June 3, 2025 • 49 mins
10 moments. 10 guests. Total unpredictability on Life on Mars.
This isn’t your average “best of” episode. it’s a chaotic, hilarious, insightful rollercoaster through the most unforgettable english-language moments from life on mars, the startup podcast by MarsBased.
🔥 from death metal growls to burning down offices (literally), surprise cofounders, and existential founder questions... this episode has it all.
if you’re into tech, startups, or just love a good story, hit play.
🎬 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 and welcome to Life on Mars.
I'm Alex Sion, founder ofMarsBase, and in this episode we
bring you the top 10 bestmoments of the English version
of this podcast.
A few days ago, we released aSpanish version of this in which
(00:20):
we covered the first 150 plusepisodes of the Spanish version
of Life on Mars, and I wentthrough with our friend David
with the most instructional, funand inspirational moments of 10
of the best episodes we've hadso far.
In these very episodes we dothe same in English.
(00:40):
So I wanted to start withprobably the biggest name we had
in the earlyitude of the remoteworker not meeting your
(01:07):
co-founders or even your teammembers for years in their case,
which struck me as prettysurprising, and all the things.
And actually you know hedoesn't speak very much in other
podcasts and I think that'ssomething that makes me even
more grateful for his time.
I think we learned a lot fromSketch, a company that we
(01:30):
admired, that we actually haveused for many years in Mars
based, and we can learn a lotfrom Peter, both from technical
side but also from themanagement side of things.
So let's take a look at theinterview with Peter Omblay.
Let's go to the very beginning.
What we're going to talk todayis mostly how to keep the love
(01:51):
alive with your co-founder andwith your team after so many
years, after experiencing growth.
You guys also raised investment.
We're going to cover all ofthis throughout the years.
Let's start from the verybeginning.
You met your co-founder, butactually you didn't meet in
person after the launch of theproduct.
Right, you had been working fora while.
How did that come about?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, no, that's true .
We met a couple of months afterwe launched that version of
Sketch.
We worked on it together andthat was just because we were
both flying to the US and said,well, it makes sense to meet up
somewhere before we get on theplane.
Well, it's made less makessense to meet up somewhere
before before we can get on theplane.
(02:28):
We worked together for um, Ithink at least a year before we,
before we, before we saw eachother in person and just uh,
back then I was working from, uh, london, he's, he was and still
is based in portugal and wejust connected over.
I think back then was called Ichat, um, uh, you know, we just
(02:48):
talked like that, uh, lots oflots of texting, lots of
exchanging images, and we justwe just started working together
.
Yeah, I got, I got in contactwith emmanuel through another
designer I worked with beforethat on another app I built, and
that designer I had never meteither.
(03:10):
We built that app together.
We launched it.
He went off to Apple I waslooking for a new designer
because of that and he said, hey, let's go have a chat with
Emmanuel, I think you two shouldlike each other.
And that's how we met, nevermeeting in person.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
And now for the second highlight.
I bring you Founder Partners, acompany that I collaborate with
.
They are from Silicon Valley.
They're a group of seasonedentrepreneurs and M&A advisors
for bootstrap and semi-bootstrapcompanies that I like a lot.
You will see that thesefriendships transpires into the
conversation, and I think thisis a must for companies that
(03:50):
want to sell or companies thatwant to buy.
Actually, and one of the mostfun moments in this episode is
where, actually, brian andDimitri go back 20 years and
when they are confronted withthe question of what has been
your most expensive fuck-up andBrian starts telling a story
(04:13):
that sounds familiar toDimitri's and I'll leave it at
that, I think, for not beingprepared.
It's one of the best sort ofimprovised moments in the
history of this podcast, solet's jump right into it.
Time for the last question.
This is a signature question ofthe podcast.
You guys have to share, eachone of you, your biggest fuck up
(04:37):
and how expensive it was, anddon't give me the usual things
Everybody tries to give me the Ihired the wrong person.
No, I will not accept that one.
Just try to think of a big fuckup that you've had in your
career, if related to M&A, ofcourse, all the better.
And if you can quantify inmoney how much was lost, don't
(05:01):
worry, we've had people settingfire to this, oh yeah.
Okay, this is great.
Okay, you want to?
Speaker 4 (05:09):
go most expensive.
First, I want to talk aboutthings other than m&a and,
dimitri, you focus on the m&athing because we can cover.
I'm going to talk about um meas an my biggest fuck up as an
entrepreneur and as an investor.
Dimitri, you talk about itAwesome.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
I like it, like your attitude.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
So I've started and sold quite a few businesses and
I think I, my I became a littlebit too confident, maybe a
little too cocky, and I thoughtthat because I was a software
guy, I've always been a softwareand a digital media guy and so
I thought, hey, and I evenbrought Dimitri and I thought I
could build a business in theconsumer package good space, and
(05:50):
it was called New York tapped,which was basically bottling New
York city tap water and and Iwas pumped.
I thought it was a brilliantidea.
We were on the David Lettermanshow, we were all this free PR
that came around and I was like,yeah, this is going to be a
cool business and it wentbankrupt.
I lost Dimitri's 25 grand asthe angel investment and it was
just like God.
But that was a.
(06:10):
That was a screw up and and, bythe way, I've had others.
I mean I've I've been a serialentrepreneur.
I've had some other failuresbesides all the things that look
glamorous and good on theoutside.
But what I learned it's it'sactually the screw ups are about
learning, frankly, right.
And so I learned I better stickto my knitting.
My knitting is software.
Just don't go outside of that.
Don't look for me to doanything in biotech or
(06:30):
semiconductors.
Just stay to software, alex.
Have you ever seen a $25,000bottle of water?
Thank you for rubbing it in mygoddamn face, dimitri.
I love you.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
I hope you like the anecdote of Brian and Dimitri as
much as I have and go back andrevisit the entire episode,
because I think it's full ofwisdom nuggets and I think
that's an episode that everyentrepreneur ought to watch at
least once in his life.
Every entrepreneur ought towatch at least once in his life.
For the next episode, I bringyou a personal friend of mine,
(07:14):
julian Truchon.
He's the singer and the leaderof a death metal, grind death
metal band.
I don't even know how todescribe this band Benighted.
It's one of my favorite extrememetal bands and you know sort
of crimecore death metal, brutaldeath Depends, pretty technical
as well, and I really like him.
(07:34):
He's a super charming personand we discuss business and
music and technology for bandmembers and touring bands and
what do they use?
What's the shareholderagreement?
How do they finance themselves?
(07:54):
Not much of a technologist, butI think I wanted to highlight in
this episode what I reallyenjoyed the most and I remember
like wow, this is going to blowsome people's minds is the
one-on-one for growling, the 101for growling.
You know these brutal deathmetal screams and good rolls,
shrieks and cries and whatnotdifferent techniques that he's
got, and I asked him to providea short demonstration on camera
(08:15):
and I had a lot of fun.
That was totally not preparedas well, like everything we do
in this podcast, and it's prettyuncommon for the rest of the
content that we have.
So I hope you enjoy this, but,seriously, just go back and
revisit the entire episode,because I think it's also really
fun and teaches you howdifficult it is to monetize and
(08:35):
to grow business out of music.
Let's go.
Do you learn how to sing withbass and how do you like?
You took lessons, I guess, butlike, what do you do in order
not to fuck up your voiceforever?
Speaker 8 (08:47):
Well, at first I never took any lessons for that,
I just learned by myself in mycar most of the time, because
people maybe not know.
But this kind of vocal practicewhen you do it at home you have
to have very tolerant neighborsbecause it's very loud and it's
very it's, it's noise.
(09:07):
It's noise.
I mean, for example, my vocals,because I think most of the
people don't know what I'mtalking about.
Uh, I have one, two, three,four, five main, uh, kind of uh
of vocal.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
But first we go through them can.
Can you demonstrate the five ofthem?
Speaker 8 (09:23):
I can say through them can you demonstrate the
five of them, I can't say numberone death metal, pretty high,
pretty low then I've got thehigh pitch, which is, yeah, and
um, something more hardcore.
(09:44):
That's pretty much the last.
The big squeal that one is thebrie.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
That's the brie.
Yeah, how did the brie storycome about?
Just because you're French?
Speaker 8 (09:58):
It came pretty stupidly because I realized that
I was doing the.
You know this kind of voice andfor some words where there's E
inside, when I wanted to go downthe E, it really sounds like a
pig that you got.
That's very funny, let's usethat as a gimmick.
And some singers were trying toget close to that with inhaling
(10:23):
vocals, but I only exhale to dothe screams.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
I inhale.
Can you do it exhaling?
I thought it was inhaling allthe time.
I don't know, everything isexhale, I inhale to do the high
pitches.
So that's, oh my God.
Speaker 8 (10:38):
Yeah, lots of people do inhaling.
But, yeah, I do everything byexhaling, including my big
squeal.
And that's why me, when I sing,every kind of vocals I do are
using my fake vocal cords notthe spoken vocal cords, but the
fake one.
Above were more like a hugemembranes to protect the spoken
(10:58):
vocal cords.
And I went to a doctor, athroat doctor, who put a camera
in my throat and he told me well, your vocal cords are safe
because you don't use them whenyou scream and that's also why I
can do all my screams, as yousaw, without any warm-up and
without hurting myself.
(11:19):
I mean, I could be totally mutebecause of the cold, I can
still do my.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Oh my god.
Speaker 8 (11:28):
It's a great comfort for a singer.
Trust me.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
It's a great comfort.
I love karaoke and then Ifucking destroy my voice because
I don't know how to singproperly, and sometimes I go for
a growling style and it's like,no, not going to happen the
next day.
I'm not.
Speaker 8 (11:44):
With this kind of techniques you're pretty safe.
Of course, at first it hurts abit.
It's like in your muscle.
You have to get used to it.
So of course at first it'spretty painful, but then you're
safe, yeah, for our audience.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Don't try without an adult supervision because you
might fuck up your vocal cords.
That was fun, wasn't it Cool?
And to the next highlight thisis a very special episode for me
as well, probably one of themost creative ones we've done so
far in which one of my bestfriends, josh Felberg, has
actually been a customer ofMarsways for many, many years, a
(12:21):
great person overall andsomebody I deeply admire and
respect.
And he said man, can Iinterview you for your podcast?
I said why would we do that?
But at the moment it soundskind of like a crazy idea.
But then I slept on it and Isaid well, why not?
We actually speak a lot aboutother companies, but we don't
(12:43):
really speak about ourselvesthat much.
And so Josh was veryintentional about drilling deep
into the company culture ofMarsBase.
And we speak about transparency.
We speak about like why am I sooutspoken in politics?
For instance, how do I combinemy multiple projects with
(13:05):
MarsBase ambitions?
And I've selected thisparticular part of the episode
because it's one of the longestepisodes we've recorded.
But this part in which hetouches really, you know,
somewhat not confidential but anuncomfortable part of business,
which is are you going to sellthe?
Speaker 6 (13:25):
company.
It's sort of all the techcompanies.
They all strive to not pay anytax and they make out this all
self-made billionaires' CEOs.
But actually, if you look atthe infrastructure, or rather
how the company operates,whether it's Tesla, amazon,
netflix, they're ultimately allbuilt on a government-created
infrastructure which needs taxmoney to exist, right?
(13:47):
So it's ironic that they thenkind of go the other way and
they claim oh, I'm against bigtaxes and I'm not going to pay
any taxes, or as little aspossible, and they sort of claim
it is all self-made, whereasactually you can't have big
internet infrastructure insimple, you know, as a very
simple universe.
Yeah Well, we all know that theinternet was created out of
(14:10):
university.
The World Wide was created bytim berners-lee.
You know, none of that was madeby those other guys.
They built on top of it, right,um, and that was funding free
tax money.
But talking about investment andand sort of growing big, they
say they want any of thisregulation, everything.
My space has got quite big.
Tell me in a second.
Uh, I'm not gonna ask for yourrevenue numbers, uh, but I'm not
(14:31):
sure how many staff revenuenumbers, uh, but I'm not sure
how many staff you've got.
I mean, if I remember 20something, I'm sure you've been
approached about investing andhaving people invest in you and
potentially being acquired.
What's your thought around that?
Would you ever accept becauseyou've got quite if they were
aligned with your values oranything and you felt actually
this might be a good ideabecause it can help us grow and
(14:53):
kind of continue our missionexcuse the pun mission to mars
based um we?
Would you rule it out foreveror what your thoughts on that?
Speaker 1 (15:02):
we'd have to consider it.
I mean, throughout the years.
Yeah, we've had the.
I mean there's two things here.
Investment doesn't really makesense.
Why would you invest in anagency?
Some people do it to make surethey can just like scale shit up
and kind of like blow up andopen an office in 50 countries,
right, Well, you're basicallybuying a team of devs in your
(15:25):
case, right Like you've got allthe infrastructure set up.
I've had people like I rememberlast year there was this Israeli
investor with whom I have agreat friendship with.
It's like dude, I'm ready tomake something big in Spain.
Do you want to become the nextbig consultancy?
We could totally pour a fewmillion into the company and
then just help you to scale upwith Dundas in Israel.
(15:46):
And I'm like thank you, but Idon't want to do that.
Like, what's the point?
It's a great offering, but notfor me, not for my co-founders,
not for the company, so that onewas turned down right away.
Acquisition that's a differentconversation.
We've had acquisition talksover the years, namely twice.
(16:07):
By always it's always ourbiggest client.
Right, the two times where ourbiggest clients two separate
companies that you know, you'vebeen working for them for a few
years, you've got a big teamthere and they're your biggest
client.
At a certain point I don't knowif it's intentional or not they
might know that they are yourbiggest client they're like okay
(16:28):
, let's talk about doingsomething bigger, which always
comes down to how about you joinour company?
Like we buy your team andyou're part of the company, you
can run it independently withthis and that, blah, blah, blah,
and then you're stuck between arock and a hard place because
you don't want to say no to yourclient, you definitely want to
(16:50):
entertain the conversation, butwhat's the protocol right?
You don't want to lose them.
In both cases, we politelyturned them down.
We followed protocol.
We had advisors and this someof our best friends in the
industry and so we had to turnthem down because they were not.
One of them was definitely notaligned with our, the way we
(17:11):
perceived it was a biggerconsultancy and they, they, they
like we said, like house, howis it going to be like on the
first day after the acquisition?
And they're like well, so youpeople will have to go to the
office and then you, you know,like that's not gonna happen.
Well, I mean, you know there'salways a price for everything
and, uh, you know, give me, giveme two billion for Mars diesel,
(17:32):
like I'll sell it tomorrow, butthat's not going to happen.
We know that's not going tohappen.
Cool, for the next highlight,I'm going to go back some years,
actually some years before weactually started the podcast.
We recorded this episode, thisevent of Startup Grind.
We recorded this episode, thisevent of Startup Grind, an event
(17:53):
that we used to organize and weran for almost 11 years and
more often than not we wouldcover founder stories,
investment, you know, scalingthe business, management,
leadership, company culture andwhatnot.
But on rare occasions I wouldbring the CTOs, because I don't
(18:15):
know of many companies that theCTO in Spain can actually give
good conversation in English andis a co-founder and knows how
to speak in front of an audience.
And in this case, I found theperfect match Elisenda Boll,
co-founder and CTO of Vellings,a company that was acquired by
(18:36):
Apple a few years back, and ofcourse, they really wanted to
nerd out and talk abouttechnology, but the audience
wasn't the right one.
At Startup Grind, we hadentrepreneurs, people from
corporate investors and whatnot,but not so many developers.
Therefore, we don't really digdown very deep into technology.
(18:56):
Of course we cover technology,because at the time we were
speaking about TensorFlow, wewere speaking about AI, machine
learning, how to hire engineers,and that must have been around
2017, if I remember correctly,2017, 18, something like that.
Around 2017, if I remembercorrectly, 2017, 18, something
like that.
But in this episode, I rememberI had a lot of fun moments.
Haley is such a great speaker.
(19:18):
She's inspirational and fun atequal parts, and I remember that
I started more or less aroundthat time to ask about the worst
day at the office.
I wanted people to share thelows of entrepreneurship and
more often than not I was alsoasking the most expensive fuck
up, but also wanted to know, ona personal level, how did you
(19:41):
feel, what did you do toovercome this Mental issues that
we all suffer from and I speakpretty openly about.
I wanted to open up on stage infront of an audience and I
think we had a very, veryinsightful conversation and I
like to remember fondly thisepisode, this event with Ellie.
(20:03):
So just take a look.
Speaker 7 (20:06):
I wouldn't say that here the rhythm is less like I
think.
Usually I tend to think thatPalo Alto, or like Silicon
Valley, they have very goodworking hours.
Yeah.
Because they, I'm just notmeaning that.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
They're just kind of more business oriented.
They tend to take decisionsvery fast, whereas here we're
more like yeah, I'll postponethis decision to like next month
.
Speaker 7 (20:30):
No, that doesn't happen.
Okay, it doesn like next month.
No that doesn't happen.
Okay, it doesn't happen in yourcompany.
No, I don't think that happensto us.
We're really quick at takingdecisions.
I don't think we have adifferent pace.
I think most of the problemsare mostly like how do you
organize Because we have alsopeople in Taipei, so sometimes
(20:53):
like finding the right meetingtime when you have US, barcelona
and Taipei, it's justimpossible.
It doesn't work.
Somebody has to be in a call at1 am or 2.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
But apart from that, Right, a bit of quick questions
before we open up the floor forother people's questions.
What has been your worst day atthe office as a founder?
I think, we like to open uphere.
Speaker 7 (21:20):
Worst day at the office.
Something you really struggledwith and you took a terrible
decision, or Sometimes it's notexactly the question you asked,
but one of my biggest problemsis when somebody from the team
(21:41):
people that you respect a lotand they're team leads and you
rely on them a lot they come toyou and they look at you like
you have all the answers.
They look at you like I'm goingto ask you what's the future,
what are we going to be doing inone year or two years?
And they're looking at you likeyou must have all the answers
right.
You don't have them.
Most of the time it's likeyou're taking guesses as
(22:05):
educated as you can and you'resharing with the team and you're
open for ideas.
So maybe that's the past, butmaybe it isn't.
So one of the moments that Istruggle mostly with is when
people look at you and they'reexpecting you to have the right,
perfect answer for any singleproblem that there might be.
You know, and they're like Imean, I'm just trying to lead
(22:27):
this thing, but we're a startupjust trying to figure out every
day.
I don't have the perfectsolution for everything, so
we're going to just keepfiguring out as we go.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
This is a really good one.
I really really like thisepisode with Jamin Holmgren, one
of the co-founders of InfiniteRed, a company we look up to, a
company that had a podcast thatwas called Building Infinite Red
, which the co-founders sort ofgroup discussed Building the
(22:59):
company very openly, and it wasgreat.
I have listened to that podcastabout three times, all of the
episodes, because they're veryinspirational and insightful and
instructive for companies likeus.
We look up to them.
We've never really workedtogether, although we keep in
each other's minds.
They're really fun and you willsee it, damon, despite being a
CTO, really knows how to talk inpublic and he's got a great
(23:22):
sense of humor.
He also loves tractors.
If you follow him on Twitter,you will know what I'm speaking
about.
And we had a very, very goodconversation about the pains of
building agencies, the pains ofbootstrapping, the pains of
leaning on the side of qualitynot quantity, being a super
specialized company, when theydecided to go all in on React
(23:47):
Native and stop doing Rails likethey had been doing for many,
many years, just to be clearthat they specialize in only one
thing, and it was.
You know, one of the pinnaclesof this episode was when he
started recounting the parableof the rich man and the
fisherman, and I don't want tospoil it for you, so I'd rather
(24:10):
have you watch it, because Ithink it explains very well what
we do with the bootstrap andlifestyle businesses.
Speaker 9 (24:17):
So let's take a look.
So about 10 years into my firstagency, I met a couple of other
guys, actually three other guysKen Miller, todd Worth and Gant
Laborde and we you know they wedecided that we were going to
merge our companies together.
So at the beginning it was justme, todd and ken, and when we
(24:40):
kind of got things together wewould have these long
discussions, you know, in zoom,and it was really great.
And eventually I was like whydon't we do a podcast?
Because there's so many coolthings that we talk about that
it feels like we could just makethis a public discussion and
people would enjoy it.
Um, and so, building infinitered, uh, which is
buildinginfinitered on the webyou can go find it.
Uh was born and uh, we wentthrough the first season, uh,
(25:06):
and then gant actually joined asan owner, uh, the second season
, and Ken left us, actually,incidentally, to go work for a
product company.
And because it turns out thatit really is two different type
of people and for him the ideaof doing consulting, you know,
just didn't match with what hewanted to do, is totally fine.
(25:28):
What's really cool is thatwe're still good friends with
Ken, you know.
What he wanted to do wastotally fine.
What's really cool is thatwe're still good friends with
Kent.
You know, like we went and Gantand I were down there last
April and, you know, went to hishouse and went to lunch with
him and you know we're greatfriends with him.
But it's just.
You know, it works better withcertain personalities.
So Building Infinite Red wasborn.
We did one season, we didanother season.
(25:48):
We've talked about a thirdseason.
We did one season, we didanother season.
We've talked about a thirdseason.
We want to do a third season.
But in the meantime, like wehad sort of gotten to where we
had said what we wanted to sayand I think we would have to
relaunch it with maybe a littledifferent focus, because a lot
of the stuff just holds up overtime, you know it's surprisingly
(26:08):
thus, surprisingly well.
Yeah, pre-pandemic, like youknow, it wasn't like we weren't
doing this when everybody wasremote and stuff like that.
So there's maybe some newthings to talk about.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
That was way back, way before people started
jumping on the cool wagon of thepodcast.
Like must have been like 2017,18, something like that.
Speaker 9 (26:26):
Yeah, that's when we did the podcast, but we were
remote in 2014.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
So almost 10 years ago, because I met Ken must have
been like 2015, something likethat in San Francisco.
That's my original connectionto Infinite Red, and one of the
reasons I bring this up isbecause oftentimes and you will
also know, this is agencies, andmore so, bootstrap companies
agencies usually are bootstrapare perceived as unambitious
(26:53):
projects.
Right, yeah, it's true.
However, we stand the test oftime because right now, like
companies are going down likeflies, and especially startups,
right, or companies arebasically so, based solely on
growth and no real financials toback them.
So they're, you know, favorableweather companies, favorable
weather companies, fair weathercompanies, I think you call them
(27:14):
right In English.
So, my point being, there's nota lot of literature around
building agencies, likeeverybody tells you about
building product.
You know the ABC ofentrepreneurship, right?
Get some friends, get aco-founder, talk to customers,
find an idea, find product,market fit Ideally not raise
(27:35):
capital in the meantime, but alot of people have to because
they're just not good at sales.
Build something, try to scaleit up, blah, blah, blah.
Raise another round, round,round, round.
After, like every 12 months,raise some money, and so,
however, if you're trying tolearn how to create an agency,
there's not a lot of goodcontent out there.
It is.
I think people assume that it'skind of like freelancing but
(27:57):
scaling it up.
There are so many things thatjust don't fit this description.
So that's why I think thatpodcast if you really want to
start an agency, you shouldconsume it from beginning to end
.
Speaker 9 (28:08):
I appreciate that that's really kind of you to say
.
And you're right, there reallyisn't a lot of uh there really
isn't like a model to followthere.
Um, I think partially because,uh, you know, a lot of silicon
valley kind of looks down theirnose a little bit.
Um, the ones that are, you know, the big ones out there,
pivotal and whatnot.
They have a certain kind ofgoal and way of way of working
(28:30):
that you know fits what theylike to do.
And uh, I'm have a certain kindof goal and way of way of
working that you know fits whatthey like to do.
And uh, I'm connected with alot of you know people that are
in operations and leadershipwithin uh larger agencies and
they do have a different mindset.
It's very much like push, push,push, uh type of a uh mindset.
Um, there's sort of this like,um, you know kind of negative uh
(28:53):
wording of saying mindset.
There's sort of this, like youknow, kind of negative wording
of saying that that you know, oh, you're building a lifestyle
business, like a business that'ssort of like built around your
life, rather than trying to beambitious, and I get that.
But I don't optimize fordollars and cents necessarily.
I don't optimize for, uh,perceived, um, you know, stature
(29:17):
in the world.
Um, we do optimize for certaintypes of impact, uh, so impact
is part of it.
One of our, one of our corepillars is significant positive
impact, um, but we feel like wecan do that in different ways
than building some sort of, youknow, startup that changes the
world.
What we really love, at the endof the day, is to work and
(29:41):
build things with our friendsand, you know, build things with
people that we care about andbuild a great life for our
families.
You know happiness we'reoptimizing for happiness and
fulfillment and contentedness,things like that and at the end
of the day, you can, you cankind of like, throw away your
family and throw away yourpersonal life and your health
(30:04):
and everything else and chasethe dollar or you know the big
splashy startup and then, andthen what you know, someone else
probably runs it after a whileand you're stuck there with, you
know, with not a lot, you havea lot of money, but like what
else?
So I really think that you knowthere there's this.
(30:24):
I've told this story countlesstimes and it's not my story, but
it's a.
It's a kind of a uh, a parable,if you will.
Uh, that I think is veryinteresting.
There's this, uh, this fishermanwho is, uh, he takes his boat
out and he goes fishing in themorning.
He goes from, you know, hesleeps in, so he's probably
(30:45):
going out around, you know, 8o'clock, 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock
depending on the day, and he'llgo out and he'll catch a couple
fish and then he comes back inby noon and you know, he has
lunch with his wife and he takesa siesta, and then maybe he
goes into town and he, you know,kind of hangs out with his
(31:08):
friends, has some wine, and then, you know, he and his wife go
dancing in the evening and thenhe goes and, you know, hangs out
with his kids and goes to sleep.
In the morning he does it again.
And one day a businessman isthere, he's on vacation in this,
you know this kind of likefishing village, and he sees
this guy going out and doing.
He says, why don't you juststop at noon?
Why don't you keep fishinguntil five o'clock?
(31:31):
You know, why don't you workharder?
And uh, the guy says, well, whywould I do that?
He said, well, you can take thefish, the extra fish that you
catch, and you can sell them andyou'd get more money.
And then you could buy a biggerboat and you'd get more fish
because you could have, youcould hire people to come on the
boat, help you with it, andthen eventually you could get
many boats and, you know, have awhole fleet of fishing boats
(31:53):
and be managing all that.
And, uh, you know like, uh, you, you just be doing really well.
Fisherman said, well, what wouldI do?
Then I said, well, what would Ido?
Then he said, well, you couldsell the thing you could.
You know you could go public orsomething.
You could really make tons andtons of money and you could
retire early.
And the guy says, well, whatwould I do after I retire?
(32:13):
And he says, well, you couldsleep in, you could go out
fishing, you could come back in,have lunch, take a nap, go
dancing, have some wine, hangout with your kids and go to
sleep.
You know it's the same thing atthe end of the day.
You know you're the fishermanand the businessman.
He's like I'm already doingthat Like, make a business that
allows you to have the life thatyou want Great.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
That episode with Damon was actually one of my
favorites.
I could talk for hours.
We speak often once per quarterevery few months, and we speak
often once per quarter every fewmonths, and we can always learn
so much from people like Damon,who have been in the industry
for many, many years running acompany similar to ours.
So we can, you know, chat backand forth about the pains of
(32:57):
growing these kind of businesses.
So for the next highlight, wehave Liz Dunn, a very good
friend of mine that resides inthe States.
I met her many, many years agoit must have been 2017 when they
were on a break with herpartner traveling around Europe
(33:17):
and I hosted them at a start-upevent and we had very good
conversations.
We emptied many glasses of wineover the course of a few days
in Barcelona, where we discussedbusiness, investment,
technology, innovation andwhatnot.
I said, like you have to be inmy podcast someday.
I didn't know I was going tohave a podcast conversation
(33:40):
about innovation inentrepreneurship and her long
experience in being inmanagement positions in Silicon
Valley, and one of the topics Ireally really wanted to cover
with her was imposter syndromeImposter syndrome.
In this case, I share myimposter syndrome being an angel
investor, but we talked aboutit at length.
(34:03):
This is just a part of a verylong conversation about many
other topics, but I wanted tofocus on this one because it
doesn't get much press.
It doesn't get spoken about asmuch as we should.
So I hope you like this part ofthe conversation with Liz done
Hard question here.
Let's open up a little bitImposter syndrome.
(34:24):
Did you get it when you startedinvesting?
Like, am I really an investor?
Can I put it on LinkedIn?
Do I really want to?
You know, advertise me as, like, promote me as an investor.
Am I investing enough money tobe called an investor or not?
Really, I still got it and I'vebeen investing for six years
now.
So it's like I'm not really anangel investor when I never put
(34:45):
more than 10 grand in a companyand I don't know like something
like this, I still get it a lot.
Speaker 10 (34:51):
I know what you mean .
I mean, you know, being a womanin Silicon Valley, I kind of
always have it Like it's alwaysjust like sitting on my shoulder
, like do you belong here?
And you get treated that waytoo, like do you belong here,
like.
So I kind of I take thatfeeling and I kind of I use it
(35:13):
to make me, like, show up harder.
But uh, yeah, I mean, you know,especially at the point where
I'd invested I don't know lessthan ten thousand dollars, uh,
sure, I wasn't running aroundtelling people I was an investor
.
Then, once I got up to, youknow, more and I put that on
LinkedIn.
Then all these people come outof the woodwork trying to pitch
you.
So then I took it off.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Yeah, the wheels start turning right.
Speaker 10 (35:35):
Yeah.
But now I mean I sort of feellike I'll really feel like an
investor when I get my firstlike profitable exit.
Actually, I think one of ZachCollius's investments is about
to cash out, not hard, but likea two Xer.
So then I'll have like that.
(35:55):
But my plan had been because Ididn't think of myself as a real
investor Well, I'm going toangel invest and I'm going to
have a couple of successes, andthen I'll go work at a big VC
company right, because I canshow them here's my resume Like
I don't have, you know, anaccounting or business
background, but I have.
I've made these successful bets.
And then the more that I dothis, the more I'm like why
(36:19):
should I work for a VC?
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Yeah, what's the incentive?
I mean probably, yeah, you canmake like a 75X return or
something like that on somethingcrazy.
Speaker 10 (36:29):
Part of it was.
I thought I needed that forlegitimacy so I wouldn't feel
like an imposter.
Speaker 6 (36:33):
And now I'm like nah, all right, that's interesting
yeah.
Speaker 10 (36:37):
To go out with a business card.
It's real.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
But for me it's like the reason I want to become an
investor is to work less, notmore.
But if you go to a VC fund, youwill work like you know until
like the crazy hours around theclock, just because they're a VC
and they got to have like thesereturns, because otherwise the
fund loses money.
And 75% of VC funds worldwidethey lose money.
They never return the money tothe investors, right?
So it's like why do you want togo in a business that it's
(37:04):
inherently bleeding money, right?
Well?
Speaker 10 (37:09):
I'll send you this article and you can show it in
the-.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
I'll link it in the show notes.
Speaker 10 (37:14):
yeah, but basically it talks about how, in a sense,
vc is.
They're so beholden to theirreturns that like, for example,
you look at WeWork, people keptthe board, knew it had a problem
and it just kept letting thatguy do whatever he wanted and
the vcs were like this does notmake sense.
(37:35):
But then they didn't want tolose.
They didn't want to, like, losetheir money, so they kept just
going along with it.
It's a great article about how,basically, it's their desire to
not to have a return on theirfund that made them, you know,
prop up a failing business forso long.
It's a great article.
It's basically like how VC isbreaking business.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Good, and now for the next one.
This is actually a part of aseries of three episodes with
Mike Cunningham from TranscendPartners in which we discuss M&A
everything about M&A.
We discuss sales side, buy side.
We discuss advisors, boutiques,prices, fees, retainers,
(38:21):
deadlines, documents, protocol,etiquette.
We discuss everything, and Ithink we will record three
episodes more because Mike is agreat friend.
He's super generous with histime, he's somebody I like
working with and I really enjoyall the conversations over tacos
that we have offline, and everynow and then I'm like man.
(38:44):
It's been a while since werecorded with Mike and when you
will watch this part of the clip, you will understand why you
want to consume the entire threeepisodes we recorded with Mike.
So let's jump right into it.
What's one or two clauses thatonly rookie entrepreneurs would
accept?
Something that you knowseasoned entrepreneurs.
(39:04):
When they see on the LOIs,they're like fuck, no, I'm not
getting this.
Speaker 11 (39:09):
Yeah.
So I mean, this exclusivityperiod is one that almost nobody
really understands too well.
They just don't know what thenorms are.
So it's kind of they get an LOIand it says 80 days of
exclusivity.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
And they're like oh, 80 days is nothing, right?
Yeah, they're like ah, 80 daysis nothing, right?
Speaker 11 (39:25):
Yeah, they're like ah, makes sense to me, you know
they're going to be investingin-.
What's the lowest you?
Speaker 1 (39:30):
can get it to Wow.
I mean there's 30 days yeah.
Speaker 11 (39:32):
I mean 30 days would be quite low.
But you also want it to be two.
Everything you do in this youwant to be kind of in good faith
in two way, because the more itseems you don't want to be too
one-sided.
You need to be doing things ina, you know, kind of a
partnership way.
Obviously you're representingyour interests and you want it
to be certainly not negative foryou but as favorable as
(39:53):
possible.
But you also don't want to beunrealistic and demanding things
that are way off market.
So this is another thing anentrepreneur, you know, who
doesn't have experience in this,they could say no, you know,
I'm not giving more than 15 daysof exclusivity, and every
acquirer I'm not saying this hasever happened, but it could
easily happen Every acquirerwould say that's ridiculous,
(40:13):
this is a joke.
I'm not going to do thisprocess with this guy.
He's demanding outrageousthings and he has no idea what
he's talking about.
So it's kind of we know, kind ofwhat's the norm, what's in the
market what's reasonable and youknow, and what's reasonable but
very good for our end, becausethe range of reasonability is is
(40:33):
very wide.
You know, and if they, you know, and I would say many times you
know, especially if they're notdealing with a professional
advisor, you know they're goingto try to push things in their
favor, why not?
Who wouldn't you know?
I mean, it's kind of you know.
If I know I'm just, you know,dealing with a CEO or you know
somebody from the board in thisprocess, then you know why not?
(40:54):
You know, make it as favorablefor myself.
So it's kind of so that's, youknow, I think, quite normal on
the side of the buyer in thosesituations.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Oh man, this is a really good one, john O'Nolan.
That's actually a bigachievement for me personally,
as a longtime user and fanboy ofGhost, one of the technologies
I love the most, one of theproducts I really admire.
I've been following for many,many years.
My personal website is builtwith Ghost.
I really like him.
(41:24):
I really like John as a leader.
He's a charismatic entrepreneur, charming, charming person,
super generous with his time.
I sent him an email Do you knowme, john, I really like to host
you on the episode and withintwo minutes it's like yes, let's
do it, let's find a time.
Boom, and in three days we wererecording.
(41:46):
Like that doesn't happen withthis sort of caliber and these
people high up the ranks ofentrepreneurship and technology.
So, yeah, I really admire him.
Super thankful, we discussedeverything.
We didn't discuss everythingbecause we didn't have time and
I was nervous, as you will beable to tell from the episode,
but we had a really, really funmoment towards the end of the
episode in which he actuallyactually he saw and he caught
(42:14):
the reference a reference I liketo use from Hot Ones, one of my
favorite YouTube shows, andhe's like man that's from Hot
Ones, right, I appreciate thereference Like man that's from
Hot Ones.
Right, I appreciate thereference.
I'm like okay, you're the firstone to actually get it.
In more or less 100 episodesI've been using these sentences
Like I'm rolling the red carpetfor you.
Here's your camera, here's yourcamera.
(42:34):
I like that style towards theend of the interview, and so we
started riffing for a couple ofminutes about Hot Ones and his
favorite episodes that were not,and I think that that was
really, really fun.
The entire episode is fantastic.
It's phenomenal, but I thinkthis part is pretty short.
It's pretty fun.
It's good to kind of like wrapup this episode even though we
(42:56):
got one more, and so I hope youenjoyed this conversation with
John Nolan.
I was going to go into that,but I think from this answer
you've just given me, I'veinferred how not to use Ghost,
which I think it's as valuable,if not more.
So well, let's just wrap ithere.
Because you've been extremelygenerous with your time.
I'm rolling out the carpet foryou.
(43:18):
You got one minute left to sayhow we can help you, how we can
help Ghost and any announcementsor anything you want to share
with our community.
Speaker 5 (43:27):
Love the Hot Ones reference.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
yeah, If you want to check out Ghost You're the first
one to get it yes.
Speaker 5 (43:36):
I would.
If you publish online and youhave an email list or you have
thoughts to share with the world, check out Ghostorg.
We're doing a lot ofinteresting things.
Um favorite hot ones episode sofar.
I mean the DJ Khaled's always aclassic right, just for for its
incredible failure.
(43:57):
Um, what was the one I watchedjust last week?
Oh, ryan Reynolds, that one wasreally good.
Yeah that's very good.
There's a few.
I'm struggling to think of themall on the spot.
Jimmy Fallon is the one I justwatched.
He was very funny.
What's yours?
Shaquille O'Neal probably.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
Like I don't understand him most of the time
we're speaking, but the facesand the entire performance is
superb.
That for me is like an all-timegreat.
Speaker 5 (44:30):
Ricky Gervais.
The Gordon Ramsay one was goodas well, just because of how
angry he got throughout thewhole thing, like why do you do
this Exactly?
Speaker 1 (44:38):
exactly, they're really good ones.
And then I'm really surprisedby people who you wouldn't
expect it but they toleratespiciness so well, like charlize
their own, for instance, and uhI'm surprised, gary vaynerchuk
yeah, yeah, exactly.
Some people are like yeah, yeah, spicy, but you know, I'm like
yeah, holy fuck like I.
I have the bomb, the bomb, Ihave it in my fridge.
(45:01):
It's is literally unbearableStuff like that I love spicy and
that's why I buy all of theseterrible sauces and when I see
some of the guests that theydon't break a sweat, I'm like,
no, I don't know how they can doit.
I don't know how they can do it,but anyways.
Speaker 5 (45:21):
I'm a big hot sauce fan.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
And for the last one, oh man, this is the banger.
This is the banger of theepisode.
So, yeah, we have DorianCarroll, great, great friend of
mine, great person to converse,super interesting, super
knowledge about technology,super experienced, being a CTO
(45:44):
for companies, silicon Valley,and VP of engineering and
technology since I don't knowfor 40 years right now close to
50.
I got the mistake in, but yeah,he's worked for companies like
EA.
He's worked for Technorati, forBlogger, for Amazon and for
(46:07):
many, many other companies.
When I met him back in the time, he was a CTO, slash CIO of
Zynga, you know the gamingcompany, and I really wanted to
wrap up this special five yearsanniversary of the podcast
special episode with a banger.
And the last one is histechnical fuck up in which, well
(46:28):
, it's, let's, let's put it likethat it is a very hot one an
electrician had been working outon the street and he wasn't uh,
he wasn't certified.
Speaker 12 (46:40):
he made some mistake , luckily didn't kill himself,
but uh, what he did in doingthat, it actually started a fire
in the data center, and so wewere literally on fire.
This wasn't just an emergency.
The software is on fire thatpeople often say.
No, the data center was on fire.
They were able to put the fireout Lateral fire.
(47:03):
Yeah, lateral fire, they wereable to put the fire out.
They were able to put the fireout and we realized we weren't
going to have power in that datacenter for a while and we
rented a trailer and unpluggedall of our equipment and stacked
it in the back of this trailerand drove it over to a new data
center where we had been lookingat and just we moved the whole
(47:24):
thing and we got the site backup and running.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
How long had it elapsed?
Speaker 12 (47:32):
We had realized we needed to change data centers,
so we had a footprint in the newdata center to some extent, but
we hadn't been ready to flipthe switch.
So I think, if I recallcorrectly, we were able to flip
the switch to at least put up asorry page, uh, and then, over
the course of, I think you know,several hours, we were able to
bring up the rest of theservices maybe it was somebody
who wanted to speed up thatprocess.
Speaker 1 (47:53):
He was very getting upset that this was not moving
and the ceo was not approvingthe budget.
It's like, fuck it, I'm gonnaburn the office down if you
don't do it.
Anyways, last question to you.
It's a very, very, very niceway to end this special episode.
We learned a lot from Dorian.
You can go and watch also theStartup Grind episode we
(48:15):
recorded with him, where wediscussed more technology.
We nerded out for an hour aboutReact, nodejs, javascript, ruby
, amazon Cloud and whatnot.
We discussed a lot oftechnologies.
But, yeah, hope you enjoyed thisspecial compilation of the five
years anniversary of Life onMars podcast.
(48:36):
There's going to be five moreyears.
I assume we enjoy doing this.
We want to thank you for yoursupport.
I want to thank you for beingthere, for sending suggestions
of content, suggestions ofspeakers, sending questions, and
I'd like to ask you for morequestions.
If you made it this far, let usknow in the comment section
(48:57):
down below, because you reallyand truly deserve a gold medal
for being a great supporter andfor always being there for us,
and so you got some questionsfor the company, for me, for my
co-founders, for some of ouremployees for David, the
marketing guy, whomever, justlet us know in the comment
(49:17):
section down below.
Send it also via email atolamarspacecom.
And, as always, if you likethis show, just recommend us
share it, retweet, repost, hitthe like and subscribe buttons
and I'll see you all in the nextepisode.
Hello everybody and welcome to Life on Mars.
I'm Alex Sion, founder ofMarsBase, and in this episode we
bring you the top 10 bestmoments of the English version
of this podcast.
A few days ago, we released aSpanish version of this in which
(00:20):
we covered the first 150 plusepisodes of the Spanish version
of Life on Mars, and I wentthrough with our friend David
with the most instructional, funand inspirational moments of 10
of the best episodes we've hadso far.
In these very episodes we dothe same in English.
(00:40):
So I wanted to start withprobably the biggest name we had
in the earlyitude of the remoteworker not meeting your
(01:07):
co-founders or even your teammembers for years in their case,
which struck me as prettysurprising, and all the things.
And actually you know hedoesn't speak very much in other
podcasts and I think that'ssomething that makes me even
more grateful for his time.
I think we learned a lot fromSketch, a company that we
(01:30):
admired, that we actually haveused for many years in Mars
based, and we can learn a lotfrom Peter, both from technical
side but also from themanagement side of things.
So let's take a look at theinterview with Peter Omblay.
Let's go to the very beginning.
What we're going to talk todayis mostly how to keep the love
(01:51):
alive with your co-founder andwith your team after so many
years, after experiencing growth.
You guys also raised investment.
We're going to cover all ofthis throughout the years.
Let's start from the verybeginning.
You met your co-founder, butactually you didn't meet in
person after the launch of theproduct.
Right, you had been working fora while.
How did that come about?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, no, that's true .
We met a couple of months afterwe launched that version of
Sketch.
We worked on it together andthat was just because we were
both flying to the US and said,well, it makes sense to meet up
somewhere before we get on theplane.
Well, it's made less makessense to meet up somewhere
before before we can get on theplane.
(02:28):
We worked together for um, Ithink at least a year before we,
before we, before we saw eachother in person and just uh,
back then I was working from, uh, london, he's, he was and still
is based in portugal and wejust connected over.
I think back then was called Ichat, um, uh, you know, we just
(02:48):
talked like that, uh, lots oflots of texting, lots of
exchanging images, and we justwe just started working together
.
Yeah, I got, I got in contactwith emmanuel through another
designer I worked with beforethat on another app I built, and
that designer I had never meteither.
(03:10):
We built that app together.
We launched it.
He went off to Apple I waslooking for a new designer
because of that and he said, hey, let's go have a chat with
Emmanuel, I think you two shouldlike each other.
And that's how we met, nevermeeting in person.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
And now for the second highlight.
I bring you Founder Partners, acompany that I collaborate with
.
They are from Silicon Valley.
They're a group of seasonedentrepreneurs and M&A advisors
for bootstrap and semi-bootstrapcompanies that I like a lot.
You will see that thesefriendships transpires into the
conversation, and I think thisis a must for companies that
(03:50):
want to sell or companies thatwant to buy.
Actually, and one of the mostfun moments in this episode is
where, actually, brian andDimitri go back 20 years and
when they are confronted withthe question of what has been
your most expensive fuck-up andBrian starts telling a story
(04:13):
that sounds familiar toDimitri's and I'll leave it at
that, I think, for not beingprepared.
It's one of the best sort ofimprovised moments in the
history of this podcast, solet's jump right into it.
Time for the last question.
This is a signature question ofthe podcast.
You guys have to share, eachone of you, your biggest fuck up
(04:37):
and how expensive it was, anddon't give me the usual things
Everybody tries to give me the Ihired the wrong person.
No, I will not accept that one.
Just try to think of a big fuckup that you've had in your
career, if related to M&A, ofcourse, all the better.
And if you can quantify inmoney how much was lost, don't
(05:01):
worry, we've had people settingfire to this, oh yeah.
Okay, this is great.
Okay, you want to?
Speaker 4 (05:09):
go most expensive.
First, I want to talk aboutthings other than m&a and,
dimitri, you focus on the m&athing because we can cover.
I'm going to talk about um meas an my biggest fuck up as an
entrepreneur and as an investor.
Dimitri, you talk about itAwesome.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
I like it, like your attitude.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
So I've started and sold quite a few businesses and
I think I, my I became a littlebit too confident, maybe a
little too cocky, and I thoughtthat because I was a software
guy, I've always been a softwareand a digital media guy and so
I thought, hey, and I evenbrought Dimitri and I thought I
could build a business in theconsumer package good space, and
(05:50):
it was called New York tapped,which was basically bottling New
York city tap water and and Iwas pumped.
I thought it was a brilliantidea.
We were on the David Lettermanshow, we were all this free PR
that came around and I was like,yeah, this is going to be a
cool business and it wentbankrupt.
I lost Dimitri's 25 grand asthe angel investment and it was
just like God.
But that was a.
(06:10):
That was a screw up and and, bythe way, I've had others.
I mean I've I've been a serialentrepreneur.
I've had some other failuresbesides all the things that look
glamorous and good on theoutside.
But what I learned it's it'sactually the screw ups are about
learning, frankly, right.
And so I learned I better stickto my knitting.
My knitting is software.
Just don't go outside of that.
Don't look for me to doanything in biotech or
(06:30):
semiconductors.
Just stay to software, alex.
Have you ever seen a $25,000bottle of water?
Thank you for rubbing it in mygoddamn face, dimitri.
I love you.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
I hope you like the anecdote of Brian and Dimitri as
much as I have and go back andrevisit the entire episode,
because I think it's full ofwisdom nuggets and I think
that's an episode that everyentrepreneur ought to watch at
least once in his life.
Every entrepreneur ought towatch at least once in his life.
For the next episode, I bringyou a personal friend of mine,
(07:14):
julian Truchon.
He's the singer and the leaderof a death metal, grind death
metal band.
I don't even know how todescribe this band Benighted.
It's one of my favorite extrememetal bands and you know sort
of crimecore death metal, brutaldeath Depends, pretty technical
as well, and I really like him.
(07:34):
He's a super charming personand we discuss business and
music and technology for bandmembers and touring bands and
what do they use?
What's the shareholderagreement?
How do they finance themselves?
(07:54):
Not much of a technologist, butI think I wanted to highlight in
this episode what I reallyenjoyed the most and I remember
like wow, this is going to blowsome people's minds is the
one-on-one for growling, the 101for growling.
You know these brutal deathmetal screams and good rolls,
shrieks and cries and whatnotdifferent techniques that he's
got, and I asked him to providea short demonstration on camera
(08:15):
and I had a lot of fun.
That was totally not preparedas well, like everything we do
in this podcast, and it's prettyuncommon for the rest of the
content that we have.
So I hope you enjoy this, but,seriously, just go back and
revisit the entire episode,because I think it's also really
fun and teaches you howdifficult it is to monetize and
(08:35):
to grow business out of music.
Let's go.
Do you learn how to sing withbass and how do you like?
You took lessons, I guess, butlike, what do you do in order
not to fuck up your voiceforever?
Speaker 8 (08:47):
Well, at first I never took any lessons for that,
I just learned by myself in mycar most of the time, because
people maybe not know.
But this kind of vocal practicewhen you do it at home you have
to have very tolerant neighborsbecause it's very loud and it's
very it's, it's noise.
(09:07):
It's noise.
I mean, for example, my vocals,because I think most of the
people don't know what I'mtalking about.
Uh, I have one, two, three,four, five main, uh, kind of uh
of vocal.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
But first we go through them can.
Can you demonstrate the five ofthem?
Speaker 8 (09:23):
I can say through them can you demonstrate the
five of them, I can't say numberone death metal, pretty high,
pretty low then I've got thehigh pitch, which is, yeah, and
um, something more hardcore.
(09:44):
That's pretty much the last.
The big squeal that one is thebrie.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
That's the brie.
Yeah, how did the brie storycome about?
Just because you're French?
Speaker 8 (09:58):
It came pretty stupidly because I realized that
I was doing the.
You know this kind of voice andfor some words where there's E
inside, when I wanted to go downthe E, it really sounds like a
pig that you got.
That's very funny, let's usethat as a gimmick.
And some singers were trying toget close to that with inhaling
(10:23):
vocals, but I only exhale to dothe screams.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
I inhale.
Can you do it exhaling?
I thought it was inhaling allthe time.
I don't know, everything isexhale, I inhale to do the high
pitches.
So that's, oh my God.
Speaker 8 (10:38):
Yeah, lots of people do inhaling.
But, yeah, I do everything byexhaling, including my big
squeal.
And that's why me, when I sing,every kind of vocals I do are
using my fake vocal cords notthe spoken vocal cords, but the
fake one.
Above were more like a hugemembranes to protect the spoken
(10:58):
vocal cords.
And I went to a doctor, athroat doctor, who put a camera
in my throat and he told me well, your vocal cords are safe
because you don't use them whenyou scream and that's also why I
can do all my screams, as yousaw, without any warm-up and
without hurting myself.
(11:19):
I mean, I could be totally mutebecause of the cold, I can
still do my.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Oh my god.
Speaker 8 (11:28):
It's a great comfort for a singer.
Trust me.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
It's a great comfort.
I love karaoke and then Ifucking destroy my voice because
I don't know how to singproperly, and sometimes I go for
a growling style and it's like,no, not going to happen the
next day.
I'm not.
Speaker 8 (11:44):
With this kind of techniques you're pretty safe.
Of course, at first it hurts abit.
It's like in your muscle.
You have to get used to it.
So of course at first it'spretty painful, but then you're
safe, yeah, for our audience.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Don't try without an adult supervision because you
might fuck up your vocal cords.
That was fun, wasn't it Cool?
And to the next highlight thisis a very special episode for me
as well, probably one of themost creative ones we've done so
far in which one of my bestfriends, josh Felberg, has
actually been a customer ofMarsways for many, many years, a
(12:21):
great person overall andsomebody I deeply admire and
respect.
And he said man, can Iinterview you for your podcast?
I said why would we do that?
But at the moment it soundskind of like a crazy idea.
But then I slept on it and Isaid well, why not?
We actually speak a lot aboutother companies, but we don't
(12:43):
really speak about ourselvesthat much.
And so Josh was veryintentional about drilling deep
into the company culture ofMarsBase.
And we speak about transparency.
We speak about like why am I sooutspoken in politics?
For instance, how do I combinemy multiple projects with
(13:05):
MarsBase ambitions?
And I've selected thisparticular part of the episode
because it's one of the longestepisodes we've recorded.
But this part in which hetouches really, you know,
somewhat not confidential but anuncomfortable part of business,
which is are you going to sellthe?
Speaker 6 (13:25):
company.
It's sort of all the techcompanies.
They all strive to not pay anytax and they make out this all
self-made billionaires' CEOs.
But actually, if you look atthe infrastructure, or rather
how the company operates,whether it's Tesla, amazon,
netflix, they're ultimately allbuilt on a government-created
infrastructure which needs taxmoney to exist, right?
(13:47):
So it's ironic that they thenkind of go the other way and
they claim oh, I'm against bigtaxes and I'm not going to pay
any taxes, or as little aspossible, and they sort of claim
it is all self-made, whereasactually you can't have big
internet infrastructure insimple, you know, as a very
simple universe.
Yeah Well, we all know that theinternet was created out of
(14:10):
university.
The World Wide was created bytim berners-lee.
You know, none of that was madeby those other guys.
They built on top of it, right,um, and that was funding free
tax money.
But talking about investment andand sort of growing big, they
say they want any of thisregulation, everything.
My space has got quite big.
Tell me in a second.
Uh, I'm not gonna ask for yourrevenue numbers, uh, but I'm not
(14:31):
sure how many staff revenuenumbers, uh, but I'm not sure
how many staff you've got.
I mean, if I remember 20something, I'm sure you've been
approached about investing andhaving people invest in you and
potentially being acquired.
What's your thought around that?
Would you ever accept becauseyou've got quite if they were
aligned with your values oranything and you felt actually
this might be a good ideabecause it can help us grow and
(14:53):
kind of continue our missionexcuse the pun mission to mars
based um we?
Would you rule it out foreveror what your thoughts on that?
Speaker 1 (15:02):
we'd have to consider it.
I mean, throughout the years.
Yeah, we've had the.
I mean there's two things here.
Investment doesn't really makesense.
Why would you invest in anagency?
Some people do it to make surethey can just like scale shit up
and kind of like blow up andopen an office in 50 countries,
right, Well, you're basicallybuying a team of devs in your
(15:25):
case, right Like you've got allthe infrastructure set up.
I've had people like I rememberlast year there was this Israeli
investor with whom I have agreat friendship with.
It's like dude, I'm ready tomake something big in Spain.
Do you want to become the nextbig consultancy?
We could totally pour a fewmillion into the company and
then just help you to scale upwith Dundas in Israel.
(15:46):
And I'm like thank you, but Idon't want to do that.
Like, what's the point?
It's a great offering, but notfor me, not for my co-founders,
not for the company, so that onewas turned down right away.
Acquisition that's a differentconversation.
We've had acquisition talksover the years, namely twice.
(16:07):
By always it's always ourbiggest client.
Right, the two times where ourbiggest clients two separate
companies that you know, you'vebeen working for them for a few
years, you've got a big teamthere and they're your biggest
client.
At a certain point I don't knowif it's intentional or not they
might know that they are yourbiggest client they're like okay
(16:28):
, let's talk about doingsomething bigger, which always
comes down to how about you joinour company?
Like we buy your team andyou're part of the company, you
can run it independently withthis and that, blah, blah, blah,
and then you're stuck between arock and a hard place because
you don't want to say no to yourclient, you definitely want to
(16:50):
entertain the conversation, butwhat's the protocol right?
You don't want to lose them.
In both cases, we politelyturned them down.
We followed protocol.
We had advisors and this someof our best friends in the
industry and so we had to turnthem down because they were not.
One of them was definitely notaligned with our, the way we
(17:11):
perceived it was a biggerconsultancy and they, they, they
like we said, like house, howis it going to be like on the
first day after the acquisition?
And they're like well, so youpeople will have to go to the
office and then you, you know,like that's not gonna happen.
Well, I mean, you know there'salways a price for everything
and, uh, you know, give me, giveme two billion for Mars diesel,
(17:32):
like I'll sell it tomorrow, butthat's not going to happen.
We know that's not going tohappen.
Cool, for the next highlight,I'm going to go back some years,
actually some years before weactually started the podcast.
We recorded this episode, thisevent of Startup Grind.
We recorded this episode, thisevent of Startup Grind, an event
(17:53):
that we used to organize and weran for almost 11 years and
more often than not we wouldcover founder stories,
investment, you know, scalingthe business, management,
leadership, company culture andwhatnot.
But on rare occasions I wouldbring the CTOs, because I don't
(18:15):
know of many companies that theCTO in Spain can actually give
good conversation in English andis a co-founder and knows how
to speak in front of an audience.
And in this case, I found theperfect match Elisenda Boll,
co-founder and CTO of Vellings,a company that was acquired by
(18:36):
Apple a few years back, and ofcourse, they really wanted to
nerd out and talk abouttechnology, but the audience
wasn't the right one.
At Startup Grind, we hadentrepreneurs, people from
corporate investors and whatnot,but not so many developers.
Therefore, we don't really digdown very deep into technology.
(18:56):
Of course we cover technology,because at the time we were
speaking about TensorFlow, wewere speaking about AI, machine
learning, how to hire engineers,and that must have been around
2017, if I remember correctly,2017, 18, something like that.
Around 2017, if I remembercorrectly, 2017, 18, something
like that.
But in this episode, I rememberI had a lot of fun moments.
Haley is such a great speaker.
(19:18):
She's inspirational and fun atequal parts, and I remember that
I started more or less aroundthat time to ask about the worst
day at the office.
I wanted people to share thelows of entrepreneurship and
more often than not I was alsoasking the most expensive fuck
up, but also wanted to know, ona personal level, how did you
(19:41):
feel, what did you do toovercome this Mental issues that
we all suffer from and I speakpretty openly about.
I wanted to open up on stage infront of an audience and I
think we had a very, veryinsightful conversation and I
like to remember fondly thisepisode, this event with Ellie.
(20:03):
So just take a look.
Speaker 7 (20:06):
I wouldn't say that here the rhythm is less like I
think.
Usually I tend to think thatPalo Alto, or like Silicon
Valley, they have very goodworking hours.
Yeah.
Because they, I'm just notmeaning that.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
They're just kind of more business oriented.
They tend to take decisionsvery fast, whereas here we're
more like yeah, I'll postponethis decision to like next month
.
Speaker 7 (20:30):
No, that doesn't happen.
Okay, it doesn like next month.
No that doesn't happen.
Okay, it doesn't happen in yourcompany.
No, I don't think that happensto us.
We're really quick at takingdecisions.
I don't think we have adifferent pace.
I think most of the problemsare mostly like how do you
organize Because we have alsopeople in Taipei, so sometimes
(20:53):
like finding the right meetingtime when you have US, barcelona
and Taipei, it's justimpossible.
It doesn't work.
Somebody has to be in a call at1 am or 2.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
But apart from that, Right, a bit of quick questions
before we open up the floor forother people's questions.
What has been your worst day atthe office as a founder?
I think, we like to open uphere.
Speaker 7 (21:20):
Worst day at the office.
Something you really struggledwith and you took a terrible
decision, or Sometimes it's notexactly the question you asked,
but one of my biggest problemsis when somebody from the team
(21:41):
people that you respect a lotand they're team leads and you
rely on them a lot they come toyou and they look at you like
you have all the answers.
They look at you like I'm goingto ask you what's the future,
what are we going to be doing inone year or two years?
And they're looking at you likeyou must have all the answers
right.
You don't have them.
Most of the time it's likeyou're taking guesses as
(22:05):
educated as you can and you'resharing with the team and you're
open for ideas.
So maybe that's the past, butmaybe it isn't.
So one of the moments that Istruggle mostly with is when
people look at you and they'reexpecting you to have the right,
perfect answer for any singleproblem that there might be.
You know, and they're like Imean, I'm just trying to lead
(22:27):
this thing, but we're a startupjust trying to figure out every
day.
I don't have the perfectsolution for everything, so
we're going to just keepfiguring out as we go.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
This is a really good one.
I really really like thisepisode with Jamin Holmgren, one
of the co-founders of InfiniteRed, a company we look up to, a
company that had a podcast thatwas called Building Infinite Red
, which the co-founders sort ofgroup discussed Building the
(22:59):
company very openly, and it wasgreat.
I have listened to that podcastabout three times, all of the
episodes, because they're veryinspirational and insightful and
instructive for companies likeus.
We look up to them.
We've never really workedtogether, although we keep in
each other's minds.
They're really fun and you willsee it, damon, despite being a
CTO, really knows how to talk inpublic and he's got a great
(23:22):
sense of humor.
He also loves tractors.
If you follow him on Twitter,you will know what I'm speaking
about.
And we had a very, very goodconversation about the pains of
building agencies, the pains ofbootstrapping, the pains of
leaning on the side of qualitynot quantity, being a super
specialized company, when theydecided to go all in on React
(23:47):
Native and stop doing Rails likethey had been doing for many,
many years, just to be clearthat they specialize in only one
thing, and it was.
You know, one of the pinnaclesof this episode was when he
started recounting the parableof the rich man and the
fisherman, and I don't want tospoil it for you, so I'd rather
(24:10):
have you watch it, because Ithink it explains very well what
we do with the bootstrap andlifestyle businesses.
Speaker 9 (24:17):
So let's take a look.
So about 10 years into my firstagency, I met a couple of other
guys, actually three other guysKen Miller, todd Worth and Gant
Laborde and we you know they wedecided that we were going to
merge our companies together.
So at the beginning it was justme, todd and ken, and when we
(24:40):
kind of got things together wewould have these long
discussions, you know, in zoom,and it was really great.
And eventually I was like whydon't we do a podcast?
Because there's so many coolthings that we talk about that
it feels like we could just makethis a public discussion and
people would enjoy it.
Um, and so, building infinitered, uh, which is
buildinginfinitered on the webyou can go find it.
Uh was born and uh, we wentthrough the first season, uh,
(25:06):
and then gant actually joined asan owner, uh, the second season
, and Ken left us, actually,incidentally, to go work for a
product company.
And because it turns out thatit really is two different type
of people and for him the ideaof doing consulting, you know,
just didn't match with what hewanted to do, is totally fine.
(25:28):
What's really cool is thatwe're still good friends with
Ken, you know.
What he wanted to do wastotally fine.
What's really cool is thatwe're still good friends with
Kent.
You know, like we went and Gantand I were down there last
April and, you know, went to hishouse and went to lunch with
him and you know we're greatfriends with him.
But it's just.
You know, it works better withcertain personalities.
So Building Infinite Red wasborn.
We did one season, we didanother season.
(25:48):
We've talked about a thirdseason.
We did one season, we didanother season.
We've talked about a thirdseason.
We want to do a third season.
But in the meantime, like wehad sort of gotten to where we
had said what we wanted to sayand I think we would have to
relaunch it with maybe a littledifferent focus, because a lot
of the stuff just holds up overtime, you know it's surprisingly
(26:08):
thus, surprisingly well.
Yeah, pre-pandemic, like youknow, it wasn't like we weren't
doing this when everybody wasremote and stuff like that.
So there's maybe some newthings to talk about.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
That was way back, way before people started
jumping on the cool wagon of thepodcast.
Like must have been like 2017,18, something like that.
Speaker 9 (26:26):
Yeah, that's when we did the podcast, but we were
remote in 2014.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
So almost 10 years ago, because I met Ken must have
been like 2015, something likethat in San Francisco.
That's my original connectionto Infinite Red, and one of the
reasons I bring this up isbecause oftentimes and you will
also know, this is agencies, andmore so, bootstrap companies
agencies usually are bootstrapare perceived as unambitious
(26:53):
projects.
Right, yeah, it's true.
However, we stand the test oftime because right now, like
companies are going down likeflies, and especially startups,
right, or companies arebasically so, based solely on
growth and no real financials toback them.
So they're, you know, favorableweather companies, favorable
weather companies, fair weathercompanies, I think you call them
(27:14):
right In English.
So, my point being, there's nota lot of literature around
building agencies, likeeverybody tells you about
building product.
You know the ABC ofentrepreneurship, right?
Get some friends, get aco-founder, talk to customers,
find an idea, find product,market fit Ideally not raise
(27:35):
capital in the meantime, but alot of people have to because
they're just not good at sales.
Build something, try to scaleit up, blah, blah, blah.
Raise another round, round,round, round.
After, like every 12 months,raise some money, and so,
however, if you're trying tolearn how to create an agency,
there's not a lot of goodcontent out there.
It is.
I think people assume that it'skind of like freelancing but
(27:57):
scaling it up.
There are so many things thatjust don't fit this description.
So that's why I think thatpodcast if you really want to
start an agency, you shouldconsume it from beginning to end
.
Speaker 9 (28:08):
I appreciate that that's really kind of you to say
.
And you're right, there reallyisn't a lot of uh there really
isn't like a model to followthere.
Um, I think partially because,uh, you know, a lot of silicon
valley kind of looks down theirnose a little bit.
Um, the ones that are, you know, the big ones out there,
pivotal and whatnot.
They have a certain kind ofgoal and way of way of working
(28:30):
that you know fits what theylike to do.
And uh, I'm have a certain kindof goal and way of way of
working that you know fits whatthey like to do.
And uh, I'm connected with alot of you know people that are
in operations and leadershipwithin uh larger agencies and
they do have a different mindset.
It's very much like push, push,push, uh type of a uh mindset.
Um, there's sort of this like,um, you know kind of negative uh
(28:53):
wording of saying mindset.
There's sort of this, like youknow, kind of negative wording
of saying that that you know, oh, you're building a lifestyle
business, like a business that'ssort of like built around your
life, rather than trying to beambitious, and I get that.
But I don't optimize fordollars and cents necessarily.
I don't optimize for, uh,perceived, um, you know, stature
(29:17):
in the world.
Um, we do optimize for certaintypes of impact, uh, so impact
is part of it.
One of our, one of our corepillars is significant positive
impact, um, but we feel like wecan do that in different ways
than building some sort of, youknow, startup that changes the
world.
What we really love, at the endof the day, is to work and
(29:41):
build things with our friendsand, you know, build things with
people that we care about andbuild a great life for our
families.
You know happiness we'reoptimizing for happiness and
fulfillment and contentedness,things like that and at the end
of the day, you can, you cankind of like, throw away your
family and throw away yourpersonal life and your health
(30:04):
and everything else and chasethe dollar or you know the big
splashy startup and then, andthen what you know, someone else
probably runs it after a whileand you're stuck there with, you
know, with not a lot, you havea lot of money, but like what
else?
So I really think that you knowthere there's this.
(30:24):
I've told this story countlesstimes and it's not my story, but
it's a.
It's a kind of a uh, a parable,if you will.
Uh, that I think is veryinteresting.
There's this, uh, this fishermanwho is, uh, he takes his boat
out and he goes fishing in themorning.
He goes from, you know, hesleeps in, so he's probably
(30:45):
going out around, you know, 8o'clock, 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock
depending on the day, and he'llgo out and he'll catch a couple
fish and then he comes back inby noon and you know, he has
lunch with his wife and he takesa siesta, and then maybe he
goes into town and he, you know,kind of hangs out with his
(31:08):
friends, has some wine, and then, you know, he and his wife go
dancing in the evening and thenhe goes and, you know, hangs out
with his kids and goes to sleep.
In the morning he does it again.
And one day a businessman isthere, he's on vacation in this,
you know this kind of likefishing village, and he sees
this guy going out and doing.
He says, why don't you juststop at noon?
Why don't you keep fishinguntil five o'clock?
(31:31):
You know, why don't you workharder?
And uh, the guy says, well, whywould I do that?
He said, well, you can take thefish, the extra fish that you
catch, and you can sell them andyou'd get more money.
And then you could buy a biggerboat and you'd get more fish
because you could have, youcould hire people to come on the
boat, help you with it, andthen eventually you could get
many boats and, you know, have awhole fleet of fishing boats
(31:53):
and be managing all that.
And, uh, you know like, uh, you, you just be doing really well.
Fisherman said, well, what wouldI do?
Then I said, well, what would Ido?
Then he said, well, you couldsell the thing you could.
You know you could go public orsomething.
You could really make tons andtons of money and you could
retire early.
And the guy says, well, whatwould I do after I retire?
(32:13):
And he says, well, you couldsleep in, you could go out
fishing, you could come back in,have lunch, take a nap, go
dancing, have some wine, hangout with your kids and go to
sleep.
You know it's the same thing atthe end of the day.
You know you're the fishermanand the businessman.
He's like I'm already doingthat Like, make a business that
allows you to have the life thatyou want Great.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
That episode with Damon was actually one of my
favorites.
I could talk for hours.
We speak often once per quarterevery few months, and we speak
often once per quarter every fewmonths, and we can always learn
so much from people like Damon,who have been in the industry
for many, many years running acompany similar to ours.
So we can, you know, chat backand forth about the pains of
(32:57):
growing these kind of businesses.
So for the next highlight, wehave Liz Dunn, a very good
friend of mine that resides inthe States.
I met her many, many years agoit must have been 2017 when they
were on a break with herpartner traveling around Europe
(33:17):
and I hosted them at a start-upevent and we had very good
conversations.
We emptied many glasses of wineover the course of a few days
in Barcelona, where we discussedbusiness, investment,
technology, innovation andwhatnot.
I said, like you have to be inmy podcast someday.
I didn't know I was going tohave a podcast conversation
(33:40):
about innovation inentrepreneurship and her long
experience in being inmanagement positions in Silicon
Valley, and one of the topics Ireally really wanted to cover
with her was imposter syndromeImposter syndrome.
In this case, I share myimposter syndrome being an angel
investor, but we talked aboutit at length.
(34:03):
This is just a part of a verylong conversation about many
other topics, but I wanted tofocus on this one because it
doesn't get much press.
It doesn't get spoken about asmuch as we should.
So I hope you like this part ofthe conversation with Liz done
Hard question here.
Let's open up a little bitImposter syndrome.
(34:24):
Did you get it when you startedinvesting?
Like, am I really an investor?
Can I put it on LinkedIn?
Do I really want to?
You know, advertise me as, like, promote me as an investor.
Am I investing enough money tobe called an investor or not?
Really, I still got it and I'vebeen investing for six years
now.
So it's like I'm not really anangel investor when I never put
(34:45):
more than 10 grand in a companyand I don't know like something
like this, I still get it a lot.
Speaker 10 (34:51):
I know what you mean .
I mean, you know, being a womanin Silicon Valley, I kind of
always have it Like it's alwaysjust like sitting on my shoulder
, like do you belong here?
And you get treated that waytoo, like do you belong here,
like.
So I kind of I take thatfeeling and I kind of I use it
(35:13):
to make me, like, show up harder.
But uh, yeah, I mean, you know,especially at the point where
I'd invested I don't know lessthan ten thousand dollars, uh,
sure, I wasn't running aroundtelling people I was an investor
.
Then, once I got up to, youknow, more and I put that on
LinkedIn.
Then all these people come outof the woodwork trying to pitch
you.
So then I took it off.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Yeah, the wheels start turning right.
Speaker 10 (35:35):
Yeah.
But now I mean I sort of feellike I'll really feel like an
investor when I get my firstlike profitable exit.
Actually, I think one of ZachCollius's investments is about
to cash out, not hard, but likea two Xer.
So then I'll have like that.
(35:55):
But my plan had been because Ididn't think of myself as a real
investor Well, I'm going toangel invest and I'm going to
have a couple of successes, andthen I'll go work at a big VC
company right, because I canshow them here's my resume Like
I don't have, you know, anaccounting or business
background, but I have.
I've made these successful bets.
And then the more that I dothis, the more I'm like why
(36:19):
should I work for a VC?
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Yeah, what's the incentive?
I mean probably, yeah, you canmake like a 75X return or
something like that on somethingcrazy.
Speaker 10 (36:29):
Part of it was.
I thought I needed that forlegitimacy so I wouldn't feel
like an imposter.
Speaker 6 (36:33):
And now I'm like nah, all right, that's interesting
yeah.
Speaker 10 (36:37):
To go out with a business card.
It's real.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
But for me it's like the reason I want to become an
investor is to work less, notmore.
But if you go to a VC fund, youwill work like you know until
like the crazy hours around theclock, just because they're a VC
and they got to have like thesereturns, because otherwise the
fund loses money.
And 75% of VC funds worldwidethey lose money.
They never return the money tothe investors, right?
So it's like why do you want togo in a business that it's
(37:04):
inherently bleeding money, right?
Well?
Speaker 10 (37:09):
I'll send you this article and you can show it in
the-.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
I'll link it in the show notes.
Speaker 10 (37:14):
yeah, but basically it talks about how, in a sense,
vc is.
They're so beholden to theirreturns that like, for example,
you look at WeWork, people keptthe board, knew it had a problem
and it just kept letting thatguy do whatever he wanted and
the vcs were like this does notmake sense.
(37:35):
But then they didn't want tolose.
They didn't want to, like, losetheir money, so they kept just
going along with it.
It's a great article about how,basically, it's their desire to
not to have a return on theirfund that made them, you know,
prop up a failing business forso long.
It's a great article.
It's basically like how VC isbreaking business.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Good, and now for the next one.
This is actually a part of aseries of three episodes with
Mike Cunningham from TranscendPartners in which we discuss M&A
everything about M&A.
We discuss sales side, buy side.
We discuss advisors, boutiques,prices, fees, retainers,
(38:21):
deadlines, documents, protocol,etiquette.
We discuss everything, and Ithink we will record three
episodes more because Mike is agreat friend.
He's super generous with histime, he's somebody I like
working with and I really enjoyall the conversations over tacos
that we have offline, and everynow and then I'm like man.
(38:44):
It's been a while since werecorded with Mike and when you
will watch this part of the clip, you will understand why you
want to consume the entire threeepisodes we recorded with Mike.
So let's jump right into it.
What's one or two clauses thatonly rookie entrepreneurs would
accept?
Something that you knowseasoned entrepreneurs.
(39:04):
When they see on the LOIs,they're like fuck, no, I'm not
getting this.
Speaker 11 (39:09):
Yeah.
So I mean, this exclusivityperiod is one that almost nobody
really understands too well.
They just don't know what thenorms are.
So it's kind of they get an LOIand it says 80 days of
exclusivity.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
And they're like oh, 80 days is nothing, right?
Yeah, they're like ah, 80 daysis nothing, right?
Speaker 11 (39:25):
Yeah, they're like ah, makes sense to me, you know
they're going to be investingin-.
What's the lowest you?
Speaker 1 (39:30):
can get it to Wow.
I mean there's 30 days yeah.
Speaker 11 (39:32):
I mean 30 days would be quite low.
But you also want it to be two.
Everything you do in this youwant to be kind of in good faith
in two way, because the more itseems you don't want to be too
one-sided.
You need to be doing things ina, you know, kind of a
partnership way.
Obviously you're representingyour interests and you want it
to be certainly not negative foryou but as favorable as
(39:53):
possible.
But you also don't want to beunrealistic and demanding things
that are way off market.
So this is another thing anentrepreneur, you know, who
doesn't have experience in this,they could say no, you know,
I'm not giving more than 15 daysof exclusivity, and every
acquirer I'm not saying this hasever happened, but it could
easily happen Every acquirerwould say that's ridiculous,
(40:13):
this is a joke.
I'm not going to do thisprocess with this guy.
He's demanding outrageousthings and he has no idea what
he's talking about.
So it's kind of we know, kind ofwhat's the norm, what's in the
market what's reasonable and youknow, and what's reasonable but
very good for our end, becausethe range of reasonability is is
(40:33):
very wide.
You know, and if they, you know, and I would say many times you
know, especially if they're notdealing with a professional
advisor, you know they're goingto try to push things in their
favor, why not?
Who wouldn't you know?
I mean, it's kind of you know.
If I know I'm just, you know,dealing with a CEO or you know
somebody from the board in thisprocess, then you know why not?
(40:54):
You know, make it as favorablefor myself.
So it's kind of so that's, youknow, I think, quite normal on
the side of the buyer in thosesituations.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Oh man, this is a really good one, john O'Nolan.
That's actually a bigachievement for me personally,
as a longtime user and fanboy ofGhost, one of the technologies
I love the most, one of theproducts I really admire.
I've been following for many,many years.
My personal website is builtwith Ghost.
I really like him.
(41:24):
I really like John as a leader.
He's a charismatic entrepreneur, charming, charming person,
super generous with his time.
I sent him an email Do you knowme, john, I really like to host
you on the episode and withintwo minutes it's like yes, let's
do it, let's find a time.
Boom, and in three days we wererecording.
(41:46):
Like that doesn't happen withthis sort of caliber and these
people high up the ranks ofentrepreneurship and technology.
So, yeah, I really admire him.
Super thankful, we discussedeverything.
We didn't discuss everythingbecause we didn't have time and
I was nervous, as you will beable to tell from the episode,
but we had a really, really funmoment towards the end of the
episode in which he actuallyactually he saw and he caught
(42:14):
the reference a reference I liketo use from Hot Ones, one of my
favorite YouTube shows, andhe's like man that's from Hot
Ones, right, I appreciate thereference Like man that's from
Hot Ones.
Right, I appreciate thereference.
I'm like okay, you're the firstone to actually get it.
In more or less 100 episodesI've been using these sentences
Like I'm rolling the red carpetfor you.
Here's your camera, here's yourcamera.
(42:34):
I like that style towards theend of the interview, and so we
started riffing for a couple ofminutes about Hot Ones and his
favorite episodes that were not,and I think that that was
really, really fun.
The entire episode is fantastic.
It's phenomenal, but I thinkthis part is pretty short.
It's pretty fun.
It's good to kind of like wrapup this episode even though we
(42:56):
got one more, and so I hope youenjoyed this conversation with
John Nolan.
I was going to go into that,but I think from this answer
you've just given me, I'veinferred how not to use Ghost,
which I think it's as valuable,if not more.
So well, let's just wrap ithere.
Because you've been extremelygenerous with your time.
I'm rolling out the carpet foryou.
(43:18):
You got one minute left to sayhow we can help you, how we can
help Ghost and any announcementsor anything you want to share
with our community.
Speaker 5 (43:27):
Love the Hot Ones reference.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
yeah, If you want to check out Ghost You're the first
one to get it yes.
Speaker 5 (43:36):
I would.
If you publish online and youhave an email list or you have
thoughts to share with the world, check out Ghostorg.
We're doing a lot ofinteresting things.
Um favorite hot ones episode sofar.
I mean the DJ Khaled's always aclassic right, just for for its
incredible failure.
(43:57):
Um, what was the one I watchedjust last week?
Oh, ryan Reynolds, that one wasreally good.
Yeah that's very good.
There's a few.
I'm struggling to think of themall on the spot.
Jimmy Fallon is the one I justwatched.
He was very funny.
What's yours?
Shaquille O'Neal probably.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
Like I don't understand him most of the time
we're speaking, but the facesand the entire performance is
superb.
That for me is like an all-timegreat.
Speaker 5 (44:30):
Ricky Gervais.
The Gordon Ramsay one was goodas well, just because of how
angry he got throughout thewhole thing, like why do you do
this Exactly?
Speaker 1 (44:38):
exactly, they're really good ones.
And then I'm really surprisedby people who you wouldn't
expect it but they toleratespiciness so well, like charlize
their own, for instance, and uhI'm surprised, gary vaynerchuk
yeah, yeah, exactly.
Some people are like yeah, yeah, spicy, but you know, I'm like
yeah, holy fuck like I.
I have the bomb, the bomb, Ihave it in my fridge.
(45:01):
It's is literally unbearableStuff like that I love spicy and
that's why I buy all of theseterrible sauces and when I see
some of the guests that theydon't break a sweat, I'm like,
no, I don't know how they can doit.
I don't know how they can do it,but anyways.
Speaker 5 (45:21):
I'm a big hot sauce fan.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
And for the last one, oh man, this is the banger.
This is the banger of theepisode.
So, yeah, we have DorianCarroll, great, great friend of
mine, great person to converse,super interesting, super
knowledge about technology,super experienced, being a CTO
(45:44):
for companies, silicon Valley,and VP of engineering and
technology since I don't knowfor 40 years right now close to
50.
I got the mistake in, but yeah,he's worked for companies like
EA.
He's worked for Technorati, forBlogger, for Amazon and for
(46:07):
many, many other companies.
When I met him back in the time, he was a CTO, slash CIO of
Zynga, you know the gamingcompany, and I really wanted to
wrap up this special five yearsanniversary of the podcast
special episode with a banger.
And the last one is histechnical fuck up in which, well
(46:28):
, it's, let's, let's put it likethat it is a very hot one an
electrician had been working outon the street and he wasn't uh,
he wasn't certified.
Speaker 12 (46:40):
he made some mistake , luckily didn't kill himself,
but uh, what he did in doingthat, it actually started a fire
in the data center, and so wewere literally on fire.
This wasn't just an emergency.
The software is on fire thatpeople often say.
No, the data center was on fire.
They were able to put the fireout Lateral fire.
(47:03):
Yeah, lateral fire, they wereable to put the fire out.
They were able to put the fireout and we realized we weren't
going to have power in that datacenter for a while and we
rented a trailer and unpluggedall of our equipment and stacked
it in the back of this trailerand drove it over to a new data
center where we had been lookingat and just we moved the whole
(47:24):
thing and we got the site backup and running.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
How long had it elapsed?
Speaker 12 (47:32):
We had realized we needed to change data centers,
so we had a footprint in the newdata center to some extent, but
we hadn't been ready to flipthe switch.
So I think, if I recallcorrectly, we were able to flip
the switch to at least put up asorry page, uh, and then, over
the course of, I think you know,several hours, we were able to
bring up the rest of theservices maybe it was somebody
who wanted to speed up thatprocess.
Speaker 1 (47:53):
He was very getting upset that this was not moving
and the ceo was not approvingthe budget.
It's like, fuck it, I'm gonnaburn the office down if you
don't do it.
Anyways, last question to you.
It's a very, very, very niceway to end this special episode.
We learned a lot from Dorian.
You can go and watch also theStartup Grind episode we
(48:15):
recorded with him, where wediscussed more technology.
We nerded out for an hour aboutReact, nodejs, javascript, ruby
, amazon Cloud and whatnot.
We discussed a lot oftechnologies.
But, yeah, hope you enjoyed thisspecial compilation of the five
years anniversary of Life onMars podcast.
(48:36):
There's going to be five moreyears.
I assume we enjoy doing this.
We want to thank you for yoursupport.
I want to thank you for beingthere, for sending suggestions
of content, suggestions ofspeakers, sending questions, and
I'd like to ask you for morequestions.
If you made it this far, let usknow in the comment section
(48:57):
down below, because you reallyand truly deserve a gold medal
for being a great supporter andfor always being there for us,
and so you got some questionsfor the company, for me, for my
co-founders, for some of ouremployees for David, the
marketing guy, whomever, justlet us know in the comment
(49:17):
section down below.
Send it also via email atolamarspacecom.
And, as always, if you likethis show, just recommend us
share it, retweet, repost, hitthe like and subscribe buttons
and I'll see you all in the nextepisode.
Popular Podcasts
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
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.