“If Navy Seals trust us with their data, oil and gas could, too.”

Rachel Olney

Described as the “Google Drive” or “Switzerland” of geospatial, Geosite technology was created for the U.S. military. But when founder and CEO Rachel Olney studied workflows across other industries, she found that the energy sector’s needs for minerals, midstream and production reflected similar cases she was already working on with the U.S. Air Force.

Olney, the mother of two and Ph.D. candidate, saw herself heading toward manufacturing when she was an undergraduate at Stanford University. But when she realized the organizational implication of using geospatial technology—and a lack of business around it—she founded Geosite in March 2018. The site is a cloud-based geospatial marketplace for satellite, drone and IoT data.

Headquartered in Silicon Valley, the privately held company ended last year with nearly $2 million in revenue and investment capital and is projected to hit $10 million in 2020, with the majority of its contracts from the government and energy industry.

Olney was recently named to the Forbes “30 Under 30” enterprise technology list for 2020, which highlighted young entrepreneurs transforming business with machine intelligence.

In an exclusive interview with HartEnergy.com, Olney shared how Geosite is impacting oil and gas operations and her insights on the geospatial industry.

Hart Energy: What are some of the biggest challenges the energy industry is facing in regard to data streams?

Olney: I think this is an issue that every industry is facing right now, but what’s unique to the energy industry is the amount of distributed operations that are really complex as well as need a level of data security. You’ll have a lot of different people that are interacting with the company, whether they are service companies or contractors, that you need the ability to control information.

One big challenge is the huge rise in the amount of satellite imagery that’s available. As the space industry has grown, the energy industry has tried to leverage a lot of that data, but one of the issues is a lack of software that they could use to integrate that data into their workflow as well as take advantage of multiple data sets.

Before our platform, if a midstream company wanted access to satellite imagery, they’d have to track down each one of the satellite companies, form a contract with them, get access to their data and do that for every data source. Then, have someone on their own team manually pull that data from each of those databases, combine it into their own system and then manually distribute that to the rest of their team.

What we’ve done is gone through and formed partnerships with the top satellite companies and we automatically provide that data to energy companies for any area that they care about so that they don’t have to deal with the burden and lift of trying to figure out how to combine geo tests. They’re able to share data across their team very easily and access new datasets. Being able to move around the map and easily get access to new datasets has been something that hasn’t been possible before.

Hart Energy: How is the platform, as the company’s website mentions, able to decrease time to hydrocarbon, exploration and manage construction and drilling?

Olney: There are a lot of different datasets that people want to take advantage of. If you have that satellite imagery you’re able to see what’s happening in the field on a day-by-day basis without sending someone out there, so you’re decreasing miles driven. Also, a company’s ability to coordinate its team is improved with our platform. They are able to layer in all of their plans about pad layout, when roads should be completed, which roads should be accessible and things like that.

The other piece that we brought into the platform is the ability to incorporate other data types whether that’s drone imagery for monitoring assets or various IoT platforms, including GPS trackers. You’re able to see where your team is, the assets that need to be checked on, and you can specifically cast people rather than having them run normal routes.

Hart Energy: With all the data housed on the platform, is there an opportunity in collaborating among typically competitive energy companies?

Olney: I would say collaborating in spots where there’s a lot of competition is a bit tricky. If you have a bunch of oilfield service companies, exploration companies and mineral companies, they all end up catching each other at different points in the process. So, if you’re able to give them a single platform that they can work on that constrains who can see what, then that’s where a lot of the collaboration can come in.

If you’re working with an oilfield service company that’s hauling away water from your fracking, you could integrate them onto your platform to see their GPS trackers and also the progress of your extended team. Geosite allows you to onboard your partners without giving them access to more information than you want them to have.

Hart Energy: Do you have plans to expand on the Geosite application?

Olney: Absolutely. That’s part of what is really fun about starting a new company.

Our current product allows for a lot of utility, but as we’re working with the energy industry we’re able to incorporate people’s needs, produce new features and collect new data sources in our platform. For instance, we had a couple of our customers asking for the incorporation of methane data. Because the Geosite team is experts at what data sources are out there, we were able to reach out and were provided different methane data sources. We evaluated those and formed partnerships and now we’re starting to integrate methane data into the system for those customers.

Because we are such a fast-moving, slightly smaller company we can adapt to customer demand really quickly.  

Hart Energy: With your application, is there an opportunity on the emissions side of energy?

Olney: Absolutely. The way I explain it to people is, if whatever information you’re looking at belongs to a place on the surface of the Earth then it can be incorporated into our platform. Whether that is drone emission data or field sensors or mounted cameras that are looking for methane. Being able to incorporate all that into a system is really difficult, but that’s what we do.

The emissions side is actually very interesting. The data production side of that industry is a little less mature than satellite imagery or IoT sensors, but there are a lot of really exciting data streams that are starting to come online and new AI tools for those data streams that we’re giving our customers access to.

Hart Energy: What advice would you give others interested in beginning a start-up company?

Olney: The first thing is to gather support. You cannot do it alone. Even if they’re not people that are going to be your co-founders or start the company with you, having a large pool of mentors and advisers is definitely the first place to start.

The next thing is that you just have to go for it. Then, over time it just builds and it’s really exciting. Having our company grow from two to 13 in a year has been absolutely wild. But it’s about building a network of people who can support and advise you. There is no possible way you know everything you need to know about starting a business on day one.

Hart Energy: What is your 2020 outlook for technology and beyond?

Olney: In terms of field data or data that has something to do with the surface of the Earth, I think more data will be produced.

I also think there is going to be more proprietary data. There was a rise in geospatial analytics, but just having access to that data doesn’t create a huge advantage because everyone else has access to it. I think there is going to be a large amount of proprietary spatial data created in the next 10 years from drones, field sensors and people in the field with their mobile devices collecting data.

Organizations are going to have their own data that they will have to contend with, in addition to datasets from external organizations like satellite companies. The number of pipes in the plumbing of data, I think, will just get more complicated. Getting that data organized, streamlined and easy to use by someone that already has a very time-consuming job is going to be really important.

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