Meeting Title: Ops Gameplan Meeting Date: 2025-11-07 Meeting participants: Rico Rejoso, Lauren Ford, Uttam Kumaran
WEBVTT
1 00:00:41.730 ⇒ 00:00:43.460 Lauren Ford: Hey, Rico, how you doing?
2 00:00:44.150 ⇒ 00:00:45.920 Rico Rejoso: Hi, Lauren. I’m good, how are you?
3 00:00:46.950 ⇒ 00:00:50.300 Lauren Ford: Did you get your internet back, or are you still on phone data?
4 00:00:50.300 ⇒ 00:00:52.830 Rico Rejoso: I’m currently on mobile data, yes.
5 00:00:52.830 ⇒ 00:00:53.790 Lauren Ford: Oh…
6 00:00:53.790 ⇒ 00:00:54.700 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, we have…
7 00:00:54.700 ⇒ 00:00:55.470 Lauren Ford: So annoying.
8 00:00:55.470 ⇒ 00:00:57.390 Rico Rejoso: We’re experiencing a storm right now, a typhoon.
9 00:00:58.210 ⇒ 00:01:00.450 Lauren Ford: Oh, wild.
10 00:01:00.680 ⇒ 00:01:01.599 Rico Rejoso: It is, yeah.
11 00:01:07.760 ⇒ 00:01:09.180 Lauren Ford: Pulling up my notes.
12 00:01:10.450 ⇒ 00:01:13.029 Lauren Ford: In case we need to talk about any of them.
13 00:01:35.880 ⇒ 00:01:36.549 Lauren Ford: How you doing?
14 00:01:36.550 ⇒ 00:01:38.249 Uttam Kumaran: Is everything? Good?
15 00:01:38.500 ⇒ 00:01:40.910 Lauren Ford: Going pretty well, just… plugging along!
16 00:01:42.400 ⇒ 00:01:53.330 Uttam Kumaran: This has been great. I, like, was… I texted Robert yesterday, I’m like, Lauren just got, like, a third of our roadmap done in, like, 4 days. And I’m like.
17 00:01:53.330 ⇒ 00:01:54.460 Lauren Ford: I know, I felt bad, I opened
18 00:01:55.620 ⇒ 00:01:59.469 Lauren Ford: I could probably do the invoice thing if you need help on it, but the problem is it’s not.
19 00:01:59.470 ⇒ 00:02:00.490 Uttam Kumaran: No, I know…
20 00:02:00.490 ⇒ 00:02:00.870 Lauren Ford: Right?
21 00:02:00.870 ⇒ 00:02:14.710 Uttam Kumaran: I know you can do it, that’s not the problem. I, I think you need to know that you can do it, but… no, no, no, I, I… no, it’s been tremendous, and… Oh, good, good. As you can tell, there’s a lot of,
22 00:02:15.030 ⇒ 00:02:18.059 Uttam Kumaran: low-hanging fruit, and I still think that, like.
23 00:02:18.460 ⇒ 00:02:29.919 Uttam Kumaran: this next week, you know, what we talk about today, we’ll push a lot of things forward, and then… yeah, I mean, I… I’m… I’m just… I’m just really happy that we’re getting a lot of this out. It’s, like, it’s really been great.
24 00:02:30.550 ⇒ 00:02:40.209 Lauren Ford: This is great, and I’ve got a lot of stuff for you to put eyeballs on at some point that’s, like, first draft, just ideas on roadmap stuff, so hopefully that’ll help. Okay.
25 00:02:40.210 ⇒ 00:02:40.760 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
26 00:02:40.760 ⇒ 00:02:42.980 Lauren Ford: bug you all day, like… I have 5.
27 00:02:42.980 ⇒ 00:02:43.970 Uttam Kumaran: No, don’t worry.
28 00:02:44.280 ⇒ 00:02:45.220 Lauren Ford: Okay, cool.
29 00:02:45.220 ⇒ 00:02:51.030 Uttam Kumaran: You can send it, it’s like, I will get to it when I can get to it, don’t worry about… don’t worry about bugging me.
30 00:02:51.190 ⇒ 00:02:51.680 Lauren Ford: Okay.
31 00:02:52.140 ⇒ 00:02:57.470 Lauren Ford: Yeah, I should have asked you first, what’s your preferred way with that? Do you want me to Slack it to you, or do you want email?
32 00:02:57.630 ⇒ 00:02:58.180 Lauren Ford: Because I know.
33 00:02:58.180 ⇒ 00:02:58.560 Uttam Kumaran: Slack.
34 00:02:58.560 ⇒ 00:03:00.529 Lauren Ford: It can be, like, really noisy.
35 00:03:00.530 ⇒ 00:03:05.239 Uttam Kumaran: I would just send in the operations channel. Okay. I read… I read everything.
36 00:03:05.540 ⇒ 00:03:05.990 Lauren Ford: Okay, cool.
37 00:03:05.990 ⇒ 00:03:12.199 Uttam Kumaran: One thing I don’t want, though, and this is kind of what I’m sending, is, like, for… part of our team should just be pinging, like.
38 00:03:12.520 ⇒ 00:03:19.459 Uttam Kumaran: ops for stuff, or they should ping, like, other people on the data team. Instead, like, I’m getting pinged
39 00:03:19.600 ⇒ 00:03:25.939 Uttam Kumaran: And I, of course, I will solve every problem, but, like, It’s very painful, and so…
40 00:03:26.140 ⇒ 00:03:29.890 Uttam Kumaran: One is that there’s a couple directions. One, I could just… be, like…
41 00:03:30.210 ⇒ 00:03:42.319 Uttam Kumaran: you should ping… this is an example of where you should ping someone else, but I don’t know what’s the best thing to do in that moment, but I’m doing more of, like, did you ask a team member first? Did you ask in a public channel?
42 00:03:43.400 ⇒ 00:03:44.530 Uttam Kumaran: Why not?
43 00:03:44.680 ⇒ 00:03:59.319 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, but, like, it’s also… but I know people know that, like, ultimately, I need to review stuff, but I’m, like, just, like, ask another… we have a lot of smart people on the team, like, just ask other people.
44 00:03:59.510 ⇒ 00:04:00.110 Uttam Kumaran: Beautiful.
45 00:04:00.870 ⇒ 00:04:15.439 Lauren Ford: Well, since a big next thing that I was planning on focusing on is, like, the recruitment stuff, who besides you and Robert, who are clearly very, very busy, are people that I should go to with stuff? Because I’ve been, like, trying to pull from the resources you sent me, like.
46 00:04:15.440 ⇒ 00:04:21.370 Lauren Ford: Look at what the roadmap might be based on gaps in the, areas of,
47 00:04:22.010 ⇒ 00:04:25.280 Lauren Ford: areas of ownership. But.
48 00:04:25.280 ⇒ 00:04:25.890 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
49 00:04:26.040 ⇒ 00:04:30.860 Lauren Ford: Yeah. Who else? So we go? Yeah.
50 00:04:30.860 ⇒ 00:04:38.289 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I would say… Rico and I are sort of like recruiting ops.
51 00:04:38.510 ⇒ 00:04:39.050 Lauren Ford: Cool.
52 00:04:39.050 ⇒ 00:04:41.270 Uttam Kumaran: So we’ve been doing all of the…
53 00:04:41.450 ⇒ 00:04:55.199 Uttam Kumaran: scheduling, we built our internal Notion for, like, applicants, so, like, we use Notion forms for applicants, that way it’s, like, very easy for them to get into, like, a database, and then we get pinged in Slack.
54 00:04:56.390 ⇒ 00:05:01.159 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know if you were able to see, sort of, a little bit about our recruiting process, but for the most part…
55 00:05:01.160 ⇒ 00:05:03.419 Lauren Ford: I did, I started poking around with some of that, yeah.
56 00:05:03.420 ⇒ 00:05:06.690 Uttam Kumaran: Cool, yeah, like, we… when we did have, like, LinkedIn job.
57 00:05:06.880 ⇒ 00:05:19.340 Uttam Kumaran: basically, we were getting, like, thousands of applicants, so what we did is I would go through, pick the people that I felt like should move to the next round, send that to Rico, we would then blast a message to each of them, basically saying, hey.
58 00:05:19.610 ⇒ 00:05:33.979 Uttam Kumaran: we have so many applicants, our next process is an async loom, it helps our team, blah blah blah. Then they would go through Notion, answer a bunch more questions, submit it. For us, I would say the overarching theme on,
59 00:05:34.560 ⇒ 00:05:40.460 Uttam Kumaran: Recruiting is that, cast a wide net, but, like, a very tight funnel.
60 00:05:40.830 ⇒ 00:05:48.080 Uttam Kumaran: Meaning we… we want the process to not be, like, everybody makes it to the end.
61 00:05:48.180 ⇒ 00:05:54.859 Uttam Kumaran: You know, so… I think we want to cast a wide net, but at each step, there should be, like.
62 00:05:55.090 ⇒ 00:06:05.970 Uttam Kumaran: only the best should survive the next challenge, you know, is sort of what we’re hoping for. So the loom, I think, is a great way that we sort of filter a lot of candidates off, and then…
63 00:06:06.100 ⇒ 00:06:21.919 Uttam Kumaran: Sam and Awash are producing, like, a technical case study, technical interview, that’s, like, a take-home technical interview. So, I would say Sam and Awash are probably the most senior people on the technical side, when it comes to,
64 00:06:22.950 ⇒ 00:06:24.780 Uttam Kumaran: like…
65 00:06:26.330 ⇒ 00:06:45.969 Uttam Kumaran: like, how to basically vet candidates, and then after that is me. And then in terms of decision-making on candidates, it is me or Robert, usually together, I mean, together, we make the decision. We have done a committee approach, though, for as much as possible, so as much as possible, like, I,
66 00:06:47.450 ⇒ 00:06:50.590 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know if you read this book called Who?
67 00:06:50.740 ⇒ 00:06:52.000 Uttam Kumaran: on hiring?
68 00:06:52.410 ⇒ 00:06:55.109 Uttam Kumaran: It’s a book called… yeah, I was…
69 00:06:55.390 ⇒ 00:07:00.599 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, I was honestly thinking we should do a book club on this book, maybe just for the people that…
70 00:07:00.940 ⇒ 00:07:07.049 Uttam Kumaran: that, are, like, recruiting. I mean, everybody in the company sort of helps Interview. Yeah.
71 00:07:07.370 ⇒ 00:07:08.669 Uttam Kumaran: But…
72 00:07:09.280 ⇒ 00:07:14.879 Uttam Kumaran: I sent this in the Zoom channel. This is a great book, and I think we should just run our…
73 00:07:15.210 ⇒ 00:07:32.960 Uttam Kumaran: I read this when I was actually at Flow Code, because when we started building the data team, and this, like, changed my whole life in terms of how I started recruiting people. So I would say we should just run the book and do it like they say, and yeah, it could be fine. Basically, the net-net of it is, like.
74 00:07:33.110 ⇒ 00:07:45.620 Uttam Kumaran: you agree on… on… and I think a lot of things came out of this book, and, like, now it’s sort of common space, but you create, like, a scorecard, everybody fills in the scorecard. It’s sort of like what probably Greenhouse now
75 00:07:45.840 ⇒ 00:07:47.930 Uttam Kumaran: Has, like, made more popular.
76 00:07:48.090 ⇒ 00:07:52.619 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know if we need a greenhouse, like, we’re… we could probably just do this in, like, Google Docs.
77 00:07:52.620 ⇒ 00:07:55.350 Lauren Ford: Yeah, greenhouse is so expensive. It’s kind of like the.
78 00:07:55.350 ⇒ 00:07:56.209 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and like…
79 00:07:56.210 ⇒ 00:07:59.100 Lauren Ford: It’s, like, prohibitively expensive.
80 00:07:59.620 ⇒ 00:08:15.320 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and we don’t have a problem getting applicants, and honestly, like, I don’t need, like… we can just do the notion. What I’m more I’m concerned about is everybody… are we agreed on, like, how we’re… how we’re rating candidates, and do we have a, like, a…
81 00:08:15.490 ⇒ 00:08:23.120 Uttam Kumaran: scorecard process for each person that’s on a committee, and then do we have the right, sort of checkpoints? Like.
82 00:08:23.730 ⇒ 00:08:30.359 Uttam Kumaran: To basically for everyone to submit their scorecard, for there to probably be a review on that, and again, the book goes through a lot of that, so…
83 00:08:30.520 ⇒ 00:08:37.040 Uttam Kumaran: I’m happy to just, like, read the book again, and we… I think we should just apply, basically, what it says, because it’ll be pretty easy.
84 00:08:38.069 ⇒ 00:08:55.599 Lauren Ford: Yeah, no, the part I wasn’t sure about is, like, how much of this was, like, forecasting headcount versus what you already know, because I know, of course, like, it’s always going to change based on how clients are going, but I was, like, looking at current needs and trying to figure out if that was what you needed, is, like, figuring out what the roles would be, or just, like…
85 00:08:55.909 ⇒ 00:08:57.299 Lauren Ford: whether you’re…
86 00:08:57.300 ⇒ 00:09:01.240 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so this is where recruiting plays with the delivery team.
87 00:09:01.590 ⇒ 00:09:02.410 Lauren Ford: So that…
88 00:09:02.410 ⇒ 00:09:09.959 Uttam Kumaran: The delivery team understands at any moment what our capacity is and what our needs are.
89 00:09:10.180 ⇒ 00:09:23.470 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So at any moment, I know the basket of hours and the number of people that… that… and on delivery, it’s usually, again, like, I’m… I’m speaking like there’s all these teams. It’s like me, Robert, Rico, and Amber that are usually.
90 00:09:23.470 ⇒ 00:09:23.930 Lauren Ford: Yeah, yeah.
91 00:09:23.930 ⇒ 00:09:26.299 Uttam Kumaran: And now I’m starting to involve more people,
92 00:09:26.300 ⇒ 00:09:26.870 Lauren Ford: Great!
93 00:09:26.870 ⇒ 00:09:40.419 Uttam Kumaran: But delivery owns who’s available, when are they, and then what their skill set is. And then, basically, we map that to clients. So we use a tool called Operating for that, Operating.app.
94 00:09:40.670 ⇒ 00:09:41.720 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
95 00:09:42.280 ⇒ 00:09:47.650 Uttam Kumaran: Rico, maybe we can invite Lauren there so she can check it out. But it’s sort of a…
96 00:09:48.950 ⇒ 00:09:52.209 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I’ll just share… I’ll just maybe give you, like, a…
97 00:09:53.140 ⇒ 00:09:58.999 Uttam Kumaran: It’s, like, it’s kind of intuitive, it’s just resource management, but basically.
98 00:09:59.290 ⇒ 00:10:06.069 Uttam Kumaran: you can put in, like, here are the projects that we have, and then you can see, like, okay, Joe’s assigned to
99 00:10:06.180 ⇒ 00:10:08.560 Uttam Kumaran: Thunder Mifflin, and here’s the…
100 00:10:09.370 ⇒ 00:10:15.650 Uttam Kumaran: Here’s his allocations, you know, he’s, like, 60% on this client, 30% on another client.
101 00:10:15.650 ⇒ 00:10:16.240 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
102 00:10:16.240 ⇒ 00:10:17.140 Uttam Kumaran: And so…
103 00:10:17.530 ⇒ 00:10:32.139 Uttam Kumaran: we use that, so… and then… but this is the thing, like, at any moment, I know… it’s a mix of sales, delivery, and recruiting. At any moment, I… on the sales side, I know how many deals are at… towards the finish line.
104 00:10:32.380 ⇒ 00:10:34.580 Uttam Kumaran: And at that point, like, I…
105 00:10:34.760 ⇒ 00:10:39.240 Uttam Kumaran: We’ll try to work with delivery to say, if those deals close.
106 00:10:39.350 ⇒ 00:10:41.729 Uttam Kumaran: A, do we have people now that can start?
107 00:10:41.880 ⇒ 00:10:47.360 Uttam Kumaran: Most of our deals, when we sign them, we’re like, let’s just start next week, so do we need to push that? Second.
108 00:10:49.040 ⇒ 00:11:03.629 Uttam Kumaran: if we don’t, okay, who’s, like, on the bench? Like, who are… who are all the people that we’ve talked to that have expressed interest that fit the skill set? So… so… and then I can go to that. Third is, like, okay, if we don’t have any people, let’s… we have to go to the market, right? And so…
109 00:11:04.190 ⇒ 00:11:09.529 Uttam Kumaran: The other piece is, at any moment, like, we will always… We will always be over…
110 00:11:09.730 ⇒ 00:11:16.830 Uttam Kumaran: utilized. Like, we’re not at a point, like a typical consultancy, where you have, like, 20% of your people on the bench.
111 00:11:17.630 ⇒ 00:11:18.230 Lauren Ford: Yeah, yeah.
112 00:11:18.490 ⇒ 00:11:23.549 Uttam Kumaran: We’re for the most… there’s no bench people here, and so we’ll always run it, like.
113 00:11:23.910 ⇒ 00:11:30.080 Uttam Kumaran: we’ll always run too hot, and that’s fine. Meaning, like, we may be playing catch-up. What’s… what’s…
114 00:11:30.260 ⇒ 00:11:34.299 Uttam Kumaran: What is tough is that, like, if we get a rush of clients.
115 00:11:35.410 ⇒ 00:11:39.709 Uttam Kumaran: it can be really hard. So we always recruit, like, I just had an interview today.
116 00:11:39.950 ⇒ 00:11:42.310 Lauren Ford: Got it. I interview 3 or 4 people a week.
117 00:11:42.780 ⇒ 00:11:53.270 Uttam Kumaran: Just to… just to talk to people, whether we’re hiring or not, whether we have a slot or not, because our roles are pretty standard. Like, we’re looking for analysts, engineers.
118 00:11:53.420 ⇒ 00:11:55.729 Lauren Ford: Now, some PM coordinators.
119 00:11:55.940 ⇒ 00:12:02.239 Uttam Kumaran: So, I just keep talking, I don’t… I’m not, like, only hire when we need it. That being said, like,
120 00:12:02.730 ⇒ 00:12:09.830 Uttam Kumaran: Right now, we’re in a point where we probably… we have, like, Definitely open slots for,
121 00:12:10.490 ⇒ 00:12:15.419 Uttam Kumaran: Someone on sales coordination, someone on PM.
122 00:12:15.710 ⇒ 00:12:18.710 Lauren Ford: Saw that, those were the two I flagged. Yeah.
123 00:12:18.710 ⇒ 00:12:24.910 Uttam Kumaran: PM coordination, right? Because it’s just me, Rico, and Amber, and Amber’s also working On clients, too.
124 00:12:25.140 ⇒ 00:12:31.729 Uttam Kumaran: And then, the last one is on analysis, which again, it’s like.
125 00:12:31.730 ⇒ 00:12:31.965 Lauren Ford: Well.
126 00:12:32.200 ⇒ 00:12:40.150 Uttam Kumaran: Amber’s doing some analysis, Henry’s doing some analysis, and we need another person there. And then, of course, like, the role you’re playing is sort of, like, on operations.
127 00:12:40.570 ⇒ 00:12:41.020 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
128 00:12:41.020 ⇒ 00:12:42.460 Uttam Kumaran: So, those are, those are, like.
129 00:12:43.150 ⇒ 00:12:49.340 Uttam Kumaran: when I woke up last month, like, that was, like, what I was like, hey, these are the four that’ll start to… I can tell…
130 00:12:49.790 ⇒ 00:12:53.140 Lauren Ford: Are starting to break, and, like, it’s, yeah, it’s basically the case.
131 00:12:54.070 ⇒ 00:12:54.690 Lauren Ford: Super.
132 00:12:55.260 ⇒ 00:12:59.759 Uttam Kumaran: You know? And then there’s also many channels of which we can get people, right? We have…
133 00:13:00.090 ⇒ 00:13:06.569 Uttam Kumaran: we have, okay, like, let’s look through all the… similar on the sales side, right? We… we keep a track of everybody we’ve ever talked to.
134 00:13:06.680 ⇒ 00:13:21.130 Uttam Kumaran: So I can just go… I can just go look and see, like, hey, who do we talk to? What… what are they up to? Like, do you think they’d be interested in? So, for everybody, of course, we’re trying our best to do contract to hire, so that’s a pretty firm…
135 00:13:21.570 ⇒ 00:13:22.700 Uttam Kumaran: requirement.
136 00:13:22.900 ⇒ 00:13:27.719 Uttam Kumaran: For the most part. And again, it’s another way for us to filter out, although, like.
137 00:13:28.000 ⇒ 00:13:34.450 Uttam Kumaran: it is a little bit tough for some people, but I say, like, look, I don’t know. We can’t… we can’t… we’re just not in a position to take risks.
138 00:13:34.850 ⇒ 00:13:41.230 Uttam Kumaran: So, for the most part, we’re going after people that are like, hey, I can work 10 hours, start, and then we can ramp from there.
139 00:13:41.590 ⇒ 00:13:55.140 Uttam Kumaran: And then, like, we also sort of will… may run out of just, like, past people or connections, and then we just post on LinkedIn. And we’ll post on LinkedIn, it’s, like, 5 to 10 bucks a day to kind of keep it…
140 00:13:55.500 ⇒ 00:14:05.419 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, keep the job post, you know, we’ll attract every single person on planet Earth, and then I go through and basically, I’ll do a pass of, like, these people should move to the Loom screen, and then we go from there.
141 00:14:05.420 ⇒ 00:14:05.940 Lauren Ford: Check.
142 00:14:06.080 ⇒ 00:14:08.120 Uttam Kumaran: Wow, okay, cool. Great.
143 00:14:08.120 ⇒ 00:14:08.760 Lauren Ford: Yes.
144 00:14:08.760 ⇒ 00:14:14.210 Uttam Kumaran: So it’s not… it’s not a… we’re not, like, always recruiting for, like, tons of people,
145 00:14:16.070 ⇒ 00:14:20.520 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s, it’s, like, not that bad.
146 00:14:20.850 ⇒ 00:14:22.969 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Yeah, it’s not like… it’s not crazy.
147 00:14:23.530 ⇒ 00:14:24.200 Lauren Ford: Cool.
148 00:14:24.810 ⇒ 00:14:29.499 Lauren Ford: Well, I sort of hijacked us. What are… what are your main priorities this week? And then I can…
149 00:14:29.860 ⇒ 00:14:31.710 Lauren Ford: We can go back to the, sort of.
150 00:14:31.710 ⇒ 00:14:41.270 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, my priority is sort of for, like, Monday. I think we wanted to… I know you sent out some messages already, so I kind of wanted to do a little bit of a, like, a recap message on, like.
151 00:14:41.590 ⇒ 00:14:45.030 Uttam Kumaran: Stuff we’re trying to change on the culture side.
152 00:14:45.200 ⇒ 00:14:55.380 Uttam Kumaran: So, I think, like, I don’t know, Rico, if you can help, maybe we can just create a little bit of a list of, like, what I need to write and send, but we want to send something about donuts.
153 00:14:55.530 ⇒ 00:15:03.840 Uttam Kumaran: I can send the, I can send the LA crew that, working doc.
154 00:15:03.960 ⇒ 00:15:04.850 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
155 00:15:05.000 ⇒ 00:15:13.229 Uttam Kumaran: I can… Send a note and book a time for, like, the etiquette meeting.
156 00:15:13.400 ⇒ 00:15:14.550 Lauren Ford: Great.
157 00:15:14.860 ⇒ 00:15:16.499 Uttam Kumaran: So that would be good.
158 00:15:16.650 ⇒ 00:15:21.829 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, if… yeah, if that… if we need to do that with the whole company, then I can just do that next Friday.
159 00:15:22.020 ⇒ 00:15:25.149 Uttam Kumaran: But I’ll just at least send that that exists.
160 00:15:25.460 ⇒ 00:15:26.730 Uttam Kumaran: Perfect.
161 00:15:28.270 ⇒ 00:15:30.639 Uttam Kumaran: What am I missing? Oh, it’s in the org chart.
162 00:15:31.450 ⇒ 00:15:32.400 Lauren Ford: Survey.
163 00:15:33.050 ⇒ 00:15:36.629 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, survey? Yeah. So survey is, like, probably number one.
164 00:15:41.210 ⇒ 00:15:48.540 Uttam Kumaran: I also want to just maybe do a refresh for everybody of, like, What operations team owns?
165 00:15:50.040 ⇒ 00:15:57.050 Uttam Kumaran: Like, when to go to the… like, when to go to the operations team, how to tag the ops team using, like, at ops team, or whatever.
166 00:15:57.230 ⇒ 00:15:59.820 Uttam Kumaran: and Slack,
167 00:16:10.010 ⇒ 00:16:11.020 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
168 00:16:12.710 ⇒ 00:16:22.310 Lauren Ford: Do you want to do the survey on Monday, or do you want to send it today and then let them think about it, and then start filling it out on Monday and do it as a reminder? Or do you like the idea of having it all as one big thing?
169 00:16:25.210 ⇒ 00:16:29.230 Uttam Kumaran: I guess I don’t mind either way, I just feel like…
170 00:16:29.410 ⇒ 00:16:32.870 Uttam Kumaran: people are just not… probably not… I mean, some of the more diligent people will do it.
171 00:16:32.870 ⇒ 00:16:33.590 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
172 00:16:33.590 ⇒ 00:16:40.229 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, like, and we, we will meet as a company next, Next Friday, so…
173 00:16:40.230 ⇒ 00:16:41.750 Lauren Ford: Oh, great! Yeah.
174 00:16:41.750 ⇒ 00:16:47.730 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so we meet every two weeks on Friday, so I’ll just make sure that everybody fills it out, and then that way, maybe we could…
175 00:16:47.800 ⇒ 00:16:56.149 Lauren Ford: I mean, if the results are more, like, everybody should… they should fire me, then maybe I won’t present that. That would be sad, but, like, if it’s… You’re not gonna get the…
176 00:16:56.430 ⇒ 00:17:03.859 Uttam Kumaran: If they’re actionable, then I’ll totally… I would love to just talk about each of them, and, like, I’m sure people would be, like, open to also…
177 00:17:04.069 ⇒ 00:17:13.950 Uttam Kumaran: discussing. Or if there’s, for example, if there’s, like, a… if there are suggestions, and, like, maybe it’s… we need to be more democratic about one of those decisions, I could bring it up to everybody, and then we can…
178 00:17:14.240 ⇒ 00:17:16.199 Uttam Kumaran: I can talk to the whole company about it, so…
179 00:17:16.490 ⇒ 00:17:25.619 Lauren Ford: Yeah, that’s great. Yeah, I think that’s… that’s perfect. If you highlight it on Friday, they’ll have till end of day. It doesn’t close, it’s a… it’s totally manual, so I’ll just…
180 00:17:25.760 ⇒ 00:17:35.180 Lauren Ford: I’ll launch it on Monday before I even start my day, and then, or, well, either way. I’ll launch it…
181 00:17:35.930 ⇒ 00:17:52.360 Lauren Ford: Is it okay if I launch it before 9? Just launch it at, like, 8? Okay, cool. I’ll launch it, you can send out the messaging on it. They’ll get it by email, but, you know, then they can figure it out. Okay. Actually, I might even just be able to give you the link, because I think it’s totally anonymous, so anybody can… they don’t have to sign in.
182 00:17:52.360 ⇒ 00:17:57.829 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, as long as, like, as long as you send it out, and then on the Monday message, I’ll just link to it as well.
183 00:17:57.830 ⇒ 00:18:01.760 Lauren Ford: Perfect. Okay, that should be fine. Okay, cool.
184 00:18:01.920 ⇒ 00:18:14.350 Lauren Ford: So, operations, you wanted to talk about who… when to go to you, when to tag us, when to go to us. You got all these things, the donuts, policy on co-working space, etiquette meeting.
185 00:18:14.480 ⇒ 00:18:18.620 Lauren Ford: org chart. You want the org chart to be public, not… Private.
186 00:18:19.320 ⇒ 00:18:20.400 Lauren Ford: Do you want it in Notion?
187 00:18:20.400 ⇒ 00:18:23.559 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, what’s your… what’s, like, what’s your take? I don’t know.
188 00:18:24.140 ⇒ 00:18:24.770 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t really care.
189 00:18:24.910 ⇒ 00:18:30.720 Lauren Ford: Here’s how you want to use it, like, I’ve seen people who use their org chart to slot in roles.
190 00:18:30.970 ⇒ 00:18:39.510 Lauren Ford: or who use their org chart to, like, play with, like, what if we played… but that, I mean, that was, like, Cordence is a 500-person company, so it was slightly different.
191 00:18:39.510 ⇒ 00:18:42.689 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, yeah, for us, for us, I mean, like…
192 00:18:43.030 ⇒ 00:18:53.980 Uttam Kumaran: we need to, like, we should have 10… we should have, like, another 20 people in the company, so, like, there’s gonna be a lot of open roles. Yeah. So I don’t… I don’t mind, I don’t mind sharing it out, yeah, I don’t care at all.
193 00:18:54.490 ⇒ 00:19:04.259 Uttam Kumaran: In fact, for the new people, I need them to know… for the new people, again, like, these are just faces on a screen, so it would be helpful for them to know, like, and then…
194 00:19:04.410 ⇒ 00:19:07.950 Uttam Kumaran: I think the other point there is, Rico, if we can put the…
195 00:19:08.160 ⇒ 00:19:12.139 Uttam Kumaran: I guess, Lauren, you’ve seen that onboarding deck, right?
196 00:19:12.290 ⇒ 00:19:14.279 Uttam Kumaran: So I would like to… maybe we can…
197 00:19:14.860 ⇒ 00:19:16.919 Lauren Ford: I saw the Notion, I don’t know if I saw the deck.
198 00:19:17.620 ⇒ 00:19:17.960 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
199 00:19:17.960 ⇒ 00:19:21.169 Lauren Ford: You can link it again, watch back, because I was, like, going through a lot.
200 00:19:21.440 ⇒ 00:19:26.439 Uttam Kumaran: I would like to add… I mean, basically, it’s just, like, we should just try to keep that updated with, like.
201 00:19:26.440 ⇒ 00:19:27.010 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
202 00:19:28.160 ⇒ 00:19:30.620 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, we should just keep adding to that, basically.
203 00:19:30.820 ⇒ 00:19:31.990 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
204 00:19:32.950 ⇒ 00:19:35.220 Uttam Kumaran: with, like, Yeah.
205 00:19:35.330 ⇒ 00:19:42.710 Uttam Kumaran: the org chart, We could, yeah, what is donuts, how to use donuts, the survey…
206 00:19:42.890 ⇒ 00:19:48.759 Uttam Kumaran: You know, so those would be great. Rico and I meet Monday mornings,
207 00:19:49.080 ⇒ 00:19:53.370 Uttam Kumaran: You know, usually, and we just do, like, a couple of housekeeping things to start the week.
208 00:19:54.760 ⇒ 00:20:00.149 Uttam Kumaran: So, even if that’s something, Rico, we want to do as a ritual once a week to just…
209 00:20:00.360 ⇒ 00:20:03.949 Uttam Kumaran: Think about anything that we want to move into that dock.
210 00:20:04.570 ⇒ 00:20:06.590 Uttam Kumaran: we can do that.
211 00:20:09.110 ⇒ 00:20:10.809 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and then,
212 00:20:11.980 ⇒ 00:20:20.160 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I guess I wonder… I was gonna wonder if you had a… oh, and then, so employee handbook, I will… I’ll ask Holly, it’s in Holly’s court to take a look at.
213 00:20:20.410 ⇒ 00:20:25.749 Uttam Kumaran: And then, yeah, I was gonna ask if you, like, had any thoughts on the AOR process, or…
214 00:20:26.550 ⇒ 00:20:27.180 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
215 00:20:27.180 ⇒ 00:20:27.810 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
216 00:20:27.810 ⇒ 00:20:30.080 Lauren Ford: I… I was mostly thinking if…
217 00:20:30.320 ⇒ 00:20:35.489 Lauren Ford: I mean, I think simple is best, like, I think the main problem you’ve got is…
218 00:20:36.040 ⇒ 00:20:47.629 Lauren Ford: Well, the way it’s structured right now with some things, like, are they lagging, are they on track? I think it’s this funny thing where, like, right now it’s sort of functioning in between the two, where, like, one is, like.
219 00:20:47.780 ⇒ 00:20:53.040 Lauren Ford: Is it… one is, like, is this thing… being done.
220 00:20:53.480 ⇒ 00:20:57.879 Lauren Ford: like, I think it’s great as a map of, like, Here’s everything that we need.
221 00:20:57.880 ⇒ 00:20:58.770 Uttam Kumaran: Everything that’s done.
222 00:20:58.770 ⇒ 00:21:18.459 Lauren Ford: Yeah, here’s what… here’s where we can see what holes we have. But the thing that I could see being challenging is that it’s hard to… I think, like, it’s not very, measurable, some of the things that are on there. Like, some of the things… I almost think you need a separate chart for the things that you’re tracking closer, which it seems like you have in the OKRs, but that.
223 00:21:18.460 ⇒ 00:21:21.410 Uttam Kumaran: The OKRs are those. This is more of, like…
224 00:21:21.840 ⇒ 00:21:35.049 Uttam Kumaran: if you were to ask who provides oversight? Yeah, like, okay, that’s… maybe it’s like… Yeah, you could look at it. Yeah. Who drafts SOWs? Oh, yeah, that’s this person. Great. I guess the reported status,
225 00:21:35.280 ⇒ 00:21:36.729 Uttam Kumaran: You’re right, it’s like…
226 00:21:36.730 ⇒ 00:21:38.119 Lauren Ford: It doesn’t belong there.
227 00:21:38.440 ⇒ 00:21:40.199 Uttam Kumaran: Unless it’s a…
228 00:21:40.200 ⇒ 00:21:41.979 Lauren Ford: It’s like, this is not working.
229 00:21:42.240 ⇒ 00:21:45.219 Uttam Kumaran: Well, yeah, exactly, but I guess, like,
230 00:21:51.190 ⇒ 00:21:55.150 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I guess that’s also… that’s what Amore I was going for, is, like.
231 00:21:55.720 ⇒ 00:22:01.539 Uttam Kumaran: Which ones… which responsibilities are either not happening, and again, that could be for a number of reasons.
232 00:22:01.540 ⇒ 00:22:02.560 Lauren Ford: But, like.
233 00:22:03.540 ⇒ 00:22:06.490 Uttam Kumaran: that’s kind of more what I was going for, which is, like.
234 00:22:06.920 ⇒ 00:22:10.319 Uttam Kumaran: Is this responsibility? Do we feel like this is covered?
235 00:22:10.680 ⇒ 00:22:20.549 Lauren Ford: Yeah, and is it really, really? Yeah, no, I think that makes sense. I would say if you’re… if you’re using it almost as, like, an overall, like, operational health
236 00:22:20.670 ⇒ 00:22:25.359 Lauren Ford: assessment, I would just do, like, a quarterly review on it, like, just…
237 00:22:25.750 ⇒ 00:22:37.049 Lauren Ford: That’s not too long, but that’s… I mean, I think that’d be the easiest thing, is just, like, set a date, put in your calendar, make yourself attend, and then whoever’s on that sheet should be attending and looking at it. That was sort of my…
238 00:22:37.170 ⇒ 00:22:41.349 Lauren Ford: overall takeaway, but I might have also missed, sort of, what
239 00:22:41.480 ⇒ 00:22:44.539 Lauren Ford: you were asking. It’s possible I missed what you were asking.
240 00:22:44.540 ⇒ 00:22:46.890 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I guess what I was more asking is, like.
241 00:22:47.050 ⇒ 00:22:50.580 Uttam Kumaran: Do you see what’s… anything that’s missing here? And…
242 00:22:50.580 ⇒ 00:22:51.290 Lauren Ford: Oh.
243 00:22:51.290 ⇒ 00:22:56.940 Uttam Kumaran: Can you just… That’s up. Like, are there things across… across…
244 00:22:56.940 ⇒ 00:22:57.679 Lauren Ford: That’s what you know.
245 00:22:57.680 ⇒ 00:22:59.360 Uttam Kumaran: from Yeah.
246 00:22:59.860 ⇒ 00:23:05.679 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Because the delivery side, I know, like, PM… data AI,
247 00:23:06.380 ⇒ 00:23:09.340 Uttam Kumaran: is not real marketing, whatever, but I would say.
248 00:23:09.340 ⇒ 00:23:09.800 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
249 00:23:09.800 ⇒ 00:23:15.030 Uttam Kumaran: Operations, executive, legal, finance, compliance.
250 00:23:15.340 ⇒ 00:23:19.500 Uttam Kumaran: recruiting, if we can add those departments and add those AORs, that would be helpful.
251 00:23:19.500 ⇒ 00:23:21.090 Lauren Ford: Got it, got it.
252 00:23:21.090 ⇒ 00:23:31.340 Uttam Kumaran: You can go… you can also add too much, and then we can remove them. Okay. I would just want to make sure… I want us to… I want it to be evident the things that we’re not doing is, like, roughly my goal here.
253 00:23:31.860 ⇒ 00:23:32.350 Lauren Ford: Okay.
254 00:23:32.350 ⇒ 00:23:38.929 Uttam Kumaran: I… I… if this… if every… if there are names on every single one of these, and they’re all reported status good.
255 00:23:39.150 ⇒ 00:23:41.760 Uttam Kumaran: that is a complete lie, you know what I mean? Yeah.
256 00:23:41.760 ⇒ 00:23:42.250 Lauren Ford: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
257 00:23:42.250 ⇒ 00:23:55.089 Uttam Kumaran: So, we should be seeing a lot of okay, lagging, blanks, my name everywhere, like, that is actually what will reflect the state of today. Ultimately, again, this goes into…
258 00:23:55.420 ⇒ 00:24:05.040 Uttam Kumaran: When you… when we decide on leveling and titles, when we decide on, who we need,
259 00:24:06.730 ⇒ 00:24:11.110 Uttam Kumaran: This… this should dig… this should be a key input into those decisions.
260 00:24:11.180 ⇒ 00:24:16.549 Uttam Kumaran: In addition to the feeling, right now, I roughly… my calculations on the delivery side
261 00:24:16.600 ⇒ 00:24:32.619 Uttam Kumaran: are more, like… I know, actually, on the delivery side, it’s much more calculated. On the operations side, it’s sort of like, oh, damn, like, nobody’s… I feel like every day, half my stuff doesn’t get done. We should hire somebody. And, like, we could be a little smarter than that, you know, like, on, like, what exactly the responsibilities are.
262 00:24:32.820 ⇒ 00:24:46.399 Uttam Kumaran: does… do we think that… what basket of responsibilities… like, if we find someone that can live in both, can we give them a basket of responsibilities? Like, that’s… those are the conversations I think I want to start having versus, like.
263 00:24:46.620 ⇒ 00:24:50.200 Uttam Kumaran: We just need somebody who’s good at getting stuff done, you know?
264 00:24:50.200 ⇒ 00:25:02.989 Lauren Ford: Right, right, that doesn’t mean anything. Yeah, it needs to be… yeah, okay. I think what I’m gonna need to do is, because I just don’t have enough context on what isn’t getting done yet, because I’m so on the outside.
265 00:25:02.990 ⇒ 00:25:13.950 Lauren Ford: if it’s okay with you, maybe I’ll start speaking to, like, your key people to see what they see on their side. I’m sure they would have more insights into, like, what’s consistently being missed, right?
266 00:25:14.580 ⇒ 00:25:16.770 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, you can call every single person.
267 00:25:16.770 ⇒ 00:25:17.200 Lauren Ford: I’m sorry.
268 00:25:17.200 ⇒ 00:25:18.430 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, no problem.
269 00:25:18.430 ⇒ 00:25:20.380 Lauren Ford: I’ll do a little retro on it.
270 00:25:20.630 ⇒ 00:25:26.029 Uttam Kumaran: They’re all great people, everybody’s great, so they’ll pick up your phone and say hi, they’re all wonderful people, yeah.
271 00:25:26.030 ⇒ 00:25:29.389 Lauren Ford: Yeah. Okay, cool. So I’ll try to find some time with them.
272 00:25:29.580 ⇒ 00:25:33.890 Lauren Ford: Where I can, and then figure out
273 00:25:34.000 ⇒ 00:25:37.459 Lauren Ford: What… what sort of things are… are missing at the moment.
274 00:25:37.980 ⇒ 00:25:38.880 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
275 00:25:40.180 ⇒ 00:25:42.510 Lauren Ford: What else is on your mind?
276 00:25:44.380 ⇒ 00:25:45.300 Uttam Kumaran: Or we can go.
277 00:25:45.300 ⇒ 00:25:48.639 Lauren Ford: through the Notion doc, the, like, onboarding thing, too.
278 00:25:50.380 ⇒ 00:25:55.499 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, was there anything in… was there anything in… yeah, maybe we can go through that and see if there’s anything…
279 00:25:55.500 ⇒ 00:25:56.190 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
280 00:25:56.440 ⇒ 00:26:03.169 Lauren Ford: I had some questions, too, so one other on the, because it was in there, there was something about…
281 00:26:03.440 ⇒ 00:26:07.050 Lauren Ford: Okay, let me find… let me pull this up before I continue talking.
282 00:26:10.480 ⇒ 00:26:13.729 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and I didn’t… I didn’t check the leveling thing either yet.
283 00:26:16.810 ⇒ 00:26:21.049 Lauren Ford: Yeah, I might have… I mean, there’s also a chance I answered the wrong question, but the level.
284 00:26:21.050 ⇒ 00:26:23.889 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, no, this one, you were… I, like, glanced at it, it’s actually, like.
285 00:26:23.890 ⇒ 00:26:24.440 Lauren Ford: Okay.
286 00:26:24.440 ⇒ 00:26:25.810 Uttam Kumaran: Exactly right, I just.
287 00:26:25.810 ⇒ 00:26:26.240 Lauren Ford: Okay.
288 00:26:26.240 ⇒ 00:26:26.950 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I need to…
289 00:26:26.950 ⇒ 00:26:29.450 Lauren Ford: I basically stole a bunch of stuff from GitLabs, but…
290 00:26:29.450 ⇒ 00:26:33.330 Uttam Kumaran: No, that’s it. Yeah, they’ve crushed it. That’s exactly what we should do. Yeah, I don’t want.
291 00:26:33.330 ⇒ 00:26:33.740 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
292 00:26:33.740 ⇒ 00:26:34.460 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t want.
293 00:26:34.460 ⇒ 00:26:44.639 Lauren Ford: Yeah, exactly. I think it’s, like, just figuring out… and I did a check on it to see, like, if we can check it against some of the resources to see.
294 00:26:44.640 ⇒ 00:26:50.420 Uttam Kumaran: No, and also we can… we can call… I can call everybody in all of our… all of our team is, like, extremely…
295 00:26:50.690 ⇒ 00:26:57.280 Uttam Kumaran: good about this kind of conversation, so we can call them and be like, does this roughly seem accurate? Like, nobody…
296 00:26:57.570 ⇒ 00:27:00.870 Uttam Kumaran: Nobody will be, like, Yeah, I…
297 00:27:00.870 ⇒ 00:27:01.350 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
298 00:27:01.350 ⇒ 00:27:07.829 Uttam Kumaran: I would say, like, that’s another thing I just tried to be really open with with folks here, is just, like, how we calculate
299 00:27:08.000 ⇒ 00:27:17.540 Uttam Kumaran: rates, how much money the company’s making, why we price a certain way. The thing that I think we don’t do a good job on is, like, structured
300 00:27:17.750 ⇒ 00:27:29.569 Uttam Kumaran: structured, like, feedback cadences, and then, like, promotion cycles, like, rate adjustment cycles, effectively, at all. So that’s… that would be the next thing about recruiting.
301 00:27:29.830 ⇒ 00:27:31.350 Uttam Kumaran: And retention.
302 00:27:31.500 ⇒ 00:27:38.130 Uttam Kumaran: Right, so on the retention side, for me, it’s important to think about How are we doing…
303 00:27:38.820 ⇒ 00:27:43.099 Uttam Kumaran: quarterly… I mean, I would prefer to do quarterly at our size.
304 00:27:43.290 ⇒ 00:27:46.929 Uttam Kumaran: Reviews for every single person.
305 00:27:47.570 ⇒ 00:27:48.170 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
306 00:27:48.990 ⇒ 00:27:53.720 Uttam Kumaran: And… The other thing is, like, I would like to think about a cadence
307 00:27:53.980 ⇒ 00:27:59.000 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe once we have the leveling guide done on… Like, rate adjustment cycles.
308 00:27:59.160 ⇒ 00:27:59.650 Uttam Kumaran: That’s a.
309 00:27:59.650 ⇒ 00:28:00.600 Lauren Ford: Great idea.
310 00:28:01.020 ⇒ 00:28:02.380 Uttam Kumaran: And then…
311 00:28:03.210 ⇒ 00:28:10.159 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, this is also something that we’re, like, roughly… yeah, and this is another conversation we’re having with a lot of people, is like.
312 00:28:10.530 ⇒ 00:28:29.399 Uttam Kumaran: the concept, like, at what point is, like, full-time, structured, like, monthly amount available, you know, from Brainforge, right? So most of our people start hourly, and then as we work and think that there’s gonna be longevity and we trust people, there is opportunity to move towards, like, a fixed monthly rate.
313 00:28:29.650 ⇒ 00:28:37.999 Uttam Kumaran: That doesn’t mean people don’t stop tracking their hours, but it’s just… it’s more stable for folks. And I would like us to have an opinion on…
314 00:28:38.300 ⇒ 00:28:41.639 Uttam Kumaran: what… Like, what… how people get there.
315 00:28:43.050 ⇒ 00:28:51.010 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, is that a timing thing? Is that an impact thing? And then additionally, yes, like, I want to give clarity to everybody.
316 00:28:51.130 ⇒ 00:28:56.199 Uttam Kumaran: On when they can expect at least a conversation about rate adjustments.
317 00:28:56.200 ⇒ 00:28:57.500 Lauren Ford: Mmm.
318 00:28:57.500 ⇒ 00:29:08.670 Uttam Kumaran: Versus, I just get pinged that people wanna… they’re like, can I make more money? And that’s, like, that’s just, like, not, I just… I don’t… and also, there’s probably people who aren’t pinging me, but are thinking that.
319 00:29:08.890 ⇒ 00:29:09.820 Uttam Kumaran: You know, so…
320 00:29:10.500 ⇒ 00:29:23.329 Uttam Kumaran: And the people that are doing really great, like, they should be making more money. I have no problem with that. It’s just, also, I’m just gonna forget, it’s just not something I think about every day, so… Yeah, of course. I wanna give people that, that, like, at least…
321 00:29:23.840 ⇒ 00:29:28.040 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, we don’t have a lot of middle management, as you can see, and there’s not, like, a lot of, like.
322 00:29:28.730 ⇒ 00:29:39.189 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know if we’re gonna have that for a while, so I’ll know everybody, so at least 6 months or whatever, if at least I can make sure to have a conversation with everybody on that, that may be fine, but…
323 00:29:39.480 ⇒ 00:29:44.800 Uttam Kumaran: Again, like, retention, and retention and…
324 00:29:46.160 ⇒ 00:29:51.770 Uttam Kumaran: I would say retention and leveling the people up that we have, is…
325 00:29:52.420 ⇒ 00:29:55.369 Uttam Kumaran: More important than getting new people.
326 00:29:56.280 ⇒ 00:29:56.730 Lauren Ford: Hmm.
327 00:29:56.730 ⇒ 00:29:59.190 Uttam Kumaran: Meaning, getting new people is still important.
328 00:29:59.400 ⇒ 00:30:02.990 Uttam Kumaran: But taking those people from when they walk in the door is, like.
329 00:30:03.490 ⇒ 00:30:06.259 Uttam Kumaran: a B-B to, like, an A…
330 00:30:06.380 ⇒ 00:30:11.329 Uttam Kumaran: A+, is… is, like, the highest ROI activity that
331 00:30:11.820 ⇒ 00:30:19.940 Uttam Kumaran: this crew could do. Because that directly impacts our ability to slot them into higher billable activities.
332 00:30:20.260 ⇒ 00:30:27.770 Uttam Kumaran: directly impacts their ability to hand off more senior responsibility for them, and more than likely, we… we…
333 00:30:28.240 ⇒ 00:30:34.140 Uttam Kumaran: like, the… our budgets don’t get hit linearly for those increases in expertise, right? Like…
334 00:30:34.490 ⇒ 00:30:35.100 Uttam Kumaran: So…
335 00:30:35.620 ⇒ 00:30:48.560 Uttam Kumaran: I… I am so concerned with the fact that there are people on our team that are capable of way more, and we just, like, are not getting them. There’s just… there’s a gap that we can bridge as, like, a ops crew or whatever, right? So…
336 00:30:48.890 ⇒ 00:30:53.650 Uttam Kumaran: There are people here that perform at the level of 2 or 3 people.
337 00:30:53.920 ⇒ 00:31:02.580 Uttam Kumaran: We may have had to recruit 3 other people, unless I had just given that person more responsibility, so it was, like, so obvious, you know?
338 00:31:02.580 ⇒ 00:31:20.050 Lauren Ford: Nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah, and when you do move them to a monthly, are you doing… everybody’s still, 1099, right? Or whatever it is globally? Okay, no one… we’re not doing benefits or anything of that. Okay, great, yeah.
339 00:31:20.050 ⇒ 00:31:20.710 Uttam Kumaran: No, no.
340 00:31:21.040 ⇒ 00:31:21.819 Lauren Ford: Okay, great.
341 00:31:22.070 ⇒ 00:31:25.239 Lauren Ford: Yeah, mainly what… mainly what it is, is we moved to just, like.
342 00:31:25.530 ⇒ 00:31:30.450 Uttam Kumaran: Brave Forge agrees to pay X amount per month, bi-weekly, or whatever.
343 00:31:30.670 ⇒ 00:31:36.199 Uttam Kumaran: And then, yeah, I mean, similarly with our, legal team and with our finance team.
344 00:31:36.760 ⇒ 00:31:44.340 Uttam Kumaran: they… they’ve said the same thing that you say, it’s just like, be careful, and I’m like, yeah. So… so we… it’s pretty clear in the contract.
345 00:31:44.540 ⇒ 00:31:51.919 Uttam Kumaran: what it… what it is and what it isn’t, and then… but yeah, and… and… yeah, so this is… this is, again, like, for, at least for,
346 00:31:53.240 ⇒ 00:32:00.409 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, this is something, again, probably Q1 or Q2 next year, we’ll start to think… at that point, we will have some people that have been with us
347 00:32:01.310 ⇒ 00:32:03.719 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe… a year and a half?
348 00:32:04.070 ⇒ 00:32:04.550 Lauren Ford: Nice!
349 00:32:04.550 ⇒ 00:32:10.440 Uttam Kumaran: Or at least there’ll be a bunch of people that have been there for a year, maybe a year and a half, so then it’s worth being, okay, like.
350 00:32:11.380 ⇒ 00:32:15.689 Uttam Kumaran: How do we make sure this person’s happy and they want to stick with us longer, you know?
351 00:32:18.880 ⇒ 00:32:19.780 Lauren Ford: Totally.
352 00:32:20.060 ⇒ 00:32:23.770 Lauren Ford: That makes sense. Okay, cool.
353 00:32:24.040 ⇒ 00:32:25.570 Lauren Ford: I’m pulling back.
354 00:32:26.490 ⇒ 00:32:28.450 Lauren Ford: Onboarding, so…
355 00:32:30.050 ⇒ 00:32:37.409 Lauren Ford: We… I did look at a thing you could plug into Slack if you wanted to start getting, like… it’s basically like a suggestion box.
356 00:32:37.950 ⇒ 00:32:44.470 Lauren Ford: Bot, but I mean, I think the bot… the, like, Slack plugin bots are, like.
357 00:32:44.850 ⇒ 00:32:51.860 Lauren Ford: a great thing and a terrible thing, because sometimes people just don’t engage with them at all, as I’m sure you’ve seen.
358 00:32:51.860 ⇒ 00:32:56.099 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think more of what I’d be interested in, and this is, like, I think you’ll probably have to…
359 00:32:56.640 ⇒ 00:33:03.019 Uttam Kumaran: See a couple more weeks is just, like, moving a lot of asks to workflows that auto-populate in linear.
360 00:33:03.550 ⇒ 00:33:05.020 Lauren Ford: Oh, cool. Okay.
361 00:33:05.020 ⇒ 00:33:09.310 Uttam Kumaran: Like, there’s people, like, for example, for marketing, there’s, like.
362 00:33:09.800 ⇒ 00:33:19.500 Uttam Kumaran: always request for diagrams, case studies, like, a template for something. All of those, like, should be forms, but they should be, like, Slack forms that then.
363 00:33:20.090 ⇒ 00:33:24.829 Uttam Kumaran: get submitted to that team. So there are these, like… or, for example, like, a new client came in.
364 00:33:25.490 ⇒ 00:33:28.069 Uttam Kumaran: Someone, whoever sells that deal, should submit
365 00:33:28.760 ⇒ 00:33:33.580 Uttam Kumaran: A form, so that ops can know what the ops gets pinged, like, set all this stuff up.
366 00:33:33.820 ⇒ 00:33:40.180 Uttam Kumaran: Finance gets pinged, do all the stuff, delivery gets pinged with their portion. That should come to a… that should come through a Slack form.
367 00:33:40.320 ⇒ 00:33:44.220 Uttam Kumaran: And that’s, like, that, I think, like, we can do a lot more with Slack workflows.
368 00:33:44.330 ⇒ 00:33:49.410 Uttam Kumaran: And the other thing is, like, you actually probably don’t even have to…
369 00:33:49.610 ⇒ 00:34:04.239 Uttam Kumaran: I would say more of what’s important here is, like, what you want the workflow to do. The AI team will help you build whatever you want on planet Earth, in terms of, like, a workflow. So more of, like, what I need this crew to think more about is, like, what workflows do we need? Don’t get… don’t worry about how.
370 00:34:04.390 ⇒ 00:34:07.789 Uttam Kumaran: They’ll… they’ll give you 100,000 ways to do it, you know?
371 00:34:07.790 ⇒ 00:34:08.389 Lauren Ford: Okay.
372 00:34:10.210 ⇒ 00:34:14.209 Uttam Kumaran: I think you’ll see them, and you can tell I’m tagging you in different areas, you’ll start to see the…
373 00:34:14.920 ⇒ 00:34:20.020 Lauren Ford: Yeah, start typing in anything that you notice being, like, excessively manual.
374 00:34:20.969 ⇒ 00:34:21.589 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, okay.
375 00:34:21.590 ⇒ 00:34:25.420 Lauren Ford: That’s the part that I, like, I just don’t see behind that curtain yet, so…
376 00:34:25.750 ⇒ 00:34:30.389 Lauren Ford: I can start, like, looking at it, and then being like, okay, I’m seeing…
377 00:34:30.860 ⇒ 00:34:37.059 Lauren Ford: I’m seeing that this is taking 5 million emails instead of one zap or whatever. Okay.
378 00:34:43.290 ⇒ 00:34:44.080 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
379 00:34:44.380 ⇒ 00:34:49.020 Lauren Ford: And then you mentioned for next week, yeah, I mean, I guess even candidly, I think you’re crushing it.
380 00:34:49.150 ⇒ 00:34:53.399 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, I think… I think, like, I would love… I mean.
381 00:34:53.760 ⇒ 00:35:02.059 Uttam Kumaran: I know you’re starting at this other company next week. I would love for us to at least do, like, another week or two, and then let me just figure out… one, we’re having a great
382 00:35:02.390 ⇒ 00:35:06.350 Uttam Kumaran: Seemingly, this should be our best month we’ve ever done.
383 00:35:06.520 ⇒ 00:35:07.220 Lauren Ford: That’s awesome!
384 00:35:07.220 ⇒ 00:35:25.499 Uttam Kumaran: to last month, and next to the month before that, so I really feel pretty confident that we should have budget, and so I would love to, like… I still think we’re on the path towards… I feel really confident that if we’re able to keep making really good progress here, then I think we could definitely put together, like, an opportunity, so…
385 00:35:25.520 ⇒ 00:35:27.730 Lauren Ford: Okay. That’s what I’m… Yeah, that’s what I’m totally open.
386 00:35:27.730 ⇒ 00:35:28.250 Uttam Kumaran: So…
387 00:35:28.660 ⇒ 00:35:35.399 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’s what I’m driving for, but I also think, like, still continue to meet everybody, and then I know you’re starting your other.
388 00:35:35.750 ⇒ 00:35:36.270 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
389 00:35:36.270 ⇒ 00:35:42.060 Uttam Kumaran: So, it’s… it’s what… it’s what you can… it’s what you feel comfortable doing, but, like.
390 00:35:42.060 ⇒ 00:35:44.640 Lauren Ford: It’s been so tremendous this week, like, I…
391 00:35:44.640 ⇒ 00:36:04.199 Lauren Ford: Cool, yeah, I really love working with you guys. You’re awesome, you’re, like, moving so many things. I just want to make sure that, like, yeah, yeah, we’ll keep going and then see what seems possible. If nothing else, the thing that I would also think about doing is if I work for this company, they have this big project that they want me to do because I’ve already done it.
392 00:36:04.530 ⇒ 00:36:09.969 Lauren Ford: just so boring, but I… I kind of feel like I should do that for them before I leave.
393 00:36:09.970 ⇒ 00:36:10.429 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
394 00:36:10.430 ⇒ 00:36:12.600 Lauren Ford: Okay, okay.
395 00:36:12.600 ⇒ 00:36:18.419 Uttam Kumaran: No, that’s also fine. So, like, if you even… if you even have those… once you get in, you just let me know, like, what you’re thinking.
396 00:36:18.790 ⇒ 00:36:29.169 Uttam Kumaran: You know, because the other thing is, like, we can always get, like, one more person to assist, like, with just day-to-day operations, like, coordination, and, like.
397 00:36:29.440 ⇒ 00:36:38.979 Uttam Kumaran: we still decide, like, what the roadmap is. More of what I kind of need as, like, a thought partner who could kind of, like, give the operational leadership, and then, yeah, as soon…
398 00:36:39.740 ⇒ 00:36:40.060 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
399 00:36:40.060 ⇒ 00:36:43.289 Uttam Kumaran: If we can figure something out, then that would be great.
400 00:36:43.530 ⇒ 00:36:46.899 Lauren Ford: And I just want you to be able to see, like, sort of the whole…
401 00:36:47.030 ⇒ 00:36:55.750 Uttam Kumaran: ecosystem of what we’re doing, and, like, yeah, this is just a one slice of the company, so there’s… this is, like, what’s happening across every single part of the org, is, like.
402 00:36:55.930 ⇒ 00:36:58.640 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, there’s, like, a hundred things we need to, like…
403 00:36:59.290 ⇒ 00:37:02.390 Uttam Kumaran: Pick up from the closet and, like, figure out now, so…
404 00:37:03.130 ⇒ 00:37:08.449 Lauren Ford: It’s amazing what you guys have built, though, like, truly, like, you have so much structure for being…
405 00:37:08.980 ⇒ 00:37:10.620 Lauren Ford: so, like…
406 00:37:10.620 ⇒ 00:37:23.120 Uttam Kumaran: Absolutely, like, small, so small, and, like, so early. Yeah, yeah. Because why not? I don’t know, why not? You should have that. What are we gonna do? That’s the reason we’re here, I feel like, you know, it’s not the other way around.
407 00:37:23.240 ⇒ 00:37:24.310 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
408 00:37:24.570 ⇒ 00:37:28.200 Uttam Kumaran: Without that, I wouldn’t have been able to attract all these smart people,
409 00:37:28.200 ⇒ 00:37:29.040 Lauren Ford: That’s awesome.
410 00:37:29.040 ⇒ 00:37:38.109 Uttam Kumaran: be like, this is a mess. Instead, they’re like, okay, this is, like, a mess, like, I can… I could see the vision here, and I know it’ll get cleaned up.
411 00:37:38.740 ⇒ 00:37:57.320 Lauren Ford: Yeah, I… yeah, I think that also for your onboarding can help, like, we can talk about that down the road, but, like, how can you, like, find the best of the best? Like, in the same way that Robert shared that sales call, like, what is the best of the best that you can share about your company, that you can put into, like.
412 00:37:58.140 ⇒ 00:37:59.269 Uttam Kumaran: Totally. Oh, yeah.
413 00:37:59.270 ⇒ 00:38:14.300 Lauren Ford: Where it’s like, this is your checklist, like, read through these things, you’re gonna understand what problems we’re solving and why, and, like, why we… like, I think all the why behind BrainForge will help, like, get people sort of ignited about it, from the.
414 00:38:14.300 ⇒ 00:38:20.279 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and honestly, I would share anything that’s non-confidential. I would share that out. That would be, like, recruiting
415 00:38:20.400 ⇒ 00:38:23.360 Uttam Kumaran: marketing, be like, this is why you should work for us.
416 00:38:23.580 ⇒ 00:38:27.840 Uttam Kumaran: And a lot of companies are shy to do stuff, I don’t really get it at all.
417 00:38:27.980 ⇒ 00:38:39.809 Uttam Kumaran: like, they’re shy, they want everything… like, a lot of candidates come to the pipeline, they don’t know anything about, like, the place they’re applying to, and I get it, right? Because you kind of just apply online, but…
418 00:38:40.400 ⇒ 00:38:46.330 Uttam Kumaran: We’re expecting, like, very few people to make it, and so… I think even…
419 00:38:46.510 ⇒ 00:38:52.720 Uttam Kumaran: asking the question of, hey, did you read… did you, like, check out our website and read the thing? And if they’re like, no, I’m like.
420 00:38:52.870 ⇒ 00:39:02.719 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, it’s probably, like, not gonna… this is probably not gonna work, right? Most of the people, I would say, usually that we’ve gone that are great, they’re like, oh, I read every single thing.
421 00:39:02.820 ⇒ 00:39:03.799 Uttam Kumaran: That you’ve ever put out.
422 00:39:03.800 ⇒ 00:39:07.310 Lauren Ford: Okay, so you want that built into the… even the pipeline itself, okay.
423 00:39:07.490 ⇒ 00:39:12.270 Uttam Kumaran: Well, I just think it’s another way to filter. Like, for the people that do take the time.
424 00:39:12.360 ⇒ 00:39:13.710 Lauren Ford: Yeah. They should get…
425 00:39:14.040 ⇒ 00:39:21.039 Uttam Kumaran: first in line, right? Because there, it shows a level of, like, okay, I’m gonna go all in.
426 00:39:21.550 ⇒ 00:39:32.829 Uttam Kumaran: on something, I’m gonna take it very seriously. And again, I think the problem we’re gonna have without full-time recruiting staff is filtering. And so I have to… I wanna have, like.
427 00:39:33.060 ⇒ 00:39:35.800 Uttam Kumaran: These very tight mechanisms by which we, like.
428 00:39:36.570 ⇒ 00:39:48.510 Uttam Kumaran: we, like, say, okay, maybe this isn’t gonna work out. And the other way is, like, similarly, we find people with the right stuff, we identify them up front. I don’t know, I don’t know at what point we’ll have full-time recruiting staff, and it’s another area which it’s, like.
429 00:39:48.620 ⇒ 00:39:52.180 Uttam Kumaran: really… It’s kind of like pure cost center.
430 00:39:52.430 ⇒ 00:39:59.790 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. You know, and I don’t know, I feel like… we… I don’t necessarily know…
431 00:40:01.400 ⇒ 00:40:06.930 Uttam Kumaran: right now, whether we need that, or whether we will, because I think you have a mix of great
432 00:40:07.190 ⇒ 00:40:10.999 Uttam Kumaran: Executors in different parts of the business that lend some of their time to recruiting.
433 00:40:11.120 ⇒ 00:40:15.949 Uttam Kumaran: And then folks like us that coordinate, and then some of these, like, AI or ASIC processes.
434 00:40:17.320 ⇒ 00:40:26.570 Uttam Kumaran: it could work, like, I don’t… I don’t… I think we’ll push the… push that timeline off to where we need, like, really senior recruiting people. We’re not recruiting… we’re not that big of a team, you know?
435 00:40:27.030 ⇒ 00:40:34.019 Lauren Ford: Yeah, I mean, a lot of people even start with, like, the contingency recruiters, which are such a rip-off, but, like, it’ll get you from.
436 00:40:34.020 ⇒ 00:40:34.750 Uttam Kumaran: No, I know.
437 00:40:34.750 ⇒ 00:40:35.410 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
438 00:40:35.410 ⇒ 00:40:39.250 Uttam Kumaran: Totally, and we have a bunch of those channels, too, like, we have a bunch of people that, like.
439 00:40:39.530 ⇒ 00:40:46.070 Uttam Kumaran: That, like, we’re our friends of the company that run those, like, recruiting agencies in different parts of the world, and…
440 00:40:46.460 ⇒ 00:40:50.449 Lauren Ford: And again, when we put a job, I actually just bat-signal it to everybody.
441 00:40:50.460 ⇒ 00:40:55.520 Uttam Kumaran: Because the lovely thing about those guys is they’ll… they’ll send you stuff, even… you don’t have to pay a dime.
442 00:40:55.690 ⇒ 00:40:58.770 Uttam Kumaran: Because they hope that you… right? And so I send it to…
443 00:40:58.770 ⇒ 00:40:59.410 Lauren Ford: Everybody…
444 00:40:59.410 ⇒ 00:41:02.650 Uttam Kumaran: Everybody… everybody works for us in that moment.
445 00:41:02.850 ⇒ 00:41:03.330 Lauren Ford: Yeah.
446 00:41:03.330 ⇒ 00:41:03.650 Uttam Kumaran: Right?
447 00:41:03.650 ⇒ 00:41:04.340 Lauren Ford: True.
448 00:41:04.640 ⇒ 00:41:14.890 Uttam Kumaran: And at that point, we find… and then I’m like, okay, at least I’ll get, like, 100 resumes, and then if something really works out, but that’s the way we’re, like, pushing that cost up to, like.
449 00:41:14.890 ⇒ 00:41:16.799 Lauren Ford: Those guys, you know?
450 00:41:17.120 ⇒ 00:41:18.939 Lauren Ford: Yeah, yeah.
451 00:41:19.150 ⇒ 00:41:20.490 Lauren Ford: That’s awesome!
452 00:41:20.930 ⇒ 00:41:27.029 Lauren Ford: I mean, it’s… it’s definitely… I think, like, also, it’s a good market for it right now, like, so many people are.
453 00:41:27.030 ⇒ 00:41:27.680 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
454 00:41:27.680 ⇒ 00:41:31.130 Lauren Ford: It’s like, you don’t even have to… Yes. You can just, like, coast with it.
455 00:41:31.130 ⇒ 00:41:32.429 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
456 00:41:32.590 ⇒ 00:41:39.639 Lauren Ford: Cool. Well, I know we’re over time, so I don’t want to take you too much later, but, for next week.
457 00:41:39.890 ⇒ 00:41:48.690 Lauren Ford: So next week will be the async thing. I’ll check in probably, after the end of the day, which is, like, 5.30 on.
458 00:41:48.690 ⇒ 00:42:00.260 Lauren Ford: just see what’s going on. It’ll be, it’ll probably be the lightest on Monday, Tuesday, because that’ll probably be the heaviest with my onboarding for the new role. Yeah. But we can,
459 00:42:00.380 ⇒ 00:42:05.689 Lauren Ford: Touch base if you want to do any kind of, like, meetings, or if it’s easier for you to do, like, a meeting…
460 00:42:05.870 ⇒ 00:42:10.520 Lauren Ford: Well, no, you’re an hour before me, so it’s… it’d be easier to do it.
461 00:42:10.520 ⇒ 00:42:14.799 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, Rico and I, I feel like we’re usually on until 6, 7 central.
462 00:42:14.870 ⇒ 00:42:19.729 Lauren Ford: Okay. So, more than enough time, like, we’ll have at least overlap, and so if we want to do something.
463 00:42:19.900 ⇒ 00:42:25.360 Uttam Kumaran: towards the… towards the end of the day on Monday, we could do that.
464 00:42:26.540 ⇒ 00:42:31.429 Uttam Kumaran: like, maybe, Rico, we can even move our, like, ops meeting to later in the day.
465 00:42:33.920 ⇒ 00:42:36.140 Lauren Ford: I could do 5.30 on Monday, for sure.
466 00:42:37.010 ⇒ 00:42:37.660 Lauren Ford: If that helps?
467 00:42:37.660 ⇒ 00:42:38.890 Uttam Kumaran: What do you think, Rico?
468 00:42:41.210 ⇒ 00:42:44.130 Lauren Ford: He’s like, that’s 6.30am in the Philippines.
469 00:42:44.130 ⇒ 00:42:57.219 Uttam Kumaran: No, I mean, I’ve told… believe me, I told… I’ve told Rico and all… everybody to get some sleeves every time, so I, but both of us are usually on, so…
470 00:42:57.220 ⇒ 00:43:08.590 Lauren Ford: Okay, yeah, if you guys are willing, that’s cool, and then as you’re thinking of projects, I’m sure you work through the weekend, but, like, just dump them somewhere, maybe in the onboarding dock, and…
471 00:43:08.590 ⇒ 00:43:26.040 Lauren Ford: That’ll give me something to focus on, because I will say, I’ve, like, worked through the things that I knew where I had a pretty good idea of what you needed, and now I’m onto the stuff that I’m like, I don’t know if he means X or Y, and so then I have more, questions, which takes longer. Definitely. But I can also just dump in all the questions, yeah.
472 00:43:26.040 ⇒ 00:43:27.520 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay, okay.
473 00:43:27.520 ⇒ 00:43:28.080 Lauren Ford: Cool.
474 00:43:28.710 ⇒ 00:43:29.460 Uttam Kumaran: Perfect.
475 00:43:30.100 ⇒ 00:43:31.670 Lauren Ford: Great! Okay.
476 00:43:31.670 ⇒ 00:43:32.330 Uttam Kumaran: Thank you so much.
477 00:43:32.690 ⇒ 00:43:36.959 Lauren Ford: Thanks, Rico! Yeah, I appreciate it. I hope you get some sleep at some point.
478 00:43:36.960 ⇒ 00:43:41.439 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, you, Rico, that’s why she’s talking to you.
479 00:43:41.440 ⇒ 00:43:44.410 Lauren Ford: I am. Okay, good luck.
480 00:43:44.410 ⇒ 00:43:44.770 Uttam Kumaran: Alright.
481 00:43:44.770 ⇒ 00:43:46.430 Lauren Ford: that, too. Okay.
482 00:43:46.430 ⇒ 00:43:47.140 Rico Rejoso: Guys.