MarsBased podcast - Life on Mars is your go-to space for technology, entrepreneurship, and innovation. Brought to you by MarsBased , a high-end development consultancy specializing in Ruby, JavaScript, and Python. If you are a software engineer , you can expect deep dives into tech, but we go far beyond the code. We share our first-hand expertise on remote work, company culture, management, and digital transformation based on our journey building a successful lifestyle business. Every two weeks, we sit down with the best founders, investors, experts, and celebrities from across the galaxy to hear their stories. After years of investing heavily in the startup and tech communities in Barcelona and worldwide, we are bringing that same value to you through this channel. Follow us to join our journey! 🚀
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MarsBased podcast - Life on Mars is a technology podcast hosted by MarsBased, with 120 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.
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MarsBased hosts MarsBased podcast - Life on Mars, a technology show with 120 episodes published.
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Episode #121
4 mistakes that didn't kill our company | Building MarsBased
Aug 18, 202642 minS2
Building a bootstrapped software consultancy comes with unique challenges, unexpected financial gaps, and hard-learned lessons. In this episode of the Building MarsBased series, Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit examines four significant errors that could have derailed the company but didn't. Most startups operate on a razor's edge, but MarsBased was built on financial independence and optionality, allowing the team to turn these costly setbacks into fundamental business lessons. The discussion covers the financial reality of working with long-term clients who stop paying and how a 100k€ loss eventually paved the way for a more resilient partnership years later. It also explores the hidden costs of starting and stopping the hiring process too frequently and why bringing in a dedicated specialist changed the company's growth trajectory. Àlex also addresses the "unreasonable frugality" that often leads founders to wait too long before hiring operations and management roles. Finally, the episode details the importance of regular pricing reviews and how moving to auto-renewing contracts eliminated constant administrative friction. This is an in-depth look at building a healthy, sustainable business by learning to manage the mistakes that are often unavoidable in the early years. Support the show You can watch the video of this episode on the Life on Mars podcast website: https://podcast.marsbased.com/
Why 94% of Companies Fail at AI ROI | Sven Peters (Atlassian)
Aug 4, 202652 minS2
Only 6% of companies see a real Return on Investment from AI. The rest buy licenses, burn through tokens, and confuse faster individual coding with actual business value. Speeding up an individual developer is meaningless if team workflows and PR reviews stay completely unchanged. On the MarsBased podcast, Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit joins Sven Peters, AI Evangelist at Atlassian, to tackle why most corporate AI implementations fail. Since every company has access to the exact same underlying LLMs, your true competitive edge relies on internal context, documentation, and codebase history, not simply upgrading to newer models. They explore how active leadership usage makes engineering teams four times more likely to adopt AI long-term, while highlighting how Atlassian measures genuine DevX impact instead of tracking wasted token budgets. Follow Sven Peters on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/svenpeters73/ Support the show You can watch the video of this episode on the Life on Mars podcast website: https://podcast.marsbased.com/
I fired a huge-name client to protect my team | Adarsh Pandit
Jul 29, 20261h 6mS2
Adarsh Pandit (founder of Cylinder Digital, ex-Thoughtbot, ex-McKinsey) met Àlex 12 years ago in San Francisco when MarsBased was just getting off the ground. They catch up on a decade of building software agencies, navigating career shifts, and managing team dynamics. Adarsh shares the story behind firing a high-profile client who was verbally abusing his team, the panic of dropping a production database on Heroku, and how applying systems thinking changes how you look at code, sales, and business operations. They also touch on how AI and vibe coding are reshaping agency pricing, the return of fixed-bid contracts, and why human trust remains the most critical asset in tech. Support the show You can watch the video of this episode on the Life on Mars podcast website: https://podcast.marsbased.com/
Why SEO isn't enough anymore: The rise of GEO with Clemens Rychlik
Jul 21, 202652 minS2
Is traditional SEO officially dead, or has search simply evolved? In this episode of "Why SEO isn't enough anymore: The rise of GEO", hosted by Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit, Clemens Rychlik from Hello Operator joins the show to examine the seismic shift away from Google's Page 1 and into AI interfaces like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. Together, they explore why customer decisions and conversions are now happening directly inside LLMs long before anyone visits your website, and why traditional SEO metrics fall apart in a probabilistic search landscape. Clemens shares practical insights on how to adapt your content so AI models actually cite your brand, why admitting what your product can't do actually builds trust with LLMs, and the dangerous "GEO hacks" currently being sold across the industry that you should stay far away from. Hosted by Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexrodba/ Guest: Clemens Rychlik (Hello Operator): https://www.linkedin.com/in/clemensrychlik/ If you enjoyed the episode, make sure to subscribe to the channel, hit the like button, and let us know in the comments how your team is adapting to AI search! Support the show You can watch the video of this episode on the Life on Mars podcast website: https://podcast.marsbased.com/
From non-technical founder to CPTO: Road to CTO with Jennifer Woodard
Jul 7, 202647 minS2
In this episode of Road to CTO, Jennifer Woodard shares her remarkable journey from founding a startup as a non-technical leader to becoming the CPTO of an AI-native company. Jennifer breaks down the reality of earning technical credibility, the importance of European AI sovereignty, and why the "imposter syndrome" is a constant companion even for established experts. We also discuss the shifting landscape of tech hiring and the lessons learned from a six-figure technical mistake. Support the show 🎬 You can watch the video of this episode on the Life on Mars podcast website: https://podcast.marsbased.com/
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