‘The real world is awesome’: interview with hobbiespot CEO, Roberto Salcines
It is often said that a crisis is an opportunity to improve, and the crisis that the CEO of hobbiespot, Roberto Salcines, lived is no exception. There are many stories about overcoming a hard situation, but this one goes directly to your heart, as it happened to himself.
Roberto’s life is filled with inspiring experiences that define his character. He is a true entrepreneur, who believes in convinction, passion and perseverance in work as the way to achieve the best part of any dream: to make them real.
His profesional career validates those beliefs from a continuous trajectory of dreaming and creating. He is an IT engineer, alum from the University of Deusto and has an MBA from a prestigious business school. In 2001, he launched his first technology company based in Bilbao, Madrid, and Barcelona (Spain). In 2005, he sold it to an international company.
In 2009, he co-founded a network of Business Angels in Spain, where he was a mentor for entrepreneurs, coordinating investments in technology projects with a fund in venture capital located in Luxembourg. In his personal life, Roberto is passionate about sports, especially running marathons.
Until now, this sounds like the typical tale of a self-made man. But there is usually a setback waiting around the corner. In Roberto’s case, it was a heart attack in 2014. A serious issue, the heart attack required two surgeries and limited him from engaging in his great passion, running. That day, his heart broke in more than one way.
But as we said, this is a story about about overcoming adversity. Roberto could have surrendered, changed his life, and said goodbye to his dreams. But he didn’t. Since he couldn’t run marathons anymore, he looked for another hobby.
“I started searching on the Internet for other things to do in my spare-time, people to hang out with and an easy way to find plans to do,” he explains. “But I couldn’t find a platform that united people and hobbies and provide details for both the participants and events, too - regardless of where I am physically located in the world. I was looking for a simple, sexy and addictive platform to enjoy my free time and I decided to create it myself.”
This was the birth of hobbiespot. A platform - both web and app-based - that allows users to enjoy their free time in a social way, providing a means to follow and connect with individuals that share similar interests around the world, all in one site.
However, there were still a few speed bumps before the full launch of hobbiespot. Initially, Roberto imaged it as a wikipedia of hobbies. He tested the viability of his idea in various places in South America (Mexico and Peru), presenting it to companies like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Chrysler Group…feedback was positive, especially due to the growing market demand for experiential products. But Roberto needed to further define the concept...
“Sketching the vision wasn’t as hard as creating a product that was true to this vision and also looked good for the users. In fact, what we were doing in the beginning was building a prototype, showing it off to our friends, and, with their feedback, returning to the drawing board to make tweaks.”
Hobbiespot launched the first version in October of 2015 on Android (followed by iOS in January of 2016), during the BiME event in Bilbao. Although, in those days, the app was not ready. Roberto was about to discard the idea, but serendipity intervened when a Barcelona-based startup accelerator Conector, that sponsored Glovo and Wallapop, put their eye on hobbiespot.
“I learned that I had to put the focus on the people, not in events,” he reflects.
A new phase of work began, in which he had to have the product rebuilt from the ground up. “It was like a business divorce,” he jokes. To achieve this, he spent eight months between Bilbao and Barcelona, living in a motel when he was not at home. He worked alongside the accelerator BeRepublic, acquiring technology to actualize his vision of hobbiespot, opened an office in Malaga, where he could test a third version of the product in colleges…and this time, the results were much more positive. The project’s transition, from a technological platform to a social network, just felt great.
Comparisons are useless. While initially hobbiespot might seem like another Facebookesque social network, after only a few minutes of use it is obvious that hobbiespot and Facebook are conceptually the opposite. This was the biggest challenge Roberto faced in making his idea real.
“One of the greatest challenges we had here in hobbiespot was the lack of existing references. 90% of digital commerce in Spain is based on models that work elsewhere and are then adapted locally. However, I had nothing to reference when defining my product,” he explains.
However, he had a place that inspired him: Boston. After closing an arrangement with an accelerator of the city, he started a new venture on the other side of the Atlantic, where he would obtain the necessary mass of users to validate his project.
“Boston is a city were thousands of young students from all corners of the planet arrive each year to study in colleges and high schools. It seemed appropriate to launch a product for new people who just landed in a new city and did not know anyone,” he ponders.
As a business model (Robert often jokes about his dream of seeing hobbiespot in NASDAQ) he used successful social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter… but with a fresh kick. Because those products, Facebook especially, are beginning to get old. They no longer have this aura of novelty they had in the past. This, alongside last year’s privacy scandals, has created some pushback from users, especially the younger ones.
“It’s like going out to a dance club and, when you step in with your drink, you see your parents hanging out. So you leave, because I don’t want to see my parents when I hang out with my friends. Especially, when I’m in a moment of my life in which I want to discover my interests and interact with other people.”
Above all, Roberto and hobbiespot’s mission is to reconnect people other others and with their hobbies. The idea is to enjoy life as we did before the arrival of smartphones and do this without rejecting all the advantages of technology to reach more people.
“Real world is awesome. People need to live intensely in their free time, socialize in and enjoy their communities. What better way to do it than with hobbies? Society is forever looking for happiness through entertainment and hobbiespot wants to help accomplish this. Hobbies, when accompanied by others, are much more fulfilling. Some go skiing, some surf, some cook at home, some go to concerts… leisure time frees us from our daily routine. It is the best antidepressant.”
As Roberto would say:
“Less meds and more fun.”
(You can read this story in Spanish here)
