What The Funk?

0:00 We are back on what the funk on an idyllic Friday here early May in Colorado. We got the rivet gang coming in. Steve Coe, the Corilla. I've heard he's been nicknamed before an Asian redneck.

0:17 Apparently we're going to dig into all of that and Clay. Clay Bonin, Bonin. I'm not sure. Clay, Clay Burbank, Bonet, Cajus. Okay. All right. No, I get it. I get it

0:30 Um, these guys are awesome. Um, funk futures has been working with the Rivet Gang, full disclosure for a couple of weeks now. Really, really promising, exciting company. I think the tech is,

0:42 even though it's in a box, it's hard to put in a box. Like I think we're starting with the, um, completions, data and data aggregation, but there's also an artificial intelligence component.

0:53 It's not the easiest product, at least to this point to put an elevator pitch around? But I think we'll figure that part out. Anyways, I told you guys this isn't gonna be a commercial for Rivet

1:05 and I just immediately launched into the commercial. So,

1:08 get into the question that I love asking all my guests. We'll start with you, Steve, and then jump over to Clay. Who are you guys? Who's Steve Ko? Who's Clay Bonning?

1:20 Man, that's like you say, Rivet's hard to put in a box. It's hard to put me in a box too, I guess, you know

1:27 Born and raised Canadian, born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. So that starts the

1:36 craziness of my personality and what I am. When I grew up in Canada, Asians weren't really the predominant culture up there or the race up there. Let's just put it that way. You know, I was

1:49 wondering - What was like Eskimos or something? Like what do you guys have up there? Oh dude, let's just imagine a 1980s Texas Transplant it up to Canada, you know lots of farming, lots of

2:01 agriculture, lots of ranching, and not a lot of Asians. And so,

2:08 you know, my parents immigrated from Korea in 1974, same year I was born.

2:14 And we're plopped down in a place called Turner Valley. It's right by a little city called Black Diamond. They're about less than a mile apart from each other. And it's called Black Diamond,

2:25 because it's where the center of coal mining and also, of course, oil and gas exploration was. And so talking about a little redneck coal and the oil and gas town in the middle of nowhere, Alberta,

2:40 southern Alberta. And in my school, it's about an hour out of town from Calgary and in my school, when I was growing up, I was one of three Asians in the entire school. Yeah. So yeah, different

2:53 background grew up in Canada,

2:56 all around oil and gas, to school for chemical engineering. and was promptly told by my uncle, who was a pipeline builder, to never ever get into open gas because of all the ups and downs. So

3:09 went into chemical engineering, did my degree, and halfway through that degree, I realized I hated chemical engineering. So I dropped out. I was actually racing mountain bikes during that summer,

3:24 and I had a really artistic friend Him and I jammed on guitar all the time, and he was one of these guys who was self-taught guitar player, taught himself how to play by listening to sounds coming

3:36 through his walls and imitating them on his guitar. And then he started imitating songs on the radio, and this was the type of guy who could just listen to a song on the radio and start playing on

3:44 his guitar. And so I was desperate. That's cool. Yeah, yeah, he was just one of these guys that had that part of his brain just fully turned on, and I was just desperate to learn how to play

3:55 guitar like him And we were hanging out. And I came back from a race one day, and he looked at my helmet and he says, That thing's ugly. That way, yeah, but protects my head. And he says, Let

4:06 me make it better. And he was a doing comic book art at the time. And he put this amazing monster on there. And I took it to the next race. And everyone was saying, How'd you get that helmet?

4:20 Where'd you get it from? How do I get it done? Nice. And I started thinking, Man, there's an opportunity here And so I

4:30 bought him an airbrush, actually. He did it all with paint brushes. And he's messing around with it. And then about 10 minutes later, he says, I got it. And he starts forming these almost

4:41 photorealistic pictures with the first time using an airbrush. And we're onto something here. And so we started small business and graphic design and custom art, doing hockey helmets, bike helmets,

4:53 and all these different things and I got a little small business grant and promptly did what probably a lot of really immature 19 year old entrepreneurs have no experience to, which is think that the

5:11 business is going to expand consistently and exponentially into the future. I looked at my cash flows in the first month and expanded that out. Started going from being in a mall in a little kiosk,

5:24 thinking that, you know what, I need to expand this thing We rented a warehouse space and I brought on about 10 part-time

5:35 artists to start working. And we started pumping things out, you know, and it was going really, really well so well that I didn't want to go back to school, right? And that didn't go over very

5:48 well for Asian parents, you know? Yeah, I was gonna say, like, and we'll get back to your story in a second, but there's some really interesting parallels here too. You know, I'm a Jewish kid,

5:59 right? And I was, I was the only Jewish student in my high school of 800 people. So there's some similarities there. While you can't see it, right? Because obviously I'm just a white guy. It

6:11 feels different being a known minority, I think. But then also on the part about the music with your buddy, that's what my dad can do with the piano. So I would throw in some like a Dr. Dre and a

6:25 cassette tape in like 1993 or something like that, and he listened to it. And I could hear him kind of, you know, the gears grinding. He would come in the house and just start to play the beat on

6:37 the piano. And I was like, man, I wish I had that skill. Like that is just super, super cool. But yeah, the emphasis on education. I see this both a little bit with Asians. I think with

6:48 Indians, definitely with Jews. Like even if there is a business opportunity or something you can make yourself successful with,

6:58 you know, shied upon to pursue that without your education first. So anyways, we'll go back to your story, but a lot of stuff you're saying is resonating with me. So now we're talking like early

7:09 20s, Steve Ko. You're like, you got this entrepreneur in a real bug. You got this artistic side. You couldn't stay on chemical engineering, then

7:20 what? Yeah, you're exactly right on all those points. We'll come back to that in a second. But yeah, so you know,

7:26 tell my parents that I'm not going back to school. I don't tell the university that I'm at. I had got accepted into McGill University, which is the number one university in Canada. And so,

7:37 halfway through it, I'm telling my parents that, you know what, I don't want to go back there. And they promptly kicked me out of the house. And just getting back to a little bit of what you're

7:45 talking about, they said, look, we came over to Korea to give you a better life. We gave up our degrees, moved over here, and did small business and worked in a podunk town. in a steakhouse

7:57 when we didn't speak the language and didn't know how to even cook a steak, right? And we did all those sacrifices, worked 18 hours a day so that you wouldn't have to do this, right? And so they

8:10 were not very receptive to my path or my choice in that I didn't want to finish out. So anyway, so they, I didn't talk to them for about a year and all of a sudden I'm out with this business I

8:26 don't have any place to stay and we had this van. You know, it's a typical 1970s van, shade carpeting, bubble window on the side, nice and green. And what we had done is we had myself a one of

8:41 one, the artist gentleman that we had and then a freelance artist that was our very first freelance artist that helped us get off the ground. And we had painted characters of ourselves around that

8:52 van. And so you can imagine a nice forest green van

8:56 Mirrors on it parked in whatever neighborhood you I could find and I was sleeping in the back of that van for about a month Trying to get this thing off the ground, you know So it was going great. I

9:09 moved actually even that freelance artist allowed me to move into is how it's basically He commits his wife to them to move it. Let me move in and quickly over the next six months watch the the

9:22 Business rise we got in on a tender for an NHL goalie to do a face mask. I think it's going great and Then the inevitable came which was you know just a dip in sales and in cash flow which every

9:36 business faces But as a young entrepreneur, I was not ready for it. No This is this is good. Well, and we'll come back to you I know Clay you haven't said anything for ten minutes But I mean,

9:47 there's Steve. This is this is really fun stuff and I'm thinking about like the NHL Gully masks how they used to just be like well for a while. They didn't wear a mask and they had like the Jason

9:56 mask. And now it's like as much art as you can put on the, you know, the goalie mask is awesome. So now that's, that's fun. And I think you eventually did go back to McGill, but we'll talk

10:07 about this. Clay, the hell are you, man? How are you going to keep up with that story? I don't know. I really don't. Um, so I guess from the beginning, I don't know it was born in Texas. So

10:24 born and raised on Galveston Island in a peach house. So started out by the water and then parents split and then we moved up and I finished, kind of finished growing up in this place called Keema,

10:36 which is on Galveston Bay, which is only inside of Galveston, which is a barrier island, you know, to the Gulf of Mexico. So just grew up in the water, um, you know, to say all that kind of

10:47 stuff. Um, anyway, then

10:52 we'll go fast forward a lot. So

10:55 I graduated when I was 17, and then I had the opportunity to go to Texas Tech or electrical engineering. Oh,

11:07 sorry, the guns up. Guns up, yeah, Texas Tech, double T. I actually have a cattle brand, double T cattle brand on my body. Oh. Yeah. So Texas, anyway. Right on my ass, one S-G has a Texas

11:20 Tech double T on it. I'm glad I got it on the S-G, because I need to be in a Buckeye So, but, you know, get to that, but yeah.

11:28 Yeah. I played on the rugby team. And the way it was was I really didn't have much of a choice, because the alternative was going to be much worse, if you know what I mean. So, I got branded on

11:39 my right butt cheek. Yep. So, if that tells you anything about it, it wasn't super successful in a very short stint. In Lubbock, came back, started working just to get, Just get in.

11:54 I actually have some background in sales, so at one point in time, I was a finance manager for a really, really big, accurate dealership in Houston. So

12:04 all deals, finance, the whole part, purchasing blah, blah, blah, all that, being the, you know, you're over the whole finance department. So it was kind of funny, just this young kid, like,

12:13 didn't know what it's I tie, doing that stuff. But just, it was cool, just ripping people's heads off, like, you know, so to speak So

12:21 then, didn't like what it's doing, and just went back to, like,

12:27 HEC, just community colleges, to kind of keep going. And then I applied on a whim to U of H, and then I started going back to school for geophysics and mathematics, and the College of Natural

12:38 Science and Mathematics at U of H.

12:41 Things were going good. It's great school, great energy school, like, it's, it's top notch. So I didn't graduate from there, so the saga continues I met my wife in the middle of the stream

12:50 downtown Houston Oh. Whatever, just in that, I ended up dropping out of school, putting my job, moving to Ohio. And that's when I got into oil and gas. Well, okay. So she went, was she from

13:03 Ohio? Is that how - Yeah, mm-hmm. And she was on her second to last quarter of her undergrad. So this was a while ago that they were still on quarters if they told you anything, right? Mm-hmm,

13:13 mm-hmm. And so she moved back and I was like, Oh, this sucks, we're doing a long exist thing. And at that time, I had moved into IT. So this all kind of pieced together. So I was in sales and

13:22 then I was IT This came naturally to me as managing the entire IT infrastructure for a small college in Houston. And it was like when Blackboard was the first thing and it was on servers, on-prem,

13:37 all those things. So it was - learned a lot with that and blah, blah, blah. And even before that, I had done a lot of WAN engineering network engineering for the world's largest telecoms and

13:48 stuff like that, like the fiber back bone, First Country type stuff. routing and switching and then ultimately I did do some work in Houston where one of the terminals that since the underground

14:02 cable to Europe connected and one went to Africa so they're know about networking this up and that all came into you know they came to play later on so I moved to Ohio I needed a job her aunt was the

14:16 head of HR at oil and gas company a little one and said hey I'm dating your niece and I quit everything and I moved up here I need a job and she was so pissed but she was like yes fine when can you be

14:28 here just show up can you pee clean yep yeah oh good so then I just I like took a different direction and this was early 2010s and I started I mean I was scum just trashed just you know a warm and

14:46 we're still warm, I was like, you know, greasing. and changing the oil like on-pad in the middle of January and the Northeast and got my CDL and then I was just driving pumps and turning wrenches

15:00 and swinging hammers. And that's how I learned about Brack. I mean, that's it, I lived it. And I worked my way up, had success, had success. And then I remember we were working down and while

15:11 I was working for Alta Mesa time down there in Oklahoma and I remember I had a huge breakdown and beat the back of my truck with pike wrench and just lost it. It was no one night in. I went back to

15:27 the hotel and I rage applied to Ohio State. I was like, you know, I'm done with this shit and I just applied and then I think I drank like two new beers and just went to sleep until the guys came

15:38 and got me in the morning 'cause I was like, and then a few weeks later I get emails like, hey, congratulations, you're in. I was like, to where? Oh, that's right, I almost didn't remember I

15:47 applied

15:49 So I was in Ohio, so I was like, Well, I live in Ohio for a few years now because of time. So I went to Ohio State, graduated from there, math and physics, blah, blah, blah. So after that,

15:59 I was like, I don't want to be in Ohio anymore. So my wife foot hurt her job. I didn't have one. We sold everything and moved back down to Texas onto a sailboat, lived in a sailboat in the Gulf

16:09 Mexico for about a year. And then she got a job in the understand. And then I did a whole bunch of stuff when I came back. I was doing geotechnical engineering as far as soil mechanics and things

16:22 like that for giant buildings and pylons and bridges and stuff. And then I got into work for the EPA for midstream and downstream engineering stuff, contract stuff, all those things. And then

16:36 I was going to Louisiana a lot, working the plants, the Phillips plants, all the big ones, and everything to get to see. It was funny because my family is oiling gas. Bonet. They're all

16:46 southern Louisiana everywhere and they all work in the plants or offshore. So it was cool, and then I wanted to be at home more, 95, so I got a job at an energy tech company, and the rest was

16:60 kind of history, and I went into that. There's a whole bunch more, I just didn't know where to start, exactly, but yeah. This is good. No, I'm getting, you guys are both unique and have fun

17:13 story. I want to go back to Steve now to kind of pick things up, because there's, at some point, you guys were both sort of early in the Marcellus shale, right? You're not far from each other,

17:23 like physically, but you didn't know each other, right? Your world's converged a little bit later. I think maybe during your EQT days, Steve, but I know there's a gap from, I guess, going back

17:34 to McGill, finishing school, pick things up, I guess, like what late '90s, early 2000s, and then some of your oil and gas stuff. Yeah So, you know, eventually speaking, you know, all that

17:46 stuff crashes out. I still didn't want to go back to do chemical engineering. And, you know, I love automotive. Anything that is engine and wheel driven. So I actually wanted to become a

17:58 mechanic. And I was, I applied for a technical institute. They were doing scholarships and, you know, being an engineer and having my background, doing their aptitude test and having a love of

18:12 mechanical things. I did pretty well in that test and I got quickly sucked in that program It was going through my first year of apprenticeship at a dealership, at a Ford dealership. And one of the

18:24 mechanics that I was mentoring under, he used to always eat tongue sandwiches, which is the first time I had tongue in my life. Yeah,

18:34 that's a, it's a delicacy. Yeah, it's actually wonderful. If you can get past the texture, man, it's really good. Yeah, the texture's kind of tough. I mean, it's interesting. Like, there's

18:45 like a taco truck near us tacos. And yeah, the texture kind of gets me. But yeah, I mean, in the the Jewish world too, right? You go to a deli and there's like literally like the big tongue

18:57 sitting right there, which if you can get past that visual, it actually does taste pretty good. Yeah, man. But he sits down and says, Hey, I heard a rumor that you're you were actually doing

19:07 chemical engineering. I said, Yeah, yeah, I'm doing it. But I don't like it. And he goes, listen, man, I do this because I have to, right. You should be doing this as a hobby. Right. And

19:19 those words really sunk in. And, you know, I decided, Hey, I need to go back to school. And I went back to school and actually had a wonderful time, met some of the my greatest friends. It was

19:30 a great thing, of course. So get through my degree, come back and I'm finished. And I'm figuring out what to do. And I was actually a used car salesman at a Mazda dealership at that time, after

19:40 my school, just waiting time. And I'd actually applied to go over and teach English in Japan. I bought the job and I hadn't bought the ticket yet. And I come home and my mom goes, someone called

19:53 for you, they said go to this website. And you know, this was early, like this early 90s, right? So like late 90s, sorry. My mom didn't know what the internet was. And I see www and then dot

20:04 spelled out D-O-T-S-L-B-D-O-T-C-O-M. And so she just, you know, I was like, oh, okay, that's a website address, went there, pick up the interview and I sit down at the interview and he goes,

20:17 ah, you know what? We picked you because we really love the answers that you gave to this application. I'm thinking to myself, what application, man? And I'm trying to look at the answers 'cause

20:27 he's got him trying to read the stuff upside down 'cause I did not remember applying to this job.

20:34 Sounds like clay, fly to Iowa State. That's right. So anyways, I get the job at SLB, get shipped down to Laredo, Texas. Wow. Real engineer and frack for a few years. got moved up to Houston

20:47 technical sales, wonderful time there, and then started getting to the corporate side of HR and public relations in SOB in Sugarland, and then

20:55 got shipped overseas to the Middle East. Spent a year and a half over the two years, actually, over there,

21:03 managing a frat crew, managing the operations there, and then I got a call from my friend, and he goes, Look, I'm an SOB friend. He says, He was my mentor, and he says, you know, this

21:13 company, Talisman, is moving over to unconventionals, and they need people with fracturing experience, multiple reservoirs, and someone who speaks French, and growing up in Canada, you learn

21:27 French, and I did a sort of an exchange program before I went to McGill to do my French. It's funny in Canada, being a Western Canadian French speaker is kind of frowned upon, And so I actually

21:41 didn't use my French very much because when I went on that exchange. It's a difference of cultures, right? But the French culture really frowned upon me speaking French. So I was really

21:52 embarrassed about my French. So I didn't speak it very much, but I had a basis of French. And so I went over there and started, was starting the Quebec Exploration Program in shale, the Lorraine

22:04 Utica shale in Quebec. And it was vertical wells at the time doing test wells and thinking about how do we go horizontal At the same time, the Marcellus was coming up. And the pace of that program

22:18 was accelerating quickly. And they had just gone horizontal. They'd done one horizontal well. And there was one engineer that needed support. So I started doing part-time support in the Marcellus.

22:27 And I did the second horizontal well in that basin for talisman. And we started accelerating that program. And if you know the history of Quebec and they banned hydraulic fracturing eventually, is

22:41 that that Quebec program started to decelerate and. Marcellus started to accelerate. So I got sucked into the Marcellus delivery unit. One of the best experiences of my life. You know, you talk

22:50 about high performance teams and what people seek these days in terms of creating culture, high performing teams, you know, really committed and bought in teams. Well, Talisman was a magical

23:03 place in that regard. We didn't even know it, you know, because it was a bunch of absolute killers in the field coming together in a time when we had to scrounge things. You know, today things,

23:19 you know, people will laugh, but plug and perf wasn't truly established at that time. There were still people that didn't believe in plug and perf at the time. They didn't think it would happen.

23:30 It was too complicated, it was too much operations, you know, and you know, I was lucky enough to be on the ground floor there and work with some amazing vendors to develop amazing technologies

23:40 that form the basis of how we do.

23:44 operations in the Northeast today, you know, and that's not to be braggadocious or anything like that, it was just really a great time to be there and work with great companies and great people to

23:55 innovate and create some of the things that we do today that are just looked at as, you know, matter of fact now. Yeah, I mean, almost like manufacturing, like viewed as manufacturing, but at

24:07 the time, like to figure out how to manufacture, there was probably some trial and error, right, and even some risky things that you look back on, roll your eyes out. You know, so from my

24:17 perspective, like as the oil and gas software sales guy, talisman was one of those companies where the people were really viewed as impressive and forward thinking. The challenge was you guys moved

24:29 so fast that to get people to actually slow down and really take your tech seriously was hard, because you're just like, there's work to be done, right? So a real emphasis on Innovation and

24:42 acceleration in the field, which makes sense then that you kind of ended up rice at rice a few years later So I want to want to go back to you on this. So so Steve's out in in Quebec is You know

24:56 hands are freezing off right, you know tightening tightening valves and and you know fracking wells You're you're in, Ohio right not too far down the road Figuring out oil and gas as well, but but

25:10 you had this passion for tech as well, right? So you ultimately did get back to Houston and get into the tech side Talk me through a little bit some of your like entrepreneurial spirit You know that

25:23 that has kind of led to rivet and just innovation in general I know that you know you've gotten some some kudos and some press by some larger companies For what you do from analytics perspective, but

25:37 like how do you combine all this together? you like a worm, you're a field guy, you're a car guy, you live on a sailboat, and now all of a sudden you're an entrepreneur. Like how does this all

25:46 come together?

25:49 Well, frustration, I think, honestly, trying to push

25:56 forward in an organization that's

26:01 not receptive or willing and are, they don't have the underlying pieces in place to support deviating from their current path, type thing, like a lot of type that or something. So everywhere, I

26:15 think the

26:20 best way to do, so when I was doing the lane engineering the wider network, routing and switching and stuff like that,

26:31 on the fiberback bones or what they call a man and metro area network, which is a combination of data over cable boxes and then like, you know, cable into the house.

26:42 literally co-acts, but it's not co-acts all the way back. It's like fiber and then dropped off and stuff. So I was really, I

26:49 guess I had a chip in my shoulder, so to speak, because a lot of people that in my account imports and stuff, they were all degreed or more, and they had a lot of experience. And I just, I don't

26:57 know, something just came easy to me because maybe a mathematically inclined, like I'm smart. Just, you can't prove it on paper, right? You just can't, 'cause I have a, I know I always had a

27:08 big problem with authority Let's just be honest, right? So, hence, doing my own thing, right? The funny thing is, like you go out and you're like, Oh, my own boss, I'm a company, blah,

27:20 blah, blah. But then all of a sudden, you have way more bosses and way more, you get shit on from both sides. You're in the middle of the valley, everyone shits down the valley, 'cause water

27:30 and shit runs downhill and you're just swimming in it. That's the reality, but at the end of the day, you do have that ultimate decision to do whatever you want, Not that you're going to because

27:40 you're not an evil person,

27:43 trying to hurt others or whatever the case is. So I remember everywhere I went, I tried to pick up as much as I could because I was really interested in how things worked. So I

27:56 got some fracturing when I started to move up or whatever. Before I moved up, I was always volunteering because I wanted to know what was going on. I liked to see all the new stuff I liked to do

28:09 this. Like other companies are out there and help them out doing some grunt work. So then they would let me watch over the shoulder to see what they're doing. And then when I got to point to where

28:19 it was kind of, I don't want to say, Banish man, whatever you want to call it, but when the aspect

28:27 of what I did was a little bit different, so I needed something done. So I would hire someone to do it, but I would pay them well enough to where then they would teach me at the same time. And I

28:36 would sit over their shoulder again. and I would watch and I would ask questions, but I paid them over what they had quoted. So then they were like, this school dude, he's interested and hey,

28:46 I'm getting paid, right? Like I'm gonna come back and work for this guy 'cause he pays more than anyone else. And I have a fight port. And so I would just learn everything that it could. And I

28:55 just put some stuff together and it was the same and like midstream, same downstream process, seeing the process of refinement,

29:04 controlling a petrochem, anything and everything I've seen all the plants and there's some nasty shit, man. But paper mills are the most disgusting thing on the face of the planet. Dude, we used

29:16 to do that. It's insane, I mean, the smells, right? There's one in Rumford, Maine, there's one in Berlin, New Hampshire. And it was like, we would go, they had such a home field advantage

29:27 'cause you go up to Berlin and like the smell. And you just couldn't get past it. You start to get this headache, the smell. It's dirty stuff, You know, it paid people well and employed the

29:38 village, right? Basically made a small city where 10, 000 of the 30, 000 people worked in the paper mill. But my God, smells good. Like, and I went to the worst of the worst. There's this

29:49 place called Volpack. Well, well, it doesn't matter. I'll say their name, Volpack and what they were, they had some injection wells that were like right on the edge of the water on 225 down East

29:60 Side Houston. Stincadino, we're even going to call it. So the most disgusting concoctions and chemicals and byproducts, everything that you would think of was brought into there and put into these.

30:11 Cause then you don't have to go, go of course, the reservoirs are pretty easy because you got a bunch of like salt that appears that will like pinch and trap. And it's the perfect thing. And it's

30:19 very little resistance to inject into there, right? And I'll just say this, that some of the stuff that they put down that well would not behave nicely if it was quite literally compressed. So

30:29 we're raised the heat and you're looking at that situation. I wouldn't say the well, we'll come back, you know, the wells But it was - That was disgusting, but the paper mills were even more

30:39 disgusting than that. But anyway, so throughout the whole thing, I just saw things differently, because I just, maybe in my way, my mind works, but I always try and reduce it down to houses

30:51 actually working. Well, it's not FM, it's not

30:57 fucking magic. Something's happening, what's the mechanism for this? What's control? So I just picked up everything like a sponge. And

31:07 then - so I had the opportunity with Rivet because I was laid off in 2020. Oil went negative. I mean, I remember I was at COVID, peak COVID, like it was a joke, it was insane. And so my family

31:23 - well, I come from a line of, I guess, entrepreneurs, so that's where that spirit comes from. Not so much the bad attitude, like, kid that I'm from a sorority and stuff like that, because I

31:31 still do, you know what I mean? And - Um. My mother was the first generation born in the United States here, and so my grandfather, his family from Spain, my mother, her family from Mexico.

31:46 And the first generation there, born in the States, was my mother. So she

31:54 learned from them, and of course, in other countries, it's not uncommon at all. Everyone has their own business. It's just how you support yourself, like it's you, whatever it is So they come

32:04 in, and so my mother started a sheet metal fabrication repair, large structure and dock repair. She doesn't know anything about it, but my grandfather was, he was a mason, and then he was also a

32:20 master sheet metal worker, and he would bring young men up through apprenticeship and like that, and young Hispanic men or Latinx, whatever you can call it, where they wouldn't get a chance in any

32:30 other places, but he would bring them up, and he got to honor you doctor for manum for that for for affecting like somebody. uh, lives and stuff. So, yeah, so he had this business going, but

32:40 then he also couldn't get the bottle down and stereotypical, Hispanic man, the bunch one of his pockets, just burning the hole, couldn't keep it right, just hitting the bottle. Yeah. And, you

32:53 know, Mr. Big Shot, the Blinken, that's, I don't know, what are you, shit, when they were like 18 feet long, you know what I mean? And, um, new one, like every six months type shit. So,

33:06 uh, so my mother was traveling broad. She's living abroad. So she came back because business would do well. She came in, sort of him up, told everyone to get out. And then she went and she bid

33:17 on some jobs. And she won the bid. And they were to repair like these crane silo to take off the, you know, in the port, or whether it be concrete aggregate or cement aggregate or grain or

33:33 whatever the case is, they need to be repaired. She bet, and she won, and she's like, Oh shit, I won it. And this job, she went and found my grandfather. I said, Where do you guys, where do

33:44 they stay? He's like, They're at these bars, go grab 'em. And she was basically like, Who's gonna be sober enough by tomorrow, and who still has her tools? And this and that, 'cause I got this

33:56 job and I'm paying this. And they all showed up, 'cause it's Solomon's my grandfather's name, they all like Solomon. You was a great guy, you know, people just loved him. They went through,

34:03 they knocked to the park, and then before long, at one point in time, my mom, so my mom's

34:10 four feet, 11, maybe like 95 pounds. They called her little B, or low B, as you know, you can imagine what that's sure for. But she had, at one point, over 50 guys, and they were skilled at

34:24 working for her, and they were skilled at workers like welders. And not just like, you know, run-of-the-mill guys that were working on ships, working in docks, dry dogs underwater. and stuff

34:36 like that and it was crazy. And then she met my father and my father, she was like, you're a bum, you need to get a better job. So she started a business for him and put him in that business. It

34:47 got him a whole bunch of big contracts and stuff and that and then my aunt started up and then she owned a bunch of franchise fire stone and then owned a bunch of shell gas stations and then it was

34:60 kind of like a family thing and my sister had started and ran her own business a couple times, it just kind of runs in her family, right? And then on my father's side, my grandfather, he owned

35:16 bars and raised and sold and bred resources and like all these things, right? So it just, it's just how it is. I mean, with you, like it's just very obvious. You're always gonna be an

35:32 entrepreneur, right? Like, whatever happens with Rivet, I think the - the future is extremely bright, but this likely isn't your last thing, and you're probably not working for anybody else. On

35:41 the flip side, Steve, you worked for not just talisman, but I think one of the best companies in the history of oil and gas and rice, and

35:52 to tie it back to me, because this is my podcast, it's all about me, ultimately, I remember meeting Danny Rice, and this must have been 2009 at this point, where Rice had a very remedial website,

36:06 and there's three names on it, and they had not a lot of 120 wells at most in the Marcellus, and I'm looking at Danny's profile, and he's from Braintree, Massachusetts, and I'm like, All right,

36:18 cool, like another new England guy reached out to him, he's like, Yeah, man, let me know when you're out in Pittsburgh. When I was at Pittsburgh, got to know him, then it was sort of like on

36:26 my routine when I would go to Pittsburgh, I would come out to Cannonsburg and see the office start to grow and expand, and then a different office. right up on the hill and, you know, see the

36:37 company really start to take off and get a feel for the culture. And at some point, you came into the picture, right? So, talk to me about that. How did you go from talisman to rice? And I'm

36:47 sure you loved the culture there. But like, what did you do? How did you end up at rice? Yeah, so, you know, talisman was a great ride. Did a whole bunch of things. Repzal eventually bought

36:59 us out. You know, we had, and, you know, no knockkins, Repzal, they're a great company. They just have different operating styles and different objectives. And I went through that transition.

37:09 You know, I was lucky enough to be at a place where I was on the transition team. I had direct input to the CEO level in terms of how do we

37:19 take the best of talisman and integrate into Repzal. And what I saw were lots of barriers, natural barriers, right? And so, you know, went through that process and went over to Repzal and got

37:31 the chance to sit down with Toby Rice and. met him in downtown Houston, and he was gracious enough with his time to turn a 30-minute meeting into almost a three-hour meeting. And what was my first

37:45 exposure to truly visionary leadership? And, you know, I would say that where talisman was driven from the bottom up, here was a place where that, we had extreme visionary leadership that people

38:05 below them could do nothing, but follow that type of leadership. And it was an amazing transformative place for me to meet all of the Rice Brothers. All four of them to say here is a group of

38:18 people that are extremely exceptional in two things. Number one, being visionaries, being ahead of the curve, understanding where things will be, not where they are. And then number two, even

38:28 more importantly, that not a lot of people have And I see that in all the brothers is being able to be. technical and technical enough to put together a coherent plan to actually go from where we

38:40 are to where we need to be and stay ahead of everybody else. And, you know, I cannot stress enough how amazing they are, all of them in that regard, you know? And I was lucky enough to hook up

38:55 with that and immediately after that three-hour meeting, I had to find a way to get out there, you know? Yeah, there is some sort of like gravitational pull to that. I mean, I actually remember

39:07 saying this to Danny, 'cause I didn't know Toby at this point. I think he was in the field more, Danny was in the office more, and I was more in like the back office tech. And I even remember

39:15 after like spending a full, you know, taking them out to lunch and hanging out at their office. And I'm like, here, go hang out in the suite, walking me into, you know, like not things that

39:23 typical oil and gas companies would do, where it's like, hey, go talk to our VP of engineering. Like, he probably wants to hear about some of the tech that you got, and then they would buy stuff

39:32 I was, um, Kanto, Ryan, uh, I can't, yeah. The commander, but you know, just like super impressive dudes that were like extremely forward thinking. And I remember saying to Danny, I'm like,

39:44 look, I'm not moving to Pittsburgh, but if I did, like I wanna work for you guy, I'd be a fucking janitor for you guys. You know what I mean? And start at the bottom. And kind of a funny story,

39:53 you know, my friend Dave Sup, who I do some work with at EAG, awesome guy. He was at CNX Gas when they first sort of spun that up, console group when they were making a transition from coal and

40:07 eventually was in the IT group at EQT. And

40:12 EQT, the contrast for me in going into the EQT office in 2015 and then going out to rice was insane. I mean, culturally, it could not be more different from the attire to the location to the age

40:27 of the resources to the tech forwardness to the attitudes very, very different. Some of the best meetings I've had and some of the worst meetings I've had.

40:37 And Dave Sup was telling me actually last week when I was in Vegas at this conference, he said, you know, basically at some point, like EQT started to get irritated with the price. They're like,

40:48 why are they always leasing land where we need to like, we need this land, right? If we're going to drill the kind of horizontal wells that we want to drill, like they got our stuff like, like

40:60 Dave, go put a project together and like, put a map basically. And pretty much what he realizes, he's like, dude, these guys are so much smarter than us. Like, whatever EQT did was like

41:10 reactionary versus what Rice was doing was very proactive. So they start, he starts putting this map together. He's like, they already did this, you know what I mean? Like clearly they sat down

41:19 and like, they have the same map and the same data. And they looked at where we're at and they just leased up all the land. So hey, you want to drill your, your long horizontal is you got to buy

41:30 the which eventually led to that sale. But I found it fascinating. Even somebody who was like from that EQT mindset and he's just like, basically took it to management. He's like, I don't know

41:39 what to tell you guys. Like they won. Like

41:42 you want to be what you want to be, probably have to buy them and they did. But anyways, I want to go back to like, so were you enabled and allowed to be innovative and creative and forward

41:55 thinking while you were at Rice? And then at some point, I want to tie you and Clay together because you guys met Yeah, let me just take one diversion real quick before getting right to the point,

42:04 right? I think, you know, we talked about your father and my friend being artists, right? True artists and the fact that they could see things in music that most people cannot see. I am a firm

42:14 believer that everyone has artistry inside themselves. It just expresses itself in different ways, right? And when you look at the Rice Brothers, their artistry is what we were talking about,

42:24 being visionaries and connecting that real world plan to getting from here to there, right? Clay has artistry in terms of art. understand the communication side and connecting machines together.

42:35 You have artistry in people and how you connect people together and bring them in on this podcast that other people can't see or can't do, right? And so everyone has artistry. And of course, when

42:45 I was there, they allowed me to play my artistic instrument, which was, you know, trying to innovate and push the all-field forward and the completion side in ways that people weren't looking at,

42:56 but ultimately were fit for purpose to the environment that we are in today, right? And that was the most important thing for me in my career was here as a visionary leader that was allowing me that

43:08 space to create the right technologies and the right deployments to get to where we need to be not today, not yesterday, but in the future. And so yeah, I was given a place where finally I could

43:21 look at all of the inefficiencies that I had seen throughout my career, you know, whether I was an engineer myself or whether I was managing engineers across multiple disciplines. There was an

43:31 inefficiency in terms of the way we collected data, the way we interpret data, and the way that we shared data. And there was lots of reasons for that, but there was an absolute barrier. And so I

43:45 took a hard look at things, and I said, what are the things that we can control? Well, certainly the subsurface is not a place that we can control. In fact, the subsurface is a place that is

43:55 multivariate, and we don't know a lot

43:58 of the variables very well We think we do, but in reality, we're taking general gross assumptions and applying them over large swaths of land. And we verify them as we go. And we've gotten way

44:10 better at it, but they are still generalizations. Where we're really not good at it is in the completion space. I did a lot of work on completionist modeling and forecasting productivity of wells

44:23 from those models. And especially when we moved to Shales, we are deficient in that regard. it's the environment that we're in. And the other part of it is, is we're not controlling the variables

44:35 we should control. And those are the surface variables. We may not be able to control the subsurface, but we sure as well, we sure as can't, it went down well, can take care of the surface

44:47 equipment. And that should be our first responsibility on Being. the server side, I saw the blades and problems with data transparency, what's actually going down whole versus what's being

44:57 displayed on the screen And then being able to digest that data in a really efficient and meaningful way. And so I was on a quest to find a way to do this and connect all of the data islands, 'cause

45:11 I say this all

45:13 the time, we're not data poor in the Christian environment, we're data rich, we're data analytics poor though. We don't know how to do that because there's so much data and so disparate, it's all

45:23 different languages, all different timestamps, all these things. So I started looking for things I went to a lot of the incumbents that were out there. and did an evaluation of them all and

45:32 started working with one. And no disrespect to any of them. They were doing the best they can. They are the people that have made Rivet possible today. So I'm not putting no disparaging comments.

45:44 They did the best they could with what they had at the time. They built these infrastructures. But they stopped at a certain point. And that point was mostly around display, right? Hey, let's

45:55 visualize this data And being a frat guy at my heart, I knew one thing over the

46:03 quarter century of my career. What I have seen is just a proliferation of visualizations inside the frat band. When I started, it was one 24-inch monitor that I was looking at. Now we're looking

46:17 at an old wall full of big screen TVs with all of the things, but it still comes back to that one individual processing all that huge wall of data saying, here's what

46:31 And that's not a very efficient way to do it. 365 days out of the year, 24 hours a day at one second resolution. No human being, no matter how good you are, is gonna be able to do that, right?

46:42 And so, I was looking for a place to connect those data islands and start really taking that data and giving meaningful, consistent, efficient actions out of that. And I was struggling. Like the

46:54 incumbents just were stuck on visualization and it came down to my guys to figure out what was going on And what I found was those are the most unsupported guys in the off field. But I think beyond

47:07 that, Steve is like, these are not technologists, right? Like the skill set of these guys and maybe their artistry is drilling and completing wells, right? And getting the most out of the

47:19 product that's in the ground that you've leased. But they're not there to build technology, right? They're there to interpret it and then make decisions based off of it Meanwhile, Clay's in a lab.

47:31 right? Figuring out basically a solution to the problem that you're talking about. How did you guys meet? Like, how did this all come together? And this, I think, was post-rise for you. You're

47:43 at EQT and you're looking for this solution. Where is this data aggregation that that can give me a simple answer quickly, both from a safety perspective and efficiency perspective and an analytics

47:54 perspective. And Clay is trying to figure out the solution to this somewhere in Houston and his, you know, not basements there. But if you did, you'd be in a basement. I hadn't figured it out,

48:06 but I needed somebody willing to take a shot on it. Right. Right. And then you found. That was it. Yeah, it was. So it was Steve. I'm going to go ahead and jump in

48:23 I came up with a few ideas to solve some central and kind of.

48:32 Mm-hmm They were I'll just say they were very central problems that everyone faced around time series data in upstream oil and gas and I had a unique perspective because if anyone knew of data

48:47 Honestly, I felt like I did So I had that unique

48:52 I Was a maggot. I was worse than maggot. I was scum. I was the scum that those fly larvae lived in right? I ate shit with FR on and I'm a rib head ripped off and shit down and spit down and my

49:04 head put back on right like It's a joke like You got thin skin you're done so I So how those machines the environments I understood how they have to be able to operate

49:22 and The conditions that they're given and then when I was in midstream and downstream stream. Same thing. I was like, Holy shit. All of these things work the same way. So the core thing that I

49:38 found Asian, I put rivet the whole predication for everything. Well, so I had a lot of time. It was fun money. It was whatever money all this that it was COVID time. There was absolutely deck to

49:47 do like you were sitting in your house, right? And so I realized that a few things that if you take away that longstanding bullshit about, oh, this is oil and gas, it's different. Fucking

50:01 cowboys and yeehaw and shit and blah, blah, blah. Like, this is the fucking wild west and love, you know, whatever the fuck that means. So if you peel away all that shit, all the machismo,

50:12 all the this and that, all the whatever romanticized, rough neck life, those machines are the same exact machines that are in your house, that are in your vehicle, that are in mistream, that are

50:24 in downstream, that are in the grocery store. Because I look for the lowest common denominator So there's the physics background in the math, the whatever is that if you, typically the point of a

50:34 machine is to work for humans. So that consists of a few things, very basic. And when Steve and I first really connected, well, for me at least it was about to get there. So in my mind, it was

50:46 like the machine at the most simple basic is potential energy.

50:54 Then with the catalyst of some kind, like, okay, so fuel and then it's hard So the catalyst, then you have that potential energy being converted into kinetic energy, almost always typically via

51:05 rotation. Electric motors, internal combustion, you're harnessing the reaction from it. And that's what you do. And that is for lathes, that is for cars, that is for frack pumps, that is for

51:16 drilling rates, that is for it. It's all the fucking same. It's not some big fucking secret. Like, oh, this is one gas that's different. It's not, it's behind. It's archaic. I'm not trying

51:25 to offend anybody, it is all this year. So this is how we do it out here. can't tell me any different, all this stuff like, you know, it's hard to print money like you used to. So you have to

51:33 be efficient, you can't just keep doing these things. And now I remember, so that was my whole thing, was everything is the system. A fracked site, drilling rig, all that is, is the exact same

51:45 components that, well not exact same, but conceptually and basically, are the same components that are used in refinement, petrochem, paper mills, disposal, whatever, it doesn't matter,

51:56 you're making plastic, you're making plastic beads, rubber tires. They're all connected to make a closed system, that closed system manipulates that raw material and to a finished material, and

52:05 then that is sent to whoever you want it. Oil and gas is the same thing, it's the same fucking thing, you did. The only difference is those machines and that is on a trailer, and you move it

52:16 around. But when you break up a site, you connect everything, it's a closed system, and the well becomes part of that system, and what are you doing? you're taking those raw materials. You're

52:28 essentially refining it and doing this, and then the purpose of what you created is sent to another location, which is down that well. Conceptually, there is no difference. It is the exact same

52:36 thing, right? So I was like, if you screw away all those things, you think about it, that's how you can do it. Is connect machines, not just connect data, share data, but interconnect

52:48 machines. And those interconnecting is availability to have multiple connections and different types of things. Do a single physical or wireless. You're interconnecting, you're not just connecting

52:57 So I was like, that's what I need to do. And that's what I want to do. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to take it further. This whole thing about visuals and all these things. I'll get you

53:07 a worry about that. In my opinion, the visuals and the dashboards and all this stuff, no disrespecting about it, but that's easy. That's the easy part. You start with that. I think it's easy

53:16 for you. I mean, I would say like you make, this is a skill. It's part of your artistry, I think, Clay, but it's not easy.

53:28 The data, the data is the challenging part. And I've dealt with executives and oil and gas for years where we need visuals, right? We need this, but if you don't trust the data, it doesn't

53:38 matter, right? So you have to start with the data. Shit in, shit out, right? It's useless, it's pointless, right? So it was just like, this is how we do it, blah, blah, and I was like,

53:46 and on top of that, we'll just take this data and then we're just gonna give it away. Yeah. You know, we're not gonna hold it hostage, we're just gonna not try and resell it. Just, that's the

53:55 service All of this data that you want that you could never get before because everyone did it this way 'cause I thought it was a de facto way way to do it. And then we're gonna take all of this

54:04 hard-earned data and all this complex shit and we're just gonna give it away. And it was like, what the fuck? Anyway, but he was, Steve got it. That's the thing, we're going with it. Steve

54:16 gave Rivet his first big break because he connected, he was on that same quest and had been on it longer But, with it. the sense was just a tool for him to get to the point that he was trying to

54:31 get to previously. We were an enabler for his vision, but it just so turns out that him and I had this conversation, and Steve was the worst to work for.

54:44 I'm kidding, but I say that because the rivet wouldn't be what it is. I consider Steve to be as much part of this company as myself. I really do, because he was the one that was pushing. Nobody

54:54 else was pushing. He pushed. He pushed on everyone. He pushed on other vendors. He pushed on us to get these things done. And it was very difficult to do, but when we got them done, it was like,

55:06 dude, this is awesome, right? In my opinion, and this is not bullshit, blowing smoke up his ass, right? Because he's already joined the rivet. So if Steve May, Steve and his group, made

55:20 companies. Companies came to EQT or ice, they were given

55:27 And if you performed, you were rewarded, but you were also rewarded with a harder task. And if you performed, then you got a harder task. And it really weeded out the,

55:42 finally, it's a real content here, but it really weeded out the pretenders, the smoke screens, right? It's like those, you know, college weeded out classes, like, and I feel like, I don't

55:52 know, Steve did this shit on purpose. And it was like, all that was left, like, no, like, the strong and the strong, you know? He, you know, you were rewarded for doing that. But the thing

56:01 was, you were pushed, and all of a sudden you've got to a certain point, and you had created this thing. And oh my God, it's like we created this whole another product, and then these companies

56:09 would go, service companies then would go and sell that to other operators, like, hey, look what we did, we did this. And in reality, don't forget where you were before to where you are now,

56:19 because the support that you had from this individual is named Steve, right? And because of that.

56:27 Rivet is what it is now, so that's why I consider Steve to be as big a part of it, but, you know,

56:34 I also have to say though, I will say this, I'll get my little dig in here on Steve too, is that the product ended up, you know, a lot better, faster, and the tables returned, and his team

56:48 wasn't ready for what we had for short time, and then we catch up, and then we do the same, and then catch up, but like we cry, we, shit dude,

56:59 600 dollars worth of bullshit, shit off Amazon, computers off Amazon,

57:06 ethernet cables from fucking Walmart, whatever it was, tough to wear and stuff to keep shit dry. I mean, I called in every favor I could, and I got this done, and

57:20 with with a joke. I know Steve, you must have seen a picture because that you guys came out. roasted me and took a picture of my setup of what we were able to accomplish and just destroyed me to

57:33 like try to at least. But I was like, you know, fuck you, fuck you. You can even do this with a100, 000 six years, you wouldn't be able to do this. And it was true. And they knew it, but

57:43 they were going to give me a hard time. And the but the point was that we did something that they had never had before that no one had ever done before. And we did it with literally nothing

57:52 Absolutely nothing. And then we crashed their cloud environment because we just forward too much data. And that's amazing. And

58:05 I love it. I mean, this is good stuff. And Steve, I, you know, we're getting short on time, we could talk for fucking two hours. And this is really, really fun stuff. But Steve, the

58:14 question I have for you is, you saw something in Rivet, but were you investing in, in Rivet or were you investing in clay?

58:23 Yeah, that's a good question. I think it comes all, I don't think you can separate either of them. Rivet is clay and clay is rivet, right? You know, you talk about the artistry. Do you like,

58:35 you know, when you get to genres of music, do you like country, do you like classical, do you like, it really isn't really about the genre, it's really about the artists, right? And that's the

58:43 way it is for me. I listen to all sorts of music because I like the artists and the way that they apply what's inside of them to whatever instrument that they're playing. And that's the same thing

58:52 with rivet And what it allowed me to do and why I think rivet is so hard to put into an elevator pitch is that

59:00 we are doing things that haven't been done yet. And we are moving towards something that was very simple to me, let us live the values that we have always said that we live inside of the industry.

59:13 Number one, safety's first, right? If safety's first - 100, right. And safety is first and we live that way. but think about all the safeguards we have in the old field that come down to someone

59:25 noticing something, right? And so like, let's talk about a nuclear reactor. How many safeguards in a nuclear reactor rely on somebody just noticing a variable? Not an alarm, not noticing an

59:37 alarm, just a variable going out of whack. That would be insane, right? And so what technology allows us to do is actually live our values Let's number one use readable data that is objective,

59:52 that is way more vigilant than we can ever be and allow that to drive our safety and drive the number of people that we need to do the operations because everybody knows manpower our exposure is a

1:00:02 huge part of safety, right? So can we decrease the exposure on key tasks to decrease our safety exposure, right? Or increase the technology to keep people out of the area instead of, you know,

1:00:15 we have this pressure pumping area where it's standard practice to put up. Yellow plastic chains are even worse. Yellow tape around this life-threatening area and say, we're really serious about

1:00:28 safety. What about you? We got it, the police tape, and then little plastic changes by party city. Yeah. Oh, why don't we use something like LIDAR technology? Computer vision with haptic

1:00:40 wearables that tell people and then alarm. There's so many things we can do with technology. What about efficiency, right? We, again, data is a way more efficient way to deliver efficiencies

1:00:51 than just human experience 'cause everybody has different and human experiences, right? Yeah,

1:00:57 Steve, I know we're running short time, but I'm just gonna have to hype you up a little bit more, and I'm just gonna say this, I'm gonna say it, is that

1:01:06 I think people, I'm gonna hear 'em in this moment of time, is that people may be undervalued, but he brings to an organization where the last place or the next place like for that or whatever the

1:01:19 case is. But. I'm

1:01:23 serious when I say that of, I mean,

1:01:27 there is so much now that is out there as a direct result from directors that Steve has put forward for things that he wanted and it's like, it's kind of like, it's, yeah, I would say he's

1:01:39 visionary. Like Steve gives a lot of praise, but he's very humble. But I feel to me, and I see this too, is that he's very visionary himself And he thinks of things, and since he's been at Rivet,

1:01:51 we're doing things that I didn't think about. And you know, and it's like, I mean, it's solid shit, and some of this stuff is being come part of kind of like a core offering, it's just like,

1:02:03 you know, it took him to come over here to, I don't know, the dude is always thinking, it's nicknamed Colerilla, I call him Cozella, because he's even bigger than King Kong

1:02:13 You know, I just feel like, here, since Steve has come on. He's Steve is at the helm, he's the

1:02:24 lead, he's the CEO, right? And it's like he runs,

1:02:28 that was the point because the vision that he has, the way that he works, the way that he moves forward, it's exactly where he needs to be in no other place, right? Yeah. And anyway, so yeah,

1:02:39 so to everyone listening to it, I just wanted to say it and acknowledge that, and that it's also better, I feel very fortunate that my situation with Rivet is the way it is now, because I have

1:02:51 somebody on with me who

1:02:56 shares a lot of that drive, but in vision, but somebody who sees things in a different way,

1:03:03 the way that I don't think that it's possible for me to do, or I just haven't to this point in my life, I don't know, but that's fine. I

1:03:11 think the compliment Rivet is now poised for,

1:03:16 I mean, parabolic growth because of him coming on and You know, I just want to also say this too, is that I can be petty, so I'm going to be a little bit petty, but like everybody who he's gone

1:03:27 through, and first of all, people who had offered him something, you know, recently, you know, me transitioned over here, is like, Ha ha, you lost. And then the next thing to all the places

1:03:38 he had before, you know, they realized that after it was gone, but man, like what, what an asset to any organization. And he's a good dude, and we're friends, and he has a house crossed the

1:03:47 lake over here His wife is a saint, his boys, I haven't met yet, but I'm sure they're hilarious and I'm sure that we're going to make fun of Steve when I meet them, right? Exactly. You know,

1:03:56 but Rivet is in the best place

1:04:01 that has been since his inception, since he's come on, and yeah, I just wanted to say that, dude, so yeah, I just wanted to adjust that. I love it. I hate you embarrassed. The gratitude is

1:04:12 real, the glazing is real I want to say this, too, like, again, to bring it back to me, like, when I started funk futures. a little over four years ago, it was truly to identify the

1:04:25 challengers and represent and work with the challengers. And I don't think that means that selling the product or positioning the product is going to be easy, but when you find the people that get

1:04:35 it, they're really gonna get it. And there's other Steves, right? You'll find the next Steve that maybe had a completions, maybe a CEO, maybe a CI, maybe a VP of engineering. We don't know

1:04:46 necessarily. You can't put that title necessarily in a box. It's a way to think And I like what you guys are doing. I think the focus on data first is key. And a couple other things just before we

1:04:58 wrap up. One, you guys never really talk about money. You never talk about the financials. I don't think you're doing this for money. I think you're doing this for impact. The other thing too is

1:05:07 as innovative as you are or want to be, you don't talk a ton about AI. Because I think that you know that that's a little bit further down the path of you have to solve for challenges that haven't

1:05:20 been solved for first. before you can start incorporating into AI. And I think that's really important in oil and gas because everyone oil and gas is from Missouri and you gotta show them, right?

1:05:29 I think you peel it back and show them, this is what you have to do first if you wanna get to there, right? So I like what you guys are doing. It's gonna be a fun ride for us to work with you and

1:05:38 represent your brand. And it's an honor for me to be a small part and play a small part in this key stage of growth for you. Where can people find more information about Rivet? Where can they find

1:05:49 you if they wanna reach out? Yeah, sure, so our websites are really best. One, it kind of shows a little bit more about the breadth of what we do, so not just a wall of gas, but rigid into

1:06:01 agriculture construction, things like that. So our technology is agnostic and it's universally applicable to really anywhere this electricity, right? But yeah, RIVIT, R-I-V-I-T-T dot I-O, of

1:06:15 course, RIVIT energy on. LinkedIn and then, you know, I'm on LinkedIn and so Steve is as well, contact info and stuff isn't there. But yeah, the website is a good place to start. It's good

1:06:27 stuff. Fellas, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure having you on. You guys need your own podcast. You could talk about the fun stuff all day. And you know, my advice to you, not that you

1:06:37 need my advice, is continue to lean into your authenticity. You guys are different from each other. You're different from other companies that are in the space and you're not afraid to challenge

1:06:47 the status quo That will probably come with some pushback and some rejection and some eye rolling. But the truth is, like when you get the people that get your stuff, it's going to be the next

1:06:58 Steve Ko Zilla type situation. So rivetio everybody, Steve and Clay, thank you guys so much.