Ian Burgess wanted to build a business around technology he co-invented while earning his PhD in applied physics at Harvard University: a colour-changing strip that identified the contents of unknown liquids based on their surface tension.
“We have always pledged loyalty to solving the problem,” not to the underlying technology, said Mr. Burgess, Validere president and chief technology officer. “At some point we realized we could make a successful business just making sense of what [customers had] already have built.” Validere has also partnered with Xpansiv, a marketplace for renewable energy products, including carbon offsets, to validate the attributes of what is bought and sold on the platform. Revenue is now in the millions of dollars and set to grow by 300 per cent in 2021 for the third year, said Mr. Ahmad, the chief executive officer.
From that contract and meetings with Mr. Fong’s oil patch contacts, Mr. Ahmad said he and Mr. Burgess realized there was a big problem: “Over $40-trillion of physical oil and gas changes hands every year and these guys are flying blind. They don’t have a good sense of what they are buying, selling or mixing along the way.”