Meeting Title: Eden Project Retrospective and Planning Date: 2026-04-29 Meeting participants: Zoran Selinger, Greg Stoutenburg, Jasmin Multani, Robert Tseng
WEBVTT
1 00:00:38.440 ⇒ 00:00:39.440 Greg Stoutenburg: Hey, Zaron.
2 00:00:41.340 ⇒ 00:00:42.099 Zoran Selinger: Hi, Greg.
3 00:00:43.350 ⇒ 00:00:44.380 Greg Stoutenburg: Hello.
4 00:00:58.320 ⇒ 00:00:59.960 Greg Stoutenburg: Do you use Cloud Desktop?
5 00:01:00.850 ⇒ 00:01:05.090 Zoran Selinger: No, I’m… I’m an open code now, fully.
6 00:01:05.220 ⇒ 00:01:07.320 Zoran Selinger: Fully integrated, almost.
7 00:01:07.320 ⇒ 00:01:11.279 Greg Stoutenburg: You’re all the way in. Yeah, well, I saw you, you were… you were ripping PRs this morning.
8 00:01:12.510 ⇒ 00:01:21.320 Zoran Selinger: I mean, it’s… I’m just writing updates, because those PRs were in place for a while now, not… Oh, okay.
9 00:01:21.950 ⇒ 00:01:31.140 Zoran Selinger: I did two this week, and I had two from before. I just wasn’t aware that there was, like, a…
10 00:01:31.230 ⇒ 00:01:45.330 Zoran Selinger: skills specific to, like, platform updates and stuff like that. It’s just, I’m going through the course, the AI course that we created, so I’m learning…
11 00:01:45.400 ⇒ 00:01:51.479 Zoran Selinger: about all the skills that we have, and that I should have already been using for…
12 00:01:51.480 ⇒ 00:02:01.579 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, yeah, good call. I should, I need to keep that open on a tab or something like that. He’s been… he’s been sending out so much stuff, I know I’m not caught up.
13 00:02:02.550 ⇒ 00:02:05.650 Zoran Selinger: This is really good, especially that foundation.
14 00:02:06.210 ⇒ 00:02:10.189 Zoran Selinger: one. Obviously, the second one is, is, kind of…
15 00:02:10.810 ⇒ 00:02:18.360 Zoran Selinger: really, kind of advanced on building stuff, but just using, and what we should be using on a daily basis, it’s…
16 00:02:18.360 ⇒ 00:02:18.780 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
17 00:02:18.780 ⇒ 00:02:21.419 Zoran Selinger: The foundation course is excellent, actually.
18 00:02:21.420 ⇒ 00:02:23.389 Greg Stoutenburg: This one that he’s called Quick Start.
19 00:02:24.140 ⇒ 00:02:26.139 Zoran Selinger: Let me see how it’s called.
20 00:02:26.460 ⇒ 00:02:28.809 Zoran Selinger: I’m going through the… yeah, quick start, yes.
21 00:02:28.810 ⇒ 00:02:30.010 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, okay, cool.
22 00:02:30.010 ⇒ 00:02:30.880 Zoran Selinger: Totally good.
23 00:02:31.300 ⇒ 00:02:32.829 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, alright, alright.
24 00:02:32.830 ⇒ 00:02:40.880 Zoran Selinger: It really goes from even from people that never, ever used, like, a GitHub or anything. It goes from the beginning, but…
25 00:02:41.180 ⇒ 00:02:45.600 Zoran Selinger: It gives a really clear picture on, on…
26 00:02:46.270 ⇒ 00:02:53.039 Zoran Selinger: What we should be using before, like, before every meeting, like, explaining that
27 00:02:53.400 ⇒ 00:03:05.610 Zoran Selinger: we should be using it to create linear tickets for basically everything, and then maybe triage later, and stuff like that. It will really… like, if we fully use it.
28 00:03:05.730 ⇒ 00:03:09.920 Zoran Selinger: It really makes… it really will make work.
29 00:03:10.530 ⇒ 00:03:11.750 Zoran Selinger: Much, much easier.
30 00:03:11.970 ⇒ 00:03:13.999 Zoran Selinger: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
31 00:03:14.000 ⇒ 00:03:14.560 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
32 00:03:14.760 ⇒ 00:03:18.570 Greg Stoutenburg: Hope so. Sometimes the… sometimes a mop-up effort can be…
33 00:03:19.150 ⇒ 00:03:25.920 Greg Stoutenburg: difficult. But in principle, yeah, I mean, like, I… I share the vision of…
34 00:03:26.400 ⇒ 00:03:34.209 Greg Stoutenburg: just keep your linear tickets updated all the time, and then things like what I’m doing right now, which I am doing it just on my personal Cloud account, because I’ve found it to just be…
35 00:03:34.300 ⇒ 00:03:50.269 Greg Stoutenburg: in my experience, more helpful than Cursor, but I’m not on Open Code yet, is, like, if you’ve got your stuff up to date, and you have all the connectors on, you can just go, here’s the last update deck, make a new one with the last week, and it’s… it’s pretty darn good, and
36 00:03:50.580 ⇒ 00:03:54.849 Greg Stoutenburg: And, you know, it can just run in the background while we talk about what happened with Eden.
37 00:03:54.850 ⇒ 00:03:55.760 Zoran Selinger: Yep, yep.
38 00:04:02.210 ⇒ 00:04:07.249 Greg Stoutenburg: Yesterday, my, my Claw desktop must have just pulled an update when I wasn’t paying attention.
39 00:04:07.560 ⇒ 00:04:14.880 Greg Stoutenburg: And it was like, Claude now has memory. Do you want to use it? I was like, yes. And it provided, like.
40 00:04:15.250 ⇒ 00:04:24.840 Greg Stoutenburg: pretty much, like, two complete single-spaced pages of everything that it knows about me, and the kind of work I do, the kinds of questions I ask, the kind of preferences I have, and I was like…
41 00:04:24.840 ⇒ 00:04:25.490 Zoran Selinger: Right?
42 00:04:25.730 ⇒ 00:04:28.999 Greg Stoutenburg: This is creepy!
43 00:04:29.260 ⇒ 00:04:33.140 Greg Stoutenburg: Remember being worried about people sending in, like,
44 00:04:33.660 ⇒ 00:04:36.409 Greg Stoutenburg: Genetic information, like, for 23andMe.
45 00:04:36.410 ⇒ 00:04:37.340 Zoran Selinger: Oh, yeah, yeah.
46 00:04:37.560 ⇒ 00:04:46.050 Greg Stoutenburg: I’m like, forget it, you don’t even have to ask people to do anything, they’ll just… if they’ll just sign up for some AI tool and write a bunch of questions, hack that database.
47 00:04:46.310 ⇒ 00:04:47.990 Zoran Selinger: Yep Yep.
48 00:04:49.340 ⇒ 00:04:50.869 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, we got from…
49 00:04:51.620 ⇒ 00:05:05.240 Zoran Selinger: being stunned about how much we are letting even just Facebook, when it showed up, like, you weren’t even aware of how much about yourself you’re… you’re showing there.
50 00:05:05.240 ⇒ 00:05:06.240 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
51 00:05:06.310 ⇒ 00:05:12.370 Zoran Selinger: And then, yeah, we started accepting, like, biometric data to…
52 00:05:12.590 ⇒ 00:05:21.830 Zoran Selinger: Just unlock your phones, then genetic data, sending literal genetic code over the mail.
53 00:05:21.830 ⇒ 00:05:26.290 Greg Stoutenburg: You know, we install, like, internet-connected cameras all around our houses. Yeah.
54 00:05:26.290 ⇒ 00:05:27.140 Zoran Selinger: Exactly.
55 00:05:27.440 ⇒ 00:05:27.760 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
56 00:05:28.080 ⇒ 00:05:31.449 Zoran Selinger: Just slowly accepting everything.
57 00:05:31.670 ⇒ 00:05:32.080 Greg Stoutenburg: Sure.
58 00:05:32.080 ⇒ 00:05:33.930 Zoran Selinger: It’s just new normal.
59 00:05:34.290 ⇒ 00:05:39.280 Greg Stoutenburg: Just, yeah, yeah. You know, it seems like… this seems so quaint now, but, like.
60 00:05:39.800 ⇒ 00:05:59.289 Greg Stoutenburg: like, 15 years ago or so, I deleted my Gmail account because Google rolled out these new priv… this new privacy policy that they were gonna, like, retain more data or start skimming emails for more or something, and I was like, forget that, I’m… I’m quitting. 15 years later, I’m like, just take it all, I give up.
61 00:05:59.290 ⇒ 00:06:01.460 Greg Stoutenburg: Hey, Robert, good morning.
62 00:06:01.900 ⇒ 00:06:04.879 Robert Tseng: Talking about how you guys have gotten desensitized to data privacy?
63 00:06:05.090 ⇒ 00:06:07.840 Greg Stoutenburg: Completely. Who cares? Yeah.
64 00:06:07.840 ⇒ 00:06:17.889 Robert Tseng: I literally just got off a call. We’re, I mean, we were talking to the Sunstone CFO, guy was such a hard ass, and was, like, grilling us on this stuff.
65 00:06:18.770 ⇒ 00:06:21.259 Robert Tseng: So, where is the data gonna be?
66 00:06:21.260 ⇒ 00:06:21.880 Greg Stoutenburg: Right.
67 00:06:22.000 ⇒ 00:06:28.799 Robert Tseng: What do you mean? It’s on your infrastructure. We’re just managing it for you. What does that mean? And he’s like, hey, yeah, he was just like…
68 00:06:29.110 ⇒ 00:06:29.900 Robert Tseng: Ugh.
69 00:06:30.280 ⇒ 00:06:33.410 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, where did you put it? Oh, some cloud server in Ireland? Yeah, I don’t know.
70 00:06:33.570 ⇒ 00:06:43.309 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I’m like, what is it? It’s in your Excel on your local machine. How’s that any better than what we’re gonna do? But whatever. I was just… just smiling and trying to say the right things, yeah.
71 00:06:43.310 ⇒ 00:06:45.170 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, just like, sign in, sign in.
72 00:06:45.170 ⇒ 00:06:49.450 Robert Tseng: Then he’s just like, okay, you’ve given me something to think about.
73 00:06:49.650 ⇒ 00:06:52.079 Robert Tseng: I’ll get back to you. Alright, guy.
74 00:06:54.320 ⇒ 00:06:55.180 Greg Stoutenburg: Okay.
75 00:06:55.180 ⇒ 00:07:14.359 Robert Tseng: Sorry, that’s… that’s just the world that I… I live… I live in. I would honestly rather look at code, it’s… they don’t give you ego. Code doesn’t give you ego. But, anyway, yeah, thanks, thanks, team, for kind of being on this call. Yeah, so… I think… I… I did call Eden last night, so, I mean, they are still kind of…
76 00:07:16.060 ⇒ 00:07:17.530 Robert Tseng: I think they’re…
77 00:07:18.930 ⇒ 00:07:29.199 Robert Tseng: they’re just trying to, like, I mean, how should I say it? So, you know, we’ve been running, pretty much just, like, kind of fixed budget, kind of,
78 00:07:29.680 ⇒ 00:07:46.199 Robert Tseng: engagement pretty much for the past 6 months, right? And, yeah, I mean, like, 6 months ago, I signed up for a 6-month expiry, because I was hoping that we would restructure it at this point. And I do think this point has come. The business is heading in a direction where we don’t really… we’re not really just doing, like.
79 00:07:46.390 ⇒ 00:07:47.999 Robert Tseng: Like, we don’t want to just…
80 00:07:48.130 ⇒ 00:08:00.329 Robert Tseng: trade time, like, time and money, like TNM, right? So, you know, Q1, we didn’t necessarily hit the outcomes that we had set out for, but part of it is, like, they were… look, we’re spread very thin, asked to do a lot.
81 00:08:00.330 ⇒ 00:08:23.279 Robert Tseng: and the way the contract was set up, we couldn’t really say no. It was just kind of expected that we would kind of just meet all these different demands. So, kind of leading up into this month, you know, I’ve continued to try to chip away at scope, and, you know, we’ve already started to restructure the team internally. So we got to this point where, you know, I put in front of them a few options. I think a couple of you already looked at the proposal I sent to them.
82 00:08:23.480 ⇒ 00:08:38.269 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and I… that’s the line that I’ve been holding with them. That’s like, we want to say no to these other things, you need to let us focus. There’s an option where we can keep the same budget, it’s gonna be a smaller team, but we’re just going to be doing the MarTech work, making sure
83 00:08:38.270 ⇒ 00:08:57.530 Robert Tseng: you know, if you want us to maintain all these systems, you know, architect it the quote-unquote right way, and make sure that it doesn’t drift because we’re spending our time doing other things, which is basically what happened, then that should just be kind of, you know, that’s what that price is. And if you want to tack on somebody who’s just chasing a particular outcome.
84 00:08:57.530 ⇒ 00:09:17.209 Robert Tseng: and we want to add that… add in, like, a more experienced analyst, happy to do that. Like, I have, you know, Zoran, you’re kind of putting together that… you reviewed that thing from Kayla. I already spoke to, like, probably 5 Martech people that I’d be interested in. Just marketing intelligence, marketing analytics people I’d be interested in bringing in to just particularly staff on… on Eden.
85 00:09:17.300 ⇒ 00:09:35.400 Robert Tseng: And so, yeah, I mean, data engineering, kind of like BI maintenance, all of that is kind of getting deprioritized, which I think is totally fair. I think what we’ve seen is that, yeah, we’re doing a lot of busy work on Eden, but it’s not really getting them the main outcome that they want.
86 00:09:35.520 ⇒ 00:09:49.479 Robert Tseng: And so I think this is, like, a fair point for us to kind of, like, reevaluate what the structure of this engagement looks like. So, I do expect them to come to a resolution tomorrow. That’s what I’ve been told. I have another call scheduled with them.
87 00:09:49.480 ⇒ 00:09:58.889 Robert Tseng: So, yeah, they’re really just waiting to month close, because that’s kind of how they do their budget approvals. So it was not really… yeah, that’s kind of why there’s a holdup.
88 00:09:58.890 ⇒ 00:10:05.990 Robert Tseng: But yeah, I would really like to, you know, I kind of set some questions to all of you. I’d love to kind of go around, kind of hear the room, hear your perspective.
89 00:10:07.490 ⇒ 00:10:13.790 Robert Tseng: yeah, I mean, I can kind of… someone wanna… I can go back and fish for those questions that I sent, or you can kind of just…
90 00:10:13.790 ⇒ 00:10:30.879 Robert Tseng: Yeah, let’s just go around and just kind of give me your reflections on how you think things… things… things have went… gone, and if we were to kind of, like, move forward, like, you know, what… what are… what are some of the learnings here, now that we have, like, a week to kind of just pause and reflect more on, kind of, on this client, particularly.
91 00:10:32.070 ⇒ 00:10:32.770 Robert Tseng: Oh, God.
92 00:10:35.400 ⇒ 00:10:37.099 Greg Stoutenburg: I’m going back to look for your questions.
93 00:10:37.270 ⇒ 00:10:43.710 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I am going in to try to… Fish would not as well.
94 00:10:44.080 ⇒ 00:10:52.520 Robert Tseng: I think I put it in the SL channel, or, like, the delivery leads channel.
95 00:10:53.070 ⇒ 00:10:59.210 Robert Tseng: Yes, so I will paste them in the Zoom.
96 00:10:59.660 ⇒ 00:11:00.330 Greg Stoutenburg: Oh yeah, okay.
97 00:11:00.330 ⇒ 00:11:00.960 Robert Tseng: cut.
98 00:11:05.350 ⇒ 00:11:08.639 Robert Tseng: So… Yeah, I mean, I do…
99 00:11:10.440 ⇒ 00:11:22.399 Robert Tseng: I’m… yeah, I would rather hear from you, from you guys, because I do a lot of the… I do a lot of the talking around these topics already, so I just want to try to, yeah, just hear… hear from you guys.
100 00:11:24.450 ⇒ 00:11:26.760 Greg Stoutenburg: I think you… I think you have the most, yeah.
101 00:11:26.760 ⇒ 00:11:34.550 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, I mean, I already replied on that thread with some of my thoughts. Let me just find my,
102 00:11:34.690 ⇒ 00:11:36.579 Zoran Selinger: What a reply there.
103 00:11:39.350 ⇒ 00:11:48.329 Robert Tseng: I don’t know if you replied in that thread, I think it was just pronounced, but but you might have replied to something similar that I’ve gotten when I was asking for something.
104 00:11:48.330 ⇒ 00:11:50.259 Zoran Selinger: Basically, those… those questions.
105 00:11:50.260 ⇒ 00:11:51.549 Robert Tseng: Similar, sure. Okay.
106 00:11:51.550 ⇒ 00:11:53.159 Zoran Selinger: Exactly those questions.
107 00:11:56.990 ⇒ 00:12:04.060 Zoran Selinger: But, oh, okay, okay, let’s, let’s… Let’s figure that out.
108 00:12:05.100 ⇒ 00:12:06.650 Zoran Selinger: Did… did ride it.
109 00:12:06.650 ⇒ 00:12:18.369 Robert Tseng: And I can go a little over time, by the way, I know that we only set 20 minutes, 45 minutes here, so you guys gotta go, feel free to, but I can… I can go over. I think this is kind of important, because I want us to…
110 00:12:18.560 ⇒ 00:12:27.779 Robert Tseng: know, like, what adjustments we would make on this client, and also kind of, you know, as we’re in the other projects, what we should kind of be learning from this as well.
111 00:12:28.370 ⇒ 00:12:29.890 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. I have one right after this.
112 00:12:29.890 ⇒ 00:12:33.759 Zoran Selinger: Greg, why don’t you go ahead, and I’ll find those.
113 00:12:34.280 ⇒ 00:12:42.229 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, so… so I was brought on to Eden, I think, sort of later in January, so it’s been about 4 months for me.
114 00:12:42.360 ⇒ 00:12:55.499 Greg Stoutenburg: So, I’ll just answer the questions and then give, like, general reflections. So, my experience working with stakeholders there was that they liked our work, they were impressed by work.
115 00:12:55.690 ⇒ 00:13:07.379 Greg Stoutenburg: Importantly, they thought our work was absolutely essential, and they were on fire if they didn’t have it, and that they didn’t know what it did for the business, except to keep the wheels on.
116 00:13:07.660 ⇒ 00:13:15.419 Greg Stoutenburg: So, like, perceived business impact is, like, essential. Essential in the way that, like, that, like.
117 00:13:15.550 ⇒ 00:13:24.309 Greg Stoutenburg: in your house, you have doors that shut, you know, to, like, keep out critters, is essential. Like, you don’t have a house, you don’t have, like, you know, walls and stuff.
118 00:13:24.770 ⇒ 00:13:29.629 Greg Stoutenburg: what went well the past 4 months, I think, I mean, I think we put out…
119 00:13:30.060 ⇒ 00:13:47.479 Greg Stoutenburg: speaking very broadly, like, I think we put out many of their fires, I think we gave them promising directions to go in, I think we showed them the light on some things around, like, you know, I know they’re huge fans of Zoron’s edge tracking work, I know that they, they seem to have
120 00:13:47.580 ⇒ 00:13:57.349 Greg Stoutenburg: they seemed to have the impression they could just come to us and we would unlock things, and that, we were really valuable in that way. What didn’t go well is, I think, very often.
121 00:13:57.350 ⇒ 00:14:11.379 Greg Stoutenburg: aside from a couple of key areas, and I would, again, you know, mostly, like, nod to Zora on this one, aside from some really key, you know, like, big work around, like, the edge stuff, I think very often there were just these really quick pivots where we didn’t have time to really…
122 00:14:11.590 ⇒ 00:14:22.710 Greg Stoutenburg: We had the time and resources to get something to 90% to 93%, but not 100. And then they would really obsess over that last little gap.
123 00:14:22.960 ⇒ 00:14:38.879 Greg Stoutenburg: And, you know, and I would point to, for example, like, about Mixpanel, or even some things like an Omni, some things that I touch personally. I know it’s like, it’s like, yeah, we can get there, but, like, we need another week of just this. But, you know, then there’d be another fire, and we move on.
124 00:14:39.250 ⇒ 00:14:56.550 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. If we were to continue on, what changes would we need to make, I think, like, I think actually exactly what you’re pitching to them now, which is, like, we need to have a defined scope of work where it’s like, here’s the thing that we’re going to do, and we’re not… we’re not doing this firefighting stuff, because
125 00:14:56.550 ⇒ 00:15:00.419 Greg Stoutenburg: I think there are 3 pieces that all…
126 00:15:00.420 ⇒ 00:15:05.140 Greg Stoutenburg: wrapped together. One is not having those hard boundaries around what we’re gonna do.
127 00:15:05.140 ⇒ 00:15:28.380 Greg Stoutenburg: Another is, being expected to move so quickly that we don’t sort of close out that last 5% or so on some things that we do. And then, finally, for the perceived business impact, like, it’s really hard to quantify something that’s essential, right? It’s like, you know, it almost sounds like a joke, like, what dollar value would you put on being able to drink water? It’s like, I don’t know.
128 00:15:28.380 ⇒ 00:15:38.029 Greg Stoutenburg: I know I can’t pay that amount, whatever it is, but I think that earbuds should cost, you know, not more than, like, $120. You know what I mean? So, like, I think.
129 00:15:38.030 ⇒ 00:15:38.350 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
130 00:15:38.350 ⇒ 00:15:49.279 Greg Stoutenburg: I think we had this really essential role for them, or have this really essential role for them, but, like, they don’t know how to quantify it unless we tell them how to quantify it. So, I think we’re in the right place, you know, as far as, like, you’re pitching them
131 00:15:49.620 ⇒ 00:15:52.789 Greg Stoutenburg: the last I saw, right, it was, like, this three-tier sort of options.
132 00:15:52.790 ⇒ 00:15:53.210 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
133 00:15:53.210 ⇒ 00:16:00.220 Greg Stoutenburg: Like, define scope, here’s what it’s worth, here’s where it’ll get you, I think is something that has been a gap.
134 00:16:05.230 ⇒ 00:16:05.740 Greg Stoutenburg: Yep.
135 00:16:05.740 ⇒ 00:16:13.879 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, if I can just respond to a couple things. I mean, yeah, I think that’s, so, yeah, I mean, I think you neglected to say, we literally…
136 00:16:14.010 ⇒ 00:16:29.830 Robert Tseng: ripped them out of Tableau and move them into a new BI tool in that 4 months. That was not, kind of, like, planned at the start of Q1. It was, like, start Q1 wasn’t even on the radar, it was just like, okay, renew Tableau. I mean, part of it was like, oh, there was this opportunity to move to Omni, but they’re also like, we hate Tableau, get us off Tableau.
137 00:16:29.920 ⇒ 00:16:45.360 Robert Tseng: And it was like, yeah, and I think what the biggest problems that you’re talking about, of the essentials or its perceived business impact, is what’s perceived as essentials, these are all of our stakeholders, our colleagues, pretty much, at Eden who
138 00:16:45.360 ⇒ 00:16:56.739 Robert Tseng: who think that our work is valuable, because it helps them, but yeah, I mean, I think, like, the decision-maker role really is the… is the C-suite. And I think, like, where I want to respond there is, I think putting it in a…
139 00:16:57.140 ⇒ 00:17:16.099 Robert Tseng: I’ve… as much as I tried to… I mean, Greg, you’ve obviously talked to some of them, and Zoran, you know, you’ve talked to… you know, you’ve talked about Timitesh, but he’s not even really, like, in that… in that, like, ELT kind of group either. It’s just, like, the… the… the way that they make decisions, like, the eye of Sauron there is, like, just…
140 00:17:16.109 ⇒ 00:17:16.619 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.
141 00:17:17.000 ⇒ 00:17:40.549 Robert Tseng: I mean, when… when it’s… when it’s Adam, it’s a certain way, when it’s Josh, it’s a certain way, like, there’s a lot of inconsistencies in their leadership. It’s no… it’s not just an hour problem, so I don’t… I want to kind of be clear on that. I mean, there’s a reason why vendors churn out of their… out of their organization, like, pretty much every three to six months. So, like, it… it’s just really difficult to kind of be under, like, those three-headed beasts that, like, doesn’t really all say the same thing.
142 00:17:40.550 ⇒ 00:18:04.169 Robert Tseng: And not only that, they just kind of pop in and out whenever they feel like. They’re not really, like, leading, kind of, like, with consistency. And so, yeah, that forces us to do a lot of the scrambling to kind of react to things that, like, come in. And… but that can… a lot of that can be noise, and then ultimately, if it doesn’t really make it up the value chain to ELT, and ELT doesn’t… doesn’t believe that it’s essential, or if they’re, like.
143 00:18:04.320 ⇒ 00:18:14.729 Robert Tseng: yeah, regardless of how misinformed they are, they… they just… they view the business very differently from the people that we’re talking to day to day. So, I think there needs to be something about, like.
144 00:18:15.070 ⇒ 00:18:28.850 Robert Tseng: I should not be doing these ELT check-ins by myself, you know, also. And that’s not your guys, it’s just because that was the relationship that we had, and they were very insistent on doing it that way, and I’m… yeah, I’m not allowing that if we were to continue. Like, they need to really…
145 00:18:28.850 ⇒ 00:18:36.339 Robert Tseng: You know, you guys are already being looped into the mix, so whoever the leaders on… in our org that are on this… on this project.
146 00:18:36.340 ⇒ 00:18:47.799 Robert Tseng: will have that direct line to ELT, and, you know, frankly, like, they need to be managed with more time than I… I was giving them the past few months. Like, I do know that there was, like, a…
147 00:18:48.240 ⇒ 00:19:07.800 Robert Tseng: huge dip on my side, like, kind of, because, you know, we moved on and we were taking on other clients. So, but yeah, the way that I was running it before, maybe 6 months ago, was, like, not really sustainable, which is… I do prefer that we were… we were heading in this direction. So anyway, I… I guess maybe the last part was a little bit more of a tangent and not directly answering Greg, but…
148 00:19:07.800 ⇒ 00:19:12.930 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think those are kind of some of my, you know, responses to what Raj Chair.
149 00:19:13.480 ⇒ 00:19:32.879 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, and just real quick to add, I also didn’t want to suggest that it’s, like, our fault. Like, the fact that their heads were on fire all the time, that was… I mean, I know I got sick of that very early, or something like, you know, like the Omni thing, like, we’ve just given you this amazing thing, and now they’re looking at all these, like, little nitpicks that they were fine with in Tableau, because, you know, it’s like, this is the same… It is the same.
150 00:19:32.880 ⇒ 00:19:41.850 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, it’s the same as it was before, but you’ve been mad about it for six weeks. It’s like, I don’t know what you’re actually asking for. So, yeah, no, fully agree. They could be… they were really challenging in that way.
151 00:19:42.330 ⇒ 00:19:42.880 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
152 00:19:46.270 ⇒ 00:19:51.160 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, okay, so… So, from my side,
153 00:19:51.330 ⇒ 00:20:07.670 Zoran Selinger: So, I’m mostly talking about Mitesh and the team, because that’s basically my work directly impacted them, in most cases, up until recently, but I’ll get to there.
154 00:20:07.670 ⇒ 00:20:08.760 Robert Tseng: Sure.
155 00:20:08.860 ⇒ 00:20:16.890 Zoran Selinger: So, the… basically, the only thing Mitesh wanted, in the last, what, half a year, is…
156 00:20:17.020 ⇒ 00:20:23.799 Zoran Selinger: Is to have enough visibility, In enough reporting that is reliable.
157 00:20:25.290 ⇒ 00:20:26.839 Zoran Selinger: We did not get there.
158 00:20:28.070 ⇒ 00:20:28.850 Zoran Selinger: in this…
159 00:20:28.850 ⇒ 00:20:29.230 Robert Tseng: Hmm.
160 00:20:29.230 ⇒ 00:20:39.099 Zoran Selinger: There’s plenty that is fine, he considers reliable, but there’s plenty that isn’t, that it isn’t.
161 00:20:39.430 ⇒ 00:20:46.529 Zoran Selinger: And he is fine with that, right? he still, like, thinks…
162 00:20:46.960 ⇒ 00:20:52.329 Zoran Selinger: this is work in progress, and we’ll get there. He… I don’t see, still, like, a…
163 00:20:52.640 ⇒ 00:20:57.079 Zoran Selinger: him being super frustrated with those things. We delivered enough.
164 00:20:57.080 ⇒ 00:20:57.720 Robert Tseng: Well, we were…
165 00:20:58.040 ⇒ 00:21:17.570 Robert Tseng: other call that we had last week with him, Zoran, like, I mean, he was frustra… I mean, he’s still frustrated about, like, just things that are not being maintained, right? Like, it’s just, like, the mixed panel stuff is what he was talking about. Like, I feel like his frustration is a moving target, too. Like, he… it’s not like he really knows what the full thing that she should be looking at is, either. He just, like…
166 00:21:17.630 ⇒ 00:21:29.690 Robert Tseng: you know, there’s always more, like, I think that’s part of his job, to always kind of think about, I want a little more here, I want a little more there, I’m starting this channel over here, and, like, it’s just gonna keep being expanding. So do you actually think it’s that we didn’t…
167 00:21:29.720 ⇒ 00:21:39.099 Robert Tseng: We didn’t meet it, or that, like, the scope actually just got wider over time, which is, like, is this even something that we could ever have even completed in his eyes?
168 00:21:41.330 ⇒ 00:21:50.169 Zoran Selinger: I think scope will, yeah, always increase, at least a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, I think that is going… that is going to happen.
169 00:21:50.960 ⇒ 00:21:56.290 Zoran Selinger: Basically, yes. So that’s what we… where we… under-delivered.
170 00:21:56.470 ⇒ 00:21:58.849 Zoran Selinger: The reason why that happened is…
171 00:21:59.100 ⇒ 00:22:03.949 Zoran Selinger: like, especially Q1 and this last month.
172 00:22:05.250 ⇒ 00:22:09.560 Zoran Selinger: at no point, I was at a position where I could
173 00:22:09.840 ⇒ 00:22:13.729 Zoran Selinger: start becoming proactive. At absolutely no point, that happened.
174 00:22:14.020 ⇒ 00:22:32.410 Zoran Selinger: It was all reaction, reaction, reaction, and I had absolutely no time or capacity for proactively looking, for example, like, looking through the reports. You were doing some of that QA daily or weekly, but that is supposed to be my job.
175 00:22:32.670 ⇒ 00:22:42.249 Zoran Selinger: to go through the reports and see if any kind of bigger discrepancies come up and all that stuff. Just no capacity for it.
176 00:22:42.350 ⇒ 00:22:48.880 Zoran Selinger: Because there was always something. Part of the reason… part of the reason is because, yes.
177 00:22:48.980 ⇒ 00:23:06.400 Zoran Selinger: a lot of people are making changes, and things are moving without us knowing. Like, you will see… see that Caesar guy making changes based on what mutation Ryan said, and Ryan making changes, and then we got, like, 3 weeks ago.
178 00:23:07.120 ⇒ 00:23:09.260 Zoran Selinger: And at no point
179 00:23:09.920 ⇒ 00:23:18.580 Zoran Selinger: MixPanel was a priority in my… that was never… up until, like, 3 weeks ago, that was never a ticket.
180 00:23:18.580 ⇒ 00:23:19.439 Robert Tseng: Never pirated, yeah.
181 00:23:19.440 ⇒ 00:23:26.800 Zoran Selinger: Never… I’ve never looked into MixedPanel until 3 weeks ago at all. That never came up.
182 00:23:26.800 ⇒ 00:23:29.050 Robert Tseng: Kicking it down, yeah. And everything that we.
183 00:23:29.050 ⇒ 00:23:37.369 Zoran Selinger: And then all of a sudden, all of a sudden, Adam comes in, and this is the most important thing that’s… that kind of blows up everything.
184 00:23:37.370 ⇒ 00:23:39.240 Robert Tseng: Which it really is not, but yeah.
185 00:23:39.710 ⇒ 00:23:46.699 Zoran Selinger: So, yeah, so, that was… for example, I did not know,
186 00:23:46.790 ⇒ 00:24:03.880 Zoran Selinger: because, like I said, mixed panel wasn’t… wasn’t a focus. Maybe it should have been, because I didn’t know ELT looks at MixedPanel so much, at least Adam, right? So, maybe that should have been a higher priority for us. If he’s in there so much,
187 00:24:04.380 ⇒ 00:24:05.400 Zoran Selinger: he says.
188 00:24:06.370 ⇒ 00:24:17.310 Zoran Selinger: in a call, he told me, like, even… yes, we have Omni, but he prefers this, and he’s gonna try to do some things in Mixpanel. So, yes.
189 00:24:17.930 ⇒ 00:24:39.879 Zoran Selinger: if we are to go forward, we need to be aware of those things, and pay maybe a little bit more attention to those tools that they actually like to use. With Mitesh, it’s easy. Mitesh tells us, at least he was very clear, he likes Google Sheets, he’s pretty handy in, like, in Excel, likes to… he’s a Claude.
190 00:24:39.990 ⇒ 00:24:42.529 Zoran Selinger: Plugged in, and he can do a lot.
191 00:24:42.930 ⇒ 00:24:55.910 Zoran Selinger: like, in a local file. So, permitage, it’s important to see it in a spreadsheet format, right, for example. But if ELT likes this, then yeah, that should be… that should be, pretty clear.
192 00:24:57.930 ⇒ 00:25:15.459 Zoran Selinger: we… like, I felt like, okay, I… once I started looking into segment and mixed panel, like, everything was built already, and it’s just, I need time to untangle that, and just never get… go there before Adam blew up everything.
193 00:25:15.460 ⇒ 00:25:16.020 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
194 00:25:16.460 ⇒ 00:25:21.220 Zoran Selinger: so, yeah, basically, we were…
195 00:25:21.600 ⇒ 00:25:30.859 Zoran Selinger: I was super reactive, I couldn’t… couldn’t get ahead of that at all. It’s mostly… it’s… one thing is that I said, the lack of governance of
196 00:25:30.860 ⇒ 00:25:42.560 Zoran Selinger: everyone’s making changes, things are happening, but also Basque was a big thing, because they changed the data layer again the other day, by the way.
197 00:25:42.670 ⇒ 00:25:49.050 Zoran Selinger: We started getting no, page titles again, because they moved.
198 00:25:49.320 ⇒ 00:25:55.310 Zoran Selinger: Move the parameter into a different… into a different parameter in the data layer.
199 00:25:56.130 ⇒ 00:25:57.029 Zoran Selinger: And just…
200 00:25:57.260 ⇒ 00:26:04.159 Zoran Selinger: And with Catalyst, that was… that was a big, big deal. You know that, like, for example, January was all just Catalyst.
201 00:26:04.160 ⇒ 00:26:05.360 Robert Tseng: Yeah, it was just that.
202 00:26:05.360 ⇒ 00:26:09.759 Zoran Selinger: ahead of those changes. At least trying, right? They…
203 00:26:10.400 ⇒ 00:26:14.019 Zoran Selinger: They still look at… look at, us
204 00:26:14.480 ⇒ 00:26:20.829 Zoran Selinger: In terms for everything tracking and making sure that, that they can scale channels.
205 00:26:21.450 ⇒ 00:26:24.560 Zoran Selinger: They see us as key, still, right?
206 00:26:25.230 ⇒ 00:26:25.860 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
207 00:26:25.860 ⇒ 00:26:30.780 Zoran Selinger: But yeah, there is… there is frustration that it’s still… it’s still not there.
208 00:26:31.640 ⇒ 00:26:42.059 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I guess my question to you, Zora, would be like, I mean, obviously, you were… you were the most reactive on this client, like, you had to, you know, obviously, MarTech changes were the most important.
209 00:26:43.330 ⇒ 00:26:52.150 Robert Tseng: I mean, it’s really hard to do governance, building net new features, and, like, kind of QA maintenance at the same time. Like.
210 00:26:52.200 ⇒ 00:27:08.019 Robert Tseng: I think traditionally, these have been three separate roles. I do think that there is a world that, with kind of in this AI-native kind of world, that all these are all could be done under the same person, and that’s what, kind of, I was really, you know, we were talking about last week, and you were saying, hey, you think you actually could do that?
211 00:27:08.220 ⇒ 00:27:24.579 Robert Tseng: I think if we were to kind of continue on with them, we would have to figure out how to make that work. And I don’t… and it’s not to, like… it doesn’t mean… like, I don’t want to max out your time on Eden. Like, that to me is not really high leverage. You know, like, I feel like, you know, but if… if it’s, like.
212 00:27:25.180 ⇒ 00:27:38.900 Robert Tseng: there are certain counterparts on Eden. Like, I think everything should be on the table. Like, tell Caesar to get out of the… we should tell him, don’t have Caesar be in the environment. Ryan was really supposed to be… if he’s supposed to be CRO, like.
213 00:27:38.930 ⇒ 00:27:45.540 Robert Tseng: person, like, he’s supposed to be doing the QA and running the experiments, but he’s also kind of reactive all the time, too.
214 00:27:45.540 ⇒ 00:27:46.140 Zoran Selinger: Oh, yeah.
215 00:27:46.140 ⇒ 00:27:59.450 Robert Tseng: And, like, yeah, so it ends up, he’s, like, deflecting some of his strategic thinking to Greg, having Greg actually set the roadmap for him, teaching him how to do experiments, and then he’s also, like, making architecture decisions, like, you know, over to Zoran, so it’s like…
216 00:27:59.620 ⇒ 00:28:06.530 Robert Tseng: Well, yeah, that’s just gonna make us not… I mean, we’re just like a Ryan extension, like, I just… it’s a little bit confusing to me, like.
217 00:28:06.530 ⇒ 00:28:07.140 Zoran Selinger: He’s my role.
218 00:28:07.140 ⇒ 00:28:07.930 Robert Tseng: are.
219 00:28:07.930 ⇒ 00:28:10.440 Zoran Selinger: Most common, co-worker.
220 00:28:10.660 ⇒ 00:28:12.700 Zoran Selinger: Over the last… Whatever.
221 00:28:13.090 ⇒ 00:28:17.140 Zoran Selinger: the most… My question is, like, do we…
222 00:28:17.140 ⇒ 00:28:30.340 Robert Tseng: We don’t have to make the call of, like, getting Ryan off, like, I don’t necessarily think that’s in our place to say, but, like, yeah, we need a race year that’s really just Greg, and Ryan, even, you know, or, like, whatever that mix is, so, like…
223 00:28:30.450 ⇒ 00:28:43.520 Robert Tseng: like, around Martech. Like, there is no single MarTech owner, right? I think is… has been a problem. And so, me being in Boston this week, I’ve been really trying to… I went to a Martech conference yesterday, was, like, really trying to, like, understand, like.
224 00:28:43.520 ⇒ 00:28:58.680 Robert Tseng: what… how do we actually, like, put together a team that can actually run this? Is this even worth us running it? Because it’s, like, it seems like there’s just so much liability, like, we’re never, like, kind of viewed as successful, like, it’s just viewed as essential, and…
225 00:28:58.680 ⇒ 00:29:08.320 Robert Tseng: you know what, it’s, like, the only… is our only hope just, like, getting more Sorons and, like, planning them into… like, that to me is, like, very… like, that’s not scalable, like, frankly, like.
226 00:29:08.320 ⇒ 00:29:31.520 Robert Tseng: I mean, you… I… I look across all our different service lines, I kind of, like, am trying to… to evaluate, you know, what… what’s… what’s… what can we actually, like, turn on and just keep… keep selling, versus, like, what’s actually kind of… kind of stuck, and it gets our foot in the door, you know, so those are some of the trade-offs that I make, and I’m not… I don’t really have all those answers yet, but I think that solutions architect person, MarTech solutions… marketing solutions architect.
227 00:29:31.700 ⇒ 00:29:55.419 Robert Tseng: JD, that Zoran, I’d like you to kind of talk to this… this person. Like, I’m trying to figure out, like, is this… is this supposed to be a different… different person, you know? And, like, rather than having Greg Zoran on a client, maybe it’s, like, this person plus Zoran, and we just run even just with those two people, I’m not even really going to be on the account. It’ll just be YouTube. Like, maybe… maybe that’s kind of what… what… what the path forward could be as well.
228 00:29:56.700 ⇒ 00:30:09.439 Robert Tseng: And then, as far as, like, you know, there’s gonna be some light BI maintenance, I don’t… yeah, Jasmine’s here, but, like, you know, there’s… they’re not really asking for net new BI things, as far as, like, steering on, like.
229 00:30:09.440 ⇒ 00:30:17.019 Robert Tseng: continuing to develop the semantic layer and, like, doing net new analysis, it’s just not really something that they want right now. Yeah.