Meeting Title: Uttam Kumaran’s Zoom Meeting Date: 2024-12-12 Meeting participants: Ethan Aaron, Nicolas Sucari, Uttam Kumaran
WEBVTT
1 00:00:47.610 ⇒ 00:00:48.510 Uttam Kumaran: Hey!
2 00:00:48.510 ⇒ 00:00:50.169 Ethan Aaron: Hello! How are you?
3 00:00:50.170 ⇒ 00:00:52.040 Uttam Kumaran: Hey? Good! How are you? Nice to meet you?
4 00:00:52.040 ⇒ 00:00:53.619 Ethan Aaron: I am good pleasure to meet you happy. Thursday.
5 00:00:53.986 ⇒ 00:00:56.550 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Happy. Thursday. Thanks for hopping on.
6 00:00:56.830 ⇒ 00:01:03.009 Ethan Aaron: Thank you for hopping on. Sorry for the inconvenience on this typically weeks. We just like things to work perfectly.
7 00:01:03.010 ⇒ 00:01:13.240 Uttam Kumaran: No totally fine. We’re an engineering company, too. So it happens. Yeah, I didn’t see anything in particular.
8 00:01:13.510 ⇒ 00:01:15.699 Ethan Aaron: So I’ve I have 2 hypotheses, one.
9 00:01:15.700 ⇒ 00:01:16.070 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
10 00:01:16.070 ⇒ 00:01:19.791 Ethan Aaron: I think the instructions that Dennis gave you yesterday are incorrect.
11 00:01:20.150 ⇒ 00:01:29.960 Ethan Aaron: and I think that’s the issue we’re seeing right now. So if you go. So one of the instructions he provided in there was to create the stage.
12 00:01:30.120 ⇒ 00:01:34.805 Ethan Aaron: So if the stage does not exist created, and I’m assuming that you or someone on your team ran that
13 00:01:35.040 ⇒ 00:01:35.700 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
14 00:01:35.700 ⇒ 00:01:38.210 Ethan Aaron: And it says, file format type equals. Csv.
15 00:01:38.700 ⇒ 00:01:48.540 Ethan Aaron: the file format type equal Csv is causing collisions with what we what we actually expect it to be, which is Json. So I believe, if you delete the stage.
16 00:01:48.620 ⇒ 00:01:51.950 Ethan Aaron: that we’ll go back to seeing
17 00:01:52.180 ⇒ 00:02:00.779 Ethan Aaron: just the insufficient privileges error. So if you are able to do that. I can rerun things, and we can see if we get back to that. And then I think it’s just a
18 00:02:00.950 ⇒ 00:02:05.240 Ethan Aaron: permissions question for the schema we’re trying to work on.
19 00:02:05.500 ⇒ 00:02:07.609 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, one second. Let me just run that. And then.
20 00:02:07.610 ⇒ 00:02:08.190 Ethan Aaron: Yep.
21 00:02:08.350 ⇒ 00:02:09.359 Uttam Kumaran: Let’s give it a go.
22 00:02:21.870 ⇒ 00:02:23.469 Uttam Kumaran: They’ll just drop that stage.
23 00:02:23.860 ⇒ 00:02:24.205 Ethan Aaron: Yeah.
24 00:02:36.640 ⇒ 00:02:38.140 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, we’re good.
25 00:02:38.813 ⇒ 00:02:40.480 Ethan Aaron: Let me rerun your flow.
26 00:03:21.890 ⇒ 00:03:28.580 Ethan Aaron: We’re watching. See what’s what’s happening. It’s running right now. I believe this is what it looked like when it’s failing on insufficient privileges.
27 00:03:29.140 ⇒ 00:03:30.919 Ethan Aaron: Yesterday or the day before.
28 00:03:30.920 ⇒ 00:03:31.490 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
29 00:03:31.940 ⇒ 00:03:32.610 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah.
30 00:03:33.140 ⇒ 00:03:37.230 Ethan Aaron: I just wanna make sure that’s what happens. And then from there.
31 00:03:39.170 ⇒ 00:03:46.109 Ethan Aaron: okay, insufficient privileges to operate on schema portable. So 2 things. So 2 things about this one.
32 00:03:46.620 ⇒ 00:03:51.840 Ethan Aaron: I think, in your setup that Nicholas had shared. Yeah of
33 00:03:52.180 ⇒ 00:03:58.039 Ethan Aaron: database of raw schema portable. One thing that we do see. By the way, I don’t know how you do this with
34 00:03:58.080 ⇒ 00:04:03.649 Ethan Aaron: 5 train today is creating different schemas for different data sources. So one thing.
35 00:04:03.650 ⇒ 00:04:08.180 Uttam Kumaran: That’s typically, yeah, that’s typically what we do. I think, Nico, just
36 00:04:08.330 ⇒ 00:04:12.389 Uttam Kumaran: this is ran through really quickly. So I can go ahead and just create
37 00:04:12.540 ⇒ 00:04:17.320 Uttam Kumaran: like we usually just do like 5 train underscore whatever
38 00:04:17.839 ⇒ 00:04:18.379 Ethan Aaron: We’re all just.
39 00:04:18.380 ⇒ 00:04:19.929 Uttam Kumaran: Or just the name of the Schema. The name.
40 00:04:19.930 ⇒ 00:04:23.123 Ethan Aaron: Yeah, I would, I would say, if if we’re doing this anyway,
41 00:04:23.590 ⇒ 00:04:27.440 Ethan Aaron: setting it up so that you have portable underscore
42 00:04:27.510 ⇒ 00:04:30.920 Ethan Aaron: gorgeous might just save you
43 00:04:31.010 ⇒ 00:04:39.489 Ethan Aaron: a little bit of work down the road. We then have a duplicate button, where we work slightly differently than 5 trend. We have a duplicate button for destination. So you can. Then, just the next time you want to add.
44 00:04:39.490 ⇒ 00:04:40.180 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, nice!
45 00:04:40.180 ⇒ 00:04:44.239 Ethan Aaron: So click, duplicate, it’ll copy everything over, and then you just swap out the Schema name and you can name it.
46 00:04:44.240 ⇒ 00:04:44.930 Uttam Kumaran: Solid.
47 00:04:45.090 ⇒ 00:04:47.710 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, you want me to just create the new one. Then.
48 00:04:47.710 ⇒ 00:04:54.290 Ethan Aaron: Yeah. So if you don’t mind creating that, and then I think, roll ingest
49 00:04:54.390 ⇒ 00:04:57.834 Ethan Aaron: need and service user portable have to have access to operate on that
50 00:04:58.100 ⇒ 00:04:58.440 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
51 00:04:58.440 ⇒ 00:05:01.120 Ethan Aaron: We have this script
52 00:05:02.120 ⇒ 00:05:10.071 Ethan Aaron: in here. I’m not like a snowflake wizard. So if you know exactly what you need to do here to actually set this up.
53 00:05:10.390 ⇒ 00:05:11.610 Uttam Kumaran: I do. I do
54 00:05:12.730 ⇒ 00:05:18.210 Uttam Kumaran: just give me one sec. We also have scripts to set it up, too. So I just wanna make sure
55 00:05:18.450 ⇒ 00:05:21.890 Uttam Kumaran: we try to just start clients off with good governance, you know.
56 00:05:22.290 ⇒ 00:05:23.130 Ethan Aaron: Love it.
57 00:05:24.970 ⇒ 00:05:29.409 Ethan Aaron: I’m hoping we can get this figured out quickly, and then I’m also just excited to hear more about what.
58 00:05:29.570 ⇒ 00:05:40.120 Uttam Kumaran: I would love to share more. Yeah, yeah, totally. I also agree. I was just mainly like, guys check that. We have everything because it’s for a client I was like, just make sure we have everything in there.
59 00:05:40.250 ⇒ 00:05:42.019 Uttam Kumaran: Cool one. Sec.
60 00:06:41.300 ⇒ 00:06:44.989 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. And should I go ahead and create this stage again with Json.
61 00:06:47.450 ⇒ 00:06:48.830 Uttam Kumaran: You do that on your end.
62 00:06:48.830 ⇒ 00:06:52.150 Ethan Aaron: Yeah, our, our system does that. So you set up all the permissions and stuff.
63 00:06:52.350 ⇒ 00:06:53.020 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
64 00:06:53.020 ⇒ 00:06:56.239 Ethan Aaron: Okay, let me rerun this and make and see if that worked.
65 00:07:16.090 ⇒ 00:07:19.420 Ethan Aaron: Oh, you were at Prequel before.
66 00:07:19.700 ⇒ 00:07:20.400 Uttam Kumaran: That was a prequel.
67 00:07:20.400 ⇒ 00:07:20.940 Ethan Aaron: Before.
68 00:07:20.940 ⇒ 00:07:21.260 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
69 00:07:21.260 ⇒ 00:07:22.849 Ethan Aaron: You’re an investor in wild, wild.
70 00:07:22.850 ⇒ 00:07:24.820 Uttam Kumaran: So you must, you know. I think you know Clint.
71 00:07:25.280 ⇒ 00:07:34.474 Ethan Aaron: Oh, yeah, yeah, no, I know. I know Clint. He comes to the happy hours I host in the city, and then I know Gabby and Leah, I’ve been talking to them a lot recently.
72 00:07:35.540 ⇒ 00:07:36.360 Ethan Aaron: you were.
73 00:07:37.450 ⇒ 00:07:49.080 Uttam Kumaran: I was in New York. I’m in Austin now. I I was at. So I worked at we work, and then I worked at a flow code they’re in based in Soho, and then was at Prequel. And then I moved here
74 00:07:49.473 ⇒ 00:08:02.699 Uttam Kumaran: kind of not not for any professional reasons, just because I I was here during Covid a bit loved it moved to Austin. And then, yeah, I started Brain Forge about a year and a half ago, basically started doing a lot of like
75 00:08:03.100 ⇒ 00:08:17.629 Uttam Kumaran: sort of snowflake data modeling data engineering bi stuff. And then, now, we’re also starting to do like building AI agents. For some clients. So yeah. And brain forge, we’re about like 10 people now. So kind of like just distributed. But like.
76 00:08:17.720 ⇒ 00:08:21.531 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, it’s been. It’s been awesome. Yeah, Clint is a really really good friend, and
77 00:08:22.322 ⇒ 00:08:26.500 Uttam Kumaran: happy to give him a little bit of money for what I had when he needed it. So.
78 00:08:26.740 ⇒ 00:08:30.260 Ethan Aaron: No, I I intro to him, to one of our investors that I love working with
79 00:08:30.480 ⇒ 00:08:30.930 Uttam Kumaran: Awesome.
80 00:08:30.930 ⇒ 00:08:37.960 Ethan Aaron: I’ll intro to him to a bunch of people but while I’m while I talk, if you go back into portable, I think you might need to swap out the
81 00:08:38.850 ⇒ 00:08:42.839 Ethan Aaron: schema. So if you go in, if you open up appdock portableio.
82 00:08:42.840 ⇒ 00:08:47.260 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t think I have the login cause. Nico is logged in
83 00:08:47.681 ⇒ 00:08:51.300 Uttam Kumaran: but I can ping him and just see if I can get it real quick.
84 00:08:51.540 ⇒ 00:08:55.850 Ethan Aaron: Okay just because it’s it’s still trying to operate on the portable.
85 00:08:55.850 ⇒ 00:08:57.520 Uttam Kumaran: On the portable schema.
86 00:08:57.520 ⇒ 00:08:58.260 Ethan Aaron: Yeah,
87 00:08:59.440 ⇒ 00:09:04.250 Ethan Aaron: if you can. I guess if you can grant access to the portable schema, too, we can at least make sure it works.
88 00:09:04.250 ⇒ 00:09:06.759 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, let’s just do that. Well, I’m just gonna
89 00:09:07.630 ⇒ 00:09:12.749 Ethan Aaron: He can also add you to portable. So in the account, he can add you as a user. But he’s just gonna be around to do that.
90 00:09:12.750 ⇒ 00:09:13.856 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Yeah.
91 00:09:14.410 ⇒ 00:09:15.289 Ethan Aaron: I don’t think I can do that.
92 00:09:15.290 ⇒ 00:09:17.620 Uttam Kumaran: The portable schema still exists.
93 00:09:17.780 ⇒ 00:09:19.559 Uttam Kumaran: I just made a new one.
94 00:09:20.475 ⇒ 00:09:28.769 Uttam Kumaran: Portable underscore gorgeous, but you can still use either of them, and ingest should have the same privileges on both.
95 00:09:30.080 ⇒ 00:09:32.360 Uttam Kumaran: Is it still giving you insufficient privileges.
96 00:09:32.360 ⇒ 00:09:33.160 Ethan Aaron: Yeah, it is.
97 00:09:33.500 ⇒ 00:09:34.760 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
98 00:09:39.950 ⇒ 00:09:40.660 Uttam Kumaran: true.
99 00:09:51.420 ⇒ 00:09:52.760 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. One. Sec.
100 00:10:36.250 ⇒ 00:10:38.619 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, you guys probably need to create stage.
101 00:10:39.160 ⇒ 00:10:40.200 Ethan Aaron: Yeah.
102 00:10:40.270 ⇒ 00:10:45.670 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay, so yeah, that’s not something. Cause we have scripts for 5 train. But they don’t create a stage. But for you guys.
103 00:10:46.070 ⇒ 00:10:47.569 Uttam Kumaran: it makes sense. Okay, cool.
104 00:10:47.630 ⇒ 00:10:50.180 Uttam Kumaran: Alright, give it a shot. Now.
105 00:10:50.930 ⇒ 00:10:51.830 Ethan Aaron: Let me.
106 00:10:51.830 ⇒ 00:10:52.990 Uttam Kumaran: Fingers crossed.
107 00:10:53.200 ⇒ 00:10:54.220 Ethan Aaron: Fingers crossed.
108 00:10:55.880 ⇒ 00:11:02.550 Ethan Aaron: Okay, so you are a services company. Who do you? Who’s your ideal customer? Who do you help?
109 00:11:02.740 ⇒ 00:11:03.650 Ethan Aaron: And.
110 00:11:04.155 ⇒ 00:11:04.660 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
111 00:11:04.660 ⇒ 00:11:14.969 Ethan Aaron: What’s like. I’m I’m always curious when I talk to founders of just like what’s like your goal, like you already have 10 people in 2 years. So like you’re not taking the whole like, I just want to be a 1 person.
112 00:11:15.657 ⇒ 00:11:42.829 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, our ideal customer. We’re probably looking. So we don’t really do a lot with like B, 2 B Sas or startups most of our companies. They work for like private businesses. We’re sort of figuring out our industry. But these are typically we’ve worked in we’ve done work in e-comm manufacturing and finance. We’re kind of heading more of this, like the old school sort of people that are just now getting into data and reporting.
113 00:11:42.830 ⇒ 00:11:55.549 Uttam Kumaran: So a lot of Ecom a lot of like legacy, sort of like people that are just adopting data like the b 2 b and startups. They’re like, really on the ball. So usually they’re like, they’re they’re fine. There’s. And there’s a lot of people.
114 00:11:55.550 ⇒ 00:12:00.569 Ethan Aaron: They’re shrinking like those teams are all shrinking and trying to like, we actually, yeah.
115 00:12:00.570 ⇒ 00:12:01.130 Uttam Kumaran: Nope.
116 00:12:01.130 ⇒ 00:12:02.439 Ethan Aaron: Customers right now, because.
117 00:12:02.440 ⇒ 00:12:02.869 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah.
118 00:12:02.870 ⇒ 00:12:10.379 Ethan Aaron: Everyone’s like we had 10 people. Now we have 2. And why are we spending $150,000 on Fivetran? So.
119 00:12:10.750 ⇒ 00:12:13.619 Ethan Aaron: But that’s not like the Greenfield like.
120 00:12:13.750 ⇒ 00:12:41.175 Uttam Kumaran: Totally totally so, for for so for us, it’s like cause. I want to go somewhere where we can really move the needle. And I want to go places where there’s a lot a lot of competition. So we, you know, we’ve done for me my background. I’ve done a lot of work in Ecom, in ads, in. And we’ve done stuff in manufacturing. And so we are kind of have this like private business focus. We’re probably gonna continue to go towards manufacturing go towards manufacturing ecom as well as
121 00:12:41.805 ⇒ 00:12:51.734 Uttam Kumaran: we. We may try to do some more stuff in healthcare, although it’s a little bit more stringent on like data security. And then, so yeah, I mentioned manufacturing com. And then we also have
122 00:12:52.210 ⇒ 00:12:53.910 Ethan Aaron: When you say manufacturer, by the way.
123 00:12:53.940 ⇒ 00:12:57.980 Ethan Aaron: it made more progress. So I don’t exactly, and I can’t see exactly where.
124 00:12:58.640 ⇒ 00:12:59.740 Uttam Kumaran: I can go check where?
125 00:12:59.740 ⇒ 00:13:05.425 Ethan Aaron: But we’re but we’re still. We’re still. We’re still seeing insufficient privileges to operate on schema portable
126 00:13:07.760 ⇒ 00:13:08.270 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, I want to.
127 00:13:08.270 ⇒ 00:13:11.910 Ethan Aaron: When you say manufacturing, what do you mean by that?
128 00:13:12.090 ⇒ 00:13:27.159 Uttam Kumaran: So these are manufacturing companies that probably have a software associated with them, or they have internal reporting on customers and things like that, manufacturing, not not because of like there’s like IoT data or anything specific. It’s actually just like that. Industry has no support from like
129 00:13:27.220 ⇒ 00:13:36.860 Uttam Kumaran: are sort of people, and they still are like just moving to like cloud and stuff like that. So we found a lot. And we just happened to work with a key customer that kind of gave us an in
130 00:13:38.000 ⇒ 00:13:42.158 Uttam Kumaran: So I think I maybe just missed. Let me just make sure that you have all the grants.
131 00:13:43.300 ⇒ 00:13:46.430 Ethan Aaron: It’s interesting. The reason why I say that is, we work with
132 00:13:46.650 ⇒ 00:13:51.479 Ethan Aaron: the verticals that we set. We see, hey, Nicholas? Our.
133 00:13:51.480 ⇒ 00:13:53.570 Nicolas Sucari: Haven we’re saying.
134 00:13:54.080 ⇒ 00:13:54.570 Ethan Aaron: Try.
135 00:13:54.570 ⇒ 00:13:55.070 Uttam Kumaran: If.
136 00:13:55.300 ⇒ 00:13:59.070 Ethan Aaron: Traction in is like we work with a company called Gallo. Mechanical. I don’t know.
137 00:13:59.070 ⇒ 00:13:59.430 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
138 00:13:59.430 ⇒ 00:14:02.539 Ethan Aaron: John Steinmetz over there. He
139 00:14:03.350 ⇒ 00:14:16.310 Ethan Aaron: they’re they’re like a multi 100 million Dollar year Construction Company, and so they they are manufacturing their own stuff. So they use, like all those types of tools and systems. So we pull like dewalt factory data for them. Factory.
140 00:14:16.310 ⇒ 00:14:17.200 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, really great!
141 00:14:17.200 ⇒ 00:14:20.579 Ethan Aaron: Like viewpoint. I don’t know if you’ve heard of this company or vista.
142 00:14:20.580 ⇒ 00:14:22.620 Uttam Kumaran: I have. Yes, yes, I have.
143 00:14:23.040 ⇒ 00:14:25.170 Ethan Aaron: Pro core. We’re building out right now for a.
144 00:14:25.170 ⇒ 00:14:25.930 Uttam Kumaran: Nice.
145 00:14:25.930 ⇒ 00:14:36.020 Ethan Aaron: 30 billion dollar real estate fund. We’re building pro core Argus and all the real estate, like the weird real estate. Like, again, I love the type of stuff you’re talking about, where it’s just like
146 00:14:37.320 ⇒ 00:14:42.761 Ethan Aaron: big like these companies have serious money. They don’t have any idea works,
147 00:14:43.660 ⇒ 00:14:49.589 Ethan Aaron: shipping, shipping and logistics companies like all the like fleet management software. I don’t know if you’ve seen any of this stuff.
148 00:14:49.590 ⇒ 00:14:54.929 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. So we we did a big sort of shipping initiative for one of our big e-commerce companies. So we learned a lot about
149 00:14:54.990 ⇒ 00:15:02.379 Uttam Kumaran: like ups data, Fedex data ship station, and then those rate sheets. And so we’re
150 00:15:02.400 ⇒ 00:15:11.269 Uttam Kumaran: but it’s like, it’s also there are shipping logistics company. There’s people who use them. So it’s kind of just like, if you know shipping, then you’re like, you have some avenues. Yeah, totally.
151 00:15:11.460 ⇒ 00:15:13.969 Ethan Aaron: But I love that type of stuff because no one like it’s not.
152 00:15:14.210 ⇒ 00:15:40.169 Uttam Kumaran: I love that, too. I think that’s like there are people that have real need for data. They’re not just like trying to optimize like a couple of things they’re like Yo. I don’t even know how much we ship today. And I’m like, this is a great problem for us to like solve the problem. There is like we have to talk to some random. We this is our problem is like some random vendor who are like we can get you the data, and like, no, we’ve never heard of S. 3 like we can fax it to you.
153 00:15:40.170 ⇒ 00:15:44.290 Ethan Aaron: One of my favorite integrations we built is a tool called Mcleod Software, which is like a.
154 00:15:44.585 ⇒ 00:15:44.880 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
155 00:15:44.880 ⇒ 00:15:49.480 Ethan Aaron: I’ve seen it labeled on the back of trucks before. Did you update the permissions? By the way, I can rerun this.
156 00:15:50.110 ⇒ 00:15:50.740 Uttam Kumaran: Yes,
157 00:15:51.730 ⇒ 00:15:53.589 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, if you could try that now.
158 00:15:53.590 ⇒ 00:15:54.220 Ethan Aaron: Yup,
159 00:15:55.830 ⇒ 00:16:02.609 Ethan Aaron: But Mcleod software, their tool looks like it’s from the eighties. And
160 00:16:02.870 ⇒ 00:16:09.430 Ethan Aaron: we got the doc somehow. And then but we’re looking at these docs being like these are not useful docs. So
161 00:16:09.520 ⇒ 00:16:24.614 Ethan Aaron: we had our customer reach out to Mcleod software. And the only way to build this integration is to just talk to this guy, Jesse. You have to like talk to Jesse. And Jesse’s like, Oh, yeah, just like, use this query parameter I’m like is this documented? He’s like, no, no, but I just like no, I know. I know how this work this works.
162 00:16:24.840 ⇒ 00:16:32.570 Uttam Kumaran: That’s crazy. Yeah. And it’s like, it’s like, we’re, I’m here like, I don’t want to build a next. I don’t want to build another Zendesk thing like that’s the sort of work that like.
163 00:16:32.570 ⇒ 00:16:33.120 Ethan Aaron: Yep.
164 00:16:33.380 ⇒ 00:16:45.189 Uttam Kumaran: I love. Africa’s just done like this. I’ve done the basics for so long. That’s sort of like long tail problems where I’m also excited because I read a lot about portable over the years, too. So excited. And yeah, we have some customers that are just like
165 00:16:45.850 ⇒ 00:16:55.500 Uttam Kumaran: dude. This is like way too expensive. And the 5 train I don’t know. I’ve been using 5 train for like 8 years now or so, or like 7 years. And yeah, it’s it’s just getting more expensive. And
166 00:16:55.750 ⇒ 00:17:01.210 Uttam Kumaran: I feel like they’re they have a market share to lose. So I’m glad that there’s more competitors now.
167 00:17:01.780 ⇒ 00:17:02.560 Ethan Aaron: This is.
168 00:17:02.560 ⇒ 00:17:03.619 Uttam Kumaran: Is it still failing?
169 00:17:03.620 ⇒ 00:17:05.079 Ethan Aaron: Yeah. Still still failed. Yeah.
170 00:17:05.280 ⇒ 00:17:11.939 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, let me just look at the logs and try to see cause I’m just making sure you have all. We don’t really have a bunch of stage grants. Typically, so I’m kind of just.
171 00:17:12.250 ⇒ 00:17:12.560 Ethan Aaron: Yeah.
172 00:17:12.560 ⇒ 00:17:13.729 Uttam Kumaran: Adding them on, but let me.
173 00:17:13.730 ⇒ 00:17:21.426 Ethan Aaron: Like we have this script that we typically give people like you’re probably granularly than other people do.
174 00:17:22.270 ⇒ 00:17:23.160 Ethan Aaron: But.
175 00:17:23.160 ⇒ 00:17:27.759 Nicolas Sucari: Use the script that you shared. I don’t know if it was you or yeah, Danny.
176 00:17:28.109 ⇒ 00:17:29.049 Nicolas Sucari: sure. So that’s great.
177 00:17:29.050 ⇒ 00:17:35.459 Ethan Aaron: 2 scripts. So there’s a script in our destination for Snowflake. That has
178 00:17:35.490 ⇒ 00:17:40.120 Ethan Aaron: exactly what we need, the one I just shared in zoom and then
179 00:17:41.210 ⇒ 00:17:50.399 Ethan Aaron: the one Dennis shared. Actually some of the instructions in there were not correct. So he was troubleshooting the the insufficient privileges thing and asked you to create a stage.
180 00:17:50.450 ⇒ 00:18:00.229 Ethan Aaron: you creating that stage caused the new issues we saw today. That’s what we just undid. And then we really, just like right now, it’s just we. We need permissions on the
181 00:18:00.330 ⇒ 00:18:02.497 Ethan Aaron: portable schema. And then
182 00:18:03.810 ⇒ 00:18:09.092 Ethan Aaron: I recommended that you, instead of using a portable schema, you just use a like portable, gorgeous schema.
183 00:18:09.680 ⇒ 00:18:10.220 Nicolas Sucari: Okay.
184 00:18:10.680 ⇒ 00:18:15.000 Ethan Aaron: So that’s set up. We just need to update it in portable. Now.
185 00:18:15.000 ⇒ 00:18:19.430 Uttam Kumaran: Can you, Ethan? I don’t have access to. Can you send me a like a can you copy paste that.
186 00:18:19.760 ⇒ 00:18:21.849 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah, I mean me, either. I can’t access.
187 00:18:22.170 ⇒ 00:18:23.460 Ethan Aaron: Oh, I thought it was.
188 00:18:23.460 ⇒ 00:18:25.040 Nicolas Sucari: I can’t access because of.
189 00:18:25.040 ⇒ 00:18:29.269 Ethan Aaron: I just thought it was a publicly available link. I just realized it’s in our app hold on one second.
190 00:18:29.270 ⇒ 00:18:30.040 Uttam Kumaran: No worries.
191 00:18:31.280 ⇒ 00:18:34.410 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah, no, I can’t access, because I’m not in the VPN. Right now.
192 00:18:34.410 ⇒ 00:18:40.012 Ethan Aaron: That’s I’m good. I’ll ping it, and I’ll ping you in slack.
193 00:18:40.940 ⇒ 00:18:44.494 Uttam Kumaran: I was gonna ping it in here, but I realized
194 00:18:59.070 ⇒ 00:19:01.700 Nicolas Sucari: So Utam, are you gonna create a new role.
195 00:19:02.582 ⇒ 00:19:05.307 Uttam Kumaran: No, we’re not creating a new role. I’m just
196 00:19:06.970 ⇒ 00:19:08.840 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Give me one. Sec.
197 00:19:11.690 ⇒ 00:19:12.560 Nicolas Sucari: Ecosystem.
198 00:19:12.560 ⇒ 00:19:15.649 Ethan Aaron: If you haven’t, if you haven’t looked at it is the Hvac and plumbing world.
199 00:19:16.620 ⇒ 00:19:36.070 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, really, okay. So we are, we are working with we’re currently demoing an AI solution to one of the larger home services companies here in Central Texas. But we haven’t. I mean, so the reason why we started doing data and AI is one. The AI thing is just, I think there’s just not many people that are doing it available for hire.
200 00:19:36.340 ⇒ 00:19:49.069 Uttam Kumaran: But of course, like our background is mostly in data. But there’s like really complimentary like, if we can get in on something, we can start to cross our services. But who are you guys working like? Is it the Hvac roll up, or like.
201 00:19:49.390 ⇒ 00:19:56.359 Ethan Aaron: No. So so we work with a variety of different Hvac and plumbing companies. So Service Titan and House call pro are the 2 like main companies in that.
202 00:19:56.360 ⇒ 00:19:59.489 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, great, yeah. I mean service. Titan is in the news now. Yeah. Yeah.
203 00:19:59.490 ⇒ 00:20:01.140 Ethan Aaron: Yeah, not for good, like I,
204 00:20:01.140 ⇒ 00:20:02.700 Ethan Aaron: not for well, I think so.
205 00:20:02.700 ⇒ 00:20:09.650 Ethan Aaron: It’s a great company like I think it’s a great product going after a great market, and then I read about, did you read about their cap table?
206 00:20:09.650 ⇒ 00:20:10.170 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
207 00:20:10.170 ⇒ 00:20:12.570 Ethan Aaron: I read about their cap table. I was like, How the fuck! How did you do that?
208 00:20:12.570 ⇒ 00:20:16.580 Uttam Kumaran: They’re like on Series Z. And I think they just like they’re just running out of money.
209 00:20:16.870 ⇒ 00:20:20.650 Ethan Aaron: So I was like, Yeah, no wonder you have to. Ipo, like you’re
210 00:20:20.660 ⇒ 00:20:23.309 Ethan Aaron: that’s really interesting. And then that made me think I was like.
211 00:20:23.510 ⇒ 00:20:27.650 Ethan Aaron: I wonder what 5 trans debt terms look like.
212 00:20:28.110 ⇒ 00:20:28.690 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
213 00:20:28.690 ⇒ 00:20:31.079 Ethan Aaron: They’re probably not that different. I’ve heard they got.
214 00:20:31.080 ⇒ 00:20:31.590 Uttam Kumaran: No.
215 00:20:31.590 ⇒ 00:20:34.950 Ethan Aaron: I’ve talked to people that know the people at Vista that did that round.
216 00:20:34.950 ⇒ 00:20:35.340 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
217 00:20:35.340 ⇒ 00:20:47.959 Ethan Aaron: And they were like vista got everything they wanted out of 5 trend. So it’s like, I just wonder what’s in there. And I wonder what like that that must be? I don’t know. Whenever I see them increasing prices. I’m like.
218 00:20:48.240 ⇒ 00:20:52.060 Uttam Kumaran: I know. Well, I just know that playing with pricing is like
219 00:20:52.090 ⇒ 00:20:59.380 Uttam Kumaran: an example of like you run out of innovation, basically like. And then you just start fucking around pricing, you know.
220 00:20:59.380 ⇒ 00:20:59.790 Ethan Aaron: Like trip.
221 00:20:59.790 ⇒ 00:21:00.260 Uttam Kumaran: That’s called.
222 00:21:00.700 ⇒ 00:21:05.759 Ethan Aaron: I don’t even know many people using 5 train transformations, but it’s like they started charging for it.
223 00:21:05.760 ⇒ 00:21:12.549 Uttam Kumaran: No, I don’t know anybody who’s using that. I don’t know why, if you’re like, if you’re like a legit dbt person, you would want to put your Dbt
224 00:21:12.910 ⇒ 00:21:14.090 Uttam Kumaran: there.
225 00:21:14.735 ⇒ 00:21:20.849 Uttam Kumaran: And yeah, I just think again, there’s a product. There’s probably a product manager, a senior. Pm, there, that’s like.
226 00:21:21.130 ⇒ 00:21:24.279 Uttam Kumaran: yeah pushing it, and it gets done. And yeah.
227 00:21:24.290 ⇒ 00:21:28.020 Uttam Kumaran: I’m trying to find out what else what other permissions. I’m missing
228 00:21:30.390 ⇒ 00:21:34.526 Uttam Kumaran: but I am having a hard time figuring this out
229 00:21:35.970 ⇒ 00:21:41.129 Uttam Kumaran: because I granted I granted usage. Create stages.
230 00:21:43.990 ⇒ 00:21:53.390 Uttam Kumaran: I wonder if it’s usage. Read, write on all stages, and
231 00:21:59.360 ⇒ 00:22:04.069 Uttam Kumaran: grant privileges on all tables on all views, future tables, future views.
232 00:22:07.040 ⇒ 00:22:10.919 Uttam Kumaran: Do you have that snowflake setup script.
233 00:22:10.920 ⇒ 00:22:12.120 Ethan Aaron: So I pinged it to you. It’s like.
234 00:22:12.270 ⇒ 00:22:13.920 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, sorry. Sorry. Okay. Let me.
235 00:22:14.139 ⇒ 00:22:18.970 Ethan Aaron: Yeah. Sorry about that. I tried pasting in zoom, and it didn’t work. And then I was like, that’s probably stupid, anyway.
236 00:22:19.190 ⇒ 00:22:20.506 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, let me let me
237 00:22:21.280 ⇒ 00:22:24.339 Uttam Kumaran: Let me just pick out what we don’t have from here.
238 00:22:34.520 ⇒ 00:22:40.200 Ethan Aaron: Yeah, I used to before portable. I was the data personal live ramp. So I was at a.
239 00:22:40.200 ⇒ 00:22:57.500 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, I’ve done a lot. I’ve done work with live ramp. So we at flow code. We tried to do like identity matching cause we had Q as a QR. Code company. So we were exploring live ramp for I for like id matching basically but but their stuff seemed kind of Jank like I I was on like the procurement side. I’m like
240 00:22:57.670 ⇒ 00:23:01.940 Uttam Kumaran: they just weren’t telling me like what I wanted to hear in terms of like accuracy and like.
241 00:23:02.220 ⇒ 00:23:03.390 Ethan Aaron: They are.
242 00:23:03.460 ⇒ 00:23:05.190 Ethan Aaron: There’s no other option to live.
243 00:23:05.190 ⇒ 00:23:06.650 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, that’s so. That’s the thing.
244 00:23:06.650 ⇒ 00:23:15.500 Ethan Aaron: So they they we were a startup competing with live ramp in 2,016, and we were doing really well. Buying and selling the match data that you have to have to do.
245 00:23:15.500 ⇒ 00:23:15.920 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
246 00:23:15.920 ⇒ 00:23:24.029 Ethan Aaron: It was Us. And another company called Circulate, that were coming in like effectively buying and selling the raw data that powers live ramp, and all their competitors.
247 00:23:24.350 ⇒ 00:23:29.048 Ethan Aaron: The same day they spent 200 million dollars to buy us both.
248 00:23:29.410 ⇒ 00:23:29.910 Uttam Kumaran: Wow!
249 00:23:29.910 ⇒ 00:23:32.699 Ethan Aaron: It doesn’t took us off the market, which, like
250 00:23:32.790 ⇒ 00:23:39.856 Ethan Aaron: that, combined with the fact that cookies are dying or hypothetically, are gonna die one day in the next decade.
251 00:23:40.210 ⇒ 00:23:40.830 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
252 00:23:40.830 ⇒ 00:23:41.820 Ethan Aaron: They?
253 00:23:42.160 ⇒ 00:23:44.760 Ethan Aaron: No one competes with them anymore.
254 00:23:45.700 ⇒ 00:23:51.401 Ethan Aaron: So they have a monopoly. They’ve just like royally not done anything with it.
255 00:23:52.370 ⇒ 00:23:55.409 Ethan Aaron: so it’s interesting, but I was the head of data there and then.
256 00:23:55.410 ⇒ 00:23:56.000 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, okay. Great.
257 00:23:56.000 ⇒ 00:23:59.480 Ethan Aaron: I’m the one that put in place 5 train there, and that that’s back. When 5 train was like
258 00:23:59.500 ⇒ 00:24:01.810 Ethan Aaron: it was $3,000 for a connector, or 6,000.
259 00:24:01.810 ⇒ 00:24:02.280 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
260 00:24:02.280 ⇒ 00:24:11.430 Ethan Aaron: Connector. Those are your 2 options, and it’s like you could use it as many times as you want it. And I was like, this is great like and then stitch and Illuma got bought
261 00:24:14.000 ⇒ 00:24:14.830 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
262 00:24:15.010 ⇒ 00:24:19.269 Ethan Aaron: And 5 trends had no competitors for 5 years, so.
263 00:24:19.270 ⇒ 00:24:19.810 Uttam Kumaran: So.
264 00:24:21.470 ⇒ 00:24:22.210 Ethan Aaron: Yeah.
265 00:24:24.450 ⇒ 00:24:25.610 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
266 00:24:27.580 ⇒ 00:24:30.184 Nicolas Sucari: Guys, I need to drop to another meeting.
267 00:24:32.210 ⇒ 00:24:33.539 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, Nico, I’ll just tell you.
268 00:24:33.540 ⇒ 00:24:33.870 Nicolas Sucari: You need.
269 00:24:33.870 ⇒ 00:24:37.088 Uttam Kumaran: We’re yeah. We’re probably we’re probably gonna resolve. Can you?
270 00:24:37.450 ⇒ 00:24:40.659 Uttam Kumaran: Can you put your portable cred somewhere, or can you invite me to portable.
271 00:24:40.660 ⇒ 00:24:41.599 Ethan Aaron: Yeah, if you just.
272 00:24:42.990 ⇒ 00:24:43.689 Uttam Kumaran: Way I just can.
273 00:24:43.690 ⇒ 00:24:49.379 Ethan Aaron: Corner. There’s a if you click on your image, there’s a users and roles.
274 00:24:50.760 ⇒ 00:24:55.350 Ethan Aaron: link. And you can just add emails there and then they can log in directly.
275 00:24:56.500 ⇒ 00:25:08.290 Nicolas Sucari: Okay, wait. I need to connect to the VPN. So I’m gonna do that and share that. Or if not, I’m gonna share my credentials to you. Oh, no, it’s
276 00:25:08.520 ⇒ 00:25:12.089 Nicolas Sucari: I’m yeah. Logging is by like a magic link in.
277 00:25:12.090 ⇒ 00:25:15.659 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, maybe. Yeah. Whenever you get it done, it’s fine.
278 00:25:16.260 ⇒ 00:25:18.420 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah, okay, thank you guys.
279 00:25:18.950 ⇒ 00:25:19.690 Ethan Aaron: Yep.
280 00:25:20.050 ⇒ 00:25:22.950 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, Ethan, can we try one more time? I just that’s do it.
281 00:25:22.950 ⇒ 00:25:24.009 Uttam Kumaran: Bunch of changes.
282 00:25:24.604 ⇒ 00:25:30.290 Ethan Aaron: I wish I was more of a Snowflake wizard. I’ve just dedicated my life to reading Api docs instead of
283 00:25:30.390 ⇒ 00:25:30.900 Ethan Aaron: snowfall.
284 00:25:30.900 ⇒ 00:25:35.829 Uttam Kumaran: No, I. Yeah. So for me, I’m the opposite. Well, yeah, I’m the opposite. I guess I know the
285 00:25:36.000 ⇒ 00:25:40.170 Uttam Kumaran: the top 10 sort of Api docs pretty clearly, but it worked.
286 00:25:40.170 ⇒ 00:25:43.770 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, let’s oh, let’s go! That’s great!
287 00:25:43.770 ⇒ 00:25:46.000 Ethan Aaron: 1 1 question for you on gorgeous.
288 00:25:46.300 ⇒ 00:25:47.999 Ethan Aaron: Do you need custom fields
289 00:25:48.510 ⇒ 00:25:54.030 Ethan Aaron: on tickets or no? The reason why I say this is, if you need. If you don’t need them.
290 00:25:54.730 ⇒ 00:26:03.659 Ethan Aaron: we sync all the data, and it takes it takes a while. But we’ll get all the data if you do need them. We have to make one Api call for every single ticket you have, which
291 00:26:03.840 ⇒ 00:26:09.705 Ethan Aaron: I’m I’m setting it up right now to incrementally sync that going forward, but your initial backfill would just take a lot longer.
292 00:26:11.796 ⇒ 00:26:14.113 Uttam Kumaran: that’s a tough question. Let me
293 00:26:14.500 ⇒ 00:26:21.759 Ethan Aaron: Let me run it without it, for now and then. And you’re like, Hey, I need custom fields. There’s just another endpoint called ticket detail.
294 00:26:22.200 ⇒ 00:26:27.509 Ethan Aaron: that last night I was working on speeding it up. Because I think
295 00:26:27.800 ⇒ 00:26:33.029 Ethan Aaron: we can’t incrementally sync tickets. Unfortunately, but we can incrementally pick.
296 00:26:33.180 ⇒ 00:26:40.629 Ethan Aaron: We can incrementally. Not make an extra 100,000 Api calls because the gorgeous Api is the gorgeous Api. Yes.
297 00:26:40.990 ⇒ 00:26:46.717 Ethan Aaron: but so I will run it as we speak, for so it’s still set up to go to the portable schema.
298 00:26:46.990 ⇒ 00:26:52.499 Uttam Kumaran: That’s fine. I’ll I’ll I’ll move. I’ll fix clean everything in the back end, and later that’s fine.
299 00:26:52.500 ⇒ 00:26:55.450 Ethan Aaron: No, but awesome. Thank you for getting. Thank you for working with with me on this.
300 00:26:55.450 ⇒ 00:27:08.719 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Yeah. And then, in terms of your your past question about goals. Yeah. So I I don’t know. I knew when I got in this business. I’ve done some contracting on this side before. And I knew that like, yeah, you could probably balance 2 or 3 of these and kind of make
301 00:27:08.890 ⇒ 00:27:12.390 Uttam Kumaran: whatever 1020 k, and be like. But you’re still working like a lot.
302 00:27:12.623 ⇒ 00:27:34.039 Uttam Kumaran: And it’s still a nightmare, because you’re basically like running a 1 person consulting firm. And it’s a lot to learn. So my goal from the start was like, we’re not doing that like this is going big, or we’re not doing this because there’s no there’s no middle ground. So a lot of people that I started with definitely turned out because you end up in the same order like 1020 K. You’re like, Wow, make a lot of money. But then your life is still insane. You have 3 bosses instead of one.
303 00:27:34.342 ⇒ 00:27:42.520 Uttam Kumaran: So for me it was always for this, like bigger sort of goal. The thing is is like this, business isn’t complicated. It’s service business. Happen. So
304 00:27:42.520 ⇒ 00:28:03.709 Uttam Kumaran: people have done agencies and services. I think the biggest thing is one AI is helping us do this a little bit more leaner, like a lot of our internal operations are getting helped a lot with AI, I think also, we’re basically gonna train every data person we hire to use AI to like speed stuff up and then also, we wanted to do the AI work because I started using AI internally. And I was like, it’s stuff is hard to do.
305 00:28:03.710 ⇒ 00:28:04.270 Ethan Aaron: Yep.
306 00:28:04.270 ⇒ 00:28:13.019 Uttam Kumaran: And I’m like, there’s God, there’s no. And I started reading articles about how much Bain and Mckinsey these guys are making. And we actually wrote a blog post about that. How much money these guys are making. And I was like.
307 00:28:13.080 ⇒ 00:28:18.519 Uttam Kumaran: dude. This is insane. Those guys don’t know anything. And they’re just probably just raking it in for like strategic services.
308 00:28:18.520 ⇒ 00:28:19.200 Ethan Aaron: Presentation.
309 00:28:19.200 ⇒ 00:28:36.839 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. And so I was like, dude if we can, if we can get into the business of doing it, I think, of course, like, I don’t have much background, so we’ll have to learn along the way. But people will be wanting to implement that in production, and then we will come in and also try to end up doing data work for them. So those are kind of the 2 things we’re we’re really going for
310 00:28:37.108 ⇒ 00:28:55.209 Uttam Kumaran: so we’re doing a lot, I think eventually, in the data side, too, we for some customers, we do like holistic like data team as a service like you can hire us to do like data, engine modeling and analysis. Other people just want, like, we need a Dbt person, or we need a snowflake person. We will probably head more towards the other route, just because those contracts are
311 00:28:55.280 ⇒ 00:28:56.480 Uttam Kumaran: like a lot more technical.
312 00:28:56.746 ⇒ 00:28:58.080 Ethan Aaron: Just data as a service.
313 00:28:58.080 ⇒ 00:29:02.750 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, no more towards the like, specific technologies, like going deeper into snowflake.
314 00:29:03.460 ⇒ 00:29:25.000 Uttam Kumaran: because the the bi and doing dashboards is like really complicated. I would do it if we could charge way more. But doing this holistic days. And it’s just it’s a more complicated problem than being like we just need you to come in and learn. Do the specific snowflake stuff. So we want to niche down towards like being really more pros at Dbt modeling snowflake stuff. And then we want to add data bricks.
315 00:29:25.408 ⇒ 00:29:42.120 Uttam Kumaran: We still will just do this holistic thing. But I think we’ll just raise our prices if we do like come in and just bring us in but it’s nice, because I don’t think there’s many like for me. We I just my whole career is built on working with exacts and like dumbing down this sort of stuff for them. So it’s it’s worked out for us. So.
316 00:29:42.370 ⇒ 00:29:43.259 Ethan Aaron: Cool, that that.
317 00:29:44.280 ⇒ 00:29:44.770 Uttam Kumaran: And we’re.
318 00:29:44.770 ⇒ 00:29:45.389 Ethan Aaron: Is like.
319 00:29:45.670 ⇒ 00:29:46.039 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Go ahead.
320 00:29:47.700 ⇒ 00:29:50.750 Ethan Aaron: Since Brooklyn data. Co.
321 00:29:51.690 ⇒ 00:29:53.880 Ethan Aaron: There aren’t as many like.
322 00:29:54.070 ⇒ 00:30:00.577 Ethan Aaron: not hyper like. I don’t know what the right way of saying is like fast growing services businesses in the data world like,
323 00:30:01.250 ⇒ 00:30:07.949 Uttam Kumaran: This Ph, data. There’s like a size. I mean, there’s a couple there’s a couple of like big ones. But those guys are very, very big.
324 00:30:07.950 ⇒ 00:30:09.710 Ethan Aaron: Yeah, I think.
325 00:30:09.710 ⇒ 00:30:14.519 Uttam Kumaran: A lot of people get stuck. Well, a lot of people get stuck in the place we’re at like they get stuck in this like
326 00:30:14.620 ⇒ 00:30:33.640 Uttam Kumaran: couple of clients. It’s hard. It’s really hard to do it, and it takes a lot of luck and a lot of for me. I think we have the supply side, because I just was an engineer myself, and I have a lot of friends. So we were kind of able to like kick. Start that. Of course you need to sell, and then, but as you kind of get some clients and helps to sell more, you make more friends.
327 00:30:33.640 ⇒ 00:30:34.030 Ethan Aaron: Yeah.
328 00:30:34.030 ⇒ 00:30:40.439 Uttam Kumaran: They send you more. So it kind of gets bigger and bigger. But again, I’ve worked in startups my whole career. So
329 00:30:40.470 ⇒ 00:30:51.699 Uttam Kumaran: it’s not like data is like, honestly, the easiest part. And the thing I love about this business, and this everything else is like really fucking hard. So yeah.
330 00:30:51.700 ⇒ 00:30:55.469 Ethan Aaron: The most difficult part like to me 3 years. So we started 5.
331 00:30:55.470 ⇒ 00:30:59.900 Uttam Kumaran: Well, you tell me I mean you’re I mean you’re you’re in your own business. I gotta tell you that. But it’s just like.
332 00:30:59.900 ⇒ 00:31:00.310 Ethan Aaron: Or so.
333 00:31:00.310 ⇒ 00:31:02.390 Uttam Kumaran: Caustic switching, and everything is crazy.
334 00:31:02.390 ⇒ 00:31:11.460 Ethan Aaron: Yeah, the context machines like for us, we always try and figure out like, how far can we expand what we do without going insane and trying to take on too much and like.
335 00:31:11.460 ⇒ 00:31:11.830 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
336 00:31:12.980 ⇒ 00:31:36.860 Ethan Aaron: But for us, like for 2 years we just built we were trying to like we built. Our plan has always been. We want to build and maintain 10,000 integrations. When that’s your goal, you can’t do it the same way. Everyone else does. Like everyone else, have python scripts. We’re gonna have an open source community. It’s like, that’s not how it has to. You have to fundamentally change how you build and maintain integrations. So for 2 years. We just did that. And then we’re like cool. We have an Elt product. Let’s sell it. And I was like, Oh, no like.
337 00:31:36.980 ⇒ 00:31:40.910 Ethan Aaron: how like, how do I get in front of people? And okay, sorry
338 00:31:40.910 ⇒ 00:31:51.630 Ethan Aaron: I posted in the Dbt slack I posted in locally optimistic. I post on Linkedin. I had 2,000 connections on Linkedin that we’re all just my friends. And I was like, this is bad like. We have no way to get customers. So like.
339 00:31:52.250 ⇒ 00:31:55.819 Ethan Aaron: I think I over indexed over the last 3 years on marketing
340 00:31:56.200 ⇒ 00:32:02.749 Ethan Aaron: like started posting constantly on Linkedin for years, like Linkedin, is at this point our biggest channel by far.
341 00:32:02.750 ⇒ 00:32:06.785 Uttam Kumaran: No, I mean, I know you from Linkedin for like years now, like I just know your face.
342 00:32:07.010 ⇒ 00:32:13.669 Ethan Aaron: But it’s like that. That was that was manufactured is the wrong answer.
343 00:32:13.670 ⇒ 00:32:15.340 Uttam Kumaran: No, that is, that is the answer like that.
344 00:32:15.340 ⇒ 00:32:15.750 Ethan Aaron: Invitation.
345 00:32:15.750 ⇒ 00:32:17.460 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, it is! You have to bootstrap a channel.
346 00:32:17.460 ⇒ 00:32:32.469 Ethan Aaron: Like I I had to do it. It wasn’t me being. I think it’d be fun to be on Linkedin. It was me being like. I don’t know how I’m going to get in front of customers, otherwise so like that worked. And then it worked a lot better than I thought. Then I like accidentally started these low key data. Happy hours that then took over like they’re everywhere now. I don’t know if.
347 00:32:32.470 ⇒ 00:32:32.930 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah.
348 00:32:33.180 ⇒ 00:32:33.430 Ethan Aaron: But.
349 00:32:33.706 ⇒ 00:32:37.020 Uttam Kumaran: Been to the one here I forgot who from Shipyard runs it.
350 00:32:37.020 ⇒ 00:32:37.490 Ethan Aaron: Like virtual.
351 00:32:37.490 ⇒ 00:32:39.269 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s a blank blank. Yeah.
352 00:32:39.593 ⇒ 00:32:47.040 Ethan Aaron: And then the other thing we’ve invested heavily in. We did. We invested for about a year. It still pays dividends. Is
353 00:32:47.210 ⇒ 00:32:54.659 Ethan Aaron: SEO. We have pages on our website that drive traffic to our site and sign ups, and
354 00:32:55.490 ⇒ 00:32:58.609 Ethan Aaron: especially for us, because we’re a long tail business like.
355 00:32:58.610 ⇒ 00:32:59.120 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
356 00:32:59.120 ⇒ 00:33:03.060 Ethan Aaron: One searching for, gorgeous to date of birth.
357 00:33:03.060 ⇒ 00:33:04.550 Uttam Kumaran: Connect. Yes, Connector.
358 00:33:06.030 ⇒ 00:33:12.132 Ethan Aaron: Like finds us and signs up so like that’s helped a lot. But it’s like,
359 00:33:13.150 ⇒ 00:33:18.240 Ethan Aaron: I think now we’re like it changes every quarter, is the answer. Like we’re the the.
360 00:33:18.460 ⇒ 00:33:22.180 Ethan Aaron: The biggest challenge for us is also our probably biggest asset is like
361 00:33:22.610 ⇒ 00:33:24.950 Ethan Aaron: we only have 4 people. We have 60.
362 00:33:24.950 ⇒ 00:33:26.090 Uttam Kumaran: No way.
363 00:33:26.090 ⇒ 00:33:28.299 Ethan Aaron: We have 1,600 systems we integrate with.
364 00:33:28.300 ⇒ 00:33:31.370 Uttam Kumaran: Wait. It’s all 4 of them in this channel with us, basically.
365 00:33:32.670 ⇒ 00:33:35.110 Ethan Aaron: Yeah, you’ve got half. You’ve met half the team at this point.
366 00:33:35.460 ⇒ 00:33:35.810 Nicolas Sucari: Alright!
367 00:33:35.810 ⇒ 00:33:36.219 Ethan Aaron: Thank you.
368 00:33:36.220 ⇒ 00:33:37.770 Uttam Kumaran: It’s crazy crazy!
369 00:33:37.770 ⇒ 00:33:40.119 Uttam Kumaran: That’s awesome. Dude congrats, man, that’s great.
370 00:33:40.120 ⇒ 00:33:43.249 Ethan Aaron: Like. It’s our. It’s our biggest asset, but it’s also like
371 00:33:43.560 ⇒ 00:33:54.959 Ethan Aaron: it means we have to be ruthless about what we say. Yes to and what we say no to which is why we haven’t built the biggest integrations until now. And now we’re like, so about a month or 2 ago.
372 00:33:55.130 ⇒ 00:33:59.250 Ethan Aaron: I kind of just like dropped on our team. I was like, oh, by the way, like.
373 00:33:59.820 ⇒ 00:34:07.179 Ethan Aaron: we’re not like, our focus is no longer long tail integrations like we’re still gonna do it like Klaus, can build and maintain
374 00:34:07.280 ⇒ 00:34:15.440 Ethan Aaron: like whatever needs to be built and maintained for people. But, like our Sergio and Dennis, our 2 engineers, me and part of Klaus’s time now is just
375 00:34:15.570 ⇒ 00:34:20.877 Ethan Aaron: the biggest integrations. So like Klaus has been adding, like the weird niche endpoints in Shopify
376 00:34:21.199 ⇒ 00:34:21.729 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
377 00:34:22.110 ⇒ 00:34:29.990 Ethan Aaron: We are like. I spent a bunch of time last week on shopify because we have a few customers on it figuring out like we? Because of how we built our system, we can actually
378 00:34:30.429 ⇒ 00:34:39.100 Ethan Aaron: run stuff in parallel for a specific endpoint. So, like the orders shopify instead of us, it takes a really long time to pull orders out of shopify.
379 00:34:39.630 ⇒ 00:34:45.360 Ethan Aaron: what I found out last we found this out for Netsuite, actually. And then we’ve been reusing it elsewhere. We can kick off
380 00:34:45.380 ⇒ 00:34:51.209 Ethan Aaron: like right right now, when we put shopify orders, instead of saying, Give me the 1st one, then the second one.
381 00:34:51.219 ⇒ 00:34:51.799 Uttam Kumaran: Next one.
382 00:34:51.800 ⇒ 00:34:55.099 Ethan Aaron: He said, give me 7 day windows from 10 years.
383 00:34:55.100 ⇒ 00:34:57.130 Uttam Kumaran: Pick up 700 of those, and then you push them.
384 00:34:57.139 ⇒ 00:34:59.199 Ethan Aaron: And then we just Max out like what like.
385 00:34:59.750 ⇒ 00:35:04.059 Ethan Aaron: when I rolled that out last week, I was like, I wonder if this will work in are the throughput.
386 00:35:04.280 ⇒ 00:35:07.460 Ethan Aaron: just like order of magnitude changed.
387 00:35:07.460 ⇒ 00:35:08.380 Uttam Kumaran: Great Great.
388 00:35:08.510 ⇒ 00:35:15.000 Ethan Aaron: And I don’t know. I don’t know. Python, I can I just we have a really robust internal platform that allows us to
389 00:35:15.170 ⇒ 00:35:16.679 Ethan Aaron: do all the stuff we do so like. That’s.
390 00:35:16.680 ⇒ 00:35:17.590 Uttam Kumaran: Hell, yeah.
391 00:35:17.720 ⇒ 00:35:21.940 Ethan Aaron: That I would say, that’s our biggest challenge is like when we want to make a bet like. Luckily.
392 00:35:22.140 ⇒ 00:35:33.370 Ethan Aaron: I have 3 and a half dedicated people, because cloud always has to prioritize sport, and if it and if more stuff comes up, I’m also prioritizing sport. And our team, our entire team does, but it’s like
393 00:35:35.870 ⇒ 00:35:41.199 Ethan Aaron: I don’t know. At times I’m like, we go slower. And then at other times, I’m like, we go a lot faster because we’re just like
394 00:35:41.260 ⇒ 00:35:46.170 Ethan Aaron: we can dedicate 3 full people to building the next thing. So.
395 00:35:46.170 ⇒ 00:35:46.960 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah.
396 00:35:46.960 ⇒ 00:35:48.020 Ethan Aaron: Yeah, Nicholas Nicholas
397 00:35:49.120 ⇒ 00:35:59.840 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, no, that’s awesome. I mean, we’re doing a lot on SEO as well, I mean, and we’re a service business. So for us, we’re looking for like people searching for specific technologies or specific like types of implementations. And but like, I know, yeah.
398 00:35:59.840 ⇒ 00:36:02.939 Ethan Aaron: Background do you have on the SEO front? Can I be a resource on that at all? I like.
399 00:36:02.940 ⇒ 00:36:11.949 Uttam Kumaran: I, yeah. So I have a I’ve hired like I have someone out outsource. But he’s like he’s our. He does all of our content blogs like SEO sort of stuff. But
400 00:36:12.150 ⇒ 00:36:20.569 Uttam Kumaran: we have like we have like sem rush. I’m learning a ton. But I’ve also followed all the SEO people on like on twitter, and like kind of like downloading
401 00:36:20.690 ⇒ 00:36:23.140 Uttam Kumaran: all the stuff that they say. But tell me.
402 00:36:23.140 ⇒ 00:36:36.599 Ethan Aaron: I spent. I spent probably a hundred $1,000. On this. I I hired one of the best guys I could find to be a contract for 9 months, and then I did nothing else. So me and Sergio, our head of engineering. Our only job for 9 months was SEO. We did nothing.
403 00:36:36.600 ⇒ 00:36:37.789 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so.
404 00:36:37.790 ⇒ 00:36:56.600 Ethan Aaron: Like we auto generate. Like when we create a connector, we auto generate all the stuff you’d expect like connect this to snowflake. We also auto generate things like, does Fivetran have a gorgeous connector? Does stitch, have a gorgeous connector? Does airbite because people Google Fivetran. And then whatever the name of the tool is, and if they don’t.
405 00:36:56.780 ⇒ 00:37:01.030 Ethan Aaron: we show up and it’s.
406 00:37:01.030 ⇒ 00:37:04.759 Uttam Kumaran: And so is that a blog post, or is that like a just like a 1 of those comparison things.
407 00:37:04.820 ⇒ 00:37:11.309 Ethan Aaron: We use contentful as our Cms headless Cms. And then we’ve built front end
408 00:37:11.370 ⇒ 00:37:29.219 Ethan Aaron: code. That’s effectively like versus pages. We have versus pages for every iteration of every I can go, add a competitor into into contentful. And then our the code that Sergio wrote will take a template that I drafted, and just this was before AI. This was.
409 00:37:29.220 ⇒ 00:37:30.000 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
410 00:37:30.000 ⇒ 00:37:32.200 Ethan Aaron: So we literally wrote out like templated.
411 00:37:32.200 ⇒ 00:37:33.229 Uttam Kumaran: This? Chris, yeah.
412 00:37:33.230 ⇒ 00:37:36.579 Ethan Aaron: I used to do it in spread. I I actually think if I were to go
413 00:37:36.700 ⇒ 00:37:39.799 Ethan Aaron: Bootstrap like an SEO project for someone, I would do it all out of Google sheets.
414 00:37:39.930 ⇒ 00:37:40.550 Uttam Kumaran: Because.
415 00:37:40.550 ⇒ 00:37:41.670 Ethan Aaron: Just have like
416 00:37:42.140 ⇒ 00:37:46.340 Ethan Aaron: a template, and then all these things, and just have them fill in the template and then copy.
417 00:37:46.340 ⇒ 00:38:02.450 Uttam Kumaran: We. So we also just added a glossary. So we’re like slowly rolling out glossary pages for every single like individual term, and then slowly, like doing the glossary thing I think we’ll start to do. We’re we have a long tail blog, so we’re trying to push content out. But again for us. I know that’ll pay dividends in like in like a few months.
418 00:38:02.450 ⇒ 00:38:03.670 Uttam Kumaran: It’ll take
419 00:38:03.670 ⇒ 00:38:09.310 Uttam Kumaran: it’ll take a year or 2. The only other thing dude in services industry. Every design is like
420 00:38:09.470 ⇒ 00:38:17.210 Uttam Kumaran: such a low priority for folks. So for me, I’ve worked a lot of designers. We have a full time designer for me. The one number one thing is like everything
421 00:38:17.330 ⇒ 00:38:45.450 Uttam Kumaran: we can’t compete on like the people we know yet. So for us, we’re gonna compete on price somewhat, but also on just having the best support for folks and then on design. So everything we do is branded. Design looks really great. Looks like we’re coming across like a huge company. Because you’ll you’ll say stuff. I’m like, I told the guys we need to be like Mckinsey. So whatever Mckinsey does, that’s what we need to come. We can’t come across like these sloppy. One page thing need to look like
422 00:38:45.890 ⇒ 00:38:47.820 Uttam Kumaran: we’re gonna charge 30 40 KA month.
423 00:38:47.820 ⇒ 00:38:53.709 Ethan Aaron: It’s shocking how bad most services companies are at marketing, just like.
424 00:38:53.710 ⇒ 00:39:07.169 Uttam Kumaran: Because they’re just Mba. But it’s hard, you know. It’s hard for you as a CEO, to spend time on SEO. Same with me. I I spend every day with our content people literally reading blogs, but that’s because, like that is the part that you have to run towards. You know a little bit.
425 00:39:07.170 ⇒ 00:39:10.770 Ethan Aaron: The. The one thing I would recommend. So semrush like
426 00:39:11.470 ⇒ 00:39:15.639 Ethan Aaron: is what we use, and it’s great to find high volume.
427 00:39:15.830 ⇒ 00:39:26.539 Ethan Aaron: low low competition, keywords that are in your like. I wouldn’t waste time on shit. That’s not a buyer for you like I would focus on things like AI consulting.
428 00:39:26.740 ⇒ 00:39:27.080 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
429 00:39:27.080 ⇒ 00:39:29.329 Ethan Aaron: Yeah or like, but like the winnable ones where it’s
430 00:39:30.910 ⇒ 00:39:38.290 Uttam Kumaran: Like we. We. We did like AI and automotive, and we have like a couple of blogs that got to the number one. We’re getting the snippet on Google stuff like that.
431 00:39:38.456 ⇒ 00:39:41.950 Ethan Aaron: The one thing to do, if you’re not already using is check out that link. I just sent you clear scope.
432 00:39:41.950 ⇒ 00:39:42.450 Uttam Kumaran: Cisco.
433 00:39:42.450 ⇒ 00:39:48.210 Ethan Aaron: This is the best month like I still pay for it, even though I’m not really heavily investing in SEO. Right now.
434 00:39:48.210 ⇒ 00:39:48.780 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
435 00:39:48.780 ⇒ 00:39:51.539 Ethan Aaron: What you effectively do with this is.
436 00:39:52.490 ⇒ 00:39:54.930 Ethan Aaron: it just makes things significantly easier. How do I?
437 00:39:55.120 ⇒ 00:39:56.800 Ethan Aaron: I don’t use zoom.
438 00:39:57.510 ⇒ 00:39:59.429 Uttam Kumaran: You just hit share at the bottom. Yeah.
439 00:39:59.901 ⇒ 00:40:02.549 Ethan Aaron: So this thing. So you come in here?
440 00:40:03.670 ⇒ 00:40:11.190 Ethan Aaron: I told. I taught Jeff at Green Mountain data how to do this, and now he ranks for Dvt alternatives on Google.
441 00:40:11.190 ⇒ 00:40:12.180 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, nice!
442 00:40:12.190 ⇒ 00:40:14.909 Ethan Aaron: But you literally just come in here. You type, in a
443 00:40:15.090 ⇒ 00:40:20.552 Ethan Aaron: word, so like one of the words I want to win is stitch data with no spaces, because no one competes on that one.
444 00:40:21.410 ⇒ 00:40:21.750 Ethan Aaron: yeah.
445 00:40:22.433 ⇒ 00:40:37.109 Ethan Aaron: So I literally have an entire article where I misspelled stitch data. But so you effectively. Run this report. The report spits out all these terms you have to include in your article, and then, as you write so like, if you have a content team or a content person.
446 00:40:37.110 ⇒ 00:40:38.420 Uttam Kumaran: I should have them right in here.
447 00:40:38.420 ⇒ 00:40:42.000 Ethan Aaron: Have them write like, I’ll typically come up with a structure.
448 00:40:42.260 ⇒ 00:41:02.009 Ethan Aaron: So I’ll be like, Okay, great like, give me a general structure for an article about stitch data. Then I’ll look through these terms. I’ll take 10 of them, put them into the 1st paragraph, 10 in the second one, and then I’ll go to Gemini, and I’ll just be like, give me a paragraph that you that is an overview of stitch data without the space and includes these 10 terms so like, and then just
449 00:41:02.220 ⇒ 00:41:03.510 Ethan Aaron: push all the terms into here.
450 00:41:03.510 ⇒ 00:41:08.870 Uttam Kumaran: So we we currently do some of this in in sem rush, like we paste it back in, and it tells us a little bit about it.
451 00:41:08.870 ⇒ 00:41:17.330 Ethan Aaron: Clear scopes by far the best. I’ve talked to a bunch of very expensive SEO consultants, and, like clear scope, is by far the best for the actual quality of the content. It’s a.
452 00:41:17.330 ⇒ 00:41:31.310 Uttam Kumaran: I have. So the guy on my team is like obsessed with this. So he’s running all of our content. And then we’re doing a newsletter, and we’re starting to get a lot of the basics down the stuff that’s gonna take a year or 2 to actually flow. But I’m gonna put him on clear scope. He’ll be very happy because a lot of time.
453 00:41:31.310 ⇒ 00:41:34.359 Ethan Aaron: That’s the one thing I would recommend in the SEO front.
454 00:41:34.360 ⇒ 00:41:35.440 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Awesome. Awesome.
455 00:41:35.440 ⇒ 00:41:38.653 Ethan Aaron: Every every quarter. Pain points change on my side.
456 00:41:39.010 ⇒ 00:41:44.799 Uttam Kumaran: I agree. Yeah, it’s just the context. Switching is a lot. And I don’t know from starting from 0.
457 00:41:45.070 ⇒ 00:42:03.680 Uttam Kumaran: for us, like my, the people are is my product like if if we don’t have the best people. So I got, I got, I would say, like lucky with some people skilled with some others. But for me, it’s like we can’t just hire engineers that are used to work internally. 50% of my job is communication. And typically, it’s hard to find data engineers that have worked in any sort of client facing.
458 00:42:03.680 ⇒ 00:42:18.620 Uttam Kumaran: even if it’s just like internally like they know who their thing is going to let alone someone who’s like we’re a consultant for. So for me, I tell the team we need to come across, we need to have better communication than their best employee. Right? Because we’re external contractor. They’re
459 00:42:19.120 ⇒ 00:42:35.759 Uttam Kumaran: bias is gonna be that we’re like, sat, we’re taking money away and that we suck. So that’s our. That’s our like. Bar is like we need to have better communication. Their best employee. But like we know how to do dbt, snowflake stuff like back of our, you know, whatever. So we can that I’m so confident in. It’s just like.
460 00:42:35.810 ⇒ 00:42:43.919 Uttam Kumaran: And then, right now, we’re in a standardization mode. So sop standard practice for everything so that we can kind of scale teams up. But it’s getting better.
461 00:42:43.920 ⇒ 00:42:48.989 Ethan Aaron: Have you thought about the other thing that especially if you’re taking more of a product approach to services?
462 00:42:49.990 ⇒ 00:42:52.659 Ethan Aaron: Have you thought about having a click to sign agreement.
463 00:42:54.416 ⇒ 00:42:57.180 Uttam Kumaran: No! But tell me more. What is what is that?
464 00:42:57.180 ⇒ 00:43:00.300 Ethan Aaron: You would be wildly shocked at how
465 00:43:01.780 ⇒ 00:43:18.830 Ethan Aaron: like large of companies are willing to just sit like in. They’ll be like, Oh, can you send over an nda, or can we like sign a contract? I’m like you already. Click to sign our agreement just like swipe your credit like. Here’s where you swipe your credit card and like you can like for you if you like. It depends on what price point you’re trying to get. Get up.
466 00:43:18.830 ⇒ 00:43:19.270 Uttam Kumaran: Sure.
467 00:43:19.270 ⇒ 00:43:23.580 Ethan Aaron: If you’re trying to standardize like for like I haven’t heard.
468 00:43:24.450 ⇒ 00:43:29.630 Ethan Aaron: So like even our scale plan, 1,500 bucks a month, 1490 like.
469 00:43:30.370 ⇒ 00:43:36.189 Ethan Aaron: Sometimes we’ll have to sign like an nda with big firms, even though there’s confidentiality language in our click to sign. Msa.
470 00:43:36.190 ⇒ 00:43:36.560 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
471 00:43:36.560 ⇒ 00:43:41.879 Ethan Aaron: Sometimes we’ll go through like a security review where? And but like other than that.
472 00:43:42.760 ⇒ 00:43:44.970 Ethan Aaron: it’s like as long as it’s like reasonably priced.
473 00:43:44.980 ⇒ 00:43:46.848 Ethan Aaron: They’ll just swipe a credit card.
474 00:43:47.160 ⇒ 00:43:47.490 Uttam Kumaran: Sure.
475 00:43:47.490 ⇒ 00:43:53.250 Ethan Aaron: And like the it’s not me being like. You can get around all the legal stuff. It’s like
476 00:43:53.370 ⇒ 00:43:57.449 Ethan Aaron: you just don’t have to. If you can skip the back and forth
477 00:43:57.960 ⇒ 00:44:07.660 Ethan Aaron: back the back and forth of considering red lines like you might, you might charge someone 40 grand a month for enterprise, white glove services, and you should be signing a
478 00:44:07.740 ⇒ 00:44:09.289 Ethan Aaron: redlined contract with them.
479 00:44:09.290 ⇒ 00:44:11.840 Uttam Kumaran: No, but you’re right for anything that’s like 10 K. Or less.
480 00:44:11.990 ⇒ 00:44:27.560 Uttam Kumaran: Even if we’re talking, I should just be like yo. But you go sign up right there. We do. So we do have services that are more like training enablement, or like an audit service where it’s like it’s 5 k. For us to come in and like give you an audit, and that usually leads to assigning a bigger thing. You’re totally right, and I should just be like. You’ll go to the site and goodbye right there.
481 00:44:27.560 ⇒ 00:44:41.070 Ethan Aaron: Like there, there’s like, if I were to start a any other company right now, like services or product, like the 2 things that I would start with in port like that that we’ve built in portable one. So, like the few things I would start with one. This
482 00:44:41.100 ⇒ 00:44:42.890 Ethan Aaron: I need to keep working on, but like
483 00:44:43.150 ⇒ 00:44:45.241 Ethan Aaron: make it very clear what to do.
484 00:44:45.540 ⇒ 00:44:45.860 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
485 00:44:45.860 ⇒ 00:44:54.710 Ethan Aaron: Where you fit in the market. Right now we’re in this weird stage of like we’re, it’s changing like, I’m not yet the best alternative to 5 Tran. No. One is the best alternative to Fivetran.
486 00:44:54.710 ⇒ 00:45:05.369 Uttam Kumaran: But this is good. I would say it’s been getting better because I’ve been. I’ve been. I check out portable every so often. It’s getting. It’s getting way better. And it’s clear that you you’ve been like looking at landing page optimization like sort of stuff.
487 00:45:05.630 ⇒ 00:45:14.529 Ethan Aaron: Yep. So like, that’s that’s critical. The next one is this, get started for free, or try our product thing. Typically, it takes you from there to
488 00:45:15.330 ⇒ 00:45:20.629 Ethan Aaron: I’m I’m logged in already. It would take you here, which you you you saw. You then
489 00:45:20.740 ⇒ 00:45:27.200 Ethan Aaron: create an account. And it’ll take you to here.
490 00:45:27.600 ⇒ 00:45:30.989 Ethan Aaron: which we just saved this in our database. And
491 00:45:32.020 ⇒ 00:45:38.065 Ethan Aaron: then we ask you, where did you? How’d you hear about us? And that’s also really valuable, because it allows me to.
492 00:45:38.340 ⇒ 00:45:38.670 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah.
493 00:45:38.670 ⇒ 00:45:42.039 Ethan Aaron: It’s not great, but it’s like back of the envelope, like attribution.
494 00:45:42.170 ⇒ 00:45:42.630 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
495 00:45:42.630 ⇒ 00:45:52.760 Ethan Aaron: And if you just have that, and then you just say great in your app, if all you had was like a form like a link to a type form or Google form and a place to check out on stripe like.
496 00:45:53.810 ⇒ 00:45:56.670 Ethan Aaron: imagine like, as a buyer of your services. Imagine.
497 00:45:56.670 ⇒ 00:45:57.350 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
498 00:45:57.350 ⇒ 00:45:58.490 Ethan Aaron: Option number one.
499 00:45:58.620 ⇒ 00:46:06.309 Ethan Aaron: Oh, I totally want to work with you. What’s the next step? And you’re like, oh, I’m going to send you a legal doc, and they’re like, Oh, I have to go. Send that to a lawyer.
500 00:46:06.700 ⇒ 00:46:07.279 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah.
501 00:46:07.280 ⇒ 00:46:11.970 Ethan Aaron: The other option is here. Sign up today like Watch. I’ll show you like the
502 00:46:12.250 ⇒ 00:46:15.480 Ethan Aaron: your app could do nothing but like you could. You could also have something in there.
503 00:46:15.480 ⇒ 00:46:16.030 Uttam Kumaran: Anyway.
504 00:46:16.030 ⇒ 00:46:19.589 Ethan Aaron: And it’s like, sign up. Okay, like, when you’re ready to get started.
505 00:46:20.410 ⇒ 00:46:22.029 Ethan Aaron: I’ll send you a stripe. Invoice
506 00:46:22.040 ⇒ 00:46:26.200 Ethan Aaron: now in their shoes. They’re like oh, like that was easy.
507 00:46:26.600 ⇒ 00:46:26.960 Uttam Kumaran: Totally.
508 00:46:26.960 ⇒ 00:46:31.981 Ethan Aaron: You never! You never got above the threshold of their like. I need to talk to my lawyers.
509 00:46:32.260 ⇒ 00:46:32.840 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
510 00:46:32.840 ⇒ 00:46:34.949 Ethan Aaron: And my procurement team, and like
511 00:46:35.420 ⇒ 00:46:38.549 Ethan Aaron: even lawyers, click to sign agreement like, so so it’s a.
512 00:46:39.450 ⇒ 00:46:52.449 Uttam Kumaran: No, you’re totally right. I mean I I so I follow a lot about what the the design agencies are doing like on twitter and stuff like that where it’s like these product. I service agencies like they’re like, you get 10 revisions. Blah blah. So I think about some of that with data is possible. Some of that
513 00:46:52.510 ⇒ 00:47:16.520 Uttam Kumaran: you kind of don’t know the difficulty until you really get in there. So, but there are services that we’re starting to offer. That’s like 5 K, you get it. We can maybe have one meeting or a couple of emails, or you’d be like, just go sign up. You’re totally right that we should maybe do a start for free, and it’ll send you we can. I mean, I could just have them put in a little app dot brainforgeai. It shows you something. Maybe we have our like standard documents like our capabilities deck stuff like that. It’s like, click here when you want to get started.
514 00:47:16.930 ⇒ 00:47:22.740 Ethan Aaron: Yeah, because, like the I I’ve been, I haven’t seen anyone.
515 00:47:23.010 ⇒ 00:47:31.210 Ethan Aaron: We rolled out our scale plan about a year ago. Up until that point. It was just per connector pricing. We rolled out our scale plan a year ago.
516 00:47:31.410 ⇒ 00:47:34.379 Ethan Aaron: I have not heard anyone say
517 00:47:34.710 ⇒ 00:47:38.578 Ethan Aaron: $1,500 a month is too much for me to put on a credit card.
518 00:47:38.820 ⇒ 00:47:43.299 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, no, it’s not. But it’s just your business credit. It’s all business credit card. So it doesn’t matter. No, yeah.
519 00:47:43.300 ⇒ 00:47:46.630 Ethan Aaron: No, but but, like my there, there are situations where, like I.
520 00:47:46.630 ⇒ 00:47:48.040 Uttam Kumaran: There is like, yeah, yeah.
521 00:47:48.040 ⇒ 00:47:50.350 Ethan Aaron: Deal on a credit card, because I don’t want to pay the fees, but it’s.
522 00:47:50.350 ⇒ 00:47:51.010 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
523 00:47:51.260 ⇒ 00:47:57.890 Ethan Aaron: Could I put $2,500 on a credit card for people and not have to go like not have to think about it like the back, and like
524 00:47:58.770 ⇒ 00:48:06.829 Ethan Aaron: so much easier to just get alerts in slack when stripe credit card payments don’t go through than to like invoice people and deal with red lines.
525 00:48:06.830 ⇒ 00:48:17.250 Uttam Kumaran: No, you’re right, I mean. So we go through. I mean again. It’s also the meeting. So we’re trying to shorten how much it takes to qualify. Everything is like track. So we’re like, you know, if we we want to qualify within 2 meetings or less.
526 00:48:17.260 ⇒ 00:48:20.050 Uttam Kumaran: and then basically get to the proposal stage, or disqualify.
527 00:48:20.280 ⇒ 00:48:20.750 Ethan Aaron: Oh! Another!
528 00:48:20.750 ⇒ 00:48:21.120 Uttam Kumaran: So.
529 00:48:21.120 ⇒ 00:48:22.329 Ethan Aaron: Like pack for you.
530 00:48:22.330 ⇒ 00:48:22.930 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
531 00:48:24.740 ⇒ 00:48:29.139 Ethan Aaron: You didn’t use my calendly to book this meeting you use calendly, internally.
532 00:48:29.140 ⇒ 00:48:31.220 Uttam Kumaran: I use cal.com.
533 00:48:31.220 ⇒ 00:48:33.273 Ethan Aaron: Okay. So they probably have the same thing.
534 00:48:35.080 ⇒ 00:48:46.309 Ethan Aaron: the the 2 things that I, depending on the types of meetings I have. I will ask everyone that meet books, meetings with me for their Linkedin, URL, and Calendar. Just so I can figure out who I’m talking to. And then the second one is.
535 00:48:46.570 ⇒ 00:48:53.649 Ethan Aaron: if it’s like a very clear like this is a prospect call or a demo call in calendly, I say.
536 00:48:53.790 ⇒ 00:49:02.479 Ethan Aaron: mandatory question, what is your data warehouse like mandatory question, like whatever like. So because it’s 1 like, if you put yourself in their shoes like, if you ask.
537 00:49:02.480 ⇒ 00:49:02.940 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
538 00:49:02.940 ⇒ 00:49:05.159 Ethan Aaron: Things and make them required. No one’s going to do it.
539 00:49:05.220 ⇒ 00:49:07.699 Ethan Aaron: But if you ask, what’s your data warehouse?
540 00:49:08.010 ⇒ 00:49:12.319 Ethan Aaron: They know the answer to that, and they will click the button, and then, when you go into the meeting.
541 00:49:12.340 ⇒ 00:49:14.380 Ethan Aaron: you know you already know, and then.
542 00:49:14.380 ⇒ 00:49:18.330 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, the only data with portable, obviously, but yeah.
543 00:49:18.330 ⇒ 00:49:19.910 Ethan Aaron: You. You already know
544 00:49:20.090 ⇒ 00:49:25.120 Ethan Aaron: that you can ask them other questions instead of Oh, what do you have a data warehouse? What is it like, you know, that 2 days
545 00:49:25.870 ⇒ 00:49:26.820 Ethan Aaron: meeting. So that that’s.
546 00:49:26.820 ⇒ 00:49:32.589 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, you, you put the you put the qualification steps there. Basically, yeah, like the stuff where we ask we asked for like.
547 00:49:32.720 ⇒ 00:49:57.529 Uttam Kumaran: is there budget here when you want to get started with this, that sort of stuff we do on meetings. The other thing we do is like we have an internal agent, because we get leads all all which way we have an internal AI agent that does a pre meeting brief for us, so that so it. It does all the research it also does like. Here’s it knows about our services. And it says, like, you could probably ask about this, ask about this. Ask about this. And now we’re getting better, like every because we’re we’re trying to standardize even our sales calls, because if I have to hit
548 00:49:57.530 ⇒ 00:50:19.581 Uttam Kumaran: hire an Sdr, it’s gonna they’re not gonna be nearly as passionate and like as knowledgeable as me. So for me, it’s like, Okay, what are the key questions they have to ask. And can I just like, give them like a basic meeting, brief to be like, go through this in this meeting budget, this types of tools stuff like that. So we’re trying to use AI that way to help us internally, too. Which has been really really cool.
549 00:50:20.200 ⇒ 00:50:39.750 Uttam Kumaran: awesome dude. I’m excited, I mean, look, we’re gonna we’re gonna try portable for 2 of the connectors. The client we have is pissed off because 5 Tran keeps ramping up, and they told us that they didn’t have nearly as much data as they currently do when we sign them. And then now, there, it’s like our problem. The other thing we’re probably gonna do is for people that are.
550 00:50:39.750 ⇒ 00:51:00.080 Uttam Kumaran: you know, at this higher tier level, we’ll just say, because a lot of clients we have don’t even care introducing them to 5 train reportable just causes issues. They don’t even really like care, because they care about Snowflake. I think some degree, but they really just care about the reports they have. They don’t spend any time in the Etl tool at all. And so we’re probably just gonna say, like, Pay us for the Etl, and that’s it, you know.
551 00:51:00.080 ⇒ 00:51:00.540 Ethan Aaron: Yeah.
552 00:51:01.000 ⇒ 00:51:01.610 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
553 00:51:02.110 ⇒ 00:51:08.379 Ethan Aaron: Yeah, excited to start on gorgeous setup shopify whenever you get a chance and give us any feedback you have on that. And then
554 00:51:11.650 ⇒ 00:51:19.899 Ethan Aaron: Yeah, as once you get some stuff live here. And you want to talk about like bigger things like cool, you know. And also just if you ever want to exchange notes on any of this stuff I love chatting with you
555 00:51:19.900 ⇒ 00:51:21.600 Ethan Aaron: cool, cool, really fun.
556 00:51:21.830 ⇒ 00:51:23.679 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, thank you. Dude. Appreciate the time.
557 00:51:23.680 ⇒ 00:51:24.850 Ethan Aaron: Awesome anytime talk soon.
558 00:51:25.220 ⇒ 00:51:26.009 Uttam Kumaran: That’s it. Bye.