Startup Circle in Barcelona

The Startup Circle we've been talking about on Twitter is already working! It's a small step for the startup community in Barcelona, yet a huge step for MarsBased!

Read more to find out what Startup Circle is!

Enter the Startup Circle

Plain and simple: it is a group of startups and small companies that collaborate together. All the participants can share coworking spaces, hardware, work on the same project or even share board – just to name a couple of variations. The bottom line is: collaboration at any level.

In our case, our Startup Circle consists of four companies and a solo entrepreneur. They are, in no particular order:

• Fuse TIC
• Mercurio Platform
• Dineyo
• @xeevi
• … and MarsBased, of course ;)

All of the mentioned above are based in Barcelona!

Startup Circle has one only goal: to help each other being more efficient, by sharing all we are learning on our entrepreneurial path. It should allow each company to focus on their strengths, rather than wasting time in trying to overcome their weaknesses.

Each and every member of Startup Circle has identified what the weak and strong points of their teams are. If we had the resources, we'd probably delegate them to third parties, but we're bootstrapping.

Bootstrapping means working on a project with whatever you have in your pockets. No external funding, working with the bare minimum to be profitable.

How does Startup Circle work?

Startup Circle helps its members in many ways:

• Knowledge sharing: We share our experiences (both good and bad) in monthly meetings, and by conducting workshops and webinars.
• Resource sharing: Coworking spaces, shared equipment (cars, computers, web hosting, ...), placing orders together, etc.
• Exchange of favours: A design agency can offer their designs to the rest of Startup Circle members, getting legal counseling in return, for instance.
• Networking: Everyone needs to build their own contacts network. But why not doing it while being part of a network? A net's worth isn't just the sum of all its members, as stated by the Metcalfe's Law (and many others), but it grows with the network in a non-linear way. Of course, there are more benefits in belonging to Startup Circle, but these are the most important to us right now.

In our case, Startup Circle can help us in the legal, administrative and bookkeeping areas. We can rely on some of the other members whose strengths are precisely these.

Conversely, we offer our expertise in web design, app development, strategic consulting and expertise in our technologies (Ruby on Rails, Angular, AWS, HTML5/CSS3, ...) in return. We believe in our technological expertise as a specialised dev shop and want to share it with the rest of Startup Circle members.

If you want to read more about Startup Circle, follow us in our social profiles and we'll keep you updated! Else, if you want to join, drop us a line at hola@marsbased.com