We, Martians, have a very distinct way of seeing the world. However, we're not alone in this. A few companies and individuals came before us and cleared the path, coined new terms and devised disruptive ways to work which inspired us to create our company and to work as we do.
The three founders know each other since the early ages. Their careers have been intertwined in many stages, but they've been together the three of them only in middle school. Before and after that, they had met in primary school, university, at the ESN association, freelancing, and once Jordi hired Xavi when he was the CTO of GreenData.
For the bonus trivia points, Jordi then hired Juan, for GreenData, to replace Xavi when he left for Gnuine. Life goes full circle, they say!
The three of them spent a few years in traditional consulting, which inspired them to create this company. They learnt how to do things, but more importantly how not to do things.
The initial idea was to put up a website and work as an association of three freelancers. However, they started getting big projects quite early in the life of the company and decided to create a proper SL (Spanish for LLC) and start hiring people.
The rest is history.
- Basecamp: The ultimate reason why this company was created. Their books, mentioned below, their company philosophy, the way they work, their love for remote and their blunt opinions on the crazy startup madness are just a few of all the things we like about them. In fact, this Handbook draws a lot of inspiration from theirs!
- Thoughtbot: Every consultancy should aspire to become like thoughtbot. Not only are they the leading Rails consultancy, but their open-source projects are used by many, their podcast is brilliant and their website and quality standards have been a large inspiration for us throughout the years.
- Buffer: One of the very first big companies to embrace the radical transparency mode and their 100%-remote philosophy. The way we blog is largely influenced by these one-of-a-kind folks.
- Rework and Remote: Office Not Required: Both written by Jason Fried and DHH, the co-founders of Basecamp. Those books provided the epiphany that we could (and quite possibly, should) create a different company. Most of our culture and workflows are based on these two books.
- Derek Andersen: CEO at Startup Grind and Bevy, he envisioned the largest community of entrepreneurs worldwide and he's building it with a set of values we share: helping others before helping oneself, making friends and not connections, and giving before taking.
- David Bowie: Contrary to popular belief, he was not the main inspiration behind our company name. But deep in our hearts, we know he might have something to do with it.