Jacob Vizinat & Jason Harry from Iron Stag Advisory & Pontem Analytics

Jacob Vizinat & Jason Harry from Iron Stag Advisory & Pontem Analytics

Author: collide. August 4, 2026 Duration: 1:05:07

Two engineers who spent years driving innovation inside a major oil company get honest about why the offshore world will land a robot at 20,000 psi but won't swap the pen and paper. Jacob Vizinat of Iron Stag Advisory and Jason Harry of Pontem Analytics unpack the corporate immune system, why the real value lives in the rock, the black magic of flow assurance, and how the right advisor can turn a single pilot into a real shot for energy tech founders.

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Click here to view the episode transcript.

00:00 Intro
00:46 Meet Jacob and Jason
02:34 Life as a petroleum engineer
05:55 Driving innovation inside a major operator
08:26 Trading pen and paper for iPads
11:35 The corporate immune system
16:20 Why the value lives in the rock
26:32 Flow assurance and black magic
32:46 How short-term thinking kills innovation
36:00 Building advisory firms after the merger
38:35 Drones, robots, and the rare orchestrators
46:31 What it takes to go offshore
48:00 Reading the 2025 market
53:25 Why founders avoid the gold mine
56:02 Advice for early stage founders
1:01:12 Where to find them

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They say everything's bigger in Texas, including the challenges and opportunities presented by climate change. That's precisely why Houston has become a surprising epicenter for the global energy transition. In H-Town, the fourth largest city in the United States, a new wave of entrepreneurs is converging, partnering with established industry titans to forge the technologies that will slash emissions and power a low-carbon future. This is the landscape explored in Energytech Startups, a podcast from collide. that goes straight to the source. Hosts Nada Ahmed and Jason Ethier sit down with the very people driving this change-the founders, investors, and innovators who are building companies at the intersection of energy and technology. Each conversation digs into the real work: the engineering breakthroughs, the complex business models, and the hard-won lessons from the front lines of a sector undergoing massive transformation. It’s a direct line to the strategies and stories shaping the future of energy, making this podcast an essential listen for anyone curious about the business and investment dynamics behind building a sustainable world. You’ll hear frank discussions about funding, scaling, and the practical realities of bringing a transformative idea to market, all set against the backdrop of a city historically known for oil and gas now betting big on its own reinvention.
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