2026-04-10_brainforge_x_lisa_partnership_discussion_8e90c34e

Meeting Title: Brainforge x Lisa Partnership Discussion Date: 2026-04-10 Meeting participants: Lisa Whall, Uttam Kumaran

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WEBVTT

1 00:02:39.970 ⇒ 00:02:41.390 Lisa Whall: Hello!

2 00:02:45.510 ⇒ 00:02:46.779 Lisa Whall: Hope you’re on mute.

3 00:02:51.520 ⇒ 00:02:52.810 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, good morning!

4 00:02:52.810 ⇒ 00:02:55.079 Lisa Whall: Yay, we finally connect!

5 00:02:55.080 ⇒ 00:02:59.339 Uttam Kumaran: No, I’m so sorry for all the, like, planned.

6 00:02:59.340 ⇒ 00:03:05.220 Lisa Whall: equally, I, you know, it just… of course, I was… so I’m finally glad that we got together, because it was a…

7 00:03:05.220 ⇒ 00:03:25.060 Uttam Kumaran: Me too, and Kayla mentioned that she had a chance to chat with you, so I’m at least happy you got to speak with someone at Brainforge, and Steve said so many great things. Steve’s, like, such a support for our business, but also, like, has been so helpful for me since I met him, you know, about 2 years ago. I tell him, like, I…

8 00:03:25.060 ⇒ 00:03:44.859 Uttam Kumaran: most of what he told me to do in partnerships, I just did. And it’s like, everything that I had time to do was working, and everything that I didn’t do is, like, everything that I messed up is on me. He gave me some really, really great advice, and yeah, it’s really great to connect, finally.

9 00:03:44.860 ⇒ 00:03:48.749 Lisa Whall: Yeah, definitely. This is a funny Steve story, and then we can get to it. So I’m…

10 00:03:48.750 ⇒ 00:03:49.120 Uttam Kumaran: Sure.

11 00:03:49.120 ⇒ 00:03:58.300 Lisa Whall: We’re in Switzerland, I’m in the lounge, you know, waiting to get on my plane. We’re chatting with these people, and the guy goes, yeah, my son works at IBM.

12 00:03:58.300 ⇒ 00:03:58.979 Uttam Kumaran: That’s fantastic.

13 00:03:58.980 ⇒ 00:04:06.780 Lisa Whall: goes, what group? And he’s like, consultant. I go, oh, Newdesick. And they’re like, how do you know that? And I’m like, oh, I know that.

14 00:04:07.540 ⇒ 00:04:09.910 Lisa Whall: Krause? Yeah, I know Steve Krause.

15 00:04:09.910 ⇒ 00:04:10.590 Uttam Kumaran: What!

16 00:04:10.590 ⇒ 00:04:11.265 Lisa Whall: Yes!

17 00:04:11.940 ⇒ 00:04:14.360 Uttam Kumaran: How did the dad know Steve?

18 00:04:14.870 ⇒ 00:04:22.650 Lisa Whall: know Steve from, like, a former life, and I’m like, this has got… so I’m like, Steve, I’m not a stalker, I don’t talk about you all the time, but…

19 00:04:23.540 ⇒ 00:04:27.079 Uttam Kumaran: I need to name drop. I didn’t know he was world famous, I guess.

20 00:04:27.080 ⇒ 00:04:28.079 Lisa Whall: I know, right?

21 00:04:28.080 ⇒ 00:04:29.580 Uttam Kumaran: Oh my god.

22 00:04:29.580 ⇒ 00:04:36.230 Lisa Whall: It was the funniest thing. I’m like, you’re gonna think I’m a stalker, but I was just talking about you in the lounge in Zurich.

23 00:04:37.950 ⇒ 00:04:39.220 Lisa Whall: Oh, God.

24 00:04:39.440 ⇒ 00:04:41.369 Uttam Kumaran: How was, how was travels?

25 00:04:41.370 ⇒ 00:04:46.199 Lisa Whall: Oh, it was really fun. My study… my son is studying in Zurich for the semester.

26 00:04:46.370 ⇒ 00:04:47.449 Uttam Kumaran: What is he studying?

27 00:04:47.450 ⇒ 00:04:52.919 Lisa Whall: He’s in business, and then my daughter is, at Georgetown, she uses Nation at grad school.

28 00:04:53.130 ⇒ 00:04:53.660 Uttam Kumaran: Right.

29 00:04:53.660 ⇒ 00:04:56.060 Lisa Whall: She’s gonna be a finance bro at some Japanese firm.

30 00:04:58.190 ⇒ 00:05:07.819 Uttam Kumaran: That was my… I was almost down that path, by the way. I was like… I almost went into banking, very, very happy I didn’t get… I got cut. I’m super happy.

31 00:05:09.660 ⇒ 00:05:14.730 Lisa Whall: I think it will suit her. She’s very methodical and, you know, I think…

32 00:05:14.730 ⇒ 00:05:20.630 Uttam Kumaran: No, some people also, it molds you, like, you learn the fundamentals of, like.

33 00:05:20.630 ⇒ 00:05:27.630 Lisa Whall: Oh, I could… I barely made it at Ernst & Young for 2 years. There was so much structure. I was… started off as a CPA. I’m with you, but…

34 00:05:28.630 ⇒ 00:05:34.270 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, my first role out of school, I was at WeWork, like, right before the IPO.

35 00:05:34.270 ⇒ 00:05:34.730 Lisa Whall: Yeah.

36 00:05:34.730 ⇒ 00:05:38.919 Uttam Kumaran: And I felt like it… it was sort of like the kind of…

37 00:05:39.550 ⇒ 00:05:42.649 Uttam Kumaran: We… the company basically went from, like.

38 00:05:43.100 ⇒ 00:06:01.259 Uttam Kumaran: a couple thousand to 15,000, like, 4X in valuation, all in, like, 2 years, and it was, like… and still, I haven’t, like, maybe only recently am I working as hard as I did when I was there. You know, and it was…

39 00:06:01.260 ⇒ 00:06:06.809 Lisa Whall: of a startup like that, man, you are just… and it’s so fun, you don’t care that you’re working all those hours.

40 00:06:06.810 ⇒ 00:06:07.500 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

41 00:06:07.500 ⇒ 00:06:11.250 Lisa Whall: Startups. I did a startup when I was 29 and raised several million dollars.

42 00:06:11.420 ⇒ 00:06:12.780 Lisa Whall: And,

43 00:06:13.180 ⇒ 00:06:19.319 Lisa Whall: it just was, like, I never stopped, because it was, like, the highs were high, the lows were low.

44 00:06:19.550 ⇒ 00:06:31.070 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and that’s what’s been interesting about this, you know, my old background has been in, startups my whole career, increasingly smaller, you know, startups, and this one is…

45 00:06:31.070 ⇒ 00:06:42.609 Uttam Kumaran: I would say we’re a startup in the way that, like, yeah, I think we were started, like, recently, but really what I’ve avoided is all of the drama and all of the, like, chaos

46 00:06:42.660 ⇒ 00:06:57.350 Uttam Kumaran: like, there still is a… I still think there’s a sense of urgency. Like, that’s what I bring to the table, is I’m like, hey, tomorrow is, like, a new day, we have to win. We have to win every day. But it’s… in the startup, sometimes you have, like.

47 00:06:57.390 ⇒ 00:07:13.509 Uttam Kumaran: for example, we’re completely bootstrapped. We don’t have any external investors, so I’m not spending, like, most of my time prepping for board meetings, or, like, investor decks, or trying to schmooze for cash. Like, I’m not… I’m not doing that. Second is, like.

48 00:07:13.590 ⇒ 00:07:24.209 Uttam Kumaran: internally, I really told the team, like, it should feel easier and easier to work here in terms of the organization, over time. It should not, like…

49 00:07:24.220 ⇒ 00:07:33.840 Uttam Kumaran: it should not feel chaotic. If it feels chaotic, raise your hand and you’ll see that the company will attack those problems. But they’re still gonna be, like, we don’t…

50 00:07:34.090 ⇒ 00:07:36.080 Uttam Kumaran: Change the bar of quality?

51 00:07:36.590 ⇒ 00:07:54.609 Uttam Kumaran: And we don’t change the sense of urgency, but it shouldn’t feel like, oh, I’m in too many meetings, oh, there’s company politics, oh, like, blah blah blah. Like, that is not… it just doesn’t enter the company, because I’m kind of the front door, and I’ve seen… I’ve worked with a lot of leaders and people that, like.

52 00:07:54.890 ⇒ 00:07:57.170 Uttam Kumaran: Tend to bring that energy, and so that’s.

53 00:07:57.170 ⇒ 00:07:57.730 Lisa Whall: Right.

54 00:07:57.910 ⇒ 00:08:17.529 Uttam Kumaran: that’s what we really avoided, which I feel really proud about, because, like, it was hard to avoid at the last few companies I worked at, and I think we built a really great team of, like, empathetic, but, like, critical of the problem type people. Like, we’re all, like, together, and we’re like, this problem sucks, like…

55 00:08:17.720 ⇒ 00:08:19.770 Uttam Kumaran: What can I do to fix that?

56 00:08:19.770 ⇒ 00:08:23.449 Lisa Whall: Right, and you have AI now, so you should be able to fix.

57 00:08:23.670 ⇒ 00:08:29.940 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, and so that is changed, yeah, so we’re… we are also punching up super, super high.

58 00:08:30.160 ⇒ 00:08:38.680 Uttam Kumaran: Like, way above, I think, where we should be on this timeline of our business. And we’ve always done that.

59 00:08:38.870 ⇒ 00:08:46.269 Uttam Kumaran: And I think Steve will tell you, and I think other people you’ll meet, you know, through this process, will show you that, like.

60 00:08:46.280 ⇒ 00:09:00.970 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve always said, even when it was just, like, me on a laptop, like, here in Austin, that, like, I want to compete with Accenture, like, I want it to be, like, Accenture or these guys. I don’t think about the other freelancers, I don’t think about small agencies, I don’t think about, like.

61 00:09:01.180 ⇒ 00:09:12.770 Uttam Kumaran: cute, like, boutique places. That’s… I don’t like… that’s great for them. I want to compete for, like… I want to win the EY deal that, like, we’re gonna take from them, you know?

62 00:09:12.770 ⇒ 00:09:15.489 Lisa Whall: Well, we can do it faster, cheaper, and better.

63 00:09:15.630 ⇒ 00:09:22.200 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and better is the thing that’s, like, consistently the case, like, we’ve…

64 00:09:22.350 ⇒ 00:09:31.280 Uttam Kumaran: my background is rooted in engineering, and so we’ve never been nervous about the quality of our work. Which is… at least you can check something off.

65 00:09:31.280 ⇒ 00:09:34.540 Lisa Whall: That was my number one question, so I’m checking it off right now.

66 00:09:34.540 ⇒ 00:09:36.339 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so I’m, I’m an engineer.

67 00:09:36.340 ⇒ 00:09:40.589 Lisa Whall: places, so if you can deliver, I can partner and sell. Okay.

68 00:09:40.590 ⇒ 00:09:52.850 Uttam Kumaran: So you’re exactly right, which is… which is, like, I think, and reflecting, I think these businesses start one or two ways. Like, I think people are able to sell work, and then they’re, like, figure the delivery out. We’re the opposite.

69 00:09:52.960 ⇒ 00:10:12.429 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, I… me and my business partner, Robert, we learned how to sell, we learned partnerships, we learned all of that, but we’re foundationally rooted in really, really amazing engineering talent. We are… like, as of, like, when we started, we were already better, faster, cheaper, with no AI.

70 00:10:12.440 ⇒ 00:10:13.010 Uttam Kumaran: Right?

71 00:10:13.120 ⇒ 00:10:13.830 Lisa Whall: Right.

72 00:10:13.830 ⇒ 00:10:28.780 Uttam Kumaran: So now it’s… now we’re just trying to, like, keep going. And so, we’ve never lowered the bar of quality. In fact, like, even… even now, we’re still… I’m still waking up every day, like, guys, why didn’t we go above and beyond here? You know, and

73 00:10:28.920 ⇒ 00:10:39.040 Uttam Kumaran: our team has that mentality, like, and I also… you know, we’ve lost a lot of money in us saying, like, hey, we’re just gonna go above and beyond, and the score will settle itself later.

74 00:10:39.040 ⇒ 00:10:39.400 Lisa Whall: Right.

75 00:10:39.400 ⇒ 00:10:56.460 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and I don’t… and we want to play long-term games. You know, like, some of the… some of the clients will… someone will work with us, they’ll move two years later somewhere and bring us back. Those are the things that we need to, like, just lock in and stay alive until those things start to happen.

76 00:10:56.460 ⇒ 00:10:57.490 Lisa Whall: Exactly!

77 00:10:58.510 ⇒ 00:11:03.660 Lisa Whall: Sometimes, my husband’s favorite say is sometimes you have to let

78 00:11:03.800 ⇒ 00:11:13.529 Lisa Whall: things fail, in the sense that if the client goes someplace else, and you’ve gone above and beyond, and they go back to EEY or Accenture, they won’t.

79 00:11:13.530 ⇒ 00:11:14.790 Uttam Kumaran: Wait for the call.

80 00:11:14.790 ⇒ 00:11:16.049 Lisa Whall: Just wait for the call. Yeah, wait for the call.

81 00:11:16.860 ⇒ 00:11:17.610 Lisa Whall: But it’s…

82 00:11:17.610 ⇒ 00:11:18.590 Uttam Kumaran: It’s painful, it’s really.

83 00:11:18.590 ⇒ 00:11:19.990 Lisa Whall: Painful, but…

84 00:11:19.990 ⇒ 00:11:23.720 Uttam Kumaran: But I want us to have that feeling, which is, like, we’ve tried everything.

85 00:11:23.720 ⇒ 00:11:24.170 Lisa Whall: Right.

86 00:11:24.170 ⇒ 00:11:26.350 Uttam Kumaran: And then it didn’t work. Okay, that’s like…

87 00:11:27.030 ⇒ 00:11:37.819 Uttam Kumaran: we can learn, but, like, okay, I’m good with that. It’s when we had an opportunity to prevent it, is where I’m like, okay, we still have work to do. But you’re totally right on the AI piece, and I think

88 00:11:37.870 ⇒ 00:11:52.149 Uttam Kumaran: you know, that’s another part of our company that we… since the beginning, I’ve been using AI to build this business. We started off as a data consultancy, but I was using AI since, like, GPT 3.5 on everything.

89 00:11:52.520 ⇒ 00:11:53.050 Lisa Whall: Babe.

90 00:11:53.050 ⇒ 00:12:07.130 Uttam Kumaran: So, it’s, it’s… it’s been in the DNA of the company. And you can’t get into the company… there’s not, like, an ar- there’s never been an argument at this company over the last 3 years about whether AI is gonna be impactful. So, like.

91 00:12:07.470 ⇒ 00:12:22.869 Uttam Kumaran: That is, like… we just don’t have those types of conversations, meaning it’s, like, such an assumed thing. It’s in the DNA, there’s nothing around it. In fact, we used it so much, and the team I built to help support me build more stuff for us.

92 00:12:23.010 ⇒ 00:12:39.480 Uttam Kumaran: I was like, we should start selling this transformation as a service, because we’re seeing it in our margins, we’re seeing it in our time to onboard, we’re seeing it in our quality, and then… so about, like, a year and a half ago, we started to build out

93 00:12:39.480 ⇒ 00:12:43.470 Uttam Kumaran: a new service area for AI, and that is, like…

94 00:12:43.570 ⇒ 00:12:45.999 Uttam Kumaran: The last thing I’ll say is, like, that’s the biggest…

95 00:12:46.250 ⇒ 00:12:58.199 Uttam Kumaran: like, the data work we’re super solid at. I think we’ve reached, sort of, the upper pricing of what we can get there. We have deep vendor relationships, just because I’ve been in the industry for a long time, and so…

96 00:12:58.220 ⇒ 00:13:17.249 Uttam Kumaran: a lot of our vendors, like, we don’t… we just, like, skip to the top, because the CEO or the head of sales was, like, someone I did work with, like, 10 years ago, which is great, because we’re nobody, and so we become somebody, and that’s what I feel like I unlock for, sort of, this partnerships role, but the AI piece is where

97 00:13:17.250 ⇒ 00:13:32.580 Uttam Kumaran: it’s so new, and I think we, in particular, have a background doing this for longer than most. There’s some folks that have been doing this for a while, but we’ve done it so long, and we use it… all the stuff we sell, we use internally.

98 00:13:32.740 ⇒ 00:13:34.230 Lisa Whall: That’s… bingo.

99 00:13:34.230 ⇒ 00:13:54.159 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. First, like, we do not sell anything on the AI side that, like, doesn’t come out of us. Yeah. Because it’s like, I don’t know what to sell, then. It’s… I’m not selling… see, because we don’t sell conferences, we don’t sell AI thought work. It’s all, like, practical workflow building, practical automation, and I think our company is about…

100 00:13:54.360 ⇒ 00:13:57.839 Uttam Kumaran: One or two years ahead of the market, in terms of, like.

101 00:13:58.250 ⇒ 00:14:02.599 Uttam Kumaran: the technology we’re using, and I think we’re probably 3…

102 00:14:02.740 ⇒ 00:14:05.109 Uttam Kumaran: Year 3 or 4 years ahead of Enterprise.

103 00:14:05.250 ⇒ 00:14:06.440 Uttam Kumaran: Which…

104 00:14:06.440 ⇒ 00:14:08.539 Lisa Whall: Probably more, to be honest.

105 00:14:08.540 ⇒ 00:14:15.260 Uttam Kumaran: Probably more, which means we, like, we have a moment in time, I feel, where we’re, like, in the future.

106 00:14:15.620 ⇒ 00:14:26.999 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. You know, which is amazing, because I’m like, wow, I’m talking to someone, like, where I was as a CEO 3 years ago. Right. Where I’m, like, just turning on ChatGBT. I’m like, wow.

107 00:14:27.000 ⇒ 00:14:27.860 Lisa Whall: Okay, bye.

108 00:14:27.860 ⇒ 00:14:33.020 Uttam Kumaran: I’m like, wow, oh my gosh, we’re gonna change your life. We’re gonna change everything.

109 00:14:33.020 ⇒ 00:14:34.629 Lisa Whall: We live in the AI bubble.

110 00:14:35.190 ⇒ 00:14:39.589 Lisa Whall: Everybody’s there, and then when you get out in the wild, you’re like.

111 00:14:39.590 ⇒ 00:14:43.089 Uttam Kumaran: Like, where… I know, I have to try to turn it off.

112 00:14:44.950 ⇒ 00:14:49.980 Lisa Whall: How are you not? But it’s… it is, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and

113 00:14:50.180 ⇒ 00:14:56.469 Lisa Whall: I mean, I’ve gone through… I used to work at… okay, I’m dating myself, but I worked at U.S. Robotics.

114 00:14:56.750 ⇒ 00:14:57.530 Lisa Whall: modem.

115 00:14:57.530 ⇒ 00:14:59.809 Uttam Kumaran: You have an amazing CV, by the way.

116 00:15:00.230 ⇒ 00:15:08.260 Uttam Kumaran: In a gayla, I… it’s… I’m so impressed. I think you’ve… like, I’m so… I feel lucky for even to get a conversation.

117 00:15:08.260 ⇒ 00:15:09.469 Lisa Whall: Cause I feel like you…

118 00:15:09.470 ⇒ 00:15:18.540 Uttam Kumaran: you have… you have an amazing wealth of experience, and, you know, I… yeah, I think it’s… I think you’ve seen so many pieces of the puzzle.

119 00:15:18.540 ⇒ 00:15:19.020 Lisa Whall: This suck.

120 00:15:19.020 ⇒ 00:15:21.120 Uttam Kumaran: And I’m very curious, and

121 00:15:22.340 ⇒ 00:15:28.940 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, about, like, how you think about this… this… this current, like, situation in the market, you know?

122 00:15:29.190 ⇒ 00:15:31.730 Lisa Whall: Well, so… I worked?

123 00:15:31.920 ⇒ 00:15:33.909 Lisa Whall: just… and then I’m gonna jump right to it, but.

124 00:15:33.910 ⇒ 00:15:34.450 Uttam Kumaran: Fair.

125 00:15:34.450 ⇒ 00:15:37.169 Lisa Whall: This is a very similar wave,

126 00:15:38.150 ⇒ 00:15:41.139 Lisa Whall: I worked at one of the very first mobile

127 00:15:41.360 ⇒ 00:15:59.060 Lisa Whall: shops, mobile application shops in the world when the iPhone first came out. There were only 3 people, 3 firms that were truly dedicated, that Apple would recommend, and a friend of ours was the founder. We ended up raising about $15 million, and we just couldn’t productize, we just couldn’t get it together.

128 00:15:59.100 ⇒ 00:16:06.319 Lisa Whall: But at the time, like, I was at the iPhone launch, and we were it. So…

129 00:16:06.890 ⇒ 00:16:13.530 Lisa Whall: I got to ride that mobile wave. I closed GE, I closed State Farm, and we were nobody, too.

130 00:16:13.530 ⇒ 00:16:14.819 Uttam Kumaran: He was throwing the.

131 00:16:14.820 ⇒ 00:16:17.700 Lisa Whall: But we were ahead.

132 00:16:17.840 ⇒ 00:16:18.470 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

133 00:16:18.470 ⇒ 00:16:22.750 Lisa Whall: And we had Apple recommending us, so that’s why partnerships are so important.

134 00:16:22.750 ⇒ 00:16:23.380 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah.

135 00:16:23.380 ⇒ 00:16:40.290 Lisa Whall: new firms like yours, is getting that validation behind you, and get… once… so I learned a long time ago from a very, very good salesperson, if you’ve got the meeting, you’re qualified, and if Microsoft is walking you in, or Snowflake.

136 00:16:40.790 ⇒ 00:16:45.240 Uttam Kumaran: No, we are… we will ride on their coattails. That’s all I’ve done. All I’ve done.

137 00:16:45.240 ⇒ 00:16:49.689 Lisa Whall: I used to tell Apple I was dumb on their shoe.

138 00:16:49.690 ⇒ 00:16:52.380 Uttam Kumaran: I’m okay with that. I’m like, the fish under the shark.

139 00:16:52.380 ⇒ 00:16:54.110 Lisa Whall: I’ve never heard the analogy.

140 00:16:54.110 ⇒ 00:17:13.690 Uttam Kumaran: I’m so… I’m like… and I want to be that. I want to make you as much money, I want… I’ll bring you leads, we’ll do… so we’ve done that… we’ve done that since the beginning, like, and I’ve had a long-time relationship with Snowflake, so I’ve seen so many people go in and out of that company. All the people that leave that company stay in data at some vendor.

141 00:17:13.690 ⇒ 00:17:14.440 Lisa Whall: Exactly.

142 00:17:14.440 ⇒ 00:17:34.410 Uttam Kumaran: me because I sell their software better than they can sell their software. And we make it very easy for partners to work with us, because we only implement the tools we love, and if we love it, we know it really well, and so it’s like, hey, we have someone that’s gonna buy you, can you just, like, say hi on a call with us?

143 00:17:34.410 ⇒ 00:17:35.090 Lisa Whall: That’s it.

144 00:17:35.090 ⇒ 00:17:36.140 Uttam Kumaran: Get the MSA over.

145 00:17:36.140 ⇒ 00:17:40.649 Lisa Whall: deal set up, just… can you just show up with your Apple logo or your snowflake?

146 00:17:40.650 ⇒ 00:17:41.290 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

147 00:17:41.290 ⇒ 00:17:43.490 Lisa Whall: And we’re cool, and that’s how you build.

148 00:17:43.490 ⇒ 00:17:43.970 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

149 00:17:43.970 ⇒ 00:17:48.060 Lisa Whall: Because they’re like, you brought me a deal, I’m going to bring you 5 deals.

150 00:17:48.340 ⇒ 00:17:52.059 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s, I think, like, at Brainforge, the situation right now.

151 00:17:52.060 ⇒ 00:17:53.210 Lisa Whall: Yeah, tell me.

152 00:17:53.210 ⇒ 00:18:09.360 Uttam Kumaran: the company, I feel like… and again, I always think about how does… how do I… how does the company use me strategically? Partnerships has been purely, like, my area that I’ve tried to push, because that’s the only way… I’m, like, a more relationship seller, I guess. It’s like.

153 00:18:09.360 ⇒ 00:18:11.280 Lisa Whall: You are a relationship seller!

154 00:18:11.280 ⇒ 00:18:16.820 Uttam Kumaran: I guess if I read… but also, you’ll realize I’m such a fraud in sales, I just read every book.

155 00:18:17.270 ⇒ 00:18:21.349 Uttam Kumaran: I read all the best books on how to sell, and I just did…

156 00:18:21.350 ⇒ 00:18:21.700 Lisa Whall: Dimit.

157 00:18:21.700 ⇒ 00:18:25.320 Uttam Kumaran: Everybody I know that’s a great salesperson, I just did what they told me.

158 00:18:25.790 ⇒ 00:18:28.179 Uttam Kumaran: You know, funny how that works.

159 00:18:28.180 ⇒ 00:18:30.560 Lisa Whall: I’m a former CPA, man, and I’m in sales.

160 00:18:30.560 ⇒ 00:18:38.510 Uttam Kumaran: I know, and so I’m… people are asking me, like, wow, you’re so, like, personable, and I’m like, dude, I was… yeah, I, like, needed to change.

161 00:18:39.180 ⇒ 00:18:45.909 Uttam Kumaran: I changed my personality. It’s like, as easy, but as, like…

162 00:18:46.190 ⇒ 00:18:51.519 Uttam Kumaran: specific as that. I was like, I need to become this person for our company to get to the next level.

163 00:18:51.630 ⇒ 00:19:01.089 Uttam Kumaran: And partnerships is something where I just have all these relationships with engineers, or product people, or salespeople at the vendors. I always used to call them, and

164 00:19:01.090 ⇒ 00:19:11.730 Uttam Kumaran: ask about roadmaps, or try out product. I used to go to… when I was in New York, I used to always go to, like, happy hour, so I just have these relationships. I never… for a lot of them, I never had any asks.

165 00:19:11.750 ⇒ 00:19:27.399 Uttam Kumaran: And even now, when we work with partners, I say, don’t even give us any referral. Just put the money towards co-marketing, if we could do that. And I told them, like, I don’t want you to think of us like your other partners that are, like, gonna try to gain the opportunities, and, like.

166 00:19:27.400 ⇒ 00:19:32.380 Uttam Kumaran: Be like a house committee tells us, we’re gonna sell this, we’re gonna… we’re gonna do 90% of the work.

167 00:19:32.380 ⇒ 00:19:42.240 Uttam Kumaran: Right. To take the money, I would love to co-brand with you, co-market with you, co-sell with you, and, like, that’s, again, like, how do we think long-term? And I think people have always been surprised.

168 00:19:42.490 ⇒ 00:19:48.559 Uttam Kumaran: Snow… we’ve… so we’ve partnered with a lot of vendors, sort of, like, in the… I think… let’s say Snowflake is…

169 00:19:48.660 ⇒ 00:19:55.479 Uttam Kumaran: kind of at the enterprise, you know, level now, in terms of cloud, but we partner with a lot of major BI tools.

170 00:19:55.480 ⇒ 00:19:56.270 Lisa Whall: Yeah, excellent.

171 00:19:56.270 ⇒ 00:20:15.819 Uttam Kumaran: tools, and then on the data warehousing side, and this is really on the data side, is Snowflake. And so, Snowflake, we… we really… the only reason I have a seat at the table is I just know, like, so many people in that org and around that org that, like, we skip. We can skip go. As, like, nobody…

172 00:20:15.820 ⇒ 00:20:16.830 Lisa Whall: doubling. I love stuff.

173 00:20:16.830 ⇒ 00:20:24.360 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, as, like, absolutely nobody, so we’re, like, we got… and I… what I realized is, like, when you have the relationship.

174 00:20:24.500 ⇒ 00:20:42.230 Uttam Kumaran: all of the things about, like, certifications and things like that, they just fall by the wayside. So, in me, as a leader, you have somebody that has these, like, entrenched relationships to just move roadblocks. What I’m struggling with is just the day-to-day.

175 00:20:42.990 ⇒ 00:20:57.549 Uttam Kumaran: the going in and finding, like, all the sellers, account mapping, finding the opportunities, building the, like, story with them, so that I can go to, like, whoever the head of sales is and, like, sort of, like, schmooze and figure that out.

176 00:20:57.550 ⇒ 00:20:58.030 Lisa Whall: Whoa, whoa.

177 00:20:58.030 ⇒ 00:21:07.790 Uttam Kumaran: That’s the data side. On the AI side, it’s sort of brand new. I don’t think… there are some people like Brainforge that are starting to build these partnerships.

178 00:21:07.790 ⇒ 00:21:20.220 Uttam Kumaran: Ultimately, I don’t… I don’t even… like, partnering with OpenAI and Claude, like, I don’t even know if that’s, like, the move right now. I think there are application vendors, there’s… some of these data vendors are also becoming AI.

179 00:21:20.220 ⇒ 00:21:21.360 Lisa Whall: Exactly.

180 00:21:21.360 ⇒ 00:21:23.149 Uttam Kumaran: We don’t have, like…

181 00:21:23.810 ⇒ 00:21:41.789 Uttam Kumaran: just because the world is really new, we don’t have a lot of those partners. However, we have so much credibility. Right. Like, we have super specific problems in this area that we’ve solved for customers, great case studies, our team is super experienced, I can talk

182 00:21:41.790 ⇒ 00:21:45.750 Uttam Kumaran: To the entirety of the stack, really well, so…

183 00:21:46.020 ⇒ 00:22:00.410 Uttam Kumaran: we call AI vendors, a lot of which are raising $30,$50, $100 million, and I just DM’d the person on Twitter, and they pick up the phone, they’re like, oh my gosh, you’re, like, the first agency that I’m, like, actually, I think, understands, like, what this is.

184 00:22:00.520 ⇒ 00:22:07.099 Uttam Kumaran: And I’m like, I’m like, this is awesome, it’s a great signal. I have no time, though, to, like, build.

185 00:22:07.100 ⇒ 00:22:10.800 Lisa Whall: follow up on it. You’re like, they answered me, now what do I do with it?

186 00:22:10.800 ⇒ 00:22:11.230 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, and so that

187 00:22:11.560 ⇒ 00:22:17.560 Uttam Kumaran: So what I found is, like, the signals are all there, like, people are picking up our call, people are seeing us, and, like, I think it’s a great…

188 00:22:17.880 ⇒ 00:22:20.990 Uttam Kumaran: Situation, you know, to walk into.

189 00:22:21.530 ⇒ 00:22:25.000 Lisa Whall: Well, what I bring to the table, I think, in this situation is

190 00:22:25.170 ⇒ 00:22:44.509 Lisa Whall: as much as I am very good at the sales part, and I close, and I do all of those things, I’m a very operational-driven person, because of my CPA background, and I’ve run companies. I’ve been a CIO before, so I can bring… I kind of look at it, and this might be a weird analogy, but it’s like.

191 00:22:44.590 ⇒ 00:22:49.889 Lisa Whall: the elephant in the parade, and I’m behind there cleaning. It’s not that I’m doing it in a bad way, but.

192 00:22:49.890 ⇒ 00:22:54.829 Uttam Kumaran: No, I talk about how, like, I’ve also done every job from the janitor to, like, my.

193 00:22:54.830 ⇒ 00:22:57.749 Lisa Whall: Right. And, and I, I enjoy being…

194 00:22:58.220 ⇒ 00:23:05.039 Lisa Whall: I love being on stage and doing those things, and more than willing to do speaking engagements. I don’t know if you saw my book.

195 00:23:05.170 ⇒ 00:23:05.730 Uttam Kumaran: Yes!

196 00:23:05.730 ⇒ 00:23:07.300 Lisa Whall: AI Business Essentials.

197 00:23:07.300 ⇒ 00:23:12.319 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, no, I was just talking to Kayla, I said we’ll get a couple for our team.

198 00:23:12.320 ⇒ 00:23:13.739 Lisa Whall: Oh, I’ll send them to you, give me your.

199 00:23:13.740 ⇒ 00:23:15.099 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, I appreciate it.

200 00:23:15.100 ⇒ 00:23:22.340 Lisa Whall: Yeah, I would love to. But I wrote that because I wanted the credibility in AI, and so I wrote that 2 years ago.

201 00:23:22.340 ⇒ 00:23:22.720 Uttam Kumaran: ready.

202 00:23:22.720 ⇒ 00:23:33.199 Lisa Whall: I mean, there’s some software that’s a little dated, but I really wrote it for non-technical people, how you can implement, you know, it’s for small to mid-sized companies, but.

203 00:23:33.200 ⇒ 00:23:33.930 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

204 00:23:33.930 ⇒ 00:23:37.800 Lisa Whall: I mean, it’s such a great door opener, too, that we can use.

205 00:23:37.800 ⇒ 00:23:38.450 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

206 00:23:38.450 ⇒ 00:23:47.729 Lisa Whall: It gives you instant credibility. I wrote it not… I mean, I’ve sold thousands of copies, but I wrote it specifically to get on a call and say, I am an AI expert.

207 00:23:47.730 ⇒ 00:23:48.600 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

208 00:23:48.600 ⇒ 00:23:49.130 Lisa Whall: And…

209 00:23:49.130 ⇒ 00:24:03.229 Uttam Kumaran: No, I mean, for us, that’s why. Similarly, we bootstrap. How do we bootstrap credibility as fast as possible? So, part of it is on our relationship, part of it is, like, we close deals with some great logos. Like, we do a lot in consumer, we do a lot in.

210 00:24:03.230 ⇒ 00:24:03.560 Lisa Whall: How’s it.

211 00:24:03.560 ⇒ 00:24:07.590 Uttam Kumaran: We’ve worked for a lot of, like, startups that have now raised a lot of money, just because

212 00:24:07.730 ⇒ 00:24:26.540 Uttam Kumaran: a friend of mine is the head of growth, or some… so we have, like, we had great logos a year in, two years in. It’s just… I really think it’s just the packaging of the story and the day-to-day activities. You know, and then someone to, like, utilize Robert and I effectively.

213 00:24:26.540 ⇒ 00:24:27.070 Lisa Whall: Yeah, go ahead.

214 00:24:27.070 ⇒ 00:24:39.219 Uttam Kumaran: For me, this is where my team struggles sometimes, is I’m like, I work for you. Someone needs to use me as the battering ram to SWAT team into this house, so someone just tell me how to.

215 00:24:39.220 ⇒ 00:24:47.339 Lisa Whall: I love these analogies, because that’s exactly what I love doing. I’m like, listen, I got it set up, I just need you to come and look pretty, Jess.

216 00:24:47.340 ⇒ 00:24:48.249 Uttam Kumaran: Exactly, so if someone.

217 00:24:48.250 ⇒ 00:24:49.319 Lisa Whall: I was like, hey, no.

218 00:24:49.320 ⇒ 00:24:54.450 Uttam Kumaran: New York, there’s this conference, meet this, go meet this person at this conference by any means necessary.

219 00:24:54.450 ⇒ 00:24:55.030 Lisa Whall: Yeah.

220 00:24:55.030 ⇒ 00:24:55.740 Uttam Kumaran: one, like.

221 00:24:55.740 ⇒ 00:24:59.469 Lisa Whall: I’ll do the follow-up, I’ll get the partnership going, I’ll get…

222 00:24:59.650 ⇒ 00:25:01.099 Lisa Whall: That’s on the map with them.

223 00:25:01.100 ⇒ 00:25:08.079 Uttam Kumaran: For me, it’s because I can do that, but it’s the worry of the other… so I can’t burn the relationship, right?

224 00:25:08.080 ⇒ 00:25:10.059 Lisa Whall: You also have to have that.

225 00:25:10.400 ⇒ 00:25:14.379 Uttam Kumaran: Separation! To come across like we’re very, very, very, like…

226 00:25:14.380 ⇒ 00:25:20.569 Lisa Whall: Totally, 100%. It’s the used car analogy.

227 00:25:20.700 ⇒ 00:25:23.650 Uttam Kumaran: No, I think about dealerships a lot, you know? Yeah.

228 00:25:23.650 ⇒ 00:25:27.259 Lisa Whall: Keep it separate. You have to have that separation. You have to.

229 00:25:27.260 ⇒ 00:25:28.030 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

230 00:25:28.030 ⇒ 00:25:29.900 Lisa Whall: And it keeps you pure.

231 00:25:29.900 ⇒ 00:25:30.500 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

232 00:25:30.500 ⇒ 00:25:34.640 Lisa Whall: And that is 100%. Yeah. I…

233 00:25:34.870 ⇒ 00:25:41.810 Uttam Kumaran: But I guess, tell me, like, tell me why… why back into, sort of, like, partnership sales?

234 00:25:42.730 ⇒ 00:25:44.230 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

235 00:25:44.230 ⇒ 00:25:51.350 Lisa Whall: Yeah, happy to. So… I was at a company, called Quizzitive,

236 00:25:51.460 ⇒ 00:25:55.570 Lisa Whall: They’re based in Texas, you might have heard of them. If not, it’s no big deal.

237 00:25:56.510 ⇒ 00:26:02.539 Lisa Whall: And… I’m just gonna be honest with you, I’ve never seen such terrible delivery in my life.

238 00:26:02.540 ⇒ 00:26:03.480 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, man.

239 00:26:03.480 ⇒ 00:26:08.359 Lisa Whall: it was, I mean, knots in my stomach constantly. And at one point.

240 00:26:08.890 ⇒ 00:26:21.449 Lisa Whall: this is… this is one of the worst things I’ve ever seen in business, is I was on vacation, I finally took a… I got this… it was a $6 million account, which was one of their largest accounts. I saved it, grown it.

241 00:26:21.980 ⇒ 00:26:35.739 Lisa Whall: I had rebuilt the team, but there was one wild card on there, but he was an old-timer at the company. So, they went over on their, manage… one of their, like, four managed services contracts, and he didn’t like the CIO.

242 00:26:35.960 ⇒ 00:26:40.689 Lisa Whall: So he cut her off in the middle of a divestiture because she went over on hours.

243 00:26:43.400 ⇒ 00:26:44.670 Uttam Kumaran: Wow.

244 00:26:44.670 ⇒ 00:26:45.829 Lisa Whall: To punish her.

245 00:26:46.800 ⇒ 00:26:49.830 Uttam Kumaran: How did you… I guess, like, this is where, I mean, I’ve…

246 00:26:49.830 ⇒ 00:26:50.410 Lisa Whall: Yeah.

247 00:26:50.410 ⇒ 00:26:55.739 Uttam Kumaran: been around these types of people. How did you get into it? Like, how did… how did you first.

248 00:26:56.010 ⇒ 00:26:57.120 Lisa Whall: How did I find out?

249 00:26:57.120 ⇒ 00:26:58.939 Uttam Kumaran: Well, no, how’d you get into the company? Like, what’s the origin?

250 00:26:58.940 ⇒ 00:27:06.319 Lisa Whall: That’s how I got into the company. Oh, so I started, at Quizum, they’re like, we want you to take over this client, so this.

251 00:27:06.320 ⇒ 00:27:09.410 Uttam Kumaran: But what brought you… what convinced you to join, I guess is what I’m.

252 00:27:09.410 ⇒ 00:27:14.869 Lisa Whall: Oh, okay, that’s a great question. They’re leader of AI, because I…

253 00:27:15.230 ⇒ 00:27:17.279 Lisa Whall: Why don’t you go to an AI first?

254 00:27:17.460 ⇒ 00:27:19.319 Lisa Whall: firm. Like, that’s my number one.

255 00:27:19.520 ⇒ 00:27:19.890 Uttam Kumaran: bet.

256 00:27:19.890 ⇒ 00:27:25.669 Lisa Whall: I’ll get into some of the other opportunities I’m talking to in a minute, but… and this guy,

257 00:27:26.110 ⇒ 00:27:29.429 Lisa Whall: was the best AI guy at FreeCloud, where Steve and I used to work.

258 00:27:29.430 ⇒ 00:27:30.480 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

259 00:27:30.480 ⇒ 00:27:33.210 Lisa Whall: And he actually went over to Quisitive, and he called me.

260 00:27:33.540 ⇒ 00:27:34.010 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

261 00:27:34.010 ⇒ 00:27:41.650 Lisa Whall: said, I want you to come over to Quisitive, because I want you on my team, because you understand AI. So that’s how I got into the firm.

262 00:27:42.130 ⇒ 00:27:42.760 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay.

263 00:27:42.810 ⇒ 00:27:48.319 Lisa Whall: And I was really hopeful that we would be having conversations like we’re having, because this is…

264 00:27:48.980 ⇒ 00:28:01.989 Lisa Whall: The future of services, the old model, is dead. The future of services for the new model, I read, I forget where, the next trillion dollar company, and I forget where I’m quoting for, is going to be a services company.

265 00:28:02.260 ⇒ 00:28:08.449 Lisa Whall: Yes. We’re gonna nap out… all of the modic software, I mean, there’s so… this is…

266 00:28:08.660 ⇒ 00:28:19.859 Lisa Whall: Yes. Mobile’s nothing compared to what’s going on right now, but you have to be aligned with the right people, so I’m talk… so I took some time off after that whole fiasco. I’m like, I can’t work here anymore.

267 00:28:20.190 ⇒ 00:28:23.740 Lisa Whall: I just need some time off. So I’ve taken some time off, and I learned…

268 00:28:24.290 ⇒ 00:28:34.569 Lisa Whall: TikTok, and I sold my books on TikTok, and I wanted to learn all about social marketing, so I’ve had 4 or 5 videos hit, like, over a million views. I’m selling books.

269 00:28:34.570 ⇒ 00:28:35.190 Uttam Kumaran: Wow.

270 00:28:35.190 ⇒ 00:28:37.820 Lisa Whall: Understand that whole ecosystem.

271 00:28:37.820 ⇒ 00:28:38.240 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

272 00:28:38.240 ⇒ 00:28:41.939 Lisa Whall: And that’s something, again, that’s not being used properly. I mean.

273 00:28:42.080 ⇒ 00:28:49.600 Lisa Whall: why are you on LinkedIn when everybody else is on TikTok and Instagram and YouTube? Like, there’s so much opportunity there.

274 00:28:49.600 ⇒ 00:28:50.050 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

275 00:28:50.050 ⇒ 00:28:56.679 Lisa Whall: conversation about… I’ve learned how to create a clone. I’ve got… I’ve cloned myself.

276 00:28:56.680 ⇒ 00:29:00.749 Uttam Kumaran: No, I mean, wait till… I think, wait till you see, like, they’re speaking our language.

277 00:29:00.750 ⇒ 00:29:01.080 Lisa Whall: Yeah.

278 00:29:01.490 ⇒ 00:29:11.569 Uttam Kumaran: I will… I’m excited for you to see a little bit of, like, what we’re doing, because if you abstract it a little bit to, like, imagine, like, the comp… the whole company

279 00:29:12.170 ⇒ 00:29:18.070 Uttam Kumaran: is like that. Like, that’s why, in my business, on day one, people create skills.

280 00:29:18.380 ⇒ 00:29:23.130 Uttam Kumaran: like, it’s rea… we’re really… I’m really pushing it.

281 00:29:23.240 ⇒ 00:29:38.530 Uttam Kumaran: as far as possible, and I think, on a personal level, 100%. For me, our challenge is, like, how do I get 25 people to operate as one unit through a shared context layer, skills, automations…

282 00:29:38.630 ⇒ 00:29:48.070 Uttam Kumaran: at the whole nine yards, and, like, we are doing… we are, like, we are close to where… how the Frontier Labs are thinking about.

283 00:29:48.070 ⇒ 00:29:48.400 Lisa Whall: Right.

284 00:29:48.400 ⇒ 00:29:52.900 Uttam Kumaran: their work, and knowledge work, automation, you know? .

285 00:29:52.900 ⇒ 00:29:56.860 Lisa Whall: Well, why can’t we be the trillion dollar company and only have I’m being.

286 00:29:56.860 ⇒ 00:29:58.260 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, yeah, I agree, I, I…

287 00:29:58.260 ⇒ 00:30:03.829 Lisa Whall: We’re talking about 100 employees at a trillion dollar company and do outcome-based pricing, where we’re.

288 00:30:03.830 ⇒ 00:30:04.150 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

289 00:30:04.150 ⇒ 00:30:07.109 Lisa Whall: Between 100… you’re… not 100, of course.

290 00:30:07.110 ⇒ 00:30:16.609 Uttam Kumaran: No, we market like a performance agency, right? And we even… we’re trying… so, the fun things, we’ve… me and Robert, we’ve always tried to innovate on, like, pricing, like.

291 00:30:17.030 ⇒ 00:30:27.380 Uttam Kumaran: we make this more outcome? Because I’ve always said, I’ll take the risk, I don’t mind, because I know I’m gonna win. I know we’re gonna deliver you ROI. I’m not, like, shy about that. In fact.

292 00:30:27.500 ⇒ 00:30:42.299 Uttam Kumaran: I think I would rather, instead of hourly, which is opaque, I would rather you work on something where we are delivering you really tangible results. And some people are like, oh, we’ve never done that, I don’t know if I could sell it. I’m like, isn’t that, like, the more fair?

293 00:30:42.300 ⇒ 00:30:44.640 Lisa Whall: I always felt weird.

294 00:30:44.750 ⇒ 00:30:54.740 Uttam Kumaran: What consultant has come to you and been like, no, I actually want to do it this way? Because it’s a… as a greedy business owner, that’s not the right thing for me to do.

295 00:30:54.740 ⇒ 00:31:08.809 Uttam Kumaran: the right thing for me to do is stat pad on the highest hourly rate I can get, and just see this through. Instead, I’m like, no, maybe there’s some fixed-cost work, but this other work is, like, strategy, or, like.

296 00:31:08.810 ⇒ 00:31:22.379 Uttam Kumaran: decision-making, how about we try to attack your CAC, or something, and we can price it that way? And so, we have a few contracts that are like that, and we have, and our customers trust us, especially on renewal time.

297 00:31:22.380 ⇒ 00:31:30.180 Uttam Kumaran: For us to think about these interesting commercial terms, but to also be someone in the market who is like, we have… we’re different.

298 00:31:31.040 ⇒ 00:31:32.720 Lisa Whall: It’s such a huge differentiator.

299 00:31:32.720 ⇒ 00:31:33.180 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

300 00:31:33.180 ⇒ 00:31:34.320 Lisa Whall: It’s interrupted.

301 00:31:34.320 ⇒ 00:31:35.060 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

302 00:31:35.310 ⇒ 00:31:41.850 Lisa Whall: But… so I talked to Hitachi, who has been recruiting me, because I know a bunch of people over there, and…

303 00:31:42.300 ⇒ 00:31:43.640 Lisa Whall: I’m just like…

304 00:31:43.820 ⇒ 00:31:49.329 Lisa Whall: I literally got up, I go, I can’t… to myself, I can’t go back to that. I can’t, because I…

305 00:31:49.330 ⇒ 00:31:50.500 Uttam Kumaran: That’s wrong.

306 00:31:50.500 ⇒ 00:31:51.140 Lisa Whall: morally.

307 00:31:51.140 ⇒ 00:31:55.319 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I don’t think I could go… I can’t see… I can’t unsee some stuff.

308 00:31:55.320 ⇒ 00:31:56.170 Lisa Whall: I can’t.

309 00:31:56.370 ⇒ 00:32:00.170 Uttam Kumaran: And, I don’t know. I… I also, I’m like.

310 00:32:00.610 ⇒ 00:32:04.989 Uttam Kumaran: I’m allergic to a lot of this stuff at those companies, even back then. Yes.

311 00:32:04.990 ⇒ 00:32:05.700 Lisa Whall: I always have.

312 00:32:05.700 ⇒ 00:32:07.500 Uttam Kumaran: No, it’s like, yeah.

313 00:32:07.500 ⇒ 00:32:09.020 Lisa Whall: But there was no other way.

314 00:32:09.200 ⇒ 00:32:13.689 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, there was no other way. This is, for me, this was the third door, and I didn’t think this was ever gonna, like…

315 00:32:13.950 ⇒ 00:32:28.279 Uttam Kumaran: I didn’t think this was gonna do my… I don’t know. I sort of woke up every day for two and a half years, and, like, it sort of climbed every day. We had ambition, and urgency, and high expectation, but, like.

316 00:32:28.470 ⇒ 00:32:48.319 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve worked this… like, I know how these things go, so we… I… emotionally, I was like, we’ll see. Worst case, we go back into a normal gig. But, like, again, you’ll see it in us and in me, like, I haven’t taken money out in a… only recently we’re getting paid. Like, I’m getting paid. People in my company made way more money than I have.

317 00:32:48.320 ⇒ 00:32:50.529 Uttam Kumaran: We pay a… we pay really well.

318 00:32:51.460 ⇒ 00:32:57.699 Uttam Kumaran: We pay really well, we recruit from everywhere, our team, you know, we really go, and I’m like.

319 00:32:57.910 ⇒ 00:33:02.649 Uttam Kumaran: do you… would you describe Brainforge as a great place? If not, how can we change that, you know?

320 00:33:02.650 ⇒ 00:33:03.380 Lisa Whall: Great.

321 00:33:03.380 ⇒ 00:33:03.850 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

322 00:33:04.860 ⇒ 00:33:06.960 Lisa Whall: That’s… that’s awesome.

323 00:33:06.960 ⇒ 00:33:11.310 Uttam Kumaran: So I guess my… maybe my last question, and I have to run, but I would love to continue.

324 00:33:11.310 ⇒ 00:33:19.679 Lisa Whall: I would too. This has been… this has been the best conversation. Steve’s like… he hung up with you, and he called me, and he’s like, you just need to talk to this guy.

325 00:33:20.480 ⇒ 00:33:22.259 Lisa Whall: You. I was…

326 00:33:22.260 ⇒ 00:33:36.700 Uttam Kumaran: I just have, like, a few things to clean up this morning, and then I’m happy my afternoon is fairly open, but I guess my last question is just, like, yeah, why partnerships now? Like, why back to that? Out of all the things you’ve done.

327 00:33:37.060 ⇒ 00:33:55.159 Uttam Kumaran: why pick that? And then also, like, I’m interested in even in, like, for your, like, life or career story, like, why is this still something that’s interesting? Why is it interesting to work… like, we’re just 20 people. Like, yes, I… I don’t think it’s, like, insane, but it is a… it is a tough gig, like, why…

328 00:33:55.350 ⇒ 00:33:59.869 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I’m just trying to… I’m… as I… I think, yeah, I’m just interested in the why.

329 00:34:00.210 ⇒ 00:34:02.140 Lisa Whall: Well, the why is…

330 00:34:03.650 ⇒ 00:34:23.490 Lisa Whall: hey, I go with my gut, and if Steve says to come here, and obviously, before talking to you, I was neutral, but… so… and I’ve worked at 20-person companies and helped grow them to hundreds, thousands. I love this stage, I’m a glutton for punishment, maybe, but you’re not so encumbered.

331 00:34:24.330 ⇒ 00:34:29.309 Lisa Whall: So that’s one of the reasons. Secondly, I was thinking about starting my own agency.

332 00:34:30.670 ⇒ 00:34:32.659 Lisa Whall: I don’t have the engineering background.

333 00:34:32.760 ⇒ 00:34:38.079 Lisa Whall: And… I thought a lot about it, and I’ve been doing a lot of things, but…

334 00:34:38.250 ⇒ 00:34:40.809 Lisa Whall: I want to be part of something, and just go…

335 00:34:40.810 ⇒ 00:34:44.870 Uttam Kumaran: It’s tough. I don’t… yeah, it’s insane. Yeah.

336 00:34:44.870 ⇒ 00:35:02.120 Lisa Whall: I just… I don’t think I… I want to do that again. So that’s why I think that I’d be a good fit here, because I’ve worked at 20-person companies. I still like to grind. I love sense of urgency. If a lead comes in, man, I will tell you, that lead, I don’t care what else is going on.

337 00:35:02.120 ⇒ 00:35:03.259 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I ain’t know.

338 00:35:03.260 ⇒ 00:35:06.639 Lisa Whall: If there’s an inbound lead, I am a rat on a Cheeto, especially if.

339 00:35:06.640 ⇒ 00:35:07.070 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

340 00:35:07.070 ⇒ 00:35:16.949 Lisa Whall: That could be our next big gig. Yeah. So I’m definitely… after talking to Hitachi, just as an example, now that I’m getting back on the market, I’m like.

341 00:35:17.210 ⇒ 00:35:19.989 Lisa Whall: I think I literally got a gag reflex.

342 00:35:19.990 ⇒ 00:35:22.260 Uttam Kumaran: I can’t.

343 00:35:22.330 ⇒ 00:35:23.090 Lisa Whall: Do it!

344 00:35:23.090 ⇒ 00:35:27.089 Uttam Kumaran: I would love, we should… they should work, we should, we should help them out, you know?

345 00:35:27.090 ⇒ 00:35:39.630 Lisa Whall: 100%. I ask all these questions. I go, okay, what are you doing internally with AI? How are you drinking your own champagne? How are you using AI in delivery? Why aren’t you doing outcome pricing? I think the guy was just like.

346 00:35:39.890 ⇒ 00:35:41.140 Lisa Whall: Whoa!

347 00:35:41.910 ⇒ 00:35:43.190 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, and I’ve been thinking…

348 00:35:43.190 ⇒ 00:35:44.950 Lisa Whall: not doing those things.

349 00:35:44.950 ⇒ 00:35:49.530 Uttam Kumaran: My only limitation to do all those things was the fact that I have to sleep

350 00:35:49.760 ⇒ 00:36:03.100 Uttam Kumaran: Right, right. We have been thinking about these things for the last 2 years, and I didn’t have the leverage. Like, I’m not a Hitachi, I didn’t have the leverage to try these, I don’t have the relationships. Right. You can only play so many games because we’re, like.

351 00:36:03.100 ⇒ 00:36:11.089 Uttam Kumaran: If we lose a couple deals, it’s like, things are gonna change. So, only recently, and really, our business changed a lot in the last

352 00:36:11.090 ⇒ 00:36:12.290 Uttam Kumaran: 6 months.

353 00:36:12.290 ⇒ 00:36:19.440 Uttam Kumaran: And grew quite a bit. Are we now having leverage? And we have built… and really, the majority of this is still in data.

354 00:36:19.440 ⇒ 00:36:31.000 Uttam Kumaran: like, the AI piece is working, and we’re starting to cross-sell really well, but we haven’t even, like, shown the world, like, what are some of the services that we can do. And I think…

355 00:36:31.100 ⇒ 00:36:45.369 Uttam Kumaran: I also lead our, like, platform team internally. Right. Which is, like, a hodge… it’s, like, mostly me and a mix of a couple people, and we have so much stuff that we could sell, you know? So many things that we could sell.

356 00:36:45.370 ⇒ 00:36:49.729 Lisa Whall: Well, and it all starts with data, though. If you read AI Business Essentials Chapter 5… no, I’m joking.

357 00:36:51.360 ⇒ 00:36:52.620 Lisa Whall: I can’t tell you how.

358 00:36:52.620 ⇒ 00:36:57.099 Uttam Kumaran: No, and that’s why I think we’re a unique partner in AI, so everything’s measured.

359 00:36:57.100 ⇒ 00:36:57.620 Lisa Whall: Exactly.

360 00:36:57.620 ⇒ 00:37:01.630 Uttam Kumaran: And AI is mostly data engineering, which is what we learned early on.

361 00:37:01.630 ⇒ 00:37:04.460 Lisa Whall: Great engineering. That’s what I tell every…

362 00:37:04.460 ⇒ 00:37:10.540 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s… that’s it, the LLM choosing is the least interesting, the least critical part of this.

363 00:37:10.540 ⇒ 00:37:13.120 Lisa Whall: AI is here. It’s the icing on the cake.

364 00:37:13.120 ⇒ 00:37:14.140 Uttam Kumaran: The iceberg, yeah.

365 00:37:14.140 ⇒ 00:37:19.780 Lisa Whall: It’s a total iceberg, and I mean, it is… this is the fun stuff, this is the cool stuff.

366 00:37:19.780 ⇒ 00:37:20.230 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

367 00:37:20.230 ⇒ 00:37:21.840 Lisa Whall: This is cleaned up.

368 00:37:22.490 ⇒ 00:37:27.119 Uttam Kumaran: But we are incredibly good at that ice… the bottom of the iceberg. That’s all we’ve done.

369 00:37:27.120 ⇒ 00:37:28.979 Lisa Whall: But now it’s time to bring in.

370 00:37:28.980 ⇒ 00:37:29.970 Uttam Kumaran: Now it’s time.

371 00:37:29.970 ⇒ 00:37:32.079 Lisa Whall: Honestly, I think 6 months ago.

372 00:37:32.920 ⇒ 00:37:36.700 Lisa Whall: I think that your timing is… you didn’t miss out on anything. People are.

373 00:37:36.700 ⇒ 00:37:41.369 Uttam Kumaran: No, I mean, I… it’s just, it’s funny because I’ve been pitching it like this for a long time.

374 00:37:41.370 ⇒ 00:37:42.839 Lisa Whall: I’ve been pitching it like this.

375 00:37:43.140 ⇒ 00:37:54.050 Uttam Kumaran: No, but I’m like, I’m just… I just knew, I said, at some point, but it just has to come as long as I can stay emotionally healthy. It’ll… I hope it’s coming at some point.

376 00:37:54.050 ⇒ 00:37:55.689 Lisa Whall: Well, there’s…

377 00:37:57.690 ⇒ 00:38:03.889 Lisa Whall: It was just, like, the data my husband and I were talking about this, the data warehousing of, you know, the early 2000s.

378 00:38:03.890 ⇒ 00:38:04.240 Uttam Kumaran: S.

379 00:38:04.240 ⇒ 00:38:07.290 Lisa Whall: the next wave of that, and there’s.

380 00:38:07.290 ⇒ 00:38:10.259 Uttam Kumaran: And it’s dragging all of that with it, because you can’t…

381 00:38:10.430 ⇒ 00:38:21.640 Uttam Kumaran: So, we come in, and it’s all, like, either I want the AI thing? I’m like, well, we have to do our classic data work. We need to land it, we need to model it, we need to build a semantic layer. This is like…

382 00:38:21.900 ⇒ 00:38:28.929 Uttam Kumaran: putting the A on the thing, that’s like, yes, that’s like one yard line, it’s important to still finish the tackle, but…

383 00:38:28.930 ⇒ 00:38:29.660 Lisa Whall: Right.

384 00:38:29.660 ⇒ 00:38:30.210 Uttam Kumaran: if…

385 00:38:30.350 ⇒ 00:38:35.000 Uttam Kumaran: Remove all the stuff in the middle and see how it goes. Or you probably have already seen it, that’s why we’re on the phone.

386 00:38:35.270 ⇒ 00:38:40.190 Lisa Whall: Exactly, and there’s… 95% of AI projects are not scaling.

387 00:38:40.190 ⇒ 00:38:40.630 Uttam Kumaran: the end!

388 00:38:40.630 ⇒ 00:38:42.240 Lisa Whall: Beta is a mess, this is not…

389 00:38:42.240 ⇒ 00:38:48.949 Uttam Kumaran: Exactly. Yeah, and so that’s the thing, when I hear that stat, I said, wow, not, that’s not our stat, like.

390 00:38:49.070 ⇒ 00:39:01.070 Uttam Kumaran: Well, I guess we’re ahead, like, we’re… our stuff is working really, really well in production, and we have done it extremely capital and people efficiently at Brainforge. Like, we have done it with, like.

391 00:39:01.390 ⇒ 00:39:04.680 Uttam Kumaran: Half of a person, my, like, free time.

392 00:39:04.680 ⇒ 00:39:05.220 Lisa Whall: Right.

393 00:39:05.220 ⇒ 00:39:09.419 Uttam Kumaran: We have built this whole thing, and imagine if you actually just, like.

394 00:39:09.590 ⇒ 00:39:20.300 Uttam Kumaran: had some resources around something. It’s actually the organizational capacity for change that is the limiting factor, essentially.

395 00:39:20.300 ⇒ 00:39:21.050 Lisa Whall: Yes.

396 00:39:21.050 ⇒ 00:39:21.730 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

397 00:39:21.920 ⇒ 00:39:35.419 Lisa Whall: Well, you asked about partnerships. I used to run partnerships at a company called, BinaryTree, and they were a ISV that basically took the last of the big banks and the insurance companies,

398 00:39:35.610 ⇒ 00:39:39.009 Lisa Whall: Lotus Notes to Microsoft 365.

399 00:39:39.010 ⇒ 00:39:39.610 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

400 00:39:39.880 ⇒ 00:39:47.799 Lisa Whall: So, I ended up doing a huge deal selling the software directly to Microsoft. It looks like 10-15 million, and they were a small ISV.

401 00:39:48.160 ⇒ 00:39:52.760 Lisa Whall: And that was one of my favorite jobs. When I worked at Scroll Motion.

402 00:39:53.020 ⇒ 00:40:05.660 Lisa Whall: even though I did both, which I would have… I would do direct selling as well as partnerships, because we were small, which I assume from the job description that I’d be taking all the deals to a close at first.

403 00:40:05.820 ⇒ 00:40:11.039 Lisa Whall: Which is fine. It just makes your life a hell of a lot easier if you have good partnerships.

404 00:40:11.040 ⇒ 00:40:17.030 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, no, no, I mean, these… I’m telling you, like, there are AEs texting me, like, let’s work, I just, like…

405 00:40:17.350 ⇒ 00:40:21.389 Uttam Kumaran: I’m… it’s such a… I’m, like, physically do not have the bandwidth.

406 00:40:21.390 ⇒ 00:40:22.450 Lisa Whall: That’s right.

407 00:40:22.450 ⇒ 00:40:28.459 Uttam Kumaran: Again, I think it’s a ma- for me, I’m like, what a great situation to walk into!

408 00:40:28.460 ⇒ 00:40:29.890 Lisa Whall: Somebody needs to take.

409 00:40:29.890 ⇒ 00:40:37.970 Uttam Kumaran: Like, some of these guys are like, hey, like, why… you guys haven’t followed up, like, these guys… I still want to work on these, or like, can you do this event with us? I’m like…

410 00:40:38.970 ⇒ 00:40:48.530 Uttam Kumaran: I’m like, I’m just, like, half awake, like, how do we… so we are in that spot. We’re not in a, like… we don’t need someone to come in and teach us what… why partnerships is important.

411 00:40:48.530 ⇒ 00:40:49.929 Lisa Whall: Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

412 00:40:49.930 ⇒ 00:40:58.529 Uttam Kumaran: No, but just to even say it out loud, we don’t need someone to come in and, like, build those, like, initial things. It’s actually to use

413 00:40:58.930 ⇒ 00:41:05.770 Uttam Kumaran: Me as a weapon, if we’re building net new, or for the existing partnerships, it’s just to, like.

414 00:41:06.020 ⇒ 00:41:08.279 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, here are all the players.

415 00:41:08.520 ⇒ 00:41:22.160 Uttam Kumaran: let’s meet. And, you know, sales is momentum. Those guys, the moment you talk about an opportunity, they’re calling my phone every day, like, hey, I saw this person, I went on Sales Nav, I saw that they just moved here, can we do this? You need this? So…

416 00:41:22.170 ⇒ 00:41:45.410 Uttam Kumaran: It’s like… and they’re all in our Slack together, and… Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah, they’re all in our Slack, and again, because in us as a partner, they’ve never seen, like, an SI partner that can actually… they feel confident, they can bring to a call, that will actually equip them with the resource, and so I early on understand, oh, I’m just gonna do… I’m just doing this person’s job for them, and that’s fine.

417 00:41:45.720 ⇒ 00:41:50.339 Lisa Whall: I just want to know the game on the field. That’s what I like to do at Microsoft.

418 00:41:50.340 ⇒ 00:41:55.229 Uttam Kumaran: know what the game on the field is. If that’s the game, then I’m gonna be like, cool, Snowflake rep.

419 00:41:55.370 ⇒ 00:41:57.890 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t think you can sell Snowflake AI.

420 00:41:58.030 ⇒ 00:42:15.330 Uttam Kumaran: I can. Right. So I’m gonna give you all the talking points for your email. Right. You’re gonna get in the door, bring me, and I’m gonna… all I’m gonna do is talk about how amazing… if the CTO’s on there, we’ll go technical. If it’s not, then I’ll show them whatever. And let’s… let’s do it.

421 00:42:15.520 ⇒ 00:42:17.510 Uttam Kumaran: Book it, you know, and they’re like, fine.

422 00:42:17.750 ⇒ 00:42:22.530 Lisa Whall: And then you need a closer, and I’m a closer. Then you need somebody to take it to the finish line, so…

423 00:42:22.530 ⇒ 00:42:23.090 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

424 00:42:24.040 ⇒ 00:42:29.639 Lisa Whall: But… Again, I have not had, other than with Steve, a conversation like this, and I feel.

425 00:42:29.640 ⇒ 00:42:30.929 Uttam Kumaran: I appreciate it.

426 00:42:30.930 ⇒ 00:42:32.489 Lisa Whall: I’m in an echo chamber.

427 00:42:32.490 ⇒ 00:42:37.050 Uttam Kumaran: No, and that’s why I love talking to Steve, too, and I look forward to…

428 00:42:37.130 ⇒ 00:42:51.239 Uttam Kumaran: you know, part of this is, like, we grew the company because I had time to build these relationships. Unfortunately, just how busy we are, the company needs me back out there meeting more Steves, finding, like, unique people to advise us and help us.

429 00:42:51.310 ⇒ 00:43:03.879 Uttam Kumaran: Because you just… the serendipity effect of it down the line, we need to capitalize. Something I’m doing is making it happen, and again, I’m like, the company needs to utilize me to just do more of that.

430 00:43:03.880 ⇒ 00:43:17.990 Lisa Whall: Honestly, that’s what I used to do with our old CEO. I had scroll motion. I’d be like, okay, Lima, I’ve got, like, 20 people from GE in a conference room, flying to Milwaukee, here’s… I’d be, like, prepping them in the car. Okay, here’s your notes.

431 00:43:17.990 ⇒ 00:43:18.600 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

432 00:43:18.760 ⇒ 00:43:25.439 Lisa Whall: And… Dude, we’re closing this today, okay? Yeah. He was a super closer, he was in New York.

433 00:43:26.320 ⇒ 00:43:29.439 Lisa Whall: He wasn’t gonna leave, but I’m like, but you can’t give them pricing.

434 00:43:29.630 ⇒ 00:43:30.630 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, exactly.

435 00:43:30.930 ⇒ 00:43:31.930 Lisa Whall: If you leave that.

436 00:43:31.930 ⇒ 00:43:33.969 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so I’m like, yeah, I don’t know, team is gonna…

437 00:43:33.970 ⇒ 00:43:39.159 Lisa Whall: Yeah, like, and do that, I’d be like, you better not mention pricing.

438 00:43:39.830 ⇒ 00:43:50.750 Lisa Whall: Do your thing, do your show, do your Lima show. I got the rest covered, and we had so much. We went to Milan, we went all over the world with GE, and we were 20 people.

439 00:43:50.750 ⇒ 00:43:51.860 Uttam Kumaran: Wow.

440 00:43:51.950 ⇒ 00:43:54.179 Lisa Whall: So, I’m very familiar with.

441 00:43:54.590 ⇒ 00:43:55.330 Uttam Kumaran: Impressive.

442 00:43:55.330 ⇒ 00:44:08.139 Lisa Whall: scenario, and the fact that you’ve got a foundation with Snowflake to the start, like, let’s just rub that up and just go. There’s also this thing called, GDS.

443 00:44:08.350 ⇒ 00:44:12.560 Lisa Whall: And they do matchmaking with senior executives.

444 00:44:12.700 ⇒ 00:44:13.380 Lisa Whall: And…

445 00:44:13.380 ⇒ 00:44:14.090 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, great.

446 00:44:15.170 ⇒ 00:44:29.549 Lisa Whall: I will get us the best pricing for this conference, and you can go, and the guy owes me big time, because I’ve been a reference for them for years, so I’ll get us, like, primo pricing, and you get in front of

447 00:44:30.080 ⇒ 00:44:35.090 Lisa Whall: Fortune 500, real people with real projects, because they are looking for brainforges.

448 00:44:35.090 ⇒ 00:44:35.590 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

449 00:44:35.590 ⇒ 00:44:37.140 Lisa Whall: We don’t know how to find you.

450 00:44:37.140 ⇒ 00:44:38.260 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yes.

451 00:44:38.260 ⇒ 00:44:39.670 Lisa Whall: to be those conferences.

452 00:44:39.850 ⇒ 00:44:44.660 Uttam Kumaran: I think it’s a dis… I also agree, I think it’s a distribution of storytelling problem for us.

453 00:44:44.760 ⇒ 00:44:45.590 Uttam Kumaran: You know?

454 00:44:45.590 ⇒ 00:44:46.700 Lisa Whall: 100%.

455 00:44:46.860 ⇒ 00:44:55.559 Lisa Whall: And with AI, we can get in front of as many people. I mean, eventually we’ll need more people to tell the story and more to get out there, but…

456 00:44:55.930 ⇒ 00:44:57.850 Lisa Whall: Let’s get it built so that.

457 00:44:57.980 ⇒ 00:44:58.530 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

458 00:44:58.530 ⇒ 00:45:02.140 Lisa Whall: But he’s… I want to get back to selling and not being in front of the computer.

459 00:45:03.130 ⇒ 00:45:04.200 Lisa Whall: We’ll be awesome.

460 00:45:04.200 ⇒ 00:45:18.159 Uttam Kumaran: No, I’m also… I’m also with you. I’m like, I want to go meet people, because if you… for me, I know if I’m able to sit in front of you, and we’re really practical about the way we talk about AI as well, and I’ll be like, oh, this is… I’ll show you on my laptop, here’s how we’re doing something.

461 00:45:18.580 ⇒ 00:45:27.049 Uttam Kumaran: And you’ll never have met… yeah, it’ll just be like, whoa. It’s not a thought piece, it’s not like a, is AI taking jobs, I’m not interested.

462 00:45:27.050 ⇒ 00:45:27.650 Lisa Whall: No, no.

463 00:45:27.990 ⇒ 00:45:34.179 Lisa Whall: So, well, I always say to customers, I’m like, don’t just look at it as cutting jobs or freezing high count.

464 00:45:34.300 ⇒ 00:45:37.730 Lisa Whall: similar to NVIDIA, you know, whenever he speaks.

465 00:45:38.340 ⇒ 00:45:41.779 Lisa Whall: What about using AI to grow your revenue?

466 00:45:42.180 ⇒ 00:45:57.409 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’s the only thing I’m interested in. Your people are wasting their time doing non-revenue, non-commercially relevant items. They’re sitting in 30-40% internal meetings, they’re spending the outside time preparing for them, those meetings.

467 00:45:57.410 ⇒ 00:45:57.730 Lisa Whall: Oh.

468 00:45:57.730 ⇒ 00:45:58.610 Uttam Kumaran: What?

469 00:45:59.030 ⇒ 00:46:00.970 Uttam Kumaran: What?

470 00:46:01.180 ⇒ 00:46:01.940 Lisa Whall: And it’s like.

471 00:46:01.940 ⇒ 00:46:11.689 Uttam Kumaran: And everybody in the room knows this. They’re like… I’m like, we all know this deep down. So be… why don’t you be the person in your organization who your group

472 00:46:11.910 ⇒ 00:46:17.630 Uttam Kumaran: changes, your group gets 20 more points of margin, your group freezes hiring.

473 00:46:17.630 ⇒ 00:46:18.300 Lisa Whall: Right.

474 00:46:18.440 ⇒ 00:46:24.560 Uttam Kumaran: both of those are true, and then you become head of AI. Why don’t you just do that, and why don’t I help you do that?

475 00:46:24.560 ⇒ 00:46:27.199 Lisa Whall: I will help you, and I always say that to clients, I am here to make you.

476 00:46:27.200 ⇒ 00:46:30.080 Uttam Kumaran: I am here for you. No, no, I don’t need… I don’t need credit, don’t.

477 00:46:30.080 ⇒ 00:46:31.330 Lisa Whall: Oh, I don’t eat credit.

478 00:46:31.330 ⇒ 00:46:33.990 Uttam Kumaran: I just… I just think clear.

479 00:46:33.990 ⇒ 00:46:37.800 Lisa Whall: If you get a promotion because of our work, That is…

480 00:46:37.800 ⇒ 00:46:55.759 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so I tell that to our team, too, and so I’m starting to teach our delivery team a lot about delivery source opportunities, and I’m teaching them about find the champion, find the sponsor, find the budget owner, write their names down, write what their favorite ice cream is, and, like, the nuances.

481 00:46:55.760 ⇒ 00:47:03.759 Uttam Kumaran: and build the story on how we can get this through. How does the budget owner, what do they care about? So how do we nip that?

482 00:47:03.870 ⇒ 00:47:16.339 Uttam Kumaran: the champion, okay, how do we crush that? The sponsor, okay, what do they care about? Are they… are they the CEO? Are they trying to get a… how do we get all those three people a win here from working with us?

483 00:47:16.520 ⇒ 00:47:19.619 Uttam Kumaran: And how are we the smallest part of this story?

484 00:47:19.620 ⇒ 00:47:21.630 Lisa Whall: Let’s just get one project.

485 00:47:22.010 ⇒ 00:47:22.510 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

486 00:47:22.510 ⇒ 00:47:24.359 Lisa Whall: That we just crush it.

487 00:47:24.360 ⇒ 00:47:39.870 Uttam Kumaran: We crush it. We go above and beyond, we spend more, and that’s what I’m telling people, I said, it’s really easy if you just are… you over-deliver on an advanced timeline, it opens up the doors, but… and so one thing I’m telling our folks more is, like.

488 00:47:39.870 ⇒ 00:47:55.630 Uttam Kumaran: if you’re a week off, you need to escalate, so I can help you, I’ll maybe seal and help just get back, but if you’re on the back track, it’s not gonna work. And so, we’re teaching a lot of our delivery team how to sell, as well, submit opportunities, because…

489 00:47:55.670 ⇒ 00:48:09.229 Uttam Kumaran: it’s… we’re gonna… I don’t think we’re gonna need, like, really dedicated full-time salespeople. If our delivery team can actually produce delivery source opportunities the same rate as, like, the big companies, I think we’ll push that

490 00:48:09.490 ⇒ 00:48:11.819 Uttam Kumaran: Further down, you know, the timeline.

491 00:48:12.670 ⇒ 00:48:19.830 Lisa Whall: My husband used to work for a company, he worked in New York, I forget what… it was a smaller consulting firm.

492 00:48:19.940 ⇒ 00:48:22.469 Lisa Whall: They spiff the delivery people.

493 00:48:22.470 ⇒ 00:48:24.020 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, no, we’re doing that. We’re gonna do that.

494 00:48:24.020 ⇒ 00:48:27.450 Lisa Whall: And he did it in a very specific way. I’ll get his exact.

495 00:48:27.450 ⇒ 00:48:46.919 Uttam Kumaran: I would love to hear, because, you know, Steve is the one that told me how to do this, and so we’re gonna… we’re gonna comp on… basically, you can submit an opportunity, so sales has to approve that, and then we’re also gonna give them the same exact, external, like, comp, like, in terms of referral fee, if they close the whole deal.

496 00:48:47.080 ⇒ 00:48:54.920 Uttam Kumaran: So, if they submit the opportunity, and then up till the closed deal, sales can give a discretionary amount, up to a certain amount.

497 00:48:55.100 ⇒ 00:49:08.090 Uttam Kumaran: we’re not gonna make it complicated, but I’m gonna tell these people, start with the opportunity, then I’ll tell you the relationship building, then I’ll tell you the commercial terms, and I will turn you into the seller, just like I used to just be an engineer.

498 00:49:08.090 ⇒ 00:49:08.770 Lisa Whall: Yeah.

499 00:49:08.770 ⇒ 00:49:19.900 Uttam Kumaran: We will not need salespeople, because people want to buy from you, you’re the accountant, you’re the builder. It’s such a joy if you’re not like, cool, let me bring in sales or account management, and that guy’s not…

500 00:49:20.230 ⇒ 00:49:23.159 Uttam Kumaran: You’re the rela- it’s your relationship, yeah.

501 00:49:23.160 ⇒ 00:49:23.679 Lisa Whall: Oh my god.

502 00:49:23.680 ⇒ 00:49:26.140 Uttam Kumaran: Make the money, I want you to make the money!

503 00:49:26.140 ⇒ 00:49:34.519 Lisa Whall: That’s why I love the partner side, because it is exactly that. We build partnerships to scale, we get delivery people that know how to…

504 00:49:34.520 ⇒ 00:49:49.219 Uttam Kumaran: And that’s unique, I think that we have really talented, technical people who are learning how to build relationships and sell outcomes. It’s… and then everybody’s like, how did you find these unicorn people? I’m like…

505 00:49:49.450 ⇒ 00:49:50.800 Lisa Whall: I trained him.

506 00:49:50.800 ⇒ 00:49:51.650 Uttam Kumaran: I just…

507 00:49:51.990 ⇒ 00:49:57.720 Uttam Kumaran: they… they came to me with, like, I want to become like that, and I said, wow, I just became like that.

508 00:49:57.720 ⇒ 00:49:58.270 Lisa Whall: Yeah, it’s like…

509 00:49:58.270 ⇒ 00:50:12.189 Uttam Kumaran: I’m… I’m happy, it took me so long! Let me… let me fast track it, let me get you… and let me actually pay you. I will pay you every step of the way, instead of paying, like, a full-time salesperson. I will distribute that cash here, you know?

510 00:50:12.190 ⇒ 00:50:25.029 Lisa Whall: That’s what they did at… it was called NAMI, and that’s exactly what they did, and if you got extended, and you know, that was a different model then, but if you got extended, you got a SPF. If you found a project, you got a SPF.

511 00:50:25.030 ⇒ 00:50:33.259 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and this is an early inning, so I’m like… but for me, if I… I’m trying to train the intuition. On the back end, we’ll figure out all the mechanics.

512 00:50:33.260 ⇒ 00:50:34.100 Lisa Whall: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

513 00:50:34.100 ⇒ 00:50:37.190 Uttam Kumaran: And I’m like, I just, if I can get you to be in a company

514 00:50:37.230 ⇒ 00:50:56.150 Uttam Kumaran: and someone calls you and is like, hey, I think, like, some… yeah, I just got off a meeting with so-and-so, they’re struggling with this, and you go from, oh, that’s not my problem, to, oh, I think, like, I would love to talk to my… I’m sure we can help, maybe if you want to make the intro. If I can just turn you into that moment, and show you that, oh yeah, I can get paid.

515 00:50:56.460 ⇒ 00:50:59.039 Uttam Kumaran: if I submitted DSO. That’s it.

516 00:50:59.230 ⇒ 00:50:59.790 Lisa Whall: Yep.

517 00:50:59.790 ⇒ 00:51:07.610 Uttam Kumaran: start… so I said, start there, and then I’ll show… but then what you’ll see is that you’ll get paid, and then I’ll be like, well, you could have actually probably, like.

518 00:51:07.810 ⇒ 00:51:14.980 Uttam Kumaran: gone to the SOW. You could have actually probably closed the whole thing, and here’s how much you would have made, okay?

519 00:51:14.980 ⇒ 00:51:27.960 Lisa Whall: Exactly. I started creating my own SOWs at 3Cloud two and a half years ago. I’m like, you guys take… I would be so stressed, because they wouldn’t… the whole process.

520 00:51:28.300 ⇒ 00:51:29.279 Uttam Kumaran: No, and we are…

521 00:51:29.370 ⇒ 00:51:30.550 Lisa Whall: I can’t… Yeah.

522 00:51:30.550 ⇒ 00:51:38.169 Uttam Kumaran: It’s a momentum game, and every step matters. Legal cannot get stuck, and so we… we push, like.

523 00:51:38.570 ⇒ 00:51:51.580 Uttam Kumaran: as far as we can, we’ve pushed a close. You know, I still think our cycles take a long time, but we push, like, we’re so, like, get it, the next, the next, the next.

524 00:51:51.580 ⇒ 00:51:57.359 Lisa Whall: And when you’re dealing with a big company, just sign their damn paper. Who cares? Yes. It’s their paper, sign it.

525 00:51:57.360 ⇒ 00:51:57.860 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

526 00:51:57.860 ⇒ 00:52:10.749 Lisa Whall: trying to trick you. Yeah. Don’t mess around with that. I got so mad at the GE one, because we had this… that’s a long story. I am not a screamer, I don’t do things like that, but I was in a lounge in a Marriott, and I’m like.

527 00:52:13.710 ⇒ 00:52:14.700 Uttam Kumaran: Jeez!

528 00:52:14.700 ⇒ 00:52:18.849 Lisa Whall: It’s a Master Services Agreement for the entire… Yeah, I just…

529 00:52:18.850 ⇒ 00:52:20.210 Uttam Kumaran: Like, you just… whatever.

530 00:52:20.210 ⇒ 00:52:36.680 Lisa Whall: But yeah, shorting that cycle, too, is another big… I mean, right when I came out, I wanted to create a, we called them my buddy and I, I forget what… we called him Carl, and we wanted to, because we were so sick of sales engineers, we just wanted to create

531 00:52:36.970 ⇒ 00:52:41.859 Lisa Whall: I mean, this is before anybody was talking about agents or anything. I’m like, I’m just gonna have Carl

532 00:52:41.990 ⇒ 00:52:48.080 Lisa Whall: come, and I’m going to… I mean, this is two and a half years ago. I’m like, because this sales engineering stuff.

533 00:52:48.740 ⇒ 00:52:59.769 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, no, and you’ll see at our company, you can develop on all this stuff right before the meeting, prep, all of it, like, so we’ve been using AI for SOW slide generation for 2 years now, like…

534 00:52:59.770 ⇒ 00:53:00.150 Lisa Whall: Yeah.

535 00:53:00.150 ⇒ 00:53:04.070 Uttam Kumaran: Because we’ve sold, we’ve sold millions of dollars of business with two of us.

536 00:53:04.370 ⇒ 00:53:09.490 Uttam Kumaran: But, like, a tenth of our time. Right. So it’s… it’s… we have… we had to automate.

537 00:53:09.490 ⇒ 00:53:10.550 Lisa Whall: We have to…

538 00:53:10.550 ⇒ 00:53:14.099 Uttam Kumaran: Like, there’s no… there was no way, there was no way for us.

539 00:53:14.100 ⇒ 00:53:14.440 Lisa Whall: Right.

540 00:53:14.440 ⇒ 00:53:15.420 Uttam Kumaran: So…

541 00:53:15.700 ⇒ 00:53:25.990 Uttam Kumaran: I think today, so I would… one, I would love to see if I can get you on the phone with… with Robert, my business partner. He has a lot of… he’ll… he’ll kind of share a little bit more. I think he may have already reached out, or Caleb.

542 00:53:25.990 ⇒ 00:53:28.109 Lisa Whall: Yeah, I’m talking to him at 3 today.

543 00:53:28.110 ⇒ 00:53:38.630 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, perfect, okay. I think some great questions for him are gonna be about some of the metrics and the mechanics of the sales process. Like, I think you’ll see in me, I’m more of, like.

544 00:53:38.900 ⇒ 00:53:45.509 Uttam Kumaran: I’m more of, like, I… the relationships and the partnership side, the vision of the AI piece, and I work really…

545 00:53:45.510 ⇒ 00:54:02.360 Uttam Kumaran: I’m… I’m leading delivery. Robert is all commercial, so he has… he has, like, our sort of, weekly, monthly business reviews, our sort of budgeting model, like, our financial model for the sales… sales sort of trackers, all set, so any questions about

546 00:54:02.360 ⇒ 00:54:05.710 Uttam Kumaran: Deal cycle length, opportunity sizes.

547 00:54:05.710 ⇒ 00:54:14.719 Uttam Kumaran: like, revenue targets, commission, what… all that is, like, he has that. I think it’s also interesting for you to get from him what’s been the…

548 00:54:14.790 ⇒ 00:54:21.269 Uttam Kumaran: biggest challenge, and for him to describe that in his own words. And…

549 00:54:21.410 ⇒ 00:54:35.309 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, I’m more than happy to text or call, you know, again today, whenever, but I’m really interested in your reflection, and I think you’ll see that from both of us. We…

550 00:54:35.360 ⇒ 00:54:49.480 Uttam Kumaran: pivot every week here. If I have a… if I call Steve and he gives me a new idea on Monday, we will do that idea. And people are very surprised when they see that about us, because there’s only 52 weeks in the year, and that means

551 00:54:49.960 ⇒ 00:54:53.300 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, that’s 52 shots on… like, that’s not even that much.

552 00:54:53.300 ⇒ 00:54:55.009 Lisa Whall: This is how my brain works.

553 00:54:55.010 ⇒ 00:55:00.970 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so we’re extremely data-driven, and I’m like, that’s not enough, we need to get 1% better every day.

554 00:55:00.970 ⇒ 00:55:02.929 Lisa Whall: Yes, yes, yes.

555 00:55:02.930 ⇒ 00:55:10.070 Uttam Kumaran: for us to even have a shot here. And the score will settle if we… and while we feel like we’re ahead, we need to lap.

556 00:55:10.210 ⇒ 00:55:24.549 Uttam Kumaran: We need to lap. Just keep lapping the competition. Yeah. I don’t… I don’t see any, like, we don’t let the gas go until… I don’t know, we just… we just don’t. And so, part of us, that’s… you’ll see that we’re very methodical, but we’re also, like.

557 00:55:24.690 ⇒ 00:55:28.459 Uttam Kumaran: we reflect a lot. We’re emotional about

558 00:55:28.520 ⇒ 00:55:41.769 Uttam Kumaran: people and about doing the right thing, but every week, I’m like, what did we do wrong? And next… next week, it will be different. And AI has helped enable a lot of that, but a lot of it is also just, like.

559 00:55:41.770 ⇒ 00:55:57.950 Uttam Kumaran: creating a culture of that. People are critical of their work, they’re critical of their team’s work, but they’re not critical of the person… like, it’s not a, this person sucks. It’s not, this person is a bad person. It’s like, we could do better for the client, for our partners.

560 00:55:58.020 ⇒ 00:56:13.549 Uttam Kumaran: I have a new playbook, I have built an AI skill to do that, I read a book to do that. And in me, I’m like, hey, I just met someone that you should go talk to, they’ll give you some great advice about this problem. We should go fish for talent in this, like, Slack channel somewhere.

561 00:56:13.680 ⇒ 00:56:20.460 Uttam Kumaran: You know, like, all… we find the third, fourth, fifth door, because the front doors are expensive and crowded.

562 00:56:20.610 ⇒ 00:56:23.269 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, everybody’s there, you know?

563 00:56:23.270 ⇒ 00:56:25.030 Lisa Whall: Everybody’s there, so we’re gonna go…

564 00:56:25.200 ⇒ 00:56:25.860 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

565 00:56:25.860 ⇒ 00:56:31.069 Lisa Whall: I mean, we, beating out Accenture, we at Scroll Motion, again, 20-person company.

566 00:56:31.510 ⇒ 00:56:33.400 Lisa Whall: We would beat them out every time.

567 00:56:33.680 ⇒ 00:56:37.619 Lisa Whall: Because Apple was bringing us in, we work fast.

568 00:56:37.620 ⇒ 00:56:38.180 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

569 00:56:38.180 ⇒ 00:56:55.010 Lisa Whall: We would turn things around. We would… I had… we ended up hiring a whole… my husband and I actually worked together in that company. We ended up building a whole office in La Jolla, California, and we had all young, talented people, and we built the best team. We’re all still… and people would spend the night working on a project without…

570 00:56:55.010 ⇒ 00:56:56.960 Uttam Kumaran: No, I think… I think this is actually… would be it.

571 00:56:57.800 ⇒ 00:57:07.080 Uttam Kumaran: This would be a great thing to talk to Robert about, because he is very interested in… we are a fully remote company, but in particular for sales, he’s interested in seeing, like.

572 00:57:07.300 ⇒ 00:57:25.400 Uttam Kumaran: how do we build a sales team culture? It’s… it’s not a large team, and we’ve had a lot of people come in and struggle, and I don’t know, I think the team-building aspect would be another thing for… for you to discuss with him. It’s really top of mind for him on how he builds a really strong sales and commercial team.

573 00:57:25.820 ⇒ 00:57:27.160 Uttam Kumaran: And so…

574 00:57:27.270 ⇒ 00:57:32.690 Uttam Kumaran: I think those couple… those topics, I think, would be really, really helpful to ask him about.

575 00:57:33.080 ⇒ 00:57:37.179 Lisa Whall: I think one more thing, and I know you’ve already given me so much of your time, and I appreciate it.

576 00:57:37.180 ⇒ 00:57:37.840 Uttam Kumaran: Of course.

577 00:57:37.840 ⇒ 00:57:39.589 Lisa Whall: Like, the stage in my life.

578 00:57:39.870 ⇒ 00:57:42.709 Lisa Whall: So I’ve moved from California to Tennessee.

579 00:57:43.090 ⇒ 00:57:44.799 Uttam Kumaran: We’re in California, in La Jolla.

580 00:57:44.800 ⇒ 00:57:47.810 Lisa Whall: Yeah, La Jolla, yeah, I raised my kids there, and

581 00:57:48.450 ⇒ 00:57:51.860 Lisa Whall: It’s just… it got out of hand. The cost is just out of hand.

582 00:57:51.860 ⇒ 00:57:54.929 Uttam Kumaran: I grew up in the Bay Area, in the East Bay. I was just there, actually, last week.

583 00:57:54.930 ⇒ 00:57:56.540 Lisa Whall: And you’re an asshole now, right?

584 00:57:56.560 ⇒ 00:58:01.440 Uttam Kumaran: I’m in Austin, yeah. It’s, I mean, it’s, like, insane cost. I don’t understand…

585 00:58:01.750 ⇒ 00:58:05.930 Uttam Kumaran: I have so… I mean, it’s beautiful. We were… we camped in Big Sur last weekend.

586 00:58:05.930 ⇒ 00:58:07.010 Lisa Whall: Oh, nice.

587 00:58:07.010 ⇒ 00:58:16.040 Uttam Kumaran: My family’s big outdoors, but I… it’s crowded, and it’s… I don’t even… I love it here in Austin. I think this is the best place.

588 00:58:16.040 ⇒ 00:58:18.240 Lisa Whall: I live in Knoxville now, outside, in the snow.

589 00:58:18.240 ⇒ 00:58:18.620 Uttam Kumaran: Great.

590 00:58:18.620 ⇒ 00:58:20.079 Lisa Whall: On a lake, over a.

591 00:58:20.080 ⇒ 00:58:20.820 Uttam Kumaran: Wow.

592 00:58:20.820 ⇒ 00:58:25.200 Lisa Whall: This overlooks… This giant lake, 7 acres.

593 00:58:25.310 ⇒ 00:58:28.350 Lisa Whall: And my taxes are 2 grand a year, my profit.

594 00:58:28.350 ⇒ 00:58:30.270 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I saw, you know, it’s like…

595 00:58:30.270 ⇒ 00:58:38.999 Lisa Whall: live a life. My kids are grown now, and they’re doing great, and so I can get back on the road and travel. Yeah. This is, like I said, this is…

596 00:58:39.210 ⇒ 00:58:40.959 Lisa Whall: I’ve been through all the waves.

597 00:58:41.320 ⇒ 00:58:48.380 Lisa Whall: And this is by far the biggest and the best, and I want to be on a team that produces and has fun.

598 00:58:48.800 ⇒ 00:58:54.489 Lisa Whall: and uses the tool, drink their own champagne. We make 40, 50, 80% margin.

599 00:58:54.490 ⇒ 00:58:55.010 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

600 00:58:55.010 ⇒ 00:58:58.460 Lisa Whall: We do it better and faster, and we knock out Accenture. That’s what it is.

601 00:58:58.920 ⇒ 00:58:59.730 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

602 00:58:59.870 ⇒ 00:59:03.110 Uttam Kumaran: I’m with you. Me too.

603 00:59:04.600 ⇒ 00:59:11.479 Uttam Kumaran: Well, appreciate the time, Lisa. Please, as you’re… even if you’re thinking about anything, like, give me… shoot me a text, but I’m really looking forward to how it goes with Robert today.

604 00:59:11.480 ⇒ 00:59:13.200 Lisa Whall: I’ll text you after and let you know my.

605 00:59:13.200 ⇒ 00:59:16.150 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay, perfect. Okay, thank you so much. Bye.