In this insightful webinar, we explore the entrepreneurial journey of Nour Baki, the co-founder of InstaFuel, and his transition to the Head of Global Key Accounts at Shell TapUp. Baki shares his experiences, challenges, and the strategic pivots that paved the way for InstaFuel's success and eventual acquisition by Shell.
From the conception of a unique fuel delivery service to navigating the complexities of the energy industry, this webinar is a treasure trove of lessons on innovation, scalability, and perseverance. Baki delves into the importance of building a strong company culture, the critical role of hands-on leadership, and how adapting to market demands can transform a startup into a major industry player.
Join us as Nour Baki provides invaluable insights into scaling a business amidst logistical and regulatory challenges, the impact of technological innovation, and the importance of strategic partnerships. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or an established business owner in the energy sector, this webinar offers a detailed blueprint for navigating the entrepreneurial journey with resilience and foresight.
Jason Assir: All right. Good afternoon. Everyone my name is Jason is here with energy gigs, and we're joined by Norbaki.
Jason Assir: Head of global key accounts of shell tapa. But formerly, co-founder of insta fuel welcome. We're gonna get right into sort of the asking more bunch of questions and talking about the entrepreneurial journey and energy but real quick for those that are new to these webinars and new to energy gigs. Who are? We're we're a just in time talent platform for the energy industry. So we connect energy companies startups to experts in the energy industry over just in time, hourly fix fee internship type projects. So we're excited to have you all here. We have, feel free to ask questions as we go along. We'll be moderating the chat fee, and and we can ask, nor many of these any questions that you you wanna ask.
Jason Assir: So without forward further ado, nor welcome again to Webinar. Thank you for sharing your time, your insight, you know. And if you don't mind. Let's just start with the origin story of Institute. How how did it happen like.
Nour Baki: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Thank you for inviting me on. It's pleasure to be here with everybody. The entrepreneurial entrepreneurial journey in general with insta fuels. It's kind of interesting. My business partner and I was Mahas. We launch into fuel in the summer of 2015, I believe. And it was probably our third startup that we started. We actually started a few companies back in college. That failed. Another one right after college that failed. This is kind of our third attempt at this. So instant fuel was kind of founded on the premise of you know this again, this is right around 2015. This is when Uber was really getting hyped up. Everything was uber for, you know, laundry uber for food delivery. And so we wanted to come with a new Uber for X business. And so the premise was, you can get everything delivered. Why not your gas? You fill up pretty much every once a week every week. And how can we make that whole process which I can assure you nobody enjoys getting gas. How can we get that process much easier for for everybody. Everyone is the potential customer here. And so the business kind of evolved from being a consumer based business, basically going to your house and filling it up at night. It evolved to a essentially A B 2 B business where fleets have the biggest pain point with fuel drivers, you know. They they can steal with the fuel cards you give them. It's it's very hard to track and manage fuel spend when you give drivers fuel cards. And so we presented business fleets solution to where we'd feel you every night. We'll give you all the data. The second that happens. And you have one check. You pay every month. There is no credit cards to manage any of that stuff. So we took the headache out of managing fuel for our customers. And it was a essentially a 10 year journey that you know, we learned a lot of lessons along the way and call made into a, you know, fairly large business at 1 point here in Texas.
Jason Assir: Wow! That's awesome. Well, so originally it was a direct to customer sort of business, like, what? How did you guys end up pivoting from from that to to commercial like the commercial focus. What was, what was that.
Nour Baki: Yeah, totally by accident. Honestly. We launched we launched a variation of our business at the University of Houston. Again, they had all these students and all these staff that that park at university all day. 5 days a week, 6 days a week, and we thought this would be a perfect opportunity to launch. And we got a bunch of Pr. We're in the news. And then what happened was, we had essentially businesses calling us, saying, Hey, we'd like to have you come to our lot and just refill our, you know, Aid delivery vans every night. We're like, sure we can do human events during the day. We can do business at night. And we quickly realized the economics of doing a B 2 B business was way better than that. B to C business. But we were making more money in the 3 4 h at night than we did 8, 9 h at your age. And so kind of a light ball pop into our head. We looked at the market. We kind of figured out where you know what is fuel delivery in this specific baby market. Where do we fit? And we found a huge essential, like essentially a hole in the market, whereas, like we have an underserved segment that is in dire need of a solution like this. And
so we just pivoted in a straight, full force that way.
Jason Assir: Wow! That's great. Like. And was, were you seeing similar traction on the consumer side, as in the the the company side? Or or were they both equally pulling at you to go a certain direction.
Nour Baki: No, no, it was. It was very much obvious that the B 2 B side was was demanding it a lot more than the B to C side for the simple fact, there's a fleet would probably refill every single day versus a consumer who probably refuel every 7 days to 10 days something like this. So the point wasn't as big from the consumer side as it is the B 2 B side. So we follow the demand essentially.
Jason Assir: That's that's awesome.
Jason Assir: What like did you like? How did you fuel and like when you just started out like, what did you already have a truck, and like what? What did? What was that process like? Like what.
Nour Baki: Yeah, this business, this industry is, it's it's it's difficult. So we're we're not from the oil and gas industry. Right? We're we're literally 2 kids fresh out of college business and field entrepreneurs. I bet and this business required heavy capital, like we had capital expenditure. We had to, but by trucks. We had to figure out how to source fuel, and we had to put up money to buy the fuel, and we had to figure out a whole billing system to Bill. And then we have to hire drivers which we've never done before, and trying to figure out this and this, and and and on top of all of that, this is a business that really hasn't been done before, like what we were trying to do didn't really exist. We had. Basically, you have these big 18 wheelers that deliver. And that's pretty much it, or the up or fleets go to the gas station. There's nothing really in the middle there for these small businesses. And so we had to essentially come up with a whole business plan from scratch. So there's nothing to really piggyback off of. And so we start off with my pickup truck. We put a hundred gallons in the back. I would do the fills. But like so.
Jason Assir: Physically like you.
Nour Baki: Physically I was. We were like Sam and I and a couple of other Co. Founders. We were the first business, the salespeople mechanics, drivers. Accountants. We did everything in the business, and I think that was a huge blessing for us, because it really made us understand the business that it's for. Really understood what's gonna make, what's what is what it's gonna take to win and what it's gonna take to lead in this business. So. It was very tough. The first 3, 4 years, I would say definitely.
Jason Assir: We did you? Did you already kind of have? Were there already competitors out there in the space in Houston trying to do similar thing that you had to do.
Nour Baki: I don't know we were the first, but we were so far out of anybody. So we, you know, like I mentioned, you have these big 18 wheelers. They sometimes do fleets. They do very large fleets or just big tanks, essentially is what their business is. But nobody would go to a a landscaper that had 25 vehicles and refuel, that the vehicles in the equipment that didn't exist. So there it was an open landscape for us which allowed us to basically trial and error a lot of things out and see what would work, what would work right? So we, the mistakes we were able to make mistakes early on to figure things out.
Jason Assir: Yeah, I guess that was kind of also. But there was no real competition.
Nour Baki: That's fine.
Jason Assir: So I I guess. Well, it's it's to the audience, you know. Please do ask any questions. If you have any questions we'll we'll be monitoring the chat, but kind of moving into like growth and scalability, I mean. So you got this you started doing serving commercial like fleets, and you you're starting to feel a little bit of a pull rather than a push. It sounds like let's talk a little bit about scalability, like what strategies did you employ to to kind of scale the business? You know. And and what what did you see as you were trying to grow the business there.
Nour Baki: So scalability. This business is also very tough, like I mentioned, there's a lot of. So we have to raise a lot of money right. These trucks cost money right? It was very difficult for us to to raise it, because we weren't like
I mentioned we weren't from. We didn't work at Exile Mobile. We have. No, we've been working in a oil rig at some. We we knew nothing about this business, so it was very difficult to get people to trust us and raise money. But we had to get creative the way we did loans on some of these trucks, and we we had to do personal guarantees with some investors. It we had to give a little bit more than we think we wanted to, but it was the only way to scale. And the reason why we did that is because we saw the demand. We saw the potential of where this would be. Take where this could go. Excuse me. And so basically, the getting trucks was a huge issue that we had to work on. Hiring was also another issue. Like again. We're not a big company. So getting drivers to not only jump ship from the regular job into this thing that could fail any moment we had to build a culture of, you know. You know, where the owners are involved, just as much as you as the driver or manager, or wherever the case may be, so the drivers would see me. Sometimes I would go out and do a route. If a driver called off they would see us working on truck fixing it if we needed. We needed it to get going that night. If there's ever an issue with a truck at night, let's say a pop! A tire popped on the way. We'd go out and fix it if we could. So it was. We had to build this culture that we're all in it together. And that's what kept our retention of employees so high. And that that's a huge factor, because when people start falling off, you know business, the the service is not gonna get done that night, and you're gonna have angry customers once or twice you're gonna lose them. And so to keep that momentum and growth and keep growing, we had to keep customers happy, and it came back down to the operational core of what we're trying to do.
Jason Assir: I mean, that's that, I think that's really interesting, I mean in in terms of finding the right people for the role, I mean, did that did that influence? How you hired people to be the driver to to be play but back office role? What what was that like in terms of interviewing, finding the right right talent.
Nour Baki: We? We were looking for a mentality, I guess. So again, what we did there was, we're gonna find a driver. We couldn't just pull from another company like, okay, those drivers can apply here. We have very weird, very specific Cdl requirements. We've kind of fit in a great bucket where we're not an 18 Wheeler driver. But a small fuel truck never existed before. So how does that classify under the Cdl, you know, regulation? So it was kind of funky the way we were hiring. Because we've kind of we're in the middle of 2 different regulations. So we're hiring strictly off of personality. And we were looking for guys and girls who were like, very They take initiative. They they knew how to take initiative. They knew how to. You know they would. They would never leave a a customer without making sure every band was hit, and that takes a very specific type of character. And it it's it's it was a reflection of who we were like, we weren't going to leave a customer unhappy with, you know, 2 bands missing. So finding key guys asking the right questions during the interview process gave us some insight onto who who we wanted. And I mean TV, for example, are essentially our head of operations at that time. I think the fuel was our first driver. The first guy we hired ended up being the the most amazing person to hire, because he he really led the team every single night. And so it became invaluable for us as we grew. And so he at some point was managing entire operations for all Texas. So he's managing maybe 50 60 drivers at one time.
Jason Assir: Wow! That's great. Good!
Nour Baki: Yeah, that guy, Troy is. His name's Troy Jupiter. He's Honestly one of the key contributors, for for instance, fuel.
Jason Assir: So it sounds like. So you you kind of you fit in between these 2 different sort of delivery modalities, I mean, did you have to do any not lobbying, but like talking to the city, or anything like that to say, hey, we're we're unique in this regard, like, what was that like in terms of the regulatory environment, like.
Nour Baki: Yeah, he I used to say this all the time. This business could not have been done in any other city in America. The reason why is Houston's very open to business? I mean,
they're they're they understand, you know, logically, we're not. We're not trying to like live by anything. We're showing them regulations. We kind of showed them what was required. They they allow us to do a lot of things that technically never existed before, and I can credit to. You know the city of Houston, that it's it's a very entrepreneurial city. And they allowed us to, you know. Conduct business. They basically adapted lost allows to to continue doing the business the way we we saw fit. And so we got lucky in that respect.
Jason Assir: That's great.
Jason Assir: You know, I just in through my own entrepreneurship journey. Sometimes I think of entrepreneurship as like you're you're swimming between you. You left a perfectly good island with coconuts and and like food to eat, and you decided to go swim to another coke, another island, and you're swimming, and you don't know when that island is gonna be beyond the horizon, I mean. So for you like, when did you feel like, Okay, we've I don't know if made, it is the right term. But like wh when do you? When did you feel like the the fear of of drowning, so to speak, was.
Nour Baki: Yeah, it's a very I mean instant fuel. We started 2015. We got acquired in 2022. So that's what 7 years or so the fear of drowning definitely was there for the first 3 years. I can definitely say that. So one thing I used to do is I would periodically go out and actually do fills because it was therapeutic, because you could see gallons being pumped into vehicles. That was money like you saw potential. I kept, you know, kind of the fears that vague. It wasn't until I think we got a couple of large customers not even like a national customer, just regional, you know, but some of the bigger landscapers in sit in the State of Texas that are like in Houston and Dallas for Houston Austin. That's when I started to see real potential like I was, okay, there's something definitely here. We just gotta make sure we are financially viable, like, we're not spending more than we make. And the the next Aha! Moment is when we sign one of our national customers a big brand customer that essentially put us on the map in terms of validity, like, if this customers using us, that means this is a real business, there's real value here. We can go out and raise money on this And ultimately we got acquired because of that, because of the operational excellence, our relationship with that customer being so highly rated by that customer. And also our technology, which I don't think I touched on. But our technology was superior, you know, from any of the competition. And so that customers really that kind of anchored that whole like, you know, we we have. There's a future here now.
Jason Assir: No, that's that's fantastic, I mean. So there's a there's a lot of little interesting nuggets in there that I kind of want to dig into a little bit more. You know. So I I I understand, like you guys had to innovate around the the vehicle of of for fueling. And so it sounds like you might have had Api, some Ips and intellectual property in that area. But like, I know that there was a software component to your business, too, which was also, I feel like pretty pretty cool. Because I think you you guys went into software, you started building your own software solution right like that was so tell me how that your IP kind of works, how. Work together, like.
Nour Baki: The the tech component is really one of the funnest things about this business. So you have to imagine you're going to a customer location. Right? You have. Let's just say a hundred vehicles in front of you that you have to refuel. How is a driver supposed to log that data? Okay, I put in 8 gallons and vehicle. Xyz and I put in vehicle, ABC, another 8, 8 to 10 gallons, or whatever the case may be. How do you log that efficiently? Because the more time you spend logging, that's more time on site, which means more cost, which means a higher price, which means a customer may not see the value in it right? So we had to be in and out as efficiently and as safely as possible. And so we looked at some of the at that times again, 2016 to 2017. Some of the solutions out there it was all it was all bad like it was actually worse than just writing it down on paper. So going back to kind of kind of goes full circle that the the 2 startups that we started back in college were all app development companies want to build games. We want to build
apps. And so we got a lot of experience in app development. And so we're looking at all these solutions. You're like, you know what we can probably build our own. And so we brought on. Josh, who's our? Who's our CTO at the time? And we kind of worked on. I I would say it's it's almost revolutionary. What we built. I mean, we actually got a pat on it, multiple pants on it, basically a logging system. How can we scan a vehicle log that data in real time within seconds and move on to the next vehicle. And then not only that, how can you control the truck, ie. The pumps and all the the meters on the truck through the phone. These meters on these trucks there's a there's a very specific brand that you can only use. And they're very difficult to. They're old school in a way. And so how do you connect to that wirelessly how to control the wirelessly? And so we spent a good year and a half building it. And it was. It was the that was the game changer for us, because we can get. We were so efficient getting in and out of a customer we were fueling, logging, and then, as soon as we left the lot, that data was sent to the customer real time, they knew exactly how much each vehicle took at that fueling a night. So that's kind of the that that was the fun stuff designing that software from the back end the front end and actually seeing it live like once we release an update we tested out that date like, I remember being is Bluetooth, right? So you know, how far can we be from the truck? How does it gonna work? I remember jumping inside of a dumpster being closing myself in metal and just trying to see if it would like control the truck. And I turn it off and on from that. And so yeah, those are, those were the fun times actually testing out these cool features? Yeah.
Jason Assir: That's that's great. I mean, I I I like, did you also have to. I'm I'm assuming you had to deal with sort of intrinsically safe devices because you're talking fuel. And you know. So so that's also there's some interesting nuances there, too, right like.
Nour Baki: Yep, yep, yep, yep, again. As you're dealing with hazards here, so we have to take some precautions. We have to get special cases for some of these phones and some of these devices, so but as long as it could send Bluetooth the way we needed to, you know that's all we were looking for.
Jason Assir: That's awesome.
Jason Assir: Well, so let's kind of maybe pivot now, unless anyone else has any questions from the call, we'll move into sort of the next phase like the acquisition, the courting process. You know. How did it happen with with shell like? What? What I mean? Were you looking to raise money, and then it just happened to, you know.
Nour Baki: Yeah, that's that's kind of how it was started that definitely, I was sorry we were in. We were in a fundraising mode, probably 3 to 4 months prior meeting. Shell so shell had a competing business to ours at some point. And we shared the same customer. Actually, that big brand name customer we shared, and the customer spoke so highly of us to to shell, but it made shell kind of like, well, who are these guys. And so I think we reached out to them. If I'm not mistaken for some fundraising, and then the conversation is kind of turned from. Hey? You know. Let's set up fundraising. Let's look at maybe joining forces together. We could leverage their fuel supply ability and expertise. Our technology can be applied to their trucks. We'd have a much larger footprint. Our customer would be happy, and it was just a perfect kind of marriage of of a lot of different things that we did. Well, they did well, and let's help each other kind of grow. And that conversation evolves within 3 to 4 months. I think maybe maybe it's 5 months or so, but we got acquired with shell, and it's been amazing. I'll say shell is Michelle Tapu's. You know the the company that I currently work for under the shell umbrella. It's been amazing, man. We've launched so many Msa. So many markets doing so many gallons. It's kind of been a crazy. It's been crazy, really.
Jason Assir: That's that's awesome. So we we have a question from the the audience. How did you determine that it made financial sense to be fully acquired by Sean.
Nour Baki: It's a lot of factors. It really is a lot of factors it goes into.
It's not just my decision as a founder goes into the investors of instant fuel. What are they going to get out of it? Is there another opportunity on the horizon that you could think about? It it I mean. We all have a number like that, we think. Look, if it comes to this number, we'll take it. If it's a little bit below, you may take it. But if it's below this number, we're definitely not taking it. And that's basically based on the value, provided we were the best at the time. But, to be quite honest with you, we were capped like we couldn't really go outside of Texas. And there was opportunities in Florida, in California, Arizona northeast. And you're gonna have to raise a lot of money to do that Dilutes your shares and all the other investor shares, or you have a perfect opportunity with basically competing business from a well known brand shell. It just made sense like the the marriage of the 2 what they did. Well, what we did was work very well. And within a year and a half we basically execute on everything we were required to in terms of our customers. You know, we grew wherever our customers grew quickly. So it's definitely it's a case by case basis. But I mean, if if it, if the, if it fits it, fits outside just the numbers of of financial numbers.
Jason Assir: No, that's great. I mean, I I guess in through the your journey, I mean, it's a 9, 10 year journey, like working with investors like do. What was that like? I mean, working you, you had raised some money to to to get your initial technology, whether it's the car or the software like, you know any any bumps in the road there that you can kind of talk through? And how did you navigate them like.
Nour Baki: Yeah, I mean investors. I mean, they think differently. The founders right? You gotta put your investor cap on instead of your found a cap on, because as a founder, you want to do what's right for the business. Always right for your employees always, and sometimes it may clash with financial goals that you have to hit right. You know we got luckier investors were were for the most part really great. They helped us. They put in money when we needed it into. And they believed in us. I mean, one of our investors literally put in money the first day we launched and we were just 2 kids who we just had this idea. And you know, we had some small little test pilots, and he just put in money. And so we got lucky with that regard the hardest part about raising money in general. In our business, at least, this is different. If you're a straight technology business is that there's a lot of capitalist manager and number one and number 2. It's hazardous materials. People get very scared about that which I understand complete sense, especially when we're not from, you know, the oil and gas industry. Just 2 kids. You know, managing a fueling business, running around the city with with the huge small, you know, pretty big gas tank. So it's That was the challenging part. But we got lucky with some of the investors we found all for the most part all Houston based. I think we had one major investor from Dallas, but all Texas based essentially I could see with their own eyes the business. We actually have friends who became customers. So that kind of proved to them like, Hey, no business is legit and so that gave them more incentive to keep pushing with us.
Jason Assir: And so I mean, does that mean like, you guys are also then investing in real estate in places to to Port Park this fuel and.
Nour Baki: Yeah, so instant fuel. We literally have. But we bought our own little permanent tank setups at our yards. So is that our own little gas station for our trucks to refuel that. And so every morning you'd see the fuel supply come in, and they dump all the fuel in these these tanks. And then we'd have a manager out there at the yard, just refilling all the trucks every single day.
Jason Assir: Hmm.
Nour Baki: And that's kind of how this group that was extremely efficient the way we did it. Actually, now, it's a little bit different. We don't do that. Now we go direct to the refinery. Now we feel we we refuel at the terminal.
Jason Assir: Okay, okay.
Jason Assir: Kind of in keeping with the questions on fuel. Another question from an attendee with gas prices changing frequently, how did you find. Figure out the finances on how much to charge.
Nour Baki: Great question. Great question. So that's kind of being the first salesperson to kind of figure out like where
the pain points are. For these customers. The customer. We we didn't that we never sold on the fuel price. So we never said, Okay, you're gonna pay 2 50 today versus 2 60. Tomorrow We sold them on the service, so we would. We would peg our fuel price to whatever the the market rate is. So let's just say opus, or something like that, or maybe even gas buddies sometimes. So whatever that Market said it was, that's what you'll pay. We would sell you on the delivery fee, which is whatever. Let's just say, cousin cost us 50 bucks to come out here, refuel it. We know our margin, we know. Basically. Okay, that's 30 vehicles equals, you know. Maybe a couple of hours at night. We're gonna be there refueling. We know our tech. We know how beneficial we are. We know that number would be really low in terms of time on site. And we would come with, come to a number. Let's just say 50 bucks. We would show them that 50 bucks. It's gonna cost you 50 bucks. But here's what you need will return Every morning if drivers and goes straight to their job site. So they're not gonna stop the fuel. That's 15 min, save that's whatever $3,000 you just saved in fuel and and labor costs by refueling. You're now more efficient. You cannot do an extra delivery, or mow an extra lawn, or whatever the case may be. That's new revenue we just give to you. And then all the soft costs which are like, you know, saving No more fuel, hard management. Get all your data upfront. You don't have to do, excel sheets to figure out your fuel data. And so if you kind of put a number on all this, 50 bucks was like nothing compared to the overall value we were providing. Just taking that headache out of somebody's a manager and owner's mind of like. I want to deal with this messiness. We take care of all that for you, and it's it's such a convincing price point that, able to make money, and we're able to make money Went to school.
Jason Assir: That's that's awesome.
Jason Assir: Well, we have a couple of minutes left. If there are any more questions, try to get them in now. I I I have a question for you. You know, I guess. Reflecting on your entrepreneurial journey like What? What sort of a a key lesson that you know that you took away from this whole experience, that you know that you're you're kind of. You're you're using every day in your work with with shell, and and if you ever you know, I don't know if you if you were to do it all over again, what would, what would be sort of a thing that you would do differently if you will.
Nour Baki: So, so I'll take that as 2 questions. So. I really learned some one of the hardest things I learned that became extremely valuable was building culture. Even, you know, I have a small team here at shell like I work with directly with 2 2 or 3 guys. It's it's the culture building. It's the making sure that we're still the the same vibe that we did at institutional ones, replicated in some form or fashion at shell, so That leadership culture, being a leader, understanding like you don't just throw things on people, you gotta actually help them through a lot of work. And and some of this analysis we do on a daily basis. That's the kind of the main thing like I will never give anything to somebody I work with. I'll never give them work that I can't do Myself right Like it, just like it's just like going jumping back into the truck and doing routes like at the end day. If it's 12 am. And I gotta go refuel this customer because some guy. You know, didn't show up that night. Then so be it. I'll go out And up until 5 am be doing fills until the fills are done. That's that's leadership to me. And something that I would do differently. That's a good question. That's a really good question. I I think we did a lot of things right. We got lucky doing a lot of things right. And we were lucky because we? So one of the I would say, this is a blessing. Honestly, we were never able to raise a lot of money against the fuel Like we had some competitors from California that raised hundreds and hundreds of millions dollars on the exact same business. And I think it was essentially disadvantage for them, because it just may it essentially incentivize them to just hire people, let them figure it out, and this business requires The like. The founders to be
in it like truly in it, IE. Being out in the field doing fills. And because we were always essentially promot, broke in this business. We were always trying to. Our survival was getting a new customer, so it made us more hungry to go out and close, do whatever it takes to get the fills done. Keep the customer happy. Because otherwise we're going out of business. We didn't have the money in the bank just to keep funneling this through. And so I so think that was a mistake on our part that you know we never were able to raise money. But looking back on it now, honestly, it's probably the best thing that ever happened to us that we are able to raise money in the way Vcs. Or private equity, or any of that case. We did it all angels, all grass roots. And I would do that. Moving forward with any business I'm in. Honestly.
Jason Assir: That's great. I mean, it's it's also sort of counter what you hear and see a in in a lot of the the news. And media. I mean that the the Vc backed 1 billion dollar Unicorn. But like, that's an interesting, I think, a really good point. We have a question from another attendee. What was the what was the biggest obstacle in figuring out how to scale the business.
Nour Baki: It's a good question. It was. It's It was a balance of doing a lot of things at once. So, for example, we got a really big customer, our nationwide customer. Well, that means we need to get more trucks. More fuel. More drivers. And our technology had to scale up to adding, No. 3, 4, or 500 more vehicles a night. And so there was a balancing act that we had to figure out, okay, well, we gotta order the the trucks now, but they're not gonna get here from the 3 months. So we gotta overload our current trucks. Which means we need to have an extra guy come out and do an extra shift. Which means you have to get more fuel to come in. So how do you plan that out. It was. It was the culmination. Basically. You struggle, you struggle, you struggle, struggling at 1 point. It hits like you get the customer. You it, you know, you finally break the ceiling. Well, now, you have new problems like, it's good problem with the new problems to how you have to deal with, which is okay. Well, we got the demand that we wanted. We gotta figure out a way to do it. Yeah. So That was the hard part is doing this balancing act, to make sure everything, just kind of correlated together at once. To to essentially go into the. To where needed to be.
Jason Assir: No, that's that's fantastic. Well, Nora, I I think we're we're at time. I I really appreciate you sharing your insight, your lessons learned. And and your insight on on yeah. Just just growing, you know, sounding into fuel growing into fuel. If people have any additional questions. Can they reach out to you on Linkedin.
Nour Baki: Absolutely no problem. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I give talks that you've aged all the time. So I'm more than happy to help entrepreneurs with whatever issues they're doing within their journey.
Jason Assir: No fantastic. Well, that's it. That's a wrap, guys and gals. Thank you so much for for joining this month's webinar on entrepreneurship and and energy. Thanks again, Nora, for for being our guest this month. Really appreciate it. Fantastic. Look forward to seeing you know all the things you're doing to grow tap up at at shell. And yeah, we'll look forward to talking to you all next month on energy's webinar, I think next month we're going to be talking about green carbon carbon finance. So scope one scope, 2. An investment into sort of green projects from a large player perspective. But anyways, thanks everyone. And yeah, look, look forward to seeing y'all next time. Thank you, Jason. Thank you. Everybody. Excellent bye.
