Meeting Title: UrbanStem Upsell Proposal Discussion Date: 2025-10-17 Meeting participants: Awaish Kumar, Demilade Agboola, Rico Rejoso, Amber Lin, Uttam Kumaran
WEBVTT
1 00:10:50.170 ⇒ 00:10:57.039 Demilade Agboola: So I messaged with Sam, and he’s responded, and he said he’s still coming, but he’ll be a bit late because of the sales call.
2 00:10:57.370 ⇒ 00:10:58.380 Amber Lin: Hmm, okay.
3 00:16:26.790 ⇒ 00:16:29.579 Uttam Kumaran: Hey guys, sorry, this last meeting went late.
4 00:16:32.400 ⇒ 00:16:33.460 Amber Lin: Hello.
5 00:16:35.680 ⇒ 00:16:43.550 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so, yeah, I don’t know if you guys have already started anything, or let me know what I’m walking.
6 00:16:45.070 ⇒ 00:16:49.060 Amber Lin: Nope. Is there a Notion Dog we can put things on?
7 00:16:49.700 ⇒ 00:16:54.190 Amber Lin: Actually, I have something that I started before, let me pull that up.
8 00:16:55.320 ⇒ 00:16:55.859 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I guess.
9 00:16:55.860 ⇒ 00:16:56.690 Awaish Kumar: Little one…
10 00:16:56.690 ⇒ 00:17:01.840 Uttam Kumaran: This… yeah, this is what Awash… And…
11 00:17:02.870 ⇒ 00:17:08.560 Uttam Kumaran: And I think I could… I kind of want to… we could probably even treat this as a little bit of, like, internal…
12 00:17:10.000 ⇒ 00:17:16.509 Uttam Kumaran: retro, because I think one thing that we can get to Zach today, Amber, is…
13 00:17:16.640 ⇒ 00:17:20.320 Uttam Kumaran: that, like, wins document that I think he wanted.
14 00:17:20.599 ⇒ 00:17:25.079 Uttam Kumaran: And then I can also tee up a conversation with him next week, just to talk about…
15 00:17:25.690 ⇒ 00:17:32.979 Uttam Kumaran: A few items, so… let’s use this mainly, let’s maybe use this… document as, like, Urban Stem’s
16 00:17:33.720 ⇒ 00:17:38.100 Uttam Kumaran: like, project review, actually, like…
17 00:17:38.440 ⇒ 00:17:42.439 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, let’s actually just use this as Urban Stem’s, like, project review for this week.
18 00:17:43.250 ⇒ 00:17:54.289 Uttam Kumaran: And then, Rico, do you mind, linking this document to the part in the project review doc?
19 00:17:54.910 ⇒ 00:17:57.740 Uttam Kumaran: That way that there’s just a link.
20 00:17:57.820 ⇒ 00:17:58.630 Demilade Agboola: Oh, sorry.
21 00:17:59.000 ⇒ 00:18:00.649 Demilade Agboola: I don’t have access to the dock.
22 00:18:01.340 ⇒ 00:18:03.769 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, here, I’ll give you, I’ll give you access.
23 00:18:07.140 ⇒ 00:18:08.380 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, try now.
24 00:18:22.390 ⇒ 00:18:27.370 Uttam Kumaran: So, we’re kinda gonna do a little bit of, like, maybe a project review for, like, the… basically, like.
25 00:18:27.600 ⇒ 00:18:29.270 Uttam Kumaran: When did we last talk to Zach?
26 00:18:29.610 ⇒ 00:18:31.240 Uttam Kumaran: Amber?
27 00:18:31.580 ⇒ 00:18:36.409 Amber Lin: Early October, I think. Let me check the date.
28 00:20:05.390 ⇒ 00:20:09.149 Amber Lin: Late September, I think. September 20-something.
29 00:20:10.010 ⇒ 00:20:12.350 Amber Lin: September 20th, most likely.
30 00:20:15.680 ⇒ 00:20:20.269 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so basically, what I want to do here is just do a project review of, like.
31 00:20:20.390 ⇒ 00:20:23.330 Uttam Kumaran: basically, like, SEP 20 to now.
32 00:20:23.480 ⇒ 00:20:37.539 Uttam Kumaran: So let’s just, like, write down wins, and I think it’s gonna be a mix of, like, probably a ways what you’ve seen now, versus, like, what me and Demolade have seen since then. But maybe just, like, let’s take 2 minutes and do that, once we just get everything into here.
33 00:20:37.790 ⇒ 00:20:40.750 Uttam Kumaran: It’ll be… Good.
34 00:26:07.650 ⇒ 00:26:08.330 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
35 00:26:51.660 ⇒ 00:26:52.980 Uttam Kumaran: This is a good one.
36 00:30:26.670 ⇒ 00:30:27.320 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
37 00:30:27.590 ⇒ 00:30:33.949 Uttam Kumaran: I feel pretty good about this list. I think probably the only thing I would ask is…
38 00:30:34.890 ⇒ 00:30:40.570 Uttam Kumaran: For the wins, if we can also do wins, and then why it matters.
39 00:30:40.950 ⇒ 00:30:45.799 Uttam Kumaran: Sorry, I should have done that the first… Go at this, but…
40 00:30:47.130 ⇒ 00:31:02.540 Uttam Kumaran: You can actually don’t even put in the table, literally, you could just put it underneath, like, why… why each of these matters. I want to make it… like, think about it from a client perspective, like Zach, who’s not in with day-to-day, it may not make… it may not be really clear to him why…
41 00:31:03.310 ⇒ 00:31:04.220 Uttam Kumaran: like…
42 00:31:04.590 ⇒ 00:31:11.259 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, like, let’s say, faster runs and more stable runs, he may not understand the before and after, or what this impacts.
43 00:31:11.530 ⇒ 00:31:26.739 Uttam Kumaran: So, I think I want to make it really clear, because ultimately he’s going to take this and send it to his boss, and so I want to make it really easy for him to understand, like, what is the… what we worked on, and why does it impact. So, if we can just do a couple of these, that would be great, too, so…
44 00:32:29.570 ⇒ 00:32:32.520 Uttam Kumaran: And then, where possible, throw, like…
45 00:32:32.910 ⇒ 00:32:39.300 Uttam Kumaran: metrics. Like, for example, I think, demo, we probably spend 50% less time debugging jobs as we used to.
46 00:32:39.560 ⇒ 00:32:45.940 Uttam Kumaran: It could even be higher than that. So, like, where we could put numbers, throw some rough numbers, that would be helpful.
47 00:32:48.860 ⇒ 00:32:49.720 Demilade Agboola: Okay.
48 00:38:47.220 ⇒ 00:38:48.530 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, how do we feel?
49 00:39:49.860 ⇒ 00:39:55.369 Uttam Kumaran: So, I think what’s gonna happen is I’m gonna go ahead and… we can turn this into a brief
50 00:39:55.500 ⇒ 00:39:56.490 Uttam Kumaran: deck.
51 00:39:56.770 ⇒ 00:39:57.930 Uttam Kumaran: for…
52 00:39:58.180 ⇒ 00:40:10.429 Uttam Kumaran: Zach to take a look at. I’m also gonna send this into the… into the channel, and then every week we can kind of go through this process. I guess I wanted… while we had… while we have sort of folks on the call, is there…
53 00:40:10.740 ⇒ 00:40:16.429 Uttam Kumaran: Anything that’s, like, tough about this client, or anything that we want to change our process on.
54 00:40:16.770 ⇒ 00:40:34.980 Uttam Kumaran: I think we’ve made a lot of changes in the last, like, 45 days in particular. I think we have, like, we have some better process for merging PRs, we’ve stabilized jobs, we’ve done a lot on revenue, I think Oasis coming on and continuing to move stuff on marketing analytics.
55 00:40:37.230 ⇒ 00:40:42.779 Uttam Kumaran: Like, any other comments from anybody on the team? Otherwise, I can give a brief summary of, like, how I’m thinking about
56 00:40:43.390 ⇒ 00:40:45.579 Uttam Kumaran: Trying to go for the contract renewal.
57 00:40:46.520 ⇒ 00:40:55.759 Demilade Agboola: I think, especially from the perspective of inventory and revenue, we’ve made huge strides, generally speaking.
58 00:40:56.150 ⇒ 00:41:02.390 Demilade Agboola: Part of why, like, a lot of the ideas were… would have been hard to execute previously was
59 00:41:02.500 ⇒ 00:41:10.529 Demilade Agboola: Urban Stems had, like, really bad data, so trying to drive insights based on bad data would always lead you down a bad hole.
60 00:41:10.940 ⇒ 00:41:26.639 Demilade Agboola: And so now we’re in a spot where, since we have a clear idea into inventory and revenue, which are, like, the huge hallmarks of things, we can start doing things like marketing analytics, or inventory forecasting, or whatever, because… or revenue forecasting, because
61 00:41:26.720 ⇒ 00:41:36.139 Demilade Agboola: At this point, it’s easy to start to do analysis that will drive actual, like, the top line and bottom line of things.
62 00:41:36.770 ⇒ 00:41:54.960 Demilade Agboola: So now we’re in that spot, and… which is why I feel like we need better, like, analysis. Like, either it’s… we have an analyst in the Urban Stems team, or we get our analysts that we can bring on board, to… to drive a lot of that growth within
63 00:41:55.210 ⇒ 00:42:01.629 Demilade Agboola: urban stem, so we can start to change things from just, like, we have great data, to we are using great data.
64 00:42:04.190 ⇒ 00:42:05.590 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, great.
65 00:42:23.780 ⇒ 00:42:24.560 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
66 00:42:24.850 ⇒ 00:42:35.740 Uttam Kumaran: So, to kind of give you a sense of, like, how I’m planning on tackling this, I mean, I think there’s… we still have quite a ways to go to help on marketing data. I think it is clear that we are…
67 00:42:35.920 ⇒ 00:42:41.860 Uttam Kumaran: like… we’re an effective team, and we’ve knocked through a bunch of issues, from Looker.
68 00:42:42.060 ⇒ 00:43:00.880 Uttam Kumaran: audit cleanup, registered audit cleanup, ETL audit cleanup, dbt jobs. We then moved on to inventory, we then moved on to revenue. We’re now sort of creep into marketing. I think… and also in parallel on that, we just, like, manage the day-to-day fires. So kind of one thing that I wanted to tell
69 00:43:01.070 ⇒ 00:43:06.870 Uttam Kumaran: Zach is, like, one, we’ve shipped a lot of great models, but the analysis team is not catching up.
70 00:43:07.030 ⇒ 00:43:10.990 Uttam Kumaran: We’re not seeing that that team is taking what we’ve built.
71 00:43:11.430 ⇒ 00:43:15.760 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, driving net new decisions.
72 00:43:17.250 ⇒ 00:43:34.550 Uttam Kumaran: part of that, I don’t know what… and we do meet with that team often, and we do share our new things, but I think either they’re very busy, or something… I don’t know, I’ll have to find out. So that’s a huge gap that we see. Second is, like, I want to understand,
73 00:43:34.680 ⇒ 00:43:52.249 Uttam Kumaran: like, what… how does the… do these initiatives play a part into the next year’s goals for Urban Stems? Additionally, I want to ask about opportunities for AI. Like, we do a lot of AI work, so I want to say, like, are there AI or automation opportunities within Urban Stems that we can also…
74 00:43:52.430 ⇒ 00:43:54.069 Uttam Kumaran: You know, help on.
75 00:43:54.220 ⇒ 00:44:00.360 Uttam Kumaran: I think certainly the marketing work is going to take Quite a bit of time.
76 00:44:00.540 ⇒ 00:44:04.269 Uttam Kumaran: But I also think that, given we modeled all the data.
77 00:44:04.380 ⇒ 00:44:10.989 Uttam Kumaran: I think it’s… I would like us to be able to also take on, and we have the capability to take on, some of the analysis work.
78 00:44:11.100 ⇒ 00:44:17.049 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s what I’m gonna pitch on, is like, hey, I wanna… I wanna go for another contract where
79 00:44:17.590 ⇒ 00:44:20.380 Uttam Kumaran: We finish up marketing,
80 00:44:20.490 ⇒ 00:44:27.300 Uttam Kumaran: We also have not done anything for the fin… for, like, the core finance team, right? So there’s marketing, there’s finance.
81 00:44:27.390 ⇒ 00:44:40.590 Uttam Kumaran: And there’s, like, customer service stuff, but I also want to tell them that, like, hey, you’re sitting on this gold, and I want our team to be able to take time to go dig and answer some of those analysis questions, but we need
82 00:44:40.800 ⇒ 00:44:43.410 Uttam Kumaran: You know, the budget resources to do so.
83 00:44:43.790 ⇒ 00:44:47.900 Uttam Kumaran: That’s gonna be kind of, like, what I think.
84 00:44:48.290 ⇒ 00:45:01.479 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we did some cost auditing, Awash. I think the… probably the biggest thing is on Looker. That’s where, they have a lot of people in… in Looker.
85 00:45:02.500 ⇒ 00:45:05.850 Uttam Kumaran: that are…
86 00:45:07.580 ⇒ 00:45:15.500 Uttam Kumaran: that are, like, not using the platform, but they’re paying for, so that’s one thing. And then, yeah, we can definitely do a redshift optimization. They’re paying up… they’re paying about…
87 00:45:15.640 ⇒ 00:45:17.499 Uttam Kumaran: 1200 for Redshift.
88 00:45:18.130 ⇒ 00:45:23.189 Uttam Kumaran: Like, how much time away should you need to go do, like, a cost audit on Redshift?
89 00:45:25.080 ⇒ 00:45:28.609 Awaish Kumar: If… if there’s, like, logging of all the…
90 00:45:30.500 ⇒ 00:45:35.799 Awaish Kumar: queries are being used and all, then it’ll just take a few hours, like, one or two hours to do.
91 00:45:36.610 ⇒ 00:45:37.460 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
92 00:45:48.180 ⇒ 00:45:51.189 Uttam Kumaran: So these are the questions I’m going to ask him.
93 00:45:53.930 ⇒ 00:46:00.510 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, I think we’ve… I think we’ve… I think we’ve crushed it. We’ve moved very, very fast for them, so I want to see what’s… what’s possible.
94 00:46:06.710 ⇒ 00:46:12.880 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, this is where, like, also, if they want to really attack costs, like, we could consider a migration from Redshift to…
95 00:46:13.060 ⇒ 00:46:14.719 Uttam Kumaran: Something else, like Mother Duck.
96 00:46:17.810 ⇒ 00:46:27.099 Uttam Kumaran: And so that’s what I want to ask him, like, Would migrations to cheaper Pools beyond the table.
97 00:46:29.540 ⇒ 00:46:35.460 Uttam Kumaran: And then also, like, wood… The team consider a migration?
98 00:46:35.460 ⇒ 00:46:36.240 Awaish Kumar: I’ve…
99 00:46:36.240 ⇒ 00:46:37.420 Uttam Kumaran: BI tools.
100 00:46:37.890 ⇒ 00:46:39.170 Awaish Kumar: Something…
101 00:46:39.590 ⇒ 00:46:40.899 Uttam Kumaran: like Omni.
102 00:46:42.560 ⇒ 00:46:47.069 Uttam Kumaran: So I can ask you about both of those as well. Omni would come out cheaper than Looker.
103 00:46:53.900 ⇒ 00:46:59.769 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, great. This is spectacular. It’s exactly what I needed, and then I gave some context in the last meeting.
104 00:46:59.980 ⇒ 00:47:08.010 Uttam Kumaran: But ideally, we’re gonna start to produce this once a week, as the week goes on. And so, ideally, we come to the end of the week, and it’s…
105 00:47:08.120 ⇒ 00:47:14.360 Uttam Kumaran: just for us to shape this, that I can, you know, ship this to the client. So, I appreciate the time to do this.
106 00:47:14.640 ⇒ 00:47:21.640 Uttam Kumaran: I know we have, the stand-up and retro later. I will be coming out of a sales call, so I may not
107 00:47:22.370 ⇒ 00:47:24.760 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll… I may… it may be the same thing.
108 00:47:25.090 ⇒ 00:47:30.530 Uttam Kumaran: I may be a little late, but… Yeah, I think,
109 00:47:30.800 ⇒ 00:47:34.489 Uttam Kumaran: Probably, Amber, I can work with you on shaping this up.
110 00:47:35.170 ⇒ 00:47:36.340 Uttam Kumaran: For a little deck.
111 00:47:36.490 ⇒ 00:47:40.609 Uttam Kumaran: And then I’m going to… Try to grab time with Zach.
112 00:47:44.180 ⇒ 00:47:49.870 Uttam Kumaran: I’m gonna try to grab time with Zach, next week, and then we can prepare a deck for that.
113 00:47:51.110 ⇒ 00:48:00.680 Amber Lin: Cool. Yeah, sounds good. We also don’t have it booked recurring, it might be better this time we ask just to have… I’m gonna get a recurring, yeah.
114 00:48:00.880 ⇒ 00:48:01.820 Amber Lin: Definitely.
115 00:48:02.170 ⇒ 00:48:02.910 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
116 00:48:03.470 ⇒ 00:48:04.240 Amber Lin: Sounds good.
117 00:48:04.880 ⇒ 00:48:06.700 Demilade Agboola: Can I… can I be added to that meeting?
118 00:48:07.320 ⇒ 00:48:07.930 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
119 00:48:09.430 ⇒ 00:48:10.120 Uttam Kumaran: Fair?
120 00:48:14.370 ⇒ 00:48:18.250 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool. Anything else?
121 00:48:23.930 ⇒ 00:48:24.750 Uttam Kumaran: Great.
122 00:48:24.890 ⇒ 00:48:25.610 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
123 00:48:26.090 ⇒ 00:48:36.900 Uttam Kumaran: Did we want… I guess you guys will go through, like, tickets, and I’ll be on that. I’ll try to come into that later meeting, but yeah, if we could just close out tickets for the week, or push stuff to…
124 00:48:37.390 ⇒ 00:48:41.799 Uttam Kumaran: To… then close out the… the board, that would be… amazing.
125 00:48:42.280 ⇒ 00:48:43.540 Amber Lin: Yeah, we can do that.
126 00:48:44.060 ⇒ 00:48:45.050 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, alright.
127 00:48:45.210 ⇒ 00:48:46.400 Amber Lin: Okay, thanks.
128 00:48:46.400 ⇒ 00:48:47.260 Uttam Kumaran: Thank you, guys.
129 00:48:47.890 ⇒ 00:48:48.500 Amber Lin: Yay.
130 00:48:48.740 ⇒ 00:48:49.390 Demilade Agboola: Aye.