Chuck Yates Got A Job

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;31;14
Unknown
Slow to do what he feels like. I will do this very fast for this work. Thank you. Pay in dreams and, take my name. So Jimmy's dad? Yeah. Is actually a big investment banker. Marshall Adkins and I've known Marshall forever. In fact, he was man of the hour one year at the roast and, all that.

00;00;31;14 - 00;00;57;10
Unknown
And his dad's. His dad's great. He's loud, bombastic, but really smart, really thoughtful. Great when it comes to kind of macro trends in energy. So Colin and I go over there, gosh, was probably a year ago, I mean, early days of us having, having software to go sell and we kind of pitch, hey, here's what we're doing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00;00;57;12 - 00;01;20;14
Unknown
And Marshall just goes, goes back and I'm like, I'm like, dude, what? We've been friends forever. What? What's the matter? And he's like, you two aren't writing the code, are you? So I was like, no, we're not. We actually, we actually have developers. A was that the truth? Were you writing code? No. One writing code. Although that's how he's my running joke is.

00;01;20;14 - 00;01;44;18
Unknown
I learned to code in Lotus one, two, three way back in the day. But now it was. It was so funny because where he was ultimately going is, hey, my my son's a, developer and potentially wants a job. So that's how it that's how we got Jimi. But man, he was just indignant. So a lot of the reason I wanted to have you on the podcast, see, we actually have somebody that knows software.

00;01;44;20 - 00;02;07;28
Unknown
No, I appreciate that, Chuck. It's, it's been a fun ride the last eight, nine months. Whatever. We can't believe it. Yeah. I mean, on one hand, it, like, seems like no time whatsoever. And on the other hand, it feels like a lifetime. Yeah. Because I think I was just telling one of our new devs they were asking this question, how long have we gone through this process of building collide the actual software stack?

00;02;08;01 - 00;02;30;18
Unknown
It started, I think I joined early May or end of April last year. Okay. And from that we just kind of went through the different duration than when I joined. Majority of the focus for development capacity was still going towards community. Yeah. Even though we were trying to sell, we're trying to sell at that point. Right. Like now though obviously been in multiple clients, the enterprise version.

00;02;30;18 - 00;02;51;00
Unknown
So I think that was one of my first big pivots that I wanted the company to make that work. If you are trying to sell into enterprise, that's where our development resources also need to go. But community had come a long way, like if you look at the community platform, the devs had done a great job of developing it in a point where it was at a good, steady state.

00;02;51;03 - 00;03;25;03
Unknown
But it's not been that long, but it just feels a very long time to, so it's it's a little weird, like, this is I've definitely been part of different startups. Clyde's very different from even the startups I've been part of. So the, so before we go there, because I want to hear that, like, you know, when they say a cuss word on, cuss word on public TV and they just beep it out, maybe, maybe it will be out there, you know, it's well, it's very different, but, how did we even find you?

00;03;25;05 - 00;03;55;22
Unknown
You know, because I don't manage people. Right? So that's Collins Collins gig. So I think when Collins was, he was touring the West Coast. My understanding is that he was but went to the Rams with innovation in interviews and all of these other companies. The VCs, one of the VCs, I think it was innovations, basically told Collins, we really love what you're building, but we need to see some proof of actual software development and DNA in the company.

00;03;55;24 - 00;04;35;23
Unknown
And I believe they're referred, called into, executive search, firm. And somehow they contacted me, early last year, and they were just following me as I was doing different things that the companies that I was with before reached out. They were like, this is a very early stage startup. And at that point, I was interested enough because I'd been at upside my last company for 5 or 6 years at that point, which it was, they reached out, gave me some very vague description of what was going on, with Collider, and I was already interviewing for different companies at that point.

00;04;35;26 - 00;04;53;23
Unknown
So I said, okay, I'm interviewing. I might as well just stalk. But I was very clear that I can only talk pretty much at that point on the weekend because I had some other obligations going on, and the recruiters reached back out to call in and scheduled a call on a Sunday actually with us, and called it an I.

00;04;53;23 - 00;05;18;22
Unknown
A half hour call ended up being 2.5 hours. We were just laughing. We were talking through a bunch of different things, so it's just something more instant. And I. I did not walk into the conversation thinking much would come out of it. I walked out thinking that all of the three different opportunities that I had at that point, that I was considering that this could actually be the one because it had so much Collins vision.

00;05;18;22 - 00;05;44;25
Unknown
And the more I understood about in software, building software is can be tough. But the tougher part is also you can build as much as you want, but can you sell it? And if you don't have distribution, that's really hard. And the one what I noticed at that point, the conversation and soon after, I think on that Monday or Tuesday, Colin had me talk to you.

00;05;44;27 - 00;06;07;19
Unknown
It was pretty clear to me that you guys had a lot of distribution. Figured GitHub. You can walk into any, any clients like you had a great network where you could get in the door to have the conversations, which it was pretty interesting, like how this whole thing came about, because the way the recruiter reached, I don't even think that they understood fully what the potential of light could be.

00;06;07;22 - 00;06;26;05
Unknown
So their pitch wasn't as strong in the initial first one. So it was really when I spoke to Colin that weekend that changed a lot of things for me, was it wasn't like an individual moment or a phrase or just anything from that first call.

00;06;26;07 - 00;06;58;11
Unknown
Maybe even a vibe. I think vibe wise, it was definitely the vibe of. Somebody with a massive vision, but needing truly a partner that they could rely on to build something. I think that's the one thing that stood out to me because until this point in all the companies I've worked for, I've worked for really strong product and engineering leaders or founders.

00;06;58;13 - 00;07;24;22
Unknown
It has its pros and cons, and on the con side, it is that they won't let you execute. Also, like they always need to be very involved in every single piece of building. And I was at a career point where I needed to be the person that would go build something for a company. So I was looking specifically for a situation where I'm not going to be hassled day to day.

00;07;24;24 - 00;07;42;07
Unknown
Sure, I need to be held accountable, but I won't be hassled day to day on. Please prove to me why you're making this particular architecture decision. It's like, okay, we can waste time doing that, or you can just trust me and and just give me the task at hand and let's go. So I think it was that was a big piece of collide.

00;07;42;07 - 00;08;21;03
Unknown
And contention with Colin. We just connected very quickly. There was a lot of laughter, but also deep conversation around similar ideologies of what how to build companies and, and organizations. And I just saw that this is somebody that I could. That would be interesting to go down the path of potentially building something that impacts a full industry. And the other third thing for me was, calling for not being like courts and courts like technical in the sense of software technical.

00;08;21;06 - 00;08;43;03
Unknown
He just knew so much about AI and this industry that I think that was a very inspirational piece for me, that I was trying to get back into tech technology, really, from the management standpoint, back into building pieces again rather than just managing people. As you said, you don't like managing people. That is my goal to do that after collide.

00;08;43;03 - 00;09;10;19
Unknown
This would be such a great ride that you like. Okay, let's kind of go have somebody else manage people at that point. But I wanted to learn AI a lot more because everybody was talking about AI. And for me, being in the technology field, it was trying to frustrate me from the standpoint of that. How much of this is reality versus just a a new shiny object?

00;09;10;19 - 00;09;45;13
Unknown
Another like just another piece, like just like crypto was bitcoin, blockchain, blockchain and all those things. But the hype was too much and I needed to go down to the basics and understand what this was. So I felt that collide would give me that opportunity, would challenge me a lot to. But I felt this will this would be the toughest of the of all the different options I was considering, this would be the toughest one, but if I could overcome it, it would be a personal testament that I needed to prove to myself that I could do it.

00;09;45;15 - 00;10;09;08
Unknown
And I believe this had the biggest, potential outcome. So I think those were just like some pieces. And it's so funny because after 2.5 hours can be both concepts. Okay, I should probably like, let you go and get you back into your Sunday. And I think he had to go do something else. My partner walked in the room and she was like, are you still talk?

00;10;09;15 - 00;10;28;12
Unknown
Are you still in the interview? I think we just wrapped up. She's like, yeah, I heard you guys just laughing. So I wasn't sure whether you were actually interviewing or whether you were just like conversing with a friend. So I think there was definitely something there from that standpoint. So it was just a combination of these things as I was assessing.

00;10;28;15 - 00;10;50;22
Unknown
And one last thing I'll say is he was very, very transparent in the conversation. I think that stood out to me as well. And I felt he me, he was looking for a true partner in this journey of building where it wasn't that I'm going to dictate the day to day the know how and all of this stuff.

00;10;50;24 - 00;11;06;04
Unknown
He needed a trusting partner, and I think that meant a lot to me, that I had that opportunity. I mean, it wasn't lost on him that this is the most important hire he was going to make. And he said that to me right on the call. And sometimes, like when people say it, you're like, okay, here we go.

00;11;06;07 - 00;11;27;23
Unknown
But somebody just wanting the candidate to feel good, but he just in the way he said it was so genuine. He was like, this is probably my most important hire ever. Because after this, once he's super successful, things get. But he can hide a lot more like different. So so this is this is kind of an interesting point.

00;11;27;26 - 00;11;57;10
Unknown
When, you know, I'm running the private equity firm, we would back management teams and they're the really good CEOs. They're called the Roman numerals because they choose a name and then they're on their third iteration, fourth iteration. And you only get to have another iteration. If you made money in the previous one, you know. So the Roman numeral C has and all my investors always used to say things like, well, did he keep the team together or did she keep the team together?

00;11;57;12 - 00;12;16;09
Unknown
And I used to tell him, you actually don't want that when you're a Roman numeral and you're on number three or number four, the best people on the planet want to come work for you. So you actually want to see the, the, the team turnover. Because you're right. I mean, later in life when you're successful, a lot easier to get talented people.

00;12;16;09 - 00;12;46;13
Unknown
Yeah. And we are seeing that now as well. Right. Fit collide and I and I don't say this out of hubris. I don't say this out of, like, I say this with a lot of humility that I've been I've been very blessed to work with some great engineers over my life, and been able to hire. And some of them are here at Callide that I've worked with for the last ten years, and they have just been able to continue working at different places and.

00;12;46;15 - 00;13;09;10
Unknown
Once you get the first 1 or 2 people in the right that everybody else starts, it's easier to convince. It's easier for others to join, because to them, as new members of our technical staff joined, it was like, okay, why is Canisius here? Why is Mark here? Why is this other person here? Like, what do they have going on that they're willing to to take this risk?

00;13;09;12 - 00;13;26;29
Unknown
So it it starts at flywheel effect, which has been quite amazing to see because now we have people from ECS, AWS, ECS, Microsoft, ECS, Candy crush right there. You can go down this list. And I tell you this the other day, so I was talking to this company and I'm sitting there talking about all the talent we have.

00;13;26;29 - 00;13;47;13
Unknown
And I go there, man, we got a CTO from side marketing like and whatever. And I go and we recruited an AI engineer away from AWS. Whatever. Got one from Microsoft, got her to leave Seattle to come join us and whatever. We got the Candy crush guy. You got the Candy crush guy? Holy cow. Oh, yeah.

00;13;47;13 - 00;14;09;28
Unknown
Yeah. No, it's quite, quite amazing. Like, every time Candy crush comes in, even yesterday, I think we were somewhere, talking to a client, and we were going to the team, and they were like, wait, Candy crush? That game? I was like, yep, that that game that a lot of people have played for the long time. So it's just been quite, quite a journey to get to this point, just career wise.

00;14;09;28 - 00;14;37;21
Unknown
But just even within collide what I have learned in the last seven, eight months of being involved in this work through that, because the because, you know, the thing I, as the finance pro, don't have a true appreciation for is, you know, everybody says, oh, I know I use AI. Well, it turns out they're writing prompts on ChatGPT and we literally have this pretty robust software.

00;14;37;23 - 00;15;19;22
Unknown
And I tell people like that, I go before we had Canisius, I could draw our software architecture up on the up on the, whiteboard. Now I can't draw it. There's so many boxes and so much stuff. So, like, what did we do? Yeah. No, it's, I think the best way for me to kind of describe this is, you know, when you're on, when you're trying to model a house or, let's say a big project of, a multifamily home made of five, 600 apartments you can build.

00;15;19;24 - 00;15;57;25
Unknown
You hired the initial architects, and they can build that miniature, like full community. Right. And that's great. You're like, okay, like, this is this is where we are. But to go from that to actually building is a very complex and involved journey. And I think that's one way to look at this in the sense of that. Yes, we could see what this could look like because even when when I joined there was like a ChatGPT style application that you light had built for companies to, to talk to their own data and find information.

00;15;57;28 - 00;16;19;26
Unknown
But it was much more kind of like a, a small miniature model of what this could look like. But to build that whole thing now you have to lay the pipes. You have to do the foundations, you have to bring in this massive crew, you have to build all these pieces. And then you start learning that, oh, like on a piece of, like small drawing, getting up to 50.

00;16;19;26 - 00;16;42;25
Unknown
So this big 50, like the, the, the room on the top most, what's the what I'm in-house like is. Yeah, it seems you can just see it there, but there's a journey to get to all of that and all the small things that have to work together to get to that point. So I think that's one way to look at this.

00;16;42;25 - 00;17;04;03
Unknown
But just and that's why I like Chuck, if somebody asks you, okay, now draw me the whole thing of like, did this like a million different pieces that are floating around, I, I can't right conceptually I can talk about this. But essentially what we have to do is when I came in, we have to do a deep analysis of, okay, AI is great.

00;17;04;03 - 00;17;29;28
Unknown
And I was learning AI to. Right. So everybody in the company knew more about AI per se than I did. Not me. But but just it was. And I started looking at and luckily within the first week you took me to three clients on my third day. And, I mean, we can talk about who those clients were, and they ended up with some to build some great stuff with them.

00;17;29;28 - 00;17;52;29
Unknown
But I when I sat with those clients, it was very eye opening to me as to the type of challenges that these clients would have. But it became very obvious to me that within a month or two, clients will be asking us, okay, what is your software stack? What does your infrastructure look like? They'll get past the AI hype, right?

00;17;53;01 - 00;18;13;01
Unknown
And if you're at security, but they'll be like, okay, show me now I'm going to make you talk to our head of IT or my CIO or CTO. How do you explain this system? How does it work? And if you just say, I got an OpenAI token and I loaded your files into it and it just worked, they were like, okay, one, why can't we do it right?

00;18;13;04 - 00;18;51;09
Unknown
Secondly, so are you giving all of our stuff to OpenAI to train their models, and how do we keep the secure? How do you run your system within our environment, or how do we securely give data to you, like all of those questions that have nothing to do with it? Cause like I. But that was going to be the foundation that how do we store all this data and move this data, pass the data and make our system secure so that so our clients, our AI, that IT teams of our clients and the business folks would trust that they could build with us.

00;18;51;11 - 00;19;15;25
Unknown
So I think I had to go through very systematic understanding of, to build a system that we could chat with, to build a system that we could build workflows with, to build a system that you can ingest a whole bunch of data, extract the data you needed, and then go to 5 or 6 external external APIs or databases, or public or private.

00;19;15;28 - 00;19;47;19
Unknown
How do you build this in a secure manner and in a in a fast manner, so that when you click the buttons or see the prompt that generate a workflow? For me, it can on the fly go through all the systems, extract information, come back pretty quickly, and solve a problem with high accuracy. So that just takes a lot deeper understanding of software, because AI to me is just the next evolution of software, like a component.

00;19;47;21 - 00;20;21;29
Unknown
But the basics of networking infrastructure, data security, data housing, analytics tools don't necessarily you still need all of those to have a very solid foundation, so that you can build much more rapid pieces on top of it. So I think I have to just bring in that true software depth and build a system with that, because. If if it was easy to just being able to build like any person could build what collide had at that point, then there's nothing different.

00;20;22;01 - 00;20;50;09
Unknown
Like there's nothing as a secret sauce, other than the distribution, obviously. But at this point, like, we have a full blown platform that has all these components, that interface that's very complex, but it's complex because the challenges we are trying to solve are complex to my favorite part of that three days and client meeting is you and I are sitting next to each other and there's a map on the table.

00;20;50;11 - 00;21;14;02
Unknown
And I'm telling you, everything in this industry runs off a map. You always throw a map out when you start talking about where you drill a well or your assets or whatever. And I looked at you with a straight face and I said, hey, Canisius up on the screen, the geologist is going to want to look at the map upside down, because they're always used to being at the head of the table, showing the map to everybody else, looking at it upside down.

00;21;14;04 - 00;21;39;18
Unknown
And, I think you actually believed me. I get, I get, I get Khalid telling me, get that out, man. You can't do that. You get chase him off. No. And I think that kind of holds to showcases, right. That my I did not know anything about oil and gas other than. And now you're like on calls talking about pods and probables and this is crazy.

00;21;39;18 - 00;21;57;12
Unknown
Yeah. And like we start learning through this the same way Chuck I've seen you go through that software journey too. Like I think I in mutual admiration. Right. I've kind of sent a couple of messages to, to you about I've read some of your emails and seen you in some of the meetings and seen some of the proposals, and I'm like, wow.

00;21;57;13 - 00;22;16;28
Unknown
Like the level of depth of what you're explaining, even technologically, to how this data can come together or what we could build. That's incredible. Right. But that's I think that happens when you have that that osmosis of culture, good ego. So we have around here, we have a really good ecosystem where we are all learning from each other.

00;22;16;28 - 00;22;40;08
Unknown
I didn't know anything about oil and gas beyond when I started watching Landman. That was my introduction into dude. I was in the I was in the the conference room, where they shot that scene with Rebecca, where she came in to that, arbitration. And, I took a I took a picture in there and I tweeted it out and tagged Kayla Wallace.

00;22;40;08 - 00;23;05;03
Unknown
The, the, actress. Hey, Rebecca. I'm here. Yeah. No, it was it's just been an incredible kind of just show also. But just my incredible journey within oil and gas and, you know, was was wild. So, that we, we were in there meeting with the company whose conference room it was. They said there were probably 150 people there that day.

00;23;05;03 - 00;23;31;17
Unknown
Cameramen make up, you know, they were kind of thinking there would be like 10 or 15, 2 or 3 cameras, cameras everywhere, probably 150 people. The other thing they said, Kayla Wallace, very dainty. She was really small. Wow. Yeah I know, yeah, but no, it's a great show too. Yeah. Love it. Yeah. Let's vote. So what was what was unexpected.

00;23;31;23 - 00;24;02;00
Unknown
Good. Like after you'd been here 3 or 6 months. And what was unexpected bad I all I've been in the startup ecosystem for a long time. Each job that I've taken has been at a small at progressively like smaller companies, just so that I can. Once you learn how to make a company successful from series B to onwards, then if you go to series A, you know, here's something Delta that is new for me to learn, right?

00;24;02;00 - 00;24;26;09
Unknown
But once it hits series B, I know what the pattern journey could look like. So in my career, I've consciously tried to get closer and closer to true just startup in the hopes that one day I'll learn enough and I might have an opportunity to build something with my family. I mean, we have talked about that a lot, so I was coming into Clyde when I came, seed investment had just happened.

00;24;26;09 - 00;24;55;18
Unknown
We were literally 12 or 13 full time people and just very different scale because I was coming from a company being the head of engineering of what had become a multi-billion dollar company, managing two, 300 people in all of the stuff. So to go from there to literally just being employee number 12 or 13 in a company with a couple of engineers, that was very different.

00;24;55;20 - 00;25;36;03
Unknown
And I think I just did not as much as I felt that I was prepared for a true small seed startup. My journey has been very stressful and anxiety driven as well in many ways. If I'm just being very yeah, no, I love what I've been there with you, right? Because the amount of learning we are going through and the vision that Collin has operating in that ecosystem is very hard because I'm not a social media person, so I'm just going to go on record and I'll say like Twitter, like X, or what it like brings a lot of anxiety to me.

00;25;36;06 - 00;26;05;07
Unknown
So I've never been on this platform. So the only platform you'll see me on is LinkedIn, just because that's what everybody has, right? Everybody has that. But 15, 16 years ago I cut out all the media from my life because I can't I can't operate with that. So when I see so much noise all the time, this release, this release, and if you look at our slack channels, everybody's posting something every hour.

00;26;05;10 - 00;26;25;07
Unknown
Did you guys try this new thing? Did you guys try this new thing? It's like the new shiny object syndrome is so much and it's very distracting because you're like, okay, like all these tools are great, but none of them have been tested in production. And at some point we have to decide what's our core ecosystem, what are we at the core selling?

00;26;25;10 - 00;26;55;08
Unknown
What are the best ways to build that? A technology set that can last long enough, but. And not going to get distracted by everything else that's coming in. So I would say that our level of input, of all the things that could be done, all the new things that's coming, that's very high. So having a buffer of trying to operate with that versus being able to execute is very tough.

00;26;55;08 - 00;27;27;06
Unknown
When you are when you have a smaller team, because you can only do so much. And now with AI, obviously our throughput is a lot more. But what that's manifested into is that yes, we can have five agents running concurrently to do a lot of things, but we still today have to tell those agents very explicitly what needs to be done, which means that my brain can only compute serially or in parallel so much, and I can just not keep up with that much context running in.

00;27;27;08 - 00;27;55;20
Unknown
So it just drives a lot of minute by minute decisions that you feel you have to make, but you have to slow down. So I think that's been very difficult in this journey. And that's something I did not anticipate to the level at which Callide has it. But I think that's why Callide is winning and will continue to win because of our ability that we can uplevel ourselves so quickly.

00;27;55;22 - 00;28;16;08
Unknown
So I think that was kind of if I had to say that that was kind of the I did not expect it to be this hard, this stressful, this, this fast either, without us being able to do so. I think that was kind of my experience on the positive side.

00;28;16;10 - 00;28;48;05
Unknown
I also did not anticipate that because of all of that, we would make this much progress. Within months. Like literally, one of the biggest things we have built is an ecosystem where we can we have developed a platform now that our PhD can genuinely build pilots pretty quickly, that we can then start pushing into production. But now our ability to meet our clients where they are rapidly, which used to take one of our earlier clients, took us six months.

00;28;48;05 - 00;29;07;25
Unknown
Right. Like we have that use case. We just couldn't we didn't have the staff, didn't have the knowledge, didn't have what we were just moving through. The same use cases now got cut from six months to a month, two weeks, two days to turnaround times of days as well that they give us feedback we can quickly go through.

00;29;07;28 - 00;29;33;11
Unknown
But when you look at that in balance, we only developed that capability, that platform in November. And from November to now. So it's crazy how much we have done. But till November we were also building a base that's now allowing us to go super fast. So I think that to me has been super positive that it it's become very real very quickly.

00;29;33;14 - 00;29;56;17
Unknown
And I think at a personal level, Chuck, I and I think I'll, I'll say this on, on, on, on data TV that. I feel very blessed that I've been able to work with and rub shoulders with folks that I would have never had the opportunity to you being one of them. Right. And I would have never had the opportunity.

00;29;56;20 - 00;30;15;26
Unknown
I've worked with a lot of different people, but just I think this has been the oil and gas space has surprised me, really with best people on the planet. I just I always say that about our industry and I, I think two things make it this way. And you can you can see if you've picked up on it.

00;30;15;26 - 00;30;41;03
Unknown
Or maybe I'm wrong. One, I think by nature we spend all of our money drilling a while, and then we turn it on and see what we got. So you've got to be an optimist. I mean, you just can't. You cannot be a pessimist in this business. And then the second thing that I think differentiates oil and gas from every other industry is literally every one of us has been rich and every one of us has been broke.

00;30;41;09 - 00;31;22;05
Unknown
Yeah. And so I always say the, the, the CEO of a multi-billion dollar oil and gas companies best friend is usually the janitor. And when times are good, they're flying around on the CEO's plane. And when times are bad, the CEO sleeps on the janitor's couch. And that's just how we roll. Yeah, and I think that's just been so fascinating for somebody like me who I grew up in Pakistan, I moved to the US when I was 17 to do my undergrad, and from there, just like started working through the the software ranks and so came from a decent family, but grew up with not a lot and but had this opportunity that my parents

00;31;22;05 - 00;32;02;23
Unknown
were able to afford me to come here and make a great life out out of that and have a family that's now here. But I could just never in my wildest dreams imagine sitting here right, and rubbing shoulders with folks who have achieved a lot financially in life as well, because I think within my 79 months of meeting clients, you know, all these folks are you'll probably be able to correct me, but just I've legitimately, probably shook hands with some billionaires and near billionaires and yeah, but you talk to them and there's just a level of just groundedness and humbleness.

00;32;02;23 - 00;32;21;03
Unknown
And just like they just come, they just go. Did Uber and went and gotten a Honda Civic. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. And they say it's sometimes like it's hard to compute that because all you are seeing is prior to being involved in this is just the what you see in the shows, what you read, what you are being told.

00;32;21;06 - 00;32;48;00
Unknown
That's been fascinating to me. And and just something that I feel very proud of, being able to be part of effecting change in an industry like that and and being able to be part of some people's orbit. So that's been amazing. Yeah. No, it really is. It's it's a great industry and I'm I've always said because, you know, on the software front oil and gas always been slow to adopt.

00;32;48;02 - 00;33;13;18
Unknown
But I've always felt the bifurcation was if you could get rich doing something like drilling a four mile lateral and doing a 97 stage frack on it to open up a sort of rock that's never commercially produced before, and you can make a million barrel well, out of that. We do stuff that's as technologically sophisticated as going to the moon.

00;33;13;22 - 00;33;41;01
Unknown
I mean, it's really hard to do. It's just if it's nickels and dimes, we don't do it because, you know, this is in shock. If to build on to that asset, my exposure into software has been completely within the software realm of. This is probably the first time that I'm working in an industry where. It's not, all the tech bros, right?

00;33;41;04 - 00;34;04;25
Unknown
For the lack of a better word. And when you're working with the tech pros, everybody just wants to make you believe that there's so much more superior. They have the best tech. There's so much smarter than you are. And it just gets very exhausting, honestly. Like, because you're always just trying to keep up with and just feeling not good enough, feeling inferior in some way or whatever form.

00;34;04;28 - 00;34;22;09
Unknown
What I found is that in in oil and gas, keeping software aside. But when you actually think about the technological advancements that have happened, like drilling for oil might like the, the, the drills and.

00;34;22;11 - 00;34;47;22
Unknown
That it requires a certain level of understanding of engineering, a different engineering. But that's actually solving a real problem and a very sophisticated problem. Like yesterday we were or last week we were at a client's office that showed us their control room where they were moving like they were moving sand and trucks and all being controlled from an office.

00;34;47;22 - 00;35;25;19
Unknown
And that crazy. You think about that. You're like, how is this possible? So then for those folks to also see that, oh, we are technologically behind on software. Like that's actually not true because their investment has just been in something different. Right? But the fact that they can control a truck or a drill bit thousands of miles out within within seconds of like the control being pushed, that's very core engineering, which has been so much fun to talk to those folks, because when they apply the same principles into what we are now trying to build, you can start layering, right?

00;35;25;19 - 00;35;49;03
Unknown
Have really great conversations, but it's just been a very fascinating journey because that's why I've been so happy and feel blessed that, okay, this I'm not dealing with all the the typical tech bro sort of mentality, but here are people who are solving real challenges. I want to build something that actually helps them. And it's and it's arguably the most important challenge we have as humans.

00;35;49;03 - 00;36;13;01
Unknown
Yeah. I mean, because energy abundance is life. I mean, you can that's a 99% correlation. You use more energy, you got a better life. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No it's been it's been fascinating to see kind of how that's kind of evolved. So what's what's our big challenge for the next three months. And then what's our big challenge for the next two years.

00;36;13;04 - 00;36;34;19
Unknown
So I think the next three months, I believe, is where the technology that we have built so far finally we will have I called you two days ago when you closed another deal like you had posted. I was like, Chuck, Holy crap, this is awesome because now we are seeing all the labor that was put in starting to hit right.

00;36;34;19 - 00;36;59;01
Unknown
We are getting multiple contracts with very big companies, just one after another. So I think now the challenge is going to be where the rubber meets the whole road and our technology and our execution being truly tested, which I'm very excited for because this is why we are building what we are building to feel that we are making a change.

00;36;59;04 - 00;37;33;10
Unknown
So I think our challenge is going to be, can we actually and I feel very confident, but our clients need to see that that will our technology hold up? Yeah, because most of the clients who are coming to us, and if I'm just been very open like they have already tried some very big name companies and they all had their copilot, they all had the copilot template, right, which had gpt2 they have all tried some other custom AI companies that are competing with us technically and have all the companies we are talking to.

00;37;33;10 - 00;37;55;04
Unknown
They have had they have not had a positive experience. And with us they are seeing a technical stack. They are seeing a deployment stack with a forward deploy engineering model. They are seeing the care that you and others are putting in on the front lines. They are seeing that every time they call us, we are ready to go and ready to meet them where they are.

00;37;55;06 - 00;38;17;11
Unknown
So I'm just excited to see how we measure up to their expectations and their challenge. The early signs are very positive, so I think next three months I want to see us land these so that we can then expand as well, because we have that land and expand proven out by a couple of companies. Now we need to do it faster with with more companies.

00;38;17;14 - 00;38;56;21
Unknown
It's all over the next two years. I think our biggest challenge is going to be. I just genuinely believe that next three, six months, as we build more traction, we will become the de facto. You know, software partner for a lot of the big companies. They'll come and ask for a lot more. Our challenge is going to be can we keep our quality high and deliver to those expectations and not just software quality high, but as a company or people quality high, so that we can replicate the success?

00;38;56;23 - 00;39;19;22
Unknown
Because I just feel that that hockey stick is going to happen, and then our challenge is going to become one. Can we continue to to build rapidly? And then secondly, can we not get distracted by building 20, 30, 40 different things and start specializing and figured out how to how to build platforms that people can build with? Because that's the way we'll have to scale.

00;39;19;22 - 00;39;50;23
Unknown
We can't scale with let's go out and hire 2 or 3000 people. We need to build platforms that will allow people to go much faster in deployments and build applications. We're going to let our clients build maybe one day. I think that would be that would be a great way of our technology worlds, because we are already proving out that a technology is starting to get to the point where a forward deploy engineers, majority of them are not software engineers at all.

00;39;50;25 - 00;40;15;16
Unknown
But I mean, yeah, Chuck, you have seen the type of applications that they're able to build. Now with that platform. The leap is not that far where we could build an ecosystem that we could just give to our clients to build on within their applications. But it's a little bit different model, right? So I think we'll have to kind of assess and understand which field we want to play in.

00;40;15;18 - 00;40;36;15
Unknown
And I think in two years we may find out that whatever we are planning today and the way we evolve is very different because of the market knowledge. But increasingly, I feel the answers change every, every two weeks when when I'm, you know, somebody for you to ask me six months ago can, can, you know, can you read handwriting?

00;40;36;15 - 00;41;13;25
Unknown
And I said, no. Yeah. Today I'm like, it reads better than we do. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think this is why the technology is evolving so fast, but it's also evolving so fast because our companies are like that on the frontier. Pushing the envelope. Yeah. And providing that feedback back into the infrastructure to continue to evolve. So I think I would want to kind of understand in two years like and see what is collide evolve into do we haven't what identity we fully have platform ecosystem wise, vertical integration wise.

00;41;13;27 - 00;41;37;21
Unknown
And then just because I'm not a humanoid yet, like I'm not an agent, I'm still a human. My brain can only process so much at a given time, and my stamina will only last so much. The pace at which we are running, we are literally running 100m in the marathon, right? Fashion and how do we keep up with that?

00;41;37;24 - 00;42;00;03
Unknown
So I think those are the the human side of things that I'm also very interested to see. How much do we push? I think that's going to be a challenge. You know, this was interesting. We've been talking to, a, a sales guy, you know, about possibly joining us. And it's nothing that's going to be immediate.

00;42;00;05 - 00;42;35;06
Unknown
But anyway, you know, he's come by a few times, we talk, we trade notes, and I was, I was, talking to him, and I don't think I appreciated this. He pointed this out. He, he pointed this out almost inadvertently, but I'll give him credit for, for lasered in on it. You know, when you're a private equity investor and let's say you're the CEO of a company and I'm the investor the way our deals work does, I put a call at 98% of the money.

00;42;35;06 - 00;42;55;17
Unknown
You put up 2%, and we just are off to the races. If there's a $100 million call, I'll put up 98 million you put up to, and we're off to the races. Right. And the way the documents read, they say I am the 900 pound gorilla. I get to do whatever I want, I control the board, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00;42;55;20 - 00;43;17;07
Unknown
And a management team would go, oh my gosh, these documents are so unfair. But I would sit there with with the management team and, and, and say things like, you know, what would mortify me the most if you said, hey, Chuck, here are the keys to this car. The royalty payments are due on Friday. Good luck with that.

00;43;17;08 - 00;43;34;10
Unknown
I mean, I can't run this company, so, you know, it's almost kind of like when you're in a private equity company, it's like being married. I mean, you've been married. I mean, you can tell your wife to do certain things, but at the end of the day, you know, you kind of got to all coexist. You got to respect each other.

00;43;34;10 - 00;44;11;29
Unknown
You got to understand who brings certain talents to the place. And so if you think about that relationship, that relationship is a principal to principle relationship. And the sales guy made the point. He said, Chuck, you're structuring these sales deals as principal. The principal I mean, you're giving a you know, you're you're giving a lot of agency kind of to the, to the, the client and depending a lot on the relationship you all have, as opposed to necessarily any guys just be cognizant of that because at some point you're going to sell to a large company where it's not a principal.

00;44;12;02 - 00;44;39;06
Unknown
You know, I mean, you know, a CTO of a midsize private equity company is, you know, part of the C-suite. It's usually an owner in the company very, you know, very significant player. So, man, you're going to be on some bigger companies where you're dealing with employees and you're going to have to have contracts and policies and procedures in place because you're going to be doing deals with people you don't know.

00;44;39;08 - 00;44;55;14
Unknown
So I actually see that as kind of our challenge. How do we grow into that? On what I'll say, kind of the sales and administrative side. And I think, Chuck, building on to that piece, from what I've seen.

00;44;55;16 - 00;45;26;04
Unknown
In some of the other companies, I've been part of that. What you're selling must be measurable, and it must deliver the value you are saying. Right. Because we have seen this firsthand, that because of your relationships, we have been able to iterate, to develop, not in the earlier phase. Not everybody's going to be that forgiving and accepting. And I think that's like building on to that challenge.

00;45;26;04 - 00;45;49;09
Unknown
Right. Like we'll have to make sure that we can build stuff that people see value straight up as well. So I don't have to go on an apology tour. Yes. So but we very much appreciate you giving us the time to go through some of that. But I think that's the power of the relationships. And that's why they always say, right, whenever you are, starting a new business is always friends and family.

00;45;49;09 - 00;46;10;06
Unknown
That's for investors. At least they know that. Some of them I trust you and might give you. And that gives you the next round, gives you the next one. Bye time you on to your series ABCd whatever. Right. And you're raising money from people that you don't know at all. So I think it then builds, but they are giving you money because you as an operator have proven out that I can do this right.

00;46;10;13 - 00;46;27;00
Unknown
And they may not get the 100 x return, but they are not looking for the 100 x, they just want a consistent ten x return on whatever return they need. So it's going to be pretty interesting for us to get to that stage, as we go through that. But yeah, no, that is that is kind of wild.

00;46;27;03 - 00;46;49;25
Unknown
Real quick before we wrap up, brag on the team some. Yeah. It's amazing. Just who have who we recruited and, and all that because, it's pretty impressive. Yeah. No, absolutely. And with names without names. Yeah. You got you can say names. I'll do the first names, then. There you go. So, Jimmy, we already talked about, at the very beginning.

00;46;49;28 - 00;47;13;27
Unknown
He's the star kid superstar. And he is. I called his dad after we had that meeting in Austin that he went to. Yeah, and I said, I said, Marshall, go tell mama your boy did really well. Yeah, I was so, so proud and happy and emotional in some ways, because it's funny. Like, he's. Yeah, like it's great kid.

00;47;13;27 - 00;47;33;13
Unknown
And coming up in this environment and just great value. So I think that's one of the things that our team has like just great values culturally and that's super important to maintain. Otherwise you just create friction. Yeah. So we know about Jimmy. We talked about some things about Stephon. Maybe you like seven was one of the earlier devs.

00;47;33;19 - 00;47;56;03
Unknown
Yeah, he but he's been here longer than you have. Yeah, he has been here longer than me. He has been here. He was part of the original team and built community, then started building the enterprise. And now he is part of a core integral AI team that's building the the ecosystem. He's right now going through a front end refresh of our application that when people will see that, they'll be super impressed.

00;47;56;05 - 00;48;12;28
Unknown
We are doing the show and tell on this, so I get to see it. So we get to see it tomorrow and and it's impressive really. So and for him to be able to do that within a couple of weeks, that's impressive too. Then we have a couple of folks from my network that came in. One is Mark.

00;48;12;28 - 00;48;36;15
Unknown
Mark and I worked. Mark is our chief architect. So he's the that's really helped me put this example that I gave off that yes. You created this miniature model of the community you wanted to build, but and actual like building blocks, and you have to build this whole tower. Like he helped me lay down the foundation of our ecosystem because he's worked in this field for 25 plus years, been a star performer everywhere.

00;48;36;15 - 00;49;01;26
Unknown
He's like your quintessential index engineer. And now with the genetic coding at his part, he's like a 100 x engineers, right? So Mark's here, somebody else from my network that came in. His name is Clay. Clay has an interesting story, too. Maybe you shared that at some point. But he was a completely frontend person. And then now he's a full stack developer.

00;49;01;26 - 00;49;24;05
Unknown
He's built some of our. The biggest challenges we have is creating robust data pipelines and extraction models for from a PDF or an image or something to extract all the data. So he's doing a lot of that work for us. And over the last like three like maybe three months or so, like we have hired the next set of folks who have fully transformed us as well.

00;49;24;07 - 00;49;44;11
Unknown
One is our founding engineer, John, who is in OKC. So we finally have like OKC presence as well. He worked at previously, worked at an energy company in OKC and then worked for AWS for about seven years. Like he was one of their star performers and we were able to get him to come say yes to us.

00;49;44;11 - 00;50;12;28
Unknown
So he left AWS to come join us. He is someone that's bringing a lot of the genetic framework into our, our ecosystem. Then we have Sam, who's the Candy crush guy that we all love bragging about, and he was on the Candy crush team that, was a site reliability engineering leader. And I think his claim to fame is that he brought the as like, they're incentivized to do this.

00;50;12;28 - 00;50;33;14
Unknown
Right. So not that he was trying to hack the system, but he brought down the whole like, app because he was the grinder trying to and he proved it was it's not easy. But that's how they then evolve. He had moved to Sweden with his family some time ago, and now he's actually moving back to Houston. So he's spending a lot of time here.

00;50;33;17 - 00;50;54;15
Unknown
So he he is the one who brought in a genetic coding into our ecosystem. So each of these people that I am talking about, they have all contributed in very, very, very massive ways. So in some ways, you can think about it that we have eight superstars who are also individually owning big transformations in the company, which is very unique.

00;50;54;18 - 00;51;20;20
Unknown
That doesn't happen. That's why we are able to go so fast as well. And then we have jazz, Mia and jazz. Mia was, just such, such a great addition to our team. And she came. She has worked at Microsoft. She has worked at some of these, like get his went to MIT, Oxford Masters, PhDs, and she was at Microsoft working on reinforcement learning for OpenAI models.

00;51;20;22 - 00;51;39;14
Unknown
So she came and joined us. And she's someone everybody's read the article, von Rigs, she's the brains behind that, in figuring out like, how do we build our own models now and go from supervised learning into refinement models, into pre-training models, and in one year you're going to see that. Did you did you hear what I did there?

00;51;39;14 - 00;52;02;26
Unknown
So we went to Oak City. Yeah. I took her with me and we went around, saw some companies, and she was talking about the model and the Scriven Hotel. Oh, is is haunted. I mean, you know, it just is. There's there's a whole Wikipedia page on it. NBA teams have, like, supposedly 12 New York Knicks slept in the same room because they were all scared of the ghost and everything.

00;52;02;28 - 00;52;25;28
Unknown
And, so anyway, Jasmine is there. She's up on the, she's up, you know, on the wood floor, is it? I think it's the 15th floor that supposedly the ghost haunts Jasmine. It was up there. And Colin's telling or texting with her. Oh, yeah. You know, it's haunted. What? You can't tell the girl that was born in New Orleans.

00;52;25;28 - 00;53;08;12
Unknown
That hotel is is ordered. So she literally ran out of her room and they made, made her change floors. Wow. That I do not know that. Oh, yeah. That was great. Yes, the Jasmine's here. And you'll see, within a year you're going to see multiple models come out of collide that are specific to fields like land and title versus, well, you know, because I don't I don't think people appreciate that when we talk about this is, you know, you can use copilot and get caught 75 or 80% of the way there, to get to 100%, which is where you have to be to be able to automate a workflow or whatever.

00;53;08;15 - 00;53;32;00
Unknown
It's really hard that last mile. And so we're doing it with our data pipelines and really, in effect, conditioning the data before we even run AI on it. And then our rag are retrievable augmented generation. So it's giving context, if you will, to that interaction with the language model. It's saying, hey, we're an oil and gas company.

00;53;32;07 - 00;53;59;11
Unknown
And oh, by the way, I'm going to go get you that aforementioned condition data. And you can only use that to make the decision. But we're going to have to have our own language models that are specifically trained. I mean, and that's literally, as we speak right now, that's exactly what she's doing, right on the floor. Right? Especially training the models going through working with John Key right now, it's it's ESP, you know, the the petroleum engineering test.

00;53;59;11 - 00;54;20;25
Unknown
But she's going to do the AAPL land, man. Yeah. You know etc.. And they just had that meeting. Recently where they were looking at all of these models as to the basically the knowledge graph. Right. How's this information connected. Yeah. So she can go that in feed. And the last person that we just hired a few weeks ago, also in OKC, his name is Dalton.

00;54;20;25 - 00;54;48;28
Unknown
He used to work for another energy company and just came and joined us. Has great experience in AI and building his background, his data science, data engineering moved into AI. Applied AI pieces in building Oklahoma City, Oklahoma City, he the the the key capital to the AI. Energy revolution. Yeah. Exactly. Like it's so funny because a lot of the the dev team just ended up being more remote than, than we wanted it to be.

00;54;48;28 - 00;55;11;05
Unknown
And but OKC now has two of our engineers sitting right there. And we are obviously starting to do some great work with potential clients there. And that's going to be the key for us to to have a tech team and a forward deploy team merging into these epicenters, right, that we can go into. Yeah, they need to be in clients offices.

00;55;11;05 - 00;55;36;20
Unknown
Yes. I just they just do I mean I we're seeing that more and more each day. The more time you spend in there educating clients on what the technology can do, the better you are at helping them automate their workflows. And if I could do one more plug here, which is, you know, when you're building these systems, you have to be able to build them to scale, build them fast, but also build them securely.

00;55;36;22 - 00;56;04;15
Unknown
And we it's very rare that you are able to do all three, but that's what you get great experience, you get great mindset. You get set that vision. So right now we are going to our Soc2 compliance, which is a huge requirement for a lot of the the customers and filling up a lot of the details in the customers have been potential clients have been asking us to do, insufficient like pentesting the penetration testing of the system to see how secure it is.

00;56;04;17 - 00;56;29;22
Unknown
And you go to companies and tell them to just basically hack your system, break your system and find all the vulnerabilities and come back to you. And we just ran our, admin test last week or the week before and came back with flying colors on our software, basically zero critical, zero high vulnerabilities. They found some informational stuff that be good to just work through.

00;56;29;25 - 00;56;52;14
Unknown
But that's like to a software person, right? And who's wants to feel proud of building great systems. That's a huge accomplishment to have an eye on security from day one, because that's going to be so paramount to our customers. Every single customer asks about, where's my data? How does it get housed? Make sure that I don't land up on the front page of Wall Street Journal like we have those cases.

00;56;52;21 - 00;57;10;24
Unknown
So being able to have a third party of somebody choosing to come in and do a penetration test on our software and come out with those colors, like, that's a huge testament. We do we do have one client that's that's a little different on that. And I'm just going to go ahead and call him out. Cast cop one of of wins.

00;57;10;24 - 00;57;25;19
Unknown
Like, dude, I hope you get hacked and my data is everywhere because I want to sell all these crappy wells, and I hope somebody makes me an offer. Well, for them, we'll make sure we give them a different flavor of our platform. That's bad. That wouldn't be good for me, Cass. Come on, you can publish your stuff. Don't.

00;57;25;19 - 00;57;43;03
Unknown
Don't make me do it. Yeah, dude, I'm glad you're here. Now. I'm, very thankful. And to be here and Chuck, it's been. It's nice to have an adult, because I'm going to brag on you for just a second. You know, I get in there, I get to talk to people that doesn't sell any software. I get them talking to you.

00;57;43;03 - 00;58;01;07
Unknown
That's when I get a phone call back and it's like, hey, you want to talk? Come in here and let's talk about that workflow. So yeah, no thank you. It's it's been it's been awesome and just been going on these being able to talk to customers with you and others. It's been a lot of fun to like of all the challenges it's been a great rewarding journey to to learn.

00;58;01;09 - 00;58;28;08
Unknown
Yeah. So thank you. So how did people get in touch with you? Are you Canisius co idea. So CA and I s I us at collide.io and then LinkedIn. You can obviously find me there. That's pretty much the only social media presence you'll find me and and despite all of the pressures at collide of being into social media because obviously that's the genesis of the company too.

00;58;28;10 - 00;58;50;07
Unknown
Personally, don't have anything against it. I just would probably not go down that route. And, so we have a lot of other folks here who are doing a tremendous job in marketing and stuff, and that helps us continue to focus on the build. So but just email, LinkedIn, cool space. But thank you.