Image: yodelMe.
A Kelowna startup is looking to change safety practices in the oil and gas industries.
Local startup yodelME (previously JA2 Applications) appears poised for huge success in the oil industry, and many other sectors to follow.
The company’s product, which allows staff working in remote areas to communicate via satellite signals, has come to the minimal viable product stage, and the founders are taking it to national organizations with serious interest.
When yodelME founder Aaron Kilback was working in the oil fields several years ago, he realized that the technology used for safety check-ins needed to change.
“Out in the oil field, the nearest cell service was 45 minutes away,” he said. “So every two hours I had to check in with a person, and I worried what would happen if I died. I would drive to the location, check in, and drive like crazy to the next well. It was super stressful.”
Kilback explains the HF radios they had could only do so much, and the cell service was so oversubscribed it was almost impossible to get a signal. So he decided to come up with a better way.
He describes the product like having your home wifi network available in remote areas, where anyone can connect. yodelME also allows companies to digitize paperwork, optimize systems and watch over their staff to ensure they are safe.
But for Kilback, it’s more than just a product.
“We aren’t just selling a router, we are selling a psychology,” he said. “There is a social responsibility for employees to be diligent for the company. We can motivate employees and give them simple tools.”
The company’s MVP consists of a safety check in system, mapping and messaging, and they’ve been told by prospective clients and government agencies that it’s the most simple solution.
Kilback and his team are actively selling the product, so far with impressive results. Before incorporating the company in 2014, he went out and interviewed 75 different companies for market research and within a year many wanted to invest in his company.
In fact, they raised $1 million in 2014 and have been working hard on developing the product since.
The nine-person company is attracting significant interest in its product, and has already had meetings with with the largest oil company in the world, the largest gas producers in Canada and B.C.
yodelME is also in talks to collaborate with another successful Accelerate Okanagan program client, Piscine Energetics.
Karen Olsson, COO of yodelME, says that Piscine’s President Nuri Fisher is on board with what the company is doing, and finds they are a fit for his compliance requirements.
“He is going to do a pilot for it on his boats,” she said. “It’s a great story of two AO clients that are working together. We have marine with Piscine, and also the forestry and even trucking industry. We have potential for more than just oil. We’ve even got a few vineyards and agriculture applications.”
Olsson joined the company because it met her personal mandate for something that changes the world and does good. “I think that a product that keeps that people who are potentially in jeopardy connected and becomes a lifeline in a number of ways is important,” she said. “When I look at what it could do, like if there’s a forest fire in the field, we can be the ones that get help there sooner.”
She also sees a bigger, broader perspective for regions like Africa and developing regions that may not be as connected, and where worker safety isn’t as regulated. “This can become a standard where the product can change how people in those countries work and keep safe,” Olsson said. “There’s an environmental stewardship component here where if we can make safety and compliance more effective we are more likely to prevent the next oil spill.”
As we become a more connected society, yodelME hopes they can be the linchpin that can hold it together.
-Written by Mark Stone
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