In January of 2003 the CEO of I/O let the company know that he was leaving to join Halliburton. That made working for the company much less attractive to me.
Around the same time a headhunter started calling me asking if I would be interested in joining a small software company that was recently created out of an industry sponsored consortium. I think my first interview was in December of 2002 I finally received an offer in May of 2003.
I started the job June 1, 2003. OpenSpirit had 18 employees at the time, and under $2 million in sales. Our cash position was precarious, and I was brought in to try and take this company to a stage where we could sell it.
The Company was dedicated to upstream (that is, exploration and production), subsurface (that is, seismic data and interpretations, well log data and interpretations, and other information associated with the view of the earth model), middleware (software that performs operations between data and applications. Think of plumbing.) Our clients were mostly the Information Technology and Data Management departments in the oil companies. The users were mostly geologists and geophysicists.
My first day on the job was in Stavanger, Norway. The EAGE (European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers) convention was being held there. We also had a user forum in town. It was an eye opening experience. The team was good, but the clients had many, many issues with the software. (Most of it focused on the speed of the operation and what sort of data the application move)
The company was funded with a reasonable amount of capital for the market size. There were a couple of other companies that were started at the same time with similar goals (Trade Ranger and PetroCosm were the two biggest. They each had investments of about $100 million each. We had, to this point, about $4.5 million)who crashed and burned well before I even started with OpenSpirit.
The Company was funded by Schlumberger Technology Company, Shell Technology Ventures, and Chevron Technology Ventures. Later, we added Paradigm Geophysical as a balancing partner to Schlumberger.
We did go through several small rounds of capital before we brought in a large round when Paradigm joined. In a small company like this, cash was always the problem that was hanging over your head. It didn't really help that nobody in the company has any experience working for a start-up. I would have company meetings regularly where I would express my discomfort at the state of our Balance Sheet. I found no commiseration. But by virtue of the fact that we were small and lean, we were able to make money for almost every year I was running the company.
We grew pretty strongly in the middle years of my tenure. We had a good team, though at times rather dysfunctional. I won't go into the details, but suffice it to say that management was fired, management quit, and the company survived in spite of both events. (de mortuis nil nisi bonum).
The decision to sell the company, and the process we went through deserve their own post.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Friday, June 24, 2011
Input/Output: My life in manufacturing
You may have noticed a theme in most of my jobs to this point. The only company that actually made anything was Exxon. (S/N notwithstanding).
But now I was about to embark on a new branch of my career. I/O (now called Ion, if you are at all interested. Or maybe Inova, depending on what part of the company you are looking at) made stuff. We made seismic acquisition stuff. Geophones, Hydrophones, Seismic Cables, Land Acquisition Systems, Vibrator Trucks (not as sexy as their name implies), and everything to support the acquisition of seismic data.
Collecting seismic data is really doing nothing more than recording sound. Granted, you are recording sound from thousands of different sources located either on the trackless ocean or buried in the ground over many square miles, and then the sound waves need to be reconstructed so you can see what they bounced off of, many thousands of feet underground. (crazy stuff. The largest Seismic Vessels now (from PGS, thank you very much) can tow as many as 22 streamer cables, each about 8 km long. They are the largest man made moving things on earth). You can imagine that you need to know exactly where those geophones are located, and when, exactly you deploy the "source" of the sound waves (either explosives like dynamite or the vibe trucks mentioned above). It is complicated.
I was hired to run the Land Data Systems group. We were responsible for the new digital "geophone" (actually a MEMS accelerometer) the Central System, which is the computer that keeps track of where all the data is coming from and then puts it all in the right place, and the sales thereof.
It was a hard time in the oil business, and not many oil companies were collecting land data. And not many service companies were buying new seismic equipment. But we had a net technology (Vectorseis is what we called it) and were sort of effective. I had to cut my staff from over 160 people to under 70 people (which was not fun), outsource some manufacturing, and try and learn about things like "Long Lead Time Items" and "Inventory". Neither of these were too important (or even existed!) in the software or data world.
I had a good time learning these things. I would walk around our factory floor and pick things up (which you can't do with software) just to hold in my hand something I made.
We did pretty well considering the environment. We increases sales in the year I was there from about $3 million a quarter to about $8 million a quarter.
But soon enough some headhunters came calling. I was destined to get back into software. I worked for I/O for 14 months. There was such a strong culture there (and such a great CEO, who quit before I did) that I still consider myself an I/O Alumni.
But now I was about to embark on a new branch of my career. I/O (now called Ion, if you are at all interested. Or maybe Inova, depending on what part of the company you are looking at) made stuff. We made seismic acquisition stuff. Geophones, Hydrophones, Seismic Cables, Land Acquisition Systems, Vibrator Trucks (not as sexy as their name implies), and everything to support the acquisition of seismic data.
Collecting seismic data is really doing nothing more than recording sound. Granted, you are recording sound from thousands of different sources located either on the trackless ocean or buried in the ground over many square miles, and then the sound waves need to be reconstructed so you can see what they bounced off of, many thousands of feet underground. (crazy stuff. The largest Seismic Vessels now (from PGS, thank you very much) can tow as many as 22 streamer cables, each about 8 km long. They are the largest man made moving things on earth). You can imagine that you need to know exactly where those geophones are located, and when, exactly you deploy the "source" of the sound waves (either explosives like dynamite or the vibe trucks mentioned above). It is complicated.
I was hired to run the Land Data Systems group. We were responsible for the new digital "geophone" (actually a MEMS accelerometer) the Central System, which is the computer that keeps track of where all the data is coming from and then puts it all in the right place, and the sales thereof.
It was a hard time in the oil business, and not many oil companies were collecting land data. And not many service companies were buying new seismic equipment. But we had a net technology (Vectorseis is what we called it) and were sort of effective. I had to cut my staff from over 160 people to under 70 people (which was not fun), outsource some manufacturing, and try and learn about things like "Long Lead Time Items" and "Inventory". Neither of these were too important (or even existed!) in the software or data world.
I had a good time learning these things. I would walk around our factory floor and pick things up (which you can't do with software) just to hold in my hand something I made.
We did pretty well considering the environment. We increases sales in the year I was there from about $3 million a quarter to about $8 million a quarter.
But soon enough some headhunters came calling. I was destined to get back into software. I worked for I/O for 14 months. There was such a strong culture there (and such a great CEO, who quit before I did) that I still consider myself an I/O Alumni.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Post Bankruptcy. A New Beginning
I am very happy to say that Bell Geospace was able to exit bankruptcy. I was an active participant in most of the proceedings, but I finally decided that it would be best if I passed the reigns on to the new president. He finished the job admirably, with one of our investors. I am also happy to say that the Company is surviving, even thriving, today.
After leaving BGI, my fiancee and I decided to take a break, and left the country for several months. While not technically a job, that trip is still a big part of why I am where I am today. It gives one plenty of perspective to take some time off and spend some time in beautiful places with someone you love. It focuses the mind strongly on what is, and what isn't important.
I use to have a website with photos and stories from that trip. But I used GeoCities,so it is all gone. I tried to capture most of the to blogger, but it is cumbersome. You can see the posts here, with a little work.
When we returned to the US, I took a couple of years where I consulted and generally enjoyed myself.
But all good things had to come to an end.
I made a small investment with a friend into a company that made solid streamer cables for seismic data acquisition. (The company originally had its manufacturing done in Mineral Wells. My friend had his own airplane, and to try and convince me to make an investment, he flew me and another friend up there from Houston. On take-off on our way home, he lost an engine. (luckily it had two). Funny way to try and raise money.)
We sold this company to Input/Output. They offered me a job as the Business Unit Manager of their Land Seismic Systems division. That was certainly a new thing for me, and it set me on a new and interesting path.
After leaving BGI, my fiancee and I decided to take a break, and left the country for several months. While not technically a job, that trip is still a big part of why I am where I am today. It gives one plenty of perspective to take some time off and spend some time in beautiful places with someone you love. It focuses the mind strongly on what is, and what isn't important.
I use to have a website with photos and stories from that trip. But I used GeoCities,so it is all gone. I tried to capture most of the to blogger, but it is cumbersome. You can see the posts here, with a little work.
When we returned to the US, I took a couple of years where I consulted and generally enjoyed myself.
But all good things had to come to an end.
I made a small investment with a friend into a company that made solid streamer cables for seismic data acquisition. (The company originally had its manufacturing done in Mineral Wells. My friend had his own airplane, and to try and convince me to make an investment, he flew me and another friend up there from Houston. On take-off on our way home, he lost an engine. (luckily it had two). Funny way to try and raise money.)
We sold this company to Input/Output. They offered me a job as the Business Unit Manager of their Land Seismic Systems division. That was certainly a new thing for me, and it set me on a new and interesting path.
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