Meet the 40 Under 40 who stepped down as VP to found a competing startup

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Scott Dalton

Tommy Golczynski, owner and managing partner at Assured Flow Solutions.

Nora Olabi

Editorial intern- Houston Business Journal

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Tommy Golczynski took his engineering and management experience, overseeing global engineering services across nine global locations, and founded his startup company, Assured Flow Solutions LLC, in 2012.

Golczynski's hard work landed him on the 2014 Houston Business Journal's 40 Under 40.

He resigned from Multiphase Solutions Kenny Inc., a Houston-based energy industry asset management software and consulting company, right before moving into his own venture, but it wasn't without a price. He left bound by a noncompete agreement that was in effect for two years.

"Starting a business is a scary endeavor, from the decision to leave and face this challenge to the actual 'now what' and how to overcome it once you decide to make a go of it," Golczynski said in his 40 Under 40 application. "To do all of this with a noncompete hanging over your head that restricts access to people, the very heart of what you do, is akin to walking into a fight with no weapons."

His industry reputation served him well, and now Assured Flow Solutions has opened its second office in Denver earlier this year and has an employee headcount of 20 people.

As a single father of two kids and an entrepreneur, work-life balance is something that he continues to work on.

"What I have found again is that hard work, honest communication with everyone involved — co-workers, clients, employees and children — is invaluable in terms of buying you that occasional break to focus on what really matters," Golczynski said in his application.

Assured Flow is an engineering management consulting firm for the oil and gas industry and specializes in flow assurance, systems engineering and production chemistry applications.