Meeting Title: Uttam <> Alexander Date: 2024-04-04 Meeting participants: Alex Kent, Uttam Kumaran
WEBVTT
1 00:01:40.370 ⇒ 00:01:41.590 Uttam Kumaran: Hey? How’s it going.
2 00:01:41.590 ⇒ 00:01:43.850 Alex Kent: Hey, Tim? Doing pretty well. How are you.
3 00:01:43.850 ⇒ 00:01:44.794 Uttam Kumaran: Good! How are you?
4 00:01:45.460 ⇒ 00:01:46.590 Alex Kent: Good pleasure.
5 00:01:46.590 ⇒ 00:01:47.315 Uttam Kumaran: Done.
6 00:01:48.170 ⇒ 00:01:48.840 Alex Kent: Sorry.
7 00:01:48.970 ⇒ 00:01:50.020 Uttam Kumaran: How’s the week going.
8 00:01:50.810 ⇒ 00:01:52.729 Alex Kent: Can’t believe it’s Thursday. Say that every week
9 00:01:53.240 ⇒ 00:01:54.800 Alex Kent: kind of flies by.
10 00:01:54.990 ⇒ 00:02:09.090 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I know I’m I’m like traveling a little bit this weekend. So I’m just like getting everything ready and things like that. But yeah, it’s been a quick week. I’m in Austin, and it’s like now starting to get super hot again, which is nice.
11 00:02:09.619 ⇒ 00:02:13.851 Alex Kent: Yeah, that. How? How cold does it get
12 00:02:14.910 ⇒ 00:02:22.394 Uttam Kumaran: 50 40. I don’t know. I used to live on the East coast. It’s like nothing here.
13 00:02:23.900 ⇒ 00:02:24.370 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
14 00:02:25.360 ⇒ 00:02:27.900 Alex Kent: Yeah. Cool. How? How do you know, Clint?
15 00:02:28.600 ⇒ 00:02:31.840 Uttam Kumaran: We’re just. We actually just became friends, maybe like.
16 00:02:32.130 ⇒ 00:02:56.268 Uttam Kumaran: 2 years ago, I was joining a new startup to lead product called Prequel and the founders of that company introduced me to Clint. He was. He just left after pay, and he was deciding on, you know, starting wild, and a couple of things, and we just started talking. We kind of became friends. And then I left Prequel last year around this time, and kind of decided to go out on my own and
17 00:02:56.900 ⇒ 00:03:20.939 Uttam Kumaran: kind of start doing data, analytics, infrastructure setup and modeling directly for clients. And he’s just been really really helpful in that that journey, and we talk a lot. And I’ve kind of helped him on the wild side, like with product feedback and introduced him to, you know, some of the people that are working there now and then. Yeah, we just kind of collaborate. But yeah, how about how about you?
18 00:03:21.940 ⇒ 00:03:29.089 Alex Kent: We well, we didn’t go to college together. We went to the same school and when he
19 00:03:30.060 ⇒ 00:03:35.789 Alex Kent: he he actually just reminded me the other day that he was on the train down to in New York.
20 00:03:35.870 ⇒ 00:03:43.441 Alex Kent: and our our advisor had had synced us up, and he was calling me right before his first interview.
21 00:03:43.820 ⇒ 00:03:44.440 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, wow!
22 00:03:44.837 ⇒ 00:03:48.412 Alex Kent: It’s like, what do you know about data? Well.
23 00:03:50.290 ⇒ 00:03:51.180 Alex Kent: of?
24 00:03:51.580 ⇒ 00:03:56.550 Alex Kent: But yeah, now he’s been so we’ve been friends. I don’t know for
25 00:03:57.210 ⇒ 00:03:59.156 Alex Kent: 8 8 years, maybe.
26 00:04:00.370 ⇒ 00:04:03.432 Alex Kent: kind of yeah tracking. I’m always always
27 00:04:03.960 ⇒ 00:04:11.569 Alex Kent: eager to talk about data. And we have. We have some wild conversations that go late into the night with too much, too much booze, but.
28 00:04:11.570 ⇒ 00:04:12.055 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
29 00:04:12.967 ⇒ 00:04:18.522 Alex Kent: But yeah, now he’s been. He’s been really helpful and kind of
30 00:04:19.010 ⇒ 00:04:25.780 Alex Kent: introducing me to people now, and kind of helping, encouraging me to spread my wings a little bit. I think.
31 00:04:25.780 ⇒ 00:04:44.210 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I you know I he’s one of the people I call. If I feel like the motivated, or if I’m like dealing with some stuff. I mean, I’d I’d say I’m this is my first year kind of being on my own doing this sort of stuff definitely like a lot of learning, lot of mistakes, a lot of issues. But
32 00:04:44.210 ⇒ 00:04:57.279 Uttam Kumaran: it’s fun. Like I, you know, I I’m pretty self motivated. And I know data, you know pretty well, and I’m kind of able to deliver value to folks. So it’s just like packaging it up and working with the best people and
33 00:04:57.768 ⇒ 00:05:21.620 Uttam Kumaran: you know, trying to put something out into the market where you know, people really value and can really help move a lot of people’s businesses. So basically, what we do is help stand up. Snowflake. Dbt, and like, yeah, for clients. We’re kind of like a little bit domain agnostic. But again, we’re just like a year old, so just figuring out now what our sweet spot is, both in like
34 00:05:21.620 ⇒ 00:05:39.339 Uttam Kumaran: company size, but also like what domains and like what part of the stack I I’ve been involved in in kind of all of it. Kind of leading teams as well as like on my own. So basically, it was like, I’m willing to do whatever. And then, now, I’m figuring out like where
35 00:05:39.440 ⇒ 00:05:42.429 Uttam Kumaran: we fit best. And you know.
36 00:05:42.830 ⇒ 00:05:43.230 Alex Kent: Wait!
37 00:05:43.230 ⇒ 00:05:43.850 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
38 00:05:44.200 ⇒ 00:05:46.539 Alex Kent: What? What have been some of the biggest challenges.
39 00:05:47.732 ⇒ 00:05:49.119 Uttam Kumaran: I would say.
40 00:05:49.340 ⇒ 00:05:51.529 Uttam Kumaran: People, it’s a big challenge.
41 00:05:52.700 ⇒ 00:06:07.639 Uttam Kumaran: like I can work in most parts of the stack. I think most of my expertise is in like modeling and like data engineering. But of course, like, there’s a customer facing aspect and the business itself. Of course, there’s like sales. There’s like
42 00:06:07.740 ⇒ 00:06:09.910 Uttam Kumaran: getting those people into contracts. There’s like.
43 00:06:09.910 ⇒ 00:06:10.350 Alex Kent: Yeah.
44 00:06:10.350 ⇒ 00:06:16.590 Uttam Kumaran: Outside the work itself. There’s all these other things. So I think honestly, the biggest challenge has been like
45 00:06:17.340 ⇒ 00:06:29.210 Uttam Kumaran: like me versus me. It’s like getting myself out of the getting myself out of the way on a lot of things, and delegating where where needed, and kind of boosting other folks. And then again, I think it’s just.
46 00:06:29.210 ⇒ 00:06:48.560 Uttam Kumaran: you know, hiring and finding the best people and making sure that you can pay them well and get the most out of them, I think, is always the challenge. But you know we don’t have. We don’t have much in terms of we’re brand new. So again, I try to just evaluate processes as they come. And you know, just try to do great data work and work with the best tools, you know. So
47 00:06:48.610 ⇒ 00:06:49.320 Uttam Kumaran: yep.
48 00:06:50.420 ⇒ 00:06:57.190 Alex Kent: Have you been having a hard time, or or how easy has it been to find contract certified
49 00:06:57.300 ⇒ 00:06:58.399 Alex Kent: people to work with.
50 00:06:58.570 ⇒ 00:07:25.660 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I would say, I’ve gotten lucky on the like on the finding talent side. Like all my, I worked in data engineering. All my friends are engineers. So I basically can put out like a bad signal and be like, Hey, I’m doing cool work like who’s open? I think that you know, I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of people that have expressed interest in working on stuff, and it’s been great, because, as I’ve been able to find more opportunity. I can kind of spread that around.
51 00:07:25.660 ⇒ 00:07:29.680 Uttam Kumaran: I think the hard part is again shaping like what we
52 00:07:29.730 ⇒ 00:07:33.369 Uttam Kumaran: want to do versus like what clients want us to do. For example.
53 00:07:34.020 ⇒ 00:07:59.600 Uttam Kumaran: So we have a lot of leverage on the modeling side of a client wants to do dashboarding. I’m kind of like I don’t wanna like there’s a difference in work, and there’s difference in efficiency. And there’s a difference in expectations. So that’s one thing. But on the finding client side, you know. Again I got I got a lot of word of mouth recommendations and referrals to a lot of folks right now we’re starting like a bigger sales. Push where I’m like doing a lot more outbound stuff like
54 00:07:59.640 ⇒ 00:08:10.170 Uttam Kumaran: kind of nurturing a bunch of leads. And I’m basically like going to get sales. What that means is like, okay, so each of our clients, especially now, just need to kind of run
55 00:08:10.517 ⇒ 00:08:12.809 Uttam Kumaran: on their own, or with some limited
56 00:08:13.134 ⇒ 00:08:42.530 Uttam Kumaran: bandwidth for me. And so right now, you know, I’m just thinking about what the general team structure needs to be. And like, is it all engineers? Is there someone who’s like managing the client is that me? And you kind of think deciding on all that and it’s interesting, because again, I manage manage teams within companies a A as a I know you’re you have a lot of expertise in but it’s different when it’s like a there’s almost like a. It is somewhat of a client relationship in a company, but at least, you know, you’re all on the same team. This one there is.
57 00:08:42.815 ⇒ 00:08:43.100 Alex Kent: Right.
58 00:08:43.100 ⇒ 00:08:46.559 Uttam Kumaran: There’s and there is like
59 00:08:46.900 ⇒ 00:08:55.699 Uttam Kumaran: there is a level of over communication that’s necessary. And like some customer facing stuff that takes some things. So it’s a different dynamic. So kind of figuring it all out.
60 00:08:56.140 ⇒ 00:08:58.317 Alex Kent: Yeah, cool that that’s awesome.
61 00:08:58.680 ⇒ 00:09:08.419 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, what do you? What do you up to now? And like I, I did look, take a look at your background and stuff, and like would love to hear about your kind of journey, and like what you’re thinking about.
62 00:09:09.430 ⇒ 00:09:11.277 Alex Kent: Yeah, it’s been
63 00:09:11.980 ⇒ 00:09:13.805 Alex Kent: kind of a wild journey.
64 00:09:14.440 ⇒ 00:09:22.398 Alex Kent: I so last 9 years I’ve been in a company called 24 7 Wall Street which is a business and financial news.
65 00:09:23.566 ⇒ 00:09:24.153 Alex Kent: website,
66 00:09:24.820 ⇒ 00:09:28.459 Alex Kent: on the their own site. They do
67 00:09:29.890 ⇒ 00:09:34.949 Alex Kent: anywhere between 2 and 10 million sessions a month, and then they’re
68 00:09:35.622 ⇒ 00:09:42.277 Alex Kent: syndicated to Msn. And Yahoo and Aol post, and and all those guys
69 00:09:42.950 ⇒ 00:09:51.280 Alex Kent: and when I started I didn’t know anything about programming and the way that they
70 00:09:52.140 ⇒ 00:09:55.322 Alex Kent: they collected data for all their ad tech
71 00:09:56.654 ⇒ 00:10:00.499 Alex Kent: all, the advertising was bi weekly, and it was manual
72 00:10:01.386 ⇒ 00:10:04.723 Alex Kent: and and on the editorial side,
73 00:10:05.580 ⇒ 00:10:09.910 Alex Kent: they build themselves as kind of like data journalists. So there’s like this, really like
74 00:10:10.180 ⇒ 00:10:14.878 Alex Kent: like labor, intensive process of collecting data by hand,
75 00:10:15.880 ⇒ 00:10:17.110 Alex Kent: cleaning it.
76 00:10:17.260 ⇒ 00:10:27.359 Alex Kent: putting it together, forming an article super prone to human error, super prone to and and you know we would.
77 00:10:27.920 ⇒ 00:10:40.190 Alex Kent: You know, 2 people would publish 10 articles a month, or something like that. And and so I I kind of came in was like, Okay, well, there’s gotta be a better way to do this. So like, first, let’s build some processes. So we like.
78 00:10:40.300 ⇒ 00:10:48.010 Alex Kent: remove some of that human error. And then 2, maybe we build some infrastructure, and and so I was kind of like leading
79 00:10:49.250 ⇒ 00:11:04.440 Alex Kent: leading a team of engineers to build a a data platform essentially in in all the data we use is all publicly available. You know, census blsda, you know, unemployment rate stuff like that.
80 00:11:05.699 ⇒ 00:11:06.249 Alex Kent: and
81 00:11:07.240 ⇒ 00:11:13.970 Alex Kent: And at 1 point, like I, I came to the realization that engineers who didn’t know anything about data.
82 00:11:14.476 ⇒ 00:11:29.513 Alex Kent: didn’t design applications in ways that they should, or in in ways that kind of anticipated the flexibility that an analyst might need. Or this is this is like, well, before I had ever heard of data, engineering,
83 00:11:30.230 ⇒ 00:11:40.839 Alex Kent: and and so I kind of started pushing back a little bit, and and one of the engineers at 1 point looked to me, and it was like, Well, you don’t know anything about coding so
84 00:11:41.330 ⇒ 00:11:43.580 Alex Kent: like. Why.
85 00:11:44.084 ⇒ 00:12:01.789 Alex Kent: why, why are you telling me what to do? And so that’s the night that I bought a book on python and yeah, it’s kind of, you know. Just been a 8 years of learning, and, you know, designing
86 00:12:02.120 ⇒ 00:12:09.081 Alex Kent: like a syllabus for myself, and and trying to figure things out kind of on the fly and
87 00:12:09.680 ⇒ 00:12:17.000 Alex Kent: and anyway, that team of engineers that I was working with didn’t they couldn’t do what we asked them to do
88 00:12:17.560 ⇒ 00:12:23.979 Alex Kent: and so fast forward a few years. I just built it and and so now it’s it’s a
89 00:12:24.925 ⇒ 00:12:27.064 Alex Kent: data platform that that
90 00:12:27.870 ⇒ 00:12:33.469 Alex Kent: services about 400 450 writers and analysts.
91 00:12:33.861 ⇒ 00:12:41.240 Alex Kent: And it’s all it it incorporates all publicly available data that I can think of. It’s all on automated
92 00:12:41.400 ⇒ 00:12:42.420 Alex Kent: upnight
93 00:12:42.430 ⇒ 00:12:54.310 Alex Kent: ingestion and level kind of harmonized together. And so people can come to it and say, like, Hey, I’m I need a data point to support an article that I’m writing, or
94 00:12:54.540 ⇒ 00:13:02.613 Alex Kent: what’s what, what data was newly available or newly updated? That I could write in our a new article about or
95 00:13:03.570 ⇒ 00:13:09.240 Alex Kent: even here. Here are some like prepackaged insights into like stuff that we find interesting, based on
96 00:13:09.665 ⇒ 00:13:14.964 Alex Kent: any number of kind of dispersion statistics or stuff like that. So we can just kind of like, give somebody
97 00:13:15.960 ⇒ 00:13:17.860 Alex Kent: what they’re looking for.
98 00:13:18.090 ⇒ 00:13:24.100 Alex Kent: And so that’s that’s kind of where the the company was acquired in the fall.
99 00:13:24.100 ⇒ 00:13:24.550 Uttam Kumaran: Hmm.
100 00:13:24.550 ⇒ 00:13:25.125 Alex Kent: And
101 00:13:25.880 ⇒ 00:13:46.029 Alex Kent: there. There were lots of promises made and few of them kept and so now I’m kind of facing facing the barrel of the gun. You know my contract is up in a week and a half, and the last, like 3 months, have kind of struggled to.
102 00:13:47.010 ⇒ 00:13:55.139 Alex Kent: Honestly, you didn’t get an interview and and so Clint’s been been really helpful in introducing me to people, and just kind of
103 00:13:55.350 ⇒ 00:13:57.540 Alex Kent: trying to understand what
104 00:13:58.536 ⇒ 00:14:06.640 Alex Kent: one. How how do you find work now? And and what’s what’s important to people and.
105 00:14:07.400 ⇒ 00:14:14.450 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s it’s tough, like, I have friends. Similarly in the market across the board
106 00:14:14.580 ⇒ 00:14:20.240 Uttam Kumaran: who are like, it’s I don’t even. They’re applying so much to to so so many things. And it’s been tough.
107 00:14:20.740 ⇒ 00:14:44.790 Uttam Kumaran: And I I feel lucky that I’m not in that position, but at the same time I don’t. I don’t really have answers for them, because a lot of them have really great experience, and I’m not sure what is getting screened for what or if people just aren’t hiring, I can say that there is still a lot of hiring happening in data. It’s just, I think, the normal channels to go through are probably not Linkedin, or indeed, because those forms are getting inundated.
108 00:14:45.030 ⇒ 00:15:05.439 Uttam Kumaran: I think there’s a lot of stuff happening just like this like through introductions. I also think like I don’t know if you’re on any of the slack channels, for, like Dbt. Or anything like that, or if you’re familiar with any. I I’m not sure what tools you guys used internally, but a lot of the open source tooling and things like that. They have slack channels where people, post jobs and things like this. So I’d be happy to
109 00:15:05.850 ⇒ 00:15:08.180 Uttam Kumaran: send that over to you. And they have.
110 00:15:08.180 ⇒ 00:15:08.790 Alex Kent: So, okay.
111 00:15:08.790 ⇒ 00:15:18.979 Uttam Kumaran: Those data jobs and things like that is there like a particular area of the mark. And I’m happy to tell you about brain forage, too, and I kind of stuff we’re working on. But is there a particular part of the stack that
112 00:15:19.040 ⇒ 00:15:27.670 Uttam Kumaran: you’re like most keen on driving towards, or even like you want to do more like management stuff, or still thinking about doing IC.
113 00:15:30.030 ⇒ 00:15:38.190 Alex Kent: open honestly open to everything. I I don’t have a ton of management experience. So getting some of that might be helpful. But I also just like
114 00:15:38.440 ⇒ 00:15:39.909 Alex Kent: really enjoy
115 00:15:40.230 ⇒ 00:15:45.410 Alex Kent: solving problems. And so right now, I’m focusing mostly on data engineering
116 00:15:45.490 ⇒ 00:15:48.884 Alex Kent: roles. Aws the bread and butter
117 00:15:49.690 ⇒ 00:15:53.148 Alex Kent: do a lot with python.
118 00:15:55.789 ⇒ 00:15:58.903 Alex Kent: dabbled and go a little bit.
119 00:16:01.130 ⇒ 00:16:01.940 Alex Kent: So
120 00:16:03.450 ⇒ 00:16:11.000 Alex Kent: yeah, that’s that’s kind of where I kind of had to make a decision like, Okay, do I want to go the software engineering route or want to go the data engineering route. And
121 00:16:11.717 ⇒ 00:16:13.089 Alex Kent: so I think.
122 00:16:13.915 ⇒ 00:16:21.290 Alex Kent: when I don’t find success. I’m like, Okay, well, like, do I do? I just go to the other one, or do I just stick to stay in the lane.
123 00:16:21.290 ⇒ 00:16:33.080 Uttam Kumaran: I, yeah, I don’t know. I think there’s still so much change happening in data. And like on some of the data entry stuff that we work on right. We have like a couple of clients again. We’re just finding out like, where best in the stack we fit.
124 00:16:33.170 ⇒ 00:16:41.469 Uttam Kumaran: Good. But I’m really similar. Like, I want to work more in like data modeling and data engineering the stuff on the analysis and the dashboarding side.
125 00:16:41.480 ⇒ 00:17:10.190 Uttam Kumaran: It’s so reactive and like lots of back and forth, and really subjective, that it’s almost hard to like narrow down, like, what is the actual issue? Instead, I’m a lot more focused on working on things where we’re like building up, modeling or bringing in data from a brand new domain, or some vendors that have tricky Apis or from the public domain, where we have to scrape some stuff, clean that up and then make it available for modeling, like we have a client, for example, where we just
126 00:17:10.190 ⇒ 00:17:13.233 Uttam Kumaran: had to do a bunch of data with 13 F filings.
127 00:17:14.220 ⇒ 00:17:40.340 Uttam Kumaran: So we pulled like we pull, we we have. We have a job that we wrote all in Snowflake. That’s pulling those from the sec on a quarterly basis, cleaning that up and then makes that available for modeling. And so that’s sort of things that we’re I’m working on with one client in particular, but basically almost trying to go more in that direction and do more things that are related to like, okay, are there? Do you do people have like tricky pipelines.
128 00:17:40.340 ⇒ 00:17:48.780 Uttam Kumaran: or like disparate data where we can leverage some of the new software on Snowflake, or different procedures to actually bring that data in
129 00:17:48.780 ⇒ 00:18:04.779 Uttam Kumaran: and like, move people off of like Csv or Sftp stuff onto these sorts of, you know, processes like directly in Snowflake. And that’s what we do. A lot of is all basically on on Snowflake mainly. And then we have clients that are using s. 3. And things like that.
130 00:18:04.780 ⇒ 00:18:06.609 Alex Kent: Gotcha. Okay, cool?
131 00:18:10.490 ⇒ 00:18:11.533 Alex Kent: So I
132 00:18:13.260 ⇒ 00:18:21.021 Alex Kent: have this like weird affinity for web scraping like, I just love it. Yeah, trickier the better. Honestly.
133 00:18:22.100 ⇒ 00:18:23.000 Alex Kent: but.
134 00:18:23.000 ⇒ 00:18:47.999 Uttam Kumaran: I I I may even like I’m having a conversation. So one of the clients that we’re working with is client called Asset Link. Basically, it’s a platform that connects financial advisors, wealth and wealth managers and accredited investors together. It’s like a startup but they’re doing a lot of scraping to get like people’s linkedin profiles. Instagram profiles. We’re doing some stuff on sec website to get
135 00:18:48.000 ⇒ 00:18:56.730 Uttam Kumaran: publicly available like registered investor registered advisors, 13 F filing. So like all that, basically making that available. And then.
136 00:18:56.960 ⇒ 00:19:17.639 Uttam Kumaran: like the client themselves, is having a lot of conversations with like Black Rock, Morgan, Stan Stanley, Steve on like exchanging all that data together. So it’s it’s actually been like, really timely that like we’re right now, and the other thing we’re doing is a lot of this publicly available data on Snowflake. You can list it on their marketplace. So a lot of times we’re.
137 00:19:18.025 ⇒ 00:19:18.410 Alex Kent: We’re.
138 00:19:18.410 ⇒ 00:19:23.689 Uttam Kumaran: Pulling public data for a client. We just turn that around and list it because it’s basically
139 00:19:23.710 ⇒ 00:19:26.000 Uttam Kumaran: it’s just publicly available data. It’s like anywhere.
140 00:19:26.000 ⇒ 00:19:26.510 Alex Kent: Right.
141 00:19:26.510 ⇒ 00:19:39.646 Uttam Kumaran: Python pipeline, but I think it’s like, I would rather people use ours, or if they need it. So that’s been also interesting internally to kind of like, publish some of those data sets publicly right on, it might hopefully builds us a little bit of presence.
142 00:19:40.242 ⇒ 00:19:48.580 Uttam Kumaran: But I mean, that’s pretty much squarely and like what you’re doing right for the 24 7 Wall Street, like, you’re basically employing probably a lot of financial sentiment like things like that.
143 00:19:49.373 ⇒ 00:19:53.500 Alex Kent: Yeah. And then all the yeah, social and economic housing data.
144 00:19:53.500 ⇒ 00:19:53.940 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
145 00:19:54.380 ⇒ 00:19:54.930 Alex Kent: Yeah,
146 00:19:56.090 ⇒ 00:20:00.239 Alex Kent: yeah, that’s cool. I I. So I haven’t done a ton with
147 00:20:00.610 ⇒ 00:20:02.369 Alex Kent: Snowflake. And by
148 00:20:02.660 ⇒ 00:20:11.534 Alex Kent: and anything that I have done has been reading about it just to be very clear. But yeah, sounds sounds like pull in that. That marketplace for kind of
149 00:20:11.870 ⇒ 00:20:14.890 Alex Kent: publicly exposing data sounds awesome.
150 00:20:14.890 ⇒ 00:20:33.801 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, there’s some people that are selling. They’re making a bunch of money selling data sets again. Like, if you’ve been in the if you’ve been. If you’ve bought data before, basically, people just repackage and are selling stuff that’s probably public available, or they stitch together. And they add some value. Add. So that’s what people are doing for us, mainly just trying to try new stuff.
151 00:20:34.080 ⇒ 00:20:35.650 Alex Kent: Cool exposure.
152 00:20:35.650 ⇒ 00:20:49.114 Uttam Kumaran: You can. You can charge people money for it. And I think I we put stuff for like 10 or 20 bucks. But I just want to see us publish stuff out there. Another example is like we’re using 5 tran for Etl
153 00:20:49.750 ⇒ 00:21:12.530 Uttam Kumaran: But one of the connectors we did, which was for Clavio, if we would have done it through 5 train would have like tripled our spend. So basically, guys, let’s just write this ourselves in snow Park, which is snowflakes like python environment. And you can just execute like a store procedure to pull that data in directly in Snowflake. And then we can basically pull all those events
154 00:21:12.530 ⇒ 00:21:25.659 Uttam Kumaran: for like a dollar instead of having it be charged per row through 5 tran so that’s like also interesting things where we’re doing to save people costs. And the nice thing about that is also we could publish that code so we can.
155 00:21:26.110 ⇒ 00:21:32.700 Uttam Kumaran: Publish like I can publish like a clay view events, application. So anybody can pull that down.
156 00:21:32.880 ⇒ 00:21:36.683 Uttam Kumaran: put in their Api key, and it runs locally on their compute.
157 00:21:37.000 ⇒ 00:21:37.500 Alex Kent: That’s how.
158 00:21:37.500 ⇒ 00:21:54.599 Uttam Kumaran: Events. So I I mean, I’ve I’ve been using Snowflake now since like 2,019. So I’m a like a huge fan, and I’ve done implemented a couple of times. And yeah, it’s been nice. I I assume you’re using like red shift or anything for like warehousing.
159 00:21:54.950 ⇒ 00:21:56.119 Alex Kent: Yeah. Red. Shift.
160 00:21:56.120 ⇒ 00:21:57.159 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Okay.
161 00:21:57.190 ⇒ 00:21:59.917 Uttam Kumaran: yeah. I mean, you’ll love Snowflake. Cause it’s way easier.
162 00:22:03.080 ⇒ 00:22:04.888 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s so much easier.
163 00:22:06.090 ⇒ 00:22:07.243 Alex Kent: That’s awesome.
164 00:22:08.020 ⇒ 00:22:13.350 Alex Kent: cool. How many how many people are working with you at at brain for.
165 00:22:13.530 ⇒ 00:22:19.399 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, there. So we have about like 4 clients we’re working on now. And there’s about 5 people
166 00:22:19.450 ⇒ 00:22:45.550 Uttam Kumaran: working like all kind of varied hours. Basically, I basically, my kind of whole idea was like, look, there’s a whole stack of data. And I’m trying to find people that are like trying to be experts in one of those areas. I think, like, I’m kind of like a can can float around. But my time is best. Serve getting us like way more clients. And you know, making sure that we can charge more and work on the best cool stuff.
167 00:22:46.056 ⇒ 00:23:04.959 Uttam Kumaran: So I I found some people that are really good at modeling, really good on like analysis and dashboarding as well as on the data engineering side. And then kind of I’m able to split work based on clients just based on the task. For example, some clients it’s pure modeling, but then they may have one like rogue Api. They need. Etl worked done for.
168 00:23:04.960 ⇒ 00:23:17.096 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool. There’s someone kind of that could manage those. So that’s kind of how I ha! I have it split out right now. The team is all brand new that I basically have brought everyone on in like last, like 2 months. So basically.
169 00:23:17.360 ⇒ 00:23:18.050 Alex Kent: Exciting.
170 00:23:18.050 ⇒ 00:23:19.780 Uttam Kumaran: It’s basically a function of me.
171 00:23:20.060 ⇒ 00:23:37.410 Uttam Kumaran: basically being like, I’m gonna burn out. I need to give up some of the work. But then, also, it’s like a forcing function for me to kind of go get us some more business. So that’s kind of like where I am now is one just trying to meet, like awesome people who are open to this sort of work.
172 00:23:37.769 ⇒ 00:23:54.219 Uttam Kumaran: The thing that’s toughest about this is like as the company grows. There’s only one person right now working full time. In addition to me, everybody else is working like part time, maybe like 20 HA week each, and different parts of the stack. So one goal for me is like making sure that
173 00:23:54.220 ⇒ 00:24:09.780 Uttam Kumaran: we can get enough reliable work that you know folks can can consider it more full time. But also the the nice thing is we get to work on like really cool technologies. And internally, you have a data team of all really interesting people trying new things. So
174 00:24:10.690 ⇒ 00:24:11.869 Uttam Kumaran: really cool. Yeah.
175 00:24:12.320 ⇒ 00:24:14.860 Alex Kent: And is, is everyone in Austin with you?
176 00:24:15.090 ⇒ 00:24:22.379 Uttam Kumaran: No, everyone’s kind of scattered one person’s in Seattle, one’s in New Orleans, and then one’s in Latin America.
177 00:24:22.510 ⇒ 00:24:35.128 Uttam Kumaran: and then another one, a guy who’s who’s on our data modeling team is in the Philippines. So it’s kind of everywhere. Just people I’ve met, either through connections or just on slack basically
178 00:24:35.900 ⇒ 00:24:50.560 Uttam Kumaran: And then again, basically, it’s like, I was like, okay in in the spur of a moment. If I need help, I kind of like, put out a note and like, Hey, does anyone want to come? Help me on this stuff? And you basically kind of find the team. But as as the company grows, we’ll kind of formalize a little bit more
179 00:24:50.956 ⇒ 00:24:55.533 Uttam Kumaran: and make sure that, like, you know, we have people that are dedicated to clients and
180 00:24:55.890 ⇒ 00:25:23.244 Uttam Kumaran: but I would say otherwise, the company is like really chill. Most we probably like one meeting a day. We it’s all related to clients stuff like, I’m very, very determined to have this be like, we either do work for clients or we do interesting things, or like people don’t have to stress. And so that is like a function of me going and getting us really, really cool work and work where you know, we get paid what we’re worth. And
181 00:25:23.660 ⇒ 00:25:46.749 Uttam Kumaran: you know, everything kind of moves forward. So we’re kind of in like this transition phase right now. But it’s been interesting. And again, like. That’s why I’m I’m I kind of interested in hearing that that what your background is because, as I hear about, and then we get more work for stuff in data engineering land like would love to run it by you. And even for our with the one client we have asset link maybe it would even be helpful
182 00:25:46.750 ⇒ 00:26:05.192 Uttam Kumaran: for you to even just check out like this kind of stuff we’ve done the kind of things they’re interested in, because they’re they’re kind of starting to do a lot more scraping on the like on the Sec stuff on some public information, and like kind of formalizing a lot of this. So it’s kind of like, it’s kind of
183 00:26:05.660 ⇒ 00:26:11.829 Uttam Kumaran: Good coincidence that you are working on a lot of different stuff on, on Wall Street, too, on like the 24 7 Wall Street stuff.
184 00:26:12.200 ⇒ 00:26:20.119 Alex Kent: Yeah, the and actually, I I apologize the time zones mess with my head a little bit. So I do have a 3, 30.
185 00:26:20.120 ⇒ 00:26:20.730 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, yeah. No. Problem.
186 00:26:21.228 ⇒ 00:26:23.221 Alex Kent: Alright, yeah. But
187 00:26:23.810 ⇒ 00:26:26.916 Alex Kent: there’s there’s a company called Smart Asset.
188 00:26:27.360 ⇒ 00:26:28.630 Uttam Kumaran: I heard of them. Yeah.
189 00:26:28.800 ⇒ 00:26:30.240 Alex Kent: Yeah. And they
190 00:26:30.790 ⇒ 00:26:40.580 Alex Kent: they, it sounds like they might do similar things. I’ve I’ve heard about them because they they also have like a an advertising like lead generation, arm.
191 00:26:40.580 ⇒ 00:26:40.870 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
192 00:26:42.340 ⇒ 00:26:43.490 Alex Kent: and there’s like.
193 00:26:43.490 ⇒ 00:26:48.010 Uttam Kumaran: Advisor pro, and like wealth feed. And some of these other like data.
194 00:26:48.882 ⇒ 00:26:53.780 Uttam Kumaran: they sell advisor data, Raa data. Yeah.
195 00:26:55.410 ⇒ 00:26:56.459 Alex Kent: Let’s say a
196 00:26:56.820 ⇒ 00:27:02.279 Alex Kent: but you mentioned some some slack channels for for finding jobs.
197 00:27:02.730 ⇒ 00:27:03.263 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so
198 00:27:03.530 ⇒ 00:27:05.409 Alex Kent: You could. You could share.
199 00:27:05.410 ⇒ 00:27:27.649 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I’ll send you a couple over. I mean, there’s just a couple of main ones that are just have, like a bunch of data people in them. And maybe I’ll just, I’ll just shoot you an email after these with them. They’re all public. A lot with job list things in them. That’s a probably really good place to start, because at least you can. DM, that person right there. And basically, it’s if it’s at least a little bit more targeted than just an open
200 00:27:27.900 ⇒ 00:27:29.210 Uttam Kumaran: kind of invite.
201 00:27:29.650 ⇒ 00:27:30.740 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, definitely.
202 00:27:30.740 ⇒ 00:27:34.529 Alex Kent: You. You know people who have kind of found success.
203 00:27:34.790 ⇒ 00:27:41.769 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, I I’ve put stuff on there. I wanted to work with me. I’ve gone from there and then also.
204 00:27:42.191 ⇒ 00:27:59.420 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, I, I think it’s like it’s it’s basically like the people who are in charge of hiring are putting it right there. And of course the audience is a lot smaller. And it’s basically all data people. So I know some people that I found all their that the last like one or 2 jobs just through like the Dbt slack channel. Basically. So.
205 00:27:59.620 ⇒ 00:28:00.720 Alex Kent: Cool. That’s awesome.
206 00:28:00.720 ⇒ 00:28:01.350 Uttam Kumaran: Taken.
207 00:28:02.280 ⇒ 00:28:03.890 Alex Kent: Sweet. Thank you. Thanks for that.
208 00:28:03.890 ⇒ 00:28:05.009 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
209 00:28:05.420 ⇒ 00:28:08.819 Uttam Kumaran: Anything else I could be helpful with. Let me know.
210 00:28:09.460 ⇒ 00:28:13.309 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll definitely keep you in mind as we kind of grow and are thinking about stuff.
211 00:28:13.989 ⇒ 00:28:24.219 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we’re kind of in like this just baby phase right now. So it’s a bit tougher to bring people on like full time. But you know hopefully, one day.
212 00:28:24.490 ⇒ 00:28:29.770 Alex Kent: Yeah, well, it’s it sounds like you’re doing doing doing all that right. Building a lot of momentum.
213 00:28:29.770 ⇒ 00:28:31.678 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, trying to trying to.
214 00:28:33.245 ⇒ 00:28:34.175 Alex Kent: Cool is
215 00:28:36.270 ⇒ 00:28:37.480 Alex Kent: the
216 00:28:38.660 ⇒ 00:28:46.325 Alex Kent: so like. If I if I were to like, search and still play marketplace for stuff that you’ve done is, that is, that the thing like.
217 00:28:46.620 ⇒ 00:29:00.139 Uttam Kumaran: You could just search. You’re gonna search. If you just Google, search for Snowflake marketplace and you search brain, you’ll see the stuff that we put out there? Yeah. And then again, Snowflake also has a lot of online learning and like.
218 00:29:00.220 ⇒ 00:29:03.099 Uttam Kumaran: like learning modules that are really really good.
219 00:29:04.330 ⇒ 00:29:05.070 Alex Kent: Sweet.
220 00:29:05.210 ⇒ 00:29:21.380 Uttam Kumaran: And then, yeah, if anything on the related to Asset Link or any of that sounds interesting. You know I’m I work. We work directly with, like the CEO there, it’s a really small team, and the CTO. So if any of that sounds interesting, too, I’m happy to even just fill you in on what we’re doing, and see if there’s an opportunity.
221 00:29:21.720 ⇒ 00:29:23.430 Alex Kent: Okay, I appreciate that.
222 00:29:24.190 ⇒ 00:29:24.640 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
223 00:29:25.270 ⇒ 00:29:26.243 Alex Kent: Cool. Cool?
224 00:29:27.150 ⇒ 00:29:33.575 Alex Kent: Well, yeah, thanks. Thanks for just chatting. Yeah.
225 00:29:34.470 ⇒ 00:29:39.355 Alex Kent: yeah. If you if you ever are back in New York and are back in Clint. Let me know.
226 00:29:39.600 ⇒ 00:29:53.720 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I definitely will. Yeah, I know I I owe a trip there for like some work stuff, hopefully, sometime soon. But yeah, please feel free to keep in touch. If there, if there’s anything I can help with, or if if you add me on Linkedin, and there’s anyone I can help connect you with
227 00:29:53.760 ⇒ 00:29:55.409 Uttam Kumaran: 100% and.
228 00:29:55.410 ⇒ 00:29:56.840 Alex Kent: Okay. Very good.
229 00:29:56.840 ⇒ 00:30:02.259 Uttam Kumaran: Comes down my way, I’ll certainly send it right over to you, so please don’t hesitate.
230 00:30:02.690 ⇒ 00:30:04.689 Alex Kent: Great. Thank you. Really appreciate that.
231 00:30:04.690 ⇒ 00:30:07.060 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, of course, it was really nice to meet you. Yeah.
232 00:30:07.060 ⇒ 00:30:07.610 Alex Kent: Don’t be.
233 00:30:07.610 ⇒ 00:30:11.158 Uttam Kumaran: Stranger, I’ll I’ll send you a note with some of the slack stuff after this.
234 00:30:11.380 ⇒ 00:30:15.841 Alex Kent: Okay, I appreciate that. Yeah. Enjoy enjoy the nice changing weather.
235 00:30:16.160 ⇒ 00:30:18.284 Uttam Kumaran: Thank you. I appreciate it.
236 00:30:18.710 ⇒ 00:30:19.659 Alex Kent: But yeah, bye.