Oil and Gas Startups Podcast

0:00 Today, we got a boy Kyle from iconic air on the show. You were on the podcast before, right? Yes, sir. All right. I didn't go back and look, but it's like, I think that we recorded a podcast.

0:09 Maybe it was like a year and a half ago. It was, but I forget, I forget who's been on the podcast. I mean, it's crazy, dude. We're almost six years into this. They're on a podcast a week.

0:18 It's fucking you guys are busy, man. It's a busy time flies, but what are you doing in town? I mean, with operators right now, it's a pretty crazy time right now for people trying to get their

0:29 carbon accounting systems, you know, you're running. Yeah, so doing some busy dev. Where do you live at again? Where are you based out of? I'm personally based out of Austin. OK, cool, cool.

0:39 Yeah, I was telling Jake. I don't think Jake was on the last podcast with us. I was like, yeah, it's like these dudes were kids in college. And when I first talked to you guys back in, was it

0:49 2020? It was quite a few years ago. Yeah, 2020. And so it's been really cool to see, you know, if you listen to this now, you ought to go back and listen to that episode that we did a while

0:58 back, but. you know, for the people that didn't hear that episode, tell us real quick, what is Iconic Air? Yeah, for sure. So first off, thanks for having me on here. Yeah. So today in the

1:08 world, carbon data for oil and gas companies specifically looks a lot like financial data. You need to be able to audit it. You need to have it coming in month to month rather than once a year.

1:18 And it needs to be highly accurate. And therefore, Iconic Air is pretty much the TurboTax for carbon accounting, right? There's all these different carbon accounting frameworks that have come out,

1:28 and it's all hit in a relatively short amount of time, a lot of new regulations, a lot of new financial institutions, tying cost of capital to emissions. Yeah. And therefore, we are a single

1:39 platform that pulls in everyone's carbon data from operations. It makes it easy for them. Yeah, let's dive into this a little bit and talk about just what's happening. I saw that the other day,

1:47 the

1:48 SEC passed that carbon accounting is now a metric that has to be tracked.

1:56 You touched on the basis of there's multiple frameworks. Let's talk about those frameworks a little bit and what they are. And I'm asking you from a point of genuine curiosity. I'm not familiar

2:06 with all of them. But the one bitch in plane I've heard from operators is like, what is the standard? Or there's goalposts that are moving. And people are a little bit

2:21 suspect of incentives of, OK, who's setting the standards? So talk about those different frameworks and what you're seeing out in the market, what frameworks people are using, what's most popular,

2:34 how those kind of feed into iconic hair. Yeah, for sure. So I mean, who does iconic artwork with the start? And I think that would be a good way to tee it up. So I mean, we work with everyone

2:42 from 30 employee private equity owned small oil and gas producers all the way up to, I'd say, mid-sized to maybe large publics, right? Today we work with four or five different public entities you

2:54 have to do these SEC disclosures that you're talking about. Then we work with 30 person, private equity owned, who don't even have somebody internally who has a title of environmental or

3:04 sustainability. And they're like, dude, what do we do? Like we have to, we just got so much more regulatory scrutiny put on us. And how on earth do we keep up, right? And so we have packages

3:14 that service them essentially is truly the TurboTax value prop. Okay, you push all your data in or we'll automate it. And then it will spit out your annual subpart WPA report, which is like the

3:25 report for submitting your emissions once a year. Okay. And then for the public companies, what do we do exactly? I think we can work with their sustainability teams to reduce their waste

3:34 emissions charge and methane fees. There was a lot of stuff that was submitted through the IRA bill, right? So I just kind of wanted to get that out there, but let's take a step back and talk

3:42 about these frameworks. Yeah. So today, yes, as you see past this regulation that pretty much says, hey, you have to disclose emissions data and you're gonna be held accountable to that

3:51 emissions data the same way that you're held accountable to financial data. because they're considering it now a signal to what the value of your company is, right? If you have dirty assets, this

4:02 could mean that your price per share should be somewhat lower, right? 'Cause you can't just simply go out there and those assets are not equivalent in SEC's eyes of maybe clean assets, right? And

4:12 so there's these new rules being passed, one's SEC one, but I think a lot of people don't really realize that that's maybe still a few years out from being truly enacted, and there's still some

4:21 speculation around it So like, what are operators truly feeling the pain on today in 2024 and in Jan one, 2025? It's a lot of the new regulation that's been passed in the IRA bill that's more

4:33 around the EPA's protocols and regulations and framework for their, they call it support W, Quato A, Quato B. And there has been a lot more scrutiny that's been placed on those rules. So

4:46 operators essentially need to be able to answer questions in a more timely manner if leaks are discovered. Or else they may suffer a, they call it a waste emissions charge. It's essentially a timer

4:58 from the moment a leak is discovered by an outside entity that now is going to start charging you, right? By almost like the hour or day based on how long that's been, you know, active for. Yeah.

5:10 And you know, this is, we just did a video on this other day, you know, John Arnold tweeted out that released or launched a supposedly the most powerful methane satellite and you know, there's

5:21 all these methane satellites now. And so the tracking, there's a lot of tracking technology that's tracking methane leaks. And I think some people are pretty surprised to see that, oh, hell,

5:31 there's a lot of methane leaks and international entities is not all, you know, the United States. So I think people are kind of getting a little bit surprised by that. But I think it's pretty

5:42 interesting, like seeing the SEC treat this equivalent to financial data.

5:49 You know, I think that There's a lot that still has to be figured out. Like, I think Scope 3 emissions are a fucking scam through and through Scope 1, Scope 2, I understand, but it's like, why

6:02 is Amazon not being penalized for using gasoline and a delivery truck to deliver one toothbrush to a house? You know? And

6:10 then those same frameworks are being used as scrutinized oil and gas. And so I think that there's a lot that needs to be figured out. But when it comes to like the methane, I've been really

6:22 surprised, you know, I was talking to, I won't say the company's name, but large private EMP on West Texas, ran by old school wildcat or that information. You can guess who I'm talking about.

6:35 But

6:37 not the type of company that I would expect to take methane emissions seriously. But when I talked to their engineering teams, I know we're using different technologies to track it. pinpoint it and

6:48 then as soon as it's tracked and pinpointed, we've got an entire workflow that gets a technician out there to fix it. And so it was pretty eye-opening to see like this old school private operator

6:58 who doesn't operate in the public markets, taking it seriously and having entire workflows and engineering teams dedicated to it. So the shift that I've seen in upstream, it's definitely real. And

7:11 people are putting a lot of time and effort into it, which is a good thing. I mean, so I find sorry to go on right here, but the methane emissions issues always been interesting to me because the

7:24 incentives are so aligned for everyone. For oil and gas companies, it's literally your product that's bleeding off, right? So it's like, you want to capture that product and be able to sell it.

7:33 So you have some incentive to keep it contained. I think, yeah, I mean, you make some really good points. I think one thing that's interesting is I think the world's coming back to reality on the

7:41 whole energy thing and where or is it come from and what is actually clean energy? Yeah. I think people are having a little bit of a reality check right now. Yeah. So I think it's good. I think

7:49 it's like, wait, look, we went a lot very far in one direction and now we're coming back in the other direction, it's a balancing act, right? Yeah. But something I think would be, you know,

7:57 interesting to chat about that, I don't think people are aware of, is this isn't just a regulatory driver right now. Like people aren't just out here collecting carbon data, just because

8:06 regulations are becoming more scrutiny. I've been talking with a lot of, let's just use, I guess, some example, talking to a large mid-stream operator, right, and there's a lot of them, about

8:17 talking to a large mid-stream operator, and they say, Hey Kyle, we need to be ableto start capturing our data at a very granular levelfrom the meter, and to understand the exact carbon footprintof

8:37 that molecule of gas, from when we pick it up to when it gets delivered, and we didn't know it a month a month, and we're going to start putting it in the commercial terms. of all of our

8:44 agreements with LNG exports and utility companies. Why? It's not regulation. It's because LNG export companies and utility companies who are their customers. Well, it's heavy industrials. It's

8:56 people that are selling huge amounts of power to it, maybe concrete or steel or everybody actually. But the point is, is like, they're being demanded to do that. Why are they being demanded to do

9:05 that? It's because these steel companies or any of these heavy industrial companies that are making products, Europe is wanting a less carbon intensive form of energy 'cause they have all these

9:18 global goals around, you could be for it or against it, but it doesn't matter. The market is the market is the market, right? And that's been the Texas philosophy for a long time. And so they're

9:26 demanding it and now the private market is reacting. And you could totally remove all regulations from this. And this is a full private market thing. Now, some of them might be smaller regulatory

9:36 tailwinds to it, right of enterprise risk reduction, et cetera. But the point is, there's two major drivers, one's regulations and waste emissions charges and everyone's getting fired up about

9:46 that and that's fine. But then there's this complete total private market driver that I don't think people pay enough attention to. Yeah, you know, that's a couple of years ago when the idea of

9:56 certified natural gas came out and, you know, I remember we did this event called New Wave, which was a private event, Chatham House Rules. Everyone said it was an Illuminati event because right

10:08 after we did it, oil prices started shooting up. So they're like, what kind of spiritual rituals are y'all doing there?

10:16 But anyways, one of the conversations, you know, we had the Toby Rices of the world there and we're talking about certified natural gas and it was interesting to hear from operators from, across

10:29 the spectrum, you know, obviously ECT is massive, but you had smaller operators. And, you know, some, the question was, is like, oh, is it really a premium for certified natural gas and in

10:40 the market, and that was like what the talk was, is within the private markets. It was like, hey, we are buyers, like you're up willing to pay higher prices for those molecules if it's certified

10:51 natural gas. And so people are trying to wrap their heads around, like, oh, maybe there is gonna be different levels and grades of quality of molecules based on emissions data. And so I don't

11:03 know where that conversation has gone. Like from a market perspective, if there are price differentials between certified versus non-certified, but regardless, like, you were starting to see the

11:12 private markets at play of like, hey, this is what end users demand. And maybe they're willing to pay premium for it. Maybe they're not, you know, maybe they just say, Hey, if you're not

11:21 certified, we don't buy it at all. But yeah, it was the private market set at work for that. That's exactly right. And I think, you know, people might, I don't know where the market stands

11:31 today in terms of the thought process around this. It might still be a little bit early days, right? but I think the circumstance I just described you. that is like that bottoms up data that I'm

11:41 getting from talking to people is like an early signal that this market is either coming or it becomes the new norm. Those are like, that's what I'm seeing. But what I'm being asked from like a

11:51 great thing is I talked with a large private equity company today. And I love talking with private equity because they are looking for solutions for their operators to reduce risk. But these guys

12:02 aren't just sloshing around money and spending it frivolously, right? Like this directly impacts their profitability. So when I start talking with them and they start to understand the value prop,

12:10 then they're like, yes, our operators need stuff like this. I know like markets are ready to turn. And this is a serious thing, right? And so when I talk with them, they said what you said.

12:19 They said, wow, what are all the frameworks? You have like MIQ is a potential framework. You have OGMP 20 as a potential framework. You have other frameworks that banks accept and ones that EPA

12:29 accept with different protocols and different calculations and different buckets for millions and millions and millions of data points for carbon data, right? And our whole value prop is we're gonna

12:38 pull if you're using from all of your operational activity, right? So if you have 2, 000 engines out in West Texas, we have them in our iconic air database, right? Because that's what drives a

12:48 lot of this. So we pull out operational data, and then if you're using our Bridger Photonics, or you're using a GHD SATA or using something else to kind of do top-down reconciliation, we pull that

12:58 in. And then what we do is we just make it so that the data is bucketed and the calculations are ran correctly, right? We have baked in 2, 000 pages of EPA protocols into our platform, and we

13:08 just make it so, hey, we pull all your data in. And now you just look at our menu and choose what you want. You want an MITU, you want a GMP 20, you want your sub-part W report and your leak

13:17 data management report. Like you can just choose those as buckets in our platform and export the data, right? And we handle all of the buckets. How does this work for you guys? You know, you

13:27 said that you've got a spectrum of clients from small 30-person shops up to larger companies. All of their data is probably structured differently And so how are y'all dealing with that? on your end,

13:41 it's easy to say, just on the podcast, like, oh, yeah, just give us all your data, and then you select the buckets if it's in my queue framework. What do y'all require in terms of how that data

13:50 is structured or what format you needed in? Yeah, I mean, look, the reality is the vast majority of the industry today is still in Excel spreadsheets, right? Yeah. This is the reality, and I

14:01 think, you know, people talk about using various software platforms like WellView or ProMax, or, you know, there's tons of platforms that we could talk about that we could connect into Yeah. But

14:10 even when we talk with operators and they're just like, hey, we want you to connect into these systems, and then we kick off an implementation, they end up using Excel Spreadsheets for the first

14:18 quarter or two anyway, because they want to move fast and make sure it works correctly and all these things. And I would say, like, the number one thing that we're most proud of as an organization

14:26 is that we built a product-first company, which means we aren't tech-enabled consulting. We aren't vaporware. Yeah. We built a bottoms-up robust carbon accounting engine. And you can get in there

14:38 and pull out all the Excel spreadsheets that you need for templates and push the data in and a annual, semi-annual, monthly, daily, even basis. And you can work all the data in yourself, right?

14:52 Month one, we have you in the platform. If you want all of your historical data and all of your facilities and all your engine data, we use Excel spreadsheets to move quickly and get them in there.

15:00 Yeah. And I don't think people realize that. Like we can have you in there in month one and we'll take a little bit more time to get everything actually stood up. Yes, like that's how the real

15:09 world works. It takes four, five, six months to actually get you running. Yeah. And it's a heavy Excel spreadsheet driven and we'll eventually move you into APIs and stuff that makes it a little

15:19 bit easier in a more automated process. Yes, for sure. But the reality is, like you said, it's a lot of Excel early days. Yeah, well, I love one. How have you positioned that? Because I was

15:30 just talking about a partnership with another tech company. And I was like, hey, it's like first off, and me over in Excel spreadsheet.

15:37 And this is low hanging fruit. This allows us to get working in two to three weeks. And then over time, once we identify what we want to do, then we can start working off KPIs, build an

15:47 automation and start hard coding it. But it's always a spectrum of, hey, what's the lowest hanging fruit just to get running and get up and going? So I appreciate that you guys have that mindset

15:58 in the onboarding process. I'm interested in hearing what you hear from your side of the world, right? In terms of talking with a lot of tech companies and two, you have a tech company of your own.

16:07 But dude, I have so, so much empathy for the oil and gas operator today. When I'm talking with them about buying our solution or potentially other solutions that are on the market, I have so much

16:17 empathy 'cause I know that they're being berated left and right. They're being promised X, Y, and Z. They're being told this can be implemented in sub 30 days. They're being told it's an easy

16:25 process. And these are all lies. Yeah, well, I mean, dude, even with our Clyde Pro product, this is not enterprise software, you guys are selling or anything else. And even that onboarding

16:37 process, I mean, it takes a lot of time in meetings, you have different stakeholders within companies. And so, you know, one, I think that I have empathy for enterprise software startups in

16:51 this space because

16:53 you put yourself in the shoes of operators. I mean, one, you're being asked to up in systems that you have plug-in new things There's so many different considerations. Like, hey, you know, like

17:06 one thing I hear all the time is like concerns around, you know, credit capacity for the startups. Like, hey, if we do all this work to implement it, are they gonna be around in the next year or

17:15 two? And I mean, this is just like reality, right? And it's a very good question too. You know, production engineers specifically are just braided and bombarded by technology providers. And

17:28 there's a lot of noise in the space and it's hard to find signal. not to plug Clite Pro in here, but that's, I mean, we're finding our product market fit with production engineers 'cause like, oh

17:39 shit, this actually allows us a tool for discoverability to see what's out there. And so, yeah, like it's easy to have empathy for these operators because they're already busy enough with their

17:53 day-to-day job, putting out the fires that come along with an oil and gas operation. And then you're looking at new technologies or, you know, vaporware out there, smoke and mirrors, people

18:02 making promises, and it's just a lot. And, you know, that's just kind of one of the disconnects on both sides of the market is you've got startups that have typical startup challenges, and then

18:14 you've got these operators that have their challenges trying to adopt and deploy new technology. And, you know, that's what some of you in peace are just like, like, hey, we want to see it being

18:25 used at one or two other companies to know it's real. And so it's what the value is in doing this stuff is, allowing a resource for companies to come here, hear about you guys and all the other

18:36 startups to make a decision. Yeah, I actually, I really resonate with what you just said. And I think that, you know, the two things that I talk to operators about today, right? Because you

18:47 can, you know, a lot of pitches sound great. You walk into the room, there's 12 people sitting around the table kind of something like this. You know, you're shaking and jiving, you're hitting

18:57 the slides, you have some executives, people are getting excited, right? And that is like the easiest part of our job, is like walking in and selling somebody on a slide deck and showing a matrix

19:08 of things that they want fulfilled and you have them all checkmarked. What do you know? They're all checkmarked. Who would have thought? Every single one. Who would have thought, right? And so

19:18 there's two things that we tell operators to do to cut through the noise. We say ask for a sandbox environment with your data today. Say, hey, if you're a real technology company And you just

19:29 check marked 15 different boxes. Yeah. I can do state reports, I can do federal reports, I can do global framework reports, I can tell you this, I can tell you that. Ask for a sandbox with your

19:39 data and send it over and wait for it and then make sure the functions - That's a real test man. Make sure the functions work, that's one. And the second thing I say is call their customers. If

19:48 they're proud, they should put their customers on a silver platter. And don't let them give some BS excuse of all trying to save their time. Look, I get it, but they are also your peers. Like

19:57 they like to talk to each other. They talk to each other all the time, right? Yeah, for sure, yeah. So these are the two things that I do to try to smoke a room out. Yeah, a lot. There's a

20:04 lot of vaporware in the room right now. Let's just put that on the table. You know, that's

20:09 one, like whenever I pitch, I never pitch off of a deck. Like I've run through our technology and show it. And like last week, I was talking to a technical society about a partnership getting

20:20 their data. And I said, Hey, I said, I'll go scrap, scrape all your abstracts track now, and I'll have it in the model by next week. And so I kill ya It's like, I'm not gonna just keep hiking.

20:32 I'll show you, I'll show it working, you know, it's not smoking mirrors, it's not some pitch deck, it's not some, you know, fucking pie-in-the-sky ideas. So yeah, that's how, hey, you wanna

20:41 like really be about it and get business, that's how you go about. Yeah, man, it's hard though, 'cause we go into some stuff with a bunch of vendors, right? And so we are just like, man, how

20:51 do we break through and show them that we're the real deal and we have really happy people, right? And so that's, you know, that's where our heads typically get during the process. So let's talk

20:60 about the company and y'all's operations for a minute because like I said earlier, you know, we connected way back in the day. You guys went on to raise some venture capital. Think y'all raised5

21:12 million, is that correct? That's spot on. Cool, 5 million bucks,

21:17 raise it from some VCs. Tell me a story how y'all connected with those VCs and raise that around. Yeah, I mean, first off, let's start here. the two co-founders of both West Virginia boys,

21:31 right? Yeah, that's what I wanted to add in there. That's what I was asking, 'cause I'm like, Y'all are in West Virginia. You know, it's not like this is some Silicon Valley startup. You know,

21:39 this is hard of a cold country, so. We are the last people who should be in the position that we're into there. So James Carnes and myself, we met each other in college as my co-founder. We met

21:51 each other in college at West Virginia University. Yeah. We were both raised from two blue collar families in the middle of West Virginia, both went to school at West Virginia University because

21:59 that was the coolest thing to do. That was like the highest thing that you shot for, getting to school at West Virginia University. A little did I know a lot of the world was like, where? Who?

22:09 So we - It's cool to you though, that's all that matters. It was cool, man dude, I thought that was it. So we went to school at West Virginia University, we met there and we entered this whole

22:19 thing got started by entering the West Virginia Business Plan Competition. And we thought that was the apex at the time, right? And we had all sorts of ideas but it eventually turned into a leak

22:30 data management product for oil and gas companies where we wanted to take IOT data, drone data and satellite data and synthesize it together for better operational decision-making. Nothing to do

22:41 with carbon, just better operational decision-making. And that eventually obviously turned into what we're working on now, right? But that's where we got our start, West Virginia, West Virginia

22:49 Business Planning Competition. Some people pointed us, we got very lucky, we found some good mentors and they pointed us in the right direction of like online YouTube videos talking about high

22:57 growth startups and like pointing us to like tech crunch and all of this kind of like West Coasty mentality of like how to run a company, right? We learned so much, man. We learned so much, we

23:07 were so hungry, so much more hungry than most people who come from maybe like a elevated family or something like that. So we just had this like deep hunger to like make something cool and like get

23:18 someone to buy it. And so we were like scraping along the bottom like selling this product along the gas companies. And obviously we met these tail winds of like this huge movement around. carbon

23:28 and regulation and all this stuff, right? We eventually took that out to the West Coast. We got5 million during that very frothy period, right? Yeah, yeah. And so maybe without that frothy

23:38 period, who knows how do we receive that, right? Two guys from West Virginia, who knows how they would have viewed that story? I'd be willing to bet that you guys still would have made it happen.

23:46 I mean, there's a spectrum to entrepreneurs and founders and

23:51 lots of bad founders get funded during frothy times but gotta believe that good founders always find a way to make it happen and get funding. We love the peer that we're in right now where the

24:02 markets went through chaos. And I actually think if markets would have stayed extremely frothy, we might have lost in that environment. Why? Because we are not the super polished up individuals

24:15 that have ran companies before and hired hundreds of people at a time, right? And I think we could have lost in that environment, right? Like, why wouldn't you take a 50-year-old? with gray hair,

24:27 who's already done that four, five, six times, has been through a few markets and, 'cause this is becoming a big opportunity right now in the world, right? And so it's actually benefited us to

24:36 be able to be a true in the trenches, heads down capital efficient company of 13 people now after two years, raise venture capital, and we're still out here surviving, landing 15 plus oil and gas

24:47 operators today. Like we are the real deal right now where I think before you could have raised100 million and covered it up for another three or four years that you really don't have great product

24:57 and you're not good at it. It happens to a lot of companies. Go raise a shit ton of money, but you don't have product market fit. And, you know, same thing over here. You know, we've raised45

25:05 million and we have 13 people. And, you know, I have lots of friends that have raised a ton of money and you go to play that capital by increasing head count and hiring people. And then, it's

25:17 like, oh, we don't have product market fit two years later and you gotta cut a lot of people And I think that a couple of things are macro.

25:26 level that have happened that are good is one VC markets, tech markets correcting and getting a little bit, a little bit, the ship was getting stupid for a couple of years there. And - That's

25:39 putting it lightly. Yeah.

25:43 The energy IQ pendulum coming back around, when you guys, when you and I first talked to me, we're at like peak ESG, anti-oiling gas of 2020 and 2021. The world is getting a lot smarter on what

26:02 it actually means to have secure and reliable energy. And it's like, oh, actually, oil and gas is going to play a part in that for the foreseeable future. So we need solutions to make it more

26:13 sustainable. And so I think those are both for iconic heron for us as well Those are both good macro, macro trends that are happening. But yeah, it's nice to be in an environment. like, like one

26:29 where good companies are rewarded, capital efficiency is rewarded. You

26:34 know, it's like I hate when you have to compete with overfunded companies that don't have product market fit, but they become a drain. They get all the best talent because they had the money,

26:44 right? And so it makes us like really lopsided type of, type of market that's hard to operate in. Something that was interesting to me about this, easy to raise money time period, like maybe call

26:56 it just oversaturated with companies, right? Yeah. I think that they have a hard time. I think like that introduces a new problem set to the equation. Like I think it's easy for them to raise a

27:07 lot of money, but I think it's like just from my anecdotal, looking at the markets and looking at competition and seeing like what we see. Yeah. I think it's really hard to like be more

27:17 fundamentals oriented and explain what you're doing in a simple way and being extremely like are who folks other with Yeah. it about clear crystal.

27:26 Hey, look, this company is kind of similar to you, I think. And they raised, you know, 80 million or something like this, but I don't know what they do. Like I've watched their whole pitch

27:33 twice and I don't know what they do, right? And I'm like, isn't this like one-on-one? Isn't this like first slide one sentence as simple as possible? That's something that is so funny. So when

27:44 we first started taking Clyde Pro to the market, um, one of our EMPs that had access to it, very large EMP, um, gonna say this without doxing any companies here. They're like, Hey, like we

28:00 love this because we were looking at integrating XYZ, uh, tech company. And we didn't actually understand what XYZ tech company did. It wasn't clear what their value prop was or how we integrated

28:12 that into our company came over to Clyde Pro. We searched for XYZ company and one of their pitches from your fuse event came up, we watched it and all of a sudden we had so much clarity into what

28:23 they And it kind of like blew my mind because I'm like, this is literally your job as like a startup founder to just be able to articulate like exactly what the fuck you do. Yeah. Yeah. You know,

28:35 like it's just like simplify the storytelling of like, okay, this is where we actually fit fit in the world and some companies struggle with that. It sounds like you guys are getting great traction

28:46 that with cloud pro now. It feels like it's just fucking it's a cool tool like it and it's valuable. Like people are finding value in it. And so you know what's funny? Just like a little little

28:58 story here because you'll appreciate this from the 2020 days. So in 2020, we launched this product called the bullpim and it's a page on our website. And like if you would have been on our podcast

29:08 back then you would have been on it. But we got 20 oil and gas startups to come on and they each had their own profile page or add their demo and shit like that. And anyways, we launch it. This

29:17 thing's a hit like this. I remember this PE fund reshots me like this is the most innovative thing we've seen in energy and I might do it at a page on our website. He's literally on WordPress, like,

29:26 it's not.

29:29 And anyways, everyone was asking for that to come back and I just found out that this company that was on there got acquired by PAC Energy like two years ago. Apparently the founders did really well,

29:41 made a ton of money, but PAC found them from the bullpen. That's how they discovered them. And so, you know, we've always had this like platform for like technology discovery and it's like, you

29:52 know, the reason Clyde Pro's taking off the production engineers, 'cause like there's so much shit out there, just need to be able to like sift through and find the signal. And so, it's really

30:01 just like Clyde Pro's been an evolution of our podcast and our energy tech nights and just doing it in a way that's enabled with AI to find stuff quickly, so. We're in a noisy world, man. There's

30:12 some more data than ever before, right? And for you guys to be able to build a product, to me cuts through the noise and just gets to the answer is incredible That's what's, you know, interesting

30:23 is it. You look at the amount of content and data that's out there, and you see this with like chat GPT, it's like the way the data and content is structured around the internet and within

30:32 companies, it's changing rapidly. And so, you know, this plays both in the theme of iconic air and what we're doing with Clyde Pro because it's like people want answers, right? And so for you

30:44 all, it's like, hey, all I want is this EPA report. At the end of the year, I'm a small 30-person team. I don't want to have to hire environmental teams and then I have to do all this burdensome

30:55 data analysis. I want to upload my shit and I want to get a report. I want to get an answer at the end. That's what the world wants and it's moving towards. So I think that you can see this thing

31:05 across different sectors and different products and companies and

31:11 it'll just be interesting to see where that continues to go over the next decade with the rise of AI. But for you guys, it's been fun to watch y'all.

31:23 enjoyed seeing y'all be successful. What are the challenges that y'all are facing right now? Is it mainly that noise from competitors? Is it EMPs trying to wrap their heads around? You know, so

31:36 much being thrown at them. You know, what the hell are they actually trying to do? What do you see as the biggest challenge for you guys as a company? Yeah, I mean, I think six months ago,

31:60 I may have said to you that what you just said around EMPs wrapping their head around it or just the industry as a whole, right? Upstream, midstream, wrapping their head around it and seeing the

32:01 value prop as value add today. Yeah. I don't think that's the case today. I think the case today is they know exactly what we do and they know they need it. And now it's just a timeline game of,

32:09 do I buy this quarter, do I buy next quarter, right? Last two years, I've talked to 150 operators doing 150 different demos, asking them questions, better understanding strategically of their

32:19 businesses. And this is from the 30 person companies to public companies. So I think I have a very, very good sense of like, where their heads were at, yeah. And I think I've talked with 35

32:28 operators since Jan won this year. And it is in a totally different space. They're like, no, we need this. We know. Give us the proposal. Give me an idea of what this is. So what you're saying

32:40 is, this is a fun time for iconic hair compared to the last couple of years. This makes the last two years look like hell, dude. Yeah, for sure, for sure. So it's a good time, man We're just

32:50 trying to meet the need right now, right? It's like there's so much regulation. There's so much commercial markets. We're being asked for new features and new value props every single day, much

32:58 like yourself. So we're just trying to rise to that need and meet where it's at. So if anyone's listening to this show and they're at an upstream or misstreamed company, what's your ask to them?

33:08 Are you just trying to get as much feedback in meetings as you can with operators? Where can they find you? Give us the ask and the information Yeah, I mean, I would just say the time is now for

33:20 getting prepared, right? Like we just had essentially the waste emissions charge go into effect for starting to charge people for excess methane intensity, but getting Jan won this year. The rest

33:30 of the rule actually comes in Jan won next year, right? So the time is now. Yeah. And I understand that people don't want to just jump on demos all the time and talk to people. So I very much

33:40 like I don't do the same for other technologies that we need. So I would just say go check us out on LinkedIn, right? On LinkedIn, you can go check it out and then we put out a lot of information

33:47 And after this podcast, iconic hair is gonna be, y'all gonna have a profile page on Collide Pro. So you can go check them out on Collide Pro. Let's do it, man. Well, thanks, dude, for coming

33:55 on. This has been great. If you all enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend, share it on LinkedIn, share it on Twitter, Don't give a shit where you share it, just share it. Kyle,

34:05 appreciate you being on, man.