Meeting Title: Brainforge Interview w- Kaela Date: 2026-04-10 Meeting participants: Nathan Runacres, Kaela Gallagher


WEBVTT

1 00:00:06.110 00:00:06.900 Kaela Gallagher: Your phone number.

2 00:00:07.020 00:00:07.780 Kaela Gallagher: ourselves.

3 00:01:14.390 00:01:16.229 Kaela Gallagher: Hey Nathan, how’s it going?

4 00:01:16.480 00:01:18.310 Nathan Runacres: Good, thank you. How about yourself?

5 00:01:18.600 00:01:23.040 Kaela Gallagher: Doing well, thanks for taking some time to meet with me, appreciate it.

6 00:01:23.070 00:01:26.190 Nathan Runacres: You are welcome. How’s your Friday afternoon going?

7 00:01:26.540 00:01:28.030 Kaela Gallagher: Going good!

8 00:01:28.030 00:01:30.199 Nathan Runacres: The last thing standing between you and your weekend?

9 00:01:30.200 00:01:34.270 Kaela Gallagher: You know what? I am actually in LA, so it’s just.

10 00:01:34.270 00:01:34.620 Nathan Runacres: Oh.

11 00:01:34.620 00:01:38.110 Kaela Gallagher: Sorry for me, I have a few more meetings to get through.

12 00:01:38.110 00:01:39.620 Nathan Runacres: Plenty of afternoon to go.

13 00:01:39.620 00:01:41.630 Kaela Gallagher: Yes, where are you based?

14 00:01:41.630 00:01:42.860 Nathan Runacres: Austin, Texas.

15 00:01:42.860 00:01:44.300 Kaela Gallagher: Oh, okay, cool.

16 00:01:44.300 00:01:45.039 Nathan Runacres: You can’t tell by the.

17 00:01:45.040 00:01:51.760 Kaela Gallagher: I was there, too. How long have you been in Austin for now?

18 00:01:52.270 00:02:01.170 Nathan Runacres: So I’ve been in Austin for almost… it’ll be 9 years in August. I’ve been in the States for 15 years in August.

19 00:02:01.170 00:02:02.360 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, okay.

20 00:02:02.360 00:02:03.860 Nathan Runacres: So, time flies.

21 00:02:03.860 00:02:10.559 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, awesome. Well, thanks for… yeah, thanks for taking the time, appreciate it. I know I had reached out to you

22 00:02:10.560 00:02:25.880 Kaela Gallagher: on LinkedIn, and kind of gave a little bit of an overview of a partnerships manager role we’re… we’re hiring for, but, I guess I can start off by giving some more information about, like, Brainforge, and why… why this role is open, and then we can jump in, like, a little bit.

23 00:02:26.210 00:02:26.570 Nathan Runacres: Yeah.

24 00:02:26.570 00:02:27.600 Kaela Gallagher: paper.

25 00:02:28.020 00:02:28.620 Nathan Runacres: Good.

26 00:02:28.830 00:02:44.399 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, awesome. So I lead people and recruiting efforts at Brainforge, so I’m kind of doing these, like, initial rounds with partnerships candidates. At Brainforge, we do data and AI consulting, so we work with a variety of clients.

27 00:02:44.400 00:02:54.689 Kaela Gallagher: across industries, mostly, like, small and mid-sized companies, but we, like, work with a few CPG brands that are on the shelf at, like, Target and Walmart that you might recognize.

28 00:02:56.020 00:03:15.779 Kaela Gallagher: We offer a few different service lines. We have a data team, an AI team, and then a strategy and analytics team. Oftentimes, those are kind of overlapping to provide solutions to clients, and we are a team right now of about 25, so still, like, a smaller company.

29 00:03:16.140 00:03:16.510 Nathan Runacres: Awesome.

30 00:03:16.510 00:03:24.079 Kaela Gallagher: partnership side, our two founders have been leading that up until now. So…

31 00:03:24.080 00:03:24.610 Nathan Runacres: Okay.

32 00:03:24.790 00:03:27.200 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, you can imagine, like, the biggest…

33 00:03:27.240 00:03:46.719 Kaela Gallagher: probably, like, constraint and struggle for us right now is time, and just really need somebody that can come in and support. We have a list of about 15 partners that, we either have a good relationship with, or we’ve been in touch with in the past, and we’re looking to target.

34 00:03:46.720 00:03:55.759 Kaela Gallagher: And, for example, like, Snowflake is a partner that we work with. We have relationships with account executives there, they’ll send us lead lists.

35 00:03:55.810 00:04:09.709 Kaela Gallagher: But we don’t have the capacity, really, for, like, the CEO to call these people. Like, he does his best to call them, like, once a week, and then once we do have a lead list, like, that’s tough for us to go after at this point, so…

36 00:04:09.980 00:04:29.820 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, looking for somebody to bring in, you know, experience, hopefully relationships in the tech industry. Right now, about 60% of our revenue has come from partnerships, so even with the limited time we’ve been able to dedicate, it’s been successful for us, so just looking to make it more of an investment there.

37 00:04:29.820 00:04:34.449 Kaela Gallagher: So that’s kind of… kind of an overview of the role, and I guess, why it’s open.

38 00:04:34.860 00:04:36.799 Nathan Runacres: Yeah, that all makes total sense.

39 00:04:36.800 00:04:44.129 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, awesome, cool, yeah. Yeah, just curious to know more about, like, what you’re doing in your current position.

40 00:04:44.650 00:04:57.589 Nathan Runacres: Yeah, and before… let me make a comment before I dive into that. I love the fact that it’s a small team, and there’s no one really owning this, because what I’m looking for next is something that I can actually own.

41 00:04:57.590 00:05:13.429 Nathan Runacres: And so, Cloudera was my last role, and I’ll get… I will answer your question in a minute, I promise. But I was, like, the smallest guy in the team, you know, there’s layers and layers above me of management and whatever, and…

42 00:05:13.540 00:05:19.939 Nathan Runacres: being able to come into a role where I get to kind of own that… the partnerships,

43 00:05:19.940 00:05:44.450 Nathan Runacres: Team’s the wrong word. The partnership, objectives is something that’s really exciting to me. So, let me answer your question. Cloudera was the company that I was with last. To be fully transparent, they did a round of layoffs at the end of January. I was caught up in those layoffs. They were very generous in their severance package, which gave me some time to just take a couple of months to chill and relax, which has been great, but I’m ready to get back at it now.

44 00:05:44.700 00:05:49.289 Nathan Runacres: But in terms of specifically what was my role at Cloudera,

45 00:05:49.440 00:06:02.410 Nathan Runacres: I was responsible… we broke our partners down into ISVs, RSIs, and GSIs, and GSIs being global, RSIs being regional. So, global would be like an Accenture, a Deloitte, a KPMG,

46 00:06:02.430 00:06:16.460 Nathan Runacres: An RSI would be more like a Trace 3. Worldwide Technology was one I worked with really closely. I was responsible for RSIs. And then the ISVs were the people who lay it on top of, the Cloudera platform.

47 00:06:16.740 00:06:33.149 Nathan Runacres: And so I was specifically responsible for RSIs, and if I can pick on Worldwide as an example, we started… they were partners with us, but we hadn’t done anything with them for, for… we’d done, like.

48 00:06:33.300 00:06:45.480 Nathan Runacres: 4 deals in 2024. And so the… at the start of 25, I put them as one of my target partners. March, we kind of started working on the partnership. And we went from…

49 00:06:45.850 00:07:00.300 Nathan Runacres: ignoring those 4 deals in 2024, we basically went from $0 in partnership pipeline to 8 figures by the end of the year. And largely what we did is we found our joint customers

50 00:07:00.300 00:07:19.930 Nathan Runacres: found where the overlaps were, and got those account teams connected to grow, that pipeline. And so… and they were directly impacting revenue for us at Cloudyra. Significant revenue, big names that, if I were to, like, Fortune 100 customers, that we were…

51 00:07:19.930 00:07:21.990 Nathan Runacres: That we were connecting on.

52 00:07:22.330 00:07:28.930 Nathan Runacres: So I’ve read… I’ve kind of given you a lot. Does that answer your question? Can I… is there anything more specific I can dive into?

53 00:07:28.930 00:07:42.640 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, yeah, no, that’s really helpful to get kind of, like, an idea of what kind of, partners you were working with. Can you tell me more about, like, Cloudera? Like, were you guys kind of doing data solutions, or AI, or what…

54 00:07:42.640 00:07:43.100 Nathan Runacres: Sorry.

55 00:07:43.100 00:07:44.250 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, okay.

56 00:07:44.250 00:07:49.030 Nathan Runacres: Is it Clouder as a software? It’s a data platform. We’re a competitor to Snowflake and Databricks, so…

57 00:07:49.220 00:07:49.830 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.

58 00:07:49.830 00:08:12.279 Nathan Runacres: you guys would have come to me and said, hey, we want to partner with Cloudera, let’s find some accounts that we can go and target together. So, we’re not as well known as Snowflake, but a billion dollars in revenue. So, we’re kind of like the ancient behemoth that has been around for 15 years, and then all these

59 00:08:12.280 00:08:16.459 Nathan Runacres: snappy kind of new guys came around, and they look shiny, but we do a lot more, so…

60 00:08:16.540 00:08:17.060 Nathan Runacres: That’s what.

61 00:08:17.060 00:08:34.959 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, okay, okay, cool. I’m curious, like, in your personal workflows or, in the work that you were doing at Clodera, like, if you utilized AI in any way, and maybe, like, your passion for AI in general.

62 00:08:35.620 00:08:48.809 Nathan Runacres: So, AI is obviously… this is such a cliche, but it’s changing the way we do everything. Definitely for me. I don’t use Google anymore. Everything is conversations with… I use Grok, but everything is conversations with Grok.

63 00:08:48.810 00:09:02.619 Nathan Runacres: Within work, there was two key ways, and they’re really basic, but two key ways I used AI. One was we dumped… we had internal LLMs, so we would dump all of our,

64 00:09:03.000 00:09:23.870 Nathan Runacres: like, all of our partner documents, we dumped into a massive notebook, and then I could just search it, hey, what’s our discount rate for a partner on this tier, or what are the perks? How does a partner get to this next tier? So, that helped me, rather than read screens and screeds of documents, I could just quickly jump into that LLM, and it would quickly give me Cloudera’s partner program-specific results.

65 00:09:23.870 00:09:28.370 Nathan Runacres: The other place that I used it a lot was around,

66 00:09:28.910 00:09:42.519 Nathan Runacres: strategy and ideas around how to build out the individual relationships with my partners, or background research on partners would be another way that I would use it. I mean, I even used it to research

67 00:09:42.520 00:09:55.479 Nathan Runacres: for this interview, you know, understand what Brainforge does, how you guys compare to Cloudera, so those are kind of the basic ways I use it. I have used it for…

68 00:09:57.890 00:10:14.299 Nathan Runacres: coding in Excel, so getting into, scripting in Excel. Code completion is probably the easiest way to say it, and I’m on the cusp of going and developing an app with it. So those are kind of… most of it’s the basic tech stuff, though.

69 00:10:15.320 00:10:23.470 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, okay, yeah, cool, that makes sense. Yeah, the LLM, like, the internal LLM that you mentioned sounds…

70 00:10:23.500 00:10:39.240 Kaela Gallagher: pretty similar. We… we have, I think it’s really cool, because obviously we do client-facing work, and that’s really important and the core of our business and our revenue. But we have invested a lot in our internal tooling as well, and.

71 00:10:39.660 00:10:54.059 Kaela Gallagher: platform team that works on all of our internal tooling, and so we have this really cool, just, like, brain of our company that has every transcript from every meeting, all client information, like, all this.

72 00:10:54.060 00:10:54.560 Nathan Runacres: Oh, wow.

73 00:10:54.560 00:10:57.169 Kaela Gallagher: Information that’s, like, so helpful and so.

74 00:10:57.500 00:11:08.420 Kaela Gallagher: basically go to Cursor, which is what we use, and just ask it anything. Like, oh, I’m about to go into a meeting with this team member, what should I prepare? Like, it’s insane, so…

75 00:11:08.420 00:11:09.100 Nathan Runacres: It’s cool.

76 00:11:09.180 00:11:28.579 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, we have really cool, like, internal tooling, and I joined about a month ago. I didn’t come from, like, the AI or data world, and I feel like I’m being challenged, like, every day to think in a new way, or see how I can implement AI in something that I never really considered doing before, so yeah, it’s a cool

77 00:11:28.610 00:11:33.390 Kaela Gallagher: cool environment, and I think it, yeah, stimulates a lot of growth.

78 00:11:33.980 00:11:37.069 Nathan Runacres: Cloudera, because we’re a data platform.

79 00:11:37.070 00:11:59.800 Nathan Runacres: customers who would use our software would plug their data into our platform, and then leverage AI tools on top of it. So, I’m… I’m in the flow of talking about what are those use cases for how do you drive, business value with AI, agentic AI, and all of that kind of rabbit hole. We can go down that if you want to. But, so, I’ve seen a lot of the use cases that are kind of

80 00:11:59.800 00:12:05.819 Nathan Runacres: probably the things that you’re selling your customers. So it’s… it’s a space I’ve come from, so I’m pretty familiar with it.

81 00:12:06.030 00:12:23.440 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, yeah, awesome. Cool, yeah, you definitely speak the technical language. I’m curious, like, in the past, I know technical stakeholders can oftentimes be tricky. How you, like, go about building trust with technical stakeholders specifically?

82 00:12:23.840 00:12:35.600 Nathan Runacres: Okay. So let me take a step back, and I have a personal philosophy when it comes to working with my partners, or, you know, like, you know, let’s say it’s a snowflake.

83 00:12:35.600 00:12:39.750 Nathan Runacres: I draw a quadrant, and…

84 00:12:39.750 00:12:56.719 Nathan Runacres: take a horizontal line. Above that line, I say, I label that as sales. Sorry, I label that as, the executives. Below that line, I label it as guys in the field. And then I put a vertical line… this is probably too complicated, but I’ll.

85 00:12:56.720 00:12:58.260 Kaela Gallagher: No, I’m tracking.

86 00:12:58.260 00:13:07.579 Nathan Runacres: So then I put a vertical line, and on one side is, the sales guys, and on the other side is the technical side. So in my top left box, I have a sales guy, but he’s an executive.

87 00:13:07.580 00:13:08.220 Kaela Gallagher: executive.

88 00:13:08.220 00:13:28.090 Nathan Runacres: So the conversation I have with him is, this is how I’m going to grow your business. This is if you partner with Cloudera, for example, this is the revenue that we can bring you guys, and this is, like, how we change your business over the next 12 to months to 24 months. When I get to the other side, in that top right box, it’s a technical guy.

89 00:13:28.090 00:13:35.430 Nathan Runacres: And what he cares about is, roadmap, longevity of the product,

90 00:13:35.640 00:13:52.080 Nathan Runacres: can we actually do what we say we do? Because he doesn’t want to put me in front of his customers and the product crash and burn in 3 months. So that’s kind of his conversation. The technical guy in the field, so below that horizontal line, he cares about speeds and feeds.

91 00:13:52.080 00:14:09.930 Nathan Runacres: And then the sales guy below the line cares about, you know, how am I going to make money on this particular deal? And so, I think you have to tailor your conversation based on who you’re talking to. I’m not a technical guy. I can, talk lingo that makes it sound like I’m technical, but…

92 00:14:09.930 00:14:10.330 Kaela Gallagher: It’s…

93 00:14:10.330 00:14:22.709 Nathan Runacres: A lot of it is, I understand the lingo, not necessarily the technology behind it. And I’m not afraid to bring in the right resource at the right time to have the conversation. But I believe if I get in front of a technical person.

94 00:14:22.710 00:14:31.599 Nathan Runacres: what I tend to do is a lot of qualification, and I used to do inside sales, which was cold calling to set meetings, and it was quick qualification.

95 00:14:31.600 00:14:40.990 Nathan Runacres: you know, in 3 to 5 minutes, you’re having a call with someone. And it’s a skill that I’ve brought across to this. When I get in front of a technical guy, very quickly qualify

96 00:14:41.170 00:14:53.009 Nathan Runacres: is this a fit for what, we’re actually trying to achieve? If it is, then I’m just like, look, you need someone more technical than me, let me bring in the right resource. I can tell you some of the information, but…

97 00:14:53.150 00:15:09.070 Nathan Runacres: I quickly recognize this person’s going beyond where I’m at, and so I get him in front of the right people. But I think that qualification is important first, because I don’t want to bring in the technical folks and suck up their time with a guy who’s the wrong… not at that right stage. Does that answer your question?

98 00:15:09.070 00:15:24.900 Kaela Gallagher: That, yeah, 100%. That’s something we’re super focused on right now, too, is, like, one of our founders leads all of our sales and our go-to-market strategy, and so, like, he’s still very involved in the process and, like, happy to hop in after an initial qualification, but, like.

99 00:15:25.370 00:15:31.840 Kaela Gallagher: He’s hoping this role could help do that qualification, step, and then,

100 00:15:31.840 00:15:54.450 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, we… because we’re still small, we’re really lean, like, we do have our technical people, like, join sales calls at certain points as well, so, like, the client can understand, oh, this is who I would be working with, this is who I would see every day. So that’s been a really cool process, too. Like, I think bringing technical people in at the right stages has really, like.

101 00:15:54.450 00:15:54.840 Nathan Runacres: Yes.

102 00:15:54.840 00:15:57.440 Kaela Gallagher: us in closing deals, too. So…

103 00:15:57.440 00:15:57.990 Nathan Runacres: Yep.

104 00:15:58.210 00:16:07.240 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, that’s been awesome. Cool. I guess, do you have any, like, questions for me? Anything about Brainforge that I can help answer?

105 00:16:08.140 00:16:12.859 Nathan Runacres: No, like I said, I did a bit of research beforehand, so I feel like I have a good understanding.

106 00:16:13.170 00:16:30.479 Nathan Runacres: I’ve run into… I haven’t seen Brainforge before, specifically, but I’ve run into organizations similar to yours, so I have a good kind of mental map of what you guys, are trying to achieve, and what your business model looks like. I guess the question I would ask would be a little bit more around…

107 00:16:30.710 00:16:33.880 Nathan Runacres: The role, specifically.

108 00:16:34.400 00:16:49.339 Nathan Runacres: it sounds like… is this just going to be one person? Are you hiring multiple partner managers? Is it just one person now? If I had to make an assumption, and attempt to answer my own question, it sounds like you’re bringing in one person to kind of…

109 00:16:50.120 00:16:52.059 Nathan Runacres: I don’t know if pilot’s the right word, but…

110 00:16:52.440 00:16:58.029 Nathan Runacres: Try and build something successful that they can then pave the way for other people to come in behind them.

111 00:16:58.150 00:17:01.580 Nathan Runacres: And do the similar role. Is that a fair assumption?

112 00:17:01.580 00:17:12.310 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, I think that’s fair. Right now, the structure of, like, our sales go-to-market partnership side of things is we have Robert, one of our founders, like I said, leading the strategy.

113 00:17:12.490 00:17:29.489 Kaela Gallagher: Utam, our other founder, used to do some partnerships work and, like, maintain relationships, but the idea is to take all of that off his plate. We do have a go-to-market lead, so, like, very focused on the sales side, network, and cold calling outreach.

114 00:17:29.490 00:17:32.570 Kaela Gallagher: And we have a sales coordinator as well, so…

115 00:17:32.570 00:17:35.910 Kaela Gallagher: Yes, this role would kind of be the first of its… of its kind.

116 00:17:35.910 00:17:47.130 Nathan Runacres: Okay. Yeah. Okay. And then Brainforce specifically, obviously you guys have a presence in, from what I saw in LA and Austin, and New York. Did I get that right?

117 00:17:47.560 00:18:01.490 Kaela Gallagher: Yes, wow, great findings. Yeah, so our team is actually global, like, we have team across the world, but Robert, one of our founders, is in New York, Utam is in Austin with a couple other team members, and then myself.

118 00:18:01.490 00:18:12.330 Kaela Gallagher: And four other team members are in LA, so we see each other pretty frequently. So, yeah, definitely being based in, like, one of those locations is a huge plus to us for this role.

119 00:18:12.330 00:18:22.810 Nathan Runacres: Okay, which is perfect, because I’m in Austin, so… Yeah. Okay. Those are the only questions. This… I can kind of see what this is in my mind, it’s pretty clear.

120 00:18:23.080 00:18:29.530 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, awesome. Just like a logistics question for you, curious the pay range that you’re targeting.

121 00:18:30.080 00:18:40.289 Nathan Runacres: Yeah, good question. My goal would be somewhere between… somewhere around $275K on the OTE.

122 00:18:40.530 00:18:45.150 Nathan Runacres: That varies depending on how you guys do the split.

123 00:18:45.900 00:19:00.749 Nathan Runacres: And it’ll also… I hate throwing out a figure like that, because I would change that for the right role, and this definitely would fall into the right role. But having said that figure, like, are we miles apart? Are we in the same ballpark?

124 00:19:01.330 00:19:19.600 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, we, like, we don’t have a defined range built out yet. I’ve chatted with quite a few candidates yesterday and today, and so kind of trying to get an understanding of what people are asking for. I think our goal would be for this to be pretty heavily commission-based, like, maybe even half

125 00:19:19.600 00:19:22.140 Kaela Gallagher: Of the take-home be commission.

126 00:19:22.410 00:19:30.730 Kaela Gallagher: But I… I… I think that is… Probably…

127 00:19:30.840 00:19:50.359 Kaela Gallagher: higher than we were initially looking at. So I can chat with Robert, like, either today or Monday. We’ll be kind of going through all of the candidates and deciding who to, move forward and have chat with him. So, definitely something we can, like, think about for sure.

128 00:19:50.430 00:19:52.570 Kaela Gallagher: And good to know you have a little flex.

129 00:19:52.760 00:20:03.479 Nathan Runacres: Yeah, 50-50 split’s not a problem. I’ve done 50-50 before, Claire was at 60-40, so I’m not too worried about the 50-50 split. And…

130 00:20:03.950 00:20:18.010 Nathan Runacres: if the OTE’s lower, then typically what I’d do is move, like, a 60-40 or a 70-30, which obviously decreases the commission, but gives me more, protection. So, there’s ways that we can make this work, and like I said.

131 00:20:18.630 00:20:20.640 Nathan Runacres: If you had asked me

132 00:20:20.660 00:20:33.259 Nathan Runacres: before telling me anything, what’s the kind of role you want, it’s absolutely like you’ve described. I want to be able to come in and build something from scratch, where I’m kind of laying out the strategy. It’s some of what I did at Cloudera.

133 00:20:33.260 00:20:41.419 Nathan Runacres: But that sounds really, really interesting to me. So, that would be something that I would be prepared to negotiate on.

134 00:20:41.670 00:20:54.680 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, okay, good. Great to know you’re interested, like, super excited to chat about with you with… with Robert and Utam, and probably, I would say, next week is when you’ll hear from me on next steps.

135 00:20:54.680 00:20:57.649 Nathan Runacres: Okay, sounds great. Is there anything else I can answer for you?

136 00:20:57.880 00:21:02.649 Kaela Gallagher: No, I don’t think so. I really enjoyed getting to know you. Thank you for your time.

137 00:21:02.650 00:21:04.239 Nathan Runacres: You’re welcome, you have a great weekend.

138 00:21:04.240 00:21:06.110 Kaela Gallagher: You too. Alright. Bye-bye.