Yes, sales really do trump everything else. I've worked with entrepreneurs and if they ever needed financing from any source, the difference between having sales and no sales was like the difference between night and day.
One of the problems with entrepreneurs is that everyone always gives them words of encouragement and tells them how great their concept is. While that's encouraging, it doesn't filter out a bad decision. Once sales start occurring, questions about the viability cease.
I remember one entrepreneur who had this concept which would make a common process in hardware stores much faster. He went around to different hardware stores and pitched his idea and got nothing but positive feedback from the owners. It was after he spent several hundred thousand dollars on development and proudly presented it to these same hardware store owners that the story changed. It turned out they liked doing this routine task since it gave them a chance to talk to customers. They were just being supportive of his idea. Development: complete loss.
In Mr. Rivera's case, there's a ready market for diesel so if he wants to sell it, all he has to show is a proof-of-concept--something beyond just holding up a beaker of pyrolysis oil and using words to try to paint it the color of diesel. I guarantee he wouldn't find many people balk at paying only around $1.00/gallon for a diesel-equivalent if it really worked in an engine. Although I'm not sure if that's still Mr. Rivera's story. His story keeps changing so I'm not sure what he's pretending to be producing now but he's sure tooting his horn alot about whatever it's supposed to be. One would think the business plan would be crystal clear after fifty or so press releases in the past year.
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
AI
