Meeting Title: Brainforge CSO Client Updates Date: 2026-02-23 Meeting participants: Greg Stoutenburg, Clarence Stone, Uttam Kumaran, Demilade Agboola
WEBVTT
1 00:13:18.950 ⇒ 00:13:22.400 Clarence Stone: It’s only Greg? What’s going on?
2 00:14:18.010 ⇒ 00:14:19.040 Clarence Stone: What’s up?
3 00:14:19.260 ⇒ 00:14:20.360 Greg Stoutenburg: Hey.
4 00:14:20.470 ⇒ 00:14:34.419 Greg Stoutenburg: Sorry about that. My volume was so low, so I had Slack over the Zoom screen, and then I saw, like, your name. I heard a sound, and then I heard… saw your name in the bottom corner. I was like, oh, shoot! I gotta go. By the time I got here, you were gone.
5 00:14:34.420 ⇒ 00:14:36.789 Clarence Stone: It’s all good. What’s up? How’s it going?
6 00:14:36.790 ⇒ 00:14:40.390 Greg Stoutenburg: It’s going well, I think. Yeah, it’s going well.
7 00:14:40.660 ⇒ 00:14:56.150 Greg Stoutenburg: The… the Omni migration for Eden is going well. It’s been more work than expected, but that’s okay. Default seems really happy with the progress that we’ve made, so those are my main CSO things, so they’re going well.
8 00:14:57.460 ⇒ 00:14:58.110 Greg Stoutenburg: Yep.
9 00:14:58.300 ⇒ 00:14:59.410 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, how are you?
10 00:15:00.560 ⇒ 00:15:06.109 Clarence Stone: Oh, man, there’s just so much happening. Oh, it’s been brutal, man.
11 00:15:06.110 ⇒ 00:15:06.820 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
12 00:15:07.070 ⇒ 00:15:18.729 Clarence Stone: Yeah, and then, Lilo kind of blew up, so I’m trying to get them back on target, and we’re gonna ask them for more money, and it’s a whole thing, and my AI is working really slow today.
13 00:15:19.930 ⇒ 00:15:21.260 Greg Stoutenburg: What’s.
14 00:15:21.260 ⇒ 00:15:29.849 Clarence Stone: Those are those days where I just, like, my brain is working faster than, like, everything else around me can actually, like, output.
15 00:15:30.010 ⇒ 00:15:31.530 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
16 00:15:32.540 ⇒ 00:15:35.879 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, I’ve had days like that. Today’s not one of those for me, but…
17 00:15:35.880 ⇒ 00:15:36.539 Clarence Stone: That’s good, it’s good.
18 00:15:36.540 ⇒ 00:15:38.079 Greg Stoutenburg: I hear you.
19 00:15:39.350 ⇒ 00:15:40.450 Greg Stoutenburg: Ugh.
20 00:15:41.960 ⇒ 00:15:47.710 Greg Stoutenburg: I think for the call, I mean, I don’t know where any of the other CSOs are, but,
21 00:15:48.410 ⇒ 00:15:53.999 Greg Stoutenburg: I know some things I wanted to discuss were, like, what happened with Hedra, because it looks like
22 00:15:54.420 ⇒ 00:16:04.979 Greg Stoutenburg: I mean, just from the outside, looking at Slack, it looks like one day their CEO was just like, hey, we don’t want to be a client anymore. Hey Tom, how’s it going?
23 00:16:08.800 ⇒ 00:16:25.020 Greg Stoutenburg: I was just, sort of giving what I thought were things I wanted to hear about in this meeting. So, one being, like, what happened with Hedra, because from the outside view, it looked like Michael, the CEO, was just like, we don’t want to be a client anymore. So, I was kind of curious what happened there.
24 00:16:25.270 ⇒ 00:16:30.859 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, we, like… Basically, we pitched them on a bunch of things, and…
25 00:16:31.560 ⇒ 00:16:37.619 Uttam Kumaran: It’s clear that they, like, are really, like, want to… they just basically don’t want to invest in data, and…
26 00:16:38.320 ⇒ 00:16:39.230 Uttam Kumaran: like…
27 00:16:39.300 ⇒ 00:16:56.770 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, it’s sort of like… it’s also clear that that guy Michael is, like, really micromanaging that whole company, and so there’s no decision that can be made without him, and there’s also no alignment on, like, how their business is measured, key definitions, so they were already a rough client, like.
28 00:16:56.840 ⇒ 00:17:07.999 Uttam Kumaran: because of what we talked about, like, these are just fast-growing startups, they tend to be really disorganized. Yeah. We’ve done, like, we’ve tried every trick that I have, like, in addition to bringing in
29 00:17:08.280 ⇒ 00:17:27.980 Uttam Kumaran: You know, someone I know who’s, like, really, really an expert in raising funding for companies, running CFO for companies, and we had a bit of a roadmap, but it’s clear that I think that he just wants someone internally, and they’re gonna just probably spend on that person, and that person’s gonna get absolutely fried, you know?
30 00:17:28.250 ⇒ 00:17:28.760 Greg Stoutenburg: And…
31 00:17:28.760 ⇒ 00:17:37.079 Uttam Kumaran: That’s okay. Like, to be frank, they didn’t want to sign a longer engagement with us, they only wanted to sign hourly. I was… I was gonna drop them as a client.
32 00:17:37.320 ⇒ 00:17:37.910 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
33 00:17:38.490 ⇒ 00:17:43.499 Uttam Kumaran: like, they’re not willing to commit, and I… and, you know, for us to maintain someone as a client.
34 00:17:43.920 ⇒ 00:17:44.370 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
35 00:17:44.370 ⇒ 00:17:49.390 Uttam Kumaran: it takes time and effort, and we wanna… like, I can go find the amount of money that they were paying us.
36 00:17:49.570 ⇒ 00:17:53.269 Uttam Kumaran: In, like, several of our active clients, in terms of network.
37 00:17:53.400 ⇒ 00:17:55.299 Greg Stoutenburg: Fuck on the map there, like.
38 00:17:55.980 ⇒ 00:18:04.919 Uttam Kumaran: like, I think they’re also a remnant of, like, our past strategy. Like, we… we brought them on when we were willing to do, sort of, flat hourly work with fast-growing SaaS. I think.
39 00:18:05.330 ⇒ 00:18:20.109 Uttam Kumaran: like, SaaS startups, I think now are… we’re just moving, sort of, a little bit off-market, you know, to work with people that are willing to sign and invest, and actually bring on a team that can deliver, and that they believe in the ROI. I just don’t think they ever got convinced that.
40 00:18:20.110 ⇒ 00:18:20.680 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
41 00:18:20.680 ⇒ 00:18:22.060 Uttam Kumaran: They would see that, you know?
42 00:18:23.470 ⇒ 00:18:24.930 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, so in your…
43 00:18:24.930 ⇒ 00:18:29.820 Uttam Kumaran: He wouldn’t even take a meeting with us. Like, I wanted to call him, you wanted to call him.
44 00:18:29.820 ⇒ 00:18:30.600 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
45 00:18:30.800 ⇒ 00:18:34.850 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, at some point, it’s like, people don’t want to take the medicine, I don’t know what to do.
46 00:18:35.120 ⇒ 00:18:35.850 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
47 00:18:36.290 ⇒ 00:18:42.760 Greg Stoutenburg: So… like, what’s the deal with SaaS? Is it… is it SaaS specifically? Is it.
48 00:18:42.760 ⇒ 00:18:44.889 Uttam Kumaran: No, it’s just startups, it’s just startups.
49 00:18:44.890 ⇒ 00:18:45.960 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, okay.
50 00:18:45.960 ⇒ 00:18:50.369 Uttam Kumaran: So, startups. If you look at, yeah, if you look at all the people that have been, like, regrettable churn.
51 00:18:50.750 ⇒ 00:18:57.380 Uttam Kumaran: A lot of them have been… 90% are all startups that are either pre-revenue or Series A.
52 00:18:57.380 ⇒ 00:18:59.630 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. Complete, they’re a complete mess.
53 00:18:59.910 ⇒ 00:19:00.880 Uttam Kumaran: Wow.
54 00:19:01.460 ⇒ 00:19:08.599 Uttam Kumaran: You know, it’s a tough… it’s a… just a… it’s just a shitty business, it’s just a shitty market to build a business on, like.
55 00:19:08.940 ⇒ 00:19:13.530 Uttam Kumaran: Unless you have, like, a product that, like, you can’t run a startup without, which is, like, Carta.
56 00:19:14.240 ⇒ 00:19:17.949 Greg Stoutenburg: Right, right, right, yeah, yeah, good call.
57 00:19:18.370 ⇒ 00:19:24.680 Uttam Kumaran: So, for us, it’s like, part of it is actually closing a door on something willingly. Like, not everybody is a worthwhile client.
58 00:19:24.680 ⇒ 00:19:25.130 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
59 00:19:25.130 ⇒ 00:19:28.279 Uttam Kumaran: You know, so, yeah.
60 00:19:28.830 ⇒ 00:19:31.639 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. Yeah, and I guess you have to earn that state.
61 00:19:32.660 ⇒ 00:19:34.200 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, it’s tough, like, I…
62 00:19:34.200 ⇒ 00:19:35.050 Greg Stoutenburg: way to get there.
63 00:19:35.050 ⇒ 00:19:40.530 Uttam Kumaran: Or, like, they have to pay, and, like, they weren’t willing to even increase hours, and they want us to maintain, like, all these systems, and I’m like.
64 00:19:40.890 ⇒ 00:19:45.000 Uttam Kumaran: dude, like, how are you gonna, like, what? I don’t know, it’s just like, you don’t go…
65 00:19:45.120 ⇒ 00:19:48.559 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I don’t know, any other business that wouldn’t make any sense.
66 00:19:48.710 ⇒ 00:19:49.620 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
67 00:19:51.450 ⇒ 00:19:51.980 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
68 00:19:51.980 ⇒ 00:19:52.640 Uttam Kumaran: So…
69 00:19:52.900 ⇒ 00:19:53.780 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, fair.
70 00:19:58.830 ⇒ 00:20:01.899 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, I don’t think… is Demi joining, or is it just us?
71 00:20:03.750 ⇒ 00:20:05.000 Uttam Kumaran: There’s always a beam here.
72 00:20:06.040 ⇒ 00:20:08.100 Greg Stoutenburg: Zip.
73 00:20:08.180 ⇒ 00:20:15.060 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, you could see, kind of, like, we could talk about what we’re doing, for Lilo, and sort of put a bow on that, Clarence, if you think.
74 00:20:15.640 ⇒ 00:20:19.390 Clarence Stone: Yeah, I can’t talk and work at the same time.
75 00:20:19.390 ⇒ 00:20:20.020 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, good, huh.
76 00:20:20.020 ⇒ 00:20:21.049 Clarence Stone: Almost done.
77 00:20:21.310 ⇒ 00:20:22.110 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay.
78 00:20:22.320 ⇒ 00:20:27.879 Uttam Kumaran: So basically, Greg, to give you a sense of, like, what we’re doing with, with Lilo is, like.
79 00:20:28.810 ⇒ 00:20:43.480 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, like, I would say, like, one thing I’ll try to do is blame us first before, like, blaming, like, externally. If I was to do something different, one thing we did with this client is we signed an agreement on an SOW. It was clear once we came in that the
80 00:20:43.600 ⇒ 00:20:48.750 Uttam Kumaran: The estate of, like, stuff was even worse than they let out to be.
81 00:20:49.000 ⇒ 00:20:53.689 Uttam Kumaran: We delivered on that, plus several things that are outside of the scope.
82 00:20:53.860 ⇒ 00:20:59.580 Uttam Kumaran: One thing that we did incorrectly was the moment we started delivering things outside of scope, we didn’t push back.
83 00:20:59.840 ⇒ 00:21:05.009 Uttam Kumaran: And this is really my fault. I am not used to…
84 00:21:05.130 ⇒ 00:21:15.920 Uttam Kumaran: like, doing two things when it comes to clients, and occasionally we get burned, and occasionally it works out in our favor. I’m not someone who sees, like, something out of scope and, like, is, like.
85 00:21:16.220 ⇒ 00:21:20.760 Uttam Kumaran: oh, we need to write a new SOW. I’m also someone that is not, like.
86 00:21:20.880 ⇒ 00:21:25.080 Uttam Kumaran: hey, this… like, I’m usually someone that’s like, guys, we can work faster and deliver more, like…
87 00:21:25.080 ⇒ 00:21:27.870 Greg Stoutenburg: I’m usually on the side of the client.
88 00:21:27.870 ⇒ 00:21:47.390 Uttam Kumaran: there are times that this has worked, like, where clients see that, and they’re like, these guys are the best we’ve ever worked with. They rarely come up with us with these things, and we want to work with them for a long time, right? Yeah. There’s also times where people see that, and then they lay it on. And they… they may not… they may… it may not be an active strategy for them to take advantage, but they do.
89 00:21:47.910 ⇒ 00:21:53.430 Uttam Kumaran: And they come on with tons of stuff that are out of scope. They work… they try to push faster and faster.
90 00:21:54.160 ⇒ 00:22:12.769 Uttam Kumaran: which these guys basically did. And it’s okay, like, I wasn’t worried for a couple reasons. One, this was an anchor client to a set of services that were new to us, right? We’re basically building for them a version of our platform, except way, way better. Like, we built for them what took us, like, more than a year to build, and probably, like, 6 weeks.
91 00:22:12.980 ⇒ 00:22:16.169 Uttam Kumaran: And it has way more shit than what our stuff has.
92 00:22:16.370 ⇒ 00:22:23.419 Uttam Kumaran: Which is… for me, I’m kind of… I’m… Clarence also echoes this, is like, dude, we should be building this for ourselves. I’m like, yes, but that’s not, like.
93 00:22:23.570 ⇒ 00:22:33.839 Uttam Kumaran: we don’t have, like, a fat R&D budget for me to go after, so I’m sort of R&D, and Sam’s free time and Mustafa’s free time is what is that R&D budget.
94 00:22:34.110 ⇒ 00:22:42.290 Uttam Kumaran: So, so, so, so maybe I’ll just finish the thought, I’ll get your thoughts. So one is, we, it’s a net new service, this sort of, like, WorkOS.
95 00:22:42.390 ⇒ 00:22:45.500 Uttam Kumaran: Like, platform building for internal work.
96 00:22:45.630 ⇒ 00:23:03.320 Uttam Kumaran: In particular, like, we’re doing this for an agency, of which we’re doing a lot of marketing with, and we have probably, like, 10 or 15 active conversations in the agency space around. So, it was an anchor client that I undersold, in particular just to get a good win and a case study out of, versus, like, potentially lose that business and not get, like.
97 00:23:03.880 ⇒ 00:23:06.810 Uttam Kumaran: Not have any case study around doing this work.
98 00:23:08.530 ⇒ 00:23:18.169 Uttam Kumaran: However, they made the mistake of not only, like, asking for way more, and us delivering way more, but then coming to the table and saying, like, we… none of our stuff works.
99 00:23:18.330 ⇒ 00:23:22.939 Uttam Kumaran: Coming to the table and saying that they paid us for this money and they didn’t get anything.
100 00:23:23.120 ⇒ 00:23:40.789 Uttam Kumaran: also coming to the table and saying… questioning, like, us recommending certain tools, saying that we’re getting paid by those vendors, which you guys all know, like, I actively say no to that, right? So, it’s not only like, oh yeah, you got me, like, we did take referrals. It’s like, no, no, it’s, like, part of our thing that we don’t… we try not to do that.
101 00:23:41.070 ⇒ 00:23:44.349 Uttam Kumaran: And then also just, like, generally kind of, like, being, like, dicks.
102 00:23:44.690 ⇒ 00:23:50.939 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, all that combined sort of now caused this to, like, explode a little bit.
103 00:23:50.940 ⇒ 00:23:52.429 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. And…
104 00:23:52.600 ⇒ 00:23:58.539 Uttam Kumaran: Mike, We had to deal with a lot of this, like, a lot of those questions last week.
105 00:23:58.940 ⇒ 00:24:09.170 Uttam Kumaran: None of which, like, are true. You know, I think you all would be surprised to hear that we didn’t really, like, haven’t delivered on a lot of value, and we’re, short-changing.
106 00:24:10.270 ⇒ 00:24:11.400 Demilade Agboola: I’m sorry, I have to…
107 00:24:11.400 ⇒ 00:24:12.440 Uttam Kumaran: Where’s true.
108 00:24:12.440 ⇒ 00:24:12.969 Demilade Agboola: Is this about you?
109 00:24:12.970 ⇒ 00:24:13.650 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah.
110 00:24:14.250 ⇒ 00:24:16.750 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, no, this is for, for Lilo.
111 00:24:16.750 ⇒ 00:24:18.920 Demilade Agboola: Literally. Gotcha.
112 00:24:19.560 ⇒ 00:24:32.370 Uttam Kumaran: And so, like, we’re sort of now in this phase of, like, trying to show… trying to not only show them that, like, none of that is true, but it’s, like, I’m not actually that interested in that. More of, like, our contract’s coming up, and…
113 00:24:32.600 ⇒ 00:24:34.470 Uttam Kumaran: There has to be a go-forward path.
114 00:24:35.150 ⇒ 00:24:37.370 Uttam Kumaran: And so we are…
115 00:24:37.830 ⇒ 00:24:42.549 Uttam Kumaran: We are going to propose something that they may not like, and they will have to make a decision on that.
116 00:24:42.870 ⇒ 00:24:51.989 Uttam Kumaran: For all the reasons why… because of what they did, there… we have to probably switch to hourly, and it’s gonna be more expensive on average.
117 00:24:52.130 ⇒ 00:24:58.060 Uttam Kumaran: And that it’s… we’re gonna be a lot more screw… we’re a lot more strict on the work we take on.
118 00:24:58.400 ⇒ 00:25:02.390 Uttam Kumaran: All of which they could have just sort of, like, piped down and just…
119 00:25:03.570 ⇒ 00:25:12.359 Uttam Kumaran: we could have just done what we were doing. Instead, now that, like, now that Clarence and I are kind of, like, paying attention, like, we’re getting screwed. And so…
120 00:25:13.150 ⇒ 00:25:15.810 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like, that’s kind of, like, where we are right now.
121 00:25:16.840 ⇒ 00:25:23.530 Uttam Kumaran: This is, like, the bad part of this job, by the way. I guess this sucks, but… Yeah.
122 00:25:23.530 ⇒ 00:25:27.330 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, I mean, for what it’s worth, I learn a ton when you talk about those things, though.
123 00:25:27.330 ⇒ 00:25:38.989 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, no, oh, I don’t… oh, believe me, I don’t mind talking about it. I’m not in any way, regretful, or I’m not in any way ashamed. Like, I actually… that’s why I wanted to leave with, like, what got us down here, but…
124 00:25:39.350 ⇒ 00:25:57.289 Uttam Kumaran: it’s really when people are disrespectful and, like, inappropriate, and, like, mean, and, like, they talk down on our team. I really can’t, like, handle that well. I can handle the talking about the work, and of course, I’m as… I want everything to get done faster, like, you guys know… know me, so it’s rare that, like.
125 00:25:57.390 ⇒ 00:26:02.340 Uttam Kumaran: we haven’t asked ourselves, how do we be faster versus the client? It’s when it… the stuff gets, like.
126 00:26:02.760 ⇒ 00:26:08.610 Uttam Kumaran: Like that. I really, like, don’t like that. Like, I’m not gonna get treated like… our team’s not gonna get treated like that.
127 00:26:08.980 ⇒ 00:26:14.199 Uttam Kumaran: But we’re, we’re, we’re trying to find a path forward, right? And so.
128 00:26:14.590 ⇒ 00:26:15.170 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
129 00:26:15.360 ⇒ 00:26:20.840 Demilade Agboola: For something like the, you know, the accusation that you’re suggesting vendors because you get a kickback.
130 00:26:22.420 ⇒ 00:26:34.400 Greg Stoutenburg: I don’t know, my mind goes… now, this wouldn’t land with everyone, but my mind goes to, like, there’s something good about a certain amount of visible outrage if you say something really inflammatory to someone, like… like, if I… like, if I’m.
131 00:26:34.400 ⇒ 00:26:35.819 Uttam Kumaran: Wait, what do you mean?
132 00:26:35.820 ⇒ 00:26:45.629 Greg Stoutenburg: But, like, if I’m the person who’s like, hey, I think you’re getting a kickback, and that’s why you suggested this, and they’re like, I wouldn’t do that, the reason why I, you know, we suggested it is this and this and this.
133 00:26:45.880 ⇒ 00:26:48.099 Greg Stoutenburg: I might actually appreciate that pushback.
134 00:26:48.530 ⇒ 00:26:51.460 Uttam Kumaran: No, I mean, I, I, yeah, I mean, you, you…
135 00:26:51.840 ⇒ 00:27:03.600 Uttam Kumaran: when… sometimes I just, like, yeah, when it comes to messages like this, I basically broke down every single claim, and was like, I’m happy… I would be happy to send you our partnership agreement, but there isn’t one.
136 00:27:03.670 ⇒ 00:27:22.000 Uttam Kumaran: like, we don’t have any written partnership with these folks. We don’t take… we don’t make any money. Right. In fact, all they do is actually offer… they… they… they try to offer our clients a discount, but also, I said, you know, you may never heard about these guys, but they work with all these brands that I’m sure you may have… you may have heard of, which is, like.
137 00:27:22.060 ⇒ 00:27:25.210 Uttam Kumaran: like, I was like, have you heard of the NFL? Like, yeah, they’re a client, so…
138 00:27:25.210 ⇒ 00:27:26.630 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
139 00:27:26.630 ⇒ 00:27:27.989 Uttam Kumaran: You know, so, so…
140 00:27:28.550 ⇒ 00:27:37.200 Uttam Kumaran: But it’s also, like, I’m like, dude, you’re hiring us because we do this, and we’ve done this, and collectively, our company has decades of experience doing this, like.
141 00:27:37.340 ⇒ 00:27:37.670 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
142 00:27:37.670 ⇒ 00:27:41.440 Uttam Kumaran: is this coming from. And I could tell that the guy just sent the message in haste.
143 00:27:41.640 ⇒ 00:27:44.529 Greg Stoutenburg: But I want to show them that that was a complete mistake.
144 00:27:44.820 ⇒ 00:27:50.679 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Yeah, you shouldn’t have… you shouldn’t have sent that message, and we’re gonna… we can… we can pull the plug on our side.
145 00:27:50.680 ⇒ 00:27:51.000 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
146 00:27:51.000 ⇒ 00:27:58.400 Uttam Kumaran: Take RSOW, and take the document I’m gonna send you, and shop it. There’s no… it’s gonna be like…
147 00:27:58.800 ⇒ 00:28:01.480 Uttam Kumaran: You, like, shouldn’t have poked, you shouldn’t have, like, said anything.
148 00:28:01.480 ⇒ 00:28:02.710 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah.
149 00:28:02.850 ⇒ 00:28:03.750 Uttam Kumaran: You know.
150 00:28:03.790 ⇒ 00:28:04.790 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, good.
151 00:28:04.790 ⇒ 00:28:18.999 Clarence Stone: Dude, this value analysis keeps telling me it’s, like, $2 million worth of stuff, so, like, I keep trying to tune it. It just seems, like, kind of absurd. So, yeah, that’s why I’m running this again, by the way, and this is why it’s taking me so long.
152 00:28:20.480 ⇒ 00:28:26.650 Uttam Kumaran: That’s fine, I mean, I know it’s… we are… we are… we are severely underpriced, like, I know that, but…
153 00:28:27.170 ⇒ 00:28:28.430 Uttam Kumaran: It’s… we have to…
154 00:28:28.430 ⇒ 00:28:30.409 Clarence Stone: Your money just sounds wild.
155 00:28:31.020 ⇒ 00:28:35.800 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t think so, like, I mean, dude, a lot of this stuff is, like, frontier AI work, like…
156 00:28:35.800 ⇒ 00:28:36.950 Clarence Stone: Yeah, I mean…
157 00:28:37.360 ⇒ 00:28:38.090 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
158 00:28:39.420 ⇒ 00:28:43.529 Clarence Stone: You know, that was the price range I was looking for for me. Why?
159 00:28:43.530 ⇒ 00:28:44.180 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
160 00:28:44.820 ⇒ 00:28:47.680 Uttam Kumaran: So, I mean, but this is where, like, we are…
161 00:28:47.950 ⇒ 00:28:52.629 Uttam Kumaran: We are just brain-forged, like, we are, you know, so we can only get… and sometimes, like, again.
162 00:28:52.800 ⇒ 00:29:00.490 Uttam Kumaran: I can… I… these guys were supposed to anchor us into this new service, that then we were gonna slowly get our prices up, things like that, like, so…
163 00:29:01.610 ⇒ 00:29:09.230 Uttam Kumaran: I’m… yeah, so… so that’s sort of, like, what’s going on here, and it’s kind of rough, like, it’s emotional, it’s a waste of time for everybody involved, like…
164 00:29:09.510 ⇒ 00:29:15.039 Uttam Kumaran: But I don’t know, it’s just sometimes this is what happens, like, for every 10 clients we get.
165 00:29:15.220 ⇒ 00:29:19.070 Uttam Kumaran: Some are really, really great, some are, like, normal, and some tend to, like, just…
166 00:29:19.520 ⇒ 00:29:26.489 Uttam Kumaran: really be rough, and ultimately, if they’re paying us more, then there is some leeway to just, like.
167 00:29:26.870 ⇒ 00:29:32.069 Uttam Kumaran: Like, you can’t want more things, wanted faster, and then ask to reduce budget, like…
168 00:29:32.420 ⇒ 00:29:32.920 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
169 00:29:32.920 ⇒ 00:29:35.089 Uttam Kumaran: How does that make any sense? Like…
170 00:29:35.470 ⇒ 00:29:37.780 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. Yeah, they’re asking you to take the hit.
171 00:29:38.220 ⇒ 00:29:39.170 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like.
172 00:29:39.170 ⇒ 00:29:39.830 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
173 00:29:39.830 ⇒ 00:29:42.400 Uttam Kumaran: And they’re… and they’re agency owners, too, and I’m like.
174 00:29:42.640 ⇒ 00:29:48.499 Uttam Kumaran: Well, so one is, like, I just can tell they probably treat all their vendors and their team probably just like this.
175 00:29:48.500 ⇒ 00:29:52.209 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. Which, again, like, doesn’t matter to me as long as they pay the bill.
176 00:29:52.250 ⇒ 00:29:53.170 Uttam Kumaran: Because…
177 00:29:53.310 ⇒ 00:29:59.079 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and then, of course, there’s, like, inappropriate stuff, and like that, he just, he walked back immediately, like, apologized.
178 00:30:01.160 ⇒ 00:30:02.500 Clarence Stone: Throw them a video!
179 00:30:03.310 ⇒ 00:30:07.390 Uttam Kumaran: No, you guys can watch the videos. I just, like, I think it’s… I don’t know, I got really kind of angry.
180 00:30:07.390 ⇒ 00:30:09.800 Greg Stoutenburg: Are you gonna get into it? Is there, like, a…
181 00:30:09.800 ⇒ 00:30:17.450 Uttam Kumaran: No, there is a video, you can go watch, I think it’s recorded, you can go watch it. I… I basically, yeah, was like, this is completely inflammatory, like, and I…
182 00:30:17.790 ⇒ 00:30:24.240 Uttam Kumaran: I was like… after that clock, I was like, I shouldn’t have, like, gone that hard, but I also walked in being like, we could…
183 00:30:24.570 ⇒ 00:30:31.209 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t… I’m… Clarence was like, are you okay with losing this? I said, yeah, because I think we’re gonna go sell probably 4 more of these in the next 2 weeks.
184 00:30:31.210 ⇒ 00:30:33.360 Clarence Stone: I… I was worse to them.
185 00:30:33.650 ⇒ 00:30:39.840 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, Clarence actually took mine, started nicer, and then… Basically, he was like, hey.
186 00:30:40.060 ⇒ 00:30:48.929 Uttam Kumaran: I need this team to come help me work on our own stuff, and you’re in my way, like, you’re the only client, you’re using all our people, so I’m happy…
187 00:30:48.930 ⇒ 00:30:54.639 Clarence Stone: randomly, and said, like, hey, I’m here because I need those people back. So what’s the deal?
188 00:30:54.640 ⇒ 00:30:55.820 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
189 00:30:56.250 ⇒ 00:30:59.909 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, because I told Clarence, I said, Pranam can easily just come help you
190 00:31:00.090 ⇒ 00:31:17.530 Uttam Kumaran: craft the rest of the service, and we have… Luke’s actively selling this to 5 people. I’m like… and then ABC, we already have work that I need him on. I’m like, I don’t mind losing this. Like, this is bad money at this… at this point, right? Bad customer. And so, we’re gonna go back to them with, like, a higher price.
191 00:31:18.530 ⇒ 00:31:23.270 Uttam Kumaran: With a lot less, with a lot more boundaries.
192 00:31:23.880 ⇒ 00:31:24.450 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
193 00:31:24.990 ⇒ 00:31:28.749 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I don’t know if they’re gonna take it, I don’t know, this doesn’t… it’s whatever.
194 00:31:29.090 ⇒ 00:31:30.520 Greg Stoutenburg: It’s unfortunate.
195 00:31:33.670 ⇒ 00:31:49.750 Uttam Kumaran: It’s just like, we have such a… I just have such a belief in our service, and that we’re consistently underpriced, that, like, we… we rarely, take advantage of that fact. Like, I rarely start and then be like, cool, now that you know we’re awesome, I… I actually should have been charging this. We don’t do that, like…
196 00:31:49.750 ⇒ 00:31:50.310 Greg Stoutenburg: Right.
197 00:31:50.310 ⇒ 00:32:08.360 Uttam Kumaran: the price we started at, okay, we have natural increases, but I don’t do the thing that, like, people do, which is, like, rug pull. Like, okay, we undercharge, that’s on us. The next client, we will charge appropriately, expecting this. But, like, for them to, like, really come back in this way is really… is really the rough…
198 00:32:09.450 ⇒ 00:32:12.879 Uttam Kumaran: is a tough thing, you know? Yeah. Sorry, go ahead, Debbie.
199 00:32:13.310 ⇒ 00:32:17.290 Demilade Agboola: I was going to ask, like, how much, like, what’s the current, like, rating which we’re charging them?
200 00:32:17.970 ⇒ 00:32:19.679 Demilade Agboola: I don’t know if that was mentioned earlier.
201 00:32:19.680 ⇒ 00:32:21.479 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we’re charging him 20K a month.
202 00:32:21.840 ⇒ 00:32:22.550 Demilade Agboola: Okay.
203 00:32:23.650 ⇒ 00:32:28.100 Uttam Kumaran: But, like, the contract ends this week, and… We don’t have, like.
204 00:32:28.410 ⇒ 00:32:34.499 Uttam Kumaran: They were actively trying to pressure it to go down, while also putting a lot… all this other pressure on.
205 00:32:35.410 ⇒ 00:32:38.630 Uttam Kumaran: And we’re working on things for them that, like.
206 00:32:39.140 ⇒ 00:32:47.290 Uttam Kumaran: again, our AI team is sort of small, so, like, if we go bring on 3 or more clients that are triple the price.
207 00:32:47.810 ⇒ 00:32:52.619 Uttam Kumaran: I was naturally gonna probably tell them, like, hey, the price is now triple, because I can’t staff other stuff.
208 00:32:53.560 ⇒ 00:32:58.850 Uttam Kumaran: And… Yeah, but, I mean… Yeah, dumb.
209 00:32:59.720 ⇒ 00:33:06.479 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, it is a churn, it is, like, is it a preventable churn? Like, we’re gonna find out, like, this is the prevention step we’re trying, but…
210 00:33:09.050 ⇒ 00:33:09.850 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
211 00:33:17.410 ⇒ 00:33:22.049 Uttam Kumaran: And then otherwise, on Demi on Magic Spoon, like, I don’t know what I should come back to Mary with.
212 00:33:23.260 ⇒ 00:33:30.699 Uttam Kumaran: I sort of told her what I thought, which is, like, do you and Esrien have an hour’s estimate of time to deliver those final marts?
213 00:33:31.050 ⇒ 00:33:31.770 Demilade Agboola: Yeah.
214 00:33:32.670 ⇒ 00:33:39.919 Demilade Agboola: Because, like, again, it’s one of those things where they’re trying to low… it’s a clear lowball, to be honest. It feels like…
215 00:33:42.560 ⇒ 00:33:46.200 Demilade Agboola: Okay, she actually just responded, I don’t know, Josh, she responded, like, 2 hours ago.
216 00:33:47.350 ⇒ 00:33:48.839 Demilade Agboola: But, basically…
217 00:33:52.060 ⇒ 00:33:57.460 Demilade Agboola: It just feels like one of those things where they’re like, hey, This is the initial SOW.
218 00:33:57.840 ⇒ 00:34:02.830 Demilade Agboola: like, get this over the line. We need you to be able to get that over the line.
219 00:34:03.190 ⇒ 00:34:07.810 Demilade Agboola: Then take over from our current data vendors that are helping us maintain this.
220 00:34:07.930 ⇒ 00:34:12.369 Demilade Agboola: they have not done… history always done a great job, because, like, we don’t…
221 00:34:13.170 ⇒ 00:34:16.250 Demilade Agboola: Get any information on when things break until…
222 00:34:16.610 ⇒ 00:34:19.730 Demilade Agboola: We let them know that, like, hey, the report seemed off.
223 00:34:20.239 ⇒ 00:34:21.260 Demilade Agboola: And then…
224 00:34:21.260 ⇒ 00:34:21.960 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
225 00:34:21.960 ⇒ 00:34:24.580 Demilade Agboola: They want us to also do some other stuff, like…
226 00:34:24.719 ⇒ 00:34:40.119 Demilade Agboola: explored, like, build out stuff in their data roadmap. So effectively, we’re taking over their… the maintenance of their infrastructure, we’re going to add things and build things out for them, and they sort of were going for this for, like, 6K a month.
227 00:34:40.120 ⇒ 00:34:43.370 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so I mean, I told this to Robert, and he was like.
228 00:34:46.630 ⇒ 00:34:50.740 Uttam Kumaran: I was like, I basically told Robert, I said, I’m coming to this conversation saying we shouldn’t take this.
229 00:34:51.139 ⇒ 00:34:54.149 Uttam Kumaran: he was like, look, I think this is a thing where…
230 00:34:55.010 ⇒ 00:35:04.170 Uttam Kumaran: By getting them to sign a 12-month agreement, we will find ways to improve that as we go, and it’s worthwhile on the risk.
231 00:35:04.480 ⇒ 00:35:09.530 Uttam Kumaran: I told him, like, dude, 6K, I can only really do, like, 10 or 15 hours of work per week.
232 00:35:09.930 ⇒ 00:35:16.810 Uttam Kumaran: for 6K a month, like… But, okay. And that’s what I told him today. I said, look.
233 00:35:17.080 ⇒ 00:35:19.419 Uttam Kumaran: Not only are we off-contract, like.
234 00:35:19.620 ⇒ 00:35:22.029 Uttam Kumaran: We’re trying to get this over the line.
235 00:35:22.390 ⇒ 00:35:29.130 Uttam Kumaran: But we have four… we have 3 different work streams. We have dbt modeling, we have maintenance, and we have this API issue.
236 00:35:29.960 ⇒ 00:35:37.349 Uttam Kumaran: I was like, you need to kind of decide, like, one at a time. And then he’s like, she’s like, do you have an hour’s estimate of time remaining?
237 00:35:37.500 ⇒ 00:35:42.109 Uttam Kumaran: I said, requirements keep coming in, and some things keep changing.
238 00:35:42.820 ⇒ 00:35:48.809 Demilade Agboola: And thanks for trying to talk about, like, the Spins API, basically, like, oh, how long would it take us to finish that in terms of…
239 00:35:48.960 ⇒ 00:35:56.290 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, but it’s like, it doesn’t know, like, we thought it was gonna take a month ago, and then the spins people came back with different requirements, so it took another month, like…
240 00:35:57.260 ⇒ 00:35:59.839 Uttam Kumaran: This is what she’s trying to box in, and so…
241 00:36:00.570 ⇒ 00:36:05.930 Uttam Kumaran: I’m basically gonna say, like, requirements keep coming in, and some teams keep changing week over week.
242 00:36:06.820 ⇒ 00:36:12.720 Uttam Kumaran: Like… Also for cars.
243 00:36:12.720 ⇒ 00:36:15.230 Demilade Agboola: context, like, the fact that we came in on, like.
244 00:36:15.680 ⇒ 00:36:22.000 Demilade Agboola: just a couple of stuff. We were… we were on a 15K a month, Budget?
245 00:36:22.600 ⇒ 00:36:23.740 Uttam Kumaran: is a third.
246 00:36:24.570 ⇒ 00:36:25.280 Demilade Agboola: Pardon?
247 00:36:25.280 ⇒ 00:36:28.330 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, this is a third of that, you know, or less.
248 00:36:28.750 ⇒ 00:36:33.270 Demilade Agboola: well, a little more than a third, but not nothing. So basically, they’re saying, hey.
249 00:36:33.720 ⇒ 00:36:35.810 Demilade Agboola: Take over our entire infrastructure.
250 00:36:36.200 ⇒ 00:36:41.859 Demilade Agboola: And, like, responsive for any other, like, development work that we will do.
251 00:36:42.280 ⇒ 00:36:48.009 Demilade Agboola: for, like, a little over a third of what we were paying you for a smaller scope initially. It just feels…
252 00:36:49.190 ⇒ 00:36:51.760 Demilade Agboola: Feels like BS, to Bianca.
253 00:36:51.760 ⇒ 00:36:54.680 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, I know, I know, I mean, dude, I… but I see, I…
254 00:36:55.540 ⇒ 00:36:57.810 Uttam Kumaran: I’m fighting to get over the line.
255 00:36:58.710 ⇒ 00:37:04.140 Uttam Kumaran: I’m giving them what they asked for. The only thing I got back in return is a 12-month commitment.
256 00:37:04.970 ⇒ 00:37:06.000 Uttam Kumaran: So, like…
257 00:37:09.460 ⇒ 00:37:13.220 Uttam Kumaran: like, this is… it’s pretty rough, but, like, I’m trying, like…
258 00:37:14.770 ⇒ 00:37:22.069 Uttam Kumaran: But I was honest with them on, like, yo, this is, like, way less, and so you are gonna get less, proportionate.
259 00:37:22.310 ⇒ 00:37:23.230 Uttam Kumaran: But…
260 00:37:23.400 ⇒ 00:37:39.019 Uttam Kumaran: But, like, we don’t typically do these, and I’m still gonna do my best. I literally said, I’m gonna do my best to maintain, like, that we’re gonna be available in Slack, we’re gonna try to balance the work, and make sure we maximize the money you’re giving us.
261 00:37:39.890 ⇒ 00:37:42.299 Uttam Kumaran: And we’re gonna try to be as efficient as possible.
262 00:37:43.480 ⇒ 00:37:47.549 Uttam Kumaran: Fucking sign the fucking thing, like, stop asking me fucking follow-up questions.
263 00:37:48.430 ⇒ 00:37:55.449 Uttam Kumaran: like… They already burned probably $1,000 today in my time, just asking follow-up questions.
264 00:37:55.620 ⇒ 00:38:02.759 Uttam Kumaran: You know what I mean? And this is where Clarence is gonna, like, throw up, and be like, what the fuck are you people doing, taking a 6-month… 6K a month contract?
265 00:38:03.360 ⇒ 00:38:04.220 Uttam Kumaran: It’s like…
266 00:38:04.220 ⇒ 00:38:09.729 Clarence Stone: Listen, broke boys have broke behaviors, so you take a broke client, they’re gonna treat you like it.
267 00:38:09.730 ⇒ 00:38:11.740 Uttam Kumaran: I know, I know.
268 00:38:11.740 ⇒ 00:38:16.789 Demilade Agboola: And they’re not… I think, annoyingly, they’re not necessarily a broke client, they’re just behaving like one.
269 00:38:17.080 ⇒ 00:38:26.720 Uttam Kumaran: That’s… yeah, but this is where, look, I did… I did… I did art… this is where, like, I like that, actually, sales and delivery are, like, different teams, because I feel like there should be natural, like.
270 00:38:26.890 ⇒ 00:38:29.549 Uttam Kumaran: There should be some tents, like, I don’t like…
271 00:38:29.740 ⇒ 00:38:43.150 Uttam Kumaran: just because I also can oversee that, I wanted this… I wanted to push this decision to Robert and say, here’s all the facts. I’m telling you that if my… if my imperative as delivery leader is to make sure we hit our margins.
272 00:38:43.440 ⇒ 00:38:59.549 Uttam Kumaran: and we drive… and we’re able to service this, this is not enough for me. Like, we agreed that we didn’t even want to take things less than 10K, because it’s really hard for me to keep 3 people and my time on a client where it’s 6. I’m like, I can divert resources. And I was like, given all that, though, like.
273 00:39:00.170 ⇒ 00:39:02.449 Uttam Kumaran: That’s… that’s the facts, like, what do you think?
274 00:39:02.680 ⇒ 00:39:12.859 Uttam Kumaran: And he’s like, I think we should still do it. I think we should think about having some type of lower-cost offering, where it’s, like, one person, they just keep the lights on type thing.
275 00:39:12.980 ⇒ 00:39:18.260 Uttam Kumaran: And I think we should try to model it for this client. And I said, okay. And so…
276 00:39:18.470 ⇒ 00:39:24.600 Uttam Kumaran: now, like, we’re gonna try it. If this client doesn’t work, then at least next time sales comes to me and says.
277 00:39:25.250 ⇒ 00:39:29.910 Uttam Kumaran: let’s do something around this. I’m gonna say last time it didn’t work, right? So, this is also just the…
278 00:39:30.800 ⇒ 00:39:38.030 Uttam Kumaran: the way we’re sort of figuring, you know, figuring things out. So…
279 00:39:39.850 ⇒ 00:39:42.459 Demilade Agboola: I feel like it’s one of those things where,
280 00:39:45.640 ⇒ 00:39:52.689 Demilade Agboola: they know their problem points. Like, in fact, if on the call last week, we had, like, a 10-minute session towards the end, where they’re like, oh.
281 00:39:53.900 ⇒ 00:40:05.809 Demilade Agboola: Can you help us, like, estimate the timeline of how long it takes for us to get this done? You know, we would like to have this data available to our clients, yadda yadda yadda, and would like to model it this way, all that stuff.
282 00:40:07.630 ⇒ 00:40:12.920 Demilade Agboola: And it’s like… Ideally, we’re gonna get to a point where we’ll…
283 00:40:13.600 ⇒ 00:40:15.959 Demilade Agboola: I feel like we will be hitting…
284 00:40:16.280 ⇒ 00:40:21.690 Demilade Agboola: 30 hours a week, minimum, based off of, like, their requirements, like, things they were talking.
285 00:40:22.180 ⇒ 00:40:30.670 Demilade Agboola: Maintenance, so, like, even if… because there are maintenance is… maintenance isn’t always, like, an active thing in terms of, like, you’re actually coding, sometimes you’re just going around looking at stuff.
286 00:40:31.160 ⇒ 00:40:42.789 Demilade Agboola: Just ensuring things are running smoothly, noticing when there’s a spike in the number of hours, things like that. Like, it’s not always, like, oh, you are actively doing stuff, it’s just like you’re going around different systems to be sure everything is running as it should.
287 00:40:43.130 ⇒ 00:40:46.679 Demilade Agboola: Then, you factor in things like they want us to build our new stuff.
288 00:40:47.580 ⇒ 00:40:54.870 Demilade Agboola: Which will require, like, development hours, which require, like, requirements gathering hours, like, you have to figure all of that out.
289 00:40:55.310 ⇒ 00:41:03.239 Demilade Agboola: And then, potentially, factor in things like breaking, presentation to stakeholders, letting them know, updating them on what’s going on.
290 00:41:03.570 ⇒ 00:41:10.900 Demilade Agboola: at some point, that’s, like, basically a full-time thing. You can’t necessarily now say, hey, we’re going to be doing that for 6K a month.
291 00:41:11.160 ⇒ 00:41:16.459 Demilade Agboola: And if we’re gonna… if we’re gonna have multiple people on the project, I don’t… like, it’s not…
292 00:41:17.700 ⇒ 00:41:22.360 Demilade Agboola: But when you factor in, like, the hourly cost of the people on the project.
293 00:41:22.630 ⇒ 00:41:27.639 Demilade Agboola: it doesn’t then work that way. Like, it’s very hard to justify. I think that’s the hard part.
294 00:41:29.470 ⇒ 00:41:41.490 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s tough. I mean, if this was, like, a joke… if there’s, like, a rando company, I would be less inclined, but it is a big e-commerce CPG brand. Like, most people who shop at, like, Whole Foods in the States know Magic Spoon.
295 00:41:42.380 ⇒ 00:41:47.020 Uttam Kumaran: So for that reason also, there’s, like, a marketing component to this.
296 00:41:47.570 ⇒ 00:41:51.280 Uttam Kumaran: Like, yeah, we could do all the math on this, but roughly, like.
297 00:41:51.690 ⇒ 00:41:56.039 Uttam Kumaran: it’s tough, like, I wish they would see the value in us and just pay appropriately.
298 00:41:56.370 ⇒ 00:42:04.159 Uttam Kumaran: Like, you don’t go… you don’t go to lunch and say, this isn’t worth 15. Like, what?
299 00:42:04.860 ⇒ 00:42:05.250 Demilade Agboola: Yeah.
300 00:42:05.580 ⇒ 00:42:12.270 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, I really wonder what the intent is there, because, like, 6,000 times 12 is 72,000.
301 00:42:12.380 ⇒ 00:42:16.619 Greg Stoutenburg: So, if they were to hire someone to do this work, they’re gonna be able to…
302 00:42:16.620 ⇒ 00:42:17.439 Uttam Kumaran: 50 bucks.
303 00:42:17.440 ⇒ 00:42:19.570 Greg Stoutenburg: And then the benefits are going to roll into.
304 00:42:19.570 ⇒ 00:42:27.009 Uttam Kumaran: They said they don’t have the budget now, and they said they were willing to work on us, work with us on additional SOWs in the next 3 months.
305 00:42:27.010 ⇒ 00:42:29.930 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. We can tie the ROI to the budget.
306 00:42:30.290 ⇒ 00:42:35.839 Uttam Kumaran: And I said, okay, fair, like, and that, you know, we’ll start… as soon as they sign, like, we’ll start scheming on that.
307 00:42:37.490 ⇒ 00:42:38.070 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
308 00:42:40.060 ⇒ 00:42:44.869 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s… it’s tough, like, we’re… our company’s not out of the woodwork yet on, like.
309 00:42:45.030 ⇒ 00:42:49.800 Uttam Kumaran: being able to say no to too many people. Like, we’ve… this is the quarter we’ve said no to the most people.
310 00:42:50.030 ⇒ 00:42:53.550 Uttam Kumaran: And it’s really tough, like, it’s a difference in culture, like.
311 00:42:54.030 ⇒ 00:42:56.219 Uttam Kumaran: It’s, it’s, it’s hard to do that.
312 00:42:57.390 ⇒ 00:43:06.239 Uttam Kumaran: Because simultaneously, we have clients that are, like, willing to pay full price. Like, Element, for example, is like, we want you to staff up.
313 00:43:06.390 ⇒ 00:43:10.880 Uttam Kumaran: Like, what’s it gonna cost? Like, we want more faster, and we’re okay.
314 00:43:11.010 ⇒ 00:43:17.500 Uttam Kumaran: And they’re willing to pay… they’re willing to add 5X one magic spoon in one go.
315 00:43:17.790 ⇒ 00:43:18.500 Greg Stoutenburg: Right.
316 00:43:18.810 ⇒ 00:43:21.730 Uttam Kumaran: And simultaneously, we’re dealing with both.
317 00:43:22.960 ⇒ 00:43:26.599 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s.
318 00:43:27.370 ⇒ 00:43:27.960 Greg Stoutenburg: Yep.
319 00:43:29.720 ⇒ 00:43:30.140 Demilade Agboola: I think.
320 00:43:30.140 ⇒ 00:43:30.760 Uttam Kumaran: you know.
321 00:43:31.060 ⇒ 00:43:34.649 Demilade Agboola: I think from, like, a numbers perspective, it’s, like, once you have, like.
322 00:43:35.070 ⇒ 00:43:41.950 Demilade Agboola: two, three anchor companies, in the sense of, like, hey, we have default for 12 months, we have Eden, we have Element.
323 00:43:42.190 ⇒ 00:43:50.219 Demilade Agboola: Those service anchors and buffers to be able to say, hey, potentially, because I, like…
324 00:43:50.220 ⇒ 00:43:54.690 Uttam Kumaran: We just have limited people, it’s… because that’s the problem, we don’t… it’s not like we have, like, a bunch of people on the bench.
325 00:43:55.070 ⇒ 00:43:58.619 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I would rather Demi take your time and go to Element.
326 00:43:59.390 ⇒ 00:44:05.730 Uttam Kumaran: Like, you know, like, that’s the other chess game, is like, I’d rather get… take our smart people like…
327 00:44:06.830 ⇒ 00:44:12.249 Uttam Kumaran: And go to where we have active work, where we’re gonna get the incremental margin.
328 00:44:13.010 ⇒ 00:44:17.170 Uttam Kumaran: now, versus, like, debate over 4K, 5K,
329 00:44:17.630 ⇒ 00:44:26.259 Uttam Kumaran: And I’m like, what are the odds I can turn a 6K a month into, like, a 20K? Like, what’s the odds we can get another 14K a month out of Magic Spoon?
330 00:44:26.580 ⇒ 00:44:39.009 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe, like, I don’t know. I have to figure out, like, what the deal is internally, but what are the odds I can go to CTA and get another 20K a month on an existing 30K a month thing? Pretty high.
331 00:44:39.320 ⇒ 00:44:40.160 Uttam Kumaran: Pretty high.
332 00:44:40.390 ⇒ 00:44:41.230 Demilade Agboola: Right.
333 00:44:41.450 ⇒ 00:44:42.530 Uttam Kumaran: So…
334 00:44:45.270 ⇒ 00:44:45.670 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
335 00:44:45.670 ⇒ 00:44:47.030 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s tough.
336 00:44:47.890 ⇒ 00:44:48.700 Greg Stoutenburg: I hear that.
337 00:44:48.980 ⇒ 00:44:49.570 Uttam Kumaran: tough.
338 00:44:52.410 ⇒ 00:44:55.079 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, cause I, the way, look, again…
339 00:44:56.030 ⇒ 00:45:03.750 Demilade Agboola: Unless… I think unless we’re able to specify and have an idea of what the future SOW kind of looks like, in terms of, like, a…
340 00:45:04.300 ⇒ 00:45:07.799 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, you might be tied for budget now, cool, but…
341 00:45:09.600 ⇒ 00:45:12.489 Demilade Agboola: This is the typical value we operate at.
342 00:45:12.650 ⇒ 00:45:15.069 Demilade Agboola: And this is way below our typical value.
343 00:45:15.830 ⇒ 00:45:18.449 Demilade Agboola: We need to be able to have some…
344 00:45:18.690 ⇒ 00:45:22.340 Demilade Agboola: Idea of what your budget will be in the next 3 months.
345 00:45:22.570 ⇒ 00:45:26.450 Demilade Agboola: Because right now, you’re having access to two…
346 00:45:26.680 ⇒ 00:45:29.870 Demilade Agboola: slash 3 engineers, because I’m also hopping into this.
347 00:45:29.870 ⇒ 00:45:35.529 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, I’m gonna… I’m just gonna… I’m gonna basically… we just have to turn it… we’re just gonna have to turn it off, like, you know?
348 00:45:35.670 ⇒ 00:45:36.750 Clarence Stone: Yeah, it’s like…
349 00:45:37.410 ⇒ 00:45:38.880 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, go ahead.
350 00:45:39.200 ⇒ 00:45:40.120 Clarence Stone: Look at this.
351 00:45:44.470 ⇒ 00:45:50.800 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, you’re gonna send it, you’re gonna send it to them, so I… I.
352 00:45:51.550 ⇒ 00:45:54.379 Clarence Stone: But most of it is revenue and business impact.
353 00:45:55.260 ⇒ 00:45:59.110 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, it’s actively allowing them to sell more.
354 00:45:59.110 ⇒ 00:46:07.439 Clarence Stone: female without it, so, like, I was trying to be very reasonable, but, like, no matter what I did to this AI, it’s just like, no, this is what it’s worth.
355 00:46:07.620 ⇒ 00:46:09.259 Clarence Stone: I looked up Lilo.
356 00:46:09.550 ⇒ 00:46:11.670 Clarence Stone: Like, I ran this 4 times already.
357 00:46:11.670 ⇒ 00:46:13.450 Uttam Kumaran: They’re a big fucking company, bro.
358 00:46:13.450 ⇒ 00:46:18.160 Clarence Stone: through different models, like, I can’t get you a better answer than this.
359 00:46:18.160 ⇒ 00:46:21.070 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t… I do. That’s fine.
360 00:46:21.260 ⇒ 00:46:31.230 Uttam Kumaran: The answer is always in our favor, that’s why it’s… it’s… we’re both… it’s probably a good thing and a bad thing. The numbers are always going to work in our favor. We’ve always punched up, like.
361 00:46:33.440 ⇒ 00:46:34.490 Uttam Kumaran: So…
362 00:46:34.800 ⇒ 00:46:38.800 Clarence Stone: I mean, I put value to Lilo in every single line item with a breakdown.
363 00:46:41.070 ⇒ 00:46:41.640 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
364 00:46:42.100 ⇒ 00:46:46.809 Greg Stoutenburg: So, you, Tom, how does this… do you ever frame a conversation like this?
365 00:46:47.220 ⇒ 00:46:57.800 Greg Stoutenburg: Just, you know, yeah. Yeah. We charge 5% of expected value to the client in the next year. We expect that in the next year, you’re gonna make an extra $5 million.
366 00:46:57.800 ⇒ 00:47:03.020 Uttam Kumaran: We’re trying to, we’re trying… this is where you’re gonna get into, like, okay, what is the…
367 00:47:03.150 ⇒ 00:47:08.590 Uttam Kumaran: me and Robert have talked about value-based… outcome-based pricing for, like, a year and a half.
368 00:47:08.590 ⇒ 00:47:09.420 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay.
369 00:47:09.680 ⇒ 00:47:11.339 Uttam Kumaran: We’re trying to get there.
370 00:47:11.550 ⇒ 00:47:12.190 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay.
371 00:47:12.190 ⇒ 00:47:13.880 Uttam Kumaran: That’s like the Holy Grail.
372 00:47:14.060 ⇒ 00:47:16.510 Uttam Kumaran: It’s tough, though. Like, that’s what I.
373 00:47:16.510 ⇒ 00:47:16.900 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
374 00:47:16.900 ⇒ 00:47:20.080 Uttam Kumaran: That’s what I pitched to ABC, by the way.
375 00:47:20.380 ⇒ 00:47:23.460 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll send you the,
376 00:47:23.850 ⇒ 00:47:33.030 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll send the one slide here, but you’re right, like, you’re getting to, like, okay, what does fair look like, then, if we’re getting… FAIR looks like percentage revenue performance-based.
377 00:47:33.040 ⇒ 00:47:34.290 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. And…
378 00:47:34.330 ⇒ 00:47:38.930 Uttam Kumaran: kind of what we decided to do for ABC is,
379 00:47:39.130 ⇒ 00:47:42.080 Uttam Kumaran: Put two… both… put both types in place.
380 00:47:42.470 ⇒ 00:47:50.250 Uttam Kumaran: Put something that is, performance-based, and put something that is more cost of… Just doing the…
381 00:47:50.750 ⇒ 00:48:00.940 Uttam Kumaran: the thing, like, you know, for example, like, spending up DBT is, like, a fixed cost, like, what does… what does DBT downstream revenue tie into? Like, I don’t know, that’s, like.
382 00:48:01.730 ⇒ 00:48:02.449 Uttam Kumaran: That’s too much.
383 00:48:02.450 ⇒ 00:48:10.050 Greg Stoutenburg: It also protects you, right? Because some other company might use dbt for something, but they have a terrible product, and so…
384 00:48:10.050 ⇒ 00:48:10.690 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
385 00:48:10.690 ⇒ 00:48:28.690 Greg Stoutenburg: you want to have some, like, fixed cost make sense, but I guess I was just thinking, like, as far as the sales conversation goes, can you ever say, well, we’re working on this kind of model, and we think we’re going to deliver this much value to you, so instead of 60,000.
386 00:48:29.580 ⇒ 00:48:34.240 Uttam Kumaran: Well, this is… so, take a look, this is, like, what we did for ABC. So, we basically said.
387 00:48:34.460 ⇒ 00:48:41.839 Uttam Kumaran: like, there’s this, like, Google Analytics work, there’s this SetupDbT, BigQuery stuff, These are all fixed fees.
388 00:48:42.220 ⇒ 00:48:49.230 Uttam Kumaran: And even… even on the fee for this, we are… we are typically, we are typically 50%
389 00:48:49.680 ⇒ 00:48:51.020 Uttam Kumaran: Less than market.
390 00:48:51.210 ⇒ 00:48:54.599 Uttam Kumaran: Right. So, like, this is… this is, like, dirt cheap.
391 00:48:55.360 ⇒ 00:49:00.529 Uttam Kumaran: For this, like, and I know this because I have the pricing sheets for several competitive
392 00:49:00.990 ⇒ 00:49:03.590 Uttam Kumaran: firms, like, I know what they price, and they suck.
393 00:49:03.730 ⇒ 00:49:07.230 Uttam Kumaran: So it’s like… Double trouble.
394 00:49:07.230 ⇒ 00:49:07.800 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
395 00:49:07.800 ⇒ 00:49:13.680 Uttam Kumaran: Like, they’re not getting a Zoran or a Greg, like, or me, or you, you know, they’re not getting, you know…
396 00:49:13.840 ⇒ 00:49:20.500 Uttam Kumaran: So, then we also pitched, like, performance-based. So, we’re gonna run a cancel, recovery, win-back campaign.
397 00:49:21.310 ⇒ 00:49:24.359 Uttam Kumaran: Where we’re thinking this is gonna get you 600 grand a year.
398 00:49:24.630 ⇒ 00:49:24.950 Greg Stoutenburg: Right.
399 00:49:24.950 ⇒ 00:49:28.429 Uttam Kumaran: We want 15,000 and 5% of the incremental.
400 00:49:29.570 ⇒ 00:49:30.370 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
401 00:49:30.700 ⇒ 00:49:33.970 Greg Stoutenburg: That’s nice. I was making up those numbers. I didn’t know that they were actually in this deck.
402 00:49:33.970 ⇒ 00:49:36.400 Uttam Kumaran: So this is what we pitched them.
403 00:49:36.400 ⇒ 00:49:36.860 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
404 00:49:36.860 ⇒ 00:49:38.670 Uttam Kumaran: Because on these, we know we can track.
405 00:49:39.260 ⇒ 00:49:41.850 Uttam Kumaran: Like, we’re gonna build the tracking in order to do it.
406 00:49:41.850 ⇒ 00:49:42.520 Greg Stoutenburg: Yep.
407 00:49:42.520 ⇒ 00:49:55.349 Uttam Kumaran: So we’re gonna get you 20% increase. I know their… their average… like, we basically know what their average cost per lead is, and we know what their average conversion rate is, so I know, like, what this is gonna get them, and so…
408 00:49:55.710 ⇒ 00:50:00.580 Uttam Kumaran: And we’re gonna price it simply 15K, and then additional when we get this 20%.
409 00:50:01.720 ⇒ 00:50:08.629 Uttam Kumaran: Which is cheap. Like, this is… we’re… this is a shitload of money for them. Yeah. Even if nothing changes in the conversion rate.
410 00:50:09.320 ⇒ 00:50:10.130 Uttam Kumaran: Right.
411 00:50:10.280 ⇒ 00:50:14.530 Uttam Kumaran: So, second thing, they have no tracking like…
412 00:50:14.910 ⇒ 00:50:15.520 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
413 00:50:15.850 ⇒ 00:50:22.000 Uttam Kumaran: Right, so this is, like, what we’re thinking about. This was the first time we were able to put something like this together for them.
414 00:50:22.000 ⇒ 00:50:22.610 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
415 00:50:22.750 ⇒ 00:50:27.280 Uttam Kumaran: And we’re seeing… they’re gonna come back to me. I really hope they go for it, it’ll be a steal for them.
416 00:50:28.580 ⇒ 00:50:29.330 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
417 00:50:30.140 ⇒ 00:50:32.329 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, we’ll get this money back easily.
418 00:50:34.360 ⇒ 00:50:37.959 Uttam Kumaran: So, yeah, we’re thinking, I mean, we’re thinking about it.
419 00:50:38.700 ⇒ 00:50:39.320 Greg Stoutenburg: Cool.
420 00:50:40.740 ⇒ 00:50:42.170 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, looks good to me.
421 00:50:42.930 ⇒ 00:50:44.330 Uttam Kumaran: Me too.
422 00:50:44.330 ⇒ 00:50:45.439 Greg Stoutenburg: I’ll buy it.
423 00:50:49.350 ⇒ 00:50:51.259 Clarence Stone: I mean, this isn’t even their money.
424 00:50:52.630 ⇒ 00:50:56.430 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I know, I know. Clarence is gonna get mad.
425 00:50:58.490 ⇒ 00:51:00.629 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, they’re… I mean, they’re managing…
426 00:51:01.360 ⇒ 00:51:04.149 Uttam Kumaran: They’re managing ad budgets for other companies.
427 00:51:04.860 ⇒ 00:51:05.550 Greg Stoutenburg: Hmm.
428 00:51:06.220 ⇒ 00:51:12.289 Uttam Kumaran: The other thing, Greg, with Hedra is they’re… they’re starting to… their business is starting to slow dramatically. That’s what we’ve found.
429 00:51:12.950 ⇒ 00:51:16.169 Uttam Kumaran: So, I don’t even expect them to be around.
430 00:51:16.870 ⇒ 00:51:21.290 Greg Stoutenburg: I gotta be honest, man, I was like… If someone…
431 00:51:21.440 ⇒ 00:51:29.329 Greg Stoutenburg: If I had ended up on a call with Hedra, and they wanted to twist my arm about product analytics, what I would have said is, hey, I tried Sora last weekend.
432 00:51:29.330 ⇒ 00:51:30.660 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, pivot.
433 00:51:30.660 ⇒ 00:51:38.909 Greg Stoutenburg: And, like, you’re not close. So, you better hit the, usability part of it really hard.
434 00:51:39.240 ⇒ 00:51:48.780 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, I know. But it’s also what I’m saying, like, we’ve had several… several of our clients, I told you, were not regrettable churns. They folded while they were customers.
435 00:51:48.980 ⇒ 00:51:49.460 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
436 00:51:49.460 ⇒ 00:51:51.949 Uttam Kumaran: And guess what? We don’t get paid. Like…
437 00:51:51.950 ⇒ 00:51:52.380 Greg Stoutenburg: Right.
438 00:51:52.380 ⇒ 00:52:00.369 Uttam Kumaran: the worst. Right. Like, that’s why even with a README, dude, like, you never know, like, what’s happening sometimes behind the scenes, like…
439 00:52:00.660 ⇒ 00:52:01.070 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
440 00:52:01.070 ⇒ 00:52:02.870 Uttam Kumaran: Go, they just may go under.
441 00:52:03.470 ⇒ 00:52:13.339 Uttam Kumaran: Like, at any moment. So, like, you just have no… it’s just, like, we don’t want to work with companies that are in that phase, unless bringing us in is part of, like, the… we just got bought.
442 00:52:13.690 ⇒ 00:52:18.559 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. He’s like, bring in Brainforge and turn these things around, we’ll pay for the top dollar.
443 00:52:19.490 ⇒ 00:52:19.820 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
444 00:52:19.820 ⇒ 00:52:21.910 Uttam Kumaran: Then I, like, I’m happy to come in.
445 00:52:22.160 ⇒ 00:52:27.950 Uttam Kumaran: But oftentimes, the clients that are failing, they’re not often gonna ramp spend with us, because we’re just.
446 00:52:27.950 ⇒ 00:52:28.280 Greg Stoutenburg: Right.
447 00:52:28.280 ⇒ 00:52:29.800 Uttam Kumaran: Show them that the data.
448 00:52:30.420 ⇒ 00:52:42.010 Uttam Kumaran: And README is like a dinosa… you know, they’re a dinosaur documentation company, been here a long time. I love the fact that we… I wanted to work with them. I like… I feel like they’re one of the first entrants in this space.
449 00:52:42.380 ⇒ 00:52:49.639 Uttam Kumaran: But it’s clear, like, the fact that they couldn’t even… they couldn’t even get their hand… their brain around spending 10K with us…
450 00:52:50.270 ⇒ 00:52:56.959 Uttam Kumaran: Shows such a business… Like, a lack of business, like, ability, you know?
451 00:52:57.520 ⇒ 00:53:00.360 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, that was… that was a weird,
452 00:53:00.780 ⇒ 00:53:18.300 Greg Stoutenburg: everything about the conversations that I would have with Phoebe around this were weird to me, because on the one hand, she seemed to, and maybe this is just, like, personality, seemed to agree with all of the suggestions and recommendations, and then would say yes to a lot of things, and then when it was time to sign for them.
453 00:53:18.470 ⇒ 00:53:20.600 Greg Stoutenburg: Would suddenly be unable to sign for them.
454 00:53:22.610 ⇒ 00:53:35.739 Greg Stoutenburg: And, you know, everything about, like, product-led growth and what their strategy is kept coming back to, well, the founder sort of already made up his mind about where we’re gonna go as far as direction for this. And I’d think.
455 00:53:36.540 ⇒ 00:53:44.249 Greg Stoutenburg: My best take looking through your product is that no one at all has any idea what anyone is supposed to do with this.
456 00:53:45.640 ⇒ 00:53:54.330 Greg Stoutenburg: And then, you know, you get a little bit of sympathy, like, yeah, you know, I know I agree with you, this needs to be improved, that needs to be improved. And then, again, just would not…
457 00:53:54.330 ⇒ 00:53:55.490 Uttam Kumaran: We’re just a soldier in the room.
458 00:53:55.490 ⇒ 00:53:56.350 Greg Stoutenburg: No room for it to go anywhere.
459 00:53:56.510 ⇒ 00:54:07.749 Uttam Kumaran: You can’t blame… she’s just a soldier in the… like, she just wants to keep her job, and… When you also get to companies that are like that, the people there are just clocking in, clocking out, dude, like…
460 00:54:07.750 ⇒ 00:54:08.330 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
461 00:54:08.330 ⇒ 00:54:09.779 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t hate… I mean…
462 00:54:10.080 ⇒ 00:54:12.010 Greg Stoutenburg: Right, yeah, makes sense.
463 00:54:12.010 ⇒ 00:54:19.640 Uttam Kumaran: that’s just half of, like, tech… SF tech has now been here for a while, like, some of those companies are just net-net. It’s like what Twitter used to be, it’s like…
464 00:54:19.640 ⇒ 00:54:20.470 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
465 00:54:20.470 ⇒ 00:54:25.640 Uttam Kumaran: That’s why they fired, like, 95% of the people, and it’s still, like, growing. Like, how did that happen, right? It’s like…
466 00:54:25.640 ⇒ 00:54:26.260 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
467 00:54:26.420 ⇒ 00:54:36.410 Uttam Kumaran: That’s a lot of companies. So, like, even… but I would like to go work for… I like to go work for those enterprise companies, because we really push the needle, but then they also… they gotta be able to spend.
468 00:54:36.910 ⇒ 00:54:44.450 Uttam Kumaran: Like, if they’re not spending, and everybody’s, like, semi-retired in the company, like, what can you do? What can an external party do?
469 00:54:46.250 ⇒ 00:54:47.290 Uttam Kumaran: Meow.
470 00:54:47.290 ⇒ 00:54:47.930 Greg Stoutenburg: No.
471 00:54:52.880 ⇒ 00:54:56.740 Uttam Kumaran: Cool, I’m trying to think if there’s any other, like, anything else where…
472 00:55:00.130 ⇒ 00:55:01.409 Uttam Kumaran: Want to chat about?
473 00:55:07.970 ⇒ 00:55:09.359 Uttam Kumaran: How’s the Omni stuff?
474 00:55:11.060 ⇒ 00:55:15.160 Greg Stoutenburg: Good. I’m really, thanks for this work stream. It’s been good.
475 00:55:15.360 ⇒ 00:55:15.970 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
476 00:55:15.970 ⇒ 00:55:21.060 Greg Stoutenburg: Blobby, and I’ll give this feedback to, the Omni team.
477 00:55:21.220 ⇒ 00:55:27.139 Greg Stoutenburg: So, I guess just… well, the positive is that Omni’s pretty sweet, so that’s good.
478 00:55:27.320 ⇒ 00:55:30.219 Greg Stoutenburg: I think the negative, as far as the migration goes, is that
479 00:55:30.380 ⇒ 00:55:35.770 Greg Stoutenburg: having Omni build dashboards for you is a lot more difficult than one would hope.
480 00:55:36.200 ⇒ 00:55:39.430 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay, yeah. It’s not even… it’s not even in the ballpark of just, like.
481 00:55:39.430 ⇒ 00:55:40.020 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
482 00:55:40.020 ⇒ 00:55:46.429 Greg Stoutenburg: give it a, you know, create a topic and then, like, give it a screenshot. Like, not close. So,
483 00:55:46.600 ⇒ 00:55:52.119 Greg Stoutenburg: That’s okay, but that has been a learning, so that’s probably… we’re probably… So, let’s see.
484 00:55:52.840 ⇒ 00:56:01.089 Greg Stoutenburg: Wednesday morning, I was like, Mustafa, can we get everything in by end of day Tuesday? That was my goal. So then, like, Friday QA, today.
485 00:56:01.100 ⇒ 00:56:13.220 Greg Stoutenburg: hey, everyone, look at this. Here’s this golden palace of data for you. And we’re… we miss that by 2 days, and I think that just comes down to… it’s just more work than…
486 00:56:13.600 ⇒ 00:56:14.150 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
487 00:56:14.150 ⇒ 00:56:15.730 Greg Stoutenburg: One would think, and…
488 00:56:16.150 ⇒ 00:56:31.330 Greg Stoutenburg: that’s okay, I mean, it’s still, like, light years ahead of instrumenting, like, you know, building first tables in Tableau to begin with. But, yeah, so even with topics in place, you can’t just give Blobby what you want.
489 00:56:33.450 ⇒ 00:56:40.499 Greg Stoutenburg: You kind of have to go, like, table by table, and for a… if your dashboard has 12 tables, then, you know, that’s… that’s…
490 00:56:41.060 ⇒ 00:56:59.370 Greg Stoutenburg: That’s some… a lot of work. And there’s QA stuff, and then there’s things where there’s, like, default filters in place in Omni that you might not have expected, and so you look at this data, you go, this number seems way off, then you find out, oh, it’s because in the background, the weak start… this is one of the things we found, the weak start is in a different place than it was in for Tableau, so…
491 00:56:59.570 ⇒ 00:57:08.090 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. But good, you know, I mean, Robert says communications are going well, people have signed on for trainings that I’ve scheduled,
492 00:57:08.140 ⇒ 00:57:20.360 Greg Stoutenburg: there are, I think, just 3 dashboards that need to be moved over still. One of them is with me, and it’s partly completed. Demi’s got 2 of them, I think. Mustaf has been a real champ in just, you know, like.
493 00:57:20.540 ⇒ 00:57:23.029 Greg Stoutenburg: Figuring out what the process is.
494 00:57:23.030 ⇒ 00:57:29.130 Uttam Kumaran: Even though we’re not… we’re not there yet, I feel like they’re comfortable turning Tableau off. Like, so…
495 00:57:29.490 ⇒ 00:57:44.530 Greg Stoutenburg: I have everything from Tableau. Every single dashboard that’s a published dashboard that they’ve been using, that was in the documentation for what we’ve been showing them, I have a screenshot of every single table, and I have every workbook. So, even without having Tableau on anymore…
496 00:57:44.530 ⇒ 00:57:49.689 Uttam Kumaran: I think you can turn Tableau off and just have, like, one free license, too. Like, I think it’s…
497 00:57:50.260 ⇒ 00:57:50.760 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay.
498 00:57:50.760 ⇒ 00:57:52.149 Uttam Kumaran: But meaning, like.
499 00:57:52.150 ⇒ 00:57:56.630 Greg Stoutenburg: I still think they have confidence to move over, like… Yeah.
500 00:57:57.390 ⇒ 00:58:03.379 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, I mean, they should. I mean, I talked to Mitesh today, and he seemed excited about it.
501 00:58:03.540 ⇒ 00:58:04.130 Uttam Kumaran: Whoa.
502 00:58:04.500 ⇒ 00:58:05.120 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
503 00:58:07.310 ⇒ 00:58:08.340 Greg Stoutenburg: Alright.
504 00:58:08.340 ⇒ 00:58:13.390 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and I think we’re gonna, we’re pitching element on this next phase.
505 00:58:13.680 ⇒ 00:58:18.610 Uttam Kumaran: And the BI thing is gonna be there for you too, Greg, so if you want that on Ellen…
506 00:58:18.950 ⇒ 00:58:20.089 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, let’s do it.
507 00:58:20.090 ⇒ 00:58:22.220 Uttam Kumaran: I think that’s gonna give you another e-comm…
508 00:58:22.660 ⇒ 00:58:23.260 Greg Stoutenburg: Yep.
509 00:58:23.460 ⇒ 00:58:25.750 Greg Stoutenburg: Another e-com sort of thing under your belt.
510 00:58:25.750 ⇒ 00:58:32.800 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. This one, you have time, and the scope is way smaller.
511 00:58:33.170 ⇒ 00:58:35.949 Greg Stoutenburg: Oh, so we don’t have to do it in 8 days? No.
512 00:58:35.950 ⇒ 00:58:42.089 Uttam Kumaran: And there’s no existing dashboards, so part of this is, like, there’s probably, like.
513 00:58:42.940 ⇒ 00:58:46.920 Uttam Kumaran: 4 tables that we just put together a simple demo.
514 00:58:46.950 ⇒ 00:58:49.109 Greg Stoutenburg: Nice. I seem like we’re gonna murder it.
515 00:58:49.110 ⇒ 00:58:53.180 Uttam Kumaran: Robert says he wants us to try to find our… weasel our way into their, like.
516 00:58:53.310 ⇒ 00:58:58.189 Uttam Kumaran: executive meeting in Montana, and, like, it’ll present to them.
517 00:58:59.100 ⇒ 00:59:01.500 Uttam Kumaran: I was like, Sure.
518 00:59:01.500 ⇒ 00:59:03.080 Greg Stoutenburg: I go to Montana.
519 00:59:03.210 ⇒ 00:59:05.050 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I was like, sure, I was like…
520 00:59:05.510 ⇒ 00:59:13.330 Uttam Kumaran: These days, I’m like, if you guys want to go, you go. I’m like, I’m just gonna chill here in Austin, but we can go. All three of us want to go.
521 00:59:13.330 ⇒ 00:59:16.119 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, where, where in Montana?
522 00:59:16.800 ⇒ 00:59:19.950 Uttam Kumaran: Some are Red Sea, they all… they’re all, like, loaded. Yeah, we’ll see.
523 00:59:19.950 ⇒ 00:59:20.600 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
524 00:59:20.600 ⇒ 00:59:22.900 Uttam Kumaran: So… .
525 00:59:23.160 ⇒ 00:59:26.830 Greg Stoutenburg: I mean, not 90% of it, but, like, 10% is.
526 00:59:26.830 ⇒ 00:59:36.809 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think that’ll be… we’re gonna seal the deal on that this week. Cool. I’ll be able to let you know at least towards the end of this week if that’s gonna go through, and…
527 00:59:37.000 ⇒ 00:59:37.330 Greg Stoutenburg: Alright.
528 00:59:37.330 ⇒ 00:59:47.589 Uttam Kumaran: see you squarely. I think that one, though, in addition to time, I think part of that is also going to be just, like, broader training and, Omni stuff, and so…
529 00:59:48.120 ⇒ 00:59:50.019 Uttam Kumaran: It’s also with Max, too, so…
530 00:59:51.050 ⇒ 00:59:53.529 Greg Stoutenburg: Cool. Yeah, good. He reached out today.
531 00:59:55.630 ⇒ 01:00:02.020 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, that sounds good, I bought a 10-pack of Element grapefruit salt, it’s pretty good.
532 01:00:02.200 ⇒ 01:00:10.489 Uttam Kumaran: Nice! Me too, I actually have… okay, I’ll go get one a lot. I got, like, they sent me, like, a pack, like, a pallet.
533 01:00:16.470 ⇒ 01:00:18.299 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we have, like, 50 of them.
534 01:00:18.550 ⇒ 01:00:22.020 Uttam Kumaran: I have to keep drinking, I haven’t drank anything, just been drinking coffee, actually.
535 01:00:22.020 ⇒ 01:00:22.670 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
536 01:00:25.060 ⇒ 01:00:40.259 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, I… I did… so, my… my brain goes right to this, like, dumb position of, and now I’m just in… I’m in rant mode now. After this call, I’m gonna go to the local place, get some wings, Monday’s wing night, so that’s what I did for these meetings.
537 01:00:40.260 ⇒ 01:00:44.020 Uttam Kumaran: I had B-dubs at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport last night, so…
538 01:00:44.020 ⇒ 01:00:45.310 Greg Stoutenburg: What are your flavors?
539 01:00:45.930 ⇒ 01:00:52.530 Uttam Kumaran: Dude, I’m just buffalo. I’m mostly buffalo, boneless. I don’t do… I don’t really like bone-in wings.
540 01:00:52.530 ⇒ 01:00:53.010 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
541 01:00:53.010 ⇒ 01:00:53.800 Uttam Kumaran: We’ll bet.
542 01:00:54.050 ⇒ 01:00:56.789 Uttam Kumaran: Big boneless, mainly for convenience.
543 01:00:56.790 ⇒ 01:00:57.260 Greg Stoutenburg: Yep.
544 01:00:57.260 ⇒ 01:00:59.110 Uttam Kumaran: in Buffalo Ranch.
545 01:00:59.290 ⇒ 01:01:00.519 Greg Stoutenburg: Nice. And…
546 01:01:00.590 ⇒ 01:01:02.160 Uttam Kumaran: I like honey mustard.
547 01:01:02.360 ⇒ 01:01:03.740 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah.
548 01:01:04.060 ⇒ 01:01:12.240 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, Mango Habanero has been my go-to flavor for them for 25 years. It’s just so good. It’s so good.
549 01:01:13.250 ⇒ 01:01:17.349 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, I’ll get… but at the local place, I’ll just get buffalo flavor.
550 01:01:17.510 ⇒ 01:01:19.440 Greg Stoutenburg: It’s just… it’s great.
551 01:01:19.560 ⇒ 01:01:26.990 Greg Stoutenburg: Oh yeah, and then what I was saying about Element, like, as someone who saves money in all the wrong places, like, Pennywise, pound foolish.
552 01:01:27.190 ⇒ 01:01:35.770 Greg Stoutenburg: I looked at the element ingredients, and I was like, this is a tablespoon of salt, and a little bit of magnesium, and a little bit of potassium, like in the packet.
553 01:01:35.770 ⇒ 01:01:38.540 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I’m looking at it now, yeah.
554 01:01:38.540 ⇒ 01:01:42.489 Greg Stoutenburg: And then it’s like, yeah, but am I actually gonna buy the…
555 01:01:42.490 ⇒ 01:01:51.830 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I was… I… the first call I had with them was I said, your product is not only the cleanest, but it is probably the highest margin.
556 01:01:52.330 ⇒ 01:01:56.940 Uttam Kumaran: And then I wasn’t surprised how much money they were making when I… when we got it, eventually.
557 01:01:57.340 ⇒ 01:02:01.089 Greg Stoutenburg: They’re mostly selling a teaspoon of salt for $2.
558 01:02:01.720 ⇒ 01:02:02.400 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
559 01:02:02.610 ⇒ 01:02:03.230 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
560 01:02:03.300 ⇒ 01:02:07.879 Demilade Agboola: I was… I’ve been watching, so I’m also… like, my YouTube is all over the place, and one of.
561 01:02:07.880 ⇒ 01:02:08.760 Greg Stoutenburg: Oh, okay.
562 01:02:08.760 ⇒ 01:02:15.820 Demilade Agboola: YouTube recommendations, like, two weeks ago, was just about how, like, no one really needs electrolytes like that.
563 01:02:16.750 ⇒ 01:02:26.679 Demilade Agboola: Because, effectively, because the guy’s, like, a personal trainer, and his point was two things. One is, you literally just need salt and magnesium for a lot of, like.
564 01:02:26.970 ⇒ 01:02:37.320 Demilade Agboola: electrolyte replacement, and two is you literally have to either be in a very hot place for an extended period while you’re working out, or you’re working out for a really long.
565 01:02:37.320 ⇒ 01:02:42.539 Uttam Kumaran: What if you’re sitting for 8 hours a day, and you only drink coffee? What about… what about
566 01:02:43.330 ⇒ 01:02:44.699 Uttam Kumaran: What about that ICP?
567 01:02:44.700 ⇒ 01:02:46.860 Greg Stoutenburg: I feel like needs then.
568 01:02:46.860 ⇒ 01:02:50.839 Uttam Kumaran: What about that person?
569 01:02:50.840 ⇒ 01:02:54.149 Demilade Agboola: I think you might… you might need… you might need more electrolytes than LeBron.
570 01:02:54.150 ⇒ 01:03:01.600 Uttam Kumaran: I might need to stand for more than 800 steps a day. I went for a walk this morning.
571 01:03:02.440 ⇒ 01:03:20.130 Greg Stoutenburg: Marketing’s such a funny thing, like, I see these Element ads where there’s just, like, this absolutely jacked guy taking his, you know, his little packet, pouring it into the cup, but I think what the ad is supposed to do to you is make you think, oh, if I drink that, I’ll do that, and I’ll look like that.
572 01:03:20.540 ⇒ 01:03:23.209 Greg Stoutenburg: Not close. That’s not how that works.
573 01:03:23.210 ⇒ 01:03:24.100 Uttam Kumaran: Yep.
574 01:03:25.950 ⇒ 01:03:26.510 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
575 01:03:28.520 ⇒ 01:03:30.650 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, it’s one of those things where, like.
576 01:03:31.040 ⇒ 01:03:39.450 Demilade Agboola: Marketing just makes some things that are not that important important, because, like, effectively, to do that, you do need to work out for, like.
577 01:03:39.630 ⇒ 01:03:57.720 Demilade Agboola: hours, you know, like, you need to be properly dehydrated. And the only people that really do that are professional, like, athletes. Those are the people who are really working out for, like… I know one time, I was listening to this interview that Roger Federer did back, because he was, like, 35 at that point, and he had played a match for 5 hours.
578 01:03:58.260 ⇒ 01:04:04.679 Demilade Agboola: And they asked him, like, how could he even, like, at 35, be playing for so long and maintain such a high level?
579 01:04:04.890 ⇒ 01:04:14.879 Demilade Agboola: And eventually win the match. And he says, like, to be fair, he doesn’t really do long training sessions anymore, because he’s old, and recovery isn’t as easy, so he can’t do long trainings and then play again.
580 01:04:15.070 ⇒ 01:04:15.960 Greg Stoutenburg: But…
581 01:04:15.980 ⇒ 01:04:22.779 Demilade Agboola: He relies on the fact that when he was much younger, he used to do extremely long sessions to the point that he felt like throwing up.
582 01:04:23.040 ⇒ 01:04:33.980 Demilade Agboola: So, he was talking, like, 8-hour sessions and everything. So now, he’s just like, you know what, I know how it feels to be tired and still be able to play. Like, I don’t need to, like, build that muscle as much anymore.
583 01:04:34.170 ⇒ 01:04:48.910 Demilade Agboola: And I just thought about that, like, yo, that’s actually crazy, to play that, to play that money. Yeah. But, you know, that’s what they have to do. They have to be used to fatigue. If not, they can’t play, like, your level can’t drop so much, because you’re just tired.
584 01:04:48.930 ⇒ 01:04:49.720 Greg Stoutenburg: Yep.
585 01:04:49.930 ⇒ 01:05:07.410 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, and I guess that’s the marketing exercise, is figuring out which message is gonna land. Like, I haven’t seen, when drinks that have lots of BCAAs in them are marketed, they always talk about recovery. I’m surprised that I don’t see that as much from, like, the hydration companies.
586 01:05:07.450 ⇒ 01:05:14.160 Greg Stoutenburg: I can say, you know, personally, you know, anecdotally, I could just be wrong about this, but I don’t think I am.
587 01:05:14.160 ⇒ 01:05:30.219 Greg Stoutenburg: So, like, on a Sunday, most Sunday mornings, I’ll work out in my girlfriend’s fitness class first thing in the morning, and then last thing I do in the day is I’ll have a hockey game that’s, you know, an hour and a half long. And it’s just intense. I’m 40 now, so it’s like… it’s a lot. It’s a lot in a day.
588 01:05:30.220 ⇒ 01:05:30.840 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
589 01:05:30.840 ⇒ 01:05:43.940 Greg Stoutenburg: But I swear that those, you know, those hydration drinks, like, I just wake up feeling a little bit better. And I think, actually, something did get replaced, but that’s not how they talk about it. They make it seem like it’s more like your peak goes higher.
590 01:05:46.090 ⇒ 01:05:49.999 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, because who wants… who wants just to wake up slightly better? No, it’s gonna be like, yo.
591 01:05:50.000 ⇒ 01:05:59.149 Greg Stoutenburg: Right, yeah, that’s the marketing for the… Yeah, that’s the marketing for the 60-year-olds. It’s like, hey, you know how you’re sore and miserable all the time? What if you were less sore and miserable?
592 01:05:59.870 ⇒ 01:06:01.910 Greg Stoutenburg: They’re like, yes, that’s what we want.
593 01:06:01.910 ⇒ 01:06:10.629 Uttam Kumaran: my girlfriend will come home, and she’ll be like, did you eat today? And I’ll be like, I forgot, I was sitting here, but I had, like, I had, like, an element, and she’ll be like.
594 01:06:10.890 ⇒ 01:06:12.849 Uttam Kumaran: What are you talking about?
595 01:06:13.340 ⇒ 01:06:21.570 Uttam Kumaran: the fuck are you even talking about? You need to eat something? I’m like, I tried, I had to call Greg, or something happened with something.
596 01:06:21.570 ⇒ 01:06:23.010 Greg Stoutenburg: That’s funny.
597 01:06:26.570 ⇒ 01:06:29.549 Uttam Kumaran: We all have bad habits, you know?
598 01:06:31.790 ⇒ 01:06:35.800 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool. Maybe, Clarence, I can stay on with you and just wrap this thing up.
599 01:06:35.800 ⇒ 01:06:36.620 Clarence Stone: Yep.
600 01:06:36.620 ⇒ 01:06:37.789 Greg Stoutenburg: It was good. Thanks, guys.
601 01:06:37.790 ⇒ 01:06:42.399 Uttam Kumaran: Greg, I owe you a voice message about other stuff, so I will send you that later. I’m gonna go for it. Sure.
602 01:06:42.400 ⇒ 01:06:43.820 Greg Stoutenburg: Sounds good. Yep, alright.
603 01:06:43.820 ⇒ 01:06:44.210 Uttam Kumaran: Sounds good.
604 01:06:44.210 ⇒ 01:06:45.170 Greg Stoutenburg: Appreciate it all.
605 01:06:45.730 ⇒ 01:06:46.580 Uttam Kumaran: Thank you, guys.
606 01:06:54.110 ⇒ 01:06:54.980 Uttam Kumaran: Alright, brother.
607 01:07:00.210 ⇒ 01:07:01.800 Clarence Stone: What’s up?
608 01:07:07.340 ⇒ 01:07:08.500 Uttam Kumaran: What do we think?
609 01:07:08.980 ⇒ 01:07:10.100 Uttam Kumaran: This is good to go.
610 01:07:10.290 ⇒ 01:07:11.730 Clarence Stone: Yeah, hang on.
611 01:07:13.800 ⇒ 01:07:19.679 Clarence Stone: I just put it in the chat. Those were the recommended messages for him to send.
612 01:07:20.620 ⇒ 01:07:22.220 Clarence Stone: And I’m gonna wrap up.
613 01:07:22.780 ⇒ 01:07:23.340 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
614 01:07:24.740 ⇒ 01:07:25.949 Clarence Stone: This was painful.
615 01:07:26.120 ⇒ 01:07:28.139 Clarence Stone: They better fucking pay for this.
616 01:07:30.790 ⇒ 01:07:37.870 Uttam Kumaran: You know, I’ve never seen you non-smile for this long. You just crack a smile during something in that last hour, but…
617 01:07:39.630 ⇒ 01:07:43.449 Clarence Stone: Dude, it’s because, like, I want to get it done, and, like…
618 01:07:43.620 ⇒ 01:07:53.449 Clarence Stone: Yeah. There’s, like, other things that I owe, like, and work is just, like, piling up, but, like, I don’t care about that work. I think I need to build this fucking platform.
619 01:07:56.250 ⇒ 01:07:59.780 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. No, and I’ll come there, I’ll… we can…
620 01:08:00.090 ⇒ 01:08:01.640 Uttam Kumaran: finish this up, and then I can…
621 01:08:01.640 ⇒ 01:08:05.040 Clarence Stone: Yeah, because Luke’s already reaching out to me for that. I’m like, dude, I…
622 01:08:05.480 ⇒ 01:08:07.719 Clarence Stone: I don’t have the headspace today for it.
623 01:08:07.720 ⇒ 01:08:09.310 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes.
624 01:08:11.640 ⇒ 01:08:17.969 Clarence Stone: And, you know, you and I have to make some more, like, high-level executive decisions. I don’t want him to hear two things, right? So…
625 01:08:18.109 ⇒ 01:08:19.169 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
626 01:08:23.950 ⇒ 01:08:25.799 Clarence Stone: Look at all the stuff I generated, though.
627 01:08:26.290 ⇒ 01:08:29.850 Uttam Kumaran: No, dude, I mean, bro, this is, like, insane. This is so deep.
628 01:08:29.859 ⇒ 01:08:31.209 Clarence Stone: poor analysis.
629 01:08:31.470 ⇒ 01:08:33.699 Uttam Kumaran: This is, like, so deep in terms of, like.
630 01:08:33.939 ⇒ 01:08:36.630 Uttam Kumaran: Using AI to do this type of niche work is insane.
631 01:08:36.630 ⇒ 01:08:40.610 Clarence Stone: Dude, normally, like, EY will give me a week to do this.
632 01:08:40.790 ⇒ 01:08:48.509 Clarence Stone: So I’ll just, like, chill, and then I’ll wait for the night before, and I’m like, oh, fuck, I gotta do this, and I spend, like, 3 hours, and then, with AI, it gets done.
633 01:08:49.800 ⇒ 01:09:01.009 Clarence Stone: So, let me just, like, break down to you, like, what I did, right? So, for the deliverables, I didn’t just price in, like, the value, I priced in total value.
634 01:09:01.010 ⇒ 01:09:20.940 Clarence Stone: Right? Like, the value of uptime, the value of not hitting errors, the value of savings of, you know, being able to troubleshoot things yourself, or interact with AI, not being a coder. So, a lot of those things end up being a lot higher than the actual dev cost spend, which is still $450K that we projected previously.
635 01:09:21.240 ⇒ 01:09:21.810 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
636 01:09:22.240 ⇒ 01:09:32.559 Clarence Stone: Right, so I broke that down by segment in tab 3 here, but there’s an entire MD document that actually breaks down the math to even smaller categories.
637 01:09:35.939 ⇒ 01:09:39.989 Clarence Stone: So I go in, and so the MD file has…
638 01:09:40.250 ⇒ 01:09:43.410 Clarence Stone: Everything broken out into actual savings.
639 01:09:46.520 ⇒ 01:09:48.000 Uttam Kumaran: Are you gonna send them that, too?
640 01:09:48.000 ⇒ 01:09:50.189 Clarence Stone: Yeah, I sent him everything in that zip file.
641 01:09:52.069 ⇒ 01:09:54.659 Uttam Kumaran: Is he gonna send it… is he gonna send that over, too?
642 01:09:54.950 ⇒ 01:09:57.940 Clarence Stone: He just… he shouldn’t, because there’s strategy in there.
643 01:09:57.940 ⇒ 01:09:59.169 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, okay, okay.
644 01:09:59.170 ⇒ 01:10:07.610 Clarence Stone: Like, yeah, he can send the value analysis one, because this one here, if they want to see the breakdown.
645 01:10:07.870 ⇒ 01:10:15.570 Clarence Stone: Sure, but it’s in an MD format, so we might have to make it, you know, non-technical, but…
646 01:10:16.960 ⇒ 01:10:25.669 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so then I wrote out, also, just, like, the last thing I did was, you know, what he should say.
647 01:10:26.120 ⇒ 01:10:29.290 Clarence Stone: But the value projection’s pretty sick. I’m trying to find the tables.
648 01:10:30.780 ⇒ 01:10:39.649 Clarence Stone: Yeah, here. Okay, so, like, they’re gonna say, how did we get to $5 million? Well, if you want to look at SaaS tool replacement, we’re replacing Orca.
649 01:10:39.800 ⇒ 01:10:43.770 Clarence Stone: for 70 different brands. That normally costs $300 a month per brand.
650 01:10:44.920 ⇒ 01:10:45.520 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
651 01:10:45.890 ⇒ 01:10:46.680 Clarence Stone: Right.
652 01:10:46.890 ⇒ 01:10:51.020 Clarence Stone: We’re replacing your vendor. Let’s just be fair, that’s about $120K.
653 01:10:51.760 ⇒ 01:10:54.310 Clarence Stone: We’re doing an MCP connector for you in-house.
654 01:10:54.560 ⇒ 01:11:09.349 Clarence Stone: Right? Like, these… these are just pure play, technical, like, no arguments here, right? Time savings? Sure, we’ll argue, but dude, $75 an hour, that’s cheaper than New York labor, and you’re telling me you’re not going to save 12 hours by having a Klaviyo calendar? Then, why did you ask us to do it?
655 01:11:10.480 ⇒ 01:11:11.500 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah.
656 01:11:11.970 ⇒ 01:11:24.219 Clarence Stone: Right? So I want to make sure, like, all the numbers are right. That’s why I was like… like, I need this fucking AI to move faster. So, like, we might have to figure out a better token vendor for me, because I’m using Olama Cloud, and it just fucks me.
657 01:11:26.680 ⇒ 01:11:40.439 Clarence Stone: And then, you know, staffing savings, right? Like, for documenting and onboarding, forecasting suite, admin panel stuff, platform independence, like, Klaviyo calendar, like, you’re not hiring a creative strategist now.
658 01:11:40.950 ⇒ 01:11:45.769 Clarence Stone: That’s worth $60K to you. That’s really cheap. I didn’t use New York modifiers.
659 01:11:47.680 ⇒ 01:11:49.340 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, no, I know, it’s insane.
660 01:11:49.340 ⇒ 01:11:57.209 Clarence Stone: Like, business revenue, like, forecasting updates, hey, if you got 5% better budget allocation at 500K.
661 01:11:57.430 ⇒ 01:12:09.880 Clarence Stone: Nano Banana, you’re not paying someone to do video production or picture production, right? Like, client retention prevents… if you prevent 2 or 3 account turns per year, that’s how much it saves you.
662 01:12:11.160 ⇒ 01:12:12.040 Clarence Stone: Right.
663 01:12:12.260 ⇒ 01:12:19.019 Clarence Stone: Risk mitigation operations. Like, all the stability work that we’re doing, we see ICD pipelines, platform uptime.
664 01:12:19.360 ⇒ 01:12:20.860 Clarence Stone: That’s worth something.
665 01:12:21.110 ⇒ 01:12:27.159 Clarence Stone: The ROI calculation at all of that is that we’re giving them an 85 to 95x ROI.
666 01:12:29.880 ⇒ 01:12:31.090 Uttam Kumaran: No, it’s insane.
667 01:12:31.790 ⇒ 01:12:33.929 Clarence Stone: And here’s, like, the comparison.
668 01:12:35.640 ⇒ 01:12:38.609 Clarence Stone: So, I put all of that in an MD file.
669 01:12:40.950 ⇒ 01:12:46.419 Clarence Stone: And there’s more in the MD docs, because I was just like, I just need to see the preview of what you’re writing.
670 01:12:46.560 ⇒ 01:12:50.530 Clarence Stone: Because sometimes, like, for their cost projections, it got stuff wrong.
671 01:12:50.850 ⇒ 01:12:51.929 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
672 01:12:52.210 ⇒ 01:12:58.660 Uttam Kumaran: But dude, at least we have one, and now that we don’t have to basically do another one of these again, like, if someone asks for the ROI analysis.
673 01:12:59.290 ⇒ 01:13:02.929 Clarence Stone: Yeah. Well, I will just use my agent. This is my consulting agent.
674 01:13:02.930 ⇒ 01:13:03.670 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
675 01:13:06.070 ⇒ 01:13:10.440 Clarence Stone: Yeah. Okay, I need to bounce. I was supposed to be somewhere.
676 01:13:10.440 ⇒ 01:13:15.410 Uttam Kumaran: Do you have a flight right now? At… yeah. Okay, alright, alright.
677 01:13:16.060 ⇒ 01:13:32.660 Clarence Stone: But hopefully you’re good, right? It’s got all the details, so if you’re wondering what the cost breakdown is, or how I got the value, or what the strategy behind the pricing is, it’s all in there, and there’s even a document showing what, Pranav should say, and the psychology on how you should respond.
678 01:13:33.030 ⇒ 01:13:33.610 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
679 01:13:34.360 ⇒ 01:13:34.980 Clarence Stone: Yeah.
680 01:13:35.460 ⇒ 01:13:36.290 Clarence Stone: Cool.
681 01:13:39.100 ⇒ 01:13:44.699 Uttam Kumaran: I guess real quick, tell me about this week. Like, I can just come on Thursday if you want, or I can come Wednesday night.
682 01:13:44.700 ⇒ 01:13:52.260 Clarence Stone: Dude, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, let’s just… let’s fucking do it. Dude, I want to take a screenshot of this chat for you, like, they’re talking about you now.
683 01:13:53.150 ⇒ 01:13:56.220 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, okay… So, like…
684 01:13:56.220 ⇒ 01:14:14.009 Clarence Stone: Yeah, like, it’s very real, and I’m gonna drop it in the group chat with Robert later on. Like, it’s… and then, like, I saw that you were being referenced, so I was just like, hey, if you need help right away, like, we shouldn’t… we shouldn’t have to go through a vendor, like, we can just hire Utam strategically, have him 1099’d.
685 01:14:14.060 ⇒ 01:14:16.430 Clarence Stone: And then we can start the vendor process.
686 01:14:18.000 ⇒ 01:14:20.560 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, that’s what I’m saying.
687 01:14:20.560 ⇒ 01:14:22.900 Clarence Stone: Yeah, like, I love he’s willing to do that.
688 01:14:24.000 ⇒ 01:14:28.730 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, then I’ll just… I’m just gonna put the money back in the company, so… Yeah. It’s fine.
689 01:14:30.080 ⇒ 01:14:33.550 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, dude, get to the airport safely.
690 01:14:33.550 ⇒ 01:14:37.019 Clarence Stone: Where are you going? You’re going to Dallas? Yeah, I have to go to Dallas.
691 01:14:37.020 ⇒ 01:14:38.090 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, okay, okay, okay.
692 01:14:38.090 ⇒ 01:14:40.410 Clarence Stone: It’s a turn and burn. I come back Wednesday morning.
693 01:14:41.030 ⇒ 01:14:44.329 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, shit. Okay, then I’ll… then I’ll come, I’ll… I’ll be there Wednesday.
694 01:14:44.330 ⇒ 01:14:46.400 Clarence Stone: Yeah, to talk to Lone Star.
695 01:14:46.400 ⇒ 01:14:47.080 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
696 01:14:47.080 ⇒ 01:14:48.850 Clarence Stone: They only want to talk to me.
697 01:14:49.470 ⇒ 01:14:50.940 Uttam Kumaran: That’s so crazy.
698 01:14:51.360 ⇒ 01:14:52.349 Uttam Kumaran: So it’s my…
699 01:14:52.350 ⇒ 01:15:02.500 Clarence Stone: Like, their tax account manager that owns their entire deal is just like, you know what, you do really well. Because I did the meeting today earlier.
700 01:15:02.880 ⇒ 01:15:10.050 Clarence Stone: And he’s like, you did a great job. I was like, yeah. And he’s like, no, I was curious why Claire wanted you, but I get it now.
701 01:15:10.620 ⇒ 01:15:14.070 Clarence Stone: So now I just, like, ride on the account for free.
702 01:15:14.340 ⇒ 01:15:15.480 Uttam Kumaran: That’s crazy.
703 01:15:15.740 ⇒ 01:15:16.390 Clarence Stone: Yeah.
704 01:15:16.730 ⇒ 01:15:20.550 Clarence Stone: All right, okay. I’ll text you, I’ve got plenty of free time.
705 01:15:20.550 ⇒ 01:15:20.970 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
706 01:15:20.970 ⇒ 01:15:27.350 Clarence Stone: Luke 2. I’m not sure what you want me to, like, preload him with, though. Like, where is he stuck?
707 01:15:27.550 ⇒ 01:15:33.210 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, he’s just gonna ask you questions, like, so I don’t know where he’s stuck. Try not to…
708 01:15:33.410 ⇒ 01:15:43.999 Uttam Kumaran: ask him to hit you async for more stuff, because otherwise he’s gonna take a lot of your time, but, like, I don’t know where he’s stuck, but he has probably, like, 10 calls this week with agencies.
709 01:15:44.110 ⇒ 01:15:50.790 Uttam Kumaran: Who, who, like, are interested in what we’re built in this… work OS thing, so… I basically said, like.
710 01:15:51.350 ⇒ 01:15:56.140 Uttam Kumaran: Well, because he’s taking Pranav’s time, and I’m like, just call Clarence if it’s a 30-minute meeting.
711 01:15:56.600 ⇒ 01:16:02.960 Uttam Kumaran: just throw Clarence in, but now you’re also busy, so then… if you’re… if you can’t do it, just tell me, because I’ll go to those with him.
712 01:16:02.960 ⇒ 01:16:04.330 Clarence Stone: No, I can do it.
713 01:16:04.330 ⇒ 01:16:05.140 Uttam Kumaran: to go along with this.
714 01:16:05.140 ⇒ 01:16:12.949 Clarence Stone: Luke’s very important to this strategy, because, like, I don’t want him to sell something, like… because he’s already scared at the pricing, and so, like.
715 01:16:12.950 ⇒ 01:16:14.220 Uttam Kumaran: No, I know he scared of the pricing.
716 01:16:14.220 ⇒ 01:16:14.670 Clarence Stone: accurately.
717 01:16:14.670 ⇒ 01:16:24.179 Uttam Kumaran: Here in the technical background. Yeah. All he has is the brand… brand agency business content. That’s why I said, someone has to go with him, either me or you. Not for Dom. Yeah.
718 01:16:24.580 ⇒ 01:16:27.660 Clarence Stone: I’m gonna send him the value analysis, then.
719 01:16:28.070 ⇒ 01:16:31.830 Clarence Stone: Like, I want him to understand why it’s worth $7.50.
720 01:16:32.690 ⇒ 01:16:37.610 Clarence Stone: Because he was something… say something in the chat, like, I don’t know how I’m gonna argue that it’s $7.50.
721 01:16:38.680 ⇒ 01:16:42.049 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, it’s… this is why, like, you’re… The odds.
722 01:16:52.590 ⇒ 01:16:56.260 Uttam Kumaran: Dude, go to… get to your flight, bro, just… just slack this on your… when you’re way there.
723 01:16:57.660 ⇒ 01:16:59.729 Clarence Stone: Boarding doesn’t begin for another hour.
724 01:17:00.590 ⇒ 01:17:02.860 Clarence Stone: How far are you from the airport?
725 01:17:03.330 ⇒ 01:17:04.710 Clarence Stone: Literally 15 minutes.
726 01:17:04.710 ⇒ 01:17:05.580 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, okay, okay.
727 01:17:05.580 ⇒ 01:17:06.160 Clarence Stone: Yeah.
728 01:17:09.030 ⇒ 01:17:16.459 Clarence Stone: And, I have gold status on American Airlines, so… whatever. They’ll just rebook me. I know there’s a later flight.
729 01:17:22.400 ⇒ 01:17:23.830 Clarence Stone: Yeah, we have time.
730 01:17:37.480 ⇒ 01:17:40.730 Clarence Stone: Yeah, he’s got conversation strategy, he’s got scripts.
731 01:17:42.150 ⇒ 01:17:48.610 Clarence Stone: He’s got closing lines. He’s got a bajillion way to handle Objections.
732 01:17:49.500 ⇒ 01:17:52.840 Clarence Stone: And a what to send after the conversation email.
733 01:17:53.820 ⇒ 01:17:59.419 Clarence Stone: Red flags to look for, success metrics. Okay, my agent didn’t stop. I didn’t check that file yet, that’s why.
734 01:18:03.160 ⇒ 01:18:07.580 Clarence Stone: So I bumped, the fees by $50.
735 01:18:07.920 ⇒ 01:18:11.749 Clarence Stone: Right, so strategist is $300 an hour.
736 01:18:11.750 ⇒ 01:18:13.209 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’s also worth in the bush.
737 01:18:13.210 ⇒ 01:18:14.030 Clarence Stone: 50.
738 01:18:15.450 ⇒ 01:18:17.899 Uttam Kumaran: That’s also what’s in the platform anyways, so…
739 01:18:17.900 ⇒ 01:18:18.550 Clarence Stone: Yeah.
740 01:18:21.670 ⇒ 01:18:27.059 Clarence Stone: Pranav is asking… wait, who’s why?
741 01:18:27.880 ⇒ 01:18:29.700 Clarence Stone: We,
742 01:18:55.020 ⇒ 01:19:02.269 Clarence Stone: Yeah, I mean, we’ve… we might have to start training people on how to do a lot of these engagement analytics stuff, too.
743 01:19:05.180 ⇒ 01:19:08.489 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we just need to hire people to do the engagement first.
744 01:19:08.890 ⇒ 01:19:11.800 Uttam Kumaran: self, and then me and you will AI everything else.
745 01:19:11.800 ⇒ 01:19:14.400 Clarence Stone: Oh, Justin’s sister wants to talk to you.
746 01:19:15.550 ⇒ 01:19:16.460 Uttam Kumaran: Really?
747 01:19:16.850 ⇒ 01:19:20.030 Clarence Stone: Yeah, he’s getting shafted by UI right now.
748 01:19:20.380 ⇒ 01:19:30.600 Clarence Stone: And he has… he’s vibe-coded something cool, apparently. I haven’t seen it yet, because, like, he called me out of the blue saying, yo, I built something cool taxed, but don’t tell me why. And I was like.
749 01:19:30.600 ⇒ 01:19:33.620 Uttam Kumaran: I haven’t talked to him in a while, but he should come work for us.
750 01:19:33.620 ⇒ 01:19:49.669 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so that’s what I told him, like, I was like, I contract for EY, but I don’t touch AI projects. I won’t do it. I don’t build anything AI, I don’t answer AI questions, I, like, the one thing that I shared with them was OpenClock, because it’s open source, and I was saying, this is how you use open source solutions.
751 01:19:49.670 ⇒ 01:20:01.149 Clarence Stone: Right? Like, just so you know, I’m fucking better than you. And, you know, I just say, hey, there’s something better that I’m building, but, you know, this is… this is what an ejective factory should look like.
752 01:20:01.510 ⇒ 01:20:06.769 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, Justin should work… Justin should come… I mean, that was the original play anyways with him. I wanted him to come work for us.
753 01:20:06.770 ⇒ 01:20:07.989 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so I said I…
754 01:20:07.990 ⇒ 01:20:10.910 Uttam Kumaran: Probably fucking having a hard time building the company.
755 01:20:10.910 ⇒ 01:20:28.130 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so I just… I told him that, like, hey, I do it independently through EY, but I don’t touch AI projects, but UTAM will. UTAM will touch AI projects, but I do it under Brainforge, and then all of a sudden, like, there is no conflict of interest in the fact that, like, you know, I saw what EY’s AI strategy is.
756 01:20:28.130 ⇒ 01:20:31.869 Clarence Stone: Right? Because we were specifically hired to do data analytics and AI.
757 01:20:32.090 ⇒ 01:20:32.680 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
758 01:20:33.450 ⇒ 01:20:38.660 Clarence Stone: So, he’s like, oh, that makes sense. I was like, yeah, you just need a third party, like.
759 01:20:38.770 ⇒ 01:20:46.289 Clarence Stone: to control that mechanism. Because, like, so he started building shit, and EY is saying that they own it.
760 01:20:46.810 ⇒ 01:20:48.030 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, oh, duh.
761 01:20:48.030 ⇒ 01:20:50.990 Clarence Stone: And I was like, you fucking idiot, why are you doing anything for them?
762 01:20:50.990 ⇒ 01:20:58.460 Uttam Kumaran: I told… dude, I also said, bro, get out, like, you have creds, get out. But also, he wanted to start a company, and I said.
763 01:20:59.200 ⇒ 01:21:03.660 Uttam Kumaran: Dude, like, you need to go all in on that, like, there’s no way.
764 01:21:03.900 ⇒ 01:21:12.209 Clarence Stone: Yeah. And I was like, I see EI just as a way to have my escape velocity. Like, I actually prefer not to have them in my life right now, because I need to build something.
765 01:21:12.210 ⇒ 01:21:16.280 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because they’re gonna have you on Teams. Fuckin’ day.
766 01:21:16.280 ⇒ 01:21:16.990 Clarence Stone: Yeah.
767 01:21:17.260 ⇒ 01:21:24.279 Uttam Kumaran: Dude, it’s very hard to do meeting and build at the same time. I’m good at it, but it’s very tough, like…
768 01:21:24.550 ⇒ 01:21:29.729 Uttam Kumaran: to listen, And talk, and be doing cursor.
769 01:21:30.480 ⇒ 01:21:34.230 Uttam Kumaran: I’m… sometimes I’m, like… I have, like, a brain, like…
770 01:21:34.470 ⇒ 01:21:37.990 Uttam Kumaran: aneurysm. I’m like, where am I again?
771 01:21:39.370 ⇒ 01:21:48.170 Clarence Stone: Yeah, I just, like, pause as soon as I see that, like, cursor is done, and then, like, I stop talking or listening for a second, I type something out, and I’m like, what was going on?
772 01:21:50.240 ⇒ 01:21:56.140 Clarence Stone: Alright, dude, I’m out. Let me know how it goes, or if there’s any clarification I can provide to you. There’s gonna be a lot.
773 01:21:56.140 ⇒ 01:22:00.130 Uttam Kumaran: You think we should… you think we should put this cost in this…
774 01:22:00.470 ⇒ 01:22:03.200 Uttam Kumaran: spreadsheet out of SOW and in scope.
775 01:22:04.180 ⇒ 01:22:04.930 Clarence Stone: Yes.
776 01:22:06.110 ⇒ 01:22:10.240 Clarence Stone: And for costs, it should be hourly adjusted. That’s why you might be asking.
777 01:22:10.930 ⇒ 01:22:16.780 Uttam Kumaran: Well, I mean, it’s just because the first cost, it doesn’t add up to 20, so I… so, like, 50, so I need to just, like.
778 01:22:17.540 ⇒ 01:22:19.200 Uttam Kumaran: basically adjust it.
779 01:22:20.050 ⇒ 01:22:20.680 Clarence Stone: Yeah.
780 01:22:22.430 ⇒ 01:22:24.319 Uttam Kumaran: So it adds up to 50, basically.
781 01:22:27.910 ⇒ 01:22:31.369 Clarence Stone: So, I mean, Lilo is in it for $50 right now, but, like.
782 01:22:32.380 ⇒ 01:22:36.690 Clarence Stone: they’ve gotten way more than $50K in value, so I want to hear no excuses.
783 01:22:40.970 ⇒ 01:22:42.390 Clarence Stone: Okay, I’m out.
784 01:22:42.390 ⇒ 01:22:43.420 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay, alright, thanks, Ed.
785 01:22:43.420 ⇒ 01:22:48.289 Clarence Stone: Adios. Yeah, let me know how it goes. Yeah. Bye.