Meeting Title: Brainforge x Griffin Spectrum Partnership Discussion Date: 2026-05-11 Meeting participants: Robert Tseng, Corey Griffin
WEBVTT
1 00:00:43.170 ⇒ 00:00:44.589 Corey Griffin: Hey, Robert, how are you?
2 00:00:44.590 ⇒ 00:00:45.759 Robert Tseng: Hey, Corey!
3 00:00:46.230 ⇒ 00:00:47.430 Robert Tseng: Happy Monday.
4 00:00:48.120 ⇒ 00:00:50.390 Corey Griffin: It is Monday, indeed.
5 00:00:50.950 ⇒ 00:00:51.750 Corey Griffin: Yeah.
6 00:00:52.290 ⇒ 00:00:53.490 Corey Griffin: Well, you’re my first call.
7 00:00:53.490 ⇒ 00:00:56.030 Robert Tseng: today, so I’m excited to chat with you.
8 00:00:56.650 ⇒ 00:00:59.830 Corey Griffin: Yeah, same, same.
9 00:01:00.380 ⇒ 00:01:08.770 Corey Griffin: I’m not a big fan of Teams, however, it seems that a lot of enterprises are still using it, so…
10 00:01:08.770 ⇒ 00:01:09.320 Robert Tseng: Yes.
11 00:01:09.320 ⇒ 00:01:16.049 Corey Griffin: First pro… pro tip, make sure whatever’s going on, that you get… you figure it out.
12 00:01:16.340 ⇒ 00:01:16.850 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
13 00:01:16.850 ⇒ 00:01:17.370 Corey Griffin: Yeah.
14 00:01:18.900 ⇒ 00:01:20.030 Corey Griffin: Yep, go ahead.
15 00:01:20.260 ⇒ 00:01:29.270 Robert Tseng: No, no, I was gonna say, a few… a couple of our clients have run on Teams, I just… it’s not where we take most of our meetings, probably, like.
16 00:01:29.500 ⇒ 00:01:41.449 Robert Tseng: 10% of my meetings are on Teams. Sometimes it just doesn’t load, and yeah, I mean, I… yeah, I’m sure we’ll figure it out afterwards, but it’s not really easy to troubleshoot.
17 00:01:42.760 ⇒ 00:01:51.549 Corey Griffin: Yeah, and again, right, it’s not a hard feelings thing, it’s just some of your… as the customers get bigger for some reason.
18 00:01:51.680 ⇒ 00:02:09.690 Corey Griffin: they’re all got their big Microsoft agreements, so they end up using Teams, and most of them don’t like it, that I interact with. But it seems… I’ve done this a few times, where, hey, and it’s a courtesy, right? Hey, what’s the… what’s the simple troubleshoot? Because I have the hosted Teams, right? And what’s going on with it?
19 00:02:09.810 ⇒ 00:02:20.150 Corey Griffin: Just to make sure that there… it doesn’t run into a… that this is a no-judgment zone, right? We want to catch up and talk about more things than team… teams, but it just…
20 00:02:20.280 ⇒ 00:02:30.870 Corey Griffin: folks are in a no-win situation, they don’t have the power over, you know, I’m talking about, like, companies 10,000, you know, 50,000 employees, stuff like that, right? They get these volume discounts, and…
21 00:02:31.190 ⇒ 00:02:34.989 Corey Griffin: cost-conscious, and, you know, they’re stuck with teams, which…
22 00:02:35.270 ⇒ 00:02:50.929 Corey Griffin: Yeah, anyway, so that’s neither here nor there. First, I… thanks, man. I, you know, appreciate… I liked you and Uten’s presentation. I can give you a little bit of my background more than just the casual lobby introduction.
23 00:02:50.950 ⇒ 00:02:57.439 Corey Griffin: And you know, you guys have got something interesting, so definitely want to talk through a handful of things, and…
24 00:02:57.940 ⇒ 00:03:08.610 Corey Griffin: see how we… there may be some synergies, and or references, or whatever it goes. That’s kind of what I had in mind. Do you feel similarly, or… Yeah, yeah.
25 00:03:10.170 ⇒ 00:03:24.209 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, that was the… yeah, this was one of the follow-ups we wanted to have, so Utam’s actually, with… at Datastrike today, he’s meeting Buddy, so we’re, you know, we’re still, like, kind of following up with… with folks post-Vixel, and…
26 00:03:24.210 ⇒ 00:03:36.519 Robert Tseng: yeah, just wanting to kind of open… open these doors and kind of see… see where they take us. So, yeah, appreciate the kind message, and, you know, we just want to see how we could possibly partner together, and, yeah.
27 00:03:37.640 ⇒ 00:03:54.419 Corey Griffin: Yeah, let me… I’m really direct. That’s just one of… that’s part of my charm, as I like to say. You guys had really good energy. Not that others did not, but I’d mentioned a little bit of this to Utam, you know, right before you had walked up.
28 00:03:54.540 ⇒ 00:03:58.830 Corey Griffin: You guys are humble, hungry, curious…
29 00:03:58.950 ⇒ 00:04:06.169 Corey Griffin: Those are all things where a lot of folks are, you know, approach it, and, you know, it’s about the money.
30 00:04:07.590 ⇒ 00:04:26.480 Corey Griffin: And you… clearly, you’re trying to, you know, build a business. I want to hear about… more about that DNA. Yeah. But you guys, like, had… you got this, this aura about you, this energy about you, that I think will play really nicely into attracting talent.
31 00:04:26.570 ⇒ 00:04:45.589 Corey Griffin: And also, you know, it’s a breath of fresh air for, I think, businesses and enterprises just to conduct business. Yeah, it’s about the zeros and ones, but this AI, it’s about trust, right? And the way that, you know, I’ve gone watched a couple, you know, looked at you guys’ website, a couple of videos.
32 00:04:45.620 ⇒ 00:04:59.219 Corey Griffin: And, like, you basically, in your business model, hey, give me your data, we’re gonna create some AI, you know, greatness for you, and what that looks like. In order to do that, you gotta establish trust, right? And so, how do you establish trust? And the first step is.
33 00:04:59.220 ⇒ 00:05:06.030 Corey Griffin: you know, is customer service, right? And so, anyway, I’m just giving you immediately, like, free feedback on
34 00:05:06.030 ⇒ 00:05:15.700 Corey Griffin: what I see, from that standpoint, that’s one. Two, let me… let me talk a little bit about my background, and just to help you understand where I’m coming from as well.
35 00:05:15.700 ⇒ 00:05:16.320 Robert Tseng: Sure.
36 00:05:17.060 ⇒ 00:05:36.830 Corey Griffin: So I’m… I started a long time ago as a consultant right out of college. I’m originally from New Orleans, Louisiana area. I’ve been in Dallas for… it’s gonna be 20 years in just a few months. I was in… I was in New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina when it happened, and that’s how I got to.
37 00:05:36.830 ⇒ 00:05:37.150 Robert Tseng: about.
38 00:05:37.880 ⇒ 00:05:50.419 Corey Griffin: I was working for a firm that… we had 10 to 12 feet of water. I could write a book just on all the stories, that came from that. But that’s how I got to corporate, for this company called Textron, Bell Helicopter Assistant Aircraft.
39 00:05:50.710 ⇒ 00:05:56.029 Corey Griffin: And, I went from being responsible for IT and systems and services
40 00:05:56.210 ⇒ 00:06:03.149 Corey Griffin: For about 1,200 users to certain services across all 70,000 users, so…
41 00:06:03.370 ⇒ 00:06:13.289 Corey Griffin: I probably wasn’t qualified to take that job, but someone saw talent in me and invested in me, and then the rest is history, right? And then fast-forward career.
42 00:06:13.770 ⇒ 00:06:19.990 Corey Griffin: after you go from IT executive, what do you… what’s the natural transition? I went into sales at Microsoft.
43 00:06:20.460 ⇒ 00:06:34.410 Corey Griffin: Which is not necessarily linear. I was there when I was at Microsoft, I kind of did a tr… the way I sell is trusted selling. You heard my comment earlier around trust, so I… it’s just something I listen for, something I look for.
44 00:06:34.440 ⇒ 00:06:41.979 Corey Griffin: And so, when I was there is when Azure, Officereach, all these things launched when I was there, and selling.
45 00:06:42.280 ⇒ 00:06:51.040 Corey Griffin: not to go through the whole thing, just fast forward, fast forward, had a life event like many other people have. I lost my father to cancer about 13 years ago.
46 00:06:51.090 ⇒ 00:07:10.120 Corey Griffin: And I said, you know what, I really, really, really love consulting. I want to give back to my first love. And so I went and worked for a firm for a bit, connection from Microsoft kind of thing, and we put the first ERP system in Azure on the planet. So, first, I’ve been around cloud since the early days, right?
47 00:07:10.210 ⇒ 00:07:13.410 Corey Griffin: And then I got a phone call from Amazon, and then…
48 00:07:13.970 ⇒ 00:07:21.290 Corey Griffin: To me, that was 2014, and in 2014, to me, it was a cardboard box and a smile. It wasn’t very serious tech.
49 00:07:21.500 ⇒ 00:07:22.380 Corey Griffin: But…
50 00:07:22.560 ⇒ 00:07:30.379 Corey Griffin: because the phone call came in from someone that I’d actually coached and mentored, which was kind of an interesting inversed phone call.
51 00:07:30.440 ⇒ 00:07:44.120 Corey Griffin: I took it ser… I took the interview seriously, and I’m like, man, if this company’s half of what it pretends to be, it might be the best company I would ever work for. The rest is history. I spent over 9 years working in progressive growth.
52 00:07:44.260 ⇒ 00:07:51.770 Corey Griffin: And ultimately built a business, of delivery consultants and a technical pre-sales organization.
53 00:07:51.870 ⇒ 00:08:06.989 Corey Griffin: it was about 1,700 people in 38 different countries, from me being employee number one in that area to that big. Some… a lot of it was organic hiring, but, you know, acquisitions and, like, you know, just…
54 00:08:07.080 ⇒ 00:08:18.260 Corey Griffin: consolidation of the resources is where it got there. So, about 2 years ago, I made a decision. My youngest daughter, it was going to be her senior year of high school.
55 00:08:18.450 ⇒ 00:08:34.699 Corey Griffin: And then she was gonna go off to college, so I just wanted… I was flying all the time. No regrets, you know, it’s a really cool job, I got my personal stuff in. But I just wanted to spend a lot more time with her, and it honestly was, okay, well, what’s my next big challenge?
56 00:08:34.850 ⇒ 00:08:40.470 Corey Griffin: And so once I did that, once I decided to leave, and I started organically getting
57 00:08:40.640 ⇒ 00:08:49.380 Corey Griffin: Phone calls, and just friend-to-friend, like, colleagues, connections, things of that, and hardly… not hardly, zero marketing.
58 00:08:49.580 ⇒ 00:09:06.419 Corey Griffin: And I didn’t have a whole lot of startup experience, but that’s where, like, people… because I had all that scale experience, startups or, like, Series B funded people were reaching out for a consultation on, hey, we’ve done a great job building it to here, but, like, what does it take to get to
59 00:09:06.420 ⇒ 00:09:22.139 Corey Griffin: you know, 100 people, or whatever, right? And so, I started having that type of consultation, and I was also doing executive coaching, some career coaching, things of that nature, and so that… that’s where the name Griffin Spectrum Group thing. I’m like, man, this is just a spectrum of stuff.
60 00:09:22.140 ⇒ 00:09:22.740 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
61 00:09:22.740 ⇒ 00:09:32.480 Corey Griffin: let me create some legal entity to actually, you know, be able to contract. And so, that’s… that’s what I’ve been doing for the last couple years, and…
62 00:09:32.970 ⇒ 00:09:34.140 Corey Griffin: you know, I…
63 00:09:34.540 ⇒ 00:09:46.599 Corey Griffin: it’s kind of been dad mode, to be honest, and transparent. That’s my brain, is trust. You probably feel that already. I genuinely, at this stage of my career, at this stage of my life, at least where I am.
64 00:09:46.600 ⇒ 00:10:01.499 Corey Griffin: I’m in dad mode. Like, I want the next generation, which is you, Utam, and others like you, I want you guys to be successful. Whether this turns into anything or not, it’s just how I made, you know, really good parents brought me up a long time ago.
65 00:10:01.630 ⇒ 00:10:03.919 Corey Griffin: And, you know, it’s time for…
66 00:10:04.070 ⇒ 00:10:12.530 Corey Griffin: your generation to really start leading, and, you know, if that turns into business-to-business, advisory, consulting.
67 00:10:12.890 ⇒ 00:10:20.930 Corey Griffin: you know, selling on behalf, we’ll see where all this goes. But that’s my DNA and how I’m wired, so feel free to shoot any holes in any of that.
68 00:10:21.560 ⇒ 00:10:26.799 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, I really appreciate the transparency, and yeah, I think it was refreshing to kind of hear you
69 00:10:26.930 ⇒ 00:10:36.680 Robert Tseng: walk through your journey. I mean, obviously, you’re a super accomplished leader, and, but yeah, just kind of the backbone through it is you can tell that, you know.
70 00:10:36.680 ⇒ 00:10:48.870 Robert Tseng: People took a chance on you, and you also kind of took a chance on other people, and it seems like, yeah, that lineage of trust has, like, kind of been something that’s, like, a through line throughout your career.
71 00:10:48.960 ⇒ 00:10:59.240 Robert Tseng: So yeah, no, I think, I appreciate that, like, you have that perspective, and, yeah, I think for us, like, we are…
72 00:11:00.240 ⇒ 00:11:01.870 Robert Tseng: I mean, we’re… I guess…
73 00:11:02.110 ⇒ 00:11:22.000 Robert Tseng: we’re, you know, we’re about, like, 25 people, you know, and kind of still pretty early, like, Utem and I have really only been kind of under… working together for, like, around 2 years. But yeah, we’ve experienced a lot of growth at this point. Yeah, I think we’re kind of thinking about what does this next stage look like?
74 00:11:22.000 ⇒ 00:11:46.899 Robert Tseng: I think Fixel really opened up a lot of doors. We’ve already taken some action since then. We brought on a full-time partnerships manager, because one of our takeaways was, hey, like, we need to go and, like, attach to one of these hyperscalers more deeply, and for us, like, Snowflake is kind of where we already started and have some roots. So we’re really just trying to kind of lead into that more. But along the way, we’ve had… met some interesting contacts at AWS, at GCP, so…
75 00:11:47.030 ⇒ 00:11:54.359 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think building these platform partnerships is definitely top of mind for us. And then from there.
76 00:11:54.360 ⇒ 00:12:10.859 Robert Tseng: you know, there’s also kind of this… the takeaway that, hey, there’s… is vertical positioning necessary right now? Because we kind of have established a wide set of capabilities that have allowed us to kind of maybe punch higher than what our size is, and I think we’re still kind of navigating, like.
77 00:12:10.900 ⇒ 00:12:35.519 Robert Tseng: I mean, there’s no, like, single vertical that dominates the majority of our portfolio. We kind of have a mix of different, a business, so I think that’s another thing top of mind for me to kind of figure out. And so, kind of, my role is I basically lead commercial at Brainforge. I run… I do all the… most of the business development, and then, you know, Utam is kind of, like, the innovation leader and kind of the front-facing CEO, so…
78 00:12:35.520 ⇒ 00:12:41.090 Robert Tseng: Yeah, that’s kind of, like, you know, a little bit of where we’re at, and kind of our rules today.
79 00:12:42.790 ⇒ 00:13:00.059 Corey Griffin: Yeah, I mean, one thing I’d tell you about my responsibilities in that decade… so, that employee number one, the reason why it was employee number one is because Amazon decided to create, a vertical business. So, most of my… probably 8 years of my 9 years.
80 00:13:00.300 ⇒ 00:13:09.659 Corey Griffin: was I built a vertical-based business across the world. My peers were pure sales with industry specialists.
81 00:13:09.820 ⇒ 00:13:24.500 Corey Griffin: But I had industry specialists, and my organization literally was healthcare, life sciences, energy, automotive, things of that nature. I spent a boatload of time in energy, and me personally, like.
82 00:13:24.680 ⇒ 00:13:30.380 Corey Griffin: overseeing a project for, like, 4 or 5 straight months, me flying to Houston every single week.
83 00:13:30.570 ⇒ 00:13:34.130 Corey Griffin: So it’s an interesting perspective.
84 00:13:34.240 ⇒ 00:13:50.900 Corey Griffin: You’re… you’re asking the right questions, and I’m gonna probably answer some… say some things that you’re thinking about, which is, hey, I’ve got a portfolio, so it’s awesome, you guys, and you show up with the hat with data on it, so clearly you guys look at data before you make decisions, which is…
85 00:13:51.070 ⇒ 00:13:58.640 Corey Griffin: Which is, which is smart and not foolish, where folks says, hey, let’s go, let’s go! You know, being grounded in data clearly is part of your DNA.
86 00:14:00.060 ⇒ 00:14:06.709 Corey Griffin: There’s a lot of stuff going on in verticals, and verticals are very, in certain cases, can be very political.
87 00:14:06.840 ⇒ 00:14:10.350 Corey Griffin: And so you gotta watch politics, specifically energy.
88 00:14:10.530 ⇒ 00:14:15.890 Corey Griffin: You know, that’s… that’s one to definitely watch. But the major ones.
89 00:14:16.020 ⇒ 00:14:18.620 Corey Griffin: There’s… there’s gonna be a big one,
90 00:14:18.740 ⇒ 00:14:28.580 Corey Griffin: And it pertains to Texas, and I’m sure you’re paying attention to it, and it’s financial services. There’s a lot of movement between
91 00:14:28.820 ⇒ 00:14:47.139 Corey Griffin: activities and people, between New York and between Texas, Tennessee, and Florida. Some of that’s California as well. And, there’s lots of footprint, for JPMorgan Chase. Citibank has a huge campus in Irving, Texas.
92 00:14:47.420 ⇒ 00:14:57.860 Corey Griffin: This is what I’m about ready to tell you next. Clearly, it’s public information, you can look it up. But the Texas Stock Exchange comes online, in July.
93 00:14:58.400 ⇒ 00:15:05.839 Corey Griffin: So, building up… And supporting other businesses that may be in that world.
94 00:15:06.120 ⇒ 00:15:16.120 Corey Griffin: might be something for you guys, definitely, to pay attention to. I’m sure you at least maybe have had a preliminary conversation, but it’s gonna be… there’s gonna be a lot of people jumping into that fray.
95 00:15:16.620 ⇒ 00:15:24.590 Corey Griffin: So, I see you guys as potentially being a differentiator because of your approach, right? There’s, like, it’s gonna be like getting…
96 00:15:25.120 ⇒ 00:15:33.189 Corey Griffin: I still get paper mail, I’m in my home office. So it’s like… it’s gonna be like getting these little mailers in the mail, right? All the email, all the approach, so…
97 00:15:33.370 ⇒ 00:15:36.970 Corey Griffin: It’ll be… I think a lot of…
98 00:15:37.450 ⇒ 00:15:40.600 Corey Griffin: Relationship management will have to go into…
99 00:15:40.750 ⇒ 00:15:46.350 Corey Griffin: like, who’s the target? Who’s the customer to interact with? What does that look like? And I think…
100 00:15:47.040 ⇒ 00:15:55.260 Corey Griffin: it’s… I think a lot of it’s changing as well. Nobody will respond to email, mailers, per se, but a lot of relationship, who knows who?
101 00:15:55.510 ⇒ 00:16:02.910 Corey Griffin: And what I learned from Dixel is that there’s a lot of people… there were a lot of people in Dallas at that event, by the way, if you didn’t know that.
102 00:16:04.640 ⇒ 00:16:11.070 Corey Griffin: And so I’ve been interacting and connecting with them as well, in general. So that’s just my take on industry, I mean.
103 00:16:11.400 ⇒ 00:16:15.009 Corey Griffin: I would go into it very carefully.
104 00:16:16.150 ⇒ 00:16:18.780 Corey Griffin: Don’t box yourself in a corner either, right? And so…
105 00:16:20.970 ⇒ 00:16:38.439 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, Udam’s background is, you know, in SaaS, and mine was in consumer goods, and so when we started the business together, that was kind of the majority of our business. I mean, surprisingly, in the past year, we’ve gotten a lot of interest in healthcare, so healthcare’s, like, half… almost half our business at this point.
106 00:16:38.450 ⇒ 00:16:46.890 Robert Tseng: And we are unlocking on the door of financial services, and so, yeah, I think there’s, there’s, there’s a couple, like.
107 00:16:48.300 ⇒ 00:17:12.510 Robert Tseng: Snowfake is passing us some leads, like, some, like, small, smaller banks, so yeah, I mean, I’m prepping for a call on Wednesday. Yeah, it’s not, it’s not an industry we’ve really kind of made headway into yet, so I’m still kind of, like, getting the reps, learning, like, what it is exactly we need in order to close a deal like that. But yeah, I think that’s definitely top of mind for us, that, like.
108 00:17:12.510 ⇒ 00:17:22.990 Robert Tseng: financial services, I think legal is another one that’s… that where I have a lot of connections into. So, those are… those are two verticals that I’m… I’m keen to… to…
109 00:17:23.060 ⇒ 00:17:26.799 Robert Tseng: To make some waves in, hopefully, in the next few months.
110 00:17:28.130 ⇒ 00:17:37.810 Corey Griffin: Yeah, the last one I was going to bring up was healthcare life sciences. I spent a lot of time with the… most of the interaction I had, as I said, back in AWS was with big customers.
111 00:17:37.930 ⇒ 00:17:54.919 Corey Griffin: And it’s been the startups the last couple of years, but, healthcare has spent the last 4 or 5 years, big ones, right, moving their data into cloud or whatever. Right. So now comes the transformation of the apps, so with healthcare, I could see even more…
112 00:17:55.100 ⇒ 00:18:02.020 Corey Griffin: some big stuff happening where folks are just trying to get insights more than analytics with data, right? Yeah.
113 00:18:02.520 ⇒ 00:18:09.649 Corey Griffin: From that perspective, so… Given, given that, where,
114 00:18:10.730 ⇒ 00:18:16.299 Corey Griffin: what do you… what do you… like, I’m… I’m asking, like, given…
115 00:18:16.390 ⇒ 00:18:22.640 Corey Griffin: like, where do you… where do you guys want to grow, and… and I want to be mindful? You know, there’s a…
116 00:18:22.640 ⇒ 00:18:39.680 Corey Griffin: disclaimer here, you know, between both of us at disclosing information. It’s a gentleman’s handshake. I don’t want to know your secret sauce. This is really about… the questions I’m asking is, like, about where you want to grow, da-da-da, so I can figure out how to potentially help you, or say, hey, what if I did X? That’s my intent.
117 00:18:40.360 ⇒ 00:18:44.650 Robert Tseng: Sure, yeah, well, so, I think we’re,
118 00:18:44.930 ⇒ 00:18:52.890 Robert Tseng: we want to… I mean, when we started the business a couple years ago, like, the goal was, like, hey, try to get to a…
119 00:18:53.510 ⇒ 00:19:10.149 Robert Tseng: you know, within 4 years, get to a… maybe exit for, like, a $30 million, you know, to evaluation at a bigger agency. That’s kind of what we thought we would… we were doing. I think the timeline is compressed significantly. We’ve received offers in the past 6 months already.
120 00:19:10.150 ⇒ 00:19:27.870 Robert Tseng: And, like, Vixel kind of even, like, accelerated that more, being like, wow, there really is just, like, this big gap, and, you know, there are… the bigger agencies that are trying to, like, get the capabilities that we have, they’re already knocking on our door. And so, it’s kind of made us think about being on the other side of the table.
121 00:19:27.870 ⇒ 00:19:47.419 Robert Tseng: And we actually think we’re at a size now where we can go and acquire other… other consultancies, trying to, like, think about, like, a different model. If we want to be in the game for… we want to… I think we do want to be in the game for… for longer. So, yeah, I think that’s kind of changed our… the ambition a little bit, in terms of, like.
122 00:19:47.420 ⇒ 00:20:03.150 Robert Tseng: I think there’s gonna… there’s a sequence to get there. So, I think one is expanding our existing capabilities just, within, like, the… kind of getting more… deeper roots in the platform partnerships, because we think we could get a lot more just off of, like, a…
123 00:20:03.150 ⇒ 00:20:14.939 Robert Tseng: you know, people build entire businesses all being an AWS partner, right? So I think kind of securing that for Brightforge, I think, is a way that we’ll be able to have a long runway.
124 00:20:14.940 ⇒ 00:20:32.799 Robert Tseng: And then after that, I think there are adjacent, kind of, services that we’re… that we’re interested in, kind of, potentially, like, acquiring as well. So, I mean, people are talking about AI-native services, and I think we already kind of have, like, the infrastructure to be able to enable that.
125 00:20:33.220 ⇒ 00:20:41.909 Robert Tseng: We do this for our clients, and, like, kind of mostly within their core ops team at these bigger brands, but, like, even if we were to run, like, a…
126 00:20:42.090 ⇒ 00:21:00.870 Robert Tseng: you know, like an insurance brokerage, or, like, an accounting firm, or something entirely AI natively, like, that’s an interesting kind of, like, feature state where, you know, if Brainforge kind of continues to develop its capabilities, we may get to a point where kind of, like, a specific service line like that
127 00:21:00.870 ⇒ 00:21:02.669 Robert Tseng: That’s kind of like a…
128 00:21:02.670 ⇒ 00:21:20.469 Robert Tseng: back office function that, you know, has… has good market size, we maybe would be able to go and pretty much just build… build… build that entirely. So, I think that’s, you know, that’s less of, like, the short-term play, but a kind of, like, where we feel like, as we continue to, build… build out
129 00:21:20.680 ⇒ 00:21:35.910 Robert Tseng: our capabilities, an opportunity like that could come in the next couple years, and I think we’d be able to go after that. So that’s kind of, you know, some ideas for kind of where we think we’re headed. But yeah.
130 00:21:36.950 ⇒ 00:21:44.860 Corey Griffin: So… This is why I was super excited to connect with you guys, like, I love how you…
131 00:21:45.440 ⇒ 00:21:54.540 Corey Griffin: You’re thinking about the future, And then, how… with the acceptance that Things may absolutely change.
132 00:21:54.750 ⇒ 00:21:55.310 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
133 00:21:55.310 ⇒ 00:22:04.009 Corey Griffin: Because it’s, you know, what you think the future’s gonna be. It may be close, but you gotta be smart enough to be nimble and say, hey, the world may change, right?
134 00:22:04.080 ⇒ 00:22:16.010 Corey Griffin: And so, the fact that you’re pure services, but I’m assuming you’re basically putting tooling together, right, that potentially could turn into a product. Okay, here’s the big question I’m sure you’re asking yourself.
135 00:22:16.720 ⇒ 00:22:20.630 Corey Griffin: With your existing contracts that you have with your customers.
136 00:22:20.780 ⇒ 00:22:34.839 Corey Griffin: Are you protecting yourself with IP on what you own versus what the customer owns? And if that ends up turning into a product, would they have rights to it, or you have… you have protected yourself to basically
137 00:22:35.140 ⇒ 00:22:46.640 Corey Griffin: use the information in a non-competing way. You do not have to tell me the answer to that. That just would be a… definitely something you guys… I’m assuming you’re talking about?
138 00:22:46.740 ⇒ 00:22:55.309 Corey Griffin: But you definitely want to look through that in that vision to say, hey, what’s ours versus what’s the customer’s? Clearly, their data should always be there, but that’s.
139 00:22:55.310 ⇒ 00:22:55.930 Robert Tseng: Right.
140 00:22:56.120 ⇒ 00:23:00.909 Corey Griffin: you guys operating with trust, right? All of a sudden, you launch a product line, you’re like, wait a minute.
141 00:23:01.050 ⇒ 00:23:02.490 Corey Griffin: They built that for me.
142 00:23:02.760 ⇒ 00:23:10.909 Corey Griffin: I’m going to challenge them legally, so that’s definitely… I’m not trying to give you a no, just… you might want to be thinking about that deeply.
143 00:23:11.130 ⇒ 00:23:14.240 Corey Griffin: In consultation on what’s ours versus…
144 00:23:14.700 ⇒ 00:23:17.080 Corey Griffin: What is something that we built for our customer?
145 00:23:17.610 ⇒ 00:23:30.319 Robert Tseng: Yeah, totally, and I think the… the conversation around that has changed significantly the past couple years, like, you know, data… data is the product, the foundation of products these days, and, yeah, I think, like.
146 00:23:30.360 ⇒ 00:23:54.809 Robert Tseng: it’s… I mean, that is something that we’re actively… actively talking about still, and I don’t think there’s a clean way to kind of, like, draw the line with client relationships still. I think by default, we’re like a… we’re still a managed services provider. Like, we… clients host, kind of the infrastructure that we build for them, and we’re managing it for them, but obviously, we’re learning a lot from it. We kind of build our own infrastructure to run on
147 00:23:54.810 ⇒ 00:24:07.019 Robert Tseng: our business, and so there is definitely a lot of, like, this feedback loop that, you know, how much of it can we actually just package up and call it our own? I think it’s… it is, you know, I don’t have all the answers for that yet.
148 00:24:07.810 ⇒ 00:24:22.089 Corey Griffin: If you haven’t consulted an IP lawyer deeply, you should. And just to review your current contracts about what you’re committed to and what you’re not, because the last thing you want to do is get really, really excited. You’re going to want to know your outs and or
149 00:24:22.140 ⇒ 00:24:37.910 Corey Griffin: get addendums signed that protect you, right? And just make sure that you’re able to harvest. You want to harvest, right? You want to get tooling better. And a big position of that is your tooling gets better, you either choose to pass savings along, or at least keep the pricing down if you’re in an MSP perspective.
150 00:24:38.080 ⇒ 00:24:41.809 Corey Griffin: One other thing I was thinking, and I’m being mindful of time, got our.
151 00:24:41.810 ⇒ 00:24:42.350 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no worries.
152 00:24:42.350 ⇒ 00:24:45.160 Corey Griffin: 30 minutes. The,
153 00:24:46.500 ⇒ 00:24:59.599 Corey Griffin: One thing to think about as well is, if you’re gonna get in acquisition world, like, what’s, like, what’s your playbook? What are you looking for? What enhances you guys? No doubt you’re… you’re talking about a lot of this stuff.
154 00:25:01.810 ⇒ 00:25:12.260 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I’d be curious to pick your brain, because you said you grew your team at Amazon, I mean, organically, and also through inorganic growth. You did it through acquisitions, too, so, maybe another time would be interesting to pick your brain.
155 00:25:12.260 ⇒ 00:25:12.780 Corey Griffin: I’m glad…
156 00:25:12.780 ⇒ 00:25:13.140 Robert Tseng: how you’re.
157 00:25:13.140 ⇒ 00:25:16.710 Corey Griffin: Glad to get some… yeah, glad to get some more time with you. What,
158 00:25:18.000 ⇒ 00:25:20.780 Corey Griffin: Yeah, and part of it, too, is,
159 00:25:21.230 ⇒ 00:25:27.439 Corey Griffin: I think one of… one thing I’m… I think I’m… and I get this feeling really good at is, like, taking…
160 00:25:27.820 ⇒ 00:25:33.020 Corey Griffin: organize chaos into structure, kind of like a COO type, right? Of…
161 00:25:33.020 ⇒ 00:25:33.520 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
162 00:25:33.520 ⇒ 00:25:49.960 Corey Griffin: of literally, there was a time… I consulted for a business that was a pure product business. They, you know, 10 years old, $3.2 billion, by the way, and they’re a captive services business to install those physical products. It was, like, network gear, all kinds of stuff, right?
163 00:25:50.360 ⇒ 00:25:53.260 Corey Griffin: $3.2 billion annual, ARR.
164 00:25:53.390 ⇒ 00:26:00.939 Corey Griffin: And they… they fell into a $600 million captive services business. And so I was talking to them on how they would structure
165 00:26:01.150 ⇒ 00:26:04.910 Corey Griffin: that big ol’ business, right? And they wanted to get to a billion.
166 00:26:05.350 ⇒ 00:26:12.129 Corey Griffin: and was looking at acquisition, you know, da-da-da-da. So, regardless of the numbers, right, you still want to make the right, and so…
167 00:26:12.240 ⇒ 00:26:22.620 Corey Griffin: you know, evaluating culture, evaluating, like, hey, like, what’s bill rates? There’s, like, a mechanical data, as you would imagine, right, data-driven approach.
168 00:26:22.790 ⇒ 00:26:39.960 Corey Griffin: And when I worked for Textron, and I came to corporate, we bought and sold companies, so there’s always a playbook of acquisition. Hey, this is how we do it, here’s the math behind it, but also there’s the people behind it, right? And how would you assess
169 00:26:40.360 ⇒ 00:26:41.400 Corey Griffin: people.
170 00:26:41.630 ⇒ 00:26:55.699 Corey Griffin: and have some, you know, perspective of where they’re gonna go. And it’s, you know, in transformation, it’s always about the four blockers, right? Hey, who’s the new leader? Are we… are we keeping the CEO? Are we packaging them out?
171 00:26:55.900 ⇒ 00:27:10.550 Corey Griffin: Could he run stuff, you know, things of that nature. Big example publicly would be Ring Camera, right? Ring was purchased by Amazon. The guy literally hung around as the president of the whole product until eventually, right? You got billions of dollars he just packaged out.
172 00:27:10.590 ⇒ 00:27:24.309 Corey Griffin: And so that, the better you get at that, deals with, okay, how do we maintain our margins? What’s the numbers that go with that? And also, like, what’s the culture? And this is what’s exciting, I’m gonna leave you at this, and then we can get more time.
173 00:27:24.530 ⇒ 00:27:34.329 Corey Griffin: you guys have got something about your culture, right? And so you could have vision, mission, you know, tenets, things of that nature of how you operate, but, like, what’s that…
174 00:27:34.710 ⇒ 00:27:39.510 Corey Griffin: Like, what’s the excitement of, hey, people, you just got bought by Brainforge, right?
175 00:27:39.650 ⇒ 00:27:46.470 Corey Griffin: And you’re like, that’s exciting. And so I think that is what can make one different. One last little nugget, Robert.
176 00:27:46.670 ⇒ 00:27:59.620 Corey Griffin: Walk in eyes wide open with these agreements with the partner activities, with GCP or with AWS. Those partners are a dime a dozen. So what makes you different?
177 00:27:59.620 ⇒ 00:28:00.070 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
178 00:28:00.070 ⇒ 00:28:03.589 Corey Griffin: Last nugget I would give you in that vein, would be…
179 00:28:03.860 ⇒ 00:28:21.570 Corey Griffin: having a commercial alignment, like, hey, yes, I’m gonna tap into them, but I have a point of view, whether it’s pack of services, whatever, hey, I’m gonna bring a pipeline, or hey, you hand me anything, I’m gonna go smash it and need about this much from you, other than using your brand, right?
180 00:28:21.570 ⇒ 00:28:22.150 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
181 00:28:22.150 ⇒ 00:28:32.900 Corey Griffin: So, having… I’m sure you’ve thought through that a bit, but that’s where they are. You know, they did a whole bunch of layoffs, and the partner team got smashed, so they’re gonna have almost no time.
182 00:28:32.900 ⇒ 00:28:33.759 Robert Tseng: History, yeah.
183 00:28:33.760 ⇒ 00:28:39.340 Corey Griffin: Yeah, almost no time for you. So, but if you could do things that drive…
184 00:28:39.600 ⇒ 00:28:50.960 Corey Griffin: platform revenue, and there’s… this is a whole other conversation, by the way, I know we’re… we’re out of time. Why don’t we grab more time? When are you in tech… in Dallas? You said… you mentioned that you… you and Ute.
185 00:28:50.960 ⇒ 00:28:55.270 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I come back, I’ll probably… next… next one’s scheduled in June, so I’ll be back, I’ll be in June.
186 00:28:56.180 ⇒ 00:29:04.849 Corey Griffin: Okay, if you want to talk before then, why don’t… let’s just grab more time. You and I could interact and get another session. If you want to move forward and talk a little more, that’s up to you.
187 00:29:04.850 ⇒ 00:29:10.070 Robert Tseng: Sure, yeah, I would love to. Yeah, I guess you gave me your link, should I do the same one?
188 00:29:10.070 ⇒ 00:29:17.790 Corey Griffin: We could take a shot at it and see if, if Teams works for you this time. I’ll be on hot standby for…
189 00:29:17.790 ⇒ 00:29:19.519 Robert Tseng: Well, I will make sure it works, yeah.
190 00:29:19.520 ⇒ 00:29:25.389 Corey Griffin: It’s all good, it’s not your fault. And, you know, and then I’ll hang up here. The…
191 00:29:25.920 ⇒ 00:29:30.359 Corey Griffin: Yeah, I think the synergy there is you guys are…
192 00:29:30.700 ⇒ 00:29:37.549 Corey Griffin: you’re… you’re already punching above your weight in a good way. That’s a compliment, right? And so I think…
193 00:29:37.980 ⇒ 00:29:51.039 Corey Griffin: my experience could help you guys accelerate some of this stuff, or look intrinsically at, you know, how do we achieve these goals, and take the people along for the ride. I think you guys are gonna push the envelope.
194 00:29:51.320 ⇒ 00:29:58.770 Corey Griffin: And, you know, the bigger you get, how do you, you know, how can you grow, not just with people, but also with tech?
195 00:29:58.850 ⇒ 00:30:13.889 Corey Griffin: and stay focused on the mission, and in order to… to be in the game and continue to acquire, you’ve got to have a North Star that deals with SOPs and things of that nature, so that way folks want to stay, and it’s not… it’s not… the words really matter.
196 00:30:13.890 ⇒ 00:30:20.329 Corey Griffin: But all the processes and all the supporting stuff around there, you know, that goes with it. So, we’ll talk about that next time, alright?
197 00:30:20.700 ⇒ 00:30:22.819 Robert Tseng: Okay, appreciate it. Thank you so much, Corey.
198 00:30:22.820 ⇒ 00:30:24.190 Corey Griffin: Alright, have a great day.
199 00:30:24.360 ⇒ 00:30:25.450 Robert Tseng: You too. Bye-bye.