Loogic English

There is already 28.5 million dollars invested in the web classifieds site OLX, led by Fabrice Grinda and Alec Oxenford. OLX is now closing on its third round of financing put together by General Catalyst Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Founders Fund and DN Capital for a total of 5 million dollars.

As noted by TechCrunch, OLX is quickly becoming recognized as a global competitor of Craigslist with the site already translated in 39 languages and presence in 87 countries. The site’s popularity is greatest in countries including Spain, India, Portugal, Mexico, China and the Phillipines.

With the continuing growth of this project and additional infusion of capital they have received, we might soon be able to say that OLX is the leader in this sector. Moreover, OLX has stated that the funds from this investment will serve in their efforts for new acquisitions (like the purchase of Chinese classifieds portal Edeng), improvements in the website, further global expansion and to continue with marketing initiatives.

The race continues between Privalia and BuyVip. On this occasion, the competition is not in the growth of users or revenues, but in the amount of funding received. A little more than a month ago, we covered the news of the investment of 14.9 million euros in BuyVip by Kennet Partners and now we get the news of Privalia receiving 8 million euros from Insight Venture Partners and Highland Capital Partners.

Our take on it: Two American investment funds investing in a Spanish startup is a great news for us. This investment confirms the fact that the business of online outlets is perhaps the most promising internet business in Spain today.

Amongst the initial investors who betted for the project are Luis Martin Cabiedes who confirmed me that he has sold his sold his stake in the company, something that fits well with his investment philosophy: “I think that a business angel should know when to enter and exit”. Luis participated until the third round of funding which was also participated by Nauta Capital and fetched 4 million euros. Now we expect that with the returns from this exit, he will continue to invest in internet startups, something that he has done with a lot of success until now.

Seen in Expansion.

At Inventa Internet, we are pleased to present Hostarting, a service that compares prices and the characteristics of different hosting services and domain registrars, with the ambition of becoming a reference in the sector. Our objective for Hostarting is to provide professionals and companies looking for hosting services a place to find solutions that fit their unique needs. Until now, people who wanted to sign up for a hosting service had to hop from one website to find the most suitable option or trust the recommendations of another person. Now all the price plans and product details of the major companies in the sector are easily accesible from a single place and it’s possible to do comparisons between different plans.

Hostarting targets hosting companies as well as individuals or companies who need those services. We want to maintain a balance between the services provided to both kinds of users because we believe that everybody can benefit from such a service. We are looking to create more transparency in the sector, better communication and above all, less conflicts between companies and clients. The aspect of participation and community is fundamental in Hostarting. We want to create a place where the hosting companies and their users can communicate, and users can comment, recommend and review the different services. This is our challenge: to creat value in a setor of huge interest for many people and companies, where we want to be a point of reference through our indpendent point of view.

This is the start of Hostarting, we have big plans for this project, many ideas that we want to develop and that we hope will fructify in the coming months. We will continue working to build a tool of great utility for all. We hope you will accompany us in this journey. Thank you all for your support and help :)

Thanks to:

Cusomedia, for the excellent work of design and programming. Without their help, it wouldn’t have been possible to start this project. Thanks to Oobo for gifting us the name, we like it a lot and hope you also liked it. Thanks to Blogoff for accepting to write a scoop, for doing an excellent article presenting the new site and for helping us improve through their recommendations.

And thanks to the betatesters: Agustin Vivancos - Impulsa, Jordi Pérez - Brandea, Javi Olmo - Tutecnologo, Javi de Rios - Guiadeconcursos, Lucas Rodriguez - Metocube, Miguel Angel Ivars - Adlemons, Roberto Pérez - Erasmoos, Tomy Pelluz - Qapacity, Aurora Garal - Worthidea, Alex Dolara - Plootu, Ignasi Prat - Allrankings, Javier Lopez - Erasmusu, Fabio Nuñez - Escapadarural, Raul Jimenez - Minube, Javier Gracia - Misscompras and to Enrique Brito.

Note: we are in Beta. We appreciate all the comments and suggestions. We will also appreciate (with a link in Loogic ;) all the blog articles that help us spread the word.

Enrique Dubois confirms the news that Carlos Blanco had advanced about the acquisition of Wamba by Mio.tv. The figures of the operation, not refuted until now, could be between 4 and 6 million euros. Some considerations with respect to it:

In the sector, people had commented on the interest of the founders of Wamba to grow the project and sell it off when presented with an interesting offer, but what was not expected was such a fast sale mostly because of the current economic situation. It must be taken into account that the initial capital invested in the company was 650.000 euros by the founding team and Matias de Tezanos and in September 2007, Morten Lund purchased a 40% stake in the company for 3 million euros, although it’s not clear whether the investment was realized in its totality. In case of confirming the figures of a sale of between 4 and 6 million, it seems that the return on investment obtained would not be too big. Also should be considered the purchase of the forum Vagos.es that considerably increased the traffic at Wamba and although it surely has given them many integration headaches, it also should have been a decisive factor to set up the social network in a good situation for a sell off.

Mio.tv? Frankly it’s the first time I have heard of this project founded by Manuel Garcia-Duran, who had been a director at Telefonica and Antena 3, and who wants to revolutionise the internet TV sector targetting the hispanic community in the United States. At the presentation of the project at the end of 2007, they said the company would be worth 1.000 million dollars in 2008. I think they haven’t achieved that goal (in one year, they wanted to be worth more than half of what Google paid for YouTube, now that is setting high goals) although they must have some cash on hand to carry out an operation such as the purchase of Wamba. I’m not sure if this acquisition fits very well in the strategy of Mio.tv. At first glance, it could seem like an acquisition similar to that of Vagos.es, mainly done to add users.

A while ago, we told you that we will come back to talk about Zankyou for the upcoming developments of this online wedding lists management service. We mentioned that this subject of wedding management was very interesting for online businesses, due to the high interest of the users and the big business that it moves.

Zankyou has made an important bet. They already have the service available in 7 countries including Spain, and they just launched the Italian version. The international expansion for a service of this kind makes a lot of sense, but it doesn’t mean just translating the website. The site content must be adapted to the country and it’s important to strike agreements with companies of those countries for advertising and for the management of the wedding lists of the users.

At Zankyou, they have started generating content on the theme. Perhaps the best way to attract users is through quality information and that’s what they are looking for with their magazine and with their blog.