Meeting Title: Brainforge AI Team Onboarding Sync Date: 2025-07-28 Meeting participants: Sam Roberts, Uttam Kumaran
WEBVTT
1 00:11:34.120 ⇒ 00:11:35.250 Uttam Kumaran: Hey! Sam.
2 00:11:35.250 ⇒ 00:11:36.180 Sam Roberts: Hey!
3 00:11:36.430 ⇒ 00:11:37.469 Uttam Kumaran: Hey! How are you?
4 00:11:37.960 ⇒ 00:11:39.709 Sam Roberts: Doing all right. How about yourself?
5 00:11:40.660 ⇒ 00:11:43.520 Uttam Kumaran: Good busy day.
6 00:11:44.210 ⇒ 00:11:47.440 Uttam Kumaran: Busy day. Monday is packed for me, cause I try to like
7 00:11:48.210 ⇒ 00:12:04.020 Uttam Kumaran: like we have some stuff that’s more. On 2 week cycles. We have some stuff that’s monthly, but like we’re still like kind of a weekly company. So try to pack in like sales meetings, marketing, planning, and then I meet with like our managers. And then
8 00:12:04.270 ⇒ 00:12:16.729 Uttam Kumaran: I try to meet with the with the AI team in the mornings. And so yeah, looks like it’s gonna be a little bit like lighter this week. I have some time blocked out to do some development work tomorrow and Wednesday. So.
9 00:12:16.730 ⇒ 00:12:17.360 Sam Roberts: Cool.
10 00:12:17.690 ⇒ 00:12:18.080 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
11 00:12:18.080 ⇒ 00:12:18.750 Sam Roberts: Sweet.
12 00:12:19.010 ⇒ 00:12:20.779 Uttam Kumaran: What’d you think about this morning.
13 00:12:21.930 ⇒ 00:12:26.399 Sam Roberts: I was good, I mean, I’m still, you know, it’s that like initial hill of like
14 00:12:26.610 ⇒ 00:12:32.750 Sam Roberts: ramping everything up and getting getting a feel for it, and like jumping in so I’m trying not to like.
15 00:12:33.765 ⇒ 00:12:34.380 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
16 00:12:34.380 ⇒ 00:12:40.359 Sam Roberts: You know, feel the overwhelming of just like everything is, you know, things in different places and figuring out what’s important. And like.
17 00:12:40.470 ⇒ 00:12:41.730 Sam Roberts: you know, I’m just
18 00:12:41.910 ⇒ 00:12:46.310 Sam Roberts: going through stuff I’ve got like a running list of like things. I’m gonna like questions kind of for.
19 00:12:46.310 ⇒ 00:12:46.720 Uttam Kumaran: Awesome.
20 00:12:46.720 ⇒ 00:12:52.919 Sam Roberts: Like this perfect, but trying to think if there was anything else like bigger. But
21 00:12:53.030 ⇒ 00:12:54.980 Sam Roberts: yeah, I mean, besides that, like I’m you know.
22 00:12:55.440 ⇒ 00:13:00.790 Sam Roberts: it’s good. I had a meeting earlier with a wife.
23 00:13:00.790 ⇒ 00:13:01.590 Uttam Kumaran: The Aish.
24 00:13:01.760 ⇒ 00:13:02.600 Sam Roberts: A wish.
25 00:13:03.050 ⇒ 00:13:10.078 Sam Roberts: Who I I thought it popped up my calendar. I didn’t actually know like who he was. Exactly. So we had a good like 1st meet, I guess.
26 00:13:10.330 ⇒ 00:13:11.690 Sam Roberts: Great, great, great!
27 00:13:11.690 ⇒ 00:13:15.950 Sam Roberts: But that’s that’s my 1st thing is like, is there is the team directory. A notion is that
28 00:13:16.280 ⇒ 00:13:17.670 Sam Roberts: up to date. Is that accurate.
29 00:13:18.005 ⇒ 00:13:22.360 Uttam Kumaran: Correct. Yeah. So anything like team wise, you can reach out to Rico.
30 00:13:22.729 ⇒ 00:13:36.219 Uttam Kumaran: But he’s maintaining all that. So yeah, the Chat team Directory should be update, mainly just wanted to make sure you can meet everyone on the AI team and then wish is like one of our engineering managers. And this sort of floats a lot a lot all over the place.
31 00:13:36.220 ⇒ 00:13:37.020 Sam Roberts: Okay, yeah, that’d be.
32 00:13:37.020 ⇒ 00:13:37.349 Uttam Kumaran: It’s why.
33 00:13:37.350 ⇒ 00:13:39.809 Sam Roberts: Once, he explained a little bit. I was like, okay, that now I understand that.
34 00:13:39.810 ⇒ 00:13:42.179 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. And everybody else, I think, will slowly
35 00:13:42.594 ⇒ 00:13:49.679 Uttam Kumaran: you’ll slowly meet. But yeah, I just want just want you to get a sense for who the folks are and who can. You can ask questions to.
36 00:13:49.680 ⇒ 00:13:52.630 Sam Roberts: Yeah, alright cool.
37 00:13:54.280 ⇒ 00:14:05.700 Sam Roberts: yeah. So that was sort of my 1st thing was oh, I mean, before we had the meeting this morning, I was like to do, and you know where things living. But you went through linear. So I got that because I saw tons of stuff in notion. It was like.
38 00:14:06.010 ⇒ 00:14:09.200 Sam Roberts: Where where’s your things live, and how you know.
39 00:14:09.200 ⇒ 00:14:13.169 Uttam Kumaran: We are not as organized as I want to be, but for.
40 00:14:13.170 ⇒ 00:14:14.270 Sam Roberts: Never is I get that.
41 00:14:14.270 ⇒ 00:14:18.260 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, for a small company like ours. I’m pretty opinionated about
42 00:14:18.540 ⇒ 00:14:25.760 Uttam Kumaran: doing docs like we will get there. Especially as the team grows. It’s like there’s only that’s the only way. So.
43 00:14:27.650 ⇒ 00:14:36.139 Sam Roberts: Yeah, no, I totally. I saw I was going through some of the stuff in notion. And I was looking around. And just I see, there’s a lot of stuff like in progress and things working. And so it looks like it’s on the right track. At least, I get that.
44 00:14:36.140 ⇒ 00:14:36.890 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
45 00:14:37.500 ⇒ 00:14:38.290 Sam Roberts: Cool.
46 00:14:40.230 ⇒ 00:14:44.350 Sam Roberts: Yeah, so okay, just like, real top level things.
47 00:14:44.350 ⇒ 00:14:46.180 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Rapid. Fire. Whatever. Anything.
48 00:14:46.180 ⇒ 00:14:53.589 Sam Roberts: Yeah, okay. So I mean, today was obviously a busy day doing a bunch. The I I got into lockify is that.
49 00:14:53.590 ⇒ 00:14:54.400 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
50 00:14:54.400 ⇒ 00:15:04.069 Sam Roberts: So okay, is there is that? I guess my question is more just about like how you want me working within a set amount of, you know, like, just what is your.
51 00:15:04.070 ⇒ 00:15:12.010 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so roughly like, I think we agreed on a little bit of a timeframe look. I think the biggest thing for me is that I want. We’re
52 00:15:12.140 ⇒ 00:15:15.299 Uttam Kumaran: we had to make a couple of other hires.
53 00:15:15.300 ⇒ 00:15:15.660 Sam Roberts: Sure.
54 00:15:15.660 ⇒ 00:15:31.399 Uttam Kumaran: Pretty rapidly for Eden, but I want to slowly ramp you up. I mean, I I kind of gave you the time that we were aiming for. But look, I think it’s like, if if you if if you reach that cap and you’re like, Hey, can I work a little bit longer. You could just message me, and and then.
55 00:15:31.400 ⇒ 00:15:31.830 Sam Roberts: Okay.
56 00:15:31.830 ⇒ 00:15:33.230 Uttam Kumaran: That that’s fine.
57 00:15:33.230 ⇒ 00:15:33.760 Sam Roberts: Okay. Cool.
58 00:15:34.990 ⇒ 00:15:40.539 Uttam Kumaran: And yeah, and clock, if I’ll just make sure you should be on the Brain Forge
59 00:15:40.930 ⇒ 00:15:47.819 Uttam Kumaran: project. So basically, if it’s like, it’s anything related to the company like Rai team stuff.
60 00:15:47.950 ⇒ 00:15:58.359 Uttam Kumaran: or like General, whatever. You can just log it to to brain forge. And then, if it’s like related to like a client like, I don’t know if you met with amber about ABC,
61 00:15:59.018 ⇒ 00:16:01.109 Uttam Kumaran: or yeah, you’ll maybe some people
62 00:16:01.710 ⇒ 00:16:12.980 Uttam Kumaran: we’ll meet. If it’s about a client. You can build the the time directly there, just to the client, and if you don’t see if you get, if you go to do that, you don’t see it. You can just ping Rico. He’ll make sure that you’re out of there.
63 00:16:12.980 ⇒ 00:16:15.110 Sam Roberts: Okay, cool. That’s sort of.
64 00:16:15.110 ⇒ 00:16:22.639 Uttam Kumaran: So it’s like Rico and then me for like any random stuff. So there’s like, I’m usually like the backup. And then there’s
65 00:16:23.040 ⇒ 00:16:29.420 Uttam Kumaran: someone, and if it comes to me then I usually will help someone do it the next time. So that’s like what we’re figuring it out.
66 00:16:29.420 ⇒ 00:16:30.629 Sam Roberts: Totally cool, cool.
67 00:16:30.630 ⇒ 00:16:31.070 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
68 00:16:31.352 ⇒ 00:16:38.969 Sam Roberts: Alright trying to think. I mean, I have like a little thing. I was just jotting down, but it’s not a ton here. I guess
69 00:16:39.270 ⇒ 00:16:46.998 Sam Roberts: other things that I was wondering so like getting into github and stuff I was in there. I’m there’s a lot of repos, obviously.
70 00:16:47.320 ⇒ 00:16:48.070 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, there are.
71 00:16:48.370 ⇒ 00:16:53.769 Sam Roberts: I guess so I is. Is Brainford Web platform? Is that the the platform we were looking at.
72 00:16:53.770 ⇒ 00:17:01.349 Uttam Kumaran: That’s correct. Yes. So there is a back end repo for that. There’s also the front end repo. There is a super base.
73 00:17:01.750 ⇒ 00:17:04.400 Sam Roberts: Yeah, that that’s the one thing I realized I was not in, and I.
74 00:17:04.400 ⇒ 00:17:06.400 Uttam Kumaran: Let me get. Let me get that for you right now.
75 00:17:06.400 ⇒ 00:17:08.269 Sam Roberts: You can do that. Now, that’d be great. Yeah.
76 00:17:09.540 ⇒ 00:17:13.740 Sam Roberts: Cause. I started. I tried getting it running. And it was like, you need the super basic oil like, oh, that’s that’s the thing. I didn’t, you know.
77 00:17:13.740 ⇒ 00:17:16.350 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Here, let me get that. Let me get that to you right now.
78 00:17:16.540 ⇒ 00:17:17.513 Sam Roberts: That’s perfect.
79 00:17:25.000 ⇒ 00:17:26.960 Sam Roberts: then, yeah.
80 00:17:29.070 ⇒ 00:17:38.489 Sam Roberts: I mean, I’m sure there’s plenty like I. You know, this is random things I’ve gotten down here and there running stuff that I noticed like a couple of little things. But I don’t want to get too much into that, because it’s it’s good.
81 00:17:38.860 ⇒ 00:17:50.670 Uttam Kumaran: No. And then, yeah, I mean, I I guess I kind of you know. I I explained a little bit when we were talking a few weeks ago. But basically, like, you know, I kind of see the AI team in particular, I think, is more unique.
82 00:17:51.090 ⇒ 00:17:51.480 Sam Roberts: We.
83 00:17:51.480 ⇒ 00:17:54.279 Uttam Kumaran: But we kind of spend our side time
84 00:17:54.410 ⇒ 00:17:57.269 Uttam Kumaran: working on the platform for the company.
85 00:17:57.400 ⇒ 00:18:00.620 Sam Roberts: Yeah. And then we’re spend. And but we also are getting clients.
86 00:18:00.830 ⇒ 00:18:04.779 Uttam Kumaran: And so really, where I see your role fitting in is kind of like
87 00:18:05.060 ⇒ 00:18:09.379 Uttam Kumaran: a kind of a counterpart to me. I am the one who’s who’s so far been like
88 00:18:09.660 ⇒ 00:18:13.629 Uttam Kumaran: proposing like architecture, sort of deciding on like
89 00:18:14.208 ⇒ 00:18:18.059 Uttam Kumaran: the next things to build but also like
90 00:18:18.190 ⇒ 00:18:43.180 Uttam Kumaran: like even more basic stuff like, just like unblocking the team reviewing Prs, even to the point of like, just like running those stand ups. So those are all things that’s top of mind for me to just make sure there’s someone else that that can do that, but also just get a counterpart. So I’m I’m thinking about all sorts of ways for us to improve and you want to improve the efficiency of the company, but also improve.
91 00:18:43.350 ⇒ 00:18:58.099 Uttam Kumaran: sort of like the the average brain forge employee. I want them to get empowered with AI right? So there’s several sort of products tools, workflows that we’re doing, some of which lives in slack natively, some of which lives in the platform.
92 00:18:58.802 ⇒ 00:19:11.519 Uttam Kumaran: You know, some of which gets triggered in Dagster for orchestration. And so this is where I I think you’re gonna kind of get a sense for like what it? What was the vision of like, how we’re thinking about breaking things up? But again. We’re
93 00:19:11.520 ⇒ 00:19:28.132 Uttam Kumaran: we’re a consultancy. So we meet with clients. We get requirements, we ticket those out, we execute them, we validate. We then communicate that back when they get the next set right. That’s generally like the boring life cycle. But through that there’s a lot of handoffs. There’s a lot of information transfer. And
94 00:19:28.820 ⇒ 00:19:41.069 Uttam Kumaran: Ultimately, I want, like for the company goals I want to have. I want to ha have less people I want to hire at a much slower rate from which we grow revenue.
95 00:19:41.150 ⇒ 00:20:11.000 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So the typical problem in consulting is that you have to hire very linearly right? And it’s brutal and so for me. The advantage in implementing an AI. Is that okay? We can now have our project. Managers go from managing a couple of client like one client or 2 clients to 3 or 4, because they have these AI augmentations that they’re able to use to manage more right. And another way is like also, like, you know, typical staff that’s very commonly used like very boring, like
96 00:20:11.320 ⇒ 00:20:30.169 Uttam Kumaran: just typing in workflows into a crm like sales coordination operations. These folks can get enabled to really make a more outstanding impact in the company, you know. And so for roles like that, we’re commonly, you know, they’re not the most expensive cost centers, then paired with AI, they’re actually able to demonstrate like a lot
97 00:20:30.340 ⇒ 00:20:31.750 Uttam Kumaran: larger value.
98 00:20:32.291 ⇒ 00:20:48.640 Uttam Kumaran: You know. And so that’s the sort of stuff I’m thinking about, which is like we’re completely bootstrapped. So how can I run Brainforge as high of a margin as possible, but also like, how can I continue to empower everybody in the team to use AI to get like the 20 or 30 to 40% work
99 00:20:48.740 ⇒ 00:21:11.969 Uttam Kumaran: that otherwise I would have had to hire a whole, another person to do. How can they start to do that with AI. So these are things like, okay, we now built a thing where you can put in transcripts and get linear tickets out of it. Right? Very simple. Another thing. Okay, our sales team uses our sow agent. So we put in transcript, we get out statement of works. That they they can create for for clients.
100 00:21:13.370 ⇒ 00:21:16.980 Uttam Kumaran: Another thing that we have that you could, you’d be curious about is.
101 00:21:17.100 ⇒ 00:21:21.910 Uttam Kumaran: we have a we have a prompt a prompt library in notion.
102 00:21:22.855 ⇒ 00:21:29.110 Uttam Kumaran: And I will share that with you in slack. I also just invited you to super base.
103 00:21:29.540 ⇒ 00:21:30.310 Sam Roberts: Awesome.
104 00:21:31.400 ⇒ 00:21:31.930 Uttam Kumaran: Oh!
105 00:21:31.930 ⇒ 00:21:32.850 Sam Roberts: Yes, pre admin.
106 00:21:42.020 ⇒ 00:21:43.340 Uttam Kumaran: and then
107 00:21:56.640 ⇒ 00:21:58.679 Uttam Kumaran: but you know the prompt library.
108 00:21:59.344 ⇒ 00:22:13.949 Uttam Kumaran: So we have these prompts that a lot of people in the company use chat gpt, and they create their own projects. So we have reusable prompts that anyone can use whether you’re drafting a follow up email, whether you’re reviewing design copy, whether you’re just editing anything.
109 00:22:15.380 ⇒ 00:22:24.049 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So. But these are things that we want, that ultimately, I want to move from just being a prompt that someone has to copy paste to make this available in slack as a bot.
110 00:22:24.050 ⇒ 00:22:24.640 Sam Roberts: Sure.
111 00:22:24.640 ⇒ 00:22:30.509 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And so there’s these, like, I sort of think about as as like the you know, the automation levels and self driving
112 00:22:31.073 ⇒ 00:22:38.140 Uttam Kumaran: like level 0 1. i kind of think about it like that. Where we start off with like, okay, we just have reusable prompts. Okay, now, we have like.
113 00:22:38.260 ⇒ 00:22:45.680 Uttam Kumaran: now the prompts are shareable in the platform where you can go into the platform. We have agents there. All they are is wrapping a prompt into into
114 00:22:46.110 ⇒ 00:23:00.299 Uttam Kumaran: a chat bot. The next thing is like, okay, can this be available in slack? And then the the next level is even like, can the can the can the agents actually watch our slack messages and respond in a smart way without prompting
115 00:23:00.520 ⇒ 00:23:05.659 Uttam Kumaran: right? So that’s actually what Miguel is working on. One of his tickets is for what we call the ambient agents.
116 00:23:05.780 ⇒ 00:23:10.220 Uttam Kumaran: If you open that ticket, you’ll actually there’s a good reading on. It’s basically something that’s always listening.
117 00:23:10.580 ⇒ 00:23:19.619 Uttam Kumaran: And so what it does is it looks at the tickets, all the slack messages that are coming in, and it will make a jurisdiction on. Can I respond to this.
118 00:23:20.200 ⇒ 00:23:21.140 Sam Roberts: Hmm, interesting.
119 00:23:21.140 ⇒ 00:23:33.140 Uttam Kumaran: Right. And so one thing that we’re working on is, I said, cool the goal, for that ticket is like, start a channel with the slack bot, and maybe a couple of us and the slack bot should send a message to that channel, just saying, Hey.
120 00:23:33.270 ⇒ 00:23:39.529 Uttam Kumaran: like I I think I can respond to this message in this way. Here’s what I would say, and someone can click yes.
121 00:23:39.680 ⇒ 00:23:56.879 Uttam Kumaran: and over time, right as as we iterate, maybe as. And we get some scoring anything above 90% score. Maybe it should automatically send. That’s when the AI really becomes kind of like unavoidable. And it’s kind of dummy proof like you really don’t have to go set anything up. It’s there. It’s like in your flow right.
122 00:23:56.880 ⇒ 00:23:57.270 Sam Roberts: Right.
123 00:23:57.270 ⇒ 00:24:03.289 Uttam Kumaran: Versus having. One thing that we we find challenging in adoption is people just remembering to ask AI first, st
124 00:24:03.450 ⇒ 00:24:19.649 Uttam Kumaran: right, or or you have to go to chat Gbt and do something right. And you have to go paste in a transcript. All that stuff sounds like data engineering and sounds like, just like a almost like a ux. Sounds like a ui, right? So for me, that was slack and slack has. I don’t know if you
125 00:24:19.890 ⇒ 00:24:23.199 Uttam Kumaran: played with any slack bots before, but pretty rich like setup.
126 00:24:23.200 ⇒ 00:24:24.179 Sam Roberts: While. But yeah, yeah.
127 00:24:24.180 ⇒ 00:24:37.210 Uttam Kumaran: Pretty rich set of actions that you could do, you know, at least basically like hit. Yes, no, add emojis for certain things. So I kind of would like to leverage that just because our our company operating system is notion, zoom black.
128 00:24:38.600 ⇒ 00:24:47.870 Uttam Kumaran: Kind of it, right? We don’t. We don’t. We don’t do Google docs for for anything except for like any for Google sheets, maybe. And then for contracts.
129 00:24:49.590 ⇒ 00:25:17.990 Uttam Kumaran: so yeah, I feel like, that’s that’s sort of the vision for this platform is. And eventually, also, we’re gonna start to measure. So one of the things that I’ll be working with I’ll be working with the the data platform team on with Voshtevon is on measuring. So we’ll start to measure how? Which of our AI agents are getting used. Who’s using them like? What are they using them for? And start to measure as a team and set goals as a team for adoption within the organization.
130 00:25:17.990 ⇒ 00:25:18.460 Sam Roberts: Oh, cool!
131 00:25:18.460 ⇒ 00:25:22.129 Uttam Kumaran: That’s kind of like the that’s like the overall vision.
132 00:25:22.290 ⇒ 00:25:23.879 Uttam Kumaran: Ultimately, I think
133 00:25:24.430 ⇒ 00:25:36.260 Uttam Kumaran: IA minimum. I want to be able just to boost our team’s efficiency, but also, really, luckily, everything we learn from what we do for ourselves, we’re actually bringing it to clients.
134 00:25:36.590 ⇒ 00:25:47.590 Uttam Kumaran: And so we then go monetize and can actually charge for that for that as well. So that’s kind of the unique part of this AI team is if it’s a group of folks that we’re all kind of working on clients, but also
135 00:25:47.690 ⇒ 00:25:49.980 Uttam Kumaran: working internally. You know.
136 00:25:51.740 ⇒ 00:25:52.870 Sam Roberts: Alright cool.
137 00:25:53.590 ⇒ 00:25:57.080 Sam Roberts: No, it definitely is, is more context.
138 00:25:57.080 ⇒ 00:25:57.660 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
139 00:25:58.376 ⇒ 00:26:00.380 Sam Roberts: Okay? So then I guess you know
140 00:26:00.880 ⇒ 00:26:04.149 Sam Roberts: I’m I’m jumping into things. I’m I’m I’m clicking around or.
141 00:26:04.150 ⇒ 00:26:05.430 Uttam Kumaran: Please, please, please.
142 00:26:05.430 ⇒ 00:26:08.160 Sam Roberts: I’m just like, you know. So
143 00:26:09.440 ⇒ 00:26:10.820 Sam Roberts: know where to. Kind of phrase.
144 00:26:11.380 ⇒ 00:26:14.729 Sam Roberts: I guess. What is the like. You know what ideally. What
145 00:26:15.010 ⇒ 00:26:20.429 Sam Roberts: do you see like handing things off to me if you want like? Where do you? How quickly like is it? You know
146 00:26:20.840 ⇒ 00:26:23.099 Sam Roberts: what? What is your feeling of some stuff with that, I guess.
147 00:26:23.100 ⇒ 00:26:23.580 Uttam Kumaran: I just want to get.
148 00:26:23.580 ⇒ 00:26:36.340 Sam Roberts: Vibe on like you know how quickly you want me to ramp into this, because that will affect, like, you know, if I’m going to be asking for more hours. You know what I mean. Like. If I could spend a long time digging into stuff, I could spend a long time doing different things. I’m just trying to get a sense of like where to prioritize my time.
149 00:26:36.550 ⇒ 00:26:41.239 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, no, I want you to get like, this is not a rush
150 00:26:41.480 ⇒ 00:26:58.609 Uttam Kumaran: like I want. I want what what would be great to get handed off is for me because of my unique position in the business, I can tell you, I can tell you, like some crazy stuff that we want to build. So the vision and like the what to build, I think is.
151 00:26:58.810 ⇒ 00:27:05.769 Uttam Kumaran: I’m not too worried about that. I think what I am more worried about is, we have a lot of pipelines
152 00:27:05.900 ⇒ 00:27:07.109 Uttam Kumaran: to move data.
153 00:27:07.290 ⇒ 00:27:13.489 Uttam Kumaran: We have a lot of different things sitting in slack sitting in the repo, sitting in the platform.
154 00:27:13.920 ⇒ 00:27:19.729 Uttam Kumaran: So some overall organization around all of our AI initiatives.
155 00:27:21.230 ⇒ 00:27:25.989 Uttam Kumaran: And then someone to have the higher level technical architecture in their mind.
156 00:27:26.502 ⇒ 00:27:55.100 Uttam Kumaran: Because I’m doing that with like 10% of my time. And it’s not helping that team much at all. All 3 of those folks in the team Miguel, Mustafa and Casey are all really really hard workers. But what they lack, what they are and hardworking, they lack the experience like just being in the industry. They’re all pretty junior, and so they can run really fast in one direction. But they struggle to think about the architecture of things.
157 00:27:55.160 ⇒ 00:28:07.650 Uttam Kumaran: and so that’s where I think I would need the most help. Of course, I think as you get more, as you get more involved, and see that we can then start having conversations together about the next set of prod products and.
158 00:28:07.650 ⇒ 00:28:08.100 Sam Roberts: Totally.
159 00:28:08.100 ⇒ 00:28:15.370 Uttam Kumaran: Things we want to build. But ultimately I think, an overall understanding of our of our platform.
160 00:28:15.927 ⇒ 00:28:20.480 Uttam Kumaran: And then and then, lastly, I think we will. We? I really want to try to measure
161 00:28:21.107 ⇒ 00:28:31.270 Uttam Kumaran: you know, we’re a data company. And I wanna make sure that we hold ourselves accountable to know that our services that we’re releasing as an internal AI team are getting adopted.
162 00:28:32.730 ⇒ 00:28:51.909 Uttam Kumaran: so that’s probably the second piece is like, what goals should we set, so that that’ll be where me and you work together to kind of say, cool, what are the goals this quarter this month in terms of AI adoption like, do we see X amount of workflow runs? Do we have some sort of like qualitative.
163 00:28:52.130 ⇒ 00:28:58.280 Uttam Kumaran: more like interview style with some of the team members about how to use AI like, are you feeling its impact?
164 00:28:59.490 ⇒ 00:29:14.739 Uttam Kumaran: is there a clear? Is there currently like a role we’re trying to hire for that, hey? Maybe if we use AI, we could prevent that. Those are kind of the things I want to start to work with you directly on where I’ve been working by myself thinking about those those goals for this team.
165 00:29:15.150 ⇒ 00:29:17.390 Sam Roberts: Definitely okay.
166 00:29:17.390 ⇒ 00:29:38.810 Uttam Kumaran: But but overall like it’s very free reign, like we’ve we’ve we’ve we’ve been able to build a lot of really cool stuff for very, very cheap, and a lot of things here that we’re doing in a con in the consulting motion has not really been done before, like I talked to a lot of people at Ui and other Big 4, or at other like consultancies, and.
167 00:29:39.330 ⇒ 00:29:41.980 Uttam Kumaran: We seem to be quite ahead of the ball in like
168 00:29:42.210 ⇒ 00:29:51.849 Uttam Kumaran: running a company like this with like a internal platform team. So I do think that there’s a ton of opportunity, I think what the challenge is.
169 00:29:52.357 ⇒ 00:30:19.119 Uttam Kumaran: Of this is. Everybody’s very busy, and adoption is really hard, right? So part of the impact of this team is really gonna be building a relationship with our users which are gonna be our other teammates. Right? Everybody on the data side, everybody in sales, even ourselves as we’re developing. And we’re using things like cursor. You know, we’re considering investing in something for aipr reviews. All of those things are what helps us.
170 00:30:19.560 ⇒ 00:30:21.180 Uttam Kumaran: you know, improve our output.
171 00:30:21.390 ⇒ 00:30:26.949 Uttam Kumaran: And so and then, lastly, you know, like, I really do think about
172 00:30:27.290 ⇒ 00:30:40.680 Uttam Kumaran: being an AI native company allows us to hire better because people want to work at companies where they have this tool set available to them. Right? You know not just that, like you have salesforce available. But you have an AI agent
173 00:30:40.820 ⇒ 00:30:49.100 Uttam Kumaran: like you have an AI agent that helps you do your job or set of tools to help you do your job because we’ve identified and accepted that. Not all of work is like
174 00:30:49.380 ⇒ 00:30:59.919 Uttam Kumaran: that interesting. And there’s parts of it that we should leverage AI for. And so that’s part of also why, it’s helpful for us to go get the best talent is that we? We bring these also, you know, to the table for them.
175 00:31:00.530 ⇒ 00:31:04.309 Sam Roberts: Definitely sounds good. Okay, cool.
176 00:31:05.764 ⇒ 00:31:06.489 Sam Roberts: Yeah.
177 00:31:06.660 ⇒ 00:31:07.245 Sam Roberts: Alright.
178 00:31:07.830 ⇒ 00:31:08.620 Sam Roberts: Okay. Yeah. Cool.
179 00:31:08.620 ⇒ 00:31:11.420 Sam Roberts: I. Yeah. No. I still want to get a better sense of like, you know.
180 00:31:11.420 ⇒ 00:31:11.960 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
181 00:31:12.250 ⇒ 00:31:13.929 Sam Roberts: Where you see me plugging in.
182 00:31:13.930 ⇒ 00:31:17.530 Uttam Kumaran: If and if you end up going down the rabbit hole, and you need more time. Just let me know
183 00:31:18.580 ⇒ 00:31:23.219 Sam Roberts: I just have to play. I just have to play. I have to play Cfo and.
184 00:31:23.542 ⇒ 00:31:27.666 Uttam Kumaran: Hey? I head of AI person. So I’m I would love to give you.
185 00:31:27.930 ⇒ 00:31:28.969 Sam Roberts: No, I get it. I get it.
186 00:31:28.970 ⇒ 00:31:31.507 Uttam Kumaran: But I I’m sort of balancing, but
187 00:31:31.870 ⇒ 00:31:32.540 Sam Roberts: Of course, of course.
188 00:31:32.540 ⇒ 00:31:37.864 Uttam Kumaran: There’s a there there, there’s also you know. We also share a lot of things in this
189 00:31:38.870 ⇒ 00:31:41.169 Uttam Kumaran: in this channel.
190 00:31:42.476 ⇒ 00:31:45.180 Uttam Kumaran: Which I think you should be in.
191 00:31:47.870 ⇒ 00:31:51.179 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, you’re in the articles post media at random.
192 00:31:52.230 ⇒ 00:31:58.630 Uttam Kumaran: There’s a lot of cool stuff in there. This channel has a lot of people. It’s a lot of like our just like friends of mine from industry.
193 00:31:58.630 ⇒ 00:31:59.140 Sam Roberts: Okay.
194 00:31:59.140 ⇒ 00:32:16.470 Uttam Kumaran: Or like advisors of ours, and like everybody in the company. So you’ll see it’s like, but it’s cool because I I we just all I just was like, Hey, we’re paying for slack. Anyways. You could just hop on as a guest, and I have a guest free guest account for everybody, and we tend to share, like the lot of AI talk in here.
195 00:32:16.470 ⇒ 00:32:17.080 Sam Roberts: Cool.
196 00:32:17.080 ⇒ 00:32:19.330 Uttam Kumaran: But lot of really good stuff.
197 00:32:19.780 ⇒ 00:32:20.550 Sam Roberts: That’s awesome.
198 00:32:20.730 ⇒ 00:32:25.729 Sam Roberts: Okay? Yeah, no, I’m good. That’s that’s good to have like a resource that I can go dig through a little bit now, but also an.
199 00:32:25.730 ⇒ 00:32:27.670 Uttam Kumaran: There’s a lot in there. I’m like.
200 00:32:27.670 ⇒ 00:32:29.850 Sam Roberts: For places to send things I’m like, oh, is this.
201 00:32:29.850 ⇒ 00:32:40.969 Uttam Kumaran: No, this is the send things channel. This is like the send. Sometimes I send in the AI team, if it’s like really supposed to relate to our work. But usually, if I’m like, I don’t know where to put this. But I’m just gonna send this somewhere.
202 00:32:41.090 ⇒ 00:32:42.409 Uttam Kumaran: It’s in here. So.
203 00:32:43.510 ⇒ 00:32:48.590 Sam Roberts: Sweet. Okay? Awesome. Just trying to think there is other.
204 00:32:48.590 ⇒ 00:32:50.800 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. And then in terms of schedule this week. So.
205 00:32:50.800 ⇒ 00:32:51.320 Sam Roberts: Yeah.
206 00:32:51.320 ⇒ 00:32:55.669 Uttam Kumaran: We usually do one stand up in the morning time.
207 00:32:56.547 ⇒ 00:33:10.100 Uttam Kumaran: You know. So if that’s fine, then I’ll probably leave that. I’m probably the flakiest person out of everybody, just because, like, if I have to run to something, it’s like sometimes tough. But usually for standups, like.
208 00:33:10.290 ⇒ 00:33:18.600 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know how you guys ran things before. But we just like someone in the team just switches off. We’re all like, it’s pretty chill. So someone just switches off and
209 00:33:19.370 ⇒ 00:33:25.760 Uttam Kumaran: post and ask for updates. And again, this, since it’s our internal team, I’m not too much of a stickler on like
210 00:33:25.970 ⇒ 00:33:29.739 Uttam Kumaran: the perfect tickets, because we do a lot of that for our client work.
211 00:33:30.224 ⇒ 00:33:36.509 Uttam Kumaran: And this crew is pretty like good in that. They, if we’re we, don’t understand. So we ask a question.
212 00:33:37.550 ⇒ 00:33:44.490 Uttam Kumaran: but there’s probably room for improvement there, and you know, and then and then on on Fridays we usually do like a a little mini retro.
213 00:33:45.284 ⇒ 00:33:47.807 Sam Roberts: And so we run like we run just weekly sprints.
214 00:33:48.190 ⇒ 00:33:54.109 Uttam Kumaran: Just because, like the team tends to move pretty fast. And and I don’t know it’s
215 00:33:54.570 ⇒ 00:33:58.879 Uttam Kumaran: we don’t necessarily have to do 2 weeks. I like to just keep the pace up so.
216 00:33:59.220 ⇒ 00:34:00.320 Sam Roberts: Totally okay.
217 00:34:01.110 ⇒ 00:34:05.050 Sam Roberts: Yeah. I mean, that should all work. If some changes, I’ll I’ll let you know. But.
218 00:34:05.050 ⇒ 00:34:05.540 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
219 00:34:05.980 ⇒ 00:34:07.896 Sam Roberts: That sounds good to me.
220 00:34:08.880 ⇒ 00:34:12.169 Uttam Kumaran: And then what do you need like we could. I can get you cursor if you need it.
221 00:34:12.179 ⇒ 00:34:16.848 Sam Roberts: Okay, yeah. I was at that. Was that was on my list. That cursor question mark.
222 00:34:17.139 ⇒ 00:34:18.159 Uttam Kumaran: You cursor.
223 00:34:18.159 ⇒ 00:34:18.869 Sam Roberts: Is it? Okay?
224 00:34:18.870 ⇒ 00:34:25.500 Uttam Kumaran: Tell me, if you need like. So so all of our Zoom Meetings get recorded and they get put into the platform.
225 00:34:25.500 ⇒ 00:34:26.790 Sam Roberts: Okay, yeah, that’s okay. So this.
226 00:34:26.790 ⇒ 00:34:37.610 Uttam Kumaran: So you should be able to go to the platform to get the Transcript to chat with the meeting. It’s actually would be really helpful to do. So. You get a you’ll you’ll see what’s broken and like. What could be better. But that’ll be good.
227 00:34:37.610 ⇒ 00:34:39.130 Sam Roberts: That’s great. Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m looking.
228 00:34:39.130 ⇒ 00:34:42.259 Uttam Kumaran: Cause I use granola. We use granola and some other stuff, but.
229 00:34:42.650 ⇒ 00:34:45.459 Uttam Kumaran: It’s probably our best to use the platform for as much as possible.
230 00:34:45.469 ⇒ 00:34:47.459 Sam Roberts: Yeah, I mean, talking as much as you can is.
231 00:34:47.970 ⇒ 00:34:48.480 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
232 00:34:48.480 ⇒ 00:34:49.190 Sam Roberts: Yeah.
233 00:34:49.659 ⇒ 00:35:12.500 Uttam Kumaran: And then, yeah, I think you’ll get a chance to meet Amber. You’ll get a chance to meet and you I would, I would certainly, when you meet Amber, talk to her about ABC. Which is our one of one of the clients that I think you’ll be most involved in it’s a really interesting project. And then we have a couple of others. So yeah, I won’t inundate you with too much, just sort of like, get the lay of the land and.
234 00:35:12.500 ⇒ 00:35:15.159 Sam Roberts: That’s exactly what I was thinking.
235 00:35:15.160 ⇒ 00:35:18.410 Uttam Kumaran: Stuff. It’s all like, really brand new, like fun. AI stuff. So.
236 00:35:18.410 ⇒ 00:35:21.499 Sam Roberts: Yeah, no, it seems like it. You know, it’s it’s that like.
237 00:35:21.900 ⇒ 00:35:26.200 Sam Roberts: it’s just like, you know, dropping into something new and seeing all the stuff and figuring out the lay of the land. But also
238 00:35:26.590 ⇒ 00:35:33.409 Sam Roberts: it does seem like it’s even to see what people were doing. You know, today talking about it. I was like, Oh, this is quick moving, and like, you know.
239 00:35:33.410 ⇒ 00:35:33.750 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
240 00:35:33.750 ⇒ 00:35:37.050 Sam Roberts: Right. It’s like bleeding edge of what’s out there and what we can work on. And I love it.
241 00:35:37.050 ⇒ 00:35:37.540 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
242 00:35:37.540 ⇒ 00:35:38.760 Sam Roberts: I’m excited about it.
243 00:35:39.030 ⇒ 00:35:40.210 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Cool.
244 00:35:40.380 ⇒ 00:35:41.300 Sam Roberts: Alright!
245 00:35:41.300 ⇒ 00:35:42.120 Sam Roberts: Yeah, alright!
246 00:35:42.120 ⇒ 00:35:44.209 Uttam Kumaran: Perfect, all right. Well, slack me if you need anything.
247 00:35:44.460 ⇒ 00:35:45.419 Sam Roberts: All right will do.
248 00:35:45.420 ⇒ 00:35:47.900 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Alright. Thanks. Man, thanks. Yeah.