Simon Martin

If I were to build a new B2B product

Fri, 09 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

First of all, there are people with more experience and success than me, like: levelsio, Marc Lou, or Greg Isenberg. These are just my learnings from founding companies.

Second, company size matters. It’s different if you want to create a solo company, a company of 20-50 people, or a fast-growing startup. Each of these cases is unique. I’ll focus more on the second: a small to medium-sized company backed by VCs.

Third, team will be remote because I live in a small village.

Fourth, it will be a tech company.

So,

Ordered steps:

Choose the right partner. Ensure you have the same objectives, cultural fit, and a shared vision of success.
Some people will tell you to create a community around your company topic before doing anything else. When you launch a new product, you’ll be seen as a reference in the field, and people will be willing to use it and provide feedback. I completely agree if your company is B2C. If it’s B2B, it can be harder depending on the company’s field.
Create a detailed landing with a waitlist and drive traffic to it. If no one cares, pivot.
Solo founders: create an MVP that can attract free users and at least one paid customer. If it’s not happening, pivot.
Raise money.
Create a team:
1. The team must cover product, engineering, marketing, and sales. They should also handle customer success and support.
2. Remote work is fine, but ensure at least 3-4 hours of overlap each day.
3. Don’t hire new people until you really need them.
4. Believe in your team and always be transparent. Share the journey and don’t push them too much.
Focus on the main feature and make it shine, the rest can be just good enough. If you’re not growing, pivot.
If you still want a bigger rocket: add features and increase prices. Again, if you’re not growing, pivot.

Leaving Stomio

Mon, 05 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This past Friday was my last official day as an employee at Stomio, and today, I am starting a new journey with a different company.

In 2021, I co-founded Stomio with Ibra and Ayham after two years of creating the first version during our after-work hours. We wanted to create something impactful with a great company culture, and I am proud to say that we made it.

Over this time, we were fortunate to work with talented professionals in a fully remote environment. I am particularly proud of our team in Spain, where we developed a great product solving a complex and significant problem.

Stomio is not yet where we wanted it to be, but there is a lot of success on the horizon.

Thank you to all who have been part of this journey: teammates, investors, and clients.

Creo que voy a seguir comprando en una web horrible otros 5 años

Sat, 11 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

La semana pasada estuve viendo la entrevista a Juana Roig en Itnig. Mucha gente se dedicó a hablar sobre un comentario de 3 segundos sobre una charla de 90 minutos. Allá cada cual, pero no todos los días se puede escuchar a alguien explicar, con tanto detalle, cómo funciona una empresa tan grande e importante como Mercadona.

Por lo que estoy escribiendo este post es por lo sorprendente que me resulta la superioridad que tienen sobre la competencia. No digo que sientan superioridad, digo que genuinamente la tienen, al menos Juana Roig, que a pesar de ser muy educada y hablar de forma inteligente sobre la competencia, dejó muchos detalles que me hacen pensar de esta manera.

Juana tiene claro que la “compra online” tiene un valor superior para el cliente, hay varios comentarios donde en segundo plano subyace esta idea, sin embargo, se centran en el cliente presencial y desincentivan este valor añadido, haciendo que en la mayor parte del territorio donde operan, el cliente tenga que usar una plataforma online obsoleta.

Esta es una pequeña contradicción respecto a sus valores, donde “el jefe” (como se refiere a los clientes) es uno de los 5 pilares, pero sin embargo, no lo potencian. Eso si, deja claro que podrian escalar si lo necesitasen.

Y lo verdaderamente interesante para mi es que defiende que el online no les sale a cuenta económicamente. Que se centren en el cliente presencial es “normal” cuando tienes una infraestructura física ya creada. Pero hay un factor clave que no menciona: no tienen necesidad de que esto sea así porque no hay un competidor que se te coma parte de la tostada. Si esto ocurriera, estoy seguro que yo no estaría haciendo la compra online semanal en una app horrible.

Cuando alguien compra online, Mercadona no tiene necesariamente un ahorro en otras partes del negocio, puesto que tienen que mantener todo “lo físico” funcionando igual. Pero esto sería diferente con la escala. Y “sin competencia”, ¿por qué van a cambiar? Puedes pensar que en España la gente aún prefiere ir a comprar físicamente. Y si, pero desde luego no es un 3% de la población la que preferimos la compra online (Mercadona online factura un 3% del total de Mercadona).

Me encantaría ver a directivos de algunos competidores de Mercadona viendo la entrevista. Lo de Shakira a Piqué no fue nada en comparación.

The Stomio team

Tue, 23 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Back in August 2021, we started Stomio. After a year, I would like to tell you about how we achieved our first success: building our initial team.

We did not have defined a hiring process. So, we based our process on having good references from people we trusted, common sense, empathy, and our values defined before we start hiring. From the personal side, I had helped hire teammates in other companies, but it is not the same when you build your own team, it is like choosing your own family. You will have to trust your judgment.

We started with a frontend engineer. To be honest, it was easy: Jaime, one of my best friends wanted to join after knowing we were finally creating Stomio :) I knew he was a good engineer, with a lot of experience working with products from scratch, and good judgment. Now, I also know first-hand, he is one of the most talented frontend engineers I know.

Then, we started to look for a product designer. I was talking to a lot of UX and product designers for some days without success. Also, being an engineer this is not easy and the doubt of being able to value these profiles properly was there… until I met Angela. After 5 minutes of conversation, I was sure she was the one for the role: passionate, direct, clever, knows what she wants even being so early in her career, … And I think she thought the same, after some other conversations, she was on the team. When I was meeting with Angela, who told me the UI part is not her preference, Ibrahim was talking with Cintia: an amazing UI designer with an incredible portfolio, great potential, and a strong desire to grow. Again, it was a super easy decision. After days of making interviews, finally, the pieces fit together.

Some months later, we were lucky to add Dani to our team. Previously, Dani and I were teammates, he was even leading my team at CARTO. I knew he is the perfect person to create, maintain and scale the foundations of our platform and it was an amazing pleasure to know he wanted to join us :)

So, what I have learned from the process is trust your network, talk to as many people as you can, trust your own judgment, insist, and eventually you will find the person you really want to work with.

Thank you team for being part of this adventure. The best is yet to come, let’s enjoy the journey and learn together.

A Spanish team talking in English?

Sat, 26 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In the beginning, my teammate Ibra told me he thought we should talk in English all the time. Even more, all the company should do it and they will be happy with that. Take into account, in Stomio most of the team is Spanish.

To be honest, as usual, I was not sure about it. That sounded weird to me and could be understood as us pretending to be cool. In fact, when I explain that to some friend, someone used to tell me that, or at least, I can see it in their faces they are thinking it :)

There is a problem for every Spaniard who has not lived outside Spain in a country where English is the main language. You can have a “not bad” level because you have studied it, you more or less have a basic understanding, but when you go to speak, you are not able to do it. Why? You have not done it before. Never. This is a blocker for us.

So, the more we thought about it, the more sense it made. The best way of improving on something is by trying it. The more, the better. We will improve with the help of each other. Finally, we started Stomio talking in English. Not Spanish allowed.

In the beginning, it was weird talking with someone you know for years in a different language. Yes, that’s true. But this is not a real problem, the second day we were used to it. And the learning is clear in the team. I received direct feedback from a teammate telling me he was having dinner with a friend and his English wife and he had finally been comfortable talking with them. And not only that, they had even told him that he had improved a lot. He was super proud of himself.

Hopefully, we will be a successful company, but if not, our teammates will be able to work from a US company. Their success is our success.

Starting a company now

Mon, 14 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Right now, as a Spanish developer, you can get opportunities that were unthinkable a few years ago. And you can do it in American companies as well known as Meta, Amazon, Shopify, … Before, these opportunities were only for those who were the best of the best. So, assuming you could get one of those opportunities: why complicate your life by creating a company?

I love to build things. It is as simple as that. This is the fastest explanation. Let’s go to the long one:

Make things happen

When you make something, spending time on it, leaving other things behind, exposing yourself to others, … and that thing you built starts to help somebody, it is an incredible feeling that empowers you and your life.

In your own company, you have a lot of the first things, and hopefully, also of the second one.

Learning in the process

I don’t know all the answers and I will change my mind about specific points because I will learn in the process.

Being wrong should not be a problem, only for your ego (so please, keep it away). When I realize I am wrong, I feel I grow as a person or professional. And again, that’s an amazing feeling.

I want to build things in the way I think they should be

We spent the first week of our company’s life thinking about things like values, culture, and vision. Maybe you might think that we were starting the house from the roof. You may think it would be better to spend that time thinking about how to sell your product, your go-to-market strategy, or creating a business plan. And yeah, maybe you are right. As I said, I don’t know all the answers.

But I believe in people. We believe in people and their values. If people’s values match with yours and cultural and personal fit happens, everything can be done. It is a factor that multiplies knowledge, hunger, and desire.

These are our values in Stomio. They are very simple. And powerful.

I haven’t done this before and I don’t know what exactly needs to be done to maintain it over time. I have lived through companies losing their culture and I would not like to go to work one day and see that this has happened in mine. So, we will need to learn in the process again :)

Changes! Starting my own company

Sun, 26 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I’m not discovering anything if I say that since March 2020, the world is a bit shitty. You know that. Everybody knows that. But a lot of good things can happen too, and I want to talk about that part.

Personally, this has been a year full of changes, probably the most important of my life. There were a lot of them, like I bought a flat, moved to an small village close to the beach in the north of Spain, so leaving Madrid after half a life, … but no doubt the most important one is that I have been a father. This is huge life change, an amazing, pure, greatefull and lovely adventure. And paintful! Maybe more on this at a later date.

I left CARTO after 4 years, the first probably the best of my career. Then, I moved to a Brazilian startup for a few months to help them create the fundations of the best car insurance company in latam. And finally, after a long time working on a idea as a side project, we were able to make it happen!

It’s not the first time I have gone down this road, dedicating a lot of time from my personal life to create something that has my values and that I can consider as mine. But in this situation, the damn virus and personal situation make it even harder. This is why being able to make it real and also the way we have done it (more about that soon), makes me feel very proud of my family, partners and myself.

I know this is just the beggining, that the fucking virus will be here for a long time, but I can only think that the best is yet to come.

First impressions about PyTorch

Sun, 20 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I just finished the AI Programming with Python course of Udacity, whose syllabus covers:

Python: a really nice starting point with the language basics, Numpy, Pandas and Matplotlib
Some maths
Neural networks basics
PyTorch

After having played TensorFlow and Keras in the past (thanks to another Udacity course: self driving car nanodegree), I was very excited to use PyTorch and as a result, I am very impressed about it.

The main reason is that PyTorch is more intuitive. When you are playing with TensorFlow (no with Keras), you need to make the things in the TensorFlow way, but with PyTorch it is more natural, explicit and with less magic.

I think it is a very important point in any case, but more so if you are not an experimented Python developer (like me). If you are starting with AI, you are knowing a new world, probably different from the ones you know and it is hard enough. So, adding it a special way to do the things, it is not the best option to learn.

For instance, thanks to PyTorch, I have finally understood the concept of backpropagation completely.

Another point for PyTorch, it is the way to work with data (vectors/tensors, maths, …). With PyTorch you will use Numpy or Pandas instead of play with TensorFlow objects. And you sure, Numpy or Pandas are a win.

I dont’t know what I will use in the future, but for sure, Facebook has done a nice work creating PyTorch.

image.ai

Wed, 16 May 2018 01:21:00 +0000

As I told in the article The blocker of the restless developer, I have been worked on image.ai, an artificial intelligence app which discovers all the elements of an image.

At least for now, I’m not going to continue moving forward the project because I do not have the strength to start a big project on my own. But I want to share current status.

Leaving aside, the most technical part, in addition to the basic functions such as the home, authentication, user account, … the goal of the app is to receive images and analyze them.

Once we have the images, we can do some analysis: find faces, labels and logos.

I have worked with AWS Rekognition and Google Vision (also, I have created some small libraries to work with: node-rekognition and node-google-vision and the code it is ready to receive the rest of analysis of this platforms, both frontend and backend.

After the analysis, you can filter the images, with progressive filters on the frontend. For example, if you select some feature (iPhone in this case), the rest of the images without this feature will disappear. And you can add all the filters that you want.

Now, the app receives images from a file input, but it could be a Twitter account or hashtag, websites, … or videos. For example, you could find in which moments of a video a specific face appears, see what brands use the people that appear on the images of a Twitter hashtag or spy the media content of your company competitors.

The blocker of the restless developer

Sun, 04 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

As many (good) developers, I always have a pet project to learn something new. Sometimes they become a reality as 4arbitro or Ifcoop. But most of the time, they are forgotten code. Forgotten?

Some months ago, thinking about learning Vue and continue improving my Node.js level, I started developing ‘image.ai’: an artificial intelligence app which discovers all the elements of an image (initially images and video later).

As usual, the project starts to grow and the initial objective begins to be secondary, I start to see the project as if it were my son, I start thinking in its future: business plan, users, payment methods, …

This moment, at least for me, it is very difficult. “Maybe I can launch an MVP… Focus, the objective is to learn Vue”. But it is unstoppable. “Maybe I can launch a small Facebook Ads campaign to get some initial users… What? Focus. Vue”.

Of course, I have learned Vue, but in this situation, it will be difficult to continue. And of course, it is impossible to launch a good product in this way.

And you, have you ever felt this blocker? What do you do?