Software, founders, and the decisions underneath.
MarsBased podcast - Life on Mars is a candid technology and entrepreneurship show rooted in real software-company decisions. Episodes move between AI coding, cybersecurity, startup resilience, remote teams, co-founder dynamics, and the practical tradeoffs behind building MarsBased.
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MarsBased podcast - Life on Mars is a technology and founder show built around the realities of running a software company. It is not only about code. Recent episodes range from AI-assisted development and the fading value of code as a moat to security, bootstrapping, co-founder conflict, specialization, remote work, and the long memory of company decisions. The conversations are practical and sometimes sprawling. That looseness gives the show room to follow how operators actually think. A discussion with Linus Ekenstam frames AI as a force that may make building dramatically faster and cheaper, while also raising concerns about surveillance, public speech, and what differentiation means when everyone can move quickly. An episode with Troy Hunt uses Have I Been Pwned as a case study in community trust, cost discipline, privacy controls, and doing useful work after bad breaches happen. The Building MarsBased episodes are more inward-facing. Alex, identified in the excerpts as CEO and founder, revisits the company’s early choices: starting from frustration with previous work environments, building with friends, assigning founder responsibilities, deciding how much contractual formality fits a partnership, and weighing generalist breadth against niche focus. Those episodes are strongest when they stay concrete. A client request becomes the trigger for learning mobile development. A founder-role discussion becomes a look at authority, friendship, and decision-making. A low employee-turnover claim becomes an argument for lifestyle-business value over generic exit logic. The guest interviews add a broader operator lens, including Ray’s reflections on bootstrapping, mentors, resilience, and the rough days behind leadership stories. The show’s energy is direct and founder-led. It suits listeners who prefer decision records, tradeoffs, and earned opinions over tidy playbooks.
Made for: For software engineers, founders, agency leaders, and startup operators who want candid thinking about AI, security, remote work, and building durable teams. It especially fits listeners interested in the business decisions behind technical work.
What sets it apart: The show pairs outside conversations with a public self-audit of MarsBased’s own choices. That mix gives it a grounded feel: broad tech themes are repeatedly tested against hiring, roles, clients, costs, and co-founder trust.
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 a…
A client insists on a mobile app; your tidy agency niche suddenly meets a real client.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A security hobby project scales to billions of records by making low cost and community trust part of the engineering.
Have I Been Pwned comes through as a study in restraint: a community-minded hobby project that became a widely used security service without losing its lean operating logic.
Power Platform news with practical static.
Discussion on how AI is making code cheaper and faster, shifting the moat from coding ability to speed and experimentation.
Troy Hunt says the current breach spike is driven by old-school social engineering, not AI, even as banks, SMS, and voice-clone fears keep changing the threat model.
Alex, MarsBased's CEO and founder, examines the company's 2014 choice between broad services and Ruby on Rails specialization.
Ray, Micrel's 37-year CEO, contrasts bank-funded bootstrapping with venture capital's five-to-seven-year IPO pressure.
Alex, CEO and founder of Mars Space, explains how he and co-founders Chavi and Jordi decided not to include a fourth friend after comparing their commitment to Mars Space against family, health, and other priorities.