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Big Swing features unfiltered conversations with operators and go-to-market leaders on growth, execution, and the swings that matter.
Hosted by Jeremy Funk and Corey Scott, the show blends real-world business experience, candid takes across marketing, sales, and leadership, and the side conversations that make it all human, from career swings to sports, bets, and everything in between.
Funk Futures Media (00:01.833)
All right, we have podcast episode number three for big swing. Guest number two, my guy, Jake Corley. Jake stepping in last minute. I knew I could count on you. You are the man. It's good to see you. You look great. You're in Idaho now. You're not working for the digital wildcatters collide thing. We're seeing Corley energy all over the place. I know a little bit about that. I don't know if everybody knows about that. We want to talk about it.
And shockingly, Jake and Corey have never met. It's a little bit mind blowing to me because you're both like, you're both in my orbit. You're both been like close friends of mine for a while. And then I hit up Corey. I'm like, you know, Jake, Jake, you know, you're like, nah, I can't say I do. So you guys are fresh, new friends, kindred spirits in some ways, but why you introduce yourselves to each other?
Jake Corley (00:36.675)
First time, I don't know how.
Corey Scott (00:56.44)
Jake, Corey, Corey, Jake, pleasure. No, Jeremy, we talking before. like sometimes with social media too, right? You get connected people or hey, you shake hands at an event or, you know, was telling Jake for like you when they were putting on some of their big events down in Houston and went to it, but you know, he's entertaining a bunch of people and shaking hands with a bunch of people, right? So once you do that and then you're connected on LinkedIn or whatever, you just start.
you kind of feel like you're in the circle in a way and you see posts, you see what people are up to. And so you kind of just look at it that way. So when you asked it, was like, yeah, no, know Jake, right. But it's like, oh yeah, we haven't like actually sat down and talked and really met. So it's cool to have it. Jake, cool to have you on here for the second guest podcast on this. So man, glad to have you on here.
Jake Corley (01:44.751)
Yeah, of course, great to meet you. Funk, it's good to see your face. We talk on the phone all the time, but I never actually see you. It's been a minute. I did.
Funk Futures Media (01:49.782)
Yeah.
Well, you moved. You moved and I love it. I mean, obviously I'm a Rockies guy. It's probably even colder where you're at. We are. There's not a lot of people that live in the Mountain Time Zone, but you and I are two of them. So talk to me, where in Idaho do you live? Like, when did you move there? Do you ever get back to Houston? What are you up to, man? What's going on with Jake Corley these days?
Jake Corley (01:59.098)
We're in the same time zone now.
Jake Corley (02:15.311)
Yeah, moved to right outside of Boise in the suburbs, a little place called Meridian. We're about 40 minutes from being able to, from my front door to being snapped in snowboarding at Bogus Basin. Idaho is like, it's a slept on state. You know, I didn't really know much about it until we started coming out here, really over the last few years. And then, I mean, most of the state is national parks.
I mean, it's just a mashup of everything that's around it, right? So it's Montana, Wyoming, California, Nevada. It's just a little bit of everything. So it's awesome. I wanted to get out of Houston for a long time. felt like Houston has a lot of good things. It's the city of opportunity, especially if you're working in energy. You just kind of can't get around that. You have to do your stint and pay your dues in Houston. It's got a great food scene, obviously. And that's about it.
Funk Futures Media (03:07.703)
It's good weather this time of year. Good weather this time of year. We'll give it that.
Jake Corley (03:08.975)
So I just got, I just got, I couldn't do, I just couldn't do the commuting anymore. couldn't do, I don't know. And once you see like a beautiful place where like in the air that we're in, it's like everything's been built in last five years. And so it's like there's zoning and it's like nice and clean and it's a bunch of Mormon. So there's no crime.
Corey Scott (03:12.014)
Thanks
Jake Corley (03:33.808)
Yeah, it's just like a better place to raise my kids. They have a bunch of cousins here. They love it. You we get to be outdoorsy people. You know, most of the year we're eating dinner outside in the back patio. You just can't do that in Houston. So I love it. It's a little bit slower pace of life. Definitely, you know, we kind of Irish goodbye to Houston didn't really tell anybody. I think a lot of people are still shocked that I'm not in Houston. I get hit up for, let's grab lunch all the time. And I'm like,
Not there. know, and. Yeah, so I, you know, I go back, I was there, you know, a few weeks ago, you know, just for work stuff. you know, I try to I try to avoid it kind of as much as I can.
Corey Scott (04:02.254)
Yeah, you can fly up here. I'd love to go to lunch. You can fly where I'm at, but yeah.
Funk Futures Media (04:02.593)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I need to get up there.
Funk Futures Media (04:18.967)
I get that. It's funny. I think back to a text conversation you and I had maybe four years ago. And you're like, dude, when when are you moving to Houston? And I'm like, never. And you're like, oh, OK. And I have no hate. I have a lot of love for Houston. be there next week for four days. How core you live there? mean, Houston has a lot of positive things. It's a great business city. The food, like you mentioned. But for me, like, man, I'm I'm from the sticks. Like I grew up
Jake Corley (04:31.673)
Yeah.
Funk Futures Media (04:48.539)
Skiing in New Hampshire, you know, I could be strapped in on the mountain in 15 minutes or 30 minutes Grew up in nature. Literally. My parents house is on a bog like it's basically a swamp but not like a Houston swamp like a real nature swamp and And I moved to Boulder Boulder is very outdoorsy and I ended up in oil and gas, right? So for me, it was like Houston was never in the cards. It was never part of the plan. I would probably
have done a stint there. But my wife is like, no, like we were in Colorado. And now I think you see it too, right? You're spending this time in Idaho. And it makes it harder to think about just being in Eddie city, I think, right? You start to get a little bit of space, get that clean air. And this isn't just a session to shit on Corey who lives in Houston, because you live in spring. And frankly, you get nice clean air in spring. I like I like it up there.
Corey Scott (05:44.431)
Well, it's more like South Dallas versus North Houston, depending where you want to say it. It's more on, you know, you're shitting on Houston, not necessarily me. So it's all good. You know, I get that. But I would say to probably, you know, what you're saying, Jeremy and a little bit for you, Jake, right? Like if this is when like.
You know, our parents, you know, when they were in their thirties and forties, they wouldn't have had this type of luxury. Like you kind of had to go where the office was. It would have been harder to do it. Or you probably in those times, Jeremy, you would have had to come to Denver or started Houston at some point. Right. But I think with just the type of work we did with, you know, remote flexibility, obviously being adopted by certain companies or just if you're on your entrepreneurship journey early, you call the shot. Right. But kind of in that later 2000s, close to 2010, certain companies were
more open to that flexibility and work from wherever, right? Just get your work done or travel to see customers or whatever it is. So I think that's probably helped us be a little bit more open and just saying, Hey, I'm going from Houston to Idaho tomorrow. Irish exit. Why not? Right. I'll come to Houston if I need to do some work. So
Funk Futures Media (06:48.279)
John, John Farrell did it. John Farrell did the Irish goodbye during COVID and moved up to Montana. He's still there. He's run a successful company. Yeah.
Jake Corley (06:56.419)
got into woodworking and just living his best life.
Funk Futures Media (07:01.235)
It's cool. I love to see it. know, Jake, we're doing kind of theme based podcast series and you fit into a lot, frankly, like you'd fit into the founder series. You fit into the kind of innovator series, the operator series from oil and gas, but definitely also like the marketing series. And I think there's a lot that you have to offer. You know, the listener who
is thinking about how do I get my brand out there? Like, how do I create something? How do I build something? I think you've done that very successfully. And it was fun for me to see when you decided, you know, you were going to move on from digital wildcatters collide, whatever it officially was at the time. Like I knew whatever you did with Corley energy was going to be like the dopest branding, right? Marketing brand building from an oil and gas company, energy company perspective. And certainly you haven't fallen short of doing that, but I want to go.
further back, right? I know your history. I'm sure some of the people listening know your history, but tell us a little bit about yourself, kind of through military days. And then, like, how did you pivot into entrepreneurship and really create this brand for yourself, where you've become like sort of the pseudo celebrity in the industry that we play in? But let's go way back.
Jake Corley (08:18.32)
Oh, not so much anymore. Let's see. Yeah, I up in College Station. You know, didn't want to be an Aggie, which is kind of funny because all my partners now are Aggies. And most of the guys that we work with that are not even on the team are Aggies.
Funk Futures Media (08:20.925)
I don't know about
Jake Corley (08:36.272)
Yeah, I didn't want to do that. I went to the Marine Corps, did four years in the Marines out in California. So I got to see what good weather was like and then got exposed to kind of startup world through a buddy of mine who was building a startup in the kind of real estate sector. And I was like, oh, this is like, this is cool. I didn't know this whole world even existed. And so I was going to school for computer science. Just really couldn't shake this whole startup bug thing. Long story short, ended up starting my first company in oil and gas in like 2013, 2014 times.
frame building cloud software for oil and gas companies, which is how we met you and I were competing against each other. I forget that until I take the trip down memory lane. But I think you were at seven lakes at the time, probably and
Funk Futures Media (09:12.726)
Yeah!
Funk Futures Media (09:20.631)
Yeah, you hit my radar like in the worst possible way because you were hustling and you were good. And you guys, I don't even know if your product was shit. But frankly, like I remember I was like in a deal. I think this was with Vanguard, if you remember Vanguard. And I thought this deal was a slam dunk. And then all of sudden.
Jake Corley (09:37.828)
We were like, we got far with Vanguard before they kind of imploded.
Funk Futures Media (09:41.048)
Yeah, you and all of a sudden, like, dude, I don't know, these guys are like, these guys are legit. I'm like, no, they're not. I don't know, man. Like they can sell and the product looks good. I'm like, the fuck are these guys? And then I see you. like, Jesus, Jake, like, dude, this guy worked at a gym six months ago. Now he's like going to beat me in a frickin mobility sale to lease operators. But you hit my radar pretty hard and certainly are my respect right out of the gate and sort of knew that we.
Jake Corley (09:56.112)
Hey
Corey Scott (09:58.777)
Hahaha.
Jake Corley (09:59.251)
Yeah
Funk Futures Media (10:08.875)
you know, we'd inevitably be friends. feels like the people that I've competed with, gone head to head with, have a lot of respect for, have become friends, right? I mean, this is just not that big of a space, but you literally did. You were like a trainer at a gym, and then six months later, you're like selling mobility software, enterprise deals to oil and gas companies. How'd that happen? That's so dope.
Jake Corley (10:23.695)
Yeah.
Jake Corley (10:30.586)
Dude, I, well, so I met, I was working at the gym in school for computer science, met a guy at the gym who was like a developer for like 20 years. His family, his dad had started an oil and gas company in the 80s, right? It's a guy that we all know. And...
He was building cloud software for his dad's company. Now in this time, cloud software was not really a thing. was very much on-prem was kind of the dominant player kind of in that space and it had a nice UI. I was already two semesters in and I was figuring out that I was like, dude, I'm not like these other guys. They love to code.
And I was like, I have soft skills. I can talk to people. That was like one of the cool things like coming from training is you're sitting there with somebody for 10, 12 hours a day, all different people, all different backgrounds. You're not just their trainer, but you're also their friend and a therapist and everything else. And so just that was like really, really valuable experience that also taught me to sell too. And so you're having to like sell yourself to all these different kinds of people. And so long story short, I started taking a few days off from
Funk Futures Media (11:18.315)
Yeah, yeah.
Jake Corley (11:32.747)
school to start coding with him. And then very quickly, just never wrote another line of code again. Quit my job, dropped out of school, we started that company. And then I just became obsessive in kind of my true nature. You know, I bought petroleum engineering textbooks and geology textbooks and petroleum finance textbooks, which is funny because I was a terrible student.
But then as soon as it was like my life depended on it, I just kind of went all in and read everything I could get my hands on. And then we just just trial by fire. And I think that even to this day, I think that one thing I've never let stop me was the fear of looking stupid. You know, I'm sitting here talking to people I don't know shit about oil and gas in the beginning. Right. And I'm just calling these people and I'm like, hey, we've got this really cool software.
Funk Futures Media (12:12.503)
Mm.
Jake Corley (12:20.438)
and you get a thousand no's and then you start to get a maybe and then you get a yes and then you get more yeses and you just refine and iterate and iterate and iterate.
And just keep pushing forward. so yeah, that was, you know, I did that for a few years and then kind of rinse and repeat it and try to get a few other things off the ground. I'd say the next notable thing was, you know, we went out and bought those wells like in 2018. So I got to kind of see the operator side really gratifying, you know, ultimately, you know, it was kind of an L for us because, you know, we kind of got the thesis wrong in the market. And I think the entire market got the thesis wrong that will, you know, go below zero.
Funk Futures Media (12:43.351)
Yeah.
Funk Futures Media (12:59.383)
Well, yeah.
Jake Corley (13:00.174)
But I always wanted to think about, you know, like what is the energy company of the future look like? And so, you know, throughout my entire time, you know, with DW, all the conversations, I was looking at every conversation as a student and just through that lens of like, what is the energy company of the future look like? We're not discovering new Permian basins. We're not discovering new recovery techniques, like, you know, marrying hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling.
There's cool things that are being built, nothing that is a step change, nothing that is a paradigm shift in the business model of oil and gas. But then that changed whenever we did the first in power.
seeing some of the early guys that were doing like digital flared mitigation, kind of this off-grid Bitcoin mining side, really kind of piqued my interest. And so just dove deep into that. Then we started the Energizing Bitcoin podcast just to kind of dive even deeper into that scene. And over time just started to kind of refine a thesis of, if I was to do something like this, how would I do it differently? And that has really been the foundation really for everything that we're doing at Corely Energy.
Funk Futures Media (14:06.603)
which we'll get to and I really want to lean into kind of when you, you explain this to me too, because all of a sudden, you know, we're competing in software sales and then you've got your hands in a bunch of different things and then there's oil and gas startups. Like you started this podcast, I think even before Digital Logcatters was really a thing, right? You guys are maybe throwing pizza parties with a keg or something like that and people are showing up and you're like, we got something here.
Jake Corley (14:29.252)
Yeah. Yep.
Funk Futures Media (14:35.959)
But you were early in the podcast game for oil and gas, for sure. What prompted you to do that? Did you just feel like there were these companies building cool shit that nobody knew about, and you wanted to give them some exposure? Was it for your own personal brand building? Was it curiosity? Because I feel like oil and gas startups kind of led to building a media company, and an events company, and then whatever it eventually became now.
Jake Corley (14:57.775)
Yeah.
Funk Futures Media (15:01.153)
Like what was the thesis behind we should do a startup and we're starting it and it's going tomorrow. Boom.
Jake Corley (15:07.756)
Yeah, I think it was, we just had a lot of friends and we had great conversations in private and we said, hey, we should just record these and...
I think it was a kind of a combination of all those things, you know, a little bit of curiosity and wanting to continue to be a student and understand what's kind of moving and shaking in this space. I think it was this, you know, kind of what my role kind of developed into over time was really, you know, as a kind of a chief community officer to help, right, to help these companies get exposure, to help kind of push innovation down the throats of the industry and by showcasing all the cool things that are being built and wanting to see the industry evolve or die.
Yeah, it was just really cool to, yeah, every single week get to see the most cutting edge things that were being built and then that obviously evolved into, you know, not just on the startup side, but getting into some of the bigger companies and getting exposure to see what they're working on, how they're thinking about things. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
Corey Scott (16:09.1)
Yeah, Jake, I'm kind of curious hearing how, I don't say things fall in place, but like as I tell people, things with inevitability and how they'll persp... When you put yourself in a position or conversations are happening, right?
You might think of something today, but it's not going to come to fruition later. Or sometimes you were like, Hey, this wasn't even on our radar and I'm just falling into this. And now this is like, I'm latching onto this and I'm, going from here to there, right? Zero to a hundred. I'm going down that path. I think everybody who is thinking about being an entrepreneur or is in that mindset and they're trying to think how to move each day. You know, what, what advice would you give to those people who are saying, I want to get into entrepreneurship, but I don't really know what I'm.
trying to get myself into, like how do I move in my day? Right? If I'm building a software side, I've got to think product and development, also balancing like how are we going to market? Right? And what are we doing for that? Right? Do want to do a lot of content creation? Is it about getting out to events and just exposing ourselves? You know, you can wrap your mind up like death by a thousand cuts.
Jake Corley (16:56.825)
Yeah, man.
Corey Scott (17:15.414)
and go nowhere on anything because you're just overanalyzing where you should be prioritizing your time. And I always try to tell people like every day is going to be a new day. And that's part of the grit and the love of entrepreneurship. Right. And you got to be able to feel comfortable in the uncomfortable. Right. And rolling your sleeves up to do things people don't want to do or do things that you don't know.
Funk Futures Media (17:19.265)
Definitely.
Corey Scott (17:36.823)
Right. Like you're picking up after school different types of engineering books, finance books, and you're like, if I'm in this, got passion about it, but I got to figure this out so I can talk to these people. So kind of with all that, what would you say to people that are younger, Jake Corley's, know, from 10 plus years ago, 15 years ago, thinking kind of you do like what advice would you give them? And if they're thinking about entrepreneurship, how to balance those days and what they should be thinking about with content marketing, but also understanding the importance of that with the product itself, whatever that may be.
Jake Corley (18:07.025)
I think there was one key thing if you're like not sure about something which inevitably there's always going to be something that is it's a laggard amongst all the things that you're working on and a lot of things could be hinging on that. And so I think a significant bias towards action taking a lot of action and the barometer for me is not you know me sitting alone just thinking about that. think that's part of it. You know a of like deep research but I think that you can accelerate that 100 times faster by figuring out
If I have a problem, who knows the answer to this question, right? And sometimes that's AI has a lot of answers to questions. But there's also a lot of things that AI doesn't know, particularly in the market that I'm in now, that you can only find out through conversations. And so by casting a super wide net and lining up my calendar with meetings back to back, literally all day, I can very, very quickly work through that.
just a mass, I personally just have a massive sense of urgency with everything that I do that is a gift and it's also a curse because I don't have the ability to necessarily turn off. You know, the weekends roll around and I'm still in my office hacking through it. Like I can't go to sleep if I have open loops, you know, I have to have a solution before I close my eyes to something or at least in line of sight to a solution for something. So I think a massive, massive bias to action. I've had countless things where I was like, I don't really know.
Funk Futures Media (19:11.189)
Yeah.
Corey Scott (19:11.628)
Yeah.
Jake Corley (19:34.052)
know exactly how we're going to solve this, especially over last year and a half. But what I do have, and this kind of goes back to podcasting and kind of this goodwill that I built up with the network, is a lot of people who have those answers. Right. And so I never hesitate to call and say, hey, I'm thinking about this. You know, do you what do you think about it or who do you know to talk to? And that has been I think that was also like me also going out of my way to do things for people for years without ever asking for anything that has now come back.
you know 10 acts 100 acts with people that have been willing to bend over backwards and help and there's a lot of people that are cheering us on so Yeah, I think it's
Funk Futures Media (20:11.649)
yeah.
Jake Corley (20:13.583)
continually pushing forward. wake up every day and there's like, there's one important thing. Like there's a million things, you know, you can eat the elephant one bite at a time, but there's one thing that everything is going to be dependent on. And you don't have that one thing done, nothing else matters. Right. So I do the one thing and then I'm like, there's a new one thing. Right. So I used to be a massive multitasker. And I think that led to just lots of inefficiency and you're kind of just, it kind of turns into busy work. But if you look macro at all the things that
Funk Futures Media (20:42.231)
Yeah.
Jake Corley (20:43.507)
you're working on and you ask yourself, what is all of this hinge on? Right? And then you just apply pressure and every single one of those those places relentlessly until you have a breakthrough. And that's literally all I've done all day every day for the last year and a half.
Funk Futures Media (20:59.639)
And before that, mean, I think I'm sort of stuck where you just described it. The massive multitasking is exhausting, and I think it's easy to get your priorities out of whack. And I'm sure my clients would tell me that too, and my family would tell me that. It's hard, right? It is hard to have so many different balls in the air that you're juggling. And I think one of the things I've admired about you is
the bias for action and the lack of fear around trying something and failing. And maybe even externally, like Fuse, that conference that you put together, I really liked it. Like, I wish you guys kept going with that, but you shut it down. You're like, no, actually, that was a lot of work. It's not as profitable as the Bitcoin mining conference. Maybe we're not as passionate about it. We're shutting it down. But at least you tried it. At least you put it out there, right? The bias for action is real.
Jake Corley (21:54.8)
Yeah, we tried it.
Yeah, I think the the what the original vision was and what it became were two different things and we just weren't able to bridge that gap. But ultimately, in comparison to something that was wildly specific, the intersection of energy and like Bitcoin mining and then later kind of just compute as a whole, there was there's in that Venn diagram, there is a community that communities still exist. Right. Whereas infused, it was it was a little bit too, you know, it was kind of a an inch deep and a mile wide versus, you know, an inch wide to mile deep.
And I think that that's really what there wasn't like that community. was, I don't know, that special sauce was missing. And I think that we all recognize that.
Funk Futures Media (22:37.301)
It was broad, but I met some dudes doing offshore wind projects in the Atlantic Ocean where Tom Brady was one of the people invested in it. And those are the types of things that I could meet at a fuse that I won't meet at a NAEP. That I'm not gonna meet at a NAEP act, Corey. That to me was like, so I was personally kind of bummed because I'm like, man, I go to these events and it's super cool, it's like reunion time.
Jake Corley (22:50.609)
That's pretty cool.
Jake Corley (22:56.688)
Yeah.
Funk Futures Media (23:05.687)
I can walk 20 feet and I'm going to see people that I know, that I worked with, that I've done business with in these traditional oil and gas conferences and events. But you were starting to branch out a little bit further and a lot of people were like, yeah, sure, I'll go to this. We're in energy tech or we're in Bitcoin mining. exposed me. Tim Loeser and I talked about this too. I think we really liked that first Empower. First of all, I was at a brewery, which was cool. And then Ted Cruz came down and talked.
I mean, just like to be a small company and get these people to come and get a band and it was different. It was fun. But I think Tim and I both left that thinking like, wow, there's like a huge Bitcoin mining industry that's built up around oil and gas. had no exposure to it. And here he and I combined at 60 years in the industry.
Jake Corley (23:49.971)
That day, those two days, those two days changed the trajectory of my life. Like that's how impactful it was.
Corey Scott (23:52.686)
you
Funk Futures Media (23:56.191)
OK.
Jake Corley (23:58.609)
You know, that was such a special moment in time. I have somebody on a weekly basis bring up the first in power. They were like, that was the coolest thing ever. And it was just the, was crazy. It was just the short lead time to even like pull that off and then just kind of like the scale and it all just kind of like worked out despite the like hurricane that we went through the morning of, but then the sun came out, everything dried up. Everybody was in the great spirits. I get asked all the time, Hey, can you, can you,
Funk Futures Media (24:05.43)
Really.
Jake Corley (24:28.542)
please bring power back in some way, shape, or form. So yeah, it was super special.
Funk Futures Media (24:36.267)
Yeah it was.
Corey Scott (24:37.002)
I think Jeremy, we were talking about this the other day, but kind of just all the things you were talking about there, Jake. What we were talking about, Jay, was the importance of just continuing to network and that sense of community. Right. So what I've been thinking about the last little bit, Jake, is, OK, when I was in my 20s, I wanted to get out there and meet people. And so I'll meet some people my age. But I know I'm.
I'm on the low end of being the younger age. Everyone else I'm probably going to meet is going to be older than me. And then you hit 40, right? And 20 years ago, it a blink. And you're thinking about the people you meet, like me and Jeremy, when we did 16 years ago, and we're kind of on that same age career path of thought. And then you still know all the people above you.
but a lot of people have moved on and retired, gone to different industries. And then you've got this 20 years younger than you and you're like, I need to be networking and constantly staying there. So I always give the, know, tell people, man, never stop networking.
every you know, whether it's just knowing who's who or I need to call and ask for something, right? Whether I just have a question, do you have an answer to it? Right. Whether it's you helping them without asking for anything return, like you said you did and down the road, it always kind of takes care of itself. You know, I just think that's so important for the younger folks out there. Right. As always, continue it. You have the vigor with it to do it early, but don't stop.
I argue it's almost more important now in my career because now I'm in the middle of the sandwich part. So I think what you guys did with Empower and using just the whole community, look how that's still paying dividends for you now. I mean, people, it's awesome.
Jake Corley (26:17.02)
Yeah, was a big part of like all of my partners in CoreLineRG came through that.
Most of the vendors and contractors that we're working with all came through that or came through people that came through that. Like it's all came from that kind of sub community. And so, yeah, but I wouldn't have been able to predict that at the time. I wouldn't have been able to predict that my life was gonna kind of take this entire direction. So yeah, and also like in the, this is...
kind of on the same line of thought. Like it costs you nothing to be a kind person. I just, I'm gonna want to say this just because I've been so spoiled in oil and gas. There's a lot of like really great people. The AI and data center market is not quite the same kinds of people. And I had my first encounter with a dude who was just a raging asshole and it costs you nothing to be a good person. And people will remember you being a good person. And they'll also definitely remember you being an asshole.
Funk Futures Media (27:14.305)
Hell yeah. And you are, yeah, you got a big heart. And I think that's rare for somebody who's also like hard charging in business. So let's go back to like the final days of DW Collide and then pivoting into Corley Energy. And we don't need to turn this into a therapy session. But I feel like my view was like you always sort of had this burning desire to like run an energy company. And I think like your passion, even when you guys had those stripper wells in Oklahoma was like, you like that.
Jake Corley (27:39.847)
Yeah.
Funk Futures Media (27:43.734)
Right. So in some ways, maybe for you, you know what you were doing at DW as a means to an end and there wasn't really a desire to build a tech company like you've done that before. And it just wasn't really your passion. And all of a sudden you're like, really, this is what I'm doing. And you decide, OK, I'm going to break away from this. I hope these guys do well. Right. Good luck to them. But I want to pursue what my passion is. And that passion is quarterly energy. So I have to hit you with the question. You're taking a big swing with this right now. What is quarterly energy? What do you guys do?
Jake Corley (27:44.69)
Mm-hmm.
Funk Futures Media (28:13.803)
or what you trying to do?
Jake Corley (28:16.518)
great, great question. I'll give you some context as to why I wanted to be an energy person first. like coming into the industry and then just studying the industry and then reading the stories of like the old Wildcatters that resonated more with me and I like I guess romanticized those journeys of those guys more than like a Zuckerberg or a Musk. I was like, that's all I wanted to do was to just go, you know, build an energy company. And I know that's like a weird
dream that very few people have, but that's all I've thought about for last 15 years. so, yeah, so with this opportunity, ultimately what we are in the business is speed to power. We kind of sit in the middle of kind of this two macro things. For one, have AI has this insatiable appetite for power. We don't have enough power on grid today. And at the same time, there's a significant amount of
Funk Futures Media (29:07.255)
needed.
Jake Corley (29:13.198)
of natural gas that we can turn into power.
And so we kind of sit right in the middle of those and so if you're open AI X AI whoever else you're looking to go deploy a bunch of GPU clusters You need a lot of power to do that And so, you know gonna be getting in line three to seven years to wait for an interconnect on grid So the grid doesn't have the power supply that we need for the demand today It's not gonna have it in five years ten years probably fifteen years. And so the quickest path to power Is to be off grid and so we build off-grid power and now we were doubling in
off-grid data centers connected to our power. So kind of being fully vertically integrated from gas all the way to energized racks for GPUs.
Funk Futures Media (29:55.416)
So you're not drilling wells, right? You're actually, you're working with companies that drill wells and you're also sort of working with the compute companies, the data center. So you sit like right in the middle. Is that accurate?
Jake Corley (29:58.909)
No.
Jake Corley (30:10.544)
Yep. Anybody who has the GPUs in hand, we don't own or buy the GPUs. So they bring those slot them into our racks. They're energized. We make money two ways. We make money selling power through a power purchasing agreement. And then we, we sell space. It's essentially it's a colo lease. So that's just, that side looks just like real estate, right? And so kind of the goal for us is to, you know, have it leased out and then probably flip it at a cap rate, retain the power side, retain the site, and then just kind of rinse and repeat.
Corey Scott (30:41.582)
How many, where you at now? I appreciate you explaining that, right? Because I think there's probably a lot of listeners who hear these terms, but they really don't understand, right? And especially some folks who are just basic one guess too. So, how many centers are you tied to today? Kind of what's the business like at Mike? All those things.
Funk Futures Media (31:01.227)
Yeah, where are you at? Where is this excess power that you're picking up? And where are these data centers? mean, all that stuff.
Jake Corley (31:02.182)
Yes.
Jake Corley (31:09.604)
Yeah, we're in West Texas, so we should hopefully break ground in the next, hopefully 60 days on the site. So first step was being able to secure the gas. We've been able to do that. Second step was being able to secure the land, but not just any land. There's a lot of things you need to kind of triangulate and things you need to be in close proximity to in order to make all this possible. It does look a lot like, yeah, just like traditional development, which is quite different than I would say, yeah, software development.
And then, yes, we probably start on the power side first and then we work our way into the data center side. You see a lot of these gigascale campuses that are popping up. I'm sure you guys have seen all the news reports about so-and-so's building 10 gigawatts here and one gigawatt here. That's all great, but most of their power capacity is not gonna come on for like five to seven years. And so,
Corey Scott (31:55.662)
you
Jake Corley (32:07.505)
And then also you kind of run the risk of like obsolescent risk with the infrastructure, you know, coming down from Nvidia, still being like the dominant chip manufacturer is changing like just as fast as iPhones are changing and not just at the chip level, it's at the infrastructure level. And so you're constantly having to go and kind of redesign that if you're going into the larger scale, whereas we're taking more of a bottom up approach, build the spec with the customer in mind.
lease and a power agreement in place and then rent and repeat and then just make it's more of a kind of a modular approach and then we have the ability to expand really as much as we'd like in that site or develop other sites.
But developing a site, you know, has its own cost. It's pretty kind of high capex to, you know, for fiber and for kind of last mile pipe to kind of get the gas in and all that. So it's been a hell of a journey. We mean, we've iterated and kind of pivoted a few different times. The, the core thesis and the core problem that we're solving has not changed whatsoever for us. It's, you know, cheap molecules to premium electrons arbitrage, right? That's kind of the thesis that, and then what we're solving is, you know, speed to power first scale of power.
second and then how we get there has changed. We started off wanting to actually go and own the oil and gas assets. That was honestly kind of my own bias and so we looked up in the Barnett, we're like you know what's an area that would kind of make sense, second largest primary data center market in the US, lot of growth, vacancy rates are like it like pretty much zero there.
And then simultaneously, know, the Barnett's not like a sexy play anymore. It's really only core assets for BKV. And so everybody else is kind of just non-core and it's just, they're just kind of holding onto it. And so we kind of made the assumption that it'd be easy to get the deal done. In theory, it was easy to get a deal done. However, a lot of those deals up there, we looked at pretty much everything.
Jake Corley (34:04.279)
a lot of them had hair on them, you know, the bid ask was too wide or a variety of other reasons. And so we looked at three packages, we put in bids on two and ultimately, yeah, it didn't transact. But that was a blessing because then we were back at square one, we're like, well, how do we get large volumes of gas, you know, without purchasing the assets? And so I,
Funk Futures Media (34:20.043)
Yeah.
Jake Corley (34:24.979)
was kind of in this, you know, a little bit of an existential crisis. I'm like, you're just kind of thinking about it. I'm like, okay, you know, should we keep looking that we've already looked at every single thing in the Barnett? Do we go elsewhere? What do we do? I flipped to Pennsylvania, hung out with Toby Rice for a little bit. And he was like, you should just go asset light. Just go buy the gas. He's like, we're doing these deals. We don't like 12 of these deals, you know, just gas purchasing agreements. And I was like, yeah, you're probably right. I was like, it sounded in my mind that it was like less sexy, but I knew it was probably more efficient. So was like, okay, let's model it out. So we modeled it out and
significantly better numbers by not being burdened by the additional, call it two to 300 million in CapEx. then had any of those acquisitions gone through, like one in particular, we probably would have inherited a hundred employees just on the gas infrastructure side, which would have been a massive distraction from what the core thesis and what our core mission in life was going to be. Whereas now we're just purchasing the gas. It's a win-win for everybody.
Funk Futures Media (34:59.591)
Yeah.
Jake Corley (35:20.571)
It allows us to keep the core team small so that we can focus on doing deals and then rely heavily on partners, vendors, contractors.
Funk Futures Media (35:28.001)
super cool. Yeah, I really like the way that you dumbed it down for me, especially. And I'm sure anybody else who listens like, so your partners, are these like traditional oil and gas guys? Are they data center guys? Like, where have they played that they understand this and see where the value is in this type of play as well?
Jake Corley (35:45.97)
Yeah, both. They come from kind of the upper levels of management on the E &P side, the investment banking slash like research side. know, Tim is he built up a E &P startup, did pretty well for himself. They exited it and he stayed on board to kind of run that company.
then also the Bitcoin mining side. So from the power to the data center, a lot of that doesn't necessarily change. would say a lot of it's the same. There's a few things that change from Bitcoin to AI data centers. But for the most part, it's relatively similar. And so having experience on that side, once you get into the data center, it's a totally different game. Everything is completely different. And it's just at a much higher level. And everything's a lot, lot more expensive than you would ever think it would be.
Funk Futures Media (36:38.729)
and slow, right?
Jake Corley (36:41.719)
and slow. It's the wild, wild west. Everybody thinks that this market is just like data centers 2.0, but the AI data center market's really kind of its own. There's lack of standardization. There's...
not a ton of visibility into the space. So there's been a couple startups that we've been talking to that are kind of like the inverus of data centers. Some of them are able to pull public information. Some of them kind of have more of the Daniel Energy Partners approach where they're getting it all through conversations and just kind of boots on the ground. So the industry is very much kind of in the early phases and it's moving very, very fast and you constantly have to be up on everything that's moving in the space.
and it's exhausting.
Corey Scott (37:32.498)
So what's, I'm just kind of curious, right? Cause for some people it can take, you know, three, seven years, right? If you're doing it off grid, um, it's faster. mean, I get that it sounds like there's just so many potential hurdles or, you know, things that could delay or just extend time.
through a process, like end to end, right? If you were working on a bid or project and getting everything going, mean, what's kind of this, what is the time? What's the cycle time for this in your business?
Jake Corley (38:04.755)
It's faster than most. I'm not going to give you an exact time, but it's under a year. It's more than six months and less than 12 months for a site.
Corey Scott (38:09.646)
Yeah.
Corey Scott (38:15.95)
Interesting.
Funk Futures Media (38:17.527)
That's dope. A lot of big swings, a lot of big swings you take. Go ahead, Corey.
Corey Scott (38:23.212)
Well, I was just going to say, appreciate what you said, something there. And I think it's good for listeners is your thesis and your mission never changed. Right. And I'll call that like building, you know, the playground in the park, but it's always the pathway to the park.
Jake Corley (38:35.107)
never changed.
Corey Scott (38:43.82)
that you think you have an idea and it's good to have your idea, but you're gonna let the market kind of shape it a little bit, right? Meaning what you thought today, two months from then or two months from now, you're gonna totally pivot how you get there. Doesn't change the mission.
Right. But you're letting certain things as you learn or go kind of shape what that is. Right. Kind of like in our space, Jeremy, you know, with more of tech stuff. Right. You think this is what the market needs, but they're going to guide you on how it kind of needs it. You're still achieving the overall mission. Right. And what you're trying to solve. But you drop that in there, Jake. And I thought that was really important for people out there to know, because people can be very hard headed and this is the mission and this is how we're to get there. And you're not getting me off that path. I'm not going to let you do that.
Funk Futures Media (39:08.247)
Absolutely.
Jake Corley (39:22.107)
Yeah, I think people fall in love with and I was even guilty of my own bias on kind of acid heavy on the willing gas side. But, you know, once I was able to see past that, yeah, it was was ultimately a better model for us. You know, I think that, you know, going back to kind of the bias for action, you know, every day there's new massive hurdles that we have to deal with. And so it's like you're kind of like running through a maze and you think you it all figured out and then you hit a wall and you're like, all right, well, we need to backtrack. You know, this is obviously, you know, not the way.
And you just continue to get smarter and you just run into these roadblocks day after day after day. And then you start to put together a very comprehensive game plan of like, well, if this happens, then I know that we have this option, this option, this option. And if this happens, then we have a few more options over here, you know, or some sort of like combination of those things. You know, it's a lot of not just necessarily chasing a single path, in order to, get a big project, leave us off the ground. It's chasing a lot of things down in tandem to kind of see what shakes loose.
Corey Scott (40:22.146)
Right.
Jake Corley (40:22.262)
from the customer side to the engineering side to going out and raising money on both the equity side, on the financing side, really knowing what cards do you have to play, right? And I think that that's where a lot of people...
don't they don't have that bias to action therefore they don't know what cards they have to play so they think that the hurdles are like that's the end all be all and like you're not gonna be able to move past that but you've got to be relentless and continuously persevere and just push forward luckily for me I just go full retard like I don't care if anybody doesn't like me or or thinks I'm stupid or it doesn't that doesn't bother me so I
Funk Futures Media (40:47.233)
Yeah.
Funk Futures Media (40:56.823)
Right, right, Well, I think that's an important part of being an entrepreneur. this is something I had to learn is I had to sort of stop taking myself seriously at all and really not worry about how people think about me. mean, generally, people's perception of you is jaded by where they're at in the world and their own personal views. And some people, this guy's a f****.
Corey Scott (41:00.492)
Yeah.
Funk Futures Media (41:24.169)
idiot, he's out there podcasting, doesn't know shit, he's never worked for no one got it. You know what? That's okay. Like, that's not my issue. I can't control how you're gonna feel. Right? I can just control what I can control on a day to day basis, but I can't control your emotions. Like, I want to get to the brass tacks this because I understand where you sit. Like, who else is doing this? Right? Because you got data centers here and they need the power and then you have producers who who've got this excess gas.
Are neither one of them are coming into this and trying to do what you do? Like, who's your competition for this? Because logically, either both sides should see this that they probably do see this. Why are they not going after this niche? Is it a distraction for them? Like they need the power.
Jake Corley (42:07.976)
Yeah, I think it's a few things. think it's, they stick to what they know.
This industry is not incentivized to rock the boat. The executives are not incentivized to rock the boat. You're making $10 million a year as the CEO of an oil and gas company. And now you have this kind of wild hair idea that you're going to go and like chase power, even though it's not that crazy. and gas companies should be oil and power companies. So yeah, you look at the incentive structures and it's just not aligned with innovation. I'll give you a little insight. I won't say who it was, but you know, we were talking with a pretty big public ENP and they were like, hey, we've had all these hyperscalers reach out and they're
like, you we know that you guys have gas, there's ways to work together. And they were like, yeah, we love to work together. And they kind of got into a Mexican standoff because neither one of them wanted to build a power plant. Right. That's not the business. And so then we got brought in to go talk to them. They're like, it seems like you guys want to build a power plant. We said, absolutely. You know, but even then, you know, there's still
Funk Futures Media (42:54.092)
Yeah.
Jake Corley (43:03.604)
You can have a ton of champions with inside the organization. They're like, hey, we should go and do this. And there's a lot of different business cases that do this. And then it can just die by deliberation by committee on whether we should do it or not. It's also just a lack of. I think it comes down to a lack of curiosity, I think, and it started with the kind of the Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining side where people were like, oh, we're not going to do the Bitcoin mining things. We don't understand Bitcoin. I'm like, you could read a single book.
Corey Scott (43:15.192)
Yep.
Jake Corley (43:32.285)
you know, in an afternoon and learn everything you need to know about Bitcoin. Like you should have some sort of like intellectual curiosity to help you make these decisions versus being like, it's just it's too complicated. It's too weird, whatever it is. And kind of writing it off. And I think you're seeing the same thing with both the A.I. side and the power side. I think the tides are kind of changing. I think you're starting to see more of it. But why haven't we seen a massive wave of adoption? And that was kind of like.
You when I was on the podcast talking about this for years, I was like, Hey, somebody should go and do this. and it's just not seeing any movement. And so was like, well, I feel like we have all the pieces that we need. I can put together a team and we know all the partners and vendors and stuff that we could work with. And let's just see if we can go pull it off. So was like, fuck it. We'll just go do it ourselves. So the industry is coming around to it, but it's a lot slower, very, very fast followers, not many leaders in this space, but that's not a surprise.
Funk Futures Media (44:27.223)
I mean, that's most industries, right? And I think that you, it's cool that you're like, you know what, maybe it's not the sexiest thing ever, but this is our focus, right? And we're gonna stick with this as the thesis. Yeah, you could have pursued some Barnett stuff or maybe acquiring an oil and gas company or a bunch of assets or gone on the data center side. But it's like, well, no, there's this one niche right here. We can do that. And we can do that well and prove this model and then scale with it.
What do you think Corley Energy looks like in three years? Because I mean, AI is going to look a lot different three years. The amount of compute required is going to look a lot different in three years. We're sitting here in 2029 in February. What is Corley Energy at that
Jake Corley (45:08.564)
to 2029. That's in three years. it isn't three years. God, that sounds so far away. That sounds like the future. I'm like,
Funk Futures Media (45:14.295)
I could say 2027. I could say 2027 and tell you that's three years from now, but it's not.
Corey Scott (45:14.531)
You had Jeremy recalculating his math right there for him.
Jake Corley (45:22.772)
I, three years from now, I mean, I would imagine that our site is, quite robust. by 2029, it should be, you know, assuming things go according to plan, we should at least have probably, I don't know, assuming nothing macro in the market changes, probably, you know, close to 500 or more megawatts at that site. I would anticipate that we would have other sites.
I kind of have my own ideas as to where we'd be as a company in terms of size, both people, know, kind of valuation, revenue. I'll leave those a mystery for now. But yeah, I mean, I threw my name on the company because I'm prepared to do this for 20, 30 years. But also if.
The Lord has different plans and somebody wants to come along and makes us an offer that we can't refuse, whether it be at the data center level, power level, site level, company level. I think that's something that we also consider. But even then, we were to exit in the next five years.
I would still be, you know, at that point, you know, around 40, 41. So I would have a lot of time on my hands still, which was kind of the case earlier last year as well. And I became pretty miserable just playing pickleball all day. And so I just find something else to do. yeah, yeah, we've got some pretty big ambitions. You know, do we stay private? Do we go public?
Funk Futures Media (46:38.399)
I remember.
Jake Corley (46:51.348)
Who knows? There's a lot of precedent for that in the market with groups like Fermi America and a few others. You're seeing a lot of the Bitcoin miners that are now kind of getting into AI space and their stock has been absolutely pumping. So there's lot of investor interest there. But yeah, ultimately it's just like we just, we wanna do a great job and we wanna do what we say we're gonna do. We wanna show the world what's possible. It's not.
just go out there and make a bunch of money. think that's, obviously that comes, but it's let's go and pioneer something that's entirely new. there's in so many different ways, there are people who are doing elements of what we are doing, but I think the way that we are doing it is quite novel. And so we're excited about that and we just want to show the world what's possible.
Corey Scott (47:39.055)
Well, I love it just because it's unique. But just more importantly, Jake, like just the passion you can hear, you know, as you talk about it, right? Like you've got a mission. This just really resonates with you back to even when this became a concept and how much you just gravitated towards it. Like you said earlier, I mean, that's what keeps people going every day, right? If you don't have that passion and that willing to like want to break through some barriers at the same time.
I mean, this isn't going to be for you, right? But I mean, just hearing that, who knows where it is in three years, like you said, but I love what I'm hearing just of what the possibility could be for your business. But man, as young as you are too, right? Like if that does happen and someone wants to come scoop you up or whatever in a few years, I don't see your passion dying for this right after that. Cause I feel like there's so much ahead of us in this business that you're doing. So I think it's pretty awesome.
Funk Futures Media (48:29.227)
Yeah.
Jake Corley (48:30.377)
Yeah. You have to have the passion and it has to be just like, I don't know, the, it's the closest thing I could ever describe to feeling a calling towards something, no matter how much I wanted to be like, no, no, like I'm, you know, I'm in middle of something else that I've been working on for a long time. It's just, it kept nagging at me and you need that because this is also easily the hardest thing I've ever done.
easily the hardest thing ever done. It is so difficult. It is doing Sudokus nested inside other Sudokus and if one thing changes, everything down the line changes and you're lining up massive timelines. It's massive amounts of capex to like build the site. It is.
challenge me in every single way. But also, I can't complain because that was the point. Jeremy, you know, we talked about early last year when things were still when we're still kind of in the developing exactly what our strategy was going to be. I had a lot of time my hands, and I was losing my mind. And I was like, I'm so anxious. I'm just ready to like be busy. Well, guess what?
I have no time left in my day now and so I really should have enjoyed just playing pickleball all day. But it's forced me to grow. I felt stagnant for the last few years. Kind of prior to this I felt like I was kind of created a job for myself and I was stuck in a particular role and I didn't really see a lot of growth in myself. And if I'm not growing I just feel like I'm dying.
Funk Futures Media (49:38.913)
Yeah, that's changed. Yeah. That's a good point,
Jake Corley (50:00.949)
And this year, the last year and a half has been just massive amounts of personal growth and has really pushed me to my limits on really learning this space backwards and forwards and kind of pushing me into things that are uncomfortable.
Funk Futures Media (50:18.209)
Love it. You've never been afraid to run into the fire. And I appreciate that. And we could go on for a long time. I know we gotta cut this off. Jake, where can people find you if they wanna ask you questions about this space? If they want to have you on their podcast, they just wanna wrap with you a little bit. Website, LinkedIn, where's the easiest place to find Jake Corley?
Jake Corley (50:39.315)
Yeah, just hit me up on LinkedIn. Pretty easy to find on there. want to learn more about Coraline Energy, Coraleenergy.com. We'll probably have a new website dropping here soon that's a little bit more comprehensive.
Funk Futures Media (50:50.817)
still podcasting too,
Jake Corley (50:51.059)
Yeah, love to talk to anybody. Still podcasting, not as frequent as I need to be. It's just hard to find the time, honestly. But I really want, that's also in the nex me. It's like I miss doing this on a very regular cadence. And so I'd like to.
Funk Futures Media (50:59.24)
I know.
Jake Corley (51:10.549)
Yeah, there's also like not a lot of like great podcasts kind of in the like the data center space. And I think that we still have a unique niche in between, you know, energy, Bitcoin, AI. And so we'd like to continue to continue to do that, continue to grow that. I just need to make it more of a priority. But it's it's tough when everything's on fire 24 7.
Funk Futures Media (51:28.541)
I'm with you. Well, Jake Corley, my man. Yeah, go ahead.
Corey Scott (51:30.584)
Jay, I don't think we're gonna have too many guests like this, you know, that you usually ask what their big swing was. All I can take from this, the listeners already know, like Jake stepping in the batter's box and he's not letting that bat sit on his shoulders. You've been taking swings, man, from what you were saying, drop out of school, everything you did in 2010 and viewing things to what you did with DW, taking.
everything with, you know, core energy. mean, man, these are all piecing out of Houston going straight to Idaho. Like I think people can already piece together your personal professional big swings. And the thing for you is I know it's not done. I mean, you got a lot to go with the stills. There's gonna be more big swings ahead of it, man. And it was a pleasure having you on here.
Jake Corley (52:13.503)
Thank you guys, I appreciate it. Always great catching up. Much success to you guys. So glad to see you breaking out, Jeremy, doing your own thing. What do you guys, my big question is like, know, on the oil and gas startups, you know, I'd say like, you know, hey, Wildcatters, like what do you guys call the audience? it hey, swingers?
Corey Scott (52:34.318)
I mean it's a good one. I've thought about it Jeremy, but I mean we gotta coin it. We gotta coin it.
Jake Corley (52:36.597)
Yeah, I mean you might as well roll with it,
Funk Futures Media (52:39.863)
Funk Futures Media (52:45.697)
What up, swingers? Got J fucking Corey here. That's a good one, I dig it. I gotta find a time to come up to Boise, man. I've never been up there. I know it's beautiful. And... Okay.
Jake Corley (52:57.855)
come and stay. I got a few guest rooms. You can hang out for as long as you want. We'll do go see the mountains. Go see the National Forest depending on what time of year it is. Yeah, we'll have fun.
Funk Futures Media (53:03.809)
Take it.
Yeah, because I know you can't really come to Denver, know, the altitudes.
Corey Scott (53:07.79)
Nice.
Jake Corley (53:12.053)
I've gotten used to it. We're at like half the altitude of Denver and so like I still get sick every time I come back for like the first like two days I kind of feel awful. Denver makes me feel worse so I try to kind of avoid it but yeah I think after being here for a year and a half I'm starting to like get acclimated.
Funk Futures Media (53:18.593)
crazy.
Funk Futures Media (53:28.755)
sure. Yeah. Right on. Jake Corley, thanks for coming on.
Corey Scott (53:31.855)
That's awesome.
Jake Corley (53:34.966)
Alright guys, take it easy.