Oil and Gas Startups Podcast

0:00 today, we got a good episode with a couple of my boys from AI driller. We got Marat and Richard. What's up, guys? What's up, man? We had a wild night last night in Houston with a hundred mile

0:13 an hour winds. You guys, Richard, y'all drove in from Fort Worth yesterday. You over there with us and energy tech night from Fort Worth. Yeah, to Austin. To a damn near hurricane to our NATO

0:27 say you'll probably probably got in like the thing you got into the power just cut on just before the episode. I think y'all got in before it will fix. Yeah, we literally got in right when when the

0:39 rain started. I didn't even know anything's happened until a little warm went off.

0:44 They got a got nasty pretty quick. But yeah, so woke up this morning and Ross said he had to drive through his To get out of his - We'll make it public because I don't

0:55 want that to steal the grass. Nobody on that. The neighbor's gonna watch this. He's like, Oh, that's who it

1:01 was. But we, yeah, we had no cell phone service over in Katie. And so I don't know if the office is gonna have power with the studio and unfortunately it did. So we get to record today. So I'm

1:11 excited to have you guys here.

1:14 Let's open this up real quick. Just tell me, 40, 000 foot view, high level, what is AI driller? And then we'll start diving into it. No, great question. So AI is a stands for all inclusive.

1:27 So we have one stop shop for software for the link and completions. What it means like it's, in operations, we have a lot of different softwares for well planning or anything. So AI driller took

1:41 that, go on us, go and replace all the softwares you need as an engineer. So you just use one single platform, unifying. What is the Agular? It's a directional software, which replaces, you

1:55 know, a Hawkeye compass. It's a well-planning software, it replaces the little plan, well-plan stuff. We also engineering software, replacing landmark systems, replacing shambles and little

2:08 plans. And reporting, this

2:12 is a huge portion too, like we automate.

2:16 A lot of reporting replaces systems like open wells, well-view, and everything else And we also analytics things. You probably will bring up today on, you know, what analytics and comparison for

2:26 us. When we say replace, we need to build 10X

2:31 better system for each of them. Yeah. And this is what we cannot be known in the industry for us. Taking the hard tasks, not the visual tasks or building system. We call our self-appirational

2:44 platform Not the app stores or like analytic system solutions.

2:51 we users use as daily. Yeah, he had dealers down, I think, stops. Yeah. And this is how, you know, we go from that side. So both of you guys, directional drillers and former, former lives.

3:06 Mariah, you're from Russia. You went to work for slumber J, I believe. That's how you got into the oil field, Richard. You've done a lot of work around the world, but you know, mainly, mainly

3:20 in the Permian, you know, funny, funny story from Richard. He came to our energy tech night out in Midland. And afterwards, he, he sent me a message. He's all right if I say the message. All

3:31 right. He sent me a message on LinkedIn. He's like, man, came out to your energy tech night. It was awesome. He's like, it's about time oil and gas gets to stick out of its ass. And I was like,

3:39 I knew I was going to like this dude

3:42 from that, from that message And so I really enjoyed getting, you know, you guys and

3:49 hang out with y'all. But what I really appreciate about y'all is you know, y'all come from the field and you're very in tune with the operational challenges that are out there in drilling and in

4:03 completions. And so Marat, why don't you tell us a little bit about, you know, one another thing I like to own out phone faxes. Marat is a judoka. He's trained judo a lot of his life. So he's

4:17 going to take me to Dagestan and we're going to go grapple This is - We need to make a podcast from there. Yeah, we're

4:24 going to go vlog and talk about it. But so you grew up - Hold on, you didn't finish. You're going to go grapple what? I'm sorry, I remember the whole story. Yeah, I told him, I was like, I

4:35 want to go to Russia, but you know what the war right now, I can't. I said, but there's this bear over there that I follow on Instagram, you can go grapple with it. And so I said, after the war,

4:42 you know, I'll go do that, but - But Coley mentioned he wants his kids to grapple the bear. Yeah, it's not just me, I'm taking it. Yeah, it's a rite of passage for my kids. Yeah, so they're

4:51 gonna go grapple the bear.

4:53 But tell us a little bit about how you got into the oil business, international work, and then I wanna hear about how you guys met. So start there, 'cause I'm interested in that. Yeah, so from a

5:06 joint slumber's around, I was 19 years old, just finished the master's degree at the time, and my own employer in my life was the slumber's there, and out of my experience, out of the people I

5:17 work with, and travel internationally everywhere from Middle East Asia, you know, like, North Sea, Alaska, cycling, like, you know, North Slough, every basin of the US as well. So it was a

5:31 fantastic experience, and

5:33 I, you know, we met with Richard when I first, my first introduction into unconventional, you know, Coming into unconventional work with all these like deep. water, ERD environment. I was a

5:46 complete space carrier. You come in 2014, right, which is 2014. Yeah, 2014, I think. I think I had, I had started over there, Foxy around 13. Because of the times when you, which bit do you

5:57 run? I don't know. Yeah, what way do we put more than better? You know, I mean, I was, it was a very fun times. And Richard was our superstar in the rig on the rigs. And you know, all the

6:08 records he was setting up. And he was kind of my damn ratio, setting the rigs or the records. It's a, you know, it's out there making some hole. Man, I come from like, you know, I play

6:18 college football, how scholarship and all that stuff. I've always been really competitive. Yeah. So that's something I brought to oilfield. But I'm sure plenty of guys have brought it. But

6:26 that's something I bring when I come, I bring that competitive nature, that spirit. And you know, getting on the rig and like getting a tool pusher involved, getting the floor hands involved,

6:35 making them want to break records, making them want to, you know, move the rig faster, all that stuff, of like kicking people's ass, like that's what it's all about. You know, it's funny when

6:44 we were drilling wells in 2010, you know, there's like 11, 000 foot verticals and like, we really prided ourselves on drilling them twice as fast as the other rigs on our lease. And we also,

6:55 they'd give us a500 Visa gift card if we got it drilled within like, you know, 16 days. And you'd be surprised what I would do for a500 Visa gift card. So that's all, that's like the

7:07 competitive spirit. That's what I love about drilling. Cause there's not a lot of places like in professional industries where you can be that competitive and bring that spirit. So it's very

7:17 important is what missing right now in the industry. I feel like it's very painful and like sad to see customers who are like, you got an engineer or manager. They come just to spend a day, you

7:31 know what I mean? They, we all show up at the offices three days a week now. And we come and just sit, you know, see when it's going to be done Yeah, it's painful not just to watch, probably

7:42 painful for the. version as well of itself, because there is no fun involved if you don't compete, you can compete not just with somebody, compete with yourself pretty well, compete with your

7:53 next door engineer, compete with the next door customer, you know, but that just makes it all fun. Like we talk about gamified digital experience, it's useless, like competition needs to be on

8:04 the level of culture inside the teams, you know, and make it fun It can help to score, but it has to be something that's ingrained in the culture. And you lose that competitive spirit, all

8:18 performance, doesn't matter what you do, it's just going to go south, you know, from there. And we try a lot with the implementation, everything else, just kind of

8:28 put a little bit of seed of that, you know, and the teams and it goes a long way, you know, from those little things Yeah, so you guys meet out in, you know, 2014 timeframe and then. uh, when

8:43 did the idea for AI driller, uh, come about and how did it come about? Kim Lee came like two thousand, six, 17. So I finished rice business school in 2016. And, uh, I really wanted to join

8:54 the house park. Cause for me, I was the, the, the kid of, you know, 30 years old, uh, network for anybody else only know drilling. Yeah. And, uh, you know, and that world, all my friends

9:05 had from drilling, you know, I mean, all completions. And, uh,

9:09 going to rice was kind of tremendous experience We don't, I didn't even know what consultant means. I didn't know what investment bankers do. You know, I mean, bank is, you know, Chase.

9:21 So like, uh, it was a fantastic experience, but, uh, in the mid, mid of the school, I realized I don't want to become any of those roles. And, uh, I really like entrepreneurship, like our

9:32 professors, like Al Donzo. They put that spirit in the, like, man, there is a more things can be accomplished And then, yeah, 2016 video, I joined Alice Park. rise. And so I had to

9:46 quichlambege to do it. And then we formed my first company, which come back to Judo. I called it Data Judo. Okay. I had no idea what we're going to do. I knew something with data and we need to

9:60 wrestle it.

10:02 And I knew it has to be all in gas because it's more fun than you understand what you're doing and understand the user you use for And then

10:12 before that and then 2017, I know we came and it was a big discussion of automation at that time. Yeah. So AI druler was a name of the project within data judo. So we wanted to build the first

10:27 assistance for the rigs on predictive drilling for sliding and rotary. Yeah. From that side. And I shall get involved. We got a game changer rewards. And the whole focused the company early on.

10:43 truly automation. So we are competitive guys. We wanted to build a fastest drilling and it's almost like, you know, click on the, it's a dream of everything. You like, click on it, it slides

10:56 for you, a lot of days for you, because a lot of hype was around systems we didn't work. And that's how we, you know, we get to the drilling world. And what you know about the agility today is a

11:08 cloud-based system, operational system, you know, like the fastest growing system right now in the industry. But it's only started in COVID, like already passed that. But the first three years,

11:19 people focused like creatures, you know, performance, performance. How can we dial in the little parameters controls on the rigs? And that was, you know, the initial beginning of it. Yeah,

11:30 it's pretty interesting, because I think a lot of times the best companies start off as projects. And so it sounds like, you know, the project here was Data Judo. It's like, hey, I want to do

11:40 something around data, and we're on oil and gas and then. Yeah, AI driller product that kind of sat under data judo and start finding product market fit through organic feedback loops through NOV

11:55 and Shell. And so it's interesting to hear how the evolution of that occurred because I love hearing that. It's like, hey, just be curious about something and just go start building and talk to

12:06 people. Yeah, focus for a long time on one thing. Like, well, you'll do well Just like,

12:14 it's not as much fun as everybody, I think. It's a lot of work. It actually kind of fucking sucks to me, you know? But like, it's almost like a drug once you get used to it. But you can do

12:27 anything else, you know, from that. Well, sometimes when you start a business, you have this idea. And then like, and that's one of the things that really drew me to I drillers, Marath's

12:36 really good at taking the feedback of what people want, not necessarily what he wants or what we want, right? Sometimes the DD I want, I want this thing, you know, I want. this, you know, you

12:43 drill like, I want this thing. He's, you know, drill engineer, he want that thing. And, you know, sometimes you lose sight of what people want, though. Yeah. You know what I mean? What,

12:51 what needs to happen for them? You know what I'm saying? Cause like you got this one track mind, but you like, you need this, you need to talk to everybody. That's why I drill like when we go

12:59 talk to people, like we sit down with them and we ask them their pain points, we talk to them about, you know, how do you, how can we help you? You know, that's, that's one of the biggest

13:07 things that, yeah, that we do at a driller. And one of the things I respect about him most is he's, you know, yeah, doing what people are asking him. So yeah, now what he wants, operating

13:17 with. And it's not like I started this way. It's a, we were humbled by COVID, like everybody else. Initially, Agile was not about it. I was like rich performance. I wanted to drill the fastest

13:29 wall thing. All the records were set in permanent for curves, for intermediates. I wanted to prove that, like, where is the limit? I mean, like, All this practice is from Fred Dupree, MSC,

13:40 like automation. what's next, you know, we were excited about these little things, makes us happy for no reason. And, you know, like, in COVID, like when COVID hits, we went down in 100 plus

13:53 weeks in the US. Yeah. So like automation was out of the question. Mm hmm. We were at the time, we're fairly small. We're almost like, you know, a little less than 30 people at the time.

14:05 I like my finding was about to finish. Mm hmm. You know, you go to investors and they say, can you raise some money? Yeah, they say, well, let's wait till COVID is over. You know, I mean,

14:17 yeah, come to customers, every project we were in, like, was canceled up because it was completely chaos in it. And, uh, you know, and the people do not care anything about like what we were

14:30 wanted to do at the time, automation. This is like was useless for those those times because you have the best of the best, where we can keep employed, if you do it, you know, I mean, like,

14:38 why bring in software.

14:41 And what happened to this, the only good thing about that moment was, you can talk to people. 'Cause everybody was like yesterday, like any disaster comes in, it's easy to reach out, people will

14:54 find time for you, nobody takes them for lunch. And this what we did there at that time is, I told, look guys, we don't want to close, we'll survive and, but tell us where do we need to push

15:09 And from 2020, we haven't done one single task I want, or any of the team wants. Yeah. Everything's driven by customer. Yeah. You know, and because whatever they suggested us to do in 2020,

15:22 this is what made us commercial, this was mixed, cumangers growth. Mm-hmm. And you see another customer using the same feature, all of it. Yeah. 'Cause same type of users, same engineer

15:32 suggested it. You know what I mean? Yeah. From that point, like main focus was to, understand what they want. We did not care at all like if it's hard or not hard, like anti-collision, you

15:44 know, one customer, impairment, a huge customer, they came to us and say, Almost a joke. They say, Marad, do anti-collision. We're going to pick you up. I say, Let's do it. So just to give

15:59 you environment, for 20 years, nobody could much, well, compost in AC, slumber's a baker, but everybody tried, for two decades, fail. Even the very committees in the industry each were failed.

16:18 We didn't have choice, we needed to commercialize, you know what I mean? So we just closed ourselves in, you know what I mean? And three months later, first prototype, six months later, fully

16:27 deployed system. And this is, until today, probably one of the biggest features we sell internationally. And think about this, this dude. Never learned how to slide as a directional jiller.

16:38 Took him years to try to figure out how to slide, but was able to create an inclusion in three months. Oh my God, come on, man. You know, that's funny is, but - This joke's by the way goes from

16:49 2014, and we continue to do them then. And it's still - It's like it's just beat the hell out of this joke. Every time, every chance I get. Well, you know what, but there's something really

17:03 nuanced there that you're talking about That I want people to pick up on. You said we had to do it because we needed to commercialize. And it's funny how startups can figure out how to do shit

17:13 quickly because you have to out of necessity to survive and make money. And so like that, that almost having your back against the wall type mentality forces innovation. Whereas large companies

17:27 with really smart people, infinite resources, they can't figure out these things It's not a life or death situation for them to figure it out, right? So, you know, that's what I love about tech

17:41 startups and innovators is that you figure out how to, like at DW, one of our core values, we have three core values. One of them is do more with less and you just heard it right there. I think

17:52 this has to be valued for every company in the industry. Operator service companies and everything else because same thing going back competitiveness, you lose that side, how can we do more with

18:03 less? If you don't ask yourself this question every day, I don't care, you're a drilling engineer, you're a drilling manager, you service company, you did your own location, my engineer, how

18:14 can I do more with less? Yeah. How can we achieve better results? If we stop asking ourselves, we're gonna be that industry which can't be like, nobody likes, you know, we just need to like

18:24 ourselves and just like the performance we do it. So when you finish your two weeks home, You're proud. You go back to your keys.

18:33 and you're like, man, I just did it, you know what I mean? Yeah. And then you come back and you see Lio relief once he did worse, like, reach out of the ship, you know what I mean? Yeah,

18:41 you're taking up Richard's - Like, oh man, like - Gotta clean up after Richard. Move a little bit, I'll show you a PowerPoint. Was there a point in the digital oil catters? A point in time when

18:52 you guys had your back to the wall? Dude, like 20 times, 100, 20 times. You know, I think, yeah, we could sit here talk about that forever, but that's what I resonated with that point because

18:57 when

19:00 you have to

19:09 deliver solutions to be able to commercialize and be sustainable, it forces you to drive innovation. And so, yeah, I could go down a list of probably 20 times where I thought of that, and some of

19:19 them are super primitive. Some of them are really advanced, like, well, what we've done with RAI, but talking about what we've done with our AI, it's been within customer feedback. and just

19:33 shipping really quickly and listening to people, and so I just think that's a necessity.

19:41 And the thing is, too, is when you started out with Data Judo, it's like you can start out with an idea, but there's probably a 98, 99 chance that your idea is off-base somewhat. And so once you

19:55 get out to the market and you start listening to people, people will start telling you what their pain points are and what they're willing to pay for So you have to have that intuition to be able to

20:03 pivot and move in that direction. And I love that customer comes here and it's like, hey, we need this built. And it doesn't matter if it's been tried to be built for 20 years and everyone's

20:14 failed at it. You figure out a way to do it because that's what's going to make your company successful. And so there's just, and I mean, that story is as old as time. I mean, that's what keeps

20:25 startup going is that it's that innovation and that. that spirit, that pioneering spirit, to be able to deliver shit that big companies can't, so. I always call it ride in the wave. Ride in the

20:38 wave. It's like being a surfer on the wave, man. Yo, wait, you never can get comfortable, you know? I suck at surfing, so hopefully that has to carry over an operating business. Yeah, but

20:47 it's just extra pressure. I mean, you

20:51 have pressure from all sides. Like, everything, like you see all the company, you fall under of the company, like you're self-corning it The main idea is, you know, you're not a main boss of

21:02 the company. You have a board of directors, you have investors that pressure in front of them. Some of them don't know when I'm drilling. You kind of, you know, they want, you know, like

21:12 performance, you know, certain things from that side. You also have pressure to make payroll. 'Cause, you know, you're excited about your product, the most probably in the world, you know what

21:21 I mean? Hopefully users share the excitement too And, you know, so you want to hire the best of the best. I'll do everything in them, how they can make it. You know, so you have that pressure

21:32 and all them have families and they believe and jump jump from the big companies Because believe in that vision, you know, I mean so you have a double pressure from that side Yeah, like a Richard

21:42 moved from Wisconsin all the way man, you know, I Managed up in an olfil for 19 years almost most of it in West Texas, but I managed to stay the hell away from here for 20 years living here

21:58 Here I am at the end in Midland, Texas. It's crazy how strong the gravitational pull is of the black hole in the Permian It sucks

22:07 you in But you know, I just it just shows to what I believed in you know I saw the yeah the need and I saw the you know how the AI driller can bring not only Know the leadership on the rig counts But

22:19 like to have a system in a platform where everybody can operate on it now now Not only have that competitive spirit out there But have a good communication over here in the office and between the

22:28 field like that makes a big difference because Yeah, even people who perform make mistakes and sometimes it could have been caught by somebody. So if you have more eyes on the prize, like it's

22:38 easier to catch little things that might be little but can cost an operator millions of dollars. Yeah, in this industry, yeah, it could be a little oversight or miscommunication but that little

22:49 mistake, that's the big dollars. And so, you know, but I think that is like, I think that's what's cool about AI driller is that one, like I said, you know, you guys come from the field and

23:00 you understand the problem. And it's easy to get excited about building solutions when you understand what it does for the industry. And so, I think that the best companies in the space and the oil

23:13 and gas tech space are made up of oil and gas people that understand the problem, you know, very deeply and inherently and brought to your point is,

23:25 you know, everyone's always like, oh, I wanna be a founder and CEO And it's like, you think like - Oh, I don't have a boss, like no, you have a boss, you have investors, you have a board of

23:33 directors, you have employees, like the pressure, like, you know, talking about like having a back against wall, like I've been at points in DW several times where we couldn't make payroll, or

23:45 we had to cut everyone's pay and that fucking sucks. It could fucking sucks to do that and, you know, can take a toll on you. And so it's a ton of pressure to, you know, not only perform for

23:56 clients and perform for investors, you know, perform for

24:00 employees and their families. And so there's a lot that goes into it. And that's the pressure that drives you to make innovative solutions because, you know, like, we're just going to figure it

24:10 out. And people are telling us that they'll pay for it and we'll figure out how to build it. And the bigger you are, it's almost always say, like, the bigger the company gets, you kind of moving,

24:19 it's almost like a different vehicle. The faster you spend, the faster you drive, you know what I mean? and it's like yeah you better make sure because it's a different approach of the game Bronco

24:29 on the you know, and getting Ferrari on the highway, right? It's a type style doing it. But I always say, people, if you want to fill that pain, just imagine like you have a mortgage payment to

24:40 do. And you can't make it this, like right now, right now you have to be late. Yeah. Now multiply them on by a hundred times. So, and exclude any ability to borrow from anybody. You know what

24:52 I mean? So it's just that kind of like moment of there. And if it's a bank, it's just a company Hero is the young guy. Yeah. Guys who have you back every day. You know what I mean? And so those

25:05 drives is a good drive to push on their front. And you know, going back to the hardship of 2020. I mean, look, it was doubly hard for people and willing guests. You know, tech was getting

25:18 wrecked. Media was getting wrecked. Well, and gas was getting wrecked. And so we actually went full time on Digital Wildcats in March of 2020 I talked to investors, I talked to Adam. as like,

25:29 oh, shit, we can commercialize this. And then COVID it, there were no investors, there were no advertisers. And so all of a sudden, it's like, you know, but I had a deep belief that the best

25:41 businesses are built in the depths of downturns. And if you can figure out how to navigate those and make it out, you know, it's going to, coming out on the other side, it's not easy, but it's

25:51 easier than what 2020 was. And so tell me a little bit about that You know, you guys,

25:58 you know, obviously the industry was ragged, you know, go back before that. So for us, like,

26:07 you know, like when you, you're doing jujutsu, right? So, different pains, like, you know, that your pain, the limit increases, right? And that's about to become super fucking meta here.

26:18 Yeah, you know what I

26:21 mean? And so there's, there's, there's something my jiu-jitsu coach tells me and tells our whole gym says you're always two moves away from being bottom and back on top. And it teaches you to

26:31 really deal with, you know, being under heavy pressure and just knowing that, hey, you're two moves away from being back on top.

26:39 And so, yeah, great fucking reference there. I talk about this often. I mean, Jiu Jitsu and Judo wrestling is a lot more than just learning about how to fight. It teaches you how to navigate

26:50 these high pressure environments. Yeah, and for us, it's like,

26:54 we were lucky to start getting this pressure early on.

27:00 Like talking about that mindset, like we were lucky, we were fortunate. So, you know, kind of mid to mid to 2014, by 2016, we set like nine records per man-based and performance-based.

27:12 Everything Excel, sitting on the rack and pushing, pushing. We went through every motor out there, you know, like and got a lot of recognition from the customers. It was a bittersweet experience.

27:22 It was like, the market was still shrinking, but we were growing like crazy. I was still at Schlumberger at the time.

27:30 Fast forward, you know, 2017, 2018, it's a code like a dating experience with, and in entrepreneurship. It's fun. You go meet customers, you meet investors, you talk about different things,

27:46 you're trying to be strong smarter when you are, you know, I mean, it's a fun environment, you know, so

27:55 2017, start rolling the sleeves, find a product It's almost like you go and flirt with everybody, you know, I mean, especially being a Schlumberger, the only employer I had, you know, I mean,

28:04 it's almost like your college sweetheart.

28:07 So now you finish this and you're like, okay, everything sounds exciting. So then you find that one area you really love and that love has to happen because if you don't love your product, you're

28:19 not going to survive through that pain. You're just going to, you know, it's too easy to just switch to something and now industry just go and find a very high paid job. Yeah. I mean, like, why

28:30 even hustle? Yeah. So, and then we finally had Julie, and then the whole rolling sleeves, and pain was tremendous.

28:41 First patent, game changer. You know what I mean? Getting the first investors coming in. Everything excited, we are on the cover of IDC

28:52 Magazine. You know what I mean? One side We winner of Rice Energy Awards of the year, 2017. Like a most promising startup. You know, like everything on the rise. Fine, hi. You're like, man,

29:07 we made it, you know? April,

29:12 big learning. Sealed by, you know, one of the big fours.

29:18 And I'm like, why? Too much noise.

29:22 People get jealous of little things, you know what I mean? and it's not the big companies go up or shoot it's like somebody in there not comfortable with something like that. This is exactly what

29:32 it is. So there's another oil and gas tech startup out there that is now doing really well and successful, but when they first started Bootstrap Company,

29:44 two founders were former engineers from a major EMP, and that major EMP sued them. And what it came down to was there was a couple of employees at that major that were jealous. And I told these

29:60 guys that. I was like, this is what it's gonna end up coming down to is one of your former coworkers is jealous that you guys went off for doing this and they're trying to make an example out of you.

30:10 And that took them years to fight that legal battle in tons of money and more importantly precious time and mental bandwidth. And so you guys haven't go through this as well. We did do multiple

30:22 years. For me, it was like, we had the easy choice to just shut down the shop and open the new one. You know, I mean, and just completely dismiss it at the time. We were not, our product was

30:34 not even proven. You know, we were working with big operators from that side. So like the question is like, do you back it up financially? That little dream you have, think about PowerPoint with

30:46 little code. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. And in a lawsuit situation, 'cause American, you know, legal system is great. If you did nothing wrong, nothing would be wrong with you. The

30:56 only problem with that is expensive. Yeah But every email is10, 000. Yeah. Yeah. And it's almost like you're playing a chess and every move is10, 000. Yeah. So the first investor into the

31:09 Agile was me. I came back 'cause I couldn't risk anybody that was money. This is how we built a very good reputation. Houston is, we made sure that we, you know, 'cause it's a huge company,

31:23 it's risk is high. We make sure we didn't put anybody on the track. We didn't hide anything from there. I was open about it. I didn't go public. I should have if digital walk out there should be

31:32 there. We should have just go and make a fun out of it. Yeah. Because I needed somebody to talk. Yeah. Because now you're going to close yourself and you have a chess game, you know, an

31:42 expensive chess game. Yeah. But it builds you, you know, you have two options. You know, I mean, you stand out for yourself or you crumble. And that's it. We say, okay, I don't care how

31:54 much it costs. I don't have my how much of a lose. Like, I mean, I want proof that, you know, we are good And, uh, all the cash you submit initially within a few months. We were out.

32:08 Everybody said, whoa, what just happened? You know, like it's a, it's a David and Gelith story from that. Yeah. You know, but that pain in like I was always tell people those learnings when

32:20 you under pressure. It's much more concentrated business schools across and more of those you more pain tolerance like your metabolic coach, glossophies, you know. So by COVID, we already had

32:35 like, there is nothing which cares us off. Yeah. When somebody said, nobody can build this engineering in three months, I'm like, you know, I mean, nobody can. Yeah. There is a, there is no,

32:46 it's nothing like never, or nobody, you know, I mean, like it's just, whenever somebody brings it up, it's already interesting. Yeah, you know, you try, you know what I mean? You develop

32:56 this pain tolerance and the scar tissue. Oh yeah. And, you know, you learn a lot of things that they don't teach you in business school. And so the aggregation or the accumulation of those

33:08 experiences makes you a better company and an operator moving forward. And so you guys get out of that, then you hit up, upside the head with COVID. And,

33:24 you know, coming out of COVID, I know it's funny he brought up. you know, digital walk adders and talking to us back then because I always got asked a lot of questions like, Hey, have you heard

33:32 anything about AI driller? Do you know anything AI driller? And I always thought it was weird that we hadn't talked and that I know y'all was like, Shit, I don't know anything about AI driller. I

33:40 don't know if they're legit or not. And I'm putting on the record, you guys are legit. And I fucking love hanging out with y'all. It's been in time with y'all, like seriously. Super energized by

33:49 talking to you guys. And so tell me a little bit about, you know, how you guys have grown the company I know y'all work with a lot of international, you know, national oil companies and

34:03 have some clients over in the United States as well. But kind of talk about how you guys coming out of COVID started taking off and commercializing the company. And COVID was a focus experience for

34:14 us. We get humbled by the environment.

34:19 We had no choice but perform, you know, And we were lucky to be in front of right managers and engineers. was like craving for solution, like what do I do with today? And from my side

34:37 is, there was so pivotal like from learning, because I always, they told me, but I'd go to operations. I'm like, man, there is so many systems, analytics, you know, spot fires, anything.

34:49 And they're like, nobody gets it. Our problems are hard, you know, like it's AC, it's a planning the well, it's doing the program every day, you know, like, you know, nobody comes to this

35:02 industry and that's what we love almost from digital workers. Like, there is no much excitement going on in the industry. Getting less and less competitive, you know, the mediocracies in new norm,

35:14 you know, I mean, like we're not a cool industry anymore. Like who said it, you know, I mean, like we are well-cat, actually, you're energy technists, it's probably coolest than any other

35:24 industry, you know what I mean? bring people together, everybody talks.

35:28 We need to bring the excitement back in, you know? And this, from us, we start working with the guys on 2020. You build them the softwares, you start delivering. And we start delivering the

35:40 hard stuff. And using our experience from 18s and everything else, I didn't want to do much marketing. I said, Look, the last thing I want is to make another guy jealous. All I want is the team

35:52 to grow. People get excited and I want to make sure that people who share the pain, get an actual solution and answer from us. So 2021, first customer, a large company. Nobody could have

36:06 anything to do with it. So we've been in the first quarter of releasing the product. We signed three large, independent. We haven't talked about that.

36:16 We, by the end of the year, we were across all basins in the US,

36:21 and that focus, we did not change until today. So for the last three years,

36:30 Marath was not CEO on marketing channel. Marath was not on

36:36 digital barcatters, Richard was not there. We are on the rigs. We have no marketing, we have no salespeople. We are there with the users, every day. If I feel tired or demotivated, I go and I

36:52 hang out with the user for three days on the rig for them. Yeah. And that's what gives me wings. You know what I mean? It's fine. Yeah. And the whole growth, you know, the company and we

37:02 outgrow everybody today

37:05 is done by one person talking to me, Hey, I actually like these guys. They actually teach me. They help me. You know? A lot of our users have Marath as an AI tech guy

37:20 because I was always, you know, a CEO, but you want to see the user. but I feel like we're a small company. You're kind of like a little bit of, you don't want to give them CEO card. Yeah. And

37:32 I usually kind of like a technician, any problems, any questions, or teach you up. Yeah. And a lot of them are keys to ask me, how do you like your company? I said, I love it. But they ask me

37:46 as the employee of a agile, they thought I'm a technician, right? Yeah. I was a management, I said, management is in great. Management is in great But I give it an opportunity to be with them

37:57 all the time. Yeah. And now what they don't know, and yeah, some of them give me a chat on the, it's a massive name, man, usually, you

38:07 know. But what is important, because, you know,

38:10 it's like I've had investors that, hey, if you were just some tech guy, we wouldn't be doing a special oil film. And so that's like, that says something. It's when, you know, you blend in with

38:21 your users because you are one of them, right? You understand they're paying points. understand what it's like to be out on a rig or out in the field. And, you know, that's why, you know, no

38:30 one from Silicon Valley can come build these types of things because, you know, you come from Silicon Valley and, and you go out to a rig, you know, these people don't relate to you. You know,

38:42 they don't, you can't find common ground with them. And so, you know, I think that that's some, that's important. And it's like, you know, for me as well, dude, I've got one of the most

38:52 unique networks in the world. Like, I've got friends that are some of the biggest YouTubers in the world. I've got friends that are, you know, leading experts and AI and machine learning. But

39:02 then, I've got friends that are out on rigs right now. They're out on the wellhead. And those are my favorite people to hang out with. Like, I fucking love hanging out with those people. And so,

39:11 and, and, you know, to be able to have that background on that. So how many years has been a little under the 10? A little under 10. So, yeah, I've spent, two years rough-necking, and then

39:23 two years running wire line, and then when I ran expandable casing, I was boots on the ground on rigs as well. And so it's funny when I was

39:35 a project manager for Inventra, which was a glorified tool hand, but I'd run these big expandable casing projects, and I'd go out to rig, and I remember this one, Driller, asking me, or he was

39:44 an operator on a workover rig, we were running some casing patch. And he's like, are you some petroleum engineers? I'm like, nah, dawg, I broke out roughneck and came up the field, and

39:55 immediately, you could feel it, like his respect went up 100, right? From even just like, no, I'm not an engineer, I'm a field hand, and so, you know, it's important. Like, this has always

40:09 been my thesis for oil and gas tech. Not even just oil and gas tech, but any industry is like, you need 10 years plus of domain expertise in the industry that. you're building

40:26 for, one, to understand

40:39 those problems deeply, but two, because people will respect you, just like they respected, you know, like I love hearing that they thought you were some tech, you know, not the founder CEO of

40:40 the company, like that says something, like, oh, this guy knows his shit, and he's been out in the field, he's not some tech CEO, Rice MBA grad, I like bashing MBAs, so I gotta give him or

40:48 out some shit for being a - No, I mean, I was bashing myself, think about it.

40:53 I'm sitting there, like, my job at the time was operations manager, you know? I'm sitting in my class, everybody's vice president of something,

41:03 and I was like, how did they get me? You know, do they make steak, you know what I mean? And the stuff, but then we started going through the, you know, the experience and management

41:14 experience, and I started going through org behavior You can see there is organizations which everybody is vice president. And there is an oil and gas organization when a British manager has 200

41:26 people underneath. So it's just very hard to compare. And then I think only guys in a personal. So that's why we kind of pitch right now. There is no should be a shame. A lot of times we hear oil

41:38 and gas. And almost people are apologetic about it. No, you should be fucking proud. Absolutely, you've been in the field. This is a big thing. We have one customer from Middle East. And they

41:53 came to our middle in plasticity recently. And our product manager, Caro, he used to be a roast bar, like a self, Andre. And they said, let's go through experiences we have, you know, if we

42:04 sit in our lounge area there. And Caro died through a product. Hey, actually, I'm a former roast bar. Guess what, I go and visit the customer in Middle East. It's all they talk about. Yeah,

42:17 man, they have a product guy, roast bar. When he's coming, you're not even like those kind of things, you know, you know, I had this guy reach out to me on Twitter last month, and he said,

42:27 hey, man, he's like, I've worked in the oil field for eight years, work on compressors. He's like, I'm currently in a accelerated master's program for computer of science or for computer science

42:40 And he's like, do you guys have any internships available? And as I did, I will hire you on the spot. And he got me this idea is I did. I love oil field hands. You got a coding boot camp or you

42:50 go to computer science. Like, you have an instant spot over at DW because just think about how base that is. If you get all these, these, you know, product managers or developers that came up

43:02 through the field. Like, that's, that'd be fucking awesome And like five years from the week, you almost have a degree, degree in life, in relationships and everything, because out there, like,

43:14 you know, you buy a cell. Office is doing office stuff. It's, you know. a few dudes trying to do a very challenging well or something like that. Especially about that up, because I was just

43:25 thinking about that a few days ago. I think the thing that most appreciative from the oil field is the ability to have critical thinking and think about, 'cause you're on a rig and something breaks

43:35 down, especially back in the old days, pre-shell. You were out there, just a group of five of you, and you had to figure out how to fix shit, right, with very minimal resources or tools, and

43:51 those skills really carry over the other parts in life, and so that's just something that I've always taken away from the oil field. Especially if you're offshore, and that one hour cost50, 000,

44:04 and it's on you, you know. Yeah, for sure. You have a

44:09 little bit of pressure to get shit back up and running It makes it difficult when you come, like, me being in the field almost your whole career and then you come into an office job and people

44:18 always want to ask questions and questions. it sometimes is like, Ah, damn, man. But let's talk about that a little bit. Let's talk about that a little bit, man, because there's a, this is

44:27 the one thing is like, I really wanna figure out how to communicate this and how to help people that are in the field, but wanna move to tech companies or more office jobs and that is a transition,

44:43 right? Like coming from 10, 15, 20 years out in the field and then all of a sudden, I think it's funny, I put off this post on Twitter the other day, I was like, hey, someone should let me

44:54 come rough neck for a week and let me take video, I'll get you millions of views and I keep it drilling reached out to me. Like, hey, we'll get you out on a rig and I was just thinking about it as

45:03 like, man, as like 19-year-old version of myself, I think I'm such a pussy right now, like I suck hands, I see your podcasting and it's a change, right? So let's talk about that a little bit,

45:10 like adjusting to that.

45:18 you know, the skills that you've taken from the field and how that helps in your position and AI driller, 'cause there's a lot of people out there that would take some insight from that. So, you

45:28 know, open floor to talk about the challenges and what's work, what hasn't. Man, I'm still trying to figure it out, honestly. That's right for our answer, too. I'm still

45:37 trying to figure it out. I'm trying to, at least times, you know, when I feel worthless, you know what I mean? Like, I'm coming, I'm sitting in the office for a couple hours, I'm like, God,

45:45 I just have that, like, itch. I have to get out to the rigs sometimes whenever I get stressed out or I'm not liking the way things are going, I just head out to the rigs, you know. Dude, that's

45:53 super interesting, man. The sense of urgency that is fucking hammered into you in the oil field,

46:01 that is something that I have found that is very unique to oil-filled hands and you get out outside of the oil field and no one else has that sense of urgency to your point, hey, one hour cost50,

46:13 000 And so it almost drives like a sense of anxiety too. sometimes 'cause you feel like you should like, Oh shit, I've got to be moving and doing something. So that's really interesting. That's

46:24 one thing I just haven't, I don't know if I'll ever get used to, honestly. Yeah, I'm just trying to figure it out, but I mean, yeah, I don't really have. That's, you know, trying to go out,

46:35 do presentations, do a podcast, traveling a lot. I mean, I've been in the office once before. I was like a rotary, stirable product line manager at Weatherford, so I got to learn what to do and

46:47 what not to do at that point in time. A little bit too. You know, presentation and stuff like that, which I hadn't been used to. I get super anxiety and all this kind of stuff. So I kind of

46:57 learned a little bit there and have brought that over here. But I'm honestly, I just be myself and people like that. So I don't change who I am. And another advice to people is sometimes people

47:10 come to the office and they think they've made it. Best in the field, I'm this, man, you're starting all over here. Like you got to come here and prove yourself now. So you got to see the new

47:18 challenge. You can't like, you can't just sit back and take it for. And I was the best here. And that's what I did when I was in, when I was at Weatherford, like I thought since I was one of the

47:26 best guys there, best direction I went, I didn't do a good job being an office guy. Yeah, I'd be honest. Like I did not do a good job. I could have done a much better job than I did. And so

47:36 when I came here, I took it as a new challenge. And I was like, I got to, I got to kick this thing's ass. I love that. Basically just know that you're restarting and you're learning new skills I

47:45 mean, I've learned so much like, and I got Danari here with me. He's the same like me. He's been in the field and he's learning so much. And we're learning how to make videos and content, how to

47:54 talk to people. And how to, you know, listen to people's pain points and all that stuff. And I'm saying, usually you're the guy that getting all the questions. And now I'm the guy asking all the

48:03 questions. So it's, it's difficult being a person, a listener is difficult because usually I'm a talker, you know, I'm like, more of a listener, you know what I mean? So do you have a really

48:13 high degree of self-awareness? Uh, understanding like, hey, I didn't do a good job at Weatherford and why did I not do a good job? And, um, you know, it realizing that you have a new challenge

48:23 and what you have to do. And I'm going to talk you up here for a minute. I mean, the only reason that you guys are sitting here right now is because of you, you know, you, you reached out to me

48:30 and, um, you know, put all the pieces of the puzzle together to make it happen. And so, you know, I think the big thing that I want to take away though is that, you know, when you work out in

48:40 the field, you don't have to stay in this, in this box You know, like you look at both of you guys, you know, you've gone on and you're building cool tech products and doing this. And so, you

48:51 know, everyone always asks me to like, well, how did you go from, you know, rough-necking and working in the field and doing what you are now? And it's about picking up new skills. It's about

48:59 building your network. It's about exploring new ideas, you know, chasing your curiosity. And so, you know, I know there's people out there that will be inspired by, by y'all's story. And I

49:09 think it's important to tell those things Yeah, one of the things that helped me out now that I think about it you kind of the memory of mine. You know, I have a business of my own that I started

49:20 and I don't remember the year when everything went down. But I was working for Parsley as a directional driller in house and we got laid off and I told myself I ever get laid off at that point in

49:29 time I'd have been DD and 515 years. I said, if I ever get laid off, I'm fucking done. I'll never come back to this industry because I don't deserve to be laid off. I got laid off

49:42 and I was like, shit. We went from 30 rigs to zero. You know what I mean? Yeah. So when I started this business, did this thing learn all this stuff about business and that was the first time in

49:54 my life I had my back to the wall. I was fucking lying. And man, I was just like, I was like, whatever it takes my family, I'm gonna go out there and I'm gonna fucking be great at what I'm doing.

50:05 Did that, got the business up to about 700, 000 revenue and it was kind of just going and me and Marat were like talking back and forth and that's when we came back to working. together after the

50:16 lawsuit, you know, that was a big deal. You know, they try to come after me personally. So I took that personally and it also scared the shot of me at the time. So when Marat says that, like,

50:25 at first he was, he was scared the whole time. And so was I, I was terrified. Yeah, just you should mean you got a100 billion company coming after you. Yeah. You're scared. Yeah. And so the

50:35 next time I saw him, man, he was completely changed. He like, I don't even want to talk about that no more. I don't care. I'm not worried about it no more. He's like a changed person Like he

50:43 literally was not scared of it anymore. I can see that and that gave me that confidence too, but it's awesome. So like going, then he was able to convince you to come back into into the industry.

50:53 Look at that. Yeah, I missed honestly. I missed the

50:57 competitive spirit. And then for me, like it's the most painful job of me. If I go see the office, right? And we come and say, well, let's, you know, we don't talk about it at all. So what

51:10 do you guys do? What's the plan? What division? let's look at the operation, like what's your challenges are? right? And they're like, Oh, you're an analytics company.

51:20 You know, like it's almost like we right now cannot even mention analytics because we get compared to like all kind of stuff, you know,

51:29 and it's a because as the industry we done, so it's such a poor job on software, like a lot of systems came in very hyped up. So people get to like jump on them,

51:41 use it for a little bit if it dropped using it, stop using it at all. When it comes to the field, field never even like look at it, you know, and we have a, people would use one or two apps,

51:53 you know, from that perspective, and whenever you come to an analytics company, you know, I mean, people like, what is exactly it's do, you know, I mean, and people lost trust completely.

52:06 And this is kind of the biggest things from there now. You go against two biggest pressures of the industry. One is like. Nobody trusts analytics or software companies. 'Cause everybody thinks all

52:16 the things promised, nothing delivered. This

52:22 was like a lot of times when young guy comes to you, you hire the best company man on VSDD from one area just to bring to your ricks, he's like, man, I'm coming, but yeah, Julia goes with me. I

52:34 need this is my operational tool I use, you know what I mean? So that kind of helps us to overcome that pressure. But the biggest thing is for me is, you have all the systems in the world, you

52:46 have all data in the world, we are drilling slower and more expensive than we did two years ago. Of course, inflation, everything else push up, you know what I mean from that side. But like,

52:56 what's our break-even in pyramid right now? You know, it used to be 50, we were happy with this, right? With inflation, 50 is new 70,

53:11 you know what I mean? And what's well treated right now? I honestly haven't. 80? Yeah, I have no way. 80 bucks, give or take. Yeah. We as a drilling and completions as operational guys, we

53:21 cannot afford mediocracy right now. You know, if something's gonna happen, we're gonna go all over again, fighting. You know what I mean? A layer of, and stuff like that.

53:33 You know, like we're not in a 50 margin right now. Of course, some of the inflation will get down, everything else, more projects gonna open up. Gas is not looking very good too. Yeah. So the

53:45 goal for us, all of us right now, the patient people, how can we kill it? 'Cause we know exactly how much we're gonna produce. How can we reduce cost? The only way to do it is just to get guys

53:59 like Richard, anybody back, give them freedom. Hey, give me something faster. Yeah. 11 days, you could have done nine. Yeah. That guy will be waking up at night, going to the floor, make

54:10 sure it's good, you know what I mean?

54:13 That's this is why when you're looking at people who just come to make a paycheck

54:18 Those companies, you know, like is only there until the next You know more than guys, but yeah, it's so it's so hard to motivate some of these these people man It blows my mind. Yeah for sure.

54:31 Yeah, look like you do in jujutsu. I think what somebody brought the kid against his will He's there every day Does want to do anything, you know, I mean like some people some people have

54:41 intrinsic drive and some don't Yeah, but I feel like if You start training them up and that doesn't matter against you. We will not the kid If you have a great coach Great people around and you push

54:57 performance. You ask him compete. Mm-hmm. The kid will turn around. Mm-hmm But if you just you know not coach them Let them play on their own, you know, they were gonna be kids. Yeah And that's

55:09 what the industry industry, the moment we stop. pushing performance. The moment we stop asking more from engineers to do, we're not going to attract high talent. I mean, we're going to be like

55:21 waiting until next, you know, downturns will be fire everybody. And we'll be companies just for acquisitions or like, you know, whatever assets you have, somebody going to come eat you. Yeah.

55:33 To me, way, way to make strong is every company right now, especially non conventional needs to be an entrepreneur. Yeah And who should be a mindset from roast about to the VP? Yeah, I mean,

55:46 yeah. And I love that, I love that messaging, you know, bringing competitiveness back to back to the industry and, you know, just that, that internal desire to win. So I love that. You know,

56:02 wrapping this up, if people want to reach out to AI driller, where can they find y'all? I know y'all are getting set up on collides. They can go over to the client tech database here soon and find

56:14 y'all's profile over there, find this podcast. What's y'all's website? Tell people where they can find y'all. AI drillercom. Yeah, I drillercom, that's pretty easy. And also hit us up. We

56:24 communicate a lot on LinkedIn as well. Yep. Rich as well. Rich as well. We're on LinkedIn. Carl, Charmaine, Denari, we had a bunch of people. Cool. Hit us up on LinkedIn. We'll see you soon.

56:36 Put out links to the show notes We'll also link out over to their profile on Collide. And also come see us on energy tech nights. Yes. You know what I mean? And Richard's been making the tour. He

56:49 was at Midland. Did you come to Houston? I did not. You weren't at Houston, okay. Was that Fort Worth this week? So, what did you guys do? And I also would recommend to reach out to you. I do

57:00 it through Collide. Yes. Just Collide up. Cause Collide should know everything about all the guests. Absolutely. So you should definitely know about AI Drillier by now. Yes. You know, and so I

57:09 encourage everybody go sign up and check. Awesome, man. Really excited about what you guys are working on. I'm excited that I know who AI Drillier is now. Seriously, enjoy talking with you guys,

57:21 and not just YouTube, but the entire team that I've met up to this point. So if you're listening right now, highly recommend reaching out to AI Drillier and talking about their solutions And if you

57:33 enjoy this show, make sure to share it with a friend and we'll catch you on the next episode. And I have one more thing. One more thing. One more thing. On Tuesday in Midland, at AI Drillier,

57:44 we'll be having a well-bore stability class with K Jackson and Pete Stetson at Deep Energy. Oh, cool. We're gonna be basically going over well-bore stability, you know, what to do. This coming

57:54 Tuesday. How to prevent it, how to trip in and out a hole. Yep, this Tuesday coming up, so. We'll try to get this - It's a great class We'll. try to get this episode pushed out by then so that

58:03 people can hear it. Cool. Yeah, if you're in Midland check that out. That sounds cool And we'll post some we'll post some info on it sweet. Thanks. So cool. All right. We'll catch y'all on the

58:15 next episode