Meeting Title: Friday-Brainforge-Demos-&-Retro Date: 2024-08-16 Meeting participants: Nicolas Sucari, Uttam Kumaran, Atharv Gudi, Patrick Trainer, Ryan Luke Daque
WEBVTT
1 00:00:42.080 ⇒ 00:00:44.039 Nicolas Sucari: I don’t know what’s going on with this
2 00:00:44.150 ⇒ 00:00:45.260 Nicolas Sucari: meeting links.
3 00:00:45.260 ⇒ 00:00:47.979 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I don’t know why it got like invalidated. But
4 00:00:48.130 ⇒ 00:00:49.130 Uttam Kumaran: yeah.
5 00:01:31.910 ⇒ 00:01:32.520 Patrick Trainer: You’ll.
6 00:01:33.840 ⇒ 00:01:34.460 Ryan Luke Daque: I love.
7 00:01:34.460 ⇒ 00:01:36.499 Uttam Kumaran: Just grabbing a just grabbing a coffee.
8 00:01:40.150 ⇒ 00:01:40.740 Nicolas Sucari: Guys.
9 00:01:41.450 ⇒ 00:01:42.040 Uttam Kumaran: Shortcut.
10 00:01:42.040 ⇒ 00:01:43.229 Ryan Luke Daque: To you guys.
11 00:01:56.390 ⇒ 00:01:59.150 Uttam Kumaran: Think it may just be us today.
12 00:02:13.180 ⇒ 00:02:14.060 Ryan Luke Daque: Hello! Hello!
13 00:02:14.770 ⇒ 00:02:15.170 Patrick Trainer: Hey! Hey!
14 00:02:15.170 ⇒ 00:02:15.830 Uttam Kumaran: Hey? Can you hear me?
15 00:02:15.830 ⇒ 00:02:17.700 Ryan Luke Daque: Yeah, they, yeah, there you go.
16 00:02:18.130 ⇒ 00:02:18.970 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool.
17 00:02:19.340 ⇒ 00:02:22.279 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. I guess. Just wanted to kind of recap
18 00:02:22.710 ⇒ 00:02:24.036 Uttam Kumaran: the week.
19 00:02:25.400 ⇒ 00:02:28.770 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll just give you everybody a little bit of a status on
20 00:02:28.890 ⇒ 00:02:46.890 Uttam Kumaran: like the business side. So we’re in talks with a couple of new clients. But some are a little bit out of data. Some are in data. So things are kind of moving forward slowly. There. The nice thing is we’re starting to do a lot more on the sales automation side.
21 00:02:47.382 ⇒ 00:02:50.678 Uttam Kumaran: You know something that I think next week,
22 00:02:51.410 ⇒ 00:02:55.510 Uttam Kumaran: Ryan, me, you and Pat will kind of spend a little bit more time on
23 00:02:56.910 ⇒ 00:03:00.499 Uttam Kumaran: you know basically one thing that we just chatted about was, how do we
24 00:03:00.580 ⇒ 00:03:23.999 Uttam Kumaran: set up a couple of automations between Apollo and instantly, and sort of like start to really like ramp up. How we do outreach you know. So that’s gonna be the next kind of big pillar for the business. I think we were. You know, we’ve been pretty good at getting clients just through like word of mouth so far.
25 00:03:24.260 ⇒ 00:03:28.889 Uttam Kumaran: But now I think we need to kind of turn a page and kind of make things a little bit more
26 00:03:30.640 ⇒ 00:03:49.270 Uttam Kumaran: like deliberate, basically, like, we need to know that there is like inbound coming through stuff we’ve done on the sales side. And so that’s what I think between now. And you know us getting more clients. You know, it’s just gonna require some of the time, you know. I think between
27 00:03:49.270 ⇒ 00:04:06.519 Uttam Kumaran: folks that are, you know, a little bit light on again stuff, I think, for the most part pool parts is becoming much more of like analysis focused. Now that we’ve really finished up a lot of the modeling and a good amount of the de stuff. But I do think that there’s a lot of room to
28 00:04:06.740 ⇒ 00:04:13.630 Uttam Kumaran: do things like you know, like a security policy document. That kind of works within both.
29 00:04:14.444 ⇒ 00:04:30.389 Uttam Kumaran: You know it works in favor with both marketing and like for them. And there’s also a bunch of really low hanging fruit on the sales side that I think we’re all like engineers. So I basically kind of know, exactly like what we need to do to make that happen. So I think the next
30 00:04:30.470 ⇒ 00:04:42.397 Uttam Kumaran: 2 weeks we’re just gonna really just meet, you know, every day and kind of like, try to hammer stuff out on that side. And basically engineer engineer revenue to come to the door that way.
31 00:04:43.407 ⇒ 00:04:58.850 Uttam Kumaran: But otherwise, like we’ve also been making a lot of strides on the AI side. We’re evaluating 2 sort of automation people that are like working with me and working with some of the tools that I’ve been exploring to
32 00:04:58.960 ⇒ 00:05:02.550 Uttam Kumaran: like automate parts of the business. And these are parts that are like
33 00:05:02.650 ⇒ 00:05:10.410 Uttam Kumaran: automating meeting notes from zoom automating github issues, automating like some of the stuff me and Nico do for like project planning
34 00:05:10.774 ⇒ 00:05:24.509 Uttam Kumaran: and so we’re finally, you know, in a position to kind of like invest in a lot of that and that’s just gonna save us a ton of time and continue like as we ramp up stuff on the sales side and it’s just gonna keep us out of like
35 00:05:24.720 ⇒ 00:05:27.879 Uttam Kumaran: a ton of like, you know, information management stuff.
36 00:05:28.413 ⇒ 00:05:34.376 Uttam Kumaran: and then otherwise, like, notion has been really great. I think we’re doing a lot of great organization there.
37 00:05:34.930 ⇒ 00:05:47.299 Uttam Kumaran: so I think there’s still probably a lot of room on the engineering documentation side. But again, most of the stuff, I think, in the foreseeable future. I want to suspend on sales.
38 00:05:47.792 ⇒ 00:05:54.979 Uttam Kumaran: And so yeah, I guess if anyone else has any questions, or has any thoughts or ideas?
39 00:05:55.444 ⇒ 00:05:59.190 Uttam Kumaran: Let me know. I know pat me, and you talked a bunch about it yesterday, so.
40 00:06:06.430 ⇒ 00:06:08.200 Ryan Luke Daque: Yeah, sounds, sounds, good.
41 00:06:11.660 ⇒ 00:06:13.080 Ryan Luke Daque: Nice updates.
42 00:06:13.910 ⇒ 00:06:22.929 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think. You know, once we once we kind of move on to automating a lot of the stuff on the sales side. We’ll begin to also do a lot of
43 00:06:23.030 ⇒ 00:06:24.718 Uttam Kumaran: same work on the
44 00:06:25.390 ⇒ 00:06:35.479 Uttam Kumaran: on the engineering side, like, you know, using chat Gbt for stuff on Github actions and like updating github issues and things like that. So.
45 00:06:37.200 ⇒ 00:06:44.670 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, I feel like there’s no other real like industry, news or anything this week. So maybe just a quick update. But if anyone has any questions or thoughts.
46 00:06:45.285 ⇒ 00:06:54.669 Uttam Kumaran: let me know we have one more intern, that’s going to be joining she actually came as a connection of Brian. She’s
47 00:06:55.610 ⇒ 00:06:59.410 Uttam Kumaran: She’s like a math student at Usc.
48 00:07:00.160 ⇒ 00:07:04.979 Uttam Kumaran: So she’ll be joining us and also helping on the sales side. So
49 00:07:05.676 ⇒ 00:07:27.500 Uttam Kumaran: the fun thing is, I’m basically I I was talking to Pat about this yesterday is like, I’m not really in the mood of firing like sales or like Bdr people. I really do think that we can automate this and do this ourselves and that. That’s what I’ve been spending the last like month and a half, just like talking to all of my marketing friends, and learn kind of like what they do day to day.
50 00:07:27.810 ⇒ 00:07:38.510 Uttam Kumaran: And so again, like what that helps us is like, you know, I think a lot back to the analogy of like the Whatsapp team, for example, the Whatsapp team. I think they were less than 30 when they got bought
51 00:07:38.640 ⇒ 00:07:41.059 Uttam Kumaran: by Facebook for like a billion dollars.
52 00:07:41.820 ⇒ 00:07:42.390 Ryan Luke Daque: Yes.
53 00:07:43.300 ⇒ 00:07:45.680 Uttam Kumaran: And I really think
54 00:07:45.790 ⇒ 00:07:49.420 Uttam Kumaran: that we people underestimate like, how much you can do
55 00:07:49.430 ⇒ 00:07:54.687 Uttam Kumaran: with like the tools that are available now. And you don’t need to continue to add head count
56 00:07:54.990 ⇒ 00:08:03.839 Uttam Kumaran: And the fact of the matter is like, I don’t. I really just want to work with the folks like on this call and that are associated with the company so far and just scale it up from here.
57 00:08:03.900 ⇒ 00:08:10.529 Uttam Kumaran: and then, of course, like be able to pay people more and like start to invest like better tech and go after bigger clients. So
58 00:08:10.590 ⇒ 00:08:17.270 Uttam Kumaran: that’s like, always been the Mo. And like, that’s what we’re gonna stick with, I think, as you guys know, like where we’ve been hovering in this like
59 00:08:17.710 ⇒ 00:08:24.960 Uttam Kumaran: 2 to 3 like client zone. But of course I made a ton of strides for the business, like if we were just like a
60 00:08:25.140 ⇒ 00:08:44.420 Uttam Kumaran: you know. To give you guys an example, there’s a lot of like it shops around the world where all they do is they just throw people at projects right? And it’s clear like, we’re not that we’re actually building our own infrastructure, and, like our own, not only infrastructure on the tech side, but infrastructure on the like documentation and the process side
61 00:08:44.693 ⇒ 00:08:49.160 Uttam Kumaran: and like, that’s something that has always been really important to me, like, I never wanted this to be like.
62 00:08:49.300 ⇒ 00:09:14.627 Uttam Kumaran: you know, just like we take people and put them on projects, although, like we, we do need to do that for a bit until we get a little bit bigger. But you know, that’s why I want to continue to invest. And engineering isn’t just on the tech side, right? It’s on engineering, the entire organization. And I really do think that some of these things that I’m describing are like super possible with the team we have here.
63 00:09:15.420 ⇒ 00:09:39.709 Uttam Kumaran: you know. So we’re for me. The the trouble is like, I just I like. See everything all the time at every moment. So you know, as we like are hovering around these like few client, like just a couple of clients, and we’ve really knocked out of the park a lot of the stuff. And really, the biggest thing we need now is on the analysis side, you know, I want to shift our resources towards where the company needs
64 00:09:39.880 ⇒ 00:09:45.990 Uttam Kumaran: stuff the most. And you know, I think it’s we’re totally gonna be able to to make that happen? So?
65 00:09:48.630 ⇒ 00:09:51.580 Uttam Kumaran: yeah. Any thoughts or questions.
66 00:09:53.780 ⇒ 00:09:56.429 Nicolas Sucari: Oh, I think it’s really good.
67 00:09:56.937 ⇒ 00:10:01.229 Nicolas Sucari: Leveraging all of with the AI and Yeah automations.
68 00:10:01.300 ⇒ 00:10:06.849 Nicolas Sucari: I just have an idea we can probably create some more projects on cloud like to
69 00:10:07.582 ⇒ 00:10:15.970 Nicolas Sucari: create like the evidence reports give them giving a little bit of context on how the structure we need. And yeah, just like for specific tasks.
70 00:10:16.120 ⇒ 00:10:19.060 Nicolas Sucari: create some new projects and try to use them.
71 00:10:19.601 ⇒ 00:10:22.970 Nicolas Sucari: But yeah, I mean, it’s it’s great.
72 00:10:23.020 ⇒ 00:10:29.110 Nicolas Sucari: I think we are doing a lot of progress with these automations and leveraging everything with the AI.
73 00:10:32.450 ⇒ 00:10:34.396 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, Ryan. Pat, what do you guys think.
74 00:10:36.940 ⇒ 00:10:38.339 Patrick Trainer: One step at a time.
75 00:10:39.370 ⇒ 00:10:40.040 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
76 00:10:40.900 ⇒ 00:10:45.379 Ryan Luke Daque: Yeah, like, I, I agree with everything like, it’s, it’s pretty cool to be like in this
77 00:10:45.680 ⇒ 00:10:47.870 Ryan Luke Daque: industry. Basically, like.
78 00:10:49.190 ⇒ 00:10:52.790 Ryan Luke Daque: yeah, we’re, we’re like leading the industry as
79 00:10:53.080 ⇒ 00:10:56.330 Ryan Luke Daque: in terms of like AI automation stuff like that. So yeah, that’s cool.
80 00:10:56.330 ⇒ 00:10:57.060 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
81 00:10:59.740 ⇒ 00:11:01.120 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, I think that’s.
82 00:11:01.120 ⇒ 00:11:02.010 Nicolas Sucari: I think.
83 00:11:02.010 ⇒ 00:11:15.289 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think the toughest part in this process is like, you know, I know. I know we came. We all came together to do a lot of data work, and I know it’s tough to like kind of transition it to working on stuff in sales or wherever the company kind of needs. But
84 00:11:15.490 ⇒ 00:11:29.830 Uttam Kumaran: like, unfortunately or fortunately like, that’s just the situation we’re in. But I know a lot of you guys, you know, when I when you 1st joined. I told you that, like, you know, we’re here to try to build something a little bit larger than us. And like.
85 00:11:29.840 ⇒ 00:11:48.119 Uttam Kumaran: you know, a lot of you guys have trusted me. So I really really appreciate that. And I do think that some of the stuff on the sales side is actually way easier than some of the stuff on the engineering side. It’s just a little bit more like a nerve nerve wracking because you’re talking to other people. But as soon as you kind of get over that hump, I think
86 00:11:48.780 ⇒ 00:11:52.649 Uttam Kumaran: it’s basically no different and then again, like.
87 00:11:52.940 ⇒ 00:12:21.629 Uttam Kumaran: I know, like IA lot of what what I initially set out for. The company was. You know, I wanted to bring people on and work for clients, but at the same time build up the brain forge business so that you know we can deliver for clients faster. But also we can do that with less resources, and then also begin to like, think about solutions that we want to market, you know. And and I’m the type of person where, like, you know, for example, we just today or like over this this week. We built like a little bit of an automation to
88 00:12:21.630 ⇒ 00:12:40.079 Uttam Kumaran: take Zoom Meetings and send it to slack to me and Nico. And like really formatted, I’m like, Oh, great like, that’s something I actually searched the market to try to find. And it didn’t exist right? So there’s actually a lot of new products hidden in plain sight that you know, like that, we we leverage. And so our moat as a business
89 00:12:40.327 ⇒ 00:12:56.159 Uttam Kumaran: and you know, just to talk a little bit about I I listen to this great, podcast. This weekend just talking about like, you know, could could like, is there any room to kind of build like an AI Service business? And what they mean? Isn’t that like you have one person, or you just have AI, that does everything. It’s actually just like
90 00:12:56.330 ⇒ 00:13:07.200 Uttam Kumaran: you use AI to actually increase the margins of the business. And so, for example, like, if you look at a company like a great comparison for us is like an accenture or
91 00:13:07.200 ⇒ 00:13:28.540 Uttam Kumaran: like a Ph data or something. And if you look at the structure of their business. Those guys have like hundreds and hundreds of people. But if you look at the actual margin structure, they they’re still only running like maybe 10 to 20% gross, like gross margin, which is tough. If you think about Sas Sas is anywhere from 70 to like 90% gross margin, which means for every dollar
92 00:13:28.540 ⇒ 00:13:29.370 Uttam Kumaran: they
93 00:13:30.560 ⇒ 00:13:32.920 Uttam Kumaran: for every dollar that they get in
94 00:13:33.258 ⇒ 00:13:53.460 Uttam Kumaran: like they’re they’re making like 95 cents on our side. It’s definitely in that 0 like that 0 to 30% range where, you know, we have so many expenses. One of the primary ones, of course, is is all of us. But of course, for technology and things like that. But the less input, we need to get the same output. That’s the efficiency, right? It’s just like.
95 00:13:53.640 ⇒ 00:14:07.919 Uttam Kumaran: you know, it’s just like manufacturing or building a car, or whatever the less input materials you need. And if you get the same output, you know, we have a real great shot of being like a very highly valued business. And in our business the comps are these like 20 to 30%
96 00:14:08.328 ⇒ 00:14:17.809 Uttam Kumaran: gross margin consultancies. And for us. The reason why I’m I really want to invest in the AI side is, you know, it may start as just automating
97 00:14:17.950 ⇒ 00:14:36.272 Uttam Kumaran: calendar invites or automating zoom transcripts. But then it goes on to, Oh, yeah, actually make the issues. Okay, actually go check on the issues. If they haven’t been updated in a few in a like a few days. Right? Like. Those are all like very scalable things that take us each out of context. And
98 00:14:36.770 ⇒ 00:14:44.190 Uttam Kumaran: you know we now have between slack zoom, all the tools we’re using everything as an Api like we’re just sitting on
99 00:14:44.240 ⇒ 00:14:46.270 Uttam Kumaran: connecting these dots in my mind.
100 00:14:46.350 ⇒ 00:15:12.710 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s what I spend a lot of my time thinking about. And you know I went into this business knowing that the gross margins are the way they were like, this isn’t a software business. The nice thing about this is like, I have a lot of you guys and I have a lot of friends that I know I could tap into to try to make this a reality. But once we’re in there we do need to carve. We carve out some of our time that we get paid for by clients to then go work on the brand and
101 00:15:12.750 ⇒ 00:15:14.949 Uttam Kumaran: the actual machine itself
102 00:15:14.960 ⇒ 00:15:21.839 Uttam Kumaran: to the point where, like, we may get a client. And actually, instead of meeting like 2 people, it may need just half of one person.
103 00:15:22.020 ⇒ 00:15:23.600 Uttam Kumaran: right and those. But then
104 00:15:23.710 ⇒ 00:15:34.519 Uttam Kumaran: that doesn’t change what we charge, you know, and that doesn’t change what we charge. And that actually increases the amount of people we can take on. So you can see how this compounds, and it’s, you know, from my perspective. And again, I’m
105 00:15:34.670 ⇒ 00:15:50.180 Uttam Kumaran: maybe Nico. I just see the whole system all the time from like getting the clients to servicing the clients and delivering feedback to getting more. I just, I’m like watching the factory floor. And so I just can spot the areas where there’s bottlenecks, and I think
106 00:15:50.610 ⇒ 00:16:09.500 Uttam Kumaran: you know I wanna talk. I wanna be more transparent with y’all about where I see that, because I think you know, you’ll start to feel like, Wow, that’s like something where we do every day. That’s just a simple Api call away from like making happen on automatically, you know. And so these are. This is like what I’ve been thinking about a lot this week, especially as this week we
107 00:16:09.700 ⇒ 00:16:18.200 Uttam Kumaran: we started to tap into some people to try to help us kind of get started with, like using some of these AI tools and connecting Zapier and a bunch of stuff, and then
108 00:16:18.230 ⇒ 00:16:20.669 Uttam Kumaran: those will slowly start to become.
109 00:16:21.160 ⇒ 00:16:23.479 Uttam Kumaran: you know, our our stack. So.
110 00:16:26.800 ⇒ 00:16:27.500 Uttam Kumaran: And
111 00:16:34.250 ⇒ 00:16:36.374 Uttam Kumaran: but yeah, any thoughts or
112 00:16:37.060 ⇒ 00:16:43.269 Uttam Kumaran: questions I know that’s kind of a little bit of a rant. But this is a it’s kind of an escientary topic, not gonna lie.
113 00:16:44.360 ⇒ 00:16:44.930 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
114 00:16:44.930 ⇒ 00:16:50.399 Patrick Trainer: It’s it’s all good. It’s like what starting a company is like a chicken. The egg thing
115 00:16:50.770 ⇒ 00:16:51.690 Patrick Trainer: that’s like
116 00:16:51.870 ⇒ 00:16:58.270 Patrick Trainer: to to do it. You’ve got to be actively doing it while doing the other thing, too. So.
117 00:16:59.490 ⇒ 00:17:01.820 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, you’re building the plane while you’re fine. Kind of deal.
118 00:17:01.820 ⇒ 00:17:03.000 Patrick Trainer: Exactly.
119 00:17:04.237 ⇒ 00:17:08.110 Uttam Kumaran: And it’s not. It’s not like emotionalist, right? It’s like.
120 00:17:08.420 ⇒ 00:17:10.679 Uttam Kumaran: we all are human beings. And
121 00:17:10.880 ⇒ 00:17:15.870 Uttam Kumaran: this new. These new technologies are always gonna keep coming. It’s just that.
122 00:17:16.020 ⇒ 00:17:27.480 Uttam Kumaran: you know, when you think about doing something that’s not been done before, or that like, clearly, there’s only like there’s only like a couple of 100 data consultancies. Right? That’s like a very low number.
123 00:17:28.106 ⇒ 00:17:36.399 Uttam Kumaran: You know, you could think about the Us. Economy is like 50% of it small businesses. So this took a very low number, and even in that, like, I’m sure there’s probably only like
124 00:17:36.790 ⇒ 00:17:39.380 Uttam Kumaran: 50 that are using AI in any way.
125 00:17:39.410 ⇒ 00:17:42.709 Uttam Kumaran: there’s probably 20 that are using AI for engineering
126 00:17:43.230 ⇒ 00:17:44.910 Uttam Kumaran: right? And so it’s like.
127 00:17:45.300 ⇒ 00:17:52.139 Uttam Kumaran: it’s so obvious. The problem is is because of how rare that is, you can’t look left to right for any guidance.
128 00:17:52.370 ⇒ 00:17:55.839 Uttam Kumaran: You kind of just have to try shit and then see
129 00:17:55.920 ⇒ 00:17:57.330 Uttam Kumaran: what happens.
130 00:17:58.960 ⇒ 00:18:02.530 Uttam Kumaran: and then, you know, it’s the the other thing I always think about is like.
131 00:18:02.930 ⇒ 00:18:05.330 Uttam Kumaran: also on the people side. It’s like
132 00:18:06.090 ⇒ 00:18:17.169 Uttam Kumaran: you want to make this a place where people want to work, and we’re doing cool shit. And that’s what I always thought of as well. And so for our ability to attack, attract on this call, and like interns. And people like that
133 00:18:17.530 ⇒ 00:18:22.149 Uttam Kumaran: want to come work. Eventually, we gotta be working on the coolest stuff.
134 00:18:22.360 ⇒ 00:18:24.059 Uttam Kumaran: We gotta pay the best.
135 00:18:24.110 ⇒ 00:18:35.289 Uttam Kumaran: and we gotta have the best clients right? And like, that’s that’s what that’s what we’re going for, like we can’t. I don’t feel like settling after working this hard. I don’t feel like settling for anything less, you know. So
136 00:18:37.340 ⇒ 00:18:40.459 Uttam Kumaran: I think there’s gonna be a little bit of a of a
137 00:18:40.690 ⇒ 00:18:42.789 Uttam Kumaran: I think in in about like
138 00:18:42.810 ⇒ 00:18:46.089 Uttam Kumaran: end of June. I was like, Damn, we really gotta
139 00:18:46.200 ⇒ 00:18:57.690 Uttam Kumaran: rip sales. And I kind of pulled a bandaid on like, okay, I have to just go figure out like how this whole thing works. Now that I kind of have enough to put together requirements, I think I was like, Okay, cool.
140 00:18:57.790 ⇒ 00:19:00.759 Uttam Kumaran: like, I think if there’s enough for me to be able to bring.
141 00:19:00.780 ⇒ 00:19:07.249 Uttam Kumaran: you know Patrick and Ryan, and kind of like invest in a little bit more in like this automation side.
142 00:19:07.280 ⇒ 00:19:17.050 Uttam Kumaran: Because a lot of those things we it requires the creative energy to write like some of the content for the emails and kind of think of the strategy. But connecting those pipes is all
143 00:19:17.390 ⇒ 00:19:33.100 Uttam Kumaran: like Zapier Apis, things like that. But again, like marketers, hire growth, people to do that growth. People are like marketers who just like Learn Zapier. So for us, we’re actually coming from the other direction, like, we’re coming from the engineering side. And we’re like learning
144 00:19:33.140 ⇒ 00:19:39.240 Uttam Kumaran: the sales part. And then we become growth people from that direction. Right? I think a very similar like.
145 00:19:39.300 ⇒ 00:19:50.251 Uttam Kumaran: I went into data engineering because I started in like Bi and I did ae stuff. And I went to data engineering. Some people go the opposite way. You know, some people come from analysts. They go all the way down. And so
146 00:19:50.570 ⇒ 00:19:53.949 Uttam Kumaran: this is just what’s necessary. And again, like, I really don’t.
147 00:19:54.060 ⇒ 00:19:55.780 Uttam Kumaran: I have a firm belief.
148 00:19:55.790 ⇒ 00:20:02.159 Uttam Kumaran: And I didn’t have this for a belief until like probably this month, that, like this, sales stuff is very, very
149 00:20:03.540 ⇒ 00:20:07.440 Uttam Kumaran: manageable without like a full time. Salesperson, for sure.
150 00:20:08.148 ⇒ 00:20:11.869 Uttam Kumaran: But it requires like this is the tax like you kind of have to deal with so.
151 00:20:16.050 ⇒ 00:20:17.430 Patrick Trainer: Way to do it.
152 00:20:17.590 ⇒ 00:20:17.910 Ryan Luke Daque: Yeah.
153 00:20:17.910 ⇒ 00:20:18.660 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
154 00:20:21.320 ⇒ 00:20:28.906 Ryan Luke Daque: I don’t mind being the guinea pig like we. We’re we’re like being the guinea pig like right to like the AI industry and stuff.
155 00:20:29.910 ⇒ 00:20:34.360 Uttam Kumaran: No. And yeah, I mean, even since we started doing this stuff right? You see how much has changed and.
156 00:20:34.360 ⇒ 00:20:34.680 Ryan Luke Daque: It’s.
157 00:20:34.680 ⇒ 00:20:45.979 Uttam Kumaran: Great because we’re we’ll build it now, and in 6 months we’ll rip it out. It’ll be 10 times faster and 10 times cheaper, and so it’s great that the thing that I know about organizations
158 00:20:46.440 ⇒ 00:20:58.090 Uttam Kumaran: is that when I started this organization, I was like very firm on like this needs to be AI powered from the start, you know, and that doesn’t mean like every process leverages AI. But
159 00:20:58.490 ⇒ 00:21:09.894 Uttam Kumaran: you can tell, like I have a firm belief that like, I want to try to get to that point. And so for me, it’s like staying true to that. A lot of organizations. The AI will is almost like
160 00:21:10.490 ⇒ 00:21:18.719 Uttam Kumaran: someone described it as like it’s, it’s just like some like a looming force that people really. It’s like a when your body like rejects like a medication.
161 00:21:19.577 ⇒ 00:21:26.790 Uttam Kumaran: And for a lot of large organizations think about if like, if they’re if they’re like a hundred people, and all they do is like.
162 00:21:27.140 ⇒ 00:21:29.749 Uttam Kumaran: translate meetings into requirements like.
163 00:21:30.110 ⇒ 00:21:35.290 Uttam Kumaran: Come on, they’re not gonna want to use AI. And so for large organizations, they reject.
164 00:21:35.420 ⇒ 00:21:40.389 Uttam Kumaran: they reject this right. They it just can’t permeate the culture, and it can’t permeate
165 00:21:40.400 ⇒ 00:21:42.870 Uttam Kumaran: how they do work for us.
166 00:21:43.100 ⇒ 00:21:59.329 Uttam Kumaran: you know. Not only are are all of us like very tapped in. But for us we’ve been talking about this since the beginning, even if we don’t use it. We we’ve been talking about it, and so for us it’s like we’re grown. And this is like the cybernetic arm like you’re we’re like, I was born with the arm right like so it doesn’t feel like it’s a
167 00:21:59.360 ⇒ 00:22:04.539 Uttam Kumaran: it doesn’t feel anything but an arm, I think so. That’s the difference also is like as
168 00:22:05.030 ⇒ 00:22:06.330 Uttam Kumaran: as a startup
169 00:22:06.570 ⇒ 00:22:17.949 Uttam Kumaran: and as fighting against like incumbents like, like, you know, larger consultancies and things. Our ability to adapt to new technologies leverage new technologies is what makes us better than them.
170 00:22:18.090 ⇒ 00:22:26.289 Uttam Kumaran: and of course, like they were that at some point, too, right? But as a as an organization grows, the problem is, it’s like stasis.
171 00:22:26.380 ⇒ 00:22:27.920 Uttam Kumaran: And so that’s like what
172 00:22:28.040 ⇒ 00:22:34.420 Uttam Kumaran: our ability to like leverage. These tools is really going to tell that story. And then at some point I’m telling you at some point
173 00:22:34.780 ⇒ 00:22:36.050 Uttam Kumaran: we will get
174 00:22:36.190 ⇒ 00:22:40.539 Uttam Kumaran: that will pick up steam, not only in our like in our financials.
175 00:22:40.860 ⇒ 00:22:45.799 Uttam Kumaran: but if we go, if we need to raise cash at all, it will be like it’ll be like
176 00:22:45.980 ⇒ 00:22:53.050 Uttam Kumaran: the biggest thing ever because I’ve talked to so many people that do these types of businesses, and they’re not thinking about it this way at all.
177 00:22:53.130 ⇒ 00:22:54.359 Uttam Kumaran: And so.
178 00:22:54.810 ⇒ 00:23:16.100 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, like, I would continue, I would love to continue to just only hire engineers, or or like folks like folks like Nico, who are like, who are like super tech, savvy? And even Nico has like done a lot of engineering stuff since he started. And like, that’s the that’s all I want to do like I don’t. I don’t wanna make this like a large super enterprise like Oregon, and there’s a couple of companies that I follow
179 00:23:16.100 ⇒ 00:23:25.941 Uttam Kumaran: that are like that, like the team@cal.com, the older team at like Vercel. Some of the some of these places where they were like all engineers for a long time.
180 00:23:26.520 ⇒ 00:23:44.329 Uttam Kumaran: But it’s tough again, like the business world, the startup world. It draws you to like making a hire like that you just feel like a tractor being like sucked into like damn! Maybe I should get a person to do that, or like maybe I should hire someone to do that. You you really have to like.
181 00:23:44.860 ⇒ 00:23:57.769 Uttam Kumaran: and I and frankly like for me, it’s easy, because I’m like, Damn! We don’t have like a ton of cash, so I can’t like. Go do that, and we’ll be. We’ll be fucked a little bit. So by that notion that helps for me to be like, no, but I could. And
182 00:23:57.870 ⇒ 00:24:07.049 Uttam Kumaran: I just like realize that like, that’s an urge you’re gonna feel in business is that you want to hire a next person you want to like, spend, throw a bunch of money at a problem. And instead, it’s like.
183 00:24:07.180 ⇒ 00:24:18.980 Uttam Kumaran: take the medicine like, really force yourself to know how these processes work. And then business is just information transfer. And like, that’s that’s our business. It’s just like information transfer and transformation. So like, it’s no different.
184 00:24:28.260 ⇒ 00:24:28.985 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
185 00:24:29.830 ⇒ 00:24:37.195 Uttam Kumaran: cool. I talked for a while. I didn’t. I was even drinking coffee before that. Now drink coffee. I’ll keep talking for another half hour.
186 00:24:37.620 ⇒ 00:24:39.180 Uttam Kumaran: but I think, like
187 00:24:39.190 ⇒ 00:24:40.929 Uttam Kumaran: overall, I think
188 00:24:41.620 ⇒ 00:24:45.860 Uttam Kumaran: one. I’ve been traveling like a lot this summer. So that’s kind of like
189 00:24:45.890 ⇒ 00:24:57.870 Uttam Kumaran: fucked up a lot of like our weekly schedule. So I want to get really back to having like these like weekly Friday meetings. Where it can just be like this like an open forum, even like doing this on like Mondays
190 00:24:58.080 ⇒ 00:25:08.390 Uttam Kumaran: for folks that can make it. I think that’d be really nice. I know it’s been like, really, really focused on work recently. I think second is me. Pat and and Ryan will be
191 00:25:08.570 ⇒ 00:25:13.215 Uttam Kumaran: really focused on the sales side alongside some other resources.
192 00:25:13.940 ⇒ 00:25:18.049 Uttam Kumaran: for hopefully. Not very long, but I would say at least
193 00:25:18.170 ⇒ 00:25:19.600 Uttam Kumaran: 2 to 4 weeks.
194 00:25:19.988 ⇒ 00:25:23.209 Uttam Kumaran: And this is just going to be like a pretty major sprint.
195 00:25:23.604 ⇒ 00:25:28.690 Uttam Kumaran: So I want to kick that off and kind of take us out of the day to day context. And
196 00:25:29.270 ⇒ 00:25:39.499 Uttam Kumaran: you know, I there’s 1 thing when you like I’ve been in companies where they’re like, this is a red flag like everybody needs to focus on this. And then, like no meetings, change. Nobody’s given like
197 00:25:39.960 ⇒ 00:25:45.920 Uttam Kumaran: like time to process. That stuff doesn’t move off the plate. And that’s not like how we’re gonna do this.
198 00:25:47.250 ⇒ 00:25:56.400 Uttam Kumaran: Instead, this work is gonna take like hours of us just sitting and like playing around with stuff, seeing how I do things, seeing how you guys do things, learning how to do this.
199 00:25:56.620 ⇒ 00:26:01.940 Uttam Kumaran: It took me about a month and a half to like. Learn how all the tools and how everything works.
200 00:26:01.990 ⇒ 00:26:04.900 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll have to translate that to you guys in about a week.
201 00:26:05.020 ⇒ 00:26:06.569 Uttam Kumaran: and like, I think I have
202 00:26:06.760 ⇒ 00:26:09.859 Uttam Kumaran: the ability to do that, and then we’ll be able to get started.
203 00:26:10.266 ⇒ 00:26:17.412 Uttam Kumaran: And then again, the goal overarching on the sales side is that we land a few more clients.
204 00:26:18.050 ⇒ 00:26:24.009 Uttam Kumaran: we have. We have a good distinction of like what the type of work we want to do, and then that funds.
205 00:26:24.270 ⇒ 00:26:50.234 Uttam Kumaran: you know, everybody on the team, at least everybody on the team. And then there’s extra left over to continue to fund these internal projects. So until the goal we’ll set a very clear goal is like, our goal is to is to land like 2 more clients. We’ll back that into clear metrics on, like, how many emails need to get sent? How many linkedin things need to get sent? What what web traffic we need. We’ll back that all into data, and then we’ll start reviewing that every week.
206 00:26:50.920 ⇒ 00:26:54.979 Uttam Kumaran: and then we’ll go from there like this will be like this will just be like every other project.
207 00:26:56.210 ⇒ 00:27:00.791 Uttam Kumaran: But consider this like less like, we’re the client, basically.
208 00:27:02.100 ⇒ 00:27:03.150 Uttam Kumaran: so
209 00:27:03.640 ⇒ 00:27:04.480 Uttam Kumaran: yeah.
210 00:27:05.710 ⇒ 00:27:07.340 Uttam Kumaran: I guess any other
211 00:27:08.620 ⇒ 00:27:09.950 Uttam Kumaran: questions.
212 00:27:11.550 ⇒ 00:27:15.449 Uttam Kumaran: And of course, like, I’m a completely open book. Also, everything’s a notion.
213 00:27:15.510 ⇒ 00:27:21.419 Uttam Kumaran: So like, if there’s any questions or any thoughts on how I’m doing stuff or how we’re thinking about stuff.
214 00:27:21.560 ⇒ 00:27:30.409 Uttam Kumaran: There’s a guarantee that I’ve thought about it, and or I I don’t have an answer, but I probably thought about it, and so happy that happy to have a discussion
215 00:27:35.200 ⇒ 00:27:36.090 Uttam Kumaran: cool.
216 00:27:37.050 ⇒ 00:27:44.648 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Well, I know a couple of people have some more meetings today, but I guess we’ll chat again on Monday.
217 00:27:45.330 ⇒ 00:27:51.330 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll be online this weekend kind of like cruising on a couple of things, but don’t feel obligated to respond anything on slack
218 00:27:53.900 ⇒ 00:27:56.160 Uttam Kumaran: and yeah.
219 00:27:56.210 ⇒ 00:27:58.729 Uttam Kumaran: yes, I’ll talk to everyone on Monday.
220 00:27:59.840 ⇒ 00:28:00.460 Patrick Trainer: Sweet.
221 00:28:01.720 ⇒ 00:28:02.450 Uttam Kumaran: Thanks guys.
222 00:28:02.880 ⇒ 00:28:03.520 Ryan Luke Daque: Thanks.
223 00:28:03.520 ⇒ 00:28:04.380 Nicolas Sucari: Thanks guys.
224 00:28:04.770 ⇒ 00:28:05.890 Atharv Gudi: See you guys.
225 00:28:06.750 ⇒ 00:28:07.610 Uttam Kumaran: Thanks.