Meeting Title: Brainforge Team Introduction and Sync Date: 2026-03-04 Meeting participants: Brylle Girang, Greg Stoutenburg


WEBVTT

1 00:02:44.600 00:02:45.640 Brylle Girang: Hey, Greg.

2 00:02:46.180 00:02:47.400 Greg Stoutenburg: Hey, bro, how’s it going?

3 00:02:47.890 00:02:50.510 Brylle Girang: This was a bad time.

4 00:02:50.510 00:02:54.309 Greg Stoutenburg: Oh, it’s okay. It’s always a bad time.

5 00:02:54.490 00:02:56.449 Brylle Girang: It was nice meeting you, Greg. I just want.

6 00:02:56.450 00:02:57.290 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.

7 00:02:57.730 00:03:05.960 Brylle Girang: I just wanted to get, you know, 30 minutes out of our times just to connect personally and, like, communicate what we’re doing here.

8 00:03:06.150 00:03:11.299 Brylle Girang: I’m really interested in the things that you’re doing, Greg, and I’m going to start with this, like.

9 00:03:12.070 00:03:14.230 Brylle Girang: How did you end up in Brainforge?

10 00:03:15.120 00:03:29.720 Greg Stoutenburg: I put a note in the Amplitude Slack that, like, like their cohort community Slack, in the jobs channel, that I was looking for the next thing, and the same day, Utam DM’d me, and was like, let’s talk, and

11 00:03:30.140 00:03:34.800 Greg Stoutenburg: Here I am. So, best job search ever.

12 00:03:34.800 00:03:41.749 Brylle Girang: It’s like Mustafi’s M.O. I think Mustafa has been… has been,

13 00:03:41.910 00:03:49.640 Brylle Girang: pulled in the Brain Forge, the same way, like, Utam saw Mustafa, and then he just sent Mustafa a message. That is amazing.

14 00:03:49.940 00:03:50.630 Brylle Girang: Wow.

15 00:03:50.630 00:03:55.159 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was, it was nice and smooth, and so then I did…

16 00:03:55.500 00:04:03.930 Greg Stoutenburg: in, I don’t know, like, something like the second and third week of December, I did, like, a, you know, like, a 10-hour, 15-hour project, and

17 00:04:04.420 00:04:12.199 Greg Stoutenburg: they were like, yeah, let’s give you more, and so then, since, you know, since the new year, you know, I’ve been here for the… since the new year.

18 00:04:12.430 00:04:19.319 Brylle Girang: Oh, wow, that is amazing. So, can you tell me more about what you really do, what your focuses are?

19 00:04:20.070 00:04:35.439 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, sure. I mean, so, like, my real background is I was a philosophy professor until 2021. I got a philosophy PhD in 2016, and I did that full-time for a while, and it was just like, I just, I need to be doing something else. This is not, like, this is not the fit.

20 00:04:35.440 00:04:40.449 Greg Stoutenburg: So, but my background was not very technical. I mean, like, I did… I did techy stuff.

21 00:04:40.450 00:04:55.760 Greg Stoutenburg: when I was in high school, like, I did some web design, I did some JavaScript, I, you know, I did some animation, I did computer hardware and software, but, like, that was just… that was, like, in high school. It was, like, high school classes, you know? So that wasn’t what I did for the longest time, and then…

22 00:04:56.210 00:05:07.879 Greg Stoutenburg: when I wanted to leave higher ed, I got a job at Stack Overflow working on product onboarding, and so, what I’ve been gearing up for when I wanted to make a career transition was, like.

23 00:05:07.880 00:05:25.579 Greg Stoutenburg: alright, something in, like, product analytics looks like it might be a way to go for me. And what really helped me, like, like, crack the code to figure out what the right transition was gonna be is realizing that I’d been teaching these online classes for, like, 10 years, and I had to do things like pay attention to the rate of student drop-off.

24 00:05:25.610 00:05:27.900 Greg Stoutenburg: And I started to realize, like, oh, like.

25 00:05:28.000 00:05:47.430 Greg Stoutenburg: there’s a direct analog to this in software, because people will sign up for an app, and companies are very eager to make sure that as many of them stick around as possible. And I was like, oh, hey, I actually have a background in this. So, that was… that was sort of the transition, and then the last, whatever this is, 5 years since,

26 00:05:47.720 00:05:56.839 Greg Stoutenburg: has really been about, getting better at product analytics. I’ve been a growth PM for a few years, so, yeah, yeah.

27 00:05:57.260 00:05:59.860 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, I… I… Yeah.

28 00:06:00.280 00:06:12.770 Brylle Girang: That is amazing. I just… I just read something about, you know, Leonardo da Vinci, just last week, and then it talked about how Leonardo was really successful in…

29 00:06:13.650 00:06:27.000 Brylle Girang: building things, and that’s by connecting anatomy, which is something that he has been studying with machines. It really fits what you described, like, you’re trying to find a way to connect

30 00:06:27.520 00:06:33.680 Brylle Girang: Your teaching history with product analytics, and then… wow Wow.

31 00:06:33.960 00:06:34.390 Greg Stoutenburg: Thank you.

32 00:06:34.390 00:06:43.290 Brylle Girang: I’m Andrews. So, I’m curious, what do we mean by product analytics? Like, can you give me more insights into that?

33 00:06:44.180 00:07:01.140 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, I mean, I think the only reason that we call it product analytics as though it’s a different thing from, like, business analytics or data analytics is just that we’re looking at… I mean, really, I think, ultimately, it’s all data analytics. But we call it product analytics when what we’re interested in is, like, what users do.

34 00:07:01.220 00:07:05.109 Greg Stoutenburg: in an app, or on a website. So,

35 00:07:05.200 00:07:14.940 Greg Stoutenburg: you know, for me, and for me, that maps directly onto the teaching stuff, because what I cared about was what students do from the moment they try to sign up for my class.

36 00:07:15.010 00:07:27.010 Greg Stoutenburg: through the rest of the semester, right? Like, I don’t care about enrollment at the college. Like, that wasn’t my concern as an instructor, right? I don’t… I don’t care how many students, like, drop out of the college, or sign up for the college, or how much…

37 00:07:27.030 00:07:39.309 Greg Stoutenburg: how much we give away in aid, or how many finish a degree. I don’t literally mean they don’t care, but I mean, like, that’s not where my focus is, right? My focus is on

38 00:07:39.550 00:07:49.060 Greg Stoutenburg: what happens inside my class with my students. So, product analytics, I think, is, like, it just takes exactly, like, the same view of,

39 00:07:49.470 00:07:56.250 Greg Stoutenburg: You know, the data that we care about is what users are doing from the moment they land on your webpage through doing something with it.

40 00:07:57.110 00:07:59.990 Brylle Girang: Oh, okay, that’s clear, that’s clear.

41 00:08:00.530 00:08:01.200 Greg Stoutenburg: Fair enough.

42 00:08:02.010 00:08:04.420 Brylle Girang: Just trying to, like, intake all of those stuff.

43 00:08:09.590 00:08:16.649 Brylle Girang: Okay, okay, that makes sense. But how did you, like, how did you get into the more technical side of things there?

44 00:08:17.440 00:08:22.500 Greg Stoutenburg: I mean, my opinion is that I’m really still just not that technical. Like, I, you know, I…

45 00:08:22.820 00:08:25.379 Greg Stoutenburg: as time went on, I learned how to get

46 00:08:25.590 00:08:32.240 Greg Stoutenburg: better at answering the very specific questions that I had, but, like, For me, the view…

47 00:08:32.470 00:08:35.980 Greg Stoutenburg: so prior to coming to Brainforge, the view was always just, like.

48 00:08:36.080 00:08:38.369 Greg Stoutenburg: Alright, a user came to the website.

49 00:08:38.539 00:08:49.260 Greg Stoutenburg: But they didn’t pay us. Why? Where did they drop off? You know what I mean? And just, like, trying to get narrower and narrower on the questions that I had. So, you know, I’m…

50 00:08:49.640 00:08:52.919 Greg Stoutenburg: I’m… I’m probably, as far as, like, people on the

51 00:08:53.630 00:08:59.059 Greg Stoutenburg: people on delivery, I’m probably on the lower side of technical.

52 00:08:59.230 00:09:10.660 Greg Stoutenburg: you know, because I was a… I was a PM. I was like, how do we align stuff that happens in the product and with what users are doing with revenue and conversion and retention, things like that, you know what I mean? Yeah.

53 00:09:10.960 00:09:13.870 Greg Stoutenburg: Where I think it’s really helpful, though, is because…

54 00:09:13.890 00:09:33.419 Greg Stoutenburg: where I don’t have maybe some of the technical chops that some other people on the team do, I, like, I relate immediately with our clients’ business objectives, and how to translate that into, like, figuring out what needs to be measured, and if it’s going well, you know what I mean? So, I think, yeah, I think it’s helpful for that kind of, like.

55 00:09:34.020 00:09:37.089 Greg Stoutenburg: client empathy, but yeah, I don’t…

56 00:09:37.550 00:09:43.950 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, thank goodness for Cursor and other AI tools, because I’m really… I’m really not that technical, so…

57 00:09:44.090 00:09:45.440 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay, gotcha.

58 00:09:45.570 00:09:50.660 Brylle Girang: That makes sense. So, speaking of Kirk right now, Greg, how…

59 00:09:51.780 00:10:00.969 Brylle Girang: how… how… on a scale of 1 to 10, how… how do you call this? I’m trying to find the right word. Like, how brainwashed are you into using cursor?

60 00:10:01.400 00:10:05.829 Greg Stoutenburg: I’ve started to default to it a lot more, like…

61 00:10:05.830 00:10:23.510 Greg Stoutenburg: you know, like, I saw the report you put out the other day, I was like, alright, how do I get out of the orange category? Well, I’ll tell you, part of the reason I’m in the orange category is because I just use my own Claude… my own Clawed desktop app for a lot of things, so I was like, alright, I gotta… I gotta make sure that my events are showing up for Brainforge, so they actually see my usage.

62 00:10:23.510 00:10:34.630 Greg Stoutenburg: But it’s… it’s gotten easier the better… honestly, the better organized the vault has become, because I think that as of, like, as of the changes that have been made in the last, I don’t know, couple weeks,

63 00:10:34.800 00:10:37.890 Greg Stoutenburg: It’s… the cursor experience has just gotten better, like…

64 00:10:38.000 00:10:56.930 Greg Stoutenburg: you know, when I started, even though it wasn’t that long ago, like, you know, I could… I could try to ask Kirsten to do something, and it might be that the resource that I would ultimately need to access just didn’t exist, or, like, you know, it’s… we’ve been relying on Notion for that, and it’s, you know, and I’m pointed at the wrong thing, or whatever, so…

65 00:10:57.480 00:11:01.860 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, it’s, yeah, I think it’s gotten better. And then…

66 00:11:02.300 00:11:21.700 Greg Stoutenburg: And then, you know, some of… some of what’s going to make someone use an AI tool for something, rather than, you know, doing it another way, has partly to depend on what it is you’re trying to accomplish, right? If it’s like, I want to get some… you know, I want to do the EP audit, for example, of all my tickets, that’s a very clear AI use case, right? If it’s like.

67 00:11:21.810 00:11:23.540 Greg Stoutenburg: If it’s gonna be something more like.

68 00:11:24.370 00:11:32.300 Greg Stoutenburg: For example, Eden is asking me, hey, help us optimize Mixpanel, because this…

69 00:11:32.900 00:11:50.340 Greg Stoutenburg: this company we’ve contracted with says that they see drop-offs in this funnel here. I can’t just go to Cursor and just ask it to do that, you know what I mean? Like, it’s just a different kind of task. I can… I can ask Cursor, hey, here’s what the client said, give me an action plan for how I can, you know, sketch out a roadmap for how I’m gonna deliver that in the next 3 weeks.

70 00:11:50.600 00:11:52.140 Greg Stoutenburg: But that’s different, you know what I mean?

71 00:11:52.570 00:11:53.390 Brylle Girang: Yeah, yeah.

72 00:11:53.390 00:11:56.640 Greg Stoutenburg: Anyway, yeah, so the muscles, you know, it’s being conditioned.

73 00:11:57.200 00:11:58.069 Greg Stoutenburg: Yes, okay.

74 00:11:58.180 00:12:05.349 Brylle Girang: That makes sense, okay. And then, so, going back to cursor, like, Greg, what challenges right now

75 00:12:05.480 00:12:12.880 Brylle Girang: that you’re having, that you wish that cursor can just do for you, aside from fixing unique problems for clients?

76 00:12:13.260 00:12:17.170 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. Yeah, hmm.

77 00:12:18.350 00:12:27.829 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, I mean, I guess I still kind of feel like I did Monday, which is like, geez, I don’t immediately know what I think a cursor could, like, do for me.

78 00:12:28.020 00:12:40.050 Greg Stoutenburg: I… I think something that would be… well, I think something that’s gonna be really helpful is us continuing to build out these playbooks for things like the Omni Accelerator, like, you know, you put that together, or Product Analytics Accelerator, like…

79 00:12:40.310 00:12:44.779 Greg Stoutenburg: The closer we can get to the following state, the better off we’ll be.

80 00:12:45.200 00:13:05.189 Greg Stoutenburg: Closer we can get to, a new client says, I want to do, I want you to help my team with our product analytics implementation. I want you to do your two-week audit and roadmap and light implementation, or at least proposal for how we’ll implement it. And then I just go to Cursor, and I just, like, feed in the SOW, feed in transcripts.

81 00:13:05.390 00:13:23.269 Greg Stoutenburg: feed in, like, some product names, like, we’re using Amplitude rather than Pendo, you know, and just… and just go, like, give me the… give me the 3-week accelerator for this client, and phrase it according to their needs, and go, like, the faster we’re gonna go. So, like, that sort of thing is gonna help me… I know that sort of thing is gonna help me a lot.

82 00:13:24.140 00:13:34.059 Brylle Girang: That’s entirely possible. That’s maybe one of the reasons why we’re pushing out these memos, and those are quick ones, so that we can tailor-fit it to our clients, right?

83 00:13:34.800 00:13:35.990 Greg Stoutenburg: Nope. Yep.

84 00:13:35.990 00:13:47.160 Brylle Girang: let’s… let’s remove cursor from our minds, like, what are your day-to-day tasks, especially the recurring, boring stuff that you’re doing, that you… Yeah. Just tell me more about that.

85 00:13:47.620 00:13:58.669 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, honestly, I don’t know, I’ve had a lot of variety since I’ve been here. There hasn’t been a lot of recurring anything, honestly. It’s, you know, it’s been… it’s been new each day.

86 00:13:59.220 00:14:00.819 Greg Stoutenburg: And I think, yeah.

87 00:14:01.100 00:14:09.020 Greg Stoutenburg: I’ve… yeah, because… well, because I’ve touched a lot of projects, and I’ve taken on different parts of those projects, so they’re really,

88 00:14:10.090 00:14:21.419 Greg Stoutenburg: there really hasn’t been a lot that’s been repeatable. I think I’m approaching now the point where some things can be repeated, like, again, like the Omni stuff, being at the tail end of this, you know, very fast two-week.

89 00:14:21.540 00:14:25.799 Greg Stoutenburg: Sprint. We were able to get some learnings from that.

90 00:14:25.920 00:14:29.679 Greg Stoutenburg: I’m at the point where, with the product analytics implementation.

91 00:14:30.080 00:14:37.750 Greg Stoutenburg: I feel like I’ve learned enough from what’s happened so far with default that I know, alright, I’m in a position where I can, like, work on a playbook for this.

92 00:14:37.940 00:14:55.190 Greg Stoutenburg: But I don’t really get a lot of… I really don’t get a lot of repeatable stuff so far. Maybe I will, like, if… if the MixPanel reporting stuff and experimentation stuff with Eden goes a certain way, I might be in a position where, like, every week.

93 00:14:55.370 00:15:00.589 Greg Stoutenburg: I’m like, alright, I need to run this same command, you know? But just not there yet.

94 00:15:01.070 00:15:08.479 Brylle Girang: Okay, okay, that makes sense. So, I just wanted to, like, also give more clarity on what I’m trying to do here in Brain Forge.

95 00:15:08.630 00:15:15.969 Brylle Girang: Basically, my goal here is to maximize the adoption of our users of our teams.

96 00:15:15.970 00:15:18.710 Greg Stoutenburg: With the systems that we’re building.

97 00:15:18.760 00:15:32.790 Brylle Girang: That’s why I’m trying to, like, push this course or usage report, trying to understand who’s not using these things, how can you help them adopt what are their challenges, what are their fiction points, etc. So that’s going to be, like, my long-term goal.

98 00:15:33.120 00:15:43.909 Brylle Girang: basically pushing AI nativity to the company so that AI is no longer just an afterthought, a fallback when you’re having challenge with something, but rather.

99 00:15:43.910 00:15:44.310 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.

100 00:15:44.310 00:15:46.939 Brylle Girang: Go-to. The go-to tool, like, to do.

101 00:15:46.940 00:15:47.520 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.

102 00:15:47.940 00:15:49.629 Brylle Girang: I know that there are some…

103 00:15:50.080 00:16:00.249 Brylle Girang: there are some things that you’ll be better off, like, trying to figure out by yourself, with your expertise, etc, but there will be things that we can help you out on.

104 00:16:00.250 00:16:00.720 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.

105 00:16:00.720 00:16:12.600 Brylle Girang: efficient, more productive. So that’s what I’m trying to, like, lead here in Brainforge, and I hear you when you… when you say that you wish there would be, like, training sessions, there would be, like.

106 00:16:12.810 00:16:22.719 Brylle Girang: Zoom clips, Loom videos, etc, of the things that we’re building, and that’s also one of the things that I will be leading the charge on.

107 00:16:22.880 00:16:28.109 Brylle Girang: our engineers here have been building really amazing things, and I just feel…

108 00:16:28.670 00:16:38.039 Brylle Girang: there’s no bridge of these amazing things, between these amazing things, the people, right? They’re shipping PRs, they’re sending updates, and then

109 00:16:38.840 00:16:43.850 Brylle Girang: No one’s translating those updates into, like, how can this help you out?

110 00:16:43.970 00:16:45.560 Brylle Girang: So, those…

111 00:16:45.560 00:16:45.960 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, exactly.

112 00:16:45.960 00:16:47.830 Brylle Girang: things that I’m trying to focus on.

113 00:16:48.300 00:16:58.890 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And when I… when I made those requests for, like, walkthroughs of some flows that had been built, really, that’s just to, like, stimulate my own creativity, because sometimes, like.

114 00:16:59.150 00:17:01.670 Greg Stoutenburg: I’ve seen some things, for example, that Utom has put up.

115 00:17:01.920 00:17:14.060 Greg Stoutenburg: where I thought, oh, I didn’t, like, I didn’t even… I didn’t even realize how good of an idea that was until I saw it, and then I’m like, oh, well, actually, here’s a place where I could use the same thing, you know?

116 00:17:14.540 00:17:19.269 Greg Stoutenburg: So, for example, like, I’ve used cursor…

117 00:17:19.450 00:17:21.469 Greg Stoutenburg: I’ve used Furser to draft docs.

118 00:17:21.680 00:17:25.769 Greg Stoutenburg: in a language that’s more, like, how I actually write, because

119 00:17:26.130 00:17:41.520 Greg Stoutenburg: I don’t even remember some of the docs that I’ve used, but just as an example, right? Like, sure, we want to follow Brainforge format for an SOW, for example, but, like, if it says it was authored by me, it should sound like I wrote it, you know what I mean? So, I’ll give an example of, like, you know.

120 00:17:41.520 00:17:59.930 Greg Stoutenburg: here’s some… here’s something else I wrote in a different context. Identify this style and write it in this style, you know, things like that, and make sure that that’s all located in some folder. Now, again, that’s a one-off task rather than, like, workflow, but still, seeing… seeing examples of how other people are using tools is just, you know.

121 00:17:59.940 00:18:02.419 Greg Stoutenburg: Stimulating for… for curiosity.

122 00:18:03.000 00:18:09.529 Brylle Girang: That is helpful, yeah. One thing that we’re trying to also lead the charge on is a weekly digest for our.

123 00:18:09.530 00:18:10.120 Greg Stoutenburg: Yep.

124 00:18:10.120 00:18:11.210 Brylle Girang: So that, the amazing…

125 00:18:11.590 00:18:15.259 Brylle Girang: that’s happening within the week. We can actually share it

126 00:18:15.430 00:18:22.640 Brylle Girang: In a bite-sized manner, where people can see how it works, people can maybe chime in on how they’re using it, etc.

127 00:18:22.980 00:18:41.410 Brylle Girang: Yeah, that’s pretty helpful. So, you mentioned that, you know, I’m hoping that you don’t get bored of the things that you’re doing, but if ever it comes to that, if you… if you find it frustrating to, like, create client decks every time you have a weekly prep, etc.

128 00:18:41.760 00:18:42.380 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.

129 00:18:42.380 00:18:42.870 Brylle Girang: Those are.

130 00:18:42.870 00:18:53.529 Greg Stoutenburg: Oh, I would love for AI to do that. Yeah, I would love for AI to do that. I got, mustafa turned me on to WhisperFlow, so I’m using that for, like, dictation, just to speed things up.

131 00:18:53.530 00:18:54.590 Brylle Girang: Yeah.

132 00:18:54.590 00:19:00.090 Greg Stoutenburg: But… Yeah, I’ve always found making decks tedious.

133 00:19:00.630 00:19:03.580 Greg Stoutenburg: My whole life.

134 00:19:03.980 00:19:12.410 Greg Stoutenburg: I could do… I could do it, but it’s like, ugh, like, who’s this for? But I know other people love them. So, yeah, I look forward to getting AI to…

135 00:19:12.530 00:19:14.809 Greg Stoutenburg: Take that over as much as possible.

136 00:19:15.010 00:19:16.629 Brylle Girang: The good news, I’m going to share.

137 00:19:16.630 00:19:17.190 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.

138 00:19:17.190 00:19:18.480 Brylle Girang: they were…

139 00:19:18.480 00:19:19.780 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. Please do.

140 00:19:19.780 00:19:35.349 Brylle Girang: There’s just a command similar to EP Audit, where you just click it, and then it searches everything, gives you topics, you can chime in if you have any specific topics, then creates… Nice. Not a deck, but something that you can just copy-paste over to a deck.

141 00:19:35.350 00:19:36.150 Greg Stoutenburg: Perfect.

142 00:19:36.150 00:19:39.580 Brylle Girang: format that you have, so yeah, let’s go… That’ll work. I hope that will help you.

143 00:19:40.870 00:19:43.450 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, that sounds good.

144 00:19:43.810 00:19:50.940 Greg Stoutenburg: Hey, I was hoping to, you know, hear more about your background and work and things like that. I should get going, though, and prepare for the default call in just a little bit, though.

145 00:19:51.100 00:19:53.959 Brylle Girang: Yeah, it’s okay. Thank you so much for the time, Craig.

146 00:19:54.270 00:19:58.579 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, we’ll talk more soon. Cool. Alright, glad you’re around. Yeah, looking forward to working with you more.

147 00:19:58.860 00:20:00.679 Brylle Girang: You too, bye-bye. See ya. Bye.