Meeting Title: Google Calendar Meeting (not synced) Date: 2025-10-20 Meeting participants: Robert Tseng, Henry Zhao, Uttam Kumaran, Samuel Roberts, Rico Rejoso, Amber Lin, Demilade Agboola
WEBVTT
1 00:00:06.800 ⇒ 00:00:09.639 Robert Tseng: Maybe those guys just, like, left their block open.
2 00:00:30.020 ⇒ 00:00:30.960 Henry Zhao: Hey, Robert.
3 00:00:33.400 ⇒ 00:00:34.510 Robert Tseng: Hey, Henry!
4 00:00:34.940 ⇒ 00:00:40.340 Henry Zhao: So, are you not going to the README meeting just because you have a conflict, or you’re just handing over everything to me?
5 00:00:40.670 ⇒ 00:00:49.840 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I guess Hannah’s in person here, so I was thinking of just doing an in-person time with her before our go-to-market call.
6 00:00:51.290 ⇒ 00:00:52.000 Robert Tseng: But yeah.
7 00:00:53.120 ⇒ 00:00:55.510 Henry Zhao: Anything specific you’ll read me about?
8 00:00:56.570 ⇒ 00:01:01.199 Robert Tseng: But I think we already kind of mentioned the outline for…
9 00:01:01.330 ⇒ 00:01:05.450 Henry Zhao: what you’re trying to get out of him. I mean, you’re just trying to figure out what’s in there.
10 00:01:05.480 ⇒ 00:01:07.130 Robert Tseng: Was it an AWS, right?
11 00:01:07.670 ⇒ 00:01:10.379 Henry Zhao: Yep. Which I wonder if that’s affected by the outage, but yeah.
12 00:01:13.450 ⇒ 00:01:16.750 Robert Tseng: affected by the outage? Oh, right. Yes.
13 00:01:16.990 ⇒ 00:01:20.879 Uttam Kumaran: It depends, it’s only certain, it’s only US East 1, so I don’t know.
14 00:01:26.070 ⇒ 00:01:26.890 Robert Tseng: Dang…
15 00:01:30.710 ⇒ 00:01:33.599 Robert Tseng: I didn’t realize it was impacting that many companies.
16 00:01:37.980 ⇒ 00:01:38.860 Robert Tseng: How’s it going?
17 00:01:42.700 ⇒ 00:01:45.869 Robert Tseng: Since I’m in New York right now.
18 00:01:46.000 ⇒ 00:01:46.820 Robert Tseng: Dad.
19 00:01:47.000 ⇒ 00:01:49.050 Robert Tseng: So, I’ve been great.
20 00:02:40.850 ⇒ 00:02:44.200 Uttam Kumaran: Who are we missing? Demolade, Awash?
21 00:02:45.690 ⇒ 00:02:47.269 Henry Zhao: I think Oasis out today, right?
22 00:02:48.400 ⇒ 00:02:49.450 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, right, okay.
23 00:03:23.500 ⇒ 00:03:24.260 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
24 00:03:24.360 ⇒ 00:03:28.950 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, great. So, today, gonna get a little bit tighter.
25 00:03:29.230 ⇒ 00:03:33.899 Uttam Kumaran: And we have some… data to share.
26 00:03:34.020 ⇒ 00:03:39.109 Uttam Kumaran: So maybe, Amber, I’ll… I’ll just run through…
27 00:03:39.520 ⇒ 00:03:46.579 Uttam Kumaran: Sort of plan a plan for today, and then I would like to start by looking at margins, if you feel…
28 00:03:47.190 ⇒ 00:03:50.579 Uttam Kumaran: roughly ready, I can pull up the dashboard and walk through that.
29 00:03:50.780 ⇒ 00:03:53.570 Amber Lin: Sure, I just added it.
30 00:03:53.570 ⇒ 00:03:54.040 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
31 00:03:54.040 ⇒ 00:04:05.100 Amber Lin: It should be accurate, apart from some missing hours, which we can also scroll down to see who we’re missing hours from.
32 00:04:05.230 ⇒ 00:04:05.820 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
33 00:04:07.250 ⇒ 00:04:13.390 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, great. So, we hustled a bit yesterday and last week on getting
34 00:04:13.580 ⇒ 00:04:17.420 Uttam Kumaran: Our first version of, like, a delivery health dashboard.
35 00:04:17.560 ⇒ 00:04:21.240 Uttam Kumaran: This is my OKR for this quarter.
36 00:04:21.630 ⇒ 00:04:26.859 Uttam Kumaran: So, one thing I really like about our setup now is we have operating for…
37 00:04:27.170 ⇒ 00:04:30.130 Uttam Kumaran: Our core allocations, we have this running notes.
38 00:04:30.650 ⇒ 00:04:32.549 Uttam Kumaran: Our notes, and then we’re also…
39 00:04:32.740 ⇒ 00:04:40.830 Uttam Kumaran: Have a dashboard now that, we’re able to actually look at, revenue,
40 00:04:41.730 ⇒ 00:04:45.699 Uttam Kumaran: Cost and the hours per week per client.
41 00:04:46.140 ⇒ 00:04:49.349 Uttam Kumaran: So one thing I’ll do,
42 00:04:49.890 ⇒ 00:04:57.240 Uttam Kumaran: Amber, do you just want to guide people through what they’re seeing on this? Then I may make some adjustments live. This is our first time going through this.
43 00:04:57.400 ⇒ 00:05:07.439 Uttam Kumaran: So, it’ll get better as the weeks go by, but I’m glad that we finally have some data. Do you want to just, like, walk everyone through this, Amber, while I just, like, kind of, like, have it up?
44 00:05:10.880 ⇒ 00:05:12.890 Uttam Kumaran: Or I can walk through it and, you can.
45 00:05:12.890 ⇒ 00:05:17.520 Amber Lin: Do you want me to share a screen while you prep other stuff, or Cisco?
46 00:05:17.520 ⇒ 00:05:21.910 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah, how about… how about you share, and then I’m just gonna make a few edits, tweaks…
47 00:05:22.240 ⇒ 00:05:23.370 Uttam Kumaran: here. Okay, okay.
48 00:05:27.490 ⇒ 00:05:28.510 Amber Lin: Right.
49 00:05:28.510 ⇒ 00:05:53.460 Amber Lin: So, this is what we have for the Delivery Health Dashboard, currently all on tables, but I think it helps us see the different projects. So, when we start here, we’ll start to look at, our main key project metrics, with weekly, and then I need to make a monthly chart. So, most important to us is we’re going to see, okay, last week for our client
50 00:05:53.460 ⇒ 00:05:57.579 Amber Lin: projects, right? So weeks start October 13th, this last week.
51 00:05:57.580 ⇒ 00:06:05.439 Amber Lin: We want to see, based on the either fixed or variable rate, what was the revenue last week?
52 00:06:06.060 ⇒ 00:06:19.680 Amber Lin: how many hours and accordingly, the cost, and then we get to see, okay, the billable rate and the project margins. I’ll add a percentage there in a bit. So, I think right now, for us, we should look at
53 00:06:19.980 ⇒ 00:06:27.390 Amber Lin: Okay, among these projects, how are the billable rates doing?
54 00:06:27.860 ⇒ 00:06:35.740 Amber Lin: Oops, I don’t think I added it here. And then, based on this, we can go to…
55 00:06:36.460 ⇒ 00:06:50.690 Amber Lin: hours, and see, okay, is the hours current… what we have here accurate? So we can see by project, by person, this is how much hours that was logged the previous week. So we see the start time October 13th.
56 00:06:51.470 ⇒ 00:07:09.159 Amber Lin: And, I don’t think… okay, I think we’re missing demolished hours, we’re also missing a few hours here and there, but that’s where we can look at the hours, and we can also see, in the future, I’ll add
57 00:07:09.530 ⇒ 00:07:17.629 Amber Lin: Our actual hours comparison to operating, so our allocated hours, so we can see, okay, how are we doing compared to what we planned?
58 00:07:18.830 ⇒ 00:07:23.020 Amber Lin: This middle section here is a sprint overview.
59 00:07:23.020 ⇒ 00:07:47.990 Amber Lin: So, in the first chart here, it shows us, okay, what are the tickets without, assignees, due dates, and estimates? I need to confirm that this chart is accurate, and then next, we’ll have the cycles. So we’ll look at, okay, for the last cycle, what is our completion rate? How much did we plan? This shows the log of the changes that was made to
60 00:07:47.990 ⇒ 00:07:50.820 Amber Lin: The scope in the previous cycle.
61 00:07:50.840 ⇒ 00:08:09.400 Amber Lin: We’ll see that, okay, how many was completed out of the total planned, and what is the percentage of item completed… items completed? And, for example, Eden, we completed most of the tickets last cycle, not a lot was carried over, so we’ll see 94%.
62 00:08:09.940 ⇒ 00:08:17.440 Amber Lin: And then, say… I’ll also filter this out with just 5 projects, but we can see, say.
63 00:08:17.610 ⇒ 00:08:30.460 Amber Lin: For Urban Stamps, we only had 71%, and for default, we only had 55, which means maybe something didn’t get planned properly, or that we didn’t clean out tickets at the end of the week.
64 00:08:31.790 ⇒ 00:08:46.319 Amber Lin: So that’s a brief overview. I’ll hand it over back to Utam to walk through some stuff, and I’ll share the link in the chat, and once you guys have a look, feel free to send any comments, improvements.
65 00:08:47.150 ⇒ 00:08:49.839 Amber Lin: But this is what we have for now.
66 00:08:50.550 ⇒ 00:08:54.570 Uttam Kumaran: Cool, yeah, so the goal for… in this meeting, at the start.
67 00:08:55.240 ⇒ 00:09:01.759 Uttam Kumaran: There’s a couple of key KPIs in my mind that I want to look at every single week, at least on Monday.
68 00:09:01.950 ⇒ 00:09:06.960 Uttam Kumaran: Is one, I want to look at margin by project for the week closed week.
69 00:09:07.240 ⇒ 00:09:11.530 Uttam Kumaran: So we have the money that’s coming in per client, we have how much…
70 00:09:11.650 ⇒ 00:09:17.739 Uttam Kumaran: of that would come in in one week. We also have how much we spent that week, and therefore we have
71 00:09:18.060 ⇒ 00:09:24.320 Uttam Kumaran: the margin. And so that’s one thing that’s… that’s really important to start looking at.
72 00:09:25.990 ⇒ 00:09:41.819 Uttam Kumaran: The second thing is just looking at, also, clients where we maybe didn’t spend enough time, so that’s also equally as, like, an equal problem to make sure that we are allocating, and we are spending the time we allocated on clients.
73 00:09:41.980 ⇒ 00:09:44.769 Uttam Kumaran: And then the last thing we’ll start to look at more…
74 00:09:44.910 ⇒ 00:09:52.339 Uttam Kumaran: More is, linear tickets, so as we get better with tracking points and estimating how much work is coming in, this should
75 00:09:52.460 ⇒ 00:10:09.489 Uttam Kumaran: we should be able to understand how much we’re planning on taking this week in order to hit our goals, and then that should directly translate to the tickets. So what you’ll see is, like, during stand-ups and during planning, we can have the amount of points in mind that we have to take, and that’ll start to get a little bit tighter.
76 00:10:09.630 ⇒ 00:10:15.919 Uttam Kumaran: So, I think, kind of the big ticket items that I wanted to look at
77 00:10:16.030 ⇒ 00:10:23.660 Uttam Kumaran: Probably for this past, close week is, for…
78 00:10:24.270 ⇒ 00:10:33.589 Uttam Kumaran: Remo, Readme, and Eden. So it looks like our total spend last week on Eden was around, like, $4,500.
79 00:10:33.780 ⇒ 00:10:38.470 Uttam Kumaran: So this is… so this is revenue, right, Amber? So just correct me if I’m going, because I’m just going to do this.
80 00:10:38.470 ⇒ 00:10:40.209 Amber Lin: This is revenue, yeah.
81 00:10:40.210 ⇒ 00:10:41.790 Uttam Kumaran: So, okay, so…
82 00:10:42.010 ⇒ 00:10:55.650 Uttam Kumaran: like, we… we… we made about 400… 4.6 on Eden, our cost is roughly 150 mark.
83 00:10:57.610 ⇒ 00:11:09.350 Uttam Kumaran: Similarly, for this week, for last week on Ellie, I don’t know if this seems inaccurate. Like, this would just be Zoran’s time, probably, right, Amber?
84 00:11:10.460 ⇒ 00:11:21.520 Robert Tseng: Yeah, it’s possible that that’s correct, because Zoran’s effort is… was supposed… was basically front-loaded for the first two weeks, and then the back half should pretty much be very little.
85 00:11:21.870 ⇒ 00:11:26.959 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so one thing, like, if we were to take that, so let’s go find Ellie for last week.
86 00:11:35.290 ⇒ 00:11:41.790 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, there’s no record… for October 6th for Ellie. So, I think one thing…
87 00:11:42.160 ⇒ 00:11:49.150 Uttam Kumaran: Amber and Rico to note down is, let’s investigate, like, whether there are hours being logged for that client.
88 00:11:51.880 ⇒ 00:11:53.730 Uttam Kumaran: Cause it’s not showing up right now.
89 00:11:54.720 ⇒ 00:11:58.800 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s one item, but for the last close week, we did okay.
90 00:11:59.000 ⇒ 00:12:03.239 Uttam Kumaran: for Interlude as well, like, this… this is our,
91 00:12:04.080 ⇒ 00:12:15.170 Uttam Kumaran: last week was our last week. I think there’s… there’s gonna be a couple of… this is an interesting case, Amber, because this is a mid-month client, so the revenue actually spans…
92 00:12:16.410 ⇒ 00:12:21.990 Uttam Kumaran: It doesn’t span across this month. Like, this is our… technically, last week was our last week.
93 00:12:22.250 ⇒ 00:12:26.110 Uttam Kumaran: So this is an entirely… accurate, but…
94 00:12:26.270 ⇒ 00:12:30.359 Uttam Kumaran: to give, I think that’s another adjustment we can make, is talk about mid-month.
95 00:12:30.550 ⇒ 00:12:31.470 Uttam Kumaran: darts?
96 00:12:32.080 ⇒ 00:12:35.270 Uttam Kumaran: For hype, like, it’s,
97 00:12:35.820 ⇒ 00:12:41.730 Uttam Kumaran: They’re actually… we’re… this is purely, Rate-based.
98 00:12:41.900 ⇒ 00:12:46.139 Uttam Kumaran: So, there shouldn’t be any… there will be costs.
99 00:12:46.340 ⇒ 00:12:50.809 Uttam Kumaran: But our billables should be… $2.50 as well.
100 00:12:51.490 ⇒ 00:12:56.390 Uttam Kumaran: For insomnia, we did around, 18 hours.
101 00:12:56.890 ⇒ 00:13:02.109 Uttam Kumaran: Is this accurate on Insomnia as well? I thought we are at a…
102 00:13:02.400 ⇒ 00:13:04.039 Uttam Kumaran: Rate, and then there’s a cap.
103 00:13:06.220 ⇒ 00:13:16.380 Amber Lin: Let’s see… Well, it’s based on the spreadsheet, so maybe the spreadsheet is not updated.
104 00:13:16.810 ⇒ 00:13:18.679 Amber Lin: So, let me check…
105 00:13:19.200 ⇒ 00:13:24.410 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so it’s by… so it’s, it’s $125 for a 20-hour…
106 00:13:24.410 ⇒ 00:13:31.620 Amber Lin: Yeah, and so I’m gonna need to be updated on the sheet. It says variable here, so it’s whatever that she says, so if we update it, it’ll be better.
107 00:13:32.020 ⇒ 00:13:33.189 Uttam Kumaran: It is variable.
108 00:13:33.560 ⇒ 00:13:38.020 Amber Lin: Oh, I thought we converted to… 10K.
109 00:13:38.400 ⇒ 00:13:39.580 Amber Lin: per month.
110 00:13:39.580 ⇒ 00:13:40.559 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, no.
111 00:13:40.560 ⇒ 00:13:42.460 Amber Lin: Oh, I see. Wait, we did.
112 00:13:42.460 ⇒ 00:13:43.349 Robert Tseng: For insomnia?
113 00:13:43.690 ⇒ 00:13:44.010 Amber Lin: Yeah.
114 00:13:44.010 ⇒ 00:13:44.850 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, really?
115 00:13:45.030 ⇒ 00:13:45.630 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
116 00:13:45.830 ⇒ 00:13:47.569 Amber Lin: Okay, then we need to update the sheet.
117 00:13:47.570 ⇒ 00:13:48.540 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, okay.
118 00:13:49.480 ⇒ 00:13:49.870 Robert Tseng: What?
119 00:13:49.870 ⇒ 00:13:52.199 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, Rico, that’s on… that’s on you, then.
120 00:13:52.680 ⇒ 00:13:57.670 Robert Tseng: I remember there was some, like, contract stuff that Rico and,
121 00:13:58.290 ⇒ 00:14:04.959 Robert Tseng: Shoot, what’s her name? Emerito, we’re figuring out. But that… the new contract is 10K a month through December.
122 00:14:05.280 ⇒ 00:14:10.990 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so then, Rico, that’s on you to confirm and update the sheet. Okay, this is great.
123 00:14:11.810 ⇒ 00:14:14.540 Uttam Kumaran: So…
124 00:14:14.880 ⇒ 00:14:20.619 Uttam Kumaran: I think the… probably the biggest thing for me is today we’ll talk a little bit about the clients that I’m, sort of.
125 00:14:20.800 ⇒ 00:14:30.270 Uttam Kumaran: from the margin perspective, there’s only a couple clients that I’m worried about. It’s… Eden, ABC, insomnia.
126 00:14:30.500 ⇒ 00:14:39.480 Uttam Kumaran: And Remo. Like, I feel like for those, we’ve, like, I want to get more visibility into. I’ve had pretty good visibility into Urban Stems.
127 00:14:39.650 ⇒ 00:14:48.669 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve also had pretty good visibility, into our fixed… our fixed hourly clients, but I think it’s even clearer
128 00:14:49.230 ⇒ 00:14:52.410 Uttam Kumaran: here on this sheet, Amber, that we don’t have…
129 00:14:52.780 ⇒ 00:14:56.030 Uttam Kumaran: like, the revenue coming in for ABC,
130 00:14:56.490 ⇒ 00:15:00.830 Uttam Kumaran: But it looks like we only booked 12 hours last week, which seems around accurate.
131 00:15:02.150 ⇒ 00:15:04.280 Amber Lin: So, if we were to do the math.
132 00:15:04.460 ⇒ 00:15:12.030 Uttam Kumaran: on that, yeah, we’d be okay.
133 00:15:12.490 ⇒ 00:15:17.879 Uttam Kumaran: Similarly, for Remo, this is where…
134 00:15:18.120 ⇒ 00:15:22.409 Uttam Kumaran: We just… one thing that would be helpful here is to have goal hours.
135 00:15:22.740 ⇒ 00:15:26.399 Uttam Kumaran: Right, what is our goal hours in order to hit 150?
136 00:15:27.670 ⇒ 00:15:29.189 Uttam Kumaran: But okay, and then…
137 00:15:30.020 ⇒ 00:15:34.880 Uttam Kumaran: Default, again, for the fixed rate clients, it’s actually important that we bill the time
138 00:15:35.140 ⇒ 00:15:46.570 Uttam Kumaran: that they signed up for, right? So, like, for default, for hype, I want to make sure that we are, like, we’re doing enough work for them, and that we’re able to get the maximum that we… we can get.
139 00:15:46.810 ⇒ 00:15:50.010 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool.
140 00:15:50.270 ⇒ 00:15:59.309 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t care much about linear for now. I think the biggest thing that’s important to me is just to know… is actually this simple chart.
141 00:16:01.250 ⇒ 00:16:08.049 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe… I think we have some action items, Amber, today, to make sure that some of these are filled out. We need to handle mid-month contracts.
142 00:16:08.170 ⇒ 00:16:14.260 Uttam Kumaran: I need… we need to get in here, like, this margin percentage… I need… we need margin amount.
143 00:16:14.680 ⇒ 00:16:16.419 Uttam Kumaran: Like, so that’s basically a profit.
144 00:16:16.420 ⇒ 00:16:18.289 Amber Lin: I was working on that, just added it.
145 00:16:18.290 ⇒ 00:16:21.569 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and then… and then… and then the percentage?
146 00:16:21.960 ⇒ 00:16:24.489 Uttam Kumaran: And then we also need goal hours.
147 00:16:25.690 ⇒ 00:16:26.190 Amber Lin: I can…
148 00:16:27.430 ⇒ 00:16:33.370 Uttam Kumaran: And then the last thing, yeah, and then we have a couple of things to go through on some of the missing hours.
149 00:16:34.710 ⇒ 00:16:45.149 Uttam Kumaran: So ideally, one other thing we should do is we can use conditional formatting to basically flag, hey, the hours for some of these are way lower than our expectation, what happened.
150 00:16:45.660 ⇒ 00:16:48.430 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
151 00:16:48.550 ⇒ 00:16:53.989 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so let’s kind of transition into… Talking through clients, so…
152 00:16:54.280 ⇒ 00:17:02.400 Uttam Kumaran: The kind of the main clients I want to talk through, today are… is Eden, Remo…
153 00:17:02.840 ⇒ 00:17:06.310 Uttam Kumaran: README and Insomnia.
154 00:17:06.579 ⇒ 00:17:12.780 Uttam Kumaran: So, let’s talk about… Eden first.
155 00:17:14.480 ⇒ 00:17:32.410 Uttam Kumaran: One is we did planning today, and I think we have a lighter week. I think still, what I didn’t get a sense from today, and just kind of what I need from you, Robert, is, like, what is our goal overarching for this week? Like, what are… what are… if there’s anything that we… we really, need to achieve.
156 00:17:32.510 ⇒ 00:17:38.559 Uttam Kumaran: That, you know, I can sort of focus on. We produced the, the deck.
157 00:17:39.030 ⇒ 00:17:41.819 Uttam Kumaran: You know, for today.
158 00:17:41.940 ⇒ 00:17:45.559 Uttam Kumaran: So I guess, also let me know if, like, that was helpful, or…
159 00:17:45.680 ⇒ 00:17:48.259 Uttam Kumaran: We’ve kind of put in some summaries of, like.
160 00:17:48.610 ⇒ 00:17:52.350 Uttam Kumaran: The… what we talked about, which is, like, Backlog.
161 00:17:52.940 ⇒ 00:17:56.150 Uttam Kumaran: So I guess I’d like to start there.
162 00:17:56.450 ⇒ 00:18:09.849 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I’ll review that today, because, you know, we do our check-in on Wednesday. I basically extended our bi-weekly with them to a one-hour session, just because we had a lot of ground to cover. So I should have a clear answer by the end of the day.
163 00:18:10.520 ⇒ 00:18:11.210 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
164 00:18:12.890 ⇒ 00:18:17.309 Uttam Kumaran: So, in this deck, just for context, so one, we changed the format.
165 00:18:17.950 ⇒ 00:18:20.750 Uttam Kumaran: Two, we put in a couple of key wins. Some of these I need…
166 00:18:21.670 ⇒ 00:18:26.829 Uttam Kumaran: you can go and just kind of fill in a couple things, which is… we’re just doing this end of the week Friday.
167 00:18:27.110 ⇒ 00:18:30.939 Uttam Kumaran: We put together two… things on Catalyst and Remo.
168 00:18:31.540 ⇒ 00:18:34.969 Uttam Kumaran: So, two, like, one-page… Docs on each of those.
169 00:18:36.120 ⇒ 00:18:40.399 Uttam Kumaran: We kind of summarized… The edge layer request.
170 00:18:41.410 ⇒ 00:18:43.390 Uttam Kumaran: Put in some of the new requests that came up.
171 00:18:43.670 ⇒ 00:18:44.960 Uttam Kumaran: And listed out.
172 00:18:45.480 ⇒ 00:18:46.600 Uttam Kumaran: the backlog.
173 00:18:46.740 ⇒ 00:18:49.060 Uttam Kumaran: This came from our last grooming session.
174 00:18:50.350 ⇒ 00:18:53.460 Uttam Kumaran: Which is just, like, what are the things that are opportunities?
175 00:18:53.460 ⇒ 00:18:55.750 Robert Tseng: Yeah. This is your sales slide.
176 00:18:55.860 ⇒ 00:19:02.640 Uttam Kumaran: And then… We have a couple asks. You can remove this if it’s, like, unnecessary.
177 00:19:03.040 ⇒ 00:19:05.650 Uttam Kumaran: The other thing is, like.
178 00:19:06.370 ⇒ 00:19:08.229 Uttam Kumaran: Should I, should I get, ask?
179 00:19:08.410 ⇒ 00:19:11.529 Uttam Kumaran: designed to… Make this look better.
180 00:19:12.690 ⇒ 00:19:18.429 Robert Tseng: I think that’s fine. It’s really just more like a talking point for now. They just want to make sure that what we’ve set up
181 00:19:18.940 ⇒ 00:19:23.070 Robert Tseng: deals like it’s HIPAA eligible, we’re definitely not compliant, but…
182 00:19:23.070 ⇒ 00:19:23.630 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
183 00:19:23.860 ⇒ 00:19:25.130 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so…
184 00:19:27.180 ⇒ 00:19:28.570 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool. So…
185 00:19:28.900 ⇒ 00:19:37.330 Uttam Kumaran: this is kind of waiting for you. I think right now, like, this… we’re on track to have, like, a pretty good margin week for this client.
186 00:19:37.510 ⇒ 00:19:44.190 Uttam Kumaran: I think we’ve only taken, like, less than 40 points, with the expectation there’ll be some ad hoc.
187 00:19:44.430 ⇒ 00:19:49.179 Uttam Kumaran: We’re gonna make some progress on COGS, we’re gonna make some progress on a couple items that Henry has.
188 00:19:49.330 ⇒ 00:19:59.020 Uttam Kumaran: I think here we just… we don’t have… some of them don’t… we don’t… I don’t think the priority is super clear, so I’m hopeful out of your output on Wednesday, we have, like, a clear, like.
189 00:19:59.370 ⇒ 00:20:02.980 Uttam Kumaran: What is our directive for, like, at least the next, like, 30 days?
190 00:20:04.530 ⇒ 00:20:08.390 Uttam Kumaran: We just seem like we’re taking out tickets, is, like, my perspective.
191 00:20:08.820 ⇒ 00:20:09.350 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
192 00:20:09.880 ⇒ 00:20:18.029 Robert Tseng: I think for the past few weeks, we’ve been kind of digging… it’s not a hole that we dug ourselves into, we’ve been digging them out of past holes.
193 00:20:18.400 ⇒ 00:20:35.979 Robert Tseng: So, we’re just getting to a point where we’re kind of more in the driver’s seat of our own roadmap. So, I know there’s a couple things that, you know, like, whether it’s the mixed panel work, and other things that I’ve talked about with Henry that we want to kind of bring back into scope, forecasting or whatever,
194 00:20:36.090 ⇒ 00:20:48.150 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think those are… those are things that I want to basically tell them we’re gonna be working on these things now, and it’s… it’s less about, like, go and fix XYZ things, so…
195 00:20:50.520 ⇒ 00:20:54.510 Robert Tseng: I’ll say the client website.
196 00:20:54.510 ⇒ 00:20:59.629 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and I’m, excited to hear about how your conversation goes on, like, outcome…
197 00:20:59.750 ⇒ 00:21:06.109 Uttam Kumaran: more, like, driving towards outcomes. It’s actually a very similar message that I sent to Zach from Urban Stems today.
198 00:21:06.110 ⇒ 00:21:06.700 Robert Tseng: Yup.
199 00:21:06.700 ⇒ 00:21:09.190 Uttam Kumaran: As we’re talking through the renewal, which is gonna be…
200 00:21:09.310 ⇒ 00:21:10.000 Robert Tseng: I’m still, like…
201 00:21:10.000 ⇒ 00:21:18.279 Uttam Kumaran: the contract is up next… end of next month, is I was very clear on, like, hey, we’ve set the groundwork, we’ve had great infrastructure, we have the marts.
202 00:21:18.400 ⇒ 00:21:22.389 Uttam Kumaran: I think they’re still sitting on a lot of our work, they’re not doing much with it, and I’m like.
203 00:21:22.590 ⇒ 00:21:34.639 Uttam Kumaran: point us at a KPI, and I would love to find ways for you to see that every dollar spent with us is, like, a huge ROI. And so I’m trying to lean towards that, so I’m curious how they respond to your…
204 00:21:34.780 ⇒ 00:21:38.640 Uttam Kumaran: feedback, and I’ll kind of take that. I’m speaking with Zach next week.
205 00:21:39.310 ⇒ 00:21:55.310 Robert Tseng: Okay. Yeah, I mean, they took my message, and they were both basically, yeah, they’re basically asking, they want me to make some recommendations, so… Okay. And then I put together some, yeah, like a plan, and obviously I’ll run it by… by this team first before I send it to them, with the deck.
206 00:21:55.930 ⇒ 00:21:56.470 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
207 00:21:57.320 ⇒ 00:22:00.459 Uttam Kumaran: For Remo, I guess,
208 00:22:02.610 ⇒ 00:22:06.880 Uttam Kumaran: Rico, can you go find out how much time we spent on Remo so far?
209 00:22:07.220 ⇒ 00:22:20.029 Uttam Kumaran: We roughly have, like, 60 hours or so for, like, the 10K, right? So I just want to check how much we’ve spent so far. What’s the deal here? Like, are we… are… I guess, tell me if anything’s changed since last week.
210 00:22:21.030 ⇒ 00:22:24.570 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so basically, I sent them a…
211 00:22:25.900 ⇒ 00:22:29.699 Robert Tseng: the Remo handoff is supposed to take place on November 1st.
212 00:22:29.860 ⇒ 00:22:43.959 Robert Tseng: I, based off of my investigations last week, my advice, my recommendation to Eden was don’t accept it by November 1st, extend us for another month, take CERF’s roadmap.
213 00:22:44.180 ⇒ 00:22:47.579 Robert Tseng: And let him, like, run, run that.
214 00:22:47.590 ⇒ 00:23:03.789 Robert Tseng: So that you can have a better, like, so that you’ll be able to get something that’s more ready to use. I think Surf projected that he needed a… he projected with another month of him helping make some of those decisions.
215 00:23:03.790 ⇒ 00:23:11.420 Robert Tseng: it should work. So I… I think that’s… that’s the first play, is to try to get an extension, off of… off of that.
216 00:23:11.780 ⇒ 00:23:12.610 Robert Tseng: if…
217 00:23:12.940 ⇒ 00:23:21.229 Robert Tseng: if Remo’s Eng team doesn’t end up being the team to finish it, then I think that would throw… that would be a bit more complicated, because…
218 00:23:21.390 ⇒ 00:23:28.730 Robert Tseng: you know, I don’t think we’re gonna go and source to engineers, but if CERF wants to be a part of that, then I think that’s something that I would look to him to…
219 00:23:28.890 ⇒ 00:23:36.240 Robert Tseng: kind of extend. So there’s a couple options, but, you know, everything is where they both start from the…
220 00:23:36.460 ⇒ 00:23:43.959 Robert Tseng: we’re not… I don’t… I don’t think Eden should take remote, or should not, like… they… they can’t accept the product by November 1st. There’s no way it’s ready.
221 00:23:44.210 ⇒ 00:23:50.380 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. So for this week, like, what’s, what’s, what’s the play?
222 00:23:51.360 ⇒ 00:24:05.250 Robert Tseng: Well, yeah, I mean, we already kind of put what we needed to in front of them. It’s really… I think it’ll be an outcome of the Wednesday call as well, like, on what… if they’re going to take our recommendation, and we’re gonna basically extend for another month, with…
223 00:24:06.830 ⇒ 00:24:11.859 Robert Tseng: With Surf being more… more actively involved in making decisions, or not?
224 00:24:12.080 ⇒ 00:24:12.680 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
225 00:24:12.960 ⇒ 00:24:13.510 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
226 00:24:13.850 ⇒ 00:24:17.039 Robert Tseng: But otherwise, we’ll step away from it, like, where we are.
227 00:24:17.230 ⇒ 00:24:20.409 Robert Tseng: We’ll just finish our existing contract, and we’re not gonna renew.
228 00:24:20.710 ⇒ 00:24:21.270 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
229 00:24:28.270 ⇒ 00:24:34.290 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. So we are… I… we are basically at our one-month mark, and we’ve done 30…
230 00:24:34.810 ⇒ 00:24:38.520 Uttam Kumaran: 2 hours, so it’s like… Fair.
231 00:24:38.800 ⇒ 00:24:42.759 Uttam Kumaran: I would like us to do a little bit less this next month.
232 00:24:43.040 ⇒ 00:24:52.709 Uttam Kumaran: and be a little bit more efficient, I felt… so I think one thing, Rico, we should just see what the breakdown is between Surf, Awash.
233 00:24:53.120 ⇒ 00:24:55.270 Uttam Kumaran: And see how we can, like.
234 00:24:55.650 ⇒ 00:24:58.690 Uttam Kumaran: Make sure that each week they’re on… they’re not spending, like.
235 00:24:58.950 ⇒ 00:25:04.359 Uttam Kumaran: an insane amount of time anymore, like, especially if they’re just wasting time on calls with Cameron.
236 00:25:04.760 ⇒ 00:25:06.159 Uttam Kumaran: Not interested in, like.
237 00:25:06.940 ⇒ 00:25:13.439 Uttam Kumaran: paying for that anymore, because they’ve already talked to him about everything, so… I’m interested to see what the outcome is going to be.
238 00:25:13.990 ⇒ 00:25:20.420 Robert Tseng: We’re gonna be one more demo from them, and then I think that’s, you know, I’m only expecting them to book one more call with Remo.
239 00:25:20.590 ⇒ 00:25:21.180 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
240 00:25:25.970 ⇒ 00:25:29.879 Uttam Kumaran: So this one, ideally, I want to see us run with, like, 25 hours or less.
241 00:25:30.020 ⇒ 00:25:30.919 Uttam Kumaran: Would be great.
242 00:25:36.270 ⇒ 00:25:38.610 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, let’s talk about,
243 00:25:39.610 ⇒ 00:25:47.960 Uttam Kumaran: read me. So this is one where it’s just you and Robert. It’s just Robert, you and Henry. I really want to make sure that, like.
244 00:25:48.070 ⇒ 00:25:56.900 Uttam Kumaran: there is some outcomes this week. I think there’s two objectives here. One is, like, we do get some great outcomes for them this week, and second, like, your time here drops.
245 00:25:57.150 ⇒ 00:26:00.660 Uttam Kumaran: So, the first pivot we’ve done is we’ve moved Henry onto here.
246 00:26:00.910 ⇒ 00:26:08.980 Uttam Kumaran: we can consider looping in Demulade as well, but I guess I’ll give the floor to you if you feel, like, pretty comfortable with the roadmap.
247 00:26:09.210 ⇒ 00:26:13.749 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, at what point this week we should, like, check in on things, and, like, what should the expectation be?
248 00:26:14.950 ⇒ 00:26:24.729 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so, I mean, Henry’s kind of getting introduced to more of the team. I think he’s talked to a couple of engineers. I think we’re still doing some discovery, figuring out, like, what parts of the stack we can touch.
249 00:26:24.920 ⇒ 00:26:42.129 Robert Tseng: And then for the work that we’ve already done, it’s more about QAing it and basically presenting it into a… in a good place to the new, kind of, POC, which is going to be the head of product, who’s going to join on Thursday. So, I will prepare for that, and kind of…
250 00:26:42.160 ⇒ 00:26:45.629 Robert Tseng: Want to add a deck with the readout with her?
251 00:26:46.080 ⇒ 00:26:48.679 Robert Tseng: I think it’s a her, I’m not really sure.
252 00:26:48.930 ⇒ 00:26:53.990 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I think that’s… that’s kind of what I’m… preparing for by Thursday.
253 00:26:55.850 ⇒ 00:27:01.540 Robert Tseng: I think, yeah, she will be the main sponsor, kind of, moving forward, so gotta make sure that she’s on board, yeah.
254 00:27:01.540 ⇒ 00:27:04.629 Uttam Kumaran: So, this week, we do need a deck, like a great deck.
255 00:27:06.270 ⇒ 00:27:07.540 Uttam Kumaran: by, like, Wednesday?
256 00:27:08.320 ⇒ 00:27:09.070 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
257 00:27:11.580 ⇒ 00:27:12.380 Robert Tseng: Thank you for help.
258 00:27:13.390 ⇒ 00:27:14.670 Robert Tseng: Or debate.
259 00:27:14.670 ⇒ 00:27:17.539 Uttam Kumaran: Henry, are you clear on, like, what we need to get done by then?
260 00:27:18.270 ⇒ 00:27:21.929 Henry Zhao: Yeah, I think it’s pretty much just the stuff you’ve already presented in Amplitude, right, Robert?
261 00:27:22.490 ⇒ 00:27:35.040 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and then just being able to speak to, these are all the other opportunities that we can be going after. We’ve looked at Mongo, maybe you need actual, like, data modeling analysis, like, you know, we can pitch
262 00:27:35.050 ⇒ 00:27:47.489 Robert Tseng: the whole, like, data pipeline thing that we do. I don’t know what you’re gonna find in AWS, but maybe you’ll… I mean, I think I kind of… yeah, I won’t want you to figure out what opportunities there are once you look at the data there.
263 00:27:47.780 ⇒ 00:27:48.380 Henry Zhao: Okay.
264 00:27:48.760 ⇒ 00:27:49.450 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
265 00:27:50.390 ⇒ 00:27:53.740 Uttam Kumaran: So, can we do a dry run meeting on Wednesday?
266 00:27:55.880 ⇒ 00:27:57.019 Robert Tseng: Yeah, we should.
267 00:27:58.100 ⇒ 00:28:00.670 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, Rico, you wanna grab that?
268 00:28:03.770 ⇒ 00:28:04.560 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
269 00:28:04.670 ⇒ 00:28:07.470 Uttam Kumaran: At any point. Ideally morning, sometime.
270 00:28:08.080 ⇒ 00:28:09.560 Uttam Kumaran: So let’s do that.
271 00:28:09.810 ⇒ 00:28:13.539 Henry Zhao: I won’t be able to on Wednesday morning, but you guys can do it, and .
272 00:28:14.020 ⇒ 00:28:18.610 Uttam Kumaran: Well, you’re the only person on this client apart from Robert, so you gotta be there. So when do you want to do that.
273 00:28:18.610 ⇒ 00:28:21.280 Henry Zhao: Tuesday’s the end of day, then? That’s possible?
274 00:28:22.200 ⇒ 00:28:23.670 Uttam Kumaran: You think you’ll have something by tomorrow?
275 00:28:24.550 ⇒ 00:28:26.249 Henry Zhao: Well, I’ll have to.
276 00:28:26.600 ⇒ 00:28:28.470 Uttam Kumaran: Well, like, are you out Wednesday?
277 00:28:29.140 ⇒ 00:28:32.840 Henry Zhao: No, but I’m working later in the day on Wednesday, because I have my move.
278 00:28:32.940 ⇒ 00:28:36.490 Henry Zhao: Just… I have stuff on Wednesday and next Thursday.
279 00:28:36.730 ⇒ 00:28:37.880 Henry Zhao: Next Friday. Okay.
280 00:28:39.040 ⇒ 00:28:42.919 Uttam Kumaran: Why don’t we plan for… Then tomorrow evening.
281 00:28:44.360 ⇒ 00:28:45.360 Henry Zhao: That works.
282 00:28:45.360 ⇒ 00:28:48.619 Uttam Kumaran: And then, at least we’ll see, because I just want to do some dry run.
283 00:28:49.650 ⇒ 00:28:51.509 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. But I’ll still try to do slides by tomorrow.
284 00:28:51.950 ⇒ 00:28:53.030 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, yeah.
285 00:28:53.850 ⇒ 00:28:58.070 Uttam Kumaran: Alright, Rico, if you want to grab that, that’d be great. Okay, cool, so…
286 00:28:58.070 ⇒ 00:29:01.720 Henry Zhao: And maybe tomorrow, Robert, you can give me some feedback already before our dry run.
287 00:29:02.690 ⇒ 00:29:08.499 Henry Zhao: Yeah, if we’re gonna do a call, it’s gotta be before 6pm Eastern for me, or after 8.30.
288 00:29:08.770 ⇒ 00:29:11.200 Henry Zhao: It might not even be a call, I might just send you the deck, and you can just give me some feedback.
289 00:29:11.200 ⇒ 00:29:12.739 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, no, we need to do a call.
290 00:29:12.740 ⇒ 00:29:15.269 Henry Zhao: No, I’m saying, no, the call will do on Wednesday, but I’m just saying.
291 00:29:15.270 ⇒ 00:29:17.130 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, no, you’re not here on Wednesday.
292 00:29:19.360 ⇒ 00:29:22.560 Henry Zhao: No, Wednesday, end of day, I can. I just won’t be in the morning.
293 00:29:22.560 ⇒ 00:29:26.509 Uttam Kumaran: The meeting itself is on Wednesday, with the head of product, right?
294 00:29:26.820 ⇒ 00:29:27.510 Robert Tseng: It’s on Thursday.
295 00:29:27.510 ⇒ 00:29:28.440 Henry Zhao: on Thursday.
296 00:29:29.800 ⇒ 00:29:33.430 Uttam Kumaran: I want… I… so, very clear, I need me, Robert, and Henry.
297 00:29:33.430 ⇒ 00:29:34.080 Robert Tseng: tonight.
298 00:29:34.280 ⇒ 00:29:37.909 Uttam Kumaran: On a call to do a dry run of the presentation to add a product.
299 00:29:38.260 ⇒ 00:29:39.840 Uttam Kumaran: Sometime before Thursday.
300 00:29:40.390 ⇒ 00:29:42.109 Henry Zhao: We can do an end of day on Wednesday.
301 00:29:42.290 ⇒ 00:29:45.879 Henry Zhao: And then Tuesday, I was going to ask Robert just for some feedback on the slides before the dry run.
302 00:29:46.550 ⇒ 00:29:47.780 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay, great.
303 00:29:48.590 ⇒ 00:29:49.980 Uttam Kumaran: Alright, perfect.
304 00:29:50.530 ⇒ 00:30:06.319 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so, like, I’m gonna wait to see that. I think we have a great opportunity to, like, get ahead on this. I have a little bit of time tomorrow, so I’m gonna… this is where I’m gonna push, because I think we can do some numbers for them, so I think we just try to stack this deck up.
305 00:30:06.840 ⇒ 00:30:08.640 Uttam Kumaran: But cool.
306 00:30:09.160 ⇒ 00:30:15.729 Uttam Kumaran: And insomnia. So I think here,
307 00:30:16.120 ⇒ 00:30:21.620 Uttam Kumaran: the main pivot that I want to talk through today is moving Demelade onto this account.
308 00:30:22.050 ⇒ 00:30:27.169 Uttam Kumaran: I think there’s… we’re starting to open up
309 00:30:27.710 ⇒ 00:30:36.869 Uttam Kumaran: the amount of data we have access to, I think there has to be some, like, basic data modeling done, but I think we do need, like, someone at Demolade’s seniority on this.
310 00:30:38.290 ⇒ 00:30:40.629 Uttam Kumaran: And, you know, I spoke… me and…
311 00:30:40.790 ⇒ 00:30:44.770 Uttam Kumaran: Demi spoke this morning, and he’s down to also, you know, help with analysis.
312 00:30:45.330 ⇒ 00:30:48.350 Uttam Kumaran: So, I feel like this is a good…
313 00:30:49.130 ⇒ 00:30:56.789 Uttam Kumaran: this is a good way to extend him, especially as, like, Eden, we’re starting to just focus on the most important things.
314 00:30:58.270 ⇒ 00:31:03.250 Uttam Kumaran: like, any… I guess, like, maybe that’s one point, and then, Robert, if you want to articulate, like, goals.
315 00:31:04.010 ⇒ 00:31:06.370 Uttam Kumaran: for… this week.
316 00:31:06.850 ⇒ 00:31:14.300 Uttam Kumaran: like, must-do goals, especially as anything you need from Demolade, we can take it and start to push for that.
317 00:31:15.680 ⇒ 00:31:19.980 Robert Tseng: Okay, yeah, no, I think that that makes sense to me. With insomnia.
318 00:31:20.200 ⇒ 00:31:37.720 Robert Tseng: Yeah, the weekly business review is running tighter. I kind of am knowing, like, what iterations we need to make. I created tickets, a couple tickets out of the meeting. One is, like, the way that we do our readout. Like, we’ve moved on from just automating the existing, we’re trying to improve it now. So, I think there’s some modeling that needs to happen in order for us to be able to
319 00:31:37.780 ⇒ 00:31:46.289 Robert Tseng: build something, like, you know, we’re not necessarily building full-on Tableau dashboards like we did in Eden, but, like, being able to do, like.
320 00:31:46.360 ⇒ 00:31:54.420 Robert Tseng: trying to extend what we’re able to share, rather than just copy-pasting what’s in Brace, being able to actually say.
321 00:31:55.830 ⇒ 00:32:07.370 Robert Tseng: like, actuals versus projected. And so, like, there’s some modeling that needs to go into that. And then I’ve identified and prioritized all the different cuts that we need to make of the data.
322 00:32:07.520 ⇒ 00:32:14.850 Robert Tseng: campaign level segmentation, I already… I did that myself, but, yeah, I think having…
323 00:32:15.010 ⇒ 00:32:18.449 Robert Tseng: Someone who can actually make it happen for the other ones, like…
324 00:32:18.620 ⇒ 00:32:33.690 Robert Tseng: the customer-level segments, like, product level drill downs, like, you know, a lot of the same stuff that we… capabilities that we have on the Eden side, Insomnia doesn’t. So, I think that’s why I think, Demolody could be a good fit here, because we basically need a lot of the same… same things.
325 00:32:35.190 ⇒ 00:32:35.910 Robert Tseng: Okay.
326 00:32:37.130 ⇒ 00:32:37.689 Uttam Kumaran: Reached him on this.
327 00:32:37.690 ⇒ 00:32:51.359 Robert Tseng: Yeah, as far as the… like, that’s, like, the… that’s the infrastructure that needs to happen. As far as the urgent stuff, yeah, it’s still gonna be, like, one-off questions. For example, it’s like, oh, are we, you know, dupe… are we duplicating
328 00:32:51.470 ⇒ 00:33:06.530 Robert Tseng: are we, like, double counting, like, conversions on email? Like, I mean, this, you know, it’s a… we’re gonna be answering these types of, like, data qual… questioning data quality questions until we can… until we really have a good handle on it, so…
329 00:33:06.750 ⇒ 00:33:07.310 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
330 00:33:08.300 ⇒ 00:33:12.450 Uttam Kumaran: So, I think, I know last week was, like, insane.
331 00:33:12.630 ⇒ 00:33:17.549 Uttam Kumaran: Yo, dude, like, look at my schedule. Like, last week, that’s so fucked up. But…
332 00:33:17.780 ⇒ 00:33:24.849 Uttam Kumaran: This week, I think I want to do, like, for the companies that are on more of a weekly cadence.
333 00:33:25.150 ⇒ 00:33:30.510 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, I want to make sure that the core team chats and preps, especially for
334 00:33:30.790 ⇒ 00:33:48.629 Uttam Kumaran: Robert, you have, like, Monday as, like, the business review. I just want to make sure that on Friday, we chat to make sure you’re prepared for that. I think this week we did a little bit better. I think, like, last week we did a little bit better. I also think we were able to get Eden and some of these project reviews, and I think this week will be even tighter. So… Yeah.
335 00:33:48.880 ⇒ 00:33:53.100 Uttam Kumaran: I think, Rico, if you can just grab time,
336 00:33:53.200 ⇒ 00:34:06.749 Uttam Kumaran: on Friday, we can just carve out 30 minutes just for, like, an Eden, just for a Insomnia sprint review. The Eden one, again, we’re on, like, a two-week rolling, so I only care about kind of gonna, like, prioritize
337 00:34:07.020 ⇒ 00:34:11.379 Uttam Kumaran: like, for this week, really getting README and Insomnia.
338 00:34:11.780 ⇒ 00:34:13.080 Uttam Kumaran: like, on track.
339 00:34:14.800 ⇒ 00:34:15.340 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
340 00:34:15.570 ⇒ 00:34:22.329 Robert Tseng: The summer was better this past week. This Monday was the most prepared I felt going into a Monday meeting, so…
341 00:34:22.330 ⇒ 00:34:27.399 Uttam Kumaran: Good, and I… but also, like, I think that was partly us, I think that was also mostly you, just, like.
342 00:34:28.100 ⇒ 00:34:36.320 Uttam Kumaran: getting better into it, so I want us to, like, equip you. You come in Monday with, like, too much to share? You know, I think this week we can achieve that, so…
343 00:34:36.489 ⇒ 00:34:42.370 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, I feel okay there. I mean, for Insomnia, we have time for our contract, so that’s okay.
344 00:34:43.760 ⇒ 00:34:50.030 Uttam Kumaran: I think README, yeah, the biggest thing I want to get you this week and next week is, like, a clear roadmap, so…
345 00:34:51.770 ⇒ 00:34:55.270 Robert Tseng: I know we’re coming up on them by the end of the month, so I want to bump them.
346 00:34:55.570 ⇒ 00:35:02.969 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I expect a few of our clients to… we’re going to renegotiate these contracts by the end of this month, so this is a… this is a big week for us.
347 00:35:03.720 ⇒ 00:35:09.190 Uttam Kumaran: And then the last one I want to talk through is, actually not the last one, but I want to talk through Ellie.
348 00:35:09.420 ⇒ 00:35:16.370 Uttam Kumaran: So… We’re… yeah, we’re sort of at the… Like, kinda like…
349 00:35:16.370 ⇒ 00:35:16.980 Robert Tseng: Okay.
350 00:35:17.630 ⇒ 00:35:21.169 Uttam Kumaran: post-Zoron scope, so there’s kind of two things we can do here. One is, like.
351 00:35:21.310 ⇒ 00:35:24.040 Uttam Kumaran: I can take a crack at putting together some scope.
352 00:35:24.570 ⇒ 00:35:27.999 Uttam Kumaran: Me and you can meet and, like, brainstorm ideas.
353 00:35:28.310 ⇒ 00:35:30.449 Uttam Kumaran: Like, what do you think is best?
354 00:35:30.600 ⇒ 00:35:31.150 Uttam Kumaran: And then we’ll.
355 00:35:31.150 ⇒ 00:35:42.090 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I had that… I had a deck already that I had built for Ellie, so we could probably just rework that. I’m gonna re-pitch the same scope that I tried when I was extending the product analytics work.
356 00:35:42.500 ⇒ 00:35:50.430 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I might try to pitch it a bit differently, but, I still didn’t see anything in Azure, so I don’t really feel like I have more visibility into, like.
357 00:35:50.710 ⇒ 00:35:59.910 Robert Tseng: the other parts of their business, other than this project that, Lauren is working on. So I still think that that’s… that’s a bit lacking.
358 00:36:01.190 ⇒ 00:36:10.590 Robert Tseng: Yeah, otherwise I feel like we’re in the same position we were, like, last month when we were trying to extend them. Like, I don’t have any new information I can… I can, make recommendations off of.
359 00:36:11.500 ⇒ 00:36:15.949 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so I’ll take it on to just create an October version of this deck.
360 00:36:16.110 ⇒ 00:36:17.560 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
361 00:36:18.160 ⇒ 00:36:23.780 Uttam Kumaran: And then… yeah, I still owe the Azure thing, so I have to do that. Shit.
362 00:36:25.210 ⇒ 00:36:28.100 Uttam Kumaran: Just put it in my calendar.
363 00:36:29.740 ⇒ 00:36:43.099 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, for Ellie and… Ellie, Insomnia, and README, all the same situation. Just got access, or getting access to Azure or AWS, and then we just have to go and find the opportunities in there, so… Okay, okay.
364 00:36:43.280 ⇒ 00:36:44.510 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I expect it’s only…
365 00:36:44.510 ⇒ 00:36:49.329 Uttam Kumaran: Insomnia and Readme, I feel pretty good about. Ellie is just, like, I don’t know much about, like.
366 00:36:50.340 ⇒ 00:36:59.940 Uttam Kumaran: Allison and the gist, so… Yeah. But, like, I can… we can certainly clean this up for you, make it way tighter, and then I can do some brainstorming.
367 00:37:00.920 ⇒ 00:37:01.480 Robert Tseng: Okay.
368 00:37:01.980 ⇒ 00:37:05.670 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, great. And then the last one to talk through is just hype.
369 00:37:06.010 ⇒ 00:37:17.010 Uttam Kumaran: We are… Coming up on… Wednesday, I do have, I do have, like.
370 00:37:17.410 ⇒ 00:37:20.040 Uttam Kumaran: Summary of, like, what we’ve done so far.
371 00:37:20.350 ⇒ 00:37:24.800 Uttam Kumaran: Like, we’re gonna be meeting with them tomorrow.
372 00:37:25.130 ⇒ 00:37:31.470 Uttam Kumaran: Like, what… I guess I… I remember you said, just, like, send me over… do you want me to put those into slides?
373 00:37:31.620 ⇒ 00:37:35.020 Uttam Kumaran: Do you just want, like, a simple, like, one-pager of stuff?
374 00:37:35.490 ⇒ 00:37:49.190 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think just a running dock is fine, we don’t need to do slides for them. I don’t think Audrey really looks at slides. Yeah, I mean, we’ll have the call tomorrow, and we’ll kind of just share, you know, we’ll share wins, share our progress, kind of give them what the next… tee up, what the next phase looks like.
375 00:37:49.280 ⇒ 00:38:01.860 Robert Tseng: just try to… you know, they’re not gonna be the ones to push us to the next phase, we have to do the pushing. So, I also grabbed time with Audrey later in the week. I’m gonna get lunch or coffee with her, and I think that’ll be, like, a…
376 00:38:02.000 ⇒ 00:38:05.150 Robert Tseng: more… they don’t… Bye.
377 00:38:05.540 ⇒ 00:38:23.129 Robert Tseng: trying to discuss, like, more intentionally, like, what we’re gonna move to. So I think there’s just two touchpoints that we have this week. One will be, like, with the team, obviously, reading the updates tomorrow, and then by the end of the week, I’m also going to see, like, hey, are we just gonna extend this for another month, or are we ready to move to the next phase?
378 00:38:25.570 ⇒ 00:38:26.410 Robert Tseng: Okay.
379 00:38:27.540 ⇒ 00:38:28.230 Robert Tseng: Interesting.
380 00:38:28.230 ⇒ 00:38:28.840 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
381 00:38:29.040 ⇒ 00:38:36.069 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so either way, we will need that doc for both calls, probably, or whatever, both touchpoints, but that’s… that’s what we have coming up for them.
382 00:38:36.390 ⇒ 00:38:47.069 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool. Rico, can you create this also for hype? And that’d be great. And then for these clients, so Interlude, we’re officially, like, off right now. I’m speaking with him tomorrow.
383 00:38:47.380 ⇒ 00:39:05.300 Uttam Kumaran: they’re just, like, it’s a rough client, like, I think we did good work, but he was just, like, not responsive and traveling, and so I’m gonna see. I mean, my… I don’t feel comfortable pitching, like, a fixed amount, but I may pitch him on either, like, a retainer model for just automation services.
384 00:39:05.500 ⇒ 00:39:11.029 Uttam Kumaran: And that way I can get a pretty good hourly rate versus, like, having to do fix, so that’s gonna be…
385 00:39:11.150 ⇒ 00:39:12.200 Uttam Kumaran: that, but…
386 00:39:12.490 ⇒ 00:39:18.780 Uttam Kumaran: I… I don’t know. This one is, like, unavoidable churn if they leave, because I don’t know, couldn’t do anything. We nailed what we wanted to, so…
387 00:39:18.970 ⇒ 00:39:24.810 Uttam Kumaran: And then default, default’s going well. ABC, I think the biggest thing for ABC is just making sure that
388 00:39:25.090 ⇒ 00:39:27.579 Uttam Kumaran: We run at a good margin this month.
389 00:39:28.120 ⇒ 00:39:29.880 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
390 00:39:30.280 ⇒ 00:39:37.080 Uttam Kumaran: So, I feel great there. Any, like, out of office this week? So, that we want to flag?
391 00:39:39.060 ⇒ 00:39:41.799 Henry Zhao: Yeah, I’m not out of office, like I said, I’m just working later on Wednesdays.
392 00:39:41.800 ⇒ 00:39:42.410 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
393 00:39:42.570 ⇒ 00:39:43.310 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
394 00:39:44.010 ⇒ 00:39:45.770 Demilade Agboola: I think Goish is out of office.
395 00:39:46.190 ⇒ 00:39:47.840 Demilade Agboola: Today, till Wednesday.
396 00:39:47.970 ⇒ 00:39:49.999 Demilade Agboola: Today, Tuesday, or Wednesday, I believe.
397 00:39:58.940 ⇒ 00:39:59.900 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
398 00:40:01.840 ⇒ 00:40:02.940 Uttam Kumaran: That’s good to know.
399 00:40:04.630 ⇒ 00:40:12.589 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, great. Yeah, one thing, process-wise, I just wanna, like, See that in the dashboard.
400 00:40:19.360 ⇒ 00:40:20.030 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
401 00:40:20.360 ⇒ 00:40:21.460 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
402 00:40:22.800 ⇒ 00:40:33.820 Uttam Kumaran: So… The only other thing I want to just double-check while we have everybody is, on… operating,
403 00:40:38.580 ⇒ 00:40:42.369 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, I literally had the thing up, right? Where does…
404 00:40:44.590 ⇒ 00:40:46.040 Uttam Kumaran: Oh yeah, here we go, okay.
405 00:40:46.620 ⇒ 00:40:47.620 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
406 00:40:48.260 ⇒ 00:40:51.450 Uttam Kumaran: So this is an active view of our clients right now.
407 00:40:51.670 ⇒ 00:40:54.279 Uttam Kumaran: One thing I just want to make sure…
408 00:40:54.480 ⇒ 00:41:04.360 Uttam Kumaran: of is that this is all accurate. So, we are coming up on… This is week 43…
409 00:41:06.330 ⇒ 00:41:13.490 Uttam Kumaran: Just double check, so… I don’t… I don’t think this is accurate, like, I don’t think Zoran is on anything.
410 00:41:14.690 ⇒ 00:41:18.440 Uttam Kumaran: like, for Eden, right? Like, we have them allocated at 15 hours a week.
411 00:41:18.900 ⇒ 00:41:20.700 Uttam Kumaran: Is that the case anymore?
412 00:41:25.180 ⇒ 00:41:27.340 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe a question for Amber?
413 00:41:30.710 ⇒ 00:41:43.930 Amber Lin: I think on Eden, we may have additional edge requests come up, so I know Robert’s talking to them this Wednesday, and then they’ll tell us, but I think 15 hours is high.
414 00:41:45.040 ⇒ 00:41:47.540 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so I think what we’re gonna have to… I think for…
415 00:41:47.790 ⇒ 00:41:51.509 Uttam Kumaran: November, we can figure out, like, what the plan is.
416 00:41:53.820 ⇒ 00:42:00.130 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, for… Urban Stems, okay.
417 00:42:01.430 ⇒ 00:42:07.909 Uttam Kumaran: I guess, like, what I don’t know is, like, what… how long we have been doing, like, I don’t know whether these are still accurate.
418 00:42:08.090 ⇒ 00:42:14.459 Uttam Kumaran: I think coming into next week, I want to see, like, hey, what do we allocate for this week versus, like, for this month? What versus, like, what…
419 00:42:15.030 ⇒ 00:42:16.740 Uttam Kumaran: What adjustments we should make?
420 00:42:16.850 ⇒ 00:42:25.259 Uttam Kumaran: like, now I’m definitely not spending… 20 hours, probably spending, like, 5 hours or so.
421 00:42:25.800 ⇒ 00:42:28.330 Uttam Kumaran: Now that Oasis here, so…
422 00:42:29.480 ⇒ 00:42:31.899 Amber Lin: We can work on the tentative…
423 00:42:32.090 ⇒ 00:42:35.400 Uttam Kumaran: Allocations.
424 00:42:35.910 ⇒ 00:42:41.250 Uttam Kumaran: For ABC, Is this still roughly accurate?
425 00:42:44.290 ⇒ 00:42:47.760 Amber Lin: Mmm… per month…
426 00:42:52.700 ⇒ 00:42:53.840 Amber Lin: I think so.
427 00:42:54.100 ⇒ 00:42:58.229 Amber Lin: Might be a little bit less, but I want to double check.
428 00:42:58.920 ⇒ 00:42:59.590 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
429 00:42:59.720 ⇒ 00:43:09.780 Uttam Kumaran: And then for insomnia, so kind of, like, we’re making an adjustment now, to add… Demolade…
430 00:43:12.490 ⇒ 00:43:15.280 Uttam Kumaran: Data engineer…
431 00:43:30.230 ⇒ 00:43:37.590 Uttam Kumaran: And then, I guess, Amber, do you know, like, how many hours we have to work with on Insomnia right now?
432 00:43:38.350 ⇒ 00:43:42.500 Amber Lin: Let me pull it up… on Insomnia…
433 00:43:42.760 ⇒ 00:43:48.880 Amber Lin: We should spend 16 hours if we want to hit 150 billable.
434 00:43:49.500 ⇒ 00:43:51.880 Uttam Kumaran: Per week. Okay.
435 00:43:52.060 ⇒ 00:43:52.840 Amber Lin: Yeah.
436 00:43:55.480 ⇒ 00:43:58.940 Amber Lin: This is where I just need… Because insomnia’s fixed now, yeah.
437 00:43:58.940 ⇒ 00:43:59.720 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
438 00:44:02.160 ⇒ 00:44:07.149 Uttam Kumaran: So, we don’t have… so Henry is not on this one, so I’m just gonna remove this allocation.
439 00:44:08.010 ⇒ 00:44:09.319 Uttam Kumaran: And then…
440 00:44:10.630 ⇒ 00:44:13.970 Amber Lin: Per month, that will be total 67.
441 00:44:16.320 ⇒ 00:44:18.769 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so what are we at now?
442 00:44:20.220 ⇒ 00:44:22.349 Uttam Kumaran: How do I see,
443 00:44:26.660 ⇒ 00:44:29.490 Uttam Kumaran: Can I see the actual things here?
444 00:44:38.930 ⇒ 00:44:43.000 Uttam Kumaran: So Robert’s at 40, I’m at 20 hours a month.
445 00:44:45.740 ⇒ 00:44:53.160 Uttam Kumaran: Mustafa… I mean, Mustafa has been doing work, right? Do you know, like, what his actuals have been?
446 00:44:53.160 ⇒ 00:45:01.569 Amber Lin: Last week, it says here, is, six and a half hours, approximately. Last week, you spent 13 hours total.
447 00:45:01.690 ⇒ 00:45:02.970 Amber Lin: Okay.
448 00:45:03.780 ⇒ 00:45:05.339 Uttam Kumaran: And do you know what he did the week before?
449 00:45:05.460 ⇒ 00:45:08.260 Amber Lin: The week before is 10 hours.
450 00:45:08.400 ⇒ 00:45:10.559 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so… And then the week before is 2.
451 00:45:10.560 ⇒ 00:45:14.780 Amber Lin: So… I would say probably, like, around 6 or 8 total.
452 00:45:14.980 ⇒ 00:45:16.690 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so let’s do 8.
453 00:45:21.440 ⇒ 00:45:27.450 Uttam Kumaran: And then, ideally, that time transitions to… Demolade…
454 00:45:28.150 ⇒ 00:45:33.940 Uttam Kumaran: And then, Robert is currently at, like, 40… a month, and I’m…
455 00:45:34.830 ⇒ 00:45:38.749 Uttam Kumaran: Definitely around, like, yeah, 5 or less.
456 00:45:39.250 ⇒ 00:45:44.229 Uttam Kumaran: So right now, and then looking at this… so, and can you check Casey, how much she spent last week?
457 00:45:44.780 ⇒ 00:45:45.630 Amber Lin: Cheaps.
458 00:45:45.750 ⇒ 00:45:56.220 Amber Lin: Casey, last week, the last week was at 4, the week before it was at 5, the week before that it was 2, so I’d say 5 hours, approximately.
459 00:45:56.530 ⇒ 00:46:00.460 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool. So, I think this allocation looks… Fair?
460 00:46:00.790 ⇒ 00:46:04.269 Uttam Kumaran: I think we’ll go into the end of the month and then kind of see, like, where we’re at.
461 00:46:05.200 ⇒ 00:46:06.529 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
462 00:46:07.350 ⇒ 00:46:11.600 Uttam Kumaran: Remo… I feel like this maybe was…
463 00:46:12.910 ⇒ 00:46:15.930 Uttam Kumaran: 5 hours a week. This maybe was high, right?
464 00:46:20.430 ⇒ 00:46:23.370 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I feel like you ended up… it wasn’t… it was more of, like, surf’s time.
465 00:46:23.370 ⇒ 00:46:32.899 Amber Lin: Yeah. My time should be less, it’s just the REMA meeting went long. I would say, like, 2 or 3 hours per week for me.
466 00:46:33.430 ⇒ 00:46:35.680 Amber Lin: 3… Okay.
467 00:46:36.140 ⇒ 00:46:36.720 Uttam Kumaran: Right.
468 00:46:39.860 ⇒ 00:46:51.870 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, and then, one thing, Rico, can you put me as, like, sort of, like, at least,
469 00:46:52.090 ⇒ 00:46:54.840 Uttam Kumaran: 3-hour… for PM.
470 00:46:55.470 ⇒ 00:47:00.799 Uttam Kumaran: First off, and then I’ll start tracking my time this week.
471 00:47:02.020 ⇒ 00:47:05.809 Uttam Kumaran: And then for Ellie… okay, that’s that.
472 00:47:06.510 ⇒ 00:47:10.320 Uttam Kumaran: And then we need, henry here.
473 00:47:17.150 ⇒ 00:47:19.639 Uttam Kumaran: Henry, you started doing README stuff last week?
474 00:47:20.070 ⇒ 00:47:24.089 Henry Zhao: 2 weeks ago, I think, technically, but there’s, like, pretty much no hours 2 weeks ago.
475 00:47:24.760 ⇒ 00:47:25.400 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
476 00:47:27.810 ⇒ 00:47:31.039 Uttam Kumaran: Roughly, like, 8 hours a week, I don’t know, deal with the…
477 00:47:31.560 ⇒ 00:47:33.249 Henry Zhao: Yeah, I think we were saying 10.
478 00:47:33.580 ⇒ 00:47:34.190 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
479 00:47:34.650 ⇒ 00:47:36.009 Henry Zhao: It’s the end state, yeah.
480 00:47:52.970 ⇒ 00:47:53.570 Uttam Kumaran: Great.
481 00:47:54.170 ⇒ 00:47:57.160 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so it looks like we’re pretty good here.
482 00:47:57.290 ⇒ 00:48:08.799 Uttam Kumaran: So yeah, I think the last, piece I had was, Robert, do we want to discuss, like, how anything, or we can have a brief discussion, like, how more people can get involved in, like, sales, or…
483 00:48:09.120 ⇒ 00:48:10.300 Uttam Kumaran: marketing side.
484 00:48:10.630 ⇒ 00:48:15.630 Uttam Kumaran: From this crew, like… I don’t know, we don’t have anything prepared, but we can even just, like…
485 00:48:16.000 ⇒ 00:48:24.299 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think, like, really just sourcing more case studies from the team, like.
486 00:48:24.850 ⇒ 00:48:33.840 Robert Tseng: Right now, like, every case study has come out of your… my head, pretty much, so… Yeah. But, you know, all of you guys are able to do the work.
487 00:48:34.010 ⇒ 00:48:38.780 Robert Tseng: Or have done the work, and, like, probably know how to communicate about it.
488 00:48:39.790 ⇒ 00:48:44.729 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think that’s a good way just to kind of, like, get… kind of go through the…
489 00:48:45.310 ⇒ 00:48:51.060 Robert Tseng: Exercise of, like, Just trying to talk about…
490 00:48:51.550 ⇒ 00:49:01.510 Robert Tseng: why you think the work that you’ve been doing is valuable to our clients, and then I know we do our monthly, kind of, services
491 00:49:01.960 ⇒ 00:49:05.160 Robert Tseng: brain trust call, but I think,
492 00:49:06.290 ⇒ 00:49:19.729 Robert Tseng: Yeah, sometimes rather than just, like, trying to launch new services and whatever, like, it’s better to start from looking at the continuity of, like, what has… what have we… what have we been consistently nailing, and, like, why has that been helpful?
493 00:49:20.270 ⇒ 00:49:23.100 Robert Tseng: You know, for… for our… for our clients.
494 00:49:25.480 ⇒ 00:49:28.440 Uttam Kumaran: So, I guess, like, maybe a question for everybody on the call, like.
495 00:49:28.560 ⇒ 00:49:34.650 Uttam Kumaran: I think everybody here so far has been involved in a case study. Like, what do you think is a good, like.
496 00:49:35.160 ⇒ 00:49:37.689 Uttam Kumaran: What has been helpful? Like, what was difficult?
497 00:49:37.810 ⇒ 00:49:43.249 Uttam Kumaran: I have some ideas on how I can facilitate more of that, but kind of, like, open discussion for everybody.
498 00:49:46.710 ⇒ 00:49:49.169 Uttam Kumaran: Like, what has everybody thought about the process?
499 00:49:50.240 ⇒ 00:49:52.050 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
500 00:49:58.890 ⇒ 00:50:05.180 Uttam Kumaran: My rough, like, if we were to talk about, like, OKRs, right, my rough thing is, like, we want to try to get two case studies out.
501 00:50:05.640 ⇒ 00:50:06.600 Uttam Kumaran: per week.
502 00:50:07.040 ⇒ 00:50:10.020 Uttam Kumaran: And so…
503 00:50:10.490 ⇒ 00:50:18.210 Uttam Kumaran: for me, the biggest blocker to that is just connecting you guys with Hannah, basically. So do you think, like,
504 00:50:19.080 ⇒ 00:50:24.820 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like, all of those things are important. I guess, like, how can I best facilitate that?
505 00:50:24.960 ⇒ 00:50:28.269 Uttam Kumaran: like, you guys have seen how we’ve paired y’all with Hannah before.
506 00:50:28.650 ⇒ 00:50:30.889 Uttam Kumaran: Should we just keep doing that? Should we, like…
507 00:50:32.520 ⇒ 00:50:35.670 Uttam Kumaran: Like, do, like, a one-hour session each week.
508 00:50:36.050 ⇒ 00:50:39.419 Uttam Kumaran: On just case studies, and so we can all, like, write together.
509 00:50:39.960 ⇒ 00:50:49.369 Uttam Kumaran: Part of this is just, like, we have a… we have a pretty concise, like, interview process to gather details for case studies now, so if you go into,
510 00:50:51.170 ⇒ 00:50:54.209 Uttam Kumaran: search, at some point if this loads, there’s, like, a way to…
511 00:50:55.080 ⇒ 00:50:59.760 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, there’s a way to search for, like, case study,
512 00:51:01.590 ⇒ 00:51:03.950 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, there’s an SOP around the…
513 00:51:06.180 ⇒ 00:51:08.760 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, there’s something around the case study interview.
514 00:51:10.790 ⇒ 00:51:17.060 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. So this is, like, what Hannah would ask you. She’s clearly going through this now with Mustafa.
515 00:51:17.260 ⇒ 00:51:20.209 Uttam Kumaran: So, what do you guys think is best, like…
516 00:51:20.550 ⇒ 00:51:23.470 Uttam Kumaran: I know this can be annoying to do, like…
517 00:51:25.600 ⇒ 00:51:29.229 Uttam Kumaran: Alone, or maybe we just all, like, forget about it, like…
518 00:51:29.740 ⇒ 00:51:37.399 Uttam Kumaran: we could… we could take time in this delivery meeting to do… like, I don’t know, what do you guys think is best? Like, I want to make sure I equip them with… with these, like.
519 00:51:37.650 ⇒ 00:51:41.100 Uttam Kumaran: Assets… .
520 00:51:42.620 ⇒ 00:51:43.530 Robert Tseng: Yeah, the way I think about it.
521 00:51:43.530 ⇒ 00:51:44.239 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
522 00:51:44.240 ⇒ 00:51:54.190 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, the go-to-market team, they focus on getting… bringing in, like, leads top of… top of funnel. Like, in sales process, we talk about top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel.
523 00:51:54.260 ⇒ 00:52:11.679 Robert Tseng: And so I think the go-to-market team, they don’t have the technical expertise this group does, and so all they can really do is kind of get the ICP or kind of criteria from us, and help us get leads that meet kind of the surface-level criteria, so that we can have these initial conversations.
524 00:52:11.770 ⇒ 00:52:20.179 Robert Tseng: Then, like, that middle of the funnel journey, that’s where most of the leads get stuck, right? And so, you know, one of the goals that we have for the go-to-market team is that
525 00:52:20.180 ⇒ 00:52:33.490 Robert Tseng: every lead needs to come into… needs to receive 3 pieces of con… 3 different pieces of content from Brainforge, whether it’s our website, plus a case study, plus, maybe, like, a Loom recording, a walkthrough, or a demo.
526 00:52:33.490 ⇒ 00:52:50.449 Robert Tseng: I know Sam has recorded a couple of these. I know De Milade has recorded some of these that we’ve used before, so, like, you know, these are all the types of assets that you contribute to. The goal isn’t just to, like, build up, like, a giant, like, content database that we don’t ever use. Like, I want to be really tactical about this, and so…
527 00:52:50.450 ⇒ 00:53:05.639 Robert Tseng: obviously, like, Utom and I will give signals about, hey, we’re working on this deal with, like, Port of Authority right now, like, it’s gonna be a long RFP process, we need a MuleSoft expert, we need people who have really worked with these, like, ERPs, and sometimes there will be, like, some
528 00:53:05.670 ⇒ 00:53:20.150 Robert Tseng: that urgency for very specific types of tech and things to talk about. But other times, I think it’s really just, like, taking the work that we’re already doing and being able to, like, extract some… like, make it more generalizable.
529 00:53:20.150 ⇒ 00:53:34.850 Robert Tseng: So, and you may not see it, but, like, the work that we’ve done on churn clients as well, even, like, Javi, like, the work that we did on Javi before, I’m reusing to pitch another client right now. So, I think, like, this all kind of comes back around in some way.
530 00:53:34.970 ⇒ 00:53:37.630 Robert Tseng: And yeah, I think…
531 00:53:38.840 ⇒ 00:53:46.490 Robert Tseng: you know, that’s the way that I kind of see it, that some… there will be stuff that we can use immediately, and other stuff that we’ll use for later.
532 00:53:46.620 ⇒ 00:53:51.670 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I guess that’s all I wanted to say about that.
533 00:53:51.920 ⇒ 00:54:03.710 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so maybe in this meeting, like, another idea is, like, this is… so, for me, my mind is like, cool, like, I’ll go interview people, and then I’m like, I forgot, I don’t have any time. So I think my more important thing is maybe…
534 00:54:03.890 ⇒ 00:54:05.829 Uttam Kumaran: We carve out 5 minutes in this…
535 00:54:06.220 ⇒ 00:54:09.170 Uttam Kumaran: To just list out, like, what are some…
536 00:54:09.350 ⇒ 00:54:11.490 Uttam Kumaran: Assets we should try to get out this week.
537 00:54:11.660 ⇒ 00:54:18.230 Uttam Kumaran: That way, and who can own it? And then I can… I’m… we have a marketing meeting later, I’ll just hand that to…
538 00:54:19.250 ⇒ 00:54:23.469 Uttam Kumaran: The go-to-market team to say, go interview these people for these assets.
539 00:54:24.230 ⇒ 00:54:34.960 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think the wins that come out of, like, our deck reviews at this point is a good starting point. Those are usually, you know, things that I feel like a lot of that we could end up turning into content.
540 00:54:36.840 ⇒ 00:54:42.060 Uttam Kumaran: So, maybe let’s try that exercise right now, like, does anyone have, like, wins?
541 00:54:42.660 ⇒ 00:54:47.960 Uttam Kumaran: Could be from the last month or two months on any clients that we want to prioritize for…
542 00:54:49.110 ⇒ 00:54:52.739 Uttam Kumaran: assets. You don’t have to think about what type of asset
543 00:54:53.080 ⇒ 00:54:58.060 Uttam Kumaran: But are there wins or projects that we have yet to, like, stare outward that we…
544 00:54:58.370 ⇒ 00:55:00.440 Uttam Kumaran: Anybody is interested in, in, like.
545 00:55:01.010 ⇒ 00:55:04.599 Uttam Kumaran: just noting down, and then I can pass a couple of these to them to prioritize.
546 00:55:04.600 ⇒ 00:55:06.539 Henry Zhao: Yeah, probably the catalyst stuff for Eden.
547 00:55:07.400 ⇒ 00:55:08.030 Uttam Kumaran: Great.
548 00:55:08.030 ⇒ 00:55:10.580 Henry Zhao: But we’ll need to think through, like, how we make that relevant to them.
549 00:55:10.800 ⇒ 00:55:12.210 Henry Zhao: General clients.
550 00:55:12.210 ⇒ 00:55:12.820 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
551 00:55:14.290 ⇒ 00:55:20.700 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so let’s just take that example. So how I would make it relevant to a bigger client, you know, this is, we helped
552 00:55:20.880 ⇒ 00:55:31.110 Robert Tseng: a… we helped, like, a 9-figure… what, 8-figure cli… whatever. We helped, like, a 8-figure, like, e-com client,
553 00:55:32.050 ⇒ 00:55:39.750 Robert Tseng: Save, millions of dollars on their affiliate
554 00:55:41.950 ⇒ 00:55:52.049 Robert Tseng: Yeah, on their affiliate partnerships with better data. Like, I don’t know, like, there’s, like, some cost-saving or some revenue-driving component, and, like, and then…
555 00:55:52.210 ⇒ 00:55:56.659 Robert Tseng: Yeah, we can kind of list through some of the things that we solved for then.
556 00:55:56.940 ⇒ 00:55:59.500 Henry Zhao: Yeah, because these numbers will be impressive in terms of, like, the impact.
557 00:55:59.660 ⇒ 00:56:00.580 Robert Tseng: Yeah, totally.
558 00:56:01.680 ⇒ 00:56:08.960 Henry Zhao: Yeah, just gotta figure out how the… yeah. We can figure that out together with, like, Hannah or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Something through this.
559 00:56:08.960 ⇒ 00:56:15.590 Uttam Kumaran: Well, she’ll… when she goes through that interview with you, the questions are so bare bones that it’ll… it forces you to, like.
560 00:56:15.980 ⇒ 00:56:33.239 Uttam Kumaran: explain it, also because Hannah has no clue. Like, so it’s actually really great, because she doesn’t know where we’re coming from, and so, like, if me and you were talking, we… I would skip, like, 10 steps. It’s actually really great, because she will be like, what is this, even? And it forces you to explain in English. And then we run all that through AI, so as long as you say it.
561 00:56:33.240 ⇒ 00:56:33.870 Henry Zhao: Right.
562 00:56:33.870 ⇒ 00:56:34.899 Uttam Kumaran: It’s, like, perfect.
563 00:56:35.280 ⇒ 00:56:35.880 Henry Zhao: Yeah.
564 00:56:36.170 ⇒ 00:56:41.330 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so Catalyst work is one thing, I don’t know, Demolade, Sam… What else?
565 00:56:44.620 ⇒ 00:56:51.360 Demilade Agboola: So I don’t necessarily have the numbers yet, but we could always look at the revenue thing we’re doing for urban stems.
566 00:56:51.510 ⇒ 00:56:58.560 Demilade Agboola: because, like, they never had a reliable source of revenue, like, prior to this, and we’re doing the QA today with Perry.
567 00:56:59.160 ⇒ 00:57:01.889 Demilade Agboola: But, like, us being able to ingest.
568 00:57:02.090 ⇒ 00:57:04.859 Demilade Agboola: Subscriptions, and bring visibility into that.
569 00:57:05.050 ⇒ 00:57:09.299 Demilade Agboola: As well as give them reliable revenue model is a huge win.
570 00:57:14.490 ⇒ 00:57:19.319 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, so that just provides visibility into, like, the actual numbers they’re doing.
571 00:57:19.800 ⇒ 00:57:22.919 Demilade Agboola: Remove some of the fluff, especially as it relates to…
572 00:57:23.680 ⇒ 00:57:30.869 Demilade Agboola: Like, things like cancellations, forced upgrades, free deliveries, things like that. Because, you know, they deal with very…
573 00:57:31.850 ⇒ 00:57:34.850 Demilade Agboola: Dynamic business environment, basically.
574 00:57:36.690 ⇒ 00:57:37.620 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, great.
575 00:57:37.810 ⇒ 00:57:38.890 Uttam Kumaran: I love that.
576 00:57:47.000 ⇒ 00:57:54.589 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I don’t know if we have… have we done anything interlude-wise? Like this, the time savings and the change? Obviously, there’s not a ton of…
577 00:57:54.590 ⇒ 00:57:55.100 Uttam Kumaran: No, but…
578 00:57:55.100 ⇒ 00:57:55.430 Samuel Roberts: numbers.
579 00:57:55.430 ⇒ 00:57:57.199 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe, like, we could do the,
580 00:57:58.460 ⇒ 00:58:00.460 Uttam Kumaran: I think we could do one on Interlude.
581 00:58:00.460 ⇒ 00:58:03.939 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, there could be something about just, like, taking that workflow and…
582 00:58:04.930 ⇒ 00:58:12.720 Samuel Roberts: you know, streamlining it, making it, rather than a long back and… I don’t know, I’m not really sure where that can go, because I don’t really have numbers on
583 00:58:12.920 ⇒ 00:58:17.560 Samuel Roberts: Time savings or anything like that, so… There’s something.
584 00:58:17.790 ⇒ 00:58:20.850 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I’m trying to think if there’s anything else internally that we’ve done.
585 00:58:21.160 ⇒ 00:58:23.450 Samuel Roberts: Internal.
586 00:58:26.830 ⇒ 00:58:32.129 Uttam Kumaran: like… I don’t know, do we have any case studies on N8N work?
587 00:58:36.150 ⇒ 00:58:40.589 Uttam Kumaran: Like, or is there one NIDN workflow that’s particularly challenging that we can highlight?
588 00:58:42.340 ⇒ 00:58:50.299 Samuel Roberts: I mean, the cleanup stuff is big and complicated, it’s pretty… but we’re kind of away from that, so I don’t know how much we want to lean on any end there, but.
589 00:58:50.300 ⇒ 00:58:53.549 Uttam Kumaran: No, but I would say it’s more… it just demonstrates our…
590 00:58:53.550 ⇒ 00:58:57.210 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of moving parts there.
591 00:59:00.110 ⇒ 00:59:03.000 Uttam Kumaran: And this one, I would want to be kind of technical about N8N.
592 00:59:03.200 ⇒ 00:59:12.180 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I mean, we could do that. We could get into some of the nitty-gritty there about, like, certain things we use and ways we thought about doing things.
593 00:59:14.230 ⇒ 00:59:18.610 Samuel Roberts: I mean, even the… the Interlude stuff is all in it in as well, so, like, that could be…
594 00:59:19.120 ⇒ 00:59:20.740 Samuel Roberts: Like, a multi-agent.
595 00:59:20.980 ⇒ 00:59:22.269 Samuel Roberts: kind of flow.
596 00:59:25.710 ⇒ 00:59:28.469 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, this is something where, like.
597 00:59:29.850 ⇒ 00:59:34.780 Uttam Kumaran: I guess, yeah, white paper, it’s… this is more like… this isn’t, like, a case study, necessarily, like.
598 00:59:34.780 ⇒ 00:59:35.240 Samuel Roberts: Sure.
599 00:59:35.240 ⇒ 00:59:40.219 Uttam Kumaran: Robert, what’s something else, like, this is more of, like, a very, kind of, like, more technical, like, deep dive.
600 00:59:40.470 ⇒ 00:59:43.230 Uttam Kumaran: Can I just… should we just consider this, like, a technical blog?
601 00:59:43.550 ⇒ 00:59:44.110 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe…
602 00:59:44.110 ⇒ 00:59:45.199 Samuel Roberts: Something like that, you know?
603 00:59:45.950 ⇒ 00:59:48.269 Robert Tseng: Yeah, technical blog or white paper or something.
604 00:59:48.980 ⇒ 00:59:50.069 Samuel Roberts: It’s not a bad idea.
605 00:59:51.800 ⇒ 00:59:52.470 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
606 00:59:53.900 ⇒ 00:59:56.639 Robert Tseng: Okay, sorry, I gotta change my room. I’m getting kicked.
607 00:59:56.940 ⇒ 00:59:57.929 Uttam Kumaran: No, you’re good, you’re good.
608 00:59:58.100 ⇒ 01:00:04.670 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so I think these are great. I think every week, let’s plan on just, like, this crew on Monday can agree.
609 01:00:04.820 ⇒ 01:00:06.640 Uttam Kumaran: On a couple that we want to highlight.
610 01:00:06.790 ⇒ 01:00:13.520 Uttam Kumaran: we’re… if we’re able to get this, then it’ll be… it should be 4 or 5 this week. Hannah is… is crushed these.
611 01:00:13.680 ⇒ 01:00:17.580 Uttam Kumaran: So, I feel like these are pretty good, and then we can kind of figure out
612 01:00:17.940 ⇒ 01:00:22.049 Uttam Kumaran: a process. Dude, another thing, guys, we could do is about how we choose tools.
613 01:00:22.480 ⇒ 01:00:23.070 Uttam Kumaran: like…
614 01:00:23.590 ⇒ 01:00:30.599 Uttam Kumaran: Choose one vendor, another… You know, things like that, so…
615 01:00:30.770 ⇒ 01:00:37.159 Uttam Kumaran: I even have some more ideas. I think, certainly, I want to do, like, Choosing Mastra would be great.
616 01:00:37.830 ⇒ 01:00:47.869 Uttam Kumaran: Choosing Metaplane… We can talk through… Doing, like, magic patterns…
617 01:00:48.310 ⇒ 01:00:48.990 Samuel Roberts: Hmm.
618 01:00:51.510 ⇒ 01:00:56.710 Uttam Kumaran: like, the agent.md stuff… these are all great for just blogs, right? So…
619 01:00:56.710 ⇒ 01:00:57.250 Samuel Roberts: True.
620 01:00:57.480 ⇒ 01:01:04.030 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Alright, cool, so I’m gonna pass this stuff to marketing team, and then they’ll reach out, but yeah, I think this was good.
621 01:01:04.300 ⇒ 01:01:13.100 Uttam Kumaran: And then we’ll keep… I think every week, let’s spend… try to spend 5-10 minutes. Me and Robert can share what’s going on on the commercial side, and see how we can loop… loop everybody in more.
622 01:01:15.490 ⇒ 01:01:23.589 Uttam Kumaran: Great. Okay. Alright, and next week we should have… dashboard should be in a much better place, and then we’ll give everyone access to stuff, too, so you guys can play around if you want to.
623 01:01:25.590 ⇒ 01:01:28.290 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Alright. Thank you, guys.
624 01:01:28.790 ⇒ 01:01:29.340 Samuel Roberts: Bye.
625 01:01:29.400 ⇒ 01:01:30.470 Uttam Kumaran: Talk to you soon. Bye, everyone.
626 01:01:31.020 ⇒ 01:01:31.610 Uttam Kumaran: Bye.
627 01:01:32.050 ⇒ 01:01:32.750 Amber Lin: Bye.