Behind the scenes at Shell Ventures - “Who says elephants can’t dance?”

Every year, Global Entrepreneurship Week is an excellent opportunity to stop and think about the start-up partnerships my team and I have been involved with through Shell Ventures. I’ve always felt extremely fortunate to be leading Shell’s corporate venture capital arm and help shape the future of Shell in areas such as renewable power and mobility, whilst making our oil & gas assets more cost-efficient and sustainable. I tend to share a lot about the venturing side, but today, it’s the first word in our description that I would like to focus on: “corporate”. A single word that defines and affects us and our partnerships in fundamental ways. 

One of the main perks of being a corporate venture capital is that we are able to offer support to our portfolio companies beyond funding. Through Shell’s global network of assets, new projects and our vested relationship with co-investors, suppliers and service contractors, we can help facilitate a classic win-win situation for our portfolio companies and our own business. Shell’s businesses are interested to get accelerated access to new technologies and business models, whereas our portfolio companies get the chance to deploy their technology as part of our supply chain and have Shell as a (launching) customer.

However, despite several deployment successes over the past couple of years, being more than an investor remains incredible hard work. To help bridge the gap between a start-up and Shell’s global portfolio, Shell Ventures has a dedicated team of Implementation Managers who serve as the ‘inter-connectors’ between our portfolio companies and Shell. They make the deployment process as efficient as possible by identifying and helping to materialize revenue opportunities in Shell for our portfolio companies. There is still a lot to learn and improve, but it’s a worthwhile journey that delivers value to our entrepreneurs and gives true meaning to the term ‘open innovation’.     

Today, I would like to highlight two of our portfolio companies who have gone through this journey with us: Halfwave and Osprey Informatics.

Innovating in inspection technology

Part of our portfolio since 2017, Halfwave is a Norwegian service company that develops and operates game-changing inspection services that help improve the technical safety of an operator’s infrastructure. Halfwave’s technology is unique because it can measure pipeline integrity using ultrasonic technology with gas as a couplant, as well as being able to accurately size the internal and external metal loss features that result from corrosion or mechanical wear. They can even “see” through the coating to measure a pipe’s integrity, eliminating the need for - more costly – means of inspection.

Shell Ventures invested in Halfwave to scale up the deployment of its pipeline inspection technology and accelerate further product development. Ever since, Shell has used Halfwave’s technology to inspect hundreds of miles of pipelines in multiple geographies and was able to get integrity data for lines that we previously considered to be ‘un-inspectable’. Taking the next step in their journey, they have recently deployed their external pipeline inspection tool in one of Shell’s subsea lines at 2300m water depth(!), meaning 230 times the atmospheric pressure.

For more details about this collaboration, have a look at this LinkedIn article which our head of Implementation Management, Michiel van Haersma Buma recently published. 

Wireless intelligent cameras 

Another company that I would like to highlight is Osprey Informatics, part of our portfolio since 2018. This Canadian company provides intelligent visual monitoring solutions for industrial operations. Using a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform, Osprey cost-effectively manages remote cameras at a massive scale, analyzing images and video footage with artificial intelligence and providing actionable insights to users. 

This short video, featuring my colleague Giancarlo Savini (Implementation Manager at Shell Ventures in Houston), shows how Osprey’s solution was a great fit for one of our asset’s ageing surveillance equipment. 

Both Halfwave and Osprey are great examples of how small-medium enterprises can make a real difference in a big corporate like Shell. Their success is founded on a great team, superior technology and tremendous stamina.  

Check out our website for more information about Shell Ventures, our team, and our portfolio.

*The title of this post was borrowed from Lou Gerstner, former chairman of the board and chief executive officer of IBM, who wrote an inspiring book with the same title.