When Ryan Vinson was younger, he remembered a drive he took with his father down I-20 to Odessa, Texas, and seeing pump jacks along the way. He asked his father why they were moving up and down, and he replied, “Son, they’re making money.” Originally from Midland, Texas, fourth-generation oilman Vinson learned the ins and outs of the oil and gas industry from his family.

During the summers after high school, he worked on a rig with his dad, earning enough money to buy a truck and pay his way through college.

Vinson graduated with honors from Texas Tech University with a degree in energy commerce and petroleum land management. He holds a master’s degree in natural resource law studies in oil and gas law and energy law from University of Denver Sturm College of Law and is an active certified professional landman.

He spent the last 10 years gaining experience in the industry as a landman for companies like Noble Energy Inc., BreitBurn Energy Partners LP and Petrohawk Energy Corp. and as a royalty and working interest owner. His family owns minerals across 40 counties in Texas, New Mexico and Arkansas. Vinson also worked at Bessemer Trust as head of oil and gas advisory where he was in charge of managing mineral, royalty and nonoperated working interests for wealthy clients with interests across 17 states. While at Bessemer, he noticed how fragmented the mineral market was and how managing methods were labor-intensive and antiquated.

His stint with Bessemer ignited the idea of founding MineralWare, a mineral management software company based in Fort Worth, with Dr. John Baum, the former associate director of the TCU Energy Institute. Prior to co-founding MineralWare, Ryan founded Energy Clearinghouse, which was an online platform to buy and sell oil and gas assets.

He is a member of National Association of Royalty Owners, American Association of Professional Landmen, Dallas Association of Petroleum Landmen, Fort Worth Association of Petroleum Landmen, ADAM Energy Forum, and Petroleum Engineers Club of Dallas. He has also served on the Board of Directors for the John W. Nick Male Breast Cancer Foundation.

Ryan lives in Fort Worth, Texas, with his wife Michelle and two young daughters.

Investor How did MineralWare start?

Vinson I attended one of TCU’s royalty owner programs, a three-day educational program to teach mineral owners how to better manage their minerals and royalties. I met Dr. John Baum who is a co-founder with me at MineralWare and the founder of the TCU Royalty Owner Programs.

I'm thinking he’s got all these people in his programs that are just dying for information. He’s put thousands through the TCU Royalty Owner programs and it’s the same song and dance. Somebody told me it’s “unscrambled chaos.” Dr. Baum and I teamed up to start up MineralWare to help mineral owners better understand what they have and to uncover valuable insights across their portfolio.

Investor As CEO of MineralWare, what do you enjoy about your role?

Vinson The people aspect and the team building aspect, are what I enjoy most. I’m not the best at a lot of things, but I think if God granted me anything—emotional intelligence is probably what he did give me. I enjoy putting a team together and building it. This is a successful company solely because of the team that we have in place. I've never seen anything like it.

Investor What was the experience like starting MineralWare during the beginning of a downturn?

When we started the company in April 2014, the oil price was over $100 a barrel. When we got to the end of the year, it was around $60 and kept dropping. We’re thinking, what’s going to happen? And all of a sudden we doubled our revenues and kept getting new accounts. These folks’ [royalty] checks aren’t as big, and they want to figure out a way to increase their revenues. Our business increased because of it. We were blessed that we had a product that could withstand a downturn and was agnostic to oil price.

Investor What goals do you have for 2018?

Vinson Our focus now is on the institutional side of the market. The institutional side perks my interest [based] on my experience at Bessemer. We continue to add new features to MineralWare and are never idle. The team that we have believes 110% in what we’re doing and is excited to come to work. I haven’t seen anything like it in any company I’ve ever worked at. It’s something that’s very special and something that we would like to maintain as we grow.

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