Meeting Title: Brainforge x Eden Project Check-in Date: 2025-12-02 Meeting participants: Robert Tseng, Henry Zhao
WEBVTT
1 00:01:24.580 ⇒ 00:01:25.869 Henry Zhao: Hey, Robert, how’s it going?
2 00:01:26.930 ⇒ 00:01:29.700 Robert Tseng: Henry. I’m good, just eating lunch.
3 00:01:30.170 ⇒ 00:01:31.509 Henry Zhao: Are you back from Hong Kong?
4 00:01:33.270 ⇒ 00:01:36.539 Henry Zhao: That’s crazy that you were so close to that big fire, I’m just glad you’re okay.
5 00:01:37.050 ⇒ 00:01:44.860 Robert Tseng: Yeah, it was right across, the river from where I was living with my in-laws. We could see it from home, yeah.
6 00:01:45.090 ⇒ 00:01:46.620 Henry Zhao: You can see, like, all the smoke and everything?
7 00:01:46.620 ⇒ 00:01:49.039 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, it was… it was pretty crazy.
8 00:01:49.290 ⇒ 00:01:55.900 Robert Tseng: We actually did, we volunteered with some of the fire relief efforts on Friday, so that was…
9 00:01:56.170 ⇒ 00:02:09.169 Robert Tseng: That was cool to see. I feel like the community mobilized very quickly. It happened on Wednesday. There was, like, an… like, an app that someone made that, like, signed up for volunteering stuff, like, within a few hours.
10 00:02:09.590 ⇒ 00:02:10.780 Robert Tseng: And then…
11 00:02:11.560 ⇒ 00:02:17.080 Robert Tseng: Yeah, a lot of people showed up to try to help, with things. I mean, I don’t speak Cantonese, so I wasn’t…
12 00:02:17.190 ⇒ 00:02:19.640 Robert Tseng: very helpful. I could only really do the…
13 00:02:19.980 ⇒ 00:02:23.589 Robert Tseng: The daycare, which is, like, for kids, like, under 5.
14 00:02:23.760 ⇒ 00:02:30.689 Robert Tseng: So I was just, like, watching children. Like, Rachel was able to do more useful things, but.
15 00:02:30.690 ⇒ 00:02:31.800 Henry Zhao: It’s called Cantonese.
16 00:02:31.800 ⇒ 00:02:34.479 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, she grew up born and raised in Hong Kong, yeah.
17 00:02:34.640 ⇒ 00:02:36.519 Henry Zhao: Oh, okay, cool. Didn’t know that.
18 00:02:36.990 ⇒ 00:02:37.540 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
19 00:02:38.470 ⇒ 00:02:41.990 Robert Tseng: Wait, I have a question. Are you… are you married?
20 00:02:42.420 ⇒ 00:02:43.010 Henry Zhao: No.
21 00:02:43.370 ⇒ 00:02:43.830 Robert Tseng: Yo.
22 00:02:43.830 ⇒ 00:02:44.410 Henry Zhao: Why?
23 00:02:44.760 ⇒ 00:02:48.450 Robert Tseng: Because you, you, you, you said the term in-laws to me once.
24 00:02:49.690 ⇒ 00:02:50.430 Henry Zhao: Did I?
25 00:02:50.850 ⇒ 00:02:51.470 Henry Zhao: I think it is.
26 00:02:52.380 ⇒ 00:02:53.390 Robert Tseng: I think so.
27 00:02:55.520 ⇒ 00:02:59.630 Henry Zhao: And yeah, maybe say brother-in-law, like, I think that’s my brother, my sister’s husband, right?
28 00:03:00.080 ⇒ 00:03:04.199 Robert Tseng: Okay, maybe. Yeah, you said, yeah, you said, you said something in law.
29 00:03:05.870 ⇒ 00:03:07.490 Henry Zhao: Or maybe I was talking about in law school.
30 00:03:07.740 ⇒ 00:03:08.480 Henry Zhao: for…
31 00:03:09.180 ⇒ 00:03:15.350 Robert Tseng: No, no, okay, okay, well, I guess maybe it must be your brother-in-law. I don’t exactly remember the message, but, yeah.
32 00:03:15.720 ⇒ 00:03:16.580 Robert Tseng: Okay.
33 00:03:19.540 ⇒ 00:03:22.639 Henry Zhao: Cool, so how are things going? What do you want to talk about? How do you want to…
34 00:03:23.800 ⇒ 00:03:25.089 Henry Zhao: Go through this today.
35 00:03:25.410 ⇒ 00:03:32.790 Robert Tseng: Well, I mean, I guess, we’re gonna chat through some of the analysis ideas that maybe you have, and then…
36 00:03:33.510 ⇒ 00:03:37.549 Robert Tseng: I know you’re going to… Texas in a couple weeks, so…
37 00:03:38.160 ⇒ 00:03:40.710 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I guess…
38 00:03:42.280 ⇒ 00:03:47.830 Robert Tseng: I mean, where I’ve already talked to Utam, I know that we’re still trying to figure out, like.
39 00:03:48.790 ⇒ 00:04:00.040 Robert Tseng: what… where… where to… as… as our org… as our org structure is changing, like, kind of where we’re gonna put you, I guess, so, that’s… that’s… I’m sure that conversation will come in a week or two, yeah.
40 00:04:00.980 ⇒ 00:04:10.009 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I’ll be in Texas next Monday, so… Yeah. I already blocked off the calendar, so I’ll probably meet with Utsam in a WeWork or somewhere, to kind of just go through…
41 00:04:10.010 ⇒ 00:04:11.049 Henry Zhao: Go through all that stuff.
42 00:04:11.340 ⇒ 00:04:19.989 Henry Zhao: But right now, I kind of just want to wrap up the year with making sure that we’re good on Honey Stinger, so I’ll take a look at the Acosta data tonight.
43 00:04:20.350 ⇒ 00:04:24.550 Henry Zhao: Yeah, usually I do Honey Stinger stuff at night, because it’s more peaceful.
44 00:04:24.710 ⇒ 00:04:44.629 Henry Zhao: Yeah, yeah. And then for Eden, I’m kind of just listing out all the analysis that we want to propose and do for 2026, get your thoughts on it, and kind of finish these action items here by end of year, because it’s going to require meeting with some people on Eden, getting a better understanding of, like, what can we actually drive, and I think that was some of the challenges,
45 00:04:44.830 ⇒ 00:04:49.309 Henry Zhao: with some of the other places where I got stuck with analysis was, like, not knowing what we can actually drive, and…
46 00:04:49.580 ⇒ 00:04:53.319 Henry Zhao: what we can actually have the power to recommend, right? So…
47 00:04:54.580 ⇒ 00:05:00.669 Henry Zhao: I shared with you this doc, so we… you don’t have to read all of it right now, but I just wanted to go over the big code, and then you can read over it later, okay?
48 00:05:00.670 ⇒ 00:05:01.320 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
49 00:05:01.960 ⇒ 00:05:07.729 Henry Zhao: So, I think the big three buckets are pharmacy operations, since Zoran is taking care of the
50 00:05:07.920 ⇒ 00:05:20.190 Henry Zhao: marketing and attribution parts of it. And then I met with Sezim earlier today to talk about, like, the forecasting stuff, so we can work on that, together, and Casey can help me with some of the smaller analysis in the meantime.
51 00:05:20.500 ⇒ 00:05:32.920 Henry Zhao: But then beyond pharmacy operations, there’s also customer relations, so that’s, like, the stuff we talked about when I made that dashboard for Judd, of, like, working on, you know, kind of giving him recommendations on the work he does with win-back campaigns.
52 00:05:32.920 ⇒ 00:05:49.350 Henry Zhao: abandoned cart campaigns, and then any, like, Zendesk stuff, and anything else that, like, Bobby kind of brings up, right? And the third thing, based on what we have, in the discussions recently, is product insights, right? So look at product performance, and look at pricing trends, and figuring out, like, what recommendations we can make there.
53 00:05:50.350 ⇒ 00:05:50.900 Robert Tseng: Nope.
54 00:05:51.390 ⇒ 00:05:59.420 Henry Zhao: So the goals in pharmacy operations, if you think about it, are multiple-fold, right? So one is, for telehealth, reduce COGS by 4.4% monthly.
55 00:05:59.530 ⇒ 00:06:01.740 Henry Zhao: I just learned that the real reason.
56 00:06:01.740 ⇒ 00:06:03.080 Robert Tseng: Where did you come up with that number?
57 00:06:03.450 ⇒ 00:06:04.400 Henry Zhao: That was from Brad.
58 00:06:04.590 ⇒ 00:06:05.320 Robert Tseng: Oh, bye.
59 00:06:06.780 ⇒ 00:06:18.010 Henry Zhao: So… so… my misunderstanding earlier was that we can’t really influence COGS. What we can do with COGS is they’re basically negotiating COGS with all the different pharmacies that they have.
60 00:06:18.100 ⇒ 00:06:31.989 Henry Zhao: And they need to have the data in Tableau to be able to say, like, this is the COGS that we’re comfortable operating with, and if they can’t make a deal, they would basically, like, reroute it to different pharmacies, or maybe, like, speed up the timeline for Eden Pharmacy. So this is less of a, like, should we…
61 00:06:31.990 ⇒ 00:06:41.050 Henry Zhao: have bigger or smaller file sizes, but it’s rather, like, informing them so that they have the data to go to negotiations and make, like, valid decisions.
62 00:06:41.170 ⇒ 00:06:42.179 Henry Zhao: So that’s why…
63 00:06:42.180 ⇒ 00:06:50.300 Robert Tseng: Eden Pharmacy is through Pharmedica, right? And so, I mean, I guess we’re pushing on it, but, like, I don’t know when they’re trying to go live with that. Like, they don’t…
64 00:06:50.860 ⇒ 00:06:55.189 Robert Tseng: I mean, when… what… what’s, what’s the… what’s the deadline?
65 00:06:55.770 ⇒ 00:07:09.809 Henry Zhao: So, it’s… so, it’s actually not that urgent anymore. Basically, Rebecca talked to Michelle today, and Michelle said that they’re rolling out a Tableau solution, so we don’t even need the API anymore, and they’re gonna meet with us this week on it, to just figure out how to implement it.
66 00:07:11.130 ⇒ 00:07:20.510 Henry Zhao: Because I asked, I was like, this data is pretty straightforward that you’re asking for, why is it not in the Pharmatica UI? They’re like, well, it’s just not, and so Michelle is like, oh, we’re putting it into a Tableau solution.
67 00:07:21.700 ⇒ 00:07:25.820 Robert Tseng: I was in, like, they’re gonna build a Tableau dashboard, or they’re gonna…
68 00:07:27.170 ⇒ 00:07:30.779 Henry Zhao: Like, Michelle is already working on a Tableau solution that’s being rolled out.
69 00:07:31.510 ⇒ 00:07:32.280 Robert Tseng: Oh, bye.
70 00:07:32.460 ⇒ 00:07:34.550 Robert Tseng: I mean, I’m thinking, like…
71 00:07:34.960 ⇒ 00:07:39.089 Henry Zhao: Why would they not give us that data? Like, it’s just like…
72 00:07:39.090 ⇒ 00:07:40.030 Robert Tseng: If this is eating…
73 00:07:40.030 ⇒ 00:07:42.500 Henry Zhao: They just want Eden to pay for it. That’s all.
74 00:07:44.280 ⇒ 00:07:46.459 Robert Tseng: And Rebecca doesn’t want to pay for it?
75 00:07:48.370 ⇒ 00:07:49.240 Henry Zhao: Correct.
76 00:07:49.600 ⇒ 00:08:01.860 Henry Zhao: Well, she just thinks we don’t need to pay for it. She thinks we should already have it, and I was like, I agree, we should already have this data, it’s pretty straightforward data, but Michelle is saying we do, and that they’re launching a Tableau reporting option, which will be less expensive, still need to pay for it.
77 00:08:03.570 ⇒ 00:08:08.200 Henry Zhao: But they said that the Tableau reporting option will satisfy the requirements, and we’re meeting about it on Friday.
78 00:08:09.610 ⇒ 00:08:17.010 Robert Tseng: Okay. I… I feel like this is… this is not something we should pay for, and then she’d give it… give it to us. So, maybe I will ask Rebecca…
79 00:08:18.930 ⇒ 00:08:20.939 Robert Tseng: For her contract with them.
80 00:08:21.160 ⇒ 00:08:25.389 Henry Zhao: Yeah, I should ask Michelle, because she’s the one that’s gonna… because Rebecca already agrees we shouldn’t pay for it, so…
81 00:08:25.800 ⇒ 00:08:32.139 Robert Tseng: Yeah, but I want to know, like, what terms did they sign? Like, how is it possible they don’t give us this data? Like, this is kind of ridiculous. If this is supposed to be, like…
82 00:08:32.870 ⇒ 00:08:40.640 Henry Zhao: She said, these are the terms, but where do you see terms? I don’t see any of these as terms. Like, I went through pretty much all of these documents that seem relevant, and none of these are, like.
83 00:08:40.640 ⇒ 00:08:45.790 Robert Tseng: Yeah, that’s why I want to see if there’s anything else that they haven’t sent us, like, I want to read their… I want to read their contract.
84 00:08:45.970 ⇒ 00:08:46.660 Robert Tseng: Seems kind of…
85 00:08:46.660 ⇒ 00:08:49.309 Henry Zhao: This is the pricing on, like, products.
86 00:08:51.540 ⇒ 00:09:01.989 Robert Tseng: We don’t need the tableau… I mean, at the end of the day, once Eden OS is stood up, like, we still need to plug Informatica into that, and we’re gonna need the data directly through API, sorry.
87 00:09:02.400 ⇒ 00:09:13.140 Robert Tseng: So, I mean, this Tableau solution seems like not… it’s not ideal for anybody. Like, who’s gonna maintain it? They’re gonna maintain it, they’re gonna move slower than we can, and
88 00:09:13.860 ⇒ 00:09:28.110 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, Rebecca’s just gonna have to have another, like, data provider to go and, like, ask her to make changes to reports. I don’t know. I’m sure the data’s not that complicated, so things won’t change that much, but still, it just, like, doesn’t make sense for them to be a managed, like, Tableau solution or whatever.
89 00:09:28.910 ⇒ 00:09:35.070 Henry Zhao: Yeah, and I even checked behind her back, like, with Pete, I was like, this doesn’t seem right that we have to pay for this, we don’t have this data. He’s like, no, she’s right.
90 00:09:35.750 ⇒ 00:09:36.849 Henry Zhao: Oh, interesting.
91 00:09:37.880 ⇒ 00:09:38.710 Robert Tseng: Who’s Pete?
92 00:09:39.180 ⇒ 00:09:41.420 Henry Zhao: Pete is the farm ops guy, he’s like the…
93 00:09:41.420 ⇒ 00:09:45.160 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, right, I forgot. I haven’t… I haven’t met him yet. Okay. Alright.
94 00:09:47.200 ⇒ 00:09:48.990 Robert Tseng: Okay. I mean…
95 00:09:48.990 ⇒ 00:09:49.790 Henry Zhao: So that…
96 00:09:49.790 ⇒ 00:09:50.360 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
97 00:09:52.310 ⇒ 00:10:06.849 Henry Zhao: Yeah, so that’s COGS, and then the other goal was zero orders over 10 days. So I want to analyze, like, create a dashboard for orders that are at 5, 7, and 9 days, and then analyze orders that reached over 10 days, and see if there’s reasons for it, and, like, what were the roadblocks.
98 00:10:07.760 ⇒ 00:10:11.210 Henry Zhao: And then less than 5% pending orders, I need to understand what causes orders to get stated.
99 00:10:11.210 ⇒ 00:10:21.229 Robert Tseng: Doesn’t the FarmOps dashboard already a deal with that one? The orders over 10 days? Like, the SLA dash? Like, don’t we already… I mean, we show, like, anything over 3 days already, right? So…
100 00:10:21.980 ⇒ 00:10:24.280 Henry Zhao: Yeah, we just need to fix some things with it.
101 00:10:24.580 ⇒ 00:10:25.150 Robert Tseng: Okay.
102 00:10:26.640 ⇒ 00:10:29.959 Henry Zhao: And we want to also include the orders that are in pharmacy but not shipped.
103 00:10:30.160 ⇒ 00:10:31.859 Henry Zhao: Which we’re waiting on Bass to give us.
104 00:10:33.200 ⇒ 00:10:33.870 Henry Zhao: Okay.
105 00:10:34.750 ⇒ 00:10:42.089 Robert Tseng: So, I mean, this whole Tableau thing, like, I keep cutting you off because, like, I feel like this is important to get back more, but,
106 00:10:42.190 ⇒ 00:10:49.800 Robert Tseng: the… Tableau contract’s up in February. If Tableau usage is not great, and, like, we’re… They’re like.
107 00:10:49.800 ⇒ 00:10:50.490 Henry Zhao: It is great.
108 00:10:50.750 ⇒ 00:10:52.079 Robert Tseng: Okay,
109 00:10:52.450 ⇒ 00:10:59.119 Robert Tseng: My point is, like, we… we could move to Omni. I don’t really want to push for that if it’s not… if it’s not, helpful, so…
110 00:11:00.770 ⇒ 00:11:11.800 Henry Zhao: Yeah, that might be a lot of… I think it depends on the December discussions and, like, how we increase our, like, staffing hours, but I feel like it would take a bit of hours to move everything from Tableau to Omni.
111 00:11:12.540 ⇒ 00:11:18.500 Robert Tseng: So, I’m not really that… so, the staffing hours, like, you’re talking about, like, for your staffing hours?
112 00:11:19.220 ⇒ 00:11:22.050 Henry Zhao: No, just overall, people that can work on eating stuff.
113 00:11:22.050 ⇒ 00:11:26.579 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, eating hours, I’m fine… I mean, we…
114 00:11:27.510 ⇒ 00:11:33.699 Robert Tseng: They’d… they pay us enough, like, we should be able to do whatever at this point, so…
115 00:11:33.990 ⇒ 00:11:41.900 Robert Tseng: I… I mean, if anything, it’s like, engineering time continues to go down, analysis time goes up, and, like, being able to do this stuff, so…
116 00:11:42.060 ⇒ 00:11:51.339 Henry Zhao: I just don’t know how it’s gonna pick up in January, right? Because this is our first year working with Eden. Like, January could come here, and the floodgates open, where it’s like, we want to do all these different…
117 00:11:51.550 ⇒ 00:11:56.869 Henry Zhao: January’s, like, smooth, then we can definitely think about making this change in February, or end of January, you know?
118 00:11:58.260 ⇒ 00:11:58.970 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
119 00:12:00.300 ⇒ 00:12:05.189 Robert Tseng: Okay. Well, anyway, I’m not gonna say anything about it for now, but I just think…
120 00:12:05.650 ⇒ 00:12:11.899 Robert Tseng: if… I mean, I would rather move off Tableau, if we don’t need to stay in Tableau, yeah.
121 00:12:11.900 ⇒ 00:12:13.340 Henry Zhao: Oh, I’m fine with it, yeah.
122 00:12:13.840 ⇒ 00:12:14.230 Robert Tseng: Okay.
123 00:12:14.230 ⇒ 00:12:15.950 Henry Zhao: I’m not a big fan of Tableau either, so…
124 00:12:20.050 ⇒ 00:12:21.130 Robert Tseng: All five buildings.
125 00:12:22.420 ⇒ 00:12:26.079 Henry Zhao: Alright, anything else on the orders over 10 days?
126 00:12:26.940 ⇒ 00:12:27.480 Robert Tseng: Nope.
127 00:12:27.720 ⇒ 00:12:28.320 Henry Zhao: Okay.
128 00:12:29.020 ⇒ 00:12:45.770 Henry Zhao: And then less than 5% pending orders, so I want to get… understand what caused orders to get stuck in pending. Is it pharmacist bandwidth? Is it the process is unclear? Are there unfinished intakes? And if there are unfinished intakes, is it due to the intake not being optimized, or are we having a poor upper funnel of clients?
129 00:12:45.770 ⇒ 00:12:55.170 Henry Zhao: If it’s a poor upper funnel of clients, we talk to Zoran, and kind of work together to work on the marketing side of it, and say, like, we’re not bringing in the right people because people aren’t finishing intakes.
130 00:12:55.170 ⇒ 00:13:10.049 Henry Zhao: So, it’s, like, leading to high intake… high pending orders, the conversion rate has gone down, so, like, obviously when we do an analysis, we’ll see conversion rate, we’ll see drop-offs with Mixpanel, and we’ll be able to figure out, kind of, where we need to patch the process.
131 00:13:10.600 ⇒ 00:13:11.200 Robert Tseng: Yep.
132 00:13:12.030 ⇒ 00:13:19.029 Henry Zhao: And then we’ll make a recommendation, we’ll say, you’re… this year we increased ad spend, we brought on a lot of people, but they’re not converting, so…
133 00:13:19.220 ⇒ 00:13:21.769 Henry Zhao: That, that’s really bad, we need to, we need to fix that.
134 00:13:22.320 ⇒ 00:13:22.920 Robert Tseng: Okay.
135 00:13:24.600 ⇒ 00:13:36.109 Henry Zhao: And then I might have Awash do that thing where we decide to cut it, where we’re gonna change the CAPI for Facebook and TikTok to fire on… to optimize for the thank you page. That would also improve… prove that there.
136 00:13:37.270 ⇒ 00:13:45.860 Henry Zhao: But I told Awashi not to look at it right now, because his cutter is on vacation. We want to see if that’ll actually have an impact, and I think it will. So, we’ll talk about that when he gets back.
137 00:13:47.670 ⇒ 00:13:48.380 Henry Zhao: And then some of the.
138 00:13:48.380 ⇒ 00:13:51.730 Robert Tseng: Why does Cutter being on vacation impact this?
139 00:13:52.820 ⇒ 00:13:56.940 Henry Zhao: I just don’t know if, like, changing that will actually have an impact, so we need to do the analysis.
140 00:13:57.170 ⇒ 00:13:59.780 Henry Zhao: I need to bring this data to them, and we need to make a decision.
141 00:14:01.160 ⇒ 00:14:02.110 Robert Tseng: Okay.
142 00:14:04.340 ⇒ 00:14:05.289 Henry Zhao: What do you think?
143 00:14:06.160 ⇒ 00:14:08.909 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, sure, I guess.
144 00:14:09.280 ⇒ 00:14:10.890 Robert Tseng: That’s… I don’t make sense.
145 00:14:12.480 ⇒ 00:14:17.030 Henry Zhao: Yeah, I need to also just think about it a little bit before we figure out, like, if that’s what we want to optimize for.
146 00:14:18.190 ⇒ 00:14:26.280 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, at this point, I feel like on the pharmacy ops side, yeah, sure, all this reporting is, like, doable, but, like, to me, it’s not just reporting. You’re really getting to…
147 00:14:26.600 ⇒ 00:14:39.609 Robert Tseng: So, for COGS, reducing COGS, like, yeah, I mean, your scope is obviously reporting on COGS, but you’re also, like, kind of thinking through how do they negotiate with vendors? Like, I mean, if you need help with that, like.
148 00:14:40.300 ⇒ 00:14:51.860 Robert Tseng: you know, Tom and I have both negotiated with… with a lot of vendors, so, like, we… I mean, yeah, like, I… so I… I feel like it’s… you’re… you’re more of, like, a partner to… to… to Brad, right? And, like.
149 00:14:51.960 ⇒ 00:15:05.589 Robert Tseng: So, to me, these goals, like, yeah, we can think about what reporting needs to set up… we need to set up for them, but then, yeah, whatever strategy or analysis that you’re coming up with should, you know, you’re trying to optimize for that goal. So, I think this.
150 00:15:05.590 ⇒ 00:15:11.200 Henry Zhao: How do I… how do I do that, though, if I’m not involved in the negotiating calls? Do I insert myself, or what, like, how do I…
151 00:15:11.910 ⇒ 00:15:12.900 Henry Zhao: do that.
152 00:15:13.640 ⇒ 00:15:23.499 Robert Tseng: Well, I don’t… I don’t think you necessarily need to be on the calls. Like, I think, you should… I mean, yeah, you gotta find… find your ways to insert… insert yourself,
153 00:15:23.950 ⇒ 00:15:27.310 Robert Tseng: For example, like, the whole clawback of…
154 00:15:28.350 ⇒ 00:15:39.370 Robert Tseng: like, the offer, and helping them claw back, like, pretty much $250,000, like, we kind of inserted ourselves into that. Like, sure, they were asking the question, like, oh, wanting to know the data.
155 00:15:39.530 ⇒ 00:15:55.909 Robert Tseng: But not only did we pull the data, I went in and I kind of, like, wrote that… I wrote that brief. I was, like, kind of telling them our point of view. It’s like, this is how you should handle the negotiation. Ultimately, like, they’re… it’s their decision to make, and they came up with a solution. It wasn’t like we issued a chargeback that just didn’t pay their, like.
156 00:15:55.910 ⇒ 00:16:05.070 Robert Tseng: two remaining outstanding invoices, and that was the solution. But yeah, like, I think that’s… that’s, like, a clear… that’s a clear decision that we impacted.
157 00:16:05.160 ⇒ 00:16:20.329 Robert Tseng: On the Mixpanel stuff, like, obviously you have more control over it, because you’re, you’re an admin on a Mixpanel, you can just make a decision, you’re cutting their bill. Oh, yeah, so, like, I, I think there’s a lot of ways that we can impact the decision without being the one on the calls.
158 00:16:20.680 ⇒ 00:16:28.939 Henry Zhao: Yeah, I’m like, I inserted myself with the UTM stuff, like, I realized that before Zoran even mentioned anything. Did the training, made sure they’re all cleaning it up, and now I’m talking…
159 00:16:29.150 ⇒ 00:16:40.150 Henry Zhao: to marketing, as well as Stuart, as the next step, divide up all the campaigns by drug, so that for forecasting and things like that, we can break it down by drug, and ad spend, and not just ad spend or product.
160 00:16:40.730 ⇒ 00:16:48.029 Robert Tseng: Well, wasn’t their whole thing with marketing ad sets, with, like, certain ad sets are general, and so that they will drive traffic?
161 00:16:48.030 ⇒ 00:16:48.570 Henry Zhao: anymore.
162 00:16:49.480 ⇒ 00:16:50.650 Robert Tseng: They stopped doing that?
163 00:16:50.970 ⇒ 00:17:01.880 Henry Zhao: Yeah, not anymore, and even if they do do that, I’m gonna have some sort of thing where we have a specific bucket for ad spend on brand awareness, and that kind of, like, just bleeds through to each drug type.
164 00:17:02.060 ⇒ 00:17:09.460 Henry Zhao: and it’s like a, kind of like a multi-variable analysis, right? It’s like, you have one variable as, like, drug-specific, one as, like, brand awareness.
165 00:17:10.579 ⇒ 00:17:13.049 Henry Zhao: How that whole ecosystem interacts with each other.
166 00:17:13.500 ⇒ 00:17:14.180 Robert Tseng: Okay.
167 00:17:15.119 ⇒ 00:17:15.869 Robert Tseng: Sure.
168 00:17:16.380 ⇒ 00:17:16.910 Henry Zhao: Yeah.
169 00:17:19.280 ⇒ 00:17:24.949 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, the remaining… the remaining goals, like, that all makes sense, like, sure. I think it’s…
170 00:17:25.640 ⇒ 00:17:32.049 Robert Tseng: yeah, these goals… I mean, if we can show, like, how we’re impacting these goals, like, I think that’s…
171 00:17:32.640 ⇒ 00:17:34.150 Robert Tseng: That’s basically…
172 00:17:35.200 ⇒ 00:17:54.939 Robert Tseng: what you’ll need to be able to communicate after you work on these projects, right? Like, I do these bi-weekly deck readouts, whatever, so I want to be able to say, hey, look, like, we helped reduce your COGS, and, like, this is what we did, these are analysis we ran, we help you negotiate things, like, that… those are the wins that we need to be able to keep, like, reading out to them, right? So…
173 00:17:55.220 ⇒ 00:18:07.090 Henry Zhao: So, a challenge that I foresee is how do we, as we go into 2026, not kind of steal thunder from Stuart, Judd, Brad, like, how do we say that this was our impact?
174 00:18:07.500 ⇒ 00:18:11.340 Henry Zhao: Without, like, saying, well, we took away their impact, you know what I mean?
175 00:18:11.590 ⇒ 00:18:17.600 Robert Tseng: No, yeah, I think the goal isn’t to make our… I mean, we can say we… yeah, always, always, like.
176 00:18:17.860 ⇒ 00:18:31.100 Robert Tseng: make them look good. Like, say, like, you help them do XYZ things. Like, I think that’s the way you frame it. But yeah, I mean, the analysis comes from us. The data that we pull, obviously, like, the reporting that we build that comes from us, so…
177 00:18:31.260 ⇒ 00:18:35.479 Robert Tseng: I don’t think we’ve ever, like, kind of self-promoted in a way that, like.
178 00:18:35.630 ⇒ 00:18:40.320 Robert Tseng: makes internal stakeholders look bad, at least not yet. I mean…
179 00:18:41.350 ⇒ 00:18:54.239 Robert Tseng: maybe in certain situations, they’re replacing their previous data people we have, but, I mean, for the business stakeholders, like, I’m not interested in replacing them, because I don’t want us to take on that work.
180 00:18:54.510 ⇒ 00:19:00.579 Robert Tseng: But if they don’t have the right person, like, with the whole Bobby thing, like, then that should be made known very clearly.
181 00:19:01.890 ⇒ 00:19:02.640 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
182 00:19:03.750 ⇒ 00:19:14.190 Henry Zhao: Okay, cool. I think I’m clear on that, and I think I know the way forward. What is Sezim’s role in all of this, and what is Casey’s role? So, now that we have all this analysis, like.
183 00:19:14.410 ⇒ 00:19:19.399 Henry Zhao: How do we want to move forward, basically, and who do we want to… get involved, moving forward.
184 00:19:19.550 ⇒ 00:19:31.329 Robert Tseng: So, I mean, so there’s a few things that I want to think about. So, you’re kind of transitioning to, like, a role where you’re basically, like… I mean, I’m pretty much out of the day-to-day. You’re, like.
185 00:19:31.550 ⇒ 00:19:35.730 Robert Tseng: you’re head of data for them, pretty much. So…
186 00:19:36.590 ⇒ 00:19:48.789 Robert Tseng: Zoran is there to do anything MarTech, so you don’t have to, like, be kind of working on that. He can work with Cutter and Ryan directly, handle all attribution stuff. That way, you can actually, like, kind of be a partner to
187 00:19:48.790 ⇒ 00:19:59.059 Robert Tseng: to me, it’s the pharmacy team, even on the… you call it customer relations, but life cycle marketing, right, I think is, like, the easiest… is the easiest win, or it’s… it’s like…
188 00:19:59.280 ⇒ 00:20:16.039 Robert Tseng: maybe it’s not easy is not the right word, but it’s… it’s the… it’s low-hanging fruit, because it doesn’t cost us anything to get more out of those customers. Like, I think that’s very, very easy for us to go and show that we’re bringing revenue impact. If we just help create better segments, we’re coaching Judd to, like, go and, like, run those campaigns. So, like.
189 00:20:16.130 ⇒ 00:20:22.940 Robert Tseng: I think that’s, you know, that’s that. And then product insights, I think, is kind of where,
190 00:20:23.210 ⇒ 00:20:25.720 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I want, I want,
191 00:20:26.390 ⇒ 00:20:41.349 Robert Tseng: Sezim and… and Casey, basically, to be analysts under you, right? So, Sezim is more there. We’re trialing her on, like, financial analysis. She has a… she has a quant finance background, so anything strategic finance related.
192 00:20:41.550 ⇒ 00:20:49.610 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, I want her to build a forecasting prototype, any of the modeling, working, working, working with,
193 00:20:50.430 ⇒ 00:21:07.789 Robert Tseng: Jonah, I think, should be… anything with that should be assigned to her. And, I mean, even some of the stuff you can leverage her on with Brad, because I think Brad, you know, operational reporting, a lot of it is in spreadsheets as well, too. So, anything with spreadsheets, I think she can… she can… she should be there to help with.
194 00:21:07.830 ⇒ 00:21:26.530 Robert Tseng: And then Casey is just there. If you need someone to crank out Mixpanel reports, and, like, do more of the lower level, like, analysis, it’s not even analysis, report building, because you need to build something for Judd and Ryan, because they don’t know how to build themselves, like, that’s… that’s kind of what Casey’s there for.
195 00:21:26.530 ⇒ 00:21:27.559 Henry Zhao: That’s what I’ve been doing.
196 00:21:27.700 ⇒ 00:21:31.499 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so, like, I’m… I guess, you know.
197 00:21:31.660 ⇒ 00:21:34.130 Robert Tseng: I guess maybe we didn’t explicitly say it, but, like.
198 00:21:34.490 ⇒ 00:21:47.259 Robert Tseng: you’re not exact… I mean, if you want to, you can be more directly people managing of them, but you said you wanted to work with people, you like… you like kind of having laundry, so that’s kind of what we’re… what we’re doing.
199 00:21:47.860 ⇒ 00:21:54.260 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I kind of… I continue to think that we’re gonna remove one of the data engineers by… by January.
200 00:21:54.560 ⇒ 00:21:59.780 Robert Tseng: I don’t really think we need two. Like, I… I would rather have you, two analysts.
201 00:21:59.880 ⇒ 00:22:06.199 Robert Tseng: and then a data engineer, something like that. I think, still around 4 people, but, like, something like that.
202 00:22:06.920 ⇒ 00:22:07.600 Henry Zhao: Hello?
203 00:22:07.870 ⇒ 00:22:16.830 Henry Zhao: Yeah, so I’ve been giving Casey some of the lower-hanging fruit and ad hoc stuff so that he can get used to the data, and also I think he’s developing his, like, SQL skills also by doing that.
204 00:22:17.410 ⇒ 00:22:19.390 Robert Tseng: Great. Yeah,
205 00:22:19.600 ⇒ 00:22:37.119 Robert Tseng: And then, from a, like, a client-facing perspective, like, you’re not on the bi-weekly, like, ELT calls yet, but I want you to get there as well, so that’s why we’re… you’re kind of doing the deck prep, and so when we’re doing, like, the key wins recap and everything, like, I want you to kind of
206 00:22:37.420 ⇒ 00:22:50.289 Robert Tseng: kind of get… get the reps there, so once it’s in a good place, and I, you know, feel like you’re ready to read it out, then I’ll just probably bring you onto those calls, and you can… you can start taking… taking that on. Yeah.
207 00:22:50.640 ⇒ 00:22:59.050 Robert Tseng: because Remo is, like, kind of pretty hands-on, I mean, basically with that, we… told…
208 00:22:59.150 ⇒ 00:23:05.159 Robert Tseng: ELT to fire Remo, and to transfer over, like, their codebase to…
209 00:23:05.280 ⇒ 00:23:20.960 Robert Tseng: us, or I guess it’s run by Surf. I don’t know if you’ve met Surf yet. But… yeah, so that’s… that’s the thing. And so I’m more focused on… on… at least on… with my limited time on Eden, I’m just gonna be supporting Surf
210 00:23:21.150 ⇒ 00:23:25.230 Robert Tseng: And building out Eden OS, I guess, so…
211 00:23:25.410 ⇒ 00:23:38.840 Robert Tseng: yeah, there’s a pretty tight timeline. We have some pretty tight milestones to hit by end of… end of this year, and then also, I think they’re trying to… well, we actually have a deadline. We will cut over from BASC in January. That is, like.
212 00:23:38.950 ⇒ 00:23:57.639 Robert Tseng: there’s never… this has been a moving target for the past, like, 6 months, but now that this project is kind of under our control, like, I’m actually putting a deadline, and it will be January, so we will move off Basket January. Yeah, that’s the… that’s the… that’s… that’s my main kind of directive at this point.
213 00:23:58.370 ⇒ 00:23:59.100 Henry Zhao: Okay, cool.
214 00:23:59.250 ⇒ 00:24:01.360 Robert Tseng: So, that’s kind of where…
215 00:24:02.050 ⇒ 00:24:10.389 Robert Tseng: Eden is headed. It’s kind of weird, like, we’re basically… we’re doing everything technical for them now, which… I don’t want to do this for every client, I think this is,
216 00:24:10.500 ⇒ 00:24:24.810 Robert Tseng: it’s a good learning for us, because Eden is our highest paying client, and so we’ve learned a lot and touched a lot of different things from working with them. But from this experience, I’m trying to… I’ve already told you, like, I don’t want another Eden, right? So, like, I just…
217 00:24:24.810 ⇒ 00:24:25.510 Henry Zhao: I’m trying to…
218 00:24:25.510 ⇒ 00:24:38.710 Robert Tseng: Pick and choose what is helpful, or, like, what we’ve done that’s impactful for them and easy to serve, and that is supposed to turn into, like, projects that we’re passing to other clients.
219 00:24:39.540 ⇒ 00:24:45.970 Henry Zhao: So, so if you don’t want more Eidens, what is this referring to? Like, just, I want a little bit more, like…
220 00:24:46.460 ⇒ 00:24:49.679 Henry Zhao: I think I’m a little bit unclear on this document, then, I guess.
221 00:24:50.000 ⇒ 00:24:59.820 Henry Zhao: Sure. To move away from, like, the insomnias… not insomnia, but move away from the, let’s say, READMEs, and move on to more of the Eden-type engagements.
222 00:25:01.260 ⇒ 00:25:04.999 Robert Tseng: Yeah, well, I think,
223 00:25:05.000 ⇒ 00:25:23.749 Robert Tseng: from, like, a billable standpoint, like, yeah, I mean, our minimum billable at this point is 5K a month. I want them out of that, or… they’re very low cost to serve right now, so I don’t really… I’m not urgently trying to kick… move them off, but I don’t… yeah, I don’t… I don’t want to have another README at that price.
224 00:25:23.750 ⇒ 00:25:29.359 Robert Tseng: most of our clients kind of sit in that 10 to 30K a month range.
225 00:25:29.410 ⇒ 00:25:39.500 Robert Tseng: I mean, Eden is, like, one of those examples of, like, they pretty much pay us, like, 500 grand a year at this point with… for a multi-work stream program.
226 00:25:39.500 ⇒ 00:25:50.929 Robert Tseng: But we’re doing, like, way too much for them. We have, like, 7 or 8 people working on Eden stuff. That’s, like, all your data work, and then we have the MarTech stuff, and then we have this whole engineering, like, thing as well, so…
227 00:25:50.940 ⇒ 00:25:54.669 Robert Tseng: To me, it’s, like, not worth the overhead, like…
228 00:25:54.780 ⇒ 00:26:11.779 Robert Tseng: I don’t know, to, like, always be thinking about how to utilize 7 or 8 people on one client is just, like, a lot to handle. I think we could do a trimmed-down version of what we do with Eden. Like, just the marketing stuff. For example,
229 00:26:12.150 ⇒ 00:26:12.900 Robert Tseng: like…
230 00:26:13.460 ⇒ 00:26:23.969 Robert Tseng: packaging Zorons, like, tagging and tracking thing with lifecycle marketing. Like, I pretty much have been trying to sell that to Insomnia. Like, that’s kind of how I got my foot in the door on Insomnia.
231 00:26:25.220 ⇒ 00:26:44.009 Robert Tseng: Yeah, they’re at 15K a month, we’re trying to get them to do more, like… Insomnia is, like, way less work than… than Eden at this point, and they, like, it would… it’s… I mean, sure, I think there’s other issues with it, they don’t… all their marketing leadership got fired or whatever, so they’re, you know, they may churn for just that reason alone, but,
232 00:26:44.310 ⇒ 00:26:53.860 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, I… that’s… like, I… I think there is… we can still serve, like, an Eden-sized client, but it’ll just be a lot easier, like, because I’m… we’re gonna…
233 00:26:54.410 ⇒ 00:27:12.930 Robert Tseng: we’re gonna define the work streams more clearly, or whatever, so I… I just view Eden as, like, kind of the experiment, like, the playground for our team. That’s a bad way to put it. There’s a big risk, obviously. It’s a regulated industry, like, we don’t want any, like, big mess-ups to happen, so it’s not like we’re chill on it, but, like.
234 00:27:12.990 ⇒ 00:27:32.410 Robert Tseng: I think we just have enough trust built up there that we can, like, work on literally anything technical there, and just, like, figure stuff out, and then try to, like, learn… take our learnings and bring it to other clients. Like, that’s… that, to me is the purpose of keeping Eden around, other than the fact that, obviously, they give us a good chunk of money, so…
235 00:27:32.880 ⇒ 00:27:40.779 Henry Zhao: Okay. So, also, do you think some of this is influenced by, like, some potential clients not knowing how to do marketing? Like, their leadership is just not…
236 00:27:41.510 ⇒ 00:27:47.450 Henry Zhao: They just don’t know the value of, like, attribution, or the value of the things that we’re trying to sell.
237 00:27:47.720 ⇒ 00:27:55.499 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, for those types of clients, like, we don’t end up closing them, right? Because we’re not… we’re not a marketing agency, and I don’t…
238 00:27:55.500 ⇒ 00:27:55.860 Henry Zhao: Right.
239 00:27:55.860 ⇒ 00:27:58.029 Robert Tseng: think that we should be. Like, I…
240 00:27:58.660 ⇒ 00:28:01.750 Robert Tseng: The problem with data services is that, like.
241 00:28:02.430 ⇒ 00:28:08.759 Robert Tseng: unless we become, like, a pure staff aug shop, which we’re not. Like, I think we differentiate ourselves from just, like.
242 00:28:09.000 ⇒ 00:28:11.960 Robert Tseng: Low-cost overseas engineers.
243 00:28:12.570 ⇒ 00:28:22.949 Robert Tseng: Because we are strategic, we do analysis, like, we do know how to do this cross-functional partnership stuff. Like, we execute, like, these cross-functional projects.
244 00:28:23.640 ⇒ 00:28:32.429 Robert Tseng: But then we’re also not so far down the line where we’re like, yeah, we only specialized in marketing, and like, you should trust our marketing strategy.
245 00:28:32.450 ⇒ 00:28:38.529 Henry Zhao: I think we’re kind of undecided, like, whether or not we need to specialize in a domain or not.
246 00:28:38.530 ⇒ 00:28:52.209 Robert Tseng: I still think that we don’t, but we may not… without specializing, we’re not going to be able to sell, like, I don’t know, like, a $3 million contract over 4 years. Like, it’s just not gonna happen. That makes sense, yeah. Yeah, like, we’ll probably stay in this, like.
247 00:28:52.310 ⇒ 00:28:59.660 Robert Tseng: 200 to 500K, kind of contract, size, which to me, is okay, like…
248 00:28:59.830 ⇒ 00:29:10.150 Robert Tseng: if I think about where we’re at and where we’re headed, like, the dock is what it is, like, we’re doing around $2 million in revenue at this point, and if we’re trying to grow to 10 million in revenue.
249 00:29:10.310 ⇒ 00:29:15.329 Robert Tseng: To do that with, like, a hundred, like, you either get a hundred…
250 00:29:16.850 ⇒ 00:29:20.149 Robert Tseng: READMEs to get to 5 million.
251 00:29:20.800 ⇒ 00:29:26.229 Robert Tseng: Like, there’s no way we’re gonna do that. Yeah, so… we need, like.
252 00:29:27.130 ⇒ 00:29:42.230 Robert Tseng: or you do 10 Eden’s. But, like, that’s also sounds crazy, I ripped my hair out. So, it’s like, if we could do 10 Eden’s, Eden-sized clients at… and run it a lot… a lot easier, and run it a lot easier.
253 00:29:42.230 ⇒ 00:29:47.560 Robert Tseng: then, like, I see a pathway to 10 million. And then, at that point.
254 00:29:47.560 ⇒ 00:29:51.740 Robert Tseng: that company… the company’s ready to sell. I think we can sell the company within 5 to 10 million.
255 00:29:51.740 ⇒ 00:30:10.389 Robert Tseng: And at that point, like, we try to get everybody and exit. Like, that’s the goal of, like, what we’re doing here. Like, I’m trying to be out of Brain Forge within 3 years, so, like, like, I think this is… I mean, we could talk a lot about this more on our off-site and everything, but yeah, like, that’s how I’m thinking about where we’re at, and where we’re headed.
256 00:30:10.910 ⇒ 00:30:13.899 Henry Zhao: But I think this is… but I think this is how…
257 00:30:14.060 ⇒ 00:30:15.850 Henry Zhao: What was I gonna say?
258 00:30:17.370 ⇒ 00:30:36.200 Henry Zhao: But I think this is why it was useful for, like, us to go through some of those challenges we did in August and October with, like, communication and, like, the talk we had about, like, coaching up someone to be an A player. Yeah. Like, I think we need to have this on a small scale, so we know how to deal with these when we become a large scale, so that we can replicate what worked.
259 00:30:36.400 ⇒ 00:30:42.279 Henry Zhao: When we bring on more people, so that we can have 100 Remis or 10 Eatens, and still be able to, kind of.
260 00:30:42.850 ⇒ 00:30:46.009 Henry Zhao: not be lost in this… all this craziness, you know what I mean?
261 00:30:46.350 ⇒ 00:31:03.100 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah. I guess, like, the… and we’ve talked to a bunch of go-to-market, I mean, if you can go over a bit, I’ll share. Like, we’ve talked to 5 go-to-market advisors that, like, they’re, like, they want to work with us. We’ve struck out anybody who only sells to enterprise, because…
262 00:31:03.880 ⇒ 00:31:14.670 Robert Tseng: I was just like, I don’t think you will be able to understand, kind of, where our business currently is at, and there’s no way we can shut everything off and only sell enterprise. Like, I just… I don’t… I don’t… we don’t want to take that risk.
263 00:31:14.950 ⇒ 00:31:19.050 Robert Tseng: So there’s… we’re still… we’re kind of… comes down to… it’s coming down to two people.
264 00:31:19.110 ⇒ 00:31:41.800 Robert Tseng: one guy, he… he’s on his, like, third business now. His first business, he sold purely, like, small contracts, like, pretty much 50K contracts that he was doing. And he, like, ran a big, big volume, and then he sold it. Then his second company, he only did enterprise, and now he’s… so he kind of has… he understands both worlds, and I think he understands that, like, we…
265 00:31:41.800 ⇒ 00:31:44.699 Robert Tseng: We have, like, half our business that’s just, like, this…
266 00:31:45.140 ⇒ 00:32:02.769 Robert Tseng: small… that’s, like, SMBs or whatever, and then… but we want to, like, be able to sell towards enterprise as well. And we think that it’s gonna be, like, a mixed approach to get there, and we don’t want to go, like, all in on one or the other. So I think he understands, like, that’s how we want to do it, and…
267 00:32:02.770 ⇒ 00:32:13.409 Robert Tseng: I think we’re gonna end up going with him. But yeah, like, I… you know, that doc that you showed is, like, is for us to help evaluate for ourselves, like, who we want to take on as an advisor.
268 00:32:13.610 ⇒ 00:32:16.170 Robert Tseng: Whereas the other person is like.
269 00:32:17.030 ⇒ 00:32:28.059 Robert Tseng: I mean, he’s more like, no, Enterprise is the only way to go, but, like, I understand where you’re at, and we’ll help you transition over to Enterprise. But he seems a lot… I mean, I don’t know. We haven’t decided who we’re gonna go with.
270 00:32:28.780 ⇒ 00:32:32.219 Henry Zhao: Yeah, so you do think we’ll grow a lot in 2026, and that’s the plan, right?
271 00:32:32.420 ⇒ 00:32:42.729 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah. I think we… we kind of, like, cleared… I mean, we beat our goal this year, so, like, I think we’re pretty… we’re doing better than we thought.
272 00:32:43.290 ⇒ 00:32:44.810 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and I think…
273 00:32:45.530 ⇒ 00:33:02.729 Robert Tseng: I mean, there’s growing pains. At this… at this point, like, I don’t think we can… like, the team has to change. That’s why the org structure is changing and everything. There will be people who have gotten us to this point that will not continue with us, like, it’s just not gonna work, because the whole coaching and getting things, like, I still don’t think we really have
274 00:33:02.940 ⇒ 00:33:15.749 Robert Tseng: like, I don’t believe it’s possible to coach a C-level to an A-level person now. Like, I was a lot more optimistic about this before. I think we’ve coached a lot of C people to B-level people, and we’ve, like.
275 00:33:15.950 ⇒ 00:33:19.799 Robert Tseng: stumbled our way into finding a couple A players.
276 00:33:19.930 ⇒ 00:33:21.320 Henry Zhao: And now, like.
277 00:33:21.320 ⇒ 00:33:24.869 Robert Tseng: we have Clarence here to basically try to help us, like.
278 00:33:25.040 ⇒ 00:33:37.649 Robert Tseng: be better at, like, hiring A players moving forward, or, like, people who are going to get us to the… to 10 million. Yeah, so I think, like, whatever that looks like, I think is kind of the…
279 00:33:38.040 ⇒ 00:33:41.279 Robert Tseng: The team will change in the next quarter, probably.
280 00:33:41.570 ⇒ 00:33:45.970 Henry Zhao: Is he, like, that guy in office space that came in and was like, so, what is it that you do here?
281 00:33:47.270 ⇒ 00:33:53.509 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I guess you could view him that way. I mean, you should talk to him, I think he’s a…
282 00:33:54.110 ⇒ 00:34:02.709 Robert Tseng: Yeah, he… he was… he was at EY for, like, 8 years, and then he… he went off, and he just sold his… his agency, so he’s kind of, like.
283 00:34:03.390 ⇒ 00:34:11.679 Robert Tseng: I mean, his was this smaller, he was, like, 5 people, but, like, they were doing specifically government contracts, like, I didn’t mean… but he just…
284 00:34:11.679 ⇒ 00:34:25.950 Robert Tseng: from, like, he understands organizational building probably better than Utam and I do, so that’s why we have him here, just to specifically help us on hiring, on structuring the delivery side. He’s not a go-to-market guy at all. Like, I don’t think I would have him help us sell.
285 00:34:26.030 ⇒ 00:34:29.710 Robert Tseng: But yeah, I think he’s… I think, you know.
286 00:34:29.880 ⇒ 00:34:35.509 Robert Tseng: He’s trying to help us see, like, well, who that we have currently, like.
287 00:34:36.110 ⇒ 00:34:42.350 Robert Tseng: what should their role be in this next phase? And, like, I think that’s kind of the main question that we have him working on.
288 00:34:42.580 ⇒ 00:34:43.059 Robert Tseng: Yeah, but…
289 00:34:43.060 ⇒ 00:34:43.620 Henry Zhao: Yeah.
290 00:34:43.810 ⇒ 00:34:44.350 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
291 00:34:45.620 ⇒ 00:34:58.269 Robert Tseng: But, yeah, I mean, it’s great. I mean, what I would like to do is to actually do a real off-site, like a week-long off-site with the U.S.-based people.
292 00:34:58.390 ⇒ 00:35:03.200 Robert Tseng: It would probably be in January. I mean, we’ve talked about this already to some extent, but
293 00:35:03.380 ⇒ 00:35:14.010 Robert Tseng: But yeah, so I think that time will come with all of this stuff. Like, I’m just giving you, like, a few nuggets here and there, but, like, I’d like to actually lay out, like, more of the vision by then. Yeah.
294 00:35:14.010 ⇒ 00:35:18.249 Henry Zhao: Okay, and I’d love to just talk to Utam in Austin next week, and just see,
295 00:35:18.530 ⇒ 00:35:21.099 Henry Zhao: Kind of where we’re at, and what he wants to talk about. Yeah, yeah.
296 00:35:21.160 ⇒ 00:35:28.030 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I know… I mean, you being full-time is a given, like, I think that’s… I don’t… I know that… that things have kind of…
297 00:35:28.030 ⇒ 00:35:42.510 Robert Tseng: I don’t know, like, didn’t really happen the way they did, he kind of… whatever, like, you’ll talk to him. I’ve already… I talked to him. We went through and talked about every single person on our team over the weekend. So, like, we’ve already talked about it, so, like, you don’t have to worry about that, so if you need any support…
298 00:35:42.810 ⇒ 00:35:54.120 Henry Zhao: I chose to not be full-time. I just felt like I wanted to learn a little bit more and, like, make sure that I was able to deliver value because of all those unknowns with, like, me and stuff like that. So that was actually a, like, joint choice, yeah.
299 00:35:54.120 ⇒ 00:36:13.899 Robert Tseng: Okay, yeah. So, I mean, any questions that you have about, like, things that you want to change about your scope and your role, like, you know, let us know. Like, obviously, we want you to be a part of, kind of, this… this next phase, and, yeah, I mean, I don’t know, I guess… I’m just… I’m just letting you know, like, I… we… yeah, like, we… we’ve…
300 00:36:14.170 ⇒ 00:36:19.660 Robert Tseng: I mean, we, we want to make sure that you feel like you have a… have a place here, so…
301 00:36:19.660 ⇒ 00:36:24.079 Henry Zhao: Yeah, and like I told you, my main concern was, like, making the decks for ELT and for Honey Stinger, etc.
302 00:36:24.190 ⇒ 00:36:43.400 Henry Zhao: not because I feel like I don’t know how to make decks, but it’s like, I don’t know how to make decks in this business scenario specifically, where it’s like, I’ve never met with Byron, I didn’t have, like, an onboarding process to any of the clients, I was just… I was just told, like, make nuggets of things that they would be interested in, but I don’t know what they’re interested in. So working with Amber these past two weeks has been a lot more helpful, because…
303 00:36:43.680 ⇒ 00:36:47.720 Henry Zhao: It’s good to have, like, a person to bounce ideas off of and say, like, would somebody care about this?
304 00:36:48.200 ⇒ 00:36:48.520 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
305 00:36:48.520 ⇒ 00:37:04.859 Henry Zhao: Byron, or if you were ELT, would you care about this? And then Amber and I could, like, shoot ideas back off of each other, and I was able to do the analysis right here, as we’re talking, and get the, like, charts and stuff made, and then use your feedback, as well as the deck guidelines, to put something better than…
306 00:37:04.970 ⇒ 00:37:06.540 Henry Zhao: what I did in October, you know what I mean?
307 00:37:06.540 ⇒ 00:37:13.600 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, I mean, it’s… I think it’s fine. I think things are getting better. Like, I think the decks… the deck qualities are great. Like, I think we…
308 00:37:13.710 ⇒ 00:37:23.860 Robert Tseng: Like, yeah, I feel like we have plenty, plenty of things to share, so I think every client has been happy with what we’ve been putting out so far, so we just… yeah, so I think it’ll just keep getting better.
309 00:37:24.830 ⇒ 00:37:36.179 Henry Zhao: Cool. Yeah, so then with, with Eden, as we start doing these analysis, I would love to have, like, a partner like Sezim, or… or Casey, or Zoran to, like, just, like, coach each other, and, like, make sure that we have…
310 00:37:36.650 ⇒ 00:37:39.649 Henry Zhao: Because I just feel like that with teamwork, things work a lot better.
311 00:37:39.960 ⇒ 00:37:44.309 Henry Zhao: Yeah, totally. We’re bringing people on full-time, we’ll have the bandwidth and the hours to be able to do that, right? So…
312 00:37:44.310 ⇒ 00:37:44.910 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
313 00:37:47.090 ⇒ 00:37:54.910 Henry Zhao: And it bonds the team, right? Like, people will enjoy their work better if they get, like, somebody to kind of work with and not feel so isolated.
314 00:37:55.200 ⇒ 00:37:56.230 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah.
315 00:37:56.230 ⇒ 00:37:57.160 Henry Zhao: That’s the thought, yeah.
316 00:37:57.920 ⇒ 00:38:08.520 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I think I… I wanna kinda trust your judgment on the Eden side. I’m just gonna keep telling you, like, you know, from the top-down perspective, like, what…
317 00:38:08.630 ⇒ 00:38:24.009 Robert Tseng: how to communicate value to ELT, because that’s ultimately your main stakeholder. It’s not really… it’s not really me. So, like, I’ll keep kind of taking that perspective. But then, as far as, like, how you execute on things and, like, how you work with the team, like, I’ll trust you to… if you’re, like.
318 00:38:24.040 ⇒ 00:38:35.300 Robert Tseng: Casey doesn’t cut it, or, like, Seism isn’t it, like, you should tell me, and I’ll go and find someone else. But, like, you know, I think that’s… that’s kind of my… that’s how I’m gonna support you there.
319 00:38:35.780 ⇒ 00:38:43.140 Henry Zhao: Thanks, yeah. Yeah. And then all these announcements, like, came from, like, talking to Brad, talking to Mitesh, talking to Rebecca, and understanding the business, so I think…
320 00:38:43.140 ⇒ 00:38:43.800 Robert Tseng: Great.
321 00:38:43.800 ⇒ 00:38:45.870 Henry Zhao: They should be good and aligned with the goals.
322 00:38:46.270 ⇒ 00:38:46.860 Robert Tseng: Okay.
323 00:38:47.320 ⇒ 00:38:48.040 Henry Zhao: Okay.
324 00:38:48.490 ⇒ 00:38:49.840 Henry Zhao: Alright, thanks, Robert.
325 00:38:49.840 ⇒ 00:38:50.490 Robert Tseng: Alright.
326 00:38:50.730 ⇒ 00:38:51.729 Henry Zhao: Talk to you again soon.
327 00:38:51.730 ⇒ 00:38:52.560 Robert Tseng: Talk to you later.
328 00:38:52.900 ⇒ 00:38:53.650 Henry Zhao: Take care.