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Check your ego at the door. Be willing to play musical chairs. No idea is a dumb idea. Inspire greatness. Inspire people to do 150% than even they're capable of doing. Not in time, but in what they can accomplish. The oil and gas industry, the driving engine of the world economy, delivering prosperity, innovation and abundance across the globe. Here are the stories of its key players directly from the leaders themselves. This is Oil and Gas Industry Leaders podcast where real experiences are passed on from the leaders of today to the leaders of tomorrow. Here is your host, Paige Wilson.
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Welcome back to another episode of Of Oil and Gas Industry Leaders podcast sponsored by ifs. Every era of the oil and gas industry has its turning point and right now that shift is industrial AI. IFS focuses on applying AI to complex asset heavy operations, helping operators reduce downtime, improve productivity and make more informed decisions across their portfolios. Discover what's next@ifs.com all right, let's introduce this week's guest. I have Robert DeSantis from founder and chief executive officer of Orchestra. Welcome to the show, Rob. Let's talk about your career.
A
Great, thank you. Fun to be here. Funny enough, my career fresh out of college as a mechanical engineer was at my first interview was at ExxonMobil. And after that interview they recommended that maybe I go to the aerospace community based on my interview. And I so I started my career as a mechanical structural engineer in the aerospace community before converting that into selling engineering structural analysis software which then pulled me up into the world of Silicon Valley. And my life then became all about software. And I co founded a company in 1996 called Ariba Technologies and we became the 800 pound gorilla in procurement. And there we built an organization that went from zero to almost 3,000 people in four years. And then post Ariba, I became the founding angel investor and board member of a social network called LinkedIn. I thought that was a very powerful way to, to especially in sales, to learn how to talk to people that you want to get to. So that became a very powerful tool.
B
Yeah, your age is showing, huh?
A
Funny enough, I left LinkedIn I was bored because I got super excited about a company in the energy space again. A company called Bloom Energy which made solid oxidized fuel cell and this thing called the Bloom box and the blue box that could make a megawatt of power and fit inside of a and fit inside of a parking lot parking space that became that company's been on fire over the past, over the past year as the need for data science or data centers need power so I've been a shareholder of that company for 18 years. But post me being involved with Bloom, I then became a strategic advisor to one or two software companies along the way. But five years ago, my world got turned upside down when I met a 34 year old data scientist who was reimagining procurement and supply chain. And the things he told me that day got me so excited I did something I thought I'd never do. I called the original Ariba go to market team. I combined them with his data science team. He asked me to join him as a co founder and together we co founded a company which I'm now CEO of called Orchestro. And that's my career in a nutshell.
B
Yeah, yeah. Moving and shaking, huh?
A
Yeah. I've been fortunate to have the opportunity to move to. Speaking of moving and shaking, to move twice to Europe. So in the mid-90s or early-90s, I moved for one company that I was at to Europe and opened up our European operations throughout 31 countries. I didn't even know there were 31 countries throughout Europe at the time. I was pretty young. And then with Ariba, once we got things going in North America, I backfilled myself with a head of sales from SAP. And then I moved to Europe a second time. And this time I built worldwide operations based out of Hoofdorp and the Netherlands.
B
Where are you now?
A
Where I'm calling you from right now is I'm calling you from California and that's home for me. And that's the corporate base of Joe. But I'm only here a couple days a week because I'm usually out in the field with customers, employees or soon to be customers.
B
Yeah. And I think I went to your conference a couple months ago probably. Oh, maybe. Was it last year, the last one y' all had here in Houston?
A
Yeah, it was in October. It's called optimal. And we brought together our customers and our product prospects and our partners, our entire ecosystem. Yes. And we'll be doing it again this October as well in Houston.
B
That's awesome. That's awesome. It's great to hear that. All right, so let's get into the meat of it and talk about your current role in what orchestra does.
A
Yeah. So Orchestro, what we do is we do all of the thing I like to say, we're the science of procurement. All the things that people, people think procurement do and the procurement knows how to do but can't do because of time and scale. For example, any company, especially in the area of oil and Gas. They're lucky if they can negotiate 10, 20, 25% of the items that they buy. And then the rest of the items that they buy oftentimes don't even get any type of competitive pricing. Sometimes you'd like to say three bids in a buy, but oftentimes that's not even the case. In fact, one oil and gas major they gave. Once they gave a contract to a supplier, they gave the supplier that corporate badge of theirs and the supplier was in charge of ordering their own stuff. So totally price unchecked. So that's the, that was, that's the opportunity of what Orchestro does. Orchestra uses data science and human behavioral science to provide the optimal outcome on every transaction. Every line item gets competitively priced and delivers the best value. And the best price is not always the cheapest because you got to make sure you can do on time and full. You can handle the geography, you can handle all the other elements, the risk associated with being able to deliver the product when you need it. So Orchestra has designed a solution that allows that to happen at scale and mass leveraging AI and data science.
B
That's great. That's great. All right, well, let's pop over to the leadership portion of the show. What is leadership to you, Rob?
A
To me, leadership, I like to put it into different buckets. There's the leadership of people, there's the leadership of a market, and there's the leadership of, of I'll call it, for lack of better words, the ecosystem. All constituencies leadership, whether it's investors, employees, product sales, customer success and how you lead really can determine the velocity of market penetration. And we discovered that at Ariba when we became the fastest growing software company ever. And now, 30 years later, I believe we're going to see that happen here with Orchestra.
B
That's great. That's great. What is an example of a difficult situation or experience that you've had as a leader?
A
I think the most difficult examples as a leader are the ones around people. It's impossible to hire right all the time. And no matter how much due diligence you do, no matter how much you try and get it right and how much, sometimes even the person being brought on broad is trying to make the right decision for them. There is that percentage, and you hope relatively small, that you've got a square peg in a round hole. And having to be brave enough to make that decision fast enough is a very challenging one. And those are the things that when I have to make changes, especially in leadership or in management, it becomes a Very important decision because it has impacts throughout an organization.
B
Yeah, absolutely. Understand you do all this due diligence to find out who this person is and then you find out what their true colors are and who they really are as a person once you get to know them and as they work at with you. So yeah, I understand that. Absolutely. What would you say is the most rewarding part though of being a leader?
A
The most rewarding part of being a leader is seeing the team come together and execute on a vision and on a plan. We just had some tremendous results this past quarter where we're approaching 300% of our plan for a variety of reasons. And nothing made me feel better than my weekly update that I do to the team to congratulate every team member and the work that they did to achieve those results. And those results were achieved not just based on sales or customer success or every element of the company. I could point to of all the things that the company did as a team and aligned correctly to win. And that. That always feels very good.
B
Yeah, yeah, I understand. If you had a piece of advice to give the audience, what would that be?
A
My advice, especially in the area of leadership is I would say I learned this real young, my age. Check your ego at the door. Be willing to play musical chairs. No idea is a dumb idea. Inspire greatness.
B
Inspire.
A
Inspire people to. To do 150% than even they're capable of doing. Not in time, but in what they can accomplish. And when you can do those things and you can not be the smartest person in the room, but you can ask maybe some of the best questions and when you can inspire people to do their best, it becomes an incredibly rewarding thing to do. And, and that's kind of my general advice when I talk to young leaders for soon to be leaders.
B
Yeah. Oh, and I meant to ask you this earlier and it just came back to me because. Squirrel. But what is an angel investor and
A
why is that important in the world of startups? It used to be, I think, a lot less angels. But what happened is venture capital typically is money that invests in a startup company says an idea. And venture capital put, puts money to work. And as. And once that gets going, typically takes two or three or four or five rounds of money to get that company or off the ground and into a productive way before the company goes on. A couple things have happened over the past 20, 30 years. One, there's been this incredible amount of money that's been moved into private equity and private equity has they invest purely based on financial metrics. Rarely do they do invest on anything other than financial metrics. They're purely financially driven and there's some value to that. And then. But the crack in the door for investing has been left with venture capitalists where they invest maybe not based on the metrics and the numbers, but the promise of the numbers. What they believe in, do they believe in, the vision they believe in, do they Are there two or three proof points in a startup company that they can go on beyond the fact? Because at the end of the day, if you have no revenue early on, a great idea like LinkedIn, you know, we didn't have any revenue for the first few years, but yet we grew and we raised venture capital at huge valuations. But the other challenge is since private equity has come into play, a lot of venture capitalists have taken more of a PE type of approach to investing. It always baffles me nowadays when I talk with VCs even for series A investments. They want to see some traction on revenue. They want to see an installed customer base. They want to see three or four year plan of getting to a certain revenue target. They want to see all the things that really that's not a startup company. That used to be maybe a series B or series C investment, but now just to get series A money, I'm involved as a mentor and advisor to another company and, and the company is one of the company's going to crush it. But series A money want it more from an advisor standpoint, more from like a PE company. So what does that mean? It means there's a new gap as VC firms move up closer to private equity type of investments. There's a gap between the people who are in the garage and they just start they have an idea and then getting to revenue and getting an initial customer base that need a quarter million dollars or a half a million dollars or a million dollars. And there's been enough wealth creation in Silicon Valley and in the world of startups and, and in private equity to where there are a lot of what we call angels. These are individuals who have made money by investing in as startup companies in some way shape or form. And they're typically willing to put anywhere from 25,000 to a million dollars into an idea of company. And there are small little funds that consider themselves angel investors where they may raise money, $5 million, but they're going to take that $5 million and invest it in $50,000 increments across a handful of companies. So that's angel investing is really Investing in a pre series A venture capital background.
B
Okay, yeah, that was very well explained, thank you so much. Because it's been a minute since I've touched any startups. And how many of those startups are oil and gas based?
A
Oh, I'll say oodles of them. There are growth funds like one of our investors out of Custer is a firm called altera and their 7 or 9 LPs are all oil and gas companies and they invest strictly in companies that can fuel the growth of oil and gas companies, whether it's a new drill bit or whether if it's a new way to do geographic analysis or topography analysis or if it's technology, such a supply chain which is what we do. But these, these so much in the area of oil and gas and honestly probably in all the industries they're always able to leverage technology, be it materials, be it software, be it something else to allow companies to do their job better, faster, cheaper.
B
Got it, Got it. With all of your experience in your life, what would you say as far as books influenced you the most?
A
Well, I would say there's two books that really have impacted me. The one that impacted me for many years in my career, especially during the ARIBA LinkedIn years and even the Bloom Energy was Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore and how you go into a, you get paradigm shift and you get emerging product in an emerging market and how do you go penetrate that market? There's the lunatic fringe that will are willing to try anything early on and then you've got your early major, you get your early adopters, then your early majority, then your late majority and then your laggards and it's so that book is almost like a bible for startup companies. And, and it's, it's been, it's had probably the most influence on my life but more recently especially since I got in the world of oil and gas with orchestro is the book Good Profit by Charles Koch. That book was so compelling to me, I listened it to it on audio tape twice. I read it once and then and I reference it oftentimes when I'm meeting people, especially in the area in the market of oil and gas these days.
B
So what would you say is your most used business tool? We're in a world of technology, constantly evolving.
A
This one might be a little non standard, I'll say. But my most used business tool is curiosity.
B
Ooh, I like that.
A
People, leaders, organizations that remain curious and stay curious and demonstrate curiosity to me will always have the edge. The organizations and people that feel like they've got all the answers, they know everything and they approach new things in a cynical way. Oftentimes suboptimize whether I'm on the as a CEO I have to look at every opportunity that comes to me from inside running the organization of the company. And rather than having preconceived notions or closed notions, I have to make sure that I stay curious and open minded to the stuff that's in Charles Charles Cook's book on good profit, disruptive innovation and creative destruction. You got to be willing to creatively destruct old processes and ways of doing business and do disruptive innovation and and those two things have been very valuable for me in my career, both as I work with on the commercial side and then on the operational side.
B
Fantastic. Who would you say, if this is applicable at all, is your most respected competitor?
A
Yeah, this is kind of a fun one here. Of course I wouldn't be CEO of this company having the haven't had the success that I've had. I wouldn't be working 80 hours a week if I felt we had any real competition. I don't feel anyone does what we do. And we've got the IP and we've got the outcomes associated with that. We deliver between 20 and 30% tangible savings to every oil and gas company and in a matter of weeks we go live in five days and within a matter of weeks customers are saving millions of dollars. One of the big oil and gas companies, they put over $50 million in our through our system in the first three days of using our software and they saved about 30% or $21 million and or I'll say over $20 million. And that was so compelling that they said we wouldn't let us shut it off. And the same thing, we've done this now a bunch of times and our ability to go live in five deliver millions of dollars of value, of tangible value, not to mention the operational value, the transformational value and the long term value has been very compelling for us especially in the area of oil and gas. But to try and answer that question, I'll say that it's a funny thing for me being the co founder of the 800 pound gorilla with Ariba where Ariba has a we got bought by SAP in 2012, so it's owned by SAP, but Ariba has a 73% market share in the Fortune 10,000 so that's pretty compelling for Ariba. I'm pretty proud of that. That said it is 30 year old technology and where, where ARIBA was really designed to be a procure to pay solution to taking manual, manual paper based ways of doing things and digitizing them but not changing the process but just digitizing them. It had a great value proposition but that value proposition has been realized now over the past 30 years. What we do is so much different than that, but because what we do is still relatively new, we're in this paradigm AI and data science. And, and so people don't really understand that there's unbelievable value to be unlocked until we get into, to educate. So it's an educational sale right now. But fortunately we've penetrated 12 different industries and we have unbelievable customer success stories across all industries. And 30 to 40% of our success stories are in oil and gas. We're very excited. In fact I'm going to be, I'm going to be out in Houston next week for our Oil Gas Council dinner and we've got the who's who of oil and gas coming to dinner with us and sharing stories of the success.
B
Well, I wasn't invited. I'm just kidding. I'm totally just kidding.
A
You're welcome to come but we try and limit it to the oil and gas customers.
B
Oh no, I was totally just joking. No worries, just pulling your leg. I guess you've already answered my next question which what makes your company better than the competition?
A
What makes us better is first of all you gotta keep in mind that when Edmund came to me, my co founder came to me that day, the data science kid, and said, and I said, Edwin, what makes your product so special? He said, rob, we combine data science and human science. But they then said, do you know the top three technologies that are used in procurement today? I said no I don't. He said it's the telephone, it's email and it's spreadsheets. And he said 80% of a person's time is spent doing that. And I've eliminated all that by being a person who's doing that and learning the nuances of how to change that. And so that ability to handle speed and scale of capturing all line items is something that's untouched by any other company. And it's funny, in this world of agentic AI you get companies like Microsoft and Amazon and everyone else say oh, agentic AI can do everything, you'll be able to build your own. And for us that's not really the case because first of all we have a cracker jack data science team with members that have come from, from Microsoft, Amazon and Ariba and all sorts of Folks. But the thing is we do multi line items to multiple suppliers on multiple reasons why and because we have this multi to multi connection agentic AI does not work for that. And we don't think it's going to work for that for at least several years to come. But more importantly, we deliver the value today in five days. So any company that wants to go try and build their own, they're going to run into a couple of roadblocks. They're not going to be able to use our IP around combining human game theory. They're going to have to figure out how to become a software organization and support and maintain it and learn from all the lessons that we learned over the past seven years. And then the other thing, one of the things that makes our product sing the way it is the fact that we have historical data of every event, every change in price, every discount, every strategy across millions of suppliers and billions of spend. So the best indicator of what our supplier will give for a discount isn't necessarily what you paid last time or how that part is made. It could be from a different industry and the discounts that are given at a different industry of the same type, of a similar type part. No industry that builds their own is going to have all that data of multiple industries that really do the predictive procurement that we do.
B
Got it? Got it. So throughout your entire life, what would you say your most important lesson learned has been?
A
I think my most important lesson that I've learned is keep an open mind and remain a student of life. And I'll give you three experiences. I am 5 foot 6 inches tall and I moved to Southern California right from my homeland of Rhode island and I fell in love with two man beach volleyball. And when I first moved out there, everyone made fun of me, they said because I wanted to play competitively and people were like, no one's going to play with you. First of all, it's a tall man's sport, you're five foot six, you don't know anybody and you're never going to be able to play at that competitive level. And I thought to myself, but I want to, how am I going to have that make that happen. So what I did is I said, you know what, I don't think I'm going to be able to today, but I'm going to go work hard, I'm going to try and start a company, I'm going to try and retire by the time I'm 40. And maybe these professional volleyball players, they'll be retiring at 40 and maybe I'll be able to mentor them in business and they'll play volleyball with me. So wouldn't you know, I retired at 37 from Arriba. I built a tremendously nice house on the beach in Manhattan beach, the ground zero for beach volleyball in the United States. And I met all these retired pro beach volleyball players, and they wanted helping their life after volleyball business. And I wanted to play beach volleyball. And so for 20 years, I played early morning because I never didn't want to interfere with my work. But I would play three or four times a week. I would play an hour and a half or two hours of beach volleyball with some of the world's best.
B
That's so awesome.
A
Yeah. And I kept an open mind. I didn't take the critics. The same thing happened for me with golf. I didn't learn how to golf as a kid, but I fell. I got the golf bug because all these volleyball players were scratch golfers. Someone said to me one time, there was a good golfer. He was a five handicap. He said to me, I said, hey, how long would it take for me to get to scratch? And he goes, Rob, you're 42 years old. You don't know how to golf. You're like a 27 handicap now. The best you're going to get to is maybe 15, and that's going to take you 15 years. You're never going to do it. Rather than me getting mad, I thought to myself, huh, I wonder if there's another way? So I kept an open mind. I met this pro golfer, and he said, rob, you could probably do anything you set your mind to, but enjoy every shot, enjoy the journey, and see what happens. So I enjoyed the journey. I found someone who had a belief in me that if you kept an open mind, anything was possible. And today I bounced between a three and a five handicap. And. And I love my golf game.
B
That's awesome. I wish I knew what that meant. I am not a golf person.
A
Yeah. What it means. Yeah. The golfers will know what that means. But my point on that was keeping an open mind on anything in life, whether it's children, whether it's personal endeavors or whether it's business, has really served me well. And as a result, I've kept an open mind when opportunities have come knocking.
B
Yeah.
A
I'll give you an example of when I did not have an open mind. So here I am on the board of LinkedIn. We're a year and a half into it. LinkedIn is growing like a weed. We're adding 80 to 120,000 new users per week. I was working with a corporate strategy person that was the vice president of corporate strategy, which cracked me up because he was 22 years old at the time and I was a whopping. I was a whopping 39. But I thought just as a kid and, and I went in one day for a board meeting and he came up to me and he said, hey, Rob, I want to let you know that I gave my notice this week and I'm going to be leaving. And I said, you're going to be leaving? How can you leave this company? It's going to be a rocket ship. This is a great company. He said, yeah, I know, but I had this opportunity to go work with my friends who I went to school with, and I feel like I should just go do that. And they're doing pretty well as they're doing pretty good as well. So I'd like to. I think I'm just going to go do it over there. So I said, all right, but what's the name of this company? And he says, he said, I'll tell you, but before I tell you, you know, I spoke to the CEO and founder. I told him, all the value you're giving us over here. And he said, hey, bring them on over here. We could use them. So come on over, talk to him. I had the opportunity to go talk to him about being a board member, possibly being an advisor, getting, doing all sorts of stuff for the company, same as I was doing for LinkedIn. And so I said, what's the name of the company? He says, it's called the Facebook.
B
And that's awesome.
A
I said to him, this is my closed minded. I said, oh, another social network. I go, one social network is fine for me, so I don't need to do another social network. Oh, no, I passed. I passed on the opportunity to see what was available. And I learned after that, I go, you know what? Don't ever think, but know all the answers. So I always try and stay curious and keep an open mind.
B
But yeah, especially after that.
A
Yeah,
B
wow. Wow. I wasn't expecting that. Rob, how is your role now in the industry important to the future of the industry?
A
My role as CEO or my role orchestra?
B
What are you going to do for the oil and gas industry? That's going to be important.
A
I believe my role is to build a company that can deliver true transformational value to the oil and gas industry as well as some other industries. But oil and gas specifically, because they are so ripe for transformation. Yes, and there is this incredible opportunity. I'll tell you something. Yesterday, just yesterday, I was on the phone with the CEO of one of the largest oil and gas companies in the world. He is all about transformation. They've got many different initiatives, but they do not have many initiatives to go impact their earnings per share. As impactful as we can. You take a company that has 30, 40, 50 billion in spend and if we can go do what we're doing with all our oil and gas customers and deliver, let's call it north of 20% savings. A 20% savings on $40 billion. 8 billion. Could you imagine adding 8 billion to earnings per share? So you know, as Jeff felt is on our board of directors, former CEO George and being the CEO of ge, he said, Rob, he said this is so compelling. It is one of the true industrial AI solutions that unlocks so much value for a company. He said, quite honestly, I don't know how this can't be one of the top five or eight items on a CEO's desk. Definitely a CFO. So that, and I tell you, for the first three or four years we were slugging it away inside of procurement and supply chain organizations because there's a big amount of skepticism associated with AI and the value we could deliver. And of course I don't, I never blame the supply chain and procurement people because there are 750 procurement solutions out in the market available today and there's not. And every procurement professional and supply chain professional probably gets one to five phone calls a week either from a board member, a C level executive person out in the field, a rig operator, you name it, trying to tell the procurement how to do their job better and how do you use a new software that they just got talked to by a salesman. So the only way procurement's been able to survive, because keep in mind there's too much, there's too much spend and too little time for them to go after what they already have to try and do is the top 10. But 20% for them to take the time to try and evaluate 750 solutions, of course it's going to create a hard shell on them and they're going to be like, cross their arms and say, don't show me another product and tell them I'm going to do my job better. But the true reality is, if we can, now that we've got the data that supports it and now that we get the number of customers from the majors to the independents using us to even the investment community in the oil and gas industry, Investing in us. Aramco, for example, is an investor with us. Altera, our growth fund, Just Oil and Gas, is an investor in us. They've seen and done their due diligence to know that we are the real deal. And so I see my job as making sure that we're able to penetrate the oil and gas industry as fast as possible and then also not stop on our laurels. So I'll give you one more little story. One of the people that joined Ariba eight years after I had retired, once the company was already a billion dollar company, they had a new CEO at the time. And the CEO made the claim in the late 2000s, 2008, 9, 10, they made the claim that they said, there's no more innovation to be had in procurement, so we're going to strip down the development team, strip down the expenses, increase the profits and sell the company. So that was something that was hearsay to me, but a couple years later, the company was sold to SAP for 5 billion. The company probably well over 100 billion today if they were by themselves because of the Ariba network. But what that, what that showed me was that you can never stop innovating. And I think Bill Gates even said it in the early 90s. He said, Microsoft, we never believe we're more than three months from being put out of business by the nearest competitor. So they constantly kept innovating. When they bought LinkedIn, I was in shock that they bought LinkedIn. I didn't know how that fit into the business model. But today I can see how it easily fit into the business model. It is interesting how you got to keep innovating. So I say that because as CEO, I believe our job is not just to deliver these incredible savings today, but we at Orchestra have a product vision and have a company vision to become the leader in the predictive economy and to amplify the impact of procurement and supply chains influence. And we see a product roadmap that we can go do that can even that can continue to disrupt the industry and the market and deliver this material value for the next ten years at least.
B
Nice. So what are your thoughts about telling someone about the industry that doesn't quite understand it?
A
What I can say about the oil and gas industry is it is a family industry to me. They all work together. So it is the ultimate cooperation. Exxon and Chevron do stuff. Shell and Aramco do stuff. Shell and Exxon, they all kind of work together in different ways, shapes or forms. And they've learned how to have success Individually, but also through partnering with the ecosystem. And they have a very close set of relationships with the entire supply chain of their organizations. And then I think the other thing is I don't think people really realize how clean and green these companies want to be.
B
Yeah, absolutely.
A
There's huge investments to make the world a better place constantly by these organizations. I continue to be impressed, inspired and excited about working with the oil and gas industry and the leadership that is in these companies because they really are true innovative people that are constantly trying to do transform themselves and innovate for the better of not just their company, but for mankind. And I know a lot of people think just the opposite, but if you haven't been in it, I could understand why you think that when you think about fossil fuels. But I can tell you these fossil fuel companies are a very. What's the right word? Thoughtful?
B
I was going to say conscientious, but yeah, thoughtful works.
A
Yeah.
B
Do you have a favorite podcast?
A
I can't say I have a favorite podcast. I have a good friend, John McMahon, who he's like the godfather of heads of sales and go to market strategies and he has an interesting one called Revenue Builders. And so Revenue Builders, no matter what the company he gives, he does this podcast on how to really drive stuff and he. That's. It's. I listen to that every once in a while and that gives me a. I chuckle and I smile when I hear from different go to market and commercial leaders and CEOs and examples of what they're doing and how they're doing it. But that's been fun for me to listen to here and there.
B
That's great. That's really great. Thanks for joining me again today, Rob. If people want to reach out to you and or get to know more about orchestra, how might they go about doing so?
A
I am simply robarchestro.com so the spelling of our estro is a R K E S t r o robkestro.com you can also find me on LinkedIn and Rob DeSantis and if you put Rob DeSantis, ARBA Orchestra or whatever, I'll pop up there, I'm sure.
B
Yeah, you're pretty easy to find.
A
Yeah, I'd be easy to find. So that's the best way to reach us. And I'd be happy to help anyone that's interested in orchestra start getting more information about us.
B
Awesome. Perfect. All right, that concludes this episode. So just remember, it's up to you to open the next door.
A
Thanks for listening to oggn the World's largest and most listened to podcast network for the oil and energy industry. If you like this show, leave us
B
a review and then go to oggn.com
A
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Oil and Gas Industry Leaders | Episode 193
Guest: Robert DeSantis, Co-Founder & CEO of Orchestro
Host: Paige LaCour
Release Date: April 29, 2026
In this episode, Paige LaCour interviews Robert DeSantis, Co-Founder and CEO of Orchestro, about his multifaceted career journey from engineering and software to founding and investing in major tech ventures, and finally leading disruptive AI innovation in the oil and gas industry. Through the lens of leadership, DeSantis shares lessons learned, industry insights, practical advice, and compelling stories that touch on transformation, curiosity, and resilience in the face of challenge and change.
Early Career and Silicon Valley Foundations (01:36)
Innovation and Energy Space (02:46)
Global Work and Leadership Experience (04:01)
Defining Leadership (07:03)
Handling Difficult Situations (07:50)
Most Rewarding Aspect (08:58)
Books That Influenced DeSantis (15:21)
Most-Used Business Tool (16:31)
On Competition (17:57)
Unique Selling Proposition (21:08)
Future Role and Industry Impact (29:14)
Industry Culture (34:53)
Favorite Podcast (36:28)
Connecting with Rob DeSantis (37:19)
This episode offers a rich tapestry of lessons and insights, both practical and philosophical, for leaders at every stage, as well as a look at how AI and data-driven innovation are shaking up procurement in the oil and gas sector.