Between the Scirocco’s (CNG and Gas) qualifying at Nurburgring and this latest gem:
It appears that VW is making a big push into CNG. I wonder if or what adoption will be like on these vehicles.
This minivan gets 45 MPG on either gasoline or CNG. That is better mileage than the Civic GX and it is a dual fuel. Vehicles like this hopefully will raise the bar on what is expected to qualify for a ‘clean fuel’ vehicle designation.
With Heather being pregnant I am not sure the dog realizes that he is going to be taking a backseat (literally) to our newcomer. That said I thought I would give him some time in the spotlight. Here is video I made celebrating Boscoe (here is a link to the stills if you want):
As an aside - I created the show using one of Microsoft’s applications – Windows Movie Maker. The real kicker of it is that I did all the editing and created the whole video on my Asus EEE PC (it has a really small processor). As of late I find myslef using more and more MS applications. My last few blog posts have been written exclusively using Microsoft Live Writer.
RawData is spread over 5 different cities across two nations. We keep a fair amount of the spending localized to a few individuals, still we are in different time-zones and can’t always communicate instantly.
With April wrapping up, RawData is closing out the monthly finances and is preparing to report these numbers to our board. Since we are a nascent start-up the most critical factor is how much cash do we actually have. This effects everything from paychecks, bills, research, and so on.
One of the tools we use to manage our cash flow is Mint. The tool is designed to help families or individuals manage their personal finances but, this is an incredible tool for us. Our CFO is a full time accountant for a firm with operations in the area, i gave him access to mint so that he can process all the transactions and generate a set of monthly statements. Features like tagging make it easy to show itemize and allocate event appropriately to the budget.
My Partner and I use it to manage and forecast product Development. The sales team (which consists of just me and a part time marketing consultant right now) use it to help plan for conferences. Our investors have access so they can check on anything they want quickly and easily.
I am sure that the tool won’t scale as we do but, I am confident that transitioning out of Mint and into a more institutional program won’t be difficult for us to do. I do wonder at what point we will need to move on. Maybe, the real question will be how will we adjust to finding instant answer about our businesses financial well-being.
Lately I have been doing a lot of research online. I have seen and tried a lot of different screen capture tool. The one that I have found to be the most user friendly is Fox Marks – now known as X-Marks. It can be used for either in Firefox or IE.
The way it works is as you bookmark items that you like on the internet X Marks uploads those to your own dedicated server in the cloud. That server communicates those bookmarks with all user sessions that you have installed X Marks on. The program is really un-invasive works seamlessly, here is a screen shot:
My bookmarks are on the right, synced up with all my computers. The little green circle on the bottom indicates the status of the X Marks plugin. In the event that you are working on a machine that does not have X Marks on it then you can log into your account through a browser and have complete access to your bookmarks.
There are a lot of other cool features like tagging, adding notes, sharing specific files of bookmarks, rss feeds of bookmarks, and the list goes on. What do you use to keep track of information that you find on the internet?
When I started looking into what car to convert to CNG I turned to the community chat rooms and started doing research. What I found was that there seemed to be an inordinate amount of zealots associated with the alternative fuel community.
I am not sure if I have become accustomed, become a zealot myself, or am just better at filtering the data but it does not seem to bug me as much.
I think a lot of debate circles around the cryptic definitions that that EPA has set forth. As I read through the definitions and tried to find safe harbor I would get mired in definitions and seemingly circular references. I had a gut feeling about what was going on and didn’t like it one bit. Jim Younkin compiled and put evidence to what is stalling the industry. Here is a culminating point:
If the true intent of the EPA was to "assure unimpaired emission control of motor vehicles …without imposing unnecessary restraints on commerce in the automotive aftermarket" they need to take a different approach, one that will show the people that the government can be a help and not an obstacle. There are so many positives to CNG conversion that producers and consumers alike are ready and willing to take advantage of them if they are free to do so.
I would love to get this service on my phone tied to my GPS. So that I could quickly and easily find new filling stations.
Maybe there is way to create a plugin for Google maps on my phone that would allow me to quickly select and view.
If you think you can build this, let me know I can help get it out to market. I will also be your first user!
That’s right a CNG car is entering what is considered to be one of the most grueling endurance races in the world, Nurburgring.
Let’s put this in perspective. In the 70’s the organizational body for Formula car racing determines Nurburgring is too dangerous to continue to have races – resulting in a boycott of the track. Now the track is used to test what will be street legal cars.
Nurburgring, or Green Hell, will see the VW CNG this May. I know that my mechanic is building CNG drift racer, maybe I should enter my CNG X Terra in the Baja or Dakar (I think Heather or Boscoe would make great navigators).
VW Scirocco GT24-CNG to enter Nurburgring 24h Race - Carscoop
RawData has been working away just fine and are finally getting ready to come out and start selling product. One concern that continues to creep up internally is ‘What if _____ happens?’ Followed up quickly with, ‘We only have to do _____ to make it better?’
My biggest concern is that making ‘it’ better costs more money, which is in short supply these days.
There was a study done, retrospectively, on causes of the internet bubble. One of the more repetitive causes of failure was a lack of focus on sales. People spent months and million refining and perfecting a product offering without ever talking to a customer. The mentality was that VC’s are investing hundreds of millions in us, this widget better function 100%. As development continues these companies are burning massive amounts of cash on research only to release to the public, and find out that what had cost millions to get working perfectly did not solve a problem (or it didn’t solve it well enough that people cared to part with money for it).
One of my first companies was genius! We partnered with the local power company and a lighting distributor to go in and change out old lighting in warehouses for more efficient and brighter output lights. After we converted a warehouse the power company would come and do an audit and return close to 1.7x the cost in a rebate check to the warehouse owner. We would take a fraction of the return as our payment for the project and leave the warehouse with better light.
I started a bakery with a good friend. We spent months writing recipes for bread that did not have yeast. As we opened the bakery we had a great line-up of breads. We thought people would want pastries as well so we hired a very expensive pastry chef. She churned out some delicious treats - that did not sell at all. At lunch time the place would be packed for sandwiches - we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to give the pastries away and let people try them. Nothing, we tried changing our line to create the perfect dessert line. No matter what we did we could not get the pastries to sell. Cash got tight and another opportunity was made available to me and I left. The bakery appears to be doing very well today - they just opened some locations downtown. What’s interesting is there new focus seems to be on their sandwiches. Honestly, you need to try a Hagerman’s sandwich - the best you will ever have!
As I sat down with a sandwich I realized some valuable lessons, the one I feel is most applicable - is let the customer tell you what is valuable enought to get him to part with his money. The point Is that if you can sell it broken then you can afford to make it better. If you can’t sell when it’s perfect then you might end up in debt and out of a company in the pursuit of perfection.
I have never made a very good sick person, I am whiny, demanding, grumpy, and sleepy.
i used to actually kind of enjoy getting sick. I could stay home tinker with things at my own pace. Lately I feel like I am subsisting on borrowed time - such may just be the nature of taking on investors. However, it has created an urgency in all my actions. I am working hard and at the same time wonder if I am working efficiently.
Being sick and forcing myself to sleep has caused me to realize that I am not taking time to reflect and self analyze. In the past I used checklists a lot - I am going to go back to doing that. Starting tomorrow I am going to sit down and spend laying out and planning my day and what are the top items to get done for the day should be.
I flew into sunny and warm LA this week for business. I thought I would take advantage of the trip to drop the X-Terra off for some upgrades to the CNG system:
I am way excited to get the car listed as a dual fuel. Once that happens that I can take it to the Divsion of Motor vehicles and get the clean fuel plates.