Meeting Title: Brainforge Onboarding Sync with Advait Date: 2026-03-18 Meeting participants: Robert Tseng, Advait Nandakumar Menon
WEBVTT
1 00:00:12.440 ⇒ 00:00:13.700 Robert Tseng: Hey, Advent.
2 00:00:13.930 ⇒ 00:00:15.649 Advait Nandakumar Menon: Hey, Robert, can you hear me fine?
3 00:00:15.820 ⇒ 00:00:17.110 Robert Tseng: Yep, I can hear you fine.
4 00:00:17.550 ⇒ 00:00:18.200 Advait Nandakumar Menon: Yep.
5 00:00:20.380 ⇒ 00:00:31.880 Robert Tseng: Welcome. Sorry, day one’s kind of crazy. We usually don’t have people start in the middle of the week, so I was, like, not really that ready, but, since we’re here, I want to make sure you… I can give you whatever I can for now.
6 00:00:32.009 ⇒ 00:00:33.050 Advait Nandakumar Menon: Yeah.
7 00:00:33.050 ⇒ 00:00:37.229 Robert Tseng: I was chatting with Kayla back and forth on, like, what you’ve been given already, but…
8 00:00:37.380 ⇒ 00:00:42.429 Robert Tseng: I figured I might just ask you directly, so I can try to connect you with the right people.
9 00:00:42.580 ⇒ 00:00:44.820 Robert Tseng: Did you already get an…
10 00:00:45.210 ⇒ 00:00:47.740 Robert Tseng: Do you get an onboarding doc? Like, do you have…
11 00:00:48.530 ⇒ 00:01:06.609 Advait Nandakumar Menon: Yeah, Kayla and Rico did send me a couple of, the decks. They gave me a presentation this morning, actually, and a couple of links as well, like, on Notion. So I went through that and got into a couple of tools. I have set up Slack, Notion, Cursor, Linear.
12 00:01:06.960 ⇒ 00:01:08.849 Advait Nandakumar Menon: And Blockify as well.
13 00:01:08.960 ⇒ 00:01:11.769 Advait Nandakumar Menon: So, I’m yet to get into GitHub, so…
14 00:01:11.980 ⇒ 00:01:19.190 Advait Nandakumar Menon: that’s the only sort of pending thing with respect to tools and access, I believe. But yeah, there’.
15 00:01:19.190 ⇒ 00:01:19.520 Robert Tseng: Okay.
16 00:01:19.520 ⇒ 00:01:21.210 Advait Nandakumar Menon: me a quick rundown of stuff.
17 00:01:22.490 ⇒ 00:01:33.739 Robert Tseng: Okay, got it. But you don’t… I’m, like, looking at Notion now, just typing your name in. I don’t see anything… like, you don’t have, like, a 10, 30, 90-day plan yet, or anything like that?
18 00:01:34.400 ⇒ 00:01:35.419 Advait Nandakumar Menon: Nope.
19 00:01:35.580 ⇒ 00:01:38.050 Advait Nandakumar Menon: I don’t think that was created for me.
20 00:01:38.660 ⇒ 00:01:39.420 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
21 00:01:39.800 ⇒ 00:01:46.239 Robert Tseng: Alright, well, I’m not going to step on Kayla’s toes there, I’ll let her create that for you, that’s definitely something she needs to do.
22 00:01:46.570 ⇒ 00:01:54.359 Robert Tseng: But yeah, I guess we’re… yeah, tooling, I think you got it, Rico. Rico and Kayla will be your go-to people for anything like that.
23 00:01:54.530 ⇒ 00:02:01.020 Robert Tseng: And, yeah, we have some internal tooling that you said, a cursor is something that we really push everybody to use, so…
24 00:02:01.090 ⇒ 00:02:17.569 Robert Tseng: If you’ve not used it yet, I’m sure you’ll get really good at it here. And… yeah, so I think that’s not too worried, so maybe I’ll just give you a sense of, like, clients-wise, like, kind of where we want to staff you. Remind me again, are you starting part-time, or are you doing full-time immediately?
25 00:02:18.230 ⇒ 00:02:19.470 Advait Nandakumar Menon: Full-time.
26 00:02:19.470 ⇒ 00:02:27.270 Robert Tseng: You’re full-time. Okay, great. So then, you know, as far as hours-wise, I know you’re Central, so you feel free to just work your central time. I’m Eastern.
27 00:02:27.690 ⇒ 00:02:30.120 Advait Nandakumar Menon: I am also in Eastern Ackley, I’m Cincinnati.
28 00:02:31.360 ⇒ 00:02:35.709 Robert Tseng: Oh, huh. Sorry, I must have been told the wrong information then.
29 00:02:36.250 ⇒ 00:02:37.129 Robert Tseng: Okay, well, yeah.
30 00:02:37.130 ⇒ 00:02:48.159 Advait Nandakumar Menon: understand where the confusion might be from. Yesterday, for some reason, Kayla mentioned in Central as well, the meetings for today, so I’m not sure if she got it wrong, but I am in Eastern as well.
31 00:02:48.740 ⇒ 00:02:58.469 Robert Tseng: Okay, got it. So, yeah, apologies for that. Yeah, I mean… Oh, that’s fine. You can work Eastern. I’m usually… my first call is at 9am Eastern every day, so… Okay.
32 00:02:58.470 ⇒ 00:02:59.140 Advait Nandakumar Menon: Okay.
33 00:02:59.140 ⇒ 00:02:59.710 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
34 00:03:00.100 ⇒ 00:03:13.690 Robert Tseng: So we’ll start adding you into… I think Brile, who you just met earlier, he’s kind of like the delivery PM, so he’ll probably add you to meetings that are appropriate for you, for the clients that you’re on.
35 00:03:13.780 ⇒ 00:03:23.960 Robert Tseng: You just saw, like, a quick intro into Elements. Element is a CPG brand, they do $600 million in revenue. We basically are their data team currently.
36 00:03:24.100 ⇒ 00:03:28.429 Robert Tseng: We set up their data warehouse, we’re kind of… It’s a little bit…
37 00:03:29.010 ⇒ 00:03:35.599 Robert Tseng: funky, like, we are in… we’re trying to do, like, a 6-month, contract renewal with them.
38 00:03:35.600 ⇒ 00:03:36.230 Advait Nandakumar Menon: Okay.
39 00:03:36.230 ⇒ 00:03:45.899 Robert Tseng: I was expecting it to be done by the start of this month, but they’ve just been dragging their feet, so we’re still negotiating. I still expect it to go through, which is why we’re doing all this planning work, but.
40 00:03:45.900 ⇒ 00:03:46.250 Advait Nandakumar Menon: That’s true.
41 00:03:46.250 ⇒ 00:03:48.910 Robert Tseng: Yeah, that just kind of delayed things a little bit, so…
42 00:03:49.090 ⇒ 00:04:00.040 Robert Tseng: I still think that’s the client you’ll start on, and the goal is really for you to, replace Amber on that client. So, Amber has been the analyst that’s been there.
43 00:04:00.380 ⇒ 00:04:17.120 Robert Tseng: So, I mean, as much as you can shadow her work, I’m basically going to tell her that whenever she’s working on something, to just loop you in, and you can just follow along, ask questions. But for now, she has the most context on the two teams that we’ve been working with, wholesale and retail.
44 00:04:17.160 ⇒ 00:04:27.379 Robert Tseng: And we’re basically trying to build reporting and a relationship with all the other teams. So, the roadmap is pretty fixed, so you’re not gonna discover new opportunities, necessarily.
45 00:04:27.390 ⇒ 00:04:43.110 Robert Tseng: But, like, we do need people, like, I mean, I think you’re slotted as more senior than Amber, and, you know, we trust your client-facing ability, so, we probably will introduce you to the client pretty soon, so… and I want to just, you know, you just gotta…
46 00:04:43.110 ⇒ 00:04:51.210 Robert Tseng: And I expect more of my time with you will less be on, like, reviewing your work. Jasmine will do that, because he’s more, kind of, like.
47 00:04:51.560 ⇒ 00:05:01.410 Robert Tseng: I guess our most senior kind of analytics person. So she’ll review, like, kind of the quality of deliverables, but I… I’m more of, like, the… I lead account management, I guess you could think about it that way.
48 00:05:01.410 ⇒ 00:05:01.760 Advait Nandakumar Menon: Wait.
49 00:05:01.760 ⇒ 00:05:14.149 Robert Tseng: So, yeah, as you get introduced to clients, if you need to navigate, like, coaching on how to navigate those conversations, if you’re having a hard time with them, or…
50 00:05:14.150 ⇒ 00:05:14.770 Advait Nandakumar Menon: Yeah.
51 00:05:14.770 ⇒ 00:05:20.419 Robert Tseng: Yeah, whatever, like, something… things like that, like, that’s where I… you’ll probably be spending more time with me.
52 00:05:20.530 ⇒ 00:05:23.120 Advait Nandakumar Menon: Material, yeah, that’s helpful, yeah, yeah.
53 00:05:23.120 ⇒ 00:05:28.829 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so you can think about, like, yeah, Jasmine and me will be that. And then UTOM is really kind of the…
54 00:05:29.240 ⇒ 00:05:33.750 Robert Tseng: for that, for Element, he is the main account owner.
55 00:05:33.750 ⇒ 00:05:34.140 Advait Nandakumar Menon: Okay.
56 00:05:34.140 ⇒ 00:05:37.049 Robert Tseng: So Yeah, I mean, I guess…
57 00:05:38.210 ⇒ 00:05:47.619 Robert Tseng: he is typically… like, I don’t think you’ll talk to him too much on this client, particularly. But… but anyway, yeah, so I think, you know.
58 00:05:47.770 ⇒ 00:06:00.149 Robert Tseng: you know, me, Jasmine, and Amber will be the most main people. And then, like, peers for you, probably, like, Greg is one person. You’ll start to get introduced to other people, but Greg is really, like.
59 00:06:01.180 ⇒ 00:06:13.660 Robert Tseng: whenever we’re introducing a client to a new BI tool, we’re usually implementing Omni, and Greg is the person who is, like, bringing Omni to the client. So, you can think of him as, like, a solutions architect.
60 00:06:13.770 ⇒ 00:06:23.070 Robert Tseng: But he’s not very technical. He’s just a really good client-facing person as well. So, you know, the lines are a little bit blurry, but he’s just…
61 00:06:23.070 ⇒ 00:06:24.130 Advait Nandakumar Menon: Yeah, I understand.
62 00:06:24.380 ⇒ 00:06:26.240 Robert Tseng: kind of, yeah, I guess…
63 00:06:26.420 ⇒ 00:06:29.130 Robert Tseng: Get… get them to sign the deal.
64 00:06:29.190 ⇒ 00:06:45.169 Robert Tseng: Then the rest of the engineers help kind of, like, stand up the reports, and then he can do the enablement and training as well, and then we basically rotate him onto a different client. So, yeah, you’ll see Greg is, like, kind of a person that’s on every client, but what he does is, like, not very technical on each client, so…
65 00:06:45.230 ⇒ 00:07:03.589 Robert Tseng: That’s, some context there. So, I’m sure it’ll… as you get more involved with delivery meetings, like, you’ll keep kind of reiterating, like, the structure, you’ll get to have more FaceTime with the other people, but at least you get to see, like, a glimpse of, like, how Brainforge is, like, operates on this particular client.
66 00:07:05.240 ⇒ 00:07:15.200 Robert Tseng: what I’ll also say is, so there’s two other clients that I want to bring you into. We’ll start with Element first, so just kind of spend your time learning as much as you can about Element.
67 00:07:15.770 ⇒ 00:07:18.549 Robert Tseng: And, yeah, I guess…
68 00:07:18.890 ⇒ 00:07:25.110 Robert Tseng: And so the other two clients I’ll introduce you to, one of them is a product analytics client, so…
69 00:07:25.290 ⇒ 00:07:30.619 Robert Tseng: So I’ll probably… I’ll wait until next week to bring you into that one.
70 00:07:30.620 ⇒ 00:07:31.270 Advait Nandakumar Menon: Okay.
71 00:07:31.510 ⇒ 00:07:38.140 Robert Tseng: Global VetLink. But yeah, so I’ll wait there. And then there’s a health client that we signed that’s starting
72 00:07:38.560 ⇒ 00:07:42.259 Robert Tseng: In April. So, hopefully that gives you, like.
73 00:07:42.500 ⇒ 00:08:00.220 Robert Tseng: two weeks to ramp on elements, you’ll take on this other, much smaller client, very focused, just product analytics work, and then I’ll introduce you to, like, another client where you will be the only net new analyst, on… on that client. So, that’s kind of, in my mind, how I see you kind of ramping up from an account.
74 00:08:00.680 ⇒ 00:08:01.340 Robert Tseng: side.
75 00:08:01.830 ⇒ 00:08:08.079 Robert Tseng: And, yeah, I guess that… I just wanted to at least give you that roadmap so you know what’s coming.
76 00:08:08.780 ⇒ 00:08:12.669 Advait Nandakumar Menon: Yeah, yeah, that’s helpful, having that context and roadmap.
77 00:08:12.930 ⇒ 00:08:22.880 Advait Nandakumar Menon: So, Element will be the first client I’ll be focusing on, then taking on an analytics client, is what you mentioned, and then a healthcare one. So, yeah, no, that sounds good.
78 00:08:23.370 ⇒ 00:08:29.809 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah. So, the goal is really to give you, like, a few different looks in the first month, so Element is a big…
79 00:08:30.090 ⇒ 00:08:49.390 Robert Tseng: big client, you’ll be part of a bigger team. The next one will be very small, it’ll just be you and another person. I think Greg is the only one on it currently, so it’ll just be you and Greg. Like, Greg’s time to rotate off is coming up soon, so it’ll just be you, pretty much there. They’re a smaller client, and so we’re not really going to be doing… we’re not going to be putting that many people on it.
80 00:08:49.600 ⇒ 00:08:50.849 Robert Tseng: And then…
81 00:08:51.200 ⇒ 00:09:00.720 Robert Tseng: And then I want to give you a chance to, like, be the first one, the first analyst on a new client, so you can just, like, have a clean slate starting from scratch. So, okay.
82 00:09:00.840 ⇒ 00:09:04.039 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and then we’ll kind of see. I think people tend to…
83 00:09:04.610 ⇒ 00:09:11.859 Robert Tseng: Like, I’ll get to… I’ll get to see, like, where your strengths are, I think. Some people are better at just, like, starting with a new client.
84 00:09:12.410 ⇒ 00:09:15.340 Robert Tseng: People are better at kind of, like, taking it to the next level.
85 00:09:16.180 ⇒ 00:09:23.739 Robert Tseng: you know, I’m not really sure, like, kind of where you fit on that spectrum yet, but I guess we’ll see over the next few weeks.
86 00:09:23.740 ⇒ 00:09:25.010 Advait Nandakumar Menon: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s something.
87 00:09:25.010 ⇒ 00:09:26.010 Robert Tseng: That’s the reasoning back.
88 00:09:26.130 ⇒ 00:09:26.670 Robert Tseng: Okay.
89 00:09:26.670 ⇒ 00:09:27.580 Advait Nandakumar Menon: Yeah, yeah.
90 00:09:28.470 ⇒ 00:09:38.810 Robert Tseng: Alright, well, yeah, I didn’t really have much else prepared for now, that’s fine. I’m gonna send some messages to try to get people to set up time with you, and then…
91 00:09:39.050 ⇒ 00:09:44.730 Robert Tseng: I will try to talk to you again on… Friday, and I’m more Proper, proper 101, yeah.
92 00:09:44.730 ⇒ 00:09:50.020 Advait Nandakumar Menon: Yeah, yeah. Okay. Sounds good. Really quick, happy birthday. I hope you…
93 00:09:50.250 ⇒ 00:09:51.000 Robert Tseng: Oh, yeah.
94 00:09:51.000 ⇒ 00:09:55.619 Advait Nandakumar Menon: I saw the post in Slack, so… I thought I’ll wish you in the one-to-one.
95 00:09:55.820 ⇒ 00:10:00.999 Robert Tseng: Hey, yeah, I appreciate it. I… I took… I took a week off last week, so I celebrated then.
96 00:10:01.000 ⇒ 00:10:01.679 Advait Nandakumar Menon: last week.
97 00:10:01.680 ⇒ 00:10:03.600 Robert Tseng: Just, just a normal day for me today.
98 00:10:03.600 ⇒ 00:10:06.640 Advait Nandakumar Menon: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
99 00:10:07.730 ⇒ 00:10:09.270 Robert Tseng: Alright, I’ll talk to you later.
100 00:10:09.270 ⇒ 00:10:10.579 Advait Nandakumar Menon: Okay, yeah, sounds good.
101 00:10:10.580 ⇒ 00:10:11.000 Robert Tseng: that.
102 00:10:11.000 ⇒ 00:10:12.110 Advait Nandakumar Menon: Excellent. Bye-bye.