They say leaders emerge from it, that the market selects the best , that whoever survives has proven something the rest cannot prove from a corporate job. They say it at conferences with PowerPoint decks, in books bought at airports, in LinkedIn posts where someone narrates their fall and resurrection as if they were the two acts of a film that always ends the same way. The entrepreneur is that figure of our contemporary culture we have mythologized for lack of better role models. Along the way, we have sacrificed many nuances.

Meep was not that.

The reality of building something from scratch is that no one warns you about most of it. Nothing prepares you for the decisions you have to make with incomplete information, scarce budgets, pressure from all angles, and the certainty that getting it wrong has real consequences for real people.

The hardest part is not failure in the abstract, but the countless situations for which one cannot prepare. A demo that breaks. A clause that binds you. A market that does not react the way it should. All of it without an instruction manual. The only real protection is not being alone, having someone to think out loud with who does not need you to explain from scratch what any of this is about.

What I take from Meep is not an exit, not metrics, not the packageable lesson of having built something. I take two friends. Real ones, two of the few who pass the filter of having shared something that was not just work but sustained pressure, fierce arguments, nights of doubt, and mornings where you had to find your way back to believing in what you were doing. A friendship built in that context is not an easy friendship. It has cracks, scars from conversations where all of us wanted to be right at the same time. And yet there they are, more solid for all of it.

This does not usually appear in the farewell posts I read. The emotional balance sheet does not fit in a deck, but for me, it is the real one.

Now something else begins. Public transit in the United States has a long way to go. There is a lot of work ahead.

Thank you all, and especially you, Armando and Borja.

Meep fue un éxito personal

Fundar una empresa es la prueba máxima de un individuo. 9 de cada 10 startups quiebran. Dicen que de ahí salen líderes, que el mercado selecciona a los mejores (al mejor), que quien sobrevive ha demostrado algo que los demás no pueden demostrar desde un trabajo corporativo. Lo dicen en conferencias con PowerPoint, en libros que se compran en aeropuertos, en posts de LinkedIn donde alguien narra su caída y su resurrección como si fueran los dos actos de una película que siempre acaba igual. El emprendedor es esa figura de nuestra cultura contemporánea que hemos mitificado por falta de referentes. Por el camino hemos sacrificado muchos matices.

Meep no fue eso.

La realidad de construir algo desde cero es que nadie te avisa de muchas cosas. No hay preaviso para las decisiones que se toman con información incompleta, con dinero escaso, con presión encima, y con la certeza de que equivocarse tiene consecuencias reales para personas reales. Lo más duro no es el fracaso en abstracto, sino la sucesión interminable de situaciones para las que uno no está preparado. Una demo con fallos. Una cláusula que te compromete. Un mercado que no reacciona como debería. Todo sin manual de instrucciones. La única protección real es no estar solo, tener a alguien con quien pensar en voz alta sin tener que explicar de cero de qué va todo esto.

Lo que me llevo de Meep no es un exit, ni métricas, ni el aprendizaje empaquetable de haber construido algo. Me llevo dos amigos. Amigos de verdad, de los pocos que pasan el filtro de haber compartido algo que no era solo trabajo sino presión sostenida, discusiones sin cuartel, noches de duda y mañanas donde había que volver a creer en lo que estábamos haciendo. Una amistad que se forja en ese contexto no es una amistad fácil. Tiene grietas, cicatrices de conversaciones donde los dos queríamos tener razón al mismo tiempo. Y sin embargo ahí está, más sólida por todo eso.

Esto no suele aparecer en los posts de despedidas que leo. El balance emocional no cabe en un deck. Para mí, es el auténtico balance.

Ahora empieza otra cosa. El transporte público en Estados Unidos tiene mucho que mejorar. Hay mucho que hacer.

Gracias a todos y en especial a vosotros, Armando y Borja.

But the 18th-century Spanish Benedictine monk Benito Jerónimo Feijóo would disagree. In the very first essay of his Teatro Crítico Universal—titled Voz del Pueblo (Voice of the People)—Feijóo argued that truth rarely belongs to the multitude. Large groups, he observed, tend to amplify fashion, emotion, and imitation rather than reason. What the crowd believes and what is actually true are often two very different things. Written in 1726, the insight feels uncomfortably relevant three centuries later.

Feijóo opened that essay by invoking Seneca: "Aestimes judicia, non numeres”. The value of opinions, Feijóo explained, must be computed by their weight, not by the number of souls who hold them.

Last week, Block announced it would cut over 4,000 employees, reducing its workforce from more than 10,000 to just under 6,000. CEO Jack Dorsey framed the move as an AI-driven transformation, not a sign of trouble. The market’s response was immediate: Block’s stock surged roughly 24% in after-hours trading.

Thousands of people lost their jobs on a Thursday evening. By Friday morning, investors were celebrating. The stock price reflected collective belief—but belief about what, exactly? That the company will build better products? That AI can replace 4,000 people without consequence? Or simply that costs are going down?

Stock prices tell us what the crowd feels. Not what is true.

Before accepting the market’s verdict, it’s worth asking a basic question: what makes a company valuable in the first place? The answer isn’t narrative. It isn’t market momentum. Companies create lasting value through their products, their services, their ability to innovate, and the trust they build with customers over time. A company’s real worth comes from delivering something useful that people repeatedly choose—not from temporary margin improvements that look good on a quarterly earnings call.

So the real question about Block isn’t whether cutting 40% of staff reduces costs. Of course it does. The question is whether it improves the product. Or weakens it.

Do markets reward layoffs anyway?

The mechanics aren’t mysterious. Markets respond to short-term signals, and layoffs send several that investors love: lower operating costs, higher expected margins, faster automation, and an “AI-first” narrative that suggests future growth. Block checked every box. Analysts modeled lower expenses. Investors projected higher earnings. The AI story provided a compelling growth thesis.

But none of this proves the company will create more value. It proves investors believe it will. And if Feijóo taught us anything, it’s that popular consensus deserves scrutiny, not blind trust.

Here’s where things get structurally interesting. Many CEOs are compensated through stock options, performance stock units, and equity-based bonuses. These instruments are directly tied to share price. So when layoffs trigger a stock surge, executives can personally benefit—sometimes enormously—regardless of whether the long-term product improves or deteriorates.

In Block’s case, Jack Dorsey holds roughly 8% of the company’s outstanding shares—making him the largest individual shareholder. When the stock surged 24% overnight, the value of that stake jumped by hundreds of millions of dollars. In a single evening.

This creates a classic principal–agent problem. If the market rewards workforce reductions today, leaders have a rational incentive to cut—even if doing so quietly hollows out the company’s capacity to innovate tomorrow. The incentive structure doesn’t reward building. It rewards the appearance of efficiency.

Markets react in milliseconds. Product quality evolves over months and years. This mismatch matters—and it’s one of the least discussed distortions in how we price companies.

When Block’s stock surged 24% overnight, it wasn’t because anyone had tested whether AI agents could handle the workload of 4,000 people. No customer had reported a better experience. No product had shipped faster. The price moved on a story—a projection of what might happen, not evidence of what already did. This is the fundamental asymmetry: bad news about costs is instantly measurable, but bad news about quality is slow, quiet, and often invisible until it’s too late.

Will AI agents truly replace the expertise of 4,000 employees? Will customer support degrade? Will engineering velocity slow? Will innovation stall as institutional knowledge walks out the door? These questions may take years to answer. Yet the market has already priced in success. The stock delivered its verdict before the experiment even began.

Short-Term Euphoria vs. Long-Term Reality

Markets operate on quarterly expectations, narratives, and momentum. Companies build value through product adoption, user satisfaction, and sustained innovation. These are fundamentally different time horizons.

Block’s own stock history tells this story well. The company hit its all-time high of $289 per share in August 2021—riding pandemic-era digital payments adoption, the meme-stock frenzy, near-zero interest rates, and the announcement of a $29 billion acquisition of Afterpay. Gross profit was growing 62% year-over-year. The crowd was euphoric. Today, even after the 24% post-layoff surge, the stock trades around $63—roughly 78% below that peak. The pandemic narrative faded. The Afterpay deal looks expensive in hindsight. Growth decelerated. What the market celebrated in 2021 it spent the next four years correcting.

Now a new narrative has arrived: AI transformation. And the crowd is euphoric again.

History offers cautionary tales beyond Block itself. Klarna’s CEO celebrated AI-driven workforce reductions, only to later rehire workers when the technology couldn’t deliver what was promised. Companies that pursued aggressive cost-cutting often saw short-term stock gains followed by long-term stagnation. Efficiency alone rarely builds great companies.

A Moment Worth Reflecting On

We don’t yet know whether replacing 4,000 workers with AI will make Block stronger or simply leaner and more fragile. That story will take years to unfold.

But the market’s reaction already reveals something worth examining: investors celebrated the reduction of people before seeing whether the company creates more value as a result.

The question is not whether AI will transform companies, it clearly will. The question is whether the market is rewarding transformation or simply celebrating layoffs.

As Feijóo warned three centuries ago, the crowd’s enthusiasm is not always a reliable guide to truth. Sometimes it’s just noise dressed up as wisdom.

Originally published on my LinkedIn on September 2025.

Eight years ago, I set out to solve what seemed like a simple problem: help people move around cities better. The vision was clear: integrate all modes of transport into one seamless platform, reduce car dependency, and nudge cities toward sustainability. We called it Meep and we envisioned what we understand now as an AI agent for our daily mobility needs. What I didn’t anticipate was that this noble mission would teach me one of the most profound lessons about orchestrating complex ecosystems: sometimes the smallest adjustments create the biggest transformations.

The Deceptively Simple Vision of Mobility

The Mobility as a Service idea behind Meep, at its core, is about orchestration. The idea in the beginning was improving all kinds of city trips. We were convinced that the “familiarized” commutes were inefficient—people stuck in routines, taking the same route every day without considering better alternatives or real-time information about the state of the service. Imagine having one app that shows you every option: bus, metro, bike-share, e-scooter, taxi, with real-time information, seamless booking, and unified payment. Not only frictionless movement, but also a tool that books for you in advance, modifies your journey when there’s an unexpected delay, or changes modes in case of disruptions.

The concept sounds straightforward, almost obvious. But as we discovered at Meep while deploying our software across cities, the execution is anything but simple. What looks like a software challenge is actually an ecosystem orchestration problem of staggering complexity.

The Web We Had to Untangle

Deploying a MaaS platform means navigating a maze of stakeholders, each with their own priorities, legacy systems, and regulatory constraints. Picture this: public transit agencies focused on cost optimization within tight city budgets while serving passenger needs, private operators balancing compliance requirements with opportunities for operational efficiency and competitive advantage, city officials seeking solutions that deliver visible community benefits within political cycles, and payment providers managing data security and regulatory compliance in highly controlled environments.

Then add the technical realities: most players lack standardized protocols or use outdated versions because upgrading requires investment and specialized talent they often don’t have in-house. Each transport operator becomes an API battle, with obsolete technology in public administration and legacy-minded teams demanding old-school development approaches. Tech teams invariably prioritize immediate fires and incidents over long-term connectivity improvements, making it nearly impossible to align development roadmaps across organizations with fundamentally different objectives. The complexity isn’t just technical—it requires a completely different mindset, less economically driven and more creatively focused on finding unconventional solutions.

After our first few deployments, I realized we weren’t just building software. We were conducting a symphony where half the musicians spoke different languages and the other half were reading from different sheet music.

The Trim tab Effect: How Small Adjustments Steer Massive Systems

It was during our deployment in Malta, working with Malta Public Transport, that I first encountered Buckminster Fuller’s concept of the trim tab, and everything clicked. Fuller described how massive ships are steered not by turning the main rudder directly (that would require enormous force) but by adjusting a tiny flap called a trim tab on the rudder’s edge. This small movement shifts the water pressure, which moves the rudder, which turns the ship. The tiniest adjustment at the right point can redirect an entire vessel.

This became my mental model for Meep deployment. Mobility ecosystems, and cities by extension, are like massive ships: too large and complex to change through brute force. But if you can identify the trim tabs (those small leverage points where minimal intervention creates maximum impact) you can guide the entire system toward transformation.

Our deployment process evolved into a careful choreography of finding these trim tabs. We’d start with deep research, mapping not just the technical landscape but the political and economic incentives of each player. We’d test the public transport ourselves, try ride-hailing services, check fares across different modes, identify corner cases in validation systems, and follow actual daily commute routines. We’d talk to passengers waiting at bus stops, understand the incentives driving vendors with active contracts, and map how each transport mode really worked in practice.

Once we gathered all this information and truly understood the system, we realized that sometimes minor changes could make a huge impact: real-time information that was already available but not shared, route deviation notifications that could prevent passenger frustration, different validation systems that could reduce boarding times, cross-selling offers between two complementary modes, new payment options that eliminated friction, or even a different fare structure that could increase ridership. When we had this diagnosis, we’d pitch the specific idea to the player who could make that change possible and start building from there. This wasn’t about grand contracts or system overhauls—it was about identifying which small lever, when pulled, would create the momentum for everything else to follow.

The technology phase involved building integration layers that could speak to legacy systems while preparing for future standards. But the real work happened during operations: running pilots, gathering feedback, and making hundreds of micro-adjustments based on real-world usage. Each deployment taught us that transformation happens not through grand gestures but through persistent, strategic nudges at the right pressure points.

Finding the Right Pressure Points

In practice, these trim tabs revealed themselves in unexpected places. In Malta, implementing real-time ETA for buses and notifications about route deviations became the key to user engagement, dramatically increasing the Net Promoter Score of the entire service. This wasn’t just about technology—it was about rebuilding trust between passengers and public transport.

In Zaragoza, the trim tab was creating a connection between bus, tram, and taxi for the first time in the city’s history. This single integration unlocked multimodal thinking among residents and operators alike, changing how people perceived urban mobility from separate services to one cohesive system.

In Sevilla, success came from connecting kick-scooter users with the metro system through a unified payment method—our NFC Meep virtual card that enabled cross-benefits between both services. Users could seamlessly transition from metro to scooter with integrated pricing and rewards, creating new mobility patterns that neither operator could achieve alone.

In Madrid, the trim tab was connecting the entire ecosystem into a single backend for the operator, allowing them to see their service as part of a larger mobility picture rather than an isolated transport mode. This backend integration became the foundation for data-driven decisions that improved the entire network’s performance.

Orchestration, Not Control

These experiences taught me that leading ecosystem transformation is fundamentally different from traditional management. You can’t control all the variables, mandate all the changes, or force all the adoptions. Instead, you must identify where small, strategic interventions can create cascading positive effects. We saw firsthand that if you can showcase how these suggested small changes make a real impact for your client, they become much more willing to commit to further innovation improvements with your software. Success with one trim tab builds confidence for the next, creating a momentum that traditional big-bang approaches rarely achieve.

Great ecosystem orchestrators don’t push harder: they push smarter. They find the pressure points where minimal effort yields maximum alignment. They understand that in complex systems, indirect influence often works better than direct force.

This insight transformed how we approached every deployment. Instead of trying to integrate everyone at once, we focused on finding the right first domino. Instead of building every feature immediately, we identified which capabilities would create the most momentum for others to follow. This approach also helped us become more cost-efficient and competitive against larger integrators with bigger budgets who often opted for brute-force approaches. While they would try to overwhelm the system with resources, we could achieve better results by finding the right leverage points and working with the ecosystem’s natural dynamics rather than against them.

Beyond Mobility: The Universal Application

The trim tab principle extends far beyond mobility into any complex problem-solving scenario. In organizational transformation, the trim tab might be changing one key performance metric that realigns everyone’s incentives. In digital transformation, it could be implementing one process that demonstrates value and builds confidence for larger changes. When facing complex problems—whether they’re technical, organizational, or systemic—the instinct is often to attack them head-on with comprehensive solutions. But complex problems rarely yield to direct assault.

Large, disruptive moves often trigger immune responses in established systems. But smaller, strategic adjustments (better communication protocols, new incentive structures, successful pilot programs) can ripple through organizations in ways that massive reorganizations cannot. Consider how Seed Savers Exchange didn’t try to revolutionize agriculture overnight—they started in 1975 with just thirty gardeners sharing seeds on a six-page list. This small trim tab of connecting passionate gardeners allowed them to build a network that eventually grew to over 13,000 members worldwide, preserving more than 20,000 endangered seed varieties and fundamentally changing how we think about agricultural biodiversity.

Whether you’re orchestrating a mobility ecosystem, leading a corporate transformation, or building a startup, the principle remains: identify the leverage points where small changes create system-wide shifts. Complex problems require patient, strategic intervention at the right pressure points rather than brute force applied to the entire system.

The Enduring Lesson from Eight Years of Building Meep

Working in mobility as a service showed me that meaningful transformation is less about heroic, sweeping reforms and more about strategic patience: knowing where to apply pressure and when to wait for the system to respond. It’s often frustrating work. Progress can seem invisible for months, then suddenly accelerate as multiple trim tabs align.

But when it works (when you see happier passengers, less time spent waiting for the bus, more efficient trips, better NPS overall, and collaboration among competitors) the impact is profound. We’ve facilitated over 88 million qualified interactions across our platforms, connecting more than 175 operators, and displacing countless private car trips.

The work taught me humility about the complexity of systemic change, but also confidence in the power of strategic intervention. Our original mission (improving quality of life in cities through smarter, more sustainable mobility) remains as relevant as ever. But the path to achieving it has taught me something unexpected: the most effective way to orchestrate complex ecosystems is not through force or grand vision alone, but through identifying and adjusting the small leverage points that guide larger transformations.

In the end, building Meep taught me that the best way to move cities forward is not to force the wheel, but to adjust the trim tabs. The smallest changes, applied at the right pressure points, can redirect entire systems toward a better future.

In the bustling streets of Madrid six years ago, in September 2017, Meep was born. The founders, myself and three others, Armando Heras Ruiz, César, and Borja Fernández Acero Bascones, were a small but determined group with a singular mission: to reshape how we move around our cities. As we hit the six-year mark since opening our doors, I find myself reflecting on the remarkable journey that brought us to where we are today.

Our vision emerged from a simple yet profound goal: to help cities manage their growing transportation needs for a growing population while also being kinder to the planet. This meant finding a way to facilitate a shift from personal cars to more eco-friendly modes of transport. We believed that by providing seamless tools for planning, booking, and paying for a connected network of multimodal transportation, we could encourage city dwellers to embrace alternative options instead of relying only on their private vehicles, which heavily contribute to global pollution.

As I shared our mission with friends and family, I encountered a recurring question, “Isn’t Google already doing that?” The simple answer was no, but the question was a challenge that fueled our determination. We understood that while tech giants existed, our dedication to sustainable mobility and the intricacies in our product set us apart. Our aim wasn’t just competition - it was and is transformation. We wanted to develop technology that alleviated the burden of daily commuting and challenged the dominance of cars.

Starting from scratch was both exciting and intimidating. Together, we built everything from the ground up: a business plan that matched our vision, a strong backend system, a journey planner and even the basic nuts and bolts of our operation like finding office space and managing finances.

Whether you are an entrepreneur, a mobility enthusiast or climate-conscious, join me as I recount our successes and stumbling blocks over the past six years, highlighting the most important lessons that one only learns by doing. This reflection is not just a description of our history - it’s an open invitation to those looking to introduce something new in a traditional setting and turn ideas into tangible change.

Early Days: a name that says it all plus initial funding

Once we greenlit the company, we needed to choose a name that was simple, relevant and memorable. Meep, inspired by the distinctive sound of the cartoon Road Runner, epitomized the dynamism we envisioned for city transport. ComicVine tells us that while Road Runner appears to be an ordinary bird, he has superspeed, he never tires and is always one step ahead of Coyote. His characteristics and signature sound, Meep Meep, represented the movement we envisioned for city transport and our company. With the creative collaboration of Muak Studio, a design studio, we translated this vision into our emblematic logo which is synonymous with innovation and progress.

Our first pivotal milestone was an initial investment of 500,000 which gave us the fuel to create the foundations of the company. We built the first iteration of the product and initiated a live testing phase, always in pursuit of an exceptional user experience. Through this process, we learned that navigating the balance between software development cycles and the evolving demands of our potential clients proved to be a formidable challenge. Yet, in the crucible of this challenge, we forged a deeper understanding of how to align technology with real-world needs, equipping us with insights crucial to creating impactful solutions used by consumers. Armed with this knowledge, we went on to raise more capital, not just pitching financial prospects, but working to paint a picture of a worthwhile future where urban mobility would become a multimodal transport ecosystem.

Lessons learned: global contracts and a global pandemic

Next up for Meep was securing our first major contract - developing the Tallinja app for the country of Malta. Our challenge was to build the principal app for transportation on the island that all bus and ferry riders used to get around. To do so, we had to convert legacy tech and disparate data into a modern, data-driven app complete with real-time information. At the same time, we debuted our Meep-branded app in Málaga in the south of Spain, which would be the first publicly endorsed MaaS project in the country, aggregating not only bus and metro, but also bikes, taxis and kick scooters.

These simultaneous projects not only demanded the expansion of our team and additional funding but also brought about key tenants to our technology - the need for agile and turnkey solutions that were flexible enough to accommodate the nuances of each city and country where we deployed. We learned through this work that our journey had to be about not only envisioning and creating the tools for change, but actively working to encourage a shift in behavior with the help of our partners.

In addition to the big-picture lessons learned from Malta and Málaga, we also learned practical lessons. An important example was that meticulous planning does not eliminate unforeseen events and therefore hiccups and potential delays. We were very much reminded of the truth articulated so well by Scott Belsky, “rule of thumb for UX: more options, more problems.” We learned that an intuitive and seamless user experience had to be a guiding principle in our design philosophy that balanced transportation choice with simplicity.

As we built momentum, won new contracts, refined our technology and even moved into a new office for our growing team, we, like the rest of the world, were shocked by the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic generated new demands on transportation, including space, cleanliness and accommodating changes in mobility routines. We found that the need for reliable, sustainable public transport as well as more access to lesser-used modes like bicycles and scooters became supremely important, which allowed us to stay true to our original mission and core values. At the same time, we also recognized the value of our stellar team and weathered the storm together without letting anyone go - a testament to our shared dedication.

The impact

Meep emerged slightly scratched from the pandemic but stronger and more resolute than ever with a robust product and success stories under our belt in the new normal. New investors from around the globe, recognizing our potential and what we had set out to accomplish, joined our mission. These included groups from places like Mexico, Cyprus, and Sevilla, as well as expansive global companies like Alsa, the largest bus operator in Southern Europe, and Aena, one of the major airport operators worldwide. By partnering with these global entities, we were able to bring Mobility as a Service (MaaS) applications and entirely new mobility ecosystems to passengers around the world, making sure our product fit their needs. These products are transforming the way passengers interact with transportation, bringing the experience of planning, booking and paying together in a single platform and pushing our team to be more creative as we evolve and scale our technology. Experiencing this transformative impact directly has reaffirmed the importance of our mission and shown us that it is possible to bring a vision to life. In doing so, Meep has become a pivotal voice in the MaaS discourse not only in Europe, but in other parts of the world.

In addition to propelling the understanding and adoption of MaaS around the world, we have also been able to grow our team. From the original four founding members, the Meep team now has over 40 people, in different corners of the world. The intricacies of rapid expansion also provided invaluable lessons, especially on the significance of team dynamics and unity. At the same time, it has revealed how a dedicated group can evolve and cultivate its unique culture and understanding amidst challenges. Today, Meep stands as a more mature entity, equipped with established processes and specialized teams. Our journey has taught us how to navigate challenging contracts and deploy software that brings transformation to urban landscapes. To each and every individual who has contributed their passion and dedication to our journey, both in the past and present, we extend our heartfelt gratitude. The efforts of those who are now part of Meep, as well as the indelible mark left by those who have gone on to new projects, have shaped our company’s identity and moved us forward.

As we look back on the past six years, we are filled with pride on all we have accomplished together so far, and all that we hope to accomplish on the path ahead. With lessons learned, a united team, and a product that empowers change, we’re poised to build better cities, pioneer sustainable mobility, and continue shaping a future where transportation is not just a necessity, but a force for positive transformation.

#enterpreneurship #enterpreneursjourney #teamwork #innovation #reflection

Originally publish on LinkedIn in September 2023