Alumni Interview: Spartanbits History, How Facebook Contacted Them

Our incredible adventure began almost 15 years ago. Edition I of Startup School took place in 2009, in a garage of some colleagues... There we had the first 14 students with whom we inaugurated our community.

Many of the people from the #OrangeMafiaCommunity sometimes ask us where are the people from the first editions now. That's why we decided to contact one of them to tell us about his career and share with our readers his experience.

In this blog you will be able to read the interview we have done with Luis Santos del Valalumni of the 2nd Edition of the Startup School. Learn about his incredible story below.

How did you get to know Tetuan Valley? And, do you remember what motivated you to participate in the program 15 years ago?

It was a bit of an accident. In the university cafeteria an acquaintance, Luis Sánchezwho was in Edition I with the startup Tink Security, told us about Tetuan Valley. He completely confused us, we did not contemplate developing our own project and we had no idea of setting up a startup. We simply forced ourselves to look for a concept to work on, that's all. We went almost by inertia, like so many things that happen in youth.

We were a bit geeky, we liked to tinker with new technologies, we were very curious and in college we were a bit on our own. Luis thought we were good at what we did, so we got together 3 friends and decided to present something. At the beginning it was a rather childish thing, we had taken it practically as a game because we knew nothing about business.

If you had to describe your experience with Tetuan Valley?

Well, the experience was very spontaneous and youthful, since we were about 21 years old. When we entered the program they started to tell us what it was all about and that's when we realized the magnitude of the matter. It was practically like "Who wants to be a millionaire?", because there was always the idea that you were going to get rich. 

When they tell you this when you are young and impressionable, you take it seriously. Then the reality check starts, which is what I have always appreciated about Tetuan Valley. They taught you things that you were completely unaware of but that were very important, such as aspects of business economics, how to keep accounts, make forecasts, analyze the competition, present to investors, and so on.

And it was almost like a booster club. They forced you to get the project off the ground. At the beginning you have a lot of desire and energy, but as the weeks go by you start to see the difficulties. There everyone supports each other and tells each other their miseries, and for this reason you get the project forward, by force of habit (of forcing you to go every week and feel that pressure). I also made contacts with powerful and very enthusiastic people, some have ended up working in companies recognized by all as Facebook or Google, or setting up startups and selling them for a fortune.

Do you remember what your graduation T-shirt looked like? Do you still have it?

Yes, it was orange and the theme was The Godfather. I don't know if I have it saved somewhere, maybe it's at my parents' house, because it's the typical T-shirt that you say "I'm going to keep it" as a souvenir, like the T-shirt of the first company you create.

What did you learn that you still apply today?

There is one thing that is very obvious in business, I think, but it really struck me when one of the founders and mentors, Bernardo de Tomásspoke to us about the levers of value. That is, what is it that you have that you can activate as an "emergency button" to stand out and not get eaten by the competition. In other words, the levers of value are like the nuts you have to tighten in order to move things forward.

This shocked me, because of my engineer/mathematician mentality; that business is not a science, that you always have others in front of you trying to eat your toast and many times you have to improvise.

Another thing that I still remember and now seems very obvious, although back then it was not so obvious, is that you always have to think about the global market. That is, when you focus on a niche market, your startup has to have the ability to expand and scale. And if it doesn't have the potential to expand... then start a bakery :)

What was the most significant impact the Startup School had on your development as a professional?

In my case, it was the urge to start my own business. My idea, and the one we all had in the race, was to get into a stable company and that's it. But the Startup School turned my plans upside down, because it proposes a very different way of life. It changes the way you see things, it changes your mentality. So the fundamental impact has been the fact that in the last 15 years I have set up several companies, and I have not stopped doing anything other than running businesses on my own.

How has your trajectory evolved since you participated in the Startup School? This is to tell us more about you and what things have changed in your life during these years.

After the Startup School I started making an Android application with my internship partner, a kind of Google Talk at that time.

The official Facebook Chat app at that time was pretty bad, it crashed a lot and you couldn't even send photos. So we came up with the idea of copying the Google Talk interface and linking it with the Facebook Chat protocol, which we saw was open and easy to integrate. We basically added the ability to send expiring pictures, videos and audios and provided an application that worked well and was easy to use. It was a tremendous hit.

We included some advertising banners and a paid version that allowed you to skip the ads. It was a very simplistic business model, but we didn't expect to make a lot of money with it. It got out of hand. People started downloading, downloading, downloading..... And in one month I think we reached 50,000 downloads, which seemed crazy to us.

At this time and in order to be accountable to the Spanish Treasury, the following was born Spartanbits.

In a very short time, that is, in just 2 years, we reached 30 million downloads and we managed to invoice more than 150,000€ per month. In 2012, when we already had a big office and 10 people in the team, we were contacted by the head of Facebook London and told us that they wanted to meet us. They were interested in buying Spartanbits because they were planning to build what is now Facebook Messenger, and they wanted us to be the team in charge of that project.

At that time I did not want to accept this proposal. But when such a big company wants to buy you, you are "screwed". You have to accept. Because if you don't, it's going to eat you. Although in the end the sale of the startup, which was actually an acqui-hire, did not go through.

However, what we had was a good product, but not a good company, and everything started to go a little unevenly among the partners. Not much visibility is given to that, but it is very common for these things to fail because of disagreements between the partners. We decided to freeze the company and leave it there. 

Since that adventure ended I've been doing projects on my own or for third parties as a freelancer, and a year ago I decided to resurrect Spartanbits. Now we offer a full service development of high quality digital product for third parties, from web platforms or apps to digital art and virtual reality experiences. We also do prototyping for startups, with fine and fast design.

What would you say to the new alumni?

I think the best thing to do is to book these 2 months of Startup School and dedicate yourself completely to it so you can get the most out of it. If you don't come out of the program with a prototype and starting to talk to clients, what are you here for? So, clear your schedules!

Once you become part of the community of Tetuan Valleycommunity, you have to be prepared for the unexpected because, as you can see, very interesting things can happen to you! With us, ideas come to life.

In the meantime, we leave you wondering who will be the next protagonist?