About Me

I'm Oliver Martínez Haro (Málaga, Spain, born June 3, 2004). I don't like to label myself or others, but if I had to define myself to the world, it would be as an entrepreneur. Currently, I fully manage the Spanish online remote control store Octopus Control and the 1v1 battle-based ranking website, RANKMAKER. I don't do any of this for money, and certainly not for fame. I'm not particularly materialistic, nor do I do it for any silly reason like "making the world a better place." I simply want one thing: freedom. For myself and for my loved ones.

Beginnings

Since I was a child, I've always hated being forced to do things, especially studying. I detest having to learn things by force, but above all, having to be cooped up in a place for five or six hours. In my early primary school years, when I was barely aware of what I was doing, my grades were relatively good, better than average. I'd say it took me several years to know what a failing grade was. Then I discovered that I didn't need to study to pass; paying a little attention was enough. I maintained this until the end of my studies. However, "paying a little attention was enough" came and went. Not because it wasn't enough, but because many times I didn't even pay attention, and that cost me several repeated years.

I never had a special interest in anything. I liked football, like any kid at the time: I collected stickers, played FIFA, wanted to be a footballer. But what caught my attention the most, for some reason, wasn't scoring goals or lifting trophies. I was fascinated by the image of getting off the team bus in the official tracksuit, all identical, and arriving at the stadium with headphones on, focused for the match. I only played one season on a team, probably the worst in the league, and I was one of the worst on the team. We didn't win a single match. I only played in home games because my parents didn't want to take me to away games. I scored two or three goals all season, but I celebrated them as if they were the 116th minute goal in a World Cup final.

My first interest in something different came at 12 or 13, when I received a PS Vita with the game LEGO Batman for Christmas. I became obsessed with DC and LEGO. Then I moved on to Marvel, then Star Wars, and so I've been changing obsessions until today, sometimes returning to previous ones, other times finding new ones.

Around that time, I also got very hooked on Minecraft. That's where I launched what could be considered my first pseudo-project: a Minecraft YouTube channel. It all started because a classmate told me that having a channel paid €30 a month. I just believed it. By the time I uploaded the first video, I already knew it wasn't true, that you needed a lot of views. But yes, I launched it partly thinking about making money. It was a proto-project, at 13 years old, nothing serious.

I didn't have much success. My most viewed video was about how to make the End portal, with about a thousand views. It seemed ultra-viral to me. Over time, I uploaded other game videos, with no clear objective and barely any editing. Most were raw, without cuts. The channel ended lamentably: I asked Google Assistant "when is my birthday," I didn't have the date set, I entered it, and my account was closed for being underage. I tried to put another date, but they asked for my ID, and that's where it died. I had about 100 YouTube subscribers. Then I had other Star Wars or FIFA channels, but they didn't last more than a couple of months.

Kenobismo

My entrepreneurial career began years later, in 2020. In a new obsession with Star Wars, I opened an Instagram account: Kenobismo. At first, I also uploaded some Marvel content, but it was only two or three posts. Before that, I had accounts about Real Madrid or Málaga, but without taking them seriously. With Kenobismo, I was consistent. I used the mass-following technique to gain followers. It worked for me. I got thousands of followers and good metrics. But I got overwhelmed and left it for a while.

In 2022, I saw a key short: it talked about an app to mine Bitcoin. I had already been a little interested in crypto, but never seriously. After downloading it and starting to mine, a new obsession was born: cryptocurrencies. I watched videos, charts, everything. A classmate asked me what I would do when I turned 18. I thought for a few seconds and replied: create an account on Binance. And that's what I did, although in the end, I bought cryptos at an ATM and put them in a wallet. No exchanges.

All this about cryptocurrencies eventually led me to discover more about investing in general, personal finance, and most importantly: entrepreneurship.

This led me back to Kenobismo. I had a good audience; I could take it more seriously and make money. And that's what I did. I resumed the Instagram account with force: consistency, quality, and a clear objective. I also started uploading short videos that I re-uploaded to TikTok and YouTube (I used an artificial voice, not my own). So there, officially, I decided to become an entrepreneur (although the project had already started before).

Instagram and other networks started to grow quite well. After a while, TikTok even surpassed Instagram, and I had excellent months, with figures of up to 50 million views. Monetization, at least on TikTok, was just around the corner. And it was. I was able to apply for it, although if I remember correctly, I had to wait one or two months to receive my first payment. To collect it, I opened my first bank account with Revolut. That month, the views were not the best, but I earned about €40-50, which felt like a fortune. The next month I earned about €20. And the next, I got a shadowban. My videos went from a minimum of 10,000 views (with an average of 50,000) to all falling below a thousand. I tried to keep uploading content in case it got fixed, but it never did.

In response to this, I stopped making short videos on Kenobismo and started uploading to a new series of accounts dedicated to cinema in general (it was my obsession at the time), now with my real voice. I uploaded exactly 100 videos. I did it as a secondary thing; I didn't generate income with that project. After the 100 videos, I returned to Kenobismo. I unified the accounts. Now I would only upload short videos of other movies besides Star Wars. No other type of content. Just short videos. I was like that for a few weeks. The TikTok shadowban continued. I decided something more had to be done. I would expand to long videos on YouTube. I started preparing everything for it.

But just the day before recording the first Kenobismo video, I saw another key video for my career: The Wild Project #219 ft Jordi Maquiavello. A podcast episode talking about cinema for almost five hours. I had never watched such a long podcast from beginning to end. This was the first. It was very good. While watching it, I came to a harsh realization: I have no idea about cinema. I can't continue with Kenobismo.

EliteBara

Right the day after that realization, I had an idea. I had been uploading content about capybaras for a while, just funny videos and photos, on an Instagram account in case I ever wanted to sell something related to capybaras and thus already have an audience. So that was it: a capybara merchandise store.

It was time to stop content creation. I hated recording my voice; I had to make dozens of attempts for ten-second videos. Plus, I had been trying to make money with content since I was 13 and hadn't generated even €100. Maybe it wasn't for me.

After a few weeks of learning just enough, designing t-shirts, and configuring Shopify, on July 13, 2023, EliteBara was born, my first project that wasn't about creating content.

To promote the brand, I launched a giveaway in collaboration with the capybara account I had created earlier. It was a failure: only two or three people participated. A guy from Guatemala or Costa Rica won, and his t-shirt was held up in customs. As far as I know, he never received it.

The rest of the project was like the giveaway: bad. I managed only one sale from which I barely made a euro. The t-shirts I had ordered were of pathetic quality that didn't justify the price I needed to set to not lose money. In short: print on demand without stock is garbage, at least in my case.

I started the project with a paltry €50, innocently thinking it would be more than enough. The first and only sale I couldn't even send immediately: I had to wait for Shopify to deposit the money so I could pay the supplier because I didn't have any money. Also, I feared there would be a return, something quite likely with a clothing store, and of such poor quality. With my very limited cash flow, that could have been a serious problem. So the most sensible thing was to shut everything down after a couple of months. The only positive thing, which is not insignificant, was everything I learned.

Shortly after that, I uploaded three videos to Kenobismo, but it wasn't the same anymore. I wasn't interested. I found myself in a long, somewhat empty period, without a project to dedicate myself to. I wasn't doing nothing: I was still studying. At that time, I was in a Vocational Training program in Administrative Management, but obviously, I wasn't interested at all.

Octopus Control

Months passed, and I still hadn't found a project. I wasn't doing anything special to find it; I was simply waiting for an idea to come to mind. One day I had an idea: buy new products wholesale and sell them on Wallapop. It remained just that: an idea.

Summer 2024 was approaching. I had already spent two summers completely focused on two projects: in 2021 with Kenobismo and in 2022 with EliteBara. I needed something. I wasn't going to spend the summer doing nothing.

So I revisited the idea of buying wholesale and selling on Wallapop. It wasn't bad. I started investigating it more thoroughly. I set out to dedicate some time every day to developing it. And that's what I did. Mostly, I looked for products that sold on Wallapop at a certain price and that I could get cheaper wholesale. Classic, simple, but effective. I had a spreadsheet with Wallapop selling prices and my supplier prices to know which products were most profitable. One of the most profitable: remote controls for Fire TV.

In July, I decided to order stock of several products, but the main one was Fire TV remotes. A couple of days after publishing the ads, my first sale arrived. Curiously, it was July 13, 2024, exactly one year after EliteBara's birth. I kept buying more stock over the weeks and selling, adjusting prices to optimize profitability. Over time, I focused more and more on remote controls. It was the most profitable.

Everything was going well. By the end of the summer and the start of the next vocational training course, I had already invoiced about €1,000 in total. If I was normally uninterested in my studies, this course was a joke. I had a project that was going to start feeding me. To top it off, I had validated hours. The first week, I might not have attended even five hours in total.

In October, a serious setback arrived: my Wallapop account was suspended. Unfairly. I had been surpassing my previous month's invoicing every month. At first, I wasn't worried. It was clearly a mistake, and they would return it immediately. I wrote to them. Their response was no, there was no mistake, but what they said made no sense. I kept insisting. Rejection after rejection. I sent messages, used external organizations, even a letter. The only physical letter I've ever sent in my life. I even thought about showing up at their offices in Barcelona.

After two agonizing weeks, when all seemed lost, I threatened them with legal disputes. And then, while I was taking a dump, I received an email: they had made a mistake and were returning my account. I had won.

That moment marked a before and after. For starters, it couldn't remain an unnamed project or depend solely on Wallapop. Octopus Control was born. I started selling on other second-hand platforms. I also created a website with Shopify.

Not long after the rebranding, I managed to return to the income level before the ban. A couple of months later, I started worrying about taxes and legalities. In December, I made everything official and registered as a freelancer. I waited too long. I was close to having problems with this.

January 2025. First month after registering. It didn't start well. Income dropped, and the new expenses were suffocating me. Octopus Control worked and could make me money, but I started to realize that alone wouldn't lead me to the freedom I so longed for.

RANKMAKER

One day, after running, as I was getting ready to shower, a random memory suddenly came to me. A couple of years ago, I made a ranking of Formula 1 drivers that someone had shared on Twitter. I was fascinated by the system: I didn't have to think about the complete order or create a tier list. They simply gave me 1v1 matchups, and based on my choices, a ranking came out. At the time, I didn't give it much importance, but for some reason, at that moment, it came back to my mind. During the shower, I kept thinking about it.

I had no idea how to program, but I'm obsessed with AI. As soon as I got out of the shower, I opened ChatGPT, played around for a while, and within minutes I had a basic system where I could input options, compare them in matchups, and get an ordered ranking. I realized there was no website that did exactly that. This was my opportunity. I could dedicate a week to it and also disconnect from Octopus Control.

I was overly optimistic with the "week" idea. It wasn't as simple as iterating with ChatGPT. I needed more powerful tools. I discovered Cursor and started making progress, slow but steady. Until my free trial ran out. I didn't even know it had a limit. I wasn't going to pay, so I found a completely free alternative: Trae.

Since I discovered the concept of a database, I thought I would first make everything work locally and then connect it to a database later. But my idea of "working locally" was to use localStorage and only work with HTML, JS, and CSS. So when I decided to take the leap and implement the database, it wasn't as simple as telling the AI "move this from localStorage to the database." I was stuck for weeks, trying different prompts and structures without success. I got fed up and started from scratch.

This time, from the beginning, everything would be connected to a database. I used PHP, which, from what I had read, was the best for communicating with MySQL databases. And yes, this time it worked. I redesigned everything. It seemed ready to launch publicly, but then I discovered a critical error: the 1v1 matchups weren't working properly. They were poorly implemented. I tried to fix it a thousand times, without success. So I started again.

Now, with better file organization (the previous JS had 3000 lines in a single file). After several versions and more restarts, I decided to use Astro and React. I finished the version and prepared it to upload to the hosting. But when I went to do it, I discovered that my hosting was too basic: it only supported PHP and little else. Back to square one.

I knew what I was doing by then, so in a few days, I had another version, this time with PHP, JS, and CSS. Much simpler than I had initially imagined, but the essentials were there. On June 6, 2025, RANKMAKER was finally born, after almost half a year of 100% dedicated work to the project, leaving Octopus Control completely unattended. In reality, it was 4 or 5 months of testing, roadblocks, and restarts, to finally develop everything in a few days with the right approach.

Personal Life

Philosophically, I have flirted with solipsism on occasion, but the fact that everything may or may not be a product of my imagination is irrelevant, so life goes on. I made my first communion, but I am far from being a Christian. I consider myself agnostic. I have my own moral principles, not those imposed by any religion.

I am interested in politics, but not in the sense of following news constantly or listening to what this or that politician has said. I don't care about that, just as I don't care about news in general. My interest is more historical or ideological, to know the different currents. I have never voted and never will. I feel contempt for politicians simply for being politicians, for the State simply for existing, and for everything public in general. I firmly believe that everyone should live their life as they please, as long as they don't interfere with others.

I like to exercise and eat minimally healthy (or at least not eat junk). I go for a run every day and do some strength training, but I have never been to the gym and am not interested right now.

On a personal level, I am completely against any type of drug, and that includes alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine. Although legally, as you can understand from what I said before, I am totally in favor of everyone being able to screw up their life as they want. But I would have no emotional interest in someone dependent on the effects of a substance. With caffeine, I might make an exception if it comes from coffee or tea, not if it's from garbage like energy drinks.

I abhor social media; they disgust me. I only use them for my projects. The only personal account I have that is anything like a social network is Last.fm. I follow and am followed by some people I don't know at all, but I like to discover new music, and sometimes I've chatted there too.

Hobbies

I've had many hobbies throughout my life, but the three main ones right now are these:

Music: I don't play any instruments. I know a few songs on piano and guitar, and sometimes I feel like learning one by memorizing, probably with a horrible technique. I was close to buying an electric guitar, and I'd like to do so in the future. But my true interest in music is listening to it. I listen LITERALLY TO EVERYTHING, except reggaeton. I won't cross that line, I'm sorry. But otherwise, I absolutely don't care about the genre, how commercial it is, or the era. I can listen to the latest single by Gracie Abrams or Taylor Swift, then put on some Bach, and finish with Burzum, passing through The Beatles, Metallica, Paco de Lucía, Ice Cube, or any random Goregrind band.

Cinema: Before, it was a bit like with music: any genre, any era, any level of popularity. But right now, I'm a bit more selective, and I find it quite difficult to finish very commercial films, especially if they are very modern. With genre, I'm more flexible.

Formula 1: Or perhaps I should say Fernando Alonso. I love Formula 1, but I don't know if I'd still be so hooked if he weren't there. He's not just a driver to me; he's a role model. How can I give up over any nonsense if Fernando Alonso has been trying to win a World Championship again for 20 years with cars that are closer to tractors than F1 cars?