Meeting Title: GTM Planning + Kickoff Date: 2025-11-10 Meeting participants: Uttam Kumaran, Holly Condos, Hannah Wang, Michele, Rico Rejoso, Joseph Good, Ryan Brosas, Robert Tseng
WEBVTT
1 00:00:20.430 ⇒ 00:00:21.900 Holly Condos: Hey, how are you?
2 00:00:22.940 ⇒ 00:00:24.020 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, good!
3 00:00:28.510 ⇒ 00:00:29.489 Holly Condos: How’s the weather?
4 00:00:30.660 ⇒ 00:00:32.670 Uttam Kumaran: Weather is finally cold.
5 00:00:33.010 ⇒ 00:00:33.660 Holly Condos: And…
6 00:00:33.660 ⇒ 00:00:38.179 Uttam Kumaran: It’ll be cold for, like, 2 months here, which is nice. We were just in Boulder.
7 00:00:39.190 ⇒ 00:00:42.040 Uttam Kumaran: weekend, and it was really nice there, so…
8 00:00:42.040 ⇒ 00:00:43.520 Holly Condos: What were you doing in Boulder?
9 00:00:43.850 ⇒ 00:00:49.469 Uttam Kumaran: We were just getting out of town. My birthday and my girlfriend’s birthday are within, like, a week.
10 00:00:50.250 ⇒ 00:00:52.669 Uttam Kumaran: So, we just were like, let’s just go somewhere.
11 00:00:53.290 ⇒ 00:00:53.850 Holly Condos: I love it.
12 00:00:53.850 ⇒ 00:00:54.710 Uttam Kumaran: Spend some time.
13 00:00:54.710 ⇒ 00:00:56.389 Holly Condos: I’m from Colorado, you know.
14 00:00:56.710 ⇒ 00:00:57.819 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, really? Where?
15 00:00:58.450 ⇒ 00:01:07.089 Holly Condos: Born and raised in Denver. I went to George Washington High School, and all my relatives and almost all of my high school friends went to CU.
16 00:01:07.490 ⇒ 00:01:12.549 Uttam Kumaran: No way! Well, you ended up on the other… you ended up on other coasts, right? Not…
17 00:01:12.550 ⇒ 00:01:20.320 Holly Condos: Well, I was like, I am bucking this trend, getting out of Dodge, going somewhere else to another state.
18 00:01:20.890 ⇒ 00:01:25.170 Holly Condos: So I did, yeah. But I was just there for a wedding in August.
19 00:01:25.780 ⇒ 00:01:26.930 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, great!
20 00:01:26.930 ⇒ 00:01:27.880 Holly Condos: In Boulder.
21 00:01:28.120 ⇒ 00:01:37.330 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, Colorado’s an interesting culture, like, I was telling my girlfriend, like, yeah, there is sort of, like, the boonies, there’s also, like, Denver.
22 00:01:37.610 ⇒ 00:01:46.740 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, we went, like, sort of into the mountains a little bit to go see some breweries and stuff, and it’s just, like, yeah, interesting.
23 00:01:47.420 ⇒ 00:01:50.740 Uttam Kumaran: interesting, like, mix of people in Colorado.
24 00:01:51.210 ⇒ 00:02:05.430 Holly Condos: It has… it has really grown, I would say, over the last, maybe 10 years. So, the space between, like, Denver itself, the city, and Boulder, it used to just be, like.
25 00:02:05.650 ⇒ 00:02:07.969 Holly Condos: Fields and tumbleweeds.
26 00:02:08.310 ⇒ 00:02:10.460 Holly Condos: And now it’s all people.
27 00:02:11.130 ⇒ 00:02:12.250 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
28 00:02:12.250 ⇒ 00:02:18.110 Holly Condos: Not a lot, but it’s a cool… it’s a cool town, but yeah, there’s a very large mix of
29 00:02:18.450 ⇒ 00:02:20.790 Holly Condos: People, politically, culturally…
30 00:02:20.790 ⇒ 00:02:21.420 Uttam Kumaran: S.
31 00:02:21.670 ⇒ 00:02:22.989 Holly Condos: It’s very diverse.
32 00:02:23.360 ⇒ 00:02:24.130 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
33 00:02:25.970 ⇒ 00:02:28.329 Holly Condos: Okay, let me see about putting my camera on.
34 00:02:33.080 ⇒ 00:02:43.320 Uttam Kumaran: Cool, and then I have, Mickey here, a buddy of mine who’s… Hannah knows, that me and him were talking a little bit the last two weeks.
35 00:02:43.560 ⇒ 00:02:46.910 Uttam Kumaran: About, you know, some stuff on video and partnerships.
36 00:02:48.340 ⇒ 00:02:56.319 Uttam Kumaran: And, you know, it kind of goes in line with how we’re planning on working with partners, so we can probably present a little bit toward the end.
37 00:02:56.550 ⇒ 00:02:57.400 Uttam Kumaran: Perfect.
38 00:02:57.990 ⇒ 00:02:58.630 Holly Condos: Becky.
39 00:03:00.300 ⇒ 00:03:01.859 Michele: Hi, Ali, good to meet you.
40 00:03:02.040 ⇒ 00:03:03.270 Holly Condos: Good to meet you, too.
41 00:03:04.900 ⇒ 00:03:05.520 Holly Condos: There we go.
42 00:03:05.520 ⇒ 00:03:06.120 Michele: unique.
43 00:03:11.620 ⇒ 00:03:12.290 Holly Condos: I don’t know.
44 00:03:16.060 ⇒ 00:03:19.060 Uttam Kumaran: Cool, Robert, I can let you… Take it.
45 00:03:19.060 ⇒ 00:03:21.830 Robert Tseng: Okay. You want Mickey to see everything?
46 00:03:22.820 ⇒ 00:03:32.169 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I don’t mind. I feel like I’ve… I’ve briefed Mickey, sort of, on our piece. I mean, he’s, like, actually… Mickey’s originally a very, very close friend of mine. I’ve known him
47 00:03:32.330 ⇒ 00:03:46.749 Uttam Kumaran: Almost 3 years most of my time here, and kind of knows a little bit about the business. I want him to kind of see, in particular the partnerships angle, who we’re working with, and then it’s kind of going to feed into, like, how we’re maximizing partner marketing. So I just wanted to have him here to sort of see that piece.
48 00:03:47.080 ⇒ 00:03:55.790 Robert Tseng: Okay, probably won’t say too much about partnerships on this call, it’s usually on Wednesdays, but, I mean, if you… yeah, I don’t mind. I guess,
49 00:03:56.030 ⇒ 00:03:59.959 Robert Tseng: Okay, so I’ll just kick it off the way I would normally do.
50 00:04:00.790 ⇒ 00:04:14.269 Robert Tseng: So… okay, we’re gonna just kinda… for those of you… I think this is Joe’s… if you guys haven’t met Joe, Joe’s helping us on GoToMarket. I think he should have already booked time, or…
51 00:04:14.270 ⇒ 00:04:27.339 Robert Tseng: or will be soon, booking time with particularly Hannah and Ryan. So, yeah, I think, yeah, we’re excited to have him here. He’s… he’s been, working on a couple things that I think we’ll be able to
52 00:04:27.430 ⇒ 00:04:44.329 Robert Tseng: talk about later on. But yeah, Joe, typically we start off by just kind of going back to the OKRs that we set at the beginning of the quarter. I kind of pre-screen everything, see if we make any adjustments, and then we kind of just give some updates, so I know where I need to focus my time on in order to support the team.
53 00:04:44.920 ⇒ 00:04:48.869 Robert Tseng: So, yeah, I think, like, a couple things here…
54 00:04:48.960 ⇒ 00:05:05.090 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, you know this objective, and we’re just trying to book meetings for Utam and I. I think the past week has been good. We’ve been… we have booked, 10 plus meetings, and I don’t know, we have… I already took one today, and I guess Utam’s jumping to one soon, so, you know, starting off the week well.
55 00:05:05.340 ⇒ 00:05:11.580 Robert Tseng: But yeah, I would say that, from a top-line perspective, we’re looking at net new
56 00:05:11.690 ⇒ 00:05:17.189 Robert Tseng: pipeline being logged in HubSpot weekly, and so, for those of you that have not
57 00:05:17.710 ⇒ 00:05:27.369 Robert Tseng: on HubSpot in a while. I was just poking around in there earlier. I would say, for the most part, this is mostly Ryan that’s kind of maintaining… oh.
58 00:05:28.390 ⇒ 00:05:29.360 Robert Tseng: I guess.
59 00:05:29.950 ⇒ 00:05:40.410 Robert Tseng: I got logged out, and asked… bit, oh, no.
60 00:05:43.080 ⇒ 00:05:47.699 Robert Tseng: Okay, I guess I’m not gonna pull up HubSpot. I don’t really have, my…
61 00:05:48.140 ⇒ 00:05:50.020 Uttam Kumaran: You can log in with the sale one, too.
62 00:05:50.790 ⇒ 00:05:51.660 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
63 00:05:51.660 ⇒ 00:05:53.309 Uttam Kumaran: There’s a sale at Brainforge.
64 00:05:55.040 ⇒ 00:05:59.420 Robert Tseng: Let’s see… Okay, there we go.
65 00:06:07.750 ⇒ 00:06:12.820 Robert Tseng: Okay, so yeah, I… I look at deals, and I look at in progress.
66 00:06:14.220 ⇒ 00:06:26.100 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I don’t think this is completely up to date, but I do think we added a couple more, so thanks, Ryan, there. Yeah, Trek proposal went out, iCustomer, we’re kind of getting on call with them again.
67 00:06:26.110 ⇒ 00:06:41.350 Robert Tseng: There’s a couple that are missing, so maybe we’ll have to kind of bubble those up back in the… in Slack thread. But yeah, when I look at this, you know, some of these have been sitting here for a while, I don’t consider these net new deals, so actually, from, like, a just top-line,
68 00:06:41.920 ⇒ 00:06:51.329 Robert Tseng: new pipeline, we are… we’re definitely not at… we didn’t… we didn’t… didn’t hit our goal this week. So, I would say this is probably more like…
69 00:06:51.730 ⇒ 00:06:56.320 Robert Tseng: won, so… This is, like, a 10K contract.
70 00:06:56.440 ⇒ 00:07:05.679 Robert Tseng: Probably. So we’re definitely lagging on this. It’s probably more than this one, but, yeah, I think this still continues to be kind of top of mind for me. So,
71 00:07:05.770 ⇒ 00:07:17.160 Robert Tseng: I was thinking that we were gonna go back, and Utam and I were supposed to do circle backs with lost leads. We didn’t end up sending those messages. We sent a couple last week, but I think we’re gonna really hit
72 00:07:17.160 ⇒ 00:07:28.579 Robert Tseng: the full list today, or this week, which is why, Ryan is putting together that list. It should be around 100. I know your initial list came back to me, and it was around 50, so I think that something’s missing in there.
73 00:07:28.860 ⇒ 00:07:32.670 Robert Tseng: But yeah, and along with that, we’re kind of just…
74 00:07:32.790 ⇒ 00:07:39.259 Robert Tseng: Pitching, a couple offers to… to our, our… our… our lost leads.
75 00:07:39.290 ⇒ 00:07:58.779 Robert Tseng: And Joe, I was kind of walking through those earlier, kind of last week into today, and so I actually went back in to this kind of later today to basically, refresh, like, what our active offers are. I haven’t filled in all the details on price ranges and outcomes, but I think if Utam and I can
76 00:07:59.000 ⇒ 00:08:07.090 Robert Tseng: block off time to really just articulate all these things. I think we just need to be… yeah, this team just needs to know, like, what we’re pitching.
77 00:08:07.470 ⇒ 00:08:10.730 Robert Tseng: You’ll… you’ll notice that I’ve kind of…
78 00:08:10.830 ⇒ 00:08:23.859 Robert Tseng: taken off or consolidated. There’s really only one or two, like, AI offers that we’re really consistently pitching at this point, so I’ve told Joe this is kind of where I kind of want him to
79 00:08:23.860 ⇒ 00:08:31.809 Robert Tseng: To focus on, you know, once we kind of onboarded him on to the other data stuff, so you can see how those pitches are going.
80 00:08:31.810 ⇒ 00:08:45.920 Robert Tseng: Because really, that’s… that’s kind of where we’re… we’re lacking maturity in the way that we’re pitching, you know, something that’s, like, consistent and getting a lot of… a lot of hits on. So, yeah, I think, like, ideally, there’s a mix of…
81 00:08:45.970 ⇒ 00:09:04.929 Robert Tseng: offers that we… we’re, you know, these are all fixed price packages. We’re able to execute them in under 30 days. Maybe, like, some of these longer ones, these accelerator kind of tier packages, these are, like, within the first 3 months, and so, you know, I’m trying to limit the list, like, it should be, like, you know, around 5 that we’re actively doing.
82 00:09:05.010 ⇒ 00:09:15.589 Robert Tseng: And anyways, I’ve just kind of rolled it out into… broken it down into the services. And then I guess there used to be a category here that was called, like.
83 00:09:15.770 ⇒ 00:09:33.069 Robert Tseng: reusable ethics, but I’m just gonna push that off. That’s more for the delivery side of the organization to kind of figure out. So, hoping that this will give us more clarity on how to go back and hit the 100 leads with, you know, some combination of these around 5 offers.
84 00:09:33.240 ⇒ 00:09:34.040 Robert Tseng: So…
85 00:09:34.380 ⇒ 00:09:43.170 Uttam Kumaran: I think my… probably my point there, Joe, is that I think I could use your brain on the AI-related offers, in particular.
86 00:09:43.280 ⇒ 00:09:49.659 Uttam Kumaran: The two that I proposed was, like, Chief Automation Officer, which is, like, someone that comes in your business.
87 00:09:49.970 ⇒ 00:09:59.010 Uttam Kumaran: basically, like, looks at everything, proposes not only a roadmap, but probably fixes a couple things. There’s also, like, a big training component. I don’t know, Robert, like, in data…
88 00:09:59.120 ⇒ 00:10:05.999 Uttam Kumaran: we probably could also do, like, a data training thing, but I think in AI, it’s actually much, easier to deliver, and
89 00:10:06.040 ⇒ 00:10:19.749 Uttam Kumaran: really obvious, which is just, like, everybody in your company should be using ChatGBT and, like, basic chat. Second, there’s probably a couple of, like, helpful tools, like Granola, other things that we could roll out as part of, like, a
90 00:10:20.640 ⇒ 00:10:33.310 Uttam Kumaran: AI enablement thing. And then, additionally, my point was that that workshop piece, I don’t think we’ve been getting a lot of love standalone for the workshop. Yep. So I was like, weave it into an offer.
91 00:10:34.160 ⇒ 00:10:43.019 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like, weave that into, like, another thing you’re gonna get is, like, we’re gonna do this, like, really rich workshop with you in addition to those pieces, so I think…
92 00:10:43.550 ⇒ 00:11:01.560 Uttam Kumaran: that’s, like, what I think could be helpful. I mean, my thought process there was, like, if you were to walk into our business and just make sure everybody’s using ChatGPT, like, what do we do? Make sure everybody’s ChatGPT, everybody had granola, we have a prop library, everybody’s trained on, like, within their function, opportunities to use AI,
93 00:11:01.560 ⇒ 00:11:12.780 Uttam Kumaran: things we haven’t done is we don’t have, like, a weekly, how did I use AI meeting or channel that we wanted to do. So there’s, like… I think that’s, like, a wonderful
94 00:11:12.830 ⇒ 00:11:16.019 Uttam Kumaran: Basket of, like, things to deliver for a company, you know?
95 00:11:17.330 ⇒ 00:11:31.840 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, I agree. So, yeah, I think we… definitely the workshop, needs to be consolidated into, like, a bigger, bigger offer. It should be, like, kind of a discovery motion for, like, the next thing that we’re gonna pitch them, so…
96 00:11:32.230 ⇒ 00:11:36.269 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I’m hoping that Joe and I will kind of work through that this week.
97 00:11:36.830 ⇒ 00:11:53.290 Robert Tseng: Couple exercises that we went through that not everyone on this call went… was on last Friday. We kind of did some, kind of whiteboarding. I would recommend clicking into this as well. You can look at our takeaways. We didn’t get through every ICP, but if you kind of recall, we were…
98 00:11:53.390 ⇒ 00:12:11.330 Robert Tseng: you know, you can ignore the bullets, I think these are kind of noisy, but, we… we’ve articulated 3 ICPs that we’re kind of focusing on this month, with the different experiments that we’re running. So, I mean, these sub points were all kind of, like, some flavor of them ended up on the whiteboarding session.
99 00:12:11.330 ⇒ 00:12:20.560 Robert Tseng: But there is a recording on, you know, the platform, Brainforge platform, so I would watch that, and I would also just try to, you know.
100 00:12:20.710 ⇒ 00:12:42.600 Robert Tseng: the, you know, try to follow what we were doing in this exercise. It’s mapping problems to solutions and realizing that, hey, the things that we are saying that we can do, they don’t necessarily map to the most urgent problems that we think about, for our customers, and like, how do we get more alignment there? So, I think this’ll be… we’ll keep doing this until we have this flushed out. I think one hour was not enough with the team.
101 00:12:42.600 ⇒ 00:12:55.399 Robert Tseng: So, I might run it back again this week, with the delivery… senior delivery folks, and maybe I will include people on this call, but if anything, it’s good context for those of you that are trying to catch up on what we’re doing here.
102 00:12:55.910 ⇒ 00:13:11.809 Robert Tseng: Okay, so I think those are kind of the initiatives for how we’re gonna continue to drive, kind of drive new pipeline. Yeah, I guess, like, for partner-led campaigns, so we have a couple things that are coming up.
103 00:13:12.050 ⇒ 00:13:30.779 Robert Tseng: And then we also said that we were gonna dial in with some of these vendors. I know that Omni’s kind of moving, we have, like, some certifications with them. We said we would bump some of these other partners. Where… where are we at with this, just kind of at a high level? Like, is there actually… is this… do I keep this as the same step, or what are we… what are we doing about it?
104 00:13:32.660 ⇒ 00:13:34.940 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah… yeah, go ahead, Ollie.
105 00:13:35.730 ⇒ 00:13:39.330 Holly Condos: Yeah, Utam and I both pinged Amplitude,
106 00:13:40.050 ⇒ 00:13:48.699 Holly Condos: And I connected with them on LinkedIn, Utom, so I did get some traction there, but they have not responded to our,
107 00:13:49.180 ⇒ 00:13:51.550 Holly Condos: invitation to get together, Robert?
108 00:13:51.550 ⇒ 00:13:51.970 Robert Tseng: Okay.
109 00:13:51.970 ⇒ 00:13:55.440 Holly Condos: I think, you know, give me another week on it, and let me see if I can.
110 00:13:55.440 ⇒ 00:14:04.549 Uttam Kumaran: What… I guess, Holly, I had a question. What do you think that is? Like, even Northbeam responded to me today, being like, we’re not gonna prioritize your partnership.
111 00:14:04.970 ⇒ 00:14:06.430 Uttam Kumaran: I’m like, why?
112 00:14:06.790 ⇒ 00:14:09.179 Uttam Kumaran: Well, like, but what do you think…
113 00:14:09.180 ⇒ 00:14:10.309 Holly Condos: At the end of the year.
114 00:14:10.680 ⇒ 00:14:11.470 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay.
115 00:14:11.470 ⇒ 00:14:15.379 Holly Condos: It’s just… the holidays are coming, end of year pressure.
116 00:14:15.620 ⇒ 00:14:19.499 Uttam Kumaran: So they’re just like, we don’t want to take on more… Meetings or whatever.
117 00:14:19.500 ⇒ 00:14:27.239 Holly Condos: Typically, typically that’s what it is. Especially if, you know, we’ve made an initial contact and had some sort of discussion.
118 00:14:27.670 ⇒ 00:14:28.590 Holly Condos: Right?
119 00:14:29.500 ⇒ 00:14:30.110 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
120 00:14:30.110 ⇒ 00:14:43.119 Holly Condos: completely cold. We’ve had at least some interaction. So yeah, I think… I think, honestly, it’s just because it’s coming up to Thanksgiving, and then, you know, it’s one more month with another holiday, and most companies
121 00:14:43.410 ⇒ 00:14:45.660 Holly Condos: I just don’t want to get started on a partnership.
122 00:14:46.250 ⇒ 00:14:56.580 Uttam Kumaran: So, could I ask another opportunity? Like, let’s say we have an active lead that’s gonna buy Amplitude. Would it be better for me to just, like, go through sales? Like, hit up someone on sales and, like.
123 00:14:56.870 ⇒ 00:14:58.100 Uttam Kumaran: Cause I’m in, like.
124 00:14:58.560 ⇒ 00:15:06.449 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, I get that, but we’re driving money towards them, so I’m sort of like, I just want to have a friend in the business that we can…
125 00:15:06.630 ⇒ 00:15:10.180 Uttam Kumaran: Leverage, like, when we’re having contracts and conversations.
126 00:15:10.180 ⇒ 00:15:24.519 Holly Condos: Well, I think, if we’ve got a potential deal, yeah, get sales, but have sales paying the partner people, or channel people, and say, hey, you know, these guys are bringing us in. There’s…
127 00:15:24.700 ⇒ 00:15:26.990 Holly Condos: Liquid business here, right?
128 00:15:26.990 ⇒ 00:15:27.580 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
129 00:15:28.210 ⇒ 00:15:31.839 Holly Condos: So, utilize sales to help us push the channel.
130 00:15:32.530 ⇒ 00:15:39.200 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. For amplitude, I don’t know whether we have any immediate Renewals, right, Robert?
131 00:15:39.620 ⇒ 00:15:47.130 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, not right now. Although, like… For Mixpanel, though, I will…
132 00:15:47.290 ⇒ 00:15:55.450 Uttam Kumaran: get a note out. I don’t think I sent it, actually, but now that… if… yeah, I’ll get a note out to Mixpanel, especially around the Eden stuff.
133 00:15:55.920 ⇒ 00:16:00.040 Uttam Kumaran: And see if we can get some support on training, or get someone certified, or something, so…
134 00:16:00.270 ⇒ 00:16:00.650 Holly Condos: Okay.
135 00:16:00.650 ⇒ 00:16:01.080 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
136 00:16:01.080 ⇒ 00:16:03.249 Holly Condos: So, Robert, maybe leave it for one more week.
137 00:16:03.510 ⇒ 00:16:04.240 Robert Tseng: Okay.
138 00:16:05.130 ⇒ 00:16:05.850 Holly Condos: Thanks.
139 00:16:06.270 ⇒ 00:16:06.870 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
140 00:16:07.120 ⇒ 00:16:15.090 Robert Tseng: I’m gonna kinda just book some time off for myself to just go and look at my contacts as well. Like, I…
141 00:16:15.490 ⇒ 00:16:17.310 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I…
142 00:16:17.750 ⇒ 00:16:23.899 Robert Tseng: I know people have shuffled around at both these companies, so I feel like we’re just not getting the right person, possibly.
143 00:16:23.900 ⇒ 00:16:26.569 Holly Condos: That is also probably part of the problem, yes.
144 00:16:26.570 ⇒ 00:16:27.190 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
145 00:16:28.070 ⇒ 00:16:36.000 Robert Tseng: Okay, so that’s that. I think, here on the inbound leads, white paper…
146 00:16:36.510 ⇒ 00:16:41.389 Robert Tseng: Can we just test this? I guess this… can we just… can we just send this? Is it ready to send?
147 00:16:41.810 ⇒ 00:16:51.530 Robert Tseng: Like, I know, like, I kind of left, like, some light feedback, but, like, I… I just wanna… I just wanna test it at this point. It’s been sitting in our queue for a while.
148 00:16:52.130 ⇒ 00:17:02.629 Hannah Wang: Okay, then I can address it and then ship it, to whoever I think would be good to send to. We could also send it to Deborah. I know you didn’t send that follow-up yet.
149 00:17:02.630 ⇒ 00:17:07.289 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, just pick, like, 5 to 10 people on that list, and just send it to them, yeah.
150 00:17:07.290 ⇒ 00:17:08.380 Hannah Wang: Okay, yeah.
151 00:17:08.380 ⇒ 00:17:09.329 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Okay.
152 00:17:09.339 ⇒ 00:17:12.549 Hannah Wang: And then also, Anne is working on the CPG one.
153 00:17:12.829 ⇒ 00:17:13.669 Robert Tseng: Okay, great.
154 00:17:13.670 ⇒ 00:17:17.239 Hannah Wang: So, that should be ready end of this week for your review.
155 00:17:17.420 ⇒ 00:17:18.980 Robert Tseng: Okay, nice.
156 00:17:21.000 ⇒ 00:17:34.140 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and then we were talking about, like, doing some activation around, like, the other stuff, basically Jake’s materials. What kind of, is… are these… are those just sitting there, or do we… what are we doing with them?
157 00:17:34.140 ⇒ 00:17:37.820 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so let’s talk about contextual, so, yeah.
158 00:17:38.500 ⇒ 00:17:43.160 Uttam Kumaran: We are… I think we’re having great momentum with them. I think, like.
159 00:17:43.280 ⇒ 00:17:53.680 Uttam Kumaran: let’s say, like, 2 weeks ago, we sort of started with, like, okay, let’s, like, make something happen with them. Last week, we have a clear path towards trying to identify co-marketing opportunities around legal.
160 00:17:53.790 ⇒ 00:17:59.719 Uttam Kumaran: E-comm, and… yeah, I think just those two, right, primarily.
161 00:18:00.760 ⇒ 00:18:02.210 Holly Condos: And real estate, too, I thought.
162 00:18:02.210 ⇒ 00:18:11.230 Uttam Kumaran: and real estate. So basically, we went to them, and they’re like, look, most of our companies are in biotech or semiconductors. I said, look, most of our folks are…
163 00:18:11.410 ⇒ 00:18:19.460 Uttam Kumaran: people that won’t even know, like, what your company even does, unless you, like, explain it in English. So I said, like, there’s an opportunity for us to collaborate.
164 00:18:19.650 ⇒ 00:18:22.690 Uttam Kumaran: you know, I… we did this great,
165 00:18:23.290 ⇒ 00:18:38.190 Uttam Kumaran: doc, and basically my pitch to them was, like, we can put this out as is, but I think we need to, either consider, one, tailoring it towards an industry, so we agreed on a call yesterday, like, kind of focus on a couple industries.
166 00:18:38.300 ⇒ 00:18:54.970 Uttam Kumaran: the next path there is, one, we’re gonna develop with them a few, like, solutions that, when we go market to those industries, it’s not like a, hey, you should use Consexual’s SDK. It’s like, we built you a insurance, reviewer
167 00:18:55.160 ⇒ 00:18:55.970 Uttam Kumaran: like…
168 00:18:56.180 ⇒ 00:19:04.450 Uttam Kumaran: solution that, like, we can implement in 30 days. And so that we have a clear industry-tailored offer that leverages their technology.
169 00:19:04.580 ⇒ 00:19:09.909 Uttam Kumaran: So I would say this is probably the partner that’s worked with us the closest and been
170 00:19:10.140 ⇒ 00:19:20.550 Uttam Kumaran: sort of the most open, because… and I… the other thing is that the deck that we generated went really well, so it was very clear to me how to show them who our ICP was.
171 00:19:20.910 ⇒ 00:19:24.980 Uttam Kumaran: Explain to them, like, what our partnership opportunity could look like, like, why there is an overlap.
172 00:19:25.300 ⇒ 00:19:30.380 Uttam Kumaran: And why is it the kind of green field for us to collaborate?
173 00:19:30.760 ⇒ 00:19:40.680 Uttam Kumaran: Probably my only piece here is that, like, I think it’s just gonna take some time. So there’s gonna be two ways. I think it’s gonna take a few more weeks to sort of arrive at
174 00:19:40.890 ⇒ 00:19:42.940 Uttam Kumaran: A clear, like.
175 00:19:43.350 ⇒ 00:19:55.949 Uttam Kumaran: we’re going after legal, here’s the Brainforge plus contextual legal offering, and then we can put that out together. The other piece that we’re… I wanted to pitch them on, and this was sort of around
176 00:19:56.280 ⇒ 00:20:02.899 Uttam Kumaran: Basically, getting… trying to differentiate us as a partner was kind of tapping into our ability to differentiate on the marketing side.
177 00:20:02.920 ⇒ 00:20:18.490 Uttam Kumaran: they… they… they, Omni, and Mother Dag have all recognized, like, that we’ve done a great job, you know, both visually and, like, sort of strategically on our marketing assets. So one thing that I’m trying to push them towards is to leverage some type of
178 00:20:18.590 ⇒ 00:20:36.000 Uttam Kumaran: budget towards supporting us to do our videos or do events, and so we’re driving them towards that as well. And so that’s kind of some of the stuff that Mickey and I are discussing. For example, if we were to do, like, a 3-5 video series on just the contextual product.
179 00:20:36.200 ⇒ 00:20:40.130 Uttam Kumaran: That is really high production, that allows us to sort of build
180 00:20:40.430 ⇒ 00:20:48.269 Uttam Kumaran: that muscle in video, but also market their product, I think that’s something that we could probably get their budget to help co-market.
181 00:20:48.580 ⇒ 00:21:07.059 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s sort of, like, what we’re thinking with them. Maybe the last piece I’ll say on Omni is that, similarly, they just sent me, like, a potential deal today. I got an email… I got a message from John, who is head of partnerships there, that him and the Mother Duck head of partnerships are talking about us.
182 00:21:07.320 ⇒ 00:21:11.300 Uttam Kumaran: And that they all… both of them want to do something with us.
183 00:21:11.520 ⇒ 00:21:14.210 Uttam Kumaran: And so I’m talking to John tomorrow.
184 00:21:14.330 ⇒ 00:21:22.769 Uttam Kumaran: And… Yeah, I think all of these tools are just have… they’re… they’re all marketing towards developers.
185 00:21:22.920 ⇒ 00:21:35.239 Uttam Kumaran: And they know that the money is really in, like, service-led solutions, not, like, getting another engineer to, like, use this. So, I feel like our pitch has worked really well, Robert, for them.
186 00:21:35.670 ⇒ 00:21:36.580 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah.
187 00:21:36.580 ⇒ 00:21:37.170 Uttam Kumaran: So…
188 00:21:37.170 ⇒ 00:21:37.710 Robert Tseng: Okay.
189 00:21:37.710 ⇒ 00:21:41.370 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. It’s going, it’s just… Yes.
190 00:21:41.370 ⇒ 00:21:49.870 Holly Condos: It takes time to develop, right? But I think, to your point, we’re doing pretty well. And Telisma is right behind contextual, I think.
191 00:21:53.230 ⇒ 00:21:53.880 Robert Tseng: Okay.
192 00:21:54.830 ⇒ 00:22:01.989 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I… I think, I mean, I don’t want to spend too much time on it, but, like,
193 00:22:02.990 ⇒ 00:22:22.200 Robert Tseng: for, like, our vendor partners, I think there are different tiers. Like, there’s, like, the… yeah, the Mixpanel Amplitude one, sure, they may not be giving us time of day, and they may think that we’re kind of, you know, whatever room it. But, just as far as, like, our ability to, go in and help a client, like, get value out of that, it all happens within under 30 days. Like, it’s pretty fast.
194 00:22:22.230 ⇒ 00:22:37.879 Robert Tseng: Okay. Maybe for, like, a contextual, and these… these platform… bigger platform products, like, what we’re doing is helping them go to market to, like, with a service-led motion that they don’t have built out themselves. And…
195 00:22:37.930 ⇒ 00:22:48.309 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I just wonder what that, like, horizon is. Is it, like, is it 90 days? Is it… is it… like, I guess that’ll help us to… to better understand, like, how…
196 00:22:48.380 ⇒ 00:23:07.110 Robert Tseng: you know, how we resource, like, kind of going to that, and if we need to have… seems like maybe, you know, things are… we have, like, a couple anchors that are kind of slowly moving along, but maybe there are other industry partners. I know we didn’t have success with Harvey AI, but, like, what if there are, like, other, like, vertically specialized platforms that are really high
197 00:23:07.110 ⇒ 00:23:19.979 Robert Tseng: barrier to entry that are trying to move down market and hit, like a… or move up or down, whatever, like, trying to go to market in some way. Like, I don’t… I know that we kind of had these privileged relationships with these two.
198 00:23:20.250 ⇒ 00:23:20.590 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
199 00:23:20.590 ⇒ 00:23:26.809 Robert Tseng: But, like, maybe there, maybe there’s more that we… we should be, we should be kind of just rolling, because the, the, the, the, the.
200 00:23:26.810 ⇒ 00:23:27.250 Uttam Kumaran: Week to week.
201 00:23:27.250 ⇒ 00:23:28.920 Robert Tseng: Touch is pretty lightweight.
202 00:23:29.510 ⇒ 00:23:44.369 Uttam Kumaran: I agree, and we’re, again, we’re selling to sellers, and, like, our messaging is working. I mean, the one, the biggest thing is just capacity. It takes a lot to kind of nurture these and come up with the offer. But other… but the other thing is, like, and maybe I can just share…
203 00:23:44.370 ⇒ 00:23:50.220 Uttam Kumaran: something that I wanted to kind of evolve further, is if you go to that, like, in the partnerships.
204 00:23:50.230 ⇒ 00:23:57.560 Uttam Kumaran: sheet. I’m basically starting to save, like, all the vendors that, like, we’ve…
205 00:23:57.730 ⇒ 00:24:13.829 Uttam Kumaran: That our clients are using, and then I’m gonna layer on the spend. And so one of the things, like, a very powerful slide that we’re gonna add, is we are… we have contributed to or touched X amount in partner-driven revenue. When we go work with a part… when we go work with a client.
206 00:24:14.140 ⇒ 00:24:19.030 Uttam Kumaran: We tend to boost partner revenue, or whatever, by X percent.
207 00:24:19.030 ⇒ 00:24:23.749 Robert Tseng: Yeah. And, like, it’s gonna be… it’s an absolute no-brainer for these guys to work with us.
208 00:24:23.880 ⇒ 00:24:33.140 Uttam Kumaran: the… what… what the benefit here is, like, Omni just DM’d me a lead. Like, Contextual will do the same. They… and so, the cost.
209 00:24:33.140 ⇒ 00:24:33.460 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
210 00:24:33.460 ⇒ 00:24:44.470 Uttam Kumaran: the customer acquisition cost really changes, and as soon as we get in, for example, I know one of the big sales reps at Omni, he’s like, we use a handful of partners for every single
211 00:24:44.540 ⇒ 00:24:54.449 Uttam Kumaran: professional service opportunity. We don’t do… they don’t do any on their own, and they’re like, you’re better than the other ones. He’s like, if you can just get a bunch of people certified, you move to the top of the list.
212 00:24:54.550 ⇒ 00:24:56.810 Uttam Kumaran: it was, like, very point blank. And so.
213 00:24:57.480 ⇒ 00:25:03.280 Uttam Kumaran: I think yes, like, I think we’re doing better. It’s, it’s just a lot, it takes capacity to manage.
214 00:25:04.080 ⇒ 00:25:06.700 Holly Condos: Tom, how many more people do we need to get certified?
215 00:25:08.130 ⇒ 00:25:13.639 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, I’m meeting with, probably 6 people tomorrow, and we’ll have a bunch of them certified by the end of next week.
216 00:25:13.710 ⇒ 00:25:15.470 Holly Condos: Okay. The Omni guy’s, like.
217 00:25:15.810 ⇒ 00:25:24.140 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, I think, like, Greg is new there, and so he’s like, oh, they push back, and you’re not certified. I was like, dude, your product is not, like, that crazy. Like, just…
218 00:25:24.370 ⇒ 00:25:24.850 Holly Condos: Yeah.
219 00:25:24.850 ⇒ 00:25:28.170 Uttam Kumaran: Don’t worry about it, but I said we’re gonna get a bunch of people certified.
220 00:25:28.540 ⇒ 00:25:30.379 Uttam Kumaran: And, yeah, they’ll be okay.
221 00:25:30.800 ⇒ 00:25:32.030 Holly Condos: Okay, sounds good.
222 00:25:32.240 ⇒ 00:25:45.149 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, it’s clear that it didn’t matter, because they’re sending us business, so… but… but, like, they want us to… basically, what they… when they sign a deal with us, and we sell, we co-sell, they want to allocate… they… basically, we signed a deal where they’re going to allocate
223 00:25:45.370 ⇒ 00:25:53.759 Uttam Kumaran: 50% of the deal is gonna go to two buckets. One is a referral fee, one is for actually implementing the solution.
224 00:25:54.090 ⇒ 00:25:58.550 Uttam Kumaran: And so basically, they’re like, hey, we’re gonna pay you to implement it, we wanna make sure your guys are good.
225 00:25:58.690 ⇒ 00:26:05.219 Uttam Kumaran: That other 25%, though, I’m gonna pitch them to put into the MDF. So I’m gonna tell John about that tomorrow.
226 00:26:05.270 ⇒ 00:26:11.429 Holly Condos: Right. And so, with all of our partners, Robert, what we’re thinking about is, instead of cutting us a referral fee.
227 00:26:11.430 ⇒ 00:26:15.859 Uttam Kumaran: Where they just pay us, put that in, like, a marketing development fund.
228 00:26:15.910 ⇒ 00:26:18.910 Robert Tseng: Yeah. So that we can use it for co-marketing, and that basically…
229 00:26:18.950 ⇒ 00:26:22.140 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, for us, dude, that just covers… OpEx.
230 00:26:22.310 ⇒ 00:26:23.180 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
231 00:26:23.810 ⇒ 00:26:27.919 Uttam Kumaran: That just covers any marketing activity to do, or event spend, or whatever, so…
232 00:26:28.210 ⇒ 00:26:37.129 Uttam Kumaran: That’s how we’re thinking about the funding there. That’s actually an idea Shannon… Shannon’s what gave… Shannon gave me that idea over the summer over summer, by the way.
233 00:26:37.260 ⇒ 00:26:38.160 Uttam Kumaran: Wow.
234 00:26:38.380 ⇒ 00:26:40.040 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
235 00:26:40.640 ⇒ 00:26:42.530 Holly Condos: And I love it, it’s very creative.
236 00:26:42.830 ⇒ 00:26:43.460 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
237 00:26:44.340 ⇒ 00:26:44.950 Robert Tseng: Okay.
238 00:26:44.950 ⇒ 00:26:45.470 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
239 00:26:46.070 ⇒ 00:26:55.479 Robert Tseng: Yeah, okay, that sounds good. I think, yeah, this is just, like, week to week. It’s not gonna be, like, super consistent, so I think we maybe had, like, 2 this past week,
240 00:26:55.800 ⇒ 00:26:58.169 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Okay. Good to know.
241 00:26:58.500 ⇒ 00:27:05.059 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so let’s move on to the next one. So as far as, like, yeah, this is, like, our lead mix, I suppose.
242 00:27:06.330 ⇒ 00:27:22.109 Robert Tseng: you know, we were saying 40% from event activations, 20% referrals, and then we don’t really know what the rest looks like. I still don’t think we have a good view of what the source of truth is, which is why I kind of put a couple things here. Moving forward, I want Joe to kind of be, like.
243 00:27:22.110 ⇒ 00:27:34.360 Robert Tseng: So he’s gonna get in the weeds, he’s already in HubSpot, but to really know where our leads are coming from, and, like, how closely we’re actually tracking this. We had some questions about the sales dash that was, like, on HubSpot.
244 00:27:34.460 ⇒ 00:27:43.180 Robert Tseng: So that’s why I kind of just bumped it to Hannah and Holly again to see, did we actually… are we ready to read out on this this week, or are we gonna move it one more week?
245 00:27:45.290 ⇒ 00:28:02.570 Hannah Wang: Let’s do one more week, and then the four of us, like, Joe, Holly, me, Ryan, we’ll grab time, before the kickoff next Monday, and then we’ll just, like, make sure that it’s… it’s good. But yeah, Ryan, Holly, and I met, just before this, and I think we need a bit more time.
246 00:28:02.920 ⇒ 00:28:04.220 Robert Tseng: Okay, sounds good.
247 00:28:04.380 ⇒ 00:28:06.760 Robert Tseng: So it sounds like we’re gonna do that.
248 00:28:06.910 ⇒ 00:28:25.449 Robert Tseng: Yeah, content-wise, I’m still… we’re still in the red, I don’t think we’ve really been pushing it, so I’m just gonna… I’m not gonna reiterate, these are the same things every time I should be trying to push something out weekly. And then, I think we are doing the activations around events, and I don’t know if we’re doing partnership promotions, though, so…
249 00:28:25.760 ⇒ 00:28:37.559 Robert Tseng: I think, you know, we… this is not, like, the biggest priority for me, but, like, I would like to at least get, you know, this should be the bare minimum of, like, we should be hitting this, at least.
250 00:28:39.580 ⇒ 00:28:55.899 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I do have a couple posts queued up, so, like, I’ll… I’m covered for the next couple weeks, I suppose, for the first one. Yeah, I don’t really have any visibility into, like, what… we don’t have no… Joe asked for a constant calendar, I don’t think we have one, so I don’t really know what else we have coming.
251 00:28:55.900 ⇒ 00:29:02.330 Uttam Kumaran: We have, we have, yeah, Ryan can provide our past content calendar, also,
252 00:29:02.540 ⇒ 00:29:10.240 Uttam Kumaran: Ryan, if you’re on the call, can you… you can invite, Joe to assembly, and you can see everything on how we did things before.
253 00:29:10.390 ⇒ 00:29:14.660 Uttam Kumaran: One of the big things I’m pushing are partnerships people… our partnerships,
254 00:29:15.050 ⇒ 00:29:21.209 Uttam Kumaran: companies on is, like, let’s co-market, so we should at least get, like, one… something from them a week.
255 00:29:21.350 ⇒ 00:29:29.009 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, hey, we announced one of their product features, we announced a partnership with them, so I’m driving towards at least some of those.
256 00:29:30.370 ⇒ 00:29:31.160 Uttam Kumaran: But…
257 00:29:31.970 ⇒ 00:29:32.360 Robert Tseng: Okay.
258 00:29:32.360 ⇒ 00:29:43.730 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, I mean, we should… dude, we should also do something around our offers. Like, that is, like, a very organic thing, so once you guys confirm the offers, we can at least just do, like, one post a week on all the offers.
259 00:29:43.990 ⇒ 00:29:48.510 Uttam Kumaran: team can put together a landing page with, like, Q4 offers from Brainforge, like.
260 00:29:48.660 ⇒ 00:29:50.760 Uttam Kumaran: At least that gives us a couple things.
261 00:29:51.600 ⇒ 00:29:52.300 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
262 00:29:56.530 ⇒ 00:30:02.309 Uttam Kumaran: And that’s really in line with probably what we’re gonna be doing in DMs or email anyways, you know?
263 00:30:03.030 ⇒ 00:30:03.590 Robert Tseng: Yep.
264 00:30:05.860 ⇒ 00:30:11.980 Robert Tseng: Okay, so I think these are kind of the two things that I want to… focus on this week.
265 00:30:12.270 ⇒ 00:30:17.860 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think we’re still good here, so nothing to say on the messaging.
266 00:30:18.530 ⇒ 00:30:23.470 Robert Tseng: partner source deals, yeah, Hannah, do you want to talk about this?
267 00:30:24.670 ⇒ 00:30:35.119 Hannah Wang: Yeah, there’s not, like, a good view on HubSpot that I can share, but basically, like.
268 00:30:35.520 ⇒ 00:30:44.710 Hannah Wang: it was zero for both September and October, and in the thread somewhere, I put down my findings. Let me try to find it.
269 00:30:44.840 ⇒ 00:30:49.710 Hannah Wang: So for September, there was 3 total,
270 00:30:50.390 ⇒ 00:31:01.350 Hannah Wang: Two of them are still in progress, John Booz and Hey Marvin. And then Bitzel was lost, but Holly, do you want to chime in for the Bitzel part? I know you said you had something for that.
271 00:31:01.350 ⇒ 00:31:09.320 Holly Condos: So, Utam and Robert, Utam, I’m assuming that you meant Javid at… .
272 00:31:09.730 ⇒ 00:31:10.530 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
273 00:31:10.530 ⇒ 00:31:11.570 Holly Condos: Vixel?
274 00:31:11.750 ⇒ 00:31:12.699 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
275 00:31:13.680 ⇒ 00:31:16.769 Holly Condos: What was, like…
276 00:31:17.010 ⇒ 00:31:24.180 Holly Condos: What was your initial discussion? I’m just thinking that he’s gained some traction in the last quarter.
277 00:31:24.380 ⇒ 00:31:29.149 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I called Javed, actually, like, 3 weeks ago. When I was in Maryland, I called him. Okay. Because he…
278 00:31:29.300 ⇒ 00:31:35.079 Uttam Kumaran: Vishnu put me and him in contact.
279 00:31:35.630 ⇒ 00:31:36.650 Uttam Kumaran: And he…
280 00:31:36.830 ⇒ 00:31:44.950 Uttam Kumaran: he’s doing… I just think, like, he’s working on pretty, like, cheap outsourced prices. So when I was like, let’s collaborate.
281 00:31:45.120 ⇒ 00:31:51.950 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, my… for those types of people, my recommendation is bring us in, because we’ll expand your dollars.
282 00:31:52.070 ⇒ 00:31:55.799 Uttam Kumaran: Versus, I think he’s taking on these small AI work, but…
283 00:31:55.940 ⇒ 00:32:00.620 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, from what I… from what I heard, and I can give you all… our whole thread and meeting, but…
284 00:32:01.180 ⇒ 00:32:07.139 Uttam Kumaran: we were starting on talking about one, and he was like, it’s just the budget’s not there right now, but yeah. Okay.
285 00:32:07.340 ⇒ 00:32:08.929 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I met him, yeah.
286 00:32:09.420 ⇒ 00:32:12.819 Holly Condos: I didn’t realize it was that fresh, so never mind.
287 00:32:12.820 ⇒ 00:32:13.550 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay.
288 00:32:13.840 ⇒ 00:32:20.249 Holly Condos: I mean, he is using primarily offshore, which, to your point, you know, is not a lot of budget.
289 00:32:21.470 ⇒ 00:32:22.160 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
290 00:32:22.580 ⇒ 00:32:23.400 Holly Condos: Okay.
291 00:32:23.400 ⇒ 00:32:24.060 Hannah Wang: Okay.
292 00:32:24.430 ⇒ 00:32:38.879 Hannah Wang: Okay, yeah, so I guess that’s for September. For October, there was also 3 total, Port Authority is in progress, and then 2 of them we lost, Get Change and Beyond Data Consulting, I think this was also from Vixel.
293 00:32:39.020 ⇒ 00:32:40.900 Hannah Wang: So, I guess my…
294 00:32:41.090 ⇒ 00:32:47.209 Hannah Wang: like, retro is that I feel like most of the lost deals came from, like, fit
295 00:32:47.720 ⇒ 00:32:56.129 Hannah Wang: fit and or, like, framing, so I’m just like, do we need to equip our partners with a better description of what we do so that, like.
296 00:32:56.290 ⇒ 00:32:59.509 Hannah Wang: I don’t know, they can just pitch us and frame us correctly, because…
297 00:32:59.800 ⇒ 00:33:16.459 Hannah Wang: yeah, we lost to, like, competitors, and, like, GetChange, they wanted someone in SF, Beyond Data Consulting, it just said… I couldn’t find threads, but it said, we lost to a competitor, and then my second, I guess, question is, like, for the active ones, like.
298 00:33:16.890 ⇒ 00:33:25.480 Hannah Wang: Is it just natural for things to be kind of this slow? I know for Hydra, it was really fast, but in general, I feel like
299 00:33:25.750 ⇒ 00:33:41.409 Hannah Wang: yeah, hey, Marvin is still discussing, or they were discussing with other consultancies, and I’m sure, like, that’s the case for a lot of the other prospects, so I’m just wondering if there’s, like, a way for us to speed it up somehow, or if that’s just the nature of…
300 00:33:41.840 ⇒ 00:33:43.499 Hannah Wang: I don’t know, deals.
301 00:33:44.910 ⇒ 00:33:48.170 Holly Condos: I would say, in general, it’s pretty normal… sorry, Robert.
302 00:33:48.310 ⇒ 00:33:50.940 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, you can, you can finish your thought, yeah.
303 00:33:50.940 ⇒ 00:33:53.110 Holly Condos: It’s pretty normal to be…
304 00:33:53.670 ⇒ 00:33:58.460 Holly Condos: Not fast, or not like what you guys are used to when you’re doing direct?
305 00:34:00.560 ⇒ 00:34:02.420 Robert Tseng: Yeah,
306 00:34:02.590 ⇒ 00:34:10.390 Robert Tseng: I think also, like, I mean, from… I know there aren’t that many, so there’s just anecdotes, but, like,
307 00:34:10.670 ⇒ 00:34:20.460 Robert Tseng: leads from part… service partners, yeah, I don’t really think that they’re pitching us very well. I mean, we’ve equipped them with a lot, so I feel like it’s not so much that we’re not giving them what they need, but I think…
308 00:34:20.760 ⇒ 00:34:31.400 Robert Tseng: you know, I think things are just… they’re kind of just a bit chaotic on their… on… on their… on their side. Our product vendors seem to be… our product partners seem to be giving us more leads,
309 00:34:31.400 ⇒ 00:34:34.460 Uttam Kumaran: Their urgency is higher, though. Yeah, urgency is higher.
310 00:34:34.460 ⇒ 00:34:35.590 Robert Tseng: So, yeah.
311 00:34:36.100 ⇒ 00:34:39.149 Uttam Kumaran: Also because they suck at the professional services, most of them.
312 00:34:39.150 ⇒ 00:34:39.880 Holly Condos: Right.
313 00:34:39.880 ⇒ 00:34:44.140 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, they’re sort of, like, have to figure something out, and…
314 00:34:44.820 ⇒ 00:34:48.299 Uttam Kumaran: I think that’s… that’s it, versus the other service partners.
315 00:34:48.510 ⇒ 00:34:55.890 Uttam Kumaran: you kind of have to be pretty humble to be like, should I just take this myself, right? I feel like maybe a lot of those guys are… that’s what they’re doing.
316 00:34:55.900 ⇒ 00:34:58.430 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Versus sending it to us, but you’re right, like.
317 00:34:59.790 ⇒ 00:35:06.570 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, for the most part, most of the folks that are coming our way are from other vendors, who have no problem, because they’re getting their
318 00:35:07.190 ⇒ 00:35:12.129 Uttam Kumaran: they’re getting their money, you know? Yeah. In fact, they’re probably… they may not get their money if they don’t…
319 00:35:12.270 ⇒ 00:35:13.870 Uttam Kumaran: Work with us, you know?
320 00:35:14.720 ⇒ 00:35:15.370 Robert Tseng: Okay.
321 00:35:15.870 ⇒ 00:35:30.469 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I think this is just kind of reiterating to me, like, yeah, our effort should be maybe going more towards the vendor partner. I mean, honestly, the last service partner that I actually did any business with was… was UTAM, so this was a long time ago.
322 00:35:30.470 ⇒ 00:35:32.249 Uttam Kumaran: I’m a great… I’m a great service partner.
323 00:35:33.310 ⇒ 00:35:39.579 Robert Tseng: I don’t necessarily… yeah, I’m not saying that I’m very optimistic about this.
324 00:35:39.580 ⇒ 00:35:41.979 Uttam Kumaran: I need a testimonial.
325 00:35:42.980 ⇒ 00:35:49.000 Uttam Kumaran: I guess my other question, Robert, is like, instead of thinking about service partners that are our size or bigger.
326 00:35:49.220 ⇒ 00:36:08.049 Uttam Kumaran: we always talked about folks that are smaller, like, Beyond Data Consulting. Clint from Wild, or from Bond, put me in touch with this other guy, he’s, like, one or two people. They have a bunch of e-commerce clients. He’s clearly, like, making a decision that we made within the first 6 months of doing our thing, which is, like, do I actually wanna…
327 00:36:08.490 ⇒ 00:36:13.599 Uttam Kumaran: Do this big, and maybe though… maybe we should just stop…
328 00:36:14.220 ⇒ 00:36:16.100 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe we should put attention there.
329 00:36:16.640 ⇒ 00:36:17.310 Uttam Kumaran: On the small.
330 00:36:17.310 ⇒ 00:36:32.620 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, it was the smaller guys, we were trying to bring them in to kind of run our pro… run delivery for us. They’re not really bringing us deals, right? If they’re smaller than us, like, I’ve… yeah, I mean, I feel like they’re not necessarily selling better than we are. And then,
331 00:36:32.770 ⇒ 00:36:36.620 Robert Tseng: I think if we are… .
332 00:36:38.240 ⇒ 00:36:38.650 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
333 00:36:38.650 ⇒ 00:36:42.859 Robert Tseng: lost my train of thought. I think… yeah, never mind, it might come back to me.
334 00:36:42.860 ⇒ 00:36:49.159 Uttam Kumaran: No, I feel like it may be better just to use them for delivery. The problem that these guys I’m always finding, dude, is that…
335 00:36:49.340 ⇒ 00:36:59.859 Uttam Kumaran: one, they all are like, yeah, I can do delivery, it’ll be 2.50 an hour? I can’t barely get $2, you know, so they’re all kind of like…
336 00:37:00.100 ⇒ 00:37:02.969 Uttam Kumaran: They haven’t kind of crossed that path at some point.
337 00:37:03.200 ⇒ 00:37:05.770 Uttam Kumaran: And they’re in the kind of, like.
338 00:37:06.620 ⇒ 00:37:13.380 Uttam Kumaran: first phase, where they’re, like, making, like, a bunch of money, and they don’t really know, like, what the true margin is to operate the business, so…
339 00:37:13.550 ⇒ 00:37:16.440 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know. I don’t… even then, I’m kind of like…
340 00:37:17.430 ⇒ 00:37:21.180 Uttam Kumaran: we’ve tried… I’ve tried to pitch those people on just being like, hey, come in and…
341 00:37:22.090 ⇒ 00:37:27.869 Uttam Kumaran: do something for us, but I’m almost, like, not that trustworthy if they, like, come in under our name and, like, do stuff, so…
342 00:37:28.280 ⇒ 00:37:39.220 Robert Tseng: Okay. I’m honestly fine with just kind of… we have, like, a lot of the irons in the fire on the vendor side, so maybe we’ll just keep pushing on that. Yeah, these small agencies, like, I mean, these smaller consultancies.
343 00:37:39.220 ⇒ 00:37:56.310 Robert Tseng: I think, they’ll just… I don’t think they’re… you know, they’re not a go-to-market motion for us. Like, they may help on the delivery, just to have more people on the bench, but we’ll have those conversations here and there. And, what I was trying to say earlier was there are the adjacent, agencies, like.
344 00:37:56.470 ⇒ 00:38:14.939 Robert Tseng: you know, why don’t we work with creatives on, like, you know, they’re entering with brands, and they may need data and AI work that we might be able to support them in. So I think that’s something… I think we might have talked about this with, with Shannon last week, so I think that’s another kind of angle on the services side that we haven’t really tried.
345 00:38:14.940 ⇒ 00:38:27.729 Robert Tseng: Like, I think other than, we have Early June, who is in our Slack, and I keep… I do talk to Renee pretty often, but, we still haven’t done any work with her. She’s just… she’s just helpful and knows healthcare.
346 00:38:27.730 ⇒ 00:38:35.839 Robert Tseng: creatives that pay to advertising very well, so, I still think that that’s not something we really… we really tried to… to push on.
347 00:38:36.440 ⇒ 00:38:40.819 Uttam Kumaran: Another two, like, one opportunity, so we’ve had two deals come from…
348 00:38:40.950 ⇒ 00:38:46.279 Uttam Kumaran: A friend of mine that runs a healthcare, like, a brain forge, except just all health.
349 00:38:46.430 ⇒ 00:38:49.350 Uttam Kumaran: She sent us Element, and she sent us CES.
350 00:38:49.530 ⇒ 00:38:50.720 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
351 00:38:50.930 ⇒ 00:38:53.619 Uttam Kumaran: So, I don’t know whether that’s an outlier.
352 00:38:53.880 ⇒ 00:39:08.949 Uttam Kumaran: But basically, those came to her desk, she said, hey, we don’t do, like, non-healthcare work, but I know someone that does, and they’re like us, except for non-healthcare e-com or whatever. Yeah.
353 00:39:09.690 ⇒ 00:39:10.710 Uttam Kumaran: So…
354 00:39:11.550 ⇒ 00:39:17.990 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, maybe it’s that, but in that case, like, maybe we should have passed hype to them, right? Like, I don’t know what… she’s just doing it because I didn’t…
355 00:39:18.150 ⇒ 00:39:21.970 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I don’t know, just know her, but… Yeah. Yeah.
356 00:39:25.180 ⇒ 00:39:25.880 Robert Tseng: Okay.
357 00:39:26.320 ⇒ 00:39:29.219 Robert Tseng: Well, we can table that for now, but okay, good to know.
358 00:39:29.320 ⇒ 00:39:31.189 Robert Tseng: We’ll keep going.
359 00:39:31.710 ⇒ 00:39:39.089 Robert Tseng: Here, we’re… Hannah and I connected on the case study backlog, so I think we have a bunch of things in the queue, so I think we’re kind of cleared there.
360 00:39:39.240 ⇒ 00:39:43.589 Robert Tseng: I think we are doing the three touches, so I think we’re on track here.
361 00:39:44.190 ⇒ 00:39:47.029 Robert Tseng: This is… I kind of re…
362 00:39:47.610 ⇒ 00:40:04.530 Robert Tseng: I reworked this one. Before it was, like, closed win conversions, but actually what I think this is actually supposed to be is win rates. And so I think maybe something we’ve been looking about at kind of getting conflating… where we were conflating on the bottom… at the bottom of the funnel was
363 00:40:04.900 ⇒ 00:40:11.289 Robert Tseng: Just, like, lead… lead conversion rates to, like, booking meetings, you know, from… versus, like.
364 00:40:11.290 ⇒ 00:40:27.930 Robert Tseng: you know, once we actually hop on a call with someone, like, what’s our win rate? And anecdotally, we think our win rate probably sits somewhere around 20%. I don’t think we have measured it very closely, and so I do think this is something I want Joe to look at as well, if, you know, I think, especially as he’s kind of
365 00:40:27.930 ⇒ 00:40:38.310 Robert Tseng: looking… studying our disco calls and trying to understand, like, how we actually pitch the business. Yeah, I think it would be good for Joe next… next time when, by next week to be able to look at
366 00:40:38.310 ⇒ 00:40:53.430 Robert Tseng: what our Q3, Q4 win rate was after a discovery call. And I think I want to get at, like, do we have a conversion problem? I guess we have a… we have a top-of-funnel problem here, where things are… if there’s not enough deals coming in from the top, we’re not going to be able to get enough
367 00:40:53.540 ⇒ 00:41:03.319 Robert Tseng: calls booked, but for the ones that we did, like, is it just that we have a low response rate on, like, on what we’re doing at the top of funnel, or…
368 00:41:03.450 ⇒ 00:41:22.950 Robert Tseng: is, you know, if our win rate’s pretty high, if our win rate’s 20%, that’s pretty good, and that means that we, you know, we just need to get more calls booked and everything, you know, and that… this should still continue to hold… hold well. Like, I want to share with the team that we actually, we did hit 130, this past month, so we already passed our goal for the quarter, in this case.
369 00:41:23.000 ⇒ 00:41:34.290 Robert Tseng: And I think we can keep going, like, you know, there’s still another month and a half left of the… left of the year. So, you know, there’s gonna be a little bit of churn here and there, but, like, I think steadily, we… we did…
370 00:41:34.290 ⇒ 00:41:51.349 Robert Tseng: you know, the numbers… the numbers, like, held up. Like, the… what we… what we projected is what is actually happening. We… we actually got there a little faster than we thought, because we had some good renewals. So, I… I think this is something I’m trying to study a bit better, kind of going into the second half of the quarter.
371 00:41:55.280 ⇒ 00:42:05.349 Robert Tseng: Okay, I know we wanted to save some time for, like, for Mickey and to talk about other things. Are there any questions on what we’ve shared so far?
372 00:42:07.340 ⇒ 00:42:08.030 Robert Tseng: Nope.
373 00:42:09.130 ⇒ 00:42:09.730 Hannah Wang: No.
374 00:42:10.700 ⇒ 00:42:11.340 Robert Tseng: Okay.
375 00:42:11.610 ⇒ 00:42:15.859 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I don’t know, I think it’s maybe one point… yeah, it seems like conversion has been high, dude.
376 00:42:16.250 ⇒ 00:42:25.389 Uttam Kumaran: I feel like, certainly, things are getting faster, and we’re, disqualifying or qualifying more effectively.
377 00:42:25.740 ⇒ 00:42:29.809 Uttam Kumaran: So I feel like all eyes right now are on top of funnel, is, like, all I think about.
378 00:42:29.980 ⇒ 00:42:32.780 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I don’t know, like, I don’t…
379 00:42:33.120 ⇒ 00:42:42.649 Uttam Kumaran: I would be, like, I’m not saying that… I don’t feel like it’s the most confident I felt, probably in sales since we started the company, just at, like, how much…
380 00:42:42.970 ⇒ 00:42:46.389 Uttam Kumaran: How fast things are closing, and our talking points, and our assets.
381 00:42:46.570 ⇒ 00:42:47.070 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
382 00:42:47.070 ⇒ 00:42:55.430 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, we’re not, like, slowing down on getting more organized there, but I feel like the top of funnel piece is, like, huge.
383 00:42:55.980 ⇒ 00:42:57.230 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
384 00:42:57.820 ⇒ 00:43:01.479 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and then the last piece also on the delivery side is, like.
385 00:43:02.040 ⇒ 00:43:13.519 Uttam Kumaran: as long as we sign the deals, I can always push the start dates for us to kind of, like, back into better, like, more people on delivery side, but we have an extra… we have at least an extra
386 00:43:14.230 ⇒ 00:43:17.379 Uttam Kumaran: Like, 40 to 60 hours of bandwidth.
387 00:43:17.770 ⇒ 00:43:24.499 Uttam Kumaran: And I’m repurposing everybody that can work on whatever clients need, so… yeah, we have, like, we have room.
388 00:43:25.860 ⇒ 00:43:40.250 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, I think… I think we can continue to grow out our current side without bringing on people. Maybe on the analyst side, we might, but, yeah, okay, that… that sounds good. I mean, I… I think that validates kind of what I… I don’t… I don’t think we would be… would have hit this number if we…
389 00:43:40.420 ⇒ 00:43:57.590 Robert Tseng: if we just had a problem with winning, like, winning the deal once we got on a call. So, I think we don’t really have a bottom-of-the-funnel problem, like, I think our win rates are pretty high. Yeah, but… so I think it is ultimately a top-of-funnel, thing that we need to continue to focus on.
390 00:43:59.960 ⇒ 00:44:08.179 Robert Tseng: Okay, cool. Alright, hopefully that gives a good view of where we’re at State of Affairs. I’ll turn it over to whoever’s kind of next.
391 00:44:08.900 ⇒ 00:44:14.220 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, maybe, Robert, briefly, we can also just talk about decision for Shannon?
392 00:44:14.730 ⇒ 00:44:22.799 Uttam Kumaran: I know we didn’t get a chance to chat that last week. Kind of now that we just went through our goals, what do you think?
393 00:44:22.800 ⇒ 00:44:31.370 Robert Tseng: I kind of felt like he was… there’s, like, too much overlap with Holly, is my kind of sense. Like, I just didn’t really know, like…
394 00:44:31.620 ⇒ 00:44:33.659 Robert Tseng: yeah, like…
395 00:44:34.060 ⇒ 00:44:40.899 Robert Tseng: we don’t have, like, an RFP for him to work on, or like… I mean, he seems like he’s interested in, like, learning our business, and…
396 00:44:40.910 ⇒ 00:44:58.140 Robert Tseng: But for him to be effective on, like, doing offer construction, I mean, we’re also giving Joe that chance, too. So, I kind of want to… yeah, especially since we’re about to take on the new advisory from… advisors from… from Vixel, I kind of want to hold off on Shannon for a bit, give Joe a little bit more time.
397 00:44:58.230 ⇒ 00:45:05.919 Robert Tseng: And, yeah, if we feel like we need somebody more senior on that side, then I… I think, I think we can maybe
398 00:45:06.230 ⇒ 00:45:09.719 Robert Tseng: tell him we can bring him in after the Thanksgiving holiday.
399 00:45:10.530 ⇒ 00:45:11.090 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
400 00:45:11.090 ⇒ 00:45:12.439 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Okay, fair.
401 00:45:13.050 ⇒ 00:45:13.680 Robert Tseng: Okay.
402 00:45:14.990 ⇒ 00:45:20.980 Uttam Kumaran: Cool, and then maybe I just have to jump to my phone, but maybe, Mickey, I can have you present…
403 00:45:21.110 ⇒ 00:45:27.829 Uttam Kumaran: the notion we worked on. I think it’s pretty clear, the structure, and then maybe we can just take 10 minutes to kind of
404 00:45:27.950 ⇒ 00:45:30.759 Uttam Kumaran: Talk about, like, how we’re gonna end up pitching this to partners, and…
405 00:45:30.990 ⇒ 00:45:33.080 Uttam Kumaran: Like, what our output expectations are.
406 00:45:34.160 ⇒ 00:45:34.970 Michele: Store.
407 00:45:35.220 ⇒ 00:45:37.130 Michele: Can you guys hear me okay, by the way?
408 00:45:37.190 ⇒ 00:45:37.720 Holly Condos: Yeah.
409 00:45:37.720 ⇒ 00:45:38.250 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
410 00:45:40.090 ⇒ 00:45:42.750 Michele: See what the easiest way to do this would be.
411 00:45:48.380 ⇒ 00:45:49.640 Michele: Can you guys see that back?
412 00:45:49.930 ⇒ 00:45:50.860 Holly Condos: Yes.
413 00:45:51.630 ⇒ 00:45:55.710 Michele: So, Utsam, I don’t know if you want to start through this, and I can color some stuff in, or…
414 00:45:56.390 ⇒ 00:46:00.149 Michele: Yeah, maybe if you could just show the goals and sort of, like.
415 00:46:00.150 ⇒ 00:46:16.209 Uttam Kumaran: and you can also… I sent this in Slack, by the way, but, you know, video is something that I think, we’ve thought about doing, we’ve done sort of by repurposing other campaigns, but I think there’s another layer, and really, I would say I wouldn’t…
416 00:46:16.420 ⇒ 00:46:32.550 Uttam Kumaran: think about executing this if, like, a sort of an execution partner like Mickey wasn’t sort of available, where I think there’s a pretty big gap for our ICP in having kind of high-quality videos that explain
417 00:46:32.680 ⇒ 00:46:48.050 Uttam Kumaran: you know, exactly how they can leverage data and AI for their need, and sort of explaining what the vision is. Additionally, I think our top of funnel problem is actually, like, how do we scale the messaging that we explain to people
418 00:46:48.270 ⇒ 00:47:00.699 Uttam Kumaran: in our sales call, and how do we do that over video? I think our website is one way that we’re starting to do that, and the website was always supposed to be, hey, find out what’s working in our sales calls, and…
419 00:47:00.900 ⇒ 00:47:02.290 Uttam Kumaran: like, great.
420 00:47:02.570 ⇒ 00:47:09.470 Uttam Kumaran: that, I think the video is actually probably a better medium and extension for that, where we show people
421 00:47:09.530 ⇒ 00:47:22.849 Uttam Kumaran: the… actually, like, what it’s like to work with us, how we break down problems, and we talk, like, directly to our ICP. If you think about AI and data sort of content, I think a lot of it is geared towards, developers.
422 00:47:22.950 ⇒ 00:47:37.059 Uttam Kumaran: And a lot of it is, like, not very tactical. In fact, I think most of the tactical advice is really a lot of growth marketing, but not a lot happening in, like, sort of the world that we’re in. So I think there is an opportunity.
423 00:47:38.400 ⇒ 00:47:51.479 Uttam Kumaran: And so we’ve listed in this doc, sort of, like, the why and the what it is. I think, the biggest reason, I feel like, in how we differentiate, not just, like, pump out YouTube videos, is one, like, the production quality.
424 00:47:51.480 ⇒ 00:48:08.860 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and so that’s where, like, an expertise from Mickey, who’s sort of done this, at several different firms, particularly in e-com, where they’ve built out sort of explaining, you know, hard e-com concepts that I think the messaging actually was very good and was working out for them.
425 00:48:08.860 ⇒ 00:48:24.619 Uttam Kumaran: Second, our benefit is that we’re not a content company, and so most of the content companies, they dilute their messaging in an effort to maximize views, because their monetization strategy is that. It’s like ads. We don’t have that. Like, our monetization strategy is
426 00:48:24.620 ⇒ 00:48:36.220 Uttam Kumaran: the services side of our business. And so, for us, like, even if it gets 500 views, if all 500 of those people are exact ICP, then it’s a better… it’s a better ROI on our dollars than
427 00:48:36.340 ⇒ 00:48:50.119 Uttam Kumaran: you know, LinkedIn, or, you know, otherwise, or going to an event. And so, you know, that’s sort of the thought on this, is that, we would produce these videos, and then we’d be able to use them as marketing assets.
428 00:48:50.250 ⇒ 00:48:54.290 Uttam Kumaran: And sort of promote against them. And then the last sort of part of this is, like, funding.
429 00:48:54.440 ⇒ 00:49:14.400 Uttam Kumaran: This is where I think leveraging this as a sales, like, as a part of our partnership strategy is really important. When we go to a partner and we talk about co-marketing activities, you know, of course, like, we can do LinkedIn posts, we’ve shown that we can do these white papers or SME interviews, but one thing that a lot of our partners
430 00:49:14.400 ⇒ 00:49:24.910 Uttam Kumaran: you know, kind of, like, aren’t great at doing is… is, you know, video, and even just, like, telling the customer story. And so, I think there’s an opportunity for us to actually leverage the…
431 00:49:24.980 ⇒ 00:49:30.049 Uttam Kumaran: BMDFs, like, funds from our partners to actually fund these activities.
432 00:49:30.180 ⇒ 00:49:32.879 Uttam Kumaran: Basically, making it free marketing for us.
433 00:49:33.080 ⇒ 00:49:35.900 Uttam Kumaran: And so that’s sort of my thought, is that, like.
434 00:49:36.390 ⇒ 00:49:41.889 Uttam Kumaran: One is we… I hope that we can basically find funds from Contextual and from Omni to, like.
435 00:49:42.480 ⇒ 00:50:00.510 Uttam Kumaran: cover, how much it would cost to produce these, but additionally, it just becomes marketing for us. Second, like, I can’t do this without a partner like Nikki, who has, like, a kind of extensive background in… in sort of video and editing, and in the notion, there’s examples of stuff that he’s done, and some stuff that we filmed last week with me.
436 00:50:00.860 ⇒ 00:50:02.569 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s sort of, like, the pitch.
437 00:50:03.280 ⇒ 00:50:07.079 Uttam Kumaran: kind of, like, on this, and, like, I think why the timing is… is right.
438 00:50:09.440 ⇒ 00:50:14.460 Robert Tseng: Cool, yeah, I mean, I’ll… I want to watch the edit and watch the videos, but that’s, that’s interesting.
439 00:50:15.000 ⇒ 00:50:28.300 Uttam Kumaran: Watch the video, it looks… I mean, I think it looks really good, like, I mean, we just kind of poached… we just tried to do a little bit of, like, a… what is Brainforge, and just sort of driving towards something that we could put on the homepage, but…
440 00:50:28.780 ⇒ 00:50:35.870 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, I think, like, this is a mix of, like, a thesis on how content works in…
441 00:50:36.210 ⇒ 00:50:46.539 Uttam Kumaran: sort of, like, right now around technology, and that most of the content is either by vendors or by people that are driven by ads, like, I don’t think the service partners put out a lot of great content.
442 00:50:46.680 ⇒ 00:50:49.030 Uttam Kumaran: And I don’t know, maybe this is something that Holly…
443 00:50:49.320 ⇒ 00:50:52.049 Uttam Kumaran: You may have seen done before, or…
444 00:50:52.480 ⇒ 00:50:56.079 Uttam Kumaran: You could kind of, like, attest to, like, if sort of those ideas are, like.
445 00:50:56.710 ⇒ 00:50:58.290 Uttam Kumaran: Kind of, like, in line with…
446 00:50:58.780 ⇒ 00:51:04.599 Uttam Kumaran: like, what’s in the market, because I don’t know, I don’t consume any content from services companies, and they’re doing all the work.
447 00:51:04.790 ⇒ 00:51:10.539 Uttam Kumaran: And actually, like, dealing with the people, dealing with the vendors, and, like, telling clients stories, and…
448 00:51:10.650 ⇒ 00:51:12.260 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t really see a lot of that.
449 00:51:12.470 ⇒ 00:51:23.389 Holly Condos: And I would concur that that’s basically correct across the services partner ecosystem, especially in the AI data tech space.
450 00:51:23.950 ⇒ 00:51:28.910 Holly Condos: I think they should do more of it, but they just don’t.
451 00:51:29.610 ⇒ 00:51:34.700 Holly Condos: And mostly, we’ve talked about this before, because they don’t have the expertise, and they don’t want to…
452 00:51:35.080 ⇒ 00:51:39.300 Holly Condos: Spend… you know, they don’t want to pay big marketing dollars.
453 00:51:39.760 ⇒ 00:51:46.230 Holly Condos: And they don’t know a partner like Brainforge that has the capability and capacity.
454 00:51:47.940 ⇒ 00:51:48.580 Holly Condos: So I…
455 00:51:48.580 ⇒ 00:51:49.090 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
456 00:51:49.090 ⇒ 00:51:52.850 Holly Condos: discussed before, I’m… I’m very supportive of this. I think
457 00:51:53.130 ⇒ 00:51:57.020 Holly Condos: I think it differentiates Brainforge dramatically.
458 00:51:57.220 ⇒ 00:52:01.089 Holly Condos: Not only in the space, but for…
459 00:52:01.620 ⇒ 00:52:08.379 Holly Condos: You know, small to mid-market companies who provide the types of
460 00:52:09.090 ⇒ 00:52:13.599 Holly Condos: things that Brainforge does. I think it’s… it’s a giant differentiator.
461 00:52:15.160 ⇒ 00:52:22.829 Holly Condos: And if we can leverage, like we’ve been talking, right, we can leverage, that resale or referral
462 00:52:23.050 ⇒ 00:52:25.130 Holly Condos: fee as an MDF.
463 00:52:25.940 ⇒ 00:52:26.839 Uttam Kumaran: That’s even better, yeah.
464 00:52:26.840 ⇒ 00:52:34.709 Holly Condos: If you will, right? It just makes it so easy for us, and with Mickey’s expertise, you know, I think this is a no-brainer.
465 00:52:41.310 ⇒ 00:52:44.130 Michele: I think you guys covered it super well. Can you hear me still?
466 00:52:44.460 ⇒ 00:52:45.170 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
467 00:52:45.170 ⇒ 00:52:47.609 Michele: Okay, I’ll just… I’ll weigh in super briefly.
468 00:52:48.110 ⇒ 00:52:53.300 Michele: Obviously, there’s enormous, and I’ll preface, I think, UTAM and
469 00:52:53.570 ⇒ 00:52:55.830 Michele: Bally, you guys hit the nail on the head.
470 00:52:56.240 ⇒ 00:53:01.710 Michele: there’s enormous opportunity, obviously, in the AI conversation that’s happening everywhere.
471 00:53:02.420 ⇒ 00:53:16.030 Michele: But at the same time, AI seems to be a bit of a black box in the way that people approach it, or know how to get started. I come from the e-commerce world, where there’s almost too much content, because everybody there is naturally a digital marketer, but…
472 00:53:16.370 ⇒ 00:53:19.899 Michele: With the goal of either finding
473 00:53:20.070 ⇒ 00:53:34.429 Michele: incremental ICP leads, or I think actually, in this case, enriching the existing prospects that are in Brainforge’s funnel, or just nurturing the relationships that you guys already have. Like, earlier in this call, somebody had mentioned, maybe it was you, Holly, or UTom.
474 00:53:34.570 ⇒ 00:53:35.380 Michele: like…
475 00:53:36.290 ⇒ 00:53:50.079 Michele: the lady who had referred CES and Elements, and then also Contextual, that feeds leads to Brainforge. I think, especially for the positioning of Brainforge in the market, from what Utah shared with me for the while we’ve known each other.
476 00:53:50.730 ⇒ 00:53:57.009 Michele: And also… the… Ticket value of what you guys are offering, like.
477 00:53:57.370 ⇒ 00:54:07.890 Michele: a really clear presentation of the customers and the problems that they face, and how Brainforge is positioned to deliver those solutions to those problems is, like, a really…
478 00:54:09.470 ⇒ 00:54:14.979 Michele: It can just open up a lot of doors and opportunities that are all pretty profitable, also, so…
479 00:54:15.340 ⇒ 00:54:16.799 Michele: Yeah, that’s my spiel.
480 00:54:19.270 ⇒ 00:54:27.799 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so my big thing to Mickey was, I cannot… I don’t have any… what’s the number one problem here is time. So I said, I don’t have any time for this.
481 00:54:28.000 ⇒ 00:54:36.299 Uttam Kumaran: I basically said, you can sit me down and I will talk about anything with anyone, but, like, I can’t execute and orchestrate.
482 00:54:36.450 ⇒ 00:54:46.280 Uttam Kumaran: And so I said that was the biggest problem we’ve had in the past, trying to do content, is that. It’s like, it was just, like, we need people to support orchestrating, and so…
483 00:54:46.540 ⇒ 00:55:00.629 Uttam Kumaran: I feel like this is worth a test. Even if we don’t end up getting the budget, like, from a partner, I still think it’s worth a test, and we can do something really lightweight. But given our conversation with Contextual last…
484 00:55:00.910 ⇒ 00:55:04.289 Uttam Kumaran: week, and things with Omni and Mother Duck.
485 00:55:04.480 ⇒ 00:55:06.349 Uttam Kumaran: I can tell these guys…
486 00:55:06.370 ⇒ 00:55:19.349 Uttam Kumaran: are, like, technical people, like, technical salespeople, who have marketing teams that are in the Bay Area that are not really, like, focused on customer success, like, the story, and…
487 00:55:19.350 ⇒ 00:55:28.319 Uttam Kumaran: like, whatever message we’re sharing is really hitting. Additionally, I could tell that their other service partners are not marketing in this way.
488 00:55:28.360 ⇒ 00:55:32.459 Uttam Kumaran: They are doing blog posts, they’re maybe doing events.
489 00:55:32.630 ⇒ 00:55:40.460 Uttam Kumaran: They’re doing happy hours for, like, engineers, but they’re not doing this, and this is a complete steal from what’s working in, like.
490 00:55:41.010 ⇒ 00:55:44.640 Uttam Kumaran: in e-com, you know? And so, I don’t know, that’s sort of the idea here.
491 00:55:49.530 ⇒ 00:55:54.039 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. So, in terms of just, like, what’s next, I think, you know, we’re gonna…
492 00:55:54.310 ⇒ 00:56:03.270 Uttam Kumaran: look to put together a little bit of, like, a scope to kind of pitch contextual on. I’m also gonna pitch Omni on using some of their funds that they owe us.
493 00:56:03.420 ⇒ 00:56:13.029 Uttam Kumaran: To… for this, and I’ll probably put that in front of them tomorrow, see what they say. So, ideally, we can get it from somewhere, and then…
494 00:56:13.300 ⇒ 00:56:20.730 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think this is just something that, I’d like to just see whether it could work. We’d run a small test and see whether…
495 00:56:21.270 ⇒ 00:56:26.610 Uttam Kumaran: It makes sense, and again, this… this is something that once we have this, we can clip up and promote, and…
496 00:56:26.610 ⇒ 00:56:29.209 Holly Condos: Sort of becomes a pretty timeless asset for us.
497 00:56:31.910 ⇒ 00:56:32.840 Holly Condos: Absolutely.
498 00:56:33.300 ⇒ 00:56:34.640 Robert Tseng: Cool, let’s do it.
499 00:56:36.660 ⇒ 00:56:37.350 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
500 00:56:38.680 ⇒ 00:56:39.460 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
501 00:56:39.640 ⇒ 00:56:40.760 Uttam Kumaran: That’s all I had.
502 00:56:42.640 ⇒ 00:56:51.859 Robert Tseng: Alright, I know we didn’t have time to go through, campaigns for the week, so I guess, Anna and Ryan, if you want to just
503 00:56:52.830 ⇒ 00:56:58.830 Robert Tseng: if we could do it async, that’d be best, but if you need to grab time with me, I can do…
504 00:56:59.470 ⇒ 00:57:03.610 Robert Tseng: like… I could do, like, in an hour.
505 00:57:03.860 ⇒ 00:57:05.409 Robert Tseng: If that’s helpful.
506 00:57:06.990 ⇒ 00:57:10.039 Hannah Wang: Yeah, let’s… let’s do that.
507 00:57:10.040 ⇒ 00:57:10.660 Robert Tseng: Okay.
508 00:57:10.910 ⇒ 00:57:11.390 Hannah Wang: Yeah.
509 00:57:11.390 ⇒ 00:57:13.749 Robert Tseng: then I’ll just grab time with Hannah and Ryan.
510 00:57:14.430 ⇒ 00:57:15.100 Hannah Wang: Okay.
511 00:57:15.320 ⇒ 00:57:16.660 Robert Tseng: Okay, cool.
512 00:57:17.810 ⇒ 00:57:18.870 Robert Tseng: Thanks, everyone.
513 00:57:19.070 ⇒ 00:57:19.790 Holly Condos: Thank you.
514 00:57:19.790 ⇒ 00:57:21.559 Michele: Thank you. Thank you, guys.