Meeting Title: Brainforge x LMNT: Next Steps Date: 2025-11-18 Meeting participants: Uttam Kumaran, Shivani Amar, Jason Wu, Robert Tseng
WEBVTT
1 00:01:52.050 ⇒ 00:01:53.050 Uttam Kumaran: Hello.
2 00:01:54.880 ⇒ 00:01:56.019 Jason Wu: Yeah, Tamara, you…
3 00:01:56.420 ⇒ 00:01:57.559 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, good, how are you?
4 00:01:59.060 ⇒ 00:02:00.370 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, how’s it going?
5 00:02:00.370 ⇒ 00:02:01.789 Shivani Amar: Oh, it’s good, how are you?
6 00:02:02.510 ⇒ 00:02:07.139 Uttam Kumaran: Good, I just feel like a lot of internet is down today, so we’re, like, having a bunch of…
7 00:02:08.180 ⇒ 00:02:10.810 Uttam Kumaran: issues across clients, but I just try to…
8 00:02:10.810 ⇒ 00:02:11.470 Jason Wu: Yep.
9 00:02:11.470 ⇒ 00:02:16.379 Uttam Kumaran: bear what’s going on, and some stuff is not affected, like, Snowflake’s up, and I’m able to do stuff, but…
10 00:02:16.560 ⇒ 00:02:19.679 Uttam Kumaran: GitHub just went down, dbt is down, so, like.
11 00:02:20.090 ⇒ 00:02:21.850 Jason Wu: Is, is GetUp still down?
12 00:02:22.720 ⇒ 00:02:29.169 Uttam Kumaran: I think it was, like, in and out. Like, I was using it this morning just fine, and then… and then, like, an hour ago, someone’s like.
13 00:02:29.430 ⇒ 00:02:32.730 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I can’t see, like, a PR, and I’m like, I don’t know, I see it on my end.
14 00:02:32.730 ⇒ 00:02:33.160 Jason Wu: I think it’s.
15 00:02:33.160 ⇒ 00:02:35.290 Uttam Kumaran: Just, like, slowly… psyched.
16 00:02:35.290 ⇒ 00:02:35.900 Jason Wu: So…
17 00:02:36.240 ⇒ 00:02:39.700 Shivani Amar: Does it still have to do with the Cloudflare thing?
18 00:02:39.700 ⇒ 00:02:40.979 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think so.
19 00:02:41.240 ⇒ 00:02:41.960 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
20 00:02:42.230 ⇒ 00:02:45.590 Jason Wu: Just, 30… just 35% of the world, that’s all.
21 00:02:45.590 ⇒ 00:02:46.180 Uttam Kumaran: True.
22 00:02:46.180 ⇒ 00:02:55.080 Shivani Amar: But I was like, something’s going on with my internet, but then you pinged this morning because I was trying to, like, click into links for my Morning Brew newsletter.
23 00:02:55.080 ⇒ 00:02:55.430 Jason Wu: None of them.
24 00:02:55.430 ⇒ 00:02:58.810 Shivani Amar: opening, and then I was like, what’s going on with my internet?
25 00:02:58.810 ⇒ 00:02:59.280 Jason Wu: I would…
26 00:02:59.280 ⇒ 00:02:59.840 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
27 00:03:00.870 ⇒ 00:03:08.599 Jason Wu: I was on a plane this morning, I was expecting to take a nap, because it was a 5.45 a.m. flight, and then I got alerted, I was like, oh, here we go.
28 00:03:08.600 ⇒ 00:03:09.800 Shivani Amar: Here we go. So…
29 00:03:10.110 ⇒ 00:03:13.750 Jason Wu: We were tracking all that this morning, so we were impacted as well.
30 00:03:14.730 ⇒ 00:03:17.320 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Sorry.
31 00:03:17.320 ⇒ 00:03:20.409 Shivani Amar: Litham, is, is Robert joining?
32 00:03:20.740 ⇒ 00:03:25.369 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think he’s hopping out of something that’s ending, but we can get started.
33 00:03:25.600 ⇒ 00:03:38.330 Shivani Amar: Okay, cool. So, I guess the… the good news is we would like to work together, right? So I think we want to figure out what the next steps are. I’m planning on, like, I’ve drafted a…
34 00:03:38.440 ⇒ 00:03:40.520 Shivani Amar: Kind of slack to…
35 00:03:40.690 ⇒ 00:03:48.289 Shivani Amar: the full team, just so that everybody knows this is coming. And so we can kind of get, like.
36 00:03:48.560 ⇒ 00:04:03.229 Shivani Amar: things signed, get the process started. Next week’s a fun one, obviously, because of Thanksgiving, so maybe it’s, like, the week after. And then, actually, like, a lot of folks have… or no, not a lot of folks, everybody has, like, the last
37 00:04:03.390 ⇒ 00:04:10.449 Shivani Amar: two weeks, kind of, off. I don’t remember the exact dates. I don’t know if you remember them. But that’s…
38 00:04:10.820 ⇒ 00:04:13.890 Shivani Amar: Like, a no-meeting time period.
39 00:04:14.250 ⇒ 00:04:20.539 Shivani Amar: So we will just, like, we can, like, formalize that stuff and, like, how it flows to the Gantt chart.
40 00:04:20.540 ⇒ 00:04:21.040 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
41 00:04:21.040 ⇒ 00:04:26.259 Shivani Amar: And, like, how it flows into the project timing, because, like, while it might mean that we’re doing some…
42 00:04:26.500 ⇒ 00:04:32.139 Shivani Amar: ingestion during that time, like, if we’re able to do the discovery, it could also mean, like.
43 00:04:32.290 ⇒ 00:04:40.789 Shivani Amar: We’re on pause for those two weeks, because we’re not gonna be able to, like, check in. Jason, does that sound right to you? I can look at the dates right now, if I find them.
44 00:04:41.210 ⇒ 00:04:52.099 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, our team, like, for the most part, I think last and the last week of the year, people will be off, but also, like, there’s parts of that where we can keep going, like, so if…
45 00:04:52.840 ⇒ 00:04:56.610 Uttam Kumaran: we can look at the Gantt chart to figure out what part of the process can continue.
46 00:04:56.610 ⇒ 00:04:57.100 Shivani Amar: Yeah.
47 00:04:57.240 ⇒ 00:04:59.220 Uttam Kumaran: At least for that third week.
48 00:04:59.360 ⇒ 00:05:02.920 Uttam Kumaran: And then fourth week, yeah, our team is kind of also in and out, so…
49 00:05:04.080 ⇒ 00:05:15.310 Shivani Amar: Makes sense, it’s just holiday time, so 2025, if I look at the calendar… Calendar… Mike…
50 00:05:16.000 ⇒ 00:05:20.119 Shivani Amar: Do I have it in my Google Calendar? Let me see, one second.
51 00:05:23.050 ⇒ 00:05:35.259 Shivani Amar: So yeah, like, the whole week next week is gonna be… the week of Thanksgiving, people aren’t really gonna be in meetings, so that’s kinda how it works over here, and then the week’s basically the 22nd of…
52 00:05:35.590 ⇒ 00:05:38.050 Shivani Amar: December through Jan 2nd.
53 00:05:40.770 ⇒ 00:05:52.850 Shivani Amar: Okay. Like, if we start, you know, there will be time for you to meet with people between December 1st and December 19th, and then it’ll be, like, 2 weeks of, like, no meetings, but, like, ideally, it’s, like, data’s being ingested during that time.
54 00:05:53.270 ⇒ 00:05:59.029 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so we can plan to at least, if we choose, like, a data vendor, ETL vendor.
55 00:05:59.030 ⇒ 00:05:59.440 Shivani Amar: Yeah.
56 00:05:59.440 ⇒ 00:06:05.879 Uttam Kumaran: And I sort of budgeted, like, 2 weeks to kind of do that. Yeah. We could kick off, and I mentioned in the comment, yeah, it’s like…
57 00:06:06.230 ⇒ 00:06:10.559 Uttam Kumaran: Again, it’s gonna be depending on the amount of data, but it’s usually, like, 3 to 5 days.
58 00:06:10.560 ⇒ 00:06:11.040 Shivani Amar: Yeah.
59 00:06:11.750 ⇒ 00:06:12.430 Shivani Amar: Cool.
60 00:06:12.630 ⇒ 00:06:14.800 Uttam Kumaran: You know, for, like, millions of events, so…
61 00:06:14.800 ⇒ 00:06:18.190 Shivani Amar: When it comes to the topic of, hey Robert, how’s it going?
62 00:06:18.450 ⇒ 00:06:19.489 Robert Tseng: Good, how are you?
63 00:06:19.490 ⇒ 00:06:24.489 Shivani Amar: No, it’s okay. When it comes to the topic of,
64 00:06:25.360 ⇒ 00:06:40.880 Shivani Amar: when it comes to the topic of the stack, and, like, how we’re working through the stack, I thought Jason could help provide some helpful context with them. I know you and I have had some back and forth just because I’m new also, where I’m like, we have some data in Snowflake, but it’s not our instance, and, like, it isn’t. Like, we’re not paying for any data warehouse.
65 00:06:40.900 ⇒ 00:06:53.910 Shivani Amar: Similarly, we have some people, like, relying on data that lives in BigQuery, but same thing, we’re not… we don’t have the contract with BigQuery. Cool. So, Jason, can you describe that ecosystem a little bit more, just so everybody knows where we’re, like, starting off from?
66 00:06:53.910 ⇒ 00:07:13.220 Jason Wu: Yeah, I mean, just to kind of, like, you know, blanket statement, we don’t have a BI stack, right? So, when we discuss, like, access to kind of that data and, like, our familiarity, excuse me, with Snowflake, that is a Snowflake instance that our retail partner, Emerson, has given us.
67 00:07:13.310 ⇒ 00:07:27.009 Jason Wu: And then when it comes to BigQuery, our, like, acquisition dashboards are driven off of that, but that’s on a shared instance, so even we don’t have access to kind of, like, the admin controls of BigQuery. So, you know, think of us as, like, basically kind of starting from scratch.
68 00:07:27.030 ⇒ 00:07:39.589 Jason Wu: Which kind of leads me to some questions that I was asking Shivani, just to make sure we cover here, is as we kind of go through this initial phase, and then kind of moving forward, like, like, will you be providing those resources to kind of provide, like, all of the administration?
69 00:07:39.590 ⇒ 00:07:49.030 Jason Wu: Instead of for that? Or is there something that we would have to kind of, like, as an expectation, like, work with Snowflake, or whatever the backend is, you know, to kind of get that working on our side?
70 00:07:49.380 ⇒ 00:08:00.809 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so the couple pieces that we will… that we’ve mapped out in the Gantt that we will have to sort of group make decisions on is a place to land the data, so a warehouse, an ETL tool, so something ideally to move.
71 00:08:01.040 ⇒ 00:08:13.530 Uttam Kumaran: the ETL tool may or may not cover everything. Like, there may be things that you will have to post and maintain that pull data from an API. And again, this sort of is depending on budget and timeline, so…
72 00:08:13.530 ⇒ 00:08:23.489 Uttam Kumaran: there’s something around data movement, either a managed service or a self-hosted service. There’s also a couple differences around, like, GitHub, for example.
73 00:08:23.600 ⇒ 00:08:26.789 Uttam Kumaran: Unless you’re, like, interested in Bitbucket or another code.
74 00:08:26.930 ⇒ 00:08:33.040 Uttam Kumaran: managed service, that’s kind of an easy… well, I guess now that they’re down, I don’t know, maybe you can consider another one, but…
75 00:08:33.530 ⇒ 00:08:35.829 Uttam Kumaran: You know, there’s not much, like… yeah.
76 00:08:36.220 ⇒ 00:08:53.760 Jason Wu: Yeah, no, we’re a GitHub shop. You know, when it comes to, like, future data sources, if it’s gonna become an API pull, like, you know, we’ve got resources to kind of do that. Cool. Really, really, it kind of comes down to, like, more kind of, like, the sysadmin, like, system operations components, like, those are the resources that we don’t have, but…
77 00:08:53.760 ⇒ 00:09:03.039 Jason Wu: As far as, like, you know, potentially being able to integrate them, if you’ve got the resources, great. If it’s something that we need to augment, let’s talk about that, but just kind of making sure we set that expectation up front.
78 00:09:03.540 ⇒ 00:09:07.439 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so across Snowflake, the ETL tool, the data,
79 00:09:07.740 ⇒ 00:09:18.089 Uttam Kumaran: like, across the data warehouse, the ETL tool, like dbt, and, like, kind of the code repository, we got handled. Similarly, on the BI side, if it’s one of the, you know.
80 00:09:18.200 ⇒ 00:09:32.700 Uttam Kumaran: top 10 tools, no problem there. I think what we would… what we would ideally like is to… to… we love… we want to build some redundancy internally, so a lot of the docs we produce, we will outline how we set everything up. So even if, like.
81 00:09:32.760 ⇒ 00:09:49.529 Uttam Kumaran: If we were all to get hit by a bus, God forbid, you can still set it up again. And so we’ll have documentation on all of the initialization. On the ETL tool and Snowflake, there’s not a lot of, like, really significant sysadmin after the initial piece, just given what we know about
82 00:09:49.600 ⇒ 00:09:51.740 Uttam Kumaran: Elements, like, goals right now.
83 00:09:51.740 ⇒ 00:09:52.100 Jason Wu: Yep.
84 00:09:52.100 ⇒ 00:10:11.880 Uttam Kumaran: We’re not doing anything, like, so complicated, that I’m worried there. Really, the BI tool, is gonna be where there’s gonna be need for some administration. You can consider that, like, creating users, creating groups, potentially creating dashboards or content. So there’s gonna be some… we’re gonna need some support
85 00:10:12.000 ⇒ 00:10:30.790 Uttam Kumaran: you know, from the team. We have all the resources to do that, but that’s where we would… we typically try to just do that alongside someone in the team, so we have understanding of that. And then in dbt as well, that’s, like, all modeling. Also there, there is, like, an initialization step, but then after that is really just writing SQL and pushing data models.
86 00:10:30.930 ⇒ 00:10:48.560 Uttam Kumaran: So, in general, like, I would say even across a lot of our clients, unless we… typically, when we walk into an environment that’s been built and there’s, like, active fires, there’s a lot of, like, administration work. Given we’re starting from scratch, the way we kind of design the architecture is to, like, try to minimize
87 00:10:48.610 ⇒ 00:10:53.220 Uttam Kumaran: A lot of that, so a lot of it is on Rails, and then there’s documentation and runbooks for the rest.
88 00:10:53.690 ⇒ 00:10:54.320 Jason Wu: Okay.
89 00:10:56.450 ⇒ 00:11:11.839 Uttam Kumaran: So, and yeah, so all the initialization of all those different pieces, like, we would help manage, and then if there’s a piece… if there’s a part of Snowflake that we need to do for a certain vendor that we can’t handle, then we’ll… we’ll… we’ll sort of let you guys know, but we haven’t had anything like that significantly.
90 00:11:12.290 ⇒ 00:11:21.920 Jason Wu: Got it. Yeah, and we are super pro-redundancy, you know, you know, from the perspective of kind of those knowledge stocks, so, definitely kind of an appetite for that, but…
91 00:11:21.920 ⇒ 00:11:23.980 Uttam Kumaran: Where do you guys do docs right now?
92 00:11:25.880 ⇒ 00:11:28.370 Jason Wu: Well, that’s a loaded question.
93 00:11:28.370 ⇒ 00:11:29.060 Uttam Kumaran: Right.
94 00:11:29.060 ⇒ 00:11:44.569 Jason Wu: a combination of Google Docs, we use Notion as well, you know, for some things there, so, you know, I’ll kind of defer to you and kind of, like, what’s best, that there’s already kind of things that are out there. Most of it’s done through kind of, like, you know, Workspace and Google, you know, from that perspective.
95 00:11:44.920 ⇒ 00:11:48.930 Jason Wu: But yeah, we can manage that forward if there’s a better way of doing that. Yeah.
96 00:11:48.930 ⇒ 00:12:04.399 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, in the repository itself, we’ll leave a lot of READMEs and docs on how did we set this up, and like, for example, in Snowflake, when you start Snowflake, you have to run a bunch of grants to create users, roles, warehouses. That entire script that we used to initialize.
97 00:12:04.400 ⇒ 00:12:15.179 Uttam Kumaran: we’ll save in the repo as well. And then anything that’s more business logic, we will… we will put into the Google workspace, so either in a spreadsheet or Google Docs. We also use Notion a lot, so…
98 00:12:15.720 ⇒ 00:12:19.770 Uttam Kumaran: That’s the easiest. We could… we internally will…
99 00:12:19.930 ⇒ 00:12:28.259 Uttam Kumaran: spin up a Notion, like, kind of area in our Notion for docs related to y’all, and we’re happy to do that wherever it’s easiest, too.
100 00:12:29.490 ⇒ 00:12:31.060 Jason Wu: Okay,
101 00:12:31.730 ⇒ 00:12:45.119 Jason Wu: maybe that’s something we’ll talk about… I could talk with Shivani, like, it depends on, kind of like, who needs that documentation. Notion, I would say, is more tactically used, you know, but, you know, if you had to say lowest common denominator, it’d be… it’d be Google.
102 00:12:45.600 ⇒ 00:12:46.220 Jason Wu: Okay. For a lot of.
103 00:12:46.220 ⇒ 00:12:53.120 Uttam Kumaran: To give you a sense of, like, a document, for example, it’s like, hey, we want to, like, a spike on, like, evaluating an ETL tool.
104 00:12:53.270 ⇒ 00:13:00.790 Uttam Kumaran: we want to document, like, what are… how do we talk… how do we go evaluate all of them? What do we find out? Who do we talk to? And then a final decision.
105 00:13:00.940 ⇒ 00:13:13.639 Uttam Kumaran: that usually ends up as a document, and so it’d be like, okay, where did we put that? At the end of the day, we can put everything into the repository, so at least it’s somewhere, and… and… but, of course, we can have that in Google, for sure.
106 00:13:13.640 ⇒ 00:13:13.990 Shivani Amar: No.
107 00:13:13.990 ⇒ 00:13:14.310 Jason Wu: Okay.
108 00:13:14.310 ⇒ 00:13:28.990 Shivani Amar: Yeah, like, I would say, like, I’ve already created a folder called Brain Forge, and then we’ll have, like, you know, your proposal in a folder that people can reference, like, decisions made on Stack, and then, like, we can kind of build from there, I think. Perfect.
109 00:13:29.020 ⇒ 00:13:36.599 Shivani Amar: I’ve been, like, yeah, creating copies of the things that you share and just kind of plopping it in, so… Okay. We can figure that out.
110 00:13:37.850 ⇒ 00:13:41.810 Shivani Amar: Question for you,
111 00:13:42.810 ⇒ 00:13:57.269 Shivani Amar: on… okay, so I’m, like, I’m just, like, building out some comms for the whole business. I just wanted to run by you. So what I’m sharing, or just maybe wanted to share, but I’m saying, like, we’re kicking off a new company-wide effort to build a stronger, more reliable data foundation for Element.
112 00:13:57.580 ⇒ 00:14:09.969 Shivani Amar: We’re gonna be working with a partner called Brainforge, I’ll put a link to your site, and we’ll be moving through business area by area. We’re starting with the commercial side of the business, Shopify, Amazon, wholesale, retail.
113 00:14:10.080 ⇒ 00:14:20.669 Shivani Amar: In the first phase, Brainforge will focus on understanding how our data flows today, aligning our definitions, and beginning to build the structures we’ll need to expand this work to other parts of the company. Sounds good?
114 00:14:21.170 ⇒ 00:14:29.570 Shivani Amar: Yeah. And then I’m gonna, like, attach, like, a kind of summarized version of your, of your proposal, just for people to be able to reference.
115 00:14:29.730 ⇒ 00:14:40.619 Shivani Amar: And the Gantt chart that you shared, like, I feel like once we actually get started, we can say, like, okay, like, what’s realistic? It’s just, like, proposal form right now.
116 00:14:40.620 ⇒ 00:14:53.109 Shivani Amar: But I think that’s fine, because it’s like, okay, who’s actually available for you to connect with versus not? But basically, especially the commercial side of the business, I’m like, I want them to be aware that, like, we’re gonna be setting.
117 00:14:53.110 ⇒ 00:14:54.699 Uttam Kumaran: Someone’s been asking questions, yeah.
118 00:14:54.700 ⇒ 00:15:05.899 Shivani Amar: And then, on that piece, like, let’s say we’re like, okay, like, the week after Thanksgiving, let’s… let’s actually, like, start some of these conversations, like, I don’t think today is the day, but, like, I’d like… I’d love to
119 00:15:06.130 ⇒ 00:15:11.540 Shivani Amar: get on people’s calendars, and, like, think about how to do that thoughtfully. So it could even be, like.
120 00:15:11.790 ⇒ 00:15:25.890 Shivani Amar: Jason, I don’t know if you want to weigh in here, but, like, it could even be starting with the head of commercial, which is Will, just so that he’s… has a sense of, like, what’s going on. He’s the person least… we want least in the weeds, but most, like, over the.
121 00:15:25.890 ⇒ 00:15:26.460 Uttam Kumaran: Bought in.
122 00:15:26.460 ⇒ 00:15:44.430 Shivani Amar: Yeah. But maybe, like, so maybe that’s, like, a 30-minute thing, just so he, like, is comfortable, gets to know you, and Jason, you weigh in here on, like, how we’ve typically done it in the past, and then otherwise, I’m thinking it’s gonna be, like, the people overseeing e-commerce to start, because that’s, like, where we’re gonna start with ingesting Shopify data.
123 00:15:47.980 ⇒ 00:15:48.740 Uttam Kumaran: You’re engaging.
124 00:15:51.170 ⇒ 00:16:09.369 Jason Wu: Thanks. Yeah, I think that makes sense. I think we’ll definitely kind of want kind of an overview about, like, what you’re going to be asking of the team. So, Shivani setting up that call is probably the right direction for the first one. And then, you know, so the e-commerce team, you know, it’s… it’s divided up into kind of, like, a couple buckets. You know, there’s…
125 00:16:09.470 ⇒ 00:16:15.140 Jason Wu: And if we’re thinking about, like, I think when I read in the doc, like, let’s, like, kind of focus on, like, Shopify first.
126 00:16:15.140 ⇒ 00:16:15.520 Shivani Amar: Yeah.
127 00:16:15.520 ⇒ 00:16:24.350 Jason Wu: You know, so, I think it’s probably… I don’t know if you have a list of questions, you know, or, like, what your process is in terms of kind of determining, like, what data you want to pull.
128 00:16:24.690 ⇒ 00:16:25.180 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
129 00:16:25.180 ⇒ 00:16:29.449 Jason Wu: Those questions might help us just kind of identify who are the right people to talk to.
130 00:16:29.450 ⇒ 00:16:31.550 Shivani Amar: Okay. Yeah.
131 00:16:31.550 ⇒ 00:16:46.149 Jason Wu: Yeah, because we’re broken up more by business division, so, like, e-commerce consists of myself on the tech side, there’s a person that runs partnerships, there’s a person that runs, like, paid ads, you know, and again, it just depends on, kind of, like, what data you’re looking for.
132 00:16:46.150 ⇒ 00:16:56.429 Jason Wu: But if it’s, like, if it starts from a systems perspective, like Shopify, perhaps a lot of that just comes from, frankly, me, you know, to say, here’s kind of where it’s at.
133 00:16:56.510 ⇒ 00:16:57.710 Jason Wu: But.
134 00:16:58.070 ⇒ 00:16:58.930 Uttam Kumaran: It’s gonna be a mix of…
135 00:16:58.930 ⇒ 00:17:00.400 Jason Wu: Sure, it’s not that simple, but yeah.
136 00:17:00.400 ⇒ 00:17:18.370 Uttam Kumaran: it’s gonna be a mix of, like, people, like, who… who are the people, like, kind of, like, priorities, and, like, sort of what is the process, like, how… what questions have been asked before, what haven’t, what… what access to data do you have? So, I’ll… we’ll totally list out, and we’ll list it out by, sort of, each…
137 00:17:18.510 ⇒ 00:17:20.460 Uttam Kumaran: Like, we’re… again, our… our…
138 00:17:20.599 ⇒ 00:17:36.599 Uttam Kumaran: mindset here is that we’re going channel by channel, so we’ll list those questions. We will have a lot of similar questions across every channel, and to give you a sense of, like, how we’ve done this in the past, is all of those meetings we have with the subject matter experts in different areas, we record and we basically
139 00:17:36.600 ⇒ 00:17:40.810 Uttam Kumaran: Create all that documentation on what we asked them, what we found out.
140 00:17:40.810 ⇒ 00:17:55.259 Uttam Kumaran: So that all lives, you know, so that’s all… that’s all notes that we take, and then basically what we… what we’ll try to do at the end of it is sort of, like, okay, we… I’m even fine to talk to people that we don’t get to, Shivani, for, like, a while, because
141 00:17:55.390 ⇒ 00:18:07.630 Uttam Kumaran: We will end up needing their help, everybody’s help here and there, and so the more that people can see that we’re here asking good questions, that we’re here to support them, and then we’ll just take notes, and then we’ll work with you to prioritize
142 00:18:07.780 ⇒ 00:18:18.749 Uttam Kumaran: you know, what to go after, what needs the most support. And then, yeah, I think the only other thing is, like, if you’re mentioning that we’re doing a bunch of stuff on data, people are free to just, like.
143 00:18:18.990 ⇒ 00:18:25.809 Uttam Kumaran: Then the wishlist and stuff, that could also kickstart our ability to see, like, what people are thinking about, if you think that’s, like, relevant.
144 00:18:25.810 ⇒ 00:18:39.080 Shivani Amar: that’s swirling right now, like, just, like, like, and I think, like, once we have, like, NDAs signed and stuff like that, like, we need to figure out all of the documentation, but it’s like, Jason, like, once they’re in, should we…
145 00:18:39.080 ⇒ 00:18:39.740 Shivani Amar: like…
146 00:18:39.740 ⇒ 00:18:59.680 Shivani Amar: I’m like, there are Google Docs that I’ll probably want to share with them around, like, e… like, Carlos’ e-commerce document. And so, I’m like, is that… is the best pathway for that stuff? Sorry, this is super tactical since I haven’t, like, accurate vendors, like, at, at Element, but, like, so when I was at my last company, we’d actually get them email addresses so that they could be, like.
147 00:18:59.680 ⇒ 00:19:14.010 Shivani Amar: you know, like, brave email addresses there, so we could share Google Docs with them, so they could, like, have access. And so, like, is that what we do with folks here, where we’re like, okay, we’re gonna get you on an Element email address, so that then I can share Google Sheets with you, and you can, like, be in the systems?
148 00:19:15.190 ⇒ 00:19:17.450 Jason Wu: You know, that’s a great question.
149 00:19:18.410 ⇒ 00:19:26.580 Jason Wu: I’ve not seen that done here. Typically we’re just gonna share it with, you know, like, Brainforge’s emails.
150 00:19:26.580 ⇒ 00:19:35.310 Jason Wu: But depending on, kind of, the sensitivity of the dock, I think… and I’m just thinking out loud right here, like, there may be some sensitivity if it’s, like, a working dock.
151 00:19:35.310 ⇒ 00:19:48.509 Jason Wu: that we’re using versus, like, a copy of, like, as of a certain date. You know, so, like, Carlos, for example, like, his, like, e-commerce dashboard, it’s like a live document. I’m not sure how comfortable he would feel with anybody, frankly, other than him, you know?
152 00:19:48.510 ⇒ 00:19:48.870 Shivani Amar: Yeah.
153 00:19:48.870 ⇒ 00:20:08.869 Jason Wu: kind of edit access, but if it’s a view access, you know, it just kind of depends on what you need. You know, I would defer to the owner of the doc saying, can we give them view rights, you know, to it, so they can edit it? Or, you know, would it be appropriate enough, you know, to just create a snapshot as of a certain day? You know, I’m less a fan.
154 00:20:08.870 ⇒ 00:20:10.160 Shivani Amar: They’re making copies of docs.
155 00:20:10.480 ⇒ 00:20:12.100 Jason Wu: You know, but… yeah.
156 00:20:12.100 ⇒ 00:20:21.310 Shivani Amar: I would almost, like, lean towards being able to, like… because of view only, it’s, like, hard to sometimes… you can’t collapse, you know, you can’t, like, even open columns when they’re hidden, so I’m like.
157 00:20:21.310 ⇒ 00:20:21.670 Jason Wu: Yeah.
158 00:20:21.670 ⇒ 00:20:37.610 Shivani Amar: I would prefer they’re able to poke around and say, okay, how are they… like, if you were looking at an e-commerce dashboard, how are we thinking about marketing efficiency ratio and things like that? So, I’m like, let’s fig… like, that’s, like, just, like, stuff that I need to figure out very tactically for you guys to be able to hit the ground running.
159 00:20:37.610 ⇒ 00:20:49.989 Uttam Kumaran: a sense of, like, how we’ve done it in the past. So, for a lot of our clients, we, yeah, we typically request, like, hey, can you create us an element email addresses? Because usually, even a lot of the vendors, you may have SSO, or, you know, you have Google Auth through.
160 00:20:49.990 ⇒ 00:20:58.970 Uttam Kumaran: We will also create an element at Brainforge.ai, and then, of course, the fallback is, like, we have each of our individual Brainforge emails. Yeah.
161 00:20:58.970 ⇒ 00:21:06.020 Shivani Amar: I think that that would make sense. I don’t know who… who is the person to, like, make that happen. Do you know, Jason? Is that Lauren?
162 00:21:06.380 ⇒ 00:21:09.730 Jason Wu: It’s Lauren, to create the emails.
163 00:21:09.890 ⇒ 00:21:16.000 Jason Wu: Yeah, explore the emails. I think we just need to kind of figure that out, yep.
164 00:21:16.000 ⇒ 00:21:21.400 Shivani Amar: Yeah, so with them, I’ll just need to know, like, who on your team, like, we just have some, like, ba- I don’t know if you have checklist stuff for, like.
165 00:21:21.400 ⇒ 00:21:22.060 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, we do.
166 00:21:22.060 ⇒ 00:21:22.560 Shivani Amar: Something like that.
167 00:21:22.560 ⇒ 00:21:22.970 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
168 00:21:22.970 ⇒ 00:21:36.980 Shivani Amar: But, like, we can work through that. If you share that with me and Jason, we can also, like, spend some time later, like, even async, just being like, okay, this is actually for Lauren, this is this, on the best way for us to just get started. Because I’m kind of working here, I just want it to be…
169 00:21:36.980 ⇒ 00:21:40.999 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll put together in our… well, I’ll go ahead and spin up,
170 00:21:41.320 ⇒ 00:21:54.969 Uttam Kumaran: that, like, we’re kind of gonna start documenting a lot in that data platform Google Sheet. I’ll create a kickoff section with just, like, what we need to kick off. So, again, it’ll be, like, can we get a Slack channel going? Do we have the Google Drive set up?
171 00:21:54.970 ⇒ 00:22:07.569 Uttam Kumaran: can we get provisioned an email, or if not, like, can we get access to these systems? And then, the other pieces that I’ll list there is, can we go ahead and block off, like, at least one weekly touchpoint?
172 00:22:07.570 ⇒ 00:22:08.510 Shivani Amar: Yeah.
173 00:22:08.510 ⇒ 00:22:19.979 Uttam Kumaran: So, for an hour, we at least have standing, and then we definitely… we talk… we’ll talk about the Element team every day in our daily stand-ups, but if you want to have that separately with us.
174 00:22:19.990 ⇒ 00:22:28.840 Uttam Kumaran: we can totally do that as well. And then, of course, we have time to allocate towards whatever meetings, and you’re right, I just want to get those booked.
175 00:22:29.780 ⇒ 00:22:30.150 Shivani Amar: Yeah.
176 00:22:30.150 ⇒ 00:22:31.039 Uttam Kumaran: we can, you know.
177 00:22:31.040 ⇒ 00:22:38.669 Shivani Amar: Jason, do you feel like you could join? I would love it if it’s, like, the four of us on the weekly touchpoint. Does that feel right to you?
178 00:22:40.690 ⇒ 00:22:44.840 Jason Wu: Yeah, that feels right. Okay. And then we just include anyone else that might need to be in.
179 00:22:44.840 ⇒ 00:22:57.320 Shivani Amar: Yeah, depending on, kind of, the topic of the day is. Yeah. So, like, I imagine, like, Utam and Robert will have, like, this… once you… once you give a sense, this is what the discovery call is going to entail, then, like, I want to join the discovery call. I don’t know if Jason.
180 00:22:57.320 ⇒ 00:22:57.670 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
181 00:22:57.670 ⇒ 00:23:16.280 Shivani Amar: really needs to join the discovery call, but it would at least be, like, me and you guys, or whoever from your team is leading the discovery call. And, like, I would be there to help connect things, mostly listening and learning alongside you, but, like, or, like, introducing you to the stakeholder, and then, like, letting you guys flow from there, and letting you drive the conversation.
182 00:23:16.600 ⇒ 00:23:35.200 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and so typically, yeah, and we’ll prepare agendas for all the meetings, and then on that Thursday or Friday end of week call, that’s when we kind of, like, consolidate, like, okay, here are the action items that we completed. It’s a… we try to have a deck prepared to drive those, but this can… it could be sharing or whatever. For the first…
183 00:23:35.240 ⇒ 00:23:52.770 Uttam Kumaran: part of this, it’s just gonna be a lot of, like… it’s gonna… it will be a lot of access things and a lot of decisions, and then as we go towards more deliverables, we can… we can have it be a deck format, because the other thing, Siobhan, I just want you to have something for you to be able to share out to the wider company on, like, how the progress is going.
184 00:23:53.030 ⇒ 00:23:53.350 Shivani Amar: with this.
185 00:23:53.350 ⇒ 00:23:53.880 Uttam Kumaran: initiative.
186 00:23:53.880 ⇒ 00:24:01.729 Shivani Amar: So, I like the idea of it being on a Friday, just to, like, just to, like, wrap the week. Jason, does that resonate with you?
187 00:24:03.390 ⇒ 00:24:04.750 Shivani Amar: Or Friday’s tough.
188 00:24:05.250 ⇒ 00:24:06.200 Jason Wu: Oh…
189 00:24:06.200 ⇒ 00:24:06.580 Shivani Amar: Friday.
190 00:24:07.180 ⇒ 00:24:08.820 Jason Wu: If it’s… depending on the…
191 00:24:08.820 ⇒ 00:24:13.620 Uttam Kumaran: We usually do Thursdays, just, yeah, just so that, in case there’s something urgent.
192 00:24:13.620 ⇒ 00:24:14.090 Shivani Amar: Yeah.
193 00:24:14.090 ⇒ 00:24:16.159 Uttam Kumaran: and get that out by a Friday, but…
194 00:24:16.160 ⇒ 00:24:26.440 Shivani Amar: Let me just scope some calendars here. Let’s say, like, I’m seeing right now a possibility is, like, 2PM Eastern every Thursday.
195 00:24:27.730 ⇒ 00:24:29.920 Shivani Amar: Like, 11 a.m. for you, Jason.
196 00:24:30.340 ⇒ 00:24:35.369 Jason Wu: I’m looking… I don’t think I have anything standing on those days. Yeah, I’m looking at your calendar, too, and I’m like… Yeah.
197 00:24:35.370 ⇒ 00:24:35.850 Shivani Amar: That’s weird.
198 00:24:35.850 ⇒ 00:24:37.200 Jason Wu: Yeah, there’s nothing standing.
199 00:24:37.200 ⇒ 00:24:40.959 Shivani Amar: How do you guys feel about that? Do you have something so that’s 1PM for you with them?
200 00:24:41.610 ⇒ 00:24:42.630 Uttam Kumaran: That’s great for me.
201 00:24:42.630 ⇒ 00:24:47.150 Shivani Amar: Okay, so should we lock that in for the four of us, weekly?
202 00:24:47.150 ⇒ 00:24:56.009 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, let’s do that, so I can send that… I can send that invite, and then, yeah, again, for us, we like Thursdays, because it… sometimes people are out Fridays, and if there’s anything that we need to, like.
203 00:24:56.460 ⇒ 00:25:02.829 Uttam Kumaran: bang out quickly before Friday hits, we can… we have a little bit of buffer, so that’s… that’s what we do across all our clients.
204 00:25:02.830 ⇒ 00:25:16.240 Shivani Amar: Okay, that sounds good. So, like, I’m gonna socialize, like, basically, you’re gonna send me a checklist, let me just, like, make sure I’m tracking. You’re gonna send me a checklist of things. I’m gonna send out an all-team comms thing, and then I’m probably gonna ping Will.
205 00:25:16.390 ⇒ 00:25:41.189 Shivani Amar: specifically, who’s our chief commercial officer, and just say, like, hey, like, we’re going to be spending time with people on your team to start. And so, like, the first thing is, like, do you want to have a touchpoint, like, with folks, or are you good with us just kind of going straight to, like, your key stakeholders to understand the terms in your org? And so, like, if he’s like, no, I’d really like to meet them, we can set up time, but he’s also very slammed, so I kind of want to give him the option of, like.
206 00:25:41.600 ⇒ 00:25:50.879 Shivani Amar: run with it versus not. So I’m gonna send all team comms, send a message to Will, and then ideally, we’re getting some touchpoints scheduled for that first week after Thanksgiving.
207 00:25:51.620 ⇒ 00:26:01.019 Uttam Kumaran: Perfect. And then, in terms of the contract, so we’ll try to get that as soon as we can. If we can sign it this week, then we could even get started.
208 00:26:01.020 ⇒ 00:26:05.150 Shivani Amar: I just need to learn on my end, I’m like, I just need to learn,
209 00:26:05.440 ⇒ 00:26:08.259 Shivani Amar: If there’s, like, other vendor, like, contracting, like.
210 00:26:08.260 ⇒ 00:26:24.100 Uttam Kumaran: So, I’ll just try to get you as much of that now, before Thanksgiving comes in, and that way, worst case, if it’s December 1st, then so be it. I think if you can at least give us… if we can figure out how to get access to Google Drive, I can at least throw a checklist in there.
211 00:26:24.400 ⇒ 00:26:24.790 Shivani Amar: Yeah.
212 00:26:24.790 ⇒ 00:26:33.330 Uttam Kumaran: already start preparing some of the questions I’ll have. You know, we’ve already noted some stuff down on our side, so I can just start organizing that folder.
213 00:26:33.910 ⇒ 00:26:38.300 Shivani Amar: Yeah, okay, so, like, I’m like… I’m trying to…
214 00:26:38.300 ⇒ 00:26:40.059 Uttam Kumaran: And I can send this in an email, I can.
215 00:26:40.060 ⇒ 00:26:47.680 Shivani Amar: Let me know, because I’m like, I just need to ping… the person who does her people stuff is very busy, so I’m like, I want her to… like, I don’t…
216 00:26:47.680 ⇒ 00:26:49.630 Uttam Kumaran: Make sure you have everything from our side.
217 00:26:49.630 ⇒ 00:26:50.050 Shivani Amar: Yeah.
218 00:26:50.050 ⇒ 00:26:51.480 Uttam Kumaran: list, and then…
219 00:26:51.480 ⇒ 00:26:52.950 Shivani Amar: Yeah, exactly.
220 00:26:52.950 ⇒ 00:26:53.700 Uttam Kumaran: I say, okay.
221 00:26:53.700 ⇒ 00:27:01.630 Shivani Amar: Because, like, I want you guys to have email address… email access, so you can, like, look at things on Google Sheets, but then also, like, our Google Drive is actually pretty, like…
222 00:27:02.650 ⇒ 00:27:07.290 Shivani Amar: Like, there’s a lot of stuff there that somebody could poke around, you know, and like, the security on that piece.
223 00:27:07.290 ⇒ 00:27:26.900 Uttam Kumaran: That’s all… yeah, so even if it’s, as Jason mentioned, where you’re just adding copies to things, and you find things relevant, that’s also fine. I mainly just… I can also, if we don’t end up figuring that out, I can start to write stuff in our Notion or Google Drive and share it directly with you, Shivani. So regardless, and we can transfer it, that doesn’t matter.
224 00:27:26.900 ⇒ 00:27:31.979 Shivani Amar: Sounds good. Cool. Okay, I’m looking forward to this. What other questions do you guys have for us?
225 00:27:35.000 ⇒ 00:27:35.920 Uttam Kumaran: Robert?
226 00:27:37.020 ⇒ 00:27:40.929 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, I have, like, a bajillion other, like, questions about the business, but not, like.
227 00:27:41.160 ⇒ 00:27:41.520 Robert Tseng: Oh, yeah.
228 00:27:41.520 ⇒ 00:27:43.209 Uttam Kumaran: Logistics-wise, I don’t…
229 00:27:43.210 ⇒ 00:27:43.760 Shivani Amar: Okay.
230 00:27:43.760 ⇒ 00:27:44.859 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, not much.
231 00:27:44.860 ⇒ 00:27:46.920 Shivani Amar: I guess one other,
232 00:27:47.670 ⇒ 00:27:56.409 Shivani Amar: thing that I didn’t totally understand from the proposal is, like, okay, like, the monthly cost I get, like, how many hours of folks’ time on your team are we getting per week?
233 00:27:57.040 ⇒ 00:28:02.010 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so typically, we basically… we back that into our hourly cost, and so.
234 00:28:02.010 ⇒ 00:28:02.550 Shivani Amar: Oh, yeah.
235 00:28:02.550 ⇒ 00:28:18.560 Uttam Kumaran: again, we usually provide, like, two options. Either we… we have the, hourly by… by rate, and then, so typically, we… we would achieve… we would work with you to achieve, like, the outcomes that we set out. So, if that’s… that’s… given this proposal, it’s gonna be anywhere from, like.
236 00:28:18.720 ⇒ 00:28:22.920 Uttam Kumaran: 40 to 60, 40 to 70 hours, cool.
237 00:28:23.340 ⇒ 00:28:26.049 Shivani Amar: So… Okay, super helpful, and then…
238 00:28:26.050 ⇒ 00:28:41.680 Uttam Kumaran: And on our side, we’re also… we typically have, like, a pod of people, so I will… Robert and I will be in, like, the beginning kind of phase, and then we’ll bring in people based on, like, the expertise needed. Yeah. So we have, like, we have all the folks to do, like, DBT and things like that, but…
239 00:28:41.740 ⇒ 00:28:50.140 Uttam Kumaran: I just don’t know… I just have to kind of see what the kind of the work is and the pace, and then we… and then we’ll… we’ll loop people in. If you’d rather meet them.
240 00:28:50.930 ⇒ 00:28:54.289 Uttam Kumaran: We can also have you meet them, and we can do the assignment earlier, but…
241 00:28:54.290 ⇒ 00:29:14.120 Shivani Amar: That’s okay, but Jason, I think, like, actually, like, if we think about the first week of December, like, I think you’re right that, like, there could be, like, a longer working session for just the four of us, to be like, let’s just talk about Shopify. Like, before we even talk to stakeholders, like, let’s talk about the layout, let’s talk about Shopify, what is Source Medium doing?
242 00:29:14.570 ⇒ 00:29:16.359 Shivani Amar: But, like, just a, like.
243 00:29:16.360 ⇒ 00:29:20.469 Uttam Kumaran: And we’re also gonna… we’ll build a diagram of, like, this whole… as we go, throughout the whole.
244 00:29:20.470 ⇒ 00:29:26.030 Shivani Amar: Yeah, and so, what do you think, Jason, about, like, us doing, like, almost like a workshop, like…
245 00:29:26.420 ⇒ 00:29:29.149 Shivani Amar: Two hours or something together, like…
246 00:29:29.410 ⇒ 00:29:34.230 Jason Wu: That’s gonna be tough. 2 hours at a time. I mean, if we can chuck it out, that’d be great.
247 00:29:34.230 ⇒ 00:29:34.570 Shivani Amar: We can…
248 00:29:34.570 ⇒ 00:29:35.000 Jason Wu: Definitely chocolate.
249 00:29:35.000 ⇒ 00:29:38.359 Shivani Amar: work it out, but I… I’m… that’s totally… that’s great, too. I’m just.
250 00:29:38.360 ⇒ 00:29:38.970 Jason Wu: Yeah, but…
251 00:29:38.970 ⇒ 00:29:46.189 Shivani Amar: First week before we even… yes, we can set up time with different stakeholders, but probably you’re gonna have so much knowledge to share.
252 00:29:46.400 ⇒ 00:30:01.930 Jason Wu: Yeah, I think we start with me first. Let’s go through, kind of, like, the list of questions, and I think it’s more of an inventory, like, here’s everything I want to ask, and I can say, I can answer that, I can answer that, or, like, here’s the right people, so then at least that helps formulate, like, the… it’ll format the agenda for everybody else.
253 00:30:01.930 ⇒ 00:30:02.530 Shivani Amar: Perfect.
254 00:30:02.530 ⇒ 00:30:03.140 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
255 00:30:03.140 ⇒ 00:30:03.990 Shivani Amar: It’s okay.
256 00:30:04.140 ⇒ 00:30:12.130 Shivani Amar: Because even I’m Jason, I’m like, so what, sorry, what is Source Medium? So I’m like, I’m like, I have my own tour I need with you.
257 00:30:12.130 ⇒ 00:30:17.020 Uttam Kumaran: No, and we have a lot of questions. We’ll have a lot of questions on the setup,
258 00:30:17.320 ⇒ 00:30:21.430 Uttam Kumaran: And… alright, I won’t even go… yeah, we will have a lot of questions. Cool, so…
259 00:30:21.430 ⇒ 00:30:29.859 Shivani Amar: If you guys need to touch base again, like, let me know this week, otherwise, like, just send me all your stuff, and then I’ll try to work in the background to, like, get us situated.
260 00:30:29.860 ⇒ 00:30:34.519 Uttam Kumaran: Do you want to start… should we… can we start a joint Slack channel? And is it… would that…
261 00:30:35.110 ⇒ 00:30:36.320 Uttam Kumaran: Does that work?
262 00:30:36.480 ⇒ 00:30:37.660 Jason Wu: I’m good with that.
263 00:30:38.400 ⇒ 00:30:43.569 Uttam Kumaran: I can just put four of us in, and Jason, if you guys are a Slack Connect, I can just invite you to a channel.
264 00:30:44.190 ⇒ 00:30:45.149 Jason Wu: That’s fine, Loop.
265 00:30:46.920 ⇒ 00:30:48.410 Shivani Amar: Perfect, thank you!
266 00:30:48.780 ⇒ 00:30:49.510 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
267 00:30:49.510 ⇒ 00:30:51.569 Shivani Amar: Perfect. Looking forward to it, guys.
268 00:30:51.860 ⇒ 00:31:03.769 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, perfect. If there’s anything else, well, just message me in the Slack channel, like, more than happy. I don’t wanna… I don’t wanna, like… I know, I think we’ll get through this initial process, but any questions, Trevonne, even in the meantime, that we can help with, like…
269 00:31:03.770 ⇒ 00:31:04.260 Shivani Amar: Perfect.
270 00:31:04.260 ⇒ 00:31:05.410 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, 100%.
271 00:31:05.410 ⇒ 00:31:06.580 Shivani Amar: Guys. Okay.
272 00:31:06.580 ⇒ 00:31:07.979 Uttam Kumaran: Really looking forward to it.
273 00:31:07.980 ⇒ 00:31:08.800 Shivani Amar: Yeah, big fan of that.
274 00:31:08.800 ⇒ 00:31:15.440 Uttam Kumaran: product, so I, I’m ready to… to be very hydrated. I’m chronically dehydrated.
275 00:31:16.730 ⇒ 00:31:19.800 Uttam Kumaran: I need to go buy some Element at the store this afternoon.
276 00:31:19.800 ⇒ 00:31:22.749 Shivani Amar: And Robert, maybe one day we can, like, co-work together, too.
277 00:31:22.750 ⇒ 00:31:26.050 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I was thinking we could do our kickoff together. We could do it in person, yeah.
278 00:31:26.050 ⇒ 00:31:28.800 Uttam Kumaran: That sounds great. Okay, bye guys. Thank you.
279 00:31:29.000 ⇒ 00:31:30.319 Uttam Kumaran: Thank you, guys. Bye.