Loogic English

A good piece of has arrived for Oportunista, the website for online promotions and discounts, that has recently received an investment from a group of various business angels including Gustavo Garcia, founder of BuyVip, and Albert Feliú of InfoJobs. The founders of the project, Rodrigo Giménez-Rico and Alexandra Klein, plan to use the funds to expand the list of businesses in the health and leisure sectors in Spain that are already present in the portal. They also plan to make significant usability improvements to the website and are set to come out of beta in September.

We first wrote about Oportunista.com last October and since then have had the opportunity to speak with the founders in various occasions and at events such as SeedRocket that have been important for them to meet private investors including the ones that finally bet on their idea. The project is quickly nearing a time when it can compete with other big players like Cuponeo, that we spoke of recently.

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.

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.

We have talked about Vinogusto (available in English) on other occasions and now we return to it as it has closed its third round of funding with 355.000 euros that add up to the 150.000 euros received in 2007 and 200.000 euros received in 2008.  With 705.000 euros of total investment, the project has achieved a good base of funding that should help it become the leader of the social networks on the subject of wines, at least in Europe.

It’s interesting to see the comparison with other wine related social networks that we know of here: snooth, vinogusto, vinix.it, yvinos and descorchados. The competition is clearly between Vinogusto and Snooth which has just received an investment of one million dollars as mentioned by François Derbaix, and who practically double the investment received by Vinogusto but the traffic is about the same.

The 355.000 euros of investment in Vinogusto come from the previous investors in the company and new individual investors who enter into the business as partners.