Meeting Title: Brainforge Default Strategy Sync Date: 2026-03-03 Meeting participants: Brylle Girang, Uttam Kumaran, Mustafa Raja, Greg Stoutenburg, Amber Lin


WEBVTT

1 00:00:18.390 00:00:19.440 Brylle Girang: Hello!

2 00:00:20.140 00:00:21.140 Uttam Kumaran: Hello.

3 00:00:27.210 00:00:32.189 Uttam Kumaran: I saw your Google Drive thing, I’m not sure. Sam may have some ideas.

4 00:00:33.040 00:00:33.740 Brylle Girang: Okay.

5 00:00:34.140 00:00:35.860 Brylle Girang: But does that make sense?

6 00:00:37.160 00:00:40.650 Uttam Kumaran: Makes sense. I don’t… I just don’t know what… what’s possible.

7 00:00:40.780 00:00:41.620 Uttam Kumaran: You know?

8 00:01:03.940 00:01:09.120 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, maybe we can start. I don’t know, Mustafa, any updates on, like, strategy stuff?

9 00:01:10.960 00:01:12.250 Mustafa Raja: Yeah, so,

10 00:01:12.670 00:01:27.919 Mustafa Raja: For default, we’re just, mapping out the… sorry, not, implementing the, events in posthog, and for this, that’s, that’s going to be just a… just the update for, for default.

11 00:01:28.220 00:01:32.159 Mustafa Raja: And we are on track with the Gantt chart.

12 00:01:33.170 00:01:33.770 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

13 00:01:35.800 00:01:38.960 Uttam Kumaran: Have they been, like, yeah…

14 00:01:39.230 00:01:43.330 Uttam Kumaran: I guess, yeah, okay, I can… Greg, we just started to talk about.

15 00:01:43.600 00:01:46.170 Greg Stoutenburg: Hey, we just started to talk about default, so…

16 00:01:46.220 00:01:51.339 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, feel free if you have anything. Yeah, we literally just started, so…

17 00:01:52.680 00:01:59.289 Greg Stoutenburg: Cool. This week, I put this in the update to them.

18 00:01:59.640 00:02:15.609 Greg Stoutenburg: Yesterday, let me look at what I wrote, thought it was great. Yeah. Basically, I need to just find time to have a call with Nandica, and we’ve been, for most weeks, we’ve been doing working sessions of 30 minutes to an hour at some point in the week, nail down…

19 00:02:15.610 00:02:27.889 Greg Stoutenburg: what’s in… what’s in Phoenix, what’s coming, get some instrumentation going. So where we’re at now is… I just want to get clear on some other workflow that’s ready to come out, instrument it.

20 00:02:27.930 00:02:44.449 Greg Stoutenburg: and at some point, need to have a conversation with them about their data sources. I was chatting with Demi about this as well, like, they’ve got… they’ve got segment, amplitude, and posthog, and the way they’re using them, as far as I can tell, there’s, like, really a lot of unnecessary.

21 00:02:44.450 00:02:47.020 Uttam Kumaran: What are they using… what are they using Amplitudes still for?

22 00:02:47.650 00:02:52.750 Greg Stoutenburg: I don’t know, but they’re sending amplitude data into Polytomic, And.

23 00:02:52.750 00:02:59.869 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think that… I think… I think that they should turn off. Like, I think that should probably be the recommendation, because they basically…

24 00:03:00.500 00:03:08.569 Uttam Kumaran: from… from what I understood, like, they just had it on, but now that they’re using PostDog, you should just tell them to… to turn it off.

25 00:03:08.940 00:03:09.650 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.

26 00:03:09.650 00:03:11.060 Uttam Kumaran: I’m… And then, and then…

27 00:03:11.220 00:03:16.360 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, and like, yeah, I want to investigate this so I don’t just go, like, hey, start shutting stuff off, and then it turns out it was.

28 00:03:16.360 00:03:16.959 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

29 00:03:16.960 00:03:24.160 Greg Stoutenburg: But, with, like, with Segment, I asked Robert for a huddle last week, because I was like, you know, I’ve not used Segment before, so I want to get clear on this, but it…

30 00:03:24.160 00:03:26.180 Uttam Kumaran: It’s gonna also tell you the same thing, that it’s like.

31 00:03:26.180 00:03:26.620 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.

32 00:03:26.620 00:03:28.270 Uttam Kumaran: A lot of stuff, yeah.

33 00:03:28.270 00:03:36.870 Greg Stoutenburg: Well, it was, because they’ve just got… the only source going into Segment for them is a site pixel, and then it’s sending it out to a bunch of places, but, like.

34 00:03:37.050 00:03:38.770 Greg Stoutenburg: Post Hog does that.

35 00:03:39.400 00:03:45.739 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so this is where, like, I think a good way to approach this is to just create a simple, like, matrix.

36 00:03:45.960 00:03:49.059 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. And be like, hey, I just wanted to have a conversation, like.

37 00:03:49.150 00:03:58.620 Uttam Kumaran: we typically, you know, we do a lot of the setup work, like, there is some… there is some duplication here. Like, the problem I think you’re gonna have is, like.

38 00:03:59.010 00:04:02.639 Uttam Kumaran: It’s just not gonna be a priority, like, to turn shit off, or like…

39 00:04:02.640 00:04:03.779 Greg Stoutenburg: Sure.

40 00:04:03.800 00:04:10.510 Uttam Kumaran: change things right now, so, like, I don’t know. I feel like, unless it’s a blocker, maybe it’s worth…

41 00:04:10.800 00:04:28.669 Uttam Kumaran: having in your back pocket when the inevitable question comes, or like, what, for example, someone will join default and be like, ask the same thing, and then they’ll be like, oh, I don’t know, like, let’s ask our data folks, you know? And so, for you to be like, yes, we recommended this, we just haven’t, like, put it in place yet, because someone.

42 00:04:28.670 00:04:28.990 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.

43 00:04:28.990 00:04:32.349 Uttam Kumaran: Someone is gonna join them and say the same thing, probably very soon.

44 00:04:33.120 00:04:52.639 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, no, and I really am just thinking more down the line, like, once May rolls around, or April rolls around, it’s time to have those conversations with them about what’s next. I’ve already tried to tee up, like, experimentation for activation in the conversation with Caitlin last week, and then just thinking ahead to, like, how can the data stuff that they’re doing be even better? Part of it can just be

45 00:04:52.980 00:04:55.760 Greg Stoutenburg: consolidation, like… Yeah.

46 00:04:56.920 00:05:00.910 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think there’s probably two things. I think there’s one, like, consolidation, but I think the…

47 00:05:00.960 00:05:17.869 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, I really think that they’re… they should just, like, have someone working on insights. Like, what we found was when Amber came in and actually, like, helped them look at all their users and stuff, like, I just don’t know how sophisticated their team is on data analytics, like.

48 00:05:17.900 00:05:23.749 Uttam Kumaran: I think they want dashboards, but the thing I’m… I’m telling Demi, and I’m… I’m kind of remind… trying to, like.

49 00:05:23.900 00:05:24.870 Uttam Kumaran: Say it.

50 00:05:25.000 00:05:30.940 Uttam Kumaran: in one way, is basically, like, I just think that we have to own that. Like, I don’t think that they’re gonna be good enough at fishing.

51 00:05:31.120 00:05:41.079 Uttam Kumaran: short term. Like, even if we get the dashboards up, like, I still think it’s a disservice if we don’t help them find those insights. So that’s what, like, my…

52 00:05:41.230 00:05:54.219 Uttam Kumaran: My rec to you is to, like, insert yourself in there, and, like, see how we can be like, hey, we just did some light exploration, we found this. Because right now, I don’t think… I don’t know if they have any cadence for, like, really looking at data.

53 00:05:55.240 00:06:07.360 Uttam Kumaran: it’s sort of like the same thing as, like, a lot of our clients, like, if we just wait until, like, yeah, we set up ETL, we set up models, we set up dashboards, and then the company still fails, like, none of it mattered.

54 00:06:07.610 00:06:18.290 Uttam Kumaran: So, what I want to do is, like, actually say, like, yeah, that’s all great, and, like, Demi will handle all that, but, like, there’s data right now that we can go glean insights from.

55 00:06:18.710 00:06:23.770 Uttam Kumaran: And Amber showed that she could do that, and so, like, I’m just wondering whether

56 00:06:24.000 00:06:30.400 Uttam Kumaran: we could take a proactive step there. Like, I think you’ll be able to nail that on anything product analytics, but…

57 00:06:30.590 00:06:33.210 Uttam Kumaran: There’s Salesforce data, there’s rev…

58 00:06:33.330 00:06:37.639 Uttam Kumaran: Pretty sure they’re sitting on a lot of that stuff. I don’t know if anyone’s actively looking at that.

59 00:06:38.310 00:06:38.980 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.

60 00:06:39.100 00:06:52.880 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, and I think on the product side, I’ve been thinking of this as, like, you know, a development of the post hoc work. This is going to be to set up a bunch of dashboards and stuff like that, but by the end of it, there still won’t be an answer to a question like, what are your user segments?

61 00:06:53.150 00:06:53.919 Greg Stoutenburg: You know, or…

62 00:06:53.920 00:06:54.240 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

63 00:06:54.240 00:06:57.750 Greg Stoutenburg: converts, right? Still won’t actually have that, so… Well, so that’s the.

64 00:06:57.750 00:07:01.050 Uttam Kumaran: The thing is, like, we could do… we have a choice, is, like.

65 00:07:01.230 00:07:05.390 Uttam Kumaran: And for me, because just knowing this client, like, I feel like…

66 00:07:05.540 00:07:15.019 Uttam Kumaran: Nandicta, I can… I think they’re trying to basically position as, like, their internal data person, but again, like, she has a job that’s, like, gonna be…

67 00:07:15.210 00:07:20.010 Uttam Kumaran: tough, because she’s just one person, and I don’t think she has all the experience, so…

68 00:07:20.210 00:07:23.819 Uttam Kumaran: Part of our thing is I want us to get closer to the insights.

69 00:07:24.160 00:07:29.309 Uttam Kumaran: Because that’s gonna allow us to continue to build the infra stuff, versus if we just build great infra.

70 00:07:29.680 00:07:33.880 Uttam Kumaran: And nothing happens, it’s sort of, like, the business isn’t gonna get impacted.

71 00:07:34.300 00:07:35.020 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.

72 00:07:35.330 00:07:40.140 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, fair. Yeah, that’s the direction I was trying to push README, and then… yeah.

73 00:07:40.390 00:07:51.359 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah. But, I mean, these guys are, I think, are growing, they’re gonna have a huge product launch, like, that’s where I… I don’t know, like, what is your… what is your thoughts on getting more involved in the actual, like.

74 00:07:51.520 00:08:02.059 Uttam Kumaran: the, like, user analytics, or, like, the revenue analytics side of things, like, do you feel comfortable on that? Do you want, like, to pair with somebody? Like, because I think that’s also a good place where…

75 00:08:02.260 00:08:05.239 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, learn some of those pieces.

76 00:08:05.540 00:08:06.530 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

77 00:08:06.530 00:08:18.690 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, I’m good to, I’m good to go deeper on user stuff already. Revenue would probably want to pair with someone and, you know, get better at, like, understanding those connections.

78 00:08:18.840 00:08:28.760 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, I… I’d love to be sort of, like, you know… So a lot… I can help, so… but, like, yeah, so I can help you on, basically.

79 00:08:28.820 00:08:34.230 Uttam Kumaran: building out… I mean, this is where, like, I don’t know… I don’t think you should be as formal as, like.

80 00:08:34.710 00:08:40.580 Uttam Kumaran: oh, here’s our, like, game plan. I think I’ll tell you what the metrics that matter for SaaS companies.

81 00:08:40.690 00:08:50.589 Uttam Kumaran: across both of those things, and I think you just go find out how to measure those, and then find out which ones are good, bad, ugly, and then…

82 00:08:50.810 00:09:00.980 Uttam Kumaran: just keep talking about it. Like, I… this is where, like, my advice, like, on the modeling side, it’s just gonna take time. I’m just really nervous that, like.

83 00:09:01.190 00:09:03.570 Uttam Kumaran: Because how slow that is, if we wait.

84 00:09:03.860 00:09:08.899 Uttam Kumaran: we’re, like, it’s… we’re gonna get jammed, and so we’re sitting on data, we have Omni stood up.

85 00:09:09.000 00:09:15.579 Uttam Kumaran: like, cheat. Basically, see if you can get some exports loaded in there, run some stuff, like.

86 00:09:15.810 00:09:19.779 Uttam Kumaran: Like, fuck it, you know? Like, because it’s already… it’s already getting late.

87 00:09:19.960 00:09:26.179 Uttam Kumaran: So I want to get ahead, and then I think you can do that. So I’ll… so I think… let me know what you want to do if you…

88 00:09:26.730 00:09:32.560 Uttam Kumaran: if you want to first canvas what data sources you have, that’s one way. I can also send you

89 00:09:32.730 00:09:38.390 Uttam Kumaran: like, some really canonical, articles on the SaaS metrics that matter.

90 00:09:38.490 00:09:41.500 Uttam Kumaran: Both revenue, user.

91 00:09:42.110 00:09:47.519 Uttam Kumaran: But, like, tell me, like, how you want to learn, and how I can help.

92 00:09:48.560 00:09:56.489 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, that sounds good. Let’s… yeah, let’s start with… send over any sources, and okay.

93 00:09:56.940 00:10:00.559 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, and I’ll… I can start digging in. I will be… I’m.

94 00:10:00.560 00:10:02.510 Uttam Kumaran: It’s all, like, it’s all, like, at… it’s all, like.

95 00:10:02.510 00:10:02.870 Greg Stoutenburg: to be.

96 00:10:02.870 00:10:09.370 Uttam Kumaran: It’s all, like, division, multiplication, it’s not, like, there’s not, like, super, super advanced stuff, so…

97 00:10:09.370 00:10:12.250 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Cool.

98 00:10:12.690 00:10:19.680 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, that sounds good. So yeah, that’s… that’s where we are with default. It’s, everything’s…

99 00:10:19.790 00:10:27.299 Greg Stoutenburg: as far as, yeah, progress report, everything’s going fine. It’s slow going, because Phoenix, this rollout is slow, so we’re…

100 00:10:28.090 00:10:29.510 Greg Stoutenburg: Proceeding apace.

101 00:10:39.840 00:10:40.910 Uttam Kumaran: Anything else?

102 00:10:46.990 00:10:52.519 Uttam Kumaran: Probably the only other thing for me is I have a plan for spinning up our internal amplitude.

103 00:10:53.540 00:10:57.160 Uttam Kumaran: That I’ll try and work on later today, I think.

104 00:10:58.310 00:10:59.369 Uttam Kumaran: So, tomorrow.

105 00:11:02.530 00:11:17.590 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, good. It’d be nice to have, like, a fully operational, demo environment, because what Amplitude gives you by default is their… is a sort of, like, fake music streaming platform. Gets you familiar with, like, using it, but there’s just so little in there.

106 00:11:17.590 00:11:31.109 Uttam Kumaran: Can I actually ask you for a favor? Do you have two seconds? If you can go to the platform repo in GitHub, there is a PR open with an amplitude plan. Can you just, like, skim that while we’re on the call? Just, like, let me know if there’s, like, anything missing.

107 00:11:31.940 00:11:33.440 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. Where is it?

108 00:11:34.060 00:11:38.049 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, if you go into the platform repo, and just go to pull requests.

109 00:11:38.440 00:11:43.010 Uttam Kumaran: There is a… there is an open pull request with the amplitude in the title.

110 00:11:44.430 00:11:47.650 Greg Stoutenburg: Amplitude, brain forge setup plan, memo, dog, footing notes, sure.

111 00:11:48.430 00:11:49.010 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

112 00:11:54.110 00:11:54.470 Greg Stoutenburg: I mean.

113 00:11:54.470 00:11:55.310 Uttam Kumaran: If you open…

114 00:11:55.600 00:11:57.120 Greg Stoutenburg: Yes.

115 00:12:02.110 00:12:04.610 Uttam Kumaran: You should be able to open it in, like, Markdown format.

116 00:12:04.970 00:12:06.740 Uttam Kumaran: So it’s not like…

117 00:12:07.070 00:12:10.690 Uttam Kumaran: super messy. I don’t know if I can show you how to do that, if you need to.

118 00:12:11.640 00:12:12.350 Greg Stoutenburg: Yep.

119 00:12:13.170 00:12:14.300 Greg Stoutenburg: commits…

120 00:12:15.030 00:12:22.819 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, if you go to Files, and then you go to the plan, there’s a little toggle for, like, the paper versus code.

121 00:12:22.820 00:12:23.390 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.

122 00:12:23.390 00:12:24.150 Uttam Kumaran: You see that?

123 00:12:24.690 00:12:25.440 Greg Stoutenburg: Yep.

124 00:12:25.440 00:12:28.499 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it should turn into Markdown, like, formatted.

125 00:12:31.070 00:12:31.830 Greg Stoutenburg: Yep, reading it.

126 00:12:31.830 00:12:32.899 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, give that a read.

127 00:12:43.740 00:12:48.010 Greg Stoutenburg: Wait, bro, this is what you shared in, sucked yesterday, right?

128 00:12:49.820 00:12:50.850 Uttam Kumaran: Damn…

129 00:12:51.200 00:12:56.380 Uttam Kumaran: It’s… I think it’s… I think this is it plus, but I have… there should be some technical pieces as well.

130 00:12:59.030 00:13:02.050 Uttam Kumaran: Is there, like, any notes on, like, the actual implementation?

131 00:13:02.750 00:13:07.110 Greg Stoutenburg: Am I looking at the wrong thing? So… Here.

132 00:13:07.110 00:13:08.389 Uttam Kumaran: Probably until now.

133 00:13:08.520 00:13:11.820 Greg Stoutenburg: Should I be looking at the… Brainforge setup.

134 00:13:13.400 00:13:14.639 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, let me look.

135 00:13:16.570 00:13:20.069 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, this isn’t what he sent. This is mine.

136 00:13:20.800 00:13:23.780 Greg Stoutenburg: This is… okay. This is the new thing. Okay.

137 00:13:24.650 00:13:28.520 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. This is… this is just… this is… yeah, exactly, Rico. This is just… this is for us.

138 00:13:29.190 00:13:29.960 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay.

139 00:13:32.040 00:13:34.160 Uttam Kumaran: Basically, what I did is I…

140 00:13:34.700 00:13:37.319 Uttam Kumaran: I… it’s kind of a little bit, like.

141 00:13:37.790 00:13:48.539 Uttam Kumaran: it’s a little bit meta. I was like, okay, I want to work… I’m gonna work on a 0-1 setup for Brainforge, so I want to make sure that it lines up with what we put into our 0-1 plan.

142 00:13:48.630 00:13:58.750 Uttam Kumaran: But, like, if it doesn’t, then I also want to update that, so that we learn. And so, it’s basically, like, line for line, it’s exactly how you do amplitude setups.

143 00:13:59.520 00:14:05.649 Uttam Kumaran: Because we’re about to do one, I’m about to do one for ourselves, so that’s why I kind of put… combined both the two, yeah.

144 00:14:06.180 00:14:07.310 Greg Stoutenburg: I see what you did.

145 00:14:07.880 00:14:08.770 Greg Stoutenburg: Yep.

146 00:14:09.800 00:14:12.259 Uttam Kumaran: That’s the dog… that was a dog-fooding part of this.

147 00:14:12.510 00:14:14.349 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, yeah, got it, okay.

148 00:14:42.700 00:14:47.919 Greg Stoutenburg: with some training, we can actually get Amplitude, we can get an agent to do this using Amplitude MCP.

149 00:14:50.200 00:14:50.970 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

150 00:14:51.750 00:14:52.470 Uttam Kumaran: law.

151 00:14:52.890 00:14:54.339 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, I have a…

152 00:14:54.970 00:15:04.290 Greg Stoutenburg: former colleague of Stack Overflow, who’s a big Amplitude guy, too, and he showed off some of their AI stuff, and what he was able to do, just using a text input through, I think, Claude.

153 00:15:04.420 00:15:07.550 Greg Stoutenburg: was… shocking for what then shows.

154 00:15:07.550 00:15:12.709 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, sick, okay. Yeah, so that’s the thing, is like, I… I just did the basics.

155 00:15:13.020 00:15:16.419 Uttam Kumaran: But if you want to think about, like, what… how they could go further.

156 00:15:16.810 00:15:17.180 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.

157 00:15:17.180 00:15:19.499 Uttam Kumaran: do as… I’d like to literally do as much

158 00:15:19.710 00:15:22.799 Uttam Kumaran: related to this as possible in one go, like, I don’t wanna…

159 00:15:23.350 00:15:23.770 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay.

160 00:15:23.770 00:15:25.729 Uttam Kumaran: think about amplitude again for a while.

161 00:15:25.730 00:15:28.579 Greg Stoutenburg: You’d rather not be just iterating on this for a while, but, like, really be thorough here.

162 00:15:28.580 00:15:34.030 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I’m gonna spend 4 hours on this, and I wanna get as much humanly done as possible.

163 00:15:35.480 00:15:41.310 Uttam Kumaran: I’m gonna use as much AI, and I’m gonna document as much as humanly possible. Sure.

164 00:15:41.540 00:15:54.690 Uttam Kumaran: So that, like, we not only get basic setup, we get, like, the basic dashboards, but, like, I want you to… I basically want our demo instance to be, like, maxed out, like, have every feature, or, like, at least we have a way of using every single thing.

165 00:15:54.960 00:15:57.310 Uttam Kumaran: And then I’ll… and then it’ll sit there.

166 00:15:58.180 00:15:58.990 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay.

167 00:16:00.400 00:16:05.340 Greg Stoutenburg: Cool. Should I just make comments on the PR, or… Yeah.

168 00:16:05.340 00:16:06.870 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s great.

169 00:16:07.150 00:16:11.610 Greg Stoutenburg: I’ll just do that, and yeah, I have, I have ideas here.

170 00:16:11.760 00:16:14.369 Greg Stoutenburg: Cool. Yeah, I like it.

171 00:16:15.070 00:16:25.830 Greg Stoutenburg: I think… I think ultimately it will be possible to pretty much be able to have a functional amplitude instance for a client, you know, as long as we’ve got the

172 00:16:26.200 00:16:37.030 Greg Stoutenburg: the instrumentation work is always just good. That’s human work for now. Aside from that, to be able to pretty much just, like, run a script, and have it done in…

173 00:16:37.270 00:16:40.029 Greg Stoutenburg: Inside of 2 weeks, 10 days, something like that.

174 00:16:40.030 00:16:43.409 Uttam Kumaran: Well, we just don’t have a lot of, like, complexity in our.