About this episode
The industrial world is still running on manual processes and siloed data while our phones got smarter ten times over, and that gap is exactly where Titanium Innovation Investments is placing its bets. Abhinav Jain and Imran Kizilbash, co-founders and managing partners at Titanium Innovation Investments, break down what it actually takes to sell tech into enterprises that move slow by design, why product market fit is something you can lose just as fast as you find it, and how they evaluate founding teams when the revenue is basically zero. Plus some real talk on Houston's startup ecosystem and whether the city has the deal flow to back up the ambition.Click here to watch a video of this episode.Join the conversation shaping the future of energy.Collide is the community where oil & gas professionals connect, share insights, and solve real-world problems together. No noise. No fluff. Just the discussions that move our industry forward.Apply today at collide.ioClick here to view the episode transcript.
0:00 Introduction1:00 Titanium Innovation Investments thesis and origin story4:17 Why industrial tech adoption lags behind consumer tech7:01 Data as an asset in M&A and enterprise transactions10:23 Imran and Abhinav's career journeys from field to finance15:04 What product market fit actually looks like at seed stage19:24 Unit economics and business models in hard tech vs software29:56 Cutting through the AI hype in industrial applications34:23 Data ownership, legal challenges, and enterprise selling40:16 Change management and why adoption cycles are longer43:21 Portfolio construction and sector diversification50:13 Houston's startup ecosystem and deal sourcing nationally1:04:18 Advice for founders on fundraising and building trusthttps://twitter.com/collide_aihttps://www.tiktok.com/@collide.iohttps://www.facebook.com/collide.iohttps://www.instagram.com/collide.iohttps://www.youtube.com/@collide_iohttps://bsky.app/profile/collide-ai.bsky.socialhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/collideai
