When Is The Right Time To Start Your Company? Building MarsBased #2 Life On Mars

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When is the right time to start your company? Building MarsBased #2

6d ago 33:54

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When is the right time to start your company?
In this second episode of Building MarsBased, we answer a listener’s question that every aspiring founder wrestles with: Should I launch while keeping my day job, or go all in?
We unpack the real factors behind that decision: macro timing, industry waves, personal runway, team alignment, and share how we made the call that led to MarsBased.
You’ll hear why the 2012–2014 window mattered in Spain’s post-crisis context, what the “mobile app boom” taught us about riding vs ignoring a hot trend, why nights and weekends rarely scale, and the exact moment (December 2013) we took the leap. We also discuss the investor point of view on “founder commitment” and a practical way to spot opportunities from inside your current company.
In this episode, you’ll learn how macro conditions shape founder timing, what makes the difference between a viable and an advantaged moment to start, what the realities of bootstrapping look like compared to fundraising, why part-time efforts usually stall and what to do instead, and how to use your current job to validate a real problem worth solving.

Support the show

🎬 You can watch the video of this episode on the Life on Mars podcast website: https://podcast.marsbased.com/

Chapters

1. Framing The Listener’s Question (00:00:00)

2. What We’ll Cover And What We Won’t (00:00:52)

3. Our Backstory And Early Attempts (00:02:03)

4. Macro Economy And 2012 Salaries (00:03:31)

5. How Timing Shaped Our Decision (00:05:10)

6. Riding Or Ignoring Market Trends (00:06:07)

7. Why Web Services Over Mobile (00:08:04)

8. Trend Safety: Press, Talent, Capital (00:09:21)

9. Starting Small And Timing Windows (00:10:54)

10. Home Life And Risk Tolerance (00:12:04)

11. Aligning Macro, Trends, And Life (00:14:05)

12. Investor Myths Versus Reality (00:15:05)

13. Legal And Contract Pitfalls (00:16:24)

14. Nights And Weekends Versus Daylight (00:18:09)

15. Working On It During Work (00:19:20)

16. Our Leap: Quitting And First Clients (00:20:32)

17. Co‑Founder Timing And Runway (00:22:04)

18. Layoffs As A Signal To Jump (00:23:12)

19. The Slow Path: Pros (00:24:45)

20. The Slow Path: Cons (00:26:12)

21. Final Takeaways And What’s Next (00:28:10)

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