2026-01-28_cso_client_presentation_dry_run

Meeting Title: CSO Client Presentation Dry Run Date: 2026-01-28 Meeting participants: Zoran Selinger, Greg Stoutenburg, Clarence Stone, Pranav Narahari, Amber Lin, Demilade Agboola, Uttam Kumaran

WEBVTT

1 00:01:01.150 ⇒ 00:01:02.230 Greg Stoutenburg: Hey, Zaron.

2 00:01:04.000 ⇒ 00:01:05.110 Zoran Selinger: Hi, Greg.

3 00:01:05.950 ⇒ 00:01:06.910 Greg Stoutenburg: Lou.

4 00:01:09.720 ⇒ 00:01:10.710 Zoran Selinger: How are you doing?

5 00:01:11.820 ⇒ 00:01:13.810 Greg Stoutenburg: I’m doing pretty well. How are you?

6 00:01:13.950 ⇒ 00:01:16.879 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, yeah, good, good day, good day.

7 00:01:21.330 ⇒ 00:01:27.299 Greg Stoutenburg: I don’t know if Eden is always this way, but it seems like they’re pretty excited for… to ask for a lot of help on a lot of things.

8 00:01:29.710 ⇒ 00:01:31.020 Zoran Selinger: Well, yeah, yeah.

9 00:01:32.520 ⇒ 00:01:41.410 Zoran Selinger: They are pretty hyperactive, but also, like, oftentimes they do lack follow-up, and…

10 00:01:42.140 ⇒ 00:01:51.429 Zoran Selinger: For example, I am going to talk about, like, today, it is hard to get feedback sometimes from them.

11 00:01:51.920 ⇒ 00:01:52.510 Greg Stoutenburg: Hmm.

12 00:01:52.720 ⇒ 00:01:56.639 Zoran Selinger: We agree on, like, on action points for.

13 00:01:56.640 ⇒ 00:01:56.990 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.

14 00:01:56.990 ⇒ 00:02:04.719 Zoran Selinger: One of us, and then they do not really follow up, even after you nudge them for, like, several times.

15 00:02:04.900 ⇒ 00:02:12.560 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was wondering about that, because I thought, there seem to be, like, a lot of ad hoc requests coming my way, like.

16 00:02:12.710 ⇒ 00:02:16.200 Greg Stoutenburg: But I don’t really have a sense of the level of priority or urgency.

17 00:02:17.160 ⇒ 00:02:21.850 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, basically, if you look at…

18 00:02:22.610 ⇒ 00:02:31.369 Zoran Selinger: If you look at that sheet for our Q1 priorities, so this… that’s… those are our priorities, as far as I understand.

19 00:02:31.480 ⇒ 00:02:44.240 Zoran Selinger: And the reason we have it is because that does allow us to say no to specific things. We should essentially only be working on those priorities.

20 00:02:45.230 ⇒ 00:02:53.400 Zoran Selinger: they… they are first, and everything else can get… we can say no to everything else, basically. That’s the idea.

21 00:02:54.080 ⇒ 00:02:55.240 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, okay.

22 00:02:55.240 ⇒ 00:03:01.149 Zoran Selinger: So if it doesn’t follow in one of those… in one of those brackets there,

23 00:03:01.290 ⇒ 00:03:05.430 Zoran Selinger: we are free to say no. At least that’s the idea behind it.

24 00:03:07.510 ⇒ 00:03:09.620 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay, I’m looking for that doc right now.

25 00:03:09.620 ⇒ 00:03:12.330 Zoran Selinger: Is it in the Eden Martech Notion page?

26 00:03:13.090 ⇒ 00:03:19.170 Zoran Selinger: So that will be in, like, the Eden Data Platform… document,

27 00:03:19.400 ⇒ 00:03:27.010 Zoran Selinger: If you look for it, if you just type that in, you should be able to find it. I’ll also search.

28 00:03:27.730 ⇒ 00:03:28.540 Greg Stoutenburg: Got it.

29 00:03:28.720 ⇒ 00:03:29.180 Zoran Selinger: Yep.

30 00:03:29.180 ⇒ 00:03:29.660 Greg Stoutenburg: Thank you.

31 00:03:29.660 ⇒ 00:03:32.399 Zoran Selinger: So one of the… one of the sheets is… Yeah, yeah, yeah.

32 00:03:32.400 ⇒ 00:03:34.470 Greg Stoutenburg: There’s the roadmap. Okay, cool, thanks.

33 00:03:34.740 ⇒ 00:03:36.359 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, okay.

34 00:03:50.020 ⇒ 00:03:50.800 Greg Stoutenburg: Cool.

35 00:03:58.850 ⇒ 00:04:00.009 Pranav Narahari: How’s it going, guys?

36 00:04:01.020 ⇒ 00:04:01.700 Pranav Narahari: Correct.

37 00:04:01.700 ⇒ 00:04:02.479 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, you’re well, Rio.

38 00:04:02.480 ⇒ 00:04:03.110 Pranav Narahari: Mother.

39 00:04:04.150 ⇒ 00:04:05.520 Pranav Narahari: Pretty good, pretty good.

40 00:04:05.740 ⇒ 00:04:09.570 Pranav Narahari: Clarence, we’ve met, but I don’t think I’ve, spoke to the rest of y’all.

41 00:04:12.510 ⇒ 00:04:15.130 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, nice to meet you. Craig Stanford.

42 00:04:15.130 ⇒ 00:04:15.560 Pranav Narahari: Dude.

43 00:04:15.560 ⇒ 00:04:16.660 Greg Stoutenburg: Came on board last month.

44 00:04:18.360 ⇒ 00:04:23.679 Pranav Narahari: Oh, okay, nice, nice, yeah. I came… I was, I think I started, like, beginning of December.

45 00:04:25.080 ⇒ 00:04:26.280 Greg Stoutenburg: Alright.

46 00:04:28.550 ⇒ 00:04:30.470 Demilade Agboola: Nice to meet you.

47 00:04:30.660 ⇒ 00:04:36.459 Demilade Agboola: The money, started in March 2025, so… Almost a year right now.

48 00:04:37.370 ⇒ 00:04:38.520 Pranav Narahari: Oh, wow, nice.

49 00:04:38.520 ⇒ 00:04:43.690 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, so I do a lot of, like, analytics engineering stuff, and…

50 00:04:43.940 ⇒ 00:04:47.550 Demilade Agboola: Recently just, like, started more CSO stuff.

51 00:04:47.670 ⇒ 00:04:49.410 Demilade Agboola: For a couple of clients, so…

52 00:04:50.910 ⇒ 00:04:51.620 Pranav Narahari: Nice.

53 00:04:54.450 ⇒ 00:04:59.659 Pranav Narahari: Yeah, I haven’t really interacted much with, like, the data engineering side of Brainforge, so…

54 00:04:59.870 ⇒ 00:05:03.300 Pranav Narahari: Yeah, I know, like, on the AI side, like, we have…

55 00:05:03.530 ⇒ 00:05:09.299 Pranav Narahari: Two projects that we, like, mostly go over during stand-ups, kind of maybe three if we count internal.

56 00:05:09.440 ⇒ 00:05:14.220 Pranav Narahari: But I know with data engineering, we have quite a few more clients, I’m pretty sure.

57 00:05:19.710 ⇒ 00:05:24.529 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, we do. The number of, like, projects that we currently are working on,

58 00:05:25.420 ⇒ 00:05:29.820 Demilade Agboola: And, yeah, it’s pretty, it’s pretty nice, pretty hectic sometimes, but,

59 00:05:30.110 ⇒ 00:05:34.159 Demilade Agboola: All in all, I think it’s… it’s been great so far, and the team…

60 00:05:34.350 ⇒ 00:05:40.710 Demilade Agboola: Like, we’ve had enough projects to the point that we have fulfilled the need to expand the team, so that’s always a great thing on the sign of projects.

61 00:05:40.710 ⇒ 00:05:41.360 Pranav Narahari: Yes.

62 00:05:42.380 ⇒ 00:05:43.350 Pranav Narahari: True, true.

63 00:05:46.730 ⇒ 00:05:48.000 Greg Stoutenburg: Renov, what’s your background?

64 00:05:50.080 ⇒ 00:05:55.380 Pranav Narahari: More of, like, software engineering, and so… yeah.

65 00:05:55.830 ⇒ 00:06:11.819 Pranav Narahari: went to school for software engineering, got a bachelor’s, worked in banking for, like, three and a half years as, like, a cloud engineer. Then, worked as kind of, like, an AI engineer, like, freelancer for some time.

66 00:06:12.260 ⇒ 00:06:13.520 Pranav Narahari: And then…

67 00:06:14.020 ⇒ 00:06:22.850 Pranav Narahari: Utam just, like, reached out to me on LinkedIn since I was in Austin at the time, and so he was just, like, looking for Austin talent. That was…

68 00:06:23.100 ⇒ 00:06:35.410 Pranav Narahari: sometime last summer, I forget, like, exactly when. And then, yeah, we just kept in touch, and then December, he reached back out to me. He’s like, oh, seems like a good fit for this project, you interested? And it was, like, perfect timing for me.

69 00:06:36.290 ⇒ 00:06:37.440 Greg Stoutenburg: Cool. Nice.

70 00:06:37.440 ⇒ 00:06:39.400 Pranav Narahari: Worked out. Yeah, yeah.

71 00:06:39.400 ⇒ 00:06:40.439 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. What about you?

72 00:06:41.090 ⇒ 00:06:49.359 Greg Stoutenburg: Well, I mean, my UTOM outreach story is, is a fun one. I shared this in the…

73 00:06:49.370 ⇒ 00:06:56.269 Greg Stoutenburg: I’m planning for a webinar with some Amplitude folks in a couple of months, and I got to share this with them as well. So, I’m in the Amplitude

74 00:06:56.270 ⇒ 00:07:10.140 Greg Stoutenburg: cohort community and done a couple of webinars for them. So, I was looking for a new job, I posted my resume in the jobs channel, like, which is normally used for people saying, like, hey, so-and-so needs someone for this, this, you know, here’s the JD. I was like, hey, I posted, I’ll look at those, but also.

75 00:07:10.140 ⇒ 00:07:16.549 Greg Stoutenburg: In case anyone sees anything that’s relevant. Within, like, a couple of hours, you Tom had DM’d me, and .

76 00:07:16.550 ⇒ 00:07:17.290 Pranav Narahari: Oh, wow.

77 00:07:17.290 ⇒ 00:07:34.510 Greg Stoutenburg: here I am! So, that’s… it was, it was a pretty, pretty nice fit. So, I went to school for philosophy, and, was a professor for a while, and then in 2021, got a job at Stack Overflow, working on product-led growth and, the UX stuff.

78 00:07:34.870 ⇒ 00:07:39.140 Greg Stoutenburg: And then, yeah, I’ve just been doing, like, product analytics, PLG,

79 00:07:39.320 ⇒ 00:07:48.229 Greg Stoutenburg: for SaaS companies for a few years, and, was like, you know, the direction I really want to be going in, though, like, the sweet spot, the part that I like, is,

80 00:07:48.350 ⇒ 00:08:03.219 Greg Stoutenburg: is helping a company get that, like, that first clear understanding of how things are going for users in their product. And, so this just seemed like a good place where it’s like, alright, cool, I can do, like, a lot of that.

81 00:08:03.480 ⇒ 00:08:04.200 Greg Stoutenburg: Down.

82 00:08:04.530 ⇒ 00:08:20.289 Pranav Narahari: Nice, yeah. That’s a… that’s funny that you mentioned, like, kind of, like, that first understanding, because that’s kind of how I… it’s like a similar type of thing that I felt with, like, you know, building an application, just, like, seeing that idea go into, like, like.

83 00:08:20.350 ⇒ 00:08:34.780 Pranav Narahari: in production for the first time, you know? Yeah. Like a deployed application for them, like, that was just fun. It felt like just, like, small projects that you just, like, work on for fun. And so, yeah, that’s why I just… I love this, like, business model for me personally.

84 00:08:34.870 ⇒ 00:08:36.850 Pranav Narahari: Yeah Yeah.

85 00:08:37.190 ⇒ 00:08:40.070 Pranav Narahari: Yeah. When did you say you joined again? Brainforge?

86 00:08:40.950 ⇒ 00:08:59.109 Greg Stoutenburg: I did a… I did a, like, a 15-hour or so project in the first part of December, and then by, I don’t know, third week of December or so… it’s all a blurb, but, like, the second or third week of December, it was like, alright, you know, we’ll have more projects for you, so… and I was like, alright, I’ll see you after the holidays.

87 00:08:59.110 ⇒ 00:09:01.100 Pranav Narahari: No, yeah.

88 00:09:01.490 ⇒ 00:09:04.980 Greg Stoutenburg: Basically, I mean, basically the second week of this month.

89 00:09:06.940 ⇒ 00:09:08.419 Pranav Narahari: Oh, second week of this month, yeah, gotcha.

90 00:09:08.420 ⇒ 00:09:08.870 Greg Stoutenburg: Basically.

91 00:09:08.870 ⇒ 00:09:14.329 Pranav Narahari: Actually, now that I think about it, too, by the time I ramped up, it was, like, early this month, or, like, late last month, I think.

92 00:09:14.580 ⇒ 00:09:15.550 Pranav Narahari: Yep.

93 00:09:15.780 ⇒ 00:09:19.089 Pranav Narahari: But yeah, no, things move fast here, like… Yeah, I’ll say.

94 00:09:21.300 ⇒ 00:09:21.970 Greg Stoutenburg: No.

95 00:09:22.180 ⇒ 00:09:24.410 Pranav Narahari: Are we, waiting on Utam, or…

96 00:09:24.510 ⇒ 00:09:26.530 Pranav Narahari: Clarence, you know who else is joining this?

97 00:09:27.490 ⇒ 00:09:29.299 Clarence Stone: Hu Town probably won’t show up.

98 00:09:30.050 ⇒ 00:09:30.580 Pranav Narahari: Oh, okay.

99 00:09:30.580 ⇒ 00:09:40.070 Greg Stoutenburg: Oh, okay. He, he made… he sent a note in the CSO channel that said, Element calling my phone, running 10 minutes late, feel free to delay 10 or just chat.

100 00:09:41.360 ⇒ 00:09:42.040 Pranav Narahari: Oh, okay, cool.

101 00:09:42.530 ⇒ 00:09:47.120 Greg Stoutenburg: But I think Clarence is giving us an interpretation of that message. Am I right?

102 00:09:47.120 ⇒ 00:09:48.430 Clarence Stone: Yeah, proceed.

103 00:09:48.430 ⇒ 00:09:50.100 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay.

104 00:09:53.330 ⇒ 00:09:54.300 Greg Stoutenburg: Alright.

105 00:10:00.990 ⇒ 00:10:03.979 Greg Stoutenburg: Well, clarence, you want to run it?

106 00:10:04.690 ⇒ 00:10:27.780 Clarence Stone: I cannot be running this because I have to leave it at the top of the hour, but I think what needs to happen on this call is each of you guys are going to present what you’re going to present to your clients, get the butterflies out of your system, right? So the format should be, hey, this is my client, this is my project, this is what we’re up to this week, and then boom, you start your presentation and get your feedback from the team here.

107 00:10:28.310 ⇒ 00:10:29.340 Clarence Stone: Made sense.

108 00:10:31.110 ⇒ 00:10:31.860 Greg Stoutenburg: Yep.

109 00:10:31.860 ⇒ 00:10:50.089 Clarence Stone: And you guys haven’t created slides, not a big deal either. Like, it should be more of a conversation than saying, like, hey, I think I’m going to present this concept, or this data, or this interpretation, right? This is really to form a community so that you guys can gut check each other. It’s not for us to come and start grading you or anything.

110 00:10:50.090 ⇒ 00:10:53.900 Clarence Stone: It’s, yeah, talk to each other, get to know each other. I love what was happening before.

111 00:10:56.340 ⇒ 00:11:05.700 Greg Stoutenburg: Sounds good. So, UTAM, had posted some ideas, actually, Pranav, was this at your… yeah, responding to you, actually. Like.

112 00:11:05.730 ⇒ 00:11:24.789 Greg Stoutenburg: what we should do in this meeting, and it looks like the provisional understanding, as I… if I interpret it correctly, was like, yeah, if you have a deck or some slides to run through, then share those for everyone and get some discussion going. If you don’t, share a win and a blocker, and, just talk about it.

113 00:11:27.210 ⇒ 00:11:28.020 Pranav Narahari: Sounds good to me.

114 00:11:32.400 ⇒ 00:11:34.089 Pranav Narahari: Yeah, I could start off.

115 00:11:34.250 ⇒ 00:11:35.530 Pranav Narahari: So…

116 00:11:36.280 ⇒ 00:11:51.700 Pranav Narahari: For us, just kind of a little bit of background for, our client Lilo, we have weekly calls. I don’t think that’s going to change, even though we’re kind of, like, in the… like, the thick of things for the project.

117 00:11:51.840 ⇒ 00:11:57.870 Pranav Narahari: They’re very hands-on, so, like, they’d like to have as many touchpoints as possible, I would say.

118 00:11:58.000 ⇒ 00:12:16.250 Pranav Narahari: And we’re trying to build pretty fast for them, so we have 3 engineers on the project, so there’s almost always, like, an update to give them. Definitely at the end of the week, almost, like, every single day, we try to give them an update of something that’s been pushed, or something that’s been, made for, like, a proof of concept.

119 00:12:16.710 ⇒ 00:12:27.269 Pranav Narahari: Yeah, so, I’ll start off with just kind of, like, wins and, like, things that can be improved upon, or just, like, things that, you know, I’m improving on.

120 00:12:27.570 ⇒ 00:12:33.639 Pranav Narahari: So, yeah, I’ll start there. Earlier this week with Lilo,

121 00:12:35.070 ⇒ 00:12:41.479 Pranav Narahari: Bobby, who’s, like, kind of, like, our main point of contact for Lilo, just, like, DM’d Utam to kind of just, like.

122 00:12:41.590 ⇒ 00:12:52.239 Pranav Narahari: wanting to, like, kind of get some progress update for, the project. Basically, I think he felt, like, a little bit out of the loop.

123 00:12:52.340 ⇒ 00:13:06.070 Pranav Narahari: And it was just kind of like an anxiety message, you know, like, not sure where things are going, like, we kind of want to make sure, like, we’re still aligned on, like, the goals and, like, deadlines, things of that nature. And so, I think part of that was, like.

124 00:13:06.590 ⇒ 00:13:21.799 Pranav Narahari: me kind of, like, figuring out CSO role, nothing was even formally, like, made for me to, like… I think that was kind of a wake-up call for me, like, to be like, okay, I need to fully take on the CSO role right now, because nobody’s, like, wearing that cap right now.

125 00:13:21.840 ⇒ 00:13:27.600 Pranav Narahari: And so, yeah, that’s basically just, like, a learning lesson, things that we can probably…

126 00:13:27.990 ⇒ 00:13:31.229 Pranav Narahari: All probably, like, bring into our own clients, just like, okay.

127 00:13:31.300 ⇒ 00:13:46.589 Pranav Narahari: let’s make sure everybody knows what hat they’re wearing. You know, this is the first client to, from what I’m aware of, like, somebody moving from one role to another, and, like, having to, like, do that transfer of tasks. I don’t think any other clients have done that so far.

128 00:13:46.610 ⇒ 00:13:53.570 Pranav Narahari: So maybe this won’t apply to you guys yet, but in the future, you know, it’s definitely gonna happen, right? Like…

129 00:13:53.920 ⇒ 00:13:55.920 Pranav Narahari: There’s no world where that doesn’t happen.

130 00:13:56.210 ⇒ 00:14:10.659 Pranav Narahari: So, yeah, just something to be aware of, like, you know, like, if things are changing, like, having kind of just, like, a sync with your team to just be like, okay, what hat is everyone wearing right now? Are all of our bases covered? And if not, like.

131 00:14:10.760 ⇒ 00:14:13.180 Pranav Narahari: You know, figure that out as soon as possible.

132 00:14:13.640 ⇒ 00:14:18.490 Pranav Narahari: Yeah, but for, like, a win?

133 00:14:18.840 ⇒ 00:14:20.240 Pranav Narahari: I would say…

134 00:14:20.400 ⇒ 00:14:32.709 Pranav Narahari: basically just, like, the last couple days, too, just been, like, sending them daily updates and just, like, getting feedback from them. Having just, like, quick 10-15 minute calls, to just kind of ask questions, like.

135 00:14:32.970 ⇒ 00:14:44.489 Pranav Narahari: And what that does for me is it puts less pressure on, like, that Friday call. That Friday call is almost just like, you know, we already kind of talked about a lot of stuff, like, let’s just,

136 00:14:45.130 ⇒ 00:14:46.950 Pranav Narahari: Summarize everything again?

137 00:14:47.360 ⇒ 00:14:48.939 Pranav Narahari: And then also…

138 00:14:49.650 ⇒ 00:15:09.260 Pranav Narahari: you guys can have a little bit more focused time on, like, asking the specifics, you know? Like, we’re not gonna draw out those conversations throughout the week, but on the week… on the end-of-week call, like, which is longer, like, an hour long, we can, you know, we can dive into the rabbit holes, like, talk about what’s next, and all the… all the specific details.

139 00:15:16.150 ⇒ 00:15:30.929 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, just, I… I can’t speak to this as much from CSO, again, you know, pretty new, but, anytime I’ve ever done presentations and had them go well, when there’s, like, some ongoing project, it’s not… the presentation is not, here’s all the stuff I did.

140 00:15:30.930 ⇒ 00:15:41.139 Greg Stoutenburg: You know, and just, like, walking through every single slide. It’s like, you’re already kind of familiar with this, we’ll sketch the overview, and then, like, have a conversation about it. So, that makes sense.

141 00:15:43.030 ⇒ 00:15:50.119 Pranav Narahari: Yeah, yeah, I think that’s something I learned, like, this week, too, kind of just from having just the more touchpoints. Exactly what you said, Greg.

142 00:15:53.560 ⇒ 00:16:00.159 Greg Stoutenburg: Since I’m already unmuted, I’ll just go. I don’t have a deck to share. My…

143 00:16:00.160 ⇒ 00:16:21.779 Greg Stoutenburg: all of my projects are in a funny spot, which is, well, that’s the blocker that I’ll get to. But as far as, as far as wins, honestly, it feels like it’s a win, because I feel like I’m caught up on what’s going on with Eden. I picked up for Henry, and the, the handoff was sort of, I’ll just say, incomplete, so it’s felt like a lot of catching up to do.

144 00:16:21.780 ⇒ 00:16:46.770 Greg Stoutenburg: But in calls this week, I was able to meet with a lot of stakeholders on their side and really understand what it is they’re looking for. And it’s exciting stuff. It’s stuff where I think that we can be really helpful, where I can be really helpful, and I’m excited to just see it go to the next stage. They want… one thing they want, for example, is they’re already pretty deep in the weeds for experimentation, but they acknowledge that they need to do a better job of prioritizing experiments and really

145 00:16:46.770 ⇒ 00:16:59.040 Greg Stoutenburg: measuring how much they’re moving the needle beyond just, like, yeah, things are a little better after the change than they were before the change. So I’m excited about that work. That’s work I’ve got some background in, so I’m excited about that.

146 00:16:59.040 ⇒ 00:17:18.479 Greg Stoutenburg: And was able to quickly get a marketing campaign enabled on their side. It wasn’t a lot of work, but it was something that… I mean, evidently they didn’t know how to do it, or they wouldn’t have asked for help on it, and it was, you know, like, just a quick thing where it’s like, cool, they’re happy this campaign is off and running, I was able to help out there.

147 00:17:18.619 ⇒ 00:17:19.349 Greg Stoutenburg: Hmm.

148 00:17:20.670 ⇒ 00:17:25.639 Greg Stoutenburg: As far as… yeah, I mean, as far as the blocker,

149 00:17:25.750 ⇒ 00:17:36.279 Greg Stoutenburg: I had two clients go from what seemed like enthusiasm about a new SOW, turn into just dragging their feet, objections,

150 00:17:36.280 ⇒ 00:17:51.589 Greg Stoutenburg: concerns about cost that hadn’t been raised previously, and it’s like, like, what’s up? Like, one of them is at the stage where Robert is like, I’m gonna pull the plug on this if they don’t say yes by the end of the week. So we’re kind of, like, you know, at the limit there, and another one…

151 00:17:51.640 ⇒ 00:17:56.250 Greg Stoutenburg: is doing that thing where… and I always find this confusing. I’ve been someone with…

152 00:17:57.230 ⇒ 00:18:04.839 Greg Stoutenburg: certain kinds of ambiguous messages I just find hard to interpret. Like, I’ve had one where it’s like, oh yeah, we are gonna do this, but we’re…

153 00:18:04.980 ⇒ 00:18:15.639 Greg Stoutenburg: figuring out the right cost, we’ll get back to you, we’ll talk about scope, and it’s like, okay, but, like, when? And how? And so, it’s, like, trying to find the right way to

154 00:18:15.800 ⇒ 00:18:24.179 Greg Stoutenburg: push them or be making progress, but also not just be annoyed… not be annoying, rather. I don’t want to be annoying if what they’re really trying to do is just give a soft no.

155 00:18:24.740 ⇒ 00:18:28.899 Greg Stoutenburg: So, those are my… That’s the struggle at the moment.

156 00:18:33.080 ⇒ 00:18:43.899 Pranav Narahari: Yeah, that first part that you were talking about with, like, campaign, like, kind of for them, like, it was a quick… it was like, from your end, you’re like, yeah, I can knock this out real quick, but then it was almost like,

157 00:18:44.780 ⇒ 00:18:49.650 Pranav Narahari: to me, I… maybe I’m, like, explaining something that happened more so to me, but it sounded like…

158 00:18:49.830 ⇒ 00:18:56.699 Pranav Narahari: they were overexcited about something, they were like, oh, this is, like, a quick thing for me to do.

159 00:18:56.920 ⇒ 00:19:03.260 Pranav Narahari: And so, yeah, I’ve noticed, like, that too, like, it’s kind of understanding your client, like, what,

160 00:19:03.540 ⇒ 00:19:17.129 Pranav Narahari: what is, like, we have different expertise, right? Like, our expertise is different than the client’s, which is why they came to us to do certain stuff. It’s good to know, like, those certain things were, like, we’re, like, a huge value add. Like, a similar thing…

161 00:19:17.460 ⇒ 00:19:30.789 Pranav Narahari: happened to me, which was, like, spinning up, like, a dashboard for, like, an application, like, we kind of got that spun up in, like, a day, and, like, we got, like, some great feedback in our external channel about that.

162 00:19:31.310 ⇒ 00:19:44.399 Pranav Narahari: a little bit, like, surprising, like, right after, kind of, like, we got, like, some mixed signals anxiety message, we got that message, so we’re like, okay, I think I’m kind of understanding, like, they kind of just want to see deliverables, like, whether it’s, like.

163 00:19:44.520 ⇒ 00:19:46.419 Pranav Narahari: We show them something, and it’s like…

164 00:19:46.790 ⇒ 00:19:59.389 Pranav Narahari: from our perspective, it’s like, oh, that was the easy part. If they can just, like, see that up front, and like, oh, they’ll view that as, like, a lot of progress. And so, yeah, I think, Greg, I’m seeing the same thing with my client as well.

165 00:19:59.470 ⇒ 00:20:00.210 Greg Stoutenburg: No.

166 00:20:05.280 ⇒ 00:20:13.010 Demilade Agboola: I was just wondering if there’s a way we can, in terms of, like, the clients who were not sure if they’re trying to give a soft snow.

167 00:20:13.150 ⇒ 00:20:19.700 Demilade Agboola: Versus if they’re just actually, like, slow and, like, have very, like, bureaucratic processes.

168 00:20:20.080 ⇒ 00:20:22.509 Demilade Agboola: I was wondering if there’s a way we could…

169 00:20:24.170 ⇒ 00:20:37.570 Demilade Agboola: Like, we could, you know, maybe, potentially, if there’s a call, or if, you know, it might be a thing of having to speak to someone higher up, or, like, just basically, figuring out a way to get the…

170 00:20:38.050 ⇒ 00:20:39.760 Demilade Agboola: Yes or no, basically.

171 00:20:40.180 ⇒ 00:20:46.660 Demilade Agboola: I guess the, like, just put kicking the can down the road, is a bit frustrating, to be honest.

172 00:20:46.840 ⇒ 00:20:51.020 Demilade Agboola: Because it’s some, like, responsibility on your plate.

173 00:20:51.250 ⇒ 00:20:55.890 Demilade Agboola: And if it’s something… I think, like, if it’s something that they know that

174 00:20:56.280 ⇒ 00:21:13.749 Demilade Agboola: whatever the SOW is is above budget, it’s like, hey, we don’t have XYZ amount, we can do half of that, and we can communicate, okay, so half of that, we will readjust the SOW and get back to you. I think that’s more productive than, you know, just, like, kicking the can down the road and just kind of wasting everyone’s time.

175 00:21:15.310 ⇒ 00:21:16.180 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.

176 00:21:16.480 ⇒ 00:21:27.739 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, and I’m glad we’re talking about this, because, I did want input on this, because I’m like, I actually, I’m… I kind of don’t know what to do. So, let me see if I can find the context.

177 00:21:27.950 ⇒ 00:21:31.379 Greg Stoutenburg: I’ll just… is it okay if I just share my screen? I don’t want to hog all the time for…

178 00:21:31.520 ⇒ 00:21:36.959 Greg Stoutenburg: to have everyone help me, but that is, that’s what’s on my mind right now. So…

179 00:21:37.930 ⇒ 00:21:39.230 Greg Stoutenburg: Alright, you see my Slack?

180 00:21:39.920 ⇒ 00:21:40.590 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. Okay.

181 00:21:40.590 ⇒ 00:21:41.240 Pranav Narahari: Yep.

182 00:21:41.240 ⇒ 00:21:44.059 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, so I’m talking about Hedra,

183 00:21:44.230 ⇒ 00:21:56.289 Greg Stoutenburg: And this was… UTOM has been running this client. There was a conversation about them needing to get product analytics in place so they can know what’s going on, especially, like, with user activation.

184 00:21:56.810 ⇒ 00:22:02.689 Greg Stoutenburg: So, I came in here, as you can see, even before I got teed up, before I’m even invited to the channel.

185 00:22:03.030 ⇒ 00:22:06.789 Greg Stoutenburg: the actual decision maker is like, do I really need to be here?

186 00:22:06.960 ⇒ 00:22:09.959 Greg Stoutenburg: For, you know, for this thing that we’re trying to schedule.

187 00:22:10.160 ⇒ 00:22:19.540 Greg Stoutenburg: Not a great sign. Anyway, so then I’ve put together this SOW, share it, we have the call.

188 00:22:19.690 ⇒ 00:22:32.240 Greg Stoutenburg: And, yeah, we have the call here, and then, you know, we’ll go over it, I follow up, you know, I give them a couple days, okay, we talked about it, too much money. I reply.

189 00:22:32.390 ⇒ 00:22:37.089 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay, I understand the concern about cost and scope. Let’s talk about reducing scope.

190 00:22:37.520 ⇒ 00:22:43.829 Greg Stoutenburg: They say, basically, you know, I’ll get back to you. Okay, but they’re active, right? They’re asking.

191 00:22:44.000 ⇒ 00:22:48.200 Greg Stoutenburg: They’re asking wage questions, for example. And then…

192 00:22:48.350 ⇒ 00:22:53.059 Greg Stoutenburg: you know, I try to go, alright, I know that they’re using posthog, kind of nudge.

193 00:22:53.610 ⇒ 00:23:06.129 Greg Stoutenburg: Hey, you know, want to see where I can help out with what they’ve got implemented so far, right? Just trying to, you know, demonstrate value. Kind of insist a little bit, but gently, on the value of the product analytics work that we’re pitching.

194 00:23:06.510 ⇒ 00:23:16.889 Greg Stoutenburg: no reply. And then, you know, and then yesterday, like, hey, here’s something relevant about, you know, improving activation, what you can do, you know, here’s a stat that’s thrown out.

195 00:23:17.310 ⇒ 00:23:18.330 Greg Stoutenburg: No reply.

196 00:23:18.450 ⇒ 00:23:25.379 Greg Stoutenburg: So, hey you, Tom, welcome. This is, I’ve shared my blocker, which is the.

197 00:23:25.380 ⇒ 00:23:25.810 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

198 00:23:25.810 ⇒ 00:23:28.890 Greg Stoutenburg: that have just, like, gotten difficult and.

199 00:23:28.890 ⇒ 00:23:32.400 Uttam Kumaran: Well, read me, read me, I sign the thing, so…

200 00:23:32.910 ⇒ 00:23:37.079 Uttam Kumaran: It’s… it’s in their world, right, to go figure that out.

201 00:23:37.420 ⇒ 00:23:38.020 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.

202 00:23:38.480 ⇒ 00:23:40.060 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. And so…

203 00:23:40.510 ⇒ 00:23:46.429 Uttam Kumaran: Default’s moving, we’re all pushing for multiple angles, so I feel like that’s fine.

204 00:23:46.700 ⇒ 00:23:48.749 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, default’s going okay. I’m talking about Hedra.

205 00:23:49.090 ⇒ 00:23:51.960 Uttam Kumaran: Hedra, that… so this one is, like, I…

206 00:23:52.280 ⇒ 00:23:55.470 Uttam Kumaran: I told this to Robert, too, because he was like, maybe we botched…

207 00:23:55.640 ⇒ 00:23:58.300 Uttam Kumaran: like, the first thing, and I’m like, dude, this is, like…

208 00:23:58.420 ⇒ 00:24:01.949 Uttam Kumaran: This is… we don’t work with startups for this reason, guys.

209 00:24:01.950 ⇒ 00:24:02.320 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.

210 00:24:02.320 ⇒ 00:24:06.049 Uttam Kumaran: because they do stuff like this. Similarly, default.

211 00:24:06.310 ⇒ 00:24:11.839 Uttam Kumaran: Like, none of our other clients have blinked an eye at, like, giving us access and doing shit.

212 00:24:12.030 ⇒ 00:24:14.009 Uttam Kumaran: It’s always the startups.

213 00:24:14.130 ⇒ 00:24:16.400 Uttam Kumaran: We don’t work with them for a reason.

214 00:24:16.540 ⇒ 00:24:18.400 Uttam Kumaran: the Hedra thing…

215 00:24:18.650 ⇒ 00:24:32.300 Uttam Kumaran: they just came in, they’re like, need something so urgent, it was a big deal, I was like, we’ll take the money and we’ll rip it. The default thing, I’m friends with Caitlin, which is one of our criteria to work with startups, that we have to have a friend there, and they have to have raised a bunch of money, and they hit both of those.

216 00:24:32.510 ⇒ 00:24:41.929 Uttam Kumaran: So… and Hedra, I just hit one of those criteria, they raise a bunch of money. If they don’t raise a bunch of money, and don’t… we don’t have a friend there, we don’t work with startups. Unfortunately.

217 00:24:42.080 ⇒ 00:24:46.539 Uttam Kumaran: Because we’re no leverage. Like, I could call Caitlin on the phone and be like, yo.

218 00:24:47.240 ⇒ 00:24:52.370 Uttam Kumaran: this is fucked up, like, we’re not… we’re not able to move forward. She’ll be like, oh, I didn’t know, and like, figure it out. But, like.

219 00:24:52.870 ⇒ 00:24:59.490 Uttam Kumaran: it’s, like, so… it’s, like, not professional, it’s not, like, scalable process. Hedra, like, what you guys will find is, like.

220 00:24:59.940 ⇒ 00:25:06.229 Uttam Kumaran: That company may just go under next week, and, like, we’ll be, like… we don’t even know what happened, and it’s not our fault.

221 00:25:06.320 ⇒ 00:25:07.349 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. And, like…

222 00:25:07.350 ⇒ 00:25:11.679 Uttam Kumaran: Clearly, Michael is like, I don’t even want to talk to the team who’s implementing all of our data, it’s like…

223 00:25:11.890 ⇒ 00:25:19.080 Uttam Kumaran: there are these, like, weird tendencies. I’m happy to explain to you why those happen, but that’s just the case in the startups, so…

224 00:25:19.270 ⇒ 00:25:24.120 Uttam Kumaran: I would say those aren’t an accurate reflection of your fault.

225 00:25:24.240 ⇒ 00:25:27.389 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll tell you. So I’m like, there’s a loss.

226 00:25:27.750 ⇒ 00:25:39.450 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, no, I appreciate that. No, I was just sharing, like, you know, going around wins and blockers, I’m like, my blocker right now is… I… and this is also just something true of me, and, you know, and some others on the call shared some ideas. I…

227 00:25:39.540 ⇒ 00:25:48.379 Greg Stoutenburg: If you want to paralyze me, give me a soft no. And I will struggle to figure out if it’s a soft no, or if it really means weight. And I’m like…

228 00:25:48.860 ⇒ 00:25:49.740 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, okay.

229 00:25:49.740 ⇒ 00:25:51.110 Greg Stoutenburg: So, like, you know, like with Hedra.

230 00:25:51.110 ⇒ 00:25:51.700 Uttam Kumaran: that I’m trying.

231 00:25:51.700 ⇒ 00:25:55.239 Greg Stoutenburg: to, like, demonstrate a little value, get a little, you know…

232 00:25:55.240 ⇒ 00:26:03.190 Uttam Kumaran: Salesperson, that’s a good… that’s good sales. I feel like most engineering people, like, I had to learn that, like, people don’t mean no, they mean, like…

233 00:26:03.480 ⇒ 00:26:05.339 Uttam Kumaran: They mean, like, I don’t know…

234 00:26:05.540 ⇒ 00:26:08.300 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, or like, I’m not sure.

235 00:26:08.300 ⇒ 00:26:11.979 Greg Stoutenburg: Change the offer a little, you know?

236 00:26:11.980 ⇒ 00:26:22.430 Uttam Kumaran: good. I think you suss it out. Frankly, at this point, like, if I give you the sales angle, they’re, like, I’m close to basically going… I have to call Sandra and be like.

237 00:26:23.210 ⇒ 00:26:33.990 Uttam Kumaran: what are we… what are we doing? Because Awashi’s like, look, they’re coming to us with ad hoc requests. I’m gonna call her and say, like, we need to establish a plan, because we just don’t work with businesses in, like, this sort of way.

238 00:26:33.990 ⇒ 00:26:34.570 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.

239 00:26:34.870 ⇒ 00:26:38.890 Uttam Kumaran: We put two great SOWs in front of you to really deliver some sick work.

240 00:26:39.000 ⇒ 00:26:40.599 Uttam Kumaran: You said no to those.

241 00:26:40.750 ⇒ 00:26:46.760 Uttam Kumaran: But, like, you kind of want to waste his time, which I already told you was, like, not the way we work. You can’t be, like, picking somebody.

242 00:26:46.890 ⇒ 00:26:49.450 Uttam Kumaran: It’s also, he’s getting super busy, and I’m like…

243 00:26:49.870 ⇒ 00:26:55.019 Uttam Kumaran: we can make more money from his time somewhere else. So, like, I’m figuring out that client right now.

244 00:26:55.020 ⇒ 00:26:55.610 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.

245 00:26:55.920 ⇒ 00:26:56.510 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

246 00:26:56.510 ⇒ 00:26:58.030 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, alright, that’s helpful.

247 00:26:58.260 ⇒ 00:26:59.090 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.

248 00:26:59.530 ⇒ 00:27:01.530 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, so I think for now, we’ll just keep doing it.

249 00:27:01.640 ⇒ 00:27:03.980 Greg Stoutenburg: But, you know.

250 00:27:04.430 ⇒ 00:27:07.110 Greg Stoutenburg: It’s like a daily challenge of, like, alright, what’s actually gonna help here?

251 00:27:08.240 ⇒ 00:27:08.850 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.

252 00:27:09.230 ⇒ 00:27:10.760 Uttam Kumaran: Alright, did anyone else go?

253 00:27:11.760 ⇒ 00:27:13.720 Demilade Agboola: Pranav went first.

254 00:27:13.860 ⇒ 00:27:16.050 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. And it was Greg’s turn.

255 00:27:16.350 ⇒ 00:27:19.650 Demilade Agboola: Cool. So, Greg, are you done, or does… Yeah.

256 00:27:19.990 ⇒ 00:27:21.260 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, it’s mine. Thanks.

257 00:27:21.970 ⇒ 00:27:23.270 Demilade Agboola: How do you want to go next, or should I go first?

258 00:27:23.270 ⇒ 00:27:32.780 Zoran Selinger: Sure. Yeah, so I have the meeting tomorrow, so I don’t have any slides. I was initially gonna be off tomorrow and only have

259 00:27:32.900 ⇒ 00:27:39.860 Zoran Selinger: the meeting on Friday, but something’s changed, changed, so, but I’ll, I’ll have the slides on time tomorrow.

260 00:27:40.150 ⇒ 00:27:53.229 Zoran Selinger: I have enough time to do it in the morning. But basically, the win I want to talk about is kind of direct… we have for Eden, so we have our Q1 targets. One of them is to get,

261 00:27:53.370 ⇒ 00:28:02.710 Zoran Selinger: to win back 5% of customers that churned in Q1. So they have… Currently.

262 00:28:02.990 ⇒ 00:28:19.139 Zoran Selinger: They have a segment, essentially, of people, that gave them their email address, right? So, this is a kind of a really, really soft segment, that is… that happens kind of pretty early on, in the… in the intakes form.

263 00:28:19.310 ⇒ 00:28:21.730 Zoran Selinger: And I was doing work for…

264 00:28:21.920 ⇒ 00:28:31.529 Zoran Selinger: Kind of figuring out, what exactly churn means for them, what exactly reactivations mean for them.

265 00:28:31.960 ⇒ 00:28:49.370 Zoran Selinger: And, kind of, we figured out that the right way to look at it is not orders or transactions, but the treatments, and they do have an entity called treatment. So, essentially, we started to find segments based on treatments.

266 00:28:49.720 ⇒ 00:28:59.610 Zoran Selinger: basically, if they have active treatment, if they never had active treatment, stuff like that. Essentially, we found a segment called Never Active.

267 00:28:59.610 ⇒ 00:29:21.099 Zoran Selinger: These are people that started creating a treatment, so we have… we have them in the database. They already had… they had a pending treatment at some point, but never became… never… any of their treatments became active. So that… that is a really qualified audience. We have 34,000 people in that segment.

268 00:29:21.100 ⇒ 00:29:22.600 Uttam Kumaran: Sick. Nice.

269 00:29:22.600 ⇒ 00:29:25.280 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, so Robert is also very excited about.

270 00:29:25.280 ⇒ 00:29:28.409 Uttam Kumaran: And it’s 5%, and the goal is 5%, like, what is it?

271 00:29:29.440 ⇒ 00:29:32.960 Zoran Selinger: The goal is, 5% to win back.

272 00:29:33.570 ⇒ 00:29:35.670 Zoran Selinger: In Q1, right?

273 00:29:35.870 ⇒ 00:29:37.150 Uttam Kumaran: 5% of what, though?

274 00:29:37.360 ⇒ 00:29:40.689 Zoran Selinger: 5% of everyone that churned.

275 00:29:42.060 ⇒ 00:29:43.900 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, nice. Easy.

276 00:29:44.080 ⇒ 00:29:47.130 Zoran Selinger: That should be easy, yes, exactly, exactly.

277 00:29:47.130 ⇒ 00:29:48.909 Uttam Kumaran: Sorry, you told me about it.

278 00:29:48.910 ⇒ 00:29:53.100 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, yeah, it’s… it’s… we should be able to hit that no problem.

279 00:29:53.760 ⇒ 00:30:06.789 Zoran Selinger: But about this segment, we are very excited because this is a super, super qualified audience. So the idea now is I want to get… I wanna, so this exactly

280 00:30:07.240 ⇒ 00:30:15.519 Zoran Selinger: references the… one of the goals that we have. So, that means that’s the priority. I want to get a buy-in from Mitesh.

281 00:30:15.740 ⇒ 00:30:24.370 Zoran Selinger: on it, I want to get a buy-in from Judd. Judd, essentially, and maybe Greg,

282 00:30:24.570 ⇒ 00:30:39.989 Zoran Selinger: kind of have to figure out what exactly the campaigning approach is for that, but I need to kind of… I need to push both Mitesh and Judd, and I want to also kind of get Mitesh to push Judd on it a little bit as well, because I…

283 00:30:40.430 ⇒ 00:30:51.129 Zoran Selinger: I want us to start with campaigns. I’ll have my technical part that I have to deal with. I need to actually get the segment into customer I.O, and that’s going to be my part.

284 00:30:51.460 ⇒ 00:30:57.469 Zoran Selinger: but I, like, I really want to highlight that as a… this is a huge opportunity, and…

285 00:30:57.900 ⇒ 00:31:03.229 Zoran Selinger: it’s a priority, I want to get a buy-in, and I want to get a move on this immediately, essentially.

286 00:31:03.230 ⇒ 00:31:08.730 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, dude, I feel like that’s easily one slide, to, like, just rip that all in one slide, and then…

287 00:31:08.930 ⇒ 00:31:13.290 Uttam Kumaran: That way, he can at least… he can take that and basically send in, be like, we should just do this.

288 00:31:13.600 ⇒ 00:31:14.549 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, yeah.

289 00:31:15.870 ⇒ 00:31:16.390 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.

290 00:31:16.390 ⇒ 00:31:19.039 Greg Stoutenburg: Zoran, where did the 5% goal come from?

291 00:31:20.740 ⇒ 00:31:22.259 Greg Stoutenburg: Was that ours, or is that theirs?

292 00:31:22.260 ⇒ 00:31:26.780 Zoran Selinger: That’s just Robert’s conversations with ELT.

293 00:31:27.460 ⇒ 00:31:28.200 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay.

294 00:31:28.200 ⇒ 00:31:28.830 Zoran Selinger: Yeah.

295 00:31:29.390 ⇒ 00:31:34.890 Greg Stoutenburg: Oh, nice. That must have felt good to be… for him to be giving that, like, 5%. Mmm, yes.

296 00:31:35.170 ⇒ 00:31:36.450 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

297 00:31:38.160 ⇒ 00:31:40.570 Zoran Selinger: No, it’s… he…

298 00:31:40.570 ⇒ 00:31:41.539 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, we’ll work on it.

299 00:31:41.970 ⇒ 00:31:43.480 Greg Stoutenburg: quarter.

300 00:31:43.480 ⇒ 00:31:53.010 Zoran Selinger: As soon as we, we, we said, kind of, he showed us that goal, he said, okay, this should be, this should be an easy, easy thing to do. But we should, like.

301 00:31:53.610 ⇒ 00:31:54.080 Demilade Agboola: price per cens.

302 00:31:54.080 ⇒ 00:31:56.789 Zoran Selinger: Overshot on that goal significantly, yeah?

303 00:31:57.170 ⇒ 00:32:01.780 Demilade Agboola: 5% is, like, $1, 700 o f$ 34,000. That’s… that’s pretty… that’s pretty good.

304 00:32:02.160 ⇒ 00:32:03.280 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, yeah.

305 00:32:03.370 ⇒ 00:32:04.600 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.

306 00:32:04.790 ⇒ 00:32:10.569 Uttam Kumaran: And, and, like, the notes are, most of those people, like, So, from the… from the…

307 00:32:10.670 ⇒ 00:32:21.319 Uttam Kumaran: marketing side, if anyone in the States, at least, like, GLP-1 is, like, the biggest thing since sliced bread. You will have no problem

308 00:32:21.780 ⇒ 00:32:28.009 Uttam Kumaran: getting those… Reactivations, because most of those people, Clearly tried to do this.

309 00:32:28.140 ⇒ 00:32:43.950 Uttam Kumaran: they’re getting hit… there’s GLP-1, Manjaro, all the ads on every single thing you can consume right now, and most of people know somebody in the US that’s already on peptides, so you’ll have no problem getting those.

310 00:32:44.110 ⇒ 00:32:47.359 Uttam Kumaran: In fact, I think you should run a small enough test

311 00:32:48.290 ⇒ 00:32:54.349 Uttam Kumaran: And then probably, like, the… you will blow the 5% out of the water, so you’d maybe think how we get another win out of that.

312 00:32:56.360 ⇒ 00:32:58.479 Zoran Selinger: Right, that’s, that’s a good, that’s a good idea.

313 00:32:58.480 ⇒ 00:32:59.620 Uttam Kumaran: My guess.

314 00:32:59.620 ⇒ 00:33:00.260 Zoran Selinger: Yeah.

315 00:33:02.040 ⇒ 00:33:25.299 Zoran Selinger: And then I… I have a kind of a blocker with, with Eden as well, and that’s… that’s mostly Mitesh, right? So, we… we started… we started this month with, like, our first call was, okay, Zoran, we are going to work together, a lot. He’s moving to, to… to marketing, he’s gonna kind of take over.

316 00:33:25.300 ⇒ 00:33:31.070 Zoran Selinger: Marketing a lot, and really gonna be hands-on, and we have these and these targets.

317 00:33:31.680 ⇒ 00:33:37.720 Zoran Selinger: it’s really hard to get follow-up from him. So, I’m sending daily updates.

318 00:33:37.830 ⇒ 00:33:41.979 Zoran Selinger: rarely reacts or, you know, replies.

319 00:33:41.980 ⇒ 00:33:43.800 Uttam Kumaran: Are you still getting on the weekly calls with him?

320 00:33:43.800 ⇒ 00:33:45.529 Zoran Selinger: We are… yes, we are on the…

321 00:33:45.530 ⇒ 00:33:45.900 Uttam Kumaran: That’s right.

322 00:33:46.390 ⇒ 00:33:49.030 Uttam Kumaran: You should try, try sending looms.

323 00:33:50.720 ⇒ 00:33:52.530 Zoran Selinger: Oh, maybe, yeah, yeah, maybe, maybe.

324 00:33:52.530 ⇒ 00:33:57.380 Uttam Kumaran: Try, like, take whatever you’re gonna say, literally, don’t overthink it.

325 00:33:57.380 ⇒ 00:33:57.810 Zoran Selinger: Press for.

326 00:33:57.810 ⇒ 00:34:02.199 Uttam Kumaran: Record, just talk for, like, 2-3 minutes?

327 00:34:02.440 ⇒ 00:34:16.959 Uttam Kumaran: you could basically also send a Slack update if you want, and just ship it. Because guess what? Like, if he’s actually busy, because I’m actually super busy, it’s way easier for me to literally go do what I’m doing, and just listen to a thing.

328 00:34:18.360 ⇒ 00:34:20.110 Uttam Kumaran: And be like, cool, I got it.

329 00:34:20.330 ⇒ 00:34:30.230 Uttam Kumaran: Versus, like… I’m getting hit with Slack, like, non-stop, and that company is notoriously bad at Slack. Like, they spam a lot, so that could be something to try.

330 00:34:30.460 ⇒ 00:34:31.190 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

331 00:34:31.199 ⇒ 00:34:43.069 Zoran Selinger: It’s a good idea. Yeah. It’s a good idea. I don’t know if I… I don’t know, should I maybe mention it? Should I mention it as a problem? You don’t think that’s… I should do that?

332 00:34:43.420 ⇒ 00:34:56.190 Uttam Kumaran: I would… I would say, hey, I know you should mention it, like, this is always where you have to flatter people and call out what’s going wrong. Hey, I can tell you’re super busy, but I want to make sure that you’re still up to date.

333 00:34:56.199 ⇒ 00:34:56.779 Zoran Selinger: Yeah.

334 00:34:57.530 ⇒ 00:35:01.959 Uttam Kumaran: Because, dude, this is the thing, we have to fight for their attentions. You know, I always say that, it’s like…

335 00:35:02.370 ⇒ 00:35:12.330 Uttam Kumaran: part of this is, like, we have to manage them, and we’re gonna get screwed if it gets 2 weeks, and you didn’t call, and then you’re like, but I sent you all these slacks, like, you know…

336 00:35:12.480 ⇒ 00:35:18.030 Uttam Kumaran: It’s… so… We’re… I think we keep… we try to loom, maybe next week we talk.

337 00:35:18.030 ⇒ 00:35:18.410 Zoran Selinger: Ziva.

338 00:35:18.410 ⇒ 00:35:20.299 Uttam Kumaran: worked at all.

339 00:35:20.300 ⇒ 00:35:22.630 Zoran Selinger: It’s a good idea. I could do that.

340 00:35:22.630 ⇒ 00:35:28.760 Uttam Kumaran: If not, like, you can… you can basically continue that path. If the loom doesn’t work, then you can literally say, hey.

341 00:35:28.960 ⇒ 00:35:35.519 Uttam Kumaran: I just want to make sure you’re getting these, like, what’s a good wake? Can I leave you a voice message? Can I call you on your phone? Like…

342 00:35:35.850 ⇒ 00:35:39.769 Uttam Kumaran: Figure it out. I doubt that he’s ignoring you because…

343 00:35:40.140 ⇒ 00:35:44.969 Uttam Kumaran: like, we’re helping him with his job, so there’s something else, maybe he’s just busy, so… Yeah.

344 00:35:44.970 ⇒ 00:36:08.800 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, I’m sure he is. The problem is, like, we had a really good conversation on Monday. It was an important conversation about one of the most important things to deliver, and that’s one KPI dashboard in Google Sheets that he really wants, because he did well with a similar dashboard in his previous role. He did well there, and kind of wants to recreate that for Monday.

345 00:36:08.800 ⇒ 00:36:10.839 Zoran Selinger: marketing here.

346 00:36:11.010 ⇒ 00:36:20.190 Zoran Selinger: So it’s really important to him. We… we have, like, 5 pieces in that dashboard, and we… we agreed what the priorities are.

347 00:36:22.560 ⇒ 00:36:32.740 Zoran Selinger: to tackle the first priority, I needed some follow-up from him. For example, he needs to exactly define what metrics we’re going to track, but

348 00:36:33.710 ⇒ 00:36:37.630 Zoran Selinger: And… I’m waiting, I’m still waiting.

349 00:36:38.050 ⇒ 00:36:41.540 Zoran Selinger: This is super important, I’m still waiting for that feedback.

350 00:36:41.780 ⇒ 00:36:47.589 Zoran Selinger: Fortunately, in this case, I had, we had all those other

351 00:36:47.900 ⇒ 00:36:59.689 Zoran Selinger: items, not just that one. We had 4 other items, and I was able to complete 2 of them this week while I was waiting. So I was kind of offsetting

352 00:37:01.190 ⇒ 00:37:09.299 Zoran Selinger: the problem by working on other portions of that KPI dash, so I was able to report on that.

353 00:37:09.360 ⇒ 00:37:25.929 Zoran Selinger: I’m not sure if… I’m not always gonna be in that position, and I’m literally gonna be stuck for, you know, 2-3 days, if that continues to happen. In this case, I was able to progress, but I don’t know,

354 00:37:26.680 ⇒ 00:37:37.520 Zoran Selinger: I’ll try, I’ll try Looms. Maybe, maybe, maybe that, that works. I’m using Looms sometimes with, with Ryan, for example. We do, do, a kind of async.

355 00:37:37.520 ⇒ 00:37:45.060 Uttam Kumaran: We criminally underutilize Loom. Like, I think Greg does a good job, like, criminally underrated, because…

356 00:37:45.150 ⇒ 00:38:02.990 Uttam Kumaran: Slack, it just doesn’t convey any emotion, or it doesn’t allow you to do long form. But again, it is hard sometimes to be like, I gotta send a loom, I gotta click on the thing, but I don’t know, I’m trying to do that more often. I default my thing to have it speed up, I use the AI to remove all the spaces.

357 00:38:03.100 ⇒ 00:38:16.920 Uttam Kumaran: So, maybe we… I would just suggest doing that. A lot of things we can skip meetings with by just sending, like, a loom on. Because by the time you write it and, like, get all the nuance, you could have just said it out loud and ripped it.

358 00:38:17.190 ⇒ 00:38:22.380 Uttam Kumaran: I also underutilize it, like, I need to use… I need to use it much more, so…

359 00:38:22.380 ⇒ 00:38:22.910 Zoran Selinger: Yeah.

360 00:38:23.950 ⇒ 00:38:26.759 Zoran Selinger: Okay, cool, I’ll try that, and we’ll talk about it.

361 00:38:26.760 ⇒ 00:38:32.380 Uttam Kumaran: So try that, I mean, there’s… I have, like, I have 5 more ideas for you to try, so try that this week.

362 00:38:32.960 ⇒ 00:38:38.110 Uttam Kumaran: I have nuclear options, and then I have, like, continued nuanced options. Sure.

363 00:38:38.110 ⇒ 00:38:39.680 Zoran Selinger: Okay, that’s a deal.

364 00:38:41.360 ⇒ 00:38:44.090 Zoran Selinger: Okay, that’s awesome. Did you get, did you get, did you get the…

365 00:38:44.090 ⇒ 00:38:47.229 Uttam Kumaran: Zoran, did you get, like, keyboard and stuff yet? Did they call come?

366 00:38:48.270 ⇒ 00:38:49.720 Zoran Selinger: No, no.

367 00:38:50.160 ⇒ 00:38:51.429 Uttam Kumaran: I thought you ordered stuff.

368 00:38:52.000 ⇒ 00:38:57.400 Zoran Selinger: I ordered the… the camera. I hope you noticed.

369 00:38:59.250 ⇒ 00:39:00.039 Uttam Kumaran: Nice, you didn’t change anything?

370 00:39:00.040 ⇒ 00:39:00.900 Zoran Selinger: Because I know the UK.

371 00:39:00.900 ⇒ 00:39:02.200 Greg Stoutenburg: No handsome.

372 00:39:02.200 ⇒ 00:39:05.809 Zoran Selinger: I’ve been… I’ve been… I’ve been using it for a while now, for…

373 00:39:06.170 ⇒ 00:39:09.789 Zoran Selinger: 2 or 3 weeks for… Cool. Thank you.

374 00:39:10.650 ⇒ 00:39:13.159 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, I mentioned the keyboard,

375 00:39:14.670 ⇒ 00:39:21.100 Zoran Selinger: But yesterday, we tried… actually, Greg, you, you, you remembered, you remembered.

376 00:39:21.100 ⇒ 00:39:22.660 Greg Stoutenburg: You’re like, can you all hear my keyboard?

377 00:39:22.660 ⇒ 00:39:40.159 Zoran Selinger: Because I have a mechanical keyboard that I absolutely love, but it’s super loud, okay? So I was… I was afraid that it’s just super loud on… on the calls. If it’s not, I don’t… I don’t need a keyboard. This is a really good one.

378 00:39:40.430 ⇒ 00:39:43.240 Zoran Selinger: Only if it’s super loud in the course.

379 00:39:43.620 ⇒ 00:39:45.659 Greg Stoutenburg: I can’t hear it. Is it, is it Blue Keys?

380 00:39:46.650 ⇒ 00:39:49.530 Zoran Selinger: Cherry MX Blues? It’s Blue’s features, yes.

381 00:39:51.930 ⇒ 00:39:57.680 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I have, I have, like, I have one, too, but it’s kind of… it’s, like, a little… it’s more silent, it’s a Corsair.

382 00:39:58.000 ⇒ 00:40:06.649 Uttam Kumaran: But I got the most silent, like, keys, because I am basically doing everything, every… I’m doing so much during every meeting, so…

383 00:40:06.810 ⇒ 00:40:11.980 Uttam Kumaran: It cannot, cannot be made obvious.

384 00:40:12.380 ⇒ 00:40:14.039 Uttam Kumaran: Alright, Demi, you wanna go?

385 00:40:14.670 ⇒ 00:40:21.239 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, I do. Funny enough, I was gonna just say, the keyboard conversation, I do have a keyboard.

386 00:40:21.820 ⇒ 00:40:34.849 Demilade Agboola: It’s a Logitech, it’s not, anything crazy. But, when, like, I feel like shit is serious, like, I need to get stuff done, I just don’t use the keyboard. I just put my computer down from the stand.

387 00:40:34.850 ⇒ 00:40:35.550 Uttam Kumaran: I’m gonna just plugged.

388 00:40:36.070 ⇒ 00:40:54.570 Demilade Agboola: And I’m just like, because, I don’t know, I don’t know why, I guess because, like, when I started, I always used to just use my computer by itself, so, like, my mind is just used to, this is some serious… I need to lock in for, like, 4 hours and get turned and turn stuff out. So, yeah, that’s… that’s how I… that’s how I go about it.

389 00:40:54.570 ⇒ 00:40:56.500 Zoran Selinger: I’m literally the opposite, if I…

390 00:40:56.500 ⇒ 00:40:56.950 Demilade Agboola: Bye.

391 00:40:56.950 ⇒ 00:41:08.150 Zoran Selinger: I need my keyboard, and I need my big monitor if I’m going to do the most serious work. If I can do a little bit of… if I don’t have to be super efficient, then

392 00:41:08.420 ⇒ 00:41:16.280 Zoran Selinger: I can work on the laptop directly, but otherwise, yeah, I usually go for the big setup. The opposite, yeah.

393 00:41:16.280 ⇒ 00:41:24.389 Demilade Agboola: I do need the monitor, so it’s plugged to the monitor, but I just won’t use that keyboard. I’m just, like, directly on the laptop to get.

394 00:41:24.390 ⇒ 00:41:25.040 Zoran Selinger: Yeah.

395 00:41:25.960 ⇒ 00:41:29.109 Demilade Agboola: So in terms of, like, CSS stuff,

396 00:41:29.760 ⇒ 00:41:32.830 Demilade Agboola: So, two clients. One is Magic Spoon.

397 00:41:33.360 ⇒ 00:41:35.960 Demilade Agboola: And the other is default.

398 00:41:36.140 ⇒ 00:41:40.650 Demilade Agboola: So, I think, let me start with Magic Spoon. So, Magic Spoon, in terms of good…

399 00:41:40.880 ⇒ 00:41:44.889 Demilade Agboola: News is that we’re close to…

400 00:41:47.060 ⇒ 00:41:51.019 Demilade Agboola: We’re close to getting out, churning out the end product that they need.

401 00:41:51.320 ⇒ 00:42:02.529 Demilade Agboola: We have, like, the data that they need available, we have, like, the logic for a lot of what we need to get out the door, so it’s just, like, piecing everything together.

402 00:42:02.770 ⇒ 00:42:06.679 Demilade Agboola: And so that’s, like… Great, in that sense.

403 00:42:07.040 ⇒ 00:42:11.950 Demilade Agboola: But on the flip side, in terms of, like, blockers slash red flags.

404 00:42:12.080 ⇒ 00:42:17.089 Demilade Agboola: We did churn out some work this week, late last week, early this week.

405 00:42:17.200 ⇒ 00:42:20.349 Demilade Agboola: That they didn’t feel so comfortable with.

406 00:42:20.580 ⇒ 00:42:26.130 Demilade Agboola: So they were expecting a deeper cut into the data, and just, like, deeper analysis.

407 00:42:26.300 ⇒ 00:42:29.060 Demilade Agboola: On, queuing the data.

408 00:42:29.510 ⇒ 00:42:33.679 Demilade Agboola: That wasn’t done, and that made them feel some type of way.

409 00:42:35.950 ⇒ 00:42:40.650 Demilade Agboola: So much so that they had to message Utam, and Utam had to reach out to the team and let us know what’s going on.

410 00:42:40.840 ⇒ 00:42:46.160 Demilade Agboola: But on the bright side, we’ve been able to use that as, like, a learning moment. We have, like.

411 00:42:46.270 ⇒ 00:42:57.130 Demilade Agboola: some daily things from now till Friday, because we’re… we’re just about to renew contracts, or get a contract with them, so this week is, like, super critical to ensure that we…

412 00:42:57.250 ⇒ 00:43:02.959 Demilade Agboola: Like, calm all fears down, and just, like, make them feel like, yeah, we’ll get stuff done.

413 00:43:03.400 ⇒ 00:43:10.410 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, so that’s, like, magic spoon in, in a… nutshell.

414 00:43:11.160 ⇒ 00:43:16.329 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, I think… we’re close, and Utam, just a heads up,

415 00:43:16.950 ⇒ 00:43:22.690 Demilade Agboola: I’m going through the sheet that JT sent, where we’re trying to get… knock out the metrics.

416 00:43:22.830 ⇒ 00:43:28.920 Demilade Agboola: I have done all the metrics for everything within the Redshift instance.

417 00:43:28.920 ⇒ 00:43:31.359 Uttam Kumaran: You have, like, a… do you have a PR for that?

418 00:43:31.740 ⇒ 00:43:33.590 Demilade Agboola: Not yet, I will push you, Harrison.

419 00:43:33.590 ⇒ 00:43:46.490 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, what’s gonna be powerful, I don’t know if you saw, and yeah, Greg, I just messaged you, like, they… this thing with Magic Spoon’s just, like, effed up my whole day, but they… they want me to hop… they said either today or tomorrow, Demi, I…

420 00:43:46.990 ⇒ 00:43:51.820 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t want to wait till tomorrow to talk to them. I want to kind of show them that some sense of urgency, so…

421 00:43:52.220 ⇒ 00:43:55.800 Uttam Kumaran: Greg, I don’t know if you’re… Free later, or maybe we…

422 00:43:55.800 ⇒ 00:44:04.589 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, that’s fine. No, I just said, I could talk after or, checking the calendar tomorrow at 9 my time, looks like there’s.

423 00:44:04.590 ⇒ 00:44:11.450 Uttam Kumaran: I’m literally gonna be on for the rest of ever today, so… if you have a pocket.

424 00:44:11.590 ⇒ 00:44:14.599 Uttam Kumaran: at any time, I’m happy to do that, or…

425 00:44:14.600 ⇒ 00:44:14.930 Greg Stoutenburg: Cool.

426 00:44:14.930 ⇒ 00:44:16.230 Uttam Kumaran: I can do tomorrow morning.

427 00:44:16.730 ⇒ 00:44:18.649 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, okay.

428 00:44:19.090 ⇒ 00:44:22.569 Uttam Kumaran: Totally up to you. I could also just call on the phone, like, I’m not, like, whatever.

429 00:44:22.570 ⇒ 00:44:23.380 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, sure.

430 00:44:24.060 ⇒ 00:44:27.590 Greg Stoutenburg: No, I’m just, I don’t remember what I’m supposed to do tonight, so I’m.

431 00:44:27.590 ⇒ 00:44:28.229 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay.

432 00:44:29.890 ⇒ 00:44:35.439 Uttam Kumaran: But Demi, I guess, like, yeah, if we can… I think it’ll be powerful, Demi, to pull up the PR.

433 00:44:36.180 ⇒ 00:44:40.119 Demilade Agboola: Just to show, be like, we’re knocked out, like, half of these, it’s under review.

434 00:44:40.380 ⇒ 00:44:44.400 Uttam Kumaran: Versus just also, in addition to just saying that.

435 00:44:45.800 ⇒ 00:44:46.510 Demilade Agboola: Okay, alright.

436 00:44:46.510 ⇒ 00:44:49.920 Uttam Kumaran: If you wanna… if you wanna just push something, and yeah, like.

437 00:44:50.370 ⇒ 00:44:59.370 Uttam Kumaran: I… I agree with you, like, very painful, though, like… I’m not sure… How we got to, like…

438 00:44:59.580 ⇒ 00:45:01.319 Uttam Kumaran: I was nervous that, like.

439 00:45:01.690 ⇒ 00:45:12.640 Uttam Kumaran: Ashwini just, like, didn’t get it right, and I actually think he did a really good job, like, with… under the circumstances, but it’s clear that, like, there’s some disconnect for some people between

440 00:45:12.820 ⇒ 00:45:16.469 Uttam Kumaran: And I don’t know, maybe, Zoran, you can also talk to this, but, like.

441 00:45:17.310 ⇒ 00:45:23.190 Uttam Kumaran: There’s some disconnect between some engineers that are able to do a lot of the gritty work.

442 00:45:23.310 ⇒ 00:45:25.899 Uttam Kumaran: But then also come up for air to, like.

443 00:45:26.250 ⇒ 00:45:33.540 Uttam Kumaran: just drive the client towards, like, what it is that’s actually going on. Not even in, like, plain English, but even in just, like.

444 00:45:33.720 ⇒ 00:45:46.650 Uttam Kumaran: getting organized. It’s clear Ashwini is really struggling with that. Like, I was… I’m… you know me, I’m… I was having trouble even being like, yo, take a step back, like, what is going on here? And… I don’t know, I feel like…

445 00:45:47.890 ⇒ 00:45:52.570 Uttam Kumaran: I’m… I want to… I just kind of want to understand if that’s coachable, or if that’s…

446 00:45:52.870 ⇒ 00:45:54.940 Uttam Kumaran: Like, just the way people are.

447 00:45:55.090 ⇒ 00:46:05.980 Uttam Kumaran: Right? Because I think, Zora, I take your kind of thing, which I think you had more of a fear of, like, if you could do it, and I was like, dude, you’re already doing it, you’re doing this internally with us, you’re explaining stuff.

448 00:46:06.170 ⇒ 00:46:08.430 Uttam Kumaran: It’s just, like, now the client, but…

449 00:46:08.570 ⇒ 00:46:12.039 Uttam Kumaran: Sometimes we have people on the team that are so in the weeds.

450 00:46:12.200 ⇒ 00:46:19.420 Uttam Kumaran: And it’s not even, like, a… I’m not even talking about, like, video on, like, classic engineering issues. I’m talking about just, like.

451 00:46:19.530 ⇒ 00:46:23.029 Uttam Kumaran: You’re sort of, like, immediately as you start talking about something, you just go down the rabbit hole.

452 00:46:23.190 ⇒ 00:46:35.340 Uttam Kumaran: And… those people cannot talk to clients, like, or, like, in any… or own a significant client demonstration. It really hurts, it really hurts us, which…

453 00:46:35.660 ⇒ 00:46:36.639 Uttam Kumaran: It’s tough.

454 00:46:40.080 ⇒ 00:46:50.389 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, so just like a… just, like, some idea of, like, what the issue is. So we were… we… we were supposed to connect to an API, get the data.

455 00:46:50.520 ⇒ 00:46:53.750 Demilade Agboola: And they have some data already on their Redshift.

456 00:46:54.150 ⇒ 00:46:59.459 Demilade Agboola: And we’re supposed to compare the aggregate of our raw data against those values.

457 00:46:59.650 ⇒ 00:47:02.910 Demilade Agboola: On their redshift, which was gotten from their, like, platform directly.

458 00:47:03.150 ⇒ 00:47:09.249 Demilade Agboola: So the values don’t match one-to-one in every single circumstance.

459 00:47:09.410 ⇒ 00:47:16.629 Demilade Agboola: And so, they contacted us to QA that data and give the information back to them as to what the disparities are.

460 00:47:17.070 ⇒ 00:47:22.109 Demilade Agboola: And I kind of think, like, oh, it’s just… Ashwini just did a sheet.

461 00:47:22.530 ⇒ 00:47:27.730 Demilade Agboola: Where he just puts the values against themselves.

462 00:47:28.010 ⇒ 00:47:30.849 Demilade Agboola: and sends it to them. And they’re just like…

463 00:47:31.370 ⇒ 00:47:35.109 Demilade Agboola: We, like, this is just showing us that the values are different.

464 00:47:36.190 ⇒ 00:47:37.759 Zoran Selinger: Which they already know, yeah.

465 00:47:37.760 ⇒ 00:47:53.090 Demilade Agboola: yeah, why are they different? How… because the idea is they want to be able to use the values, like, from their API into reports that they’ll send to other clients. So they need to be able to be certain in the numbers and what’s going on there.

466 00:47:53.250 ⇒ 00:48:03.890 Demilade Agboola: So yeah, I guess, like, you know, some sort of report, some sort of analysis into, like, why the numbers are different. So a very good example is the numbers from the API,

467 00:48:04.550 ⇒ 00:48:08.229 Demilade Agboola: Like, the numbers from the platform that we’re comparing against.

468 00:48:08.290 ⇒ 00:48:20.270 Demilade Agboola: precede the numbers from the API, so we have a larger number as a result, because more sales have happened, so we can then see that, you know, it’s not like the numbers from the API… from the platform are wrong, or the API is wrong.

469 00:48:20.270 ⇒ 00:48:32.010 Demilade Agboola: We just have… we’re just looking at different time segments as a result. So, things like that. Just kind of, like, breaking it down bit by bit to get to the point where we’re like, okay, any disparity is explained.

470 00:48:32.120 ⇒ 00:48:34.909 Demilade Agboola: And the similarities have been noted as well.

471 00:48:35.020 ⇒ 00:48:42.530 Demilade Agboola: So that was kind of the issue. They just kind of felt like we just gave them some numbers, threw some numbers in their head, in their face, sorry, and it was just like…

472 00:48:42.740 ⇒ 00:48:55.209 Demilade Agboola: okay, so what do we do with this? And so they’re trying to guide us into how they want us to, like, cut the data deeper, which obviously doesn’t inspire confidence within them, because we’re supposed to be, like, the experts, and we’re supposed to let.

473 00:48:55.210 ⇒ 00:48:57.160 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like, these guys literally were, like.

474 00:48:57.570 ⇒ 00:49:06.289 Uttam Kumaran: the prefect is their, like, is their orchestration tool for Python jobs. They’re literally, like, we don’t even know how this works, and we don’t know

475 00:49:06.400 ⇒ 00:49:10.609 Uttam Kumaran: Like, how… who even set this up? Like, the other firm set this up.

476 00:49:10.930 ⇒ 00:49:20.509 Uttam Kumaran: So, showing them anything about, like, a Python thing, or, like, putting… like, it’s… they’re so… they’re so far away. They’re gonna… it’s just gonna miss them.

477 00:49:20.640 ⇒ 00:49:24.000 Uttam Kumaran: And it missed them too many times, and I got a phone call.

478 00:49:24.190 ⇒ 00:49:31.950 Uttam Kumaran: And so, like, so when I get a phone call about that, like, I have a choice, right? I lean as much as possible to being like.

479 00:49:32.100 ⇒ 00:49:41.840 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, let’s take this moment as, like, coachable. Let me try to show, let me try to show whoever the engineer is, like, how maybe they can level up.

480 00:49:42.400 ⇒ 00:49:51.010 Uttam Kumaran: in this situation, especially after this morning, I was like, we’re jammed. I’m just gonna have to… I’m gonna try to get a Shrini to sort of see, but…

481 00:49:51.320 ⇒ 00:49:53.369 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t think that’s gonna happen, and like…

482 00:49:53.590 ⇒ 00:49:55.579 Uttam Kumaran: we have a renewal on Friday.

483 00:49:56.510 ⇒ 00:50:03.989 Uttam Kumaran: kinda, kinda just rip this one, you know? But that’s tough, like, and this is where I think Clarence and I are going back and forth on, like.

484 00:50:04.350 ⇒ 00:50:09.570 Uttam Kumaran: Is every engineer in the company able to get to the spot that, like, y’all are at?

485 00:50:09.760 ⇒ 00:50:13.849 Uttam Kumaran: Or not? And if not, are we okay with that? Like.

486 00:50:13.980 ⇒ 00:50:27.429 Uttam Kumaran: are we always just gonna have, like, sort of icy engineers that are, like, on projects? Of course, we’re never hiring people that are totally, like, weirdo engineers, but, like, maybe they just never get into, like, the sort of, like, leadership

487 00:50:27.650 ⇒ 00:50:30.940 Uttam Kumaran: Level roles.

488 00:50:33.390 ⇒ 00:50:41.789 Uttam Kumaran: And… but, like, I think what I talked to Clarence about was, like, the path up in this business is these roles that you guys are in. Like, there’s not a… there… I don’t think…

489 00:50:42.230 ⇒ 00:50:47.539 Uttam Kumaran: we’re gonna ever get to a position where we need, like, super, super deep ICs.

490 00:50:47.650 ⇒ 00:50:59.799 Uttam Kumaran: Because when we come in, we’re… again, I think we’re doing really technical work, but rarely are we doing things where there’s, like, limited communication, you’re only dealing with technical stakeholders. Communication’s such a big part of this.

491 00:50:59.910 ⇒ 00:51:01.649 Uttam Kumaran: that, like, I feel like…

492 00:51:01.930 ⇒ 00:51:07.249 Uttam Kumaran: growing here has to require that. I totally think everybody here is capable of that.

493 00:51:08.190 ⇒ 00:51:13.999 Uttam Kumaran: But whether they are able to, like, do it, or, like, show progress towards it.

494 00:51:14.250 ⇒ 00:51:17.569 Uttam Kumaran: is tough, you know? And we take every…

495 00:51:17.810 ⇒ 00:51:21.120 Uttam Kumaran: We take every path towards, like, giving people

496 00:51:21.300 ⇒ 00:51:33.610 Uttam Kumaran: the way to do that, like, I’m like, hey, an SOW’s coming up, let me work on it with you, right? Like, oh, this meeting’s coming up, like, call me, let’s prep so you can run it. Like, I’m trying to do those things.

497 00:51:34.330 ⇒ 00:51:40.319 Uttam Kumaran: I think you guys are picking it up really well, some people are not picking it up. I didn’t expect everybody to pick it up.

498 00:51:40.540 ⇒ 00:51:41.460 Uttam Kumaran: But…

499 00:51:41.830 ⇒ 00:51:55.579 Uttam Kumaran: I just want to give you some sense of, like, my mindset and, like, how I think about that. Ultimately, I can come in and Navy SEAL it. I have very, very little interest in doing that. That doesn’t help anybody at all. Doesn’t help our company long-term. It helps the client, and so…

500 00:51:56.030 ⇒ 00:52:00.369 Uttam Kumaran: ultimately, like, if I have to do it, I will, but yeah.

501 00:52:04.760 ⇒ 00:52:14.749 Greg Stoutenburg: I mean, again, new guy disclaimer. My only thought is just, like, maybe some of it depends on what someone’s background looks like. I mean, organizations that I’ve been in, like.

502 00:52:15.070 ⇒ 00:52:20.250 Greg Stoutenburg: Most engineers get used to talking to other engineers, or their engineering manager.

503 00:52:20.390 ⇒ 00:52:29.919 Greg Stoutenburg: Or, I mean, some of them don’t even talk to the product manager, you know, whose job it is to translate it into something that can be communicated. So I think… I think some of it…

504 00:52:30.140 ⇒ 00:52:31.769 Greg Stoutenburg: Probably a lot of it is learned.

505 00:52:31.800 ⇒ 00:52:49.150 Greg Stoutenburg: And some of it is preference. So, for the people who it’s learned, it’s like, you know, maybe you just say, hey, we’re gonna really insist that anytime that you’re going to take an issue and communicate to a client about it, it’s gotta meet certain acceptance criteria. And the acceptance criteria will include things like.

506 00:52:49.150 ⇒ 00:52:55.089 Greg Stoutenburg: You’ve articulated how what you’ve done speaks to the customer need.

507 00:52:55.290 ⇒ 00:53:04.659 Greg Stoutenburg: like in an English sentence, and not in a chart, or something like that, right? And then, I don’t know, then for other people, I don’t know. That one’s… that one’s tougher to speak more generally to the other class, which is…

508 00:53:05.010 ⇒ 00:53:08.709 Greg Stoutenburg: I don’t know, some people are… some people, it seems to me, are just so technically minded, it’s like…

509 00:53:08.870 ⇒ 00:53:11.729 Greg Stoutenburg: It’s like, I don’t… it’s like, you seem really smart, but I don’t know what you said.

510 00:53:11.730 ⇒ 00:53:13.240 Zoran Selinger: Yeah.

511 00:53:13.240 ⇒ 00:53:14.010 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

512 00:53:14.590 ⇒ 00:53:15.209 Demilade Agboola: I made it myself.

513 00:53:15.210 ⇒ 00:53:19.810 Uttam Kumaran: like, we… all of us have a lot of technical depth. I’m not worried about us, like.

514 00:53:20.530 ⇒ 00:53:28.370 Uttam Kumaran: getting… I actually prefer… I much prefer to talk to engineers. It’s great, we’re good at that, like, it’s so… it’s the best. Like…

515 00:53:28.560 ⇒ 00:53:37.280 Uttam Kumaran: but it’s the one you have to… like, because even on… even on Element, right? And, like, this is my struggle on, like, my CSO stuff, is…

516 00:53:37.670 ⇒ 00:53:40.140 Uttam Kumaran: like, if I could give you an example.

517 00:53:40.300 ⇒ 00:53:53.479 Uttam Kumaran: she doesn’t know anything about data. She got hired as, like, head of BizOps, rolling up this guy that’s, like, head of digital. They’re coming into this big-ass company and basically evaluating everything and being like, there’s no metrics here.

518 00:53:54.220 ⇒ 00:54:04.490 Uttam Kumaran: She doesn’t… she knows that there’s a world of data, but unfortunately, at her level, she’s just, like, she only knows what she gets at the end of the report.

519 00:54:04.790 ⇒ 00:54:24.170 Uttam Kumaran: Which is so frustrating, and I think it’s kind of similar to Lilo, in that, like, the client is so far up that how do I force an appreciation for all the piping that goes into getting things there? But however, her expertise is in, like, Google Sheet formatting. So away, she’s getting flamed, and literally is, like.

520 00:54:24.420 ⇒ 00:54:35.249 Uttam Kumaran: she called me, she was like, she, like, wants to move them off the project. I’m like, dude, you’re overreacting. But… because this is the fourth time in where he put a Google Sheet together and just didn’t…

521 00:54:35.270 ⇒ 00:54:45.169 Uttam Kumaran: format it, like, at all, and she’s explicitly said, like, I don’t want to review stuff that isn’t, like, clean and, like, something that can be shown to the business.

522 00:54:45.840 ⇒ 00:54:49.320 Uttam Kumaran: Like, and I’m like, dude, I can’t save you anymore. Like…

523 00:54:49.750 ⇒ 00:55:09.269 Uttam Kumaran: you’re… you’re not seeing the fact that this person is so insecure about data, has, like, no understanding about how this works, that they need to hook into things they know, which is column formatting. And they even put conditional formatting. These don’t… these don’t have Ks, these have two… these are… we need one sig figs. Like, they’re hooking into those stupid things.

524 00:55:09.410 ⇒ 00:55:13.830 Uttam Kumaran: And… okay, we can do those stupid things, I’m happy to, but then…

525 00:55:14.190 ⇒ 00:55:26.050 Uttam Kumaran: don’t, like, don’t fumble that, like, right at the last moment, because she doesn’t care about our Snowflake RBAC setup, she doesn’t care about dbt, she doesn’t care about our GitHub.

526 00:55:26.420 ⇒ 00:55:37.530 Uttam Kumaran: She cares about if the Google Sheet that we’re producing at the end of the day is, like, formatted well. And, like, it’s killing us every week, and as a CSO on that client, I don’t know what to do.

527 00:55:37.860 ⇒ 00:55:45.229 Uttam Kumaran: Because Awash is amazing, but I’m like, dude, I think you just cannot… Talk to this client, like…

528 00:55:45.610 ⇒ 00:55:50.870 Uttam Kumaran: I think you just can’t, like, you’re just… you shouldn’t. I think you’re… I don’t know, like…

529 00:55:51.030 ⇒ 00:55:56.570 Uttam Kumaran: And it’s so hard, because Oasis Gray, it’s not… it’s not something about his character, it’s just, like.

530 00:55:56.910 ⇒ 00:56:01.139 Uttam Kumaran: This client sucks, like, they’re so fixated on these, like, random things.

531 00:56:01.350 ⇒ 00:56:05.540 Uttam Kumaran: that I’ve just been flamed so much in my career that I learned

532 00:56:06.170 ⇒ 00:56:09.790 Uttam Kumaran: Like, how to deal with those folks, and not ev- not everyone…

533 00:56:10.390 ⇒ 00:56:28.680 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t… I don’t… I prefer, actually, I don’t want people to go through getting yelled at by these, like, weird business people. So instead, I’m like, okay, just, like, maybe your skill set isn’t on formatting, I need to bring in a Robert or an Amber, who is just, like, the formatting person on this client, and we need a formatter. We need an Excel formatter person.

534 00:56:29.030 ⇒ 00:56:33.660 Uttam Kumaran: And OA sort of continues to just rip stuff in the background, and…

535 00:56:34.550 ⇒ 00:56:37.100 Uttam Kumaran: But see, these are the ch- this is, like, this is the challenge, like…

536 00:56:37.870 ⇒ 00:56:48.930 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s the kind of challenge that I think I feel like I’m dealing with, is we had a lot of, like, communication gaps. I think technical work was great this week. We just had a lot of tech… communication gaps on things, yeah.

537 00:56:51.090 ⇒ 00:56:57.130 Zoran Selinger: Actually, I’ll need help with formatting when we finish this KPI dash for Eden.

538 00:56:57.850 ⇒ 00:57:04.879 Zoran Selinger: I’ll definitely need help. I’m so rusty in any sheets. I can do, like.

539 00:57:06.040 ⇒ 00:57:11.809 Zoran Selinger: pivot tables and stuff like that, that’s… I’m comfortable. But in terms of making it look nice.

540 00:57:12.030 ⇒ 00:57:15.179 Zoran Selinger: I think I’ll need… need… need help from Amber.

541 00:57:16.100 ⇒ 00:57:22.420 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so I think Amber and Robert are the formatters. I’m trying to get us another, like.

542 00:57:23.240 ⇒ 00:57:28.580 Uttam Kumaran: consultant-type person that, like, just good at, like, that type of BS stuff.

543 00:57:29.410 ⇒ 00:57:35.459 Uttam Kumaran: I’m finding that. And maybe that’s just something we use as, like, an internal service, like, formatting as a service.

544 00:57:35.460 ⇒ 00:57:36.520 Zoran Selinger: Yeah.

545 00:57:36.520 ⇒ 00:57:39.869 Uttam Kumaran: I’m also not great, but I learned the hard way, like…

546 00:57:40.200 ⇒ 00:57:53.049 Uttam Kumaran: So, I just know the… I just know some of the… I just, like, again, I’ve just been yelled at, and so it’s really, like… it’s ingrained some of these things in my brain on, like, Google Sheet formatting, Excel formatting, slide formatting.

547 00:57:53.730 ⇒ 00:58:01.899 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t… it’s like… it’s… it’s just something that is a pain point in just what we do. At some point, like, we’ll AI it, I think, but…

548 00:58:02.060 ⇒ 00:58:11.670 Uttam Kumaran: For now, it’s still very, very manual, so… and it matters, unfortunately, especially the less knowledgeable your client is, the more it matters.

549 00:58:12.800 ⇒ 00:58:17.490 Uttam Kumaran: Just, like, such, like, it’s so… it’s, like, it sucks, you know?

550 00:58:19.810 ⇒ 00:58:23.410 Uttam Kumaran: Because I feel like sometimes they’re just insecure, you know? Yeah.

551 00:58:23.640 ⇒ 00:58:24.060 Pranav Narahari: Yeah.

552 00:58:24.060 ⇒ 00:58:24.590 Uttam Kumaran: Go ahead.

553 00:58:24.590 ⇒ 00:58:27.260 Pranav Narahari: I was gonna ask for…

554 00:58:27.930 ⇒ 00:58:35.700 Pranav Narahari: Awash specifically, he’s a SL, right? I haven’t worked with him on any project. Okay, gotcha. Yeah, I guess,

555 00:58:37.000 ⇒ 00:58:43.599 Pranav Narahari: Does it always make sense to have the SL, the CSO, and the EP on the weekly client calls?

556 00:58:45.330 ⇒ 00:58:50.580 Uttam Kumaran: I think you should have the CSO and the EP there.

557 00:58:50.880 ⇒ 00:58:54.929 Uttam Kumaran: Like, anyone we’re pushing into EP, we’re expecting

558 00:58:55.420 ⇒ 00:58:57.770 Uttam Kumaran: To be able to be your backup.

559 00:58:58.500 ⇒ 00:59:04.880 Uttam Kumaran: Because previously we had no backups, right? So, we’re trying to induce this natural backup structure.

560 00:59:04.880 ⇒ 00:59:05.440 Pranav Narahari: Yep.

561 00:59:06.560 ⇒ 00:59:09.910 Uttam Kumaran: However, as a CSO, you gotta control the meaning. So…

562 00:59:09.910 ⇒ 00:59:10.490 Pranav Narahari: Right.

563 00:59:10.910 ⇒ 00:59:23.150 Uttam Kumaran: I, like, and so that, again, there’s, just like I told Zoran, there’s a range of options on controlling a meeting. The nuclear option is, I’m the only one in the meeting, because everybody keeps fucking things up around here. That’s a nuclear option.

564 00:59:23.400 ⇒ 00:59:31.860 Uttam Kumaran: The other option is, like, kind of going back up. Like, the worst option is you just, like, hop on a call, no prep, no slides, dance.

565 00:59:32.090 ⇒ 00:59:37.999 Uttam Kumaran: tough. Like, you could… sometimes it’ll go well, sometimes it won’t. The middle option is, like, you do a bit of prep work.

566 00:59:38.300 ⇒ 00:59:50.629 Uttam Kumaran: You meet with the team, you’re like, here’s how this is gonna go, you have the slides, you tell people where and when they’re supposed to share, and you really reinforce that no live demos

567 00:59:50.730 ⇒ 00:59:59.600 Uttam Kumaran: your answer to this is, like, we’ll get back to you. That’s a great point, we’ll get back to you. I love that you brought that up, we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

568 01:00:00.150 ⇒ 01:00:07.459 Uttam Kumaran: Like, don’t say hammer that. Like, this is not… you do not want this to be, like, a…

569 01:00:07.650 ⇒ 01:00:10.580 Uttam Kumaran: Show and tell, a lot of follow-ups. It’s not like…

570 01:00:11.050 ⇒ 01:00:17.700 Uttam Kumaran: You want to build a hype around what we’re doing, but, like, it’s much better to handle it, you know, after the fact, so…

571 01:00:18.750 ⇒ 01:00:19.570 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

572 01:00:21.440 ⇒ 01:00:28.329 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool. I know I have to… I have to run to this next meeting. This was great, so I… I feel like this was a great set. If we want to do this…

573 01:00:28.480 ⇒ 01:00:34.690 Uttam Kumaran: even, like, more often than just the Wednesdays, like, I’m happy to. I think hearing from everybody today was great.

574 01:00:34.840 ⇒ 01:00:46.260 Uttam Kumaran: I… for me, it’s helpful for everybody to show their… to share their wins, and then the blockers, you’ll kind of understand… I’m trying my best to explain the range of, like, options that you have.

575 01:00:46.340 ⇒ 01:01:03.959 Uttam Kumaran: As a CSO. Not every client is the same. Like, Ahedra, for example, we would never put any slides in front of that, because they’re, like, they’re, like, opening up HEX, and, like, we’re just running. Versus there’s some clients where it’s so slow. Like, CES, for example, this is the slowest thing ever, but they love us.

576 01:01:04.100 ⇒ 01:01:07.100 Uttam Kumaran: And we’ve done, like, 5 things, and they love it. It’s like…

577 01:01:07.400 ⇒ 01:01:11.029 Uttam Kumaran: And I think CES is gonna be worth 5 heatres.

578 01:01:11.320 ⇒ 01:01:17.519 Uttam Kumaran: So, this is just, like, we’re gonna talk about, as, like, me and Rob are bringing these bigger folks.

579 01:01:17.670 ⇒ 01:01:24.320 Uttam Kumaran: we’re gonna naturally start to work with them. I feel like our jobs are actually gonna get a lot easier on the CSO side.

580 01:01:24.440 ⇒ 01:01:30.319 Uttam Kumaran: But still, I think, like, we have these challenges that we’re figuring out, so this is a good conversation.

581 01:01:31.350 ⇒ 01:01:38.689 Pranav Narahari: We can maybe even, like, start to categorize them. So, like, you know, this is a playbook for this type of client, this is the playbook for this type of client.

582 01:01:38.850 ⇒ 01:01:45.520 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, ideally, it’s like, you should be able to, yeah, sort of, like, just QA something and be like, I’m dealing with this. But, again, like.

583 01:01:46.330 ⇒ 01:01:51.459 Uttam Kumaran: A lot of this is anecdotal learnings that you kind of, like, we just maybe have to talk through and, like.

584 01:01:52.080 ⇒ 01:01:52.720 Pranav Narahari: Yeah.

585 01:01:53.380 ⇒ 01:02:12.559 Pranav Narahari: Like, it’s how, like, when we were all kind of describing, like, our clients, like, I was seeing similarities with Lilo, with also y’all’s clients, but also different. So, like, you know, maybe it helps a little bit to, like, you know, we find out, like, 5 things, you know, and then they’re on… there’s two ends of the spectrum on where they land, and then we can kind of…

586 01:02:12.830 ⇒ 01:02:24.719 Pranav Narahari: see where… if we find, like, common knowledge between, like, yeah, my client and Greg’s client, then we can be like, okay, well, you know, I think our clients, like, function from, like, a… in a similar way on this point.

587 01:02:25.160 ⇒ 01:02:28.559 Pranav Narahari: Like, how are you running things? Maybe I can run things similarly.

588 01:02:29.360 ⇒ 01:02:29.900 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

589 01:02:29.900 ⇒ 01:02:30.900 Pranav Narahari: More data there.

590 01:02:31.620 ⇒ 01:02:31.980 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

591 01:02:32.110 ⇒ 01:02:40.929 Pranav Narahari: One other thing I was gonna ask, though, Utam, was, where is the… like, what is the status on, like, the slide-making thing that, you presented last week?

592 01:02:40.930 ⇒ 01:02:48.750 Uttam Kumaran: It’s sitting… it’s sitting in a branch, I need to get it out. I’ll… just keep messaging me every day if you want to use it, I’ll get it out. It’s like 30 minutes.

593 01:02:49.480 ⇒ 01:02:52.079 Pranav Narahari: I was gonna try it out this week, but yeah.

594 01:02:52.600 ⇒ 01:02:56.519 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, I’ll send you the branch. I mean, you could just take it, I’ll just give you the… it’s in a PR.

595 01:02:56.520 ⇒ 01:02:56.910 Pranav Narahari: button.

596 01:02:57.780 ⇒ 01:02:58.740 Pranav Narahari: Sounds good.

597 01:02:59.270 ⇒ 01:03:00.919 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, thank you guys.

598 01:03:01.370 ⇒ 01:03:02.599 Greg Stoutenburg: So yeah, school, too.

Brainforge Knowledge

Explorer

2026-01-28_cso_client_presentation_dry_run_d01de4ce

Graph View