Meeting Title: Brainforge x D&G Project Check-in Date: 2026-03-10 Meeting participants: Luke Scorziell, Robert Tseng, Pranav Narahari, IT Department, peter.bassett
WEBVTT
1 00:01:02.320 ⇒ 00:01:03.950 Luke Scorziell: Very relaxed, Robert.
2 00:01:05.890 ⇒ 00:01:07.740 Robert Tseng: I will be after this.
3 00:01:28.610 ⇒ 00:01:30.190 Robert Tseng: How did the eating call go, bro?
4 00:01:31.250 ⇒ 00:01:32.130 Pranav Narahari: Oh, well.
5 00:01:33.780 ⇒ 00:01:34.889 Robert Tseng: You get what you need?
6 00:01:36.210 ⇒ 00:01:40.409 Pranav Narahari: Yeah, I got in terms of, like, direction, exactly, but he was also, like.
7 00:01:40.480 ⇒ 00:01:59.560 Pranav Narahari: oh, like, let me know, like, it was kind of, like, almost, like, get started type thing, you know, like, oh, like, kind of get these, like, credentials, like, you can message me about that. So I was like, oh, yeah, let me talk to Robert and, like, we’ll, like, get the comps up, because I feel like there still needs to be, like, some, like, sign-off that happens, right?
8 00:02:00.290 ⇒ 00:02:03.209 Robert Tseng: We got assigned the additional SOW, so…
9 00:02:03.210 ⇒ 00:02:05.960 Pranav Narahari: Yeah, exactly. So, won’t get started on that.
10 00:02:07.220 ⇒ 00:02:07.940 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
11 00:02:11.250 ⇒ 00:02:16.399 Robert Tseng: Okay, well then, I guess… Would you… Mine just kind of, like…
12 00:02:17.850 ⇒ 00:02:26.480 Robert Tseng: I guess you could send it to me. I can… I can go amend the SOW, or I guess I’ll go look at the transcript. I’ll amend it with what you… if you… I’m assuming you’re going forward with them.
13 00:02:26.950 ⇒ 00:02:27.580 Pranav Narahari: Yup.
14 00:02:28.540 ⇒ 00:02:30.640 IT Department: Hey, Josh. Hey, what’s going on, guys?
15 00:02:30.640 ⇒ 00:02:31.610 Luke Scorziell: How’s it going?
16 00:02:32.320 ⇒ 00:02:33.010 IT Department: Good?
17 00:02:33.400 ⇒ 00:02:36.239 Luke Scorziell: Is, you think Peter will hop on today, or…
18 00:02:36.240 ⇒ 00:02:38.119 IT Department: No, I don’t think we’re gonna see Peter today.
19 00:02:38.120 ⇒ 00:02:39.020 Luke Scorziell: Oh, well, here.
20 00:02:39.020 ⇒ 00:02:40.199 Robert Tseng: There he is.
21 00:02:40.200 ⇒ 00:02:41.179 IT Department: Oh, there he is, alright.
22 00:02:42.120 ⇒ 00:02:48.100 Luke Scorziell: This is, Robert. He’s our… one of our founders and CEOs, so just,
23 00:02:48.320 ⇒ 00:02:52.600 Luke Scorziell: I’ll kind of let him introduce himself, but, yeah.
24 00:02:52.600 ⇒ 00:03:10.719 Robert Tseng: Yeah, hey Josh and Peter, good to meet you. I think these guys have enjoyed the conversations with you so far, so just thought it’d be helpful for me to kind of jump on this call as well, as we’re kind of getting more details. I think Luke will still drive the call for now, but at least wanted to be here and, see how I could be helpful.
25 00:03:11.360 ⇒ 00:03:13.050 IT Department: Great, nice to meet you, Robert.
26 00:03:13.950 ⇒ 00:03:14.860 peter.bassett: Meet you.
27 00:03:15.680 ⇒ 00:03:16.340 Luke Scorziell: Oh.
28 00:03:16.480 ⇒ 00:03:27.109 Luke Scorziell: Well, it’s great to see you guys, again. I guess, pass along a couple things. I’m curious, yeah, if you guys had thoughts on, like, that revamped demo, if you were able to pass it along, if anyone had…
29 00:03:27.350 ⇒ 00:03:30.760 Luke Scorziell: Feedback within the team, or… yeah, just… would love to hear.
30 00:03:31.550 ⇒ 00:03:33.430 IT Department: You know,
31 00:03:33.570 ⇒ 00:03:46.480 IT Department: I think we all really liked, Peter and I both really liked what we saw. I thought it was very interesting. Cost is, like I said, the number one thing we’re thinking about in terms of,
32 00:03:46.800 ⇒ 00:03:57.350 IT Department: you know, what could this, what could this cost us in terms of setup and maintenance, and any kind of ongoing support contracts? That would be the next step for us to consider.
33 00:03:58.110 ⇒ 00:04:04.629 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, and I, did you get to see the document that I sent over last night?
34 00:04:04.630 ⇒ 00:04:07.660 IT Department: I don’t think I saw that last night.
35 00:04:07.660 ⇒ 00:04:14.459 Luke Scorziell: Okay, no, no worries. Yeah, I mean, I think the goal that we have with that is just kind of, like, if we’re gonna…
36 00:04:14.590 ⇒ 00:04:15.950 IT Department: Try to roll out.
37 00:04:15.950 ⇒ 00:04:30.000 Luke Scorziell: data connections across, like, the entire organization, what would that look like as far as, like, doing the initial discovery to see where you guys are at in terms of what you already have set up and the systems that you have? Because I know we
38 00:04:30.240 ⇒ 00:04:39.190 Luke Scorziell: talked about it, sounds like there’s some on-prem, systems, and then maybe, Peter, you’ve done a little bit on, like, the vibe coding side with Figma.
39 00:04:39.300 ⇒ 00:04:49.649 Luke Scorziell: But as far as, like, yeah, rolling that out across the entire organization, what would that look like? So, wanted to just put, like, here’s, like, the menu of things that we could do.
40 00:04:49.920 ⇒ 00:04:52.499 Luke Scorziell: In front of you guys, and then just see…
41 00:04:53.000 ⇒ 00:05:12.509 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, kind of on today’s call, like, what are the real priorities? Are those 5 softwares that we talked about, being, like, the Adobe Tenant, Frame.io, Kanto, File Stage, and then building out your own archive server? Are those, like, the five top priorities right now, or those 5 priorities that, like, were just top of mind when we spoke the first time?
42 00:05:12.660 ⇒ 00:05:18.190 Luke Scorziell: And then… Yeah, because I think that’ll kind of bring us to the phase
43 00:05:18.450 ⇒ 00:05:21.289 Luke Scorziell: Zero, and that scope of work of, like.
44 00:05:21.860 ⇒ 00:05:29.439 Luke Scorziell: us just doing discovery of, like, how can we best create a solution that really fits in, with what you guys need, so…
45 00:05:29.590 ⇒ 00:05:32.160 Luke Scorziell: I can kinda… yeah, I can pause there,
46 00:05:32.410 ⇒ 00:05:37.940 Luke Scorziell: But that’s… that’s a bit of, yeah, the thought behind sending that document, so I don’t know if that…
47 00:05:38.720 ⇒ 00:05:41.879 IT Department: Okay, yeah, I’m kind of browsing the document now.
48 00:05:42.130 ⇒ 00:05:50.729 IT Department: I can’t speak to this at the moment, I’d have to look it over and get back to you. I do appreciate the cost being in there, that’s really helpful for us.
49 00:05:53.860 ⇒ 00:06:03.680 IT Department: Yeah, so the initial request that we had, that was a lot of top-of-mind stuff. I mean, there’s still certainly a place for that.
50 00:06:03.780 ⇒ 00:06:15.329 IT Department: Some other areas that we’ve been looking into is, like, generative AI in terms of images and video. I’m not sure if you guys do things specifically on that front.
51 00:06:15.620 ⇒ 00:06:20.920 IT Department: It seems like, you know, that’s… that’s another component, though, that we’d be interested in.
52 00:06:22.670 ⇒ 00:06:29.490 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, so I think, and too, so I was kind of talking with Robert before,
53 00:06:29.810 ⇒ 00:06:31.460 Luke Scorziell: It’s just figuring out…
54 00:06:31.830 ⇒ 00:06:42.319 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, I guess, like, us meeting at some place of, like, you kind of knowing the priorities that you guys have on the team, and then us being able to help you discover that. So, obviously, there’s, like.
55 00:06:42.910 ⇒ 00:06:54.069 Luke Scorziell: if you guys were maybe coming to us, like, here are the specific pain points that, like, we exactly know, and we wanna… we want you to build out this system, this system, and this system, then, like, that’s, I guess, on our end, like.
56 00:06:54.470 ⇒ 00:06:58.200 Luke Scorziell: Gives us more clarity of, here’s the…
57 00:06:58.950 ⇒ 00:07:08.579 Luke Scorziell: Okay, here’s, like, probably what that would take. I guess with the… if it’s higher on the ambiguity side, like, that’s fine too, it’s just more of, like, you know, then we’re setting up,
58 00:07:08.740 ⇒ 00:07:11.769 Luke Scorziell: Doing a longer discovery, and seeing
59 00:07:11.900 ⇒ 00:07:22.250 Luke Scorziell: where, yeah, where… where we could fit in, but then, like, it’s… the time to production, I guess, would… would be longer, and then we’d be spending more time
60 00:07:22.770 ⇒ 00:07:27.499 Luke Scorziell: researching it and whatnot. So I guess that’s kind of maybe an area, too, that we can flush out.
61 00:07:29.350 ⇒ 00:07:41.239 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, on this call of, like, is that… would that be something that you’d be interested in doing, like, with us, where you want to do more discovery? Is that something you guys would kind of want to do on your own? I know you have the internal AI team.
62 00:07:41.240 ⇒ 00:07:55.179 IT Department: Yeah, I know, we’re still kind of trying to figure out exactly what we want to do. What you showed us in the demo, though, is exactly the kind of thing that we’re looking for in terms of being able to consolidate
63 00:07:55.180 ⇒ 00:08:02.170 IT Department: Our information in one place, and make it searchable, and be able to glean insights from it, and stuff like that.
64 00:08:02.350 ⇒ 00:08:08.980 IT Department: And you know, like I said, that was, that was a fantastic demo.
65 00:08:11.660 ⇒ 00:08:14.109 IT Department: That’s all I have, man, I don’t know.
66 00:08:14.300 ⇒ 00:08:24.490 IT Department: Can I jump in here? Talking about it internally with people, it really comes down to cost, so they want to know what that cost is going to look like every month before we go any further or show anybody else.
67 00:08:24.490 ⇒ 00:08:25.090 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.
68 00:08:25.790 ⇒ 00:08:42.899 Robert Tseng: Yeah, can I jump in here? Yeah, I guess, looking at the doc, I mean, I think our price on there is… I mean, we just… it’s just a… just a starting price, but, like, typically, this is, like, a 90K, 90K is, like, kind of what we see.
69 00:08:43.080 ⇒ 00:08:52.679 Robert Tseng: Have you guys looked into other tools? Are you talking to other… are you talking to other, service providers? Like, what… how does… what’s your reaction to that price?
70 00:08:54.040 ⇒ 00:09:00.700 IT Department: You know, it’s in line about with what I would expect it to be, so I’m not particularly shocked by it or anything.
71 00:09:00.960 ⇒ 00:09:03.679 IT Department: Yeah, it’s just more…
72 00:09:03.680 ⇒ 00:09:08.409 Robert Tseng: And where’s the budget coming from? Is it from you, or is it from Peter, or…
73 00:09:08.410 ⇒ 00:09:13.879 IT Department: They’re… we don’t have a budget at the moment, which is why they want to know what to expect.
74 00:09:13.880 ⇒ 00:09:14.440 Robert Tseng: Okay.
75 00:09:14.900 ⇒ 00:09:18.930 Robert Tseng: Yeah, because, like, just based on what you described, just to give you some other benchmarks, like.
76 00:09:19.070 ⇒ 00:09:28.979 Robert Tseng: You know, what we’re talking about here is a horizontal search platform first. There’s, like, 5 custom sources that we’ve talked about in front of what I gleaned from the previous transcripts.
77 00:09:29.120 ⇒ 00:09:31.729 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think, like, the…
78 00:09:32.130 ⇒ 00:09:36.399 Robert Tseng: You could… you could buy an off-the-shelf context graph
79 00:09:36.510 ⇒ 00:09:50.029 Robert Tseng: tool, like Glean. It’s an enterprise search tool. They’re, like, probably 50 bucks per person per month for, like, 200 users, so it’s about $120K a month for probably at least a 2-year contract.
80 00:09:50.210 ⇒ 00:09:57.490 Robert Tseng: And then on the low end, you could go with something like Worklytics, which is probably around $30K a year, but they only do, like.
81 00:09:57.820 ⇒ 00:10:02.840 Robert Tseng: your calendar and your chat tools, probably. So, I think, like.
82 00:10:03.230 ⇒ 00:10:18.289 Robert Tseng: you know, I think that’s kind of, you know, if you feel free to do your shopping around, I think that’s kind of what you would see. We could be helpful. We’ve assessed all of these vendors as well. And I think how you can view what we offer is, you know, it’s a custom
83 00:10:18.600 ⇒ 00:10:23.919 Robert Tseng: software as a service, right? I think it’s, we… we don’t kind of…
84 00:10:24.020 ⇒ 00:10:42.249 Robert Tseng: give you all the things where only, typically, when you buy software off the shelf, you know, 80% of it is not really useful to you, you only really want 20% of it. Instead, we’re starting small, scoping with just those 5 specific sources that you’re talking about, building something very, very narrow, but you’ll get immediate value out of that, which is why we
85 00:10:42.250 ⇒ 00:10:50.769 Robert Tseng: kind of emphasize having what Luke is describing as the discovery phase, to make sure that we have, like, a project to get off the ground. So…
86 00:10:50.810 ⇒ 00:11:00.229 Robert Tseng: I guess, like, I’m curious, like, is this… are those just… are those the five sources? Is there… is there something that’s more urgent? Like, what would… what would get people to…
87 00:11:00.300 ⇒ 00:11:14.429 Robert Tseng: at least, like, kind of scope for something that we can move on soon… sooner. I mean, otherwise, like, I guess we could… we could revisit this conversation later down the line. But, I think that’s what I’d like to get out of this call.
88 00:11:15.630 ⇒ 00:11:18.089 IT Department: Yeah, those are the five sources,
89 00:11:18.370 ⇒ 00:11:22.049 IT Department: That’s where we, that’s where we want to get our information out of, and…
90 00:11:22.220 ⇒ 00:11:28.819 IT Department: gain a better understanding of, you know, our data lakes, and how we can glean insights from those. So, yeah.
91 00:11:29.000 ⇒ 00:11:31.259 IT Department: That’s really, the start of it for us.
92 00:11:32.560 ⇒ 00:11:32.960 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.
93 00:11:32.960 ⇒ 00:11:39.419 Robert Tseng: Great. Well, I guess, like, from a timeline perspective, like, when are you guys looking to make a decision?
94 00:11:40.610 ⇒ 00:11:47.729 IT Department: I think we’re talking about it at the moment, right, Peter? There’s, ongoing conversation, so…
95 00:11:47.730 ⇒ 00:11:55.270 peter.bassett: Yeah, I mean, I think if I were to jump in, and, you know, I know that you had, had a…
96 00:11:55.590 ⇒ 00:12:01.830 peter.bassett: conversation with Josh, and then Josh pulled me into the last session, so I got my first peek at this.
97 00:12:02.510 ⇒ 00:12:10.710 peter.bassett: As an organization, we’re doing kind of a wholesale evaluation of everything…
98 00:12:10.850 ⇒ 00:12:23.110 peter.bassett: we currently leverage AI for. We have a few tools that we’re using currently that are, you know, part of our kind of normal integrated systems, like
99 00:12:23.570 ⇒ 00:12:31.379 peter.bassett: we’re on… we’re on Microsoft, so we have access… or a few people have access to Copilot that has some…
100 00:12:32.900 ⇒ 00:12:39.300 peter.bassett: interesting functionalities in this space. I think if I were…
101 00:12:40.140 ⇒ 00:12:46.909 peter.bassett: Just coming in to my thought right now is, especially as it pertains to timing, is like.
102 00:12:47.580 ⇒ 00:13:00.010 peter.bassett: we… we’re in the process right now of kind of figuring out what that… what our real requirements are, and what a tool like BrainCorp Forge could help us with.
103 00:13:00.180 ⇒ 00:13:02.370 Luke Scorziell: Yeah. Our immediate…
104 00:13:02.600 ⇒ 00:13:09.610 peter.bassett: next steps… are… we’re actually working on a client-facing presentation for Kia.
105 00:13:09.980 ⇒ 00:13:16.659 peter.bassett: That encapsulates some other functionality, so I would say in the next, probably, 2 to 3 weeks.
106 00:13:16.990 ⇒ 00:13:22.759 peter.bassett: our teams, like, our kind of AI steering committee is really focused on that.
107 00:13:23.310 ⇒ 00:13:23.910 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.
108 00:13:23.910 ⇒ 00:13:30.830 peter.bassett: And… and Josh, I don’t know if that… If that, sounds…
109 00:13:31.030 ⇒ 00:13:32.010 IT Department: Yeah, no, that’s right.
110 00:13:32.010 ⇒ 00:13:34.240 peter.bassett: I knew that, like, we’d probably need…
111 00:13:35.440 ⇒ 00:13:40.709 peter.bassett: we probably need some time to really evaluate how this… how Brainforge could…
112 00:13:41.140 ⇒ 00:13:46.240 peter.bassett: Impact our normal day-to-day work, but we’re a very small team.
113 00:13:46.820 ⇒ 00:13:53.369 peter.bassett: Better… and we’re pulled in a ton of different directions, every day, so it’s kind of…
114 00:13:54.320 ⇒ 00:14:11.750 peter.bassett: we’re trying to evaluate these things as these opportunities come up, and of course, seeing what you guys brought to the table is really amazing, and I think Josh and I both see the value in it, but getting other team members to evaluate it
115 00:14:12.210 ⇒ 00:14:18.119 peter.bassett: in the context of some of the other work streams we have going. That’s just where we’re at, to be…
116 00:14:18.120 ⇒ 00:14:27.039 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, no, it’s totally normal for agencies. It’s like, you get… you have a deadline and a project, and it’s like, no one is thinking about anything else other than…
117 00:14:27.740 ⇒ 00:14:38.210 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, getting that done, so it’s like, yeah, throwing an AI, like, hey, can you look at this, you know, AI thing is, you know, it’s like, you know, no, like, I have a million other things.
118 00:14:38.740 ⇒ 00:14:45.329 Luke Scorziell: And these are, like, the things that we’re billing the client for. So, yeah, totally understand that. And I think,
119 00:14:45.620 ⇒ 00:14:49.780 Luke Scorziell: Just those questions are really helpful for us, just in knowing, like.
120 00:14:49.880 ⇒ 00:14:57.920 Luke Scorziell: how much can we support you, and… and… or, like, where… where do you need support, I guess, as we’re in this process together? And it sounds like if I’m…
121 00:14:58.500 ⇒ 00:15:09.899 Luke Scorziell: like, reading the room, like, you guys are really excited about it. I think we’re really excited, to get to, yeah, have the opportunity to partner. And then it just sounds like there’s some other…
122 00:15:10.710 ⇒ 00:15:13.130 Luke Scorziell: I guess, like, stakeholders,
123 00:15:13.340 ⇒ 00:15:25.170 Luke Scorziell: that are, like, busy right now. This isn’t, like, the highest priority for them, necessarily, even though it maybe is important, and honestly, like, as time goes by, like, other agencies are also
124 00:15:25.360 ⇒ 00:15:32.920 Luke Scorziell: implementing these workflows, and it’s… it’s… I mean, it’s… yeah, these aren’t just, like, 20-30% time savings.
125 00:15:33.000 ⇒ 00:15:51.519 IT Department: I mean, you know, for us, Peter and I both like this, but, you know, as we’re working through this other AI stuff that’s going on, we need a whole picture from you guys to present to them of, you know, what this tool does, and what it’s gonna cost, and, you know, why we need it.
126 00:15:51.580 ⇒ 00:15:58.980 IT Department: Which is why, cost is the thing that, I brought up that we need to… that we need to see a ballpark cost for what this would be.
127 00:15:59.110 ⇒ 00:16:04.570 IT Department: Because if we’re going to move forward with it, then that’s just the understanding that we have to bring with us.
128 00:16:04.810 ⇒ 00:16:05.290 IT Department: before the.
129 00:16:05.290 ⇒ 00:16:05.690 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.
130 00:16:05.690 ⇒ 00:16:14.090 IT Department: see the tool, you know, we would tell them, this is what it does, this is how it could help us, this is what the cost is going to be, and then they’d probably want to see a demo after that.
131 00:16:15.520 ⇒ 00:16:25.540 Luke Scorziell: And with… so with this SOW, I guess, that we’ve put in front of you, obviously, I know you haven’t had a chance to look over it. I know Peter, I think, but so I’m happy to… if you want to email thoughts, too.
132 00:16:25.770 ⇒ 00:16:32.820 Luke Scorziell: Like, is there more ammo that, like, I kind of outlined, I mean, I can share.
133 00:16:33.080 ⇒ 00:16:43.789 IT Department: I’m gonna have to look at it, right? Like, I just saw it for the first time right now while we’re on this call, so… Yeah. Hard for me to say, like, what’s missing from it yet, and it’s…
134 00:16:44.280 ⇒ 00:16:45.639 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, I mean, I can just even, like…
135 00:16:45.640 ⇒ 00:16:49.860 IT Department: It’s well documented, I gotta tell you, like, 16 pages is, that’s great.
136 00:16:50.130 ⇒ 00:16:52.170 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, we’d do our best to…
137 00:16:52.380 ⇒ 00:16:56.660 Luke Scorziell: kind of address what we can, so I’ll just… I can just look over, like, a couple…
138 00:16:57.440 ⇒ 00:17:01.440 Luke Scorziell: kind of key. So, obviously, we’ve got, like, the overview of,
139 00:17:02.530 ⇒ 00:17:11.389 Luke Scorziell: what the project would entail, I think we’re pretty clear on this, like, the five different, creative and production systems, and then building you guys a proprietary archive server.
140 00:17:13.069 ⇒ 00:17:19.709 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, I guess with, like, the scope of work, and maybe this is how, you know, as you’re thinking of, like, how do we communicate this, is, like.
141 00:17:20.109 ⇒ 00:17:25.209 Luke Scorziell: If it’s truly, like, we want to build out the tool that we already saw,
142 00:17:25.380 ⇒ 00:17:34.339 Luke Scorziell: and the demo, and we just want to very narrowly focus on that. I think we can do that. We just… it would still take time for us to learn how do we build, like, custom
143 00:17:34.560 ⇒ 00:17:38.670 Luke Scorziell: Data integrations with each of those tools, and then it’s…
144 00:17:38.860 ⇒ 00:17:41.639 Luke Scorziell: you know, there’s a lot of… on our end and building.
145 00:17:43.100 ⇒ 00:17:51.759 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, so you can kind of look at the technical stuff here. I won’t go super into it, because it’s… But just, like, this is a phase that would take time, just because
146 00:17:51.970 ⇒ 00:17:56.690 Luke Scorziell: We’re kind of… Having to look through all the stuff, that you guys have.
147 00:17:56.910 ⇒ 00:18:01.160 Luke Scorziell: And then… then from there, we were thinking of rolling it out to, like, a pilot group.
148 00:18:02.740 ⇒ 00:18:13.299 Luke Scorziell: Where we can just see that it’s working, seeing how people are using it. We can kind of work on some edge cases of, yeah, what’s happening there, and then it, like… so this, I mean, this is, like.
149 00:18:13.550 ⇒ 00:18:17.569 Luke Scorziell: kind of big, big picture, and then, I mean, from there, it’s like.
150 00:18:17.680 ⇒ 00:18:28.770 Luke Scorziell: Are there specific departments that you would want us to roll it out to first? Or do we want to, like, trial one department? Do we want to do the whole agency? Like, what makes sense there?
151 00:18:29.070 ⇒ 00:18:34.970 Luke Scorziell: And so… And then, kind of us doing training sessions and whatnot.
152 00:18:35.060 ⇒ 00:18:40.109 Luke Scorziell: So that’s, like, the full roadmap of… we do a discovery to see more of
153 00:18:40.170 ⇒ 00:18:44.419 Luke Scorziell: Like, okay, how would these features actually work? How do we plug them in?
154 00:18:44.440 ⇒ 00:19:00.580 Luke Scorziell: And… and that’s where Pranav would spend a lot of time, and the rest of our team. And then… and then from there, it’s really like, okay, we know that you’ve launched other tools that you mentioned weren’t really successful. So, like, why was that, and how do we make sure that this doesn’t fall under those same…
155 00:19:00.840 ⇒ 00:19:07.439 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, like, have those same issues. And so… That’s kind of a…
156 00:19:07.440 ⇒ 00:19:25.790 Robert Tseng: pause on the phases, just go back up for a sec. I mean, I think in other words, it’s like, I think the demo we put together is the demo. Like, we’re not gonna make another demo without, kind of, entering the contract. Like, I… I think to build the integrations, like, that’s all paid work, and that, to us, is part of a phase zero that we typically do.
157 00:19:25.910 ⇒ 00:19:38.019 Robert Tseng: So, rather than, like, this isn’t a tool that you buy out of the box, it’s not for sale, like, we’re just… we build custom, kind of, implementations for every client. So, I think typically what we see is that
158 00:19:38.020 ⇒ 00:19:49.520 Robert Tseng: people have a few sources that they’re… that they want to use as the demo, and I, you know, if we take this Kia project, you know, it sounds like it’s already at the end, it’s only 2 or 3 weeks left.
159 00:19:49.520 ⇒ 00:20:08.339 Robert Tseng: But whatever you needed to see in a particular work screen there, if we would just take a few things from there, we’d plug it into the… and we would build… we would build around that, that would be the proof of concept, that you would be able to go and get more buy-in from your team before. So, I mean, the phase one to three is really just kind of throat clearing currently, like, it’s…
160 00:20:08.340 ⇒ 00:20:24.969 Robert Tseng: like, I think we’re… we’re still, like, pre-Phase zero at this point. Like, this… there hasn’t been enough detail from, like, I think what we’ve… from the two conversations that I feel like the team has had with you guys, so I’m not really sure, like, if there’s any more for us to write on this doc, or if there’s, like.
161 00:20:25.040 ⇒ 00:20:29.180 Robert Tseng: If we can try to get budget to, like, work with, I mean.
162 00:20:29.510 ⇒ 00:20:40.740 Robert Tseng: budget, or, you know, somebody on your team just kind of does, like, a… does, like, a walkthrough with us, like, I don’t know what that would look like, but I feel like we’re… I don’t know if we’re on the same page there.
163 00:20:42.900 ⇒ 00:20:48.940 IT Department: At the moment, I don’t think we need to add anything to the stock. Like I said, I just need to review it.
164 00:20:50.530 ⇒ 00:21:06.360 IT Department: And in terms of the Kia project, there is a pathway that I think would benefit from, you know, the kind of work that you guys do, and the demo that you’ve already shown us. But for us, it just comes down to cost approval, and…
165 00:21:06.370 ⇒ 00:21:18.989 IT Department: team leadership buy-in beyond Peter and myself, so, you know, at the moment, we just need this, what you’ve already sent us, and I don’t think we need anything else for now. Right, Peter?
166 00:21:21.270 ⇒ 00:21:26.060 peter.bassett: Yeah, I agree. No, this is… this is all great, and… and…
167 00:21:27.020 ⇒ 00:21:40.510 peter.bassett: I understand the concern, like, we’re not… we’re definitely not asking you to do any more demos and stuff. I think we have all the info we need, and we just need a minute, like Josh said, to… to figure out how this piece fits within…
168 00:21:40.800 ⇒ 00:21:46.350 peter.bassett: the AI puzzle that we’re… Yeah, yeah. …together here at D&G.
169 00:21:47.150 ⇒ 00:21:59.690 Robert Tseng: Well, I mean, can we spend a few minutes talking about, kind of, what your guys’ AI roadmap is? Like, we don’t want to just impose our own plan onto what you guys are doing. I think it typically is more helpful when
170 00:21:59.930 ⇒ 00:22:08.850 Robert Tseng: I mean, sure, you guys could be excited about what we’ve shown you, but, like, you know, where does this actually slot into, kind of, what you guys have on your own internal roadmap?
171 00:22:08.850 ⇒ 00:22:20.610 IT Department: I mean, at the moment, Robert, we can’t. The project that we’re working on for Kia is covered by our NDA, and I know that we haven’t yet signed a mutual MDA.
172 00:22:21.430 ⇒ 00:22:25.950 Robert Tseng: Oh, we have it? Sorry, that was not… I was not aware about that.
173 00:22:25.950 ⇒ 00:22:29.770 IT Department: No, so we can’t share very much information about it.
174 00:22:30.010 ⇒ 00:22:30.590 Robert Tseng: Totally.
175 00:22:30.590 ⇒ 00:22:33.139 IT Department: Hopefully soon in the future, though, yeah.
176 00:22:33.550 ⇒ 00:22:34.150 Robert Tseng: Okay.
177 00:22:39.340 ⇒ 00:22:40.070 IT Department: Okay, cool.
178 00:22:40.070 ⇒ 00:22:57.069 Robert Tseng: Well, then, sounds like we’re going to just circle back in a couple weeks. Yeah, I think that’s… that’s, I mean, I’ll… I guess the team can kind of schedule that call, with you, but… yeah, I mean, in the meanwhile, we should… we should get a mutual NBA in place. I think,
179 00:22:57.310 ⇒ 00:23:07.880 Robert Tseng: I’m surprised we didn’t do that with even the demo that we shared with you. That should have definitely been in the NDA. So, we will… we will… if you wouldn’t mind, we would like to send that over.
180 00:23:07.880 ⇒ 00:23:08.269 IT Department: We can do that.
181 00:23:08.270 ⇒ 00:23:09.890 Robert Tseng: I would like to get that signed, too.
182 00:23:11.260 ⇒ 00:23:14.329 peter.bassett: Yeah, and then I would also ask,
183 00:23:14.720 ⇒ 00:23:22.699 peter.bassett: Obviously, you guys have a ton of information on your website and things like that, but if you have any specific case studies that
184 00:23:23.520 ⇒ 00:23:30.740 peter.bassett: Are… that would help us just understand the impact that a tool like this has made, like, real life.
185 00:23:31.820 ⇒ 00:23:36.090 peter.bassett: I don’t know if you have that, or maybe you… maybe you can only show that once we…
186 00:23:36.190 ⇒ 00:23:47.499 peter.bassett: have an NDA in place, but… Yeah. I think it would just help us to see how, like, contextually, a tool like this has been implemented in a creative agency.
187 00:23:47.880 ⇒ 00:23:49.890 peter.bassett: Or… adjacent.
188 00:23:49.890 ⇒ 00:23:51.110 Luke Scorziell: sort of…
189 00:23:51.110 ⇒ 00:23:53.130 peter.bassett: company, and… and how
190 00:23:53.540 ⇒ 00:23:59.589 peter.bassett: Like, how it impacted, and maybe what… what some of the pain points were, some of the things that over… just…
191 00:23:59.750 ⇒ 00:24:09.100 peter.bassett: Whatever you have in that would be helpful for me anyway, just for the context, as we’re answering questions internally and thinking about this.
192 00:24:09.440 ⇒ 00:24:19.229 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Yeah, totally. We have an ROI thing here, Luke, but we should probably split it out of the stock, and then just kind of send along materials with them on… well, after the MBA, we can send… then we can send some case studies.
193 00:24:19.410 ⇒ 00:24:25.940 Luke Scorziell: Okay. Yeah, no, that sounds great. And I guess, are there other things just that you’re anticipating? Like, questions coming up from
194 00:24:26.050 ⇒ 00:24:28.740 Luke Scorziell: Your internal team that maybe we can help speak to.
195 00:24:28.960 ⇒ 00:24:30.779 Luke Scorziell: Now, just to give you, like.
196 00:24:30.780 ⇒ 00:24:37.890 peter.bassett: I mean, at this point, I think Josh was right, like, it really boils down to cost of implementation,
197 00:24:38.590 ⇒ 00:24:54.660 peter.bassett: And so that’s why I think if we have… we have that in the SOW, which is great, the only other thing that I would ask for would be these kind of, like, case studies, or whatever you guys call them, but a case… some sort of case studies. And I see the ROI model
198 00:24:55.040 ⇒ 00:24:58.660 peter.bassett: We can definitely spend some more time there, but…
199 00:24:59.450 ⇒ 00:25:00.860 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, I’ll send you…
200 00:25:00.860 ⇒ 00:25:16.079 peter.bassett: Anything more specific you can provide once we have an NDA in place would be great, because what we’ve… Josh and I both have onboarded a bunch of tools at D&G, and like with any new tool, adoption is…
201 00:25:16.620 ⇒ 00:25:27.409 peter.bassett: like, the most important metric. If people aren’t using it, then it doesn’t make any sense to… to spend the time, and so we would love to see how…
202 00:25:28.020 ⇒ 00:25:32.760 peter.bassett: that implementation… Has worked in the past.
203 00:25:33.370 ⇒ 00:25:39.489 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, for sure. Well, I mean, so I’ll… I can just quickly run through this, too. I kind of modeled the…
204 00:25:39.600 ⇒ 00:25:40.929 Luke Scorziell: ROI, just…
205 00:25:41.130 ⇒ 00:25:48.020 Luke Scorziell: Like, splitting across two different employee streams, so obviously they have, like, client-facing, and then you also have internal overhead, so…
206 00:25:48.390 ⇒ 00:25:51.770 Luke Scorziell: Just… and again, all these are estimates based on…
207 00:25:51.960 ⇒ 00:25:57.320 Luke Scorziell: just what we have, I don’t… do you guys… is it, like, 240 employees that you guys have total?
208 00:26:00.250 ⇒ 00:26:05.129 IT Department: It kind of fluctuates between, 200 and 250 throughout the year, yeah.
209 00:26:05.850 ⇒ 00:26:16.689 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, I guess we can talk about the ROI model, like, later. I think I’m more curious, like, okay, when you’ve signed on other tools, adoption being the limiting factor,
210 00:26:16.980 ⇒ 00:26:18.590 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I think, like…
211 00:26:18.840 ⇒ 00:26:32.830 Robert Tseng: the… what makes this work is we need an internal champion, so I don’t know if this would… I mean, you guys seem like the budget owners, like, typically, the person who is, like, driving the adoption internally is not the same person as the person that signs,
212 00:26:32.860 ⇒ 00:26:40.910 Robert Tseng: So, I… is that, like, ahead of PM, or is, like, I don’t know how your organization is structured, like, who would you see being the one, kind of.
213 00:26:41.030 ⇒ 00:26:47.969 peter.bassett: As I mentioned before, we all wear a lot of hats, so yeah, Josh and I would probably be the ones championing this as well.
214 00:26:48.060 ⇒ 00:26:48.919 Robert Tseng: I see.
215 00:26:49.140 ⇒ 00:26:52.909 peter.bassett: Our head of finance ultimately is the budget owner, not the.
216 00:26:52.910 ⇒ 00:26:53.340 IT Department: Yeah.
217 00:26:53.340 ⇒ 00:27:04.739 peter.bassett: Not us, like… Got it. We go, you know, we don’t have… we don’t have, like, departmental budgets or things like that for… for tools like this yet, it just hasn’t…
218 00:27:05.260 ⇒ 00:27:07.250 peter.bassett: Been figured out, so everything is added.
219 00:27:08.080 ⇒ 00:27:08.800 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.
220 00:27:08.800 ⇒ 00:27:23.570 Robert Tseng: Would you treat something like this as, like, a tool, or would you treat it as, like, percentage of headcount, or, like, how do you… I mean, I think we’ve kind of seen it both ways, and want to kind of… I mean, I could speak to it, I’m just curious, like.
221 00:27:23.570 ⇒ 00:27:34.530 peter.bassett: It’s a new… it’s a new thing. We’ve never looked at a tool as replacing headcount, so that would be definitely a totally different way of looking at
222 00:27:34.660 ⇒ 00:27:37.319 peter.bassett: Our internal scoping.
223 00:27:37.900 ⇒ 00:27:51.929 peter.bassett: Okay. I don’t think we would look at it that way, based on our overall direction as it pertains to AI, like, our agency’s kind of POV about how we would be implementing tools like this. It’s not going to replace headcount, and I don’t think that…
224 00:27:51.930 ⇒ 00:27:52.430 Robert Tseng: Okay.
225 00:27:52.430 ⇒ 00:27:54.369 peter.bassett: read the intention. It’s more.
226 00:27:54.370 ⇒ 00:27:54.920 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
227 00:27:54.920 ⇒ 00:28:01.620 peter.bassett: How to optimize workflows and get the best out of the tools that we currently are using.
228 00:28:02.300 ⇒ 00:28:02.900 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
229 00:28:03.180 ⇒ 00:28:17.979 Robert Tseng: Okay, well then I think what’s not also reflected here that we should focus more on is on… more… it’s more outcome-based. I don’t know what… if you guys can… I mean, we can… I know we’re coming up on time, so this could maybe be helpful for maybe the next time we chat, but, like, really knowing
230 00:28:18.040 ⇒ 00:28:25.900 Robert Tseng: okay, when you’re talking about, like, effective use of tooling, like, what are the metrics we want to see? Like, I can share internally, like, we…
231 00:28:25.980 ⇒ 00:28:36.939 Robert Tseng: we, we track all this… we have our own, kind of, like, tooling that we build for ourselves, and so when I’m looking at our team, and I’m looking at planning capacity, like.
232 00:28:37.150 ⇒ 00:28:53.909 Robert Tseng: my head of delivery, has to kind of share with me and my co-CEO, everyone’s time, how they’re being utilized, what their bill… what the average bill rate is across clients. Like, we have all these different cuts of data that help us kind of decide who we need to hire for the next 3 months, and…
233 00:28:53.910 ⇒ 00:28:57.499 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, I think, you know, we track things like.
234 00:28:57.500 ⇒ 00:29:11.560 Robert Tseng: you know, tickets pushed, Slack messages sent, things like that. So, I don’t know if you guys measure, kind of, your team’s output in that level of granularity, but if you do, like, ultimately, we’re… we’re data people, and I’m a data person, I think
235 00:29:11.560 ⇒ 00:29:19.769 Robert Tseng: That’s a helpful way to back into, an outcome where we can be like, yeah, if we improve that metric for you, and we can tell you by how much.
236 00:29:19.910 ⇒ 00:29:26.640 Robert Tseng: probably something we’ve measured internally already, then, like, I think that could be a good way to try to help build the case for you guys.
237 00:29:28.110 ⇒ 00:29:30.209 peter.bassett: Yeah, let’s think on that, Josh.
238 00:29:30.210 ⇒ 00:29:30.570 IT Department: Yeah.
239 00:29:30.570 ⇒ 00:29:36.349 peter.bassett: And we don’t… we don’t generally… we track hours spent on projects.
240 00:29:36.350 ⇒ 00:29:36.790 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
241 00:29:36.850 ⇒ 00:29:44.219 peter.bassett: Some of the other metrics are maybe a bit looser and maybe tracked by department heads, but not necessarily as an
242 00:29:44.640 ⇒ 00:29:47.320 peter.bassett: Overall data set, but let’s…
243 00:29:47.320 ⇒ 00:29:47.680 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
244 00:29:47.680 ⇒ 00:29:50.979 peter.bassett: Josh and I can connect after and kind of figure out…
245 00:29:52.870 ⇒ 00:29:59.990 peter.bassett: how to respond to that, but like I said, I think if we brought this, like, oh, we’re gonna save X amount of…
246 00:30:00.950 ⇒ 00:30:07.589 peter.bassett: you know, people hours doing projects, I don’t… I don’t know how that would land at D&G, to be honest.
247 00:30:09.190 ⇒ 00:30:15.760 Luke Scorziell: Well, I think there’s, like, and yeah, I know for one minute, but in this ROI section, as you look at it, like.
248 00:30:15.900 ⇒ 00:30:28.000 Luke Scorziell: the thought that I had is not that… and this is just generally also, like, my philosophy, too, as I’m thinking about AI, is, like, it’s enabling us to work on more and do higher quality things as we get out, kind of, the…
249 00:30:28.480 ⇒ 00:30:36.770 Luke Scorziell: granular, or just, yeah, the mundane tasks. And so I think this second, like, story of… of the ROI is, like, not…
250 00:30:36.910 ⇒ 00:30:49.079 Luke Scorziell: can we replace all of our people, but what would happen if we could add, like, another Kia to David and Goliath? Like, how would that… another Kia without necessarily needing to add the same number of employees?
251 00:30:49.480 ⇒ 00:30:55.540 Luke Scorziell: Onto that. And so that’s kind of the thinking more, is like, how does this increase the capacity of
252 00:30:55.650 ⇒ 00:31:00.609 Luke Scorziell: David and Goliath as an organization, not how does David and Goliath start to function with
253 00:31:00.780 ⇒ 00:31:02.179 Luke Scorziell: 10 people who have
254 00:31:02.300 ⇒ 00:31:08.369 Luke Scorziell: like, some AI system, built out for them. So that, that, yeah, just at least as, as far as, like.
255 00:31:08.810 ⇒ 00:31:10.949 Luke Scorziell: Where… where our thinking is on that, so…
256 00:31:11.160 ⇒ 00:31:15.800 Luke Scorziell: But yeah, hopefully that’s helpful, and yeah, we’re not, like, the…
257 00:31:15.920 ⇒ 00:31:26.410 Luke Scorziell: trying to automate out all of the work. Just having people focus on the higher leverage, strategic tasks, I think, is more of the goal that we have.
258 00:31:26.840 ⇒ 00:31:31.589 Luke Scorziell: So… Yeah, well, we could set up,
259 00:31:31.960 ⇒ 00:31:34.810 Luke Scorziell: Would it make sense to set up a call for, like, 2 or 3 weeks?
260 00:31:35.000 ⇒ 00:31:40.710 Luke Scorziell: today, or would you rather email about that? I’m happy to kind of just, like we did last time, just send an invite.
261 00:31:41.050 ⇒ 00:31:41.560 Luke Scorziell: Wow.
262 00:31:41.560 ⇒ 00:31:45.799 IT Department: I’d say let’s… let’s maintain, email conversation.
263 00:31:46.090 ⇒ 00:32:02.889 IT Department: Just because, you know, like Peter said, we are in the last couple weeks of this other thing, but we don’t know if there’s actually… if it’s actually, you know, the conversation’s gonna keep going after that, or, you know, we’ll try and work you guys in where we can find the opportunity.
264 00:32:03.240 ⇒ 00:32:03.850 Luke Scorziell: Okay.
265 00:32:04.050 ⇒ 00:32:16.609 peter.bassett: Yeah, and Josh and I can also connect… we’ll connect on this topic, and as we keep in touch on email, can keep you updated on what the actual requirements are, and…
266 00:32:17.070 ⇒ 00:32:18.029 peter.bassett: Stuff like that.
267 00:32:19.440 ⇒ 00:32:24.989 Luke Scorziell: Sweet. Yeah, that sounds good. Well, I’ll send over… we’ll send over the NDA, and then,
268 00:32:25.320 ⇒ 00:32:32.229 Luke Scorziell: And maybe, yeah, then I’ll send over some of the white papers after we get that signed, and case studies and stuff, and then,
269 00:32:33.000 ⇒ 00:32:39.939 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, so… Great. I appreciate your guys’ time. It’s been a pleasure getting to, yeah, chat through it.
270 00:32:39.940 ⇒ 00:32:41.059 peter.bassett: Nice to meet you, Robert.
271 00:32:41.060 ⇒ 00:32:42.089 Luke Scorziell: Can I use?
272 00:32:42.430 ⇒ 00:32:50.750 Robert Tseng: Yeah, good to meet you, Peter and Josh. Saw you guys have a New York office. Would love to stop by sometime, and I don’t know if you guys are there, but maybe… maybe see someone else on your team.
273 00:32:50.750 ⇒ 00:32:51.450 IT Department: Sure.
274 00:32:51.870 ⇒ 00:32:52.260 peter.bassett: Sure.
275 00:32:52.260 ⇒ 00:32:52.750 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
276 00:32:52.750 ⇒ 00:32:54.130 IT Department: Cool.
277 00:32:54.130 ⇒ 00:32:54.680 Robert Tseng: Thanks, guys.
278 00:32:55.110 ⇒ 00:32:56.010 Luke Scorziell: Bye.