What The Funk?

0:00 And today, on what the funk we had to

0:05 rev on, come to

0:07 one of my favorite colleagues from back in the day at seven lakes, I think you came aboard in 2014. That sounds right. Yeah. And you were one of the first people there that didn't have a really

0:22 strong accent.

0:26 If I'm right about that. But I remember you bringing some immediate value to the table, you had experience in the oil and gas industry.

0:34 Kind of threw you on to a bunch of projects right away. You and I hit it off. We've stayed in touch even after my time there. You stayed through the seven lakes acquisition by W energy software and

0:48 you're still there. Still working at W these days. So one of the few left. There's only like three or four you guys, right? That of the acquisition. Yeah, which is crazy So it's really fun to.

0:60 have you on today. I think you've got a real level headed forward thinking tech forward approach to oil and gas as a whole. You've worked at small companies. You've worked at big companies. You've

1:10 worked on the product side. You've worked a little bit on the sales side. So we'll get into all of that, but I really want to get into your background, too. I know you're a Southern California

1:19 kid, but the question that I ask that I'll ask you right now is who are you, man? Who is a Chevron Combar? Yeah, I'd say, you know, first and foremost, I'd say I'm a father, husband, and a

1:33 son, obviously. And, you know, outside of that, I like to travel. I play some Eastern Indian classical music whenever I get a chance.

1:45 Part-time YouTuber, not famous at all, just make some fun videos with my son here and there. I

1:54 think on the professional side, someone who loves how to look at a problem, And then, and you know, if I'm not the one solving it, figuring out who's solving good ones and investing in them, you

2:06 know, as a stock picker. On the spiritual side, you know, I go to India a couple times a year, I do some volunteer work, and then I just hang out in an ashram for a couple weeks and do some

2:21 spiritual reading or retreats a couple times a year.

2:25 So that's part of who I am And outside of that, yeah, I think on the, I like to think of myself as one of the pioneers in terms of flipping the tech side of the oil and gas field on its head in

2:40 terms of being one of the first to design software that was focused on the field first versus on the back office first, because I always had an appreciation of the monies made where the valves are

2:51 turned and that's where the dollars make sense, so to speak.

2:55 I like that. I like that the spiritual stuff. That's, that's little bit unique or I mean, spiritual stuff in general is not unique, but you go to India for it. So talk to me a little bit about

3:07 that. What is a spiritual retreat like in India? Yeah. So, you know, obviously we have our, you know, religious texts and things like that that maybe hundreds or thousands of years old, but

3:21 you know, a lot of times it's hard to relate to well, how am I supposed to live by this specific book? So, you know, we've got consultants, doctors, engineers, you know, a group of us that go

3:33 to an ashram and, you know, they just have kind of these almost like a spiritual conference, but retreat, you know, you live, you're disconnected from everything. And there's sessions that you

3:44 can attend about, okay, how do you take these ancient principles and apply them in your modern life to generally find, you know, the peace that you're always running after. But if you're running

3:57 after it, you're never going to be peaceful. So how do you stop running, still achieve what you can in the same amount or less time, and just find that

4:07 inner piece that's in there somewhere 'cause you feel it every now and then.

4:12 That's fascinating stuff. And yeah, you've got the past, you've got the future, but what about the present, right? You gotta enjoy that. So yeah, I think that's unique. I don't think anybody

4:24 that's ever come on this podcast before 150-ish episodes has done My spiritual retreats in India, so that certainly makes you unique. Last year, I would say - Last year in India, I'd recommend it

4:35 anywhere, but I, you know, I guess if I go find the quintendia. Yeah, I love spiritual retreats and feel like I'm overdue for one. That's a whole nother long conversation. Maybe we'll touch on

4:48 that a little bit later. But one of the things that I would say is a little less unique is your background. You took like somewhat of a traditional path, I think, to oil and gas You, I know you.

4:58 We're a UCLA USC guy. I'm sure that provides you lots of internal conflict. Who do I root for in the big game? Who do you root for? Whoever's closer to winning the championship that year is gonna

5:10 be UCLA, football's gonna usually be USC, but I like to diversify. Just a big LA fan in general. But career-wise, right? So you get out of your NBA

5:23 USC and you work for ExxonMobil, right? On the downstream side of things And I remember having this conversation with you in 1, 000 Oaks and this must have been late 2014 at one point and asking

5:33 like, Wow. So here you are at ExxonMobil

5:39 and now you're coming over here to Seven Lakes at this like 30-person company that's trying to be disruptive. Like, what made you do that? And I remember your answer, but I want to kind of hear it

5:48 from you and have you tell the audience. Like, what made you want to make that move from seeing your pension, seeing the long-term possibilities of a company that's. one of the biggest and most

5:58 powerful in the world, that's always gonna be around an ExxonMobil to something riskier in a California-based oil and gas tech startup. Why'd you make that move? Yeah, I think, you know, being

6:12 at Exxon for eight, nine years, you were getting to the point where the golden handcuffs were not that far away, right? And I just had to ask myself that, hey, you know, I'm getting a lot of

6:22 great experience. And after eight years, I'd also just finished my MBA And I felt a lot smarter because I'd learned so many cool new things in the MBA. And I'd gotten the practical experience of

6:35 chemical engineering while at ExxonMobil. But the pace of what you could try and do was very slow, right? You had a set decision, but to execute on that decision would take forever. So I really

6:49 had to think, OK, there's this butterfly of a startup that I can go join, or I can spend the next 30 years here And I thought it was. time to, you know, take at least one risk in life. And I

7:02 think at the time I was taken more than one because just finished the MBA, had had a new baby. And then, you know, let's shift careers completely. So it was not the, probably looking back, not

7:15 the safest time, but I did it anyway. And, you know, I'm glad I did because, you know, that led to a lot of new opportunities. I literally probably, I checked off, I think in the first year

7:25 at seven lakes, I went through my list of MBA classes and I probably like applied all of them within one year in the startup. So that was pretty cool. I thought I'd never be able to do that. Yeah,

7:38 it was like kind of a hands-on application of everything that you've learned in your MBA, combined with a lot of the oil and gas-related experience that you had. Talk a little bit about the

7:47 differences between downstream and upstream, right? Like I know maybe from the outside, it's just oil and gas and everything sort of flows together,

7:58 There's a supply chain to all of this, but talk about some of the differences, right? Like what did you do in downstream versus what you immediately took on an upstream? And what are some of the

8:08 kind of quirks of each? Yeah, I think in some downstream, I was in a refining, but there's also chemicals, which some of my colleagues at the time worked in. So I had four different jobs in a

8:21 refinery. Exxon used to have a refinery out here in LA And I did, my first two years was an environmental advisor. So what's that? You're basically a translator between Exxon operations and Exxon

8:34 corporate law, right? So

8:38 applying all of the federal and state regulations of California and making sure the site complies with them. Anytime there's issues, translating operational speak into legal ease for the lawyers And

8:52 then also dealing with government inspectors that come around and wanna check out stuff. That was that then I did more traditional jobs. That first one was really out of left field, never thought

9:03 I'd do something like that. Then I did more traditional jobs like running an operational unit as an engineer, working with the economists, figuring out what kind of gasoline octane do we need for

9:14 the Vegas market, for the LA market. Move down to basic project management, small construction projects in and around a refinery. And then before I left, I was a risk manager So, you know, have

9:27 a bunch of engineers and inspectors figuring out all the risks in the refinery of a pinhole leak, thinning metal, and then figuring out, okay, what's the cost of, you know, de-risking all of

9:39 this, and then working with the maintenance planners to get the most risk reduction for the dollar spent to make the refinery safer. So that was, you know, pretty interested. It's like big

9:52 vessels, tanks, mammoths, you know, just equipment everywhere, you could easily get lost. And then you go to upstream and being an ex on my picture of upstream was always those rigs and offshore,

10:06 right? Because those are cities by themselves. Those are like little floating refineries, but traditional upstream what we see, you know, in lower 48. You go out there. It's pretty it's pretty

10:17 simple, but it's like out in the middle of nowhere, right? So it's a bunch of small tiny risks spread out over mass amounts of land versus a refinery or a rig is a massive massive risk concentrated

10:30 into a very tiny piece of land or or ocean, right? So because you you go up in the lower 48 and you see like, okay, six soda can size tanks, you know, the, you know, tank batteries and a well

10:42 and, you know, some meters and that's it, right? That's the whole thing, but you just have thousands of them dotted across the land. So I thought that was really interesting and I think it's a

10:52 good way for the large companies to Take on spend a lot but then Each individual operational unit is a small risk, right? Like a fire in a refinery or a oil platform in the ocean is way, way bigger

11:08 than a fire in a tank out in the middle of nowhere on one tiny little battery. Okay, you can put that out in no time, right? So your risk is much less and chances of things going wrong.

11:20 Yeah, I like that. So it put you in a situation where you're like, okay, cool, I've worked with these big vessels. I've dealt with, you know, government risk, environmental risk, big company,

11:35 legal ease. And then it's like a little bit, like if I'm reading between the lines a little bit more wild west-ish, right? Oh yeah. You've got various different types of tech. You've got very

11:46 disparate assets. You have companies who own these assets in fields that are thousands of miles apart that operate differently When you got to seven lakes, what? What were you working on right away

11:58 and then what did that sort of evolve into? 'Cause I feel like at least when you came on, it was a lot of data management analytics and then eventually it turned more into the field services

12:10 management, field data capture, like field-based stuff. But what was kind of your evolution from a product standpoint and then needing to learn expertise and seeing how different these silos of

12:21 each organization were? Yeah.

12:27 Yeah, when I joined on, we were doing a lot of custom app development. I think you probably remember a lot of it, like the financial authority matrix and well lifecycle management and all these

12:39 custom dashboards. So we were working with a lot of companies in primarily in Oklahoma at the time, doing a lot of these projects. I was managing those. And then that kind of taught me about how

12:52 to work with developers, translating requirements.

12:58 managing expectations, you know, the budgeting and all that I already had from Exxon, but, you know, making these custom code changes and learning how developers work. Well, fast forward, you

13:11 know, I think Seven Lakes made the decision, hey, a lot of the times we're making the same product for a different customer. Why don't we just consolidate the code base, make it all a standard

13:20 product. And then so we consolidated. And that's kind of when I started getting into the product marketing and product management side.

13:29 So, you know, now I knew how to work with developers. I knew how I knew how to translate requirements, but now I had to tackle the challenge of how is it that when company A wants one thing,

13:40 company B wants the other thing. It's not just for company A. I'm able to talk to the developers in a way that we're making a feature that's usable by the next 10 companies, the next 20 companies.

13:51 And then how do you increase that usability, right? versus just having. lags in the back end that says, if X on this, if Chevron this, if Pioneer this, right? So I got pretty good at that.

14:04 And then had some good mentors along the way and learnings along the way through all the different folks that passed through Seven Lakes. So just started adding to the toolkit and then that led to

14:17 the proliferation of what eventually became FDG and then, which is all of your production data gathering. And then after that, we took on a new challenge where the field was like, hey, can you

14:32 give us something to manage our work and our tasks? And I was like, well, don't you have big players like SAP Oracle, Microsoft, whoever? But when we saw what they were offering, we realized

14:45 why they were asking us to do that. And then we started building that out. And now that's also getting a lot of uptick and the marketplace. kind of rare that you get to hit products, but that's

14:58 pretty cool to be able to do that. And both of them being field first. Yeah, FDG to me was always, was always fun because it was leveraging iOS technology, right? iPad based field data capture,

15:13 put it in the hands of lease operators. And I think you may have even been with me in some of these meetings, but hearing, you know, 55, 65 year old lease operator saying, man, I don't know how

15:23 to use that thing, but my, you know, six-year-old nephew grants it does. And I'm thinking, man, this is gonna change pretty fast, right? Oh yeah. These guys aren't gonna have a choice

15:33 eventually. They're gonna have to start inputting data there. And then seeing the skater feeds tie into the field data capture solution. It was, to me, very logical, right? Innovative, sure,

15:47 but mostly like, this was the direction it was gonna go because you had to get people away from writing things down by hand in the freezing. cold and somewhere like North Dakota or Alaska or

15:57 something like that. Um, but then after, after I left, I left in about 2017, you and I kept in touch. And you started being like, Hey, we've got this like FSM thing. I'm like, I don't know

16:08 about that. I sort of know about the legacy seven, like stuff. So talk about FSM because you were telling me the last time we spoke about some pretty like kind of fun and cool use cases for this

16:18 field services management solution that you sort of helped architect So what does it do and how do companies benefit from this? And then where is it going to go once you sort of outline what the

16:29 solution does? Yeah. So FDG kind of took the administrative workload off of the operations, right? All the manual, multiple data entry. So now you have this free time. What would you do with it?

16:42 Well, everybody wants to upskill their workforce and have them do maintenance work. Right. That's the next level of complexity so that you're not having to spend much on vendors. The challenge was

16:52 whether you were spending on vendors or your own folks, the transparency of what works getting done, how to keep everybody on the same page wasn't there, and work was still flowing in from multiple

17:02 different directions on multiple different systems.

17:06 But if you own the last mile of what the field sees, which is a mobile app, then you can literally get everything to them on a single pane of glass, so to speak So that's essentially what FSMs

17:21 turned into is the ability, whether it's your environmental inspections, your maintenance or, you know, metallurgical inspections, your fluid readings, your

17:36 maintenance workflows, compressor jobs, pump repair jobs, valve repair jobs, anything you can imagine, right? All of that, whether it's from your SAPs or manually input or coming from SCADA,

17:49 all of that ends up on the field technician or lease operator's phone.

17:55 And they're able to say, yep, I did this, I didn't do this, I need more information on this. And meanwhile, in the control room or the foreman, they have like a boardroom vision of everything

18:05 that's going on in the field. So now everybody's essentially on the same page. And even your vendors can get a login on the same thing where they have a secure view where they don't see other

18:18 vendors or other things in the company, only what's assigned to them. And I think where it's headed now, what I'm seeing now is we've got one company that has drones detecting leaks in their field.

18:31 The moment it detects a leak, the drone calls the FSM APIs and dispatches a task for a field technician to go out there with a wrench and fix the leak like immediately. Same thing with sensors. If

18:45 a sensor in the field stationary sensor detects a leak, that sensor can call the APIs for FSM. this bad someone to go fix that. So, you know, I used to hear about the time between a problem is

18:56 found and a wrench being picked up to go fix it could be up to four days. Now it's instantaneous. Right, right, and this all sort of goes back to the Uberization of the oil field, which I know is

19:08 something that you have, at least tried to help usher in, sounds like you have ushered in, but a question a little bit, and you know, I've been in some boardrooms before and certainly over the

19:18 last couple years with the Inflation Reduction Act, companies looking to be good stewards of emissions, right? It starts with monitoring, and then it moves into alerting, right? But the

19:29 challenge I've seen in the case of alerting is,

19:35 what is an alert and then what is like truly an alarm, right? So how does FSM detect like a threshold? So you mentioned like, if there's a leak, okay, but what if that leak was something that

19:48 happened because a test was being performed And that week was actually an organic thing that was supposed to happen, right? And now somebody's called out and they show up and they're like, what are

19:58 you doing here? We were just performing a well test, right? So how does FSM become intelligent enough to know, I guess, the difference between an alert and an alarm, right? Or do you just

20:11 detach the people anyway and say figure

20:14 it out? Yeah, so there's different modes of dispatch, right? If there's usually some rationalization done up front where if it's critical, it's one of those drop everything and go after it, then

20:26 you do that. Then there's the ones that first go to the control room or a supervisor where they're aware of everything that's going on. So they can just radio out, there's like, hey, we're

20:36 getting this alarm, dude. Is this legitimate, right? Before they dispatch someone. And then there's those where, you know, SCADA might be floating in and out of alarm, in and out of alarm.

20:47 Well, heck, if you set that up, a hundred different dispatches over and over just having

20:52 things floating in and out. So it's smart enough to have, we have a setting where you can say, hey, in case it's floating in and out of alarm, only do one task and as long as that dispatch is

21:04 active, you don't dispatch more.

21:07 Got it. And yeah, I mean, it's just sort of a curiosity thing, right? And something that operators have asked 'cause they're like, the problem will be. It's like the boy who cried wolf, right?

21:17 Yeah, yeah. We keep telling you that there's a wolf and the wolf never shows up. Well, then they're just gonna ignore it. And then when the wolf shows up, nobody goes, right? So, you know,

21:27 fascinating stuff that you're doing. And I think drones in general make a lot of sense for the oil field for concentrated areas, especially those that have really strong protection. We're gonna see

21:38 that become widely adopted, especially in certain basins and states like Colorado, California, where having that real time monitoring is super important. Love that your app ties into that. Wanna

21:53 go back a little bit to the business side and then we'll get away from business and talk personal and sports and all that other fun stuff. So

21:60 for you, right? So you were at Seven Lakes, I guess if my math is right for like seven years and then there start to become some rumors, hey, this company might get acquired. I even remember

22:11 some people from Seven Lakes reaching out to me like, hey, wait a second. These people from W Energy are like coming out here into our office a lot I'm not totally sure what's going on, but you

22:21 worked at W Energy Software Jerry, like what do you know? And I even said this to Mark Hill, who was the CRO, and I think probably one of the initiators of why Seven Lakes was acquired by W. He

22:35 and I would even talk about this in 2020 when I was working there that W had really embraced cloud and had embraced Amazon Web Services and truly wanted to be a disruptor in the accounting land space

22:50 both for upstream as well as midstream and sort of be that cloud based ERP and then the first one to kind of place their flag there. But what was missing was the production field data capture all the

23:03 way through to the allocations piece just wasn't there, right? It wasn't where some of the other competitors were. And Mark and I were both like, man, the perfect fit for this company would be

23:14 Seven Lakes, right? Same tech stack, offshore development team, subject matter expertise, and logical plug and play application, right? So I think Mark started putting those dots together and

23:28 said, hey, we should probably get serious and take a look at these guys, right? So sure enough, the deal is finalized, the acquisition happens. And now you've been there by my count, whatever,

23:39 two and a half years since it since it happened. So talk to me a little bit about W. I mean, certainly the differences between seven lakes and W hasn't been seamless, hasn't been challenging. I

23:50 don't want to put you in a position where you could lose your job by saying anything too crazy. But, I mean, I would guess, you know, and I can speak to this having worked at both companies,

23:59 people cared at both those organizations, the skill sets and subject matter expertise was different, for sure. One sort of more field centric, one's more back office centric and more of a slant

24:11 toward midstream where Seven Lakes was a slant toward upstream.

24:15 Both cared about innovation, both cared about like being cloud and like being firm about that But talk to me a little bit in your experience since you've spent more time at both those companies than

24:22 I have. Like what was that transition like and where some of the differences and similarities between that W and Seven Lakes? Yeah, I think the similarities were planning from, you know, like

24:33 back then it was, you know, there was not a lot of companies that were natively on the cloud to start with in oil and gas tea. So that was a big, big similarity. I think the, the, the want to

24:46 do innovation, you know, when I looked at some demos that they were - showed us, you know, I'd seen, I'd had interface with accounting systems before, but, you know, SAP like, but there were

24:57 some really cool features that they had where it's like, you know, accounting is a hard thing to be innovative on, but I saw a lot of these guys did some pretty cool stuff there.

25:08 They had this feature called a Calc Trace, which was really awesome.

25:15 So there's definitely, you know, the innovation on being on the cloud. A lot of that mentality of, you know, before better and for worse, not being able to say no to the customers, right,

25:28 which

25:31 can be a good thing in the early growth years, and then it can quickly turn into something you don't want to continue doing, because it's not as sustainable. So we had similar, I think, good and

25:42 bad habits on both sides

25:45 Think the major difference from me for me that I've seen was that the, you know, like you pointed out, the W was very accounting centric.

25:58 Seven Lakes was pretty much except for like maybe the AFE tool. It was almost entirely field centric. We went as much into the back office as production accounting at the most, right, not beyond

26:11 that.

26:13 So I think that was the main thing. So, you know, I think from,

26:18 but other than that philosophy wise, I don't think there was too much of a difference otherwise. So it was more like there was a natural, for lack of a better word, silo, just because it's like,

26:29 hey, we're in the field, you're in the accounting.

26:33 The integration piece was what's important, right? So we've done the preliminary integration and then we're solidifying that even further going forward where

26:44 it's more,

26:48 I guess, built out going forward versus You know, bare minimum, just to get everything integrated up front. But now you have that story of from field to finance. And, you know, while there's

27:00 maybe companies that have the individual components, there is not a lot that can tell that story seamlessly through a native integration, right? It's most companies out there have bought up a lot

27:14 of different software, but then there's still different pieces. That's right Here there was that intention that we're not just going to buy software modules and, you know, earn by the revenue. We

27:26 want to add the value of the systems talking to each other. Yeah. And it makes sense, like what, P2 bought Merrick, right? And they saw that as a natural value add, and that was 2015 or

27:41 something like that And then Coram bought some field data capture stuff as well, I forget what it was called, but they bought that. continue to build it out, pack energy, bought, scout, right?

27:54 I mean, so all of these companies that are accounting focused are like, wait a second, there's a little bit of a gap here. And I think that from a technology standpoint, the W7 Lakes marriage was

28:05 seamless from the outside. It made a ton of sense. What I was always kind of curious about is like culture. So here you've got a Tulsa company and then you have a California company with an office

28:16 in India, right? So you've got these Indian dudes right out in California or overseas and then you've got these cowboys and cowgirls right out in Tulsa, Oklahoma. What's that then like kind of

28:26 reconciling like the different personalities and cultures and making it all work together? Yeah, you think that would be like something that would come up more just because of the differences in the

28:39 culture, but I think, you know, I haven't heard, you know,

28:43 anything on the lines of, hey, you know, it's just really hard to understand you know anything like that it's just yeah it's really. both sides are just trying to understand what is the business

28:53 need. And then once that's clear, then it's pretty seamless. But yeah, you know, I wish I had more funnier stories to tell on that side of it, but it's been pretty mundane on that side. It was

29:06 just, yeah, we just gotta work on weird hours now because of the time, you know, difference, but outside of that, yeah, yeah. Yeah,

29:17 I mean, I think a little bit also, like from the seven lakes perspective, like, you know, you're working with central time zone, cowboys and cowgirls and oil and gas anyway, right? Like that

29:30 had been the history of the company, so no real difference. Yeah, the other thing is we've had, we've had a lot of our India staff interface directly with customers, so we already had that

29:41 expertise. And then the other side of it is that, you know, I think traditional hiring, of seven lakes in India was you're usually going after the creme de la creme. Right. So that also probably

29:55 played into it. Yep, yep, no, it makes sense. Has the pace of innovation remain the same or do you feel like it's a little bit more measured now?

30:06 I wouldn't say it's measured. It's measured in the sense that you're gonna be more targeted in what you go after, you know, just 'cause I think, you know, like you said, when I first joined

30:17 Seven Lakes, it was the Wild West, right? Like I came from Exxon where, you know, like one decision would take, you know, 30 revisions of a PowerPoint, right? Whereas here I could drop

30:29 something on a one-slide PowerPoint at the back of a napkin, and two weeks later I'd have a working prototype, right? And like, I was like, okay, we don't even know if we wanna do this, but

30:38 somebody's already built it, right? So, whereas now it's like, you know, where we have a more defined approach, for example, starting to look into like large language models and things now and

30:51 we've got working prototypes of that. But there's specified bets where you put in all of your AI ideas and then you measure them against one another. And then it goes through a review with the

31:05 executive team. And then you figure out, okay, which ones are the biggest, baddest bets that we're gonna go after. I love that. And I do have to say, like reflecting back 10 years ago, like I

31:16 missed those days a little bit, man Like it really was kind of, it was fun. You know, it's, I'm sure the stress on Shiva was more immense because he was footing the bill for the whole thing, but

31:27 like just seeing these new people, new personalities come into the organization and get thrown right onto projects and just constantly impress me with their ability to pick up concepts quickly was

31:39 fun. And it felt like nothing was really off the table. Like if somebody had a problem, that technology could solve, that organization would solve it. Like a true tech consulting firm, right?

31:55 Like most consultants in traditionally in oil and gas are in it for the project management, right? Or sort of like the long-term business case relationship. I think Seven Lakes was just big and

32:07 like, hey, you got this specific problem like that land solution that we did for Continental, right? Land loader, whatever it was called And it's like, oh, we can help with that, right? You

32:17 need this data to come in here and go into here. Cool, we'll just build that and test it. Yeah,

32:22 we were just solving problems at Hodge, like what's the problem of the day? Let's figure it out, yeah. It was wild, but it was really fun. I mean, I think my biggest education in oil and gas

32:31 came like 2013 to 2015 when someone would bring up a challenge, I'm like, I've never heard this before. And then somebody on Seven Lakes would be like, okay, well, here's the solution, right?

32:42 and then wireframe it out, JSON it out, and then all of a sudden it's solved. And then of course, it became a little more boring, at least for me when it's like, Damn it, this is like a real

32:50 company. Right, we've got products and investors and silos. Like I missed the Wild West shit, that stuff as well. So, you know, some questions for you. I think you've articulated a lot from a

33:03 technology standpoint, business, cultural standpoint, industry standpoint. But I'm curious kind of Shrivan from your seat, like you're not a big guy, right? But one of the things that you told

33:16 me in our last call is your son's like a little ass kicker, right? He's like a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu champion. So how does that happen? How does it do? What are you? Like five foot four or

33:24 something like that? And now your son's out here kicking everybody's ass. Five, six or so. All right, all right, all right, sorry. Yeah.

33:31 But yeah, I can probably pass for a five four just 'cause the frame is overall small. You know, I don't weigh that much either. But yeah, he's, you know, he was not really liking a lot of the

33:43 other sports I was putting them into Um. He hated even going to Taekwondo 'cause he's like, I'm only punching the air, it's boring. So my neighbor told me about this jiu-jitsu place, so I dragged

33:54 him over there. And, you know, he liked the fact that 20 minutes of the one hour class, and it was two hours back to back. So 40 minutes over two hours was literally baby fight club, essentially.

34:11 And, but when he finally got in there, he realized that it's not just simple rough housing like he'd do with his friends or cousins. You know, these guys had talent, right? So there were like

34:22 six or he was eight when he started. There were six year old girls just whooping his rear left and right. And so he cried for a couple months, but you know, I kept pushing them towards it 'cause I

34:34 think this dojo was like, you know, they weren't about to baby him. They were just looking at me as like, Hey, you're the man. It's your job to keep him in here, right? And I was like, Oh,

34:42 okay So he ends up going to his first tournament. by like the third or fourth month and he gets a bronze medal and then you know that was like the shark taste blood type of thing like he just he'd

34:54 had a taste of victory and then he just went on a rampage and just started training like five six days a week two hours a day um started lifting um now i'll just count them the other day as like 17

35:08 medals like five gold six silver six bronze has another tournament tomorrow but yeah it's been pretty cool he got a sixth grader tried to bully him at school when he was in third grade and um he he

35:20 took care of that on his own you know like so that was pretty impressive i was like that's better than any better than any better than any better than any better than any better than any better than

35:26 any better than any more of that good for him um and you're are you still in uh los angeles like where where are you yeah yeah still in LA where where you grew up as well and i think i remember you

35:37 saying so i call you shrivan in a very early way but in high school you were shravan or dachshunde

35:45 your Shray and Shray ended up turning into my son's name. So that's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. And you know, I've, I've talked about this before, but athletic competition where I grew up in

35:55 New Hampshire, you know, it's okay. Right. Like I was a good athlete. I was captain of sports teams. It's not what it is in Southern California. So to be competitive in any sport in, in Texas

36:06 or Southern California, you got to be a beast. So he's seeing it from the other perspective where I'd learn the hard way where I'm like, man, maybe I'm not as good as I thought I was being like

36:15 big, big, small bond. He's in the ocean. You know what I mean? He's out there trying to survive. So good for him, right? Yeah, it's pretty fun watching him. See where it goes. I

36:26 love it. Congrats. So, you know, one of the questions that I asked you on the prep questions that I send over to everybody and out of 147 or so episodes, I think maybe four or five have actually

36:40 responded with answers, but I love when they do because I think it

36:46 it leads to more articulate thoughts when I do ask you questions. But one of the questions that I asked you is what gets you out of bed in the morning every day? And I found your answer to be

36:56 incredibly fascinating and in some ways inspirational. So I'll just ask you and you can say to the listeners, like what gets you out of bed every day? Yeah, I think I don't remember the exact

37:07 words I used on that. You want me to read it? 'Cause it's really good. Sure, if you have it up You said, just the opportunity to live another day with the wonderful hand that I've been dealt and

37:20 to ensure I don't waste it away. I think about how fortunate we are to have what we have compared to the rest of the world. And today I'd even argue compared to even so many in our own country.

37:31 What are the odds a kid is born into a situation where his or her life will be equal to or better than mine and the answer is very low? And that to me is like, it's so simple, But it's also awesome.

37:45 that you have that level of perspective and reflection, where does that attitude and mindset come from? Does it come to those trips that you take to India where you see real poverty in some cases or

37:55 even in Los Angeles in some places? I think that's really admirable and I wish more people would embrace that mindset. I've been going to India since I was young. I can't say I had always

38:08 that mindset. I saw poverty, but I was kind of immune to it. I think my perspective changed when I started touching into the spiritual side and actually consciously living and thinking differently,

38:22 like not getting caught up in the daily wrap race of, I've got to do this, I've got to do that, and just thinking about, Okay, what is my goal? If I just want to be peaceful, then why am I

38:34 getting so agitated about this, that, and everything else? So at the end of the day, I always try to come back to this type of a thought, like, Okay, even if I had a bad day. how bad is it

38:45 really, like, how many people in the world would consider what I have right now a problem, like, no, like, very few, like, like, less than 01 or whatever, right? So then what am I really

38:57 worried about, right, then, yeah, so that's kind of how I think about that. But, you know, I say that in the answer, I wrote that down, it felt good writing it, but you know, I can't say,

39:08 not every moment of every day is like that, you have to come back to that, right? So, it's a conscious effort.

39:16 Yeah, and I love it, and I think you explained that extremely well. And something that I would add onto it is, I have to catch myself in those moments, too. And I'm very quick to point out when

39:29 I'm complaining about something, whether it be to my wife or to, you know, Max, who's a colleague of mine, and you worked with Max for a little bit, great guy. And I'll always sort of preface

39:40 it with,

39:42 I know this is first world problems. But

39:46 at the same time, I don't want to minimize the fact that it's still problems, you know what I mean? And it's you start to live in whatever lens you have. So I think it's really important that

39:56 you're able to take that extracted view of the world and realize, yeah, I mean, here I am in the basement of a home I've got heat, I've got electricity, I got food, I got healthy kids upstairs,

40:08 right? I have a job running a business, my wife has a job. Like, I've got cable TV that I can turn on and watch the Patriots dynasty thing. After this, if I want to in the afternoon, like, you

40:19 know, health is good. So, so there's a lot that we have to be thankful for. And it's important to remind ourselves of that every day. Another question I wanted to ask you is about you, right?

40:32 So, so you're not you have some more perspective. Now you're probably coming up on 40 years old ish in that ballpark. Yeah. 40.

40:41 Yeah. There you go. Got it. What advice would you have for for young Srivant Kamdar? Say that the 18, 20, 22-year-old version is just trying to make it either through college high school or

40:53 break into the working world. What advice would you give to yourself or to kids that are at that age right now? Yeah, it's a, you know, number one, you know, and not that you necessarily always

41:05 have regrets, because like we just discussed life turned out pretty good. But, you know, you always look back and you'd be like, well, I was afraid to take on certain things or certain

41:13 challenges. So, you know, when you look back 20 years, you're like, I wasn't that big a deal if I would have done it. So number one would be don't be afraid to take on new challenges. Number

41:22 two would be, you know, related to the similar is do what you want. Don't worry so much about the traditional career building mindset, because, you know, what I've discovered in 20 years is the

41:36 world changes faster than you can plan for.

41:40 So, you know, don't worry about it. Yeah. And I think the other is, I've always been a really logical guy, and I've recently discovered, you know, in the last maybe five to 10 years that I'm

41:53 able to use that logic with that, you know, if I take the emotion out of the logic that I have and, you know, go back to that spiritual grounding we talked about, I'm able to use that to

42:05 constructively, you know, influence people. So I'd say, you know, use that logic earlier in life and don't shy away from constructive conflicts, right? Like, if they're constructive at the end

42:18 of the day, take the emotion out of 'em and all you're doing is constructing, you're not distracting anything. Yeah, I will say that's one thing that I always admired about you is being grounded

42:29 and unemotional. That's not, I've had to learn that the hard way about myself because I am just innately emotional, but working with you and seeing the way that you operate. Like, I even remember

42:40 one time you and I went on a business trip. together. And I think it was, I think it was in Tulsa. And we were going in there and the guy that we're meeting with was saying like, Oh yeah, you

42:49 guys are the ones from eight lakes or 10 lakes or whatever. And I think it upset me. Right? It's like, what do you mean? I've worked really hard to put this company's name on the map. And you're

42:59 just like, yeah, whatever, not everyone's going to do business with us not everyone's name. Right. And I think that was a really good balance for for me to have. But nonetheless, it did kind of

43:08 stand out. I think to both of us, like, you know, that could be interpreted as kind of disrespect. But you know, we can let it run. Yeah, no, I remember that. I think I wrote that in one of

43:18 the the stories where that that happened, like a couple days after we had raised20 million Series A, right? And the guy was asking us, how do I know you guys are still going to be in business?

43:29 And I didn't say it at the time, but I was like, how do I know you're still going to be in business? And I don't I don't think that company ever made it out of the 2015 pop Yeah, I mean oil, you

43:40 know, per barrel prices got down to what, 26 bucks. And I mean, even look at natural gas now, which is just totally in the crapper. Like it's tough. They're so commodity priced driven. And

43:52 that's why they need to embrace innovation. But yeah, I mean,

43:57 those are questions that you're just gonna get at a startup, right? And not everybody's is plugged in when you're not in the tech universe of what's happening like we were, but like a20 million

44:08 series A back then was fairly substantial for energy tech There just wasn't a lot of that happening. And that was kind of a cool and fun and certainly learning experience for me in so many different

44:19 levels that exposed me to a different side of the financial versus as well as the technology universe. All right, I'm gonna put you on the spot 'cause we got a few more minutes here. I'm gonna do

44:30 rapid fire questions. I didn't prep you for these, but I know you're gonna answer it well. First question, who's gonna win the NBA championship this year?

44:41 I can't, I can't do it.

44:45 you're holding up to seize Jersey.

44:51 Man, I don't know. I feel like when my, when my Lakers aren't in it, I'm just out of it, you know, and I know the felt they're doing good. So they could take it, but I'm not sure, you know,

45:04 it's a, it's a different league altogether now than the one I'm used to watching. Yeah, the playoffs are different. The Celtics are 52 and 14 as of this recording, which is crazy. It's one of

45:16 the best teams they've ever had. Clippers are nice. And I, you know, I think the NBA wants the Warriors and the Lakers to make it and maybe go on runs, but the odds are like they're going to play

45:27 each other like the knock out round right away. So one of them's not going to make it. The other one will be lucky to even win a series and Denver's really good. Yeah, trying to build their own

45:36 little dynasty, so it should be fun. I'm going to go with the Celtics though. The second question again, even though back it's hard.

45:47 I'll accept it. Second question. What is your favorite oil and gas company to do business with over the last 10 years, number one, who stands out? Hmm. That's a good one.

46:01 Cause you've been in a lot of boardrooms. Yeah, it's just they, you know, every now and then, I think more than the company, you know, definitely some companies have, have culture Like I'd say,

46:12 you know, pioneers been really cool to work with. They're, they're always coming up with new ideas and they, they challenge how they've, they've challenged me the most. Um, but, uh, they've

46:23 also helped build, you know, build us quite a bit, um, and X on, but you know, the big guys are always, always fun. But what I'll say is, you know, a lot of times, whether it's a big

46:35 company or a small company, it's, um, it's the people like you could. have one guy come into one job in one role, and he will have so many, he or she will have so many ideas. And, you know, I

46:52 know there's one person at a company in, I think, Midland, but they're Denver based. And the guy's like a maintenance and automation foreman. He was not even one of the original users of join at

47:07 all. But he got a login somehow. And over the course of the next one year, he moved their entire maintenance department onto FSM with no help from us as a vendor all by himself. And then, yeah,

47:20 just figured it out. And then they stopped using whatever their old software was. And then that's when I spoke to him And that he pretty much was just telling me about stories, about how he's had

47:35 300 increase in the visibility of his contract labor. No, so he thought of that all by himself, right? Now, that's rare, that's really rare where somebody gets their hands on your product all on

47:46 their own and they do crazy things with it. But then every now and then you'll have someone who will just keep shooting you ideas. And then, hey, if I use this feature combined with this one,

47:57 couldn't I make this happen? And I was like, holy crap, you could. And then, you know, they'll use it in a way I had never imagined, right, so. Yeah, yeah, I love that. I love hearing you

48:08 talk about that And it makes me think I should talk to you more about my business too, 'cause my whole thing is finding companies who are tech-forward, but underserved on the sales side. So there's

48:18 some really cool stuff going on out there, whether it be from like sustainability modeling, you know,

48:25 AI, large language model stuff. I think we could probably nerd out on some other conversations. But final question for you too, again, to put you on the spot. Who was your favorite colleague at

48:37 Seven Lakes? Oh, I don't know. I think probably, you know, I don't know that this is a secret, but probably Hari. Hari, Hari, Hari, Hari, Hari, Hari, Hari, Hari, Hari. Yeah, so he was

48:49 the one who brought me in, and I think me and him formed a really close, you know, relationship over the years. So, you know, we split up the responsibilities a lot when we got into the later

49:01 years. So, and he was always the one who was like, you know, more calm, and I wanted to move like cheetah speed. So, you know, it was a good balance. Yeah, he's

49:13 just a stud, like a lot of good memories with him too, and extremely intelligent, worked 18 hours a day type of guy, just the type of dude where, you know, and actually Sachin at one point, I

49:28 forget, he was either at right after Seven Lakes, or he's looking for a job. And this to me was emblematic of how I felt about a lot of people at Seven I'm Langston. like I was, Sachin asked me

49:40 to be a reference for him. And I just remember the, you know, the HR person asking me these questions. I'm like, I don't like there's not enough words for me to say that like, you should be so

49:50 lucky. Right. Bring this guy on. It's the same thing I'd say about her, you're about you. It's like, let's see, he's like really good in front of customers. He's like got a really good

50:01 attitude. He works 20 hours a day. He's incredibly technology savvy, right? He listened. He's got a good laugh. You'd want him to date your daughter, like, do I need? I say, I'd want him

50:16 leading a team, or I'd want him on my team. I'd want him in the office, or I'd trust him to work remotely. I'd want him on my board. I would put him in front of - you know what I mean? And there

50:27 was a bunch of guys that we worked with, and I think there were a lot of those. Yeah. Jimmy's touching Marley Panda. Noresh, remember him? Yeah Let's talk for for he was tough work for me a

50:37 little bit like he He just intrinsically was like very confident, right? And he was right a lot too. He was the most intimidating of the interviews that I had because he was on my panel. Right,

50:50 but then once you get to know him a little bit more, he softens up, but like also a beast. But man, we had a good crew, we had a good time. Where can people find you and the product suite that

51:00 you're working with? Like all those things, LinkedIn and websites and all that, give it to us Yeah, mainly LinkedIn or just even the company email, shirvancamdarwenergy, softwarecom. Obviously,

51:11 LinkedIn, I'm trying to post more. Now that I'm doing some more work with AI, I

51:21 feel like I should.

51:24 And then outside of that,

51:28 the spiritual stuff I do, there's some non-profits I work with. So that's OK, I can send you the links There's some stuff on Amazon that benefits like150.

51:39 Tribal women in India and through a NGO that I'm working with so you know It's like charbles free and send sticks and stuff So if anybody's interested in that they can buy it off Amazon and all the

51:50 Ben everything benefits people back there Yes, and it send it to me too. We'll throw it on the either the LinkedIn link or even the post to this podcast with digital Wildcatters they're big and

52:01 supporting causes as well as am I but I'm sure you've on Awesome. Anytime I get to spend with you is good time. I know we didn't get much at nape since nape is Yeah, total shit. So I made this

52:15 time now. You're doing great stuff. My advice and hope and thought for you is just keep innovating Right, wherever you end up if you end up taking over W energy software If you go back to a big big

52:27 company God forbid or start your own thing at some point like like don't don't forget That it's the innovation that kind of put you where you're at in your career So I've always admired you for that

52:38 and appreciate what you bring table. So thanks for coming on. What the fall now? Thank you. It's been fun. I always love and enjoy talking to you and reminiscing about the good old days.