2026-01-29_notion_and_hubspot_integration_discussio

Meeting Title: Notion and HubSpot Integration Discussion Date: 2026-01-29 Meeting participants: Uttam Kumaran, Sheshu Chandrasekar, Luke’s Notetaker, Luke Scorziell

WEBVTT

1 00:03:35.690 ⇒ 00:03:37.160 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Hey, can you hear me now?

2 00:03:37.940 ⇒ 00:03:39.250 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, dude. Yeah.

3 00:03:39.710 ⇒ 00:03:41.100 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Sweet, okay.

4 00:03:41.520 ⇒ 00:03:47.240 Sheshu Chandrasekar: How’s it going? I… I was just chatting with Pranatu, he was telling me about his, his client work. Seems like it’s.

5 00:03:47.240 ⇒ 00:03:49.190 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, how’s his thing? How’s his thing going?

6 00:03:49.760 ⇒ 00:03:57.470 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Apparently he just told me that, the client wants to onboard some people onto the production environment.

7 00:03:57.470 ⇒ 00:03:58.260 Uttam Kumaran: Sounds good.

8 00:03:59.360 ⇒ 00:04:01.429 Sheshu Chandrasekar: So he’s just been pushing that on right now.

9 00:04:02.230 ⇒ 00:04:02.860 Uttam Kumaran: Sick.

10 00:04:03.340 ⇒ 00:04:14.690 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yep. But it’s been… it’s been pretty chill, I guess. Just been trying to build out these databases, and I did refine the deck, the 48-hour deck.

11 00:04:14.830 ⇒ 00:04:17.050 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Honestly, having that conversation with Luke.

12 00:04:17.700 ⇒ 00:04:20.439 Sheshu Chandrasekar: And having that conversation with Gabe yesterday really…

13 00:04:21.300 ⇒ 00:04:26.499 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Really painted the picture a little bit more clearly on how to… how to best tackle this now, so…

14 00:04:26.570 ⇒ 00:04:27.630 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.

15 00:04:27.930 ⇒ 00:04:31.039 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, I don’t know if you had a chance to look at it.

16 00:04:31.040 ⇒ 00:04:34.029 Uttam Kumaran: No, let’s go… let’s… yeah, let me go through it now.

17 00:04:34.360 ⇒ 00:04:35.250 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Alright, cool.

18 00:04:49.060 ⇒ 00:04:52.720 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Also, I was on a call with Robert.

19 00:04:53.740 ⇒ 00:04:56.630 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Well, it’s Robert, Holly, and Hannah.

20 00:04:56.770 ⇒ 00:05:03.650 Sheshu Chandrasekar: And I think they want to split the sales linear board into a GTM board as well, so it’ll be two separate ones.

21 00:05:04.800 ⇒ 00:05:07.919 Uttam Kumaran: What is… so then what… but what… I guess, what is the difference? I don’t know.

22 00:05:08.170 ⇒ 00:05:10.840 Sheshu Chandrasekar: That’s a great question. So that’s why in the…

23 00:05:10.840 ⇒ 00:05:11.270 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

24 00:05:11.270 ⇒ 00:05:24.719 Sheshu Chandrasekar: linear ticket, I added, like, a… like, an issue of some sort to, like, kind of walk with Holly, Robert, Luke, and figure out, like, what constitutes as, you know, GTM, what constitutes as, like, a sales, so…

25 00:05:24.720 ⇒ 00:05:25.360 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

26 00:05:25.700 ⇒ 00:05:26.250 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah.

27 00:05:26.470 ⇒ 00:05:37.770 Sheshu Chandrasekar: So I want to do that next week, just because it is… maybe even tomorrow, like, I’ll talk with Luke, and Hannah, and Holly, and Robert, try to get that, but next week, I’ll have a better answer for you.

28 00:05:37.770 ⇒ 00:05:41.970 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I feel like… The engineering team…

29 00:05:42.410 ⇒ 00:05:49.429 Uttam Kumaran: is probably gonna continue to use Notion less and less, just because now they’re able to do a lot of their writing.

30 00:05:49.660 ⇒ 00:05:51.510 Uttam Kumaran: directly in cursor.

31 00:05:51.710 ⇒ 00:06:00.320 Uttam Kumaran: But sales… and ops… and HR and recruiting, it’s, like, will be less…

32 00:06:00.920 ⇒ 00:06:03.200 Uttam Kumaran: Have it less, like, there’s… there’s…

33 00:06:03.600 ⇒ 00:06:12.060 Uttam Kumaran: It’s not that they couldn’t do stuff in cursor, it’s just a lot of those docs have to be public-facing. It’s a lot of collaboration, like, inline collaboration.

34 00:06:14.190 ⇒ 00:06:32.280 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, for engineering, right, most of the things we write are for client deliverables. Most of the things we write for client deliverables, actually, like, the client doesn’t care about keeping. It’s sort of like prep for meetings, or, like, SOW, or, like…

35 00:06:32.400 ⇒ 00:06:38.570 Uttam Kumaran: A project plan, and it’s not, like, actually that… Essential to even, like.

36 00:06:39.310 ⇒ 00:06:44.210 Uttam Kumaran: for the most part, what people are gonna do is just write in cursor, throw it in Google Drive.

37 00:06:45.010 ⇒ 00:06:47.069 Uttam Kumaran: Client looks at it and is like, cool.

38 00:06:47.990 ⇒ 00:06:52.970 Uttam Kumaran: And then it, like… that’s it, you know? So… .

39 00:06:53.670 ⇒ 00:06:54.370 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay.

40 00:06:57.590 ⇒ 00:07:01.570 Uttam Kumaran: So, I actually addressed all the comments that Gabe had in there. Cool.

41 00:07:27.630 ⇒ 00:07:30.800 Uttam Kumaran: Cool, yeah, I just think, like,

42 00:07:31.970 ⇒ 00:07:36.680 Uttam Kumaran: Part of these, I think I would probably say, are, like, required… okay, yeah, required, yeah, never mind, sorry.

43 00:07:37.210 ⇒ 00:07:41.699 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, because, like, I feel like some people are gonna be lazy, they’re not gonna fill their description out.

44 00:07:42.620 ⇒ 00:07:45.390 Uttam Kumaran: Otherwise, yeah, I feel this is fine. I mean…

45 00:07:45.550 ⇒ 00:07:48.410 Uttam Kumaran: To be honest, what you could do also is, like.

46 00:07:50.740 ⇒ 00:07:54.229 Uttam Kumaran: Have all documents have to go through, like, approval first.

47 00:07:55.860 ⇒ 00:07:56.240 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay.

48 00:07:56.240 ⇒ 00:08:01.490 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe… it kind of may be a bit annoying, but…

49 00:08:03.320 ⇒ 00:08:06.140 Uttam Kumaran: That’s one thing. Another thing,

50 00:08:09.950 ⇒ 00:08:14.420 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, last updated… you can’t see, like, last viewed, can you?

51 00:08:15.640 ⇒ 00:08:18.189 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Like a previous version of something?

52 00:08:18.480 ⇒ 00:08:22.230 Uttam Kumaran: Well, like, the last time anyone has even opened a dock, basically.

53 00:08:22.230 ⇒ 00:08:23.670 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I think there is.

54 00:08:24.640 ⇒ 00:08:27.830 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I think so… I don’t think there is, actually. Let me check right now.

55 00:08:29.300 ⇒ 00:08:34.249 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I know there’s created last, edited, like, activity.

56 00:08:34.450 ⇒ 00:08:35.970 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Is that what you’re referring to?

57 00:08:37.150 ⇒ 00:08:41.429 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I guess activity means edit, right? So, I don’t know.

58 00:08:43.110 ⇒ 00:08:44.349 Uttam Kumaran: That might be tough.

59 00:08:46.680 ⇒ 00:08:48.530 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Here, let me… Right now.

60 00:08:48.770 ⇒ 00:08:53.639 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay, I see last edited time, last edited by, created by, created time.

61 00:08:54.110 ⇒ 00:08:56.280 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, yeah, that’s… that’s fine then.

62 00:09:01.590 ⇒ 00:09:02.849 Sheshu Chandrasekar: But, I mean…

63 00:09:03.010 ⇒ 00:09:11.010 Sheshu Chandrasekar: to answer your question better there, I know if you click on, like, a document, and then you go… you press the second,

64 00:09:11.680 ⇒ 00:09:15.520 Sheshu Chandrasekar: You press, like, the three little dots, you can see, like.

65 00:09:15.730 ⇒ 00:09:18.740 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Updates and analytics and see who’s, like, viewed it.

66 00:09:18.980 ⇒ 00:09:19.380 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

67 00:09:19.380 ⇒ 00:09:24.070 Sheshu Chandrasekar: who’s been online on it. You can see, like, the little icons on the top, top right.

68 00:09:24.340 ⇒ 00:09:24.990 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

69 00:09:25.360 ⇒ 00:09:25.990 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah.

70 00:09:32.710 ⇒ 00:09:34.800 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, one thing I’m almost like…

71 00:09:35.190 ⇒ 00:09:37.049 Uttam Kumaran: I’m almost interested in is, like.

72 00:09:37.170 ⇒ 00:09:44.069 Uttam Kumaran: for each of these DBs, like, what are the… how are we gonna keep them clean? Like, an example, right, like…

73 00:09:44.450 ⇒ 00:09:49.629 Uttam Kumaran: Basically, like, clean, cleanliness tactics.

74 00:09:49.800 ⇒ 00:09:57.960 Uttam Kumaran: One could be, like, EOM… Move anything in progress.

75 00:09:58.290 ⇒ 00:10:03.189 Uttam Kumaran: to Don… Or… Back to draft, right?

76 00:10:04.440 ⇒ 00:10:04.860 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Right.

77 00:10:04.860 ⇒ 00:10:08.849 Uttam Kumaran: Like, there’s, like, stuff that’s in progress, like, it’s gotta move somewhere.

78 00:10:08.990 ⇒ 00:10:10.770 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s, like, one thing.

79 00:10:11.810 ⇒ 00:10:17.530 Uttam Kumaran: Another thing could be, like, ensure… like…

80 00:10:21.110 ⇒ 00:10:26.960 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it would kind of be nice for us to be able to see, like, what pages are viewed the most. I mean, again, this is why, like.

81 00:10:27.430 ⇒ 00:10:34.899 Uttam Kumaran: Notion is, like, they’re just, like… so the… I just, like, keep ragging on this company, because they… I’ve used it for a long time, and…

82 00:10:35.040 ⇒ 00:10:42.689 Uttam Kumaran: they have not innovated on the product in a long time. Like, they’re trying to hop on this AI thing because it’s the easiest thing to do.

83 00:10:42.940 ⇒ 00:10:48.480 Uttam Kumaran: But, like, simple things like, hey, I just want to see, like, what are the top pages?

84 00:10:48.700 ⇒ 00:10:53.920 Uttam Kumaran: Like, just figure that, and add that, like…

85 00:10:53.920 ⇒ 00:10:56.230 Sheshu Chandrasekar: by analytics, right? Like, you can see.

86 00:10:56.230 ⇒ 00:10:57.010 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

87 00:10:57.870 ⇒ 00:10:58.600 Sheshu Chandrasekar: True.

88 00:10:58.800 ⇒ 00:11:03.950 Uttam Kumaran: And then they’re also gonna gay, they’re gonna be like, oh, you… to do anything AI, you’re gonna have to buy our Notion AI.

89 00:11:04.270 ⇒ 00:11:10.180 Uttam Kumaran: And I’m, like, if we make more money, I’m down, because, like, maybe this is… it saves us time.

90 00:11:10.520 ⇒ 00:11:15.420 Uttam Kumaran: But right now, it’s kind of expensive, and I’d rather… not.

91 00:11:15.970 ⇒ 00:11:16.839 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, no.

92 00:11:17.630 ⇒ 00:11:20.390 Sheshu Chandrasekar: This shit’s pretty expensive.

93 00:11:20.390 ⇒ 00:11:21.959 Uttam Kumaran: Really expensive, yeah.

94 00:11:21.960 ⇒ 00:11:22.720 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah.

95 00:11:22.870 ⇒ 00:11:23.900 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I get it.

96 00:11:26.500 ⇒ 00:11:39.039 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Shoot, maybe… I really do think we can figure something out, because I’m looking at this analytics chart right now, like, on the homepage. I really feel like we can do something with, like, creating our own little, like, tool, saying, like, top 10 pages, or most viewed pages.

97 00:11:39.320 ⇒ 00:11:41.699 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that also helps, because.

98 00:11:42.420 ⇒ 00:11:45.979 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Like, often that’s probably the pages that other people are looking for.

99 00:11:47.280 ⇒ 00:11:53.159 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, this is like a… this is really good data here. You can see who recently edited by, permission.

100 00:11:53.160 ⇒ 00:11:55.940 Uttam Kumaran: Can you turn it into something you can put somewhere?

101 00:11:56.970 ⇒ 00:11:59.590 Sheshu Chandrasekar: No, you can’t, like, create, like, a separate thing.

102 00:11:59.590 ⇒ 00:12:00.280 Uttam Kumaran: I think it just shows.

103 00:12:00.280 ⇒ 00:12:03.340 Sheshu Chandrasekar: you, like, kind of like read-only data use.

104 00:12:03.340 ⇒ 00:12:04.110 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay.

105 00:12:04.110 ⇒ 00:12:04.760 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah.

106 00:12:05.180 ⇒ 00:12:06.110 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Bare.

107 00:12:06.290 ⇒ 00:12:08.440 Sheshu Chandrasekar: It’s still useful to me.

108 00:12:10.750 ⇒ 00:12:18.820 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, I can see who exactly viewed it, like, Casey viewed this an hour ago, and I viewed it 26 seconds ago, because I’m looking at it right now, so… it’s pretty good.

109 00:12:19.840 ⇒ 00:12:21.740 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I figured you’re saying ads for it.

110 00:12:21.740 ⇒ 00:12:25.640 Uttam Kumaran: On this one… I’m…

111 00:12:30.080 ⇒ 00:12:31.149 Uttam Kumaran: Like, this is where…

112 00:12:31.150 ⇒ 00:12:33.170 Sheshu Chandrasekar: That’s a little oversimplified, yes.

113 00:12:33.170 ⇒ 00:12:35.299 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, no, I actually think some of this, like.

114 00:12:35.800 ⇒ 00:12:38.270 Uttam Kumaran: It’s just gonna be a bitch to maintain.

115 00:12:38.720 ⇒ 00:12:43.650 Uttam Kumaran: Because people are shifting between clients, new people are getting added, new clients are getting added.

116 00:12:44.230 ⇒ 00:12:53.010 Uttam Kumaran: it’s like, the EP has to maintain this, like, I’m almost like… it’s a lot. For example, this is in HubSpot.

117 00:12:53.920 ⇒ 00:12:54.520 Uttam Kumaran: Right.

118 00:12:54.520 ⇒ 00:12:55.080 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Right.

119 00:12:55.670 ⇒ 00:12:59.500 Uttam Kumaran: This is in HubSpot and in Quick… and in… I think, in QuickBooks.

120 00:12:59.970 ⇒ 00:13:03.580 Uttam Kumaran: This is also in HubSpot.

121 00:13:05.560 ⇒ 00:13:07.480 Uttam Kumaran: These are in operating.

122 00:13:07.660 ⇒ 00:13:09.549 Uttam Kumaran: This is in HubSpot.

123 00:13:09.800 ⇒ 00:13:11.620 Uttam Kumaran: This is in HubSpot.

124 00:13:12.510 ⇒ 00:13:17.819 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, I… boat to put this in HubSpot, because

125 00:13:18.020 ⇒ 00:13:23.320 Uttam Kumaran: There’s gonna be handoffs from sales, to delivery…

126 00:13:23.540 ⇒ 00:13:30.710 Uttam Kumaran: And then back to sales for renewal, and I think having it all in HubSpot is gonna just centralize, like, this stuff.

127 00:13:31.220 ⇒ 00:13:36.449 Uttam Kumaran: And in HubSpot… and this is, again, like, HubSpot may partly come under your purview a little bit, but, like…

128 00:13:37.000 ⇒ 00:13:39.269 Uttam Kumaran: I feel like I would… I would like to keep…

129 00:13:40.210 ⇒ 00:13:44.390 Uttam Kumaran: I would like to make sure the client stuff here is actually just what’s essential for, like.

130 00:13:45.170 ⇒ 00:13:53.659 Uttam Kumaran: if someone’s looking something up on a client. For example, like, people aren’t gonna go look at the contracts that often, and if you do, you can ask… you can just ask ops.

131 00:13:54.480 ⇒ 00:13:55.340 Uttam Kumaran: But, like.

132 00:13:55.460 ⇒ 00:14:03.439 Uttam Kumaran: it’s not gonna be common for, like, a random engineer on a project to be like, tell me the contract. In fact, like, yeah, it’s… it’s just not, like, an ask people to have, so…

133 00:14:04.640 ⇒ 00:14:07.800 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, what do you think? Like, I would vote for…

134 00:14:08.600 ⇒ 00:14:17.010 Uttam Kumaran: having, like, each client, and then having links to their HubSpot record, links to their operating record.

135 00:14:18.210 ⇒ 00:14:19.950 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And then…

136 00:14:22.480 ⇒ 00:14:26.290 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Do you really think it’s… I mean… I can see…

137 00:14:26.920 ⇒ 00:14:32.229 Uttam Kumaran: Like, more of what I’m interested in, some people, yeah, some people want to write about their client in Notion.

138 00:14:32.390 ⇒ 00:14:37.399 Uttam Kumaran: But, like, contract start and end date, it’s gonna be in two places. It’s already in HubSpot.

139 00:14:38.190 ⇒ 00:14:39.789 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, but I mean, we’ll.

140 00:14:39.790 ⇒ 00:14:45.200 Uttam Kumaran: Sales is gonna get comped that way. Like, sales is gonna start to look at, for example.

141 00:14:45.630 ⇒ 00:14:51.720 Uttam Kumaran: The contract end date, they already know it’s there because they just wrote an automation that pings 15 days before the end date.

142 00:14:52.400 ⇒ 00:14:53.090 Uttam Kumaran: So…

143 00:14:53.380 ⇒ 00:14:54.080 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay.

144 00:14:54.380 ⇒ 00:14:58.369 Uttam Kumaran: And it’s like, what is the source of truth for this is gonna be HubSpot.

145 00:14:58.700 ⇒ 00:15:01.719 Uttam Kumaran: Because there’s… Notion is not gonna be our CRM.

146 00:15:02.410 ⇒ 00:15:06.419 Sheshu Chandrasekar: That’s true. I just thought it’d be very important data for, like.

147 00:15:06.830 ⇒ 00:15:10.320 Sheshu Chandrasekar: just, like, to see, like, PEPs or SLs, but, I mean…

148 00:15:10.320 ⇒ 00:15:13.719 Uttam Kumaran: And that’s why I feel like, do you think it’s easier to just, like.

149 00:15:14.270 ⇒ 00:15:16.980 Uttam Kumaran: Give… I mean, okay, I hear you on that.

150 00:15:18.960 ⇒ 00:15:20.320 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, I mean…

151 00:15:21.020 ⇒ 00:15:25.639 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Like, if, for example, if someone’s onboarding to this client, right?

152 00:15:25.980 ⇒ 00:15:45.270 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I feel like that kind of data is, like, a quick, like, screen… like a scorecard. Like, you just look at it, and you’re like, okay, I understand, like, why I’m here, like, when this ends. Even for, like, Luke, I feel like it’d be important, too, when he does renewals, because he says he lives in Notion. That’s where he’s always in. Like, that’s the most useful. So I thought it would be useful for him as well.

153 00:15:45.270 ⇒ 00:15:49.099 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, then I’m gonna say at least I wanna nix these two.

154 00:15:49.960 ⇒ 00:15:50.620 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay.

155 00:15:51.250 ⇒ 00:15:54.149 Uttam Kumaran: And this one.

156 00:15:55.390 ⇒ 00:15:56.220 Uttam Kumaran: And…

157 00:15:56.220 ⇒ 00:16:03.789 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Wait, for 17, I… I think Luke wants an Invoices DB in Notion.

158 00:16:03.790 ⇒ 00:16:05.270 Uttam Kumaran: We’re not gonna have anybody, yeah.

159 00:16:05.270 ⇒ 00:16:05.850 Sheshu Chandrasekar: China.

160 00:16:05.850 ⇒ 00:16:09.639 Uttam Kumaran: There’s no reason for that. It’s not… we’re like, I would ask you why.

161 00:16:12.830 ⇒ 00:16:14.999 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, I’m just… We don’t know that…

162 00:16:15.000 ⇒ 00:16:16.610 Uttam Kumaran: You could go find out.

163 00:16:16.610 ⇒ 00:16:18.069 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, I would love to find out.

164 00:16:18.070 ⇒ 00:16:21.880 Uttam Kumaran: If his question is, oh, I want to see how much money we’re making.

165 00:16:22.110 ⇒ 00:16:29.439 Uttam Kumaran: I would say go to HubSpot. You already have that. He already has it. Like, this is where the fact that he’s not in HubSpot does not mean…

166 00:16:29.580 ⇒ 00:16:37.220 Uttam Kumaran: that we shouldn’t use HubSpot. Like, that means he’s not fucking in HubSpot. Like, he should go there. Like, he should do his job, and he should go, he should go to HubSpot.

167 00:16:37.860 ⇒ 00:16:38.900 Uttam Kumaran: What’s the life.

168 00:16:39.150 ⇒ 00:16:43.899 Uttam Kumaran: Having invo- like, nobody in the team has ever asked me for an invoice.

169 00:16:44.280 ⇒ 00:16:46.190 Uttam Kumaran: Or when we’re invoicing clients.

170 00:16:47.510 ⇒ 00:16:51.110 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve never… I’ve never had a single person apart from me

171 00:16:51.230 ⇒ 00:16:56.070 Uttam Kumaran: or Robert, ask, when is the invoice going out? I’m telling you, like, the whole history.

172 00:16:56.520 ⇒ 00:16:59.619 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, there’s nothing that happened recently that would

173 00:17:00.430 ⇒ 00:17:07.629 Uttam Kumaran: like, Luke being involved in our invoicing process, that’s like, there’s no part of his responsibility set that involves invoices.

174 00:17:08.270 ⇒ 00:17:15.260 Uttam Kumaran: In my mind. So, like, I would… I would mix it, and if he can prove a reason why he needs it, I’m happy to reconsider.

175 00:17:16.500 ⇒ 00:17:19.729 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Let me just add a note here saying, ask Luke…

176 00:17:19.950 ⇒ 00:17:22.750 Sheshu Chandrasekar: What specific data he needs from there.

177 00:17:22.750 ⇒ 00:17:29.169 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, the one thing I would say is, like, again, some people, it’s… it’s not neces… part of this is not necessarily…

178 00:17:29.460 ⇒ 00:17:40.619 Uttam Kumaran: like, even Luke, again, I mentioned Luke as someone who knows Notion, but part of that is gonna be because some people… a lot of the people that use Notion run their life on Notion.

179 00:17:41.330 ⇒ 00:17:48.589 Uttam Kumaran: But we don’t… that’s… this is not, like, a life planning thing. We’re not gonna run invoicing out of Notion. We’re not gonna run CRM out of Notion.

180 00:17:48.800 ⇒ 00:17:49.580 Uttam Kumaran: like…

181 00:17:49.690 ⇒ 00:17:58.620 Uttam Kumaran: there are reasons for that, and those are, like, I would say, like, not debatable, because we can’t do, we can’t do, like.

182 00:17:58.940 ⇒ 00:18:08.599 Uttam Kumaran: Customer lifecycle management, resource planning, task management, like, all of the automations we have in HubSpot and Notion.

183 00:18:10.060 ⇒ 00:18:11.129 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, that makes sense.

184 00:18:11.130 ⇒ 00:18:20.589 Uttam Kumaran: we can’t do it. So I guess, in that sense, I mean, I’ll ask… I can ask Luke here, but in that sense, I think, like, some of these

185 00:18:20.820 ⇒ 00:18:39.079 Uttam Kumaran: what’s gonna happen, though, is you’re just gonna maintain two copies. And updating HubSpot is part of the operations team workflow already. Like, this is what happens. We sell a deal, the SOW comes back, they say, cool, draft the contract. I go to operations, I say, draft the contract, it goes to legal.

186 00:18:39.290 ⇒ 00:18:43.769 Uttam Kumaran: They sign… I sign it, client signs it, as soon as it’s signed.

187 00:18:44.350 ⇒ 00:18:51.849 Uttam Kumaran: Operations sends it to finance. Finance loads the invoice schedule. Operations also goes to HubSpot, closes out the deal.

188 00:18:52.210 ⇒ 00:18:53.080 Uttam Kumaran: Right.

189 00:18:53.520 ⇒ 00:18:55.630 Uttam Kumaran: None of that touches Notion.

190 00:18:58.570 ⇒ 00:18:59.389 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, that’s fair.

191 00:18:59.780 ⇒ 00:19:04.550 Uttam Kumaran: I guess, Luke, I was asking, like, why do you need… why do you need to see… why do you need to see invoices?

192 00:19:05.560 ⇒ 00:19:07.049 Luke Scorziell: Oh, no.

193 00:19:08.540 ⇒ 00:19:19.860 Uttam Kumaran: That might have been a miscommunication. Was that in the… I mean, I don’t mind if you have a valid reason, but I’m like, no one has ever asked me to be like, what… I wonder what’s in our invoice to them. I’m like, it’s just an invoice.

194 00:19:21.500 ⇒ 00:19:27.550 Luke Scorziell: Oh, no, I mean, I think, like, I was talking about this with Robert, I think the system that I built is,

195 00:19:28.550 ⇒ 00:19:37.090 Luke Scorziell: it’s to track up to the point where we send the proposal, and then, in my mind, everything after that can go through HubSpot, but it’s like, I’m tracking, like.

196 00:19:37.090 ⇒ 00:19:37.560 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay.

197 00:19:37.560 ⇒ 00:19:46.359 Luke Scorziell: comments people are making if… when we send the proposal out. Like, it… and it’s, like, it doesn’t really need to be filled out by anyone except for me.

198 00:19:47.390 ⇒ 00:19:51.630 Luke Scorziell: I mean, well, and the team as they do stuff, so, I mean, I can show you what I…

199 00:19:51.810 ⇒ 00:19:52.360 Luke Scorziell: Had to.

200 00:19:52.360 ⇒ 00:19:57.029 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I guess I’ll… yeah, I haven’t… I didn’t look at… I mean, I wanted to go through what you sent also.

201 00:19:57.250 ⇒ 00:19:59.069 Uttam Kumaran: And I can tell you some of the…

202 00:19:59.180 ⇒ 00:20:06.820 Uttam Kumaran: Because we’ve tried a bunch of things here, so I’ll… I am happy to just, like, give you anecdotal of, like… For example, one thing I said here is, like.

203 00:20:07.280 ⇒ 00:20:11.539 Uttam Kumaran: Putting the contract link and who the signer for the contract, we’re just not…

204 00:20:11.750 ⇒ 00:20:15.310 Uttam Kumaran: big enough, like, I’m always the signer for every contract.

205 00:20:15.590 ⇒ 00:20:22.060 Uttam Kumaran: And nobody needs to see the con… like, there’s not… it’s not like we’re hiding anything, it’s just not relevant, like, it’s noise.

206 00:20:24.050 ⇒ 00:20:31.750 Uttam Kumaran: So, that was my point on, like, we don’t need that there. Same with invoices, I was like, who’s gonna maintain this? Like, I mean, I will say…

207 00:20:31.750 ⇒ 00:20:32.340 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, I don’t…

208 00:20:32.340 ⇒ 00:20:38.150 Uttam Kumaran: Is maintaining invoices on this a good use of company money? I would vote no. No?

209 00:20:38.480 ⇒ 00:20:39.459 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, let me.

210 00:20:39.460 ⇒ 00:20:49.189 Uttam Kumaran: But I’m already paying finance… I’m already paying the finance folks to keep track of this. I’m like, what’s… no… and nobody has asked me ever for invoices, so I was like, that’s what I mean. But there’s some other things, like…

211 00:20:49.330 ⇒ 00:20:57.070 Uttam Kumaran: the contract start end date, okay, like, maybe it’s relevant to have this both in HubSpot In Notion.

212 00:20:57.070 ⇒ 00:21:03.020 Luke Scorziell: like… Yeah, I mean, I don’t know what you guys have talked about already. Pretty much the only things…

213 00:21:03.970 ⇒ 00:21:09.220 Luke Scorziell: Like, for me, I built this just because I want to be able to see, like, week to week.

214 00:21:10.140 ⇒ 00:21:12.869 Luke Scorziell: Like, what we’ve done, and so…

215 00:21:13.100 ⇒ 00:21:19.589 Luke Scorziell: basically, I just made everything roll up into, like, I can see this week, we launched two campaigns, these are the two campaigns.

216 00:21:19.940 ⇒ 00:21:22.810 Luke Scorziell: We launched 6 pieces of content, these were the content.

217 00:21:23.810 ⇒ 00:21:29.000 Luke Scorziell: I need to edit this a little bit for, like, filters. We did 36… 38 engagements this week.

218 00:21:29.240 ⇒ 00:21:34.329 Luke Scorziell: We sent out 3 proposals, and, like, I don’t need anyone to go through and, like.

219 00:21:34.620 ⇒ 00:21:39.819 Luke Scorziell: It’s just like, okay, I’m tracking, like, Robertson, too.

220 00:21:39.820 ⇒ 00:21:41.010 Uttam Kumaran: the proposal?

221 00:21:42.270 ⇒ 00:21:44.609 Luke Scorziell: This one has stuff, the other one is just nothing.

222 00:21:44.780 ⇒ 00:21:55.769 Uttam Kumaran: So the reason why, like, we even use Google Docs, dude, is because many of our clients are not Notion savvy, and are gonna share Google… are gonna share the document internally.

223 00:21:56.350 ⇒ 00:22:01.430 Uttam Kumaran: So, like… We tried to do Notion for a long time, externally.

224 00:22:01.430 ⇒ 00:22:01.830 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

225 00:22:01.830 ⇒ 00:22:06.480 Uttam Kumaran: The reason why we use Google Docs is because, like, the world is working on Google Docs and Word Docs.

226 00:22:06.860 ⇒ 00:22:17.369 Uttam Kumaran: So, we… so that’s why I’m like, if you’re okay with just being like, at least we have a record for a proposal, and then maybe you link to the Google Doc, I don’t care, that’s fine.

227 00:22:17.370 ⇒ 00:22:24.570 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, no, that’s… I mean, that’s, like, this… I just… I was showing Robert, it’s like, I can just add, like, a URL property, and then just… that’s fine.

228 00:22:24.570 ⇒ 00:22:26.040 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, then I don’t care.

229 00:22:26.040 ⇒ 00:22:26.510 Luke Scorziell: Don’t even…

230 00:22:26.840 ⇒ 00:22:31.699 Uttam Kumaran: And again, the rest of it, the rest of it, I’m totally… I don’t… I don’t care at all. Yeah.

231 00:22:31.950 ⇒ 00:22:32.960 Luke Scorziell: Okay, cool. Yeah, cause then.

232 00:22:32.960 ⇒ 00:22:39.230 Uttam Kumaran: As long as you can manage it, and then one day you’ll be like, yo, there’s too much shit going on, we should buy a tool, and then, yeah, we’ll buy a tool. Like, that’s just…

233 00:22:40.150 ⇒ 00:22:40.820 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

234 00:22:40.820 ⇒ 00:22:41.440 Uttam Kumaran: That’s just it.

235 00:22:41.440 ⇒ 00:22:48.269 Luke Scorziell: That’s… So, I mean, like, with, Ryan… We just sat down.

236 00:22:48.560 ⇒ 00:22:56.739 Luke Scorziell: And I had him, like… he’s just doing, like, outreach right now and logging his things in this. So it’s, like, more, like, functional for that.

237 00:22:56.900 ⇒ 00:23:02.599 Luke Scorziell: And then if I start making lead magnets and stuff, or when I do, then… you know, so I’m just kind of figuring out…

238 00:23:03.730 ⇒ 00:23:08.250 Luke Scorziell: like, right now, at least in Notion, all the stuff that we’ve had is, like.

239 00:23:08.910 ⇒ 00:23:14.490 Luke Scorziell: everywhere, and then I feel like the HubSpot is, like, useful, but a little bit,

240 00:23:15.780 ⇒ 00:23:24.249 Luke Scorziell: like, it’s just the… a lot of the day-to-day stuff, I think, that, like, as I’m thinking strategically about what we’re doing, this gives me, like, the space to do, so…

241 00:23:24.560 ⇒ 00:23:25.290 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

242 00:23:27.400 ⇒ 00:23:31.459 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, I have another… I’m supposed to meet with, I don’t know if you know this guy, I’m…

243 00:23:32.070 ⇒ 00:23:35.750 Luke Scorziell: jor… or Jor-El? Jor-El or something?

244 00:23:35.750 ⇒ 00:23:37.649 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, I met your all once.

245 00:23:38.790 ⇒ 00:23:41.319 Luke Scorziell: Oh, yeah, yeah, I’m supposed to go meet with him at a coffee shop.

246 00:23:41.320 ⇒ 00:23:42.170 Uttam Kumaran: Nice, it’s fun, good.

247 00:23:42.170 ⇒ 00:23:43.279 Luke Scorziell: Yeah. Wow.

248 00:23:43.760 ⇒ 00:23:44.400 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, yeah.

249 00:23:44.400 ⇒ 00:23:45.100 Uttam Kumaran: That’s a funny idea.

250 00:23:45.910 ⇒ 00:23:50.600 Luke Scorziell: I’ll probably hop off, but I just wanted to hop on and just see if there was anything… yeah, just any updates or things.

251 00:23:50.600 ⇒ 00:23:57.349 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, no, and then I sent you… I think… I think we have a good Omni screenshot, so I can… we should just ship it, if that’s good.

252 00:23:57.630 ⇒ 00:24:00.120 Uttam Kumaran: Or, I don’t know if they didn’t get back to us?

253 00:24:00.700 ⇒ 00:24:07.469 Luke Scorziell: No, they did get back to us, and they gave us a different, like, a rewrite of the post. Or not, not a full rewrite, but I think they added a couple things.

254 00:24:07.640 ⇒ 00:24:08.650 Luke Scorziell: Cool.

255 00:24:09.100 ⇒ 00:24:15.100 Luke Scorziell: And then… yeah, I guess, like, my only thing with… Because,

256 00:24:15.900 ⇒ 00:24:20.720 Luke Scorziell: I mean, we’re still building up the pipeline, but I want to get ahead to where we can post things in the morning.

257 00:24:21.380 ⇒ 00:24:22.830 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

258 00:24:22.830 ⇒ 00:24:23.779 Luke Scorziell: throughout the day.

259 00:24:24.720 ⇒ 00:24:30.639 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, Friday… I mean, obviously it’s not Friday, but, like, Thursday night is maybe not a… ideal.

260 00:24:30.640 ⇒ 00:24:31.550 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, I agree, but…

261 00:24:31.550 ⇒ 00:24:33.710 Luke Scorziell: I also, I also think…

262 00:24:33.710 ⇒ 00:24:45.240 Uttam Kumaran: I’m the same way, though, like, if we can batch as much as possible, just the thing is, like, look, I batch, like, everything I do, so if I’m reviewing, I’m in the zone of reviewing, and then I’m like, yeah, this doesn’t have an image.

263 00:24:45.450 ⇒ 00:24:57.489 Uttam Kumaran: Then I’m like, okay, well, fucking, why am I reviewing it right now? So that’s why I’m like, bash a bunch, bash a bunch of them, send it to me for review, but I kind of have to shift, like, I can’t…

264 00:24:57.800 ⇒ 00:25:00.099 Uttam Kumaran: I can’t just be on the hook to review

265 00:25:00.630 ⇒ 00:25:09.460 Uttam Kumaran: every 10 minutes all day, I got just some… I don’t do… I can’t do it with anything, basically, where I have to enter and sort of figure it out and then exit.

266 00:25:09.990 ⇒ 00:25:27.039 Uttam Kumaran: So… but, like, again, I think we’re getting closer and closer, I just think, like, the messaging is getting better. I’m still going in and adding a couple things, and basically, cool, get it out. Cool. So, yeah. And, and dude, every… as you can tell, every partner wants to do something with us.

267 00:25:27.180 ⇒ 00:25:29.329 Uttam Kumaran: So, in the next…

268 00:25:29.490 ⇒ 00:25:36.889 Uttam Kumaran: 4-day weeks, as long as we, like, have a steady cycle of that, we’re gonna get the events rockin’ for sure. And then…

269 00:25:37.560 ⇒ 00:25:37.970 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

270 00:25:37.970 ⇒ 00:25:47.099 Uttam Kumaran: I think you can probably end up… because we’re gonna have so much, like, volume, maybe it is coming from your account, too, or it’s coming from someone else, because

271 00:25:47.250 ⇒ 00:25:51.159 Uttam Kumaran: It’s clear every partner wants us to post about them probably every week.

272 00:25:52.120 ⇒ 00:25:58.699 Luke Scorziell: And… I mean, if they’re gonna put, like, paid ads behind it, like, I don’t know.

273 00:25:58.700 ⇒ 00:26:07.450 Uttam Kumaran: Omni is really aggressive, like, Omni is the only… they’re the only ones that really said that explicitly. Mother… but everyone, again, we can get to sponsor events.

274 00:26:07.570 ⇒ 00:26:10.339 Uttam Kumaran: And we can get the money elsewhere. So think of it like…

275 00:26:10.510 ⇒ 00:26:19.849 Uttam Kumaran: this is where I think it’s like, even… I’m down if you are like, yo, we need to boost these posts, we need budget, because it’s like, I think about the marketing budget as just a box, and it’s like, you just use it.

276 00:26:20.120 ⇒ 00:26:27.040 Uttam Kumaran: in the arena, you need to. Just because they don’t give us the money to boost it doesn’t mean we can’t boost it. So, like.

277 00:26:27.230 ⇒ 00:26:30.069 Uttam Kumaran: You sort of just have a bunch of tools that you can do.

278 00:26:30.180 ⇒ 00:26:42.319 Uttam Kumaran: Right. I think part of it is just, like, being consistent with the post, maybe we just do some videos, we do… we’re gonna do this mixed panel event, and then it’s like, okay, how long did that take? What was the ROI? Like, should we do another?

279 00:26:42.700 ⇒ 00:26:46.890 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, how well should we keep… what do we have capacity to do on, like, a weekly basis?

280 00:26:47.920 ⇒ 00:26:48.570 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

281 00:26:48.830 ⇒ 00:26:54.659 Luke Scorziell: Okay, and then… just a quick question. With… like, with the budget, is the vision to just…

282 00:26:54.950 ⇒ 00:26:58.960 Luke Scorziell: make bets every month, and, like, max it out? Or what is the, like…

283 00:26:59.710 ⇒ 00:27:01.399 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, this is where, like.

284 00:27:02.520 ⇒ 00:27:08.690 Uttam Kumaran: We have… we’re… it’s not… we have to set a budget in our… in the marketing, you… you should spend the budget.

285 00:27:09.180 ⇒ 00:27:15.819 Uttam Kumaran: In my mind. It’s sort of tough for me to say this, because we, like, didn’t have money for a while, but…

286 00:27:16.090 ⇒ 00:27:25.139 Uttam Kumaran: we have to spend money to make money, truly, in marketing, and because we are expecting ROAS, we’re expecting a return on the spend, and so…

287 00:27:25.660 ⇒ 00:27:33.379 Uttam Kumaran: Like, this is the same problem our clients have, and our clients have a problem of, like, extreme scale, meaning they’re having to spend a million dollars a month

288 00:27:33.610 ⇒ 00:27:37.139 Uttam Kumaran: Couple million a month. Where do they spend that type of volume?

289 00:27:37.250 ⇒ 00:27:42.859 Uttam Kumaran: like, appropriately, right? And so, from our lens, we have some budget. I think…

290 00:27:43.500 ⇒ 00:27:48.730 Uttam Kumaran: in order… what I would recommend is, like, you have a certain metric to hit.

291 00:27:49.230 ⇒ 00:27:56.970 Uttam Kumaran: So then you can back into, like, okay, what is the return on every dollar I spend? We’re gonna spend… for example, we’re gonna probably spend…

292 00:27:57.380 ⇒ 00:28:00.800 Uttam Kumaran: 3, 4K, maybe, on this event with Mixpanel.

293 00:28:01.170 ⇒ 00:28:07.029 Uttam Kumaran: But, I think we’re gonna get X amount of impressions out of it, we’ll probably get a customer out of it, right?

294 00:28:07.130 ⇒ 00:28:13.520 Uttam Kumaran: And so, like, if you were to say, cool, every event, we land one customer, This is their LTV.

295 00:28:13.830 ⇒ 00:28:16.090 Uttam Kumaran: You’re gonna see, it’s like a fucking no-brainer.

296 00:28:16.260 ⇒ 00:28:24.310 Uttam Kumaran: However, we… our budget isn’t, like… you can’t just do the event, you can’t just do… be like, cool, we’re gonna do 4 events, and then be like, we’re out of money.

297 00:28:24.420 ⇒ 00:28:38.680 Uttam Kumaran: So we’re gonna do some events, we’re gonna do some posts, we’re gonna also fly to some things, we’re spending money on some tooling, we’re spending money on people, and then that’s it. You sort of just, like, allocate it where it is.

298 00:28:38.900 ⇒ 00:28:42.810 Uttam Kumaran: However, the best thing is to find the thing that’s working, and then just double down.

299 00:28:43.080 ⇒ 00:28:44.920 Uttam Kumaran: What you don’t want to do is, like.

300 00:28:45.630 ⇒ 00:29:00.300 Uttam Kumaran: find the thing that’s working, and then be like, yeah, but let’s still try something over there. I’m like, if it’s working, we hit it hard, hard, hard. Like, if the LinkedIn things work, I’d be like, yo, it’s working super well, just keep going, keep going. Because you have a fixed bandwidth.

301 00:29:00.300 ⇒ 00:29:02.359 Luke Scorziell: You also have, like, a time budget, like…

302 00:29:02.630 ⇒ 00:29:07.939 Uttam Kumaran: you only have 8 hours in the day, you only have, like, you and Ryan mainly in, like, kind of orchestration of things.

303 00:29:09.340 ⇒ 00:29:10.149 Luke Scorziell: So, can you…

304 00:29:10.150 ⇒ 00:29:10.680 Uttam Kumaran: Amphetamine.

305 00:29:10.680 ⇒ 00:29:13.220 Luke Scorziell: Is there, like, a doc? Where can I see the budget?

306 00:29:14.060 ⇒ 00:29:15.990 Uttam Kumaran: I thought it’s all in that go-to-market doc.

307 00:29:16.420 ⇒ 00:29:22.210 Luke Scorziell: Oh, I mean, I get, like, is everyone’s, like, salary and what… or just, like, all the stuff we’re paying out in there, too?

308 00:29:22.490 ⇒ 00:29:24.279 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think everything’s in there, dude.

309 00:29:25.840 ⇒ 00:29:26.600 Luke Scorziell: Alright.

310 00:29:27.910 ⇒ 00:29:36.060 Uttam Kumaran: I think every… I feel like literally everything about how we’re trying to grow is in that spreadsheet. I mean, I… unfortunately, I don’t look at it every day, but…

311 00:29:36.490 ⇒ 00:29:37.600 Uttam Kumaran: I should.

312 00:29:44.420 ⇒ 00:29:46.259 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, like.

313 00:29:46.660 ⇒ 00:29:48.060 Uttam Kumaran: If you go to, like.

314 00:29:49.000 ⇒ 00:29:50.650 Luke Scorziell: MRR, or…

315 00:29:51.030 ⇒ 00:29:54.380 Uttam Kumaran: Like, the WBR is our goals.

316 00:29:54.990 ⇒ 00:29:55.680 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

317 00:29:56.480 ⇒ 00:30:07.570 Uttam Kumaran: And then… the… Yeah, the MRR forecast…

318 00:30:09.950 ⇒ 00:30:17.530 Uttam Kumaran: So I guess there is… there’s just, like, an HR budget. The tooling budget is probably… I mean, this is maybe where you’re like, yo, there’s no…

319 00:30:17.730 ⇒ 00:30:22.150 Uttam Kumaran: like… Discretionary spend budget.

320 00:30:22.420 ⇒ 00:30:30.520 Uttam Kumaran: Which I assume he’s basically putting into tooling, but then my question would be, like, where’s… where’s, like, our spend on the event?

321 00:30:30.940 ⇒ 00:30:31.750 Uttam Kumaran: Right.

322 00:30:33.440 ⇒ 00:30:37.140 Luke Scorziell: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think I’d like to build out something a little more.

323 00:30:37.710 ⇒ 00:30:46.869 Uttam Kumaran: But that’s… this is where it is here. And so, what this… what this is gonna show you, this MRR forecast, is gonna show you how much budget we have, and what we’re trying to do with it.

324 00:30:47.630 ⇒ 00:30:50.230 Uttam Kumaran: Right, we’re gonna use the 20…

325 00:30:50.830 ⇒ 00:30:56.510 Uttam Kumaran: 3 grand, or whatever, to bring in an extra…

326 00:30:58.400 ⇒ 00:31:04.529 Uttam Kumaran: like, I don’t know, whatever, 150 grand or whatever, right? And so that’s the… that’s the return on…

327 00:31:04.840 ⇒ 00:31:06.150 Uttam Kumaran: rough spend.

328 00:31:06.790 ⇒ 00:31:09.030 Uttam Kumaran: There should be another call-out here.

329 00:31:09.660 ⇒ 00:31:12.219 Uttam Kumaran: That goes to, like.

330 00:31:13.290 ⇒ 00:31:22.250 Uttam Kumaran: like, discretionary spend, right? So this is where maybe we just should ask Robert. And so what basically he’s done here is he’s like, cool, let’s just assume 20%

331 00:31:22.680 ⇒ 00:31:23.980 Uttam Kumaran: Goes to the team.

332 00:31:24.710 ⇒ 00:31:29.230 Uttam Kumaran: Some amount goes to the tooling, it’s probably some amount that goes to discretionary.

333 00:31:31.630 ⇒ 00:31:43.169 Uttam Kumaran: Because we’re gonna spend on events, we’re gonna fly to stuff, right? And this is the way where, like, ultimately, when we throw an event with Mother Duck, I want to go to you and say, what’s your budget?

334 00:31:43.860 ⇒ 00:31:44.700 Uttam Kumaran: Right?

335 00:31:45.130 ⇒ 00:31:53.490 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. I’m gonna try to get as much free shit as possible, but ultimately, if you’re like, yo, we can actually do way bigger, like, we could go to, like, a conference.

336 00:31:53.680 ⇒ 00:31:56.319 Uttam Kumaran: And here’s why the ROI is gonna be big.

337 00:31:56.610 ⇒ 00:31:58.880 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, but, like, but that’s… that’s, I think.

338 00:31:59.650 ⇒ 00:32:01.760 Uttam Kumaran: And also, for example, the video thing, right?

339 00:32:01.920 ⇒ 00:32:03.590 Uttam Kumaran: Like, both of those guys.

340 00:32:03.590 ⇒ 00:32:03.930 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

341 00:32:03.930 ⇒ 00:32:05.400 Uttam Kumaran: me, I’m like.

342 00:32:06.180 ⇒ 00:32:11.320 Uttam Kumaran: I’m like, yo, I have to talk to Luke, he’s the budget owner here. So, and I’m just the vessel.

343 00:32:11.320 ⇒ 00:32:11.710 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

344 00:32:11.870 ⇒ 00:32:13.519 Uttam Kumaran: Whatever we need to do.

345 00:32:13.810 ⇒ 00:32:22.330 Uttam Kumaran: And so, in that sense, I’m like, okay, what is the… what can we expect if we record a set of videos, pay these guys five grand to do whatever?

346 00:32:22.430 ⇒ 00:32:27.590 Uttam Kumaran: you’re… if you go to Robin, you’re like, yo, I think we’re gonna get, like, X amount of leads out of this.

347 00:32:28.190 ⇒ 00:32:32.319 Uttam Kumaran: Or, like, a partner event, or they’re gonna bring us in?

348 00:32:32.920 ⇒ 00:32:36.510 Uttam Kumaran: It’s… it’s… you could basically sell… tell the story.

349 00:32:37.140 ⇒ 00:32:39.919 Uttam Kumaran: And that’s… that’s kind of, like, what I… what I think it is.

350 00:32:42.230 ⇒ 00:32:45.419 Luke Scorziell: Okay. No, that… I mean, that makes sense for me. So…

351 00:32:45.710 ⇒ 00:32:48.279 Luke Scorziell: Alright, well, I’m gonna run, so I’m not…

352 00:32:48.280 ⇒ 00:32:48.730 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay.

353 00:32:48.730 ⇒ 00:32:57.409 Luke Scorziell: But, Yeah, okay, that’s helpful. So, I’ll keep thinking about it, but… Okay. Alright, see you.

354 00:32:57.870 ⇒ 00:32:58.950 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, thanks, dude.

355 00:33:00.140 ⇒ 00:33:02.230 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, let’s go back to this.

356 00:33:03.680 ⇒ 00:33:07.460 Uttam Kumaran: So yeah, I mean, I feel like…

357 00:33:09.710 ⇒ 00:33:14.750 Uttam Kumaran: I feel like, just in terms of noise, I would… Recommend removing these.

358 00:33:15.020 ⇒ 00:33:20.169 Uttam Kumaran: I think, instead of description, I would… I would change this to, like, goal.

359 00:33:20.620 ⇒ 00:33:23.470 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I think I’m looking at the wrong spreadsheet.

360 00:33:23.910 ⇒ 00:33:25.379 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, sorry, I’m showing this one.

361 00:33:26.000 ⇒ 00:33:34.030 Uttam Kumaran: Instead of description, I would just… do… Like, objective or goal.

362 00:33:35.230 ⇒ 00:33:35.700 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay.

363 00:33:35.700 ⇒ 00:33:39.540 Uttam Kumaran: Like, what’s the… what’s the one-liner? We’re trying to help them hit X. Well…

364 00:33:40.080 ⇒ 00:33:46.039 Sheshu Chandrasekar: What’s the difference between Like, having that description for client versus project.

365 00:33:48.000 ⇒ 00:33:51.829 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, then I wouldn’t have a description at all at the client level.

366 00:33:52.340 ⇒ 00:33:52.940 Uttam Kumaran: Because what…

367 00:33:52.940 ⇒ 00:33:55.130 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, like, I was thinking, like, description be, like…

368 00:33:55.340 ⇒ 00:33:59.170 Sheshu Chandrasekar: LMT, yeah, like, LMNT’s, like, an energy…

369 00:33:59.400 ⇒ 00:34:04.810 Uttam Kumaran: Then I would change it from description to, like…

370 00:34:06.820 ⇒ 00:34:21.469 Uttam Kumaran: like, what do they… basically, I would say, probably, what do they do? The thing is, like, the more… the… like, what you’ll find is that, yes, everybody at the company is smart, but, like, they’re gonna spend literally negative one second doing this.

371 00:34:21.800 ⇒ 00:34:26.950 Uttam Kumaran: And so, just… I would urge to just make it super, super explicit, like.

372 00:34:27.429 ⇒ 00:34:34.219 Uttam Kumaran: like, what is the business… like, I would… business description, even, like, people may not get it. I would just say, like, what do they do?

373 00:34:34.580 ⇒ 00:34:37.940 Uttam Kumaran: Or how do they make money? Could be… could be a good description.

374 00:34:48.159 ⇒ 00:34:49.349 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Something like that, maybe?

375 00:34:51.790 ⇒ 00:34:56.140 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, but I’m almost like, dude, are people gonna read the notes of the…

376 00:34:57.790 ⇒ 00:35:01.599 Sheshu Chandrasekar: No, not really. If we’re saying, like, quick view, like…

377 00:35:01.600 ⇒ 00:35:05.710 Uttam Kumaran: That’s why I’m like, why don’t you just change this to, like, to how do they make money?

378 00:35:06.480 ⇒ 00:35:07.520 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay.

379 00:35:07.520 ⇒ 00:35:09.919 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, but, like, tell me why that makes you nervous.

380 00:35:10.420 ⇒ 00:35:23.289 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I mean, it’s not… it doesn’t make me nervous, I just feel like, do they care? Is my… do they care, like, does it matter? Like, I’m more inclined now to even say industry. Like, what kind of industry are they in?

381 00:35:23.290 ⇒ 00:35:27.850 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, yeah, I’m… I think, I think that’s good, too, and that’d be drop-down, that’s even easier.

382 00:35:28.000 ⇒ 00:35:28.700 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah.

383 00:35:29.500 ⇒ 00:35:31.700 Uttam Kumaran: Because, dude, ultimately, it’s like the…

384 00:35:32.400 ⇒ 00:35:37.849 Uttam Kumaran: I think someone’s gonna click into it, and then find out what they do, or be like, what do the people do to Gemini?

385 00:35:39.080 ⇒ 00:35:39.720 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Right.

386 00:35:40.140 ⇒ 00:35:48.190 Uttam Kumaran: that I just think there’s a diminishing return, like, the more fields there are, not only the more have to get filled out, the more have to get maintained.

387 00:35:48.660 ⇒ 00:35:49.780 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, that makes sense.

388 00:35:49.780 ⇒ 00:35:56.539 Uttam Kumaran: And you’re gonna find that, like, I think just the bandwidth of things you have to maintain will just go higher, you know? So, that’s what I want to caution about.

389 00:36:00.200 ⇒ 00:36:05.549 Uttam Kumaran: So are you good with, like, maybe we mix, like, these three?

390 00:36:05.550 ⇒ 00:36:06.910 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, we can, we can go over it.

391 00:36:06.910 ⇒ 00:36:09.209 Uttam Kumaran: So then I’ll just, I’ll just put strikethrough.

392 00:36:11.050 ⇒ 00:36:12.160 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Let’s do it.

393 00:36:18.140 ⇒ 00:36:18.950 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Cool.

394 00:36:19.950 ⇒ 00:36:20.650 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.

395 00:36:36.370 ⇒ 00:36:38.380 Sheshu Chandrasekar: The big discount.

396 00:36:41.460 ⇒ 00:36:47.890 Uttam Kumaran: Status updated by… I probably, like… Or what…

397 00:36:49.730 ⇒ 00:36:51.750 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Wait, you’re looking at clients.

398 00:36:52.340 ⇒ 00:36:54.060 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Hi, this starts updated by…

399 00:36:54.060 ⇒ 00:36:57.950 Uttam Kumaran: always gonna be the… the… this is basically… should be the EP.

400 00:36:59.860 ⇒ 00:37:02.490 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, maybe that’s too granular? Do we…

401 00:37:03.040 ⇒ 00:37:10.990 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like, it’s… I mean, because again, what are they gonna… someone looks at the status, and they want to know who put the status, then you should reach out to

402 00:37:11.680 ⇒ 00:37:13.110 Uttam Kumaran: One of these two people.

403 00:37:13.300 ⇒ 00:37:18.899 Uttam Kumaran: Alright, so, like… it’s sort of, I think, redundant to put, like, who updated the status.

404 00:37:19.370 ⇒ 00:37:20.030 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay.

405 00:37:20.700 ⇒ 00:37:23.369 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, we can… we can also strike through that.

406 00:37:23.670 ⇒ 00:37:24.320 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

407 00:37:26.000 ⇒ 00:37:28.779 Uttam Kumaran: Last date of project review, okay, that’s fine.

408 00:37:30.610 ⇒ 00:37:33.409 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, for some of these, they’re… okay, yeah. So, like.

409 00:37:33.580 ⇒ 00:37:36.379 Uttam Kumaran: From the… from, like, a delivery standpoint, like…

410 00:37:36.640 ⇒ 00:37:40.910 Uttam Kumaran: Are people expected to keep this up-to-date after every…

411 00:37:41.040 ⇒ 00:37:47.079 Uttam Kumaran: Like, on what cadence should I, as, like, a CSO or an EP, keep this up to date, basically?

412 00:37:49.750 ⇒ 00:37:54.869 Sheshu Chandrasekar: whenever the project is done. That’s kind of, like, the idea that I’m kind of drafting up right now.

413 00:37:55.340 ⇒ 00:37:58.470 Uttam Kumaran: But none of… but, like, for example, we have clients where

414 00:37:59.590 ⇒ 00:38:02.389 Uttam Kumaran: That’s like, we’re gonna be with some clients for years.

415 00:38:04.650 ⇒ 00:38:05.420 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Oh.

416 00:38:06.280 ⇒ 00:38:10.829 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Shoot, that’s a good… that’s a great question. Then…

417 00:38:15.180 ⇒ 00:38:24.050 Sheshu Chandrasekar: So, like, are you saying, let’s say we have, like, let’s say Element becomes, like, our lifelong customer, but they don’t have any project with us? Or they do, like, they become on a retainer.

418 00:38:24.050 ⇒ 00:38:26.309 Uttam Kumaran: Well, everything’s gonna have a… everything’s gonna have…

419 00:38:26.510 ⇒ 00:38:35.829 Uttam Kumaran: projects, but I guess my point is that, like, if you’re like, hey, there has to be… we’re gonna do a project review every week with every client.

420 00:38:37.200 ⇒ 00:38:46.029 Uttam Kumaran: So, every week I have to go in here and up… you’re asked to me as a CSM, every… every week, go in here and update the state.

421 00:38:46.460 ⇒ 00:38:47.320 Uttam Kumaran: Right.

422 00:38:48.240 ⇒ 00:38:53.980 Sheshu Chandrasekar: But, I mean, if the cadence is, like, you’re gonna meet with them every two weeks, you can just add, like, a reminder, right?

423 00:38:54.420 ⇒ 00:38:54.940 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Is that…

424 00:38:54.940 ⇒ 00:39:01.250 Uttam Kumaran: No, I mean, that’s… but that’s what I’m asking. But this is where I’m… what I’m gonna ask throughout this whole thing is, like, as so-and-so.

425 00:39:01.370 ⇒ 00:39:18.629 Uttam Kumaran: operations is asking me to do what? Because that’s just… it’s actually… this is explicitly what we’re gonna go do, right? We’re gonna go tell people, this is another one of your responsibilities to update this, like… and I’m… I know it seems, like, really daunting, but, like, that is what we’re asking here. And so I wanna… I really wanna just…

426 00:39:18.930 ⇒ 00:39:25.629 Uttam Kumaran: My job is gonna be just to question the value, because it’s another thing we’re asking people to do.

427 00:39:25.790 ⇒ 00:39:37.980 Uttam Kumaran: And what value does this field serve? So this is where, like, people, when they use Notion, they get addicted to, like, oh my god, I have field for everything. Again, what you’re gonna find

428 00:39:38.050 ⇒ 00:39:50.560 Uttam Kumaran: is that, like, yes, you could easily create fields, but as easy as you create them, it’s… it’s extremely hard to maintain. So I’m of the… I’m of the feeling that, like, every field here needs to have a purpose.

429 00:39:50.820 ⇒ 00:39:54.090 Uttam Kumaran: Because it’s not just vanity, like… Yes.

430 00:39:54.230 ⇒ 00:39:58.119 Uttam Kumaran: if we had a million people and everybody could be in Notion all day, yes, but…

431 00:39:58.510 ⇒ 00:40:00.900 Uttam Kumaran: That’s just not gonna happen. So…

432 00:40:01.190 ⇒ 00:40:08.870 Uttam Kumaran: I want to make sure that for your goal for this, your goal for this database is someone opens Notion and they get a sense of the project.

433 00:40:10.790 ⇒ 00:40:18.520 Uttam Kumaran: then, in terms of the last date of project review, I don’t know… we meet every client every week, across the board.

434 00:40:18.820 ⇒ 00:40:19.740 Uttam Kumaran: You know?

435 00:40:20.300 ⇒ 00:40:23.880 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, no, that makes sense. I mean, if that’s the case, right, like…

436 00:40:23.880 ⇒ 00:40:28.260 Uttam Kumaran: And for the most part, you could go into Cursor and be like, when was this last… when did we last meet?

437 00:40:28.580 ⇒ 00:40:30.990 Uttam Kumaran: Or, you could go to the platform and see the last meeting.

438 00:40:34.450 ⇒ 00:40:36.910 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, that makes sense. I’m just thinking about, like.

439 00:40:37.900 ⇒ 00:40:56.380 Sheshu Chandrasekar: would it become too much for a CS or an EP to update that? I don’t… I personally don’t think so. If I give a… if I had to say an update, like, saying, hey, like, moving forward in our Notion SOP, if you’re an EP or CSO, your job is to maintain these fields in the client database. If it becomes a problem, like.

440 00:40:56.410 ⇒ 00:41:01.510 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I mean, we can talk about it in the lead… lead meetings that we have, like, you know, early in the week.

441 00:41:01.510 ⇒ 00:41:08.049 Uttam Kumaran: I guess, like, what… I’m not… I’m just not hearing the value. Like, all I’m hearing is, like, how much of a problem it is.

442 00:41:08.360 ⇒ 00:41:08.910 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Right?

443 00:41:08.910 ⇒ 00:41:10.580 Uttam Kumaran: How much of a value it gives.

444 00:41:11.020 ⇒ 00:41:17.149 Uttam Kumaran: Like, who is this serving? Because I’m telling you, I manage 4 or 5 clients, I, like…

445 00:41:18.170 ⇒ 00:41:24.789 Uttam Kumaran: this… I have to consistently drop responsibilities, I don’t think, like…

446 00:41:24.920 ⇒ 00:41:31.389 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t think I’m… this is gonna be, like, important to me, to update the Notion thing for the last data project review.

447 00:41:31.390 ⇒ 00:41:35.799 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay, I mean, the reason why I wanted that field is because…

448 00:41:36.960 ⇒ 00:41:46.539 Sheshu Chandrasekar: if engineering needs to look at, okay, like, hey, like, this is what happened last time, right? Like, when did we last have a project review with the client? Like, they can quickly glance at it.

449 00:41:47.220 ⇒ 00:41:51.949 Uttam Kumaran: But who, but like, but you’re saying engineering, like, who are you talking about?

450 00:41:51.950 ⇒ 00:41:54.390 Sheshu Chandrasekar: In this case, the assaults, right?

451 00:41:54.590 ⇒ 00:41:58.560 Uttam Kumaran: But did either of those folks mention that?

452 00:41:59.420 ⇒ 00:42:02.140 Sheshu Chandrasekar: No, I’m just anticipating it, actually, but…

453 00:42:02.140 ⇒ 00:42:06.869 Uttam Kumaran: But that’s what I’m saying, I don’t wanna, like, we’re not building for a fake person, like…

454 00:42:06.870 ⇒ 00:42:07.300 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Right.

455 00:42:07.910 ⇒ 00:42:16.299 Uttam Kumaran: And this is where, like, I want to show you that, like, yes, in a perfect world, we would have this information in 10 places, but, like.

456 00:42:16.520 ⇒ 00:42:23.459 Uttam Kumaran: I just… I’m still not hearing… That, like, it’s super.

457 00:42:23.460 ⇒ 00:42:23.930 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Needed.

458 00:42:23.930 ⇒ 00:42:27.869 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, what you may find is, like, we can still go with it.

459 00:42:27.980 ⇒ 00:42:31.280 Uttam Kumaran: But then, if no one ends up updating it, and then…

460 00:42:31.920 ⇒ 00:42:34.390 Uttam Kumaran: And we’re gonna end up at the same spot, right? Yeah.

461 00:42:36.490 ⇒ 00:42:40.130 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay, yeah, I mean, if we need it, I’ll just add it in.

462 00:42:40.130 ⇒ 00:42:40.490 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

463 00:42:40.490 ⇒ 00:42:41.939 Sheshu Chandrasekar: update to the broader team.

464 00:42:41.940 ⇒ 00:42:47.220 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, ask them. If really you’re like, okay, the SLs may need it, I would ask them and validate.

465 00:42:47.790 ⇒ 00:42:59.330 Uttam Kumaran: I feel like there’s a couple of other already in-built places to get this. And, like, I don’t know, I don’t… I don’t know if either… if any of them… because they’re already on… they already know most of the project reviews, right? So…

466 00:42:59.510 ⇒ 00:43:03.050 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, no, that makes sense. I’m… I’m cool with axing it.

467 00:43:03.050 ⇒ 00:43:03.430 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

468 00:43:03.430 ⇒ 00:43:14.209 Sheshu Chandrasekar: But I’ll just… let’s just cross it out, because I want to validate it next week with the EPs, and SLs and whoever, but if not, we can, you know, it’s fine.

469 00:43:16.070 ⇒ 00:43:20.720 Uttam Kumaran: I would rather strike it out, and then you give a good reason to bring it back. Like, that’s fine.

470 00:43:21.220 ⇒ 00:43:21.940 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah.

471 00:43:38.020 ⇒ 00:43:40.489 Uttam Kumaran: So this one, I would put projects.

472 00:43:42.350 ⇒ 00:43:43.560 Uttam Kumaran: Or SOG.

473 00:43:43.560 ⇒ 00:43:46.150 Sheshu Chandrasekar: No, it’s, the consultant jargon.

474 00:43:46.150 ⇒ 00:43:50.060 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so I’ll start case the SOW, end date of the SOW.

475 00:43:50.270 ⇒ 00:43:55.270 Uttam Kumaran: Status, kickoff… Ongoing. Completed.

476 00:43:56.740 ⇒ 00:44:03.339 Uttam Kumaran: I guess I wouldn’t do off-boarding. Like, I would do off-boarding probably at the client level.

477 00:44:04.850 ⇒ 00:44:07.739 Uttam Kumaran: Or, like, yeah, churn, same things off the way.

478 00:44:07.940 ⇒ 00:44:08.910 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Okay.

479 00:44:09.850 ⇒ 00:44:13.419 Uttam Kumaran: So… Okay, this is all fine.

480 00:44:14.060 ⇒ 00:44:15.560 Uttam Kumaran: This is great.

481 00:44:17.410 ⇒ 00:44:19.580 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, I’m curious about what you think about Rogue 12.

482 00:44:19.990 ⇒ 00:44:24.469 Uttam Kumaran: I guess, well, for a linear project, I would probably…

483 00:44:29.890 ⇒ 00:44:38.110 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, that’s not fine. I mean, like, the thing is, I want to be careful with terminology, because linear projects and linear teams are different things.

484 00:44:38.490 ⇒ 00:44:41.510 Uttam Kumaran: For most of our clients, we will create a team.

485 00:44:41.760 ⇒ 00:44:45.590 Uttam Kumaran: It’s not yet standard for us to create projects.

486 00:44:45.910 ⇒ 00:45:00.610 Uttam Kumaran: like, the engineering team for that client can use projects in multiple different ways, like for a work stream or for a person, so I would almost just make this, like, linear team, and I honestly would probably tell you to just move this to the client.

487 00:45:02.020 ⇒ 00:45:03.320 Uttam Kumaran: Because it’s gonna be the same.

488 00:45:03.720 ⇒ 00:45:04.390 Uttam Kumaran: For now.

489 00:45:04.390 ⇒ 00:45:04.990 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Right.

490 00:45:05.350 ⇒ 00:45:06.270 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Let’s do that then.

491 00:45:06.750 ⇒ 00:45:09.900 Uttam Kumaran: So, yeah. And I would just say, lead your team.

492 00:45:10.150 ⇒ 00:45:18.330 Uttam Kumaran: And then Brainforge advocate type internal non-confidential details. Oh, yeah. I mean, this is great, like… Hi!

493 00:45:20.460 ⇒ 00:45:38.469 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I don’t know if we want, like, we want it in a table view, that information, or… I mean, it’s just a binary option, right? It says yes or no. And they can click into it and see the notes that we have that says, okay, yeah, like, the client said we can use the logos, or they can give testimonials, whatever the case may be.

494 00:45:38.470 ⇒ 00:45:44.310 Uttam Kumaran: I like it, yeah, I feel like, you know, we should either make this a page, or whatever.

495 00:45:45.880 ⇒ 00:45:46.540 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Sweet.

496 00:45:48.310 ⇒ 00:45:52.170 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Dang, this is, and you said it’s a linear team, right, not a linear project?

497 00:45:52.170 ⇒ 00:45:53.449 Uttam Kumaran: None of your team, yeah.

498 00:45:53.620 ⇒ 00:45:54.360 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Gotcha.

499 00:46:13.990 ⇒ 00:46:17.100 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Super simple, we didn’t really change much from the existing.

500 00:46:17.100 ⇒ 00:46:21.070 Uttam Kumaran: I would, probably have their personal email.

501 00:46:22.440 ⇒ 00:46:23.440 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay.

502 00:46:23.440 ⇒ 00:46:24.780 Uttam Kumaran: and sell.

503 00:46:28.140 ⇒ 00:46:35.100 Uttam Kumaran: To give you an example for both,

504 00:46:35.860 ⇒ 00:46:43.469 Uttam Kumaran: Some people, when they go on holidays, will just, like, not check their work email, and something will blow up, and I need to get in touch with them.

505 00:46:43.630 ⇒ 00:46:45.929 Uttam Kumaran: I will first email their personal.

506 00:46:46.050 ⇒ 00:46:50.610 Uttam Kumaran: And then, last resort, I will call their cell. Secondarily, sometimes.

507 00:46:51.320 ⇒ 00:46:59.809 Uttam Kumaran: there will be, like, an emergency somewhere in the world, and, like, we need to know whether someone is safe. It’s helpful to have their personal email and their cell.

508 00:47:00.130 ⇒ 00:47:05.939 Uttam Kumaran: Eventually we’ll start getting emergency contacts and stuff, but I think these are fine.

509 00:47:06.350 ⇒ 00:47:13.529 Uttam Kumaran: Start day is great, working hours…

510 00:47:14.860 ⇒ 00:47:17.699 Uttam Kumaran: I would almost not put working hours

511 00:47:17.880 ⇒ 00:47:20.320 Uttam Kumaran: I would probably just put, like, locale.

512 00:47:20.320 ⇒ 00:47:21.450 Sheshu Chandrasekar: zones? Okay.

513 00:47:21.450 ⇒ 00:47:26.119 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, or time zone. Like, you can either put the country that they’re in, or… yeah.

514 00:47:26.850 ⇒ 00:47:32.899 Uttam Kumaran: Or their time zone, basically. Because most of the people work until at least 1… 1PM Central.

515 00:47:33.910 ⇒ 00:47:40.530 Uttam Kumaran: Unless they have a specific arrangement with their, CSO.

516 00:47:45.720 ⇒ 00:47:47.320 Uttam Kumaran: How many dogs barking.

517 00:47:48.570 ⇒ 00:47:50.449 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, that’s great.

518 00:47:53.700 ⇒ 00:48:01.229 Sheshu Chandrasekar: So we simplified this tools DB, just so everyone can see it without the financial aspects, because we have that in a separate…

519 00:48:01.980 ⇒ 00:48:06.780 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, yeah, I just put it there, because I made that maybe, like, 2 years ago, so…

520 00:48:06.780 ⇒ 00:48:08.290 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, it makes sense.

521 00:48:17.630 ⇒ 00:48:20.249 Uttam Kumaran: Cool, yeah, I mean, this… I would say this is important.

522 00:48:22.260 ⇒ 00:48:29.670 Uttam Kumaran: And then, this is important And,

523 00:48:30.260 ⇒ 00:48:33.969 Uttam Kumaran: Well, I would say, yeah, related playbooks, though…

524 00:48:34.280 ⇒ 00:48:38.650 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe you should just do related documents, and then this isn’t… this is not a,

525 00:48:39.050 ⇒ 00:48:40.809 Uttam Kumaran: Well, this is a relation, right?

526 00:48:41.570 ⇒ 00:48:42.340 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah.

527 00:48:44.520 ⇒ 00:48:46.860 Uttam Kumaran: Because this will relate back to the documents, Stevie.

528 00:48:46.860 ⇒ 00:48:48.190 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yep, exactly.

529 00:48:48.470 ⇒ 00:48:49.110 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

530 00:48:50.210 ⇒ 00:48:55.180 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Well, yeah, I just put document, because, like, in my head, I’m envisioning, like, a link to the document, so people.

531 00:48:55.180 ⇒ 00:48:56.630 Uttam Kumaran: Exactly, exactly, yeah.

532 00:48:56.630 ⇒ 00:48:57.360 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Gotcha.

533 00:49:12.350 ⇒ 00:49:13.659 Uttam Kumaran: Trying to think.

534 00:49:14.840 ⇒ 00:49:17.250 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, that’s fine for now, it’s okay.

535 00:49:18.160 ⇒ 00:49:18.830 Uttam Kumaran: Campaign.

536 00:49:18.830 ⇒ 00:49:24.290 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay, and then I don’t have any… Yeah, I’m still working on it, and I’m gonna give you some more context to those.

537 00:49:24.290 ⇒ 00:49:26.940 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I feel like… Yeah, go ahead.

538 00:49:27.230 ⇒ 00:49:28.140 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Oh, sorry, yeah.

539 00:49:28.140 ⇒ 00:49:28.940 Uttam Kumaran: Ayo, yo.

540 00:49:29.500 ⇒ 00:49:34.579 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Ashley, if you can… I can show you the deck that I’ve kind of.

541 00:49:34.580 ⇒ 00:49:34.960 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

542 00:49:34.960 ⇒ 00:49:40.590 Sheshu Chandrasekar: little bit, then I can kind of give you the story behind it. Let me do that real quick.

543 00:49:42.610 ⇒ 00:49:45.099 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Shit, I have so many tabs open, jeez.

544 00:49:48.080 ⇒ 00:49:59.760 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay. So, yeah, it looks like a bunch of Tetrix-looking… Tetrix PowerPoint, but basically what’s happening now is… so, I met with Hannah and Luke, and

545 00:49:59.970 ⇒ 00:50:04.100 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Luke brought a great point. I think… what…

546 00:50:04.240 ⇒ 00:50:08.689 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I’m envisioning is Luke and Ryan will take care of anything that’s related to go-to-market.

547 00:50:08.810 ⇒ 00:50:19.000 Sheshu Chandrasekar: So that includes the marketing page, now… now the partnerships, leads, sales, campaign services, and brand pages all get consolidated into the marketing page.

548 00:50:19.350 ⇒ 00:50:36.939 Sheshu Chandrasekar: And Luke and Ryan will be the ones that’ll be taking care of that. And the reason why I say it is because Luke has a really good structure that Hannah also really liked. And she… she wants to work with Luke to kind of revamp some of the process that she’s carrying right now.

549 00:50:38.770 ⇒ 00:50:43.930 Sheshu Chandrasekar: And that’s where the partnerships, campaigns, and services DB is something that Luke and Ryan

550 00:50:43.930 ⇒ 00:51:01.019 Sheshu Chandrasekar: we’ll be primarily managing, and we’re just there to help them out, kind of give them a nudge, like, if they have any questions, like, you know, we’re there to help them out in the best way possible. Foundational DVs is something we take care of, the ops team will take care of, and then this is specifically for ops, right?

551 00:51:01.030 ⇒ 00:51:06.590 Sheshu Chandrasekar: The candidates DB, like, all these pages is something that we’ll take care of.

552 00:51:06.850 ⇒ 00:51:21.369 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I’m also envisioning that these three will eventually be split across engineering, and delivery side, but for now, we can take care of that, because… just because they’re already doing a lot, and we’re happy to help them, like.

553 00:51:21.370 ⇒ 00:51:22.160 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

554 00:51:22.160 ⇒ 00:51:24.459 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Focus on the things that matter the most to them, so…

555 00:51:25.150 ⇒ 00:51:32.179 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, so right now, I’m, like, after this call, I’m gonna be working on the partnerships and campaigns of service to DB by looking at Luke’s GTM.

556 00:51:32.550 ⇒ 00:51:38.450 Sheshu Chandrasekar: like, corner that he has, and figuring out, like, how we can best replicate that across, the GTM page.

557 00:51:39.470 ⇒ 00:51:46.979 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool. Yeah, I mean, again, like, I think as much as you can push to these teams, you’re gonna move stuff off your plate. Like…

558 00:51:47.680 ⇒ 00:52:07.410 Uttam Kumaran: I would say for engineering, like, I’m opinionated enough to, like, manage… I was already managing all of Notion, right? So, I can handle managing the engineering stuff, knowing that the other shit is, like, kind of getting taken care of. Especially if you guys are handling, like, the SLEP, like, some of that stuff, and we’re just focusing on, like.

559 00:52:07.460 ⇒ 00:52:15.629 Uttam Kumaran: engineering, productivity, engineering support, things like that. And then, yeah, Luke and Ryan on everything go-to-market. And then,

560 00:52:16.310 ⇒ 00:52:21.219 Uttam Kumaran: I think, yeah, I think there are these foundational databases or, like, primitives.

561 00:52:23.510 ⇒ 00:52:27.460 Uttam Kumaran: And then, I think the other kind of piece on Notion is,

562 00:52:30.140 ⇒ 00:52:34.160 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, maybe we should… we could talk about it later. It’s more about, like, security and.

563 00:52:34.580 ⇒ 00:52:36.130 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Like, roles-based permission?

564 00:52:36.130 ⇒ 00:52:41.399 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s, like, roles, groups, and then, like, on a monthly basis, we should just go check, like.

565 00:52:41.690 ⇒ 00:52:49.330 Uttam Kumaran: Are there, like, extra… are there random consultants, like, still in here? Are we still sharing stuff to clients that we offboarded?

566 00:52:49.680 ⇒ 00:52:52.110 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe that’s, again, part of the monthly cleanup.

567 00:52:52.510 ⇒ 00:52:53.640 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah.

568 00:52:55.220 ⇒ 00:52:59.849 Sheshu Chandrasekar: This is a really stupid question, but can you create groups from a permission in Notion? Yeah, you can.

569 00:52:59.850 ⇒ 00:53:04.309 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, he… so, yeah, go… are you… I think you’re… are you an admin? You can just go check,

570 00:53:05.460 ⇒ 00:53:11.340 Uttam Kumaran: You can, you can… if you go to Users, you could go create, groups.

571 00:53:11.540 ⇒ 00:53:20.100 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, we already have in there, like, finance, or sales, or something, but you have to maintain the groups. So if you go to…

572 00:53:21.150 ⇒ 00:53:23.070 Uttam Kumaran: Somewhere…

573 00:53:25.680 ⇒ 00:53:27.830 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, full access.

574 00:53:34.620 ⇒ 00:53:36.510 Uttam Kumaran: Here, let me check.

575 00:53:37.060 ⇒ 00:53:39.430 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Oh, I think I see it. Security…

576 00:53:42.490 ⇒ 00:53:43.890 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Oh, no, nevermind.

577 00:53:59.070 ⇒ 00:54:01.640 Uttam Kumaran: Hmm. Wait, you should be, you should be…

578 00:54:03.920 ⇒ 00:54:07.180 Uttam Kumaran: able to see, like, everything. Click on, go to…

579 00:54:08.400 ⇒ 00:54:12.159 Uttam Kumaran: What? You don’t see a settings anywhere?

580 00:54:13.720 ⇒ 00:54:15.669 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I see it right here.

581 00:54:16.700 ⇒ 00:54:22.169 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, yeah, okay, so this is where you can do all your admin stuff. So go to People, and you’ll see Groups.

582 00:54:25.830 ⇒ 00:54:26.610 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

583 00:54:28.030 ⇒ 00:54:32.279 Uttam Kumaran: So these, I think, ideally, you should align to probably the orgs.

584 00:54:33.030 ⇒ 00:54:34.899 Uttam Kumaran: Or the cost centers, or whatever.

585 00:54:35.360 ⇒ 00:54:36.100 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay.

586 00:54:36.770 ⇒ 00:54:39.110 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like SLs, EPs…

587 00:54:39.110 ⇒ 00:54:43.000 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Stuff like that. Delivery team. I can create multiple, right? Yeah, I think I can.

588 00:54:43.000 ⇒ 00:54:43.720 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

589 00:54:45.440 ⇒ 00:54:51.059 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Oh, this is sick. Okay, yeah, we’ll… I’ll definitely take a look and figure out how to map this out a little bit better.

590 00:54:51.960 ⇒ 00:54:53.759 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, man,

591 00:54:58.260 ⇒ 00:55:02.070 Uttam Kumaran: I feel like we’re also not taking advantage much about, like, team spaces.

592 00:55:03.060 ⇒ 00:55:05.539 Uttam Kumaran: We sort of have everything in one team space.

593 00:55:07.190 ⇒ 00:55:12.109 Uttam Kumaran: Like, we use some of this leadership one for some internal stuff.

594 00:55:12.920 ⇒ 00:55:18.759 Uttam Kumaran: But overall, we just use the one, but I don’t know if that’s even worth, like, messing around with, like…

595 00:55:19.190 ⇒ 00:55:20.360 Uttam Kumaran: That could overcome.

596 00:55:20.360 ⇒ 00:55:22.000 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Well, what’s the… what’s the…

597 00:55:22.000 ⇒ 00:55:24.090 Uttam Kumaran: Sort of, like, one layer up.

598 00:55:24.310 ⇒ 00:55:25.490 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Oh, I see. Okay.

599 00:55:25.490 ⇒ 00:55:28.670 Uttam Kumaran: It’s like, you can manage access at the team space level.

600 00:55:28.840 ⇒ 00:55:31.590 Uttam Kumaran: Gotcha. Right now, we don’t have anything, like, that sensitive.

601 00:55:31.900 ⇒ 00:55:35.699 Uttam Kumaran: Like… For that, except with some of the leadership stuff, so…

602 00:55:37.130 ⇒ 00:55:42.670 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, I mean, if there eventually becomes a use case for it, I’m more than happy to explore it, but I think…

603 00:55:45.310 ⇒ 00:55:51.829 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, I have no idea. I need to get smarter on this. I have no idea what the difference between team spaces and workspaces are at this point.

604 00:55:54.020 ⇒ 00:55:54.660 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

605 00:55:55.080 ⇒ 00:55:56.090 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool.

606 00:55:56.970 ⇒ 00:56:01.130 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Oh, and then, let’s see…

607 00:56:02.890 ⇒ 00:56:12.139 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Sorry, give me one second, there we go. Yeah, so I guess some… some things I’m gonna be working on today, today, night, and tomorrow. First and foremost, I think…

608 00:56:12.720 ⇒ 00:56:31.309 Sheshu Chandrasekar: if we have… now that I have your approval, like, we can go ahead and build some of the databases. I think Ricoh’s already been building it out, so my next step right now is to kind of go through every document. Not gonna alternate thing, I’m just gonna add another column, and say, like, audit column, and tag everything that’s archived, and everything else can be moved.

609 00:56:31.420 ⇒ 00:56:42.540 Sheshu Chandrasekar: So that’s going to be what I’ll be doing, along with Rico and Eliza. But also, I’m gonna work on creating, like, a Notion SOP, and topics include, like, Notion hygiene.

610 00:56:42.640 ⇒ 00:56:56.009 Sheshu Chandrasekar: what do we keep? What do we archive? Database configuration, but I’m also going to go through this, this Zoom, and see, like, some action items that we discussed, because I think there were some other things in there. So, yeah, I’m going to start working on that, and then…

611 00:56:56.760 ⇒ 00:57:04.280 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, honestly, another thing with Luke is I need to figure out, and I need to also figure this out for myself, is…

612 00:57:04.510 ⇒ 00:57:08.440 Sheshu Chandrasekar: what stays in Notion and what stays in HubSpot? Like, we need to figure out, like.

613 00:57:08.900 ⇒ 00:57:10.320 Uttam Kumaran: And what stays involved?

614 00:57:11.060 ⇒ 00:57:13.470 Sheshu Chandrasekar: And what’s his… yeah, and I may need to connect with Gabe.

615 00:57:13.470 ⇒ 00:57:17.109 Uttam Kumaran: Well, this is where, like, maybe, again, like, my proposal was, like.

616 00:57:17.460 ⇒ 00:57:24.239 Uttam Kumaran: maybe we just get on a 30-minute call with the 5 people that care the most? Because Robert is not gonna care.

617 00:57:24.380 ⇒ 00:57:29.159 Uttam Kumaran: So it’s not worth taking his time. He’s gonna be like, dude, I could give a shit about this.

618 00:57:29.160 ⇒ 00:57:31.630 Sheshu Chandrasekar: It said, me, you, Gabe…

619 00:57:32.130 ⇒ 00:57:36.760 Uttam Kumaran: Sam and Luke, Should just chat for 30 minutes.

620 00:57:37.120 ⇒ 00:57:39.400 Uttam Kumaran: And we just argue about it.

621 00:57:40.310 ⇒ 00:57:40.940 Uttam Kumaran: Because I don’t.

622 00:57:40.940 ⇒ 00:57:42.229 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, that’s fine.

623 00:57:42.230 ⇒ 00:57:47.030 Uttam Kumaran: Sam is hella smart and has some interesting ideas about this.

624 00:57:47.740 ⇒ 00:57:50.750 Uttam Kumaran: He just won’t volunteer, so I’ll volunteer him.

625 00:57:51.260 ⇒ 00:57:55.480 Uttam Kumaran: And then maybe we just… maybe we just argue and we arrive at, like, some compromise?

626 00:57:55.730 ⇒ 00:57:58.619 Uttam Kumaran: Because I’m… I’m gonna have the lens of, like.

627 00:58:01.920 ⇒ 00:58:05.730 Uttam Kumaran: like, what I’ve seen just in working at a bunch of places that works.

628 00:58:06.310 ⇒ 00:58:11.199 Uttam Kumaran: individuals are gonna be like, well, I don’t fuck with HubSpot, I wanna have my own Notion.

629 00:58:11.390 ⇒ 00:58:19.079 Uttam Kumaran: And then I also… me and Gabe also, I’m like, yo, everything’s going to AI, like, if my cursor can’t talk to Notion.

630 00:58:19.510 ⇒ 00:58:29.240 Uttam Kumaran: then, like, you know, because you know how much time? The Vault has saved us? So much time, like, no question, it’s the ROI. So then I’m like, okay, what…

631 00:58:29.530 ⇒ 00:58:32.950 Uttam Kumaran: What is the disadvantage to not have more stuff there?

632 00:58:33.270 ⇒ 00:58:35.810 Uttam Kumaran: And so I just want… I wish… we should just hash it out.

633 00:58:36.170 ⇒ 00:58:37.000 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

634 00:58:37.690 ⇒ 00:58:43.239 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Dan, let’s do that tomorrow, because, I mean, in that case, next week, I can just get the momentum going, and…

635 00:58:43.850 ⇒ 00:58:44.660 Sheshu Chandrasekar: you know.

636 00:58:45.430 ⇒ 00:58:59.509 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I mean, I’m cool with having the vault, I’ll say that right now. Like, I’m okay with it. If anything, I’ll just create, like, a… it’ll just be a link in the doc… in the DB, the document DB, and that’s fine with me. I don’t want to ruin… my thing is, like.

637 00:59:00.310 ⇒ 00:59:07.290 Sheshu Chandrasekar: there’s a separation between, like, federal and state, right? That’s kind of the same, like, concept I’m instituting here. I don’t want to…

638 00:59:07.580 ⇒ 00:59:14.040 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I want to be able to have some level of control, but I’ll decide up to GTM and engineering how they want to run things.

639 00:59:14.040 ⇒ 00:59:17.020 Uttam Kumaran: be notified of it. So, that’s kind of what I’m thinking.

640 00:59:17.230 ⇒ 00:59:18.480 Uttam Kumaran: Cool, great.

641 00:59:19.130 ⇒ 00:59:25.890 Uttam Kumaran: I think that’s a good way… I think that’s a good way of putting it. It’s like, look, ultimately, like, you want to give people guardrails.

642 00:59:26.440 ⇒ 00:59:31.270 Uttam Kumaran: But also, look, if, like, one team figures out an innovation.

643 00:59:31.530 ⇒ 00:59:34.440 Uttam Kumaran: It’s gonna be very interesting for you to be like, okay.

644 00:59:34.920 ⇒ 00:59:46.140 Uttam Kumaran: Can every team, like, can even the non-technical teams benefit? Like, to give you an example, Robert pushed a pricing calculator

645 00:59:46.330 ⇒ 00:59:54.939 Uttam Kumaran: pro- like, guide to the vault. Like, you just send in an SOW, and it runs through a bunch of pricing scenarios.

646 00:59:55.300 ⇒ 00:59:59.770 Sheshu Chandrasekar: That’s not something I can do in Notion, like, what fucking world can I do there in Notion?

647 00:59:59.950 ⇒ 01:00:00.540 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yup.

648 01:00:00.540 ⇒ 01:00:05.389 Uttam Kumaran: So then it’s like, okay, like, what else is like that? But, for example, like.

649 01:00:05.500 ⇒ 01:00:07.410 Sheshu Chandrasekar: First day onboarding.

650 01:00:07.880 ⇒ 01:00:13.100 Uttam Kumaran: what clients do we have? That’s, like, really annoying to do in cursor. Like.

651 01:00:13.410 ⇒ 01:00:14.200 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah.

652 01:00:14.200 ⇒ 01:00:18.620 Uttam Kumaran: it’s like, yeah, it’s… it’s, like, over… a little bit overkill, so… yeah.

653 01:00:20.370 ⇒ 01:00:25.120 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Alright, that’s what’s up then. Alright, cool. I’m happy with this idea of, like.

654 01:00:25.240 ⇒ 01:00:32.479 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I was, like, kind of hesitant, I was like, I don’t know if you want me to take over everything, but I like the idea of just letting people do what they want to do, and, you know, I don’t want.

655 01:00:32.480 ⇒ 01:00:36.460 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, in places where you have people with opinions, your job is just to, like.

656 01:00:36.710 ⇒ 01:00:42.129 Uttam Kumaran: give them the tools to run, but for example, someone may come to you and be like, hey, I want to go, like.

657 01:00:42.270 ⇒ 01:00:48.459 Uttam Kumaran: invest in Dropbox, I wanna go… I wanna set up Dropbox. Or, like, hey, I want to set up ClickUp.

658 01:00:49.030 ⇒ 01:00:58.459 Uttam Kumaran: then you’re gonna be like, dude, no, we have this. So that’s… that’s also part of this equation, is like, you become the person who decides, because you have a principled approach.

659 01:00:58.670 ⇒ 01:01:03.310 Uttam Kumaran: To, like, how different types of data is stored and accessed in the company.

660 01:01:03.570 ⇒ 01:01:06.490 Uttam Kumaran: Previously, I’m the only person

661 01:01:06.670 ⇒ 01:01:22.979 Uttam Kumaran: And, again, a lot of where we are now is because I had some opinions. Now, there’s a lot of people who have their own workflows that need to be supported, and so it’s, again, and it’s… we’re at a different scale, right? Like, there’s, like, 20 people accessing all different types of information.

662 01:01:23.240 ⇒ 01:01:26.589 Uttam Kumaran: So yeah, I think you’re thinking of another right way.

663 01:01:27.440 ⇒ 01:01:28.140 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Sweet.

664 01:01:28.370 ⇒ 01:01:35.170 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Did you look at the AORs as well? Like, I think we’re gonna sort of try to finalize that tomorrow.

665 01:01:35.680 ⇒ 01:01:42.849 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I briefly looked over it last week, because that was, like, one of the few things that Eliza wanted me to review, but I’ll take a look at it again today.

666 01:01:42.850 ⇒ 01:01:43.320 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

667 01:01:43.320 ⇒ 01:01:44.760 Sheshu Chandrasekar: We’re having a conversation about it tomorrow.

668 01:01:44.910 ⇒ 01:01:49.400 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, okay. Yeah, I think we’re gonna just try to have everybody whose name is on one of those.

669 01:01:49.640 ⇒ 01:01:50.180 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Okay.

670 01:01:50.180 ⇒ 01:01:52.159 Uttam Kumaran: Room tomorrow, just to be, like…

671 01:01:52.650 ⇒ 01:01:55.249 Sheshu Chandrasekar: I’ve seen the spreadsheet, right? It’s a spreadsheet.

672 01:01:55.250 ⇒ 01:01:56.390 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, it’s just a spreadsheet.

673 01:01:56.390 ⇒ 01:01:58.129 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Oh yeah, yeah, I’ve seen it. Yup.

674 01:01:58.340 ⇒ 01:02:03.670 Uttam Kumaran: So, my goal is basically every responsibility of the company we have written down.

675 01:02:04.380 ⇒ 01:02:07.759 Uttam Kumaran: it should look like me and Robert on a bunch of them, and then…

676 01:02:07.960 ⇒ 01:02:26.179 Uttam Kumaran: part of the… part of our… the company’s job is to remove us from those, because we are, like, huge blockers to things. So it’s like finding… is it a team? Is it a person? And that should honestly inform our recruiting, right? So, it’s, it’s all part of this, like… there’s a…

677 01:02:28.590 ⇒ 01:02:34.129 Uttam Kumaran: There’s a thing called, What’s it called?

678 01:02:37.900 ⇒ 01:02:39.129 Uttam Kumaran: I forget what it’s…

679 01:02:39.430 ⇒ 01:02:46.680 Uttam Kumaran: it’s just called Area of Responsibility, but, I would say it’s part of this thing called, like, He…

680 01:02:46.880 ⇒ 01:02:53.439 Uttam Kumaran: OQ, or I don’t even know what it’s called, but I can send you some stuff on, like, why AORs matter.

681 01:02:55.350 ⇒ 01:02:58.729 Sheshu Chandrasekar: They’re kind of like OKRs, but… Not really, right?

682 01:02:58.730 ⇒ 01:03:10.860 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s all part of this thing called, like, Entrepreneurial Operating System, EOS. It’s, like, this concept that, like, a lot of people adopt, which is, like, OKRs, AORs,

683 01:03:11.250 ⇒ 01:03:27.350 Uttam Kumaran: And so, like, it became famous in this book called… this book called Traction. That’s really good, I have it next to me, I can get it to you, it’s good. But it’s all… it’s, like, a lot about, like, really just, like, super tactical, like, how the fuck do you organize a comp… like, a basic company?

684 01:03:27.540 ⇒ 01:03:28.470 Uttam Kumaran: And, like.

685 01:03:28.650 ⇒ 01:03:36.679 Uttam Kumaran: modern times, and it talked all about, like, yo, just write down every responsibility, put someone’s name next to it, put their backup.

686 01:03:36.980 ⇒ 01:03:39.900 Uttam Kumaran: And that way, anytime there’s, like, something…

687 01:03:40.110 ⇒ 01:03:44.880 Uttam Kumaran: happens related to that, you know how to go to somebody, right? And so it’s just, like, basic things like that, so…

688 01:03:45.580 ⇒ 01:03:48.380 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Gotcha. Shoot, yeah, I’d be down to read that, but…

689 01:03:48.380 ⇒ 01:03:48.960 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.

690 01:03:49.570 ⇒ 01:03:58.110 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, let me take a look at it again, and I don’t know where… so, tomorrow’s kind of like, we’re knighting everyone, in a way, to a specific AOR, right?

691 01:03:58.610 ⇒ 01:04:11.859 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, well, basically, like, I wrote a draft version last quarter, we just didn’t finish it, and then this quarter, finally, like, Eliza’s here, so she was able to finish it. Ops will own the fact that that keeps updated, but ops…

692 01:04:12.240 ⇒ 01:04:22.520 Uttam Kumaran: does not… is not on every AOR, right? So, yeah, so tomorrow will basically be, like, these… these are the… these are the things, and then in that AOR sheet, you’ll also see that, like.

693 01:04:22.760 ⇒ 01:04:27.589 Uttam Kumaran: There’s… if you want to propose that someone Take on that responsibility?

694 01:04:27.790 ⇒ 01:04:29.519 Uttam Kumaran: Or changes the backup.

695 01:04:29.670 ⇒ 01:04:31.700 Uttam Kumaran: And then we basically have statuses, like.

696 01:04:32.370 ⇒ 01:04:38.029 Uttam Kumaran: how is it going? Like, half my AORs, I’m like, this is… sucks, like, I’m not able to do it. And so…

697 01:04:38.150 ⇒ 01:04:40.789 Uttam Kumaran: That should be what, like, leads to discussion.

698 01:04:41.940 ⇒ 01:04:44.960 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Gotcha, and that’s gonna be, like, a quarterly review? Like, quarterly…

699 01:04:44.960 ⇒ 01:04:47.299 Uttam Kumaran: I think we’re gonna try to do monthly, because, like.

700 01:04:47.610 ⇒ 01:04:59.050 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve been meaning not to send a note out, but I was gonna see if a couple of folks like you and a few other people would come to this, like, we have an end-of-month check-in that we’re trying to do at the end of the month, every month.

701 01:04:59.520 ⇒ 01:05:05.359 Uttam Kumaran: Gotcha. And… We just… we’re, like, collect feedback, sort of talk about…

702 01:05:05.660 ⇒ 01:05:08.310 Uttam Kumaran: How the month went, and then for us, we kind of…

703 01:05:08.680 ⇒ 01:05:11.119 Uttam Kumaran: Try to set the stage for next month.

704 01:05:11.280 ⇒ 01:05:15.000 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, a lot. I mean, we do a lot of pivoting during the week.

705 01:05:15.290 ⇒ 01:05:18.300 Uttam Kumaran: like, we pivot almost every week here, I feel like, and, like.

706 01:05:18.580 ⇒ 01:05:27.700 Uttam Kumaran: just kind of, like, this way, this way, just try to, like, leapfrog forward. Versus, like, most companies, dude, it’s like, every quarter, they’re like, how did it… how did it go? Like…

707 01:05:27.990 ⇒ 01:05:30.659 Uttam Kumaran: What do we need to change? Like, you could tell here, we’re like…

708 01:05:31.010 ⇒ 01:05:34.219 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, let’s, like, what… how’d it go last week? Like, what could we change this week?

709 01:05:34.220 ⇒ 01:05:35.280 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah.

710 01:05:35.280 ⇒ 01:05:37.900 Uttam Kumaran: So, this one is more about looking at the month.

711 01:05:38.180 ⇒ 01:05:40.159 Uttam Kumaran: And then, okay, what do we need? And then…

712 01:05:40.600 ⇒ 01:05:45.549 Uttam Kumaran: We also… we did one, sort of, end of last quarter, but again, it was mainly me.

713 01:05:45.660 ⇒ 01:05:50.309 Uttam Kumaran: Clarence and Robert, in for… in… in March.

714 01:05:50.510 ⇒ 01:05:55.860 Uttam Kumaran: It’ll be a lot… it’ll be a lot more people involved in, like, Q2 planning.

715 01:05:56.520 ⇒ 01:06:02.830 Uttam Kumaran: Gotcha. And then eventually, at some point, we’ll start to be able to look a year out. At some point.

716 01:06:03.060 ⇒ 01:06:03.490 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

717 01:06:03.950 ⇒ 01:06:04.900 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

718 01:06:04.900 ⇒ 01:06:08.059 Sheshu Chandrasekar: That’d be insane. That’s, like, the true, like, North Star.

719 01:06:08.060 ⇒ 01:06:13.000 Uttam Kumaran: You think so? I don’t know, I feel… I mean, I could, dude, I could tell you what a year… like, I could just… we could…

720 01:06:13.130 ⇒ 01:06:18.979 Uttam Kumaran: We could fake it and be like, oh, and this year will be this, but it’s… it’s hard, like, it takes a lot of organizational…

721 01:06:19.250 ⇒ 01:06:23.220 Uttam Kumaran: Capacity to predict, and could put any type of forecast together, right?

722 01:06:23.330 ⇒ 01:06:25.880 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah. Sales is the first team…

723 01:06:25.890 ⇒ 01:06:29.860 Uttam Kumaran: To have any type of true… Forecast.

724 01:06:30.110 ⇒ 01:06:32.909 Uttam Kumaran: With, like, drivers, and with, like, a model.

725 01:06:33.490 ⇒ 01:06:37.309 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. I’m on the hook to try to do one for delivery and margin.

726 01:06:37.870 ⇒ 01:06:39.750 Uttam Kumaran: So, but I just need…

727 01:06:39.750 ⇒ 01:06:45.049 Sheshu Chandrasekar: But you’re saying from an organizational standpoint, that… that shit will always change, in a way? Like, it’s never, like…

728 01:06:45.050 ⇒ 01:06:45.640 Uttam Kumaran: No, we…

729 01:06:45.640 ⇒ 01:06:46.569 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, so anyway.

730 01:06:46.570 ⇒ 01:06:57.549 Uttam Kumaran: No, we will forecast, but, like, for example, we tripled the business last quarter. Like, how would I have forecasted? It wouldn’t have been, like… well, I can’t for… you don’t forecast things like that, like…

731 01:06:57.720 ⇒ 01:06:59.129 Uttam Kumaran: So, and also, what’s…

732 01:06:59.230 ⇒ 01:07:17.999 Uttam Kumaran: like, we’re just gonna… at that point, we’re just waking, we grind every day, and you’re like, let’s see if this even works. Now, it’s like, okay, we need to spend… as I told Luke, we need to spend money effectively and in a predictable way to get money in. Okay, we need to kind of forecast, like, how much money’s coming in, what’s the budget, how do we hire?

733 01:07:18.140 ⇒ 01:07:21.959 Uttam Kumaran: And that’s, like, a lot of, like, what we’re thinking about more.

734 01:07:22.510 ⇒ 01:07:23.220 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Right.

735 01:07:23.540 ⇒ 01:07:26.159 Sheshu Chandrasekar: That makes sense. So you’re just, you’re just there to, like…

736 01:07:26.460 ⇒ 01:07:30.460 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Tune the, you know, the brakes a little bit, the acceleration of it.

737 01:07:30.460 ⇒ 01:07:33.230 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like, we still set goals, but for example, like.

738 01:07:33.460 ⇒ 01:07:36.640 Uttam Kumaran: If we’re… it’s just… it’s… part of it is, like.

739 01:07:38.930 ⇒ 01:07:47.200 Uttam Kumaran: part of it is we’re doing some of the right things. We’re bringing in people to start to own areas, to free Robert and I up to go start to be able to, like.

740 01:07:47.290 ⇒ 01:07:59.689 Uttam Kumaran: think in a year long. Additionally, we’re gonna have 3 or 4 contracts that are year-long coming up, and so that way it gives us at least some amount of revenue that we’re, like, locked into.

741 01:07:59.840 ⇒ 01:08:02.030 Uttam Kumaran: And then it starts to open us up at, like…

742 01:08:02.300 ⇒ 01:08:08.629 Uttam Kumaran: The other challenge is, like, look, if I don’t… if I only have, like… if I don’t have that much free time in the week, at what point can I…

743 01:08:08.830 ⇒ 01:08:13.569 Uttam Kumaran: Spend time even, like, creating the forecast, getting alignment on it, updating it.

744 01:08:14.560 ⇒ 01:08:21.530 Uttam Kumaran: it’s, like, not possible. So it’s not worth… it’s not for, like, it’s not even worth it for, like, brownie points. It’s, like…

745 01:08:22.479 ⇒ 01:08:28.579 Uttam Kumaran: My time is better spent with you here than, like, even thinking about, like, a year-long forecast, you know?

746 01:08:28.580 ⇒ 01:08:32.679 Sheshu Chandrasekar: That’s fair, that’s fair, yeah, and plans don’t always go to plans, so…

747 01:08:32.680 ⇒ 01:08:33.389 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah.

748 01:08:33.390 ⇒ 01:08:34.850 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Yeah, gotta figure that out.

749 01:08:35.500 ⇒ 01:08:41.469 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Cool, I mean, I’ll get working, and tomorrow, yeah, let’s, let’s get knighted on the AORs.

750 01:08:41.470 ⇒ 01:08:42.100 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

751 01:08:42.100 ⇒ 01:08:42.430 Sheshu Chandrasekar: there.

752 01:08:43.950 ⇒ 01:08:44.470 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Cool.

753 01:08:44.479 ⇒ 01:08:45.539 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, thank you.

754 01:08:45.540 ⇒ 01:08:47.640 Sheshu Chandrasekar: Alright, appreciate it. Yeah, I’ll talk to you soon. Peace.

755 01:08:47.640 ⇒ 01:08:48.510 Uttam Kumaran: Thank you. Bye.

Brainforge Knowledge

Explorer

2026-01-29_notion_and_hubspot_integration_discussio_a1f63928

Graph View