Meeting Title: Brainforge x FusionNode Weekly Sales Sync Date: 2026-04-01 Meeting participants: Robert Tseng, Jorrel Sto. Tomas
WEBVTT
1 00:01:40.350 ⇒ 00:01:41.150 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Hey, Robert.
2 00:01:41.830 ⇒ 00:01:42.600 Robert Tseng: Hey!
3 00:01:45.860 ⇒ 00:01:52.530 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: One second here… Had to restart my computer so everything is opening right now.
4 00:01:52.720 ⇒ 00:01:53.669 Robert Tseng: Oh, good.
5 00:01:56.640 ⇒ 00:01:57.760 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: How are you? How’s it going?
6 00:01:59.070 ⇒ 00:02:03.249 Robert Tseng: Good. Just reading, like, I feel like I spent…
7 00:02:03.430 ⇒ 00:02:10.960 Robert Tseng: A lot of time just reading legal jargon now, just… Reviewing contracts and, like.
8 00:02:11.820 ⇒ 00:02:16.460 Robert Tseng: Yeah, there’s just a lot of stuff that gets set back and forth, and
9 00:02:17.710 ⇒ 00:02:21.170 Robert Tseng: And yeah, I feel like I’m the one that reads it.
10 00:02:23.630 ⇒ 00:02:26.419 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Do we not have legal counsel at Brainforge?
11 00:02:26.420 ⇒ 00:02:29.679 Robert Tseng: No, we do, but, like, I also don’t…
12 00:02:31.090 ⇒ 00:02:36.080 Robert Tseng: rely on them only, because I think that they’re wrong sometimes.
13 00:02:37.750 ⇒ 00:02:38.710 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Oh, man.
14 00:02:38.930 ⇒ 00:02:41.079 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: It’s because you’re going to law school, isn’t it?
15 00:02:42.090 ⇒ 00:02:51.880 Robert Tseng: Yeah, perhaps. But I also just feel like they don’t really understand our business model that well. And I’ll… yeah, I mean, things around, like, how do we,
16 00:02:53.060 ⇒ 00:03:02.379 Robert Tseng: deal with liability from AI-generated stuff, and I mean, there’s not really, like, a clear precedent for any of this stuff yet, so…
17 00:03:02.540 ⇒ 00:03:06.209 Robert Tseng: And then because we work with, like, healthcare clients and…
18 00:03:06.490 ⇒ 00:03:15.089 Robert Tseng: they’re all ask… they always ask us to sign BAAs, and, like, there’s… there’s… I mean, they’re… some of the… there’s just a lot of…
19 00:03:15.950 ⇒ 00:03:21.830 Robert Tseng: I mean, I don’t know how much risk there actually is, but, I don’t know, I feel like I have to try to…
20 00:03:22.180 ⇒ 00:03:27.180 Robert Tseng: understand what I’m… what’s put in front of me, and I don’t just rely on the…
21 00:03:27.380 ⇒ 00:03:36.810 Robert Tseng: I mean, futon will just chuck it into AI, or… and then… or just listen to our legal folks, but I think that they’re… I just don’t think that they’re right all the time.
22 00:03:38.950 ⇒ 00:03:48.149 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, I getcha, yeah, when we… when we were doing our business in the Philippines with FusionNode.
23 00:03:48.310 ⇒ 00:03:54.320 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: our GC didn’t have no idea, like, cybersecurity, appliance stuff.
24 00:03:54.720 ⇒ 00:03:57.130 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: So, we had to write a lot of…
25 00:03:57.280 ⇒ 00:04:06.280 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: We had to write a lot of the contracts first, so that they could understand what, you know, what they were for, so I totally get what you’re…
26 00:04:07.230 ⇒ 00:04:08.310 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Going through.
27 00:04:09.230 ⇒ 00:04:09.950 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
28 00:04:12.220 ⇒ 00:04:21.100 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, we now have… we now have someone who’s, like, very, very, like, is on, like, too… on the opposite side of it, where they’re, like, questioning every little thing now.
29 00:04:21.100 ⇒ 00:04:21.430 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
30 00:04:21.430 ⇒ 00:04:28.509 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: It’s not bad. It’s kind of awful in the Philippines. They’re very, like… They protect…
31 00:04:28.860 ⇒ 00:04:31.299 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: They… they have a tendency to, like.
32 00:04:31.550 ⇒ 00:04:36.239 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Overprotect their workers there, which is kind of weird, because…
33 00:04:36.500 ⇒ 00:04:41.440 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: As a result, it’s, like, made a lot of people not… wanna, like…
34 00:04:41.900 ⇒ 00:04:49.040 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Either start, like, a real business, or start a, Like, corporation there?
35 00:04:50.440 ⇒ 00:04:51.230 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
36 00:04:51.230 ⇒ 00:04:56.700 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And so everyone just does, like, hires through contracts, because it’s… there’s, like, a lot of…
37 00:04:56.810 ⇒ 00:05:00.010 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: If you’re not careful, or if you don’t, like, properly collect…
38 00:05:00.400 ⇒ 00:05:07.880 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Like, for example, when you’re firing someone who’s, like, a full-time employee, you have to have a collection of… of, like.
39 00:05:08.420 ⇒ 00:05:16.030 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Cases, and then you have to have, like, a hearing, and then you have to make sure your lawyer has, like.
40 00:05:17.750 ⇒ 00:05:28.069 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: like, has the minutes for that hearing, just in case, like, that employee wants to, like, fight back or whatever. And then there’s another thing where if the…
41 00:05:29.710 ⇒ 00:05:37.220 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: If the employee has been… even if it’s, like, on a contract or an intern… or not a contract, if it’s been on, like, a probationary…
42 00:05:37.430 ⇒ 00:05:44.920 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Period. After 6 months, like, we’re required to convert them to full-time.
43 00:05:45.570 ⇒ 00:05:55.809 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: So it’s a lot of weird stuff like that, like, because we’re a Philippine-based company, where we have to, you know, oblige to those things, like, we’re…
44 00:05:55.940 ⇒ 00:05:59.580 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: We have very, very scarce… like…
45 00:05:59.720 ⇒ 00:06:13.179 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: ability to only hire folks as contractors as a, you know, as a company registered there, with the BIR. So, I, like, understand why so many Filipinos don’t work for companies in the…
46 00:06:13.290 ⇒ 00:06:15.740 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: In the country.
47 00:06:15.740 ⇒ 00:06:16.750 Robert Tseng: Oh, interesting.
48 00:06:16.750 ⇒ 00:06:28.070 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, it’s like, it’s super… it’s super, super business-friendly. Oh, also, there’s a 37% tax on digital goods if you’re not a Philippine-based company.
49 00:06:28.420 ⇒ 00:06:28.950 Robert Tseng: Wow.
50 00:06:29.380 ⇒ 00:06:39.949 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, and that’s… that’s why we found out that literally nothing, like, the adoption of, like, security technologies, even, like, CRMs, is super slow there because of that reason.
51 00:06:40.420 ⇒ 00:06:41.150 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
52 00:06:41.150 ⇒ 00:06:51.850 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: So… 30%, 37%, man. It’s… Yeah, anyways, yeah, but…
53 00:06:53.020 ⇒ 00:06:56.559 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, how did you want to use this meeting, though, on a side note? I saw that.
54 00:06:56.560 ⇒ 00:06:56.940 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
55 00:06:56.940 ⇒ 00:07:01.279 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: mapping and whatnot, I, you know, I want to make sure we’re making good use of our time as well.
56 00:07:01.280 ⇒ 00:07:15.419 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I think, since we have, like, the, on Mondays, Artie will start joining moving forward, so that’s a little bit of a longer block. Like, we’ll actually talk more strategy on accounts and stuff here. I think here, I’m just gonna pull up HubSpot, and we’re just talking about leads, so…
57 00:07:15.420 ⇒ 00:07:15.950 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Okay.
58 00:07:16.210 ⇒ 00:07:22.279 Robert Tseng: then, you know, if you have any questions about, is this an ICP? Is it not? Like, how do you approach it? Like, I think that’s… that’s what we’re gonna do.
59 00:07:22.430 ⇒ 00:07:29.729 Robert Tseng: I mean, so this’ll… this… on some days, if you don’t have much to share, we’re just not gonna spend much time on it, but
60 00:07:30.280 ⇒ 00:07:33.669 Robert Tseng: I mean, I have this pulled up here, and
61 00:07:35.230 ⇒ 00:07:47.439 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think on… on my end, so Collective Fed is, like, a 520-person agency. I met them last week, so, I met the founder there, and we’re… we’re, I sent over, like, a…
62 00:07:48.890 ⇒ 00:07:53.530 Robert Tseng: overview of Brainforge and trying to get him on a call. I think there’s this,
63 00:07:54.620 ⇒ 00:08:02.939 Robert Tseng: we’re talking to a few agencies that are 50-plus kind of people, and they just… I mean, I think they’re wanting to
64 00:08:03.130 ⇒ 00:08:04.699 Robert Tseng: build something…
65 00:08:04.910 ⇒ 00:08:13.850 Robert Tseng: similar to what we do for Brainforge to help streamline agency ops, so, I think for now, it kind of feels like it’s…
66 00:08:13.870 ⇒ 00:08:25.740 Robert Tseng: project management, some, like, HR admin work. Yeah, we’re not really trying to do go-to-market engineering for agencies, like, I don’t want to build CRM connections and, like, do any of that stuff for them.
67 00:08:25.860 ⇒ 00:08:32.030 Robert Tseng: So, yeah, I guess that’s… there’s a few leads in here where we’re pitching that.
68 00:08:32.150 ⇒ 00:08:42.000 Robert Tseng: Movers and Shakers is another one. This is, like, an, it’s not really… is it inbound? Yeah, maybe it is. This was from Luke previously, one of his old leads.
69 00:08:42.299 ⇒ 00:08:50.200 Robert Tseng: I talked to them last week, they’re, like, a 70-person agency just got acquired by a bigger… by a bigger agency.
70 00:08:50.420 ⇒ 00:08:56.509 Robert Tseng: They just do, like, mostly, reels or, like, kind of short video content.
71 00:08:56.610 ⇒ 00:09:11.410 Robert Tseng: But yeah, I think similar type of discussion early on, they had 3 different ideas for where they wanted AI to be adopted in their org, and I’m… I picked… I picked one to, pitch them that was more…
72 00:09:11.740 ⇒ 00:09:16.509 Robert Tseng: And you can read some… I mean, I’ll send it to see, you can read it later.
73 00:09:23.990 ⇒ 00:09:27.280 Robert Tseng: Yeah, we talked about, what, like a…
74 00:09:27.830 ⇒ 00:09:37.399 Robert Tseng: we’re calling it Control Center, because that’s just… that’s… we have an ongoing client right now for… for Eden. We’re building… we’re building this, which is just kind of a…
75 00:09:37.530 ⇒ 00:09:41.739 Robert Tseng: They wanted it in Gemini, but we’re throwing in all of their, like.
76 00:09:41.970 ⇒ 00:09:46.880 Robert Tseng: HR data into that, and the COO basically wants to
77 00:09:47.220 ⇒ 00:09:51.270 Robert Tseng: Have his own workspace where he can,
78 00:09:51.390 ⇒ 00:10:04.040 Robert Tseng: better understand resourcing, what people are… what people are doing. So this is, like, we’re kind of trialing it with a client right now, while also trying to sell it. So I don’t… I feel like…
79 00:10:04.190 ⇒ 00:10:22.499 Robert Tseng: the ROI is still a little bit unclear to me. I think people feel like they want that throw-everything-into-clawed, like, kind of experience, but I think it’s really kind of not proven how useful this is. I think there are just, like, some other tools out there that
80 00:10:22.680 ⇒ 00:10:28.350 Robert Tseng: I forgot what Eden was evaluating, but it was basically just, like,
81 00:10:29.250 ⇒ 00:10:38.170 Robert Tseng: one of our partners is called CorralData. They are basically ETL out on the box, specifically for healthcare and CPG brands.
82 00:10:38.330 ⇒ 00:10:43.819 Robert Tseng: And there are other brands… there are other startups like this, which are basically…
83 00:10:43.950 ⇒ 00:10:55.590 Robert Tseng: kind of focus on each department. So there was, like, a corral version for HR, and their pricing is pretty, pretty hard, pretty, pretty high.
84 00:10:55.970 ⇒ 00:11:09.119 Robert Tseng: So it’s either that, or people think about, like, about trying to use Glean, but Glean is pretty expensive. Their, like, minimum is, like, $90K a year or something, so… Yeah, I think, like, those are the…
85 00:11:09.420 ⇒ 00:11:14.880 Robert Tseng: those are the comps that I’m hearing when I pitch this right now, where people are like.
86 00:11:15.520 ⇒ 00:11:23.909 Robert Tseng: they’re trying to look for an out-of-the-box solution where they can throw all of their, like, comms and HR data into, and then be able to…
87 00:11:24.720 ⇒ 00:11:32.460 Robert Tseng: I guess, chat with it and use it to produce reports, but there’s nothing really good out of the box, and everything is pretty overpriced.
88 00:11:32.460 ⇒ 00:11:45.240 Robert Tseng: what we do is, like, 30K a month for 2 or 3 months, so it’s… it’s a lot… it’s basically… I mean, if people are… if people are benchmarking it against… against Glean, then, like, I mean, at least we… that’s how we won on Eden.
89 00:11:45.240 ⇒ 00:11:52.810 Robert Tseng: And so I’m gonna see if it will resonate with movers and shakers, and also with these galactic Fed guys.
90 00:11:53.230 ⇒ 00:11:58.360 Robert Tseng: Yeah, any kind of questions on the agency play there?
91 00:11:59.210 ⇒ 00:12:00.869 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: No, I think,
92 00:12:01.000 ⇒ 00:12:12.009 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: I’ve been following the threads a bit, and so, and kind of reading the summaries from your meeting, so, I think it’s pretty clear
93 00:12:12.170 ⇒ 00:12:18.130 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: It’s interesting that they’re asking for that type of experience.
94 00:12:18.240 ⇒ 00:12:21.719 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: The… just upload everything, and it should just work.
95 00:12:21.820 ⇒ 00:12:24.969 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Is that the expectation, that we’re… like…
96 00:12:25.790 ⇒ 00:12:29.720 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: how do we… how do we break it to them that that’s not really a thing, Gwen?
97 00:12:32.430 ⇒ 00:12:41.210 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I probably would chat for now. I don’t really know how this project is going. All we’ve done is really kind of done some of the basic connectors so far on the Eden AI.
98 00:12:44.130 ⇒ 00:12:49.210 Robert Tseng: I think the next… looks like the next thing that they’re trying to get set up this week is…
99 00:12:49.530 ⇒ 00:12:51.809 Robert Tseng: Slack MCP into…
100 00:12:52.360 ⇒ 00:13:07.519 Robert Tseng: Gemini. I mean, yes, we can throw everything in there and they can start chatting with it, but we still have to basically build custom skills and things in order to get to the outputs they want. So, I think that’s the way that we kind of have been talking about it with Eden, that it’s like.
101 00:13:07.620 ⇒ 00:13:12.049 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, this phase is all just kind of discovery and plugging everything they want in.
102 00:13:12.140 ⇒ 00:13:23.999 Robert Tseng: But there’s gonna be a lot of, like, fine-tuning to get to the output that Danny wants. And at least he’s a COO, and he, like, has, ideas of, like, what he wants it to be able to do.
103 00:13:24.000 ⇒ 00:13:34.880 Robert Tseng: I don’t know how achievable it is, but he’s willing to take the risk and let us… let us try building it. So, I’m hoping that this project is going to inform us more on, like, how do we actually articulate what are the
104 00:13:34.880 ⇒ 00:13:39.479 Robert Tseng: what are the outputs to other people? Because right now, it does feel very much just like…
105 00:13:39.790 ⇒ 00:13:55.479 Robert Tseng: oh, I’m frustrated that I can’t just throw everything into Claude, it doesn’t actually work well. Well, but I also don’t want to pay for something like Blean, so there must be something in the middle. And, like, Bravehorge is kind of, like… I mean, it feels like we’re somewhere in that… in that middle, but I don’t really know what… what…
106 00:13:55.680 ⇒ 00:14:01.709 Robert Tseng: what exactly… I mean, I don’t think it’s super clear to me how I will be able to keep selling this.
107 00:14:03.900 ⇒ 00:14:04.920 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: That makes sense.
108 00:14:05.580 ⇒ 00:14:13.049 Robert Tseng: Tsib is an insurance company. This is one of our partners is Telisma,
109 00:14:13.330 ⇒ 00:14:22.220 Robert Tseng: they’ve been around for a while. They do… I mean, they’re early adopter of, like, AI for OCR, and, like, kind of just… they’re really good at doing, like, form…
110 00:14:23.140 ⇒ 00:14:40.860 Robert Tseng: basically scraping forms and, like, making product recommendations specifically on… on… on… I mean, yeah, I guess on mostly form, form intakes. They’ve built, like, some CDP kind of thing on top of it. I mean, there’s all these other features, like.
111 00:14:41.330 ⇒ 00:14:54.189 Robert Tseng: This is another example, kind of similar to Moengage, of, like, big legacy client, been around for 20-plus years, has good logos, but they’re not US-based, and they’re trying to, like, establish themselves more in the U.S. market.
112 00:14:54.250 ⇒ 00:15:04.069 Robert Tseng: So they’re looking for U.S.-based go-to-market partners, so that’s why we’re able to kind of talk to them. We’ve been trying to help them break into education, so…
113 00:15:04.380 ⇒ 00:15:12.810 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I have some higher ed contacts, and we’re talking to some people, but insurance leads, when they come, we try to partner with them to basically be a systems integrator for them.
114 00:15:12.990 ⇒ 00:15:15.870 Robert Tseng: So this is something that Utam is chatting with.
115 00:15:15.990 ⇒ 00:15:30.199 Robert Tseng: Illmore is, like, a CPG company. They’re basically, or… they do, like, advanced engineering. This particular department is just the marine department, so they do, like, racing boat parts and stuff.
116 00:15:30.490 ⇒ 00:15:50.479 Robert Tseng: Small business, 20, or, like, smaller, probably, like, 20 million a year, but very high ticket items. Each boat is, like, you know, probably a million, like, $700,000 to a million dollars, at least. But yeah, they’re just wanting to do, like, a marketing setup. So, GA4, go to, and…
117 00:15:50.840 ⇒ 00:15:55.730 Robert Tseng: Like, we did this, like, whole… we already sent them this proposal last month.
118 00:15:55.910 ⇒ 00:16:14.419 Robert Tseng: They put out an RFP, and I kind of just bid on it. So, they know what they want to track, and this is really just a tracking setup. We don’t do this in-house. We have a partner, who would… who would do this. So, they charge 10K, we’re just putting 15K plus some discovery on top of it, so…
119 00:16:14.420 ⇒ 00:16:28.050 Robert Tseng: I’m pitching it around 20K, and, you know, assuming they move forward and they actually need help doing data modeling and, like, some of the more complicated stuff, then… then we will… then we will take it on. Otherwise, like, this first
120 00:16:28.090 ⇒ 00:16:37.659 Robert Tseng: phase is basically, I just handed off to a partner on audit. So, they came back to me and said they want to start in May, so we’re starting to go through some of the paperwork now.
121 00:16:38.160 ⇒ 00:16:40.380 Robert Tseng: To get some clearance there.
122 00:16:42.510 ⇒ 00:16:52.999 Robert Tseng: Yeah, most of these other deals have already been sitting here this past week, but, a couple other callouts. The EY deal, we got that, through, so Utam’s working that just himself.
123 00:16:53.090 ⇒ 00:17:06.629 Robert Tseng: We haven’t decided on how many hours yet, but, I mean, the bill rate is pretty high, it’s like $3.50 an hour. I think we’re gonna try to get UTAM 10 to 20 hours a week there for a month, and then Clarence is kind of figuring out what the play is after that.
124 00:17:06.859 ⇒ 00:17:12.969 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, I wanted to ask, so what is the deliverables for the EY deal?
125 00:17:12.970 ⇒ 00:17:18.680 Robert Tseng: This is just a snowflake, kind of, discovery first. Like,
126 00:17:18.829 ⇒ 00:17:24.019 Robert Tseng: Bhutam has… because we work with CTA, like the big tech conference, we’ve…
127 00:17:24.089 ⇒ 00:17:35.219 Robert Tseng: we set up Snowflake for them and do all of their… I mean, they’re still a client of ours. We’re… that’s… I… yeah, I don’t know, I guess they’re here. We’re basically also trying to extend them for a year.
128 00:17:35.220 ⇒ 00:17:52.569 Robert Tseng: we’ve been doing a lot of stuff in Cortex for them, and so EY wants to better understand… like, they don’t have any partners that do Cortex implementation, so I think we’re just having Utam do some discovery and build out a roadmap for Cortex implementation on one of their, like, I don’t know, financial services, like, clients, so…
129 00:17:52.570 ⇒ 00:17:57.689 Robert Tseng: Along the way, like, we want to show them that we’re executing this using, kind of.
130 00:17:57.710 ⇒ 00:18:09.150 Robert Tseng: the Brainforge app, which… Brainforge Vicinity… Vicinity is basically… Clarence’s version… Oh.
131 00:18:09.560 ⇒ 00:18:13.280 Robert Tseng: With the city?
132 00:18:14.720 ⇒ 00:18:22.680 Robert Tseng: like, I don’t know, whatever, whatever Clarence calls it. It’s, it’s basically an open work, kind of, skin… brainforge skinned open work.
133 00:18:22.910 ⇒ 00:18:39.119 Robert Tseng: And we’re… Uptam’s gonna be using that to, like, build… to execute that contract, so that he can show EY that, like, hey, we have this internal tool thing, and, we want… we want EY to buy… buy the… buy the bigger tool. So I think that’s… that’s what the…
134 00:18:39.230 ⇒ 00:18:41.410 Robert Tseng: The bigger deal is supposed to be.
135 00:18:41.980 ⇒ 00:18:46.639 Robert Tseng: I’m pitching something similar to, like,
136 00:18:47.240 ⇒ 00:18:52.520 Robert Tseng: partner here in New York who’s focused on, like, AI delivery,
137 00:18:52.640 ⇒ 00:19:08.820 Robert Tseng: So I… I… I mean, I haven’t put her on my… on this yet until I… until I schedule, like, a lunch with her, probably next week, but, yeah, we’re… that’s, like, another thing that we’re trying to pitch to these bigger consultancies. They don’t even have to be, like, EY Deloitte size, like, any, like…
138 00:19:08.990 ⇒ 00:19:19.730 Robert Tseng: West Monroe, or any of these, like, mid-size, like, thousand person or under, kind of, consultancies, like, I would be willing to pitch them as well. So,
139 00:19:19.840 ⇒ 00:19:24.579 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I’m going to a conference tomorrow, so that I’ll probably see some more of these types of folks.
140 00:19:25.810 ⇒ 00:19:35.940 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And you’re… and for those consultancies, are you pitching them… you’re pitching them more on, like, data, right? As opposed to the AI stuff right now? I’m just curious.
141 00:19:36.170 ⇒ 00:19:37.620 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Like, approach.
142 00:19:38.020 ⇒ 00:19:42.709 Robert Tseng: No, I’m pitching them on… here we go forward to see you.
143 00:19:48.130 ⇒ 00:19:55.029 Robert Tseng: So, you can see, listen, look at this text exchange that I had with this particular, like, Deloitte person.
144 00:19:57.470 ⇒ 00:20:10.859 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, I think my pitch is pretty much, like, well, obviously there are some Skats that are like, oh, like, why would we… I’m… I went to this… went to this event, they… I mean, people continue to show, like.
145 00:20:12.370 ⇒ 00:20:16.880 Robert Tseng: I went, I went to this, strategy frame.
146 00:20:18.180 ⇒ 00:20:31.460 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so, like, this German company came and gave us, like, presentation last week. I went to this event. They target a bunch of consultancies. It’s just, like, this one, like, I don’t know, this book strategy book… business management strategy book
147 00:20:31.820 ⇒ 00:20:33.420 Robert Tseng: book Arthur that, like.
148 00:20:33.640 ⇒ 00:20:39.239 Robert Tseng: built, like, I mean, his team has built, like, a… it basically looks like a…
149 00:20:39.460 ⇒ 00:20:43.010 Robert Tseng: Like, an open work that’s just…
150 00:20:43.400 ⇒ 00:20:50.000 Robert Tseng: I trained on a bunch of his own writing on business strategy. So, it’s like a pretty…
151 00:20:50.190 ⇒ 00:20:54.480 Robert Tseng: Horizontal tool in the management consulting world.
152 00:20:54.740 ⇒ 00:21:11.179 Robert Tseng: I mean, everybody there was, like, super skeptical of this thing, but he’s got some good logos, because he has a good reputation, whatever, as an educator from his previous businesses. So, you know, I think I was kind of talking to some leaders at that conference, or that event afterwards, and I was like, look.
153 00:21:11.350 ⇒ 00:21:20.800 Robert Tseng: I don’t think this UI is really gonna… I mean, the UI is whatever, like, anybody can build this at this point, and the only proprietary thing they have is that they’re trained on his, like.
154 00:21:21.590 ⇒ 00:21:34.209 Robert Tseng: on his, like, his business strategy, like, content. So, you’re basically paying for… I mean, I think a lot of apps are doing this now, where they’re… it’s… it’s basically just, like, a…
155 00:21:34.720 ⇒ 00:21:48.030 Robert Tseng: a model that’s fine-tuned on some, like, subset of their content. Like, I think, I was thinking about… I’m jumping around here, but this is, Stan is a base… is a LA-based company.
156 00:21:48.190 ⇒ 00:21:49.430 Robert Tseng: Stanley…
157 00:21:50.350 ⇒ 00:22:00.319 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, these guys, like, yeah, I mean, they charge, like, $150 a month, targeting particular creators. Stan is, like, kind of a all-in-one creator tools, like, thing.
158 00:22:00.360 ⇒ 00:22:09.329 Robert Tseng: you can sign up and use, like, their old, like, Stan-powered AI thing, which is just Claude plugged into some, Stan data, and they have, like, a…
159 00:22:09.330 ⇒ 00:22:25.879 Robert Tseng: LinkedIn connector, where they use to scrape some of your content. So, but yeah, it’s like, they charge $150 a month here. Strategy frame is a little bit… I mean, they price it differently, it’s not price per user, it’s not a B2C tool, it’s more of a B2B. But, like, I’m seeing a lot of these types of tools that are just, like.
160 00:22:25.950 ⇒ 00:22:45.769 Robert Tseng: hey, just, if you click into it, like, the UI is very similar to kind of a Claude experience now, and then, like, under the hood, it’s obviously one of the base LLMs, and then with some, like, additional data set that they have. So they’re basically selling packaged data at this point, and I think people are getting, like, frustrated that this is, like.
161 00:22:46.070 ⇒ 00:22:54.579 Robert Tseng: There’s… like, this stuff is, like, not that useful itself, and for a bigger organization, they would rather have an environment where they can
162 00:22:54.750 ⇒ 00:23:10.909 Robert Tseng: fully control it, feel free to dump all their stuff into… into it. It’s completely, completely closed-loop system. That’s… that’s what I’m pitching that, like, Brainforge can build for them. So, and like, yes, they could try to do it themselves, but, like.
163 00:23:11.920 ⇒ 00:23:17.369 Robert Tseng: it’s… I think they’re… I’m kind of, like, jumping on the, oh, it’s gonna take your team…
164 00:23:17.520 ⇒ 00:23:21.789 Robert Tseng: way too long to organize, especially something like a Deloitte.
165 00:23:21.830 ⇒ 00:23:39.960 Robert Tseng: I mean, they have a thousand-person AI data team, but they don’t all play on the same team. They all play for different partners, and so I’d rather go target, like, a single partner who wants to, like, extend this type of, capability into his book of business and try to sell that.
166 00:23:39.960 ⇒ 00:23:49.510 Robert Tseng: with a single partner, and then, like, you know, they basically out-compete each other, and that might be a way to kind of keep moving around the Deloitte ecosystem.
167 00:23:49.510 ⇒ 00:24:09.979 Robert Tseng: at least that’s how it is for EY. Clarence just has, like, a direct relationship with an MD at EY, which is why we’re able to get in with her. But it’s not like I’m pitching… like, there’s no procurement at Deloitte or EY, or maybe there is, but I… we’re not selling it to them. We’re selling it to the partner, specifically, and, like, whoever their territory and their book of business is, so…
168 00:24:09.980 ⇒ 00:24:12.109 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I guess, like.
169 00:24:12.170 ⇒ 00:24:28.610 Robert Tseng: it’s… yeah, I think it’s… it’s… the difficulty is, like, navigating the politics of, like, getting to the person to sign off on it, especially if I’m not in Deloitte, I don’t have somebody who’s a partner. But, like, yeah, I guess that’s… that’s, like…
170 00:24:29.750 ⇒ 00:24:45.360 Robert Tseng: That’s what I’m seeing. So, to summarize, like, the frustration is that there are all these, like, AI wrapper tools that are basically base LLMs, like, kind of synced to some, like, proprietary data set from a tool, but it becomes very limited in what it can do.
171 00:24:45.360 ⇒ 00:25:01.520 Robert Tseng: bigger organizations are like, well, I want the ability to do this for ourselves. We have, like, a pretty rich knowledge base, but, you know, it’s just not hooked up into an agenda workspace like this. And so, when I spot
172 00:25:01.580 ⇒ 00:25:06.319 Robert Tseng: bigger organizations that may run into this problem.
173 00:25:06.340 ⇒ 00:25:25.369 Robert Tseng: once again, it’s like, they can go into Glean, or they can have, like, a full-stack team, kind of building out, like, knowledge bases for themselves, but, like, none of them have gotten to this point yet, and so they’re just really… they’re really frustrated, and I’m trying to, like, kind of sell them on, like, I think we can… we can help them get there faster. So that’s, that’s kind of the…
174 00:25:25.370 ⇒ 00:25:31.280 Robert Tseng: that’s the AI, kind of, the, the open claw for enterprises, kind of, like.
175 00:25:31.280 ⇒ 00:25:35.200 Robert Tseng: style, pitch that I’m making these days.
176 00:25:36.560 ⇒ 00:25:37.799 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Okay, okay.
177 00:25:38.840 ⇒ 00:25:39.700 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Okay.
178 00:25:39.980 ⇒ 00:25:40.870 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Interesting.
179 00:25:41.220 ⇒ 00:25:43.420 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: That gives me… that gives me some… some…
180 00:25:43.850 ⇒ 00:25:47.189 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: That gives me some good visibility into what’s working.
181 00:25:47.190 ⇒ 00:25:48.020 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
182 00:25:48.580 ⇒ 00:26:01.669 Robert Tseng: Lastly would be, yeah, this one, inbound came last week. I took a straight product analytics, already sent a proposal. They, they, took a call earlier this week, and, you know, starting price is probably around 15 to 20K with them.
183 00:26:01.800 ⇒ 00:26:07.690 Robert Tseng: We’ll see if they close. And then, some of these other ones, I’m just continuing to follow up on.
184 00:26:09.180 ⇒ 00:26:20.340 Robert Tseng: So yeah, that’s… that is what I’m doing on the accounts. How is… I know we’re kind of coming up on time, so I probably have to jump, but if you could send out your, kind of.
185 00:26:20.340 ⇒ 00:26:33.420 Robert Tseng: it doesn’t look like you added things to HubSpot yet, but if you had any conversations that you wanted to chat through, like, I’d rather spend more time with… on… on the leads that you’re talking to next time. But I’ll always run through what I have going on, too.
186 00:26:33.420 ⇒ 00:26:53.179 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, I can do mine super fast. Yeah. So, I’m getting intro’d to… I think I talked about this on the sales channel, but I’m getting intro’d to, I think either… or both the engineering team and the data team at Butterfly MX. So, I’m really pushing for that, just so I get a better idea of the ICP there.
187 00:26:53.290 ⇒ 00:26:58.569 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And I’m meeting with the VP of Ops
188 00:26:58.660 ⇒ 00:27:05.540 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: at Crexi, he’s a friend of mine. I know 100% that they’re moving super slow on,
189 00:27:05.570 ⇒ 00:27:18.089 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: on AI, so I’ll see if there’s a play there. But those are the two main leads I’m trying to push for right now, since I have warm introductions into the… into their space. And then last night, I had a dinner with,
190 00:27:18.110 ⇒ 00:27:36.789 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: the Founders Dinner, transparently. These guys are just as ahead of the curve as we are. So, I tried to, you know, ask them, you know, how they’re using AI and all that stuff, and half of the people I talk to already have, like, an open clause setup.
191 00:27:36.790 ⇒ 00:27:47.020 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: they have Mac Minis, they’re using, a lot… like, their workflows, just based on if they’re telling the truth or not, were also very agentic-based.
192 00:27:47.030 ⇒ 00:27:50.140 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: So, but I’m… I…
193 00:27:50.240 ⇒ 00:28:10.010 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: I don’t know how this happened, but at least for 3 of them, we’re… we’re gonna be, like, I guess I’m gonna see them a little bit more regularly, because they all play the same video games I do, so I think we’ll slowly… I’ll slowly carve out and see if there is, an opportunity there, because one of the guys, he’s pivoting his e-commerce.
194 00:28:10.050 ⇒ 00:28:12.789 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Startup into something else.
195 00:28:14.260 ⇒ 00:28:32.379 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And so I… but it is AI-related, and so I think there is a play there for us, because, he’s a three-time founder, so he easily raises money. And then, the other two, his company got acquired and is actually, do you know ZeroClick? They’re the…
196 00:28:32.520 ⇒ 00:28:35.519 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: They’re the company based out here in LA,
197 00:28:35.790 ⇒ 00:28:40.239 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Run by the former CEO of Honey, or the former co-founder of Honey.
198 00:28:40.430 ⇒ 00:28:41.220 Robert Tseng: Oh, yeah?
199 00:28:41.220 ⇒ 00:28:50.650 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: So, yeah, his company, his name’s Adam. Adam, his company got acquired by ZeroClick, and they’re trying to build, like, the first, like, AI or agentic, like.
200 00:28:50.830 ⇒ 00:28:54.599 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: I guess that you could call it, like, an ad marketplace.
201 00:28:54.750 ⇒ 00:29:00.349 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And so, he’s one of the guys where they use, like, they use every…
202 00:29:00.580 ⇒ 00:29:17.990 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: everything in the book, but I’m curious if they’re actually scaling their data, so I’m gonna try to get an introduction into the ZeroClick team, and see kind of what their environment is like, but yeah, I wasn’t… I was… I felt… I felt like I was learning from them when they were talking about their workflows, so…
203 00:29:17.990 ⇒ 00:29:18.490 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
204 00:29:18.490 ⇒ 00:29:29.569 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Might not be… might not be a short timeline with these guys, but at least for tomorrow, I have, I have a con… I’m going to a conference of, for…
205 00:29:29.950 ⇒ 00:29:37.520 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: One of our partners is called GuidePoint Security, and most of their customers are mid-market to enterprise-level customers.
206 00:29:37.550 ⇒ 00:29:54.399 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: And I know they’re all antiquated, so I’m gonna see, if there’s a play there tomorrow, since, I’ll be representing Fusion Node, but, they, they all know that I also do data stuff. So, but yeah, that’s what’s currently going on. So,
207 00:29:54.560 ⇒ 00:30:02.060 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: I think the only ones I have confidence in probably getting a meeting in is Crexi and Butterfly right now.
208 00:30:02.660 ⇒ 00:30:19.019 Robert Tseng: Cool. Yeah, I mean, I think, like, on the YC stuff, like, yeah, we’ve talked to a bunch of these founders before. I don’t think they’re the best target for us, frankly, because they are probably just doing, like, kind of experimenting a lot. I mean, they’d rather just try to do it themselves, and they don’t really have money to throw.
209 00:30:19.140 ⇒ 00:30:34.829 Robert Tseng: At these projects. There are a couple, like, we work with Default still, and, you know, they’re post-Series A or Series B or whatever, and, we’re not doing any AI work for them. We’re literally just doing straight data engineering work for them. So, that…
210 00:30:34.830 ⇒ 00:30:35.540 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: I’m thinking, yeah.
211 00:30:35.540 ⇒ 00:30:42.639 Robert Tseng: companies want us to do AI work for them. The only people that want to do AI work for us are the ones that are clearly behind. So, I think, yeah.
212 00:30:42.640 ⇒ 00:31:01.559 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, I think the… I think the sell there… well, yeah, I think for any YC or those, like, startups, I think the seller’s data, because they were very fluent in AI tools, but they were not fluent in data scaling at all. So, but yeah, I’m gonna try to insert that in, because I think, there are some potential interesting opportunities.
213 00:31:01.580 ⇒ 00:31:06.180 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: But, yeah, aside from that,
214 00:31:06.430 ⇒ 00:31:21.670 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Yeah, I’ll let you know. I’ll let you know how these other conversations go. I’m aggressively pushing. And then Utam just merged the commit for, the stuff I was… I was pushing out for him, to do, like, the Snowflake Partner, kind of lead plays.
215 00:31:21.670 ⇒ 00:31:26.879 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: So, hopefully I can get it, I can get those going, yeah, by tomorrow.
216 00:31:27.000 ⇒ 00:31:34.750 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: So, we can start, I can start talking to the AEs, and we can start pushing for these leads from the partners. But that’s… that’s the updates from my end.
217 00:31:34.750 ⇒ 00:31:39.880 Robert Tseng: Okay, cool. Alright, I gotta go. But, yep. I’ll talk to you later.
218 00:31:39.880 ⇒ 00:31:40.920 Jorrel Sto. Tomas: Robert.