Meeting Title: Uttam <> Chang Date: 2024-05-27 Meeting participants: Chang Ho, Uttam Kumaran
WEBVTT
1 00:01:56.700 ⇒ 00:01:57.060 Uttam Kumaran: Hello!
2 00:02:04.080 ⇒ 00:02:05.540 Uttam Kumaran: Hi, Frank! You there!
3 00:04:30.480 ⇒ 00:04:31.729 Chang Ho: Hey! Here’s how are you? There.
4 00:04:32.260 ⇒ 00:04:33.276 Uttam Kumaran: Hey? Can you hear me?
5 00:04:34.180 ⇒ 00:04:35.100 Chang Ho: Hello.
6 00:04:35.540 ⇒ 00:04:38.020 Chang Ho: yeah, perfect! How are you doing.
7 00:04:38.020 ⇒ 00:04:39.069 Uttam Kumaran: Good! How are you?
8 00:04:39.520 ⇒ 00:04:40.940 Chang Ho: Nice. Yeah. Yeah. Good.
9 00:04:41.210 ⇒ 00:04:41.920 Uttam Kumaran: Good to see you.
10 00:04:41.920 ⇒ 00:04:44.590 Chang Ho: Any what’s new since since last time.
11 00:04:44.940 ⇒ 00:04:49.618 Uttam Kumaran: What’s new? I just was in Philadelphia actually for a wedding, and my sisters
12 00:04:50.835 ⇒ 00:04:51.680 Uttam Kumaran: graduation.
13 00:04:52.040 ⇒ 00:04:52.530 Chang Ho: Oh!
14 00:04:52.530 ⇒ 00:04:54.160 Uttam Kumaran: Graduated out of Swathmore.
15 00:04:54.960 ⇒ 00:04:55.780 Chang Ho: Awesome.
16 00:04:56.020 ⇒ 00:05:01.579 Uttam Kumaran: Just just out of just outside of Philly, and it was there for a wedding, actually, other friends wedding on Friday. So just
17 00:05:01.700 ⇒ 00:05:06.099 Uttam Kumaran: spent the weekend in Philadelphia, little bit exhausting weekend. But
18 00:05:06.110 ⇒ 00:05:13.985 Uttam Kumaran: in the Us. We have, we have today off which means I get to work alone today. So that’s nice.
19 00:05:14.360 ⇒ 00:05:16.010 Chang Ho: Wait. What days today? What? What is that?
20 00:05:16.390 ⇒ 00:05:17.150 Uttam Kumaran: Memorial Day.
21 00:05:21.020 ⇒ 00:05:24.179 Chang Ho: We actually, as it happens, have a coincidental
22 00:05:24.460 ⇒ 00:05:25.879 Chang Ho: Bank Holiday. So we all.
23 00:05:25.880 ⇒ 00:05:27.160 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, really. Okay.
24 00:05:27.160 ⇒ 00:05:27.600 Chang Ho: Yeah.
25 00:05:27.912 ⇒ 00:05:29.160 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Great. Great. Great.
26 00:05:29.160 ⇒ 00:05:31.780 Chang Ho: Clearly we are both suckers for punishment, because we both.
27 00:05:31.780 ⇒ 00:05:47.312 Uttam Kumaran: No, I mean, there’s no way I was gonna not work today. I actually was happy. I was like, Oh, great! I can have like a date on my own. So like, handle some of this like planning. And and you know, we can work from the couch. And I can watch some TV and
28 00:05:47.640 ⇒ 00:05:50.850 Uttam Kumaran: go to the gym. And yeah, just regroup a little bit.
29 00:05:51.220 ⇒ 00:05:52.530 Chang Ho: Awesome mate, awesome.
30 00:05:52.900 ⇒ 00:05:53.270 Uttam Kumaran: Is.
31 00:05:53.620 ⇒ 00:05:56.149 Chang Ho: Yeah, what’s new with us? I guess
32 00:05:56.410 ⇒ 00:06:01.979 Chang Ho: this has been a month of recalibration after absolute craziness over April.
33 00:06:02.312 ⇒ 00:06:08.039 Chang Ho: We’ve really not been around. So yeah, may may just be great time just to catch up on things whilst.
34 00:06:08.040 ⇒ 00:06:08.620 Uttam Kumaran: Great.
35 00:06:08.780 ⇒ 00:06:10.570 Chang Ho: Guests have been coming up to
36 00:06:10.680 ⇒ 00:06:21.439 Chang Ho: sort of bask in the sanctuary that is off that for the every weekend. So we’ve had guests every weekend, and but you know how it is like social labor is just not as tiresome as
37 00:06:21.450 ⇒ 00:06:24.030 Chang Ho: like every single day. Grind stuff, but.
38 00:06:24.030 ⇒ 00:06:24.440 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
39 00:06:24.440 ⇒ 00:06:28.179 Chang Ho: Yeah, it’s so it’s been very rejuvenating for sure. And
40 00:06:28.230 ⇒ 00:06:31.409 Chang Ho: yeah, looking forward to the looking forward to these next challenges, basically.
41 00:06:31.820 ⇒ 00:06:32.640 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
42 00:06:32.640 ⇒ 00:06:34.620 Chang Ho: Yeah, have you heard anything since from
43 00:06:34.720 ⇒ 00:06:41.389 Chang Ho: Mr. Very careful about. So I’m just going to touch on the very careful about non-disclosure agreements.
44 00:06:43.240 ⇒ 00:07:06.969 Uttam Kumaran: I? Yeah. So I actually talked with Arvin on Wednesday. Basically, I think, like, I think we just had like a pretty wide range of conversation when we all chatted. So I mentioned a little bit about like our role he was like wanted to know about like how we’re working together and like he’s like, what’s the general like state of affairs? And I was like, we’re just began talking
45 00:07:07.290 ⇒ 00:07:23.840 Uttam Kumaran: you know, like about like opportunities. And you know, he definitely thinks there’s gonna be some great opportunities between, like the connections that we all have. And I think today we can talk a little bit about potentially drilling down on on one or more and scheduling some more. Follow up time this week.
46 00:07:23.840 ⇒ 00:07:24.629 Chang Ho: Yeah, yeah.
47 00:07:24.630 ⇒ 00:07:30.739 Uttam Kumaran: But that was mainly it. And he’s just like I want to set up like a actual clean arrangement between
48 00:07:30.760 ⇒ 00:07:32.210 Uttam Kumaran: brain Forge.
49 00:07:32.260 ⇒ 00:07:53.372 Uttam Kumaran: Between us, too, between Brain Forge and their company. And then just have a follow up meeting. So that’s the big thing. And then the other thing is he? I also was talking to them a little bit about potentially finding talent in India. Through some of their sources or people on their team. And he mentioned, he’s like, Hey, we actually have a few interns that
50 00:07:53.770 ⇒ 00:08:05.471 Uttam Kumaran: like came to us for work, and he’s like we don’t. He’s like he didn’t have any opportunity for any data work. And he. And so I may actually interview some of their interns. For some potential work at Brainforge.
51 00:08:05.930 ⇒ 00:08:08.038 Uttam Kumaran: you know, for the next few months.
52 00:08:08.370 ⇒ 00:08:10.761 Uttam Kumaran: So that that was that was mainly it.
53 00:08:11.270 ⇒ 00:08:11.589 Chang Ho: Not in.
54 00:08:11.590 ⇒ 00:08:23.339 Uttam Kumaran: Talked about, I told them. Hey, we’re we talked about a lot of things, and me and you will kind of chat, and come up with, you know, a couple of opportunities where we may find more interesting to kind of drill down, and then
55 00:08:23.719 ⇒ 00:08:28.830 Uttam Kumaran: they had a a you know, of course, some more information they wanted to share. So that’s basically it.
56 00:08:31.760 ⇒ 00:08:32.830 Uttam Kumaran: and then again, upcoming.
57 00:08:32.830 ⇒ 00:08:35.679 Chang Ho: So any like any preliminary discussions on
58 00:08:35.720 ⇒ 00:08:55.629 Chang Ho: what? What very specific I guess task he’d be. He’d be wanting us to implement on, maybe both for the benefit of both sides. I guess from that perspective, just to see what we’re about and what we can offer above and beyond what they already have. And then from our side, just sort of actually something of a little bit more substantive and concrete
59 00:08:55.690 ⇒ 00:09:03.670 Chang Ho: and very finite, rather than what seems to me like a very grand grand grandeos, like 5 year 10 year vision, that they seem to have the
60 00:09:03.860 ⇒ 00:09:04.700 Chang Ho: biz.
61 00:09:05.150 ⇒ 00:09:08.420 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. And and so the main thing was like, I. I was talking to him about
62 00:09:10.220 ⇒ 00:09:14.660 Uttam Kumaran: where we could be valuable. And then, as well as like where it would involve
63 00:09:14.670 ⇒ 00:09:19.880 Uttam Kumaran: me or your time, or us more leading on strategy versus like execution.
64 00:09:21.340 ⇒ 00:09:26.110 Uttam Kumaran: So the the big things that you know, I know we talked about was
65 00:09:26.130 ⇒ 00:09:28.090 Uttam Kumaran: we talked about some of the
66 00:09:28.738 ⇒ 00:09:40.709 Uttam Kumaran: like the current, like population initiatives that they’re doing. We talked about roughly, some of their like technical architecture and
67 00:09:40.780 ⇒ 00:09:43.160 Uttam Kumaran: like data issues that they’re dealing with.
68 00:09:43.210 ⇒ 00:09:44.250 Uttam Kumaran: I am.
69 00:09:44.410 ⇒ 00:09:56.139 Uttam Kumaran: I, I know, last time we also talked about. And so I, what I did is I just took our. I took our meeting, and I just took the transcript and put it into Chat Gbt, basically to give us a little bit of summary, so I can.
70 00:09:56.140 ⇒ 00:09:56.880 Chang Ho: Price.
71 00:09:56.880 ⇒ 00:10:07.280 Uttam Kumaran: I can even share that, and we can even ask it some questions and things like that. But those were the main things, and I just like read through some of the transcript again. I I think, like it would be interesting to hear.
72 00:10:07.774 ⇒ 00:10:09.900 Uttam Kumaran: What do you think? Like a
73 00:10:10.580 ⇒ 00:10:14.200 Uttam Kumaran: like, what do you think an engagement could look like between
74 00:10:14.330 ⇒ 00:10:20.160 Uttam Kumaran: us and them? And to give you context of like, what’s possible on my end. So one is, of course, like
75 00:10:20.420 ⇒ 00:10:36.510 Uttam Kumaran: basic strategy and architecture, just helping them de design and deploy. You know, technical solution. That could be that could be research that could be speaking with vendors that could be technical planning, I think, of course, there’s also the execution of that plan.
76 00:10:36.880 ⇒ 00:10:42.820 Uttam Kumaran: So whether they need engineering talent to do that. And so there’s hours associated with both.
77 00:10:43.301 ⇒ 00:10:48.720 Uttam Kumaran: I think there’s also, you know, if they need help on bringing in other experts.
78 00:10:48.954 ⇒ 00:10:52.540 Uttam Kumaran: We’re tapping into art network for people to kind of arrange meetings. I think there’s process.
79 00:10:52.880 ⇒ 00:10:53.220 Chang Ho: Of.
80 00:10:53.220 ⇒ 00:10:54.540 Uttam Kumaran: Probably opportunity there.
81 00:10:55.294 ⇒ 00:10:57.730 Uttam Kumaran: But that’s more of like the services side.
82 00:10:57.960 ⇒ 00:11:07.500 Uttam Kumaran: I I think I need a little bit more context from them on what are the current priority projects and where they need help
83 00:11:07.530 ⇒ 00:11:08.980 Uttam Kumaran: just broadly.
84 00:11:10.640 ⇒ 00:11:15.320 Uttam Kumaran: like, where they need help broadly. And then we can decide like what are potential
85 00:11:15.580 ⇒ 00:11:17.749 Uttam Kumaran: like things we could offer
86 00:11:18.350 ⇒ 00:11:27.869 Uttam Kumaran: and then also, like, What is a what is that? What is a win? Right? So that’s what I tried to do with new clients is, think about like, what is an initial win? We can drive towards
87 00:11:29.300 ⇒ 00:11:37.320 Uttam Kumaran: you know, and then just begin a relationship right? Because it, you know. Take some time to get everything signed and to get us on boarded onto things, and just think about
88 00:11:37.340 ⇒ 00:11:50.399 Uttam Kumaran: if we were to take one task or one initiative that they’re working on where we could be helpful again. I’m still speaking a little bit broadly, just because I don’t have specifics. That’s what I that’s what I would hope we can.
89 00:11:50.690 ⇒ 00:11:56.450 Chang Ho: No, I think I wouldn’t have expected anything less of me. I came out away from that. I came away from that meeting feeling similarly
90 00:11:57.367 ⇒ 00:12:03.909 Chang Ho: I mean, I think, boys, by the enthusiasm, but on, but at the same time just a little ones unclear as to
91 00:12:04.150 ⇒ 00:12:13.470 Chang Ho: which or what they were actually working on at the time, and where this and where they saw potential for people like us to come. And I guess it’s kind of difficult for them, because it’s
92 00:12:13.570 ⇒ 00:12:17.089 Chang Ho: it is a 2 sided tango at the end of the day.
93 00:12:17.200 ⇒ 00:12:18.260 Chang Ho: and
94 00:12:19.010 ⇒ 00:12:24.899 Chang Ho: they probably don’t know what we would be able to do. And I guess we’re just starting to explore what we’d be capable of offering.
95 00:12:24.900 ⇒ 00:12:25.320 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
96 00:12:25.320 ⇒ 00:12:27.379 Chang Ho: As a consulting.
97 00:12:27.490 ⇒ 00:12:29.990 Chang Ho: slash sort of model building
98 00:12:30.584 ⇒ 00:12:37.010 Chang Ho: enterprise that is inherently flexible. By the way, you’ve created Brain Forge, and.
99 00:12:37.080 ⇒ 00:12:45.360 Chang Ho: as you rightly point out, keep being slightly vague. A little bit more sort of okay. Let a couple of things grow and see how they turn out.
100 00:12:45.520 ⇒ 00:12:48.940 Chang Ho: And having that kind of flex is super useful. Isn’t it going for because.
101 00:12:48.940 ⇒ 00:12:49.600 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
102 00:12:49.600 ⇒ 00:12:56.030 Chang Ho: Yeah, things will arise that we didn’t realize. But at the same time as you. Yeah, I think one of the points you raised in that meeting
103 00:12:56.170 ⇒ 00:13:07.030 Chang Ho: which you clearly come back to time and time again. From what I see, what the work you’ve done so far for brain again, based on. What you’ve told me is that you have to limit it.
104 00:13:07.570 ⇒ 00:13:08.839 Chang Ho: limit the scope
105 00:13:09.040 ⇒ 00:13:18.269 Chang Ho: to an extent where you can actually start iterating on stuff and building stuff. So I think that’s where I kind of didn’t quite have any concrete notions. That meeting. I was like.
106 00:13:18.340 ⇒ 00:13:22.650 Chang Ho: yeah, yeah, it’s all fine like thinking we can be part of this grand journey of, you know.
107 00:13:23.320 ⇒ 00:13:23.830 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah.
108 00:13:23.830 ⇒ 00:13:40.340 Chang Ho: And like interoperable interstate sort of public health authorities, you know, link linking up with local hospitals. And all this like data custodianship, like everything. It was like being thrown into the kitchen sink. That was like, Yeah, it’s all fine. And I love the vision like grand scale vision. But
109 00:13:40.630 ⇒ 00:13:46.200 Chang Ho: yeah, you need to start with something something really concrete and small, and something that is demonstrable
110 00:13:46.240 ⇒ 00:13:52.000 Chang Ho: within a short time, from a kind of that’s why I wanted to sort of get out in the second meeting. If we end up having a follow up.
111 00:13:52.010 ⇒ 00:13:58.249 Chang Ho: and that will then be like that will enable both of us. But well, actually, this is within the scope of our
112 00:13:58.940 ⇒ 00:14:00.050 Chang Ho: specialism.
113 00:14:00.100 ⇒ 00:14:01.319 Chang Ho: This is something that we can offer.
114 00:14:01.320 ⇒ 00:14:01.910 Uttam Kumaran: Crack!
115 00:14:03.350 ⇒ 00:14:07.029 Chang Ho: plus or minus, with some of these interns that are coming knocking on their doors.
116 00:14:07.602 ⇒ 00:14:12.389 Chang Ho: And if it is like for us, ends up being a bit more project management initially with the data
117 00:14:12.440 ⇒ 00:14:17.410 Chang Ho: curation component before we actually get our hands dirty with the Mall building cool.
118 00:14:17.820 ⇒ 00:14:19.029 Chang Ho: I think I kind of
119 00:14:19.970 ⇒ 00:14:34.529 Chang Ho: is what I had in mind, because it sounded like they’ve got. They’ve got a couple of researchers on board already, don’t they? And they’ve got, you know, an epidemiologist and all that. So to say that just because you’ve done epidemic research, it doesn’t mean that you’re not. You’re necessarily okay with all the all, the latest and
120 00:14:34.820 ⇒ 00:14:37.786 Chang Ho: best, you know, latest and greatest methods.
121 00:14:39.590 ⇒ 00:14:58.950 Chang Ho: so it’s yeah. It’d be it’d be cool to work with them. And I, we can definitely add some some new spicy things that I certainly know from my side, and it’ll be it’ll be. I think it might end up being of interest to you as well given that like on epic, on the epidemological as well as machine learning angles more and more clients, and certainly with quantum black.
122 00:14:59.290 ⇒ 00:14:59.810 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
123 00:14:59.810 ⇒ 00:15:08.539 Chang Ho: We’re asking for causal, causally oriented machine learning models cause causally oriented AI models. I was just like, huh!
124 00:15:08.580 ⇒ 00:15:17.720 Chang Ho: That’s exactly what we what’s happening in epidemiology as well, like an epidemiology to public health level. And almost every retrospective medical data set
125 00:15:17.810 ⇒ 00:15:22.769 Chang Ho: analysis now at a higher level required to think about.
126 00:15:23.210 ⇒ 00:15:29.880 Chang Ho: You know what what the ultimate causal question is, and how you set that problem up which is slightly different from just a naive logistic regression or a linear.
127 00:15:29.880 ⇒ 00:15:30.470 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
128 00:15:30.820 ⇒ 00:15:43.799 Chang Ho: It’s just I can tell you about it later. But it basically it’s it was like the final chapter of my thesis is all about causal inference methods being applied to retrospective electronic health record data. And same applies to
129 00:15:43.810 ⇒ 00:15:46.640 Chang Ho: genotype data. Phenotype data. You name it.
130 00:15:46.970 ⇒ 00:15:48.790 Chang Ho: And so it’s.
131 00:15:48.820 ⇒ 00:15:52.149 Chang Ho: I I think it’d be hugely useful for them, potentially
132 00:15:52.200 ⇒ 00:15:54.080 Chang Ho: and and interesting.
133 00:15:54.240 ⇒ 00:16:04.401 Chang Ho: And it’s something that we can help guide even interns build. It’s not. They’re not necessarily like groundbreaking models that if I, to tell you the truth, they basically just weighted logistic regression models.
134 00:16:04.700 ⇒ 00:16:05.180 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
135 00:16:05.180 ⇒ 00:16:09.185 Chang Ho: Or weighted Cox regression models. They’re really not that complicated. But
136 00:16:09.810 ⇒ 00:16:24.079 Chang Ho: in in terms of the problem, setup can be quite complex and can be room for a lot of debate, and I think that’s where a bit of client, modular sort of interface could be could get quite interesting. Because you can imagine May, if you’ve got.
137 00:16:24.300 ⇒ 00:16:26.359 Chang Ho: you know, when you got randomized experiment.
138 00:16:26.810 ⇒ 00:16:28.560 Chang Ho: whether in physics or in
139 00:16:28.750 ⇒ 00:16:30.620 Chang Ho: medicine, or wherever it might be.
140 00:16:31.020 ⇒ 00:16:36.790 Chang Ho: but by virtue of having randomized people to a certain treatment, one or no treatment.
141 00:16:37.360 ⇒ 00:16:41.250 Chang Ho: If you have a sufficiently large population that you’re looking at.
142 00:16:41.390 ⇒ 00:16:50.769 Chang Ho: then, by virtue of the randomization effect. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t measured in all the variables possible, you know they will end up balancing each other on so ultimately
143 00:16:50.790 ⇒ 00:16:56.089 Chang Ho: your treatment effect that you’ve estimated is conditionally independent of
144 00:16:56.110 ⇒ 00:16:59.090 Chang Ho: all the variables that you can possibly measure, and all the ones.
145 00:16:59.090 ⇒ 00:16:59.580 Uttam Kumaran: Exactly.
146 00:16:59.580 ⇒ 00:17:04.440 Chang Ho: You haven’t measured. Now, if you have conditional dependence.
147 00:17:04.550 ⇒ 00:17:07.379 Chang Ho: for what treatment assignment they end up with.
148 00:17:07.420 ⇒ 00:17:14.699 Chang Ho: which is essentially what you see in bias data sets, or every retrospective, non observational data set, every electronic health record you see under the sun.
149 00:17:15.410 ⇒ 00:17:17.589 Chang Ho: Then the question is, how can we
150 00:17:17.690 ⇒ 00:17:19.060 Chang Ho: get us close
151 00:17:19.510 ⇒ 00:17:22.909 Chang Ho: to the randomized control trial golden channels as possible.
152 00:17:22.930 ⇒ 00:17:27.559 Chang Ho: And you can imagine, despite the fact that we actually have techniques right now to do this.
153 00:17:27.819 ⇒ 00:17:33.539 Chang Ho: most people don’t do is it’s lazy because they’re lazy, or they don’t know how or they just haven’t ever both to look how.
154 00:17:33.830 ⇒ 00:17:38.989 Chang Ho: And finally, because there is debate as to how you, which variables you include.
155 00:17:39.672 ⇒ 00:17:43.600 Chang Ho: which variables and how those variables interact, not just
156 00:17:44.020 ⇒ 00:17:49.639 Chang Ho: in, not in like hand, wavy terms, but actually like in statistical terms. How do you interact with them?
157 00:17:50.440 ⇒ 00:17:57.039 Chang Ho: and that’s where you sort of go down the realms of okay, how can I get to get this treatment. Assignment in this retrospective setting
158 00:17:57.220 ⇒ 00:18:01.290 Chang Ho: to be conditionally independent of the variables, I think may be responsible for.
159 00:18:01.290 ⇒ 00:18:01.900 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
160 00:18:02.050 ⇒ 00:18:21.820 Chang Ho: Says, treatment, assignment, and so on. And it’s not simply a case of like in machine learning model so often, just checking everything in and seeing what happens because you can’t base it on predictive performance, there is nothing to train it on. It’s more. Do I do. I fundamentally believe in this, like biological, hypothetical model I created of what happens.
161 00:18:21.860 ⇒ 00:18:25.280 Chang Ho: and do I see evidence? For it is sort of the more.
162 00:18:26.005 ⇒ 00:18:26.280 Uttam Kumaran: Rest.
163 00:18:26.280 ⇒ 00:18:35.619 Chang Ho: Looking at it rather than great. I’ve got, you know, British capacity no point 9 5 is supposed to 9 3. This is this, is it? I found I found the underlying truth.
164 00:18:35.620 ⇒ 00:18:36.270 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah.
165 00:18:36.270 ⇒ 00:18:39.140 Chang Ho: Yeah, so that’s in a nutshell.
166 00:18:39.805 ⇒ 00:18:51.880 Chang Ho: But it’s it’s fairly simple to implement. But it’s but is this complexity in debasing out with the domain experts as to how, which variables to include, how to include them, in what shape or format
167 00:18:52.010 ⇒ 00:18:53.000 Chang Ho: ends.
168 00:18:53.210 ⇒ 00:18:56.849 Chang Ho: I think that’s where there could be some cool work happening, especially with
169 00:18:56.920 ⇒ 00:19:02.399 Chang Ho: people, would be involved in policy like your cousin is cousin. Right? Yeah.
170 00:19:02.400 ⇒ 00:19:03.100 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Pleasant.
171 00:19:03.100 ⇒ 00:19:05.509 Chang Ho: Yeah. Yeah. Where
172 00:19:05.770 ⇒ 00:19:07.989 Chang Ho: the idea of like a causally.
173 00:19:08.020 ⇒ 00:19:18.049 Chang Ho: a high causal model being built will probably be very marketable, even if it’s actually in real terms. Not that much more advanced than the standard regression model.
174 00:19:18.050 ⇒ 00:19:18.670 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
175 00:19:18.670 ⇒ 00:19:23.619 Chang Ho: If you call it a calls inference what it’s just like what AI and Ml. Was back in the day.
176 00:19:23.620 ⇒ 00:19:25.660 Uttam Kumaran: It sounds like linear algebra. Yeah.
177 00:19:26.250 ⇒ 00:19:38.500 Chang Ho: Yeah, yeah, is that is that. But it’s also honesty. I mean, like, if we’ve been honest with ourselves when we when we fit these models in scientific papers like looking at looking at retrospective data.
178 00:19:38.720 ⇒ 00:19:51.309 Chang Ho: Ultimately, we are still asking causal questions. It’s just that when you, when you frame it in a causal way. You’re just being extremely explicit about the assumptions biases you’ve made and that assumptions of biases you’ve you’ve helped to mitigate.
179 00:19:51.330 ⇒ 00:19:52.470 Chang Ho: Yeah, whereas
180 00:19:52.500 ⇒ 00:20:02.579 Chang Ho: if you don’t frame it in those terms, and just Willy nearly up, you know, indiscriminately apply logistic re model without any waiting based on the variables you’ve measured.
181 00:20:02.890 ⇒ 00:20:04.360 Chang Ho: You’re essentially saying
182 00:20:05.280 ⇒ 00:20:18.753 Chang Ho: who gives a shit like I don’t really care. And I don’t care if it’s association or causation when that’s actually not the what it is ultimately you always care if it’s something is potentially going to be causative of something or not. Otherwise
183 00:20:19.370 ⇒ 00:20:20.780 Chang Ho: why would you bother? It’s like.
184 00:20:20.780 ⇒ 00:20:21.630 Uttam Kumaran: And that.
185 00:20:22.230 ⇒ 00:20:25.175 Chang Ho: That is as useless as any other correlation. You know.
186 00:20:25.640 ⇒ 00:20:35.760 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s like, yeah. You see, this charts where it’s like, people just correlate to random things. And then you’re like, yeah, these have nothing to do with each other. There’s no impact at all. But yeah.
187 00:20:36.180 ⇒ 00:20:45.579 Chang Ho: Exactly, then then that is as useful as just seeing any older association that you found in your paper. So why are you bothering to do that analysis. Oh, wait!
188 00:20:45.750 ⇒ 00:21:02.279 Chang Ho: That’s right, because you want to see if that might be potentially causative of your outcome. Oh, yeah, that’s so. It’s like an honesty thing that’s not really culturally ingrained, or import or embedded at the moment. But anyway, thought there was opportunity. Yeah, like I, you know, I’ll be happy to
189 00:21:02.590 ⇒ 00:21:12.889 Chang Ho: get you up to speed. It would not take you long at all to grasp that. And it’d be it’d be a potentially very marketable, very powerful thing we can provide yeah policy makers and
190 00:21:12.920 ⇒ 00:21:16.219 Chang Ho: other people, because even if it’s not ultimately.
191 00:21:16.460 ⇒ 00:21:17.310 Chang Ho: you know.
192 00:21:17.980 ⇒ 00:21:23.550 Chang Ho: but as not to maybe not more informative than that than a naive
193 00:21:23.850 ⇒ 00:21:28.740 Chang Ho: logistic regression model apply might be. At least you’ve tried
194 00:21:29.008 ⇒ 00:21:38.690 Chang Ho: at least you tried with your models, and at least you’ve been explicit with the biases and assumptions you made. I think that’s a very good, if that’s that’s a good thing to be working towards rather than
195 00:21:39.560 ⇒ 00:21:43.749 Chang Ho: you know, maintaining the current chasm of faith between
196 00:21:43.820 ⇒ 00:21:45.100 Chang Ho: an experiment
197 00:21:45.110 ⇒ 00:21:46.160 Chang Ho: mattens
198 00:21:46.460 ⇒ 00:21:51.532 Chang Ho: all all the other. You know. This is the botanist piece of the iceberg that is
199 00:21:52.150 ⇒ 00:21:53.781 Chang Ho: retrospective data analysis.
200 00:21:55.090 ⇒ 00:21:56.630 Chang Ho: But anyway.
201 00:21:56.650 ⇒ 00:21:58.964 Chang Ho: bit bit of an aside, though.
202 00:21:59.520 ⇒ 00:22:02.714 Chang Ho: I think a couple of things concretely I was gonna ask you was
203 00:22:04.110 ⇒ 00:22:06.680 Chang Ho: if you want me to
204 00:22:07.500 ⇒ 00:22:10.160 Chang Ho: sort of help, help you build
205 00:22:10.310 ⇒ 00:22:23.480 Chang Ho: what you might do in terms of the medical consultation part of the web pay. If you still want that, then just let me know what you want in terms of if you want me to write a little speed about what we can provide, I guess, in terms of consultation.
206 00:22:24.670 ⇒ 00:22:26.050 Chang Ho: my medical angle
207 00:22:26.100 ⇒ 00:22:30.150 Chang Ho: where where you, you and my expertise can help
208 00:22:30.250 ⇒ 00:22:39.179 Chang Ho: coalesce like can come, can coalesce and and provide certain services. Yeah, if that’s something that you want me to write a bullet point list to help you build that that proportion, the website happily do that.
209 00:22:41.550 ⇒ 00:22:45.420 Uttam Kumaran: Let me note a couple. So let me note a couple of things down. So one is.
210 00:22:45.470 ⇒ 00:22:48.489 Uttam Kumaran: maybe let’s just close out what we’re for this.
211 00:22:49.690 ⇒ 00:22:51.950 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll just say the hph.
212 00:22:53.580 ⇒ 00:22:55.877 Uttam Kumaran: So so one thing on that
213 00:22:56.400 ⇒ 00:23:02.819 Uttam Kumaran: is one thing that I’m learning a little bit about running this business and doing these projects is
214 00:23:03.638 ⇒ 00:23:05.949 Uttam Kumaran: it’s no longer best
215 00:23:06.220 ⇒ 00:23:19.080 Uttam Kumaran: like to kind of run, even though I think there is opportunity here. The one thing I found in consulting is like having consistency of process in terms of both. Evaluation, intake, execution.
216 00:23:19.080 ⇒ 00:23:19.430 Chang Ho: Yeah.
217 00:23:19.430 ⇒ 00:23:30.229 Uttam Kumaran: Delivery and like feedback, and then loops so the one thing that I’m doing across all clients is, I just hired a project manager. He’s really being tasked with
218 00:23:30.640 ⇒ 00:23:40.310 Uttam Kumaran: most of the like intake execution feedback delivery feedback and then looping. So one thing is like
219 00:23:40.330 ⇒ 00:23:51.850 Uttam Kumaran: I’m trying to get everything molded into when we go and evaluate a potential client. What are the key principle things we’re looking for? And how far are we from that. And how
220 00:23:51.850 ⇒ 00:24:19.329 Uttam Kumaran: or how close are we, for example, like there’s been plenty of times where I’ve had like 5 or 6 conversations with people where I’ve given them a lot, and then finally, just doesn’t work out because we just didn’t arrive at the right thing whether the right thing existed or not. So this is more of like a disqualification or a qualification process. So that’s how that’s where I feel we are with these guys right now is process of understanding whether there is something we can affect.
221 00:24:19.520 ⇒ 00:24:25.189 Uttam Kumaran: whether, like there is a short term milestone that we can go after, some concrete, second, that there’s budget
222 00:24:25.725 ⇒ 00:24:31.730 Uttam Kumaran: and then, third, we have, like a stakeholder. We have a stakeholder there that we can work with to deliver that
223 00:24:31.810 ⇒ 00:25:00.759 Uttam Kumaran: cause. The other issue I found sometimes you work just directly for you. Bring on. Come on. But then you need someone internally that we’re gonna be like interacting with and deploying and doing that. So those are the 3 things that I wanna really understand is again, budget if there’s like a milestone. And then if there is like, who is the stakeholder. The second thing is, I would love to treat this similar to how I’ve been treating any other opportunity. Where, again, you have the folks involved which are me and you, and then I’m gonna involve
224 00:25:01.045 ⇒ 00:25:21.050 Uttam Kumaran: the project manager on my side who will just help again to kind of take notes facilitate a conversation and basically handle. You know whether this is gonna be a go or no go and and if we end up working with the prod. If we’re working with a project, the best thing is that he’ll actually be able to heal, actually handle communication delivery and basically getting us.
225 00:25:21.150 ⇒ 00:25:50.300 Uttam Kumaran: Whoever works on this, the right room. So I wanna I wanna involve him. His name is Nico. He just started last week. So it’s not like he hasn’t been here. It’s just been a a week, so, but into the deep end. And I he’s actually very curious. And how the sales process works. And I want his feedback on whether he sees that this will be because he’s frankly gonna become the owner of, like the successful execution of these projects, even if it’s me or you or someone else working on it.
226 00:25:50.864 ⇒ 00:26:06.390 Uttam Kumaran: I want him to be able to handle and make consistent the the, you know, deployment of whatever our work is, so I think we involve him. His name is his name is Nicholas. He’s based in Buenos Aires, but it goes by Nico, so I’ll I’ll involve him on. What else.
227 00:26:06.390 ⇒ 00:26:08.120 Chang Ho: How do you do? How do you do this going.
228 00:26:08.662 ⇒ 00:26:27.079 Uttam Kumaran: I went through a recruiting firm and then just hired him. Recently we interviewed several people over the last month for a project manager like Technical project manager role, someone who was client facing. But also, frankly, I’m managing all the clients right now, and it’s really hard to do to do that, and.
229 00:26:27.080 ⇒ 00:26:28.170 Chang Ho: So much work.
230 00:26:28.170 ⇒ 00:26:46.469 Uttam Kumaran: And I’m still doing engineering work, and then also to kind of have conversations like this which actually is more of like exploratory opportunity, finding conversations where me and you just have to sit and have time to talk and like, think about opportunities. Right? It’s not. This is the same. Conversation is like cool. We have this thing. Knock it out, send it out right.
231 00:26:46.470 ⇒ 00:26:46.860 Chang Ho: Totally.
232 00:26:46.860 ⇒ 00:26:55.659 Uttam Kumaran: So for me. I actually, this is a little bit like outside. But I just like some. I’ve been having a lot less time for things like this which make growth
233 00:26:55.670 ⇒ 00:26:57.260 Uttam Kumaran: really hard, because
234 00:26:57.773 ⇒ 00:27:15.019 Uttam Kumaran: in in a project ex the project setting you have a key deliverable. You drive towards. This is where, you know, we have to try things. And I wanna make sure that this is a separate flow than that, because this has to be purposely open ended. And we’re trying multiple things. So.
235 00:27:15.020 ⇒ 00:27:15.600 Chang Ho: Hmm.
236 00:27:15.600 ⇒ 00:27:22.659 Uttam Kumaran: Testing. I’m gonna involve him. I’m gonna create a channel just for this project, which is, gonna be like opportunity with hph!
237 00:27:22.750 ⇒ 00:27:28.130 Uttam Kumaran: The 3 of us will be in it. We’ll just house those sorts of conversations there and then. Basically.
238 00:27:28.130 ⇒ 00:27:28.900 Chang Ho: That’s good.
239 00:27:29.110 ⇒ 00:27:40.389 Uttam Kumaran: Talk about that on on that in particular, for the next meeting. One is, I wanna get like at least like one to 3 like
240 00:27:40.910 ⇒ 00:27:45.048 Uttam Kumaran: initial areas or scopes that we can affect.
241 00:27:47.370 ⇒ 00:27:54.181 Uttam Kumaran: Second is, of course, like is is of course, ending up understanding whether like, who is the stakeholder.
242 00:27:54.540 ⇒ 00:27:55.090 Chang Ho: Yes.
243 00:27:55.660 ⇒ 00:27:58.973 Uttam Kumaran: And then timeline, and then budget
244 00:28:00.110 ⇒ 00:28:00.640 Uttam Kumaran: so we’ll.
245 00:28:00.640 ⇒ 00:28:15.120 Chang Ho: Can I just get a sense for your time? I mean, you can be completely honest. I mean, you could remember you’re talking to britch here. So it’s not like we command absolutely meant salaries, and in fact, quite the opposite. And we and we still do the penurious work.
246 00:28:15.410 ⇒ 00:28:21.290 Uttam Kumaran: Definitely shifting. Yeah, I know. But but also again, like, this is why global talent is becoming a lot
247 00:28:21.680 ⇒ 00:28:25.120 Uttam Kumaran: like, I mean, I have some people that are outside the Us. Some people in the Us.
248 00:28:25.270 ⇒ 00:28:28.240 Uttam Kumaran: Just becoming. It’s interesting to work with people everywhere. But
249 00:28:28.420 ⇒ 00:28:37.990 Uttam Kumaran: you’re right. I don’t know. The EU is struggling in the tech side right now. Cause I just I look at the macro charts of where investment and the funding and that are going. But yeah, continue.
250 00:28:39.230 ⇒ 00:28:41.490 Chang Ho: Yeah. So just wanted to get a sense for
251 00:28:41.540 ⇒ 00:28:47.960 Chang Ho: what kind of budget would be worth your time? What kind of money going to you per hour
252 00:28:48.314 ⇒ 00:28:59.779 Chang Ho: will be worth your time, and then that will give me a sense for what I should be thinking about, too. So yes, I should have no sense for that is, I’m being completely honest with them. I’m I’ve never done any consulting work in the Us. In the Uk. Sure.
253 00:29:00.460 ⇒ 00:29:01.950 Chang Ho: yeah, no previous.
254 00:29:01.950 ⇒ 00:29:06.990 Uttam Kumaran: Sense like to give you a sense. And this is how like I kind of explain it to the whole team is like.
255 00:29:07.150 ⇒ 00:29:15.039 Uttam Kumaran: And and there’s one thing about how this consulting business runs. Now versus how it will run long term consulting business is basically
256 00:29:15.671 ⇒ 00:29:28.589 Uttam Kumaran: like an optimization problem of talent and margin for the business and partners at this point there’s no partners in the business, so for the most part it’s like, Can the company make money, and then can I?
257 00:29:28.860 ⇒ 00:29:42.089 Uttam Kumaran: Can we have enough money to get the best talent? Typically what I pay folks in the Us. Is anywhere from like 50 to 150 an hour. Basic based on us, based on the type of work.
258 00:29:42.694 ⇒ 00:29:47.240 Uttam Kumaran: What I’m able to, bill clients is now slowly climbing.
259 00:29:47.743 ⇒ 00:29:49.860 Uttam Kumaran: The tough thing is as
260 00:29:50.060 ⇒ 00:29:57.010 Uttam Kumaran: clients grow as the complexity of the business grows. Of course the business needs margin. So that’s like where I’ve been aiming.
261 00:29:57.120 ⇒ 00:30:18.976 Uttam Kumaran: It depends on a whole host of factors. It also depends on the involvement, like some people on the team, are not involved in the like sales process like like you are right. So I think my ultimate goal is like to bill as much as we can, so I could pay everybody as much as as possible, like actually being very, very transparent. But I also think a lot about
262 00:30:19.410 ⇒ 00:30:21.329 Uttam Kumaran: If we are able to land
263 00:30:21.390 ⇒ 00:30:30.419 Uttam Kumaran: these folks as a successful client. How does that open us up to future clients? How does how does it? How does that change your involvement with the business?
264 00:30:30.695 ⇒ 00:30:35.609 Uttam Kumaran: And then also just thinking about a relationship like it’s not. It’s not just like work for hire. It’s actually.
265 00:30:35.610 ⇒ 00:30:35.980 Chang Ho: No.
266 00:30:35.990 ⇒ 00:30:58.053 Uttam Kumaran: Everybody has an opportunity affect the sales side, the execution side. And then, you know, of course, we’re talking about writing articles and things to grow that part of the business. But monetarily, that’s kind of I try. I’m trying to get everybody to that’s that’s us based or and I’m sure it’s very similar. There, it’s like, I’ll try to get everybody above 100 an hour if I can.
267 00:30:58.820 ⇒ 00:31:09.699 Uttam Kumaran: but you’ll see is that people will will. It depends on the contract. So I actually have at the moment, I have no idea whether they have budget. I have no idea about timeline. So that’s like the conversations
268 00:31:09.870 ⇒ 00:31:11.677 Uttam Kumaran: we basically have.
269 00:31:12.360 ⇒ 00:31:26.730 Uttam Kumaran: and then and then again, the nice thing about the having the company structure cause I used to do consulting on my own. But you know I don’t have a project manager. I don’t have slack. I don’t have like a website. So actually, that’s what the company
270 00:31:26.940 ⇒ 00:31:31.880 Uttam Kumaran: can offer is like that infrastructure, right? So where we just focus on.
271 00:31:31.910 ⇒ 00:31:38.169 Uttam Kumaran: If you’re on a project, you just focus on the project, and then the rest of the machine is able to assist with all those things that are like
272 00:31:38.190 ⇒ 00:31:43.710 Uttam Kumaran: typical things. You can’t really, Bill, for that are like a little bit outside, but still take quite amount of time. But
273 00:31:43.940 ⇒ 00:31:47.819 Uttam Kumaran: that’s a little bit about rambling about how I think about about that. So.
274 00:31:48.270 ⇒ 00:31:53.023 Chang Ho: No, no, it’s it’s super fascinating, because I guess it’s something that I’ve never had to really think about concretely myself.
275 00:31:53.300 ⇒ 00:32:05.819 Chang Ho: You know. I get offered a certain amount of money per hour. And yeah, if I’m being honest 100 50, an hour would probably be in the Ballpark Range, where I’ve been offered before in in Noi here, but also in New Zealand.
276 00:32:05.970 ⇒ 00:32:08.679 Chang Ho: So if that’s what’s billable to
277 00:32:08.880 ⇒ 00:32:12.210 Chang Ho: to your to your cousin’s group in India.
278 00:32:12.220 ⇒ 00:32:23.040 Chang Ho: then that would be, and if they can budget for that, and I guess the question is, how many hours can they budget for? And then within those hours. How many? What kind of project can we actually conceive.
279 00:32:23.270 ⇒ 00:32:23.620 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
280 00:32:24.092 ⇒ 00:32:25.510 Chang Ho: And I think.
281 00:32:26.000 ⇒ 00:32:29.670 Chang Ho: almost in a way they should work backwards from that, because otherwise
282 00:32:29.690 ⇒ 00:32:34.039 Chang Ho: they will. They will come up with some planned. Ho! You know, with to sort of hire.
283 00:32:34.040 ⇒ 00:32:34.400 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, you did!
284 00:32:34.400 ⇒ 00:32:37.430 Chang Ho: Indian tech guy in mind, a local person.
285 00:32:37.630 ⇒ 00:32:48.110 Chang Ho: obviously, who charges significantly less. And you know another group. I I help consult, for we have a full stack software developer from Vietnam. His annual salary is 20,000
286 00:32:48.160 ⇒ 00:32:49.590 Chang Ho: Us. Dollars a year.
287 00:32:49.850 ⇒ 00:32:56.920 Chang Ho: That’s unimaginable for a full stack developer in the Us. You know how it is, even for the worst of the worst of the class. They basically fail.
288 00:32:56.920 ⇒ 00:32:57.795 Uttam Kumaran: Times.
289 00:32:58.670 ⇒ 00:33:03.299 Chang Ho: Mostly suck Dick to pass their bachelors, and
290 00:33:03.310 ⇒ 00:33:06.689 Chang Ho: they’re still yeah. They’re still being paid 20,000, anyway.
291 00:33:06.690 ⇒ 00:33:15.470 Uttam Kumaran: At the same time, like, I realize that this is why people typically have hard time in this, because it is a negotiation process. But I’m I’m pretty clear about
292 00:33:15.660 ⇒ 00:33:20.439 Uttam Kumaran: if you need our time. But again, look, if if they they have access to Indian talent
293 00:33:20.490 ⇒ 00:33:35.779 Uttam Kumaran: like, what I’m guessing is that we probably may or not may not be actually handling like hardcore engineering. If we’re like guiding team coming up with project spec making introductions or kind of being like, you know, leading these projects.
294 00:33:35.890 ⇒ 00:33:58.756 Uttam Kumaran: I that’s what I’m gonna push for. If for engineering work like, I don’t know what their plan is, they could also have us do it for that same rate. I that’s what I’m very clear on that. Because I actually and this is where I actually talked to Neil a lot about this, because I called him one day and you know he was. He was running. He was the GM. For data culture, which is a data consulting as well. And I was telling him, Yeah, I’m thinking about the margins for the business. And
295 00:33:59.530 ⇒ 00:34:21.710 Uttam Kumaran: you know, like, I’m like, if the business made like 20. That’d be great. So that’s something he’s like. He’s like, what you don’t realize is like you have to charge you off. The business has to make like almost like 50 for it to work because it’s gross revenue, and then you have taxes you have hiring, you have equipment, you have people. You have equipment. And then you have to score sales, marketing, or whatever he’s like.
296 00:34:21.850 ⇒ 00:34:36.400 Uttam Kumaran: He’s like, no, that’s you’re you’re not. You’re not thinking about the math right? But then think about how much you have to charge to make. It works. But at the same time, like, I run this business a little bit lean. We’re just starting to grow, starting to grow. And again, like
297 00:34:36.750 ⇒ 00:34:57.909 Uttam Kumaran: everything. And there’s a way to. There’s a way to. There’s a tried and true way of running consulting businesses where you end up like Mckinsey. But I’m not a Mckenzie. We’re just a couple of folks, so there are different ways of architecting these sorts of projects in that. Even if we were to say, Hey, we’ll take. We’ll take X amount upfront, and we’ll do this project. And then, if we are, if you’re if you like it, we continue, then we’ll have an opportunity for renewal.
298 00:34:57.910 ⇒ 00:34:59.569 Chang Ho: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
299 00:34:59.570 ⇒ 00:35:01.540 Uttam Kumaran: So there’s an art to some of this
300 00:35:01.550 ⇒ 00:35:03.510 Uttam Kumaran: part of the art is having
301 00:35:03.520 ⇒ 00:35:05.319 Uttam Kumaran: the freedom, and, like
302 00:35:05.780 ⇒ 00:35:19.459 Uttam Kumaran: the hey, we, the brain forge, has work going on. And so you’re not like begging for anything that comes by. But also it’s like, I don’t want to have 10 conversations where we spend 1020 h, and then it dies
303 00:35:19.680 ⇒ 00:35:27.760 Uttam Kumaran: like, if, frankly, if we spend, if we even have like, more than 4 meetings on this, I’m going to be a little bit pissed because we’re giving out a lot
304 00:35:27.800 ⇒ 00:35:28.980 Uttam Kumaran: of our time right.
305 00:35:28.980 ⇒ 00:35:34.550 Chang Ho: Oh, I agree. So I’m I’m completely agreement. I think I think, basically, even by the second meeting, if we don’t have.
306 00:35:34.550 ⇒ 00:35:34.900 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
307 00:35:34.900 ⇒ 00:35:35.300 Chang Ho: Increase.
308 00:35:35.300 ⇒ 00:35:36.579 Uttam Kumaran: 2 meetings should be the goal.
309 00:35:36.580 ⇒ 00:35:43.744 Chang Ho: Oh, these should be 2 meetings. Yeah. And for free, as you say, I mean, I think that’s basically what even the kindest lawyers do.
310 00:35:44.020 ⇒ 00:35:44.350 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
311 00:35:44.350 ⇒ 00:35:45.360 Chang Ho: So, yeah.
312 00:35:45.410 ⇒ 00:35:52.400 Chang Ho: yeah. So I think, Kelly, that’s completely reasonable. Otherwise, you know, they should know as well as I do that we do that they’re wasting our time.
313 00:35:52.830 ⇒ 00:35:53.819 Uttam Kumaran: And and yeah, like.
314 00:35:53.820 ⇒ 00:35:55.180 Chang Ho: Tendency for them.
315 00:35:55.180 ⇒ 00:35:55.500 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
316 00:35:55.500 ⇒ 00:35:56.969 Chang Ho: Ramble on last time.
317 00:35:57.430 ⇒ 00:36:03.359 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah tendency to ramble on. But it’s it’s again. I don’t know whether we’re going to be working with them, some on their team, like. I’m also just learning
318 00:36:03.380 ⇒ 00:36:17.300 Uttam Kumaran: a little bit about it. I know they’re motivated to do something with us, but we like there’s there’s limits we have, and I want to guarantee if we’re gonna continue spending time, that there’s opportunity. The other thing I learned into this business is like deals come and go.
319 00:36:17.370 ⇒ 00:36:22.209 Uttam Kumaran: Opportunities are gonna keep coming, and you can’t get too attached
320 00:36:22.550 ⇒ 00:36:25.480 Uttam Kumaran: because you just don’t know what that’s gonna happen. But.
321 00:36:25.480 ⇒ 00:36:26.040 Chang Ho: Yeah, yeah.
322 00:36:26.040 ⇒ 00:36:39.989 Uttam Kumaran: You have to treat everything like it will happen, but have some guardrail. So that’s what I try to do. And that’s why, even by the first meeting. I was like cool, I can tell that like there’s so much going on by the next meeting. I need to have understanding of like, what’s the first? What’s like? The 2 top priorities?
323 00:36:40.020 ⇒ 00:36:50.473 Uttam Kumaran: Where do they see are of a engagement and budget timeline like? I need to know that before we spend any time before I spend any time any of my team’s time.
324 00:36:50.790 ⇒ 00:36:52.159 Chang Ho: Oh, yeah, 100%.
325 00:36:52.160 ⇒ 00:36:53.810 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s that’s what we’ll go for.
326 00:36:54.770 ⇒ 00:37:04.850 Chang Ho: I think I mean, your cousin might well push back a little bit and just say, well, ultimately, obviously, it’s gonna be negotiation game, and naturally it’s always going to be a bit a bit like that.
327 00:37:04.940 ⇒ 00:37:07.930 Chang Ho: and he may well suggest
328 00:37:08.310 ⇒ 00:37:11.890 Chang Ho: that what we do is obviously in the second meeting
329 00:37:12.600 ⇒ 00:37:18.169 Chang Ho: they they might end up. I think I think the important thing, maybe before the second meeting is for him and his team to think about
330 00:37:18.240 ⇒ 00:37:24.779 Chang Ho: some some concrete projects that can be done within a few months, that they think can be done in a few months.
331 00:37:25.180 ⇒ 00:37:30.650 Chang Ho: and the idea is for them to have some notion of what their expectations are for for a given project.
332 00:37:30.720 ⇒ 00:37:39.100 Chang Ho: and then for us to come in and say, we think that could be viable based on Xyz, I’d like data availability current? Yes.
333 00:37:39.190 ⇒ 00:37:50.980 Chang Ho: access to data current. Yes, like, how long is this all going to take? What’s the time? Blah? Blah! What’s the manpower human power that we have available at our disposal? Tick, tick, and based all of that?
334 00:37:51.000 ⇒ 00:37:59.945 Chang Ho: We could probably give them a feasibility report vaguely. Obviously with a with a pretty massive confidence interval. But that’s discriminating the beast with this.
335 00:38:00.290 ⇒ 00:38:07.139 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But then, again, that’s where we’re that’s where that’s where we can say, Hey, we for this project. We’ll dedicate 20 HA week.
336 00:38:07.300 ⇒ 00:38:09.870 Uttam Kumaran: and we’re gonna that’ll be a Max cap.
337 00:38:09.880 ⇒ 00:38:21.089 Uttam Kumaran: And then, because the other thing I was just talking to someone about my friend who I dropped in the airport, I told him. It’s too it’s really hard in this business to to, unless unless I’m able to go
338 00:38:21.240 ⇒ 00:38:34.209 Uttam Kumaran: high in the range. I that’s when I can say cool. It’s gonna be this much a month. Otherwise you have to do hourly, because you don’t really know what you don’t know. And this is always gonna be something wrong. And so I tend to not charge people flat rates.
339 00:38:34.280 ⇒ 00:38:40.419 Uttam Kumaran: Cause if I did, I would have to have a room. I would have to have a room of buffer that it would be real big stickers. I’m sure.
340 00:38:40.750 ⇒ 00:38:41.983 Chang Ho: Oh, yeah, yeah, I think.
341 00:38:42.230 ⇒ 00:38:42.820 Uttam Kumaran: And like, we’re.
342 00:38:42.820 ⇒ 00:38:43.490 Chang Ho: Exactly. Yeah.
343 00:38:43.490 ⇒ 00:38:50.760 Uttam Kumaran: You have like 20 h. And that’s what we’ll work through. I would say, typically, we’re working more than that for clients, because it’s only 20 h of work. It’s like.
344 00:38:51.200 ⇒ 00:39:00.619 Uttam Kumaran: it’s like meeting, scheduling, preparing for meetings. So I have to bake all that in. And so I agree. So my goal is, say, like.
345 00:39:00.680 ⇒ 00:39:11.720 Uttam Kumaran: I wanna just the initial. The initial initial goal is just get something signed for scope of work for some amount of hours at a rate that we agree on and like get a win
346 00:39:11.770 ⇒ 00:39:21.299 Uttam Kumaran: cause, I’m confident if we get a win, and then we can expand into more things. But the toughest part is just being pen to paper, something written down that’s signed. Then we can begin moving forward.
347 00:39:22.560 ⇒ 00:39:26.277 Uttam Kumaran: And after doing a lot of these sorts of scoping meetings with a ton of people
348 00:39:26.660 ⇒ 00:39:29.260 Uttam Kumaran: that’s the thing that always like
349 00:39:29.520 ⇒ 00:39:37.320 Uttam Kumaran: have to drive the needle towards that as fast as possible. Really, really go for it? Because again, like.
350 00:39:37.320 ⇒ 00:39:38.350 Chang Ho: Sounds good. Your time. Yeah.
351 00:39:38.350 ⇒ 00:39:39.609 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s what I’m gonna go from.
352 00:39:40.830 ⇒ 00:39:43.810 Chang Ho: I think that sounds yeah, yeah. You and I are on exactly the same page.
353 00:39:43.810 ⇒ 00:39:44.660 Uttam Kumaran: Tricky.
354 00:39:44.660 ⇒ 00:39:46.624 Chang Ho: I’m glad you are. Yeah,
355 00:39:47.720 ⇒ 00:39:50.155 Chang Ho: I’m glad there’s some people on this
356 00:39:50.460 ⇒ 00:39:51.470 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, I mean I.
357 00:39:51.470 ⇒ 00:39:52.170 Chang Ho: Yeah.
358 00:39:52.170 ⇒ 00:39:58.739 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I just look like you have to. We have to make a living. And we and we have a plethora of opportunities that
359 00:39:58.750 ⇒ 00:40:00.520 Uttam Kumaran: where we can spend our time.
360 00:40:00.560 ⇒ 00:40:01.900 Uttam Kumaran: And so.
361 00:40:02.030 ⇒ 00:40:07.020 Uttam Kumaran: you know, I want us to get paid for our work, and I want us to make sure we can deliver great work.
362 00:40:07.130 ⇒ 00:40:13.210 Uttam Kumaran: So in any situation where those are compromised like or like, seem like, they may be compromised. It’ll be difficult.
363 00:40:13.410 ⇒ 00:40:14.569 Chang Ho: Yeah, yeah.
364 00:40:14.880 ⇒ 00:40:17.319 Chang Ho: I’m with you. I’m with you 100%. So I think
365 00:40:17.440 ⇒ 00:40:20.959 Chang Ho: if if it would be if you think it would be helpful to
366 00:40:21.210 ⇒ 00:40:24.559 Chang Ho: maybe give them a little like like a polite nudge
367 00:40:24.660 ⇒ 00:40:27.290 Chang Ho: about this before we head into the next meeting.
368 00:40:27.290 ⇒ 00:40:27.670 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
369 00:40:27.670 ⇒ 00:40:40.529 Chang Ho: Okay, we’ll dedicate another hour with you guys, but we should probably get something by the end of that meeting concretely. Yay, or nay, in terms of a project we think is either viable or not. So they just think about maybe the top 3
370 00:40:40.970 ⇒ 00:40:50.180 Chang Ho: projects that they think could be done within 3, 6 months that they that that’s what the expectations are, or whatever timeframe you think utam. It could be 12 months, but obviously.
371 00:40:50.488 ⇒ 00:40:51.679 Chang Ho: in terms of like
372 00:40:51.710 ⇒ 00:40:54.189 Chang Ho: number of hours. You’ve invested you rightly. Say.
373 00:40:54.330 ⇒ 00:41:00.720 Chang Ho: if it’s like 20 to 30 h, you think you could probably invest in it over 12 months. Was that something that would fits from the timeframe, or whatever.
374 00:41:01.060 ⇒ 00:41:04.439 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I’ll I’ll so I’ll send them. I’ll send them something in the next
375 00:41:04.640 ⇒ 00:41:17.270 Uttam Kumaran: like 2 days, just an email where we’re all on. And basically say, like, this is our goals for the next meeting ideally, can you please come prepared with Xyz? I’m I’m pretty sure
376 00:41:17.390 ⇒ 00:41:21.510 Uttam Kumaran: we’ll we’ll get. We’ll I’m pretty sure we’ll get the answers to that. And then
377 00:41:21.889 ⇒ 00:41:25.959 Uttam Kumaran: last meeting, I just wanted to get everybody introduced, so I know we’re kind of wide ranging.
378 00:41:25.960 ⇒ 00:41:26.980 Chang Ho: Yeah, yeah, definitely.
379 00:41:26.980 ⇒ 00:41:30.419 Uttam Kumaran: Keep on like I’ll I’ll push to make sure we’re just. We can.
380 00:41:30.420 ⇒ 00:41:38.410 Chang Ho: Yeah, this has to be hyper focused, as you say, and then, with the budget in mind, will it be fee? Would it be viable for them. Will it be worth the pennies to give them?
381 00:41:38.650 ⇒ 00:41:42.250 Chang Ho: How much more we’d be charging per hour, and the average
382 00:41:43.378 ⇒ 00:41:47.555 Chang Ho: domestic consultants? So yeah, that’d be. That’d be that
383 00:41:49.050 ⇒ 00:41:50.310 Chang Ho: I think on.
384 00:41:51.160 ⇒ 00:41:52.165 Uttam Kumaran: Let’s talk about
385 00:41:52.500 ⇒ 00:42:01.730 Chang Ho: A separate but not altogether unrelated note on the website. I guess that’s where W. Would it be? Good? Would it be useful for me just provide with a bullet point list of things that we could offer. I guess.
386 00:42:02.030 ⇒ 00:42:02.590 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like.
387 00:42:03.020 ⇒ 00:42:07.005 Uttam Kumaran: I guess let’s talk about. Let’s talk about it as as a whole. So one is
388 00:42:07.760 ⇒ 00:42:17.680 Uttam Kumaran: I think, like with your support. I think there is an opportunity for us to go get clients and offer a range of services. To folks.
389 00:42:18.158 ⇒ 00:42:29.999 Uttam Kumaran: In your geographic market, my geographic market, but primarily just being very clear in the in the medical field, where you have a ton of experience and connection.
390 00:42:30.338 ⇒ 00:42:46.680 Uttam Kumaran: I think, where there’s a great opportunity is that you have a lot of experience connections in this industry, and Brainforge itself is like a real entity with waste in the Us. With talent, also with connections. But again, that can be wielded to kind of push where we need to go.
391 00:42:47.051 ⇒ 00:42:59.680 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s where I think there’s really great opportunity. Second in in in speaking with Hbhf. And also I mentioned last time that I have a family friend that’s in India, working for the like. Second largest
392 00:43:00.012 ⇒ 00:43:19.760 Uttam Kumaran: like vaccine manufacturer. There, there’s opportunity like in. And so if I keep asking some more questions, I’m sure I’m gonna get some more leads. I know we talked briefly about talking to people here in ut, and things like that frankly, just have not gone after anything. But I wanna, I just wanna make sure if we go after it, we’re gonna get inbound, believe me. But.
393 00:43:19.760 ⇒ 00:43:20.330 Chang Ho: Go.
394 00:43:20.330 ⇒ 00:43:30.430 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I wanna make sure both of us know what we’re going after, what is what is like in a qualification process look like for work, and then quickly, like.
395 00:43:30.630 ⇒ 00:43:34.950 Uttam Kumaran: let’s get meetings set up and start talking to people. So one certainly is like
396 00:43:35.100 ⇒ 00:43:38.710 Uttam Kumaran: thinking about like what services we could offer.
397 00:43:39.182 ⇒ 00:43:44.159 Uttam Kumaran: Almost. It would be great to have like a stack ranking of like confidence, of like delivery.
398 00:43:44.739 ⇒ 00:43:54.250 Uttam Kumaran: That would be great! That would not. That would give me some ability to go like, do some research and read up about things. But also just begin to think about what
399 00:43:54.270 ⇒ 00:43:58.079 Uttam Kumaran: Brainforge could offer. Of course, my world is all data
400 00:43:58.150 ⇒ 00:44:00.300 Uttam Kumaran: front end back end software. So
401 00:44:00.540 ⇒ 00:44:03.446 Uttam Kumaran: it’s I’m sure it’s like flavors of that. But
402 00:44:03.950 ⇒ 00:44:06.643 Uttam Kumaran: that’s where that would be really helpful. So.
403 00:44:06.980 ⇒ 00:44:09.199 Chang Ho: So that actually caught out every time just before you.
404 00:44:09.200 ⇒ 00:44:09.820 Uttam Kumaran: So far, right.
405 00:44:10.093 ⇒ 00:44:10.639 Chang Ho: What sorry.
406 00:44:11.122 ⇒ 00:44:15.500 Uttam Kumaran: So I would say, priority, based on like confidence of like our execution.
407 00:44:15.740 ⇒ 00:44:16.479 Chang Ho: I’m trying to see.
408 00:44:16.863 ⇒ 00:44:22.609 Uttam Kumaran: So like stack brings based on like confidence that it’s something we can do.
409 00:44:24.600 ⇒ 00:44:25.080 Uttam Kumaran: How.
410 00:44:25.080 ⇒ 00:44:36.819 Chang Ho: Broad, the the to the themes have to be so obviously sort of, or even how knowledge that do you prefer? Would you prefer the website to be in terms of the so, for I’ll give you some examples. So I guess would be sort of things like
411 00:44:41.840 ⇒ 00:44:42.590 Chang Ho: like
412 00:44:44.580 ⇒ 00:44:45.350 Chang Ho: like
413 00:44:47.540 ⇒ 00:44:49.320 Chang Ho: are doing like live
414 00:44:53.570 ⇒ 00:45:01.080 Chang Ho: like a live live, you know something something so fast on was something like live, patient bed, occupancy, dashboards, or like, or just even a
415 00:45:01.140 ⇒ 00:45:07.309 Chang Ho: a healthcare dashboard creation. Obviously, that complete depends on what data is that we’re we’re displaying.
416 00:45:07.420 ⇒ 00:45:09.599 Chang Ho: So, but with the less perfect.
417 00:45:09.900 ⇒ 00:45:11.369 Uttam Kumaran: It’s it’s more of like.
418 00:45:11.450 ⇒ 00:45:15.219 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, it’s I think it’s it’s more of like that. So so here’s the
419 00:45:15.420 ⇒ 00:45:19.410 Uttam Kumaran: and I. And I’ll send you some stuff after this, too, to kind of give you a sense of like.
420 00:45:19.490 ⇒ 00:45:23.070 Uttam Kumaran: We have a whole playbook about how we’re writing about content
421 00:45:23.170 ⇒ 00:45:28.859 Uttam Kumaran: from Brain Forge, who are kind of going after. And so I’ll send you some of those cause that’ll help you frame like
422 00:45:28.970 ⇒ 00:45:40.229 Uttam Kumaran: what the things actually catch people’s minds. What I realize is that typically in the sales process, we’re going to be interacting with executives who may or may not have a great technical understanding.
423 00:45:40.330 ⇒ 00:45:54.269 Uttam Kumaran: And so for that reason we need to talk about outcomes and things that they can wrap their minds around. And we come across as people that are just getting can get things done for you, either as your second set of eyes, either as just that like. There’s a project that like.
424 00:45:54.280 ⇒ 00:46:00.829 Uttam Kumaran: you know, I can’t get prioritized, or we don’t have bandwidth for, or it’s like we’ve tried something, and it’s failed. Multiple times. We want you to do it.
425 00:46:01.550 ⇒ 00:46:25.670 Uttam Kumaran: That’s kind of angles that I see. The second thing is, having concrete examples like a dashboard like you should see this amount of pipeline efficiency of moving data. Those types of examples are really great and and and has things that the CEO, whoever we talk to can say like that’s an outcome, whether how it gets done is where we’ll need to work and think about. Technically.
426 00:46:25.670 ⇒ 00:46:32.680 Uttam Kumaran: you know. What are. But that’s the things that are really helpful is like, what are some of the outcome projects?
427 00:46:33.060 ⇒ 00:46:39.329 Uttam Kumaran: That’s really helpful. So just a list of those services and like outcomes from those services is is really.
428 00:46:39.330 ⇒ 00:46:40.550 Chang Ho: Yeah, that we can provide.
429 00:46:41.247 ⇒ 00:46:45.510 Uttam Kumaran: The other thing is like it’s like typical, like customer profiles right
430 00:46:46.090 ⇒ 00:46:50.177 Uttam Kumaran: again, like from my angle. You know, we’ve discussed hospitals and things like that. But
431 00:46:50.857 ⇒ 00:46:56.020 Uttam Kumaran: would be great to think about, not only like what types of companies
432 00:46:56.210 ⇒ 00:46:58.290 Uttam Kumaran: so hospitals.
433 00:46:59.691 ⇒ 00:47:03.339 Uttam Kumaran: etc, but also who are the
434 00:47:03.510 ⇒ 00:47:05.569 Uttam Kumaran: who are the decision makers.
435 00:47:06.020 ⇒ 00:47:09.580 Uttam Kumaran: And then who are the project stakeholders?
436 00:47:10.380 ⇒ 00:47:11.160 Uttam Kumaran: Hmm.
437 00:47:12.390 ⇒ 00:47:15.650 Uttam Kumaran: or like our liaisons, like, you know.
438 00:47:16.660 ⇒ 00:47:18.950 Uttam Kumaran: because typically that those are different people.
439 00:47:20.020 ⇒ 00:47:21.389 Chang Ho: Yes, yeah. For sure.
440 00:47:22.310 ⇒ 00:47:28.902 Uttam Kumaran: The the other thing that’s also great is like, if you have any inkling of like, what a typical like sales process looks like more from
441 00:47:29.630 ⇒ 00:47:35.090 Uttam Kumaran: like it. Security. I don’t know if you if you have, you have any inkling of like who may be involved.
442 00:47:35.502 ⇒ 00:47:43.964 Uttam Kumaran: That’s something that would just be helpful, because I can go ask some folks who have sold into this industry and kind of get a sense of like what’s possible. So
443 00:47:46.220 ⇒ 00:47:47.140 Uttam Kumaran: So, yeah, there was.
444 00:47:47.140 ⇒ 00:47:48.080 Chang Ho: Definitely doable.
445 00:47:48.450 ⇒ 00:47:56.340 Uttam Kumaran: Those are the those are the biggest things. And then, ideally, the other thing is thinking about like potential like leads.
446 00:47:56.410 ⇒ 00:47:58.030 Uttam Kumaran: like, we’ve talked about
447 00:47:58.200 ⇒ 00:48:00.210 Uttam Kumaran: these guys. HPHF.
448 00:48:00.872 ⇒ 00:48:02.588 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve talked about
449 00:48:03.190 ⇒ 00:48:06.730 Uttam Kumaran: the vaccine company in India.
450 00:48:09.440 ⇒ 00:48:31.739 Uttam Kumaran: It would be great just to have a just think of like, Hey, these are. These are long shots, or these are people have connections for. And we can begin to explore like what a pitch could look like how to get in touch, and that that way I can do with you, and kind of like kind of look like, how do we dissect, and what opportunity for this client would be. And then what is background research and putting that together like that’s that would be helpful. And then.
451 00:48:31.740 ⇒ 00:48:32.389 Chang Ho: But Eck.
452 00:48:32.560 ⇒ 00:48:33.150 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
453 00:48:33.510 ⇒ 00:48:49.242 Uttam Kumaran: in terms of and the last thing in terms of like materials and case studies. So I am beginning to put together several case studies for existing clients we’ve worked on, and I’ll even show you like. I’ll give you a sense of like what?
454 00:48:49.950 ⇒ 00:48:52.981 Uttam Kumaran: what like the format of that document is
455 00:48:54.250 ⇒ 00:48:59.959 Uttam Kumaran: And really, the goals of these sort of case study documents are partly to kind of explain
456 00:49:01.290 ⇒ 00:49:16.980 Uttam Kumaran: what we’ve done, but additionally, mostly just to get people to book a meeting with us frankly. And that’s kind of what I’ve told, like the kind of the folks that worked on the design side. As well as like the folks that I worked on the website, which is like a lot of these materials
457 00:49:17.260 ⇒ 00:49:19.530 Uttam Kumaran: primarily just focused on
458 00:49:19.560 ⇒ 00:49:21.379 Uttam Kumaran: getting people to book
459 00:49:21.610 ⇒ 00:49:22.610 Uttam Kumaran: time with us.
460 00:49:23.611 ⇒ 00:49:28.350 Uttam Kumaran: And just show kind of like what the website looks like.
461 00:49:29.390 ⇒ 00:49:30.860 Uttam Kumaran: Pray, that
462 00:49:45.410 ⇒ 00:49:53.059 Uttam Kumaran: great. So like this is like kind of the basic layout of like 2 types of case studies that we’ll probably work on. It’s just as filler.
463 00:49:53.425 ⇒ 00:49:53.790 Chang Ho: Yes!
464 00:49:54.130 ⇒ 00:49:55.000 Chang Ho: Yes!
465 00:49:55.000 ⇒ 00:49:58.300 Uttam Kumaran: So we’ll basically have some sort of header image that we can get designed.
466 00:49:59.072 ⇒ 00:50:02.709 Uttam Kumaran: And this is this is for a service. And this is for a case study.
467 00:50:02.950 ⇒ 00:50:08.830 Uttam Kumaran: So a simple example here would be, I I would say, data cost mitigation or like cost.
468 00:50:09.000 ⇒ 00:50:14.339 Uttam Kumaran: like infrastructure cost analysis. We’ll talk a little bit about ways we do things.
469 00:50:14.770 ⇒ 00:50:18.979 Uttam Kumaran: some association with some case studies that we’ve done, that people can click into.
470 00:50:19.270 ⇒ 00:50:20.060 Chang Ho: Basically.
471 00:50:20.060 ⇒ 00:50:21.000 Uttam Kumaran: Crap time
472 00:50:21.410 ⇒ 00:50:26.866 Uttam Kumaran: on the case study side. This is where we would identify specific company or specific initiative. We did
473 00:50:27.260 ⇒ 00:50:29.540 Uttam Kumaran: have, like a quote or testimonial.
474 00:50:29.670 ⇒ 00:50:31.330 Uttam Kumaran: introduce the company.
475 00:50:31.580 ⇒ 00:50:33.620 Uttam Kumaran: and then basically say, grab some time.
476 00:50:33.940 ⇒ 00:50:42.352 Uttam Kumaran: The point of the point of this is basically to show that, like, we have a range of services. A lot of the services are gonna be like, these are all gonna link to those services, basically.
477 00:50:42.720 ⇒ 00:50:50.760 Uttam Kumaran: And then the case studies are meant to show like we. I have people that are working. I have friends that work in manufacturing. I want them.
478 00:50:50.760 ⇒ 00:50:51.410 Chang Ho: Yeah, this.
479 00:50:51.410 ⇒ 00:50:58.520 Uttam Kumaran: Like. Oh, I wonder how you can. You can help us in our manufacturing. We should have something about hey? How we have helped
480 00:50:58.630 ⇒ 00:51:01.860 Uttam Kumaran: X Manufacturing Company optimize Y,
481 00:51:01.950 ⇒ 00:51:07.050 Uttam Kumaran: and then there could be also a service specific page about like how brain Forge works with manufacturing companies.
482 00:51:07.050 ⇒ 00:51:07.689 Chang Ho: Yeah, cause.
483 00:51:07.690 ⇒ 00:51:23.160 Uttam Kumaran: You. You know, data is available everywhere. So a lot of people say, like, what niche do you focused on? It kind of depends. We, we data is available everywhere and data modeling. And they did engineering. It is basically the same in a lot of places. People do want to see that their domain you have experience in.
484 00:51:23.410 ⇒ 00:51:38.090 Uttam Kumaran: So I’ll have one for Tom. I’ll have one for Sas. I’ll have one for shipping and logistics, and basically begin to kind of churn some of these out. The nice thing is, it’s not like a ton of text, and ideally gonna try to see how we can leverage some helpful AI features to kind of
485 00:51:38.576 ⇒ 00:51:43.140 Uttam Kumaran: streamline some of this process, but this is generally like the format that we’re.
486 00:51:43.570 ⇒ 00:51:44.280 Chang Ho: We’re gonna have.
487 00:51:44.280 ⇒ 00:51:44.910 Uttam Kumaran: Pushed.
488 00:51:45.660 ⇒ 00:51:46.490 Chang Ho: But it’s good
489 00:51:49.240 ⇒ 00:51:50.870 Chang Ho: that’s good. That makes sense.
490 00:51:51.170 ⇒ 00:52:06.971 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. So I mean, I this, I just wanted to kind of prime your mind with like, kind of the content that we’re thinking of putting it about. I think maybe one of these pages could be nice to think about for this world. Since we don’t, we don’t have a specific
491 00:52:07.360 ⇒ 00:52:14.049 Uttam Kumaran: case, studies like it could just be like how we work with people in the medical field. And it could be. These could be the examples.
492 00:52:14.250 ⇒ 00:52:20.720 Uttam Kumaran: And we could take again some of these work in these questions that I’ll I’ve just been taking notes I’ll send over, and we can take that and put it into.
493 00:52:20.940 ⇒ 00:52:23.529 Chang Ho: Hmm, nice. Okay.
494 00:52:23.530 ⇒ 00:52:31.336 Uttam Kumaran: And then you cause to give you a sense of what happens is when we go to target folks, or when we have conversation with folks. We will send this out, saying.
495 00:52:31.710 ⇒ 00:52:34.760 Uttam Kumaran: Here’s our site. And here’s like a specific page where we talk about
496 00:52:34.860 ⇒ 00:52:37.280 Uttam Kumaran: kind of some of the work we do in the medical field.
497 00:52:37.790 ⇒ 00:52:41.199 Uttam Kumaran: Again. The thing I realize is, people aren’t really like
498 00:52:41.240 ⇒ 00:52:56.180 Uttam Kumaran: reading this and being like, Oh, you guys don’t do this doing that they just want to see that you have some legitimacy in the space, and our goal is to get on a call with them. Our goal is just to get the meeting booked, cause I’m confident that if we get the meeting booked, then we can at least get to it, yes or no.
499 00:52:56.400 ⇒ 00:52:59.861 Uttam Kumaran: right without that we never qualify or disqualify. So that’s the
500 00:53:00.180 ⇒ 00:53:02.330 Uttam Kumaran: while we’re still in this process of like
501 00:53:02.350 ⇒ 00:53:06.130 Uttam Kumaran: generating leads. That’s the initial milestone.
502 00:53:06.670 ⇒ 00:53:07.530 Chang Ho: Funds to us
503 00:53:09.710 ⇒ 00:53:11.940 Chang Ho: that is good, that is really good.
504 00:53:12.170 ⇒ 00:53:15.588 Uttam Kumaran: And I will. I will go ahead and share
505 00:53:16.420 ⇒ 00:53:18.240 Uttam Kumaran: this thing with you.
506 00:53:18.560 ⇒ 00:53:20.010 Uttam Kumaran: I can click into.
507 00:53:20.060 ⇒ 00:53:25.600 Chang Ho: As an aside, how far have you gotten with the calendar email? Solution? That? Yeah.
508 00:53:26.130 ⇒ 00:53:31.809 Uttam Kumaran: We got pretty far. But I’ve a honestly, what’s happening is like I’m running out of time to work on it.
509 00:53:32.020 ⇒ 00:53:33.009 Chang Ho: Oh, no, honey.
510 00:53:33.010 ⇒ 00:53:34.618 Uttam Kumaran: I got I got to.
511 00:53:35.040 ⇒ 00:53:52.026 Uttam Kumaran: we actually have it working where it’s able to book meetings and things like that. But some of the other folks on the team have like a lot more time. And so we’re kind of kind of debating whether, like I’m gonna still help them or not because it’s just becoming doing this and doing that is becoming quite, quite dramatic.
512 00:53:53.502 ⇒ 00:54:09.269 Uttam Kumaran: So the agent is working. And like technology, wise has been really fun like, the agent is working where it’s able to take in an input, it’s able to say, for example, like, Hey, go booked this meeting with this person at this time. It’s able to Co. Call Google Calendar, Apis
513 00:54:09.300 ⇒ 00:54:22.277 Uttam Kumaran: and book those meetings. So it’s been fun just to get that thing up and running. We’ll see. I don’t like. We’ll see if I’m involved. Long term like it’s it’s just becoming a lot, and to do consistently like 3 or 4 h that every day
514 00:54:23.131 ⇒ 00:54:25.240 Chang Ho: That’s a lot to ask for. Yeah.
515 00:54:25.864 ⇒ 00:54:33.670 Uttam Kumaran: But yeah. And then the other thing I’m actually thinking about is some of the interns that I’m that we’re thinking about bringing on.
516 00:54:34.361 ⇒ 00:54:46.109 Uttam Kumaran: I’m also thinking about helping automate some of these internal processes, one of which is like, even could be even this like case study page generation. Another one could be like automating some of our internal tasks, like
517 00:54:46.170 ⇒ 00:54:58.142 Uttam Kumaran: one of the things I’m asking to people to do is the Zoom Meetings we have recorded. I wanted to automatically feed out the notes and the action items. And so one thing I even did today is I
518 00:55:00.000 ⇒ 00:55:01.320 Uttam Kumaran: I
519 00:55:02.500 ⇒ 00:55:04.539 Uttam Kumaran: I row a little like.
520 00:55:04.660 ⇒ 00:55:12.129 Uttam Kumaran: create a little Gpt that just takes in the Zoom transcript that I clean up a little bit. And then it basically just like outputs a meeting summary
521 00:55:12.455 ⇒ 00:55:17.760 Uttam Kumaran: I put in our meeting with them, which was like, here’s the topics. Here’s the time zone. Here’s the Timestamps.
522 00:55:18.360 ⇒ 00:55:24.770 Uttam Kumaran: We discuss these things. Here’s the action items. We wanted a technical overview document sharing.
523 00:55:25.030 ⇒ 00:55:29.099 Uttam Kumaran: They were gonna set up some environment. And then we were gonna kind of work on a scope document.
524 00:55:29.190 ⇒ 00:55:32.399 Uttam Kumaran: And here’s like, and I also had to give us give feedback
525 00:55:32.640 ⇒ 00:55:34.010 Uttam Kumaran: on to us.
526 00:55:34.633 ⇒ 00:55:39.190 Uttam Kumaran: Which is like, how did we? How did the brain forge team handle that meeting.
527 00:55:39.200 ⇒ 00:55:47.849 Uttam Kumaran: So it was like, here’s the things that we did. Well, so like, this is something that I want like automated for every meeting. I want this to get posted in slack, basically, or to the right people.
528 00:55:48.481 ⇒ 00:55:51.588 Uttam Kumaran: So I’m gonna have some of the interns work on stuff like this. Basically.
529 00:55:54.814 ⇒ 00:55:56.600 Chang Ho: That’s so. Fun.
530 00:55:57.800 ⇒ 00:55:58.370 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like.
531 00:55:58.370 ⇒ 00:55:59.399 Chang Ho: It’s really fun.
532 00:55:59.400 ⇒ 00:56:02.040 Uttam Kumaran: You could see. It’s like a long transcript, right like.
533 00:56:02.040 ⇒ 00:56:03.170 Chang Ho: Oh, my goodness! There was a lot.
534 00:56:03.170 ⇒ 00:56:12.599 Uttam Kumaran: I’m not gonna go. I’m not gonna go through that. And here’s like one we had with another client where this is great cause I. I want my project manager and our team, Nico, to be able to
535 00:56:12.860 ⇒ 00:56:20.250 Uttam Kumaran: take this, so he doesn’t have to re-watch these meeting. He can do this, and then, if there’s specific thing he needs feedback on, he can go through. And just look at this.
536 00:56:20.250 ⇒ 00:56:22.899 Chang Ho: Yeah, you can. You can. Exactly.
537 00:56:23.130 ⇒ 00:56:24.650 Chang Ho: Yeah. So typically
538 00:56:24.860 ⇒ 00:56:28.660 Chang Ho: lock it out. I think that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Okay, cool
539 00:56:28.690 ⇒ 00:56:32.299 Chang Ho: as, what are you next meeting? Actually your time? In that case.
540 00:56:32.450 ⇒ 00:56:33.550 Uttam Kumaran: So
541 00:56:34.760 ⇒ 00:56:39.969 Uttam Kumaran: today, let me get a meeting booked. Let me send an email to
542 00:56:39.990 ⇒ 00:56:43.609 Uttam Kumaran: the Hpf Hf team with our action items
543 00:56:43.670 ⇒ 00:56:49.270 Uttam Kumaran: and like some of the notes from last meeting. Some of the things we’re looking forward to speaking about.
544 00:56:49.340 ⇒ 00:56:53.189 Uttam Kumaran: I think on the second thread we can talk a little bit about
545 00:56:53.680 ⇒ 00:56:55.140 Uttam Kumaran: work for
546 00:56:55.930 ⇒ 00:56:58.369 Uttam Kumaran: these sorts of medical on the medical side.
547 00:56:58.690 ⇒ 00:56:59.410 Chang Ho: Yeah.
548 00:56:59.410 ⇒ 00:57:02.546 Uttam Kumaran: I think it’d be great to set up another time.
549 00:57:02.950 ⇒ 00:57:05.980 Uttam Kumaran: I mean you let me know what your availability is like. I’m.
550 00:57:05.980 ⇒ 00:57:09.440 Chang Ho: I was having a look at my calendar. Yeah, I think
551 00:57:10.280 ⇒ 00:57:15.289 Chang Ho: presumably they can’t do weekends. So during the week, generally speaking.
552 00:57:15.420 ⇒ 00:57:18.059 Chang Ho: my sort of one Pm.
553 00:57:18.200 ⇒ 00:57:21.949 Chang Ho: Which would probably amount to. Where are you? You’re in Texas.
554 00:57:22.460 ⇒ 00:57:23.040 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so.
555 00:57:23.040 ⇒ 00:57:23.380 Chang Ho: So.
556 00:57:23.380 ⇒ 00:57:26.040 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, 7, so.
557 00:57:26.500 ⇒ 00:57:32.339 Chang Ho: Or 8 am. Maybe so it could be even be 2 Pm. For me. So it’s 8 Am. For you. Would that be? Would that be too early still.
558 00:57:32.470 ⇒ 00:57:35.609 Uttam Kumaran: No, that’d be fine. I’m anytime in the morning works
559 00:57:35.650 ⇒ 00:57:41.910 Uttam Kumaran: honestly, weekends would work. I’m just gone next weekend traveling again, but that’s kind of it for a little bit.
560 00:57:42.410 ⇒ 00:57:51.120 Chang Ho: I’m traveling this weekend, too, so it could be either. Next week sort of 2 Pm. For me since 8 am. On was for you I would say most days of the week.
561 00:57:51.631 ⇒ 00:57:56.690 Chang Ho: or or and if not, then on the weekends more flexibly.
562 00:57:56.690 ⇒ 00:58:02.189 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, ideally, if we can do next week that way, we just kinda keep momentum on this. I’m gonna.
563 00:58:02.190 ⇒ 00:58:03.279 Chang Ho: Oh, yes. Yeah.
564 00:58:03.280 ⇒ 00:58:05.760 Uttam Kumaran: I’m gonna get us into
565 00:58:05.840 ⇒ 00:58:09.109 Uttam Kumaran: like a rip. At least the hph stuff should
566 00:58:09.300 ⇒ 00:58:10.949 Uttam Kumaran: continue this week.
567 00:58:10.990 ⇒ 00:58:19.149 Uttam Kumaran: so I don’t know if if you, if you have still time this week, I’m just gonna rather make sure. Find out when they have time to meet ideally
568 00:58:19.200 ⇒ 00:58:21.250 Uttam Kumaran: Wednesday or Thursday.
569 00:58:22.080 ⇒ 00:58:27.700 Uttam Kumaran: And then for this medical side of things. I think maybe if we can put some standing time on for
570 00:58:27.770 ⇒ 00:58:29.400 Uttam Kumaran: like Monday next week.
571 00:58:29.660 ⇒ 00:58:32.609 Uttam Kumaran: or if Monday busy Tuesday, I mean? Let me know what you think.
572 00:58:32.610 ⇒ 00:58:34.429 Chang Ho: Tuesday might. Tuesday might be better. Yeah.
573 00:58:34.650 ⇒ 00:58:39.319 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. So let let me go ahead and just grab something for Tuesday at 8 am.
574 00:58:39.470 ⇒ 00:58:40.450 Uttam Kumaran: My time.
575 00:58:41.090 ⇒ 00:58:43.481 Uttam Kumaran: And then let’s plan on. Just
576 00:58:44.470 ⇒ 00:58:47.310 Uttam Kumaran: let’s plan on just discussing, like.
577 00:58:47.740 ⇒ 00:58:54.980 Uttam Kumaran: basically, some of these like services and things like that and like. And if we have enough to begin putting some of those docs out, and then
578 00:58:55.040 ⇒ 00:58:58.968 Uttam Kumaran: I think, ideally and again we can chat on slack. In the meantime.
579 00:58:59.530 ⇒ 00:59:00.200 Chang Ho: Yeah, definitely.
580 00:59:00.200 ⇒ 00:59:04.390 Uttam Kumaran: I think, just have like that date on there and then also, as
581 00:59:04.550 ⇒ 00:59:10.480 Uttam Kumaran: as as I begin to think about the different services, I’ll begin to list potential like
582 00:59:10.939 ⇒ 00:59:21.329 Uttam Kumaran: references and contacts that I have here in this, in the States or abroad in this field, that we can once we have kind of like our material set up. I can give them a call because I don’t. Wanna
583 00:59:21.550 ⇒ 00:59:45.709 Uttam Kumaran: I wanna make sure if we call them. What’s the game. It’s like game time, right? Like we’re driving something, cause there’s some people who I talked to. And then I’m like, Hey, we can do stuff for you, though, think about something, think about something in particular. So I wanna make sure we call them, we’re like, these are things we can offer. Tell me about your problems. You know, we’re like 2 or 3 meetings we can get. We can get somewhere. We don’t get somewhere. So that’s the kind of the feeling that I think we should, we should drive towards
584 00:59:46.348 ⇒ 00:59:48.635 Uttam Kumaran: and then the nice thing is like we have
585 00:59:48.900 ⇒ 00:59:53.507 Uttam Kumaran: like, we have design resources to kind of get get any of these pages up and running, and then
586 00:59:54.566 ⇒ 01:00:02.340 Uttam Kumaran: dearly, like Nico will help up help on the project management for the hph stuff as that kind of moves along. So
587 01:00:02.450 ⇒ 01:00:09.469 Uttam Kumaran: again, hopefully, June, we can get to somewhere like where we start having conversations with with people in this in this kind of kind of sector.
588 01:00:09.470 ⇒ 01:00:10.470 Chang Ho: Yeah, now, yeah, yeah.
589 01:00:10.470 ⇒ 01:00:16.630 Uttam Kumaran: Establish some legitimacy and begin to weigh out like what we’re looking at. So that’s that’s that’d be my goal.
590 01:00:17.520 ⇒ 01:00:18.480 Chang Ho: Superb.
591 01:00:19.170 ⇒ 01:00:19.865 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
592 01:00:20.560 ⇒ 01:00:21.929 Chang Ho: The momentum going. Yeah.
593 01:00:21.930 ⇒ 01:00:36.410 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, that’s the thing that’s tough is, I know we’ve been talking for 2 months, and just now, like, I’m glad we we have the initial call with them that unearthed a bit of things. We’re gonna begin working on that in parallel with kind of like getting up to state on like what we need to be marketing medically. And then
594 01:00:36.540 ⇒ 01:00:37.729 Uttam Kumaran: we can begin
595 01:00:37.770 ⇒ 01:00:39.780 Uttam Kumaran: calling people and going for it. So yeah.
596 01:00:39.780 ⇒ 01:00:41.539 Chang Ho: Yeah, yeah, I agree, I agree.
597 01:00:41.690 ⇒ 01:00:45.280 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool. How’s everything else? How’s everything else like work? Wise.
598 01:00:45.960 ⇒ 01:00:52.539 Chang Ho: Yeah, yeah, yeah, good. I mean definitely definitely to in the evenings and on on certain days in the weekends, I’ll definitely have
599 01:00:52.880 ⇒ 01:00:56.470 Chang Ho: time to spare for this sort of thing. I often sort of.
600 01:00:56.890 ⇒ 01:01:08.300 Chang Ho: We’ll put a sideline an hour or 2, just to be sort of as high proficient as possible in providing some input, whether it be even pithy advice on on an application or a particular
601 01:01:08.330 ⇒ 01:01:19.490 Chang Ho: research methodology, or whether it be a certain model that I need to review on, or whatever. So it’s not unusual for me to have to do that kind of thing. So, going from branching from one project to another.
602 01:01:21.010 ⇒ 01:01:28.759 Chang Ho: am I building anything at the moment that might be of interest to you as an engineer? As it happens, yes, I am building
603 01:01:28.920 ⇒ 01:01:31.352 Chang Ho: this sort of network,
604 01:01:32.140 ⇒ 01:01:33.970 Chang Ho: temporal or spatial
605 01:01:34.410 ⇒ 01:01:39.959 Chang Ho: network. AI based platform for trying to predict antibiotic resistance
606 01:01:40.900 ⇒ 01:01:48.630 Chang Ho: in the hospital based on which nurses and doctors to contact them. Whether the patient’s been in touch or in contact with
607 01:01:48.820 ⇒ 01:01:52.029 Chang Ho: other patients who’ve been confirmed to have that diagnosis, say with
608 01:01:52.563 ⇒ 01:02:00.409 Chang Ho: C diff clostridium difficile, which is a super bug in the hospitals, or covid, or Mrsa, or whatever it might be.
609 01:02:00.793 ⇒ 01:02:10.509 Chang Ho: and trying to validate those models across time because it would enable. Basically, you can imagine where this is going. You’ll basically enable already resource restricted
610 01:02:10.830 ⇒ 01:02:13.539 Chang Ho: infection prevention teams and hospitals
611 01:02:13.630 ⇒ 01:02:17.009 Chang Ho: to direct the resources human and testing.
612 01:02:17.310 ⇒ 01:02:17.880 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
613 01:02:18.170 ⇒ 01:02:22.339 Chang Ho: Wise. So yeah, building that at the moment, with sort of trying to Api
614 01:02:22.430 ⇒ 01:02:29.139 Chang Ho: 5 different platforms, because, of course, even in one hospital, they decided that buying 5 separate.
615 01:02:29.450 ⇒ 01:02:37.770 Chang Ho: you know, proprietary spits of software was a really wise decision that have absolutely 0 interoperability is absolutely incredible. Yeah.
616 01:02:38.691 ⇒ 01:02:45.228 Chang Ho: so yeah, that’s what I’m currently sort of tinkering away with with my free time, which is not. Not
617 01:02:45.620 ⇒ 01:02:47.079 Chang Ho: not too tedious. So.
618 01:02:47.080 ⇒ 01:02:47.850 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
619 01:02:47.850 ⇒ 01:02:49.129 Chang Ho: Yeah, it’s good. It’s good.
620 01:02:49.636 ⇒ 01:03:00.569 Chang Ho: But yeah, I think as you say, we’ve been talking to obviously sufficient over 2 months. But I get the sense that we definitely have alignment in terms of how we want to operate and how we want to do stuff. I think
621 01:03:00.640 ⇒ 01:03:02.060 Chang Ho: what will be. Really.
622 01:03:03.190 ⇒ 01:03:10.769 Chang Ho: it’s what’s gonna be really great for us actually to sort of. Finally, let the dust settle in some ways is to have this initial project hopefully this one.
623 01:03:11.247 ⇒ 01:03:25.400 Chang Ho: how we work, how each of us actually works, whether it actually aligns with what we think, how each of us works, even in terms of self reflection, and also how we bounce off each other. And then we think we can execute something
624 01:03:25.706 ⇒ 01:03:28.280 Chang Ho: you know, hand in hand, which would be super.
625 01:03:28.490 ⇒ 01:03:34.959 Chang Ho: I think, even if it’s even if it’s a particularly modest project, don’t care as long as it’s like a proof of proof of concept that we can.
626 01:03:34.960 ⇒ 01:03:35.769 Uttam Kumaran: Totally, agree.
627 01:03:35.770 ⇒ 01:03:42.399 Chang Ho: Do this sort of thing and consult for someone, even with a complex problem. Even the fact that we’ve gotten this point
628 01:03:42.420 ⇒ 01:03:43.949 Chang Ho: after 1 1
629 01:03:44.000 ⇒ 01:03:46.160 Chang Ho: group chat which was super messy
630 01:03:46.948 ⇒ 01:03:59.080 Chang Ho: to like aligning, and what we need and what our interests on what? What’s concretely necessary for for an end like engineerable project, I think, is, yeah, you’re you’re talking my language, my friend. So yeah, that’s
631 01:03:59.400 ⇒ 01:04:13.355 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, I and I really appreciate your flexibility. You know some of these things are. I do really value your time. And and you know, it’s it’s I. Wanna make sure that we get to a deal happening and get some money in the door and us executing.
632 01:04:13.640 ⇒ 01:04:36.150 Uttam Kumaran: I think it’s nice now that, compared to even 6 months before, that, I have this entity with the site, and like some credibility through other projects that we can go get meetings, and I hope that’s something that, like, you know, Brain Forge can bring to the table. And then we’re able to leverage that. And just with a little bit hopefully of time from you. Get the basics down right to bare minimum for us to be able to go, have conversations with people.
633 01:04:36.150 ⇒ 01:04:36.700 Chang Ho: Hmm.
634 01:04:36.976 ⇒ 01:04:54.670 Uttam Kumaran: And you know a lot of it is in hope that so again, some of these projects are lucrative, and it’s worth the upfront investment, but just like anything, it takes a little bit of time initially. But like, yeah, the one thing to know about me is like, I’m I’m like a generally very skeptical person overall. And I’m I’m typically like.
635 01:04:54.760 ⇒ 01:05:05.349 Uttam Kumaran: I never think things are gonna go well or like ever happen. So I’m always like trying to find and disqualify or qualify all these opportunities as fast as possible, because
636 01:05:05.400 ⇒ 01:05:19.319 Uttam Kumaran: there’s a lot going on. And I wanna make sure that this is the best use of of our time. So hopefully, it’s just like one more kind of planning session on the medical begin having live conversations with
637 01:05:19.370 ⇒ 01:05:27.680 Uttam Kumaran: with people. And then ideally same thing on the Hvf thread. Hopefully, we’re just a few hours away from like.
638 01:05:27.680 ⇒ 01:05:28.360 Chang Ho: Yes.
639 01:05:28.500 ⇒ 01:05:39.579 Uttam Kumaran: Concrete. So that’s shouldn’t be more not expecting more time than that to just like drive towards. And and I’m glad like that’s that’s what it needs. You know it doesn’t need much more than that. So.
640 01:05:40.830 ⇒ 01:05:44.383 Chang Ho: Absolutely absolutely enjoy your time. Have a great rest of your day, mate.
641 01:05:44.930 ⇒ 01:05:46.150 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. You, too, have a good.
642 01:05:46.150 ⇒ 01:05:48.949 Chang Ho: Up next year. Next week we’ll see what your cousin says.
643 01:05:48.950 ⇒ 01:05:49.320 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
644 01:05:49.320 ⇒ 01:05:49.980 Chang Ho: But yeah.
645 01:05:50.100 ⇒ 01:05:51.830 Chang Ho: nice one man catch soon.
646 01:05:51.960 ⇒ 01:05:53.189 Chang Ho: Yeah, you, too. Bye.