What The Funk?

0:00 It should be a fun one, Nick. I really appreciate you coming on company called Think Onward, an innovative tech company based out of Austin, but Mick is just down the road from me here in Boulder,

0:13 Colorado. So not too many of us in the patch out here, but always good when we get some time to connect with them. So Mick, the question that I have for you is a question that I ask everybody that

0:25 comes on my podcast. Who are you, man? Who is Mick? I see

0:30 Hopefully we're not going to go to philosophical on that. But let's see what we can do. Yeah, I have been in the industry, in the oil and gas industry for about 22 years, in another 15 before in

0:42 technology in general, outside of oil and gas, things like out of water, very space, you know, chemistry, pharmaceutical, stuff like that. So I ended up in oil and gas by coincidence in 2002.

0:54 And I stayed. I got, I got stuck with the bug, got the, of oil and gas, I actually enjoyed quite a bit. I spent the last 22 years always in pretty much subsurface exploration, not only but as

1:06 majority has been the technical side in the geoscience side of

1:11 the industry. Background, I'm originally Italian, left Italy now over 30 years ago, 32 or something. So I've been out for a long time in Colorado for 27, so pretty long time over here. Even

1:24 though many people think that I live in Houston, I never lived in Houston, but I've been in Houston so much that people think I live there. So that's an interesting - Sounds like me, a story in my

1:33 life. Exactly, so we always commute on United Airlines down to Houston, I guess. So yeah, that's it. Background, I started Computer Science initially. I ended up doing an MBA at Stanford,

1:46 halfway in my career. Cool. It was a few years back. And I worked with a bunch of different companies, from large companies to small companies. I started with people like HP and Microsoft and

1:56 NVIDIA. AWS, but also been involved with companies like Blueware and also been co-founder and investor in many startups. I still am invested in a variety of different things. I even invested in a

2:07 company that did exploration directly. We drilled a couple of wells in Louisiana. So I've been all over the map if you want to see it that way. Yeah. I mean, geographically and career-wise, so

2:20 let's go way back. So you were born in Italy, grew up in Italy. What was that like? It's not like you have something to compare it to since you didn't grow up over here. But what was growing up

2:29 like in Italy? When I was in an interesting situation, I grew up in Milan, right in the center of Milan. Milan is the capital, the economic capital of Italy. That's where all the business really

2:39 is done. And yeah, I was quite exposed to everything you have around you without even realizing. You know, from art to fashion to design, everything was like around me without me even realizing.

2:51 I realized at the moment I left what I had and what I grew up with.

2:56 the US was kind of a dream. I went to Germany first, by the way. So I went to Germany five years, and then after Germany, the US. And for me, travel has always been interesting, learning new

3:06 languages, new cultures, new way of living has always been very attractive. So I didn't feel any pain, traveling, changing countries, actually, we're looking forward to it. And yeah, it's

3:17 been very interesting for me, my career and my life to be exposed to multiple cultures Yeah, it's neat. So growing up, would you guys travel to various different other European countries? Because

3:29 everything feels relatively close together down there, right? I'm actually looking at a business trip coming up to London. And I'm like, you know, this is pretty easy. I could take like a three

3:38 hour train to Amsterdam, a two and a half hour train to Paris, like you start hitting different countries really quickly. So did you do a lot of traveling as a kid? Actually, not at all. I come

3:51 from a family with very simple means. So we didn't have money to do And my first travel, funny enough, I think I was 19. And I left and I went with, I don't know, many stops. I went to Belgium,

4:07 Saudi Arabia,

4:10 Khartoum, Kigali, Sarwanda and then Burundi. So I was a volunteer in Africa for a big project. So my first travel was actually going from Milan to a very remote location in Africa where I worked

4:23 for a while on a third world development project It was my first trip outside of Italy unless you count going to Switzerland for skiing, but that's just, you know, one hour drive that doesn't

4:32 really count, is it? Nice. Going abroad. Nice. So you came over, so you lived in Africa for a little bit. Did you go to college in Italy? Yeah, the computer science in Milan. Got it. And

4:46 then Germany you said for a little bit, is that where you started your career? I started in Milan for three years. I worked in Italy and then, My company was bought by HP and then they needed

4:56 somebody with my background and a move to the European level to support customers at European level. Yeah, and you stood care at that time. How many languages do you speak? None completely.

5:08 That's the right answer.

5:10 Depending on where I am, depending on how I feel and what I'm talking about, I can have conversation in a few languages and make stuff up in between, so whatever works. Nice. Depends

5:23 So you start in Milan, you end up in Germany, you work with a company that gets acquired, start working for HP, which I'm guessing even back then was pretty big. Had you ever been to the US or

5:35 was your first time in the US when you moved here? No. So when I started working for HP and even the previous company, I had several trips to the US. In fact, my first trip was to Colorado,

5:44 interesting enough for a training. And remember, I landed in Denver at that time, Denver was a much smaller place, it was the old Stapleton Airport. And I know they lost my bag. So I ended up

5:55 being four Collins without a bag. First time I got here and I had some very interesting days that day because I actually got stopped by the police because I was going, I fired miles below about the

6:06 speed limit. I came out of the car with my driver license and the policeman pointed the gun at me and said, go back to the car. That was in my welcome to the US day. It was an interesting culture

6:17 shock on some of these things, but that was a long time. Well, it's what, so when you get pulled over in Italy, you get out of the car? Yeah, people don't shoot you, but because of the

6:28 speeding stuff that you just go out and you talk to the police and you figure things out, you don't have to put your hands on the steering wheel and be careful, so I learned that pretty fast.

6:37 That's amazing, no, I love that. So you made a few trips over here, you already knew you wanted to be in business, right? What prompted the move officially to the United States, and where did

6:49 you go first? Did you move to Colorado and what were you doing? Yeah, so the offer that I got from HP was to move to the US. It was to be kind of the person that will connect the experience with

7:00 customers in the field and the development of a new computer. So was the person connecting the customer needs and the RD team, so connecting the two sides. So when the product is actually launched,

7:12 it's fully ready, all the software is ready, customer needs are already known upfront. So it was like a complete solution program manager. That's what they call it at that time Very interesting.

7:22 Originally, that job was supposed to go to Boston. That's where we had a group. But by the time I moved, they closed that group and they moved me to Colorado. That's why I ended up in Colorado in

7:32 the first place. So there was like no real plan to end up in Colorado. You're like, well, I guess I'm going to Boston. I'll stay in Boston. You probably would have liked it there too, the North

7:40 End has some pretty good-of-time food. Yeah, exactly. I mean, by the way, I know that area quite well because I was there many times and I was pretty enamored of Boston and the area. But you

7:49 know, Colorado was, very different, of course, especially at that time. If you go back, you know, 20, 30, whatever, 30 years ago, whatever it was, it's like very different compared to

7:58 today. I mean. Extremely, yeah. I mean, I moved out here, you know, from New England, 20 years ago, sight unseen, and I'm still here. But the changes is pretty stark. I think especially

8:12 with Denver. Like Denver back then was still kind of a cow town. Like there was a couple of like telecom companies and maybe a little bit of a tech scene from like that early tech boom in the late

8:24 '90s, early 2000s, but it was a cow town. And then it kind of transitioned to be a little bit more of like a pot town, right? Because there's the legalization of marijuana and you start getting

8:36 influx of tourism. Then I feel like in the past, maybe 10 years, it's actually become like what I would consider like a real city, you know? Yeah, definitely, definitely. I mean, even other

8:47 parts of Colorado, Remember when I landed. In 2002, when you arrived at Stapleton, I was going to Fort Collins. The highway was only a two-way lane highway. It was all pretty much grass fields

8:58 all the way. There was nothing in between. And the sign was saying Cheyenne Wyoming, was not even saying Fort Collins Colorado. So it's just that it's like an interesting how these evolved, you

9:07 know. Now there are some parts of that highway. There are four or five lanes and, you know, it's kind of, yeah, big change. Yeah, it's funny that you mentioned Stanford a little bit earlier.

9:17 When I was in San Francisco once, I was sitting at a wine bar actually at Tony's Pizza, which is kind of a famous pizza place in San Francisco. Some of the best pizza that I've ever had in my life.

9:29 I absolutely love it. And I was sitting at the bar there and talking to a guy who is actually in the Stanford real estate hall of fame. And he was talking a little bit about Colorado, this is about

9:41 three years ago, two years ago. And he was saying, This is really the time for Colorado. He mentioned some of the same things that you said, where that corridor on I-25 from Fort Collins, the

9:52 Colorado Springs used to be just fields, right? It was like all agriculture, all cows. Now, it's almost like one continuous developed area all the way from Fort Collins through Denver to Colorado

10:07 Springs, and it's only gonna keep calling, right? People know now that this is a great area to be. Yeah, yeah, it's a great place. I'm happy that I'll end it here I had many chances to move to

10:16 Yellowstone and other places, but for my family made more sense to be here and then I traveled from here. Yeah, and Boulder, obviously, is a beautiful place. So I'm jealous that you're there.

10:27 I'm in Lafayette, which isn't bad. The Boulder, obviously, a super special place. So you're here, you knew you were gonna work in tech, right? You end up in Colorado, you're at HP. Where did

10:40 your career go from there? I know there were some stints at other really big companies and very prominent and popular names. Where'd you go after HP?

10:49 Yeah, I mean, the story is quite similar at least for the first two, you know, when I was in Olegas in HP, we did a pretty good job for, you know, three to five years to grow that vertical. HP

10:59 became kind of the darling for many of the vendors from Shumbage to Alibaba and many others. We did very well. The team was very excited. We called ourselves like a team of pirates If you want, we

11:09 were just taking no prisoner, figuring things out was really fun. And then of course, new CEO comes in, he started to go through his spreadsheets, cuts, and they said, okay, no vertical's not

11:18 that important. So, okay, there he goes. So my previous boss at that time moved to Microsoft and he called me the next week, said, okay, let's do the same thing here again. So I did about

11:29 three years in Microsoft. We did the same, almost the same thing. I just changed the company name, but the people, the contact, the role was about the same and that is the same thing for NVIDIA.

11:39 When NVIDIA was still, not NVIDIA is today. NVIDIA at that time was still fighting. Was we were fighting to get GPUs into seismic processing or reservoir simulation or other places, right? So

11:50 very different. Right now everybody's killing each other to get an NVIDIA GPU. At that time was a lot of real work to be done to convince people to replace a CPU with a GPU. Really good fun with

11:59 that team as well. We stay pretty good friends with that. And then eventually I got the call to help a European start-up open the US office. And I joined with a few other people, and that's what

12:12 we did, that eventually became blue air, was a

12:15 merge of four companies. We orchestrate a kind of reverse merge kind of thing. So we find it for companies that together would make sense. We found investment from shell ventures, energy ventures.

12:27 We were able to grow when other people were going out of

12:31 business. It was actually quite an interesting experience from that perspective And then after that, Amazon was building their vertical for energy.

12:40 I joined AWS for three years when they built a team that went from 10 people to 300 and good experience there as well. And then what is my current company now was something that came out out of left

12:54 field and sounded extremely interesting and said, you know, why not?

12:59 Yeah. The smallest company you've worked for, it sounds like, at least to this point in your career. Talk a little bit about what it's like I mean, I think I remember you telling me even at one

13:10 point, like when you were at Microsoft, like you actually had meetings with Steve Balmer, right? Like you were dealing with some of the senior executives there. We have some interesting situation

13:20 there. I remember, you know, again, historical stuff. Now Sarah Week is a big deal, right? It used to be always a big deal, but at that time, Sarah Week was very much a geopolitical gig.

13:31 There was all ministers and CEOs were talking about at high level. There was almost no, in fact, there was no tech whatsoever. I remember we had a conversation with the people who are gonna insert

13:40 a week, they were looking for sponsors and I was at HP at that time. And I said, you know guys, you know, you want to be sponsored, but there is no technical. So that what's, you know, it

13:49 doesn't make a lot of sense for companies like us to invest. And I started to have the idea, you should have a CEO of a technology company to speak to your audience, to give them an understanding

13:59 of how technology is gonna change. And the guy actually opened up to it. And so I tried to go first to my CEO at that time, people may remember Carly Fiorina, it was the CEO of HP at that time,

14:11 pretty controversial person. She was not available, so I wasn't unable to get her to be the keynote at Sarah Week. So I talked to my friend at Microsoft at that time, we were partners. I said,

14:21 Hey, could we get somebody? So we were able to get Steve Ballmer to be the first technical CEO to be the keynote at Sarah. And so it was interesting. Then we did the same thing when I was at

14:31 NVIDIA, we were able to get the CEO of NVIDIA to be the keynote as well.

14:39 And if you look at what happens today, today Sarah Week has two sides. That is the Sarah Week that is a political and that is the Agora that is very much technology driven. It's very growing a lot.

14:46 These came all from that initial conversation about sponsoring Sarah Week, I mean in 2003 or 2004 or something like

14:55 that. Ah, that's really cool, right? I mean, to me, some of these names that you're mentioning are like rock stars, right? These are like celebrities, right? They're people that own sports

15:04 teams And for you, it's like, hey, we need a keynote speaker for this event, and then it launches into something else. So you've had your fingerprints and some pretty cool stuff in oil and gas.

15:15 I wanna touch on AWS a little bit too, 'cause I remember when you went over there enjoying it and the growth was just, it was completely insane at that time. And really, the most powerful company

15:26 in the world that I feel like Amazon is a whole - Amazon

15:32 more than AWS, Amazon's the last more than AWS. So you would say AWS is a completely different business than Amazon, like is that how you'd look at it? Yeah, if you think about the way AWS grew,

15:41 it became pretty much the IT organization for Amazon IT. And then they developed enough IP and innovation. They said, you know, other people will need the same thing and they came up with this

15:51 cloud idea. And they were, I think, lucky enough that their number two company at that time was Microsoft was the key tech company. They didn't pay attention to much of this cloud thing for a

16:02 while So Amazon got about six, seven years of running without anybody competing with them. So they gave them a fantastic advantage, right? And still, and then there is some of the things that

16:13 Amazon did in terms of DNA, how they think about innovation that was quite interesting. Now, of course, it's a huge company now. It's not the same, you know, super agile company that was when

16:23 they started, but it's still trying to find a way forward and innovating all the time. It's quite interesting, yeah Did you get to meet Andy Jassy or Jeff Bezos?

16:34 No, no, no, didn't get to those now. No, I was out in that three years and we were just working with our own little energy team trying to get on the map for energy companies. So we didn't have

16:45 that level of exposure, at least not. I feel like you guys successfully did that though. It was sort of like, all right, people are using AWS and then there's this massive explosion. I think a

16:55 lot of it happened during COVID too, where AWS is now sort of everywhere, right? And you've got this OSDU and all this other stuff So, so you're at big companies, right? Besides Blueware, right?

17:07 Obviously a little bit of a smaller kind of roll up gig, bringing a European company over here. So you've worked at really big companies and then you end up at Think Onward. So talk a little bit

17:16 about what you're doing today with Think Onward. Like, you know, what drew you to the company? What are some of the differences in working for a smaller company versus some of these behemoth tech

17:26 companies? So Onward is an interesting hybrid, right? Because the company, it is 70 plus people So not huge, not huge. not a super startup, but it's something in between. But it's a company

17:38 that is owned by Shell. So that's another, it's an interesting mix, right? So you have a big, you know, mothership that has decided to create this company for a good reason. We'll talk maybe in

17:49 a second about what they did. But we have kind of a two souls. We have a startup. We are also connected to a big company. And because we are fully owned by Shell, we have to be quite a bit in

17:59 compliance with everything that is Shell from, you know, legal and anti-corruption and anti-trade. All the things that a big oil company worries about because we're 100 owned, we have to be aware

18:13 about all of those and be cognizant of the requirement. So it's a bit of a mix and that's why it's interesting as well.

18:22 So the, how do you think on we're get born then? Is it with Shell, like we have a whole bunch of projects that we wanna work on and you've got this, you know, skilled technology group and all of

18:33 a sudden you guys are building stuff. And you're like, hey, wait a second, we have a company here. Like, was that the genesis of onward? No, so as some of the executive on the exploration side

18:42 of Shell, they started to, they're very innovative. They look at the industry and what's happening as far as innovation and technology out there. And they started to have the feeling that, you

18:53 know what? The way a traditional IOC works with pretty much a closed RD thinking, our

18:60 own people, our own research By the way, some of these companies have massive research teams, right? That we're not talking small, small effort. But they say, look, there is so much innovation

19:10 happening outside that if we don't think about a new model, we're going to miss a lot. So the actual idea was very much at these levels. How can we tap into the more collective brain of scientists

19:23 around the world to augment our internal brains? That was the kind of the spark, if you wanted the idea So they work with the. with Boston Consulting for a year and a half to incubate this idea.

19:37 This became the first name of the company was Studio X. Oh yeah. Studio X, yeah. It was like five people, five people with this mission in mind to say, can we create a crowd innovation model

19:52 that would bring in the best of brains out there in the world and make it available initially to Shell only. The initial idea was just to extend Shell So for three, four years, this company was

20:04 only serving Shell and with this model. So they started to create this network of open innovation, both in data science and geoscience. They also created a small accelerator or incubator to start

20:17 investing in early stage companies that could be relevant for climate, tech, and energy. And started growing from

20:27 there. So eventually there was also a moment Google had a pretty nice innovative team focusing on energy, but they decided that energy was not, you know, strategic anymore, specifically oil and

20:37 gas was not, you know, fashionable anymore. But there was a fantastic team in Austin, and we picked up some of the best people from that group as well. So we now have our own RD as well. So now

20:48 the company has multiple pieces, right? There is the incubator. We have this crowd sourcing community. There's about 6, 000 people worldwide and growing. And we have our own RD So it's hard

20:59 sometimes to explain what we are to people because we have these multiple souls. But it's still a pretty interesting bet. And again, about six months ago, Shell said, Okay, you guys delivered

21:10 enough value to Shell. Why don't you open up the rest of the industry and see if other companies will be open to leverage this kind of one. Yeah, I mean, makes perfect sense to me. And from a

21:22 technology perspective, there's some forward thinking in terms of sustainability, but also artificial intelligence.

21:34 A lot of it is AI and the technology-wise foundation is mostly AI with a real mix of geoscience, earth science skills. So if you think about this unique differences, we have people that deeply

21:42 understand geoscience and earth science with this kind of innovative, flexible model. So we have a pretty unique way to say, we can bring innovation in, we understand how to apply to geoscience

21:55 and earth science and climate tech And we now are finding ways to turn this into IP and value that operators can sign up for. So when, you know, when I think of AI, right, at least at a minimum,

22:09 I think about like open AI, chat GPT, right, conversational, asking questions on a personal level. But when I think about it from an oil and gas standpoint, it's about asking questions of data,

22:22 right?

22:24 I'm curious to kind of learn a little bit more and then have had some exposure, of course, to your organization, really impress what onward is doing. But how do oil and gas companies want to

22:35 interact with their data leveraging AI, right? 'Cause as you know, oil and gas has just tons and tons of data, whether it's from SCADA systems, whether it's from drilling and subsurface and

22:46 internal systems like accounting or production and then public data sets as well Like how do companies rationalize, how they leverage AI for this data? Like, how does this work? Right, so it's an

23:03 interesting and everybody's, not everybody's the same, obviously. There are different companies with different personalities. There are some very tangible areas where people have been trying to

23:14 apply AI, or even just call it analytics plus AI plus LLM. Now, one is operations. I mean, that's the one that has usually, There's always been the one that. as the biggest opportunity for

23:26 savings, because it's typically people heavy kind of operations. So every time you have people involved and people have to run around with the truck to check an oil field or inside a refinery or a

23:36 pipeline, there is a lot that can be saved. A lot that can be predicted. Prediction is really the key in that space, right? Can you predict? Can you avoid down time and so on? That has been

23:47 going on for a while. My impression in that space, but in other spaces, is that unfortunately, in the energy industry in particular, it is very difficult to innovate. And the difficulty is

23:60 because it's very hard for an oil company to adopt a new ISV and new solution. There are so many barriers to go from your wealth to no true, tested and true vendor that you had for 30 years to bring

24:16 in a new innovated company. Even if you like what they have, sometimes You cannot even give them data. You cannot give them real data to test and demonstrate. So there are some very basic things.

24:26 Then you pass that point and then IT is gonna block you for a year, or legal or procurement. So I saw with my own skin, we brought in some innovative AI with blue air for exploration in some

24:37 companies. From the day we signed the contract with the day they deployed was three years. Wow. So in three years, in this day and age? In three years, people didn't even know what open AI was.

24:48 Three years ago. People had no idea how to do So think about the speed of innovation out there and how limiting our solid internal processes, right? So the aspiration of many people in the

24:59 companies are to use AI in many ways. But how do you go from that to deploy, to turning into real money? That I think is one of the biggest challenges. And we're trying to address that ourselves

25:11 in order. So for example, we can be a lot more flexible and adopting new technology compared to maybe even shell themselves And if you combine these - people that we have in the crowdsourcing

25:22 community and experts with this technology and we can show it in a project, demonstrate how much value you can extract from an oil company, then we'll give them a way to test the impact of this in

25:34 modern technology into a real use case scenario versus aspiring to test something that sometimes is the barrier to face. Yeah, I like the way that you walk through that and it makes a ton of sense.

25:48 Like, I think the approach that's going to win out ultimately in oil and gas will be integrated data sets plus AI

25:59 LLM chatbot I bet we'll see a lot of vendors who have a product create some sort of wrapper on top of it where you can ask questions just of their data. But where the real value comes in is where you

26:10 have lots of different data sets feeding in and being able to ask questions of it Right, and I think that that's the direction that you guys are going. Talk a little bit about like training some of

26:23 these models like how long does it take to train an AI model to be able to work and interact with oil and gas data does it require thousands of different documents and data points is it millions is it

26:35 billions like this is something that I'm really curious about and as it relates to oil and gas specifically I think it's quite different when people think about this if you think like an open AI

26:45 approach where there is something crawling the world the internet and come up with this universal thing right so the opportunity and the challenge in oil and gas is to focus on specific domain

27:12 data And if you focus on a specific domain and you have already a platform that can ingest and make sense of the data And if you focus on a specific domain and you have already a platform that can

27:20 ingest and make sense of the data. taxonomy, the language and the science itself, you don't need millions of documents. You can start to get some significant value with a few hundreds and of

27:29 course you can keep growing. But you're starting with the approach of saying, I'm not trying to boil the ocean, I'm trying to solve a specific use case. So I think that's when you make it not only

27:40 faster to deliver, but also tangible to a specific, you know, budget holder, manager, team, whatever, right? Yeah, and it reminds me a little bit of if we go back 10, 12 years ago, when

27:56 companies started to think in terms of business intelligence, right? So that was kind of a hot term back then, you know, so you build some sort of data warehouse, and then you slap some sort of

28:06 analytics on top of it, whether it be spa fire or tableau or something like that. And it's overwhelming, right? What you have to do is pick something specific that one part of an organization will

28:18 gain. game benefit from and one of the stories that I like to come back to and I'll never forget this, this is a Dallas based oil and gas company and I was talking to the VP of operations and I

28:29 showed him a dashboard that incorporated data from their financial system so like you know an SAP and from their well data system they're drilling and completions and their real-time production and

28:41 their forecasting system and then their expense their invoices pull all this data together and analyze on a well by well basis the profitability of a well over a given period of time and I remember

28:54 him asking you know what is this cost and so this is fifty thousand dollars for a year and then there's an implementation cost and I think he meant to put me on mute but he didn't and what he said and

29:05 leaned over to somebody on his team he goes 50 grand because that's one well right if I can optimize one well because of this data that I have here then it makes sense And it simplified it for me so

29:17 much, right? It has to be a logical use case that the business can digest, but I see companies all the time and saw it back then, trying to boil the ocean, right? So I think it's really about

29:29 where do you start, right? What is the logical use case that you start with because AI is going to be everywhere. All right, how do we manage that AI? Absolutely, pick the use cases, make that

29:40 work. Try to do it with a platform thinking so you don't reinvent the wheel every time. So you don't do this project the next one is different, different, different So you need to find the balance

29:48 between try to find a platform that is generic enough but then apply to a specific use case. Prove that, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat and do more like that. So that's, I think it's the best

29:59 way to do it for everybody involved. So even from our side, you don't want to promise the Nirvana, okay, hey, this is the salt of your problem. And some companies do that, they pretend to have

30:09 everything that is perfect, we can solve a real problem. I mean, I don't feel very comfortable with that. I think it's better to walk before you run,

30:19 incremental wins. But on the flip side, you see these and maybe they're engineers or maybe they're in operations. And they start hearing in the news about what AI is doing. And then they go to

30:32 their teams and say, hey, we want to use AI for everything, right? Then the thought process becomes ingrained that it needs to be this big grandiose thing. What I'm hearing you say is it doesn't

30:41 need to be that, right? Pick something, pick some documents, pick some set of data where you can get value from it that eliminates some of the human manual element and let the computers do the

30:52 work. And one thing that I learned again in previous, a couple of previous companies was the fact that ultimately many projects, many processes, a human being has to sign off on something. So

31:06 there's no way around that, okay? We're not gonna, we're not yet at the point where a plant is completely without humans and can be around by itself. There's a long way to go, I think. There is

31:15 an interesting balance between giving a tool that can solve a problem using AI, but still giving the respecting the authority and involvement of the human, so you can make the right assessment and

31:26 feel comfortable with that tool. So that balance between completely unmanned AI and understanding the responsibility of the people that have to sign off, it's an interesting balance,

31:38 pretty critical. Yeah, good point. We're not ready to fully transition to the machines taking over, nor should we, especially for a safety centric industry like oil and gas. Nick, I wanna

31:52 transition a little bit and ask some kind of higher level questions. So you've been an oil and gas, you're a grizzled veteran at this point, right? You've been doing this for over 20 years and

32:03 you've seen technology of all of quite a bit. Where do you see it going over the next three, five, 10 years? Do you see an increased emphasis on - ESG sustainability, hydrogen or geothermal type

32:20 drilling. And from a technology perspective, do you see more of a reliance on AI? Like as part of why you took this job because you see this being an extremely fast growing area, you've seen where

32:32 tech has come from. You've seen where the industries come from. Where do you see it going?

32:38 Yeah, so different types of technologies is now perculating across the industry everywhere, right? I think the biggest issue that I still see is the internal processes that are red-taping and

32:49 blocking the adoption of technology. So people see it, want it, but some of the internal processes is procurement or legal or IT or whatever, it's an issue. The second thing is the other bear is

33:01 how do you get a veteran that is an expert on a certain application to be willing and to have the time to learn something new, right? You know, the, the typical, you know, the, the, the

33:12 cartoon with the guy trying to sell the machine gun to the guy says, I don't know time. I'm going to keep using arrows. So, it's a bit that situation. So, how are companies going to adapt and

33:22 modify those processes so that they can actually adopt technology before the technology is obsolete? Because right now, the time to adopt is the time of solution for technology in a tech. So, it's

33:32 actually pretty crazy. It's got to the point that the three years that it takes to deploy makes what you're deploying obsolete. So, you really have to think that completely differently. And I

33:42 think the question about hydrocarbons, geothermal, carbon capture, hydrogen, all of these would play. Some of them would be, very few of them would be as profitable as hydrocarbons, right? So,

33:54 the biggest challenge is, now you're not going to have the same level of margins and profitability in some different areas of energy. ESG is an example, right? Carbon capture is an example. You

34:06 have to do it. There are mandates and obligations, but can you actually be profitable with that? So, I think here,

34:15 technology is going to be even more important. Even this crowdsourcing approach that we have could be even more important because can you actually afford to have300, 000 a year salary people in a

34:26 certain number in a business that is not as profitable as the hydro economy? So, technology is going to be a critical function into the efficiency and the profitability of the companies coming

34:38 forward. Yeah, and I think you combine that with generally speaking, less younger people getting into the industry, right? I mean, we've seen that shift and, you know, I think we had, geez,

34:52 a while ago, some Texas AM professors on this podcast talking about how man, there are just a lot less students going through the petroleum engineering program and putting those people out in the

35:02 industry. So, there will be a gap there for sure that technology will need to fill. I wanna hit you with some rapid fire questions 'cause I always like doing this with my guests. Number one,

35:16 Nick, what is your favorite city to travel to in the world?

35:21 I just came back from Paris. I think Paris is really on the top of the list in terms of an amazing place where you can have art culture, food, walk around, beauty. I think Paris is fantastic. I

35:35 like London. I'm not gonna mention the Italian cities because it's like home, so I'm gonna skip those. Yeah, yeah, yeah For me, London and Paris in Europe are extremely nice, and also because I

35:48 know them quite well. I like Sydney quite a bit. I enjoy Shanghai, so there are a few places that I really, Singapore is amazing. So there is not a single place. There are many places that I've

35:59 been around in my career that I'm very nice and different. Even Tokyo, very super interesting in a very diverse, extremely diverse environment in terms of what you see, what you taste, the

36:10 products, everything that is out there.

36:13 amazing from that perspective. And is, are most of these places, places you've been to for business. And then you kind of turned it into some personal trip as well. Or like, because obviously

36:23 you've done a lot of international business. If that's the case. Yeah. Yeah. I've been in so many places around the world and, you know, I always try to find a little bit of time to also see,

36:35 you know, the city, some places that went back, of course, personally, another place that I like a lot is real, real, it's fantastic as well So there are many, many different places. I love

36:44 to travel and I love to visit cities. So I have a long list, not a short one. But you didn't mention any in the US. What's your favorite city to travel to in the US? Interesting. Um,

36:57 I tell you of something controversial, I like nature in the US. I'm not a fan of cities. I think the nature of the US. is amazing and that is some of the most beautiful things, uh, not just in

37:08 the West in particular, but not just the West I like the Northwest. in North America from

37:15 a natural standpoint is amazing. Cities, they are interesting ones, but if you compare that to some of the European Eurasian cities, I think it's not the same level. It's just my personal

37:27 impression. Do you think that's because the cities that you're talking about internationally are so much older and they have more just established culture and history to it? 'Cause I could see that

37:37 being part of the reason, but I'm wondering why these international cities strike you differently. So that would be true for a Paris or a London, but if you compare to Singapore, Singapore, if

37:49 you think about it, is a fairly new state concept, relatively speaking, in history. So it's not older than New York, or other, let's say, all

37:58 the American cities, but I think the way they build that city, for example, it's quite innovative, both in terms of green space, public transportation, huge issue in the US, right? Yeah.

38:10 Adding a place that you can easily move around, city to city inside the city, walk around safely and so on. That makes a big difference, I think, in the way you feel about a place. Right, like,

38:21 you know, you can't be in Los Angeles or Houston or Dallas without a car. It's just the reality of like - US, I think, is the opposite advantage. The mediums of cities sometimes are really nice

38:33 because you had that kind of feeling of a local walking around and kind of a community feeling.

38:41 Especially when they have universities, US is very good at creating big university centers. So

38:45 that combination I think is very, very US specific, I think, that I really enjoy. Yeah, so you're happy you ended up in Boulder, it sounds like, which is the best of kind of all those worlds

38:56 'cause you got great food. So food, right? I wanna ask you this. Give me some of your favorite restaurants First in maybe some of the oil cities in the US, but also just in the world. What are

39:07 some of your favorite restaurants? I, you know, I don't keep memory of the restaurant specifically. I can tell you that I, if I have to choose where to go, I tend to go sushi or Asian food first,

39:18 just my preference. Mainly because I cook myself. So I don't really need to go pay for an entire restaurant to myself. So I feel kind of almost cheated sometimes when I do that. So, but yeah, I

39:30 don't have a specific list of restaurants. If I, I have them saved when I go to a city, I know where to go. But I can give you a specific address So what do you, do you make your own pizza and

39:40 pasta and all that stuff at home? We cook quite a bit, you know, especially with friends. We do pretty much anything you can get in a restaurant, just at home with friends. It's pretty

39:51 straightforward. Yeah. So I'm sure you got a nice, you know, wood fired oven or something like that, right? Got to have it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, sports teams, do you care about American

40:02 sports? Like what is this like for an Italian? You grow up over there and you come over here. Everybody's into football. basketball hockey. You know, these are sports that I guess basketball and

40:12 soccer they play over there. But do you care about US sports at all? No, in fact, I don't even care about European sports anymore. So I need a little bit of story. So my apartment in Milan was

40:24 in front of the main stadium. Okay. So we had three times a week, there were somebody playing. You're invaded by, you know, teams and people screaming and noise and so on. So you end up not

40:36 being a fan just because it's intrusive into your life anyway. But I used to follow, you know, soccer, tennis, skiing, Formula One, all that stuff when I was in Europe. When I got over a year,

40:46 I never felt, you know, interested in, and I have some funny stories. I mean, I think I tell you one that could be interesting. We had sponsorship for the Astros in Houston when I was in HP, I

40:58 think. Yeah. And so I went to one of the, you know, baseball, baseball game. And I was there paying attention and a certain I really need to go to the restroom. So just go. And I say, when is

41:11 the break? There is no break. You just go whatever you want.

41:15 They're socializing, drinking, talking. I was waiting for, you know, when is a break? You know, kind of stuff. So it's like completely, you know, alien to to. I'd works. So there's no what?

41:27 There's no halftime. They just keep going back on the field and see what matters. I would say, what is this over? I mean, anyway, that's awesome. Yeah. Well, baseball is a little bit

41:36 different now with the pitch clock But that's one of the things I have historically liked about baseball is there. There is no time. So my wife would ask me like, hey, you know, you're at the

41:45 baseball game. What time does it end? I'm like, you don't know. She's like, well, can you give me like a ballpark? I'm like, I mean, it could be done in 30 minutes. It might be playing

41:55 tomorrow. I don't know. It could be the longest game of all time. I have no idea exactly with the clock. They've condensed it a little bit. I think because we're all in this 80D Twitter

42:04 generation where we can only assume so much information it wants. Um, so, you know, Mick, I, I mean, I'm enjoying your hearing your perspective, both on technology, some of your history and

42:16 the international slant that you've, you've taken on, on business. Um, the final question I have for you, more of a reflective one, like what advice would you give to your younger self? So

42:28 you've got 21 year old Mick looking to get out of school. You're ready to take over the world. You want to work in business, travel internationally, do all these things. Like what advice would

42:39 you have for your younger self back then?

42:43 I was very green when I got into my, I don't know how everybody else that is listening, listens in, but I had really no, no much of a clue. So I start working and just get a job figuring it out.

42:54 Just also. What helped me was interesting. I ended up being one of the few people left that had a certain technical knowledge with a lot of customers around Europe that were screaming for help. To

43:06 the point that we're almost suing. HP at that time because of breach of contract. So I ended up for five years only dealing with really pissed off customers with real problems, okay? So I learned

43:17 so much. It was like a battlefield. So every customer were ready to strangle somebody and I was that bone thrown to the dog, right? So I learned so much in those five years that was like amazing.

43:29 So that was my one thing. One thing that I learned from that experience was interesting Everybody always tries to go after the new stuff, right? Always after the new, the new, the new. But in

43:40 that case, I was actually successful because I was the only person that was able to understand the old.

43:47 And you know, you know, technology in companies lasts forever as we discussed before. So there are still people today that have to program and fix cobble, you know, programs or water and stuff

43:59 like that. So, and those people are becoming extremely valuable So some time you may have a contrary or thinking about you know, I'm actually going to stick with this old thing. because I'm gonna

44:08 be the only one left on the planet, but it was just a coincidence in my case. In terms of learning, I wish I would have learned faster to understand how business really works versus being on the

44:21 technology angle. So I would have done that earlier, would have been useful. I'm willing to take more risk and changing either job or company. Earlier, my first half of my career, I stayed with

44:30 one company for half of my life. So I didn't change, I changed jobs inside the company, but was not even thinking about opening up. So eventually understood that there is a lot of opportunity out

44:42 there and you can apply yourself to different companies you learn to that transition. So I would encourage people to be open, not necessarily to live every five minutes, but keep their ears open.

44:54 There's a lot there that resonates with me too. And I think one of the things that you said that stood out is instead of just like learning the technology actually learning the business, And I think

45:05 for me coming in on the sale side, it was -

45:08 If you're gonna have any intelligent conversation with somebody, especially if you're doing lead generation and you only get people's limited attention, you really need to understand the tech. So

45:16 the first few years of my career, I never really learned about business. I just learned about technology, which I think helped over time, 'cause I was able to understand business eventually. But

45:27 I remember working at a company I was based actually in Boulder, and I was just, you know, I was 25 years old and I really wanted to learn the technology and not have to bring in a sales engineer

45:37 every single time I needed even just to have a discovery conversation. And then the company raised like8 million in a series A. I had no idea what that meant. None. Like I knew that8 million was

45:48 probably cool and I probably meant that I didn't have to worry about losing my job or my check clearing, but I didn't understand what that meant. Maybe it meant we could put more features into the

45:58 technology is what I thought 'cause I was hearing people ask for new features. But it really should have asked more questions and started to learn more about the. business side and not just the

46:08 techs. That resonates with me

46:11 big time. Mick. That's a big challenge for startups as you know, right? So many people come with a fantastic new tool and they cannot sell because a company with a much low tech product that has

46:22 been there forever. They know how to talk to the right people and they keep selling forever, even though they're probably be completely inferior. But so that's a big

46:35 disadvantage of startups. Yeah, yeah, no, agreed And I personally like to stay in that, in that part of the ecosystem. Final question, well, I guess two more questions, but curious from, you

46:44 know, you've had a sales background, you've had a technical background, big companies, small companies, entrepreneurial, international, domestic, do you, you know, from a kind of a sales or

46:54 business perspective, do you subscribe to a certain methodology? Like do you view yourself as more consultative in sales approach? Like, like, how do you. How do you go about doing business in a

47:09 complex enterprise business environment? Yeah, my background, the way I evolved, I guess, or grew up is that I'm more of a problem solver. So I will not fit very well with a company that has a

47:23 predefined block of product that is completely rigid. And you're just trying to sell door-to-door kind of stuff and scale. That is not what I enjoy. I enjoy solving problems And typically I

47:35 gravitate towards company that have innovative technology or innovative approach to solve problems. And so eventually you end up with a sale, but the sale is simply a consequence of helping a

47:46 customer solving a problem. So that's really the way I think of myself. It's more of a business development lending into a sales versus a pure sales role. I love that, right? It's identify the

48:00 pain, align a solution to that pain versus pushing a product on somebody, which - I think explains a lot about where you're at in your career. Mick, thank you so much. Where can people find your

48:11 company? Where can they find you? Like websites, things like that. Yeah, so we go by onward, but the website is thinkonwardcom. And if you just put Mick in front with an ad, you'll find

48:28 me. Mickthinkonwardcom. That's hard to find me. And then the website you'll find it at thinkonwardcom. There's not

48:33 a ton of mixed MIKs out there, at least in my ecosystem. So you're not hard to find. But Nick, Assernia over at Onward, thank you so much. I think we're gonna see this company do a lot in the

48:44 next few years and your journey and career continue to evolve. So thank you for coming on today.