Click here to learn more about Jeff and his company.

 

Mark: Hey, folks let’s learn something new about the oil and gas industry.

All right. We have Jeff Chambers on. Good morning, Jeff.

Jeff: Good morning, Mark. How are you?

Mark: Awesome. And, Jeff and I just could not get in the same city at the same time, so we’re shooting this via Skype.

But, Jeff, you have a fascinating story. You know this industry as a whole especially in upstream has always been data-centric even back the days when all these stuff was done on paper. And as we went through time, you have technology come in to help track a lot of these stuff and your company is almost like the next evolution in that.

Let’s talk a little bit about your company, Upstream DB. What do you all do?

Jeff: Yeah. So, basically, you know, exactly what you said, we aggregate a lot of information on the upstream oil and gas industry. Everything from drilling permits to well spot locations, header information, production, who’s operating it, and even in some cases the sales data at the well head.

And so, you know, one of the things that we learn several years ago was that this information is all over the place, it’s scattered and it’s messy. And there’s a real opportunity to kind of come in do a better job of cleaning it up and really put it on, you know, not to be too cheesy, but a beautiful interface you know.

Mark: Right.

Jeff: I think the presentation of the data matters and making a simple and easy and intuitive is – is really important because learning a new tool is hard. And so, the context switching from the tools we used to use to what we have, you know, we wanted to make that a low barrier entry.

Mark: Yeah. And so, I don’t think it’s cheesy. I’ve seen your user interface, I think what’s beautiful about it is it’s intuitive literally even I, I’m not geosciences guy, right? But literally I, in a few minutes, got it. I understood where everything was, it was easy to maneuver. And that’s a big deal especially we have a lot of these younger generation that started that entered the oil and gas industry for the first time and they’re going to want and expect that and your interface actually is going to be quicker time to productivity for your company’s employees because they don’t have to learn something that’s hard to figure out.

Jeff: Correct. We don’t do any training. You know we would if somebody ask and reach out. But fortunately so far we haven’t even really had any request.

But, this younger group that’s coming out of college and they grew up in a different world, even more different than you and I. You  know, the Gen X’ers, they, you know, they kind of came out of the womb essentially with the computer in their hand so to speak. And so, when they – when they go to the workforce and, you know, see the things are still done on Excel they kind of scratch their heads and say, man, there’s got to be a better way. And so, we’re really hoping to kind of hit that demographic as they get into the industry.

Mark: Yeah. Even, Jeff, I’ve been in this industry twenty years, even I go, why are we still doing stuff in Excel.

Jeff: Yeah.

Mark: It is ridiculous. I mean I have seen like seventy-tab Excel spreadsheets out there.

Jeff: Yeah.

Mark: And, it’s the culture of the industry, but even I have to laugh at it. So, you have a lot of this upstream data that you have gathered from bunch of places and historically people use a bunch of tools to do this, sometimes even the fact that sending somebody out to some courthouse somewhere and looking at paper.

Jeff: Yeah.

Mark: And so, you bring it all in one place. You have a beautiful intuitive interface, but the other thing that you do I think that’s really cool is your business model is different. There’s other companies out there doing this sort of similar, but they charge way more money than you do.

Jeff: Yeah. I think that’s – that’s one of the things that we learned early on is that there was a real opportunity to serve as what I would call the smaller guys in the space you know. Other options out there started off as that and they’ve kind of grown overtime and priced a lot of their customers out. And so, we felt like there was a real opportunity to step in, provide a really quality service at a price that people can afford and we were able to slice up the information in ways that we can make it affordable even down to the county level.

Mark: Yeah. And the thing I think is neat is you’re now allowing smaller companies to compete with much bigger companies because they have access to the exact same information.

Jeff: Correct. Yes.  If we all have a little playing field in terms of the information and data we use, then I feel like that hopefully levels up those smaller companies that we’re kind of priced out of being able to compete.

Mark: Yeah. And it’s cool because, you know, we’ve talked about this on past shows, we’re seeing as a research company, we’re seeing technology being adapted by the oil and gas industry faster than – than ever than in the last twenty years and you’re part of that wave, right? You’re bringing new technology that’s beneficial that solves real business problems to the industry, but you’re not targeting the mega super majors and everything, you’re targeting a lot of the smaller companies which honestly are the large majority of the oil and gas business here in the US.

Jeff: Yeah. Correct. We’re really going after, you know, the smaller independents, you know, the independent consultants. That’s the – that’s the group of people that I feel has been kind of left behind if you will.

Mark: And the other thing I like about you is you all have a personal touch. I mean you, I don’t know you. You and I connected, you showed me the tools, you talked me through a bunch of stuff. It’s nice to have a real person on the other end of that conversation instead of trying to be reading some FAQ page in a website somewhere.

Jeff: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s the other thing is we’re really kind of over the top in terms of customer service and kind of who we are as a business. We’re very responsive. You know we have a lot of customers that get on and, you know, maybe our tool from the beginning didn’t do exactly what they wanted, but they reached out and said, hey, Jeff, is there a way that you guys can do X for us?

And, you know, usually inside of that day, if not the next day, if we can do it, we’ll have it done and out the door. And it blows their mind because they’re not used to that level of service in this industry.

Mark: Yeah. That’s awesome. So, Jeff if people wanted to learn more about what you do, where should they go?

Jeff: They can go to the website, www.upstreamdb.com.

Mark: Yeah. And, folks we’ll put a link in the show notes, so you don’t have to be writing anything down.

Jeff: Sure.

Mark: Jeff, man, great story. I love what you’re doing. I know you’ll be highly successful. Thank you so much for your time today.

Jeff: Thanks, Mark. I hope to see you at NAPE.

Mark: You will see me at NAPE. You know you will, I couldn’t get out of here anymore.

Jeff: Awesome.

Mark: So, folks I hope this helped. We will see you next time.