Hi everyone!

I just wanted to drop a few lines of appreciation and gratitude for following me in this journey of finding out how to do newsletters. Thank you.

After almost twenty years blogging, more than ten doing content for my own company and for other side projects, like Startup Grind, I took the plunge and dove head first into this project of rebranding my personal website into a weekly newsletter.

Thankfully, I had an audience before doing this, so I haven't had to start from scrathc. This has helped me to get early feedback and lots of subscribers (and a few paid subscribers, too!). Without a pre-existing following base, I would have probably abandoned this project right away.

I don't have much to share this week because I am preparing my next issue about my predictions for 2025, so I'll keep it short and go straight to my recommended content:

🌍 Recommended content

• 🎙️ Rework's episode about Building to flip is building to flop - the idea of building companies to sell them is a surefire way to fuck up, as you cut corners everywhere trying to ensure the short-term profit at the expense of maintainability.
• 🎙️ Another one by Rework about the conundrum of having a "biggest" customer, which turns product companies into services companies.
• 🎙️ On the fun side of things, I always like recommending Conan O'Brien's podcast. This week, his team dedicates him an episode because his parents died a few days apart of each other so he had to miss the recording session. Beautiful tribute.
• 🎙️ Foc a Terra - we discuss and review Scott Galloway's 2024 predictions (in Catalan).
• 📰 Andrew Wilkinson (Tiny) dropped a list of his favourite stuff. I'm considering building the same. Interested? Reply to this email.
• 📰 Joel Gascoigne (Buffer) wrote Embracing clouds and clear skies or how to deal with the ups and downs of being a founder in rocky times.
• 🛠️ I've used this extension to migrate the accounts I follow on Twitter to BlueSky.
  • I've also stopped posting on threads and Mastodon. Not worth it.
• 🎥 We've enjoyed Carles Tamayo's "Cómo cazar a un monstruo" (in Spanish) about a convicted pedophile who was running around freely in a nearby town from Barcelona for decades. Totally recommended.

🚀 New and noteworthy at MarsBased

• We have lined up almost all of Q1 for our team of 20 and a few freelancers. 2024 ended very strongly for us, and 2025 looks promising.
• We are bringing back the newsletter after 18 months without sending one. My bad. Can't do everything. Need to figure out the format and cadence, though. Ideas will be welcome.
• We plan to go back to live events in 2025. Let me know what kind of content you want to see.
• We're hiring a marketer to help me with the podcast & other stuff.
• Expect more announcements on the MarsBased blog and podcasts from the first week of January!

🙋🏻‍♂️ Asks

• Looking for a new coworking space - or a shared office - with a private room for me in the center of Barcelona. Hit me up for any leads.
• One US client we have at MarsBased owes us about 40-50k of unpaid invoices. If someone is willing to help us get that money back, we're happy to pay a good fee.
• My portfolio companies Berto's, Northe, Celebreak and AudioStack are raising. Let me know if you want to invest with me there.