Our first christmas dinner

It's been two months since our last status update, and we wanted to let you know we're far from dead.

After a fledging progression that has seen us completing our first projects after the summer, a couple of new big challenges have popped up. All these projects have kept us swamped with work, but they are also a reason to celebrate.

Indeed, 2014 has brought many good achievements and landmarks for our company. But none of them can compare to celebrating our first Christmas dinner.

A year in review

The MarsBased spaceship has been working at full capacity to complete the ongoing projects we have had thus far, having barely no time to update the blog. While we can't wait to tell you everything we are undergoing at the moment, we also need to meet the deadlines.

Let's review the steps we have taken to reach this point.

MarsBased as a company was founded in March this year, after I came back from San Francisco. Signing all the required documentation to create the company was both relieving and challenging, and definitely has changed our lives for the better.

After doing some minor projects, we got the opportunity of working for Barcelona Activa, in the creation of the Barcelona Startup Map. This project gave us enough propulsion (both economically and visibility-wise) to start working on other apps. Also, through this project we were contacted by other companies who wanted to hire our services.

During the summer, we landed the project of Eureka Startups Experts (still in progress), and a couple of other projects, that allowed both Xavi and I to go full time for the company. As a result of that, we boosted our production capacity, which means we could take on more & bigger projects.

By working full-time, we could also start going to events, thus increasing our visibility in the scene. We participated in numerous events, organizing meetings with the Startup Circle, collaborating with Startup Grind BCN, mentoring at Ironhack, giving speeches at congresses, attending Baruco, and meeting fantastic people everywhere.

But it was in September-October that we landed a couple of big projects from abroad. These two projects have given us enough stability to hire Javi to increase our development capacity again. Soon thereafter, we got the opportunity of welcoming our first intern Emilio.

A Martian Christmas dinner

Last Wednesday, we got together and spent a whole evening celebrating the first MarsBased Christmas dinner.

As a remote working company, this kind of get-togethers is essential to help to bond with the team at a personal level. They also increase happiness in the company and provide a good way to talk about stuff that's normally not covered in the corporate chat.

The evening started at Cerveceria Clandestina to taste a selection of the finest beers. Barcelona is not famous for its craft beer yet, but it's a growing trend that is getting very popular in the last years.

Beer makes people more proficient in foreign languages such as Martian!

Dinner took place in the Restaurant L'Ombú. A very cozy restaurant hidden between the Gracia and Horta districts in Barcelona. A well-kept secret for fusion cuisine mixing traditional Catalan recipes with the latest trends.

Enjoying tasty Earth food at Restaurant L'Ombú

The MarsBased team at Restaurant L'Ombú

In the restaurant, we spent hours talking about the company and its future, and we toasted to our success in 2015.

The evening came to a close at the famous L'Elephanta, one of the best gin&tonic places in Barcelona. The conversation drifted to off-topic mode and provided an excellent ending to a lovely evening out enjoying a good share of teambuilding.

Martian advise: Don't drink & drive spaceships.

We are ecstatic to have been able to celebrate such a landmark in our career and looking forward to kicking off 2015 stronger than ever.

Happy I18n.translate :local_winter_celebration everyone!