Houston entrepreneur encourages improvement during a difficult time

Time to Grow

VPC founder Claudio Gutierrez. Courtesy photo

Flexibility has always been a core component of Valens Project Consulting, but the unpredictable last year — as COVID-19 has ravaged the economy and oil industry, especially — has strengthened that vital skill even more.

"As the lockdown loomed and predictions of a closed economy foretold the massive loss of business, I was ready to hunker down and expect the loss of 100 percent of our customers," says VPC's owner and founder Claudio Gutierrez. "But by May, VPC had lost only a quarter of our customers, and by September we were down by just 50 percent — not nearly the disaster I had been prepared for."

Gutierrez understood that this situation was ultimately temporary, and when they were able to, these accounts would return as customers — with no hard feelings from his end.

Instead, VPC focused on what it could do to improve its own operations during the pandemic, and top of the list was growing the staff. Since the worst of the lockdown, VPC has expanded its permanent engineering resources in a variety of disciplines, including electrical engineer, process engineer, and reservoir engineer.

Its industries have expanded, too. VPC started out mainly in the engineering field, taking on project management, process improvement, cost reductions, and more on a contract basis.

Now, after a slight COVID delay, it has expanded its base of fabrication and industrial distribution companies to include those offering disaster relief (such as temporary emergency housing), automation companies, and construction companies.

VPC is even venturing into public projects, with a few in partnership with Harris County currently in the works.

Gutierrez also focused on the value of face-to-face meetings by traveling to seek out new markets, and now supports projects in Florida, Washington, and Louisiana. Next on the docket: expanding outside the U.S. and into Latin America.

But until these global plans can be realized, Valens Project Consulting has been organizing virtual activities and developing a podcast presence. You might have spotted them on LinkedIn, where Gutierrez's personal network has grown significantly and VPC has been adding followers daily.

The importance of in-person networking has not been lost on Gutierrez, however. He makes sure all precautions are in place for both his staff and clients, and that everyone's safety is top of mind.

"I've become an advocate for in-person meetings," he says. "I don't want virtual meetings to become 'the new normal.'"

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Visit the website learn more about Valens Project Consulting or its offshoot, Potens Energy.

When time is money, speed is everything. Photo by chain45154/Getty Images

Houston entrepreneur explains how aiming small generates big growth even in trying times

Project by Project

Since founding Valens Project Consulting in 2017, Claudio Gutierrez has seen his business continue a steady climb upwards as smaller companies discover the benefit of having engineering assistance on retainer.

While large firms might have an entire department dedicated to engineering, project management, process improvement, and cost reduction, it is the medium-to-small companies looking to fill that gap on a case-by-case basis that are Gutierrez's bread and butter.

"I attribute our success to our business model," he says. "The companies we work with may not always need our services, but when they do, they need them yesterday."

A low-cost retainer-like structure means that — even better — those services have already been paid for. Larger companies can blow through their budgets quickly, but Valens' small, consistent price tag means they are always available and ready to begin the next project.

"It sounds counterintuitive to seek out smaller companies, but it works for us," he says.

The Valens Project Consulting team can also leap into action immediately with an incredibly quick response time.

"Being so flexible has been very valuable to us," Gutierrez says. "Some large oil and gas companies tend to move slowly, but when time is money, small businesses need that speed."

Valens is ensuring even quicker response times during this current uncertain environment caused by COVID-19, with constant communication and greater flexibility with payments. And now, in the midst of the worst oil crash in history, he understands how important it is to be able to support his company's customers with flexible payment terms and going above and beyond what's expected of engineering support.

"We're all wearing different hats at various times these days — it's a policy that our current customers appreciate," says Gutierrez.

It's understanding what these companies need, and when they need it, that is Gutierrez's special skill, in addition to something unique for his industry.

"For an engineer, I've been told I have people skills," he says. In fact, his warm demeanor and amiable personality work in tandem with other "soft skills" such as being trilingual and growing up global (he's originally from Nicaragua), having experienced different cultures all over the world.

Claudio Gutierrez. Courtesy photo

Though Valens Project Consulting specializes mainly in the oil and gas industry, it has made inroads into food distribution and the medical field.

It's also expanding into a different vertical: the distribution of heavy industrial equipment. Potens Energy ("potens" means "power" in Latin, just as "valens" means "effective" or "strong") was recently formalized as a new company with Gutierrez's business partner, Danny Salinas, PhD.

"Diversification is key," says Gutierrez. "While the bulk of our business will always be energy and power generation, it doesn't hurt to explore necessary elements that all people need."

Claudio Gutierrez. Courtesy photo

Houston entrepreneur engineers support solutions for businesses

In the Lone Star State, size is often seen as a badge of honor — after all, "everything's bigger in Texas." However, small and medium-sized businesses are the bread and butter of Claudio Gutierrez's engineering consulting business, Valens Project Consulting.

Throughout his years as an engineer and manager at a variety of companies, Gutierrez noticed a gap.

"I found that smaller companies that didn't have a need for dedicated engineering departments occasionally did need help with engineering, project management, process improvement, cost reduction, and things of that nature," he says.

In 2017, Gutierrez decided to do something about it and officially launched Valens Project Consulting. The company specializes in helping small and medium-sized businesses grow their revenue by focusing on business efficiencies and strengthening an existing customer base.

Valens is a Latin word that translates to "effective" or "strong," and those are Gutierrez's goals for the companies with which he works.

Based in Houston since 2007, the Nicaraguan-born Gutierrez has worked at a variety of companies, ranging from an armored vehicle manufacturer to several cable management companies. At each company, Gutierrez's hard work was consistently rewarded with promotions and projects all over the world.

Throughout his years in the engineering world, Gutierrez honed his skills as a project manager and was also known for his great people skills. So he decided to combine his knack for sales with his engineering acumen and fill a void he'd begun noticing in the industry: that of reliable engineering staffing for companies that don't necessarily need an entire department.

Gutierrez started out as the sole employee of Valens Project Consulting, but now manages a growing staff of engineering professionals. The company has expanded its services from simply project management to include business development, lean manufacturing implementation, and more. They're currently in the initial phases of adding a new business vertical — industrial distribution — through which Valens Project Consulting will sell heavy equipment.

One factor that sets Valens Project Consulting apart is how nimble it is. A smaller staff, Gutierrez explains, can be "extremely flexible and have extremely fast reaction times." Valens Project Consulting achieves this through a combination of remote work and collaboration with other small companies.

"We understand our customers' intents and needs, and we're mindful of limited budgets, so we believe in fulfilling the spirit of the project, rather than being beholden to the letter of the project," says Gutierrez. "We can do this because we fully embrace technology that allows for remote work as much as possible, and by not being captive to a single, central location."

In addition to his contributions to Houston's business economy, Gutierrez is a staunch participant in and supporter of the arts. He has played classical piano for nearly three decades and used to be in a heavy metal band. Gutierrez is a huge fan of the Houston Symphony and is on the Houston Grand Opera board of trustees.

Gutierrez is both creative and analytical, and combines these two mindsets to create holistic business solutions for his clients.

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Elon Musk's SpaceX is about to make its debut on Wall Street

Money Moves

Elon Musk's rocket company SpaceX will make its debut on Wall Street Friday, June 12, and both institutional and retail investors are expected to gobble up the 555.6 million shares going up for sale at $135 apiece. Musk, already the world's richest man, could become its first trillionaire.

SpaceX is likely to become the biggest IPO ever, with proceeds of around $75 billion. SpaceX hopes to become the first company to send people to Mars. In fact, part of Musk’s future compensation depends on SpaceX eventually establishing a colony of at least 1 million people on the red planet.

Why SpaceX is going public now

In a video conference on Musk's social media platform X, he told JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon that people have suggested for the last 10 years that he take SpaceX public. He's doing it now because the company plans to put 100,000 next-generation Starlink satellites into orbit. Deploying AI data centers in space is a “massive new growth base and you need capital for that,” he said.

Going public provides access to the capital that SpaceX needs. But it also exposes it to more scrutiny from shareholders and more regulatory oversight. That includes filing quarterly financial reports, which critics say incentivizes short-term thinking over longer-term planning and creates unnecessary costs for a company. Securities regulators are currently soliciting public comment on a proposal to require public companies to file the financial reports only twice every year.

How the IPO impacts the company

Musk will hold the majority of a special class of shares, giving him control over decisions related to company strategy, finances and personnel. On the latter, because of his ownership of most of these Class B shares, the only person who can fire Musk as CEO is Musk.

The company credits Musk with being the “driving force” behind its growth, innovation and success. But what happens if Musk is no longer in the picture? SpaceX warns that the loss of Musk could disrupt its ability to execute its strategy as well as hurt its “reputation and relationships with customers, partners and other stakeholders.”

The company also warns that finding a replacement with the same skills and experience as Musk would be time-consuming, if not nearly impossible. As Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives wrote Wednesday, “At the end of the day Musk is SpaceX and SpaceX is Musk.”

What could make or break SpaceX

Currently in the test phase, the gigantic reusable Starship rocket is key to SpaceX realizing Musk's ambitions. Much of the commercial space business hinges on SpaceX developing Starship’s capability to be fully reusable and hearty enough for a quick turnaround between flights. If that doesn't happen, SpaceX warns that putting data centers and satellites in space will take longer and cost more money, meaning it risks customers bailing on the company.

Analysts say that by pioneering reusable rockets, SpaceX has established a clear lead on competitors such as Blue Origin, led by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The Starlink satellite business competes with, among others, AST SpaceMobile – which is relying on a SpaceX rocket to send its latest generation of satellites into orbit next week.

The prospectus filed last week says SpaceX’s biggest potential market is the sale of business-oriented artificial intelligence products designed to transform how people get work done. It’s an opportunity SpaceX predicts would be worth $22.7 trillion if it could somehow dominate rivals like Anthropic, OpenAI and Microsoft in a highly competitive industry. But the prospectus shows no clear path to profitability for the xAI business, which merged with SpaceX earlier this year.

Why Wall Street is paying attention

If the SpaceX IPO is as successful, the stock could quickly join the Nasdaq 100, a widely followed index that tracks the 100 largest non-financial companies in the composite. That's important because some popular funds, such as the $460 billion QQQ exchange-traded fund, mimic the index and will automatically buy whatever is listed in the index.

Nasdaq recently changed its rules to allow select companies to enter the Nasdaq 100 after just 15 trading days.

S&P Dow Jones Indices, on the other hand, is sticking to established and more traditional thresholds that will not allow SpaceX or other companies with gargantuan IPOs faster entry into its S&P 500 index. That means even high-profile companies will still need to wait for their stocks to trade a full 12 months before they can enter the index.

Companies want to be in the S&P 500 in particular because it's arguably the most important index on Wall Street, with trillions of dollars either mimicking it exactly or benchmarked against it. Vanguard's VOO fund that tracks the S&P 500 has roughly $950 billion invested in it, for example.

NASA unveils Artemis III astronauts at Johnson Space Center in Houston

To the moon

NASA on Tuesday, June 9, revealed the crew for its Artemis III mission, the next step in the space agency's plan to eventually land astronauts on the moon.

The announcement came two months after Artemis II's record-breaking trip around the moon that surpassed the distance record of Apollo 13.

NASA's Randy Bresnik, Frank Rubio, Andre Douglas and the European Space Agency's Luca Parmitano won't fly to the moon or land on the surface. Instead, they’ll orbit Earth while practicing docking their Orion capsule with two lunar landers.

“To the Artemis III crew, we wish you Godspeed on the journey ahead,” said NASA administrator Jared Isaacman.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin are racing to deliver the lunar landers. The two-week demo is targeted for 2027. Blue Origin suffered a recent setback when its massive rocket exploded during an engine-firing test on the launch pad in Florida, shaking nearby homes and illuminating the sky with an orange fireball.

NASA's Jeremy Parsons said the setback is a learning opportunity and that the space agency is confident Blue Origin's rocket will be ready in time.

NASA's Artemis program aims to return astronauts to the moon's surface for the first time since the 1970s. A recent revamp of the program announced by Isaacman aims to fast-track it similarly to the Apollo era, adding the upcoming spaceflight around Earth before eyeing a lunar landing in 2028.

“We are certainly humbled as a crew to be able to be your crew that executes this Artemis III mission in space,” said Bresnik, Artemis III commander.

Added Douglas, mission specialist: “My brain — it is going a mile a minute right now. But my heart, it is so warm. It is so full."

In May, NASA awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to four companies, including Blue Origin, to build landers, rovers and drones for a future moon base. Isaacman said the goal of the moon base is to lay the foundation for a Mars expedition.

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