Meeting Title: Douglas <> Uttam Date: 2025-04-09 Meeting participants: Dougw, Uttam Kumaran
WEBVTT
1 00:01:34.340 ⇒ 00:01:35.680 Uttam Kumaran: Hey? Can you hear me?
2 00:01:36.270 ⇒ 00:01:36.790 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, guys.
3 00:01:36.790 ⇒ 00:01:38.512 dougw: I don’t have audio just yet.
4 00:01:42.890 ⇒ 00:01:43.789 dougw: are you there.
5 00:01:44.000 ⇒ 00:01:45.150 Uttam Kumaran: Yes. Can you hear me?
6 00:01:52.310 ⇒ 00:01:53.319 Uttam Kumaran: How about now?
7 00:01:56.830 ⇒ 00:01:59.240 dougw: Sorry I have a doc, and it’s not my.
8 00:02:01.000 ⇒ 00:02:01.949 Uttam Kumaran: No worries.
9 00:02:03.760 ⇒ 00:02:04.130 dougw: Hello!
10 00:02:04.850 ⇒ 00:02:05.270 Uttam Kumaran: Can you hear me?
11 00:02:12.580 ⇒ 00:02:14.280 dougw: Okay. Maybe. Now.
12 00:02:14.280 ⇒ 00:02:15.040 Uttam Kumaran: How about now?
13 00:02:16.510 ⇒ 00:02:20.860 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe anything.
14 00:02:29.240 ⇒ 00:02:29.930 dougw: Now.
15 00:02:30.370 ⇒ 00:02:31.220 Uttam Kumaran: How about now?
16 00:02:34.060 ⇒ 00:02:37.420 dougw: Sorry about that. I usually it’s easy to get this to work, but
17 00:02:42.160 ⇒ 00:02:43.210 dougw: that’s complicated.
18 00:02:44.140 ⇒ 00:02:44.830 dougw: Pick it up.
19 00:02:45.140 ⇒ 00:02:48.200 dougw: It shows everything that I’m supposed to have, but it doesn’t.
20 00:02:49.360 ⇒ 00:02:51.560 Uttam Kumaran: You can try dialing in via phone.
21 00:03:22.270 ⇒ 00:03:27.899 dougw: I’m so sorry I I’m gonna have to probably reboot this machine to get it to work. I don’t think it’s gonna it’s gonna.
22 00:03:28.310 ⇒ 00:03:30.560 Uttam Kumaran: I can message you on Linkedin or.
23 00:03:36.170 ⇒ 00:03:38.640 dougw: Yeah, you could call me on my phone. Yeah, yeah.
24 00:04:02.080 ⇒ 00:04:03.779 dougw: I could just call into this meeting.
25 00:04:04.410 ⇒ 00:04:05.850 dougw: It doesn’t give me a number.
26 00:04:09.480 ⇒ 00:04:10.260 dougw: Hello.
27 00:04:11.720 ⇒ 00:04:19.280 dougw: yeah, I hear you. Yeah. Sorry about that. I you know I I use the dock a lot, but when I move it back and forth the surface doesn’t wanna
28 00:04:19.640 ⇒ 00:04:27.709 dougw: pick up my speakers. Usually it’s easy to make teams or zoom to to work. But in this case it just won’t do it. Today. I think it’s
29 00:04:28.860 ⇒ 00:04:32.869 dougw: it’s it’s it’s been daring me to reboot for a couple of days, and I was like, No. No.
30 00:04:32.990 ⇒ 00:04:34.572 dougw: 3 things overnight.
31 00:04:36.270 ⇒ 00:04:43.830 dougw: Yeah, yeah. Nice to meet you and sorry sorry about the problems here, so
32 00:04:45.190 ⇒ 00:04:58.840 dougw: everything’s good, everything good. Well, I mean, you know it. It’d be great if I had a job. But you know I’ve I’ve been staying really busy, even without a job. You know. I’ve got several interviews lined up
33 00:05:00.400 ⇒ 00:05:06.379 dougw: a call with the company called Barion here in a little bit.
34 00:05:08.120 ⇒ 00:05:13.630 dougw: Their CEO is A is a friend of mine, so she told me. They’ve got a senior director role open. So I,
35 00:05:14.050 ⇒ 00:05:21.447 dougw: looking at that. And you know I’ve been playing with my AI. You you guys really
36 00:05:22.150 ⇒ 00:05:25.620 dougw: piqued my interest because I you know everybody’s AI.
37 00:05:25.880 ⇒ 00:05:26.505 dougw: But
38 00:05:27.240 ⇒ 00:05:49.839 dougw: if you go start trying to learn. You know anything about it. It’s a it’s. There’s a ton of junk out there that you know every everybody that doesn’t know even anything about computers? Hardly. They’ve got some kind of AI thing. And I’m like, Oh, man, I didn’t want to follow this link and talk to these. You know this, they don’t know anything about this stuff, you know, they just
39 00:05:50.550 ⇒ 00:05:51.290 dougw: technology.
40 00:05:52.140 ⇒ 00:05:57.240 dougw: Yeah. But then couple of questions.
41 00:06:02.270 ⇒ 00:06:05.120 dougw: And right.
42 00:06:10.140 ⇒ 00:06:13.580 dougw: you know our company, we for mine.
43 00:06:15.210 ⇒ 00:06:19.940 dougw: Only recently have I been like posting stuff on more. But
44 00:06:23.790 ⇒ 00:06:32.720 dougw: yeah, yeah, yeah. So I saw that you guys are into like.
45 00:06:32.930 ⇒ 00:06:41.709 dougw: well, when I look up brain for ji, I get a lot of different facets of the business. There’s even education. I think that you guys have something in there.
46 00:06:42.371 ⇒ 00:06:44.779 dougw: What’s your what’s your main like
47 00:06:45.870 ⇒ 00:06:52.040 dougw: niche that you’re working in with brain? AI, are you all of it?
48 00:06:52.850 ⇒ 00:06:53.540 dougw: Primarily.
49 00:06:57.800 ⇒ 00:07:03.779 dougw: analytics and AI area both that we talked about
50 00:07:07.500 ⇒ 00:07:09.320 dougw: sales marketing finance.
51 00:07:10.340 ⇒ 00:07:13.190 dougw: Yeah, for setup data warehousing.
52 00:07:14.550 ⇒ 00:07:15.980 dougw: Do that later on.
53 00:07:19.330 ⇒ 00:07:22.239 dougw: Basically pass the right context to AI,
54 00:07:22.580 ⇒ 00:07:24.939 dougw: yeah. So this could be for like.
55 00:07:25.200 ⇒ 00:07:27.220 dougw: Rep could be for a sales team.
56 00:07:29.430 ⇒ 00:07:36.059 dougw: Focus on a lot of things, helping them grow revenue and do that with
57 00:07:36.680 ⇒ 00:07:38.140 dougw: the same amount of people that they have
58 00:07:39.210 ⇒ 00:07:41.889 dougw: more leverage using any kind of copilot.
59 00:07:44.980 ⇒ 00:07:50.680 dougw: Yeah, yeah, I was talking to a friend the other night, and just
60 00:07:50.930 ⇒ 00:07:58.550 dougw: he was like, Well, I don’t even know how to use. AI. I was like, well, the chat bot! You just talk to him, you know. It’s it’s easy, but
61 00:07:58.770 ⇒ 00:08:19.739 dougw: he’s like, well, you know I’ve played with it for fun, and I’m like dude. You could do all kinds of things. He owns a small business that he does consulting for mold remediation. That’s his job, and I’m like you could have it do all kinds of tasks for you. So if you don’t have an assistant, you have all this work to do at night, because he was complaining about that. I was like you could have it do a lot of things for you
62 00:08:19.770 ⇒ 00:08:32.589 dougw: if you just know how to prompt it, you know, or give it enough context. And he says, I don’t know if I can do that, and I’m like, well, it’s not. That’s not that hard. But you know, when I think about the integrations that people have and their applications.
63 00:08:32.919 ⇒ 00:08:42.649 dougw: they you can usually do better yourself a lot of times you’ll see the integration, and the AI will come up and let’s take enhanced B. For example.
64 00:08:42.940 ⇒ 00:08:50.520 dougw: if I take in and create a resume with enhance B, and it says AI is going to write this part of it or import it.
65 00:08:50.640 ⇒ 00:08:57.660 dougw: If you import your word, Doc, it misses everything, and then it’s harder to fix the thing that you’re you know that you imported.
66 00:08:57.790 ⇒ 00:09:10.799 dougw: It’s it’s harder to do that than it would be to just, you know. Copy it from scratch up there, and it’s like, Why do you all even have an import? And you know and and the AI doesn’t give you doesn’t do enough context, he doesn’t. He can’t retain enough
67 00:09:10.970 ⇒ 00:09:16.560 dougw: to really available if you paid today
68 00:09:19.000 ⇒ 00:09:25.230 dougw: every single time. Yeah, it’s pretty hard. Yeah for both private
69 00:09:28.450 ⇒ 00:09:29.600 dougw: build. The AI.
70 00:09:29.930 ⇒ 00:09:32.510 dougw: Take that contact. Whether it’s on a
71 00:09:32.730 ⇒ 00:09:36.820 dougw: customer, whether it’s not an active customer on, you know
72 00:09:40.260 ⇒ 00:09:42.200 dougw: your meeting notes to my right.
73 00:09:42.810 ⇒ 00:09:46.080 dougw: One documentation topic.
74 00:09:47.410 ⇒ 00:09:49.979 dougw: My, AI, so it’s actually that same process.
75 00:09:58.950 ⇒ 00:09:59.720 dougw: Calm.
76 00:10:02.240 ⇒ 00:10:06.039 dougw: Wow here to Austin, although we do have quite
77 00:10:11.230 ⇒ 00:10:12.619 dougw: okay. Yeah.
78 00:10:12.730 ⇒ 00:10:17.520 dougw: yeah, I have a friend that works at Snowflake, and I didn’t know if you guys are in the in the same.
79 00:10:17.700 ⇒ 00:10:21.899 dougw: it seems like you’re in the same. Your competition. Yeah.
80 00:10:22.990 ⇒ 00:10:27.530 dougw: yeah. So that’s all. That’s all. That’s like my, that’s so. That’s how I started. The company was
81 00:10:27.820 ⇒ 00:10:28.749 dougw: everything around building
82 00:10:32.370 ⇒ 00:10:36.269 dougw: that stuff came later, because 2 years ago, and
83 00:10:36.850 ⇒ 00:10:42.510 dougw: using it just to help my kids that go ahead.
84 00:10:43.150 ⇒ 00:10:47.480 dougw: Yeah, that’s sort of how we got into doing both.
85 00:10:49.420 ⇒ 00:10:53.160 dougw: Proud of you people globally
86 00:10:56.260 ⇒ 00:11:01.150 dougw: to grow for me, the high 5.
87 00:11:05.500 ⇒ 00:11:10.299 dougw: Okay, yeah. And it’s just nice.
88 00:11:10.770 ⇒ 00:11:11.550 dougw: Want it?
89 00:11:13.328 ⇒ 00:11:16.620 dougw: It’s not really like personal at all.
90 00:11:17.740 ⇒ 00:11:19.479 dougw: More to kind of build connection.
91 00:11:20.310 ⇒ 00:11:21.639 dougw: I love it here like
92 00:11:25.780 ⇒ 00:11:27.250 dougw: reach out to people that aren’t.
93 00:11:29.340 ⇒ 00:11:34.400 dougw: Yeah. We can help each other like one way or another, you know, I think, you know, like
94 00:11:35.660 ⇒ 00:11:38.710 dougw: worked in the industry for a long time, a lot of people. And somehow.
95 00:11:42.660 ⇒ 00:11:43.830 dougw: like what I’m trying to do.
96 00:11:45.090 ⇒ 00:11:49.508 dougw: Yeah, okay, yeah, that’s cool. I I mean, are you?
97 00:11:50.850 ⇒ 00:12:01.010 dougw: let’s see. So you’re an engineer really at heart. Do you still do engineering work to see your CEO?
98 00:12:01.110 ⇒ 00:12:02.670 dougw: Most boring part of everything?
99 00:12:03.030 ⇒ 00:12:09.510 dougw: Oh, my, it’s not that I don’t like office policy.
100 00:12:15.850 ⇒ 00:12:24.000 dougw: because, in fact, I think absolutely row 9 the off of that, or yeah, I don’t mind.
101 00:12:24.290 ⇒ 00:12:25.070 dougw: I don’t.
102 00:12:25.970 ⇒ 00:12:27.950 dougw: Oh, can I do the 5?
103 00:12:28.740 ⇒ 00:12:29.959 dougw: No fun like, I don’t have any.
104 00:12:30.480 ⇒ 00:12:33.579 dougw: Yeah, I still do a lot of development work. And
105 00:12:34.580 ⇒ 00:12:46.069 dougw: yeah, I don’t get to get into that, or I haven’t gotten into that. I’ve I’ve recently since I’m not employed. I I bought visual studio license and have been able to. I’m a big Microsoft
106 00:12:46.260 ⇒ 00:12:52.300 dougw: dot net guy. So I bought visual studio, and I did a temp job for a person
107 00:12:52.490 ⇒ 00:12:55.350 dougw: for some folks up in Denver, and
108 00:12:55.520 ⇒ 00:13:15.010 dougw: that was about the 1st time I’ve coded, probably in in 6 years or something. And I was like, Oh, this is so different! I can’t remember. It’s not different. But it’s I was like, Oh, yeah, I forgot. It’s pain in the butt to get that to load and to get this to install and get that service pack.
109 00:13:15.360 ⇒ 00:13:18.360 dougw: Yeah, that’s what I use every day.
110 00:13:21.430 ⇒ 00:13:25.440 dougw: You could log everything so done before.
111 00:13:28.480 ⇒ 00:13:33.369 dougw: I haven’t been using Chat Gbt much lately. I I do have this. I do pay them.
112 00:13:33.590 ⇒ 00:13:35.270 dougw: I should start using it.
113 00:13:35.550 ⇒ 00:13:49.049 dougw: But I’ve been using Gemini. I really love Gemini. It’s not like I used a real exact science to figure this out. I went and used copilot, Gemini and Chat Gbt. I asked them all to give me a story
114 00:13:49.450 ⇒ 00:13:57.280 dougw: about how they take over the world when Skynet goes live, and they all kind of like chuckled. And you wanted to write this story.
115 00:13:57.630 ⇒ 00:14:26.899 dougw: Jim and I had the funniest story. It was hilarious. It was a big, long story about how it, you know, took over, but it was just. It had lots of anecdotes and stuff. It was more my style, because I’m really. I like funny stuff. Chat Gpts was real serious, but it was good. It was just like it was real serious. And then copilot. He tried to be funny, but it was just stupid. And I was like, Okay, so you’re the dunce we don’t want to. I’m not going to use you, and and every time I use copilot it seems to get better. But I haven’t been a big.
116 00:14:27.070 ⇒ 00:14:29.739 dougw: huge fan of that one. So I you know.
117 00:14:30.170 ⇒ 00:14:37.570 dougw: what what do you guys use? Do you have your own? Are you running your own like open AI, or
118 00:14:38.670 ⇒ 00:14:39.779 dougw: where you can upload them?
119 00:14:46.460 ⇒ 00:14:47.270 dougw: Be like.
120 00:14:51.850 ⇒ 00:14:56.180 dougw: yeah, I think it’s about like, Oh, my God!
121 00:14:59.190 ⇒ 00:15:09.400 dougw: So we discussed with that sort of like, how we Broadway, like they’re all all the models, and
122 00:15:09.550 ⇒ 00:15:13.180 dougw: some of them have larger contacts, or better, at like term things.
123 00:15:15.700 ⇒ 00:15:19.560 dougw: And then, yeah, I think longer term, we will end up like starting to run.
124 00:15:25.240 ⇒ 00:15:28.000 dougw: Yeah. So we will start, we will start to run the
125 00:15:28.690 ⇒ 00:15:31.860 dougw: here. I’ll have a box here at the house somewhere.
126 00:15:38.480 ⇒ 00:15:44.659 dougw: priced up first, st like both, but all the open source models are pretty good, too.
127 00:15:45.060 ⇒ 00:15:45.850 dougw: Yeah.
128 00:15:46.400 ⇒ 00:15:56.110 dougw: yeah. I I mean, like, our company didn’t want us using it. Where I was working. We everybody uses it, anyways. But you couldn’t really like I wouldn’t feed it
129 00:15:57.950 ⇒ 00:16:04.860 dougw: sales data. Let’s say, I got a we had the the sales team give us a bunch of win loss data.
130 00:16:04.970 ⇒ 00:16:24.219 dougw: And you know, there was so many comments like going through them. Everybody was trying to go through and and order them and everything. And I was just like I’m just gonna take the comments without the customer’s name, and just send them up to to chat, Gpt and give me, you know. Tell them to give me some stats on it. Well, immediately comes back, and I have a report
131 00:16:25.163 ⇒ 00:16:41.609 dougw: ready for the Cfo. To say, Here, here’s all the reasons that you know that people didn’t didn’t buy, and we lost the sage this many times. And and the reason is because we don’t have integration, you know. Look, it’s the top in the top. 3 integrations we need to have is salesforce and
132 00:16:41.750 ⇒ 00:16:42.640 dougw: and
133 00:16:42.730 ⇒ 00:17:07.180 dougw: 2 other ones that were that we needed. And I you know it was like $800,000 in the 1st quarter. I’m like, that’s a lot of money in a year, if you look at that. And you know, so we need to build this integration. So he didn’t even need any more than that. He didn’t want a business case now that he just funded like an integration project for 6 months, you know. He no no questions asked. You know I’m gonna fund you and another couple of people to go and build this
134 00:17:07.200 ⇒ 00:17:13.119 dougw: this integration platform or so. We started the the base of it. And you know, I think it’s still running right now. So
135 00:17:13.745 ⇒ 00:17:31.539 dougw: but you know that that was just like I’m like, why are all these people like trying to do stats on something that you can just get it done in a second, you know, with an AI, you know. Just feed it the comments, and they’ll give you the report, you know, and and just people. They don’t want us using it. But and then, you know, I thought, Well, there’s so many things that we do that need
136 00:17:31.850 ⇒ 00:17:51.510 dougw: quick analysis. And people are spending lots of time on it. You could just give it to the AI. But you can’t just give your confidential data up to the AI, or you don’t want to. You know they’re pretty leery about it. So I was like, well, we need to run one in house. And they they started with that project, and and they’re going to see if they’re going to run one in house. But I was like, Okay, well.
137 00:17:51.790 ⇒ 00:17:58.310 dougw: I’m out. So we transitioned everybody to India. So
138 00:17:59.190 ⇒ 00:18:02.979 dougw: every day for your own stuff, you’re never gonna get it.
139 00:18:05.620 ⇒ 00:18:06.730 dougw: They want to move.
140 00:18:07.490 ⇒ 00:18:09.390 dougw: Talking about AI,
141 00:18:13.960 ⇒ 00:18:17.999 dougw: right? Yeah, right? Like, thank you? Very good.
142 00:18:20.570 ⇒ 00:18:21.810 dougw: My company is like Tim.
143 00:18:26.600 ⇒ 00:18:27.429 dougw: Oh.
144 00:18:35.030 ⇒ 00:18:38.010 dougw: so you’re using the one from Microsoft. So copilot, basically.
145 00:18:38.430 ⇒ 00:18:41.110 dougw: Well, we’re using now. We’re using Openai through.
146 00:18:41.910 ⇒ 00:18:49.580 dougw: Oh, and part of the Microsoft startup program.
147 00:18:51.320 ⇒ 00:19:00.340 dougw: Okay? Cool? Yeah, that’s that’s awesome. Or, yeah, you know, they do it for nonprofits and for and for startups. And and
148 00:19:00.880 ⇒ 00:19:19.429 dougw: we were. We were writing software for nonprofits, and you know, but we weren’t nonprofit. So I was always like, Why don’t you get the the account, and it’ll be a lot cheaper. And then, you know, we can. We can work work from there. So that’s that’s great that you got into the partnership there. So
149 00:19:20.140 ⇒ 00:19:21.520 dougw: what? The what sort of role?
150 00:19:23.950 ⇒ 00:19:39.449 dougw: Well, I I haven’t looked at hard to be honest with you. That’s that’s 1 of the problems. Because, like I said I I knew some folks in Denver it was a former customer of of community brands, and and so I talked to them like the day
151 00:19:39.680 ⇒ 00:20:05.609 dougw: I was on January 31st is, when was my last day, and that next, and that was a Friday, and the next Monday I was on a plane to Denver already and had a interview with them, and then they hired me for a temporary role. I didn’t get the permanent role. But then I didn’t have to move. So I wasn’t that upset so and the guy that did get it. You know, he didn’t really know the that form product that that I knew. So I did the temporary job, and then
152 00:20:05.730 ⇒ 00:20:22.750 dougw: turns out they don’t really know what they want. So you know, I I started looking at it. And I’m like, Man, I I signed a contract. It wasn’t real specific about what we’re gonna do. And I was like I should have signed it. But I want to be easy to do business with, because their CEO, he was just kind of trying to offer me something, and and
153 00:20:22.820 ⇒ 00:20:27.629 dougw: he knows knows he needs some help. So I get in there. Everybody’s wanting to do something different. They don’t know what they want.
154 00:20:27.690 ⇒ 00:20:39.510 dougw: And so, after I took a 1st payment. I was like, Okay, you guys don’t really know what you want. So if we can’t nail this down, you know, there’s only like 2 months. There’s 2 months left in this thing, and and it’s not gonna look good.
155 00:20:39.520 ⇒ 00:20:56.139 dougw: And I, you know the the contract kind of said I’d be liable if their members had problems with the software or something like that. And I was like, Well, why don’t we dissolve this now? And you know I’ve hooked them up with another company called Catalyst Fire. That I knew can do this job. They need several people coming in
156 00:20:56.140 ⇒ 00:21:12.050 dougw: and doing a lot of programming, and I’m like, Well, I can do some of it because I was architected that product. But I can’t really fix all this if you don’t want to fix your processes. I really just wanted out. They were happy with that, they were saying already thinking they needed to go to that other company. So
157 00:21:12.050 ⇒ 00:21:27.802 dougw: we dissolve that contract. And I was like, Okay, next time I’ll do what my gut tells me, and that’s get very specific, you know, milestones and and things in place in the contract. So, but it, it worked out. Okay, we’re still friends and no problem, no, no harm done. So
158 00:21:35.850 ⇒ 00:21:40.510 dougw: really, wow, part of the part of my house, and like
159 00:21:41.180 ⇒ 00:21:44.340 dougw: to make money 1st before making like longer term.
160 00:21:44.640 ⇒ 00:21:54.500 dougw: But you know, this year we’re starting to graduate from think about larger support staff.
161 00:21:59.200 ⇒ 00:22:09.909 dougw: What kind of folks do you have like in the company like, do you put just engineers, or do you have some? Qa.
162 00:22:12.180 ⇒ 00:22:15.320 dougw: my business partner. We’re doing everything around sales finance.
163 00:22:16.260 ⇒ 00:22:18.019 dougw: We have a couple of marketing.
164 00:22:19.340 ⇒ 00:22:20.110 dougw: Okay?
165 00:22:20.630 ⇒ 00:22:24.759 dougw: Yeah. Yeah. Marketing operations is is very
166 00:22:24.920 ⇒ 00:22:29.430 dougw: important that you have that, you know, like
167 00:22:29.610 ⇒ 00:22:36.940 dougw: where, when it with community brands, like I was. I was in the, you know, with Mip, which is a the nonprofit group
168 00:22:37.180 ⇒ 00:22:45.600 dougw: that used to be sage, and I was hired there to build grants management. We did that, and then I moved from that when it was in silver life.
169 00:22:45.710 ⇒ 00:23:06.110 dougw: And so sometimes when Microsoft has new stuff come out, I’m like, I don’t know. I don’t know. They got me with that silverlight crap. I don’t know if I’m gonna but you know, they dumped it. And you know that we were like, really. But the world spoke. They didn’t. It was the best ui that you would ever probably get, as a you know, compared to Javascript.
170 00:23:06.615 ⇒ 00:23:31.684 dougw: But the world spoken. They want to keep Javascript and all the sloppy code and all that stuff. So yeah, there’s nothing we can do about it. So you know, anyways, I moved over I moved over to the other a new division that we just bought. And that’s where we got into the Association Space Netform Enterprise. It was all.net. So it was kind of right up my alley, and so I got to learn that.
171 00:23:32.180 ⇒ 00:23:33.040 dougw: you know.
172 00:23:33.710 ⇒ 00:23:39.590 dougw: you got a lot of autonomy there. You could do a lot of techy things. It was a real techie app. It was a platform
173 00:23:40.129 ⇒ 00:23:49.840 dougw: but if you didn’t use the platform the way that it was built to build your modules or whatever. And your pages. Then you know you you
174 00:23:50.070 ⇒ 00:24:18.439 dougw: it just became real techy, you know. So we had a tech. We have to go to conferences. I would go and be the tech guy. I loved it, but it didn’t. You know, it’s enterprise software, it doesn’t. It’s real customized. The margins aren’t great in it, and you know that’s just. That’s just the nature of enterprise. So I had lots of revenue, but the margins were pretty horrible because you had to employ a lot of people to fix it and to keep it up to date. But then I moved over to him, back over to Mip and took over that
175 00:24:18.580 ⇒ 00:24:29.299 dougw: mit fund. Accounting is is a, you know, mid mid grade kind of product. When nonprofits get to to where they’re usually between 5 and 15 years old
176 00:24:29.510 ⇒ 00:24:35.639 dougw: over over 5 million in revenue. Then they need funded counting because quickbooks just gets too small for them.
177 00:24:36.676 ⇒ 00:24:45.749 dougw: Yeah. And anyway, so it. It’s a Saas product, and it has like 5,000 customers. It’s got on premise. And they they’ve got a hosted model.
178 00:24:45.850 ⇒ 00:25:07.869 dougw: and we hosted a 32 bit app over Rdp, which is a nightmare, to say the least. But you know it was. It was cool, because there they had the sales and the marketing people were really good, like the sales. People were really good, and when they lost the salesperson like, they started tanking for a while.
179 00:25:08.272 ⇒ 00:25:29.149 dougw: And that’s because Neil Neil wasn’t there. They brought Neil back, and the the revenue started coming back, and when I came over we you know, we we got it to where the revenue almost doubled in in the time that I was in there. And so it might be. It didn’t have this customizable feature. It’s customizable, but it did it itself via configuration. So
180 00:25:29.756 ⇒ 00:25:42.660 dougw: like you, just your chart of accounts would change the database up and everything. But outside of that it wasn’t customized like there wasn’t something different. Everybody had. And just because of that, and the fact that you can sell it, it’s a good product
181 00:25:43.200 ⇒ 00:25:49.140 dougw: it the revenue, the margins were great, I mean, you know, when was the 1st year that I was there? We had like.
182 00:25:49.540 ⇒ 00:26:05.839 dougw: I don’t know. I want to say it was like 60 or something, you know. It was way up there, you know, way over 40. The rule of 40, you know it was way up there, so I know when I left I think it was. It was lower, but they did that on purpose. They were trying to get it lower. They’re trying to put more money into it. So
183 00:26:05.920 ⇒ 00:26:26.000 dougw: anyways, big differences in having a sales and marketing, I do not do sales and marketing. That’s where I’ve never started anything, because I’m just afraid of the sales and the marketing. I’m like I could probably get a sale, but I don’t know if I could get another one, you know. So you know, important to have those guys. And and
184 00:26:26.180 ⇒ 00:26:34.950 dougw: you know what what kind of things are you gonna need like down the road like, are you? Are, you? Are you guys bringing in a lot of a ton of cash, or y’all getting lots of new sales. And
185 00:26:35.450 ⇒ 00:26:36.881 dougw: yeah, lots of folks.
186 00:26:44.790 ⇒ 00:26:45.560 dougw: So we’re
187 00:26:48.690 ⇒ 00:26:49.990 dougw: for me. There’s a benefit
188 00:26:58.770 ⇒ 00:27:06.050 dougw: more like about people that bye ability.
189 00:27:07.040 ⇒ 00:27:12.630 dougw: Yeah, that’s a lot what we’re. That’s that’s what we’re thinking, a lot product.
190 00:27:14.440 ⇒ 00:27:16.239 dougw: Okay, this one is purely like
191 00:27:16.500 ⇒ 00:27:18.299 dougw: a lot to take this morning.
192 00:27:19.440 ⇒ 00:27:20.560 dougw: Yeah.
193 00:27:22.500 ⇒ 00:27:37.730 dougw: yeah, if you’re a services. So like, do you sell? What do you sell in an engagement? What would you sell them a customer like? Do you sell them just a 3 month project or something like that, and you get that in grade in their business. Or you know, what do you actually
194 00:27:39.340 ⇒ 00:27:43.399 dougw: going the time more and more work
195 00:27:49.980 ⇒ 00:28:01.130 dougw: do you? Are, are you? So they’re really paying Microsoft. And for the AI usage, or any data usage that they’re doing? Or is there anything with your name on it that they’re coming through you for.
196 00:28:01.240 ⇒ 00:28:11.520 dougw: like, yeah, yeah. But for the most part, yeah, we’re all
197 00:28:12.880 ⇒ 00:28:23.580 dougw: I see. Okay, well, that could be lucrative. You know you make good money that way. And yeah.
198 00:28:24.310 ⇒ 00:28:25.200 dougw: because I get to.
199 00:28:34.840 ⇒ 00:28:39.630 dougw: Yeah, I said, I can bring the best of the best of clients.
200 00:28:44.170 ⇒ 00:28:47.719 dougw: our product team, mostly on our end.
201 00:28:49.750 ⇒ 00:28:55.950 dougw: So like, if you sell like customer, you know your business or your your
202 00:28:56.320 ⇒ 00:29:01.050 dougw: your product or your services, you would. And and I wanted to say.
203 00:29:01.530 ⇒ 00:29:23.900 dougw: Let’s say I wanted to use AI to to look at my all my finances and budgets and help me keep this stuff straight, you know, and be able to ask it. Anything like a chat gpt right? But but now I could say it’s but it’s mine like, I want to say that the data is mine. It doesn’t go through Google or Microsoft can’t really go peeking at it. You know. How?
204 00:29:24.200 ⇒ 00:29:28.439 dougw: What would you tell them? And what would you? What would you? What would you try to sell
205 00:29:31.070 ⇒ 00:29:35.110 dougw: nonprofit group, setting up some sort of
206 00:29:39.940 ⇒ 00:29:40.810 dougw: that model.
207 00:29:43.970 ⇒ 00:29:47.659 dougw: your computer or your like, wherever those end of living
208 00:29:51.940 ⇒ 00:29:52.610 dougw: plan.
209 00:29:54.630 ⇒ 00:29:55.609 dougw: My manager
210 00:30:01.500 ⇒ 00:30:02.180 dougw: client.
211 00:30:06.280 ⇒ 00:30:08.240 dougw: Okay, that one.
212 00:30:08.440 ⇒ 00:30:12.610 dougw: So if I wanted to have an in-house AI engine
213 00:30:12.800 ⇒ 00:30:36.779 dougw: that I’m running, because I don’t want to go out to the Cloud. Let’s say I’m afraid of the cloud. I’m an Indian tribe. That’s what we we sold to the Indian tribe. They wouldn’t come off the on-premise product, you know. Yeah. So so you know, they they had data sovereignty. They said, No, no data’s got to be in our in our stuff. And and so my idea was, Hey, why don’t we sell them
214 00:30:37.270 ⇒ 00:30:58.080 dougw: our product or get our product ready so that we can deploy it to any azure environment, and we can deploy it to their azure environment. And it would be a lot better. And then we can use like something like lighthouse to maybe manage it like if they don’t pay, we can still cut it off, you know. But you know, other than that. It’s theirs. They they’re running in their cloud.
215 00:30:58.080 ⇒ 00:31:18.719 dougw: So that was that was one option that we could do. But you know, could you set up. Open AI engine on your own like you said, running on your machines what you could do eventually. This this company wants. Let’s just say I want to do that in house. And you know, you guys show me how to. I’ve got the servers or I’ve got the cloud. Let’s say I got to get my own data center
216 00:31:19.263 ⇒ 00:31:26.110 dougw: already. So I want to run it over here and then run it from my data center. Could you guys come and help with that and get that all set up. And
217 00:31:26.450 ⇒ 00:31:28.329 dougw: you know, yeah, that seems pretty
218 00:31:30.290 ⇒ 00:31:31.949 dougw: kind of the more technical it is.
219 00:31:32.740 ⇒ 00:31:35.420 dougw: And it’s like you have to go higher than that.
220 00:31:39.160 ⇒ 00:31:44.290 dougw: Likely we’ll make pretty good progress about a month.
221 00:31:46.320 ⇒ 00:31:52.960 dougw: Yeah. So that’s that’s based on like our case, studies got hired.
222 00:31:56.350 ⇒ 00:32:25.269 dougw: Yeah. So if I wanted to do that, and then I wanted to follow up. Hey, I’ve got a suite of products here, and in that suite of products it does. Well, I’ll just use the my friend, they do aviation software. So I’ve got aviation software. The reason I needed it in house is because there’s data, sovereignty, lots of laws around that. So I’ve got to be able to protect all that data that’s coming in. Now, I want to integrate that with this software. And you know, let’s just say the maintenance. I wanted to help me keep.
223 00:32:25.470 ⇒ 00:32:53.840 dougw: Ask questions about the maintenance of this plane of this specific plane on this record, and I’m going to go ask it a bunch of questions about that. It’s going to come back and say, you know what he’s going to be in New York next week. They’ve got that part there. I wanna I wanted to tell him that, you know. Go and get the part while you’re here. I know it’s going to be 3 more flights, but then you’ll have to fly all the way back to New York to get it, because they’ve got the part there. So that kind of thing is what I want to integrate right? And have the AI come up and tell them
224 00:32:54.600 ⇒ 00:32:56.580 dougw: exactly like the data and the network.
225 00:32:56.790 ⇒ 00:32:57.635 dougw: Yeah.
226 00:33:02.570 ⇒ 00:33:05.589 dougw: oh, software, you want to break that data?
227 00:33:07.770 ⇒ 00:33:10.560 dougw: Yeah, that’s a lot of the work that we do.
228 00:33:10.690 ⇒ 00:33:27.639 dougw: Yeah. So they from what I understand, and sorry. I probably shouldn’t talk about this, but I just met them just the one time. But they they have a data lake they bring everything into, anyway. So they’ve got a bunch of apps. They’ve acquired apps, and as they do, they, they get those apps to, then bring the data into their data. Lake.
229 00:33:28.036 ⇒ 00:33:45.979 dougw: Is there a is there a thing for you to do there? If they’re already that far like, if they’ve already got their data lake. And and they think they’ve got an AI model that might work. But it’s not working out for them. They just can’t get nowhere. Is that where you could come in and say, Yeah, we could fix this. We can make this work for you.
230 00:33:50.690 ⇒ 00:33:54.910 dougw: Yeah, it’s not easy.
231 00:33:55.200 ⇒ 00:33:58.349 dougw: Yeah. So we do both like strategy work, and it will also handle
232 00:34:00.910 ⇒ 00:34:04.190 dougw: so that people audit all their stuff
233 00:34:12.560 ⇒ 00:34:13.440 dougw: on both.
234 00:34:15.199 ⇒ 00:34:16.120 dougw: Make that stop around.
235 00:34:19.030 ⇒ 00:34:26.640 dougw: Okay, okay, cool. All right. Well, yeah. I mean, it seems, yeah.
236 00:34:27.210 ⇒ 00:34:39.289 dougw: yeah, do you? So are you just do you all know, do you? Are you big into the AI end of it like, do you know the Ml models and and how to build all that? Or are you more like, I know, the
237 00:34:39.400 ⇒ 00:34:44.430 dougw: yeah, yeah, we’re getting more into like fine tuning.
238 00:34:46.230 ⇒ 00:34:47.290 dougw: But nobody.
239 00:34:48.570 ⇒ 00:34:51.360 dougw: Yeah, we’re more like actually implementing.
240 00:34:51.969 ⇒ 00:34:53.300 dougw: Yeah.
241 00:34:54.199 ⇒ 00:35:10.800 dougw: you know how to use the A, the Apis really well and know how they work. Are they complicated? I’m just kind of curious, because I haven’t looked into using them the Apis on any of the stuff. And I it seems like, oh, I’d have to know a lot more about the model itself.
242 00:35:18.100 ⇒ 00:35:19.040 dougw: Yeah.
243 00:35:22.570 ⇒ 00:35:24.460 dougw: the right document at the right time.
244 00:35:26.260 ⇒ 00:35:43.150 dougw: Well, documents and stuff like that, that, you know that stuff gets complex, but it it’s not that hard, in my opinion. Like, if I just want to grab a doc from somewhere as long as there’s an Api to grab that Doc or I build an Api to grab the Doc, or I use an Xml like, you know.
245 00:35:43.290 ⇒ 00:35:54.890 dougw: how does that? Let’s say, you have a thousand autograph and act like the basically go through.
246 00:35:57.280 ⇒ 00:35:59.569 dougw: Yeah, that’s like the part that we do a lot
247 00:36:02.790 ⇒ 00:36:03.840 dougw: slide deck.
248 00:36:06.790 ⇒ 00:36:07.540 dougw: Why, today
249 00:36:11.070 ⇒ 00:36:16.790 dougw: know if it won’t exist like, yeah, no, find the right doctor
250 00:36:17.880 ⇒ 00:36:19.140 dougw: part that out and bring it.
251 00:36:19.900 ⇒ 00:36:21.850 dougw: So there’s a lot of stuff around.
252 00:36:22.500 ⇒ 00:36:49.109 dougw: Let me put a put a scenario. I just kind of curious, I’m sorry to, you know. Give you all this. If you got something else I can let you go. But okay, just a really quick one. So I have. I have, let’s say, the same scenario, the same company. And I’ve got all these documents that I serve up as manuals to airplanes. There’s thousands of them, thousands and hundreds of them, and they they get updated all the time.
253 00:36:49.639 ⇒ 00:37:04.700 dougw: But it’s more like a sharepoint folder that we have, but I’d rather have a a ui on it that AI is looking at those documents and giving me the most up to Date Manual immediately, that that’s in there and giving me the right information that I’ve just asked for
254 00:37:05.000 ⇒ 00:37:07.789 dougw: is that something you guys could could do that.
255 00:37:08.310 ⇒ 00:37:09.010 dougw: Take that.
256 00:37:09.790 ⇒ 00:37:22.250 dougw: Yeah, that’s that’s what I think. Yeah. So you know, the scenarios that you’ve just kind of described is kind of fight on the nose of those guys.
257 00:37:29.700 ⇒ 00:37:31.349 dougw: Multi millionaire people are
258 00:37:35.650 ⇒ 00:37:38.820 dougw: okay, back. In fact, it’s our building.
259 00:37:40.260 ⇒ 00:37:41.000 dougw: Yeah.
260 00:37:41.390 ⇒ 00:37:59.630 dougw: eat your own dog food. That’s what I call it. Like, you know, anytime you can eat your own dog food you can probably win in the market, because, like my friend was like, Oh, you can think of something a niche and start up. And I’m like, Yeah, it’s not that easy. I said that, you know. If I was an accountant, then I would have done this in mip where I worked. But I’m not an accountant.
261 00:38:00.050 ⇒ 00:38:01.220 dougw: I’m the tech guy.
262 00:38:01.320 ⇒ 00:38:25.000 dougw: But if I went back into AI I might go and do something for development, because I know development really well. And I think if we could apply it to testing and and and to, you know, look at all the tickets in the help desk that’s coming out, and then see if they’re working on the right stuff, because you might not be working on the right stuff if you looked at all the tickets, I bet AI could tell you so. If I could build that, I think we could sell it. It would go crazy.
263 00:38:25.000 ⇒ 00:38:32.360 dougw: you know. So somebody, yeah, somebody’s gonna give it. Somebody’s gonna beat me to it, probably. But
264 00:38:32.680 ⇒ 00:39:02.340 dougw: anyways, so I you can. You can use it for things, you know really? Well. So if you know that, then, and that I always think that’s accessible. So it’s smart that you did that in-house thing first.st Yeah. Well, you know, thanks for the time. I mean, it’s nice meeting you. I’d like to keep in touch. So this was fun. It’s fun to just talk to somebody that’s techy and and throw ideas out. And I don’t know.
265 00:39:05.740 ⇒ 00:39:14.699 dougw: Yeah, I mean, if I start learning some of the stuff I might ask you some questions, hey? Should I read through this? Or is this a bunch of nonsense? And I should go to do this instead? You know, you might.
266 00:39:14.900 ⇒ 00:39:28.439 dougw: Yeah. Okay. Okay. How do I say your name? Okay, okay. I didn’t wanna butcher it so great. Well, great great. Seeing. You have a great day.