i have officially made the switch to become the CTO of Local Dirt (www.localdirt.com) – an online marketplace for local food.

local dirt’s founder/ceo heather and i were introduced through a mutual trusted mentor (let’s leave him at that for now, there’ll be more on that in the coming months :) we hit it off very quickly and it has been an absolute pleasure to work with her in the last few months. i am very excited about the company we’ve set out to build.

there is so much to read and learn about the local food movement, and i encourage you to do so. i would start with michael pollan’s omnivore’s dilemma. if you haven’t read it already, go and read it now. it will change how you think about what we eat…

we launched localdirt.com at the DEMO conference in san diego in september and even won a DEMOGod award. you can view our 6-minute DEMO presentation at http://bit.ly/localdirt

although i am no longer day-to-day at carsala, i am very excited about that business as well. i have full confidence in tyler and the team. they’re kicking serious ass and they’ll continue to do so…

in the meantime, my ramblings here will probably start to sway in the direction of our food system and the usual randomness… thanks for tuning in, and as always, feel free to reach out if i can help in anyway: raif at raif dot com

sometimes starting a company is like playing house… especially when you’re setting up your office.

both my co-founder tyler and i have always felt strongly that the environment we set up now will play a significant role in shaping the culture and the values of the company we’re building at carsala. we are also both pretty frugal to a fault, so we started off for our interior decoration with a very (VERY) limited budget.

we ended up with some pretty cool looking desks with trestles and somewhat comfortable chairs, each under $100.

next challenge was to find some art for the walls.

my pick for the technology and marketing room was the photograph above by renowned photojournalist w. eugene smith called “dream street”. i felt it was very appropriate for a handful of people who have set out to change the single largest retail segment of the US economy (44M used cars are sold every year, representing $365 billion).

the entrepreneurial spirit is really one with the spirit of the dreamer… the pursuit of  creation of something out of nothing… the pursuit of something better and greater…

“dream street” embodies this entrepreneurial spirit – the spirit we have at carsala.