Talas is an operating assistant for the executive team.

Think of Talas as a savvy assistant who:

• Understands Lumen’s business, customers, and market

• Listens across meetings and decisions

• Helps reduce friction by taking first passes, tracking follow-ups, and synthesizing context when useful

We’re here to support how you already work, not to change it.

We are former founders and operators who built and exited a Higher Ed edtech company that did both Direct-to-professor and Institutional sales. We’ve led teams through critical moments such as new product launches, company-wide initiatives, and periods of transition.

We now partner closely with a small set of pilot teams, adding leverage where it’s most useful while developing the Talas product alongside them. Our experience spans product, go-to-market, and data, allowing us to operate across executive, sales, and board contexts without adding friction.

At first, very little changes. Over time, things get easier.

First 30 days

• Talas is in listening and learning mode

• Focus is on understanding how Lumen operates today:

  • How decisions get made

  • How work moves across exec, sales, and board contexts

• No new tools, processes, or expectations

• You’re encouraged to ask for help, but nothing is required

After the first 30 days

• Talas begins to function more like a savvy executive assistant with context

• Can take first passes on drafts, summaries, analyses, reminders, or follow-ups

• Support is always optional and editable - meant to save time, not add work

You can treat Talas like an assistant in Slack or email.

Examples:

• “Remind me to follow up with ___ next Wednesday.”

• “Take a first pass at a whitespace analysis for Texas.”

• “I can’t make this meeting — can you cover it and brief me?”

• “Can you summarize where this decision landed and what’s still open?”

The Talas team will do our best to help and will ask clarifying questions when needed, utilizing our deep experience in the Higher-Ed market, spanning product, go-to-market, and data.

• Talas is not evaluating performance.

• Talas is not changing how meetings run.

• Talas will not insert itself into workflows or channels unless asked.

If something isn’t useful, the expectation is simply to say so.

Talas is on Slack under Talas Assist

You can also email lumen@talas.co

Talas will quietly join the biweekly exec meetings, weekly sales meetings, and monthly board meetings to capture context and help track to-dos

Any additional access is requested only for specific tasks that you ask us to do

Everything is under NDA

Talas should:

• Reduce executive overhead

• Help work move forward more smoothly

• Give you an extra set of capable hands when you want them

You don’t need to do anything differently unless you choose to.