Management Team

Larry Warnock, CEO
Larry WarnockLarry serves as Chief Executive Officer of Phurnace Software. He provides strategic guidance and operational expertise to the company. Larry has over 25 years of experience working with start-up and established technology companies. Most recently he was CMO of Vignette, a publicly traded enterprise content management software company. As a Venture Partner at AV Labs (Austin Ventures), Larry assisted with the incubation of several early-stage software companies. Previously, he was an executive at start-up OnLink Technologies which was acquired by CRM market-leader Siebel Systems. Earlier in his career, Larry was a VP at Documentum, a publicly traded content-management software company (acquired by EMC) from its start-up phase through a successful IPO and into the market leader. Larry holds a B.B.A in Marketing from Texas A&M University and is a guest lecturer at McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, and the Acton MBA program of Hardin-Simmons University.


John Balena, Vice President, Sales and Services
John Balena John serves as Vice President Sales & Services for Phurnace Software. He provides strategic and tactical leadership for all customer and partner facing sales and services activities. John has over 25 years of sales leadership experience with large technology companies including IBM, BMC Software and Symantec and with startup companies including two ventures where he was a founder. Most recently, John was Founder and CEO for Prime Paradigms International, a Symantec Platinum Value Added Reseller, providing consulting and implementation services for Governance, Risk and Compliance Management projects. Before that, John led the Worldwide Mid-market Sales organization for Symantec. Previous to Symantec, John was EVP of Worldwide Sales and Marketing for ComplyChain, an innovative startup company, pioneering a web-based software service (SaaS) between tightly coupled IT enterprises. At BMC Software, John was General Manager of Federal Operations in Washington, DC and at IBM John held various sales and sales management positions. John has a BS in Business Management from Penn State University. He sits on the board of three not-for-profit organizations.


Patti Soch, Vice President, Finance and Operations
Patti Soch Patti serves as Vice President Finance and Operations for Phurnace Software. She provides management and oversight for all finance, accounting, human resources and legal functions at Phurnace. In addition, she manages the operational policies and procedures for the company. Patti has 24 years of financial leadership experience. Most recently, Patti was CFO for System Fabric Works, Inc., a provider of both services and specialized hardware in the high performance computing market. Previous to SFW, Patti held financial management positions for VIEO, QuestLink, Visible Decisions, UniSQL and Uniplex. Patti’s background includes both domestic and international experience. Patti has a BBA in Accounting from the University of Texas at Arlington. She also attended the Executive MBA Program at SMU’s Cox School of Business.


Daniel Nelson, Vice President, Products
Daniel NelsonDaniel serves as Vice President, Products and is one of the original founders of the company. He is responsible for all aspects of product management including innovation and product line expansion. Daniel has over ten years of experience in the software development field, eight of which are in senior management positions in operations, project management, and quality assurance at innovative early-stage software companies such as Isochron Data, drkoop.com, the Cobalt Group, NetObjects, and SurfWatch Software. Daniel has spent the last six years working specifically with Java EE™ technologies. Daniel has a B.A. and an M.B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin. His idea and business plan for Phurnace Software, Inc. won him the coveted Moot Corp. Award in 2006 from the University of Texas competition.


Robert Reeves, Founder, CTO
Robert Reeves Robert serves as CTO and is one of the original founders of the company. He is responsible for customer satisfaction, customer support and pre-sales technical interaction.  Robert was the chief architect of the Phurnace engine and the company’s first products. Robert has almost ten years of experience in the software development industry, including roles at drkoop.com, NextJet, 360Commerce, CarOrder.com and Trilogy Software. He has spent his career focused on configuration management and deployment of enterprise applications. Robert spent some time outside of the software industry as a production assistant for the Warped Tour, a nationwide show of independent and alternative musicians. The last seven years of his software career have been spent specifically building deployment and configuration management solutions for Java EE™ technologies. Robert has been awarded a provisional patent for technologies used in the Phurnace products. He has a B.A. in Economics with mathematics minor from the University of Texas at Austin.


Alexander Bibighaus, Director of Development
Alexander Bibighaus Alexander serves as Director of Development and is responsible for managing the software engineering team. He also serves as the chief architect for the expanding Phurnace product line. Alexander is a seasoned software developer and manager that has created, as well as extended, numerous software applications. He has twelve years of experience as a developer and architect, including roles at uControl, Motive, and Vignette. Of note is his role at uControl where he built a first of its kind application for the home security industry which communicated time-critical/sensitive information from millions of home devices using cellular technologies. His development experience includes Java and C. He was Sun Certified in Java 1.1 in 1998 and has spent the last 10 years focusing on enterprise products for the Java marketplace. Alexander has earned a B.A. in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin.