Meeting Title: CPG Industry Analysis and Presentation Prep Date: 2025-10-30 Meeting participants: Amber Lin, Robert Tseng
WEBVTT
1 00:05:43.550 ⇒ 00:05:44.780 Robert Tseng: Hello.
2 00:05:45.820 ⇒ 00:05:46.920 Amber Lin: Hi!
3 00:05:47.640 ⇒ 00:05:48.890 Amber Lin: How are you?
4 00:05:49.760 ⇒ 00:05:54.450 Robert Tseng: Sorry I’m late. I actually took, like, a 10-minute nap.
5 00:05:54.730 ⇒ 00:05:55.330 Robert Tseng: I felt like.
6 00:05:55.330 ⇒ 00:06:00.219 Amber Lin: I wish that could have been longer. If you let me know, I could have totally moved it.
7 00:06:00.220 ⇒ 00:06:04.380 Robert Tseng: No, no, it’s okay, I wasn’t trying to sleep in the middle of the day.
8 00:06:04.380 ⇒ 00:06:06.979 Amber Lin: I would have loved to sleep, though.
9 00:06:07.320 ⇒ 00:06:08.220 Amber Lin: Boy.
10 00:06:08.580 ⇒ 00:06:14.320 Robert Tseng: Oh, yeah, I was just like… I came out on my last call, and I was… my head felt kind of dizzy, so…
11 00:06:14.940 ⇒ 00:06:16.029 Robert Tseng: I feel better now.
12 00:06:16.320 ⇒ 00:06:17.410 Amber Lin: Yeah, that’s awesome.
13 00:06:17.410 ⇒ 00:06:17.960 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
14 00:06:18.640 ⇒ 00:06:19.470 Amber Lin: Boom.
15 00:06:19.780 ⇒ 00:06:35.209 Amber Lin: we talked earlier today, the analysis part was really helpful, I wrote down some notes, but today, I remember last time we talked about CPG companies and then how to do that, and I spent the week and I did some research.
16 00:06:35.410 ⇒ 00:06:43.230 Amber Lin: One on the uniqueness of the industry, and then the two on… more on the modeling side of what type of
17 00:06:43.390 ⇒ 00:06:58.720 Amber Lin: So what does the DE work look like, meaning, like, what type of tech stacks and types of data we would be ingesting? And then the modeling of the typical models and how that looks like, and also the analysis.
18 00:06:58.820 ⇒ 00:07:11.900 Amber Lin: of what type of questions people will be asking, and usually what will go wrong. And so I’m also doing a lab share tomorrow, I was like, I might as well just hopefully help
19 00:07:12.040 ⇒ 00:07:25.060 Amber Lin: other people in the company understand, and I think the audience is mostly going to be more junior folks like me, because I think people like Henry, who has worked in this industry, know what it’s about.
20 00:07:25.260 ⇒ 00:07:33.680 Amber Lin: but I kind of want to see from… hear from you of… One, what…
21 00:07:34.170 ⇒ 00:07:39.190 Amber Lin: what more should I do on the, like, the CBG industry? Because
22 00:07:39.340 ⇒ 00:07:52.910 Amber Lin: I know facts now, but I don’t feel like they’ve translated into something meaningful yet. And also, just some tips of tomorrow, if I present this, like, what would make it more interesting to the average audience?
23 00:07:53.590 ⇒ 00:07:58.390 Robert Tseng: Sure, I guess, what are you gonna present tomorrow? Do you want to… do you wanna show me what you’ve got?
24 00:07:58.390 ⇒ 00:08:03.680 Amber Lin: I was making a visual
25 00:08:03.870 ⇒ 00:08:10.630 Amber Lin: That’s my research. I’m just thinking of… like, overall.
26 00:08:10.940 ⇒ 00:08:15.179 Amber Lin: Of helping them understand, say, how things
27 00:08:15.420 ⇒ 00:08:26.330 Amber Lin: like, how things work together. I’m thinking of my average audience, like, Hannah, or say, or people who I’ve not thought about
28 00:08:26.640 ⇒ 00:08:31.660 Amber Lin: This, it feels pretty basic.
29 00:08:32.100 ⇒ 00:08:41.179 Amber Lin: I think to… to you, because this is the thing you work with, and probably also very basic to Sitaum laude, because he works with all these models.
30 00:08:41.409 ⇒ 00:08:52.240 Amber Lin: I was thinking, I want to break this down of, like, this very, very fun, basic revenue equation, or profitability equation, and
31 00:08:52.340 ⇒ 00:08:59.570 Amber Lin: Put them into each of these parts, like, okay, if we… Say…
32 00:08:59.700 ⇒ 00:09:09.670 Amber Lin: what are they trying to do when they want to optimize campaigns, right? It’s also maybe because they care about how much money they earn. It’s like, okay.
33 00:09:10.200 ⇒ 00:09:23.819 Amber Lin: if we go with all these different channels, what’s gonna happen? Or if we select this product versus that product, what’s going to happen? Or, say, if we send this campaign versus that campaign.
34 00:09:24.410 ⇒ 00:09:31.449 Amber Lin: Is it going to give us more money, more sales, but is it going to cost more? I think…
35 00:09:31.590 ⇒ 00:09:33.970 Amber Lin: Like, do you think this type of…
36 00:09:34.700 ⇒ 00:09:40.960 Amber Lin: Approach would be helpful to help people in their company understand What’s going on?
37 00:09:42.520 ⇒ 00:09:47.830 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, I think this, this org, this, this visual makes sense,
38 00:09:48.050 ⇒ 00:09:54.330 Robert Tseng: I was looking at… have you… have you, like, seen anything around systems design before?
39 00:09:54.900 ⇒ 00:09:57.979 Amber Lin: I have… I have not. I’ve wanted to.
40 00:09:59.550 ⇒ 00:10:06.349 Robert Tseng: There’s a guy whose book is pretty good. I was trying… I think USC published it for free, so I’m trying to, like…
41 00:10:07.090 ⇒ 00:10:09.499 Robert Tseng: Gotta dig up the link and send it to you.
42 00:10:14.670 ⇒ 00:10:17.119 Robert Tseng: This might be helpful.
43 00:10:18.840 ⇒ 00:10:19.810 Robert Tseng: Excuse me.
44 00:10:22.380 ⇒ 00:10:32.000 Amber Lin: I think it’s really funny, like, people show, oh, this is a game I’m doing, and this is the stuff I’m doing, and I’m… I’m… like, this is what I do for fun, so it’s…
45 00:10:34.740 ⇒ 00:10:39.140 Robert Tseng: Alright, so… It’s…
46 00:10:52.210 ⇒ 00:10:56.620 Robert Tseng: So, I just sent you…
47 00:10:59.680 ⇒ 00:11:10.229 Robert Tseng: this resource… And… Oh, sweet. Yeah, this is, like, his actual book.
48 00:11:11.380 ⇒ 00:11:12.230 Amber Lin: Oh.
49 00:11:13.410 ⇒ 00:11:14.640 Robert Tseng: Okay, great.
50 00:11:15.700 ⇒ 00:11:17.709 Robert Tseng: Yeah, you can actually get his book.
51 00:11:19.550 ⇒ 00:11:24.320 Robert Tseng: I’m trying to see if… if he has a CPG section.
52 00:11:25.740 ⇒ 00:11:26.379 Amber Lin: Oh, so…
53 00:11:26.380 ⇒ 00:11:26.829 Robert Tseng: You might not be.
54 00:11:26.830 ⇒ 00:11:30.350 Amber Lin: Design as in technical system design.
55 00:11:30.560 ⇒ 00:11:31.610 Robert Tseng: Yeah…
56 00:11:31.610 ⇒ 00:11:37.740 Amber Lin: Oh… But that also depends on, like, what they… what…
57 00:11:37.740 ⇒ 00:11:40.540 Robert Tseng: The company system is like, right?
58 00:11:40.750 ⇒ 00:11:41.290 Amber Lin: That’s part of it.
59 00:11:41.290 ⇒ 00:11:41.880 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
60 00:11:42.410 ⇒ 00:11:45.039 Amber Lin: A lot of this seems very technical.
61 00:11:46.010 ⇒ 00:11:48.120 Robert Tseng: Yeah, this might be too technical.
62 00:11:50.750 ⇒ 00:12:01.760 Robert Tseng: But… I think… It’s a good way to visualize, like, how data moves around, pretty much, still. So…
63 00:12:02.840 ⇒ 00:12:09.709 Robert Tseng: I guess… Yeah, this stuff might be a little bit too technical. It’s more like for an architect.
64 00:12:11.030 ⇒ 00:12:23.809 Robert Tseng: I don’t know, I feel like his LinkedIn posts are pretty helpful, like, he’s broken down a lot of different businesses, and his book is maybe a little less so. I think he did it for, like, it’s like an interview prep book. It’s probably more for an engineer audience.
65 00:12:24.080 ⇒ 00:12:24.800 Amber Lin: I see.
66 00:12:24.800 ⇒ 00:12:27.219 Robert Tseng: But, but anyway, I think,
67 00:12:28.020 ⇒ 00:12:31.819 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think if you want to talk through,
68 00:12:32.220 ⇒ 00:12:40.020 Robert Tseng: your… kind of, like, how you… the inputs and outputs of a business… of a CPG business, I think that’s… that’s great. I think,
69 00:12:40.520 ⇒ 00:12:46.440 Robert Tseng: they’re these, like… I like doing these, like, company teardowns, like, I… I,
70 00:12:48.600 ⇒ 00:13:05.949 Robert Tseng: it’s kind of… if you’ve seen our event data design exercise, that’s basically what I do to businesses, but I just do it from a product analytics perspective on, like, what are the workflows within a product and the events that we need to track. So, I think this is a… I think it’s a helpful exercise.
71 00:13:08.000 ⇒ 00:13:19.519 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I guess if you’re trying to just, like, break down, like, what all the different equations, like, kind of the profit equation, I mean, I think you’re gonna end up with something pretty simplistic that’s just kind of, like.
72 00:13:19.520 ⇒ 00:13:37.729 Amber Lin: Yes, I think, especially for tomorrow, I just want to keep it very high level. It’s mostly, like, money in, money out level of granularity, but I also wanted to do for myself, like, the data diagram. I don’t know if I will go into a different
73 00:13:37.880 ⇒ 00:13:51.650 Amber Lin: sources, but I might list out, like, oh, these are the things that happened here and happened there. I just don’t know, like, do you think this is helpful for the other people at the company? It is helpful for me, but…
74 00:13:51.860 ⇒ 00:13:58.719 Amber Lin: Like, how does this land as actual benefits for us, I just say, oh, this is… oh, this is how it is?
75 00:13:59.550 ⇒ 00:14:05.119 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean… I don’t know, to be honest, like, I feel like…
76 00:14:08.680 ⇒ 00:14:14.659 Robert Tseng: I want the rest of the team to up their business knowledge as well, but, like.
77 00:14:15.620 ⇒ 00:14:17.199 Robert Tseng: I don’t know, like, I just…
78 00:14:17.590 ⇒ 00:14:21.390 Robert Tseng: I feel like it’s help… I think it’s good that people…
79 00:14:21.840 ⇒ 00:14:28.959 Robert Tseng: I think we should have a natural curiosity for, like, the types of organizations that we’re working with, and then being able to, like.
80 00:14:29.420 ⇒ 00:14:44.829 Robert Tseng: teach broadly across to our… our team, like, who our clients are, what they’re doing, what stage they’re at, like, what we’re… what our goals are. Like, I… I think that’s… that’s a helpful exercise. So, if you want to be more specific to, like, a particular client that we’re working with.
81 00:14:44.940 ⇒ 00:14:55.300 Robert Tseng: whether it’s Insomnia, or Eden, or Urban STEM, since you kind of have your hands on all of them, I think that’d be a better, like, maybe more focused, like, kind of walkthrough for them.
82 00:14:55.300 ⇒ 00:14:55.700 Amber Lin: Let’s see.
83 00:14:55.700 ⇒ 00:15:02.559 Robert Tseng: Rather than you trying to, like, generalize, like, I don’t really think you need to do that, yeah.
84 00:15:02.560 ⇒ 00:15:04.539 Amber Lin: Yeah, well, that makes sense.
85 00:15:04.540 ⇒ 00:15:05.340 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
86 00:15:05.600 ⇒ 00:15:11.120 Amber Lin: Then… I guess, very similar question, specific to myself, of how does…
87 00:15:11.260 ⇒ 00:15:17.930 Amber Lin: what else do I need to do, to translate, like, this knowledge into something that…
88 00:15:18.410 ⇒ 00:15:28.390 Amber Lin: is helpful or is useful in, say, the business, or in our… in our business. Like, I… if I understand, what can I do?
89 00:15:30.070 ⇒ 00:15:36.930 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I guess, like, this is kind of where I, you know, something that you can kind of… a direction you can head in is, like.
90 00:15:38.410 ⇒ 00:15:49.749 Robert Tseng: I think about, like, VC analysts. They’re usually kind of, like, early career people as well. They’ve never been operators, and they’re trying to understand.
91 00:15:49.870 ⇒ 00:15:50.840 Amber Lin: Like…
92 00:15:50.840 ⇒ 00:16:02.850 Robert Tseng: certain sectors and evaluate, kind of, like, the opportunities there. So, I don’t know if you’ve read any, like, VC, like, market reports, but I think, I mean, obviously, they have access to
93 00:16:03.200 ⇒ 00:16:04.030 Robert Tseng: life.
94 00:16:04.300 ⇒ 00:16:09.159 Robert Tseng: market research data, but, I mean, I’m sure we could, like, kind of
95 00:16:09.620 ⇒ 00:16:13.720 Robert Tseng: Do some version of that ourselves, but you’re basically just trying to
96 00:16:13.890 ⇒ 00:16:24.239 Robert Tseng: you know, once… when you’re, you know, if you’re building out, like, a CPG landscape kind of thing, let me see if there’s, like, an example from a competitor, let’s see.
97 00:16:25.260 ⇒ 00:16:29.000 Robert Tseng: I have a couple that comes to the top of my mind.
98 00:16:29.560 ⇒ 00:16:34.909 Robert Tseng: Pitch data, aux, white papers…
99 00:16:34.910 ⇒ 00:16:44.880 Amber Lin: I’ve read a lot of the consulting reports, and I read a few when I was doing research, and usually it’s from the investment banks that have the actual industry reports.
100 00:16:45.370 ⇒ 00:16:46.020 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
101 00:16:46.020 ⇒ 00:16:46.940 Amber Lin: I’ve read a few.
102 00:16:47.680 ⇒ 00:16:52.859 Robert Tseng: Okay, so I mean, I think you understand, like, that forum, but I… I think…
103 00:16:53.060 ⇒ 00:17:02.370 Robert Tseng: I mean, the banks put out, like, their industry reports, but, like, the deal analysts at VC, like.
104 00:17:02.690 ⇒ 00:17:08.650 Robert Tseng: you know, their partner is basically saying, like, hey, I want to invest 20% of our funds in a.
105 00:17:09.220 ⇒ 00:17:12.310 Amber Lin: in the CPG… in the CPG sector.
106 00:17:12.310 ⇒ 00:17:29.889 Robert Tseng: Tell us, like, which vertical we should be looking at, and, like, you know, here’s the criteria. I want to write a check that’s, 10 million for a company at X stage, or whatever, right? And so, a deal analyst pretty much has to go and look through a lot of.
107 00:17:29.940 ⇒ 00:17:47.020 Robert Tseng: you know, they’re doing a lot of outreach, hold outreach through email and LinkedIn as well, trying to, like, talk to founders of these businesses. They’re reading the same reports that you’re reading as well. And then, you know, they’re hopefully having enough conversations with operators to, like, understand the different, like, how, like.
108 00:17:47.130 ⇒ 00:18:00.449 Robert Tseng: what are the differentiators between business, right? Like, I don’t think they necessarily will know how the business is run, but they’ll be able to be like, okay, what differentiates, like, healthcare from, like, cookies is, like.
109 00:18:00.620 ⇒ 00:18:03.959 Robert Tseng: Healthcare is a higher ticket item,
110 00:18:04.260 ⇒ 00:18:26.379 Robert Tseng: yeah, like, there’s 6-month… 6- to 12-month billing plans. Like, you kind of just follow the money, like, follow, like, where… how the customer life cycle is, and, yeah, kind of, like, what the… what the profile of the customer is like. Like, how frequently are they purchasing things? Kind of like… and you have access to all the data now, so you don’t really even need to do the market research.
111 00:18:26.380 ⇒ 00:18:26.770 Amber Lin: Sure.
112 00:18:26.770 ⇒ 00:18:31.489 Robert Tseng: like, through these reports, you could just… just look… study… study within our clients, kind of like…
113 00:18:31.490 ⇒ 00:18:36.529 Amber Lin: We have, like, a wide variety of CBG clients.
114 00:18:36.620 ⇒ 00:18:38.610 Robert Tseng: It’s very interesting.
115 00:18:39.890 ⇒ 00:18:54.579 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so, I mean, even within, like, just Urban Stems, Insomnia, and Eden, you already have, like, 3 different versions, right? You have something that’s, like, food and beverage, you have perishables, which is kind of, like.
116 00:18:54.580 ⇒ 00:19:00.500 Robert Tseng: urban stems, then you also have health product. So I think even just being able to, like, look at
117 00:19:01.250 ⇒ 00:19:05.860 Robert Tseng: Kind of the differences between the three, and develop a point of view on, like.
118 00:19:08.020 ⇒ 00:19:17.019 Robert Tseng: I think it’s helpful. You can understand the revenue profile of a customer, how long it takes for them to buy, to get their
119 00:19:17.260 ⇒ 00:19:21.570 Robert Tseng: To recoup the cost that it… to acquire that customer.
120 00:19:21.620 ⇒ 00:19:37.269 Robert Tseng: I mean, you can think of it, if you want to take a marketing perspective, you know, you’re trying to basically understand, like, how much money they have to spend in order to acquire customers there, like, what are their growth levers? And then on the product or revenue side, it’s kind of more, like.
121 00:19:37.440 ⇒ 00:19:46.759 Robert Tseng: how… how many products do they have, have they launched? Like, yeah, what’s, like, the velocity of, like, them launching products? And,
122 00:19:46.990 ⇒ 00:19:50.160 Robert Tseng: I… can…
123 00:19:50.510 ⇒ 00:19:58.999 Robert Tseng: like, yeah, I think doing these types of, like, kind of exercises, I think, helps you to understand the… understand the business.
124 00:19:59.400 ⇒ 00:20:01.230 Amber Lin: Hmm. Okay.
125 00:20:01.640 ⇒ 00:20:02.590 Amber Lin: And…
126 00:20:04.140 ⇒ 00:20:12.590 Amber Lin: Yeah, that’s… I think that’s what I felt like I hit a wall, was that I was at this very general understanding, and there’s really not more.
127 00:20:12.900 ⇒ 00:20:17.449 Amber Lin: if I stay within that general framework. So that was very helpful.
128 00:20:18.130 ⇒ 00:20:18.920 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
129 00:20:19.980 ⇒ 00:20:23.890 Robert Tseng: Let me see if I can get you something.
130 00:20:25.800 ⇒ 00:20:30.990 Amber Lin: And also, on these questions you propose, do the companies even know, like.
131 00:20:31.170 ⇒ 00:20:34.960 Amber Lin: Do all of our clients know about that?
132 00:20:36.330 ⇒ 00:20:49.240 Robert Tseng: The… not all of our stakeholders probably know these questions, but at the board level, that’s what they’re gonna look… that’s what they’re gonna… or the C-suite level, that’s what they… that’s what they care about. So, yeah.
133 00:20:52.780 ⇒ 00:21:03.790 Robert Tseng: What is this doc called? The… Partnerships, market…
134 00:21:15.410 ⇒ 00:21:16.490 Robert Tseng: I…
135 00:21:19.830 ⇒ 00:21:22.909 Robert Tseng: So I’ll share this with you, but,
136 00:21:23.330 ⇒ 00:21:30.809 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I guess this is a doc I built for, like, hand-on partnerships. I just… it just doesn’t really, like, kind of fit her… her need, I guess.
137 00:21:30.910 ⇒ 00:21:37.930 Robert Tseng: But, you know, this is kind of like… I mean, we kind of adapted this to be, like, kind of for a SaaS company.
138 00:21:38.080 ⇒ 00:21:42.569 Robert Tseng: But… Sorry, not… like, a B2B company?
139 00:21:42.860 ⇒ 00:21:48.590 Robert Tseng: But I could say, Yeah, you could… you could…
140 00:21:48.780 ⇒ 00:21:56.900 Robert Tseng: kind of build something like this out for a CPG business, and I can show you kind of how I would change this, but, like.
141 00:21:57.170 ⇒ 00:22:06.609 Robert Tseng: I think rather than pipeline stages, this is probably more like product development, kind of like knowing
142 00:22:06.860 ⇒ 00:22:24.130 Robert Tseng: You know, if you were to break it out into phases, like, from ideation all the way to, like, launch, like, what are the different phases and how… and then this is more kind of, like, at a product level, rather than an account level. So, for Urban Stems, I could see something like this being helpful.
143 00:22:24.310 ⇒ 00:22:37.879 Robert Tseng: There’s probably too much, like, filler in between here. But, then you’re just looking at, like, I think about those, like, marketing inputs, which is kind of, like, when was the… when was the collection launched?
144 00:22:38.100 ⇒ 00:22:41.280 Robert Tseng: You know, revenue…
145 00:22:41.520 ⇒ 00:22:49.679 Robert Tseng: Spend, like, paid spend, and then you can kind of, like… you’re kind of just, like, stitching together what… what metrics you need to tell the story of, like.
146 00:22:51.600 ⇒ 00:22:57.750 Robert Tseng: And I guess I could send you a template of something that I’ve built before, but…
147 00:22:58.240 ⇒ 00:22:59.030 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, I think…
148 00:22:59.030 ⇒ 00:22:59.880 Amber Lin: grants.
149 00:23:00.080 ⇒ 00:23:18.619 Robert Tseng: something like this would be helpful for a CPG company, and you just go and you start to fill it in, and then it’ll kind of give you a sense of, like, what’s… what’s going on in the company. So, I guess, like, the… is… this is just, like, to give yourself, like, a full funnel… not a full funnel, like, a full…
150 00:23:18.780 ⇒ 00:23:24.780 Robert Tseng: view across… everything in the business, right? You have product development, you have marketing.
151 00:23:25.050 ⇒ 00:23:32.420 Robert Tseng: And then, I guess, like, whatever the section would be, like, I… I guess I’ll… let me see if I can dig it up into my…
152 00:23:33.140 ⇒ 00:23:42.060 Robert Tseng: other… I may not. Let’s see…
153 00:23:43.280 ⇒ 00:23:50.550 Robert Tseng: Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking, is, like, you gotta create, like, some structure for yourself to be able to go and, like.
154 00:23:51.280 ⇒ 00:23:59.059 Robert Tseng: then, like, evaluate these CPG businesses. And I can give you something that helps you do that, so I’m trying to find it.
155 00:23:59.630 ⇒ 00:24:16.150 Amber Lin: So far, I think what you’ve said so far today is that all of it is centered around the product level. I was thinking, is there anything that’s centered around, like, the consumer level, or, like, do we look at… because
156 00:24:16.280 ⇒ 00:24:20.339 Amber Lin: for Insomnia, we were doing this customer segmentation, so how.
157 00:24:20.340 ⇒ 00:24:21.020 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
158 00:24:21.500 ⇒ 00:24:26.200 Amber Lin: play in, so would I also do, like, a consumer level?
159 00:24:26.410 ⇒ 00:24:32.679 Amber Lin: Deep dive, or is there any other, like, key areas other than product and consumer that…
160 00:24:33.370 ⇒ 00:24:38.490 Amber Lin: That can sort of encompasses the whole company and how they think about things.
161 00:24:39.250 ⇒ 00:24:47.409 Robert Tseng: Yeah, for a customer, I… I think there are…
162 00:24:48.450 ⇒ 00:25:05.190 Robert Tseng: as you can tell, like, every time you’re asking questions, like, I think there’s just, like, there’s just ways to, like, frame, like, your investigation. So, if you want to do, like, customer life cycle, then, like, I think there’s better formats, probably not this, like, long, wide, like, kind of view that I was showing you.
163 00:25:05.510 ⇒ 00:25:11.500 Robert Tseng: that’s probably more relevant to business, because there are so many different business units. But for, like, a customer view.
164 00:25:11.500 ⇒ 00:25:30.880 Robert Tseng: you probably would want something that’s, like, more narrow, with many rows, perhaps, but you’re basically trying to track all the different customer lifecycle stages and trying to see if you can tell the story that way. So, I feel like that’s kind of how you’re gonna have to… yeah, you’re gonna have to break it down anyway, in whatever business you’re looking at.
165 00:25:33.780 ⇒ 00:25:34.710 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
166 00:25:51.210 ⇒ 00:25:56.600 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Okay, well, anyway, I’ll… I guess… it’s…
167 00:25:58.510 ⇒ 00:26:07.140 Robert Tseng: Nothing I’m gonna give you is, like, gonna be perfect out of the box. I think you kind of have to just… all I do is, when you say things, you give me ideas, and
168 00:26:07.380 ⇒ 00:26:16.370 Robert Tseng: Like, kind of send you resources, and then you have to, like, kind of tailor them a bit. But this one, I already showed you that link.
169 00:26:16.630 ⇒ 00:26:22.340 Robert Tseng: what I was gonna share with you is some…
170 00:26:22.680 ⇒ 00:26:29.070 Robert Tseng: There’s a couple more things, so… like… Week.
171 00:26:35.520 ⇒ 00:26:36.440 Robert Tseng: Okay.
172 00:26:37.930 ⇒ 00:26:41.890 Robert Tseng: This one… And…
173 00:26:56.390 ⇒ 00:27:01.960 Robert Tseng: Okay, I sent you 3 screenshots. I think… I thought this was a good report. I read this,
174 00:27:02.270 ⇒ 00:27:07.360 Robert Tseng: this was on, like, Rachel’s… my wife’s, like, per…
175 00:27:07.690 ⇒ 00:27:17.460 Robert Tseng: she doesn’t read… she doesn’t even read these, but, like, you know, publicly traded companies often publish reports on, like, how they’re doing, whatever, and then I thought this was a good way of presenting
176 00:27:17.740 ⇒ 00:27:21.509 Robert Tseng: I’ll just share my screen so you can look at what I’m looking at.
177 00:27:23.020 ⇒ 00:27:39.019 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, this is customer life cycle by stages, right? Like, you think about, like, Insomnia, they just have, like, RFM segments, which are just, like, it’s kind of not interpretable. It’s just recency, frequency, monetary value. They kind of, like, split it up into these random categories.
178 00:27:39.090 ⇒ 00:27:45.079 Amber Lin: most of, like, 40% of them are considered champions. It’s, like, not that helpful. Whereas, like.
179 00:27:45.390 ⇒ 00:27:56.080 Robert Tseng: I guess this is different, because it’s a meal subscription company, and so everything they care about is, like, they’re measured in boxes. Like, their individual SKUs are, like, the vegetables that are in the boxes, but, like.
180 00:27:56.500 ⇒ 00:28:10.819 Robert Tseng: Obviously, a customer is buying a box. And so, for… for insomnia, I think that’d be helpful, too. It’s like, why look at the business as, like, an individual cookie? Like, it’s not really that helpful, and individual transactions, like, you know, like, I, you know.
181 00:28:11.260 ⇒ 00:28:19.990 Robert Tseng: At the end of the day, like, are we trying to optimize for people that are purchasing single cookies, or are people who are buying, like, you know, they have this… they have this
182 00:28:19.990 ⇒ 00:28:32.209 Robert Tseng: 12-pack, which I think is something they’ve been trying to really… to sell. So, I think they haven’t even figured out what’s, like, the core business unit that they want to be measuring. They just have sales and transactions. But, like, it’s…
183 00:28:32.210 ⇒ 00:28:41.390 Robert Tseng: it’s not that… I don’t think that’s, like, that helpful. So, I think there’s a lot of room there for us to… white space for us to fill in those details for them, and be like.
184 00:28:41.490 ⇒ 00:28:51.119 Robert Tseng: look, when you’re looking at your business in terms of just dollar revenue and transactions, it’s not telling the full story. You don’t really get to see the volume of, like.
185 00:28:51.410 ⇒ 00:29:06.799 Robert Tseng: the purchases that you’re making. Like, maybe most people are only buying, like, you know, less than 3 cookies at a time or something. I don’t… I don’t really know, I’m just making that up. But yeah, like, there’s… there… we’re just trying to, like… with customer data or, like, customer framing.
186 00:29:07.590 ⇒ 00:29:21.709 Robert Tseng: customer segmentation, I don’t think there’s a universal way to do it. I think it’s really just whatever makes sense for the business. And so, that’s why it’s so hard. There’s no tool out there that helps any… helps a company do customer segmentation, and it’s a repeat exercise. Companies
187 00:29:21.940 ⇒ 00:29:27.770 Robert Tseng: you know, insomnia size, like, well, they should be, or at least in my experience from
188 00:29:27.790 ⇒ 00:29:43.700 Robert Tseng: from Ruggable, like, we were… they were doing this every year. So, like, it, you know, it was a fast-growing company, new segments were… they were launching a bunch of new products, expanding to new segments all the time, and so they always needed to update their… their segments. And every time we did, it was, like, a six…
189 00:29:43.700 ⇒ 00:29:48.509 Robert Tseng: 6-8 week exercise. So, it’s not something that could be done very quickly.
190 00:29:49.180 ⇒ 00:30:05.870 Robert Tseng: But I think it just starts from you, like, trying to break the business down into, like, a… yeah, like, you’re trying to basically tell the story of a life cycle. What’s, like, a quantitative way of doing it? So, I guess in HelloFresh, they realize, like, okay.
191 00:30:05.890 ⇒ 00:30:09.439 Robert Tseng: the base unit should be boxes. It should not be, like.
192 00:30:09.770 ⇒ 00:30:20.879 Robert Tseng: heads of lettuce, or whatever. It’s just like, you know, so there’s that. And then, you know, we are, you know, the average, you know, customers are buying, at most, one box a week, and
193 00:30:20.890 ⇒ 00:30:31.950 Robert Tseng: you know, there’s on a weekly subscription, and then they may, like, kind of drop off after some point. And, you know, they’ve just bucketed it into 0 and 4, 5 to 10, 11 to 20, 20 plus.
194 00:30:31.980 ⇒ 00:30:39.449 Robert Tseng: So, you know, I think there’s probably some version of this for, like, insomnia’s, like, cookie distribution as well.
195 00:30:39.580 ⇒ 00:30:43.510 Robert Tseng: And anyway, so, like, this gives them a sense of, like.
196 00:30:43.660 ⇒ 00:30:56.869 Robert Tseng: okay, like, this is what customer loyalty looks like. Like, you’re not… most customers are not making it past, you know, whatever. Like, a third of the customers are not making it past, you know, the second box.
197 00:30:57.440 ⇒ 00:31:07.920 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and, like, that’s… I think that’s, somewhat helpful. Share of active-react… of not reactivated customers, I don’t even… honestly don’t really know what this means, so I think.
198 00:31:07.920 ⇒ 00:31:11.250 Amber Lin: It’s also finding the buckets of this…
199 00:31:11.630 ⇒ 00:31:17.829 Amber Lin: First of all, what things can be divided into buckets, and then what size of buckets make the most sense?
200 00:31:17.830 ⇒ 00:31:21.939 Robert Tseng: And then, going through the buckets and see, okay, what does this…
201 00:31:21.960 ⇒ 00:31:30.500 Amber Lin: how does this relate to the revenue, or how does this relate to things? And then the company is like, okay, let’s change this, and let’s change that, right?
202 00:31:31.090 ⇒ 00:31:43.789 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so what I’m telling, Demolade, you need to, like, change… like, you have an RFM segment, it’s like, I don’t want to… those… nobody uses those segments, it’s not helpful. Like, no one… you ask anybody in the team, our team doesn’t even know what those mean.
203 00:31:43.820 ⇒ 00:31:51.680 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and so it’s like, well, like, how do we actually create, like, more descriptive segments? Like,
204 00:31:52.430 ⇒ 00:32:09.249 Robert Tseng: I guess it could be that, it could be… I mean, this one is a little bit of a different view. They’ve taken the early buckets of, like, behaviors, like customer signing up, and they’ve broken it out by events. So this is more like product analytics. It’s, like, the events that roll up into this particular bucket.
205 00:32:09.250 ⇒ 00:32:23.539 Robert Tseng: Once you sign up, you have to describe… you have to answer a question about your motivation, you have to answer something about your address, you need to have interacted with a couple things. And it’s like, what percentage of those people who have gone through the sign-up flow have actually hit those milestones?
206 00:32:23.540 ⇒ 00:32:26.669 Amber Lin: You know, that’s… that’s what product analytics is about. We’re just, like, kind of…
207 00:32:26.670 ⇒ 00:32:33.310 Robert Tseng: Trying to drive the right behaviors to move people into the next… into the next, bucket, or whatever.
208 00:32:33.810 ⇒ 00:32:38.160 Robert Tseng: So, yeah, I think, like, this is a different… this is a different way to look at it.
209 00:32:38.190 ⇒ 00:32:54.479 Robert Tseng: So, yeah, I mean, I know this is kind of, like, a bit rambly here, but, like, I’m just trying to, like, show that, it’s not… it’s not, like, a pure science, like, I don’t really think… I think companies obviously struggle to do this, but hopefully I’m giving you examples of, like, how…
210 00:32:54.610 ⇒ 00:32:59.160 Robert Tseng: how I think we should… they’d be thinking about it more.
211 00:33:00.180 ⇒ 00:33:04.200 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, I don’t really believe this is an engineering exercise. Like, there is…
212 00:33:04.200 ⇒ 00:33:07.170 Amber Lin: Like, some intuition layered into this, and…
213 00:33:07.170 ⇒ 00:33:23.079 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, ultimately, it… it just… it has to, has to be interpretable. That’s, like, the most important thing. If you can categorize and break things up in a way that makes sense to people, and you can explain it, like, I think that’s what strategy is about.
214 00:33:23.960 ⇒ 00:33:29.570 Amber Lin: Hmm. Yeah, because this a lot of is, oh, I think this might work, and then I go test this…
215 00:33:29.850 ⇒ 00:33:34.670 Amber Lin: like, how to cut it in this way, and I know it works, so this might mean something.
216 00:33:36.020 ⇒ 00:33:36.600 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
217 00:33:42.810 ⇒ 00:33:50.799 Amber Lin: Okay, that’s very interesting. And I also think, I guess right now, I only know about the CPG companies.
218 00:33:51.000 ⇒ 00:34:01.420 Amber Lin: oh, we’re over time. So, I think as we, in the future, do more industries, I think it’ll click even more of, like, oh, why is it…
219 00:34:01.590 ⇒ 00:34:08.969 Amber Lin: Why is it different? Like, what makes it different? Because right now, everything seems like, oh, you sell products, people buy products.
220 00:34:09.889 ⇒ 00:34:10.269 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
221 00:34:10.270 ⇒ 00:34:14.590 Amber Lin: That’s how everything mushes together for me, but it will become clearer in the future.
222 00:34:15.780 ⇒ 00:34:26.200 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and that’s why I’m saying, like, it’s okay to start in CPG and then kind of just learn, learn the business. Like, I think the business is a lot simpler than other types of businesses,
223 00:34:27.110 ⇒ 00:34:31.970 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and then, like, we can expand into other things afterwards.
224 00:34:32.380 ⇒ 00:34:33.050 Amber Lin: Cool.
225 00:34:34.280 ⇒ 00:34:38.530 Amber Lin: Yeah, thank you so much. I know we’re a little bit over time, so this has been really…
226 00:34:38.530 ⇒ 00:34:38.980 Robert Tseng: It’s…
227 00:34:38.980 ⇒ 00:34:45.390 Amber Lin: Well, it gives me more direction to know where to go, because I have… I hit a wall after I did that.
228 00:34:45.840 ⇒ 00:35:02.269 Robert Tseng: Okay, great. Yeah, no, I think, I’m… I’m glad you’re, kind of, going, going after it like this. I… yeah, I mean, I… I don’t have all the answers, I can just only point you to… to good examples, I think, or… or things I’ve seen before. Yeah.
229 00:35:02.860 ⇒ 00:35:03.790 Amber Lin: Alright.
230 00:35:04.090 ⇒ 00:35:06.350 Amber Lin: I appreciate your time.
231 00:35:07.560 ⇒ 00:35:09.830 Robert Tseng: Sure, anytime. Okay, talk to you later.
232 00:35:09.830 ⇒ 00:35:10.910 Amber Lin: Alright, bye.