Life on Mars
marsbased
A podcast about technology, entrepreneurship and innovation from MarsBased. Listen to stories of the best founders, investors, experts and celebrities from all around the galaxy.
As a development consultancy specialized in Ruby, JavaScript and Python, we go beyond the code to share our real-world experience running a lifestyle business, remote work, company culture and digital transformation. From Barcelona to the world, bringing value to the global tech and business community.
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Troy Hunt: 12 years of Have I Been Pwned & the truth about AI scams
Agency Q&A: Recruiting "Champions" and optimizing for answer engines (AEO) Building MarsBased #6
Scaling a remote team: Lessons on trust, productivity, and firing | Building MarsBased #5
Generalist or specialist? Inside our biggest business debate: Building MarsBased #4
Episode 021
From CTO of TaskRabbit to founding a B2B open-source project, with Brian Leonard (CEO @ Grouparoo)
Brian Leonard co-founded the B2C startup TaskRabbit in 2009 and built its initial prototype coding it in Ruby on Rails, one of our preferred development frameworks.
TaskRabbit went on to grow until it was acquired by Swedish powerhouse IKEA in 2017, to expand to Europe and beyond, and a couple of years later, Brian quit the company to pursue his new endeavour: Grouparoo.
Brian transitioned from being the CTO and product guy at a B2C startup to co-founding a pure B2B startup based on an open-source model to provide data connectivity between marketing products.
Brian tells us how to wear different hats: CEO, CTO, product, sales, and more while running a company effectively and keeping the focus on the product. Brian also spoke with our CEO, Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit, to explain why they followed the open-source approach and how the transition to B2B happened, among other topics like choosing the right technology for your company and how to prototype new projects within a bigger company.
This is the first episode with a recorded intro by our CEO, Àlex, so don't be too harsh on him. We'll improve soon.