2025-03-27_allocation

Meeting Title: Allocation Date: 2025-03-27 Meeting participants: Mariane Cequina, Aakash Tandel, Nicolas Sucari, Uttam Kumaran, Amber Lin, Robert Tseng, Miguel De Veyra

WEBVTT

1 00:01:26.490 ⇒ 00:01:28.049 Miguel de Veyra: Hey? Nico morning.

2 00:01:29.630 ⇒ 00:01:31.640 Nicolas Sucari: Hey, Miguel, how are you?

3 00:01:33.014 ⇒ 00:01:34.586 Miguel de Veyra: Yeah. Doing. Great.

4 00:01:35.740 ⇒ 00:01:37.759 Nicolas Sucari: What about you? How’s Argentina?

5 00:01:38.930 ⇒ 00:01:43.829 Nicolas Sucari: It’s good weather is better. It’s not so hot anymore. So it’s really nice.

6 00:01:46.480 ⇒ 00:01:49.869 Nicolas Sucari: I’m drinking Argentinian mate, you know.

7 00:01:50.120 ⇒ 00:01:54.679 Nicolas Sucari: But whatam does. This is mate, and this is how you properly do it.

8 00:01:55.550 ⇒ 00:01:57.400 Miguel de Veyra: Hey? What’s Matthew

9 00:01:57.550 ⇒ 00:02:05.670 Nicolas Sucari: Mate is an beverage that we do, that it includes like these. I don’t know how to say it, Sherbati, you know.

10 00:02:05.910 ⇒ 00:02:06.660 Nicolas Sucari: like these.

11 00:02:06.660 ⇒ 00:02:08.060 Nicolas Sucari: Oh.

12 00:02:08.530 ⇒ 00:02:09.929 Miguel de Veyra: This is like tea.

13 00:02:10.470 ⇒ 00:02:13.580 Nicolas Sucari: It’s like tea, but not tea. It’s different.

14 00:02:15.292 ⇒ 00:02:16.990 Nicolas Sucari: And you drink it like this

15 00:02:17.420 ⇒ 00:02:25.500 Nicolas Sucari: with this kind of straw. You kind of fill it with water every time, and you can do it like for a long time.

16 00:02:26.120 ⇒ 00:02:30.279 Nicolas Sucari: It’s not just like an infusion as tea. It’s something different

17 00:02:30.860 ⇒ 00:02:35.019 Miguel de Veyra: And you put like the water on? Are those leaves on the map?

18 00:02:35.020 ⇒ 00:02:40.810 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah, it. It’s kind of leaves. I I do like this like, this is my, yeah, I don’t know how this

19 00:02:40.810 ⇒ 00:02:41.300 Nicolas Sucari: he scored

20 00:02:41.300 ⇒ 00:02:43.570 Miguel de Veyra: In English. It’s my Theramo

21 00:02:43.960 ⇒ 00:02:47.210 Nicolas Sucari: And I do like this. I just kind of drop the water in

22 00:02:47.550 ⇒ 00:02:52.999 Nicolas Sucari: touching a little bit. I have like a wall that is dry, and I kind of little by little

23 00:02:53.200 ⇒ 00:02:56.279 Nicolas Sucari: eat a little bit of that wall, so it gets a little bit more flavor

24 00:02:56.280 ⇒ 00:02:59.440 Miguel de Veyra: Oh, how do you know when it’s like time to change

25 00:03:00.870 ⇒ 00:03:05.230 Nicolas Sucari: You know, in Argentina, we say when it’s kind of washed

26 00:03:05.560 ⇒ 00:03:14.099 Nicolas Sucari: like when you you don’t feel that like strong flavor of Mayday, it’s kind of getting washed, and that’s when we change it.

27 00:03:15.080 ⇒ 00:03:17.340 Miguel de Veyra: I see, and throw it away

28 00:03:18.150 ⇒ 00:03:21.639 Nicolas Sucari: It’s interesting, yeah, different techniques. But it’s pretty good

29 00:03:22.660 ⇒ 00:03:26.439 Miguel de Veyra: I’ll probably think MAT.

30 00:03:28.160 ⇒ 00:03:28.890 Nicolas Sucari: Sorry.

31 00:03:29.290 ⇒ 00:03:31.409 Miguel de Veyra: How do you spell that, mate? Hold on.

32 00:03:31.410 ⇒ 00:03:32.000 Nicolas Sucari: Martin

33 00:03:32.000 ⇒ 00:03:32.540 Miguel de Veyra: Pop.

34 00:03:33.020 ⇒ 00:03:33.819 Miguel de Veyra: Oh, okay. Okay.

35 00:03:33.820 ⇒ 00:03:36.990 Nicolas Sucari: A, TE, yeah, exactly.

36 00:03:38.200 ⇒ 00:03:39.850 Nicolas Sucari: Hey, guys, how are you?

37 00:03:41.790 ⇒ 00:03:42.660 Robert Tseng: Hello!

38 00:03:44.610 ⇒ 00:03:46.340 Mariane Cequina: Hi

39 00:03:47.360 ⇒ 00:03:49.820 Miguel de Veyra: Hey? Guys? Morning, you know.

40 00:03:56.740 ⇒ 00:03:57.819 Miguel de Veyra: creates a full company

41 00:04:20.800 ⇒ 00:04:23.680 Nicolas Sucari: So should we wait for Utam? Yes, right

42 00:04:27.920 ⇒ 00:04:29.960 Miguel de Veyra: Can someone ping him or will come in

43 00:04:38.480 ⇒ 00:04:41.060 Nicolas Sucari: Oh, yeah, that’s fine, Robert. I’m gonna run it. Don’t worry.

44 00:04:49.170 ⇒ 00:04:51.169 Nicolas Sucari: Did you ping him, Miguel?

45 00:04:51.850 ⇒ 00:04:52.390 Miguel de Veyra: Yep.

46 00:04:57.210 ⇒ 00:04:57.880 Miguel de Veyra: I don’t have a question.

47 00:04:57.880 ⇒ 00:04:59.299 Miguel de Veyra: So whatsapp

48 00:05:00.270 ⇒ 00:05:05.230 Nicolas Sucari: Okay, just for introduction. The idea is to review kind of all.

49 00:05:05.930 ⇒ 00:05:07.653 Nicolas Sucari: Okay, here you sit on. Let’s wait

50 00:05:08.710 ⇒ 00:05:10.419 Uttam Kumaran: Hi! Everyone. Sorry.

51 00:05:12.530 ⇒ 00:05:13.329 Nicolas Sucari: Hey! Adam!

52 00:05:13.770 ⇒ 00:05:15.770 Uttam Kumaran: Hey? Okay, great.

53 00:05:15.990 ⇒ 00:05:24.879 Uttam Kumaran: So I’ve been looking forward to this meeting. My whole life seems like, this is where we figure out how to actually make money in this business.

54 00:05:26.330 ⇒ 00:05:36.230 Uttam Kumaran: And so I think this is the right crew to make this happen. We have here finally, representatives from

55 00:05:36.380 ⇒ 00:05:39.489 Uttam Kumaran: the triforce. I think we have like sort of me.

56 00:05:39.600 ⇒ 00:05:51.930 Uttam Kumaran: Miguel, on like engineering Akash amber on pming, Robert sort of representing sales, I guess. Quad force, and then Ops sort of on like

57 00:05:52.060 ⇒ 00:05:59.999 Uttam Kumaran: people need to get into clockify. People need to update their like sort of like the mechanics. I think all of us are sort of the core folks equipped to

58 00:06:00.100 ⇒ 00:06:15.210 Uttam Kumaran: solve this problem of who’s assigned? Where? How many hours should people be working? And then understanding like what expectations are for utilization billable hours. And like, what’s our what our goals are? And so I worked on this document.

59 00:06:15.780 ⇒ 00:06:41.060 Uttam Kumaran: what I’m gonna do today is like, I want us to walk through all of our core tools. So I want us to walk through, clockify, make sure everyone is in there understands how to use that tool to see the hours for your team. I also want to take a look at operating which will start to be looking at how resources are shift and then immediately, I just want to start to run. Just start to spend time talking through each client. The clear goals are one like.

60 00:06:41.300 ⇒ 00:06:56.250 Uttam Kumaran: do we have all all like the meetings booked? Do we feel comfortable there? The second piece is, who’s allocated? Where? So that’s the 1st piece to start and then understand, like, how much of each person is allocated, where and then we have a couple of other sort of

61 00:06:56.740 ⇒ 00:07:03.669 Uttam Kumaran: action items to discuss like smaller items. So maybe let’s begin. I mean, I’m gonna I’ll just go ahead and run

62 00:07:04.260 ⇒ 00:07:09.680 Uttam Kumaran: and Nico, you can just just help me and Nico and Marianne just help me out on Clockify if I’m

63 00:07:09.680 ⇒ 00:07:10.310 Nicolas Sucari: Yes.

64 00:07:10.310 ⇒ 00:07:15.924 Uttam Kumaran: Sort of don’t see the right thing, but I’ll run. I’ll start by sharing clockify. Then start by sharing

65 00:07:16.760 ⇒ 00:07:20.759 Uttam Kumaran: operating, and then we could just dive right in? To some of these questions

66 00:07:21.370 ⇒ 00:07:29.549 Nicolas Sucari: Perfect. Yeah, I I already kind of shared a little bit with amber and Akash on where to check for the hours of the people. But yeah, go ahead.

67 00:07:29.900 ⇒ 00:07:30.630 Nicolas Sucari: Okay.

68 00:07:30.630 ⇒ 00:07:31.090 Uttam Kumaran: Right.

69 00:07:31.090 ⇒ 00:07:33.699 Nicolas Sucari: I’ll comment if I see something. Okay.

70 00:07:33.700 ⇒ 00:07:43.039 Uttam Kumaran: So does so does everyone see this view when you, when everybody logs in here, I think everybody on this call. So for the most part be admin, I think, if not, you can slack Nico and Marianne to make that happen

71 00:07:43.040 ⇒ 00:07:43.410 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah.

72 00:07:43.410 ⇒ 00:07:48.939 Uttam Kumaran: This is where everybody goes in and is logging time. But to give you an example, today.

73 00:07:49.120 ⇒ 00:07:59.200 Uttam Kumaran: I went and met with ABC. So what I would do here as an engineer is. I would go in here, I would say, ABC. I would then come in here, and and I met with them for an for an hour.

74 00:07:59.430 ⇒ 00:08:04.749 Uttam Kumaran: so I would just put that in. It gets persisted. The time entry has been created. This is

75 00:08:05.080 ⇒ 00:08:07.029 Uttam Kumaran: this is what their side. Looks like

76 00:08:07.506 ⇒ 00:08:10.620 Uttam Kumaran: what? Our side looks like. Yeah, go ahead, Nico.

77 00:08:10.620 ⇒ 00:08:22.379 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah. Comment here. These, we need to define how to do it. Because if you do it like how you just did it, we don’t have like any detail of what’s happening. If you go to time tracker instead of time, sheet

78 00:08:23.162 ⇒ 00:08:32.440 Nicolas Sucari: and if you use like the input here, you you can add the description. There, you see. Exactly. That’s that’s that’s the difference between doing from the time sheet and from the time Tracker

79 00:08:32.929 ⇒ 00:08:33.359 Uttam Kumaran: So this is

80 00:08:33.360 ⇒ 00:08:45.309 Nicolas Sucari: Always override and add the descriptions later. But I think it’s it’s better to guide the everyone to do it from the time tracker and not from the time sheet, because they can add descriptions from here

81 00:08:46.070 ⇒ 00:09:07.490 Uttam Kumaran: Totally, I think again, this is probably for Ops for you guys to just make sure that people are using this the number one best way I I like for me. This was easy, but you’re right like it would be amazing to have hours, and when I’ve worked as a contractor for the most part they’ve where I was assigned like one client. So they’re just like trying to find hours, I think, for us.

82 00:09:07.630 ⇒ 00:09:13.420 Uttam Kumaran: We definitely need to know where ours are going. To which client ideally also in the long term.

83 00:09:13.720 ⇒ 00:09:36.159 Uttam Kumaran: I mean long term, as in like, probably next month, we’re gonna pull the hours in here and start to match the linear tickets. Not one to one, but basically looking at how many tickets someone took and like how long it take took to do them based on their time here. But yeah, ideally, everybody can add descriptions. I think I don’t know. We’ll see. We’ll see whether it happens or not. One of the things that I look at

84 00:09:36.959 ⇒ 00:09:48.400 Uttam Kumaran: is reports here. So I look at this this summary view. I then basically go team by team. So like, let’s say, if we were gonna choose Eden and I’ll probably pick on Eden this

85 00:09:48.400 ⇒ 00:09:50.209 Nicolas Sucari: Oh, yeah. Clients. Exactly.

86 00:09:50.210 ⇒ 00:10:14.789 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I’ll probably pick on Eden this this session. But you can see here who’s billing? What time? I think if we go to this month we should see all the sort of core folks that have been spending time here. You should see Kosh away, James Sahana Steven, and what this showing is that? Yeah, we spend roughly 160 h. We have 4 weeks a month. So we spent 40 HA week.

87 00:10:16.320 ⇒ 00:10:17.360 Uttam Kumaran: If you did

88 00:10:17.822 ⇒ 00:10:27.179 Uttam Kumaran: like. Let’s say if we were to, this is like literally the the math that I just poke in here and do is I then say cool. We’re charging Eden like like

89 00:10:27.330 ⇒ 00:10:28.810 Uttam Kumaran: 20 grand a month.

90 00:10:30.430 ⇒ 00:10:34.640 Uttam Kumaran: Divided by 160, puts our net billable rate at 1, 25

91 00:10:35.281 ⇒ 00:10:46.430 Uttam Kumaran: right? And so one of the also, the things we’ll be talking about in this meeting is like, what are our what are our goals? At 1 25. We are making very little margin on this

92 00:10:46.947 ⇒ 00:10:58.729 Uttam Kumaran: and I would say this, what you don’t see here is you don’t see Robert’s name. You don’t see my name, so we’re definitely under counting on average everywhere we’ll be. We’ll be under counting. So

93 00:10:59.000 ⇒ 00:11:04.459 Uttam Kumaran: this is where it’s like my instinct here is, and I’ll I just want to walk you through our current process.

94 00:11:04.680 ⇒ 00:11:15.140 Uttam Kumaran: But all of this I’m doing sort of on the fly. My instinct here is to to say cool. I need to go to Robert and say, we’re taking too much on right. We should probably be closer to 20 HA week.

95 00:11:15.894 ⇒ 00:11:21.940 Uttam Kumaran: For this to be to for this to hit our margin goals. And that’s like, that’s sort of what I am.

96 00:11:21.970 ⇒ 00:11:47.280 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. And Robert, said he, he himself probably put a hundred hours. So like, we’re clicked on this client. Basically. So this is like, kind of like, how I I am looking at it. You can then but see, I want everybody to sort of be able to come in here and click and understand who’s being leveraged, where and what times are being spent. We’re not tracking anything on project task tag for me. The number one thing is that everybody’s hours are in and they’re tracked to their right client. Second piece.

97 00:11:47.686 ⇒ 00:12:00.600 Uttam Kumaran: We have folks on the team that are salary and folks on the team that are hourly regardless. I think the decision we came is that everybody’s if they’re working on client work needs to track even for me. I’m I’m starting to track

98 00:12:02.080 ⇒ 00:12:06.089 Uttam Kumaran: This is actually what the accounting team uses to make those payments.

99 00:12:06.548 ⇒ 00:12:24.669 Uttam Kumaran: Is having hours tracked here. But we need to figure out. And I think I we need to figure out we could talk about later in the meeting about how to enforce that this process happens. There’s gonna be no way for us to report on. If we’re making money, because, of course, to be to be honest, the money doesn’t come in for this

100 00:12:24.770 ⇒ 00:12:36.720 Uttam Kumaran: until probably sometime later next month. Everything’s net 30 payments, meaning it takes 30 days from the time we Bill. They have 30 days to pay, but we send out expenses anywhere from once a month to twice a month.

101 00:12:37.224 ⇒ 00:12:59.749 Uttam Kumaran: So it’s really important for us to have the this sort of healthy margin the Ops team is in charge of when new clients come in to go, create new projects, add new team members, but this will be. They need guidance from this crew on who is assigned where? I’m sure we’re not utilizing a lot of clockify features, Nico. So this is probably where I’ll let you and Marianne think about.

102 00:12:59.940 ⇒ 00:13:11.719 Uttam Kumaran: Do we want to upgrade? Is there anything else like we can do here to make clockify more of the home for people to make sure they’re getting their hours check, whether it’s alerting things like that. But

103 00:13:12.140 ⇒ 00:13:16.030 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll pause there. Any questions on Clockify.

104 00:13:16.940 ⇒ 00:13:18.829 Uttam Kumaran: We’re this is free. By the way, we’re not paying

105 00:13:18.830 ⇒ 00:13:28.519 Nicolas Sucari: Just, yeah, this is like as a free tool. I think this is great as we have it right now, like everyone can go, we can create. I think it’s limited number of clients and projects.

106 00:13:28.792 ⇒ 00:13:49.519 Nicolas Sucari: But yeah, the only comment here is, if you wanna check like by team member. What are they like? Adding, the hours from you can go to team and just like Filter down by name there. And if you go on, if you scroll up a little bit with them, you’re gonna see that you have like different time reports. Yeah, if you go to detail, you have here, like all the descriptions and the

107 00:13:49.520 ⇒ 00:13:51.079 Nicolas Sucari: hours spent on

108 00:13:51.080 ⇒ 00:13:53.670 Uttam Kumaran: So people are. Some people are doing good job with descriptions. That’s great.

109 00:13:53.670 ⇒ 00:13:57.130 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah, yeah, that’s that’s that’s why we’re. I think, yeah, this is good.

110 00:13:57.130 ⇒ 00:13:58.600 Uttam Kumaran: Are not doing a good job. Yeah.

111 00:14:00.140 ⇒ 00:14:02.190 Uttam Kumaran: okay. So so I think this is

112 00:14:02.320 ⇒ 00:14:13.569 Uttam Kumaran: fine. Everybody here is pretty smart. This this makes a lot of sense. Let’s talk about operating. This is a new tool clock. If I have this feature, we got pitched by these guys.

113 00:14:14.140 ⇒ 00:14:18.830 Uttam Kumaran: I like the guys. I was gonna build this in a spreadsheet probably best not to do that

114 00:14:19.205 ⇒ 00:14:31.189 Uttam Kumaran: but like we’re gonna go with this for now I don’t. I don’t think we have enough. I don’t think I have another few weeks to sort of come to this decision. They’re giving us a pretty good discount. So let’s consider this our tool for

115 00:14:31.660 ⇒ 00:14:36.930 Uttam Kumaran: team allocation. And so one of the things that I’ll I’m gonna do here is just

116 00:14:37.690 ⇒ 00:14:42.070 Uttam Kumaran: is just try to show right now all of our all of our clients. So

117 00:14:42.320 ⇒ 00:14:45.090 Uttam Kumaran: Nico, walk me through like I can just go here and

118 00:14:45.581 ⇒ 00:14:48.039 Uttam Kumaran: delete this filter and just show everything.

119 00:14:48.700 ⇒ 00:14:52.010 Uttam Kumaran: We should see all of our all of our clients right now.

120 00:14:52.540 ⇒ 00:15:07.689 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah, before doing this, maybe explain what is the different like kind of tabs that we have here in operating on the top right? You see that we have like horizon timeline reports and hours. Timeline is where we’re gonna see the allocation with the people in it, and each project

121 00:15:07.710 ⇒ 00:15:31.400 Nicolas Sucari: horizon is kind of to do it before a project starts. So let’s say, Robert, that you’re working on a new client with a new project, and we can upload it. Here. We can add the roles that we’re gonna need. And then we can fill it in with the team that actually is gonna work on that project ahead of the project starting right? So that’s kind of the the what we need in here. That’s why, when you open the project, you can see the details, and you can see the team set up.

122 00:15:31.701 ⇒ 00:15:38.929 Nicolas Sucari: So that’s what this tab does. But if you want to go and see the allocation for each project, we should go to timeline

123 00:15:41.140 ⇒ 00:15:46.669 Uttam Kumaran: Exactly so for everybody here. This is how we go from the sale

124 00:15:46.690 ⇒ 00:16:11.849 Uttam Kumaran: to this to okay. It’s coming through the door. We need to determine who’s on the who’s the owner which engineers are on the project and like potentially what skills are needed. Again, I don’t think we need to use that feature, we can sort of continue how we’re doing it. Now and then we move to timeline. So right now again, we’re coming in with a lot of stuff in flight at towards the end of the conversation. We’ll we can hear from Robert on potential things coming in. But what you’ll see here is all of our

125 00:16:12.270 ⇒ 00:16:17.249 Uttam Kumaran: team. Does everyone here have access to this? And is everyone in this tool

126 00:16:17.830 ⇒ 00:16:30.019 Nicolas Sucari: No, I don’t think so. We need to have. Yeah, we need to ask Laurie for access to. I think only Akash and amber are gonna need access. And maybe, Robert, if you wanna add something. But yeah, that’s it.

127 00:16:30.340 ⇒ 00:16:35.230 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I wanna make sure that everybody here has can see everything in this

128 00:16:35.530 ⇒ 00:16:39.722 Mariane Cequina: Like, I actually do have an access to that as well. Yeah,

129 00:16:41.790 ⇒ 00:16:46.629 Uttam Kumaran: So let’s make sure everybody here, and I’ll also get the contract sign, and whatever with them.

130 00:16:48.070 ⇒ 00:16:49.300 Uttam Kumaran: I the

131 00:16:49.520 ⇒ 00:16:59.509 Uttam Kumaran: I think after this team gets comfortable, we can start to allow individuals to start to go in and see their own allocation right, and there is a permissions to be able to allow them to do that

132 00:16:59.790 ⇒ 00:17:05.440 Uttam Kumaran: like I I feel I feel pretty good about letting people have transparency into that

133 00:17:06.008 ⇒ 00:17:09.901 Uttam Kumaran: so one of the one of the pieces here is, you can see timeline

134 00:17:10.300 ⇒ 00:17:17.010 Uttam Kumaran: As Nico mentioned, this is really showing everything in flight. So again, to pick on Eden, we have.

135 00:17:17.369 ⇒ 00:17:37.740 Uttam Kumaran: This is our current setup. And so to give you a sense of like, what I did here is, I basically looked at everybody on the team. And I said, Okay, what is their availability? And 1 1 thing that you can actually do is you can go to. Let’s say, James, for example, if we go to his profile. You can see that he has 10 h available per week

136 00:17:38.180 ⇒ 00:17:41.330 Uttam Kumaran: starting on 3 14, not ending anywhere.

137 00:17:42.870 ⇒ 00:17:52.629 Uttam Kumaran: And right now he’s on Eden health. There’s a bunch of other information. But basically, what I said is, he’s a hundred allocated. 100 of his 10 h is allocated to Eden

138 00:17:52.840 ⇒ 00:18:13.709 Uttam Kumaran: the way we did this is, you can go here. You can hit, add, you can choose a role. You can then choose the person. You can then put either the percentage or you can put how many hours per week. So if I was to put a hundred, it would be 10 if I were to put 10 here, it’d be 100. I can then choose a start date, choose the end date. And then here you can basically choose a status

139 00:18:14.210 ⇒ 00:18:28.019 Uttam Kumaran: and then be like cool. We don’t. We don’t have. We’re not on site, right? So there’s nothing to do. There. We’ve done this now on every single client. So what you’ll see here and then. So I think for this cop, for for this piece of the call. I just want to show you how the tool works.

140 00:18:28.260 ⇒ 00:18:33.940 Uttam Kumaran: There are these numbers. We can talk about them in a sec. But does everyone kind of sort of get

141 00:18:34.220 ⇒ 00:18:36.069 Uttam Kumaran: what the purpose here is

142 00:18:37.110 ⇒ 00:18:42.679 Uttam Kumaran: to give you to give you one more piece. We’re expecting people to be 80% allocated.

143 00:18:44.210 ⇒ 00:18:48.079 Uttam Kumaran: Meaning 80% of their time is going to billable work.

144 00:18:48.210 ⇒ 00:19:01.620 Uttam Kumaran: 20% of the time of the 8 h per day is either internal meetings or no meetings. Right? That’s a industry benchmark. That’s what we’re gonna aim for. I don’t think I I just to start want to set that as like a goal.

145 00:19:01.740 ⇒ 00:19:11.369 Uttam Kumaran: So every single person who is an engineer on the team. We want to be able to be 80% allocated. We may have opportunities for people that are 10 or 20 h.

146 00:19:11.490 ⇒ 00:19:22.860 Uttam Kumaran: I think, as a company goal. We want all of our engineers to be 80% allocated. There may be times. We have people on the bench. There’s other metrics. We can do there as people are in between. But this is pretty standard in.

147 00:19:23.020 ⇒ 00:19:25.130 Uttam Kumaran: in sort of it, consulting

148 00:19:27.440 ⇒ 00:19:48.630 Nicolas Sucari: Maybe you can. We can. Yeah, any questions. Please do it right now. But if not, you can share that, we can see project allocation here with the detail of each person. Or if you go to the top right, you can change it to people. Yeah. And we can go like by people. If you click on one of yeah, maybe click on someone so that you can see the detail

149 00:19:49.100 ⇒ 00:19:52.090 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, let’s just pick like Casey for now

150 00:19:52.360 ⇒ 00:19:53.290 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah.

151 00:19:53.290 ⇒ 00:19:54.609 Uttam Kumaran: 40 h.

152 00:19:54.950 ⇒ 00:20:10.330 Uttam Kumaran: But right now what you’re seeing is our goal allocation? Right? So these aren’t actuals. Oh, one piece, I think. Good point, Nico. This is sort of like what people should be. So I went ahead and said Casey should be spending 20% of 25% of his time on. ABC,

153 00:20:10.610 ⇒ 00:20:20.959 Uttam Kumaran: my question is, where is the rest of the time going? Right? And so this is where, as a team, we’re gonna have a discussion on. Okay, where do we want to allocate the rest of of his time?

154 00:20:21.334 ⇒ 00:20:26.470 Uttam Kumaran: One. Another thing you can start to do is, is it in reports, Nico, where you can see sort of the

155 00:20:27.560 ⇒ 00:20:29.840 Nicolas Sucari: Go to people in reports, maybe

156 00:20:31.120 ⇒ 00:20:34.379 Nicolas Sucari: click on filters. Yeah, search results.

157 00:20:35.930 ⇒ 00:20:37.070 Uttam Kumaran: Very good have.

158 00:20:37.420 ⇒ 00:20:40.049 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, sorry. Hold on, go to this once.

159 00:20:42.590 ⇒ 00:20:43.770 Uttam Kumaran: So at this.

160 00:20:43.770 ⇒ 00:20:46.190 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, this is this month. So

161 00:20:46.430 ⇒ 00:20:49.960 Uttam Kumaran: one thing that we can see here is we can save for pious

162 00:20:51.450 ⇒ 00:20:56.079 Uttam Kumaran: Right now, we can see. Basically, this is the left item is

163 00:20:57.350 ⇒ 00:21:00.579 Nicolas Sucari: Percentage of allocation, like a planned allocation

164 00:21:01.310 ⇒ 00:21:04.690 Uttam Kumaran: Plan allocation, and then the right item is

165 00:21:05.320 ⇒ 00:21:09.120 Nicolas Sucari: Clock if I like, yeah, spend. That’s oh, okay, fine

166 00:21:09.490 ⇒ 00:21:09.950 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Okay.

167 00:21:09.950 ⇒ 00:21:10.470 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah.

168 00:21:11.180 ⇒ 00:21:19.499 Nicolas Sucari: that are the actual hours spent on each project. And it is shown as a percentage. But we can show it actually as hours, too. If you want, you need to change

169 00:21:19.500 ⇒ 00:21:26.890 Uttam Kumaran: Again, you should see around 86%. We’re at the end of the month right now. Right? So I think that’s probably accurate. If we go. If we go to like previous month.

170 00:21:27.040 ⇒ 00:21:31.144 Uttam Kumaran: we should start to see, for example, like if we were to pick

171 00:21:31.740 ⇒ 00:21:40.070 Uttam Kumaran: like Kyle, for example, he spent. 50% of his time is gonna supposed to go here, and 25% full parts. 100 of his time is going

172 00:21:40.420 ⇒ 00:21:41.310 Uttam Kumaran: here.

173 00:21:42.292 ⇒ 00:21:46.959 Uttam Kumaran: Or or this goes, this is going from 0 to 50%. This is going to from 0 to 50%.

174 00:21:47.100 ⇒ 00:21:52.170 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So this is like, this is what our expected is, and this is what the actuals are.

175 00:21:52.540 ⇒ 00:21:55.040 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t think. Can we see the actual hours here?

176 00:21:56.170 ⇒ 00:22:10.469 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, hours. Plan. Yeah. Hours. Plan versus actuals. Great. This is a really good example. So let’s pick Sahana. So, Sahana, here right now we have art helper. So this is in February, right? So February, our helper for Eden. Health.

177 00:22:10.580 ⇒ 00:22:13.860 Uttam Kumaran: I said. 10 HA week. She spent 66 HA week.

178 00:22:14.230 ⇒ 00:22:20.099 Uttam Kumaran: she said. 66 h the month internal. She spent 17 h internal.

179 00:22:20.470 ⇒ 00:22:23.839 Uttam Kumaran: Okay for me. 17 h internal. I’m like.

180 00:22:24.350 ⇒ 00:22:47.170 Uttam Kumaran: like, I start crying. I’m like what the fuck is. What are we doing? Spending internal time was internal time. I don’t like I, you know. So so then I’m like, Okay, cool. What is it? Meetings? Stand up. What is it? So then then this is the conversation we need to have right. Until I saw this, I I was like, I didn’t even get to think about. Okay, where are people’s times going right? So this is the sort of thing we want to start looking at is like

181 00:22:47.600 ⇒ 00:22:57.589 Uttam Kumaran: for Jana, for example, I we I determined we only have 10 h of her time going to AI automation. But I know last month she spent around 90 h on ABC.

182 00:22:57.790 ⇒ 00:23:00.129 Uttam Kumaran: So this is now a question for Miguel and Amber.

183 00:23:00.910 ⇒ 00:23:02.299 Uttam Kumaran: This is a lot of time.

184 00:23:02.720 ⇒ 00:23:08.119 Uttam Kumaran: right? And so then my question is like, Okay, where’s this time? Did we actually see output from here

185 00:23:08.610 ⇒ 00:23:16.810 Uttam Kumaran: for me. Now, if I if we if we were to add up Janice time Miguel’s time, my time, Amber’s time, and Casey’s time on ABC, we’re cooked again

186 00:23:17.060 ⇒ 00:23:24.222 Uttam Kumaran: right? And so you can start to see how it starts to all ladder up a little bit.

187 00:23:24.960 ⇒ 00:23:32.369 Uttam Kumaran: there’s a lot of help helpful views in here. I have not spent nearly enough time in here, but like this should basically have everything we need around this

188 00:23:32.750 ⇒ 00:23:42.509 Uttam Kumaran: sort of like planning versus actual problem. The last piece we’re we’re pulling in clockified data into here manually. We will probably end up doing this on Api sometime soon.

189 00:23:42.640 ⇒ 00:23:50.120 Uttam Kumaran: Also, we have a through line with the operating team, and they can make changes if we need to. So I’m pretty confident about this tool.

190 00:23:52.000 ⇒ 00:23:58.410 Uttam Kumaran: Any other questions on the tool

191 00:24:03.290 ⇒ 00:24:04.130 Uttam Kumaran: cool.

192 00:24:04.280 ⇒ 00:24:11.560 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, then let me stop sharing this, maybe back to the back to the agenda.

193 00:24:12.158 ⇒ 00:24:19.041 Uttam Kumaran: Great, I think one of the things I maybe just wanted to share before we

194 00:24:19.930 ⇒ 00:24:25.259 Uttam Kumaran: before we just jump into like making some decisions. Here is, I sort of saw wanted to share like,

195 00:24:25.680 ⇒ 00:24:31.250 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve probably a really good slide on like what our goals are. And let me just pull up

196 00:24:32.210 ⇒ 00:24:35.309 Uttam Kumaran: Robert. I’m gonna share that. That’s that that deck from

197 00:24:35.510 ⇒ 00:24:39.313 Uttam Kumaran: that M and a presentation that we did, that we went to

198 00:24:40.620 ⇒ 00:24:48.909 Uttam Kumaran: which is basically like understanding, like, okay, what is what is benchmark industry standard for great companies in our in our ecosystem.

199 00:24:49.546 ⇒ 00:24:51.980 Uttam Kumaran: Let me pull this up.

200 00:25:00.800 ⇒ 00:25:02.040 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool.

201 00:25:04.460 ⇒ 00:25:06.210 Uttam Kumaran: So

202 00:25:10.740 ⇒ 00:25:25.449 Uttam Kumaran: cool. So this is a deck we went through with. We’re again. As I mentioned, we’re part of Vixel. Vixel is like a tech service accelerator. They brought us into several different conversations around how to position and organize the business, one of which is looking at

203 00:25:26.055 ⇒ 00:25:47.310 Uttam Kumaran: m and A in our space. And we took this as a good way to understand what the best companies, which, of course, are the people who are getting bought and sold? For the highest amounts? What are their kpis? Right? And so what is our North star for the business? One of the key things that we noticed is in this slide was actually very, very crucial for us. And

204 00:25:47.530 ⇒ 00:25:54.779 Uttam Kumaran: you know, I actually went to Costco this week, and I tried to buy a printer. But I they didn’t have a laser printer. So I think I’m gonna buy it on Amazon. But I’m gonna print this and put this like.

205 00:25:54.970 ⇒ 00:26:04.169 Uttam Kumaran: I’m gonna tape this like in front of my thing or so I wake up every day and look at this, because this is our north star, right? This slide.

206 00:26:04.390 ⇒ 00:26:06.829 Uttam Kumaran: I think, like it’s like one of the top 10

207 00:26:07.390 ⇒ 00:26:10.629 Uttam Kumaran: slides like I’ve seen. That’s sort of changed.

208 00:26:11.080 ⇒ 00:26:29.029 Uttam Kumaran: Given me really the light of where we’re going. What what you see on the left is. You see, your revenue growth, net revenue size. This, you just say, never. You say, revenue customer concentration blended hourly bill rate service growth, margin, ebitda margin, utilization and annual employee attrition.

209 00:26:30.226 ⇒ 00:26:41.619 Uttam Kumaran: This is how people view how financially external people will view our business. And this is how financially we will also view our business. We’ll we’ll have multiple other factors that are outside of this. But

210 00:26:42.030 ⇒ 00:26:47.559 Uttam Kumaran: this is the. This is the nice thing about business is that some things are an art, and some things.

211 00:26:47.880 ⇒ 00:26:54.622 Uttam Kumaran: This is math. And so for us, what one of the key things that we can affect as this crew?

212 00:26:55.480 ⇒ 00:27:07.870 Uttam Kumaran: this is gonna work. Yeah. So we want to look at so net revenue size, we’re continuing to grow the real core things. Short term for this crew to focus on is blended hourly rate and services gross margin.

213 00:27:09.230 ⇒ 00:27:12.469 Uttam Kumaran: The other 2 things are monthly utilization.

214 00:27:12.833 ⇒ 00:27:40.499 Uttam Kumaran: We’re not. Gonna we’re not in a high enough to to start thinking about annual customer concentration net revenue size speaks for itself. Revenue growth speaks for itself. This is more sales ebitda margin. This is more on on, like our operational costs. Again, I wouldn’t focus much on this annual employee attrition again. This is for, like more of our our people, side of the business for this allocation, execution squad. These are the 3 numbers to wake up thinking about.

215 00:27:40.640 ⇒ 00:27:47.950 Uttam Kumaran: Are we able to get a blended hourly bill rate of 175 to 2 25. Let’s just say 200.

216 00:27:48.510 ⇒ 00:27:53.679 Uttam Kumaran: Are we able to get a services? Gross margin of 35 to 45%

217 00:27:54.330 ⇒ 00:27:57.610 Uttam Kumaran: said differently for every dollar that comes in

218 00:27:57.880 ⇒ 00:28:05.489 Uttam Kumaran: someone’s hands, brain forge a dollar minus operations, equipment hacks.

219 00:28:05.760 ⇒ 00:28:11.870 Uttam Kumaran: amortization, blah, blah, just factoring in the cost of the people required to execute it.

220 00:28:12.210 ⇒ 00:28:14.450 Uttam Kumaran: We make 60 cents, right?

221 00:28:14.740 ⇒ 00:28:20.629 Uttam Kumaran: So 40 cents goes to actually doing the work.

222 00:28:21.170 ⇒ 00:28:26.510 Uttam Kumaran: That’s all that’s that’s the number one thing to think about. We can think about ebitda margin every other thing after this.

223 00:28:26.750 ⇒ 00:28:31.659 Uttam Kumaran: But the advice I got when I started the business was aim for 50% right

224 00:28:31.880 ⇒ 00:29:00.459 Uttam Kumaran: that you initially, when I started this, I was like, there’s no, there’s no way. There’s no way we can do that right. It seems it seems insane. But what you actually find is for many of our projects. We are achieving 50 but what happens like we started, or we take on the project with the goal of 50. But what happens? Scope, creep comes in, more, more outcomes come in us, needing to work faster. The quality of the work goes lower, so that we have more like patch work right? And so

225 00:29:00.840 ⇒ 00:29:06.119 Uttam Kumaran: this is, those are the real things in our day to day. Life that come in and eat this amount

226 00:29:06.330 ⇒ 00:29:09.699 Uttam Kumaran: sales is going to be on the hook for getting us

227 00:29:09.880 ⇒ 00:29:15.779 Uttam Kumaran: for getting us high. Paying deals. Execution is going to be on the hook for doing it

228 00:29:15.890 ⇒ 00:29:19.400 Uttam Kumaran: as efficiently as possible, executing right?

229 00:29:19.620 ⇒ 00:29:31.500 Uttam Kumaran: This is also why we’re trying to move towards fixed price projects, meaning monthly fee that puts the incentive on us to deliver it for cheaper right? If we’re charging hourly.

230 00:29:31.580 ⇒ 00:30:01.319 Uttam Kumaran: Really, the spread we’re making us is basically just on like what we’re paying people versus what money is coming in the door, but if I can charge, if we can charge 1020 k. And then we can start to say cool. Well, this month. We did it 15 next month we can do for 10. The following do for 5, we can start to really achieve more than 50% of gross margin. And so that’s the one thing that I think sales and Robert is working on. How do we sell these more fixed price bids? But for us. The number. One thing is to start to understand how much it costs for us to execute on these.

231 00:30:01.480 ⇒ 00:30:17.089 Uttam Kumaran: One more example here, when I think about Eden. I look at the 20 K. We just did the math right. So the math turns out that at for for the 160 h that we did minus Robert’s time. We ended up at 1 25 right billable rate.

232 00:30:17.290 ⇒ 00:30:31.790 Uttam Kumaran: which means we are well below our goal of 25%. We are in red flag. And so this is where I want us to think about. Okay, cool. What are the levers? Right? And so for me, the levers are we charge more

233 00:30:32.330 ⇒ 00:30:33.979 Uttam Kumaran: or we take on less.

234 00:30:34.230 ⇒ 00:30:55.769 Uttam Kumaran: There is no other lever right? The other lever is get cheaper. People. I would say. We are doing fine on finding people at great rates. In fact, that’s, I think, something that where it’s a core skill of ours is to find talent in the Us. And globally at really great rates, and then start to build people up. But what those are the 2 levers that I think about in the business.

235 00:30:55.920 ⇒ 00:30:59.379 Uttam Kumaran: So for me. I go talk to Robert, I then say.

236 00:30:59.670 ⇒ 00:31:04.959 Uttam Kumaran: find a way to get us some more cash. I then go talk to Akash and say, Find a way to take on less.

237 00:31:05.270 ⇒ 00:31:12.110 Uttam Kumaran: That’s that’s it, right? And so this is from the execution side. And this is again, we need to figure out whether it’s

238 00:31:12.810 ⇒ 00:31:24.800 Uttam Kumaran: it’s like engineering leads that conversation. This is a group thing or something. But that’s how those conversations kick off. Very similarly, we have. We have situations like pool parts where.

239 00:31:24.950 ⇒ 00:31:35.560 Uttam Kumaran: like, I would say, we’re actually able to probably hit this average billable and get a good margin. But we’re not. We’re not hitting the revenue size, meaning we’re not building enough.

240 00:31:35.750 ⇒ 00:31:42.189 Uttam Kumaran: That’s because we’re having trouble getting them to agree to work getting them on the phone. Those are things. So that’s a different set of problems. So

241 00:31:42.550 ⇒ 00:31:51.119 Uttam Kumaran: one thing I call Robert this month and said, I said, where I think we’re sitting on probably another 20 grand, just on existing clients, meaning some clients up 5 grand

242 00:31:51.240 ⇒ 00:32:06.247 Uttam Kumaran: moving, some clients up so that we’re billing at least 5 to 10 grand a month. I think we’re sitting on that just with our current client base this free money. It’s just it’s just waiting for us to go collect it. But we needed these angles to sort of start to see that

243 00:32:06.650 ⇒ 00:32:11.579 Uttam Kumaran: The last piece, I’ll say is that we’re gonna try to take on work.

244 00:32:11.770 ⇒ 00:32:14.290 Uttam Kumaran: We’re we’re I’m pushing.

245 00:32:14.450 ⇒ 00:32:39.609 Uttam Kumaran: you know, and there’s always going to be this healthy back and forth between sales and execution. I’m pushing us to only take work where we’re really confident we can hit this right, which means a lot of implementation projects. People are not going to want to pay this high, and we’re not going to be able to execute. There are a lot of them would be really high in scope, really low revenue. And so one of the things that we’re gonna push for is, everything comes and starts a strategy.

246 00:32:39.720 ⇒ 00:33:07.430 Uttam Kumaran: Strategy for us is a very high margin product. Because what is strategy? It’s sitting on the phone with me. And I just talk about how to do this sort of stuff. Very high margin product. There’s no need for. Pm, there’s no need for execution. There’s no need for software, right? It’s so we’re gonna try to start every project there. And, in fact, I think longer term a lot of our business should come in, because for strategy we may be able to hit

247 00:33:07.670 ⇒ 00:33:09.930 Uttam Kumaran: 60, 70% margin

248 00:33:10.330 ⇒ 00:33:27.979 Uttam Kumaran: revenue right? And so again, this whole thing is as a company as a whole. So we may find projects that start at 30% gross margin. As they mature, they get closer to 50. We may see things start as purely strategy with 70% margin as they mature. And we take on implementation, they sort of get lower.

249 00:33:28.420 ⇒ 00:33:33.299 Uttam Kumaran: These are the sort of factors to think about here, but I’ll send this deck to everybody.

250 00:33:34.410 ⇒ 00:33:35.990 Uttam Kumaran: Highly recommend

251 00:33:36.450 ⇒ 00:33:41.020 Uttam Kumaran: sort of branding these numbers into your head, because this is what I wake up and and sort of think about.

252 00:33:42.550 ⇒ 00:33:47.379 Uttam Kumaran: any questions here, I know for many people. You may not have seen a slide like this, but happy to answer anything

253 00:33:53.250 ⇒ 00:33:57.209 Uttam Kumaran: cool. Okay, I would say, these are all fair. These are all high. By the way.

254 00:33:57.500 ⇒ 00:34:04.760 Uttam Kumaran: many people are in a business will shoot lower, and they will achieve lower because of that. So we’re gonna shoot to become

255 00:34:04.880 ⇒ 00:34:13.480 Uttam Kumaran: what are what the best of the best people are doing like? I’m not. I’m aiming for this category. Frankly, I’ll be happy if we hit this category.

256 00:34:13.620 ⇒ 00:34:24.319 Uttam Kumaran: But this is where we’re gonna push right and and having you all here and having your own levers within your own teams, or wherever you can affect the business to achieve. This is what we’re gonna do.

257 00:34:25.550 ⇒ 00:34:29.150 Uttam Kumaran: Let me just shift back to the Doc, and then

258 00:34:29.520 ⇒ 00:34:35.409 Uttam Kumaran: I think we can just talk a little bit through some of our existing clients and

259 00:34:35.670 ⇒ 00:34:47.719 Uttam Kumaran: discuss like allocations and things like that. Let me pull up in here cool so

260 00:34:48.650 ⇒ 00:34:50.540 Uttam Kumaran: great. We went through these.

261 00:34:53.790 ⇒ 00:34:58.670 Uttam Kumaran: so we just walk through each client. Maybe if the folks who are leading each want to sort of

262 00:34:59.120 ⇒ 00:35:01.240 Uttam Kumaran: take them on. And

263 00:35:02.060 ⇒ 00:35:21.790 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know. I know we only have 30 min left. We can probably just plan on discussing, and then we can go make the changes in in operating. After this, I think one last piece from my side is, I want us to, and come to a decision by the end of day on who in the company is working on what and for how long, so we can get that to the engineers

264 00:35:22.080 ⇒ 00:35:49.270 Uttam Kumaran: as soon as possible. I want people to come in Monday, knowing how much time need to spend for a client knowing, and then the next piece for me as the engineering leader. So then go and and explain to people like, because a lot of people will say, Well, I can’t do this in this many, much time. That’s for me to then work with them. On saying, How do you become more effective, more efficient? What sort of boundaries do you have? But maybe let’s just walk. Start going right through this list unless anyone has any other thoughts

265 00:35:52.150 ⇒ 00:35:57.359 Nicolas Sucari: Oh, what time do you want to go through that with operating, like showing, operating, or just discuss it here

266 00:35:57.360 ⇒ 00:36:04.630 Uttam Kumaran: I think we should just go through this right now. Probably next week we’ll we’ll run through operating. It’s just gonna be a while to go through.

267 00:36:05.890 ⇒ 00:36:13.040 Uttam Kumaran: so I guess I just want to talk about each client. I can provide the perspective on who’s on there now, and how their time needs to be split. We’ll just take notes.

268 00:36:15.880 ⇒ 00:36:19.850 Uttam Kumaran: So maybe amber. If you wanna kick off on

269 00:36:21.090 ⇒ 00:36:26.029 Uttam Kumaran: stack Blitz, ABC, I guess we can just start with the with the AI or Stack Blitz clients

270 00:36:26.820 ⇒ 00:36:27.680 Amber Lin: Sure.

271 00:36:28.730 ⇒ 00:36:50.789 Amber Lin: so me and Miguel was looking closely at ABC, and specifically how how many hours we’re doing and what rate we’re doing it at so essentially. For now for the month of March, we’re probably at around 30 for 30 to $40 per hour, which is bad. We are losing money. So

272 00:36:51.400 ⇒ 00:36:59.859 Amber Lin: for that, our goal to achieve, to aim for the goal of even just a hundred dollars per hour.

273 00:37:00.060 ⇒ 00:37:04.820 Amber Lin: we need to do a hundred

274 00:37:04.960 ⇒ 00:37:10.629 Amber Lin: wait a hundred hours per month, which means 25 per week.

275 00:37:10.940 ⇒ 00:37:26.259 Amber Lin: So we’re looking at how we want to allocate that within the team. So engineering is just gonna be Casey and Miguel is going to provide guidance. So we’re aiming for Casey to spend around

276 00:37:26.820 ⇒ 00:37:29.560 Amber Lin: 15 h per week.

277 00:37:30.852 ⇒ 00:37:47.680 Amber Lin: And Miguel will shadow or code pay, or just coach, so that will probably take Miguel like 3 h per week, and then on my end, with not just me of the more operation, more operating side for the team of me creating tickets.

278 00:37:48.615 ⇒ 00:37:53.770 Amber Lin: meeting with the clients and internal meetings that’s gonna take

279 00:37:54.400 ⇒ 00:38:05.729 Amber Lin: at least 5 h. That’s that’s gonna be our goal. We’re gonna cut it down as much as we can. But right now our time is a little bit inflated by

280 00:38:09.220 ⇒ 00:38:18.119 Amber Lin: essentially engineering, and also a lot of meetings here and there. So we’re gonna see who is going to participate in what meetings and try to get it down there

281 00:38:18.480 ⇒ 00:38:19.140 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

282 00:38:19.880 ⇒ 00:38:35.730 Nicolas Sucari: Utah. If you change that hours, you’re gonna you’re changing it from the start date that it’s set up there. If you wanna kind of start a new one or modify like ongoing. You can just like hover on the line on the right, like on numbers

283 00:38:36.761 ⇒ 00:38:47.899 Nicolas Sucari: on the on the blue line. That’s like, yeah. And you can click there, and it will say, Split not not the edit in like any day that you have on the right. Yeah, there.

284 00:38:48.720 ⇒ 00:38:55.009 Nicolas Sucari: and you you should be able to see the end moving forward or split it, and then you can edit the following one

285 00:38:55.840 ⇒ 00:38:56.480 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.

286 00:38:57.460 ⇒ 00:39:04.706 Uttam Kumaran: So what is it? What is? Oh, 31, st is the start. Okay, so okay, one.

287 00:39:05.890 ⇒ 00:39:11.900 Uttam Kumaran: wait. Here, let me just do like, okay, whatever, we’ll figure it out. But okay, I see what you mean. Okay.

288 00:39:12.240 ⇒ 00:39:14.040 Uttam Kumaran: so let’s start it like this.

289 00:39:14.660 ⇒ 00:39:15.420 Nicolas Sucari: Exactly.

290 00:39:15.710 ⇒ 00:39:16.239 Uttam Kumaran: And then what do you

291 00:39:16.240 ⇒ 00:39:16.580 Nicolas Sucari: I think

292 00:39:16.580 ⇒ 00:39:17.880 Uttam Kumaran: For for Patrick.

293 00:39:20.280 ⇒ 00:39:23.330 Amber Lin: So for Patrick, we’re considering

294 00:39:25.160 ⇒ 00:39:32.999 Amber Lin: not having him do ABC stuff, because we already it takes up a lot of time. So Patrick will probably be on the internal AI team.

295 00:39:33.670 ⇒ 00:39:36.020 Amber Lin: Do you want me to go a bit more into that

296 00:39:36.420 ⇒ 00:39:41.879 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, that’s fine. I guess. My point is that it’s still 10 HA week

297 00:39:42.410 ⇒ 00:39:45.689 Uttam Kumaran: overall. Are you? Gonna keep it at that, or

298 00:39:45.690 ⇒ 00:39:47.140 Amber Lin: So probably

299 00:39:48.920 ⇒ 00:39:59.140 Amber Lin: me and Miguel needs to think about what, how many total hours is available for internal AI team, but probably 0 for Patrick on ABC.

300 00:39:59.530 ⇒ 00:40:00.150 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

301 00:40:01.390 ⇒ 00:40:03.540 Uttam Kumaran: So I’m gonna end this here

302 00:40:03.710 ⇒ 00:40:06.319 Uttam Kumaran: and then that way, there’s gonna be nothing moving forward

303 00:40:06.830 ⇒ 00:40:07.889 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool.

304 00:40:08.509 ⇒ 00:40:13.270 Uttam Kumaran: Let’s talk about okay. Great. Let’s talk about back foots

305 00:40:15.300 ⇒ 00:40:20.760 Amber Lin: Stackblitz is going to be me, you and Luke, and

306 00:40:22.220 ⇒ 00:40:27.540 Amber Lin: I think your involvement should go down, cause there’s not much

307 00:40:28.240 ⇒ 00:40:29.809 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, mine like my.

308 00:40:30.720 ⇒ 00:40:37.550 Uttam Kumaran: So I should. Well, then, so that to give everybody the sense, this is an hourly client meaning

309 00:40:37.940 ⇒ 00:40:43.905 Uttam Kumaran: I actually am okay. If they just want to use up our time because we we can sort of build that

310 00:40:44.320 ⇒ 00:40:47.839 Uttam Kumaran: to get. I think one of the things we’ll need to decide on is for hourly clients.

311 00:40:48.330 ⇒ 00:40:51.409 Uttam Kumaran: How do we set a goal of minimum? Because

312 00:40:51.640 ⇒ 00:40:59.220 Uttam Kumaran: we’re probably gonna have the same conversation about pool parts? But I agree that, like I, I estimated that roughly, I should probably spend at least

313 00:40:59.490 ⇒ 00:41:04.470 Uttam Kumaran: 5 to 10 HA week, cause I’m we. We already had 2 meetings this week

314 00:41:04.890 ⇒ 00:41:07.020 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll be answering some questions in slack.

315 00:41:07.170 ⇒ 00:41:09.210 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe I can set my time.

316 00:41:09.400 ⇒ 00:41:13.030 Uttam Kumaran: But like 5 HA week, basically and a for that.

317 00:41:14.960 ⇒ 00:41:18.349 Uttam Kumaran: I think that’s pretty fair for clients that I’m still involved in.

318 00:41:18.970 ⇒ 00:41:27.230 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t want to do like one or 2 h that we’re gonna be sort of nitpicking, but I think we round it to 5, and then just see how it goes. They may need my help on like

319 00:41:27.450 ⇒ 00:41:29.140 Uttam Kumaran: subscription related stuff. So

320 00:41:29.140 ⇒ 00:41:29.760 Amber Lin: Forward!

321 00:41:30.210 ⇒ 00:41:32.020 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, perfect.

322 00:41:32.190 ⇒ 00:41:42.630 Amber Lin: I think my time would be mostly meetings and not I should not spend that much time on tickets for them, because that’s what we discussed so

323 00:41:42.630 ⇒ 00:41:43.000 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

324 00:41:43.000 ⇒ 00:41:51.520 Amber Lin: Excluding meeting time, which probably totals like 2 h, 2, 3 HI would say I I’ll aim for spending like 3

325 00:41:51.520 ⇒ 00:42:15.669 Uttam Kumaran: Well, so I think we should. I think we should round to fives. I think we just round to fives that way again. I think if we do like? No, we’re never gonna be like, Oh, spend 30 min here 1 h. It’s just gonna be too much. I actually like, I want us to see the. I want us to see the problem. Very obviously, it’s hard to spend like 20 min, 30 min like, do stuff like that around to 5 for for us on this call, and then

326 00:42:15.670 ⇒ 00:42:16.280 Amber Lin: Cool.

327 00:42:16.420 ⇒ 00:42:22.399 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so cool. So amber. You’re gonna be working, and I’m just gonna cut it off as of Sunday.

328 00:42:24.390 ⇒ 00:42:36.040 Uttam Kumaran: Let’s say your time is also 5 HA week until next there, cool.

329 00:42:36.470 ⇒ 00:42:38.230 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. And then how do you feel about

330 00:42:39.030 ⇒ 00:42:44.220 Uttam Kumaran: Luke? I still right now we had 10 HA week for him at minimum.

331 00:42:44.990 ⇒ 00:42:48.580 Uttam Kumaran: like I would like this. I would like this to go up to 20 HA week

332 00:42:48.900 ⇒ 00:42:49.800 Amber Lin: Totally.

333 00:42:49.960 ⇒ 00:43:02.810 Amber Lin: I don’t. I don’t know how efficiently he works or what pace he works at, so that will take a bit of time to get to know, but I think 20 h is a good goal to aim for.

334 00:43:03.140 ⇒ 00:43:05.270 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so.

335 00:43:05.270 ⇒ 00:43:06.890 Amber Lin: Find more work for him.

336 00:43:07.140 ⇒ 00:43:08.920 Uttam Kumaran: No, so that’s the thing. Is that

337 00:43:09.090 ⇒ 00:43:14.929 Uttam Kumaran: what we’ll see on a? We’ll talk. We’ll we’ll go through all the teams. Then we can look at the people and make sure who’s not allocated.

338 00:43:15.170 ⇒ 00:43:16.210 Uttam Kumaran: So

339 00:43:16.560 ⇒ 00:43:25.280 Nicolas Sucari: And in that case, yeah, it’s the red line is because he is allocated it somewhere else. So when we go into people where we can see. Where else is he

340 00:43:25.520 ⇒ 00:43:26.260 Nicolas Sucari: allocated

341 00:43:26.950 ⇒ 00:43:27.960 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool.

342 00:43:28.410 ⇒ 00:43:30.519 Uttam Kumaran: And then let’s talk about pool parts

343 00:43:31.840 ⇒ 00:43:34.280 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah. Good part, maybe. Boulevard

344 00:43:34.280 ⇒ 00:43:35.250 Amber Lin: Stock

345 00:43:35.760 ⇒ 00:43:36.460 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

346 00:43:37.240 ⇒ 00:43:42.300 Amber Lin: So there should be 0 h until until

347 00:43:42.300 ⇒ 00:43:48.690 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. So so give everybody the go, the the problem here. They’re they’re in M and A, and we like, they’re just too busy

348 00:43:48.860 ⇒ 00:43:52.679 Uttam Kumaran: to like work with us reliably right now.

349 00:43:52.870 ⇒ 00:43:54.120 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s 1 problem.

350 00:43:54.550 ⇒ 00:43:57.640 Uttam Kumaran: The second problem is like.

351 00:43:58.770 ⇒ 00:44:04.819 Uttam Kumaran: I I don’t. I don’t think we need like I just don’t expect us to need this much time from everybody

352 00:44:05.010 ⇒ 00:44:07.630 Uttam Kumaran: right now, so

353 00:44:08.020 ⇒ 00:44:12.929 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know I’m kind of like. But I the thing is, I have a goal. I want to build them at least like

354 00:44:13.050 ⇒ 00:44:14.649 Uttam Kumaran: 10 to 20 HA week.

355 00:44:15.390 ⇒ 00:44:23.800 Uttam Kumaran: So I wanna make sure we at least have the allocation set. If we don’t hit it. It’s fine. But what we’re doing here is just making sure that people are available.

356 00:44:24.170 ⇒ 00:44:37.100 Uttam Kumaran: And so one of the things here is amber. You’re here, basically for 5 HA week. Kyle, I put allocated as 5 HA week that there’s redundancy for Luke, who’s on here 5 HA week.

357 00:44:38.090 ⇒ 00:44:38.820 Uttam Kumaran: Pious

358 00:44:38.820 ⇒ 00:44:39.970 Amber Lin: Hours a week.

359 00:44:39.970 ⇒ 00:44:45.280 Uttam Kumaran: Pies I put for also, like 3 HA week. I guess we can put for 5

360 00:44:46.820 ⇒ 00:44:51.079 Uttam Kumaran: And then, Nico, can I see the hours for this total client somewhere here

361 00:44:53.100 ⇒ 00:44:57.880 Nicolas Sucari: If you open details, I’m not sure that is in there.

362 00:44:58.370 ⇒ 00:45:00.190 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, that’s fine. I can

363 00:45:00.190 ⇒ 00:45:03.920 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah, I can comment that to Laurie to see if we can have, like the

364 00:45:03.920 ⇒ 00:45:05.329 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Somewhere. Here.

365 00:45:05.580 ⇒ 00:45:06.190 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah.

366 00:45:08.320 ⇒ 00:45:10.490 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so

367 00:45:10.700 ⇒ 00:45:16.040 Uttam Kumaran: my, my like sort of fast forward on this is like, I think we should start to loop Annie in here

368 00:45:16.350 ⇒ 00:45:20.389 Uttam Kumaran: and probably end up having any just like

369 00:45:20.990 ⇒ 00:45:24.540 Uttam Kumaran: shadow, and start to take on tasks for this

370 00:45:24.540 ⇒ 00:45:29.189 Amber Lin: Can she take over Beau, or just both Beau and Luke? How’s

371 00:45:29.190 ⇒ 00:45:31.989 Uttam Kumaran: Again. This is a client where we’re billing hourly so

372 00:45:31.990 ⇒ 00:45:35.309 Amber Lin: Okay. So that doesn’t matter. Okay, that’s okay.

373 00:45:35.310 ⇒ 00:45:39.939 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I’m kind of more interested in them getting the job done and us billing anytime here. Short term

374 00:45:40.070 ⇒ 00:45:40.460 Amber Lin: Okay.

375 00:45:40.460 ⇒ 00:45:46.729 Uttam Kumaran: So we’ll look at. We’ll look at that. And then we. I have a point towards the end about talking about sort of contractors. So

376 00:45:46.990 ⇒ 00:45:50.244 Uttam Kumaran: okay, then, if we’re comfortable with this, let’s move on to

377 00:45:50.930 ⇒ 00:45:53.240 Uttam Kumaran: Let’s talk about Eden while we have time.

378 00:45:56.940 ⇒ 00:46:03.730 Uttam Kumaran: We’ll talk about Eden and Gavi in one cool.

379 00:46:04.180 ⇒ 00:46:09.570 Uttam Kumaran: So yeah, I think this is probably more for Akash

380 00:46:11.280 ⇒ 00:46:20.499 Uttam Kumaran: as we talked about, I think we probably need to end up spending closer at the current price point. We need to spend closer to 20 HA week

381 00:46:20.970 ⇒ 00:46:23.789 Uttam Kumaran: right now. We’re spending roughly 40 a week.

382 00:46:24.346 ⇒ 00:46:29.520 Uttam Kumaran: I guess this is probably a conversation between me, you and Robert, like Robert, on what we want to do here.

383 00:46:29.700 ⇒ 00:46:35.820 Uttam Kumaran: but assuming no price increase, we need to really try to cut

384 00:46:36.740 ⇒ 00:46:44.100 Aakash Tandel: Yeah, we’re yeah. I think Robert and I are on the same page. And right now we’re taking on too much work for our current

385 00:46:44.536 ⇒ 00:46:53.023 Aakash Tandel: pay or the amount of money we’re getting from them. So we need to really hone in and pull in some of these work streams.

386 00:46:53.520 ⇒ 00:47:04.100 Aakash Tandel: and then have a conversation with Josh to say, Hey, if you want these other things, we gotta. We gotta increase your your monthly bill cause. Right now it’s fixed. Bid right on a monthly amount

387 00:47:04.100 ⇒ 00:47:04.680 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

388 00:47:04.690 ⇒ 00:47:09.720 Aakash Tandel: Yeah, yeah. So we’re do. We’re doing too much like

389 00:47:10.816 ⇒ 00:47:22.933 Aakash Tandel: some of our folks are going a little over to like Sahana. And I think James is also in that bucket of. We’re probably spending 2 more time than we initially intended on their work streams.

390 00:47:23.930 ⇒ 00:47:30.159 Aakash Tandel: And then I know, awaii sends these 50% on this and 50% on Javi, right?

391 00:47:30.540 ⇒ 00:47:30.939 Uttam Kumaran: That’s correct.

392 00:47:30.940 ⇒ 00:47:36.100 Nicolas Sucari: 50% is 10 h from away. Because he, yeah, like, 20 h. Yeah.

393 00:47:36.480 ⇒ 00:47:38.310 Uttam Kumaran: Exactly. Yeah.

394 00:47:38.590 ⇒ 00:48:04.879 Aakash Tandel: Yeah, I would say, his time is fairly valuable, and we’re definitely using. I would say, I don’t know what his, his utilization looks like, but I would assume it’s probably at least a hundred percent. I would say we’re probably using more than 20 HA week on average. That’s what it feels like, at least at this point. Hopefully, some of that can get offload to demo for Eden, specifically and hopefully, that gets picked up more there.

395 00:48:05.550 ⇒ 00:48:30.779 Aakash Tandel: and then he can more focus on Javi. But yeah, I think the main story here is for Eden. We’re doing too much. We need to pull the reins in. And also we need to have we need a kind of re-sync with like, Hey, who’s our main point of contact because we’re getting pinged by a lot of people over there that are having random requests, and we can’t fill those requests. If we’re billing, you know, 20 k. Per month, or something like that.

396 00:48:31.190 ⇒ 00:48:36.080 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. So I guess right now we have 10 h from a wage

397 00:48:36.400 ⇒ 00:48:38.739 Uttam Kumaran: and 10 h from Dema Laude

398 00:48:38.870 ⇒ 00:48:44.040 Uttam Kumaran: a week that already puts us at 20. We then have 10 h from James.

399 00:48:44.760 ⇒ 00:48:49.299 Uttam Kumaran: 10 h from Sahan again. This is like what we want to be hitting that already puts us at 40.

400 00:48:49.990 ⇒ 00:48:53.319 Uttam Kumaran: Then we have you and and Robert working there.

401 00:48:53.490 ⇒ 00:48:59.559 Uttam Kumaran: That puts us at infinity. So I think one of the suggestions I have is one

402 00:48:59.950 ⇒ 00:49:02.250 Uttam Kumaran: we? We should talk like

403 00:49:03.260 ⇒ 00:49:08.649 Uttam Kumaran: my pitch is that we move Annie in, and we get, and we move James and Sahana off

404 00:49:09.430 ⇒ 00:49:17.959 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think should be off. That’s for sure. I think. Yeah. So that’s that’s a i want him off by the end of this week. I’m not signing really new things

405 00:49:18.150 ⇒ 00:49:18.780 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, great.

406 00:49:18.780 ⇒ 00:49:19.370 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So.

407 00:49:19.370 ⇒ 00:49:21.860 Robert Tseng: Yeah, once he ships the one thing he’s been working on

408 00:49:21.860 ⇒ 00:49:22.699 Nicolas Sucari: You need to

409 00:49:22.700 ⇒ 00:49:23.800 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I would.

410 00:49:24.830 ⇒ 00:49:26.640 Nicolas Sucari: Sorry, because I’m scrolling. Yeah.

411 00:49:27.680 ⇒ 00:49:28.370 Uttam Kumaran: Go ahead!

412 00:49:28.830 ⇒ 00:49:33.980 Robert Tseng: Yeah, if Annie is full time with us now, like, yeah, I want her to eventually replace the Hana

413 00:49:35.410 ⇒ 00:49:36.229 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so.

414 00:49:36.230 ⇒ 00:49:41.309 Robert Tseng: I think, for now we need a layer of redundancy. So 10 h of any 10 h of Sahana is fine

415 00:49:41.510 ⇒ 00:49:42.170 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

416 00:49:44.305 ⇒ 00:49:48.690 Robert Tseng: Is definitely the most valuable on this plan. He is helping everybody.

417 00:49:48.690 ⇒ 00:49:49.330 Robert Tseng: Yep, okay.

418 00:49:49.330 ⇒ 00:49:54.390 Robert Tseng: Engineers like he, I don’t know what. Yeah. Well, anyway, like he. He is caring

419 00:49:54.390 ⇒ 00:49:59.845 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, dude. He was up like he was up at like 6 Pm. I mean, I approved his Pr. I went before I went to dinner, but I

420 00:50:00.890 ⇒ 00:50:13.000 Robert Tseng: Yeah, but is not is not taking ownership of things. And so, yeah, I think either, we end up taking off and just increase oasis time here, or I don’t know but I’m not

421 00:50:13.000 ⇒ 00:50:22.060 Uttam Kumaran: I I still think like having redundancy is fine because someone needs to. They need to approve each other’s Prs. Otherwise I’m going to be put back into the fray once, when like

422 00:50:22.360 ⇒ 00:50:24.709 Uttam Kumaran: they’re not asked. So I think

423 00:50:24.940 ⇒ 00:50:28.820 Uttam Kumaran: basically, it should be. At least it should be like 15 5 then.

424 00:50:29.380 ⇒ 00:50:36.330 Uttam Kumaran: and Demo Lot is just there to mainly approve Prs. Unless you can get the budget increase. And then we can take on more modeling scope. That’s what I would suggest.

425 00:50:36.330 ⇒ 00:50:40.788 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, I I’m gonna ask for them. But budget budget increase.

426 00:50:41.470 ⇒ 00:51:01.899 Robert Tseng: I think to get it there. There are a couple of actions that I need to take. But like we’re, we’re simplifying the tool. So I think I anyway, I can. I I will push for at least 5 K increase. Yeah, I think I just spend like at least 2 HA day reviewing people’s work like it just

427 00:51:01.900 ⇒ 00:51:02.340 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

428 00:51:02.340 ⇒ 00:51:12.340 Robert Tseng: Takes me a while to do that, and then the Pm. Stuff, and then I have to interface all the stakeholders. So I end up, still being like way to spread thin on across just 2 clients

429 00:51:12.610 ⇒ 00:51:15.139 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, Nico, can you check out what’s happening

430 00:51:15.140 ⇒ 00:51:18.070 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah, you you didn’t add in the hours

431 00:51:20.220 ⇒ 00:51:23.070 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, it didn’t let me. Okay. So I’m just gonna send here

432 00:51:23.070 ⇒ 00:51:25.570 Nicolas Sucari: Because you need to add, they started first, st but

433 00:51:25.570 ⇒ 00:51:27.460 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, oh, shit. Okay. Okay, great.

434 00:51:27.640 ⇒ 00:51:35.990 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool. So that’s this, this, we’re gonna move to 15, which I’m happy about Damolade.

435 00:51:38.880 ⇒ 00:51:42.900 Uttam Kumaran: We’ll keep it. 5 with standups alone.

436 00:51:43.220 ⇒ 00:51:49.919 Uttam Kumaran: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 2 and a half, 2 and a half to prs, yeah, I mean, this is probably not gonna be accurate. But

437 00:51:50.230 ⇒ 00:51:52.789 Uttam Kumaran: let’s just let’s aim for that, anyways.

438 00:51:54.240 ⇒ 00:51:58.680 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, I see what? You? Okay. So yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, okay.

439 00:51:59.020 ⇒ 00:52:03.232 Uttam Kumaran: I’m getting there getting there, I’ll come back and clean this up. But

440 00:52:03.480 ⇒ 00:52:04.919 Nicolas Sucari: I can do it. Don’t worry.

441 00:52:09.850 ⇒ 00:52:10.840 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. James

442 00:52:10.840 ⇒ 00:52:20.360 Robert Tseng: I mean, I’m okay with, like, we’re doing 50 50 engineering analysts right now. But I mean honestly, our margin on the engineering side is higher than our analyst, anyway, and

443 00:52:20.360 ⇒ 00:52:20.880 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

444 00:52:20.880 ⇒ 00:52:29.290 Robert Tseng: A lot of it is engineering work. So I feel like if a lot of his output is what it is at 10 HA week it would cut him down to 5 like I have no idea what he will do.

445 00:52:29.647 ⇒ 00:52:32.230 Robert Tseng: You know that that’s what I said, too, but that hour a day

446 00:52:32.230 ⇒ 00:52:34.920 Uttam Kumaran: That’s what I that’s what I think, too. So

447 00:52:35.110 ⇒ 00:52:37.889 Robert Tseng: He’s in 2 meetings a day that’s already 5 HA week

448 00:52:38.250 ⇒ 00:52:44.709 Uttam Kumaran: But he is put I but he’s I think he’s pushing. He’s still pushing stuff forward. I think he’s also helping on Urban. Some stuff with me

449 00:52:45.350 ⇒ 00:52:46.070 Robert Tseng: Okay.

450 00:52:46.070 ⇒ 00:52:48.190 Uttam Kumaran: So I’m saying

451 00:52:48.190 ⇒ 00:52:49.379 Robert Tseng: You should stay at 10

452 00:52:49.800 ⇒ 00:52:53.149 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think if you’re like, Hey, I’m gonna go get the 5.

453 00:52:53.260 ⇒ 00:52:55.369 Uttam Kumaran: Then I think we have 1010.

454 00:52:56.100 ⇒ 00:53:01.017 Uttam Kumaran: We have 1010, 10, and then we’re at 30,

455 00:53:02.440 ⇒ 00:53:05.020 Uttam Kumaran: and it’s better it’s a better situation.

456 00:53:07.510 ⇒ 00:53:13.640 Uttam Kumaran: So let’s aim for that. Let’s aim for that. 1010, 10. The modeling work should get lower over time.

457 00:53:13.940 ⇒ 00:53:16.810 Uttam Kumaran: More of the time will shift towards the analyst.

458 00:53:16.970 ⇒ 00:53:20.420 Uttam Kumaran: As the modeling layer gets figured out. It took us.

459 00:53:20.620 ⇒ 00:53:33.499 Uttam Kumaran: This took about a year at pool parts to get to this point, where, like, there wasn’t as much modeling work. Most of it is on like analysis. But I agree, the bigger point I want to make is we should move, Annie.

460 00:53:34.110 ⇒ 00:53:38.600 Uttam Kumaran: I think Amy should be able to cover all of our analysts needs across the whole company. Basically at this point.

461 00:53:39.890 ⇒ 00:53:41.840 Uttam Kumaran: as fast as we can make that happen

462 00:53:45.390 ⇒ 00:53:46.180 Robert Tseng: I feel like

463 00:53:46.180 ⇒ 00:53:50.849 Robert Tseng: gonna struggle with taking on too many clients. I feel like an analyst can only really has

464 00:53:50.980 ⇒ 00:53:56.220 Robert Tseng: the capacity to understand the nuances for 2 or 3 that I guess we’ll see

465 00:53:56.220 ⇒ 00:54:01.420 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, then Eden and Javi are still our most pressing ones.

466 00:54:02.480 ⇒ 00:54:06.470 Uttam Kumaran: So let’s see, I mean, yeah, let’s see.

467 00:54:07.607 ⇒ 00:54:12.499 Uttam Kumaran: that’s the challenge. Right? Okay? So then, are we good? We’re good with how this looks. Roughly.

468 00:54:13.245 ⇒ 00:54:16.174 Uttam Kumaran: what I’m gonna basically do is I’m gonna put

469 00:54:17.110 ⇒ 00:54:26.390 Uttam Kumaran: I’m gonna put Sahana at at 20 ending at ending this Sunday.

470 00:54:27.060 ⇒ 00:54:38.499 Uttam Kumaran: I’m then gonna put her starting at 10 going until the end of the month.

471 00:54:39.310 ⇒ 00:54:44.460 Uttam Kumaran: I think this is something like, so let’s let’s do a quick check.

472 00:54:45.160 ⇒ 00:54:50.869 Uttam Kumaran: Is this coming coming from the Pm’s to sort of translate? How do we want to do? How do we want to like communicate

473 00:54:52.360 ⇒ 00:54:53.560 Aakash Tandel: Yeah, I mean.

474 00:54:53.870 ⇒ 00:55:05.880 Aakash Tandel: I think it should be communicated through Pm’s, but also through project plan like, Hey, this is what we have coming up in the next like 2, 4 weeks. And this is what the allocation looks like. So

475 00:55:06.040 ⇒ 00:55:14.469 Aakash Tandel: you know, if if folks say they can’t get that done in that timeframe, or that’s too much time we could readjust. But from a from a standpoint of like

476 00:55:14.830 ⇒ 00:55:17.639 Uttam Kumaran: We’re gonna yeah. So let’s let’s like role play this

477 00:55:18.040 ⇒ 00:55:23.719 Uttam Kumaran: and even talk more specifics like, are we sorry? Should we send a slack message. We want to do a meeting with every team like, what do we want to do

478 00:55:24.560 ⇒ 00:55:28.860 Aakash Tandel: I would like to do a sprint planning meeting almost, or like roadmap

479 00:55:28.860 ⇒ 00:55:29.760 Uttam Kumaran: Monday.

480 00:55:29.760 ⇒ 00:55:30.290 Aakash Tandel: Yeah.

481 00:55:30.710 ⇒ 00:55:32.449 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so let’s do that on Monday.

482 00:55:32.890 ⇒ 00:55:37.130 Uttam Kumaran: If the pushback is, there isn’t enough time to do this.

483 00:55:38.080 ⇒ 00:55:44.649 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll my defense is I’m gonna help. I’ll help anything on data. I can help you on estimation.

484 00:55:44.770 ⇒ 00:55:48.320 Uttam Kumaran: and I’ll I feel pretty good at like doing an honest estimation there.

485 00:55:48.870 ⇒ 00:55:52.569 Uttam Kumaran: The other thing is clearly yesterday. There’s stuff that

486 00:55:52.790 ⇒ 00:55:55.749 Uttam Kumaran: their folks are working on that is not a priority

487 00:55:55.870 ⇒ 00:55:57.679 Aakash Tandel: Right and

488 00:55:57.830 ⇒ 00:56:02.869 Uttam Kumaran: Another problem with with folks that are external contractors.

489 00:56:03.060 ⇒ 00:56:10.530 Uttam Kumaran: The and this is just historically what I’ve seen. I’m not painting a picture on everybody but they, bill what they can get they can get away with

490 00:56:10.680 ⇒ 00:56:29.310 Uttam Kumaran: right. I’ve been a contractor, too. I know how it goes right, but we are on Team Brain Forge. Our job is to have people bill for what we want them to do for us. And so this is a situation where my suspicion is that, hey? There’s 10 things to do. I’m gonna go ahead and do all 10, even if only 2 are important.

491 00:56:29.440 ⇒ 00:56:33.190 Uttam Kumaran: So I think it’s gonna be really clear. We’re gonna get pushback on this you have.

492 00:56:33.450 ⇒ 00:56:39.869 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll I’ll help play defense. I’m speaking with Sahana tomorrow, anyways, one on one. But

493 00:56:40.230 ⇒ 00:56:44.980 Uttam Kumaran: this is what we can afford to do. So I think we we set 10 h.

494 00:56:45.480 ⇒ 00:56:50.370 Uttam Kumaran: and I think there is enough dashboarding work for just for just that.

495 00:56:52.600 ⇒ 00:57:06.049 Uttam Kumaran: I would say. A lot of our problems with the dashboard have been that that time is has not gone to just like really understanding everything and spending time doing all of tableau, which is like making sure the connections and shit are proper stuff like that. So

496 00:57:06.540 ⇒ 00:57:16.870 Uttam Kumaran: I’m game with this. I would love to see this happen next month. If we can get the extra 5 K. And keep this, we’re perfect. If we need to add a little bit more time we’ll do another allocation after next month.

497 00:57:18.510 ⇒ 00:57:35.520 Aakash Tandel: Yeah, I I’d like to review with amber, and I will be reviewing kind of like the actuals after on a weekly basis. So if we’re off. That’s when we had to have a conversation with the person who’s off like, Hey, look! This task was not supposed to take, you know, 40 h

498 00:57:35.520 ⇒ 00:57:35.890 Uttam Kumaran: It’s

499 00:57:35.890 ⇒ 00:57:46.020 Aakash Tandel: You know that type of thing. We both. Basically, we booth our budget for this task. So now we’re eating cost, we’re basically for the future work. So that’s what we gotta have a conversation

500 00:57:46.020 ⇒ 00:57:51.789 Uttam Kumaran: So this is where I actually think it’s helpful to have both sides like for me. I used to have both conversation, which is like

501 00:57:52.030 ⇒ 00:58:05.540 Uttam Kumaran: someone be like. Well, it took Xyz. It took this long. And I’m sort of playing engineering. But then I’m also like fuck. We’re not gonna make money on this. So for me, it’s helpful for you guys to be the police on we’re out of budget from. And then I can play police on.

502 00:58:05.790 ⇒ 00:58:11.239 Uttam Kumaran: Was this really supposed to take this long like this is where I think it’ll save you guys from being like

503 00:58:11.440 ⇒ 00:58:20.209 Uttam Kumaran: making being like, oh, it’s just a dashboard. That’s commonly happens from Pm. To be like it’s just a dashboard like, get it out, you can say, Hey, we got we did estimates

504 00:58:20.320 ⇒ 00:58:28.420 Uttam Kumaran: it was not. It was a 5 pointer. It took as much time as a 12. What happened here? Did we mess up the estimate? Right? So you start to do that.

505 00:58:28.530 ⇒ 00:58:48.889 Uttam Kumaran: I will tell you, though really, honestly, how long things are supposed to take even with. And I push back. I’m like, yeah, this actually much more complicated than it end up. We ended up thinking, I’ll tell you, if people are are sort of juicing it or not. But this is a common problem. So stick stick to just say, Hey, it took too long than what we estimated. If they have a question on like

506 00:58:49.170 ⇒ 00:58:58.999 Uttam Kumaran: well, it wasn’t just a dashboard blah blah. Then we can rely on the estimations right? And this is where for Miguel Amber, for everyone on all tickets.

507 00:58:59.240 ⇒ 00:59:21.310 Uttam Kumaran: making sure that the estimation is agreed upon in there will really drive accountability on this, because if we mess up the estimation, then that’s a problem on our team. But if people are sort of take on a data, a dashboard ticket ticket, and then go and like, solve quantum mechanics in that same, and like with the with like, another 30 h. That’s not what we wanted. We wanted the dashboard, though, you know.

508 00:59:23.120 ⇒ 00:59:28.990 Uttam Kumaran: So cool. Okay, how do we feel about about Davi?

509 00:59:31.360 ⇒ 00:59:36.530 Nicolas Sucari: I ended everything there uttan, because we were talking about the renewal that date.

510 00:59:36.926 ⇒ 00:59:41.550 Nicolas Sucari: So yeah, we can just kind of add new ones for the next kind of

511 00:59:42.090 ⇒ 00:59:43.830 Nicolas Sucari: contract period. I don’t know

512 00:59:45.110 ⇒ 00:59:54.610 Robert Tseng: Yeah, we’ve got about 3 weeks left with them. So I don’t really know how much we’re gonna shuffle things around. Yeah, I mean, if anything, we just could get to get a pulse check on where we’re at right now with them.

513 00:59:56.053 ⇒ 01:00:00.536 Robert Tseng: I need to do some roadmap planning for the remaining 3 weeks.

514 01:00:01.740 ⇒ 01:00:05.820 Robert Tseng: yeah, we’re not. Gonna I mean, I kind of know what the directives are from. Aman.

515 01:00:06.360 ⇒ 01:00:08.480 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

516 01:00:09.250 ⇒ 01:00:09.580 Aakash Tandel: Yeah.

517 01:00:09.580 ⇒ 01:00:10.080 Uttam Kumaran: So.

518 01:00:10.080 ⇒ 01:00:13.349 Aakash Tandel: We do a similar sprint planning with the team there, too.

519 01:00:14.350 ⇒ 01:00:14.970 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

520 01:00:15.310 ⇒ 01:00:18.710 Aakash Tandel: For the probably not for the sprint, probably for the remainder of the contract

521 01:00:19.530 ⇒ 01:00:21.360 Uttam Kumaran: Is, that is, that up on the 20th

522 01:00:22.190 ⇒ 01:00:22.780 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

523 01:00:23.320 ⇒ 01:00:23.900 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

524 01:00:23.900 ⇒ 01:00:26.799 Nicolas Sucari: I can. I? Okay, yeah, that’s fine.

525 01:00:27.430 ⇒ 01:00:39.368 Aakash Tandel: And I’ve been pretty happy with kind of the work Annie’s doing, and the way she’s also like again crushing it on like just being a repository of knowledge on this one.

526 01:00:40.640 ⇒ 01:00:50.770 Aakash Tandel: I think we haven’t fully offloaded any of the work to from Kayo to Oas, so something might need to change there and then. Pious

527 01:00:51.440 ⇒ 01:00:59.490 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I don’t think he should be at this point, Billing. If he’s if he needs to do something for the client, he needs to run it by Robert and I, just to make sure that’s actually something that they’re

528 01:00:59.690 ⇒ 01:01:05.470 Uttam Kumaran: so we’ll translate that, yeah, basically be like, Hey, if they they may still ping you, but you need to just shuffle it

529 01:01:05.650 ⇒ 01:01:06.160 Aakash Tandel: Yeah.

530 01:01:06.160 ⇒ 01:01:07.229 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, okay.

531 01:01:07.230 ⇒ 01:01:10.550 Nicolas Sucari: He only has 2 h planned per week

532 01:01:11.670 ⇒ 01:01:13.369 Uttam Kumaran: Should be should be 0 like I’m gonna tell him, don’t.

533 01:01:13.840 ⇒ 01:01:16.220 Uttam Kumaran: If you get pinged, don’t. Don’t. Yeah. Just like

534 01:01:16.650 ⇒ 01:01:18.169 Nicolas Sucari: Don’t! Don’t add anything there yet

535 01:01:18.170 ⇒ 01:01:20.329 Uttam Kumaran: 15 seconds. I’ll pay for 15 seconds

536 01:01:20.770 ⇒ 01:01:24.909 Aakash Tandel: Yeah, we do 2 HA week on a per client basis. That’s pretty. That’s pretty

537 01:01:24.910 ⇒ 01:01:31.589 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, I’m gonna I’m gonna say, do not, Bill. Well, or I’ll just delete it from the Channel. I won’t be able to add him. And I’ll just say, like.

538 01:01:32.410 ⇒ 01:01:38.302 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s just like I’ll tell him to do the right thing here, just like, shuffle it over.

539 01:01:39.440 ⇒ 01:01:46.100 Uttam Kumaran: okay, great. So, Aisha, I’m also gonna put at to at 10 h here until the 20th

540 01:01:46.672 ⇒ 01:01:56.049 Uttam Kumaran: so can we spend a moment talking about how Kyle is doing. Kyle is gonna be another situation where I’ll give you the engineering angle. I think he’s probably like

541 01:01:56.490 ⇒ 01:01:59.520 Uttam Kumaran: 2 times, maybe less effective than

542 01:01:59.900 ⇒ 01:02:04.229 Uttam Kumaran: Demo Ade and Awaii. My bet there is that. And we’re I’m working with

543 01:02:04.430 ⇒ 01:02:07.740 Uttam Kumaran: Mike Weinberg on the coaching side, on like leveling him up a bit.

544 01:02:07.920 ⇒ 01:02:12.544 Uttam Kumaran: What your guys perspective, you know, not being able to see actuals.

545 01:02:13.240 ⇒ 01:02:17.770 Uttam Kumaran: like, what is your guys? Perspective on him right now?

546 01:02:19.730 ⇒ 01:02:24.190 Robert Tseng: Well, I guess I’ll just chime in real quick on my side, because then I gotta jump to meet with him on it. But

547 01:02:24.825 ⇒ 01:02:35.179 Robert Tseng: yeah, I mean, I don’t have much trust in him, which is why his roadmap is blank right now, because I haven’t assigned anything to him this week. I I just assigned everything to wish

548 01:02:35.674 ⇒ 01:02:55.019 Robert Tseng: and so he’s just like asking me if he can work on documentation. I’m just like that’s just where I’m at with him right now. So he like, and anything I’ve asked him to do he hasn’t been able to do so. I’m just like not that induced about tagging him in, but I maybe I just don’t know how to how to get him. Get him

549 01:02:55.020 ⇒ 01:03:00.579 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, that’s fair. That’s that’s the feedback. No, no, you shouldn’t be. You don’t need to be. I think that’s the feedback I need to hear

550 01:03:00.970 ⇒ 01:03:01.530 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

551 01:03:03.360 ⇒ 01:03:05.810 Uttam Kumaran: Akash, you sort of like price. Similar sentiment

552 01:03:06.320 ⇒ 01:03:14.929 Aakash Tandel: Yeah, I was. Gonna say, my, my, from my perspective, I haven’t been able to offload anything fully from oas to him and everything that we do offload to him

553 01:03:15.070 ⇒ 01:03:21.039 Aakash Tandel: comes back to a waste to kind of answer the question, and then it’s like, it will. Yeah.

554 01:03:21.040 ⇒ 01:03:21.640 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

555 01:03:21.850 ⇒ 01:03:24.690 Uttam Kumaran: So for me, I’ll have the tough conversation this week

556 01:03:24.810 ⇒ 01:03:28.350 Uttam Kumaran: if I can catch him tomorrow and basically say, like.

557 01:03:28.610 ⇒ 01:03:31.530 Uttam Kumaran: you have probably a month to get to get shit figured out.

558 01:03:32.880 ⇒ 01:03:34.460 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, I wanted to have

559 01:03:34.460 ⇒ 01:03:49.909 Robert Tseng: Helpful that they work the same time zone like they. They’re only available like I don’t know. Before 11 Am. Eastern away. Kind of comes back to life somewhere in the middle of the day. But like I’m never like working at the same time as Kyle, so I can’t actually intervene and help him

560 01:03:50.612 ⇒ 01:03:55.159 Uttam Kumaran: Whereas I wish, like I could still grab him up until, like, you know, one or 2 Pm.

561 01:03:55.160 ⇒ 01:04:07.719 Uttam Kumaran: So none of like I’ve given the feedback to Kyle that, like his stuff, comes back like it’s super long. It’s like he’s spending 6 h on something that literally one day took me like 90 seconds to just do and ship.

562 01:04:07.940 ⇒ 01:04:10.719 Uttam Kumaran: So there’s like, there’s like engineering problems there.

563 01:04:10.850 ⇒ 01:04:21.040 Uttam Kumaran: I’m gonna I wanted to see a month go by. I want a pro. My, my point in hiring all 3 of them is so that we could have capacity to take on more clients.

564 01:04:22.080 ⇒ 01:04:31.579 Uttam Kumaran: but I’m gonna have the, I’m gonna basically the feedback that I’ve given and we’re gonna continue to give is that like we need to see him be able to take on work entirely on his own and start to do it

565 01:04:31.880 ⇒ 01:04:40.280 Uttam Kumaran: like coming up to the pace of of a wish. Basically, there’s something we don’t have. The probably the data really clean on. But that’s what I’ll that’s what I’ll push for. Okay.

566 01:04:41.960 ⇒ 01:04:43.790 Robert Tseng: Okay, okay, go ahead.

567 01:04:45.286 ⇒ 01:04:48.580 Uttam Kumaran: I think maybe we’ll spend like 5 more minutes.

568 01:04:49.234 ⇒ 01:04:52.065 Uttam Kumaran: I think urban stems right now. It’s just

569 01:04:52.750 ⇒ 01:04:55.699 Uttam Kumaran: right now. Urban Sims is just me and demalade.

570 01:04:56.194 ⇒ 01:05:02.070 Uttam Kumaran: I guess one question I wanted to have is, they’re gonna turn into a real client and about

571 01:05:02.340 ⇒ 01:05:05.930 Uttam Kumaran: 6 weeks like, who wants to

572 01:05:06.100 ⇒ 01:05:13.089 Uttam Kumaran: come. Pm, or like, I think we probably there is a product owner. Pm. On their side. But he’s not.

573 01:05:13.530 ⇒ 01:05:16.019 Uttam Kumaran: I do. I need. We need. I want to bring

574 01:05:16.170 ⇒ 01:05:23.049 Uttam Kumaran: one of you all with us to sort of like, start to own that relationship. And then I want to bring. I’m gonna bring in one other ae

575 01:05:23.170 ⇒ 01:05:26.749 Uttam Kumaran: to sort of fill in for me, I may still stay on.

576 01:05:27.280 ⇒ 01:05:36.660 Uttam Kumaran: does not cause it’s really a mess as sort of like kind of architect. But I want to bring in 2 more folks here when that thing lapses, and a few weeks before then to plan

577 01:05:37.060 ⇒ 01:05:43.070 Aakash Tandel: Yeah, I think it would be good to have both Amber and I in a planning session with you, just to determine, like what the

578 01:05:43.210 ⇒ 01:05:48.169 Aakash Tandel: overall components of the project are, and then we can kind of determine how to play that

579 01:05:48.670 ⇒ 01:06:01.800 Amber Lin: Yeah, I do think I’ll have capacity coming up since my different projects, getting more organized also, pool parties not happening right now. So we wanted to get looped in earlier, so that I don’t have the ramp up process again.

580 01:06:02.060 ⇒ 01:06:02.720 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

581 01:06:04.890 ⇒ 01:06:12.570 Uttam Kumaran: cool. My other asks here was for the internal AI team. Maybe Miguel. Once let’s let’s talk a little bit about

582 01:06:13.210 ⇒ 01:06:18.970 Uttam Kumaran: this with you guys, internal, or what is this AI automation?

583 01:06:20.510 ⇒ 01:06:27.669 Uttam Kumaran: How do you guys want to divvy up time to this? I basically, I want any remaining time from Casey. Here.

584 01:06:28.520 ⇒ 01:06:30.179 Uttam Kumaran: Dana, it’s up to you.

585 01:06:30.320 ⇒ 01:06:31.869 Uttam Kumaran: Everything else is up to y’all.

586 01:06:33.190 ⇒ 01:06:34.110 Uttam Kumaran: You’re on mute

587 01:06:38.720 ⇒ 01:06:40.109 Miguel de Veyra: Hey, guys? Yeah. Sorry.

588 01:06:41.362 ⇒ 01:06:43.769 Miguel de Veyra: Casey, I would say.

589 01:06:46.220 ⇒ 01:06:49.030 Miguel de Veyra: Around 20 HA week, 25 h

590 01:06:49.610 ⇒ 01:06:50.280 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

591 01:07:00.520 ⇒ 01:07:04.129 Miguel de Veyra: Yeah. And then I think for Jana, it should be like a hundred percent.

592 01:07:04.920 ⇒ 01:07:06.449 Miguel de Veyra: Yeah, should be fine

593 01:07:07.590 ⇒ 01:07:11.829 Uttam Kumaran: So I’m gonna save this here. And then I’m just gonna redo it again. Okay, yeah, go ahead.

594 01:07:13.960 ⇒ 01:07:16.789 Miguel de Veyra: And then, yeah, should I also include my time? Then

595 01:07:17.962 ⇒ 01:07:21.500 Uttam Kumaran: Yes. So for folks like me or you.

596 01:07:21.810 ⇒ 01:07:31.899 Uttam Kumaran: what we’re basically gonna do is say, we have a bucket of time available for engineering, because I’m still doing some work here and there, and then we will be 100. That amount of time will 100 allocate.

597 01:07:32.050 ⇒ 01:07:38.060 Uttam Kumaran: So for you, whatever time. That is I’ll just. I’ll put it here, and you can tell me like what you expect that to be.

598 01:07:38.270 ⇒ 01:07:42.120 Uttam Kumaran: But I know you’re helping out in sales, you know. I’ll start helping out on recruiting. So

599 01:07:46.527 ⇒ 01:07:49.170 Miguel de Veyra: I’d say 15% of my time

600 01:07:50.170 ⇒ 01:07:50.800 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

601 01:07:50.800 ⇒ 01:07:58.300 Miguel de Veyra: Because, yeah, technically, we have 2 clients right now, internal. And ABC, so 30% should be on coaching and execution. So I’d say 50

602 01:07:58.300 ⇒ 01:08:05.990 Uttam Kumaran: So I would say 5, 5 HA week is basically enough to go to planning all the stand ups and retro.

603 01:08:06.200 ⇒ 01:08:10.729 Uttam Kumaran: But I would say 10 if you’re gonna take on some work. So let’s aim for 10,

604 01:08:13.280 ⇒ 01:08:17.749 Uttam Kumaran: and let’s start on Monday and go to next this time.

605 01:08:19.170 ⇒ 01:08:21.599 Uttam Kumaran: Okay? And then you said Patrick.

606 01:08:21.740 ⇒ 01:08:22.550 Uttam Kumaran: Right

607 01:08:23.020 ⇒ 01:08:25.180 Miguel de Veyra: Patrick is gonna spend his time here

608 01:08:27.310 ⇒ 01:08:28.909 Uttam Kumaran: And he’s gonna be like

609 01:08:29.580 ⇒ 01:08:31.100 Miguel de Veyra: This is the ideal sorry.

610 01:08:31.560 ⇒ 01:08:32.060 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

611 01:08:32.069 ⇒ 01:08:36.389 Miguel de Veyra: Should be right. Yeah, ideally, 10 h here, like majority of this time.

612 01:08:37.630 ⇒ 01:08:38.160 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

613 01:08:54.100 ⇒ 01:09:04.670 Uttam Kumaran: okay, cool. And then the internal data platform. I’m gonna take whatever’s left of of a wish.

614 01:09:05.510 ⇒ 01:09:08.410 Uttam Kumaran: Demolata and Luke, basically, I think.

615 01:09:10.649 ⇒ 01:09:18.070 Uttam Kumaran: I think the one piece that we’re gonna we’re gonna need to decide is who’s gonna come on the urban stems right? Like which ae

616 01:09:18.460 ⇒ 01:09:20.930 Uttam Kumaran: is gonna go to replace me.

617 01:09:23.069 ⇒ 01:09:26.830 Uttam Kumaran: The other piece here is we have Annie currently on

618 01:09:27.050 ⇒ 01:09:31.380 Uttam Kumaran: Javi and Eden for basically 20 HI think.

619 01:09:31.540 ⇒ 01:09:36.489 Uttam Kumaran: amber. You’re gonna have to. I want her to take on any of the dashboarding work for for ABC.

620 01:09:37.224 ⇒ 01:09:43.619 Uttam Kumaran: And that way you have 2 reliable people outside of Miguel AI. Stuff dashboard stuff.

621 01:09:44.029 ⇒ 01:09:46.110 Uttam Kumaran: and then it’s like sort of a wrap there.

622 01:09:46.430 ⇒ 01:09:48.470 Uttam Kumaran: But I think you can plan on taking

623 01:09:48.779 ⇒ 01:09:55.100 Uttam Kumaran: 10 h of stuff for ABC. I’m I’m now gonna consider that we’re gonna spend

624 01:09:55.320 ⇒ 01:10:01.559 Uttam Kumaran: roughly 20 to 30 HA week here. And so I will. I’m going to structure the contract

625 01:10:01.920 ⇒ 01:10:04.509 Uttam Kumaran: with that cost in mind, basically.

626 01:10:05.610 ⇒ 01:10:16.870 Uttam Kumaran: So I’m gonna assume that we can get away with spending 30 HA week on ABC, getting everything we need to get done there. And then I will structure the contract to hit at least 50% above that

627 01:10:17.520 ⇒ 01:10:19.040 Uttam Kumaran: on the lowest end.

628 01:10:19.150 ⇒ 01:10:21.291 Uttam Kumaran: But that’s the map there.

629 01:10:22.930 ⇒ 01:10:29.560 Uttam Kumaran: Robert didn’t get to the sales piece. But we have a few proposals out right now.

630 01:10:30.051 ⇒ 01:10:34.969 Uttam Kumaran: Some are strategy, some are implementation. As they come up. I think we will.

631 01:10:35.330 ⇒ 01:10:52.369 Uttam Kumaran: We will basically try to get them slotted here. I know we didn’t get to it today. I think the only other piece I wanted to talk about was, Yeah, I’m not. I’m not really planning on, I guess. Okay, so 2 things, one, I think we haven’t, as you can see here, I think, on the people side we have.

632 01:10:52.540 ⇒ 01:10:55.820 Uttam Kumaran: We have enough people, I think, to take on another 2 or 3 projects.

633 01:10:56.010 ⇒ 01:10:58.779 Uttam Kumaran: I think. Like, if we just look at

634 01:11:00.280 ⇒ 01:11:04.239 Uttam Kumaran: April, like we have some people at the bottom end here.

635 01:11:04.440 ⇒ 01:11:05.950 Uttam Kumaran: Let’s see.

636 01:11:06.090 ⇒ 01:11:10.120 Uttam Kumaran: Sort by most available, I guess.

637 01:11:13.680 ⇒ 01:11:17.919 Uttam Kumaran: Like we have. Like amber. You have capacity.

638 01:11:18.080 ⇒ 01:11:21.450 Uttam Kumaran: Awaitia is a little bit overbooked. Demalade has capacity.

639 01:11:21.960 ⇒ 01:11:24.768 Uttam Kumaran: James Steven. Jacob. Okay, so

640 01:11:25.590 ⇒ 01:11:32.629 Uttam Kumaran: and then the sec. So for one piece is, I do think we have enough. We have another 20 h available for Annie. Right? You can see that she’s only 50% booked.

641 01:11:33.710 ⇒ 01:11:41.419 Uttam Kumaran: I am also trying to push to have to really reduce the amount of external contractors we have. Right? So this is Sahana

642 01:11:41.620 ⇒ 01:11:42.700 Uttam Kumaran: Bo.

643 01:11:43.350 ⇒ 01:11:47.079 Uttam Kumaran: So the external external contracts you have is Sahana, Beau, Patrick, James!

644 01:11:48.075 ⇒ 01:11:48.960 Uttam Kumaran: And

645 01:11:50.750 ⇒ 01:12:04.320 Uttam Kumaran: who else? What else? Who else am I missing? Pious, pious is helping us on the sales side. Patrick is coming in really as a navy seal on like some of the toughest AI problems, but feel pretty good with them. We don’t have that internal talent and pat

646 01:12:04.600 ⇒ 01:12:09.439 Uttam Kumaran: pies really isn’t billing anything at the moment. He’s kind of just an advisor. So Tahana

647 01:12:09.600 ⇒ 01:12:16.259 Uttam Kumaran: Bo is who my eyes are really on, on how we can take their time and transfer it to Annie.

648 01:12:17.890 ⇒ 01:12:36.299 Uttam Kumaran: I’m gonna be telling them a little bit about that tomorrow. But to give you a sense of what I’m telling people is a hundred percent of my time. When I think about our people needs to go to think about Brainforge employees and brain forge team. So I’m looking at finding ways to see 100% across the board on all these folks, that all their time is allocated.

649 01:12:36.300 ⇒ 01:12:55.309 Uttam Kumaran: and that we are allocating that to the people who want to be part of our company. I’ve explained this to the folks that are external about how we were in. We’re just in a need of people external. But the reason we brought on Annie is we want to ramp her up as our 1st full time brain forge data analyst and start for her to take on these things and build our platform for her to start to do the work, you know.

650 01:12:55.380 ⇒ 01:13:16.200 Uttam Kumaran: faster. And so I think it starts today by making sure we get the allocations right over the over the month. And I think our goal for next month is to ideally have as few external contractors as possible. Ideally we have more work coming. We may have one or 2 people always the patch short term needs.

651 01:13:16.260 ⇒ 01:13:38.747 Uttam Kumaran: but my goal is to get the job done with internal brain forge folks. They’re gonna stick with us longer. They’re more reliable. And I I think, like I want to invest more on internal folks who are not just like think of us as a side gig. And so that’s sort of how I’m thinking about this. I I’ve I’ve very transparent with that to everyone that is sort of

652 01:13:39.170 ⇒ 01:13:49.699 Uttam Kumaran: an external contractor as well. So don’t be shy to to say that, or to to feel like you’re saying something, and I’m saying something different. I’ve told this to every single person, and I’m gonna continue to reiterate that

653 01:13:51.390 ⇒ 01:13:57.549 Uttam Kumaran: great. So in quick, next steps, any questions, though I just talked for a while any questions

654 01:13:57.890 ⇒ 01:14:00.019 Uttam Kumaran: on this process or on this meeting

655 01:14:02.050 ⇒ 01:14:24.750 Aakash Tandel: I think, to see it better as we kind of go forward, and we’ll have more actuals and projected to compare against. That’ll be good. And the one thing I wanted to highlight is the time tracking and accountability thing. I think we’re gonna need people to do that correctly from the Pm side. Otherwise we’re just not gonna be able to estimate things correctly. So yeah, we can. We can figure that out, Async. But that’s something that we’ll need to. We’ll need to hone in on

656 01:14:24.750 ⇒ 01:14:32.669 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think, Marianne, this is where I think Ops needs to work closely with the Pm’s. On. How do we get employees to time track

657 01:14:32.770 ⇒ 01:14:36.170 Uttam Kumaran: and close out time tracking by Friday every week.

658 01:14:36.883 ⇒ 01:14:55.319 Uttam Kumaran: So this starts at onboarding. But it also we need to think about some process of like identifying who’s not doing that and getting them to do that. This is something that happens at every company. I think this can be. There’s probably some AI thing we could do here to help this or do this in slack. But that’s 1 thing is how to get everyone to update hours

659 01:14:55.710 ⇒ 01:15:03.629 Uttam Kumaran: on Friday. The next piece is for the next allocation meeting. I totally want to look at actuals versus expected.

660 01:15:03.770 ⇒ 01:15:20.280 Uttam Kumaran: This is the 1st month where we set an expectation. So by by the next allocation meeting, which I think a good. I think it’s good to probably do this every 2 weeks, for now, or maybe I maybe I’ll book another time just to do this next week, and probably over time. This happens every 2 weeks or once a month.

661 01:15:20.783 ⇒ 01:15:22.839 Uttam Kumaran: But I want us to see that

662 01:15:22.950 ⇒ 01:15:28.040 Uttam Kumaran: we’re on track. And we’re pacing like our allocation is is pacing from what’s actuals.

663 01:15:28.478 ⇒ 01:15:31.110 Uttam Kumaran: So I’m gonna put cadence of this meeting

664 01:15:31.740 ⇒ 01:15:36.219 Uttam Kumaran: on. So tomorrow, I think in tomorrow and and on Monday

665 01:15:36.580 ⇒ 01:15:57.142 Uttam Kumaran: I think it’s very essential to set plans, or if even if you want to send this out for your teams tomorrow on what to expect. Monday. Get this out as quick as possible. I’m in terms of my jobs I’m going to. I’ll I’ll chat with James either today or tomorrow, and sort of I can mix that

666 01:15:57.610 ⇒ 01:16:11.064 Uttam Kumaran: I’m going to be talking to Sahana tomorrow, so I I may, I probably will touch on the fact that we’re doing allocations here. But, Akash, I sort of want you to to own the communication and Amber own the communication for your teams.

667 01:16:12.380 ⇒ 01:16:23.267 Uttam Kumaran: I will. I’m also continue to work with Kyle on on what we what we talked about today. And then we’ll continue to just double down on a wish and and tell him that he’s doing a great job.

668 01:16:25.260 ⇒ 01:16:27.540 Uttam Kumaran: okay, anything else

669 01:16:30.750 ⇒ 01:16:41.239 Amber Lin: Can we confirm that this is finalized? And can we just give a quick blurb on each team like, can we have a document on each team of Who’s how many on? What?

670 01:16:41.810 ⇒ 01:16:42.590 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

671 01:16:42.800 ⇒ 01:16:45.710 Amber Lin: To confirm is finalized. So I can take that and tell the team

672 01:16:46.030 ⇒ 01:16:46.650 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so.

673 01:16:46.650 ⇒ 01:16:48.299 Amber Lin: Navigate and operating right now

674 01:16:48.510 ⇒ 01:16:50.376 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, so I think let’s

675 01:16:51.130 ⇒ 01:16:55.450 Uttam Kumaran: Do we want to do one document across the whole company? Or do you want to do one per team. Or how do you want to do it?

676 01:16:55.450 ⇒ 01:17:00.170 Amber Lin: Sure, just just across the company, and then we’ll. It’ll be a lot easier to

677 01:17:00.170 ⇒ 01:17:19.060 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so how about we just do it? How about? Let’s just like create. Let’s just create sections here at the bottom or something. I’m gonna I have like I’m in some meetings. I mean, we have our Pm sync. Later, too. We want to keep doing that. But like I’ll try to finish this up by like mid afternoon, and then let’s get it here in a blurb, and then we can share it on slack.

678 01:17:19.350 ⇒ 01:17:23.970 Uttam Kumaran: We can also yeah, or do whatever we need to do, and just sort of call locked.

679 01:17:24.372 ⇒ 01:17:27.399 Uttam Kumaran: Very, very timely that we got this done the end of this month.

680 01:17:28.300 ⇒ 01:17:33.639 Uttam Kumaran: I want us to make some money next month, like Robert definitely wants us to make some money more.

681 01:17:33.810 ⇒ 01:17:40.079 Uttam Kumaran: and he’s not. He’s like. So the one thing is like, I’m very, very excited for this conversation. It’s gonna be tough, though. It’s like pulling teeth

682 01:17:40.240 ⇒ 01:18:01.529 Uttam Kumaran: to get the allocation down. Everything is gonna push us towards billing more and getting more revenue in which is great. We do a really great job, by the way, like we are cheap compared to people in the industry. We work faster, so not we should not be at all embarrassed to ask for more and to say, Cause there’s there’s no way they’re gonna go to a competitor and find what we’re doing.

683 01:18:01.931 ⇒ 01:18:03.740 Uttam Kumaran: And so I’m very, very confident

684 01:18:03.740 ⇒ 01:18:04.370 Amber Lin: Exactly.

685 01:18:04.710 ⇒ 01:18:05.310 Uttam Kumaran: Huh!

686 01:18:05.500 ⇒ 01:18:08.630 Amber Lin: How much are competitors charging? So I can get an idea

687 01:18:09.261 ⇒ 01:18:20.809 Uttam Kumaran: It’s a i mean again, pricing models vary, but you can consider like the on the highest end is like the vendors themselves. So if you go to Snowflake and you say I want to get a snowflake architect, they charge 500 an hour. Typically

688 01:18:23.210 ⇒ 01:18:26.789 Aakash Tandel: You can look at those rates that with them shared the

689 01:18:26.790 ⇒ 01:18:27.230 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

690 01:18:27.230 ⇒ 01:18:28.470 Amber Lin: Oh, right? Okay.

691 01:18:28.470 ⇒ 01:18:36.209 Aakash Tandel: When we hit 2, 25 at Willow Tree. That’s like awesome. And that’s when we’re like killing it. So I would say, like that rate. Right? There is like

692 01:18:36.970 ⇒ 01:18:48.059 Uttam Kumaran: And to give you what I I tell Robert 2, 50 every single time he brings me in a thing, and then we have an argument. So that’s like how it goes. I’ve said 2 50. For the last few months

693 01:18:48.160 ⇒ 01:19:09.808 Uttam Kumaran: we do our best. I push sales to go for more. Of course, sales gonna push back because they want to close the deal. This is the thing that’s the healthy conversation that needs to happen where I’m gonna say, I can’t achieve 50 unless you get the 2 50. He’s gonna say that they’re not gonna buy the 2 50 when you do 1 50, and we’re gonna find a place to work in the middle right? 2 50 is the like. The number, though.

694 01:19:10.930 ⇒ 01:19:13.270 Uttam Kumaran: that’s it. So that’s what we’re gonna go for

695 01:19:15.310 ⇒ 01:19:17.430 Uttam Kumaran: if we hit that, we’re golden

696 01:19:18.880 ⇒ 01:19:25.480 Uttam Kumaran: cause to give you a sense, 2, 50 allows us to get engineering talent around 100. That’s basically the best

697 01:19:26.480 ⇒ 01:19:27.260 Uttam Kumaran: right?

698 01:19:29.670 ⇒ 01:19:30.390 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.

699 01:19:30.880 ⇒ 01:19:45.520 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, guys, thank you so much. I know this is a dense meeting. This has been. This is the one meeting I’ve been looking forward to all week, so I’m very, very happy. I’ll make sure everybody’s in here. Please poke around and spend some time and clockify it in here and let Ops know if you need access or anything. And then.

700 01:19:45.690 ⇒ 01:19:49.010 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, I think we’ll sort of circle back on this stuff in slack

701 01:19:50.180 ⇒ 01:19:50.950 Aakash Tandel: Sounds good

702 01:19:51.260 ⇒ 01:19:52.450 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, makes sense.

703 01:19:53.780 ⇒ 01:19:54.170 Mariane Cequina: Thank you.

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