Marcelo Lopez - CEO at UruIT

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Hello, my friends. Today we are talking to Marcelo, the founder and CEO of UruIT, and we discuss ways to beat attrition and retain top talent, benefits of working with a nearshore team, and creating better relationships by treating your vendors like key partners. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO podcast. Here we go. This is the Modern CTO podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:36) Hello, Marcelo.

(Marcelo at 00:00:37) Hey, Joel. How are you doing today?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:40) Amazing. How are you, my friend?

(Marcelo at 00:00:41) Good, good. Enjoying the almost to spring here, so it's getting better. What about you?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:50) Well, I was in Colorado last week, so I got to escape the heat of Florida. But now we're back, and it's just starting to break into the fall time.

(Marcelo at 00:01:05) Yeah. I am planning actually, I am taking a week, one week vacation next, in two weeks. I'm going to Miami with my family.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:14) Oh yeah? Yeah, it's—

(Marcelo at 00:01:17) It's a short trip, but I also need to do some business there, but I plan to enjoy the beach for sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:24) See, I like that. That's what I do. I mix my work with my vacation. So I go somewhere where I have business to do, but I also have a couple days.

(Marcelo at 00:01:32) Yeah. I think if you can do that, it's much better than traveling alone and spending a week. I don't typically do that, but in this occasion, I could manage to do that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:44) So where are you right now?

(Marcelo at 00:01:46) Right now, I am in, we're headquartered in Montevideo in Uruguay. So yes, I am working from the office today.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:56) Is that where you started the company?

(Marcelo at 00:01:58) Yes. We started in Uruguay, for sure, in Montevideo. I have a business partner that we started together, a friend. We started actually at his barbecue. So we had a few desks. Yeah, typical garage story. And then we moved to other offices as we grew, and we ended up in this big house. We have room for about 80 people just in the financial district here in Montevideo. So yes, this is where the headquarters is. And we also have a couple of offices, actually, one in, two in Colombia. And we are also incorporated in the States.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:41) Now when you started, did you take a bunch of venture capital, or did you just grow off of cash flow?

(Marcelo at 00:02:47) Well, no, it was bootstrapped. So I think actually that was one of the things that I regret a bit because obviously we did everything with our savings. And at the very beginning, it is really, really complex because we started with projects. At the very beginning, we had good projects coming from Microsoft, for instance. They was one of our first clients, but those were kind of fixed price, and so we had to meet some deadlines to get the invoice approved. But at the same time, we had to pay our talent, our developers. And so cash flow at the very beginning was kind of tricky. And as I say, we were using our savings, credit cards, whatever we had near us. But it was a different timing. Right now, it's easier to get funding, to get investors, angel investors, in particular in Uruguay. That has been changing a lot in the past few years. But 12 years ago, it was kind of not that easy. Anyway, we did get people or investors looking to maybe put some money in, but not the smart money that we were hoping to get. More like financial investors. I think that is what I regret right now, is not taking one of those offers because maybe we could have done something different.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:19) Yeah, but you guys are growing like crazy and you're doing amazing things right now.

(Marcelo at 00:04:24) Oh yeah. Right now, it's a totally different story, for sure. I am talking about the first year in particular, the couple, two years, that was difficult. And family was always around to help, paying some checks as well. But we did everything from our own pocket. Right now, yes, we continue growing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:49) Of all the interviews I've done, I've never had one person say it was easy the first couple years.

(Marcelo at 00:04:55) Yeah, I bet. No, it was, it is really fun and you learn a lot. And I think one thing that we did that was kind of the right decision is that from the very beginning, I had some billable hours, some time that I was kind of a PM in some of our projects. But eventually, I ended up doing sales and more like management. And my business partner took on the technical side of the business. And I think that was a smart decision because we had leads come in and pipeline and so on. I think that was one of the things that helped us a lot to continue growing. If you don't do that, it's a risk. And I think that we did it the right way.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:44) So you stepped up out of necessity?

(Marcelo at 00:05:47) Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So I decided to focus more on sales, marketing, and so on. I was pretty good with digital marketing at that time and SEO and those type of things. And I started to travel a lot and visit, attending trade shows in the U.S. and so on. Just when we were less than one year old, and it was kind of an investment to do that. And we are in Uruguay, in South America, and paying for tickets and a trade show when we are starting was kind of a risky move. But I think at the end, it did help us to gain some visibility in the market, start getting some leads that are so critical when you are growing and starving for new projects.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:32) So Latin America is growing really fast. I could tell because they're one of our top countries when we look at our listener stats. And specifically, I don't say it correctly. I say Uruguay, but you say it better.

(Marcelo at 00:06:46) Uruguay. It's okay. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:47) Yeah. But it's growing a lot, isn't it?

(Marcelo at 00:06:50) Yeah, yeah, it is. I think that is actually one of the things that I really like. Right now, the timing for Latin America is great. And not only for company like us, software companies building products, but eventually for the entire entrepreneurship ecosystem here. It's growing. We have lots of investment coming from banks all over the world. SoftBank, for instance, announced $2 billion investment just in startups in Latin America. So that combined with the education and the government's pushing a lot for IT because they realize that there is a huge advantage if they can do more technology instead of just exporting goods. So every government in the different countries are kind of promoting our industries. And I think that is great and it's a great timing. At the same time, I see more U.S. businesses looking at Latin America to do outsourcing, for instance, which is our business. And coming from bad experiences in Asia, in India, in East Europe, and the time zone and the culture and everything makes a lot of sense for them. So I think it's a good timing for Latin America to continue growing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:13) So that's what we're calling nearshore, right, versus offshore?

(Marcelo at 00:08:17) Yeah, exactly. So nearshore is kind of outsourcing to a nearby location, in particular in terms of the time zone. That is what's more, this is how we created the business. Actually, 12 years ago, we realized that we had great talent in Latin America. And at the same time, we saw that U.S. companies were starting to face talent issues, shortage. And so offering, blending that with competitive costs and good rates and the same quality. Actually, we have clients that say, okay, you guys have the same quality of other agencies that we hire locally. That kind of started to grow the nearshore industry. And there were some big players investing on that. I used to work for TCS, the Indian service provider. They established their branch in Uruguay. It was the first nearshore branch they had, 20 years ago or 25 years ago. We were part of the core team and the initial team that was setting up the operations here with my business partner. And then it grew to, I don't know, 2,000 people right now here and many branches across other countries in Latin America. I think this is how nearshoring started to gain attention within the U.S. CTOs. And right now, it's booming. Yeah, because when you are building products, it's a lot of agile involved. You need strong communication channels, real-time communication, good culture also. People that are able to challenge you on the daily decisions you are making. And I think those are kind of the benefits that we have in terms of working from Latin America and working for U.S. companies.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:15) One of the things I liked when I read your story, the first thing I liked is how you started up out of a barbecue shop. And then the second thing I liked is how your initial thoughts when creating the business were, let's hire some really talented, top tier people. That way, we can hit our deadlines and grow the business and have a higher level of quality. And for me, I'm one of those engineers, right? And so you always want to surround yourself with those types of people. So I thought it was really smart rather than you saying let's get a bunch of average people so we could take as much work as possible on. You said let's get a bunch of really top people together to execute.

(Marcelo at 00:10:55) Yeah. I mean, I was in the same, on both. I mean, I used to be a developer. I have a computer science degree. So I had to train tons of junior people and entry level folks that were getting into the big projects and not delivering the quality that we thought was needed for those critical applications. And this is why when we started, we had that choice. Either we grow and we get junior people involved and we grow a lot and we explode, or we try to be more like a boutique that is able to hire the best of the talent in Latin America. Because right now we have people coming from, I think, 10 countries, and there is talented people all over the countries. If you are able to identify but also attract that type of talent, at the end, I think the results are much better. So this is how we decided to grow organically and focus more on the quality of the talent. Yes, for sure. And I think that is just in our DNA.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:02) So I always like to get expert advice, right? Because you spend all day in this nearshore world. And I think most of our audience doesn't spend a lot of time there. So I'm curious to know, what makes a successful nearshore partnership?

(Marcelo at 00:12:22) Good question. Good question. Yeah, I think, I mean, we built the business based on the CTO issues and struggles for sure. And we have been speaking with most of our clients. We have done projects for, I think, more than 100 CTOs in the States, and we have tons of good relationships out of those projects. I think the main thing is how you build trust, how you can trust your development partner. And as I say, there are so many bad experiences in the past with offshoring, for instance. We have many clients coming from bad experiences. And so we work a lot with them in how they can build the trust with the development team. At the very beginning, obviously, you need to invest a lot in the due diligence process and make sure you really understand the culture behind the company that you are engaging with, the type of talent they have, how they recruit, how they manage the project, how agile they are and so on. Obviously, you look at the credentials and the type of clients they have, the industries they serve, and so on. But in my experience, I think that building that relationship and investing in the relationship is kind of what drives better results. And so we have clients that we plan with them the onboarding processes, how to get the alignment with the nearshore team to make sure that the nearshore team feels a part of the in-house team when we do co-development with our clients as well. So we care a lot about that relationship. And at the very beginning, it is important also to meet face-to-face. And so we have clients visiting us, and they have a great week in Colombia or in Uruguay, hanging out with the teams, sharing the vision of the business, not just the calling stories and the stories of the scope of the project, but where their business is going, how they will grow in the next few years, what they will need to do that. And if you do that and you create that common vision, I think at the end, it really pays out. And from there, it's about working as a partner. So for instance, we have, the two offices we have, we have one in Medellín. We are opening a new branch in the capital of Colombia. Those were created in true collaboration with our existing clients. So we invited them to open the branches for a couple of them. We even visited the offices before we were renting the space and so on. And they feel like part of also your growth and your strategy. And I think that's what has been great for us. I mean, and this is why people recommend us and more of word of mouth is our main source of new projects and businesses. And we do spend a lot on that. And obviously, depending on the maturity on the client side and the roles and the stakeholders they have, in some cases, we also help them to navigate all the remote work challenges, for instance. Working with a remote team, how to use the right tools, how to set up the ceremonies, and so on. Some of them are less agile, so we do also some coaching in terms of the agile process. So it's, but at the end, it's tackling the trust and the communication. I think that is, if you can do that, then the technical aspects you can basically overcome. But I will say that's kind of the key things to consider when doing some nearshore.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:26) Yeah. Because you're relying on that team to produce, so you have to be aligned.

(Marcelo at 00:16:32) Yeah, obviously. I mean, it's a part of your strategy, I guess. And so how you can align also your expectations with the career plans, for instance, of your developers. Again, we ask them to treat our talent as part of their teams. And we align them on that, and we create a path for the developers to continue growing, exploring new technologies, which is also important to, I mean, you also need to consider how you avoid attrition. It's one of the critical things also. I mean, to stay with your team. We have dedicated teams running for years for our projects, and it is important that you can provide them challenges and ways to grow if you want to retain the people. And attrition is everywhere and competition for talent is everywhere, including Latin America.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:23) That's really interesting. So I never thought about this before. So you're the nearshore company, and you have a dedicated team that's working with a specific client. But there's some responsibility on both sides, of both the client and you housing them physically in their location, to retain them. So how do you do that?

(Marcelo at 00:17:48) Well, it's a lot about, as I say, alignment. So you need to be open to align with us and with our teams in what are the best growing options and career plans and technologies, technology challenges, and so on. And if you can do that, I mean, you can rest assured that the people will stay and will continue engaged with your team and your project. And but it's a challenge. I mean, you need to—for instance, we work a lot with CTOs, as I said.

(Marcelo at 00:18:31) And the CTOs has to change their mind and say, "Okay, this is a partner, you know, and this is my strategic partner. It's not just a vendor that will throw bodies to code with me." And if you can do that little change in the way you approach the relationship, we have seen great results. And we have CTOs traveling, as I say, down here, meeting a week with the team, going out and hanging out and sharing the visions they have. And if you can spare that time or send one of your managers or your tech leads, I think those type of little things actually help to navigate this.

(Marcelo at 00:19:13) And we have many articles in our blog, by the way, in how you can get the best relationship going with your offshore or nearshore teams. Invite the people to go and visit uruIT.com, or we can share some articles with you. But it's, I think, what's actually, at the end, is important if you want a successful partnership, for sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:38) Yeah. I really did—when we were first talking about coming on this show and discussing articles and resources, I really did like the amount of content that you guys have. Because whether, you know, you're my nearshore company or not, right, you can go read that content and understand how to have a better relationship with your nearshore provider or your outsource.

(Marcelo at 00:19:58) Yes. I think we invest a lot on that, you know, and understand the different also engagement models you can have with your partner. I mean, you can have a—we like to have dedicated teams, you know, focused on the project, as I say. But eventually, you can rely on your partner to take care of the entire project, including, you know, doing the UX/UI. We are channeling a lot right now into UX/UI work and discovery phases, envisioning new products.

(Marcelo at 00:20:26) And so different profiles get involved in a project. Or eventually, you can just, you know, do some what we call staff augmentation and get two, five, six, ten engineers that will plug into your existing teams. And if you have the processes in place, I think that is a great way to give it a try, because the developers or the engineers will follow your processes. You will be leading them. You will have your team and tech leads getting involved and looking at the work that is being produced.

(Marcelo at 00:21:01) So I recommend to start—if you are new to this nearshoring, you know—start with that engagement. It might be easier if you can, and you will realize the talent and the capabilities that are here in South America. But we do like to produce content to educate because, as I say, we are here to get more people interested in Latin America and realizing the advantage that you could have as a business if you can engage with companies here like us. And so we do invest a lot on that type of content.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:38) I think there's a lot of benefit to being close in the time zone. I did have a question, though. Like, how much time does it take between when someone first contacts you and they actually have a staff member working, like, augmented?

(Marcelo at 00:21:53) Yeah, sure. Well, we have a bench strategy, for sure. It is difficult right now to have talent in bench across the different technologies. We prefer to focus on just a few technologies on a given point of time rather than being a generalist.

(Marcelo at 00:22:08) But so, depending on the time of the year, we could have like two weeks to one month to set up a team in terms of the lead time. And then, depending on the ramp up, we scale on a monthly basis. But it is, as I say, more like a boutique approach. So we prefer to start small with a minimum team of three, four engineers and scale from there, create that core team that will understand the client and their business and the culture, and we scale from there. So it's not like super fast to hire here.

(Marcelo at 00:22:48) Our process takes a lot of stages—coding challenges, interviews, and so on—but we prefer to do that. So it's, in our case, CTOs looking for 5, 100 people are not the ideal clients, for sure. But people who want, you know, truly specialized and senior people that will work as an extension of their teams, I think that is our sweet spot.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:16) I like it. And I like that you're very aware of what your value and your niche is too. Now, what type of technologies are you guys focused most on today? Like, what's really popular right now?

(Marcelo at 00:23:28) Yeah, sure. Well, a lot of JavaScript. I mean, it's everywhere, as you know. We actually—we were a former Microsoft shop at the very beginning, twelve years ago.

(Marcelo at 00:23:38) And we had to expand to other technologies in the path to where we are today. Right now, we are doing a lot of JavaScript, obviously looking at the popular frameworks like React, which is growing, you know, as crazy. There are some newer frameworks coming, but we are trying to decide which one we will be focusing on for next year. In terms of—we also see a lot of machine learning, you know, coming in terms of clients interested in growing in that space. So we are building our machine learning capabilities and data scientists, which is kind of a different profile, but that is growing too.

(Marcelo at 00:24:27) So we see some requirements for functional programming as well, so looking at some of those frameworks. Python is still there, so we have a team in Colombia, and we see more Python also in the machine learning space. So I think those are kind of what we are focusing right now. In the mobile space, we really like the cross-platform frameworks. So platforms like Xamarin from Microsoft, or React Native right now is also gaining a lot of traction across our projects.

(Marcelo at 00:25:02) So those are kind of the technologies we are focusing right now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:09) And I'm a fan of React Native too.

(Marcelo at 00:25:12) Really? Okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:13) Yeah.

(Marcelo at 00:25:13) Yeah? I built a company. Yeah. Oh, really? How—were you able to publish those, or were they more like an internal app?

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:22) Yeah. You know, I've had this conversation quite a few times. People are saying, like, "Oh, can you take that to maturity?" And it's like, well, yeah. I mean, look at the companies that support it, obviously.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:31) I know some of them move away from it eventually in support of two separate native apps, right? Because, well, they're billion-dollar companies.

(Marcelo at 00:25:38) Oh, is it?

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:39) Right? With huge, thousands of developers. But for that, like, mid-level, getting the app out and working, I built this complicated app that was—the simplest way to explain it was it was for lawyers to do depositions. It did quite a lot of things, and it was on desktop, iPhone, Android, and the iPads.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:04) So it was on, you know, three different platforms. And we did all the iPhone, Android, iPad stuff in a React Native project, and then we did a React web app project for the other stuff. And we had a common API. And we had, you know, lots of users on that, just a ton of traffic on it. And we had, what, two developers and a designer and a project lead.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:29) And there was no problems at all. I mean, we had to jump down and make, like, one custom library for React that, like, didn't tap into the APIs we needed that were already there. But other than that, like, it was really easy to do.

(Marcelo at 00:26:45) Wow. And issues? Yeah. You were proactive enough. You got more.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:50) Yeah. It saves so much time. The biggest amount of time it saved was we only had to communicate, like, with one engineer that—well, we had two engineers on the product, but we just have that one meeting and they would both be working on the same code base. And so we didn't have to, like, completely explain everything over and over in two different styles. So—

(Marcelo at 00:27:12) Yeah. It makes all that sense. I mean, we are huge fans of the cross-platform framework. We did try many in the past, as you can guess, but right now, I think we are in a good timing for those, because you can eventually build application that will look and perform as native. And right now, you know, we bring also all the UI and UX into the table, so the application will look amazing and the usability is also great.

(Marcelo at 00:27:39) But I think the advantage right now with these frameworks are the performance you can get. I remember the old times when we were using other cross-platform frameworks, you know, it was—wow. You could notice a difference with the native performance, for sure. But right now, you can't even notice.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:00) Yeah. Ten years ago, it wasn't that great, but today, it's amazing. So I want to know what the future of the business looks like for uruIT. Like, are you going for world domination? Like, where are you headed?

(Marcelo at 00:28:14) Well, it's exciting times for us. As I said, for sure, we are opening a new branch in the capital of Colombia. We will probably continue opening some a few more delivery centers in the future. And I, as I say, it's a great timing, so we are excited. We will continue focused in the U.S. market for now.

(Marcelo at 00:28:36) For sure, it's huge. We have good reputation already. We have tons of clients there, and the demand is growing. So I don't see right now other markets for uruIT to be focused. We are obviously looking at how we can add more value to clients.

(Marcelo at 00:28:56) Right now, I think that is the main thing that we are focusing, right? So how we can get other profiles involved in the project. You know, as I say, a lot about product management, discovery, envisioning, and so on. So to understand the businesses behind the product that we are building.

(Marcelo at 00:29:15) Machine learning as well is—I think it will continue growing as a practice here. And eventually, we are consolidating as a group of outsourcing companies right now. We did our first acquisition a couple of months ago. It's more like—it's a digital agency headquartered also in Latin America. And again, I see a lot of things happening in the nearshore and how we can consolidate a group of companies that can each have one a niche and a specific, you know, set of technologies or market.

(Marcelo at 00:29:51) And I see that growing. And our focus has been a lot in the software-as-a-service industry, which, as you know, is also booming. So I think opportunities are great for us, and also for other Latin American entrepreneurs, as I said, because there are great applications being born in Latin America. We can see now some unicorns coming from different countries. So a lot of investment coming to us.

(Marcelo at 00:30:24) So I see just a great future. It's a lot of work, and we will be busy, but I trust that we will continue growing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:34) So I actually, like, looked up some of your customers because I was always interested, right? Because you're—yeah. So I was like, you know what? Let's—I asked Chloe. I said, "Hey, Chloe. Why don't you contact some of the people that, like, they have quotes on their website from and see what they're like?" Everybody said such great things about you guys.

(Marcelo at 00:30:54) Wow. Glad to hear about that. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:56) Yeah. So I was really excited because, you know, whenever we have someone on the show and they, you know, we like to promote their stuff and get you awareness and, you know, help grow the community because we like what people are doing, specifically because you focus on high-quality people, things like that. But, you know, before we do that, we're always like, you know, let's go check out some of their customers and send them emails and talk to them. And, yeah, your people were, like, huge fans of what you guys do.

(Marcelo at 00:31:22) Yeah. We—I think we are lucky that we did meet nice people and that they trust us and what we were doing. And right now, as I say, some of those are even, you know, we have close relationships going with them, and they when they move to another company, they call us and they recommend us and so on. So not only about the ratings and reviews that we get everywhere are positive, but I think what I like the most about this business is how we can build these relationships and how, you know, can get to know each other and get to understand what are the, yeah, the challenges and the passions behind and so on.

(Marcelo at 00:32:05) And I am really proud of both the clients we have and the people we have, and I think it's a great match if you can, you know, build that trust within those sides of the equation. So not to hear that. They provide good feedback, for sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:24) That's exciting, right? Especially as a founder.

(Marcelo at 00:32:27) Yeah. If you created this, you know, it's our recognition—not only the prizes and awards that you get, but, you know, I think the most important thing is what the client says. So we are really customer-focused.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:39) And I want to take it back to the beginning a little bit here. So we started with, you know, the conversation with, you know, how your company got started and that. But I'm curious to know, like, what got you interested in technology at the beginning? Like, what was the first time?

(Marcelo at 00:32:56) Good question. Well, I am 38 years old. So probably my first—the first memory I have was, like, I was working with this Logo. Remember the little turtle that was moving around the screen, and you had to give directions? I realized then that it was kind of a programming, basic programming language.

(Marcelo at 00:33:20) But when I was seven years old or so, I remember I was attending those classes, and then I got my first computer, the ones with the tape and the cassette. And I think that's kind of the first memory that I have. So from the very beginning, I really liked computers, and I was lucky because I was born in a small town here in Uruguay, like many southern people. So having a computer thirty years ago was kind of not so common. And so my parents did give a lot of support in that career.

(Marcelo at 00:33:59) And since then, I had to move to the capital when I was eighteen to go to the university. So at that time, universities were only in the capital. Right now, we have universities all over the country. And then I went to this IT career, computer science, and I realized at that time that technology was kind of huge and important to make the people's life better. So at that time, I realized that I wanted to commit to technology.

(Marcelo at 00:34:32) Eventually, I moved to management, and then after working at a few companies, I realized to create our own company. But that was kind of the, yeah, career that I had in that sense. So from the back—since I was a kid, I think I fell in love with the technology.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:54) That's—I love that because I started very young too, and I don't know. I feel like we're similar in that regard. But so for some of the other people that are listening that might be, like, engineers, software leaders, things like that, that might be interested in working at uruIT, how would they learn more about that on your website?

(Marcelo at 00:35:16) Yeah, sure. Our website—we have a careers page as well. We actually, you know, have some Americans living in Uruguay and working here at uruIT. So I invite them, yes, to go through our blogs.

(Marcelo at 00:35:32) I write a lot about our culture, the agile values behind us, and the way we approach software development. If they like what they see, obviously, they can apply or send us a note. And yes, we invite them to join us because, as I said, we believe that talent is everywhere, and we like to have the best talent available. So we have people relocating from Italy, from United States, from Cuba. So people that relocate, and they want to enjoy living in a safe country and enjoying our culture as well.

(Marcelo at 00:36:11) So, yeah, everyone is invited to take a look.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:14) Who oversees your blog and your content?

(Marcelo at 00:36:18) Well, we have a small marketing team here. I used to be the one leading that. As I say, I am a huge digital marketing advocate. And so at the very, very beginning, it was basically me writing content. I was able to, yeah, to that time, you know, ten years ago, SEO was kind of the big thing.

(Marcelo at 00:36:39) Right now, we have a small team, and eventually everyone is contributing content to us internally. So we have, you know, developers writing, PMs writing, and because I think it's also part of our DNA to share with the community. So going to conferences, you know, speaking at conferences, sponsoring things, it's kind of also part of the DNA and sharing what we do, how things can be done better. We have this view around, you know, how software can be built better in a better way, and we really like to share that with people. So, yes.

(Marcelo at 00:37:18) Right now, they oversee the content, and but everyone is contributing in terms of writing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:27) Well, I like it. I think it looks really good. I'm always a big fan of when things look good. And the interfaces, the design, the blog, the content, reading through it, I was just impressed. So shout out to your content team.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:41) They're doing a great job.

(Marcelo at 00:37:43) We put a lot of effort into that. And, actually, the website—the blog is built on WordPress, but the rest of the website is a custom React application that we developed with the same quality and the same processes that we do with the other projects that we do. So it was kind of an internal product with a scrum team behind it that built it, and performance, usability, and UI were kind of the main things that we were focusing. So glad to know that you recognize that. It was a huge investment from us.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:16) Well, it's so important. Right? Like,

(Marcelo at 00:38:18) It's what we do. So

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:20) Yeah. It's like I always tell people, like, walking into a physical building. Right? Like, if you walk into a financial planner's office. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:29) It's beautiful. It's nice. It feels good. There's amenities. It's nice.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:34) And then if they go to your website, like, that's your storefront for online. And so when someone comes to your website, there has to be useful things there. It's gotta look good. It's gotta function right. And so whenever I notice a company doing it right, I always, like, give them a shout out for that.

(Marcelo at 00:38:50) Thank you. Yeah. For companies like us that are remote, you know, we need to, from the very beginning, build that trust. So I think that is kind of a key thing, you know, to, yeah, showcase what we do. We put a lot of effort into the cases, case studies, and so on.

(Marcelo at 00:39:05) Because it's, at the very beginning, we want to give this good impression, and then you need to, you know, continue delivering. But, eventually, we don't have an office space that people can visit. And after the when they do the due diligence or after we sign a contract, they come down here and visit. But or we go there with our talent and visit them. But it's a first impression, so which matters.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:32) No. First impressions are absolutely critical to relationships. Right? You don't wanna mess that up.

(Marcelo at 00:39:40) Yeah. Totally agree.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:42) So as we start to wrap up here, is there anything else that you wanna get out into the world?

(Marcelo at 00:39:48) Well, no. Just invite everyone to take a look at Latin America and, you know, get informed into the different countries, different cultures that we have here, and the possibilities for the outsourcing industry itself. So I really like to spend time sharing our stories out there and, you know, branding and being an ambassador of Latin America as a software hub, so a technology hub. So I encourage everyone if they have—if people have questions or they want to know more about the different options that we have here, the companies that we are building in Latin America, feel free to send a note, and I will be happy to share with them stories or navigate them through the process of learning how to deal with a nearshore team. I think that is what I'd really like to do.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:47) Yeah. And you had some good items in the portfolio too on the website, which I like.

(Marcelo at 00:40:51) Oh, yeah. They can go and check it out for sure. Yeah. We have a lot of content there.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:55) Alright. So if I find people interested, they start asking me about machine learning, you know, they start asking me about React Native or nearshore, I'll just say, hey. Yeah. Go talk to Marcelo.

(Marcelo at 00:41:05) For sure. Yeah. We are building tons of MVPs. You know, we see this trend also that CTOs are starting their own businesses. So we get many founders that are former CTOs, and they need a team to build the MVP as you probably did with your web mobile apps.

(Marcelo at 00:41:22) And so we are now putting together this package that is kind of an MVP in a short period of time, three, four months, so that you can validate the market fit. And so we are a great partner for CTOs and technical founders too, and I see that it's going to continue growing. So building MVPs, software as a service applications, or when they need extra hands to meet some deadline, yeah, we are the perfect partner for those.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:54) Now have you called SoftBank yet and said, hey. I saw you're putting $2 billion.

(Marcelo at 00:41:59) Not yet. No. I think they are interested in right now in more like consumer applications, B2C, and they are investing in those. But, eventually, we can be the machine building those types of products for them. What do you think?

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:16) I think we should call them up.

(Marcelo at 00:42:17) Yeah. I

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:18) I think we should say

(Marcelo at 00:42:19) Ask for a few millions.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:20) No. No. Half. You ask for half. You say, like, give me one of the 2 billion, and then they'll say, no.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:28) We'll give you $2.50.

(Marcelo at 00:42:29) We can negotiate.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:30) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Start off.

(Marcelo at 00:42:31) Well, as in Latin America, it's small. You know? We can get easy access to those, to those points for sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:39) Well, I'm excited. I think the future is bright. I see just constantly companies growing, needing more technology talent. And so, you know, thank you for existing and saying that, like, we're not right for everybody. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:51) We're not right if you need, like, a hundred people overnight, but you do have that core, strong, talented senior level team that you can apply to a project, which is very useful.

(Marcelo at 00:43:01) Yeah. We have almost a hundred people right now, ready to jump into exciting projects. So

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:06) That is awesome. And you're growing. And I see you're in Los Angeles, Miami, and then Uruguay, Medellín, a new one.

(Marcelo at 00:43:14) It's been a great, great journey for us.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:16) Awesome. It's exciting. Well, let me know how I can help. If there's any past guest you want me to connect you with, as people come up in the future, I'll say, hey. You know, go talk to Marcelo when it matches up.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:28) And then

(Marcelo at 00:43:29) As I say, word-of-mouth and referrals are our main source of business right now. So

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:35) That's how you can tell a good business. I love it.

(Marcelo at 00:43:39) Well, if

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:40) you need anything from me at all, we'll help you out as much as we possibly can, and we thank you so much for coming and hanging out with us.

(Marcelo at 00:43:46) Thank you, Joel. I also went through your content, and I really liked it. And I, I mean, how you created also this value for CTOs. It's an impressive career that you have built. So congratulations about that.

(Marcelo at 00:44:01) And all the content that you produce, I think it's also, like, great quality and really, really, really good. So I will continue tuned to your podcast and your content for sure. You have a fan here in South America too. So next visit to The States, I will give you a call.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:21) Absolutely. Thank you so much for the kind words, and then Jake and Chloe will loop back with you when we post the content and the clips.

(Marcelo at 00:44:27) Excellent. Excellent. Thank you, everyone.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:29) Have a great day.

(Marcelo at 00:44:30) Take care, Joel. Bye bye.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:31) Take care.