Personal growth

Personal reflections on personal growth and some tools and cool findings I have to share with you.

Personal growth
Photo by Suzanne D. Williams / Unsplash

I have spent the last six months questioning everything I do.

After ten years running MarsBased and doing Startup Grind events, and about the same time investing in almost 40 startups, it's been a long time since I felt like I was growing professionally and personally.

A lifestyle business like MarsBased is a tremendously privileged thing to have and run. I get to work with people I like and for people I like. Not everyone can say that.

There are many advantages of running a bootstrapped & all-remote business. If you've been following me, you know them already: lower stress, high financial rewards, (mostly) positive karma projects, great personal/work balance and more.

The flipside of this kind of businesses is that they don't grow much. This can be a problem if you're either ambitious or curious. I am a bit of the former and much of the latter. You will eventually hit a ceiling.

I don't plan to conquer any particular market, reshape an industry or improve the world. My ambition is to do great work and inspire others to do the same while I improve the life conditions of those around me without turning into a son of a bitch. Not a lot of people can say that in business.

But I am curious. I seek to learn new stuff every day. I have to try new tools, technologies and gadgets. I have to work on areas of my personality to grow. Being swamped in routine isn't helping me to grow much, so that's why I'm seeking further challenges by taking up business projects and pushing the company forward to do more innovative projects and get out of the confort zone. But I don't always succeed.

That's why I have decided to invest less in others and more in me going forward. I have helped others selflessly for about fifteen years.

Here's a few things I've found interesting so far that are helping me to grow.

Book: The CTO Toolbox

One of my best friends, Sergio Gago (of Rakuten, Zinio & Naviga Global fame, among others), has recently released a new book, The CTO Toolbox: https://thepiratecto.com/book-the-cto-toolbox/

Running as CEO of a technological company like MarsBased has allowed me to stay pretty close to technology, frameworks and the changes in programming languages over the years, but from further than I would've desired.

It's been ten years since I coded properly for projects. I haven't built anything significant from the ground up since I freelanced for Summit Partners and a couple of other financial firms in 2014 to afford Airbnbs in San Francisco.

As I mentioned in the last post, Cursor is taking me back to development, but here's a hot take: personal projects are of little significance and bring no experience to the table unless they generate a lot of impact (open source) or they become a proper business.

This book has revived the flame of being closer to technology in me. Don't know when, don't know where, but it'll eventually happen.

Now that I've finished the book, I can say that this is one hell of a great book: no fluff, straight to the point and isn't overfilled with business cases that reiterate and re-prove the point countless times just to make the book longer. Most business books should be around 80-100 pages.

Newsletter

Ignacio Arriaga, one of my all-time favourite Spanish founders, runs a weekly newsletter called Disaaster (in Spanish). His main jam is everything regarding SaaS and bootstrapped & healthy businesses.

His is one of the few newsletters I follow that I enjoy. It's organic, it's casual and it's completely free of bullshit. There might be more famous ones out there, but this one keeps my feet on the ground and makes me want to be a better boss.

Similarly, I read Joel Gascoigne's (CEO at Buffer) one. It contains his opinions on all kinds of subjects and the stuff he's saved to read for later, which is a direct inspiration for me to write my own. He also shares Buffer's metrics, his books highlights and more. It's long but worth it every line.

Public speaking

One of the things where I've progressed the most over the years - and well before I started my businesses - is public speaking.

I recommend listening to this episode of the Rework podcast, by the creators of Basecamp and Ruby on Rails, on this subject.

Progressing in Public Speaking
It’s been reported that up to 75% of the population has a fear of public speaking. This week, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founders of 37signals

My 15-year-old self couldn't look in the eyes or utter a complete sentence without trembling to a stranger. If I somehow couldn't look for the place I was going to, I'd go back home, look it up again in the map, draw a map on a postit, and try again - all to avoid talking to people in the street.

Now, I've gone on stage in front of thousands of attendees of big technological conferences. I've met and talked to the founders of Stripe, Facebook, Tesla and Basecamp, among others, from a position of respect for them, but not fear.

We don't invest in this enough.

Work with me guides

Long ago, I learnt about the "work with me" guides. They're internal documents you write to your employees so they learn beforehand how to interact with you: what do you expect, done vs. perfect, communication cadence, red flags, values and more. The first one I remember reading is the Stripe's COO "Work with me" guide.

I don't plan to write one, as our company will never scale that much. But I find the exercise of writing one to be mentally stimulating. I could use it for my employees but also for the side projects I'm involved in, and most importantly, for my portfolio companies as an angel investor.

Going off-topic here, but I do believe that in 5-10 years everyone will have one that we will feed it to AIs we interact with, so we receive personalised treatment in everything we do in life.

Related to this...

Video production

Actually, it starts off as a "work with me" guide but I've come across the Mr. Beast guide to mastering YouTube and video production.

Find it here.

You'll learn why most podcasts have the outrageous/polemic claims/soundbites over dramating music at the start of the episode. It's people repeating the YouTube mantras on the podcast scene. Among other things, of course.

Other

  • All-time classic: #defineCTO, by Greg Brockman of Stripe.
  • Enjoying the flame wars between WordPress creator and WP-Engine folks. Read the drama here. Even though I don't like WordPress, Matt seems to be in the right, although the more I read about the whole conflict, the more confused I am. Still, don't use Wordpress.
  • Great tips to maximise the return on investment with Executive Assistants.
  • I'm not a TV/series/cinema person at all, but I'm enjoying "Hunting a Monster" (Como cazar a un monstruo), by Carles Tamayo, about a convicted pedophile who somehow didn't end up in prison. Jeez. We're in a sick society.

Asks

Last week, I got a couple of answers to my asks, so I will repeat!

  • We're about to sign a project for a company in Andorra. It requires payments, and I seem to remember that most payments platforms don't operate in Andorra. Only those of their national banks. Can anyone shed some light here?
  • Gotta start thinking about xmas company dinner. Any cool picks for restaurants in Barcelona that can seat around 30 people?
  • Does anybody have benchmarks for podcasts stats in 2024?