Meeting Title: Brainforge Sales Role Culture Fit Interview Date: 2026-01-16 Meeting participants: Matthew Tracy, Robert Tseng
WEBVTT
1 00:01:15.320 ⇒ 00:01:17.149 Matthew Tracy: Hey, Robert. How are you?
2 00:01:17.150 ⇒ 00:01:18.900 Robert Tseng: Hey, Matt. Good, how are you?
3 00:01:19.070 ⇒ 00:01:20.510 Matthew Tracy: Nice, doing well.
4 00:01:21.610 ⇒ 00:01:22.940 Matthew Tracy: Happy to connect with you.
5 00:01:23.180 ⇒ 00:01:25.410 Robert Tseng: Yeah, you wanna come camera on?
6 00:01:25.820 ⇒ 00:01:27.660 Matthew Tracy: I can’t, is that okay?
7 00:01:27.980 ⇒ 00:01:30.570 Robert Tseng: I’m curious, why not?
8 00:01:31.470 ⇒ 00:01:35.279 Matthew Tracy: So I just came back from… well, I was kind of out of office with,
9 00:01:35.590 ⇒ 00:01:41.430 Matthew Tracy: my grandmother passed away, and anyways, I’m, like, kind of not really super camera ready right now, to be honest.
10 00:01:41.920 ⇒ 00:01:46.449 Robert Tseng: Okay, yeah, I… yeah, that’s fine. I can understand that.
11 00:01:48.690 ⇒ 00:01:52.470 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I guess on this call,
12 00:01:53.370 ⇒ 00:01:58.159 Robert Tseng: you’ve… I mean, you’ve already spoken with Clarence, so I think you already kind of got the high level of, like.
13 00:01:58.770 ⇒ 00:02:03.890 Robert Tseng: logistics around the role and kind of stage of the company, where we’re at.
14 00:02:04.230 ⇒ 00:02:06.329 Robert Tseng: For me, I… I mean, I run…
15 00:02:06.750 ⇒ 00:02:14.919 Robert Tseng: I run sales, on our team, so I think, for me, I’m more looking for a culture fit, and, yeah, just wanting to see
16 00:02:14.990 ⇒ 00:02:22.420 Robert Tseng: You know, if you would actually enjoy being here, kind of get some early signal on how long, you know, we believe that you’d be able to
17 00:02:22.440 ⇒ 00:02:38.719 Robert Tseng: gotta jump in pretty quickly, or, you know, some people, you know, would… might take longer than others on board, and so we’re kind of really just looking to get our staffing needs in order, probably, like, for the rest of the quarter, and, kind of up ahead. So,
18 00:02:38.720 ⇒ 00:02:50.109 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I guess it’s gonna be less, like, kind of talking… walking me through projects, more wanting to get to know you, what you’re… what you’re looking for in your career, and yeah. Yeah, we can kind of take that as a starting point.
19 00:02:50.650 ⇒ 00:02:57.029 Matthew Tracy: Okay, cool. Yeah, it sounds good. Yeah, I can maybe just pick that one up, kind of what I’m looking for. Do you want me to just kind of start from there?
20 00:02:57.030 ⇒ 00:02:57.560 Robert Tseng: Yep.
21 00:02:57.900 ⇒ 00:03:12.400 Matthew Tracy: Okay, yeah, for myself, I think, you might see it on my LinkedIn, and just kind of how I am. I’m… I really have this entrepreneurial itch to kind of… and I think that’s kind of why this is very interesting for me, right? So, I’ve done consulting for a while.
22 00:03:12.620 ⇒ 00:03:31.570 Matthew Tracy: We’ve all done, like, custom solutions, like AI and ML solutions, automation solutions. I’ve always had, like, this entrepreneurial itch in college. I started this nonprofit, scaled it up, and then we merged with a larger nonprofit, so I’ve always kind of had this, like, itch to kind of get more into entrepreneurship. Did a lot of, like, eShip classes at UNC, too.
23 00:03:31.760 ⇒ 00:03:50.329 Matthew Tracy: And just, like, something that I’d really like to get into. I think, for me, this seems very interesting for me, because that’s the opportunity to kind of, like, pursue it in a way, like, to kind of keep growing in a way that you can’t really do in, like, Big Four or something like that. So, I think that’s kind of one of the big drivers for me as well, too. I’ll pause there if you have any thoughts.
24 00:03:50.670 ⇒ 00:04:10.599 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Yeah, let’s talk about, kind of entrepreneurship and what that really looks like for you. Sounds like you’ve had some experience kind of starting things from scratch, and, yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, where we’re at in our stage, I can add some context, you know, Utub and I have both, you know, separately, we started consultancies about 3 years ago, yeah, about, like.
25 00:04:10.710 ⇒ 00:04:34.980 Robert Tseng: 10 months in, we started working… we introduced, shared clients, and then eventually kind of merged… merged businesses, and in the past, past year, we’ve experienced a lot of growth. And so, we’re expected to kind of grow our business by another 60% in the next, by the end of Q1, or on track to. And yeah, I think the goal is really to… to probably, like, 3, 3X revenue by the end of the year.
26 00:04:34.980 ⇒ 00:04:49.389 Robert Tseng: Because we’re really chasing for, like a… like an exit within, you know, 3 years. So, I think that’s really our intention behind this business and the direction it’s headed in. It’s not a lifestyle business, we’re not trying to run this forever, like, we want to
27 00:04:49.390 ⇒ 00:04:56.460 Robert Tseng: We want people who are ready to come in and scale up quickly, which I think means a few things in terms of, like, entrepreneurial qualities.
28 00:04:56.460 ⇒ 00:05:11.779 Robert Tseng: One is obviously coming in with, like, a high bar already, which is why we’re looking for people with your background. Have had some taste in consulting. You know, formerly, Utah and I have not been trained in consulting, but I think over the past few years, we’ve kind of picked up some of the
29 00:05:11.840 ⇒ 00:05:13.410 Robert Tseng: just…
30 00:05:13.820 ⇒ 00:05:38.289 Robert Tseng: I guess the… the standards that I feel like we need to get to in order to be competing at the same deals, deal size as… as some of these big four… big four companies. And so, yeah, someone who can raise the bar for… for the team internally, but then also really look to, yeah, creatively use, our… our tools and our engineering team to, get… get yourself out of the work.
31 00:05:38.300 ⇒ 00:05:55.070 Robert Tseng: Really. So, I think that’s how we look at leverage for somebody. We’re not trying to just grow, you know, headcount and revenue proportionally. We want to see a disproportionate increase in revenue per person we add. So, I think that’s something that we’re indexing for.
32 00:05:55.070 ⇒ 00:06:07.580 Robert Tseng: So I’d like to hear more about, kind of, your, experience with, you know, using, kind of, personal, professional use of AI tools, and just other ways that you feel like you’ve leveraged,
33 00:06:07.650 ⇒ 00:06:12.509 Robert Tseng: You’ve created leverage in your learning, growth, or kind of execution.
34 00:06:13.080 ⇒ 00:06:31.909 Matthew Tracy: Yeah, definitely. I mean, for us, we are constantly using AI, like, in work, so we use ChatGPT Codex, that’s the one they have approved. Personally, I use Cloud Code as, like, my go-to. I heard you guys use Cursor, which is also good as well, too. I think all those are just, like, good options. I think that’s one thing that’s also really nice, too, is that
35 00:06:32.170 ⇒ 00:06:44.479 Matthew Tracy: that you guys kind of have this, like, open approach, it seems like, to more AI tools, like, it’s kind of like the free rein, which is really nice. I think that’s one thing, like, there’s a lot of blockers in Big Four, but, like, everything that you can and can’t use.
36 00:06:44.480 ⇒ 00:06:52.330 Matthew Tracy: and you have to get approvals of this or that, so I think that’s kind of, like, nice. Like, personally, I’m able to use Cloud Code and all these different tools that I can use easily like that, but…
37 00:06:52.330 ⇒ 00:06:56.460 Matthew Tracy: It’s not the same when you’re under, like, these specific client guidelines and…
38 00:06:56.460 ⇒ 00:07:06.099 Matthew Tracy: kind of rules that they have as well, too, because clients will also say certain things, like, don’t use this or use that. So, for me, definitely use Cloudco a lot for, like, personal projects, which is really nice.
39 00:07:06.100 ⇒ 00:07:19.259 Matthew Tracy: So I think that’s… that’s the part I really like as well, too, is, like, I think you guys kind of get it, that that’s kind of where the world is going, and that those efficiencies is… like, also, that was another question I was gonna have as well, too, when I was talking previously to Clarence, he was mentioning that
40 00:07:19.440 ⇒ 00:07:37.199 Matthew Tracy: you guys are trying to go from, like, 2 million in, revenue that you did in 2025 to something about, like, 4 million target in 2026, and I was curious if it was gonna be, like, you guys are just trying to grow headcount and have a proportional, steady, profit, where it’s not really, like, you’re growing as much, but I like the idea that you have as well, too, which is, like, a disproportional gain.
41 00:07:37.200 ⇒ 00:07:39.759 Matthew Tracy: Which is nice, so that’s… that’s good to hear.
42 00:07:40.790 ⇒ 00:07:50.880 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I can elaborate a bit more there. So, yeah, I think, you know, we’re well on track to kind of hit that… hit that goal by the end of the year. But yeah, and that’s really just as a function of
43 00:07:50.880 ⇒ 00:08:13.320 Robert Tseng: on the sales side, like I said, around sales, kind of know the inputs and outputs, like, how much we need to throttle, like, the sales pipeline in order to get us to that number. But to me, it’s really about on the delivery side, and this role that you would come in is, like, can we actually sustain that? And not just… we can’t lower… we have to continue to raise the bar without having to, like, get into the pitch of, like.
44 00:08:13.570 ⇒ 00:08:25.989 Robert Tseng: We don’t have enough people, or really wanted to make sure that everybody has a full plate, as well. So, I think this, it is kind of a multifaceted, like, you’re not just in your own lane, kind of, you know.
45 00:08:25.990 ⇒ 00:08:36.650 Robert Tseng: working on, like, 2 or 3 clients, but, yeah, I think everything that you do, kind of ideally, what you would bring to the table, would create that leverage for everyone else on the team.
46 00:08:36.679 ⇒ 00:08:43.629 Robert Tseng: And I think I’ll kind of elaborate a bit. Did Clarence go over, kind of, like, the structure of their delivery structure?
47 00:08:44.750 ⇒ 00:08:57.679 Matthew Tracy: Not completely, so actually, I’d like to hear from you as well, too. He went over part of, like, the product role, and so, like, client success, planner, service lead, so I kind of have that, but I’d like to hear it from you as well, too, just to kind of get another perspective.
48 00:08:57.940 ⇒ 00:09:11.770 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, I mean, those terms are kind of just, like, you know, they’re pretty new to us, we rolled them out this year. So, yeah, I think, like, basically, we don’t operate with PMs currently, so that was, like, a big decision we made that was…
49 00:09:12.070 ⇒ 00:09:23.529 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, it’s still a bet that we’re making, but we pivoted away from that in Q4. So we basically took the traditional role of a project manager, and we split it up into 3 roles, which was this
50 00:09:23.530 ⇒ 00:09:32.779 Robert Tseng: the client success owner, engagement planner, service leader, that kind of Clarence introduced. And so what we’ve done is we’ve forced our technical staff, everybody now, or not everybody, but
51 00:09:32.780 ⇒ 00:09:35.859 Robert Tseng: More senior folks, or kind of leaders on that technical staff.
52 00:09:35.860 ⇒ 00:09:59.209 Robert Tseng: are expected to spend probably, like, 20 to 30% of their time taking on one of these roles. So, I won’t go into the, kind of, repeat the same thing that Clarence did in terms of, like, what those roles are, but there’s a client-facing component to it. There’s, like, the kind of, like, just making sure that there’s, roadmap prioritization is taken care of, and then just kind of the day-to-day hum of, like, making sure that the work gets done.
53 00:09:59.280 ⇒ 00:10:15.919 Robert Tseng: booking meetings, doing… doing the… getting tickets written out, because we track everything in linear. And so, yeah, we’ve found so far that that’s hopefully letting us to run leaner than, you know, what we were running at before.
54 00:10:16.300 ⇒ 00:10:25.500 Robert Tseng: But like I said, it’s still an early experiment. I think we’re gonna… Q1 is the year to really test that out, and it’s possible that, like, we’ll come to the end of the quarter, and…
55 00:10:25.500 ⇒ 00:10:48.689 Robert Tseng: we’ll be like, I don’t think this really is gonna scale well, and… but hopefully that just gives you, like, a sense of, like, one, we’re trying to be creative about how we’re running our projects, like, we’re not just, like, kind of taking best practice just because, you know, someone with more experience than us tells us it should be run that way. But, I think the speed to test is, like, probably our differentiating factor that, contrary to most
56 00:10:48.690 ⇒ 00:10:50.980 Robert Tseng: services or consultancy, like, they’re kinda…
57 00:10:51.160 ⇒ 00:11:12.120 Robert Tseng: you know, you’re maybe slow to pivot… slow to change practices, we’re very willing to kind of adopt, adopt things like this when, you know, when there’s a good use case for it, and there’s good internal advocacy. So, yeah, this was one of, like, the big projects that Claris put… pushed when he joined our team, and we’re willing to kind of work with him there.
58 00:11:12.120 ⇒ 00:11:35.779 Robert Tseng: hopefully that gives you a sense of, like, you know, the level of influence that you would be able to have, too, which we would kind of expect for somebody at your level to really come in, probably spend kind of the first two weeks, like, really looking around, trying to, like, look for a bet that you want to make that you can impact the way that we do our delivery overall, you know, in your first 60 to 90 days. So, I think, like, yeah, I think that’s, you know, that’s what…
59 00:11:35.870 ⇒ 00:11:55.549 Robert Tseng: I mean, I don’t… I’m not expecting you to have a bet like that right now, but, yeah, I think that’s… that’s probably something that, you know, if you were to talk to Utam later on, he’d probably be interested in picking your brain on, like, what are you most excited about, and kind of how would you… and innovating on the delivery side of the organization.
60 00:11:56.620 ⇒ 00:11:59.650 Matthew Tracy: Okay, awesome. Yeah, thanks for giving me more info. I appreciate that.
61 00:11:59.980 ⇒ 00:12:00.640 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
62 00:12:00.940 ⇒ 00:12:19.989 Robert Tseng: Yeah, let’s kind of maybe switch gears a bit to… I mean, I think he caught… Clarence kind of caught me up a bit on kind of your experience and kind of the projects that you ran, mostly in healthcare, and seems like you’re more technical than, like, most consulting background people that we’ve talked to. I think you mentioned you’re doing kind of a…
63 00:12:19.990 ⇒ 00:12:25.020 Robert Tseng: like, a master’s in engineering, so, yeah, I’m curious, like, for you,
64 00:12:25.340 ⇒ 00:12:30.190 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I guess, like, do you see yourselves wanting to, like.
65 00:12:30.190 ⇒ 00:12:45.550 Robert Tseng: you know, I mean, you mentioned kind of the entrepreneurial itch right now, but, you know, assuming you finish your program, you know, like, where… do you want to be more in engineering, or do you want to stay more on, kind of, on the strategy side, or kind of, like, where… where do you see yourself, maybe, like, 2 or 3 years from now?
66 00:12:46.330 ⇒ 00:12:57.860 Matthew Tracy: Yeah, 2 or 3 years. I think it’s… for me, I always want to keep the technical skills strong, because I feel like regardless, any delivery projects I’d ever work on, I need to kind of have that, so I know what good looks like.
67 00:12:57.960 ⇒ 00:13:09.139 Matthew Tracy: So I want to keep that… I like to keep that strong, that’s why I’m doing the Masters. But in a couple years, I think it depends, maybe, right? So, I think I could totally see myself going more towards, like.
68 00:13:09.460 ⇒ 00:13:20.009 Matthew Tracy: kind of, like, you know, going to, like, kind of that sales, or, like, sales engineer type role, where you’re kind of, like, moving towards, or, like, more of that e-ship role, kind of, like, moving towards, like, closing more deals.
69 00:13:20.010 ⇒ 00:13:31.560 Matthew Tracy: And that’s kind of something that I want to do here as well, too, early on, because I feel like what I’m currently doing now is I’m doing a blend of, like, end-to-end development with our business users, and then, we’re also, like.
70 00:13:31.560 ⇒ 00:13:46.089 Matthew Tracy: keeping the deals alive and getting extensions, contract extensions, right? And then we’re also doing the technical development as well, too. I think it would also be interesting as well, too, to take kind of that whole aspect of it and just keep on going with it, because I feel like
71 00:13:46.630 ⇒ 00:13:55.259 Matthew Tracy: I’d like to be kind of in that blended role. I don’t know what you guys think about that, but I think it’s… that’s kind of, like, one of my strengths, is I can kind of do…
72 00:13:55.400 ⇒ 00:13:59.080 Matthew Tracy: again, that’s kind of how I’ve been operating. I’ve been kind of, like, doing it all.
73 00:13:59.080 ⇒ 00:14:21.740 Matthew Tracy: So I’d like to kind of do something like that as well, too, if you guys have the capacity for it. Because I think it’d be nice to also, like, extend deals, you know, see what I can do to push project pitches along, but then also, like, I have a pretty good feel about, like, this is what good development looks like, and this is what a good… how a good project is when it’s humming along, so I think somewhere in between, I feel really comfortable.
74 00:14:22.140 ⇒ 00:14:31.460 Robert Tseng: Okay, great. Yeah, I mean, definitely sounds like you want to be close to, kind of, you know, the revenue, like, kind of bringing in new business as well. So, yeah, I guess, like, I can share…
75 00:14:31.670 ⇒ 00:14:34.350 Robert Tseng: Like you, like you mentioned, there are a few ways that
76 00:14:34.350 ⇒ 00:14:59.309 Robert Tseng: I mean, I think it’s pretty standard across all consultancies. We… we can… in our org, we call it kind of delivery-sourced deals, so these are either expansions, or they’re kind of referral source from our clients. Then there’s, like, the whole outbound motion, which I basically run that right now, where, we have, like, a lot of go-to-market engineering automations kind of going out, doing the cold email, doing the cold, cold calls.
77 00:14:59.310 ⇒ 00:15:05.789 Robert Tseng: Doing a lot of event-based promotion, and then we have, like, partnerships. So those are really kind of the three
78 00:15:05.790 ⇒ 00:15:07.520 Robert Tseng: Partnerships being… we have
79 00:15:07.520 ⇒ 00:15:27.519 Robert Tseng: we’re, you know, we’re building out, kind of privileged partnerships with different vendors that we, implement their tooling with, tooling for, and, yeah, they end up kind of bringing us on to kind of close a deal or accelerate development for their end customer. So, yeah, those are really, like, the main ways that we’re bringing in new business right now.
80 00:15:27.520 ⇒ 00:15:32.299 Robert Tseng: And so, yeah, I mean, like you mentioned,
81 00:15:32.300 ⇒ 00:15:39.310 Robert Tseng: I mean, for this role specifically, we were thinking this would… this person’s immediately kind of impact to the revenue side would be to
82 00:15:39.310 ⇒ 00:15:55.850 Robert Tseng: not only just keep the projects going, but, to look for expansion opportunities and, to kind of contribute to delivery source, deals. So, sounds like you’ve already been doing a little bit of that at your current role, so I’d love to hear more about, kind of, what do those op… what kind of…
83 00:15:55.900 ⇒ 00:16:01.899 Robert Tseng: You know, walk me through an example of, kind of, when you contributed to an expansion on a project.
84 00:16:02.130 ⇒ 00:16:19.490 Matthew Tracy: Yeah, I think it’s definitely with this healthcare project. So, what we’re doing is we started off as, like, a pilot, so we came in with, like, this million-dollar contract that was quite small, and then it really was just through good work and building trust with the CIO. We did, like, weekly meetings with the CIO of the health plan that we were working with, and then it was just…
85 00:16:19.490 ⇒ 00:16:37.759 Matthew Tracy: over time, we kind of… kind of came to this, decision point of… if they wanted to extend, or if they wanted to end the contract. And we put together kind of this other pitch of how we could structure the pod, add additional capacity, add additional pods, and then that led to a larger expansion for a larger contract of, like, I think it was, like, 3.6 or 7.
86 00:16:37.760 ⇒ 00:16:48.090 Matthew Tracy: 3.65 or so. And then, now we got extended again until end of 2026 for another 4 or something like that.
87 00:16:48.300 ⇒ 00:16:59.739 Matthew Tracy: And we have, like, kind of 3 different pods that are all running, one person overseeing all of it, so it’s, like, 6 staff members that are kind of, like, all full-time, or I guess it’s, sorry, 8 staff members that are all full-time, just working on this pod.
88 00:16:59.770 ⇒ 00:17:12.239 Matthew Tracy: And just kind of, like, churning out different solutions every single quarter, and then I’m running one of those pods. I’ve also done, like, a bunch of, like, reinvest work, which is what we call it at PwC when you’re, already staffed. It’s, like, kind of like,
89 00:17:12.770 ⇒ 00:17:32.039 Matthew Tracy: I would say, like, maybe, like, an extracurricular where you’re trying to find, like, additional books of business where you can help develop, so I’ve, like, helped along with, like, different, strategy cases or other different projects that… where, like, they’re just trying to, you know, put a pitch together and have, like, a pricing structure and go over to a certain client and pitch this deck.
90 00:17:32.040 ⇒ 00:17:37.819 Matthew Tracy: To try to bring in, like, a new book of business. Often there’s, like, some type of connection that
91 00:17:37.820 ⇒ 00:17:52.689 Matthew Tracy: someone already has, like, someone has done previous work, or we have a person that might have worked there before, but sometimes it is, like, new clients, and someone goes in, usually a director or, like, partner or something, but it’d be interesting to, like, do that from this level as well, too, on and up, right? So…
92 00:17:52.690 ⇒ 00:17:55.210 Matthew Tracy: That’s kind of… I’ll pause there, that’s… but that’s my experience.
93 00:17:55.760 ⇒ 00:18:09.769 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, definitely the second, yeah, the kind of the example of the reinvest makes sense. Yeah, sure, this… yeah, we… we do… you would be… you would be able to do… do that. I’m curious more for this… for the first one, for the first example you gave.
94 00:18:09.770 ⇒ 00:18:21.679 Robert Tseng: Like, what specifically did you own there? Did you make the pitch? Like, sounds like you put together a pricing structure, but like, yeah, how did that deal go? I want to kind of… I mean, I want to know your, your, role on closing that deal.
95 00:18:21.870 ⇒ 00:18:44.190 Matthew Tracy: Yeah, for that whole entire deal, we have two people, so a boss and Jamie, who are kind of the partners who oversee the whole entire project, and we put together, like, the whole deck to kind of set it all up, but they’re the ones who go into the end meeting with just him, and they kind of just… they flew out to Boston and connected with them. We do, like, these quarterly connects where we’d go in, we’d give them, like, a program update, and just kind of keep him close, so I think…
96 00:18:44.190 ⇒ 00:18:50.369 Matthew Tracy: Essentially, it was like, we already built the trust with him from the very ground up, and we do the legwork to, you know.
97 00:18:50.480 ⇒ 00:19:01.010 Matthew Tracy: create the whole entire deck and have everything ready to go, and then they go in and then close the deal, so we don’t actually… I wasn’t in, like, the closing of the deal at the end.
98 00:19:01.460 ⇒ 00:19:26.350 Robert Tseng: Sure, yeah, no, that’s… that’s good, good, good clarity. So, in putting together that deck, especially, I mean, I think this is relevant, especially for our AI engineering projects, because, actually what we found, you know, we’re… we’re not, you know, we’re gonna be doing, like, multi-hundred-thousand dollar deals, so we’re definitely, like, a step below, kind of, the deal… deal size that you’re seeing at PwC. But a lot of them, they still start with the pilot before we go into a full-fledged implementation.
99 00:19:26.350 ⇒ 00:19:32.969 Robert Tseng: So, I kind of view it as there’s always an incubation period with our clients. It’s typically anywhere one to three months before we can really, like.
100 00:19:32.990 ⇒ 00:19:57.049 Robert Tseng: you know, sell directly to the, to the, to the full contract, you know, to get… capture the biggest share, unless it’s, like, a referral that, you know, we kind of shortcut through that, and we already have some more… more trust established. So I’d love to kind of hear more about, like, what are kind of success… success criteria, or, like, kind of the, you know, I mean, like, kind of moving… moving past pilot into, into, the.
101 00:19:57.050 ⇒ 00:20:07.179 Robert Tseng: I guess the upsell, whatever you want to call it. Like, what… what do you… what are you looking for, you know, on… on a deal? Like, what context do you need in order to make… to make that pitch?
102 00:20:07.860 ⇒ 00:20:23.970 Matthew Tracy: Yeah, for us, I mean, we already built… I think the most important thing is just having trust from the pilot, so if we can establish… like, well, that’s what we did. We established a really good trust from the pilot on, and we just stayed very close to how everyone was feeling, the SVP of AI, the CIO of the company.
103 00:20:23.970 ⇒ 00:20:28.519 Matthew Tracy: the other directors of AI and other directors of the business units, and we just made everyone feel
104 00:20:28.620 ⇒ 00:20:35.809 Matthew Tracy: happy with all the things that we were providing and the solutions that we had. And once we had that checked off, it was kind of…
105 00:20:36.160 ⇒ 00:20:50.049 Matthew Tracy: It’s just a matter of if we put it in front of them, we make it logical and reasonable, and we deliver it, and we delivered exactly what we said we were gonna deliver, and actually a little bit beyond it, because our goal was, like, a million in ROI in the first year, and we were able to deliver that.
106 00:20:50.080 ⇒ 00:20:51.610 Matthew Tracy: And then, so…
107 00:20:51.610 ⇒ 00:21:13.520 Matthew Tracy: we were able to deliver that, that’s checked off. We have the trust, so we… we delivered what we said we can deliver, we added the trust that was already built with the customer and the client, and now the third part is just getting in front of them and saying, like, hey, we did a million, what if we step this up now and do a 4 million ROI for the next year, and we expand the pods, and we have additional capacity, we increase the contract size.
108 00:21:13.520 ⇒ 00:21:14.919 Matthew Tracy: And we let this grow.
109 00:21:14.920 ⇒ 00:21:35.469 Matthew Tracy: And then, it’s just a matter of, like, that kind of getting in their mind and getting exciting, and like, hey, this worked for this first year, we know… they know this, and everyone knows this is where the world is going. How about we step this up to the next level and see if we can expand even more? And after that, it was, like, a no-brainer, and that’s why they also expanded again with us for 2026, and it’s, like, another $4 million contract.
110 00:21:35.470 ⇒ 00:21:39.729 Matthew Tracy: And now it’s like, scaled up even more with, like, a higher ROI, so…
111 00:21:39.900 ⇒ 00:21:46.889 Matthew Tracy: That’s… that’s kind of how it was. I think if we checked off those, like, 3 boxes, then it seemed like everyone was, like, ready to jump on it.
112 00:21:47.640 ⇒ 00:22:03.650 Robert Tseng: I see. Okay, no, that’s a… that’s a great, perspective to have. I think, oftentimes, like, with just having a technical staff, which is most of our… most of our team is still mostly engineering background, yeah, I mean, they just want to make sure that the thing works, and it’s just about, like, kind of…
113 00:22:03.940 ⇒ 00:22:09.330 Robert Tseng: filling out the requirements, and I think there’s not enough, kind of, an eye for
114 00:22:09.330 ⇒ 00:22:24.499 Robert Tseng: building relationship and trust, and so I think having somebody who is able to come in and build that with clients is important, because work doesn’t speak for itself. You definitely need to have these touchpoints in order to
115 00:22:24.530 ⇒ 00:22:37.199 Robert Tseng: I mean, more or less kind of brag about, like, what… what’s going well, and make sure that people are focused on the ROI that you… that you’re… that you’re trying to deliver. So, definitely a big part of, like, kind of getting to
116 00:22:37.350 ⇒ 00:22:41.769 Robert Tseng: The finish line or the starting line, whichever way you want to look at it, that.
117 00:22:41.770 ⇒ 00:22:42.200 Matthew Tracy: Meh.
118 00:22:42.200 ⇒ 00:22:47.599 Robert Tseng: sometimes the engineers, don’t, don’t really, don’t really get. So, that’s great.
119 00:22:47.860 ⇒ 00:23:12.529 Robert Tseng: Okay, well, I wanted to, which is fine, I can save it for another time. I think I wanted to just kind of look at your, technical background a bit more, and just, like, kind of how you… whether you… how you would fit in the stack that we use, and, like, but I… I guess I also wanted to give you some time to ask some questions, so up to you. If you don’t have… if you don’t have that many questions, I can… I can ask mine. Otherwise, I’ll… I’ll just…
120 00:23:12.530 ⇒ 00:23:16.340 Robert Tseng: I can… I can push that off for… for, the next call.
121 00:23:16.880 ⇒ 00:23:26.110 Matthew Tracy: Yeah, I definitely have some questions, so I’m fine. I don’t know if you have extra time after this, I have, like, a couple extra minutes, I could go a little bit later, but if you don’t, that’s also fine. What’s better for you?
122 00:23:26.490 ⇒ 00:23:29.339 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think… yeah, I got another cough for this, so…
123 00:23:29.340 ⇒ 00:23:44.909 Matthew Tracy: Okay, no worries. Yeah, so just a couple questions then. Like, I went over this a bit with, Clarence, but I’d like to hear it from you as well, too, because I just want to make sure that it’s all there. So it seems like 2024, you guys had something about, like, 2 million in recurring revenue.
124 00:23:45.390 ⇒ 00:23:45.970 Robert Tseng: Yep.
125 00:23:46.140 ⇒ 00:23:53.760 Matthew Tracy: Okay, and then out of the… okay, I’m also taking the assumption Clarence gave me, that you guys are very open, talking about numbers and deal size. Is that…
126 00:23:53.760 ⇒ 00:23:54.250 Robert Tseng: Yeah, of course.
127 00:23:54.250 ⇒ 00:24:00.119 Matthew Tracy: Okay, cool. Yeah. And then, what’s… what was the profitability on that 2024… or 2025 year?
128 00:24:00.910 ⇒ 00:24:10.499 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so, I mean, our gross margin is probably around 60%, so, on average, and then we plan to keep that, like, that’s… that’s our goal on the delivery side.
129 00:24:10.500 ⇒ 00:24:24.099 Robert Tseng: You kind of strip out operating expenses, we contribute 20% of it to sales and marketing, so, yeah, I mean, I think we’re definitely investing a lot of that back into the business. So, yeah, I mean, stop, we’re… we’re not…
130 00:24:24.310 ⇒ 00:24:30.129 Robert Tseng: We never raise funds, we are, yeah, we have… we have cash in the bank, we are…
131 00:24:30.290 ⇒ 00:24:41.510 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, the fact that we had 40% to kind of go and decide what to do with it, it’s not like all coming back to each other in my pocket, where we’ve, like I said, we’ve kind of mostly threw it back into the business.
132 00:24:41.960 ⇒ 00:24:56.749 Matthew Tracy: Okay, cool, that makes sense. Yeah. And then, one thing I was also curious about is, like, regarding the average deal size, I think you were saying it’s somewhere in, like, the mid-hundreds of thousands, or maybe $300,000, or something is kind of what I was hearing from Clarence. How much of those are recurring afterwards as well, too?
133 00:24:57.430 ⇒ 00:25:08.229 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I guess, like, our largest client is probably paying us about $800K a year, and that’s just, like, kind of for the next… we have another year-long contract secured, so…
134 00:25:08.230 ⇒ 00:25:08.750 Matthew Tracy: Awesome.
135 00:25:08.750 ⇒ 00:25:22.579 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think on the small side, we start off, like, probably around, it’s like 30K a month for 3 months, so, like, around $90K a month. So, we’re trying to keep pushing up. Realistically, I think…
136 00:25:23.480 ⇒ 00:25:33.250 Robert Tseng: we will probably increase, average contract value to, you know, 200, ideally.
137 00:25:33.670 ⇒ 00:25:42.110 Robert Tseng: or… yeah, and I think that’ll be, like, most of the deals coming in, but I… I mean, we are… we are definitely,
138 00:25:42.450 ⇒ 00:25:56.489 Robert Tseng: bidding for the larger projects, like, we’re kind of… I mean, I won’t name names, but we’re… we’re doing RFPs and kind of trying to, get… I mean, we just land, like, a couple PW-sized deals, like, PWC-sized.
139 00:25:56.490 ⇒ 00:25:57.190 Matthew Tracy: Yeah, yeah.
140 00:25:57.190 ⇒ 00:26:08.679 Robert Tseng: we’re set. So, yeah, I think we’re… we’re definitely, like, in the running for those this year. Yeah, so much so, we invested in somebody who
141 00:26:08.680 ⇒ 00:26:25.210 Robert Tseng: very senior person in the partnerships world, that’s kind of gotten us more privileged kind of connection to some of these vendors, and we’ll be doing more technical conferences and stuff, so we are trying to, break into enterprise more intentionally this year, and not just having a bunch of mid-market contracts.
142 00:26:25.620 ⇒ 00:26:29.740 Matthew Tracy: Okay, awesome. And who’s that advisor? Is that Scott Harmon, or is that someone else?
143 00:26:30.100 ⇒ 00:26:45.129 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, Scott is still an advisor for us. Yeah, he’s definitely with our second longest tenured client. He was… he’s a… he’s a key person for that, for that one. But no, that’s, we went through an accelerator called Vixel. They’re also based.
144 00:26:45.130 ⇒ 00:26:45.490 Matthew Tracy: Okay.
145 00:26:45.490 ⇒ 00:26:52.659 Robert Tseng: yeah, they’re basically a group of people who have built and sold services businesses like ours,
146 00:26:52.910 ⇒ 00:26:57.900 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so, I mean, ironically, the guy’s also name is Scott, but it’s not, it’s not Scott Harmon.
147 00:26:58.270 ⇒ 00:27:14.220 Matthew Tracy: Okay, that’s funny, Scott Squared, okay. Yeah, okay, so that’s good to know. And then, okay, so that’s good. And then, so regarding your 3-year plan, like you were mentioning, it seems like your eventual goal would be to sell the company, is kind of what you were mentioning in the beginning, is that…
148 00:27:14.220 ⇒ 00:27:15.090 Robert Tseng: the case.
149 00:27:15.530 ⇒ 00:27:16.110 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
150 00:27:16.930 ⇒ 00:27:19.300 Matthew Tracy: And then… and then question on that as well, too.
151 00:27:19.470 ⇒ 00:27:24.940 Matthew Tracy: Regarding this role, I heard this a bit from Clarence as well.
152 00:27:25.030 ⇒ 00:27:35.379 Matthew Tracy: He was saying it was something like, 5% of revenue is outcome-based, or some type of… 5% in revenue, like, profit sharing, if you close that deal, if it’s a new project.
153 00:27:35.400 ⇒ 00:27:47.649 Matthew Tracy: With a current client for the first 6 months, then 10% with new projects, with new clients for the first 6 months. I was also curious, is there equity in this role as well, too, in case there would be, like, an equity upside?
154 00:27:48.120 ⇒ 00:28:07.589 Robert Tseng: Yeah, there’s no equity right now. I think, we are considering raising growth capital this year, actually, so if we end up doing that, then we would open up, kind of, a portion of revenue for employees. So, yeah, I think just the way that our company is structured right now, we’re actually…
155 00:28:07.590 ⇒ 00:28:14.270 Robert Tseng: Everyone’s on a 1099 currently, so, like, this isn’t really a way for us to issue equity like that. It’s just kind of a…
156 00:28:14.270 ⇒ 00:28:25.039 Robert Tseng: Like, a structural thing that we delayed for probably longer than we should have, but now that we are trying to, like, make our cap table look better for, like, external investment, like.
157 00:28:25.040 ⇒ 00:28:34.339 Robert Tseng: people will be on W-2s probably in the next… by the end of this quarter, is the HR goal, and then I think the equity conversation would probably come up again then.
158 00:28:34.370 ⇒ 00:28:54.940 Robert Tseng: So, in the meanwhile, what we do is, like you said, we do quarterly bonuses off of, kind of, like, revenue on the… on the projects that you’re staffed on, which is, I feel like, unheard of in this industry. And then, you know, if you bring in that new business, you get 10% of the first 6 months, which is, also, you know, a big… hopefully a big reason why
159 00:28:55.140 ⇒ 00:29:05.970 Robert Tseng: somebody who’s… Clarence’s background is excited to do business with us, because he gets to take home more than if he were just to funnel that business to EY.
160 00:29:06.900 ⇒ 00:29:24.149 Matthew Tracy: Yeah. Yeah, I know. He was very excited. Yeah. Okay, so that’s good to know. I know we’re, like, right at time, too. I know you have another call, too, but I have some other ones. Maybe we can schedule that follow-up call to go into technical details in the future, and then I can ask some of these other questions, but I appreciate the time. Is there anything else you want to
161 00:29:24.510 ⇒ 00:29:26.140 Matthew Tracy: While we have, like, another minute?
162 00:29:26.340 ⇒ 00:29:42.320 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, all good. I’ll… I’ll send a follow-up and email, yeah, we’ll definitely schedule you for the next call. It’ll probably be with Utam, and yeah, I think I’ll… I’ll, I’ll… I can… I can… I can send my questions there, so, no, no worries.
163 00:29:42.720 ⇒ 00:29:46.999 Matthew Tracy: Awesome. Alright, I appreciate you. Thanks so much. Have a good weekend, okay? You too. Thanks.
164 00:29:47.000 ⇒ 00:29:47.520 Robert Tseng: Bye.