I Keep Failing

It's Been a While Since I Felt This Way

I remember being an entrepreneur since I was a kid. I remember creating a page called marco.com on my local machine using FrontPage, but with zero idea how to upload it, so before I learned what FTP mean. Was supposed to be a marketplace for independent people to sell their own art. I was painting back then, I think I was 15, this was 1997. And I wanted to sell my “art”.

It took me so much time to build, never deployed. I didn’t know HTML back then so it was kind of a failed attempt, was frustrating. I had this great idea to create a marketplace for people to be able to exchange their art. I felt defeated. Internet was not like today.

It was hard for me to convince my dad to buy me HTML for Dummies. I tried for 2 full years to get a copy. The time passed and as any other kid my time on internet on a 54kbps modem was used for other discovery/exploratory endeavors. I’m talking about gaming.

Internet moved forward. 2003 and 2005 were great, WordPress, YouTube appears, still nothing like what we have today. But slowly things were getting interesting again.

Now I’m 23 living on my own and the blog age was at its peak so I started writing my own blogs, about stuff. Some even picked up so much that I remember having this blog about rock bands in Argentina, and I was writing about them, their music, and they started replying back and we started talking.

I got bored and I started using the earliest version of Squarespace. It was so bad. It’s not great today, but back then oh my god! it was horrible. But I started building my own websites. One I did was a lifestyle fashion publication, I was into fashion and stuff like that, lifestyle. I started writing about all I liked and the internet was young, no AI, all in Spanish, it started picking up. I got a few emails from brands to put ads that I obviously rejected because I didn’t like them morally. Then I was using AdSense basically. I was getting 10k views a week.

I got bored fast.

Then the mobile era appeared and I started with Google Play with a childhood friend building mini apps and icon packs. We started doing amazing, we were making 30 - 50 dollars a day. For a couple of young 24 year olds in Argentina that was 1,500 USD a month. Insane. Was most of my salary. But we got banned because we were unsing themes like Star Wars and other copyrighted material. Sorry Marvel.

Forgot to mention, I started the university studies when I was 18, and working at the same time. I had a 9 to 5 working in offices, accounting, EY, etc. At nights 7 pm to 11 pm I was going to the uni. And still was doing so many things. Including writing sci-fi books, a few of them. I’m dyslexic so basically they are dumps of what I thought the future will look like. Only my mother had read them. I was right in almost everything I imagined 2030 would be. On top of that I was living on my own.

Around that time, I started an import business with my youngest sister importing to Argentina and selling sport gear on kind of a shop like eBay, back then MercadoLibre before it became public. We made good money but I’m a control freak and organized executioner, my sister was loose and she was not able to cope with me organizing the job and delivery like a navy seal. It was all about the 5 stars so we needed to be perfect. We made good money but we decided to shut it down.

Good money.

After, I tried to start an accounting firm with my dad, modern, based on tech and not calculations and spreadsheets. My father didn’t like the idea even though I created a great business plan, a website and printed 500 business cards. Each.

I also called Starbucks before they were in Argentina, or sent them hundred of emails, to see if I could open a franchise. The idea came after watching a movie, I couldn’t let it go. And I told my father to talk to any of his friend to see if there’s a connection there. Nothing. They came later in 2008 with their first store.

A few years passed, and I started working on more mature companies. EY, then Philip Morris, travels for work, traveling solo around the world to see how other people do stuff. All paid by me (or debt) as I was soaring like 150 extra hours per month. Yes, Big 4 are a meat grinder but in countries like Argentina they have to pay extra hours. So I was 25 making 2x salaries, sleeping 4 hours per day. I was able to take it.

Yes. I started other now failed attempts to start something cool.

I remember thinking about a reverse procurement marketplace and we went to talk to a developer firm in Argentina, we gave them our blueprint. A few months later we saw our design implemented in one of their clients, a big marketplace in Argentina. Our exact design. Was odd, we never heard from them after that meeting in the cafe and he took our documents. We had it all outlined there. That’s on me.

I got bored of the politics and economy and a few years after getting my degree I moved to Europe to start over from scratch. I sold all my stuff and with almost nothing I moved and started a new life. New everything

It was a lot of fun. Scary but fun. I love moving from one country to another, I did it quite a few times already, it’s like changing jobs. But continent to another continent is like starting a new business. It’s so painful. But an experience that is worth it and I will do it again 100%, 100 times more.

I started working for Meta (back then Facebook), and I started realizing how big those tech companies are and how they are “not so hard to make”.

In the sense that it’s about trying and failing and doing it until it clicks.

And since then, I was not able to stop failing.