Adam Torres and Carlos Martinez discuss Leanware.
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Show Notes:
What does it take to work with an outsourcing partner to create great software? In this episode, Adam Torres and Carlos Martinez, Founder & CEO at Leanware, explore why Carlos created Learnware and his journey to grow the company to 50+ developers.
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About Leanware
Leanware is an experienced Latin America software development company that focuses on building world-class quality products for digital visionaries around the world. Currently, Leanware has evolved into a company of around 50 individuals, all proudly based in Colombia.
They also expanded our vision, centering our culture around four pivotal pillars: work ethics, transparency, quality, and work/life balance for their valued employees.
Full Unedited Transcript
I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres. And if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today’s guest is Carlos Martinez and he is founder and CEO over at LeanWare.
Carlos, welcome to the show. Thank you, Adam. Happy to be here. So we got a lot to talk about there. We’re going to talk about what it looks like to build quality software using an outsourcing partner. I also want to get into how you bootstrapped a company to where now you have over 50 plus developers working for you and with you.
So excited to get into this. I think it’s an amazing entrepreneurial story. Before we get into all that, we’re going to start this episode the way that we start them all with what we like to call our mission matters minute. So Carlos, we at Mission Matters, we amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives and experts.
That’s our mission. Carlos, what mission matters to you? For me, it’s very important to be a catalyst on helping entrepreneurs, founders, CEOs, making their vision a reality in the form of, of web applications, mobile applications. So every time, you know, every for that first prototype that look on their face when they first see their baby coming to life, that’s, that’s worth the whole deal is what the whole payrolls and taxes that I have to do.
So, so, yeah, that’s definitely. That’s amazing, Carlos. I even like the way you talk about it. You’re like, it’s like they see their baby. They’re new, whatever it was, the app or the application, or they see whatever that idea was, that was maybe on a, on a napkin or a piece of paper at first. And now it’s reality and they can see it like in the world.
I think it’s great. And I think it’s, and again, it’s great to have you on. So let’s just go a little bit kind of further back in your story. So lean where, like, where’d all this come about? Like, were you out before even this, were you always an entrepreneur? Did you have that entrepreneurial spirit in you?
Where’d that start? I guess that I come from an entrepreneur family. We got these really early from my father. He’s most of his side. He has been like has his own company, obviously different company, different market. I guess that both of my brothers and myself picked it up because there was no other way around it.
You’re you’re you picked it up or I don’t know. Yeah. What was it like in the holidays around the kitchen table with that one? Like, was there a lot of entrepreneur talk going on? Definitely. There were phrases thrown around, like you don’t create wealth in a nine to five. Obviously it’s like a old kind of old mindset.
My father is 70 plus years old right now. So those contexts might not apply today for obvious reasons, but it was kind of the feeling and kind of the education we were brought up under a lot of correctness, ethics, and strictness, for example, I didn’t miss a single day of school. I know what this means.
I’ve got in during my. My high school and middle school. I not a single day. I haven’t got a middle school, nothing, zero, like my father and my mother were really strict about that. So in an environment like that, obviously I picked up some jobs early on my career. Before we get into that though, when you were a kid, did you have some like small businesses or something else like that?
Like, were you, when you were in those, if you’re at school, you’re going to school. Were you selling candy? What were you selling? Like you were doing something. So at that point, the novel thing was like burning your own CDs with, oh, Oh, so you were, so you were pirating music. Okay, good. Yeah. I mean, like, I cannot say it was a hundred percent legal, but I was a 12 year old girl.
So yeah. So basically I got like feedback from people. What music do you like? And put together like this in, in this, in between, you were in the wild west of all of that. That’s interesting. Yeah. And there’s a funny story about that. I have so. It grew, like it started growing to different forms at some point, I was working with a portable console from Sony that basically you, you have to pay to get their game.
So, you know, you got into forums, you find ways around that. Yeah. Like I, at some point, and it was, it was probably my, my most profitable business as a school entrepreneur. At some point I was selling the services of, you know, jailbreaking the thing, and people were literally coming into my house and my father was, okay, do you know who’s coming?
And I, I had no, I have no idea. Oh my God, I have no idea. And at some point when I opened the door. You know, it wasn’t, you had an elevator that put you directly into the apartment. There wasn’t any, okay. Okay. I got it. So you let them up. Yeah, they’re up. No, yeah. You know, they’re already at your house. Right.
When I opened up, it was a local policeman that walking and my father was like, what did you do? No, just tell me the truth. What are you doing? What, like, what are you hacking? What? And then the policeman like pulls his gun to the other side and gets out the console out and, you know, Can you do this for my son, please?
And literally he was sitting in the living room, you know, all the equipment and everything while I was doing the thing, pretty nervous. Actually, that was when my father said, okay, I had enough. Maybe you should go out different, take a different path. Is this when you got, like, I noticed this pattern of tech, right?
Like, were you into tech and like, I don’t know if the words gadgets are like, you know what I mean? But you were into the physical version of tech, even with that, even with CDs, with this, like you’re going into the forums. Is that like, was that like, That’s kind of what sucked you in, huh? Like to start developing your skill set and problem solving.
Yeah, I guess it all goes back to my gaming background, non professional gaming. I was terrible at it, but I really enjoyed it playing video games online. At that point, there was this first game from Blizzard. That it was an ulti in the sense that you have to pay a monthly subscription for, and I used to play it a lot, and I used to mod my PC a lot to be able to play it better.
What year was this, roughly? Roughly what year? Roughly. That was probably So for some context, they had a set, almost a SAS product, or we weren’t even, we weren’t necessarily using that term back then, but that was the early days of it. Like that was pioneering back then. In my friends circle, only three of us were playing the actual game and paying for it.
And we were called like, you guys are crazy. Why are you going to pay a monthly fee to play a video game? It doesn’t make sense. Yeah. 20 years later, here we are. But anyways, in that game, I got, I got to, and they shouldn’t have been burning CDs in jail, should have been creating that one right now. I’m just messing with you.
Go ahead. I had this. Yeah. So I had to mop my PC and components. And also in this game, it has a scripting language where you can automate some of your actions, your character that, so I brought some scripting there as well. So that was my first. Exposure to programming and that was in LDA scripts, which is really old language.
So, yeah, that in actually in 2004, I think it was my father had to go to like an in person meeting with Cisco Academy back in my hometown for them to let me take a course on it because I was too young. So they wouldn’t let me in because I was under age. Wow. In everyone there was really old, basically.
You know, and they say, okay, you can get in. If we can get your father’s approval, you guys can do it through an interview process and all that. So I guess that passion was there since the beginning, you know, that you get, man, how, how forward thinking of your father. If you think about it from his position, like he might, he’s got this crazy kid on his hand.
He’s doing all these things. My guess is, I don’t want to assume you said it’s in many different businesses, but I’m guessing he wasn’t as like in a tech business or in He doesn’t actually know, he knows, he knows his son is super talented, has a lot of interests. I’m sure he knows tech is the future of the world.
Cause I’m sure being in business and with the type of conversations. So now he’s trying to figure out how to deal with you and how to give you your dream. Like that’s an amazing story. Like from his point of view, like that’s amazing. Like, how do I deal with this kid? I got to go take these classes. Like, what do I got to do next?
Man, he was, he was crazy, but yeah, he always supported me in, in every single way in my, in my passions. I’m really grateful for that. Yeah. Let’s fast forward this story a little bit, but I love this. And thank you for sharing. Cause it’s, it’s interesting to see the dynamics here. So now at some, obviously, you know, fast forwarding a bit, you come up with this concept of lean wear.
Why did you see this need in the market? Like, like, how did this come about? So I started lean wear in early 2020. I had a lot of work experience. I was a software architect by then, which is like the, one of the, like the end game when it comes to tiers in, you know, it’s junior, mid, senior, architect. If there are other ways to see it, but to see it in a simple way, to put it in a simple way.
I had a lot of experience gained already, and I kept, like, I work with really big companies as a consultant, as a contractor consultant, like Unilever, Chevron, Cargill, like really big global companies in IT consulting, cybersecurity, networking, and software. So I had a little bit of knowledge in, in a lot of areas, and I kept seeing how.
People make or entrepreneurs, when they’re trying to build their products, keep, kept making the same mistakes from a tech perspective and those mistakes cost them money. And, you know, you know, the Leonardo DiCaprio meme that, you know, he’s like, Oh yeah, I saw that. I felt that way because through my career, I made those mistakes and I make the company I wish to work for, I lose money on those mistakes, but you know, you’re a junior, right?
You’re a mean, you’re there to learn. Of course. Of course. So when I started Lingware, I started because I want to create a company where me and my co founder can put all of our knowledge and experience at the disposal of our clients, or even the people, sometimes they don’t even necessarily need to pay, but we’re happy with that, so they don’t make those same mistakes.
And I’m not saying we’re perfect. I’m saying that with, you know, it’s tech, right? You need to be constantly learning and evolving and adapting, especially in this AI era, but you’re better off like people who have, have been in the business for 15, 20 years. I’m doing this than trying to learn it out yourself and, and for sure, you know, falling into the oversimplification on how to build good software, like production level work class, good quality software.
Hmm, yeah. That 15 years of education or whatever that amount of times, that’s expensive. That’s expensive. Making mistakes is expensive. So you, you obviously were serving a need in the market and you obviously found the right clients and you found, you know, and you created a correct culture because correct me if I’m wrong on this, cause I don’t want to be off.
You have over 50 developers now on the team. Am I off on that? Yeah, that’s, that’s how does that feel? Do you look around and you’re like, man, where’d all these people come from? That’s how I look sometimes. I’m like, where do all these people come from? Obviously I know where they came from, but it feels like just the other day, it was me and the other co founder employee number one and two, one, two, and back in developer one and front developer two.
And that was it. Like there was no other way around it. We did a lot of coding. Well, I guess that the first, the first time I got that feeling was when someone was hired that I didn’t interview. Yeah, that person obviously went through a whole process, of course, you know, English skill sets, cultural feed, background checks, blah, blah, blah, the whole recruitment and onboarding process.
And I didn’t, I didn’t know his face. I didn’t know him at all. And that, you know, that’s good, right? Because you’re creating processes, you’re scheduling, but it is a little bit scary. It was a little bit scary at that time. They see it happens every week. So I learned to cope with that. And from the 50 percent perspective, you know, that’s a, it’s a really good day to ask it because it’s the theory is a payroll day.
So it’s when the fund is, it’s a stressful day usually. But yeah, we have great developers. We’ve come around to where mature our processes and our recruitment on onboarding. To make sure that we have like basically the biggest filter is culture and you know, soft skills, hard skills can be learned.
Soft skills are a little bit harder. What do you think the secret to the, some of the secrets are to some of this growth that you’ve had or create, whether it’s creating the right culture, the right processes, the light, what, what’s the secret, like what, what are some of the things you felt? Yeah, I think it’s straightforward.
Well, first, obviously you need to work hard. You need to love what you do. That’s obvious. That’s obvious. I guess that are for us, at least. The main point has been actually caring for what we do for the products we’re involved in for our clients. To this day I get I try to be at least once a week in a call with, you know, where we do demos, where we do follow ups.
I didn’t write a single line of code. I don’t take any credit for, for any of the deliverables or anything. It always agrees to the team, but I guess that. You know, our clients feeling like, you know, are the partners, the founder care about us. And actually when we make mistakes, because we make mistakes, we’re not perfect.
Obviously we are the ones to own it and be in the front lines in the trenches, trying to solve them and adjust whatever needs to be adjusted. So that creates a feeling of friendship, even I will say, so some of our clients have become even partners. We’ve been engaged in the joint ventures together, and some have become friends, like actual drink friends, where all the way to, you know, having drinks, having dinner with the founders, wife and family and families getting together.
So. That has been a really rewarding process. Isn’t that wild? Isn’t that wild when you realize that it’s in person? Like that’s how our entire community is. Like when I see some people, I mean, we started this about eight years ago and I a little over eight are going on eight years and another month or two, I think.
And when I see this, or if we finally meet somebody in person or something, we did a meet up the other day in Orange County. And when I was talking to something, I’m like, man, you sound familiar. Like, do I know? And he’s like, yeah. Yeah, I was on your show like six years ago. I’m like, Oh my gosh, that’s, you’re like, wow, it’s amazing.
Yeah. And that’s a good memory too, because yeah, and actually we did this a couple of months ago, we went to, I think, eight cities in the U S Phoenix, Seattle, Vegas, Columbus, Detroit, where we sit together just for a quick lunch, quick dinner, jokes, drinks with our clients, because we really value the level of personal relationship and trust.
We can build and nourish with our clients because we don’t want to be the typical outsourcing partner that, you know, just throw a bunch of people into a problem and get on with it. This mindset obviously puts a roof on how much we can scale, but we’re happy with that. We’re not in the mission of becoming millionaires doing this.
We’re in the mission to empowering founders. And obviously we make money in the way we make enough money. We’re not, but we’re not like. We’re not people who that overspend or highly ambitious people. We do fine. We’re happy with that. And we’re happy with adding value and bringing products to life. Where do you feel LeanWare adds the most value to its clients, to the clients?
Where do you feel that comes from? In creating that, that feeling, that certainty that, you know, if it’s tech related, that’s fine, leave it to them. They will solve it. Assurance, that sense of security basically propels the founders to be able to, you know, go into sales, get into marketing, get into like validation with users, get exposed to the market, and they don’t have to worry about all the nuances and all the, you know, all the things we love, like architecture, dealing with AWS, building the front end, the back end, the mobile application, dealing with the app stores.
All the nuances that are around building an application or web application or mobile application or digital products, for that matter, I think the most value is creating that sense of assurance that, you know, you’re with us, you’re fine. This is great. Well, Carlos, man, this is, this is a lot of fun. I mean, it’s fun having you on.
It’s fun hearing the story. Shout out to your dad for dealing with you. Shout out to him and the whole family. Like, and I love this early story is a lot of fun because I think about what sometimes the parents of those young entrepreneurs got to deal with and other things like that, it’s amazing that we get to do what we do because of many that have paved a path for us before we even, you know, got here.
That being said, man, what’s next? What’s next for you? What’s next for leanwear? I guess that, you know, keep building products, keep building great products and, you know, making, try to make the world a better place through technology and definitely start. You know, leveraging A. I. For our current clients. And you know, we’re have a think tank for that to make sure that we’re leveraging these technologies, these new technologies as they come out, start testing them out and yeah, put them at the disposal of Of the people.
Amazing. And Carlos, if somebody wants to follow up because they have a project or they want to, you know, talk to somebody in your team or they want more, how do they do that? So the easiest way is going to our website, lingward. co. Really simple. Fill out the form or just send an email, info at lingward. co.
I have an OCD. I cannot have any pending notifications. So I usually, I read, I reply really fast. You know, the three minute rule, two minute rule, sorry, that if something takes less than two minutes, do it right away. Yeah, I try to be really responsive when things get to me. So yeah, that’s the easiest way to do it.
Good stuff. And for everybody watching, just so you know, we’ll put that information in the show notes that you can just click on the links and head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with mission matters or engaging in an episode and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe button, hit that follow button.
This is a daily show each and every day. We are bringing you. New entrepreneurs, new content, new thoughts, new inspiration. Hopefully that’s going to help you along in your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe button. And again, Carlos, thank you so much for coming on, man. This was a lot of fun. Thank you.
Thank you for the invitation, Adam.