Meeting Title: Friday Brainforge Demos & Retro Date: 2026-02-06 Meeting participants: Samuel Roberts, Greg Stoutenburg, Luke Scorziell, Mustafa Raja, Ryan Brosas, Rico Rejoso, Holly Condos, Elizah Joy, Gabriel Lam, Uttam Kumaran, Sheshu Chandrasekar, Pranav Narahari, Demilade Agboola, Hannah Wang, Robert Tseng
WEBVTT
1 00:00:56.310 ⇒ 00:00:57.120 Greg Stoutenburg: Hey, Sam.
2 00:00:59.420 ⇒ 00:01:04.519 Samuel Roberts: Hey! I just got my camera on… Yeah, how are you?
3 00:01:05.050 ⇒ 00:01:06.189 Greg Stoutenburg: Doing alright, how are you?
4 00:01:06.720 ⇒ 00:01:10.089 Samuel Roberts: Good, good. I’m doing the lab show today, so I was trying to get my, like…
5 00:01:10.470 ⇒ 00:01:11.220 Greg Stoutenburg: Oh, nice.
6 00:01:11.830 ⇒ 00:01:13.920 Samuel Roberts: Tabs in a row up here, so…
7 00:02:23.780 ⇒ 00:02:25.019 Samuel Roberts: How are you doing today?
8 00:02:30.190 ⇒ 00:02:30.940 Rico Rejoso: Hey, guys.
9 00:02:32.690 ⇒ 00:02:34.040 Luke Scorziell: Hey, how’s it going?
10 00:02:36.340 ⇒ 00:02:37.690 Samuel Roberts: Doing alright.
11 00:03:55.710 ⇒ 00:03:56.710 Uttam Kumaran: Hello.
12 00:03:57.460 ⇒ 00:03:58.350 Greg Stoutenburg: Blue.
13 00:03:59.050 ⇒ 00:03:59.820 Luke Scorziell: Ew…
14 00:04:02.240 ⇒ 00:04:03.040 Samuel Roberts: Where are you today, Lana?
15 00:04:04.240 ⇒ 00:04:06.029 Uttam Kumaran: Where am I? I’m in a WeWork.
16 00:04:06.170 ⇒ 00:04:10.999 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, nice. I’m with… I’m with Shay Shu and Pranav out of WeWork in Austin. Oh, sweet.
17 00:04:11.330 ⇒ 00:04:12.240 Samuel Roberts: Nice.
18 00:04:13.010 ⇒ 00:04:14.580 Uttam Kumaran: They’re over here, somewhere.
19 00:04:16.709 ⇒ 00:04:17.490 Uttam Kumaran: Goodbye.
20 00:04:18.329 ⇒ 00:04:21.860 Uttam Kumaran: I’m trying to do… we’re trying to do every other Friday here in Texas.
21 00:04:22.710 ⇒ 00:04:23.320 Samuel Roberts: Cool.
22 00:04:35.510 ⇒ 00:04:37.970 Elizah Joy: Alright, I think we can start, Sam?
23 00:04:40.370 ⇒ 00:04:42.150 Samuel Roberts: Oh, yep, sorry, let me,
24 00:04:42.640 ⇒ 00:04:46.249 Samuel Roberts: I had my presentation up, I didn’t have the regular one up, one sec.
25 00:04:52.150 ⇒ 00:04:53.490 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, what is this thing is, what is it, what is this?
26 00:05:02.480 ⇒ 00:05:03.539 Uttam Kumaran: Let’s see…
27 00:05:04.870 ⇒ 00:05:07.120 Samuel Roberts: Almost there, sorry guys, my computer’s…
28 00:05:07.930 ⇒ 00:05:09.750 Samuel Roberts: Kinda mad at me right now.
29 00:05:14.880 ⇒ 00:05:15.870 Samuel Roberts: Alright.
30 00:05:20.340 ⇒ 00:05:21.240 Samuel Roberts: Anything about you, huh.
31 00:05:24.230 ⇒ 00:05:25.809 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, my husband walked by.
32 00:05:30.020 ⇒ 00:05:30.890 Samuel Roberts: Okay.
33 00:05:31.190 ⇒ 00:05:32.050 Uttam Kumaran: Try this again.
34 00:05:37.700 ⇒ 00:05:38.900 Samuel Roberts: Alrighty.
35 00:05:43.820 ⇒ 00:05:44.510 Uttam Kumaran: Thanks again.
36 00:05:54.190 ⇒ 00:05:56.249 Samuel Roberts: Alright, is my screen going?
37 00:05:58.180 ⇒ 00:05:59.890 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
38 00:06:05.500 ⇒ 00:06:06.380 Samuel Roberts: Alright.
39 00:06:13.400 ⇒ 00:06:17.169 Samuel Roberts: Alright, so I guess we’ll jump in then, or do we wait another minute or two, or how do we.
40 00:06:17.580 ⇒ 00:06:18.900 Uttam Kumaran: Let’s go ahead.
41 00:06:19.160 ⇒ 00:06:19.990 Samuel Roberts: Alright, cool.
42 00:06:21.050 ⇒ 00:06:22.210 Samuel Roberts: Hi, everyone.
43 00:06:22.420 ⇒ 00:06:23.780 Samuel Roberts: Aye.
44 00:06:25.410 ⇒ 00:06:32.000 Samuel Roberts: Those of you I haven’t necessarily met in person, I feel like everyone here I’ve spoken to, though. I’m Sam.
45 00:06:32.170 ⇒ 00:06:50.789 Samuel Roberts: It says Samuel here, but I should probably change that at some point, maybe, too, because that’s confusing the system a few times, but, yeah, welcome, welcome to our Friday meeting. Agenda, as per usual, icebreaker, and I’ll be doing a lab share. Then we have exec updates, operations, go-to-market, and shoutouts.
46 00:06:50.790 ⇒ 00:06:56.349 Uttam Kumaran: Shouldn’t be too many questions there, but, if there are… Alright.
47 00:06:56.350 ⇒ 00:07:01.250 Samuel Roberts: In that case, we will jump right into the icebreaker, so I will…
48 00:07:02.110 ⇒ 00:07:06.370 Samuel Roberts: switch over, I have this in a different presentation, but I think it still should be the same window here.
49 00:07:07.520 ⇒ 00:07:21.810 Samuel Roberts: So, I, tried to come up with one that was on theme for my lab share, which you’ll see, but I decided to just pick one, because I spent too long on the lab share. So, I’m gonna just popcorn this around a little bit, rather than do any kind of, like, polling, but…
50 00:07:21.810 ⇒ 00:07:28.430 Samuel Roberts: I’ll start. So if I wrote a book, I love a good mystery, and I feel like that would be…
51 00:07:28.580 ⇒ 00:07:40.989 Samuel Roberts: fun to craft in addition to actually writing. I don’t even know how authors go about that, backwards, maybe? I don’t know, I imagine there’s a lot of different ways to do it, and I think that’d be cool. So.
52 00:07:41.290 ⇒ 00:07:42.490 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
53 00:07:42.490 ⇒ 00:07:43.790 Samuel Roberts: I’ll throw it to Uten, then.
54 00:07:45.150 ⇒ 00:07:59.910 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think… I have two. I think Mystery would be really good. I… I went on, like, an Agatha Christie binge, like, a few years ago, and those are very fun, and, like, you just get sucked in. And…
55 00:08:00.220 ⇒ 00:08:07.750 Uttam Kumaran: I feel like I do like some… I do like a lot of, like, nonfiction, like…
56 00:08:08.760 ⇒ 00:08:18.390 Uttam Kumaran: like, honestly, it’s, like, a lot of, like, corporate drama books, like, on, like, the banking crisis, or, like, different things like that. It’s very, very boring, though, it’s almost, like, embarrassing, but, like…
57 00:08:18.500 ⇒ 00:08:32.630 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like, I’ve read some stuff about, like, like, these, like, these, like, corporate fraud books, or, like, high-frequency trading and stuff like that, but they’re all stories about people, so… I feel like they’re more about people than they are about the business stuff, but…
58 00:08:32.770 ⇒ 00:08:36.700 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, maybe print off?
59 00:08:38.559 ⇒ 00:08:40.210 Uttam Kumaran: Sure, yeah.
60 00:08:40.360 ⇒ 00:08:46.270 Pranav Narahari: I don’t know if I could write any other book besides maybe nonfiction.
61 00:08:47.170 ⇒ 00:08:50.730 Pranav Narahari: I don’t know if I have that talent.
62 00:08:51.000 ⇒ 00:08:53.060 Pranav Narahari: But, yeah, if it was non-fiction…
63 00:08:53.060 ⇒ 00:08:53.859 Uttam Kumaran: Thanks a lot.
64 00:08:53.860 ⇒ 00:08:59.049 Pranav Narahari: Probably… I don’t know, maybe…
65 00:08:59.460 ⇒ 00:09:06.549 Pranav Narahari: The type of books I like to read, yeah, are definitely, like, in that non-fiction, a little bit different than what Uten was saying, but…
66 00:09:07.020 ⇒ 00:09:08.030 Uttam Kumaran: kind of…
67 00:09:08.030 ⇒ 00:09:11.259 Pranav Narahari: More digestible, like, science topics.
68 00:09:11.700 ⇒ 00:09:12.629 Uttam Kumaran: It’s like…
69 00:09:13.040 ⇒ 00:09:23.090 Pranav Narahari: books about anything, like, bio-related, those are super interesting to me. And biographies, like, reading those.
70 00:09:24.140 ⇒ 00:09:24.620 Pranav Narahari: Bye.
71 00:09:25.070 ⇒ 00:09:27.000 Pranav Narahari: Yeah, I think that’s what I would do.
72 00:09:27.520 ⇒ 00:09:30.980 Pranav Narahari: Let’s a glosses.
73 00:09:31.480 ⇒ 00:09:34.340 Pranav Narahari: I’ll, I’ll pick on Greg, I see his face.
74 00:09:36.220 ⇒ 00:09:36.870 Uttam Kumaran: That’s true.
75 00:09:41.000 ⇒ 00:09:42.340 Greg Stoutenburg: Alright, give me one second.
76 00:09:42.340 ⇒ 00:09:44.520 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
77 00:09:48.180 ⇒ 00:09:50.130 Greg Stoutenburg: Give me… countdown to 10 for me.
78 00:09:50.740 ⇒ 00:09:58.230 Uttam Kumaran: 10… 9, 8, 7… 2-1. 4-3-2.
79 00:09:58.430 ⇒ 00:10:01.200 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay, you’re in luck, so here’s one.
80 00:10:05.210 ⇒ 00:10:11.210 Greg Stoutenburg: And, definitely don’t click the second link, that’s my dissertation.
81 00:10:11.940 ⇒ 00:10:26.820 Greg Stoutenburg: I did write two. One is a dissertation, don’t look at it. The other one is intended to be, like, a how to teach critical thinking to little kids book, illustrated through stories of my very smart dog figuring things out as he goes through life.
82 00:10:27.710 ⇒ 00:10:34.779 Greg Stoutenburg: And, you know, direct to sale, just, like, put it on Kindle, you know, I made my $100 back through family purchases.
83 00:10:36.140 ⇒ 00:10:39.000 Greg Stoutenburg: If I were to write a book, I think it would be…
84 00:10:39.100 ⇒ 00:10:55.110 Greg Stoutenburg: on the theme of, like, I think it would be a fiction book that’s, like, a drama on the theme of someone whose life just gets out of control. Like, such a flex… yeah, it was. I think, like, like, this movie, I don’t know if anyone’s seen this movie,
85 00:10:55.410 ⇒ 00:11:03.019 Greg Stoutenburg: falling down with Michael Douglas, like, office worker who just finds himself displaced and doesn’t know what to do about it and kind of goes crazy. Oh, yeah.
86 00:11:03.020 ⇒ 00:11:04.340 Luke Scorziell: I hear about that all the time.
87 00:11:04.400 ⇒ 00:11:05.490 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, he, like…
88 00:11:05.490 ⇒ 00:11:07.680 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, it starts with NLA.
89 00:11:07.680 ⇒ 00:11:14.389 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. Yeah. He started shooting stuff, so I don’t mean, like, quite that, but… Yeah, I’d…
90 00:11:14.390 ⇒ 00:11:21.530 Uttam Kumaran: I relate to those characters who are like, they wake up, and it’s like, oh gosh, what do I do now? I’m here again? Oh, no. So, something like that.
91 00:11:23.370 ⇒ 00:11:28.160 Greg Stoutenburg: Popcorn to, let’s see, who’s not spoken? Holly.
92 00:11:37.800 ⇒ 00:11:43.269 Samuel Roberts: While Holly gets unmuted, I’m looking at your dissertation, and I want to talk so much about it now, so I’m so excited.
93 00:11:43.920 ⇒ 00:11:45.060 Samuel Roberts: We can wait for our donut at some point.
94 00:11:45.670 ⇒ 00:11:47.669 Greg Stoutenburg: The last chapter is okay. Just read that one.
95 00:11:47.670 ⇒ 00:11:48.260 Samuel Roberts: Okay.
96 00:11:50.690 ⇒ 00:11:55.649 Holly Condos: Hey, thanks, Greg. So, if I wrote a book, it would be,
97 00:11:55.760 ⇒ 00:11:59.320 Holly Condos: About, like, a spy ring fiction.
98 00:11:59.840 ⇒ 00:12:04.589 Holly Condos: And basically CIA-oriented.
99 00:12:04.900 ⇒ 00:12:05.620 Samuel Roberts: Mmm.
100 00:12:05.800 ⇒ 00:12:08.989 Uttam Kumaran: probably in the Middle East, or…
101 00:12:10.040 ⇒ 00:12:12.170 Holly Condos: Like, Morocco, somewhere cool like that.
102 00:12:17.480 ⇒ 00:12:18.790 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
103 00:12:19.510 ⇒ 00:12:20.569 Samuel Roberts: One, two more, maybe?
104 00:12:20.820 ⇒ 00:12:22.539 Holly Condos: How about… Shaysia?
105 00:12:26.560 ⇒ 00:12:28.230 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
106 00:12:28.280 ⇒ 00:12:29.180 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Shoot.
107 00:12:29.540 ⇒ 00:12:38.630 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I think it would definitely be in the historical category, so, like, war history, ancient history, something along those lines, for sure. I’m a huge history nerd.
108 00:12:39.510 ⇒ 00:12:43.399 Uttam Kumaran: This is perfect. Cool.
109 00:12:43.680 ⇒ 00:12:56.659 Samuel Roberts: Alright, let’s, maybe cut it there then, so we can keep going. But yeah, okay, I thought this was interesting, because I was thinking a little bit about it, and, while I love a good mystery, I also, would like to write something on another topic, which would be…
110 00:12:57.040 ⇒ 00:13:07.139 Samuel Roberts: Science. So, as some of you may know, one of my majors in undergrad was History and Philosophy of Science. And then recently, I was taking a class
111 00:13:07.300 ⇒ 00:13:18.940 Samuel Roberts: here in Cleveland, on Wednesdays, and so I take a little time off, and I had cleared up with Utom, and he was like, you’re doing what? And he wanted me to… so this is, this is, this was requested. I hope it, I hope it lives up.
112 00:13:19.910 ⇒ 00:13:31.339 Samuel Roberts: So for… for this, I’m gonna talk… there’s a lot of different things you can talk about in history and philosophy of science. I mean, it’s history of science and philosophy of science. Yeah, there’s too much to do, so we’re gonna kinda keep it quick.
113 00:13:31.480 ⇒ 00:13:39.260 Samuel Roberts: kind of high level, but the first thing I’m gonna say is, can someone give me, like, a definition of what science is, if they feel comfortable with that?
114 00:13:39.540 ⇒ 00:13:41.439 Samuel Roberts: Like, what they think it is, because that’s.
115 00:13:41.440 ⇒ 00:13:46.829 Uttam Kumaran: The… describing the way the world works around you.
116 00:13:46.830 ⇒ 00:13:47.489 Samuel Roberts: Alright, I like that.
117 00:13:48.780 ⇒ 00:13:53.979 Samuel Roberts: Not bad, not bad. I’m gonna throw out a suggestion here, that…
118 00:13:54.660 ⇒ 00:13:57.609 Samuel Roberts: Science is a machine for being less wrong.
119 00:13:58.370 ⇒ 00:13:59.949 Samuel Roberts: So my…
120 00:14:00.250 ⇒ 00:14:07.640 Samuel Roberts: You know, argument here is gonna be basically, somewhat of a historical one, that a lot of science has been wrong in the past.
121 00:14:07.640 ⇒ 00:14:24.469 Samuel Roberts: At least the way we would think about it, and we think we’re right now, in a lot of ways, but historically and scientifically, if you’re gonna look at history of science in an inductive lens, why do we think we’re right now when we’ve been wrong in the past? A lot of interesting questions there, but I want to talk about a specific one
122 00:14:24.920 ⇒ 00:14:30.109 Samuel Roberts: A theory that, we now do not believe to be true, but was once,
123 00:14:30.700 ⇒ 00:14:41.620 Samuel Roberts: really, really believed, and that is, luminiferous ether. So, I don’t know if anyone… okay, I see Greg nodding, good, good. Okay, so, for those of you that may not,
124 00:14:41.750 ⇒ 00:14:52.430 Samuel Roberts: know this phrase, there was this idea, for a very long time, I’m not gonna go into the different ways it might have been conceived of, but basically,
125 00:14:52.660 ⇒ 00:14:54.100 Samuel Roberts: If you imagine…
126 00:14:55.000 ⇒ 00:15:04.279 Samuel Roberts: light, as people understood it at the time, was waves. And there were different ways to show that light must behave like a wave.
127 00:15:05.640 ⇒ 00:15:23.879 Samuel Roberts: But as we pretty much know and believe, waves need something to travel through. Like, you can’t have a wave on the ocean without the ocean. And so, this was an idea that there must be something that the light is traveling through, you know, and this ether. So, one of the things, like.
128 00:15:24.810 ⇒ 00:15:30.070 Samuel Roberts: people were thinking about was, how this would affect the Earth
129 00:15:30.570 ⇒ 00:15:37.480 Samuel Roberts: as the Earth rotates around the Sun, we kind of move through the ether in different ways, and that would therefore,
130 00:15:37.700 ⇒ 00:15:46.630 Samuel Roberts: have some results we could look at. And so, basically, a lot of people believed that this substance existed, really hard ways to measure it. It’s, it’s, it’s…
131 00:15:46.740 ⇒ 00:15:47.480 Samuel Roberts: It’s…
132 00:15:47.760 ⇒ 00:16:00.379 Samuel Roberts: not quite unmeasurable, though. But people believed it, and it stood for a long time. In fact, I think this little clip here, this is, Encyclopedia Britannica from…
133 00:16:00.390 ⇒ 00:16:13.079 Samuel Roberts: I didn’t knock down the date, but, this is the, entry here on, the Luminiferous Aether, written by, Maxwell. So, for those of you who don’t know who Maxwell is, he’s…
134 00:16:13.080 ⇒ 00:16:23.790 Samuel Roberts: A very important, scientist in the history of science. Did a lot of work, the work, basically, on electromagnetic radiation and figuring out how all that worked in a way that
135 00:16:23.860 ⇒ 00:16:37.809 Samuel Roberts: we have basically come to accept. But he believed in the ether. He… his theory held that this was part of it, the math works still, it’s a… you know, we could go into detail, but I want to also point out here,
136 00:16:38.300 ⇒ 00:16:46.699 Samuel Roberts: Somewhere down, he talks about the beam of light from single sources divided certain optical methods into two parts, talks about all the wave stuff, and how the ether explains.
137 00:16:46.700 ⇒ 00:16:48.160 Uttam Kumaran: When was that written?
138 00:16:48.320 ⇒ 00:16:54.550 Samuel Roberts: This was, 1800s. I don’t remember exactly which version this was.
139 00:16:54.550 ⇒ 00:16:55.480 Uttam Kumaran: Interesting.
140 00:16:58.710 ⇒ 00:16:59.400 Uttam Kumaran: No.
141 00:17:01.080 ⇒ 00:17:03.910 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I grabbed the screencap, I didn’t get the whole,
142 00:17:04.190 ⇒ 00:17:07.810 Samuel Roberts: I should’ve got the whole, reference there.
143 00:17:07.950 ⇒ 00:17:09.020 Uttam Kumaran: But…
144 00:17:09.369 ⇒ 00:17:15.889 Samuel Roberts: The other thing, that happened in the… 1800s, was…
145 00:17:16.520 ⇒ 00:17:27.959 Samuel Roberts: people finally figured out an experiment, and I’m gonna talk a little bit about it, because it’s an experiment near and dear to my heart, because it happened where I went to college, or what… where… what became eventually where I went to college, and this was the…
146 00:17:28.440 ⇒ 00:17:35.860 Samuel Roberts: Michelson and Morley interferometer experiment. And so, basically, as I mentioned here, if we’re spinning around.
147 00:17:36.010 ⇒ 00:17:43.420 Samuel Roberts: light should behave a little bit differently. If you’re going with the ether, against the ether, you imagine, you know, how waves move.
148 00:17:43.870 ⇒ 00:17:49.410 Samuel Roberts: Basically, these guys invented this device here, and…
149 00:17:49.710 ⇒ 00:18:06.730 Samuel Roberts: as you can see, a little bit, there are all these mirrors, they’re bouncing lasers, they’re making a really long path for these lasers to follow, that are at right angles to each other. This thing is all floating on a big bed of mercury, it’s very heavy, it’s very stable,
150 00:18:06.730 ⇒ 00:18:13.230 Samuel Roberts: And they spun it and measured the light speed and all the different changes that would happen.
151 00:18:13.230 ⇒ 00:18:16.449 Uttam Kumaran: If the ether was real, they should have been able to measure the…
152 00:18:16.460 ⇒ 00:18:23.029 Samuel Roberts: the change there. And, nothing. They, they measured nothing. And people…
153 00:18:23.190 ⇒ 00:18:30.279 Samuel Roberts: basically had to come to terms with the fact that this showed, that the ether wasn’t real, and a lot of scientists who
154 00:18:30.920 ⇒ 00:18:41.989 Samuel Roberts: believed it either had to change their mind, fight for the ether despite this, or, as I might suggest is more likely, they died and new scientists came around.
155 00:18:41.990 ⇒ 00:18:53.300 Samuel Roberts: who didn’t believe in this anymore, and that’s probably how a lot of this stuff changes over time. That’s a whole other historical thing I could talk about for a long time. But basically, I just want to suggest that,
156 00:18:53.970 ⇒ 00:19:06.219 Samuel Roberts: There are lots of ideas like this out there, this is just one that I know relatively well, because there’s a big model of this in the basement of where I learned physics. And, there are so many of these ideas, phlogiston is a really
157 00:19:06.220 ⇒ 00:19:21.179 Samuel Roberts: interesting one that I almost talked about. People thought that there was a chemical, or a substance that was involved in fire. There’s a lot about bloodletting I was thinking about talking about, and humors of the body. Lots of these ideas that were held for very long times by very smart people that
158 00:19:21.180 ⇒ 00:19:26.519 Samuel Roberts: In some ways, made their theories work, but as new evidence came out.
159 00:19:26.520 ⇒ 00:19:28.430 Samuel Roberts: Theories had to adjust, and
160 00:19:28.760 ⇒ 00:19:33.199 Samuel Roberts: That’s a fun little fact from the history of science, I guess. So that’s my lab fair.
161 00:19:33.460 ⇒ 00:19:37.680 Uttam Kumaran: And you’re mostly focused on Sam, like, what time period?
162 00:19:38.270 ⇒ 00:19:39.579 Samuel Roberts: what I’m focused on?
163 00:19:39.580 ⇒ 00:19:45.940 Uttam Kumaran: Or, like, yeah, because there’s… there’s science, like, for example, like, heliocentric thought, like.
164 00:19:45.940 ⇒ 00:19:46.600 Samuel Roberts: Oh, yeah, yeah.
165 00:19:46.930 ⇒ 00:19:49.979 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, are you going all the way back, or… yeah.
166 00:19:49.980 ⇒ 00:19:56.360 Samuel Roberts: I have, yeah, so, I mean, in my undergrad, we covered a lot. I, you know, if I were to do graduate work in this, which I would
167 00:19:56.500 ⇒ 00:20:11.700 Samuel Roberts: love, but can’t seem to rationalize to myself in any real way, financially. I don’t know what I would want to study specifically. There’s a lot here, going all the way from, like, ancient times and astronomy, that was a big part of the class I took recently. It was a…
168 00:20:12.680 ⇒ 00:20:19.639 Samuel Roberts: instrumentation throughout the history of science, and he went all the way back to, like, naked eye astronomy and how
169 00:20:19.810 ⇒ 00:20:26.849 Samuel Roberts: impressive it was that people were able to do that, and learn these star charts, and map out the heavens at that time.
170 00:20:27.310 ⇒ 00:20:41.259 Samuel Roberts: So there’s lots of stuff that goes way back, there’s lots of really interesting stuff in the, you know, 1800s, in the 1900s that I find really interesting, the rise of the atomic age and all that stuff. Like, I honestly, like, I just love reading about all of it, it’s hard to…
171 00:20:41.430 ⇒ 00:20:47.910 Samuel Roberts: pick a favorite here, but, this one, I knew relatively well because I heard it a lot in college, so…
172 00:20:48.580 ⇒ 00:20:49.510 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
173 00:20:50.370 ⇒ 00:20:56.580 Greg Stoutenburg: Sam, I’ve always thought the following is true, and would like your take on it. It always seems to me that, like.
174 00:20:56.620 ⇒ 00:21:14.920 Greg Stoutenburg: we can’t get away from the idea that the only way… like, in physics, we can’t get away from the idea that the only way anything can impact anything else is, like, by analogy with how we move around in our environment, right? Like, what kinds of forces are there? There’s pushing things, there’s pulling things, there’s lifting things up.
175 00:21:14.960 ⇒ 00:21:31.859 Greg Stoutenburg: There’s putting things down. And, like, that’s, like, all of physics. And sometimes… and then this sort of, like, weird edge case where it’s, like, when you lean, you kind of feel some pressure, but still, that’s just, like, your body. And it’s, like, everything’s an analogy with that, right? Like, so, like, the ether is… well, that’s just, like, that’s just, like, me moving through a room
176 00:21:32.090 ⇒ 00:21:32.919 Greg Stoutenburg: Right, so it’s gonna be…
177 00:21:32.920 ⇒ 00:21:33.250 Samuel Roberts: Right.
178 00:21:33.250 ⇒ 00:21:35.530 Greg Stoutenburg: For me to move around in. Yeah, yeah.
179 00:21:35.780 ⇒ 00:21:42.750 Greg Stoutenburg: Does that… I mean, does that seem right, even as we go through cycles of generations of scientists over time?
180 00:21:43.150 ⇒ 00:21:51.279 Samuel Roberts: Oh, that’s interesting. I mean, I think, like, analogy is such a powerful tool for that, like, there’s a reason that that kind of is…
181 00:21:51.450 ⇒ 00:21:55.449 Samuel Roberts: how we think about things. I, I think…
182 00:21:55.640 ⇒ 00:22:01.870 Samuel Roberts: analogies are good, and finding where analogies break down is almost the best part of that, for that reason, like…
183 00:22:02.140 ⇒ 00:22:21.430 Samuel Roberts: this worked for a long time. Worked in that, like, this was true to a lot of people, as much as anything we believe about, you know, whatever modern physics you want to say. But, like, the edge cases where they finally broke down, and the analogy doesn’t work anymore, I think is helpful. So I think, like, that’s probably not a bad way to think about it.
184 00:22:21.780 ⇒ 00:22:27.150 Samuel Roberts: I hadn’t… I hadn’t really thought too much about that myself, personally, but I… I mean… I can see.
185 00:22:27.820 ⇒ 00:22:28.930 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. Yeah.
186 00:22:29.550 ⇒ 00:22:33.579 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. And then it’s like, which theories struggle to get traction? Like…
187 00:22:33.810 ⇒ 00:22:36.509 Greg Stoutenburg: you know, Big Bang Theory. Like, nothing would just happen.
188 00:22:36.680 ⇒ 00:22:41.999 Greg Stoutenburg: Like, nothing just happens in my house, like, I make stuff happen. Or an animal, you know?
189 00:22:42.000 ⇒ 00:22:42.989 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, yeah.
190 00:22:43.220 ⇒ 00:22:46.960 Greg Stoutenburg: They’ll just go, you know, here’s the thing, new thing. There’s never just a new thing.
191 00:22:46.960 ⇒ 00:22:51.869 Samuel Roberts: The Big Bang Theory, the fun thing about that is the name came from a guy making fun of the theory.
192 00:22:52.330 ⇒ 00:22:53.580 Samuel Roberts: And it… Exactly.
193 00:22:53.580 ⇒ 00:23:14.940 Samuel Roberts: And as it started to gain traction, everyone’s like, oh, we’re just gonna call it that. That’s a fun one. There was another thing I was gonna say there. Oh, the other thing about how these theories evolved that I think, I just thought of earlier, when the time was talking about the, like, the business books being more about the people, is that the, like, this is something I really found interesting when I started getting into the history of science, and even the philosophy of science, is that it’s a human endeavor. It’s not this…
194 00:23:15.050 ⇒ 00:23:17.560 Samuel Roberts: Like… crazy…
195 00:23:17.740 ⇒ 00:23:28.139 Samuel Roberts: You know, it is abstract in some ways, but it’s humans doing things, thinking about things, there’s a whole element there that, like, the humanism that goes into it that affects
196 00:23:28.350 ⇒ 00:23:39.720 Samuel Roberts: the theories, and what we believe, and what we look for, and all these other things, what gets funded, what gets… what gets dismissed, who gets to do… there’s all that kind of stuff that, like, plays into that really, like, in a way that…
197 00:23:39.720 ⇒ 00:23:51.049 Samuel Roberts: you know, over long stretches, like I said, people dying out that believed it is probably how a lot of these things die, but also, you know, there’s other things about, like, who gets to suggest these ideas, and who gets to be the…
198 00:23:51.050 ⇒ 00:23:57.249 Samuel Roberts: People, the peers that get to… like, there’s all kinds of really interesting stuff there that might not even feel like doing…
199 00:23:58.050 ⇒ 00:24:14.380 Samuel Roberts: like, the analysis of science, necessarily, but that is what science is in a lot of ways, is not just a system, but, like, it’s a human endeavor. So, that’s another side of it I’m just gonna throw out there at the end there. Love to talk about this stuff. I tried to go through something really quick, so I kind of glossed over, obviously, a ton of stuff.
200 00:24:14.380 ⇒ 00:24:22.809 Samuel Roberts: It’s also been a while since I did a lot of, learning about this, in formal ways, so, if I mess something up, I apologize, but yeah.
201 00:24:22.830 ⇒ 00:24:24.090 Samuel Roberts: That’s what I got.
202 00:24:25.330 ⇒ 00:24:29.870 Samuel Roberts: Any other… Alright, cool.
203 00:24:30.060 ⇒ 00:24:35.590 Samuel Roberts: We’ll jump back over, and we’ll cut through there to, Utamu.
204 00:24:35.780 ⇒ 00:24:51.170 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. Yeah, I can be quick. So, sort of a recap on January. I think, one, we have, a lot of great new team members that have sort of ramped up. It’s January seems like… January 1 seems like 3 years ago, so…
205 00:24:51.280 ⇒ 00:25:09.069 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, I feel like I’m really, really excited to see, both Chaishu and Luke ramp up. I think I’m seeing a lot of great wins from sort of our first two, I would say, established teams outside of, delivery. And right, in delivery, it’s almost like a team of teams, but…
206 00:25:09.070 ⇒ 00:25:14.790 Uttam Kumaran: Our business has only been delivery, really, for the longest time, so we’ve… we’ve sort of…
207 00:25:14.790 ⇒ 00:25:25.440 Uttam Kumaran: one of our goals in Q4 was to drive towards establishing, you know, a sales team and an operations team, and I think we’ve done a really good job at that. I think
208 00:25:25.440 ⇒ 00:25:43.859 Uttam Kumaran: you know, the four of us are starting to meet, you know, on a weekly basis, and, you know, really what the way… what that’s allowing us to do is, one, you know, I’m continuously trying to drive my time and meetings down, and being able to have
209 00:25:43.860 ⇒ 00:26:02.020 Uttam Kumaran: you know, you know, actually some leadership on those sides take on some tasks. It was really, really great. Second, as I was explaining to, you know, Luke and Shakesha yesterday, like, in… for us, like, there’s always, like, an ambient level of, like, anxiety when we run this type of business. There’s always balls being dropped.
210 00:26:02.020 ⇒ 00:26:04.689 Uttam Kumaran: And so to know that we have folks
211 00:26:04.690 ⇒ 00:26:29.449 Uttam Kumaran: on the operations and the sales team now, thinking about sales and operations every day, is really, really great. You know, it’s actually the type of lifting of anxiety that happened when we brought on a lot of our leaders and team members on the delivery side, right? You can think about a world where it was just, like, two of us doing everything on the delivery. Now we have, you know, Pranav and the whole Lilo team is running that with very, very little
212 00:26:29.460 ⇒ 00:26:31.719 Uttam Kumaran: You know, intrusion from my side.
213 00:26:31.860 ⇒ 00:26:46.090 Uttam Kumaran: And we also have clients like Eden, where we have 4 or 5 work streams going on, and so it’s starting to just continue to chip at the noise of the anxiety of sort of keeping the business going, and then allowing us to go work on things that push the business forward, which…
214 00:26:46.090 ⇒ 00:26:55.420 Uttam Kumaran: is these great renewals that we got. So, one is, you know, we signed a little over a $100,000 deal with CCA for 3 months of work.
215 00:26:55.420 ⇒ 00:27:07.829 Uttam Kumaran: So I want to give a lot of credit to that team and, and to Robert and the sales team for assisting on the, you know, the SOW there. And then ABC Discovery, you know, I think… I want to give, like.
216 00:27:07.830 ⇒ 00:27:20.380 Uttam Kumaran: 98% of the credit here to, Amber, to Zoran, and to, like, the strategy team for, allowing me to just go to meetings with great decks, and sort of just, like.
217 00:27:20.380 ⇒ 00:27:31.049 Uttam Kumaran: put on a show for them. I think they really saw the value of, like, our company, and I think what I saw is what we’ve been thinking is, like, what is the value of a really vertically integrated data team?
218 00:27:31.050 ⇒ 00:27:31.740 Uttam Kumaran: like…
219 00:27:31.740 ⇒ 00:27:41.539 Uttam Kumaran: It’s rare to have data teams that do everything from warehousing to modeling to BI, to analytics to then strategy and recommendations, and then finally to DEX.
220 00:27:41.540 ⇒ 00:27:58.289 Uttam Kumaran: Like, and I call out DEX because they are hard. They are not like a… they’re not an easy part of that whole pipeline. And, ABC is trying to grow their business from 250 million in revenue, and they see us as a clear path
221 00:27:58.290 ⇒ 00:28:01.430 Uttam Kumaran: towards helping them do that. And that’s,
222 00:28:01.430 ⇒ 00:28:09.210 Uttam Kumaran: That’s amazing. And so, I’m really, really pumped at how that went, and we’re kind of waiting to see, like, what the next steps there are gonna be.
223 00:28:09.420 ⇒ 00:28:25.109 Uttam Kumaran: And, you know, I think we also did a great job of kicking off work for a company like Lilo. You know, this is our first end-to-end application build that is super, super AI-driven, not only in the way we develop, but in the applications that we’re building for them.
224 00:28:25.110 ⇒ 00:28:29.610 Uttam Kumaran: And so, the AI team, of course, compared to our data team, is the younger team.
225 00:28:29.610 ⇒ 00:28:38.299 Uttam Kumaran: Meaning, like, we’ve only been doing AI work formally externally now for maybe, like, a year, a year and a half, and so we’ve had a lot of, like, sort of, like.
226 00:28:38.370 ⇒ 00:28:53.020 Uttam Kumaran: steps and falls on the path, like, you know, we work for several clients that we’re building small automations for that, like, didn’t end up working, they were bad clients, we effed up, so we’re… this is the first, I think, sort of end-to-end client on the AI side that’s showing our power.
227 00:28:53.160 ⇒ 00:29:09.590 Uttam Kumaran: And so, Pranav, Casey, Sam, like, I think you guys nailed it. However, what I’m gonna pull you out of is now we gotta go do this again and again. And so, I think Sam, like, that’s where me and you are working on, like, what do we learn from Lilo? How do we go copy-paste that to more clients?
228 00:29:09.590 ⇒ 00:29:19.799 Uttam Kumaran: And I think the… really the holy grail, I think, to keep in everybody’s mind over the next 3 months is how does the data organization and the AI organization
229 00:29:19.800 ⇒ 00:29:22.849 Uttam Kumaran: you know, play in the playpen more.
230 00:29:23.050 ⇒ 00:29:26.669 Uttam Kumaran: There’s a lot of advancements in the way that we’re doing
231 00:29:26.670 ⇒ 00:29:49.089 Uttam Kumaran: everything in the data stack due to AI, and we need to find a way to build a larger story of AI transformation as really our true offering. Whether that is data work, whether that is AI work, we’re really trying to help these companies grow. And so, I think it’s gonna be up to Luke, you, and the go-to-market team to think about all of these wins we’re getting and come up with, like.
232 00:29:49.090 ⇒ 00:29:52.830 Uttam Kumaran: A cohesive transformation story that we’re developing for these clients.
233 00:29:52.830 ⇒ 00:30:06.670 Uttam Kumaran: Because we’re coming into these clients, and they’re asking us, how can you help us in other ways? And, this kind of goes to my next point. I didn’t prepare this, this is just naturally flowing to this point, which is, like, recruitment. We are…
234 00:30:06.670 ⇒ 00:30:16.080 Uttam Kumaran: redoing, sort of, our recruitment flows. We had a great post go out that got a ton of likes, had about 50 or 60 people apply to work at the company.
235 00:30:16.440 ⇒ 00:30:28.599 Uttam Kumaran: Which is great, but, that’s a lot of interviews and a lot of qualifications, so, ops will be presenting a little bit of our recruitment process. Right now, we maybe have 8 people that are involved in, sort of, interviewing,
236 00:30:28.920 ⇒ 00:30:52.409 Uttam Kumaran: folks across all the three different services, and so we’ll be meeting Monday to sort of brief everybody again about, like, how we do recruiting, what are we looking for, how to conduct those interviews. So, if you’re on that panel, some people have been interviewing as part of our panels for a long time, some people are just new, and so this group is gonna nail that, and then more and more people will get involved in our recruiting process. And that goes to my next point, if you have
237 00:30:52.670 ⇒ 00:30:58.989 Uttam Kumaran: Smart people in your life, that you would say, hey, this person is smart and bright.
238 00:30:59.040 ⇒ 00:31:13.869 Uttam Kumaran: send them to me. I will… if I can find a place for them to help out our business or help out our clients, I will. And I’m particularly keeping that broad, like, I don’t… you don’t need to think too much about, are they smart at data or whatever?
239 00:31:13.870 ⇒ 00:31:20.380 Uttam Kumaran: We all know bright people, and I would say everybody at this company is someone that I would say is a very, very bright person.
240 00:31:20.380 ⇒ 00:31:28.489 Uttam Kumaran: and send them our way, and we will pay you if they succeed at Brainforge. You know, and so I want to just…
241 00:31:28.660 ⇒ 00:31:40.470 Uttam Kumaran: re-emphasize that. And then the last piece, we’re working on a device program. I am on my 2020 M1 Air, and the video cuts off, like, if I have Zoom and, like.
242 00:31:40.560 ⇒ 00:31:56.039 Uttam Kumaran: Notion desktop open at the same time, and so I’m very much looking forward to upgrading my device, and so Eliza’s, like, kind of pushing this forward. But for folks that are having equipment issues, we are, like, gonna come help you out soon.
243 00:31:56.540 ⇒ 00:31:58.390 Uttam Kumaran: Any questions?
244 00:32:01.680 ⇒ 00:32:02.540 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
245 00:32:08.710 ⇒ 00:32:26.660 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Awesome. Hey, everyone. So quick operations update. We made some big improvements to how we organize our content, and how to submit requests from expenses to requesting tooling, or even changing access, role-based access for certain tools.
246 00:32:28.190 ⇒ 00:32:46.449 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I believe this should make everyone’s work a little easier, so let me kind of explain what’s changed. Starting with Notion, there’s no more content duplication, we did a full entire, like, audit, purchased some documents that no longer should be living in Notion, and really.
247 00:32:46.540 ⇒ 00:33:00.019 Sheshu Chandrasekar: allowing things to be in GitHub. Also, it’s no longer going to be harder to find certain things. We’re eventually going to connect in Notion to the BrainForge Assistant, so if you ever need, hey, what’s the SOW process look like?
248 00:33:00.020 ⇒ 00:33:11.899 Sheshu Chandrasekar: We expect Brainforge system to kind of walk you through that entire process by connecting with the correct data sources. Also, we’re gonna have clearer document standards, so originally there was not
249 00:33:12.050 ⇒ 00:33:20.270 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Too much of a taxonomy of some sort to organize documents, and now that’s… that’s completely gonna change.
250 00:33:20.550 ⇒ 00:33:28.310 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Just some things, to know, really, is that the old Notion will be accessible until next Friday.
251 00:33:28.340 ⇒ 00:33:42.139 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Obviously, if, you know, you need some more time, just let us know, and we’re happy to kind of extend that access. But, tentatively, we are going to keep it open till the 13th, but after the 13th, the existing Notion will no longer be available.
252 00:33:42.590 ⇒ 00:33:55.699 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Any outdated duplicate documents are archived, and next week, we do have some documents that we will follow up with certain individuals to see if it needs to be in the new Notion, or it can be completely archived.
253 00:33:55.810 ⇒ 00:34:02.800 Sheshu Chandrasekar: So, yeah, I mean, I’m happy to kind of give a walkthrough right now. Let me… let me go ahead and share my screen.
254 00:34:07.180 ⇒ 00:34:12.550 Sheshu Chandrasekar: So, with the new notion, you know, we established document standards.
255 00:34:12.760 ⇒ 00:34:27.569 Sheshu Chandrasekar: that’s in the Documents Database Hub. That’s something that the ops team will manage, so if there’s anything that you find, that’s missing, or, you know, things you want to change, please just, like, have… go to this, like, Notion feedback form, and just type in whatever your concerns are.
256 00:34:27.570 ⇒ 00:34:30.860 Uttam Kumaran: We promise we’ll get to you as soon as possible.
257 00:34:30.860 ⇒ 00:34:44.379 Sheshu Chandrasekar: But as of, like, what we changed so far, previously, there were a lot of links, so we kind of organized into four pillars, which is company, internal, client delivery, and also domain knowledge.
258 00:34:44.799 ⇒ 00:35:04.690 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Right now, the company tiles are all live and ready to go, so as of today, you can go in there and read about what the new mission looks like, or what the new model will look like, or if you have certain time-off policies that you want to read up on, we have that here as well. So, super excited to roll this out and present this to you.
259 00:35:05.270 ⇒ 00:35:19.479 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Obviously, this is a soft launch, so we’re still under construction on a lot of pages, and, you know, we’ll be scheduling some meetings with, the go-to-market team and other client-based teams to kind of get more information, but…
260 00:35:19.630 ⇒ 00:35:35.889 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, we’re so excited, this was a lot of work, that was put into, and a lot of conversation, so for those individuals, you know, just want to say thank you, for helping me out here. And, yeah, if we can go back real quick…
261 00:35:37.380 ⇒ 00:35:47.309 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Also, we are working on the client delivery, so next week, we’ll be speaking with client success owners, EPs, SLs, to kind of do some more requirements gathering, but…
262 00:35:47.380 ⇒ 00:35:56.760 Uttam Kumaran: we’re super excited on where this is going, and yeah, and I know by, you know, end of next month, it’s… this entire notion’s gonna look completely different, and…
263 00:35:56.760 ⇒ 00:35:58.610 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Absolutely usable, so…
264 00:35:58.820 ⇒ 00:36:04.409 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, that’s something I wanted to share, and then if we go back to the deck…
265 00:36:08.550 ⇒ 00:36:14.790 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Another update, we have two new Slack commands. So we have the request expense.
266 00:36:15.660 ⇒ 00:36:29.669 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Slack command, so if you have a new, like, if you want to buy a new mouse, where do you submit the expense request? Well, voila, go into Slack and type in request-expense, and you can submit your expense. Also.
267 00:36:29.760 ⇒ 00:36:37.530 Sheshu Chandrasekar: We will send out the policy update, in Slack after this call, so you can read up on what’s expensible and what’s not.
268 00:36:37.640 ⇒ 00:36:49.540 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Second tooling, or second request we have is request tools. So, how do you request for new tools, or if you need to change roles, everything will be done through this command right now, so…
269 00:36:50.010 ⇒ 00:36:58.779 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, I mean, that’s all we have for today, and yeah, please let us know if you have any feedback or concerns, like, we’re always open, just…
270 00:36:58.950 ⇒ 00:37:04.829 Sheshu Chandrasekar: go into, the Brainforge team and type your concerns, or just use the form as well. Thank you.
271 00:37:10.240 ⇒ 00:37:33.400 Elizah Joy: Alright, so a few more, additional updates for us. So, as Uta mentioned earlier, we have this new, policy. So, I’ll be sending the policy in Slack after this, so that you can also read through them. So, basically what will happen is that there’ll be also bonuses included in there, and then recruitment process, so we’ve also created recruitment processes.
272 00:37:33.400 ⇒ 00:37:42.780 Elizah Joy: Let’s discuss further. Again, the process for that will be sent over in Slack if you want to read more through that, and then a meeting will be followed up on
273 00:37:42.780 ⇒ 00:37:47.920 Elizah Joy: Monday for that. And then, just a few last few…
274 00:37:47.920 ⇒ 00:38:04.459 Elizah Joy: things from us. So, we have this new policy for Slack etiquette, so it’s just a quick guide on how we communicate at GrainForge. So, it helps us to stay async, friendly, clear, and respectful. Policycles in Slack as well. And then.
275 00:38:05.000 ⇒ 00:38:17.030 Elizah Joy: Quick reminder, for the Donut app, we highly encourage everyone to join, our engagement in the Donut app when you got paired with any of the team members. So, just a few…
276 00:38:17.060 ⇒ 00:38:29.840 Elizah Joy: stats from the previous weeks. So, January 5, we did get a 50% engagement rate, but for last week, we’ve only got 13%, guys, so we highly encourage everyone to really.
277 00:38:29.920 ⇒ 00:38:30.680 Uttam Kumaran: like…
278 00:38:30.780 ⇒ 00:38:36.310 Elizah Joy: With everyone that we got paired with the team members, so it also builds up our team culture.
279 00:38:40.780 ⇒ 00:38:42.790 Elizah Joy: Alright, so yeah, I’ll hand this over to you.
280 00:38:44.480 ⇒ 00:38:45.970 Luke Scorziell: Well,
281 00:38:46.890 ⇒ 00:38:53.749 Luke Scorziell: Thank you guys for the great updates, and hello, again. But yeah, this week, I think one of the…
282 00:38:53.930 ⇒ 00:39:04.720 Luke Scorziell: a couple big wins, I think, that I wanted to highlight. One was, yeah, the job posting, and just, like, shout out Ryan for helping work on that and getting it,
283 00:39:05.360 ⇒ 00:39:09.190 Luke Scorziell: out, and then it’s just been cool to see the response. And then another one…
284 00:39:09.310 ⇒ 00:39:10.970 Luke Scorziell: This is, like, me…
285 00:39:11.090 ⇒ 00:39:15.490 Luke Scorziell: Raising the golden child to get the rest of the children to do the same thing.
286 00:39:15.850 ⇒ 00:39:21.500 Luke Scorziell: But Greg, great job doing the demo, walking through,
287 00:39:22.100 ⇒ 00:39:30.400 Luke Scorziell: Mixed panel, and I think, like, I would be open to even having you share for, like, 30 seconds on what that even looks like, but I think just…
288 00:39:30.530 ⇒ 00:39:36.899 Luke Scorziell: As far as it’s gone with, like, content, it was, like, a really engaging video. We got to put,
289 00:39:37.510 ⇒ 00:39:46.749 Luke Scorziell: our branding on it. It ended up having a meeting booked, I believe, through MixedPanel, so I don’t know, Greg, I’ll just even have you.
290 00:39:46.870 ⇒ 00:39:47.400 Luke Scorziell: Good.
291 00:39:47.730 ⇒ 00:39:52.619 Luke Scorziell: Maybe go over, like, what was that process like to create the video, like, what instigated that, and…
292 00:39:52.620 ⇒ 00:39:54.320 Greg Stoutenburg: How can we do more of that?
293 00:39:55.330 ⇒ 00:40:09.389 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, sure, yeah, happy to. So, for this one, I mean, yeah, just real quick, so it was, like, the ask was illustrate Mixpanel MCP. So, like, alright, went to the docs, figured out how to set it up, and then I thought, what would be an actually interesting
294 00:40:09.630 ⇒ 00:40:21.590 Greg Stoutenburg: feature that I can show off. And, you know, it’s pretty sweet that you can use an MCP to just perform an analysis, but, like, the work is never analysis, right? The work is, like, what do we learn from this, and what do we do next?
295 00:40:21.590 ⇒ 00:40:32.299 Greg Stoutenburg: So I thought, why don’t I just, like, shoot for the moon here, and go do the analysis, and then give some suggestions for turning this into an experimentation roadmap. And it took probably 6 to 8 prompts.
296 00:40:33.450 ⇒ 00:40:47.290 Greg Stoutenburg: to, like, get it so that it would actually deliver something. And then, you know, if you saw the unedited video, it took forever. It took, like, six and a half minutes, for it to actually do that, and so what I did is, once I did it, the prompt worked.
297 00:40:47.310 ⇒ 00:40:56.419 Greg Stoutenburg: I just put stuff on the screen, talked through it, and then just tried to hold as still as possible while Claude was doing its thing, so that the video editor could just speed up through that.
298 00:40:56.600 ⇒ 00:41:02.479 Greg Stoutenburg: So that was it. That was the entire process, and then just uploaded it to Linear, and
299 00:41:02.600 ⇒ 00:41:05.939 Greg Stoutenburg: And then from there, we sent it over to the person who edited our videos.
300 00:41:06.670 ⇒ 00:41:07.790 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, sweet.
301 00:41:07.790 ⇒ 00:41:13.460 Luke Scorziell: And you already got a meeting with someone from Xpanel, right? Set up for next week? From that?
302 00:41:14.550 ⇒ 00:41:27.199 Greg Stoutenburg: I don’t know about, I don’t know about, like, on the sales side, but the… the senior PM over there who does their AI features reached out, like, he commented on the video and was like, you know, like, let’s talk about this, you know, I’m the PM on this. That’s huge.
303 00:41:27.200 ⇒ 00:41:44.729 Greg Stoutenburg: That’s crazy. That’s awesome. Like, I’ll never say no to that. So, like, you know, that kind of direct touch, where we can say, it’s not just that we have, you know, of course, all the sales partnerships we can get, those are fantastic, but, like, what’s really high credibility is, no, we’re talking to their PMs. Like, we can have input at the level that
304 00:41:44.730 ⇒ 00:41:54.390 Greg Stoutenburg: makes differences in what goes on the roadmap and what doesn’t. And so, you know, I’ve got some feedback for him, but the main thing is just having that relationship and bragging about it loudly.
305 00:41:55.190 ⇒ 00:42:03.079 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, so I think, like, that’s such a great example of, us, and, like, the other example, too, is Gabe kind of making those,
306 00:42:03.230 ⇒ 00:42:09.880 Uttam Kumaran: videos with Contextual is just when we, like, use our partners, stuff, and then we can put it online and show.
307 00:42:09.880 ⇒ 00:42:16.850 Luke Scorziell: It’s, like, great because it gives customers, like, the potential to see within, like, what our capabilities of what we can build.
308 00:42:16.850 ⇒ 00:42:22.210 Uttam Kumaran: Using them, but then it’s also great because our partners love to be highlighted.
309 00:42:22.210 ⇒ 00:42:31.539 Luke Scorziell: And especially, as you can see, like, probably no one is posting about that, and so he was really excited to see your post, like, specifically walking through the future that he spent.
310 00:42:31.540 ⇒ 00:42:49.019 Uttam Kumaran: double down, there is nobody posting, like, well-edited walkthroughs of product features that aren’t the product company themselves. Like, and so it is so easy for us to get noticed and come across as an expert if we’re able to do that.
311 00:42:49.150 ⇒ 00:42:58.899 Uttam Kumaran: we do… we do this every day, and so part of it is, like, Luke, like, finding a way to get our delivery team to do what Greg did, to just take a quick step and, like.
312 00:42:59.090 ⇒ 00:43:17.269 Uttam Kumaran: just record yourself going through something, and we’ll polish it and get it out. It’s sort of like the vendors are trying so hard to advertise themselves, but everybody just puts them on mute because they’re just so super annoying, they’re just bragging about their own tools, where if we talk about them, it’s coming at it from, like, a broader solution as, like, users ourselves, you know?
313 00:43:17.760 ⇒ 00:43:30.369 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, whatever, and however I can be of support to the delivery team, like, if I could use all these tools, I would try to do all my own videos, but I think it’s probably more.
314 00:43:30.760 ⇒ 00:43:31.280 Uttam Kumaran: That’s.
315 00:43:31.280 ⇒ 00:43:33.860 Luke Scorziell: authoritative coming from, the engineers, so…
316 00:43:34.430 ⇒ 00:43:43.020 Luke Scorziell: But yeah, so that’s kind of a big win, and something, like, I’d love to highlight just for the rest of us, too, as we’re, like, working with platforms.
317 00:43:43.230 ⇒ 00:43:49.410 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, specifically, like, Omni, Mixed Channel, anything on Snowflake, I know Rail has expressed, like.
318 00:43:49.530 ⇒ 00:43:54.590 Luke Scorziell: interested in doing that. So any kind of, like, work that you’re doing that you’re like, oh, I wonder if this would be interesting, like.
319 00:43:54.590 ⇒ 00:43:56.329 Uttam Kumaran: Feel free to shoot a message over.
320 00:43:56.330 ⇒ 00:44:06.510 Luke Scorziell: And just ask. And so, yeah, I think another few, like, more operational things on the go-to-market side, we’re also trying to,
321 00:44:07.140 ⇒ 00:44:11.739 Luke Scorziell: kind of capture our audience more with lead magnets, so I think the,
322 00:44:12.160 ⇒ 00:44:24.259 Luke Scorziell: like, we’ve… the job posting, we got, like, I think it was, like, yeah, I mean, 1,200 visitors, but over, like, 15,000 or 16,000 impressions on that post, and so we’re trying to get ways to…
323 00:44:24.450 ⇒ 00:44:32.529 Luke Scorziell: how do we capture that? Obviously, a lot of those people are probably, people looking for a job, and maybe not necessarily, like, potential customers, but still, I think.
324 00:44:32.780 ⇒ 00:44:39.590 Luke Scorziell: we’re trying to get ways to, like, get people’s email addresses and see that they’re engaging with us in a deeper way, and I think,
325 00:44:39.760 ⇒ 00:44:49.180 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, the demos and stuff are also things that we can gate, behind emails, or have, like, you know, content that we send out that’s specific, too.
326 00:44:49.700 ⇒ 00:45:01.840 Luke Scorziell: That. So, yeah, and then next week, you should see some stuff on Robert and Tom’s account about the dbt, audit service that we’re offering, and so…
327 00:45:02.060 ⇒ 00:45:02.650 Uttam Kumaran: Please.
328 00:45:02.650 ⇒ 00:45:13.409 Luke Scorziell: feel free to engage and like that, and if anyone wants to walk through dbt, demolade, if that’s interesting to you and, you know, there’s a video idea.
329 00:45:13.870 ⇒ 00:45:26.989 Luke Scorziell: And then also, we’ll be launching some of the insurance demos with, Contextual, that Gabe recorded. And, yeah, that’s like a kind of a foray into a new industry for us, and so…
330 00:45:27.200 ⇒ 00:45:38.259 Luke Scorziell: Likewise, if anyone has, any insurance connections, like, super grateful to have that, and then, yeah, just feel free to, like, like and engage, and I think, like, the…
331 00:45:38.520 ⇒ 00:45:48.770 Luke Scorziell: Nice piece of this, too, is it’s with contextual, and so it, again, like, kind of amplifies our relationship with them, showing that we care, enough to do, basically.
332 00:45:48.880 ⇒ 00:46:00.089 Luke Scorziell: a whole product launch, or service launch around that. And then… yeah, lastly, some of the, like, attribution stuff, that Zoran and I have been working on will also be going out, so…
333 00:46:00.450 ⇒ 00:46:06.490 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, we’re kind of going, like, crunch time next week. There should be, like, two posts a day coming out from…
334 00:46:07.860 ⇒ 00:46:11.840 Uttam Kumaran: the Brainforge accounts, so, so keep your eyes out.
335 00:46:14.250 ⇒ 00:46:16.930 Luke Scorziell: And, yeah, I think that’s about it for me.
336 00:46:28.830 ⇒ 00:46:30.760 Uttam Kumaran: Any shout-outs?
337 00:46:36.400 ⇒ 00:46:39.339 Pranav Narahari: Give a quick shout-out to Sam and Casey.
338 00:46:40.610 ⇒ 00:46:51.520 Pranav Narahari: we… so as of today, like, we have our client demo later, but I feel like we’ve just been killing it in terms of timeline, and so, yeah, shout out to them for, you know, keeping us on track.
339 00:46:59.670 ⇒ 00:47:03.449 Greg Stoutenburg: I put this on the channel the other day, but I’ll repeat it for the sake of the video.
340 00:47:03.630 ⇒ 00:47:19.300 Greg Stoutenburg: Shout out to Zoran, Monday morning, I came in, logged on, you know, like, checked my email at, like, 6, and there was a 4-hour meeting reserved because Eden thought everything was on fire. And, Zoran just kind of came in and handled it, and…
341 00:47:19.460 ⇒ 00:47:35.399 Greg Stoutenburg: did such a good job that the next day, when we were on a call with Eden, they even said, like, yeah, Zoran is always so, like, calm and collected when I think everything is on fire, and then he just fixes it. So, that’s me relaying a shout-out from the client as well. So, what do you go, Zoran?
342 00:47:41.850 ⇒ 00:47:55.330 Uttam Kumaran: I wanna shout out to, Sam and Mustafa and Gabe. I have been extremely annoying about pushing platform stuff and shipping PRs at, like, midnight, and then coming in the next day being like.
343 00:47:55.330 ⇒ 00:48:05.849 Uttam Kumaran: I need a hundred things to get through. I’m not gonna stop doing that, but I appreciate you working with me on, figuring out what it’s gonna be like, what a future of… of…
344 00:48:06.040 ⇒ 00:48:15.870 Uttam Kumaran: team members building features on the platform would look like, and what things we need to figure out to enable that. So yeah, shout out to you guys.
345 00:48:26.860 ⇒ 00:48:30.939 Elizah Joy: Alright, any questions from anyone?
346 00:48:32.700 ⇒ 00:48:46.929 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I don’t have a question, but I do have an announcement. So, Gabe is trying to get some feedback on the platform, so he’s created a pretty cool survey, that he’s gonna drop into Zoom, and then also created an announcement later in our Slack channel.
347 00:48:46.970 ⇒ 00:49:03.290 Sheshu Chandrasekar: if everyone could just take, like, a couple minutes to just look at a survey and help them out, that’d be very, very great. Like, that’d be awesome, because, you know, we’re trying to evolve the platform, so your feedback is, you know, greatly appreciated here, so, yeah, it’s…
348 00:49:03.430 ⇒ 00:49:12.400 Sheshu Chandrasekar: feel free to take a look and let us know, and you can… you can talk a lot about it and, you know, give us some perspective on how to improve, so…
349 00:49:12.400 ⇒ 00:49:26.689 Gabriel Lam: Appreciate it, Shashu. Yeah, basically just to piggyback off of that, like, the goal of the platform is, and as Utam was mentioning, is just, like, to make everyone’s lives easier, so any and all feedback is appreciated. I do have another announcement, which is…
350 00:49:26.870 ⇒ 00:49:38.169 Gabriel Lam: If people have noticed problems or struggles with Cursor, we are implementing a code freeze, we are migrating, so we’ll send out a huge announcement, basically everything will be in one repo.
351 00:49:38.380 ⇒ 00:49:53.500 Gabriel Lam: And, it will make things a lot easier to navigate, so you won’t have a bunch of folders open anymore. So that’s gonna happen this afternoon, and so if there’s code you want to push, this is for the delivery team. If there’s any code you want to push.
352 00:49:53.630 ⇒ 00:50:01.230 Gabriel Lam: Feel free to push it now, and then we just kindly request you guys not to do anything.
353 00:50:01.350 ⇒ 00:50:08.790 Gabriel Lam: At 3.30 Eastern today, onwards. And then, by Monday, you guys should be all set to go.
354 00:50:14.620 ⇒ 00:50:15.390 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
355 00:50:16.010 ⇒ 00:50:17.970 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Thanks, everyone.
356 00:50:18.560 ⇒ 00:50:19.150 Luke Scorziell: Sweet.
357 00:50:21.100 ⇒ 00:50:22.780 Rico Rejoso: Have a great weekend. See ya.
358 00:50:23.340 ⇒ 00:50:24.139 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Have a great weekend!