Meeting Title: Brainforge Ops Weekly Planning Date: 2026-02-10 Meeting participants: Rico Rejoso, Elizah Joy, Sheshu Chandrasekar, Uttam Kumaran
WEBVTT
1 00:01:45.450 ⇒ 00:01:47.170 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Hey, Rico. Hey, Eliza.
2 00:01:47.950 ⇒ 00:01:49.900 Rico Rejoso: Hey guys, you feeling better, Shashu?
3 00:01:50.700 ⇒ 00:01:57.389 Sheshu Chandrasekar: A lot better, yeah, still got, like, the tail end of the cold still, but…
4 00:01:57.810 ⇒ 00:02:00.029 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, feeling a lot better today.
5 00:02:00.330 ⇒ 00:02:01.320 Rico Rejoso: Great, great.
6 00:02:07.400 ⇒ 00:02:17.180 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, I’m looking at the deck right now, I… Don’t see that we have… Anything regarding up… upgraded.
7 00:02:18.110 ⇒ 00:02:19.959 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Oh, I see it now, never mind.
8 00:02:19.960 ⇒ 00:02:20.330 Uttam Kumaran: There you go.
9 00:02:20.330 ⇒ 00:02:20.900 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Absolutely.
10 00:02:21.290 ⇒ 00:02:22.329 Rico Rejoso: Hey, Dom, morning.
11 00:02:22.330 ⇒ 00:02:23.160 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Hey, Tom.
12 00:02:23.490 ⇒ 00:02:24.500 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, good morning.
13 00:02:28.750 ⇒ 00:02:30.090 Uttam Kumaran: Cool, let’s get started.
14 00:02:30.450 ⇒ 00:02:31.060 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah.
15 00:02:34.240 ⇒ 00:02:37.850 Rico Rejoso: Alright, Elijah, do you like to share, I can share my screen.
16 00:02:38.100 ⇒ 00:02:39.990 Elizah Joy: Yep, I can share.
17 00:02:40.800 ⇒ 00:02:41.350 Rico Rejoso: Okay.
18 00:02:55.360 ⇒ 00:02:56.030 Rico Rejoso: Okay.
19 00:02:56.140 ⇒ 00:03:00.110 Rico Rejoso: I can start off, just to provide quick updates,
20 00:03:00.610 ⇒ 00:03:13.639 Rico Rejoso: First, on the renewals. So, client contracts, we have Magic Spoon and Remo that has, that had their contract expired, and are… or should be on renewal negotiations. Haven’t got any updates yet.
21 00:03:14.350 ⇒ 00:03:18.730 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so for Magic Spoon, I’m talking to them this week about the renewal.
22 00:03:19.340 ⇒ 00:03:28.489 Uttam Kumaran: And then, yeah, good reminder on the other two, can you send this screenshot to the sales channel as well?
23 00:03:28.810 ⇒ 00:03:32.050 Uttam Kumaran: Or just the… basically just the renewals.
24 00:03:32.240 ⇒ 00:03:35.319 Uttam Kumaran: That would be great.
25 00:03:36.580 ⇒ 00:03:38.400 Rico Rejoso: We’ll send that after the speaking.
26 00:03:38.400 ⇒ 00:03:40.870 Uttam Kumaran: Sure. And we have Urban Stems,
27 00:03:40.950 ⇒ 00:03:44.410 Rico Rejoso: Expiring this contract is March 6th, and LMNT.
28 00:03:44.600 ⇒ 00:03:46.229 Rico Rejoso: March 1st.
29 00:03:46.810 ⇒ 00:03:47.330 Uttam Kumaran: Great.
30 00:03:47.660 ⇒ 00:03:58.189 Rico Rejoso: Alright, for team, there are no team contracts that are expiring, and also the leadership appointment and transition agreements, we had it prepared, we just need confirmation whether we could send it out for signature.
31 00:03:58.690 ⇒ 00:03:59.280 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay.
32 00:04:00.720 ⇒ 00:04:04.050 Rico Rejoso: Okay, recruitment meeting takeaways from yesterday’s meeting.
33 00:04:04.050 ⇒ 00:04:18.059 Uttam Kumaran: And then one thing on the leadership appointments, so we’re… today, I’ll… I’m gonna share this with Casey, but we’re officially moving Ashwini and Casey out of the EP program. So they’ll just be… they’ll just be engineers on the team.
34 00:04:18.220 ⇒ 00:04:23.540 Uttam Kumaran: So that’ll be the only change to that. So I won’t be sending them the appointments.
35 00:04:24.150 ⇒ 00:04:24.919 Rico Rejoso: Got you.
36 00:04:26.400 ⇒ 00:04:27.120 Rico Rejoso: Alright.
37 00:04:27.910 ⇒ 00:04:31.109 Rico Rejoso: We take note of that as well, so we can take off those contracts.
38 00:04:32.980 ⇒ 00:04:37.319 Rico Rejoso: Alright, so moving forward from our takeaways from yesterday’s recruitment meeting.
39 00:04:38.080 ⇒ 00:04:52.169 Rico Rejoso: decision in regards to the final interview, we have yet to have, a candidate go through this process yet, but if in case, if it’s a unanimous agreement, we can proceed. If not, we’re gonna have a short screening or a screening meeting in regards
40 00:04:52.270 ⇒ 00:05:00.020 Rico Rejoso: to discussing if… whether we should be proceeding with that candidate or not. But again, the final take would be coming from you and Robert.
41 00:05:00.150 ⇒ 00:05:03.280 Rico Rejoso: In regards to, having or moving that
42 00:05:03.550 ⇒ 00:05:09.319 Rico Rejoso: prospect or candidate into onboarding or offer negotiation. That’s what we had decided yesterday.
43 00:05:09.370 ⇒ 00:05:28.140 Rico Rejoso: And also need a review on the drafted scorecard, which I think will be helpful or beneficial for our interviewers, since I’m somewhat confused, and they don’t want to base it off as what we mentioned in regards to their emotion, have a better structure on deciding whether we can proceed with a candidate or not.
44 00:05:28.820 ⇒ 00:05:38.930 Rico Rejoso: So, if you can… if anyone from the recruitment team can provide feedback, and we can monitor that adoption moving forward to our stages in the interview.
45 00:05:40.050 ⇒ 00:05:53.720 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and then, Rico, for these, wondering if you have these ticketed and linear. I’m trying to think about, like, how to get organized around things that leadership needs to review. Okay. Because we meet at the end of the week, typically.
46 00:05:54.110 ⇒ 00:06:04.839 Uttam Kumaran: And so, one thing that would be helpful is, like, one, I try to keep some notes, but if, if, like, if there’s linear tickets, and then they get moved to a column that’s, like.
47 00:06:05.170 ⇒ 00:06:08.920 Uttam Kumaran: leadership review, then I can just pull that up and walk through it.
48 00:06:10.000 ⇒ 00:06:17.599 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Hey, Tom, actually, this week, that was something on my agenda, to clean up the linear board, so we’ll definitely make note of that.
49 00:06:18.030 ⇒ 00:06:21.310 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, if there’s items on the board that.
50 00:06:21.600 ⇒ 00:06:26.310 Uttam Kumaran: need our review. If you could just make a column for that,
51 00:06:26.970 ⇒ 00:06:33.169 Uttam Kumaran: then I can just go through at the end of the week and look through that column, and then leave comments directly in the ticket.
52 00:06:33.310 ⇒ 00:06:34.570 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, sounds great.
53 00:06:34.570 ⇒ 00:06:35.140 Uttam Kumaran: mine.
54 00:06:35.520 ⇒ 00:06:38.429 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I was… I was gonna break up the sales board into…
55 00:06:38.550 ⇒ 00:06:47.590 Sheshu Chandrasekar: well, not break it up, but really tag and use the linear tickets to identify which are more GTM-specific versus sales, so I can do the same thing with operations as well.
56 00:06:48.060 ⇒ 00:06:53.709 Uttam Kumaran: Cool, yeah, and I had a few things about, like, operations linear as well, so, Rico, we can talk about that whenever.
57 00:06:53.760 ⇒ 00:06:55.040 Rico Rejoso: I don’t want to derail.
58 00:06:56.310 ⇒ 00:06:58.879 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, I can help out on that one as well, Shashu.
59 00:06:59.160 ⇒ 00:06:59.830 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay.
60 00:07:00.210 ⇒ 00:07:00.910 Rico Rejoso: Alright.
61 00:07:01.210 ⇒ 00:07:09.629 Rico Rejoso: So yeah, I will list down those, tasks that needs or, that needs your review, for meeting with the executive team as well.
62 00:07:11.270 ⇒ 00:07:13.750 Rico Rejoso: So, yeah, another would be…
63 00:07:14.040 ⇒ 00:07:20.170 Rico Rejoso: As per discussion, regardless if the candidates will move on or not, we will be sending a follow-up email.
64 00:07:20.420 ⇒ 00:07:30.950 Rico Rejoso: Rather than verbal promises or informing them throughout the meeting. We want to, you know, make sure that we don’t provide any guarantee on that meeting, and just provide it through email.
65 00:07:32.200 ⇒ 00:07:44.709 Rico Rejoso: And also, a request coming from Pranav, or from some of the engineers as well, is to have those past recorded interviews, so they can use it as training resources for, you know, as an interviewer as well.
66 00:07:47.310 ⇒ 00:07:47.950 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
67 00:07:48.120 ⇒ 00:07:53.310 Rico Rejoso: Okay, yes, moving forward, some for, finance updates, Eliza.
68 00:07:53.310 ⇒ 00:07:56.010 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, one… I mean, one question on the,
69 00:07:56.170 ⇒ 00:08:00.260 Uttam Kumaran: If we go back one slide…
70 00:08:01.930 ⇒ 00:08:10.519 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think also, Rico, one thing that could be nice is for candidates to get an email once they submit their application.
71 00:08:11.060 ⇒ 00:08:13.770 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know if that’s something you can look into
72 00:08:14.090 ⇒ 00:08:20.449 Uttam Kumaran: automating in Notion, but a lot of candidates are messaging me on LinkedIn.
73 00:08:20.670 ⇒ 00:08:23.979 Rico Rejoso: Basically, like, what’s the status of my application?
74 00:08:24.570 ⇒ 00:08:30.030 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know what… maybe we can brainstorm if we think that there’s a…
75 00:08:30.410 ⇒ 00:08:33.489 Uttam Kumaran: something we can do about that right now, I don’t know.
76 00:08:36.070 ⇒ 00:08:41.549 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t want to have to respond to every candidate, like, basically, I think we should…
77 00:08:41.990 ⇒ 00:08:50.050 Uttam Kumaran: Send them a note once they submit an application, and then it’s like, hey, it may take 2-4 weeks for us to get back to you, just given the volume of applicants.
78 00:08:51.690 ⇒ 00:08:57.009 Rico Rejoso: Okay, so those are that submitted their, application through the Application Notion form, right?
79 00:08:57.350 ⇒ 00:08:58.170 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
80 00:08:58.170 ⇒ 00:09:03.650 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, we can look into how we can automate that one, so whenever we receive one, there’s a recipient email.
81 00:09:05.390 ⇒ 00:09:10.870 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think, I think, yeah, if you create a ticket for that, like, in Notion, I think you can trigger email.
82 00:09:11.230 ⇒ 00:09:16.229 Uttam Kumaran: And if you can’t, let me know, I can help build an automation for that.
83 00:09:16.940 ⇒ 00:09:19.789 Rico Rejoso: Gotcha. We’ll look at it first and let you know afterwards, okay?
84 00:09:20.150 ⇒ 00:09:21.690 Uttam Kumaran: Alright, thanks.
85 00:09:25.930 ⇒ 00:09:34.909 Rico Rejoso: Alright, so yeah, moving forward, Demis hours, finance update, Demis hours had been decided for the month of, January.
86 00:09:35.060 ⇒ 00:09:54.699 Rico Rejoso: Shashu, I, and Demi went on a meeting to discuss this further and ensure that, also, for Demi’s action steps to make sure that he will be uploading more hours in a consistent basis, and we will be monitoring on the operations side. And also, we’ve confirmed, from the finance regarding them’s second installment.
87 00:09:54.830 ⇒ 00:10:02.449 Rico Rejoso: For the month of December. That was confirmed yesterday. But we’ll still update and make sure that, finance uploaded that on-ramp.
88 00:10:03.040 ⇒ 00:10:03.790 Rico Rejoso: For Gabe?
89 00:10:03.790 ⇒ 00:10:04.310 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
90 00:10:04.930 ⇒ 00:10:08.779 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so for Gabe, this is… I think this is on pause for now, so…
91 00:10:08.780 ⇒ 00:10:09.330 Rico Rejoso: Okay.
92 00:10:09.330 ⇒ 00:10:19.980 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll send an email confirming that for everybody. The 1099 piece, yeah, I was wondering if, like, if people request, can you guys just say, like, hey, we acknowledge this?
93 00:10:20.310 ⇒ 00:10:24.979 Uttam Kumaran: Even if, like, there’s a delay, because I don’t want Sahana to be like, oh, they’re ghosting me.
94 00:10:25.320 ⇒ 00:10:26.490 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
95 00:10:26.640 ⇒ 00:10:32.529 Uttam Kumaran: So, it’s fine if you’re like, hey, we are figuring this out, we will follow up with you.
96 00:10:32.650 ⇒ 00:10:37.740 Uttam Kumaran: Just so that they’re… they have acknowledgement, and then that way.
97 00:10:38.300 ⇒ 00:10:47.249 Uttam Kumaran: UI is also, like… like, for example, acknowledging means, like, okay, we created a ticket, right? So… I think that would be… that would be helpful on these types of requests.
98 00:10:47.380 ⇒ 00:10:52.299 Uttam Kumaran: I think one thing broadly that maybe we can talk about also is, like, I’m gonna work on
99 00:10:53.100 ⇒ 00:11:10.570 Uttam Kumaran: I think this is where, Shayshu, when… if you’re in linear a lot this week, yeah, I think banking out both of those for sales and for ops is gonna be great, because we want to think about… I’m getting questions that need to get directed to ops from, like, multiple different channels. So, like, in-meeting.
100 00:11:10.760 ⇒ 00:11:18.100 Uttam Kumaran: through Slack and through email, and so we just want to try to make it easy for
101 00:11:18.210 ⇒ 00:11:31.480 Uttam Kumaran: need to direct those, or for people to direct those. And so the request access and request expense are good starts. I think we can also think about email, like, if I get emailed by somebody and it’s an ops thing.
102 00:11:31.530 ⇒ 00:11:43.180 Uttam Kumaran: how do I just forward that to Linear? I think there is an integration in Linear already built for that, but I just want to give you the lay of the land that, like, our goal is to get everything into triage.
103 00:11:43.260 ⇒ 00:11:48.919 Uttam Kumaran: And then… we can talk a little bit about how do we handle triage, you know?
104 00:11:49.180 ⇒ 00:11:52.279 Uttam Kumaran: Because not everything needs to be handled same day, so…
105 00:11:52.640 ⇒ 00:11:54.390 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense.
106 00:12:00.710 ⇒ 00:12:03.369 Rico Rejoso: Got it, let me take note of that as well.
107 00:12:03.800 ⇒ 00:12:05.700 Rico Rejoso: Alright, and we can discuss later.
108 00:12:07.570 ⇒ 00:12:12.450 Rico Rejoso: Okay, so yeah, 1099, 1099 forms, we will be…
109 00:12:13.130 ⇒ 00:12:23.460 Rico Rejoso: are applying through Sahara’s email and providing updates. We were hesitant at first, since we don’t know what were the updates, but as you mentioned, we’ll inform Sahara that we’re looking into it as well, and
110 00:12:24.040 ⇒ 00:12:32.419 Rico Rejoso: provide her with the, next steps on what’s gonna happen after finance review that one. But I’ll also inquire with the finance as well for this.
111 00:12:33.920 ⇒ 00:12:41.290 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Yeah, and the other thing is, like, if you guys are having trouble keeping track of finance tasks, you can also…
112 00:12:41.660 ⇒ 00:12:55.320 Uttam Kumaran: you can either create it on… you can create it on your board and tag it to a finance project. Yeah. And that way, you know, like, hey, these are not on us, but they’re open items. Because, again, as I mentioned, like, we don’t have
113 00:12:55.440 ⇒ 00:12:59.629 Uttam Kumaran: So much access into how that team is organized.
114 00:12:59.630 ⇒ 00:12:59.980 Rico Rejoso: Yes.
115 00:12:59.980 ⇒ 00:13:04.499 Uttam Kumaran: But of course, like, we’re responsible for a lot of the things that they need to do.
116 00:13:04.610 ⇒ 00:13:05.770 Uttam Kumaran: So…
117 00:13:06.010 ⇒ 00:13:11.420 Uttam Kumaran: I just want to give you guys, you know, some of those ideas on, like, how do you track everything, you know?
118 00:13:12.310 ⇒ 00:13:13.630 Rico Rejoso: Got it, Jess, thank you.
119 00:13:14.330 ⇒ 00:13:22.189 Rico Rejoso: We have… I think… I guess we have that project in linear as well. We just haven’t utilized that much, but yeah, we’ll take account a note of that.
120 00:13:24.940 ⇒ 00:13:28.060 Rico Rejoso: Moving to some of our finance updates.
121 00:13:28.310 ⇒ 00:13:30.160 Rico Rejoso: For the C Corp updates.
122 00:13:30.350 ⇒ 00:13:45.120 Rico Rejoso: Based off our previous, based off the previous email with Robin as well, I guess it’s just, the vesting and board appointment for, Robert, which, Robin did confirm already. Just need a few details, like, for the timeline at the same time, the title.
123 00:13:45.280 ⇒ 00:14:03.569 Rico Rejoso: to complete the documentation, and another one that needs a decision would be whether Vixel receives an equity at this time. We have replied to Robin for that one, and they also flagged the risk of issuing the 100% of the shares that we have right now for Brain Forges transitioning into a corporation.
124 00:14:03.790 ⇒ 00:14:07.179 Rico Rejoso: So those haven’t got any reply or decision from us yet.
125 00:14:08.290 ⇒ 00:14:11.820 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so this would be another great ticket for, like, leadership review.
126 00:14:12.080 ⇒ 00:14:13.559 Rico Rejoso: Yes, we’ll be adding this as well.
127 00:14:13.830 ⇒ 00:14:14.430 Uttam Kumaran: Great.
128 00:14:15.580 ⇒ 00:14:19.830 Rico Rejoso: Alright, so, I think that’s it for the finance. The next one, Eliza.
129 00:14:21.890 ⇒ 00:14:38.070 Elizah Joy: Yep, so yeah, thanks, Rico. Just for me on my end, with Ben, we have responded to him, like, as we… he was asking if there are any specific, devices that we want for the Mac Minis, and then the
130 00:14:38.160 ⇒ 00:14:52.350 Elizah Joy: MacBook Airs and Pros, so we’ve sent that out. Last week, Thursday and Friday, he mentioned that he has missed the email, so yeah, he was… he has just responded yesterday, but he will get, the pricing to us today.
131 00:14:52.410 ⇒ 00:15:05.440 Elizah Joy: So, the next step for us would be to review the pricing options and then budget ranges, and once we’ve made that decision for that, is to share out the rollout plan to the specific team members that we wanna
132 00:15:06.140 ⇒ 00:15:09.840 Elizah Joy: Up that device’s plan, too.
133 00:15:11.650 ⇒ 00:15:12.230 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
134 00:15:16.670 ⇒ 00:15:17.680 Elizah Joy: I think…
135 00:15:19.000 ⇒ 00:15:21.260 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so as soon as that’s… as soon as that…
136 00:15:21.790 ⇒ 00:15:23.680 Uttam Kumaran: That, the pricing is ready?
137 00:15:23.680 ⇒ 00:15:24.839 Elizah Joy: Feel free to…
138 00:15:24.840 ⇒ 00:15:28.360 Uttam Kumaran: Tag a ticket, or let me know, I can review and make a decision.
139 00:15:28.580 ⇒ 00:15:31.889 Elizah Joy: Yep, okay, I will let you know as soon as possible.
140 00:15:32.060 ⇒ 00:15:37.690 Elizah Joy: I think… just that on this slide, Shashuv, I think…
141 00:15:37.980 ⇒ 00:15:38.570 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah.
142 00:15:39.010 ⇒ 00:15:40.649 Elizah Joy: Share slides now.
143 00:15:40.990 ⇒ 00:15:48.480 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Sweet. So I was working on these slides yesterday, kind of, like, kind of mapping out what would be a win this week.
144 00:15:48.850 ⇒ 00:15:52.800 Sheshu Chandrasekar: So, kind of want to use the remaining of this time to kind of, like.
145 00:15:54.230 ⇒ 00:16:04.320 Sheshu Chandrasekar: may, you know, act as if this is a strategy discussion, so… so, you know, bear with me on the slide de… design and stuff, I was just…
146 00:16:04.470 ⇒ 00:16:21.770 Sheshu Chandrasekar: It was very late at night last night. So, yeah. So, for me, I’m thinking about what would make this week a win, right? And for me, it’s about full alignment with Notion, right? We need to get full alignment and complete migration of the GTM team, because I feel like they have a lot of processes.
147 00:16:21.960 ⇒ 00:16:33.090 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I’ve been recently hearing that they’re going to use Tally in Notion to capture leads, so I need to follow up on that, with Luke’s team. So we actually scheduled a meeting.
148 00:16:33.280 ⇒ 00:16:37.180 Sheshu Chandrasekar: With Luke and Hannah, later in the day today to kind of
149 00:16:37.340 ⇒ 00:16:43.430 Sheshu Chandrasekar: walk through that migration plan and figure out how they’re best gonna use GTM tile in the new Notion.
150 00:16:43.790 ⇒ 00:16:48.670 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Also, housekeeping for linear, you know.
151 00:16:49.310 ⇒ 00:16:54.509 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I need to go through all the linear tickets, because some seem very outdated in our operations board, and some…
152 00:16:54.640 ⇒ 00:16:59.790 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I feel like we have already completed, but just need confirmation from the rest of the team to…
153 00:16:59.970 ⇒ 00:17:03.220 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Ensure that we can move that… we can move on from that ticket as well.
154 00:17:03.430 ⇒ 00:17:09.900 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Also, yeah, there’s, like, some policy changes I have to… I’m thinking about, because…
155 00:17:10.599 ⇒ 00:17:29.920 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I guess the two questions I have for expense requests is, like, what happens when we deny an expense request, right? I don’t think we have any policies charted there, so really want to walk through, like, a flow chart of some sort, figure out, like, what happens if there’s a path that, you know, we reject expenses, what happens to the approved expenses, how do we…
156 00:17:30.370 ⇒ 00:17:45.599 Sheshu Chandrasekar: send that information to the finance team as well. So, that’s something I’ve been thinking about that we need to hammer out for this week. And then also the main important one is start mapping out processes between EPs, SLs, and CSOs.
157 00:17:45.990 ⇒ 00:17:49.040 Sheshu Chandrasekar: And I have some bonus wins that, you know, it’s kind of like…
158 00:17:49.340 ⇒ 00:18:01.159 Sheshu Chandrasekar: if we complete these four things, then, you know, it’d be nice if we can achieve these other two bonus wins, which is, how do we use AI as a moderator to kind of review the escalation process? So, meaning, like.
159 00:18:01.670 ⇒ 00:18:13.649 Sheshu Chandrasekar: how do we define layers of escalation from a team level and leadership level for EPs and SLs, and then documenting those issues and resolutions? That’s something I’m thinking about a little bit more, but…
160 00:18:13.770 ⇒ 00:18:17.399 Sheshu Chandrasekar: It’s not a… it’s a low-priority item at the moment.
161 00:18:20.410 ⇒ 00:18:20.960 Uttam Kumaran: Great.
162 00:18:21.830 ⇒ 00:18:30.279 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Cool. And then, a little bit more in-depth in Notion, so we still have to do a little bit more formatting stuff, with the how to use our hub.
163 00:18:30.600 ⇒ 00:18:37.570 Sheshu Chandrasekar: page, that’s a high priority item for us. We’re gonna send out the walkthrough and Slack message today. I’m just…
164 00:18:37.670 ⇒ 00:18:46.000 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I just need to re-record our walkthrough, just because the other video did not seem that great. Also thinking about onboarding guides.
165 00:18:46.030 ⇒ 00:18:57.369 Sheshu Chandrasekar: and process for CSOs, EPs, and SLs. That’s kind of the priority of this entire week, for me at least. And then also migrate Robert’s Loom and zoom clips to proper sources.
166 00:18:57.370 ⇒ 00:19:14.909 Sheshu Chandrasekar: As for the company section, you know, continue breaking up the Forging the Future document into digestible format, that’s a low priority item. But high priority items for me this week, for Notion, is really get the GTM team to start migrating, thinking about how they want to use the new Notion to the best of their ability.
167 00:19:17.670 ⇒ 00:19:33.250 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, and then, as for client delivery, last week when I was speaking with the EPs, they wanted a standardized template for meeting notes and documenta- client documentation in Notion, so I’ll be working with Amber and, Mustafa a little bit.
168 00:19:33.360 ⇒ 00:19:37.690 Sheshu Chandrasekar: On refining those, requirements for the standardized template.
169 00:19:38.010 ⇒ 00:19:42.909 Sheshu Chandrasekar: And then, something I need to do this week, with the engineering team is…
170 00:19:43.210 ⇒ 00:19:47.790 Sheshu Chandrasekar: How do you guys want to best use Notion in GitHub? I still feel like I’m a little bit in the dark.
171 00:19:47.930 ⇒ 00:19:54.840 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Just because I just read that you guys merged the vault and the playbook in the GitHub repository, so…
172 00:19:55.060 ⇒ 00:20:02.930 Sheshu Chandrasekar: really need to figure out, like, okay, like, where do people go to find sources or information in Notion versus GitHub?
173 00:20:02.930 ⇒ 00:20:13.289 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I just think, like, those… these don’t need to be, like, meetings. I feel like you can do all of this, like, via Slack. Like, for example, schedule a meeting with engineering on how to use…
174 00:20:13.370 ⇒ 00:20:31.680 Uttam Kumaran: GitHub, like, that’s… you could… you could just ask me, and I’m gonna be… me and Sam are, like, the only people making those decisions, so, like, this can just be a Slack discussion. And we announced on Friday that we’re gonna be merging both these, and we sort of did it on Friday. So everything’s living in one repo now.
175 00:20:31.680 ⇒ 00:20:42.800 Uttam Kumaran: And I think it’s… it’s… if you open the repo, it’s pretty clear what you can do in there. So, like, I just want to avoid having, like, too many meetings for, like, figuring these things out. A lot of these we’ve already…
176 00:20:42.910 ⇒ 00:20:51.020 Uttam Kumaran: sort of decided. So, like, let’s try and start with, like, a Slack discussion, and then if there’s confusion, we can…
177 00:20:52.110 ⇒ 00:20:59.229 Uttam Kumaran: do a meeting on it, but, like, everyone’s really, really busy, so as much as we can do in Slack, like, I would prefer.
178 00:20:59.550 ⇒ 00:21:01.650 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay. I can, I can definitely check it out.
179 00:21:02.270 ⇒ 00:21:03.150 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
180 00:21:03.150 ⇒ 00:21:03.810 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Cool.
181 00:21:03.810 ⇒ 00:21:06.799 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, for a lot of these, again, like, I think…
182 00:21:07.620 ⇒ 00:21:17.259 Uttam Kumaran: what I’m… what I’m worried about is you’re gonna call some people, and then they’re gonna tell you what they like, and then they’re not gonna give you a sense of, like, what the company needs. So…
183 00:21:17.710 ⇒ 00:21:23.779 Uttam Kumaran: Again, my thought is, like, you’re probably much better suited just starting a public discussion.
184 00:21:24.870 ⇒ 00:21:35.179 Uttam Kumaran: and then deciding on whether you need to book a meeting. Like, I just want to avoid the, like, book meeting first, and we just never talked about it in Slack.
185 00:21:35.570 ⇒ 00:21:41.090 Uttam Kumaran: Like, so for example, if I was to think about, like,
186 00:21:41.770 ⇒ 00:21:47.909 Uttam Kumaran: like, if you’re gonna ask, okay, we just need standardized meeting notes and documentation in Notion.
187 00:21:48.060 ⇒ 00:21:53.499 Uttam Kumaran: We already have done, like, several passes at, like, a standard meeting note template.
188 00:21:53.690 ⇒ 00:21:56.380 Uttam Kumaran: And so, like.
189 00:21:56.580 ⇒ 00:22:03.379 Uttam Kumaran: I think both Sam, me, and Mustafa can guide you to, like, what that standard template is, because it already exists in the platform.
190 00:22:03.620 ⇒ 00:22:07.429 Uttam Kumaran: Like, if you go to the platform and you open a meeting, you’re gonna see…
191 00:22:07.680 ⇒ 00:22:10.310 Uttam Kumaran: The meeting notes come out of there.
192 00:22:10.780 ⇒ 00:22:17.099 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So, this is where, like, a lot of this reads, like, more and more process. I just want to, like, really…
193 00:22:17.320 ⇒ 00:22:23.770 Uttam Kumaran: try to have some of these discussions on Slack, and understand, like, what’s been done in the past, because we’ve done a lot of this already.
194 00:22:24.080 ⇒ 00:22:26.230 Uttam Kumaran: Before, like, grabbing time with everybody.
195 00:22:27.150 ⇒ 00:22:28.020 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Gotcha.
196 00:22:29.030 ⇒ 00:22:36.760 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay, I’ll… I just don’t think I’ve had a chance to look over the new GitHub stuff, so let me look through that first, and then maybe I can…
197 00:22:37.760 ⇒ 00:22:40.340 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Get a lot of these to-do items out of the way.
198 00:22:40.690 ⇒ 00:22:49.659 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so review the new GitHub, but again, it’s… if there’s nothing, like, new, we just merged everything in. So, if you haven’t spent time in the vault, like.
199 00:22:49.970 ⇒ 00:22:57.269 Uttam Kumaran: I think that’s, like, super, super paramount, that you spend some time, use Cursor to help you explore what’s in there.
200 00:22:57.370 ⇒ 00:23:11.639 Uttam Kumaran: Before, like, any of this, because it’s gonna just be redundant information. Second is, like, spend a lot of time in the platform to understand, like, what exists already. You’re gonna see in there, we’ve already done a lot of the meeting update… meeting…
201 00:23:11.770 ⇒ 00:23:19.300 Uttam Kumaran: summary, like, templates, and a lot of that. And a lot of that also exists in the vault, so I just really want to avoid
202 00:23:19.530 ⇒ 00:23:23.820 Uttam Kumaran: like, redundant work, if possible. And then, yeah, like, in any case.
203 00:23:24.070 ⇒ 00:23:29.250 Uttam Kumaran: I really want this team to be really pro… Slack and Zoom clips.
204 00:23:29.350 ⇒ 00:23:46.070 Uttam Kumaran: Like, we don’t have time for, like, tons and tons of internal meetings. All of our engineers need to be working on client stuff, or taking a break. So, the more time we pull from Mustafa, Sam, Amber.
205 00:23:46.130 ⇒ 00:24:01.659 Uttam Kumaran: like, from anyone not internal, it’s time that we can’t bill for clients. And so I just want to, like, I’ve been pretty open with their time, but I want to be very cautious that, like, those folks need to be spending their time thinking about client work.
206 00:24:01.720 ⇒ 00:24:15.710 Uttam Kumaran: And so, like, I can answer a ton of questions if it’s in Slack, Sam can answer a ton of questions, and so, like, I really want to emphasize just, like, try to avoid meetings if possible. We just don’t have a ton of time.
207 00:24:16.180 ⇒ 00:24:16.830 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay.
208 00:24:17.100 ⇒ 00:24:19.160 Sheshu Chandrasekar: No, that makes sense.
209 00:24:20.050 ⇒ 00:24:36.069 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, maybe I just need to explore the GitHub, and then maybe I don’t even need a lot of these meetings. I think the only meeting I really need to have is with Luke and Hannah, just because I feel there are a lot of updates on their end, and I’m a little lost there on what they’re planning on doing with their Notion page.
210 00:24:36.610 ⇒ 00:24:37.360 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
211 00:24:38.980 ⇒ 00:24:47.850 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Cool, and then, as talking about the policy and process changes, yeah, so… so there were some questions that kind of popped up last week for me. It’s like, what do we do if, you know.
212 00:24:48.130 ⇒ 00:24:54.239 Sheshu Chandrasekar: You know, we approve or deny expenses? Like, how do we… How do we navigate that?
213 00:24:54.730 ⇒ 00:25:03.159 Sheshu Chandrasekar: what do we do if expense is kind of denied per guidelines? So really, I just want to document that in a flow chart, and make the necessary amendments to the…
214 00:25:03.370 ⇒ 00:25:07.400 Sheshu Chandrasekar: To the internal ops policy before we make it team-facing.
215 00:25:07.680 ⇒ 00:25:09.539 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Also time tracking.
216 00:25:09.940 ⇒ 00:25:17.170 Sheshu Chandrasekar: you know, how do we track everyone’s hours is billable, right? I mean, obviously, we have it in operating, in Clockify, so…
217 00:25:17.370 ⇒ 00:25:22.710 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I think this is where I need your help, Lutam. Like, you were telling me last week that you’re building, like, a Clockify application.
218 00:25:22.950 ⇒ 00:25:27.150 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Or adjacent applications, so I really want to see, like.
219 00:25:27.370 ⇒ 00:25:30.940 Sheshu Chandrasekar: If you have, like, a demo of some sort, or, like, what’s the progress there?
220 00:25:30.940 ⇒ 00:25:46.800 Uttam Kumaran: So right now, everyone’s hours that is billable, Clockify, again, like, I would go spend time in Clockify, and Rico can guide you, like, we have projects for every single client, and for internal stuff, like recruiting, operations, and so…
221 00:25:47.120 ⇒ 00:25:54.360 Uttam Kumaran: If it’s client, then it’s billable, but again, for some clients, we’re on fixed monthly fee, not on hourly.
222 00:25:54.580 ⇒ 00:26:08.960 Uttam Kumaran: And so, it… it sort of depends on every client, but that’s sort of how we’re doing the distinction. And yeah, it’s on my… it’s on my plate this week to try to get something out for… I mean, we’re not going to be replacing Clockify.
223 00:26:09.220 ⇒ 00:26:13.909 Uttam Kumaran: I’m just gonna make it easier for people to log hours into Clockify.
224 00:26:15.880 ⇒ 00:26:16.840 Uttam Kumaran: But…
225 00:26:17.590 ⇒ 00:26:23.009 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I feel like for… already, like, I think Rico can answer the first one. For the second one.
226 00:26:23.140 ⇒ 00:26:28.330 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like, forecasting teams availability, this is something that, like, yeah, we’re gonna need some…
227 00:26:28.860 ⇒ 00:26:38.559 Uttam Kumaran: some work on. But, I mean, the first… the first, really, piece still that I’m not so sure is, like, are the EPs able to use operating for…
228 00:26:39.570 ⇒ 00:26:46.000 Uttam Kumaran: Like, are… is all of… is everyone on delivery leadership able to use operating for stuff? It’s not clear right now.
229 00:26:46.560 ⇒ 00:26:48.510 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, my understanding is that…
230 00:26:49.000 ⇒ 00:27:00.590 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Amber is, like, the only one that kind of understands how to use operating really well, but everyone else is still in the dark, so I think there needs to be some sort of operating 101 within the EP leadership group to kind of…
231 00:27:01.790 ⇒ 00:27:09.209 Sheshu Chandrasekar: let them be… let them enable to be like, okay, I know how to use operating, let me go log in my hours and forecast my hours, like, weeks ahead.
232 00:27:09.490 ⇒ 00:27:11.280 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I think that’s still missing.
233 00:27:11.550 ⇒ 00:27:14.160 Sheshu Chandrasekar: from my discussions with the EPs last week.
234 00:27:15.390 ⇒ 00:27:17.349 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so, like, we just need to do that.
235 00:27:18.170 ⇒ 00:27:18.810 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah.
236 00:27:20.150 ⇒ 00:27:33.240 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, for me, like, that’s gonna be… like, that’s… that’s gonna be… that’s a bigger priority than, like, anything in Omni and any of the Omni stuff. So, I think what would be helpful for me is, like, can I… if I can see just, like, a…
237 00:27:33.390 ⇒ 00:27:40.460 Uttam Kumaran: an overall priority list, like, each week. We’re gonna just probably end up changing priorities week to week.
238 00:27:40.800 ⇒ 00:27:45.830 Uttam Kumaran: And so, one thing that would be helpful for me is, like, if I can just see a list of, like.
239 00:27:46.030 ⇒ 00:27:49.579 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, we have the Gantt, but, like, even on a weekly basis.
240 00:27:49.740 ⇒ 00:27:55.999 Uttam Kumaran: what are the things we’re working on, because I would rather get Eliza’s help to push on getting operating set up.
241 00:27:56.290 ⇒ 00:28:02.660 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and… and basically, like, push the Omni stuff to later.
242 00:28:02.810 ⇒ 00:28:06.060 Uttam Kumaran: So I can make those decisions, I just need to kind of see…
243 00:28:06.290 ⇒ 00:28:12.119 Uttam Kumaran: Either all of this needs to end up in the Gantt, or there needs to be just a clear list of things, like priorities.
244 00:28:13.740 ⇒ 00:28:14.470 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay.
245 00:28:14.470 ⇒ 00:28:15.470 Uttam Kumaran: Up to you guys.
246 00:28:17.830 ⇒ 00:28:22.239 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I would like to do it, like, on a week-to-week basis, because I think the Gantt is already, like.
247 00:28:22.590 ⇒ 00:28:26.149 Sheshu Chandrasekar: We already worked on that before, but a week-to-week, like.
248 00:28:26.300 ⇒ 00:28:30.680 Sheshu Chandrasekar: high-priority items would, I think, best suit everyone.
249 00:28:30.680 ⇒ 00:28:36.240 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, if you can make a list, I can give you feedback on…
250 00:28:36.530 ⇒ 00:28:38.660 Uttam Kumaran: What should move higher or lower?
251 00:28:39.110 ⇒ 00:28:44.579 Uttam Kumaran: Because this just seems like, overall, like, hearing today’s presentation, there’s a lot going on.
252 00:28:44.700 ⇒ 00:28:49.980 Uttam Kumaran: And so, I don’t see how we get a lot of this done by the end of the week.
253 00:28:50.380 ⇒ 00:28:52.070 Uttam Kumaran: In particular, like.
254 00:28:53.090 ⇒ 00:29:03.090 Uttam Kumaran: like, finishing… I mean, there’s still a couple things, right? So for me, I’m like, is Notion… are we sort of, like, cut over on Notion?
255 00:29:04.150 ⇒ 00:29:06.089 Uttam Kumaran: Or are we still using, like.
256 00:29:06.980 ⇒ 00:29:11.780 Uttam Kumaran: the older version? Like, what is the overall status there?
257 00:29:14.460 ⇒ 00:29:18.279 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, I mean, with Notion, like, everything’s going to plan, right? I think…
258 00:29:19.160 ⇒ 00:29:30.949 Sheshu Chandrasekar: only thing I need to do is, like, we’ve already completed the audit, we made a decision that all the case studies within Notion is going to be archived, because Hannah confirmed that she uses GitHub, so…
259 00:29:31.060 ⇒ 00:29:35.260 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Really, the only thing remaining is, like, allowing…
260 00:29:36.070 ⇒ 00:29:50.589 Sheshu Chandrasekar: the GTM team in engineering to figure out, like, okay, like, these are… these are the type of information that’s gonna live in Notion versus GitHub, right? Like, I think we’re according to plan there, like, I’m not too worried about that. If anything, I’m just gonna extend the deadline to…
261 00:29:50.770 ⇒ 00:29:57.649 Sheshu Chandrasekar: migrate everything, start using the new Notion on Feb 15th, just because I was out, and I haven’t sent out that Slack message, so…
262 00:29:57.650 ⇒ 00:30:01.860 Uttam Kumaran: So then, but that’s why I would just, like, focus on that, like, don’t take on new stuff.
263 00:30:02.410 ⇒ 00:30:06.970 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I just want to see us close out these items, because everything on this list…
264 00:30:07.140 ⇒ 00:30:13.089 Uttam Kumaran: is all new, like, what is the denying process for expenses? Like, I… it’s just not a priority.
265 00:30:13.150 ⇒ 00:30:28.620 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So this is where, like, I can… I think this is a good meeting, like, where I can review, like, what all the ideas are, but my… my job is gonna be to tell you, like, okay, what is, like, super, super paramount? And figuring out, like, expense denial process is just, like, so…
266 00:30:28.830 ⇒ 00:30:43.500 Uttam Kumaran: it’s just not significant right now. Like, we just… I can just tell you if it’s denied and for why, we can… we can work with that person. So, that’s, like, what would be helpful for me, is, like, if I can just see a list of, like, all of our current in-flight priorities.
267 00:30:43.940 ⇒ 00:30:51.749 Uttam Kumaran: Because I’m gonna say, just, like, this Notion thing needs to… we need to move on from this, like, as soon as possible. Like, I really don’t wanna, like…
268 00:30:52.200 ⇒ 00:31:00.419 Uttam Kumaran: talking about Notion and organizing is just, like, is, like, not what I want to be doing at all anymore, so, like, let’s just close it out, if we can.
269 00:31:01.150 ⇒ 00:31:02.989 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Gotcha. Yeah, no, that makes sense.
270 00:31:03.300 ⇒ 00:31:04.360 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
271 00:31:04.390 ⇒ 00:31:13.279 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Cool. And then dashboards, yeah, we’re working with Mustafa. I think we have a general idea of what we want to work with, like, what we want to present in the software expense.
272 00:31:13.380 ⇒ 00:31:20.149 Sheshu Chandrasekar: And then next week, we would want to start working on expense requests, but that’s such a low priority item at the moment. Cool.
273 00:31:20.150 ⇒ 00:31:36.339 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, if you guys have a clear path towards the software expense dashboard, that’s great. Let’s just… let’s just knock that out. But the operating thing is super, super important. And… and I added… the operating team can give you that 101, by the way.
274 00:31:37.620 ⇒ 00:31:42.519 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay, I’ll… I think you added me to the Slack channel, I’ll just need to follow up with them and ask them if they can…
275 00:31:42.640 ⇒ 00:31:45.490 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Point me to the right resources, or even schedule a one-on-one.
276 00:31:46.340 ⇒ 00:31:47.010 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
277 00:31:47.840 ⇒ 00:31:53.440 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Cool, and then another low priority item, something we need to think about is the time tracking dashboard.
278 00:31:53.770 ⇒ 00:32:00.340 Sheshu Chandrasekar: So, again, like, forecasting, but I think operating can solve a lot of these problems, now I think about it. So, this is redundant.
279 00:32:00.440 ⇒ 00:32:02.750 Sheshu Chandrasekar: So we’re gonna move on from that.
280 00:32:03.490 ⇒ 00:32:07.810 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, and then client delivery. I think a lot of my time is gonna be spent here,
281 00:32:08.370 ⇒ 00:32:16.350 Sheshu Chandrasekar: So I’m gonna zoom in a little bit. So, based on yesterday’s discussions that you had with CSO, and then last week that I’ve noticed with EPs.
282 00:32:17.260 ⇒ 00:32:21.440 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I know we have resources already in terms of ticket standards.
283 00:32:21.620 ⇒ 00:32:24.829 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Like, how to create linear tickets and whatnot.
284 00:32:25.420 ⇒ 00:32:29.340 Sheshu Chandrasekar: But the problem is, the SLs don’t enforce it.
285 00:32:29.480 ⇒ 00:32:30.350 Sheshu Chandrasekar: and then…
286 00:32:31.670 ⇒ 00:32:44.979 Sheshu Chandrasekar: the EPs don’t… I mean, sorry, the EPs don’t enforce it, the SLs are… they don’t define it really well. There’s a… there’s a clear miscommunication between the two groups when it comes to creating standard linear tickets.
287 00:32:45.340 ⇒ 00:32:48.950 Sheshu Chandrasekar: So that’s something I really want to get down to, and try to figure out, like.
288 00:32:49.110 ⇒ 00:32:56.070 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Why is this happening, and what’s… what’s the best, like, process moving forward, so that this doesn’t become an issue again?
289 00:32:56.560 ⇒ 00:33:01.990 Sheshu Chandrasekar: So I kind of got to… I had to do some investigative work and kind of document those things.
290 00:33:02.380 ⇒ 00:33:08.859 Sheshu Chandrasekar: To see why that’s happening. But also, something that I would like to bring up is, like.
291 00:33:09.110 ⇒ 00:33:16.210 Sheshu Chandrasekar: if we can have, like, an end-of-week client Slack channel summary, that would be great. And I think…
292 00:33:16.380 ⇒ 00:33:21.860 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Amber was telling me last week that there was something like that in the earlier days of Brainforge.
293 00:33:22.210 ⇒ 00:33:28.360 Sheshu Chandrasekar: But I just want to get a confirmation from you that that tool exists, and if so, why did we scrap it?
294 00:33:28.860 ⇒ 00:33:35.109 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, we just… nobody was using it, really, so we just paused it. I can turn it back on.
295 00:33:36.780 ⇒ 00:33:50.939 Uttam Kumaran: But yeah, I mean, it would be great for you to do a little bit of discovery, because we can… we can build anything, but I’m sort of, like, worried about, like, are people actually going to be using, you know, any of it? So, I think this is a good thing to go…
296 00:33:51.320 ⇒ 00:33:55.660 Uttam Kumaran: you know, look into and see, like, what’s happening here, but I agree.
297 00:33:56.070 ⇒ 00:34:00.599 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, and I was talking to Pranav last week, and I think he said it would be very useful for…
298 00:34:02.170 ⇒ 00:34:19.190 Sheshu Chandrasekar: new members that onboard to client projects to read through it, right? If they can just ask, like, hey, what happened last week, or what happened in this quarter with this project, or something like that, I think that would be extremely useful for anyone who wants to onboard onto a project to kind of get a quick glimpse of, like, what’s happened so far.
299 00:34:19.230 ⇒ 00:34:22.660 Sheshu Chandrasekar: So I think that’s, like, another business case of why we need to turn it back on.
300 00:34:24.090 ⇒ 00:34:34.580 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’s fine. I mean, again, like, I would say, like, a lot of that is possible through the vault, though, right now. Like, any of those EPs can go into the vault and say, what happened this week?
301 00:34:34.949 ⇒ 00:34:40.990 Uttam Kumaran: So, this is where, like, I’m gonna push back. A lot of people are not using Cursor in the vault.
302 00:34:41.110 ⇒ 00:34:46.959 Uttam Kumaran: to ask questions about their clients. You can also create tickets directly from Cursor.
303 00:34:47.090 ⇒ 00:34:56.329 Uttam Kumaran: So, I really need you to spend time, like, using the vault. Like, this team in particular, I feel like, is not leveraging
304 00:34:56.510 ⇒ 00:35:13.659 Uttam Kumaran: the new, like, repo and, like, the AI features that we’ve developed as much, which is gonna cause it hard for you to talk to everybody about it. So, really try and spend some time in there. Use Cursor to tell you what is possible. You know, we’ve built a lot in there, so…
305 00:35:14.350 ⇒ 00:35:17.230 Uttam Kumaran: Understanding what happened in a client this week.
306 00:35:17.350 ⇒ 00:35:24.819 Uttam Kumaran: like, those are all things we can build, but I really want to see, like, what… we’ve already done a lot of work in the new repo.
307 00:35:25.030 ⇒ 00:35:29.940 Uttam Kumaran: And so, for example, I create all my tickets directly via cursor.
308 00:35:30.350 ⇒ 00:35:36.160 Uttam Kumaran: And it’s really easy. Like, I just copy-paste a transcript, I say, propose the tickets, and I create it, so…
309 00:35:36.440 ⇒ 00:35:41.700 Uttam Kumaran: I’m having a hard time hearing, like, why those folks are not able to do that, you know?
310 00:35:42.760 ⇒ 00:35:48.040 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Well, I, I think… This is just a, like, A hypothesis, but…
311 00:35:48.990 ⇒ 00:35:53.499 Sheshu Chandrasekar: one, I feel like I don’t know if a lot of people are aware, or I guess they are aware, but…
312 00:35:53.630 ⇒ 00:35:57.550 Sheshu Chandrasekar: maybe they just haven’t had the time to explore the GitHub Vault and playbook?
313 00:35:57.550 ⇒ 00:36:02.570 Uttam Kumaran: But, like, that’s… that’s what… they need to do that, then. Like, that’s what our recommendation should be.
314 00:36:03.210 ⇒ 00:36:05.860 Uttam Kumaran: Like, there’s no alternative to that, you know?
315 00:36:05.860 ⇒ 00:36:09.590 Sheshu Chandrasekar: So we just need to create, like, some sort of awareness, right? Like, even in our, like.
316 00:36:09.590 ⇒ 00:36:17.550 Uttam Kumaran: But, like, that’s where, like, when you’re talking to them, I would just point-blank ask them, are you using… did you try to use the platform to do this?
317 00:36:17.740 ⇒ 00:36:25.039 Uttam Kumaran: like, this is where, like, we can’t baby everybody. Everybody here is an adult, and is a smart engineer. And so…
318 00:36:25.560 ⇒ 00:36:40.340 Uttam Kumaran: like, I’ve been begging people to use the platform repo for stuff, and it’s so painful. Even, even, like, and even in this meeting, it’s clear that this group doesn’t know what’s in the platform repo. And so, like.
319 00:36:40.660 ⇒ 00:36:53.729 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t… I don’t… we can’t… we can’t always say, like, oh, we need to create another onboarding meeting, we need to create another doc explaining. Nobody’s gonna read that. Everybody should just take 20 minutes, go in there.
320 00:36:54.050 ⇒ 00:37:00.519 Uttam Kumaran: Ask Cursor, hey, explain to me what is possible. I’m on the operations team, what can I use this for?
321 00:37:00.740 ⇒ 00:37:17.900 Uttam Kumaran: That’s it. I’m telling you, you’re gonna just… it’s gonna explain it all to you. So, like, that’s where I would want you… my ask for you is to just push people. When you talk to them, ask them, like, hey, have you tried this? If not, why not? You know? Like, that’s what I’m more curious about, because what I’m finding is that
322 00:37:18.000 ⇒ 00:37:26.569 Uttam Kumaran: We can continue to write, and we continue to do onboarding meetings, but if people aren’t taking the time in their day to, like, working… to go work on that.
323 00:37:26.690 ⇒ 00:37:30.089 Uttam Kumaran: then that’s… that’s on them. You know, they have to do that.
324 00:37:31.790 ⇒ 00:37:32.350 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay.
325 00:37:32.650 ⇒ 00:37:36.179 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’ll take minutes to just… just go in there, you know?
326 00:37:37.880 ⇒ 00:37:38.630 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay.
327 00:37:38.750 ⇒ 00:37:43.110 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, let me… let me take some time to just explore the GitHub vault.
328 00:37:43.420 ⇒ 00:37:44.780 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Figure things out there.
329 00:37:46.220 ⇒ 00:37:57.479 Sheshu Chandrasekar: But yeah, these are… these are the things I want to work on, but yes, as you said, we’re gonna close that Notion this week, for sure. And then I need to move on to client delivery stuff, because I think there’s just a lot of things that are…
330 00:37:58.290 ⇒ 00:38:04.850 Sheshu Chandrasekar: that are just, like, emerging in terms of problems and pain points. And also, just want to document everything.
331 00:38:04.960 ⇒ 00:38:07.519 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Like, how the EPs and CSOs and…
332 00:38:07.810 ⇒ 00:38:11.360 Sheshu Chandrasekar: That cells interact with each other, and figure out any gaps from there.
333 00:38:11.880 ⇒ 00:38:14.179 Sheshu Chandrasekar: That’s kind of my biggest priority items right now.
334 00:38:14.790 ⇒ 00:38:15.370 Uttam Kumaran: Great.
335 00:38:16.490 ⇒ 00:38:24.060 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Cool. I’m gonna stop sharing. But yeah, team, if there’s anything else you guys want to talk about, I think the floor is yours.
336 00:38:32.040 ⇒ 00:38:37.509 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. Okay, yeah, if I can… maybe one thing that would be helpful coming out of this is just, like, a quick…
337 00:38:37.620 ⇒ 00:38:43.240 Uttam Kumaran: high priority, Like, list of tasks that we’re working on this week.
338 00:38:43.390 ⇒ 00:38:48.279 Uttam Kumaran: And I can give some quick feedback on, like, stuff to deprioritize or stuff to reprioritize.
339 00:38:48.390 ⇒ 00:38:53.420 Uttam Kumaran: I think that’s a great, like, I’m liking how this meeting is evolving,
340 00:38:53.790 ⇒ 00:39:00.670 Uttam Kumaran: I think, like, I have some homework as well, like, I want to make sure to come to this meeting prepared to talk about
341 00:39:00.810 ⇒ 00:39:03.359 Uttam Kumaran: new requests.
342 00:39:03.780 ⇒ 00:39:18.399 Uttam Kumaran: And so, yeah, it’s helpful. And then the other piece is just, like, look, there’s gonna be ops requests that come in daily, and it’s gonna come to triage. So do you guys have a process right now that you’re, like, looking through the triage? Is that something that y’all are doing in stand-up?
343 00:39:18.530 ⇒ 00:39:23.099 Uttam Kumaran: Or, like, what’s the plan for all of those tickets? I just want to make sure you’re not, like.
344 00:39:23.500 ⇒ 00:39:29.959 Uttam Kumaran: Having to, like, Because stuff’s gonna come in, but a lot of things aren’t, like, urgent, you know?
345 00:39:30.320 ⇒ 00:39:32.339 Uttam Kumaran: And some things are, but yeah.
346 00:39:35.880 ⇒ 00:39:38.769 Rico Rejoso: I mean, we have an operations sink, every day.
347 00:39:38.960 ⇒ 00:39:58.010 Rico Rejoso: For, like, 15 minutes, so we can take a look at it. But since we just got recently the, I mean, high volume of 3H tickets, I think we’re gonna talk about it more, and make sure we have a process, or standard process that we’re gonna follow moving forward, and checking those out, and prioritizing what needs to be prioritized, or confirming with the stakeholder as well.
348 00:39:58.870 ⇒ 00:39:59.540 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
349 00:40:02.610 ⇒ 00:40:15.440 Rico Rejoso: For now, I guess, it’s… I mean, it’s been my habit to, like, look at the linear every now and then to make sure. I mean, if there are, like, any 3 other tickets that needs to work on, and I just work on it, but we’ll create a process around it, for sure.
350 00:40:15.980 ⇒ 00:40:20.290 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think it’s helpful, because the number of tickets is gonna go up.
351 00:40:20.700 ⇒ 00:40:25.060 Uttam Kumaran: And so I want to make sure that you guys, just the three of you, have a clear understanding of, like.
352 00:40:25.410 ⇒ 00:40:31.389 Uttam Kumaran: what is an urgent ticket versus what is something that we can just deal with our normal SLA on?
353 00:40:34.570 ⇒ 00:40:39.879 Uttam Kumaran: And that, like, I can direct people just to submit a ticket, and then it’ll get figured out, you know?
354 00:40:42.200 ⇒ 00:40:42.760 Rico Rejoso: Yeah.
355 00:40:43.080 ⇒ 00:40:44.510 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah. That makes sense.
356 00:40:45.580 ⇒ 00:40:50.920 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, and I was looking at the linear board yesterday, and I feel like we have a lot of tickets. Again, like.
357 00:40:51.270 ⇒ 00:40:52.650 Sheshu Chandrasekar: it’s just
358 00:40:53.220 ⇒ 00:40:59.610 Sheshu Chandrasekar: it’s too crowded at the moment, because there are a lot of items that are already, like… I know we finished, but there’s not an update.
359 00:40:59.780 ⇒ 00:41:00.470 Sheshu Chandrasekar: that…
360 00:41:00.950 ⇒ 00:41:01.899 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. You know.
361 00:41:01.970 ⇒ 00:41:05.550 Sheshu Chandrasekar: So, I just want to go through and do some… Some housecleaning there.
362 00:41:07.550 ⇒ 00:41:08.170 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
363 00:41:11.120 ⇒ 00:41:11.910 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
364 00:41:12.140 ⇒ 00:41:13.050 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
365 00:41:13.050 ⇒ 00:41:13.610 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Sweet.
366 00:41:15.690 ⇒ 00:41:23.540 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I’m good on my end, I have nothing else, but thanks for the time, and yeah, Utam, I’ll give you a list, and I… yeah, thanks for your input, that really…
367 00:41:23.540 ⇒ 00:41:26.330 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, this is… this is gonna be, like…
368 00:41:28.120 ⇒ 00:41:41.419 Uttam Kumaran: this is gonna be aligned… we’re gonna just align more and more, but you’re gonna see, again, like, we’re a small team, so as much as we can do… as much as this team can be a proponent of all of our systems, that’s gonna be the best, right? Like, if our
369 00:41:41.810 ⇒ 00:41:45.350 Uttam Kumaran: not relying on Zoom clips, Slack.
370 00:41:45.550 ⇒ 00:42:04.319 Uttam Kumaran: the platform, like, nobody else is going to. So I want this crew to be, like, sort of the North Star on, like, you know, the really… the, like, the team that’s most enabled, and, like, people are gonna, like, even today, like, someone was like, hey, can we have a call? And I’m like, this can be… just send me a Zoom clip, I’ll watch it, and I’ll give you an answer.
371 00:42:04.470 ⇒ 00:42:24.139 Uttam Kumaran: And so, like, I want us to kind of start promoting those best practices, and… and it’s tough, like, this is… it’s easy to just book a meeting, it’s hard to get your thoughts together and do the things over Slack, but again, like, the context switching, like, for our client teams, context switching is the worst problem right now.
372 00:42:24.160 ⇒ 00:42:28.649 Uttam Kumaran: And so, it is really expensive, actually, to book a meeting, like.
373 00:42:28.950 ⇒ 00:42:33.239 Uttam Kumaran: I think one of the ways you can… you can think about it is, like, it may cost, like.
374 00:42:33.350 ⇒ 00:42:37.789 Uttam Kumaran: Thousands of dollars for every, like, hour-long meeting in the middle of the day.
375 00:42:37.950 ⇒ 00:42:48.330 Uttam Kumaran: And so, it’s… I don’t want to, like, scare people, but, like, that’s… that could be the cost, right? Because think about the time that could go onto, like, getting something out the door for a client, or…
376 00:42:48.580 ⇒ 00:42:56.530 Uttam Kumaran: another, like, communication with the client that could lead to a renewal, so I just want to be very, very cautious of, like, midweek.
377 00:42:56.770 ⇒ 00:43:04.530 Uttam Kumaran: midday meetings, because it really affects, like, the engineering team. So, from my side, on the delivery side, like, that’s what I want to guard against.
378 00:43:05.300 ⇒ 00:43:07.620 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, no, that makes sense.
379 00:43:10.600 ⇒ 00:43:14.710 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, I think, I think we’re aligned there. Only thing I really need to talk to
380 00:43:14.880 ⇒ 00:43:19.639 Sheshu Chandrasekar: like, the only team I really need to speak to is the GTM team, and that’s, like, happening end of day, so…
381 00:43:19.640 ⇒ 00:43:20.360 Uttam Kumaran: Well…
382 00:43:20.720 ⇒ 00:43:21.240 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah.
383 00:43:21.360 ⇒ 00:43:22.629 Sheshu Chandrasekar: They were good on that.
384 00:43:23.400 ⇒ 00:43:24.380 Uttam Kumaran: Cool, perfect.
385 00:43:25.010 ⇒ 00:43:26.710 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, alright.
386 00:43:27.200 ⇒ 00:43:28.540 Uttam Kumaran: Thanks, everyone. Appreciate it.
387 00:43:28.540 ⇒ 00:43:29.170 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Thank you.
388 00:43:29.170 ⇒ 00:43:30.290 Rico Rejoso: Talk soon.
389 00:43:30.290 ⇒ 00:43:30.860 Elizah Joy: Inc.