Every client invoice is a small investment in our product
We've had investors since day one. They just never asked for equity. How 300 € and client invoices paid for every product we've built.
Leer más →Building for Barcelona from a small town
In 2012 I was writing the API for a Barcelona startup from Olot. Now the whole world is discovering remote work. You don't need to be where the money is. You need to be where the work gets done.
This spring, the whole world discovered you can work from home.
Congratulations. Welcome.
Some of us have been here a while.
In August 2012, I was writing the API for a Barcelona startup. On commission. From Olot.
If you don't know Olot, picture a small town in a volcanic area, about an hour and a half from Barcelona and quite a few light years from the startup scene. Lovely place. Not exactly a tech hub.
The startup was in Barcelona. The money was in Barcelona. The meetups, the coffees, the people who knew people: all in Barcelona.
The code was in Olot.
Nobody asks an API where it was written
What I took from that time is simple. Location matters a lot less than people think.
Not because everyone is especially open-minded. Because an API doesn't care where it was written. It works or it doesn't. The endpoint answers or it doesn't. Nobody calls it and asks for your postcode.
That was my first real lesson about working remotely, long before everyone called it that: when the work is good and arrives when promised, distance stops being a topic.
When it isn't, distance becomes the excuse. For both sides.
Nobody has ever asked an API where it was written.
Where the money is vs where the work is
There's an old idea that you have to be where the money is. Move to the big city. Be seen. Go to the events. Have lunch with the right people.
I don't think it's entirely wrong. Being close helps. I worked in Barcelona myself before making the jump. Contacts are easier when you bump into them.
But I think it confuses two things. Being close to the money helps you find work. It doesn't help you do it. And when you're small, what keeps clients isn't the lunch. It's the delivery.
I didn't have contacts. I didn't have anyone to ask for money. What I had was a connection, a lot of hours and the habit of answering. From Olot, that turned out to be enough to start.
The following spring, when I registered as self-employed, I did it in Olot too. Same logic. The town didn't get in the way. If anything, it got rid of distractions.
What lockdown is teaching everyone else
Now everyone is at home. Companies that swore remote work was impossible are doing it, with varying degrees of elegance and webcam lighting.
I suspect some will go straight back to the office the day they can. That's fine.
But I also suspect a lot of people are discovering what I discovered in 2012: that the important part of the job was never the building. It was the trust. And trust is built by delivering, not by being in the same room.
Barcelona is still where a lot of the money is. That hasn't changed.
What's changed is that more people now know you don't need to live next to it.
I found out from a town built among volcanoes. Sleeping ones, luckily.
P.S. Yes, the volcanoes have been asleep for thousands of years. My deadlines never were.