Why Small Teams Beat Big Companies
0:01 I love the clap here, it makes it official. Is anyone else, people think it's all in legit? Literally, 5 on Amazon. Best5 is the oldest ever spin. Yep, so yeah, that's our intro right there.
0:12 Okay, I'm gonna start off with an on-screen graphic on my laptop here. So by the way, I'm here with Colin McClellan. He is the founder of Collide. And you know, you are on Chalk Yeats podcast
0:26 this year and Rory with Not Your Story. Yeah Best funny. And. Wonder if he meant to rhyme that. I know, right. And so on Chucks, you talked about like, kind of like present day and future for
0:39 Collide. And then with Rory, you told your backstory and a really interesting one where you talked about going into like LinkedIn, like all bullish and like kind of changing the culture there,
0:49 which I love. So today we're going to do neither of those and try to find new talking points. And I want to talk about energy startups, you can mention your own, and also just. You know, this is
1:01 meant for the people who want to start their own, basically. Yeah. And just start up people in general. This will be your good old advice, just spit facts the whole time kind of podcast. All the
1:12 war stories from building startups. Of course. So I'm gonna start off with this image and I'll pull it up on the edit. But can you name these three people? Bill Gates, Sam Allman and Mark
1:25 Zuckerberg. Okay, can you name these three people?
1:29 Who are they? No, I can't. Well, that's the CEO of Coca-Cola, Target and Amazon. Okay. Yes, Jeff
1:37 Bezos is not the CEO of Amazon. So why is that? That's a man, you're putting me on the high seat here.
1:45 Yeah, there's a few interesting probably facets to that, but you brought up Bill Gates,
1:56 Sam Allman and Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg What's the common denominator between all three of those things? Those guys, they're founders. They found their companies.
2:04 Founder-led companies are the most special companies in the highest performing companies and much different than the CEO of Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola has been around for what, 150 years or something
2:18 crazy like that. It's much different when you are a career CEO and climb your way up the ranks of the corporate ladder, which is a skill in itself, but it's much more of a political skill than it
2:32 is actually knowing how to build in scale company. And so people like myself would take more inspiration from someone like Mark Zuckerberg than they would the CEO of Coca-Cola. Like, honestly,
2:46 there's not really anything that that CEO of Coca-Cola could teach me or that I would learn from. Well, hold on, do you think, you're sure he's not the founder? 50 year old looking man. You sure
2:56 he's not the founder of Coca-Cola? I mean, the math wouldn't be math-ing wouldn't be math-ing there. And even like you look at this with Google, you know? The founders stepped back from Google
3:10 and Google fell behind in the AI game. You know, when Jim and I came out, Jim and I sucked and it was super woke, wasn't accurate. And all of a sudden the founders come back in and now Jim and I
3:22 is one of the best performing models It's always the founders that are able to drive innovation and lead these companies. And so, you know, when you look at it, it's like, why do we gravitate,
3:34 you know, why are the books written by, or about, you know, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk and, you know, why is there not a book written, you know, about the CEO of, the current CEO of Coca-Cola,
3:45 it's because these types of
3:49 personas were capable of building great things that didn't exist before. Now, not to say like, you know, There's a book
3:58 written on Disney CEO. Damn, why am I blanking on his name? Iger. Yeah, Bob Iger. Yeah, and great book. And so, you know, there are CEOs in certain instances where, you know, they can
4:17 really transform companies and lead companies and do great things. But yeah, that's the primary difference between those two sets of people that you showed me and why I know the names of some. And
4:27 honestly, I didn't even know the faces of the others. And frankly, I don't care either, so. Yeah, that's totally
4:34 what I tried to get out of you. And yeah, that was my whole idea, for sure. I thought you're gonna pick some oil and gas guys and like put me on the hot sleeve. No, no, I don't
4:45 know them. Yeah, I was like, I don't really know what I'm doing here, but this seems like a smart idea. And of course, you killed it, and so. It was a good idea. Just keep doing that the rest
4:54 of the show and that'll be great. Okay, so another funny thing I want to bring up is that you've been doing digital wall caters and collie for five years, basically 2020, right? Yep. And just
5:04 for reference, it's almost Christmas time 2025. So I'd say even before that, I mean, we started the podcast in 2018. Yeah. So, you know, you could make an argument six or seven years. Yeah.
5:14 Six seven. Shout out. Six seven. We're gonna get into that. We'll bring back like kind of that. But I kind of have this funny idea where, you know, in five, seven years, you, you've kind of
5:24 like, okay, I'm in, I'm into collide. We're doing this. I'm building my team. Here we go. In those, in those years, you're kind of thinking of new ideas. And it's like, damn, this is like
5:35 totally missing. It would be a billion dollar idea. This is missing and people would love this. So what are those ideas? Are you willing to share any of them and give someone watching the next
5:45 billion trillion dollar idea? Cause you're too busy with collides. Yeah, I think some areas that I'm really interested in are power generation. And so I'll give you an example, you know, a
5:54 couple years ago, or maybe like 18 months ago, I don't know how long ago it was exactly, but I was looking at starting a natural gas turbine business packaging up, turbines that were
6:07 essentially remanufactured turbines from my QE helicopters because I had this thesis that oil and gas companies would become power generation companies and start providing power both across their own
6:20 assets, but then doing power purchase agreements with like data centers, Bitcoin miners, manufacturing companies, things of this nature, and got into it and I was like, you know what, I'm
6:31 actually not interested in packaging natural gas turbines, I'm actually interested in, is there a better way to make a natural gas turbine? Like if you looked at it, all the night gas turbines
6:40 designs are from the 60s and 70s and with the advent of 3D printing, I thought there had to be a better way. And since you've seen two companies pop up, one is not arbo energy, arbor energy.
6:57 And their team actually worked and built the original Raptor Engine for SpaceX. That picture that we have in the hallway, they actually worked on that. And they've taken the technology that they
7:07 developed to the Raptor Engine to make a new age natural gas turbine. And then you saw boom, I think their company name is Boom Supersonic. They're working on building the Supersonic plane and the
7:18 turbine technology that they built for that, they are actually building into Nat Gas Turbine Technology, signed a deal with Crusoe to power up one of their data centers. And so like when I look at
7:29 it on a macro theme, I'm like, where is my, where does my personal interests lie? It's really at the intersection of power generation, compute and AI. And there's so many different layers Two,
7:46 two. what that actually means, but I think that power generation, electrification, space mining are all areas that are gonna continue to grow over time. And I think like something else, it's
7:60 important to kind of tease out here is that not, you know, the companies that I like creating are technologies that are going to have an impact on society and move the needle and move us forward.
8:13 But that doesn't have to be every type of business that you build You know, I have a ton of friends that have built, you know, we'll fill services, EMPs, just
8:22 like traditional businesses. And so not everything, you know, the lens that I look at things through, like I want to work on breakthrough technologies. But when I'm talking about like power
8:31 generation, there's so much opportunity to start service businesses in that area. And, you know, just a million different opportunities that are going to exist within these industries. But that's
8:44 where my, interest is at the intersection of power generation, compute, and AI, and I just think that there's going to be infinite amounts of opportunity to build up businesses in those categories.
8:56 Yeah, so there's your free advice. I mean, yeah, if your focus is to do something that actually changes the world or impacts a huge industry, then it's kind of a no-brainer. And I mean, that
9:06 kind of goes into what we could talk about next, which is that gives you a story, right? So when you have to go pitch and tell this story, it helps when you have this amazing, holistic thing.
9:18 And it's just something passionate, something someone's never heard before. So for five years, I've heard you, you know, I knew you back in like 2017. And now 2026, Colin is like, he's got
9:30 like his dialogue tree down, I always say, like, I hear, I hear you and all the other guys, like, you'll kind of have your dialogue tree and it's just clarity Yeah, it's clarity, right? And
9:39 it's like, I don't even think y'all practice, you know, y'all just say it over and over again so much and y'all just sound confident and y'all understand. what y'all are doing. It's like, it's
9:47 just so funny seeing it grow in like this, what's almost a decade. Yeah, you mentioned knowing me since 2017, remember the picture that we have of that, we work office where you wrote business on.
9:57 Yeah, I'll throw it up right now. Yeah, I did, that's one of my favorite pictures 'cause it really just kind of shows how far we've come in a relatively short amount of time. And,
10:12 you know, when it comes to the storytelling, like, yeah, that story gets iterated and evolves over time. And like what you're explaining is actually just clarity. And you get clarity over time.
10:24 You know, when you have an idea, actually brought up Mark Zuckerberg earlier. Zuckerberg is the first person that I heard say this and articulated something that I thought, but if you actually
10:33 look at it, the best companies in the world don't start off as, oh, I'm going to start this company. It actually starts off as an idea or a project that you're passionate about and your mission
10:43 driven about and then.
10:46 that can sometimes evolve into being a commercially viable business. That was very much the case for us. You know, started this off with the podcast in 2018. And it is just evolved into what it is
10:57 today. But if I were to try to tell the story of who we are and where we're at today back in 2018, I wouldn't even even been able to do that, you know? And then even like, I look at some of my
11:08 emails from like a year ago, our story has changed so much from a year ago. But you start getting clarity over time as things progress and you have better understanding of where the world's going,
11:20 you know, what your technology is, where it's applicable, where it's useful. And you just you sit there and you think and you tell people about it and just over time, naturally, it gets boiled
11:32 down into this really simple story that you hear me tell today. So it's not like I just came out of the gate, you know, with with that story nailed down, it's just a lot of time and effort out on
11:42 the market to refine that story. Yeah, you really got your shirt together, bro. I appreciate that. I mean, in 2020, during COVID, when we're starting up, you were hiring me, like,
11:54 contractor-wise, right, to like help out and edit some videos. And I'm like, you know, like, what is this? Like, it's just another client, another project. I was a freelancer, right? So I
12:03 was just like, I was not sold at all. And now I sometimes think collide as my own baby, you know? And that isn't like me being a simp It's because you are like, you're just such a good founder.
12:16 And all the people we've surrounded us with are just like incredible. I appreciate that. But also, you know, you're our longest tenured employee. And to be able to work with me for five, six
12:28 years now, like as a testament to you and your work ethic and like, you know, when you say this is your baby, it is, you know, you've been working on this for a long time and you have so much
12:36 ownership and agency in it And like, you should have been skeptical of coming 2020 in work to, like, I don't have any fucking money. financial suicide and put every dime I had into this business,
12:47 right? And I couldn't even afford to hire someone like you full time. And there was no clarity in the vision of what it was. I just knew that, hey, if we produce content, something like
12:58 something valuable will come from that. And I was willing to take a bet on that and eat that cost to invest in that strategy. And, you know, even today, like, you know, we had our show and tell
13:12 meeting last Friday and you were sharing metrics across, you know, our content and our social strategy and our user growth and collide. And I was just sitting there thinking, like, how special is
13:23 it that we're this leading AI company and we have this built in media engine where we can ship content and we do it so naturally, like it doesn't even feel like it's, I don't even think about it.
13:35 Yeah, it doesn't even feel like it's some extra effort. It's just who we are. Like we just use content and generate content. And that's really special. companies like that out there. Like I
13:45 can't think of one off the top of my head that has that. And, um, you know, that's just, uh, again, that's from five or six years of doing it and just having clarity over time of like, Hey,
13:56 who are we? Why do we produce content? What type of content are we producing? And, um, it's just a superpower that, that we have, but, you know, I always tell stories about, you have, I'm
14:05 always, I do, I said, Jacob will be out in the middle of a forest hiking and pull out his computer and start editing. If he needs to genuinely have done that Yeah, dude, you're a fucking lurk
14:13 horse and that's why you've survived working, working with me for so long, because you, you match work ethic and that's a hard thing to do. And so, you know, you should be proud of yourself on
14:23 that too. Yeah. And we both did it while raising families. So yeah, exactly. If you have excuses. Yeah. Yeah. That's a whole other topic for some other time. Okay. So kind of like wrapping
14:36 up this section, like, another thing I just love about what you do is, We use Slack as our internal messaging. And like every time you post, it's always just like a banger. It's always something
14:46 like motivates me. Or you're like dropping some like memes or whatever, but like it's always like an announcement or it's just like sharing something that you had done that day. And it's just like,
14:58 every day you're like, you're boosting them around. Just what like these wins or even losses and honesty. It's just so awesome. And it's such a great tool. And you know, I've learned in the last
15:09 five years that like these other startups and even big companies, like they don't have internal messaging. They don't use these tools. They fucking text each other or have like these stupid email
15:17 chains. It's like, yeah, it's not even like, sometimes it's like, yeah, we're ahead of the curve. But like, sometimes it's like, we're just doing what you should do. Like when it comes to
15:25 your startup and collide, like what are these tools that you should be utilizing? Well, I think let's talk about the deeper, the deeper thing and what you just said was that
15:38 kind of sharing messaging.
15:42 of a founder, which is actually the hardest job is that you have to come and inspire people every single day and you have to set the tempo. And that sucks on some days. Like maybe you don't feel
15:51 like the per - like you are the person to set the tempo or be motivated. But, you know, one thing that I see in our company specifically is I get so energized when I'm out in the market talking to
16:01 clients and I see that reaction from people. And so it's a big part of my job to distill that down to our team and share those wins and, you know, share what investors are saying about us or
16:12 clients are saying about us. And, you know, I think I have a pretty easy job of doing that because we just have a culture of winners here that want to win and everyone's motivated. So I don't have
16:23 to come in every day and motivate everyone per se, like everyone's already intrinsically motivated. But I do think that it's important to really, um, you know, this is just part of the culture
16:34 and part of being a leader is, is keeping out that, that fire lit because the only a startup is a fucking grind. and they can wear it down on people and keeping people motivated and understanding
16:47 the why. Like what is our mission in doing this? This is really important and it's funny. Like you say, it's like, you go talk to other companies and like they don't even have like simple things
16:56 like messaging and things of this. Like the things that we do that seem like common sense, you'd be so surprised how it's not common sense across many companies. Like I look at many companies and
17:06 I'm just like, I don't understand how you guys operate And, you know, I think that communication is probably one of the most important things in life, not just in building startups. And we've
17:19 been able to have a good system of communication and distilling down messaging and cultures and values in our team. And I think that we have a really transparent culture in company too, where, you
17:32 know, hey, like sometimes it's not all, it's not all rainbows. Like, you know, sometimes those messages are like, Okay, look, you know, we're, we're. up against the wall here and we got to
17:41 overcome a feat, but having a culture where we can have those conversations and everyone feels like they're part of the solution and solving those problems is really important. Yeah, the day-to-day
17:53 stuff is just so inspiring and I guess that is just not happening in other businesses. There's something we do that's more normal is our quarterly meetings. We follow the EOS system, which if you
18:04 don't know what that is, I don't feel like explaining it But every, we get together every quarter and we talk and we set up goals in a way and the EOS system has a creative and more formatted way of
18:15 doing it, measurable, stuff like that. Yeah. We've implemented that maybe, what, three or four years ago? I wasn't that long ago, maybe two, but there's four parts to my algorithm for
18:28 building a high velocity company. The first one is talent density and this is the most important element of it And so what I care about is finding the best people in the world in their specific
18:38 discipline. comping them extremely well. And what that allows you to do is to have a very small team that moves at a very high velocity. So, you know, it's kind of counterintuitive because you're
18:50 like, oh, I could go get this person and they're really expensive or I could go get three people for the same cost. If you add three people to your organization, your productivity actually does
18:59 not scale in a linear fashion. It actually regresses because now you have three average people It adds friction in communication, it adds bureaucracy and layers of decision making. And so my goal
19:14 here at Collide is to turn this into a billion dollar company with less than 50 people. And to do that, you have to focus on talent and city and getting the best of the best people in the world. So
19:22 that's the first part. The second part is identifying what is the important work because when you're building a company like this, there is a never-ending list of things to get done and things that
19:33 seem important. And so to actually go through that, and identify what is important is a real challenge. And you have to be able to say, say no to a lot of things. You know, Steve Jobs has a
19:44 famous saying it's a thousand nos for every yes. And people think that those are like, should be easy nos, but they're actually nos to things that you wanna do and things that make sense. Like you
19:54 need hard nos in there. And so that's the important thing is identifying the important word, which this is where the OS setting system comes in. You know, we use a hybrid version of the OS, but
20:05 honestly using the OS system is one of the best investments that we made. You know, I think that we probably invested something like50, 000 to get an EOS consultant to come in here and help us
20:15 implement the system. But essentially what EOS is taking many different learnings from quote unquote business leaders and actually productizing that and making it into an operating system. So the
20:26 big part of that operating system is setting your annual and quarterly goals.
20:32 That's where we really get to determine, hey, what is the important work that we need to get done this year? And what is the important work that we need to get done in the quarter? The third part
20:42 of my algorithm is aligning the team to execute on that important work. So everyone in startup plan talks about speed, like speed, speed, speed. Speed actually doesn't matter because you can all
20:53 be moving fast in different directions and pulling against each other, which I actually care about is velocity. Velocity has a vector, it has a direction You wanna be moving fast and in the same
21:02 direction. So not only does an operating system like EOS help you identify what that important work is, but it helps align the team to move in the same direction and execute on that important work.
21:14 And then the fourth part is just ruthlessly removing friction. And that can be in process, it can be in people. It is very hard to build momentum and a business. And the second that you start
21:25 seeing friction and you're in the system, you have to cut that friction and remove it And so those. That's really what it boils down to is those four steps in having an operating system is really
21:38 critical to being able to execute that algorithm. And so, you know, whether it's EOS, you know, there's other systems like OKRs, but OKRs are good for goal setting, but doesn't really give you
21:52 the playbook to go execute on those goals. And that's why I liked the EOS system. And we've taken the EOS system and modified it a bit to fit our company And I think that we've outgrown the EOS
22:03 system a little bit, but we still use the core tenets of it. Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, you're just setting goals. Yeah. It's generic stuff, but when you get in the weeds of it,
22:12 it's detailed and - There's some more - like, there's some stuff that isn't generic, though, like how we run our meetings. Like, we're super time efficient in our meetings. We always have
22:21 outcomes. You know, in EOS, like, there's an issues list. When we first started, our issues list would be like 50 things long.
22:30 Now our issues list is like maybe one to three things and they're always resolved by the end of a meeting. And so, you know, not to sound arrogant here, but I would say that our company is in top
22:41 percentile of operational efficiency. And it's because we've gotten really good at running that system. Yeah, I'll accept that. Glad you'll accept it. Yeah,
22:51 wrapping up this kind of talking points. I mean, there's two things. One, I brought this up in a quarterly meeting when you're kind of, you're going on a spiel like this and it made me think like,
23:01 you know, like people,
23:04 the first thing you said was like you pay them well out the gate and stuff like that. Like there's a, there's actually a paradox with employment where like people work for raises and promotions and
23:15 stuff. And then once they get it, they slow down, right? So right out the gate, you want to just pay someone well. And it isn't like, don't expect to raise now, but it's like, it's just like
23:25 starting them off like acknowledging their value right out the gate Yes, I could go with it, put it. Yeah, well, I have this theory or this thesis that most businesses operate
23:38 through the lens of like what a private equity firm would operate at. And they look at GNA through the lens of an Excel spreadsheet. And they just see numbers in Excels cells and they're not even
23:54 capable of viewing compensation as an investment into their people Like businesses come down to the people that you have, full stop. And so if you can flip that and look at how much money you spend
24:08 on your people as an investment into the business. You know, I have people on our payroll that were very expensive when we hired them. Like gives me a little bit of Harper. And every single time I
24:21 make one of those hires, six months later, they end up looking really cheap. And it's because the velocity of the company grew extremely fast. I mean, you even look at like. You know, I'll just
24:32 give an example. You know, we hired Jasmine. Jasmine is an amazing AI engineer and expert in reinforcement learning. You know, spent time at Microsoft, worked on Chad GPT's reinforcement
24:42 learning team while she was there. And you bring someone like her on and all of a sudden, a month and a half, two months later, we had the best performing LLM in oil and gas. It's like, okay,
24:56 well, you gained this velocity from getting the best of the best people. And you wouldn't be able to do that if you just look at building your company through an Excel spreadsheet and just seeing it
25:07 as pure cost. And so I think that that's what makes things much different of how I view hiring people than the majority of businesses out there is like, I would rather go get the best of the best,
25:20 pay them really well. And one, that's going to attract them to come work with you, but then also make them feel valued. And then you get 10x productivity out of these amazing people. And now I
25:31 don't have to go higher, you know, bodies. And I don't have, like, there's one thing it's like, I will not settle for mid-level talent. It's funny, I asked one of our people on our team. I
25:41 was like, hey, is there anyone from your previous company that we should go recruit from this? And he's like, man, he's like, the hard part about this is they don't meet the collide bar. And
25:50 that's what I want. It's like, I want such a high bar to come work here that you know that you're the best of the best to be here And you know, you can only get that way if you kind of have this
25:60 mindset towards hiring people and how you compensate them. Yeah, and one thing you left out was just the domain expertise of your employees. Like, I don't even know if Jazmya comes from energy,
26:13 but she was able, she's either learned or it's just, you know, you picked the right person who was able to build the LLM based off this knowledge. And then of course you're hiring people like Todd
26:23 and John who do come from the industry. Yeah, well, I think the beautiful thing is, is that we've been able to marry those two. So we have deep domain expertise in oil and gas. And so you have
26:33 people like, you know, Michael, who is a completionist engineer for 20 years. You have Nick, who's a geophysicist, who's a chevron, you have John, who's a Frack engineer, Todd, you know, go
26:44 down the list. But then on the other side of the coin, we have the best of the best in AI talent as well. And a team that doesn't come from oil and gas or have a traditional energy background. But
26:58 you marry those two and our tech AI team, you know, what I really appreciate about everyone on our team is how interested they are in oil and gas. And they get into it and they're just fascinated
27:08 by it. And so they're getting to apply what they know in AI to the industry. They're getting to learn from people on our team that have that oil and gas domain expertise. And on the flip side, the
27:17 oil and gas domain expertise is getting to learn like our four deployed engineers, like, like, man, this is incredible I get to learn from Mark. in John Slow and Jasmine and Clay and Sam Texas,
27:30 it's the opportunity of a lifetime for them that they get to learn from such smart AI minds. And that's hard to do. Last year I was in Silicon Valley and VCs didn't have faith that I could recruit
27:43 the best AI talent. And now I go to Silicon Valley and they're like, How are you getting AI engineers from Seattle to come work in oil and gas? And so it's a really special thing that we have here
27:51 being able to get the smartest people from both sides and put them together to build collide. Cool. I think it's time to switch it up real good. I wanted to kind of be getting into more taboo
28:03 topics. So, taboo, talking about whatever, right? So right now it's Christmas time, December 22nd, clients slow down, we're slowed down, and there's a whole mindset to it. You know, do
28:18 people desperately need a break from burnout or is it time to get going on the next year? You know, people have different thoughts And so like, what is your temperature check right now? Like
28:29 everyone's about to be out of the half the office has gone tomorrow and then we're off for like a week. You know, people working from home, people are just going to completely turn off like, and
28:37 you've done this, you know, five years now. Like, how are you feeling in current day about getting this break? Is it a good, bad, neutral? Yeah, this is my favorite time of the year because
28:47 one, you get to look inward so a little bit and work on some internal things. I think what's been unique about this year is that things haven't slowed down
28:57 up until Friday, a few days before Christmas, we're still in client meetings, we're still in investor meetings,
29:04 and I love that. Like I love the continuing the momentum and the productivity to the holiday season.
29:12 If you listen to me where I talked about my four step algorithm, nowhere did I talk about hours worked or working hard. Honestly, hard work ethics just kind of table stakes for me. you have to be
29:24 a hard worker to be anywhere in my vicinity. So that's just kind of like table stakes. But I think one thing that I've realized over my career is that you focus on the important work and the high
29:35 leverage work. And then go put in all your time and effort into those things, you know? When you start working people 100 hours a week, that's when they get burned out. But what's actually
29:46 interesting about that, it's like if you're working on something meaningful, people will go put in those long hours and they'll never get burned out because they're actually excited about what
29:54 they're working on. You know, I see our engineering team sending messages sometimes at midnight, one o'clock in the morning of things that they're working on. That's not mandated that you need to
30:04 be up at 1 am, working 16-hour days. They're just doing it because they're excited and they want to accomplish that problem. And so I think that like naturally it's kind of like counterintuitive,
30:13 but you
30:16 identify what that important work is and really articulate how meaningful it is. and people really accept it as a challenge to go put an effort on those things and they're actually fulfilled and
30:26 energized by it. And so, things
30:33 like this week between Christmas and New Year's, we don't take it completely off but people work from home and it's like, hey, go spend some time with your family. I think that that's important.
30:43 And I don't hold everyone to the same standard anymore that I have I understand,
30:51 I'm cracked out. This is what I like doing. I like spending all my time on this.
30:57 This is my hobby and my love is building businesses. But understanding, there's a balance for that throughout your employees and your team. But I think what I like is I get high achievers that are
31:10 mission driven and they just want to accomplish the goal at any cost. And that comes and ebbs and flows sometimes and it's worked out really well for us. Yeah, I think You have such an interesting
31:22 take on just how you see these things. Like you're also, you also hate remote workers, but the office hours, people can leave at three. Well, I hate remote work in general, which is funny
31:33 considering that like half of our team is remote. You know, we run, we run hybrid, you know, I got people in Denver and Oklahoma City and in Charlotte, Charlotte and Austin. And Sweden. And
31:46 Sweden
31:48 My hate for remote work actually stays intact. Like I would choose, I would choose
31:56 in-person teams all day. There's nothing more powerful than a team around a whiteboard. And you even see this, when our engineers come down to the office, you know, they come down for a few days
32:06 or a week out of the month and there's just nothing that can replace that. I took a video of Todd riding on a whiteboard and I was like, you literally look like stock footage of like, of like.
32:20 People working in office, you're literally like pointing and there's like shapes and letters and numbers and like arrows I'm like, it's so funny. You're like y'all are literally a business There's
32:29 like like the other day. We're around a whiteboard and just had a revelation and how we Structure our contracts and
32:38 I Think that comes down to the communication piece and like it's just like you know Easy it is for me to turn around in a chair and like oh dude What do you think about this instead of someone being
32:48 remote and like oh Harry are you available to get on a zoom? And like you have to go through that like it's just so much friction in the communication process And so like still if you ask me today,
32:57 hey what I want people in person I will always pick in person now. How do you cope with how do I cope a couple things?
33:08 Like many things in life, I don't think that things are so binary I think that there's always a right answer somewhere in between and and Most of the reasons why our people are the people that we
33:20 have that are remote were family related. So, you know, someone's in Austin. Their divorce, their kids are in Austin. But I want them on our team. I know they are the right person on our team.
33:33 What am I supposed to do in that instance? Like, no, no, you gotta move to Houston for this. You know, you can't see your kids. Like, no, have another employee that's remote. He's the
33:42 primary caretaker for his elderly dad. Same thing I want his talent on our team, but understand that. You know, another one that is remote is like, I moved away 15 years, my parents are aging.
33:54 I want to be with them. I'm sympathetic towards that. My dad just passed away. One of my, how could I in good conscience tell this person, no,
34:02 you know, you need to be in Houston. And so there was this point in our company where it's like, look, I just need to get the best of the best talent and I need to make accommodations for them and
34:12 that. Now I'm at a point. It's like, okay, I've kind of got my core team. Now I'm gonna have a bias more of getting people here in our nucleus in the Houston office. So I've kind of switched
34:21 back to that. But then the understanding of, hey, oil and gas is a worldwide industry and it's a remote industry as well. So in the near future, I'm gonna have four deployed engineers in Midland,
34:33 Oklahoma City, South America, the Middle East. And so we better learn how to work in this remote capacity because we're gonna have operations all around the world So anyways, this is just
34:44 something. And like, I think this also determines by job function and company size as well. Like when you are a high growth early stage startup, it is very critical that you have in person,
34:57 FaceTime, like you have to, this shit's hard. And you have to feed off that energy of your team and have that clear frictionless communication. And you did, like I was the only virtual employee.
35:09 Yeah, for a long time. Like literally, yeah Yep. And then. I think that remote works better with some engineering roles and capacities because they know what they need to work on and they can
35:22 just execute on it. And so as long as they're executing on those things and we're meeting our goals and our deadlines, everything's fine. But then if it comes to like the product team and like
35:31 sales is like those are a lot of things that we need to have that constant communication. And so anyways, I just have lots of thoughts on it. It's funny because like publicly like I have been very
35:44 anti-remote. And I think like where I was like really anti-remote is like at big tech companies. For instance, like there became a lot
35:53 of froth in the American workforce, a lot of entitlement. And when you had remote workers, like they're not working like one, most jobs are fake jobs anyways and most people aren't doing real
36:04 valuable work. And then now, you know, they're not even willing to come into an office. And so that was where a lot of my hate for remote work was actually like the big tech companies and things
36:13 of that nature but. I've definitely softened up on it just in terms of how we operate and things are working out for us. So, you know, what we're doing right now, it's working and we're going to
36:24 keep running with it. Yeah, I agree. They gave a healthy view on all this stuff. Sticking with the taboo stuff though, you know, you know how to cope with people being virtual, taking the
36:34 holidays off, stuff like that. But what do you think the industry, just American industry culture in general, has a healthy normalization when it comes to time off, like vacation, maternity
36:46 leave, Sydney's gone for two months. Like we have people, we have such a tight team, but you have a paradox where when one of them wants to go on vacation or gets pregnant or whatever, like
36:58 you're kind of fucked, right? It's like, okay, this one person does all this work. Like they're gone for a week. What do we do, right? Like how do you, how do you work with that? Well, a
37:06 couple things. You should not be fucked if one person takes vacation. Good advice. This actually comes down to you probably don't have good processing systems. Um, so getting to a point where you
37:16 have good processing systems and, um, one person taking vacation for a week doesn't fuck you. Um, it's important. Um,
37:27 Yes, more broadly about my thoughts on like how Americans treat holidays. I think that Americans are getting fucking soft. Straight up. Um, I think that we need to work much harder. You look at
37:40 countries Like China in Russia and, uh, India, like these are. And you see this, like immigrants that come to the United States are just much harder working than the average American. And I
37:56 think that we've gotten fat, fluffy, lazy, and broadly speaking, I think that Americans have gotten really soft Um, now when it comes to my company specifically and the types of people that I
38:10 like working with, yeah, I think like one thing that's great is like, You know, people can go get time off and actually get time off and not have to worry about things because we have good systems
38:20 and processes. You know, one thing I appreciate is like, you know, our office hours right now are nine to three. Try to keep people out of that use and traffic, but like a month ago, I had an
38:30 issue Sunday morning at 6 am. There were four people from our company on a call with me within five minutes on their own doing like them reaching out to me sending me messages. And so that's a big
38:40 part of our culture too is stepping up and doing the work no matter what time it is or what day it is and that's table states to me and that's what I expect. And so having a balance of that but like
38:53 yeah I think that like we're talking on a macro level. I think Americans are soft. I think that we are in a lot of trouble if we don't embrace American capitalism and the work ethic that made our
39:04 country great like those are what made the United States United States but also understanding that hey you can build a company culture where people and enjoy their work, and enjoy their lives. And
39:18 where they're, you know, I'll use Nick Smart as an example, comes here from Chevron. Nick told me that he's working 10 times harder than he ever worked at Chevron, and his happiness in life has
39:28 gone up 100x. And that's the type of culture I want. I want people to be able to come here and work hard, but actually have their life improved across the board. And I think that that's achievable.
39:37 I don't think that those two things are mutually exclusive. That really hits with me, and it's something I've kind of noticed this year, is that
39:46 in her early years, I really was basically a contractor, even when I was on full-time. I would basically work on random video ideas you'll had. I was so disconnected. I didn't schedule a podcast.
39:58 I had no administrative backwork. It was, I was an editing tool. And so I had lots of time. I feel like I had a week. Sometimes I would wake up Monday and have nothing from digital wall catters
40:10 till like the next week I'm talking like 2020, 2021. And at the same time, I was still working on, I kind of fizzled out contracting work and like taking on other clients, but I was still working
40:23 on my own YouTube channel. And I do a YouTube channel where I make city guides and geography stuff, it's a lot of fun. And I was so into it. And I'd get in the projects and write and edit, and
40:33 then I would have to go and work for y'all and get a lot done. I would get so frustrated that I couldn't go back and spend time, 'cause I was following the rules. Like if there was something I
40:43 needed to be done for you, I was doing it. I wasn't like moonlighting and I've been splitting the 5050. Yeah. And that has fizzled out. I had come out, I made one video this year on my YouTube
40:53 channel and that was in January. Yeah. Since almost been 12 months. Yeah. And I'm not frustrated anymore.
41:01 Yeah. I, the feeling I get for making videos for my YouTube channel is the same feeling I get for making content and keeping up with Collide now. That's awesome. So you've fully brainwashed me
41:11 into that feeling.
41:13 I don't think I've done anything. That's probably a derivative of you having more ownership. Like what you just brought up, like in 2020, 2021, do we didn't know what the fuck we were or what
41:23 we're doing? And like, you know, it was just like a random like video idea, you know, every other week or whatever it might have been. Whereas now it's like, dude, you have clear mission and
41:35 objectives and like know what you're building towards. And that's actually goes back to what my comment was earlier It's like, if you identify what the important work is and give people meaning,
41:45 like that's how you actually have a happy life, in my opinion, is where you have something that you deem as meaningful work and you get to wake up and work on that every day and you get to wake up
41:56 and spend time with your family and do the things that you love outside of that as well. Like, you can't like, dude, that's a better life than the majority of humans who have ever lived on the
42:06 planet get to get to experience. And so, you know, for me, I'm really grateful of that that I get to wake up and work on the things that I want. I want to create a culture where people feel that
42:16 all throughout the team and then I don't feel like you deal with burnout if you can get that element right. Yep, agreed. One more taboo topic and it will wrap it up. You're spitting facts though,
42:30 this is good. I love this. It's a taboo to me, these are just, these are. Yeah, that's a dumb word to use but I mean, the most taboo is what I will mention next, which is money. So there's
42:40 like this fallacy of giving people raises and shares while being a startup. You're not a profitable company and you may not be for years. How do startups
42:54 raise money and then distribute that money? You pay your people well, but you have to give raises, you have to give shares, it seems so screwy. And what have you learned in five years? It's not
43:05 screwy, like I said, people in your team are the most important part business. They are what make a company. And so the entire point of raising capital is to invest in that team. Now, this is
43:19 also where it's important to understand that there's a difference between types of companies, types of financing structures. Like if I was to go start up a plumbing service business, pretty much
43:29 everything I'm about to say here is not applicable to that. There are two completely different types of businesses, two different types of financing structures. But for a company like Collide, we
43:39 look at this and we say, hey, look, we're gonna lose money for several years. It's gonna take a big capital investment to get the right people in here to build cutting-edge technology to build out
43:51 a product that's proven in the market. And really, we look at, hey, what are those potential cash flows that come 15, 20 years out from now? And it's almost like drilling a well. Hey, we're
44:02 gonna invest a ton of money upfront to go acquire the land to run the seismic, to drill the well, and we hope that a lot of oil is going to come out of it. is building a company like this. And so,
44:15 you know, there's a couple great books. One of them is called Scaling Compensation. Really skinny book, I love it. It's all meat and potatoes, like no fluff in it. But it talks about how
44:26 compensation is so much a part of your culture. And this is something that I don't think most people understand is that compensation can vary so differently between company, between all companies,
44:40 because it's so much tied into culture. But for us, I want everyone here to make a lot of money and to get rich off of building this company. That's my intention. I'm a capitalist, so that's what
44:55 I want for everyone around me. I've kind of disconnected myself from financial outcomes. I'm so mission driven that I just -
45:05 even if I didn't make a penny off of this, I would still be happy, because this is what I want to work on And I think that it's one of the most important technologies the world. So I've
45:13 disconnected myself from financial outcomes, but I want everyone around me to win. And
45:19 the only way that you can do that is being thoughtful about compensation. And that's why we raise money is because, hey, we need to get the best of the best of people here. And that takes money to
45:31 do that. And so I just look at as an investment into the company. And like I said, we wouldn't be doing the things that we're doing today if we didn't have the people that we have. And so
45:44 when it comes to being profitable, that's just part of our plan is like, hey, we're not going to be profitable. We're going to lose money. This is why we need the balance sheet to be able to
45:52 sustain that, to build up the right team, to build up the technology, to get the technology out to market, prove that it works, and then we'll generate revenue. And so that's why we raise
46:01 capital so that we have the balance sheet to be able to execute that and do that Boom, last question, question mark. So I'm going to go on a little tangent. So. Um, so I come from Hurricane
46:15 Katrina in New Orleans and, um, you know, my whole life, you know, it's like, Oh, boo hoo, poor you, not like that, but like, literal sympathy. Yeah. And it's like, it's always been so
46:26 hard to, um, feel bad because it, my life is better. Like, Jacob growing up in New Orleans and Katrina never happening is a worse or Jacob than today. Um, my New Orleans is just, you know,
46:40 everyone, everyone has an opinion about it And it's, it's what you can assume, you know, the schools aren't the best. And the culture there is a centric where I could have just grown up to be
46:50 some like guy working at a grocery store, addicted to drugs, whatever. She seems like a higher probability, especially where I was. Yeah. But instead I, um, we moved here. My parents both got
47:01 their same jobs, but better. And then my mom went on to go work for TPH and I went to better schools that are still some of the best districts. in the country to this day and so on, right? Yeah.
47:13 And so there's this irony of a tragedy creating opportunity. And I would say digital wall catters and collided the same thing starting up in COVID. So to wrap it up, like, what is your overall
47:27 perspective of the last five years and what did, what would, where would we be without COVID? Well, I think on a deeper level, like luck and timing play
47:41 really big factors in life, that sometimes people don't attribute all the credit that they should. And it's never lost on me how fortunate I am and how luck and timing have played into my life,
47:54 just like you, like, yeah. It's kind of butterfly effects are weird, man. When you look back, like, honestly, humans, they're like, there's a few events and decisions in your life that make
48:04 up your entire life and I doubt that you would have been just some guy working at a grocery store. Like, I think that you would have created something for yourself, but that path would look so much
48:17 different if a hurricane didn't push out in the Texas, right? I think about this all the time. Like, dude, I actually used to get a lot of guilt. Like, I'd go to a restaurant and, you know,
48:27 there's some guy, like, you know, working as my server and I'm like, man, you know, they're not making that much money. Like, I'd have a lot of guilt for me being a 19-year-old, making a shit
48:36 ton of money out on a drilling rig that I just happen to grow up in Midland, Texas and have that opportunity. But over time, what I learned is that most people, even if they had access to that
48:46 opportunity to rough neck on a drilling rig, wouldn't do it because it's fucking hard. And to make that money, you had to work on it hours a week and risk your life for it. Like most people just
48:54 wouldn't do it. And what I've seen about luck and timing is that you got to increase your surface area. Like you have to work hard to put yourself in those lucky spots and to capture that Like,
49:06 yeah, cool dude. You got moved here to Houston from a hurricane, but you still had a work hard and you had to learn skills that put you in the position that you are in today. Like full stop. Like
49:17 the only reason that I met you and I had an interest in you is because I thought you were one of the best video editors in Texas and you worked hard to teach yourself that in your pot off of YouTube.
49:28 You had the agency and initiative to go learn that and then you were fined even more over time. That's all you. That's your effort. That's your input It's easy to think like, Hey, you got lucky
49:39 on a life break and got to move to Texas and all this. At the end of the day, you're still the one that capitalized on that. There's a balance in thinking that sometimes of being grateful for the
49:49 opportunities that were presented and the timing and luck, but also there's an idea of you control the inputs and that's the only thing that you can control in life and you need to go put in the
49:59 effort on those inputs to get lucky and capitalize on that timing. That's not lost to me in this business. We had so much luck in timing, you know, from this great crew change to software and AI,
50:14 but also I was there putting in the hours to see those trends and put us in that position to get lucky. And so there's a balance of that. And I don't think that those things had to be mutually
50:25 exclusive. Like I think that you can have pride in ownership and what you do and what your personal effort is and also humble and grateful for the opportunities that you were able to capitalize on.
50:37 And so
50:40 that's an ever evolving thought that just kind of gets derived from wisdom of living in the world and seeing things. But
50:50 what I would always encourage people is to focus on the things that you can control, the inputs and gaining skills, meeting people, building your network, working hard This is one thing that
51:00 you'll see me like, yeah, some people think that I'm a, you know, hustle porn, hard work, hardo on Twitter. But dude, if you come from nothing and you don't have a safety net and you don't
51:10 have those opportunities, like it is on you to go create those opportunities and that quote unquote luck. And so, you know, that's always my overarching advice to people is to focus on those
51:24 inputs. And yeah, you wanna hope that you catch a lucky break. You need some lucky breaks in life, but you have to create that luck yourself. And we've been lucky to experience that Damn, I'm
51:36 featuring me as pumping as fist as I bust out all these clips on social media. You are an actual modern day Gary Vee. Without the bullshit. Without the bullshit. I appreciate that. Yeah. I
51:50 appreciate you. You know, one, I appreciate you as a person. And I'm very thankful of our relationship and getting to work with you over five years coming up on six years now And, you know, I'm
52:02 just forever grateful for the. skills and ability that you bring to the team. So hopefully, you know, we have a lot more of those years ahead of us. Oh yeah, man. Thanks for coming on. And
52:15 thanks for letting me trick you into a free therapy session. Absolutely, man.
