Meeting Title: Uttam Date: 2025-02-05 Meeting participants: Uttam Kumaran, Emily Chan
WEBVTT
1 00:03:35.480 ⇒ 00:03:36.540 Uttam Kumaran: Hey! Emily!
2 00:03:37.590 ⇒ 00:03:38.960 Emily Chan: Hey? What Tom?
3 00:03:38.960 ⇒ 00:03:39.859 Uttam Kumaran: Hey! How are you?
4 00:03:40.184 ⇒ 00:03:41.479 Emily Chan: How are you doing.
5 00:03:41.710 ⇒ 00:03:45.829 Uttam Kumaran: Good, busy, busier than last time. Somehow.
6 00:03:45.830 ⇒ 00:03:47.160 Emily Chan: Is good, right.
7 00:03:47.160 ⇒ 00:03:52.449 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. I guess that’s why we’re we’re talking again. How are you? How’s everything?
8 00:03:52.910 ⇒ 00:03:57.739 Emily Chan: Good. Yeah. Getting busier, too. I guess the New Year is good.
9 00:03:59.330 ⇒ 00:04:06.179 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, New Year has been really good for us, too. We we’re we move from probably, like, you know, like 2 or 3 clients. Now we’re sort of
10 00:04:06.340 ⇒ 00:04:11.470 Uttam Kumaran: we have 2 more starting one this week, one next week. So we’re up to almost like 7
11 00:04:11.992 ⇒ 00:04:20.900 Uttam Kumaran: concurrent, which is leading to a lot of other issues. But again, I think our our sort of focus now is sort of building up
12 00:04:21.450 ⇒ 00:04:27.209 Uttam Kumaran: like our playbook arm. Of how do we actually engage on on these, on these data clients and
13 00:04:27.970 ⇒ 00:04:31.350 Uttam Kumaran: sort of guarantee success. So that’s sort of like where we’re at right now.
14 00:04:31.730 ⇒ 00:04:34.450 Emily Chan: Congrats. Sounds like traction is really good.
15 00:04:34.450 ⇒ 00:04:34.910 Uttam Kumaran: Good.
16 00:04:34.910 ⇒ 00:04:38.940 Emily Chan: And like a sounds like you’re seeing growing pains. Did I hear that right.
17 00:04:38.940 ⇒ 00:04:42.500 Uttam Kumaran: Exactly. I mean, it’s like, I mean, it’s
18 00:04:42.610 ⇒ 00:04:51.259 Uttam Kumaran: it’s on one hand, it’s like managing one data team on another hand, it’s like sort of several clients to kind of work
19 00:04:51.610 ⇒ 00:05:03.284 Uttam Kumaran: on and you know for me, like I’ve I’ve I’ve managed data teams. I know you have as well, like, it’s not the actual engineering that’s really a challenge. It’s just like coordinating setting requirements and
20 00:05:03.830 ⇒ 00:05:12.689 Uttam Kumaran: sort of just like staying on the ball with the client. And sort of that’s that’s really where we’re at, where me and Robert, our time right now is really being spent.
21 00:05:13.260 ⇒ 00:05:19.749 Uttam Kumaran: There, and and one of our goals is to sort of reduce our time spent on client work. So I can continue to work on the machine.
22 00:05:20.453 ⇒ 00:05:36.789 Uttam Kumaran: And sort of yeah, that’s kind of like, why, I wanted to re-engage and sort of see? Like you know, if you’d be open to maybe getting involved at all, or or still open to an opportunity. With us, I mean, typically, I think, for this
23 00:05:37.435 ⇒ 00:05:50.220 Uttam Kumaran: opportunity. Really, it’s just coming in to sort of lead. Like client engagements. We’re starting to work with more sophisticated and like larger engagements where we all, we’re coming in basically as like
24 00:05:50.610 ⇒ 00:05:58.060 Uttam Kumaran: the entire analytics team. So it almost is like a head of data function, like for hire
25 00:05:58.890 ⇒ 00:06:03.329 Uttam Kumaran: as well as we deploy like our data, engineers, analytics, engineers, etc.
26 00:06:03.900 ⇒ 00:06:06.699 Uttam Kumaran: So yeah, that’s kind of like the gist of it.
27 00:06:07.259 ⇒ 00:06:12.289 Uttam Kumaran: But yeah, I guess I’ll want to hear your reaction or your thoughts.
28 00:06:12.290 ⇒ 00:06:18.510 Emily Chan: Yeah, super interesting. Tell me more like, what kind of clients, what kind of work?
29 00:06:18.690 ⇒ 00:06:23.389 Emily Chan: What is the gap that you know this role that you’re looking for is trying to fill.
30 00:06:23.390 ⇒ 00:06:24.810 Uttam Kumaran: Sure. So
31 00:06:27.010 ⇒ 00:06:51.109 Uttam Kumaran: for us. It’s just like I mean, I think of the brain. Forge is just like layers of abstraction. Right? We have, like one engineer on one team. We have a pod of either data analysts, data engineers, or analytics, engineers per client. And then we have several clients. You know, across our engineer our data, and like our data practice, our clients are typically in right now in either an Ecom or b 2 b saas
32 00:06:51.566 ⇒ 00:07:12.479 Uttam Kumaran: like some, I would say, anywhere from like 10 to 100 million in Revenue Ecom, and then probably somewhere in that range for b 2 b sas as well. That’s honestly probably what the next quarter of clients is gonna look like as well, just because we’re hitting stride. I don’t know longer term whether that’ll be the case. But we are. We have done a lot of that work, and
33 00:07:12.630 ⇒ 00:07:20.140 Uttam Kumaran: it’s now kind of compounding for us. Really, the engagement lead is sort of 2 things. So one is we have a project manager.
34 00:07:20.519 ⇒ 00:07:34.290 Uttam Kumaran: Who’s kind of sort of working on analy. Make making sure that like tickets and everything’s assigned but one of the things that me and Robert really do well is go in and sort of set like what the what the goals are for the engagement. What are the big rocks that
35 00:07:34.290 ⇒ 00:07:50.309 Uttam Kumaran: we’re trying to push forward for the client from a data perspective, and then also sort of like, basically meeting with them. Typically, like once a week to say, like, Here’s here’s like the progress we made and being a partner for them on the actual analytics side, a lot of these clients don’t have a head of data.
36 00:07:50.684 ⇒ 00:07:55.370 Uttam Kumaran: And the mistake we made is kind of assuming that, like a project manager.
37 00:07:55.680 ⇒ 00:08:18.530 Uttam Kumaran: is gonna fill that. And instead, that’s not necessarily the case, because the project managers are more just like managing scrum or managing like what tickets are getting assigned. This is sort of someone I like our level, which is like we’ve seen sort of what goes wrong. And also, we can set a direction for the client on basically how to set their analytic strategy. And then how do we deploy resources to accomplish that?
38 00:08:19.074 ⇒ 00:08:35.929 Uttam Kumaran: So it’s a little bit like abstract. I think we previously we had no idea sort of what the pod is gonna look like for a given client. I think now we’re more going towards at minimum. There needs to be an engagement lead and engineers. Whether we need a project manager
39 00:08:36.039 ⇒ 00:08:38.309 Uttam Kumaran: longer term I’m not sure, like
40 00:08:38.539 ⇒ 00:08:43.949 Uttam Kumaran: we don’t. It’s not like a lot of tickets. It’s not like a ton of work. So I feel like, if we just
41 00:08:44.220 ⇒ 00:08:48.679 Uttam Kumaran: like, if we have good coordination between an engagement lead and
42 00:08:48.940 ⇒ 00:09:00.969 Uttam Kumaran: the engineers. It’s like enough right now, I think the reason why we are Project manager is because, like I’m leading some of these clients, and I don’t have time to sort of make requirements things like that. So I think that’s more of the function of our issue.
43 00:09:01.447 ⇒ 00:09:06.340 Uttam Kumaran: And so yeah, we have about 7. We’ll have about like 6 or 7 clients right now.
44 00:09:06.911 ⇒ 00:09:13.089 Uttam Kumaran: I’m spread across 3 of them. Robert is spread across 2 of them.
45 00:09:13.570 ⇒ 00:09:22.810 Uttam Kumaran: and we have another project managers sort of handling. So we’re kind of in the spot where we need to sort of replace me and Robert on some of these, but that can’t be a junior person.
46 00:09:22.940 ⇒ 00:09:32.329 Uttam Kumaran: It kind of doesn’t. People are looking to us for that like head of data service. And actually all of our engagements that we sign. We’re basically looking to move into that function.
47 00:09:32.793 ⇒ 00:09:40.709 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and the the bigger engagements they will require sort of that level of work from us. And so that’s sort of like where we are.
48 00:09:41.650 ⇒ 00:09:50.859 Emily Chan: Got it. Can I just play back to make sure you’re right? So so it sounds like the the part is obviously you have, like engineers doing the work right now. That’s like a
49 00:09:51.680 ⇒ 00:09:53.200 Emily Chan: Jira ticketmaster.
50 00:09:53.200 ⇒ 00:09:53.540 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
51 00:09:53.540 ⇒ 00:10:08.190 Emily Chan: Person. And then you need someone higher level to basically like, be the partner from the client standpoint, like, figure out, what is the business problem the client have, what does that mean in terms of data requirement and really be like head of data like more a strategy role.
52 00:10:08.550 ⇒ 00:10:12.730 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s it’s sort of just like, yeah. If they were to hire ahead of data
53 00:10:12.850 ⇒ 00:10:22.169 Uttam Kumaran: like, what would they do right when we come into a client. We typically explain that like this is what they would expect. Some clients understand that some clients never hired ahead of data.
54 00:10:22.534 ⇒ 00:10:49.940 Uttam Kumaran: However, like that includes everything from like. Okay, what is procurement like, what tools should we use? Like, what? How should we staff this? What are the milestones and timeline and then again, for me, the the really, the nice thing is like we’re just we did. We do this across many clients. So our playbook for Ecom runs very similarly across all of our Ecom clients. They really have the same problem typically on like the marketing analytics. Side b 2 b slash clients are really around.
55 00:10:50.825 ⇒ 00:10:54.500 Uttam Kumaran: Arr Mrr, churn product metrics.
56 00:10:55.005 ⇒ 00:11:02.969 Uttam Kumaran: But yeah, again, it’s basically like the opportunity sort of be that like head of data and then sort of lead the team from like an engagement standpoint, I think
57 00:11:03.160 ⇒ 00:11:14.185 Uttam Kumaran: for the person. This role, I think our question will be longer term like whether we do need a project manager in addition, and maybe that’s based on the size and scope of the client.
58 00:11:15.340 ⇒ 00:11:19.589 Uttam Kumaran: or maybe again, I think if if stuff is really coherent between
59 00:11:20.070 ⇒ 00:11:28.360 Uttam Kumaran: the person, this role and the engineers, then you know, it maybe doesn’t need. There’s no room for a project manager to just like sort of move tickets around.
60 00:11:28.944 ⇒ 00:11:32.735 Uttam Kumaran: But that’s sort of the the idea we have right now.
61 00:11:34.460 ⇒ 00:11:49.240 Uttam Kumaran: so yeah, I mean, we’re we currently have, like several clients, that flight and all of them we’re looking to basically renew at a higher rates and sort of take on more work. But of course, like in a head of data role, we’re not just working for the marketing department, working for a sales department finance department. So that’s really where.
62 00:11:49.550 ⇒ 00:11:56.950 Uttam Kumaran: like the scope increases in turn, allows brain forge to bill more but also it requires somebody that’s like
63 00:11:57.160 ⇒ 00:11:59.985 Uttam Kumaran: run cross functional teams. We dealt with multiple stakeholders.
64 00:12:00.733 ⇒ 00:12:06.540 Uttam Kumaran: Which is too much to put on a you know. If we were just get a project manager to sort of handle
65 00:12:07.039 ⇒ 00:12:10.089 Uttam Kumaran: you know. So that’s sort of where we’re at.
66 00:12:10.630 ⇒ 00:12:20.829 Emily Chan: Yeah, that sounds very exciting. I mean, that’s kind of what I did for a long time. So yeah, I would. I would love to be that person. Couple of questions like, Are you looking for
67 00:12:21.530 ⇒ 00:12:26.689 Emily Chan: this person to do that role for all the clients kind of like across all the clients.
68 00:12:26.980 ⇒ 00:12:29.335 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, ideally, we would just start with one.
69 00:12:30.050 ⇒ 00:12:32.709 Uttam Kumaran: And for every I mean again I
70 00:12:32.860 ⇒ 00:12:58.219 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know something about this company where I I just I just realized that, like, I’m not good at hiring, and so instead, what I like to do is just like, bring people on and sort of be like, give it a go as bite off something small, and let’s just see how it goes. So ideally we would start with one client. Currently like, I don’t think me and Robert, are good barometers for, like what’s possible, where we’ll just do whatever it takes. But I think I I would like
71 00:12:58.340 ⇒ 00:13:00.369 Uttam Kumaran: for this person to sort of own
72 00:13:00.680 ⇒ 00:13:02.820 Uttam Kumaran: the 2 biggest clients that we have
73 00:13:03.554 ⇒ 00:13:17.385 Uttam Kumaran: ideally whether it’s that strategy or whether it’s maybe one large 1, 1 smaller one. I’m not sure like, I’m I’m just now understanding sort of what the cognitive load for. Every role is across and context switching
74 00:13:17.970 ⇒ 00:13:34.260 Uttam Kumaran: But again, like ideally, this person goes onto either our set, 1st or second largest client. And then just starts there, basically like understanding. The stakeholders understand the key priorities. Understanding who we have staffed on there. And then it’s sort of able to say, like, cool
75 00:13:34.530 ⇒ 00:13:47.713 Uttam Kumaran: on a given day, is this client doing well, doing okay or or like? Are we gonna lose them right? And that’s the sort of feeling that we need as a data person, I can go in and sort of tell that
76 00:13:48.170 ⇒ 00:14:03.271 Uttam Kumaran: And like, I can sort of help govern procurement decisions like, should we go with this tool or not? What are the pricing? What’s the long term implications of infra. Okay, we just hired a new coo. Can we go understand what his requirements are? Those sorts of things?
77 00:14:04.150 ⇒ 00:14:07.999 Uttam Kumaran: and so that’s exactly where we would start is probably just with like one client.
78 00:14:08.410 ⇒ 00:14:11.949 Emily Chan: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense test and iterate. Right?
79 00:14:11.950 ⇒ 00:14:17.739 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, what do you think about? Sort of like, I guess, like
80 00:14:18.130 ⇒ 00:14:20.779 Uttam Kumaran: the challenge of like multiple clients,
81 00:14:22.340 ⇒ 00:14:31.130 Uttam Kumaran: and sort of like, I mean, the the thing I tell the team is like consulting. It’s it’s, I think, when you work in a company internally, it’s like maybe
82 00:14:31.300 ⇒ 00:14:36.820 Uttam Kumaran: 30% communication. I think it’s consulting. It’s almost like 50% communication meaning
83 00:14:36.990 ⇒ 00:14:39.923 Uttam Kumaran: the work actually, really isn’t the hard part.
84 00:14:40.540 ⇒ 00:14:49.300 Uttam Kumaran: it’s typically like just communicating often and having that communication be rich because the consultants are always going to be thought of as like.
85 00:14:49.630 ⇒ 00:15:06.089 Uttam Kumaran: maybe they’re dropping the ball, for example. So for us, that’s the biggest thing I tried to encourage the team is like to communicate. Often a lot of the team, though, is coming from internal background, so they’re not used to being like, send something every day. And so that’s also the thing is like right now.
86 00:15:06.490 ⇒ 00:15:16.659 Uttam Kumaran: me and Robert, we’re building the whole business as well as sort of engagement clients, and we’re losing a lot on, just like not communicating often and sort of putting ourselves in their shoes.
87 00:15:17.112 ⇒ 00:15:22.449 Uttam Kumaran: And that’s something that we’ve tried to get the engineers to do. But it’s tough like for me. I want them to spend
88 00:15:22.770 ⇒ 00:15:25.910 Uttam Kumaran: the 4 to 8 HA day developing
89 00:15:26.305 ⇒ 00:15:30.820 Uttam Kumaran: as little time in meetings, and this engagement lead to really be the extension of the client.
90 00:15:32.590 ⇒ 00:15:33.240 Emily Chan: What do you?
91 00:15:33.240 ⇒ 00:15:52.410 Emily Chan: What do you guys do now in terms of being in touch with the client like, is it? Do you guys do daily stand up. Is there a slack channel that you know? Just send daily updates? Or is it more like, okay, we just do a weekly meeting of like half an hour, and that’s enough, and I guess maybe it also depends on the kind of the project.
92 00:15:52.630 ⇒ 00:16:14.539 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. So for for most, for almost every client, we set up a slack channel. So we have an internal slack channel for the client and an external one, basically depending on. If we’re just meeting with one team, or if we have several teams, so we’ll start a slack connect we typically will do one like meeting a week where we sort of do demos or or progress. And then the rest is sort of ad hoc.
93 00:16:17.150 ⇒ 00:16:37.020 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, that’s that’s typically it. Again, I think another thing is sort of we. We have established some sla’s. I think the toughest part is on the data analyst side. Sometimes when clients have feedback for analysis, they sort of just like pepper you with questions like, What’s this? What’s this? What’s this? But for for data modeling and data inch work. We have a little bit longer slas.
94 00:16:37.418 ⇒ 00:16:48.431 Uttam Kumaran: But that’s really where again, like, even if we get 10 questions, the engagement, we can play a little defense and be like cool. We’ll get back to you on those we’ll get those answered. We’ll toss those to the team
95 00:16:49.290 ⇒ 00:17:01.000 Uttam Kumaran: and again, typically our other questions and stuff we’re answering, we’re still in really early innings for a lot of our clients like they’re still just getting their snowflake infrastructure set up getting their base models.
96 00:17:01.130 ⇒ 00:17:08.629 Uttam Kumaran: getting like their initial dashboards and then allowing them to think through. Okay, what are some second and 3rd layer questions we want to answer.
97 00:17:10.190 ⇒ 00:17:15.280 Emily Chan: I mean, that sounds like a good place. It’s good starting place for communication. And then, yeah.
98 00:17:15.280 ⇒ 00:17:23.219 Emily Chan: look at like work. Well, what doesn’t and iterate from there on the feedback from the client, like.
99 00:17:23.589 ⇒ 00:17:34.599 Emily Chan: I feel like a lot of the times on the like, a hundred percent agree on the data and side. That’s more of like a A, they give you more time for turnaround. And the analyst side is actually great that they’re asking questions there and.
100 00:17:34.600 ⇒ 00:17:35.250 Uttam Kumaran: I agree.
101 00:17:35.250 ⇒ 00:17:39.039 Emily Chan: Curious right? And I feel like sometimes, if you could just
102 00:17:39.740 ⇒ 00:17:56.519 Emily Chan: empower your analyst to jump on a call with the client that actually save them time, because, like, when they ask 5 questions, really, they have one overarching question that you don’t really get to unless you talk to them. Live. So if you talk to them, you just save yourself time, and you understand. And
103 00:17:56.520 ⇒ 00:17:57.050 Emily Chan: so that makes
104 00:17:57.050 ⇒ 00:18:00.630 Emily Chan: questions you don’t have to like. Go through the rabbit hole of answering all those 5 questions.
105 00:18:00.630 ⇒ 00:18:11.050 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and it build it. It also adds to the communication layer that like needs to happen right? Like, I think of everything as like for us. For example, one of our okrs is communicate with the client once a day.
106 00:18:11.210 ⇒ 00:18:26.070 Uttam Kumaran: something, whether it’s a slack message, whether it’s a meeting and we’re gonna start measuring slack to sort of try to verify that that’s happening. But that’s something. Where again, we’re we’re external consultants. We’re charging tens of thousands of dollars. We go 2 days without saying anything.
107 00:18:26.240 ⇒ 00:18:30.789 Uttam Kumaran: That’s rough, like I would if I if I was a business owner, I would be like.
108 00:18:31.210 ⇒ 00:18:45.917 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, we! There’s something wrong here, right? And so that’s the sort of problems. I think that because our focus is really thin, we’re we’re dropping some balls even when the work is pretty good quality, and we have enough staff to sort of execute on it.
109 00:18:46.330 ⇒ 00:19:05.860 Uttam Kumaran: The other thing is again, we’re we’re always gonna we’re in this phase, where we’re transitioning from sort of hourly contractors to more full time people, as we now have, like sort of stable revenue and pipeline. So this person also, again, like. And you’ve done, I’m sure a lot of hiring like help us basically on understanding engineering quality as well.
110 00:19:06.413 ⇒ 00:19:29.579 Uttam Kumaran: And sort of like, okay, what do we need to expect from our engineers? I don’t think this to think this role is like CTO, you know, or like too broad across clients. I still want to keep it focused on the client engagement. But for me, I my role overall. I want to get more towards like, okay, what is the what is our like platform? How? What’s the developer quality of life?
111 00:19:29.710 ⇒ 00:19:34.410 Uttam Kumaran: And then how do we measure developer productivity across Brainforge and then, partner with
112 00:19:34.660 ⇒ 00:19:45.679 Uttam Kumaran: like, whoever’s managing one or many clients to be like, are you getting what you need? Right? So that allows for some separation? Otherwise, if you’re if you’re if you have to go to a client, and you don’t have the right engineers. Then
113 00:19:45.790 ⇒ 00:20:00.780 Uttam Kumaran: that’s tough, but it’s not. I don’t want it to be up to that person to be like, Okay, I have to go solve this. I have to hire, etc. It should be like, Hey, this is a flag. This is happening. And then my job goes more on like again. Okay, going one step abstracted across our, do we have the right people?
114 00:20:00.950 ⇒ 00:20:17.700 Uttam Kumaran: For example, we have some analysts that were part time, but because they were part time, they couldn’t do this like quick answering, or they couldn’t cop on a call really quickly. Okay, that’s a problem. But on the analytics engineering side, maybe it is okay, because they have longer slas. So like talking through and learning, that is also a process for us.
115 00:20:18.950 ⇒ 00:20:23.829 Uttam Kumaran: and again, we have a really really good pipeline. So that’s why we want to sort of try to make
116 00:20:24.050 ⇒ 00:20:31.960 Uttam Kumaran: an investment here. Not it. Just like, okay, let’s throw 5 more people at the problem. But really talk about like, how do I get
117 00:20:32.440 ⇒ 00:20:53.490 Uttam Kumaran: myself and Robert sort of like further away. So then we can continue to just like, okay, can we make the process better? Not from the inside. And sort of that’s how we’re we’re thinking about things. But again, I think over time to give you a sense, we’re gonna take on bigger and bigger engagements with more complicated people and process as well as ideally more technical.
118 00:20:53.853 ⇒ 00:21:08.339 Uttam Kumaran: Like. Right now, I think the advantage we have in the in the, in the space is we can plug in a data engineer if you need an analytics engineer or an analyst depending on what the problem is. So for for companies to go hire that, especially companies in E com
119 00:21:08.742 ⇒ 00:21:23.180 Uttam Kumaran: they don’t. They don’t have the opportunity to spend, you know, half a million dollars, and going and staffing all that and getting people that have done this so many times. But additionally, people, the reason people like us because we really just get it, we go in, and we can speak about data.
120 00:21:23.676 ⇒ 00:21:43.950 Uttam Kumaran: but we we’ve talked to executives all the time, so I don’t muck it up with jargon. I try to just keep it like what they need to hear. And that’s what people really really like for us, I think to be honest, what people have get frustrated with us. And that’s really what we’re trying to solve, for here is just timelines getting delayed like I think we we lose a lot on. I think
121 00:21:44.140 ⇒ 00:22:10.409 Uttam Kumaran: my time is stretched. Robert’s time is stretched. We don’t spend enough time on requirements. We sort of hand off like, Hey, go figure this out doesn’t get done the right way. So that’s the real problem we’re trying to solve, like our our pitch and our positioning is is pretty good. It’s the execution. And again, I don’t think it’s really on the like actual like, does the code come out good? It’s more like on the requirements and the communication side, and then, understanding the ability to set like a 3 month roadmap
122 00:22:10.460 ⇒ 00:22:18.779 Uttam Kumaran: for many of our clients. We only look about a month ahead, which is tough because it’s hard for Robert to go and sell a 6 month contract if we don’t have
123 00:22:18.780 ⇒ 00:22:20.310 Uttam Kumaran: 6 months worth the plans.
124 00:22:20.805 ⇒ 00:22:30.380 Uttam Kumaran: And so it’s like it’s cascading like, okay, can we get the one piece of work? Can we get the pods work? Can we then plan one month, 3 months, and then can we go pitch
125 00:22:30.820 ⇒ 00:22:35.400 Uttam Kumaran: the longer client, you know, and so it all sort of cascades on itself.
126 00:22:36.010 ⇒ 00:22:37.009 Emily Chan: Got it. Yeah.
127 00:22:37.290 ⇒ 00:22:47.230 Emily Chan: So what I’m hearing is you need someone to come in and like plan longer term at a client level. Then you and Robert can take a step back and plan for Brainfrosh. The company.
128 00:22:47.230 ⇒ 00:22:52.889 Uttam Kumaran: 100%. Yeah, correct. Our time is best spent working on the machine itself.
129 00:22:54.740 ⇒ 00:23:06.439 Uttam Kumaran: of course, number one is the people so recruiting great people, making sure everybody is happy, making sure that the individual stakeholders within a pod or within a client have the right partners
130 00:23:07.760 ⇒ 00:23:16.129 Uttam Kumaran: and then, basically, fighting fires. So still being able to go in and go towards a fire. But right now everything is kind of a fire. So then there’s no.
131 00:23:16.350 ⇒ 00:23:28.330 Uttam Kumaran: it’s sort of wake up and figure things out. So we’re trying to offload. And again for me, we’re trying to build a big company. So I want to bring in someone that’s very strong here that has worked with executives. I don’t wanna
132 00:23:28.820 ⇒ 00:23:47.170 Uttam Kumaran: bring in someone Junior and just be like, go sit with them. Figure it out. The clients are gonna know right? And if you move from charging (102) 030-4050 KA month, the clients are, they’re gonna have expect an accenture level of quality of working with someone who’s seen these problems before, who comes into an executive meeting and can be like.
133 00:23:47.330 ⇒ 00:23:52.349 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve seen this guys don’t worry. We got this, you know. And that’s what people really love about us.
134 00:23:53.880 ⇒ 00:23:55.620 Emily Chan: Sounds like growing pains, which are good.
135 00:23:55.620 ⇒ 00:23:57.599 Uttam Kumaran: It’s good, it’s good, it’s a.
136 00:23:57.909 ⇒ 00:24:04.710 Emily Chan: Are you thinking of? You know, a part time to start with for this role? What? What? How do you envision it.
137 00:24:04.710 ⇒ 00:24:33.439 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I guess. Tell me, like what your status is right now. I mean, ideally, we would start this as part time. I think one. It gives you an opportunity to sort of like, make sure I’m not just lying about everything, and also sort of like, see the machine from the inside, which I think is very, very important, I think, for us. Also, it’s just making sure that this is the right fit for you. We try to do that with every one of our roles, and it’s led to really good success. In terms of just making sure that people
138 00:24:33.560 ⇒ 00:24:40.879 Uttam Kumaran: want it like, know what they need and can succeed. It doesn’t mean we can’t like. If you quickly, it works out, then we can’t just ramp up
139 00:24:41.361 ⇒ 00:24:44.900 Uttam Kumaran: but like that’s sort of that would be our our process.
140 00:24:44.900 ⇒ 00:25:06.230 Emily Chan: Yeah, that sounds good. I have enjoyed all our conversations. I would love to work with you, but I also want to be transparent. A friend of mine has also been doing data science consulting, and he and I have been talking about a project that could kick off this month, but then again, like you know, right like it may not get green light by the client. So.
141 00:25:06.230 ⇒ 00:25:06.820 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
142 00:25:07.100 ⇒ 00:25:10.150 Emily Chan: I I don’t have that much
143 00:25:10.380 ⇒ 00:25:19.169 Emily Chan: clarity about my availability. But I I think I will in like a week or 2. What is the timeline that you’re thinking of.
144 00:25:19.870 ⇒ 00:25:23.378 Uttam Kumaran: As soon as yeah, as soon as possible. Basically.
145 00:25:24.250 ⇒ 00:25:30.050 Uttam Kumaran: I think, like we this month was really sort of recalibrating as we went from like a few clients, almost double
146 00:25:30.591 ⇒ 00:25:53.789 Uttam Kumaran: and we’ve we also went and sort of set like 2025 goals and okrs for the quarter. And so it’s we’re sort of like cascading in our decision making, one of which is making some really key hires both on the analyst side and on this like engagement lead side. So really, it would be as much as you’re available again. We can even start very small where you sort of come in and observe
147 00:25:54.273 ⇒ 00:26:12.179 Uttam Kumaran: and then sort of pick off pieces of responsibility to take on I totally hear you on your other opportunity. Of course, would love for you to work with us. But again we can smart as we can start as small as as you need but also yes, as soon as you’re ready, we can
148 00:26:12.410 ⇒ 00:26:15.900 Uttam Kumaran: can sort of add you to stuff and sort of have you take a look.
149 00:26:16.120 ⇒ 00:26:22.089 Emily Chan: Yeah, when you say, start small, like, how how much time do you think is the minimum.
150 00:26:22.410 ⇒ 00:26:22.790 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
151 00:26:22.790 ⇒ 00:26:25.629 Emily Chan: You know, if I can fit both of you guys in.
152 00:26:25.630 ⇒ 00:26:30.539 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think like for one client, I don’t think you’ll need more than like 10 HA week.
153 00:26:30.730 ⇒ 00:26:31.130 Emily Chan: Got it.
154 00:26:32.620 ⇒ 00:26:53.500 Uttam Kumaran: and you may even need less, because I think initially, I think if if we, if we, if you want to get in front of clients. I think we’ll need some level of commitment. But if you’re just in slack sort of observing, and then taking on pieces a lot of which is really like apparent, like what we need to do then I think it’s probably close to 10 HA week per client.
155 00:26:54.041 ⇒ 00:27:23.599 Uttam Kumaran: Ideally, that’s the range we would want to stay in. We’ll see. I I don’t know. I I’m not. It’s not clear at what level clients need more support right now we’ve we’ve been only pro primarily billing just for the engineering resources. But as we get to these larger clients, they’re gonna require this sort of engagement lead. So for us, we’re sort of like calibrating what the the time is, but I do think that 10 h is probably more than enough to sort of. Come in and see a client and then
156 00:27:23.700 ⇒ 00:27:26.890 Uttam Kumaran: assist on either creating roadmap assets.
157 00:27:27.960 ⇒ 00:27:45.730 Uttam Kumaran: creating project plans or priorities. Holding meetings with engineers on like okay, demo work. And can we get things out? And then also give it basically also having a 3rd eye for us, which is would be super super helpful just to see how things are going, and give us some candid feedback.
158 00:27:45.940 ⇒ 00:27:56.319 Emily Chan: Yeah, I hear you talk to me more about like you know you mentioned like, if you don’t get in front of a client, 10 h is sufficient. But then, like a lot of that work, so like if I
159 00:27:56.820 ⇒ 00:28:07.900 Emily Chan: just, you know, be a sponge, and learn from all those slack, and be able to just translate that into road map, and then that has to go in front of a client. Right? Would you then do that? If I don’t take on that role.
160 00:28:07.900 ⇒ 00:28:15.779 Uttam Kumaran: That would be correct. I mean, the biggest thing is like we’ve made this mistake in the past where we’ve added people, and then it hasn’t worked out. And then the client is like.
161 00:28:16.050 ⇒ 00:28:19.639 Uttam Kumaran: we just introduce people to people and like I don’t.
162 00:28:19.910 ⇒ 00:28:26.480 Uttam Kumaran: Everything is an OP. Is an opportunity for risk in this business. So for me, I just want to make sure that
163 00:28:26.830 ⇒ 00:28:32.069 Uttam Kumaran: if you’re committed, then I think it’s we’re more than welcome to go meet clients and sort of do that.
164 00:28:32.370 ⇒ 00:28:53.200 Uttam Kumaran: But I also do think there’s things to do without that commitment still. And then, yeah, ideally, it would be. It would be me, Robert, or our project manager. That would sort of present those things. Again, even on in on some of our clients. You can work directly with the project manager on creating those and understanding the workload. I have one client in particular where I think that could work really really well.
165 00:28:53.731 ⇒ 00:29:05.200 Uttam Kumaran: And then, yeah, basically, he would end up going and and presenting that. You know, there’s probably 2 clients in my mind where it’s really, really clear that we just need a longer roadmap and sort of
166 00:29:05.320 ⇒ 00:29:11.090 Uttam Kumaran: a holistic understanding of the client what their plans are, where we should ask more questions. Who else should we involve things like that?
167 00:29:11.460 ⇒ 00:29:13.220 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
168 00:29:13.380 ⇒ 00:29:17.588 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, that makes sense. If I were you, I wouldn’t just keep throwing new people at my client, either.
169 00:29:18.096 ⇒ 00:29:22.390 Uttam Kumaran: We we made that mistake, and like I don’t know. I feel bad because I
170 00:29:22.570 ⇒ 00:29:29.220 Uttam Kumaran: you know it’s tough for the client to to trust us already, and these things take a lot of people to do
171 00:29:29.594 ⇒ 00:29:32.289 Uttam Kumaran: but of course, for our job is to simplify for them.
172 00:29:32.290 ⇒ 00:29:36.299 Emily Chan: Yeah. One more question for me like
173 00:29:36.630 ⇒ 00:29:48.629 Emily Chan: you mentioned, you have, like 2 clients in mind where it makes sense to have this engagement lead like? Can you talk to me more about like the type of work you guys are doing for the client? And what would the engagement lead? Come in and and do.
174 00:29:48.630 ⇒ 00:29:50.212 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. So the
175 00:29:50.920 ⇒ 00:30:09.910 Uttam Kumaran: primarily for 2 of the clients, one, we’re moving data into a data warehouse. So we’re for both the clients. We’re using Snowflake. So there’s we’re using either 5 tran or portable to move data in. There’s some data engineering tasks, a lot of that is infra setup, and a good amount of that is done. Second piece is just new data modeling.
176 00:30:10.380 ⇒ 00:30:17.399 Uttam Kumaran: So client wants to measure client wants a dashboard that measures Xyz, how do we translate that into data modeling
177 00:30:17.820 ⇒ 00:30:27.969 Uttam Kumaran: requirements for the analytics engineer on the team? Okay, we need a, the client wants to measure user churn. Okay, we need a users table. There needs to be some churn logic in there.
178 00:30:28.591 ⇒ 00:30:31.259 Uttam Kumaran: It needs to be at X granularity.
179 00:30:31.903 ⇒ 00:30:32.969 Uttam Kumaran: And then.
180 00:30:33.430 ⇒ 00:30:39.429 Uttam Kumaran: like, here’s the pro. Here’s the time. Basically, like, Okay, this is a. Your timeline is is accurate.
181 00:30:39.857 ⇒ 00:30:49.230 Uttam Kumaran: And then it’s it’s just that. And then the second piece is on dashboarding. So, clients, a lot of our work ends up in a dashboard in one form or another. So clients may have
182 00:30:49.300 ⇒ 00:31:09.989 Uttam Kumaran: asks about like, okay, can we see a dashboard that looks like this? You may pass it off to an analyst and say, Go, wireframe a dashboard, and then you may review that and then say, Okay, cool, go ahead and build that. Also. It’s like the analysts need to work directly with it. With the analytics engineers to make sure that they have the data available. It’s all full. It’s timely
183 00:31:10.346 ⇒ 00:31:13.650 Uttam Kumaran: so there may be bugs and issues like that that need to get resolved.
184 00:31:14.268 ⇒ 00:31:37.221 Uttam Kumaran: But that’s really the work. And then, in terms of the engagement side, yeah, it’s running the weekly meetings that we have with clients or ad hoc. We may present a dashboard or a new data model, or a piece of analysis to the C-suite, to our stakeholder. And then, but throughout the week it’s mostly just slack. Most of our clients work, really, Async. And so they’re open to just
185 00:31:38.010 ⇒ 00:31:46.940 Uttam Kumaran: you know, getting results back in slack and sort of iterating on it. And then we try just just to have one sync like over video per week.
186 00:31:47.374 ⇒ 00:31:50.429 Uttam Kumaran: Just to say, Hi, things like that. So that’s that’s really it.
187 00:31:51.170 ⇒ 00:31:54.610 Uttam Kumaran: It’s a lot but I don’t think
188 00:31:54.720 ⇒ 00:32:04.700 Uttam Kumaran: you will have. I don’t think there’s any engineering work involved in terms of like hands on keyboard. A lot of it is just making sure the right people have the right things, and then, just understanding that the timeline keeps moving.
189 00:32:05.830 ⇒ 00:32:06.630 Uttam Kumaran: You know.
190 00:32:08.080 ⇒ 00:32:13.309 Emily Chan: Yeah. Someone to just, you know, make sure things are running. Make sure things. Think ahead of time.
191 00:32:13.600 ⇒ 00:32:31.519 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. And again, just becoming an extension of that business like it. Really putting yourself as like, if I was the head of data, this business. What would I do? Some of our clients are smaller, too, some of our clients. We only have 1015 h of of engineering hours per week. So you can only do so much damage with that. But part of that is also being like, hey.
192 00:32:31.950 ⇒ 00:32:36.900 Uttam Kumaran: this, if at this rate, at this rate, it’s gonna take us 6 months, you wanna like.
193 00:32:37.620 ⇒ 00:32:46.770 Uttam Kumaran: do you want to spend more money like, what can we do here? That’s the conversations we want to be having, because people love the work that we do, and then immediately they want more of it.
194 00:32:47.156 ⇒ 00:32:52.130 Uttam Kumaran: But a common issue we have is like timelines, or we over promise, because we’re trying to fit
195 00:32:52.380 ⇒ 00:32:57.479 Uttam Kumaran: to their requirements. Not fit to like. Okay, the budget, you know. And so that’s also a conversation that
196 00:32:57.610 ⇒ 00:33:00.150 Uttam Kumaran: it’s hard to have when I’m sort of seeing both sides.
197 00:33:00.150 ⇒ 00:33:01.049 Emily Chan: Yeah, yeah.
198 00:33:01.382 ⇒ 00:33:06.229 Uttam Kumaran: You’re sort of sitting on both things. It’s hard to have that healthy, you know, discussion and back and forth.
199 00:33:06.560 ⇒ 00:33:15.580 Emily Chan: Yeah, got it. Okay, yeah, I understand what the role needs to do. And honestly, you know, I would love to take on that role. It’s just what.
200 00:33:15.580 ⇒ 00:33:15.930 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
201 00:33:15.930 ⇒ 00:33:21.890 Emily Chan: I have been doing. Let me get more clarity about my availability, and then
202 00:33:22.320 ⇒ 00:33:25.940 Emily Chan: maybe I circle back like in the next week or 2. How does that sound.
203 00:33:25.940 ⇒ 00:33:46.779 Uttam Kumaran: That’s perfect. Yeah, you know. Again, I think we’re we’re sort of in the market for somebody. I’m so I’m making other phone calls, but would love to see at least, if you can come in and just sort of poke around, I mean at minimum. I think your feedback on how we’re doing things would be really helpful. But yeah, I do think it’s like we have a great opportunity to sort of like, get your hands and like multiple different clients and see
204 00:33:47.000 ⇒ 00:33:51.529 Uttam Kumaran: how an entire industry works for some really successful folks and really move the needle like
205 00:33:52.080 ⇒ 00:33:55.190 Uttam Kumaran: folks that we’re working for. Just need the basics.
206 00:33:55.633 ⇒ 00:34:05.656 Uttam Kumaran: You know they’re not. They’re not looking for like, or they’re just not in a stage to even get to the advanced analysis which makes every incremental piece of work so valuable.
207 00:34:06.220 ⇒ 00:34:14.950 Uttam Kumaran: you know, and like just getting basic data modeling out there like just getting, you know, their 1st executive dashboards or 1st marketing dashboards out.
208 00:34:15.334 ⇒ 00:34:26.020 Uttam Kumaran: Everybody, you know, really, really wants that in the business. So it’s it’s a. It’s nice to see that that people really need our work and and then they’re willing to spend on it right? And then that’s how we grow.
209 00:34:26.540 ⇒ 00:34:28.620 Emily Chan: Yeah, got it. Okay.
210 00:34:29.489 ⇒ 00:34:36.129 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool? Well, yeah, let me know. It’s really great catching up. And yeah, thanks for thanks for entertaining. And yeah, let me know what you think.
211 00:34:36.139 ⇒ 00:34:39.676 Emily Chan: No, of course. Yeah, thank you for reaching out.
212 00:34:40.319 ⇒ 00:34:44.859 Emily Chan: yeah, thank you for thinking about about me. Yeah, I will be back.
213 00:34:45.000 ⇒ 00:34:46.420 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay, perfect.
214 00:34:46.420 ⇒ 00:34:47.130 Emily Chan: Thank you.
215 00:34:47.130 ⇒ 00:34:49.099 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Thank you. Bye.