Meeting Title: Brainforge x Remo CSO Structure Check-in Date: 2026-01-07 Meeting participants: Uttam Kumaran, Josh Goodkin
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1 00:01:31.820 ⇒ 00:01:33.960 Josh Goodkin: Be sure. Give me 2 seconds.
2 00:02:01.630 ⇒ 00:02:03.110 Josh Goodkin: Sweet, do something here.
3 00:02:03.760 ⇒ 00:02:04.200 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, dude.
4 00:02:04.200 ⇒ 00:02:06.180 Josh Goodkin: Got it. Awesome, sweet.
5 00:02:07.040 ⇒ 00:02:10.330 Josh Goodkin: Clarence coming to, or just us?
6 00:02:10.699 ⇒ 00:02:12.859 Uttam Kumaran: Let me text him.
7 00:02:12.860 ⇒ 00:02:14.169 Josh Goodkin: Yeah, I’m cool regardless.
8 00:03:53.620 ⇒ 00:04:02.949 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, maybe he’s in the meeting or running late, but… yeah, mainly this call, we’re just booking, like, kind of, like, one-on-ones with everybody, just…
9 00:04:03.180 ⇒ 00:04:14.979 Uttam Kumaran: I think we already kind of talked, like, you know, last week or so, but just making sure everybody feels good with, like, the new CSO structure. I know for Remo, it’s a little bit weird, like, it’s not,
10 00:04:15.340 ⇒ 00:04:29.420 Uttam Kumaran: as straightforward as our other clients, but I know we’re… we’re sort of working towards, you know, getting a few more on board. But, yeah, just, like, understanding if you’re comfortable with the new structure, you kind of, like, kind of get, like, how we’re doing things. I don’t know if you…
11 00:04:29.430 ⇒ 00:04:37.880 Uttam Kumaran: you guys are doing, like, direct presentations and stuff for Remo, but yeah, just kind of checking in just to make sure, like, you know, you kind of feel okay about that.
12 00:04:39.920 ⇒ 00:04:47.460 Josh Goodkin: Yeah, so I am, again, bringing up a little bit of a weird one, because of…
13 00:04:47.700 ⇒ 00:04:51.280 Josh Goodkin: Like, just the weird scoping on the business, so…
14 00:04:51.470 ⇒ 00:04:56.230 Josh Goodkin: I’d say the model for them right now is very much a deep embed. It’s like…
15 00:04:57.450 ⇒ 00:05:02.710 Josh Goodkin: I basically work for them, like, I’m, like, I’m on, always chatting with them.
16 00:05:02.880 ⇒ 00:05:06.410 Josh Goodkin: All the time, so it’s like that sort of relationship.
17 00:05:06.450 ⇒ 00:05:10.229 Uttam Kumaran: It’s a little bit different, but again, it’s to win the business.
18 00:05:10.260 ⇒ 00:05:26.310 Josh Goodkin: Right? So at the end of the day, I think whatever comes out of the argument, around what the next steps looks like is gonna potentially, hopefully, feel more like what we want it to feel like. Yeah. Mad dash rush for this.
19 00:05:26.340 ⇒ 00:05:27.430 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
20 00:05:27.890 ⇒ 00:05:30.089 Josh Goodkin: So I guess that’s the first piece.
21 00:05:30.210 ⇒ 00:05:31.570 Josh Goodkin: Cool.
22 00:05:31.990 ⇒ 00:05:32.710 Josh Goodkin: Fair.
23 00:05:34.030 ⇒ 00:05:39.160 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so I feel pretty confident in that, like, I think we’re gonna…
24 00:05:39.400 ⇒ 00:05:55.719 Uttam Kumaran: we’re gonna drive towards that, and we’re gonna drive towards, like, standardizing, like, as many of our engagements as possible, so I feel pretty good that we’ll… we’ll get there here in the next, like, you know, month or two, so yeah, no problem. And then, also, even the follow-on work with Remo, like, maybe there’s some way we can…
25 00:05:55.940 ⇒ 00:05:59.589 Uttam Kumaran: Move it to kind of, like, our typical model, not sure.
26 00:06:00.570 ⇒ 00:06:12.770 Josh Goodkin: Yeah, I think we really need to get the planning on that, because, like, their whole thing is, especially now, and again, having worked with Cameron, now working with us and liking us, right?
27 00:06:14.070 ⇒ 00:06:32.369 Josh Goodkin: they wanna… and I’ll just give you that, so I gotta… we gotta figure out how we combat against that, is they want to move away from the model of paying, like, an outside entity, and it’s present in the way that they speak about it. So, like, right now, they have…
28 00:06:32.600 ⇒ 00:06:42.560 Josh Goodkin: Like, they’re spending a lot of money on hiring talent. I’ll just give you some of the numbers and metrics. So, the GCC that they’re spinning up in India is 50 grand a month.
29 00:06:42.860 ⇒ 00:06:44.400 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. For 10 people.
30 00:06:44.500 ⇒ 00:06:49.079 Josh Goodkin: Then you have us, And then you have…
31 00:06:49.270 ⇒ 00:07:03.089 Josh Goodkin: an additional team that they had originally brought in for intake that they’re paying $17, so we’re at 117 right now, plus Sergio, plus the additional guy that I brought in, so we’re at 132.
32 00:07:03.090 ⇒ 00:07:04.079 Uttam Kumaran: A month. Yeah.
33 00:07:04.180 ⇒ 00:07:07.429 Josh Goodkin: Right, like, they want to build an actual engineering team.
34 00:07:07.820 ⇒ 00:07:14.310 Josh Goodkin: And then, when I spoke with Ryan today, the numbers are astronomical, right? This company’s doing hundreds of millions of dollars.
35 00:07:14.530 ⇒ 00:07:18.840 Josh Goodkin: Right? So, like, they want to in-house their team.
36 00:07:19.570 ⇒ 00:07:24.190 Josh Goodkin: I think we need to very… we need to speak to…
37 00:07:24.590 ⇒ 00:07:35.329 Josh Goodkin: it, and I guess treat it as a… and again, this is where our model, they’re wanting to ask, like, we gotta really figure out how we want to really do that, because, like.
38 00:07:35.540 ⇒ 00:07:39.539 Josh Goodkin: the model I feel they’re leaning to is more like…
39 00:07:39.840 ⇒ 00:07:47.840 Josh Goodkin: Not dev shop, but, like, what we call a deep embed, which is, like, a consultant company that actually, like.
40 00:07:48.330 ⇒ 00:07:52.289 Josh Goodkin: Puts devs underneath you that work for you, so…
41 00:07:52.500 ⇒ 00:07:59.210 Josh Goodkin: similar to what I worked at, like, Venmo, and when I worked at… Spotify, too.
42 00:07:59.370 ⇒ 00:08:02.099 Josh Goodkin: Half my team was outsourced.
43 00:08:02.340 ⇒ 00:08:07.310 Josh Goodkin: But they would, like, come to stand-ups, basically be…
44 00:08:07.630 ⇒ 00:08:12.890 Josh Goodkin: come to all the meetings. They’re basically our employees, it’s just they were paid by somebody else.
45 00:08:13.040 ⇒ 00:08:19.049 Josh Goodkin: So I call it, like, the deep embed model. So, I think that…
46 00:08:19.280 ⇒ 00:08:27.580 Josh Goodkin: I’m just giving you what I’m thinking as seeing how they operate. I think that’s what they would want, or ideally to have everybody
47 00:08:28.000 ⇒ 00:08:36.519 Josh Goodkin: eaten, eat and eaten, because, like, I actually got invited to go to India, and I was like, well, I can’t make it, but, like, whoa.
48 00:08:36.520 ⇒ 00:08:50.569 Josh Goodkin: Because he’s going to meet the team over there at Hyperbad, because they’re actually creating, like, an Eden pod, so it’s gonna have, like, Eden logos on it. Everyone’s gonna, like, it’s like… so, like, they’re very big on the, like, they want to create a company.
49 00:08:50.660 ⇒ 00:09:00.569 Josh Goodkin: So, we need to be very good at articulating whatever that… transformation is on, like, how…
50 00:09:01.210 ⇒ 00:09:04.890 Josh Goodkin: Going through Brains Forge, you’re still gonna get that deep feel.
51 00:09:05.730 ⇒ 00:09:09.849 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, okay. So that’s something I think we’ll just work on as we get to renewal, I mean…
52 00:09:10.180 ⇒ 00:09:18.279 Uttam Kumaran: like, I don’t know, it’s gonna be very hard for our model to… like, all of our stuff is sort of, like, owned relationships right now, like.
53 00:09:18.490 ⇒ 00:09:23.240 Uttam Kumaran: We can still… we can staff as many people as we want, but, like, It’s…
54 00:09:23.850 ⇒ 00:09:28.040 Uttam Kumaran: It’s tough, like, we don’t… we don’t do any dev shop work, because…
55 00:09:28.570 ⇒ 00:09:33.529 Uttam Kumaran: like, it’s, like, it’s gonna be commoditized, so I can’t, like, I’m not interested in doing, like…
56 00:09:33.990 ⇒ 00:09:39.440 Uttam Kumaran: just not interested in doing it, because it’s… like, we have no ownership. It’s like, we’re just taking instruction.
57 00:09:39.730 ⇒ 00:09:44.629 Uttam Kumaran: But yeah, okay, so I think we’ll just think about it as we sort of get some more.
58 00:09:44.630 ⇒ 00:09:47.400 Josh Goodkin: cool thing, too, right? Like, what I’m finding is…
59 00:09:47.530 ⇒ 00:09:53.009 Josh Goodkin: It depends on who the client is, but, like, these guys are very non-technical, so, like.
60 00:09:53.490 ⇒ 00:10:01.550 Josh Goodkin: They need someone with our skill set, like a me skill set, you skill set, but they need someone with our skill set, because, like.
61 00:10:01.760 ⇒ 00:10:07.889 Josh Goodkin: like, I’ll ask a question, or like, I’m asking a question right now, it’s like, alright, who owns NNI? And, like, everybody’s like, hmm…
62 00:10:08.470 ⇒ 00:10:12.350 Josh Goodkin: I just gotta go figure it out, right? Which is a different mindset.
63 00:10:12.480 ⇒ 00:10:21.040 Josh Goodkin: Right? Because it’s like, they have this giant business, and what… it’s so fragmented because of how it was put together.
64 00:10:21.380 ⇒ 00:10:31.459 Josh Goodkin: But the business is great, it’s just we need to codify a bunch of these things, and then you’re codifying it and jamming it into someone else’s, like, makeshift thing that they built.
65 00:10:31.800 ⇒ 00:10:35.369 Josh Goodkin: And she’s like, visit… Like, there’s two things.
66 00:10:35.530 ⇒ 00:10:44.969 Josh Goodkin: there’s closing this business and seeing what it is long-term, but then there’s, like, a framework and a topology I want to wrap around, like, we should probably never do this again.
67 00:10:44.970 ⇒ 00:10:49.220 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, dude, we’re working with clients, we’re working with clients bigger than them.
68 00:10:49.400 ⇒ 00:10:50.920 Josh Goodkin: Yeah, oh, that’s it.
69 00:10:51.170 ⇒ 00:10:52.240 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
70 00:10:52.520 ⇒ 00:10:53.980 Josh Goodkin: Expect no.
71 00:10:53.980 ⇒ 00:10:58.970 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we’re working with clients. We’re working with people bigger than… than them, and…
72 00:10:59.440 ⇒ 00:11:10.839 Uttam Kumaran: And we will, like, I think we’re gonna keep… we’re gonna… I mean, they were the… probably the biggest when we first started with them, and then since then, we’ve… we have a couple companies that are over a couple hundred million that we’re working with.
73 00:11:11.290 ⇒ 00:11:15.929 Uttam Kumaran: And so they don’t… they are totally okay with our normal model, so…
74 00:11:16.160 ⇒ 00:11:16.880 Josh Goodkin: Gotcha, cool.
75 00:11:16.880 ⇒ 00:11:32.060 Uttam Kumaran: mainly, I think it’s, like, we want to kind of… the thing we want to… we want to get into more situations where, like, there’s an acquisition, or there’s, like, there’s a milestone they need to hit, versus, like, yes, I think the long term… but dude, there are some companies we’re working with who, they want to keep their company small, like…
76 00:11:32.320 ⇒ 00:11:38.170 Uttam Kumaran: I think these guys are kind of dumb for hiring, like, all these people, like, I don’t really understand it.
77 00:11:38.560 ⇒ 00:11:39.070 Josh Goodkin: Huh?
78 00:11:39.070 ⇒ 00:11:42.739 Uttam Kumaran: like… What are they gonna do with these folks longer term?
79 00:11:43.120 ⇒ 00:11:48.950 Uttam Kumaran: Whatever, like, there’s a lot of companies who we work with who are like, no, we don’t want to hire, like, we want everything outsourced.
80 00:11:49.200 ⇒ 00:11:52.080 Uttam Kumaran: It’s like, we want to keep our company culture tight, you know?
81 00:11:52.450 ⇒ 00:11:54.819 Josh Goodkin: Well, so that’s the thing, right? Like…
82 00:11:55.950 ⇒ 00:12:02.180 Josh Goodkin: we did this, and then he was like, do I need more engineers? And I had to actually push back. I was like, whoa, let’s chill, right?
83 00:12:02.180 ⇒ 00:12:03.039 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
84 00:12:03.040 ⇒ 00:12:10.889 Josh Goodkin: They don’t know what the solve is, they just know that they didn’t like what they had before, which was, like, an outsourced company camera not delivering.
85 00:12:11.050 ⇒ 00:12:19.569 Josh Goodkin: Right? We’re delivering as Brain Forge, but it’s just like, you can only do that then so much before you think the solution is bring it in-house.
86 00:12:19.570 ⇒ 00:12:20.210 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
87 00:12:20.210 ⇒ 00:12:25.419 Josh Goodkin: really bring it in-house without the rest of the frameworking, and someone has to set that up.
88 00:12:25.420 ⇒ 00:12:29.520 Uttam Kumaran: Well, people will sell you anything, but it’s like, dude, this is not a tech company, like…
89 00:12:29.650 ⇒ 00:12:37.919 Josh Goodkin: Well, so that’s the thing, it’s not, but the business is huge, the opportunity is huge, and then, like, the way they’re talking…
90 00:12:38.220 ⇒ 00:12:44.459 Josh Goodkin: long-term vision is a tech company, right? And it’s just, like, I’m giving you more of the framing of, like, what they’re giving me.
91 00:12:44.460 ⇒ 00:12:45.220 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I see, I see.
92 00:12:45.220 ⇒ 00:12:52.390 Josh Goodkin: They want to, basically, like, the company BASC, the long-term strategy is to actually become Basque.
93 00:12:53.370 ⇒ 00:12:55.739 Uttam Kumaran: Hmm, yeah, like, sell baths to other people.
94 00:12:55.740 ⇒ 00:13:00.060 Josh Goodkin: Exactly, but the interesting thing is because they own the entire vertical.
95 00:13:00.200 ⇒ 00:13:13.879 Josh Goodkin: Now, instead of the random hidden fees that Basque is charging, they don’t have to charge that, right? They’ll give you the product for free, and then they’ll be like, you should just use Egan Pharmacy, and they’ll make their margin on that side.
96 00:13:14.260 ⇒ 00:13:14.990 Josh Goodkin: Which is.
97 00:13:14.990 ⇒ 00:13:15.340 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
98 00:13:15.340 ⇒ 00:13:31.770 Josh Goodkin: Because they own the vertical, that makes so much sense. They own the doctors, they own the pharmacies, they own the drug compounding, so it’s like, they don’t have to charge you the SaaS fee. So they’re like, we want to give away it for free to use that as the scaling opportunity to scale you into all of these other things that we’ve already perfected.
99 00:13:31.770 ⇒ 00:13:32.880 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.
100 00:13:32.880 ⇒ 00:13:50.779 Josh Goodkin: Oh, okay. And then, yeah, so I’m talking to them, like, I’m getting that, and I’m like, okay, I see where they’re going, because they’re basically saying, we built this whole thing without tech, and it’s hurting us. Now we want to build tech, and then we want to change the way that, like, this whole framework is working.
101 00:13:50.780 ⇒ 00:13:53.840 Uttam Kumaran: Because, like, everyone who’s working with Bass hates Bass because of the fees.
102 00:13:53.890 ⇒ 00:14:04.840 Josh Goodkin: And they’re like, you don’t have to charge them, but you have to own more of the pieces. So, like, it’s interesting learning how they think about the business, because, like, because they’re thinkers, I guess that’s why they grew a really big business.
103 00:14:05.060 ⇒ 00:14:07.340 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, I see, I see, okay.
104 00:14:09.230 ⇒ 00:14:11.799 Josh Goodkin: But yeah, I like the model for us.
105 00:14:12.670 ⇒ 00:14:13.370 Josh Goodkin: Yeah, because.
106 00:14:13.370 ⇒ 00:14:20.900 Uttam Kumaran: Because for us, dude, it’s like, I don’t care whether you have big dreams or not, it’s like, I want to go work with, like, 10 of these guys, 10 and otherwise, and like…
107 00:14:21.140 ⇒ 00:14:27.170 Uttam Kumaran: I want to go work with, like, 30 Eatens. Like, that’s where these guys, they only think about themselves, and…
108 00:14:27.350 ⇒ 00:14:30.549 Uttam Kumaran: Like, honestly, they’re kind of an insane company, like…
109 00:14:30.770 ⇒ 00:14:36.719 Uttam Kumaran: we were kind of close to even being like, is this even worth it for us? Because they’re kind of… they’re kind of, like, all over the place, but…
110 00:14:37.320 ⇒ 00:14:43.070 Uttam Kumaran: you know, I think we realized that, like, yeah, they still need a lot of help, and we’re trying our best, so… yeah.
111 00:14:44.430 ⇒ 00:14:49.900 Josh Goodkin: Again, a lot of this happens because, like, they’re all over the place because, again, they’re trying to build tech without…
112 00:14:50.140 ⇒ 00:15:08.879 Josh Goodkin: tech leader, which is just… it’s just always a recipe for disaster. And then, when your only expectation is, when is it done, it’s not a good experiment, right? Like, right? So it’s just like, yeah, there’s a lot of, like… and again, we find this all the time, it’s just, usually it’s with
113 00:15:09.260 ⇒ 00:15:17.259 Josh Goodkin: companies that aren’t making money, to find it with companies that aren’t making lots of money is just like, wow, you’re building businesses with no tech, it’s kind of crazy.
114 00:15:17.260 ⇒ 00:15:18.999 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. So yeah.
115 00:15:20.470 ⇒ 00:15:21.280 Uttam Kumaran: Nice.
116 00:15:21.280 ⇒ 00:15:22.140 Josh Goodkin: Don’t flip.
117 00:15:23.290 ⇒ 00:15:32.709 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, sick. Alright, well, yeah, I feel like the new, kind of, morning structure is still going well, like, lean on folks as you need them, and yeah, like, maybe we just keep,
118 00:15:33.240 ⇒ 00:15:34.929 Uttam Kumaran: We just keep at it for a bit.
119 00:15:35.000 ⇒ 00:15:35.640 Josh Goodkin: Yeah.
120 00:15:35.640 ⇒ 00:15:41.220 Uttam Kumaran: I’m gonna… I’m gonna look through the… I’m gonna work with you to kind of… on the renewal stuff as we kind of get further, so…
121 00:15:41.220 ⇒ 00:15:46.340 Josh Goodkin: Cool. I think let’s work on that, and if there’s any… because I have some bandwidth, if there’s any…
122 00:15:46.640 ⇒ 00:16:03.410 Josh Goodkin: sales calls, or net new coins you want me to do a breakdown on, I’ll send that over, like some scopes or anything like that, some SOWs, and then, I guess, less… less purpose before February.
123 00:16:03.580 ⇒ 00:16:08.980 Josh Goodkin: me potentially helping you with one of those deals, so I can see what your guys’ flow is, what our flow is, that sort of thing.
124 00:16:08.980 ⇒ 00:16:13.360 Uttam Kumaran: Yes. So that we hit the ground running with all that. Perfect, okay.
125 00:16:13.530 ⇒ 00:16:14.390 Josh Goodkin: Go swiftly.
126 00:16:15.020 ⇒ 00:16:16.929 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, dude. Alright, I’ll talk to you soon.
127 00:16:16.930 ⇒ 00:16:17.900 Josh Goodkin: Awesome, easy. Alright, bye.
128 00:16:17.900 ⇒ 00:16:18.660 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, bye.