Energy Bytes

0:00 Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of Energy Bites. John, California, here with you today. This is actually, I think the second or third time we have tried to record an episode with my

0:12 wonderful guest, Anega Ulanova, founder and CEO of QMS to go. Like I said, so just some history that you guys don't know, we have recorded this at least one other time and I had technical

0:24 difficulties on my end. So the file got corrupted So Anega stopped by yesterday to say hi and she's in town. So I was like, Hey, let's just go ahead and record this and do it. So thank you for

0:35 making time and stopping by. Thank you so much for having me here and a pleasure to be here and technical different difficulties happen. So it's always fun. Yeah. It's always fun on a technology

0:48 podcast.

0:51 Technology is not always the best. Um, but yeah, no, we were, we've talked a lot We've, like I said, we've kind of done this already, at the beginning, who

1:03 are you, what are you currently doing now? You're the founder and CEO of QMS to go, we can start there. But I want to do, I think there's a lot of, you have a really cool story. And so let's,

1:12 we'll get into that, but tell people what QMS to go is. Definitely. So QMS to go is my new venture. It's AI assistant for quality managers, specifically in manufacturing settings. So basically

1:25 we tried to remove the manual work and busy work from quality managers and just let them focus on what is important. And our tool is not like replacement for the existing, even Excel shields or more

1:40 sophisticated ERP systems. We adjust a tool for them to be more effective and save time. And the story of QMS to go, I guess, goes back when I was quality auditor and quality manager. Actually,

1:54 my entire career in oil field began when I joined the manufacturer and she.

2:01 who's API licenses was suspended due to non-conformances. So we joined this company, five of us, five new employees, plus two external auditors just to rebuild the system from the ground up. And

2:17 one of the reasons why their licenses were suspended because they had huge operations, global operations, and just one exhausted quality manager. So it wasn't feasible even to make sure that they

2:29 comply with API Q1 and such. So that was like, for me, a bright moment, like there should be a better way. Then I stopped doing quality management, auditing and consultancy because we launched

2:45 our LA new product development team. And 10 years after, exactly last year, at the same time, I went to visit my friends, owners of a machine shop, and I observed how the audits and quality

3:01 managers do their stuff, they haven't moved forward, they moved backwards. It's like, we live in such a tech-advanced world, there are so many simple ways to do versus a resilience of nodes which

3:18 you will not be able to read, so that's what inspired us to create this QMS to go Okay, so let's break that down a little bit, talk about the auditing process for those who might not be as familiar

3:32 with the manufacturing side of things, so what does that mean when I have an API certification as a manufacturer? What

3:40 all does that? There's a lot of similarities to on the software technology side with Sock2 and some of the different compliances and things like that, but it's incredibly important on the

3:50 manufacturing side because these are the things that are being either the equipment that's working on the wells or the actual equipment in the wells, and so they have to have these certain standards

3:58 or, you know, there's all kinds of. problems that can happen from that. Definitely. Indeed, I fully agree with you that it's critical process for the entire industry. So the research

4:07 organization is American Petroleum Institute. It's one of the oldest organization created by big corporations. With the goal to standardize the equipment, to make sure that everything will be

4:20 interchangeable. And when they started to create monograms, programs meaning like setting up specific requirements for

4:31 wellhead, like Christmas trees, pipes, and such, they realized that there shouldn't be a way how to control quality. Yeah, so it's everything from the type of steel that's used, to how it's

4:43 treated, how it's cooled, all the fun stuff. Definitely. So in 1980s, they released an API Q1 first version, which was very similar to ISO 9001. In essence, it's a framework how to keep

4:57 quality It's set of standards, rules, things they need to pay attention to. So, a company needs to have this quality management system designed. It's standard separating procedures, templates

5:11 and such, and then they will have audits from American Petroleum Institute. When an auditor comes to your facility, they learn about what you do, what is your scope of certification. Do you do

5:25 just machining? Do you build just chalk valves? Or you do piping, or you do threading, then he starts to read your procedures, making sure that what you have in your procedures complies with what

5:39 API Q1 states, how you approach supplier evaluation, how you approach evaluation of your supplier suppliers, how you do customer satisfaction surveys, how you go about in-process inspection, how

5:55 your designs are being verified invalidated to make sure that everything is done. single piece of equipment which goes on the field meets at least safety standards, the minimum requirements,

6:05 because one mistake could cost millions in litigation and lives, which is not fun, right? So auditor comes through these procedures, reviews all your processes, and then goes to actual shop or

6:19 field to evaluate if what you have said in your procedures actually being executed on the field. They talk with people, machinists, welders, QC personnel, the review records going back up to two

6:34 years, and by the end of the day, the advice, so auditors do not make decisions. They provide suggestions to API either to grant certificate or licensee to apply quality mark or the issue

6:49 nonconformances andor advice

6:52 company for suspension And companies then need to address non-conformances within, I think, six days now, and after that, they will be preparing for the next audit, which will take place either

7:06 next year or in three years if company has a monogram. So again, it's very important to have someone to come to your facility unbiased, making sure that what you do actually meets requirements of

7:21 API and products which go in the field are safe. Yeah, so I mean, these are all things that are, they're in the RFPs, they're in the contracts that these vendors have to provide, you know, this

7:32 type of equipment that meets these standards, whether that's API or ISO or ASME, there's all of these different standards and stuff, right? And so

7:42 it's, there's a lot behind it, right? And a lot of it is

7:48 not paperwork, but it's written, right? It's procedures, it's policies, it's manuals, it's for, you know, records of them actually doing those procedures and policies and all of those things.

7:60 Actually, we've done a survey talking about the paperwork, right? Paperwork could be meaningful and meaningless. And we surveyed over 200 quality and general managers in small to medium-sized

8:13 manufacturers, and 65 of time of quality managers spent on meaningless paperwork, meaning they are re-typing, they are looking for things, it's just not something evaluated Let's look at the

8:28 salaries of quality managers. They make from 80, 000 to 120 even higher

8:35 expensive clerk, just because they don't have tools to do what they're supposed to do, and they become, again, just clerks, which is set. Yeah. No, I think that's, everyone is, you know, so

8:48 there's every kind of article out there under the sun about AI, you know, taking people's jobs and things like that, but ensure that happens, right? will continue to happen in certain aspects.

8:59 But I think the one, it's not just like a you flip a switch and it happens overnight. But two, it's a transitional kind of step change. And there's all these new things that happen to do that.

9:10 But one of the first things that happens in my opinion perspective is we automate away the things that people don't like doing anyway, most of the time. Right. And so it's like, Hey, if you can

9:20 take that person and give them back 60 of their time to go do the things that you can't have a computer do, that's, that's the goal, right? Like, I agree. And also, you know, like, I have so

9:31 many stories again throughout this year, as we were talking about our tool, and not only, I do feel that people who are very scared of them losing job are not well qualified to do their job at the

9:45 first place. AI by no means really replace you if you are a value add, if you can think, because AI can do that much, but not critical thinking, And so one of the stories I have, I have, one of

10:01 my, uh, quality, uh, fellow quality consultant, and he was like super against my tool and we had maybe 10 conversations till he had that, uh, moment, like, I can charge more, I can do way

10:17 more. Yes, I can do way less charge more because I will be able to focus on real improvements Plus we have like affiliate programs for quality managers and quality consultants where they can offer

10:34 our software to their clients. So clients will do this work without a consultant and consultant comes like a keen to actually check what has been done and improve things. So, yeah, no, that's,

10:48 that's what I tell people, uh, when they, when they ask me questions about software and it's like at the end of the day, you want your user to be. to be the champion, the king, the winner in

10:59 the situation. How do you make them look as good as possible to their boss or to the client or whoever? And so, yeah, that's a huge piece of this. I wanna back up and kind of start a little

11:12 earlier because I think it's important. One, you have a really cool story. Two, the story is interesting. It kind of builds up to QMS to go and I think it gives a lot more validation to it So

11:24 let's back up to, I guess, how did you get to Louisiana Tech? So my background, my father-in-law is an ex - Louisiana Tech alum. His children went to Louisiana Tech. He's a booster over there.

11:38 And so when we initially met, I was like, this is crazy. Rustin is a very small town. It's a small world. And so having that connection. But how did you ultimately end up at Louisiana Tech? And

11:47 then kind of let's go through because you did have a very cool story with LA new product development stuff as well. Yeah, that leads into some of this other stuff, so. Yes, definitely, so I was

12:02 born and raised in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is like country between Russia and China. I call it neutral place where negotiations take place. But we also the largest landlocked country in the world.

12:15 And we have like, if I'm not mistaken, the third largest oil reserves. So all the majors like Chevron, Harry Burton, Schlumberger, you name it have a huge presence back home. I will tell you

12:28 one story about small town in Kazakhstan, which felt like a luxury, Sweden, I don't know, me town. But yeah, born and raised in Kazakhstan, when my husband and my partner, my business partner,

12:41 Konstantin was doing his master's. And I was finishing up my undergrad, Louisiana Tech University invited him to be like a professor exchange for a month. So at the time, Louisiana Tech University

12:56 have had strong partnerships with our university back home. So after his visit here, he was offered to get his PhD in mechanical engineering, material science to be more specific, attack, and I

13:10 just graduated.

13:12 So his dream was to get to the US. My dream was to continue living my life. Dream of my father was never letting your daughter go to other country if she's not married. So we were dating two years

13:27 back then and they got married and moved to the US. What I was able to do in English when I moved back in 2010 was smiling.

13:40 So that was the most, you know, like simplistic and more powerful language at that time. So yeah, I learned English in six months So, my accent. is still there just because I had advanced degree

13:55 in learning English in six months. So I skipped things to get through the language test. Your English is very good, by the way. Thank you. So I graduated with master's degree in engineering and

14:07 technology management, Constantine graduated with his PhD in material science. And as I mentioned, on Friday, I went to interview in Shreveport after my graduation, and on Monday, I started my

14:23 work just because the company had four months to revamp their system. That is how I joined oil and gas, and this is how I learned about API. Right after we went through successful audit, I joined

14:37 American Petroleum Institute as an auditor. I was traveling three years, four, four and a half maybe, yeah. I don't remember, I met with numbers, but I lived on a route with API,

14:51 Or just auditing over the world, right? Yes, you ordered over the world. I was lucky enough to audit companies in Italy,

14:59 Kazakhstan, all over the US. So, very thankful for the job, very thankful for opening ice about industry, why it's important and why everybody needs to care about it. If we stop, the world will

15:13 stop. So, and Konstantin was research and development engineer at the DXB. So, he was designing a huge centrifugal pumps for refineries. And one day I was driving

15:28 and I was talking with my husband, they were like, they are done for work in this, for others. Like, we have our product development student organization. We receive recurring revenue. So, we

15:40 already generate some revenue. We have savings like, hell, let's do it We always wanted to be entrepreneurs with war entrepreneurs back home. That's the time. And in

15:55 2015, we quit our jobs and started product development company in Shreveport, Louisiana. So I think actually we are still the only one product development company in Louisiana. And funny enough,

16:10 we have quite a few customers from Houston

16:14 and we love it. We moved from Shreveport to Ruston thanks to Louisiana Tech Innovation Team. They built a huge building, new enterprise campus. I hope you will come one day. Nice facility, very

16:29 safe professors close by, interns close by so beloved there. And yep, when we were discussing our opportunities to come back to Ruston, I was joking with at that time Chief Innovation Officers

16:45 that I need you all to work on the airport. So we have a private airport in Rustin, and sooner than later, last week, we had a customer flying on private jet to see us from Houston, actually. So

16:60 I was like, I told you, you need to innovate, you know, like first impression matter. Yeah, it's a, it's a weird, if you build it, they will come kind of situation, right? Where I got my

17:10 undergrad in Northwood and University of Arkansas. Northwest Arkansas has the Walmart headquarters and a lot of people don't know this But if you're, if you sell something in Walmart, you have to

17:21 have some sort of office in Northwest Arkansas. And so the Northwest Arkansas airport is basically, it's a public airport, but it's basically Walmart's executive airport. And so it's like having

17:30 those things that even just like a little infrastructure things really do help or can't hurt when in your entrepreneurial kind of journey when you think about those things. So it's funny to think

17:40 about the Walmart. So as a product development company, we need to maintain relationships, specifically buyers, right? Because we launch our own products and as well as our customers, we help

17:53 them. So while building relationships with Walmart buyers, I learned a couple of years ago that most of their buyers and more executive and managerial positions got an offer. You either move to

18:11 Arkansas or you quit. Yeah So right now in that area of Arkansas, it's super cool and they have one of the Walmart, I think grandson or something. He's very into biking. And if you like to.

18:28 There's a bunch of mountain bike trails and stuff up there. Yeah. If you are into that, you definitely need to check that area. Plus, he supported several bike apparel companies and I think bikes

18:39 itself from Italy So they have had quarters there. Yeah, that's cool now. That's you know people Walmart tends to get a bad name as this big corporate overlord and stuff. But a lot of people don't

18:50 know a lot of the things that they do for the local community. And not only local, so one of the stories, so what product our LA new product development does? Yeah, I want to get into that. Like,

19:01 'cause you all have a lot of, I mean, y'all have done a lot of stuff, you got a lot of really cool products. And yeah. Yeah, so basically companies,

19:12 businessmen come to us with their ideas, product ideas, hardware. And we help them with initial research, we help them with engineering, we build from ideas product with daily work We. beyond

19:23 and states the in manufacturers of network great a maintain also we, prototypes

19:36 like roll, railroad, industry, oil and gas. You can say so you do everything from commercial Yes, consumer products.

19:47 And yeah, they've been doing since 2015 and one of the products we have built. It was actually a concept design for Cajun Navy. I'm not sure if you're aware of such organization, but guys do a

20:01 great job. They rescue people. Yeah, they were a big player during Harvey down here in Houston. When everybody was flooded, the Cajun Navy came over 'cause they've got all kinds of good machine

20:11 boats and supplies and resources for other people Amazing organization, founders, great people. Rob, hi, if you will, watch it. But we helped them to design a concept for their camp and that

20:27 camp basically, the idea was to set up camp within like hours at Walmart lots. I mean, Walmart is everywhere and they have a lot of space to set up camps for giving like water main

20:43 supplies, starting the equipment. needed for rescue missions and Walmart sponsored it. So they pitched to Walmart our concept. I mean, we kind of work for hire. We don't own IP, but we help

20:57 them to design it and Walmart helped to sponsor. I don't remember the exact number, but it's like 1, 000 how many people were helped using this concept and Walmart support was huge. So they

21:11 support not only our concept companies, but. No, for sure Luziana, Texas, you name it. Yeah, shout out Walmart and the Walton family. They're great. Absolutely. So let's get into the product

21:22 stuff because. Yes, sir. So I mean,

21:26 your husband was designing

21:29 pumps, right? So like very industrials, application specific. That being said, I've almost as an engineer who hated material science. If you can understand at that level where you're able to

21:42 design like industrial equipment, then you definitely have a very strong understanding. And from my perspective, it's probably almost easier to get into the product, the consumer product, to a

21:53 certain extent. You have different, there's just different things you have to worry about, right, and balance. But

22:00 how has that been? 'Cause I think, you know, 'cause y'all still have it, y'all still operate it. Yeah, definitely. It's still functioning and stuff. But kind of walked me through how you went

22:09 from, you know, designing and building products to going back to the auditing and in compliance and then now you've got an entire company around. I want to talk a little bit more about a couple of

22:22 products because I do believe some of the listeners might find it very interesting. So, Constantine is great in engineering, mechanical and electrical, not talking about material science because

22:36 that is his main and core expertise to enough lucky were We find a great team of

22:43 industrial designers, because he can do engineering part and he can execute it well, but we also need to think about consumer stuff, you say, let's go say, that's a very different thing, right?

22:55 Like it's different from a manufacturing from an industrial standpoint, right? Like it's not as big of a deal. It's a object, it works, but how it looks, who cares? Right, from a consumer

23:07 perspective, completely different, and then you also have to get it, you know, both of them, you have to manage, you know, longevity and life cycle and how much for maintenance and all that.

23:14 But then also on the consumer, now you have like this volume, like you can charge a lot for these big things and you don't have to sell as many of them on the industrial side, but then on the

23:24 consumer side, typically, you have way more volume. So now you have to figure out the scaling and you get an actual productivity and manufacturing side of it. So yeah, that is a team. You are as

23:36 good as your team, and they are like enough to have a great team who merges all this expertise. And Constantine fell in love with product development when he was still in school. So again, shout

23:50 out to Louisiana Innovation Department, they supported him when he just had this idea to create a student organization. So they gave us space, some funds, just go with it, bring product

24:02 development to tech. And he learned the craft while he was running the product development student organization So when we launched our product development, we already have certain stone processes,

24:17 procedures, certification, knowledge, and such. So, and yeah, one of our earliest products, it was from oil field safety union, it's the replacement for hammer unions. We remove hammer from

24:31 the equation, so there is no need for green head to damage themselves. And have that back hurting and mental fatigue, because -

24:41 It's a pain in the ass. Thank you so much for validating that. Yes, no, absolutely. I've worked in the field, I've - You know, the pain points, yes. So that product is something dear to my

24:53 heart. And yeah, we started with oil field products, some of the consumer heartwares, and yeah, now we work with large companies, small companies. What are some other products that people might

25:07 know of either industry or consumer? Did I see y'all had something on Shark Tank on the website? Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah. So one of our customers, it's not our product. We are proud to have

25:19 customers who've been on a Shark Tank. Those who have dogs, I have three. No, might know that dogs don't like to do manicure or pedicure. So just don't like it, right? And she came up with the

25:33 coolest idea to create a device where you put like treats inside the thing. And you have like special surface, which then they try to take all the treats, they kind of cut their nails organically,

25:49 and they love it because they want to get the treat. And you don't need to take them to, I don't know, vet, or whatever. I had to take mine to the vet this morning to get some shots and he

25:59 absolutely hates it because he knows he's going to the vet. Yeah. Or yeah, even at the house, if I try to, he has, I don't know, I don't know what we found him. We don't know exactly what type

26:09 of dog he is, but he's the only dog I've ever had who like we had to actively really make an effort to maintain his nails and he hates, we have a hardwood floor in most of the house. And so he like,

26:20 yeah, he kind of just tip toes until he gets to the carpet. And so, no, that's really, it's definitely a need to think 'cause dogs hate it. So next time you are in Rustin,

26:33 Is he a big dog, small dog? He's like 65 pounds, he's - Okay, so it's medium size. I have your products in my office, I will be happy to give it to you. So yeah, it's a dog product, amazing,

26:46 she's killing it. I think you can buy it at Petco and large retailers. But that's almost more like the natural way that that would happen in nature, right? Like people forget that dogs are - Yeah,

26:57 they're kind of from wood, so. Right, they didn't have people cutting their nails a thousand years ago, right? So, yeah, that's one of the coolest products. What else to share about? I just

27:08 think it's awesome that y'all have done everything from hammer unions to consumer goods, right? Like short-tank stuff. One of the funny stories, so a couple from Miami and they're both TV

27:20 personalities, Vanessa. Yeah, so they're both TV personalities during COVID when it was difficult to go to do a facial and such. They came up with the way how to maintain your skill young and

27:38 bright. So they came up, you know, like some people do ice in the morning to kind of refresh their skin and ice. I'm one of the people who needs all the bags. But ice, you know, like you will

27:50 get all the weighty and messy and it's not fun I don't do it. So they at home designed a gel which will give you the same effect even more because infused with vitamins and but it doesn't leak. So

28:07 you apply it, wait maybe five minutes and wash it out. So they decided to run with it and they launched a bread gelata for your face and they flew from Miami to Shreveport It was late night and they

28:24 wanted to have dinner. Obviously, they had a toddler with them. Did you go and see nose or? They actually stopped at the Hilton. Downtown and they were very upset because the kitchen was closed,

28:36 but one of the Housekeeper recognized him because he's like a superstar. It's like good morning, America but for Latina's market. Okay. So most of the Latina snout him and They made a special

28:51 example for him. They cooked them chicken and treated them well right after hours So they were like, wow, you never heard of Shreveport. Yeah, but now we love it the most Yeah, now that the

29:04 people of Louisiana as a whole are it's another story. Yeah, that's awesome. So how

29:12 How different like how different is it?

29:16 Building for you know like an OFS or a manufacturer versus like a consumer goods from y'all's perspective And then I'm gonna ask you some tech questions about that. Yes, definitely, you know, that

29:28 is a great question We currently work is one of the federal agencies even. So it's we have like private inventory, let's call this way companies, corporations and now federal agencies. And the

29:43 approach you take is the same. Even like within corporations and federal agencies, they have the same pain points. They're unclear about the process. And yeah, it's different from the engineering

29:59 perspective. It's different from usability, like how you survey users or how you introduce product. But when it comes to the product development process, it's kind of the same. Due to that,

30:12 actually, a Constantine wrote and released a book, a workbook with our 3D ideation process. So it might be sound weird, but the approach we take is similar when it comes to framework. What you do

30:26 first? What you do next?

30:30 especially as an engineer. We'd like to proceed. We'd like to. Yeah. We love standardizing things. Kind of interesting.

30:38 Recently, we had a customer who wanted us to produce 500 units. They do construction work, and they need to do pilot. And 500 units as prototypes, it's not usually often we do. My engineers got

30:57 bored They told me, we didn't want to do the same thing over and over again. So we already built this within the team that everything is something new. You never know what you will work on maybe in

31:11 two months. And it just keeps us on our tour and it's fun. Yeah, I can imagine. So how did you get back into the auditing side from that? I mean, it kind of makes sense, right? especially the

31:26 industrial ones, you have to have, you have to beat those specs anyway. You know, like they say, once oil field, oil, always oil field.

31:35 I've been there, I've done that. And yeah, our product development company is luckily enough doing well. And now we have certain stone processes and people and team. And last year, one of my

31:52 friends, they said, like, hey, do you mind helping this audit prep? I was like, hell yeah, let's do it It was a volunteer work. I just love people. I miss people and I loved that company so

32:05 much. And I helped seeing that again, nothing has changed. Then I met with my dear friend API auditor. I seen the same thing and I was like,

32:21 on my way home on the phone with my husband. I said him, hell, nothing has changed. And he played with, at that time, open AI, open their API.

32:34 He put into, I don't know, playground, I think.

32:39 All the information I had from my backdays when I was doing

32:44 API, it worked like magic to help these procedures and such, even without fine tuning. I went back to the company, said, What do you think? They like, You're into something big And they cut the

32:59 first check. So I never asked for money. I never done fundraising before. This is first time ever. So all the companies were bootstrapped. We put our own money into other companies. Actually in

33:10 QUS to go, we put even more. And Constantine was, I was like skeptical a little, but he was like, You need to do it, you need to do it. My friends said the same thing, You need to do it. So

33:24 my heart melted And now I'm - in the start-up world, growing AI product for my dear industry and profession. Yeah. Well, first of all, congratulations on bootstrapping all of those. I don't

33:39 think enough people, you know, in the news, you always see so-and-so raise this on this funding round and that's great. But there's an entire other side about corn where you've got all these

33:51 startup founders who either don't want to raise money or have no idea how to, and

33:57 so they bootstrap it and it's even, it's a much harder journey when you, everyone knows funding. But you get smarter. You have to, you have to, right? Like it's a, you don't have that, like,

34:05 because I've worked on both sides of it, right? Where, like, come in early stage, but they get a big check and like, the mentality is very different than I don't have funding and everything I do.

34:18 Yeah, right, you have to make it, yeah, figure it out. It's like over here, if I've got funding, I'm not as focused on. Optimizing or making this efficient or where all the money is going or

34:28 how many people the money is going to and it's very easy to Spend it all out right and that's uh, so it's I fully agree so like first money I got from my Initial strategic investors now. I feel

34:44 double responsibility. So I can play with my money. I invest in other products The like within our network and our own this uh, this is a responsibility and when you fundraise It's not the end of

34:59 the story. It's just the beginning like you got money to Grow basically investors hire you to multiply the investments so and Sometimes I do see the mentality that my goal to fundraise your goal to

35:16 find means to scale and Fundraising is just one of many means

35:25 It's a tool in a toolbox, so fundraising, it's just the beginning, beginning when you take responsibility for other money, other people money, but

35:36 you also

35:38 become responsible for maintaining those relationships, which could be sometimes time-consuming. I've seen stories when investors killed startups, just because there are investors who are good as

35:53 investors and others who want to manage you and help you to make decisions, and those decisions are not always well-educated and unsightful, so you're kind of disturbed and disattracted from the

36:11 core responsibility. It's, yeah, I think such happened, and some of the startups I saw buying out those investors just to do what they do. But not many startups has multiple madame family fonts

36:28 and so ah Yeah Yeah no that's A It's a it's a necessary evil depending on where you're at right like it's yes we have the funding but the minute you sign that that investment forum or that term sheet

36:43 you now have a responsibility not only responsibility but then all of this other stuff yeah the maintenance of that relationship the quarterly or monthly calls with the investors or the board whoever

36:53 that is but then also to your point and I've seen this first hand you could have investors who know you know technology or they know a certain industry but then they're trying to roll into a different

37:04 industry like the energy space and they think what worked over here will work in this one because it's the same tech so it should work right and that's not the case at all in most situations and so

37:15 they can make poor recommendations just because they don't know the market as well as somebody that's worked in it for our many years and so that's a That's a big one that I see, right? Like when we

37:26 saw it quite a bit, kind of when the oil and gas energy kind of tech boom started in the mid teens, 20 teens, whatever, where it's like you had all these tech companies coming in trying to

37:40 infiltrate the oil and gas space because we need a lot of tech and a lot of opportunity there. But, you know, their expectation and perfect example, I worked for a company and they assumed that we

37:52 would do a pilot on one well or a handful of wells and then we would immediately deploy, then we would work into deploying to the across the entire company. It's like, that's not how this industry

38:03 works at all. You'll do one or two wells and then maybe you'll do a pad and then maybe you'll do a basin or a field and then they slowly scale up and then maybe you're just in that one group and now

38:15 it's your responsibility to figure out how to get to the other assets or into other groups. It's not just gonna organically happen overnight where they're like, Okay, yeah, we're gonna go from

38:22 zero. or one deployment of this to a thousand. That's not how the industry works. It's not like software in the SaaS world. And so there's so much to it. And yeah, you get, you are now almost

38:34 burdened, not burdened, but

38:37 you have a lot more stress, pressure, potential headache of having those investors. So I think one of the points I wanna make there is that don't just take money because you need the money. Take

38:49 money because you're aligned with the people that you are taking money from. 'Cause VCs versus private equity versus personal and angels, they all have very different timeframes and expectations.

39:03 Once you get into the bigger rounds and the more venture private equity guys, they want large multiples on these things and they want them fast and it's all about growth. It's not necessarily about

39:14 profit, it's about growth and revenue multiples. Whereas if you're on the smaller side, you want profit because you have to stay alive and you have to pay your people. It's very interesting that

39:25 you brought it up. Last week I was in New Orleans, and I met with my, I would say, mentor.

39:33 He'd been angel investor for years now, and we were discussing the fundraising for QMS to go. And QMS to go fundraising, not for the sake of fundraising. This company is built to be sold, and we

39:48 have kind of clear strategy, kind of because you never know what technology will do So, now we are at a stage when it's kindly, but he told me very wise words. I was like, Hey, I can go to that

40:00 and that network. I can go to this and this people, who are not like investors per se, but they're high, well, they'll sit high in

40:12 networks or whatever. And he told me, Don't do that. You need to think strategically about who will write you, see it, or please check. because people who do it professionally, they expect you

40:25 to fail. Right. And if you will take money from more personal slash other network, you might jeopardize relationships forever. That's really good advice, actually. So that you need to be smart

40:39 about not only getting married with VC and angels, but also think through the years if you want to maintain relationships with this group of people, so if you do like, again, expectations in your

40:57 mind versus them might be different from those who are sitting here. Yeah, no expectations and timelines, right? Yeah. The two big ones, no, that's such a good point, right? Especially in the

41:10 energy space, right? Like oil and gas investors, at least private ones, typically they're investing in minerals or production And they expect to see. Uh, yeah. And they expect to see it rather

41:22 quickly, generally speaking, right? Like they expect a monthly check from their distributions from the production or whatever, where it's like a tech startup is going to want to do like a safe and

41:32 it's going to be a long-term thing. And it's going to be on an exit or an acquisition, not on future revenue. True. So, you know, like SM learning is a startup world, right?

41:46 Couple of weeks ago, I was at the angel pitch, you know, like angels come together to hear for a pitch to invest. And there was a company and she been in business for nine years. She makes good

42:02 money, but she's not profitable and time to market and time to exit and revenues crucial. Even though she makes revenue, right? investors are very skeptical to cut another check because it's been

42:18 nine years. she's not profitable. There are maybe three to five years to potential exit. It feels like it's more of the regular family business where you just cut the negatives and red light with

42:34 investors' money to cover. So even if you are raising money and if you are not, you need to think about your bottom line. Well, yeah, well, and that's the other, 'cause I've seen this firsthand

42:46 as well, where it's like the startup mentality is either growth, exit, acquisition, whereas a small business is not about it's, they wanna grow, but they wanna grow because they wanna increase

42:58 profit. So there's also different ways to do that, right? You can reduce costs, you can increase revenue, but it's just a very different mentality, right? Like my experience with small

43:08 businesses, they're much more conservative in their actions. They want to make sure they're managing cash flow. Profitability is at top of mind because that's how everybody gets paid at the end of

43:17 the day, right? or isn't a startup, it's all about growth. and new users or new revenue and the growth rates, it's all derivatives, right? It's all rates of change, whereas a small business

43:30 has a very different, and that's okay. I think that's the thing. It's okay. People just need to understand, there are these two things, and it's okay, but just understand which one of them

43:38 you're in or you want to be building before you get too deep into it because then it's much easier to understand which way, how to prioritize. If you have a good understanding of which one of those

43:49 paths you're going down instead of trying to figure it out along the way. Yeah, so if you decide to go like startups call from for a reasons, you need to grow fast. And there is now weekends in

44:01 essence in this world, but you put into it for five, seven years and hopefully, I mean, we live in the US, everything pays out. You get what you put into it, period So, but startups you put

44:17 like you reserve. seven years to hustle with the hope that it will pay off one day. So that is just reality and not everyone built for that. Very sure. That is absolutely because it's emotional

44:32 ups and downs within an hour. You also have to have a risk tolerance to, right? Like I think that's another big, a big differentiator between the small businesses that I've worked for in the past

44:42 and the startups that I worked for in the past, right? Like the startups are more likely to take risks because that's, it's risky to have startup as it is, right? Like there's a, there's a level,

44:51 a minimum level of risk threshold that you have to have just to start a startup, like out of the gate, right? And so that's a, yeah. VC it's from adrenaline. It's

45:02 true coffee and adrenaline. Yeah, that's very, it's very true. Um, so coming back to you, yeah, talk to me about how, who are your users? Who is your target audience and how do they kind of,

45:16 how do they, how are they And then you said you've got five beta customers right now, let's get into some of that and kind of highlight it because I'm a super LLM fanboy. And so I'm super bullish

45:28 on LLMs. I love that this is a product using LLMs. And so let's get into it. So I am worrying to talk about technical details because yeah, I am lucky enough to have team behind me who does the

45:41 training But one of the strategy we took from the beginning, we are LLM agnostic, we are fine tuning using various methods. And we play not just with open AI models, but also others. I do

45:58 actually like Amazon Bedrock, but my team doesn't.

46:03 Anyhow, so yeah, we are fine tuning our model and building new tools We are visiting our product to assist with daily activities of quality managers. So I'm like an NOV player. quality major.

46:19 Yeah, so how does this work for me? One of them, my first and I guess favorite, not favorite, my first company, it's metering equipment manufacturer who built like the metering devices to see

46:32 how much oil and gas were sent to refinery. So she used our tool to reply to API nonconformances So again, so API audited her. Yes. They gave her a list of 14 nonconformances. And she used our

46:50 QMS to go to reply in official way to API because we trained on specific requirements API has on the structure format information and such. She also created also training material and training

47:07 records. She done the educational activities within our QMS to go. updated procedures, created training records, then evaluation. and it took her four days, two days. And yes, two days, I'm

47:23 sorry. And if she would do it without our tool, it will be at least 14. Yeah, I was gonna say weeks, probably. Yes, so it's two weeks without our tool, two days with our tool and without

47:38 manual work, without has a link, you know, like when you update SAP or procedure, you need to create quiz, then you need to send the quiz First of all, you need to train the personnel, affected

47:50 by this change. You will create presentation of whatever format, then you need to evaluate the knowledge, usually we do like quizzes, where you send to other people, they reply to it, you remind

48:02 them to reply to it, you remind them to reply to it, then you evaluate manually, usually it's replies and keep it as a record. All those features incorporated, you must go. She uploaded her SAP.

48:19 our queue must go, recommend it. Improvements, what needs to be changed. Changes were implemented. She saved it in her company, Leatherhead. Into computer, she asked our queue must go to do

48:32 presentation. Presentation will be done within a minute in her company, Leatherhead, Presentation Format. She asked to create a quiz. She reviewed the quiz, she liked it. She copies the link

48:46 for the quiz, sent to other, they reply to the quiz. It's just, you know, like it saves hours and hours of work. That is one

48:60 of the examples. Another machine shop, they used our voice to text feature to capture knowledge of CNC machinist and QA personnel. Guys, it's tough to go on a shop. It's sound allowed there. You

49:12 need to set a mood to talk with these people to know how they do it. Let's be real. industry is a drink. It's difficult to find a new CNC machinist. Good one. I mean, any type of hands-on labor,

49:28 especially that needs years of training and experience to truly master that kind of craft. I'm so bullish on that because we complain about our data's not good, or the data's okay, but it doesn't

49:41 have context. There's all these issues in the oil and gas industry around data, but the biggest issue is that we put everything in reports with no context, right? Like, here's a frack report,

49:51 and here's the summary of the frack job, but then there's this entire other log from the guy that was sitting on location of every single thing that happened, and it's in a different data set, and

50:01 it's not related back to the original data set, and so it's like, you don't have all of the context, so how are you supposed to understand what's happening here? And so the text-to-speech thing,

50:11 I think I am so bullish on that for our industry if we use it right. because it allows you to gain that knowledge. Do you capture the knowledge? And then you convert almost instantaneously to the

50:21 SAP with integration of API, either product specs or API Q1 itself. So again, it would take him weeks, if not months, to do that. And it was done within a week. Isn't it cool? It is, not it.

50:38 And another example is like training material. You know, like I haven't expected that the training materials for quality manager will be such a big hit. But she uses to create presentations and

50:51 video. So we can create, I mean, we use CinTg API, but it's still, it's useful for them. So they create video material, they create presentations, quizzes, and she saves to roughly six hours

51:06 a week. Again, six hours a week, it's quite a lot. It's almost a full, it's 20 of your week on this Yes, so. that has couple of examples of how people already used it we like st diet product

51:20 map and you know What's Funny I created a product map back in January fourth I experienced myself as a quality manager in house and quality auditor and I created priorities and now I am in product

51:40 doesn't develop in the week right it takes time to deploy features and quality managers coming back with me asking for what exactly I wrote so I can feel my people Err in the quality management space

51:54 so we are slowly but steadily deploying the latest features I think those are some of the best apps and software and that comes from the end user right Yeah I know all of the problems because I used

52:05 to do this and I ended doing X Y and Z so therefore let me automate X y and Z now and I AM kind of spoiled in a sense that my beta users, I'm so thankful for them because they sent me reports. They

52:20 sent me what they like, what they don't like. They've been honest, you know? Like this thing doesn't work. This thing bothers me. I want to see this and that. And again, I'm just, I have like

52:33 right now goosebumps but they're so welcoming and not all of those but the users, my friends, so we had some who like was called outreach. Grace, thank you for accommodating that. But yeah, they

52:48 are so welcoming and they are so open about what they want, what they like, what they hate. And we just doing our best to deploy what they need. Yeah, well, I'm just having that user feedback,

52:60 like having a way to get your user feedback and then also understanding the value and listening to that user feedback is a big piece that problem that a lot of people don't do. or they just kind of

53:12 half asset and it's like, hey, there's a thing here and you can report something if you find a bug, but that's it. Yeah, you know, like another story, again, startup work is myself being new

53:25 there, but one of my advisors told me like, make sure that when you get a better user, you're getting a better user not for the matter to show a step to your investors or pitches, because there

53:40 are two types of better users Those who are just numbers and those who, with whom you want to actually authentically build relationships and problem solve. Yeah, for the power users, passionately.

53:52 So there are two types of better users when I guess startups pitching and investors listening. So I'm lucky enough that we were able to get those better users who actually care. Yeah, one, you

54:06 know, I think that's also another way to gauge the value of a product out at like, whether there's a need for it, right? Like if you have beta users that are giving you feedback, whether you ask

54:17 for it or not, and they're highly engaged and stuff, then there's clearly a market for something that, right? But if you just have something out there and you're not getting much feedback, even

54:26 if whether you ask for it or not, that's a, it's not always a bad thing, but it definitely helps to see quick traction like that. You know, it's, you're right What I also noticed that sometimes

54:41 your end users, I hear you know that you're too busy to get less busy.

54:48 This is a tricky part when you have a tool to help them get less busy, but they're too busy to learn it. So that is a tricky part. It's very true. Now that's probably one of the hardest things

55:02 about selling software, especially in this industry, because there are just so many incumbents

55:08 30 years. And it's like, okay, well, the whole company uses it. The whole company knows how to use it. How do we

55:15 put our foot in the door? Right. And so that's a, yeah, it's a very tricky thing.

55:22 How

55:26 was I going to say, what is

55:31 I'll just, I lost that thought, but where what are you all kind of where are you all at now? I know you're you're looking at kind of you're meeting with investors. Are you all trying to raise some

55:41 fun? Yes. So we are raising now 15 mil to

55:47 scale the product and sales. We need to get 52 customers till our next fund raise. I hope I will be profitable next year though. So we are raising 15 mil goal to close by May, 2025, we gave

56:06 ourselves some times. Thanks to Boot64, who was that kind enough to issue us term sheets and giving us that much. But we need to close 150, 000 by the end of this year. So that is what we are

56:20 raising. And it will be the same term for 15 mil. It's just something we agreed on. I unfortunately can't put my money into it because we need to get third-party validation too So we raised

56:35 350. We have 350 committed. We need to get 150 till the end of this year. So from January to May, I will need to raise just a mil, which is doable. Yeah, no, that's awesome. How is it going

56:51 to say?

56:54 So you've got, you also mentioned you're going to be opening up the beta next year as well to start Yes, so we start sales, pre-sales with very lucrative terms in January. So just after 12 am.

57:10 I'm 31st level start picking up before I'm calling. No, that's cool. That's cool. And I think you did it the right way, right? Like I am personally a big fan of it. It's so hard because

57:19 software is like a child to an extent. And so like putting out it, putting the product out in beta where you know it's not perfect. I was almost crying. Yes. I know it is. It is a very emotional

57:30 thing. And yeah, it's almost always great to have someone in a company that pushes you to push when you're not ready That's what was engineered. Who is like, I don't care. I need feedback. Yeah.

57:41 I need to know that what we are building actually useful. Well, that's the thing, right? Like you need the feedback, but you know that there's things that aren't working or that aren't perfect.

57:48 And so you're like, well, how do I do that? And it's likely enough. I didn't. You can see my gray hair, I guess, because every time I'm a better user, I am in a sense perfectionist. And when

57:59 I was listening that it doesn't work, this doesn't work I'm like, my software team is like, that is how it works. like you need to test the product to identify bugs, to fix those, so it will be,

58:14 it's iterations. Yeah, it's always iterations. And I'm like, I want it perfect from the first time, what can I do? And they like, you can hire residents of QA, but they are not quality

58:26 managers. Right, no, some of the best advice

58:30 I was given around the product side was perfection is the enemy of progress. And that it's so hard, it's very easy to say, very hard to act and it actually lived that way. But it's a tricky thing.

58:44 How are y'all, how is the kind of, you don't have, I'm not asking for pricing, but what is the like structure? Is it kind of corporate enterprise or is it gonna be a staff? I think it will be,

58:56 it's already put in on paper. So it will be seen out, convertible note. I mean, for your customers. How are you charging customers? Okay, okay, sounds good. So definitely our pricing model is

59:06 simple. We have three tiers of subscription. It's 300 per month if you're like machine shop where you have like 15 people and you are the owner or general manager and you need help with partial

59:23 maintenance. So the right case is when your customer like Halliburton requires a machine shop to have API Q1, 6A or whatever, otherwise they will not do business with you. But that machine shop

59:34 also need to have their supplier evaluation, but for that supplier, they don't need to have a full QMS. They might need to have just quality control, measuring equipment stuff and such. So this

59:48 is for these people who do not have fully executed quality management system. The second tier is 1, 400 a month. If you have your certification, if you have quality management system developed and

1:00:04 you just need to use it for drag. treat like daily things or if there is an update from API or whatever, that is like 400 user per month. Per user per month, I will explain why I don't like it.

1:00:20 And there is like 2, 500 if you were told you need to have quality management system, you have nothing just your knowledge, that is why you will use it. The reason why I don't like per user per

1:00:31 month now data is getting cheaper and cheaper So for me, tokens become more affordable. So, and I do know that password sharing takes place in industry. So it will be - Yeah, it's such a - it's a

1:00:45 hard way as we struggle, we're going through the same thing. Yeah, so it will be per user. And if they will be excess usage, they will talk with our customers about additional fees. But yeah, I

1:00:58 think it will be per company Pass-for-sharing there, data getting less expensive. Cool, now that's all. That is one of the things which we will learn next year.

1:01:10 No, yeah, that's another one of those where you just have to throw it out there and see what's six. Yes, you just need to six. It's so hard because you wanna present a unified thing but you gotta

1:01:15 just test it. You

1:01:22 know, LinkedIn, I have love and hate relationships with LinkedIn and - It's one of those necessary roles of the world, yeah And I have love and hate relationships with those who sent me messages.

1:01:40 Why love and hate? Because recently we deployed a couple of AI automation tools, Luna, one of them and I started to get great return. Like we properly, I guess, formulated the value prep of our

1:01:58 tool, what we are building And again, it will be better using the give you the best deal you ever. could imagine, and yeah, AI works even in cold outreach. Yeah, no, but that is, it's

1:02:14 becoming,

1:02:17 it's almost scary how, like, I got one the other day and it was like, oh, I recently saw your podcast with so-and-so, and you could tell they scraped my LinkedIn and use some data from that to

1:02:29 formulate the email and stuff, and it's like, that's good You know, I read recently, HBR Harvard Business Review published research data where they were asking specifically to be sector about

1:02:43 their relationships when they get AI generated emails, things, and such. And you know, the prevailing majority said, if this message relates to what I do, I am okay with that. It's just like

1:02:56 ads, right? Like, I don't care if I'm given an ad that is like, it's Christmas time. I'm getting all the different ads for all kinds of stuff. but if it's something that my kids or my wife or

1:03:07 mom or whoever might actually want, then yeah, target me all day long because that's how I discover new stuff. But if it's just junk, right? I think that's where it's like, the automated piece

1:03:17 of the DMs was super frustrating up to this point almost because it wasn't personalized or it was like very poorly attempted to personalize because the tech wasn't there. But now it's like, yeah,

1:03:28 understand who I am and if you offer me a service that I could potentially use and tailor the message and why not, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so. All right, so we just blew through an hour which is

1:03:38 awesome. We're gonna, so normally at the end we do like a speed round, I'm gonna modify it and do a little Louisiana tech speed round. So everything's gonna be Louisiana tech themed. What, where

1:03:52 would, what's one place that you would recommend someone to go visit while they're in Rustin, either it could be a restaurant, it could be just like a monument, it could be whatever it out. So we

1:04:03 have a huge. It's huge, like huge for us, 16th floor building. And on the 16th floor where a president sits, the best ever view of Rust in itself. So it's very

1:04:20 eye-opening of how small yet big Rustin is, so definitely visit that. So campus itself, it's nice, but on top, cherry on top will be that - What's your favorite? What's your favorite restaurant

1:04:35 either in tree port Rustin or in Houston?

1:04:40 Oh my god, you know? That was probably too broad. Houston alone is hard to pick. No, actually Houston will work. That's why I threw it out there 'cause Houston has a huge - Yeah, so look at

1:04:49 this, the last six months - Are there any good Kazakh restaurants in Houston? No. So yesterday, I went to Turkish restaurant, it calls Raja, I never, yes, I never been in, I haven't had any

1:05:02 Turkish food. This is good ever before, even in Istanbul, even like the best resorts in Turkey. That was the thing. But the tricky part, which Constantine told me yesterday, okay, fully out

1:05:16 again, 20 pounds this year. That is what startup does for you. The weight and the greater. That's a

1:05:25 definitive sign of food. So we changed our diet. So we started to eat more turkey and rice And it's more like on a low level of spices and colors. So maybe yesterday I tried

1:05:43 the spices and colors and butter, but it was the best, like seriously. I do like fancy stuff. Is that Roger, isn't it that place, R-A-J-A? Yes, R-A-G-A, yeah. So, and it's like the best

1:05:56 place to eat Mexican food is somewhere in nowhere, and that was the same deal Yes. So yeah, that's, that's one of my favorite things about Houston is that it has some of the best food in the world.

1:06:09 Yes, sir. That was Raja and amazing 48 Google reviews and they were correct. Yeah. That's the Houston, the Houston food critics can be very critical because we have such good options. Yeah. So

1:06:21 that's, that's awesome. What is your, what's your favorite thing about, about running a startup or company out of either Louisiana or Rustin in general? Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, I love it. You

1:06:34 can do this little in Rustin, but you can do anything from Rustin. I spent eight minutes away on traffic. I don't have any destruction, but work. Yeah. I do have luxury of having one of the best

1:06:52 professors around me. It sounds like LaTeX is very dominant in Rustin. Yeah very supportive of the startup technology kind of. community. Yeah, definitely. And tech saw our progression. It's,

1:07:08 I mean, they're like family. Yeah. They saw me when I smiled in English.

1:07:16 So yeah,

1:07:19 we support and love each other. And yeah, Rustin is home for

1:07:25 quite large companies serving the entire country and world. So we have one of the engineering firms, which helped during the Katrina and they done the majority of work to the structure and such. So

1:07:41 Rustin is very small, but mighty. Yeah. No, that's, that's probably one of my favorite things about just the oil field in general is you have all these towns that have their small towns, but

1:07:52 like the stuff that they're doing, whether it's engineering or product or whatever is very large, it's international work, right? They don't have bikers soon in Rustam, which is Super cool.

1:08:04 Yeah. All right, last one. Where is your favorite place to either eat or shop in Shreveport?

1:08:13 I don't do shopping. Eat. Kind of Mexico. So we have two places in three, yes. I do love food in our petroleum club. You don't have a great petroleum club in Shreveport.

1:08:19 Yes, I

1:08:30 do like their lunches.

1:08:33 When it comes to street food, we have a great place called Key Mexico, Mexican food, but it's very modern twist. And we have a Remington Hotel, which is a great place for happy hour and drinks

1:08:51 and talks. It's a boutique hotel with a nice bar, very ambient environment and the owner is just cool. That's awesome. All right. Well, we are at the end. How can people find you? How do they

1:09:06 reach out if they're interested in beta testing or investing? Yeah. LinkedIn is go to place our website QMS to gocom. The number two, right? Yes. They have my cell number there. So I'm at the

1:09:23 stage of startup owner. I am answering calls myself or it goes to my voice message and I return it back They are not at the stage where I can put my assistant to do it. I need to have that. I need

1:09:36 to hear, I need to hear intonation or things which might be interested. So I'm always out and about. And yeah. Yeah, you travel a lot still. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's good.

1:09:48 You're, I assume you're in Houston a decent amount too. Yes. So right now I share my time between Ruston, New Orleans and Houston. I love all these places. Houston is where I became adult. New

1:09:60 Orleans is a great growing community of entrepreneurship in New Orleans. It's just a different planet. I was gonna say, it's a complete, it's its own country. Yes, it's own country. It's the

1:10:10 same as Houston, like, be realistic. And Rustin is, you know, a place where I can focus, execute, pick pair, and then go. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. And Egga, thank you so much for

1:10:21 coming on. Guys, if you're interested or want to reach out, be a part of the beta testers or even investment, please make sure to find her ever on LinkedIn. We'll put everything in the show notes

1:10:32 here. And that's it for us. Hope you guys have a happy holiday season. We're probably gonna be taking a break here the next couple of weeks for Christmas and New Year's, but we will see y'all next

1:10:43 year, hopefully, maybe sooner, but we'll see y'all then, appreciate it.