Meeting Title: BF Interview: Robert <> Sheshu Date: 2026-01-12 Meeting participants: Fireflies.ai Notetaker Sheshu, Sheshu Chandrasekar, Robert Tseng
WEBVTT
1 00:08:07.920 ⇒ 00:08:09.260 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Hey, Robert!
2 00:08:09.260 ⇒ 00:08:11.490 Robert Tseng: Hey, is it Sheshu?
3 00:08:11.840 ⇒ 00:08:13.320 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, it’s Shaishu. How are you doing today?
4 00:08:13.320 ⇒ 00:08:15.510 Robert Tseng: tissue. Good, how are you? Sorry I’m delayed.
5 00:08:15.510 ⇒ 00:08:18.060 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Good. No worries at all.
6 00:08:18.060 ⇒ 00:08:35.499 Robert Tseng: I’m glad to just connect with you. Hearing… I heard a lot about you, so it’s finally, you know, good to see a face. Yeah, I mean, I’ve heard a lot about you, too. So, yeah, I mean, I guess with this call, I mean, Utam’s really excited about, kind of, what you bring to the table already, so I’m hopefully gonna just skip a lot of the
7 00:08:35.500 ⇒ 00:08:50.030 Robert Tseng: intro stuff that, like, I feel like, you know, maybe you’ve already heard from him, or… but if you have any other lingering questions that you carried over from previous conversations, I’m happy to kind of take them. I did read, like, this doc that you put together of the
8 00:08:50.030 ⇒ 00:09:08.679 Robert Tseng: Brainforge operating system. I think one of the reasons why we’re still talking to you is, I think we just like that you’re, you know, you’re a systems thinker, kind of know how to break things down, even though you kind of have a generalist skill set, kind of done a bunch of different things, it seems like you have a way of approaching a lot of the
9 00:09:08.680 ⇒ 00:09:14.219 Robert Tseng: we just have a lot of different initiatives in the operations side of the org that we want to take on. So…
10 00:09:14.220 ⇒ 00:09:15.160 Robert Tseng: Right.
11 00:09:15.450 ⇒ 00:09:28.339 Robert Tseng: I think, you know, based on this doc, I’m hoping to just kind of talk through some of these initiatives, help you to prioritize in terms of, like, you know, if you were to come in and execute on these things, like, you know, what is actually the highest priority here?
12 00:09:28.340 ⇒ 00:09:44.310 Robert Tseng: And like, you know, maybe add a little bit more nuance for, like, how we’re… how we’re, thinking about these initiatives, and I’d, you know, just love to just kind of talk to you as if we were, you know, taking this as a project plan from you and actually, like, moving forward. Do you think that… how does that sound?
13 00:09:44.600 ⇒ 00:09:45.489 Sheshu Chandrasekar: No, that sounds perfect.
14 00:09:45.490 ⇒ 00:09:46.970 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Okay, cool.
15 00:09:47.080 ⇒ 00:09:52.620 Robert Tseng: But let’s do that. I’ll share my screen if I can get it up.
16 00:09:54.790 ⇒ 00:09:55.460 Robert Tseng: Huh.
17 00:10:02.490 ⇒ 00:10:04.370 Robert Tseng: Let’s see…
18 00:10:14.600 ⇒ 00:10:16.590 Robert Tseng: And sometimes Zoom doesn’t, like.
19 00:10:16.590 ⇒ 00:10:17.270 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah.
20 00:10:17.270 ⇒ 00:10:21.710 Robert Tseng: Hover, like, the window, like, just is… you can’t really choose the window that you want.
21 00:10:23.310 ⇒ 00:10:25.990 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, and if you have multiple tabs, it’s game over, right?
22 00:10:25.990 ⇒ 00:10:30.170 Robert Tseng: So yeah, it’s game over. Okay, whatever. We’ll just… we’ll just go the widescreen.
23 00:10:30.510 ⇒ 00:10:30.930 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay.
24 00:10:31.110 ⇒ 00:10:34.070 Robert Tseng: We’ll just go off this, okay.
25 00:10:34.090 ⇒ 00:10:34.890 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah.
26 00:10:36.380 ⇒ 00:10:47.939 Robert Tseng: Okay, cool. So, yeah, I think, you know, you… I know you’ve… you’ve only read a few things on Brainforge, but yeah, let’s just… I’ll just go in order here, and I will… yeah, so…
27 00:10:47.940 ⇒ 00:11:03.280 Robert Tseng: as far as, like, this, in terms of, like, building, Slack workflows that kind of work with linear to help us to route requests to the right board, so, yeah, this idea of hidden factories, yeah, I think, like, this is often, like.
28 00:11:03.280 ⇒ 00:11:10.570 Robert Tseng: you know, what happens is we do have linear, we’re constantly, like, pushing from the top down, asking.
29 00:11:10.970 ⇒ 00:11:23.029 Robert Tseng: people on the team to leave the context in linear, but obviously a lot of conversations happen in Slack or their meetings, they don’t end up actually kind of coming in. And so, yeah, like, I think that’s, like, a common
30 00:11:23.150 ⇒ 00:11:34.179 Robert Tseng: common issue where we just spend a lot of time when we are… I mean, we’re running, kind of, stand-ups across, you know, 15 clients, and so, it’s really hard for when people are sharing, like.
31 00:11:34.230 ⇒ 00:11:48.599 Robert Tseng: oh, this is the task that I’m working on for line A, like, what, like, do I have everything? Can I pick up a ticket and have everything that I really need, in order to know what’s going on, to be able to review if I’m, as, if I’m a peer, just giving a peer review?
32 00:11:48.600 ⇒ 00:11:59.109 Robert Tseng: Hopefully if I’m the one working on the ticket, like, I have everything that I need in there as well. And then, like, the PM, or what we’re calling, really, like, a service leader.
33 00:11:59.610 ⇒ 00:12:17.640 Robert Tseng: In our org, in our delivery structure, like, are they able to know, like, the sequencing within that ticket of, like, where things could be blocked, and, like, how they could push things along? So, I think that’s really the heart behind this idea of having a unified intake.
34 00:12:17.720 ⇒ 00:12:29.459 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I guess wanted to just kind of pause there, see, yeah, does that kind of help clarify anything in your mind? Like, what are some of the things that you think about when, you know, knowing that that’s some more context around this initiative?
35 00:12:29.730 ⇒ 00:12:35.600 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, so I think the reason why I had, this unified intake, when I was talking to,
36 00:12:35.870 ⇒ 00:12:49.929 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Eliza and Rico, one thing I kind of understood is that a lot of the requests that they get is ad hoc, and then sometimes, when they need to work on certain tasks of some sort, you know, it gets lost. So, I felt like this was, like, a great way of just, like.
37 00:12:50.060 ⇒ 00:13:05.270 Sheshu Chandrasekar: you know, having everything formalized in one area, and then it… there’s, like, a request being sent, it goes right into linear, and it has, like, a routing logic. So if, we can either manually go in and say, like, hey, maybe Eliza’s better suited to solve this problem, or versus me, right? At some point…
38 00:13:05.420 ⇒ 00:13:17.980 Sheshu Chandrasekar: if we can have, like, a task board from the operations side, it’d be so much more easier for us to kind of, like, figure out, okay, here are the more reoccurring problems that we’re facing, and here are some things that are, like, one-off basis, and we can work from there. So that’s kind of, like.
39 00:13:17.980 ⇒ 00:13:18.500 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
40 00:13:18.500 ⇒ 00:13:22.400 Sheshu Chandrasekar: the thought process behind it, so I’m kind of glad that we’re aligned on that… on that end.
41 00:13:22.400 ⇒ 00:13:22.960 Robert Tseng: Okay.
42 00:13:23.100 ⇒ 00:13:28.570 Robert Tseng: Great. Yeah, okay, great. So you’ve met Eliza and Rico, and so, like, structure-wise would be, like.
43 00:13:28.760 ⇒ 00:13:41.840 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, they don’t really… you know, they’re… I think they’re great, they’re able to kind of action everything we tell them, but yeah, they don’t know how to build systems, and so, like, yeah, I think, like you said, they’re feeling the pain of
44 00:13:41.840 ⇒ 00:13:54.130 Robert Tseng: being pinged in Slack, random emails, like, we’re just always kind of just have a lot of different ways of telling them, like, what to work on, and they’re really just kind of managing their own to-do lists, and so, yeah, like, to have
45 00:13:54.440 ⇒ 00:14:00.659 Robert Tseng: you kind of be able to help set that up for them would probably make them more effective. I’m sure they save a lot of time on their side.
46 00:14:01.370 ⇒ 00:14:13.180 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, and it prevents burnout. That’s, like, one of the biggest things in my previous job that I felt consistently, and I don’t want anyone to ever face that, so that’s kind of, like, my mentality of this, unified intake as well.
47 00:14:13.440 ⇒ 00:14:22.829 Robert Tseng: Okay, great. Yeah, I mean, as far as, like, dashboarding, I won’t spend too much time here. I feel like we have a lot of very opinionated data people on our… our team, obviously, and so…
48 00:14:22.830 ⇒ 00:14:23.230 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah.
49 00:14:23.230 ⇒ 00:14:37.509 Robert Tseng: I think in terms of designing dashboards and, like, kind of the tooling for it, like, I think we have… we have, like, pretty good foundations for that, and so, yeah, I do think that it’s just that, on the ops side, like.
50 00:14:37.510 ⇒ 00:14:54.070 Robert Tseng: Eliza and Rico cannot build them, and so I think this would be a very easy one for you to kind of pick off if you were to come in, and you can… you can… you can build something that is able to basically be, like, an executive-level, kind of reporting suite for… for me and Utah, mostly.
51 00:14:54.280 ⇒ 00:14:54.880 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah.
52 00:14:55.670 ⇒ 00:15:04.099 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think, like, for the librarian piece, yeah, I think this is something that’s interesting. We’re, we’re actually,
53 00:15:04.510 ⇒ 00:15:18.830 Robert Tseng: Yeah, documentation is absolutely central for, like, a remote-first company, right? Just because we don’t really get that much FaceTime, we’re sharing docs, I mean, I don’t think this is a great look that we only shared this much with you, but, yeah, I mean, you can see that we have a lot of…
54 00:15:18.860 ⇒ 00:15:24.270 Robert Tseng: a lot of work to do on this front. On the client teams, I think we’re…
55 00:15:24.270 ⇒ 00:15:47.599 Robert Tseng: we’re continuing to innovate on this. Like, I think what’s been really cool is when we work on clients, every client now has, like, a Git, we store all the docs in Git, and so it becomes something that’s easily accessible for… in a cursor-like environment. And so, we have a lot of, you know, engineers on our team, and they’re used to kind of working in these types of environments, so we’re like, hey, if we’re asking them to
56 00:15:47.600 ⇒ 00:16:02.739 Robert Tseng: write client messages, or contribute to decks, or even put together proposals, like, what better way to just keep them in cursor and just have them, like, do all the writing in cursor as well. So, I think we’re getting better on that side, on the delivery side of the organization.
57 00:16:02.740 ⇒ 00:16:13.360 Robert Tseng: But yeah, I think, you know, there’s definitely best practices, and just, like, trying to level up everybody across the org on how to do documentation.
58 00:16:13.360 ⇒ 00:16:28.010 Robert Tseng: Some of, like, the lagging ones, the ones that I… I lead sales at Brainforge, and so, yeah, I think I always have, like, different, assets that I’m experimenting with, new playbooks for delivery if people…
59 00:16:28.010 ⇒ 00:16:35.070 Robert Tseng: if a lead is telling me, asking me, okay, well, this is a really cool outcome you’re pitching me on, like, how do you actually do that? So we have, like.
60 00:16:35.170 ⇒ 00:16:38.769 Robert Tseng: We’re just trying to get to a place where we have,
61 00:16:38.770 ⇒ 00:16:55.820 Robert Tseng: like a… like, an asset for every type of objection, or every stage on the sales side, that we can kind of just… whether it’s decks, or one-pagers, or… or more technical documentation, Gantt charts, like, we have all this kind of stuff that we’re constantly kind of producing.
62 00:16:55.820 ⇒ 00:17:06.710 Robert Tseng: And I know that it’s become quite heavy for the team, because now I’m asking people, like, hey, when you do a case study, I also need it in 4 or 5 formats, and our design team
63 00:17:06.910 ⇒ 00:17:23.210 Robert Tseng: they’re great at putting out, nice, like, very beautiful things, but they’re not really thinking about, like, I don’t really want them to be spending, like, 3 or 4 hours, like, doing that. Like, there must be a way to, kind of more quickly take one asset and turn it into, like, the 4 or 5 more formats that we want.
64 00:17:23.210 ⇒ 00:17:34.949 Robert Tseng: So I think, like, I don’t know that’s really kind of two separate things that I’m describing here. One is just, like, overall, writing process for, like, everybody across the team, so that we can
65 00:17:35.050 ⇒ 00:17:50.639 Robert Tseng: you know, so the bottle… so, like, the bottleneck doesn’t end up following on me and Utam to keep pushing documentation along, but then also being able to produce different formats that are very unique to our business. You know, hopefully I just… and I described what that would look like on the sales side.
66 00:17:51.200 ⇒ 00:17:57.839 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, so I guess, I’m thinking from, like, an ops standpoint and a client delivery standpoint, would it be more valuable…
67 00:17:58.130 ⇒ 00:18:09.250 Sheshu Chandrasekar: to kind of research best practices and build kind of, like, that foundation before building an automation on top of it, or would it be, like, useful to just figure out, okay, what’s, like, A-B test which
68 00:18:09.370 ⇒ 00:18:15.249 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Kind of, like, process is working right now, and then just build… or kind of optimize that process on top of it.
69 00:18:15.360 ⇒ 00:18:18.310 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Because it sounds like you guys are working on something already, right? So…
70 00:18:18.310 ⇒ 00:18:32.400 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, we are. Yeah, I think that’s always the chicken and egg that we face here. Should we be spending more time, like, kind of figuring out what are the best practices, or should we just be, like, trying to just experiment with things? And,
71 00:18:32.410 ⇒ 00:18:39.610 Robert Tseng: Yeah, frankly, I don’t have a good answer to that. I think we… we do… we do both. I mean, I would… you know, my gut is that, like.
72 00:18:39.700 ⇒ 00:18:42.530 Robert Tseng: best practices,
73 00:18:42.790 ⇒ 00:18:47.640 Robert Tseng: I think they’re always… whenever we bring in new people, they have their own flavor, so, like, we brought in.
74 00:18:47.640 ⇒ 00:18:48.000 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah.
75 00:18:48.000 ⇒ 00:18:49.570 Robert Tseng: I don’t… have you talked to Clarence?
76 00:18:50.320 ⇒ 00:18:51.090 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I have, yeah.
77 00:18:51.090 ⇒ 00:18:59.960 Robert Tseng: Okay, yeah, so we’ve run clearance, and obviously he’s been at EY for 10 years or whatever, and so he has, like, a certain standard for deck quality that has just kind of raised the bar for everyone.
78 00:18:59.960 ⇒ 00:19:24.889 Robert Tseng: And that forced us to kind of improve the way that we push… push… push out decks. And so I do feel like it’s kind of a moving target, because as new… as we hire better and more senior people, and we… we want Brainforce to become more and more polished. Like, we are trying to… we are bidding on the same, like, level of contracts, maybe just a step down from the… the big… big three, big four. But, like, yeah, we want to keep pushing up market, so we do know that
79 00:19:24.890 ⇒ 00:19:35.099 Robert Tseng: those standards have to get better. But we also know that our advantage right now is speed. And so, yeah, it’s kind of like we do kind of need
80 00:19:35.100 ⇒ 00:19:50.760 Robert Tseng: need both. Like, I wouldn’t expect you to be the one coming up with what those best practices are, I guess. Maybe, like, where this would be, kind of, your seat at the table would be, you’re… you’re pushing along, like, kind of how, like, the… on this, on this piece, what our options are, like, what…
81 00:19:50.760 ⇒ 00:19:56.209 Robert Tseng: what AI tools are we going to… and workflows are we going to use to help with the sequencing?
82 00:19:56.210 ⇒ 00:20:04.400 Robert Tseng: You know, we’ve tried a bunch of, like, deck-building AI tools. They all suck, in my opinion. Yeah. There’s a… Gamma sucks, even though it’s got a lot of hype.
83 00:20:04.400 ⇒ 00:20:05.510 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Terrible.
84 00:20:05.510 ⇒ 00:20:21.729 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, so there… but maybe there are, like, bits and pieces that are okay, like, Clarence is very convinced that he can make it work with, like, Gemini. I’m not… Notebook LM, yeah. Yeah, Notebook LM is… it’s nice, nice environment, but yeah, I mean…
85 00:20:22.060 ⇒ 00:20:37.850 Robert Tseng: So, yeah, clearly there’s no… there’s no consensus on… on best practice there, but I would say, kind of the… yeah, like, that’s… that’s what I’m thinking, like, you… where you would be able to kind of come in and… and… and, and keep us, like, on… on,
86 00:20:38.310 ⇒ 00:20:57.760 Robert Tseng: keep us on track, and not getting bogged down by, like, oh, it’s not good enough, we shouldn’t push it out, versus, like, we’re just pushing things out, and it’s… and there’s no… there’s no guardrails or restraint on it. So, that’s kind of how I would maybe add more color to what this is really, how I see this really being laid out.
87 00:20:58.080 ⇒ 00:21:14.499 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Gotcha. No, that paints a lot of context, because if there’s already a way of doing about things, or, there’s already research being done into this, then it kind of saves my time, and, you know, all I can do in this, initiative is, like, kind of enforce those, right? Yeah. As a standard, in a way. Okay, that makes sense.
88 00:21:14.500 ⇒ 00:21:15.020 Robert Tseng: PDF.
89 00:21:15.210 ⇒ 00:21:16.650 Robert Tseng: Okay, great.
90 00:21:16.980 ⇒ 00:21:28.439 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think this one, so anything recruiting-related is interesting. So, yeah, I think, the biggest constraint to our growth is, our people. So, I mean, as a services business.
91 00:21:28.440 ⇒ 00:21:43.410 Robert Tseng: traditionally, the only way to scale is to hire more. And so, you know, where we are now, we want to kind of grow revenue by another 60% this quarter, and I think we’re able to do that on the sales side. We could probably close enough deals, we just don’t have the people for it. And so.
92 00:21:43.410 ⇒ 00:21:43.810 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Right.
93 00:21:43.810 ⇒ 00:21:55.170 Robert Tseng: Utah’s probably shared bits and pieces, or has he, about, like, how we currently screen for candidates, and like, you know, I think, yeah, and where we were sourcing talent from.
94 00:21:55.630 ⇒ 00:22:15.320 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, so I have, like, some level of context, because I grabbed dinner with them on this past Thursday, so he told me, he would join Discord, servers and stuff like that, so it’s… and I found that so interesting, because… but it’s… I know also, like, for a business that’s not, like, formalized, it has to be standardized and replicable, so…
95 00:22:15.370 ⇒ 00:22:25.169 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, I think I have some level of context, but I’d love to hear how recruiting is being done on your end, or what you see that, you know, we need to fix and close the gaps on.
96 00:22:25.560 ⇒ 00:22:43.719 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, no, so I mean, I do… I do echo Udam’s sentiment there, and we want to be scrappy. Like, I don’t think the solution is to hire, which we’ve, you know, for this role, we’ve interviewed other, like, head of talent, like, level people who come in, they’re like, yeah, my first 30 days, I’ll get you up on LinkedIn, Indeed, da-da-da, all these job platforms.
97 00:22:43.720 ⇒ 00:22:46.500 Robert Tseng: And that also didn’t feel right to us, because it’s like.
98 00:22:46.600 ⇒ 00:22:59.090 Robert Tseng: Well, I don’t really… I just don’t really think that’s… that’s not… I mean, we do kind of want that at some point, but I would also rather lean in to, like, get us into the best Slack communities and Discord channels and these off.
99 00:22:59.090 ⇒ 00:22:59.440 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Right.
100 00:22:59.440 ⇒ 00:23:16.370 Robert Tseng: places, find, like, the nerds that are, like, working on the tools that we care about. Our top performers all came from these, like, really obscure channels, and so there is kind of, like, a… we do want to not, like, kind of move away from that. But also, it’s like, yeah, I mean, just some traditional
101 00:23:16.500 ⇒ 00:23:22.900 Robert Tseng: kind of things of being able to enforce SLAs from application to screening, knowing that, like.
102 00:23:23.290 ⇒ 00:23:42.240 Robert Tseng: yeah, like, right now, it’s really just part of the Eliza and Rico scope to go and follow up with people and kind of slowly nudge them along, but, yeah, I think a lot of people… our… our talent pipelines probably, if I were to guess, we don’t really have a way of measuring this, frankly, right now, but,
103 00:23:42.420 ⇒ 00:23:54.010 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think, like, we… we get a lot of… we get a lot of interest, there’s a lot… definitely a lot of people, but the qualification, is… is tough. Like, I think if we can qualify before they get us to a call with me or Uto.
104 00:23:54.010 ⇒ 00:24:04.270 Robert Tseng: we’re trying to, like, add some more stopgaps in there, things like screeners, like, I think maybe you had to record a Loom video in order to jump on a call with us. I forgot exactly what we pushed out there.
105 00:24:04.710 ⇒ 00:24:09.739 Robert Tseng: But yeah, we’ve added some of those things, and then on the back half, just, like.
106 00:24:09.840 ⇒ 00:24:11.920 Robert Tseng: Frankly, just,
107 00:24:11.920 ⇒ 00:24:30.569 Robert Tseng: after calls, like, negotiating, kind of getting… getting, like, the right package in front of… in front of the candidate faster, that’s something that we’re not… we’re not doing great at. So, I’m not… I… it is a high priority for us, and I think from an operational perspective, like, using AI to kind of help
108 00:24:30.590 ⇒ 00:24:50.110 Robert Tseng: nurture and screen is definitely something that I feel like would be a good pairing with somebody who’s also from the talent world. So, we are actually interviewing somebody who still might just come in and just do talent for us. Gotcha. And, like, we could see you probably working with that candidate to basically
109 00:24:50.110 ⇒ 00:25:06.209 Robert Tseng: speed up whatever they think is kind of best practice. They’ve been recruiting technical talent for 5 years, so I kind of feel like they should have a better, like, way of doing it than we do. Framework, yeah. At least framework, yeah. And maybe they just… but they’re not going to be able to
110 00:25:06.270 ⇒ 00:25:12.519 Robert Tseng: think about things from an AI-native perspective, and that’s where you would be able to be a good partner for them.
111 00:25:13.000 ⇒ 00:25:19.830 Sheshu Chandrasekar: No, absolutely, and I got… I have another question. So, do you guys have, like, some level of, like, some sort of spreadsheet there where you guys are tracking candidates, and…
112 00:25:19.830 ⇒ 00:25:27.769 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Yeah, we at least have that. Okay. Yeah, we at least have that, we have some Notion, like, yeah, we have some stuff that’s in databases, but,
113 00:25:27.900 ⇒ 00:25:31.560 Robert Tseng: But yeah, I mean, beyond that, we’re not…
114 00:25:31.850 ⇒ 00:25:34.860 Robert Tseng: I think it’s… it’s… it’s… we should be.
115 00:25:35.300 ⇒ 00:25:48.480 Robert Tseng: recruiting all the time, we’ve kind of been more just, like, retroactively, or kind of, reacting to, oh shoot, like, we just signed 3 more clients, we’re gonna get jammed in a month, we gotta start hiring for this role now.
116 00:25:48.480 ⇒ 00:25:58.319 Robert Tseng: And it’s like, okay, we’ll put a three-week app, interview everyone we can get, and then just make a decision, because the contract starts in 3 weeks, and we just need someone in.
117 00:25:58.320 ⇒ 00:26:12.859 Robert Tseng: And, I think we’ve just gotten really lucky to kind of be able to fly… fly by the seat of our pants through that, and I just don’t really think that’s gonna help us get to where we want to go. Yeah, but that’s really what we’ve been doing.
118 00:26:13.340 ⇒ 00:26:27.249 Sheshu Chandrasekar: No, that makes a lot of sense, and, you know, I really appreciate the scrappiness that you guys bring to the table when it comes to recruiting. Like, I’ve never heard of that, and the fact that you guys do that, it’s awesome. It’s, like, very… it’s not traditional, and it’s new, and it’s awesome.
119 00:26:28.270 ⇒ 00:26:42.620 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I’ve… I mean, I’ve… Utah and I both have led teams in big bureaucratic organizations. It’s… it’s… it’s a nightmare. Like, it takes, like, 2 months to… two to three months to get somebody in the door, and, like, that’s just… that…
120 00:26:42.620 ⇒ 00:26:42.990 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Which is not…
121 00:26:42.990 ⇒ 00:26:44.649 Robert Tseng: I’ll be able to do that here.
122 00:26:44.650 ⇒ 00:26:45.770 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, no.
123 00:26:45.770 ⇒ 00:26:46.330 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
124 00:26:46.670 ⇒ 00:26:47.109 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Makes sense.
125 00:26:48.470 ⇒ 00:26:57.420 Robert Tseng: Okay, yeah, I know we’re coming up on time, so I don’t want to necessarily go through the rest of the stuff. I think this is all pretty straightforward, yeah, I mean, just kind of internal onboarding. Yeah, so I…
126 00:26:57.420 ⇒ 00:26:57.750 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah.
127 00:26:57.750 ⇒ 00:27:00.759 Robert Tseng: I do think that there’s definitely room for improvement there.
128 00:27:00.800 ⇒ 00:27:17.760 Robert Tseng: So yeah, I mean, I think, like, we can workshop with you, like, kind of 30, 60, 90. I think we’re, like, pretty set on, like, hey, especially since you can start part-time, we’d love to kind of bring you in and just kind of pick a couple initiatives to just have you go run at. Whether it’s this… in this order, I think we should probably
129 00:27:17.760 ⇒ 00:27:32.870 Robert Tseng: just kind of finalize that. I’d love to give you a few minutes to just ask me any other questions, and what you feel like you would need as we’re building, basically, your job description or scope of work with you, to feel good about, moving forward with us.
130 00:27:33.390 ⇒ 00:27:47.160 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, so I… to start off with, I’m just so curious, like, for me, like, in the 30 days, like, what would be something that, you know, it’s such a bottleneck for you that it just weighs down on all the other things? Like, what’s the one thing that’s, like, on top of your mind?
131 00:27:48.100 ⇒ 00:27:54.080 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, kind of even just not even looking at this, biggest thing…
132 00:27:54.420 ⇒ 00:28:00.010 Robert Tseng: bogging us down on the offside. B,
133 00:28:09.490 ⇒ 00:28:14.119 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think it actually is probably, like, the,
134 00:28:16.640 ⇒ 00:28:22.320 Robert Tseng: this librarian piece that we were describing, I don’t know if I would still call it that, but,
135 00:28:22.790 ⇒ 00:28:28.519 Robert Tseng: Yeah, to me, that’s… that seems to be, like, the common pain, like, across all of our
136 00:28:28.750 ⇒ 00:28:39.419 Robert Tseng: it affects everybody in the org. Like, the ops team, like, they’re good at doing these one-off tasks, but, like, nothing they do is necessarily repeatable, like, I mean, Ricoh’s a nice…
137 00:28:39.700 ⇒ 00:28:56.089 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, they’re very proficient in Notion, but you… once you come into our Notion fully, you’d be able to see that there’s a lot of redundancies and stuff, so they’re good at starting new things and just, like, kind of getting us from zero to one. But yeah, then, like, we just have too many things kind of spread everywhere, so…
138 00:28:56.090 ⇒ 00:29:06.659 Robert Tseng: And making sure that, like… and it kind of just… it’s… there’s a cascading effect from there. So it’s, like, if the ops team doesn’t, is not able to produce,
139 00:29:06.660 ⇒ 00:29:11.440 Robert Tseng: for your documentation, the other… other folks that are relying on that to do
140 00:29:11.440 ⇒ 00:29:15.180 Robert Tseng: To follow the… follow the… follow the process,
141 00:29:15.480 ⇒ 00:29:30.079 Robert Tseng: On all fronts, whether it’s on the delivery side, making sure that every client, page gets, like, every workspace has all the necessary pieces, like, they’re following all the rituals, they don’t end up adhering to that very well, because it wasn’t very clearly communicated to them.
142 00:29:30.080 ⇒ 00:29:41.269 Robert Tseng: from a time tracking perspective, like, people are not really, like, doing what they need, like, we’re still chasing people on, like, fill out your timesheets and stuff like that. And so, like, that’s what I mean by, like, kind of cascades all the way down.
143 00:29:41.480 ⇒ 00:29:59.379 Robert Tseng: To, like, every, every person’s, like, kind of how they do their job at Brainforge. And so, I, I do think that, like, being able to tackle that, problem, hold people accountable to higher document and higher standards.
144 00:29:59.410 ⇒ 00:30:07.999 Robert Tseng: That are actually standardized, and then also being able to help them speed up, like, kind of this… a lot of it just feels like admin or, like, second…
145 00:30:08.000 ⇒ 00:30:31.060 Robert Tseng: second, like, behind-the-scenes work, but it’s… it is very necessary, like I’ve mentioned, especially on the sales side, because, we do need, like, many different formats for the things that… for the… for the content that we put out. And so, yeah, obviously you wouldn’t be the only one working on that problem, but, I think that… that to me is, like, what really weighs… weighs the team down the most.
146 00:30:31.780 ⇒ 00:30:35.520 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Gotcha. No, that… that paints a lot of insight, because… Yeah.
147 00:30:35.980 ⇒ 00:30:46.510 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, I mean, if one process doesn’t work, then it kind of trickles down, so… totally makes sense. Yeah. I guess the one… I know, I know coming up on time here, I’m so curious, like.
148 00:30:46.620 ⇒ 00:30:57.620 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Uten was talking to me about financial analysis and shadowing some clients. Can you paint me a little bit… like, I’m a little confused. I get it, but I also don’t know, like, what the day-to-day would look like if I were to.
149 00:30:57.620 ⇒ 00:30:58.050 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
150 00:30:58.050 ⇒ 00:30:59.160 Sheshu Chandrasekar: side of things.
151 00:30:59.160 ⇒ 00:31:06.120 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think he was also trying to be like, look, can you figure out if Shishu can jump on some client work as well?
152 00:31:06.120 ⇒ 00:31:06.490 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah.
153 00:31:06.490 ⇒ 00:31:11.759 Robert Tseng: So, I mean, yeah, I’m sure… I don’t know what type of analysis work you’ve done, but,
154 00:31:12.070 ⇒ 00:31:17.070 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I don’t… yeah, so by financial analysis, we’re thinking, like, FP&A work, so…
155 00:31:17.070 ⇒ 00:31:17.490 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay.
156 00:31:17.710 ⇒ 00:31:25.589 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so things like building forecasts, we… half our business is, like, CPG brands, and so, you know, we have…
157 00:31:26.190 ⇒ 00:31:34.489 Robert Tseng: like… needing to do some demand forecasting, and so I can send you, like, a…
158 00:31:35.010 ⇒ 00:31:44.369 Robert Tseng: I didn’t actually… we didn’t recruit for this role specifically with you, so I can… I can send you, like, a… like, a case exercise that I put together that kind of, like, captures, like, what
159 00:31:44.370 ⇒ 00:31:59.250 Robert Tseng: An example would be, like, it’s like a driver-based forecast model, where basically I give you a scenario, some assumptions, and then you kind of need to be able to, like, put it into a spreadsheet, and create different scenarios, right? So, it’s not like…
160 00:31:59.700 ⇒ 00:32:02.069 Robert Tseng: It’s not so far, like…
161 00:32:02.180 ⇒ 00:32:08.610 Robert Tseng: Technical, like, investment banking, due diligence, like, you need to, like, be able to, kind of.
162 00:32:08.800 ⇒ 00:32:23.670 Robert Tseng: dot your I’s, cross your T’s, but it is kind of, like, something that’s useful for our brands to be able to better forecast… forecast demand, which is very… which is a very helpful thing on… for those types of clients. So,
163 00:32:23.670 ⇒ 00:32:31.609 Robert Tseng: that’s… that’s probably what he was referring to. But yeah, I guess I didn’t really… he didn’t really share much with me about, like, what your other
164 00:32:31.610 ⇒ 00:32:45.190 Robert Tseng: like, analysis capabilities were, or, like, what your interests were. So I could probably send you… I’ll send you a couple of our case exercises. I’m not gonna ask you to do them unless you want to. And you can just let me know, like, is this… if there’s something that you’re comfortable with.
165 00:32:45.190 ⇒ 00:32:57.149 Robert Tseng: Or if you just wanted, like, yeah, do… do it… yeah, you want to pick one of them and do it, and I can… I can give you feedback, we can… we can probably, I could probably do that and jump on another call with you. But yeah.
166 00:32:57.150 ⇒ 00:32:58.030 Sheshu Chandrasekar: That’d be awesome.
167 00:32:59.250 ⇒ 00:32:59.850 Robert Tseng: Okay.
168 00:33:00.100 ⇒ 00:33:07.580 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, I guess I can kind of give you, like, what I did in… at Deloitte, like, FP&A stuff. I guess, mainly that I didn’t…
169 00:33:07.690 ⇒ 00:33:26.709 Sheshu Chandrasekar: build the foundational budget model, because I was mainly on the budget team. So yeah, a lot of forecasting was involved, like, figuring out where funding appropriations were going. But my side of that job was kind of, like, maintaining that spreadsheet, building any enhancements that are needed for new program managers for the client I was facing. So it’s more on the ops side of things, of, like.
170 00:33:26.710 ⇒ 00:33:28.879 Sheshu Chandrasekar: how does data get into that spreadsheet?
171 00:33:28.880 ⇒ 00:33:29.560 Robert Tseng: I see.
172 00:33:29.720 ⇒ 00:33:47.410 Sheshu Chandrasekar: what I… what I did, but I do, like, I mean, I learned from the best there when it comes to FP&A, so, like, I understand how, like, if you were to tell me, like, build it intricately, I don’t know if I could, but with the help of AI, probably can. But I understand, like, the conceptual basis of, like, what needs to be… what factors need to go into it to build that model out.
173 00:33:47.840 ⇒ 00:33:52.719 Robert Tseng: Okay. Yeah, no, I think that’s… that’s helpful. I mean, honestly, I’m not an FPA myself, but, like, I…
174 00:33:52.720 ⇒ 00:33:53.130 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah.
175 00:33:53.130 ⇒ 00:34:08.780 Robert Tseng: did it for a couple clients, so I’m sure you could do it. If you’ve seen the standard before, then I feel like you kind of know, like, yeah, I’ve just… I’ve just seen it and been able to, like, kind of reverse engineer from there. And, like, we have good people in our network, so I could always pair you with
176 00:34:08.780 ⇒ 00:34:22.680 Robert Tseng: somebody in my network who’s, like, a head of finance, VP of finance level, who can definitely kind of help coach on that side. Obviously, I don’t want to push you into that if you’re not interested in it, but if you’d like to do, like, a mix of
177 00:34:22.889 ⇒ 00:34:29.029 Robert Tseng: Internal, and also you want to take on, like, a project with a client?
178 00:34:29.159 ⇒ 00:34:49.079 Robert Tseng: That’d be great, and we definitely would be able to, you know, bring you on full-time faster, I guess, but yeah, I guess that’s… that’s something that I’m not urgently trying to figure out, because I don’t want to necessarily distract you from the main stuff we’re trying to bring you on for, but, you know, it’s… it is helpful if everybody’s time can be billable in some way.
179 00:34:49.510 ⇒ 00:34:51.159 Robert Tseng: Yeah, absolutely. Makes sense.
180 00:34:51.840 ⇒ 00:35:01.300 Robert Tseng: Okay, cool. Alright, so I’ll probably add a… I’ll throw a couple more links in here, and I’ll follow up with you via email. But yeah, otherwise, great chatting with you, Shaysu, and yeah.
181 00:35:01.300 ⇒ 00:35:01.670 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Likewise.
182 00:35:01.670 ⇒ 00:35:02.590 Robert Tseng: Talk to you soon.
183 00:35:02.930 ⇒ 00:35:08.239 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Absolutely. Thank you, Robert. And, who do I talk to the next steps about? Just talk to Utam.
184 00:35:08.240 ⇒ 00:35:09.770 Robert Tseng: Oh,
185 00:35:09.910 ⇒ 00:35:18.780 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, I mean, I’ll have Utah follow up with you today, so we’ll… we’ll move quickly. I know we’ve kind of dragged this out for longer than we typically do. Yeah, so…
186 00:35:18.780 ⇒ 00:35:19.460 Sheshu Chandrasekar: No, not a problem.
187 00:35:19.460 ⇒ 00:35:20.910 Robert Tseng: You’ll hear from us soon.
188 00:35:21.250 ⇒ 00:35:31.610 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, absolutely. Well, it was great chatting with you, and I’m excited to work with you closely, and, just help out where I can, and, you know, drive the firm a little forward than it was before. Yeah, thanks.
189 00:35:31.610 ⇒ 00:35:32.390 Robert Tseng: issue. Alright.
190 00:35:32.390 ⇒ 00:35:33.520 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Talk to you soon. Bye.