2026-02-27_brainforge_leads_weekly_retro

Meeting Title: Brainforge Leads Weekly Retro Date: 2026-02-27 Meeting participants: Kaela Gallagher, Rico Rejoso, Luke Scorziell, Uttam Kumaran, Robert Tseng, Clarence Stone

WEBVTT

1 00:00:11.710 ⇒ 00:00:12.880 Kaela Gallagher: Hey, Rico.

2 00:00:14.530 ⇒ 00:00:15.420 Rico Rejoso: Hey, Kaida.

3 00:00:17.320 ⇒ 00:00:18.130 Kaela Gallagher: Hey, Luke.

4 00:00:23.590 ⇒ 00:00:24.649 Luke Scorziell: How’s it going?

5 00:00:26.390 ⇒ 00:00:28.650 Kaela Gallagher: Great! Happy Friday!

6 00:00:29.570 ⇒ 00:00:31.140 Luke Scorziell: Happy Friday!

7 00:00:32.150 ⇒ 00:00:33.979 Kaela Gallagher: Do you have any plans for the weekend?

8 00:00:36.210 ⇒ 00:00:39.620 Luke Scorziell: Go play hockey tomorrow.

9 00:00:40.230 ⇒ 00:00:41.819 Kaela Gallagher: At the Mar Vista Park?

10 00:00:42.310 ⇒ 00:00:44.039 Luke Scorziell: Yeah. Did I tell you about that?

11 00:00:44.410 ⇒ 00:00:48.929 Kaela Gallagher: No, but I’m familiar, because when I go on walks, I walk right past it.

12 00:00:49.680 ⇒ 00:00:50.520 Luke Scorziell: Oh, cool.

13 00:00:50.650 ⇒ 00:00:51.530 Luke Scorziell: Finally.

14 00:00:53.360 ⇒ 00:00:55.970 Luke Scorziell: Alright, I’m like, found another column, and I’m…

15 00:01:14.250 ⇒ 00:01:15.190 Luke Scorziell: What about you?

16 00:01:16.540 ⇒ 00:01:30.430 Kaela Gallagher: I… Let’s see… I don’t know, I have, like, a workout class, and a lunch, and… A dinner…

17 00:01:30.620 ⇒ 00:01:34.200 Kaela Gallagher: Just hanging out with different people. Just chill.

18 00:01:41.010 ⇒ 00:01:42.899 Kaela Gallagher: I’m actually gonna head to,

19 00:01:44.030 ⇒ 00:02:00.170 Kaela Gallagher: a coffee shop after this to finish out my day. It’s the one that Amber and I went to earlier this week, and then I had a friend, like, swipe up on my story and be like, where is this? Like, let’s go co-work this week. So I’m going back to the same coffee shop.

20 00:02:00.170 ⇒ 00:02:00.920 Luke Scorziell: That’s so funny.

21 00:02:02.240 ⇒ 00:02:03.330 Kaela Gallagher: We’ll have to go.

22 00:02:03.910 ⇒ 00:02:05.509 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, which coffee shop is it?

23 00:02:05.700 ⇒ 00:02:07.300 Kaela Gallagher: It’s called Lilo?

24 00:02:07.430 ⇒ 00:02:18.710 Kaela Gallagher: Or Laylo. It’s L-E-I-L-O. But next week, when we go co-work, I put on the calendar this place called Jackson Market. Have you been there?

25 00:02:19.020 ⇒ 00:02:20.210 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, I’ve been there.

26 00:02:20.210 ⇒ 00:02:20.800 Kaela Gallagher: Oh, okay.

27 00:02:20.800 ⇒ 00:02:22.409 Luke Scorziell: Maybe there was, like, a co-working.

28 00:02:25.440 ⇒ 00:02:33.270 Luke Scorziell: There’s not, like, a co-working, like, dedicated spot, but they have a huge back patio with, like, a bunch of, like.

29 00:02:34.270 ⇒ 00:02:38.409 Kaela Gallagher: Tables and greenery and fountains, and it’s, like, really nice.

30 00:02:40.060 ⇒ 00:02:42.500 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, no, I’ve been there,

31 00:02:42.820 ⇒ 00:02:44.769 Luke Scorziell: Going on a date there once.

32 00:02:45.830 ⇒ 00:02:48.050 Luke Scorziell: my… my recollection.

33 00:02:48.790 ⇒ 00:02:49.435 Kaela Gallagher: Mmm…

34 00:02:53.360 ⇒ 00:02:57.130 Kaela Gallagher: I used to entertain people, and that was, like, a good…

35 00:02:57.380 ⇒ 00:03:00.689 Kaela Gallagher: A good place to take people for, like, a lunch.

36 00:04:08.090 ⇒ 00:04:08.790 Uttam Kumaran: S.

37 00:04:09.470 ⇒ 00:04:10.350 Kaela Gallagher: Here, Tom?

38 00:04:16.089 ⇒ 00:04:18.619 Uttam Kumaran: What do you guys think of, these sheets?

39 00:04:20.839 ⇒ 00:04:24.719 Luke Scorziell: I think they’re… they’re beautiful. I couldn’t imagine a better way to spend a Friday.

40 00:04:26.529 ⇒ 00:04:27.629 Luke Scorziell: Alright, let’s…

41 00:04:27.630 ⇒ 00:04:37.229 Uttam Kumaran: You guys are the only people I would… I, like, really, really, really love talking to. I do talk to everybody else in the company, but I spend a lot of time with people outside the company.

42 00:04:38.040 ⇒ 00:04:39.870 Uttam Kumaran: Hence… Tough.

43 00:04:41.000 ⇒ 00:04:41.580 Kaela Gallagher: Mmm.

44 00:04:41.580 ⇒ 00:04:43.130 Uttam Kumaran: Tough.

45 00:04:44.730 ⇒ 00:04:45.920 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

46 00:04:46.900 ⇒ 00:04:53.629 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, it was… I mean, yeah, I always enjoy these conversations, too. The one with Clarence, too, from earlier this week, I was like, damn, so…

47 00:04:53.760 ⇒ 00:04:58.130 Luke Scorziell: The fire conversations. Give me a lot to think about.

48 00:04:58.940 ⇒ 00:05:03.730 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I just, like, sometimes, like… I mean, these days I’m a lot less emotional if, like.

49 00:05:05.290 ⇒ 00:05:11.119 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t tend to think… I don’t tend to be, like, when things happen bad to us, I’m like, oh, it’s like…

50 00:05:11.240 ⇒ 00:05:18.799 Uttam Kumaran: the world’s fault, like, I’m not much of a victim, but sometimes, like, we have some clients or partners who just, like, don’t do the right thing, and…

51 00:05:19.630 ⇒ 00:05:24.770 Uttam Kumaran: I’m like, oh, damn, like… but I try… I try to find out how we can get better.

52 00:05:25.080 ⇒ 00:05:26.380 Uttam Kumaran: Through the process.

53 00:05:29.430 ⇒ 00:05:30.810 Robert Tseng: You’re telling them about.

54 00:05:32.250 ⇒ 00:05:35.200 Uttam Kumaran: Just… just talk… just philosophically.

55 00:05:35.200 ⇒ 00:05:37.819 Luke Scorziell: Yeah. Whoa, is there a practical example of this?

56 00:05:39.540 ⇒ 00:05:42.650 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, plenty, plenty. I mean…

57 00:05:42.830 ⇒ 00:05:47.189 Uttam Kumaran: What we’re dealing with with one of our clients is a little bit of… but it’s also, like.

58 00:05:48.760 ⇒ 00:05:51.169 Uttam Kumaran: We’re in a bit of a transition phase.

59 00:05:51.480 ⇒ 00:05:59.919 Uttam Kumaran: in where, like, our pricing is changing, how formal we are changing, and even Clarence made a good point to me, it was like, you guys are starting to sell deals

60 00:06:00.320 ⇒ 00:06:05.299 Uttam Kumaran: when you… when, like, if me and Robert sell a deal, a lot of our clients are expecting to work with me and Robert.

61 00:06:05.500 ⇒ 00:06:14.020 Uttam Kumaran: And now I’m actually very, very happy that, like, Magic Spoon is a good example where, like, Demi basically negotiated, like, 70% of it.

62 00:06:14.150 ⇒ 00:06:21.679 Uttam Kumaran: And it not only goes in, like, okay, Gray’s taking care of it, like, outside of my time, but I actually think it’s… it’s,

63 00:06:23.340 ⇒ 00:06:26.510 Uttam Kumaran: I actually think that it’s more about…

64 00:06:27.110 ⇒ 00:06:30.799 Uttam Kumaran: He’s owning it, and the client knows that he’s their go-to.

65 00:06:31.170 ⇒ 00:06:41.560 Uttam Kumaran: Because then he can also play, like, oh, this is just what, like, management told us to do, right? Or he can sort of, like… there’s more of a dynamic versus, like, a lot of our clients to date.

66 00:06:41.750 ⇒ 00:06:45.599 Uttam Kumaran: they’ve met me and Robert, and then they’re like, expect us forever.

67 00:06:45.730 ⇒ 00:06:46.350 Uttam Kumaran: And…

68 00:06:46.350 ⇒ 00:06:46.900 Luke Scorziell: Damn.

69 00:06:46.900 ⇒ 00:06:53.430 Uttam Kumaran: That’s changing, and so… There’s just, like, turbulence. I don’t… It is what it is.

70 00:06:57.310 ⇒ 00:07:04.499 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, it’s nice to be on a call and just be like, oh, there’s people above me that can tell me what to do.

71 00:07:04.500 ⇒ 00:07:05.109 Uttam Kumaran: No, it usually…

72 00:07:05.110 ⇒ 00:07:05.900 Luke Scorziell: I was gonna say, you should.

73 00:07:05.900 ⇒ 00:07:11.909 Uttam Kumaran: I was gonna say, yeah, dude, this place is a sweatshop, like, they suck, like, I know, we’re screwing you guys, I have nothing I can do, like…

74 00:07:12.360 ⇒ 00:07:19.709 Uttam Kumaran: I’m, like, I, like, more play bad cop, like, I’ll play bad cop all day. It’s just like…

75 00:07:20.010 ⇒ 00:07:26.179 Uttam Kumaran: sometimes that’s what it is, you know? So… it’s good, and our people are open to it, like, I think…

76 00:07:26.380 ⇒ 00:07:29.510 Uttam Kumaran: This month in particular, I think it’s been really, really good.

77 00:07:29.640 ⇒ 00:07:31.289 Uttam Kumaran: People have stepped up, so…

78 00:07:32.390 ⇒ 00:07:33.010 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

79 00:07:33.730 ⇒ 00:07:37.559 Luke Scorziell: I was… it was for an hour of an hour on that call this morning, and it was, like, it was…

80 00:07:38.270 ⇒ 00:07:43.470 Luke Scorziell: Both of the calls that we’ve been on together, we both got off, and we’re just like, dude, that was… that was so fun.

81 00:07:43.470 ⇒ 00:07:44.839 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, nice.

82 00:07:44.840 ⇒ 00:07:46.250 Luke Scorziell: two together, so…

83 00:07:46.250 ⇒ 00:07:46.870 Uttam Kumaran: Great.

84 00:07:47.340 ⇒ 00:07:50.059 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, he’s actually very interested in sales stuff, too, so…

85 00:07:51.660 ⇒ 00:07:53.670 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, I would love to start selling with him.

86 00:07:55.900 ⇒ 00:08:10.549 Uttam Kumaran: Alright, I don’t know if we wanna… Luke, you wanna kinda go first? So, I think we did one of these in Jan. I think we missed a couple weeks here and there. I think I want to kind of get back on track, do some slimmed-down version of this each week.

87 00:08:10.630 ⇒ 00:08:17.169 Uttam Kumaran: But really, I think, like, for us to nail the month reflection is, like, really the minimum.

88 00:08:17.350 ⇒ 00:08:23.239 Uttam Kumaran: And then we’ll iron out, like, how we get to something weekly that’s sustainable, because all of us are very, very busy.

89 00:08:23.440 ⇒ 00:08:28.940 Uttam Kumaran: But I think for this conversation, like, we all are coming from a couple different…

90 00:08:29.060 ⇒ 00:08:41.440 Uttam Kumaran: directions, and really, I think it’s beneficial, one, to use this time to actually, like, be really critical on how things go, and, like, I think, as you guys know, like, we’re pretty, like.

91 00:08:41.650 ⇒ 00:08:49.859 Uttam Kumaran: we tend to be, like, it’s either Brainforge’s fault, or it’s, like, Robert and I’s fault, like, so it’s, like, it could… it could be okay to be, like.

92 00:08:50.260 ⇒ 00:09:06.329 Uttam Kumaran: I guess, like, avoid being, like, this one person or, like, this one thing. Like, talk about, okay, we have a bunch of systems, and what… what system or process may have… may have failed us. I also think, like, it’s helpful to, like, really be rigid about, let’s… let’s talk through our OKRs.

93 00:09:06.500 ⇒ 00:09:11.889 Uttam Kumaran: As we go, and basically, I think one thing that I have to remind myself

94 00:09:12.360 ⇒ 00:09:21.159 Uttam Kumaran: is that even if I do stuff, like, outside, willy-nilly, if I come to this meeting, and I’m like, damn, I didn’t do anything, and I’m still lagging.

95 00:09:21.330 ⇒ 00:09:26.770 Uttam Kumaran: like, I have to be like, like, where did I mess up? Like, why aren’t I staring at this every, every week?

96 00:09:26.960 ⇒ 00:09:33.880 Uttam Kumaran: And so, like, I think we’ll… we’ll continue to align, but, like, I don’t know… I… the way I arranged this call was sort of start with the…

97 00:09:34.290 ⇒ 00:09:41.860 Uttam Kumaran: Start with, like, one end of the business, which is demand, and then end, sort of, like, closer to supply platform.

98 00:09:41.990 ⇒ 00:09:48.390 Uttam Kumaran: So, if you… if you want to go first, Luke, I sort of said marketing, but marketing, brand, go to market.

99 00:09:48.770 ⇒ 00:09:51.919 Uttam Kumaran: And then Robert is more on, like, just, yeah, like, rough…

100 00:09:52.320 ⇒ 00:09:58.719 Uttam Kumaran: like, super outbound, like, just sales closing, and then I can go into, like, partnerships delivery.

101 00:09:59.690 ⇒ 00:10:04.640 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, okay, no, that sounds good. I think,

102 00:10:05.500 ⇒ 00:10:07.169 Luke Scorziell: So if we start, then, with…

103 00:10:08.820 ⇒ 00:10:10.449 Luke Scorziell: You wanna start with the OKRs?

104 00:10:10.880 ⇒ 00:10:11.700 Uttam Kumaran: Sure, yeah.

105 00:10:12.160 ⇒ 00:10:13.680 Luke Scorziell: Okay.

106 00:10:14.300 ⇒ 00:10:21.950 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, the 30% of new pipeline coming from MQLs, I mean, I think just, like, the main thing with the MQLs right now is just that

107 00:10:22.980 ⇒ 00:10:26.920 Luke Scorziell: like, I think we… we just this week got clear on the

108 00:10:27.470 ⇒ 00:10:31.749 Luke Scorziell: what we’re tracking as an MQL, between me, my…

109 00:10:32.980 ⇒ 00:10:35.790 Luke Scorziell: Robert just did a full 360.

110 00:10:36.050 ⇒ 00:10:46.569 Luke Scorziell: between me, myself, Ryan, and Hannah, so that was… that was, like, a flag at the beginning of this week. I just… I was like, do we… are we all on the same page of, like.

111 00:10:46.850 ⇒ 00:10:51.939 Luke Scorziell: what this even means, and I… like, cause I… I wasn’t, and then…

112 00:10:52.190 ⇒ 00:10:59.590 Luke Scorziell: So we simplified that, and I think, yeah, it’s just someone whose contact information we get that expresses interest.

113 00:10:59.910 ⇒ 00:11:06.979 Luke Scorziell: And… and our page. And so… So that, I think, is… Helpful for then us.

114 00:11:07.340 ⇒ 00:11:08.949 Luke Scorziell: getting more MQLs.

115 00:11:09.220 ⇒ 00:11:13.990 Luke Scorziell: Intentionally, and as opposed to just, kind of, people that come across

116 00:11:14.280 ⇒ 00:11:19.790 Luke Scorziell: our page. And so, yeah, I think it’s… I think it’s still lagging. I think… the…

117 00:11:20.660 ⇒ 00:11:25.920 Luke Scorziell: vision that I do see is that, well, yeah, let me just look, I think we had…

118 00:11:27.050 ⇒ 00:11:34.200 Luke Scorziell: like, some of these are, like, from Robert and myself doing… like, I cold emailed the Joshua Dent guy, we did get…

119 00:11:34.870 ⇒ 00:11:38.389 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Patrick and Daniel, who filled out the forms on the website.

120 00:11:38.550 ⇒ 00:11:42.310 Luke Scorziell: Jeffrey McDonald was through, like, a mutual intro.

121 00:11:42.600 ⇒ 00:11:45.870 Luke Scorziell: That was the guy that Pranav and I just talked to.

122 00:11:47.440 ⇒ 00:12:06.789 Luke Scorziell: So, and the thing that we haven’t had is just, like, a system yet for capturing these. Like, we kind of have these, like, ad hoc lead magnets built out, which no one is really filling out their contact information for. So the pivot that I’m wanting to make that I’ve been working with Hannah, on this week, is to…

123 00:12:07.420 ⇒ 00:12:15.430 Luke Scorziell: just kind of experiment with running these, like, weekly office hour things that we can just use in, like, a CTA on…

124 00:12:15.710 ⇒ 00:12:24.769 Luke Scorziell: Several, so kind of simplifying from random call-to-actions and lead magnets to just three, where it’s like, you can join us at our office hours.

125 00:12:24.890 ⇒ 00:12:29.300 Luke Scorziell: And then, you know, I don’t know if we’ll… Anna’s kind of working on the technical side of that, but…

126 00:12:29.410 ⇒ 00:12:33.809 Luke Scorziell: You can give us your email or whatever and sign up, and then, obviously, then that gives us

127 00:12:34.180 ⇒ 00:12:38.600 Luke Scorziell: something, and then Ryan and I are working on doing a, like.

128 00:12:39.100 ⇒ 00:12:42.720 Luke Scorziell: a 7-day, like, AI education sequence,

129 00:12:42.850 ⇒ 00:12:45.360 Luke Scorziell: That people can sign up for, too, so…

130 00:12:45.740 ⇒ 00:12:55.299 Luke Scorziell: sign up for the office hours, or sign up for that. And then the last, kind of just an idea, too, that I have right now is to build out, like, a…

131 00:12:55.960 ⇒ 00:13:04.809 Luke Scorziell: like, a brain health quiz of, like, what is your company intelligence? So, those three, I think, I expect to give me better data.

132 00:13:05.610 ⇒ 00:13:11.200 Luke Scorziell: Of who’s actually coming in as an MQL, and… and get us, MQLs.

133 00:13:11.520 ⇒ 00:13:12.650 Luke Scorziell: The…

134 00:13:13.300 ⇒ 00:13:23.350 Luke Scorziell: ICP actions, I guess my confusion is just, like, do I track this across, like, the outreach that I’m doing directly to people? Or are we just purely looking at content?

135 00:13:23.350 ⇒ 00:13:24.320 Uttam Kumaran: I feel like, yeah.

136 00:13:25.810 ⇒ 00:13:28.119 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, so I think in that case, then, like.

137 00:13:29.380 ⇒ 00:13:32.680 Luke Scorziell: I’m getting a lot of pings back, especially…

138 00:13:32.980 ⇒ 00:13:36.699 Luke Scorziell: on the agency, content, we just… Yeah, like, identification.

139 00:13:36.700 ⇒ 00:13:38.620 Uttam Kumaran: through marketing content, or it was, like.

140 00:13:38.780 ⇒ 00:13:43.490 Uttam Kumaran: spurred, like, even if you’re, like, you got a text because someone saw something, I think that’s totally, like.

141 00:13:44.480 ⇒ 00:13:46.820 Uttam Kumaran: It totally comes in through funnel, you know?

142 00:13:47.690 ⇒ 00:13:48.310 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

143 00:13:48.610 ⇒ 00:13:51.009 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, I think, I don’t know, I’m kind of…

144 00:13:52.320 ⇒ 00:13:58.120 Luke Scorziell: I guess, skeptical, so to say, that the… marketing…

145 00:13:58.220 ⇒ 00:14:02.140 Luke Scorziell: I don’t know, I feel like it’s helping on recruiting, and I feel like it’s helping with

146 00:14:02.340 ⇒ 00:14:06.710 Luke Scorziell: Warming up people and, like, getting our partners excited, but…

147 00:14:07.060 ⇒ 00:14:12.439 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, I think maybe Robert could chime in too, but, like, I’m not, like, super sold right now that it’s, like.

148 00:14:13.300 ⇒ 00:14:16.439 Luke Scorziell: of, like, a pipeline, or, like, a growing pipeline, as much as, like.

149 00:14:17.410 ⇒ 00:14:19.869 Luke Scorziell: I… I believe we should get a few more.

150 00:14:20.350 ⇒ 00:14:25.270 Luke Scorziell: calls booked from doing that outreach campaign that Rico and Ryan

151 00:14:25.580 ⇒ 00:14:30.459 Luke Scorziell: launched, like, the two yesterday. Like, I… I would imagine if we reach out to 30…

152 00:14:30.870 ⇒ 00:14:33.159 Luke Scorziell: 30-plus people on each of those, we should get.

153 00:14:33.600 ⇒ 00:14:38.159 Luke Scorziell: One or two back, so, that seems more effective.

154 00:14:38.500 ⇒ 00:14:42.549 Luke Scorziell: for getting leads, but I do think not to say that the brand building isn’t important.

155 00:14:42.720 ⇒ 00:14:48.119 Luke Scorziell: So that’s kind of where I would start, I guess, on the OKRs.

156 00:14:48.610 ⇒ 00:14:50.830 Luke Scorziell: People have questions off of that.

157 00:14:52.550 ⇒ 00:14:54.260 Robert Tseng: I didn’t really catch your question for me.

158 00:14:55.890 ⇒ 00:15:01.409 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I guess the question was, like, the… is the… is the LinkedIn and the thing… is that…

159 00:15:02.450 ⇒ 00:15:05.320 Uttam Kumaran: Do we see that as just brand awareness? And therefore.

160 00:15:05.460 ⇒ 00:15:08.589 Uttam Kumaran: we were not expecting it to drive like MQLs.

161 00:15:08.940 ⇒ 00:15:14.329 Uttam Kumaran: Or are we actually, like, okay, maybe, like, we have to keep driving CTAs and, like.

162 00:15:14.760 ⇒ 00:15:21.189 Uttam Kumaran: Because right now, I would say, yes, brand awareness, I would say, is helping recruiting, for sure. It’s helping partnerships, for sure.

163 00:15:23.310 ⇒ 00:15:28.650 Uttam Kumaran: It’s probably helping someone in, like, pricing, but you’re right, like, we’re not… people aren’t, like, clicking the link and, like.

164 00:15:29.110 ⇒ 00:15:31.019 Uttam Kumaran: Getting to the site, you know, so…

165 00:15:33.330 ⇒ 00:15:34.989 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I guess, like…

166 00:15:39.810 ⇒ 00:15:46.730 Robert Tseng: I see, I see what you guys are saying. Like, well, right now, the way it’s worded with, like… okay, just so we’re all looking at the same thing.

167 00:15:49.790 ⇒ 00:15:51.950 Luke Scorziell: I keep forgetting that screen sharing is a thing.

168 00:15:54.940 ⇒ 00:16:00.150 Robert Tseng: this 12 high-intent ICP actions only for, like.

169 00:16:00.680 ⇒ 00:16:13.950 Robert Tseng: SQLs, really. So, I mean, I do care about it for the other… like, recruiting… and partnerships.

170 00:16:14.270 ⇒ 00:16:20.929 Robert Tseng: it’s not reflected here currently. This is purely from, like, our SQLs.

171 00:16:21.130 ⇒ 00:16:28.410 Robert Tseng: our… or… no, not SQL, our… our MQLs, because if you take an ICP, if you take a… okay, well…

172 00:16:28.980 ⇒ 00:16:36.320 Robert Tseng: even if it’s, like, let’s say, let’s just say it’s a… we’ve been calling it high-intent MQL action, it’s more like an MQL action.

173 00:16:37.000 ⇒ 00:16:43.500 Robert Tseng: basically, like, our actions from our content driving MQLs? And, like.

174 00:16:43.820 ⇒ 00:16:48.020 Robert Tseng: I… if… maybe 12 is not the right number, because it’s like…

175 00:16:49.870 ⇒ 00:16:57.629 Robert Tseng: that’s just, like, we backed into that from, you know, if our MQL expectation is, what, like, a 30% of pipeline.

176 00:16:57.630 ⇒ 00:16:58.869 Luke Scorziell: Like, 16, I think?

177 00:16:59.460 ⇒ 00:17:00.250 Luke Scorziell: Oh.

178 00:17:00.250 ⇒ 00:17:07.819 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, this is really probably more like 10, if I were to be… plus the lesson.

179 00:17:08.530 ⇒ 00:17:10.780 Luke Scorziell: I guess my… my confusion is… is…

180 00:17:11.220 ⇒ 00:17:17.760 Luke Scorziell: Inherently, by being an MQL, aren’t they expressing a high-intent action? Like, what’s the difference between

181 00:17:19.390 ⇒ 00:17:23.909 Luke Scorziell: becoming an MQL by submitting your email and contact information, and then…

182 00:17:25.030 ⇒ 00:17:28.649 Luke Scorziell: Like, does this just mean 10 new high… 10 new MQLs per week?

183 00:17:30.150 ⇒ 00:17:35.710 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, like, yeah, these definitions are changing, obviously. I think we,

184 00:17:36.610 ⇒ 00:17:47.869 Robert Tseng: because before, I was very narrow, and like, it had to be ICP. Like, that was the intent of the result. It’s like, is our content getting our ICP to engage with us in a meaningful way? That’s what.

185 00:17:47.870 ⇒ 00:17:48.350 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

186 00:17:48.350 ⇒ 00:18:01.889 Robert Tseng: I’m really trying to say here. Maybe I’m, like, getting away from that now by, like, saying this high intent acting. So I still think that’s… that’s the intent, because if… if it’s… if we’re not doing that, then we’re just, like…

187 00:18:02.500 ⇒ 00:18:06.840 Robert Tseng: making noise to people that, like… okay, and it’s not noise, but we’re just, like.

188 00:18:06.840 ⇒ 00:18:18.659 Uttam Kumaran: So I think, Luke, but Luke, what you’re saying is that LinkedIn Direct, as a channel, is not giving it to you, but, like, people are texting you, like, is that what you’re saying?

189 00:18:18.910 ⇒ 00:18:20.310 Luke Scorziell: I think… But those are all…

190 00:18:20.310 ⇒ 00:18:28.670 Uttam Kumaran: those are all intent actions. Like, if someone… if I run into somebody, and they’re like… they’re like, oh, I saw this thing, I count that.

191 00:18:29.160 ⇒ 00:18:31.210 Uttam Kumaran: Right? Yeah. Versus, like, if they, like.

192 00:18:31.430 ⇒ 00:18:40.069 Uttam Kumaran: did they go through our call-to-action thing? I’m like, maybe not, but that is one channel part of this, and there’s no OKR on that channel, so however you get there, get there.

193 00:18:40.070 ⇒ 00:18:47.249 Luke Scorziell: Well, if it’s just 10 responses to content per week, based… like, because I guess, yeah, the tension that we’re finding…

194 00:18:47.250 ⇒ 00:18:53.480 Robert Tseng: responses. We define this list of what high-intent actions looks like, so they could be…

195 00:18:53.480 ⇒ 00:18:55.199 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, the comments are just from homies.

196 00:18:55.570 ⇒ 00:18:58.979 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And so, like, some of those, it’s like, okay, that’s fine.

197 00:18:59.140 ⇒ 00:19:01.110 Uttam Kumaran: But, like, I wouldn’t count that.

198 00:19:01.260 ⇒ 00:19:02.020 Uttam Kumaran: Right.

199 00:19:02.310 ⇒ 00:19:17.709 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, I guess I just don’t think this is where, like, pipeline is coming from on the sales side, versus, like, maybe it’s helpful overall for recruiting, and so that’s kind of where we slimmed down the amount of content that we’re doing, and that freed us… freed up space this week, too.

200 00:19:20.490 ⇒ 00:19:24.840 Uttam Kumaran: So you still hit it, you just said you didn’t hit it from content. Like, content didn’t drive it.

201 00:19:25.170 ⇒ 00:19:31.029 Luke Scorziell: Yes, yeah, I, like, I feel good about this week. I don’t know that being off-track on this metric is…

202 00:19:31.220 ⇒ 00:19:32.829 Luke Scorziell: It was reflective of that.

203 00:19:34.410 ⇒ 00:19:44.399 Kaela Gallagher: Sorry to interrupt here, but just for this first meeting, would you guys be willing to say what each of these abbreviations mean? And then I promise I’ll never ask again.

204 00:19:44.400 ⇒ 00:19:45.990 Luke Scorziell: No, no, no, go ahead.

205 00:19:45.990 ⇒ 00:19:46.830 Kaela Gallagher: Thank you.

206 00:19:48.800 ⇒ 00:19:51.870 Robert Tseng: Okay, so, I mean, I guess…

207 00:19:52.060 ⇒ 00:20:11.629 Robert Tseng: So, like, an SQL is a sales qualified lead. We consider that somebody who has… and you can look through our sales staff, it’s, like, somebody who has meaningfully engaged with us to the point that we are looking to schedule a call with them,

208 00:20:12.240 ⇒ 00:20:20.769 Robert Tseng: Because they’ve been qualified, like, they’re part of, like, the ideal customer that we’ve defined.

209 00:20:21.050 ⇒ 00:20:39.210 Robert Tseng: And, like, we think that there is an opportunity, like, a real opportunity to sell them on business. A marketing qualified lead is not… is not quite a sales qualified lead. It’s somebody who has the potential to be a sales qualified lead that we engage with through the

210 00:20:39.210 ⇒ 00:20:44.660 Robert Tseng: Like, our content, which is our main marketing strategy, because we’re not…

211 00:20:44.660 ⇒ 00:21:03.930 Robert Tseng: using… we’re not paying… we’re not doing paid ads right now. But yeah, anything around, like, our LinkedIn… it’s mostly LinkedIn, like, direct posts that we do, or partner posts, if partners talk about us, or… I mean, I think those are all kind of, like, marketing channels. But the expectation is that

212 00:21:04.960 ⇒ 00:21:06.610 Robert Tseng: A third?

213 00:21:06.740 ⇒ 00:21:26.319 Robert Tseng: of marketing qualified leads turn into sales-qualified leads, and then once they get to this point, we’re, like, looking at the different stages they’re going through, for them to convert. So, I guess we don’t have it broken down by stage here, but we have, like.

214 00:21:26.410 ⇒ 00:21:44.569 Robert Tseng: you know, I’m looking through, are deals, like, are deals moving? Like, once they’re in this SQL stage, like, are they… how are they moving? Are they stalling? Are we adding new ones? Are they coming from partners? Like, and there’s all these other kind of different cuts that we look at.

215 00:21:44.860 ⇒ 00:21:49.029 Robert Tseng: Whereas, like, this is probably more… This is more qualitative.

216 00:21:49.100 ⇒ 00:22:04.279 Robert Tseng: we don’t have every description of every person that could work with us, but we regularly have these conversations about what’s an ideal, like, client for Brainforge. We have it in different verticals, we have it for different services,

217 00:22:04.310 ⇒ 00:22:12.840 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I think, like, as we define these better, and we… we’re not always going after the same people.

218 00:22:14.510 ⇒ 00:22:33.479 Robert Tseng: Yeah, this is just for us to try to, like, focus on, like, who are we targeting, not just looking at, like, numbers based off of brands and budgets and whatever. Like, are they… do we have a good understanding of who we are aiming at? So, yeah, those are all the different, kind of, components to the sales pipeline.

219 00:22:33.760 ⇒ 00:22:38.890 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, so an MQL would come from, like, just a comment on one of our posts? That could.

220 00:22:38.890 ⇒ 00:22:43.549 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so you would become an MQL if you are…

221 00:22:43.550 ⇒ 00:23:06.939 Robert Tseng: commenting, if you’re signing up for something that we’re hosting, whether it’s a webinar or in-person event, you download, something from our website or from one of our posts that we put out, even track the links. Sometimes we’re not always doing downloadables, like, we’re just, like, sharing stuff that’s, like, published on our blog or a domain. Or, like, if they just, like, straight up text us, like, I think those are all meaningful ways to express

222 00:23:06.940 ⇒ 00:23:12.629 Robert Tseng: intent of engaging with us, and that would qualify someone to become an MQL.

223 00:23:12.770 ⇒ 00:23:16.020 Kaela Gallagher: Okay. Yeah. Thank you. I’ll look into this further later.

224 00:23:16.280 ⇒ 00:23:16.810 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

225 00:23:17.890 ⇒ 00:23:26.880 Robert Tseng: However, like, there’s all this visitor engagement, so this is, like, just people who view. Viewing is not… does not automatically mean you’re an MQL, like, I…

226 00:23:26.880 ⇒ 00:23:27.590 Kaela Gallagher: Yum.

227 00:23:27.590 ⇒ 00:23:42.989 Robert Tseng: yeah, that’s, like, too passive. It doesn’t really express intent. And then, like, if you’re commenting, it also… it’s not… I don’t think… I don’t think commenting automatically means that you are expressing intent, because people just, like… I think comments are just… are too noisy.

228 00:23:43.280 ⇒ 00:23:45.189 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah. Okay, cool.

229 00:23:45.700 ⇒ 00:23:46.240 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

230 00:23:50.320 ⇒ 00:23:57.050 Luke Scorziell: I don’t know if this is a place to start arguing with these things, but I’m… maybe now that I’ve been around longer, I don’t know, I’m like…

231 00:23:57.270 ⇒ 00:23:59.289 Luke Scorziell: I think it’s a lot to…

232 00:23:59.600 ⇒ 00:24:05.840 Luke Scorziell: Or just kind of… it’s like different… I guess it’s different priorities, but in my mind, I just think about, okay, is this person gonna turn into…

233 00:24:06.410 ⇒ 00:24:08.020 Luke Scorziell: A sale, and then move them.

234 00:24:08.210 ⇒ 00:24:09.450 Luke Scorziell: along… Yeah, I mean, mine…

235 00:24:09.450 ⇒ 00:24:13.929 Uttam Kumaran: My take is, like, Right now, the numbers are set, hit the number.

236 00:24:14.140 ⇒ 00:24:16.100 Uttam Kumaran: I think when we go into March.

237 00:24:16.460 ⇒ 00:24:19.260 Uttam Kumaran: or we go to… after March, we’ll be like.

238 00:24:19.560 ⇒ 00:24:22.009 Uttam Kumaran: Was that actually, like, what we needed to do?

239 00:24:22.260 ⇒ 00:24:25.720 Uttam Kumaran: because you can’t do both, we’re gonna keep adjusting, so I think, like.

240 00:24:25.880 ⇒ 00:24:37.249 Uttam Kumaran: let’s hit them. If we end up with, like, all green and our company sucks, then, okay, fine. But, like, I feel like… I’m like, let’s just get them green, and then if we’re like, yo, that was a low bar.

241 00:24:37.430 ⇒ 00:24:41.289 Uttam Kumaran: Or, like, clearly, like, we’re blowing past that, like, we should.

242 00:24:41.390 ⇒ 00:24:44.699 Uttam Kumaran: It’s, like, kind of my take about OKR adjustment.

243 00:24:45.370 ⇒ 00:24:46.309 Uttam Kumaran: You know?

244 00:24:46.670 ⇒ 00:24:47.500 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

245 00:24:47.500 ⇒ 00:24:49.960 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, because it seems like MQLs…

246 00:24:50.110 ⇒ 00:24:55.179 Luke Scorziell: MQLs matter, the quality of them matters, and then people engaging. So, to me, it’s, like, 3 main things.

247 00:24:55.180 ⇒ 00:24:59.529 Uttam Kumaran: However it happens, like, I would say maybe next quarter we carve out a LinkedIn channel.

248 00:24:59.670 ⇒ 00:25:03.699 Uttam Kumaran: or whatever, but, like, I think however it happens, it happens. So it’s up to you to be like.

249 00:25:03.870 ⇒ 00:25:06.850 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, does LinkedIn… does content matter? Does this matter?

250 00:25:06.990 ⇒ 00:25:12.139 Uttam Kumaran: And then we have OKRs that sort of fight with each other a little bit, right? To bring that balance.

251 00:25:12.820 ⇒ 00:25:16.529 Uttam Kumaran: Because then you could technically be like, oh, I’m just gonna turn off LinkedIn.

252 00:25:16.900 ⇒ 00:25:19.690 Uttam Kumaran: But then we also have, like, your team has goals on…

253 00:25:20.040 ⇒ 00:25:25.939 Uttam Kumaran: posting and things like that, so… but I think going into the next quarter, we’ll all collaborate on the goals, you know.

254 00:25:26.340 ⇒ 00:25:28.160 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, that’s helpful.

255 00:25:28.350 ⇒ 00:25:43.190 Robert Tseng: I tried not to limit us in terms of the vehicle for how these are done. Like, I’m not saying, like, content… yeah, number of posts isn’t here. Like, that’s intentional. It’s because, like, I think there are many ways to drive high intent ICP actions.

256 00:25:43.190 ⇒ 00:26:02.029 Robert Tseng: like, even Hannah’s, like, event from just, like, the Austin thing that I was like, hey, like, just throw Luma together. She made it on Monday, we sent out invites. Utah and I have been inviting our network, we have around 10 people there already. That’s 10 sign-ups. Not all of them are ICP, but at least half of them are. Like, that’s also us, like, kind of.

257 00:26:02.030 ⇒ 00:26:07.099 Uttam Kumaran: Or they’re Luke, they’re, like, one… one basically, hey, can you intro me to XYZ away from…

258 00:26:07.220 ⇒ 00:26:08.590 Uttam Kumaran: You know? Yeah.

259 00:26:09.050 ⇒ 00:26:15.079 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so, like, that’s not… it’s not all… I mean, yeah, it’s not limited to just from content,

260 00:26:15.260 ⇒ 00:26:15.940 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

261 00:26:19.010 ⇒ 00:26:27.530 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I guess I didn’t end up filling this in, so, I guess numbers will show in the WBR, but, like.

262 00:26:28.310 ⇒ 00:26:33.929 Robert Tseng: SQL to discovery rate, 30%. That’s not… that did not happen.

263 00:26:34.180 ⇒ 00:26:42.179 Robert Tseng: And, active deals greater than 40 days, that is no longer a problem. So…

264 00:26:42.300 ⇒ 00:26:47.620 Robert Tseng: As far as, like, why here, I think…

265 00:26:48.830 ⇒ 00:26:53.310 Robert Tseng: I think… I think it’s just… we didn’t… if I look here…

266 00:26:53.590 ⇒ 00:26:57.979 Robert Tseng: Number of SQLs, new SQLs.

267 00:26:59.400 ⇒ 00:27:04.220 Robert Tseng: One, oh, we’re talking about… okay, well…

268 00:27:04.620 ⇒ 00:27:07.650 Robert Tseng: I don’t think it’s been won. I think it… I think I’m…

269 00:27:08.910 ⇒ 00:27:26.319 Robert Tseng: Was this actually 10 and 1? The fact that I can’t rely on this yet is just so frustrating to me. Okay, I don’t actually think this is, like, 10 and 1. I feel like this is closer to, like… I’m just gonna say it’s, like, 5 and 5, or 6 and 6, or something. So, 5 new SQLs, and then meetings taken…

270 00:27:26.460 ⇒ 00:27:34.560 Robert Tseng: 14… okay, I guess this is not… this is including Utam and Luke as well. I mean, in that case, if I… out of 5,

271 00:27:34.800 ⇒ 00:27:38.490 Robert Tseng: new SQLs did more than

272 00:27:38.830 ⇒ 00:27:45.890 Robert Tseng: one, like, book meetings, I think that’s actually true. So, never mind, I think I take that back. I think this should be on track.

273 00:27:47.320 ⇒ 00:28:03.849 Robert Tseng: But I guess, like, for my part, what I wanted to share was more on the… like, my day was doing a monthly business review, but I guess we can go through this OKR thing first before I go… before I go to my piece. I’ll just keep it simple with my… my two, OKRs.

274 00:28:04.160 ⇒ 00:28:04.790 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

275 00:28:04.790 ⇒ 00:28:05.330 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

276 00:28:07.870 ⇒ 00:28:18.460 Robert Tseng: Okay, and then I collapsed as a section, so we can just go through all the business as usual ones, and if we don’t have time, we’re just… we’ll skip the aspirational ones. You guys aren’t really held to these anyway, for at least for now.

277 00:28:20.280 ⇒ 00:28:22.580 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so,

278 00:28:24.610 ⇒ 00:28:30.879 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I guess, I mean, before we go, I guess, do we want to talk about, like, on sales and marketing, like, changes for next month?

279 00:28:31.760 ⇒ 00:28:36.560 Uttam Kumaran: like, I think basically you guys went through, like, okay, well, you kind of went… you kind of focused on, like.

280 00:28:37.000 ⇒ 00:28:40.550 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, I think… think about, like, good, not so good.

281 00:28:40.750 ⇒ 00:28:42.720 Uttam Kumaran: What’s gonna, like, what’s next month?

282 00:28:43.550 ⇒ 00:28:47.650 Robert Tseng: Okay, well then let’s look at the monthly view. So this is the monthly business review, so…

283 00:28:47.970 ⇒ 00:29:02.689 Robert Tseng: if you can see, like, we added… this is average weekly SQL pipeline, so I think, yeah, we definitely filled pipeline more, booked a lot more meetings, like, this is more closer to the capacity that I feel like we should be at.

284 00:29:02.990 ⇒ 00:29:05.590 Robert Tseng: I feel like we’re pretty full on meetings right now.

285 00:29:05.850 ⇒ 00:29:13.979 Robert Tseng: We just need to drive the quality of the meetings now. We sent about 10 proposals, but we didn’t really close many deals this, this, this month. This was, like.

286 00:29:14.540 ⇒ 00:29:19.880 Robert Tseng: probably all-time worst month in terms of deals closed, so…

287 00:29:19.880 ⇒ 00:29:25.110 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I lost, like, a couple that I thought were gonna work, and yeah.

288 00:29:25.110 ⇒ 00:29:37.230 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so this is abnormal for us, like, I feel like we’re usually better at, like, you know, 20-25% close rate on the previous sheet, but yeah, this month, we just didn’t do a good job of closing, for various reasons.

289 00:29:37.430 ⇒ 00:29:41.669 Robert Tseng: And then… but, you know, on the plus side, like, our average

290 00:29:42.010 ⇒ 00:29:44.190 Robert Tseng: Oh, Rico, you just added this in?

291 00:29:45.020 ⇒ 00:29:45.680 Rico Rejoso: Yep.

292 00:29:45.830 ⇒ 00:30:02.820 Robert Tseng: Oh, sweet. Okay, so basically, I know this is a lot. I had to, like, go through a couple iterations with Rico, but basically what this is, is, like, looking at all of our total contracts, just, like, a history of Brainforge. What is our total contract value, and what’s the average? It’s, like.

293 00:30:02.830 ⇒ 00:30:10.549 Robert Tseng: around this number. So, I mean, obviously, some of our newer deals are reflecting more than that.

294 00:30:10.570 ⇒ 00:30:13.569 Robert Tseng: Wait, this is total, not monthly, you said, Rico?

295 00:30:14.150 ⇒ 00:30:16.579 Rico Rejoso: Yep, from 2024 to 2026.

296 00:30:16.580 ⇒ 00:30:29.239 Robert Tseng: Okay, fine. I mean, that makes sense. 2024 is smaller, so… Okay, and so, like, yeah, this is, like, all time, our average monthly contract value was, like, about $14, 000,$ 14,000 in a month.

297 00:30:29.510 ⇒ 00:30:45.490 Robert Tseng: of our current active deals, it’s closer to 30, so obviously, like, we’re… that means that we’re… the deals that we’re getting are… are bigger than they were before, that’s basically what your takeaway is. And then, like, yeah, in the past 3 months, we’re consistently around, like, this… around this number, so…

298 00:30:45.490 ⇒ 00:30:52.680 Robert Tseng: I guess, like, the takeaway here, which I think was one of the assumptions that I had in the WBR, is that

299 00:30:52.680 ⇒ 00:31:06.639 Robert Tseng: yeah, our average monthly con… yeah, like, when we’re… when we’re, scoring leads and, like, trying to, like, project how… like, what… what the value… what their value is in our pipeline, I mean, 30K…

300 00:31:06.640 ⇒ 00:31:12.939 Robert Tseng: Like, we made a conscious effort to bump that number up to, like, around $30K a month.

301 00:31:12.940 ⇒ 00:31:37.250 Robert Tseng: deals, at around 3 months. This is, like, slightly more than 3 months. So, by doing that, like, our overall, like, contract value is increasing, but we’re closing at a lower rate, and, like, I mean, yeah, so I think those… these are some of the trade-offs that I think, with more time, we’ll get to see. Like, is this actually where we want to be at? Like, is this a healthy mix for our current business that, like, our average

302 00:31:37.250 ⇒ 00:31:46.190 Robert Tseng: track, our average deal size is, like, about $30K a month. I don’t know today, but I think that’s, that’s the view that I’m trying to paint here.

303 00:31:46.890 ⇒ 00:31:50.240 Robert Tseng: Any questions on, like, that mix here?

304 00:31:53.200 ⇒ 00:31:57.030 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so benchmarking against all time, this is kind of where we’re actively at. And then, like…

305 00:31:57.030 ⇒ 00:32:06.670 Luke Scorziell: I don’t know if you didn’t want to go into it. I don’t know if you want to go into it now, but were there… what were some of the reasons that you were suspecting, like, we didn’t close as much this month?

306 00:32:07.490 ⇒ 00:32:16.349 Robert Tseng: Yeah, sure, we could… I think it’s because, like, we’re… we’re asking for more. I think because we, like, consciously raised our prices, like, that’s… it’s where…

307 00:32:16.350 ⇒ 00:32:27.800 Robert Tseng: where we’re having a harder time closing them. There are certain types… there are certain service lines that we’re just losing the business now. One example is, like, product analytics was a lot easier to close when it was under 10K a month.

308 00:32:27.800 ⇒ 00:32:32.250 Robert Tseng: But now that, like, we’re trying to push… push the… every… we try to just…

309 00:32:32.250 ⇒ 00:32:46.640 Robert Tseng: raise the floor on all the services. I think we did it in, like, too much of a blanket way that, like, there are certain service lines that are just not gonna hit that price point from the start, and we, like, didn’t, like, you know, we just…

310 00:32:46.720 ⇒ 00:32:47.430 Robert Tseng: But, yeah.

311 00:32:47.430 ⇒ 00:32:52.099 Uttam Kumaran: That was also, like, I take… I mean, I take credit over, like, really pushing it, because…

312 00:32:52.240 ⇒ 00:32:56.400 Uttam Kumaran: I think, like, if you were to even it out, yes, like, I think we lost some.

313 00:32:56.600 ⇒ 00:32:58.289 Uttam Kumaran: But we need the money.

314 00:32:58.560 ⇒ 00:32:59.700 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

315 00:32:59.880 ⇒ 00:33:03.459 Uttam Kumaran: And so, like, I’m not as… like, I think…

316 00:33:03.640 ⇒ 00:33:23.269 Uttam Kumaran: I would rather start higher and come down, especially because some of the clients that we did get, like CES, for example, you pricing it that way, and us getting that deal, like, is great. A huge win, and that was worth 5 some of these other things, you know? So, element we’re gonna see, it looks like something… it looks like it’ll shake out.

317 00:33:23.320 ⇒ 00:33:24.990 Uttam Kumaran: I, you know, and so…

318 00:33:25.370 ⇒ 00:33:44.279 Uttam Kumaran: I think now, also, this is where, like, recruiting and delivery’s job is to enable you to sell some of those low-cost offerings at a healthy margin, or at least a margin we’re okay with. So you propose, sort of, like, the 1, 3, 5K, like, audits or two-week things. Well, I’m gonna… I’m gonna… I’ll get to deliver on that.

319 00:33:44.410 ⇒ 00:34:02.680 Uttam Kumaran: I just think we were pitching a lot for a little, but if we’re pitching a little for a little, then I’m, like, I’m more game, and I think, like, I’m more like, okay, how can Kayla and I… how can… how can Kayla and I make sure we have the resourcing, and then how can I, on the delivery side, make sure our, like, delivery of that is super, super tight, you know?

320 00:34:02.700 ⇒ 00:34:04.659 Uttam Kumaran: like, we’re leaning towards that Google…

321 00:34:04.760 ⇒ 00:34:07.859 Uttam Kumaran: thing, you know, remember that Google Spreadsheet type of thing?

322 00:34:08.230 ⇒ 00:34:08.840 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

323 00:34:09.040 ⇒ 00:34:14.309 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, I think… I think those are all… I think that’s… that’s all… that’s all fair. So,

324 00:34:14.620 ⇒ 00:34:16.459 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, by…

325 00:34:16.530 ⇒ 00:34:24.889 Robert Tseng: quickly, like, getting rejected or, like, moving on from some of the smaller deals, we did, with our limited time, Utem and I spent more time on

326 00:34:24.909 ⇒ 00:34:40.800 Robert Tseng: pitching the bigger deals. And we’re getting a different sales cycle and pushback negotiation to it, like, you know, like, Element is, like, a $750,000 deal. Like, it’s… I didn’t expect it to be, like, one iteration, and then, like, they just sign off on it.

327 00:34:40.969 ⇒ 00:34:56.849 Robert Tseng: we’re getting calls today, they’re asking us to, like, kind of do this dance, or like, oh, no, we’re only willing to pay up to $500, so \dots b u t, l ik e, I^{'} d r a t h er pl a y w i t h$ 500,000 to $700, 000 t han, l ik e, w ha t e v er,$ 5,000 to $15K. So, like, I think that’s… that’s,

328 00:34:56.850 ⇒ 00:35:01.210 Robert Tseng: I think that’s just, like, a shift in, like, how we’re spending our sales time.

329 00:35:01.310 ⇒ 00:35:17.920 Robert Tseng: This thing we haven’t really spent much talking about, which I’m not fully ready to kind of show, but I guess, like, unfactored pipeline is pretty straightforward. This is just, like, the pipeline that we recognize. Every deal, we expect off of, like, they close the same. But what… how are we actually…

330 00:35:17.920 ⇒ 00:35:29.830 Robert Tseng: doing at closing, like, percentages at closing it, closing the deals. It looks pretty noisy right now. I want to look at more of, like, a 3-6 month historical look back, so I might have to do a separate analysis, but…

331 00:35:29.980 ⇒ 00:35:47.489 Robert Tseng: I guess, like, the intent here is that we should find that, like, deals that are in earlier stages, they close at a lower rate than those that are in late stages. So, that’s not fully what the story is saying right now. I might have done this calculation incorrectly, so I’m not gonna spend too much time on it this month, but…

332 00:35:47.490 ⇒ 00:35:53.929 Robert Tseng: by next month, I think my goal is to be able to give this group an idea of, like.

333 00:35:54.620 ⇒ 00:36:00.000 Robert Tseng: you know, what’s the… like, why do we care about moving deals along in the cycle? It’s because

334 00:36:00.400 ⇒ 00:36:19.700 Robert Tseng: if they stay stuck in a stage, they’ll be at a lower probability. So the more that we can send nudge messages and, like, the whole thing that Sam is building for Rico to, like, be able to help follow up on leads, if we’re able to push deals through the pipeline, get them to mid-stage or later stage.

335 00:36:19.700 ⇒ 00:36:37.619 Robert Tseng: like, our chances of winning that deal are way higher than them staying in the early stages. So, that’s kind of, like, the case that I’m trying to build with this whole, like, factored, unfactored pipeline view. Like, the math’s just not, like, fully working out right now, so I’m not gonna spend much time on it this month.

336 00:36:37.640 ⇒ 00:36:42.769 Robert Tseng: I think this was plenty to take away from, like, our monthly overview.

337 00:36:43.050 ⇒ 00:36:43.640 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

338 00:36:43.640 ⇒ 00:36:44.170 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

339 00:36:46.880 ⇒ 00:36:49.530 Luke Scorziell: What is the difference between late stage, or the different stages?

340 00:36:50.680 ⇒ 00:36:56.930 Robert Tseng: Well, I don’t think this is true. Like, I think I just did this math wrong. So, I think…

341 00:36:58.210 ⇒ 00:36:59.830 Robert Tseng: I think this is, like…

342 00:37:00.110 ⇒ 00:37:03.750 Uttam Kumaran: So of the people that got into… that got that far, how many finish?

343 00:37:03.750 ⇒ 00:37:04.340 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

344 00:37:05.280 ⇒ 00:37:08.769 Uttam Kumaran: It’s like, oh, you made it, like, a quarter mile of the race?

345 00:37:09.080 ⇒ 00:37:17.130 Uttam Kumaran: We should be like, okay, you made a quarter mile, you’re probably hitting, like, 20%, and then made it halfway, should be 50, you made a third of the way.

346 00:37:17.510 ⇒ 00:37:20.590 Uttam Kumaran: Like, we should be seeing a lot higher.

347 00:37:21.200 ⇒ 00:37:25.439 Uttam Kumaran: And then there’s, like, kind of the math, right? Like, so that way we’re, like.

348 00:37:25.730 ⇒ 00:37:32.529 Uttam Kumaran: it’s sort of like a funnel. We know that, like, if we could just get them to the midpoint, like, their odds increase, right? And so we sort of do that.

349 00:37:32.670 ⇒ 00:37:41.199 Robert Tseng: Yeah. What’s missing in this equation is, I think when Rico pulled it, like, which he did it the way I said it, like, it… we should really be looking at

350 00:37:41.300 ⇒ 00:37:52.709 Robert Tseng: early stage in the same time period. We need to, like, do an apples-to-apples comparison. This is just straight up, like, everybody that’s in these stages right now, which is not the right way to calculate it. So, it’s like…

351 00:37:52.710 ⇒ 00:38:08.520 Robert Tseng: somebody who entered early stage 2 weeks ago versus, like, somebody who entered early stage today, they have two weeks. You know, those periods should be… you need to be able to compare those. And, I don’t think that’s being reflected in this right now, so I don’t think this number… I don’t think this math makes sense.

352 00:38:09.500 ⇒ 00:38:23.099 Robert Tseng: But anyway, like, I… that’s… yeah, that’s… but the way that Utam described it is basically how we should be thinking about it. I don’t know if it’s really, like, 20%, 30%, whatever, like, yet, but, like, that’s… that’s kind of what we’re trying to get to.

353 00:38:24.830 ⇒ 00:38:27.270 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, maybe I can talk about partnerships?

354 00:38:27.270 ⇒ 00:38:27.900 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

355 00:38:28.870 ⇒ 00:38:36.629 Uttam Kumaran: So, the two OKRs are, 50% active, SQL’s partner source, 70% of partner source leads.

356 00:38:36.740 ⇒ 00:38:39.420 Uttam Kumaran: So, I think,

357 00:38:40.910 ⇒ 00:38:59.309 Uttam Kumaran: I think we’re… so, on track is what I’m trying to hit, so I think we are on track on both. Last time we talked, I said that I am working on Snowflake. I did good this week, and, like, did… like, I’m actively talking to 3 account executives, which… and that’s just sort of, like, out of, like.

358 00:38:59.480 ⇒ 00:39:09.260 Uttam Kumaran: convenience, like, we haven’t reached out to any account executives, and that’s just at Snowflake, so we even haven’t even gone so deep on Omni yet, so I feel confident

359 00:39:09.390 ⇒ 00:39:16.760 Uttam Kumaran: that not only am I learning, like, what they want to hear, the time it takes for me to prepare that meeting, as I basically automated a lot of that.

360 00:39:16.930 ⇒ 00:39:28.640 Uttam Kumaran: So, I feel good. I mean, roughly, the problem, the bottleneck here is gonna be time. Like, those are all meetings with salespeople. Like, can’t… I have to at least call them once a week.

361 00:39:29.060 ⇒ 00:39:34.410 Uttam Kumaran: So, that’s that. And it’s like… yeah, so, yeah.

362 00:39:34.410 ⇒ 00:39:46.549 Robert Tseng: One call-out is high bar, but, like, yeah, 50% is really high, but we’re average 40, 40% over the past month, so… Oh, okay. I don’t know, but maybe we are not on track yet.

363 00:39:46.550 ⇒ 00:39:47.290 Uttam Kumaran: Oh!

364 00:39:47.290 ⇒ 00:39:47.820 Robert Tseng: Okay.

365 00:39:47.820 ⇒ 00:39:48.559 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay, okay.

366 00:39:48.560 ⇒ 00:39:48.920 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

367 00:39:48.920 ⇒ 00:39:50.719 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, you can do off-track, do off-track.

368 00:39:50.720 ⇒ 00:39:52.640 Robert Tseng: Okay, we’re sorry, we’re all fine.

369 00:39:52.640 ⇒ 00:39:57.619 Uttam Kumaran: I say… I say on track in that, like, I… I am getting… I’m closer than I was…

370 00:39:57.820 ⇒ 00:40:02.890 Uttam Kumaran: last week, but I guess you can… I can… you can see how it looks like next week.

371 00:40:02.890 ⇒ 00:40:03.799 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I don’t mind.

372 00:40:04.340 ⇒ 00:40:08.619 Uttam Kumaran: Meaning, like, I am probably 2 more meetings away from all 3 of those AEs from.

373 00:40:08.620 ⇒ 00:40:09.400 Robert Tseng: Give me that.

374 00:40:09.400 ⇒ 00:40:20.579 Uttam Kumaran: lead list, right? So, in that sense, like, okay, so that’s one thing, I think, doing better. 70% of partner source leads, yeah, totally. I’m, like, not… I’ve really hammered to them

375 00:40:20.900 ⇒ 00:40:26.019 Uttam Kumaran: I’m, in fact, I’m, like, going even further to say, like, we need to work on the bigger ones, like, let… so…

376 00:40:26.020 ⇒ 00:40:30.140 Robert Tseng: literally share… doing account mapping and sharing lead lists and stuff, so, like, yeah, definitely.

377 00:40:30.140 ⇒ 00:40:47.040 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and I’m really using, Luke, your marketing stuff, I’m using, like, our case studies to really push… elevate our conversations with these guys, and I’m not talk… I’m truly trying hard to not help these salespeople go after, like, small folks. I’m trying to hit the higher end of whatever their band is, so…

378 00:40:47.450 ⇒ 00:40:55.290 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, we don’t… I feel like of the partner source leads that we are going to get, they will fit the ICP.

379 00:40:55.640 ⇒ 00:40:59.509 Uttam Kumaran: And then the ones that we have gone totally fit.

380 00:41:00.240 ⇒ 00:41:01.519 Luke Scorziell: What kind of leads are they giving you?

381 00:41:01.830 ⇒ 00:41:06.449 Luke Scorziell: Or, like, what do they look like? They’re giving me, like, it’s like, it’s literally like a sheet of, like.

382 00:41:07.060 ⇒ 00:41:09.139 Uttam Kumaran: It’s like a sheet of 800 companies.

383 00:41:09.290 ⇒ 00:41:11.670 Uttam Kumaran: And they’re like, help me get into these.

384 00:41:12.170 ⇒ 00:41:15.319 Uttam Kumaran: Which you may be like, oh, sick, but it’s actually, like…

385 00:41:16.500 ⇒ 00:41:21.050 Uttam Kumaran: I have to help them sell those, so I have to do their job for them.

386 00:41:21.800 ⇒ 00:41:22.350 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

387 00:41:22.350 ⇒ 00:41:30.710 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t mind. I think I could… I easily can sell Snowflake, which is why they work with us, because they see me and they’re like, oh my god, like…

388 00:41:31.270 ⇒ 00:41:41.139 Uttam Kumaran: we’re gonna… this guy’s gonna sell all this, the whole… this entire thing for me. I’m like, yes, I will, please, just, like, let me help you, give me all your list. So…

389 00:41:41.140 ⇒ 00:41:45.820 Luke Scorziell: But we should… we should align on that, too, because we could start making content specifically for…

390 00:41:45.820 ⇒ 00:41:53.200 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and that’s what, that’s exactly what Scott… well, two things, like, we got the advice that we should market ourselves as super partner-friendly.

391 00:41:53.660 ⇒ 00:41:58.350 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, how… we should… we should probably do something on why we work really, really well with…

392 00:41:58.550 ⇒ 00:42:07.310 Uttam Kumaran: Snowflake and Omni, and, like, Snowflake in particular, because every time I talk to a Snowflake person, that company’s massive, so they’re like a… they’re like a new person.

393 00:42:07.530 ⇒ 00:42:12.170 Uttam Kumaran: So I’m talking to, like, that company for the first time every, every, like, time I’m talking to somebody.

394 00:42:12.400 ⇒ 00:42:25.669 Uttam Kumaran: So, they don’t care that, like, Joe and the other team is talking… they’re like, I don’t know Joe. Well, Omni’s different. Omni’s, like, a tight team. So, these guys, we have to come across, like, we love Snowflake. Every time I don’t want to re-explain myself.

395 00:42:26.240 ⇒ 00:42:30.850 Uttam Kumaran: So maybe we can talk about that. But, like, overall, I feel better this week than I did…

396 00:42:31.680 ⇒ 00:42:39.979 Uttam Kumaran: We still only have the capacity for two of these, though. And so, on the flip side, I think, like, we kind of fumbled the mix panel thing, which, like.

397 00:42:40.120 ⇒ 00:42:41.400 Uttam Kumaran: Mix of them.

398 00:42:41.730 ⇒ 00:42:43.399 Uttam Kumaran: I think mix of us.

399 00:42:45.130 ⇒ 00:42:50.299 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, like, I don’t want… I wonder even what’s going on in that company, but, like, whatever.

400 00:42:52.650 ⇒ 00:42:57.999 Uttam Kumaran: I didn’t do any outward AE outreach, like, I didn’t message any AEs and be like, let’s do this.

401 00:42:58.540 ⇒ 00:43:13.910 Uttam Kumaran: And then, like, I need to continue to just, like, focus on the gold guys, so, like, I basically kind of nixed… like, David loves to talk to us, because we are good at what we do, and he’s trying to do what we’re doing for other people, which is leech, although he’s a friend of mine. So, I just am, like.

402 00:43:14.150 ⇒ 00:43:17.639 Uttam Kumaran: I’m convincing myself to do the thing which is like, yo.

403 00:43:18.000 ⇒ 00:43:27.790 Uttam Kumaran: trying to say in nice terms, like, you’re not a priority. I have to just do that for more. I totally told that to Robert. And so Robert, I think this month, he’s basically gonna take some of the, like, silvers.

404 00:43:27.920 ⇒ 00:43:31.079 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, keep progressing, so I can just really, like.

405 00:43:31.390 ⇒ 00:43:36.139 Uttam Kumaran: I’m like, I need to call Snowflake people and text them and go become friends every single day.

406 00:43:36.430 ⇒ 00:43:39.279 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, go super, super all-in.

407 00:43:39.630 ⇒ 00:43:48.950 Uttam Kumaran: because I’m also figuring out what it takes to do that, and I’m, like, basically automating, like, non-stop, whatever it takes to do that call, so…

408 00:43:49.670 ⇒ 00:43:59.289 Uttam Kumaran: That’s probably my only piece there. I think probably, Luke, the only change in my AORs around partnership is that maybe you can be, like, the listed backup on things.

409 00:43:59.770 ⇒ 00:44:03.789 Luke Scorziell: I don’t think there’s anyone else in the company apart from Robert, that can do that.

410 00:44:03.870 ⇒ 00:44:06.979 Uttam Kumaran: But I think if you can start to see how I’m doing partnerships.

411 00:44:07.430 ⇒ 00:44:14.120 Uttam Kumaran: you can just flip-flop between, like, partner or marketing, right? And so, that’s the only change to the AORs that I said.

412 00:44:17.170 ⇒ 00:44:19.540 Luke Scorziell: I mean, that sounds good. I got my shot on the call.

413 00:44:19.680 ⇒ 00:44:20.970 Luke Scorziell: with Mother, like, today.

414 00:44:20.970 ⇒ 00:44:23.070 Uttam Kumaran: I know, I wanted to go that…

415 00:44:23.070 ⇒ 00:44:25.089 Luke Scorziell: No, that’s supposed to… and then there…

416 00:44:25.680 ⇒ 00:44:31.069 Luke Scorziell: I was… I mean, Hannah and I prepped before, but I didn’t really know where I was going, and then he’s just like, alright, Luke, like.

417 00:44:31.230 ⇒ 00:44:37.780 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, can you just kind of take us through this whole thing? I was, like, totally not expecting to lead this meeting, but…

418 00:44:38.120 ⇒ 00:44:39.079 Uttam Kumaran: Did it work out?

419 00:44:39.080 ⇒ 00:44:42.319 Luke Scorziell: Sure, yeah, I had cursor pulled up, and then I was like…

420 00:44:42.690 ⇒ 00:44:52.640 Luke Scorziell: I mean, I… it just was, yeah, it worked out. I think they were… yeah, I sent the message in the channel, but it was… it was funny, so I was just like…

421 00:44:52.930 ⇒ 00:44:55.310 Luke Scorziell: Okay, like, we’re doing this right now.

422 00:44:55.310 ⇒ 00:45:13.300 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, imagine that being all of your meetings for the last two years, like, that’s how I feel. So, at least now you’re getting to… now you’re getting to feel what it takes. Imagine showing up to every meeting being like, where am I? Okay.

423 00:45:13.810 ⇒ 00:45:14.910 Uttam Kumaran: Let me talk about…

424 00:45:14.910 ⇒ 00:45:15.630 Luke Scorziell: Good enough.

425 00:45:15.630 ⇒ 00:45:18.980 Uttam Kumaran: Let me talk about, delivery.

426 00:45:19.110 ⇒ 00:45:38.180 Uttam Kumaran: So, I mean, one good thing is, like, we’re… our margins are really good. There is a downside to that, but our margins are really good. I think I’ve done a really good job alongside Clarence at, like, enabling our CSOs. Like, I’m seeing really, really tremendous growth in these individuals who previously we just thought they were engineers. They’re actually able to sell.

427 00:45:38.360 ⇒ 00:45:47.919 Uttam Kumaran: In fact, I had a wonderful message from Demi, because I was like, hey, do you want me to come to this Magic Spoon thing? Like, can you get this over the line? He’s like, no, no, no, I gotta, like, go make us some money elsewhere.

428 00:45:48.040 ⇒ 00:45:49.609 Uttam Kumaran: And I was like, this is, like…

429 00:45:49.850 ⇒ 00:45:52.500 Uttam Kumaran: Exactly it. I was, like, super, super hyped.

430 00:45:52.750 ⇒ 00:45:57.790 Uttam Kumaran: So, I think him, Greg, Pranav are all getting better.

431 00:45:58.060 ⇒ 00:45:59.570 Uttam Kumaran: I… I think, like.

432 00:46:00.030 ⇒ 00:46:06.190 Uttam Kumaran: I still want to continue that rate, and so, like, having Clarence share anecdotes, having them come…

433 00:46:06.340 ⇒ 00:46:11.910 Uttam Kumaran: come with us to sell. So my one ask for sales for you guys is, like, bring one of those folks alongside you.

434 00:46:12.020 ⇒ 00:46:14.079 Uttam Kumaran: If you’re, like, post-disco?

435 00:46:14.350 ⇒ 00:46:20.740 Uttam Kumaran: Because it’s just gonna help us be able to hand it off faster and help them get more integrated. All of them are super, super hungry.

436 00:46:21.020 ⇒ 00:46:26.359 Uttam Kumaran: And I would like for all of them to get the incentive, you know? So, in that sense, I think we did good.

437 00:46:27.090 ⇒ 00:46:32.650 Uttam Kumaran: Bryle also ramped up super, super well. I think we took a risk.

438 00:46:32.830 ⇒ 00:46:34.589 Uttam Kumaran: In being, like.

439 00:46:35.520 ⇒ 00:46:40.790 Uttam Kumaran: like, I think we took a risk in the way we approached it, and he actually stepped up to the challenge, and is like.

440 00:46:41.220 ⇒ 00:46:47.740 Uttam Kumaran: Kind of the first person who is, like, like, like, 98% AI day-to-day.

441 00:46:47.840 ⇒ 00:47:02.849 Uttam Kumaran: And I think, like, maybe I’ll pause there. I know, Robert, you talked to him, I don’t know, Kayla, like, everybody here has sort of talked to him. I’m like, want to hear your reflection, and, like, what… if it challenged you to think about your workflows differently, if it challenged… if it, like, opened your eyes to something, like, yeah.

442 00:47:03.210 ⇒ 00:47:09.929 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I already told him that, like, I showed him the OKR sheet, and I walked him through, like, the stuff of delivery ops, and I was like.

443 00:47:10.080 ⇒ 00:47:23.800 Robert Tseng: hey, like, I want to see your name here, you know, next. Like, we’re not gonna put that on you yet, you just started two weeks in, but, like, you know, he… and he’s like, we walked through each of these, and I try to get… pick his brain on, like, what he… where he wants, like, which ones, like.

444 00:47:23.800 ⇒ 00:47:34.219 Robert Tseng: what he’s really excited about? Yeah, I think he really wants to… wants to help kind of be in this position where he’s, like, helping us think about, like, helping us with

445 00:47:34.730 ⇒ 00:47:36.540 Robert Tseng: like…

446 00:47:37.020 ⇒ 00:47:57.550 Robert Tseng: team utilization. So, like, I think that’s… I’m great… I’m glad that that’s something that really, like, caught his eye, like, I… and, yeah, I mean, as far as, like, his workflow, I think it’s great. I think he’s… he’s really trusting the infrastructure that we built, and just willing to take… just to try, and just put…

447 00:47:57.580 ⇒ 00:48:19.440 Robert Tseng: uses the tools to put something out there, and then he takes feedback while he’s able to do the revision, so I think that’s really what we needed. The people come in with all of their biases about how work should be done, and so, you know, you ask something, and they’re like, no, I can’t do it, I need a week, I need two weeks. Whereas he has, like… he doesn’t come from this world at all. Like, I just… I was hearing about his background, and…

448 00:48:19.440 ⇒ 00:48:39.819 Robert Tseng: Yeah, he was… he was doing pretty much, like, customer service before, and so he comes in here, project management’s new to him, but he’s like, I want to learn it the AI-first way, and he’s just really been able to just embrace what we’ve built. So, I think it’s a great case study to me of somebody who really comes in and tries to, like.

449 00:48:39.820 ⇒ 00:48:41.959 Robert Tseng: learn things the Brainforge way.

450 00:48:44.100 ⇒ 00:48:51.719 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, my experience with Bea was super positive. He put time on my calendar to help me set up Cursor and…

451 00:48:51.770 ⇒ 00:49:11.269 Kaela Gallagher: GitHub and all these things that, I’m not super technical with, and made it, like, really relevant to me, like, oh, you’re gonna be recruiting for this role, I’m gonna show you how to use Cursor to make your life easier, and, like, walked me through multiple situations that felt super relevant to me, and…

452 00:49:11.270 ⇒ 00:49:25.789 Kaela Gallagher: yeah, definitely changed my… my workflow and my outlook on it, and then I had technical difficulties, and he got on a call with me this morning, and spent 15 minutes, like, helping me, fix all my GitHub issues, and so, yeah, super positive experience with him so far.

453 00:49:27.800 ⇒ 00:49:28.370 Uttam Kumaran: Right.

454 00:49:29.510 ⇒ 00:49:32.179 Luke Scorziell: We’re weeks away from you not having to think about…

455 00:49:32.360 ⇒ 00:49:35.569 Uttam Kumaran: for the next Kayla to never think about, like.

456 00:49:35.850 ⇒ 00:49:38.039 Uttam Kumaran: GitHub and stuff like that, but, like…

457 00:49:38.210 ⇒ 00:49:40.879 Uttam Kumaran: Sitting on my desk, the fix for a lot of that, but yeah.

458 00:49:40.880 ⇒ 00:49:42.040 Kaela Gallagher: Oh, beautiful.

459 00:49:42.040 ⇒ 00:49:44.220 Uttam Kumaran: But that’s good, that’s good. Like, the friction’s…

460 00:49:44.590 ⇒ 00:49:47.539 Uttam Kumaran: That friction is, like, you know, getting removed, so…

461 00:49:48.020 ⇒ 00:49:49.260 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, yeah.

462 00:49:54.700 ⇒ 00:49:58.810 Uttam Kumaran: So yeah, I mean, I would say… I would say both of these are off-track, though. Yes.

463 00:49:58.810 ⇒ 00:49:59.670 Robert Tseng: Yes, definitely.

464 00:49:59.670 ⇒ 00:50:02.449 Uttam Kumaran: I have, like… I am still,

465 00:50:02.790 ⇒ 00:50:05.870 Uttam Kumaran: It’s still, like, basically, like, the,

466 00:50:06.480 ⇒ 00:50:11.830 Uttam Kumaran: hangover GIF where there’s, like, all the numbers in my head, that’s basically how I’m running this.

467 00:50:13.050 ⇒ 00:50:13.590 Robert Tseng: Which,

468 00:50:13.590 ⇒ 00:50:19.120 Uttam Kumaran: It’s like, yeah, it’s, like, not good. Like, I have no interest in doing that. Like, this… it’s a simple math problem.

469 00:50:19.470 ⇒ 00:50:29.019 Uttam Kumaran: But it’s, like, less about the math problem, it’s, like, someone has to stay… look at this, like, look at this every day, week, and I just have not been able to. I will say, though, like, overall, it’s kind of like what… what…

470 00:50:29.180 ⇒ 00:50:33.550 Uttam Kumaran: The downside of the margin is that our people are, like, pretty overloaded.

471 00:50:33.580 ⇒ 00:50:36.309 Robert Tseng: Yeah. We will continue to attack it with AI.

472 00:50:36.310 ⇒ 00:50:41.849 Uttam Kumaran: But, like, at the moment, like, there’s still a context limit to, like, how much… how many clients you can manage.

473 00:50:42.240 ⇒ 00:50:47.380 Uttam Kumaran: And Awash is, I think, at that point. I think Mustafa’s gonna get to that point.

474 00:50:47.740 ⇒ 00:50:57.179 Uttam Kumaran: Certainly Demi’s already at that point, and Greg will soon be at that point, so, like, we have work to do on hiring people to put under them.

475 00:50:57.360 ⇒ 00:51:01.190 Uttam Kumaran: So that I can then take them to the most difficult

476 00:51:01.550 ⇒ 00:51:04.460 Uttam Kumaran: You know, most money-making client.

477 00:51:04.710 ⇒ 00:51:06.969 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so…

478 00:51:06.970 ⇒ 00:51:24.259 Robert Tseng: We all have different context windows. It’s like in Cursor, like, they’re, it’s like 200,000 tokens, and so maybe Bhutan maybe has, like, 500,000 tokens, but maybe the average person is more like 200,000 tokens.

479 00:51:24.750 ⇒ 00:51:30.330 Robert Tseng: Or our team’s all maxed out. We need… we need to increase our billing plan, or somehow buy more tokens.

480 00:51:30.620 ⇒ 00:51:33.060 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we spent a lot on Krisher last month.

481 00:51:33.560 ⇒ 00:51:35.519 Uttam Kumaran: And yes, like…

482 00:51:35.950 ⇒ 00:51:41.650 Uttam Kumaran: I’m also kind of, like, getting maxed out. But this is, again, it’s, like, less about, like, what I can do.

483 00:51:41.740 ⇒ 00:51:57.249 Uttam Kumaran: I’m not interested in, like, oh, I’m doing this because, like, I’m just trying to do whatever it takes. It’s like, people need to do it sustainably, and need to do it well, and need to do it better than me, and so I’m like, yeah, like, running over across 7 clients is, like, not possible.

484 00:51:57.360 ⇒ 00:51:59.510 Uttam Kumaran: So, I’m like, 3 or 4?

485 00:51:59.790 ⇒ 00:52:02.539 Uttam Kumaran: With AI, 3 to 4, I think, is, like, the sweet spot.

486 00:52:03.080 ⇒ 00:52:10.430 Uttam Kumaran: And then there’s some people who I think are still struggling just on 1 and 2, and, like, we’re gonna lift them up. So, that’s my conversations with Bea every day.

487 00:52:10.690 ⇒ 00:52:13.870 Uttam Kumaran: And so… yeah, I feel like this is…

488 00:52:14.680 ⇒ 00:52:22.310 Uttam Kumaran: like, I think… I think you’re right in that… I think he’s gonna be the ultimate AOR backup, and then he’s… I really hope that he steps into this…

489 00:52:22.520 ⇒ 00:52:27.570 Uttam Kumaran: Into this roll, so by next month, we’re sort of looking at his name here, and some greens, so…

490 00:52:27.880 ⇒ 00:52:28.430 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

491 00:52:30.890 ⇒ 00:52:45.160 Uttam Kumaran: Cool, and then maybe the one other piece I just wanted to talk about is, like, people. Like, I think, we haven’t… we don’t talk about it often, but, like, I… I went to get a coffee, and I sort of wrote, like, what is the… what is the supply chain at Brainforge? So people, which is everything around retention.

492 00:52:45.160 ⇒ 00:52:55.329 Uttam Kumaran: like, happiness, like, ENPS stuff. I think the good thing is, like, Kayla, you’re here, so, like, you being here gave me the 30 minutes I had to even be like, what are we doing around…

493 00:52:55.560 ⇒ 00:52:57.590 Uttam Kumaran: Keeping our people happy.

494 00:52:58.040 ⇒ 00:53:04.599 Uttam Kumaran: And getting people… people earning more, getting people to challenge themselves more, take on more.

495 00:53:04.730 ⇒ 00:53:08.010 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I don’t know, I’ve never, like…

496 00:53:08.230 ⇒ 00:53:16.159 Uttam Kumaran: I have worked on, like, people data, but I often don’t like thinking about it that way, because it can minimize, like, the human to be like.

497 00:53:16.300 ⇒ 00:53:34.370 Uttam Kumaran: our average EMPS is this, and, like, we’re… we’re extracting this much labor, like, I don’t like to think that way. But I do think there’s probably some metrics or something we need to do around people. I think, like, in ways that are good, I think, like, there are some people about to… who have hit or are about to hit their one year with us.

498 00:53:34.720 ⇒ 00:53:54.630 Uttam Kumaran: Which… there’s… there’s a… there’s a lot of people who did not get to that point, and so I feel really proud, and some of these people are very, very smart, and they spent a year working with us, which is huge. I think we need to continue to, show them that we’re the best place to work, and drive them towards year two.

499 00:53:55.090 ⇒ 00:53:56.769 Uttam Kumaran: And so there’s, like.

500 00:53:56.920 ⇒ 00:54:10.989 Uttam Kumaran: there’s just logistics to that. There’s, like, raises, or, like, surveys and feedback that, like, I think, Kayla, that that’s probably hopefully going to… into… going into next month, we will have a little bit more of an approach towards.

501 00:54:11.690 ⇒ 00:54:20.520 Uttam Kumaran: So yeah, there’s some people that, like, I need to get back to them on, like, what their… they hit their one year, like, well, okay, what happens? You know, I do a good job, as you guys know, of just, like.

502 00:54:20.670 ⇒ 00:54:30.499 Uttam Kumaran: I sort of circle the wagon, like, once or twice a week and talk to everybody, but that’s not sustainable, especially as we’re gonna probably add a bunch more people, like.

503 00:54:30.650 ⇒ 00:54:31.890 Uttam Kumaran: I’m actually…

504 00:54:32.230 ⇒ 00:54:41.540 Uttam Kumaran: I am both, like, kind of sad, but actually kind of happy that, like, some of the new people, I may not, like, really have the relationship I have with you guys, you know?

505 00:54:42.700 ⇒ 00:54:43.530 Uttam Kumaran: with.

506 00:54:43.720 ⇒ 00:55:02.389 Uttam Kumaran: And it does make me kind of sad, because I really like everybody here, but it’s what needs to happen. And so, do we have… like, is Demi able to have that relationship with that person, or is Luke able to have that relationship, or is, like, does someone end up with that, or is that person just stranded? Because I’m not the one, like, kind of keeping them up. So that’s what I’m thinking about.

507 00:55:02.680 ⇒ 00:55:03.820 Luke Scorziell: Hmm.

508 00:55:04.130 ⇒ 00:55:07.360 Uttam Kumaran: And then, of course, I think there’s also, like, a money thing, like, how are we doing…

509 00:55:07.780 ⇒ 00:55:24.790 Uttam Kumaran: we put this bonus program in front of people. I don’t think we’ve, like, made it super, super clear, how they achieve it, but I am excited to, like, make that super obvious, how people can make more money here, how people can use AI to accomplish that, and how we’re supporting that, so…

510 00:55:24.920 ⇒ 00:55:27.420 Uttam Kumaran: That’s on… That’s on people.

511 00:55:27.800 ⇒ 00:55:39.790 Uttam Kumaran: I think there are… there are some people, operations things here, but, like, yeah, I think maybe, Kayla, I can pass it to you to just give us a sense of how your first week went, and yeah, any thoughts on… on OKRs?

512 00:55:39.790 ⇒ 00:55:44.690 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, I mean, it’s Day 5, so I don’t have a ton for you guys.

513 00:55:44.690 ⇒ 00:55:45.570 Robert Tseng: Yes.

514 00:55:46.580 ⇒ 00:55:52.589 Uttam Kumaran: Wait, look, you’ve put out your first job post, you’ve taken an interview, you’ve taken screens, like.

515 00:55:52.830 ⇒ 00:55:56.399 Uttam Kumaran: I feel like that’s a great, like, 5 days, like…

516 00:55:56.400 ⇒ 00:56:02.620 Kaela Gallagher: I don’t know. Yeah, I mean, we’ve grown our pipeline by over 20 candidates in just… Let’s go!

517 00:56:02.620 ⇒ 00:56:21.989 Kaela Gallagher: So, that’s exciting. Nice. So, huge focus on, like, the recruiting side of the house currently, because I can’t onboard anybody if I don’t recruit anybody. So, kind of taking it, step by step there. But in terms of our… oh my gosh, this sheet just changed a lot.

518 00:56:21.990 ⇒ 00:56:26.270 Robert Tseng: Sorry, I’m like… I don’t… I didn’t like the inconsistent… Bits.

519 00:56:26.270 ⇒ 00:56:30.390 Kaela Gallagher: It’s okay. I’ll just run through these… I’ll just run through…

520 00:56:30.390 ⇒ 00:56:30.929 Robert Tseng: Stop touching it.

521 00:56:30.930 ⇒ 00:56:38.209 Kaela Gallagher: Super quickly, no, all good. I don’t have, like, super in-depth, analysis of, like, all of this.

522 00:56:38.210 ⇒ 00:56:55.619 Kaela Gallagher: yet, but right now, in terms of, like, our pipeline status being updated weekly, we don’t have a way to track that. I know that I manually did that with every single candidate in the pipeline this week, but, no good way of measuring that yet. Candidates receiving their first response within 72 hours.

523 00:56:55.620 ⇒ 00:57:14.079 Kaela Gallagher: We also don’t have a way to measure that yet, so that will be, a problem for me to solve. In terms of, scheduling sequences in place to move people through the pipeline, I feel like we have a pretty good process of that, currently. I’ve worked on kind of streamlining our interview process this week, and just

524 00:57:14.170 ⇒ 00:57:27.759 Kaela Gallagher: Doing one-on-ones with every person that’s involved in interviews to understand how I can make their lives easier and how, we can save as much time as possible in that process. So I’ve done some streamlining there.

525 00:57:29.540 ⇒ 00:57:45.920 Kaela Gallagher: Right. In terms of, like, putting together, like, comp packages, like, that’s something Utam and I will be working together on, benefits and W-2, things like that. And then the people ops side of the house haven’t started touching that yet, so,

526 00:57:45.920 ⇒ 00:58:04.269 Kaela Gallagher: these, like, employee pulse mechanisms and, like, escalation pathways for performing and all of that hasn’t been touched. Open to any feedback or ideas on any of these. And then, kind of similar with, like, the aspirational OKRs, like, those haven’t been touched yet. Recruiting has just been the big focus this week.

527 00:58:06.660 ⇒ 00:58:17.900 Uttam Kumaran: I know we probably haven’t talked about recruiting with everybody in this crew, but, like, Rico, Clarence, Luke, like, anything you want to share about recruiting, or…

528 00:58:18.140 ⇒ 00:58:21.809 Uttam Kumaran: Or, like, any advice for Kayla or anything?

529 00:58:25.840 ⇒ 00:58:32.160 Kaela Gallagher: I mean, I know I’ve met with, like, each of you one-on-one to kind of ask exactly that question, so I’ve gotten some.

530 00:58:32.160 ⇒ 00:58:33.270 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay, cool, alright.

531 00:58:33.270 ⇒ 00:58:35.830 Kaela Gallagher: But, if anyone has anything additional to add.

532 00:58:35.830 ⇒ 00:58:39.290 Uttam Kumaran: It’s usually because recruiting to date has been me and Rico being like.

533 00:58:39.290 ⇒ 00:58:39.800 Kaela Gallagher: Shit, like…

534 00:58:39.800 ⇒ 00:58:44.460 Uttam Kumaran: we need more people, and… and so I want… I want it to be, like, more elevated.

535 00:58:44.550 ⇒ 00:58:47.260 Kaela Gallagher: Of course. You know? Yeah. Yeah.

536 00:58:47.500 ⇒ 00:58:53.709 Clarence Stone: I mean, I think it’s evident to me that you might need some tooling or software, so…

537 00:58:53.960 ⇒ 00:58:57.519 Clarence Stone: you know, I’m wondering what your requirements might be, because…

538 00:58:57.800 ⇒ 00:59:06.949 Clarence Stone: I could probably spin up a lot pretty quickly for you, and get you a system that works exactly the way you want. So, just keep that in mind.

539 00:59:06.950 ⇒ 00:59:07.690 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.

540 00:59:08.360 ⇒ 00:59:20.369 Clarence Stone: Yeah. All these SaaS companies, like, you’re not going to get it exactly the way you want to do it, and that would kill, you know, your ability with UTAM to create the systems you want. So, that’s sort of my feedback on this.

541 00:59:21.000 ⇒ 00:59:31.660 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, yeah, I’d definitely love to build, build a system, or yeah, use a different system. Right now, a lot of the process in Notion is pretty time-consuming.

542 00:59:31.660 ⇒ 00:59:54.020 Kaela Gallagher: And manual, as much as we have stuff automated. And I think we have a lot of gaps in the process. Like, for example, right now, when candidates come through the pipeline, they come into, like, the Loom review section, but half of them, actually, probably 75% of them, don’t even include a Loom video, so they’re not actually ready for Udom to look at.

543 00:59:55.100 ⇒ 01:00:11.710 Kaela Gallagher: And then, on top of that, like, we don’t have all of the information on candidates centralized in one place. So when Untam clicks in to look at this Loom video link, he doesn’t have a resume or anything else to go off of for this candidate. So, I think we have some gaps, I’ve…

544 01:00:11.710 ⇒ 01:00:15.420 Kaela Gallagher: Chatted with interviewers, especially, like, first-round interviewers, who were like.

545 01:00:15.420 ⇒ 01:00:23.740 Kaela Gallagher: oh yeah, this candidate was way too junior, and maybe if we had, like, seen the resume, we would have been able to identify that earlier in the process. So,

546 01:00:23.960 ⇒ 01:00:32.160 Kaela Gallagher: Definitely some… some work to do here, but, yeah, we had a final round go off today. Seems like that went well, so that was exciting. We have another…

547 01:00:32.160 ⇒ 01:00:32.490 Uttam Kumaran: Oh.

548 01:00:32.490 ⇒ 01:00:35.950 Kaela Gallagher: So, yeah, good things happening.

549 01:00:36.160 ⇒ 01:00:42.600 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think my job, too, is to get myself out of the Loom review part, and I’m gonna be training some of the

550 01:00:42.830 ⇒ 01:00:44.590 Uttam Kumaran: Other guys on how to do that.

551 01:00:44.730 ⇒ 01:00:49.140 Uttam Kumaran: most… I’m hopeful that I can… it’s more of the service leads that are doing a lot of that, but.

552 01:00:49.140 ⇒ 01:00:49.790 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.

553 01:00:49.790 ⇒ 01:00:53.119 Uttam Kumaran: Let’s see, like, yeah, that’s… That’s my piece.

554 01:00:53.470 ⇒ 01:00:53.840 Kaela Gallagher: If that’.

555 01:00:53.840 ⇒ 01:00:54.270 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

556 01:00:54.270 ⇒ 01:00:55.900 Kaela Gallagher: that I could take on.

557 01:00:55.900 ⇒ 01:00:56.650 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

558 01:00:56.650 ⇒ 01:01:01.170 Kaela Gallagher: As well, I… I’m… I’m happy to do that, sure.

559 01:01:01.330 ⇒ 01:01:04.429 Kaela Gallagher: But I do think I need a little bit of a better…

560 01:01:04.820 ⇒ 01:01:13.140 Kaela Gallagher: understanding of what you’re looking at in those videos, and maybe what a service lead would look at. So the more I sit in on interviews and kind of understand

561 01:01:13.430 ⇒ 01:01:15.620 Kaela Gallagher: what the team needs, I think I’ll be able to.

562 01:01:15.620 ⇒ 01:01:16.070 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

563 01:01:16.070 ⇒ 01:01:18.529 Kaela Gallagher: better screen those, yeah.

564 01:01:18.970 ⇒ 01:01:28.279 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, I think, too, this is something that, yeah, I was just thinking about as we put up the recruiting post this week, and then obviously, like, you’re coming in, so I’m thinking more about, like, how does…

565 01:01:28.930 ⇒ 01:01:35.529 Luke Scorziell: Yeah. How does content and brand affect recruiting? And I think, like, I kind of built out…

566 01:01:35.810 ⇒ 01:01:40.459 Luke Scorziell: yesterday, like, like, just, I mean…

567 01:01:40.600 ⇒ 01:01:42.690 Luke Scorziell: Took a little bit, but it wasn’t…

568 01:01:43.290 ⇒ 01:01:51.740 Luke Scorziell: super in-depth, like, a brand strategy just that can kind of guide, like, our content and how we’re talking about our services and meetings and whatnot, but I think, like.

569 01:01:52.460 ⇒ 01:01:56.510 Luke Scorziell: Really important part of brand is employer branding, and, like.

570 01:01:56.970 ⇒ 01:02:10.460 Luke Scorziell: exactly what Tom mentioned with, like, the benefits that we’re talking about, and what it’s like to work at Brainforge. I think the, like, high agency thing that we had in, both of those posts was, like, important, because, yeah, it’s, like.

571 01:02:10.870 ⇒ 01:02:18.129 Luke Scorziell: I think a good brand both attracts people and repels people, so I would love to work with you to

572 01:02:18.250 ⇒ 01:02:20.440 Luke Scorziell: Or just, like, if you ever have thoughts, or…

573 01:02:20.680 ⇒ 01:02:33.449 Luke Scorziell: on… or if you’re noticing, like, oh, these are the types of things that are resonating, or even Robert’s reflection from today that, like, oh, people who are interviewing are, like, referencing our content, you know? So it’s, like, I wonder if we could start putting,

574 01:02:33.630 ⇒ 01:02:39.350 Luke Scorziell: You know, like, that’s… that adds another lever that we can,

575 01:02:39.890 ⇒ 01:02:42.079 Luke Scorziell: begin to play with, and so…

576 01:02:42.280 ⇒ 01:02:49.649 Luke Scorziell: like, that may be another change that I would reflect on, too, for next month, is, like, if content could reflect some of the…

577 01:02:49.780 ⇒ 01:02:51.489 Luke Scorziell: the brand.

578 01:02:51.830 ⇒ 01:02:58.320 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think it’s big, I mean, look, it’s a lot of… I think there’s two things, and I told this to Clarence, like, a lot of people want to work here.

579 01:02:58.490 ⇒ 01:03:00.219 Uttam Kumaran: just great. First, like.

580 01:03:00.370 ⇒ 01:03:08.170 Uttam Kumaran: first thing, you know, because a lot of… I know a lot of companies, and I used to be… work at companies where you post LinkedIn stuff like that, and it’s like.

581 01:03:08.280 ⇒ 01:03:09.720 Uttam Kumaran: Nothing happens.

582 01:03:09.820 ⇒ 01:03:21.100 Uttam Kumaran: And then people interview, and then they’re like, yo, that guy, like, was kind of, like, weird, or, like, mean. And so we’ve done something, either it’s because we’re in the market, or, like, our brand.

583 01:03:21.410 ⇒ 01:03:28.899 Uttam Kumaran: or whatever, at, like, we… people want to work here. So I think that’s, like, one thing. And then it’s like, okay, how can we…

584 01:03:29.010 ⇒ 01:03:42.669 Uttam Kumaran: how can we continue… like, I would… for me, it’s like, I would like to get a thousand people apply, and then we just filter, because we get… we get the best, right? And so, how can we take advantage of me and Robert, or, like, people being local?

585 01:03:43.180 ⇒ 01:03:48.010 Uttam Kumaran: And continue to raise the bar, right? And keep the bar really, really, really high.

586 01:03:48.130 ⇒ 01:03:57.039 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I… I wanted to be un… I want to be uncomfortable for this crew, how smart some of the people we’re hiring are. Like, I want… I want this crew to be like, damn, that person’s, like.

587 01:03:57.110 ⇒ 01:04:13.209 Uttam Kumaran: really, like, really, really smart. Could probably do my job. Like, that’s how we should feel when we bring in people. Not that, like, that’s what we’re ga… that’s what we’re hoping for, but it should… it should feel like that. Versus if you… if we bring on people and you’re not impressed, that should be a red flag, right? And it’s like…

588 01:04:13.420 ⇒ 01:04:18.250 Uttam Kumaran: It’s not happened in my career often. In fact, when companies grow, they lower the bar.

589 01:04:18.370 ⇒ 01:04:24.030 Uttam Kumaran: It’s because there’s a disjointed nature between the executive team, the delivery team, the…

590 01:04:24.280 ⇒ 01:04:29.459 Uttam Kumaran: the recruiting folks, so… I really want to just maintain that super, super high.

591 01:04:31.080 ⇒ 01:04:32.120 Kaela Gallagher: 100%.

592 01:04:32.250 ⇒ 01:04:41.539 Luke Scorziell: Maybe, like, a quick flag, because I know, I think it was in the WBR meeting, just for… we mentioned, like, Brian, and I know, Robert, you were kind of like.

593 01:04:41.790 ⇒ 01:04:50.390 Luke Scorziell: But there, I think you mentioned the brand as being, like, oh, we’re not that big of a brand, but it is interesting that, like, we have a lot of people that are thinking about us in that way, and then also…

594 01:04:50.510 ⇒ 01:04:54.470 Luke Scorziell: That we’re starting to occupy some of these slots with partners, where it’s like.

595 01:04:55.080 ⇒ 01:04:59.480 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Like, they’re taking us more seriously. So, like, I could see…

596 01:04:59.730 ⇒ 01:05:01.500 Luke Scorziell: like, LinkedIn, I don’t think is…

597 01:05:01.720 ⇒ 01:05:06.869 Luke Scorziell: doing a tremendous job in getting us leads, but I… I do think it’s, like.

598 01:05:07.200 ⇒ 01:05:11.830 Uttam Kumaran: the impressions are probably growing, and… I mean, we’ve met a lot of people, like…

599 01:05:11.960 ⇒ 01:05:15.320 Uttam Kumaran: I meet consistently 20 or 30 new people, like, a week.

600 01:05:15.690 ⇒ 01:05:21.660 Uttam Kumaran: And I’m only talking about the company, like, I don’t meet any new people in my personal life anymore, so… it’s, like, all…

601 01:05:21.760 ⇒ 01:05:25.839 Uttam Kumaran: like, all of that is, like, compounding, I feel like, you know? So…

602 01:05:26.680 ⇒ 01:05:34.709 Uttam Kumaran: We have to take advantage, so it’s, like, up to you, Luke, to take advantage, because Robert and I have met so many people. We’re somewhere in their brains, sitting.

603 01:05:34.870 ⇒ 01:05:35.690 Uttam Kumaran: Right?

604 01:05:36.950 ⇒ 01:05:41.850 Uttam Kumaran: It’s like, how do we activate that? You know, how do we get them… how do we get them to think about us again?

605 01:05:41.970 ⇒ 01:05:43.830 Uttam Kumaran: Ideally, and they’re, like.

606 01:05:44.180 ⇒ 01:05:49.119 Uttam Kumaran: Because of the people that do think about us, they call us, and we sign something, so what about all the people that just, like.

607 01:05:49.590 ⇒ 01:05:59.119 Uttam Kumaran: they just, like, have yet to be like, oh yeah, like, I remember I talked to some data people, right? Like, that’s… that’s what I’m sort of thinking. We’re still sitting on a lot of that, like…

608 01:05:59.250 ⇒ 01:06:00.090 Uttam Kumaran: You know?

609 01:06:00.980 ⇒ 01:06:03.769 Luke Scorziell: It’s the forge your brain thing. That’s what I want them to remember.

610 01:06:03.770 ⇒ 01:06:15.139 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like, you can just go through my whole email and basically be like, this person is hiring for a data person, I wonder if they just haven’t thought about us. But we have a relationship, right? So there’s… I think there’s still a lot of juice to squeeze.

611 01:06:16.040 ⇒ 01:06:16.710 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

612 01:06:18.600 ⇒ 01:06:19.689 Luke Scorziell: That was exciting.

613 01:06:20.980 ⇒ 01:06:21.570 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.

614 01:06:21.800 ⇒ 01:06:25.450 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe, Rico, you wanna go on, on ops?

615 01:06:26.890 ⇒ 01:06:27.420 Rico Rejoso: Sure.

616 01:06:28.160 ⇒ 01:06:29.759 Rico Rejoso: So, for ops…

617 01:06:30.000 ⇒ 01:06:31.849 Uttam Kumaran: It’s also great to see you here, dude.

618 01:06:34.650 ⇒ 01:06:35.580 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, happy to be here.

619 01:06:35.580 ⇒ 01:06:36.760 Luke Scorziell: Man of many hats.

620 01:06:39.180 ⇒ 01:06:54.640 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, for ops, just a quick one for the ops request, the making sure that everything is in linear. So, thanks to Tom and the platform team, we, we have this operation, or ops request Slack channel, where we get all the notification for

621 01:06:54.720 ⇒ 01:07:12.669 Rico Rejoso: new requests for the ops team, so it’s been very helpful to track that one. At the same time, make sure that everything is in linear and we don’t miss any tasks or requests coming from the team. We also have a bunch of forms that we’ve created this month, including the expense request, which we have several,

622 01:07:13.120 ⇒ 01:07:21.260 Rico Rejoso: requests already coming from the team, out of office, and which we revamped to be more, let’s say.

623 01:07:21.510 ⇒ 01:07:25.110 Rico Rejoso: user-friendly for everyone, and also we’ve added the sick form.

624 01:07:25.220 ⇒ 01:07:43.460 Rico Rejoso: that we will be announcing during our BF Retro. We have the documentation and everything in place also, because before we have this… I mean, we have some of this set up already before, but the team-facing documentation were not prepared, and we also want to make sure that we share that during our onboarding, and at the same time, everyone is aware of it, so…

625 01:07:43.470 ⇒ 01:07:49.289 Uttam Kumaran: they can further utilize, and we get… That’s, I think, what’s… that’s, I think, one of the things is, like, I think a lot of people are just… aren’t aware.

626 01:07:49.390 ⇒ 01:07:51.440 Rico Rejoso: Yeah. I think also it’s like…

627 01:07:51.620 ⇒ 01:07:55.840 Uttam Kumaran: Nobody has a question… nobody… nobody is, like, proactively, like.

628 01:07:56.170 ⇒ 01:07:59.649 Uttam Kumaran: just in case, like, I wonder how I can submit something to ops. It’s like…

629 01:07:59.850 ⇒ 01:08:10.819 Uttam Kumaran: because there’s a question, right? So, like, some maybe regular, like, I like the log your hours message. Maybe there’s a mix of those that always just go out, so it’s like, people know…

630 01:08:11.220 ⇒ 01:08:14.789 Uttam Kumaran: You know, this is the way to do things.

631 01:08:15.560 ⇒ 01:08:18.850 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, that’s one reason why, during our retro.

632 01:08:18.850 ⇒ 01:08:28.120 Rico Rejoso: We also wanted to discuss some of the forms that everyone can access. At the same time, introduce a document. Also, part of it is during the onboarding, since

633 01:08:28.200 ⇒ 01:08:33.639 Rico Rejoso: My experience doing the onboarding for most team members, I always advise them to be like.

634 01:08:33.700 ⇒ 01:08:47.089 Rico Rejoso: before we have everything informed, is to contact me, or the operations team. Like, let me know what you need. I’m always available on Slack, and let me know if you need tools, requests, or anything, and I can help you out on that one. Which, we’re transitioning into different forms, which

635 01:08:47.090 ⇒ 01:08:55.959 Rico Rejoso: also can be automated. Part of it is listing out what we can automate for the AI team to help us out with, and, you know, avoid any… or reduce any noise in Slack.

636 01:08:55.990 ⇒ 01:08:58.859 Rico Rejoso: And we can focus on some important tasks that we’re working on.

637 01:08:58.920 ⇒ 01:09:09.659 Rico Rejoso: So yeah, that’s one thing that we’re also looking to list as tools that we want to automate, which is some of the forms that everyone can access without even asking us or the operations team for it.

638 01:09:10.040 ⇒ 01:09:16.550 Rico Rejoso: In case they’re, like, you know, don’t want to speak or don’t want to, bother them sending a stack message to a team member.

639 01:09:16.710 ⇒ 01:09:28.160 Rico Rejoso: So that’s one thing on the ops request. The triage, so for more 90% automation process pools, contacts right now, actually, I just explored cursor last week.

640 01:09:28.220 ⇒ 01:09:40.639 Rico Rejoso: I had this onboarding for Cursor with Cabe. At the same time, I was also inspired to do so, since Brad has been very effective in using Cursor. Yeah. So, I was very hesitant at first, to be honest, and…

641 01:09:40.640 ⇒ 01:09:41.300 Uttam Kumaran: No.

642 01:09:41.300 ⇒ 01:09:46.749 Rico Rejoso: I let with them know, because I don’t want to mess up any system that you guys created, and, you know.

643 01:09:46.750 ⇒ 01:09:55.099 Uttam Kumaran: Everybody’s so… everybody’s so, so careful, doesn’t want to break, no one wants to break anything. I’m like, please!

644 01:09:55.590 ⇒ 01:09:55.910 Luke Scorziell: Did that…

645 01:09:55.910 ⇒ 01:09:57.669 Uttam Kumaran: No, that’s really, really great.

646 01:09:57.960 ⇒ 01:10:00.030 Rico Rejoso: But yeah, Gabe and Brian, like.

647 01:10:00.260 ⇒ 01:10:05.530 Rico Rejoso: helped me, like, you know, ramp up with this, and I was like, alright, maybe I can…

648 01:10:05.640 ⇒ 01:10:09.480 Rico Rejoso: Try some things off this one, and how we can…

649 01:10:09.590 ⇒ 01:10:29.000 Rico Rejoso: use this to further ease some of the process that we’re doing in the operations side. So, I’ve discovered, like, this command in cursor, which can help us enrich thickets, audit some of the linear thickets that we have. I run one yesterday, or the other day, and this… or figured that some thickets and ops are, like, you know, doesn’t have any context yet.

650 01:10:29.330 ⇒ 01:10:44.670 Rico Rejoso: So, aside from those coming from linear, and linear putting in description, it’s also helpful to run a manual full audit using Cursor that can add context, set up a goal, and also, you know, help us in discussion during our operations, or daily operations syncs.

651 01:10:46.180 ⇒ 01:10:52.070 Rico Rejoso: So that’s one. It’s not yet fully automated. I asked Cursor how we can help that. It’s, you know.

652 01:10:52.400 ⇒ 01:11:08.159 Rico Rejoso: I don’t think there’s a way yet, but it’s better to keep a human in the loop process for it, since it’s part of our… it will be part of our cadence in operations to do it every week, or by start of the week, so I think that still would be helpful to pull in context for all tickets that we have.

653 01:11:08.410 ⇒ 01:11:14.759 Rico Rejoso: for the SOPs and NDAs, or making sure that the Founders or executives are…

654 01:11:14.960 ⇒ 01:11:17.630 Rico Rejoso: You know, not a bottleneck when it comes to the process.

655 01:11:20.750 ⇒ 01:11:38.839 Rico Rejoso: I can say that it’s still off track, since most of the documentations are still being requested by the executives, okay? So, we look into it, I mean, we were, like, listing maybe HubSpot automation, like, you know, sending notification once a deal moved from

656 01:11:38.850 ⇒ 01:11:43.159 Rico Rejoso: pre-qualifying to discovery call. We get notified on

657 01:11:43.290 ⇒ 01:11:54.050 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, and we can, like, create an NDA prior to that call and send it out via email, so we can get that, or we can have the NDA in place first, regardless if it’s a good lead or not.

658 01:11:54.640 ⇒ 01:11:55.050 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

659 01:11:55.050 ⇒ 01:12:05.919 Rico Rejoso: So once you got… or once you get… once you got scheduled with anyone, we can, like, set up the ND ASAP as soon as we get the notification from HubSpot. So that’s one thing we’re looking to…

660 01:12:06.480 ⇒ 01:12:09.259 Uttam Kumaran: I wonder if, like, if I pause, I wonder if this is, like.

661 01:12:09.770 ⇒ 01:12:12.409 Uttam Kumaran: Tough to achieve in terms of without.

662 01:12:12.860 ⇒ 01:12:15.049 Uttam Kumaran: I wonder if it’s instead, like…

663 01:12:15.900 ⇒ 01:12:21.739 Uttam Kumaran: We’re able… everything is, like, gets ticketed, or, like, Everything is, like.

664 01:12:22.090 ⇒ 01:12:28.739 Uttam Kumaran: 80% handled without… because, like, for example, like, I take a call, I get an NDA, I want to run it by legal.

665 01:12:29.200 ⇒ 01:12:35.440 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, my typical steps is, like, I put it in the legal channel. Maybe one step further is, like, I forward it to, like.

666 01:12:35.540 ⇒ 01:12:38.289 Uttam Kumaran: linear, or an AI agent, or something.

667 01:12:38.710 ⇒ 01:12:41.900 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I don’t mind doing that, I think that’s fine, but…

668 01:12:43.200 ⇒ 01:12:48.820 Rico Rejoso: I mean… That means that you’re still getting involved in the process by triggering it, right?

669 01:12:50.840 ⇒ 01:12:55.879 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I still think that, like, how else would you know? You know, it’s like, I guess it’s in my email, but, like…

670 01:12:59.120 ⇒ 01:13:03.209 Rico Rejoso: Then they… but for, like, discovery call that they set up the meeting with.

671 01:13:03.210 ⇒ 01:13:06.340 Uttam Kumaran: For discovery calls, yeah, for discovery, it makes sense, yeah.

672 01:13:06.940 ⇒ 01:13:10.249 Uttam Kumaran: For sales, it makes a lot of sense. I think we will have to figure out…

673 01:13:10.570 ⇒ 01:13:15.599 Uttam Kumaran: For finance, and for… Like, contracts, how to continue to smooth it out.

674 01:13:19.170 ⇒ 01:13:24.490 Rico Rejoso: map out the delivery process, form for CSOs and other delivery lead.

675 01:13:24.750 ⇒ 01:13:27.659 Rico Rejoso: We also like to pass that,

676 01:13:28.070 ⇒ 01:13:42.739 Rico Rejoso: task to them, of letting us know, like, for Demi, who communicated with me, letting me know about the Magic Spoon contract, I think that’s one way to get you off, the process. Yeah, yeah. Them letting us know that we have this in place, we have a new SOW.

677 01:13:42.930 ⇒ 01:13:48.850 Uttam Kumaran: So I think my… maybe my ask to you, Rico, is, like, where do I… where do you want me to send people? Like…

678 01:13:50.550 ⇒ 01:13:53.490 Uttam Kumaran: like… I guess my question is, one.

679 01:13:53.630 ⇒ 01:13:57.909 Uttam Kumaran: Do you wanna… should we make the ops request channel public? Like, should I have them just…

680 01:13:58.660 ⇒ 01:14:01.670 Uttam Kumaran: Tag, like, linear anywhere?

681 01:14:01.800 ⇒ 01:14:07.300 Uttam Kumaran: like, I’m wondering how we can basically streamline, and I don’t want them to just ping you directly.

682 01:14:07.640 ⇒ 01:14:14.189 Uttam Kumaran: Right? I wanna… I want them to either, like, create a ticket for it, or… like, something.

683 01:14:17.820 ⇒ 01:14:20.240 Rico Rejoso: Sending it to ops, and we get notified with it.

684 01:14:20.370 ⇒ 01:14:27.430 Rico Rejoso: Just to avoid them sending me a message or pinging me on Slack, if in case that, you know, something is still in progress, but yeah.

685 01:14:27.700 ⇒ 01:14:34.690 Rico Rejoso: Utilizing the tools that you set up would be, like, a better way to do it, for now. Unless we figure out a much better way of

686 01:14:35.180 ⇒ 01:14:36.980 Rico Rejoso: you know, picked on for… So maybe I.

687 01:14:36.980 ⇒ 01:14:43.809 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll just tell people, like, use the linear and submit a request, or use the slash command to submit a request, right?

688 01:14:44.000 ⇒ 01:14:48.370 Rico Rejoso: And assign it to me, and… I mean, we check the triage every day, so…

689 01:14:48.600 ⇒ 01:14:50.170 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay, okay, cool, great.

690 01:14:51.970 ⇒ 01:14:58.120 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, so that’s for the, OKRs that I have for… this format.

691 01:14:58.390 ⇒ 01:14:58.930 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

692 01:14:59.880 ⇒ 01:15:04.429 Uttam Kumaran: again, I think operations is another thing, like, people, where I think

693 01:15:05.200 ⇒ 01:15:13.260 Uttam Kumaran: Rico and I have been just sort of, like, laying the foundation and handling a lot of it, so I want to just elevate it a bit. Any questions about

694 01:15:13.780 ⇒ 01:15:21.499 Uttam Kumaran: ops… Any wish lists, or, like, anything that’s, like, this is super painful?

695 01:15:22.050 ⇒ 01:15:22.840 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

696 01:15:30.180 ⇒ 01:15:33.310 Kaela Gallagher: I don’t think I have anything right now, but as I…

697 01:15:33.600 ⇒ 01:15:44.770 Kaela Gallagher: get more integrated. If I run into stuff, I’ll let you know. Like, I submitted an expense report, but I didn’t get a status update until today, Rico, I got it, so thank you.

698 01:15:45.260 ⇒ 01:15:47.750 Kaela Gallagher: So, yeah, I’ll share feedback like that.

699 01:15:49.260 ⇒ 01:15:52.600 Rico Rejoso: Actually, I just set up the documentation for it, and also, you know.

700 01:15:52.710 ⇒ 01:16:04.250 Rico Rejoso: discuss it with Eliza, with the ops team, like, yay, we have to set up an SLA for every request that we get. Make sure we get back to them. If not, you know, provide a timeline of when we can get back with the receipts.

701 01:16:04.890 ⇒ 01:16:10.489 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think one thing is also is, like, I’ll kind of… I can go next, is, like, ops is sort of the layer above, like.

702 01:16:10.590 ⇒ 01:16:17.839 Uttam Kumaran: platform, and so really, like, I think ops is the first line of defense, and then on the platform side, I’m gonna start picking off

703 01:16:18.010 ⇒ 01:16:33.479 Uttam Kumaran: things across the entire business, and sort of trying to automate, right? But maybe just right before that, like, I’ll talk a little bit about finance. I think, like, finance, again, is not something that we’ve elevated, and I’m hoping that, again, a lot of my time will be moving to…

704 01:16:33.700 ⇒ 01:16:36.580 Uttam Kumaran: You know, finance, platform…

705 01:16:36.900 ⇒ 01:16:45.890 Uttam Kumaran: You know, so we did make some decisions on budget groups, but still, I don’t think we have a great view of, like, daily, weekly margin.

706 01:16:45.890 ⇒ 01:16:50.230 Kaela Gallagher: It’s something that I feel more capable of doing single-handedly.

707 01:16:50.370 ⇒ 01:17:07.180 Uttam Kumaran: In the next month or so, but it’s something that I… I owe this team a clear view of, like, our margin and our delivery… our margin across different parts of the business, and especially concerning our largest cost center, which is delivery.

708 01:17:07.250 ⇒ 01:17:11.859 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, that’s something, like, I owe, and so going into this next month, like, I really want to…

709 01:17:12.200 ⇒ 01:17:14.119 Uttam Kumaran: Have that in a good place.

710 01:17:14.570 ⇒ 01:17:21.810 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t… We’ve tried plenty of ways. I think, like, I am good enough now with Cursor.

711 01:17:21.970 ⇒ 01:17:25.479 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, everything we’re doing on the data side to just rip this myself.

712 01:17:27.130 ⇒ 01:17:29.149 Uttam Kumaran: Like, probably just in real.

713 01:17:29.570 ⇒ 01:17:32.800 Uttam Kumaran: Just for us to have a view of, like, everything that’s in QuickBooks.

714 01:17:33.050 ⇒ 01:17:33.700 Uttam Kumaran: And then…

715 01:17:34.100 ⇒ 01:17:40.689 Uttam Kumaran: That’s the first thing, is just showing what’s in QuickBooks, because that’s closed business. And then I’ll… I’ll pull in HubSpot.

716 01:17:40.880 ⇒ 01:17:43.849 Uttam Kumaran: And, kind of pull in what’s in RAMP.

717 01:17:44.210 ⇒ 01:17:48.849 Uttam Kumaran: To sort of give a little bit more operational view of, like, what’s in the existing month.

718 01:17:49.670 ⇒ 01:17:54.100 Uttam Kumaran: So, yeah, it’s like a… just need, like, a…

719 01:17:54.780 ⇒ 01:17:59.290 Uttam Kumaran: Just need, like, a weekend to do… just rip that. So that’s on the finance side.

720 01:18:00.920 ⇒ 01:18:09.960 Uttam Kumaran: And then, on the platform side, so… yeah, I think another really, like, I think a super, super solid month. I think January was good.

721 01:18:10.070 ⇒ 01:18:12.220 Uttam Kumaran: I think a lot of bugs, but, like.

722 01:18:12.330 ⇒ 01:18:15.829 Uttam Kumaran: I was happy that at least people were entertaining the idea of, like.

723 01:18:16.060 ⇒ 01:18:23.079 Uttam Kumaran: waking up and using cursor in a repo to do their job, regardless of, like, if they’re engineering or not. Like, to see Robert…

724 01:18:23.290 ⇒ 01:18:26.429 Uttam Kumaran: In there, and not, like… and still being, like.

725 01:18:26.800 ⇒ 01:18:38.219 Uttam Kumaran: why do we have 3 repos? And I’m like, oh, it’s great… these are all great questions. I’m super… I’m like, I love that, like, people are actually, like, asking about the ergonomics of this, not just being like, oh, this seems like OD.

726 01:18:38.300 ⇒ 01:18:47.220 Uttam Kumaran: So, I’m glad, I think it’s… it’s a long time coming for us to have this smooth of, like, a access to this… everything that we’ve been building.

727 01:18:47.380 ⇒ 01:18:55.400 Uttam Kumaran: I think this month, we saw a couple things. Like, one, I think we shipped… we shipped, like, almost, like, 100 or 200% more code.

728 01:18:55.730 ⇒ 01:19:02.930 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, that’s kind of vanity, but, like, there’s more stuff, I will say. We have multiple people push PRs, like, I think…

729 01:19:03.100 ⇒ 01:19:09.280 Uttam Kumaran: Like, B, Rico, Luke, like, Robert, Greg, Awash…

730 01:19:09.460 ⇒ 01:19:26.040 Uttam Kumaran: all have, like, pushed stuff into the platform, and, like, went through the journey of pushing a pull request, getting it reviewed, being frustrated when, like, reviews take a while. These are all, like… this is what it’s like to be, like, an engineer, folks. So, like, you guys all saw that, and actually being, like.

731 01:19:26.320 ⇒ 01:19:35.629 Uttam Kumaran: being like, oh my god, having that moment for yourselves about, like, oh my god, this is really, really helpful, and then being able to contribute back. Like, that is the flywheel, not just taking

732 01:19:35.640 ⇒ 01:19:54.859 Uttam Kumaran: And being like, this is working for me, but then, like, I told Rico, like, push some ops stuff, like, and I think, Kayla, you’re gonna push some recruiting stuff, like, contributing back is the flywheel to just making the whole platform better, and so that was really, really good. I think, surprisingly, adoption among our engineers is still weak sauce.

733 01:19:54.930 ⇒ 01:19:58.830 Uttam Kumaran: Which, you’d be like, oh my gosh, this is, like, This is, like, their…

734 01:19:59.140 ⇒ 01:20:12.689 Uttam Kumaran: this is it, like, you just do your whole job on this, and it’s still low. And so this is something that, like, me and Bea are basically… like, we have… we know the culprits, and, like, we’re gonna attack, like, super, super directly. There’s no…

735 01:20:13.210 ⇒ 01:20:32.459 Uttam Kumaran: I’m, like, much more impatient with the engineers if they’re not using this to do their job, because it’s, like, it’s a no-brainer, and they’re super, super capable. So we look at who’s using what systems, and how many tokens they’re using, and, like, I don’t blame them, I don’t think anybody here is, like, not using it because they don’t believe it. I think it’s just training.

736 01:20:32.830 ⇒ 01:20:34.219 Robert Tseng: Am I in the top 3?

737 01:20:36.060 ⇒ 01:20:37.690 Uttam Kumaran: no.

738 01:20:38.800 ⇒ 01:20:39.280 Robert Tseng: Wow.

739 01:20:40.770 ⇒ 01:20:43.230 Uttam Kumaran: I can show you.

740 01:20:45.040 ⇒ 01:20:47.869 Uttam Kumaran: I know it’s vanity, I’m just curious, like… No, no, no, I mean…

741 01:20:47.870 ⇒ 01:20:49.339 Robert Tseng: You’re pushing more than me!

742 01:20:49.340 ⇒ 01:20:54.220 Uttam Kumaran: I’m gonna show you… I’m gonna sh… I’ll show you it, oh, and on GitHub?

743 01:20:55.070 ⇒ 01:20:57.000 Uttam Kumaran: Or just in, like, in general?

744 01:20:57.000 ⇒ 01:20:59.589 Robert Tseng: No, just token usage in general, yeah.

745 01:20:59.590 ⇒ 01:21:01.000 Uttam Kumaran: Let me.

746 01:21:01.000 ⇒ 01:21:03.280 Robert Tseng: cursor, I guess, if that’s that…

747 01:21:05.600 ⇒ 01:21:07.320 Clarence Stone: Yeah, let me show you.

748 01:21:07.530 ⇒ 01:21:10.230 Robert Tseng: On multiple tabs, multiple queries.

749 01:21:10.230 ⇒ 01:21:11.209 Uttam Kumaran: I do.

750 01:21:11.390 ⇒ 01:21:12.050 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

751 01:21:12.690 ⇒ 01:21:13.820 Uttam Kumaran: So, this is our…

752 01:21:13.820 ⇒ 01:21:18.579 Clarence Stone: Gotta get some swarms. I don’t know, you can do this.

753 01:21:19.060 ⇒ 01:21:24.920 Uttam Kumaran: So this is our co… this is our codebase, oh! And…

754 01:21:24.920 ⇒ 01:21:25.870 Robert Tseng: Luke…

755 01:21:28.540 ⇒ 01:21:30.200 Uttam Kumaran: So this is lines of code.

756 01:21:30.200 ⇒ 01:21:33.659 Luke Scorziell: Bro, you know me out here coding, 24-7.

757 01:21:33.840 ⇒ 01:21:36.140 Uttam Kumaran: This is lines of code, but I don’t know if it’s.

758 01:21:36.140 ⇒ 01:21:38.519 Robert Tseng: Dude, I don’t even make the top 10 anywhere.

759 01:21:40.740 ⇒ 01:21:44.580 Robert Tseng: This has to be wrong. Maybe I’m paying for my own cursor or something, like…

760 01:21:44.580 ⇒ 01:21:45.450 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, no.

761 01:21:45.450 ⇒ 01:21:46.420 Luke Scorziell: That’s…

762 01:21:48.040 ⇒ 01:21:49.610 Uttam Kumaran: And then I listened… I live so high.

763 01:21:49.610 ⇒ 01:21:50.340 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, that’s cool.

764 01:21:50.340 ⇒ 01:21:51.860 Uttam Kumaran: I only looked at,

765 01:21:52.610 ⇒ 01:21:57.139 Uttam Kumaran: I looked at… we looked at the token usage, and I did a little pivot table.

766 01:21:57.420 ⇒ 01:22:05.270 Uttam Kumaran: Somewhere… Shit, where is somewhere in here.

767 01:22:08.590 ⇒ 01:22:12.120 Clarence Stone: Yeah, you shared it the other day, right? I thought we saw it.

768 01:22:12.120 ⇒ 01:22:18.570 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did it really quickly, because I was like, yo, nobody’s… I looked at it, and I was, like, the only one, and one day, I was like, I freaked out.

769 01:22:19.160 ⇒ 01:22:34.060 Uttam Kumaran: let me just find it real quick, but we’re basically gonna look at not only, like, how many tokens people are using, which is, like, okay, but I want to see, like, what people are doing, and we’re mapping it to,

770 01:22:34.820 ⇒ 01:22:37.429 Uttam Kumaran: Like, their role and the tasks that they’re doing.

771 01:22:37.680 ⇒ 01:22:40.330 Uttam Kumaran: And so, if I just find this…

772 01:22:41.100 ⇒ 01:22:42.140 Luke Scorziell: Gins…

773 01:22:42.140 ⇒ 01:22:49.649 Robert Tseng: That would be crazy if someone came in and it’s like, oh, you’re in marketing? We expect you to use this number of tokens for the money.

774 01:22:50.430 ⇒ 01:22:53.429 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, dude, that’d be so crazy if that happened.

775 01:22:53.600 ⇒ 01:22:57.019 Luke Scorziell: How am I hitting… how am I at the top? I don’t…

776 01:22:57.020 ⇒ 01:23:00.179 Robert Tseng: It’s because you’re using Claude, you’re using the most expensive model.

777 01:23:00.930 ⇒ 01:23:02.360 Robert Tseng: Cutted up our bill.

778 01:23:03.000 ⇒ 01:23:05.930 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I haven’t… I haven’t been, like, super mean about.

779 01:23:06.430 ⇒ 01:23:07.299 Luke Scorziell: Oh, is that why?

780 01:23:07.300 ⇒ 01:23:07.940 Uttam Kumaran: shot.

781 01:23:07.940 ⇒ 01:23:08.320 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

782 01:23:08.320 ⇒ 01:23:08.689 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it is.

783 01:23:08.690 ⇒ 01:23:13.000 Robert Tseng: I’m using the cheapest one, just because I got that, yeah.

784 01:23:13.620 ⇒ 01:23:18.010 Luke Scorziell: You’re the one getting the bill, I don’t have to look at a bill.

785 01:23:18.780 ⇒ 01:23:19.800 Uttam Kumaran: Let me.

786 01:23:19.800 ⇒ 01:23:21.109 Luke Scorziell: No, it writes, nice.

787 01:23:23.330 ⇒ 01:23:31.450 Uttam Kumaran: I feel like… I think it’s a good chart to just brown everyone in, in,

788 01:23:32.690 ⇒ 01:23:34.750 Uttam Kumaran: Like, how much people are using, but…

789 01:23:34.750 ⇒ 01:23:40.409 Robert Tseng: But yeah, this has to be wrong. I must, like, not be in the team. I must be paying for my own cursor somehow, like, I…

790 01:23:40.410 ⇒ 01:23:42.979 Uttam Kumaran: So this was, this was it, I found it.

791 01:23:45.930 ⇒ 01:23:48.610 Luke Scorziell: I think he might have it pulled up on a different tab, potentially.

792 01:23:48.610 ⇒ 01:23:49.270 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

793 01:23:49.270 ⇒ 01:23:50.080 Luke Scorziell: Bother you.

794 01:23:50.610 ⇒ 01:23:53.570 Uttam Kumaran: This was as of, like, 2 weeks… as of a week and a half ago?

795 01:23:53.810 ⇒ 01:23:57.739 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I’m not even on here, what the heck? Yeah, something’s wrong, something’s happening here.

796 01:23:57.740 ⇒ 01:23:58.820 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay.

797 01:23:59.900 ⇒ 01:24:02.620 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, cause… Yeah.

798 01:24:03.260 ⇒ 01:24:09.910 Uttam Kumaran: These guys are using it for work, like, real, like, engineering work. Have I been paying for it this whole time? And then, Luke, you’re coming up.

799 01:24:10.900 ⇒ 01:24:17.200 Uttam Kumaran: But these are still, like, rookie… but you’re also not, like, I wouldn’t expect… tokens is not, like, a good representation of, like.

800 01:24:17.760 ⇒ 01:24:24.990 Uttam Kumaran: work, get… I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not, like, up for debate, but… We’ll start, I’ll start… yeah.

801 01:24:24.990 ⇒ 01:24:26.550 Luke Scorziell: My cost was $60.

802 01:24:27.160 ⇒ 01:24:27.709 Luke Scorziell: What’s that?

803 01:24:27.910 ⇒ 01:24:34.220 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, but I think over the last, like, week or so, you’re using the new Sonnet model, like, a lot. But this is where, like, I’m not, like…

804 01:24:34.580 ⇒ 01:24:38.169 Uttam Kumaran: I’m not worried about what… how you’re using it right now.

805 01:24:38.300 ⇒ 01:24:41.269 Uttam Kumaran: I just want you to use it, just spend it, I don’t… whatever.

806 01:24:41.430 ⇒ 01:24:47.380 Uttam Kumaran: Because then I’ll show you that, like, oh, dude, like, you can just use something easier and stuff like that. Like, I’m… that’s not the hurdle.

807 01:24:47.600 ⇒ 01:24:49.980 Uttam Kumaran: Because once you’re in it, it’s addicting.

808 01:24:50.090 ⇒ 01:24:55.530 Uttam Kumaran: Then I’ll… I can… shave off 10, 20 bucks somewhere, somehow, so I’m not worried as much about that.

809 01:24:56.700 ⇒ 01:25:00.529 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s… that’s good. I feel like we had a really good platform…

810 01:25:02.430 ⇒ 01:25:06.259 Uttam Kumaran: like, month. So, I feel like that’s really, really positive.

811 01:25:06.690 ⇒ 01:25:14.519 Uttam Kumaran: Trying to think if… Yeah, so, I mean, I feel like my job is to

812 01:25:14.700 ⇒ 01:25:19.249 Uttam Kumaran: Do the thing that’s on the edge, and then be like, hey guys, we could do this now.

813 01:25:19.350 ⇒ 01:25:22.700 Uttam Kumaran: And so I’m continuing to do that, so things are getting faster and faster.

814 01:25:25.400 ⇒ 01:25:35.299 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I feel like maybe I can just pass it to you, Clarence, and I think one thing that I think we’re gonna talk a little bit about today, and I can let Clarence set the stage, is…

815 01:25:35.510 ⇒ 01:25:38.040 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, one, I think, like, I think…

816 01:25:38.440 ⇒ 01:25:46.370 Uttam Kumaran: overall, Clarence’s involvement in the company has been one more of, like, coaching and strategy, but I think…

817 01:25:47.620 ⇒ 01:25:54.230 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve always thought about, okay, like, what are ways for us to actually pair and drive the business forward beyond that?

818 01:25:54.460 ⇒ 01:26:05.940 Uttam Kumaran: I think Clarence has been in an interesting spot where he’s tried to decide, like, you know, how that… how that could work, and I think we have a pretty good path forward. You know, I think if I could… I will lay out

819 01:26:06.410 ⇒ 01:26:16.430 Uttam Kumaran: I’m not gonna… I won’t lay out… I’ll lay out some of the risks before you go, and… but more broadly, like, I think anytime, like, all of the things we talked about, all the list of items.

820 01:26:16.570 ⇒ 01:26:18.540 Uttam Kumaran: These all take up, like…

821 01:26:18.930 ⇒ 01:26:37.630 Uttam Kumaran: and energy. And so anytime we do anything in the company, it takes effort from somebody. And so, we have a capacity, we can only do so many things, but not only are we trying to do a lot, we have to… we want to win at all these. Like, there’s no OKR on there that we don’t care about making green. If… if we… if we’re like, this doesn’t matter, it shouldn’t be on there, right? And so…

822 01:26:37.690 ⇒ 01:26:47.560 Uttam Kumaran: I do want to, like… we are… I would say we are moving faster and doing way more than most companies our size, or…

823 01:26:47.790 ⇒ 01:26:53.630 Uttam Kumaran: our duration, how long we’ve been, or our experience, which is amazing, and I think

824 01:26:53.920 ⇒ 01:27:02.949 Uttam Kumaran: with that in mind, you know, I spent some time with Clarence this week, and I think we have a path forward on, like, a little bit of a… I won’t say… not a shift, but, like, another…

825 01:27:03.130 ⇒ 01:27:09.870 Uttam Kumaran: way for us to capture some really, really incredible demand, I think we’re seeing in one particular part of the market.

826 01:27:11.210 ⇒ 01:27:15.710 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I don’t know, Clarence, like, I… I think that’s probably, like, a good, like…

827 01:27:15.940 ⇒ 01:27:19.000 Uttam Kumaran: trailer for, like, I think what you’re gonna share, so…

828 01:27:19.000 ⇒ 01:27:21.170 Clarence Stone: Absolutely. So,

829 01:27:21.390 ⇒ 01:27:41.239 Clarence Stone: how do I want to start this? I think you guys are feeling the acceleration, finally, right? Super Bowl commercials, you know, OpenClaw, and a lot more clients that are actually asking about AI services in comparison to the other suite of amazing, you know, services that Brainforge already has.

830 01:27:41.710 ⇒ 01:27:57.099 Clarence Stone: what my gut tells me, and what data says, is that the adoption is going to be a slow roll, while the inflection point of what AI is capable of is going to be a kind of like a J-curve upwards, right?

831 01:27:57.100 ⇒ 01:28:01.750 Clarence Stone: And, while y’all are running in a really amazing organization.

832 01:28:02.110 ⇒ 01:28:14.239 Clarence Stone: the transformation of AI is quickly outpacing what you guys are delivering to the market right now, because the market’s not even ready for, you know, what’s possible, right? So…

833 01:28:14.440 ⇒ 01:28:28.079 Clarence Stone: a lot of the conversations I was having with Utam is, how can we meet that demand without, you know, adding any stress to the current team and structure, right? And bring new features and capabilities on board, and,

834 01:28:28.410 ⇒ 01:28:45.599 Clarence Stone: and continue to standardize them so that you guys can go, you know, hit the market with, you know, the same stack of products, but be first to all of these new innovations. So, that’s sort of the theme of the conversation. Utam, I don’t know how much more you want to chat about on that topic.

835 01:28:46.070 ⇒ 01:28:53.920 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, I think… I think, like, does anyone have questions? I think part of this conversation is you’re… you guys are seeing internally, like, what AI is allowing us to do.

836 01:28:54.190 ⇒ 01:29:05.340 Uttam Kumaran: But the real, like, unlock for us is, like, how do we capture the fact that if our company is doing that, every company is actively trying to do that, or will actively be trying to do that?

837 01:29:05.460 ⇒ 01:29:18.939 Uttam Kumaran: And how do we service that, right? Just like all of our… how AI was born at this company was really, like, we solved this for ourselves, and then we’re like, okay, like, we did it, and we went through the pain, we can now do it for you. And this is, like.

838 01:29:19.210 ⇒ 01:29:29.930 Uttam Kumaran: basically trying to take some of our, like, energy and put it towards, like, that, that thing should happen. And the way I think about it is, like, that thing should happen much more seriously.

839 01:29:30.380 ⇒ 01:29:41.580 Uttam Kumaran: The technology is accelerating, though, but also the demand and the cost and the amount of people that can do it, is very, very different right now, and it kind of gives us an advantage.

840 01:29:41.910 ⇒ 01:29:45.240 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I don’t know, Clarence, if you want to just share, like.

841 01:29:45.650 ⇒ 01:29:59.949 Uttam Kumaran: an example, or why you think this is different than anything we’re doing right now, and I think you’ve talked to Luke a little bit about it, but I think our conversation yesterday and the day before was, like, really help… enlightening for me, so…

842 01:30:00.440 ⇒ 01:30:15.550 Clarence Stone: So the concepts around why I’d like to come on board is not going to change anything that you guys are doing at all, right? What’s happening is I want to run a more innovation-type cell that sells directly to enterprises so that we can get bigger wins.

843 01:30:15.550 ⇒ 01:30:32.410 Clarence Stone: Right? And sustain those wins. In order to do that, you know, I can’t do that alone. I’m actually finally seeing, you know, like, these enterprise clients have… show so much, you know, interest. And, you know, when I finally have these conversations, the question is, like, how am I supposed to deliver that?

844 01:30:32.410 ⇒ 01:30:43.869 Clarence Stone: Right? I do advisory, I, you know, I help with strategy, but, like, actually delivering on AI experiences is not what my, you know, organization is geared to do, right?

845 01:30:44.160 ⇒ 01:30:50.909 Clarence Stone: So, you know, the partnership that Utam and I talked about is, you know, coming up with those innovation features.

846 01:30:51.090 ⇒ 01:30:59.749 Clarence Stone: testing them here at Brainforge, right? Instantly getting that feedback on that innovation, and just turning right around and bringing it to the market.

847 01:30:59.850 ⇒ 01:31:05.509 Clarence Stone: Right? That allows us to capture the immediate market value without any sort of lag.

848 01:31:05.510 ⇒ 01:31:20.030 Clarence Stone: That’s gonna allow us to, you know, Luke, on your side, show some cutting-edge, you know, previews of things to come, and also position, you know, pricing in a more premium bracket for the higher-end things that we do.

849 01:31:20.080 ⇒ 01:31:31.559 Clarence Stone: And, I think all of that should, you know, end-to-end be net additive to this team, and, expand the scope of what we can deliver.

850 01:31:33.960 ⇒ 01:31:34.490 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.

851 01:31:37.570 ⇒ 01:31:39.550 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, I mean, I think the conversation from

852 01:31:39.720 ⇒ 01:31:46.259 Luke Scorziell: a few days ago, it was really, really powerful, and then it was just… it’s like, I think, yeah, right now, I’m, like.

853 01:31:46.680 ⇒ 01:31:54.079 Luke Scorziell: how do we keep the engine running with deals that just keep the business afloat, I guess? And then…

854 01:31:54.620 ⇒ 01:31:56.500 Luke Scorziell: But I’m thinking about…

855 01:31:57.070 ⇒ 01:32:08.400 Clarence Stone: But for, like… Luke, I guess there is one thing that might change, now that you do mention it. I think you’re gonna feel acceleration, too. Because, like, when I showed you that application.

856 01:32:08.760 ⇒ 01:32:13.289 Clarence Stone: I think you’ve connected the dots on what the capabilities are that are coming next.

857 01:32:13.970 ⇒ 01:32:24.100 Clarence Stone: Right? Like, and what we can bring to the table if we’re able to test them here, and, you know, or have you instantly do a client analysis and build a demo right there.

858 01:32:24.960 ⇒ 01:32:25.640 Luke Scorziell: Damn.

859 01:32:25.640 ⇒ 01:32:36.199 Clarence Stone: This is massively transformational to what you will be capable of doing alone. And, you know, validating that in-house and then being able to market that from your side is gonna be massive.

860 01:32:37.110 ⇒ 01:32:37.710 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

861 01:32:37.900 ⇒ 01:32:41.270 Luke Scorziell: I mean, I think that’s the thing, too, that I was, like, this…

862 01:32:41.330 ⇒ 01:33:00.439 Luke Scorziell: on a couple of these agency calls, I’ve been able to really relate with the prospect, because I’m… I’m like, I am your people that you’re frustrated with not using AI. Like, I had to go through that my own journey on that, so I think, like, Kayla too, and… and all of us, like, as we’re learning how to use these tools.

863 01:33:02.100 ⇒ 01:33:11.030 Luke Scorziell: those are the stories that are resonating with the people in other companies, too, and so… yeah, I don’t know, like, I’m excited to…

864 01:33:11.330 ⇒ 01:33:15.769 Luke Scorziell: I had the open… open… what is it called? Open,

865 01:33:16.080 ⇒ 01:33:17.340 Luke Scorziell: That was, I was open on mic.

866 01:33:17.930 ⇒ 01:33:19.569 Clarence Stone: You have work vicinity open!

867 01:33:19.810 ⇒ 01:33:21.970 Luke Scorziell: Work for San Dieu. No, okay, I have worked with San Die.

868 01:33:21.970 ⇒ 01:33:23.340 Clarence Stone: Nice.

869 01:33:23.340 ⇒ 01:33:25.359 Luke Scorziell: It was sucking my battery, though, so…

870 01:33:25.360 ⇒ 01:33:40.389 Clarence Stone: Yes, it does. Context costs, you know, but, I think, Luke, the biggest difference and the value proposition there is that it’s actually storing all those conversations on your laptop, so that battery life is well, you know, worth it to a lot of enterprise clients.

871 01:33:40.560 ⇒ 01:33:41.080 Clarence Stone: Right.

872 01:33:41.080 ⇒ 01:33:42.620 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, which is the whole privacy angle.

873 01:33:42.940 ⇒ 01:34:00.720 Clarence Stone: Well, not even that, just think about, like, the pressure of just switching from ChatGPT to Anthropic, right? Like, in this moment right now, Anthropic came out with this work suite, and let’s say there’s a company that’s dedicated themselves to building all these things in GPT and GPTs. How are you gonna lift and shift all that?

874 01:34:01.820 ⇒ 01:34:16.390 Clarence Stone: Right? Are you gonna copy and paste all your conversations over? Right? Like, when these things are stored and secured within the organization, like, you really have, you know, all the room to play with. You know, security aside, hey, your data is yours, right?

875 01:34:17.230 ⇒ 01:34:17.800 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

876 01:34:19.090 ⇒ 01:34:19.850 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

877 01:34:21.120 ⇒ 01:34:24.560 Clarence Stone: So I… you’ve got so many good sales points now.

878 01:34:24.560 ⇒ 01:34:26.339 Luke Scorziell: I know, I’m like…

879 01:34:27.020 ⇒ 01:34:37.440 Clarence Stone: So, with that, you know, I hope that we move up in marketing, and I’m sorry, we move up in the price brackets that we’re, you know, we’re in right now, because we’re going to start delivering things that no one else can do.

880 01:34:38.620 ⇒ 01:34:39.220 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

881 01:34:41.650 ⇒ 01:34:42.460 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

882 01:34:42.830 ⇒ 01:34:47.799 Luke Scorziell: Well, which even… yeah, I mean, even today, the guy that we were talking with today was very technical,

883 01:34:47.960 ⇒ 01:34:53.120 Luke Scorziell: But by the end of the conversation, Pranav had, like, shown him that there’s just, like, a lot more that he’d…

884 01:34:53.710 ⇒ 01:34:55.439 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, that he can do, so…

885 01:34:56.050 ⇒ 01:34:56.450 Clarence Stone: Nice.

886 01:34:57.310 ⇒ 01:34:58.110 Luke Scorziell: Cool.

887 01:34:58.690 ⇒ 01:34:59.260 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.

888 01:34:59.660 ⇒ 01:35:06.309 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. So I think, yeah, I mean, I feel like this meeting was great. I think probably next week, next month.

889 01:35:06.420 ⇒ 01:35:14.729 Uttam Kumaran: will be a bit tighter. I think maybe one thing that I can think about going into next week is, like, how do we keep… how do we do something like this rhythm once a week?

890 01:35:15.120 ⇒ 01:35:20.639 Uttam Kumaran: I wonder if it’s, like, on Monday or on Friday. It’s definitely gonna be tough to go to this detail.

891 01:35:20.800 ⇒ 01:35:22.610 Uttam Kumaran: But,

892 01:35:23.340 ⇒ 01:35:29.839 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, I want to think about something, like, I don’t want it to feel like a chore to, like, flick on everything and things like that, but…

893 01:35:30.050 ⇒ 01:35:34.360 Uttam Kumaran: I do think it’s helpful to go through some of these topics once a week, the most important ones.

894 01:35:34.660 ⇒ 01:35:38.319 Uttam Kumaran: So let me think a little bit about what to do for next week.

895 01:35:38.440 ⇒ 01:35:40.569 Uttam Kumaran: And then, yeah, for next month, I mean, look, I think…

896 01:35:40.830 ⇒ 01:35:48.680 Uttam Kumaran: the things listed there are what we’ve stated. And then, so coming into next month, coming into end of March.

897 01:35:49.040 ⇒ 01:35:53.649 Uttam Kumaran: You know, we will be looking at, okay, what is… what do we do for Q2? So I think it’s a…

898 01:35:53.650 ⇒ 01:35:54.030 Luke Scorziell: I think…

899 01:35:54.030 ⇒ 01:35:57.120 Uttam Kumaran: This is sort of the last month for us to really, like, knock a lot of these out.

900 01:36:00.730 ⇒ 01:36:03.060 Uttam Kumaran: But yeah, looking forward to it, so this is great.

901 01:36:05.980 ⇒ 01:36:09.910 Uttam Kumaran: Cool, maybe Clarence and Robert, you want to stay on.

902 01:36:10.150 ⇒ 01:36:12.119 Uttam Kumaran: Everybody else, like, have a great weekend.

903 01:36:14.780 ⇒ 01:36:15.160 Robert Tseng: Right.

904 01:36:15.160 ⇒ 01:36:15.580 Luke Scorziell: too.

905 01:36:15.580 ⇒ 01:36:16.390 Robert Tseng: Perfect.

906 01:36:16.800 ⇒ 01:36:17.680 Uttam Kumaran: Thanks, everyone.

907 01:36:17.680 ⇒ 01:36:19.010 Clarence Stone: Appreciate it, guys.

908 01:36:21.120 ⇒ 01:36:21.880 Uttam Kumaran: Nice.

909 01:36:22.470 ⇒ 01:36:24.179 Uttam Kumaran: That was great. I love that.

910 01:36:26.000 ⇒ 01:36:26.620 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think.

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