a quick intro about me

I'm Nacho Lucea, an investor, entrepreneur, speaker, and writer. Throughout my career, I have founded, co-founded, and advised over half a dozen businesses in three different countries. But my journey was far from easy, far from immediate...

I grew up in Madrid and graduated from San Pablo CEU University with a degree in law. At that time, I worked at a law firm because that was what I was supposed to do. As I finished my degree, I did a Master's in Intellectual Property. It didn't take long for me to realize what I wanted to do: Be myself and take control of my life. So one day, I woke up and quit my job.

as i left, i had no idea what would happen or what path i would take. only two things were clear to me: i wasn't meant to work for others, and i had to find a way to live my life on my own terms.

Having this idea in mind, and despite many people trying to convince me otherwise, I ended up in the United States, launching Mashboxx, the predecessor to Spotify. It was the world's first streaming service.

Today, this idea is widely accepted, but at the time, it represented a paradigm shift: moving from ownership to usage. Think about Uber or Airbnb. Sadly, it didn't work out... By a narrow margin.

There are many similarities between success and failure, as you'll see in my content.

The experience eventually led me to London, where I cofounded the online advertising company Zugo with a group of twenty-somethings. After months of hard work, we reached 30M daily users, becoming a multinational company.

This time, it went very well, and I was able to experience what success is. I felt if for the first time in my life.

Nevertheless, I also understood what my friend Steve once told me:

You will embrace a project. You will devote three or four years to it until it dies, is bought, or fails. You'll go home and, sooner or later, find another project. The most important thing you need to be an entrepreneur is having good hobbies, so that you know how to wait.

After that chapter, I invested in and advised other startups such as Loving Life Today, a holistic rehabilitation clinic in Tampa, CopyPress, and beWanted, which facilitates employment among young people. However, I also learned that freedom and hobbies don't mean anything if I don't have time to pursue them.

In the middle of my time at beWanted, the pandemic hit, reminding me that time is both scarce and finite, but also relative.

After the clocks stopped in March 2020, I decided that now was the time to begin a project that had been on my mind for several months, but that required calm and stillness. Thus was born Think Like a Villain and Act Like a Hero, the book that introduced me as a writer.