Meeting Title: Catalan Weekly Pulse Check and Partnerships Date: 2026-03-17 Meeting participants: Robert Tseng, Luke Scorziell, Luke’s Notetaker


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1 00:00:29.300 00:00:43.040 Robert Tseng: is a, kind of RFP that I’m trying to pitch at. I’ll be able to better understand what business you think this is, or do you have any case studies that we think that we can write for this.

2 00:00:43.250 00:00:44.020 Robert Tseng: Yeah.

3 00:00:51.340 00:01:01.129 Robert Tseng: Use the Notion MCP to look through Notion, look specifically at our catalog strategy, also look throughout the vault and any other Slack transcripts.

4 00:01:01.130 00:01:12.559 Robert Tseng: for situations where we’ve put together catalyt, pitches, I want to be able to build a skill, to be able to, pitch the catalyt, to do catalyt pitches.

5 00:01:43.980 00:01:47.059 Robert Tseng: Oh, man, that’s not what I wanted.

6 00:01:54.190 00:01:56.990 Robert Tseng: Worthy is your name.

7 00:01:57.650 00:02:04.429 Robert Tseng: Behavors… You deserve a praise.

8 00:02:04.850 00:02:07.430 Robert Tseng: Birthday is your name.

9 00:02:09.210 00:02:12.350 Robert Tseng: Worthy is your name.

10 00:02:12.660 00:02:16.160 Robert Tseng: Jesus…

11 00:07:57.010 00:07:59.309 Robert Tseng: Okay, here, let’s give this pitch.

12 00:11:55.510 00:11:59.780 Robert Tseng: Okay, well, with cold…

13 00:13:53.990 00:13:56.490 Robert Tseng: Hey, let’s get going.

14 00:19:09.620 00:19:10.730 Luke Scorziell: Hey, sorry.

15 00:19:11.690 00:19:13.919 Robert Tseng: Hey, Norris, I’m just… doing…

16 00:19:15.000 00:19:21.450 Luke Scorziell: I mean, maybe I could just show you… well, we could do… I was literally filling out the catalog.

17 00:19:21.740 00:19:24.780 Robert Tseng: Oh, I may… I just submitted two pitches on Catalan, but yeah.

18 00:19:25.070 00:19:27.140 Luke Scorziell: Oh, did you already do the one that we were thinking about?

19 00:19:27.560 00:19:28.759 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I did.

20 00:19:29.200 00:19:29.830 Luke Scorziell: Okay.

21 00:19:30.950 00:19:31.960 Luke Scorziell: I mean…

22 00:19:33.280 00:19:37.899 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, okay. Would it be helpful, maybe, if I show you what I was doing, and then…

23 00:19:38.440 00:19:40.350 Luke Scorziell: And kind of… Got it.

24 00:19:41.460 00:19:45.010 Robert Tseng: I mean, I’d rather just keep, kind of.

25 00:19:45.010 00:19:46.049 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, I gotcha.

26 00:19:46.050 00:19:57.310 Robert Tseng: things, but, yeah, I guess if there’s something you can show me later, like, I can review it, but otherwise, I’m… I’m just trying to push out as much stuff as I can before the 4-5.

27 00:19:57.310 00:19:58.940 Luke Scorziell: That’ll probably be helpful.

28 00:20:05.010 00:20:09.720 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I’m trying to figure out, like, who is this? Who sells cybersecurity?

29 00:20:11.170 00:20:13.150 Robert Tseng: B-distance software, like…

30 00:20:16.600 00:20:20.370 Robert Tseng: Interesting. Retention analytics and forecasting support.

31 00:20:24.870 00:20:28.049 Robert Tseng: I would turn that into a campaign as well.

32 00:20:44.170 00:20:53.669 Robert Tseng: trigger, the go-to-market campaign brief skill and orchestrator to, build another, campaign for

33 00:20:55.400 00:20:57.679 Robert Tseng: This type of,

34 00:21:02.220 00:21:03.730 Robert Tseng: quiet below.

35 00:21:10.770 00:21:13.270 Robert Tseng: Okay, we’re reacting with these tuning in.

36 00:21:14.540 00:21:15.200 Robert Tseng: Okay.

37 00:21:16.530 00:21:20.860 Robert Tseng: Interesting, could go after some of these people.

38 00:21:26.240 00:21:27.740 Robert Tseng: Tableau…

39 00:21:41.610 00:21:42.340 Robert Tseng: Oh.

40 00:21:46.480 00:21:54.740 Robert Tseng: Oh, interesting. That… Marketing and MedTech, okay.

41 00:22:12.710 00:22:14.750 Robert Tseng: Oh, I wish I knew who this was.

42 00:22:32.240 00:22:36.149 Robert Tseng: And they want to do Snowflake. That’s huge.

43 00:22:41.820 00:22:49.200 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, that… this is worth pitching. So, like, I would probably take some extra time and actually try to pitch… pitch this guy.

44 00:22:49.650 00:22:53.150 Robert Tseng: But this is also pretty late, 14 days has already been a long time.

45 00:22:59.490 00:23:00.190 Robert Tseng: Wow.

46 00:23:00.590 00:23:01.690 Robert Tseng: bookmarks, though.

47 00:23:04.720 00:23:14.750 Robert Tseng: Rb minus sigma… Yeah, that’s… Which… Good, too.

48 00:23:17.240 00:23:17.910 Robert Tseng: Boom.

49 00:23:22.090 00:23:30.630 Robert Tseng: How to research data engineer agents, data engineering agents. That’s definitely right in our wheelhouse.

50 00:23:39.350 00:23:43.079 Robert Tseng: Interim Head of Data, also a big one.

51 00:23:46.270 00:23:48.300 Robert Tseng: Yeah, data science…

52 00:24:13.920 00:24:14.820 Robert Tseng: Okay.

53 00:24:16.540 00:24:19.939 Robert Tseng: Oh, interesting. Multi-site healthcare.

54 00:24:20.690 00:24:23.670 Robert Tseng: This is all pretty… Pretty late at this point.

55 00:24:24.840 00:24:30.629 Robert Tseng: Okay, well, I guess I can go to Ali, show my bookmark projects.

56 00:24:32.280 00:24:36.190 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I would say… Huh.

57 00:24:36.690 00:24:41.940 Robert Tseng: Why did the health one not get… All good.

58 00:24:44.330 00:24:45.800 Robert Tseng: Yeah…

59 00:24:54.250 00:25:13.389 Robert Tseng: Well, I guess, if anything, I think these are pretty hard to go after, these pretty late in the game. Like, they kind of tell you more about who the persona is, like, and what they’re looking for. And I think from a project size perspective, Catalan is more in our range, like, you could see, like, every deal here is…

60 00:25:13.570 00:25:16.049 Robert Tseng: Decent… is decent size.

61 00:25:16.180 00:25:18.260 Robert Tseng: And…

62 00:25:19.050 00:25:35.369 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, I… anyway, like, I think if you just read a few of these, like, you’d probably pick up on some patterns of, like, what are people looking for when they’re looking for, like, data engineers versus, like, data leaders, or whatever, like, I think it all kind of…

63 00:25:36.740 00:25:37.710 Luke Scorziell: there’s…

64 00:25:37.710 00:25:42.239 Robert Tseng: ETL pipelines, there’s a visualization piece to it, there’s, like…

65 00:25:42.890 00:26:02.330 Robert Tseng: governance, typically, and then, like, I guess I’m curious, like, I mean, would they… you know, Snowflake, so I’m just… I’m able to see some of those keywords. This one’s interesting, industrials company. I mean, everyone’s just using AI to produce these things at this point, so it kind of just feels all, like, kind of a wash. Like, I…

66 00:26:02.690 00:26:13.290 Robert Tseng: I would… I would try… I’m trying to think of, like, how it would stand out at this point, like, I’m not entirely sure. I think the easiest way is just to try to find, like.

67 00:26:13.680 00:26:16.080 Robert Tseng: Who this is, but.

68 00:26:17.340 00:26:21.189 Robert Tseng: I guess sometimes they write who they are, sometimes they… most of the time, they don’t.

69 00:26:21.680 00:26:28.590 Robert Tseng: Anyways, so that’s kind of my weekly…

70 00:26:29.490 00:26:41.059 Robert Tseng: kind of pulse check on Catalan and what people are hiring for, I guess. So, I’m not gonna spend too much more time there. I think I’d probably prefer to…

71 00:26:41.290 00:26:48.679 Robert Tseng: get close to wrapping up my day on Sales Navigator, and making sure that, like, everything buddy is accounted for there.

72 00:26:50.110 00:26:55.270 Robert Tseng: So… Let’s see…

73 00:27:01.360 00:27:05.769 Robert Tseng: I’ll probably add these guys to the list.

74 00:27:21.240 00:27:25.330 Robert Tseng: My lists kind of don’t look familiar to me anymore.

75 00:27:26.950 00:27:29.459 Robert Tseng: I think…

76 00:27:36.020 00:27:37.350 Robert Tseng: Probably.

77 00:27:37.960 00:27:39.390 Robert Tseng: Daily…

78 00:27:46.460 00:27:48.689 Robert Tseng: I’m going to call…

79 00:27:52.460 00:27:53.255 Robert Tseng: Basically…

80 00:27:56.910 00:27:57.750 Robert Tseng: Thanks.

81 00:28:34.840 00:28:38.109 Robert Tseng: Alright, I’m supposed to follow up on some of these guys.

82 00:28:39.260 00:28:45.010 Robert Tseng: Okay, so… Back to Justin.

83 00:28:47.820 00:28:48.950 Robert Tseng: Oh, man.

84 00:28:51.150 00:28:54.930 Robert Tseng: Hey, Justin Sorry for the Bob message.

85 00:28:56.510 00:29:03.640 Robert Tseng: We are focused on… Oh, great.

86 00:29:24.100 00:29:35.150 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I actually, on Slack… I mean…

87 00:29:44.540 00:29:45.200 Robert Tseng: But…

88 00:29:53.990 00:30:01.190 Robert Tseng: This is gonna dry up soon, because I’m not paying for it, but I actually think it’s… worth…

89 00:30:03.040 00:30:13.200 Robert Tseng: joining, if you’re going to do more on the partnership side. Here is a network of about 2,000 partners… partner managers at other vendors.

90 00:30:13.500 00:30:18.480 Robert Tseng: Like… We just saw a partner at… at Figma.

91 00:30:18.620 00:30:27.299 Robert Tseng: like, I would want to scrape all these guys and see who are these, like, good targets for us, maybe in, like, mixed panels even here, I don’t know.

92 00:30:27.570 00:30:28.150 Luke Scorziell: Hmm.

93 00:30:35.710 00:30:38.759 Robert Tseng: It feels like some of these would be…

94 00:30:43.550 00:30:47.970 Robert Tseng: I mean, there’s this conference that they’re throwing, like, I…

95 00:30:48.400 00:30:55.480 Robert Tseng: I mean, I just… I don’t have the, like, brain capacity to think about this, but, like, partnership…

96 00:30:57.130 00:30:58.989 Robert Tseng: Ugh, I mean…

97 00:31:06.350 00:31:22.149 Robert Tseng: Yeah, you’re doing a few things for different partners right now. I think we just need to be able to get them through the calibration phase faster. So, like, I want to, like, have a yay or nay on a partner within 30 to 60 days.

98 00:31:23.530 00:31:30.739 Robert Tseng: And… Yeah, like, I just… I feel like you should just really…

99 00:31:31.070 00:31:34.700 Robert Tseng: Get a handle of, of, of, on part, on partner…

100 00:31:34.860 00:31:37.609 Robert Tseng: Yeah, on… on partner… on pushing…

101 00:31:37.720 00:31:42.280 Robert Tseng: Pushing partnerships, like, it feels like it’s something that doesn’t take too much time, like…

102 00:31:43.330 00:31:50.410 Robert Tseng: I built some stuff already, I need to go and try to remember where I left off before I went on holidays, or…

103 00:31:53.370 00:32:00.809 Robert Tseng: I was, like, building, like, this whole, like, cursor workflow to go do it, but what am I trying to say? Like,

104 00:32:01.230 00:32:12.959 Robert Tseng: like, Moe engaged, like, I just… I feel like we’ve been talking to them for 60 days now, I just want something to go out, otherwise I’m just gonna move them out. But it feels like a waste, because…

105 00:32:13.320 00:32:14.969 Robert Tseng: They’re… it’s just…

106 00:32:15.080 00:32:24.300 Robert Tseng: like, not everything has to be so heavyweight, like, it… I mean, they were willing to put so many people on a thread with us and to push things forward.

107 00:32:24.550 00:32:31.710 Robert Tseng: like, I… I just think to… to get to… to identify that, like, getting a co-marketed blog post out

108 00:32:31.750 00:32:44.650 Robert Tseng: Like, that… that’s… that’s good. Like, that to me is a pretty good next step. Like, I just… there’s… there’s always gonna be people who want to partner with us, and we need to be able to, like, go through them faster, somehow, so…

109 00:32:44.750 00:32:56.120 Robert Tseng: I… I don’t know, like, I don’t think we’ve really tried to, like, push… push…

110 00:32:56.740 00:32:59.399 Robert Tseng: on what we can do there, like,

111 00:32:59.710 00:33:06.659 Robert Tseng: I… for Utam, I only want him thinking about our gold partners, but, like, I need to somehow, like.

112 00:33:07.940 00:33:14.410 Robert Tseng: If you’re not gonna do the fast sales and the fast marketing stuff, and you’re just gonna do some of the…

113 00:33:14.560 00:33:26.420 Robert Tseng: like, this… the… the slower middle-of-funnel nurturing and… and partnering… partnership things, then… then yeah, you should just take… you should just own… you should just own partnerships. Like…

114 00:33:26.650 00:33:41.709 Robert Tseng: And, really make sure that every partner gets an outcome within 30 to 60 days, otherwise we move them out. Like, we just need to have some way to just, like, cycle through them. So, I don’t… these are all just, like, thoughts that have not been…

115 00:33:41.710 00:33:49.310 Robert Tseng: put into OKRs, but, like, I think that’s probably what I’m gonna end up doing for your second quarter OKRs.

116 00:33:50.040 00:33:53.810 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, okay, I mean, that’s… yeah, it’s helpful, because I think, for me, coming in, it’s like.

117 00:33:54.800 00:34:01.580 Luke Scorziell: yeah, knowing where we’re at with each partner. So even with the office hours thing, if, like, tempering…

118 00:34:02.810 00:34:12.620 Luke Scorziell: that back, but yeah, so that’s helpful for me to know that just that that’s how you’re thinking about partners, that we don’t… like, they’re not permanent, and we just need to get something kind of quickly to show.

119 00:34:12.620 00:34:25.359 Robert Tseng: The partner is permanent. If nothing happens within 30 to 60 days, they should be out, and we should go focus on someone else. Like, I… I think that, like, the Snowflake partner, OpenDB, like, is still a good opportunity. Like, there’s…

120 00:34:26.120 00:34:36.939 Robert Tseng: they are a fresh Snowflake product, like, they are eager for… they have no systems integrators currently. It would be a way to break into fintech, but anyway, I just…

121 00:34:37.190 00:34:48.170 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I could list off all the different people who have talked to us about partnering. I talked to a guy yesterday who’s the MixPanel guy for Eden, and

122 00:34:48.360 00:35:00.799 Robert Tseng: he has a book of business, he’s… he’s Mixpanel’s only North American solutions partner for enterprise clients, like, I want his book of business, and so I’m gonna find a way to try to, like.

123 00:35:00.810 00:35:09.750 Robert Tseng: either buy him out of his business, because he wants to exit it, or bring him in to be a service lead. Like, as long as I have some…

124 00:35:10.480 00:35:16.569 Robert Tseng: momentum, like, I can… I can move… I can move partners through stuff like that,

125 00:35:16.780 00:35:20.760 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, I… I, I…

126 00:35:21.940 00:35:32.119 Robert Tseng: Anyway, like, I think maybe you’re thinking about partner activity as, like, just hosting things, and, like, doing this leadless stuff, like.

127 00:35:32.760 00:35:45.640 Robert Tseng: I think it’s… that’s just, like, one… that’s, like… that’s, like, not… the bigger goal is to see if it’s… if we can bring business to each other, and I think there are a lot of ways to do so, like…

128 00:35:45.820 00:36:03.020 Robert Tseng: top of funnel awareness through, like, co-published white papers, doing the office hours is a very heavy lift on us compared to some of this other stuff. Doing certifications is the big lift, so… I don’t really have it all mapped out. Like, I think I know what all the partner activities are.

129 00:36:03.080 00:36:20.800 Robert Tseng: And we just have to be able to, in a conversation, in just, like, a couple limited conversations with partners, be able to identify what the next step is for them, and, like, at what’s the… what point is the cutoff, if there’s no momentum, to move on from them.

130 00:36:20.990 00:36:25.190 Robert Tseng: That’s what everybody that’s not in gold should be, and…

131 00:36:26.040 00:36:28.299 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, I… I think that’s…

132 00:36:29.660 00:36:43.099 Robert Tseng: You know, 80% of our… 80% of proposals came from partners. To me, there’s no higher leverage thing than that in the past quarter. So, it just feels like that’s probably where you should spend your time.

133 00:36:46.270 00:36:54.000 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, I mean, that’s helpful. Like, some… I’m definitely picking up on some… having more momentum towards us than others not, so…

134 00:36:54.450 00:37:09.490 Luke Scorziell: And then if, yeah, if the office hours is too big of a lift, we can start doing blog posts first, and then move office hours to more of, like, if someone is kind of confirmed as a gold, or just a partner that we want to invest more time in. And then that gives us the precursor to doing an in-person event.

135 00:37:09.980 00:37:19.340 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, we can do it with each one, but I think we just have to have clearer gates of, like, when does a partner get that much time from us, or, like, effort, and…

136 00:37:19.450 00:37:27.010 Robert Tseng: And, like, I want to not talk about what partner activities are we doing every week, but more, like.

137 00:37:27.070 00:37:39.980 Robert Tseng: who’s showing promise, and, like, what’s the opportunity size, and… because that’s how I think about everything that we do. Like, is what we’re doing, is there an op… is there… is there something that we’re aiming at, or are we just, like.

138 00:37:40.080 00:37:46.739 Robert Tseng: doing busy work, which is, like, I think a very… two very different… like, things.

139 00:37:48.340 00:37:49.190 Luke Scorziell: Yeah.

140 00:37:50.760 00:38:02.969 Robert Tseng: So, I need to come back around to, like, close the loop on what I was thinking with this partnership leaders thing. I probably had thrown out a couple ideas, but kind of lost momentum on it from the past week.

141 00:38:03.080 00:38:14.720 Robert Tseng: And I’m gonna lose access to this community in two days, since I’m not… I’m not paying for it anymore. So, I will try to push out what I…

142 00:38:15.050 00:38:21.339 Robert Tseng: add, I just… I really don’t remember what I was… where I left off, so I need to go and…

143 00:38:23.170 00:38:30.310 Robert Tseng: somehow find some time to go and vote and… Okay, if I don’t end up closing the loop, then whatever, I think I…

144 00:38:30.790 00:38:36.440 Robert Tseng: I think this is here, like, I’m… I’m… at least I’m just at least showing you, like, how I thought about it.

145 00:38:36.850 00:38:46.800 Robert Tseng: Rather than us, like… yeah, I think I want to export this list of people, and then just hit every single one of them up on LinkedIn. And I think I did that with a couple people.

146 00:38:47.000 00:39:02.420 Robert Tseng: Justin being one of them, and, you know, he leads an… an agency that helps other agencies, like, get into cloud alliances, so, like, to become a partner of

147 00:39:02.650 00:39:06.989 Robert Tseng: a vein, so I… I… I was interested in trying to… to talk to him.

148 00:39:07.570 00:39:14.089 Robert Tseng: And there were other people as well, so I, I, I, I don’t know, like, I… I…

149 00:39:14.820 00:39:16.029 Robert Tseng: Yeah. I just…

150 00:39:16.580 00:39:25.249 Robert Tseng: I want to go after people who can meaningfully, like, move us forward, not just, like, talking to

151 00:39:25.250 00:39:32.489 Robert Tseng: mother duck and asking them to bring people to an event, you know, like, I… I would… I… I don’t know, like, I…

152 00:39:32.490 00:39:45.479 Robert Tseng: I want to always be talking to you about, like, leverage. Like, you’re talking to me about what activities you’re doing, and I want to ask you, like, why is that important? Like, what is that going to bring you? And, like, I want to have that level of conversation with you.

153 00:39:45.920 00:39:47.970 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, okay,

154 00:39:49.440 00:39:55.780 Luke Scorziell: Tom is waiting for me on another meeting, so I’ll probably pop over, but that’s, yeah, that’s helpful.

155 00:39:55.980 00:39:56.770 Luke Scorziell: So I can start.

156 00:39:56.770 00:39:57.450 Robert Tseng: Okay.

157 00:39:57.450 00:39:57.980 Luke Scorziell: In terms of…

158 00:39:57.980 00:40:04.789 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I feel like that’s just gonna be my mo- my mode, like, kind of moving forward, like, every… everything. I’m just gonna…

159 00:40:05.190 00:40:10.199 Robert Tseng: whatever you’re doing, I’m gonna ask that question, probably, and I want you to, like, be able to

160 00:40:10.620 00:40:11.420 Robert Tseng: Kind of…

161 00:40:12.080 00:40:26.370 Robert Tseng: see, like, a couple steps further of, like, what you’re doing, not just, like, we’re gonna set up this process root… or this routine, or whatever it is. Like, I… I just… I wanna know, like, why, like, what’s the bet? Like, and how long is the bet?

162 00:40:26.430 00:40:33.989 Robert Tseng: how long is this office hours bet? Like, do you… are you betting that if we do this every week for the… like, and it has to be… has to be, like.

163 00:40:34.390 00:40:45.439 Robert Tseng: it has to be measurable. Like, I… and I’m… even with office hours things, I don’t… the bet to me is not very clear, so I don’t… I don’t really know what… what that… what the end of the road is for that.

164 00:40:46.110 00:40:47.190 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, okay.

165 00:40:53.260 00:40:55.630 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, maybe that’s… I mean, I can…

166 00:41:00.790 00:41:08.899 Luke Scorziell: Yeah, maybe it’d be helpful then for me to start learning more of how you’re thinking about bets, and what’s a good bet versus not a good bet. I think I have, like, a general intuition, but.

167 00:41:09.600 00:41:23.179 Robert Tseng: Yeah, well, like, the campaigns that I was running when I was actually pushing top of funnel campaigns, it was, like, brief campaign. Within two weeks, cut it off, or just move on from it. Or you find enough signal, and then you can, like.

168 00:41:23.260 00:41:37.970 Robert Tseng: press more into it. But, like, everything should be, like, I don’t know, just because we write all our engineers off of, like, one or two-week sprints. I think anything that you do should kind of have, like, a two-week feedback loop.

169 00:41:38.160 00:41:50.460 Robert Tseng: at max, like, I think there’s some things that will take longer, but I think very few things will take that long for you to pick up any signal. So, I think it should just be…

170 00:41:50.710 00:41:57.809 Robert Tseng: I think your bet should just be constrained to, like, something that you can actually, like, learn within one to two weeks.

171 00:42:01.220 00:42:08.010 Luke Scorziell: Okay, well, let me… let me pop on at your time. He’s, yeah, messaging me.

172 00:42:08.010 00:42:08.700 Robert Tseng: Okay.

173 00:42:08.700 00:42:10.070 Luke Scorziell: Okay. Alright.

174 00:42:11.120 00:42:12.160 Robert Tseng: Alright, see ya.