Energy Tech Startups

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0:15 So we're here with Jason this year with Energy Giggs, a company here in Houston that specializes on the energy industry and helping people connect with the talent they need Yeah, Jason, why don't

0:27 you tell us a little bit about how you got into this domain and how you're different from those brands, probably we are aware of, which is like Fiverr and Upwork. Yeah, so by trade, I'm a

0:39 consultant, like business process consultant, software consultant, about, gosh, now almost eight years ago, I was working for a large French consultant firm, Capt. Jim and I, I was working in

0:50 wall containment and I got laid off around Thanksgiving And if you've ever gotten laid off around that time, it's a, it's a really crummy time to look for work.

0:60 And so I drove Uber for a little bit and then a friend of mine was like, dude, like you got an MBA, like, what are you doing driving Uber? You know, you should try consulting via some of these

1:09 freelance platforms. And I was at a certain part in my career as a consultant that I hadn't really fully mastered how to sell, but I could deliver work. Um, and so I started going on these

1:20 platforms. And the first thing that I noticed about these platforms is like there weren't a lot of projects or any projects at the time This is like 2016 in, in the energy space and, and so like,

1:34 you know, one thing that led to another, I ended up like, I went in really, really low. I was making like25 an hour just to just get out of my head and just to, you know, prove that to myself

1:42 that I could consult, even because I just got laid off. And the idea of like building an energy, dedicated energy platform, um, to connect energy companies to talent on a just in time basis, it

1:53 kind of took hold And I started, that was like, you know, that was like 2016 and then over the years, like, I, you know, that next year, I kept freelancing, kept raising my rate, got more to

2:04 like where I needed to be rate-wise. And then, yeah, and then I stopped using those platforms for leads 'cause I was able to sell off the platform, find consultants, find projects off the

2:16 platform. And then we started bootstrapping energy gigs from our business and software consulting firm. And about four years ago, we raised an initial age around from one of our past consulting

2:27 clients and spun it out as a separate C Corp. So energy gigs as a whole, like what is it? Like it's essentially it's a work and talent platform for the energy industry. So companies come in, they

2:40 can post projects, they can post job roles. And you've got the talent side of the platform and the talent is made up of job seekers, consultants,

2:50 part-time people, you know, those hustlers, those people that like, they'd rather be, you know, freelancing as an engineer versus freelancing They have a full-time job as an engineer, but they

2:59 want to use their skills in a way to monetize their skills better. And also retirees, right? Like people like my father who, you know, power engineer, you know, 40 years in the space, like at

3:09 the top of his career knows more about like power than probably anyone else, like, you know, younger than him, whatever. I mean, he's, anyways, like, yeah, like, he just wants to work a

3:20 couple of projects here and there. And yeah, and so that's sort of the platform We help, you know, companies find talent, work with talent. Yeah, no, super interesting. You mentioned retirees

3:32 and I was like, yeah, there's

3:34 so many smart, experienced, retired people on my LinkedIn feed, who are like boosting my engagement 'cause there's so many great comments. And yeah, that's a very specific niche of people. So

3:48 what have you found over the past couple of years that you've taken it to market on, yeah, what categories of people are you attracting to the platform? So it's been really interesting, so we

4:00 complete our MVP last March, but as a consultant I didn't know much about talent recruiting, and so when we were building the product, we were like, okay, in order for us to really understand the

4:13 product and their users, we need to play the role of recruiter. And so we started recruiting early on, and this right when the IRA came out, we were involved recruiting. And so we've seen this

4:26 interesting shift, and like, IRA came out, you know, there's all this opportunities around hydrogen. We saw this big demand for hydrogen, where like, if you had, you know, any sort of

4:36 chemical engineering degree or experience in hydrogen, you could name your price and you can go wherever you wanted to go. Even though like a lot of the rules and stuff like that didn't just get

4:44 released until like December, right? But like, as that went along as I already kind of impacted sort of stabilized, I think people like companies didn't really know exactly how to, how to. make

4:57 use of the opportunities around the IRA and didn't really also, that translated to like hiring, getting stalled and changing. So we've seen some ebbs and flows in that. We've

5:11 done a fair amount of work in geothermal and geothermal has been sort of a beachhead market for us because we've heard on the talent side, there's a lot of people interested in getting into

5:23 geothermal A lot of the same skill set, drilling, safety, a lot of those similar skill sets can be applied to geothermal. And so on the talent side, there's been a lot of interest. And so we've

5:35 reached out to various companies and actually are supporting a search right now or are called to being drilling operator role in Colorado. So those are some of the trends we've seen. Okay, so in

5:47 terms of like, you know what Jason asked earlier, how you're different from Upwork and in Fiverr is that you're actually also helping companies recruit. So it's not just matching. contractors or

5:58 consulting gigs. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so I think our perspective on work in general is that work has fundamentally changed and you will wear different hats at different points in time. You might

6:12 be an employee one day and you might get laid off in a riff, right? Like, you know, some of these big companies shell, like they don't fire people, but every couple of years they play musical

6:21 chairs and they let people go, right? Like chairs are moved, right? Yep And so, like, when you find yourself without a job, like, that's a great opportunity for you to start your own business,

6:32 right? That's a great opportunity for you to consult, you know, you don't just have to just wait until you get that full-time job, you can freelance, right? Like,

6:43 or be a consultant, right? And so we wanna, we were creating the platform in such a way, initially our idea was just a freelance platform, but our thinking has evolved to be more along the lines

6:53 of, allow people to wear those different hats for different phases in their life. You know, retirees, for example, I have so much experience. You think about oil and gas. Like people, like a

7:07 lot of companies hire and fire in oil and gas based on price of oil. Well, there's been gaps of talent, right? Like, and I think we've talked, we've heard about like the great shift change and,

7:17 but those gaps means that like, some people with depth of expertise are not there And so how do you, you know, the retirees can play a role in filling those gaps? Yeah, yeah. And I was thinking

7:28 yesterday we were on the line with climate techies, another podcast and talking about what is Houston have to offer? And we were talking about how geothermal is picking up and there are a lot of

7:40 good parallels between geothermal drilling and traditional oil drilling. But I think you highlighted some things that are kind of industry agnostic, it's safety, it's process, and I think one of

7:50 our thesis is about Houston. Is anyone working on energy transition? should look at the talent here in Houston, 'cause a lot of that skill set of how you

7:58 build a10 million project or a100 million project. It's all the same, but it's also here. And I would go so broadly as to recommend any startup looking to come to Houston, instead of staffing up a

8:11 full company, maybe the first step is to go on energy gigs and say, okay, who's that vanguard of

8:17 our team we need to bring in, who can help us actually figure out what talent you even need, step one? Yeah, and then step two, how do we start to build these projects, right? Yeah, I mean, I

8:27 think that's like so spot on because hiring is, there's a lot of risk in hiring and people can interview really well on both sides, right? Like companies could present really well to the client,

8:41 and candidates could present really well to the company, but doesn't mean necessarily that working relationship is gonna be great, doesn't necessarily mean the culture is great or the candidate

8:50 knows exactly what they're talking about, might just be able to interview really well. So our perspective is. Try someone out, test them out. Like, obviously you're not gonna give away the keys

8:59 to the castle or the secrets, but find an interesting project, test them out on energy gigs, test them out as a consultant, as a contractor, and see if you wanna bring 'em on. Particularly if

9:08 you're a startup, right? Like, you don't wanna mess up your cap table, you don't wanna go through all of that process of getting them on sort of an equity plan, and then realizing really quickly,

9:18 I mean, obviously you can fire 'em, but why not just use a project to test 'em out? Yeah, and then I look at how most on gas companies work, they're like project-based, right? If you're a

9:31 developer, even as an ECPC firm, you're basically kind of freelancing within the company, and then suddenly you're a specific engineer, you're needed for this project, then you're put on that

9:42 project for four to five years as long as the lifetime of that project, and then when that project finishes, you're supposed to go on another project, and if there isn't one, then you'll be fired,

9:52 right?

9:54 So in terms of what you're really proposing is like this new way of thinking in which you don't have to maybe hire people where people can be freer. Have you also noticed, you know, the shift that

10:04 we've seen post COVID and how people work and how that's impacting the way we should hire and think about employees? Yeah, I mean, I think there is a little bit of attention. I think we missed

10:16 COVID in terms of like, where our platform wasn't ready, you know, at that time

10:22 I think companies in general are much more open to the idea of hiring through a platform. Energy is interesting because the concept

10:35 of freelancers sounds like too loosey-goosey or too like, there's not enough structure and rigor or safety, you know? And so

10:43 that'll take a little bit more time. And another thing that we found also, just in terms of our going to market and talking to prospects companies,

10:53 There's also like just generally not a deep understanding of what these platforms are. So we had built the platform thinking, you know, Upwork, Fiverr, these other platforms had done a lot of the

11:04 heavy work around market development, but they haven't really. Like in energy companies, I think for the longest time, I just kind of looked at that stuff as like that's tech, that's for tech,

11:14 that's not something that ever could be applied to for energy. And so that for us means that like, we actually have more market development to do And that was sort of a little bit of a eye-opening

11:25 moment for us. So it's like within energy, I think you are playing a specific space and you know, and correct me, we're wrong. I assume this is more kind of white-collar folks you're working with.

11:35 And so Jason's nodding here because you guys can't see, but I think 'cause my understanding of parts of the oil field, like if you're actually out there in the field, you know, it is challenging

11:46 to get kind of roused abouts and day labor and the firms who just specialize in that, just rounding up folks for. specific jobs. And I can totally imagine how that's not a job that's not a role

11:57 that's online yet. It could be a lot of value because there's a lot of folks who are kind of available on hand to help a given drilling job all the way up to

12:09 going out and checking if a well is running. But do you find that you're at different segments of the oil field? I think we have a small team and this is also eye-opening for us in terms of how we

12:23 built and gone to market. We built the platform for the entire energy value stream, so upstream, midstream, downstream, solar, geothermal, commodity markets. Anything as long as it has to do

12:37 with energy is relevant to energy gigs. But the capacity or the bottleneck is really what's the capacity of our team to take product to market, right? To take the product to market and sell into

12:48 that market. And so our actually, one of our very first, projects was a geothermal project, or it was a global search, it was a consultancy based out of New Zealand project manager in Mexico City,

13:00 wanting a geothermal wire line engineer to work in Ethiopia and in the field. And we were like, the reason we didn't want to go to field is because it was like the risks are super high. We don't

13:12 have like a great insurance policy, like, you know, there's some dynamics there that we saw them totally figured out, right? So we were like, okay, well, let's try it and see and see what

13:21 happens. And it was a great experience. Like we found someone in Kenya, an expert professional in Kenya who could go work across the way in Ethiopia, but that

13:33 was not the goal. So, I mean, I think long term, when you look at our road map, and we do want to get into the field work turnaround So, you know, when

13:47 there's a shut-in of a downstream facility where they need 200 people. some of these people are just watching a hole to make sure no one like is dying in a hole. Like we, there's a great

13:57 opportunity for us there, but it's just capacity for us that's limiting. And so we've had to be very over the last six months. We've had to sort of narrow in and look at, okay, what is our quote

14:08 unquote beachhead market? Who are the customers that would most use our services right now? 'Cause we've also sold to like big companies, publicly traded companies, got MSAs in place, but like we

14:18 waited six months for anything to happen and then they had an org change and so it's like, it's really capacity is our challenge there. Are you

14:29 also seeing, I mean, a few years ago, I was hearing a lot that, you know, because of COVID, people are applying for a job in Houston from all over the world. So you're getting like 10, 000

14:38 applications for one job. And then you're using AI to figure out who's the right candidate and if that is really the best approach and like really, really, good candidates don't get through because

14:50 they didn't have the right keywords in their resume. How do you solve that problem? Yeah, I mean, it's a fascinating question and it's a question we bat around a lot. Like, I mean, AI has made

15:02 things easy, right? You can go to chat GBT and you could create your cover letter, right? You can use chat PBT and input, you know, especially now with operator, right? Like you could probably

15:13 look at a bunch of resumes in series and say these are the top candidates, right? Yeah There is a risk of having AI talk to AI. And then you're like, well, you didn't really get anywhere, right?

15:24 Yeah. So I think we were kind of teasing out, like, obviously we wanna make it easier, take the pain out of some of the processes. Like, so I'll tell you, like, a thing that's a pet peeve that

15:35 you can see memes online for is like, someone gives you their resume through your system and then you ask them to go create a profile. Yeah, and it's the worst, right? And we have that too,

15:47 right? Like, and we're solving that now, but like

15:52 that shouldn't happen. That's like waste, you need to cut that out, optimize that. And AI is in LLMs are really good at doing that. So we're trying to thread the needle of like figuring out,

16:03 okay, how do we take out the most painful parts? But then still always add a human element into it, like into the work, right? And so there's various ways that we're thinking about doing that.

16:16 And I think like LinkedIn does that pretty effectively, you know, many jobs that I have applied to when I did in the past, you know, you could just like send them your LinkedIn profile. And then

16:27 obviously attach a PDF resume to it. And like LinkedIn basically tells you what you've done in the past and what your qualifications are. But it's still, you know, for a lot of good talent, the

16:39 best way that I've found for people to get jobs

16:43 because they know somebody. Yes, yeah. So it's really hard actually for people to get jobs through these platforms, but perhaps having something that's niche for energy,

16:56 you know, how are you thinking about solving that problem if you do get 10, 000 applicants for a job? Yeah, I mean, I think - I mean, and maybe you won't because you're a bit one-ish. There's

17:06 like other 10, 000 in professional. Yeah, maybe not 10, 000, okay, but what about 1000? You know, it's still a lot, it's a big number, yeah Well, I mean, one thing that we've seen just in

17:14 our use of, like,

17:17 when we hire, hire the other platforms, right? Like, there's

17:23 a time duration of

17:26 candidates that you'll look at. Like, so let's say you post a job somewhere and you get 300 candidates. You're really probably gonna look at the first 10, 20, and then you're just gonna just not

17:38 really pay attention It becomes impossible almost to look at all everyone else on the internet. underneath that. So there are ways you could pulse it, right? You could say, okay, it's open,

17:48 it's closed, it's open, it's closed. And there's things you could do to make it easier for the human on the back end to review it. I think there always needs to be an aspect of human intervention,

18:02 you know? I don't fully trust. Just letting AI, letting an LLM, like evaluate and recommend candidates for you. I mean, that's obviously a use case, right? You could just say, okay, we'll

18:14 take all 300 people and then have, you know, have your LLM. Yeah, well, I think like the thing that's most arduous for me is like when I was doing a hiring, just understanding who is qualified.

18:27 Like, you know, you basically put out your job description. It's a spec sheet, essentially. And it's like, okay, does this person actually have all the things that I want at a minimum? And

18:37 then no one's ever perfect, but you kind of want to force rank of like, This one has 10 out of 10 of the requirements. as much as you might like something and it's like these folks actually just

18:47 don't meet the requirements. Let's actually filter them out. And so it seems to me like an LLM is a it's semantic filtering, right? I mean, that's the most basic use case, right? I mean, I

18:60 think this is our bias and being consultants, like our whole team is our consultants, like, and so we have a very strong bias of consulting sort of approach to even our platform. Like for us, it

19:11 always starts with the project. Like, you know, you can interview, but like really quickly go from interview to project and then test someone out on a project basis, right? Because that's where

19:22 the rubber meets the road when you really see, can they deliver, I mean, can they, are they in tune to the culture that you have, whether it's good or bad or in different, you know, it's like,

19:29 are you simpatico, right? Like, and that's, that's the best way to do it. And then for us, it's make conversion easy, right? Like, you know, a lot of the, you know, if you're working with

19:41 the staffing recruiting firm, there's like, you know, a hefty fee for converting someone, right? And so you got to make sure everything's aligned, you know, so you know, exactly said how you

19:53 actually monetize off of this. Yeah. So we are a two-sided marketplace. Candidates come on one end and the companies come through the other. We currently don't monetize the candidate side of the

20:05 platform in a sense that we don't charge anything for our candidates Now we have about 450, a little bit over that of candidates on the platform. And that includes job seekers, consultants,

20:16 experts, retirees, quote unquote freelancers, right? And then

20:28 we got about 60 companies on the platform. And up until probably fairly recently, we've monetized through sort of contingent strategic search, which has helped us understand how, you know, the

20:34 industry and also like the markup on the freelancers rate. So we don't ever put a thumb on the scale with regard to what the freelancers rate is. We say, okay, it's your rate, you own it, we

20:48 mark it up. Depending on the client, the company's preference, like sometimes they might have a little bit more of a white glove service where we mark it up by 20. If it's like just posted on the

20:59 platform, it's a 10 markup. And then there's like the strike, you know, the interchange. Yeah, the fees, some of those fees, yeah. But that's kind of how we monetize it But going forward, in

21:12 this year, we're gonna be rolling out a new pricing program. Well, we'll have like essentially three tiers and an enterprise tier, there's a growth tier and a startup tier, where certain features

21:22 will be sort of locked or unlocked based on, based on value, honestly, of the size of the company, right? So for example, if you're a startup and you have like five people on your team, you

21:32 don't need unlimited seats really necessarily, right? That's not gonna drive value, necessarily. So we're trying to figure out like optimized, you know, placement of features. or per value,

21:41 you know.

21:43 And how are you planning on scaling the platform? Yeah, I guess what's next for the growth, yeah. Yeah, so we're in the early stages of looking at raising capital. Our situation's a little bit

21:56 complicated, and that we're, we spun out of our software business consulting firm, that still pays my day job, so keep food on the table as kind of we'd said. Like, so there's some optionality

22:08 there If we were to raise capital the way we want to, I would probably, our whole team would probably convert over full time, and that would be, that would be the goal. If we're not able to do

22:20 that, then we're back to bootstrap. Continue to grow, focusing on our best sort of client profiles. Yeah, and actually if we can divert a little bit here, I think, you know, we're starting out

22:30 the new year, there's a lot of kind of, I'm gonna say volatility, not necessarily in the stock market, but just some kind of investor sentiment, I don't think anyone knows what's going to happen

22:39 in the next six months. Um, I guess as, as a, as a kind of founder going thinking about fundraising, like, are you hearing things from investors? What's, what's kind of the, the sense out

22:50 there? I just saw like on Sunday, siteline, you know, raise55 million for their data platform. Um, and so like clearly people are investing. Yeah. But I'm, I'm curious, like boots on the

23:02 ground. What's your feeling? I mean, the money being thrown at AI is just insane. It just blows my mind. Like, I mean, and, and the joke is like, everything is just a wrap around an L and I

23:13 chat to PT, right? And people are still raising tons of money. As long as you say you're an AI platform, you'll get some money. Yeah, I see you in an AI platform. Yeah, we're all, yeah, yeah.

23:23 So is it an AI platform? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, but then we also saw this week kind of how that can be very easily disrupted. Yeah. You know, we've spent, I think, 100 billion last year in

23:36 AI startups in venture capital. And, you know, I don't know, the rate of return is looking a little bit shaky right now. Yeah. It's fine. I still think there's value in the wrapper. That's my

23:47 idea. Yeah, I think there's definitely some value, but you know, I think we've definitely spent way too much money. Yeah. And the market going down this week with the new news of DeepSeek. It's

23:59 fascinating, right? Like, I mean, last week it was SoftBank and like, you know, 500 billion, 100 billion And then this week, like, it's almost like China's like, how about them apples, you

24:11 know?

24:14 Like, yeah, it's just super interesting. I, you know, there are times like, I think when version four, you know, dot, okay, came out of Chachi BT, like, I, I couldn't go to sleep. I was

24:25 like, we're done or it's all, it's all over, you know, like, you don't need anything else. No, no, it's all, yeah. All problems are solved Go, we've come on, you know, find another job,

24:35 be a palma or whatever, but it, like, there's,

24:40 I think there's, I mean, we're bullish on humans in general. Like we always think there's an opportunity to, you know, to combine AI with, with, with the human side of things. And there's

24:50 value there. And there's, there's a lot of space there. Yeah. Are you ready to lead the decarbonization charge? Energy Technexes is your platform for growth, offering unique resources and

25:01 expertise for energy and carbon tech founders. Join us at energytechnexescom and

25:07 start building your Thunderlizard But going back to that, it sounds like with the investor side things. So are you framing energy gigs as kind of an AI startup? Or how does that play for you in

25:18 terms of investor sentiment? I mean, I think so we do have a use case for AI and we were kind of cautiously going down that path as part of our pitch deck in terms of where we see it going.

25:33 But it's not the main part Like, I think probably more value in the short term forever. you know, for our investors, we'll be our go-to-market plan. Yeah. How we plan to attack the different

25:45 sort of

25:47 market niches within the energy industry. I think that's where the immediate return is gonna come back. And you're finding like investors are deploying capital, like they are interested in energy.

25:58 I guess that's kind of the broad question I'm trying to get answered. Yeah, so,

26:04 I think there's, I think the way I like our view on it is like, so we're at Greentown Labs. We've been there for the last year, and we've had some initial conversations with some VCs that were

26:16 climate focused, and they couldn't really work with us. Yeah, they threw up their nose. Yeah, because LPs like they're like LPs committed capital saying there's nothing you're doing is carbon

26:27 intensive, and we're like, well, we're in the people side of business, and if it's coal, we're gonna help companies and people in coal industry. If it's oil and gas, same thing. Now, the

26:37 interesting part on the talent side There's lots of people in oil and gas that are drillers that are drill, baby drill, but want to get out of oil and gas. And like they're missing an opportunity,

26:47 I think. And we're not gonna like, we even debate it internally. Do we go away from our mission to chase that capital? And it's like, no, like that's, I mean, we're in Houston, we're in oil

26:58 and gas town, lots of our colleagues and friends are in oil and gas. Like we care about climate change, we care about that. But like,

27:05 we're stay focused on the people side and we'll be fine Yeah, you gotta be authentic to what your customers want, what the market wants. Sometimes investors,

27:16 their customers

27:20 are LP. You know, you always gotta remember that. And you can kind of try to bend over backwards trying to kind of fit whatever they think they want. But at the end of the day, you gotta have a

27:27 good business and it doesn't matter and kind of what an investor thinks they want. But they wanna generate returns and you only do that by being kind of authentic to your customers, right? I mean,

27:38 like the mission piece, I feel like for any startups out there, like have a mission because it's like, it's the thing that's going to see you through like all the ups and downs of building your

27:48 product or taking your service to market like, you know, if you're, if you're looking at something higher than just, you know, just making the money, like, then you'll always be able to look at

27:58 it and say, okay, what do we, what's the decision to make here? And

28:03 what have you found from, you know, trying to fundraise here in Houston about the investor community, you know, aside from the fact that, you know, it's, it's been hard to reach out to

28:13 investors who are solely focused on maybe climate. But in general, I think the investor ecosystem is not that mature here. So what, you know, what if one, what have you found and then, you know,

28:26 what is your plan going forward in terms of fundraising? So full transparency, like I have barely even scratched and did the service of, you know, work. uh, so biased towards bootstrap, like,

28:41 but you said you had some angels come in. Yeah, we, we, we, yeah. So, um, and this was, so we had worked with a client on a business turnaround in the tech space. Um, and we had built, it

28:52 was like a three year, like multi-year engagement with them, helping them look at like, hey, can we, can, is there enough IP here to, to, you know, add in more capital to this business and

29:01 take it to market? Um, turns out that there was like theft and graft going on and it was like, it was going to be like, a whole thing, but we had won a lot of trust over that multi-year

29:12 engagement with, with our, in that client, that when it came to asking for funds, it was like, they, they just trusted us. And, um, and so that was very lucky, right? Like, um, maybe done

29:26 consulting on my end, probably, probably wasn't the most profitable consulting engagement ever, but like at the end, it resulted in us, it made raising heat took our entire angel round. We went

29:38 to him with 100 per 100k and he came back and he's like, I want to best 500k. So like dumb luck.

29:46 And so I don't have to get back to you on the answer to your question. No, but that's one experience that you've had, right? That is maybe. And this is from Houston. No, this is. This investor

29:59 was in the Middle East Yeah, but I think it's. Sometimes we talk about friends and family rounds, and I think sometimes people assume that means your uncle. But also sometimes it just means the

30:10 business relationships where people have worked with you and they know you're going to bust your butt for them. But also they trust what you're thinking. And I think especially in the energy

30:21 industry, here there's a lot of trust that when you show up and kind of deliver And I think, you know, folks like yourself who have like years of experience working in industry, you can tap into

30:35 that network and. but not everyone has free capital to kind of deploy willy-nilly, but that's part of your search sometimes. It's like finding those people we've worked with in the past and said,

30:45 saying, you know, how do we help me come on this journey? 'Cause I'm gonna go build this thing and I want you to be part of it. And it doesn't feel like sales. It feels like a partnership. 100.

30:55 Yeah, like,

30:58 I think that's like spot on. Like, we didn't really have to, didn't really have to pitch in a big way You know, it was all that time, you know, spent with him. Mm-hmm, yeah. Yeah, and being

31:09 able to see your value.

31:13 What do you think, I mean, so far in your journey, 'cause you've been at it for a few years now, has been the biggest challenge.

31:22 You asked my wife, she'll say, Too long? I've been at it too long.

31:26 Well, I think, so bootstrapping is great, right? Like, bootstrapping gives you lots of freedom, but it's hard, right? Like, you are constantly. like

31:39 juggling things. And if you can bootstrap long enough to get to product market fit, then you can dictate the terms or you have more influence on the terms when you, if you wanna raise capital.

31:53 But it's just a hard journey of like,

31:56 you know, getting to that point. And

32:00 so I'd say that, that, you know, that's probably one of the harder things is, is, you know, just juggling those multiple things, you know, and just working through that. Yeah, I feel like,

32:14 so we're at the early, we're at one year here at the Energy Tech Nexus, and we're looking at what do we wanna do next, and

32:24 I have identified some, I guess, products we wanna bring to the market. And on the one hand, I feel like I'm falling into this trap of, oh, this is gonna be great. People are gonna wanna buy it

32:34 And then I think we still have to go sell and deliver stuff. Yeah. And we're very good at marketing. Yeah, you guys are good at marketing. Yeah, awesome. It's on what we have to build something

32:42 and I guess it makes me reflect on that gap between kind of like when you set a vision down versus like actually having to get out there. Tell us a little bit about that journey of like that first

32:51 test in the market that you've kind of had while bootstrapping. So I would say don't do what

32:59 I did. Like don't build your product and then try to sell it Yeah,

33:05 start with

33:07 the challenges that your customer has and test out your theory through conversations.

33:14 Like even what we coach our software business consulting clients is have productive conversations first. Like so there's a book called the mom test, excellent book, recommend it for anyone that's

33:23 looking to build a product before you even hire a firm or before you even eat yourself due dev or do design, like read that book, start talking to ideal customers. It's never too early to - to

33:35 start having productive sales conversations, so start as soon as you can. But what is the mom test? So it's just a way of having conversations like in a way talking about your product in a way that

33:45 your mom can understand. Okay, okay. And I think the key part there is the questions that you ask is you're not leading her to say, aren't you cute, you did a good job, but that's, yes, hun,

33:54 whatever, you know, I love you and so I'm sure it's good. Yeah. Doesn't get at the root of like, is that a good idea or not, you know?

34:02 I think that's sort of a good, you know, a good way for a step. And then after that, I would say, like, take that next step of if you're building a digital product, like build a prototype in

34:15 Figma, you know, like in a, you know, a design, or even use like a wizzy wig, like, you know, something that, you know, in Webflow or, you know, and just show it to people, you know, and

34:27 see, see what, you know, what they think For us, like what we should have done, day one is provided. the energy gig service for freelancers, right from the jump without having anything. Just

34:40 sell the service. Just to see people pay for that output. Yeah, like our biggest competitor, honestly, is not other platforms in the energy space. Our biggest competitors are the status quo of

34:53 staffing agencies, relationships, that person

35:00 on what's up, you know, what's up, I guess. What's up, what's up? Let's say what's up, you know that is on speed dial, right? Like those are the established relationships, right? And like,

35:06 you can have a million dollar plus business just doing that without any tech, you know? And we were like, Oh, it's built a product. And yeah, it's all this other stuff, you know? Like, you

35:16 know, marketing and. Yeah, it's like the basics of lean 'cause, you know, also the thing is like, when you're just going and doing a survey, 'cause people often like do that market survey, go

35:25 talk to people. And if you're only talking to the people that you know, like believe in you, they'll be like, oh yeah, that's great, you know, and you'll get that response or you'll get the

35:33 skeptics who'll be like, no, I don't think. So like, how great of a judge is that until they are actually willing to be like, okay, yes, I'll be here. Here's the money. Here's the money,

35:44 yeah. You know. That's it, that's not exactly. If they're not willing to spend money or time on the problem, then it's not really a problem. That's, yeah, that's a real test. 'Cause you were

35:55 talking about product market fit What have you set for yourself as like that,

36:01 the metrics that you're gonna use to say, You know what, now we have product market fit. Yeah, how do you know when you're at product market? That's like the forever question I always have. I

36:10 mean, I can talk academically a little bit about it, like from the stuff that's on the interwebs, whatever, you know, like, you know. Which at GPT would say, like, Cool, and you can't keep

36:22 up and you've seen like, It's a dumpster fire, whatever. That's when you know, you know, I think we have a dumpster fire and we don't have any other stuff, so I don't know if that's quite right.

36:31 So I said burning in this case, I don't understand. I mean, I think

36:37 finding for us, I think it's finding our ideal customer persona. And it's taken us a while to get to that point. But for us, for example, consulting firms, whether it's engineering, business

36:51 consulting, tech consulting, these are the ones that need to hire tomorrow because they sold a project yesterday.

36:59 So those are, for us, they just need to get the work done. And they would hire a contractor anyways. Are you thinking like the likes of Accenture and Capgemina? No. They're too big, I think,

37:12 for us. At some point, yeah, for sure. But like the middle tier, smaller firms Like the local engineering firm, or do you touch the environmental consulting, yeah. Yeah, like environmental,

37:28 safety, engineering, like, you know, I think, so there's a

37:37 small, medium-sized businesses are bread and butter, and fast-growing consulting firms are like our best customers, right? Like, and so we have some really amazing customers that are just growing

37:48 like at a really clip pace, internationally, that we have a really great relationship with, and we've provided great candidates too, and that's sort of like that one customer, like that's the

38:00 proof, right? And then that's like, okay, how do we copy that one customer? Or how do we serve another customer like that, right? Yeah, that's that customer persona that you want to replicate.

38:09 And it's so easy to want to spread the net-wide, but sometimes we get those first customers really got to cultivate and grow with them too, right? No, interesting Do you think there was a. a

38:24 pivotal moment that kind of shaped the company's trajectory.

38:31 I mean, I would say like the angel investment was phenomenal. Like, and actually tell us about the decision. You said it a couple of times, like you spun it out of the consulting business. And

38:41 so that feels very pivotal. There's probably a moment where you just know the strategy is to do a couple of these things. Yeah, um, what? It's funny because we, we, the thought at that point in

38:52 time was like, okay, raise them funds, sunset, you know, the consulting business, and, and then just go full bore on energy gigs. But we didn't raise enough like to, to really pay everyone

39:06 salaries, myself salaries and, and like so, and then we had some dynamics with like the founder, like of the consultant, like partners on the consulting side, not everyone wanted to come across.

39:16 Yeah. And so kind of, you know, like happenstance ended up with two businesses, you know, and I couldn't, and I needed. one to pay my food on the table. Make sure my wife didn't lock the doors

39:29 and keep me to the curve. How do

39:34 you think what's happening today, this past week, changed a lot of things, at least for the energy industry, with the new executive orders coming in. How do you see that maybe as an opportunity

39:47 or a threat for you and what you're building? Yeah, good question. I mean,

39:55 it'd be interesting to see about AI and data centers, you know, power behind the meter for data centers and what sort of opportunities that presents to industry and what sort of talent, you know,

40:06 is it nuclear, is it geothermal, is it just gas, like, what sort of skill sets do these people need to have if they're going to do that, right? Because the data centers are going to need power,

40:16 you know, everything from transmission distribution to power generation, you know, so there's lots of interesting things there. And it's got a lot of projects going on the ground. They're going

40:26 to need kind of this short-term expertise, right? Yeah,

40:30 so that's one thing. I think we are,

40:36 I mean, I think we're kind of, in my opinion, like we can do well in any environment, like whether it's a pro-climate tech, anti-oil environment, or a pro-oil environment. I mean, I think

40:49 we're, because there's just need for talent on either any of those scenarios. I mean, the conversations with VCs are a little bit different, I think, like,

41:01 but candidly, we're kind of cautiously optimistic to see what happens with the new secretary of energy. We like the old secretary of energy, but the new one has a previous CEO of Liberty, I think,

41:14 Liberty Energy. Liberty Energy, they had invested in Fervo. So, I'm interested to realize that in geothermal There wasn't a lot there in the IRA for geothermal. Um, and so, and we have a pretty,

41:26 you know, our, our bench, so to speak, the talent pool is pretty strong and so we're cautiously optimistic. I mean, I think it's a natural transition for Houston, you know, for geothermal. So

41:38 we'll see. Yeah. No, I think for you, I mean, cause a lot of, we're getting this question a lot, like how are your startups positioning? How are you positioning yourself now in this like new

41:48 era for the next four years? And I think you're in a good position to take advantage of the areas within energy that this new government's going to prioritize. Geothermal is definitely one of them.

41:57 Nuclear is one of them. Natural gas and coal is going to be one of them too. And I think you're in a good position to do that. I think one of the goals, I mean, obviously we have a profit motive

42:10 or a for-profit entity, but part of our mission and the reason we do webinars every month on different educational topics, actually tomorrow we have one on safety. We always start off January with

42:20 safety 'cause it's like part of the year, you know? It's like, people die, you know?

42:29 Sorry, what was I gonna say? Oh, like part of our mission, like we wanna make sure as the energy industry changes that people don't get left behind. You know, that's the mission. We haven't

42:38 really been able to do much with coal, but that's an area that we'd like to get into in terms of helping, in terms of, it forms our roadmap as well as like, how do we help people that are maybe,

42:52 the industry is in cyclical decline, fine work, you know. Yeah, it's like the career transitions, right? And transforming from one industry to another. And we say, why Houston's great for the

43:03 energy transitions because you have the talent that you're gonna need for these different types of energies and projects that we're gonna do.

43:13 Do you provide any kind of like domain literacy as part of the education? So that's on our roadmap for sure.

43:22 We've had some preliminary conversations around building out a learning management system, had some conversations with IGA, the International Geothermal Association. Unfortunately, we weren't able

43:33 to bring that over the line. But

43:36 yeah, there's some interesting use cases there

43:42 You know, from, we have this bias that like, or we just view that you have resume data resume data, you have, you know, a learning management system. You have the ability to do projects, the

43:55 ability to find mentors, which is something that we're rolling out soon on our platform You know, full-time jobs, like you have all these different things. Well, you can really help someone find,

44:07 you know, navigate in their career, you know, you could find, if you're looking for a mentor, you can find a mentor. If you're looking for a co-founder, maybe even, you know, you could find a

44:17 co-founder. And so we're really kind of excited about that idea of providing a way to

44:28 pull these different threads of information together in a way that's useful for the candidate side of the platform. And then once we do that, I think that's when we would more formally monetize the

44:37 candidate side of the platform. At a rate that's reasonable that is pegged to the value that they get from it. I wanna go down a little rabbit hole with the mentors So I'm just gonna, when I was on

44:51 the founder side of things in my first company, Dynamo, I had a lot of mentors. Every one of my investors wanted to mentor. But then I also had my advisory board and so those constantly trying to

45:01 figure out what I was trying to do based on those close confidants. And then when I went into working at Greentown, most of the door got shut. It's just having a manager meant. I didn't feel like

45:13 I needed a mentor 'cause it was less indecision. Yeah. And then I'm wondering, okay, once we come back out and we're at ETN, like people I go to for advice, but I don't normally have mentors

45:26 anymore, probably 'cause maybe I have the hubris to think I know something now. But I'm wondering, how do mentors usually engage if you don't find them at your current job, right? Like what's

45:39 that gap you're filling where, 'cause I'm

45:43 not feeling it. And I guess that's why I'm explaining myself I mean, I think like for job seekers or people that are kind of trying to figure out where they want to go in their career, I think an

45:54 underutilized

45:56 action to take is have an informational interview. Like you're not selling anything, you're not selling yourself. Buy someone lunch, talk to them and say, Hey, I'm really thinking about doing

46:08 this. I see that you're doing that. Like what do you recommend? Like what should I study? What should I read? What courses should I take? How can I improve myself? to get into something that

46:20 you're in, you know, like, and people are, you know, generally pretty open to that conversation. I mean, every now and then people will say just never respond, but like, if you cast that in

46:31 that wide enough, you're going to get a lot more people than not. We're going to say, I'd be happy to talk to you over coffee or Zoom or telephone call. But you have to be very appreciative and

46:41 you have to be sensitive to the burden that you're putting on it. I mean, obviously, if there's a way you can buy them lunch or coffee or something like that. But I think that's one thing that I

46:50 would recommend for job seekers. You

46:54 could, for example, if you're trying to find a new job, just apply online. And by virtue of applying lots of places, you'd be really busy. But your resume may not ever get looked at anyone. But

47:07 you could probably take a lot of that energy, half that energy, and put it to informational interviews, and you'll get a lot further Okay, so that's part of the mentor use case is understanding

47:15 the market, understanding the businesses, understanding your company. Yeah, and it's kind of a, it's not a salesy role. It's really about learning more. Do you find like there's a relationship

47:26 that kind of extends beyond like one or two engagements or meetings that you would target? So for us, I think like we, we're looking at it as like a way of, I mean, we're rolling out a program

47:40 called Encore and that connects energy companies to retirees from those companies. Got it And dedicated mentorship component to that where retirees who, you know, provided that they still enjoy

47:55 like the company. They'll take the company's phone call. They can mentor junior employees. Okay, getting that SME is extremely valuable. Yeah, and I think there's a lot of different, you know,

48:08 there's a lot of benefits for both the company, the candidate and the mentor, right? Like the retiree year.

48:17 within sort of on the candidate side, there's a candidate, a candidate, sort of component of mentorship that we haven't built out, but like that we would like to look at. I mean, I think like

48:26 AngelList has like, you know, co-founder or at one point they had that co-founder meet up. They still have a co-founder dating site. I don't know what co-founder Tinder, but that's what it looks

48:35 like. It literally is like that on there. I think one of the founders we brought on, I think last year had met his co-founder that way So it's not as, I think it's more California-centric and

48:47 software-centric, but it still works. Yeah, it's a great pattern. I feel like that we have a proven use case and it just needs to be tweaked for us, for energy.

48:59 So what do you see for yourself in the next kind of five years? You know, what's your vision for the company? Hmm, good question So

49:11 I think for us a lot, it depends on the raise. Like if we If we you know, raise the capital that we need, you know, we'll be, the whole team will convert over full time and work on energy gigs.

49:27 If we don't, then we'll back to bootstrap and keep building the product incremental growth, not as fast, obviously, but like with a much more razor focus on the beach, you know, the markets

49:42 where we're seeing the traction. So this is one of the more frustrating things I would say about building energy gigs is like we've got a lot of really talented people. We're now over 450 people on

49:54 the platform, growing with two to three people per week,

49:58 but like we don't have enough jobs. And so we're in functionally like a marketplace with no buyers. You got the supply side and none of them. And like we have a wait list in place from the

50:11 candidate side to vote that the candidates also to kind of just Just, just. slow to kind of have a little bit more of a measured growth.

50:23 But it sucks, honestly, to have a platform and the people come in and they're looking for work and there's not enough there.

50:31 But like we just tell any of our listeners that are in our members that are listening or just be patient, we're working on it, we're trying to get to that point where we have more projects and

50:42 that a lot of that means, one way or another, it means a greater focus on Biz Dev You know, and so that's the things, those are areas that we're hiring for. So if there's anyone out there that

50:53 looking to uncapped commissions, you know, on a part-time basis, you can call her at me, I might have to do an energy gig.

51:03 How can people get in touch? So you can message me on LinkedIn, you could email me at JSSIRenergygigscom J-A-S-S-I-R

51:16 at energygigscom, yeah. just I'm open. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, this is awesome. Great conversation right here.