Energy Tech Startups

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0:14 energytechnexascom. Welcome back to the show. Today, I am here with Matt Adams, the CEO of Net Benefit Software. And Net Benefit is a company that we at Energy Tech Nexus are bringing as part of

0:29 a Canadian cohort of companies, part of a program called Caleb Hub Houston, in which we've selected nine of the brightest, smartest, grandest energy techs kilos from Atlantic Canada to come to

0:42 Houston. Welcome to the show. I don't know how I made the top nine, but thank you very much, I'm happy to be here. So tell us a little bit about Net Benefit Software, what does it do and how did

0:56 you get involved with the company?

1:00 So a couple of questions there, first one, for what do we do? So net benefit software is ultimately an information management software company. And what we do is we help companies secure their

1:10 social license to operate and maintain their operations by helping them quantify their socioeconomic impact. And a little bit about what that means, and we can actually pivot right into the energy

1:23 transition piece, is there are thousands, tens of thousands of projects we're going to need to happen to really

1:32 make the energy transition happen, whether that's renewable energy projects, whether that's things like making infrastructure better suited for clean technologies and just better use of our

1:45 infrastructure. And all of these projects face headwinds, whether that's working with different stakeholders, like thousands of stakeholders with many interactions, whether that's

1:57 quantifying and measuring what you're doing for things like tax credits or regulatory requirements. Net Benefit really is a software platform that helps companies do that incredibly efficiently and

2:07 ultimately helps them move their projects forward much quicker, much more efficiently. How I got involved in net benefit software was really through my background which was environmental health and

2:19 safety software. So that moved over the years to more and more carbon accounting, more understanding of kind of scope one, scope two, scope three emissions.

2:30 The movement of as the industry was really learning how to do that really well. And what was following was kind of a big hole. People weren't getting good at quantifying kind of the social impact of

2:43 things. So I was fortunate enough to be introduced to a company. It was called SCI Resources at the time. It's now net benefit. And there was actually a couple original founders that started the

2:54 company years ago moved to Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada and took the company on from there. So that's a little bit about how I got involved in what we do. Where did you move from? So I

3:06 actually moved from Nashville, Tennessee. So my software journey, I was in the environmental health and safety space. I started in Toronto for several years with a company called Intellect

3:16 Technologies that did really well. And I moved from there to a company called Sitehawk that was out of Nashville, Tennessee, actually Smyrna, Tennessee, just a little bit south. That was later

3:26 acquired by Sphera at a Chicago. So I was with them for a while, and then I figured it was time to really, really run my own thing. And I moved to Net Benefit and cut that deal and we've grown the

3:38 company from there.

3:41 Yeah, so, and you say you help companies with their license to operate. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? What kind of companies are you talking about? Well, actually, I want to know it

3:52 Socialized operate is, 'cause I think. In some ways, it has a duality of meeting. I think for people who are very climate active, they view it as an excuse for people to behave poorly, which is

4:06 not the point here. But then on the other side, this is about delivering real benefit. So I guess, break down for us what that means and what the kind of KPIs for social license operate mean today.

4:20 Great, so I'll use an example So let's talk offshore wind in the United States. So we've got a lot of activity for offshore wind in the northeast part of the country. And when a proponent, so the

4:33 kind of big company that wants to go and do a wind project wants to get up and going, there are a whole bunch of people that have opinions and need to be kind of consulted with and listen to about

4:48 the project you can think of all of the different property owners all on the coastline. You can think of all the different folks that are involved in the electric grid and how that is actually going

4:60 to play into how we're gonna power homes with that energy. Think about the different regulators, you can think about all the different NGOs, the folks that care about the wildlife and the ocean,

5:10 what the impacts are going to be there, the folks that are focused on kind of the bats and the birds and the things that are going through the air. And you have this massive ecosystem of groups and

5:23 individuals that if you're not organized and you're not clear on your messaging and you're not proactive,

5:33 they can really, if it's not done properly, either delay a project for years at the point where it just doesn't make sense or it can be canceled altogether. And this is the thing when it's done

5:44 poorly, you see the news. So whether that's a pipeline protest or whether it's a protest against a mine whether that's somebody that's shutting down. a facility somewhere due to unrest in a

5:57 community and so being able to do that efficiently and manage all that is a huge challenge for these companies and that's not just to get up and going but that's on an ongoing basis. I think that off

6:07 the coast there was actually a turbine that went down or broke and ended up with a bunch of debris in the water like that doesn't look great. That really needs to be managed effectively so that your

6:22 project can continue to operate in a profitable way. Is that a

6:30 fancy way to say stakeholder management or is there more to it than that? Because you're getting to the license operate

6:39 part. The most, that really early proactive thing is the stakeholder management. That's a big part of it and it's different depending where that project's going to happen in the world. But there's

6:48 also the entire regulatory process as well. Okay, so tell us a little about that because I don't

6:54 They'll vary from industry, but the core principles are similar. They really need to show what your impact is going to be on the environment, what the impact is going to be on, the folks that live

7:08 and work and play, near where you're doing your project, and that'll vary by jurisdiction that looks very different in South America than does in the United States, for example, and then you're

7:22 going to have a very different set of concerns if you're trying to start a lithium mine compared to if you're trying to start a put together a solar farm. Got it. So there's the messaging and the

7:33 engagement of the ecosystem, but there's also a very rigorous environmental impact report that gets cut at the beginning of these and making sure that there's transparency in that. But I guess the

7:49 question is, how does that get to net benefits? Yeah, so. And with us, we're not for every single project out there, but right now, if you look at a project that has any level of complexity

8:01 with the stakeholder engagement in the regulatory process, there are thousands or tens of thousands of interactions, and people are largely organizing these with many spreadsheets. They're working

8:13 with consultants. They're doing it in a reactive way, sometimes with not a fully thought-out strategy or a full stakeholder map, our platform allows a lot of this to be automated. We found that it

8:27 reduces the amount of administrative and organization time for folks by up to 80.

8:34 As we're continuing to make improvements, I like the advent of AIs really helped, that amount of administration time is going to go down even more while the quality of data goes up. So these tasks

8:48 in this report building and the sifting through all these things that add. hours, it turned into days, it turned to weeks, it turned to real serious project delays. We're really whittling that

9:01 down to make it efficient.

9:06 And how are you actually using AI for that? So, AI is, I think what I'd like to say right now is about 100 of AI projects are cool, and the amount that are useful and can

9:22 be applied today, that percentage is a lot lower. We're really fortunate in that some of the processes that people are doing with our software, so the same repetitive motion of organizing data,

9:37 the AI can do that really well immediately. So, we've actually been funded with the support of one of the hydrocarbon majors to layer that over our platform for the past few months and that's just

9:49 coming to a point where we can. I will probably do a soft launch that in the coming weeks. So that's like automating the process of stakeholder management, regulatory committee. Exactly, a big

10:01 one for automating the logging of the communications. So say someone comes in with a formal question or a formal complaint or say you're running a town hall meeting and there's certain concerns that

10:14 come up, you'll have a lot of back and forth where that's phone calls, email, sending people reports, and that's all documented manually in a very kind of meticulous way right now. So who sent

10:26 what when, who was included on the email thread, what were the attachments, over the topics we spoke about, but using AI to just kind of tag AI along with that email in most cases, allowing the

10:40 agent to extract the information for the company and save, yeah, a per-summer clients, save thousands of hours a year. So kind of like an AI assistant that we use like on our calls, et cetera.

10:52 But then they can track it over a thread of emails and communications that you have had. Yeah, that's a good way to think about it. And then so if I am one of these oil majors and you're my

11:02 customer, I have a big project ongoing. Can you kind of walk through, 'cause usually I would outsource maybe the permitting, the stakeholder management, I'll have different parties involved in

11:14 doing that work. Would you still need those different parties and then everyone together uses this platform, or can you even replace some of the consultants that you would use, normally? We're

11:27 seeing a little bit of a trend overall for especially large companies for bringing all of their engagement in this process in-house. We're seeing them wanting to be closer to their data, closer to

11:37 the people that they care about the projects. So I think there's in some ways less consultants involved than we've the on least with at, historically seen

11:46 the folks we're working with.

11:48 But absolutely. If you look at the breakdown of either what a consultant's doing on behalf of the company or what those company experts are doing, say there's 30 being in community, speaking with

11:60 people actually going and interacting, and 70 administration time, you're able to cut that administration time at least in half, but more likely more. So that's doubling your time in community,

12:14 doubling your time moving things forward So you can either, yeah, you can either reduce headcount, or you could have a much larger impact with the headcount you're having and just make progress in

12:26 a much more efficient way. So this trend is to bring people in, is that being driven because there's consolidation or industry or because it's increasingly important

12:38 for the business success? The latter. So it's increasingly important for the business success And what's driving that? I think there's a lot. I think that's a, that's a complex question. And not

12:52 necessarily it's a complex question, but I think there's not just a simple answer to that. I think that

12:57 in today's world, we have such access to information so readily. And I think that people are driven by often

13:10 just the, whether it's the headlines or the things that grab on, that's really easy to back a cause and get involved when it might've been a little more difficult years ago. And you're really

13:20 seeing a lot of kind of social activism with folks or people really want to understand the change that's going on with community people that are really passionate about things like energy transition.

13:35 So companies are realizing that folks, they want these folks that they're working around to be partners as opposed to being headwinds their projects. and by working with them, understanding their

13:49 concerns, understanding what their values are, what are important to them, and sometimes just getting them the information that will really help them secure these communities as partners, as

13:60 opposed to folks that they need to kind of work around or be careful about if they're actually can be vested in their success and they for a much stronger project. And it's a big risk for these

14:10 companies, right? We've seen some big projects that have not been able to go forward because of permitting, because of, you know, they haven't properly managed stakeholder. They're stakeholders

14:22 who had some rights on the land that they wanted to build on. And I think it is a very important point but that in this age where information is readily and available a few years ago, you wouldn't

14:35 know that there's this big project close to you that's being built.

14:41 the ability of like information to also become viral and misinformation to spread, like it can cause like polarization and, you know, activism to actually, like it's a breeding ground for activism.

14:54 So I think that's, I can imagine that companies now want more control because in some sense, we're also losing control. You can, yeah, I think they want more control of the narrative, but also

15:07 they, if you look at projects, so look at one of these major projects and what happens is you'll have a developer come in and they, if they develop properly, which that, I mean, the company's

15:19 really, I think a lot of the times they get a, there's some negative stories that come out, and I'm sure there will always be bad apples, but if you're going through the process appropriately and

15:30 you're considering the potentially negative impacts and you're mitigating against those, what you're doing is you're a massive economic,

15:39 for these communities as well. So you're coming in early, even early on, you're staying at hotels, you're staying at restaurants, you're using services, you're probably getting a small office,

15:48 you're then using local businesses to support your early operations. And eventually when you get into something like construction, there's entirely new companies being formed that are hiring dozens

15:60 of people, or you're bringing in large companies and they're opening regional offices that are potentially hiring hundreds of people at times And it creates really thousands of jobs through these

16:11 really complex supply chains. But these jobs are largely folks in communities that's putting kind of food on the table, they're putting people's kids through school that are contributing to these

16:23 kind of vibrant economies and communities that otherwise, they're operating, they're doing well. But it just increases the size of the economic pie and the abilities for.

16:43 people that have kind of solid jobs near where they want to live. And are most of your projects, you know, you talk about local content and you talk about, especially companies when they have

16:50 projects outside of the US, Canada, what has been your experience there in that product being used abroad? So it's interesting. This is probably a good opportunity to give some background on the

17:04 company So net benefit used to be called SCI Resource Software. And it was created in Newfoundland and Labrador and Newfoundland for people that aren't familiar with it, which probably a lot of your

17:17 listeners is an island off the east coast of Canada. And in the 90s, it was almost entirely a fishing economy. There's about 500, 000 people. And what happened was there was a moratorium, there

17:29 was overfishing. So we really had to stop fishing and the economy was decimated This is right around when the province and the island. was developing some major mining assets and some major offshore

17:44 oil and gas reserves. So we had this challenge of, okay, we've got tens of thousands of unemployed fishermen or people that supported the fishing industry. How do we create kind of offshore oil

17:56 workers or miners out of the locals and how do we understand that data to know that that kind of reconributes the economy? And they created these regulatory mechanisms called industrial benefit

18:10 agreements. It said, okay, for the operators, you can extract the nickel or you can extract the iron ore, you can extract the oil. But you need to show us that you're hitting the appropriate

18:21 local content levels for procurement spending and for employment. That sounds simple. What's gonna happen is you're gonna have an oil major and they might have an office with 200 people in town.

18:33 But then they're going to have your, big-time contractors, your baker hues and your slumber jays

18:40 and your hackers, and those folks will have hundreds of people employed on the projects, and then they'll subcontract to dozens of specialty providers within the town, and by the end of the day,

18:54 you've got this really complex supply chain with hundreds of different companies and thousands of individuals It's actually tracking what's local, what kind of jobs are these, are we talking

19:05 apprenticeships, are they becoming journey people, whether it's a job progression looks like over time, becomes very complex, and that's what SCI did very early. What we're seeing now is the rest

19:17 of the world isn't a fishery that needed to transition to oil and gas workers, but the rest of the world's now taking a much harder look at those local jobs created I think you see a little bit of

19:32 a pullback of globalization. We talk a lot about strong domestic supply chains and strong local jobs and being able to manufacture

19:44 things and provide services that we need where we live and that's becoming a global trend. So what we're seeing is regulation that mandates that. So things like the Inflation Reduction Act focus

19:58 really heavily on local jobs in the US. But you're seeing that really, really all over the world now.

20:08 Interesting. And I'm thinking in some ways that I'm going to bring this back to climate a little bit. One of the challenges with any sort of industrialization is you don't always measure the kind of

20:21 environmental impact or the cost, right? And so that's kind of the whole story of, you know, greenhouse gas emissions. But as you were talking, it struck me that that's That's something Canada,

20:33 a Canadian. I guess government thinks a lot about in terms of measuring, right? 'Cause, and then putting policies around it, 'cause it reminded me of how, in many ways, a lot of the first

20:43 carbon taxes came out of Alberta, obviously different province, but it's the same concept of how are we measuring kind of the external factors that maybe exist outside of pure dollars and cents

20:55 economics that feels very Canadian to me. And I don't know if that's something you've noticed or am I just seeing trends that don't exist? I think that,

21:07 so I think I have a unique perspective on this, having lived and worked so much in the United States and also I'm very proud of Canadian, I've lived in four different provinces from coast to coast.

21:19 And America does capitalism so well. Like it is incredible, the drive and the innovation and the willingness to pursue that. edge and how hard you go after it. And that capitalism and the really

21:38 the American dream to be able to build something from scratch and make it yours and move ahead. And it's fantastic. Canada, there's that there's a similar push and especially in the big in the

21:50 cities and the hubs, you have that same capital capitalist approach. But I also think there is in Canada, at least this, it's a little more of a social capitalism. So I think those externalities

22:05 are a weight a little heavier than just purely financial outcomes, where I think are weight heavier in the US. I think there's pros and cons to that. But one of the things we see is I think with

22:17 our policies and just the actions we take as a country, we focus on quantifying more of those ESG impacts And I think that that kind of that ESG has been politicized a lot now. But once you move

22:29 past the political, I think it comes to actually quantifying and measuring. the externalities beyond just the dollars and cents, right? So the emissions are a big one, right? Like it's great if

22:43 you can create an awesome product and people will pay for it. But if you're polluting the drinking water of thousands of people, at some point we need to quantify that and figure out how to even

22:56 that out again, so it's fair. And there's the same thing with carbon credits, right? If you're creating great product that makes you a lot of money, but there's, you are, at the same time,

23:09 making the environmental quality worse for others. How do we even that out? So the quantification of that is really started with scope one, scope two, scope three emissions and all the different

23:22 pollution mandates and the regulation around it. And then you get to the carbon tax as well, but I think we're going in the same direction with other things like the social impact So it's awesome if

23:34 you. can make another nine cents of profit on each item you sell. But if that nine cents is on a20, 000 item and it results in having to offshore, 10, 000 jobs and then having to create all those

23:51 negative externalities, the shipping and the logistics and the time delay, like is that, is saving that nine cents in profit, really worthwhile. And then how do you understand that? How do you

24:04 quantify it? Yeah. And I think that while we're doing, we're helping quantify that S really, really well. And I think the important thing here is like, once you measure and you can quantify,

24:15 like, yes, maybe there'd be political elements on both sides, but then it's not opinions. It's, this is at least what the data says. And then we can engineer to a results. And I think that's

24:24 also something that I've seen the Canadian government and companies like look at it, like it's very rigorous when I see it. It's not just a perspective. Are you ready to lead the decarbonization

24:37 charge? Energy Technexes is your platform for growth, offering unique resources and expertise for energy

24:46 and carbon tech founders. Join us at energytechnexescom and start building your Thunderlisset. I agree, I think it's getting a lot better too. I like to have a little bit of a story of the way

24:56 this went for environmental, kind of quantifying emissions. So you can look at companies, annual reports, and if you look at like early 2000s annual reports, it's like there are numbers for

25:09 emissions, they may or may not be audited, and then you have like look at the great social we did, and it's like this, we're a multi-billion dollar company, but we planted 10, 000 trees. And we

25:20 gave 15 kid scholarships, and it's like collage and photos, and these lovely feel-good stories, but it's more of a narrative as opposed to the actual metrics. Something I'd love to get down to is

25:33 almost like my engineering brain thinking like this almost like get right down to the data Like you said like you can't really refute an audited report of this is how many quality jobs are created

25:43 This is where the jobs are created. This is the kind of progression we saw in the workforce and the skills that were created in these Communities to build this capacity. Hmm, but you also on top of

25:56 that you would quantify the CO2 emissions or Impact on the environment. So we're not doing environmental. There's a lot of amazing firms working with the environmental side and I it's it's funny You

26:09 look at the transition overall. It's there's not one company that's going to solve the transition There are thousands of companies that are going to do a tiny little bit and together. We're going to

26:19 get there So we really focus on that socioeconomic impact piece and we focus on doing that really really well and I think the other important piece of the energy transition is all the supply chains

26:31 are going to change because you're producing energy, but the way we make it is different. I

26:38 guess everything from manufacturing to the logistics and supply chain you described to the very real projects you're building locally,

26:48 and it's a question of when you talk about high quality jobs, are we bringing in skill talent that becomes a local competency? That's really

27:00 the other big transition behind energy transition is the labor transition that's going to come with it, and that's part of what you're helping to measure. Yeah, and I think that labor transition,

27:09 it's energy transition, but I think with AI and the with AI, I heard this quote recently, and it was basically, I'm not going to nail it, but it was basically people always overestimate the

27:24 impact of a new technology like this in the and they underestimate the impact in the long term. I think that's very true, and I think all of us, or whether we know it or not, we're seeing the

27:34 impact of AI creeping to our lives. But with that, there is just, there is our massive,

27:42 there's massive movement forward in efficiency. And what that means is it's going to take less people to do the jobs that were done before, and those are gonna turn into kind of new types of jobs

27:55 You can think of AI's impact on driving, like, I'm seeing all these cars in Houston with the cameras all over their top, there's a person sitting in them, and they just kind of have their hands in

28:04 their pockets. Oh, well, there's cars driving around. I mean, we're not that far away from just a massive employment source, largely kind of taking the numbers of people, reducing them in a

28:20 really realistic way. And there's dozens of industries where that's happening So understanding where these. new jobs are popping up that where they are in the supply chain, understanding the

28:30 companies that are creating these jobs and having the data around them just becoming more and more important as this movement kind of continues. Do you have any, I'm going to say interaction with

28:41 the

28:43 change in the labor forces like age? One of the things we talk about here is just the knowledge transfer from older workers to younger workers But that's not part of your business, but I don't, I'm

28:53 curious if you see that in the data anywhere, in terms of how you engage with companies. So we don't see it much in our data, age isn't a big focus for us, but it is a, it is a conversation with

29:07 any large company that we work with. And there are, there are particular companies, like some legacy household names, they're not going to get into it, but that I've worked with, that have seen

29:18 massive negative effects because of just waves of retirement that have hit the company. and really cause them to be less competitive than they used to be. And I think you don't see that on the

29:31 headline in the news story that says, oh, Legacy Knowledge Left Company Act. So they're not doing as well as they were, but through having long-standing relations with these companies and several

29:42 of the software companies have worked with, that is a cause of lower performance with some of the big company stays. Just they've lost so many bright people that were largely that first-ended the

29:57 baby boomers that are working towards retirement now and we're just so innovative to create those companies.

30:04 So changing gears a little bit, I'm curious. So we talked about the software is good for people engaging in projects. Who's the buyer of the solution? Is it a project lead? Is it a business unit

30:17 manager? It's certainly not, or is it, is it an HR department? I assume it's not in a true department. So who's the person who says I need this to make my job look good? So it'll be, if it's

30:29 regulatory driven, which it is in some places, it'll be a specific role in relation to that regulatory. So in Canada, we actually have a lot of indigenous content that's really important. So if

30:39 you're operating in, he mentioned Alberta, like in the Alberta oil sands. Like there are indigenous communities that are very present in the ecosystem. They live there, they have land rights,

30:52 say I have land ownership And the oil and

30:57 gas companies, they'll need to sign agreements or just have great partnerships and good understanding with the communities. That means understanding jobs are created, that means understanding the

31:08 dollars that are spent on businesses that are indigenous owned. So our buyer may be a VP of indigenous relations. Okay. Or it could be a VP of community relations and that will fall towards it.

31:22 the largest companies will have actually a social impact or socioeconomic impact role. In the US, they'll often see a specialist level role in local content for your larger renewable company. So

31:39 they'll actually be a manager of local content or manager of community and local content and they'll rule up to maybe a vice president of ESG or a vice president of regulations or regulatory and legal.

31:53 That's two examples and then there's just kind of

32:00 different pockets for earlier starting companies. So if you're going to start with a pipeline expansion or you're going to start with a mine, that may be someone with the title of stakeholder

32:12 relations or stakeholder engagement or community engagement. The general movement of our software is when when a project's early and we're working with someone early. there in that stakeholder

32:23 engagement, community engagement phase, and that would be the engagement person would be the buyer. But as they really start to move that project forward or they're an established company with

32:32 operations, we move more to that socioeconomic impact, local content,

32:38 piece of our software. I'm curious to know from you

32:43 now, you primarily operated in Canada. Most of your clients are based out of Canada. You've come to Houston now quite often and you were here last week for our in-market event and you got to meet a

33:00 lot of potential clients here. What are your insights from how things are maybe done a bit differently here in the US? What

33:12 have you learned from the conversations that you've had?

33:16 I think that it's not so much a US can to thank, but I think that. where you are in the US matters as well. I think it's very different in Houston than it would be in Silicon Valley or it would be

33:27 where I lived in Nashville for a while or it would be in New York. And then Canada, the same thing. I mean, I'm in St. John's, Newfoundland, which is a good, let me do my metric to Imperial

33:39 here, but a good 2, 500 miles across from the other side of the country. So things are done very differently in Vancouver But I'll say one thing that's unique about a couple of things about Houston.

33:53 One is,

33:55 it's really hot

33:58 compared to at least Canada, that was Nashville too. But I'll say the

34:05 legacy of the oil and gas industry here in that

34:12 engineering mindset and that innovation mindset, that comes through going to places like Greentown Labs and the ION. there is this energy and this we can kind of do it attitude and this innovation

34:26 that's involved in each conversation. And I've actually absolutely loved that about Houston. That is unique, that does not happen to anything. I don't even think it's just Houston, but I think

34:35 that's, you create specific kind of micro ecosystems that where it can happen. And Greentown Labs and the I have been really cool. I'm not just the same with the Esperson building where I know

34:48 you're so setting up now, but some of the interactions that I've been a part of or have witnessed, like those are special. They don't happen all the time. And that's been something that's really

34:57 stood out for us. And even though we probably have more clients that are in kind of New York, New Jersey area and the Northeast at least right now because of the offshore wind, Houston's been

35:10 really nice to come to for that kind of level of conversation than that can do. And then the fact that the large oil and gas players here supporting that. is also very different. I mean, you walk

35:22 through buildings and you've got folks from whether it's like on a shell or BP or Chevron that are part of their venture community that are saying, Hey, what are you doing and can we, how can we

35:32 pilot that? How can we use that? Or can we provide, how can we help you move forward with your project? I'm sure a lot of your listeners have done business with large rolling gas companies. That

35:44 wasn't the approach five or six years ago or 10 years ago. You really had to prove yourself to get one of those conversations, and now you have arms of these companies that are actually the ventures

35:55 that are actually going out there and searching out ways to innovate, which is really, really cool. That is totally unique to Houston. I haven't seen that anywhere else. There's a Ramco,

36:06 ExxonMobil, Chevron. There's a whole bunch of them with teams dedicated to finding early innovation and fostering it. And that was part of the reason I moved to Houston back in 17 was that we were

36:20 trying to bring our technology product to the oil field. So I went to the Bakken actually was selling into Calgary and the message will always come back as you got to go to Houston first and kind of

36:30 work with the technology SMEs there to get the blessing before we want to take the risk and other locations. And people really liked to pile it out in the Permian, that was just the nature of the

36:43 ecosystem And it's something that feels like a little unique to Houston in terms of the energy industry here. But I'm curious, so you said you've been coming three or four times now, is the push to

36:54 come to Houston because the energy industry is here? Or when did you realize that it was the time to grow down here? So I think that we, our journey was three and a half years ago,

37:09 the previous founders, or that the original founders of SCI, we have done this for. 20 years with tracking local content really well in Newfoundland and Labrador with a couple other Canadian

37:21 clients, and they wanted to transition more into retirement, and picking that up there's like our first year was okay, let's modernize the platform. Let's turn this into a true B2B modern SaaS

37:34 structured software platform. That took a year. It took some investment, and then we expected hundreds of people to just call us up and buy our software.

37:45 That didn't happen. I know we were talking earlier about product market fit. There's

37:51 product market fit. There's your initial messaging market fit. There's your sales experience market fit. You have a few different market fits to get there. We spent a year figuring that out. But

38:02 finally, once we nailed that, we really started growing. We're up at 25 customers or so now. I think, well, what, five or six is quarter alone We're really starting good and I'm momentum good

38:12 with that Naturally, we started to get more inquiries and some inbound leads from the United States. We signed our first US. deal a few weeks back, and that was we're in the sales cycle for that

38:29 and a couple others, while there was this program being created out of tech new from land, so tech and L, to come down to Houston, so it all kind of lined up. So the timing was right I'd been to

38:41 Houston a couple of times before. I knew there was an energy hub. I knew there was people that were innovative here, but I think the reason we're actually here and not somewhere like, say, New

38:50 York is because of that tech canal. I created that program and made the connection with yourselves and the connection with the Houston ecosystem

38:59 to kind of lower the lower the activation energy needed to start this. That's what it is, the activation energy Yeah, I know. We're glad to help and support that. Yeah, no. It's been really fun

39:12 to Um, see, you know, get, get a diverse set of energy tech companies and bring them here to Houston and, and see also like, I think the Houston innovation ecosystem has evolved quite a bit. I

39:28 think in the past five years since we've had, um, ion, uh, open up, green town, that labs came here. Now we have energy tech nexus, um, and you see these venture arms have also become a bit

39:41 more open to just talking and piloting. So we definitely see that change, but in general, historically, I think in the premium, we've been open to just, um, testing technology a bit more. And

39:52 I've heard this from a few other founders who've also come from Calgary, Canada, where um, there's that reluctance to try anything new. Talk to us a little bit about your funding journey. Um,

40:06 are you self funded so far as a company? you raised funds, what are your plans going forward? So,

40:17 I guess you'd call us bootstrapped. We haven't necessarily raised, but we have had definitely some advantages in the funding ecosystem that Newfoundland and Labrador provides. So when I was moving

40:29 from Tennessee back to Canada, I was gonna take on the company. My plan was actually to run out of Toronto. Toronto's an incredible place. I spent time there. It's a diverse city with a ton of

40:39 talent. I really enjoy it But what happened is I worked with the initial founders of Net Benefit, and they kind of made some introductions with the government of Newfoundland and Labrador. And the

40:51 government said, look, this is a tech company. We're investing heavily in technology. And we have a few different programs that might help you do this transition. So how would you come check out

41:01 Newfoundland and Labrador? Three years later, I can walk out my front door and look at the ocean and see whales certain times a year. So it worked out really well And they put us on some programs

41:12 that really. accelerated our development, and we're really thankful for that. And I'd say we, through programs with the local university, through programs with the local tech ecosystem, we were

41:24 able to bring on two or three full-time employees that we otherwise wouldn't have, and what that allowed us to do was avoid going for, I guess, an earlier round. But at this point, with the

41:35 traction we're getting, I think it's probably time to either, I mean, to keep riding these sails actually really helping us, but potentially look at some outside sorts of funding as well. But

41:48 long story short, the funding ecosystem and Newfoundland and Labrador and the programs they have there really allowed us to avoid getting any sort of seed funding and create this traction. Yeah. No,

42:00 I think that's like one of the common challenges here in Houston is there's not a lot of programs to help with that Those first few staff for that first chunk of development, because something I

42:10 really missed from the New England ecosystem. Um, those, those kinds of grants or those kinds of contracts just don't exist here. Uh, and it makes it much more challenging. Um, cause adding a,

42:22 adding a person when you're early, it could be like 30 50 of your head count. You guys are more mature than that, but it can really be that extra resource. You need to take it to that next level.

42:32 Well, at the start, we weren't and it would have been very tough, um, without the programs And I mean,

42:40 early days, you either need to let somebody in from an equity perspective and let them be an owner, um, or build someone up from scratch. Like there's, it's very tough to be in a situation where

42:55 you can go get top talent that's experienced in what you're trying to do and bring them in from kind of a salary perspective. You don't have some serious funding early on

43:05 Yeah, and I think it proves the point of like how if a city wants to become an innovation tech hub, like you have to invest in it, you know, like. New York and Boston didn't just happen to become

43:14 it by chance. The cities made it part of their strategy and they invested in it heavily. And so that's something that we hope that the Houston city can also learn from. Yeah, I think that the

43:26 challenge here in some ways is the government structure in Houston makes that challenging. So in terms of who gets to put that budget together. So for right now, it's us, you know, the private

43:39 sector that's kind of driving it, yeah I think that, you know, if you look at that in a much larger macro scale, it's not just Houston, but decisions are tied to incentives and strategies tied to

43:52 incentives. I mean, you look at even at the highest level, elections, like here it's four years and in Canada, a prime minister might have anywhere from kind of three to five years depending. We

44:06 have some complexities with what an auction is called but not at home But, um, That's tough because we really need to plan a lot farther out. I mean, our climate goals are largely around 2050.

44:18 There's some, some interim goals along the way, the 2035s and the 2040s. But that's really tough to plan for when incentives have you planning for four years out. And I'm sure there's a lot of

44:30 truth to that with planning to be an innovation hub, right? But mind you, I think that Houston, in the creation of that, the ION District and creation of kind of what you're doing with the

44:42 Esperson Building, those are really big steps. In Newfoundland, Labrador, they're doing something similar. They're creating the Co Innovation Center. I actually think it's largely modeled from

44:53 their visits to the ION District and Greentown Labs to try and protect that. And energy tech's next to that. And energy tech's next to this. Absolutely. Yeah, it's like we were not public until

45:05 last week. Yeah, I mean, we're not on the map, but we're hoping we would. they were getting on the map now. You will be, when they were looking for inspiration, you were there yet. But hey,

45:15 we're working with you. They're working with you now. You're one of the key partners. Absolutely. That's why I'm here. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, no.

45:24 You were talking to us earlier about the hidden gem in Houston. So I thought maybe you could share that a little bit with the audience. You did an innovation ecosystem and then we can talk about

45:35 food. Yeah. And do two things. Oh, absolutely. I mean, well, and here's the hidden gem The key is hidden because, I mean, have you ever heard of Houston? We have a problem. I mean,

45:44 everyone knows that. We know the space centers here. We know a space city. We see the Astros, right? We also know that Houston has great barbecue and that everything is bigger in Texas. We

45:53 understand that, but the hidden gem, like the Vietnamese and Thai food here is, like, I think I've been to Houston now. I've been to Houston five or six times. It's the last three times I've had

46:04 Vietnamese and each time is like the best Vietnamese I've ever had.

46:09 The hidden gem is the super authentic Vietnamese and Thai food that I wouldn't expect. Very tasty. And I don't think you talk about it when you travel either. Like you just take it for granted if

46:19 you live in Houston. Do you have a favorite Vietnamese or Thai restaurant that you can name here? Oh, I was thinking of this when I was looking at kind of like the questions a little bit. There's

46:27 one in Midtown and it's a little tiny, it's like almost smaller. I can't name it, but it's in Midtown. It's actually near near like one, which is right near the, right off Main Street. And I

46:40 can't remember, it's right to the right of the station, you can like see the station from the place, all we can put in the show notes. We're putting the show notes. Okay. They deserve a shout

46:48 out. You're good. I've been there like three times. I never been to be near there and it was delicious. My favorite place used to be in Midtown and it used to be like 275 for the sandwich, which

46:59 is crazy. And then you realize there's a reason why they're not in business anymore, but it used to have like a line around the door that kind of place, but they didn't survive COVID So it was too

47:07 bad.

47:09 but no, it's really tasty. I love the sandwiches.

47:14 Yeah, I guess to wrap up, is there something that our listeners can help you with? How can we support you on your mission? Honestly, if you are in the energy transition space, that socioeconomic

47:28 impact, not focusing on little content, that is a trend that is going up to the right. If you are in the space, give us a follow on LinkedIn Now, benefit software, go check us out on our website,

47:39 netbenefitsoftwarecom, and just be aware that we exist, 'cause eventually you

47:43 will run into this problem, and you are going to want to know that we are there to help you solve it.