A blast from the past - Buenos Aires

6 min read

A blast from the past - Buenos Aires

I hope this blog post isn’t too tangential to our website’s audience. Perhaps it would help explain a little more about how we got started.

I brought this subject up, because FlightFox recently wrote an article about currency trading on the Black Market, on the streets of Buenos Aires. I figured it should be a good time to revisit my origins.

From 2011-2012, I lived in Buenos Aires for 8 months, working on a startup called Playtomic. It was a great opportunity, being able to learn from the pros: seeing first-hand, how my boss worked 14-hours/day, putting intense dedication into the product. Learning how high-level meetings take place, and how products were launched.

Apart from work, Buenos Aires is a great place to live in. If you like latin wine, music and meeting interesting people, it’s the place to be. A lot of Americans make the 10-hour flight down every summer ( October - March ), some deliberately avoiding the cold winters in the north. That always helps with creating a vibrant expat community.

I remember vividly the days, where the team would work out of our office in Areatres, Palermo Soho. It’s one of the first places Javier (senior developer) took me to, straight out of the plane. Oddly enough, a Starbucks sits adjacent to the office, and greets us every day. Post-lunches always ended up here ( who doesn’t want a cup of coffee after lunch ). It was here that I picked up my still horrible Argentine Spanish (Castellano), struggling for the first few weeks trying to order a coffee, plus a bagel with cream.

A blast from the past - Buenos Aires

Over time, I started to appreciate the Latin culture, attending various events and mingling with the folks. Late and long lunches became the norm. Weekends were weekends.

The tech scene is upbeat, with many travellers/hackers coming in and working their magic. Unfortunately they never stayed long enough, to start a potential project together. I even met a part-time HTML5 game developer, but he was too busy working on client projects ( some facebook marketing app he says ).

When i first thought of MarketJS, I never considered starting a team in Buenos Aires, because I couldn’t find a dedicated set of people to tackle hard problems. My ex-boss was still working on his company, and that left me wandering around seeking talent. Human capital, especially in HTML5 was really hard to find.

The other option was to move back up to the States, but that required a significant amount of investment. We all know how that goes for foreign founders. After three attempts, we still have no sign of victory.

What about Latin incubators? I did exactly that, applying to Startup Chile and was accepted into Batch 5. It was a great opportunity (albeit in a different latin country), but it had a few drawbacks. The fund, back then was based on reimbursable expenses. Which meant you had to spend money, to get it back. I was not in a position to do that, but some of my friends from Areatres took the offer.

The doors were closing in. I had a fantastic 8 month stay in Buenos Aires, but it was time to move on. I discovered a whole new life and business in Asia instead. I’ll leave this for another blog post.



Travel Life

About the blog


MarketJS is a company that leverages HTML5 to provide cross-platform solutions to clients. We have been serving clients since 2012.



About MarketJS


MarketJS offers a variety of products and services:

  1. We operate a B2B Marketplace for other companies and brands to license high quality games.
  2. We help companies reskin existing games from our portfolio.
  3. We operate game feed for clients.
  4. We partner with high traffic channels to engage and monetize their users.
  5. We design and develop custom games for brands.
  6. We develop game solutions for taxis, airlines, hospitals, schools and more.
  7. We build playable ads for app and gaming companies.


How to reach us

We can be reached at support at marketjs dot com.

What our clients say about us


"We found MarketJS very easy to work with, and were impressed with how quickly they delivered and responded to our questions."

Rebecca MacDonald, VP of Marketing, Active Navigation

"MarketJS was very easy to work with, and they were always responsive to our questions and requests"

Jeff Robertson, Vice President of Technology & Operations, Carbon8

"MarketJS consistently delivers quality games on time and on budget. They are a great partner."

Scott Sheppard, President and CTO, MoZeus

"We had a great experience working with MarketJS. They were able to move fast on a tight timeline project and deliver exactly what we required with record time and quality. Definitely will be working with them on future projects to help bring our client’s digital needs to life."

Lauren Boutette, Account Director, Lumency

"MarketJS went above and beyond to deliver our projects tailored to our needs. Very swift and quick response and turnaround time. Highly recommended."

Yazan Al Tamimi, Account Manager, Socialize Agency

"Thanks so much for the work your team did. MarketJS was able to work with us to create a custom solution that exceeded our expectations."

Mike Davis, Sales Manager, ComQi

"We are really satisfied with MarketJS. They are quick to help with any troubleshooting and implementation."

Liliya H., Content Specialist, Telecoming

"It was a great pleasure working with MarketJS, they really helped thinking along with our needs. The delivery of the content was always quick and every custom request we had was possible to develop."

Willem van Ditzhuijzen, Business Development, CreativeClicks

"We are extremely happy with the content and service which MarketJS has provided us."

Matt McPherson, Director / Strategic Accounts , Wildtangent

"MarketJS provided excellent support and responded well to ad-hoc requests."

Seah Li-Wei, Project Manager, Spoon Creative

"MarketJS collaborated with our team really well and delivered quality work."

Kevin MacDonald, CTO, TeachTown

"MarketJS has been outstanding; they were patient and very helpful in delivering quality service that matches our custom game requirements."

Marlon Santos, Researcher and Senior Software Engineer, University of Sydney

"We've worked with MarketJS on a number of games now and always find them to be easy and efficient to work with."

Ben Gilbert, Project Manager, Ichi Worldwide

"We are very pleased working with MarketJS, it was far above our expectations in terms of deliverables."

Didier Seevraz, Digital Media Specialist, Lottotech

"MarketJS was fast, responsive and very customer focused. It was a pleasure to work with them."

Bryan Wursten, Senior Digital Editor, Boy Scouts of America


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