I believe I was always meant to be an entrepreneur... to generate value for others. When I was in Junior High School, I bought a pack of gum on the way to school every day for $.25 and then sold individual sticks out of the pack to my fellow students for $.25 per piece! I had a lawn business as a kid that made more money on a Saturday morning than my buddies made all weekend taking tickets at the movie theater. In those formative years, I learned that creating value is a big deal... and it comes in many shapes and sizes (from a piece of gum to avoiding the 100 degree Texas heat by letting the neighbor kid mow your lawn).
One of my fondest memories as a young kid was when I won a competition at my summer vacation Bible school for bringing the most friends. We filled that Olds station wagon to the gills... pre-seatbelt era of course or we wouldn't have been able to pile them all in like we did! The prize was great, but what I most remember and enjoyed was the winning part. I think it's why I have always been drawn to creating, leading, and growing organizations.
Through the years, I have had the opportunity to help start Kanakuk's K-7 as the program director, grow one of National Instruments' largest sales territories as a 24 year old, start and grow 4 branches for Optimation, start and sell vibDaq, and lead the young marrieds' ministry at BridgePoint Bible Church.
Using technology to solve complex problems comes easily for me, which is why I have excelled in working with upstream oil and gas companies over the past 15 years. I have experience building automated test systems (for new product design and manufacturing test), building field systems (oilfield drilling, completions, and operations), and creating product software to bring client's upstream product ideas to life.
I see Velentium as the union of my love for people, my passion for excellence, my strength in solving technical problems, and my deep experience with oil and gas companies. I have a dream of building Velentium to be a source of progress and peace in the lives of our clients, our employees, and their families. I dream of a day when Velentium can fuel entrepreneurism for people throughout the world who don't have the ample opportunities and resources we have.
And last (but certainly not least!) is Julie. She's my favorite person in the world and I'm crazy about her. We've been married since 1998, and during that time we've had a lot of fun hiking, biking, reading books aloud, and raising our four young kids – two adopted boys from Kazakhstan and two more biological kiddos. There's never a dull moment around our place!
As COO at Velentium, it is my privilege to ensure that your project is excellent in every way. The technical success of your project is forefront, but equally important to me is that the process is well managed by the staff at Velentium. Over the past twenty years I have recruited and trained many staff members in a variety of settings. From my years of experience I have learned what each of my team members needs to know, both from a technical and project management standpoint, to make your project a success.
I began my career at Intermedics in Angleton, TX, developing software for medical devices. After that company was purchased by Guidant and shut down in 1998, I joined Dan Purvis and we have been working together closely ever since. I have personally coded or supervised the code of over 300 projects in the past twenty years.
My early experience in the medical device industry has given me what I consider to be a great lifelong advantage as it relates to creating successful projects. I learned from the get-go the importance of robust systems that are developed in a way that is repeatable and makes sense. I have been able to apply these same principles to our work in the oil and gas industry and transfer these lessons on to our staff.
I have been married to my wife Stacy for twenty-two years, and we are recently enjoying the process of watching our two children reach adulthood. Now we get to be "young again", and we spend most of this new found extra time traveling to new destinations together.
As Velentium CTO, my role is to leverage or create appropriate technologies to address unmet needs and improve quality of life, particularly through medical device development. I've found the most successful way to achieve this is by nurturing innovation, streamlining processes, and maintaining a focused vision. As Quality Manager and a licensed Professional Engineer, I oversee our certified ISO 9001 and ISO 13485 quality system.
My calling is in healthcare and medical technology, predominantly implantable medical devices, and my journey has covered exhilarating spans: micro-implants to bioastronautic systems, startups to multinational corporations, detailed design to executive management, process creation to international standards development, risk analysis to litigation expert witness. Across all these spectra, my goal is consistent: apply the appropriate solution to the real problem. I have a passion for the elegant solution – one that is simpler, consumes less energy, has fewer components, is smaller, needs less maintenance, costs less – to produce designs which become flagship and platform technologies, returning value far beyond original goals.
I also love to travel with my wife, Cindy, visiting worldwide locations and cultures and learning their histories, seeing first-hand the role of healthcare and medical technology in quality of life, and empowering a passion for solutions driven by compassion for people.
I love people and solving problems with great looking software!
I have been creating solutions with LabVIEW for more than 20 years. Along the way I have been privileged to work with an incredible pool of talented engineers in many industries including electronics manufacturing, aerospace, medical device manufacturing, and oil and gas. Whether I am gathering validation data in the base of a research wind turbine or tuning the controller for a 60k PSI pressure generator, I never fail to get excited by tackling challenging technical problems and making projects successful for my co-workers and customers. Successful implementation of projects requires more than talent and availability, however. At Velentium we focus on following well-defined development processes to ensure that projects are not only done, but complete.
I have been married to Trisha for nearly 25 years. Along with our three kids, we greatly enjoy this adventure called life. I am not ashamed to say they are my favorite things and make me a better person in more ways than I know.
Larry Bickle is a founding partner of Midstream Energy Holdings, LLC. Prior to Midstream Energy Holdings, LLC, Dr. Bickle was the Co-founder and Managing Director for Haddington Ventures, LLC. HVLLC is a private equity investment management firm that was responsible for the successful development of LODI Gas Storage in California and the Bobcat Gas Storage Project in Louisiana. Prior to his time at Haddington, he was Co-founder and Chairman of Market Hub Partners. Anchored by its flagship operations at Moss Bluff and Egan Gas Storage, Market Hub Partners has been recognized as a world leader in origination, development and HDSS operations. Mr. Bickle was also Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO of Tejas Power Corp (formerly NYSE:TPC). It was at Tejas that Mr. Bickle was instrumental in developing the concept of "market hubs" to the natural gas transportation grid.
Mr. Neumann is a Registered Professional Engineer and has been practicing chemical and process engineering for the oil and gas industry for over forty years. He has been involved in process design, supervision, construction, startup and operations management of natural gas process plants in the United States and worldwide. Mr. Neumann's most recent experience includes three years as Vice President of Engineering and Operations at US Infrastructure; two years as Manager of Engineering for Ceritas Energy where he was responsible for the construction, startup and operations management of a 50 MMcfd gas processing plant in Liberty County, Texas; five years of service with Fluor Corporation where he was Director of Process Technology and an engineering/technical functional expert where he was the lead engineer specializing in upstream oil and gas processing and led the design of five world scale gas processing projects and several conceptual LNG terminal projects; two years as an independent engineering consultant; Manager of Process Engineering for Conoco, Inc. where he managed a group of engineers tasked with new project design and operations support to Conoco gathering and processing facilities in the United States and Trinidad, including gathering and LPG extraction, LPG fractionation and coal bed methane handling; and ten years with Natural Gas Clearinghouse, where he held various key roles in building the NGC/Dynegy gas processing asset business from its inception in 1988 up to and beyond its merger with Warren Division of Chevron in 1996.