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profile 10MTRJuly/August 2011 especially in intelligence and othersystems.How does your computer and marineexperience meld for Liquid Robotics?Vass: My long-term goal (for the company) is to be more of a data serv- ices provider rather than just a com- pany that builds vehicles. We aim to put a very large number of vehicles out there and operate them continu- ously. The vision is to run (the vehi- cles) for two, three years, with no interaction other than telling it where to go and pulling the data from it. So the goal is establishing grids of thesevehicles out that are (continuously) pulling data, reprocessing it, and communicating that back in largecloud services that reprocess data and deliver data to services. Could you share a brief overview of your management philosophy?Vass: For large organizations, I believe in centralized control and centralized execution. For smaller organizations, you have to be more hands-on. I have ten rules of management ? I wont go through all of them, but I have a very straight-forward management style. Im very communicative. Very big on prioritization, with coming up with alot of innovations and prioritizing them. I have a pretty good understanding of what goes on in the marine services field and what has to happen at sea;what is survivable at sea. The reason I joined Liquid Robotics is because I saw a video of it operating, and Ithought it was like the invention of the wheel. I love engineering solu- tions that are elegant and simple. If you look at Apple, for example, in the IT world, one of the reasons people like Apple so much is that they take very complex things and make them look simple. The beauty of the Wave Glider is its simplicity and engineering elegance.One of the first things I did when I joined the company is I worked for our manufacturing organization for aday and assembled (the vehicles), so I know how they are put together. What are the strengths of the platform?Vass: This current platform is the most practical, most reliable, for the most possible number of uses we could build. Its small enough to be standard air-shipped anywhere, the The sales cycle for selling a vehicle ? if they have to learn how to use it, try it out, etc. ? can be 6-18 months. The sales cycle for selling them data can be a day.