Meeting Title: Brainforge <> Contextual: Bi-Weekly Catchup Date: 2026-04-08 Meeting participants: Jay Chen, Uttam Kumaran
WEBVTT
1 00:09:55.740 ⇒ 00:10:11.540 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, Jay, so sorry for the delay, I just was getting out of an investor meeting and just in person, which is rare these days, but very much, like, nice to go meet people, and I… it was just here in Austin, I just had… things just went a little bit long, apologies.
2 00:10:11.540 ⇒ 00:10:13.470 Jay Chen: Yeah, no, no worries at all.
3 00:10:14.940 ⇒ 00:10:24.239 Jay Chen: whoops, sorry, I just pushed the mute button for no reason. Thanks, sorry about that. Yeah, so no worries, great to, great to see you. I, I, I think we, we,
4 00:10:24.440 ⇒ 00:10:34.530 Jay Chen: probably chatted once or twice before, but definitely haven’t spoken too much since then. But thanks for jumping on. I know you probably saw the note from, from Mike.
5 00:10:34.530 ⇒ 00:10:34.960 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
6 00:10:34.960 ⇒ 00:10:45.769 Jay Chen: channel yesterday or the day before. So, just wanted to kind of pick up from there, and maybe give you a couple updates, and then just, like, talk through kind of next steps and align on some near-term goals here, right?
7 00:10:45.770 ⇒ 00:10:58.070 Uttam Kumaran: Perfect, yeah. And just… just up front, a big fan of Contextual. Like, I feel like I’ve been a big fan for… for a long time, and I… I… the team has been really great, and…
8 00:10:58.260 ⇒ 00:11:04.169 Uttam Kumaran: I still think that, like, you know, I love the product a lot, and how deep you guys are, especially in…
9 00:11:04.250 ⇒ 00:11:16.950 Uttam Kumaran: in retrieval, and… and I, you know, I don’t know, it’s always been a really, really impressive group and product, so, like, always have been trying to find ways to collaborate, and our business has, you know, grown even since our relationship, like.
10 00:11:17.020 ⇒ 00:11:29.869 Uttam Kumaran: you know, it’s a business I started alone just a few years ago. We’re now, like, 30, 40 people, doing a lot in the AI services world. So yeah, I’m, like, super, super excited to chat and see how we can continue to be helpful.
11 00:11:29.990 ⇒ 00:11:42.680 Jay Chen: Yeah, no, that’s awesome, and congratulations on all that success as well. Basically, just from what I’ve heard from Mike, I mean, you guys have been great partners and really leaning in on working together, so thank you for that over the last.
12 00:11:42.740 ⇒ 00:12:01.470 Jay Chen: several months, or a year or so. Just to give you some background on myself, I don’t know if you kind of know this exact situation or know my role previously, but I was leading marketing here at Contextual, so I’ve been here for over a year and a half, and so I was working with Mike very closely on, like, our internal assets, our positioning, our overall messaging, and all that stuff, right?
13 00:12:01.470 ⇒ 00:12:05.490 Jay Chen: So I know, kind of, we’re on the periphery of the stuff that he was working on with partners.
14 00:12:05.490 ⇒ 00:12:05.900 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
15 00:12:06.550 ⇒ 00:12:15.060 Jay Chen: The update from him, he mentioned, you know, this is his last day, and then he mentioned that I’m taking over as CEO, so that’s probably maybe a big shock, or a big change.
16 00:12:15.060 ⇒ 00:12:15.560 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
17 00:12:15.560 ⇒ 00:12:21.139 Jay Chen: For the org, so… so let me maybe just help explain a little bit about that, and give you a bit more background.
18 00:12:21.140 ⇒ 00:12:21.470 Uttam Kumaran: Sure.
19 00:12:22.600 ⇒ 00:12:45.009 Jay Chen: So, as you can probably guess, if I’m taking over as CEO, that means Dow has gone somewhere else, right? Yes. So what’s happened is, there’s been a, I guess, kind of a, kind of a quasi-acquisition event here at Contextual, where, a number of our,
20 00:12:45.010 ⇒ 00:12:52.510 Jay Chen: folks, including Dow, and including many of our research team, have left us to join another company.
21 00:12:52.680 ⇒ 00:12:53.110 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
22 00:12:53.110 ⇒ 00:13:12.289 Jay Chen: And so, I’ve, being the most, kind of, senior executive left on the organization, am now the acting CEO for the remaining company here at Contextual. Okay. That said, we have every intention of continuing to honor our customer and partner obligations.
23 00:13:12.290 ⇒ 00:13:17.819 Jay Chen: As well as, find ways to grow together, moving forward. Now.
24 00:13:18.200 ⇒ 00:13:24.779 Jay Chen: That growth and the path forward is going to look a little bit different than how it would have looked before, right?
25 00:13:25.170 ⇒ 00:13:29.779 Jay Chen: So, primarily, what that means is,
26 00:13:30.380 ⇒ 00:13:33.770 Jay Chen: most of, kind of, the… I mean, obviously, Dow…
27 00:13:33.830 ⇒ 00:13:57.610 Jay Chen: no longer being here is obviously a huge, huge impact, right? I think a lot of people are here because of that in the first place, so… Yeah. I think that’s obviously a big, big, big change. And then, also, like, most of our research organization has moved on as well. And so, what we have here left is we have, obviously, a very solid, platform that we’re
28 00:13:57.610 ⇒ 00:14:07.899 Jay Chen: keeping stable, and it is, you know, we’ll add incremental new features to it as we go here. And we have a large number of customers that we’re servicing, on an ongoing basis as well, so…
29 00:14:07.900 ⇒ 00:14:24.889 Jay Chen: what that means for you as a partner, I think it can mean a couple of things. So, one, it means, if you think of it from, like, a constraints point of view, there’s certainly more constraints. We’re not going to be able to do as much… I don’t know that we were doing probably enough in the past, but we’re…
30 00:14:24.890 ⇒ 00:14:40.269 Jay Chen: certainly not going to be able to do more with the resources we have. And secondly, I think the other impact is there is more of an opportunity if, from your point of view, you have interest and capacity to do so.
31 00:14:40.270 ⇒ 00:14:56.899 Jay Chen: to take on more of, like, a service-oriented role, right? So what we have here is we have people who are going to maintain the platform. We have a couple of CMLEs and solutions architects who will help build, like, kind of lightweight custom solutions for our customers.
32 00:14:56.930 ⇒ 00:15:07.139 Jay Chen: But what we’re gonna lose is kind of the larger team of researchers and CMLEs who will do, like, heavy lifting on customer kind of customization work, right?
33 00:15:07.140 ⇒ 00:15:07.670 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
34 00:15:07.920 ⇒ 00:15:14.820 Jay Chen: So… so I’ll pause there. I’m sure you have questions, and happy to go into any other details, or maybe you can just get your initial reactions and thoughts. We can go from there.
35 00:15:15.390 ⇒ 00:15:18.100 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, look, I… I mean, I think…
36 00:15:18.220 ⇒ 00:15:27.190 Uttam Kumaran: you know, from a Brain Forge perspective, like, I would love to continue to be helpful. I think leveraging us in… in sort of that way that you described, which is, like.
37 00:15:27.280 ⇒ 00:15:36.389 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, can we start to… instead of having an existing contextual professional services organization, use external partners?
38 00:15:36.390 ⇒ 00:15:47.439 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, I’m just more curious on your personal take. I’m interested in, like, how you feel. I know I’m sure a lot of people are asking you how you feel, but look, I think for us,
39 00:15:47.540 ⇒ 00:16:02.520 Uttam Kumaran: the reason why we love your product is I’ve always believed in it from the technical side, and I think we’re really unique in professional services because we don’t make vendor decisions based on our allegiance or the amount of money we make from anyone. In fact.
40 00:16:02.560 ⇒ 00:16:11.190 Uttam Kumaran: most of our natural partnerships were very natural, because I said I love the product, and it just makes sense, because we’re already pitching you all the time, you know?
41 00:16:11.200 ⇒ 00:16:25.540 Uttam Kumaran: And Contentral was a great example of that, and so I still really believe in what exists today. But yeah, I mean, I’m interested in, sort of, as, you know, a software integrator, right, even for us, our customers value the fact that
42 00:16:25.540 ⇒ 00:16:33.579 Uttam Kumaran: we implement products that are gonna be there, like, that they’re not going to, there are some tools that we don’t implement, because I’m like, this is a…
43 00:16:33.780 ⇒ 00:16:52.929 Uttam Kumaran: brand new startup, like, you don’t want to… you don’t know, right? And, certainly, I’m not… I’ve never described contextual in that camp, but sort of, like, two-fold question, like, you know, and I know you may not have all the answers, but I’m kind of interested in, you know, what your perspective is, but also just interested to hear, like.
44 00:16:53.070 ⇒ 00:16:57.109 Uttam Kumaran: From our perspective, we always want to implement the best tools for a customer outcome.
45 00:16:57.250 ⇒ 00:17:00.230 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and so that’s really important to us.
46 00:17:00.550 ⇒ 00:17:02.279 Jay Chen: Yeah, absolutely, I totally understand that.
47 00:17:02.570 ⇒ 00:17:12.339 Jay Chen: Yeah, so, I mean, I kind of… I’ll answer your question and share my view here. So, first of all, this is very new, right? So this is literally two… this news is two days old.
48 00:17:12.359 ⇒ 00:17:24.300 Jay Chen: Mike shared it with you yesterday when it’s one day old, so… so we’re also trying to… things are still settling a little bit, right? There’s no, definitely no… Yeah. Nothing is kind of written in stone right now.
49 00:17:24.560 ⇒ 00:17:32.820 Jay Chen: Sure. I think my point of view, is basically, as I mentioned earlier, like.
50 00:17:33.970 ⇒ 00:17:38.930 Jay Chen: We’re… the velocity that we’re gonna be able to maintain in terms of developing product
51 00:17:39.230 ⇒ 00:17:42.449 Jay Chen: Features, capabilities, is gonna be quite a bit slower.
52 00:17:42.700 ⇒ 00:17:43.360 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
53 00:17:43.970 ⇒ 00:17:54.589 Jay Chen: That said, again, you know, we’re trying to do this as best we can, and maintain all of our customer obligations. Moving forward, I think there’s a few paths for us, so…
54 00:17:54.750 ⇒ 00:18:08.420 Jay Chen: We are definitely open to, like, licensing agreements, right, from a number of partners, right? Like, I don’t mean necessarily, like, service partners, but also customers and others, right? So definitely willing to entertain those kind of opportunities.
55 00:18:08.610 ⇒ 00:18:22.250 Jay Chen: I think maybe in the… maybe more near term, we… I would definitely welcome more of, like, a… if, you know, if you or anyone else are… have the…
56 00:18:22.370 ⇒ 00:18:34.910 Jay Chen: capabilities and comfort and desire to take on more of the, kind of, customization work. We definitely want more of that partnership, and we can, you know, re, kind of discuss how that would look, a bit more. We can maybe…
57 00:18:35.400 ⇒ 00:18:44.959 Jay Chen: I’m actually not sure what the existing kind of agreements look like that Mike has walked you through, or you guys agreed to, so we can essentially, you know, start fresh.
58 00:18:44.960 ⇒ 00:18:45.600 Uttam Kumaran: Sure.
59 00:18:45.600 ⇒ 00:18:46.529 Jay Chen: We want to.
60 00:18:48.580 ⇒ 00:19:07.220 Jay Chen: Yeah, I mean, and then beyond that, I think we just have to take it, you know, a little bit at a time, right? So, right now, my priority is two things. So, number one is stabilizing the team. Everyone is a bit of a shock to a lot of people, and so we’re trying to make sure everyone is, you know, knows that they, you know, they have a role here, and we have a path forward there. And the second thing is.
61 00:19:07.220 ⇒ 00:19:19.670 Jay Chen: talking to customers and partners to making sure that everyone is aware of our situation. I’m not trying to hide anything or mislead anyone. I want everyone to be trans… you know, transparent with everyone where we are, and set realistic expectations, right? The last thing I want to do is…
62 00:19:19.670 ⇒ 00:19:21.549 Jay Chen: Promise something that we cannot deliver to you.
63 00:19:21.740 ⇒ 00:19:22.480 Uttam Kumaran: Sure.
64 00:19:22.480 ⇒ 00:19:27.169 Jay Chen: So… so that’s my priorities for the next… for this week and next week, and
65 00:19:27.540 ⇒ 00:19:42.950 Jay Chen: Yeah, I think it would be good to get a sense from you and others, like, you know, what would good look like for you? Like, what an ideal outcome could be, and then see to what extent we can support that.
66 00:19:43.510 ⇒ 00:19:55.930 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, look, I think several people on our team are trained, and we’ve developed demos on the platform. I think… in us, you have a great partner that can take on some of that system integrator customization work.
67 00:19:55.970 ⇒ 00:20:07.449 Uttam Kumaran: We do that with several other, you know, similar vendors, everything from building from scratch all the way to, you know, plug and play, so I think that’s really…
68 00:20:07.520 ⇒ 00:20:09.489 Uttam Kumaran: a great way to leverage us. I think…
69 00:20:09.620 ⇒ 00:20:21.939 Uttam Kumaran: you know, my business partner, Robert, leads a lot of sales from our side, and I think he would totally welcome if you guys are sitting on customers that are looking for continued support on the integration development side, or
70 00:20:21.940 ⇒ 00:20:33.290 Uttam Kumaran: you know, building out customizations. You know, I know how rich the platform is, and so I know, kind of like, yeah, I’m sure there’s some difficulties in customers to maintain some of that. I think we’d totally be interested.
71 00:20:33.290 ⇒ 00:20:45.929 Uttam Kumaran: And assisting there. You know, I think 100%, like, we can assist there. I think, you know, for me, it’s… and I think as maybe a relationship continues, just to hear more about, like.
72 00:20:46.120 ⇒ 00:20:49.109 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, is… are we gonna… is Contextual gonna…
73 00:20:49.420 ⇒ 00:21:03.730 Uttam Kumaran: continue, or is, like, okay, is there a path to, like, okay, we’re gonna wean… we’re gonna move people off, or is there, like, we’re just gonna keep people on the existing product for a while? But ultimately, I know, just like you do, that, hey, there’s existing client obligations, and you’re looking for just a path forward.
74 00:21:03.730 ⇒ 00:21:12.840 Uttam Kumaran: And so, you know, as a partner on our side, I want to make sure that we can be there. So I’m happy to discuss that. I think what would be really helpful is just
75 00:21:12.840 ⇒ 00:21:24.960 Uttam Kumaran: you know, whenever’s convenient for you, I can set a follow-up and bring… bring on Robert, who’s my business partner, and even anyone senior technical on my side. I’m happy to…
76 00:21:25.070 ⇒ 00:21:30.199 Uttam Kumaran: you know, start fresh in terms of, like, what an engagement could look like. But really, like, I…
77 00:21:30.340 ⇒ 00:21:39.569 Uttam Kumaran: I just kind of wanted to hear was, like, where can we be helpful, you know? And is the way, kind of, I just… I’ve described where we can positive? That’s, like.
78 00:21:39.850 ⇒ 00:21:51.920 Uttam Kumaran: Anywhere from, like, you guys are actively doing demos and training, or is it like, hey, there’s roadmaps for… bespoke roadmaps for clients, that we sort of, like, can no longer sustain as just a platform team?
79 00:21:51.920 ⇒ 00:22:01.119 Uttam Kumaran: you know, happy to discuss all that. We have the team, and we’re actively growing pretty fast, especially on our, like, full-stack AI team, and we do a lot of
80 00:22:01.320 ⇒ 00:22:16.610 Uttam Kumaran: the exact same work on, you know, building and customizing, you know, AI platforms for clients, so I think it’s totally in our wheelhouse. And that’s ultimately even how we were, what our goal was framing Brainforge and the relationship as, you know, ultimately even in our partnership with Mike.
81 00:22:16.920 ⇒ 00:22:18.529 Jay Chen: Yep, makes sense, makes sense.
82 00:22:18.670 ⇒ 00:22:25.240 Jay Chen: I think that’s, that’s, yeah, that makes sense to me. I think that’s a good, next steps.
83 00:22:25.550 ⇒ 00:22:39.010 Jay Chen: Just so I have a better sense, like, can you maybe give me a sense of, like, what are the types of projects you guys typically take on, just so I kind of know where to slot you in as I see needs here?
84 00:22:39.010 ⇒ 00:22:56.109 Uttam Kumaran: Sure, yeah, so we are… so our background and the DNA in our business, we’re a data consultancy, so my background’s in data engineering for a long time, built data teams, worked on data products, and so that’s sort of what we started off as. Really, our journey into AI is… I was automating and
85 00:22:56.110 ⇒ 00:23:00.210 Uttam Kumaran: a lot of our business, and so I’m always kind of on the edge in terms of
86 00:23:00.210 ⇒ 00:23:02.649 Uttam Kumaran: Understanding what the best tools are, and…
87 00:23:02.650 ⇒ 00:23:15.949 Uttam Kumaran: Contextual stood out a few years ago, and that’s sort of how the relationship was born. Since, you know, probably the early days, we now have three sort of concrete services that Brainforge offers. Data, strategy and analytics, and AI.
88 00:23:16.260 ⇒ 00:23:18.689 Uttam Kumaran: And so within the AI,
89 00:23:18.900 ⇒ 00:23:36.169 Uttam Kumaran: sort of world. One way of describing it, it’s everything from workflow automation to building internal knowledge, like, you know, sort of context layers, as well as building internal surfaces, like, you know, we implement OpenWork, for example. We implement, you know, background agents for people.
90 00:23:36.170 ⇒ 00:23:51.660 Uttam Kumaran: And so, on the AI side, it’s all focused on internal services, though. So, we’re not building consumer-facing applications, we’re not building customer-facing things for clients, we don’t… we’re not doing mobile apps, right? Everything is on internal, optimization, and basically, like.
91 00:23:51.680 ⇒ 00:24:10.559 Uttam Kumaran: growth-related initiatives. Even on the data side, right, we’re not… we’re not partnering with companies, that are purely just focused on, hey, we want to find costs and lower them. It’s all around a growth story. And so, typically, our ICP to date is we work with companies anywhere from 20 million to…
92 00:24:10.710 ⇒ 00:24:28.579 Uttam Kumaran: We have a couple companies in the portfolio that are several hundred million, and some pushing a billion in annual revenue. You know, we have engineers, sort of scattered across those three services, but really our… our bread and butter, and where my background is, we do a lot of work in e-com, CPG,
93 00:24:28.580 ⇒ 00:24:29.000 Jay Chen: Fair.
94 00:24:29.000 ⇒ 00:24:35.259 Uttam Kumaran: SaaS, as well as a lot of traditional services businesses, from legal to insurance, real estate,
95 00:24:35.460 ⇒ 00:24:38.320 Uttam Kumaran: And then a couple more that we’re, like, trying to get into, so…
96 00:24:38.500 ⇒ 00:24:58.030 Uttam Kumaran: If anything in e-com, CPG, SaaS, we have tons of case studies and a big track record. Similarly, in traditional services businesses, we also are doing a lot there. On the data side, what does that look like? That looks like coming in, setting a data foundation, so ETL, landing data in a data warehouse like Snowflake.
97 00:24:58.110 ⇒ 00:25:05.629 Uttam Kumaran: Modeling it, and then putting it into a BI tool. The strategy and analytics work is really all the stuff after that, so…
98 00:25:05.640 ⇒ 00:25:23.139 Uttam Kumaran: it’s sort of typical, like, management consulting style work, finding opportunities, driving decision-making strategy. And the AI side is all around internal workflow optimizations and helping people kind of find alpha in their data. And so the way it’s kind of married now, and the reason why I think we’re
99 00:25:23.230 ⇒ 00:25:25.310 Uttam Kumaran: Our business is starting to grow, is
100 00:25:25.600 ⇒ 00:25:35.969 Uttam Kumaran: everything that we are… as you know, the AI problem is really a lot of data engineering, you know, and sort of what’s called context engineering, or knowledge, and it’s just…
101 00:25:36.060 ⇒ 00:25:48.159 Uttam Kumaran: this is data pipeline work. Of course, there’s a lot more… it’s a lot of… yes, and it depends, but that’s what we’re really, really good at. So, the stuff we’re going to market now on the AI side is all around arranging
102 00:25:48.160 ⇒ 00:26:02.150 Uttam Kumaran: context in a way that it’s accurate and available from all source systems. And then it’s the integration and, like, sort of what I’m describing as the surface, whether it’s Slack agents, whether it’s something within your teams. And so contextual fits is, like, a really great
103 00:26:02.280 ⇒ 00:26:05.910 Uttam Kumaran: layer for that entire… that entire, like, thing, right?
104 00:26:06.740 ⇒ 00:26:24.080 Uttam Kumaran: product to you, but it’s… you guys have the full stack within that, all the way to the UX elements, you know, which is why I was really, you know, bullish on the team and the product, because, the UX… it was extremely demoable, and a lot of the stuff that you guys did with document intelligence is really amazing. It’s still
105 00:26:24.250 ⇒ 00:26:41.510 Uttam Kumaran: core, core problem for a lot of our customers. But I just think, what’s changed is, I think our messaging in the last 6 months in particular, it’s not like we’ve changed our confidence in the fact that this is needed, I just think the market has opened up to it a lot more. And so.
106 00:26:41.700 ⇒ 00:27:00.569 Uttam Kumaran: that’s always how I’ve described contextual, is like, look, it’s a platform for you to go from anywhere from structured to unstructured data, and I know you guys now offer SQL and database, all these connections, to build… now you offer sort of N8in-style workflow building, all the way to the front-end elements, you know? So, that’s sort of a little bit about our business.
107 00:27:00.570 ⇒ 00:27:07.180 Jay Chen: Okay, that’s super helpful, and I think… I think that’s actually, to your point, like.
108 00:27:07.210 ⇒ 00:27:25.560 Jay Chen: quite complementary to, obviously, what we have in the platform, and especially given the new, kind of, org structure and resources that we have. I think there is probably a very significant opportunity for you all to actually kind of take on a lot of that, like, end-user customization, like, the last mile, kind of, kind of.
109 00:27:25.560 ⇒ 00:27:26.060 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
110 00:27:26.060 ⇒ 00:27:27.599 Jay Chen: First smile and last smile, I guess, right here.
111 00:27:27.600 ⇒ 00:27:47.599 Uttam Kumaran: No, and that’s typically how we partner. So, for Snowflake, for example, you don’t purchase that tool in, like, a bubble. It’s… we’re always connecting, right? So, similar for contextual, someone has to land the data, get it organized, plug it in, and then, of course, configure the contextual application. And this is how we work with a lot of our vendors, and oftentimes, our vendor partners
112 00:27:47.600 ⇒ 00:27:56.219 Uttam Kumaran: We do… we just do a lot of the selling, and we’re really confident in the tools that we bring, and our team is super, super trained on all of them, and so…
113 00:27:56.230 ⇒ 00:27:58.200 Uttam Kumaran: We… we tend to, like…
114 00:27:58.290 ⇒ 00:28:12.009 Uttam Kumaran: be able to manage the customer relationship really well, and take that load off the vendor, and I don’t think… I don’t know… I’ve worked with a lot of service partners, you know, service companies before. It’s not often like that. Like, we find ourselves better at selling Snowflake than the Snowflake folks are.
115 00:28:12.640 ⇒ 00:28:15.299 Uttam Kumaran: You know? And they love it, we love it.
116 00:28:15.300 ⇒ 00:28:15.720 Jay Chen: Yeah.
117 00:28:15.720 ⇒ 00:28:33.229 Uttam Kumaran: Like, you know, and so, yeah, and so that’s why I think our partnerships really matter, because customer ultimately interacts with us on a day-to-day basis on the integration and the building side, and we’re bringing all the shovels to the party to just dig holes for them, and I think we tend to…
118 00:28:33.260 ⇒ 00:28:51.270 Uttam Kumaran: we tend to not just be a partner that’s, like, give us referral money. In fact, I told Mike, like, very… I’m like, I’m really more interested in, like, doing co-marketing and doing things that are win-win, and of course, like, I think we’ll… we’ll get our fix from servicing the customer, you know? And we’ve always had this, like, sort of long-term mindset about
119 00:28:51.360 ⇒ 00:28:52.800 Uttam Kumaran: Partnerships in that way.
120 00:28:53.520 ⇒ 00:28:58.490 Jay Chen: I think that’s… that’s actually… that’s… that’s really great, and
121 00:28:59.750 ⇒ 00:29:10.099 Jay Chen: That’s perfect. I actually just… I probably shouldn’t know this, but I don’t… I actually don’t… didn’t get a full download from Mike before he left, but do we have any kind of…
122 00:29:10.580 ⇒ 00:29:16.219 Jay Chen: Existing customer conversations in flight between us right now, and what are they, if so?
123 00:29:16.410 ⇒ 00:29:32.770 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we do. So, there’s two clients that we… it’s sort of, like, in flight. I think, even on our side, I think we could do a better job of moving it forward. One is with this company called CTA. They’re actually the company that, runs CES and several other trade shows. They’re a huge…
124 00:29:32.770 ⇒ 00:29:41.509 Uttam Kumaran: SharePoint, like, legacy, 20-year-old legacy IT company, tons of unstructured data, they’re not very happy with Glean.
125 00:29:41.600 ⇒ 00:30:00.300 Uttam Kumaran: I think there’s a really great opportunity. We’re actually developing their Snowflake sort of data intelligence right now, but of course, it’s not really great at supporting unstructured data, and so that was one opportunity that, you know, we’ve been speaking to Mike about. I think on our side, they’re a relationship that we started with in December, so it’s still kind of early, but…
126 00:30:00.730 ⇒ 00:30:01.490 Uttam Kumaran: like.
127 00:30:01.550 ⇒ 00:30:14.919 Uttam Kumaran: you know, there’s tons of opportunity there. And then there’s another company here in Texas, where I’m based here in Austin, called ABC Home and Commercial. Large, home and commercial pest, and sort of several other services.
128 00:30:14.930 ⇒ 00:30:26.279 Uttam Kumaran: again, similar to, like, legacy IT, tons of unstructured data. We actually built their customer service team and continue to maintain, like, a chatbot for their customer service reps to look up policies and look up.
129 00:30:26.940 ⇒ 00:30:28.310 Uttam Kumaran: CRM information.
130 00:30:28.320 ⇒ 00:30:47.379 Uttam Kumaran: Again, we’re currently in the process of pitching them on expanding our relationship beyond just the customer service team to, like, all internal knowledge and, like, everybody being able to use a chat-style interface to interact with documents and things like that. And then, these are just the ones that are sort of immediate, I think.
131 00:30:47.660 ⇒ 00:30:57.509 Uttam Kumaran: We… we’ve moved to a model now… before, again, it was just me and Robert kind of managing a lot of clients. Now we have several people who are basically leading client engagements, who…
132 00:30:57.700 ⇒ 00:31:14.030 Uttam Kumaran: can totally be briefed on the contextual platform and think about how it can fit into their renewal conversations or active lead conversations. So those are the only two that are, in flight. Still, I think CTA is probably a really good chance if we can get a good demo in front of them.
133 00:31:14.220 ⇒ 00:31:18.789 Uttam Kumaran: And we just haven’t, you know, kind of pushed it recently on our side.
134 00:31:19.280 ⇒ 00:31:30.519 Jay Chen: Yeah, got it. And then on those two ops, like, have you been working with anyone on our side for support in terms of developing product, or just, like, you know, anything on our…
135 00:31:30.520 ⇒ 00:31:36.880 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s mainly been… it’s mainly been Mike and a few people that have been on this meeting, and really what it’s looked like is…
136 00:31:36.990 ⇒ 00:31:40.880 Uttam Kumaran: Again, like, typically for our partners, we’re not like, hey, we have an op, like.
137 00:31:41.270 ⇒ 00:31:43.629 Uttam Kumaran: you guys do everything. It’s almost like, hey, we’re…
138 00:31:43.900 ⇒ 00:31:55.599 Uttam Kumaran: we’re actively putting together the demo and putting together the narrative, and we’d love to co-author with you, and then I would love to make the connection. But typically, again, for our clients, we don’t often just say, like.
139 00:31:55.800 ⇒ 00:32:14.830 Uttam Kumaran: cool, here’s a vendor, like, go talk to them. It’s like, hey, we have the solution, this outcome, here’s the vendors that… some of which you may already have, some of which are new, we’d love to arrange. So for both of those, kind of still on the table for us to craft that and make those introductions and sort of pitch, I just think… Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
140 00:32:15.070 ⇒ 00:32:24.359 Jay Chen: So, I mean, for… so, correct me if I’m wrong, it sounds like, so, in that… in those, in those kind of opportunities.
141 00:32:24.560 ⇒ 00:32:28.549 Jay Chen: We are… we would still be directly selling to the customer, like, we would have direct contract with the customer.
142 00:32:28.550 ⇒ 00:32:30.820 Uttam Kumaran: You’d be directly, you’d be directly signed, yes.
143 00:32:30.820 ⇒ 00:32:32.120 Jay Chen: Okay, got it. And then what’s.
144 00:32:32.120 ⇒ 00:32:35.669 Uttam Kumaran: So we would just be the system integrators with paper with the customer, basically.
145 00:32:35.960 ⇒ 00:32:39.649 Jay Chen: Paper with a customer, but we still… we will have a separate contract with.
146 00:32:39.650 ⇒ 00:32:42.159 Uttam Kumaran: So it’s not a managed service, I guess, put it another way, yeah.
147 00:32:42.160 ⇒ 00:32:49.580 Jay Chen: Got it, got it, yeah, got it, okay. And then what’s our, kind of, overall… what’s our commercial agreement with you all? Is it, like, a rev share, or is it, like, a…
148 00:32:49.580 ⇒ 00:32:54.849 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think it is… I actually… it’s been a while. I think there’s something around…
149 00:32:55.060 ⇒ 00:33:00.219 Uttam Kumaran: some amount for submitting ops, and then there’s, I think there is a rev share…
150 00:33:00.390 ⇒ 00:33:06.270 Uttam Kumaran: As well, I can find the partnership agreement and share it. But again, it’s…
151 00:33:06.380 ⇒ 00:33:25.739 Uttam Kumaran: sort of open to however you want to do it. We don’t do… we don’t do a lot of managed service, I just think maybe it’s probably the next evolution of our business, like, to get there, but a lot of our stuff is direct relation… like, the vendors have direct relationships with the… with the customer, and then we also have a direct relationship with the customer, and we just are doing a lot of the systems integration work.
152 00:33:25.740 ⇒ 00:33:32.669 Jay Chen: In our relationship, who… or maybe it’s case by case, but who, who does, like, first-line support?
153 00:33:33.760 ⇒ 00:33:37.009 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, it’s primarily been within us and that channel.
154 00:33:37.330 ⇒ 00:33:44.900 Uttam Kumaran: And then I think Mike has connected me with a… I’ve spoken to a couple AEs in the past, as I’ve been sort of putting the opportunity together.
155 00:33:45.030 ⇒ 00:33:46.869 Uttam Kumaran: And then on our side.
156 00:33:47.090 ⇒ 00:34:01.560 Uttam Kumaran: like, we kind of co-author a pitch, and then basically, like, go pitch to the client, and then, like, try to line up a scope of work for it. But, again, it’s really… our relationship has been much… just really close with Mike and a few of the, you know, engineers that have joined those calls.
157 00:34:02.120 ⇒ 00:34:04.820 Jay Chen: Yeah. Okay. Got it, got it.
158 00:34:05.660 ⇒ 00:34:06.380 Jay Chen: Okay.
159 00:34:06.380 ⇒ 00:34:12.120 Uttam Kumaran: I guess, put it that way, kind of, like, open to however you wanna… you wanna do it, and even just, again, I think…
160 00:34:12.500 ⇒ 00:34:23.989 Uttam Kumaran: I’m not sure if you’re thinking about moving… you mentioned, like, licensing. Right now, the state for us is everything is sort of direct relationship with the customer, but we do, like, all the configuration, and…
161 00:34:24.260 ⇒ 00:34:29.929 Uttam Kumaran: Like, an account management, like, it’s… and, like, expand… looking at the expansion of the products.
162 00:34:30.150 ⇒ 00:34:37.499 Uttam Kumaran: And the measurement of the tools, like, we’re… we basically build data and AI… internal data and AI teams, sort of as, like, a service, you know?
163 00:34:37.870 ⇒ 00:34:44.970 Uttam Kumaran: So we’re the fractional, or the entire data or AI team, or both, for a series of companies.
164 00:34:45.139 ⇒ 00:34:48.659 Uttam Kumaran: And… and really interesting, I think we’re even, like.
165 00:34:48.830 ⇒ 00:34:57.369 Uttam Kumaran: fuller stack data and where we do a lot of strategy and analytics work, and so that’s been our edge, is we don’t just come in and do data warehousing and then kind of get out. We sort of do…
166 00:34:57.530 ⇒ 00:35:00.440 Uttam Kumaran: basically end-to-end, and now, because of AI,
167 00:35:00.650 ⇒ 00:35:08.450 Uttam Kumaran: It’s almost kind of going more towards decision intelligence and things around workflow automation, built on a lot of the data foundations.
168 00:35:08.740 ⇒ 00:35:10.879 Jay Chen: yep. Okay.
169 00:35:11.810 ⇒ 00:35:16.950 Jay Chen: That makes sense. Okay, I think…
170 00:35:17.740 ⇒ 00:35:24.619 Jay Chen: This is super helpful, and I realize we went over time a little bit, but I hope that’s okay with you.
171 00:35:24.620 ⇒ 00:35:25.800 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, totally fine.
172 00:35:26.270 ⇒ 00:35:31.410 Jay Chen: So, so, as I mentioned, I think we’re, we’re, we’re still kind of…
173 00:35:31.660 ⇒ 00:35:38.049 Jay Chen: The dust is still settling a little bit over here, so, probably just maybe give me a little bit of time to sort out.
174 00:35:38.050 ⇒ 00:35:38.550 Uttam Kumaran: Huh?
175 00:35:38.550 ⇒ 00:35:57.350 Jay Chen: you know, what we need to do here. From your end, I mean, I would suggest… I would encourage you to also think about, like, possible futures with us here, like, what it could look like, just given what I’ve shared with you in terms of our resourcing. So, I do think if… if there is an appetite on your end to take on
176 00:35:57.350 ⇒ 00:36:08.420 Jay Chen: you know, more of the customization service, which you’re already doing, I mean, I understand. I think that could continue to work. Now, to your question about, like.
177 00:36:08.610 ⇒ 00:36:16.079 Jay Chen: what’s the long-term plan for the company, right? I think we’re still trying to figure that out, honestly. Like, I don’t want to over-promise anything and say, like.
178 00:36:16.080 ⇒ 00:36:16.710 Uttam Kumaran: For sure, for sure.
179 00:36:16.710 ⇒ 00:36:32.060 Jay Chen: we’ll stick with you for the next 10 years, like, that’s not a realistic expectation for me to set with you, right? So yeah, so maybe we can sync back up in a few weeks. I probably won’t have any updates in the next week or so, but,
180 00:36:32.360 ⇒ 00:36:41.769 Jay Chen: we’ll sort things out. Let me know if you have any ideas, or if you have any interest in, in, or, like, thinking about our relationship together, but…
181 00:36:41.770 ⇒ 00:36:59.590 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll give Robert a call right after this, and then probably introduce him to the channel, and then we can just kind of work through Slack, and… Sure. Yeah, I mean, he’s gonna have a lot of ideas on the sort of the commercial terms and things like that, so I think that would be… that’d be great, and yeah, in the next few weeks, like, however else I can be supportive, please, like, I’m more than happy to.
182 00:36:59.970 ⇒ 00:37:08.539 Jay Chen: Sounds good. And I’ll also keep you guys in mind as, you know, as we have, inbound interest, like, you know, if we can direct some deals in your direction as well.
183 00:37:09.060 ⇒ 00:37:10.260 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay, perfect.
184 00:37:10.870 ⇒ 00:37:16.879 Jay Chen: Okay, awesome. Well, thanks, Adam. It was great to meet you, and sorry for, like, kind of this awkward news, but .
185 00:37:16.880 ⇒ 00:37:32.449 Uttam Kumaran: No, I… this is… it’s business, so I think, like, again, I can see from your perspective, it’s… we just want to be a helpful partner, you know, I know it’s kind of a lot to go through, so if you guys are going to still be in business, and we can make some money together, we’re more than happy to, so we’re here for y’all.
186 00:37:32.450 ⇒ 00:37:36.260 Jay Chen: Absolutely, absolutely. Okay, cool. Well, thanks, man. I’ll, talk to you later.
187 00:37:36.470 ⇒ 00:37:37.560 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, perfect, thank you.
188 00:37:37.560 ⇒ 00:37:38.110 Jay Chen: Bye.