At first glance, the worlds of oil trading and tech startups seem poles apart. One thrives in physical barrels, freight spreads, and geopolitical risk, the other in lines of code, user growth metrics, and venture capital rounds. Yet beneath the surface, both are high-stakes arenas defined by uncertainty, rapid iteration, and the relentless pursuit of asymmetric returns.

Having spent over two decades navigating volatile energy markets, from arbitrage to refinery turnarounds in the Middle East, I’ve come to see surprising parallels between the trading floor and the startup garage. More importantly, each camp has the opportunity to grow by learning lessons from the other industry.

What Oil Traders Can Learn from Tech Startups

1. Embrace “Fail Fast” But with Discipline

Tech startups celebrate rapid prototyping and iterative failure. Oil traders, by contrast, are often penalized for any P&L volatility. But in today’s fragmented markets, where regulatory shifts, ESG pressures, and digital disruption redefine value overnight, rigid playbooks become liabilities. Traders can adopt a startup mindset: test small positions as “minimum viable trades,” continue to gather real-time feedback, and scale only when the signal is validated. The key difference? Traders must couple this agility with ironclad risk controls, because unlike a failed app, a mispriced crude cargo can sink a book. If they "fail fast" with a purpose, they might be surprisingly pleased to see what this brings.

2. Productize Insights, Not Just Positions

Startups don’t just sell features, they solve problems. Similarly, top traders don’t just execute deals; they package market intelligence into actionable narratives for stakeholders and clients. Whether it’s explaining how Red Sea disruptions reshape Mediterranean diesel cracks or why Nigerian Bonny Light is mispriced relative to Dated Brent, I find that the best traders act as internal “product managers” of risk-adjusted insight. This builds confidence and trust within C-suite leaders and unlocks strategic partnerships beyond the desk.

3. Leverage Data Without Worshiping It

Tech runs on data, but so does modern trading. Yet while algorithms dominate paper markets, physical trading still hinges on human judgment: a refiner’s maintenance delay, a port official’s discretion, a broker’s whisper. The lesson? Use data to inform, not dictate. Like a savvy founder who joins analytics with customer intuition, elite traders blend satellite imagery, flow data, and AI-driven forecasts with on-the-ground relationships. The edge lies in synthesis, not substitution.

What Tech Startups Can Learn from Oil Traders

1. Capital Efficiency Is Survival

Startups burn cash chasing growth; traders survive by preserving capital through cycles. In an era of rising interest rates and tighter VC funding, tech founders would do well to adopt a trader’s discipline: every dollar deployed must earn its keep. Think like a trader managing a position, define your max loss upfront, hedge key assumptions, and know when to walk away. Growth without margin is fragility disguised as momentum. Focus and commitment to discipline when investing their funding will reap rewards in the long run.

2. Navigate Real-World Friction

Code deploys in minutes; pipelines take years. Oil traders operate in a world of physical constraints: vessel availability, storage limits, customs delays, force majeure. Tech entrepreneurs often underestimate how messy execution gets outside Silicon Valley. Imagine building a digital tool to track or verify carbon emissions from fuel shipments, you’ll need to understand how actual barrels move, how contracts are structured, and how compliance is enforced on the ground. A combined approach where you partner with operators, not just pitch to them, turns theoretical solutions into adopted ones.

3. Master Asymmetric Risk/Reward

Great traders don’t win every trade; they win big when they’re right and lose little when they’re wrong. They're also not too proud to admit that they were wrong. This is the essence of optionality: structuring deals with embedded upside (e.g., swing cargoes, storage plays, blending flexibility) while capping downside. Startups can improve if they apply this by designing business models with low fixed costs, variable scalability, in addition to having multiple exit paths (acquisition, licensing, spin-out). Don’t bet the company on one outcome, engineer optionality into your strategy.

The Convergence Is Already Happening

We’re seeing this fusion in real time. Commodity trading services now run proprietary AI teams. Energy startups embed former traders to design realistic go-to-market strategies. And platforms like blockchain-based commodity exchanges or IoT-enabled tank monitoring are blurring the line between physical flow and digital insight.

The future belongs to those who have a presence in both worlds: the trader who thinks like a founder, and the founder who respects the physics of real assets.

Final Thought

Oil trading teaches you to respect reality, because the market settles in cash, not clicks. Tech startups teach you to reimagine what’s possible. Together, they form a powerful dialectic: grounded innovation, forged through resilience.

In an age where energy transition, digitalization, and geopolitical realignment are rewriting the rules, the most valuable skill isn’t coding or cracking, it’s the ability to operate at the intersection of both.

Said Addi brings over 18 years of experience in the global commodities trading industry. Having worked in major hubs including London and Singapore, he is now based in Dubai, where he serves as Global Head of Fuel Oil at E3 Energy. He has held senior roles at leading organisations such as Shell Trading and Gunvor Middle East DMCC (part of the Gunvor Group) and advises executive leadership on strategic market developments.