Mobile World Congress 2025 has just wrapped up today. As I write these words, people must be walking out of the venue looking for a cab to go to the airport, home, or back to the office to work for 8 more hours, if they work in a big consultancy like Accenture or Deloitte.

I don't like huge crowds, but I force myself to attend two or three massive conferences every year for a couple of compelling reasons I am going to talk about today.

First off, business is about relationships, especially if your job title includes words like founder, investor, sales or HR. As CEO of MarsBased, my job is to talk to people. I have breakfast people, I meet for coffee with people, I eat lunch and/or dinner with people and I occasionally get drunk and end up in a karaoke with people.

More than taking 100 meetings a day, which is what aspiring entrepreneurs want to do, it is about being seen. That is why I moderate sessions every year at 4 Years From Now and Mobile World Congress. I don't love interviewing other people - especially outside of my events - but it gives my company exposure.

I'd much rather be on the receiving end of the questions, to be one hundred per cent honest. Until that happens, I'll happily take what I'm given and make the most of it.

I often get questions about my participation in these events, so let me address a few of them.

Q: How do you schedule all your meetings for big conferences?

I don't.

If you book up all your time, you won't meet new people. The best meetings are the improvised, last-minute ones - like when the person you’re talking to introduces you to someone you have to meet today or it won’t happen.

That's why I only schedule one or two meetings per day and leave the rest of the day open to serendipituous events. Of course, I am a well-known person in the ecosystem so I constantly bump into people I know. Earlier in my career, I booked 4–5 meetings per day because I couldn’t rely entirely on serendipity.

Nowadays, I just book my first meeting of the day to force myself to get there early. After that, I either sit down to work or walk around taking calls until someone waves at me (hopefully someone I know!) and I start stringing meetings together from there.

Q: How do you do the follow-ups to all these meetings?

I don't.

I'd love to remember every actionable item to every conversation, but it's simply not realistic. On a given day, I might talk to nearly 50 people, even if briefly.

I do make an effort to write down the name of everyone I've met on an Apple Notes and the 2-3 key ideas of each meeting. If it's only one ("intro me to your lawyers", "send me your podcast", etc.), I'll complete that task right away and move on.

On the last day of the conference - like today - I go through the list and complete all the tasks to avoid losing context and momentum. Realistically, I have written down 30-40% of the meetings I've had, but luckily some of the missing ones will follow up themselves.

Q: How do you get VIP passes for conferences?

I don't.

In some cases I get a speaker pass if I'm moderating a panel, or an investors pass because, well, I happen to be an investor. Back in the day, I did get a press pass here and there when I was with Startup Grind thanks to the authority their blog had in the industry.

Other times, in my early entrepreneurial years, I got broke-founder discounts or even free passes in exchange for some volunteering.

You won't get VIP passes that easily, even if it does look like everyone else but you is getting one. It looked like that to me, too.

Q: How do you make sure you watch the talks but also meet people?

I don't.

I actually don't watch any talks. My rule of thumb is: if it's really something worth watching, I will go to YouTube to watch the recording later. I can't waste my limited conference time sitting through entire talks. That is how most people waste their time at conferences.

As you can see, there's a common denominator in all of the above answers: I don't do more than I do things. The mirage that most people do everything and are successful is just that: a mirage. Most of us struggle to get our shit together and are able to do connect the dots only after many years of feeling clueless and lost like John Snow on Father's Day.

The other underlying truth about this matter is that conferences are just the excuse. The important things happen in the backstage or surrounding the conference.

For instance, last time I attended WebSummit, in Lisbon, I didn't even check in (I had a free pass, anyways, so no real money was lost). I just hung out directly outside the conference having meetings and I attended a lot of satellital events and after-conference parties.

In the case of 4YFN in particular, most of my interesting conversations happen in the VIP areas (investors area, executive lounge). As you can tell by the name, these are exclusive and restricted areas, which just reinforces my point: business is just another rich folks' game.

One last thing: I have also been on the organising side of conferences.

Besides the 150+ monthly Startup Grind Barcelona events, we also hosted 3 editions of an international conference: Startup Grind Tech. That gave me the chance to invite over, hang out with, have dinner with and have chats onstage and offstage with the founders and C-level executives of companies like Shazam, Zynga, Stripe, Codecademy, Couchsurfing, Google Ventures, Pocket and many more.

Of course, of course, every conference organiser does it for the right reasons. They’re not using attendees to gain access to high-profile speakers, attract funding to host the event in their city instead of another, get exposure in the media, curry favor with local authorities, or generate business for their own companies.

Of course, of course, of course... but maybe.

Recommended content

• 🎙️ Gruber's Talk Show is back!
• 📖 Indie publishing is on the rise, according to Ghost (of course!).
• 🧪 Cortical Labs. Check this shit out.
• ... I don't have much else because I've been out with a virus!

My projects

• 🎙️ We hosted our friend David Arroyo (Everesting) on Life on Mars.
• 👩‍💻 We're hiring more technical profiles and a project manager for MarsBased.
• 🤝 We signed a one-year contract with Dreaming Spanish to help them with their web app & more.
• 💸 One of my portfolio companies, Anything, are opening up their beta. Sign up to have access to on-demand virtual assistants. SO useful.
• 🎙️ Foc a Terra: A podcast episode about the Catalan equivalent of the Karens: el Josep MarIA.
• 🎙️ We're hosting a live Foc a Terra show every month this year. Ping me for updates.
• 🎙️ We also have launched a Patreon for the show.

Gratitude & asks

• Thanks to everyone who attended our Corporate Innovation Summit (I did it for the right reasons! of course! ... but maybe?). While the attendance was lower than expected, the quality of the attendees and of the catering was superb.
• Thanks to Carlos Cruz for inviting me over again and again to moderate cool stuff at 4YFN.
• Thanks to Jordi Miró, Sergio Gago, Marc Oliveras & the CTO community in Barcelona for the cool event they hosted yesterday night.
• Ask: Any good alternatives to HelloSign? It's SO broken lately.
• Ask: Any guitarist or bassist to help me to bring back to life my punk rock band?