Meeting Title: Uttam Kumaran Date: 2025-03-21 Meeting participants: Mariane Cequina, Aakash Tandel, Luke Daque, Annie Yu, Nicolas Sucari, Uttam Kumaran, Amber Lin, Demilade Agboola, Hannah Wang, Ryan Brosas, Awaish Kumar, Caio Velasco
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1 00:00:57.300 ⇒ 00:00:58.270 Uttam Kumaran: Hey!
2 00:01:00.240 ⇒ 00:01:01.150 Luke Daque: Hey, guys.
3 00:01:55.610 ⇒ 00:01:57.309 Uttam Kumaran: Marianne is Nico joining.
4 00:01:58.900 ⇒ 00:02:01.110 Mariane Cequina: Hello! I’m not sure to hear
5 00:02:01.380 ⇒ 00:02:01.950 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
6 00:02:07.340 ⇒ 00:02:08.490 Nicolas Sucari: Right hey, guys.
7 00:02:08.800 ⇒ 00:02:09.530 Uttam Kumaran: A
8 00:02:23.680 ⇒ 00:02:26.539 Uttam Kumaran: Nico. Do you want me to kick off or
9 00:02:27.460 ⇒ 00:02:31.999 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah, go ahead. I don’t know if we’re waiting for someone else. But go ahead
10 00:02:32.410 ⇒ 00:02:37.090 Uttam Kumaran: Do we have do we have any other like Demos today or no?
11 00:02:38.090 ⇒ 00:02:45.989 Nicolas Sucari: We have some demos from the AI team. So, but maybe we can start, and then Amber, if you want to jump in, just guide us through that.
12 00:02:46.140 ⇒ 00:02:47.070 Nicolas Sucari: That’ll be great.
13 00:02:48.190 ⇒ 00:02:53.730 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, maybe. I mean, if amber, do you have any specific Demos? If not, I’m I just have a couple of
14 00:02:54.140 ⇒ 00:02:56.720 Uttam Kumaran: like company wide process things that
15 00:02:57.550 ⇒ 00:03:05.019 Uttam Kumaran: I could spend talking about, because I just got a bunch of questions about them. Let me know if there’s any Demos you want to go ahead and share. Now you can go ahead
16 00:03:05.020 ⇒ 00:03:12.639 Amber Lin: Then you should just go ahead, Demos. We have are updates on our existing parts, so I would rather hear from you
17 00:03:13.340 ⇒ 00:03:15.760 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, give me one second.
18 00:03:19.430 ⇒ 00:03:20.355 Uttam Kumaran: So
19 00:03:22.470 ⇒ 00:03:34.600 Uttam Kumaran: I just, I think this week, you know, we we had a lot of people join. And of course we’re spending a lot more time figuring out what our company wide processes are for several different items.
20 00:03:35.035 ⇒ 00:03:56.154 Uttam Kumaran: And one of the things that I wanted to probably just spend the majority of the time today talking a little bit about is some of the questions I got, and then basically gather more questions. From anyone. About this. This is a document that I’m probably just will work with. You guys right now on just getting feedback on
21 00:03:56.600 ⇒ 00:04:02.730 Uttam Kumaran: But really I received probably like these 5 questions I got from everybody sort of on one
22 00:04:03.590 ⇒ 00:04:10.710 Uttam Kumaran: frame or another, so I thought it would be best to go through this with everybody. If you have a sec, I’m sharing
23 00:04:10.860 ⇒ 00:04:11.880 Uttam Kumaran: this
24 00:04:12.827 ⇒ 00:04:22.430 Uttam Kumaran: document, and I’ll share this on my side, too. Basically, I received probably one of more of these questions sort of from
25 00:04:23.550 ⇒ 00:04:32.830 Uttam Kumaran: several people. So I just wanted to sort of hash this out with everybody, just to preface this whole conversation is, this is all things that I want to develop with
26 00:04:32.990 ⇒ 00:04:37.910 Uttam Kumaran: you guys. I’ve worked in several companies. I know what the
27 00:04:38.200 ⇒ 00:04:54.130 Uttam Kumaran: the default thing to do is but I want to do the right thing for us. And so several questions that we have here. Are around and I’m just gonna put these dividers so it’s a little bit easier to see
28 00:04:56.000 ⇒ 00:05:07.890 Uttam Kumaran: And I don’t know, Nico, if you’re on if you could just help format this while we’re going through this. So couple of things here I received questions about what is our vacation policy. Our employees allocated to projects?
29 00:05:08.000 ⇒ 00:05:15.689 Uttam Kumaran: Is there a path for hourly employees to move to salary? What benefits or incentive plans in there, and with will healthcare benefits be offered?
30 00:05:16.255 ⇒ 00:05:23.139 Uttam Kumaran: Before we sort of go one by one. Are there any other questions in the same vein
31 00:05:23.280 ⇒ 00:05:24.890 Uttam Kumaran: that we want to tackle
32 00:05:25.740 ⇒ 00:05:31.650 Uttam Kumaran: or like is like pressing on anybody that you think would benefit everybody to talk about here.
33 00:05:37.180 ⇒ 00:05:40.200 Uttam Kumaran: Really, this is all it’s all we had. It’s all I got to answer
34 00:05:40.570 ⇒ 00:05:51.269 Amber Lin: Oh, I think yesterday, when we talked, we also mentioned the retirement benefits, but I know that’s coming after healthcare, but I think it’s good to just put it out there, so that everybody knows
35 00:05:51.410 ⇒ 00:05:54.580 Uttam Kumaran: Cool I’ll put. I’ll just put it here like benefits.
36 00:05:54.900 ⇒ 00:06:03.470 Uttam Kumaran: Retirement benefits anything else from anybody
37 00:06:08.400 ⇒ 00:06:11.709 Uttam Kumaran: cool. So maybe I’ll just start from the top again, like I don’t.
38 00:06:12.460 ⇒ 00:06:32.300 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll give you my perspective, but that’s all it is is a perspective. If I don’t hear feedback on, on, hey? We tried to do that. Another company. It didn’t work, or Hey, that’s really good. We should totally do that. Then, likely what I go ahead and say here is gonna happen.
39 00:06:32.410 ⇒ 00:06:42.550 Uttam Kumaran: So I definitely want this to be an opportunity to get feedback from everyone we are setting. These are things that we have not set policies on to date.
40 00:06:42.990 ⇒ 00:06:57.419 Uttam Kumaran: You would ask, how are we this far without doing this? Yeah, that’s just the way life is. So we’re figuring it out now on the fly. With all of you. And so let me just start from the top on what is vacation policy? So
41 00:06:57.670 ⇒ 00:07:19.615 Uttam Kumaran: I think for each of these I’ll give my my perspective. And so I want to share, like, sort of like, my background with some of these problems. And then I’ll sort of share like where I arrived. And then I would love to get feedback. So vacation pause. So I’ve worked as an engineer for a number of firms. Well, all of them being startups, all of them being unlimited vacation places.
42 00:07:20.080 ⇒ 00:07:28.969 Uttam Kumaran: I yeah, I think it’s sometimes work can feel like you can never leave. And so
43 00:07:29.130 ⇒ 00:07:33.949 Uttam Kumaran: oftentimes it’s common in our industry that people do unlimited.
44 00:07:34.190 ⇒ 00:07:45.539 Uttam Kumaran: Initially, you would say, Wow, okay, unlimited like, I can take off like every day ever. But of course, what actually ends up happening is, we’re all pretty motivated folks. You end up taking no days off, or very little days off.
45 00:07:46.192 ⇒ 00:07:47.729 Uttam Kumaran: That’s the trap.
46 00:07:47.880 ⇒ 00:07:49.140 Uttam Kumaran: And so.
47 00:07:49.840 ⇒ 00:07:55.229 Uttam Kumaran: as as of today, we are, we are. We are in that policy. I don’t really. There’s no policy, meaning
48 00:07:55.620 ⇒ 00:08:13.799 Uttam Kumaran: sort of take off as you need. The problem is because there’s no expectation. It could lead to sort of this like, oh, I don’t want to take off, or I feel bad taking off. So one of the things I want to do with this question is sort of set an expectation for how many days are available? But also set the expectation like that
49 00:08:14.120 ⇒ 00:08:31.210 Uttam Kumaran: like, what times should you like? How should you make a decision on planning out of office. Basically, like, I don’t think in my mind, there’s like, any time where it’s like you don’t take off. During this time. We’re not like a seasonal business or anything. But I do want to provide people with like, hey?
50 00:08:31.650 ⇒ 00:08:46.059 Uttam Kumaran: If you can avoid taking off like the day of some big thing. Then you should do that, or how to actually translate this to your client pod. So one of the pieces here I got some feedback is basically to set like a day amount
51 00:08:46.506 ⇒ 00:08:48.879 Uttam Kumaran: and to say that those days are available.
52 00:08:49.378 ⇒ 00:09:02.279 Uttam Kumaran: I think this is also going to be a little bit different between the folks that are hourly and the folks that are on salary, which is the next. Probably the next question I have here, but my my inkling is that we will probably arrive on like a number of days.
53 00:09:02.660 ⇒ 00:09:06.449 Uttam Kumaran: I will try to have that at be as as high as as possible.
54 00:09:07.221 ⇒ 00:09:18.430 Uttam Kumaran: And then the second phase of that is, I will work with the Pm teams to basically be able to help track that with Pm. And Ops teams track that. And then how do we actually
55 00:09:18.560 ⇒ 00:09:21.060 Uttam Kumaran: weave that into our plans for clients?
56 00:09:21.360 ⇒ 00:09:26.240 Uttam Kumaran: So stop there any thoughts or questions on this
57 00:09:26.240 ⇒ 00:09:44.140 Amber Lin: I think, for the time off. It’s probably also worthy to consider holidays versus just regular vacations. I think that’s also important distinction there. So would the set amount of days include holidays, or is it just overall
58 00:09:45.690 ⇒ 00:09:46.810 Uttam Kumaran: Okay? Good question.
59 00:09:47.380 ⇒ 00:09:54.080 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t have the answers, so don’t expect an answer finally today. But these are good points.
60 00:10:03.470 ⇒ 00:10:13.369 Aakash Tandel: I think one thing for a full time. Employees. I know we’ve done this at some of the companies I worked at. You have to take at least one full week off a year. If you
61 00:10:13.370 ⇒ 00:10:13.720 Uttam Kumaran: Go.
62 00:10:13.720 ⇒ 00:10:19.799 Aakash Tandel: Last week of the year just to ensure ensure people are disconnecting and getting some time away. So
63 00:10:20.080 ⇒ 00:10:27.319 Aakash Tandel: that’s aside from all the other vacations. All of that, like just 1 1 week has to be fully fully out of the office
64 00:10:27.320 ⇒ 00:10:29.340 Uttam Kumaran: Like one con one consecutive week
65 00:10:29.340 ⇒ 00:10:30.800 Aakash Tandel: Executive? Yeah, exactly.
66 00:10:30.800 ⇒ 00:10:31.690 Uttam Kumaran: Like that.
67 00:10:32.730 ⇒ 00:10:36.950 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say as like a CEO, but I like that. I would like a week off.
68 00:10:38.930 ⇒ 00:10:40.370 Uttam Kumaran: That sounds really nice.
69 00:10:41.680 ⇒ 00:11:01.269 Annie Yu: I have a clarifying question. So you mentioned the salary versus hourly rate. So does that mean for the salary folks? This would be like Pto, meaning like Pay time off, and for hourly workers. Would that be like unpaid?
70 00:11:01.780 ⇒ 00:11:03.100 Annie Yu: Is that how it works?
71 00:11:03.390 ⇒ 00:11:04.820 Uttam Kumaran: This is a good question.
72 00:11:05.365 ⇒ 00:11:12.499 Uttam Kumaran: So basically, where we are now is for folks on hourly. If you’re not billing, then there’s no pay?
73 00:11:14.010 ⇒ 00:11:17.510 Uttam Kumaran: So I think I’ll kind of talk a little bit about.
74 00:11:17.830 ⇒ 00:11:29.170 Uttam Kumaran: Probably the next obvious question is to be like, Okay, how do I become on salary. But I’m not sure yet, like we we have folks that are
75 00:11:29.670 ⇒ 00:11:38.799 Uttam Kumaran: to kind of. Maybe maybe I’ll just jump. I’ll just give the flash of like what I. What I’ll be speaking about here is we want to move as many people as we can
76 00:11:38.960 ⇒ 00:11:39.840 Uttam Kumaran: do work.
77 00:11:39.950 ⇒ 00:11:51.330 Uttam Kumaran: you know, in a salary position. Full time like that’s that’s our goal. Of course we can’t. We’re not in a position to afford that with everybody’s with everybody right now. In addition, our hiring process is
78 00:11:51.881 ⇒ 00:11:56.219 Uttam Kumaran: by which we bring people on sort of slowly, and then and then ramp them up.
79 00:11:56.380 ⇒ 00:12:06.750 Uttam Kumaran: So I think, for salaried versus full time. This is a good point I’ll have. We’ll have to come to a decision on how? Out of office, and Pto works for both.
80 00:12:07.469 ⇒ 00:12:22.640 Uttam Kumaran: I think there’s probably something we can do for sorry, not salary salaried versus hourly. I think there will be something we can do for the folks that are hourly on allowing some amount of paid time off.
81 00:12:23.178 ⇒ 00:12:27.889 Uttam Kumaran: I will have to take that back and and get some feedback from
82 00:12:28.080 ⇒ 00:12:30.670 Uttam Kumaran: and take a look at what’s what’s going on? Industry wide.
83 00:12:37.680 ⇒ 00:12:41.960 Uttam Kumaran: If you have any ideas, please let me know. But, these are. This is really really helpful to hear
84 00:12:45.565 ⇒ 00:12:48.109 Annie Yu: In my past roles.
85 00:12:49.148 ⇒ 00:13:10.740 Annie Yu: And this is more so, for like I guess, salary meaning like pto. People can choose not to take Pdo. But then the companies will give, probably like 2 to 4 floating holidays. That means, if you don’t take them, you don’t get any like pay out for for that. I’m not sure if that will make sense here. But just
86 00:13:10.840 ⇒ 00:13:11.540 Annie Yu: during that
87 00:13:12.660 ⇒ 00:13:14.970 Uttam Kumaran: So they’ll give you like unpaid holidays.
88 00:13:16.190 ⇒ 00:13:20.570 Annie Yu: Yes, and then, if you don’t want to take your Pto, it’s
89 00:13:21.911 ⇒ 00:13:28.970 Annie Yu: you can just save them, or I think the company pays them out when you leave
90 00:13:29.260 ⇒ 00:13:31.700 Uttam Kumaran: And I I don’t even know like one
91 00:13:31.970 ⇒ 00:13:36.550 Annie Yu: If I’m feeling like good or bad about that. But that’s just one thing that
92 00:13:37.450 ⇒ 00:13:41.060 Uttam Kumaran: I had that, too. I so when I was at, when I was at we work
93 00:13:41.180 ⇒ 00:13:43.440 Uttam Kumaran: well, my boss never told me to log.
94 00:13:43.570 ⇒ 00:13:46.450 Uttam Kumaran: Ptl, because no, it was like such a mess
95 00:13:46.840 ⇒ 00:13:51.569 Uttam Kumaran: And then when I left, I like, got a bunch of money. I was like, what? And they’re like, yeah, they paid me for like 30 days of
96 00:13:51.990 ⇒ 00:13:53.150 Uttam Kumaran: Pto.
97 00:13:53.640 ⇒ 00:14:01.180 Uttam Kumaran: I was like, Oh, this is great. I didn’t even know that was that was the thing. But okay, I hear you on there. Yeah, I’ve seen that policy, too.
98 00:14:05.370 ⇒ 00:14:08.320 Demilade Agboola: I don’t know if you saw Kyle’s question, but his last question
99 00:14:08.320 ⇒ 00:14:08.890 Uttam Kumaran: Sorry, no
100 00:14:08.890 ⇒ 00:14:09.500 Demilade Agboola: Question.
101 00:14:10.729 ⇒ 00:14:14.329 Uttam Kumaran: Sorry I didn’t see that. Well, I’m just pulling the chat up.
102 00:14:17.420 ⇒ 00:14:19.539 Uttam Kumaran: one second. Okay, so
103 00:14:20.081 ⇒ 00:14:32.529 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll just read it out loud. Maybe talk about out of office versus part time. People does part time mean working every day with 3 h flexible holidays. From which location, okay? So I’m gonna leave the second question for
104 00:14:32.850 ⇒ 00:14:36.040 Uttam Kumaran: topic number 3.
105 00:14:37.167 ⇒ 00:14:42.109 Uttam Kumaran: But for topic number one, yes, you.
106 00:14:42.350 ⇒ 00:14:53.919 Uttam Kumaran: I was about to do this and then start answering question. It’s gonna be ho! It’s gonna be local holidays wherever you are. I mean, if you’re traveling a lot, then that’s kind of a a cheat code, I guess, but like
107 00:14:54.490 ⇒ 00:15:05.059 Uttam Kumaran: it’s gonna be based on wherever you are. So wherever it’s in Europe, it’s in us, or or if you’re in, you’re in Portugal or Spain, or or if you’re in the Philippines, or if you’re in Latin, or or
108 00:15:05.180 ⇒ 00:15:12.440 Uttam Kumaran: or if you’re in Malta demalade, or if you’re in both. Whatever I think ideally it would be, it would be holidays wherever your your home base is
109 00:15:15.260 ⇒ 00:15:16.319 Uttam Kumaran: good question
110 00:15:22.190 ⇒ 00:15:37.949 Annie Yu: And following up on following up on the holidays. I think it’s also good, I think, at least in the Us. To list out what holidays we are trying to observe. Cause I know some States are, or some companies are observing like President’s day.
111 00:15:38.090 ⇒ 00:15:43.720 Annie Yu: and some are not so. Things of that sort. It would be great to have an idea
112 00:15:44.600 ⇒ 00:15:45.250 Uttam Kumaran: Great.
113 00:15:45.360 ⇒ 00:15:46.110 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
114 00:15:47.700 ⇒ 00:15:51.449 Nicolas Sucari: We can work on having a calendar or something with it.
115 00:15:51.560 ⇒ 00:15:54.900 Nicolas Sucari: depending on location, which are the holidays, and share that
116 00:15:55.030 ⇒ 00:15:57.410 Nicolas Sucari: across everyone, so that they can check right
117 00:15:57.410 ⇒ 00:15:58.110 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
118 00:16:05.660 ⇒ 00:16:07.959 Nicolas Sucari: Sorry, similar, that you were saying something
119 00:16:09.193 ⇒ 00:16:13.070 Demilade Agboola: We could have a brain forge calendar
120 00:16:13.730 ⇒ 00:16:22.710 Demilade Agboola: holidays that brain fudge recognizes as us holidays that work. And then you can just everyone can just like, you know, subscribe to it. They can see it
121 00:16:24.090 ⇒ 00:16:26.310 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I asked the same thing from the Ops, which is like
122 00:16:27.600 ⇒ 00:16:32.010 Uttam Kumaran: for holiday and out of out of office calendar. Yeah.
123 00:16:33.060 ⇒ 00:16:38.810 Awaish Kumar: I. Actually, I have been working at a Canadian company for like remotely.
124 00:16:39.030 ⇒ 00:16:49.400 Awaish Kumar: And it was like full time engagement as a like contract based. So they were saying that you observe the holiday of your manager. So if you are working
125 00:16:49.530 ⇒ 00:16:53.919 Awaish Kumar: for someone who is in Canada to streamline all the holidays
126 00:16:53.920 ⇒ 00:16:54.390 Uttam Kumaran: Like.
127 00:16:54.390 ⇒ 00:17:03.009 Awaish Kumar: The team can be from different countries, but, like one country, can have only 3 holidays per year. Other one can have like 10 holidays
128 00:17:03.140 ⇒ 00:17:10.470 Awaish Kumar: per year. So to still streamline all that like you can take holidays of of the person you are reporting to
129 00:17:12.650 ⇒ 00:17:16.830 Uttam Kumaran: That’s interesting. I guess their their incentive there is to make sure that.
130 00:17:18.250 ⇒ 00:17:22.519 Uttam Kumaran: Well, I guess that kind of is not good cause. Then, like a bunch of people are off on the same day
131 00:17:23.500 ⇒ 00:17:27.069 Uttam Kumaran: like, that’s yeah, I can. Okay, I hear you.
132 00:17:27.300 ⇒ 00:17:29.319 Uttam Kumaran: There’s there’s probably some logic there.
133 00:17:31.170 ⇒ 00:17:39.434 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. Okay, I know we’re we’re about 10 min, and this is really helpful. Please slack me. If there’s anything or put in the chat, I’ll add this. Let’s
134 00:17:39.820 ⇒ 00:17:46.459 Uttam Kumaran: Let’s just talk. I’ll I’ll skip this one. But let’s just talk about path for hourly employees to move to salary. So
135 00:17:48.410 ⇒ 00:17:50.338 Uttam Kumaran: Let me give you
136 00:17:51.660 ⇒ 00:18:14.170 Uttam Kumaran: Let me give you the like thesis behind this, from where we started, where we are now and then I’ll kind of tell you like the math from my side. So my, my ultimate goal is for everyone to become brain forge engineers or or brain forge project managers or brain forge project owners or brain forge operations, folks marketing folks.
137 00:18:14.330 ⇒ 00:18:40.807 Uttam Kumaran: I never wanted to build a company filled with like just part time contractors everywhere, right? Because you, you build no camaraderie and commonly in agency world, especially in development agencies. You just sort of plug into one client. You have like random people, then you plug in another client. You feel like the company overall like you don’t really feel attached like that’s my experience. And so I always was interested in
138 00:18:41.320 ⇒ 00:18:48.000 Uttam Kumaran: in trying to bring as many people in as possible who who could? Who could come in and dedicate their time?
139 00:18:49.240 ⇒ 00:19:09.500 Uttam Kumaran: and so that’s that’s like. Always been sort of my thought process there in terms of the financial side. Our goal is to basically make sure that anyone who is working on a client 80% of your time as a benchmark is able to go towards billable time, meaning that on average, in a given week
140 00:19:09.550 ⇒ 00:19:21.691 Uttam Kumaran: you’re spending 80% of your time on client work. The other 20% could be. Internal meetings could be not doing anything could be meeting with me. But that’s like a benchmark for our industry.
141 00:19:22.740 ⇒ 00:19:29.769 Uttam Kumaran: And so that’s that’s sort of what I will share. As like as the at the Comp at the company level. That’s what I’m benchmarking.
142 00:19:31.210 ⇒ 00:19:33.710 Uttam Kumaran: To talk a little bit about Pat
143 00:19:33.870 ⇒ 00:19:37.089 Uttam Kumaran: to move from hourly to salary.
144 00:19:37.190 ⇒ 00:19:43.529 Uttam Kumaran: as the company has grown, especially in the last few months. Of course, as I mentioned, everybody sort of starts just working
145 00:19:43.720 ⇒ 00:19:49.650 Uttam Kumaran: what we have available, and then sort of working their way up. My goal is to get everybody
146 00:19:49.740 ⇒ 00:20:18.729 Uttam Kumaran: to at least 80% of their maximum time for some folks that maximum time is 20 h for some folks. That maximum time is 40 h. I wanna make sure for that for the folks that that are committed to us, that I can get them there. Some some of you, I know, are floating in between anywhere from 10 to 30 h, maybe on like one or 2 clients. My job, you know, and I’m working with the Pm’s on this right now is, how do we ramp everybody up and get
147 00:20:19.506 ⇒ 00:20:23.750 Uttam Kumaran: everybody fully allocated, and 80% billable?
148 00:20:26.150 ⇒ 00:20:33.469 Uttam Kumaran: So I’ll pause there and then before I move on to questions, any feedback, any thoughts there?
149 00:20:43.760 ⇒ 00:20:44.530 Uttam Kumaran: okay.
150 00:20:44.870 ⇒ 00:20:47.310 Uttam Kumaran: So in terms of
151 00:20:48.780 ⇒ 00:20:57.290 Uttam Kumaran: out of office versus part time people. So yeah, I think we talked a little bit about this there. So part time means working every day but a few hours.
152 00:20:58.410 ⇒ 00:21:04.147 Uttam Kumaran: So this is a good question. This is like, Hey, if you have 10 HA week. Can you do 4 h on another day? Blah! Blah!
153 00:21:04.580 ⇒ 00:21:07.620 Uttam Kumaran: That’s I’m gonna totally leave to you and your team.
154 00:21:08.421 ⇒ 00:21:10.588 Uttam Kumaran: This is something that.
155 00:21:13.180 ⇒ 00:21:18.980 Uttam Kumaran: I’m just gonna write it here. This is something again we talked about the 3 legged stool product owner.
156 00:21:19.280 ⇒ 00:21:27.860 Uttam Kumaran: project managers, engineering. This is not a that is for your group to decide what the bounds are.
157 00:21:27.990 ⇒ 00:21:31.000 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t like to be quite frank.
158 00:21:31.240 ⇒ 00:21:38.510 Uttam Kumaran: The reason we have stand ups. The reason we have our rituals is because that is the minimum accepted framework to get work done.
159 00:21:38.730 ⇒ 00:21:45.489 Uttam Kumaran: But if your pod can do work in a different way and still achieve the outcome. I will leave it to you.
160 00:21:45.600 ⇒ 00:22:07.719 Uttam Kumaran: But this is up to you in that sort of 3 legged stool to determine like, if you need less frequent stand ups. If you’re open to having one day where there’s nothing like that’s all on the table. But the challenge I will have is that as the overseeing the client, I will still require that the output happens right? And so
161 00:22:08.450 ⇒ 00:22:13.660 Uttam Kumaran: I think I’m sort of answering a question with a question which is more like.
162 00:22:13.860 ⇒ 00:22:16.649 Uttam Kumaran: can can you still accomplish the outcome
163 00:22:17.030 ⇒ 00:22:18.720 Uttam Kumaran: in a in a flexible way?
164 00:22:19.900 ⇒ 00:22:21.910 Uttam Kumaran: Kyle, does that? Does that make sense
165 00:22:23.121 ⇒ 00:22:28.850 Caio Velasco: Yes, it does. I think at the end of the day it’s a matter of like theory versus practice.
166 00:22:28.850 ⇒ 00:22:29.370 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
167 00:22:29.370 ⇒ 00:22:42.730 Caio Velasco: Because, yeah, I mean, let’s say that we are in an ideal world where all requests are amazingly you know. Well written. And then, and then just know that you have to sit, and 8 h after you’re done
168 00:22:42.730 ⇒ 00:22:43.130 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
169 00:22:43.130 ⇒ 00:22:51.630 Caio Velasco: If that was possible, of course it would do. Just so. Yeah, I’m gonna use my $10 in 2 days or in a day I don’t know, and then I use my life for other things. That’s it.
170 00:22:51.630 ⇒ 00:22:52.190 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
171 00:22:52.190 ⇒ 00:22:55.050 Caio Velasco: But yeah, I think that was
172 00:22:55.210 ⇒ 00:22:58.040 Caio Velasco: yeah, for me sounds good the way it is
173 00:22:58.990 ⇒ 00:23:11.789 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. I think at this. At this point, of course, our processes are, we have planning, we have stand ups and we have retro. And that’s sort of what as I’ve worked with the Pm. Team to sort of. Say, let’s just start here.
174 00:23:11.940 ⇒ 00:23:17.682 Uttam Kumaran: Whether you can remove some of those. Add I I’ll I I want to give free reign.
175 00:23:18.170 ⇒ 00:23:39.300 Uttam Kumaran: My other thing is that again, for folks will be one understanding the amount of time you have, and again. My goal is to give you more work and give you as much money as I can. And so over time we want to start to. I want to start the value to accrue towards positive outcomes. Right? Having a stand up to me just like we go to our clients, where we saying, hey! You’re
176 00:23:39.580 ⇒ 00:23:41.080 Uttam Kumaran: this metric went up.
177 00:23:41.200 ⇒ 00:23:47.949 Uttam Kumaran: What is the outcome right for me? I don’t care like I care about stand ups. But for me I care about the client winning.
178 00:23:48.260 ⇒ 00:23:51.300 Uttam Kumaran: So it’s up to the client pot to tell me.
179 00:23:51.420 ⇒ 00:23:54.219 Uttam Kumaran: And the clients still win. Given whatever structure
180 00:23:54.740 ⇒ 00:24:02.010 Uttam Kumaran: like, I’m open to challenging anything like, you know. So that’s where I think we are going to be a lot less rigorous than probably most
181 00:24:02.648 ⇒ 00:24:11.420 Uttam Kumaran: development engineering firms. Because I’m open to challenging whether we could use AI to handle some of these meetings. Blah! Blah
182 00:24:11.890 ⇒ 00:24:14.970 Uttam Kumaran: like that’s up to. That’s up to us to decide.
183 00:24:19.150 ⇒ 00:24:26.610 Uttam Kumaran: Some clients may be higher touch. Sometimes we may have clients in meetings, sometimes maybe we don’t have to meet at all. Maybe just twice a week
184 00:24:28.070 ⇒ 00:24:32.930 Uttam Kumaran: our goal will be to have a standard practice of how do we set expectations?
185 00:24:33.547 ⇒ 00:24:38.769 Uttam Kumaran: But we will. I think we’re gonna constantly try to iterate here one of our competitive advantages
186 00:24:38.920 ⇒ 00:24:42.329 Uttam Kumaran: in this business has been our flexibility and our ability to sort of adapt.
187 00:24:42.820 ⇒ 00:24:50.380 Uttam Kumaran: A lot of companies. Again, they have 5 or 10 people per client, which means they can only go after certain clients they meet move like
188 00:24:50.500 ⇒ 00:24:53.460 Uttam Kumaran: they move super super slow like. That’s not us.
189 00:24:53.720 ⇒ 00:24:59.250 Uttam Kumaran: So you know, I’m open to challenging any of our processes.
190 00:25:03.850 ⇒ 00:25:15.909 Uttam Kumaran: Cool? Next question. So about benefits, retirement benefits, incentive plans. And then I’ll talk about actually, let me talk about healthcare benefits. This will be an easy one, because I don’t know if there’s
191 00:25:16.120 ⇒ 00:25:35.519 Uttam Kumaran: sort of a yes or no. So yeah, we kicked off processes with our accounting team right now. So far. The timeline they’ve given me is June. I believe. June first.st The way it works in the Us. Is, I have to offer health insurance, and then it kicks in the month after.
192 00:25:35.680 ⇒ 00:25:38.710 Uttam Kumaran: So that means May, which means
193 00:25:40.390 ⇒ 00:25:42.129 Uttam Kumaran: A month and 10 days.
194 00:25:43.110 ⇒ 00:25:48.660 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s if I can get this done next month.
195 00:25:48.910 ⇒ 00:25:51.009 Uttam Kumaran: That is my like stretch goal.
196 00:25:51.594 ⇒ 00:26:16.670 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know anything about healthcare offer. I don’t know anything about offering healthcare, except I have a couple of friends that work as healthcare brokers, or whatever it’s extremely complicated. Our team that we brought in, though, is very, very competent at bringing in healthcare solutions. This will be another area where I will likely circulate this among the folks affected to get feedback on what plans what’s effective and what we can afford.
197 00:26:17.850 ⇒ 00:26:22.909 Uttam Kumaran: So we’re pushing us as fast as we can here.
198 00:26:23.440 ⇒ 00:26:31.950 Uttam Kumaran: In terms of global benefits for everybody. This is something that is on my mind. And I’m just gonna put put a note here.
199 00:26:34.440 ⇒ 00:26:38.650 Uttam Kumaran: I just don’t know at this point what it’s like to offer
200 00:26:38.950 ⇒ 00:26:41.599 Uttam Kumaran: benefits in every country where we all live.
201 00:26:43.160 ⇒ 00:26:48.520 Uttam Kumaran: I will have to go learn about that and work with our accounting team on on what’s possible. There!
202 00:26:48.986 ⇒ 00:26:55.050 Uttam Kumaran: If anyone has any experience with that, or has any thoughts again, and let me know now, or
203 00:26:55.190 ⇒ 00:27:01.469 Uttam Kumaran: in the chat, or you can slack me but again, where I’m gonna do.
204 00:27:01.620 ⇒ 00:27:05.129 Uttam Kumaran: The rough overall principle here is I’m gonna do my best
205 00:27:05.290 ⇒ 00:27:07.339 Uttam Kumaran: to make this the best place to work
206 00:27:07.700 ⇒ 00:27:14.270 Uttam Kumaran: for. But within, within, within reason, reason is so we can. We can survive and grow so
207 00:27:15.500 ⇒ 00:27:19.380 Awaish Kumar: There is a company called Safetywing.
208 00:27:19.965 ⇒ 00:27:30.360 Awaish Kumar: They provide like digital nomad visa, which is for like people who who are who are working remotely, and they can like change countries and
209 00:27:30.500 ⇒ 00:27:33.149 Awaish Kumar: like doesn’t matter where where you are
210 00:27:33.400 ⇒ 00:27:39.990 Awaish Kumar: with their plans you’re covered. So that’s something the the previous company I worked with. They were offering
211 00:27:40.450 ⇒ 00:27:43.280 Uttam Kumaran: Can you? Can you send me the can you? Can you send the spelling in the chat
212 00:27:47.060 ⇒ 00:28:05.560 Caio Velasco: Another question that I have is, when you say employees do you mean, for example, in other countries like contractors? Because in my in the previous company I work for I was a full time contractor. I don’t know like what would be the difference. And actually, when I bought the number to live in Spain.
213 00:28:05.977 ⇒ 00:28:33.130 Caio Velasco: And well, this this would be a good conversation, but at the end of the day it’s just an umbrella of 2 things that you can consider for people who are interested. You’re either contractor, and you have a digital visa, and you become self employed in another country, or you are a regular employee, which I believe would be only for us people, I guess. But then you can also, fall into that umbrella with other regulation. But yeah, just
214 00:28:34.050 ⇒ 00:28:36.462 Uttam Kumaran: This is a great question. I will find out
215 00:28:37.420 ⇒ 00:28:40.819 Uttam Kumaran: to to set to set like the expectation here. I
216 00:28:40.950 ⇒ 00:28:44.970 Uttam Kumaran: I want this to be a place where people want to
217 00:28:45.580 ⇒ 00:28:55.409 Uttam Kumaran: leave their other job and come work. So I want the benefits to accrue to the bit brain forge employees, the people that are part of our team
218 00:28:55.950 ⇒ 00:28:59.719 Uttam Kumaran: right? And so that’s gonna be my number one goal.
219 00:29:00.141 ⇒ 00:29:28.300 Uttam Kumaran: As of now, we’ve had. No, the company itself has had no leverage over like we just do our best, and everybody’s sort of on the same playing field. I’m gonna start to try to bring the value as close to the people that are part of the company, and want to see the company grow as as possible. Probably more than you’ve ever seen another company you’ve been part of do benefits like healthcare retirement, incentive plans
220 00:29:29.180 ⇒ 00:29:34.270 Uttam Kumaran: like in the order of operations. I will think about the brain forge team first.st
221 00:29:34.400 ⇒ 00:29:38.269 Uttam Kumaran: And so all these are actually, really, really good question
222 00:29:38.530 ⇒ 00:29:46.270 Uttam Kumaran: about employees versus contractors. And again, I know this is not really about the hours I’ll have to go find this out. Most likely it’s
223 00:29:46.390 ⇒ 00:29:49.190 Uttam Kumaran: I will. I’ll find out per country.
224 00:29:49.770 ⇒ 00:29:53.200 Uttam Kumaran: what the distinction is, and can get you an answer on that
225 00:29:58.670 ⇒ 00:30:07.540 Uttam Kumaran: cool. So in terms like to wrap up the thing about just like health. We’re gonna try for health first, st for retirement will come next.
226 00:30:09.120 ⇒ 00:30:19.029 Uttam Kumaran: that is probably just the that’s just the way I ha! I have capacity to tackle those things. The second piece I did do want to talk about is
227 00:30:19.860 ⇒ 00:30:26.930 Uttam Kumaran: is incentive plans. So this is where I’ve been spending like a lot of time.
228 00:30:27.050 ⇒ 00:30:32.190 Uttam Kumaran: honestly, for the last, like 6 months thinking about, how do we align
229 00:30:32.490 ⇒ 00:30:38.839 Uttam Kumaran: the incentives. Of the how do we align the business success with incentives for our team?
230 00:30:39.515 ⇒ 00:30:48.659 Uttam Kumaran: Commonly like the way you can think about this is that when the business grows I want the people in the company to grow as well. Of course.
231 00:30:49.059 ⇒ 00:31:13.829 Uttam Kumaran: If you were to take one end of the spectrum. This is like what it’s like to be a shareholder in the company. If you have equity value, and as the company grows, it cruise to you. On the other hand, right now there’s we don’t have a cap table. There’s like we. We don’t offer equity. So how how can you? How can you still come to work and feel like, Hey, I’m putting it my all on the table. And I’m growing with the growth of the business
232 00:31:13.970 ⇒ 00:31:19.909 Uttam Kumaran: to give you the personal perspective which I hope across all these. It’s helpful to see my perspective.
233 00:31:20.426 ⇒ 00:31:33.499 Uttam Kumaran: If not, you can just tell me I’m wrong. But I’ve been part of a lot of startups, a lot of startups where I was given equity. Absolutely 0 of those ever made me any money, and so
234 00:31:34.040 ⇒ 00:31:39.533 Uttam Kumaran: I I can’t sit here with a stray face and say, this one is the one
235 00:31:40.400 ⇒ 00:31:44.479 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve been on the other side so many times. And
236 00:31:44.550 ⇒ 00:31:58.550 Uttam Kumaran: it’s so common for someone in my seat to tell all of you guys that this is the one. Take equity, hitch the wagon. We’ll all get super super rich. I can’t
237 00:31:58.600 ⇒ 00:32:26.130 Uttam Kumaran: like say that with good faith, because I don’t know. I wake up every day with the goal of growing the business. But like I I think it’s helpful for everybody on this call to to come to the table with skepticism on, on how you can get some of that value. The flip side, though, is I my my short term thinking. And after speaking with several people in the industry, several peers sort of thinking through this problem
238 00:32:26.320 ⇒ 00:32:37.869 Uttam Kumaran: and and looking at sort of how some other really high, highly effective companies do. This is to most likely structure, a cash bonus based program.
239 00:32:39.480 ⇒ 00:32:58.649 Uttam Kumaran: I’m not sure what the cadence is gonna be, but ideally, this is aligned to a couple of key factors. One the ability for clients to be successful, to the ability for us to expand clients and 3, the ability for folks to take on more work per hour.
240 00:33:00.610 ⇒ 00:33:06.619 Uttam Kumaran: What that basically looks like is if you’re on a client pod and the client renews.
241 00:33:06.960 ⇒ 00:33:19.609 Uttam Kumaran: Is there an opportunity for that team to get a percent of that. If you’re on a client pod and the client grows, is there an opportunity to get that right? And the assumption there is that your team’s direct contribution led to that.
242 00:33:19.850 ⇒ 00:33:31.569 Uttam Kumaran: The other piece is if you’re currently on one client and and you’re able to work across multiple clients, and then you’re able to take on even more and take on meaning successfully.
243 00:33:31.800 ⇒ 00:33:41.650 Uttam Kumaran: We want to be able to reward that. And so for me, at the business level, I want to start to put our money where our mouth is on incentivizing people, to take on
244 00:33:41.910 ⇒ 00:33:48.760 Uttam Kumaran: more work, to take on more work and execute it successfully, and to also want
245 00:33:48.890 ⇒ 00:33:56.270 Uttam Kumaran: the company to win. And when the when the clients win and the clients grow with us, the company wins. And that’s that’s really all
246 00:33:56.450 ⇒ 00:33:58.380 Uttam Kumaran: that’s really it. It’s very simple.
247 00:33:59.880 ⇒ 00:34:06.269 Uttam Kumaran: this is not to give you a sense of what people in this industry do. One. Most people don’t do anything.
248 00:34:06.520 ⇒ 00:34:08.120 Uttam Kumaran: They’re like, you work here.
249 00:34:09.070 ⇒ 00:34:22.679 Uttam Kumaran: You leave here. Right? So that’s like the that’s like, not, I would say 90% of the companies. That’s not who I look to for, like how to do this. There’s a lot. There’s also a lot of companies that do equity
250 00:34:23.033 ⇒ 00:34:28.609 Uttam Kumaran: and I’m sure a lot of people are interested in like, okay, do I ask for equity? Is equity part of stuff.
251 00:34:30.000 ⇒ 00:34:31.580 Uttam Kumaran: To give you a sense of
252 00:34:32.070 ⇒ 00:34:44.939 Uttam Kumaran: our perspective on that equity is a is a classic way for companies to provide you with a ticket that on paper is worth something, but that actually doesn’t require any cash from the business short term.
253 00:34:45.090 ⇒ 00:34:57.449 Uttam Kumaran: Of course, if the company goes and becomes super massive, potentially, there is an option there. However, in my learning and being part of these types of businesses.
254 00:34:57.590 ⇒ 00:35:09.799 Uttam Kumaran: the more short term ability to actually use that cash and use it in your daily life, and have that be something that that hits on a higher frequency than 10 years, or whatever down the line
255 00:35:10.248 ⇒ 00:35:14.711 Uttam Kumaran: is through this sort of like cash, or some sort of profit based incentive?
256 00:35:15.360 ⇒ 00:35:23.249 Uttam Kumaran: so that’s like 6 months of like thinking about this problem and trying to do the best thing here. But like anybody, have any thoughts
257 00:35:23.520 ⇒ 00:35:26.610 Uttam Kumaran: or questions or concerns.
258 00:35:28.050 ⇒ 00:35:32.980 Uttam Kumaran: It would probably spend the remaining time sort of talking about this item. And one more item.
259 00:35:44.790 ⇒ 00:35:48.185 Uttam Kumaran: no thoughts. Did I just get it right
260 00:35:52.020 ⇒ 00:35:54.530 Caio Velasco: We’re just all waiting for for that field
261 00:35:55.140 ⇒ 00:35:56.779 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, me, too.
262 00:35:59.470 ⇒ 00:36:12.249 Annie Yu: Well, no, no question but just a sentiment like Thank you so much for like striving to making this a great workplace like really appreciate you for being like empathetic good deal
263 00:36:12.990 ⇒ 00:36:15.749 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I want it to be a good deal like
264 00:36:15.890 ⇒ 00:36:21.319 Uttam Kumaran: I worked at a lot of places where I didn’t get see anything, and I worked weekends. I worked nights.
265 00:36:21.680 ⇒ 00:36:24.150 Uttam Kumaran: I gave a lot of time and effort.
266 00:36:24.300 ⇒ 00:36:33.709 Uttam Kumaran: and I love engineering. So I did it because I love engineering. I love working with those people, but like that value accrued to other people. And it’s not that like I felt like I deserved 100.
267 00:36:34.080 ⇒ 00:36:43.610 Uttam Kumaran: Well, like I didn’t get anything, you know. And and I don’t I? It built resentment in my mind, and those are the reasons why I left those companies, partly because I was like.
268 00:36:43.840 ⇒ 00:36:48.439 Uttam Kumaran: I’m doing a lot, and I’m getting paid the same as someone over here that’s like
269 00:36:48.700 ⇒ 00:36:59.399 Uttam Kumaran: not doing anything or just knows the CEO of the company, or whatever like. I don’t. I don’t like situations like that. And and so I I wanna make sure that this is equitable. This is another thing that
270 00:37:00.163 ⇒ 00:37:02.920 Uttam Kumaran: we’re about like 50% on this
271 00:37:03.230 ⇒ 00:37:14.959 Uttam Kumaran: purely getting this done is a function of me having, like any amount of free time. But I really want to try to have this done by the by the end of q. 2, and done meaning.
272 00:37:15.110 ⇒ 00:37:22.900 Uttam Kumaran: I will begin to circulate this one on one with everybody. When we talk one on one. I will then begin to circulate this among
273 00:37:23.180 ⇒ 00:37:29.250 Uttam Kumaran: teams, and then we’ll sort of present this as a business like again.
274 00:37:29.480 ⇒ 00:37:34.659 Uttam Kumaran: I think across all of these we have a we have really a great opportunity to set this structure
275 00:37:34.770 ⇒ 00:37:37.550 Uttam Kumaran: like now, that will last a while.
276 00:37:38.070 ⇒ 00:37:45.059 Uttam Kumaran: So I really want us to all be bought in and take all of our collective experiences here. Sort of make this reality. Of course
277 00:37:45.210 ⇒ 00:37:58.909 Uttam Kumaran: I will bring the perspective of like what’s possible. From the company side. But I do think that something is possible here, and as a company grows, I think more is possible here. I’m really, really committed to having
278 00:37:59.040 ⇒ 00:38:05.149 Uttam Kumaran: value accrued to the people that are most impactful on the on the business growing like. I’m very, very serious about that.
279 00:38:05.667 ⇒ 00:38:21.370 Uttam Kumaran: There’s I don’t think that happens very often, and like it’s 1 of the things about having this business and doing the things your way. Some people take that the wrong way, but for me, I I try to. I want this to be as fair as possible.
280 00:38:21.640 ⇒ 00:38:39.099 Uttam Kumaran: The last piece, I’ll say is, you know, advice I got from sort of finance people is to say, Oh, don’t give out cash, because, like that comes directly out of like the money your company has, and you should give it equity, because it’s like not real cash, though that’s some of the advice that I’m getting
281 00:38:39.280 ⇒ 00:38:42.129 Uttam Kumaran: to give you an example. Right? And so
282 00:38:42.280 ⇒ 00:38:48.369 Uttam Kumaran: this is sort of the battle we you know we have at the company level is like, how do we set this up fair?
283 00:38:48.680 ⇒ 00:38:55.489 Uttam Kumaran: But there’s always there’s a fairness aspect to everything we do here, but I don’t think we need to run a company like everybody does.
284 00:38:55.935 ⇒ 00:39:14.600 Uttam Kumaran: I think there is an opportunity here to to do the right thing. There are companies that are. Do this. I will share some examples. After this meeting, that you can read about how some very successful companies have architected this very successful fully remote companies of architected this and so
285 00:39:14.970 ⇒ 00:39:21.709 Uttam Kumaran: I know. Probably nobody on this call spends as much time thinking about this as I do. But if you do have a a second to
286 00:39:22.050 ⇒ 00:39:33.019 Uttam Kumaran: to think through what you would expect, or what would you like to see? Or if a friend was asking you about? Hey, what benefits they offer? What would. What would excite you to talk about?
287 00:39:33.210 ⇒ 00:39:35.910 Uttam Kumaran: That’s the sort of stuff I want to strive for.
288 00:39:41.310 ⇒ 00:39:42.000 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
289 00:39:43.140 ⇒ 00:40:01.440 Uttam Kumaran: Anything else again, if you don’t feel comfortable talking about on this call. Please just DM me directly. I really, I’m I mean, I’m gonna meet with everybody and and get the feedback, whether you you want to give it or not. Don’t worry. But if you have any feedback early on that, I can use that would be very helpful.
290 00:40:04.630 ⇒ 00:40:05.390 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
291 00:40:06.070 ⇒ 00:40:21.339 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, great. We have 5 min left because Demolan and I have to jump to a new client call but I wanted to go through this new software that we started using that directly impacts this question, which is how employees are allocated to projects.
292 00:40:22.650 ⇒ 00:40:29.549 Uttam Kumaran: nico, I’m gonna share, if you can just like, if I end up like not knowing where something is. If you can just help me
293 00:40:29.950 ⇒ 00:40:38.630 Uttam Kumaran: guide through, because it’s sort of something new. I know we’re we’re sort of just finishing up, setting everything up. But I just.
294 00:40:39.170 ⇒ 00:40:44.928 Uttam Kumaran: you know, I want to ship it. So this is a tool called operating
295 00:40:45.810 ⇒ 00:40:49.169 Uttam Kumaran: you could consider it software in
296 00:40:49.940 ⇒ 00:41:01.290 Uttam Kumaran: sort of like people project allocation, hourly management. What you’re seeing here is all of our teams, and how everybody is allocated to one of those.
297 00:41:01.795 ⇒ 00:41:05.749 Uttam Kumaran: This is not only just external, this is also internal.
298 00:41:05.940 ⇒ 00:41:14.059 Uttam Kumaran: I look at the business as a whole meaning like we have external clients that are billable. We have internal clients that are non billable and
299 00:41:14.180 ⇒ 00:41:20.520 Uttam Kumaran: like, I want to look at where all of our hours are going, and make sure that everybody comes to work and is working on the most effective thing.
300 00:41:20.630 ⇒ 00:41:26.259 Uttam Kumaran: I’m gonna focus this conversation really, just on our external, on our external clients.
301 00:41:27.680 ⇒ 00:41:29.538 Uttam Kumaran: And so let’s just take
302 00:41:30.340 ⇒ 00:41:33.899 Uttam Kumaran: like, let’s just take ABC as a good example here.
303 00:41:34.580 ⇒ 00:41:38.149 Uttam Kumaran: Abc, right now, it’s primarily just the
304 00:41:38.950 ⇒ 00:41:48.242 Uttam Kumaran: just the AI team. And so if we go to timeline here, what we’re gonna be able to see in one view is
305 00:41:48.810 ⇒ 00:41:52.730 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah, you can. You need to change from people to projects on the top right?
306 00:41:53.120 ⇒ 00:42:04.720 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, yes. The one thing we’re going to be able to see here is everybody’s allocation towards a project. And, as I mentioned before, our goal is to have 80% of everybody’s time allocated.
307 00:42:05.980 ⇒ 00:42:19.490 Uttam Kumaran: whether the math like I don’t know how I’m gonna do the math meaning like I could do 80% of billable time. I could do everything just adds up to 80%. But basically again, like, if you just bear with me all we’re trying to solve here is I’m trying to make it
308 00:42:19.590 ⇒ 00:42:29.729 Uttam Kumaran: clear to our project managers and to our sales team about how much we can reliably execute, and who’s available to execute that
309 00:42:29.950 ⇒ 00:42:56.699 Uttam Kumaran: for. And this is again part of this 3 legged stool. If you’re gonna consider me as the as the product owner, I want to know that we have the right skill sets on the right projects to to be effective for our project managers. And again, I’ll probably speak for them just because we have a couple of minutes. Their goal is to make sure that they have enough resources to accomplish what’s in the sow the statement of work. What we promised
310 00:42:56.840 ⇒ 00:43:03.349 Uttam Kumaran: for the team for engineers. You want to make sure that you’re not like 5%, 5%, 5% 5 like
311 00:43:03.720 ⇒ 00:43:26.640 Uttam Kumaran: you’re gonna get, you’re gonna get jammed right? And so we wanna also make sure that our engineers are on the projects they want to be on are working with other some other person meaning there’s some redundancy. So if you’re out of office, or if you need Prs reviewed, you can get that but this is really is going to be the place where we look as a team on. How are all of us allocated to projects?
312 00:43:26.997 ⇒ 00:43:33.870 Uttam Kumaran: So I’ll pause there. We have, like, you know, probably like one or 2 min just to take questions. I just flashed up a view you can think about.
313 00:43:34.230 ⇒ 00:43:39.799 Uttam Kumaran: They have several other views. This is like a big data product. Any questions here?
314 00:43:40.826 ⇒ 00:43:41.659 Uttam Kumaran: Any thoughts
315 00:43:41.660 ⇒ 00:43:42.340 Nicolas Sucari: Yes.
316 00:43:42.340 ⇒ 00:43:44.360 Amber Lin: Who can get to it
317 00:43:44.360 ⇒ 00:44:11.200 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah, just a comment. I’m gonna I’m gonna book some time with you, amber, Akash and all. Pm’s Steven, too, so that I can kind of share a little bit on how this is set up, and you can understand it a little bit better on that allocation. You maybe you should have access to those to to these tools, so that you can manage that that allocation and see ahead of time, like if we have new projects and new people, how we are allocating them into the teams. So yeah, that’s it.
318 00:44:11.430 ⇒ 00:44:37.330 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and in terms of allocation. So basically, as new stuff comes down the pipe, we want to be able to plan ahead as things are working and we increase scope, we want to be able to add people in for our engineers. When I meet with you, I wanna make sure to pull this up and look at. Hey! What clients are you on? How are they going? Do you have more bandwidth? Do you feel like some client is not moving like this is so. Every piece of the pie sort of connects into this process
319 00:44:38.030 ⇒ 00:44:51.350 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah, it’s really important that you keep kind of tracking your hours in clockify. We are using clockify to get that information in here, and kind of compare our plan
320 00:44:51.655 ⇒ 00:45:17.100 Nicolas Sucari: time for each of these projects with the actual time that you’re spending. So it will give us a clear view of where the time is going, and see if we need to also drive a a new conversation with the client to ask for more hours. So it’s really important to to keep tracking the hours and clockify. And we’ll we’re doing this kind of integration manually right now. But then we’re gonna work on something better and we can compare all of that in here.
321 00:45:21.300 ⇒ 00:45:24.840 Nicolas Sucari: But yeah, this tool is is is good on.
322 00:45:24.900 ⇒ 00:45:39.260 Nicolas Sucari: We can. We can kind of create the teams with the roles that we all need for each of the different teams or or clients, and then with the team that we have, we can kind of suggest which people is with has bandwidth to get
323 00:45:39.280 ⇒ 00:45:57.409 Nicolas Sucari: that new role or that new client or project. So it’s it’s it’s really good. It will let us understand a little bit how everything is is allocated, how everyone is allocated throughout the teams and projects and see who has bandwidth and who hasn’t, or which client we need to ask for more hours, and that kind of stuff
324 00:46:02.920 ⇒ 00:46:12.280 Uttam Kumaran: Great. I know we’re at time. If you have any questions, please please just slack me just sort of top of mind today.
325 00:46:14.090 ⇒ 00:46:26.880 Uttam Kumaran: I think, apart from that, I’ll probably just end it here. Again. I think everybody has access to that notion, Doc. If you have any comments on that. Please add that there, I know this wasn’t our usual meeting where we went through Okrs and stuff, but
326 00:46:27.350 ⇒ 00:46:37.780 Uttam Kumaran: I think it was still very, very effective, I think probably once a quarter or something, we’ll do some things like this. We’re developing these processes with everyone here. So I don’t have all the answers.
327 00:46:38.128 ⇒ 00:46:49.329 Uttam Kumaran: Very surprisingly. So. I want to get to the point at which we all agree that these are the right things to do. And then over time we may see that some of the things we decided on aren’t the right things, and we’ll adjust them. So
328 00:46:52.970 ⇒ 00:46:59.679 Nicolas Sucari: One. Just last comment, utam I think the the event is already published
329 00:46:59.980 ⇒ 00:47:03.450 Nicolas Sucari: in Linkedin. So maybe we can help everyone promote.
330 00:47:03.450 ⇒ 00:47:04.490 Nicolas Sucari: Oh, yeah,
331 00:47:05.630 ⇒ 00:47:08.858 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, maybe I’ll just share one thing.
332 00:47:09.670 ⇒ 00:47:16.989 Uttam Kumaran: Hannah, do you? Wanna do you wanna maybe share real quick, just like what we’re doing with default, and how the team here can can help promote that
333 00:47:16.990 ⇒ 00:47:46.500 Hannah Wang: Yeah. So we’re basically doing a webinar with a company called Default new. Tom’s gonna basically be the speaker on that. It’s gonna be kind of like a Q&A I know Tom’s gonna give his best advice and answer. So we made a Linkedin post. I think Tom posted it like an hour or 2 h ago, so if you could go and engage with it, that’d be awesome, so that we can have a lot of people come to the webinar and have a lot of sign ups. Yeah. And he put the link in the chat
334 00:47:49.280 ⇒ 00:48:03.739 Uttam Kumaran: Thank you. Yeah. We’re starting to do more marketing and trying to sort of work with some of our vendor partners. On explaining what we do, how we can be effective. And of course, try to get more more customers that we can help. So any help you guys can do to like
335 00:48:03.900 ⇒ 00:48:07.720 Uttam Kumaran: repost re, and ideally repost with a comment.
336 00:48:08.521 ⇒ 00:48:12.839 Uttam Kumaran: Hannah, myself and Ryan and Ann will be very happy.
337 00:48:14.940 ⇒ 00:48:16.470 Uttam Kumaran: For our metrics.
338 00:48:19.060 ⇒ 00:48:19.970 Uttam Kumaran: Awesome.
339 00:48:20.900 ⇒ 00:48:21.680 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
340 00:48:21.810 ⇒ 00:48:31.009 Uttam Kumaran: thank you so much. I’ll send some of these links in the in the brain. 1st team channel again. Slack me if if you need anything, and if I don’t talk to everyone here. Please have a good weekend
341 00:48:32.130 ⇒ 00:48:33.940 Nicolas Sucari: Thank you, Tom. Bye, bye, everyone
342 00:48:33.940 ⇒ 00:48:35.159 Caio Velasco: Thank you. Guys. Bye.
343 00:48:35.160 ⇒ 00:48:36.090 Ryan Brosas: You.