Wences Garcia

On Sunday, Adam Robinson got on a private jet in Austin with his wife, their 4-year-old, their 2-year-old and their nanny for a trip to the Bahamas. None of them made it home. He left Wall Street to start a company and got stuck at the same revenue for four years before he finally cracked it. What came after was a $22M-a-year business, built without a dime from investors. The idea behind it sounds like a magic trick. You visit an online store, poke around, never type in your email, and leave. His software could still figure out who you were, so the store could email you anyway. I interviewed Adam for my podcast in January 2025. He gave me two and a half hours, the longest interview he'd done up to that point, and he answered every single thing I asked. He told me how much he paid himself and what he spent buying the Retention.com domain, then walked me through his churn problem and how he planned to fix it. He talked about his own money the way most people talk about what they had for lunch. His first company was an email marketing tool called Robly. Before he'd even built it, he scraped the web for small businesses using Constant Contact and started reaching out to see who'd switch. That got Robly to about $3M a year, and then it just sat there. Four years is a long time to wake up to the same number. The magic trick came out of that stuck stretch. Back in November 2019 he launched it inside Robly under the name GetEmails. He sold Robly to private equity, eventually renamed the new product Retention.com, and four years after launch it was doing around $22M a year at 87% gross margins with a remarkably small team. Then he did it again. RB2B pointed the same idea at business websites, so a company could see which real person from which company just looked at its pricing page. It went from zero to $4M a year in 280 days and crossed $9M this spring, and he paid for all of it out of Retention.com's profits. LinkedIn is how he got there. He went from almost no following to over 100K by posting his actual P&L and writing honestly about the years he spent stuck. A lot of founders without investors behind them learned what normal looks like from those posts, because hardly anyone else at his level would show them. The photo going around is the one I can't stop looking at. Adam in their kitchen with his arms wrapped around a pregnant Helen, both of them laughing. Their families said Emma and Charlie were the light of their lives. Nine people were on that plane. Along with Adam, Helen Sharp, Emma and Charlie, there was their nanny Anita Maria Cetina, their friends Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr, and the pilots, Jeff Gregory and Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras. Every one of them leaves behind people who are hurting tonight. Adam spent four years stuck at $3M and the rest of his career showing the next founder stuck there exactly how he got out. I'm grateful I got 146 minutes of him on tape. Rest in peace, Adam, Helen, Emma and Charlie.

Had a spectacular podcast recording with @wencesg about his path in #IT, #SEO and about what @mktgoo does best; bridging the gap between developers, providers and agencies to make their #WordPress site a success! Subscribe to know when it's published! youtube.com/playlist?list=PL…

Same here.

Really good week * Signed a new agreement with a big distributor to promote mDI among their customer base * Signed one-off project to analyze a TLD zone file in the five figures range * Signed the first 12month agreement 18K€ ACV * Lots of conversations going on, need to be cautious but there is finally a vibe we are onto something * 12 months ago, validation meant 'this is interesting, I might use it.' Today, in 2025, validation means signed agreements and revenue worth tens of thousands €€ * HOWEVER, we are far from PMF, we have to validate: recurrency + profitability + scale (easier said than done) * Quite focused on talent related initiatives, Marketing process progressing nicely and also options to sum muscle on the Sales side of things * Prepping for Cloudfest conference in a few days, we must nail it * Opening mDI access next week + website overhaul with brand refresh and new CORE FOCUS: from SEO to Website Intelligence * I was close to burn out a couple of weeks ago, it has been a game changer to i) take some time off ii) identify the things that I need to push myself iii) delegate others and iv) letting go the rest * I enjoyed working this week so much * Feels good having a crazy weekend in Madrid but also feels amazing coming back home, eating well, sleeping better and getting back to routine * Family is coming over the weekend and I'm planning to disconnect with some gardening, paella & vermú

The story of @glovo is absolutely insane. This is a company that: 💰Sold ⅓ for €100K 🍟 Was saved by a single deal with Mcdonald's 🏦 Almost ran out of money three times 💵 Was burning $1M per day 🛵 Sold to DelveryHero for $2.2BN What an unbelievable story and my 7 key takeaways with @oscarpierremi 👇

Me he calentado -> open.substack.com/pub/javisa…