Energytech Startups

00:00:00:03 - 00:00:28:21
Unknown
Energy tech doesn't move forward alone, and neither should you. Energy tech cipher brings together the founders, investors, operators and corporates shaping what's next. From innovation trends to data driven insights. This is where the ecosystem connects, collaborates and moves. Find your place in the ecosystem at energy Tech cipher.com. That's cipher as in Sci, pH. E.R. where we bring the community together online and in person.

00:00:28:23 - 00:00:46:14
Unknown
I'm excited today because we have a new set of guests here on the show. At Energy Tech startups, we have, Jacob and Jason. Jacob is at Iron Stag Advisory and Jason is at Ponton Analytics. And they have different names for their firms. But the reality is they're a team. And they've been a team for for multiple years, dating back to, I guess working together.

00:00:46:14 - 00:01:17:14
Unknown
It has. So, why don't you, Jacob, take it away and introduce yourself? Yeah. And I appreciate you having us here today. And, thanks for the opportunity to share our story. That's something that we were not able to do a whole lot of while we were at this, one of our growing frustrations. And maybe we'll talk about that a little bit, is is the inner workings of the corporate ecosystem and the immune system of a corporation, which does prevent internal messaging and free flow of information coming in and out of the, out of the organization.

00:01:17:14 - 00:01:40:23
Unknown
So. Yep. I'm Jacob isn't it? We work together at has, started an advisory company very similar to the work that we were doing that has actually driving innovation within the business. And, it's been an interesting several months, but, time for us to start sharing some of our knowledge with the broader, ecosystem in Houston. And exactly, Jason.

00:01:40:23 - 00:02:10:01
Unknown
Harry. So, spent 14 years, at Haas and, a little short time at Chevron after the merger. I'm, I'm a subsea, an operations offshore specialist, by background. So, I like to lead with domain firsts, and, you know, taking a shot at things in AI. So, machine learning, you know, deep reinforcement models and etc..

00:02:10:03 - 00:02:34:17
Unknown
So, that's, that's the type of work we do at Quantum Analytics, but, still day to day, Jacob and I calling each other once a day and talking about, you know, how can we help different, companies, run two pilots, evaluate pilots, evaluate different companies and products. So we do that pretty often. Yeah. I'd say my domain specifically is in the drilling and completion space.

00:02:34:17 - 00:02:59:19
Unknown
So I graduated from LSU with a petroleum engineering degree and went went through the ranks starting in the field and went into engineering management. And then later as a operations management role. So my core domain is drilling and completions. Yeah. So I imagine after you graduated university in petroleum engineering, you work for a big oil company. What is it like working for a big oil company as a petroleum engineer?

00:02:59:21 - 00:03:22:04
Unknown
Like what is your day to day? Is it focus on making sure nothing goes wrong, hitting goals like putting out fires, like what drew you to it and what was the experience like? Yeah, I'll go first. I mean, I think we've had different experiences and we both started, I think, on the service sector coming straight out of out of university and then later transitioned into an oil or traditional oil company.

00:03:22:04 - 00:03:51:13
Unknown
Upstream oil company. So risk management is a huge part of what we do as individual contributors and as managers and as leaders within the organization. But you'll find that depending on where you are in your career, your experience and your day to day is very different. So very early in your career, you're you're you're building your technical foundation, so you're learning how to drive those calculations and learn the work processes and learning the operations and how stuff's actually done.

00:03:51:15 - 00:04:12:23
Unknown
In reality, not not in textbooks. And I would say that probably takes the first ten years or so of your career. Then you move into kind of first line management, team leadership, that kind of stuff. And usually corporations put some of the best technical people into management roles, which is a mistake to a certain degree, but that's what they do nonetheless.

00:04:12:23 - 00:04:33:03
Unknown
And those individuals have to kind of figure out how to lead people and how to be a manager, etc.. And then after about 20 years, you get into senior leadership where it's not really about the day to day operations. It's more driving strategy. And, stakeholder alignments and things like that. But what was your experience? Yeah, so very similar.

00:04:33:03 - 00:05:19:01
Unknown
So started as a, subsea operability and flow assurance consultant would, would, you know, just fresh out of Georgia Tech, would a chemical engineering degree worked at for a long time and just, it was all about simulation at that time, simulating things and Olga and Gap and prosper and, hi-seas and, you know, determining, you know, running, you know, tens of thousands of simulations to determine an outcome or a decision on how you, you know, build an offshore platform in field, that that was completely different from, when I actually started working for an oil company at Hess, and then I started kind of managing the guys

00:05:19:01 - 00:05:49:10
Unknown
who did that stuff. And in doing it as, you know, as a manager of contracts and taking out what was important from those, those engagements with the consultant and bringing it up to management, over the years, I became the, the technical authority for flow assurance at, at Hess and then, again, around that ten year mark, you start getting the itch like, you know, where's my career about to go.

00:05:49:12 - 00:06:17:21
Unknown
And I found a deep connection to technology. And that's kind of where Jacob and I, met. And we've been really bonded and really close since. Yeah, I know, obviously, how Scott, rolled in, but what was the innovation ecosystem like within Haas? What was the kind of structure that helped distribute technology throughout the company? So we had a both a top down and and a bottom up kind of approach, which was unique to us.

00:06:17:21 - 00:06:48:03
Unknown
And I think as we learned more about our peers, it was a very advantageous set up that we had. Okay. I don't know if that was really by design or if that's just how things kind of worked out because, by necessity, things weren't going the way they were supposed to go. But we did have a CTO and a technology office, and, you know, we talked about that a little earlier, ago, and that that team was essentially responsible for scouting.

00:06:48:05 - 00:07:16:13
Unknown
What what technologies are coming down the pipeline ten years from now, seven years from now, five years from now. But the difficulty there is that they're not aligned specifically with the business, particularly the domain. And, Jason, talk about domain knowledge and leading domain first innovation as being something that is critical to actually moving things forward and not in a theoretical or theatrical way, but in an actual way of deployment, etc..

00:07:16:15 - 00:07:40:03
Unknown
So at Hess, we had a team that we belong to that was embedded in our business unit. So we we supported our Gulf of America business unit as well as our offshore Denmark at one time, and we collaborated closely with our, Malaysian counterparts that were all offshore. We had another team that was similar to us, but they focused on our onshore assets.

00:07:40:05 - 00:08:03:23
Unknown
We come from our offshore asset, our offshore business flow assurance production operations. I was a drilling and completion manager, so we knew our business, we knew the people, and we were able to really push. And, run pilots and drive innovation in a very effective way because we knew the business and we knew the technical domain. So we knew the people and we knew the people we had relationships.

00:08:03:23 - 00:08:26:09
Unknown
We had that street credit, if you will. But, yeah. What was your experience? Yeah, I would say so. I came into the job, the job in the business with Jacob, probably around 2021, 2022. And like some of the first things I did was try to use the equity that I built. Built up in the technical domain.

00:08:26:11 - 00:08:59:12
Unknown
First base. Right. And, try to use that to influence the technology that are deployed. So I, I probably, I think I started the job in June and, by by August, I was doing like a, a tour of the platforms, you know, I was flying from, from each platform that we had in the Gulf and, you know, kind of going spread the gospel about technology and really getting down to, you know, what do you guys need to make your job better?

00:08:59:13 - 00:09:29:23
Unknown
And one of the first things which, you know, us coming from Jacob, coming from the drilling background, domain background, I'm coming from production. We get out there and we're trying to, you know, push things that will improve production and improve drilling. And we get out there and the guys are like, well, hey, we we need to stop using this pen and pad, and we need to start using some iPad or some mobile device to capture our inspections.

00:09:30:01 - 00:09:56:14
Unknown
And we're like, that's it. So, that immediately became the top priority because that that is where you had the poor and you can gain more equity in being able to spread the word and start to move pilots. So, we started out with that, that one first. And we gained, you know, we gained a lot more equity by trading their pen and pad for iPads.

00:09:56:16 - 00:10:17:22
Unknown
But as simple as that sound, it was not easy. Yeah. To talk about some of that friction and, and I guess on the one hand you can pull us through. Why did it take so long to identify the problem? Maybe. And then second, what were the barriers to kind of get something that seems very every day kind of deploying and also tagging on to that.

00:10:18:01 - 00:10:43:05
Unknown
Why did the offshore operators boss not tell anyone, like, hey, our team doesn't want pen and paper, they want iPads. Like, why wasn't anyone else? I wasn't filtering up. Yeah, yeah. I think, you know and in the, in the offshore world right. You have a, you have a tower or office of people who are just sitting there and they're running day to day business.

00:10:43:06 - 00:11:15:14
Unknown
And you have the satellite offices which are offshore, which are your platforms, and, you know, the people offshore. They rotate fairly frequently on a 14 day basis, and they're busy focusing on keeping the platform up. They don't have much time to call up to the to the tower and say, hey guys, we need XYZ. Okay. And once we once we receive the problem, you know, and we call it, you know, we follow a we follow the meet, lean methodology.

00:11:15:16 - 00:11:35:01
Unknown
And one of the big things and lean is going to gimbal meaning you go to where the work is done. And I think a lot of people were guilty of not doing that. And that's why Jacob and I, we have such a human centric mindset. Like what does the end user need with some of these pilots that we're going, going to deploy.

00:11:35:03 - 00:11:57:10
Unknown
So kind of back to the use case, right. Once you take that use case of turning paper that, electronic, you bring it back to the office and there's just tons of debate going through this corporate, this, this corporate. What do we call it? The corporate immune system. Yeah. So you like, you get back to your office.

00:11:57:10 - 00:12:28:15
Unknown
Hey, guys, we would like to deploy a, digital inspection capture software. Oh, well, it needs to run through it. We need to make sure that we have the contracts that fit this purpose. How are we going to do the software selection? And it's just this whole corporate thing that you have to go to go through to get to eventually deploying something.

00:12:28:17 - 00:12:49:08
Unknown
And that probably took 6 to 9 months before we even, you know, started our first inspection capture with digital devices. You know, I would say that, you know, why didn't that individual offshore voice those things? It's because it takes 6 to 9 months to impact change and their mindset is hitched a hitch to hitch. So they're 314 days.

00:12:49:08 - 00:13:08:19
Unknown
You mean 14 days or 21 days. And if they can't impact change in that window, then they're done. You know, they don't want to start that journey. But, the friction is also in all of the red tape and the frustration, just like, you know, you want to get a new iPhone or whatever it is. You know, it's not just rolling up to the store and buying a new iPhone.

00:13:08:19 - 00:13:28:20
Unknown
It's phone calls, it's data transfer. It's the two factor authentication and on and on and on. So imagine all of that taking place remotely offshore, where remember, we had to struggle with year two of this back there for like a month. I can only imagine if you're offshore with poor internet and you can't get into your teams account.

00:13:28:22 - 00:13:58:12
Unknown
Frustrating. It it it kills innovation because in your personal life, you know, you're incentivized to get your new iPhone, etc. you have a personal connection. You have to understand that the business of innovation and driving technology, you're dealing with people's discretionary time if they choose to do it or not, to do it because they have a day job, they have expectations to meet ops managers, have budgets to deliver, etc. so when you do get them to try something, that's their discretionary effort.

00:13:58:12 - 00:14:19:22
Unknown
You're you're dealing with. It's not. So there's a thousand reasons why they can say no after that point. And there's no ramifications for saying no right now. Just do it the way they've been doing it all along, etc.. So, so, so to kind of achieve your goal of getting this technology deployed, how did you when people over, did you, did you have a boss was like, you know, listen to Jason Jacob.

00:14:19:22 - 00:14:42:19
Unknown
They know what they're doing or news. And the answer is it's not always that easy. It's not always that easy to do. You have to do the opposite. Actually, I'll tell you a funny story because, you know, I, I went through drilling completions. We talked about that was my domain. My prior role to getting in the technology was the ink manager for for the Gulf America, which I had a massive budget, a massive team.

00:14:42:21 - 00:15:00:06
Unknown
I could get lots of stuff done. So, you know, we started to think about driving this technology team and standing up a new team. I said, it's going to be easy. I'll run a few pilots. I mean, I've drilled wells all over the world and deploy teams and very complex things, running a few technology pilots that can be super easy.

00:15:00:11 - 00:15:20:02
Unknown
It's very humbling, very humbling experience. And, you know, I found myself having to, you know, kind of beg people, hey, can you give this a shot? You and my domain was the toughest domain to try and get anything done. And the drilling a completion folks wanted nothing to do with my ideas. After I was not their manager, so to speak.

00:15:20:02 - 00:15:40:13
Unknown
So that was very humbling and learning experience. And is it just that cycle of the job is the job. And just like you said, that that all the innovation in the implementation is on your free time, is that really the barrier? It really feels that way. Yeah. And, you know, if you ever been part of a large organization where they were trying to roll out a massive change.

00:15:40:13 - 00:15:57:08
Unknown
So maybe it's lean management system, maybe it's technology initiatives nowadays it's AI, right? You have lots of folks who are just, you know, turtle syndrome. They just want to go in their shell and wait for this to pass. And, you know, if I stay in my shell long enough, you know, then I won't have to do this.

00:15:57:08 - 00:16:20:01
Unknown
So, you know, you have to deal with all those kinds of, resistors is what it's called from a change management perspective. Yeah. My observation also is like, granted, it's been a while since I've worked in a corporate environment, but you'd rather just, like, play defense and make sure you don't have a failure versus try to be like Kobe and, like, win the game, you know, it's funny you say that.

00:16:20:06 - 00:16:50:14
Unknown
You know. Yeah. Absolutely. That's you up there. So so yeah. So I think what people don't realize and what a lot of like energy tech startups don't realize is, when you're, when you're pitching to, oil and gas company or operator, much of the landscape that you're going into is experimental. So, you don't have to pitch the perfect product or you don't have to set up a quote to deliver the entire elephant.

00:16:50:14 - 00:17:14:14
Unknown
You you're you're taking the first bite out of it and proving what you can do for the company, proving that you can, deliver some value with that pilot or that technology. One of the I mean, Jacob, I'll tell you, we, you know, during our time, we probably tested maybe 20 to 30 pilots and, maybe, I would say a 4 or 5 year period.

00:17:14:16 - 00:17:43:12
Unknown
Yeah, that's pretty good. What a quarter? Well, what were you guys think? The success rate of what what we end up scaling would be? I would guess 5 to 10%. That would be my. Yeah. So, so maybe 2 or 3 actually stuck, right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And actually like I think when the, the, the digital, that the one that I spoke about earlier, the converting paper to digital, I don't even know if that stood up after the merger.

00:17:43:14 - 00:18:04:22
Unknown
Okay. Because, because the IT systems probably come from the, you know they require. Right. So you know if, if only 2 or 3 was successful you could take a minus one on now. No. Okay. Well you know what. Let's so I want to I have the opinion that I think energy is, very willing to adopt technology when it's, it's very clear what the value is.

00:18:04:22 - 00:18:35:13
Unknown
And, and so help me paint a picture because I've never worked in your shoes. I've only come as an outsider. But when I sit back and and watch, kind of the shale revolution, there's so much technology that was tested and, and, and obviously different from offshore because offshore people like, can get really hurt. But when I think about just changes in how, you know, ESPs were developed, like all the experimentation that went on between, you know, the different types of frack fluid that went in and just the actual process of fracking and completions.

00:18:35:15 - 00:18:52:14
Unknown
I think they took a lot of risk and maybe, maybe that lived in smaller companies. But if I remember, has at a certain point had a pretty substantial, unconventional portfolio and had you had to get it at some point, right, and had to stay on that leading edge, because I think we all remember unconventional were not profitable in the beginning, and people figured it out.

00:18:52:15 - 00:19:16:20
Unknown
Right. And that only happened because of a lot of technology development. So yeah, I guess in some ways, you know, tell me, tell me what happens when things do line up and people say, no, we're going to go. We're going to go figure we're going to spend the money to figure this out. Yeah, I can I can take a first shot at that one because it's an interesting question with maybe an unexpected answer, at least for me.

00:19:16:22 - 00:19:55:05
Unknown
The energy sector is a conundrum. So being offshore for 20 plus years, I've seen how technologically advanced we had to be to, exploit reservoirs in very deep, water depths at very high pressures. So 20 K stacks and beyond 10,000ft of water. Yeah, it's literally like landing stuff on the moon and all that. When you watch what goes on at the seafloor, at the same time, those same individuals are unwilling to digitize their handover documents, so they'll deploy a robot at 10,000ft of water at 20,000 psi, pressure on the seafloor.

00:19:55:05 - 00:20:19:03
Unknown
But they won't digitize their tally books. This is the same people. And I've thought about that quite a bit, because it was my job to drive innovation and technology for about six years in the offshore space. And what I've concluded is when when technology is standing in the way or an enabler to get more oil in the pipeline, direct more oil in the pipeline, we're all over it.

00:20:19:03 - 00:20:47:01
Unknown
The the industry's all over it. But if it's not one degree separated from oil in the pipeline, then there is there's all kinds of challenges on the human side to get things done. Yeah. What's your perspective on that? I think I think coming from the subsea space, is it's a little bit, a little bit different. It's not as, technology technologically advanced as drilling and completion.

00:20:47:03 - 00:21:11:22
Unknown
I, I saw a presentation once saying that subsea, it's probably only gone through maybe 1 or 2 technology cycles since like the 80s. So because all it is, is it's just, it's just pipe with really not a lot of instrumentation on it. You have some instrumentation I use subsea trees and subsea trees are now going from ten K to 15 K to 20 K.

00:21:12:00 - 00:21:30:20
Unknown
And now next thing you're going to is like fully electric to trees but subsea. That's really about it I mean I think there's a lot of technology. I mean you got to do this like basically on the surface of the moon or the bottom of the ocean. I think it's hard to install it, to maintain it and make sure decommissioning it, it absolutely is.

00:21:31:01 - 00:21:51:07
Unknown
But but I guess there's not the same, glory, I guess the way you describe it of, deploying. Right. That's, that takes a lot of engineering, right, to, to figure out, like, what's the thing that'll last because it's going to last 20, 30, 40 years, right? Yeah, exactly. But at the same time, so like, you know, to compliment Jason Jacobs.

00:21:51:12 - 00:22:33:19
Unknown
Oh, there we go. Yeah. This one, this one. Yeah. So, to complement Jacobs analogy, where you doing moon type stuff and you don't want to tally books? In subsea, there's a huge problem with capture, capturing of inspection and, inspection anomalies. And that stuff is worth, I mean, it's it has massive value because, you know, like, we're required by regulators to go out every 3 or 4 years to go and inspect the pipe, and you basically have to fly over with the ROV over every inch of equipment every three years.

00:22:33:21 - 00:22:58:15
Unknown
But you know where technology is going, even with production anomalies, you should only be going after the anomalies. So, like, if I get an anomaly, let's say 20 anomalies, I should only be going back in three years to go and have a look at those and make sure that those are not getting worse. So there's tons of room for optimization in that space.

00:22:58:15 - 00:23:24:07
Unknown
Management by timelines and plans. Not, by incidents. Exactly. Exception based, strategies. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. I think the industry is moving in that direction in all facets and far, but it's it's slow. So so what I'm hearing is for entrepreneurs, like looking to come into the energy industry, if you can help a company, you know, produce a barrel of oil and there's a good ROI on that, that that technology gets implemented.

00:23:24:07 - 00:23:42:20
Unknown
And I think that makes sense. Right. Like the energy industry is so focused on proven reserves, you can kind of tie the value of a company almost, to what's, what's there. Right? Absolutely. But there's so few companies out there that actually are 1 or 2 degrees separated from one in terms of in terms of the technology being able to.

00:23:42:22 - 00:24:02:04
Unknown
Absolutely. Right. I mean, we he said earlier we did about 40 or so pilots. Only a couple or 2 or 3 of them were directly related to increasing production. The others are more qualitative, if you will. They save time to make things more efficient. Not that they're not important, but they're not directly quantitatively connected to oil production. Yeah.

00:24:02:04 - 00:24:21:06
Unknown
And then the secondary one is, yeah, these indirect, ways to benefit, maybe unlocking around regulatory right is the other one I'm hearing is a big driver, but not as strong as is getting, you know, more out of the ground. Yeah. And vitamins, not painkillers. Yeah. And that's the fundamental challenge is the organ is that the ecosystem knows where all the value is.

00:24:21:06 - 00:24:42:18
Unknown
It's it's in the rock. Right. Yeah. And everything else is kind of secondary. And I think that's easy to forget that. Like like you get I gotta focus on delivering value to the, to the, to the industry. And if you don't do that, you're really just, Yeah. You're just vitamin. Yeah. So it's funny, I think it was like last time I was at Greentown.

00:24:42:18 - 00:25:13:23
Unknown
I actually ended up running into both of you out outside Greentown Labs. Right? Yeah. So. Okay, so merger happens. You're now your own boss. You have your own advisory firms are working for, like, more entrepreneurial organizations. Tell us what you've been up to now. Even though you're not at Haas, you're still, like, tag teaming. My understanding. Yeah. So for me, so, you guys remember I told you I started out at wood as a flowcharts consultant?

00:25:14:00 - 00:25:38:11
Unknown
I've. I've joined up with a group called Part Time Analytics and, part of, you know, they they are, they're kind of the, I guess the next, the next level, like, it's a whole bunch of domain first guys who are kind of out to, deploy these machine learning models, these AI models that delivers exactly what you just mentioned.

00:25:38:11 - 00:26:13:17
Unknown
Right. The, the first the the one degree of separation away from increase in production and the flow assurance world. I mean, we hire barrels every day, behind, slugging, behind, you know, not properly allocating, where your wells go, on a daily basis. And I think that's kind of where pantomime is, is, is after. Did you start with quantum when you were at Hess that we that we pilot with plant bottom had just formed when we were ramping down.

00:26:13:17 - 00:26:32:20
Unknown
Okay. Yeah. But but we did do some similar pilots in that area. Yeah. And those, those directly, impacted and put barrels in the pipeline. So I'm excited for what's to come with bottom. I'm going to reveal how little I know about the industry. I don't know what flow assurance actually means in terms of like a role.

00:26:32:20 - 00:26:59:17
Unknown
And it's, it sounds like a very specific but jargony role. So, please, you got the right person, right? We might have to do another podcast. I understand drilling that one. Kind of, straightforward to think, but. Yeah, please explain in 20 minutes, you know, you got you have five minutes. I don't know. Would be quicker than five minutes if flow assurance is basically, it's it's, it's some people think it's black magic, right?

00:26:59:19 - 00:27:22:22
Unknown
But it's, you know, preventing anything that could completely stop your subsidy or your pipelines from flowing. There are things called, I don't know if you ever heard of hydrates. Yeah. It's kind of like butter. Is that a good example? Like, it's just hydrates are more like ice, right? Oh, is it ice? Okay, okay. You can burn. You can form ice in your pipeline.

00:27:22:22 - 00:27:50:17
Unknown
Okay. With, you know, when you put cold gas in cold water to get okay, then it like, clumped together, like slush, right? Yeah. Yeah, I could do a whole podcast on that. Right. And and how that. So it's cold down there. Not hot. It's cold. Yeah. The seabed is about 38°F. So when you have hot fluid going into a pipe, you got to make sure that it gets all the way up, to the platform and a decent temperature and it doesn't freeze.

00:27:50:19 - 00:28:16:04
Unknown
So that's really wood floors, right. And you've got paraffin and asphalt teens and all these, all these things that could really impact production. And again, one, because they shrink down the the flow area in the pipe or they clog it up, shrink down the flow area, or can completely block it off. And in my experience, I've probably probably resolved well, had to encounter and resolve probably about 6 to 8 of them.

00:28:16:06 - 00:28:35:21
Unknown
Okay. And so what happens when there's an incident like alarm bells or boss calling you. Like what do you do now. You just so somebody calls from offshore. Hey, Jason, I just tried to start up the well and the pressure just keeps going up, and it, I don't see any flow. Right. Okay. And that means you got a blockage.

00:28:35:21 - 00:28:58:09
Unknown
So I like to say is more like. Like, I've gotten I've gotten good. I do a lot of property management around my house. I've got really good at plumbing. Is this is the equivalent of my five year old just stuff. And, a whole entire toilet paper roll down on the toilet, down the sink to fix it up.

00:28:58:09 - 00:29:30:12
Unknown
But what's the fix, do people, do you heat it up or do you pick it or what you can do? You can't heat, okay. You can't pick because you're going to make another wow. So there are chemicals that can help you, clear things up. You can do it through depressurization. So, like, you know, lowering the pressure so that you get outside of the hydrate envelope, or if you're in the worst case where you can't do anything, you have to call a vessel out, and it it puts a vacuum, on the flow line and basically sucks the hydrate up.

00:29:30:18 - 00:29:51:01
Unknown
And so just to kind of paint numbers, I assume pulling out a vessel is like a million bucks a day, kind of situation. And pigging your is even more expensive, and that's why you never do it. And you said something interesting. You change the flow condition. So I guess, the hydrate is, it's chemistry, right. And so if the, it's like, you can do things to make it boil off.

00:29:51:02 - 00:30:12:14
Unknown
Is that essentially what I'm hearing? Yeah, I, I'm appreciating the temperature. Yeah. Actually, you can't manipulate the temperature. The pressure be laid. The pressure pressure. You need to, manipulate the kinetics of thermodynamics by injecting some chemical and manipulating the pressure. Right. That's that's magic. I'm not told you it's black magic. Like like magic. But but the whole.

00:30:12:14 - 00:30:30:21
Unknown
Like most things in life, it's better to be preventative than reactive. So if you can prevent the hydrate from forming in the first place, which is a lot of what flow assurance does well is that they give recommendations on certain types of, chemicals, LDH and other things so that the hydrate doesn't form in the first place. Yeah.

00:30:30:21 - 00:30:50:04
Unknown
Interesting. The name of that's proactivity. Okay. I would think like that's a really important function because like if you spend, you know, tens or hundreds of millions of dollars drilling a well, like you want to make sure, like it doesn't get clogged. Yeah. This is 100 bucks a barrel right now. Two like, no money. So is very important.

00:30:50:06 - 00:31:19:09
Unknown
And, you know, before you start producing oil, like in the design, right. That's where a lot of the money is being built, but, well, a lot of money is being spent, but actually, hardly anybody spending the money in operations. And that's, that's probably like the worst thing you could do because, you could be optimizing as you go and finding those hidden barrels, and, like operations and maintenance work that's like, not sexy, like, well, not at all.

00:31:19:11 - 00:31:47:01
Unknown
When, when a new when the government wants a new bridge built, they'll roll out the, you know, the drums and a press release for a new infrastructure project. But then so much maintenance doesn't happen. So, yeah, it's like the Lake Charles Bridge. Yeah, that should be interesting. Thanks for listening. If you're fundraising now or know someone who is, I want to tell you about Safran, our investor relationship management product for energy tech founders.

00:31:47:03 - 00:32:10:15
Unknown
Think of it as a CRM built for energy fundraising. Use our recommendation engine to find the right investors faster and then track every conversation and stay connected through your raise. There's a free tier so you can start today at no cost. That's key here on Ecom now. Thanks and back to the show. But I don't know I like I understand why you don't spend that much on operations.

00:32:10:17 - 00:32:30:22
Unknown
You know, a lot of times, especially when you look at these like, business models that just print cash, right? It's all about minimizing opex, right. And, you know, you obviously put a big bunch of CapEx and getting that that platform out there. And, in the short term, you know, if you can, you can produce that barrel oil for, what, $10 a barrel or something.

00:32:31:00 - 00:32:46:13
Unknown
It looks really good on the cash flow statement and anything that, you know, increases that. I can see where the the managers, you know, don't want to to do that because that's not what the stock market wants. Now you bring up you bring up a good point and I'll comment on that. And I'll go back to your question.

00:32:46:13 - 00:33:18:07
Unknown
I'll tell you kind of what what, from my perspective, how things have gone since corporate corporate life, if you will. But a short term view on economics and performance is really what kills innovation in technology. Innovation requires executive leadership and sponsorship across the executive team for a very long term commitment. The second the commitment wanes, the whole organization from a discretionary perspective just fluffs it off.

00:33:18:07 - 00:33:40:04
Unknown
They're like, oh, EVP doesn't want to do that anymore. Okay, I'm done with that. Or they can get switched out or you switched out and the initiatives change. So driving technology, AI, innovation, whatever it is, requires a long term commitment. Yeah. It cannot be short term focused. Yeah. And that's hard, especially when you're a public company. It's very difficult.

00:33:40:04 - 00:34:09:15
Unknown
Yeah. It's very difficult. But I think the executive leadership team has to bring that mindset into the rooms when they engage shareholders and stockholders and stakeholders of all kinds of shapes and sizes, they need to to to firmly express their commitment to long term change and unwavering from that statement, you know, and and that that sends that message down the organization, but also sends the message to the stock market and then the stock market kind of holds them accountable going forward.

00:34:09:17 - 00:34:35:04
Unknown
I just haven't ever heard that from hardly any of the executive leaders at any of the oil and gas companies. Honestly, I feel like they're they're sort of operating out of the 1990s playbook of, executive leadership. Yeah. Do you think is better at like, maybe privately held or family owned? Not necessarily, not necessarily, but they're the privately owned oil companies and think, I guess when they get to a certain size, they all become public or they all get rolled up.

00:34:35:04 - 00:35:03:07
Unknown
Well, they're private equity back. Many okay. Onshore or private equity. Okay. And there's some that are off shore as well. But but yeah they're focused maybe a little bit different more longer term okay. Because they're typically going to be flipped or something. Yeah. But typically those are also very stringent business metric driven because they are looking to have that bottom line increase, etc., and demonstrate to the market that they've gone from $20 a barrel, lifting cost to 15 to 12, etc..

00:35:03:07 - 00:35:36:00
Unknown
And in the short term, on paper that looks great, but they might be sacrificing integrity, spend and other things that they have to pay for later. It's not obvious on paper today I won't name any companies, but there are some that have done that, successfully in the short term. One of my angel investors in my last company, was on a group of like, ex Weatherford guys, and one of the guys there was a specialist in, they would, like, buy up a bunch of leases and all they would do is just, do you know, CapEx on technology improvement, take the lift costs from whatever it was and cut in half and then turn around

00:35:36:00 - 00:35:57:04
Unknown
in 2 to 3 years and sell it again. But because it just made the cash flow look a lot better. And these are all, you know, there are older age wells, things that were, you know, not quite stripper wells, but still lower production. And it was a good business for them. And so like, maybe that's just the way the cycles need to work sometimes where they come in with a plan of, you know, we're going to we're going to retrofit everything a certain way.

00:35:57:06 - 00:36:27:00
Unknown
Right. And, and we saw that a lot when they were like digitizing control systems for example, on, on, on left on older older or older. Yeah. Exactly. So it's just the dynamics of what capital wants kind of steers the innovation plan sometimes. Yeah, yeah. You were going to say something before I cut in. No, I'm just going to, answer her question earlier, which was, you know, how has life been for for myself and Iron Stag after after decompressing from my corporate career, if you will.

00:36:27:02 - 00:36:47:02
Unknown
It's been interesting because, you know, there's a variety of different customers that I've been able to kind of help out. So one is is a natural fit, which is a company similar to here. So a midsize oil and gas company that has a desire to deploy technologies, etc.. Why should they relearn all the lessons we learned, if you will?

00:36:47:02 - 00:37:05:12
Unknown
Why should they vet all the companies that we vetted? As we mentioned, we tried 40 and only scaled a handful of them, so why should they go through the same process? So I've been able to help a few of those companies, through advisory services, etc.. Jason and I, we're starting a project next week. Actually, that's just strictly change management.

00:37:05:12 - 00:37:28:02
Unknown
So we're going to help a fairly large company deploy technology in a more effective way that really aims at the human centric side of change. So, Jason, I are, are, so you have to do touchy feely stuff, but it is kind of touchy feely for people like us who are engineers and not necessarily the most touchy feely kind of people.

00:37:28:02 - 00:37:47:00
Unknown
But, you know, we appreciate it because once we started, we went to, change management training. Probably the last couple of years. There it has. We was able to take that knowledge and really help to, to make our last few pilots go really well. So we appreciate the impact and believe in it. So we believe in it.

00:37:47:00 - 00:38:13:10
Unknown
We want to help others do do the same. And then the third group of people that I've been able to work with, was where we met. Yeah, it's through the investing side. So, you know, venture and private equity where I help them to understand what the upstream customers are kind of looking for. Not necessarily today, but what where are they going tomorrow in the next 3 to 5 years to try and, you know, shape their investment thesis aimed at that, at that future deal.

00:38:13:12 - 00:38:35:20
Unknown
And I kind of bring the voice of the customer into the room and and help also help startups and early stage companies understand the perspective of the customer and help lower their customer acquisition cost. Yeah. I wanted to ask a question, and I'm not sure you're gonna have a good answer, but, I'm gonna ask it anyway to have an answer.

00:38:35:22 - 00:38:57:08
Unknown
So what are the. It's like, what are the exciting check out? Like, what are the technology themes you're excited about right now? You'll ahead me the probably what one of the most exciting, I saw this week was a like, we we really like the the drone and robotics space, right? You know, we spend a lot of time when we were working.

00:38:57:08 - 00:39:26:06
Unknown
It has a, there's this company called MSP in, in, in, Pasadena. I mean, they are way on top of their game, like, as far as deploying these Boston robotics, dogs for inspections, reading, reading gauges, deploying drones like, inside of vessels to go do inspections so that, you know, humans don't have to enter, is a very dangerous job.

00:39:26:08 - 00:39:54:07
Unknown
As well as, like, you know, imagine the offshore platform, maybe, I guess 300ft tall or something. And imagine you have to go down and look at the legs of the platform. Now you can put crawlers down there and, attach magnetic crawlers with cameras on them, and they go and do, integrity inspections there. So why do you think this company does it better than probably like, oh, you know, the dozens or hundreds of other vendors out there.

00:39:54:10 - 00:40:17:04
Unknown
Well, it goes back to, you know, the human centric part, right? They are there are folks that they they go to the plants, they figure out the problems, they talk with people. They're very personable. And, they bring out a robot. It's just that simple. It's. And there's domain first people as well. They're all for inspection people.

00:40:17:08 - 00:40:44:07
Unknown
So. Exactly. Yeah. So I think those those are going to be the winners in this, this AI boom. You know, you go to these conferences and you see, you know, random people coming up to you and they're like, well, we made a flawless French model in, I. Right. And oh, how you do that? You know, we well, we dumped every floersch French paper from San Pedro into this model.

00:40:44:07 - 00:41:20:17
Unknown
And go ahead, ask it any question you want. Yeah, but did you talk to the people, the people who are using who have to use it and know what their well does. Right. That's the other thing. Right. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. For me it's really it's a it's A22 sided answer. So to accompany the drones and robots, I think just the general surveillance of IoT devices and sensors and telecommunications and the ability to just collect enormous amounts of data from stationary video cameras, etc., we see drones and robots just as the mobile version of that.

00:41:20:17 - 00:41:41:04
Unknown
So you take a robot and you put certain sensors and lidar or whatever it is, and it goes and collects all the data for you. You couple that with with AI capabilities and the digital technologies that we have today, it starts to help you get more like spider senses all around you. So you hear the term digital twins and all this other stuff.

00:41:41:06 - 00:42:14:16
Unknown
We don't normally use that word digital twin, but all of that collection of data helps you get perspective and nuance from a surveillance perspective. Jason talks about fine to fix, and you know, in old days, find was a very slow process and fix was an even slower process. Okay, so now if you have sensors and robots and drones and AI to put it all together to tell you from an exception based A, you need to go deal with this issue, not 1010 miles of pipeline, but you need to go deal with this ten foot of pipeline.

00:42:14:16 - 00:42:41:13
Unknown
And then you can deploy a more, more specific tactical deployment. But what really excites me more than all of that is being able to work around people who can orchestrate it all together. You see people who can do, you know, amazing technology development. There's people that that run their business effectively and have a strong domain understanding, but there's very few people that can put it all together and orchestrate the outcome.

00:42:41:15 - 00:43:24:14
Unknown
And, there's a few around now. What what makes them like I agree with you, there aren't that many orchestrators out there, but what are characteristics of those people? So I would say a domain first, understanding somebody that that has a strong understanding of the value case, the value chain, the technical workflows that go on and whatever it is, whether it's producing oil or a chemical, then that individual has to go from a very tactical mindset to a more strategic, forward looking mindset to understand that you're not going to be able to flip a switch tomorrow and have that capability stood up, that individual or those individuals have to know or have to understand

00:43:24:14 - 00:43:47:10
Unknown
that it's going to take a journey to get there. We we've produced and tried to produce many artifacts over the years that articulate that, and we develop certain charts and roadmaps, and it's hard for people to really put that together. But those those select people can see that vision, but also they have the ability to tactically move it along the journey.

00:43:47:12 - 00:44:05:17
Unknown
Yeah. You know, so we always used to say do I have to be strategic in this meeting or is this a tactical meeting. Is this theater or is this reality. And we have to go in and understand the messaging because it depends on who you're presenting to. Yeah, I think that's that's kind of one of the things that connected Jacob and I.

00:44:05:17 - 00:44:44:17
Unknown
Right. So like, you know, again, I was coming out of, you know, ten years as an expert and, you know, just getting with Jacob and starting in the technology group, you know, I, I got to stand behind him and see him tackle the strategic stuff and lay out the plans and go talk to the executives about things and, you know, it helped me connect the dots on how to go run, run things and knock out tactical execution on a pilot side and just, just just have the strategy in mind and just go find the pilots to execute.

00:44:44:18 - 00:45:11:16
Unknown
Let's do them. Let's hurry up and fail fast again. I spoke earlier about being experimental with pilots. Let's do a thousand of them if we can. And let's take the shortest amount of time to figure out if this is going to work for us. Are we going to throw it in a trash can? So, you know, being the tactical leader, it helped me in watching him kind of help me develop some of the strategic sense.

00:45:11:18 - 00:45:33:18
Unknown
And now, I mean, I'm using that in my career. As Jacob mentioned, we're going help somebody with the touchy feely things. Right? One of the things when, when when I sit at a table and someone said, what's what's the most interesting thing about you, as an engineer? Well, hey, I'm a certified change manager. Yeah, that's. I mean, you just.

00:45:33:20 - 00:45:54:01
Unknown
You you don't see that stuff with, domain engineers, right? I think one of the things we talk about here at Energy Tech, is, you know, obviously AI is going to change things. Generative AI and agents, but especially in energy where you do have to go out and meet people. The AI won't replace, you know, people getting together and seeing what actually happens.

00:45:54:01 - 00:46:09:19
Unknown
But, it's more about getting the right people in the room together and then helping them, you know, learn the best practice or or, have all the right information. But at the end of the day, you gotta you gotta be boots on the ground. You gotta talk to the operator. And, the operator isn't already talked about.

00:46:09:19 - 00:46:31:02
Unknown
They're not writing, you know, a manuscript for you to put into, you know, ChatGPT. Because they got they got other things on their mind. And, what I is going to do is help. Help get the right people together. Right? I think so, yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Good. So this is like, maybe a side question, and I don't know, Jason, if you like this question, but go for it.

00:46:31:02 - 00:46:55:16
Unknown
Yeah. So I wish one day to go to an offshore platform past I've got. You're on your own, man. I was telling Jason I was called. No, no, I saw Jason. I went to the Amazon warehouse, and I. I love field trips. Yeah. If I were to ever get that, will I have to do that training where you go into a helicopter and a swimming pool and have to, you know, be able to get out and swim up top?

00:46:55:16 - 00:47:20:17
Unknown
Like, what is that to go offshore, what do you need to do? So absolutely, you have to do that unless you're going with an executive or a member of Congress, the president, you can get a waiver then okay, okay, okay. Because I'm not very good at swimming. And but I would really like to go. So, another secret that I would share at the table is I cannot swim, but I pass the test every four years.

00:47:20:21 - 00:47:41:23
Unknown
How? Because you go. You go and take the, you take the test, and, all the people that can't swim, they get red ham helmets, and all the people who can't swim, they get regular helmets. And there's always a, a person kind of looking out for me and making sure that I can escape from the helicopter simulator.

00:47:42:01 - 00:47:59:23
Unknown
Time. Right. So. Okay, I don't stress out about it too much, but I go in, I get it done every, every four years. So I can keep that connection with the field. Well, we just got to make sure to push them out the helicopter first. Okay. So you somehow have to say your real life situation. You have a red helmet.

00:48:00:00 - 00:48:29:12
Unknown
That's the red helmet. Yeah. Okay. Oh, he never told us that, by the way. And all these years, I'm just finding that out. Yeah. No, there are people who cannot swim. They still go off shore. Yeah. So I mean, you're wearing a flotation device, etc., so. Okay, I've got I've got it. So I'm a little curious about the market today because, I think when we came into the beginning of the year 2025 seems so long ago, there was a lot of predictions of low price of oil and, we saw a lot of belt tightening.

00:48:29:12 - 00:48:50:06
Unknown
I think we saw ConocoPhillips reduce size. And we had a couple of other companies true to size before. Yeah. And then obviously it's like February the world changed and, and we saw the price of oil go up. And I talked to a lot of customers and they said it was above 100 yesterday. Above 100. Again, I talked to a bunch of of operators and they said, well, we're not spending capital yet because we don't know where we need to deploy it.

00:48:50:08 - 00:49:10:22
Unknown
And, you know, now it's been six months, more or less. And I'm sure there's still a lot of conservatism with wanting to deploy because, again, that that same question is out there. But I'm, I'm curious, you know, with your kind of your sense with the market, like, how are people planning? Because we're starting we're going to hit planning cycle again soon in the next four months.

00:49:10:22 - 00:49:38:19
Unknown
And I think people are trying to deploy new technology, need to understand if they're, you know, what the sentiment is. Because if we're not spending money again next year, that changes the sales strategy. It changes the sales cycles some. I'm curious how you're seeing operators think about the, you know, this world we're in right now. I mean, for me, you know, I get asked similar questions a lot, you know, including, you know, why is why is commodity prices going, why's gas going up in the US?

00:49:38:19 - 00:50:09:07
Unknown
We have nothing to do with what's going on in the street or whatever. But I think what oil companies and what the market's like is stability. Yeah. Any form of instability or uncertainty, unrest, etc. you know, that's why commodity prices going up and that's why commitment to doing discretionary things like technology is probably going down. I think that the it will stay in the budget cycle, I think go on through October etc. in the next year, you'll still have that money available to do things, in the tech and innovation space.

00:50:09:09 - 00:50:34:11
Unknown
But, you know, instability drives a lack of commitment. I think for some we talked about that earlier a little bit, but I mean, I can see it. Yeah, I kind of feel like it was probably maybe about 3 to 4 years ago. A lot of operators just they're on a quest for, you know, let's produce a $10, $10 per barrel, and it doesn't matter what what's going on.

00:50:34:13 - 00:50:54:02
Unknown
We will do this to protect ourselves. And I don't think we've ever gotten out of that. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know for a while there, offshore was what I would say with all the capital going into, unconventional. Like, I'll show I had a slow period for like 5 or 6 years. Absolutely. And then suddenly you've seen a lot of these leases kind of open up in Latin America.

00:50:54:02 - 00:51:16:07
Unknown
And I think I've been seeing some activity in Africa. What's changed? In terms of like kind of bringing activation energy policy, right. As a policy, I think policy in the basins matured onshore quite a bit. Right. So the returns and the private equity money and the operators onshore recognize that, you know, there's been a decline in maybe, maybe past peak from that perspective.

00:51:16:07 - 00:51:40:17
Unknown
And looking at other areas, including offshore, you know, along the way, they've been I mean, there have been some major discoveries, like in, Guyana, for example. And other places. So, you know, where at one time people thought offshore was sort of dead and there's no more large discoveries to be had, won't they? They've been having several. And Murphy's had some there, I think in, other parts of the world also.

00:51:40:17 - 00:51:59:03
Unknown
So that's again, if you're having to replace reserves, you want to go for a long term big replacement sometimes. Yeah. We hope, we hope so. Yeah I've learned anything. There are always more reserves. We just haven't evaluated. Yeah. It's just a matter of what the price of oil needs to be for us to go look. Yeah, yeah. It's an interesting optimization.

00:51:59:05 - 00:52:22:05
Unknown
Yeah. Challenge. You're going to say something. Yeah. I think for a while there was like a dichotomy between, energy transition and developing more offshore oil and gas. Right. And like, people were just confused. So the investment stopped for a while. But what you have to realize is like the cycle time to invest in getting your first drop of oil.

00:52:22:07 - 00:52:48:19
Unknown
It's like, I don't know, maybe 6 to 8 years sometimes. Yeah, absolutely. So, you're you're seeing, more short cycle projects which were like, tie backs, which is like maybe a couple subsidy trees and one flow line that go to an existing facility, and you're just not seeing the big stuff anymore, where you got a big $6 billion platform with, you know, a bunch of, wells tie back to it.

00:52:48:21 - 00:53:07:22
Unknown
You seen that in Guyana and in the New Frontiers, but, you know. Yeah, not a lot in the Gulf. Yeah. Where the economics are staggering, you know, was. But yeah, I think that's played a huge part into the investment cycle for offshore this very long. Yeah. And I think that's what I heard a lot during the, the, the height of the shale revolution.

00:53:08:00 - 00:53:25:10
Unknown
Right. You can get your money back in nine months for a shale. Well yeah. Right. Versus having to tie it up for six years. And yeah, you know you might make less money overall, but it's it's easier to turn it on and off. It's a safer bet. So it's yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I'm curious. So we're going to go on another random question.

00:53:25:14 - 00:53:51:05
Unknown
I was just thinking about your comment earlier of if someone comes to you with the technology to make you to help you produce more oil versus maybe some of these other startups coming to you with technologies that have good but ancillary benefits, why are founders not working on the gold mine? Is it just because there aren't gold mines?

00:53:51:10 - 00:54:27:07
Unknown
You know they can't solve those problems, or people not coming out of the industry and understanding like that's where they need to focus? I'll let you tackle that. Yeah. So that's a two part answer for me. And we look so my team our team looked after subsurface technologies, drilling technologies, production etc., the production, production operations and all of those technologies were fairly easy to get your mind around to understand, etc. the ones that existed in the subsurface space, better characterization of reservoirs are standing up.

00:54:27:07 - 00:54:58:12
Unknown
Surrogates for reservoir models are better yet changing the prosody or chemistry of the formation itself. Those are super complicated, hard to understand, very esoteric people understood the knowledge base to even deploy those types of technologies. So the problem is much harder the closer you get to the oil. I would say, you know, because the transferable knowledge between asset management exists for upstream, midstream, downstream, etc., it's all production kind of equipment, even onshore and offshore, can share quite a bit.

00:54:58:12 - 00:55:20:07
Unknown
But when you get down to the reservoir, it gets quite different. And even in the wells and the plumbing of the whales themselves, that coupled with a lot of highly experienced, knowledgeable, esoteric people leaving the industry. So, and then the founder, if they're leaving, why aren't they starting companies? They know the problem. You would think so, but those are it's not the same DNA.

00:55:20:07 - 00:55:39:12
Unknown
It's not the same mindset. You know, people who grew up in a bureaucratic organization like Chevron's and Exxon's, etc., they do not have a agile mindset. They do not have the risk tolerance around, oh, I'm going to take some money and go start something, and it may not work out. And odds are it's not going to work out.

00:55:39:12 - 00:56:02:06
Unknown
They just don't have that risk profile to do that. So I think it's key for and that's actually an opportunity. You know your question raises an opportunity in the industry which is founders and startups and and the and the startup incubation system ought to be looking for these highly experienced, esoteric people and grabbing them from an advisory perspective or co-founders, etc..

00:56:02:08 - 00:56:33:07
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. So some of the best practice that, we kind of articulate to early founders today is to talk to about 150 people around your target customer, and so maybe 50 direct users, 50 like, vendors, you know, just everyone who's kind of around it. So you can really get in and understand the problem. And, and I think one of the things that's additionally challenging about the world is like, you can't actually go out into an, it's not easy to go out to the offshore platform and they don't respond to your emails and then your Sunday.

00:56:33:09 - 00:56:50:14
Unknown
You know, I remember going out to Midland and going up to a, field office and I realized, oh, everyone actually only meets at the office like once a week, and they're gone by like 7 a.m. if they even come in at all. And so it's sometimes it's really hard to get to a customer and, and that becomes in some ways becomes a barrier to entry.

00:56:50:14 - 00:57:05:17
Unknown
And I think one of the things that Clyde has done really well is the Clyde team here is a bunch of folks from the industry. It's really easy to get in, but if you're, you know, you're a smart kid out of Texas A&M and you might have the next inspection robot, how do you how do you get that to people?

00:57:05:17 - 00:57:26:18
Unknown
So you can figure out which robot to build. And that's kind of the $10 million question, I guess. Yeah, I think it has nothing to do with, with knowledge. It's personal skills. Right? Yeah. It's, you know, having the, the emotional intelligence to go somewhere and be the be the only person, you know, in the room. Right.

00:57:26:18 - 00:57:59:04
Unknown
And and and meet people and shake hands and go to conferences and and network, like, Jacob is like the most networking person I've ever met. Like, you know, the people, people hit him up on LinkedIn, and the next thing, I know they're, they're having coffee, like, the same week. And it's going into these conversations with no intentions, like, I don't have a Pio that I'm, holding behind my or or an estimate that I'm going to give you.

00:57:59:06 - 00:58:17:11
Unknown
But it's like just having a network of people that you just go and, and it's you're not put bringing any collateral to the table and, and trying to earn business or anything. It's just knowing about what's going on. And, knowing about what people go talk to you, talk to one person, that person is going to send you out to.

00:58:17:11 - 00:58:43:06
Unknown
Go talk to 3 or 4 other people. And you just keep going and going and and and you become a natural right? Yeah. And I think the way you describe it, there's there's this authenticity to that. Right? You're not going with any preconceived notions or trying to hold leverage over people, etc.. But but I think also leveraging, you know, there's a massive pool of experienced people that are available.

00:58:43:08 - 00:59:05:03
Unknown
I think, in the Houston area that that folks can can do that with. I think, you know, we sit with startups quite a bit on a pro-bono basis just to talk with you know, brainstorm, provide, you know, feedback, etc.. We sat with three companies a few weeks ago at Green Town and, you know, in the first ten minutes after hearing, but what is your company do?

00:59:05:03 - 00:59:23:16
Unknown
And they tell us and like, well, have you talked to this type of customer or do you know that this persona is actually the one you should be selling to? And, and nine times out of ten, they don't have a clear understanding of where their tech actually fits in the value chain and which specific persona they should be pitching to.

00:59:23:19 - 00:59:40:05
Unknown
Yeah. So just if I can provide a little. Did you talk to like Pike Robotics or Cap? Well, as some of the ones you met, I spoke with cap with. So yeah. So I think like, the the couple guys are interesting because. Right, they started this company right at school and I think they've done a good job of trying to get out there and working with operators.

00:59:40:07 - 00:59:59:11
Unknown
But, you know, like you said, it took ten years to develop the domain expertise to kind of understand all the, the the processes. Right. And I think the best time to start a company is when you're right out of school because you have no obligations. I think, Andrew and then were like living together in like, a place right here, off of Greentown and sharing one car.

00:59:59:11 - 01:00:18:10
Unknown
Like, you don't have the financial liabilities that come with having, kind of a but you have no experience either. Yeah. So, so that's that's the question is that, you know, how do you, how do you how would you advise those folks, like I said, coming out of school might have, like, really interesting technology, and maybe a little bit more orchestration ability as well.

01:00:18:12 - 01:00:38:06
Unknown
Yeah. They don't have the EQ capabilities. They don't have the experience, they don't have the network. They're the great disadvantage. Which is why the failure rate so high. Again, I'm advocating for advisors. They should get some people to help advise them, tap into their resources, tap in our network, so to speak. Yeah. And I think the couple, the guys, did you know that they've been building out an advisor network.

01:00:38:08 - 01:00:54:13
Unknown
That's why they moved to Houston. Yeah, we got a Pennsylvania. So that's kind of the the answer for audiences. Like we'll get an advisory group who's really in the industry. Yeah. It can be very helpful. And, you know, because a lot of companies, they just need one pilot, one break, one opportunity, exposure to the right people at the right time.

01:00:54:13 - 01:01:12:18
Unknown
Go into the right room and network with the right people. But but that opportunity is not coming to your house, to your couch. You have to go out and get it and socialize and meet people. And, you know, Lady Luck's looking for you out on the street. Not not at your house. Yeah, I love that. That's a good one.

01:01:12:18 - 01:01:27:20
Unknown
Good. Well, man, we're running a little over time, so I appreciate you guys being here. It's already been an hour. And I learned so much about, innovation in, in the industry and and offshore. And I learned what flow assurances. So I will remember for the rest of my life. And you learned what hydrates are not butter.

01:01:27:20 - 01:01:51:17
Unknown
They're ice like in my mind. It's like, you know what you know. Anyways, they were butter. I wouldn't have a job. Yeah, I think I was thinking of saturated fats. Saturated fats are. He is a hell of a cook. But no, I appreciate, having you guys here. How how can people find you? Well, through our websites, we're, we're out and about all over.

01:01:51:17 - 01:02:19:00
Unknown
He actually offices in the islands. Okay. There. Yeah, I'm. I'm at the iron, on the second floor. Yeah. Come see me. I was here at the air and the coffee area. Okay. No, but, LinkedIn. Jason. Harry. Part time analytics. Part time analytics.com. Yeah. And myself, LinkedIn as well. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. Jacob visa and my company, Iron Stack advisory.com, my website, and, I'm at the iron too.

01:02:19:00 - 01:02:36:05
Unknown
I spend quite a bit of time with, with cognizant is a company that I, that I help advise as an industry expert. So I'm there on the third floor a couple days a week also. Okay. And and how do we spell your last name just for everyone who heard it and does it. Well, yeah. It's, visa I nrt.

01:02:36:05 - 01:03:02:19
Unknown
All right. There we go. Silent t silent t yeah. And so, like, we always like to have class action at the end, so, you know, if what can our audience potentially help you with and what can you potentially help our audience with? Well, I think or if you have an ask. Yeah, I think, I think we kind of laid out what, what we can help your audience with.

01:03:02:19 - 01:03:35:08
Unknown
Right. And trying to, you know, understanding the right angles and how to approach, the big company, for, for us, I don't know. The ask is not much on my side. You know, I just want, just like to share information and. Yeah, yeah, for me, it's about perspective. So the audience of this that consumes this type of content oftentimes has a myopic perspective through their founder ship or their company, etc..

01:03:35:10 - 01:04:04:12
Unknown
And, you really have to try and step out of that and understand the perspective of your investor, the perspective of your customer, or who is the ultimate buyer of your company or your technology, and keep keep that dance of perspective management, active at all times. And that's hard to do. But to me, that that would that is my biggest piece of advice usually for, for folks is keep the perspective straight if you can.

01:04:04:14 - 01:04:08:13
Unknown
Yeah. Well thanks for joining us now. Thank you. Yeah. You guys.