Meeting Title: Uttam <> Ryan-Weekly Date: 2024-08-27 Meeting participants: Ryan Luke Daque, Uttam Kumaran
WEBVTT
1 00:00:47.110 ⇒ 00:00:47.920 Ryan Luke Daque: Hello!
2 00:00:50.840 ⇒ 00:00:51.530 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, Ryan.
3 00:00:52.170 ⇒ 00:00:53.100 Ryan Luke Daque: I don’t.
4 00:00:53.100 ⇒ 00:00:54.090 Uttam Kumaran: Hey! How are you?
5 00:00:54.650 ⇒ 00:00:56.060 Ryan Luke Daque: Doing well, how are you.
6 00:00:56.060 ⇒ 00:00:56.840 Uttam Kumaran: Good.
7 00:00:58.700 ⇒ 00:00:59.480 Ryan Luke Daque: Cool.
8 00:01:00.230 ⇒ 00:01:01.989 Uttam Kumaran: How’s the week going.
9 00:01:03.140 ⇒ 00:01:05.459 Ryan Luke Daque: Yeah, doing good so far.
10 00:01:06.500 ⇒ 00:01:11.480 Ryan Luke Daque: feeling a lot better than last week. So yeah, that’s that’s doing. Well.
11 00:01:12.020 ⇒ 00:01:12.800 Uttam Kumaran: Nice.
12 00:01:13.130 ⇒ 00:01:16.660 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I also had some sort of like weird cough, but
13 00:01:16.680 ⇒ 00:01:19.129 Uttam Kumaran: seems like it’s all going away so
14 00:01:19.650 ⇒ 00:01:20.919 Uttam Kumaran: doing a lot better.
15 00:01:22.660 ⇒ 00:01:24.770 Ryan Luke Daque: Yeah, I think it’s just the weather or something.
16 00:01:25.150 ⇒ 00:01:25.880 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
17 00:01:26.530 ⇒ 00:01:33.629 Ryan Luke Daque: It’s like been raining every day here. It’s hot in the morning, and then in the afternoon it starts pouring. So
18 00:01:33.770 ⇒ 00:01:36.279 Ryan Luke Daque: I guess that’s costing the
19 00:01:36.850 ⇒ 00:01:38.850 Ryan Luke Daque: weird sickness and stuff.
20 00:01:39.210 ⇒ 00:01:39.960 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
21 00:01:40.560 ⇒ 00:01:41.820 Uttam Kumaran: How’s the family?
22 00:01:42.660 ⇒ 00:01:45.179 Ryan Luke Daque: Yeah, everyone’s fine.
23 00:01:46.210 ⇒ 00:01:47.660 Ryan Luke Daque: So far. Yeah.
24 00:01:47.780 ⇒ 00:01:48.640 Uttam Kumaran: Nice.
25 00:01:50.050 ⇒ 00:01:54.947 Uttam Kumaran: How’s it? How like I think I think we’re almost at like 8 months dude like, how’s
26 00:01:55.220 ⇒ 00:01:57.070 Ryan Luke Daque: Yeah, like I, I don’t.
27 00:01:57.070 ⇒ 00:01:57.810 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
28 00:01:58.210 ⇒ 00:01:59.529 Ryan Luke Daque: Like it’s been
29 00:01:59.750 ⇒ 00:02:04.860 Ryan Luke Daque: like time flies so fast I can’t even imagine it’s almost a year like we’ve been working.
30 00:02:05.900 ⇒ 00:02:08.289 Ryan Luke Daque: It’s pretty cool. It’s been pretty fun
31 00:02:08.440 ⇒ 00:02:10.209 Ryan Luke Daque: so far. So yeah.
32 00:02:10.780 ⇒ 00:02:11.897 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I I
33 00:02:12.420 ⇒ 00:02:14.659 Uttam Kumaran: I I sometimes try not to look
34 00:02:14.770 ⇒ 00:02:20.575 Uttam Kumaran: back, because then I’m always like, why aren’t we moving faster, you know. But
35 00:02:21.250 ⇒ 00:02:30.799 Uttam Kumaran: you know, I feel really lucky to have folks like you that have stuck around. And you know, I I think you know one of the things that you can tell that I’m starting to talk a lot about is sales and
36 00:02:30.860 ⇒ 00:02:32.839 Uttam Kumaran: and starting to sell more. So
37 00:02:33.391 ⇒ 00:02:38.169 Uttam Kumaran: you know, my goal from the start, has stayed the same right trying to get everybody to.
38 00:02:38.420 ⇒ 00:02:45.620 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll get on 40 h and continue to increase rates up and kind of get us really, really solid work. So I know pool parts is
39 00:02:45.740 ⇒ 00:02:49.200 Uttam Kumaran: pool parts is fairly stable. We have, like some of these.
40 00:02:49.340 ⇒ 00:02:52.460 Uttam Kumaran: you know, issues that keep coming up like, I think the email thing.
41 00:02:52.590 ⇒ 00:02:54.259 Uttam Kumaran: you know, I I think the stuff
42 00:02:54.300 ⇒ 00:02:55.720 Uttam Kumaran: Patrick did was
43 00:02:55.730 ⇒ 00:02:59.270 Uttam Kumaran: good, but just a little bit too over engineered. And
44 00:02:59.380 ⇒ 00:03:04.543 Uttam Kumaran: you know. I think we’re just gonna we’ll just try to do Zapier for as much as possible.
45 00:03:05.310 ⇒ 00:03:10.670 Uttam Kumaran: and then, yeah, I’m I’m really hoping that Siraj can come, take over and
46 00:03:10.720 ⇒ 00:03:13.330 Uttam Kumaran: really be like your partner there.
47 00:03:14.890 ⇒ 00:03:16.080 Uttam Kumaran: you know. And then.
48 00:03:16.170 ⇒ 00:03:20.739 Uttam Kumaran: ideally, he he takes over, like, you know, like 90% of stuff. And then.
49 00:03:20.800 ⇒ 00:03:22.300 Uttam Kumaran: you know, one of the things that
50 00:03:22.450 ⇒ 00:03:26.190 Uttam Kumaran: we’re starting to focus a lot on on the sales side is
51 00:03:28.080 ⇒ 00:03:30.710 Uttam Kumaran: like automation. And so that’s why I sent you that
52 00:03:31.000 ⇒ 00:03:35.060 Uttam Kumaran: that link yesterday, and I want you to kind of like start to take a look at
53 00:03:35.130 ⇒ 00:03:36.620 Uttam Kumaran: how to.
54 00:03:37.100 ⇒ 00:03:43.479 Uttam Kumaran: You know how we can automate some of these things on the engineering side like very low hanging fruit stuff. And then.
55 00:03:43.620 ⇒ 00:03:51.210 Uttam Kumaran: you know, ideally, we start with, you know, really, basics like sending error logs to chatter, Bt. To slack.
56 00:03:51.400 ⇒ 00:03:51.820 Ryan Luke Daque: Right.
57 00:03:51.820 ⇒ 00:03:52.355 Uttam Kumaran: Like
58 00:03:53.110 ⇒ 00:03:54.470 Uttam Kumaran: sending
59 00:03:54.910 ⇒ 00:04:06.029 Uttam Kumaran: Prs to chat to Pt. To review. And then, you know, ideally, we get to the point where we send requirements, and it’s able to write some code right? And so the biggest thing for me is like, how do I give everyone
60 00:04:06.050 ⇒ 00:04:08.680 Uttam Kumaran: more leverage for us to take on more work without
61 00:04:08.750 ⇒ 00:04:10.760 Uttam Kumaran: bringing on like a ton. More people.
62 00:04:11.120 ⇒ 00:04:11.650 Uttam Kumaran: Right?
63 00:04:12.880 ⇒ 00:04:13.970 Uttam Kumaran: so
64 00:04:14.140 ⇒ 00:04:16.842 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, that’s what I’m very, very excited about.
65 00:04:17.180 ⇒ 00:04:19.271 Ryan Luke Daque: Yeah, I did read the medium
66 00:04:20.040 ⇒ 00:04:24.404 Ryan Luke Daque: blog post that you shared with me. It was pretty interesting. Yeah, I
67 00:04:24.940 ⇒ 00:04:34.479 Ryan Luke Daque: try to see what we can do with that like on like, at least for maybe the intraday workflow for pool parts like we can use that as like a
68 00:04:34.720 ⇒ 00:04:39.910 Ryan Luke Daque: like a guinea pig or something, and and see what what we can do from there. So yeah, that’s pretty cool.
69 00:04:40.490 ⇒ 00:04:52.500 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think the biggest thing I would suggest is like, we’ve had a lot of trouble working with Github actions. So the biggest thing that I would suggest is try to leverage zapier
70 00:04:52.640 ⇒ 00:04:58.309 Uttam Kumaran: like where possible, or where you hit any roadblocks, for example, like you can send
71 00:04:58.660 ⇒ 00:05:00.650 Uttam Kumaran: web hooks, the zapier.
72 00:05:00.670 ⇒ 00:05:06.059 Uttam Kumaran: and like, do a couple do come some interesting stuff. Or, for example, if you need to send
73 00:05:06.170 ⇒ 00:05:08.030 Uttam Kumaran: slack messages out
74 00:05:08.180 ⇒ 00:05:11.309 Uttam Kumaran: like maybe it’s helpful to do that via Zapier?
75 00:05:11.884 ⇒ 00:05:16.109 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know. I’m just using it a lot more. And it’s been really, really nice.
76 00:05:16.360 ⇒ 00:05:18.759 Uttam Kumaran: So that would be my suggestion.
77 00:05:18.950 ⇒ 00:05:21.689 Uttam Kumaran: because the actions are kind of
78 00:05:22.330 ⇒ 00:05:24.460 Uttam Kumaran: they hit or miss sometimes. So.
79 00:05:26.870 ⇒ 00:05:31.509 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, you know, we’re starting to do a bunch of stuff on the sales side as well around automation
80 00:05:31.580 ⇒ 00:05:32.155 Uttam Kumaran: like
81 00:05:32.870 ⇒ 00:05:37.209 Uttam Kumaran: you know, moving certain people to certain lists, starting to send out campaigns.
82 00:05:37.250 ⇒ 00:05:42.159 Uttam Kumaran: things like that. And you know, I use it for coding related tasks
83 00:05:42.280 ⇒ 00:05:51.039 Uttam Kumaran: like every day like, for example, yesterday, I basically, I did kind of the dummy data for sales. And it worked like, really, really, nicely.
84 00:05:51.950 ⇒ 00:05:52.520 Ryan Luke Daque: So.
85 00:05:52.520 ⇒ 00:05:54.880 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and I and I use Claude and
86 00:05:55.393 ⇒ 00:05:59.630 Uttam Kumaran: I actually. What I did is I didn’t have it. Give me the Csv. I had it. Write me
87 00:05:59.900 ⇒ 00:06:02.890 Uttam Kumaran: the Snowflake code to generate the table.
88 00:06:03.490 ⇒ 00:06:05.680 Uttam Kumaran: because, you know, Snowflake has a lot of like
89 00:06:05.880 ⇒ 00:06:08.150 Uttam Kumaran: Snowflake has a lot of data generation
90 00:06:08.370 ⇒ 00:06:15.420 Uttam Kumaran: related functions like random, like uniform, like sequences. And so I actually had
91 00:06:15.510 ⇒ 00:06:20.499 Uttam Kumaran: had it. Write the code to generate like a 10,000 row table.
92 00:06:22.700 ⇒ 00:06:23.570 Uttam Kumaran: that way.
93 00:06:23.570 ⇒ 00:06:24.110 Ryan Luke Daque: Come on!
94 00:06:24.110 ⇒ 00:06:26.010 Uttam Kumaran: When we want to add columns.
95 00:06:26.050 ⇒ 00:06:29.689 Uttam Kumaran: or we, wanna, you know, change certain things. We just.
96 00:06:29.690 ⇒ 00:06:30.330 Ryan Luke Daque: Just wrote.
97 00:06:30.330 ⇒ 00:06:32.269 Uttam Kumaran: There, right? Yeah.
98 00:06:32.920 ⇒ 00:06:33.960 Uttam Kumaran: So
99 00:06:34.070 ⇒ 00:06:37.031 Uttam Kumaran: things like that are are really, really great. And
100 00:06:37.780 ⇒ 00:06:40.430 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, basically, I, I wanna try and
101 00:06:40.680 ⇒ 00:06:42.269 Uttam Kumaran: as much as possible
102 00:06:42.330 ⇒ 00:06:45.249 Uttam Kumaran: start to use AI like, basically everywhere.
103 00:06:45.808 ⇒ 00:06:57.229 Uttam Kumaran: But it takes time like it takes time. And also, like I was playing a lot around with it. But I need the whole team to kind of, you know. Begin messing around with it. So I definitely want to carve out some of your time
104 00:06:57.420 ⇒ 00:06:58.930 Uttam Kumaran: to do that
105 00:07:00.910 ⇒ 00:07:03.759 Uttam Kumaran: And then again, like the goal will be like, Okay.
106 00:07:04.230 ⇒ 00:07:11.372 Uttam Kumaran: if you’re if we’re able to have AI, take care of certain things, and I can move you on to another client, for example.
107 00:07:11.670 ⇒ 00:07:12.340 Ryan Luke Daque: But.
108 00:07:12.680 ⇒ 00:07:18.830 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and then you can start to manage like 2 or 3 clients instead of just one. But that’s kind of like my thinking, and
109 00:07:19.110 ⇒ 00:07:22.670 Uttam Kumaran: also our quality of service. And things like that will all get better. So
110 00:07:22.740 ⇒ 00:07:24.070 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, just like
111 00:07:24.140 ⇒ 00:07:27.230 Uttam Kumaran: it’s gonna be a little bit painful to start like
112 00:07:27.589 ⇒ 00:07:33.089 Uttam Kumaran: you know, to figure kind of things out, but it is kind of like the cutting edge, like none of this stuff is really
113 00:07:33.150 ⇒ 00:07:34.909 Uttam Kumaran: ironed out. Well, so
114 00:07:36.910 ⇒ 00:07:41.080 Uttam Kumaran: Patrick and Abigail are helping me on the sales side. So I so that’s why I’m
115 00:07:42.060 ⇒ 00:07:53.000 Uttam Kumaran: if we can have some movement on the engineering side. And then I have one person that’s basically coming in to help us do operations and like streamline auto operations, which is like meeting notes and things like that. So
116 00:07:53.110 ⇒ 00:07:56.740 Uttam Kumaran: he’s gonna kind of be able to learn like how everything works. And then
117 00:07:57.120 ⇒ 00:08:01.010 Uttam Kumaran: again, again, we we spend try to spend some percentage of our time on
118 00:08:01.120 ⇒ 00:08:03.359 Uttam Kumaran: an automation would be very nice. So.
119 00:08:04.480 ⇒ 00:08:05.430 Ryan Luke Daque: Sounds good.
120 00:08:05.880 ⇒ 00:08:07.990 Ryan Luke Daque: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
121 00:08:09.160 ⇒ 00:08:10.280 Ryan Luke Daque: Yeah, cool.
122 00:08:10.770 ⇒ 00:08:14.883 Ryan Luke Daque: But yeah, it. It makes sense to like, focus on the sales side.
123 00:08:15.650 ⇒ 00:08:23.009 Ryan Luke Daque: cause? Yeah, we really need to like, bring in some clients and and stuff like that. So we can like, continue moving forward. Basically, yeah.
124 00:08:23.210 ⇒ 00:08:30.050 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, exactly like I want to get you back up to 40 h. And then I want to get I want to get Patrick back on
125 00:08:30.150 ⇒ 00:08:36.540 Uttam Kumaran: find work. And again, it’s nice to kind of help with the business side of stuff, but it’s just like a stopgap, for.
126 00:08:36.830 ⇒ 00:08:38.780 Uttam Kumaran: you know, bigger fish. So
127 00:08:38.890 ⇒ 00:08:40.594 Uttam Kumaran: that’s my goal. Still,
128 00:08:41.100 ⇒ 00:08:44.419 Uttam Kumaran: you know, we kind of started this whole process in July.
129 00:08:44.720 ⇒ 00:08:47.290 Uttam Kumaran: And then I think next month is, gonna be
130 00:08:47.800 ⇒ 00:08:50.589 Uttam Kumaran: kind of the month, where we really try to go. Close some
131 00:08:51.270 ⇒ 00:08:53.779 Uttam Kumaran: close, some new clients. So let’s see.
132 00:08:55.360 ⇒ 00:08:56.070 Ryan Luke Daque: Cool
133 00:08:56.700 ⇒ 00:08:57.720 Ryan Luke Daque: sounds, good.
134 00:08:58.610 ⇒ 00:08:59.580 Uttam Kumaran: And
135 00:08:59.940 ⇒ 00:09:02.329 Uttam Kumaran: anything else you want to chat about.
136 00:09:07.270 ⇒ 00:09:10.709 Ryan Luke Daque: I don’t think there’s anything else I have in mind at the moment.
137 00:09:11.210 ⇒ 00:09:11.850 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
138 00:09:12.240 ⇒ 00:09:19.080 Uttam Kumaran: cool. Well, yeah, slack me. I know we’ve been talking about that zapier thing. So yeah, take check it out. Make sure you’re in Zapier, and then
139 00:09:19.478 ⇒ 00:09:28.339 Uttam Kumaran: you can also make sure you can share the zaps so that everybody can see it. But then yeah, I would just play around with that. Let’s get it working. And then
140 00:09:28.470 ⇒ 00:09:30.080 Uttam Kumaran: we can go from there.
141 00:09:30.695 ⇒ 00:09:35.709 Uttam Kumaran: And Suraj should be online working today on rail. Finally. So.
142 00:09:35.975 ⇒ 00:09:36.240 Ryan Luke Daque: Thanks.
143 00:09:36.240 ⇒ 00:09:39.019 Uttam Kumaran: Kind of so hopefully. He has some questions, and
144 00:09:39.100 ⇒ 00:09:40.780 Uttam Kumaran: there’s some chat there. So.
145 00:09:41.600 ⇒ 00:09:43.150 Ryan Luke Daque: Sure sounds good.
146 00:09:43.150 ⇒ 00:09:43.730 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
147 00:09:43.980 ⇒ 00:09:45.420 Uttam Kumaran: Hi, Ryan, thank you.
148 00:09:45.420 ⇒ 00:09:46.499 Ryan Luke Daque: Talk to you soon.
149 00:09:46.600 ⇒ 00:09:48.780 Ryan Luke Daque: Thanks, Outam. Have a nice day. Bye.