In this interview, Shiva Rajagopalan discusses how SaaS companies can succeed in the oil and gas sector by prioritizing customer experience, focusing on cash‑flow and production efficiency, and leveraging AI for data capture and route optimization. He emphasizes the importance of passion for the target persona, avoiding direct executive pitches, and delivering tangible efficiency gains. Rajagopalan also shares operational constraints that affect field routing, such as weather, gate access, and proximity of skilled operators. On the leadership side, he outlines a goal‑setting cadence with annual objectives cascaded through seven direct reports, weekly metric reviews, and frequent one‑on‑ones. He advises founders on hiring mid‑level managers, noting when to use executive search firms versus internal hiring. Finally, he explains his philosophy of making SaaS more human, illustrating how their software frees field operators to finish work earlier and improve work‑life balance, thereby creating real impact for end users.
Chapters
So, I mean, obviously you're a leader in this space, right? We've seen most of these founders we've had in the past are measuring their success in terms of Customer experience, maybe MRR growth results. What would you say is the basis, you know, for you as a SaaS leader? What does make that? What makes that SaaS leader DNA?
Yeah, we had a customer advisory meeting last month wherein one of our customers started talking about our customer experience, their customer experience, and and you know it was funny. everybody started chiming in about the same thing. And so that is the number one differentiator as far as they're concerned, because, you know, for them, they're shrinking, right? You know, because of the market and, you know, they're laying off people and, you know, they don't have a lack— they don't have the number of resources that they once had, right?
Yeah.
To keep systems up and running and the data quality good and all that kind of stuff.
Right.
So they rely quite a bit on the vendors now, right? And according to them, we are the best vendors that they work with, right, that allow for them to do all of that without having to hire additional people. So yeah, so customer experience has always been forefront, and it's actually paying off. We're getting good references and stuff like that.
I imagine that helps with your retention and kind of how long they stay aboard regardless of, you know, the industry.
Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
So do you have any tips for maybe other founders who are, who maybe who are in this market, maybe they're in the SaaS and they want to tackle this market, right? They have, uh, they haven't tackled oil and gas, uh, but they have maybe a new product or solution and they want to convince like, you know, the old boys, you know, you mentioned one way going through, you know, the people who report to and who are gonna be their sales champions. Any other way you can kind of give any tips or any suggestions?
You know, my ultimate suggestion would be make sure you're passionate about what you're building and you're passionate about the persona that you're building the product for. So if that particular persona enjoys the product, you will invariably get a chance to sell, right? So that will be my recommendation. There, you know, don't go after the execs because, you know, for them, the proof is in the pudding. They're not gonna, you know, do you a favor, especially in this kind of market, right? So always look to improve efficiency somehow, somewhere, right? And that's your way in. Love it.
If you were starting a new solution today, Shiva, let's say for the oil and gas industry, right? You're starting all over. What are some opportunities that you see and you would maybe tackle and you see a big opportunity in right now? You know, maybe different than when you started, you know, over 10 years ago.
In oil and gas?
Yeah.
In oil and gas, you know, obviously if you look at the market today, with the new Biden administration, bank loans, finances, capital has dried up. So pretty much if you look at drilling, back in the day it was drill, baby, drill. Now it's more like this, I have to have enough cash flow generated as an operator to be financing my own drilling program, right? Does that make sense? So it's more about maintaining their production levels is what they're after, and therefore, you know, anything to do with production optimization, efficiency gains around operations is what they're looking to do. So if you are interested in getting into the space, That is the right space to be in.
Got it. So it's not in the going after the big CapEx budgets, the billion dollars. Those are not, those are not being spent anymore. Now it's really about, right, okay, how do we optimize our cash flow, what we have, and, uh, you know, grow with what we have? Yeah, makes sense.
Exactly.
Yeah, I think I would say imagine like a lot of data, you know, like you said, you're a data per— you know, a guy. Um, I imagine there's kind of opportunities there, right? Like especially, I know, you know, AI and a lot of these technologies being built. Um, are you guys building anything like that with them? And do you see anything, you know, going that route with With the companies you work with?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We do have a couple of, uh, AI, uh, pieces in our software. Uh, one is to allow for the operators to, um, seamlessly enter their data, so they can actually take a picture of something and the data will flow in. They don't even have to type it in, right? So it actually saves them some time. Uh, the other one is— so that's called computer vision technology, right, which is AI. The other one is more route optimization. So, you know, the operators in the field have an optimized route which allows them to go after the assets that are the highest value for the company, right? So, you know, it's called route optimized— route optimization, and that also uses, you know, AI techniques. for us to be able to optimize them. But all of that optimization happens by a lot of data variables, not just production of the well, but there's lots and lots of data variables that we take into account.
Like what, like weather, temperature?
Actually, yeah. Actually, yeah. You know, weather, temperature, you know, your skillset, experience of the, you know, person, where they are, from the location proximity-wise, you know, because drive time matters, right? So if there's another operator that is closer by that is similar skilled and experienced, et cetera, we wanna get them to the location faster. So yeah, lots and lots of variables you wouldn't believe.
Hmm.
You know, in some areas, you know, there are ranches, you know, where oil fields are, right, in South Texas, for example. So you have to enter through one gate and exit to another gate. These are all constraints that we have to use in order to optimize the routes.
Right. And you would never know that unless you're in the field, you know, at live location. You can't do this from a computer, you know, outside in the middle of nowhere, right? So this is where, you know, being with your customers really matters, right?
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, you gotta, you gotta be with them. I mean, you know, uh, uh, fortunately we've had a chance to go to a lot of these different places and see it firsthand, uh, and see their pain firsthand, right?
Exactly.
So that's how, that's how we, uh, sympathize with them, uh, even more.
Nice. So Shiva, I wanna talk about your, how you kind of, your management structure, right? You have over 100 team members. You've been, you know, for a while managing a man— you know, pretty significant team. Do you have a kind of recurrence cadence with your team interactions, coaching, you know, strategy feedback? And do you have maybe a framework you could share on how you make harder decisions while maintaining still, you know, motivation and consistency across the team?
Yeah, you know, every year we have some goals, right, that we put together. And at the beginning of the year, those goals are distributed to my direct management.
Right?
And then, so I have about 7 direct reports, right? And then they take those goals, you know, for example, engineering has its own goals, product has its own goals, etc., right? And then they actually take it to their team and then actually they meet amongst their peers also to enable those goals to get done. So that's kind of how things have been working so far, but then we also have, you know, weekly cadence meetings to go over how we're doing around those goals, right, and around those metrics that we've created at the beginning of the year. So yeah, it's pretty straightforward, nothing too fancy, lots of one-on-ones, lots of, you know, Peer conversations. Unfortunately, these days, lots of Zoom calls.
Yeah, yeah.
But prior to that, we were in the office. But yeah, we're looking back, we're looking forward to going back into the office. We've started slowly trickling in.
Yeah, yeah. I imagine a lot of people are starting to miss it. Yeah, we've always been, you know, a couple days a week, even before and after. So yeah, I think that's the way to go. So 7 people, you manage them, and then they kind of work with their own team as kind of managers. Do you have any suggestions maybe on how to hire those kind of higher-level management? So I know sometimes it's easier where there is a lot more than just experience that goes into that kind of factor. What do you look for and how are you typically finding those? Is that mostly internally?
Yeah, no, that's a great question. It depends on the size of your company, right? So really, if you are at a specific ARR number, you may not need to go after an executive search agency and then like a, you know, Heidrick, you know, and then have them hire a top-end person, right?
Mm-hmm.
But, you know, if you are at a 10 ARR and then trying to get to the next level, which is the 25 ARR, you may want to actually spend that kind of money, right? Because you want the person, you know, that has experience in doing so. So it really depends on where you are as a company, on how you wanna create— do that search. So initially, of course, I grew the company by hiring on my own, right? But now we're actually using, leveraging some of these more advanced search agencies to do the exec-level hiring for us.
Got it. Yeah, makes sense. Um, yeah, once you're bigger, the money helps, and I guess you can, you can, you know, makes that decision a lot easier. You mentioned in the past you're making SaaS more human. Uh, what, what exactly does that mean to you, and why is that important, and why should other maybe founders think about that as well?
Yeah, at the end of the day, you know, for me, SaaS is just a way to run the business, but unless I'm able to help my end-user personas, you know, in this case the field personnel, right, I'm not doing anything. So, you know, I'm not making a positive impact, right? So for me, that is the key and that is the human side of it. Like, for example, you know, this is my favorite story. I keep saying this over and over again, but I was driving around with one of the operators using our software and he was telling me, look, you know, I don't have to open up my laptop at the end of the day and sit there in front of the TV doing my work, okay, anymore. I can take my kid who loves baseball to baseball games, right, because I'm done at 5. I go, I get to go back home, right? My wife is not mad at me anymore, right? So, you know, I'm actually, you know, very proud to be making such a positive impact in someone's life, right?
Right.
And that is the human side of it, and we'll continue to do so. You know, that's where our passions are.
