On October 22 I hit publish. It wasn't a deploy. It wasn't a product release. It was a song.
It's called "Estar vivo", "to be alive". It's my debut single as MARTO. I started producing it in July, and 4 months later it was out on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube. For anyone.
I've spent years launching things. Products, features, a whole startup. I know what it's like to finish something and send it into the world. I thought this would feel the same.
It didn't.
When you launch a product, you have somewhere to hide. There's cash, there's NPS, there's a number that tells you if it's working or not. If something breaks, you fix it in the next version. The product isn't you.
A song is.
There's no metric to cover you. No roadmap. You upload it and that's it. What's left there is you, your voice, singing something you wrote during your worst week.
I'd never felt that fear shipping software.
10 years putting off something I love
10 years ago I played for real. Guitar, a band, the stage. I was part of Melian in Buenos Aires. Music was woven into my days.
Then everything else came along. GetLavado, the moves, running operations in 2 countries, an exit. Music slowly got pushed into a corner.
I didn't quit it by choice. I quit it for lack of time, which is the polite way of saying I kept putting it off.
10 years is a long time to not do something you love.
This year I got back on the road. Not with a band or a career plan. With a raw idea and the urge to finish it.
"Estar vivo" is about exactly that: falling to the edge, looking your own ghosts in the face and choosing to keep going. Alternative rock, from Lima. A low, restrained voice in the verses that breaks open in a chorus somewhere between melody and scream.
Producing feels like building
I didn't do it alone. Perfloa on production and bass. Matías Sabagh on drums. Matías Cugat on mixing and mastering. I brought the lyrics, the guitar and the vocals. Just like in a startup: the vision is yours, but without a team it doesn't ship.
Producing a song is closer to building a product than I expected. There are a ton of iterations nobody ever hears. Bad takes, versions you throw out, calls like "this one's a bit weak, again". July to October was that: repeating until it stopped sounding like a demo and started sounding like a song.
And then, the hardest part of all: deciding it was done. Letting go. In product they call it shipping. In music it's the same. At some point you stop polishing and you launch, knowing you could keep going forever.
The most honest launch I've done
Nobody asked me for this song. There's no customer waiting for it, no round to close, no market to serve. I made it because not making it was no longer an option.
And that, I think, is the most honest launch I've done. No safety net. No cash behind it. No way to measure whether it "was worth it" other than what I feel when I hear it.
I've spent years telling founders to execute, to finish, to ship. That an idea you never launch doesn't exist.
This time I had to take my own advice.
"Estar vivo" is out. If you want to hear it, here it is:
Also on Apple Music, YouTube and martonfire.vercel.app, where you'll find the full lyrics.
Thank you for being here from the start.
And if you've also got something you've been putting off for years, something you love and won't launch, let this be your push.
Ship it.
