July 1, 2025 • 53 mins
After 10 years building MarsBased as a fully remote, bootstrapped, and values-driven tech company, we’re finally sharing the full story. This keynote, recorded for our 10th anniversary, is a reflection on everything we've learned about building sustainable software, nurturing company culture, and growing a business without external investors, shortcuts or growth hacks.
We talk about how we made remote work function from day one, why we chose to bootstrap instead of seeking venture capital, and how ethical decision-making has shaped every part of our journey. You'll also hear our philosophy on writing clean, maintainable code, and how long-term thinking has guided the way we run the company: slowly, intentionally, and with purpose.
🚀 We are martians. And this is how we built MarsBased.
🎬 You can watch the video of this episode on the Life on Mars podcast website: https://podcast.marsbased.com/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everybody, welcome to Life on Mars.
I'm Alex, ceo and founder ofMarsBased, and in this episode I
bring you a talk I gave oneyear ago at the 10th anniversary
of MarsBased and in thatoccasion I spoke for about an
hour and a half on stagecovering almost everything I've
learned, or I had learned, forabout 10 years running a company
(00:24):
that, and Startup Grind,because we're celebrating the
10th anniversary of bothinitiatives.
We gathered 300 people 300 ofour friends, former clients,
current clients, formeremployees and other people that
we like in the industry, thepodcast guests or the people we
(00:46):
hosted at Startup Grind, some ofour partners and sponsors and a
lot of people in the industry.
It was very moving to see allthe people from the stage and to
celebrate the 10th anniversary,and that is very special
because an event that I got tocelebrate with my co-founders,
tavi and Jordi, with my family,with the entire team of
MarsFaced, and we had a really,really great time.
(01:08):
The talk might be a little bitlong and if our friend David at
the helm of marketing, hasmanaged to reduce or to
eliminate the audiovisualproblems we had at the beginning
of the talk, where the micsdidn't work, beginning of the
talk where the mics didn't work.
You know you're in for a realtreat here A lot of wisdom
(01:30):
nuggets, a lot of blunt opinionsand towards the end I get a
little bit emotional.
So I think that all in all,this is really good content.
I hope that's interesting for alot of you.
Then you can take some advicefor your companies as well.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
And here's to 10 more years of running Marsbase and
sharing our learnings with ouraudience, community and friends.
So let's go.
Thank you so.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Welcome to the 10th anniversary party of Startup
Brain Barcelona and MarsBase.
This is a very special event.
It is so special that if thiswas a Startup Brain event, I
would say welcome to StartupBrain.
But this is not the event.
I would also go on and talkabout the values of Startup
(03:15):
Brain.
This is something that Istarted doing 10 years ago and I
keep very close to my heart,because Startup Brain have some
values that resonate with me.
It's giving or taking.
It's making friends beforemaking contacts.
It's helping others beforehelping yourself.
Essentially, I always believedthat.
(03:38):
That's why I think Starbriandand I have a varied action.
I would go on in a regularevent and I would say, look, and
we got some sponsors, becauseevents don't happen without the
response.
And I would say, hey, where'sthe CMS people?
They're probably not here yetbecause they're lawyers, they
(04:00):
work in 2008,.
But if you're here, raise yourhand.
If you work at CMS, you see,still not here, but they have
been supporting people for fiveor six years already.
First off, you know there's gotthis bunch of companies over
here that are really, reallynice Banktrack, for instance.
Raise your hand, lasse, whereare you?
That guy over there, norwegianguy, but he's great.
(04:24):
He runs Bank, bank track.
This company hits close to myheart because I'm an active
investor in this company andthey are a company to manage
your personal and businessfinance and so they're still
pre-seed, early stage.
All contacts are welcome.
I know they've got.
They leave some leaflets overhere.
You get some discount and, mostof all, you get to collaborate
(04:47):
with a company.
You get to shape it.
They're really small of a team.
The product's great, thetechnology is superb and so
please give it up for Lassen,his team at BankTrack.
It's going to be a lot ofapplause tonight, so you better
fucking get used to it.
(05:09):
There's Attico, attico.
Where are you Over there?
No roll-ups.
How are you going to find nohat?
How are you going to have?
Yes, okay, usually there's kindof like orange hats, yellow
hats, black hat.
Come on, anyways, atticoWorkspaces.
We on, anyways, atticoWorkspaces.
They're active clients ofAttico Workspaces.
(05:29):
We have been collaborating formany, many years.
Nayara is a super strongadvocate for the startup brand
values.
As a matter of fact, she runsstartup brand in Madrid since a
few months ago.
They're still generous.
They gave us a promotion for50% off of the first two months
at Attico Workspaces, so pleasegive it up for Nayara and the
(05:49):
team.
Dennis, where are you All?
Right, dennis is not here, butthe ODHC is a company that helps
you get access to financialdata via APIs.
It's a company that just wantto have contacts.
They don't need investor.
(06:11):
They're so powerful, they don'tneed anything else.
They're so cool.
They want to talk tointeresting people, use cases,
maybe for a future investment.
Please give it up for them aswell.
We've got only three to go.
Go, come on, we can do it.
Where are you over there?
(06:32):
First time sponsoring.
She's been coming to some events.
Hello, mark, you're not late,don't worry.
Don't worry, no bad blood.
One of my best friends say hito Mark tomorrow.
Wants to personally coach.
Don't worry, no bad blood.
One of my best friends, say hito Mark.
I'd like to see tomorrow.
Marike wants to personally coachsome of you.
I don't think you can take themall, can you Some a few of them
(06:54):
.
Leadership you know she can bea coach in your personal
day-to-day and business trainingand she has got an active
promotion for the first peoplewho sign up for this, who go
there, talk to her in thenetworking and claim this
opportunity.
These one-on-one sessions aregoing to change your life.
(07:15):
Please give it up for her soyou can tell I'm running out of
voice.
It's a great moment before a40-minute presentation, but I'll
try to do my best.
Bucaneros, henry, where are you?
It's probably busy over there.
Over there, second timesponsoring the event, we're
going to have very interestingdrinks tonight for the
(07:37):
networking part, so not whatyou're used to.
I'm not going to spoil it, butthis gentleman over here is
providing the drinks for theevent and also he truly embodies
the values of Startup Grind, soplease give it up for him as
well.
He's looking for investors, bythe way, he's looking for
(07:58):
investors.
He runs a canning company inthe beverages sector.
So looking for investors.
If you got some spare moneyjust kidding, if you're a
professional investor, of course, or you know a lot of investors
, go talk to him.
And last but not least, lesMoons.
I know they're not here and theCEO can't be here, but this
(08:19):
one's very special.
Our first event 10 years agowas with them.
Our first event 10 years agowas with them.
They've been supporting thisevent for 146 editions in 10
years.
They're part of the catering,so please give it up for Las
Moons Amazing Thank you.
(08:40):
If this was a regular event, Iwould say and now come over,
just move to the front, there'sspace over here.
And now there will be, you know, an open mic session.
I would be interviewingsomebody and I would say
something like and this event isprobably sponsored by my
company, but I don't talk aboutmy company in the event.
But tonight it's not this day.
(09:01):
Tonight I'll be sharing myentrepreneurial trip for 10
years because we have beenorganizing this event from
MarsBase, our company.
We got the entire team ofMarsBase this year tonight.
Raise your hand, martians overthere.
And you know why?
(09:24):
It's because I realized I nevertalk about Mars Space and I get
tired of people asking but whatdoes Mars Space do?
Why don't you talk?
Because you know, frankly,there's a lot of events in the
city and people organizingevents from a company.
They do a shit job.
They sell their services, theysell the product and it ends up
transpiring in the content ofthe event and then it's not a
(09:46):
good event.
Clearly they want to sell yousomething.
I don't want to sell youanything.
You're broke.
You're entrepreneurs.
That's why you attend startupevents.
You can't pay us, possibly Justkidding, but this is my style,
first timers.
I'm sorry in advance, but yeah,just to give a glimpse.
(10:07):
Like this is a different event.
I will be talking at thecompany, not because we want to
sell in the true spirit Art ofGrind.
I want to share what we'velearned, what I've learned in 10
years running a company andalso in 10 years organizing the
Startup Brain event, 10 years ofbeing an angel investor, things
that, thanks to Mars Base, Ihave been able to become, and I
(10:32):
hope this is useful.
Normally, you learn from otherentrepreneurs, but over the
years, people are like when arewe going to learn from you?
Well, you're lucky or unluckyif you didn't know it, but
you're going to learn from metonight, hopefully.
Probably you'll take away someimportant things.
Long story short, I'm not goingto bore you a lot there.
We've got a phenomenal websitedesigned by Lasse, by the way,
(10:54):
who's our designer Ten years ago, with two gentlemen over there.
I'm going to be talking aboutthem now in a minute.
We created a company, aconsultancy, an agency, call it
what you want Companiesoutsource to us.
Usually it's bigger companies.
We started with startups, ofcourse.
Now we've been working forstuff like FC Barcelona, hewlett
(11:15):
Packard, ford and stuff likethat.
You've got a team of 20 allaround here, but we've never had
an office, so we meet onlythree, four times a year, and
this is one of these days.
That's why they are here.
They're here for 10 years, youknow.
Over 10 years we've grown to bea full team, remotely, no
(11:36):
office, working from some reallybig brands from Spain, from
Portugal, doing over 2 millionin annual revenue, clients all
over the world.
And one of the important thingsis we're not a startup.
So why the fuck am I heretalking to you?
Right, precisely, startups getall the credit, and I think
these kind of companies agencies, bootstrap companies this means
(12:01):
companies with no outsideinvestment.
We have no debt, no loans, nobanks, no venture capital.
Our company is alive because weknow how to sell and we have
clients Come over there becauseyou're accumulating at the
entrance, there's a lot of spaceover here and so, but how did
it start?
(12:21):
Right, how did this companystart?
I'm going to give you a littlebit of an overview of the whole
thing.
And then, after this, so youknow, there's the catering
networking.
Don't worry, I know I amseparating you from the beer and
the food.
I know I can take the pressure.
So clearly, you know a company,as I said, started in 2014.
(12:44):
Coincided, when I was launchingthe company and I was like, okay
, we got to do something.
I got a not respectable pastworking for Deloitte I'm sorry
about that Clearly not oursponsor, but Jordi Chavi and I
have known each other sincemiddle school Jordi, from
(13:06):
elementary school and we weretired from working from our old
bosses and I know there's one ortwo here, so don't get me wrong
.
You're great people, that's whyyou're still here.
We're good friends.
But we didn't like thecompanies.
We were about to quit and wesaid why don't we create this
kind of company ourselves?
We're about to quit and we saidwhy don't we create this kind
of company ourselves?
Two years we kept the job andwe were working for some
(13:30):
projects that, luckily for us,they didn't see the light of day
.
One of them is this Bolivar.
Not even going to go intodetail.
The other one was a digitalcookbook manager called
cookingme.
And then we realized, okay, yeah, clearly we know how to design
shit, we know how to developshit, but we don't know how to
(13:55):
sell it.
We don't know how to raisefunds, we don't know how to
network.
We were coming fromconsultancies like Atos or
Deloitte, right?
And I said why don't we haveother people do this stuff and
we help them taking only thedevelopment part, right?
True, but you need a team,right.
(14:18):
Let me introduce you to myco-founders.
Usually, when they tell me,when they ask me, as an angel
investor, what is your preferredcomposition of a team, I always
say one tech guy, one guy goodin business and operations, then
somebody who can sell.
Right, let's start with the CTOChavi, teenage years.
(14:42):
Don't worry, my picture is theworst, so this is the best one.
Clearly, cto in the making.
You know pizza, video games,heavy metal, hoodie and all that
.
Jordi is going to kill me forthe next picture.
Then you got somebody countingthe coins.
You know, jordi has been takingcharge of the.
(15:04):
If he was not in the company,the company wouldn't exist.
He checks the money in the bank, right, xavi?
And I don't do it.
We know jack shit about financeand this is really important.
I'm going to go about this.
And then you need somebody,like a fucking clown like me, um
, but then again, I got yourattention right.
That works.
So one year before so 11 yearsago actually, we did this.
(15:33):
I sent an email.
This is the first email ever ofMark Spaced.
2013 and March 2014.
A really common mistake amongentrepreneurs, which is I'm not
ready to launch, oh, the websiteis not ready, the logo is not
(15:53):
ready, this is not ready,nothing is fucking ready ever.
Right, for one year, we keptour jobs and we didn't do other
than choosing Trello overBasecamp, creating a nice Google
Drive and stuff like that, butwe didn't go out and sell.
We didn't go out and create thecompany.
(16:14):
There was all analysis, noaction, analysis, paralysis.
It's the worst thing.
Get started First.
Learning of today.
Right, it took one fucking yearbetween this email and the
first and the incorporation ofthe company.
Okay, as I said, we are notgood at having contacts, we're
(16:37):
not entrepreneurs, but we knewhow to build good software.
So that was kind of like how itlooked like for us.
And there was a moment of change.
We started while working ourprevious companies, but one day
(16:59):
25th so more or less in the 15thof December of 2013, I quit my
job completely.
I decided to go all in.
I said, fuck it, I'm moving tothe US.
I went to San Francisco, burnedall my savings, had to
freelance for terrible companiesto pay for the Airbnb, which
was fucking expensive, andChameleon Jordan incorporated a
little bit later.
But this move, kind of like,created the need, right.
It's like, okay, if I don'tfind clients, I will not be able
(17:22):
to eat right, and so we neededto have money to pay for
something right.
By the way, I know there's afew people for whom I've worked
in the past.
I've seen Harlan over there.
I think there's Mark over thereForever grateful for teaching
me how to do things.
But also in those companies welearn how not to do things Big
companies with terrible businessethics, like Deloitte and other
(17:44):
big consultancies, so extremelygrateful.
As a matter of fact, while wekept the job, we couldn't
because we had exclusivity inour contracts.
So we were doing Google meetsHangouts with these masks on
because we needed some stuff onthe blog.
How do we put pictures ofourselves?
How do we show that we'reworking?
(18:05):
Look, for one year it was likethis.
I know it sounds ridiculous.
It was 2014.
People were using hashtags onsocial media and that was our
first website.
But in March 2014, this is thepicture we incorporated the
company.
Why?
Because I found the firstclient in the US $700 website
(18:26):
that only 200 were paid Rightterrible mistake.
But because we had the client,we wanted to do things legally
from day one.
In spite of doing thingslegally since day one, pretty
unlike other startups in theworld, we're still alive and
kicking right.
So we lost money with thatclient.
Actually, right From there,we're like, okay, we got 3,000
(18:51):
euros in in the bank.
Until this money runs out,we'll try it.
We got three months, we're nottaking any money, but you know,
fucking autonomous and stufflike takes a lot of money and
notaries, lawyers and all ofthese other people in the chain
of value.
Our money was rapidlydecreasing.
Or like, okay, urgency, urgency.
Okay, urgency, urgency.
(19:13):
In spite of all of that, we'rehere celebrating 10 years with
what I said.
There's 10 lessons for youtonight.
First one we learned in thefirst year is the rules are for
the 80% of the people.
When we started, the ABC ofentrepreneurship was create a
startup, go to an incubator, goto an accelerator, raise some
(19:37):
funds, find mentors, create aboard and shit like that.
You can't be the same profile,you can have one founder only,
and stuff like that.
We defied all of this right.
People are like this is notgoing to work.
Obviously it's not going towork.
You're remote.
You don't have an office.
You're more expensive than thecompetition.
(19:57):
You only do Ruby, which isfucking niche.
You don't do mobile in 2014,.
Really it's not going to work.
Well, in your face it's worked,but actually what I'm saying is
it worked.
If you follow everybody else's,you will go to where they ended
, but you will not go anywhereelse.
(20:18):
Rules are 48% right.
Look, I know these books areprobably not popular anymore,
but they helped us to create thecompany just for one reason
they taught us to think aboutthings, to reconsider, to
reevaluate.
I was like office.
Why do you need an officeMeetings Email?
They taught us to think aboutthings, to reconsider, to
reevaluate.
I was like office.
Why do you need an officeMeetings Email?
(20:39):
Do you really need that?
Not saying these are toxicthings.
It's like you probably don'tneed them.
There's a lot of things thatyou don't need, but a lot of
people are like create a company, I'll get an ERP and a CRM and
and a co-working space is likeyou don't need all of that.
Right?
And because we read all of that, you know we defied some rules.
(20:59):
Three similar profiles.
We're three geeks, three whitemen, obviously, but three geeks
of similar profiles.
We had no office, we were tooexpensive, niche technologists,
all of these things I mentioned,right, and it looks like a
recipe for failure.
We haven't done any of this inall of these years.
I was going to write.
(21:19):
Also no lawyers, but maybe CMSgets.
We didn't use them until prelater on, right?
In spite of all of that, thecompany's doing okay.
You don't need all of this.
This is a pretty good learning.
It's like there's a lot youdon't need, right, and look,
sometimes the clients are notright.
There's another thing there's alot you don't need right and
look, sometimes the clients arenot right.
(21:40):
There's another thing there's alot of sayings, there's a lot
of mantras, right, like, oh, gobig or go home, or, you know,
feel fast, feel.
Often the client is not alwaysright.
Look, we've got a form on thewebsite for clients to request
projects and one of the projectsis like look at this, I please
you very much to invent fivedimension.
I please you that this.
Invent white people.
It's like I don't want toinvent white people.
(22:03):
We got already too many of them.
But you know the clients one ofthe things we also defied this
Raise your hand if you're anactive Mars Base client or past,
past Mars-based client.
There's a bunch of over here.
Yeah, I mean over there.
Look, how many times have wetold you like this is not a good
idea.
Other companies are like yes,sir, yes, sir, sure, we'll do
(22:25):
everything.
You say.
Like sometimes you're wrong.
Like motherfucker misspelled mysurname.
How am I going to take thisperson seriously?
Anyways, in the second year welearned something essential.
We learned how do companies die?
Most companies die because theydon't sell enough.
Actually, let me correct that.
All companies die because theydon't sell enough.
(22:46):
A lot of companies will say weran out of investment.
I had a fight with myco-founder.
I did this, I did that.
No, you don't sell enough.
Why?
I mentioned the coin stink ofJordi, a co-founder, ceo.
It's so essential.
One of the things we've doneevery year perfectly is
(23:07):
accumulate cash in the bank, andI know crypto bros are going to
say you're losing money.
You know cash in the bank.
Wow, are you in the 19thcentury?
I know the company is stillafloat.
Where's yours Right After thecrash?
Just get, I mean.
You know there's a lot of peoplesaying, oh, my company is going
so well.
I interviewed so many people atStar Grand.
(23:27):
You can't even imagine whosecompanies are now dead, right,
or that I've met over the yearsand they're always giving
interviews, podcasts and allthat.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm doingwell, doing well, and then the
next day in the newspaper it'slike this company disappears or
they're in a financial scandal.
Right, we work hard to havemost projects in green.
Every project has to turn aprofit.
(23:49):
You know, we got an internalset of KPIs.
We really believe in this.
A lot of companies get lost inthe nonsense of raising funds,
raising funds, raising funds andeventually maybe they're going
to figure out about sales.
You know there are differentapproaches.
I'm not saying some are wrong.
Some are definitely wrong.
I'm not saying all of them are,but if you don't have money in
(24:17):
the bank, if you live hand tomouth, how are you going to act
when clients don't pay you, whenthere's a financial crisis,
when Silicon Valley Bankdefaults, you know, and when a
client is like, oh, I'm notgoing to be able to pay these
months, I will pay in threemonths time, Okay, most
companies are not able to dothat, you know.
Also, that's what we learned inthe second year.
It was the best profit ever forthe company.
We sold like crazy.
(24:38):
We launched Startup Ryan inEnglish.
We launched a Slack communityfor entrepreneurs, something
with it but, most importantly,we raised a lot of money in the
bank, right?
I don't like to promotecapitalist people I'm not a fan
of that but this saying it'sreally true, like a check is a
(24:59):
commitment, everything else is aconversation, right?
If we had to believe everyperson that said like, oh no,
can you start the project today,don't worry, the contract will
be fine tomorrow.
No, the payment will go throughnext week we wouldn't be here
today.
Sometimes we have to take verydifficult decisions Stop working
for a fine tomorrow.
No, the payment will go throughnext week.
We wouldn't be here today.
Sometimes we had to take verydifficult decisions stop working
for a client and sometimes wedidn't, and we lost a ton of
(25:20):
money, right?
So like, for instance, I'll seewhat's here.
I don't even know what's coming.
I'm improvising.
Yeah, we have been a veryconscious effort of selling,
selling, selling.
You'll see a lot of pictures ofus selling, maybe not selling
giving.
That's very different.
(25:40):
Teaching at Ironhack 2014.
Speaking at Startup Brian inMadrid in 2019.
Look how fat I was In thenewsletter of our university in
2016.
Or something like that AtMobile World Congress two, three
weeks ago with my co-foundersand a potential sponsor, at some
random corporate event, atanother event and at another
(26:03):
corporate event here I don'teven know most of these events
anymore and what shows is likeyou got to go out.
You got to get out of the cave.
How many companies get stuck inthe co-working space?
They don't go to talk toclients or meet people or give
talks, appear in podcasts andstuff like that.
This is essential.
This is, you know, chavi,presenting one of our very first
projects, the Barcelona Startup.
(26:24):
That kind of like gave us thefame in 2014 because we worked
for the Barcelona City Hall.
But there will be times in whichclients will leave you this big
of a fucking hole.
You know it happened in oursecond year.
We lost a big client, left us80,000 debt.
Happened in our fifth year.
(26:45):
Sorry.
In our first year, somebodyowed us 25 grand.
Second year, 80.
In the year number five,something similar.
It's stupid.
It's going to happen.
It kills companies, right?
So sell, sell, sell all thefucking time.
As a matter of fact, as Imentioned, like some startups
that I've interviewed, I'veinterviewed over 200 startups in
(27:10):
the last 10 years.
I could say, well, above 20 to40 are dead, they don't exist
anymore.
Right, should be higher.
Some of them are like in zombiestate, about to die, something
like that.
They will languish, but there'sa lot of them in the graveyard.
Right, good intentions.
And in 2016, we learnedsomething else we sold so much,
(27:31):
we hired a lot of people, but wedidn't go into the crazy hiring
hired 25 people, didn't workand all of that.
But we thought, oh, we needprojects, just start getting
projects.
And twice as many people meanstwice as much money.
Yeah, also twice as manyproblems and not enough profit.
And this is very important.
This is not an equation, right?
We increased the team in 2016.
(27:53):
We even decided, oh, we'reurgent, urgently, we need to
hire somebody.
Sometimes we didn't do the righthiring.
We had to hire abroad, wedidn't know the implications,
regulations, payments and stufflike that, and then, as a result
, we had to sell more becausesome client defaulted and they
didn't pay.
So we did some weirdexperiments.
I fucked up massively in 2016.
(28:16):
And basically, I blew up allthe profit in the company.
So, I'm sorry, xavi and Jordi,we didn't have profit because I
fucked up that year, I know, butyeah, we always kept pushing
from sales, then we had too manyprojects, then we pushed hiring
.
It's hard.
It's a balance.
That's your job as a founder.
You got to figure it out right.
It was the worst year in profit.
However, we did interestingstuff that worked well.
(28:36):
We launched a new website, westarted curating Startup Digest
and we started organizingattending conferences as a
company.
So we were always trying newthings right.
Come over, I know you love thestaircase.
This is amazing, but you get avery good HR.
How are you doing?
There's a space over here ifyou want.
(28:57):
And then in 2017, we're likeokay, this is pretty fucking
hard.
You know we're already tired.
Year number three no figure In2017 is where the remote
loneliness started.
It takes between 12 to 24 monthsworking remotely to start
feeling, if you are not used toit, to kind of like feel it we
(29:21):
lost a couple people.
You know Some people startedhaving problems decrease of
productivity and whatnot.
It's hard.
You know we advocate for remote.
I know there's Bernardo overhere who doesn't like remote
that much and we have these veryinteresting exchanges all the
time but like, we're good forremote, but we know it comes
with a price and you got to paythat price and we happily pay
the price.
(29:41):
It's not for everybody.
We cannot hire.
If we want it.
We couldn't hire you.
Why?
Because probably you're notmade for remote.
I can't hire some of my bestfriends, excellent professionals
, or people that are excellentprofessionals, because they
don't know how to work remotely.
And this is hard, it's a skill,you know.
It's hard as a manager becauseyou don't see when they have
(30:01):
problems.
They can hide, they can simplynon-block onto the video calls.
It is very hard.
It's very hard to find somebodywho's like in the office.
They would be like, you know,hanging their head or something
like that.
You don't see that remotely.
It is very fucking hard.
Unless you create a companythat you open up about these
kinds of things, you will nothave these very difficult
(30:23):
conversations with youremployees.
In spite of that, it was areally good year.
You know.
We also started organizing aconference for Startup Brain,
which was massively profitable,great for the ecosystem, and one
of our employees, oriol, hadvery amazing ideas like well,
remote is hard, we don't seeeach other very often.
Why don't we go on a companyretreat?
And this was a game changer.
(30:48):
And then comes the fourth year,in 2018.
And we started, like some ofour clients started blowing up
for whatever reason, right, andwe learned that sales is hard.
You know we lost our clientagain, you know, because they
defaulted.
Another company that mergedwith another one and all of a
sudden they leave you.
You know unpaid bills and stufflike that.
(31:09):
But we realized that for fouryears we haven't raised prices
to our clients.
And these are very fuckingdifficult conversation as a
matter of fact.
I'm just going to stop it here.
But timing the sales are hard.
That's why you have to havereserves in the bank.
If you go to sell to bigfucking corporate, it takes
forever.
Procurement, sales and contactdiverse teams, get five
(31:33):
sign-offs from different people.
App selling is hard.
You've sold somebody to a priceand conditions, not very likely
that you will change it unlessyou're really really good and
what you provide is reallypainful for them.
Right, managing expectations.
We learned like this Alsolearned that the ups and downs
on the founders not only onemployees, of course, but on the
founders are really hard aswell.
(31:55):
We have to manage like this.
Luckily, that year we rebranded, we started offering more
technologies, we startedbuilding startup brand in
Andorra.
We are always trying new thingsevery year.
That's why I'm highlighting ithere, because we've done.
Maybe I am a little bitdispersed, I know Jordi tells me
that all the time.
(32:15):
I'm like dude, why don't we doless stuff?
Well, some of it it sticks, youknow it works, and some others
don't, I know.
But you know, all of these kindof reinvention over the years
seems to pay off.
Sometimes when it pays off, itreally pays off.
You know, you can be like thiscat and and try to to estimate
and you have your big plan andand this is going to work, and
(32:38):
I've got these clients over hereand then no, I know, I just
want to.
I love cats and I wanted to.
I don't do presentationswithout a cat gift.
That's it.
Um, who said woo, awesome, yeah, give it up for Katz.
Everybody give it up for Katz,I love it.
(33:01):
You made me so happy.
Well, there's this other thing.
This is really important.
This doesn't apply to everybody.
I know this is controversial,but you can turn your clients
into friends and I'm reallyproud to say that we have
managed to accomplish this thisyear.
Before I go into very emotionalmoving pictures, you know we
adopted React in the company.
We started our product, which,spoiler alert failed miserably,
(33:22):
but at least we tried.
But I'm happy to say, you know,when a client asks for
reference as to whether how wework, we get emails like this
all the time.
You know, hi, sarah, nice tomeet you.
Yeah, I work with them.
I would hire them for all theother companies they have.
Hi, sarah, hi, sarah.
Well, spoiler, sarah hired uslast week and so and this
(33:45):
happens all the time why?
Because we're not a salesmachine.
We make friendships with ourclients.
We're there and I know thissounds very fluffy, but you know
, look at this.
People from where's Jose?
Jose, raise your hand, whereare you Over there?
One of our first clients nineyears ago, and you know they
(34:06):
come over.
He came from Euskadi all theway, like, oh, I'm going to be
there.
You know, can I come to theevent?
I'll be there.
This is amazing.
Like, oh, I'm going to be there.
Can you come to the event?
I'll be there.
This is amazing.
Other people wouldn't do that.
People in Barcelona of course,you're here, but not only them.
People at Eclair I saw Johnover here.
Where are you?
Don't worry, you'll get yourapplause.
You'll get your applause.
(34:30):
People from Mailtrack I tookthem to Silicon Valley for a
week to help them as a part of aproject.
I'm like, fuck it, I'm going togo to Silicon Valley with you
guys.
I'll show you around.
We're very good friends.
People from Everis, you know,probably not our favorite
company, but they invited us totheir Christmas dinner.
You don't invite a provider toChristmas dinner, I don't know.
It's kind of weird.
We do it because we're allfriends, but the company is
(34:52):
because we have these kind ofrelationships and this matters a
lot.
Why?
Because a lot of people youknow there's a person in the
ecosystem who's hired us forfive different companies.
And then the very bad year forsociety and I'm going to be
clear about this 2020, you knowwhat happens right 2020,
(35:14):
pandemic and all of that.
But it was really hard forpeople and I could say like it
was probably one of the bestyears in business for Marspace.
But that's not everything.
We had stuff.
Everybody gets stuff, likemental health.
That was the year we startedtalking about it and, precisely
because some people open up inthe company, we created a safe
(35:34):
space for the rest of the peopleand that mattered a lot.
Somebody told me look, in 10years time, 20 years time,
people are going to remember howyou treated them in very bad
times like now, like thepandemic, and I was like, yeah,
I could see how you know, intimes my previous companies
didn't do the stuff that we didright.
(35:54):
And so 2020, you know, it wasgood.
We learned that.
Also, in times of need, I reachout to people.
I called some of the speakersof Startup Prime.
I called all the clients Do youwant your money back?
They said like no, we continuethe project.
The sponsors that we signed toStartup Prime do you want your
money back?
Because we're not going to bedoing events for a while.
(36:16):
And they're like no, keep themoney.
So, because we have built anamazing community at startup
brand clients, sponsors and allthat you know, I called some of
them to ask for advice.
Like we're first-timeentrepreneurs, what do we have
to do in this time ofdesperation?
There's no business, you can'thire, you can, you can't travel
what the fuck?
And I call people who are like20, 40, 50 years in business and
(36:37):
they give me advice.
Why?
Because we're friends, peoplewho built really good companies,
and some example is StartupBrain.
This is what you're seeingtonight, minus the interview
that will not happen becausethere will be no interview
tonight.
We want to have more time withyou.
We've done, over 10 years, 145startup brand events every month
(36:59):
since 2014.
We've never skipped a singlefucking month.
Talk about commitment.
We've got 9,000 members.
We did three startup brandconferences of about 1,000
people with really cool speakers.
We've done our company 15non-star brand events.
We have a podcast.
Some of the stats we've done isto show that we really invested
(37:21):
in community.
As a matter of fact, 10 yearsago, I said I don't think any
company will succeed in 10years' time without a community
behind them, and I'm super happyto be able to call people a lot
of people in the audience.
I know that in a time of need,I can ask favors and they will
return them.
I will return them, right.
(37:42):
I've made so many friends overthe years, thanks, and we made
friends in the company.
One guy advised us in 2017, acompany wanted to buy us.
I called one of the bestentrepreneurs in Spain.
I said can you help us withthis?
He's like, yeah, sure, let'sget for lunch.
We went four hours with him.
He taught us everything aboutM&A.
We decided not to sell thecompany, right, and I didn't
(38:07):
even have a great relationshipwith that person at the
beginning.
Now I have invested in three ofthese companies.
You know I do a lot of officehours.
We produce a lot of content.
I say I know.
I say a lot of I because thisis the entire marketing
department of Mars based.
Basically, this is what happenswhen you're bootstrapped.
You cannot hire lots of peoplethat then you might fire in
(38:28):
times of not made.
But we also fail a lot.
I fucked up a lot.
I take full responsibility ofall the things, all the money I
squander.
Probably we're going to besquandering a lot of money
tonight and we did yesterday,definitely because of me, but it
pays off and when it comes back, it comes back tenfold.
I was able to have one of thebest conversations of my life 30
(38:50):
minutes with the founder ofShazam on stage in our second
conference.
That's weird.
And then in 2021, thingsstarted to get better and, don't
worry, we're approaching theend.
One of the things that welearned is like things we
learned 10 years ago might nothold up anymore.
I was like you know, are wedoing the right thing with
(39:14):
remote?
We adopted asynchronous workbecause everybody else was doing
remote, so we didn't have anedge in heart.
I was like oh, maybe we have towork async, maybe we have to
rethink our technologies, maybewe have to open an office Every
year, every quarter andsometimes some things monthly.
We review a lot of stuff in thecompany.
(39:37):
Why Do you know the myth of theboiling frog Boiling frog?
For those who don't know it,there's a saying that says if
you put a frog inside a pot, youwarm the water, warm it up.
Eventually it gets used to itand it dies.
It doesn't leap out.
How many people believe this istrue?
(40:00):
Raise your hands, don't worry,I'll not judge you, don't worry,
come on.
Usually it's 60%.
Come on, I'm not going to shameyou publicly.
It's false.
People repeat this all the timebecause they heard it somewhere
.
They have never spent a singleminute thinking is this actually
(40:21):
true?
And we do this with many, manythings in our life, many things.
That's why, in our company,frequently we reevaluate obvious
things like salaries.
I know this is pretty fuckingobvious.
Okay, but our model, ourtechnologies, working remotely
we're reverting asynchronouswork.
We tried for two years, didn'twork.
We're like fuck it, we don'tneed it anymore, right?
(40:43):
Our prices, our employeebenefits, stuff like that,
things, everything is subject toreview every term or every year
in the company, why Sometimesyou're accumulating a lot of
stuff that you don't need.
In technology, in coding,there's something called the
technical debt, which is thebaggage that you accumulate for
having been in business for solong, it's like, but you
(41:04):
probably don't need it anymore,but it keeps the things working
and you never go back to it.
There's business debt as well.
Right, you should go revisit itvery, very often.
In 2021, we signed the bestproject, the best event a year
in the company and I know it'snot nice to say, because people
were suffering a lot and so butit goes to show that maybe, when
(41:25):
you do things right and youhold very close relationships
with people, they will hold tothis relationship.
You know other things that wehear very often with people.
They will hold to thisrelationship.
You know other things that wehear very often and, believe me,
they're not right.
Maybe they are in someconditions.
Maybe they were right onceRails doesn't scale.
Okay, how many of you are usingStripe?
(41:47):
Raise your hand.
Your company uses StripeShopify.
Raise your hand.
Github.
Raise your hand.
Linkedin.
Raise your hand.
Github.
Raise your hand.
Linkedin.
Raise your hand.
All these companies are builtusing Ruby on Rails.
It fucking scales, but peoplehear it somewhere.
Remote workers don't work.
(42:07):
I worked for 10 years in anoffice.
Believe me, people didn'tfucking work in that office.
I could see everybody else'sscreens.
Bootstrap businesses are notambitious.
Yeah, talk about automatic.
They built WordPress.
They power 45% of the internetwebsites.
Hybrid mobile apps are slow.
You know things.
We adopt a lot of things thatmake sense and we don't
(42:29):
reevaluate them right.
It's like all the time you getto hear say, hear, say, hear,
say.
I'm tired of hearing.
It's very good, like theprocess of unlearning stuff.
It's essential.
This is one of the best thingswe've done as a company over the
years.
And, coming very close to theend of the presentation, ladies
and gentlemen, one concept thatnot enough people do in the
(42:51):
industry, which is lift peopleas you climb.
What does that mean?
You know your company becomes alittle bit successful.
You pay better salaries, ofcourse, to your employees, but
how about the rest of the peoplethat help you?
How about the publicinfrastructure?
How about the school thatraised you as a kid and taught
you?
Most people don't go back totheir school to talk, or their
(43:12):
uni, or their high school andstuff like that.
You got to lift people up asyou climb because I was helped.
When I arrived to the UnitedStates, some people opened doors
, introduced me to potentialclients and now it's my turn.
I've been doing it for 10 years.
A lot of people don't have thisvision and believe you.
10 years.
(43:34):
A lot of people don't have thisvision and believe you.
Believe me, it just fuckingworks all the time.
Live as you climb.
You know I take a lot of pridein what we do.
Normally I never do these kindof presentations.
I don't like talking aboutmyself, I don't like talking
about my company.
It's taken 10 fucking years forme to talk about my company on
stage in a Starbrand event.
We help people to co-foundcompanies.
I personally invested in 37startups.
(43:54):
We have brought internationalcompanies to open, multinational
companies to open an office inBarcelona.
We attracted foreign investment.
Right, we're paying it forward.
If you're not familiar with theconcept, google it up.
Paying it forward means helpingsomebody selflessly so that
maybe it comes back, maybe inthe future, right, but it's
(44:18):
altruistic and in the startupecosystem wouldn't exist without
people giving, giving andgiving, sharing, creating
community events.
Of course, there are other freecommunities I mentioned.
There's Bernat over there.
I know you don't like attention, but they run not only the best
podcast, they have co-workingspaces, they have been investing
in companies.
(44:39):
They have a fund.
They believe in community.
We need more players like themin the ecosystem.
We'll be 10 times better if wehad more Bernats and people like
that.
People at Attico they createcommunity.
And people like that.
People at Attico they createcommunity.
People love their workingspaces, love their events.
Right, we need more people likethat helping without expecting
(45:01):
anything in return, and in 2023,I realized that.
You know I've explained prettymuch everything.
Like that's all I wanted you tolearn, but still there are
quite a lot of assholes in theecosystem.
We all know one or two names.
Not gonna drop them, obviously,leave it up to you, but what I
(45:24):
say by that is, like you know,sometimes we're too driven with
our own mission that we don'tstop and think if what we are
doing is hurting other people.
You know.
So be nice to people, helpothers.
Pay coffee to aspiringentrepreneurs.
If you're an investor, don'tlet the entrepreneur pay for the
(45:45):
fucking coffee.
Come on, that happens too often.
Be nice, pay your taxes.
Give back to your community.
Don't break the law.
We don't need more Globos.
We've got enough with one of itright.
And so, because I don't want tobe an asshole, I want to give
the last five minutes of thepresentation to the people that
(46:06):
helped me.
And you know, for 10 yearsdoing startup right, I couldn't
have done it without aphenomenal team and I get all
the credit because I am on stage.
I'm like alex from star brain,alex from mars base, who's
posting the.
You get me every day on yourlinkedin because I post shit
every day on linkedin.
(46:26):
I know it works.
Um, these people don't get thecredit early enough and they put
in the work.
So please, big, big, big fuckingapplause for the sub-ranked
team.
Remember the thing aboutgetting used to fucking
(46:54):
applauses.
There's a lot of them now.
Our team at Mars Base.
Please give it up for them.
Thank you.
Look how strong I mean as anowner of a small company.
(47:15):
It means the world to you whensomebody picks your company
instead of something bigger.
You know all of them could beworking for Spotify or Google or
LinkedIn or stuff like that.
They're with us.
That means a lot, and also oneof the things I did this week,
(47:35):
and I'm not going to play itbecause, I mean, it's 23 fucking
minutes long.
This is only for our team,clients and friends of the
company, former employeesthere's a bunch of them here and
people who love the company.
They send videos from all overthe world in five different
languages saying thank you andyou know we couldn't have built
(47:59):
this without relationships likeJose, nine years uninterruptedly
hiring us.
Some others are on and offbecause the startups go up and
down.
Some their startup failed, theyhired us for another business
and some came last year.
We got two people over here,roger and Pau from Plaza, one of
our last clients from last yearand we love you all.
(48:24):
So thank you, big applause,thank you, guys.
Could be four minutes mentioning, you know, the companies I see
in the audience we work for.
There's a parking goal there'sNice, there's Eclair, there's
Plaza.
(48:44):
You know there's a lot of themNot going to spend because all
this fucking light is blindingme, but a lot of them are here.
It means the world to us that,even if we haven't worked since
2015, they're here or they senta video, they took their time.
And also I've got somethingspecial my good friend, derek
(49:05):
Anderson, ceo of Startup Brain,one of the most well-known
people in Silicon Valley.
People respect him.
He's been doing this shit foralmost 15 years, helping people
for absolutely no reason otherthan building community.
He helped the company goingstartup brand over the pandemic.
(49:27):
He's helped millions ofentrepreneurs worldwide.
And we sang Miley Cyrus in thekaraoke.
I know it looks like it's metal, it's not.
We sang Wrecking Ball, one ofmy favorite songs, believe it or
not, and he's got a message forus.
Speaker 2 (49:47):
Good evening everyone .
My name is Derek Anderson.
I'm one of the co-founders ofStartup Grind and I want to wish
you an incredible happybirthday celebration tonight in
Barcelona.
And I want to first give a hugethanks and shout out to Alex
(50:07):
and the entire organizing team,who have built just an
absolutely amazing and inspiringcommunity in Barcelona over
these past 10 years.
Startup Grind's values are allabout giving more than you take,
helping others first and makingfriends, and whenever I think
(50:28):
about who and where these valuesare best personified, Barcelona
and this amazing group ofpeople and all of you are
immediately come to the top ofmy mind.
I wish I could be there with youin person.
Unfortunately, I'm stuck inCalifornia in the United States,
(50:49):
but I hope you have a wonderfulevening tonight.
I hope you are all so proud ofwhat you built.
I hope you are able tocelebrate it.
Please go to the organizers andthank them.
Give them a hug on behalf of meand our community around the
world.
We're so grateful to be part ofwhat you're building.
(51:12):
We're so grateful to have beenable to watch this and see
inspiring work that you've doneand the community that you built
together.
Have a great night.
Speaker 1 (51:32):
What a terrible place to be stuck in California.
I know he's watching this, bythe way, but he always sends
some funny remark about me, sothe first time there hasn't been
any, so thank you for that.
So I wanted to give a big roundof applause for the Startup
Grind family, but also, and mostimportantly, for all the
(51:52):
Startup Grind speakers inBarcelona, because there's 12
tonight in the audience.
So thank you very much.
And, last but not least, I'mtalking people who have
supported for 10 years.
(52:12):
Of course, there's other peoplewho have supported us.
Some people I host a podcastwith Somebody that sponsored an
event, somebody who did this,maybe I have invested, somebody
I shared beers over with andstuff like that, but it goes
beyond that.
There's a special and I thinkit's the last one.
(52:33):
I hope it's the last one.
I'm thirsty and hungry.
There's a concept in technologyand development and I know some
people will be like that's nothow it works.
But there's a front end and aback end.
Usually front end is makingthings look pretty, but the real
work happens in the back end.
I'm sorry, react people.
I know.
(52:53):
I know it's not exactly likethis.
Don't ruin my joke.
So this is exactly what happensin our company.
I get all the credit, but Ihave two amazing co-founders
Come on stage.
(53:31):
We celebrated nine years.
I had to do so much shit lastnight.
I didn't update.
This is from last year.
We celebrated last night.
We had another cake, much morebeautiful, super tasty, with 10
years, astronauts and stuff, butit was so tiring last night we
had to try to confirm everything, all the last minute changes
(53:53):
and accommodating each and everysingle request we had.
So that's it.
I mean I want to dedicate thelast applause of the night to
them.
10 years and we're stillfriends.
(54:16):
You know, doesn't happen andthat's it.
So thank you very much forcoming.
Also, I lied, it was not thelast applause of the night, so
at least two more One for myfamily.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
And the last one for you, thank you.
Hello everybody, welcome to Life on Mars.
I'm Alex, ceo and founder ofMarsBased, and in this episode I
bring you a talk I gave oneyear ago at the 10th anniversary
of MarsBased and in thatoccasion I spoke for about an
hour and a half on stagecovering almost everything I've
learned, or I had learned, forabout 10 years running a company
(00:24):
that, and Startup Grind,because we're celebrating the
10th anniversary of bothinitiatives.
We gathered 300 people 300 ofour friends, former clients,
current clients, formeremployees and other people that
we like in the industry, thepodcast guests or the people we
(00:46):
hosted at Startup Grind, some ofour partners and sponsors and a
lot of people in the industry.
It was very moving to see allthe people from the stage and to
celebrate the 10th anniversary,and that is very special
because an event that I got tocelebrate with my co-founders,
tavi and Jordi, with my family,with the entire team of
MarsFaced, and we had a really,really great time.
(01:08):
The talk might be a little bitlong and if our friend David at
the helm of marketing, hasmanaged to reduce or to
eliminate the audiovisualproblems we had at the beginning
of the talk, where the micsdidn't work, beginning of the
talk where the mics didn't work.
You know you're in for a realtreat here A lot of wisdom
(01:30):
nuggets, a lot of blunt opinionsand towards the end I get a
little bit emotional.
So I think that all in all,this is really good content.
I hope that's interesting for alot of you.
Then you can take some advicefor your companies as well.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
And here's to 10 more years of running Marsbase and
sharing our learnings with ouraudience, community and friends.
So let's go.
Thank you so.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Welcome to the 10th anniversary party of Startup
Brain Barcelona and MarsBase.
This is a very special event.
It is so special that if thiswas a Startup Brain event, I
would say welcome to StartupBrain.
But this is not the event.
I would also go on and talkabout the values of Startup
(03:15):
Brain.
This is something that Istarted doing 10 years ago and I
keep very close to my heart,because Startup Brain have some
values that resonate with me.
It's giving or taking.
It's making friends beforemaking contacts.
It's helping others beforehelping yourself.
Essentially, I always believedthat.
(03:38):
That's why I think Starbriandand I have a varied action.
I would go on in a regularevent and I would say, look, and
we got some sponsors, becauseevents don't happen without the
response.
And I would say, hey, where'sthe CMS people?
They're probably not here yetbecause they're lawyers, they
(04:00):
work in 2008,.
But if you're here, raise yourhand.
If you work at CMS, you see,still not here, but they have
been supporting people for fiveor six years already.
First off, you know there's gotthis bunch of companies over
here that are really, reallynice Banktrack, for instance.
Raise your hand, lasse, whereare you?
That guy over there, norwegianguy, but he's great.
(04:24):
He runs Bank, bank track.
This company hits close to myheart because I'm an active
investor in this company andthey are a company to manage
your personal and businessfinance and so they're still
pre-seed, early stage.
All contacts are welcome.
I know they've got.
They leave some leaflets overhere.
You get some discount and, mostof all, you get to collaborate
(04:47):
with a company.
You get to shape it.
They're really small of a team.
The product's great, thetechnology is superb and so
please give it up for Lassen,his team at BankTrack.
It's going to be a lot ofapplause tonight, so you better
fucking get used to it.
(05:09):
There's Attico, attico.
Where are you Over there?
No roll-ups.
How are you going to find nohat?
How are you going to have?
Yes, okay, usually there's kindof like orange hats, yellow
hats, black hat.
Come on, anyways, atticoWorkspaces.
We on, anyways, atticoWorkspaces.
They're active clients ofAttico Workspaces.
(05:29):
We have been collaborating formany, many years.
Nayara is a super strongadvocate for the startup brand
values.
As a matter of fact, she runsstartup brand in Madrid since a
few months ago.
They're still generous.
They gave us a promotion for50% off of the first two months
at Attico Workspaces, so pleasegive it up for Nayara and the
(05:49):
team.
Dennis, where are you All?
Right, dennis is not here, butthe ODHC is a company that helps
you get access to financialdata via APIs.
It's a company that just wantto have contacts.
They don't need investor.
(06:11):
They're so powerful, they don'tneed anything else.
They're so cool.
They want to talk tointeresting people, use cases,
maybe for a future investment.
Please give it up for them aswell.
We've got only three to go.
Go, come on, we can do it.
Where are you over there?
(06:32):
First time sponsoring.
She's been coming to some events.
Hello, mark, you're not late,don't worry.
Don't worry, no bad blood.
One of my best friends say hito Mark tomorrow.
Wants to personally coach.
Don't worry, no bad blood.
One of my best friends, say hito Mark.
I'd like to see tomorrow.
Marike wants to personally coachsome of you.
I don't think you can take themall, can you Some a few of them
(06:54):
.
Leadership you know she can bea coach in your personal
day-to-day and business trainingand she has got an active
promotion for the first peoplewho sign up for this, who go
there, talk to her in thenetworking and claim this
opportunity.
These one-on-one sessions aregoing to change your life.
(07:15):
Please give it up for her soyou can tell I'm running out of
voice.
It's a great moment before a40-minute presentation, but I'll
try to do my best.
Bucaneros, henry, where are you?
It's probably busy over there.
Over there, second timesponsoring the event, we're
going to have very interestingdrinks tonight for the
(07:37):
networking part, so not whatyou're used to.
I'm not going to spoil it, butthis gentleman over here is
providing the drinks for theevent and also he truly embodies
the values of Startup Grind, soplease give it up for him as
well.
He's looking for investors, bythe way, he's looking for
(07:58):
investors.
He runs a canning company inthe beverages sector.
So looking for investors.
If you got some spare moneyjust kidding, if you're a
professional investor, of course, or you know a lot of investors
, go talk to him.
And last but not least, lesMoons.
I know they're not here and theCEO can't be here, but this
(08:19):
one's very special.
Our first event 10 years agowas with them.
Our first event 10 years agowas with them.
They've been supporting thisevent for 146 editions in 10
years.
They're part of the catering,so please give it up for Las
Moons Amazing Thank you.
(08:40):
If this was a regular event, Iwould say and now come over,
just move to the front, there'sspace over here.
And now there will be, you know, an open mic session.
I would be interviewingsomebody and I would say
something like and this event isprobably sponsored by my
company, but I don't talk aboutmy company in the event.
But tonight it's not this day.
(09:01):
Tonight I'll be sharing myentrepreneurial trip for 10
years because we have beenorganizing this event from
MarsBase, our company.
We got the entire team ofMarsBase this year tonight.
Raise your hand, martians overthere.
And you know why?
(09:24):
It's because I realized I nevertalk about Mars Space and I get
tired of people asking but whatdoes Mars Space do?
Why don't you talk?
Because you know, frankly,there's a lot of events in the
city and people organizingevents from a company.
They do a shit job.
They sell their services, theysell the product and it ends up
transpiring in the content ofthe event and then it's not a
(09:46):
good event.
Clearly they want to sell yousomething.
I don't want to sell youanything.
You're broke.
You're entrepreneurs.
That's why you attend startupevents.
You can't pay us, possibly Justkidding, but this is my style,
first timers.
I'm sorry in advance, but yeah,just to give a glimpse.
(10:07):
Like this is a different event.
I will be talking at thecompany, not because we want to
sell in the true spirit Art ofGrind.
I want to share what we'velearned, what I've learned in 10
years running a company andalso in 10 years organizing the
Startup Brain event, 10 years ofbeing an angel investor, things
that, thanks to Mars Base, Ihave been able to become, and I
(10:32):
hope this is useful.
Normally, you learn from otherentrepreneurs, but over the
years, people are like when arewe going to learn from you?
Well, you're lucky or unluckyif you didn't know it, but
you're going to learn from metonight, hopefully.
Probably you'll take away someimportant things.
Long story short, I'm not goingto bore you a lot there.
We've got a phenomenal websitedesigned by Lasse, by the way,
(10:54):
who's our designer Ten years ago, with two gentlemen over there.
I'm going to be talking aboutthem now in a minute.
We created a company, aconsultancy, an agency, call it
what you want Companiesoutsource to us.
Usually it's bigger companies.
We started with startups, ofcourse.
Now we've been working forstuff like FC Barcelona, hewlett
(11:15):
Packard, ford and stuff likethat.
You've got a team of 20 allaround here, but we've never had
an office, so we meet onlythree, four times a year, and
this is one of these days.
That's why they are here.
They're here for 10 years, youknow.
Over 10 years we've grown to bea full team, remotely, no
(11:36):
office, working from some reallybig brands from Spain, from
Portugal, doing over 2 millionin annual revenue, clients all
over the world.
And one of the important thingsis we're not a startup.
So why the fuck am I heretalking to you?
Right, precisely, startups getall the credit, and I think
these kind of companies agencies, bootstrap companies this means
(12:01):
companies with no outsideinvestment.
We have no debt, no loans, nobanks, no venture capital.
Our company is alive because weknow how to sell and we have
clients Come over there becauseyou're accumulating at the
entrance, there's a lot of spaceover here and so, but how did
it start?
(12:21):
Right, how did this companystart?
I'm going to give you a littlebit of an overview of the whole
thing.
And then, after this, so youknow, there's the catering
networking.
Don't worry, I know I amseparating you from the beer and
the food.
I know I can take the pressure.
So clearly, you know a company,as I said, started in 2014.
(12:44):
Coincided, when I was launchingthe company and I was like, okay
, we got to do something.
I got a not respectable pastworking for Deloitte I'm sorry
about that Clearly not oursponsor, but Jordi Chavi and I
have known each other sincemiddle school Jordi, from
(13:06):
elementary school and we weretired from working from our old
bosses and I know there's one ortwo here, so don't get me wrong
.
You're great people, that's whyyou're still here.
We're good friends.
But we didn't like thecompanies.
We were about to quit and wesaid why don't we create this
kind of company ourselves?
We're about to quit and we saidwhy don't we create this kind
of company ourselves?
Two years we kept the job andwe were working for some
(13:30):
projects that, luckily for us,they didn't see the light of day
.
One of them is this Bolivar.
Not even going to go intodetail.
The other one was a digitalcookbook manager called
cookingme.
And then we realized, okay, yeah, clearly we know how to design
shit, we know how to developshit, but we don't know how to
(13:55):
sell it.
We don't know how to raisefunds, we don't know how to
network.
We were coming fromconsultancies like Atos or
Deloitte, right?
And I said why don't we haveother people do this stuff and
we help them taking only thedevelopment part, right?
True, but you need a team,right.
(14:18):
Let me introduce you to myco-founders.
Usually, when they tell me,when they ask me, as an angel
investor, what is your preferredcomposition of a team, I always
say one tech guy, one guy goodin business and operations, then
somebody who can sell.
Right, let's start with the CTOChavi, teenage years.
(14:42):
Don't worry, my picture is theworst, so this is the best one.
Clearly, cto in the making.
You know pizza, video games,heavy metal, hoodie and all that
.
Jordi is going to kill me forthe next picture.
Then you got somebody countingthe coins.
You know, jordi has been takingcharge of the.
(15:04):
If he was not in the company,the company wouldn't exist.
He checks the money in the bank, right, xavi?
And I don't do it.
We know jack shit about financeand this is really important.
I'm going to go about this.
And then you need somebody,like a fucking clown like me, um
, but then again, I got yourattention right.
That works.
So one year before so 11 yearsago actually, we did this.
(15:33):
I sent an email.
This is the first email ever ofMark Spaced.
2013 and March 2014.
A really common mistake amongentrepreneurs, which is I'm not
ready to launch, oh, the websiteis not ready, the logo is not
(15:53):
ready, this is not ready,nothing is fucking ready ever.
Right, for one year, we keptour jobs and we didn't do other
than choosing Trello overBasecamp, creating a nice Google
Drive and stuff like that, butwe didn't go out and sell.
We didn't go out and create thecompany.
(16:14):
There was all analysis, noaction, analysis, paralysis.
It's the worst thing.
Get started First.
Learning of today.
Right, it took one fucking yearbetween this email and the
first and the incorporation ofthe company.
Okay, as I said, we are notgood at having contacts, we're
(16:37):
not entrepreneurs, but we knewhow to build good software.
So that was kind of like how itlooked like for us.
And there was a moment of change.
We started while working ourprevious companies, but one day
(16:59):
25th so more or less in the 15thof December of 2013, I quit my
job completely.
I decided to go all in.
I said, fuck it, I'm moving tothe US.
I went to San Francisco, burnedall my savings, had to
freelance for terrible companiesto pay for the Airbnb, which
was fucking expensive, andChameleon Jordan incorporated a
little bit later.
But this move, kind of like,created the need, right.
It's like, okay, if I don'tfind clients, I will not be able
(17:22):
to eat right, and so we neededto have money to pay for
something right.
By the way, I know there's afew people for whom I've worked
in the past.
I've seen Harlan over there.
I think there's Mark over thereForever grateful for teaching
me how to do things.
But also in those companies welearn how not to do things Big
companies with terrible businessethics, like Deloitte and other
(17:44):
big consultancies, so extremelygrateful.
As a matter of fact, while wekept the job, we couldn't
because we had exclusivity inour contracts.
So we were doing Google meetsHangouts with these masks on
because we needed some stuff onthe blog.
How do we put pictures ofourselves?
How do we show that we'reworking?
(18:05):
Look, for one year it was likethis.
I know it sounds ridiculous.
It was 2014.
People were using hashtags onsocial media and that was our
first website.
But in March 2014, this is thepicture we incorporated the
company.
Why?
Because I found the firstclient in the US $700 website
(18:26):
that only 200 were paid Rightterrible mistake.
But because we had the client,we wanted to do things legally
from day one.
In spite of doing thingslegally since day one, pretty
unlike other startups in theworld, we're still alive and
kicking right.
So we lost money with thatclient.
Actually, right From there,we're like, okay, we got 3,000
(18:51):
euros in in the bank.
Until this money runs out,we'll try it.
We got three months, we're nottaking any money, but you know,
fucking autonomous and stufflike takes a lot of money and
notaries, lawyers and all ofthese other people in the chain
of value.
Our money was rapidlydecreasing.
Or like, okay, urgency, urgency.
Okay, urgency, urgency.
(19:13):
In spite of all of that, we'rehere celebrating 10 years with
what I said.
There's 10 lessons for youtonight.
First one we learned in thefirst year is the rules are for
the 80% of the people.
When we started, the ABC ofentrepreneurship was create a
startup, go to an incubator, goto an accelerator, raise some
(19:37):
funds, find mentors, create aboard and shit like that.
You can't be the same profile,you can have one founder only,
and stuff like that.
We defied all of this right.
People are like this is notgoing to work.
Obviously it's not going towork.
You're remote.
You don't have an office.
You're more expensive than thecompetition.
(19:57):
You only do Ruby, which isfucking niche.
You don't do mobile in 2014,.
Really it's not going to work.
Well, in your face it's worked,but actually what I'm saying is
it worked.
If you follow everybody else's,you will go to where they ended
, but you will not go anywhereelse.
(20:18):
Rules are 48% right.
Look, I know these books areprobably not popular anymore,
but they helped us to create thecompany just for one reason
they taught us to think aboutthings, to reconsider, to
reevaluate.
I was like office.
Why do you need an officeMeetings Email?
They taught us to think aboutthings, to reconsider, to
reevaluate.
I was like office.
Why do you need an officeMeetings Email?
(20:39):
Do you really need that?
Not saying these are toxicthings.
It's like you probably don'tneed them.
There's a lot of things thatyou don't need, but a lot of
people are like create a company, I'll get an ERP and a CRM and
and a co-working space is likeyou don't need all of that.
Right?
And because we read all of that, you know we defied some rules.
(20:59):
Three similar profiles.
We're three geeks, three whitemen, obviously, but three geeks
of similar profiles.
We had no office, we were tooexpensive, niche technologists,
all of these things I mentioned,right, and it looks like a
recipe for failure.
We haven't done any of this inall of these years.
I was going to write.
(21:19):
Also no lawyers, but maybe CMSgets.
We didn't use them until prelater on, right?
In spite of all of that, thecompany's doing okay.
You don't need all of this.
This is a pretty good learning.
It's like there's a lot youdon't need, right, and look,
sometimes the clients are notright.
There's another thing there's alot you don't need right and
look, sometimes the clients arenot right.
(21:40):
There's another thing there's alot of sayings, there's a lot
of mantras, right, like, oh, gobig or go home, or, you know,
feel fast, feel.
Often the client is not alwaysright.
Look, we've got a form on thewebsite for clients to request
projects and one of the projectsis like look at this, I please
you very much to invent fivedimension.
I please you that this.
Invent white people.
It's like I don't want toinvent white people.
(22:03):
We got already too many of them.
But you know the clients one ofthe things we also defied this
Raise your hand if you're anactive Mars Base client or past,
past Mars-based client.
There's a bunch of over here.
Yeah, I mean over there.
Look, how many times have wetold you like this is not a good
idea.
Other companies are like yes,sir, yes, sir, sure, we'll do
(22:25):
everything.
You say.
Like sometimes you're wrong.
Like motherfucker misspelled mysurname.
How am I going to take thisperson seriously?
Anyways, in the second year welearned something essential.
We learned how do companies die?
Most companies die because theydon't sell enough.
Actually, let me correct that.
All companies die because theydon't sell enough.
(22:46):
A lot of companies will say weran out of investment.
I had a fight with myco-founder.
I did this, I did that.
No, you don't sell enough.
Why?
I mentioned the coin stink ofJordi, a co-founder, ceo.
It's so essential.
One of the things we've doneevery year perfectly is
(23:07):
accumulate cash in the bank, andI know crypto bros are going to
say you're losing money.
You know cash in the bank.
Wow, are you in the 19thcentury?
I know the company is stillafloat.
Where's yours Right After thecrash?
Just get, I mean.
You know there's a lot of peoplesaying, oh, my company is going
so well.
I interviewed so many people atStar Grand.
(23:27):
You can't even imagine whosecompanies are now dead, right,
or that I've met over the yearsand they're always giving
interviews, podcasts and allthat.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm doingwell, doing well, and then the
next day in the newspaper it'slike this company disappears or
they're in a financial scandal.
Right, we work hard to havemost projects in green.
Every project has to turn aprofit.
(23:49):
You know, we got an internalset of KPIs.
We really believe in this.
A lot of companies get lost inthe nonsense of raising funds,
raising funds, raising funds andeventually maybe they're going
to figure out about sales.
You know there are differentapproaches.
I'm not saying some are wrong.
Some are definitely wrong.
I'm not saying all of them are,but if you don't have money in
(24:17):
the bank, if you live hand tomouth, how are you going to act
when clients don't pay you, whenthere's a financial crisis,
when Silicon Valley Bankdefaults, you know, and when a
client is like, oh, I'm notgoing to be able to pay these
months, I will pay in threemonths time, Okay, most
companies are not able to dothat, you know.
Also, that's what we learned inthe second year.
It was the best profit ever forthe company.
We sold like crazy.
(24:38):
We launched Startup Ryan inEnglish.
We launched a Slack communityfor entrepreneurs, something
with it but, most importantly,we raised a lot of money in the
bank, right?
I don't like to promotecapitalist people I'm not a fan
of that but this saying it'sreally true, like a check is a
(24:59):
commitment, everything else is aconversation, right?
If we had to believe everyperson that said like, oh no,
can you start the project today,don't worry, the contract will
be fine tomorrow.
No, the payment will go throughnext week we wouldn't be here
today.
Sometimes we have to take verydifficult decisions Stop working
for a fine tomorrow.
No, the payment will go throughnext week.
We wouldn't be here today.
Sometimes we had to take verydifficult decisions stop working
for a client and sometimes wedidn't, and we lost a ton of
(25:20):
money, right?
So like, for instance, I'll seewhat's here.
I don't even know what's coming.
I'm improvising.
Yeah, we have been a veryconscious effort of selling,
selling, selling.
You'll see a lot of pictures ofus selling, maybe not selling
giving.
That's very different.
(25:40):
Teaching at Ironhack 2014.
Speaking at Startup Brian inMadrid in 2019.
Look how fat I was In thenewsletter of our university in
2016.
Or something like that AtMobile World Congress two, three
weeks ago with my co-foundersand a potential sponsor, at some
random corporate event, atanother event and at another
(26:03):
corporate event here I don'teven know most of these events
anymore and what shows is likeyou got to go out.
You got to get out of the cave.
How many companies get stuck inthe co-working space?
They don't go to talk toclients or meet people or give
talks, appear in podcasts andstuff like that.
This is essential.
This is, you know, chavi,presenting one of our very first
projects, the Barcelona Startup.
(26:24):
That kind of like gave us thefame in 2014 because we worked
for the Barcelona City Hall.
But there will be times in whichclients will leave you this big
of a fucking hole.
You know it happened in oursecond year.
We lost a big client, left us80,000 debt.
Happened in our fifth year.
(26:45):
Sorry.
In our first year, somebodyowed us 25 grand.
Second year, 80.
In the year number five,something similar.
It's stupid.
It's going to happen.
It kills companies, right?
So sell, sell, sell all thefucking time.
As a matter of fact, as Imentioned, like some startups
that I've interviewed, I'veinterviewed over 200 startups in
(27:10):
the last 10 years.
I could say, well, above 20 to40 are dead, they don't exist
anymore.
Right, should be higher.
Some of them are like in zombiestate, about to die, something
like that.
They will languish, but there'sa lot of them in the graveyard.
Right, good intentions.
And in 2016, we learnedsomething else we sold so much,
(27:31):
we hired a lot of people, but wedidn't go into the crazy hiring
hired 25 people, didn't workand all of that.
But we thought, oh, we needprojects, just start getting
projects.
And twice as many people meanstwice as much money.
Yeah, also twice as manyproblems and not enough profit.
And this is very important.
This is not an equation, right?
We increased the team in 2016.
(27:53):
We even decided, oh, we'reurgent, urgently, we need to
hire somebody.
Sometimes we didn't do the righthiring.
We had to hire abroad, wedidn't know the implications,
regulations, payments and stufflike that, and then, as a result
, we had to sell more becausesome client defaulted and they
didn't pay.
So we did some weirdexperiments.
I fucked up massively in 2016.
(28:16):
And basically, I blew up allthe profit in the company.
So, I'm sorry, xavi and Jordi,we didn't have profit because I
fucked up that year, I know, butyeah, we always kept pushing
from sales, then we had too manyprojects, then we pushed hiring
.
It's hard.
It's a balance.
That's your job as a founder.
You got to figure it out right.
It was the worst year in profit.
However, we did interestingstuff that worked well.
(28:36):
We launched a new website, westarted curating Startup Digest
and we started organizingattending conferences as a
company.
So we were always trying newthings right.
Come over, I know you love thestaircase.
This is amazing, but you get avery good HR.
How are you doing?
There's a space over here ifyou want.
(28:57):
And then in 2017, we're likeokay, this is pretty fucking
hard.
You know we're already tired.
Year number three no figure In2017 is where the remote
loneliness started.
It takes between 12 to 24 monthsworking remotely to start
feeling, if you are not used toit, to kind of like feel it we
(29:21):
lost a couple people.
You know Some people startedhaving problems decrease of
productivity and whatnot.
It's hard.
You know we advocate for remote.
I know there's Bernardo overhere who doesn't like remote
that much and we have these veryinteresting exchanges all the
time but like, we're good forremote, but we know it comes
with a price and you got to paythat price and we happily pay
the price.
(29:41):
It's not for everybody.
We cannot hire.
If we want it.
We couldn't hire you.
Why?
Because probably you're notmade for remote.
I can't hire some of my bestfriends, excellent professionals
, or people that are excellentprofessionals, because they
don't know how to work remotely.
And this is hard, it's a skill,you know.
It's hard as a manager becauseyou don't see when they have
(30:01):
problems.
They can hide, they can simplynon-block onto the video calls.
It is very hard.
It's very hard to find somebodywho's like in the office.
They would be like, you know,hanging their head or something
like that.
You don't see that remotely.
It is very fucking hard.
Unless you create a companythat you open up about these
kinds of things, you will nothave these very difficult
(30:23):
conversations with youremployees.
In spite of that, it was areally good year.
You know.
We also started organizing aconference for Startup Brain,
which was massively profitable,great for the ecosystem, and one
of our employees, oriol, hadvery amazing ideas like well,
remote is hard, we don't seeeach other very often.
Why don't we go on a companyretreat?
And this was a game changer.
(30:48):
And then comes the fourth year,in 2018.
And we started, like some ofour clients started blowing up
for whatever reason, right, andwe learned that sales is hard.
You know we lost our clientagain, you know, because they
defaulted.
Another company that mergedwith another one and all of a
sudden they leave you.
You know unpaid bills and stufflike that.
(31:09):
But we realized that for fouryears we haven't raised prices
to our clients.
And these are very fuckingdifficult conversation as a
matter of fact.
I'm just going to stop it here.
But timing the sales are hard.
That's why you have to havereserves in the bank.
If you go to sell to bigfucking corporate, it takes
forever.
Procurement, sales and contactdiverse teams, get five
(31:33):
sign-offs from different people.
App selling is hard.
You've sold somebody to a priceand conditions, not very likely
that you will change it unlessyou're really really good and
what you provide is reallypainful for them.
Right, managing expectations.
We learned like this Alsolearned that the ups and downs
on the founders not only onemployees, of course, but on the
founders are really hard aswell.
(31:55):
We have to manage like this.
Luckily, that year we rebranded, we started offering more
technologies, we startedbuilding startup brand in
Andorra.
We are always trying new thingsevery year.
That's why I'm highlighting ithere, because we've done.
Maybe I am a little bitdispersed, I know Jordi tells me
that all the time.
(32:15):
I'm like dude, why don't we doless stuff?
Well, some of it it sticks, youknow it works, and some others
don't, I know.
But you know, all of these kindof reinvention over the years
seems to pay off.
Sometimes when it pays off, itreally pays off.
You know, you can be like thiscat and and try to to estimate
and you have your big plan andand this is going to work, and
(32:38):
I've got these clients over hereand then no, I know, I just
want to.
I love cats and I wanted to.
I don't do presentationswithout a cat gift.
That's it.
Um, who said woo, awesome, yeah, give it up for Katz.
Everybody give it up for Katz,I love it.
(33:01):
You made me so happy.
Well, there's this other thing.
This is really important.
This doesn't apply to everybody.
I know this is controversial,but you can turn your clients
into friends and I'm reallyproud to say that we have
managed to accomplish this thisyear.
Before I go into very emotionalmoving pictures, you know we
adopted React in the company.
We started our product, which,spoiler alert failed miserably,
(33:22):
but at least we tried.
But I'm happy to say, you know,when a client asks for
reference as to whether how wework, we get emails like this
all the time.
You know, hi, sarah, nice tomeet you.
Yeah, I work with them.
I would hire them for all theother companies they have.
Hi, sarah, hi, sarah.
Well, spoiler, sarah hired uslast week and so and this
(33:45):
happens all the time why?
Because we're not a salesmachine.
We make friendships with ourclients.
We're there and I know thissounds very fluffy, but you know
, look at this.
People from where's Jose?
Jose, raise your hand, whereare you Over there?
One of our first clients nineyears ago, and you know they
(34:06):
come over.
He came from Euskadi all theway, like, oh, I'm going to be
there.
You know, can I come to theevent?
I'll be there.
This is amazing.
Like, oh, I'm going to be there.
Can you come to the event?
I'll be there.
This is amazing.
Other people wouldn't do that.
People in Barcelona of course,you're here, but not only them.
People at Eclair I saw Johnover here.
Where are you?
Don't worry, you'll get yourapplause.
You'll get your applause.
(34:30):
People from Mailtrack I tookthem to Silicon Valley for a
week to help them as a part of aproject.
I'm like, fuck it, I'm going togo to Silicon Valley with you
guys.
I'll show you around.
We're very good friends.
People from Everis, you know,probably not our favorite
company, but they invited us totheir Christmas dinner.
You don't invite a provider toChristmas dinner, I don't know.
It's kind of weird.
We do it because we're allfriends, but the company is
(34:52):
because we have these kind ofrelationships and this matters a
lot.
Why?
Because a lot of people youknow there's a person in the
ecosystem who's hired us forfive different companies.
And then the very bad year forsociety and I'm going to be
clear about this 2020, you knowwhat happens right 2020,
(35:14):
pandemic and all of that.
But it was really hard forpeople and I could say like it
was probably one of the bestyears in business for Marspace.
But that's not everything.
We had stuff.
Everybody gets stuff, likemental health.
That was the year we startedtalking about it and, precisely
because some people open up inthe company, we created a safe
(35:34):
space for the rest of the peopleand that mattered a lot.
Somebody told me look, in 10years time, 20 years time,
people are going to remember howyou treated them in very bad
times like now, like thepandemic, and I was like, yeah,
I could see how you know, intimes my previous companies
didn't do the stuff that we didright.
(35:54):
And so 2020, you know, it wasgood.
We learned that.
Also, in times of need, I reachout to people.
I called some of the speakersof Startup Prime.
I called all the clients Do youwant your money back?
They said like no, we continuethe project.
The sponsors that we signed toStartup Prime do you want your
money back?
Because we're not going to bedoing events for a while.
(36:16):
And they're like no, keep themoney.
So, because we have built anamazing community at startup
brand clients, sponsors and allthat you know, I called some of
them to ask for advice.
Like we're first-timeentrepreneurs, what do we have
to do in this time ofdesperation?
There's no business, you can'thire, you can, you can't travel
what the fuck?
And I call people who are like20, 40, 50 years in business and
(36:37):
they give me advice.
Why?
Because we're friends, peoplewho built really good companies,
and some example is StartupBrain.
This is what you're seeingtonight, minus the interview
that will not happen becausethere will be no interview
tonight.
We want to have more time withyou.
We've done, over 10 years, 145startup brand events every month
(36:59):
since 2014.
We've never skipped a singlefucking month.
Talk about commitment.
We've got 9,000 members.
We did three startup brandconferences of about 1,000
people with really cool speakers.
We've done our company 15non-star brand events.
We have a podcast.
Some of the stats we've done isto show that we really invested
(37:21):
in community.
As a matter of fact, 10 yearsago, I said I don't think any
company will succeed in 10years' time without a community
behind them, and I'm super happyto be able to call people a lot
of people in the audience.
I know that in a time of need,I can ask favors and they will
return them.
I will return them, right.
(37:42):
I've made so many friends overthe years, thanks, and we made
friends in the company.
One guy advised us in 2017, acompany wanted to buy us.
I called one of the bestentrepreneurs in Spain.
I said can you help us withthis?
He's like, yeah, sure, let'sget for lunch.
We went four hours with him.
He taught us everything aboutM&A.
We decided not to sell thecompany, right, and I didn't
(38:07):
even have a great relationshipwith that person at the
beginning.
Now I have invested in three ofthese companies.
You know I do a lot of officehours.
We produce a lot of content.
I say I know.
I say a lot of I because thisis the entire marketing
department of Mars based.
Basically, this is what happenswhen you're bootstrapped.
You cannot hire lots of peoplethat then you might fire in
(38:28):
times of not made.
But we also fail a lot.
I fucked up a lot.
I take full responsibility ofall the things, all the money I
squander.
Probably we're going to besquandering a lot of money
tonight and we did yesterday,definitely because of me, but it
pays off and when it comes back, it comes back tenfold.
I was able to have one of thebest conversations of my life 30
(38:50):
minutes with the founder ofShazam on stage in our second
conference.
That's weird.
And then in 2021, thingsstarted to get better and, don't
worry, we're approaching theend.
One of the things that welearned is like things we
learned 10 years ago might nothold up anymore.
I was like you know, are wedoing the right thing with
(39:14):
remote?
We adopted asynchronous workbecause everybody else was doing
remote, so we didn't have anedge in heart.
I was like oh, maybe we have towork async, maybe we have to
rethink our technologies, maybewe have to open an office Every
year, every quarter andsometimes some things monthly.
We review a lot of stuff in thecompany.
(39:37):
Why Do you know the myth of theboiling frog Boiling frog?
For those who don't know it,there's a saying that says if
you put a frog inside a pot, youwarm the water, warm it up.
Eventually it gets used to itand it dies.
It doesn't leap out.
How many people believe this istrue?
(40:00):
Raise your hands, don't worry,I'll not judge you, don't worry,
come on.
Usually it's 60%.
Come on, I'm not going to shameyou publicly.
It's false.
People repeat this all the timebecause they heard it somewhere
.
They have never spent a singleminute thinking is this actually
(40:21):
true?
And we do this with many, manythings in our life, many things.
That's why, in our company,frequently we reevaluate obvious
things like salaries.
I know this is pretty fuckingobvious.
Okay, but our model, ourtechnologies, working remotely
we're reverting asynchronouswork.
We tried for two years, didn'twork.
We're like fuck it, we don'tneed it anymore, right?
(40:43):
Our prices, our employeebenefits, stuff like that,
things, everything is subject toreview every term or every year
in the company, why Sometimesyou're accumulating a lot of
stuff that you don't need.
In technology, in coding,there's something called the
technical debt, which is thebaggage that you accumulate for
having been in business for solong, it's like, but you
(41:04):
probably don't need it anymore,but it keeps the things working
and you never go back to it.
There's business debt as well.
Right, you should go revisit itvery, very often.
In 2021, we signed the bestproject, the best event a year
in the company and I know it'snot nice to say, because people
were suffering a lot and so butit goes to show that maybe, when
(41:25):
you do things right and youhold very close relationships
with people, they will hold tothis relationship.
You know other things that wehear very often with people.
They will hold to thisrelationship.
You know other things that wehear very often and, believe me,
they're not right.
Maybe they are in someconditions.
Maybe they were right onceRails doesn't scale.
Okay, how many of you are usingStripe?
(41:47):
Raise your hand.
Your company uses StripeShopify.
Raise your hand.
Github.
Raise your hand.
Linkedin.
Raise your hand.
Github.
Raise your hand.
Linkedin.
Raise your hand.
All these companies are builtusing Ruby on Rails.
It fucking scales, but peoplehear it somewhere.
Remote workers don't work.
(42:07):
I worked for 10 years in anoffice.
Believe me, people didn'tfucking work in that office.
I could see everybody else'sscreens.
Bootstrap businesses are notambitious.
Yeah, talk about automatic.
They built WordPress.
They power 45% of the internetwebsites.
Hybrid mobile apps are slow.
You know things.
We adopt a lot of things thatmake sense and we don't
(42:29):
reevaluate them right.
It's like all the time you getto hear say, hear, say, hear,
say.
I'm tired of hearing.
It's very good, like theprocess of unlearning stuff.
It's essential.
This is one of the best thingswe've done as a company over the
years.
And, coming very close to theend of the presentation, ladies
and gentlemen, one concept thatnot enough people do in the
(42:51):
industry, which is lift peopleas you climb.
What does that mean?
You know your company becomes alittle bit successful.
You pay better salaries, ofcourse, to your employees, but
how about the rest of the peoplethat help you?
How about the publicinfrastructure?
How about the school thatraised you as a kid and taught
you?
Most people don't go back totheir school to talk, or their
(43:12):
uni, or their high school andstuff like that.
You got to lift people up asyou climb because I was helped.
When I arrived to the UnitedStates, some people opened doors
, introduced me to potentialclients and now it's my turn.
I've been doing it for 10 years.
A lot of people don't have thisvision and believe you.
10 years.
(43:34):
A lot of people don't have thisvision and believe you.
Believe me, it just fuckingworks all the time.
Live as you climb.
You know I take a lot of pridein what we do.
Normally I never do these kindof presentations.
I don't like talking aboutmyself, I don't like talking
about my company.
It's taken 10 fucking years forme to talk about my company on
stage in a Starbrand event.
We help people to co-foundcompanies.
I personally invested in 37startups.
(43:54):
We have brought internationalcompanies to open, multinational
companies to open an office inBarcelona.
We attracted foreign investment.
Right, we're paying it forward.
If you're not familiar with theconcept, google it up.
Paying it forward means helpingsomebody selflessly so that
maybe it comes back, maybe inthe future, right, but it's
(44:18):
altruistic and in the startupecosystem wouldn't exist without
people giving, giving andgiving, sharing, creating
community events.
Of course, there are other freecommunities I mentioned.
There's Bernat over there.
I know you don't like attention, but they run not only the best
podcast, they have co-workingspaces, they have been investing
in companies.
(44:39):
They have a fund.
They believe in community.
We need more players like themin the ecosystem.
We'll be 10 times better if wehad more Bernats and people like
that.
People at Attico they createcommunity.
And people like that.
People at Attico they createcommunity.
People love their workingspaces, love their events.
Right, we need more people likethat helping without expecting
(45:01):
anything in return, and in 2023,I realized that.
You know I've explained prettymuch everything.
Like that's all I wanted you tolearn, but still there are
quite a lot of assholes in theecosystem.
We all know one or two names.
Not gonna drop them, obviously,leave it up to you, but what I
(45:24):
say by that is, like you know,sometimes we're too driven with
our own mission that we don'tstop and think if what we are
doing is hurting other people.
You know.
So be nice to people, helpothers.
Pay coffee to aspiringentrepreneurs.
If you're an investor, don'tlet the entrepreneur pay for the
(45:45):
fucking coffee.
Come on, that happens too often.
Be nice, pay your taxes.
Give back to your community.
Don't break the law.
We don't need more Globos.
We've got enough with one of itright.
And so, because I don't want tobe an asshole, I want to give
the last five minutes of thepresentation to the people that
(46:06):
helped me.
And you know, for 10 yearsdoing startup right, I couldn't
have done it without aphenomenal team and I get all
the credit because I am on stage.
I'm like alex from star brain,alex from mars base, who's
posting the.
You get me every day on yourlinkedin because I post shit
every day on linkedin.
(46:26):
I know it works.
Um, these people don't get thecredit early enough and they put
in the work.
So please, big, big, big fuckingapplause for the sub-ranked
team.
Remember the thing aboutgetting used to fucking
(46:54):
applauses.
There's a lot of them now.
Our team at Mars Base.
Please give it up for them.
Thank you.
Look how strong I mean as anowner of a small company.
(47:15):
It means the world to you whensomebody picks your company
instead of something bigger.
You know all of them could beworking for Spotify or Google or
LinkedIn or stuff like that.
They're with us.
That means a lot, and also oneof the things I did this week,
(47:35):
and I'm not going to play itbecause, I mean, it's 23 fucking
minutes long.
This is only for our team,clients and friends of the
company, former employeesthere's a bunch of them here and
people who love the company.
They send videos from all overthe world in five different
languages saying thank you andyou know we couldn't have built
(47:59):
this without relationships likeJose, nine years uninterruptedly
hiring us.
Some others are on and offbecause the startups go up and
down.
Some their startup failed, theyhired us for another business
and some came last year.
We got two people over here,roger and Pau from Plaza, one of
our last clients from last yearand we love you all.
(48:24):
So thank you, big applause,thank you, guys.
Could be four minutes mentioning, you know, the companies I see
in the audience we work for.
There's a parking goal there'sNice, there's Eclair, there's
Plaza.
(48:44):
You know there's a lot of themNot going to spend because all
this fucking light is blindingme, but a lot of them are here.
It means the world to us that,even if we haven't worked since
2015, they're here or they senta video, they took their time.
And also I've got somethingspecial my good friend, derek
(49:05):
Anderson, ceo of Startup Brain,one of the most well-known
people in Silicon Valley.
People respect him.
He's been doing this shit foralmost 15 years, helping people
for absolutely no reason otherthan building community.
He helped the company goingstartup brand over the pandemic.
(49:27):
He's helped millions ofentrepreneurs worldwide.
And we sang Miley Cyrus in thekaraoke.
I know it looks like it's metal, it's not.
We sang Wrecking Ball, one ofmy favorite songs, believe it or
not, and he's got a message forus.
Speaker 2 (49:47):
Good evening everyone .
My name is Derek Anderson.
I'm one of the co-founders ofStartup Grind and I want to wish
you an incredible happybirthday celebration tonight in
Barcelona.
And I want to first give a hugethanks and shout out to Alex
(50:07):
and the entire organizing team,who have built just an
absolutely amazing and inspiringcommunity in Barcelona over
these past 10 years.
Startup Grind's values are allabout giving more than you take,
helping others first and makingfriends, and whenever I think
(50:28):
about who and where these valuesare best personified, Barcelona
and this amazing group ofpeople and all of you are
immediately come to the top ofmy mind.
I wish I could be there with youin person.
Unfortunately, I'm stuck inCalifornia in the United States,
(50:49):
but I hope you have a wonderfulevening tonight.
I hope you are all so proud ofwhat you built.
I hope you are able tocelebrate it.
Please go to the organizers andthank them.
Give them a hug on behalf of meand our community around the
world.
We're so grateful to be part ofwhat you're building.
(51:12):
We're so grateful to have beenable to watch this and see
inspiring work that you've doneand the community that you built
together.
Have a great night.
Speaker 1 (51:32):
What a terrible place to be stuck in California.
I know he's watching this, bythe way, but he always sends
some funny remark about me, sothe first time there hasn't been
any, so thank you for that.
So I wanted to give a big roundof applause for the Startup
Grind family, but also, and mostimportantly, for all the
(51:52):
Startup Grind speakers inBarcelona, because there's 12
tonight in the audience.
So thank you very much.
And, last but not least, I'mtalking people who have
supported for 10 years.
(52:12):
Of course, there's other peoplewho have supported us.
Some people I host a podcastwith Somebody that sponsored an
event, somebody who did this,maybe I have invested, somebody
I shared beers over with andstuff like that, but it goes
beyond that.
There's a special and I thinkit's the last one.
(52:33):
I hope it's the last one.
I'm thirsty and hungry.
There's a concept in technologyand development and I know some
people will be like that's nothow it works.
But there's a front end and aback end.
Usually front end is makingthings look pretty, but the real
work happens in the back end.
I'm sorry, react people.
I know.
(52:53):
I know it's not exactly likethis.
Don't ruin my joke.
So this is exactly what happensin our company.
I get all the credit, but Ihave two amazing co-founders
Come on stage.
(53:31):
We celebrated nine years.
I had to do so much shit lastnight.
I didn't update.
This is from last year.
We celebrated last night.
We had another cake, much morebeautiful, super tasty, with 10
years, astronauts and stuff, butit was so tiring last night we
had to try to confirm everything, all the last minute changes
(53:53):
and accommodating each and everysingle request we had.
So that's it.
I mean I want to dedicate thelast applause of the night to
them.
10 years and we're stillfriends.
(54:16):
You know, doesn't happen andthat's it.
So thank you very much forcoming.
Also, I lied, it was not thelast applause of the night, so
at least two more One for myfamily.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
And the last one for you, thank you.
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com