Meeting Title: Personal Meeting Room Date: 2025-01-31 Meeting participants: Luke Daque, Anne, Nicolas Sucari, Uttam Kumaran, Ryan Brosas, Hannah Wang, Payas Parab, Robert Tseng, Miguel De Veyra, Casie Aviles, Sahana Asokan, Awaish Kumar, Connor Fenn


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1 00:00:09.980 00:00:10.860 Ryan Brosas: Hey, guys.

2 00:00:12.620 00:00:13.520 Uttam Kumaran: Hey!

3 00:00:14.880 00:00:15.510 Sahana Asokan: Hello!

4 00:00:16.850 00:00:17.500 Awaish Kumar: You know.

5 00:00:24.430 00:00:27.890 Uttam Kumaran: Big meeting today. I’m excited. It’s been a busy week.

6 00:00:35.570 00:00:37.230 Luke Daque: Hey? Guys, happy Friday.

7 00:00:38.820 00:00:41.250 Uttam Kumaran: Hey? Did your hair looks good?

8 00:00:43.065 00:00:43.480 Luke Daque: Fish!

9 00:00:45.990 00:00:48.769 Luke Daque: I just combed it for the 1st time in like.

10 00:00:49.220 00:00:50.480 Ryan Brosas: The whole week.

11 00:00:50.900 00:00:54.570 Uttam Kumaran: Connor told me the other day that you look very young.

12 00:00:56.670 00:00:58.690 Uttam Kumaran: said, Yeah, we have a youthful spirit.

13 00:01:14.260 00:01:16.030 Uttam Kumaran: Well, what were we waiting for?

14 00:01:24.530 00:01:26.299 Uttam Kumaran: Miguel? Is Casey joining.

15 00:01:27.090 00:01:29.650 Miguel de Veyra: Yeah, I’m pretty sure he will, is he’s here.

16 00:01:29.650 00:01:30.489 Casie Aviles: I’m here.

17 00:01:30.710 00:01:31.410 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, sorry.

18 00:01:32.310 00:01:35.440 Uttam Kumaran: There’s a lot of names now, and I no longer can be like

19 00:01:35.600 00:01:44.268 Uttam Kumaran: I. It’s hard for me to be like who’s missing. So okay, let’s get started. We’re 2 min in yeah. So I I

20 00:01:44.850 00:02:12.940 Uttam Kumaran: I wanna let you know, Connor, take some of the the the culture stuff and maybe handle the the icebreaker, and, you know, intros to new people. But I wanted to say that we made a lot of good progress this week. And really, this month, which is all already over today. On planning for the rest of the year. And in particular this quarter, so I think everybody should have a lot more structure on how your

21 00:02:13.030 00:02:16.859 Uttam Kumaran: sort of individual day to day is contributing to

22 00:02:17.372 00:02:22.219 Uttam Kumaran: you know the greater company goals and like what even those goals are.

23 00:02:22.670 00:02:39.190 Uttam Kumaran: And so I’m really, really excited to for some of the stuff we’re gonna present today. Sort of the structure that we’ll be doing. Moving forward is we will be leveraging slides to sort of facilitate this meeting and the Monday morning meetings. One thing that you’ll

24 00:02:39.812 00:02:43.749 Uttam Kumaran: most likely get really tired of is how

25 00:02:44.090 00:03:02.310 Uttam Kumaran: how frequent we’re gonna refer back to the goals and achievement additionally across the team. We’re going to start to assign folks as owners of each of the of the goals to report out on progress. So I think this will give us, you know, a lot more structure to this meeting, and I know we have.

26 00:03:02.390 00:03:21.479 Uttam Kumaran: and almost 1516 people that will be on this you know, twice a week. So on Mondays we wanna really do a look forward for the week on how all the tasks that are coming up affect the goals. And then on Friday we basically look to see how well do we do? So I guess I’ll maybe pass it back to you, Connor, if you wanna

27 00:03:21.580 00:03:25.190 Uttam Kumaran: just kick things off. Yeah.

28 00:03:30.987 00:03:33.249 Uttam Kumaran: you are on, mute or not.

29 00:03:34.090 00:03:35.869 Miguel de Veyra: Think this is lagging out.

30 00:03:40.470 00:03:44.230 Luke Daque: Yeah, it looks like he’s audio is connecting, or something.

31 00:03:45.051 00:03:47.580 Uttam Kumaran: He said. He’s trying to connect here. Let me.

32 00:03:54.500 00:03:56.619 Uttam Kumaran: Let’s give it like 30 seconds.

33 00:03:56.910 00:03:58.720 Uttam Kumaran: He doesn’t go. Then I’ll sub in.

34 00:04:11.150 00:04:13.407 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, I’m gonna go ahead. We’ll see

35 00:04:14.440 00:04:17.300 Uttam Kumaran: we’ll see what happens. But let me share this

36 00:04:37.280 00:04:38.159 Uttam Kumaran: cool

37 00:04:39.260 00:04:47.950 Uttam Kumaran: So yeah, probably next week we’ll try to use a new deck format as well. But yeah. So we, I think overall, we wanted to go through

38 00:04:49.170 00:04:50.390 Uttam Kumaran: what are

39 00:04:50.983 00:05:02.626 Uttam Kumaran: like mission and and values are, and I think this is something that for folks that join, you know, since last December, and earlier, I did a good job of sharing some of this out.

40 00:05:03.130 00:05:14.269 Uttam Kumaran: but I also think that we’ve been in business now quite a while, and some of these are have been the same. But also I think we’ve done a good job at at really narrowing our scope. And I think a lot of what you’re gonna hear

41 00:05:14.711 00:05:38.199 Uttam Kumaran: over the next few months is focus and making sure that we say no to distractions. We are. Gonna get a lot sharper on our positioning a lot sharper on what we do and how we do it. And a lot sharper on the machine. The machine being the company right? And there are folks that work

42 00:05:38.280 00:06:01.349 Uttam Kumaran: for clients. You know, on behalf of the company. There’s also folks here that work on the company and so we have goals and okrs across both of those initiatives. So really, one, our mission is to help businesses make smarter, faster and more informed decisions. I think this has been something that you folks have probably heard me say is, we help people make more decisions and better decisions.

43 00:06:01.717 00:06:30.569 Uttam Kumaran: You know, after running this business for a while, and you guys know that I sort of hop around multiple things. The goal is just how many decisions can we make and move things forward every day? And ideally how many of those can be data driven. And this is exactly what we do for our clients, whether it’s across AI where we help them improve processes, or we help the data teams sort of improve decision making and accuracy and then on value. So we have these 3 values, which is one. Everybody eats.

44 00:06:30.964 00:06:44.809 Uttam Kumaran: I like this phrase and really, what this means is that between us, the company, our clients, and our partners, as we do work. Everybody benefits, you know, not only monetarily, although that is a big.

45 00:06:45.060 00:06:52.090 Uttam Kumaran: We make money here. And but I really do think that this is going out of our way to find opportunities to help each other.

46 00:06:52.130 00:07:13.610 Uttam Kumaran: and also to make sure that if the company wins, everybody wins. You know, and I hope you’ll see some more concrete steps towards making this. You know reality and our goals. But this is something that I want, I think is the number. One thing I think about when we bring folks onto the team when I bring, you know, bring new clients and new partners in

47 00:07:13.610 00:07:34.305 Uttam Kumaran: is that you don’t look at it as a like 0 sum game, like everybody has the ability to win and if someone wins over here it doesn’t come at the cost of another person. So the second thing is operate like giants. I think folks on the design side have probably heard me say that we want to come across as like Mckinsey Deloitte.

48 00:07:34.660 00:07:50.640 Uttam Kumaran: you know we want to. I never thought about that. We’re competing with folks that are you know, at the same level as us. We’ve always been competing with the biggest firms, and we will continue to consider ourselves as competition for the largest contracts for the most impactful work.

49 00:07:52.220 00:08:15.159 Uttam Kumaran: And so everything we do, we need to have the notion. You know, that we’re gonna we’re gonna do that at the highest level, right? And that’s why you’ll see a lot of the investments we’re making on the AI side on the operation side. We’re not here to build a small company, and we’re not here to build a small small and impact company. So everything is geared towards being the best.

50 00:08:15.230 00:08:22.609 Uttam Kumaran: And in order to do that, we look up, you know, for for inspiration. And also we look internally to see how we can cut down a complexity.

51 00:08:22.720 00:08:31.920 Uttam Kumaran: use automation and sort of improve our efficiency. You know, I feel I feel like this is really the 1st company I’ve worked at where

52 00:08:32.039 00:08:45.820 Uttam Kumaran: to be this young, and have, like our notion, all organized or slack, super organized, have process like this. I know there’s still a lot of stuff that’s broken. But I feel, super super jazz, that a lot of companies that I worked at this wasn’t set up.

53 00:08:46.430 00:08:54.980 Uttam Kumaran: you know, no matter how much money they made. And you know, really, all the work that we do on on the operation side is to help everybody do their job better, which is.

54 00:08:55.090 00:09:09.679 Uttam Kumaran: you know, which is a mission which is working for our clients. The 3rd thing, so give back and pay for it. So this is another thing that I think we’ll we’ll try to find more impactful ways to make this real. But one is, you know, trying to create impact beyond business.

55 00:09:09.900 00:09:37.939 Uttam Kumaran: whether that’s giving opportunity to folks in our network. You know. One thing I always ask. Everybody is to introduce us to people in your network that are smart, that need opportunities that want to work hard. We’re willing to, you know, interview and consider everybody. The other thing is bringing people into our company. You know, partners, clients to learn from us, but also to share with us. You know how they operate their business. And so we’ll be, you know, looking to do some of this in the next

56 00:09:38.170 00:09:42.049 Uttam Kumaran: quarter, and and beyond any questions.

57 00:09:44.790 00:09:50.499 Uttam Kumaran: any thoughts. Does this sound? This is sound about right? Or is there? Is there something we’re missing.

58 00:09:55.070 00:10:00.560 Uttam Kumaran: The goal here is like, whatever you’re doing day to day. Imagine you were to have this pinned up on your wall.

59 00:10:00.700 00:10:12.679 Uttam Kumaran: This is sort of the thing that we would be like, PIN this up right? And so whenever you’re interacting with the client interacting with a team member, these are the ways we operate and this is the way we do decision making. So any decisions we make

60 00:10:12.980 00:10:16.419 Uttam Kumaran: if it’s not congruent with the values, it’s a wrong decision.

61 00:10:16.700 00:10:37.490 Uttam Kumaran: right. And that’s that’s the barometer. So this isn’t like I’ve worked at again. We’ve all worked at companies where they have sort of corny missions and corny values on the wall and they say one thing in public, and it’s really like a mess privately. This isn’t meant to be that this is meant to be a filter for our decisions the way we interact with each other and externally

62 00:10:43.250 00:10:58.200 Uttam Kumaran: cool. Yeah, I agree. So new team members. So we have 2 new folks. I don’t know if you guys are able to come on video really quickly. This is also a very low video meeting. I feel like me. Robert and Luke are the only

63 00:10:58.340 00:11:02.220 Uttam Kumaran: faces here. So if anyone else wants to come on Video, I know, Miguel, you’re probably in the dark.

64 00:11:02.450 00:11:09.170 Uttam Kumaran: but you can come on video, too. If you guys want to. Just say, Hi, the kind of the ways I like to do intros is just

65 00:11:09.720 00:11:19.539 Uttam Kumaran: not work related. Maybe just talk about you where you’re from and what you like to do. I know both of you guys have definitely interesting stories.

66 00:11:20.060 00:11:34.129 Uttam Kumaran: And I’ll I’ll maybe I’ll give the little intro about the work stuff away. She’s coming to join us on the analytics engineering side. And Hannah is coming to join us on the brand and design side. So maybe a wish. Do you want to go first? st

67 00:11:34.870 00:11:44.110 Awaish Kumar: Yeah. My, as we mentioned, my name is Aish, and I’m from Pakistan and have

68 00:11:44.550 00:11:49.650 Awaish Kumar: worked across the continents in Europe and Canada.

69 00:11:51.720 00:11:57.770 Awaish Kumar: And I would like to go to the walks. And it’s it’s because mainly coming from

70 00:11:58.626 00:12:08.780 Awaish Kumar: Europe, I had a lot of interest in going on. Nature walks, but it has been really difficult to find that in Canada, especially in the winters.

71 00:12:10.240 00:12:16.920 Awaish Kumar: So apart from that, I I like to watch. I was

72 00:12:17.070 00:12:20.650 Awaish Kumar: Netflix sometimes. Yeah, that’s about me.

73 00:12:20.650 00:12:23.040 Uttam Kumaran: What are you? What are you watching on, Netflix right now?

74 00:12:24.588 00:12:31.580 Awaish Kumar: Right now I’m I’m not really watching anything, but I like we like to watch from time to time.

75 00:12:32.400 00:12:36.330 Awaish Kumar: Not a active Netflix user.

76 00:12:37.200 00:12:46.457 Uttam Kumaran: Nice in the Us. Netflix they released like a conspiracy theory, one like narrated by the guy from Star Trek, where he talks about like aliens and

77 00:12:47.390 00:12:51.756 Uttam Kumaran: ancient like figures. And that’s what I’m watching right now. But

78 00:12:52.310 00:12:57.080 Uttam Kumaran: okay, cool. Thanks appreciate it. Awaish, Hannah, do you wanna go.

79 00:12:58.480 00:13:16.202 Hannah Wang: Yeah, I’m Hannah. Contrary to my outfit, I’m actually in California, where it’s supposed to be warm, but where my building is like super cold. So I have a blanket also on me, and a heater next to me, cause I’m freezing all the time.

80 00:13:16.860 00:13:33.849 Hannah Wang: yeah, I guess a bit of background. I was a software engineer, but I’m trying to pivot. I was trying to pivot into Ux. But now I guess I’m more on the brand slash marketing side question mark. So yeah, just exploring a bunch of things. And then outside of work.

81 00:13:34.365 00:13:46.099 Hannah Wang: I like to hike with my husband, as you can tell from that photo that was in Sequoia or Kings Canyon, one of those. But we like to go to national parks all across the Us.

82 00:13:46.588 00:14:00.210 Hannah Wang: And I also am starting to get into photography. Which is new for me. But more like couples shooting slash potentially even like wedding photography. I know someone who’s in that business, and he’s

83 00:14:00.320 00:14:12.949 Hannah Wang: willing to let me shadow him for a couple not a couple like one wedding that’s coming up for a friend. So I’m kind of nervous for that, but also excited. And yeah, I’m I’m in la.

84 00:14:13.140 00:14:15.700 Hannah Wang: It’s really cold. For some reason this week.

85 00:14:16.280 00:14:19.109 Uttam Kumaran: What’s what kind of camera are you using.

86 00:14:20.040 00:14:24.859 Hannah Wang: I just my husband thrifted like a used Nikon.

87 00:14:24.860 00:14:25.280 Uttam Kumaran: Nice.

88 00:14:25.280 00:14:35.210 Hannah Wang: 7,500. I have just like the basic lens. But obviously, if I want to get into that industry, I need to upgrade my equipment. But for now this is

89 00:14:35.620 00:14:43.020 Hannah Wang: that Dslr is better than an iphone. Well, that’s questionable, because Iphone has pretty good phone camera quality.

90 00:14:43.020 00:14:45.929 Uttam Kumaran: The new iphone is really, really good. Yeah, I have my.

91 00:14:46.070 00:14:51.110 Hannah Wang: Yeah, I have the. I have the 13, and like, when I do 3 x zoom.

92 00:14:51.444 00:14:51.780 Uttam Kumaran: Like.

93 00:14:51.780 00:14:55.760 Hannah Wang: My one of my lenses is broken. Yeah, it’s it’s a mess. So.

94 00:14:56.280 00:15:18.005 Uttam Kumaran: Awesome. Well, yeah, welcome. And yeah, I you know, as you probably know from just this week we have a ton of opportunity on the on the design side, but I think it’s also rare for a company like ours to even have a design team. And I’m so pumped that like we get to leverage you guys for making our stuff look really really amazing.

95 00:15:18.600 00:15:20.209 Uttam Kumaran: so thanks, welcome.

96 00:15:21.788 00:15:26.020 Uttam Kumaran: Cool any like shout outs we wanna do.

97 00:15:26.560 00:15:36.510 Uttam Kumaran: And this week I have one. But maybe I’ll I’ll go last anyone.

98 00:15:37.250 00:15:39.820 Uttam Kumaran: Wanna say, thank you.

99 00:15:39.940 00:15:41.840 Uttam Kumaran: I appreciated that.

100 00:15:43.880 00:16:06.631 Payas Parab: Shout out to Nico, yesterday I was very stressed because I was like, man. I’m cooked. Nico got on the phone, walked me through it also shout out to you, Tom, for even at some absurd hour, your local time helping me figure out some dbt stuff. Thank you guys, I know, like when we’re all stressed. It’s like nice to know that, like it’s such a team effort, and there’s no like there’s no hate. It’s all love. So. Thank you both, Nico. And you know.

101 00:16:07.180 00:16:13.460 Payas Parab: I know I’m I’m I’m trying my best here, but it’s never. It’s never execution is never perfect. So we’re just moving forward. So I appreciate you guys.

102 00:16:19.710 00:16:24.600 Awaish Kumar: Yeah. I also like to shout out to both Nicholas and Kutum for the

103 00:16:25.550 00:16:28.130 Awaish Kumar: smooth onboarding and a warm welcome.

104 00:16:30.350 00:16:32.610 Uttam Kumaran: Thanks. I was gonna shout out a wish, I mean

105 00:16:33.202 00:16:37.889 Uttam Kumaran: we threw like a kind of not so clear.

106 00:16:38.120 00:16:45.589 Uttam Kumaran: Just like, go figure this dbt thing out and I kind of was like fingers crossed cause a wish. I I think, like

107 00:16:46.252 00:16:56.739 Uttam Kumaran: I guess we didn’t talk about work stuff. But oasis worked at several startups sort of in like a 0 to one capacity on a lot of sort of data stuff that I’ve done. And I’m like, Okay, I’m sure

108 00:16:56.870 00:17:14.149 Uttam Kumaran: you know, if you’re honest, I’m sure you’ll be able to figure it out and you crushed it. So we got a lot done I like. We moved timelines forward on a couple of things, and I’m so excited, you know, to have you. I think we’re gonna build a good, you know. Dbt, data and squad. So yeah, I appreciate you jumping on all that.

109 00:17:17.310 00:17:18.940 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, yeah, thank you so much.

110 00:17:22.782 00:17:24.359 Uttam Kumaran: I have one more shout out

111 00:17:24.669 00:17:29.249 Uttam Kumaran: to Ryan on marketing. He’s still continuing just to push

112 00:17:29.509 00:17:35.346 Uttam Kumaran: stuff out like real like, just like a machine. And it’s it’s really, really great, I think.

113 00:17:35.959 00:17:58.319 Uttam Kumaran: you know. Again, I think part of the reason. I think Hannah is here also is just our time. You know, on the marketing side has been really, really cut thin as we grow our client base. But to have, like the ability to know that people are gonna come through and just keep getting stuff out and and getting illustrations out. That’s really, really great. Consistency is going to be the really the key, and that we’re doing really, really well, so

114 00:18:02.099 00:18:02.929 Uttam Kumaran: cool.

115 00:18:04.174 00:18:08.419 Uttam Kumaran: Anyone else. Otherwise I may hand it to you. Robert.

116 00:18:11.470 00:18:19.830 Robert Tseng: Cool. I mean, I guess now that we kind of have those values. And then we now people know that we’ll be sharing kind of

117 00:18:20.340 00:18:26.389 Robert Tseng: some shout outs every week. Maybe we can kind of think about it for kind of just keep it in mind for the next week.

118 00:18:27.026 00:18:31.580 Robert Tseng: Just whenever you you feel like there’s something to just

119 00:18:32.820 00:18:37.140 Robert Tseng: encourage or affirm someone on the other team, for I think it would probably go a long way.

120 00:18:38.106 00:18:55.889 Robert Tseng: As far as like executive update goes. I mean, we don’t have like a clear section. This this week, I mean, I think, probably mentioned we’ve been going through a startup accelerator since last week, and that’s been really helpful for just to be.

121 00:18:56.320 00:19:23.910 Robert Tseng: you know, coached by other advisors that have kind of gone through our our stage and kind of really set the bar for where I think we’re trying to head. So yeah, we’re just trying to absorb everything like a sponge and and share things that are helpful to the team. Even this exercise, like at first, st like the formality, seemed a bit too much, but then I think it actually provides a lot of clarity for everyone to know how their efforts are tied to

122 00:19:24.668 00:19:49.639 Robert Tseng: the different levers that are actually gonna move the business forward. And so today, we wanted to kind of spend some time discussing like 3 main objectives that we kind of have for this quarter. That we think are pretty all encompassing where everybody’s work kind of ladders up into that. So the structure that we’re introducing is called, okay, ours. Yeah, you can go to the next one. You know, we’ll just start with this one.

123 00:19:49.640 00:20:13.020 Robert Tseng: So there’s like a clear, very simple objective. And then we have different results that we’re trying to measure. Like, how we’re our progress towards those objectives. And then we had some ideas for the initiatives that are gonna get us there. And so I think within, we may have already met, introduced these 2 individually in our different one on ones. Throughout the week.

124 00:20:13.020 00:20:40.589 Robert Tseng: But yeah, I really want to take some time to let this sink in. Everyone can kind of just read read through it. I know not everyone’s or for those of you whose work are directly tied to these key results. Yeah, really, just kind of study those initiatives think about like how your work really impacts those things. And if you think that you want to adjust or these targets, or you know, you have, you? Wanna, yeah, just we want feedback on these initiatives as well.

125 00:20:40.710 00:21:03.499 Robert Tseng: And so I’ll just kind of not gonna read it line for line. But you know the overall the 3 levers that we think are gonna move the objective on our revenue target. One is like really diversifying, continuing to produce a diverse portfolio of different clients. So I think you know, we have the full service kind of like

126 00:21:03.770 00:21:25.682 Robert Tseng: full service client kind of like what we do with Eden. And we have, like the single function kind of client like we do with like Joby, currently and then we’re running like smaller contracts or smaller engagements that are probably like one month or less something like with our helper and I think with the client lifecycle sometimes, like the smaller

127 00:21:26.260 00:21:30.532 Robert Tseng: clients like in the 3rd initiative, end up growing into

128 00:21:31.440 00:21:36.775 Robert Tseng: the the next stage. And then the single function was, we want to grow to the full service as well. So

129 00:21:37.330 00:22:04.059 Robert Tseng: yeah, from. I think there’s there’s there’s room for us to go after clients in different stages. And I think we’re we’re we’re small enough, nimble enough to go in and and do this, and we think that the offerings that we have right now and just looking at our current portfolio like these are kind of the 3 types of clients that we currently have. And so I think there’s just room to kind of fill to to continue to per to grow, to grow our our clients.

130 00:22:04.060 00:22:07.777 Robert Tseng: our client portfolio, in these in these 3 ways.

131 00:22:08.290 00:22:21.630 Robert Tseng: And then, from a further up, like a pre sales perspective. Like, when we talk about pipeline we’re talking about what’s the potential revenue that’s that’s coming in based on the folks that we’re talking to.

132 00:22:21.630 00:22:48.399 Robert Tseng: And so, yeah, 400 KA month may seem like a really high target. It doesn’t mean that all of those all that business is gonna close in the 1st quarter. It just means that the conversations that we’re having with people that has the potential to be able to hit. That’s that’s the revenue potential of it. And so in order to in order to get that, we need to be talking to a lot of different clients or leads per week. And we need to.

133 00:22:48.530 00:23:10.979 Robert Tseng: Yeah, we need to be hopping on a bunch of calls with demos and discoveries like, kind of like what we’ve been doing. We have some pretty. We have some numbers here now for what we think. Our close rates are at these different stages. And so this is just to kind of make that a lot more clear on what the expectations are, that what we think our expectations are at our current stage for what we think we can win

134 00:23:11.489 00:23:39.350 Robert Tseng: so. And then the last piece is, we’re making a bet. In expanding into the legal services sector. You know, before we were kind of saying yes to everything, and we’re our our offerings a bit more narrow now and trying to be more focused. But we want to keep exploring and learning. You know, what are some other areas that we can take big bets on? And yeah, I think that this is the one that we’ve chosen for for the quarter. That

135 00:23:39.510 00:23:50.379 Robert Tseng: I think you know. After at the end of the quarter we’ll see if they if we’ve really brought in new business in this vertical, and if not, then we can adjust for another target for for the next quarter.

136 00:23:51.940 00:24:20.840 Robert Tseng: But okay, I’ll pause there. And anybody who’s kind of yeah, I mean, if this is, if your work is related to this and you have questions about it would love to, or it just will have have thoughts and responses. Would love to just kind of create a bit of space for us to kind of talk through. What are the the things that stick out to you the most? What do you think is kind of a challenge that you feel like we, we would need to provide extra support in just like any. Any kind of reaction, I think would be would be helpful here.

137 00:24:25.970 00:24:30.719 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think maybe reaction from people who are on the client side like Connor.

138 00:24:30.860 00:24:33.840 Uttam Kumaran: Nico, what do you guys think when you see this.

139 00:24:39.000 00:24:44.850 Nicolas Sucari: I think. Well, it’s more directly to Connor. But yeah, I like these kind of objectives. I know they are like

140 00:24:45.140 00:24:52.910 Nicolas Sucari: a little bit if you if you think it right now, it’s like a long way to go. But it’s good to set kind of those

141 00:24:53.210 00:25:15.139 Nicolas Sucari: goals in order to start working towards that. I don’t know if if you mentioned that, Robert. But when we said okrs like, we are obviously trying to aim for the 100% of that of that ones. But if we reach kind of 80, 90%, is that really pretty good result on that ones, too. So, yeah, I mean, I think they are

142 00:25:15.895 00:25:23.599 Nicolas Sucari: good good objectives to go through to go with. And yeah, trying to reach these goals will make us grow

143 00:25:23.770 00:25:26.720 Nicolas Sucari: a lot in what we are doing. So, yeah.

144 00:25:29.030 00:25:29.500 Connor Fenn: I can agree.

145 00:25:29.500 00:25:46.549 Robert Tseng: Yeah, definitely, Nico, you’re right like this isn’t the current state of the business. This is kind of like where we see a business like 3 months from now, you know. So now that we’re at a place where we’re not like, you know, surviving. And we can actually like plan ahead for a couple of months or a few months. Yeah, we wanna kind of

146 00:25:46.550 00:26:08.630 Robert Tseng: think about where we want to be, and that hopefully, that kind of makes all of us be a bit more focused on how we could get get towards that. You know I will say that I think we already do on the on the right track, like this month, has probably been our biggest month yet. We’re more than halfway to to our like that 1st for 1st goal already, and this, the quarter is still young. You know we still have, like

147 00:26:08.630 00:26:22.459 Robert Tseng: almost 3 months at this point. So or 2 2 months. And yeah. So I think it’s it’s an aggressive target. But it’s not. It’s not impossible. But yeah, as long as we keep heading in that direction. I think we’ll be good.

148 00:26:25.700 00:26:30.459 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think to Nico’s point like, this is the 1st time we’ve set goals.

149 00:26:30.780 00:26:42.480 Uttam Kumaran: of course, like I have goals of having the best company with the best employees and doing the best work. But like actual goals that we can measure and so we we aren’t gonna hit all these.

150 00:26:42.590 00:26:50.519 Uttam Kumaran: And you know, it’s that’s okay. But we are gonna set goals that are ambitious, and we’re gonna make sure that we can measure them

151 00:26:50.570 00:27:14.169 Uttam Kumaran: right. The goals are there to push us ahead. But also they’re they’re just balance with being realistic. Some of these we we may not have the path right now on how to get there. The initiatives are sort of what we said, but we maybe we don’t know exactly what our conversion rates are. Things like that. So don’t get frustrated too much with the nitty, gritty focus on the big numbers. And then, really, next quarter, I feel like we’ll have a really really good

152 00:27:14.330 00:27:30.409 Uttam Kumaran: sort of process dialed in for establishing these ideally. Me and Rob are really establish these together. I think the next quarter we’ll work closely with the folks that are executing on these to find out what’s realistic, and then we’ll make that happen. So that’s great.

153 00:27:30.920 00:27:31.750 Robert Tseng: Yeah, bias.

154 00:27:32.154 00:27:51.759 Payas Parab: I. 1 thing I wanted to ask is like, How do you think about goals for like these are all kind of like new business, right? Like net. New business, like one of the things that, like I feel is like someone who works on the client. Right? Is like, what am I trying to achieve other than like, survive and keep the Billings alive right like it’s like, how do you think about goals? For

155 00:27:52.220 00:27:56.020 Payas Parab: like existing clients right like, is it like? Is there

156 00:27:56.200 00:27:59.900 Payas Parab: like not get canned? Is that the is that the benchmark, or like? What do you.

157 00:28:01.300 00:28:27.970 Robert Tseng: Actually, we go back to more. Slides. Yeah, I just want to call out. So in that 1st kr, with, like, you know, it’s not. We’re all those initiatives are for new business, like, I would say, going from a audit or paid discovery up to like a single function data team. I mean, you know, there’s there’s some ability we could push a client to a higher tier. That’s like one of the goals on the account management piece. So that’s what I spend my time on with the existing clients. Like

158 00:28:27.970 00:28:32.080 Robert Tseng: as you guys are executing on it. I’m thinking about, how do I keep growing this account

159 00:28:32.200 00:28:59.760 Robert Tseng: right? And then also I would call out in the second Kr. And the 3rd initiative there, we’re talking about like partners as well, and our partners. May is like it is kind of new business. But like this is like another, you know, pies for you specifically, I think, because you’ve had a lot of ideas around this this like, I I wanna lean into that and get get our, get our existing partner network to be contributing to to to the clients that we get as well. And these may be.

160 00:29:00.040 00:29:24.479 Robert Tseng: yeah, they will already come warm because they’ve worked with our partners before. And you know, I think so that that’s like another. That’s another kind of piece of the puzzle. But I guess what we thought jumped ahead to a couple couple of slides later with the with the service delivery goals specifically. Maybe that would be more practical, for, like what what the goals are in your in in the client work. So

161 00:29:25.047 00:29:27.450 Robert Tseng: yeah, we can jump ahead a couple of slides.

162 00:29:29.420 00:29:33.670 Robert Tseng: Yeah. So I think there’s

163 00:29:34.650 00:29:51.649 Robert Tseng: there’s a few parts to to deliver having delightful service delivery, as we’re calling it. You know you’ve we’ve you’ve heard us emphasize over and over again, just like how we need to be communicating better than their best employ internal employee, and that may sound like a very

164 00:29:52.017 00:30:08.869 Robert Tseng: like lofty goal. But I think it doesn’t require that much effort on our side, I think as long as we deliver like a high quality message, regularly figuring out what those touch points are everyone that’s like engaged on the client kind of has that same buy in

165 00:30:08.870 00:30:32.946 Robert Tseng: to really want to like, be helpful for the client? I think these are the different initiatives that we’ve broken out on like things that we believe that we can do on our side, just to show that we’re on top of it to the clients. Right? Also also says a lot that, like, you know, only like half of the battle of the of the client work is in is just is just like letting them know what we’re doing.

166 00:30:33.380 00:30:45.099 Robert Tseng: in most of these situations we’re the outsider. It’s always kind of going to be our fault if we’re not. If if things don’t seem to be moving along, it’s always easier to blame the outsider. And so we want to really like

167 00:30:45.970 00:30:52.800 Robert Tseng: show. Show them that we’re we’re equally invested in the business as the people that are working there full time and

168 00:30:52.910 00:30:59.250 Robert Tseng: creating that perception is is is essential for us to continue to have trust with with these clients.

169 00:30:59.550 00:31:02.260 Robert Tseng: The second kr, I think this is

170 00:31:02.797 00:31:15.392 Robert Tseng: to me. This was like a big stretch, but reducing the amount of time that we come, and I spend on like client work itself. Obviously, as we’ve grown much bigger than we were like even a couple of quarters ago.

171 00:31:15.770 00:31:41.830 Robert Tseng: yeah, there, there are different like breaking points and and parts of our of our process that have been leaking where we’ve had to jump in and we’re getting better like we’re we’re. We’re communicating a lot internally and and doing things, figuring out who are the right people that we need to bring on to support the existing team. And yeah, I think this, the goal is to eventually like, have us to to step out a bit more so that we can do more.

172 00:31:41.830 00:32:01.519 Robert Tseng: We we can do more work that’s focused on growing growing the business, either by bringing in new clients or kind of building, building the relationship with the existing clients and and helping helping push them higher or helping build tools and processes within internally to help the team move faster as well.

173 00:32:01.815 00:32:11.864 Robert Tseng: And then the 3rd piece is really just, I guess, more a target for the AI team, with all the different agents that we’ve been building out and deploying to support our team internally.

174 00:32:12.250 00:32:27.440 Robert Tseng: like, all of this, is really to basically create a a virtual Pm for every person. Right? And I think we’ve made a bunch of strides in getting there. And I see the usage of the tools across our slack. And it’s great.

175 00:32:27.732 00:32:49.979 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think it’d just be awesome for us to be able to measure it as well, and yeah, that this could end up. You know, this. This is this is what sets us apart from other teams, because we’re we’re real, always thinking about how we can automate and to improve efficiency within our within our organization. That that’s gonna make us execute better than than the than anyone else.

176 00:32:54.310 00:33:02.630 Robert Tseng: so I guess I’ll pause here as well, and for the folks like, I guess the AI team like Pm, ops

177 00:33:02.910 00:33:14.809 Robert Tseng: any any folks that are kind of touching those areas like this objective is really, really for you. So if you have any like feedback that you wanna kind of quick or questions you wanna ask now like, feel free to.

178 00:33:20.170 00:33:27.160 Nicolas Sucari: I don’t have questions, guys. Yeah, I talked to you about this yesterday. So I I started looking into

179 00:33:27.290 00:33:34.670 Nicolas Sucari: what kind of measures I can provide to you so that we discuss and see if we can

180 00:33:35.010 00:33:44.300 Nicolas Sucari: add some of those into the I don’t know improving the Pm. Function, maybe, or on the communication side with clients. I’m I’m preparing something. I will send to you.

181 00:33:44.834 00:34:08.099 Nicolas Sucari: So that you can take a look. But with some ideas on how we can measure some of those things. Sometimes it’s kind of difficult. We just need to look into slack and try to measure all of those ones. Maybe with some help with the AI team, we can yeah, manage to do something like that. But yeah, this seems reasonable. Obviously, having you guys reduced our time. Client work and focus on sales will will make growth.

182 00:34:09.592 00:34:37.290 Nicolas Sucari: We’ll accelerate growth of the company. Obviously. And yeah, maybe it’s also what we need to do is to just like define some processes on how to handle the client the client work on so that we can standardize across different clients. Because if not, if we need to create something different for each client. Sometimes it’s difficult to track and measure something different for each. So maybe standardizing a little bit. What we do with all clients will help on that one.

183 00:34:38.429 00:34:46.109 Robert Tseng: Yeah, totally. And I think the more clients I mean, as we’re taking on more and more clients, we’re going to be seeing more patterns, things that we can do better.

184 00:34:46.339 00:34:57.879 Robert Tseng: And so, yeah, I think this is just a natural growth of the natural step progression of the maturity of the company. So the longer we stay in business the better we’ll get at this. Yeah bias.

185 00:34:58.980 00:35:02.330 Payas Parab: Just 1 1 thing I wanted to kind of add here, and I don’t know if, like

186 00:35:02.510 00:35:08.859 Payas Parab: one of the things that can be really challenging on like continual conversations with clients. Right is like.

187 00:35:09.070 00:35:16.100 Payas Parab: like some people are part time, right? So it’s like, it’s a really hard to like. We kind of have to balance that against like, how do you think about like balancing this against

188 00:35:16.260 00:35:26.950 Payas Parab: people who are part time? I even utam yesterday I mentioned to you. It’s like when I start to feel like my capacity is a little stretched, I’m like, Hey, I’m just like throwing up the yellow flag like it’s not a red flag yet, but it’s like a yellow flag.

189 00:35:27.334 00:35:48.729 Payas Parab: Like with part time people, and like kind of availability and hours kind of flexing up and down because there’s other commitments for these people like on the Da side. Do you guys have any thoughts around like, how do you align those goals to that and if there’s like Saha or anyone, I actually don’t know who else in the company is like part time or on the da side. More so. But like, like, How do you guys manage with that?

190 00:35:49.420 00:36:11.430 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, you’re totally right. And even, I guess Sahana experiences this morning. But you know communications 2 ways. If the client’s not receptive, or they’re being unresponsive. We have to find another way in. And so I think those, you know, if if you’re not able, if you don’t feel equipped to send the message, or someone’s not being like, you know. That’s what I will will step in to help help. There, you know.

191 00:36:11.693 00:36:29.100 Robert Tseng: We we will anything that you do? We will make it sound 10 times better. And anything that you. If anybody is ignoring you, we will get on their case, you know, and I think that’s that’s those are the things that we think we can do to help you like. This is very important to us. So if you do feel like, hey, like

192 00:36:29.160 00:36:57.910 Robert Tseng: like, never don’t feel bad or embarrassed, or whatever it is like even the yellow flag, like, even if it is yellow flag like. Show it to us so that we can go, and just like send that message on on your behalf. What would help us is, if you know, we have the daily. We have a daily check ins. We have the updates. Just make it easy for us to kind of be up to up to speed on what it is you’re doing, and then we’ll be able to kind of step in and help help with the messaging there as well.

193 00:36:58.417 00:37:24.630 Robert Tseng: Obviously, ideally, as you know you you own, even for the part time, folks, you own your one or 2 clients. Like I I would I would love if you could still kind of feel like you, if you could create the bandwidth to just feel like you could send at least a message. Almost every day. But if that’s not, you know, if it’s gonna take a while to get there, then we will. We’ll keep working with you on on that. But that that’s really kind of the expectation that we have here.

194 00:37:27.220 00:37:30.220 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. And then one more thing, I know, we don’t have anything here around

195 00:37:30.679 00:37:54.700 Uttam Kumaran: like our technology, or actually like improving the quality of the data data work, actually think we’re doing like a pretty good job. So you know, we can only have like we, we can only have a few objectives and a few krs, otherwise we’ll get nothing done. But probably next quarter we’ll have a couple more things around bugs, sla for tickets. Things like that. We’re doing pretty good.

196 00:37:54.770 00:38:17.790 Uttam Kumaran: and like, I sort of catch things as they get through on the info side. But like, I feel really confident about our data quality. And I, I, you guys know, like, it’s actually not a problem about the what the work we’re doing. All of our issues are Comms related for the most part, which is good and bad. It’s like, okay, fine. So what? That’s why we really are focusing on communications. And how do we standardize so?

197 00:38:18.530 00:38:24.690 Uttam Kumaran: And then the the AI team like, I I think we’ll we’ll probably could probably talk. I wanna make sure we can get to the other

198 00:38:25.040 00:38:40.070 Uttam Kumaran: objective. But we can talk in our meeting, but this is going to be how we run our meetings, and Miguel in particular. You’ll be owning how we basically can make this a reality across one or more agents in the company. So I’m really, really excited for this.

199 00:38:41.840 00:38:44.220 Robert Tseng: Cool. Alright. Let’s move on to the last one.

200 00:38:45.347 00:39:05.232 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Okay, so this is probably more directed at the Brand Content design kind of folks here so trying to drive attributable revenue like, I think the perception is one thing, and what we’re trying to do here is we’re trying to measure like, how is perception of the brain forge brand like really impacting the business right? And

201 00:39:05.570 00:39:22.000 Robert Tseng: these are just a couple of things that we came up with that, we think would move needle. So I think, with all the content that we publish, obviously wanting to bring more engagements and visibility to the business. We know that it’s helpful. I think something that Vixel kind of taught us is like

202 00:39:22.190 00:39:39.529 Robert Tseng: for for those mid market, like enterprise level clients that we want to get to. They need to hear about us 9 times before they make a purchase, you know. And yeah, maybe like, you know, we’re we’re at a point now where we’re we’re ranking high like we’re we. We passed the initial sniff test

203 00:39:39.530 00:40:03.740 Robert Tseng: and folks folks that come onto our website like we? We’re we’re getting engagement and visibility there. But yeah, I think like, where we’re trying to push towards with the team that we have is we want to rival like kind of what enterprise marketing has to offer, you know. And I think that you know High High bar to set. But I think we’re we’re we’re we have the right foundational pieces in place to be moving that direction.

204 00:40:03.800 00:40:32.109 Robert Tseng: And the last piece is on the Mql. Just means minimum qualified leads. So folks that actually are of the buyer persona so I think that would be a that’s that’s something for us to consider like are the people that we’re attracting just like anybody’s eyeballs in the industry? Or are we able to get specific enough that the buyer that we want to be talking to is able to is able to reach out to us directly through the through the content.

205 00:40:32.110 00:40:45.539 Robert Tseng: the branding design that we put out, and so I think that would be a great challenge and objective for us to kind of like Orient towards, as we really narrow down our messaging and really focus on talking to the buyer.

206 00:40:47.480 00:40:49.182 Robert Tseng: Oh, guys, okay.

207 00:40:51.630 00:40:54.499 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Alright. Well, that’s I mean.

208 00:40:54.970 00:41:00.520 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I guess. Like, yeah, maybe, Ryan, I’m interested to hear from Ryan, Hannah.

209 00:41:01.014 00:41:15.470 Uttam Kumaran: and what do you guys think about this sort of stuff on the design and brand side, I think. Finally, I hope this gives some structure to that work I know sometimes it’ll be hard to attribute, but in particular, I think

210 00:41:15.720 00:41:16.730 Uttam Kumaran: you know

211 00:41:16.880 00:41:23.649 Uttam Kumaran: you all collaborating closely with Ryan. I know we we set some goals. I’m interested to hear what you guys think about this.

212 00:41:33.362 00:41:36.098 Anne: Yeah. So for the design team, I think.

213 00:41:38.310 00:41:46.430 Anne: I think we’re doing great. But since Hannah is already here, maybe we can establish more on our on the brand side. So

214 00:41:46.840 00:41:52.420 Anne: yeah, I think we’ll have more followers on Linkedin on our socials.

215 00:41:52.920 00:41:53.580 Anne: Yep.

216 00:41:55.825 00:42:09.019 Ryan Brosas: As for the marketing we are structuring like a based off of strategy for personal linking so that we can achieve the goals, for you know our

217 00:42:09.525 00:42:27.740 Ryan Brosas: on our newsletter or or others traffic that we want to target also, like constantly improving the quality of the content is I’m currently like doing also for the blog post, carousel and the linkedin, I think. Yeah, I agree.

218 00:42:29.520 00:42:29.840 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.

219 00:42:31.320 00:42:35.760 Hannah Wang: Yeah, sorry I have one thing. Yeah, I feel like, with

220 00:42:35.980 00:42:45.619 Hannah Wang: just social media and marketing and design and all that. There’s a lot of platforms that we’re using. And just a lot of touch points that we have. I think.

221 00:42:46.180 00:42:53.729 Hannah Wang: yeah, I think just establishing like a strong foundation of consistent like

222 00:42:54.080 00:43:02.402 Hannah Wang: design and look and feel, I think, is important. As we continue to expand into like other areas.

223 00:43:03.170 00:43:11.729 Hannah Wang: so I don’t know, like, obviously, I just started. So I don’t really know like what there is and what we’re already doing in the systems that are in place. But I feel like

224 00:43:12.140 00:43:29.790 Hannah Wang: it’s easy for things to get overwhelming, cause we there’s like a lot of assets and designs and decks and documents and all that stuff. So I just want to. Yeah, just remember or remind everyone, everyone, Ryan, and and not yeah, I don’t know just that. Like consistent

225 00:43:30.470 00:43:43.429 Hannah Wang: tone and branding and voice is what I think I want to focus on. I mean, not just pushing out content for the sake of pushing it out, but really making sure that everything’s cohesive.

226 00:43:44.690 00:43:46.790 Hannah Wang: yeah, that’s just the thought I had.

227 00:43:47.520 00:43:48.280 Uttam Kumaran: Awesome.

228 00:43:50.070 00:43:56.540 Uttam Kumaran: So we’ll assist on all these in terms of helping to measure as well. Nice thing is, we are a data company. So this is.

229 00:43:57.000 00:43:58.848 Uttam Kumaran: this would be cake.

230 00:44:00.180 00:44:06.449 Uttam Kumaran: but if I don’t have time to do it, it’s gonna be hard. So yeah, great

231 00:44:08.278 00:44:12.320 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know what other slides we had. Robert. Yeah.

232 00:44:12.320 00:44:37.290 Robert Tseng: This is just if you wanted to read more into the Okrs framework for those of you that have not kind of seen objectives kind of present. In this way I put some good resources kind of for you to look into. Maybe if I could spend like 30 seconds on this. Maybe you’ve heard of Kpis before? The difference between okrs and kpis is kpis is more kind of measuring the day to day of how the business is coming along. So if we have, like.

233 00:44:37.890 00:44:55.860 Robert Tseng: yeah, just certain like metrics that we’re just monitoring like the ups and downs of daily, whereas okrs are more kind of like direct, directionally focused. Kind of more. Yes, sir, they have a. They have strategic context to them, and we don’t really feel like, you know we’re in a place right now to

234 00:44:56.000 00:45:03.500 Robert Tseng: be sharing out Kpis, and how our business is going up and down every day. So that’s kind of why we chose to go with the Okr framework first.st

235 00:45:04.650 00:45:25.564 Robert Tseng: but yeah, I think the deck here, there’s a section for everyone to kind of contribute to. So I guess going for next week, we don’t wanna create too much more work. But just being able to concisely put on a slide updates. And I think we’ll share out more details of kind of coaching you how you can put together an update and we’ll we’ll probably be running with something like this.

236 00:45:25.970 00:45:27.560 Robert Tseng: for the for the weeks to come.

237 00:45:29.750 00:45:38.579 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. Yeah. And I think, you know, we’ll spend. Probably this. These meetings will start to get more focused. But hope this is really really clear. I’m gonna send this in slack.

238 00:45:39.030 00:45:54.340 Uttam Kumaran: Please, if you have questions, don’t DM me. Just put them in the thread. Everybody, I’m sure, has questions. And we’ll be meeting with folks and teams individually to start talking through how we sort of give everyone ownership over these and report

239 00:45:54.340 00:46:17.500 Uttam Kumaran: again. I know, I think back to when I told Ryan that I want to grow the newsletter to a thousand people, and and he was like dude. I’m like I’m gonna quit. We can’t even. There’s no way we do that. And this, that’s what I I think we’re don’t get too worried about hitting these. But in order again, what what Luke just said in the chat is like in order to understand, are we heading the right direction every single week?

240 00:46:17.815 00:46:36.374 Uttam Kumaran: We have to think about things this way. The way we get there is is up to everyone on this call. So I’ll be sending this in slack, and then we’ll meet with people individually. I know some people spent time on notion putting in updates. Sorry we didn’t get to those. I’ll I’m gonna move those to the slide, and then we can cover those on Monday.

241 00:46:37.860 00:46:40.240 Uttam Kumaran: perfect anything else

242 00:46:43.970 00:47:07.709 Uttam Kumaran: cool. I think this is our biggest meeting, like 15 people which is awesome. We are growing. And it’s really, really exciting. I know a lot of people have been I feel like, I say this every few few weeks, but you know we were like it was like me on a Zoom Meeting with like myself for a while, and then you know, Luke, join, and then me and Robert started working together, and we sort of grew a lot. And I I’m so excited like.

243 00:47:08.090 00:47:11.610 Uttam Kumaran: this is really really amazing. We have a lot of big goals, but

244 00:47:11.950 00:47:17.019 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know. It feels like we really have everything we need here to to bake the whole pie. So I’m excited.

245 00:47:19.680 00:47:21.800 Luke Daque: Yeah, we’re growing so fast, like.

246 00:47:22.310 00:47:26.760 Luke Daque: it’s very different. Like January last year. It’s it’s just like me and

247 00:47:27.010 00:47:30.260 Luke Daque: whole town doing doing all data work. And then.

248 00:47:30.940 00:47:35.539 Luke Daque: now, we’re doing AI and like marketing everything like, yeah, so so fast.

249 00:47:37.870 00:47:38.879 Uttam Kumaran: More to come

250 00:47:39.780 00:47:45.169 Uttam Kumaran: cool. Well, thanks. Everyone. Have a good weekend. Get some rest for the folks abroad, and we’ll talk on Monday.

251 00:47:46.350 00:47:47.497 Luke Daque: Cool thanks guys.

252 00:47:47.990 00:47:48.500 Uttam Kumaran: Thank you.

253 00:47:48.500 00:47:49.600 Miguel de Veyra: Everyone. Bye-bye.