Meeting Title: Brainforge x Urban Stems Date: 2025-01-14 Meeting participants: Robert Tseng, Zack Gibbs, Uttam Kumaran
WEBVTT
1 00:00:26.270 ⇒ 00:00:27.100 Robert Tseng: Hey?
2 00:00:29.310 ⇒ 00:00:32.090 Robert Tseng: Is it my audio or your audio that I can’t hear.
3 00:00:32.850 ⇒ 00:00:33.989 Uttam Kumaran: It may be mine.
4 00:00:33.990 ⇒ 00:00:36.210 Robert Tseng: Okay, okay, I can hear you. Now. Yeah.
5 00:00:37.480 ⇒ 00:00:40.099 Robert Tseng: alright, let’s do this. Let’s get it.
6 00:00:42.690 ⇒ 00:00:47.530 Robert Tseng: I I just threw some last minute notes in case you needed like, some reference points. Yeah.
7 00:00:47.530 ⇒ 00:00:48.430 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Cool.
8 00:00:48.430 ⇒ 00:00:51.749 Robert Tseng: But I’m assuming you’ll be doing more of the talking this time.
9 00:01:23.840 ⇒ 00:01:25.219 Uttam Kumaran: Hey? Your 1st point’s good.
10 00:01:26.220 ⇒ 00:01:26.820 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
11 00:01:59.490 ⇒ 00:02:00.360 Zack Gibbs: Hey, guys.
12 00:02:00.670 ⇒ 00:02:01.430 Uttam Kumaran: Hey! Zack!
13 00:02:03.140 ⇒ 00:02:04.500 Zack Gibbs: How’s it going.
14 00:02:04.680 ⇒ 00:02:06.160 Uttam Kumaran: Good! How’s the week?
15 00:02:06.790 ⇒ 00:02:11.880 Zack Gibbs: Oh, it’s it’s busy, busy, busy time right now as we lead up to
16 00:02:12.330 ⇒ 00:02:25.980 Zack Gibbs: to Valentine’s Day and I, my entire family has been like sick and I’m just like just not coming out of it. So I am also struggling, and I don’t know why like why is my! Why, my earbuds not working.
17 00:02:26.718 ⇒ 00:02:31.660 Zack Gibbs: I don’t know. It was just working, not working. Now, can you hear me? Okay.
18 00:02:32.020 ⇒ 00:02:32.700 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I can hear you.
19 00:02:32.700 ⇒ 00:02:33.339 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah.
20 00:02:33.650 ⇒ 00:02:34.800 Zack Gibbs: Okay, cool.
21 00:02:35.463 ⇒ 00:02:49.529 Zack Gibbs: alright. So Alex and I and our finance lead and our CEO have all kind of we’ve met internally on this Alex and Alex is tied up with other stuff. So he’s not gonna join us.
22 00:02:49.820 ⇒ 00:03:07.332 Zack Gibbs: So I’ll kind of give you a high, level kind of where where we’re at and our next steps internally. So number one, we really like you guys. We think that you would be a great fit. We have another we had. I don’t know 4 or 5 different groups involved in this process.
23 00:03:08.210 ⇒ 00:03:18.235 Zack Gibbs: and there’s 1 other. There’s 1 other you know, similar setup to you guys, small group that we really like as well. And so it’s kind of between the 2 of you.
24 00:03:18.890 ⇒ 00:03:20.050 Zack Gibbs: and
25 00:03:21.330 ⇒ 00:03:26.020 Zack Gibbs: Some things have changed a little bit internally in regards to like some of the tactical stuff.
26 00:03:26.486 ⇒ 00:03:32.373 Zack Gibbs: So a couple of key dates for you guys to kind of keep in mind. One is
27 00:03:32.930 ⇒ 00:04:00.800 Zack Gibbs: We have Valentine’s day coming up on 2 14. That is our. That is our second highest sales period for the business. And those sales happen typically about 2 weeks. You know that kind of February first, st through the 14th is, you know, that sale period, and it’s like the last week in particular is quite high. It, you know, historically. And so there’s a lot of work internally on preparing for that sale event.
28 00:04:02.230 ⇒ 00:04:30.669 Zack Gibbs: and we’ve been through it many times. So it’s like but we’re also we’re not taking big risks during the lead up of that sale event as well. The other the biggest sale event. So v. Day like a 5 XA 5 x of V day. Is mother’s day. So mother’s Day is our biggest sale sale event of the year. It’s quite a bit larger than our number 2, which is Valentine’s Day, or Number 3 is around Christmas,
29 00:04:32.030 ⇒ 00:04:36.269 Zack Gibbs: And so mother’s Day is 5, 11,
30 00:04:36.610 ⇒ 00:04:51.332 Zack Gibbs: and then the context of our conversation, we’re not gonna be. We’re not going to be taking big risks and are making big fundamental changes to our infrastructure. Prior to mother’s day. That 5 11 period
31 00:04:51.870 ⇒ 00:04:55.361 Zack Gibbs: and in terms of the team availability.
32 00:04:56.170 ⇒ 00:05:12.730 Zack Gibbs: Everybody’s kind of heads down doing what they need to do to prepare us for Valentine’s Day right now. And so, in terms of that, like the ideal starting time for you guys, would be coming in the week of February, February 17.th So right after
33 00:05:12.860 ⇒ 00:05:14.519 Zack Gibbs: right after Valentine’s day.
34 00:05:15.118 ⇒ 00:05:27.640 Zack Gibbs: If you came in now, then it would. I think it would be like good in certain scenarios, and then hurt us in other scenarios where the team needs to be more tactically focused on delivery.
35 00:05:27.850 ⇒ 00:05:28.290 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
36 00:05:28.649 ⇒ 00:05:44.100 Zack Gibbs: Because there’s a ramp up period. You’ll need our team’s time energy to get you up to speed. So our ideal start time is the week of February 17.th Just so. We’re clear on that. Any any concerns from your end there.
37 00:05:45.560 ⇒ 00:06:06.099 Robert Tseng: I have a quick question, I mean, is there a world where it would make sense for us to? I guess theoretic, I mean on paper like start earlier. We can do some of the discover whatever we can find on our own without trying to burden the team. Just so that, like, I feel like we’re ready to hit the ground running. And yeah, like, come February 17, th because, you know, either way, there’s gonna be.
38 00:06:06.210 ⇒ 00:06:19.320 Robert Tseng: I just like a ramp up period like you described. And I’m just trying to shortcut that as much as we can and we have the availability. And and we we wanna we wanna work with you guys as soon as we can. So that’s that’s just, you know, something I would put out there.
39 00:06:19.610 ⇒ 00:06:23.720 Zack Gibbs: Yeah, I mean, we we talked about internally. And
40 00:06:24.400 ⇒ 00:06:40.290 Zack Gibbs: either way, it’s gonna like, No, no matter if you want to just start and do the discovery on your own 100 independently, like the reality is, that’s not gonna happen. You know, you’re gonna need to chat with people internally, you’re gonna need to look at reports. You’re gonna have questions on things that you see.
41 00:06:41.100 ⇒ 00:06:51.829 Zack Gibbs: everybody’s time is gonna be freed up as soon as Valentine’s day is over, and so like there’ll be a big breath internally of like, hey? Now we have time to dedicate to this initiative.
42 00:06:52.010 ⇒ 00:07:00.929 Zack Gibbs: Sure, you’re gonna have access to all you know, the the 4 analysts that we have in different business units like that time is gonna be
43 00:07:01.050 ⇒ 00:07:02.626 Zack Gibbs: that’s the right time.
44 00:07:03.370 ⇒ 00:07:21.520 Zack Gibbs: otherwise I think you’ll be less efficient and you’ll figure you would be able to figure stuff out half the way, probably, or you know, 33% of the way. But you’re not going to be as efficient, and we won’t be able to like tie you in the right resources to make it as efficient as possible. So that’s what we discussed.
45 00:07:22.240 ⇒ 00:07:23.449 Robert Tseng: Yeah, makes sense.
46 00:07:24.880 ⇒ 00:07:32.490 Zack Gibbs: so that would be kind of the change. Number one is starting instead of now. Starting the week of February 17th
47 00:07:34.150 ⇒ 00:07:35.640 Zack Gibbs: and so
48 00:07:37.970 ⇒ 00:07:53.070 Zack Gibbs: So we sent over we sent over some of the tactical like Asana ticket items that had come in. We have a we have a good grasp on what is Valentine’s Day critical, and we have resourcing to make.
49 00:07:53.070 ⇒ 00:08:10.169 Zack Gibbs: you know, to knock out those items that are critical. Some things will be left behind. There’s probably like a bundle of 1012 items tactically that will be left behind that we won’t get to in advance of V-day, but the critical ones we know of, and we have resourcing plan around
50 00:08:10.880 ⇒ 00:08:38.738 Zack Gibbs: so tactically starting the week of 2 14 or 17 whatever. That is 2 17 it would be kind of a mixture of the focus would change a little bit. The focus would be more so on helping with some of the miscellaneous tactical items that’ll help get you up to speed on like how things are being leveraged and used. But the main focus will be the the deeper audit of
51 00:08:39.280 ⇒ 00:08:50.859 Zack Gibbs: you know, what? How are we housing data? How are we transforming data? What tooling are we using? And does that make sense? And so, you know, really, the main focus would be helping with some tactical items. But
52 00:08:51.490 ⇒ 00:09:01.799 Zack Gibbs: it would be doing the audit and then providing kind of a a future state recommendation of what do you see, and what are some best practices? And what can we shift into?
53 00:09:03.590 ⇒ 00:09:16.810 Zack Gibbs: that would be kind of like delivery. Deliverable number one deliverable number 2 would be like working with us, and we will, you know, Alex and I wouldn’t help you navigate like getting alignment from the stakeholder groups. Because there’s, you know, analyst in different parts of the business.
54 00:09:17.490 ⇒ 00:09:36.684 Zack Gibbs: and then, once we get alignment on, hey? We think this is the right infrastructure. That. And here’s the change over getting second real deliverable will be getting that step by step. Migration plan together of like, how do you? What’s the sequence of steps? And what would we tackle? First, st second, 3, rd 4, th and why
55 00:09:37.250 ⇒ 00:09:40.460 Zack Gibbs: so getting like buy in on that migration plan.
56 00:09:41.375 ⇒ 00:10:05.720 Zack Gibbs: The 3rd part of the deliverable like helping identify where you can assist with that migration. And so where you have strengths. You know. We’ll leverage leverage you in those areas, and some of it, you know. We’ll handle, you know. We’ll likely handle ourselves pieces of it as well. That would be kind of the the high, level kind of like the planning side.
57 00:10:06.553 ⇒ 00:10:07.760 Zack Gibbs: Once again
58 00:10:07.920 ⇒ 00:10:16.469 Zack Gibbs: coming back to our big sales period. We are not going to make big infrastructure changes prior to 5 11
59 00:10:16.970 ⇒ 00:10:20.459 Zack Gibbs: we will. We would make. We would get alignment on. We would create the plan.
60 00:10:20.600 ⇒ 00:10:37.854 Zack Gibbs: get alignment on that migration, feel good about the the steps, feel good about the cost associated, feel good about the resource allocation across our team versus eventually your team. But we wouldn’t make those changes. We may make some small small changes that we feel like are a lot not risky
61 00:10:38.270 ⇒ 00:11:01.810 Zack Gibbs: And if you can identify those in that like audit and discovery period, then great but we’re not gonna make big fundamental shifts. From, you know. On tooling infrastructure, data warehouse until we’re past mother’s day and we’re past that that period. We’ve done things like that in the past, and it has come back to bite us like every time.
62 00:11:02.180 ⇒ 00:11:08.010 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, there’s there’s a lot of low risk stuff. But also most of the migration is actually just
63 00:11:08.930 ⇒ 00:11:14.430 Uttam Kumaran: they basically re architecting the pipelines to go to a new area, that and that
64 00:11:14.930 ⇒ 00:11:27.289 Uttam Kumaran: by basically keeping up everything that’s going on. So you could actually probably get 70% of the way without like cutting over so there’s a lot of pipeline development work that really won’t affect stuff
65 00:11:27.500 ⇒ 00:11:44.349 Uttam Kumaran: that exists already. And that’s usually the plan we go through with all of our clients where we come in, and they’re either their models or their warehousing is in many sort of areas. And we look to first, st just like, can we get to the same state? And then can we start to break that down and make it more composable, but totally hear you on
66 00:11:44.520 ⇒ 00:11:46.929 Uttam Kumaran: that date being really critical, and the risk there.
67 00:11:46.930 ⇒ 00:12:01.950 Zack Gibbs: Yeah. And if and if the audit recommendation is Hey, we can parallel path this where, even if we incur additional costs. But we can replicate data. We can get it, you know, into this different. You know, this different pipeline. Different social thing of tooling. We’re all ears there like.
68 00:12:01.950 ⇒ 00:12:02.530 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
69 00:12:02.530 ⇒ 00:12:15.417 Zack Gibbs: There’s no, you know. If that is a recommendation we feel like that is a viable path forward, then great! We could parallel path it. Keep our existing infrastructure in place. But you know, while building the net new.
70 00:12:16.180 ⇒ 00:12:26.709 Zack Gibbs: so that is, if that’s you know, an option, then, then, great like we’ll we’ll look at that as a as a digital path as well versus waiting until you know we’re past mother’s day.
71 00:12:29.974 ⇒ 00:12:32.099 Zack Gibbs: Sorry. I’m still like coughing.
72 00:12:32.542 ⇒ 00:12:34.310 Uttam Kumaran: You’re good. No worries.
73 00:12:35.790 ⇒ 00:12:43.970 Zack Gibbs: okay, so let’s talk about the proposal itself. Any questions kind of like where we’re sitting roughly and where our heads at.
74 00:12:44.500 ⇒ 00:12:45.320 Uttam Kumaran: Make, sense.
75 00:12:45.820 ⇒ 00:12:46.490 Zack Gibbs: Okay.
76 00:12:48.960 ⇒ 00:12:52.740 Zack Gibbs: Alright. So I have the proposal, or do I still have it?
77 00:12:54.720 ⇒ 00:12:56.060 Zack Gibbs: I don’t. I was.
78 00:12:56.060 ⇒ 00:13:13.619 Robert Tseng: I guess, while you’re pulling it up, I’d love to, or we can share it as well. But I’d love to hear. Kind of yeah, what are like the remaining factors that in your decision making process now, now that you’ve kind of narrowed it down to us. And another, you know, we just want to better understand what are those key things that we could speak to as you’re as we’re talking through the proposal.
79 00:13:15.320 ⇒ 00:13:22.200 Zack Gibbs: I think it’s it’s coming down. It’s gonna come down to cost. And then, generally like, how are we going to structure the agree, the agreement
80 00:13:23.440 ⇒ 00:13:24.829 Zack Gibbs: and so
81 00:13:25.340 ⇒ 00:13:40.449 Zack Gibbs: and then, like, we wanted to have this conversation as well of like. Here’s where our heads at. We don’t want to make any fundamental changes, you know. Here are 2 big sales periods. How can we work together, you know, in that post Valentine’s Day. But prior to mother’s day period.
82 00:13:41.469 ⇒ 00:13:48.990 Zack Gibbs: We didn’t have. We didn’t have already had the other conversation with the other group. They didn’t bring up the whole like, hey? We could parallel path. This
83 00:13:49.250 ⇒ 00:13:49.800 Robert Tseng: Hmm.
84 00:13:49.930 ⇒ 00:13:57.700 Zack Gibbs: As an option like, maybe maybe that is a good viable option, if if so, that I’m very interested in that because then we can work on this again.
85 00:13:57.700 ⇒ 00:14:15.679 Uttam Kumaran: Totally. I mean, yeah, sorry. But like we, you know, I’m doing migrations like this. I wouldn’t do it the other way around by like cutting it off and rebuilding. So any sort of path would we take that, whether we do that in parallel or subsequent is one thing, but and also, that’s a lot of work where
86 00:14:15.840 ⇒ 00:14:21.700 Uttam Kumaran: and part of the reason, and even taking on some of those tickets was not only to get through those tickets, but like.
87 00:14:21.890 ⇒ 00:14:42.599 Uttam Kumaran: that’s a great way to learn how sort of data flows through your org and where stuff is broken. And you know part of the reason to do that was that’ll give us a good sense of like, okay, what? Where do we go? And a lot of data is less like back in engineering it. It doesn’t really rely on the people in the process. So some infrastructure, some infrastructure decisions. We I can’t really make
88 00:14:42.700 ⇒ 00:14:51.319 Uttam Kumaran: confidently without knowing sort of like, okay, what’s the chain of operations? And how does stuff flow through people? But definitely, there’s opportunities to do that sort of migration
89 00:14:51.630 ⇒ 00:14:55.019 Uttam Kumaran: in parallel. We’ll have. No, we’ll have very little effect
90 00:14:55.200 ⇒ 00:15:00.340 Uttam Kumaran: on what exists. In fact, our 1st goal was just being able to mimic exactly what you have.
91 00:15:00.955 ⇒ 00:15:04.960 Uttam Kumaran: You know, before making the several other decisions.
92 00:15:04.960 ⇒ 00:15:30.130 Zack Gibbs: Yeah, so there’s so this is just looking at reporting tags. You know, ticket types. There’s gonna be a good chunk of these that are left behind. And so to your point, there will be. There will be tactical work that will help you get up to speed on how things are working that we can assign out and that will help with like they’ll help get you up to speed and get more familiarity faster. Right. So
93 00:15:30.230 ⇒ 00:15:35.299 Zack Gibbs: not to say that’s like that’ll still be there. that’s not, you know.
94 00:15:35.810 ⇒ 00:15:46.450 Uttam Kumaran: And then I totally hear you on the risk, like, I mean, it’s yeah, I that’s totally fine. And actually like very, I mean, especially if that’s hurt in the past, then
95 00:15:46.580 ⇒ 00:15:54.630 Uttam Kumaran: totally don’t make reporting changes right before mother’s day. But there is a lot of background infra stuff that can be done where
96 00:15:54.760 ⇒ 00:15:57.249 Uttam Kumaran: it’s it shouldn’t affect anything in flight. So.
97 00:15:57.560 ⇒ 00:16:01.590 Zack Gibbs: Yeah. Gotcha my! Did I share my screen, or did I not.
98 00:16:01.770 ⇒ 00:16:04.109 Uttam Kumaran: Just yeah. I just saw we just saw a sauna come up or.
99 00:16:04.490 ⇒ 00:16:06.720 Zack Gibbs: Okay. Am I not sharing any longer.
100 00:16:06.870 ⇒ 00:16:07.580 Uttam Kumaran: You’re not sharing it.
101 00:16:07.580 ⇒ 00:16:08.630 Robert Tseng: You’re not.
102 00:16:08.630 ⇒ 00:16:10.970 Zack Gibbs: Zoom. I don’t know what is like. We
103 00:16:11.500 ⇒ 00:16:21.425 Zack Gibbs: zoom always gives us difficulty. I don’t understand why. Okay, so let’s go back to the proposal, and some of the things that I think we’re thinking
104 00:16:21.910 ⇒ 00:16:24.350 Zack Gibbs: around changes. So
105 00:16:24.390 ⇒ 00:16:35.280 Zack Gibbs: 1st is the 20 HA week is, I think, a good estimate. I think that’s like a half half person. You know. However, that is broken up is.
106 00:16:35.280 ⇒ 00:16:59.179 Zack Gibbs: I think, the right level of engagement to start off with. I think that’s that’s the right level. I will say that like one of the key, the other group that’s in our top 2, your hourly rates roughly, like 1, 88, 187, 50 an hour at using that 20 h, baseline, they’re at 150, and so there’s a difference there, if you can get us closer to that 150 and be more competitive then.
107 00:16:59.524 ⇒ 00:17:18.555 Zack Gibbs: You know, Alex and I feel like you guys are the best, our best fit and so piece of piece of feedback, you know, for you guys to think about and come back if if you wanna adjust the proposal. But I think 20 h is the right. 20 HA week is the right level to, to, you know. Go in with
108 00:17:19.060 ⇒ 00:17:25.587 Zack Gibbs: and then we can use that time, you know, wisely on our end as well, and making sure that you have the right resourcing.
109 00:17:27.528 ⇒ 00:17:32.962 Zack Gibbs: I would say that that the like the duration of the engagement.
110 00:17:33.740 ⇒ 00:17:54.669 Zack Gibbs: I think it’s up for debate like we are. We were coming in, not saying, thinking that we were going to. You know the 1st piece was the discovery, plus the future state. Build out, and then alignment internally, and then the second piece would be like, Okay, what is the migration plan? Step by step.
111 00:17:55.360 ⇒ 00:18:00.589 Zack Gibbs: once we got high level alignment on, on new tooling and some of the changes.
112 00:18:00.870 ⇒ 00:18:11.689 Zack Gibbs: If we can parallel path, then it’s less of a concern. That we would be signing up for like a a commit as in like 2 months or 3 months, whatever that may be.
113 00:18:12.550 ⇒ 00:18:21.588 Zack Gibbs: I would rather to have flexibility. I would rather commit to the 20 h of you know. Weekly time.
114 00:18:22.490 ⇒ 00:18:25.019 Zack Gibbs: but not have a.
115 00:18:25.030 ⇒ 00:18:45.449 Zack Gibbs: you know, 3 month. Commit. That we use what we need. And then, as we build the project itself out. If we then decide, hey, here’s the migration plan, and we know that this plan is, gonna take 2 and a half months, 3 months, then we can do a commit if that’s desired. But I would like to start out with no commit
116 00:18:45.450 ⇒ 00:18:57.794 Zack Gibbs: other than let’s commit, you know to the the that the figure of $20 20 HA week, and whatever you come back with as your that value.
117 00:18:58.810 ⇒ 00:19:11.820 Zack Gibbs: then we’ll commit to that, and kind of we’ll start off there once we have a better feel for the project, then we could then then change it to a time commit if that’s desired.
118 00:19:13.010 ⇒ 00:19:14.260 Zack Gibbs: that makes sense.
119 00:19:14.260 ⇒ 00:19:18.699 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that makes sense. And to give you, you know, our side one, you know, for us to make.
120 00:19:18.830 ⇒ 00:19:25.190 Uttam Kumaran: I mean definitely, it’s gonna be me sort of leading the project. But for us to include some other folks on our side where needed.
121 00:19:25.260 ⇒ 00:19:51.099 Uttam Kumaran: you know, we just we want to get commits from people. Just so we can have. It’s tough to move people around. And of course, on our side, you know, we’re not just throwing bodies at a problem. We really have some people that I think are better for this problem, who have worked sort of on these sorts of models. But I think your your sort of concern there makes sense. I think this is transitioning more from hey? Come in and just get stuff done initially to hey? Come in and let’s spend, you know, a month
122 00:19:51.210 ⇒ 00:19:52.520 Uttam Kumaran: thinking through
123 00:19:52.770 ⇒ 00:19:59.589 Uttam Kumaran: what the next, of course, like what the long term infra is, but for what? The next 3 to 6 month. Implementation plan is
124 00:20:00.176 ⇒ 00:20:03.239 Uttam Kumaran: you know, on our side, like, look, I would say.
125 00:20:03.870 ⇒ 00:20:10.559 Uttam Kumaran: I would love for you to go with us to implement that plan. But I also wanna make sure that that plan works for no matter who you go with
126 00:20:10.931 ⇒ 00:20:28.320 Uttam Kumaran: and so for me, it makes sense. I think maybe me and Robert will go discuss a little bit on pricing part of the you know the way we arrived at. Like sort of that 15 number is typically, our hourly rate is higher, and usually the 15 gives us a little bit more commitment, but it is our lower like net rate.
127 00:20:28.670 ⇒ 00:20:30.069 Uttam Kumaran: And of course, like
128 00:20:30.450 ⇒ 00:20:45.720 Uttam Kumaran: we have people across the full stack. So it sort of averages out rates and everything. But maybe we can take that back, Robert, and sort of think about from our side. What we can do. And yeah, and just that’s just hopefully to give you a little bit of context of how we, we sort of arrived at that.
129 00:20:46.627 ⇒ 00:20:51.490 Zack Gibbs: Okay, you guys are providing the you know the tactical support alongside the architecture.
130 00:20:54.710 ⇒ 00:20:59.900 Zack Gibbs: I get it right. I don’t think your number was outlandish at all, have just other roofs.
131 00:21:00.520 ⇒ 00:21:02.430 Robert Tseng: Sorry, Zack. Your mic is kind of.
132 00:21:02.430 ⇒ 00:21:06.909 Uttam Kumaran: Just switched your air pods, I think, but I did. I didn’t catch that, but I think it just switched.
133 00:21:09.070 ⇒ 00:21:11.250 Zack Gibbs: Yeah, okay.
134 00:21:11.480 ⇒ 00:21:14.276 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe your yeah. I think your air pods are probably working now.
135 00:21:15.480 ⇒ 00:21:16.110 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
136 00:21:16.460 ⇒ 00:21:16.810 Robert Tseng: Okay, that.
137 00:21:16.810 ⇒ 00:21:20.219 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. And it makes sense. They just came lower. So that’s all.
138 00:21:20.220 ⇒ 00:21:36.007 Zack Gibbs: Yeah, your number, your number for your kind of the the different services, like your number, is not outlandish at at all. They just came in lower and so I’m just trying to show you where they are. So if you come in a little bit lower as well, you don’t have to meet them. But if you come in lower than that gives you an advantage.
139 00:21:36.810 ⇒ 00:21:38.459 Zack Gibbs: we’re not. We’re not.
140 00:21:38.760 ⇒ 00:21:50.450 Zack Gibbs: We’re not driving to the very bottom in terms of. We want to get the right fit. Alex, and I feel like you guys probably are best fit for us. It’s just it’s hard when the finance person gets involved to say, like, Well.
141 00:21:50.780 ⇒ 00:21:51.480 Zack Gibbs: what’s the difference?
142 00:21:51.480 ⇒ 00:21:54.889 Zack Gibbs: They’re not gonna understand what that means. I get it. I got it. Yeah, yeah.
143 00:21:55.360 ⇒ 00:22:16.119 Zack Gibbs: And so and then the other thing that we just so you guys are aware in terms of how we manage 3rd parties in this sense. Typically, it’s you create us an invoice. The invoices. Net 30. Is there our typical model. You submit those invoices to our financial group. It’s just an email that you submit the invoice. And then that’s paid out.
144 00:22:16.810 ⇒ 00:22:33.449 Zack Gibbs: that’s paid out in via the net. 30 terms. That’s typically how it’s done. So we would request that you submit the invoices, and then it’ll just go through the accounting financial. You know process. You know, we’re all invoice based. That way. We have a paper trail.
145 00:22:33.690 ⇒ 00:22:36.549 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’s perfect. That’s in line with with all of other clients.
146 00:22:36.720 ⇒ 00:22:37.540 Zack Gibbs: Okay.
147 00:22:38.110 ⇒ 00:22:58.589 Zack Gibbs: okay, so that’s all the stuff I haven’t on my side, or like notes of things. I think, really, the the 2 big changes are not not doing a initial term commit and then the feedback on on hourly pricing. And so if you guys wanna go take that back and
148 00:22:59.083 ⇒ 00:23:07.296 Zack Gibbs: come back with a you know second proposal, then. I wanna make. By the end of this week I wanna make a call on what what we’re doing,
149 00:23:07.860 ⇒ 00:23:14.679 Zack Gibbs: And and then that way we’re we’re set up and we’re set up for the next steps right after Valentine’s day is done.
150 00:23:16.620 ⇒ 00:23:27.219 Robert Tseng: So, Zack, a couple couple of pieces of feedback. So based on kind of your kind of summary summarization of the how you see the 3 Day Liberals kind of taking place
151 00:23:27.250 ⇒ 00:23:47.869 Robert Tseng: rather than us like, maybe it’s not so helpful for us to include like timelines in there right now, then maybe we just kind of keep the like the 3 phases. But then we’ll we’ll adapt some of the language you use to adjust those deliverables. But maybe we just like I mean, we don’t. We don’t. Since we’re not assuming that this is going to be a consecutive 3 months we can, for now we can just take that part off of the proposal. Does that work for you?
152 00:23:47.870 ⇒ 00:23:48.869 Zack Gibbs: Yep, that’s fine.
153 00:23:48.870 ⇒ 00:23:49.450 Robert Tseng: Okay.
154 00:23:51.900 ⇒ 00:23:52.500 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
155 00:23:54.480 ⇒ 00:24:06.780 Uttam Kumaran: I did have a product question, though. I guess we were. Me and Robert were talking. Is the subscriptions product new? We were looking at a couple of like competitors in the space. I know. I think Robert knows one of them particularly
156 00:24:06.900 ⇒ 00:24:13.779 Uttam Kumaran: interested in. Like the subscriptions product, we went through the funnel. So curious like, if that’s a new product, or how you guys think about that.
157 00:24:13.950 ⇒ 00:24:22.739 Zack Gibbs: Yeah, so so subscriptions is not new, but it’s not been. It’s not been a priority of ours, which is a mistake. Part of the move to shopify
158 00:24:23.000 ⇒ 00:24:28.560 Zack Gibbs: was, we were super constrained on what we could do with subscriptions inside of salesforce.
159 00:24:28.560 ⇒ 00:24:29.060 Uttam Kumaran: Oh!
160 00:24:29.708 ⇒ 00:24:46.349 Zack Gibbs: And our 3rd party there was horrific is a company called Stickyio. Now we’re on loop. So loop AI is the subscription provider that we have. They’re way better than, and they have way more capabilities than we had. Prior.
161 00:24:46.771 ⇒ 00:25:06.990 Zack Gibbs: We looked at Recharge. We looked at stay loop a couple of others. And so one of the big growth goals for this year is growing subscriptions. I don’t know. 5 to 7 million of subscriptions revenue over annually. We know that competitors of ours have.
162 00:25:06.990 ⇒ 00:25:25.010 Zack Gibbs: you know, 4 x that 5 x that and so that’s an area where that we can absolutely grow. And some of our other development initiatives are focused on subscriptions. You know, getting new feature functionality. There. So you know, we can continue to push that program.
163 00:25:25.590 ⇒ 00:25:26.490 Uttam Kumaran: Makes sense.
164 00:25:26.930 ⇒ 00:25:37.719 Uttam Kumaran: And then my other question was on like event tracking. What are you guys using for event tracking? And then how does that flow into is that flowing into just redshift right now, and getting used by the analysts.
165 00:25:39.345 ⇒ 00:25:41.685 Zack Gibbs: Well, so we use
166 00:25:43.020 ⇒ 00:25:47.250 Zack Gibbs: we use like, what? Like web pixels we’re using.
167 00:25:47.250 ⇒ 00:25:51.400 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Like, if you’re using amplitude, or mixed panel, or or anything to sort of track
168 00:25:51.910 ⇒ 00:25:53.769 Uttam Kumaran: and set up those web events.
169 00:25:54.080 ⇒ 00:25:59.930 Zack Gibbs: Yeah. So we we use north beams, our main and so
170 00:26:00.600 ⇒ 00:26:04.369 Zack Gibbs: let me just pull up so I can tell you. Specific pixels.
171 00:26:06.524 ⇒ 00:26:10.353 Zack Gibbs: In terms of it flowing in to
172 00:26:11.970 ⇒ 00:26:19.835 Zack Gibbs: I don’t. I don’t think that like a lot of the you know what’s what’s in Ga, what’s in north beam?
173 00:26:20.910 ⇒ 00:26:26.419 Zack Gibbs: our marketing team is using. But it’s not a lot of those events aren’t flowing into.
174 00:26:26.610 ⇒ 00:26:28.330 Uttam Kumaran: Isolated just to marketing. Yeah.
175 00:26:28.330 ⇒ 00:26:32.676 Zack Gibbs: They’re isolated. Which is probably a mistake. And
176 00:26:33.990 ⇒ 00:26:38.500 Zack Gibbs: and it’s just fragmented like each group has different responsibility areas.
177 00:26:39.520 ⇒ 00:26:51.626 Zack Gibbs: some of the events are being taken in and pushed. We have bloom reach. So bloom reach is like klaviyo. It’s a email and SMS marketing. platform.
178 00:26:52.290 ⇒ 00:26:58.019 Zack Gibbs: Some of those events are being pushed into bloom reach. So we have better segmentation and email SMS outreach
179 00:26:58.020 ⇒ 00:26:58.570 Zack Gibbs: checkers.
180 00:26:59.630 ⇒ 00:27:05.640 Zack Gibbs: And but it’s not like there’s not a ton of data being pushed in current state.
181 00:27:07.890 ⇒ 00:27:09.010 Zack Gibbs: let’s see.
182 00:27:10.980 ⇒ 00:27:11.760 Zack Gibbs: Yeah, Jose.
183 00:27:11.760 ⇒ 00:27:21.169 Robert Tseng: Sound like you’ve really mapped out like a full customer lifecycle like funnel, or or anything like that in in redshift.
184 00:27:22.120 ⇒ 00:27:28.218 Zack Gibbs: Yeah, I I know we definitely not. So these are all the current pixels north beam.
185 00:27:31.167 ⇒ 00:27:38.830 Zack Gibbs: we have yapo in the mix on the reviews and reviews and and loyalty.
186 00:27:39.839 ⇒ 00:27:44.330 Zack Gibbs: You know the the Gtm Gtm stuff, Facebook.
187 00:27:46.220 ⇒ 00:27:47.030 Zack Gibbs: So.
188 00:27:49.630 ⇒ 00:27:50.210 Uttam Kumaran: Right?
189 00:27:50.600 ⇒ 00:27:57.680 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, there’s a huge area. You guys could definitely improve on getting those events and tie those to the actual
190 00:27:57.910 ⇒ 00:28:02.780 Uttam Kumaran: shopify like revenue triggers for a lot of cohorting and segmentation.
191 00:28:03.401 ⇒ 00:28:09.360 Uttam Kumaran: And basically looking at funnel drop off and stuff like that load times. Things like that. Cool.
192 00:28:09.530 ⇒ 00:28:10.599 Uttam Kumaran: great, just curious.
193 00:28:10.600 ⇒ 00:28:18.600 Zack Gibbs: On the yeah, on the on the marketing technology side, like North Beam is new. North beam is relatively, I think we signed up with them in like November of last year.
194 00:28:18.780 ⇒ 00:28:20.140 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, okay. Wow!
195 00:28:20.320 ⇒ 00:28:29.410 Zack Gibbs: We have not like. We are very low tech usage there. And probably have a big, that’s probably a big area of low hanging fruit. So.
196 00:28:31.930 ⇒ 00:28:33.650 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Great.
197 00:28:34.699 ⇒ 00:28:38.289 Zack Gibbs: Okay. Well, cool any other questions before we drop off.
198 00:28:39.640 ⇒ 00:28:45.710 Uttam Kumaran: I’m good. So yeah, we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. And yeah, appreciate the time and thanks for again for all the contacts and the feedback.
199 00:28:46.190 ⇒ 00:28:48.850 Uttam Kumaran: I think we’re we’re gonna look to make something work. So I appreciate it.
200 00:28:48.850 ⇒ 00:28:50.700 Zack Gibbs: Okay. Alright. Sounds good thanks. Guys.
201 00:28:51.530 ⇒ 00:28:52.120 Robert Tseng: Thanks, zack!