Continuing the presentation of the amazing people that make Marzee Labs a great company, we move forward to presenting another co-founder. This is the time to present Nuno Veloso, the entrepreneur and surfer helping us to create outstanding digital products.
Nuno is a world enthusiast and even though he was born in Portugal, he has lived in many countries and speaks 6 languages. This makes him a very flexible and happy person, always with a positive attitude.
Working as a developer helped him to move around the globe easily and meet incredible people that would, later on, work with him and start two businesses.
Nuno is not just one of Marzee Lab's co-founder, but he is also the co-founder and project lead of Porto i/o, the biggest digital hub in Porto, Portugal with 4 coworking spaces.
We also did an interview with Nuno so you can learn more about the challenges and benefits of running two businesses.
How did you end up being a founder?
Well, it all started when I met Peter in BCN and we ended up working in the same coworking space. We started to collaborate on a few projects together. We were both working with Drupal back then. When we had the need for a front-end guy, I pulled João in, as I did in Demotix. After a few months working almost exclusively together, we ended up creating Marzee Labs. I always liked to be independent and I was just exiting a great project — strength people I was working with. I valid a lot the type of people that Peter and João were and it made me want to start this project with them. It was more about the people than how skilled there were. The name Marzee Labs was first used to the coworking space that Peter and I ended up managing “by accident”. It was at the time a freelancers nest, with no more than half a dozen seats, right in the middle of a marina. Later on, we decided to adopt the same name for our webshop.
What was the most valuable lesson that you have learned as a founder?
Surround yourself with good people that you can trust and that shares some of your values — everything is easier. I am a people’s person. And I value more working with people that are good learners than with people that think they know it all. I’ve been privileged to always be able to learn a lot from my team. And I brought a lot to the mix too. I love to learn as much as I love to teach. I usually apply this mantra to my life: if people bring more than they take, everybody wins.
How do you see your role at Marzee Labs?
I would say a running managing partner. I also generally make sure the team is happy. Finally, nowadays I am more on the product side of the business — anything from product management and design to its development. How do I keep people happy? First — give them the same freedom I would like to have — MZ started as a group of 2 freelancers that wanted to have this freedom and everyone in the team should have it. The second thing is to keep people challenged — whether helping to bring new interesting projects or making them learn a different way of working — being there for the team and helping them to accomplish/unlock their potential.
How is like to run two companies? What is the most challenging thing about it?
I am a co-founder of 2 companies that are from different industries and different stages, so it’s important to be able to balance attention/time but more than that — it’s important to embrace each of them with a different mindset. Each company requires a different kind of attention. I try to keep the same core values to both. Try to apply what I learn from one side to another. This makes things richer. Things from IT world can be applied to the coworking space and the other way around. All in all, it’s fun!
For you, what makes your MZ team special?
The common thing about everyone is that we are all very talented and trustworthy. Surround yourself with good people — personal and professional. Each person brings part of their individuality to the team. Peter brings more structured thinking. João brings diplomacy. Luís brings quite some randomness. Pedro brings weird jokes. Ana brings always good vibes.
What inspires and motivates you?
At work, I am always inspired by the place where I am working at and that includes the people surrounding me. Music is also very important. I almost always work with music. What motivates me is that I always try to be proud of what I do. I don’t like to do things just because. Another thing that I seek to do is to always do things that create added value or bring a positive impact. And in general, as inspiration, it goes from nature, surfing, family and friends. And travelling. I cannot spend much time without travelling. It’s good for the soul. Hearing about projects of people that don’t have access to the same resources we do and still do amazing things.
What is the one weakness you wish to improve?
This is a hard question — there is a lot of things and it is difficult to choose one. I think I’d start with keeping sanity in my email or any communication channel. I am not the “regular IT” user — I am not so much of using IT at daily things. I prefer putting technology to work for a purpose and not use it just because.
What are your plans for the future?
Professionally the most immediate plan is to bring my main 2 business with most of the operational side automated so we can focus on the next big things. I would also like to do a year travelling. Ever since I left university I haven’t been living in the same city for that long, so I feel I won’t be able to hold the wanderlust in me for much longer. All in all, to be honest, I don’t like planning, actually! I like to make things happen.
What is the best way to rest, forget about work and power your mind?
Surf, playing instruments (guitar, drums, percussion), travelling and helping people in general. I have recently gone to an adventure to build a surfboard. I actually liked to build the surfboard — it was like a travel in my mind. Other things I like to do are teaching (e.g. the volunteer work I did in Morocco), reading (so far this year I’ve worked my way through around 20 books) and exploring new cultures by learning new languages and trying new food.
Nuno in the interwebs:
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nunoveloso/
- GitHub: https://github.com/nunoveloso
- Medium: https://medium.com/@nunoveloso
UPCOMING EVENTS
- [Porto] Thursday, September 12, 2019 — Porto Codes The regular Porto Codes event for all developers of Porto community.
- [Webinar] Thursday, September 12, 2019 — Designing a Machine Learning Product by Pegasystems PM Leaders are essential to the success of any goal. Leaders outline the vision and the mission to be done, guide and mentor teams, and demonstrate how to accomplish goals. Leadership is not an option — it’s a necessity. If you choose not to lead, someone else will. If you are unable to lead, someone else will. Finally, if you fail to lead well, someone else will, and you will no longer be the leader. There are four key attributes you can learn here that are essential for leaders in any context.
- [Porto] Saturday, September 14, 2019 — DESIGNATHON — PORTO UX Designathon is an event that aims to bring people together. You are expected, as a group, to deliver an awesome functional prototype following Google’s Design Sprint Kit guidelines. Split the 24 hours in each phase of the design sprint. You have 2 days to have fun!
- [Lisbon] Wednesday, September 18, 2019 — Nerdzão PT #3 — Lisbon is all about tech With the growth of REST, as one of the main means of client / server communication, the model is one of the most used today. However, the emergence of GraphQL comes at a good time, not to end REST, but to execute means and specifications where REST is not capable. In the case of .NET Core, we always map outgoing objects to our queries, with GraphQL, everything gets a little more uncomplicated, and the client passes the domain over the data they want to receive.
- [Lisbon] Thursday, September 19, 2019 — JAMstack Lisbon — Endless summer We invite everyone to come and share Jam stack use cases on a beautiful summer day in sunny Lisbon. For the agenda, Nuno Pereira will be presenting a Bright Pixel use case, and for the rest of the session, we invite anyone willing to show their own.