Life on Mars - A podcast from MarsBased
Life on Mars - A podcast from MarsBased
084 - Goodbye to Startup Grind
Join Àlex, CEO of MarsBased, as he tells the story behind starting both MarsBased and the Barcelona chapter of Startup Grind in 2014. Prepared for a rambling of 45 minutes?
This episode covers running both the chapter and MarsBased, reasons to keep it up, impact generated over ten years, metrics of Startup Grind Barcelona, highs and lows, and the reasons why we're quitting after 153 events and three international conferences.
We also give some hints as to what's next for Àlex and our involvement in the events & community space in the near future. Who knows, maybe you get the chance to listen to these ramblings live in a podcast studio near you!
🎬 You can watch the video of this episode on the Life on Mars podcast website: https://podcast.marsbased.com/
So what is my friends? Here ends our journey with Startup Grand and I'm Alex, C of Marspace, and welcome to another episode of Life on Mars. This one is a very special one. We have no guests today.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:In this episode, I will go about why I decided to quit Startup Grand and, for the uninitiated, I will begin explaining what is Startup G, which is a fundamental part of what we do at Mars Based, even though it is not strictly related to what we do with business or what we do with web and mobile development, which is what we are mostly well known for, but it has accompanied us from the very beginning. Let's start with the basics. Startup Brand is the largest community and organization for entrepreneurs worldwide and basically what Startup Brand does is to organize events and host meetups monthly, regular meetups for entrepreneurs in every city where they are present, and they have chapters, and these chapters are organized locally in over 500 cities in more than 120 countries or something like that, and each of these cities has got a local representative. In this case, I have been the local representative of Startup Grant in Barcelona, and that's something I started at the same time as Marspace because in early 2014, when I was in San Francisco, I thought well, if I am to play in the lottery of entrepreneurship, I might as well buy two tickets. And so it's not that I didn't trust in my or our ability to build Mars space from the ground up or, to be honest, I didn't and so that's why I decided to start two things at the same time. So what started as two separate initiatives in early 2014, one of them as a co-founder of Mars Space alongside my two best friends, xavi and Jordi, and then the other one was Startup Brain, where I was appointed as local chapter director. That was my official title in a sort of a franchise contract.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:So Startup Prime, much like other similar organizations like Fuck Up Nights, for instance, and other or I think TEDx works like that as well. They appoint local champions in every city. They are responsible for the organization of the local chapters. They are responsible for the organization of the local chapters, and so it's up to them to create a company, to run it as a nonprofit, to do it. However the fuck, they want to organize it and deploy it right, and so it was appointed as chapter director. So, technically, I've never been employed by startup brand. It's sort of a commercial agreement, but anyways. So in 10 years, I have been responsible for developing the brand of Startup Night in Barcelona.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:That meant mostly organizing monthly meetups around technology, around entrepreneurship, investments, startups, venture capital and whatnot, and in these meetups, what we did is host a very welcoming event and setup for entrepreneurs, because we all know that entrepreneurship is a very lonely journey and, as such, most entrepreneurs, they are either solopreneurs or they are very lost, or they don't know where to go to for their to look for help, for instance, to look for a co-founder to hire, to raise funds, to seek for advice and counsel and maybe mentoring and whatnot, and or to learn from more experienced people. And so in this monthly meetups that basically revolved around a fireside chat that was a central part of the event what we did is to educate, inspire and connect entrepreneurs worldwide. What that meant is, you know, we created the right environment for entrepreneurs to join and mingle. Every month and, in particular in the case of Barcelona, we hosted 153 events in a little bit over 10 years. We started in March 2014, and our last event has been August 2024.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:So 10 and a half years give or take, and we created the event with such a vibe that was welcoming, that was inclusive. The event was in English, so it was mostly inclusive to everyone who speaks English, because at the time, in 2014, the community of entrepreneurs in Barcelona for expats was underserved and most events were in Spanish or Catalan. But it was also a paid event. That was quite the paradox, right? By creating some sort of filter, we made it safer and more inclusive, right, the filter was very low. Like, you paid three five bucks to get in Actually, I always joked it was the cheapest bar in Barcelona because for five bucks you got unlimited beer, food and you had a lot of fun, right. So, yeah, it was a safe event. And also, you could learn On top of that. You could learn from the speakers and from the rest of the people in the audience and you could get hell. You could get you know investment or a co-founder or potential hires and whatnot. So for 10 years, we've been doing that.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:I have been spearheading the project. I co-founded it with two other people, carlos Cruz and Alex González, two of my best friends as well, and we've had a team of volunteers, because this startup brand we ran it, or initially we created as an altruist project that we didn't want to make any money, but we also didn't want to lose any money, right? And so, for the first time, it was something that I did outside of MarsBased. That's something that I did, you know, working in the graveyard shift after, because the first years of MarsBased they were very intensive and I was pulling eight, 10 hours or 12 even every day, and then at the end of it I had to do startup, right, because I didn't want any conflict between the two parts. But soon enough, my two co-founders, xavi and Jordi, were very generous and they told me look, this looks like something that could benefit MarsBased and why don't you do it as a percentage of the hours of MarsBased, right? It's an integral part of your job, it's strategic for us. We also don't want you to work 12 hours a day. Just try to do it inside of the regular working shift of MarsBase, right?
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:So by year one, year two, we decided to kind of like merge it, and so MarsBase adopted Startup Rank Barcelona. We had been running an event called Startup Circle, so it was basically merging both communities, and that's how it came to be more professionalized, right. We allocated a budget the first 10,000 euros every year Urban 15, depending of every year, where, you know came right out of our pockets, from the company, and we hosted these 153 events mostly in English. First year maybe we did some events in Spanish, but we moved to English very rapidly and we had a lot of impact. Right. We have had an average of 120 people per event. That's for a paid event. It is really good. Of course, we've had events where we had fewer people. We had more.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:We hosted three editions of a conference in 2017, 18, and 19. We organized bigger conferences, international conferences. The first one was San Francisco Barcelona Summit. Then it was Startup Brain Tech for a couple of years, but that project had to be canceled because of COVID 2020 came. We had to postpone the conference 2021,. We tried to pick up from where we left off, but it was not possible. So instead of postponing again, we decided to cancel it altogether and we never went to revive the project because at the 2022, I don't know if there were still some restrictions in place probably not but business travel was still not picking up. Sponsors were at a you know all time low and so it was not a great time to kind of like raise funds to create events or get sponsorships and stuff like that. People were a little bit saturated from all the events post-pandemic, so we decided to cancel. But they were pretty successful conferences.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:We got founders and C-levels from companies like Google, ventures, shazam, couchsurfing, codecademy, stripe, revolut, atomico and other companies. These are just a few off the top of my head, right. So we had a bunch of 20, 25 people speakers coming from Silicon Valley Actually, we had so much in this coming from Silicon Valley as well or from California. We had this guy in the first conference came all the way from LA and he said like, oh, I came to the conference because, you know, I love Startup Grind and I thought Startup Grind in Barcelona, what a nice combination. I wouldn't have done that myself, but you know, kudos to him. It's probably he spent also a nice time in Barcelona. But so, yeah, and that serves to give some context about what we've done, because people outside of Mars space they probably know me because of startup brand.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:I have been the public face of startup brand in Barcelona. I've been the ambassador of Barcelona in startup brand and and I'm always wearing startup brand t-shirts because basically we I have more than Mars space and and it's kind of like more media friendly, more catchy, so to speak, and so newspapers like the idea of interviewing somebody who's even remotely associated to Google, because up until 2020 or something like that, startup Grind was sponsored by Google for Startups and therefore it was Startup Grind powered by Google for Entrepreneurs or Google for Startups, and so that gave us some media coverage, but I had to tell people that my real business was Mars-based, so it's always been a struggle to combine both things. I've spent 10 years in the organization. I've seen the community ebb and flow over time. Startbrand grew a lot throughout the years but also was greatly affected by the pandemic, so the community ebbed and flowed, but I made many good friends. Every year we'd meet in the Startup Brand Global Conference in California around February, march, and it's a conference of up to 10,000 people some of the greatest speakers you can have in Silicon Valley.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:Over the course of 10 years, I have been very attached to Startup Grind. I attended Startup Grind in 15 different cities and the chapter directors and committee members and people from the teams of Startup Grind in other cities 60 of them came to ours so the relationship, the bonding, has been very deep, right. Another interesting thing is we built a community of 9,000 people, right. It is estimated that Barcelona has got 30,000 people working in technology at least subscribed to the newsletters of technology. So we had 9,000. That's pretty big actually, and also you know the event was paid. So we had 9,000. That's pretty big actually. And also you know the event was paid, so it was not for everybody, and so that's another maybe difficulty, but I think it contributed to having a healthier newsletter, a healthier subscriber base, a healthier attendee base and people who would come to the event. Right, and also another metric that is very interesting.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:We hosted about 500 speakers, give or take, most of whom we consider friends. Some of them are really good friends, some of them have become my best friends and a few of them I have invested, and a few of them are really good friends. Some of them have become my best friends and a few of them I have invested and a few of them have helped the company. We've gotten some clients and we have become the clients of somebody at some of these companies, right, so we have established very good commercial relationships with some companies. We've partnered with Travel Perk, where we hosted the events. With Attico, I invested in MailTrack and and and and BankTrack and HireFlix from Nacho González Barros and Globatalian from Ferran Martínez and EasyPace from Sunil Pardash and Inviertis from Rebecca Pérez off the top of my head, probably invested in more companies coming from startup brand or from the startup brand circles or vicinities.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:Right, but there are three things I want to single out as to why I did this. Right, of course, as I mentioned, I did within MarsBased and with the support of MarsBased, but that was mostly and entirely me spearheading this. At a certain point, we decided to allocate some time of our operations people. You know the three different people we've had in the team Bego, leire and Eli over the course of the years. But there are three things that I want to single out as to why I did this for 10 years, which I think it is pretty relevant, because why do you do something for 10 years and never skip a single month? That is important. I think I didn't mention that. So we have never skipped a single month. There's been at least one event in every single one of these months between March 2014 and August 2024, right, some months we've done two events. In some months we hosted three of them. We did a bunch of online events during the pandemic, for obvious reasons, but mostly it was because of number one our team of volunteers right For me, the friendships that I've first off consolidated with some of my pre-existing best friends, like Carlos or Alex or Paul or Mark they were worth it but also met really good friends that I didn't know before, that I hadn't known before creating Startup Grind, right.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:So people like Stella, victor, francesca, Nasia, anne Ferran and others that have collaborated throughout the years, like Paula, dot and David other people who have collaborated with Startup Brand. So we've had a bunch of them right, but mostly they're the people who stayed the most. I have already mentioned all of them and they're great, they're priceless, they're amazing. They're priceless, they're amazing, they're amazing. Group of people. I would hire them all. I know I could work with them all and we're very good friends. We will continue meeting and they've been always there. Somebody who has given their all for seven years. You know most of them I mentioned here. They've been so on average, we've had people staying five, six, seven years in the project volunteering. So that's amazing. That is super amazing. That speaks at length about their commitment, their passion and their devotion for something like this and for helping and embodying the startup brand values, right?
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:The second is the motivation of going on stage and seeing a full audience pretty much in every event. That is incredible. The feeling, the kick I got every time I went on stage and I saw 100 plus people in the audience. Or in the case of bigger events like the Corporate Innovation Summit, the Scale Up Summit, the VC Night, or the conferences, the conferences we had 1,000 people in the audience. Right, the feeling of going on stage and seeing these month after month, it was incredible.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:Occasionally you had that event that was like only 50 people. It's like, oh my God, it was horrible, we only had 50 people. It's like, oh my God, it was horrible, we only had 50 people. That is literally every week or every event for most people out there. So it's a first world problem to have only 50 people in the audience.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:Right, for me it was kind of like a defeat, but it showed the hunger that we had when we organized this event. Right, we wanted to have, not for the sake of having a defeat, but it showed the hunger that we had when we organized these events, not for the sake of having a lot of people, but because we knew that below a certain size of an event, you don't have that much impact. There is this minimum threshold from which the event grows in value because potentially, you have more interesting people, you can create more connections and you can establish deeper links with all the nodes in the network, right, and so, if also we have this mass mentoring of the Fireside Chat, the networking was bigger and greater, the video was more interesting and whatnot. So, having also people who have attended 50 plus events, that's some rare exceptions, but there are people who've done that, some crazy ones like Alex or Ottman, for instance, but we have people I would say over a hundred, maybe not a hundred, yeah, close to a hundred people have attended more than 30 events, which is insane. I wouldn't have done that myself, you know. So, having this, seeing familiar faces almost every month, where 50% of the people was always the same but they were changing, but it was the same base and 50% of the people they were new in every event, because Barcelona is a very, it's a transient city for a lot of people. It was very interesting, created a very healthy mix of new and consolidated and established people. And then the third is the impact right, that is very.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:I have some examples here I want to share. I don't want to go very, very long with this because I'm saying that I've been rambling for 20 minutes already. I wanted to keep it very short, but it's not going to be very short. But basically, you know, we've helped to create companies, we've got an investment for a company. I have some numbers here. The craziest example is you know one of the people I met at one event. He said can I be introduced to the speaker of the next event? That was Juan San Rosso, the first investor of BlaBlaCar. I said, yeah, sure, they met because of my introduction. They created a company. And the month after they sent me an email and said can we meet Pedro Vallez? Can we get an intro to him? Because he's an angel investor, Maybe he wants to invest in our company. They meet him, they get money from him. And so I said, fuck it, I'm going to invest as well. That was my second investment, right?
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:Some examples here we have hired for our projects or helped someone else to hire directly more than 100 individuals that we know. We've been inspired and we've spoken at business schools and universities and middle schools and other initiatives over the course of 10 years and potentially inspiring new generations of entrepreneurs. I have personally invested in 30 plus companies. At this point. I don't know off the top of my head how many of these came through Startpoint, but it's a great example and, like me, I have been able to drag other investors to co-invest with me in these companies. And sometimes I've dragged investors to invest in companies I haven't invested in, but I met through Startup Brand and that's also remarkable. So, as a result, companies attending our event they got funding right. We and I know around 25 of these companies they've done this with our help right. We've never commissioned, never taken any money.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:All of this we've done altruistically. We maybe not more importantly, but in another different level of impact we've canceled and helped a couple of companies to open an office in Barcelona, and for that I should have taken money, to be honest, but I was young and naive. But we helped Haufe Romantis, a big German-Swiss multinational, to open an office in Barcelona. And also lots to know, a lesser-known company, but it's a product company from the States, to open a development office in Barcelona. Right now they've got 80 developers or something like that. You know, it is something remarkable, creates employment in the city and fuck yeah, I should have taken some money for that. But maybe the next one, the third one is a charm.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:We managed to channel investment from Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors directly into Barcelona. We have conducted open calls for VCs. Every time we hosted a VC or a business angel, we hosted an open call and we screened or when I say we mostly Zai the things he just to make it clear. The operational part of the event was taken care of by somebody else in our team. And these other initiatives I would do them myself, right, so I screened about a thousand investment decks for other people Later on, for myself as well as an investor. We raise funds for charity as well, right? Initiatives like Casa Ronald McDonald, for instance, or the war in Ukraine, for instance, and other initiatives we've done over the years.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:We help about a dozen entrepreneurs to go to Silicon Valley. Sometimes I went with them. I invited them to the Start Brand Global Conference to open doors for go to Silicon Valley. Sometimes I went with them. I invited them to the Startup Brain Global Conference to open doors for them in Silicon Valley, just as I got 10 years prior in 2014, when somebody else opened the door for me. That was my time to pay back to the community. Right?
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:We have inspired and mentored other startup brain chapters in cities well beyond our borders, like some of them were close nearby. They were like in Valencia, gibraltar, mataró, asturias, andorra. But I helped in a time I was regional director of Startup Brain, so I managed and mentored southwestern region of of of start brain and so chapters in in spain, portugal, malta, italy, france and some of the problems switzerland as well, andorra and gibraltar. They were my jurisdiction, so that inspired in turn other other things. Right, they created impact in their own local ecosystems. Granted, I was not involved in their, but if we helped to make it happen, in turn that helped their entrepreneurs. We have given voice to hundreds, if not thousands, of entrepreneurs selflessly over the years. That over open mics and newsletters.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:Right, in our event we had this part 10 minutes, come on stage 30 seconds, say who you are, what you do and don't pitch, just ask for help to our audience, because somebody in the audience will be helping you right away. In the networking part afterwards, right, people found mentors, entrepreneurs, you know, co-founders, hires we hired a couple of people from our audience over the years, right, and then I spent over 800 hours doing office hours right, helping entrepreneurs just for the sake of helping and most of the times, just welcoming them to Barcelona and opening the first doors and giving some basic indications and directions. So you know, this is part of the impact. This part of why I did it made me feel great. It contributed to upping the GDP of the Barcelona startup ecosystem. That was my main KPI, that was my North Star. I was driven by this.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:But also there was the flip side. You know, certain things haven't gone so well over the years and that is something that I also want to share, because it's not everything that shines. It was not a matter of roses right, and so we lost a ton of money in events where something broke or our venue canceled last minute and we had to move somewhere else and, as a result, we had to pay for the beers and the food and transportation, changing stuff here and there, people didn't sign up and whatnot. We lost a ton of money because of that. In one occasion my screensaver went off and a room full of 300 VIPs in the Barcelona startup ecosystem. My screensaver at the time said fuck off. That was pretty funny.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:There's a link in the blog post I wrote as a farewell to Starbrain. Go check it out. It's pretty fun. I was collapsing internally. I was. You know, I was hoping the earth would swallow me because I was so, so disturbing of an event is so disturbing of an event, but anyways, we had also a speaker that had to cancel their attendance because he was involved in a sexual harassment scandal back in the day.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:And I know you dirty minds. You have somebody in mind. It's not that person you're thinking of, not that person. Sadly, it's not that person. I know who you're referring to. I would say publicly for obvious reasons but no, it was somebody else. You can dig it up. It's pretty basic Somebody who disappeared off the website of our conference in 2017, right, you know there are some tweets about it and whatnot.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:We had to cancel our conferences 2020, 21. We lost money because some things we paid up front. I personally fucked up so many times with sponsors sending the wrong numbers, sending stuff too late, lost money on that. In one of our conferences we lost about 30,000 euros. Right, because I was not fully focused or because, you know, startup was demanding, but Mars Base was more demanding and more important than startup brands. So, having to juggle all of these things, I accepted these losses are as something that is part of the game, and you know other funny stories that we got. We got there right. There's a bunch of them. It's a longer list on the blog post. But basically, the main point of this podcast episode, the main reason why I'm sharing this, is because we will not be doing this anymore. We have stopped. Mars Base has been the organizing partner, has been the main sponsor and has been also the main reason why I've been doing this.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:Back in 2014, when I had nothing and I was in the application process of Startup Grind, derek told me why do you want to do this? Like seems like you don't have a business, you don't have an income, you don't have a plan. Like you have nothing. Everybody else who's applied for this has a more established position and they either work for somebody or they can afford doing it right. So he took a huge bet. I think it paid off manifold in dividends. Maybe we didn't give a lot of money. We also haven't taken much, but I think we have managed to establish the brand of Startup Brain in Barcelona, to expand the values, to sing the gospel of Startup Brain and expand our impact beyond Silicon Valley and importing to Barcelona certain traits of the Silicon Valley culture, like paying it forward, giving back to the community and these kind of things, that they were not very established here, if at all.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:And but a few months back, I had an epiphany when we made it to the 10-year anniversary, which was a phenomenal event. Phenomenal event, I freaking love it. We had 300 people in the audience VIPs, clients of MarsBase, early employees of MarsBase and the other co-founders of Startup Prime and people from all over the place and throughout the years. You know people who had come to the first events and for 10 years they disappeared and they came to this event specifically, I realized that a lot of companies that I have interviewed at Startup Brand over the course of these 10 years, they don't exist anymore.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:And I'm not talking about a 1%, it's not a 5%, it's not a 10%, it's bigger than that. I don't know, I don't think it is a 30%, but it is significant but also a lot of companies that still exist. They are either in zombie state they have significantly shrunk. Some of them they have been accused of fraud and other scandals. Right, we have had the case of companies shutting down, companies that have been in the midst very big PR turbulences. You know companies like Rebi or Badi or what else that was Jeff in Valencia, like stuff like that, that supposedly they were going to change the world. That was Jeff in Valencia, like stuff like that, that supposedly they were going to change the world, and we don't know the whole story. But they turned out to not be the things that they wanted to be and some of them they engaged in not very ethical decisions, right, and so I feel a little bit dirty.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:I even interviewed somebody that shouldn't have been on stage with me and back in the day and just because the team asked for it and the community asked for it, and so I don't want to do these things anymore I can say this now. I can do this now because I'm in a position of power after 10 years, after you know, having grown a company to 20 plus people, having established some sort of a financial independence and having grown a voice and a following, I can say that Maybe I couldn't say 10 years ago, maybe I did say somehow 10 years ago, but not as publicly, not as firmly. Right Now we can do it. So that's why I think I have outgrown the role at Startup Brain and somebody else will benefit more than I can do. Somebody deserves it more. I'm going to be looking for somebody to replace myself. The team does not want to continue. The team wants to do something with me which is very funny and super humbled by. So of course, they don't want to continue this if I am not involved, and so that's why I'm closing the chapter on my career.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:Also, marsbase, and if you're listening to this podcast, it's because you listen to the MarsBase podcast and we haven't talked much about MarsBase in this episode. But I think that a lot of people don't know StartupBrand is an integral part of what we do, right, part of why MarsBase is the way it is. It is explained by StartupBrand. Right, because of the values, because my trip to Silicon Valley maybe my trips to Silicon Valley every year, every year more or less I got a client from there. We have gotten some clients from StartupBrand. I've given visibility to MarsBase through StartupBrand and the other way around. So they have cross-pollinated very well over the years, but they have been very separate.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:As a matter of fact, in the events you could barely see the existence of MarsBase, because I've always had this imposter syndrome. I don't like it when somebody organizes an event and they're like by the way, come to my event, my event is this and because it's my company and they're trying to sell you something Like we couldn't sell something because entrepreneurs are fucking poor and they couldn't afford Mars Base rates. Jokes aside, it's like I didn't want to do that. Couldn't afford Mars-based rates Jokes aside, it's like I didn't want to do that. I wanted to prove you can be 100% honest and transparent and upfront at organizing an event without having to soft sell something or engage in shady tactics or something like that. Right, I wanted to keep it 100% separate. That's possible.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:I've done it for 10 years, but I think it is time for me to move on. And now what? Right? So how does this continue? Well, the last 10, 12 months, mars Days has required me more. The company is now past 20 employees.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:We live in a cycle, in a moment in which I have to spend most of my weekly dedication doing sales and marketing and growing the company, and I cannot devote that time to something that is not my project. In other words, I found that sometimes I was dedicating some time and effort and mental bandwidth to StartBrain over MarsBased and MarsBased is my company, startbrain is not Right and so I didn't find that acceptable. Also, for a couple of years, for some years we haven't seen eye to eye with StartBrain for different reasons, and so that didn't help either, but it's not the main case of me leaving. But so for me I felt like, look, I'm not doing the right thing. I have to invest everything I have in Marseilles because there's a recession. We have been growing in the last years, but I feared that we would stall or we would shrink down if I continued spreading too thin and too many things Right, and my heart wasn't in a start point.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:For the last year, year and a half, maybe two years, post-pandemic, it's never been the same, and so I said, look, let's move on. It doesn't make sense anymore. That doesn't mean we will stop doing events. That means we will do it on our terms, because that's something that I was always at loggerheads with the organization of Startup Crank. We'll do it on our terms. We'll do it more technical events. We will do events that are not so much focused on VC and investment, high growth and stuff like that. I want to build events more for the community.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:I found that it's closer to my values and my heart, which is more bootstrap companies, healthy companies, no bullshit companies, and therefore that's why I want to focus on that. I'll let somebody else enjoy the ride the ups and downs of entrepreneurship with VC and high growth and move fast, break things, go big or go home and these other nonsensical bullshit just not going to be me. I'm not saying I didn't like it for this year I liked it, I enjoy it. I learned a ton, but I also learned it's not going to be me. I'm not saying I didn't like it for this year. I liked it, I enjoyed it, I learned a ton. But I also learned it's not for me, right. And so for me. I wasn't interested in learning how this 21 year old raised 40 millions of venture capital and then, three years after, the company had to be shut down right, or they had to sell everything at a discount because the company was not viable. Of course, it was not fucking viable.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:And also I found a lot of hypocrisy in people demanding less taxes but at the same time, government isn't helping me much because they're not giving me the freaking ANISA or other funding coming from government and whatnot, or I want to hire cheaper from unis and stuff like that. I don't know, man, that's not how taxes work. Maybe I'm being too opinionated, but that's why you're here in the Mars Days podcast. I can be more opinionated here than I was in startup, right. So I want to contribute. I always said, like, if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem, and I was being part of the problem. That's why I want to stop promoting that kind of things.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:I will occasionally talk about VC and some companies I respect and admire, because some of them are very good, like in the case of Factorio in Barcelona, very good friends of mine. I like them and if they can VC money and they're doing a great job and who knows how it's going to pan out. But to me they are more of an example than other companies in Barcelona, right. And so you know, if you want to stay tuned to what we do, basically what you can expect is more content. The podcast you know we had to stop it for six months and while we stopped the Mars Days podcast, we didn't stop Startup Friend events and that was one of the things that you know. It kind of like didn't feel right with me and that's why I said like it's not acceptable that I stopped a Mars space initiative to continue with somebody else's project, and so that's why the podcast goes uninterrupted. From now on, we will revive the newsletter. One year without a newsletter is not acceptable.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:I have launched the personal website. I have relaunched my personal website and I'm blogging there every week and talking about the things I can talk, maybe at a company level, and sharing other stuff, but I don't know. I will continue to contribute to StartBrand, embodying the values. That's something that stays with me forever, eternally grateful. I want to also to share my eternal gratitude for the opportunity, share my eternal gratitude for the opportunity People like Derek Francisco, carly, bruce G Finn, daniel Yele Madeline, all of these countless people, but most of them in the community team or headquarters team that they place their trust in me and they've given me power.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:They've given me the voice. They've put up with my infinite runs, sometimes sending 90 minute long videos, saying like this is shit, this is not working, and but look, if you don't move, you don't hear your chains, right. So I think that somebody is going to be that the devil on the shoulders saying like, hey, something's not working, this is bad. Here I think outside the box and basically be vocal about things that aren't working. And so I think I have contributed to StartBrain, immensely grateful for the friendship, the leadership and the companionship that I've received over the course of these 10 years.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:The awards and recognition some of them that you see over here and most of them are hidden they every year we back two, three, four of them at the Star Prime Conference and the friends we've made all over the world and other chapter directors and the people at the organization. Having the opportunity to meet Patrick Collison, jason Freed, dustin Muscovitz and other famous people. I don't remember right now, but backstage in the Startup Prime conference or introducing them on stage or even interviewing them myself, like Balaji. I interviewed Balaji in 2017 or 18, before he got so famous, and I didn't have a clue about fucking blockchain, and I didn't have a clue about fucking blockchain, but yeah, these opportunities are to just go on stage in front of 5,000 people and speak. That has been phenomenal. The friendships I've made and the things I've gotten out of this are countless and that's why I'm so grateful.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit:I will continue singing praise of StarCrane and I will continue supporting from the distance Close distance, long distance, I don't know, but I need some time to oxygenate. I think MarsBase will benefit from this. Everybody's better off parting ways amicably and basically, my responsibility right now is to focus 100% on Mars space, because there are 20 people eating from the contracts I land and some other freelancers involved, and it's my direct responsibility to put my eggs in this one basket. That is very and it's a very nice basket and but anyways, I cannot, of course, disregard everything that I've done, built and helped to build or gotten from StartupBrain and you know, forever eternally grateful and I will always recommend that people go to StartupBrain conferences and events and, you know, hoping that our paths cross again in the future Without being said I'm off for today, so thanks for listening, peace.