The son of a small businessman, Larry OCull knew from a young age that he wanted his own business.

Therefore, upon graduating from the Purdue School of Technology, he immediately went to work for a huge company.

That, however, was a good thing. He learned much from his engineering mentors at a time when Microsoft, Dell, Gateway and Apple were forming a perfect storm of personal computing and small business opportunities.

During his ‘big box’ tenure, OCull he came to see engineering as more than providing function-only solutions. He saw a higher plane of collaboration between good engineering and good design – and all in the context of good relationship between service provider and customer.

At some point he decided he couldn’t effectively meet the customer’s needs from within a large company. “I had the pull of mass from 450 people every time I wanted to do something,” he says. “I had to ‘feed the machine,’ and as a result I couldn’t give my customers the level of attention they needed.”

OCull observed that customers had simple needs, but there was no simple way to meet them – no direct path. That resulted in the launch of Priio (then known as Progressive Resources LLC) – and eventually, the Priio Path, a product development algorithm that captures the vertical integration necessary to provide optimum performance and value for most companies seeking a solution.

After a humble beginning as a one-man-show in a converted basement, OCull gradually grew the company, adding carefully-selected employees to support his company vision. “If you’re the right size and weight, you can pretty much meet anyone’s needs – there’s a magic to the mix,” he says. “It takes a mixed discipline and collaboration with the right team. And I’m proud to say that’s exactly what we have today at Priio.”

Today, with particular strengths in software and electronics, Priio does the entire gamut of product development – enabling customers to make informed and concise decisions early in the development process, and improve their time to market.

To learn more, go to We’re Priio. (Animation by Zane Knight, production by Tim Borek)

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