January 20, 2025 • 47 mins
What if economic downturns could be a springboard for growth instead of a setback? Join Àlex, the CEO and founder of MarsBased, as he shares the inside scoop on how his company not only weathered the technological market storm of 2024 but emerged stronger. Learn from their journey through industry challenges, management demands, and the strategic pivots that led to exciting collaborations and a revenue milestone of 2.5 million euros, all while remaining bootstrapped and expanding the team.
Despite grappling with project estimation issues and sudden contract cancellations, the story of MarsBased is one of resilience and adaptability. Àlex recounts the emotional journey of navigating a tense Q1 and the strategic decisions that helped regain stability. From transparent communication practices to celebrating MarsBased's decade-long journey, this episode paints a vivid picture of staying the course amidst uncertainty. Get insights into how MarsBased's strategic shift to smaller projects and consulting work opened doors to contracts with entities like Mobile World Capital.
Join us as we explore MarsBased’s technological strategy evolution, focusing on the decision to standardize their tech stack with Ruby on Rails and React. Àlex explains how this strategic move ensures reliable, cost-effective solutions for their clients without compromising quality. Discover the balance between embracing innovation in areas like VR and AI while staying committed to proven technologies. As the episode wraps up, Àlex invites listeners to share feedback and ideas, reinforcing the collaborative spirit of the MarsBased journey.
🎬 You can watch the video of this episode on the Life on Mars podcast website: https://podcast.marsbased.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (00:00):
Well, hello everybody and welcome to
Life on Mars.
I'm Alex, ceo and founder ofMarsBased, and in this episode
I'm going to be reviewing whathappened in 2024 at MarsBased
and in the industry in general,and what will be of us at the
industry in general in 2025.
Was a really exciting year, notvoid of any kind of pressure,
(00:29):
because it was atransformational year for us.
It was a year in which we haveseen a lot of changes in the
industry.
To give a little bit of context, in mid-2022, when there was a
huge decline of thetechnological market, when all
the stock went down, the seasonof layoffs started, everything
(00:50):
changed drastically for boutiqueagencies and agencies and
consultancies in general, butmore so for boutique agencies,
while it didn't affect usimmediately because these things
are caused by a rippling effect.
So, basically, the effects ofthat stark decline, we saw them
(01:12):
almost six months afterwards.
We haven't quite recovered fromthat as an industry as a whole.
Right.
And August 2022, when more orless this was getting crazier,
(01:39):
when the roller coaster oftechnology was on the way down,
we did not see any changescoming in the months after.
That is that companies weremuch more cautious about
approaching external developmentand services in general,
because they were not able toraise funds as quickly and as
swiftly as before, and they werenot able to get money from
(02:02):
banks or venture debt or othersources also as easy as it was
before the summer of 2022.
(02:24):
So, fast forward two years ofsome sort of an economic
downturn, also for agencies.
This short-sightedness, thisdryness in the pipeline for
investment for many, manycompanies and the cancellation
and postponing of projectsobviously affect a lot of the
(02:47):
companies, but not all of them.
There's a point to be made thatactually crisis or crisis I
don't even know what plural,right plural for this word is in
English are good times forconsultancies, and we have
discussed this in the firstseason of Life on Mars with
(03:09):
Gordon Cardiff, the CEO of ClearPeaks, a company that we used
to be providers to back in theday, and he grew the company
through a couple of, because thecompany is 20 years old.
If I remember correctly, hesold it a couple years ago to
German private equity, and so hewas always sort of counseling
(03:33):
me on how to endure these longwinters, because these are
opportunity times for smalleragencies to get bigger clients
right.
Smaller agencies to get biggerclients right.
A lot of customers, bigcorporations, for instance, they
want to cut down on costs andsometimes they look for cheaper
alternatives.
(03:53):
Well, that's not a goodopportunity for us, because on
very rare occasions we arecheaper than the actual provider
of our prospective clientsbecause, at least for Spain,
we're on the expensive side ofthings.
In other countries, incomparison, maybe we're cheaper
than the local players, but notin our local market, but anyways
(04:14):
.
So what started in 2022, it isstill lingering in 2024, or it
was lingering in 2024 at thetime of recording January 2025,
we are still in the samesituation and a lot of our
competitors slash friends, slashsimilar companies with
(04:36):
like-minded company cultures andmethodologies and ways of doing
things.
They have been wiped out by thepandemic, either because they
took the wrong decisions, theyoverhired, they bet all on
single client or technology thatended up not working, or
because they grew tired ofbusiness and they just wanted to
(04:56):
look for an exit, or maybe theyjust, you know, fought between
the partners and they had toshut down.
That left us very alone in theboutique space and, as a result
of that, the boutique ecosystemhas sort of disintegrated and
whereas before we would be onthe mid-range the price because
(05:20):
there would be the generalistcompanies on the cheaper side of
things, and there would be themore expensive companies, the
super specialized boutiques.
They have been 20, 30 yearsdoing this.
They have the most experts inthe market.
They only work in very, veryspecific technologies and kind
of projects Like, for instanceI'm thinking of ThoughtWorks,
(05:42):
where I'm thinking of people atthe labs back in the day.
They were the expensive ones.
There were, on the other side ofthe spectrum, the cheaper ones,
and we were sitting in themiddle and therefore we would be
in an advantage position to wina lot of the prospective
clients.
They discard the companies onthe edges of the spectrum and
(06:08):
they focus on the mid-ranges.
But when all of the playersdisappear and suddenly not you
know, we have a situation whereplayers in the middle are not
the majority but the minority.
There's a shift in the middleare not the majority but the
minority.
There's a shift in the buyingintention towards, especially
(06:29):
towards the cheaper side ofthings, right, and we are
discarded with higher endTogether.
We're lumped into this bag ofexpensive companies, right?
And the companies who want toget a better bank for the buck
or they just want to save somemoney because it's downturn,
(06:50):
there's a crisis out there, theyjust go for the cheaper
companies, and so there's apoint to be made in that if
you're able to lower your pricesand just act more cheaply, then
you have a higher chance ofsurvival in these kind of
scenarios.
But we didn't want to do thatand we have endured this.
(07:11):
We have not only survived, butwe have thrived in these trying
times, right, in spite of allthese things that go against us,
these unfavorable winds, wehave grown the company.
We have managed to close 2024with an annual revenue of 2.5
(07:38):
million in euros.
We grew the team three peoplelast year.
We have consistently beengrowing the team two, three
people for 10 years straight andgrowing every year.
As a matter of fact, 2024 was arecord year for us.
We have been hitting recordyear after record year since
(07:59):
probably the third year of thecompany, something like that,
growing at a steady pace of 20to 35% every year, completely
bootstrapped.
For those who don't know us,we're an entirely bootstrapped
company, super healthy, growingorganically, perhaps more slowly
than we should, perhaps moreslowly than we could, but we
(08:20):
don't know any better.
And by doing it this way wehave made it this far.
But we don't know any better,and by doing it this way, we
have made it this far.
So we know that at leastthere's a good chance that this
was the right decision all along.
I wanted to do a little bit of arecap of what happened last
year and why we've been soinactive and so intermittent in
(08:43):
either social media andcommunications, podcasts and
whatnot.
It's because we've been workingon projects right.
This whole situation ofprospective clients wanting to
go for the cheaper side ofthings.
We ended up chopping projectsin phases right, and whereas
(09:04):
previously to 2022, we wouldsign annual retainers, now we're
signing multi-phase projectsright.
Sometimes phase oneconcatenates with phase two just
right away.
There's no gap in betweenphases.
Sometimes there's a huge gapbetween phases right.
That's not ideal.
(09:25):
That implies more managementoverhead.
That implies that sometimes thepeople who develop phase one of
the project, if there's a gapof, say, four months, maybe they
are not able to go back to theproject in phase two right, so
there are inefficiencies there.
There's going to be morefriction.
Luckily for us, not very often,and we haven't had any bad
(09:50):
friction with the clients in2024.
So, super, not only happy, butextremely grateful for that.
But, yeah, that forced us to domore management, and the three
founders, xavi Jordi and I we'vehad to manage many, many
situations.
We've been hired a projectmanager two years ago, cristina
to help us with this, and wehave created a couple of people
(10:12):
in the company to do tech lead.
But that's not enough.
We're always lacking moremanagement capacity, and so
that's why I have had to step into do some management in the
recent years and, as a result ofthat, the marketing efforts of
MarsFace, the projects like youknow, it's Startup Prime,
(10:34):
startup Digest, the newsletter,the podcast they've had
different fates.
I'm going to be going over allof this.
So, basically, q1 started prettybadly.
We came from having had asituation with a client in which
we sort of messed up with anestimate Client also didn't do
(10:57):
the job, so it was more of a50-50 thing.
We ended up solving the issue,but we had to double down on
effort on a project to make surethat we met the deadlines, and
that took away all of our focusand distracted us for a good two
, three months, in which thissituation wasn't able to be
(11:18):
stabilized until later on in theyear.
So, basically, q1 started offnot so well for us.
It was record in revenues, butwe don't only optimize for
revenues in the company.
Actually, revenue is not a KPIof Mars East, it is a byproduct.
We optimize for margin and weoptimize to bring down stress
(11:42):
and we optimize for quantity,but revenue is more of a vanity
metric, if you ask me.
In the beginning of the year wealso I think that's where we
kept the bleeding we stopped thebleeding of losing the annual
retainers, the last two annualretainers.
(12:03):
We lost them end of 23,beginning of 24, with a couple
of startups that they were notable to raise more funding.
One of them shut down, theother one had to internalize all
development and cut down oncosts to make it to
profitability, which, in allfairness, it's fair play for
(12:23):
them.
And we started signing onlysmall projects.
Right, we started signingprojects, a lot of them, more
than ever.
You know, this year has been arecord year in the number of
projects we have signed.
Maybe, if I'm able to rememberthe number, it will be a big
number.
But whereas, like maybe fiveyears ago, we'd sign two or
three contracts a year and we'realready 15 people, and now
(12:46):
probably we sign like 20 or 30because they're smaller.
Right, we started working in fora couple of old clients
Shoptimus, ai, despasa andZapTales.
Zaptales, for instance, is acompany that we had signed in
2015, if I remember correctly,or 16.
And so for a couple of years,they had to internalize
(13:08):
development to cut down on costsand whatnot.
We also, interestingly enough,we started selling more
consulting projects, like audits, and, while that seems like a
little bit of a distractionbecause they're on the smaller
side of things and some of themI have to do them myself, like,
for instance, we started workingfor the Mobile World Capital,
(13:30):
the organizing entity of MobileWorld Congress.
That was the first project I didalone and by myself in the
company, where no one else inthe company knew what the fuck I
was doing.
Since 2018 or 19, when I didsome work for MailTrack, I
remember that was someconsulting projects we did back
then, which was more like BI,market perspective, figuring out
(13:54):
stuff like pricing and how toapproach VCs, how to approach
potential sales and stuff likethat in Barcelona, attracting
(14:17):
top tier speakers to speak atthe conference and make the same
play they did with four yearsfrom now, 10 years ago, and to
build a huge developmentsconference or a tech conference
in Barcelona within the MobileWorld Congress right.
I did that project.
It was very fun, went very well.
As a matter of fact, we renewedthe contract just a month later
to do it again for this year,so that was positive.
That all happened in Q1.
(14:37):
One of the other good things iswe we found one that really
works very well and, moreimportantly, in Q1, we
(15:06):
celebrated the 10 yearsanniversary.
It was a fantastic event.
We managed to get 300 people inthe room, with old clients, new
clients first employees, ourfirst intern, emilio, a lot of
the speakers of Startup Brian orthe Mars Base podcast, vips
from the Barcelona techecosystem and we even had a
(15:28):
couple of clients flying in fromother countries.
Super happy, it went very well.
It was a fantastic night.
I rambled for 90 minutes onstage about everything I had
learned about business and lifein general running MarsBase, and
it was very emotional.
I ended up welling up andalmost crying because I have
(15:51):
family in the front row.
I had the whole MarsBase teamthere.
I had my two co-founders comingon stage and I was deeply moved
, so that was very good.
That was a great way to end Q1,but the situation was very
uncertain and we had to learnhow to balance sharing too much
versus sharing not enough, astransparency is one of our core
(16:12):
pillars in our company culture.
We, we, we also we were sort ofrealizing that for too long we
were sharing bad news.
We're saying that it's so coldout there, you know, layoff
season, company shutting down,the interest rates going up and
(16:32):
life is becoming more expensive.
Salaries might be going downfor people in the industry not
for us but it's not a good timeto change.
Companies or people are nottaking as many risks as before.
And so it dawned on us thatmaybe we were bringing down the
morale inside the team by beingtoo over communicative and this
(16:55):
aspect and this kind of things.
Right, and in many ways thatwas true.
Like the situation was notgetting better after two years
and we were starting to losefaith.
We found this, were like thisshit is not improving, what is
happening?
And so we we tried to, you know, we tried to keep everybody
(17:16):
motivated as best as we could.
Company was doing well We'vealways done well financially,
and that was no exception butthere was more risk involved.
Like, even though we had a lotof money in the bank, we didn't
know what the situation would belike in two or three months
potentially so in 2024, everythree months we've been in a
(17:37):
situation that within a fewweeks, half of the team would be
unassigned or they would haveno project right, because people
renew last moment and projectsare so small, phase one doesn't
really finish when phase twoshould start, and stuff like
that.
So there was a lot ofuncertainty involved.
(17:57):
However, we went to you know, wecelebrated our company retreat,
we had celebrated theanniversary, all was well.
We, you know, we got all theprojects under control again.
That was good, but that came ata very high price.
We had to stop doing marketingand I had stopped the podcast.
The newsletter had been oneyear without sending.
(18:20):
We had shut down other projects, like Startup Digest.
Other side projects werestarting to feel a little bit
abandoned, like our open source,our Slack community, and so all
of a sudden we realized that,hey, we need somebody else to
run this.
Alex can do it no more, and so,unless you know, I focus on
(18:41):
that, but I couldn't run theprojects and I couldn't run
sales, which would have beenvery short-sighted and probably
the end of the company as weknow it.
Right, we had one situation thatsort of exemplifies the extreme
bad luck we've had in 2024.
We were supposed to visit ourfriends in Nice, in the Basque
(19:02):
Country, and on the way therethere was a huge storm in Bilbao
, where we were supposed to landin northern Spain, the Basque
country to be more precise.
And so as the plane starteddescending, it lifted up again
(19:24):
and the pilot said ladies andgentlemen, we're not able to
land because of the lack ofvisibility, so we're going back
to Barcelona.
We're like but what the fuck?
We're just there.
We were literally on top of theairport and we were being
brought back to Barcelonabecause of the extremely nasty
weather conditions.
And so we flew back toBarcelona.
(19:45):
But Charlie Jordi and I werelike but we gotta visit them
anyways, surely there'ssomething else we can do.
And so we said like, how about?
Fuck it, let's drive.
And so we got on the car and wedrove six hours.
We made it there.
Of course, we lost most of theday, and we had planned to use
(20:06):
that day for, you know, meetingsome other clients them and then
the next morning we would flyback.
So we had to shift this alittle bit more, and because
we're not taking the plane backat eight or nine am in the
morning next day we could staylonger.
We decided to postpone themeeting to the next day, right?
So on the way there we had somesort of a partner's meeting,
(20:27):
chubby jordy and I, and wedecided not few things and how
to do this, how to do that andwhatnot.
And I remember that, know, wewent for dinner and drinks and
whatnot.
And so we wake up the next dayto an email from clients saying,
hey, sorry to let you know, butwe will not be renewing our
contract.
And that was June, and theycanceled for August.
(20:49):
Right In August they were notable to continue extending the
project.
I was not a big client but Isaid like, okay, what a pity,
but we sort of expected that tohappen, you know with a small
startup.
So we go to the meeting withthe client, we receive another
email, this time from HP, a hugeclient, and they say our
(21:10):
contract that was ending inAugust will not be renewing
because we're recentralizing allof the development of HP and
it's going all to India and andso we'll not be extending our
contracts.
Oh, wow, that was biggerbecause we had two developers
there and then, yeah, so two anda half developers in the
project, so it was a bigger hit.
(21:31):
I said that doesn't really feelright.
And in the middle of themeeting, lo and behold, we
received an email from Repsolwhich is from a contract we had
signed one year before.
That never started.
They canceled it altogether.
We sort of expected we were notcounting on that project,
(21:52):
because you know, we signed acontract and after a year the
project hasn't started.
Something's not right there.
And so we, even though it wasnot a good I mean, we didn't
expect that project to start.
It was not a big projectanyways, but it felt like a
truck, like it was a bigemotional hit, like three
contracts canceled on the sameday.
(22:14):
That must have been a joke.
So we took the meeting withnice fantastic meeting.
We had lunch and then afterlunch we drive back and we went
into.
We decided to go into I don'tlike the terminology of war mode
, but we had another.
Well, we had to basically throwaway everything we had decided
the day before on the way to thepass, count free and repeat the
(22:38):
same meeting, which I'veenjoyed, and discuss stuff and
scenarios and outcomes, and youknow what we should do here and
there for the months to come.
And so you know some otherclients we lost last minute or
some other prospective clientsthat we lost last minute, and
between May and August is alwaysa hard time.
It's basically the lowestmonths for us in sales and those
(23:01):
look pretty harsh, right,because we're not selling
anything, but yeah, so we had todouble down on sales.
However, not everything waswrong, not everything was bad.
We signed a few contracts.
We started working for Moody's.
That was not everything waswrong, not everything was bad.
We signed a few contracts.
We started working for Moody's.
That was not a huge contract,but it's a huge client, right,
and that gave us a little bit ofhope.
(23:22):
We signed a contract withNieves Energía, an energy
company from Spain, to redotheir mobile apps, which is a
pretty substantial contract, andthen a few other like smaller
projects basically bespoke CMSs,marketplaces and whatnot and so
we signed something that got usthrough the months of summer,
right, but we decided to go alittle bit like into savings
(23:46):
mode.
We started cutting down onexpenses.
Jordi did a terrific job thereand because we push sales,
because we cut expenses at thebeginning of Q3, we turned the
situation around, and so,whereas everything before the
summer looked gloomy and darkand looked pretty bad.
(24:07):
After the summer, the outlookwas very positive.
Right, we signed a few deals,mainly thanks to that big sales
push.
Right, we signed Vueling, forinstance.
We signed an innovation projectwith Vueling.
We signed Everesting, which isan e-commerce, and we'll be
doing more stuff for them, butbasically started off as only as
like a marketing pages ande-commerce and whatnot.
(24:29):
Trompo, that is an Endoracompany marketplace for
second-hand cars.
And HappyScribe, a company thathas appeared in the podcast.
It's a bootstrap company doingAI, built in Ruby and Rails, who
started working for them in thebeginning of Q3 of last year.
So this turned the situationaround.
(24:50):
That's when we decided toincrease the team.
We incorporated a couple people, we signed an audit a tech
audit that usually we don't dobecause we don't have the
capacity but we started doingthis kind of process as well.
So we're reactivating hiring,we reactivated some of the
marketing initiatives and weeven got some developers writing
(25:12):
blog posts for Mars Space forthe first time in 10 years.
But I'm not, I'm not going togo into that, but yeah.
So basically we changed thenarrative of it's cold out there
, like the prospect isn't asgood, not good, the future is
terrible too.
Well, it could actually be avery good year for us, and we
are.
We have turned the situationaround, right?
(25:33):
It's funny how you go from oneto the other in just a matter of
a few weeks, but it shows thatwhen you do the work, it
actually comes back manifold,right?
We started optimizing as wellsome stuff in the company, like
how to be more effective ininternal processes.
We realized that we're losing alot of opportunities because
we're very slow in the processof taking requirements, building
(25:57):
a proposal and sending to theclient, right, and so we decided
to double down on that, and wecame up with a pretty good
strategy that we're going toshare in another episode, just
so we don't extend this one fortoo long, right?
We?
I don't like admitting this inpublic, but we signed a couple
of WordPress projects Not thatwe love WordPress, but it's not
(26:22):
that you do.
What you got to do is.
You know they were part ofsomething else, right?
One of them was Shopify projectthat they also had a WordPress,
and so, okay, why not?
And the other one was somebodywho really, really wanted to
work with us and, after havinganalyzed it because we had
analyzed WordPress as an optionto build our website we launched
last year and so we feltconfident we could do that
(26:45):
project.
And turns out we signed apretty substantial deal and so
we're working with WordPress.
Nowadays, as we speak,wordpress projects are being
built.
And then towards the end of theyear Q4, thanks to that, moody's
project we completedsuccessfully.
(27:06):
The client was very happy andthey decided to sign a retainer
with us, which was the firstretainer we signed in almost two
years.
So very happy with that.
It shows that if you do a greatjob, then clients might want to
pay you back and give you moretrust.
We hired two people, mateo andEnrique.
They joined the company rightbefore our Martian day of
(27:29):
Christmas, the last Martian dayof the year.
That was a very good one.
We had pretty shit weather inBarcelona, but it was a really
fun experience.
And then, you know, we startedalso enlarging the team on the
freelancing side, because westarted having these peaks of
work and we wanted to have morepeople to be able to deal with
(27:49):
them, and so I think Q4 was thetime that we have built more
innovative projects.
So we built a VR project, webuilt WordPress, we work with AI
.
So we completed two, threeprojects in AI.
We did consulting, we didaudits, we were a little bit all
(28:10):
around but also we tried newtools to be able to work faster.
I'm going to go into this alittle bit all around.
But also we tried new tools tobe able to work faster.
I'm going to go into this alittle bit later, but basically
adopting AI to be more effective, more efficient and probably
bringing down the cost of theprojects.
Right.
For instance, we tried Versus V0to prototype stuff or to build
(28:32):
designs.
We tried Courser, copilot,raycast, ai stuff like that in
order to, you know, build moreefficiently, maybe avoiding
Googling so much and, I know,spending time on what matters,
not on what doesn't right.
We also started putting outmore content.
(28:53):
That was good.
That was a huge push to themarketing process of MarsBased.
But, on the other hand, I quitStartupFriend, which is
something that I had been doingfor 20 years.
I had been doing for 10 yearsand it was a big milestone.
After 10 years, 143 events,three of them conferences, five
(29:18):
or six summits, 9,000subscribers to newsletter, more
than 30,000 people that you knowcame to the events all combined
, and God knows what othermetrics.
I decided to quit to focus moreon Mars Space.
Mars Space demanded me morethan ever, and so it was time to
pass the baton.
We have yet to find somebody,but in case you're interested,
(29:43):
just drop me a line.
But yeah, the company demandedmore, and so that was a
responsibility-based decision.
So that was 2024.
We had other realizations there.
We realized that we were stillreceiving a lot of deal flow in
(30:05):
Rovi.
We realized that we were notextremely efficient in certain
parts of the productivity sideof things, when building apps or
in internal methodologies andwhatnot.
But, yeah, basically because wesaw that we are receiving more
requests to build MVPs andprototypes, both from startups
(30:27):
and corporates, because probablythey want to test the waters a
little bit more before goingfull product, we decided to
standardize this more, and I'mgoing into what we will do in
2025, right, one of the maindecisions we've taken
technologically speaking, is tostandardize our tech stack and
decide look, if the client wantsto do it more cheaply without
(30:51):
skimming on quality, we'll saylook, you want to do it more
cheaply, we do it with our stack, and our stack will be Ruby and
Rails on the back, react on thefront and all sorts of
technologies that we can specout and we can share later on
right?
I don't want to get tootechnical on this particular
(31:12):
podcast episode, but if you wantto have more control on the
tech stack and the architecturaldecisions, libraries and
whatnot, it's going to be alittle bit more expensive for
you.
So there's going to be thistrade-off.
We'll see how that plays out.
We have found out over the yearsthat in a lot of cases, clients
don't really care, and if we'reable to save them some bucks by
(31:34):
choosing the technology, thenso be it.
That's of great value to them,right?
Of course we're doing it.
Technologies that are awfullytested tried and tested.
Big ones are built on this one.
So you know, basically, onRobeat, rails and JavaScript,
they are tried and tested.
They are not new technologies,right, tried and tested.
(31:55):
There are not new technologies.
Right, we have seen howtechnology is changing but at
the same time, we don't want tobe on the bleeding edge of
technology.
We decided to take the approachwhereby we'll not be the first
ones doing things.
Right.
We didn't jump on the AIbandwagon two, three years ago.
We did it last year.
Python became popular manyyears ago, or React, and it took
(32:20):
us a few years to get into this, like when we started the
company in 2014,.
React was already around, butAngular was the big thing, right
?
So we decided to, we choseAngular and then we moved to
React in 2017, if I remembercorrectly, when it was tried and
tested.
When Facebook had Facebook andAirbnb, they were doubling down
(32:43):
on React and just investing bigtime in them and big companies
were using it.
So we said now it's a good timefor us to go into this
technology, right?
We don't want to be theinnovators, we want to be
followers in this case, and thiswill allow us to train us
properly, to have more time toinspect things and learn the
(33:05):
technologies and avoid fuck-ups.
Right, and come into theprojects as experts in the
technologies.
When you cannot be an expert ifyou are, you know riding the
wave you might be lucky, but youcannot be an expert if you are,
you know riding the wave, youmight be lucky, but you cannot
be an expert because you haven'treally figured out all the nuts
(33:25):
and bolts of this technologyand you haven't tried it in five
or 10 or 15 different projects.
So, anyways, as I said, youknow standardizing the tech
stack.
For the curious ones, it will beRails API for the backend,
reactos Remix, or Nextjs, thefrontend Tailwind, css for the
styles, shadcn as a UIcomponents library I'm reading
this because it's quite a lot ofthings Fake command designs for
(33:47):
projects, lineart for projectmanagement, render for backend
hosting, cloudflare, slash Versofor frontend hosting, react,
native with Expo for mobile, andthere could be more, but we
will be sharing this soon.
So you know, in terms oftechnology, a little bit of
forecast for 2025 is Ruby is notdead.
(34:10):
As a matter of fact, we'reseeing a renaissance of Ruby.
We have seen that probablypeople being laid off from
companies like Shopify, stripe,microsoft are huge Ruby players
of them.
They're creating the newcompanies in Ruby, right?
I know a few folks that got outof Factorial and they built
(34:31):
their app on Ruby on Railsbecause Factorial is a huge Ruby
on Rails player, right?
So it makes sense and it'sstill a very good technology.
It's very solid, it's verymodern, it's adapting to the new
ways of doing things, highlyopinionated, but still really
good, and so we're still reallyhappy with it.
React has proven to be a goodinvestment for us.
(34:53):
We don't see any othertechnology overcoming React in
the next year or two, so we'redabbling down on that one.
We have tried all flavorsfront-end.
We have tried Svelte, we havetried Vuejs, angular, ember.
Back in the day, we still havegot an active project in
Backbone, which is pretty funny,but yeah, so basically it's
going to be React all the way.
(35:14):
You know, we we have otherother learnings in in technology
that we can share on on a on ablog post.
But, yeah, the main thing thatwe want to share for 2025 and
now I'm things we want to getaway from the narrative.
(35:41):
We are a development boutique.
We are a development shop,development agency, ruby and
Rails agency, whatever you wantto call it and we want to focus
on innovation and technology.
We want to appeal to biggerclients or, to put it another
way, we don't want people tofilter the projects before they
(36:06):
arrive to us.
If we focus so much ontechnology, like with the Ruby
and Rails, javascript, pythonsomebody who has got an idea for
a project and comes to ourwebsite will be like oh, I
thought the best, I think thebest technology for it is like a
mobile app, and these guysdon't do mobile or it's.
I've been advised to do this inJava.
(36:29):
These guys cannot help me, sotherefore, I will not approach
them.
Right, maybe that projectdoesn't really require Java.
Maybe that mobile app is not amobile app, maybe it's like a
progressive web app, or maybeit's a web app altogether.
Maybe it's a desktop app, right.
So we want to do that filteringfor you.
That's why we're getting away.
We're probably like puttingdown, like lowering the position
(36:53):
of the technologies and theranking on the website in favor
of technology innovation product.
We're still figuring it outright, so we're not becoming a
generalist.
But what we have learned is thatover the course of these 10,
almost 11 years now, we havebeen overly cautious and
(37:15):
extremely conservative when itcomes to technology and pretty
much everything that hasn'tquite fitted our exact we have
said no to.
Even before we did React.
If a React opportunity camearound, we would say no.
The jump from Angular to Reactwas very big, but we just didn't
(37:35):
want to do it because we wantedto make sure that we fucking
nailed it.
But in a couple of occasions wewere forced to use another
technology, either by the clientor because we were really good
friends with the client, and wesaid, ok, we'll split the risk
right.
Or this is a sandbox project,or this is like an experiment.
This is something that we justwant to build, but we'll not be
(37:58):
using it a lot.
So you guys can play with newtechnologies.
Okay, let's do it right.
We did it with mobile in 2016for DPL.
We did it with Nodejs for ClearPeaks in 2017 or late 16.
And we did it with VR for a bigcorporation last year.
So clients said like, look guys, we want a VR project and we
(38:22):
want you to build it because ofreferences, and they kind of
like forced us to do it andwe're like, okay, well, at that
time we're probably short ofprojects.
That wasn't the big driverbehind that decision, but we
said, if we can afford to makethis move and take this risk,
(38:42):
it's now.
This project with this clientright, turned out, it went
really fucking well.
And so it dawned on us thatmost of the times, the success
of the project is not tied totechnology.
It is on the methodology.
It is is not tied to technology.
It is on the methodology.
It is on who manages theexpectations.
It is on correct communicationwith the client and doing the
(39:04):
right work, doing work thatmatters right.
And so we decided to open up alittle bit the spectrum of
technologies, provided that wecan manage that, and we have
calculated the risks with theclient, and so there's a huge
learning.
We'll be doing a softwarebranding of the website, of our
marketing materials, because wehave to communicate this to
(39:27):
people.
Right?
Most people still know us aslike the Ruby guys, right?
The Ruby agency from Barcelonaand even some of our actual
clients, some of our currentclients I know they don't listen
to this, but one of them everyyear comes to us like, but hey
guys, I've got new projects, butlet me know when you guys do
(39:48):
Nodejs, and every year we haveto tell them we have been doing
Nodejs since 2016.
But yeah, it's a recurring meme.
So that goes to say that it'ssort of like the Harry Potter
effect, right, that the actorthat characterized Harry Potter
(40:12):
will forever be Harry Potter,just like Elijah Wood would
always be Frodo, right?
So we will always be the Rubyguys, even though we have done
mobile, vr, ai, python, nodejs,react, what have you.
We will always be the Ruby guys, but if we're new clients, we
can get some people that canunderstand this and can get like
(40:33):
we're not.
We'll not change the image thatpast clients have got of us.
That's perfect, it works.
It could be better, but itworks because they will still be
coming for projects becausethey always do right.
But for new people, it would begreat to communicate that we are
a bigger agency, that we're notjust three guys doing Ruby like
(40:54):
10 years ago.
We're 20 people in-house.
We're not just three guys doingRuby like 10 years ago.
We're 20 people in-house.
We're 10 freelancers.
So we're at a 30-peopleworkforce that can do all sorts
of projects.
That's why we enlarged the team.
That's why we have decided tobring in a little bit more
management on the technical side.
We don't want pure managers, wewant technical experts that
(41:16):
know what they're doing and howto do it.
And yeah, so 2025 is going to bean intense year.
We have sold a few projectsalready.
We're excited.
We're getting a lot of renewals.
We hope we can get more annualretainers, but the sales
(41:36):
pipeline it's great.
Like I'm saying this withconfidence, I think 2025 will be
a big year for us, even more soif we manage to work on our
goals, you know.
So, standardizing the tech stack, as I mentioned, keep investing
in organic and sustained growth.
We might even want to doubledown on that.
(41:58):
Up until now, we have hired twothree people a year.
This year, we want to hire five, right, including a marketing
person, right.
So that's an odd thing.
We step up in marketing andsales and to do that we have to
bring in somebody else, becauseI cannot take care of everything
.
I cannot take care of sales andmarketing at the same time as I
(42:18):
used to do up until now.
Now the company's biggerrequires more people to work in
this department.
We'll do more kinds of projects,more technologies Maybe there's
another VR project coming soon.
Definitely there's more Pythonthat we're signing, more audits,
more consulting projects, moreinnovation projects where we
have to figure out thetechnology as we go in a
(42:39):
discovery phase for big plans,doing corporate innovation and
corporate venturing.
I have a feeling that we'll begetting more clients from abroad
again, right.
As the the economy opens upworldwide, they will be looking
to expand the horizons andlooking for ways to collaborate,
especially when now everybodygoes back to the office and
(43:00):
there'll be a need for remoteexperts somewhere else.
Right.
We'll be also investing in morevisits to clients, because we
have seen that this is a provenmethodology to basically get
everybody on board and be happywith us and, as I mentioned,
this transition from being theRuby guys or the development
(43:23):
agency to one-stop shop.
That would be the right term.
Right, the one-stop shop forinnovation and technology
partner that you just come withan idea, come with a problem and
we'll fucking figure it out.
Right, we will decide whetherthis is a mobile app, whether
this is a.
You know, this is a dashboard.
This is like some low-codeproject.
(43:44):
This is built with python orreact native, right.
So we have to decide thatbecause we also want to get more
projects from the existingclients.
Sometimes we're like, okay,yeah, the project is finished.
Good, I will talk again.
Whenever you guys needsomething, call us.
No, now we're taking aproactive approach.
We're sharing all of ourprojects with the rest of
(44:05):
clients saying, look, this iswhat we did for this and that
and that, provided we don'tinfringe any DA agreement.
But yeah, we want to suggest,hey, you can build this.
We did this for X, y and Zclients, or we thought this is a
great idea.
We're pitching ideas to clientsand actually some of them I'd
(44:27):
say like 10% of them are gettingaccepted, which is like a 10%
of deal flow that we didn't havelast year.
So I can only imagine that ifwe start doing this with more
solid proposals and ideas, thisis going to go up and we'll be
able to generate more projectsto kind of like keep the wheel
(44:47):
spinning, and so not much morefrom my side.
Thank you very much.
I know the podcast has beenagain stopped for a while.
Really, I'm really sorry forthat.
But also I'm really focused ona couple of other things, like
working on getting the marketerfinding the right person to help
(45:07):
me with this.
Ideally, she or he will takecare of the podcast as well.
That doesn't mean I'm goingaway, just that I will not have
to do all the scheduling,editing, creating the editorial
calendar and sharing it onsocial media, creating the
snippets for this specific videoPR campaign we're doing and
(45:31):
blogging about it, andcorrecting the AI fuck-ups and
whatnot.
And the Corporate InnovationSummit.
That's right.
We're going back to eventsbecause we know events are a big
thing at MarsMaze and we have asoft spot for them.
After having oxygenated fromnot doing startup, for instance,
summer, I felt like we shouldbe going back to events and we
(45:56):
signed a couple of sponsorshipsfor a Corporate Innovation
Summit, the fourth edition ofthis event that we have been
doing for a few years now,during the Week of Mobile
Congress, march 4th.
Cios, heads of innovation,corporate venturing and other
interesting individuals.
They will be joining us for anevening of a couple of panels
(46:16):
about AI and maybe quantumcomputing, if I'm not mistaken,
and right now Orkig and the bestcatering in town.
So if you're interested, checkout our blog it should be there
our social media where we haveannounced it.
And that's it from my end.
No question of the day, noquestion of the week.
(46:36):
Thank you for your patience,thank you for your support.
If you made it this far, let meknow on Twitter.
I will be forever grateful.
And if you got ideas forprojects, we got ideas for
content for the podcast.
If you got ideas forimprovement, if there's
something we can do to help youor your business, let us know.
And that's it from my side,blogging off.
(46:58):
Thank you very much, peace.
Well, hello everybody and welcome to
Life on Mars.
I'm Alex, ceo and founder ofMarsBased, and in this episode
I'm going to be reviewing whathappened in 2024 at MarsBased
and in the industry in general,and what will be of us at the
industry in general in 2025.
Was a really exciting year, notvoid of any kind of pressure,
(00:29):
because it was atransformational year for us.
It was a year in which we haveseen a lot of changes in the
industry.
To give a little bit of context, in mid-2022, when there was a
huge decline of thetechnological market, when all
the stock went down, the seasonof layoffs started, everything
(00:50):
changed drastically for boutiqueagencies and agencies and
consultancies in general, butmore so for boutique agencies,
while it didn't affect usimmediately because these things
are caused by a rippling effect.
So, basically, the effects ofthat stark decline, we saw them
(01:12):
almost six months afterwards.
We haven't quite recovered fromthat as an industry as a whole.
Right.
And August 2022, when more orless this was getting crazier,
(01:39):
when the roller coaster oftechnology was on the way down,
we did not see any changescoming in the months after.
That is that companies weremuch more cautious about
approaching external developmentand services in general,
because they were not able toraise funds as quickly and as
swiftly as before, and they werenot able to get money from
(02:02):
banks or venture debt or othersources also as easy as it was
before the summer of 2022.
(02:24):
So, fast forward two years ofsome sort of an economic
downturn, also for agencies.
This short-sightedness, thisdryness in the pipeline for
investment for many, manycompanies and the cancellation
and postponing of projectsobviously affect a lot of the
(02:47):
companies, but not all of them.
There's a point to be made thatactually crisis or crisis I
don't even know what plural,right plural for this word is in
English are good times forconsultancies, and we have
discussed this in the firstseason of Life on Mars with
(03:09):
Gordon Cardiff, the CEO of ClearPeaks, a company that we used
to be providers to back in theday, and he grew the company
through a couple of, because thecompany is 20 years old.
If I remember correctly, hesold it a couple years ago to
German private equity, and so hewas always sort of counseling
(03:33):
me on how to endure these longwinters, because these are
opportunity times for smalleragencies to get bigger clients
right.
Smaller agencies to get biggerclients right.
A lot of customers, bigcorporations, for instance, they
want to cut down on costs andsometimes they look for cheaper
alternatives.
(03:53):
Well, that's not a goodopportunity for us, because on
very rare occasions we arecheaper than the actual provider
of our prospective clientsbecause, at least for Spain,
we're on the expensive side ofthings.
In other countries, incomparison, maybe we're cheaper
than the local players, but notin our local market, but anyways
(04:14):
.
So what started in 2022, it isstill lingering in 2024, or it
was lingering in 2024 at thetime of recording January 2025,
we are still in the samesituation and a lot of our
competitors slash friends, slashsimilar companies with
(04:36):
like-minded company cultures andmethodologies and ways of doing
things.
They have been wiped out by thepandemic, either because they
took the wrong decisions, theyoverhired, they bet all on
single client or technology thatended up not working, or
because they grew tired ofbusiness and they just wanted to
(04:56):
look for an exit, or maybe theyjust, you know, fought between
the partners and they had toshut down.
That left us very alone in theboutique space and, as a result
of that, the boutique ecosystemhas sort of disintegrated and
whereas before we would be onthe mid-range the price because
(05:20):
there would be the generalistcompanies on the cheaper side of
things, and there would be themore expensive companies, the
super specialized boutiques.
They have been 20, 30 yearsdoing this.
They have the most experts inthe market.
They only work in very, veryspecific technologies and kind
of projects Like, for instanceI'm thinking of ThoughtWorks,
(05:42):
where I'm thinking of people atthe labs back in the day.
They were the expensive ones.
There were, on the other side ofthe spectrum, the cheaper ones,
and we were sitting in themiddle and therefore we would be
in an advantage position to wina lot of the prospective
clients.
They discard the companies onthe edges of the spectrum and
(06:08):
they focus on the mid-ranges.
But when all of the playersdisappear and suddenly not you
know, we have a situation whereplayers in the middle are not
the majority but the minority.
There's a shift in the middleare not the majority but the
minority.
There's a shift in the buyingintention towards, especially
(06:29):
towards the cheaper side ofthings, right, and we are
discarded with higher endTogether.
We're lumped into this bag ofexpensive companies, right?
And the companies who want toget a better bank for the buck
or they just want to save somemoney because it's downturn,
(06:50):
there's a crisis out there, theyjust go for the cheaper
companies, and so there's apoint to be made in that if
you're able to lower your pricesand just act more cheaply, then
you have a higher chance ofsurvival in these kind of
scenarios.
But we didn't want to do thatand we have endured this.
(07:11):
We have not only survived, butwe have thrived in these trying
times, right, in spite of allthese things that go against us,
these unfavorable winds, wehave grown the company.
We have managed to close 2024with an annual revenue of 2.5
(07:38):
million in euros.
We grew the team three peoplelast year.
We have consistently beengrowing the team two, three
people for 10 years straight andgrowing every year.
As a matter of fact, 2024 was arecord year for us.
We have been hitting recordyear after record year since
(07:59):
probably the third year of thecompany, something like that,
growing at a steady pace of 20to 35% every year, completely
bootstrapped.
For those who don't know us,we're an entirely bootstrapped
company, super healthy, growingorganically, perhaps more slowly
than we should, perhaps moreslowly than we could, but we
(08:20):
don't know any better.
And by doing it this way wehave made it this far.
But we don't know any better,and by doing it this way, we
have made it this far.
So we know that at leastthere's a good chance that this
was the right decision all along.
I wanted to do a little bit of arecap of what happened last
year and why we've been soinactive and so intermittent in
(08:43):
either social media andcommunications, podcasts and
whatnot.
It's because we've been workingon projects right.
This whole situation ofprospective clients wanting to
go for the cheaper side ofthings.
We ended up chopping projectsin phases right, and whereas
(09:04):
previously to 2022, we wouldsign annual retainers, now we're
signing multi-phase projectsright.
Sometimes phase oneconcatenates with phase two just
right away.
There's no gap in betweenphases.
Sometimes there's a huge gapbetween phases right.
That's not ideal.
(09:25):
That implies more managementoverhead.
That implies that sometimes thepeople who develop phase one of
the project, if there's a gapof, say, four months, maybe they
are not able to go back to theproject in phase two right, so
there are inefficiencies there.
There's going to be morefriction.
Luckily for us, not very often,and we haven't had any bad
(09:50):
friction with the clients in2024.
So, super, not only happy, butextremely grateful for that.
But, yeah, that forced us to domore management, and the three
founders, xavi Jordi and I we'vehad to manage many, many
situations.
We've been hired a projectmanager two years ago, cristina
to help us with this, and wehave created a couple of people
(10:12):
in the company to do tech lead.
But that's not enough.
We're always lacking moremanagement capacity, and so
that's why I have had to step into do some management in the
recent years and, as a result ofthat, the marketing efforts of
MarsFace, the projects like youknow, it's Startup Prime,
(10:34):
startup Digest, the newsletter,the podcast they've had
different fates.
I'm going to be going over allof this.
So, basically, q1 started prettybadly.
We came from having had asituation with a client in which
we sort of messed up with anestimate Client also didn't do
(10:57):
the job, so it was more of a50-50 thing.
We ended up solving the issue,but we had to double down on
effort on a project to make surethat we met the deadlines, and
that took away all of our focusand distracted us for a good two
, three months, in which thissituation wasn't able to be
(11:18):
stabilized until later on in theyear.
So, basically, q1 started offnot so well for us.
It was record in revenues, butwe don't only optimize for
revenues in the company.
Actually, revenue is not a KPIof Mars East, it is a byproduct.
We optimize for margin and weoptimize to bring down stress
(11:42):
and we optimize for quantity,but revenue is more of a vanity
metric, if you ask me.
In the beginning of the year wealso I think that's where we
kept the bleeding we stopped thebleeding of losing the annual
retainers, the last two annualretainers.
(12:03):
We lost them end of 23,beginning of 24, with a couple
of startups that they were notable to raise more funding.
One of them shut down, theother one had to internalize all
development and cut down oncosts to make it to
profitability, which, in allfairness, it's fair play for
(12:23):
them.
And we started signing onlysmall projects.
Right, we started signingprojects, a lot of them, more
than ever.
You know, this year has been arecord year in the number of
projects we have signed.
Maybe, if I'm able to rememberthe number, it will be a big
number.
But whereas, like maybe fiveyears ago, we'd sign two or
three contracts a year and we'realready 15 people, and now
(12:46):
probably we sign like 20 or 30because they're smaller.
Right, we started working in fora couple of old clients
Shoptimus, ai, despasa andZapTales.
Zaptales, for instance, is acompany that we had signed in
2015, if I remember correctly,or 16.
And so for a couple of years,they had to internalize
(13:08):
development to cut down on costsand whatnot.
We also, interestingly enough,we started selling more
consulting projects, like audits, and, while that seems like a
little bit of a distractionbecause they're on the smaller
side of things and some of themI have to do them myself, like,
for instance, we started workingfor the Mobile World Capital,
(13:30):
the organizing entity of MobileWorld Congress.
That was the first project I didalone and by myself in the
company, where no one else inthe company knew what the fuck I
was doing.
Since 2018 or 19, when I didsome work for MailTrack, I
remember that was someconsulting projects we did back
then, which was more like BI,market perspective, figuring out
(13:54):
stuff like pricing and how toapproach VCs, how to approach
potential sales and stuff likethat in Barcelona, attracting
(14:17):
top tier speakers to speak atthe conference and make the same
play they did with four yearsfrom now, 10 years ago, and to
build a huge developmentsconference or a tech conference
in Barcelona within the MobileWorld Congress right.
I did that project.
It was very fun, went very well.
As a matter of fact, we renewedthe contract just a month later
to do it again for this year,so that was positive.
That all happened in Q1.
(14:37):
One of the other good things iswe we found one that really
works very well and, moreimportantly, in Q1, we
(15:06):
celebrated the 10 yearsanniversary.
It was a fantastic event.
We managed to get 300 people inthe room, with old clients, new
clients first employees, ourfirst intern, emilio, a lot of
the speakers of Startup Brian orthe Mars Base podcast, vips
from the Barcelona techecosystem and we even had a
(15:28):
couple of clients flying in fromother countries.
Super happy, it went very well.
It was a fantastic night.
I rambled for 90 minutes onstage about everything I had
learned about business and lifein general running MarsBase, and
it was very emotional.
I ended up welling up andalmost crying because I have
(15:51):
family in the front row.
I had the whole MarsBase teamthere.
I had my two co-founders comingon stage and I was deeply moved
, so that was very good.
That was a great way to end Q1,but the situation was very
uncertain and we had to learnhow to balance sharing too much
versus sharing not enough, astransparency is one of our core
(16:12):
pillars in our company culture.
We, we, we also we were sort ofrealizing that for too long we
were sharing bad news.
We're saying that it's so coldout there, you know, layoff
season, company shutting down,the interest rates going up and
(16:32):
life is becoming more expensive.
Salaries might be going downfor people in the industry not
for us but it's not a good timeto change.
Companies or people are nottaking as many risks as before.
And so it dawned on us thatmaybe we were bringing down the
morale inside the team by beingtoo over communicative and this
(16:55):
aspect and this kind of things.
Right, and in many ways thatwas true.
Like the situation was notgetting better after two years
and we were starting to losefaith.
We found this, were like thisshit is not improving, what is
happening?
And so we we tried to, you know, we tried to keep everybody
(17:16):
motivated as best as we could.
Company was doing well We'vealways done well financially,
and that was no exception butthere was more risk involved.
Like, even though we had a lotof money in the bank, we didn't
know what the situation would belike in two or three months
potentially so in 2024, everythree months we've been in a
(17:37):
situation that within a fewweeks, half of the team would be
unassigned or they would haveno project right, because people
renew last moment and projectsare so small, phase one doesn't
really finish when phase twoshould start, and stuff like
that.
So there was a lot ofuncertainty involved.
(17:57):
However, we went to you know, wecelebrated our company retreat,
we had celebrated theanniversary, all was well.
We, you know, we got all theprojects under control again.
That was good, but that came ata very high price.
We had to stop doing marketingand I had stopped the podcast.
The newsletter had been oneyear without sending.
(18:20):
We had shut down other projects, like Startup Digest.
Other side projects werestarting to feel a little bit
abandoned, like our open source,our Slack community, and so all
of a sudden we realized that,hey, we need somebody else to
run this.
Alex can do it no more, and so,unless you know, I focus on
(18:41):
that, but I couldn't run theprojects and I couldn't run
sales, which would have beenvery short-sighted and probably
the end of the company as weknow it.
Right, we had one situation thatsort of exemplifies the extreme
bad luck we've had in 2024.
We were supposed to visit ourfriends in Nice, in the Basque
(19:02):
Country, and on the way therethere was a huge storm in Bilbao
, where we were supposed to landin northern Spain, the Basque
country to be more precise.
And so as the plane starteddescending, it lifted up again
(19:24):
and the pilot said ladies andgentlemen, we're not able to
land because of the lack ofvisibility, so we're going back
to Barcelona.
We're like but what the fuck?
We're just there.
We were literally on top of theairport and we were being
brought back to Barcelonabecause of the extremely nasty
weather conditions.
And so we flew back toBarcelona.
(19:45):
But Charlie Jordi and I werelike but we gotta visit them
anyways, surely there'ssomething else we can do.
And so we said like, how about?
Fuck it, let's drive.
And so we got on the car and wedrove six hours.
We made it there.
Of course, we lost most of theday, and we had planned to use
(20:06):
that day for, you know, meetingsome other clients them and then
the next morning we would flyback.
So we had to shift this alittle bit more, and because
we're not taking the plane backat eight or nine am in the
morning next day we could staylonger.
We decided to postpone themeeting to the next day, right?
So on the way there we had somesort of a partner's meeting,
(20:27):
chubby jordy and I, and wedecided not few things and how
to do this, how to do that andwhatnot.
And I remember that, know, wewent for dinner and drinks and
whatnot.
And so we wake up the next dayto an email from clients saying,
hey, sorry to let you know, butwe will not be renewing our
contract.
And that was June, and theycanceled for August.
(20:49):
Right In August they were notable to continue extending the
project.
I was not a big client but Isaid like, okay, what a pity,
but we sort of expected that tohappen, you know with a small
startup.
So we go to the meeting withthe client, we receive another
email, this time from HP, a hugeclient, and they say our
(21:10):
contract that was ending inAugust will not be renewing
because we're recentralizing allof the development of HP and
it's going all to India and andso we'll not be extending our
contracts.
Oh, wow, that was biggerbecause we had two developers
there and then, yeah, so two anda half developers in the
project, so it was a bigger hit.
(21:31):
I said that doesn't really feelright.
And in the middle of themeeting, lo and behold, we
received an email from Repsolwhich is from a contract we had
signed one year before.
That never started.
They canceled it altogether.
We sort of expected we were notcounting on that project,
(21:52):
because you know, we signed acontract and after a year the
project hasn't started.
Something's not right there.
And so we, even though it wasnot a good I mean, we didn't
expect that project to start.
It was not a big projectanyways, but it felt like a
truck, like it was a bigemotional hit, like three
contracts canceled on the sameday.
(22:14):
That must have been a joke.
So we took the meeting withnice fantastic meeting.
We had lunch and then afterlunch we drive back and we went
into.
We decided to go into I don'tlike the terminology of war mode
, but we had another.
Well, we had to basically throwaway everything we had decided
the day before on the way to thepass, count free and repeat the
(22:38):
same meeting, which I'veenjoyed, and discuss stuff and
scenarios and outcomes, and youknow what we should do here and
there for the months to come.
And so you know some otherclients we lost last minute or
some other prospective clientsthat we lost last minute, and
between May and August is alwaysa hard time.
It's basically the lowestmonths for us in sales and those
(23:01):
look pretty harsh, right,because we're not selling
anything, but yeah, so we had todouble down on sales.
However, not everything waswrong, not everything was bad.
We signed a few contracts.
We started working for Moody's.
That was not everything waswrong, not everything was bad.
We signed a few contracts.
We started working for Moody's.
That was not a huge contract,but it's a huge client, right,
and that gave us a little bit ofhope.
(23:22):
We signed a contract withNieves Energía, an energy
company from Spain, to redotheir mobile apps, which is a
pretty substantial contract, andthen a few other like smaller
projects basically bespoke CMSs,marketplaces and whatnot and so
we signed something that got usthrough the months of summer,
right, but we decided to go alittle bit like into savings
(23:46):
mode.
We started cutting down onexpenses.
Jordi did a terrific job thereand because we push sales,
because we cut expenses at thebeginning of Q3, we turned the
situation around, and so,whereas everything before the
summer looked gloomy and darkand looked pretty bad.
(24:07):
After the summer, the outlookwas very positive.
Right, we signed a few deals,mainly thanks to that big sales
push.
Right, we signed Vueling, forinstance.
We signed an innovation projectwith Vueling.
We signed Everesting, which isan e-commerce, and we'll be
doing more stuff for them, butbasically started off as only as
like a marketing pages ande-commerce and whatnot.
(24:29):
Trompo, that is an Endoracompany marketplace for
second-hand cars.
And HappyScribe, a company thathas appeared in the podcast.
It's a bootstrap company doingAI, built in Ruby and Rails, who
started working for them in thebeginning of Q3 of last year.
So this turned the situationaround.
(24:50):
That's when we decided toincrease the team.
We incorporated a couple people, we signed an audit a tech
audit that usually we don't dobecause we don't have the
capacity but we started doingthis kind of process as well.
So we're reactivating hiring,we reactivated some of the
marketing initiatives and weeven got some developers writing
(25:12):
blog posts for Mars Space forthe first time in 10 years.
But I'm not, I'm not going togo into that, but yeah.
So basically we changed thenarrative of it's cold out there
, like the prospect isn't asgood, not good, the future is
terrible too.
Well, it could actually be avery good year for us, and we
are.
We have turned the situationaround, right?
(25:33):
It's funny how you go from oneto the other in just a matter of
a few weeks, but it shows thatwhen you do the work, it
actually comes back manifold,right?
We started optimizing as wellsome stuff in the company, like
how to be more effective ininternal processes.
We realized that we're losing alot of opportunities because
we're very slow in the processof taking requirements, building
(25:57):
a proposal and sending to theclient, right, and so we decided
to double down on that, and wecame up with a pretty good
strategy that we're going toshare in another episode, just
so we don't extend this one fortoo long, right?
We?
I don't like admitting this inpublic, but we signed a couple
of WordPress projects Not thatwe love WordPress, but it's not
(26:22):
that you do.
What you got to do is.
You know they were part ofsomething else, right?
One of them was Shopify projectthat they also had a WordPress,
and so, okay, why not?
And the other one was somebodywho really, really wanted to
work with us and, after havinganalyzed it because we had
analyzed WordPress as an optionto build our website we launched
last year and so we feltconfident we could do that
(26:45):
project.
And turns out we signed apretty substantial deal and so
we're working with WordPress.
Nowadays, as we speak,wordpress projects are being
built.
And then towards the end of theyear Q4, thanks to that, moody's
project we completedsuccessfully.
(27:06):
The client was very happy andthey decided to sign a retainer
with us, which was the firstretainer we signed in almost two
years.
So very happy with that.
It shows that if you do a greatjob, then clients might want to
pay you back and give you moretrust.
We hired two people, mateo andEnrique.
They joined the company rightbefore our Martian day of
(27:29):
Christmas, the last Martian dayof the year.
That was a very good one.
We had pretty shit weather inBarcelona, but it was a really
fun experience.
And then, you know, we startedalso enlarging the team on the
freelancing side, because westarted having these peaks of
work and we wanted to have morepeople to be able to deal with
(27:49):
them, and so I think Q4 was thetime that we have built more
innovative projects.
So we built a VR project, webuilt WordPress, we work with AI
.
So we completed two, threeprojects in AI.
We did consulting, we didaudits, we were a little bit all
(28:10):
around but also we tried newtools to be able to work faster.
I'm going to go into this alittle bit all around.
But also we tried new tools tobe able to work faster.
I'm going to go into this alittle bit later, but basically
adopting AI to be more effective, more efficient and probably
bringing down the cost of theprojects.
Right.
For instance, we tried Versus V0to prototype stuff or to build
(28:32):
designs.
We tried Courser, copilot,raycast, ai stuff like that in
order to, you know, build moreefficiently, maybe avoiding
Googling so much and, I know,spending time on what matters,
not on what doesn't right.
We also started putting outmore content.
(28:53):
That was good.
That was a huge push to themarketing process of MarsBased.
But, on the other hand, I quitStartupFriend, which is
something that I had been doingfor 20 years.
I had been doing for 10 yearsand it was a big milestone.
After 10 years, 143 events,three of them conferences, five
(29:18):
or six summits, 9,000subscribers to newsletter, more
than 30,000 people that you knowcame to the events all combined
, and God knows what othermetrics.
I decided to quit to focus moreon Mars Space.
Mars Space demanded me morethan ever, and so it was time to
pass the baton.
We have yet to find somebody,but in case you're interested,
(29:43):
just drop me a line.
But yeah, the company demandedmore, and so that was a
responsibility-based decision.
So that was 2024.
We had other realizations there.
We realized that we were stillreceiving a lot of deal flow in
(30:05):
Rovi.
We realized that we were notextremely efficient in certain
parts of the productivity sideof things, when building apps or
in internal methodologies andwhatnot.
But, yeah, basically because wesaw that we are receiving more
requests to build MVPs andprototypes, both from startups
(30:27):
and corporates, because probablythey want to test the waters a
little bit more before goingfull product, we decided to
standardize this more, and I'mgoing into what we will do in
2025, right, one of the maindecisions we've taken
technologically speaking, is tostandardize our tech stack and
decide look, if the client wantsto do it more cheaply without
(30:51):
skimming on quality, we'll saylook, you want to do it more
cheaply, we do it with our stack, and our stack will be Ruby and
Rails on the back, react on thefront and all sorts of
technologies that we can specout and we can share later on
right?
I don't want to get tootechnical on this particular
(31:12):
podcast episode, but if you wantto have more control on the
tech stack and the architecturaldecisions, libraries and
whatnot, it's going to be alittle bit more expensive for
you.
So there's going to be thistrade-off.
We'll see how that plays out.
We have found out over the yearsthat in a lot of cases, clients
don't really care, and if we'reable to save them some bucks by
(31:34):
choosing the technology, thenso be it.
That's of great value to them,right?
Of course we're doing it.
Technologies that are awfullytested tried and tested.
Big ones are built on this one.
So you know, basically, onRobeat, rails and JavaScript,
they are tried and tested.
They are not new technologies,right, tried and tested.
(31:55):
There are not new technologies.
Right, we have seen howtechnology is changing but at
the same time, we don't want tobe on the bleeding edge of
technology.
We decided to take the approachwhereby we'll not be the first
ones doing things.
Right.
We didn't jump on the AIbandwagon two, three years ago.
We did it last year.
Python became popular manyyears ago, or React, and it took
(32:20):
us a few years to get into this, like when we started the
company in 2014,.
React was already around, butAngular was the big thing, right
?
So we decided to, we choseAngular and then we moved to
React in 2017, if I remembercorrectly, when it was tried and
tested.
When Facebook had Facebook andAirbnb, they were doubling down
(32:43):
on React and just investing bigtime in them and big companies
were using it.
So we said now it's a good timefor us to go into this
technology, right?
We don't want to be theinnovators, we want to be
followers in this case, and thiswill allow us to train us
properly, to have more time toinspect things and learn the
(33:05):
technologies and avoid fuck-ups.
Right, and come into theprojects as experts in the
technologies.
When you cannot be an expert ifyou are, you know riding the
wave you might be lucky, but youcannot be an expert if you are,
you know riding the wave, youmight be lucky, but you cannot
be an expert because you haven'treally figured out all the nuts
(33:25):
and bolts of this technologyand you haven't tried it in five
or 10 or 15 different projects.
So, anyways, as I said, youknow standardizing the tech
stack.
For the curious ones, it will beRails API for the backend,
reactos Remix, or Nextjs, thefrontend Tailwind, css for the
styles, shadcn as a UIcomponents library I'm reading
this because it's quite a lot ofthings Fake command designs for
(33:47):
projects, lineart for projectmanagement, render for backend
hosting, cloudflare, slash Versofor frontend hosting, react,
native with Expo for mobile, andthere could be more, but we
will be sharing this soon.
So you know, in terms oftechnology, a little bit of
forecast for 2025 is Ruby is notdead.
(34:10):
As a matter of fact, we'reseeing a renaissance of Ruby.
We have seen that probablypeople being laid off from
companies like Shopify, stripe,microsoft are huge Ruby players
of them.
They're creating the newcompanies in Ruby, right?
I know a few folks that got outof Factorial and they built
(34:31):
their app on Ruby on Railsbecause Factorial is a huge Ruby
on Rails player, right?
So it makes sense and it'sstill a very good technology.
It's very solid, it's verymodern, it's adapting to the new
ways of doing things, highlyopinionated, but still really
good, and so we're still reallyhappy with it.
React has proven to be a goodinvestment for us.
(34:53):
We don't see any othertechnology overcoming React in
the next year or two, so we'redabbling down on that one.
We have tried all flavorsfront-end.
We have tried Svelte, we havetried Vuejs, angular, ember.
Back in the day, we still havegot an active project in
Backbone, which is pretty funny,but yeah, so basically it's
going to be React all the way.
(35:14):
You know, we we have otherother learnings in in technology
that we can share on on a on ablog post.
But, yeah, the main thing thatwe want to share for 2025 and
now I'm things we want to getaway from the narrative.
(35:41):
We are a development boutique.
We are a development shop,development agency, ruby and
Rails agency, whatever you wantto call it and we want to focus
on innovation and technology.
We want to appeal to biggerclients or, to put it another
way, we don't want people tofilter the projects before they
(36:06):
arrive to us.
If we focus so much ontechnology, like with the Ruby
and Rails, javascript, pythonsomebody who has got an idea for
a project and comes to ourwebsite will be like oh, I
thought the best, I think thebest technology for it is like a
mobile app, and these guysdon't do mobile or it's.
I've been advised to do this inJava.
(36:29):
These guys cannot help me, sotherefore, I will not approach
them.
Right, maybe that projectdoesn't really require Java.
Maybe that mobile app is not amobile app, maybe it's like a
progressive web app, or maybeit's a web app altogether.
Maybe it's a desktop app, right.
So we want to do that filteringfor you.
That's why we're getting away.
We're probably like puttingdown, like lowering the position
(36:53):
of the technologies and theranking on the website in favor
of technology innovation product.
We're still figuring it outright, so we're not becoming a
generalist.
But what we have learned is thatover the course of these 10,
almost 11 years now, we havebeen overly cautious and
(37:15):
extremely conservative when itcomes to technology and pretty
much everything that hasn'tquite fitted our exact we have
said no to.
Even before we did React.
If a React opportunity camearound, we would say no.
The jump from Angular to Reactwas very big, but we just didn't
(37:35):
want to do it because we wantedto make sure that we fucking
nailed it.
But in a couple of occasions wewere forced to use another
technology, either by the clientor because we were really good
friends with the client, and wesaid, ok, we'll split the risk
right.
Or this is a sandbox project,or this is like an experiment.
This is something that we justwant to build, but we'll not be
(37:58):
using it a lot.
So you guys can play with newtechnologies.
Okay, let's do it right.
We did it with mobile in 2016for DPL.
We did it with Nodejs for ClearPeaks in 2017 or late 16.
And we did it with VR for a bigcorporation last year.
So clients said like, look guys, we want a VR project and we
(38:22):
want you to build it because ofreferences, and they kind of
like forced us to do it andwe're like, okay, well, at that
time we're probably short ofprojects.
That wasn't the big driverbehind that decision, but we
said, if we can afford to makethis move and take this risk,
(38:42):
it's now.
This project with this clientright, turned out, it went
really fucking well.
And so it dawned on us thatmost of the times, the success
of the project is not tied totechnology.
It is on the methodology.
It is is not tied to technology.
It is on the methodology.
It is on who manages theexpectations.
It is on correct communicationwith the client and doing the
(39:04):
right work, doing work thatmatters right.
And so we decided to open up alittle bit the spectrum of
technologies, provided that wecan manage that, and we have
calculated the risks with theclient, and so there's a huge
learning.
We'll be doing a softwarebranding of the website, of our
marketing materials, because wehave to communicate this to
(39:27):
people.
Right?
Most people still know us aslike the Ruby guys, right?
The Ruby agency from Barcelonaand even some of our actual
clients, some of our currentclients I know they don't listen
to this, but one of them everyyear comes to us like, but hey
guys, I've got new projects, butlet me know when you guys do
(39:48):
Nodejs, and every year we haveto tell them we have been doing
Nodejs since 2016.
But yeah, it's a recurring meme.
So that goes to say that it'ssort of like the Harry Potter
effect, right, that the actorthat characterized Harry Potter
(40:12):
will forever be Harry Potter,just like Elijah Wood would
always be Frodo, right?
So we will always be the Rubyguys, even though we have done
mobile, vr, ai, python, nodejs,react, what have you.
We will always be the Ruby guys, but if we're new clients, we
can get some people that canunderstand this and can get like
(40:33):
we're not.
We'll not change the image thatpast clients have got of us.
That's perfect, it works.
It could be better, but itworks because they will still be
coming for projects becausethey always do right.
But for new people, it would begreat to communicate that we are
a bigger agency, that we're notjust three guys doing Ruby like
(40:54):
10 years ago.
We're 20 people in-house.
We're not just three guys doingRuby like 10 years ago.
We're 20 people in-house.
We're 10 freelancers.
So we're at a 30-peopleworkforce that can do all sorts
of projects.
That's why we enlarged the team.
That's why we have decided tobring in a little bit more
management on the technical side.
We don't want pure managers, wewant technical experts that
(41:16):
know what they're doing and howto do it.
And yeah, so 2025 is going to bean intense year.
We have sold a few projectsalready.
We're excited.
We're getting a lot of renewals.
We hope we can get more annualretainers, but the sales
(41:36):
pipeline it's great.
Like I'm saying this withconfidence, I think 2025 will be
a big year for us, even more soif we manage to work on our
goals, you know.
So, standardizing the tech stack, as I mentioned, keep investing
in organic and sustained growth.
We might even want to doubledown on that.
(41:58):
Up until now, we have hired twothree people a year.
This year, we want to hire five, right, including a marketing
person, right.
So that's an odd thing.
We step up in marketing andsales and to do that we have to
bring in somebody else, becauseI cannot take care of everything
.
I cannot take care of sales andmarketing at the same time as I
(42:18):
used to do up until now.
Now the company's biggerrequires more people to work in
this department.
We'll do more kinds of projects,more technologies Maybe there's
another VR project coming soon.
Definitely there's more Pythonthat we're signing, more audits,
more consulting projects, moreinnovation projects where we
have to figure out thetechnology as we go in a
(42:39):
discovery phase for big plans,doing corporate innovation and
corporate venturing.
I have a feeling that we'll begetting more clients from abroad
again, right.
As the the economy opens upworldwide, they will be looking
to expand the horizons andlooking for ways to collaborate,
especially when now everybodygoes back to the office and
(43:00):
there'll be a need for remoteexperts somewhere else.
Right.
We'll be also investing in morevisits to clients, because we
have seen that this is a provenmethodology to basically get
everybody on board and be happywith us and, as I mentioned,
this transition from being theRuby guys or the development
(43:23):
agency to one-stop shop.
That would be the right term.
Right, the one-stop shop forinnovation and technology
partner that you just come withan idea, come with a problem and
we'll fucking figure it out.
Right, we will decide whetherthis is a mobile app, whether
this is a.
You know, this is a dashboard.
This is like some low-codeproject.
(43:44):
This is built with python orreact native, right.
So we have to decide thatbecause we also want to get more
projects from the existingclients.
Sometimes we're like, okay,yeah, the project is finished.
Good, I will talk again.
Whenever you guys needsomething, call us.
No, now we're taking aproactive approach.
We're sharing all of ourprojects with the rest of
(44:05):
clients saying, look, this iswhat we did for this and that
and that, provided we don'tinfringe any DA agreement.
But yeah, we want to suggest,hey, you can build this.
We did this for X, y and Zclients, or we thought this is a
great idea.
We're pitching ideas to clientsand actually some of them I'd
(44:27):
say like 10% of them are gettingaccepted, which is like a 10%
of deal flow that we didn't havelast year.
So I can only imagine that ifwe start doing this with more
solid proposals and ideas, thisis going to go up and we'll be
able to generate more projectsto kind of like keep the wheel
(44:47):
spinning, and so not much morefrom my side.
Thank you very much.
I know the podcast has beenagain stopped for a while.
Really, I'm really sorry forthat.
But also I'm really focused ona couple of other things, like
working on getting the marketerfinding the right person to help
(45:07):
me with this.
Ideally, she or he will takecare of the podcast as well.
That doesn't mean I'm goingaway, just that I will not have
to do all the scheduling,editing, creating the editorial
calendar and sharing it onsocial media, creating the
snippets for this specific videoPR campaign we're doing and
(45:31):
blogging about it, andcorrecting the AI fuck-ups and
whatnot.
And the Corporate InnovationSummit.
That's right.
We're going back to eventsbecause we know events are a big
thing at MarsMaze and we have asoft spot for them.
After having oxygenated fromnot doing startup, for instance,
summer, I felt like we shouldbe going back to events and we
(45:56):
signed a couple of sponsorshipsfor a Corporate Innovation
Summit, the fourth edition ofthis event that we have been
doing for a few years now,during the Week of Mobile
Congress, march 4th.
Cios, heads of innovation,corporate venturing and other
interesting individuals.
They will be joining us for anevening of a couple of panels
(46:16):
about AI and maybe quantumcomputing, if I'm not mistaken,
and right now Orkig and the bestcatering in town.
So if you're interested, checkout our blog it should be there
our social media where we haveannounced it.
And that's it from my end.
No question of the day, noquestion of the week.
(46:36):
Thank you for your patience,thank you for your support.
If you made it this far, let meknow on Twitter.
I will be forever grateful.
And if you got ideas forprojects, we got ideas for
content for the podcast.
If you got ideas forimprovement, if there's
something we can do to help youor your business, let us know.
And that's it from my side,blogging off.
(46:58):
Thank you very much, peace.
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