Meeting Title: Brainforge Interview w- Kaela Date: 2026-04-09 Meeting participants: Kaela Gallagher, Mike Klaczynski
WEBVTT
1 00:01:03.490 ⇒ 00:01:05.209 Kaela Gallagher: Hey Mike, how’s it going?
2 00:01:09.280 ⇒ 00:01:10.760 Kaela Gallagher: Can you hear me okay?
3 00:01:27.910 ⇒ 00:01:31.169 Kaela Gallagher: Hmm. Okay, can’t hear you at all.
4 00:01:33.180 ⇒ 00:01:34.759 Kaela Gallagher: Wonder what’s going on.
5 00:01:39.480 ⇒ 00:01:40.990 Mike Klaczynski: Alright, can you hear me now?
6 00:01:41.130 ⇒ 00:01:41.910 Kaela Gallagher: Yes.
7 00:01:43.280 ⇒ 00:01:44.130 Mike Klaczynski: There we go.
8 00:01:44.730 ⇒ 00:01:46.509 Kaela Gallagher: Awesome! How’s it going?
9 00:01:46.510 ⇒ 00:01:50.259 Mike Klaczynski: I want a new laptop, since I no longer have my corporate laptop.
10 00:01:50.430 ⇒ 00:01:51.790 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, got it.
11 00:01:51.790 ⇒ 00:01:53.589 Mike Klaczynski: I’ve used Zoom on here before, so…
12 00:01:53.590 ⇒ 00:01:57.680 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, okay, well, thanks for taking the time.
13 00:01:57.680 ⇒ 00:01:58.259 Mike Klaczynski: Of course.
14 00:01:58.460 ⇒ 00:02:05.659 Kaela Gallagher: It was Utong that had connected us, right? After… okay, and there’s, like, changes going on at your company?
15 00:02:06.540 ⇒ 00:02:14.179 Mike Klaczynski: Yeah, yeah, so I was working with Utom for the last, I don’t know, 8 months, maybe longer, on partnership work. Okay. And then the startup I was at.
16 00:02:14.310 ⇒ 00:02:18.859 Mike Klaczynski: There was a big restructuring. They let off most of the go-to-market team, actually all of it.
17 00:02:19.060 ⇒ 00:02:21.400 Mike Klaczynski: And so…
18 00:02:21.520 ⇒ 00:02:27.370 Mike Klaczynski: I just gave Utama a heads up, and he said, hey, we’re looking for a partnerships person, maybe this could be a good fit, so…
19 00:02:27.710 ⇒ 00:02:35.140 Mike Klaczynski: I… I regard Brainforge quite highly, so I said, hey, I’ll get on the call and see what you guys are up to and how I can help.
20 00:02:35.540 ⇒ 00:02:38.500 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, exciting, cool.
21 00:02:38.660 ⇒ 00:02:46.820 Kaela Gallagher: yeah, hopefully this timing is kind of meant to be here. Are you wanting to stay in the partnership space, like, moving forward?
22 00:02:47.680 ⇒ 00:02:49.610 Mike Klaczynski: So…
23 00:02:49.770 ⇒ 00:03:02.260 Mike Klaczynski: I’ve had several partners and companies reach out to me in the last few days, and the roles vary from, like, head of marketing to partnerships, alliances, product marketing.
24 00:03:02.450 ⇒ 00:03:03.579 Mike Klaczynski: To me, it’s…
25 00:03:03.700 ⇒ 00:03:09.810 Mike Klaczynski: all the skills that I have, and it’s all interrelated. I mean, everything you do with a partner is based on
26 00:03:10.290 ⇒ 00:03:20.720 Mike Klaczynski: pricing, packaging, joint value messaging, collateral, sales enablement. So, whether you’re doing it for your company or doing it for a partner ecosystem, it’s a similar motion. So,
27 00:03:21.240 ⇒ 00:03:25.110 Mike Klaczynski: At this point, I’m kind of open to whatever.
28 00:03:25.270 ⇒ 00:03:32.180 Mike Klaczynski: It really comes down to who’s the company, what are they doing, who are their clients, and then how does my skill set support that?
29 00:03:32.750 ⇒ 00:03:39.899 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, okay, makes sense. Can you tell me more about what your, like, day-to-day looked like in your most recent role?
30 00:03:40.430 ⇒ 00:03:45.820 Mike Klaczynski: Sure, sure. So as head of partnerships, globally, and both…
31 00:03:46.070 ⇒ 00:03:51.099 Mike Klaczynski: oversaw everything strategically, but also an individual contributor, because I didn’t have a team.
32 00:03:51.280 ⇒ 00:04:06.090 Mike Klaczynski: And so, worked with 3 primary categories of partners, the hyperscalers, or what other folks call CSPs, so that’s your Microsoft, Amazon, Google, some of the neoclouds, like Nebius and Together and Fireworks.
33 00:04:06.490 ⇒ 00:04:15.960 Mike Klaczynski: In that space, you could also maybe put, like, Dell or HPE, Supermicro, so I had quite a bit of conversations there, was in a lot of their ecosystems as well.
34 00:04:16.589 ⇒ 00:04:24.250 Mike Klaczynski: Then we had technology partners, and these were adjacent technologies that, our customers would use with us.
35 00:04:24.420 ⇒ 00:04:27.909 Mike Klaczynski: So these could be, like, a snowflake, or an elastic, or…
36 00:04:28.340 ⇒ 00:04:37.029 Mike Klaczynski: other technologies, that just happen to be in the space. And then there was the SIs and GSIs. So, Brainforge was one of the SIs we were working with.
37 00:04:37.360 ⇒ 00:04:39.100 Mike Klaczynski: And…
38 00:04:40.540 ⇒ 00:04:55.499 Mike Klaczynski: you know, my approach… I had a couple different things. There were strategic partners that I was pursuing, and then I was always open to having conversations with partners that were coming to us that were potentially interested in working with us and excited about that. I call that opportunistic.
39 00:04:56.040 ⇒ 00:05:11.539 Mike Klaczynski: you know, I spent 6 years at Snowflake, and I saw how a lot of partner managers would be very closed off. They’re like, I’ve got 5 partners, you know, that’s my bandwidth, I don’t want to talk to anybody else. I was the complete opposite. I took Snowflake from about 10 partners in the AI space to over 230.
40 00:05:11.690 ⇒ 00:05:18.090 Mike Klaczynski: I talked to every single one of those startups and companies, because I wanted to learn, and I wanted to see, you know, what the potential was.
41 00:05:18.230 ⇒ 00:05:24.570 Mike Klaczynski: And so, like I said, strategically, I’d reach out to specific partners that we wanted to further things with.
42 00:05:24.690 ⇒ 00:05:26.730 Mike Klaczynski: And then there was always inbound.
43 00:05:26.910 ⇒ 00:05:39.499 Mike Klaczynski: we do outbound marketing, go to events, and there would always be partners that would reach out and say, hey, sounds like there’s a really good way we can save time, money, energy, and generate better value for our customers by using your platform. And so…
44 00:05:39.780 ⇒ 00:05:51.560 Mike Klaczynski: get on the call with them, and have a conversation, and it usually was like, holy crap, this is really good. You know, let’s sign paperwork, and let’s start working together jointly, which is essentially what I did with UTAM and Brainforge.
45 00:05:51.910 ⇒ 00:05:53.820 Mike Klaczynski: But day-to-day, I mean.
46 00:05:54.370 ⇒ 00:06:00.489 Mike Klaczynski: like I said, I had my big strategic partners… sorry… like, like NVIDIA and AWS.
47 00:06:00.700 ⇒ 00:06:19.310 Mike Klaczynski: And a lot of those companies have very structured program frameworks, so it’s like, you know, you sign the paperwork, and then you go and you have to create your marketplace listing, which means you have to build an integration, you have to create all the billing, and all that other stuff. Then you have to start submitting leads into ACT, you have to put together a partnership plan.
48 00:06:20.560 ⇒ 00:06:32.750 Mike Klaczynski: So, traditionally, you know, I would work with other folks to do that work for me, but at Contextual, I was kind of a one-man band, so I did… I figured out who the partners were, figured out the strategy, and then I actually did all the work for that.
49 00:06:33.290 ⇒ 00:06:39.559 Mike Klaczynski: And then I was a major, lead funnel contributor. So,
50 00:06:40.040 ⇒ 00:06:48.649 Mike Klaczynski: I think the last quarter that we tracked progress in, like, I generated more, more leads than… than all of marketing, just through partnerships, so…
51 00:06:48.910 ⇒ 00:06:53.109 Mike Klaczynski: You know, always kind of keep an eye on the… on the revenue angle.
52 00:06:53.250 ⇒ 00:06:58.629 Mike Klaczynski: But it also comes down to customers. And so the big thing for me with partnerships was also industries and verticals.
53 00:06:58.860 ⇒ 00:07:03.660 Mike Klaczynski: And this isn’t necessarily day-to-day, but this is kind of the strategic vision of
54 00:07:03.960 ⇒ 00:07:10.070 Mike Klaczynski: We have our horizontal platform, and then we needed partners to come in with expertise in insurance, real estate.
55 00:07:10.230 ⇒ 00:07:23.120 Mike Klaczynski: whatever it might be, healthcare, retail, CPG, and those partners were that lens that would create that value for our customers, as opposed to us having to train and learn that jargon and that language, and have to act as that translation layer. So…
56 00:07:23.320 ⇒ 00:07:30.739 Mike Klaczynski: Yeah, I mean, again, being a kind of a one-person band, I did everything that
57 00:07:31.220 ⇒ 00:07:35.559 Mike Klaczynski: was… was possible. I would say my biggest struggle was
58 00:07:36.100 ⇒ 00:07:38.090 Mike Klaczynski: Bandwidth from the rest of the company.
59 00:07:38.450 ⇒ 00:07:46.409 Mike Klaczynski: So, being able to find sales reps that I could bring in on calls, so I ended up taking a lot of the sales calls myself, and then also platform and engineering.
60 00:07:46.820 ⇒ 00:07:52.410 Mike Klaczynski: Many of these integrations required significant development and engineering resources.
61 00:07:52.650 ⇒ 00:07:58.600 Mike Klaczynski: for example, replatforming from GCP onto AWS Marketplace. Like, we actually have to lift and shift our platform.
62 00:07:58.770 ⇒ 00:08:00.760 Mike Klaczynski: And so…
63 00:08:01.200 ⇒ 00:08:06.870 Mike Klaczynski: I, you know, I always prided myself, even at Snowflake, like, I did not want to be the bottleneck, so…
64 00:08:06.870 ⇒ 00:08:07.380 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah.
65 00:08:07.380 ⇒ 00:08:15.100 Mike Klaczynski: there was always way more opportunity, and it was always on other folks to figure out, you know, do they want to prioritize this? Do they have the bandwidth to support it? So…
66 00:08:18.060 ⇒ 00:08:30.379 Kaela Gallagher: Cool. Yeah, I think, like, a lot of what you just said really resonates with, like, Brain Forge and what we’re building and what we’re looking for in this role. I think your, like.
67 00:08:30.380 ⇒ 00:08:50.749 Kaela Gallagher: personality of being opportunistic, and, like, not wanting to be the bottleneck, and, like, always, you know, moving forward, is something that the team would really appreciate. And I think in your last role, like, being strategy, but also being an IC is, like, something that you might have to balance with us as well, so that seems really relevant.
68 00:08:51.730 ⇒ 00:09:01.180 Kaela Gallagher: I can tell you, like, a little bit more about what we’re looking for, and kind of the pain points, and, like, why this… this role is open.
69 00:09:01.180 ⇒ 00:09:01.940 Mike Klaczynski: Please.
70 00:09:01.940 ⇒ 00:09:12.689 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, so… currently, Partnerships is run by Utam, who is our CEO, so that’s just a huge,
71 00:09:13.920 ⇒ 00:09:15.030 Kaela Gallagher: you know.
72 00:09:15.130 ⇒ 00:09:28.640 Kaela Gallagher: responsibility on him, on somebody who doesn’t have a lot of time. So, you know, his goal is to just even, like, make one call a week to some of our partners. And we have partners that are, like.
73 00:09:28.840 ⇒ 00:09:42.190 Kaela Gallagher: sharing lead lists with us, like account executives at Snowflake that are willing to share lead lists, but we don’t have capacity to, like, track those down, or take initial calls, or qualify leads, or any of that.
74 00:09:42.490 ⇒ 00:10:00.410 Kaela Gallagher: Currently. Our other founder, Robert, is managing all of our sales and go-to-market efforts currently, so he would love somebody that can kind of take these initial calls, focus on really building relationships, and then he can step in, like, later in the process to support.
75 00:10:00.410 ⇒ 00:10:10.680 Kaela Gallagher: Right now, about 60% of our revenue has come from partnerships, so it’s been really successful, even with the very small bandwidth we’ve had to dedicate to it.
76 00:10:10.680 ⇒ 00:10:25.759 Kaela Gallagher: So that’s why we’re, like, looking to make an investment in this area right now. In terms of, like, the setup of our sales team right now, we have Robert leading all of the strategy and, like I said, hopping in later in the process.
77 00:10:25.760 ⇒ 00:10:35.720 Kaela Gallagher: We do have a go-to-market lead right now that’s doing a lot of outbound, and, you know, attending events and networking, and then we have a sales coordinator as well.
78 00:10:35.930 ⇒ 00:10:47.300 Kaela Gallagher: And then, obviously, being Brainforged, we’re leveraging a lot of AI in every part of the process, too, just making our own lives easier. So, that’s kind of an overview right now.
79 00:10:47.720 ⇒ 00:10:51.479 Kaela Gallagher: Curious if you have any questions about any of that. Yeah. Okay.
80 00:10:51.480 ⇒ 00:10:56.569 Mike Klaczynski: Yeah, no, that’s great. And that’s what I’m seeing across so many of these companies in the AI space.
81 00:10:56.940 ⇒ 00:11:00.450 Mike Klaczynski: is… AI is not…
82 00:11:00.970 ⇒ 00:11:09.530 Mike Klaczynski: like, when I was at Tableau and a couple other companies, like, you’d build this… this platform, and you would go out and sell it soup to nuts. But this is very much,
83 00:11:09.980 ⇒ 00:11:17.589 Mike Klaczynski: like an ecosystem play. And you’re either leveraging folks upstream or downstream, and you need to build those relationships, because
84 00:11:18.140 ⇒ 00:11:33.210 Mike Klaczynski: the number one challenge I think companies are facing now, the second they put on that AI label, it… there’s just so much AI slop out there. Like, you go and look at new startups, everybody says the same thing, that they do the same thing. Something with the Gentic for business value generation, you’re like.
85 00:11:33.530 ⇒ 00:11:48.540 Mike Klaczynski: how is this any different? And so the way you cut through that to get credibility is through partnerships. So, like you said, I mean, 60% of your leads coming through partnerships, that’s… that’s awesome. And I’m pretty sure they’re solid leads, right? Like, they’re…
86 00:11:48.540 ⇒ 00:11:48.960 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah.
87 00:11:48.960 ⇒ 00:11:56.840 Mike Klaczynski: if Snowflake and other folks come to you and say, hey, we have a client that has budget ready to go. So, that sounds good. Yeah, the thing for me is…
88 00:11:57.560 ⇒ 00:12:03.199 Mike Klaczynski: you know, I’ve got a lot of opportunities right now,
89 00:12:03.690 ⇒ 00:12:09.620 Mike Klaczynski: One of the things I’m juggling is, is there potential to maybe do something like part-time around contract?
90 00:12:09.790 ⇒ 00:12:15.570 Mike Klaczynski: Because… I love doing the strategy, I love setting things up.
91 00:12:15.830 ⇒ 00:12:32.560 Mike Klaczynski: And I have this approach of, like, hunting and farming. I love the hunting part, which is setting up the relationships, getting things going, even putting together all the plumbing, like Crossbeam, integrating it with Salesforce, using Closar for all the marketplace management, setting up all the legal frameworks. But then, when it comes to, like.
92 00:12:32.830 ⇒ 00:12:40.480 Mike Klaczynski: necessarily the day-to-day stuff. It’d be great to bring on someone more junior, like a coordinator, that can handle that part.
93 00:12:40.650 ⇒ 00:12:44.870 Mike Klaczynski: And so… you know,
94 00:12:45.010 ⇒ 00:12:57.340 Mike Klaczynski: again, being candid, like, I think this would be really fun and interesting, but I don’t necessarily think it’d be necessarily that many hours to get started with. I could help set up all the processes, all the pipelines, get, you know, partnerships ramped up.
95 00:12:57.530 ⇒ 00:13:01.629 Mike Klaczynski: And then, you know, if you guys realize, wow, this is…
96 00:13:01.790 ⇒ 00:13:09.539 Mike Klaczynski: bringing in a ton of pipeline, then maybe even makes sense for me to come in full-time. But that could be a decision, you know, that we both could make later down the path.
97 00:13:09.680 ⇒ 00:13:11.750 Mike Klaczynski: But to kick things off, you know.
98 00:13:12.050 ⇒ 00:13:15.610 Mike Klaczynski: it kind of be non-committal on both of our ends.
99 00:13:15.810 ⇒ 00:13:18.270 Mike Klaczynski: If you guys were open to having this as a contract thing.
100 00:13:18.670 ⇒ 00:13:30.610 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, so for some, like, transparency in regard to contracts, so everybody on our team currently is on a 1099 basis, so we’re all contracting. We have…
101 00:13:30.680 ⇒ 00:13:47.540 Kaela Gallagher: done situations in the past where we’ve started people with, like, a trial period, part-time, and then kind of ramped up based on how things went. So this is not, like, something that’s unfamiliar to us. I’m curious how many hours a week you would see a part-time engagement being.
102 00:13:48.980 ⇒ 00:13:56.190 Mike Klaczynski: Yeah, and what I’ve told some of these other folks that I’ve spoken with, it’s like, you know, I could do 50 hours or 60 hours one week if it’s necessary.
103 00:13:56.570 ⇒ 00:13:57.940 Mike Klaczynski: But…
104 00:13:58.160 ⇒ 00:14:15.989 Mike Klaczynski: what I’ve seen, even at contextuals, it’s highly variable, so it’s not really necessarily fair to you guys if I’m, you know, if I spin these things up, and then we’re waiting a month for these partners to get their stuff in place, right? And so that could be time where I’m going and helping another client or somebody else, so…
105 00:14:16.640 ⇒ 00:14:26.479 Mike Klaczynski: It’s variable, like, it’s whatever it takes, really, is, I guess, the answer. It’s not so much that I’m trying to limit my engagement to, like, you know, 5 or 10 hours a week or anything, it’s more of…
106 00:14:26.710 ⇒ 00:14:32.950 Mike Klaczynski: I want to be able to have as much impact, you know, across potentially a handful of clients.
107 00:14:32.950 ⇒ 00:14:33.300 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah.
108 00:14:33.300 ⇒ 00:14:38.790 Mike Klaczynski: If you guys needed me a ton, you know, for a month, great, you know, I could essentially work full-time if necessary.
109 00:14:39.280 ⇒ 00:14:51.640 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, okay. Would you foresee this being, like, an hourly rate plus commission, or, like, how would you see that structure kind of being?
110 00:14:52.510 ⇒ 00:15:00.310 Mike Klaczynski: Yeah, great question. So, my last day was Tuesday. I’ve talked to a handful of folks that have started consulting stuff.
111 00:15:00.410 ⇒ 00:15:06.519 Mike Klaczynski: I haven’t really set a plan on what that could look like. I mean, most everybody I know is hourly.
112 00:15:07.890 ⇒ 00:15:19.009 Mike Klaczynski: for me, again, I’ll be super candid, I don’t have to work. I’ve done really well at Snowflake and whatnot, so I really do this more as a passion thing. You know, I love this space.
113 00:15:19.270 ⇒ 00:15:26.199 Mike Klaczynski: So, like, it could even just be, like, an equity thing, I don’t know if that’s something you guys do, where I could work for equity, but…
114 00:15:26.340 ⇒ 00:15:32.850 Mike Klaczynski: I guess the short answer is, like, it’s flexible, whatever makes sense for you guys and me, and, you know, we can work it out.
115 00:15:33.290 ⇒ 00:15:39.120 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, okay. Yeah, I think initially the plan for this was… to be…
116 00:15:39.260 ⇒ 00:15:56.850 Kaela Gallagher: sort of full-time, but of course everybody’s 1099, so still contracting, and to have probably a significant portion of it being commission-based. So maybe that’s something we could look into. I think these, like, flexible situations are something
117 00:15:56.960 ⇒ 00:16:00.630 Kaela Gallagher: we’re always really, like, interested in.
118 00:16:00.750 ⇒ 00:16:14.440 Kaela Gallagher: just, like, to be candid, too, like, our go-to-market lead has kind of been a similar situation right now, with, like, a very heavy amount on commission. So, yeah, maybe this is something we could discuss. I’ll definitely mention it to
119 00:16:14.440 ⇒ 00:16:27.949 Kaela Gallagher: to Robert. The next steps here would be chatting with Robert, since he runs all of our go-to-market sales side. And then we also have, like, like, an advisor that would…
120 00:16:27.950 ⇒ 00:16:40.059 Kaela Gallagher: probably give you a ring as well. So, probably two more conversations after this. I’m chatting with a ton of people today and tomorrow, and then Robert and I will, like, look at everyone’s profiles and decide who to move forward.
121 00:16:40.560 ⇒ 00:16:52.590 Mike Klaczynski: Cool. Yeah, no worries. Yeah, it was great having Utam reach out and then, you know, put my name in there. As I said, if there’s an opportunity for me to create value and help you guys out, I’d love to be able to do that.
122 00:16:52.790 ⇒ 00:16:58.630 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, that sounds great. One more just, like, logistics question for you. You’re located in Seattle right now?
123 00:16:59.090 ⇒ 00:17:03.969 Mike Klaczynski: Just north of Seattle, so I’m actually right on the border with Canada.
124 00:17:03.970 ⇒ 00:17:04.660 Kaela Gallagher: Oh, cool!
125 00:17:04.660 ⇒ 00:17:12.049 Mike Klaczynski: We’re one of the border crossings. So I typically fly out of Vancouver airport, it’s like 50 minutes from my house, and then I can go anywhere in the country really quickly.
126 00:17:12.200 ⇒ 00:17:17.529 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, nice. I used to live in Puyallup, I’m not sure if you’re familiar, but… Yeah.
127 00:17:17.530 ⇒ 00:17:17.950 Mike Klaczynski: That’s all.
128 00:17:18.150 ⇒ 00:17:22.460 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, cool, yeah. Awesome, yeah, I…
129 00:17:22.460 ⇒ 00:17:26.899 Mike Klaczynski: Most of Brainforges is in Austin, right? And then I think there’s a group in New York as well?
130 00:17:27.270 ⇒ 00:17:41.619 Kaela Gallagher: So, Robert’s in New York, Utam is in Austin, so technically our HQ. But actually, like, our biggest hub right now is LA, where I am. There’s 5 of us out here, and so, we get together pretty frequently, but I don’t…
131 00:17:41.640 ⇒ 00:17:48.899 Kaela Gallagher: know that travel would be, like, a huge aspect of this, but, I think it’s important to Robert that somebody’s, you know, willing to, like.
132 00:17:49.410 ⇒ 00:17:55.529 Kaela Gallagher: Go to… go to events, or conferences, or even just in your local area, just network, so… yeah.
133 00:17:55.820 ⇒ 00:18:04.690 Mike Klaczynski: Absolutely, yeah, I mean, that’s what I do. I was just at GTC a week ago. I was in the Bay, actually, Monday, Tuesday this week, because it’s so quick and easy to get around the West Coast.
134 00:18:04.690 ⇒ 00:18:05.160 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah.
135 00:18:05.160 ⇒ 00:18:16.859 Mike Klaczynski: Plus, a lot of the companies are… are local, like, Microsoft is based in Redmond, and then Amazon’s obviously in Seattle, so, yeah, travel and being able to be flexible and fly around, not a problem for me.
136 00:18:16.860 ⇒ 00:18:24.230 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, okay, cool, awesome. Well, this is really exciting. Thanks for taking the time to meet with me. Really appreciate your… your time.
137 00:18:24.570 ⇒ 00:18:28.320 Mike Klaczynski: Yeah, absolutely. Nice meeting you, Kayla, and then, yeah, let me know what next steps are.
138 00:18:28.320 ⇒ 00:18:31.039 Kaela Gallagher: Alrighty, we’ll be in touch soon. Thank you so much.