“I’m not an engineer. I’m the guy engineers call when the plan stops working.”Steven Startz · Directional driller and creator of IronSuit
The directional driller behind IronSuit
A real directional driller built software for directional drillers.
Steven Startz has spent more than 29 years in drilling, including roughly 21 in directional. IronSuit is not an office theory pushed onto the rig. It is decades of watching formations, motors, bits, surveys, people, and plans succeed—or fail—translated into a system that works the well.
Earned in the chair
Directional judgment that other directional drillers respect.
Some of the best directional drillers Steven knows have told him they believe he is better than they are. He does not repeat that as a trophy or pretend it settles anything. He takes it as responsibility: build the software to the standard of the people who have actually sat in the chair.
What “real directional driller” means
The well never gives you one clean answer.
Formation changes. Motor yield changes. The bit walks. Reactive torque moves the toolface. Surveys arrive after the physical response has already begun. In a tight window, the DD may have to act before the trend has enough footage to prove itself. That is the reality IronSuit was built to understand.
See the whole systemGeology, drilling parameters, BHA mechanics, survey uncertainty, tool delay, and wellbore trajectory are one problem—not separate screens.
Read what the tool actually doesNameplate performance is not downhole performance. The motor, bit, formation, hydraulics, and drilling practice create the real response.
Think ahead of confirmationThe directional decision often has to happen before the next survey proves the trend. IronSuit keeps estimating, projecting, and comparing while the job moves.
Own the recordA strong DD does not only steer. He records what happened, explains why, hands the office a defensible report, and leaves the next shift with the well—not a mystery.
How Bionic reads a well
The terrain, the formation, the BHA, and the trajectory all leave clues.
After hundreds of thousands of feet, pattern recognition becomes part of the work. Surface terrain can suggest structural behavior. Drainage, dip, strike, gamma response, bit walk, motor yield, and regional well history can all add context. None is the answer alone. The job is to make them agree—or show where they do not.
Read the ground
Use the physical setting and regional structure as clues about what the lateral may encounter, then test that expectation against downhole evidence.
Read the response
Watch how the formation and BHA change build, drop, walk, toolface, ROP, pressure, torque, and gamma—not just what the plan predicted.
Read the history
Carry forward the lessons earned on previous wells so every pad and operating area develops a stronger directional and geological memory.
The craft has a history
Steven writes about where directional drilling came from—and where it should go next.
From Eastman and jetting to TOTCO, the Ouija Board, mud motors, and real-time telemetry, Steven studies the tools and thinking that built the profession. IronSuit carries that history forward instead of pretending directional drilling began with a cloud dashboard.
When the Hole Really Started Talking Back
How real-time downhole telemetry changed directional drilling from delayed confirmation to continuous awareness.
The Ouija Board: The Mechanical Brain of the Directional Driller
The slide-rule tool that helped generations of directional drillers calculate curves before handheld computers.
TOTCO: When the Hole Spoke Back
The rig recorder that gave the operation a physical memory of what the well and the crew were doing.
Eastman’s Edge: How One Man Taught the Earth to Bend
An examination of the first directional drilling system and the problem-solving mindset behind the profession.
Competence over credentials
Prove the work. Show the calculation. Preserve the evidence. Keep the standard high and make the answer survive the field.
Experience turned into execution
IronSuit converts what an expert DD notices, remembers, calculates, and anticipates into a system the whole job can use.
Built for the people doing the work
The objective is not to replace expertise. It is to amplify it—and give a good directional driller the memory and calculation power of an entire team.