mean, some of the
75 00:09:59.070 ⇒ 00:10:05.949 Greg Stoutenburg: what I think of as step two type work is… is sort of like pure business strategy, like, who’s their target customer?
76 00:10:05.950 ⇒ 00:10:06.290 Robert Tseng: Yep.
77 00:10:06.290 ⇒ 00:10:24.349 Greg Stoutenburg: Is the idea… so, when you showed the pricing page a moment ago, I did see a free option. Is this a freemium? Is it a trial? Why? So I have some questions around those things, and how much… Yeah. Because I’d like to know, you know, how much you work with the client on that kind of thing, and then…
78 00:10:24.350 ⇒ 00:10:24.790 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
79 00:10:24.790 ⇒ 00:10:36.770 Greg Stoutenburg: By the time we get to this stage, yeah, I think my… I think my main question is maybe you could just walk me through a couple of these, and in particular, you mentioned that there’s some kind of… some kind of main event that you’re measuring against everything.
80 00:10:36.770 ⇒ 00:10:37.170 Robert Tseng: Yup.
81 00:10:37.170 ⇒ 00:10:42.600 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, maybe you can tell me what that is. So those are my… sorry for rattling off, you know, 4.
82 00:10:42.600 ⇒ 00:10:43.489 Robert Tseng: No, no, good question.
83 00:10:43.490 ⇒ 00:10:44.009 Greg Stoutenburg: It’s right around.
84 00:10:44.240 ⇒ 00:10:45.630 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, those are good questions, yeah.
85 00:10:45.890 ⇒ 00:10:55.620 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so… let’s see… conversion funnel, yeah, I think this is one of the initial ones. So from, like, you’re asking about business strategy, yeah, I would say for this…
86 00:10:55.780 ⇒ 00:11:04.840 Robert Tseng: for this client, they really didn’t have much to go off of, so we kind of have to, like… I mean, I was, like, really pushing a lot of things. I was like, okay, you really need to be thinking…
87 00:11:04.840 ⇒ 00:11:17.529 Robert Tseng: about conversions and, like, this funnel structure, and so I kind of, like, I thought it would be better to approach it like a notebook style, not just giving them a set of reports. So, I kind of, like, created this first funnel for them and kind of showed them
88 00:11:17.530 ⇒ 00:11:24.400 Robert Tseng: Alright, these are all the users that are signing up, these are all the projects that are being created, that’s the first action you take once a user signs up.
89 00:11:24.400 ⇒ 00:11:30.080 Greg Stoutenburg: Attempted launch, this is a little bit outdated. I think they actually just sent… they just logged new events.
90 00:11:30.080 ⇒ 00:11:42.929 Robert Tseng: But it’s like, how do we know that a user is expressing intent to purchase? They enter, like, a launch event. So, once you launch your project, it takes you to the payment, kind of flow.
91 00:11:42.930 ⇒ 00:12:00.439 Robert Tseng: And so, I mean, this is actually… it’s more of a proxy, not everybody who clicks… people could just click that because they’re curious. So, now they’re actually… they’ve put another intermediary event that’s more of a better signal of whether or not there’s intent to pay. But yeah, you can… that’s, like, an example where there was a missing gap.
92 00:12:00.440 ⇒ 00:12:05.190 Robert Tseng: I had to, like, kind of triangulate what’s, like, a good proxy that at least we could use directionally.
93 00:12:05.240 ⇒ 00:12:18.899 Robert Tseng: And then, like, just to kind of keep the conversation going. So, you know, they… they… and then, obviously, this is just, like, you know, people who, who, you know, payment, payment actually went through. We did… yeah.
94 00:12:18.900 ⇒ 00:12:24.930 Greg Stoutenburg: May I interrupt there? Is successful project creation the activation moment, or one of the activation moments?
95 00:12:25.200 ⇒ 00:12:32.219 Robert Tseng: I would… yeah, I would say it is one of the activation moments. It’s like, kind of, why are 50% of people not creating projects?
96 00:12:32.220 ⇒ 00:12:32.570 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
97 00:12:32.570 ⇒ 00:12:39.979 Robert Tseng: more of them, too. So that’s part of, like, the onboarding tweak that we kind of, like, flagged here, so this was, like, one of the experiments.
98 00:12:40.700 ⇒ 00:12:41.629 Robert Tseng: Yeah, that was, like, kind of…
99 00:12:41.630 ⇒ 00:13:05.009 Greg Stoutenburg: Sorry, just to put it differently, my intent is, so you’ve got this, the first chart that you’re showing them is, you know, these four events, and my question really is, is the reason why project creation shows up on there because that’s supposed to be the golden path, or is it more like, this is the next thing they are forced to do? Like, if you sign in, the first thing that happens is you create a project, and then.
100 00:13:05.010 ⇒ 00:13:10.060 Robert Tseng: Yeah, this is actually the first thing that you have to do in order to, like, access any of the other features.
101 00:13:10.060 ⇒ 00:13:11.800 Greg Stoutenburg: Like it or not, this is where they’re going.
102 00:13:11.800 ⇒ 00:13:31.240 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I know, I get, like, Golden Path-wise, I don’t think they really have clarity on, like, what that is. Like, they thought they did, so, like, they sent me, like, a Google Doc, kind of articulating, like, this is what we think users are doing. I mean, they’re an API docs company, so, like, obviously you should be… you should be using the API docs feature.
103 00:13:31.240 ⇒ 00:13:34.730 Robert Tseng: But turns out, like, you know, there’s some nuances where, like.
104 00:13:34.890 ⇒ 00:13:47.399 Robert Tseng: you know, actually, that’s not the main feature that’s being used. Like, some other… some other feature, some other documentation feature is being used. And so, like, you know, that kind of… those type of questions, you’d have to just pick up by looking at the existing
105 00:13:47.400 ⇒ 00:13:54.929 Robert Tseng: reports where I’d be able to kind of share that with you in more detail. But yeah, this is not a golden path analysis at all. This is really just, like, kind of,
106 00:13:55.940 ⇒ 00:14:03.520 Robert Tseng: initial conversion funnel of, like, and, like, kind of just picking… yeah, if I had, like, a true…
107 00:14:03.520 ⇒ 00:14:19.219 Robert Tseng: like, Golden Path, like, activation, like, events, I would… I would have shown it, but we don’t know what that is, so we’re just kind of going off of, like, the first real active event to, like, when they actually tried to pay, and there’s, you know, there’s obviously something, some steps missing in between.
108 00:14:19.720 ⇒ 00:14:24.810 Robert Tseng: But yeah, so I guess, like, yeah, that’s… that’s, that’s how I would answer that.
109 00:14:24.980 ⇒ 00:14:25.530 Robert Tseng: They’ve also…
110 00:14:25.530 ⇒ 00:14:27.480 Uttam Kumaran: released a bunch of new features.
111 00:14:27.480 ⇒ 00:14:28.820 Robert Tseng: Yes, that, like…
112 00:14:28.880 ⇒ 00:14:33.450 Uttam Kumaran: Sort of, like, some of them you can only do post-project creation.
113 00:14:33.540 ⇒ 00:14:38.010 Uttam Kumaran: I would say the majority of them just aren’t getting used. I mean, there’s a reason we’re here helping them.
114 00:14:38.050 ⇒ 00:14:50.670 Uttam Kumaran: So… that’s also, like, I agree with Robert. I mean, I don’t know, Greg, if you’re familiar with README, but I… in the developer documentation space, like, Mintlify is there, README is there. Basically.
115 00:14:50.670 ⇒ 00:14:59.389 Uttam Kumaran: They just want people to come in, create, like, a project, and start to link their GitHub, you know, put in, move their docs in, and so they’re just finding that
116 00:14:59.460 ⇒ 00:15:10.939 Uttam Kumaran: they have a problem, number one, of just, like, the tons of free users, and then it’s sort of, like, trying to identify, okay, who’s serious about this, and where are they getting blocked because they just, like, can’t figure out the product, or, like…
117 00:15:10.940 ⇒ 00:15:12.980 Greg Stoutenburg: They just don’t get to that critical…
118 00:15:13.140 ⇒ 00:15:15.620 Uttam Kumaran: You know, sort of… setting.
119 00:15:15.640 ⇒ 00:15:17.710 Greg Stoutenburg: Your integration.
120 00:15:18.420 ⇒ 00:15:28.559 Robert Tseng: where this might kind of play in well with your experience, Greg, is, like, they actually started off as, like, an enterprise SaaS product selling more, like, B2B. So they just… they kind of just…
121 00:15:28.760 ⇒ 00:15:43.389 Robert Tseng: build a bunch of features, but now they’re basically trying to get this PLG motion going, and they don’t know what features to show to free users, like, they don’t really know how to tier out their service at this point. And so, I think that’s why they’re kind of fumbling the ball here.
122 00:15:43.390 ⇒ 00:15:53.560 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. Yeah, I’ll need to spend some time really understanding the product offering, but yeah. Already, I’m just looking at all these features, and my thought is…
123 00:15:53.670 ⇒ 00:16:02.680 Greg Stoutenburg: what can’t you do on free that you can do on startup? What can’t you do on startup that you can do on business and is valuable?
124 00:16:03.120 ⇒ 00:16:06.080 Greg Stoutenburg: And the features don’t really tell that story.
125 00:16:06.730 ⇒ 00:16:15.740 Robert Tseng: Yeah, they don’t, and I think, they kept changing… they flip-flopped a lot over the past couple months, like, you know, the header product got fired recently, so,
126 00:16:16.160 ⇒ 00:16:21.039 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think the bet that she made that was wrong, like, was that…
127 00:16:21.100 ⇒ 00:16:39.149 Robert Tseng: she, let… she basically, like, let free users use everything, and, like, people were just not, like, kind of moving upwards. Like, it was not very clear, like, why somebody would upgrade. And so, they’ve kind of flipped to the other direction, where now, like, free plan is, like, very limited.
128 00:16:39.150 ⇒ 00:16:53.270 Robert Tseng: And anytime you click something, it’ll try to… it’ll try to push you back into the pricing page. So, I’m sure, like, you know, they probably over-corrected, and it’s really something in the middle, but that’s really what they’re trying to figure out at this point.
129 00:16:53.400 ⇒ 00:16:56.710 Greg Stoutenburg: Got it, okay. And when it comes to…
130 00:16:56.840 ⇒ 00:17:04.050 Greg Stoutenburg: When it comes to working with a client on that kind of really fundamental question, do they expect
131 00:17:04.050 ⇒ 00:17:21.699 Greg Stoutenburg: to hear an analytics solution to it? Or, I mean, can you go to them with a conversation and say, like, hey, look, our charts show… this is the way that I would think about it. Our charts show… our charts are compatible with this story, they’re compatible with this story, they’re compatible with this story. The stories are not compatible with each other, though, so what we think is really going on is that
132 00:17:21.710 ⇒ 00:17:39.820 Greg Stoutenburg: we need some clarity on what we want users to do, right? So the solution… the solution is going to be one that is not fundamentally, you know, plug this hole. It’s going to be, we need to revamp your concept of what the free tier is doing. We need to revamp the concept of what the startup tier is doing.
133 00:17:40.570 ⇒ 00:17:49.969 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, I think… I think, that’s… that’s… those are totally valid questions to bring to check-ins. I think, like, we have to couch that with, like, they have…
134 00:17:50.080 ⇒ 00:18:08.419 Robert Tseng: I mean, I don’t know, there’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen, and so, like, there’s… we may be the ones to tell them what it should be, but, like, facilitating that conversation, making them answer those questions, I think is very important, and, definitely part of the requirements gathering. Like, this is… the expectation is not they just, like, send us docs and we just build reports.
135 00:18:08.420 ⇒ 00:18:13.020 Robert Tseng: Send docs back? Yeah, okay, go get them. Yeah, we definitely… I mean…
136 00:18:13.020 ⇒ 00:18:24.600 Uttam Kumaran: But it’s sens… it’s sensitive, right? It’s like, you can… what’s happened right now is they had a head of product, she’s gone. It’s clear that they’re… the person, the people that we’re working with, they looped in the CEO into our Slack channel.
137 00:18:24.720 ⇒ 00:18:44.059 Uttam Kumaran: So there’s probably… it’s up… it’s… this is kind of the game. It’s like figuring out, do we let them read between the lines? There are some clients we work with where it is, like, you do this thing, and they’re hoping… they want us to say that, because we may have been the only people to look into data. README is a company full of engineers, they’re a developer documentation companies, so…
138 00:18:44.060 ⇒ 00:18:49.360 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Like, it sort of is a little bit of sussing it out, but of course, like, we… we want
139 00:18:49.360 ⇒ 00:19:00.919 Uttam Kumaran: we want to win, not by just, like, putting together a dash and saying, here you go. We want to win by them winning, right? So ultimately, we’re… I want to be judged by us actually helping them achieve the results.
140 00:19:00.920 ⇒ 00:19:05.449 Greg Stoutenburg: Like, Robert and I talk about this often, which is, like, if they don’t take the medicine.
141 00:19:05.450 ⇒ 00:19:06.350 Uttam Kumaran: then, like.
142 00:19:06.660 ⇒ 00:19:14.470 Uttam Kumaran: that is up to us to say that, hey, you’re not… you’re not taking us seriously, and we’re open to that, but I think there is some sensitivity to just, like.
143 00:19:14.820 ⇒ 00:19:30.479 Uttam Kumaran: I think you kind of get where we’re going, which is, you figure out, like, how do we drive them? What do they respond to? Is it we’re enabling somebody to go to a meeting to have that conversation? Is it asking, like, kind of, like, the quiet question out loud in a meeting to get people? Things like that.
144 00:19:30.480 ⇒ 00:19:40.430 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, it’s… that’s the… that’s the sales perspective, right? Yeah. Figuring out what this client is really looking for, and the different personalities of the people on the team, what they’re going to be receptive to. Yeah.
145 00:19:40.600 ⇒ 00:19:41.160 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
146 00:19:41.360 ⇒ 00:19:51.119 Robert Tseng: Last thing I’ll say on this, I mean, I’ll send you, kind of, like, stuff to help you get on board, and you can get familiar with it, but just, like, the dynamics of this client.
147 00:19:51.240 ⇒ 00:19:58.600 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, this is one of our, like… I mean, I would say it’s a troubled client, like, they… I mean, they’ve just gone through a lot of change, like…
148 00:19:58.730 ⇒ 00:20:01.209 Greg Stoutenburg: Fired a better product, and like… Right.
149 00:20:01.210 ⇒ 00:20:08.860 Robert Tseng: CEO is just very opinionated, like… I mean, there’s a reason why, like, they’re kind of still stuck in this mess, because, like, nobody has really been able to…
150 00:20:09.160 ⇒ 00:20:17.680 Robert Tseng: kind of show the golden path, you know, so… Yeah, yeah. Like, I don’t, you know, I think it’s…
151 00:20:17.850 ⇒ 00:20:25.649 Robert Tseng: you know, this is why we get brought in, because they can’t… everything was going smoothly themselves, they wouldn’t… they wouldn’t hire us, so.
152 00:20:25.650 ⇒ 00:20:26.660 Greg Stoutenburg: Thank goodness.
153 00:20:26.660 ⇒ 00:20:35.309 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think, like, but I will say that this has been moving slower than I wanted to. Like, we’ve been working with them since on and off, pretty much since July, so…
154 00:20:35.310 ⇒ 00:20:39.190 Uttam Kumaran: Like, it took us, like, 2 months to, like, get access to, like, Mongo with, like.
155 00:20:39.510 ⇒ 00:20:40.669 Uttam Kumaran: Product data in it.
156 00:20:40.710 ⇒ 00:20:58.270 Uttam Kumaran: And, yeah, and then they’re like, oh, yeah, so there’s… there… that’s what there’s these nuances, but again, what we always do is, like, hey, we find the win, and then we say, hey, but, like, if we had Mongo, we could get you this, right? So we… it’s always… and I think we’re getting better internally at, like, making those stories, but totally, this may, like.
157 00:20:58.270 ⇒ 00:21:11.720 Uttam Kumaran: Robert and I have talked about it, we may not… we may end up not working out for this client because they’re not listening to us, and they’re not moving fast enough. And that is not… if it’s for those reasons, it’s actually not a bad thing. Like, that’s not, like, churn that we’re…
158 00:21:11.810 ⇒ 00:21:24.450 Uttam Kumaran: pissed about. In fact, I’m more like, okay, we need to just try another way, or maybe we didn’t do enough here, and we all kind of, at a conclusion, want to arrive, it’s okay, we’ve tried everything, it’s… it’s… you know, and so that’s…
159 00:21:24.450 ⇒ 00:21:33.010 Uttam Kumaran: But I think we’re in a place where we have access, we have… the last two weeks have been really good with some good momentum, like, we have them on the hook on some stuff we’re delivering.
160 00:21:33.110 ⇒ 00:21:39.420 Uttam Kumaran: You know, so… and there’s more people looking at this stuff now versus just, like, one person. Everybody’s an amplitude, at least, so…
161 00:21:39.700 ⇒ 00:21:40.920 Greg Stoutenburg: Right. Yeah.
162 00:21:41.930 ⇒ 00:21:42.790 Robert Tseng: Yep. Okay.
163 00:21:42.790 ⇒ 00:21:43.410 Greg Stoutenburg: Good.
164 00:21:44.970 ⇒ 00:21:47.009 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool, so I feel like…
165 00:21:47.230 ⇒ 00:22:03.190 Uttam Kumaran: Robert is, like, are you clear? Are there tickets for a couple of the things that we need to do? And then, basically, what I’ll try to do, Greg, is we’ll loop you into, like, our internal channel for this client. Typically, the way we work is we have, like, an internal and external channel. I’ll probably just have you
166 00:22:03.190 ⇒ 00:22:11.970 Uttam Kumaran: for the short term, just enable, you know, Robert with some of this reporting, and he’ll kind of communicate it out, and then, you know, after a few weeks, if it works out, then we can probably
167 00:22:12.180 ⇒ 00:22:15.159 Uttam Kumaran: you know, throw you in front of them and things like that, so…
168 00:22:15.160 ⇒ 00:22:15.840 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay.
169 00:22:15.900 ⇒ 00:22:24.219 Greg Stoutenburg: Great. So here’s what I wrote down, just, just so I’m clear on what I’m moving forward with.
170 00:22:24.220 ⇒ 00:22:38.140 Greg Stoutenburg: So, for README, the project goal is to drive conversions along their PLG funnel, and what you want me to do is look at the experiments that are running now, turn those into
171 00:22:38.140 ⇒ 00:22:50.170 Greg Stoutenburg: requirements for engineers to work on, to make improvements, come up with hypotheses… coming up with hypotheses for things that would, improve the findings that we have. And, yeah, advise the client on what they should measure.
172 00:22:50.260 ⇒ 00:22:52.130 Greg Stoutenburg: And what direction they should go in.
173 00:22:52.880 ⇒ 00:23:02.029 Robert Tseng: Yep, that’s… yeah, that’s it. And, so some of those, the slides I flashed for you, all the experiments,
174 00:23:02.980 ⇒ 00:23:20.990 Robert Tseng: are already being worked on right now, in terms of, like, we’re… we have someone on our team that’s kind of building out some of the initial reporting with, like, at least two metrics that I, you know, for each one. Yeah. But yeah, you’re basically gonna take that and try to, you know, get more out of… squeeze more out of it, right? And… Okay. Yeah, so…
175 00:23:21.590 ⇒ 00:23:33.679 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I’m already going to be talking to the client tomorrow, at least telling them that we’ve kind of… this is how we’ve laid it out, but over the next couple weeks, like, you know, maybe you’ll be able to
176 00:23:33.760 ⇒ 00:23:42.250 Robert Tseng: you’ll be able to just, yeah, craft some hypotheses, yeah, equip me with the questions that you think I should be asking the client.
177 00:23:42.750 ⇒ 00:23:43.540 Robert Tseng: Yep.
178 00:23:43.850 ⇒ 00:23:46.979 Robert Tseng: Yeah, we’re just, you know, at this point, we’re just trying to…
179 00:23:48.360 ⇒ 00:24:01.770 Robert Tseng: poke the bear on it from a different… a bunch of different angles, and see… and see, like, you know, what they’re receptive to actually, like, executing on. So, I think that’s, you know, that… with the goal being that we want to drive conversions, yeah.
180 00:24:02.300 ⇒ 00:24:03.190 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay.
181 00:24:03.190 ⇒ 00:24:03.730 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
182 00:24:06.880 ⇒ 00:24:07.570 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay.
183 00:24:07.760 ⇒ 00:24:09.100 Greg Stoutenburg: That sounds great.
184 00:24:10.190 ⇒ 00:24:10.950 Robert Tseng: Cool.
185 00:24:11.360 ⇒ 00:24:18.840 Uttam Kumaran: Cool, yeah, and then please ask any question in Slack, by the way, like, we should… we’ll talk… talk as much about it over at Slack, so please…
186 00:24:18.840 ⇒ 00:24:30.110 Greg Stoutenburg: Sounds good. Yeah, I’m sure once I get… once I get access to things, I’ll be able to go through, and I will have… I’ll have plenty of questions. Yeah, I’ll have plenty of questions. I mean, if there’s anything that’s…
187 00:24:30.140 ⇒ 00:24:54.719 Greg Stoutenburg: if there’s anything where the client has given their perspective on what they want to see users doing, or anything that already exists that’s, like, documentation on that, that would be very helpful for me. Of course, I’ll come in with my own ideas about just, like, okay, here’s what I think just should happen, regardless of what they said their intent is. But I do want to be mindful of that as well. And then, you know, as always, knowing something about things that have been tried already, especially…
188 00:24:54.720 ⇒ 00:24:56.029 Greg Stoutenburg: is a good approach.
189 00:24:56.290 ⇒ 00:25:03.740 Greg Stoutenburg: My phone has just interrupted to say, acknowledging the need to be mindful is a good approach. Thanks, Gemini. Let’s.
190 00:25:03.740 ⇒ 00:25:09.939 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that channel allowed you to… you’ll… you could read through the whole back history of everything we’ve tried, so…
191 00:25:09.940 ⇒ 00:25:16.619 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, learning some of the history will be really helpful. I think… I think for now… I think for now, that’ll be…
192 00:25:17.340 ⇒ 00:25:18.639 Greg Stoutenburg: Those are all my questions.
193 00:25:18.810 ⇒ 00:25:20.270 Robert Tseng: Okay. Okay. Yeah.
194 00:25:21.270 ⇒ 00:25:22.120 Greg Stoutenburg: Cool.
195 00:25:23.280 ⇒ 00:25:27.280 Uttam Kumaran: Perfect. Alright. Well, thanks, guys. Yeah, I’ll add you to the channel, we can chat there.
196 00:25:27.790 ⇒ 00:25:29.870 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay, sounds good.
197 00:25:29.980 ⇒ 00:25:30.660 Uttam Kumaran: Sounds good.
198 00:25:31.090 ⇒ 00:25:31.470 Robert Tseng: Exactly.
199 00:25:31.470 ⇒ 00:25:31.850 Uttam Kumaran: Appreciate it.
200 00:25:31.850 ⇒ 00:25:33.649 Greg Stoutenburg: Alright, talk to you guys soon. See ya.