In this Founder Wisdom Pod episode, host Charles Cormier interviews Dario Blanco Iturriaga, a seasoned technology leader who has served as CTO at Karla and previously as VP of Engineering at ParcelLab. Dario shares his personal journey, beginning with early programming at age 12 and professional work from age 18 in a family finance business, through computer science studies in Spain, and a move to Germany where he contributed to startups and large enterprises like Vodafone and Allianz. He discusses his experience building products from scratch at MindDoc (a digital mental‑health platform) – a classic zero‑to‑one effort – and later scaling existing organizations (one‑to‑hundred) at ParcelLab and Karla, emphasizing change‑management challenges. Dario also highlights his role in leading AI‑driven transformations in e‑commerce, describing the shift from traditional operations to AI‑enhanced revenue generation. The conversation sets the stage for deeper exploration of his past projects and the strategic decisions that shaped his engineering leadership style.
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Welcome to another Founder Wisdom Pod. We have Dario Blanco Iturriaga with us today. He's the CTO of Carla. He's a 3x CTO, VP Engineering, turning e-commerce deliveries into revenue. So Dario's from Spain, I believe, but lives in Munich. So interesting guy altogether. Dario, welcome to the pod. Tell us a bit more about yourself and what you've been building.
Yeah, very happy to be here. So in Spain, and I mean, I've been developing since I'm 12, professionally since 18. I worked in a family business doing a lot of finance development and studied computer science in Burgos, my hometown, in Madrid. And then I moved 14 years ago to Germany that had a good exit at the time. I learned a lot. I moved to Munich, that's where I am. In another startup that also had an exit later. I worked in big companies like Vodafone and Allianz in transformation projects. Built a startup, it's also a transformation project. And I attempted another one in another clinic with Kirinos. And then during the pandemic, I switched to e-commerce where I've been Vice President of Engineering at Parcel Lab in the hypergrowth phase, which is a scale-up. And now CTO at Karla. Um, I joined in as a late founder CTO, and yeah, we have been through the AI transformation, and being there in the arena has been quite an experience.
So yeah. You said you joined late, right? Um, what is your profile? Is it 0 to 1 type of guy or 1 to 100 type of guy?
Ah, it's a good question. I have done both. So I've done like, at MindDoc, we had nothing. We had even no product at all. So we had only a vision that was to digitalize the clinic. And then we had a wider vision that, you know, is to go international, you know, to basically make mental health affordable to everybody with licensed therapists. And, um, you know, in a way in which you could do it remotely with video therapy. That was kind of a completely new concept back in the time. So So that, I was 0 to 1, but I've been also 1 to 100. I mean, later I've been joining companies that were already around, that I didn't start from scratch. And then it's where you need to join and be very mindful of what is already there. Usually when you join a company at that stage, it's because there are things that have to change. There is never like, you know, that everything is working perfectly. So you also need to be very mindful about the things that you need to change and to make, know, it's a lot of change management, but also, um, there are some things that you don't start from scratch that are good, but there's some others that are slowing you down. So I think I'm lately, I'm more 1 to 100, but I, I enjoyed a lot the 0 to 1, and I think I could do that again as well.
Well, let's check what you've built so far, right? So I guess like, yeah, up until 2017, uh, you were working at classic companies, right? And then officially started like at CTO at MindDoc. What was MindDoc about? Tell me about that story.
So back in the time, it was so one of the biggest private clinics in Germany, not the biggest, with— it was 20+ clinics in Germany. And you know, they, they wanted to, to become digital, which is a very abstract concept. And then they, they, they had, um, a found— a former founder from a startup in Berlin that, you know, the one who hired me, I was the second hire. And then we, our goal was to create an entity there that will work like a startup. And I mean, that's what it became, MindDoc, because we acquired a startup from Berlin called Moodpath. And then, you know, we basically like incorporated that entity into MindDoc and then we became MindDoc. that was related to this clinic. So we did it without venture capital and with quite different capital that is from the clinic itself that demands different metrics. So you need to really show profitability very, very quick. It's not like it's going to really— like, what you need to burn, you need to basically like process a lot of money very quick. And it will be like you really need to show the results very, very early. And on that, I, you know, that's what I think, what I think was a great success. And MindDoc, mainly from all the portfolio that the clinic had, mainly we focus on the mental health disorders. And we created an online digital platform where patients could book their seats with licensed therapists, not only with coaches. And during the pandemic, at the beginning, we managed to do it completely remote with
