2025-10-06_weekly_client_and_project_sync_eae73544

Meeting Title: Weekly Client and Project Sync Date: 2025-10-06 Meeting participants: Justin Breshears, Uttam Kumaran, Rico Rejoso, Amber Lin, Henry Zhao, Awaish Kumar, Samuel Roberts, Robert Tseng

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WEBVTT

1 00:00:22.940 ⇒ 00:00:24.160 Uttam Kumaran: Hello!

2 00:00:25.510 ⇒ 00:00:26.250 Justin Breshears: Hey, hate!

3 00:00:26.550 ⇒ 00:00:27.630 Uttam Kumaran: Good morning.

4 00:00:28.760 ⇒ 00:00:35.819 Justin Breshears: It’s probably my least favorite, Google Calendar quirk, that when you transfer ownership, it, like, deletes.

5 00:00:35.820 ⇒ 00:00:44.800 Uttam Kumaran: I know, and my worst quirk is that, like, I should have just looked, like, an hour ago, and I’ve been, like… I’ve been, like.

6 00:00:45.260 ⇒ 00:00:53.489 Uttam Kumaran: this meeting, but, like, I just, of course, left some couple pieces the last minute, and I’m like, oh, let me just jam on this real quick.

7 00:00:53.900 ⇒ 00:00:58.879 Justin Breshears: That has gotten me so many times, so… it’s, it’s unavoidable sometimes.

8 00:00:59.290 ⇒ 00:01:00.220 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.

9 00:01:02.570 ⇒ 00:01:03.780 Amber Lin: Yellow.

10 00:01:04.160 ⇒ 00:01:05.280 Uttam Kumaran: Hello?

11 00:01:05.840 ⇒ 00:01:06.910 Justin Breshears: No, noon.

12 00:01:11.290 ⇒ 00:01:12.200 Uttam Kumaran: Coffee.

13 00:01:16.260 ⇒ 00:01:18.210 Uttam Kumaran: How’s the weekend, everybody?

14 00:01:19.340 ⇒ 00:01:21.140 Uttam Kumaran: Only something we all did.

15 00:01:21.870 ⇒ 00:01:25.689 Amber Lin: Hey, good. My parents arrived, so…

16 00:01:25.690 ⇒ 00:01:26.829 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, great!

17 00:01:26.830 ⇒ 00:01:34.530 Amber Lin: I’m happy to see them, I’m also… Stressful? My head hurts from the kids screaming.

18 00:01:34.710 ⇒ 00:01:35.720 Amber Lin: I can’t…

19 00:01:35.720 ⇒ 00:01:36.810 Uttam Kumaran: Who’s there?

20 00:01:36.810 ⇒ 00:01:40.720 Amber Lin: My brother, who is 5 years old, and I cannot handle it.

21 00:01:42.440 ⇒ 00:01:46.089 Amber Lin: I don’t want kids, is all I can say.

22 00:01:48.130 ⇒ 00:01:51.369 Uttam Kumaran: You gotta talk to Justin about that. He’s in the throes right now.

23 00:01:52.960 ⇒ 00:01:53.520 Amber Lin: Listen.

24 00:01:53.520 ⇒ 00:01:53.970 Justin Breshears: Yeah.

25 00:01:53.970 ⇒ 00:01:55.180 Amber Lin: Queens to your kids.

26 00:01:55.730 ⇒ 00:01:58.730 Justin Breshears: I have a 2-year-old and a 7-month-old, so…

27 00:01:58.730 ⇒ 00:01:59.920 Amber Lin: Wow.

28 00:01:59.940 ⇒ 00:02:04.990 Justin Breshears: I’ll say, if you don’t like the screaming and the chaos, yeah, don’t. Don’t have kids, then.

29 00:02:06.500 ⇒ 00:02:15.020 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know if I can do life without chaos. Like, that’s what some people in my life tell me that. They’re like, no, you just need, like, some amount of…

30 00:02:15.550 ⇒ 00:02:19.230 Uttam Kumaran: a lot to juggle, you know? Otherwise, I get bored, so…

31 00:02:21.040 ⇒ 00:02:24.350 Justin Breshears: You’re in the right line of work as a business owner, then.

32 00:02:24.700 ⇒ 00:02:26.560 Justin Breshears: That seems like it.

33 00:02:26.590 ⇒ 00:02:29.469 Uttam Kumaran: How about everybody else? Anything this weekend?

34 00:02:31.890 ⇒ 00:02:34.360 Samuel Roberts: what I… what I missed so far. Sorry, guys, I was finishing up on.

35 00:02:34.360 ⇒ 00:02:36.530 Uttam Kumaran: Just we… just… just weekend?

36 00:02:36.530 ⇒ 00:02:37.330 Henry Zhao: Oh, that’s wrong.

37 00:02:37.640 ⇒ 00:02:38.570 Henry Zhao: Yeah, I was also around…

38 00:02:38.570 ⇒ 00:02:39.170 Justin Breshears: I was gonna be kidding.

39 00:02:39.170 ⇒ 00:02:41.210 Henry Zhao: had the same thought, actually, Amber.

40 00:02:42.300 ⇒ 00:02:44.880 Uttam Kumaran: Boy, how are you, Nick? Why were your new grades?

41 00:02:45.770 ⇒ 00:02:48.389 Samuel Roberts: No, just, like, in public and everywhere, like…

42 00:02:48.390 ⇒ 00:02:52.580 Uttam Kumaran: On the flights, yeah.

43 00:02:52.580 ⇒ 00:02:55.719 Henry Zhao: Yeah, and we had a fire drill that was a real fire, so…

44 00:02:55.720 ⇒ 00:02:56.110 Samuel Roberts: Oh.

45 00:02:56.110 ⇒ 00:02:57.970 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, no!

46 00:02:59.750 ⇒ 00:03:02.360 Uttam Kumaran: Oh my gosh, are you okay? What happened?

47 00:03:02.360 ⇒ 00:03:03.899 Henry Zhao: Oh, yeah, I have no idea.

48 00:03:04.360 ⇒ 00:03:06.170 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, there’s kids screaming, like…

49 00:03:06.790 ⇒ 00:03:07.280 Samuel Roberts: Buh.

50 00:03:07.280 ⇒ 00:03:08.429 Henry Zhao: It’s, it’s crazy.

51 00:03:10.210 ⇒ 00:03:11.009 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, you’re fans.

52 00:03:11.010 ⇒ 00:03:14.100 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I had a family wedding this weekend.

53 00:03:14.100 ⇒ 00:03:15.049 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, yeah, right.

54 00:03:15.050 ⇒ 00:03:30.309 Samuel Roberts: Which was honestly the opposite of Screaming Kids, because I was a little nervous about my 3-month-olds at this wedding, and being out a little later, and the noise, getting passed around and meeting lots of new people, and he was absolutely fine. It was incredible.

55 00:03:30.310 ⇒ 00:03:30.980 Uttam Kumaran: Nice!

56 00:03:30.980 ⇒ 00:03:34.359 Samuel Roberts: Best case scenario, he didn’t really fuss.

57 00:03:34.500 ⇒ 00:03:42.279 Samuel Roberts: he didn’t hate anyone that I was worried about, like, him not being held by, and then, you know, everything went as well as it could. So that was,

58 00:03:43.000 ⇒ 00:03:44.649 Samuel Roberts: That was a blessing.

59 00:03:45.450 ⇒ 00:03:46.200 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.

60 00:03:48.180 ⇒ 00:03:50.699 Uttam Kumaran: Hell yeah. Awash, anything this weekend?

61 00:03:51.270 ⇒ 00:03:58.550 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, actually, I’ve been planning Diwali with my family. I’ve been doing shopping with family.

62 00:03:59.670 ⇒ 00:04:00.480 Uttam Kumaran: Hmm.

63 00:04:01.560 ⇒ 00:04:02.520 Uttam Kumaran: Nice.

64 00:04:03.790 ⇒ 00:04:11.300 Uttam Kumaran: Hell yeah. Okay, let me, pinged… Robert…

65 00:04:13.180 ⇒ 00:04:19.760 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. So, yeah, I feel really good going to this week. We…

66 00:04:20.029 ⇒ 00:04:34.359 Uttam Kumaran: really, I did my best to jam in a ton of decisions last week, and so, as you guys have seen today, we have done allocations for this month. Y’all should have received a little bit of a message around your hours. It’s our

67 00:04:34.430 ⇒ 00:04:40.199 Uttam Kumaran: start of how do we start to leverage the OKRs and the budgets and back into, basically.

68 00:04:40.390 ⇒ 00:04:59.740 Uttam Kumaran: all the way to the individual person’s hours, and… and of course, I think the theme of this month is you’re going to see more of a push towards, okay, we’re going to achieve the OKRs, what needs to happen on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis to do that? Part of this is going to be… this meeting is, I would say.

69 00:04:59.850 ⇒ 00:05:03.020 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe the most important meeting of the week?

70 00:05:03.040 ⇒ 00:05:14.820 Uttam Kumaran: And really, the decisions that this crew makes, the team that we have here are really the folks that are entrenched in all of the parts of the business and all of our clients.

71 00:05:14.820 ⇒ 00:05:24.730 Uttam Kumaran: From delivery, from engineering, and from sales, and so it’s really, really important that we’re all on the same page. We also… it’s also really important that we all know what levers we can pull.

72 00:05:24.790 ⇒ 00:05:30.010 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And what levers are easy to do, what levers are hard to do. But of course.

73 00:05:30.350 ⇒ 00:05:45.040 Uttam Kumaran: just to reiterate what our goals are, one is to hit our revenue target. We are on track to do that, given the amount of clients that we have, so that’s really great. What are the ways for that to get off track? One is if we lose clients.

74 00:05:45.040 ⇒ 00:05:55.450 Uttam Kumaran: So that is something I’m just gonna say out loud. If we lose clients, there’s a great… that’s a great way to… for that number to go down. The second thing is if we lose people.

75 00:05:55.770 ⇒ 00:05:59.629 Uttam Kumaran: And so, again, I’ll remind… I’ve sort of mentioned on the call, but…

76 00:05:59.720 ⇒ 00:06:04.319 Uttam Kumaran: Really be mindful of your time and your…

77 00:06:04.320 ⇒ 00:06:12.110 Uttam Kumaran: happiness and your worry. If there are things that are on your mind that you want to talk about, please bring it up, but…

78 00:06:12.110 ⇒ 00:06:29.999 Uttam Kumaran: this team sets the standard for the whole company, and will continue to, so it’s really important that we’re all comfortable with what we’re signing up for. And then the last thing is gonna really be around planning, so making sure that we can achieve our goals. And so a lot of what you’re going to see today is

79 00:06:30.000 ⇒ 00:06:40.049 Uttam Kumaran: We’re gonna start with some short-term decisions, and then we’re going to focus more on, okay, like, what does the month look like? Ideally, this will start to expand

80 00:06:40.160 ⇒ 00:06:46.719 Uttam Kumaran: I’m hoping that going into Q1, we can start looking at things on a quarterly basis. So…

81 00:06:46.950 ⇒ 00:06:50.459 Uttam Kumaran: Let me… Get started…

82 00:06:53.480 ⇒ 00:06:55.960 Uttam Kumaran: One second…

83 00:07:00.780 ⇒ 00:07:05.810 Uttam Kumaran: And just don’t worry about, the messiness on this…

84 00:07:06.040 ⇒ 00:07:08.640 Uttam Kumaran: Doc, I will clean this up.

85 00:07:09.060 ⇒ 00:07:12.169 Uttam Kumaran: But this has everything I want to talk about today.

86 00:07:12.790 ⇒ 00:07:31.250 Uttam Kumaran: So great, so I just wanted to kind of give a snapshot of all of our clients, and we need to talk today about one more, which is README. And so, really, I think that the four that I want to discuss today, the four or five

87 00:07:31.250 ⇒ 00:07:37.920 Uttam Kumaran: or so I want to discuss today is Eden, Remo, Interlude, HIP, and README.

88 00:07:38.060 ⇒ 00:07:52.759 Uttam Kumaran: And so, a couple of changes overall that we’re making to, Eden. So, Eden is our largest client, but I would say our lowest margin client. And so, what’s the point of making more money if we don’t make more money?

89 00:07:52.760 ⇒ 00:08:01.509 Uttam Kumaran: And so, really, the theme of this month is how do we accomplish the goals for Eden more sustainably? Amber has set allocations

90 00:08:01.510 ⇒ 00:08:19.910 Uttam Kumaran: But I think we’re still not at the point at which we are hitting our margin targets. So, a couple of things that need to happen. One, it just… we just really need to have clear tickets here, and I think I’ll be relying on Amber… on Amber, Awash, and Henry, on you guys to understand

91 00:08:19.910 ⇒ 00:08:27.010 Uttam Kumaran: If all the work that we’re taking on is actually, like, due right now, or it’s just ad hoc stuff.

92 00:08:27.290 ⇒ 00:08:43.320 Uttam Kumaran: Second piece, the Zoron workstream, is something that we have not really allocated, you know, revenue towards, so that’s something that, I want to discuss with Robert, about if that’s something that we should

93 00:08:43.409 ⇒ 00:08:47.659 Uttam Kumaran: ask for more budget for, or we should push back on.

94 00:08:47.840 ⇒ 00:09:02.660 Uttam Kumaran: I think, Henry, you discussed that you see a path towards, you know, being more efficient with time here. I also just think that we need to have a strong backstop on the amount of work that we’re taking, and I don’t think we’ve had that, like.

95 00:09:02.880 ⇒ 00:09:07.060 Uttam Kumaran: ceiling budget yet on this client, so… that’s probably what I would say. Yeah, go ahead.

96 00:09:07.060 ⇒ 00:09:18.570 Henry Zhao: Yeah, we just had our stand-up this week, right now, and we definitely are doing that, like, pushing things that are not urgent to next week, but we should be asking for more budget for Zoran stuff, because this is stuff that

97 00:09:18.720 ⇒ 00:09:24.689 Henry Zhao: was not, like, just kind of extra stuff that we agreed to do for them, and I think Robert knows the value that they’re getting out of that.

98 00:09:25.210 ⇒ 00:09:25.860 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

99 00:09:26.630 ⇒ 00:09:28.690 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, great. So, that’ll be…

100 00:09:28.840 ⇒ 00:09:41.720 Uttam Kumaran: my… that’ll be sort of what I ask about next week, but I think that’s the theme, so between Awash, Henry, you guys sort of have the keys on the engineering side. Amber has done her best on, like, giving me the

101 00:09:41.920 ⇒ 00:10:00.119 Uttam Kumaran: a budget that works, but she’s sort of out of levers, because the scope is pretty large. So, unless we can get the new revenue in… if we can’t get the new revenue in, then my… my push on you guys and Robert is going to be we have to lower scope. So, just keep that in your mind.

102 00:10:00.710 ⇒ 00:10:05.200 Uttam Kumaran: I think I’ll wait for Robert to get here to talk about,

103 00:10:05.520 ⇒ 00:10:11.180 Uttam Kumaran: Remo, but let’s talk about Interlude. So, kind of the biggest…

104 00:10:11.390 ⇒ 00:10:16.719 Uttam Kumaran: sort of nervousness I have on Interlude is just the time available from client.

105 00:10:16.740 ⇒ 00:10:34.330 Uttam Kumaran: So, this is something that Justin and I talked about last week. I think the biggest thing we want to do is, one, try to rely on some type of async mechanism, like Looms, to try to still get in front of the client. The second thing, Justin, I believe you’re going to try to get

106 00:10:34.390 ⇒ 00:10:38.129 Uttam Kumaran: standing time with Micah and Sylvia, I believe.

107 00:10:38.130 ⇒ 00:10:42.669 Justin Breshears: Correct. We’re… we have that in the works right now. Yeah, that’s…

108 00:10:42.700 ⇒ 00:11:02.670 Justin Breshears: Anytime anybody sees a project where the main decision maker or stakeholder on the client side continually, like, declines or reschedules meetings, that should be, like, a huge red flag to you, especially when you’re two weeks out from a contract renewal, and you haven’t met with that stakeholder in two or three weeks.

109 00:11:02.700 ⇒ 00:11:06.069 Justin Breshears: Just throwing that out there. That should be something we should be calling out.

110 00:11:06.940 ⇒ 00:11:11.020 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s something in the past that, again, we’ve just tackled because

111 00:11:11.200 ⇒ 00:11:30.329 Uttam Kumaran: Robert and I have a sales relationship with someone, but this is a huge risk to the delivery team if the client is not able to meet. And so, I think, Justin, what we’ll find this week is you’ll kind of let me know if that works. If it doesn’t, I’ll raise the flag directly to Matthew.

112 00:11:30.850 ⇒ 00:11:43.250 Justin Breshears: We got Micah and Sylvia in the works, but I also have a message out to Matthew about meeting on the 14th that is still outstanding, so there’s a couple of things that, yeah, if we don’t have any traction by midweek, we should probably…

113 00:11:43.400 ⇒ 00:11:44.530 Justin Breshears: Escalate.

114 00:11:44.530 ⇒ 00:11:48.460 Samuel Roberts: Are you talking about a new meeting with Micah, or the Friday one that we have standing already?

115 00:11:48.920 ⇒ 00:11:54.930 Justin Breshears: the new one we talked about this morning, where… I don’t know if Michael was gonna be there or not, but the one with Sylvia, especially.

116 00:11:54.930 ⇒ 00:11:55.560 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, okay.

117 00:11:55.560 ⇒ 00:11:57.449 Justin Breshears: I would imagine both of them being…

118 00:11:57.970 ⇒ 00:12:08.929 Justin Breshears: included on that, but just to continue, because right now we’re kind of… this is the problem in the life cycle of it, is we’re coming up on a contract renewal, and we’re running out of steam on things to do.

119 00:12:08.930 ⇒ 00:12:09.660 Samuel Roberts: Put that off.

120 00:12:09.660 ⇒ 00:12:11.789 Justin Breshears: Those two are… are not good. Yeah.

121 00:12:11.790 ⇒ 00:12:12.740 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, totally.

122 00:12:12.740 ⇒ 00:12:20.650 Justin Breshears: So we need to keep, keep the ball moving on what we can do, which requires us meeting with Sylvia and Micah on that, so…

123 00:12:20.650 ⇒ 00:12:33.430 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and I want… I want you guys to exhaust what you can do on the PM side. I can then make a decision on if this is even a client worth keeping, right? Like, if they’re not… if we’re… if we’re not able to guarantee success, and it’s not because of our technical ability, then…

124 00:12:33.810 ⇒ 00:12:37.080 Uttam Kumaran: it’s a wrap, right? So… the…

125 00:12:37.100 ⇒ 00:12:48.430 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s what… and then, again, that’ll come into my ability to put together a renewal package that works. I think the biggest thing I’ll need in teeing that up, probably Sam is…

126 00:12:48.430 ⇒ 00:13:02.139 Uttam Kumaran: I’m trying to think about how we do renewals for, like, AI clients better, but also overall is… I think we just need some type of before and after, like, ROI snapshot or something. So, as a salesperson here, I’ll work on something that looks

127 00:13:03.620 ⇒ 00:13:15.330 Uttam Kumaran: like, as part of our renewal deck and process, I’ll work on, like, what we can produce for before and after. They’re not paying us a lot of money, and I don’t think this will expand to the biggest client, but I do think that

128 00:13:15.410 ⇒ 00:13:25.650 Uttam Kumaran: they should probably keep us on to continue to pick at these things. It’s just gonna matter if this is a priority for them. So, that’s just something that probably next week I will… I will work on.

129 00:13:33.190 ⇒ 00:13:37.219 Uttam Kumaran: Great. And then let’s talk about,

130 00:13:37.480 ⇒ 00:13:46.520 Uttam Kumaran: hip. Yeah, the biggest thing for hip, I think we talked about, last week, is just making sure that, Justin, you’re hooked…

131 00:13:46.700 ⇒ 00:13:54.919 Uttam Kumaran: up with… with Audrey… with, Gray and… and Andrea, or… and then I think that’s…

132 00:13:55.070 ⇒ 00:14:02.760 Uttam Kumaran: that’s really it. I sent you the text from Robert, and so, like, I think you generally have the, kind of, like, the M.O. on this client, right?

133 00:14:03.060 ⇒ 00:14:12.860 Justin Breshears: Yeah, so, actually just got a message from Gray. I’ve got a call scheduled on Wednesday with Gray and the rep from Healthy.

134 00:14:13.150 ⇒ 00:14:29.450 Justin Breshears: to go over, like, a deep dive into Healthy and be able to kind of match up what OASI’s working on as far as the data flows from the SOPs that we talked about. So we actually have a pretty good plan for this week, at least, but it’ll be kind of a week-to-week thing to monitor on.

135 00:14:29.510 ⇒ 00:14:34.990 Justin Breshears: You know, how we can continue, like, pushing it forward with a little bit of ambiguity here.

136 00:14:35.930 ⇒ 00:14:36.520 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

137 00:14:37.140 ⇒ 00:14:41.449 Justin Breshears: So, yeah, we got a good plan this week, but we’re just gonna work between now and then, get a good handle on

138 00:14:41.680 ⇒ 00:14:50.939 Justin Breshears: outside of Healthy, and then Wednesday we’ll get into Healthy. And then we have a meeting with them Thursday for a weekly sync, where we can kind of download what we found out.

139 00:14:51.990 ⇒ 00:14:52.800 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool.

140 00:14:52.980 ⇒ 00:15:08.750 Uttam Kumaran: So I think two decisions that we’re gonna make today, also is on coverage for Insomnia and for README. I think for both of these, we lost Shreya on the Insomnia side, and we… README is a…

141 00:15:08.880 ⇒ 00:15:27.159 Uttam Kumaran: past customer coming back. And so, the preliminary decisions right now, are that, one, Insomnia is, like, a slow burn client. I think the stuff that they need, and again, I’m not on the client, so correct me, but I think it helps if… if with what information I have, if I narrated, I think that shows probably what

142 00:15:27.360 ⇒ 00:15:36.470 Uttam Kumaran: what we all know. So, Insomnia, from what I know, is a little bit of a slow burn client. It’s a lot of setup, but I think the scope is pretty clear.

143 00:15:36.590 ⇒ 00:15:41.400 Uttam Kumaran: I think they move very slowly as well, so the… the…

144 00:15:41.940 ⇒ 00:15:46.209 Uttam Kumaran: the, adjustment to make here is to move Mustafa onto this client.

145 00:15:46.220 ⇒ 00:16:05.370 Uttam Kumaran: The reason, I voted for that is Masafa’s starting to do some great data work, and has expressed interest, to me that he wants to do more data work, and I think, that would be great for him to learn that skill set, and to come on this client and do that.

146 00:16:05.730 ⇒ 00:16:06.920 Uttam Kumaran: And so I feel…

147 00:16:07.470 ⇒ 00:16:14.979 Uttam Kumaran: that’s, like, pretty fair. I think I’ll… I think, Justin, we probably… I think we did some of the allocations for his time.

148 00:16:15.290 ⇒ 00:16:19.370 Uttam Kumaran: But I think that’ll probably be up to… for us to confirm.

149 00:16:19.970 ⇒ 00:16:22.400 Justin Breshears: When we met, we didn’t have,

150 00:16:22.400 ⇒ 00:16:23.659 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, that’s right, that’s right, that’s right.

151 00:16:23.660 ⇒ 00:16:39.789 Justin Breshears: So, yeah, we had just had an analyst role allocated, so we just need to plug his name into that role that I already put in there. Okay. And I think we need to make a decision on tech lead on this account, because it says Henry right there, but Henry hasn’t been involved in, salmon.

152 00:16:39.790 ⇒ 00:16:40.160 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

153 00:16:40.160 ⇒ 00:16:50.140 Justin Breshears: both kind of been on invites and stuff, and so I think we just need to pick one and go with it, and I think Sam probably has more availability than Waish does right now.

154 00:16:50.500 ⇒ 00:16:55.049 Justin Breshears: So can we… can we just decide that Sam’s gonna be the tech lead there?

155 00:16:55.050 ⇒ 00:16:57.419 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I would say the… probably the biggest…

156 00:16:57.790 ⇒ 00:17:00.270 Uttam Kumaran: I guess it depends on the scope of work.

157 00:17:00.390 ⇒ 00:17:04.540 Uttam Kumaran: Like…

158 00:17:05.319 ⇒ 00:17:10.520 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, this is, like, this is where Sam’s expertise is on the AI and sort of full-stack side.

159 00:17:11.010 ⇒ 00:17:12.069 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, I would.

160 00:17:12.410 ⇒ 00:17:13.059 Justin Breshears: Okay, then maybe not.

161 00:17:13.069 ⇒ 00:17:14.399 Uttam Kumaran: If you’re… same if you’re…

162 00:17:14.400 ⇒ 00:17:14.970 Justin Breshears: Sure.

163 00:17:14.970 ⇒ 00:17:19.240 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, Sam, if you’re interested, I would push you in the ring, but it’s like…

164 00:17:19.430 ⇒ 00:17:27.440 Uttam Kumaran: There’s some deeper data work. Otherwise, Awash… It’s kind of slammed, so…

165 00:17:27.599 ⇒ 00:17:34.499 Uttam Kumaran: it… we may have to think about whether this is Henry, or we have to decide if there’s an open slot here.

166 00:17:35.310 ⇒ 00:17:36.110 Justin Breshears: Gotcha.

167 00:17:36.110 ⇒ 00:17:36.929 Henry Zhao: Yep, up to you guys.

168 00:17:38.530 ⇒ 00:17:38.870 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.

169 00:17:38.870 ⇒ 00:17:42.079 Justin Breshears: Kind of makes sense why Henry was slotted in there, because, yeah, I just…

170 00:17:42.600 ⇒ 00:17:49.749 Justin Breshears: like, oh, yeah, another risk here, you know, like, everything is, like, Robert’s time, and we wanna… I wanna…

171 00:17:49.900 ⇒ 00:17:52.469 Justin Breshears: We’re gonna do what we did with you and get… get him out of stuff.

172 00:17:52.470 ⇒ 00:17:52.810 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

173 00:17:52.810 ⇒ 00:17:58.309 Justin Breshears: So having a strong, like, tech lead presence on this account would really help.

174 00:18:00.140 ⇒ 00:18:00.750 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

175 00:18:00.750 ⇒ 00:18:12.949 Amber Lin: I… for ABC, I switched to Techly from Awish to Sam, so we should have some time freed up. I just removed them from the invite, so Awish can have more time.

176 00:18:16.060 ⇒ 00:18:16.750 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

177 00:18:17.480 ⇒ 00:18:18.619 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think…

178 00:18:19.090 ⇒ 00:18:24.840 Uttam Kumaran: Awash, I think all eyes are kinda gonna be on you this month. You’re spread up… you’re spread out pretty thin.

179 00:18:25.140 ⇒ 00:18:29.689 Uttam Kumaran: So, if you think you can support on Insomnia, let me know, otherwise…

180 00:18:30.350 ⇒ 00:18:33.449 Uttam Kumaran: You know, basically, in order of capabilities, it’ll be…

181 00:18:33.840 ⇒ 00:18:37.500 Uttam Kumaran: It’ll be you or Henry, and then me, who needs to fill in.

182 00:18:37.500 ⇒ 00:18:46.120 Justin Breshears: I will say it’s not gonna take a lot of your time on Insomnia, like, we’re not gonna ask you, like, do hands-on work, it’s more just, like.

183 00:18:46.890 ⇒ 00:18:47.770 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, I mean.

184 00:18:47.770 ⇒ 00:18:56.379 Justin Breshears: sure that what Mustafa’s delivering is, like, hitting the mark on what we need to deliver, kind of a thing, and I don’t have the expertise to be able to really judge that.

185 00:18:56.810 ⇒ 00:19:00.160 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. I’ve been doing it, so I think it’ll be okay.

186 00:19:00.890 ⇒ 00:19:01.460 Justin Breshears: Okay.

187 00:19:02.220 ⇒ 00:19:06.880 Uttam Kumaran: Sam, how interested are you on getting involved on, like, data side of things?

188 00:19:06.880 ⇒ 00:19:11.290 Samuel Roberts: Definitely interested in at least learning a bit more about that side, because it’s a little…

189 00:19:11.580 ⇒ 00:19:15.749 Samuel Roberts: black boxing to me right now. I have some knowledge, but not enough, so I definitely…

190 00:19:15.960 ⇒ 00:19:20.369 Samuel Roberts: I was already kind of in the loop on Insomnia stuff, just to support Casey as he needed things.

191 00:19:20.860 ⇒ 00:19:21.270 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

192 00:19:21.270 ⇒ 00:19:23.130 Samuel Roberts: So, more in that loop.

193 00:19:23.910 ⇒ 00:19:33.629 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, basically, as you’re seeing on that client, there’s… there’s, like, automation, which provides data, which then gets into a dashboard, and then the dashboard gets analyzed.

194 00:19:33.950 ⇒ 00:19:40.450 Uttam Kumaran: the toughest… the toughest thing about this is Robert is our best analyst, and…

195 00:19:40.770 ⇒ 00:19:44.599 Uttam Kumaran: Analysis is, like, not… it’s, like, not a, like, a…

196 00:19:44.830 ⇒ 00:19:53.239 Uttam Kumaran: it’s not an easy thing to grasp immediately, but I think this could be something where, Awash, I think we could… we could try to figure out how

197 00:19:53.540 ⇒ 00:19:54.999 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe the three of us

198 00:19:55.180 ⇒ 00:20:02.959 Uttam Kumaran: we work to see how Sam can start to get more involved on data clients, because as he has more bandwidth, he can take that on.

199 00:20:03.260 ⇒ 00:20:11.090 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe that’s something we… the three of us can talk about this week, but for now, I think we’ll… we’ll have a way share. A way she let me know, like, if this gets…

200 00:20:11.220 ⇒ 00:20:16.639 Uttam Kumaran: tents. I think the biggest thing, Justin, is to make sure that we allocate for.

201 00:20:16.970 ⇒ 00:20:19.870 Awaish Kumar: A waste hours on this, as well, and operating.

202 00:20:20.740 ⇒ 00:20:21.350 Justin Breshears: Yeah.

203 00:20:21.770 ⇒ 00:20:22.160 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

204 00:20:22.160 ⇒ 00:20:23.379 Justin Breshears: Like I said, it shouldn’t…

205 00:20:23.610 ⇒ 00:20:33.149 Justin Breshears: Shouldn’t take a ton, but just oversight on that side, until I can get more up to speed, because I’m on the same track. Like, I want to get more up to speed on the data analysis work, and be able to

206 00:20:33.570 ⇒ 00:20:37.110 Justin Breshears: oversee this better in the future, but I just gotta get there.

207 00:20:37.920 ⇒ 00:20:40.040 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think I wish you’ll be the best bet.

208 00:20:41.510 ⇒ 00:20:43.439 Uttam Kumaran: Just lock in this month.

209 00:20:45.200 ⇒ 00:20:52.789 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. And then, README. So, README is actually probably the most stressful, and that’s where, Henry, I think you’re gonna sub in.

210 00:20:53.100 ⇒ 00:20:57.980 Uttam Kumaran: Which is, they have, like, very clear…

211 00:20:58.560 ⇒ 00:21:11.530 Uttam Kumaran: product analytics asks that we sort of fumbled through last time. I think Robert has a really clear vision of what he needs for them. This is actually very similar to default. I don’t know exactly, like, what the,

212 00:21:12.000 ⇒ 00:21:19.080 Uttam Kumaran: what the setup is. I believe they have amplitude and everything set up already. I think they just are trying to do exploratory analysis.

213 00:21:19.200 ⇒ 00:21:28.029 Uttam Kumaran: Robert can get the… Robert will basically hand off those requirements to you. Yep. We have a meeting about that right after this, so sounds good. Cool. And then Justin, you’ll…

214 00:21:28.080 ⇒ 00:21:39.819 Justin Breshears: He’ll run our rituals for that. Robert did deliver a handoff doc. I haven’t gotten a chance to review it yet, but he did deliver that, and we had that meeting, so I think… I think we’ll be able to be off and running with this one.

215 00:21:40.060 ⇒ 00:21:49.640 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so let’s talk about this again next week, and make sure that we… we feel good about where these are. These guys, I think, could be a steady client for us.

216 00:21:49.770 ⇒ 00:21:54.819 Uttam Kumaran: Really, really great team, by the way. I think just, like, high expectations.

217 00:21:55.120 ⇒ 00:22:00.150 Uttam Kumaran: But, pretty simple product, so I don’t think it’ll be… that crazy.

218 00:22:00.360 ⇒ 00:22:06.490 Uttam Kumaran: So I’m gonna put, confirm, allocations, and operating.

219 00:22:06.870 ⇒ 00:22:09.900 Uttam Kumaran: It’ll be next to the F.

220 00:22:11.780 ⇒ 00:22:20.650 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool. So I feel good about this. Any other thing to talk about in terms of clients?

221 00:22:21.320 ⇒ 00:22:25.320 Uttam Kumaran: How do we, like, a way you feel good about urban stems?

222 00:22:26.450 ⇒ 00:22:27.489 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, so…

223 00:22:27.490 ⇒ 00:22:28.100 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

224 00:22:29.270 ⇒ 00:22:35.900 Awaish Kumar: I just got, like, got access in at the end of last week, so I will get up to speed this week.

225 00:22:36.390 ⇒ 00:22:45.849 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so just brain dump any questions you have about, like, the repo, core modeling, I’ll answer everything. It’s complicated.

226 00:22:46.000 ⇒ 00:22:54.199 Uttam Kumaran: But it is, they do subscriptions, they do transactions, they have a big inventory thing, so there’s a lot to discover there.

227 00:22:54.310 ⇒ 00:23:00.769 Uttam Kumaran: But I’m glad we’re involving another one of their stakeholders, and we’re…

228 00:23:01.030 ⇒ 00:23:05.579 Awaish Kumar: a waste, you’re now involved, so I’ll still… I’ll still stay, like, kind of in the strategist role here.

229 00:23:05.630 ⇒ 00:23:10.379 Uttam Kumaran: The biggest thing for that is we are coming up on some…

230 00:23:10.700 ⇒ 00:23:18.670 Uttam Kumaran: renewals next month, I believe. Urban Stems is… At some point next month.

231 00:23:19.140 ⇒ 00:23:20.690 Uttam Kumaran: It’s not listed here.

232 00:23:20.830 ⇒ 00:23:26.400 Uttam Kumaran: I think it’s mid-next month, so I’m gonna start… one of the things for me to take on this week…

233 00:23:26.720 ⇒ 00:23:31.819 Uttam Kumaran: or this month, I could put it this week, is to start trying to get ahead of

234 00:23:31.980 ⇒ 00:23:42.749 Uttam Kumaran: how we handle renewals, and starting to put, like, a package together. Urban Sems is a great one. We have a lot of information about how we’ve moved the ball for them.

235 00:23:42.830 ⇒ 00:23:52.779 Uttam Kumaran: And I have a pretty high confidence that they’ll renew. So that’s… that’s something. We… we have a renewal conversation already in progress with ABC.

236 00:23:53.020 ⇒ 00:24:02.000 Uttam Kumaran: And then, I think Interlude is really the next one. Default, we’ve secured the renewal for… .

237 00:24:02.660 ⇒ 00:24:04.209 Awaish Kumar: And then, so, I think…

238 00:24:04.210 ⇒ 00:24:14.919 Uttam Kumaran: For this week… for this week, for this meeting, let’s just get through normal delivery stuff, and then as things calm down, we can have a sales portion that talks a little bit about renewals, so…

239 00:24:16.210 ⇒ 00:24:18.450 Uttam Kumaran: Cool, okay.

240 00:24:18.820 ⇒ 00:24:25.660 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t have any concern about any other clients. I think the biggest thing for the delivery, for the PMs is just

241 00:24:26.120 ⇒ 00:24:44.119 Uttam Kumaran: we will get tighter on allocations and making sure that our hours spent is closer to what we planned. Mustafa and I work this weekend, and we have Clockify data now in Omni. I have, like, part of a dashboard ready, but by this week, we should have a dashboard which clearly shows

242 00:24:44.260 ⇒ 00:24:47.079 Uttam Kumaran: Client, the person, how much hours was booked.

243 00:24:47.230 ⇒ 00:24:51.059 Uttam Kumaran: Versus a goal. That would be the very simple thing we try to review.

244 00:24:51.420 ⇒ 00:24:55.539 Uttam Kumaran: And that’ll be something I’ll give everyone access to, and…

245 00:24:56.160 ⇒ 00:24:58.250 Uttam Kumaran: That should solve at least one problem here.

246 00:24:59.830 ⇒ 00:25:01.899 Justin Breshears: Amber, are there any risks that aren’t…

247 00:25:02.160 ⇒ 00:25:05.350 Justin Breshears: Like, up here, identified on any of your clients?

248 00:25:06.060 ⇒ 00:25:12.279 Amber Lin: I do want to talk about Remo. I… I see that Robert’s not here yet, though.

249 00:25:12.610 ⇒ 00:25:18.189 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I messaged him. Let’s see. If we don’t get to it in this meeting, we will… I’ll book another meeting.

250 00:25:18.190 ⇒ 00:25:22.090 Justin Breshears: I think he’s coming out of a insomnia call around this time.

251 00:25:22.090 ⇒ 00:25:23.890 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, okay. Okay, cool.

252 00:25:23.890 ⇒ 00:25:27.560 Amber Lin: I’m happy to book another meeting, just if you guys have time.

253 00:25:27.920 ⇒ 00:25:37.989 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, we’ll see if he comes out of this. So, out of office, so this is, another section, I think. Is there… maybe, Amber, is there anyone else out of office this week?

254 00:25:39.270 ⇒ 00:25:40.770 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t believe so.

255 00:25:42.040 ⇒ 00:26:01.649 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so Amber is going to be out of office Wednesday to Tuesday, and so… it is time for us to figure out how we, guard against all of her great work. And so I… this is our sort of current plan that we talked about on Friday.

256 00:26:02.480 ⇒ 00:26:04.680 Uttam Kumaran: There’s a couple of names listed on here.

257 00:26:05.020 ⇒ 00:26:15.609 Uttam Kumaran: are we nervous? Is… are any… any of this comes as a surprise to anybody? The… kind of the one thing I mentioned on a con… on a… on a…

258 00:26:15.710 ⇒ 00:26:27.890 Uttam Kumaran: client like Eden is just for have one person. I think we talked… previously, we were talking, it was, like, Henry and a wish can cover. I think it’s helpful just to have one person. I just nominated Henry. So, Henry, this would just be running…

259 00:26:28.340 ⇒ 00:26:30.300 Uttam Kumaran: The typical things.

260 00:26:30.400 ⇒ 00:26:40.180 Uttam Kumaran: Any concerns here, or is anyone, like… So you see Henry, Sam, Awash.

261 00:26:40.710 ⇒ 00:26:45.659 Uttam Kumaran: And Zoran and Ellie, is anyone concerned about any of this? Or…

262 00:26:46.650 ⇒ 00:26:50.390 Uttam Kumaran: Is there anything to worry about here, like, about this week up till Tuesday?

263 00:26:53.440 ⇒ 00:26:58.319 Samuel Roberts: Just to confirm… so, Confirm Thursday Meeting’s the meeting that we have with them to go over stuff.

264 00:26:58.710 ⇒ 00:27:10.539 Samuel Roberts: I don’t necessarily have all the data that you usually populate that slide with. Yeah, for this week’s Thursday meeting, I just called Yvet, I think she wants to cancel, because she is going to be out of office.

265 00:27:10.540 ⇒ 00:27:19.570 Amber Lin: And Steven and Matt might not be there, so I’m just gonna check on Steven and Matt’s availability. If they’re free, I think Utsam, it’s best that we talk to them about the renewal stuff.

266 00:27:19.740 ⇒ 00:27:20.770 Amber Lin: So…

267 00:27:20.770 ⇒ 00:27:23.510 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, let’s, let’s, let’s keep that meeting, and then…

268 00:27:23.920 ⇒ 00:27:26.290 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, Sam, you just come with me, and then we can…

269 00:27:26.290 ⇒ 00:27:26.720 Samuel Roberts: That’s fine.

270 00:27:26.720 ⇒ 00:27:30.110 Uttam Kumaran: we can… yeah, that’ll be… that’ll be fine. Okay, that’s what we…

271 00:27:30.110 ⇒ 00:27:34.850 Samuel Roberts: I’m covering all the, like, the data on the, like, ANDI usage and stuff.

272 00:27:35.260 ⇒ 00:27:44.110 Amber Lin: Yeah, and if you need me, I’m still here, it’s just I’m gonna be out with my family, but I still have access to a computer, like, if you need anything urgent, I’ll still be there.

273 00:27:44.970 ⇒ 00:27:50.529 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think we got it, don’t worry. I think as long as we get… and then Sam… Sam’s gonna be running daily stand-ups.

274 00:27:53.030 ⇒ 00:27:54.270 Uttam Kumaran: For ABC?

275 00:27:54.430 ⇒ 00:28:07.239 Amber Lin: Yes, Samgar, in all the meetings, I’ll confirm with you… we’re meeting right after this, so I’ll just confirm with you, like, if you feel comfortable, like, does this time work for you, and such, we’ll talk about it more in that meeting.

276 00:28:07.240 ⇒ 00:28:08.259 Samuel Roberts: Sounds good, yeah.

277 00:28:08.500 ⇒ 00:28:11.970 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I would say the number one thing to not drop is stand-ups.

278 00:28:12.220 ⇒ 00:28:13.690 Uttam Kumaran: And the project review.

279 00:28:14.800 ⇒ 00:28:20.120 Uttam Kumaran: I can survive if we drop grooming I could survive.

280 00:28:20.350 ⇒ 00:28:27.839 Uttam Kumaran: But the stand-ups are the one thing across all these clients that we want to make sure. So, Henry, you’re good to run stand-ups on Eden.

281 00:28:28.240 ⇒ 00:28:31.120 Uttam Kumaran: And… A waste your good as well?

282 00:28:31.120 ⇒ 00:28:35.749 Henry Zhao: I can on Thursday. Awash, do you mind, doing it on Thursday for me?

283 00:28:36.600 ⇒ 00:28:38.259 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, sure.

284 00:28:41.020 ⇒ 00:28:41.940 Amber Lin: Okay.

285 00:28:42.870 ⇒ 00:28:44.040 Amber Lin: Hi, Robert!

286 00:28:44.440 ⇒ 00:28:49.909 Robert Tseng: Hello, sorry, I know that, some of you had questions for me on this slide, yeah.

287 00:28:49.910 ⇒ 00:28:55.979 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so let’s wrap, let’s finish this up. Amber, are you good on,

288 00:28:56.500 ⇒ 00:28:58.470 Uttam Kumaran: For Allie, is Zoran aware?

289 00:28:58.470 ⇒ 00:29:12.900 Amber Lin: Yeah, I booked the meetings we just met today. His time is a little bit more turbulent, but I asked him to just move the meetings to times he can meet, so I think… and Robert will be meeting… will cover for me when I’m out.

290 00:29:13.420 ⇒ 00:29:16.239 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so it’s… so on this one, yeah, I guess…

291 00:29:17.380 ⇒ 00:29:24.380 Uttam Kumaran: I’m watching the channel, but, like, I would just make sure that, like, he’s sending some updates, or…

292 00:29:26.340 ⇒ 00:29:33.760 Amber Lin: Also, on your question of, do we have work after the two weeks, or is it just two weeks for the month? I think…

293 00:29:34.090 ⇒ 00:29:45.579 Amber Lin: Robert told them that we’ll need 4 weeks just for a buffer, because I don’t think we’re gonna exactly hit 2 weeks, but that’s the amount of work we have, and then after that, we should have some,

294 00:29:45.900 ⇒ 00:29:56.650 Amber Lin: expansion or, say, previously work owned by Shreya, like, that type of work that we can look forward to expand, and Robert will be looking at expansion possibilities, like, this week or next week.

295 00:29:57.180 ⇒ 00:30:05.020 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I totally oversold us on the work. It should not take that long. And I just, like, whatever, I just told them it would take a month, but it should only take us 2 weeks.

296 00:30:05.620 ⇒ 00:30:06.090 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, okay.

297 00:30:06.090 ⇒ 00:30:06.770 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

298 00:30:07.080 ⇒ 00:30:11.049 Uttam Kumaran: And then, last thing, we’ll close this out, Amber, Demolade is aware of this.

299 00:30:11.610 ⇒ 00:30:20.430 Amber Lin: I will confirm and stand up later, not yet, so I’m… we’re meeting later, so I’ll talk about that in the meeting.

300 00:30:20.920 ⇒ 00:30:25.179 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, that would be great. I just…

301 00:30:25.450 ⇒ 00:30:28.510 Uttam Kumaran: Really don’t want anyone to have this be a surprise.

302 00:30:29.290 ⇒ 00:30:39.369 Uttam Kumaran: And if it is a surprise, you just tell someone, everybody here, you can throw me into any meeting. But if so, if you get jammed on anything, just throw me into whatever meeting it is.

303 00:30:39.540 ⇒ 00:30:45.510 Uttam Kumaran: like, if something comes up, or there’s an emergency, and you were gonna tag Amber, you can just tag me. But…

304 00:30:47.240 ⇒ 00:30:54.139 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool. I think this is the best, like, redundancy, like, plan we’ve had today, so I feel good about this.

305 00:30:56.790 ⇒ 00:31:11.490 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so star of the show is here. So, a couple things we want to talk about, Robert. So, let’s talk about Remo first. The… we just, like, there’s no way… we just didn’t know that that amount of work was going to come out of this when we.

306 00:31:11.490 ⇒ 00:31:11.810 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

307 00:31:11.810 ⇒ 00:31:12.600 Uttam Kumaran: initial deal, so…

308 00:31:12.600 ⇒ 00:31:13.519 Robert Tseng: That’s fine, yeah.

309 00:31:13.520 ⇒ 00:31:17.179 Uttam Kumaran: So what I… so what I told Amber is, like, my question to you was.

310 00:31:17.420 ⇒ 00:31:21.780 Uttam Kumaran: Is this, like, a get what we can done in two months and we just keep it going? Or, like…

311 00:31:22.040 ⇒ 00:31:23.150 Uttam Kumaran: What should we do?

312 00:31:24.390 ⇒ 00:31:31.310 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think we should just be honest with, like, what… like, what we’ve scoped out. Like, I told them, like.

313 00:31:31.580 ⇒ 00:31:38.110 Robert Tseng: This is just a quote off of, like, we haven’t seen none of their codebase. We just had one call with them.

314 00:31:38.340 ⇒ 00:31:39.660 Robert Tseng: And, like…

315 00:31:39.840 ⇒ 00:31:55.570 Robert Tseng: That was it. So, I was like, we need to get in there and really peek under the hood. We have to make adjustments. And I will tell you if it’s going to take longer than 2 months. If you… if we have to meet that two-month deadline, we need to really turn it up, then I guess we can kind of talk about that, but I just…

316 00:31:55.570 ⇒ 00:32:02.500 Robert Tseng: I just need to give them, like, kind of, like a true, like, a clean, like, assessment of the situation. Yeah.

317 00:32:02.500 ⇒ 00:32:07.560 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Okay, great. So, Amber, you… do you have… Sort of a two-month.

318 00:32:08.380 ⇒ 00:32:09.670 Uttam Kumaran: What can we get done?

319 00:32:09.850 ⇒ 00:32:21.900 Amber Lin: Yeah, that depends on how much hours we allocate to surf each week. I think we would… originally, we were saying 15 hours to get everything done, but we’re definitely at a loss there, so I would say…

320 00:32:21.900 ⇒ 00:32:27.569 Uttam Kumaran: So, again, I… do whatever the hours you should get from the 40%.

321 00:32:27.750 ⇒ 00:32:45.829 Amber Lin: Yeah, so I’ll limit that, and then I can just check that right now. And also, Remote just told us they’re gonna do single tenant, so there’s gonna be a little bit of change in scope, so it also falls under, hey, we’re gonna tell them, this is what we just found out, because they gave us nothing before.

322 00:32:46.320 ⇒ 00:32:50.099 Uttam Kumaran: That’s fine. Yeah, so if you can put together, like, what the 2-month scope

323 00:32:50.420 ⇒ 00:32:56.080 Uttam Kumaran: We can do, given we hit our margins, and you can just send that whenever.

324 00:32:56.230 ⇒ 00:33:00.340 Uttam Kumaran: Like, today or tomorrow, we can confirm that and lock it in, so…

325 00:33:00.340 ⇒ 00:33:00.870 Amber Lin: Yeah.

326 00:33:01.600 ⇒ 00:33:02.180 Uttam Kumaran: Great.

327 00:33:02.920 ⇒ 00:33:07.400 Amber Lin: That looks like very little hours from surf. It’s gonna be, like.

328 00:33:08.020 ⇒ 00:33:11.890 Amber Lin: 5 was 6 hours from the surf?

329 00:33:12.110 ⇒ 00:33:13.110 Uttam Kumaran: per week.

330 00:33:13.110 ⇒ 00:33:14.270 Amber Lin: Yeah…

331 00:33:14.660 ⇒ 00:33:16.459 Uttam Kumaran: Well, I guess it’s like…

332 00:33:19.170 ⇒ 00:33:25.630 Amber Lin: Because it’s me, Awaz, surf, right? And then, if me and Awage are at 2 hours per week.

333 00:33:26.320 ⇒ 00:33:31.279 Amber Lin: Because that’s all the meetings, essentially, and then that gives us… that gives us…

334 00:33:31.280 ⇒ 00:33:48.759 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so give… I guess my question… my ask would be, give me… give me two options. Give me one option that’s, like, there’s no change. Give me a second op… give me a second option on, like, what a healthy two months’ worth of work should be. And this is where I’ll… Awash, I’ll kind of lean on you. Look at the scope, and tell me, like.

335 00:33:48.960 ⇒ 00:33:54.670 Uttam Kumaran: it would be great if we can get this amount of… it’s like a healthy amount of work, because I can go back to surf and negotiate rate.

336 00:33:54.890 ⇒ 00:33:59.700 Uttam Kumaran: Or, like, if we know that this client is gonna expand.

337 00:34:00.030 ⇒ 00:34:03.680 Uttam Kumaran: Or continue, then we can eat into the margin short-term.

338 00:34:03.860 ⇒ 00:34:12.399 Uttam Kumaran: But give me, like, two options to work with. Give me, like, from an engineering perspective, what you’re not ashamed of delivering in two months, and then give me the…

339 00:34:12.690 ⇒ 00:34:15.879 Amber Lin: PM perspective of, like, to hit 40% margin.

340 00:34:15.929 ⇒ 00:34:19.380 Uttam Kumaran: we need to do this, and then I’ll get… I’ll…

341 00:34:19.380 ⇒ 00:34:20.860 Robert Tseng: What’s surf’s rate?

342 00:34:21.639 ⇒ 00:34:22.319 Uttam Kumaran: I said 100.

343 00:34:22.320 ⇒ 00:34:24.730 Amber Lin: 100. It is eating…

344 00:34:24.739 ⇒ 00:34:25.169 Robert Tseng: Damn.

345 00:34:25.409 ⇒ 00:34:26.550 Amber Lin: all up.

346 00:34:26.710 ⇒ 00:34:30.789 Robert Tseng: Because at 5K, we only have…

347 00:34:31.090 ⇒ 00:34:31.920 Amber Lin: Like…

348 00:34:32.199 ⇒ 00:34:37.109 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, but this work is complicated, like, I don’t know. This work is pretty complicated, I don’t think, like…

349 00:34:37.609 ⇒ 00:34:41.899 Uttam Kumaran: It’s like walking into, like, kind of a full-stack, like, situation.

350 00:34:41.900 ⇒ 00:34:44.560 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I’m not saying we should take it. I mean, if you… yeah.

351 00:34:44.560 ⇒ 00:34:46.899 Uttam Kumaran: More, more, it’s like, if I can go to surf.

352 00:34:47.130 ⇒ 00:34:51.480 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, this is where I just need the two options, and I can find a path forward.

353 00:34:51.710 ⇒ 00:34:59.719 Justin Breshears: I think it’s also helpful to know what the future pipeline is, right? If we’re gonna just decide to eat our margins on this, like, for that.

354 00:35:00.040 ⇒ 00:35:02.550 Robert Tseng: No, we won’t, we won’t, we won’t, yeah.

355 00:35:02.550 ⇒ 00:35:06.759 Amber Lin: Will the renewal still be a 5K, or is it gonna be a bump up?

356 00:35:06.760 ⇒ 00:35:20.459 Robert Tseng: I don’t think they… they don’t have… I don’t think they know. I think it’s… we… we can dictate that. So, like, just kind of to reframe it, they’ve fired every engineering person. We are their only technical resource.

357 00:35:20.460 ⇒ 00:35:32.239 Robert Tseng: So, like, their CTO, gone. They’re… and anyone… this is not maybe… they bought up this company, they’ve… it’s basically two college-age kids, like, building out this… this stack. They have no idea what they’re doing.

358 00:35:32.510 ⇒ 00:35:44.500 Robert Tseng: So much so that Eden signed the contract on their behalf. To me, they’re just, like, totally, like, parenting them. So, I think they really have no idea, like, what’s going… they don’t know how to price this, they don’t have no idea what’s going on.

359 00:35:44.500 ⇒ 00:36:03.549 Robert Tseng: This thing was supposed to go live in July. Like, it is a… it is a mess. So, we should, like, we don’t need to ask for so much permission to, like, call the shots. Like, we should… we should call the shots. So, like, I don’t know, I think that’s… that’s… that should be our attitude, is we have… we have more leverage than… than… than, maybe you guys are giving yourself credit for.

360 00:36:03.550 ⇒ 00:36:07.269 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so then, so then, I think, Awash, you have the two options, right?

361 00:36:07.780 ⇒ 00:36:27.739 Awaish Kumar: What I have discussed, like, in the last meeting with Cameron, he was… he’s a kind of a lead developer there, and he was mentioning that after he is done with the project, it all has to go to the Eden, and Eden will hire its own engineers to do that. And right now, they don’t have any developers.

362 00:36:28.010 ⇒ 00:36:34.759 Awaish Kumar: And there’s a good chance if we want to involve in the back-end engineering work, like implementation.

363 00:36:34.900 ⇒ 00:36:38.299 Awaish Kumar: There’s a good chance they could utilize our resources.

364 00:36:38.300 ⇒ 00:36:41.590 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so you sent… you already sent that doc, right, about the upsale opportunity?

365 00:36:42.110 ⇒ 00:36:43.379 Uttam Kumaran: That’s what you’re talking about?

366 00:36:44.420 ⇒ 00:36:45.689 Awaish Kumar: No, no.

367 00:36:45.910 ⇒ 00:36:47.910 Uttam Kumaran: Remember you said that doc about the three…

368 00:36:47.910 ⇒ 00:36:51.289 Awaish Kumar: That’s… that’s… that’s for the migration of Eden. Okay.

369 00:36:51.850 ⇒ 00:36:53.860 Awaish Kumar: Inside, like, that’s for Eden.

370 00:36:55.550 ⇒ 00:37:04.070 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so I think probably, let’s close this out so that we could just get this Remo thing, and then Robert, there’s… there is a probably even further expansion.

371 00:37:04.300 ⇒ 00:37:08.490 Uttam Kumaran: I can… if we can get more work, I can get surf at a cheaper rate.

372 00:37:08.780 ⇒ 00:37:13.100 Uttam Kumaran: And he would… he basically would knock out. Also, like, I can…

373 00:37:13.100 ⇒ 00:37:22.869 Robert Tseng: So they’re already looking for, like, a founding engineer. I sent… I passed them 3 contacts from my network, so they’re talking to them. They’re trying to, like… yeah, you know, Remo’s gonna…

374 00:37:23.030 ⇒ 00:37:34.380 Robert Tseng: they basically have sold their company, they’re trying to adapt it to Eden, and then they’re… those guys are gonna exit, and they’re gonna wanna bring in their own internal people to run it, which is… just sounds like a… a mess, but, like.

375 00:37:34.410 ⇒ 00:37:43.470 Robert Tseng: I think we’re basically profiting off of this handoff period. They clearly have not been able to integrate Remo into their current system, so that’s why we’re here.

376 00:37:43.490 ⇒ 00:37:53.870 Robert Tseng: So, like, that should be our focus. I’m not gonna worry too much about the… the handoff and the hiring. I’m just doing them a favor there. I’m not… I don’t really… I mean, if Surf wants to go and become

377 00:37:53.870 ⇒ 00:38:07.639 Robert Tseng: And he wants to build out a team and go and actually be their founding engineering team, like, that… we could… we could dangle that in front of him and say, like, that’s yours to go get if you do a good job here, because they really don’t have a… they don’t have an option afterwards.

378 00:38:08.880 ⇒ 00:38:09.510 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

379 00:38:09.770 ⇒ 00:38:10.460 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

380 00:38:11.180 ⇒ 00:38:12.480 Uttam Kumaran: Alright, I’ll dangle.

381 00:38:17.700 ⇒ 00:38:19.130 Uttam Kumaran: Serves who they need.

382 00:38:19.320 ⇒ 00:38:24.590 Uttam Kumaran: But I don’t know if he’s gonna… culture’s a little bit weird in there, so…

383 00:38:25.350 ⇒ 00:38:33.030 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll have to make that clear. Although nothing we haven’t seen before. Okay, so let’s… okay, so that’s fair, so we’ll close out at least this portion.

384 00:38:33.380 ⇒ 00:38:35.759 Uttam Kumaran: It seems like, okay, this, like.

385 00:38:36.260 ⇒ 00:38:48.160 Uttam Kumaran: I’m not as worried about hitting the perfect margin here, because it seems like this will continue, but let’s agree on some two options, get them to at least agree on the scope so that we don’t get jammed, and then…

386 00:38:48.350 ⇒ 00:38:51.740 Uttam Kumaran: we’re… we’re just able to run.

387 00:38:52.650 ⇒ 00:38:56.790 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so if we could put that two options… Amber, I will call Surf.

388 00:38:56.990 ⇒ 00:39:02.470 Uttam Kumaran: And then we’ll… can kind of get… get an answer here. So, let’s talk about next about,

389 00:39:03.110 ⇒ 00:39:20.729 Uttam Kumaran: read me an insomnia, Robert. So, for Insomnia, Mustafa is gonna come on. Is the scope, like, tell me what the current, like, what’s the hand up? You’re, you’re basically writing, like, requirements for analysis, and you’re like, go dig up these rough cuts, or, like, tell me what the process is.

390 00:39:20.730 ⇒ 00:39:32.380 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think when we spoke over the weekend, I was thinking that I could just outline all the analysis, and then just tell Mustafa to just go and execute, like, different parts of it. I think,

391 00:39:34.000 ⇒ 00:39:40.290 Robert Tseng: I still think I need to be pretty involved for the next one to two weeks to kind of turn it around. There’s just, like.

392 00:39:40.890 ⇒ 00:39:41.590 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

393 00:39:41.590 ⇒ 00:39:43.629 Robert Tseng: Yeah, there’s just kind of…

394 00:39:44.350 ⇒ 00:39:56.669 Robert Tseng: we have to create the frameworks for, like, how do we actually measure a campaign performance across, like, the marketing team? Like, that… some of this, like, foundational work that was not done the past few weeks, that…

395 00:39:56.910 ⇒ 00:40:01.240 Robert Tseng: I don’t think Rustafa can do, and I feel like that’s kind of where I’ll be…

396 00:40:01.240 ⇒ 00:40:03.269 Uttam Kumaran: Kind of just, like, stretching my brain on.

397 00:40:03.270 ⇒ 00:40:18.520 Robert Tseng: But I think once it’s set up, then I think the, kind of, where the data is, how he gets it, how he calculates it, like, should all be pretty straightforward. So, I’m… I’m hoping that he can kind of cover that afterwards, because I don’t.

398 00:40:18.520 ⇒ 00:40:22.069 Uttam Kumaran: Are there any pieces in this setup piece that are,

399 00:40:22.560 ⇒ 00:40:29.580 Uttam Kumaran: That you can hand off, like, whether it’s creating spreadsheet formats, or… Like, whatever.

400 00:40:29.830 ⇒ 00:40:37.329 Robert Tseng: Yeah, well, so it’s like, it’s, yeah, it’s like designing, designing how do we run these big business reviews, like, and…

401 00:40:38.150 ⇒ 00:40:40.909 Robert Tseng: Like, how do you… how do you,

402 00:40:41.320 ⇒ 00:40:45.059 Robert Tseng: Like, for example, like, we were…

403 00:40:45.580 ⇒ 00:40:57.539 Robert Tseng: they ran a big, like, Taylor Swift campaign, like, in line with, kind of, the album launch, and they were trying to find, like, a comparable campaign for last year. Like, I don’t think… it’s a little bit too open-ended. I don’t think we saw.

404 00:40:57.540 ⇒ 00:40:58.099 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

405 00:40:58.100 ⇒ 00:41:08.430 Robert Tseng: I get it. So, like, I need to kind of, like, outline, like, how he… how he should do that, and then maybe he can do it for all subsequent campaigns moving forward. So, like, I… that’s where I feel like I…

406 00:41:08.430 ⇒ 00:41:18.159 Uttam Kumaran: I think… I think it’s… I think it’s worth staying involved, but also, like, using this as an opportunity to say someone very… like, think of Mustaf as, like, a junior data analyst.

407 00:41:18.270 ⇒ 00:41:28.289 Uttam Kumaran: And what can he accomplish with AI with, like, some of your instructions? Like, that’s how I would try to take it. So if you can outline, like, here’s sort of how I’m doing it.

408 00:41:28.770 ⇒ 00:41:34.999 Uttam Kumaran: I would… I think you should give him the benefit of the doubt. I don’t think he’s gonna be able to do, like, the strategic stuff.

409 00:41:35.120 ⇒ 00:41:40.169 Uttam Kumaran: But… putting together analysis, or just… I would leverage him as just, like.

410 00:41:40.380 ⇒ 00:41:51.239 Uttam Kumaran: even brainstorming, like, here are the 5 different types of work I do, how can we use AI to augment this somehow? Because he’s a perfect candidate for, like, someone who’s very new to data, but is, like, very AI-enabled.

411 00:41:51.350 ⇒ 00:41:57.769 Uttam Kumaran: And I think there could be some opportunity. I’m not… I’m sorry, I’m not, like, pinpointing exactly where in the workstream.

412 00:41:57.770 ⇒ 00:42:09.689 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, no, no, I think that’s… that’s fair. I think the way that I’ve been building out these outlines is… it’s… I’ve been… yeah, I’ve been preparing to… I already handed off, or I’ve set up an onboarding kind of, like, doc thing for him, and…

413 00:42:09.910 ⇒ 00:42:15.010 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so, like, I… I… I am trying to actively hand it off.

414 00:42:15.390 ⇒ 00:42:16.090 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

415 00:42:16.700 ⇒ 00:42:27.019 Justin Breshears: As far as the Monday meetings go with the CMO, are you planning on continuing to… because you’re the only one currently invited to those, like, is that going to be just an ongoing thing that you’re involved with?

416 00:42:27.320 ⇒ 00:42:36.350 Robert Tseng: I mean, eventually, I would like someone else on the team to be on there, but I don’t know if I kind of trust anybody to be on that call yet, because you’re basically…

417 00:42:36.720 ⇒ 00:42:37.430 Robert Tseng: I’m getting grilled.

418 00:42:37.430 ⇒ 00:42:38.020 Justin Breshears: to see him.

419 00:42:38.020 ⇒ 00:42:43.580 Robert Tseng: at, like, having to, like, answer on the fly. Like, I don’t… I don’t think I would trust Mustafa to do that.

420 00:42:43.580 ⇒ 00:42:48.060 Justin Breshears: It’s gotta be somebody, like, at your level with that sort of thing, so…

421 00:42:48.060 ⇒ 00:42:48.420 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

422 00:42:48.420 ⇒ 00:42:50.599 Justin Breshears: That’s why I asked about that specifically, because we…

423 00:42:50.600 ⇒ 00:42:53.320 Uttam Kumaran: But do you need Justin to be there, just to, like.

424 00:42:53.620 ⇒ 00:42:57.259 Uttam Kumaran: Document and move things to, like, tickets and organize.

425 00:42:57.260 ⇒ 00:43:03.159 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I’ve been recording all the transcripts and just kind of just sharing with the team, but yeah, I guess kind of being there kind of helps.

426 00:43:03.160 ⇒ 00:43:03.860 Justin Breshears: If I could…

427 00:43:03.860 ⇒ 00:43:04.220 Robert Tseng: be.

428 00:43:04.220 ⇒ 00:43:15.290 Justin Breshears: there, that would be better, just because transcripts are great, but, like, hearing the context and, like, some things is better, so that’s a possibility. Yeah, I’d love to just listen and.

429 00:43:15.290 ⇒ 00:43:15.670 Robert Tseng: Okay.

430 00:43:15.670 ⇒ 00:43:20.730 Justin Breshears: translate that, and then I’ll take the burden off of you a little bit on, like, handoff every week for that stuff.

431 00:43:20.960 ⇒ 00:43:21.650 Robert Tseng: Okay.

432 00:43:21.820 ⇒ 00:43:25.209 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I’ll ask to get you added to that. Sorry, XC.

433 00:43:26.840 ⇒ 00:43:38.080 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, the biggest risk, Robert, on Insomnia Read Me Ellie, is gonna be your time, and then Justin’s ability to support, given your limited time. So, I want to make sure that, like, yeah.

434 00:43:38.540 ⇒ 00:43:44.080 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I feel better about README. I mean, Henry’s gonna be on this call with me in 15 minutes, I think.

435 00:43:44.390 ⇒ 00:43:45.550 Robert Tseng: And then,

436 00:43:46.070 ⇒ 00:43:52.400 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I don’t think it’s that hard to pick up where we are, and I think he can kind of keep it going from there.

437 00:43:52.400 ⇒ 00:43:58.220 Uttam Kumaran: I think if Henry gets all the contacts on Reme, then him and Justin can meet the ticket and plan everything out.

438 00:43:58.320 ⇒ 00:44:08.649 Uttam Kumaran: So as long as that happens, then their goal is to lob you the alley-oops for, like, the project reviews, the sprint reviews, basically. Yeah. So you can… so…

439 00:44:08.800 ⇒ 00:44:09.950 Uttam Kumaran: That’s fine.

440 00:44:10.650 ⇒ 00:44:16.909 Uttam Kumaran: If that’s perfect, then on README, then… then we’re good. And is that… what… what is the contract details? Do you remember?

441 00:44:16.910 ⇒ 00:44:27.180 Robert Tseng: Yeah, we’re… we just… it’s just, like, 30 hours a month right now. I think that’s what I’m gonna keep it at for this month, and then try to push up again.

442 00:44:27.850 ⇒ 00:44:28.580 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

443 00:44:28.580 ⇒ 00:44:29.210 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

444 00:44:29.510 ⇒ 00:44:31.490 Uttam Kumaran: And the deliverables are pretty clear, like.

445 00:44:32.710 ⇒ 00:44:49.739 Robert Tseng: I mean, yeah, I think, it’s… it’s similar to Insomnia, where it’s kind of open-ended, but yeah, everything… it’s not really engineering heavy right now. Like, we are missing a bunch of data, and so I think that’s kind of where things will get dicey, but…

446 00:44:49.830 ⇒ 00:44:53.419 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I don’t think it’s that… it’s not… it’s not very heavy.

447 00:44:55.020 ⇒ 00:44:55.620 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

448 00:44:55.980 ⇒ 00:44:56.600 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

449 00:44:56.600 ⇒ 00:45:01.229 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so I, I mean, I think it’s still clear that we need sort of, like, a…

450 00:45:02.560 ⇒ 00:45:06.529 Uttam Kumaran: data analyst that is, like, a storytelling type thing. Like, that’s.

451 00:45:06.530 ⇒ 00:45:07.030 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

452 00:45:07.030 ⇒ 00:45:09.509 Uttam Kumaran: That’s… we just don’t have that, like…

453 00:45:09.750 ⇒ 00:45:12.520 Uttam Kumaran: I think, Henry, you can probably get there.

454 00:45:12.690 ⇒ 00:45:19.300 Uttam Kumaran: it will take a while for anyone else on the team to get there. But… Okay.

455 00:45:19.690 ⇒ 00:45:24.500 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Okay, any other… any other questions on… Clients?

456 00:45:24.500 ⇒ 00:45:30.519 Amber Lin: Lastly, I think I have a question on Henry’s availability. Right now, Henry has 30…

457 00:45:30.800 ⇒ 00:45:38.570 Amber Lin: Okay, okay. There’s just a lot of meetings on Eden, so we’ll have to adjust the ticket amounts and make sure…

458 00:45:38.570 ⇒ 00:45:43.830 Henry Zhao: Yeah. I just have a… I just have a million meetings tomorrow, and then the Wednesday through Friday’s okay.

459 00:45:44.170 ⇒ 00:45:44.990 Amber Lin: Okay.

460 00:45:44.990 ⇒ 00:45:45.600 Henry Zhao: Yeah.

461 00:45:46.110 ⇒ 00:45:46.600 Amber Lin: Good.

462 00:45:46.600 ⇒ 00:46:02.859 Justin Breshears: Amber, that might be a way that, between you and I, with Eden and ReedMe, that we just make sure if there’s any kind of, like, stuff that can be handed… handled by anybody else on the teams, like, maybe we can offload some of that stuff on Henry and get him on the stuff that, like, he’s uniquely positioned to be able to handle.

463 00:46:03.120 ⇒ 00:46:06.180 Henry Zhao: Yeah, like Awash… like, Awash already took some stuff off me today.

464 00:46:06.990 ⇒ 00:46:17.530 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, really this week, really this month, try to get everything in tickets, because then, as the engineering leadership, we can start to look at, are the right people taking the right tickets?

465 00:46:17.780 ⇒ 00:46:31.150 Uttam Kumaran: So, that’s what I’ll start to look at after this month, probably. I want to see a full month go where we hit the targets, and then what we’ll find is that there would be junior people that can take on some of the larger tickets, and we’ll pass it to them.

466 00:46:31.290 ⇒ 00:46:39.510 Uttam Kumaran: So, great. Okay. So we talked about Remo, any questions on HIP?

467 00:46:39.960 ⇒ 00:46:42.609 Uttam Kumaran: Justin, that we want to talk about?

468 00:46:42.820 ⇒ 00:46:59.950 Justin Breshears: I’ll just run… yeah, with Robert here, I’ll run kind of the plan that we have for this week by him and see what he thinks. So we have a wish working on kind of going through the SOP docs that they sent over and everything, and looking at the data flows there. And then Wednesday, we have a meeting with,

469 00:47:00.290 ⇒ 00:47:06.500 Justin Breshears: hypes… you know… SME on healthy… this person.

470 00:47:06.500 ⇒ 00:47:07.500 Robert Tseng: Is that gray?

471 00:47:07.500 ⇒ 00:47:08.620 Justin Breshears: Yeah, gray.

472 00:47:08.900 ⇒ 00:47:09.270 Robert Tseng: Oh, gosh.

473 00:47:09.270 ⇒ 00:47:22.050 Justin Breshears: I think they’re, they, them, but they… they said that they’re not that, like, expert on it, so we also have the healthy rep gonna join that call. Great, okay. So, we’re gonna meet, and then after that, Away should be able to, like.

474 00:47:22.110 ⇒ 00:47:35.310 Justin Breshears: meld the two that, you know, that he’s doing from the SOPs and what Healthy’s actually capable of, and then we have a weekly sync on Thursdays with, Audrey and Andrea, and Gray, so…

475 00:47:35.450 ⇒ 00:47:39.059 Justin Breshears: We should be able to get started that way.

476 00:47:40.280 ⇒ 00:47:42.200 Robert Tseng: Okay, yeah, that sounds good to me.

477 00:47:42.740 ⇒ 00:47:48.309 Uttam Kumaran: So, Robert, your task is to go to any of the sprint reviews, the project syncs.

478 00:47:48.310 ⇒ 00:47:49.100 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

479 00:47:49.570 ⇒ 00:47:50.949 Justin Breshears: Where we’ll really need you.

480 00:47:50.950 ⇒ 00:47:51.840 Robert Tseng: Okay. Yeah.

481 00:47:52.360 ⇒ 00:47:56.690 Justin Breshears: And so that’s, 11 a.m. Eastern, Thursdays.

482 00:47:57.140 ⇒ 00:47:57.890 Robert Tseng: Sure.

483 00:47:58.550 ⇒ 00:47:59.140 Justin Breshears: Cool.

484 00:47:59.640 ⇒ 00:48:09.349 Uttam Kumaran: So, I would say… I would say, yeah, me… me and Robert, we’re gonna be at every project sprint, like, sprint review, so that’s where we’re gonna need the most, like.

485 00:48:09.590 ⇒ 00:48:17.929 Uttam Kumaran: 30 minutes before that, like, what… or, like, whatever, on that day, whatever we need to come in and… and collaborate on, that’s gonna be…

486 00:48:18.140 ⇒ 00:48:22.879 Uttam Kumaran: That’s gonna be that, but Robert, we’re signed up to attend those across all our clients.

487 00:48:23.050 ⇒ 00:48:23.710 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

488 00:48:24.100 ⇒ 00:48:43.360 Justin Breshears: Yeah, because that puts y’all in less of a hands-on and more of just an account manager role, which we can… we can handle the hands-on and then, yeah, give you what you need, the ammo you need for the account manager role. I… I like to, sync up, like, prior to calls, either the day before or right before, and just make sure, like.

489 00:48:43.580 ⇒ 00:48:54.380 Justin Breshears: all of the logistics of the call, who’s going to speak to what, what are we going to speak on, those sort of things are handling. So, I recommend that for this kind of setup, especially since they won’t be as involved in day-to-day.

490 00:48:54.770 ⇒ 00:49:08.790 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so the main thing is I just want to make sure, and this is sort of, like, what I started to map out here, is just, are all the rituals booked? And so this month is really just, are we getting all of this done in one

491 00:49:08.790 ⇒ 00:49:15.909 Uttam Kumaran: form or another for every client. And the next month’s goal is going to be, okay, do we need

492 00:49:15.950 ⇒ 00:49:20.080 Uttam Kumaran: A standard, like, deck for the project reviews, for the monthly, like.

493 00:49:20.340 ⇒ 00:49:39.390 Uttam Kumaran: we’ll get to standards and enforcing those, but really, I want to see these next two weeks that we hit all of these. So this is where I’m working really hard to free up y’all’s time on the PM side to hit all of these, and then to set us up for great sprint reviews, to set us up for great project reviews on monthly, and then we rip the renewals.

494 00:49:39.500 ⇒ 00:49:49.600 Uttam Kumaran: So those are, like, the three… that’s the domino effect. So, I think when we talk, I’ll just make sure that we’re hitting all these. I know some got booked today, so…

495 00:49:50.670 ⇒ 00:50:03.029 Justin Breshears: And to add to that, I would say to your earlier comment about getting everything in tickets, like, that… that has to be, like, a from today on kind of a thing. Everything we do has to be documented in tickets so that we can,

496 00:50:03.030 ⇒ 00:50:17.449 Justin Breshears: you know, make sure, like you said, the right people have the right tasks, and right allocations, and all that. It all comes from documenting the work we’re doing, so that’s a big ask for our teams, is to make sure, hey, you do any little thing, an ad hoc request, whatever, it gets documented in a ticket.

497 00:50:18.000 ⇒ 00:50:18.580 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

498 00:50:19.760 ⇒ 00:50:24.000 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. And then the… so the last piece is, kind of, like.

499 00:50:24.500 ⇒ 00:50:37.909 Uttam Kumaran: I think there’s two pieces on the internal side, we haven’t talked, about the internal teams. So, we planned AI and marketing, we’re gonna do sales after this, or whatever. The biggest goal there is to

500 00:50:37.930 ⇒ 00:50:50.870 Uttam Kumaran: adhere to budgets. So, we set budgets for the quarter, we set budgets for the quarter, but really focused on October. The kind of the biggest changes there are, one, there was some runaway spend on…

501 00:50:51.050 ⇒ 00:50:58.010 Uttam Kumaran: marketing, so there now are caps on design and a couple of people there, so that’s in line, and Ricoh’s planning

502 00:50:58.060 ⇒ 00:51:07.100 Uttam Kumaran: that out. And then the biggest thing is, Sam, on the internal work, I think me and you are gonna work together to make sure that those hours are spent

503 00:51:07.150 ⇒ 00:51:21.999 Uttam Kumaran: attacking direct automations. What I will say is, if that team, if the AI team can show that hours to the AI are resulting in direct ROI, in expanding our PM’s ability to

504 00:51:22.060 ⇒ 00:51:39.300 Uttam Kumaran: do all of these rituals to standards for more clients, and sales ability to sell more with the same amount of people, then the team unlocks more budget. So that’s the way to go. I’m the through line there, but I think the biggest theme is… you’re gonna see is, one.

505 00:51:39.300 ⇒ 00:51:55.670 Uttam Kumaran: the couple of tickets we’re working on for the next few weeks really need to hit sales and PMs, ideally probably PMs first. So we’ll plan together on that. We have a couple things that are at the finish line, like the grooming agent, the ticket creation.

506 00:51:55.750 ⇒ 00:52:10.850 Uttam Kumaran: But those need to… first, we need to, of course, we’re working this week on measuring the platform, and then second, we’ll get… make sure that these actually get adopted by the PM team. But those are our two core levers. Can the PMs take on all their existing stuff and take on more?

507 00:52:10.870 ⇒ 00:52:16.990 Uttam Kumaran: can sales take on all the existing stuff and take on more? No added expenses on their team on Locke’s budget for…

508 00:52:17.210 ⇒ 00:52:19.420 Uttam Kumaran: for AI.

509 00:52:20.230 ⇒ 00:52:26.520 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s just something to kind of keep in mind. I think, Sam, me, and you can stay attached to the hip this week and focus on that.

510 00:52:26.740 ⇒ 00:52:29.620 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.

511 00:52:30.100 ⇒ 00:52:34.839 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t have anything else to talk about, so I feel pretty good.

512 00:52:37.750 ⇒ 00:52:43.240 Uttam Kumaran: We have 5 more minutes. Is there anything else that anyone’s nervous about this week, or wants to chat about?

513 00:52:43.690 ⇒ 00:52:47.839 Uttam Kumaran: I have one or two bonus topics that, if we don’t, I can talk about.

514 00:52:52.920 ⇒ 00:52:56.569 Robert Tseng: I think I’m gonna jump off to prep for my next call, but .

515 00:52:56.810 ⇒ 00:52:58.030 Henry Zhao: Yeah. I guess…

516 00:52:58.250 ⇒ 00:53:08.999 Henry Zhao: I guess I have one question. If, you know, life happens, or if some people are out, can… are these allocations, like, by week, or can we, like, shift around as long as by month we’re good? Does that make sense? Like…

517 00:53:09.410 ⇒ 00:53:11.340 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so, it…

518 00:53:11.370 ⇒ 00:53:31.240 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so let me give you the… so one is we’re trying to hit margins on a monthly basis, so week to week is… typically, companies do this on, like, a quarterly basis, so we, of course, are trying to shorten those decision points. On a weekly basis is fine, as long as you and your PM are in sync, right? Like, if you work less one week and more the other week.

519 00:53:31.440 ⇒ 00:53:41.019 Uttam Kumaran: it’s all kind of net-net on the monthly level, and so the monthly is what we’re optimizing for. But if you work more one week, and the second week, and the third week, and the fourth week, then we get jammed.

520 00:53:41.020 ⇒ 00:53:41.900 Henry Zhao: said, yeah.

521 00:53:41.900 ⇒ 00:53:43.480 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. So, it’s…

522 00:53:43.480 ⇒ 00:53:46.619 Henry Zhao: We might have less, and then more next week, because Amber’s out, etc.

523 00:53:46.890 ⇒ 00:53:51.619 Henry Zhao: And then, like, December, I would assume we front-load the first few weeks, and then Christmas, like, people are all.

524 00:53:51.620 ⇒ 00:54:10.980 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so the biggest thing where, like, I would say my… what I’ve been saying is, like, stay within 10% of budget. So, either way, I’m giving us that error bar, maybe I should go a little bit more. I’m gonna find out what benchmarks are, but 10% within budgets, which means we can go over or under. I don’t… we’re not gonna get it right this month.

525 00:54:10.990 ⇒ 00:54:16.210 Uttam Kumaran: But at least we are gonna have the conversations when we don’t get it right, which is, like, my number one goal.

526 00:54:16.630 ⇒ 00:54:20.600 Henry Zhao: Okay, and the 10% is helpful, because it’s not like, if there’s, like, a fire on Friday, we don’t want to be like.

527 00:54:20.600 ⇒ 00:54:32.810 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, no, like, the number one goal is to accomplish… is to achieve client happiness. So don’t let any… nothing… none of this is affecting them, but what this causes is for us to have a conversation.

528 00:54:32.810 ⇒ 00:54:36.289 Uttam Kumaran: And then for there to be an escalation and approval flow for added hours.

529 00:54:36.290 ⇒ 00:55:00.260 Uttam Kumaran: That’s it. Like, we’re not the consultancy that’s like, oh, you’re out on hours, like, put more money in the machine. Like, we are gonna… we are gonna solve the problems for the customers, but, like, we… I would say that’s not been the problem, actually. More of the problem is, like, I think we worked a lot on the marketing side when we probably could have pushed some low-prio stuff. We also just didn’t have any understanding of caps on any clients, so…

530 00:55:00.580 ⇒ 00:55:02.989 Uttam Kumaran: I think your… your head’s in the right spot.

531 00:55:03.390 ⇒ 00:55:18.320 Justin Breshears: It’s all about… it’s all about, like, planning for the future, really. Like, the next sale that we scope, the next contract that we write, like, did we get this current one right so that we can properly price the next one? Or, you know, hey, do we have our headcount right?

532 00:55:18.320 ⇒ 00:55:24.929 Justin Breshears: Is everybody just, like, drowning in work right now, and we actually, you know, need to increase… like, it’s… it’s really not about, like, the…

533 00:55:24.930 ⇒ 00:55:36.819 Justin Breshears: to me, the current situation that you’re in is, like, Remo, like, we’re gonna do what we need to do, even though, like, it’s not an ideal contract. It’s all about, like, okay, well, how do we learn for the next one?

534 00:55:37.900 ⇒ 00:55:42.160 Henry Zhao: Yeah, and one thing we learned last Friday, too, is that, like, when we move to one-week cycles.

535 00:55:42.370 ⇒ 00:55:53.629 Henry Zhao: some of the hours looked weird, because, like, we would have a 10-hour project, for example, that actually went over from one week to the next, so it looks like last week was 5 hours less, and this week was 5 hours more. So it’s just getting those understandings correct.

536 00:55:53.630 ⇒ 00:56:01.340 Uttam Kumaran: So we’re gonna be tracking on a weekly and an hour… and a monthly basis. Of course, this crew talks, and we’re gonna talk just about problems every week, so…

537 00:56:01.530 ⇒ 00:56:04.559 Uttam Kumaran: Just keep being open, and we’ll get better at predicting.

538 00:56:04.560 ⇒ 00:56:06.429 Henry Zhao: Yeah, but now it’s clear, I just wanted to understand.

539 00:56:06.430 ⇒ 00:56:07.350 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah.

540 00:56:07.510 ⇒ 00:56:17.419 Uttam Kumaran: So, and a couple other things… Yeah, a couple other things. So one, everybody… these allocations we did in operating, I couldn’t get everybody into the platform, but everybody will have access, so…

541 00:56:17.420 ⇒ 00:56:31.600 Uttam Kumaran: there won’t be a spreadsheet anymore, like, everybody will go be able to see this live at any moment for the month, and for past, and for future. Second is, like, I’m considering moving our time tracking to operating as well. It’s… it’s just, like.

542 00:56:31.600 ⇒ 00:56:42.200 Uttam Kumaran: fairly similar to Clockify, and actually, the projects are all aligned, because we do our project planning in there. I may try to end up doing that for November.

543 00:56:42.800 ⇒ 00:56:58.120 Uttam Kumaran: And… we’ll start to have some dashboards as well on Clockify and Linear here in the next two weeks. So those are probably the biggest changes from the project planning perspective. The other things is, kind of to Justin’s point, seeing it like this shows me a couple things. One.

544 00:56:58.240 ⇒ 00:57:05.720 Uttam Kumaran: We are… what we’re aiming for on the delivery team is 90% allocation. Typically, in a consultancy, you aim for 80%.

545 00:57:06.170 ⇒ 00:57:14.559 Uttam Kumaran: where does the extra 20% come from? Some people, sometimes people are benched between projects, sometimes people are out of office. For us, our projects are very thin.

546 00:57:14.560 ⇒ 00:57:33.219 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, we… we tend to not have much, like, downtime, so we’re aiming for 90% allocation, meaning out of a 40-hour work week, you should be working around 36 hours. That’s what we’re aiming for. So again, you may see something around that. That’s… that’s what we’re going for, is that everybody is at least, on average, 90% allocated towards projects.

547 00:57:33.220 ⇒ 00:57:45.669 Uttam Kumaran: There also is time, again, like this meeting, recruiting meetings, sales engineering help, all of that is your time, so please track that to the, like, you know, the relevant project in Clockify.

548 00:57:45.670 ⇒ 00:58:03.639 Uttam Kumaran: But I want to give you guys a sense of, like, we’re tracking towards everybody being 90% allocated for the folks that do have 40 hours with us. It’s also very clear once we do these allocations, on what we’re missing. So it’s clear that we’re still missing, I think, some of these strategist roles. It’s clear that Robert is their only, like, super senior data analyst.

549 00:58:03.640 ⇒ 00:58:15.679 Uttam Kumaran: But it’s also clear that I think we have enough AE support to kind of continue, and this is where, like, look, if we sign 3 more clients, I know now where we’re gonna get Jim, the exact roles, and I can start to pull from the bench.

550 00:58:15.740 ⇒ 00:58:18.850 Uttam Kumaran: So… Great.

551 00:58:19.550 ⇒ 00:58:23.280 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t… I… I think I’ll… I’ll sort of…

552 00:58:23.720 ⇒ 00:58:31.550 Uttam Kumaran: think about this a bit more, if, like, this crew wants to meet maybe for 30 minutes once more during the middle of the week. Does anyone think that would be helpful?

553 00:58:31.730 ⇒ 00:58:34.170 Uttam Kumaran: Like, or is that, like, a waste of time?

554 00:58:34.560 ⇒ 00:58:38.260 Uttam Kumaran: Should we try it for a month?

555 00:58:39.050 ⇒ 00:58:41.470 Uttam Kumaran: And then if there’s nothing to talk about, we just nix it.

556 00:58:44.940 ⇒ 00:58:46.430 Henry Zhao: I think either or.

557 00:58:47.220 ⇒ 00:58:52.020 Justin Breshears: Unless anybody else has strong opinions, I think this is sufficient at the moment.

558 00:58:52.020 ⇒ 00:58:52.730 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

559 00:58:52.730 ⇒ 00:59:02.760 Justin Breshears: I think once we get more complex than this, we’ll probably have to find a way to break it up, because we just spent an hour with the current project load that we have. What about when we double?

560 00:59:03.000 ⇒ 00:59:05.809 Justin Breshears: Yeah. That’s one I think we’ll probably have to add.

561 00:59:06.230 ⇒ 00:59:18.340 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool. I just want to make sure this crew of folks is really attached to the hip, so let me know if you, like, want more context. I’m available. If I get more nervous, or, like, I don’t see us making the changes, or we don’t attach.

562 00:59:18.470 ⇒ 00:59:21.760 Uttam Kumaran: We’ll do a meeting until we don’t have to, so… Perfect.

563 00:59:21.760 ⇒ 00:59:26.280 Samuel Roberts: Is it worth to have, like, a Slack update on Thursday.

564 00:59:26.280 ⇒ 00:59:36.259 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, maybe I’ll… maybe I’ll put an… I’ll just put an… I’ll put something as just an async calendar invite for, like, delivery check-in, and… and I’ll send some notes in at that time.

565 00:59:38.350 ⇒ 00:59:39.180 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

566 00:59:40.150 ⇒ 00:59:40.890 Uttam Kumaran: Perfect.

567 00:59:41.040 ⇒ 00:59:43.470 Uttam Kumaran: Thanks, guys, good to see everyone. Strong week.

568 00:59:43.470 ⇒ 00:59:43.980 Henry Zhao: Yes.

569 00:59:44.300 ⇒ 00:59:44.890 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.