
Scaling a remote team: Lessons on trust, productivity, and firing | Building MarsBased #5
From MarsBased podcast - Life on Mars by MarsBased
January 27, 2026 · 40 min · Season 2 · Episode 110
About this episode
Àlex Rodriguez Bacardit discusses lessons learned from nearly 12 years of operating MarsBased as a remote-first company.
In this fifth episode of Building MarsBased, Àlex Rodriguez Bacardit reflects on nearly 12 years of operating as a remote-first company since 2014. Inspired by the 37signals philosophy, MarsBased was designed as a "hard remote" entity to optimize for productivity over mere presence, a model that forced the founders to defend their professional authority without a physical office during the early years. To maintain human connection in a distributed team, the company established rituals like M...
People in this episode
Host: Àlex Rodriguez Bacardit
Topics covered
- remote team
- trust
- productivity
- company culture
- entrepreneurship
Keywords
- remote work
- team management
- productivity
- company rituals
- trust
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: MarsBased, 37signals
More episodes of MarsBased podcast - Life on Mars
- Why the AI slop problem is getting worse | David Okuniev (Typeform co-founder) · May 26, 2026 · 48 min
- Why I left big tech to build again: The reality of being a founder · May 12, 2026 · 46 min
- 100x faster every 6 months: Linus Ekenstam on the future of AI · April 7, 2026 · 1h 9m
- Is your NDA a rookie mistake? Lessons from 12 years in tech - Building MarsBased #7 · March 17, 2026 · 25 min
- Troy Hunt: 12 years of Have I Been Pwned & the truth about AI scams · March 3, 2026 · 38 min
- Agency Q&A: Recruiting "Champions" and optimizing for answer engines (AEO) Building MarsBased #6 · February 17, 2026 · 33 min
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the MarsBased podcast - Life on Mars podcast page.