Meeting Title: Brainforge Interview w- Greg Date: 2026-03-27 Meeting participants: Greg Stoutenburg, Allyson Marks
WEBVTT
1 00:00:17.690 ⇒ 00:00:18.510 Allyson Marks: Hello!
2 00:00:19.070 ⇒ 00:00:20.680 Greg Stoutenburg: Hey, Allison, nice to meet you.
3 00:00:20.680 ⇒ 00:00:22.060 Allyson Marks: Nice to meet you as well!
4 00:00:22.900 ⇒ 00:00:24.400 Greg Stoutenburg: Where are you located?
5 00:00:24.400 ⇒ 00:00:26.170 Allyson Marks: I’m in Denver, where are you?
6 00:00:26.490 ⇒ 00:00:30.629 Greg Stoutenburg: Cool. York, Pennsylvania, which is Baltimore and Harrisburg.
7 00:00:30.800 ⇒ 00:00:31.799 Allyson Marks: Okay, cool, gotcha.
8 00:00:31.800 ⇒ 00:00:36.310 Greg Stoutenburg: I’m on your LinkedIn, you have an Ampey Award.
9 00:00:36.710 ⇒ 00:00:39.520 Allyson Marks: Yes, I’m a big Amplitude fan.
10 00:00:39.520 ⇒ 00:00:43.949 Greg Stoutenburg: Cool. Same. What is an Ampi… I don’t know how I’ve never heard of this, but what’s an AMPI Award?
11 00:00:44.160 ⇒ 00:00:48.069 Allyson Marks: They… I think they started doing it last year, but it was like a…
12 00:00:48.190 ⇒ 00:00:55.489 Allyson Marks: various awards they gave out, and I got Pathfinder of the Year, so mostly just being really involved in their Amplitude community.
13 00:00:56.250 ⇒ 00:00:57.160 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay.
14 00:00:57.430 ⇒ 00:01:02.170 Greg Stoutenburg: I need to ask… I need to tell Beth Sanders that I won an AMPI Award.
15 00:01:02.740 ⇒ 00:01:06.110 Greg Stoutenburg: Like, hey, I didn’t even know this existed!
16 00:01:06.160 ⇒ 00:01:09.850 Allyson Marks: Beth is how I, found my way to this job, so…
17 00:01:09.850 ⇒ 00:01:21.000 Greg Stoutenburg: Same! Same! I, yeah, I’m in the community, I’ve done, I think, I’ve done, I think, 3 coffee chats with them, one when I was at Stack Overflow, and then 2 since, and
18 00:01:21.380 ⇒ 00:01:37.669 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, I mean, amplitude is, first of all, the way that I ended up in, like, analytics at all. And then, second, for this job specifically, like, another role was ending, and I just put a comment in the jobs channel, and I was like, yeah, I’ll pay attention, because, you know, people share job listings, but I was like, but also, here’s my resume, so in case anyone
19 00:01:37.670 ⇒ 00:01:43.029 Greg Stoutenburg: you know, sees anything relevant, let me know. And that same day, Utom reached out to me, and so…
20 00:01:43.030 ⇒ 00:01:44.070 Allyson Marks: Wow!
21 00:01:44.070 ⇒ 00:01:51.519 Greg Stoutenburg: this was the easiest jobs transition ever. So, yeah, you know, 3 cheers to, 3 cheers for cohort, right?
22 00:01:51.520 ⇒ 00:01:55.950 Allyson Marks: Yeah, I… honestly, it’s the best community I’ve ever been a part of. I’m obsessed with it.
23 00:01:56.120 ⇒ 00:01:58.610 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, that’s very cool.
24 00:01:59.240 ⇒ 00:02:02.989 Greg Stoutenburg: What do you do? Oh yeah, I gotta speak at two different amplitudes, but this is so cool!
25 00:02:03.570 ⇒ 00:02:06.070 Allyson Marks: How have we not met before this?
26 00:02:06.070 ⇒ 00:02:12.509 Greg Stoutenburg: I don’t know. You got to go to Barcelona? Were you just, like, in Barcelona?
27 00:02:12.830 ⇒ 00:02:28.639 Allyson Marks: I was, yeah. I, a friend had their apartment free for a few months, so I went and subleased their apartment, and then there happened to be an amplitude meetup in Barcelona while I was there, so they asked me to speak. So, unfortunately, they did not fly me out for it. I’m not that important, but I was already there.
28 00:02:28.860 ⇒ 00:02:43.469 Greg Stoutenburg: You’re just kind of there? That’s cool. Yeah, I, they don’t do events in York, Pennsylvania, believe it or not, so… Yeah, I guess they just go to better places. Well, cool. All right, well, yeah, nice to meet you.
29 00:02:43.750 ⇒ 00:03:04.809 Greg Stoutenburg: So, this is the second round interview, and… I mean, well, actually, I guess I should say a little bit about my background. I’ve been at Brainforge since January. The team’s been growing really quickly. My background is really more of a growth PM, and, but, you know, got enough, like, analytics chops and product management chops to manage projects here.
30 00:03:04.810 ⇒ 00:03:10.919 Greg Stoutenburg: I don’t have a consulting background beyond that, up until…
31 00:03:11.080 ⇒ 00:03:25.279 Greg Stoutenburg: from 2016 to 2021, I was a philosophy professor, a philosophy PhD, and so just, you know, my career’s been sort of taking this shape, and yeah, so now… and now I’m at Brainforge.
32 00:03:25.400 ⇒ 00:03:43.470 Greg Stoutenburg: So, I… I mean, I guess I’m interested in things like, you know, how you relate to coworkers, you know, I’m sure the analytics chops are all there, but we’ll, you know, we’ll ask some questions about that kind of thing. But I’ll be interested a lot in how you do things like manage stakeholders and understand clients and, you know.
33 00:03:43.470 ⇒ 00:03:49.409 Greg Stoutenburg: Turn… turn complaints or questions or ideas from clients.
34 00:03:49.410 ⇒ 00:03:53.619 Greg Stoutenburg: into work, and then see that the work gets done well.
35 00:03:53.650 ⇒ 00:03:59.940 Greg Stoutenburg: So, yeah, I guess just sort of showing my hand at the beginning, those are some things I’m interested in.
36 00:04:02.070 ⇒ 00:04:10.769 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay, so yeah, maybe just, maybe just sort of do the interviewee thing and just sort of walk through, how you ended up on the other side of the screen.
37 00:04:11.180 ⇒ 00:04:20.959 Allyson Marks: Yeah, absolutely. So, I ended up here from Beth as well. She reached out to Robert, but why I’m actually interested in Brainforge and excited about it is…
38 00:04:20.980 ⇒ 00:04:32.170 Allyson Marks: I did start my career in, like, consulting agency work. It’s been a while, but I was on the client services team, so I was, like, an account manager and also a project manager, so I have…
39 00:04:32.170 ⇒ 00:04:54.420 Allyson Marks: the client-facing background, but then most recently, I’ve been a product analyst at AirDNA, and have been an Amplitude Power user, and I was also the only analyst at AirDNA on the product team and kind of the whole company, so while product analytics is definitely my core, I also have a lot of experience working with finance and marketing and customer success, and just…
40 00:04:54.540 ⇒ 00:04:59.960 Allyson Marks: Bringing all of the data together to present to all of the stakeholders, so…
41 00:04:59.960 ⇒ 00:05:07.080 Greg Stoutenburg: Got it. Okay, cool. Yeah, what does AirDNA do, and what did you… what did you do there?
42 00:05:07.080 ⇒ 00:05:14.359 Allyson Marks: Yeah, so they’re a, like, B2C SaaS company. I kind of describe it as, like, Zill…
43 00:05:14.790 ⇒ 00:05:19.020 Allyson Marks: Zillow for Airbnbs, so if you want to figure out if you should get an Airbnb in
44 00:05:19.370 ⇒ 00:05:25.609 Allyson Marks: Lauderdale or Aspen, you can look up, see if it’s a good investment, and then if you buy it, like, how should you set your nightly rates? Like, if you have a hot.
45 00:05:25.610 ⇒ 00:05:26.079 Greg Stoutenburg: So, do you.
46 00:05:26.080 ⇒ 00:05:28.710 Allyson Marks: charge $50 more per night, all that kind of stuff, so…
47 00:05:28.710 ⇒ 00:05:29.470 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay.
48 00:05:29.470 ⇒ 00:05:40.189 Allyson Marks: I guess a data tool, in a way. And yeah, I was the product analyst for several years. I also filled the product analytics gap when I was on the marketing team, and…
49 00:05:40.210 ⇒ 00:05:49.970 Allyson Marks: Yeah, ran all of the product analytics end-to-end, like, the event tracking and taxonomy, launched our first experimentation program, was responsible for interfacing with
50 00:06:08.250 ⇒ 00:06:09.789 Allyson Marks: Can you hear me now?
51 00:06:10.010 ⇒ 00:06:18.999 Greg Stoutenburg: Yep, I can hear you now. Yep, you cut out for a bit. Yeah, and if you have to… let’s give it one more try, and if it continues to happen, we can just turn video off, if that’s gonna save us some bandwidth.
52 00:06:19.230 ⇒ 00:06:19.850 Allyson Marks: Perfect, sorry.
53 00:06:19.850 ⇒ 00:06:27.750 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, so I’m sorry, you had just said, you had just said, I set up their first experimentation, and then you’re gone.
54 00:06:28.340 ⇒ 00:06:29.899 Allyson Marks: Yes, let’s see.
55 00:06:30.020 ⇒ 00:06:38.890 Allyson Marks: probably what I was saying after that is, yeah, all of the product analytics needs, and I’ve interfaced with all the stakeholders and executives and all of the different departments, so…
56 00:06:38.890 ⇒ 00:06:47.909 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, cool. Alright, for… what did you do for experimentation? Like, what did that setup look like, and what was it used for?
57 00:06:48.170 ⇒ 00:07:07.959 Allyson Marks: Yeah, so we, unfortunately ran our experimentation through StatSig and not through Amplitude. I really wanted to do it through Amplitude. But yeah, but previously we were not an experimentation culture company, so there was a lot of, culture and mindset changing work I had to do for the foundation. But then we eventually got to the point where
58 00:07:08.520 ⇒ 00:07:15.639 Allyson Marks: all of the big initiatives on our roadmap were an experiment first, before they were a feature release, so… Okay.
59 00:07:16.230 ⇒ 00:07:29.279 Allyson Marks: led, like, the experimentation process with the PM, set up all the guardrails and tracking and, like, metric definitions, worked with the engineers to make sure all the technical pieces were working, and then led the retros and the follow-ups from the experiments.
60 00:07:29.450 ⇒ 00:07:34.379 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, okay. How… what was… what was the day-to-day of working with the PMs like?
61 00:07:35.380 ⇒ 00:07:40.539 Allyson Marks: It definitely varied based on which kind of PM team I was working with.
62 00:07:41.150 ⇒ 00:07:46.109 Allyson Marks: But I think… Generally, it’s… A mix of…
63 00:07:46.430 ⇒ 00:07:50.910 Allyson Marks: Roadmap planning, like, how should we be planning our next few months?
64 00:07:50.960 ⇒ 00:08:07.949 Allyson Marks: and prioritizing dev capacity based on the feature releases that can have the most impact, so helping them figure out where in the product needs improvement, or helping them quantify the ideas they had to see if it’s worth the time to spend. And then I guess the other half was kind of a…
65 00:08:08.110 ⇒ 00:08:12.949 Allyson Marks: like, maintenance and enablement, for lack of a better way to describe it. Yeah.
66 00:08:13.080 ⇒ 00:08:27.579 Allyson Marks: I would monitor the ongoing feature releases, but over time, as the company grew and the analytics role stayed the same, I spent a lot of time enabling the PMs to start pulling data on their own, because I’m only one person, I can only be so many places at once, but…
67 00:08:28.100 ⇒ 00:08:33.390 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. What was your, what… what area of that work did you find most challenging?
68 00:08:35.159 ⇒ 00:08:39.540 Allyson Marks: I think what I found most challenging was…
69 00:08:40.730 ⇒ 00:08:48.009 Allyson Marks: trying to avoid the shiny object syndrome. I think PMs, by nature, have a lot of ideas, and they get really excited about
70 00:08:48.200 ⇒ 00:08:52.140 Allyson Marks: things they can do for the product, and I think…
71 00:08:52.540 ⇒ 00:08:55.570 Allyson Marks: a challenge I had with them is…
72 00:08:56.250 ⇒ 00:09:06.860 Allyson Marks: If we are working on an initiative, like, seeing it through, making sure we have a really strong hypothesis, and then especially after it launches, not forgetting to come back to it and look at how it did, or like.
73 00:09:06.860 ⇒ 00:09:07.200 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
74 00:09:07.200 ⇒ 00:09:20.340 Allyson Marks: we set the experiment live, and we pushed the test version. How is this doing a month later? Is it still working well for us? So kind of, I guess, the revisiting and learning part was a challenge to get them to focus on when they just want to move forward all the time.
75 00:09:20.340 ⇒ 00:09:26.040 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, as a former PM, that’s because the CEO is going to look at those blog posts
76 00:09:26.450 ⇒ 00:09:33.629 Greg Stoutenburg: for the new feature release, and you don’t write in your feature release. And then we re-examined the thing I shit 3 months ago, and it stinks.
77 00:09:34.040 ⇒ 00:09:34.660 Allyson Marks: Yep.
78 00:09:34.660 ⇒ 00:09:47.649 Greg Stoutenburg: So that’s… that’s not going to get those clicks. Yeah, yeah, no, I, so, so, yeah, so you’re pointing to, like, basically accountability and, you know, performance against a metric and making sure that it moves forward. When you’re working with
79 00:09:48.030 ⇒ 00:09:55.680 Greg Stoutenburg: PMs, leadership, whoever. Whether at AirDNA or elsewhere.
80 00:09:56.520 ⇒ 00:09:59.169 Greg Stoutenburg: How do you go about, sort of.
81 00:09:59.590 ⇒ 00:10:05.949 Greg Stoutenburg: aligning everyone’s thinking on that kind of thing you just mentioned. And the reason I’m asking this question is because
82 00:10:06.210 ⇒ 00:10:19.209 Greg Stoutenburg: Well, I mean, it’s super important. So, in a business like ours, we have to be proving ROI basically all of the time, because, you know, that monthly invoice is gonna hit, and they’re gonna go, oh, we’re paying this, you know, this company…
83 00:10:20.160 ⇒ 00:10:24.349 Greg Stoutenburg: thousands to tens of thousands of dollars on a monthly basis.
84 00:10:24.840 ⇒ 00:10:41.830 Greg Stoutenburg: you should… a sensible person will ask every month, is this worth it? And the way to answer affirmatively is to go, like, here are the things that are in motion, and also here are the things that we’ve done, and here’s been the impact, right? Like, on your business. So we… we have to have that mindset all of the time. That’s the reason why I’m asking that question.
85 00:10:42.190 ⇒ 00:10:48.279 Allyson Marks: Yeah, I think, obviously, yeah, the PM’s job is to ship things and get things out in a timely manner. I think…
86 00:10:48.950 ⇒ 00:11:08.239 Allyson Marks: the best way to keep everyone focused between the PMs and stakeholders is to just realign on what the goal is. Like, business wants to improve ARR for the year. How are we gonna do that on the product team? Product team has committed to boosting ARR by improving retention, so as long as we can all come back and be
87 00:11:08.430 ⇒ 00:11:14.960 Allyson Marks: aligned on how what we’re doing is gonna move the metrics that move the retention metric, I think that’s…
88 00:11:15.370 ⇒ 00:11:30.759 Allyson Marks: my tactic for keeping everyone aligned, and it can… I like a parallel path approach, like, yes, we’re shipping these new features, but also, hey, after looking at this feature that went out 2 months ago, there’s an opportunity to make it better, and, like, still reach that goal.
89 00:11:30.760 ⇒ 00:11:55.700 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, and that’s effectively, like, a pitch for additional business or something, so that’s good. Yeah, something that, something that we have to keep a lookout for, and this applies not just, like, in consulting, but also in… I mean, I know in my own experience as a PM, is, there can be voices that are very eager or impatient, and they want to, like, change priorities often, but then you come around to the end of the quarter, and then they… all of a sudden, they remember the goals that you had at the beginning of the
90 00:11:55.700 ⇒ 00:12:06.770 Greg Stoutenburg: quarter, and even though they spent the last three months derailing you from accomplishing them, now you’re held accountable. How do you then, as you, as you work with folks, like,
91 00:12:07.040 ⇒ 00:12:12.480 Greg Stoutenburg: Keep everything on track, like, with a view toward the goals that have been set out.
92 00:12:13.030 ⇒ 00:12:14.150 Allyson Marks: Yeah, I think…
93 00:12:14.240 ⇒ 00:12:32.960 Allyson Marks: one of the ways I prefer to help the PMs is helping them, I guess, quantify the impact of all those ideas, because you’re right, like, stakeholders and leadership can be very noisy with the best new idea they’ve had, and I find… I like to work with the PMs and say, okay, like, if we implement this feature, or this feature, like, here’s how many users it would impact, and here’s the potential
94 00:12:32.960 ⇒ 00:12:36.830 Allyson Marks: lift it would have towards the goals, and I think that helps them prioritize
95 00:12:36.830 ⇒ 00:12:41.719 Allyson Marks: And go back to leadership and kind of say, like, yes, we could do this, but this is…
96 00:12:41.940 ⇒ 00:12:58.189 Allyson Marks: will help us reach your goal better. Just kind of navigate that conversation to say, like, I see what you want, your underlying desire is, we have a better way to approach it, so you never have to tell the stakeholder no, but we can better serve our users if it’s gonna make a bigger impact on a bigger group of users.
97 00:12:58.430 ⇒ 00:13:02.550 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. If you did have to tell a stakeholder no, how would you do it?
98 00:13:03.450 ⇒ 00:13:13.830 Allyson Marks: I like to do it by redirecting. I never want to say, like, no, I hate your idea, or like, no, this is a dumb idea. I think there’s always a…
99 00:13:13.830 ⇒ 00:13:14.410 Greg Stoutenburg: Of course.
100 00:13:14.680 ⇒ 00:13:20.319 Allyson Marks: a core problem under their shiny idea, so maybe they think
101 00:13:20.580 ⇒ 00:13:32.180 Allyson Marks: method A is the best way to solve it, and I’ll… I guess I’ll just kind of come back and be like, yes, that idea was great, if we build on it a little more, or switch it this way, it can be even better, so…
102 00:13:32.180 ⇒ 00:13:32.610 Greg Stoutenburg: I know.
103 00:13:32.610 ⇒ 00:13:38.540 Allyson Marks: I never want to tell them no, I just want to kind of redirect or add on to the idea, depending how we have to pivot.
104 00:13:38.720 ⇒ 00:13:57.009 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, something we have to do with some clients is sort of just remind them what the goals are, as… as some new idea comes up, and be like, hey, you know, this is out of scope, we can do it, this is out of scope, and, you know, here’s how we… here’s how we bill for that, or something like that. Thinking of AirDNA, so are you still there?
105 00:13:57.180 ⇒ 00:14:03.099 Allyson Marks: No, I left at the beginning of last month, there’s been some layoffs going around, and I was part of it.
106 00:14:03.100 ⇒ 00:14:08.599 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, been there. Yeah, I like to get laid off every year and a half or so.
107 00:14:08.600 ⇒ 00:14:09.759 Allyson Marks: That’s exciting, you know?
108 00:14:09.760 ⇒ 00:14:13.260 Greg Stoutenburg: It’s great, yeah, it’s like, cool, I wasn’t sure what I was gonna eat next month anyway.
109 00:14:13.830 ⇒ 00:14:16.439 Greg Stoutenburg: Now I also don’t know how.
110 00:14:17.130 ⇒ 00:14:22.279 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay. How… how could… think of your, you know, deep knowledge of AirDNA and what the…
111 00:14:22.450 ⇒ 00:14:32.169 Greg Stoutenburg: what the company does and what the PMs are up to. How could D… how could AirDNA, what… what data-backed insights do you have
112 00:14:32.280 ⇒ 00:14:38.289 Greg Stoutenburg: that AirDNA could use to increase revenue. Like, where might they be missing something they could improve? What do you think?
113 00:14:38.650 ⇒ 00:14:55.489 Allyson Marks: Yeah, that’s a good question. So, as I was leaving, we were actually working on something. So, we’re a SaaS product, it was subscription-based billing, but I found in an analysis that over half of our customers were extremely dormant, they weren’t logging in for months at a time, so we kind of just had some zombie
114 00:14:55.490 ⇒ 00:15:00.700 Allyson Marks: retention coming through, and so I… in that sense, I think there is…
115 00:15:01.460 ⇒ 00:15:12.540 Allyson Marks: an opportunity to boost revenue by changing our pricing model. I had modeled some scenarios out if we tried, a usage-based approach or, like, a hybrid of subscription and usage-based, so I think…
116 00:15:12.570 ⇒ 00:15:21.469 Allyson Marks: Updating our billing model to meet customers where they’re at for usage, but not losing our core source of revenue was an opportunity.
117 00:15:21.790 ⇒ 00:15:28.020 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, so is the idea there that these zero-usage customers… so they’re still paying?
118 00:15:29.010 ⇒ 00:15:34.980 Greg Stoutenburg: So, is the idea… so they would go down to paying nothing, though, right? So you’d lose their subscription.
119 00:15:35.280 ⇒ 00:15:49.819 Allyson Marks: So we had… I didn’t explain it very well, like, there would still be a subscription base, but then more of, like, an a la carte add-on usage type model, so basically, like, because the problem was that our superpower users are paying the exact same as our zombie users.
120 00:15:49.820 ⇒ 00:15:50.530 Greg Stoutenburg: Yikes.
121 00:15:50.530 ⇒ 00:15:52.759 Allyson Marks: There’s some room to monetize more there, yeah.
122 00:15:52.760 ⇒ 00:16:11.369 Greg Stoutenburg: Got it, right. It’s like when Planet Fitness, like, charges for the, like, the massage chair, right? So you’re already paying the 20 bucks a month, right? But that’s mostly for… they need 80% or whatever of people to effectively never go to the gym. But then the ones who do, you can get a little more money out of them. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
123 00:16:11.420 ⇒ 00:16:16.440 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay, cool. Were you able to roll that out, or did they take you up on that?
124 00:16:17.040 ⇒ 00:16:31.130 Allyson Marks: We were working on it, as I left, so I… yeah, we modeled the scenarios, and they did decide to start working on it, so I’m not sure where it’s ended up now. I’ve been checking the pricing page, but yeah, we were able to start working on it and pitch it to leadership.
125 00:16:31.130 ⇒ 00:16:38.690 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, Stack Overflow. I created a new Stack Overflow for Teams account. It is still the very same onboarding tour that I set up.
126 00:16:38.890 ⇒ 00:16:40.050 Allyson Marks: Oh my gosh. Mine and a half.
127 00:16:40.050 ⇒ 00:16:51.440 Greg Stoutenburg: like, 5 years ago. So they might… they may have moved on. Okay, cool. Give an example of a hypothesis you tested that turned out to be wrong, and what did you.
128 00:16:52.570 ⇒ 00:16:54.070 Allyson Marks: Yeah, so…
129 00:16:56.400 ⇒ 00:17:11.929 Allyson Marks: I was going through our retention analyses, and basically, if users did Action A, they were more likely to retain. The problem was hardly anybody was doing Action A, but we felt strongly that it was a core part of the app, and so, proposed some experiments where
130 00:17:12.510 ⇒ 00:17:25.189 Allyson Marks: the problem… I worked down the funnel, and the reason people weren’t doing the action is because nobody was finding it in the app in the first place, so proposed some new onboarding flows to surface that to users more, and…
131 00:17:25.540 ⇒ 00:17:28.679 Allyson Marks: Technically, the experiment succeeded, so I…
132 00:17:29.580 ⇒ 00:17:34.030 Allyson Marks: I was right and wrong, like, we saw a big lift in the number of people
133 00:17:34.460 ⇒ 00:17:36.839 Allyson Marks: Use, like, activating that feature.
134 00:17:37.020 ⇒ 00:17:44.629 Allyson Marks: But the adoption was still really low, like, the more people we sent there, it didn’t really fill the gap as much as I thought it would, so that…
135 00:17:45.110 ⇒ 00:17:53.919 Allyson Marks: was wrong in the sense that we perceived it to be very valuable action, and users were not perceiving it as valuable action, so…
136 00:17:53.920 ⇒ 00:17:54.330 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay.
137 00:17:54.330 ⇒ 00:18:09.799 Allyson Marks: That also ended up kind of snowballing into different changing business strategies, but I think that was in a case where, like, even though all the metrics went up, it looked like a success, but it really wasn’t, because there was still a disconnect with what the users expected and what we were trying to push.
138 00:18:09.970 ⇒ 00:18:21.709 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, okay, so just to clarify on what… what didn’t work out, so, like, just… is it like this, where it’s like, oh, 80% of users who click button A convert to paying?
139 00:18:21.990 ⇒ 00:18:26.429 Greg Stoutenburg: But the problem is that, like, only 5% of users click button A.
140 00:18:26.620 ⇒ 00:18:27.510 Allyson Marks: Yeah.
141 00:18:27.510 ⇒ 00:18:31.450 Greg Stoutenburg: Something like that? Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not… sort of insufficient reach.
142 00:18:31.800 ⇒ 00:18:32.510 Allyson Marks: Yeah.
143 00:18:32.510 ⇒ 00:18:34.020 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay, yeah.
144 00:18:34.160 ⇒ 00:18:48.690 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, that’s too bad. Now, if you’re… say you’re designing a new onboarding flow, and you want to not run into that problem, I mean, do you have anything… have you had anything to do with onboarding at AirDNA or elsewhere?
145 00:18:48.970 ⇒ 00:18:55.929 Allyson Marks: Yeah, lots to do with onboarding, I think onboarding is the flip side of retention, you know? Like, everyone wants to fix retention, a lot of times it’s an onboarding problem.
146 00:18:55.930 ⇒ 00:19:14.249 Greg Stoutenburg: It’s just onboarding. It’s the first half an hour. All the work in the first half an hour. So, what would you do then, like, if AirDNA needed to… wanted to revise their onboarding flow, what would you have them do to get users into the app, and why?
147 00:19:14.460 ⇒ 00:19:15.890 Allyson Marks: Yeah, I think…
148 00:19:15.890 ⇒ 00:19:21.760 Greg Stoutenburg: And if you don’t remember the numbers, you know, because it’s been a while, you can just say that, and we can just, you know, be hypothetical, that’s okay.
149 00:19:21.760 ⇒ 00:19:25.110 Allyson Marks: Yeah. I mean, yeah, I definitely don’t remember all the exact numbers, but I think.
150 00:19:25.110 ⇒ 00:19:25.490 Greg Stoutenburg: Sure.
151 00:19:25.490 ⇒ 00:19:41.250 Allyson Marks: if we’re revising an onboarding flow, I like to do kind of a mixture of the art and science, like, I have all the data, I can look and see how people are onboarding right now and where we’re losing them, but I also like to sit down with the PMs and do kind of like a mirror exercise of.
152 00:19:41.450 ⇒ 00:19:50.700 Allyson Marks: How do they think users should be moving through the product based on what we believe the value to be, and then see how that matches up with what users are actually doing sometimes.
153 00:19:51.090 ⇒ 00:19:52.849 Allyson Marks: Match, sometimes it’s not, and then…
154 00:19:52.850 ⇒ 00:19:53.390 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
155 00:19:53.390 ⇒ 00:19:54.880 Allyson Marks: that dictates…
156 00:19:55.250 ⇒ 00:20:14.889 Allyson Marks: what the problem we’re trying to solve for in onboarding is, if it’s simply, like, is the app confusing, and a certain feature is hidden, or are users going totally haywire and not anywhere close to where we think they should be behaving? So, I think there’s a variety of problems that can uncover that then you decide what to address first.
157 00:20:14.890 ⇒ 00:20:25.089 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, yeah, fair enough. Yeah, and sometimes it might just be that, you know, the company’s just wrong about, what users even like about their product. That happens.
158 00:20:25.410 ⇒ 00:20:30.370 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay, how do you decide what not to show in a product analytics deck?
159 00:20:30.870 ⇒ 00:20:32.040 Allyson Marks: Mmm.
160 00:20:33.140 ⇒ 00:20:34.529 Allyson Marks: That’s a good question.
161 00:20:35.660 ⇒ 00:20:36.940 Allyson Marks: Basically.
162 00:20:37.430 ⇒ 00:20:44.079 Allyson Marks: I like to run it through in my head a bunch of times as if I’m presenting it to the stakeholder.
163 00:20:44.240 ⇒ 00:20:45.319 Allyson Marks: And I think…
164 00:20:45.440 ⇒ 00:20:51.879 Allyson Marks: I only want to show the data that directly answers the question they asked, or the problem they have.
165 00:20:52.000 ⇒ 00:20:59.050 Allyson Marks: I think, as an analyst, you can get excited and want to show everything, because it’s so cool and exciting, but, like, if it’s not going to help them make their next decision.
166 00:20:59.230 ⇒ 00:21:02.269 Allyson Marks: It doesn’t need to be the focus of the conversation, so…
167 00:21:02.700 ⇒ 00:21:10.049 Allyson Marks: I like to keep it light in the deck, and then I’ll include another dashboard or more slides in the appendix.
168 00:21:10.240 ⇒ 00:21:12.820 Allyson Marks: For the people who do want to go deeper, so…
169 00:21:12.820 ⇒ 00:21:13.360 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
170 00:21:13.360 ⇒ 00:21:21.409 Allyson Marks: the top, I don’t know, 3 to 5 charts that help them make a decision and directly answer the question is what I’m gonna focus on, and then everything else, I’ll…
171 00:21:21.560 ⇒ 00:21:24.950 Allyson Marks: Save in an appendix in case it comes up.
172 00:21:25.550 ⇒ 00:21:31.349 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, fair. What are the limitations of tools like Amplitude or Mixpanel that teams often overlook?
173 00:21:31.570 ⇒ 00:21:35.990 Allyson Marks: I think one of the biggest limitations I’ve found at the Amplitude is the…
174 00:21:36.160 ⇒ 00:21:42.339 Allyson Marks: time-based element, like, you’re really kind of limited to, like, 365 days on a cohort or a chart or something, and so…
175 00:21:42.340 ⇒ 00:21:43.199 Greg Stoutenburg: I hate that.
176 00:21:43.610 ⇒ 00:21:52.130 Allyson Marks: I… really challenging, so… honestly, yeah, I think that’s a huge limitation, because you’re missing a lot of…
177 00:21:52.280 ⇒ 00:21:56.820 Allyson Marks: Nuance, and how long it takes to complete actions for different cohorts.
178 00:21:57.230 ⇒ 00:21:58.000 Allyson Marks: and then…
179 00:21:58.110 ⇒ 00:22:10.109 Allyson Marks: My flipside answer, this isn’t necessarily a limitation, but I think tools like Amplitude or MixedPanel do not work if your data is a mess, so if you have really bad data management, data governance, the tools are not going to work for you.
180 00:22:10.110 ⇒ 00:22:22.150 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. So, in the conversations that brought you here to Brainforge, like, what is it that you’re looking for? What are you, you know, hoping to do? What’s the, you know, what’s your idea?
181 00:22:22.490 ⇒ 00:22:23.670 Allyson Marks: Yeah, I think…
182 00:22:24.180 ⇒ 00:22:41.390 Allyson Marks: the… what I really like about analytics is the people part of it, which I think is kind of a weird answer for data analysts, like, I don’t really want to be locked in a closet running SQL all day, like, I really like the conversations that happen around analytics, like, helping your stakeholders get to their aha moment, just like you help users get to the aha moment, and just…
183 00:22:42.660 ⇒ 00:22:52.709 Allyson Marks: that data can make people more confident in their decisions, so I guess that’s why I’m drawn to Brainforge, is the consulting aspect of, like, helping people with their analytics, and…
184 00:22:53.260 ⇒ 00:23:02.409 Allyson Marks: getting people to that aha moment, I don’t know, I just really like the people side of it, and I think, you get that more in a consulting role versus sometimes an internal role.
185 00:23:02.900 ⇒ 00:23:03.600 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
186 00:23:04.040 ⇒ 00:23:23.939 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, I think that’s… I think that it is probably so. Like, since I’ve been here, I just… the number of… the number of different clients that I’ve worked with, and the number of different projects they’ve got, and their, you know, their idiosyncrasies and things, are just… it’s just such a broad view of what people are using these kinds of tools for.
187 00:23:24.330 ⇒ 00:23:27.889 Greg Stoutenburg: And that’s awesome. I think that’s great.
188 00:23:28.210 ⇒ 00:23:41.929 Greg Stoutenburg: Zooming out a little bit, like, if you think about your relationship with a… with a client, what sort of… what sort of role do you want to have on a team, when it comes to, yeah, working with clients?
189 00:23:42.220 ⇒ 00:23:55.130 Allyson Marks: I mean, I’m open to anything that’s appropriate for the client relationship. I… I’m not scared of being client-facing, so, like, to the extent that it makes sense for me to interact with clients, I would love to.
190 00:23:55.240 ⇒ 00:23:58.020 Allyson Marks: I don’t necessarily need to manage the account, but…
191 00:23:59.040 ⇒ 00:24:04.519 Allyson Marks: Yeah, so I guess I don’t know if that’s a full answer, but whatever extent makes sense for me, I’m…
192 00:24:04.970 ⇒ 00:24:05.690 Allyson Marks: Would you…
193 00:24:05.690 ⇒ 00:24:07.009 Greg Stoutenburg: Would you like to?
194 00:24:07.160 ⇒ 00:24:08.470 Greg Stoutenburg: Manage accounts?
195 00:24:10.650 ⇒ 00:24:15.529 Allyson Marks: I’m open to it, I’ve done it in the past, but I do really like the product analytics side, so I’d like to.
196 00:24:15.940 ⇒ 00:24:18.640 Allyson Marks: retain some of the more technical aspect?
197 00:24:18.640 ⇒ 00:24:37.080 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. Yeah, no, that’s totally fair and makes sense. As… if you are someone leading… if you’re leading an analytics project, and you’re the primary contact person for a client, one of the things that you’ll have to do is really delegate a lot of the technical work to others.
198 00:24:37.140 ⇒ 00:24:47.279 Greg Stoutenburg: what’s your reaction to that, first, as someone who likes being in the weeds herself? And also, you know, how do you handle, slash, how do you feel about, like.
199 00:24:47.330 ⇒ 00:24:58.169 Greg Stoutenburg: having to work with someone else and saying, like, hey, I need you to do this. Like, I wrote this ticket for you, I need you to do this. You won’t be doing it, they’ll be doing it. Maybe you’ll review it, but, yeah, what’s your… what are your thoughts there?
200 00:24:58.740 ⇒ 00:25:04.089 Allyson Marks: Yeah, I mean, I’m comfortable with that. I have been a project manager in the past, so I have that muscle.
201 00:25:04.350 ⇒ 00:25:13.380 Allyson Marks: delegate a lot of things to engineers now. I would… I think I would like a balance, like, if I’m offloading all the work, and my only job all day is to talk to clients, I think I would…
202 00:25:13.590 ⇒ 00:25:15.720 Allyson Marks: I still want to do some analytics work, but…
203 00:25:15.720 ⇒ 00:25:16.529 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. I don’t mind.
204 00:25:16.530 ⇒ 00:25:27.750 Allyson Marks: having to also be the bridge between the clients and delegating work and communicating timelines and such. That logistical part doesn’t bother me, but I’d be a little sad if I had to hand off every single piece of work.
205 00:25:27.750 ⇒ 00:25:31.790 Greg Stoutenburg: You don’t get to log into Amplitude anymore, you’re just, so, thank you.
206 00:25:31.790 ⇒ 00:25:33.300 Allyson Marks: Yeah.
207 00:25:33.300 ⇒ 00:25:50.049 Greg Stoutenburg: Cool. Well, we’re… we’re 4 minutes till time here, so, I’m… I mean, I’m not, like, a decider, I’m not… I’m just, you know, this is sort of like the peer-level interview. So, yeah, I mean, do you have any… anything you want to share? Anything you want to ask about that I might be able to answer?
208 00:25:50.240 ⇒ 00:25:53.190 Allyson Marks: Yeah, I’m curious, like, what do the…
209 00:25:53.620 ⇒ 00:26:00.780 Allyson Marks: What does a really strong client relationship look like from your point of view? Like, how does that go?
210 00:26:01.280 ⇒ 00:26:02.080 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
211 00:26:02.080 ⇒ 00:26:03.380 Allyson Marks: it’s successful.
212 00:26:03.590 ⇒ 00:26:21.490 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, when it’s going well… it’s going well when they trust you, and they think that you’re competent. Yeah, I think that’s… now, again, I’ve only been here since January, but, like, I’ve seen what it looks like when it’s not the case, and… and I’ve seen what it looks like when it is the case, and it seems like, basically, the real job here is,
213 00:26:21.620 ⇒ 00:26:36.239 Greg Stoutenburg: you know, I can’t remember who sliced this up, right? But, like, there are different types of needs, and I think that often what we’re there to do is work with someone who is, like, one step under senior leadership, maybe two, and make them feel confident.
214 00:26:36.520 ⇒ 00:26:38.009 Greg Stoutenburg: I think that’s, like.
215 00:26:38.270 ⇒ 00:26:50.880 Greg Stoutenburg: That’s sort of… sort of a core part of the job. Now, obviously, the way we do it, the way we achieve that goal, the way we satisfy that need that the client has, is by, you know, delivering great work. Did you hear any of that?
216 00:26:50.940 ⇒ 00:26:53.690 Allyson Marks: I heard what we’re here to do, and then it…
217 00:26:53.960 ⇒ 00:26:59.479 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay, yeah. Yeah, so I think, you know, there’s, like, different types of needs, and I think…
218 00:26:59.770 ⇒ 00:27:13.800 Greg Stoutenburg: often, on the projects I’ve been on, we’re working with someone who’s, like, one or two levels underneath the C-suite, and they need to feel confident about certain things that have been done in order to report to leadership and to lead projects.
219 00:27:13.820 ⇒ 00:27:28.450 Greg Stoutenburg: So the emotional need that we’re there to satisfy is confidence, right? We’re… to go take them from doubt to confident. And then the way that we do that is by, you know, putting into place great data structures and doing good analyses and things like that.
220 00:27:28.450 ⇒ 00:27:40.330 Greg Stoutenburg: So someone who is, someone who is, like, leading a project has to really deliver on both of them. You know, you inspire a lot of confidence, and,
221 00:27:40.770 ⇒ 00:27:43.830 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, and, you know, and you lead great work, and you do great work.
222 00:27:44.420 ⇒ 00:27:54.239 Allyson Marks: Do you find that clients come to you, like, do they have a strong data foundation already, or has that been a problem where they come to Brainforge and they have a messy data foundation?
223 00:27:54.240 ⇒ 00:28:00.630 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, I’m… so, yeah, again, just like in the time I’ve been here, the clients, they don’t know anything about data.
224 00:28:00.630 ⇒ 00:28:16.539 Greg Stoutenburg: Like, that’s how they ended up hiring us. Like, some of the things that we’ve been able to… some of the things we’ve been able to knock out of the park, are things where the stakeholder just does not really understand how it works. Like, they know what the end state looks like.
225 00:28:16.670 ⇒ 00:28:29.150 Greg Stoutenburg: And they know words like database and data model, I mean, sometimes, not always. And we provide that for them. So we paint a picture, and then we deliver that picture.
226 00:28:30.000 ⇒ 00:28:34.049 Allyson Marks: That’s helpful. So, yeah, I guess when you’re working with clients, is it, like.
227 00:28:35.400 ⇒ 00:28:42.039 Allyson Marks: There are technical stakeholders you’re working with and you’re supporting them, or is it, like, they have a full, open gap they need filled?
228 00:28:42.360 ⇒ 00:28:42.680 Greg Stoutenburg: It’s.
229 00:28:42.680 ⇒ 00:28:44.669 Allyson Marks: No technical knowledge to offer.
230 00:28:44.670 ⇒ 00:29:01.559 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, it’s usually the latter. Like, for the most part, and now this is… this isn’t universal, there are exceptions to this. For the most part, if you’re on a call, and you’re the only person on the call from Brainforge, you will be the most technical person on the call. And, which is, you know, which can be pretty sweet.
231 00:29:02.120 ⇒ 00:29:11.420 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. Now, there are other times where, you know, you get engineers on the call or something, and they just seem to know everything. Like I said, I have a philosophy degree, so I don’t really know… I don’t know how computers work.
232 00:29:11.800 ⇒ 00:29:18.029 Greg Stoutenburg: But yeah, mostly, most of the time, you’d be the most technical person.
233 00:29:19.250 ⇒ 00:29:20.020 Allyson Marks: Okay, that’s.
234 00:29:20.020 ⇒ 00:29:23.740 Greg Stoutenburg: So that it’s really up to you on the board. Yeah, go ahead, I can take another one.
235 00:29:23.740 ⇒ 00:29:24.220 Allyson Marks: Okay.
236 00:29:24.220 ⇒ 00:29:24.880 Greg Stoutenburg: Yep.
237 00:29:25.390 ⇒ 00:29:27.480 Allyson Marks: Oh, I guess…
238 00:29:29.390 ⇒ 00:29:40.429 Allyson Marks: How often… how much data do you get access to from the clients? Like, are you getting access to their warehouse, or is it more, like, you’re more separated, and you… they’re doing things for you? Like, how embedded are you in their data stack?
239 00:29:40.430 ⇒ 00:30:03.859 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, typically… so, Robert and Utam are, are pretty, you know, they’re, like, picky about who we’re gonna work with and under what conditions, and I think that’s a really good thing. And, like, if a client is reluctant to give us access to things, they don’t really want to bring us in, like, if they’re not gonna treat us as, like, a partner, then we just don’t want to work with them. They’ll just say that’s not the kind of engagement that we want.
240 00:30:03.860 ⇒ 00:30:07.880 Greg Stoutenburg: And so, yeah, so, so we basically…
241 00:30:07.970 ⇒ 00:30:22.739 Greg Stoutenburg: treat it like, you know, hey, we’re here to help, and we have these goals that we’ve aligned on with the client, and so they need to, you know, they need to give us what they need to give us for that to happen. And of course, that’s not said in, like, a combative way, but it’s just like, hey.
242 00:30:23.080 ⇒ 00:30:32.970 Greg Stoutenburg: The goal is to… is to, you know, for example, run a bunch of experiments that have, as a result, that, you know, revenue goes up 10% or whatever. You have to give us what we need to do that.
243 00:30:33.680 ⇒ 00:30:47.220 Greg Stoutenburg: And sometimes that means that we write tickets for your engineer, sometimes that means that, you know, we’re using our engineer, but they’ve got access to your GitHub repos, including the private ones that are relevant, you know. Yeah.
244 00:30:48.880 ⇒ 00:30:51.920 Allyson Marks: That’s cool, alright, it’s nice, it sounds like it’s very embedded then.
245 00:30:51.920 ⇒ 00:30:53.989 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it is, yeah.
246 00:30:54.210 ⇒ 00:31:07.419 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay, all right, well, cool, hey, great talking with you, Allison. I will, I’ll just sort of, like, write notes for the team, and then whoever’s been in touch will stay in touch, and yeah, great to talk with you.
247 00:31:08.260 ⇒ 00:31:10.270 Allyson Marks: Sounds great! It was so great to meet you, have a good weekend.
248 00:31:10.410 ⇒ 00:31:12.910 Greg Stoutenburg: Yep, you too. Alright, see ya. Thanks. Bye.