Meeting Title: Brainforge Ops Team Onboarding Sync Date: 2026-01-16 Meeting participants: Elizah Joy, Sheshu Chandrasekar, Rico Rejoso, Uttam Kumaran
WEBVTT
1 00:00:10.550 ⇒ 00:00:11.420 Elizah Joy: Bye.
2 00:00:11.730 ⇒ 00:00:13.549 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Hey, Eliza, how are you doing today?
3 00:00:14.140 ⇒ 00:00:16.860 Sheshu Chandrasekar: My Friday is starting off fabulously.
4 00:00:16.980 ⇒ 00:00:18.120 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Good news.
5 00:00:29.910 ⇒ 00:00:31.329 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Hey, can you hear me alright?
6 00:00:31.860 ⇒ 00:00:33.360 Elizah Joy: Yeah, yeah, we can hear you.
7 00:00:33.360 ⇒ 00:00:36.460 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Sorry, sorry about that, that was my Alexa.
8 00:00:36.460 ⇒ 00:00:37.090 Rico Rejoso: You guys.
9 00:00:37.090 ⇒ 00:00:37.640 Sheshu Chandrasekar: God.
10 00:00:39.120 ⇒ 00:00:40.140 Elizah Joy: Hi, Erica.
11 00:00:40.140 ⇒ 00:00:41.380 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Hey, Rico.
12 00:00:41.380 ⇒ 00:00:42.510 Rico Rejoso: Morning, guys.
13 00:00:42.650 ⇒ 00:00:43.800 Rico Rejoso: How are y’all?
14 00:00:45.750 ⇒ 00:00:53.279 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Good, just, just catching up, just going through the… this notion and linear, so,
15 00:00:53.710 ⇒ 00:00:59.730 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, it’s been good, and then also the stand-ups, so understanding the flow of things at, Brainforge right now.
16 00:01:00.070 ⇒ 00:01:01.290 Rico Rejoso: That’s great, that’s great.
17 00:01:02.540 ⇒ 00:01:07.240 Rico Rejoso: Okay, Simi, we’re just waiting for them, right? Yeah, let’s just…
18 00:01:07.240 ⇒ 00:01:08.610 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Lisa, yeah.
19 00:01:08.790 ⇒ 00:01:09.380 Rico Rejoso: Okay.
20 00:01:11.360 ⇒ 00:01:23.850 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I’m not sure if you guys had a chance to see my message in Slack, and also, just out of curiosity, so each, stand-up, do you guys take notes of any sorts, or… and if so, like.
21 00:01:24.170 ⇒ 00:01:27.390 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Where do you usually store them?
22 00:01:27.810 ⇒ 00:01:29.800 Sheshu Chandrasekar: And if so, how can I help you there?
23 00:01:30.480 ⇒ 00:01:32.880 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, I saw your,
24 00:01:32.940 ⇒ 00:01:52.590 Rico Rejoso: I mean, I saw your messages back. I mean, we have this platform, platform Brainforge, for Brainforge, where usually the stand-ups and notes are there. But previously what I was doing was that I usually take the transcript from, the recording. By the way, the recordings are also, and the transcripts are available in the platform.
25 00:01:52.590 ⇒ 00:01:57.170 Rico Rejoso: I haven’t, sent that one to you yet, because we haven’t gone through the
26 00:01:57.260 ⇒ 00:01:59.729 Rico Rejoso: Onboarding, but yeah, let me send it through chat.
27 00:02:00.630 ⇒ 00:02:01.610 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay, perfect.
28 00:02:01.860 ⇒ 00:02:14.480 Rico Rejoso: that one. So, all recordings and transcripts are there once you open the meeting, and once you get that one, we do have a stand-up assistant that was in place, last quarter, last year.
29 00:02:15.250 ⇒ 00:02:22.669 Rico Rejoso: But, tendency is that I just use the GPT to draft the, stand-up notes and put it on file.
30 00:02:22.670 ⇒ 00:02:29.970 Rico Rejoso: But right now, since we’re also restructuring how we do, I mean, the delivery side of it, wherein we have the…
31 00:02:29.970 ⇒ 00:02:43.190 Rico Rejoso: engagement planners, client success owners, and the, service leader. There’s also been a mix-up on how the notes will be taken in place, and, there’s… all the meetings that I’ve added you with are also new.
32 00:02:43.250 ⇒ 00:02:45.589 Rico Rejoso: So, we’re just, you know.
33 00:02:45.860 ⇒ 00:02:54.199 Rico Rejoso: trying to adapt to that process first before we move forward. But yeah, I like the idea of you mentioning how we can get the notes for all those stand-ups.
34 00:02:55.590 ⇒ 00:02:57.890 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, cause, I think…
35 00:02:59.850 ⇒ 00:03:08.030 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, because I think that would take a long time, right? I mean, just getting the transcript and then putting it into the platform, so I guess we gotta find a better way of doing those things.
36 00:03:08.390 ⇒ 00:03:21.790 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, if you were able to check on the platform, you will see there, like, on the AI tool, tab, you will see a stand-up assistant. I don’t think this… I mean…
37 00:03:21.990 ⇒ 00:03:29.820 Rico Rejoso: This is also to record the previous conversation from our previous meeting and put in all the notes there. So you can also check that out.
38 00:03:31.010 ⇒ 00:03:36.610 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay, perfect, yeah, I’ll take a look at the platform when I… when I have a chance. Hey, Utham, how are you doing today?
39 00:03:37.120 ⇒ 00:03:38.689 Uttam Kumaran: Hey. Good dude, how are you?
40 00:03:39.480 ⇒ 00:03:46.430 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Good, just… check out the slots, and I was just in the strategy, session call.
41 00:03:46.430 ⇒ 00:03:47.240 Uttam Kumaran: What’s your thing?
42 00:03:48.030 ⇒ 00:03:57.099 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I think it’s cool, like, I didn’t… I totally forgot that we had a strategy line, to the… to the business, so, it was very interesting to hear,
43 00:03:57.540 ⇒ 00:04:10.079 Sheshu Chandrasekar: like, what you guys are working on with the HVAC stuff, I forgot her name, but, she had a really good deck, I think. Robert is very… I’ve learned a lot of intricacies of how Robert works when it comes to the work products and stuff like that, so that was very interesting.
44 00:04:10.080 ⇒ 00:04:17.500 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, well, what did you learn? Yeah, I’m interested to hear. And I… when you… when you learn about me too, I’m interested to hear what you think, because I,
45 00:04:17.870 ⇒ 00:04:21.249 Uttam Kumaran: I think we’re both kind of semi-conscious, but also…
46 00:04:21.350 ⇒ 00:04:26.140 Uttam Kumaran: We have very, very, very high expectations, but we kind of, like, outlay it in different ways, so…
47 00:04:27.040 ⇒ 00:04:33.240 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, I think with, Robert, yeah, like you said, he has high expectations, like, he has…
48 00:04:34.110 ⇒ 00:04:44.129 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I guess he has, like, no fear. He’s just, like, asks questions. He’s like, how’d you get this number? I’m an equations guy, so whatever you have put together makes no sense. So he’s kind of, like, out forward, and…
49 00:04:44.450 ⇒ 00:05:01.960 Sheshu Chandrasekar: And, like, it’s not in a bad way, right? It’s like, he’s trying to make you better, and I can… I can clearly tell that he cares about the work, because I know… I think it’s Angela, if I’m correct, that’s presenting this… Amber? Amber, yeah, Amber… so she’ll be performing… I mean, she’ll be presenting in 3 hours, so, like…
50 00:05:02.110 ⇒ 00:05:14.019 Sheshu Chandrasekar: he’s just like, I need to make sure you’re good. So he’s willing to, you know, challenge us assumptions that’s already there, and make sure she looks good. So that was very interesting to see. I actually have a call with…
51 00:05:14.160 ⇒ 00:05:31.019 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Greg, at 12 o’clock today, so he’ll be helping me kind of share his experience. Yeah, he’ll be sharing me his experience about his onboarding, because I think he got hired this December, so, pretty fresh for him still, so that’d be very useful to see what’s…
52 00:05:31.020 ⇒ 00:05:43.159 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s kind of meta for you a little bit to kind of watch your process. Your process is unique because you’re… you’re… you… like, you’re getting added to, like, a lot… both, like, all the delivery stuff and ops.
53 00:05:43.300 ⇒ 00:05:46.520 Uttam Kumaran: Like, you’re gonna be in almost, like, most every channel.
54 00:05:46.680 ⇒ 00:06:02.829 Uttam Kumaran: But more of the folks to focus on is our delivery team onboarding, because that’s the team that is going to grow, not linearly, but, like, it will grow with our revenue faster than our operations, sales, marketing, like, OpEx grows.
55 00:06:03.000 ⇒ 00:06:19.479 Uttam Kumaran: You can consider them all, you know, cost of goods, right? So cost of goods will grow to some degree, as a percentage of revenue. And so, really nailing the fact that an engineer can join us, and within 30 days, they’re, like, fully effective is, like, extremely important.
56 00:06:19.560 ⇒ 00:06:23.829 Uttam Kumaran: I even think that’s probably, like, too long, because most of the people we’re getting are really good.
57 00:06:23.980 ⇒ 00:06:25.060 Uttam Kumaran: And…
58 00:06:25.170 ⇒ 00:06:33.830 Uttam Kumaran: work is already there, and, like, sort of a good match. But there’s also a lot of cultural things I think we have, never prioritized.
59 00:06:34.240 ⇒ 00:06:45.089 Uttam Kumaran: Because it’s sort of, like, we were just all work-focused. So I do think that there’s some… there’s some step up for people to learn about, like, our delivery strategy, like, the characters involved, like…
60 00:06:45.130 ⇒ 00:07:00.680 Uttam Kumaran: how to ask for feedback, how to use Slack, how to use Notion, like, how to face failure up front, like, things like that. But you’ll see that, like, both Robert and I, because we have a relationship with everybody, I have no fear about being direct.
61 00:07:00.680 ⇒ 00:07:06.019 Uttam Kumaran: Because, I’ve worked in, like, many fear-based environments.
62 00:07:06.020 ⇒ 00:07:19.809 Uttam Kumaran: And those environments, you don’t have a relationship with people that allows you to have, like, direct feedback. Like, people know that I’m critical, but it’s not mean, and it’s not coming out of, like, I don’t like you.
63 00:07:19.810 ⇒ 00:07:39.659 Uttam Kumaran: We’re discussing the work, right? It’s sort of… sort of the similar theme around, like, disagree and commit, right? So, I think the problem is, people are coming from fear-based environments, so it takes some time to get used to that, where they’re like, oh, this person doesn’t hate me. They actually really like me. They’re just, like.
64 00:07:40.080 ⇒ 00:07:47.290 Uttam Kumaran: giving me feedback, critical feedback, about something I did. And you’ll see that, well, that we… we need to do more and more of that.
65 00:07:47.290 ⇒ 00:08:01.519 Uttam Kumaran: And remove that fear from people. I think Eliza and Rico will both tell you that I’m pretty open to give feedback, but also, you’ll see all of our people are fiending for that feedback. Like, otherwise, we’re all people are trying to learn and improve. Without that, like, we’re…
66 00:08:01.590 ⇒ 00:08:04.890 Uttam Kumaran: how do you know if you’re doing a good job or not, right? And so.
67 00:08:05.120 ⇒ 00:08:07.139 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Both of us are pretty direct.
68 00:08:07.140 ⇒ 00:08:17.250 Uttam Kumaran: But, like, the team is doing great. Like, we’re hitting a lot of expectations in a lot of ways. And yeah, I’m really glad you start to see the strategy line. That’s where I think.
69 00:08:17.250 ⇒ 00:08:29.789 Uttam Kumaran: Initially, you’ll be helping out a little bit on delivery, too. But also make sure you’re added into the AI line and the beta line. And those are kind of our three, sort of, service lines right now.
70 00:08:30.660 ⇒ 00:08:31.270 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Right.
71 00:08:32.630 ⇒ 00:08:33.320 Uttam Kumaran: But yeah.
72 00:08:36.169 ⇒ 00:08:38.839 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Sweet. Yeah, no, it makes total sense, and…
73 00:08:39.139 ⇒ 00:08:55.399 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I think that’s, like, a really good philosophy, right? Like, people come from fear-based, like, environments, but giving feedback is, like… I think it kind of reminds me of Jensen Wong. He kind of says, like, you know, I’d rather invest in my relationships and go through the suffering together and still have them than, you know…
74 00:08:55.559 ⇒ 00:08:58.469 Sheshu Chandrasekar: fire them and, you know, get a new person on, so…
75 00:08:58.470 ⇒ 00:09:09.360 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, I… we will do everything before splitting ways with people, because the… for two reasons. One is, like, incredibly emotionally taxing for everybody involved.
76 00:09:09.500 ⇒ 00:09:14.909 Uttam Kumaran: Second is it’s extremely hard And extremely costly to…
77 00:09:15.190 ⇒ 00:09:17.419 Uttam Kumaran: Get a new person in and train them up.
78 00:09:17.580 ⇒ 00:09:23.220 Uttam Kumaran: Like, for every open role we have, we have considered everybody internal for.
79 00:09:23.380 ⇒ 00:09:29.779 Uttam Kumaran: Whether they have a background or not for it. In fact, we’re going to the market mainly because we’re out, like, I can’t…
80 00:09:29.790 ⇒ 00:09:48.580 Uttam Kumaran: we can’t promote, like, people can’t… there’s no people… there’s no more people internally to do some of this. Everybody’s doing something that’s very important, so we go to the market, right? But we always consider who we have internally first. You gotta get first dibs, right? And some people, they get first dibs, but they don’t have the background, and I’m like.
81 00:09:48.920 ⇒ 00:10:01.200 Uttam Kumaran: okay, like, do you want to try to do this? Are you worth the risk? For some people, they’re like, oh, I… you should do that. I’m like, okay, perfect, it’s yours if you want it, you know? And so, yeah, it’s a good way of putting it.
82 00:10:02.340 ⇒ 00:10:03.550 Sheshu Chandrasekar: No, makes sense.
83 00:10:03.740 ⇒ 00:10:05.419 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Well, sweet.
84 00:10:05.680 ⇒ 00:10:10.729 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I don’t know if you had a chance to look at the… the Slack. I had some questions,
85 00:10:10.730 ⇒ 00:10:12.620 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I answered a bunch of them, yeah.
86 00:10:12.620 ⇒ 00:10:16.769 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Oh, I didn’t… see that at all. But…
87 00:10:17.680 ⇒ 00:10:25.479 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, I think one, one main thing, while I read through this right now, is I see that…
88 00:10:26.710 ⇒ 00:10:42.920 Sheshu Chandrasekar: you know, we have… it’s… we have a homepage, and that’s… that’s great, but I… I’m so curious to see, like, from, like, an onboarding experience, do people know exactly what to click? So if I was a CSO, can people just understand, okay, these are the following documentations I need to read.
89 00:10:43.070 ⇒ 00:10:54.579 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Then these are the kind of templates I’ll be working with on my day-to-day basis. Like, have we created some level of system there, or is it… is it still, like, a work in progress? And…
90 00:10:54.670 ⇒ 00:11:09.869 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Another thing to add on, I feel like some of the documents I’ve seen, there’s some notes in there, there’s some things that, you know, seems to be, like, under construction. So, curious to see, like, what’s, like, the definition done, before publishing onto the homepage, and… and if the homepage is also
91 00:11:10.000 ⇒ 00:11:13.849 Sheshu Chandrasekar: published, right? Does everyone know about it right now? That’s, like, another…
92 00:11:14.340 ⇒ 00:11:17.140 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, Eliza, maybe I’ll let you… I’ll let you take it.
93 00:11:17.900 ⇒ 00:11:37.289 Elizah Joy: Yep, so, with the… when we onboard new team members, for example, if their role is CSO, we don’t have that one yet, wherein they… we direct them clearly on what pages they go for, but yeah, it’s a… currently, it’s a work in progress, and then… because we’ve just started this,
94 00:11:37.410 ⇒ 00:11:45.100 Elizah Joy: CSO roles, EP roles, and SL roles, and the notion that we, used to have does not,
95 00:11:45.100 ⇒ 00:12:01.050 Elizah Joy: It’s not structured in that way, so pretty much everything’s, work in progress now, now. But then, for the pages that we do, like, the published, how do we know the pages that’s work in progress and pages that’s…
96 00:12:01.090 ⇒ 00:12:16.600 Elizah Joy: published. We have the stat… at the moment, we have those under, status section, but yeah, at the moment, that’s the only way… Correct me if I’m wrong, Rico, like, at the moment, it’s, the only way we get to see if it’s, finished,
97 00:12:18.080 ⇒ 00:12:20.489 Elizah Joy: Database or page at the moment.
98 00:12:21.240 ⇒ 00:12:45.919 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, mainly because, we’re also, I mean, with… along with the restructuring of Notion, we’re also finalizing the documentation tab, which is… which we wanted to serve as a master database for all documents that we have. So right now, we’re trying to consolidate and reformat some of the documents that we have, so yeah, it’s still a work in progress, and as we go through all those documents, we’ll probably be changing the status of it once we
99 00:12:45.920 ⇒ 00:13:08.999 Rico Rejoso: checked it, because, you know, everybody’s moving fast, everyone’s just focused on their work, I just… everyone’s just creating those documents, so we re… some of it wasn’t really finalized, some of it was… I mean, still in a work in progress, but we’ll definitely go ahead and check it if we have to go one by one, just to make sure everything there is finished, or we can publish it, and everyone can, like, view it.
100 00:13:09.030 ⇒ 00:13:11.819 Rico Rejoso: Already, or available for everyone to see.
101 00:13:12.470 ⇒ 00:13:19.320 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense, because when I was going through the Notion, one thing that kind of stood out to me was
102 00:13:20.180 ⇒ 00:13:26.520 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I feel like, and Utem, please correct me if I’m wrong here, like, I think…
103 00:13:27.070 ⇒ 00:13:37.049 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I think we’re too transparent in that sense that there’s a lot of documents on there that a lot of people don’t need to see, in that sense. Like, it’s good to be transparent, but it’s also such an.
104 00:13:37.050 ⇒ 00:13:37.609 Rico Rejoso: Oh, yeah.
105 00:13:38.090 ⇒ 00:13:50.529 Uttam Kumaran: So I would… I would even encourage you to, like, not be shy in that, dude, this is the system that I have been the only person opinionated about, basically until…
106 00:13:50.970 ⇒ 00:14:10.870 Uttam Kumaran: like, Rico and Eliza showed up, but mainly until Eliza showed up. Like, I… I’m the only person in the company that’s, like, we have to have some organization. I’ve worked with Notion most of my career. I kind of, like, set things up in some semblance of, like, a way, but it’s totally just gone. Like, it’s just, like.
107 00:14:11.160 ⇒ 00:14:19.240 Uttam Kumaran: some stuff we’re not using, some stuff we are using, people are using it in all their own ways, there’s no principled approach. So, you’re totally right about, like.
108 00:14:19.510 ⇒ 00:14:29.680 Uttam Kumaran: what you’re saying. We’re not here by design, meaning, like, and we… this next phase, we really do need to be going somewhere by design, and thinking about it a lot.
109 00:14:29.820 ⇒ 00:14:35.679 Uttam Kumaran: In a lot more careful way about how we do this, because I don’t…
110 00:14:35.790 ⇒ 00:14:43.610 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t want to, like… have to redesign Notion again. Unless we, like, 5X, I would like…
111 00:14:43.940 ⇒ 00:14:46.310 Uttam Kumaran: to work for, like, at least the rest of this year.
112 00:14:46.310 ⇒ 00:14:47.609 Rico Rejoso: So we have a shot.
113 00:14:47.610 ⇒ 00:14:49.170 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe I have, like, another, like.
114 00:14:49.540 ⇒ 00:14:52.369 Uttam Kumaran: Two weeks to, like, figure it out, and then just, like.
115 00:14:53.030 ⇒ 00:14:56.180 Uttam Kumaran: rip it, you know? We’re not married to it at all. Yeah.
116 00:14:56.990 ⇒ 00:14:58.500 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay, perfect, so, like.
117 00:14:58.740 ⇒ 00:15:12.350 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I guess, Eliza and Rico, maybe we can do, like, an audit of, like, figuring out, like, hey, like, I’ll go through the documents and kind of flag, like, hey, do we want to keep this? Because you guys have more knowledge than I do here. So we can kind of, like, figure out what works, what doesn’t, and then…
118 00:15:12.510 ⇒ 00:15:17.079 Sheshu Chandrasekar: figure out, kind of like, okay, because in my head, the way I see homepage is, like.
119 00:15:17.850 ⇒ 00:15:29.299 Sheshu Chandrasekar: if you’re new, if you’re already an existing Brainforge member, like, you just go there to find what you need, and you get out. But you don’t need all the information in there. And for when it comes to databases, like.
120 00:15:29.510 ⇒ 00:15:43.230 Sheshu Chandrasekar: figuring out what, like, the lifetime value of a customer is. I don’t think those are things that we need to put on the homepage, and we need to figure out a way to shelf that and make sure that it’s still usable, but it’s not something we need to include in the homepage. So I guess
121 00:15:43.570 ⇒ 00:15:52.449 Sheshu Chandrasekar: before I even begin, we need to do an audit, then we would probably need to figure out what we want to include in that homepage structure. So maybe I’ll put together something on
122 00:15:52.860 ⇒ 00:16:00.289 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Like, what we should include in that homepage, and then we can kind of do an audit, see which one is needed in that homepage, in the new re…
123 00:16:00.290 ⇒ 00:16:01.470 Uttam Kumaran: And phase it, like…
124 00:16:01.470 ⇒ 00:16:02.380 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah.
125 00:16:02.380 ⇒ 00:16:14.949 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know… I don’t think… I don’t know if Notion has any type of, like, analytics, but also consider just, like, the number one priority is the new team member and the delivery team.
126 00:16:15.200 ⇒ 00:16:20.050 Uttam Kumaran: like… sales, And, and sales, so 3.
127 00:16:20.360 ⇒ 00:16:24.909 Uttam Kumaran: everything else is, like, P1. So those are, like, P0 to support.
128 00:16:25.010 ⇒ 00:16:28.270 Uttam Kumaran: the sales within Notion all the time, writing.
129 00:16:28.430 ⇒ 00:16:34.300 Uttam Kumaran: the delivery team is in Notion all the time writing, and for a new team member, like.
130 00:16:34.560 ⇒ 00:16:39.210 Uttam Kumaran: They just need to know, like, what is, like, Policy, their stuff.
131 00:16:39.350 ⇒ 00:16:43.960 Uttam Kumaran: But, like, you’ll see some stuff there from, like, maybe marketing, or…
132 00:16:44.070 ⇒ 00:16:47.179 Uttam Kumaran: Like, other writing, just sort of, like.
133 00:16:48.200 ⇒ 00:16:53.299 Uttam Kumaran: phase it to Phase 2 or something. You know. Got it. Yeah.
134 00:16:54.930 ⇒ 00:16:59.749 Sheshu Chandrasekar: No, that makes sense. We can… that’s more of a mature way of phasing, like, you know.
135 00:16:59.970 ⇒ 00:17:00.770 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Rolling it out.
136 00:17:00.770 ⇒ 00:17:06.020 Uttam Kumaran: Because you’re not gonna be able to rip… we don’t… I don’t have… I can’t have you guys doing 6 weeks of Notion work.
137 00:17:06.930 ⇒ 00:17:11.770 Uttam Kumaran: other stuff to do, so I’m gonna be like, you have, you have, like, two weeks.
138 00:17:12.300 ⇒ 00:17:15.599 Uttam Kumaran: And then this is where it’s like a… it’s gonna be a debate between…
139 00:17:15.770 ⇒ 00:17:29.550 Uttam Kumaran: I think, like, you, Sheshu, and the team, and me on, like, okay, we have, like… and I think they might… did the team share, like, kind of, like, our current priorities for, like, Q1, and the Gantt chart? So, like, there’s, like, a bunch of…
140 00:17:29.690 ⇒ 00:17:33.839 Uttam Kumaran: There’s a bunch of big rocks, big and small rocks, that we’re trying to accomplish.
141 00:17:34.130 ⇒ 00:17:39.920 Uttam Kumaran: I’m always gonna push us to say, like, I’m gonna… what you can expect from me is the priority.
142 00:17:40.080 ⇒ 00:17:49.220 Uttam Kumaran: And ideas on, like, Like, what is, like, how to slim things down or speed things up.
143 00:17:49.380 ⇒ 00:17:51.790 Uttam Kumaran: what I need from you is really that, like.
144 00:17:52.220 ⇒ 00:18:11.760 Uttam Kumaran: hey, like, we can’t do this this fast, or we need more time, or we… this is, like, the ordering that we propose. And that’s gonna be, like, our debate, right? Because we have several different things on the ops team that have to happen. A lot of them are important, some of them are critical, like, and so I’m happy to give that. So not everything is critical.
145 00:18:11.840 ⇒ 00:18:19.339 Uttam Kumaran: But what I’m expecting is, like, that’s this, like, back and forth when we… when, like, me and your team sort of meet is, like.
146 00:18:19.660 ⇒ 00:18:31.339 Uttam Kumaran: okay, like, where are we on things? And our plan is not gonna be perfect, like, we’re gonna… we’re gonna have plan, we’re gonna get into Notion, be like, it’s way more… taking way more long… way longer than we expected.
147 00:18:31.510 ⇒ 00:18:34.159 Uttam Kumaran: And so then, that’s up to me to be like, okay, like.
148 00:18:34.500 ⇒ 00:18:41.220 Uttam Kumaran: what should we do? And you can expect that from me, okay, yeah. Right, yeah.
149 00:18:41.220 ⇒ 00:18:44.640 Sheshu Chandrasekar: That makes a lot of sense. I guess my priority right now
150 00:18:44.890 ⇒ 00:19:03.159 Sheshu Chandrasekar: like, being someone that’s being onboarded is to reduce the overload, that cognitive overload of any sort, so that’ll kind of be my priority, and I’ll put together something and then send it to you either end of today or early, early into Monday. So it makes sense, but I want to run it by Eliza and Rico to see what they think, and…
151 00:19:03.270 ⇒ 00:19:05.260 Sheshu Chandrasekar: And we can… we can figure out from there.
152 00:19:05.260 ⇒ 00:19:05.930 Rico Rejoso: Yeah.
153 00:19:06.000 ⇒ 00:19:20.599 Rico Rejoso: And also, we have a ops stand-up, me and Eliza, and we’ll probably… we’ll add you on that, Shashu. We could probably discuss everything before we present it to Utham, our stakeholder. And we have this, Gantt chart of our,
154 00:19:20.600 ⇒ 00:19:33.650 Rico Rejoso: high priority and low priority, so that we’re, trying to aim for this quarter. So we’ll also share that one during the stand-up, so we can… you can have a better view of what we’re working on, and maybe try to see what are necessary, and, you know, help us organize things out.
155 00:19:34.390 ⇒ 00:19:37.079 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Sweet. Okay. That works. And then…
156 00:19:37.410 ⇒ 00:19:40.420 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I guess, like, another question I had,
157 00:19:40.530 ⇒ 00:19:44.690 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Eliza and Rico. So, when people ask, Things from you, right?
158 00:19:45.090 ⇒ 00:19:47.930 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Can you kind of, like, pinpoint, like, which…
159 00:19:48.240 ⇒ 00:20:03.430 Sheshu Chandrasekar: role, like, is it a CSO, or an EP, or an SL that requests you a lot of things? Like, I’m super curious to see which role right now, has, like, a lot of questions and ambiguity, or any requests that you have to answer.
160 00:20:04.610 ⇒ 00:20:14.449 Rico Rejoso: Right now, for, I mean, for me, because basically everyone’s going, sending me a message about it, the engagement planners, since they’re also working out,
161 00:20:14.560 ⇒ 00:20:25.889 Rico Rejoso: projects and milestones. They’ve been asking me a lot of things, especially the new ones, for those, or are requesting access for tools. Those are, like, the main concerns that they have right now.
162 00:20:26.040 ⇒ 00:20:29.009 Rico Rejoso: Other than that, I guess, second would be, like, the CSO.
163 00:20:30.300 ⇒ 00:20:39.039 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay, that makes sense. And Utam, like, today, the data service stand-up, are most of the… most of the folks on there EPs and SLs, basically?
164 00:20:39.300 ⇒ 00:20:44.880 Uttam Kumaran: EP, CSO, we have 3 SLs, so it’s a WASH, Sam and Robert.
165 00:20:44.990 ⇒ 00:20:47.959 Uttam Kumaran: So it’s one-to-one right now with service lines.
166 00:20:48.360 ⇒ 00:20:52.129 Uttam Kumaran: Awash is a SL, so he runs the stand-up.
167 00:20:52.510 ⇒ 00:20:56.469 Uttam Kumaran: All the rest of the folks are EPs or CSOs who are on
168 00:20:56.680 ⇒ 00:21:07.750 Uttam Kumaran: data work streams for clients. So some clients have something in AI and data, like some combination, but that’s just all the service, all the clients who are
169 00:21:07.900 ⇒ 00:21:24.739 Uttam Kumaran: basically procuring from the data service line. So you’ll see CSOs, and in that Forging the Future doc, we have an outline of, like, how we typically run standard, which is, like, CSO goes, it’s, like, more about, like, the business side of, like, how’s this client going? The EP goes, which is, like.
170 00:21:24.770 ⇒ 00:21:33.589 Uttam Kumaran: here’s, like, are we on track according to plan? And Awash or Sam are… kind of have linear open just to confirm that… that things are moving.
171 00:21:33.660 ⇒ 00:21:36.220 Uttam Kumaran: And sort of… it kind of creates this, like.
172 00:21:36.820 ⇒ 00:21:45.329 Uttam Kumaran: You know, would you describe this client as doing well? Are we on track? And then, like, do we need any technical support from the SL?
173 00:21:48.080 ⇒ 00:22:07.990 Uttam Kumaran: The other thing I would, the other thing I would say is we have ingested, a lot of our Slack messages, and we continue to. One thing you can do, probably, if you ask nicely in the AI team channel, is get an export of every time, or get directed to where every time
174 00:22:08.200 ⇒ 00:22:11.569 Uttam Kumaran: Anytime me, Rico, or Eliza have been tagged.
175 00:22:11.820 ⇒ 00:22:15.829 Uttam Kumaran: Or any place that we have responded to a thread.
176 00:22:16.070 ⇒ 00:22:19.070 Uttam Kumaran: And I would be… I would…
177 00:22:19.310 ⇒ 00:22:30.139 Uttam Kumaran: probably, like, one thing that would probably save you a ton of time is to just take all that and shove it into Cursor and be like, tell me, like, ways I could streamline this or whatever.
178 00:22:30.140 ⇒ 00:22:30.930 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Right.
179 00:22:31.200 ⇒ 00:22:37.839 Uttam Kumaran: Our AI team is already ingesting a lot of that data for our internal Slack. It’s not being used for much.
180 00:22:38.210 ⇒ 00:22:47.010 Uttam Kumaran: It’s… but it’s been there waiting for, basically, like, this type of use case. So, overall, like, what do we want to see? Like, we want to see the times that, like.
181 00:22:47.160 ⇒ 00:22:49.890 Uttam Kumaran: I’m added for, like, non…
182 00:22:50.140 ⇒ 00:22:55.300 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, this depends on the situation, but overall, you’ll see that I’m… continue to be…
183 00:22:55.350 ⇒ 00:22:58.809 Uttam Kumaran: the most added, and send the most messages.
184 00:22:58.860 ⇒ 00:23:11.980 Uttam Kumaran: I think it’s for us to define in what situation is that good or bad, but I would say, holistically, like, I should not be tagged as many times, like, for a fact, right? So, we should see that number go down.
185 00:23:12.020 ⇒ 00:23:26.529 Uttam Kumaran: Ideally, I think to what you sent, we should see the usage of some type of streamlined form go up, right, as we start to structure the types of requests. I think what would be helpful is for you to just make sure that when you implement a form.
186 00:23:26.650 ⇒ 00:23:32.760 Uttam Kumaran: It’s… you’re able to reflect the data, like, how often it’s being tagged for what use cases, so it’ll help you quickly see, like.
187 00:23:33.180 ⇒ 00:23:35.970 Uttam Kumaran: And how to iterate, and basically, like, show the ROI.
188 00:23:37.560 ⇒ 00:23:45.090 Sheshu Chandrasekar: No, that makes sense. And I think, in addition to that, like… like I said, we want the volume of, like, the requests to go up, but in my head, I’m…
189 00:23:45.650 ⇒ 00:23:48.240 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I’m seeing it as a point where, like.
190 00:23:48.360 ⇒ 00:23:57.580 Sheshu Chandrasekar: yeah, we wanted to increase, but the requests that we get are unique, right? Because if we answer the same question over and over again, we should have a process already.
191 00:23:57.820 ⇒ 00:24:06.040 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Right? In a way, like, it’s… if someone’s asking, hey, where can I find this document? Do we have this? We should automatically be able to point them to the right direction.
192 00:24:06.190 ⇒ 00:24:16.969 Sheshu Chandrasekar: But if they have something very unique that we can’t really provide them resources to, then… then we want to take on that request and really help them out and give them that one-on-one support. It’s kind of where.
193 00:24:16.970 ⇒ 00:24:17.370 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
194 00:24:17.370 ⇒ 00:24:18.510 Sheshu Chandrasekar: My thinking is…
195 00:24:19.780 ⇒ 00:24:20.910 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I agree.
196 00:24:20.910 ⇒ 00:24:23.030 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay. Sweet. Okay.
197 00:24:23.270 ⇒ 00:24:25.639 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, no, this is great.
198 00:24:26.560 ⇒ 00:24:30.080 Uttam Kumaran: And I would say… So, like, linear triage?
199 00:24:30.200 ⇒ 00:24:32.540 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know if you’ve used linear before.
200 00:24:33.280 ⇒ 00:24:36.500 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I’m just not getting used to it, but it seems pretty straightforward.
201 00:24:36.500 ⇒ 00:24:53.259 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s sort of like the more modern, hip version of Jira, minus, like, all the kind of BS, and, like, very programmable. So, like, Linear has, like, a triage function, and you can do a lot of, like, interesting automations. For example, we use Linear for our out-of-office.
202 00:24:53.260 ⇒ 00:25:08.339 Uttam Kumaran: request form, and so when someone submits an out-of-office request, there’s a linear form that they can trigger from many Slack channels, and then it goes to the ops… it goes to the planning and allocation channel, being like, this person requested an out-of-office.
203 00:25:08.350 ⇒ 00:25:13.179 Uttam Kumaran: So linear may end up being, like, more important. I think, Rico, you can probably share with…
204 00:25:13.200 ⇒ 00:25:16.029 Uttam Kumaran: Shows you, like, how we built that.
205 00:25:16.540 ⇒ 00:25:25.289 Uttam Kumaran: it may allow you to kind of, like, drive towards something faster, but I’m also open to, like, if we want to build something custom or whatever, like, it’s…
206 00:25:25.520 ⇒ 00:25:34.920 Uttam Kumaran: Sort of totally up to you. Like, I’m not afraid of, like, having us build something in Replit, or building a custom Slack bot, like, we can do whatever, as long as it works well.
207 00:25:37.020 ⇒ 00:25:39.700 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay. No, that makes a lot of sense.
208 00:25:39.810 ⇒ 00:25:54.430 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, I’m still getting the hang of linear right now. So… Sure. I think the one thing I’m trying to… one thing I realized with Linear, and Rico and Eliza, please correct me if I’m wrong here, I think the operations board is still kind of like… it’s not being touched at all, is that correct?
209 00:25:55.200 ⇒ 00:26:05.219 Rico Rejoso: We upload everything in linear. Basically, what we’re doing, based, based on the Gantt chart that we have, on… we upload it on linear, and that’s where we tracked it.
210 00:26:05.420 ⇒ 00:26:06.479 Rico Rejoso: And close it out.
211 00:26:06.480 ⇒ 00:26:07.000 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay.
212 00:26:07.000 ⇒ 00:26:13.829 Rico Rejoso: That’s the current process that we have, but basically everything, we throw it in linear, just to make sure we track all the things that we’re doing, all the tasks that we’re assigned to.
213 00:26:14.490 ⇒ 00:26:19.870 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay, sounds good. Okay. Yeah, I’ll take a look at that and figure out…
214 00:26:20.060 ⇒ 00:26:34.540 Sheshu Chandrasekar: exactly, like, how we’re… how we can improve on that. But I think my end goal here is to kind of, like, any requests that we get, they can just type… anyone can just type in Slack, and it’ll be, like, a quick little form that… and then it’ll just be redirected to linear, so we just see what…
215 00:26:35.080 ⇒ 00:26:39.819 Sheshu Chandrasekar: what requests we have, and how quickly we can address that. So time to…
216 00:26:40.020 ⇒ 00:26:48.750 Sheshu Chandrasekar: time to address the request should be very low for us, if we keep looking at linear. That’s kind of my… the metric that I’m kind of tracking here.
217 00:26:50.950 ⇒ 00:26:54.550 Rico Rejoso: Definitely, and I’ll probably… and I’ll walk you through, linear as well.
218 00:26:56.080 ⇒ 00:27:10.700 Sheshu Chandrasekar: So, yeah, maybe we can add some time later today, I don’t know what your schedule’s like. And can you… yeah, please let me know, because I remember messaging you guys yesterday, and it was, like, 5 AM, so I just want to be, like, mindful of, you know, what’s, you know, your working hours.
219 00:27:10.700 ⇒ 00:27:12.559 Rico Rejoso: No worries, definitely.
220 00:27:12.660 ⇒ 00:27:15.519 Rico Rejoso: You work U.S, U.S.-based.
221 00:27:15.520 ⇒ 00:27:16.090 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay.
222 00:27:16.090 ⇒ 00:27:17.099 Rico Rejoso: It’s ours, yeah.
223 00:27:17.790 ⇒ 00:27:18.420 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Got it.
224 00:27:18.810 ⇒ 00:27:31.700 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Cool, and is there anything else that you have top of mind? I want to just get everything together and put, like, a solid plan next Monday or Tuesday, kind of like in a Gantt chart form.
225 00:27:31.700 ⇒ 00:27:41.910 Uttam Kumaran: No, I think you’re doing well, dude. I think… yeah, you’re gonna see that, like, I think when you talk to me, I’m just gonna, like, tell you everything about ops that’s on my mind. I think, like…
226 00:27:42.020 ⇒ 00:27:52.829 Uttam Kumaran: there’s not a shortage of things to do. I think we just have to make sure to align the priority. The lucky thing is, I think Eliza and Rico have already, like.
227 00:27:52.840 ⇒ 00:28:10.199 Uttam Kumaran: fleshed out a good base of that, for you to reflect on. And then I think it’s gonna be for you to see, like, okay, in what ways can we use AI automation or stream… or… or pare down some of the expectations in order to, like, accomplish these? And then also just, like.
228 00:28:10.360 ⇒ 00:28:29.870 Uttam Kumaran: instead of taking 10 things and sort of doing them all kind of, like, crappy, like, can we do 3 and just nail it? And are those the highest leverage? Like, I think you’ll start to build an opinion, and then we just have conversations like this, like, you’ll get a hang of it. There’s a lot going on, so I just wanted to make sure that you’re able to see with your own eyes, like.
229 00:28:30.160 ⇒ 00:28:35.030 Uttam Kumaran: how things are working for you to form your own opinions, and then I can help you, like.
230 00:28:35.660 ⇒ 00:28:42.989 Uttam Kumaran: shape, like, okay, why are we here? Like, why… why is this thing the way it is? Similar to Notion, like, you’re like.
231 00:28:43.450 ⇒ 00:29:02.869 Uttam Kumaran: it’s just the way it is, because I decided one day. It’s like, there’s no… there’s no, like, advanced thought. There are other things in the company where there’s a lot of advanced thought. Yeah. So, I… that’s what I’m here for. So you can hit me with any question, literally, like, anytime. I am in meetings a lot, but I’m, like, always
232 00:29:02.870 ⇒ 00:29:07.189 Uttam Kumaran: like… I’m doing, like, 5 things all the time, so I’ll just… if you just slap me, I’ll,
233 00:29:07.260 ⇒ 00:29:26.190 Uttam Kumaran: I will respond to you, basically, as soon as I can, so that’s the easiest way to get ahold of me. But typically, we meet as an ops team on Monday for an hour with me, and I think Rico and Eliza meet pretty frequently, so I’ll let the three of y’all kind of figure out a cadence to meet together. I can certainly guarantee at least, like, an hour or a week.
234 00:29:26.190 ⇒ 00:29:29.339 Uttam Kumaran: To meet, and then sort of ad hoc from there as we need.
235 00:29:30.650 ⇒ 00:29:41.739 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Sweet, yeah, no, that sounds perfect to me, and yeah, no, thanks for all the support so far. I think it… y’all have all been super helpful to me, so… Yeah, and apologies for…
236 00:29:41.740 ⇒ 00:29:42.410 Uttam Kumaran: Of course.
237 00:29:42.410 ⇒ 00:29:43.780 Sheshu Chandrasekar: potions, so…
238 00:29:43.780 ⇒ 00:29:53.229 Uttam Kumaran: No, I need… I need the questions. Like, what you’re also gonna see, and I think something for you to be aware of, is, like, again, a lot of people,
239 00:29:54.070 ⇒ 00:30:03.650 Uttam Kumaran: they are nervous to talk in Slack from, like, a previous job in the fear of, like, being annoying or, like, asking a dumb question, and we have to, like.
240 00:30:03.990 ⇒ 00:30:15.249 Uttam Kumaran: root that out. Like, Slack and communicating in Slack is, like, the… one of the… communicating in Slack early in your time at Brainforge, I will prove if we did a…
241 00:30:15.280 ⇒ 00:30:28.530 Uttam Kumaran: a study is one of the key indicators of success here. So the faster that people can lean into Slack, share what they’re working on, share where they’re stuck, ask for feedback, the faster they, like.
242 00:30:28.910 ⇒ 00:30:43.779 Uttam Kumaran: succeed here, and so there is no annoying, like, it’s, like, not… there’s not a poss… it’s not possible here. You’ll see that I’m annoy… I’m the annoying one, and so, like, you’ll never be sending more, like, I… maybe one day you will send more Slack messages than.
243 00:30:43.780 ⇒ 00:30:44.710 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I think I will.
244 00:30:44.710 ⇒ 00:30:45.100 Uttam Kumaran: like.
245 00:30:45.550 ⇒ 00:31:00.599 Uttam Kumaran: But, like, it’s not annoying at all, so I don’t want you to… I don’t even want you to, like, consider that as a possibility. In fact, like, we’re… we need more people to be sharing, and to, like, kind of turn this company… like, turn parts of the company into their own, you know? So it’s, like, that has to happen.
246 00:31:00.600 ⇒ 00:31:01.170 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah.
247 00:31:02.040 ⇒ 00:31:09.750 Sheshu Chandrasekar: No, sounds good to me, and yeah, hopefully, you know, I don’t take on the reins of being the annoying one, but, you know, we’ll see how that goes, yeah.
248 00:31:09.750 ⇒ 00:31:14.400 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Okay, cool. I’m gonna jump to next meeting, but yeah, great to chat to you.
249 00:31:15.110 ⇒ 00:31:16.390 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yep. Talk to you guys later.
250 00:31:16.390 ⇒ 00:31:16.730 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
251 00:31:16.730 ⇒ 00:31:17.170 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Bye.
252 00:31:17.170 ⇒ 00:31:18.309 Uttam Kumaran: Thank you, Jason. Bye.
253 00:31:18.310 ⇒ 00:31:19.560 Elizah Joy: You might…
254 00:31:19.950 ⇒ 00:31:20.530 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Bye.