Meeting Title: PeopleOps Role Discussion and Hiring Update Date: 2026-01-08 Meeting participants: Kaela Gallagher, Robert Tseng
WEBVTT
1 00:02:35.360 ⇒ 00:02:36.269 Robert Tseng: Hey, Kayla!
2 00:02:36.270 ⇒ 00:02:38.339 Kaela Gallagher: Hey, hey, how’s it going?
3 00:02:38.520 ⇒ 00:02:39.670 Robert Tseng: Happy New Year!
4 00:02:39.690 ⇒ 00:02:42.890 Kaela Gallagher: Happy New Year! How was… how was your holidays?
5 00:02:43.300 ⇒ 00:02:46.320 Robert Tseng: It was good. I was mostly in California.
6 00:02:46.320 ⇒ 00:02:46.770 Kaela Gallagher: Oh!
7 00:02:46.770 ⇒ 00:02:48.429 Robert Tseng: Living Bay Area, yeah, so…
8 00:02:48.430 ⇒ 00:02:49.829 Kaela Gallagher: Cool. Okay.
9 00:02:49.830 ⇒ 00:02:54.770 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah. But it was quite rainy, as maybe you’ve experienced if you stayed around.
10 00:02:54.770 ⇒ 00:03:06.739 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, I actually somehow managed to escape all of the rain, and spent the holidays mostly with my family in Illinois, and…
11 00:03:06.740 ⇒ 00:03:07.289 Robert Tseng: Oh, okay.
12 00:03:07.290 ⇒ 00:03:15.239 Kaela Gallagher: I packed, like, a glove… like, gloves and a scarf and everything, thinking it would be freezing, and it was 65 degrees, and we went on walks every day.
13 00:03:15.240 ⇒ 00:03:15.830 Robert Tseng: Wow.
14 00:03:15.830 ⇒ 00:03:18.080 Kaela Gallagher: It was great.
15 00:03:18.670 ⇒ 00:03:21.129 Robert Tseng: Illinois, like, Chicago area, or…
16 00:03:21.130 ⇒ 00:03:23.119 Kaela Gallagher: Closer to St. Louis.
17 00:03:23.120 ⇒ 00:03:24.080 Robert Tseng: West St. Louis, okay.
18 00:03:24.080 ⇒ 00:03:29.210 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah. Oh, nice. My dad is, active duty Air Force, so that’s just where they’re stationed.
19 00:03:29.210 ⇒ 00:03:30.060 Robert Tseng: Oh, wow!
20 00:03:30.060 ⇒ 00:03:30.510 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah.
21 00:03:30.510 ⇒ 00:03:31.030 Robert Tseng: Okay.
22 00:03:31.030 ⇒ 00:03:31.650 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah.
23 00:03:31.650 ⇒ 00:03:40.550 Robert Tseng: Well, yeah, I did hear somebody had a conversation with you and said you were from Hawaii, and I think I crossed… was… did I get confused? Did you say… have you lived in Hawaii before?
24 00:03:40.550 ⇒ 00:03:43.350 Kaela Gallagher: I’ve never lived in Hawaii. Oh.
25 00:03:43.810 ⇒ 00:03:51.659 Robert Tseng: Okay, maybe we talked to somebody else who is also a child of active military. Yeah, okay, never mind. That’s my bad.
26 00:03:52.060 ⇒ 00:03:57.889 Kaela Gallagher: No, no worries, no worries. But, yeah, moved around quite a bit, hence, WBB, so…
27 00:03:57.890 ⇒ 00:04:02.129 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah. No, I think, WBB, I mean, I feel like I have the most…
28 00:04:02.410 ⇒ 00:04:09.519 Robert Tseng: one of the most… more boring kind of upbringings. I… my elementary, middle, and high school are all on the same street.
29 00:04:09.520 ⇒ 00:04:10.360 Kaela Gallagher: Oh my god.
30 00:04:10.360 ⇒ 00:04:19.579 Robert Tseng: little suburb in… somewhere near San Jose, but closer to Gilroy. Like, I was closer to,
31 00:04:19.899 ⇒ 00:04:27.670 Robert Tseng: ranches and, like, with horses and cows than I was to, like, The freeway, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
32 00:04:27.670 ⇒ 00:04:29.730 Kaela Gallagher: Oh, that’s fun. That’s awesome. Yeah.
33 00:04:30.290 ⇒ 00:04:31.170 Kaela Gallagher: Cool.
34 00:04:31.470 ⇒ 00:04:36.980 Robert Tseng: Yeah, well, yeah, I guess thanks, thanks for kind of, working with us as we’ve been…
35 00:04:37.340 ⇒ 00:04:42.639 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think a lot has changed since, like, even the first… last time we talked, for sure, and
36 00:04:43.660 ⇒ 00:04:52.150 Robert Tseng: Yeah, just in terms of… we’ve… new people have come on, obviously this is the role we’re still hiring for, but even the needs of this role have kind of, like, adjusted as well, based on…
37 00:04:52.510 ⇒ 00:04:57.039 Robert Tseng: Yeah, just what we’ve learned, as we’ve kind of, like.
38 00:04:57.100 ⇒ 00:05:12.809 Robert Tseng: brought different people in to try to, like, take on some of the scope. I think I’m just gonna pull up a couple things to reference, like, what I had shared with you over email again. And so, yeah, I think to… what I’m hoping to share with you on this call really is, like.
39 00:05:12.920 ⇒ 00:05:19.889 Robert Tseng: Yeah, just to reiterate kind of the biggest need to fill on the recruiting people ops side, which is why I feel like you were still top of mind for us.
40 00:05:19.890 ⇒ 00:05:21.709 Kaela Gallagher: I know that you had, like, some…
41 00:05:21.710 ⇒ 00:05:28.050 Robert Tseng: concerns about, like, total comp and, like, how does that all kind of fit in now? But yeah, I think, like.
42 00:05:28.110 ⇒ 00:05:44.209 Robert Tseng: And then, like, the biggest question from the team is, like, whether or not, like, you will enjoy kind of being kind of in this stage that we’re at right now. So, I hope to kind of give you just a bigger, like, a better snapshot of that. And then, yeah, I just, you know, we want to just make sure that
43 00:05:44.320 ⇒ 00:05:54.150 Robert Tseng: you… if I have… take time to answer any questions you have, and if there’s anybody else in the team that you… that you still need to talk to, that I would… I could help set that up, too.
44 00:05:54.470 ⇒ 00:06:03.520 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, okay, sounds like a plan, yeah. Exciting to hear that you guys have kind of continued hiring. What were your most recent hires?
45 00:06:04.200 ⇒ 00:06:11.129 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so we hired… I think… I’m not exactly sure if this is the way I framed it to you, but when I first reached out to you, I think…
46 00:06:11.460 ⇒ 00:06:16.200 Robert Tseng: I was telling… I mean, I was looking for four core rules, so these, to me, are, like, kind of…
47 00:06:18.790 ⇒ 00:06:36.529 Robert Tseng: op… like, I would consider them, like, a founding ops team, like, in a traditional product startups, like, lingo. That’s just kind of my frame of reference from my previous time working at startups. So someone to kind of head up on the go-to-market side, someone on, like, the biz ops, people ops side.
48 00:06:36.530 ⇒ 00:06:47.160 Robert Tseng: And then on the delivery side, so, because we’re not a product company, we’re a services organization, somebody to really come in and lead delivery and be able to help us scale our delivery.
49 00:06:47.160 ⇒ 00:06:58.119 Robert Tseng: And then, the fourth role was more something that was, like, like a product person, because we are actually building internal product that helps speed up our engineering, too.
50 00:06:58.120 ⇒ 00:07:01.870 Robert Tseng: So we filled 3 out of the 4 roles. Yeah, so we’ve hired 3 people in the past month.
51 00:07:01.980 ⇒ 00:07:10.390 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so the… the PeopleOps and BizOps one is still, like, the one that we haven’t… haven’t gotten, that we’re… that we’re trying to… trying to fill, so…
52 00:07:10.450 ⇒ 00:07:28.450 Robert Tseng: Yeah, it feels like it’s been… yeah, I mean, the other three… the other three have been immediately impactful right off the bat, so super glad that we made that decision. Two of them are actually in LA, so I’m probably gonna come to LA again soon, so… Okay. Yeah, I guess regardless of how this goes, like, I’d love to… love to meet you in person, too.
53 00:07:28.450 ⇒ 00:07:34.119 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, I don’t know if Hannah mentioned to you, but her and I actually grabbed coffee the other day as well.
54 00:07:34.120 ⇒ 00:07:34.679 Robert Tseng: Oh, really?
55 00:07:34.680 ⇒ 00:07:35.480 Kaela Gallagher: And, yeah.
56 00:07:35.480 ⇒ 00:07:36.100 Robert Tseng: -Oh.
57 00:07:36.100 ⇒ 00:07:43.240 Kaela Gallagher: Great to meet the LA team. Okay, yeah, no, she did, yeah, she didn’t tell me that. So, yeah, exciting to hear there’s more… more people here.
58 00:07:43.430 ⇒ 00:07:51.150 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah. I do recall you being in, like, kind of the West LA area. Ironically, both… both… everyone’s in that area.
59 00:07:51.150 ⇒ 00:07:51.550 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.
60 00:07:51.550 ⇒ 00:07:55.409 Robert Tseng: Like, there’s 3 people in Culver City, and 1 person involved, so…
61 00:07:55.410 ⇒ 00:07:59.210 Kaela Gallagher: Oh my god, okay, I’m in Palms, technically, I’m right next to Venice.
62 00:07:59.210 ⇒ 00:08:07.879 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I remember you said you were in Palms, and I was always telling the team, oh, if we have 5 people in one place, then we’ll have an office there, so, like, we’re almost there. It’s kind of funny.
63 00:08:07.880 ⇒ 00:08:09.069 Kaela Gallagher: Here we go!
64 00:08:09.070 ⇒ 00:08:09.420 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
65 00:08:09.420 ⇒ 00:08:10.180 Kaela Gallagher: Ugh, cool.
66 00:08:10.710 ⇒ 00:08:20.170 Robert Tseng: Yeah, but okay, let me just start by kind of… I’ll share my screen. This is a little bit of a spreadsheet thing. Let me try to…
67 00:08:21.140 ⇒ 00:08:38.659 Robert Tseng: in some things. Yeah, so, I guess… excuse the kind of, like, spreadsheet thing, but I guess we wanted to, first from, like, a comp perspective, yeah, like, we’re… we’re having, like, different tiers now for, like, junior, mid-level, and senior, so we’ve kind of flushed that out over the past,
68 00:08:38.820 ⇒ 00:08:46.890 Robert Tseng: past, December, so the number is, like, the base is pretty similar to what we described. Might be… I forgot exactly what number we gave you, but,
69 00:08:46.980 ⇒ 00:08:59.239 Robert Tseng: That’s a good chunk of the… of the comp. But then there’s all these other things that, like, we feel like are part of the value that we are also, like, offering in… as well. So, I think…
70 00:08:59.580 ⇒ 00:09:16.259 Robert Tseng: we… like, healthcare and… and 401 matching and stuff is not here yet, because we’re not… no one’s on a W-2. We actually ideally wanted… I mean, if you were to come in, you’d basically help us push this to the finish line. This is one of our biggest priorities, just to, like.
71 00:09:16.750 ⇒ 00:09:21.630 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, we want this to be a place where people of all different,
72 00:09:21.690 ⇒ 00:09:32.379 Robert Tseng: backgrounds feel comfortable coming in, they have, like, they have what they need to feel like they’re ready to set up. You know, everything that was stood up was just me and Utam, so, like, none of us are really true HR or…
73 00:09:32.380 ⇒ 00:09:47.329 Robert Tseng: ops people, I mean, we’ve kind of, like, figured our way to get to where we are, but, yeah, I think this is definitely one of the biggest priorities to codify a lot of what we’ve described here. So, keep that in mind. These are part of the things that we want to add as soon as we can.
74 00:09:47.630 ⇒ 00:09:54.850 Robert Tseng: And so we do feel like this ends up being, like, an additional, like, 30… 20 to 30% of, like, somebody’s, like,
75 00:09:54.880 ⇒ 00:10:08.620 Robert Tseng: comp that gets added onto their base, so I think that that should be, factored into that as well. And then we also have, performance targets for every, for every role, especially in this, like, founding ops team.
76 00:10:08.650 ⇒ 00:10:17.859 Robert Tseng: I think I shared with you a job description before, or, like, an updated Notion doc. I don’t have it pulled up here right now to kind of outline specifically what
77 00:10:17.940 ⇒ 00:10:33.369 Robert Tseng: we felt like this role needed to kind of come in and own. Yeah, and so we would workshop this a little bit more with you, but before the other three signed on, we basically kind of co-authored their JD for them, made sure that they understood, like, okay, well.
78 00:10:33.370 ⇒ 00:10:47.339 Robert Tseng: here are the different things that you can unlock from your performance bonus, and I think that adds more range as well. So, yeah, I think my point, like, the point there is that I feel very confident that we can easily hit your, your, your expected total comp.
79 00:10:47.340 ⇒ 00:10:52.280 Robert Tseng: And, yeah, I think just, just obviously being a…
80 00:10:52.510 ⇒ 00:11:09.450 Robert Tseng: startup, we don’t really kind of offer all the same things up front. I think we kind of bank a lot more on, like, there are a lot more options in the menu that we provide, and we are able to actually build this variable comp plan with each person, at least for now.
81 00:11:09.450 ⇒ 00:11:13.690 Robert Tseng: I think as we scale, I will not offer this to every person, but…
82 00:11:13.690 ⇒ 00:11:30.269 Robert Tseng: you know, at this… at this stage, like, you know, this is… this is just what we’ve had to do in order to, like, get people to the… to the number that they… that they want, at least. And most of the time, we’ve exceeded… most… most of the time, we’ve exceeded their number. So, okay. Yeah. I guess, like.
83 00:11:30.430 ⇒ 00:11:34.250 Robert Tseng: I know this is really still just, like, a… I can…
84 00:11:34.550 ⇒ 00:11:44.569 Robert Tseng: kind of just a spreadsheet. It’s not, like, a nice thing to show you yet, but, like, if we were to actually write out the contract, it would all include, we would try to basically include all of that in there.
85 00:11:44.810 ⇒ 00:12:01.150 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, and I… I appreciate you sharing this, because not only is it helpful for me in determining, obviously, what it would look like if I joined the team, but just from the recruiting perspective, like, understanding how I could kind of sell this and present this to future.
86 00:12:01.150 ⇒ 00:12:02.080 Robert Tseng: Yeah, that’s true.
87 00:12:02.080 ⇒ 00:12:13.999 Kaela Gallagher: It’s, like, awesome to kind of see it broken down and kind of, you know, the potential of, you know, healthcare and an annual off-site, and all these things that are kind of selling points going forward. So, I like
88 00:12:14.330 ⇒ 00:12:15.840 Kaela Gallagher: From that perspective, too.
89 00:12:16.400 ⇒ 00:12:35.690 Robert Tseng: Great, yeah. So yeah, I mean, this is a little bit of a… it’s a more interesting conversation, because I’m showing you, kind of, what you would basically come in and make better, I guess, as opposed to the other people. They were just like, great, like, this is… okay, this is just how it is. So, yeah, I mean, if you… if you notice anything that you’re like, well, yeah, you should
90 00:12:35.690 ⇒ 00:12:48.420 Robert Tseng: consider this or that, like, I’m totally open to… to that feedback. But this is kind of… we… when we were… when we shut down the company for the last week of the year, we really, like, sat down and tried to, like, make all of this as clear as we could.
91 00:12:49.720 ⇒ 00:13:09.059 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so what we’ve rolled out this week, and I just want to briefly touch on that, is, like, we’ve… we’ve done, like, bonus, like, spot bonuses and individual performance bonuses for everyone across the team, specifically on the delivery side, this week. So, we actually rolled out a new model of, delivery that we didn’t have before.
92 00:13:09.060 ⇒ 00:13:18.800 Robert Tseng: So, yeah, I think I just want to share that, because it’s, like, we’re… we’re experimenting on… on, like, how… what our operating model should be, kind of, moving forward, like…
93 00:13:19.140 ⇒ 00:13:37.630 Robert Tseng: We did around, like, kind of 8 million this year is kind of, like, what our goal is. And so, in order to do that, we know that our team needs to continue to grow. And so, yeah, like, hiring and the recruitment pipeline is, like, the…
94 00:13:37.640 ⇒ 00:13:56.219 Robert Tseng: top… one of the top things that we need to continue to have. That’s why this role is super important to us, and yeah, you know, like, I think that, you know, if… that’s… I guess that’s something that we would hope that you’d be… you’d be interested in coming to… to help and build that pipeline up.
95 00:13:56.690 ⇒ 00:13:57.280 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah.
96 00:13:57.640 ⇒ 00:14:06.650 Robert Tseng: On the… and then… but there… there are certain… contrary to other consultancies or other, maybe, models you’ve worked in, we… we’re… we’re willing to…
97 00:14:06.650 ⇒ 00:14:19.330 Robert Tseng: like, adopt pretty, like, scrappy models, and so, like, even this approach, which I can share this with you, because I think it’s a good example of, like, how we try to operate differently from traditional consultancies.
98 00:14:19.330 ⇒ 00:14:30.549 Robert Tseng: not just to be unique, but just… I think it’s an example of, like, how there’s a lot of things that we do that aren’t necessarily by the book, but, like, we feel like it’s worth betting on to try to… to try to… try to do differently.
99 00:14:30.610 ⇒ 00:14:31.240 Robert Tseng: So…
100 00:14:31.240 ⇒ 00:14:31.700 Kaela Gallagher: Come on.
101 00:14:31.700 ⇒ 00:14:35.380 Robert Tseng: For example, we don’t… we’re not hiring any project managers right now.
102 00:14:35.900 ⇒ 00:14:45.800 Robert Tseng: we kind of got rid of all our project managers. That was, like, a pretty controversial decision, in Q3 of last year, and we’ve been trying to, like.
103 00:14:46.070 ⇒ 00:14:59.280 Robert Tseng: Q4 was kind of rough, because we were, like, trying to figure out, like, testing different formats for how we could operate, across, you know, 15-plus clients without having project managers, but, we were able to do that,
104 00:14:59.630 ⇒ 00:15:05.110 Robert Tseng: And take our learnings and build a framework that has allowed our
105 00:15:05.400 ⇒ 00:15:21.020 Robert Tseng: engineers and other technical staff to take on, becoming… take on some project management scope, and they get compensated for that. So that’s kind of where this, like, model of, like, what we’re calling, client success,
106 00:15:21.680 ⇒ 00:15:36.460 Robert Tseng: Officer… engagement… sorry, there’s a lot of things, yeah. Engagement planner, service leader, etc. So, like, we know that these are not roles that any engineer typically is, like, asked to do, and even in traditional consultancy, they don’t necessarily have these roles.
107 00:15:36.460 ⇒ 00:15:45.610 Robert Tseng: And we don’t really know if this will work, to be honest. Like, we’re kind of testing this out for the first quarter, and kind of… and we’re nervous about, like.
108 00:15:45.880 ⇒ 00:16:05.709 Robert Tseng: you know, is the quality of our work going to drop? But so far, in the first week, it’s been… it’s been great, because it gets me out of a lot more meetings on the delivery side. I don’t have to run, like, 7 clients, like, things are… people are starting to take more ownership. But yeah, I think this is just kind of an example of, like.
109 00:16:05.710 ⇒ 00:16:14.980 Robert Tseng: From an organizational standpoint, the creativity that we have to, like, try to… to do things, in a different way, and…
110 00:16:15.230 ⇒ 00:16:21.970 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so it’s not just about process change, but we also have to have tooling, you know, improvements as well, which is why
111 00:16:21.970 ⇒ 00:16:44.299 Robert Tseng: as the consultants do, we have, like, an internal engineering team that builds AI products to help support our team. So, and that ends up becoming the stuff that we build for ourselves internally. For example, one of our clients, is literally paying us to build what we build for ourselves. And so, like, we know that the way that we’re running our… the product that we’ve built internally.
112 00:16:44.410 ⇒ 00:16:54.129 Robert Tseng: It’s not something we want to go and package up and sell as, like, a software as a service right now, but, other service organizations see what we do, and they want
113 00:16:54.130 ⇒ 00:17:05.500 Robert Tseng: they want us to build the same thing for them. So I think that’s been good validation that we’re approaching this in a truly AI-forward way, that requires kind of everybody to kind of think about their job differently.
114 00:17:05.750 ⇒ 00:17:23.250 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, question here on these roles, now that you’ve kind of, like, shifted, project management responsibilities. When you’re looking to hire engineers moving forward, are these roles that you would be wanting them to kind of take on off the bat?
115 00:17:24.089 ⇒ 00:17:40.499 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so that’s a great question. Yeah, so actually, you know, we’re actually having a crunch on hiring analysts right now, so for the technical talent, there’s, like, there’s basically three roles that we hire for. AI engineers, data engineers, and data analysts.
116 00:17:40.499 ⇒ 00:17:48.729 Robert Tseng: and those kind of three end up being kind of the technical staff on our team. We have a shortage of analysts right now. But every analyst that I’m hiring
117 00:17:48.729 ⇒ 00:18:03.089 Robert Tseng: There are… we know that we have a shortage of client success owners, or people who are client-facing, who are comfortable, in, like, just being in a lot of client meetings, gathering requirements from the client, and kind of really owning, like.
118 00:18:03.099 ⇒ 00:18:07.689 Robert Tseng: Yeah, just basically being, like, a client success person for them.
119 00:18:07.690 ⇒ 00:18:08.380 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah.
120 00:18:08.380 ⇒ 00:18:24.720 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, I… we… we understand that that’s been, like, the biggest gap for us, and so every… every analyst candidate that we’re talking to, we are indexing that they need to have that. Okay. So, eventually, like, I expect there to kind of be more of, like.
121 00:18:25.770 ⇒ 00:18:41.340 Robert Tseng: people have the option of deciding, like, which roles they want to participate in, but the expectation is that every technical staff that comes on is going to operate in one of these roles as well, and it’s going to take at least 20% of their job. So, yeah, I think that’s…
122 00:18:41.620 ⇒ 00:18:51.739 Robert Tseng: And that’s, you know, that’s just something that’s unique about our culture, that they’ll have to… if they want to work here, that that’s what they’ll have to be okay with.
123 00:18:51.770 ⇒ 00:18:52.750 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.
124 00:18:52.770 ⇒ 00:18:56.250 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so that’s… that’s… hopefully that answers that question.
125 00:18:56.250 ⇒ 00:18:57.900 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, definitely.
126 00:18:58.180 ⇒ 00:18:58.780 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
127 00:18:59.260 ⇒ 00:19:04.949 Robert Tseng: So I’ll share the stock with you afterwards, because I, you know, would want you to take some time to look through it.
128 00:19:05.840 ⇒ 00:19:14.250 Robert Tseng: And… yeah, so I think beyond the comp conversation, there, water.
129 00:19:14.250 ⇒ 00:19:19.500 Kaela Gallagher: Just actually really quickly, since we’re already on the topic of comp…
130 00:19:19.840 ⇒ 00:19:20.450 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
131 00:19:20.980 ⇒ 00:19:27.970 Kaela Gallagher: Wanted to ask… If PTO is something that you guys have kind of fleshed out yet.
132 00:19:28.430 ⇒ 00:19:29.800 Robert Tseng: No, because.
133 00:19:29.800 ⇒ 00:19:30.190 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.
134 00:19:31.920 ⇒ 00:19:48.960 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I know if we hire in, like, California, and everyone’s on W-2s, there’s, like, certain… we have to pay, like, something to… like, and people have the option to either do unlimited PTO versus, like, actual days, and you have to pay out. I know there’s some complexity there.
135 00:19:48.960 ⇒ 00:19:52.979 Robert Tseng: I mean, the way we’ve been doing it is that…
136 00:19:53.200 ⇒ 00:20:10.629 Robert Tseng: since everyone’s on a 1099 currently, we just… but people who are technically full-time with us, they just get paid a fixed amount, so we just let people take time off, and it’s functionally PTO for now. But yeah, we do want to move to a place where we’re able to offer
137 00:20:10.740 ⇒ 00:20:17.010 Robert Tseng: yeah, W-2s, and, like, do kind of PTO the more traditional way.
138 00:20:17.300 ⇒ 00:20:18.460 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, okay.
139 00:20:18.600 ⇒ 00:20:19.599 Kaela Gallagher: Makes sense. Yeah.
140 00:20:19.720 ⇒ 00:20:20.570 Kaela Gallagher: Cool.
141 00:20:22.630 ⇒ 00:20:27.070 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think, I want to…
142 00:20:27.200 ⇒ 00:20:33.850 Robert Tseng: Spend a little time going into… the…
143 00:20:34.450 ⇒ 00:20:38.989 Robert Tseng: ops leadership role, is this the right… doc.
144 00:20:41.700 ⇒ 00:20:46.070 Kaela Gallagher: Yes, I have one in front of me, yeah, Operations Leadership Framework.
145 00:20:46.590 ⇒ 00:20:48.570 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so…
146 00:20:52.890 ⇒ 00:20:55.960 Robert Tseng: I guess…
147 00:20:58.840 ⇒ 00:21:10.660 Robert Tseng: I think… I don’t… I don’t really think we have… I have, like… I think you do… I think you do well here, but we do want to acknowledge that, like, people ops and BizOps are typically two separate roles in an organization.
148 00:21:11.350 ⇒ 00:21:12.320 Robert Tseng: Yup.
149 00:21:12.970 ⇒ 00:21:29.859 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think, like, another candidate that we were trying to get in the door, for this same role, she had a stronger background, or, like, just in BizOps, like, she had been in BizOps for, like, 10 plus years at various small organizations, and
150 00:21:29.990 ⇒ 00:21:37.299 Robert Tseng: You know, but she also didn’t ever really cross into the people ops, and that was ultimately why we didn’t end up going with her.
151 00:21:37.770 ⇒ 00:21:53.809 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so… but from Utam’s perspective, this is kind of, like, the open-ended question marks, like, okay, we feel confident that Kayla could probably start here, and, you know, but, like, would she actually want to, and would she thrive in, like, kind of expanding to this scope? So, I’d like to spend a little bit of time kind of talking about
152 00:21:53.810 ⇒ 00:22:01.469 Robert Tseng: this a bit more, and just… I mean, I don’t… yeah, like, I… I don’t know if, yeah, if you have any initial thoughts on that.
153 00:22:01.920 ⇒ 00:22:21.840 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, when you guys had, kind of, sent this over initially, I was, like, so excited to read this, like, I felt like all three, kind of, portions of this were, kind of tailored towards me in a way. Obviously, like, I have the people ops and the recruiting
154 00:22:21.840 ⇒ 00:22:31.810 Kaela Gallagher: experience, like, super extensively and, you know, feel confident in impacting those areas, but I think we had initially kind of touched
155 00:22:31.810 ⇒ 00:22:49.040 Kaela Gallagher: In our first conversation about me wanting to feel very involved in, like, a strategy, perspective as well, and, like, right now in my current role, I get to do that through leadership meetings and kind of developing strategy for the office, and so…
156 00:22:49.040 ⇒ 00:22:53.090 Kaela Gallagher: Like, seeing this portion in there was really exciting to me to…
157 00:22:53.090 ⇒ 00:22:53.430 Robert Tseng: Hmm.
158 00:22:53.430 ⇒ 00:22:59.639 Kaela Gallagher: You know, get to, like, improve workflows and basically be, like, the problem solver for.
159 00:22:59.980 ⇒ 00:23:04.850 Kaela Gallagher: And, like, looking through, kind of, the,
160 00:23:05.040 ⇒ 00:23:17.899 Kaela Gallagher: template schedule that you guys had built out. There was a section about, like, kind of holding office hours and meeting with, you know, the entire team to kind of figure out, like, how can you…
161 00:23:18.740 ⇒ 00:23:31.670 Kaela Gallagher: eliminate hidden factories and, roadblocks that they might be facing in their daily lives, like, this is a really cool part of the role to me, and yeah, definitely something that I’m excited for.
162 00:23:31.790 ⇒ 00:23:34.830 Kaela Gallagher: Very excited to see you guys included it.
163 00:23:35.240 ⇒ 00:23:38.090 Robert Tseng: Great. Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, I think…
164 00:23:38.420 ⇒ 00:23:58.199 Robert Tseng: as we expect to probably grow… like, I mean, I don’t… if we’re… if, you know, I’ve already forecasted out kind of what it would take to get to our revenue target, but we’re probably gonna have to almost double the team again, you know, this year, if we’re gonna… if we’re gonna get there. So, yeah, I mean, right now, we’re just like, I don’t think we’re ready to…
165 00:23:58.200 ⇒ 00:24:04.700 Robert Tseng: we would… our organization would break if we did that. And so, yeah, there’s just a lot of… there’s, like, I think that’s…
166 00:24:04.910 ⇒ 00:24:29.529 Robert Tseng: Obviously, having the healthy pipeline where we can always be interviewing candidates and having better evaluation criteria, getting that in order is the top priority. But shortly after that, you know, we would expect that we’ll come across some great candidates still coming through the door, and we’re gonna need to be able to kind of help them onboard, and also just to do their job effectively. And so, I think this is definitely what makes us nervous.
167 00:24:29.710 ⇒ 00:24:45.779 Robert Tseng: probably not in the short term, like, next quarter, but probably 6 months from now, I think we’re gonna run to a huge jam here. So, it’s great to hear that that’s, like, something that you’re interested in, and we can definitely kind of spend some more time, like, thinking through, like, what are, like, the biggest priorities, like.
168 00:24:46.520 ⇒ 00:24:52.159 Robert Tseng: Like, we only really have… we have, like, two executive assistants right now that kind of cover both scopes.
169 00:24:52.380 ⇒ 00:24:55.070 Kaela Gallagher: Okay. They’re great, and they would be under you, I guess.
170 00:24:55.070 ⇒ 00:25:14.050 Robert Tseng: But, like, they’re not, like, strategy people, so they literally just do whatever we tell them to do, and it’s… it’s kind of tough to get them to, like, really build out a roadmap for, like, what we need to prioritize on the BizOps side. On the… yeah, and stuff like that. So, I definitely think that this is a, like.
171 00:25:14.050 ⇒ 00:25:21.429 Robert Tseng: a core op… this is a core member team, or a core team member that, yeah, would definitely be
172 00:25:21.430 ⇒ 00:25:29.410 Robert Tseng: like, we would be leaning on to really lead by helping us build out the roadmap and strategy for these functions.
173 00:25:29.410 ⇒ 00:25:30.070 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah.
174 00:25:30.070 ⇒ 00:25:35.510 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I think that’s… that’s, that’s kind of how I would put it from our perspective.
175 00:25:35.760 ⇒ 00:25:49.619 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, this reminds me of a couple questions I actually wanted to ask you. I know the first time we chatted, you had mentioned basically doubling the team in the next 6 months is possible, if you can, you know.
176 00:25:49.620 ⇒ 00:25:50.310 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
177 00:25:50.310 ⇒ 00:25:57.950 Kaela Gallagher: interview that many people and bring in that many people, it’s… it’s possible. Is that kind of still your forecast, going from maybe 20 to 40 in the next 6 months?
178 00:25:58.340 ⇒ 00:26:02.959 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think so. I’m… but I guess we’re not so…
179 00:26:03.240 ⇒ 00:26:09.189 Robert Tseng: I guess, like, yeah, now I would represent… try to think about what Uten would say from his perspective. He would be like.
180 00:26:09.490 ⇒ 00:26:25.899 Robert Tseng: okay, well, we want to try to double our business without growing at the same, like, without growing the same number of headcount as well. And so, I think that kind of adds another dimension to it, where it’s like, yeah, I… maybe I’m more like you, traditionally, like, from a business-minded perspective.
181 00:26:25.900 ⇒ 00:26:42.409 Robert Tseng: I know, kind of like, what it took to get us to here, and, like, I can forecast out, like, if the inputs and outputs still work the same that they expect, it just means that we’re gonna have to double our headcount in order to get to our target now. But, because we are also trying to be, like, innovative here on, like.
182 00:26:42.410 ⇒ 00:26:42.800 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah.
183 00:26:42.800 ⇒ 00:27:01.250 Robert Tseng: can we just do more with less? Then yeah, I think that’s… that’s also something that, from his perspective, and you would be working with both of us, he probably would be pushing you more on, like, well, can we, yeah, can we… how do we, like, do this with fewer people and not have to hire as many? Can you do it by only hiring 10?
184 00:27:01.290 ⇒ 00:27:07.620 Robert Tseng: Instead of 20. And, yeah, just kind of figuring out, like, what that would look like.
185 00:27:07.830 ⇒ 00:27:10.130 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, okay, that’s a good challenge.
186 00:27:10.130 ⇒ 00:27:10.670 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
187 00:27:10.770 ⇒ 00:27:24.489 Kaela Gallagher: And then also wanted to ask, like, you mentioned the EAs would likely be reporting into me, would that… so, would that be, like, the structure? Like, I would be their manager, in theory, in this position?
188 00:27:24.800 ⇒ 00:27:40.980 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I guess… so, for the other, like, people that we’ve brought on, they basically ended up becoming middle management for us, so, like, I’m not meeting… so, like, on my sales team, because I run sales for our org, and before…
189 00:27:41.240 ⇒ 00:27:57.549 Robert Tseng: I was, like, directly managing, like, another four people, but then, like, that includes our designer, marketing, and then, like, two kind of, like, sales coordinator, executive assistant level people. But now the go-to-market team, go-to-market lead.
190 00:27:57.550 ⇒ 00:28:14.389 Robert Tseng: he’s… he’s kind of managing them. And so, I would kind of assume something similar, where, you become a budget owner, where we try to give you a budget of, like, what BizOps and PeopleOps should be. We can give you the existing team of, like, and they can report to you, and then you can decide if you want to
191 00:28:14.470 ⇒ 00:28:33.890 Robert Tseng: keep them, or you want to consolidate, bring… make it one person, that’s kind of a decision we would probably, rely on you to do. So, like, the go-to-market lead, he’s been here for, like, about a month now, and he actually wants to bring in somebody else that he… that he’s worked with before, so we may end up kind of,
192 00:28:34.130 ⇒ 00:28:43.409 Robert Tseng: replacing two of the people that we have right now with the one person that… if we can get them on. So, that’s, like, the type of flexibility where I basically told them.
193 00:28:43.410 ⇒ 00:28:56.979 Robert Tseng: this… your… your budget for your team is this… this amount, and you can decide what you want to do with it. I’ll help train you up to, like, manage the team that you currently have, but you decide, like, how you want to deploy them to execute, like, the scope that you have.
194 00:28:57.300 ⇒ 00:29:03.149 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, and right now the ops team is these two EA coordinators.
195 00:29:03.450 ⇒ 00:29:03.950 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
196 00:29:03.950 ⇒ 00:29:05.200 Kaela Gallagher: Okay. Okay.
197 00:29:05.200 ⇒ 00:29:05.740 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
198 00:29:05.890 ⇒ 00:29:15.319 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and they just… they’re just in every channel with me and Utam, and, like, we’re just constantly pinging them on stuff, so we would like to kind of get away from that and have, you know, more, like.
199 00:29:15.760 ⇒ 00:29:31.039 Robert Tseng: just… we do have, like, a weekly, like, ops meeting, where we do kind of review kind of a roadmap and try to catch things more proactively, but right now, it is mostly kind of just, like, a list of things that come up as they come, we just assign them to do.
200 00:29:31.210 ⇒ 00:29:44.169 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, got it. And right now, you guys have this, weekly cadence with ops, but if I were to come into this role, what would our touchpoints look like, I guess, with Yumi, and Utom?
201 00:29:44.580 ⇒ 00:29:53.929 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so we definitely would set up a weekly with you, at least. I think for the first two weeks, we’d probably be meeting more frequently. If anything, like.
202 00:29:54.010 ⇒ 00:30:09.419 Robert Tseng: I would probably spend some in-person time with you and just try to get you caught up as much as we can. But yeah, I guess, like, maybe the expectation would then be, you would meet with those coordinators, and we wouldn’t necessarily be in those meetings anymore.
203 00:30:09.560 ⇒ 00:30:11.550 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, okay, that makes sense. Yeah.
204 00:30:11.920 ⇒ 00:30:12.770 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.
205 00:30:13.180 ⇒ 00:30:14.110 Kaela Gallagher: Got it.
206 00:30:14.240 ⇒ 00:30:21.210 Kaela Gallagher: Trying to think if I had any other questions related to those,
207 00:30:21.340 ⇒ 00:30:37.529 Kaela Gallagher: topics. I guess, I know we mentioned W-2 earlier, and the goal being to provide benefits and be W2. Does that mean that you guys would kind of limit your hiring to the U.S? Because I know right now there’s quite, like, a global presence.
208 00:30:38.280 ⇒ 00:30:47.319 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, I don’t think we would only limit to the US, and I know by state it’s even different as well, so, like, yeah,
209 00:30:47.460 ⇒ 00:30:51.809 Robert Tseng: I’m not… I’m not sure. I think, we’ve kind of just hired…
210 00:30:53.070 ⇒ 00:30:59.900 Robert Tseng: I think that we will continue to have higher, like, kind of globally for our technical talent. I think that just…
211 00:31:00.570 ⇒ 00:31:10.099 Robert Tseng: it’s just done well for us, but, yeah, I guess, like, our US-based hires are really just Austin and LA right now. Yeah.
212 00:31:10.410 ⇒ 00:31:12.770 Robert Tseng: So, it may just end up, kind of.
213 00:31:13.200 ⇒ 00:31:31.169 Robert Tseng: looking, like, not just… it’s, like, Southwest. There’s, like, a couple in Arizona and something like that, but, like, yeah, I don’t… I don’t expect to hire people all over the country, like, I’m totally fine just limiting our U.S. team to, just those regions, if that’s easier to do.
214 00:31:31.440 ⇒ 00:31:34.049 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
215 00:31:34.210 ⇒ 00:31:35.480 Kaela Gallagher: Alrighty, cool.
216 00:31:35.780 ⇒ 00:31:39.239 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s all I have for now.
217 00:31:39.940 ⇒ 00:31:56.499 Robert Tseng: Okay, cool. So yeah, I’m gonna send you some docs for you just to kind of read, to try to kind of get familiar with some of the new changes that we’ve rolled out. Just, like, wanted to let you know, we are also, like, talking to another candidate as well, so…
218 00:31:56.530 ⇒ 00:32:12.389 Robert Tseng: It’s interesting, because his background, once again, is very much just like BizOps, and he’s never done any PeopleOps stuff again, so it kind of feels like deja vu, we’re running into the same thing as the other candidate that we didn’t end up kind of moving forward with, but that said, it’s…
219 00:32:12.730 ⇒ 00:32:27.019 Robert Tseng: he’s… he’s Austin-based, he’s, like, near… near Utam, and so, like, there’s… there’s some, like, advantage of, like, well, do we actually think he can pick up on this stuff? So, I really think that, like, I mean, I want to advocate for you, I feel like this is a better fit, like.
220 00:32:27.020 ⇒ 00:32:39.410 Robert Tseng: you know, in terms of, like, skill set for what we need, and so, yeah, I may ask you some specific, like, people recruiting questions, just to kind of, like, I want… I want… I want, Tom, to be aware that, like.
221 00:32:39.510 ⇒ 00:32:54.010 Robert Tseng: if you come… if you came in, you’d be able to make an immediate impact on this, and this is still our biggest priority. So, that’s… that’s kind of… I’m just letting you know, there’s… there’s always, like, kind of internally, like, what… how we’re… how we’re thinking about this at this point.
222 00:32:54.260 ⇒ 00:32:59.719 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense, for sure. If there’s anything I can do to, yeah, help you guys…
223 00:32:59.830 ⇒ 00:33:10.209 Kaela Gallagher: make the decision a little bit easier, ease any concerns, like, I’m really excited about the possibility of joining the team, so, yeah, excited.
224 00:33:10.210 ⇒ 00:33:10.670 Robert Tseng: Okay.
225 00:33:10.670 ⇒ 00:33:12.279 Kaela Gallagher: Continue chatting if need be.
226 00:33:12.740 ⇒ 00:33:16.470 Robert Tseng: Yeah, great. I mean, I know that you’ve been on a lot of calls with us already, and we don’t wanna…
227 00:33:16.800 ⇒ 00:33:31.399 Robert Tseng: drag this on too long, but, and… but I guess, obviously, you not being able to start part-time is… yeah, we just want to make sure you feel good, and we both sides feel good about kind of making you a good… a good offer. And, yeah, so I think the best way is just to…
228 00:33:31.400 ⇒ 00:33:38.310 Robert Tseng: communicate as much as you can async, like, I might just, like, kind of redo this, or I think you already have the stock, but I might just, like.
229 00:33:38.340 ⇒ 00:33:53.719 Robert Tseng: put it into a Google Doc so that you can leave your own comments and feedback on it. Yeah, that could… that might be able to just help, just give a… give us more detail on things where you feel uncertain about, and then anything that I feel like I probably want
230 00:33:54.020 ⇒ 00:33:58.290 Robert Tseng: I would… I would like you to share… share more about, mostly to, kind of.
231 00:33:58.390 ⇒ 00:34:05.000 Robert Tseng: persuade Utam, then I think that would be helpful for me, as well as I’m… as I’m advocating for you.
232 00:34:05.410 ⇒ 00:34:13.660 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, alrighty, cool. And, I guess last question, like, what does your guys’ timeline look like here?
233 00:34:14.150 ⇒ 00:34:22.830 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, we’re, like, I’m as, kind of, as soon as we can, so,
234 00:34:22.960 ⇒ 00:34:24.149 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think…
235 00:34:24.920 ⇒ 00:34:30.520 Robert Tseng: I’m… yeah, I’m sure you have to give some notice. I’m not… I guess, whatever your earliest,
236 00:34:30.679 ⇒ 00:34:35.089 Robert Tseng: time would be… I was hoping, honestly, that this role would have been filled by now, so…
237 00:34:35.260 ⇒ 00:34:48.899 Robert Tseng: I’m willing to, like, wait until the end of the month, but I think we would probably try to get, like, make a decision before then. So, yeah, I get… yeah, like, I think that’s… that’s kind of where we’re at now.
238 00:34:49.139 ⇒ 00:34:57.209 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, alrighty, cool. Sounds great. Yeah, let me know if you need anything else on… on my end, and yeah, very excited to…
239 00:34:57.509 ⇒ 00:34:58.369 Kaela Gallagher: Move forward.
240 00:34:58.850 ⇒ 00:35:00.699 Robert Tseng: Cool. Alright, thanks, Kayla. Appreciate your time.
241 00:35:00.700 ⇒ 00:35:01.260 Kaela Gallagher: Correct me.
242 00:35:01.820 ⇒ 00:35:02.380 Robert Tseng: I…