Chuck Yates Needs A Job

0:20 Hey everybody, welcome to Chuck Yates needs a job, the podcast. Very fired up today. We have on as our guest, Deanna Zhang of Etech Monkey. And I'm actually glad I was able to pronounce that. I

0:34 was like, etch a sketch monkey. Yeah, I got etch monkey a couple days ago. Oh, did you? Yeah. I like that etch monkey. And I'm fired up about hearing what etch monkey or etech monkey is. But

0:46 let's do this So I was looking up on Lincoln at your bio. You grew up in Houston. I did. And this is why I'm bringing this up because I kind of have an axe to grind. You went to St. John's High

0:59 School. Yes. All right. Here's my St. John story.

1:05 I grew up or my dad grew up out in Rosenberg. Mom grew up in West University. They get married. They have me. They come back to Houston They want to figure out where to live, right? And so mom

1:18 wants to live in West Jew, dad wants to move out to Richmond, Rosenberg. So they agree that I would go interview at St. John's. And if I got in West Jew, if I don't, Richmond, Rosenberg. So

1:30 anyway, mom gets me up that morning, go down to St. John's for an interview, supposedly I throw a fit. I won't get out of the car. The lady has to come interview me in the car, right? And so

1:42 anyway, my mom's just mortified. I'm so sorry And I bring him back for another interview. The lady turns to my mom and says, oh, I don't think that'll be necessary. He's very ordinary. Oh no.

1:54 I did. She said that. She did. Wow. And so dad says Chuck brought such shame on the family. We had to move out to Richmond. It's amazing.

2:06 So congratulations on getting in. Thank you. Yeah, no, it was quite a process. 'Cause I did public school up until high school.

2:17 the application process in high school. And I remember being very nervous for the interview, but the lady I talked to was very nice. And - Well, you probably talked to Myrtle Sims. I mean, I

2:29 think Myrtle Sims was the, the, she was a long time admissions person there. Anyway, she was great. Normally we don't talk about high schools on - Yeah, it's okay - But I just had an axe to

2:41 grind. I wanted to make sure I threw that in. So you went to Yale - Yes - Yeah - Tell me about that. Why did you go to Yale - Yeah.

2:51 You had grown up in Houston all my life. We didn't really move around too much. We moved once within the city, but that was it.

2:59 And, you know, I love Houston now, but at the time, I just really wanted to get out of Houston - Yeah - And there are a lot of things that you just don't appreciate as a kid. And, and then I

3:13 also - Including mom and dad. I've got three kids that I'm not going to get any of them to go to rice. So I say, yeah. So it was between, it was actually between rice and Yale. Ultimately for me,

3:25 uh, and Yale was, was also my dream school in a lot of other ways. Like I was really artsy, uh, as a high schooler and you know, how to really good art program, um, and a good science program

3:39 I was kind of like your typical like nerdy artsy kid. If there's a combination of that, that, that you can picture in your mind. Yeah. No, I got, I mean, I went to rice. Yeah. I was like,

3:50 yeah, exactly. So I think I was king of the nerds. So I get it. I just didn't have the artsy side. Yeah. Can't carry a tune. Can't play an instrument. Yeah. I was, I was visual arts. Um,

4:01 but, um, but yeah, personally what factored into this decision was really the desire to kind of try something new and getting out of Houston and being kind of independent in another city. Yeah.

4:17 And so, um, yeah, it was, uh, it was a great experience. I don't know. I, I kind of feel weird about college because, um, I was still growing up in a lot of ways, uh, and it was, um, it

4:33 was a great experience, uh, but it almost, it, now, but these days, it kind of, it's like a blur to me. It's almost like I went, I have, I had in amnesia through the whole thing Like there's

4:46 bits and pieces I still remember, of course, but, um, uh, it just went by so quickly. Yeah. No. It's, it, they say time is supposed to move. Um, it's supposed to move quicker, right? As

4:59 you get older, but, uh, I think that period in my life, I just like, I was just doing so many things that it was a whole blur. Yeah. I think my college career was like that too, except it was

5:10 alcohol. I mean, it wasn't. It wasn't. me like I didn't drink too much in college. It was actually at TPH when I had a lot of my bursts in drinking. No, okay. We're going straight there. So

5:24 how does artsy nerd person make it into energy investment banking? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was definitely kind of find myself thing in freshman and sophomore year, but I had a finance organization

5:42 on campus, smart women securities that I just like coincidentally got involved with because a lot of people I knew were in that same organization. And they kind of pitched it as like, okay, well,

5:53 like in the future, whatever you're going to do, but you're going to need to know how to like manage your portfolio. So come like take the seminar and be part of a group. And it was a very low

6:05 commitment way of like feeling like you were doing something productive with your off time and classes. And and also I was just hanging out with my friends that were also in the group. And so I got

6:17 involved with them and that was like the inroads into kind of this world of finance.

6:23 And so I was still taking science classes and everything. And I actually did an internship with a

6:30 biotech company after my freshman year, but I realized in that process that,

6:39 especially small companies, like the biotech world was fraught with

6:46 not

6:48 so great business models. And there was just like a lot of, it

6:53 was things were a little bit slower in a smaller company - Yeah, so were you a biochemistry major? What were you majoring in that was - I was actually thinking about chemistry. And so I took

7:06 basically, if you looked at the pre-med course packet, I like took most of those classes.

7:14 with the expectation that I would be doing

7:17 a chem major or a bio major and maybe working up towards medical school later on. There's like a lot of things I was thinking about back then. But then I got involved with this finance organization

7:30 and then I started to learn a little bit more about that and ended up actually just really liking it. And then I was like, you know, I think science is really interesting, but maybe I need to

7:47 think about learning something that can also help me with on the finance side. And the natural sort of major back then and still is just like econ, right? Because there's not really a finance major

8:01 you can do.

8:03 But then there's this little department on

8:08 kind of the math and science hill up there on Prospect Street. called the statistics department. And I got to know the professors there really well, and it was really tiny. And I was also only

8:20 like 10 credits. I was like, that's my major - It's a statistics - Statistics, yep - So you're in this finance club, and do you do the whole thing, your junior and senior year in terms of

8:33 interviewing? It's every bank, everybody on Wall Street, and you were gonna go be an investment banker - I did that, yeah, pretty much all of junior year. I had decided at that point, after

8:47 my sophomore year, I did an internship at an investment management firm in St. Louis, really random, but it was like - Which one was that - It was Acropolis, investment management.

8:59 But which was awesome, they are so nice. And I had an appreciation for St. Louis that I carry with me until today - There you go.

9:10 I will say this, I've been to St. Louis a few times, had an LP there, so I'd make the pilgrimage period. That arch doesn't look real. I mean, you stand, you know, across the street and it

9:21 looks CGI-generated. Yeah, yeah. And there's also, they have the biggest park, I think, in the US, or it's a park that's bigger than Central Park. And I'm forgetting they know, I think it's

9:34 like Forest Park or something like that. But I would go there almost every day After work, before work. I mean, the Midwest or in the summer is actually nice. I mean, you wouldn't want to be

9:47 there through the winter. I mean, I guess you were up in Connecticut, which was miserable on the winter too. It wasn't great. But I also was coming from Houston. So my first year, there's like

9:59 snow around, the campus looked magical when snow had just fallen, and then everything turned

10:07 gray and slushy and terrible. But for the first year, I actually really enjoyed it. And then I got disenchanted after that.

10:16 But,

10:18 you know, St. Louis, I think, I actually had my very first deep dish pizza in St. Louis. And it was my favorite pizza place for a while after that. Yeah, pie pizza, which apparently,

10:33 President Obama used to fly into the White House. 'Cause it was so good - Really - Oh, that's interesting - Yeah, I love that - 'Cause, I mean, he's a Chicago guy - Yeah - Was it part of a chain

10:45 out of Chicago, or was it a standalone - I think they only had locations, if I'm remembering correctly, which there's a good chance I'm not. They only had locations in St. Louis and DC - Oh,

10:57 gotcha. You're only disparaging a president in the United States on the global digital walk-out is network So you go through your interviews.

11:10 is Tudor Pickering Holt one of 15 offers that you had. Were you lucky to get that one? And then all that, why even pick Tudor Pickering Holt given that you were so disenchanted with Houston - Yeah,

11:26 I actually, so I actually interviewed for New York that junior summer and ended up at Barclays, that junior summer - Okay - So I didn't even enter that TPH

11:38 And so I kind of, I went with the crowd on that one, had a ton of interviews with a lot of different firms, but ultimately, Barclays had the largest Yale alumni contention. So it just, it was

11:53 easier to get in, and it was also, there's just a ton of support internally. And then I actually ended up placing into the chemicals group for my internship. So it's going back to like my love for

12:06 chemistry And. And it was also, it was within the natural resources group at Barclays. So it's kind of - Was that corporate finance? So you were in investment banking? Yeah, it was the coverage

12:20 group for chemicals.

12:24 And I mean, it was great. Well, some are internships the best. They don't actually expect anything from you. They're wooing you to come work for them after you graduate. Yeah, I'm actually like

12:38 - I'm surprised the drinking didn't start there. But anyway - There was some, but I think I was pretty laser focused on getting an offer and being good. That's probably smart. But yeah,

12:55 I'm actually pretty impressed with what interns do these days, because my internship, half of it, was shadowing. So I would sit behind an analyst.

13:07 I would sit behind her on this yoga ball that she had her desk and just watch her model. Like hours on end. Yeah. I mean, because I don't think and I don't think that was like a universal

13:20 experience, but for some reason they decided that was, that's what I was supposed to do. So you walked out with killer abs

13:31 and an offer for full time. Right. Burning that extra three calories an hour. Perfect Yeah. So you, so you roll into senior year, you get the offer from Barclays, various others. How do you

13:43 wind up at Tudor, Prickering Hall? Yeah. So I got the offer from Barclays and I was kind of looking around and then. Um, I had actually, I had actually kind of, um, tried to interview for,

13:57 for TPH, uh, for the summer internship Uh, but by the time I had even contacted the recruiter and the one. person I knew over there to kind of go through that process. It had already ended. What

14:12 I hadn't realized was that Houston cycle is like two months earlier than the New York cycle. So by the time I had started my actual interview process, like they had already gotten all their interns.

14:26 So after Barclays,

14:29 you know, like, I think I was trying to decide if I wanted to take the offer. And what they had told us is that,

14:37 you know, it's if you had a good experience, and if the group liked you, there's a good chance you'll be back in that same group for full time. But it's not guaranteed. Like that following year,

14:51 you're going to have to go through kind of like a placement process during your training and actually like basically recruit over again for the group that you're going to be in for the next two years.

15:02 And I was like, that's kind of a raw deal. Right? I mean, I could end up in a group that's like a, you know, it's a 10th on my list or something. Yeah. And I would have a totally different

15:16 experience than what I was expecting. So I decided then that I was going to try and recruit out words and, and yeah, TPH was on the list. And at that point, I was like kind of open to like being

15:31 wherever I wasn't necessarily in love with New York I'm still not necessarily in love with New York, but, but I was kind of like just wanting to find a good place to work. Right. I wanted to find

15:42 a good firm. And, and so I got back in touch with the person I knew at TPH and I got back in touch with a recruiter. And that just so happened that they had a space available and were recruiting

15:53 full time. And so it just kind of worked out like I liked everyone I interviewed with and they liked me. And so I went for it in the end Yeah, now I'll give the guys credit over at TPA. terms of

16:06 just the culture and all the folks I dealt with. I mean, no better person on the planet than Maynard Hall. I mean,

16:13 I always say this in the nicest way possible, but he is the least banker banker. That's for sure. Yeah. Exactly. So when you came in there, you came into corporate finance or investment banking.

16:29 Were you an energy tech person then, or were you doing oil and gas? Tell me how you wandered into energy technology. Yeah, no. I mean, definitely not specialized at that point. You come in as a

16:42 generalist in the group and at the

16:46 time, so this was

16:48 2015, oil had just gone to the pits. You

16:54 don't have to tell me that. Thanksgiving day. I'm frying a turkey and I'm literally looking down at my cell phone watching the whatever 12, 13, 15 drop in oil and I always drop my phone into the

17:09 turkey fryer. Whatever, this is over - I'm gonna enjoy Thanksgiving, yeah - Yeah, that was not pleasant -

17:17 Yeah, so it's like a really weird time to come into the group because deal flow had kind of slowed down a lot and the firm was also thinking about pivoting where at least expanding products because

17:32 it was very aminé focused before, very much focused on just like corporate finance andor just like buying and selling different asset packages. And now there was just a lot of balance you worked to

17:36 be done - Yeah - A lot of restructuring work and we didn't,

17:52 TPH didn't have that expertise at the time so we were building it up. And so it was just, yeah, anyway, I worked on a lot of Delaware deals.

18:05 in kind of the small restructuring group.

18:09 And

18:11 just did kind of your usual pitching and banking work around upstream midstream and OFUS - Yeah, the thing that always got me about the bankruptcy situations is it literally seems like everybody in

18:27 their fights over a penny and it just hours and hours of arguing about a penny And I guess it is a fixed pie where I was always a growth equity guy. So well, let's just make the pie bigger and

18:41 everybody wins and so I get that. But I don't think I could have done that - I think, yeah,

18:52 it was interesting. It was really interesting 'cause oftentimes you'd be on the calls and the other side. It's like not ever any call that you would encounter kind of in just MA or

19:04 capital raising because it would be the other side would be these like creditors, right? And they would be angry. They would be so angry, they'd be swearing. It would just be like crazy, like a

19:16 raucous. And so as an analyst, where you don't have to like really deal with any social interaction or being active on the call at all, just sitting there and listening to that was kind of just

19:28 entertaining. I was involved in one of those kind of calls because we at Caine were arguably going to come in and put some equity in. But we wanted our kind of thing was, you guys figure out your

19:42 deal and then we'll propose the deal to you. But we can't propose the deal to you if you guys are fighting and who has what and all. So you need to do that first. And we got a call and they started

19:55 screaming at me. And I like, hey, I get that somebody did you wrong. I knew for a fact it was not me. Yeah, I had nothing to do with this. Yep.

20:05 Yes, they're just angry people - Yes, yes. I don't know what type of personality you have to be to be in restructuring forever. A lot of bankers do really well at that, but you have to just be

20:18 okay, I think getting yelled at and be even killed and able to have a thick skin, maybe - I just thought, do you become that person because you're in restructuring? Or if you're that person,

20:35 you're drawn to restructuring - Yes - You just lose your emotions over time - I just beat it out of you and all that. So you did restructuring. When did you get into energy technology about what

20:49 year? Because where I'm going with this question is, was it cool at that point or was it still kind of the, well, we got to have an energy tech person somewhere, but stay out of the way.

21:05 So I did one more pivot before that. So I switched over from banking to research and actually covered midstream and infrastructure equities for a while. And that was because I just wanted the

21:18 experience of being public facing to see if that's kind of where I wanted to be in versus kind of on the more transaction side. And then it was at that point that they started that Maynard and

21:31 the team started the energy tech group on the banking side. He had just met and hired John Gibson, which is a story in itself - Right - But he hired John on the banking side and he needed somebody

21:44 on the research side to start writing energy tech research. And yeah, it's a small team. The research team, I don't know, is like 15 people - So who's the research team when you're there? Dan's

22:01 already moved over to money

22:04 manage money. Yeah. So Dan wasn't part of it, although we still had his like original like checklist for the morning note. Nice. That was sent around and everything. So he was just kind of the

22:17 legend that just left. And so is Dave Purcell? Purcell was there. Yeah, Portillo was there. So I was part of infrastructure. So it was a Colton was Colton Bean was the one that I worked with the

22:34 most. Gotcha. And was Mark Meyer there? Mark was the head. Yeah, at the time. I want to run of the tutor pickering halt alums on the podcast because I've had Brad Olson and Mark Meyer. Yeah.

22:47 Now you want to wear everywhere. Exactly. I think I have Bobby, Maynard and Dan talked into coming on the podcast and talking about the founding of the firm. Oh, awesome. Yeah, which would be

23:01 which would be a need to do. So hopefully I can cry on and get him to do it. So we had John Gibson come talk at a cane CEO retreat and he's hysterical. He got up there and he was just telling

23:18 stories and he told the story about going to the Tesla annual meeting. And he said, 'cause he said he went and bought one share. So that way he could go to the annual meeting. He said it was crazy.

23:29 Elon Musk is up there just going, we're gonna build a Gigafactory here and a Gigafactory there. And John was counting it up and it was something like two and a half trillion dollars worth of CapEx

23:41 that Elon Musk announced and he goes, I've been to a lot of annual meetings. I've never seen anyone propose two dollars of CapEx unless they had a line of sight to actually raising the money. So it

23:53 was just crazy - Yeah, no, John is, he was amazing to work with 'cause it would be like stories every day. Yeah - Like you would go into his office and you would just want to ask him a question

24:06 about like, oh, is this meeting at 11 with somebody you know or whatever? And he would sit you down and then it would turn into a two hour conversation. It wasn't very good for productivity

24:19 sometimes, but - Right. Education wise, I would think it would be great - Oh my gosh, it was amazing. Yeah, I learned so much from him. It also had a deal with people 'cause I think what was

24:30 appreciated about John was that no matter where he was or what he had going on during the day, if he scheduled something with you, he gave you all of his time and all of his attention. And

24:48 then also like, he was also just like forced to personality. Like he would come into a room and like immediately be kind of

24:58 know, just the person that people look to. to speak. Like, and that was, I haven't encountered that many people that can do that. I mean, as charismatic as they come. Yeah. And funny. I've

25:10 actually heard he's done stand-up comedy before. He has, yeah. And was actually good at it. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, he was a comic. He's been a comic. He's

25:23 a veteran. He was a suicide hotline operator at one point I mean, I didn't know that. Yeah. Ran Landmark graphics did really well. I forget who they sold to. And as I recall with John's hiring,

25:39 I didn't know you then, but as I recall, that seemed pretty progressive of Tudor Pickering Holt in terms of being out in front of stuff. Because you really didn't have energy technology groups in

25:52 any of the other banks. It seemed like. Yeah. Yeah. At the time, there wasn't really dedicated. energy tech practices. You could say there was like many efforts within the services group of a

26:09 lot of banks, but not really a dedicated practice. And John too is John is like not that you're a typical banker hire, right? He's like, he's an industry dude. He's also just, you know, crazy

26:21 personality and really like a true like technical genius too.

26:30 And so just the hiring of John itself was kind of a radical move. And then establishing a group around John was another radical move. But yeah, at the time there wasn't anybody talking about kind

26:45 of digitalization

26:49 around at least the banking side of things. Like there are some rumblings obviously and the operators and Um. And you're just starting to get kind of that momentum, that conversation around, you

27:04 know, what can we do better on implementing technology, like innovating more and digitalizing, digitalizing more of our operations. But the bankers weren't really paying attention 'cause there

27:17 just wasn't really deal work around it.

27:21 And that's changed a lot since then, but at the time I was, you know, just like writing research about it So - And who are you covering at that point? Yeah, it was - Or was it thematic? It was

27:35 thematic. And I mean, who was doing the digital transformation in the space, it was like mostly startups. And so I would, you know, the morning note would be like all this equity chatter. And

27:50 then at the bottom it would be like the, the e-tech blurb for Tuesday. And it would be me writing about like, yeah. I covered Data Gumbo at one point, you know, Tacky is, well, Data Labs,

28:05 like, no V, just all the ones that, you know, that at the time, you know, they were just like raising their series A at the most, like they were all like pretty young at that point. And they

28:20 were just so happy somebody was talking about them and giving them free publicity - And you're like writing it, all these great trends, all this stuff's happening, but by the way, you can't play

28:29 it unless you're doing private security - Exactly - Sorry about that - Yeah, it was kind of an odd thing to put in the morning note because like mostly he's like public guys that would read it.

28:40 But then, you know, the morning note has kind of like disseminated into everybody's inbox, like corporate and private investor. So I

28:54 think I like to think I helped. some of the startups I wrote about get some exposure to, to people that actually mattered in their universe - Right -

29:04 But, but yeah, it was, it was a little bit odd to have in the morning now. And that was in part, you know, that, and then also my desire to kind of work on it full time. That was what led me

29:15 to transfer back into banking, to kind of work on energy tech fully, instead of kind of half infrastructure, half energy tech - So you moved back to corporate finance or investment banking and give

29:31 me a sense during that kind of first year, you're back in banking, what sort of deals did you work on - Yeah, I mean, it was

29:40 that first year, it was the deals that, a lot of deals that John had brought in. So let's see,

29:51 there was a geophysical software company that we were looking into. selling at least a portion of their interest. There

30:04 was a subsurface monitoring company that we're working for to sell to sell them. It was actually like a lot of the work was in combination with the OFS group and and some of the companies they've

30:17 come across in their universe.

30:20 And then it kind of evolved from there like then. So what year is this? This is

30:29 2018 was one. So this is 2018. Is there any mention of carbon in any discussion you're having? This is just this is just we're not going to do buy out and oil field service. We're actually going

30:43 to create some new technology. Yeah. We're 10 years behind the rest of the world in terms of using computers and the internet and stuff like that. Yeah. No, 2018, there wasn't any real mention

30:54 of carbon I would say that. The one thing I would say to that is like, John did come with John and Gary, both. So Gary Morris joined the group not long after John did. And he's also like ex

31:12 corporate guy was at Halliburne for a while. He was the CFO of Halliburne when Dick Channey was the CEO and did a lot of tech things afterwards But both he and John have always had an interest in

31:26 this hard tech. And so I think for our 2018 conference, our disruption conference, we had some of those technologies in there. But all the Diork we were doing was definitely all technology facing

31:40 oil and gas And

31:46 then that following year 2019, all of a sudden, like, you know, CCUS started coming up more and more. And I remember there's like one article that John wrote about how the industry needs to pivot

32:02 from being an oil and gas industry to being like an atmospheric monitoring and carbon monitoring industry. And that was like, it was kind of a revolutionary thought at the time, 'cause nobody was

32:17 really thinking about it at all.

32:22 And I remember he was talking about how he got some comments on that article that weren't so positive after it came out - From Maynard and Bobby and Chad

32:36 and

32:38 everybody in turn - Yeah, Maynard's always loved it. When hydrogen became a topic, he was like one of the first ones to jump on that too, like to make sure that we were spending time on it.

32:49 So yeah, 2019 was kind of a little bit of the year that things started changing.

32:56 It felt, you know, so in private equity world, we raised Kane Anderson Energy Fund 7 in 2016. And that was the largest private equity fund ever raised in Kane history. It was just over 2 billion.

33:15 It was way over subscribed. We six months later sold Silver Hill for 25 billion front page of the Wall Street Journal and all that really felt like peak shale. Yeah. I mean, that felt like,

33:31 particularly in hindsight. And then the interesting thing about Energy Fund 7 is we literally had line a site to where 80 of the money was going to go. And so, you know, six, nine months later,

33:45 after we're done, we started calling LPs and said, Hey, I know this is crazy, but we're 80 invested starting to think about energy fund eight. just want to give you a heads up. And we started

33:58 raising that in June of 18. And I'm not saying that people hated oil and gas at that point, but it felt a lot different walking into people's offices there. And so we raised, I think we had our

34:17 first close in June of 18 and had our final close and call it the spring of 19. And we raised half the amount of money we did for seven. I mean, that really was kind of the time where I felt the

34:33 green movement had taken a hold - Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, you could start to sense that there was something different in 2019. And then when COVID rolled around in 2020, that's when I was like,

34:48 it was the topic, right? then everything started shifting much more dramatically. and all the clients, all the corporates, all of the investors that we were talking to where all of a sudden just

35:02 laser focused on clean tech, climate tech. I don't think climate tech was even a term back then, but clean tech and like alternative energy and like emissions, all of a sudden became a topic - Do

35:18 you know what a catalyst for that might have been -

35:22 In my mind, looking back, you can kind of say, well, in the early 2000s and we start drilling horizontal and big fracks for natural gas, we didn't really publish what was in frack fluid because

35:37 we made it a big secret 'cause everybody had a proprietary mix and it felt like there was a little bit of an advantage towards the environmentalist movement 'cause they were able to use that - Those

35:49 guys won't even tell us what's in it getting in the groundwater and you had out Wars movie come out at some point and then you had gas land can't come out. But it always kind of felt like that was on

36:02 the periphery until like we were talking about, you know, kind of 2018, 2019, it just seemed to hit. Was there, was there an event or was that just I was blissfully ignorant and oil and gas land

36:16 and all of a sudden I woke up? I, I don't think there's any one catalyst I think it was several things. I think when oil went negative, it wasn't a good look, right? In general, for the

36:32 investment world,

36:34 there's also like, I think up until that point, there had been a lot of fun flow out of oil and gas already. And then when COVID hit, all of a sudden it was like, well, nobody's investing in

36:46 anything traditional There's that also. realization stark really this

36:53 life can be disrupted, but yet it goes on kind of thing. You know, like,

36:59 I think with COVID, like everything was just all of a sudden disrupted. Everybody had to force themselves to like not do the things that they had done before,

37:11 like both in personal life and then also in business. And I think that just led to a lot of people making change, just generally speaking. So I think it was like kind of a mentality shift a little

37:21 bit Um, and then also the whole, you know, SPAC movement helped that, helped the, um, the investing side a lot because the private markets at that point had dried up. Um, and so, you know, a

37:36 lot of these companies that were expecting to raise capital in 2020 really weren't able to access that capital in the public, in the private markets. And so when SPAC vehicles came out and there,

37:50 there was like appetite from the pup markets kind of. take on spec vehicle and whatever they were looking at, all of a sudden that became an avenue, I think. And then the really, you know, it

38:05 wasn't just climate tech or clean tech investments, but that very much was something that the retail investors and the public markets loved. And so that I think really, really helped boost up the

38:19 profile for a lot of these companies All of a sudden, you know, now that at that point, we had a bunch of these EV specs happening. All of a sudden, like, you know, banks were taking note,

38:30 private equity investors were taking note, infrared investors were taking note. And so you had the whole capital universe kind of pivoting to like trying insert themselves into this movement somehow.

38:45 Yeah. So. And what was interesting about it is, And maybe this was part of it is. Public investors did seem more sensitive to what I'll call climate type issues earlier than private investors did.

39:04 You had fidelity in, I want to say, maybe as early as kind of 2008, 2010, they started asking companies, all right, how much gas are you flaring? And questions and questions like that. And so

39:23 the public side of it became sensitive. And maybe that's because the public side of it is more in tune in with the general population than maybe private investors are And so because I do think one of

39:39 the things that happened in SPAC World was there became a clear line drawn that if you are furthering the development or the life of hydrocarbons, we're not going to.

39:54 SPAC you were not going to invest in that.

39:58 And so

40:00 that's interesting. I hadn't thought of it that way because the SPACs pop up. They're willing to invest in EVs, climate, all that sort of in effect play venture capital for it. It may have even

40:12 made our oil and gas capital issue worse because, okay, we have a place we can go play now. We don't have to play an oil and gas anymore. Right. There wasn't, yeah, I mean, I think there was

40:26 just

40:29 such

40:31 an easy economic pathway on the SPAC side. If you IPO to SPAC, it would cost you like what? 8 million? Maybe you can make 20 times that easily with your investment, right? And so it was just,

40:47 there was just such clear line of sight to making money in that route.

40:54 Um, and then, you know, there's this thought that like, okay, so if I find a company that's pre-spec and I invest in them, then that's another way I can, you know, potentially, um, create

41:08 this growth portfolio. Uh, and so there's a lot more interest in the companies that were, you know, that would be a spec candidate one year or two years down the line too. So it kind of trickled

41:20 down. Yeah.

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42:12 No, it was a wild thing. And, you know, I actually heard the justification for it and I'll make these numbers up. You probably know the right ones, but call it pre economic collapse of, you

42:24 know, 0708 right around there. There were call it 8, 000 publicly traded companies. And by the time we got to 2018, 19, somewhere in there, there were 4, 500 publicly traded companies There

42:40 actually was a demand from the fidelity's, etc. of the world of we need more product. And the other interesting things. And obviously, COVID caused the MA market and the private market to dry up.

42:56 So you had obvious targets that needed capital, needed liquidity, whatever the case. The other interesting thing I heard about this that I didn't fully appreciate because Everybody says the specs

43:09 have done horribly. you pull up the list and they've all lost money. I have heard though that if you view it as a venture capital portfolio, we're gonna have a lot of losses, but we're gonna have

43:21 our periodic home run that's gonna pay for everything else. If you total all of that up, the SPACs have actually performed. But it's one home run carrying nine losses - Yeah, that's really

43:34 interesting - Yeah. Like most things I do, I just espouse it and don't actually run any path or dig into it - I believe it, I believe it. I mean, I think the SPACs have done for climate tech and

43:48 clean tech and energy tech, whatever you wanna call it, have done for this space what, a little bit what the dot com boom did for tech, which was it has subsidized a lot of tech development and

44:03 has put funding in places where there wouldn't have been funding in a normal cycle.

44:10 Um, you know, I think from that perspective, it was almost necessary. Um, for us to kind of go through that, um, going through that, I guess it's still going on. Right. Um, but, uh, it's,

44:25 it's something that I think we'll, we'll need to see actually more of just that kind of mindset of like, you know, we're, I kind of, we're, we're kind of in this place right now where we have 20

44:37 years, right? To, 30 years to reach our, our net zero goals. And if we rely on kind of the traditional funding ecosystem, um, I just don't think there's enough urgency to get there. There's,

44:55 you know, it's almost like if you're, um, you're, you're playing basketball and you're trying to shoot a hoop, but make it every single time you're not gonna shoot as many, you know, shots,

45:08 right?

45:10 And maybe you'll make it every time, but you won't score as many points. Whereas like, you know, those games that they have in kind of, you know, your bar where it's like, you know, you shoot

45:21 as many balls as you can, and you just try to rack up the score as much as you can. I think that's kind of where we are in, in kind of achieving net zero, is like, it doesn't matter how many

45:33 shots we take. The end goal is like how many points we get - Right - Right So we have to be taking as many shots as we can. So we think we'll need to see more of those vehicles - So this is, so

45:47 back in the day, the Rockets had periodic runs where they were just really bad back in the 80s. They'd have the worst, they had the worst record in the league, two years in a row and led to a

46:01 chemo-logs on in Ralph Sampson getting drafted. But there was a player in the NBA called named Lloyd Free. He changed his name to World B Free. And World B Free's deal was he signed with the worst

46:16 team in the league every year because he just liked to shoot. So he would, he would, he would want to average 35 points and go 12 and 70 during the season as opposed to being on a winner and maybe

46:30 scored 12 points. And so anyway, he was with the Rockets and one of the sports casters was being a little snarky interviewing him and said, you know, world, how do you know you're in range for

46:43 your shot? And his response was when my Mercedes Benz pulls into the parking lot. I know it's time for me to start shooting. So we need more world B free. And I hadn't thought of this. I'm glad

46:58 you brought this up because I lived through the dot com bubble back when I was at Stevens. His oil and gas was at oil was at 12 a barrel.

47:08 So I ran around and googled, I didn't even Google, I probably Yahoo'd or Google, I didn't even around Altavistas or Ask Jeeves or whatever it was. I tried to find every company that was internet

47:21 or. com related that had something to do with a hydrocarbon. And I would go call on those folks. Steven's had a really good internet analyst, Brad Heikler. And so I was doing that for a few years

47:34 through the. com bubble So I had experience with it. And the thing I noticed is you had a massive amount of capital come in. You had massive value destruction. But at the end of the day, if you

47:49 looked at the business metrics, the number of web pages was doubling every six months, the number of people on the internet were doubling costs were coming down as, you had better transportation

48:03 and like And so the The destruction of value did not mean that the dot com phenomenon wasn't going to become part of our daily lives. It's almost, that's what you're saying on energy tech. We may

48:18 lose a lot of money in this whole bubble, but at the end of the day, to get to where we are striving to be in 30 years, we're going to have to do that. Do you actually think we can get to net zero

48:33 in 30 years?

48:37 I think, and this, by the way, is going to be on the web for the rest of time. Your children, your great-grandchildren, all are going to be able to see

48:54 this. No, I think as an industry, I think we can get to net zero by 2050 I think it'll take carbon offsets, a lot of carbon offsets. a ton of unrelated carbon offset projects. But I think we can

49:11 get there. So I think

49:16 there's sort of a definition issue too. We're talking about scope one and two, that's very achievable in my mind. Like I think those are smaller numbers and we're already making the operational

49:29 improvements. And we also have, I think by 2050 enough carbon offsets to be able to get to net zero on those two scopes. Scope three is a little bit different. Scope three is huge for industry.

49:42 And I am actually not sure if there's enough carbon offset projects out there. And that potentially could be implemented by 2050 to cover all of the offsets that are needed for scope three - Now in

49:58 your view of that world, Does energy become so expensive? that literally we're talking about cutting back standard of living.

50:13 Maybe Africa doesn't get the energy it desires, et cetera.

50:22 Does that question make sense? I mean, if we're gonna - Yeah, if we're gonna sacrifice humans prosperity in our - To be able to do that, yeah - Yeah, I don't think so. Like I'm optimistic about

50:35 that

50:37 I think one, it's, I think everybody's kind of on the same page that there's no blatant sacrifice of prosperity that makes sense in this sort of like goal to reach net zero, you know, decades away.

50:54 So I don't think those decisions will be, will be, you know, made

51:01 with kind of the blasiness that everybody thinks they'll be made.

51:06 I do think that new technology will pop up on the combustion side that may be able to solve our problems without having to sacrifice all of existing infrastructure. So you talk about scope three

51:22 emissions,

51:25 most of it from four oil and gas right now is combustion of fossil fuels And I don't think it's that much of a stretch to believe that by 2050 we'll have a technology in which I think it already

51:42 exists at a larger scale today, but at a modular level to be able to combust oil and gas cleanly without any emissions into the air. And then all of a sudden our scope three emissions are pretty

51:55 much gone at that point, right? If that gets the scale. You know, I had damn pickering on the podcast last summer and we talked a similar sort of issue and I think That's where Dan and I both

52:08 shook out that at the end of the day, it's got to be, and I'm going to use this term wrong, but, you know, carbon capture of some sort

52:20 that's going to be able to get us there. And it's a technology that maybe is bouncing around in a lab right now, but I haven't read about it yet. Yeah And I, you know, a lot of what we focus on

52:33 as an industry, well, gas industry focuses on is

52:39 the sort of industrial side of carbon capture. So, you know, how do we apply it to your ethanol or your ammonia facilities or your power gen facilities? And we don't really talk about the consumer

52:53 side of things, which is really what's driving our scope three So I think we just need to do more research on that and be more involved in that conversation, because it's something that I, my.

53:06 definitely want to do too is just get more up to speed on what optionality there is on that side of things. Like it's out there. I've seen articles that talk about how researchers in so-and-so lab

53:20 have developed a zero emissions engine that uses net gas.

53:28 And, you know, I try to look for updates, but none come, 'cause I just don't think there's enough attention paid to those types of developments, 'cause that could just be an instantaneous game

53:40 changer for the prospecting and the forecasting for this industry and change everyone's opinion on, you know, what the growth trajectory is for this industry - Yeah, 'cause I think what's lost on a

53:55 lot of this is we talk about how we're going through an energy transition and all that I mean, 25 years ago, we got, what, 794 of our. energy from burning hydrocarbons. And today it's 802. So

54:11 we have a transition. We've just, we've just needed more. And this is the thing that, that gets me is, I've become a big Bitcoin believer. I mean, I truly think that's the much better store of

54:25 value than gold. My running joke is always what is gold have besides being limited. And it looked marginally attractive on the Queen's neck Outside of that, you know, you just didn't have much.

54:38 So I've become a, a become a believer in that, which is just tons more energy. The metaverse Colin and I were talking about this on the BDE show last week. If the metaverse actually happens and

54:52 we're running around with oculars on, that's a ton of energy that's going to be needed to do this. Colin brought up something I didn't even know the Xbox network of these guys in gals playing game.

55:06 every night, it's just tons of energy. It is. So I mean, we're going to need every single source of power that fuel source to grow if we just want to meet that demand, to keep our standard of

55:21 living flat, much less try to increase it. Yeah, maybe. I think on a global level, yes. On the US, I'm actually not quite sure, because you're talking about these developments Like obviously,

55:33 Bitcoin mining

55:36 isn't necessarily replacement for anything. But the metaverse would be a kind of replacement for us going out and meeting in person with each other, right? So there would be kind of a reduction in

55:46 emissions from calling out. I kind of talked about that, and we didn't get into it as deep as you and I are talking about it right now. But we were thinking that it was actually going to be

55:56 supplemental, that maybe the metaverse is not replacing your once a year ski trip, your once a year trip. the beach and all, but maybe it's replacing watching reruns of

56:12 the office on night and so that it potentially is supplemental in nature as opposed to replacing. And so it just means more energy. Yeah, that's true. I guess you're not going out for groceries on

56:25 the metaverse and that's really in having magically bringing groceries in from the metaverse into your home So you still have to do

56:36 your basic day to day things. I mean, Colin talks about, because what's it called? An ocular? Yeah. Colin got an oculus for one of his kiddos. He was sitting there playing ping pong with a

56:48 friend. And I mean, he's like 25 minutes later, he's sweating because he's bouncing around and he says it's gotten that real. And I was sitting there telling Colin, I don't know what you're

56:59 talking about I messed around with VR with one of my kids. Well, that was five years ago. I bet it's gotten a little better since then. Yeah.

57:10 So this is what I find really interesting is, so you're in the middle of energy transition, you're at Tudor-Prickering Hole, this great firm doing all this, and you decide, nay, I'm out. Yeah,

57:23 I quit. I was part of their great resignation, I guess. The great resignation, there were a lot of resignations Well, generally speaking, I think there's been just a lot of resignations across

57:37 the world, across every single industry. And I think it's, and

57:45 I'm not too well read on it, but I think it's because so many people have taken a look at what their life was like before COVID, taken a look at what their life was like after COVID, and I found

57:57 that there might be a better option out there. So it just made people

58:07 relook at what they want to do. And

58:14 that definitely happened to me. So I mean, I was,

58:18 I've been in energy tech for a couple of years now, it's completely dedicated, which has been amazing. Like there really hasn't been another firm that could have offered me

58:32 that option And I've done well in it and I've met a lot of great people. But kind of in that process, I realized that I, there's just not enough bandwidth to do what I want to do. And

58:50 I also was just getting behind in everything if that makes sense. So - No, I think that, 'cause you hear the battle about Republicans saying, oh, if we're gonna continue to pay people, they're

59:03 not gonna work. and all that, I think that's way oversimplifying until we miss the point you just made in terms of a reexamination of life and all that. I mean, look at me. I'm gone back to work.

59:17 And I told my parents the other day, I was like, man, I moved back in with y'all before I get another job 'cause working sucks. So yeah, no, I totally see that. So what are you doing with that?

59:32 Is that E-Tech Monkey - Yeah, so I started this blog called E-Tech Monkey. And it's really kind of a journal and a documentation of whatever I'm gonna be doing this year. But my goal is it's a

59:51 couple different things. Like one, I realized I was behind in everything. And so I just need to get caught up on a lot of reading. I need to be thinking about a lot of things and charting things

1:00:03 out and just. just spending time sitting in my room and just solely focused on figuring things out for a while, like figuring things out around,

1:00:15 you know, the macro picture of climate tech and energy tech, figuring things out on where I want to play in it, figuring things on like what the problems are. And that kind of leads into kind of

1:00:27 my second goal, which is my theory is that the funding ecosystem for energy tech and for climate tech is broken and that there are issues with it that it could be done better. And part of it is what

1:00:41 we just talked about, which is there's a lot more shots on gold that need to be taken in order for us to be able to fund the technologies that we need to be funding and to get to where we need to be

1:00:55 in 30 years. And in order to do that, we can't just take the venture capital model from other industries and copy paste it into. into this one. And so what are the problems with the funding

1:01:08 ecosystem validating what those problems are? And then figuring out if there's a solution that evolves or pops out of this sort of analysis that makes sense to build. So that's kind of my second

1:01:22 goal is to kind of

1:01:24 go through that journey - So dummy this down for me because, one, I'm not very smart, but two, just give me an example of something that you've thought, ah, maybe we could do it different this

1:01:42 way - Yeah - Kind of give me a tangible example of just kind of what you've been thinking about - Well, it's like

1:01:51 with

1:01:53 raising money for heart tech is really difficult and raising money for any startup is a -

1:02:04 process in itself, right? Because you have to go out and talk to thousands of investors potentially in your entire life span of your company, but at least for that one round, hundreds for sure.

1:02:17 And you'd convince some of the story and you need to also find a match in the other side in the investors that you're talking to. And you also need to be running your business and getting your pitch

1:02:29 deck together and doing all the things that, you know, to run a normal business you need to be doing on the side. So raising money as a startup is hard in itself. If you're in kind of like a very

1:02:44 niche area, like a lot of these climate tech and energy tech companies are where you're solving a very specific problem,

1:02:55 it's hard to figure out what universe of investors go after - Right - It's, you know, it - It's almost impossible to figure out if there's like one cohesive group to go after because there's so many

1:03:09 things changing about the investor universe too, so many new entrants. And everybody wants to look at everything, right? So you end up having to go out compared to kind of your average sort of go

1:03:19 out to many more investors. So not just hundreds, but like a thousand, you know, 2, 000 different investors and getting to know all of them. And so there's that issue

1:03:31 And then there's sort of the issue of

1:03:36 who you know, right? Because it's in

1:03:40 VC and in this kind of universe of earlier stage companies, it's very much about

1:03:46 who you know, what they think of you and who can they can recommend, right, on your behalf. And in this world, if you're coming in and you're just starting a climate tech startup and you were

1:04:01 previously. oil and gas or you're previously in like in tech, you may not have the necessary context to be able to go out to the vc universe and raise that money. And so all of a sudden you're cold

1:04:14 calling everybody and you're cold calling 2, 000 people. Right. So, so those are some of the problems I see. There's also like not very much standardization of between the different sub sectors.

1:04:29 So, like a hydrogen startup is being looked at the same way as a CCUS startup is being looked at the same way as like you're like a solar developer. Like every, you know, it's it's it's like these

1:04:43 are totally different industries, but they're kind of all being lumped together. And there's no like framework for how you look at each one of these areas. And and so all of this I I think creates

1:04:57 this problem of like when you have funding going. going to the hot startups. So like the ones that have been able to like get, you know, kind of a critical mass of exposure and investors already

1:05:09 looking at them, a lot of people just pile on behind them. And so you have a lot of funding being thrown at very small tip of kind of the pyramid. And then you have all these other startups whose

1:05:21 technology should be like developing and should be moving quicker towards commercialization that can't get the funding because they just don't know where to start in this sort of process. So I think

1:05:35 those are a lot of the issues that I can't, like we came across those a lot in working for different companies in the last few years. Like there's one company that kind of produced a a component

1:05:52 that fed into renewable energy. And it was a better component And it was honestly a

1:06:01 technology breakthrough. what they were doing, 'cause they brought the cost curve down so much that it was enabling a lot of other different developments around the

1:06:15 end product. And I think we ended up calling like 300,

1:06:21 400 people and sending emails out to more. So, and that's for a banking process. That was, that's a huge process And so, I realized that was like very inefficient. And there was an issue.

1:06:36 There's a problem in the fact that they, like, were coming to us. They were looking for help. So there was a problem in them getting funding. And then there was another problem in us running the

1:06:50 process. Like, 'cause because we, we realized in that process that there was, that there was just so many people that could be interested in them But then there's also so many. that were

1:07:02 definitely not. And so just figuring all of that out was just, it was just super complex, not something that should be done manually, but it is in the service world. Yeah, now I sitting there

1:07:16 thinking through it, I mean, the way we did situations like that, way back in the day, is you got an assignment you called and you tried your best to just keep notes of what people wanted. And

1:07:30 the second assignment you got, you hoped you didn't have to call 300, you only had to call 290. And you kept, went on it down. No, it is a really big problem because the disparate nature of

1:07:46 potentially the stakeholders in this, you have everything from government to just people that want to make money to people that want to make money responsibly is investing to strategic partners all

1:08:01 along with. chain, I mean pulling all that together, your rights can be a mess. Right. And they all have different risk appetites. Right. Like I think

1:08:12 there's a ton of capital raised right now at the kind of private equity and up level where it's like private equity infrastructure, like the look, the sort of like 20 25 and below type of returns

1:08:30 that conservative risk appetite level. And then there's there's the whole venture universe, which is aiming at like 30 above types of returns. But most of the money that they have

1:08:46 that they raise are aimed at like kind of these seed investments, seed and series A, that's like most of the venture universe So then you've got these like kind of maybe late series A series B

1:08:56 series C types of companies that just don't know where to go. There's like. not really a clear entity or universe to go after that's as big as the venture community or all this infrastructure and

1:09:11 private equity capital that's been raised. What you find is that these private equity firms and infrastructure capital that don't have enough projects to be putting their capital into are now looking

1:09:22 at the Series B and see types of investments and kind of moving their risk appetite up and their investment sizes down.

1:09:33 So, I think there's some way you can play that because right now it's just like it's all very confusing. There's so many investors that I talk to that are like, Yeah, we'll make an exception for

1:09:44 this one. We're not sure if we'll do that going forward We

1:09:49 want to be making lower tech risk types of investments because we just don't have the expertise in this area.

1:09:59 gain that expertise, there's a way to marry different risk profiles together, like finance and insurance and all these other instruments do it all the time. There just needs to be better thinking

1:10:12 and more innovation around and more creativity around how you do it. And so, I mean, we're what, week three into the blog. Yeah Because the thought is you're going to be publishing content.

1:10:28 Here's what I thought of today.

1:10:31 Yeah, yeah. I think I'm

1:10:36 trying to keep it

1:10:38 just kind of open. I don't want to be committed necessarily to one type of content or just one theme of content. I think this very much is a discovery process for me So I'll be publishing kind of

1:10:55 like whatever I want to publish, but it'll be a long. It would be on the vein, the general vein of what did I learn today? And here's what I want to learn tomorrow. Um, and then also here's who

1:11:08 I talk to and here's what I learned from that. Um, so I'll be doing that regularly. I'll also, I don't know. Uh, I just, I, I would like for there to be feedback on the blog. Like I want to

1:11:22 publish something like horrendously stupid and have people tell me that it's horrendously stupid, you know, I want that kind of dialogue. I will just say, be careful what you wish for as a

1:11:34 podcaster who

1:11:36 every once in a while is known to read his apple or Spotify reviews. Just be careful. Okay. It can be a little tough on the, uh, the ego. I will admit that I'm shallow enough that I need

1:11:47 everybody to like me. And so, but it's cool You're doing it because Colin always says this and I have become a big believer that creation of content is the greatest source of leverage you have today

1:12:03 in terms of drawing in bounds and to your point maybe creating community because it sounds like at the end of the day you're trying to create a better ecosystem you know and we can call that community

1:12:15 or whatever and creating contents the best way to do that. And the other thing that I've learned is creating genuine content is what matters because you can't fake it these days You really can't.

1:12:29 There's enough content out there of people being real, being vulnerable, putting out smart ideas that if you try to craft a narrative of something I think we're seeing it in politics these days. I

1:12:43 think that's a lot of the reason we and this is a whole other topic that I won't take us down but just so much of the divide today is crafted narrative crafted narrative when people are sitting there

1:12:56 you just freaking be real. Yeah, yeah. We admit we have inflation and what are we gonna do about it and the like and so, yeah, that's gonna be a fun journey for you. I know. I've had a blast.

1:13:06 I mean, I love doing this. I mean, I love hearing myself speak and looking up at the camera. Hey, that's me, look at that. But it'll be fun. Yeah, yeah, I'm excited. I mean, you guys were

1:13:17 one of the first ones, digital wall catters, I would say generally, were one of the first ones to kind of put themselves out there and then you joined the group and took it to a new level to get to

1:13:28 a much higher level. Don't you forget it.

1:13:32 And so I find a lot of inspiration that 'cause putting yourself out there, I think is pretty risky and it's scary. Like I know sitting here now, like it's very scary, but I think most things scary

1:13:47 are, you know, are

1:13:49 worth doing in the sense that it helps you grow from that experience. So, yeah, I'm excited Whoa, and. what I've found kind of getting to the, I never thought I'd relish being the old guy. And

1:14:04 okay, this is crazy. Yesterday at the IPAA Private Capital Conference, I was on the industry veterans tape or panel. And I'm just going, how did I become? I'm looking over at a Jim Trumbull and

1:14:17 Frank Lozinski going, no way near as old as these guys are, but I've actually kind of relished the role of being the old guy. It's fun to sit around here because Colin and Jake are full of pissing

1:14:29 vinegar and they come, we're going to do this. And I go, no, you're not. And they go, why not? And I go, I tried it in '07. It didn't work. I tried it again in '11, didn't work. We forgot

1:14:37 and tried it in '17 again. And here's why it doesn't work.

1:14:42 But just from the old guy, what I would say is you're never going to regret things you tried and failed. You just don't. You sit around at my age and you go, ah, should have tried that. Ah, I

1:14:54 should have done that and the big catastrophe. you've had and I've had a handful of them. You look back and you laugh at. Yeah. You know, they're a learning experience. So you're smart, you're

1:15:06 talented. And if you figure out, you know, in a year of doing this, you didn't like it. Peter Pickering-Hole will take you back. Barclays will take you back. I don't know why you'd want to work

1:15:16 for a European bank, but they'll take you back. So yeah, I am. Yeah, I hope the industry will take me back if I cause if I so Well, private equity's not taking me back.

1:15:30 They've already made that plainly clear. So, but trust me, you're a much better person than I am. Yeah, no, I,

1:15:40 yeah, I'm excited. I mean, so the monkey. Yeah. Explain the name and then tell me how or tell folks how they reach you Yeah. So, etechmonkeycom is the blog and my email is dianazingetechcom.

1:15:58 monkeycom.

1:16:00 And the reason why I chose a monkey, it's a couple of different things. It's like, I like to say, and it's a cliche thing at this point, because a lot of people say it, but I'm a recovering

1:16:12 investment banker. I

1:16:16 always said reformed. Reform. I'm a reformed investment banker. Yeah. It's a process you go through and you learn a lot from it, but then you come out the other side and you're like, was I a

1:16:26 human being kind of thing, right? But

1:16:31 yeah, so I think

1:16:34 I don't know, people kind of jokingly refer to bankers as monkeys sometimes. So that's part of it. And then also, I think you see a lot of tech companies using monkey too, because monkeys are

1:16:48 playful and they're a plover and they're also sort of chaotic, which is like what I aim to be in this sort of process. I want to be a little bit playful. I want to be hopefully clever. And I also

1:17:04 want to be a little bit chaotic. So, and I think that'll be a challenge for me because I'm, I mean, you look at me, I'm not like a, I'm not a chaotic person. Like I'm, I'm, you know, I'm an

1:17:18 introvert and I like to be thoughtful and I like to follow the rules. But I think this is a challenge for me to kind of not do that a little bit and see where that goes - Oh - Yeah - Well,

1:17:30 appreciate you coming on. This has been a, this has been a lot of fun - Yeah, thanks for having me, Chuck - Absolutely. You should aspire to do better things on a Friday afternoon - No, this was.

1:17:41 This is great. Thank you.