Meeting Title: Funnel Optimization Project Check-in Date: 2025-11-11 Meeting participants: Robert Tseng, Alicia Shin
WEBVTT
1 00:01:17.640 ⇒ 00:01:18.560 Alicia Shin: Hi!
2 00:01:20.520 ⇒ 00:01:21.590 Robert Tseng: Hey, Alicia!
3 00:01:23.910 ⇒ 00:01:24.640 Alicia Shin: What’s up.
4 00:01:25.730 ⇒ 00:01:27.690 Robert Tseng: How was, how was the off-site?
5 00:01:28.780 ⇒ 00:01:37.019 Alicia Shin: It was great. It’s, like, jarring being in, like, 90 degree weather and then coming back to this, like, polar vortex in the U.S.
6 00:01:37.020 ⇒ 00:01:37.390 Robert Tseng: Oh, yeah.
7 00:01:37.610 ⇒ 00:01:38.540 Alicia Shin: It’s…
8 00:01:38.540 ⇒ 00:01:41.040 Robert Tseng: It’s cold, I’m wearing a beanie inside, so… Yeah, like.
9 00:01:41.040 ⇒ 00:01:51.909 Alicia Shin: We didn’t… I don’t think any of us, like, took proper jackets with us either, so, like, coming back was quite, like, the wind that night, you know, at Newark Airport is not, like… it’s not fine, so…
10 00:01:51.910 ⇒ 00:01:54.540 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Where, where did you… where did the team go?
11 00:01:54.540 ⇒ 00:01:56.439 Alicia Shin: We went to Tulum, Mexico.
12 00:01:56.440 ⇒ 00:01:58.979 Robert Tseng: Oh, very cool! Okay. Yeah, yeah.
13 00:01:58.980 ⇒ 00:02:01.489 Alicia Shin: Yeah, no complaints, yeah.
14 00:02:01.720 ⇒ 00:02:12.019 Alicia Shin: yeah, a lot of us took, like, plus ones, and it was, like, a really great time, but, like, long, long travel days, and it was, like, right as the FAA announcements were coming out with the shutdown, so it was a little.
15 00:02:12.020 ⇒ 00:02:12.710 Robert Tseng: Right.
16 00:02:13.010 ⇒ 00:02:17.040 Robert Tseng: Okay, but that mostly impacted domestic flights, right? Exactly.
17 00:02:17.040 ⇒ 00:02:21.240 Alicia Shin: Yeah, I think the biggest thing, like, some people might have had, like, delays.
18 00:02:21.240 ⇒ 00:02:22.579 Robert Tseng: But, like, nothing. Bro, yeah, yeah.
19 00:02:22.580 ⇒ 00:02:24.489 Alicia Shin: No cancellations, thankfully. Yeah.
20 00:02:24.490 ⇒ 00:02:27.480 Robert Tseng: Okay, because your team is remote and all over, and not…
21 00:02:27.480 ⇒ 00:02:42.420 Alicia Shin: We’re, like, half in office in SF, Columbus, and New York, and then half remote, so the off-sites are really nice to, like, get together, but we try to choose locations that are good for both, like, East and West Coast to meet, like, halfway. Yeah.
22 00:02:42.420 ⇒ 00:02:44.169 Robert Tseng: Did you say Columbus? Like, Ohio?
23 00:02:44.170 ⇒ 00:02:53.380 Alicia Shin: is Ohio, yeah. Oh. We have, like, yeah, we have, like, two salespeople there. Our former head of sales is based there, and then, like, kind of built a team there.
24 00:02:53.620 ⇒ 00:02:57.859 Robert Tseng: Okay, I was wondering if you were targeting some, like, vertical that was in Ohio, and I was like.
25 00:02:57.860 ⇒ 00:03:01.929 Alicia Shin: No? Nope, it just so happens that we have some people living there.
26 00:03:01.930 ⇒ 00:03:07.200 Robert Tseng: Okay, very cool. And you have a kid, right? I’m assuming your kid didn’t go to Tulum, so…
27 00:03:07.200 ⇒ 00:03:10.399 Alicia Shin: Oh, no, you were assuming wrong. I took my kid.
28 00:03:10.400 ⇒ 00:03:11.330 Robert Tseng: Oh, wow.
29 00:03:11.330 ⇒ 00:03:15.870 Alicia Shin: Yeah, with, but my plus one was my mom, who’s in town, so I had some extra hands.
30 00:03:15.870 ⇒ 00:03:19.530 Robert Tseng: Oh, wow. Okay, well, that’s not a… that’s not a bad place.
31 00:03:19.530 ⇒ 00:03:20.470 Alicia Shin: Yeah, it was like…
32 00:03:20.470 ⇒ 00:03:22.359 Robert Tseng: Stay at home, or staycation, whatever.
33 00:03:22.360 ⇒ 00:03:29.549 Alicia Shin: The travels were… were hard, but, like, the actual time there, like, everyone really enjoyed it, so it was, like, net positive.
34 00:03:29.550 ⇒ 00:03:31.250 Robert Tseng: Okay, okay, good to hear, yeah.
35 00:03:32.140 ⇒ 00:03:39.399 Alicia Shin: Okay, cool. Well, I wanted to get on a call because, you should have access to.
36 00:03:39.400 ⇒ 00:03:40.770 Robert Tseng: Yes, thank you.
37 00:03:40.770 ⇒ 00:03:41.160 Alicia Shin: Yeah.
38 00:03:41.160 ⇒ 00:03:42.280 Robert Tseng: Getting us back.
39 00:03:42.470 ⇒ 00:03:46.200 Alicia Shin: Yes, it took some internal conversation, so appreciate your patience there.
40 00:03:46.200 ⇒ 00:03:46.820 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no.
41 00:03:46.820 ⇒ 00:03:59.369 Alicia Shin: The biggest thing for us, which now that we’re back from the off-site, I will be, like, more engaged, is I think we just need to get the funnel to, like, a really solid place, that’s, like, workable.
42 00:03:59.370 ⇒ 00:04:11.819 Alicia Shin: It’s, like, partially our fault for, like, being excited about the questions that we can unlock, but I think we lost sight of the key, like, fundamental question that we need to answer. So…
43 00:04:11.820 ⇒ 00:04:25.959 Alicia Shin: my ask of you would be, like, between now and the end of month, like, I’d love to try and get as much of this funnel to, like, a really good, reportable, and trusted place, so that we can actually start pulling it up for
44 00:04:25.960 ⇒ 00:04:37.949 Alicia Shin: meetings, I mean, in my ideal world, we can replace, like, my janky reporting for, like, the self-serve funnel that I do, and, like, use it for the board meeting, which is, you know, in January, but I just
45 00:04:38.290 ⇒ 00:04:52.180 Alicia Shin: don’t think we’re there yet, and so… Okay. That’s what the team wants to work on, and until we get there, it’s really hard to, like, feel the value of, like, all the other things that we know we can unlock through the work, so… Yeah. Like, all that said, like.
46 00:04:52.180 ⇒ 00:05:06.639 Alicia Shin: yes, like, send over paperwork for this month, like, we want to continue working together, but we really need to work this month on getting that funnel to, like, a solid place, which hopefully we can, like… this will be a priority for me, I’m sure it is for you, so we’ll work really closely together on that.
47 00:05:06.870 ⇒ 00:05:22.590 Robert Tseng: Okay, cool. Yeah, I mean, I think we’re, like, well past Discovery. We know what the opportunities are, we know where we would like to go, but, like, we understand that this is, like, the thing we need to figure out, so… Yeah. Yeah, I’m confident we will. I mean, we’re already… UTAM’s already in Mongo, like, we’re gonna… I think we can check
48 00:05:22.590 ⇒ 00:05:30.910 Robert Tseng: we could make the check that we wanted to make this week, and then if there’s any adjustments that we need to make, like, I think we could easily be done this month, so…
49 00:05:30.910 ⇒ 00:05:41.870 Alicia Shin: Great. I was, like, looking through it. I mean, there’s gonna be a question around, like, how we want to visualize it, because I think there’s, like, a couple tweaks we might want to make there, but I think if you guys could just work on, like.
50 00:05:42.220 ⇒ 00:05:59.309 Alicia Shin: do the numbers at the funnel stages, like, directionally map, and then, I was looking through the dash again, and there’s, like, a sizable number of people who have, like, no plan. I think we should try and get them mapped, so just some of the basic things that we need to clean up, and then we can talk about, like, the visualization as, like, a last, like.
51 00:05:59.850 ⇒ 00:06:02.190 Alicia Shin: Step, the icing on top.
52 00:06:02.670 ⇒ 00:06:10.829 Robert Tseng: Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Cool. Yeah, so I think we’re… yeah, you already called it out. I think we’re aware some data needs to be backfilled, some user data, so…
53 00:06:10.830 ⇒ 00:06:25.929 Robert Tseng: you know, plan types or whatever, just to kind of have cleaner segmentation when we’re doing the funnel by cuts. Yeah. So that will be one engineering kind of thing that’s a little bit out of our hands right now, because we’re not really actively pushing code into your codebase, or kind of… we’re not sending any data into amplitude from our side, so…
54 00:06:25.930 ⇒ 00:06:36.749 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think that’s something, like, we might need to do a touch base with Mark, I’m assuming, or whoever’s doing… who’s… I guess maybe Falco was the one that was doing amplitude instrumentation before.
55 00:06:36.750 ⇒ 00:06:43.600 Robert Tseng: But I think we should have a good, you know, line of sight on that by end of week, assuming we turn everything back on and keep going this week.
56 00:06:43.880 ⇒ 00:06:47.739 Alicia Shin: I don’t know enough about how amplitude works, but…
57 00:06:47.990 ⇒ 00:06:53.130 Alicia Shin: If you’re not seeing the information on your end, is the only way to represent that.
58 00:06:53.650 ⇒ 00:06:58.509 Alicia Shin: adds, like, a plan on our end, or is there anything you can do in Amplitude?
59 00:06:58.740 ⇒ 00:07:10.900 Robert Tseng: I mean, yeah, we can’t, like, manually, like, go and fill in stuff. Like, you can’t backfill data on amplitude. That’s kind of… yeah, that’s… that’s the limitation of these tools. Like, you need… you need to populate it from a warehouse.
60 00:07:11.100 ⇒ 00:07:35.349 Robert Tseng: I don’t think they have a native Mongo connection, so, like, yeah, anyway, like, it’s… if we need to pull some… we have read… we have read-only access to your Mongo, we’re not writing anything into it, so, like, there’s no risk, like, you know, so… but if we need to land that data in… I know Amplitude is platformed on Snowflake, so they prefer a Snowflake integration. They have a direct thing there that you don’t pay for or whatever. If we need to land it in a warehouse to be able to
61 00:07:35.350 ⇒ 00:07:38.940 Robert Tseng: Then update the user data, let maybe, like, one
62 00:07:38.940 ⇒ 00:07:47.950 Robert Tseng: like, piece of this stack that I might push for, but that’s, like, the only thing I foresee, like, that we will need to, get data into amplitude.
63 00:07:48.510 ⇒ 00:07:48.960 Alicia Shin: Okay.
64 00:07:48.960 ⇒ 00:07:49.470 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
65 00:07:49.470 ⇒ 00:07:54.510 Alicia Shin: This only becomes an issue if we really want to slice things by plan type, right?
66 00:07:54.910 ⇒ 00:08:07.470 Robert Tseng: Yeah, or, like, any other, attributes that you have on your users in Mongo. So, I mean, plan type is the most obvious one, but… Yeah. Yeah, I mean, everything else, like.
67 00:08:08.130 ⇒ 00:08:14.050 Robert Tseng: demograph… well, I don’t think you have demograph… I don’t know if you have demographic or business data, because it’s all, like, kind of used… yeah, whatever, so…
68 00:08:14.050 ⇒ 00:08:14.600 Alicia Shin: Yeah.
69 00:08:14.620 ⇒ 00:08:16.220 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
70 00:08:16.830 ⇒ 00:08:22.499 Alicia Shin: Okay. Let’s not get, like, stuck on that, you can just sort of flag that as, like.
71 00:08:22.500 ⇒ 00:08:38.660 Alicia Shin: this will remain an issue unless we do X, and then, that’ll be, like, a good point for us to maybe, like, bring back Ashley once we feel like we got it to, like, you know, 80, 90%, and then we can make a business decision on how we want to handle that, or if it’s even important to us at that point.
72 00:08:39.280 ⇒ 00:08:40.720 Robert Tseng: Okay. Yeah.
73 00:08:41.200 ⇒ 00:08:43.100 Alicia Shin: Awesome.
74 00:08:43.309 ⇒ 00:08:50.199 Robert Tseng: You said you would do some janky reporting on your own, like, there is also a world where we could just export the data from Amplitude, and then you can…
75 00:08:52.670 ⇒ 00:09:00.320 Alicia Shin: Yeah, we… I think we, like, walked you through this in the past. I can share my screen, but we basically just, like…
76 00:09:03.360 ⇒ 00:09:04.489 Robert Tseng: Oh, right, right, this one, okay.
77 00:09:04.490 ⇒ 00:09:15.990 Alicia Shin: We pulled this for our board meeting, and it just, it’s coming from different sources, and it’s not cohorted, so it’s, like, it’s not a bad view, it’s just not the full picture. It’s just, like, a screenshot at a point in time.
78 00:09:15.990 ⇒ 00:09:38.490 Alicia Shin: So I think… I just feel like there’s, like, deeper levels of analytics that we can surface to start answering, like, more important questions, but right now, all we are able to tell our board is that, like, we’re contracting in a certain segment, and we don’t know why, and it’s, like, not… it’s, like, very unsatisfying for… for us, and it kind of blocks us from being able to do, like, interesting growth experiments, so… Yep. Yeah, I think, like, as…
79 00:09:38.490 ⇒ 00:09:44.250 Alicia Shin: As soon as you feel good about The different validations,
80 00:09:44.450 ⇒ 00:09:47.899 Alicia Shin: That’ll help us, like, begin taking next steps.
81 00:09:48.110 ⇒ 00:09:51.650 Alicia Shin: The only other thing… the other question I had, so,
82 00:09:51.850 ⇒ 00:10:02.350 Alicia Shin: in your funnel, what was the final stage that you had again? So you had subscription success? Yeah. I know you were gonna validate that with
83 00:10:02.480 ⇒ 00:10:04.460 Alicia Shin: Mongo, but…
84 00:10:05.360 ⇒ 00:10:10.710 Alicia Shin: If it doesn’t match, then what do we do? Like, I guess for all of these, like, what do we do if it doesn’t match?
85 00:10:10.970 ⇒ 00:10:20.899 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so, user signups not matching, I think, that would probably be… I expect that to match, or, like, that’s fixable. That’s just, like…
86 00:10:21.080 ⇒ 00:10:38.360 Robert Tseng: you know, false… false positives or something. Like, you know, project creations, I also expect that to match. Attempted launch, obviously, is our proxy for somebody who’s exhibiting, like, behavior yet. I don’t think Mongo’s gonna have anything like that. They won’t, yeah. So the subscription is probably, you know, it’s… you… you have
87 00:10:38.360 ⇒ 00:10:56.019 Robert Tseng: I’m assuming… well, sorry, I mean, I… John looked at it today, I haven’t looked at it today, but, it’s payment… you have payment data in there, or, like, you know, some sort of, like, payment transactions log, or whatever, that’s pulling, or, like, kind of mirroring what you have in Stripe. So, assuming that those two systems are right, and that is actually your true
88 00:10:56.020 ⇒ 00:11:02.919 Robert Tseng: subscriptions data, well then, I would say, then we would have to send that data into… into Amplitude.
89 00:11:02.920 ⇒ 00:11:16.990 Robert Tseng: So that’s… that’s gonna be, like, okay, replicate the transaction log, model it as a transactions table in a data warehouse, and then send that into Amplitude. We can match off… match on users so that
90 00:11:17.000 ⇒ 00:11:31.139 Robert Tseng: we would disregard, like, the amplitude-fired, like, subscription success event, and use this, like, like, true event instead. So, that’s basically kind of… that kind of goes back to what I was saying, that there may be…
91 00:11:31.170 ⇒ 00:11:36.350 Robert Tseng: A little bit of engineering work to push… push that, or to get that data correct.
92 00:11:36.350 ⇒ 00:11:44.230 Alicia Shin: Okay. Yeah. Is that… assuming I can line up resourcing for that, like, is that feasible, like, in the next few weeks, slash, like…
93 00:11:44.420 ⇒ 00:11:46.479 Alicia Shin: by end of year, like, do we feel like that could be.
94 00:11:46.480 ⇒ 00:11:50.259 Robert Tseng: Yeah, it’s fast. I mean, we could do, we could do it, we could do it, within a week, so…
95 00:11:50.260 ⇒ 00:11:50.640 Alicia Shin: Okay, cool.
96 00:11:50.640 ⇒ 00:11:51.550 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
97 00:11:51.550 ⇒ 00:11:59.710 Alicia Shin: Okay, I… I don’t know the answer of, like, how Stripe and Mongo… I mean, like, yes, that… I would hope, like, the things are all tied out.
98 00:11:59.710 ⇒ 00:12:02.400 Robert Tseng: I think Anthony will be able to answer it by today.
99 00:12:02.400 ⇒ 00:12:09.629 Alicia Shin: If you want to, like, list out your assumptions or have any questions, like, Mark and Ashley, like, are in the channel, but,
100 00:12:10.080 ⇒ 00:12:19.930 Alicia Shin: yeah, otherwise, like, just feel free to, like, ping me, use the channel, like, I’m… I’ll be, like, active. I just think, like, at this point, basically, Ashley’s, like, so slammed right now that, like.
101 00:12:19.930 ⇒ 00:12:20.270 Robert Tseng: Sure.
102 00:12:20.270 ⇒ 00:12:21.849 Alicia Shin: He’ll,
103 00:12:22.010 ⇒ 00:12:29.960 Alicia Shin: until we have something, like, ready for her, I… we just don’t want to distract her from her other stuff. Yeah. So that’s what… that’s what we’re trying to balance right now, so…
104 00:12:29.960 ⇒ 00:12:46.789 Robert Tseng: Okay, yeah, I hear that. Yeah, and obviously, like, I’ve kind of… we… we’ve already kind of, like, poked at the other questions around… around the room, so, like, I… you know, I understand that this is the biggest blocker. This is the… this is the only thing that we’re gonna be… we’re gonna… and we’re gonna get it done really quick, so… Okay. Yeah.
105 00:12:47.030 ⇒ 00:12:48.359 Alicia Shin: Okay, awesome, thank you.
106 00:12:48.360 ⇒ 00:12:55.310 Robert Tseng: As far as contracting goes, Phoebe, signed off on it. Do you want… are we just gonna do another month, and then…
107 00:12:55.310 ⇒ 00:13:09.499 Alicia Shin: I think month-to-month works for us. Okay. Let me just make a note. I don’t talk to her until Thursday, so there might be a little lag, but I’ll try to push on my end. She’s… it usually just, like, sits in her inbox for, like, she’s our signatory for everything, so the queue is long, but…
108 00:13:09.500 ⇒ 00:13:09.849 Robert Tseng: Of course.
109 00:13:09.850 ⇒ 00:13:10.429 Alicia Shin: It’ll get done.
110 00:13:10.430 ⇒ 00:13:20.160 Robert Tseng: We can… we can just kind of assume… I mean, we’ve worked with you for a couple months already, so I’m not worried about it being signed off on. We can just kind of resume and just… I’ll just back… backbate it to the start of this week.
111 00:13:20.160 ⇒ 00:13:22.010 Alicia Shin: Okay, that works great, yeah. Okay.
112 00:13:22.010 ⇒ 00:13:22.640 Robert Tseng: Okay.
113 00:13:22.920 ⇒ 00:13:26.119 Alicia Shin: Awesome, thank you. I’m available, just Slack if you need me.
114 00:13:26.430 ⇒ 00:13:29.430 Robert Tseng: Okay, sounds good. Thank you. Alright, thanks, Alicia. Bye.