Meeting Title: Offsite Recap & CoS Backlog Date: 2025-04-29 Meeting participants: Uttam Kumaran, Amber Lin, Robert Tseng
WEBVTT
1 00:01:47.790 ⇒ 00:01:49.020 Amber Lin: Hi, Robert!
2 00:01:49.120 ⇒ 00:01:50.730 Amber Lin: Sorry I’m a bit late.
3 00:01:51.470 ⇒ 00:01:53.220 Robert Tseng: Hey, amber, no worries! How are you?
4 00:01:53.220 ⇒ 00:01:58.799 Amber Lin: I’m good. How did had a little break between all the meetings so? And
5 00:01:59.290 ⇒ 00:02:08.969 Amber Lin: cooked a bit, so I’m a bit recouped, I know to Kyle cause kyle needs some assignments for this week.
6 00:02:09.729 ⇒ 00:02:15.250 Amber Lin: Okay, alright get started. And then she did.
7 00:02:15.650 ⇒ 00:02:16.260 Robert Tseng: Okay.
8 00:02:16.660 ⇒ 00:02:17.360 Amber Lin: Yeah.
9 00:02:24.050 ⇒ 00:02:25.660 Robert Tseng: My driving, or you driving.
10 00:02:28.700 ⇒ 00:02:32.120 Amber Lin: Let’s make it here, let me.
11 00:02:34.120 ⇒ 00:02:35.080 Amber Lin: I
12 00:02:38.160 ⇒ 00:02:49.400 Amber Lin: I did some notes from the offsite. I think I would love to hear what what your takeaways are because I put all of my stuff in
13 00:02:49.840 ⇒ 00:02:51.300 Amber Lin: a notion, Doc.
14 00:02:51.590 ⇒ 00:02:58.239 Amber Lin: but it’s definitely not as thorough as what you would have thought of, because you sort of thought about it from the beginning.
15 00:03:01.390 ⇒ 00:03:02.200 Robert Tseng: So.
16 00:03:02.200 ⇒ 00:03:05.510 Amber Lin: Grab it. I’ll share the document. I’ll just chime in here and there.
17 00:03:05.990 ⇒ 00:03:06.540 Robert Tseng: Sure.
18 00:03:49.260 ⇒ 00:03:59.070 Robert Tseng: yeah, we can just kind of go over this. Yeah, as far as like in Friday week, Friday, demo structure, yeah, I don’t think we’ve really like made a adjustment to this yet, so would like to see.
19 00:03:59.070 ⇒ 00:03:59.450 Amber Lin: The ignorance.
20 00:03:59.450 ⇒ 00:04:00.170 Robert Tseng: Of that?
21 00:04:02.340 ⇒ 00:04:11.210 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think we were saying to do, yeah, like, monthly.
22 00:04:13.020 ⇒ 00:04:13.800 Robert Tseng: Well.
23 00:04:25.880 ⇒ 00:04:31.080 Robert Tseng: yeah. And then quarterly on site.
24 00:04:46.220 ⇒ 00:04:48.400 Robert Tseng: Yes, let’s split that up. So
25 00:04:48.610 ⇒ 00:04:50.299 Robert Tseng: yeah, I do think we should
26 00:04:50.610 ⇒ 00:05:00.410 Robert Tseng: make some. We should actually make this happen. So I mean, I think it’d be great if, like
27 00:05:01.270 ⇒ 00:05:07.909 Robert Tseng: you and Hannah together could could drive this. I think that’d be helpful. I I know she likes
28 00:05:11.220 ⇒ 00:05:12.070 Robert Tseng: Is.
29 00:05:12.470 ⇒ 00:05:19.189 Robert Tseng: She enjoys like doing like emceeing for events. And
30 00:05:20.010 ⇒ 00:05:28.339 Robert Tseng: yeah, just like creating more personal engagement. So I think she can do that with you. So I would. I would suggest this. So.
31 00:05:28.340 ⇒ 00:05:33.730 Amber Lin: I’ll lean on her for all the visuals and demos, so that helpful.
32 00:05:35.360 ⇒ 00:05:38.380 Robert Tseng: Amber. And Hannah do.
33 00:05:42.240 ⇒ 00:05:46.459 Robert Tseng: Yeah. And then, obviously, this is more. For like, we, Tom.
34 00:05:55.440 ⇒ 00:05:58.529 Robert Tseng: yeah. And then I think this is self explanatory
35 00:05:58.650 ⇒ 00:06:01.677 Robert Tseng: as far as like function, specific workshops.
36 00:06:04.110 ⇒ 00:06:06.530 Robert Tseng: yeah, I mean, we are doing sales
37 00:06:07.930 ⇒ 00:06:12.799 Robert Tseng: office hours, lots of retros for anyone to attend.
38 00:06:13.280 ⇒ 00:06:15.599 Amber Lin: They’re not really happening, though.
39 00:06:16.110 ⇒ 00:06:19.600 Amber Lin: And so I think we need to look at
40 00:06:19.740 ⇒ 00:06:23.859 Amber Lin: of like what we want these times to be for
41 00:06:25.490 ⇒ 00:06:29.910 Amber Lin: right now. I kind of just use them as oh, I know this time Robert will
42 00:06:30.300 ⇒ 00:06:36.019 Amber Lin: but be be online, because other times it’s kind of hard to catch both you and Utam.
43 00:06:36.890 ⇒ 00:06:37.345 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
44 00:06:37.800 ⇒ 00:06:41.289 Amber Lin: We just define what all of these meetings will be, for
45 00:06:41.850 ⇒ 00:06:45.250 Amber Lin: there’s data meetings, I believe, for the data platform
46 00:06:46.396 ⇒ 00:06:49.980 Amber Lin: marketing has their own meetings.
47 00:06:50.990 ⇒ 00:06:55.230 Amber Lin: But since we talk about that, I guess marketing could also have.
48 00:06:55.670 ⇒ 00:07:05.960 Amber Lin: like a specific timeframe, where people can also go in and see how they can say, attend more events or get help on posting on Linkedin
49 00:07:06.070 ⇒ 00:07:13.449 Amber Lin: ideally, I would love that to happen. I just don’t know how motivated people would actually go to this those office hours.
50 00:07:13.770 ⇒ 00:07:16.550 Amber Lin: and I don’t want Hannah to just be waiting there.
51 00:07:18.100 ⇒ 00:07:18.800 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
52 00:07:28.730 ⇒ 00:07:46.899 Robert Tseng: I mean, I think the point of this is really to have a time, or anyone can come in and ask questions for the sales office hours. Now that we have the go to market team kicked off, I think that kind of kicks off like some of the Sales Ops work. I mean, we have like people that are thinking about it now so and then, as far as like
53 00:07:47.840 ⇒ 00:07:55.629 Robert Tseng: retros and catching up on like who we’ve been talking to progress since we made like, I, yeah, I think we
54 00:07:59.300 ⇒ 00:08:16.970 Robert Tseng: yeah. I mean, if we get booked over because there is a call or something like. I I think that’s fair, like I I don’t know. I don’t really know what to say about that. I talked to Tom regularly on our on our lead pipeline and the sales channels up. So I mean, it’s really just a placeholder. I think it’s meant to be shifted around.
55 00:08:17.420 ⇒ 00:08:32.990 Robert Tseng: I mean, if there were specific topics that you wanted to talk about as a visitor coming in. Then, like we just, you know, we can protect that time. But yeah, otherwise, like. I kind of see it as a placeholder, and not something that I’m not preparing for it every week. I’m just that’s just time that’s open.
56 00:08:33.429 ⇒ 00:08:34.369 Amber Lin: That’s good.
57 00:08:36.679 ⇒ 00:08:37.699 Amber Lin: See?
58 00:08:39.009 ⇒ 00:08:40.114 Amber Lin: So
59 00:08:43.719 ⇒ 00:08:49.909 Amber Lin: let’s move on to the other parts. I bet things will just come up as we as we continue to think about them.
60 00:08:50.370 ⇒ 00:08:51.110 Robert Tseng: Okay.
61 00:08:51.110 ⇒ 00:08:56.030 Amber Lin: Cross functional office hours. Yeah, it just ties into the week.
62 00:08:56.030 ⇒ 00:08:56.820 Amber Lin: Okay.
63 00:08:59.030 ⇒ 00:09:01.419 Robert Tseng: So we have the data platform.
64 00:09:03.350 ⇒ 00:09:08.930 Robert Tseng: It means we also have AI team meetings.
65 00:09:09.110 ⇒ 00:09:13.360 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and that pretty much covers everything. Yeah.
66 00:09:13.810 ⇒ 00:09:17.740 Robert Tseng: So I do think that we are kind of doing this now. So
67 00:09:18.290 ⇒ 00:09:25.610 Robert Tseng: okay, company should leverage presence in major Us. Cities. So what? La New York, Austin?
68 00:09:27.480 ⇒ 00:09:30.519 Robert Tseng: Well, I’ll just kind of go through one by one, so.
69 00:09:31.770 ⇒ 00:09:32.150 Amber Lin: Hmm.
70 00:09:32.150 ⇒ 00:09:42.590 Robert Tseng: Yeah. So Robert attends one to 2 events a week plus local marketing via Linkedin.
71 00:09:43.580 ⇒ 00:09:48.100 Robert Tseng: I mean same thing with Austin. So I think we’re definitely doing that.
72 00:09:48.290 ⇒ 00:09:58.500 Amber Lin: I would love to also start attending events as well. I put it as some. I was doing my review retro last month.
73 00:09:58.860 ⇒ 00:10:07.519 Amber Lin: and it’s just been so much task like here and there that I didn’t even have space to think about this. But I really would love to
74 00:10:07.620 ⇒ 00:10:09.529 Amber Lin: attend events as well.
75 00:10:09.780 ⇒ 00:10:10.390 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
76 00:10:12.430 ⇒ 00:10:21.000 Amber Lin: Like not even the bigger conferences was just small meetups to start with, and plus, I need some practice to experience how to talk about
77 00:10:21.140 ⇒ 00:10:23.289 Amber Lin: like just all these topics.
78 00:10:24.020 ⇒ 00:10:25.119 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Totally.
79 00:10:25.230 ⇒ 00:10:25.930 Robert Tseng: Hey? What’s up?
80 00:10:25.930 ⇒ 00:10:26.960 Amber Lin: Bye.
81 00:10:28.822 ⇒ 00:10:32.267 Robert Tseng: We’re just going over this outline that
82 00:10:33.020 ⇒ 00:10:38.160 Robert Tseng: amber put together from our offsite. We’re just kind of reviewing kind of similar what we did with.
83 00:10:38.370 ⇒ 00:10:41.690 Robert Tseng: you know the the sales okrs yesterday? On my.
84 00:10:41.830 ⇒ 00:10:45.850 Robert Tseng: it was what we said we were, gonna do. How are we doing towards? How are we tracking towards those.
85 00:10:46.010 ⇒ 00:10:46.585 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
86 00:10:47.300 ⇒ 00:10:58.090 Robert Tseng: Yeah. So I think the takeaway. So far, one is like, yeah, the Demos weekly Demos. I don’t think we really revamp them yet. I just kind of suggested that Amber and Hannah run these every week.
87 00:10:58.617 ⇒ 00:11:05.070 Robert Tseng: With kind of some of the more engagement demo focus kind of approach that we mentioned.
88 00:11:06.120 ⇒ 00:11:11.830 Robert Tseng: And then we can just do like monthly goal setting and retros like, yeah, so.
89 00:11:11.830 ⇒ 00:11:15.109 Amber Lin: Yeah, I’ll let run the fun parts.
90 00:11:15.528 ⇒ 00:11:18.710 Amber Lin: I won’t do the I can do the other ones.
91 00:11:18.710 ⇒ 00:11:48.560 Uttam Kumaran: No. And I, I think getting this off of our hands is actually really, really important. And I want more people to feel open to presenting their work. But yeah, Fridays, like it’s just an it’s just a good day to just celebrate like wins for everybody. And just get everyone excited going to the weekend, and and, you know, being able for people to show their work. That’s what I’ve seen really, really successful. And then me and Robert are more just like there to assist or like. Add context.
92 00:11:48.560 ⇒ 00:11:48.950 Amber Lin: Yeah.
93 00:11:49.304 ⇒ 00:11:52.450 Uttam Kumaran: But that would be amazing.
94 00:11:53.070 ⇒ 00:11:53.670 Amber Lin: Awesome.
95 00:11:54.760 ⇒ 00:11:59.180 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so kind of open to you how you wanna like, take these kind of
96 00:11:59.330 ⇒ 00:12:05.119 Robert Tseng: guidelines and run with that amber. I don’t think we have to force people to present something every week like, I think.
97 00:12:05.830 ⇒ 00:12:21.569 Robert Tseng: don’t have a culture where people are proactive and jumping at it. So I do think we kind of need you to probably nudge people so that we have, you know, a few every week, and then hopefully, there are some momentum, and people will start, be willing to share to to jump in and share and share things.
98 00:12:21.850 ⇒ 00:12:23.000 Amber Lin: Sounds good.
99 00:12:23.000 ⇒ 00:12:27.639 Uttam Kumaran: Piece. Here is also the, I think the shout outs worked well, like the last 2 companies I was at
100 00:12:28.077 ⇒ 00:12:35.290 Uttam Kumaran: but the the thing is that we Co, we use like there’s like a couple of little shout out Bots! That will collect it ahead of schedule
101 00:12:35.410 ⇒ 00:12:40.309 Uttam Kumaran: that maybe it’s you could probably do it manually for a little bit, but I think
102 00:12:40.490 ⇒ 00:12:43.539 Uttam Kumaran: people can submit anonymous shout outs like throughout the week.
103 00:12:44.280 ⇒ 00:12:47.990 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know something like that. It’s just what I’ve seen. I’ve
104 00:12:48.270 ⇒ 00:12:55.570 Uttam Kumaran: these meetings are often like a struggle, a lot of companies. So I think, just making sure that we highlight that people are doing like crushing it. You know.
105 00:12:57.100 ⇒ 00:12:57.860 Amber Lin: Totally.
106 00:12:59.120 ⇒ 00:13:10.609 Robert Tseng: Yeah, amber. So if you could just set some time with Hannah like you to, just you know me in the middle of the week or something, or I don’t know. If you decide you want to do earlier midweek, then kind of give people a heads up
107 00:13:10.710 ⇒ 00:13:15.960 Robert Tseng: couple of days in advance so like if they want to prepare anything and share it, then that would do. They would do so.
108 00:13:16.290 ⇒ 00:13:24.427 Robert Tseng: I know. Maybe sometimes we, Tom and I, would nominate someone like, I want to nominate Annie this week. She felt like a sick dashboard for
109 00:13:25.060 ⇒ 00:13:26.450 Robert Tseng: for Eden, and I want.
110 00:13:26.450 ⇒ 00:13:27.120 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, nice!
111 00:13:27.120 ⇒ 00:13:28.399 Robert Tseng: Brag about it, so.
112 00:13:28.830 ⇒ 00:13:29.260 Amber Lin: Hmm.
113 00:13:29.260 ⇒ 00:13:29.890 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
114 00:13:30.870 ⇒ 00:13:34.510 Robert Tseng: But now, that’s just like an example.
115 00:13:36.550 ⇒ 00:13:48.359 Robert Tseng: yeah. So that’s that as far as like weekly functional specific workshops. I mean, we talked about how sales office hours and retros. It’s just a placeholder. We have a go to market sales team now, so
116 00:13:48.520 ⇒ 00:13:54.849 Robert Tseng: we do stand ups there. It just feels like we’ve separated sales operations from just like.
117 00:13:54.950 ⇒ 00:13:56.640 Robert Tseng: yeah, just like sales.
118 00:13:57.830 ⇒ 00:13:58.450 Uttam Kumaran: Update like.
119 00:13:58.450 ⇒ 00:14:00.399 Robert Tseng: The sales updates. Yeah,
120 00:14:02.510 ⇒ 00:14:09.110 Robert Tseng: yeah, so I think that’s fine market. We don’t have this yet. So I think this is kind of like a do
121 00:14:11.120 ⇒ 00:14:12.220 Robert Tseng: 2.
122 00:14:12.580 ⇒ 00:14:18.332 Robert Tseng: Host, would you want to host this kind of like?
123 00:14:19.960 ⇒ 00:14:23.420 Robert Tseng: no agenda space for people to come?
124 00:14:24.930 ⇒ 00:14:27.459 Robert Tseng: And what about your roadmap?
125 00:14:28.400 ⇒ 00:14:38.620 Robert Tseng: Yeah, data platform. AI is already kind of kicked off. So we’re good on those. Yeah. And then, now, we’re talking about what we said would be our external networking strategy.
126 00:14:39.221 ⇒ 00:14:44.510 Robert Tseng: Yeah, we’re activated in New York, Austin. I have another event in a couple of hours. So
127 00:14:44.670 ⇒ 00:14:48.910 Robert Tseng: I know we’re we’re definitely doing what we can to put ourselves out there.
128 00:14:49.553 ⇒ 00:14:54.270 Robert Tseng: La Amber wants to start attending events. So finding meetups and stuff.
129 00:14:54.540 ⇒ 00:15:00.400 Robert Tseng: you know, I think Amber would be helpful, you know. I guess I don’t know if you’re that just well.
130 00:15:00.590 ⇒ 00:15:07.098 Robert Tseng: so Jarell runs, you know. I I would say, just ask. You’re possibly good person again, you know.
131 00:15:07.460 ⇒ 00:15:07.850 Amber Lin: Hmm.
132 00:15:07.850 ⇒ 00:15:09.416 Robert Tseng: Get some lead there like.
133 00:15:10.910 ⇒ 00:15:34.820 Robert Tseng: there’s a data. La, meet up even the the happy hour that we threw the the friend that pies brought along like, you know, he hosts events to. I forgot his name to be honest. But yeah, you know, there’s I think there’s small ways that beyond, like the industry conferences that I agree like, it’s kind of a hit or miss that whether or not we’ll get into them. Yeah, you could you could start.
134 00:15:35.060 ⇒ 00:15:36.210 Robert Tseng: yeah.
135 00:15:36.210 ⇒ 00:15:45.170 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Like, once you go to a couple of these, you’ll get on some newsletters. You’ll sort of identify which ones are legit versus which one is just like.
136 00:15:45.170 ⇒ 00:15:45.580 Amber Lin: Okay.
137 00:15:45.580 ⇒ 00:15:47.679 Uttam Kumaran: People looking for jobs and stuff and.
138 00:15:47.680 ⇒ 00:15:48.130 Amber Lin: Okay.
139 00:15:48.130 ⇒ 00:15:51.870 Uttam Kumaran: You’ll get some reps, and it’ll naturally just cascade like.
140 00:15:52.060 ⇒ 00:15:52.940 Amber Lin: Okay, I think also.
141 00:15:52.940 ⇒ 00:15:56.920 Uttam Kumaran: It ends up being like one out of 5 or one out of 10.
142 00:15:57.020 ⇒ 00:16:01.920 Uttam Kumaran: You know. I end up meeting someone pretty cool, or meeting a new friend or meeting someone like we do business with
143 00:16:02.560 ⇒ 00:16:18.500 Uttam Kumaran: like. I think I’m more aggressive now, and that I don’t go to. I always try to only go to the stuff where there’s like actually gonna be business value. But I think it’s helpful. You’ll meet a lot of people, too. So, looking to just like, go to one of those a week is probably like a good barometer to start with.
144 00:16:18.760 ⇒ 00:16:29.860 Amber Lin: Okay, great let’s, I’m gonna note that down. So one week. And then you mentioned Pius and
145 00:16:30.230 ⇒ 00:16:35.209 Amber Lin: are good people to reach out to to get a intro or get a sense of things.
146 00:16:35.210 ⇒ 00:16:39.250 Robert Tseng: Yeah, python’s pretty well connected, he he’s he’s attending these things all the time.
147 00:16:39.920 ⇒ 00:16:42.080 Amber Lin: Hmm, awesome. Okay.
148 00:16:42.190 ⇒ 00:16:46.160 Amber Lin: Next point, participation.
149 00:16:46.800 ⇒ 00:16:58.650 Robert Tseng: Yeah. So this was more like, okay, well, how do we equip people to be out in events? I mean, right now, it’s just us 3. So I don’t think we’re gonna build out an scp or anything but amber. If you just have questions you can just ask me so. But I will help you out.
150 00:16:58.650 ⇒ 00:17:07.749 Amber Lin: Cool, and I think this is a great chance. If you can comment right there of, as I learn about these, I’ll just write. I’ll just like note them down.
151 00:17:07.920 ⇒ 00:17:08.970 Robert Tseng: Yeah, okay.
152 00:17:09.490 ⇒ 00:17:15.339 Amber Lin: So I’ll just use make it like recreatable repeatable for other people.
153 00:17:18.869 ⇒ 00:17:23.539 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think the only thing that could be a good stretch is. I asked if the
154 00:17:24.209 ⇒ 00:17:28.719 Uttam Kumaran: if the team wants to just like scrape a couple of meetups, or for whatever for each
155 00:17:29.029 ⇒ 00:17:34.779 Uttam Kumaran: city that everybody’s in, just for like data or AI stuff, I mean, Austin is pretty small, like
156 00:17:35.399 ⇒ 00:17:37.359 Uttam Kumaran: there’s only like a couple every week
157 00:17:37.589 ⇒ 00:17:43.449 Uttam Kumaran: pretty easy, but maybe New York and Sf. And la, maybe there may be a ton, so I don’t know if that’s helpful.
158 00:17:43.960 ⇒ 00:17:45.530 Amber Lin: There’s also not that much.
159 00:17:45.750 ⇒ 00:17:46.330 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, wow!
160 00:17:47.008 ⇒ 00:17:58.729 Amber Lin: At least on the meetups and eventbrite that I look at, because maybe, though, those are more of newsletter things of if you get in the circle. Then it starts circulating.
161 00:17:58.730 ⇒ 00:17:59.460 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
162 00:17:59.460 ⇒ 00:17:59.900 Amber Lin: Yeah.
163 00:17:59.900 ⇒ 00:18:03.909 Robert Tseng: Yeah. You gotta try to get it on some of the closed door. Stuff the stuff that’s on
164 00:18:04.090 ⇒ 00:18:06.300 Robert Tseng: via Luma, or like.
165 00:18:07.470 ⇒ 00:18:14.739 Robert Tseng: I don’t know, invite only kind of events. I think those I found have been more valuable than the
166 00:18:15.110 ⇒ 00:18:17.080 Robert Tseng: then the eventbrite beat up.
167 00:18:17.080 ⇒ 00:18:17.760 Amber Lin: Yeah, yeah.
168 00:18:17.890 ⇒ 00:18:18.670 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
169 00:18:20.720 ⇒ 00:18:30.889 Robert Tseng: But anyway, just go and try it out. Yeah. So events to consider. So local meetups, that’s what we’re talking about. Industry conferences. We haven’t planned a conference schedule yet. So
170 00:18:35.490 ⇒ 00:18:37.230 Robert Tseng: to evaluate.
171 00:18:37.350 ⇒ 00:18:43.320 Robert Tseng: How was vixel conference impact, you know?
172 00:18:43.820 ⇒ 00:18:51.980 Robert Tseng: Oh, many qualified, read so many our heiress.
173 00:18:53.820 ⇒ 00:19:04.149 Robert Tseng: What like materials, co-marketing materials. Did we get out of it? Basically, I want to back into into like an Roi calculation
174 00:19:07.210 ⇒ 00:19:10.900 Robert Tseng: on like, how do we measure
175 00:19:11.900 ⇒ 00:19:25.889 Robert Tseng: conference success, right? Like Yc companies, like they’re always going to conferences that’s like one of their main ways to break out of like the Yc cult in terms of like getting actual customers that aren’t just people, and from book face.
176 00:19:26.180 ⇒ 00:19:47.049 Robert Tseng: But like, yeah, I think I don’t think there’s. I think we kind of it’s interesting. We can’t just like use their playbook because they just they just, you know, they just throw a bunch of money at whatever I’ve been talking to a guy who he works at 11 x now, but like he was a Yc. Founder, and he’s been running it for a couple of years before they got acquired in September.
177 00:19:47.330 ⇒ 00:20:05.380 Robert Tseng: And actually, what he was saying was that like, it was kind of similar to like kind of our budget breakdown where yeah, 60% of their marketing budget was going to events. So you know, if they if they raised 200 grand and like 50% of that was going, you know, to marketing.
178 00:20:05.640 ⇒ 00:20:10.809 Robert Tseng: They, you know, they they spent like 60, 60, grand on on conferences, and that was like
179 00:20:11.150 ⇒ 00:20:16.790 Robert Tseng: something, and then everything else. It was like that. They didn’t really do much paid ads. And it was just like
180 00:20:17.090 ⇒ 00:20:25.268 Robert Tseng: obviously trying to do plg using content or viral like drops to like try to bring attention to their to their app.
181 00:20:25.640 ⇒ 00:20:25.970 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
182 00:20:25.970 ⇒ 00:20:27.350 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Yeah. So
183 00:20:27.550 ⇒ 00:20:33.680 Robert Tseng: anyway, like, we’re not a place yet where we really set marketing budget and whatnot. But I think that exercise of like.
184 00:20:33.900 ⇒ 00:20:40.459 Robert Tseng: hey? Like I mean, I think momentum wise like Vixel was, you know, anecdotally was like a good
185 00:20:40.750 ⇒ 00:20:42.580 Robert Tseng: momentum shifter for us
186 00:20:42.860 ⇒ 00:20:55.619 Robert Tseng: so like, and we haven’t gone through answering these questions, yet we thought we probably should go through this exercise. We, we should think, think about like, what are some other conferences we should hit up this this year. Yeah.
187 00:20:56.220 ⇒ 00:21:00.210 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, also, like, yeah.
188 00:21:00.570 ⇒ 00:21:07.189 Uttam Kumaran: I can finesse. We. I can get us into a bunch of stuff. I think we just need your right? Just need the strategy like.
189 00:21:07.680 ⇒ 00:21:10.860 Uttam Kumaran: And yeah, we need to. Basically.
190 00:21:11.120 ⇒ 00:21:16.000 Uttam Kumaran: the ship needs to be running well enough where we can go. Do like a 2 day thing
191 00:21:16.120 ⇒ 00:21:20.130 Uttam Kumaran: go like really, really hard in the paint at the, at the event.
192 00:21:20.240 ⇒ 00:21:23.080 Uttam Kumaran: like Vixel, where we like talk or like.
193 00:21:23.350 ⇒ 00:21:25.880 Uttam Kumaran: we just like line up a ton of meetings.
194 00:21:28.780 ⇒ 00:21:39.359 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, and we’re able just to rock it. It was very energizing. And it did lead to a lot of conversations that I’m still having with folks, and it it helped
195 00:21:39.500 ⇒ 00:21:46.900 Uttam Kumaran: a couple other things to help with one. It helped fill in stuff on Linkedin, so that added several
196 00:21:47.320 ⇒ 00:21:49.929 Uttam Kumaran: things like sort of the habits section that like.
197 00:21:50.300 ⇒ 00:21:58.180 Uttam Kumaran: that’s 1 thing that we get a lot of assets out of it like pictures, video speaking engagements.
198 00:21:58.680 ⇒ 00:22:00.600 Uttam Kumaran: So there is a lot of benefit.
199 00:22:00.930 ⇒ 00:22:06.629 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think maybe we should think about an Roi exercise, because at least that’ll give me a budget for like.
200 00:22:06.810 ⇒ 00:22:12.420 Uttam Kumaran: okay, we’re only we, we basically can consider that these are all worth like 10 K, if we go.
201 00:22:12.540 ⇒ 00:22:18.159 Uttam Kumaran: And then that way, I, we could start to manage. Okay, do we want to try to go to a couple here in Austin.
202 00:22:18.310 ⇒ 00:22:22.710 Uttam Kumaran: and then anything where we are involved in? We’ll make a play to go talk like talk, or
203 00:22:23.600 ⇒ 00:22:28.335 Uttam Kumaran: basically get in for free talk, like we’ll find a way. But,
204 00:22:29.420 ⇒ 00:22:31.330 Uttam Kumaran: I agree, like, this is something that
205 00:22:31.770 ⇒ 00:22:38.919 Uttam Kumaran: we we’re sort of doing really willy-nilly, but I think I don’t know. I almost like, do you consider this like a background like
206 00:22:39.910 ⇒ 00:22:45.970 Uttam Kumaran: it’s like, not necessarily like a back like kind of the what do we call habits? It’s not. It could be like that, I guess.
207 00:22:46.632 ⇒ 00:22:49.660 Uttam Kumaran: But it seems like something we should have on a recurring basis.
208 00:22:50.130 ⇒ 00:22:50.860 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
209 00:22:54.190 ⇒ 00:23:01.360 Robert Tseng: yeah. I mean, I think when we when we do, when we close the books this month, we should, we should. Yeah, we should actually try to
210 00:23:01.490 ⇒ 00:23:24.540 Robert Tseng: but throw a marketing budget number out there. Obviously, since we’re adjusting some tooling, pricing, we just turn on clay and we turn off some stuff as well. So yeah, I think we should. We should make a call on that, and then maybe project that out for the next quarter and and just commit to like. Alright, we’re just gonna that’s gonna be our marketing budget for the quarter, and that’ll help us to
211 00:23:24.750 ⇒ 00:23:26.680 Robert Tseng: allocate better for these.
212 00:23:26.980 ⇒ 00:23:28.190 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Okay.
213 00:23:30.350 ⇒ 00:23:38.120 Robert Tseng: Yeah, small gatherings, local meetups like they’re similar. So I’m just gonna delete that family personal networking opportunities.
214 00:23:38.340 ⇒ 00:23:46.669 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I I think this is worth, you know, I think, whether it’s Tom and his Bucknell 30 under 30, like thing I know you haven’t done any sound promotion. There.
215 00:23:46.670 ⇒ 00:23:49.519 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, but that’s some. Yeah. We should totally do something with that.
216 00:23:49.520 ⇒ 00:23:58.680 Robert Tseng: Totally do that. And your alumni network there, you know, Amber and I unfortunately share the same alumni network. So not really multiplying that.
217 00:23:58.680 ⇒ 00:24:01.000 Uttam Kumaran: But Amber has the ey connect. So that’s where.
218 00:24:01.000 ⇒ 00:24:01.760 Robert Tseng: That’s true. Yeah.
219 00:24:01.760 ⇒ 00:24:20.119 Uttam Kumaran: This guy I talked to the today added some ui thing I was like, yo mention that. And yeah. So there’s there’s something there. That’s how I built. I mean my whole. The whole business is built on a lot of that. I just. We haven’t gone to the to the the end of the well on some of these networks.
220 00:24:20.370 ⇒ 00:24:45.010 Uttam Kumaran: and we should like. But we could only sort of we have to pick, which is like, Okay, I’m gonna I’m just gonna run this like a 2 week sprint on Buck now, where I just like get in front of everyone. They just published me in the map. It’s actually pretty good that we should do this soon. But it’s sort of picking like, which initiatives we want to work on at any time. Yeah. Is it a conference sprint? Is it a like case study sprint? Is it a
221 00:24:45.140 ⇒ 00:24:48.619 Uttam Kumaran: let’s go after Bucknell sprint, or
222 00:24:49.240 ⇒ 00:25:04.899 Uttam Kumaran: something like that that way? It gives us some focus, because everything is like we. We go, we have to promote it. We didn’t have to go speak, or do the execution, and it’s all the follow ups right. So taking on too many of those is just not possible. Right now.
223 00:25:06.440 ⇒ 00:25:27.989 Robert Tseng: Yeah. So I agree that it’s yeah. They, kinda these gotta be sprints, you know. So we gotta have that calendar. And I think we work backwards from like, okay, these are the conferences we want to target if we know of them, and then anything else that’s like, there’s no conference in that in that chunk, because, you know, conference seasons really only April, April summer or April spring to summer.
224 00:25:28.670 ⇒ 00:25:29.140 Robert Tseng: Like.
225 00:25:29.990 ⇒ 00:25:33.589 Robert Tseng: Outside of that, we can fill in with some of these. Like
226 00:25:34.100 ⇒ 00:25:38.979 Robert Tseng: all the we could do Buck Mail campaign, we could campaign whatever it is. Yeah.
227 00:25:38.980 ⇒ 00:25:54.899 Uttam Kumaran: No, we should, and and these these should be listed. So these should just be for the marketing team. I basically bucketed all these as what what we call promotions, and we have, like a promotion kit. Now, where we can produce Linkedin headers, carousels, videos.
228 00:25:55.264 ⇒ 00:26:09.380 Uttam Kumaran: and so let’s just list a couple of these like promotions we want to do. These can be webinars. These can be in person events. So we don’t have to get too detailed. But if we want to do a Bucknell one, if we want to do like.
229 00:26:09.670 ⇒ 00:26:13.629 Uttam Kumaran: I work one like we.
230 00:26:22.070 ⇒ 00:26:23.800 Robert Tseng: Is it just me, or did your time cut out.
231 00:26:23.800 ⇒ 00:26:25.479 Uttam Kumaran: Sorry. Sorry did I cut out.
232 00:26:26.950 ⇒ 00:26:28.790 Amber Lin: Yeah, a little towards the end. But.
233 00:26:29.540 ⇒ 00:26:31.419 Uttam Kumaran: But I think you got what I’m saying. So.
234 00:26:31.720 ⇒ 00:26:32.040 Amber Lin: Yeah.
235 00:26:32.040 ⇒ 00:26:32.390 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
236 00:26:32.390 ⇒ 00:26:39.150 Amber Lin: And they made a note to we should list out all of them. And then, yeah, build a calendar to focus each sprint on.
237 00:26:39.920 ⇒ 00:26:43.199 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. And this can go directly on the marketing team. As projects
238 00:26:43.320 ⇒ 00:26:59.269 Uttam Kumaran: and the projects are all time boxed. So there’s a start. There’s a content calendar. There’s an execution either an event or like I don’t know. We can consider now broader, and then there’s like a ending, and then it’s all related to follow ups and things like that. So.
239 00:27:00.525 ⇒ 00:27:01.310 Uttam Kumaran: yeah.
240 00:27:04.440 ⇒ 00:27:04.990 Robert Tseng: Cool.
241 00:27:07.690 ⇒ 00:27:10.360 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I think this is
242 00:27:10.780 ⇒ 00:27:17.270 Robert Tseng: I don’t. I guess I have a question about like marketing. Pm, work. I don’t know. Is amber, helping you much on that side. Your time.
243 00:27:17.270 ⇒ 00:27:18.040 Amber Lin: -
244 00:27:18.400 ⇒ 00:27:25.459 Uttam Kumaran: No, I’m I’m handling it. It’s actually like that team was like that team’s crushing like they’re not. They don’t need anything actually
245 00:27:25.610 ⇒ 00:27:30.069 Uttam Kumaran: like. In fact, once we get all these case studies done, get the one pages done.
246 00:27:30.330 ⇒ 00:27:35.699 Uttam Kumaran: most of their time is just going to go to either. The the next big thing we have to do is the site.
247 00:27:36.209 ⇒ 00:27:57.019 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, but we will have done almost everything we set out to do like, and it’s gone pretty fast. So then, really, the next piece, I just want them to help on promotions like we’ll start to dissect how many of these we can run, and how we can start basically using the marketing team to promote anyone in the company. I don’t think we like, I’m not. I’m spending. Maybe like
248 00:27:57.180 ⇒ 00:28:04.370 Uttam Kumaran: I’m basically spending maybe an hour pming. And then the rest of my time. I’m I’m literally just like reviewing the actual output. So
249 00:28:04.580 ⇒ 00:28:05.429 Uttam Kumaran: it’s not bad.
250 00:28:06.110 ⇒ 00:28:08.390 Robert Tseng: Okay, cool.
251 00:28:09.505 ⇒ 00:28:16.400 Robert Tseng: Oh, yeah. Then I guess this is gonna go on your, I mean, I don’t know if this is gonna go on your point. I mean, we kind of also have to.
252 00:28:18.400 ⇒ 00:28:22.619 Uttam Kumaran: This is where you can also ask Hannah like this is where I think.
253 00:28:22.620 ⇒ 00:28:23.509 Robert Tseng: Much for Hannah.
254 00:28:24.050 ⇒ 00:28:40.050 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think this would be a stretch for Hannah. I I asked. I spent time talking to Hannah a bit about like what her overall goals are, and I think she’s interested in execution. But she’s also interested in like in doing some of these events and things like that. So I think this would be a stretch for Hannah for Base to basically plan it out.
255 00:28:40.170 ⇒ 00:28:49.309 Uttam Kumaran: Every one of our partners that we did a promotion with has really enjoyed working with her, and I think she has a knack for like doing this sort of coordination. So
256 00:28:49.470 ⇒ 00:28:56.680 Uttam Kumaran: I think if she can own basically like coordinating which one to do and like what the key outcomes are.
257 00:28:56.860 ⇒ 00:28:58.330 Uttam Kumaran: I think that’s great.
258 00:28:58.430 ⇒ 00:29:06.500 Uttam Kumaran: and and I don’t know. We’ll see if we get to like kind of goal setting and stuff today, but like I see that as like a great opportunity for her to own
259 00:29:07.480 ⇒ 00:29:07.940 Robert Tseng: Okay.
260 00:29:07.940 ⇒ 00:29:12.679 Uttam Kumaran: It’s just putting us in the putting us in the right spot to to make the right pitch. That’s it. Like
261 00:29:12.850 ⇒ 00:29:16.949 Uttam Kumaran: we’re just pure numbers like, you know, it’s just like, how many people can we pitch
262 00:29:17.200 ⇒ 00:29:20.839 Uttam Kumaran: and like, how how effective can those be? You know? So.
263 00:29:21.450 ⇒ 00:29:29.830 Robert Tseng: Yeah, sounds good. Okay, so
264 00:29:32.770 ⇒ 00:29:37.149 Robert Tseng: yeah, I’m not gonna speak to these next steps. I think this is kind of I’ll leave it open.
265 00:29:37.980 ⇒ 00:29:41.860 Robert Tseng: yeah. So it should cost. Yeah. So
266 00:29:42.010 ⇒ 00:29:46.680 Robert Tseng: I mean, this is kind of more or less addressed with some of the stuff we talked about, and we’ll touch on that.
267 00:29:47.338 ⇒ 00:29:51.350 Robert Tseng: This is basically a repeat of what’s up here. So I’ll skip that.
268 00:29:51.951 ⇒ 00:29:56.929 Robert Tseng: Okay, so is this what we’re gonna spend some time on yeah, career growth goal setting.
269 00:29:59.090 ⇒ 00:30:06.500 Robert Tseng: yeah, I mean, I guess I’ve started. I mean, we’ve all maybe talked to people since about their personal department company goals.
270 00:30:08.270 ⇒ 00:30:09.520 Robert Tseng: Yeah, we we.
271 00:30:09.750 ⇒ 00:30:17.610 Robert Tseng: I don’t know if we’ve really structured it in this way. But yeah, I guess let’s try to
272 00:30:18.500 ⇒ 00:30:21.190 Robert Tseng: kind of reflect a bit here on where.
273 00:30:22.220 ⇒ 00:30:27.089 Robert Tseng: how this was, was this implemented, if not like kind of what adjustments we need to make.
274 00:30:28.430 ⇒ 00:30:29.720 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so, maybe maybe.
275 00:30:29.720 ⇒ 00:30:31.570 Amber Lin: Systematic implementation.
276 00:30:32.740 ⇒ 00:30:33.880 Uttam Kumaran: Wait! Sorry. Say that again.
277 00:30:34.170 ⇒ 00:30:36.969 Amber Lin: I don’t think we had a systematic like.
278 00:30:37.410 ⇒ 00:30:40.369 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, let me let me let me maybe talk about like, so I’ve
279 00:30:40.670 ⇒ 00:30:45.600 Uttam Kumaran: I typically have one on ones with most people unless they get
280 00:30:46.020 ⇒ 00:30:50.100 Uttam Kumaran: bumped like every 3 weeks, I would say
281 00:30:50.596 ⇒ 00:31:03.760 Uttam Kumaran: until unless I some people I just talked to so so often. But I’ve been basically I put together. A group I put together, basically a template of like a goal setting template, which is just like.
282 00:31:03.940 ⇒ 00:31:28.450 Uttam Kumaran: list out your goals. I don’t know Amber, if you if you have that, I’m just on my phone. But if you have that, I it’s basically just ask people to reflect on their goals and how it could ladder up. And you know one of the things that I I sort of thought about here was I was in the car like a few weeks ago in Sf. And my friend’s girlfriend is doing like a master’s
283 00:31:28.740 ⇒ 00:31:40.040 Uttam Kumaran: or like we’re doing like an Mba extension course, like I don’t know. She already has an Mba. I don’t know what shell she’s studying for, but she’s she was studying like organizational excellence, or like
284 00:31:40.280 ⇒ 00:31:59.140 Uttam Kumaran: organizational hierarchy or something, and I was like, Okay, we were like, on the way into Sf, for like an hour. I’m like, let’s just talk about that. And I talked to her about goal setting, and she was explaining to me a lot of the science behind it. And I probably can get the research. But basically, I asked her like, what is the biggest indicator basically
285 00:31:59.310 ⇒ 00:32:00.200 Uttam Kumaran: of like
286 00:32:00.320 ⇒ 00:32:06.000 Uttam Kumaran: goals being achieved. And she said, the number one by far is if you can get people to
287 00:32:06.434 ⇒ 00:32:28.500 Uttam Kumaran: basically write their, write their own goals and set the goals themselves. And this is something I think many companies make a mistake on. I think we were very close to making a mistake on, because I was just thinking about like maybe we should just write everyone goals and then ladder them up like, it’ll be a great little optimization problem. And
288 00:32:28.550 ⇒ 00:32:48.910 Uttam Kumaran: I was like, Oh, instead, like, we should have everyone write what they think their goals are, and then take it from there and help basically shape it into something that’s accomplishable, something that ladders up into company things. And then it gives them something that we can both reflect on, but they’re bought in on. So that’s my like 2 cents reflection that I’ve been thinking a lot about
289 00:32:49.285 ⇒ 00:32:55.380 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve I don’t think I’ve been in a company where this is like been done. Well, I mean, I worked in. I worked
290 00:32:55.630 ⇒ 00:33:03.960 Uttam Kumaran: in engineering large engineering orgs like company, like service now, or something where this is one meeting a quarter and like
291 00:33:04.570 ⇒ 00:33:11.520 Uttam Kumaran: sort of like a useless meeting. It’s sort of like a checkbox meeting. I’ve also worked at like a small company. Where, like.
292 00:33:11.830 ⇒ 00:33:16.559 Uttam Kumaran: if you ask someone like yo, can you help me think about my goals? They sort of laugh at you, and they’re like.
293 00:33:16.760 ⇒ 00:33:24.909 Uttam Kumaran: what do you mean? Dude, like the goal is to like grow the company. So I think we have an opportunity to do this really the right way, you know. So.
294 00:33:28.060 ⇒ 00:33:29.429 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so.
295 00:33:29.786 ⇒ 00:33:30.499 Amber Lin: Go ahead!
296 00:33:31.287 ⇒ 00:33:33.070 Robert Tseng: Was just taking some notes. Yeah.
297 00:33:34.033 ⇒ 00:33:40.499 Amber Lin: So what I’ve been doing recently, I’ve been meeting with people for the AI part, but as part of it.
298 00:33:40.964 ⇒ 00:33:43.880 Amber Lin: I also asked some of it. Is there something.
299 00:33:44.630 ⇒ 00:33:57.520 Amber Lin: career wise or even personally? You want to achieve this quarter? And most of them tell me about a way they want to get stretched. So I do have data on most people, except for
300 00:33:58.040 ⇒ 00:34:00.310 Amber Lin: so for Ann, she has still.
301 00:34:00.310 ⇒ 00:34:03.139 Uttam Kumaran: Nobody asked me how I want to get, how I want to stretch.
302 00:34:03.140 ⇒ 00:34:08.509 Amber Lin: I want. I wanted to ask you. I sent you the meeting link. You did not book a meeting
303 00:34:09.315 ⇒ 00:34:09.710 Amber Lin: so.
304 00:34:09.710 ⇒ 00:34:14.480 Uttam Kumaran: I’m like, I don’t need to be stretched. I need to be compressed.
305 00:34:15.730 ⇒ 00:34:19.840 Uttam Kumaran: I need to be like, yeah, brought back into one board.
306 00:34:19.840 ⇒ 00:34:21.166 Uttam Kumaran: Jello, like.
307 00:34:27.520 ⇒ 00:34:38.779 Amber Lin: So I will compile those, and I’ll share that. I also wanted to share more on the AI progress. But I need to comb through my own mind first, st because it’s a lot of people.
308 00:34:40.530 ⇒ 00:34:48.070 Uttam Kumaran: Do you have an experience in the professional setting where, like goals, were actually set appropriately, and then, like.
309 00:34:48.270 ⇒ 00:34:50.610 Uttam Kumaran: you’ve met them. And there was some evaluation.
310 00:34:50.610 ⇒ 00:34:51.590 Amber Lin: For me.
311 00:34:51.590 ⇒ 00:34:52.440 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
312 00:34:52.440 ⇒ 00:34:55.071 Amber Lin: No, I just asked for stuff.
313 00:34:55.510 ⇒ 00:34:57.669 Uttam Kumaran: Well, yeah, I mean same. But like.
314 00:34:58.270 ⇒ 00:35:08.990 Amber Lin: No, it was mostly of. I just asked, can I do this? They either say yes or no. There was no really a structured goal setting at most, I think.
315 00:35:09.220 ⇒ 00:35:14.340 Amber Lin: or maybe there wasn’t even one, because I always I I sort of gave them my goals.
316 00:35:14.550 ⇒ 00:35:21.160 Amber Lin: And then they’re like, okay, great. So I I just track my own goals. So I haven’t had a company that did it for me.
317 00:35:21.500 ⇒ 00:35:22.060 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
318 00:35:22.430 ⇒ 00:35:25.710 Robert Tseng: I think that what we’ve been doing for amber is like.
319 00:35:25.920 ⇒ 00:35:26.360 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
320 00:35:26.360 ⇒ 00:35:30.520 Robert Tseng: Is like a good step in that direction. Yes, we’re trying to.
321 00:35:31.190 ⇒ 00:35:37.939 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Obviously, like, yeah, amber is, you know, abnormally proactive and asking for what she wants. But also, like we get to help
322 00:35:38.100 ⇒ 00:35:44.279 Robert Tseng: kind of share, like from a role, perspective or function perspective, like, what does
323 00:35:44.570 ⇒ 00:36:03.620 Robert Tseng: her questions and asking for things like, what does that actually roll up into? And so we’re defining what that function looks like, and then kind of like trying to phase in different levels of responsibility there. So we don’t do. We haven’t done that exercise to every person. And I think that’s fine. I definitely only want to offer it to the people who are full time with us.
324 00:36:03.850 ⇒ 00:36:06.739 Robert Tseng: But yeah, I feel like, that’s that’s that.
325 00:36:06.960 ⇒ 00:36:14.089 Robert Tseng: Yeah. I I think, maybe similarly to you, Tom like I I don’t feel like anybody really did that for me in in the industry like it’s
326 00:36:14.270 ⇒ 00:36:18.939 Robert Tseng: if anything, it’s just like a 6 month or yearly check in where you talk about
327 00:36:19.140 ⇒ 00:36:29.149 Robert Tseng: your goals, and you know, with your manager, and you never look at it again until they ask about it, for, like 6 months later. So yeah, if anything.
328 00:36:31.790 ⇒ 00:36:57.630 Robert Tseng: when I think feel like for all of our full time folks which Tom’s already doing this, you know, with with a wish with, you know, getting them to. And they’re expressing more interest and wanting to participate in, you know, in in things beyond just the scope that they started in. So I think we are heading in this direction. Anything? Yeah, I agree with. We need people to write out and set their own goals. We need a culture here of people managing up and not us like.
329 00:36:57.630 ⇒ 00:36:58.210 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
330 00:36:58.210 ⇒ 00:37:06.410 Robert Tseng: I’m not gonna write down. I mean, we, you know, I share some stuff with amber. But yeah, you know, Amber, you’re you’re gonna have to own, like what your, what your growth looks like.
331 00:37:06.410 ⇒ 00:37:20.790 Uttam Kumaran: I think, Robert, your your inclination there is much better than mine like I definitely have a tendency to just be like, well, what do you think like you know? And I tend to ask, and then what we do is but like, I think certainly
332 00:37:20.940 ⇒ 00:37:40.010 Uttam Kumaran: we should bias towards being more assertive. And my my point being is that like this is actually like a very positive conversation. But this also should help us have the tough conversation on 2 fronts. One. Yeah. Like, if people, we, in order to identify beyond a gut feeling or like
333 00:37:40.120 ⇒ 00:38:08.340 Uttam Kumaran: sort of a sense which that may be good, and that may, we may end up with the same conclusion with people, but that doesn’t mean like that was the right way of doing it. And it also I don’t know. We it may not be compliant longer. Term is just like, Are these people succeeding with us? Right? So on day one, we want to have goals, so we can measure like progress towards them. The second piece is, we’re also gonna start to enable managers. And so we want to start to judge managers based on the
334 00:38:08.570 ⇒ 00:38:19.459 Uttam Kumaran: partly based on their people achieving their goals, whether those goals are set right or not, whether they’re achieving them. And so those are actually the the. I think we’re. We’re gonna have some luck.
335 00:38:19.620 ⇒ 00:38:31.849 Uttam Kumaran: And we have the energy to like interview everybody. Really, holistically, we have great people. For the most part, I think all the people we have now are gonna crush it. But that’s not going to be the case.
336 00:38:31.970 ⇒ 00:38:50.950 Uttam Kumaran: And we are going to definitely bring on people that aren’t going to work out. And it’s the time to identifying that and the time to basically agreeing with that with that person. That’s that’s that’s our timer. And then I also want to be able to have hold managers accountable to their to their people’s like success. Right?
337 00:38:51.315 ⇒ 00:38:55.980 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s those are 2 concepts I wanted to bring up as well like as we talk about this.
338 00:39:00.520 ⇒ 00:39:01.270 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
339 00:39:08.400 ⇒ 00:39:36.259 Robert Tseng: So I think, like this, one of like motivations, I think, is an interesting one. I don’t think we can. We don’t. We can’t tell people what they should be motivated by or whatever. And I think it’s something that comes out naturally, not when you ask people directly, but you can just tell us as we get to know our team a bit more like kind of what what makes them feel like they can show up as their full self at work. And yeah, I think we just, you know, at a certain point, like we we need.
340 00:39:36.630 ⇒ 00:39:55.719 Robert Tseng: we, we should be having regular conversations, you know, if anything like we should be honest about like the morale. I you know I’m listening to a yeah, I’ll I think I’ll have more to to follow up on this, but sounds weird. But I’m I’m reading a business book right now. It’s called getting naked. But it’s a.
341 00:39:55.720 ⇒ 00:39:57.959 Uttam Kumaran: Hey? I feel like I heard about this. Who who wrote it?
342 00:39:58.527 ⇒ 00:40:04.082 Robert Tseng: It’s it’s written. It’s written from like a consult, like a small, like a consultant’s perspective.
343 00:40:04.430 ⇒ 00:40:05.380 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, nice!
344 00:40:06.170 ⇒ 00:40:09.760 Robert Tseng: Yeah, basically, the the context is that like.
345 00:40:09.970 ⇒ 00:40:22.850 Robert Tseng: there is this big consulting firm that, like acquired a small consulting firm and was just trying to like, basically dissect the culture of that of the smaller firm. And why?
346 00:40:23.180 ⇒ 00:40:26.430 Robert Tseng: You know what? What made them successful. And you know, I think it’s
347 00:40:27.330 ⇒ 00:40:41.689 Robert Tseng: yeah, it’s like, anyway. So there’s a i i think there’s some good stuff in there. I haven’t compiled all my thoughts yet, but I I do think some of the nuggets that I’ve gone out of there really have are kind of shaping my paradigm, for we really create space for this.
348 00:40:42.178 ⇒ 00:40:56.860 Robert Tseng: But yeah, so I I you know, I think there there is like clear business roi from it as well. So like this, the smaller company, like. Obviously people, are more motivated when they come to work, but then it also
349 00:40:57.567 ⇒ 00:41:16.550 Robert Tseng: like the client, experience working with them is so different that they on average charge 25% higher than the than the client that they ended up than the company that they ended up getting acquired by even though they operate much, much cleaner and smaller. So I think, like there’s just like good. It just ties together a lot of good things of like.
350 00:41:16.580 ⇒ 00:41:30.189 Robert Tseng: why, having good culture and making everyone feel motivated here like actually translates to like better outcomes for the business, too. So once I kind of distill it all down, then I’ll share more of that. That reflection with with you guys.
351 00:41:30.850 ⇒ 00:41:34.259 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think there’s, I think there’s long term and short term thinking. I think
352 00:41:34.530 ⇒ 00:41:40.140 Uttam Kumaran: this is just a consequence of having to sort of consider everything all the time. I mean, I feel like as
353 00:41:40.550 ⇒ 00:42:06.790 Uttam Kumaran: as part of compared to businesses that I’ve been part of. We have definitely succeeded in being extremely transparent, with like what’s good and what’s bad, and like letting people have a lot of autonomy which I think both in itself contribute to like everyone feeling safe even when we may not pay the most, even when like stuff is kind of all over the place. So part of that is like just the state we’re in. Those things are necessary, like, if we were assholes.
354 00:42:06.880 ⇒ 00:42:18.489 Uttam Kumaran: and we sort of like could pay top dollar then, like there’s not, there’s no success, so we should take advantage of that. Partly, I think you’re also right in all the sort of like contemporary stuff that I’ve read about
355 00:42:18.700 ⇒ 00:42:20.439 Uttam Kumaran: like team building.
356 00:42:20.860 ⇒ 00:42:34.000 Uttam Kumaran: Everything sort of goes towards just like treating. Really your people well, because they ultimately are treat will then treat like the clients. You know. Well, and
357 00:42:34.360 ⇒ 00:42:45.580 Uttam Kumaran: you kind of don’t. This is like, I was sort of listening to a podcast about chick-fil-a and like sort of how the employees there sort of treat you know their their people, and that’s that’s like a big thing. And
358 00:42:45.910 ⇒ 00:43:00.010 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know. I I feel like we. It’s it’s hard to say, that’s similar to like the problem we’re having on marketing where we have these like background or sorry habit, we have these habits. That, like we not we.
359 00:43:00.220 ⇒ 00:43:08.320 Uttam Kumaran: We may be inclined to try to measure the roi of all these decisions, but sometimes it’s just the right thing to do, and we shouldn’t overthink it, you know, and
360 00:43:08.330 ⇒ 00:43:35.199 Uttam Kumaran: and this is maybe something that we should have in our principles or something. But this is something that I just don’t think we should overthink. We really do want to treat everybody well. We want to pay as much as we can, and we want people to be with us for a long time. Those are all like company financial goals, too, like we want to maintain less than 10% attrition hiring and enabling and training people is very expensive. It messes up the client experience.
361 00:43:35.555 ⇒ 00:43:45.650 Uttam Kumaran: So I think all of those sort of play hand in hand. And then the last piece I’ll mention is, I read this document from Vixel, which they called basically like total rewards.
362 00:43:46.018 ⇒ 00:43:53.220 Uttam Kumaran: And we can think about it differently. Rewards kind of sounds like it’s like an amex program or something. But they basically called it like.
363 00:43:53.310 ⇒ 00:44:01.180 Uttam Kumaran: there’s like more than just money. And like what we’re offering right? And I actually, just, I actually just like tried this on Jacob when I sent the email back where I was like.
364 00:44:01.960 ⇒ 00:44:30.419 Uttam Kumaran: I’m trying to explain to people. And sometimes people that are earlier in their career may not see this, and that a company is not just like the salary you get. In fact, if people just look at work that way. They may not work out here because we’re sort of a little bit more than that. But I want to share that. There’s autonomy. We work remote. We’re working on cool problems with a bunch of clients like you get to sort of stretch. Those are all like non financial benefits that like, I want people to highlight as positives.
365 00:44:30.853 ⇒ 00:44:40.139 Uttam Kumaran: And be helpful for us to recruit, you know, faster and cheaper. So yeah, there’s something around total rewards as well. That, I think, is important.
366 00:44:40.960 ⇒ 00:44:41.570 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
367 00:44:44.970 ⇒ 00:44:58.459 Uttam Kumaran: Retention is a big thing like these types of businesses churn a lot of people. It’s very common for it to become a very impersonal workspace and clients. And the client Ltv is what really like gets hurt ultimately.
368 00:45:00.080 ⇒ 00:45:03.550 Uttam Kumaran: But it’s it’s not easy to think about that
369 00:45:03.660 ⇒ 00:45:06.509 Uttam Kumaran: and think about like growing the business quickly, because
370 00:45:06.800 ⇒ 00:45:12.719 Uttam Kumaran: the inclination in this business to hire a bunch of people just throw them at problems and like secure the sale.
371 00:45:13.330 ⇒ 00:45:16.030 Uttam Kumaran: We we don’t do a lot of that, actually.
372 00:45:16.160 ⇒ 00:45:28.980 Uttam Kumaran: Well, maybe to our detriment, you know, like, maybe we would be a lot bigger or a lot faster. But I don’t know. That’s part of like who we are. So we should codify that somehow and really like explain that to people
373 00:45:29.220 ⇒ 00:45:32.469 Uttam Kumaran: when they join and and before they join, or whatever.
374 00:45:40.100 ⇒ 00:45:40.790 Robert Tseng: Okay.
375 00:45:43.190 ⇒ 00:45:47.830 Robert Tseng: yeah, I think this is this kind of being able to work on something like this where we can.
376 00:45:48.720 ⇒ 00:46:06.710 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I’ll ultimately we talk. I think the urgency for being able to put this together is like, when we make more offers to people. Yeah, we’re not. We know we’re not paying like the highest dollar possible. I mean, I think the conditions have changed to everyone’s paying less. But like we, we’re able to clearly articulate what we offer. Not just like, you know.
377 00:46:06.710 ⇒ 00:46:07.050 Uttam Kumaran: Whatever.
378 00:46:07.050 ⇒ 00:46:14.859 Robert Tseng: Random Hr lingo, and like a nice nice packet that they send you full of like icons and stuff. So.
379 00:46:14.860 ⇒ 00:46:30.499 Uttam Kumaran: Totally agree. And I wanna I wanna share that like if you think that. Not that doesn’t contribute. Then you’re mistaken. Like, imagine we said, you have to come to office every day, or imagine this place was an absolute mess, and we were both yelling all the time like, there’s all types of like stuff that
380 00:46:30.640 ⇒ 00:46:34.509 Uttam Kumaran: that like is actually, there are actually all benefits.
381 00:46:34.939 ⇒ 00:46:46.639 Uttam Kumaran: And I don’t know. It takes a different type of person to want to work here, in fact, like I interviewed everybody. And the fact the reason why I liked everybody is, most of the people that join and stuck it out were like longer term thinkers that I could tell
382 00:46:46.770 ⇒ 00:46:52.979 Uttam Kumaran: wanted to succeed at something for a long time, or we’re sort of like duped by some other firm.
383 00:46:53.110 ⇒ 00:46:59.710 Uttam Kumaran: And so that’s like what we want to avoid. And we shouldn’t try should try to avoid the same traps that those guys fall, for.
384 00:46:59.950 ⇒ 00:47:00.740 Uttam Kumaran: you know.
385 00:47:01.240 ⇒ 00:47:01.830 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
386 00:47:03.400 ⇒ 00:47:16.059 Amber Lin: And honestly, I’ve been working on my Linkedin post. I’ve been trying to post back, get back to posting, and the post I’m working on is like, I have a job type of posting, and
387 00:47:16.200 ⇒ 00:47:19.740 Amber Lin: all of the benefits that you mentioned are things that I
388 00:47:19.870 ⇒ 00:47:23.139 Amber Lin: am writing about what I like about here. So
389 00:47:23.620 ⇒ 00:47:36.339 Amber Lin: I guess I guess if we have people posting that as well like that could be a filter of people see, people in their network will see what it’s like to work in this company.
390 00:47:36.600 ⇒ 00:47:37.260 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
391 00:47:37.260 ⇒ 00:47:50.160 Amber Lin: Would also be a marketing initiative. But how do we? How do we share more about the day to day in this company of that we’re not just client facing, because ultimately we want both sides. We want talent and clients.
392 00:47:50.160 ⇒ 00:47:59.179 Uttam Kumaran: Yes. And and as we get more technical as we do bigger projects, we have to go attract people that are going to be more expensive, more experienced.
393 00:47:59.619 ⇒ 00:48:24.059 Uttam Kumaran: It can take us to the next level, and cash is going to be a big thing for those people. And so we want to always defend against that. We want to find a way to to make sure that we’re paying appropriately, but that we’re able to benefit in other ways, and also like we can, then we can eventually start talking about long term like, how do people benefit from overall company outcomes? But I I think
394 00:48:24.070 ⇒ 00:48:37.170 Uttam Kumaran: that’s certainly something we want to keep in mind, and it’s going to be tougher as we try to go after more experienced people. But the more experienced people. They don’t want sort of basic stuff. They want tough challenges, and they want to go after some big challenge right like.
395 00:48:37.260 ⇒ 00:48:57.689 Uttam Kumaran: And our pitch is just gonna change. But our ability to build a great brand around the people we have like not let anyone leave where they have anything bad to say about us. And certainly that helps us like, keep our recruiting costs low, right? Or like, basically we, we get more better candidates, we can afford to. So all those things are
396 00:48:57.960 ⇒ 00:48:59.200 Uttam Kumaran: are important.
397 00:49:04.610 ⇒ 00:49:05.290 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
398 00:49:08.810 ⇒ 00:49:10.563 Robert Tseng: okay, let’s keep going.
399 00:49:16.390 ⇒ 00:49:23.169 Robert Tseng: yeah, I feel like, this is kind of already tying into what we said before. So I’m not gonna repeat that I may. Just
400 00:49:26.360 ⇒ 00:49:29.250 Robert Tseng: okay. I won’t delete anything. I’ll just keep moving through it.
401 00:49:29.500 ⇒ 00:49:32.700 Robert Tseng: Transparency. Try to rotate attack. And we already talked about all these things.
402 00:49:33.690 ⇒ 00:49:35.610 Robert Tseng: Okay, cool. I mean.
403 00:49:36.220 ⇒ 00:49:49.159 Robert Tseng: yeah, we didn’t really talk about this work, but I know we spent a lot of time kind of on this stuff, the go to market stuff we talk about all the time already. I’m happy to spend a few more minutes on there. I do have to jump at the top of the hour. But
404 00:49:50.990 ⇒ 00:49:54.960 Robert Tseng: yeah, maybe we just kind of pick like one more section to kind of breeze over.
405 00:49:55.210 ⇒ 00:49:55.630 Amber Lin: I have.
406 00:49:57.000 ⇒ 00:50:01.190 Amber Lin: The only meeting I have is with Utam, and Utam is here so.
407 00:50:01.190 ⇒ 00:50:10.380 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I have a 2 30. Yeah, I guess I don’t know. Like wait, let me just brand positioning, measuring.
408 00:50:10.560 ⇒ 00:50:15.476 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know I feel like these are sort of like endless holes.
409 00:50:16.370 ⇒ 00:50:18.320 Robert Tseng: Yeah, we’re we’re iterating of this all the time.
410 00:50:18.320 ⇒ 00:50:21.770 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, is there anything else in the bottom of this.
411 00:50:22.092 ⇒ 00:50:31.370 Amber Lin: There is a q. 1 and Q. 2. If you scroll scroll down more, it’s our when.
412 00:50:31.370 ⇒ 00:50:36.359 Uttam Kumaran: I think. Yeah, I think these would be great, because we sort of need to do this before we can
413 00:50:36.510 ⇒ 00:50:43.159 Uttam Kumaran: ladder everyone else’s goals up. The only other thing I wanted to bring up is sort of how we’re thinking about
414 00:50:43.300 ⇒ 00:50:52.100 Uttam Kumaran: like layering on more middle management like, how do I? How do I turn away into someone that can manage a lot of the junior engineers
415 00:50:52.230 ⇒ 00:50:57.679 Uttam Kumaran: and cause for me purely. I’m just trying to attack my time not being spent on
416 00:50:57.840 ⇒ 00:51:09.920 Uttam Kumaran: on sales or like sales related activities. And so if if Luke and Annie can sort of ladder up to a wish, and then they’re succeeding, and he’s succeeding. Then that takes a load off.
417 00:51:10.372 ⇒ 00:51:15.059 Uttam Kumaran: So I don’t know. Part, I’m sort of trying to think about, how do we set
418 00:51:15.490 ⇒ 00:51:19.369 Uttam Kumaran: those people up. We want to think about that, too. That’s something on my mind.
419 00:51:22.960 ⇒ 00:51:23.990 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
420 00:51:27.490 ⇒ 00:51:42.340 Uttam Kumaran: And then, like, even like this squad like, do we want? Do we want to have a larger meeting with those people? Cause I basically think like on the data side can definitely leverage their time better. I think they’ve
421 00:51:42.370 ⇒ 00:52:06.280 Uttam Kumaran: they know that what they’ve done, because I I know those guys like they knew that. And what I really promised them was that they will. We’re gonna it may start, is just like grinding out normal stuff. But both of them are a little bit beyond that, and so I want to try to enable them. I think them a lot clearly mentioned as part of his goals that he wants to help on overall project architecture as well as on scoping
422 00:52:06.562 ⇒ 00:52:20.689 Uttam Kumaran: and like kind of the pre close process. A wish was very, very firm and that he wanted he wanted to definitely help manage people and sort of own data platform and like, really go technical. So both of them, I want them to do. Go do that, because that’s
423 00:52:20.770 ⇒ 00:52:24.419 Uttam Kumaran: all. Those things are sort of landing on one of us right now. So.
424 00:52:27.060 ⇒ 00:52:32.049 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I don’t think that’s really part of like anything we’ve talked about here. So, but we can kind of
425 00:52:33.210 ⇒ 00:52:35.870 Robert Tseng: it’s kind of new from the goal setting stuff. Really.
426 00:52:35.950 ⇒ 00:52:39.740 Robert Tseng: Yeah, it’s it’s it’s yeah. We’re just. We’re just totally fine. I think we can. Just.
427 00:52:40.180 ⇒ 00:52:42.139 Robert Tseng: I’ll just tack it on to this. So.
428 00:52:42.140 ⇒ 00:52:42.710 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
429 00:52:46.710 ⇒ 00:52:49.770 Uttam Kumaran: It’s really around promotion, leveling responsibilities.
430 00:53:08.240 ⇒ 00:53:08.925 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
431 00:53:18.320 ⇒ 00:53:24.089 Robert Tseng: yeah. I honestly don’t really have much of a point of view on this right now. I don’t think this isn’t something I’ve been actively thinking about.
432 00:53:24.820 ⇒ 00:53:26.080 Amber Lin: Robert, I think
433 00:53:26.450 ⇒ 00:53:34.700 Amber Lin: a good point to start here would be. You can start from me because I know you already thought about where you want me to be, and I think it’s a good interest
434 00:53:34.930 ⇒ 00:53:36.190 Amber Lin: to this.
435 00:53:38.920 ⇒ 00:53:39.640 Robert Tseng: Okay.
436 00:53:40.030 ⇒ 00:53:40.690 Amber Lin: Yeah.
437 00:53:45.050 ⇒ 00:53:50.070 Amber Lin: I looked at all the different stuff you sent. I talked about it, Witham, and I think
438 00:53:52.850 ⇒ 00:53:59.509 Amber Lin: I think we’re pretty set. I also sent a response. There, I just need to look at it to get to remind myself.
439 00:54:00.600 ⇒ 00:54:03.589 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like things that you talked about with your Tom. Yeah.
440 00:54:03.590 ⇒ 00:54:04.860 Amber Lin: Yeah.
441 00:54:08.050 ⇒ 00:54:15.500 Robert Tseng: So I mean, maybe we just do this exercise with Tim Lauder, and a wish I mean, it seems like you’ve already informally done that with them, and then
442 00:54:16.480 ⇒ 00:54:23.230 Uttam Kumaran: I basically, was like, you want to do that. Yeah, hell, yeah, let’s figure it out, you know. But I’m I sort of want to think about
443 00:54:23.630 ⇒ 00:54:27.300 Uttam Kumaran: like if K. If it’s if Oasius our if is our 1st like
444 00:54:27.470 ⇒ 00:54:56.960 Uttam Kumaran: technical manager, and then I don’t know. Maybe if we don’t really know all the answers yet. Then we just sort of mentioned that and say, we’re gonna run with this process. I I wanna set him up to manage effectively. I have some ideas on how he can do that. I can check in with him that way, because right now Amy and Luke and Kyle are gonna are getting very, very limited support for me. And like they’re gonna they’re gonna struggle because my time isn’t getting like much shorter on the data side. So I wanna just make sure that everybody has
445 00:54:57.040 ⇒ 00:54:59.880 Uttam Kumaran: someone they can go to that is checking on their goals.
446 00:55:02.360 ⇒ 00:55:09.790 Uttam Kumaran: But this is just an open topic. So I can continue just to push this you know.
447 00:55:10.560 ⇒ 00:55:14.140 Uttam Kumaran: or we can wait and like, make sure to get everybody’s goals first, st
448 00:55:14.250 ⇒ 00:55:17.489 Uttam Kumaran: and then sort of like work on a little bit more of like an org hierarchy.
449 00:55:17.650 ⇒ 00:55:26.358 Uttam Kumaran: cause I kinda wanna make there’s a couple of people in the company that I want to make some decisions on leveling and promotion, which is Miguel Hannah,
450 00:55:27.370 ⇒ 00:55:29.203 Uttam Kumaran: Miguel, Hannah
451 00:55:30.710 ⇒ 00:55:40.030 Uttam Kumaran: them a. And awaish, which is like what are their responsibilities. They clearly have some like higher level ability than just like iterating on tickets.
452 00:55:40.140 ⇒ 00:55:41.750 Uttam Kumaran: But like, what can we
453 00:55:41.870 ⇒ 00:55:54.400 Uttam Kumaran: allow them to do that? That ladders up to our core objectives. And then how do I out of those people? Are any of those going to be helping our? The next rung of people move up as well?
454 00:55:55.990 ⇒ 00:55:56.840 Uttam Kumaran: You know.
455 00:55:58.850 ⇒ 00:56:04.820 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, you’re right. I think we this, yeah, this is gonna impact a lot of people. So we we gotta we gotta get this done?
456 00:56:06.410 ⇒ 00:56:07.190 Robert Tseng: yeah, I’m just.
457 00:56:07.190 ⇒ 00:56:10.710 Uttam Kumaran: Starts to move the boat running without us, you know. Just yeah.
458 00:56:12.630 ⇒ 00:56:23.600 Robert Tseng: I mean, obviously, we’ve done been doing a big like sales push past 2 weeks. But yeah, let’s let’s maybe we. We spend some time. And towards the end of this week we’re trying to to go. And yeah, like to to work work on this.
459 00:56:23.600 ⇒ 00:56:24.160 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
460 00:56:26.800 ⇒ 00:56:36.699 Amber Lin: Yeah. And I can help say, write out the steps that we need to do. So. We don’t have to constantly think about how we’re gonna do this, we’ll just check off some points
461 00:56:39.491 ⇒ 00:56:46.719 Amber Lin: should also compile all all our findings. So we don’t duplicate our efforts because your timing is very limited.
462 00:56:47.420 ⇒ 00:56:48.720 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’s perfect.
463 00:56:49.830 ⇒ 00:56:54.800 Robert Tseng: Okay, I’m gonna move this up 2 there.
464 00:56:56.170 ⇒ 00:56:56.930 Robert Tseng: Oh.
465 00:57:02.670 ⇒ 00:57:03.450 Robert Tseng: right?
466 00:57:03.570 ⇒ 00:57:05.100 Robert Tseng: Okay.
467 00:57:05.620 ⇒ 00:57:10.450 Robert Tseng: I have a call. So I’m gonna jump. But yeah, you guys want to keep staying on, feel free to.
468 00:57:10.450 ⇒ 00:57:10.990 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
469 00:57:11.310 ⇒ 00:57:17.710 Robert Tseng: Last thing I’ll say here is just on the go to market side. If I can just flash something or I move.
470 00:57:27.180 ⇒ 00:57:41.800 Robert Tseng: yeah. Yeah, I think. Thank you for driving this amber. So I think definitely, you have the 1st project. I think the scope scope is right. I think the stores are good. Definitely, I need to keep pushing there. I’ll probably jump in and just like
471 00:57:43.000 ⇒ 00:57:48.520 Robert Tseng: build some of the stuff out that I need. Marginally, I’ve added, like a few other kind of
472 00:57:48.730 ⇒ 00:57:54.320 Robert Tseng: all the different I mean, I mean, these are not. It’s all backlogs, only one things in progress, right. But
473 00:57:54.964 ⇒ 00:58:00.750 Robert Tseng: I’m thinking about like, what are all the different workflows we need to really displace with with this like.
474 00:58:00.890 ⇒ 00:58:14.059 Robert Tseng: go to market team. And so I’m going to keep adding to this, and then for the stuff that I consider to be higher priority, I will probably jump in and like, make my own version, first, st and then hopefully, that’ll that’ll speed things up. But
475 00:58:14.720 ⇒ 00:58:24.930 Robert Tseng: but yeah, I think this is just visibility into. If we Tom wants to take a look at it as well like these are all the the domain like these are all the different things that I’ve been thinking about on on this side.
476 00:58:25.400 ⇒ 00:58:29.629 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. Yeah, I think this is great. I mean, I I don’t know something
477 00:58:29.740 ⇒ 00:58:40.120 Uttam Kumaran: something from like this week, and last week has just been pushing me to just like, continue to just to leverage AI and automation and and stretch our folks a little bit more.
478 00:58:40.596 ⇒ 00:58:44.890 Uttam Kumaran: You know, we would really benefit a lot from being able to build that that
479 00:58:45.140 ⇒ 00:58:49.649 Uttam Kumaran: like a revenue buffer. But also, I think a lot of this is possible with AI like
480 00:58:50.279 ⇒ 00:58:53.469 Uttam Kumaran: and we’re we’re getting closer to like realizing that. So
481 00:58:53.760 ⇒ 00:58:59.470 Uttam Kumaran: I just wanna keep trying to push towards that as much as possible. So.
482 00:58:59.470 ⇒ 00:59:09.839 Robert Tseng: Cool. Yeah, I mean, I’m up for it. We’re basically building an A An AI go to market tool product here. So hopefully, amber like. That’s the vision that you see, like all these workflows that we’re building like.
483 00:59:10.440 ⇒ 00:59:16.849 Robert Tseng: you know, the pink fish guys they demoed like this part of the product. I’m like dude. This is exactly what we do for every client like
484 00:59:17.010 ⇒ 00:59:24.420 Robert Tseng: it took them like 3 months to ship this feature. But we, you know we we are. We are delivering stuff just as fast as these like product companies. And I think.
485 00:59:24.420 ⇒ 00:59:25.230 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
486 00:59:25.230 ⇒ 00:59:32.060 Robert Tseng: That’s motivating to me that like we can, we don’t have to. We’re we’re not competing in the same game as them, because we’re not like.
487 00:59:32.620 ⇒ 00:59:36.530 Uttam Kumaran: We don’t have any allegiance to like anything that we use off the shelf. In fact.
488 00:59:36.870 ⇒ 00:59:41.220 Uttam Kumaran: more stuff is coming off their shelf cheaper and and better than the past stuff. So yeah.
489 00:59:41.220 ⇒ 00:59:45.380 Robert Tseng: Yeah, this gives us leverage. When we do talk to these like AI vendors, like.
490 00:59:45.720 ⇒ 01:00:06.610 Robert Tseng: yeah, I mean, they’re gonna give us the best. We understand their product, and like we know what the capabilities are. This makes us a good you know, procurement partner for teams that are like, hey? Should I use Nadn, or Pink fish, or whatever show you both versus whatever and like, you know, I think this is, you know, we are dog fooding. Everything that we’re doing. So I think this is, this is important.
491 01:00:08.860 ⇒ 01:00:11.840 Amber Lin: Yeah, and also on our. I know you have to drop.
492 01:00:12.100 ⇒ 01:00:16.079 Amber Lin: So to show this in our marketing, too.
493 01:00:16.080 ⇒ 01:00:16.970 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
494 01:00:16.970 ⇒ 01:00:20.030 Amber Lin: That we actually build products.
495 01:00:20.430 ⇒ 01:00:23.569 Amber Lin: I think it sets us at a different level.
496 01:00:24.680 ⇒ 01:00:25.290 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, yes.
497 01:00:25.290 ⇒ 01:00:34.030 Uttam Kumaran: where we should just keep building that the Promotion cycle. Because again, I could, we could definitely easily plan a 2 week cycle on just clay. Just one thing. But
498 01:00:34.380 ⇒ 01:00:51.399 Uttam Kumaran: again, I think it’s sort of the scaffolding around cool. We want to do that. We have these posts going out, what do we need from each of us? How do we need to engage? How does the actual like? How do we get to the lead part of it versus just posting. So let’s come up with a couple of these topics, and like we should just push it. And then again, I really want to see how we can
499 01:00:51.700 ⇒ 01:01:00.220 Uttam Kumaran: get Hannah on board to start to lead this, because it’s just all about putting me and Robert in the right place to say the right thing. So that’s it, you know.
500 01:01:04.290 ⇒ 01:01:07.189 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. Okay, Amber. I can stay on and talk. ABC.
501 01:01:08.260 ⇒ 01:01:09.050 Robert Tseng: See? Y’all.
502 01:01:09.050 ⇒ 01:01:09.490 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
503 01:01:09.490 ⇒ 01:01:15.210 Amber Lin: Bye, I want it to be a different link. So our zoom.
504 01:01:15.210 ⇒ 01:01:18.070 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, I’ll I’ll hop on the other link.
505 01:01:18.070 ⇒ 01:01:19.110 Amber Lin: Yeah, see you there.
506 01:01:19.110 ⇒ 01:01:19.870 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.