Loogic English

Unience, the social network for investors in stock exchange was presented last month in Madrid. It’s a project of Nicolas Oriol who has surrounded himself with an important team of development and financial support of a company in the sector of stock investment.

Some time ago, Nicolas and Vicente talked to me about the project and showed me the application. I was quite surprised when I saw the powerful tool that they had developed for the management of portfolios and the options for sharing investment decisions with the community. Also, I have had access to the private beta and although I haven’t been able to try out the management of portfolios, because I don’t have stocks and in Unience they only work with real investments, I have observed that the community options are also very interesting with a view of sharing information between users.

I also attended the presentation of the project among bloggers, and my views with respect to the project were confirmed. In events with investors, many times we talk about the lack of ambitious projects and the lack of opportunities to invest big amounts of money. Unience is one of those ambitious projects, for the business idea, for the work being done behind the project and for the fact that its founders know the market in which they are involved. I can mention many more projects who are in this situation and that’s what I have wanted to represent in base.loogic.com (of which I will talk in detail when I have added the projects that have come up in the last few weeks).

More information in the blog of Unience (in Spanish).

We first wrote about Tuenti on the 29th of December, 2006 (I think it was our first exclusive in Loogic).

On the 4th of March 2008, the CEO of Tuenti, Zaryn Dentzel, announces in Mobuzz TV that they have reached 2.000 million page views a month.

Incredible isn’t it? I’ve been talking often to the folks at Tuenti and the truth is that they are a role model for all of us who are into creating a business on the internet. Let’s have a look at some of the reasons for their success:

1) A young but very well prepared team that doesn’t like to boast of its achievements, but that has been hardened by the thousand battles they’ve had to confront with in the last few months to meet the demands of an enormous growth in traffic.

2) Highly influential investors with great experience (Bernardo Hernandez and Rodolfo Carpintier among them) who have had their role in advising the team of Tuenti, and that has been decisive in taking them where they are today.

3) A closed model (one can enter only through invitation) that has led them to turn into a social phenomenon, so much so that there’s talk of Tuenti on the streets, and even some people have created songs, recorded them with their friends and uploaded them to YouTube.

4) No advertising, at least for the moment, which has allowed them to dedicate all of their time to grow without worrying about making money. Now the time will come when they can make good use of all that traffic to earn money.

5) Right time and right place to start. They started a year ago when Facebook was not looking towards Spain as a market to expand, and a country where the users were navigating in portals and forums, not in social networks. For Tuenti, being the first in their market has been a great idea.

Impressive, right? The best thing is that the success of Tuenti is a reality and I’m sure that it will be an incentive for all.

Jesus Monleon just presented the social network for entrepreneurs Club Emprendedor XXI as part of the initiative of La Caixa to support entrepreneurs, which has been evident in the last few years through the sponsorship of events that present projects to investors.

The benefits of participating in Club Entrepreneur XXI are the following:

- Access to a group of companies and professionals with whom to exchange experiences and discover new opportunities.

- Access to the program of funding for entrepreneurs of “la caixa”.

- Entrance to exclusive events for entrepreneurs.

- Exclusive information for entrepreneurs.

More initiatives like this are the need of the hour in the world of entrepreneuring. This is the way to help entrepreneurs, and not by advertising campaigns.

Read the original article in spanish.

I think that the first time I heard of Luis Marti­n Cabiedes was in the blog of Carlos Blanco a few months back. Since then, Luis Marti­n Cabiedes has turned into a reference for all of us who are involved in the internet business, especially for the investors and the venture capital scene.

In person I didn’t meet him until he came to Iniciador of the month of December. He seemed to me a simple person who doesn’t like to stand out, but one who knows how to be surrounded by good contacts around him.

If we google Luis Marti­n Cabiedes, the first result that appears is that he was the President of Baquia, something that shows his great involvement in internet projects, but the thing he is most well-known for in the business world is for being the Co-President of Europa Press and now continues to be a stakeholder and advisor of this group of communications.

But for us what stands out the most is the great activity that he is carrying out in the last few months as a business angel, above all for having invested in projects of which we talk with frequency over here, some of which are: privalia.com, sclipo.com, bubok.com, trovit.com and nvivo.es.

About the investments realized, I cannot say if they will go on to be very profitable for him, but I do believe that he has made a very intelligent selection of projects mainly for the diversification of themes and models. Pay close attention as I believe it’s worth it to analyze the investments made:

Privalia: e-commerce model, fashion theme. I understand it’s a project that is already generating profits making the investment a profitable one from the beginning.
Sclipo: web 2.0 model, video theme, still not generating profits but could have a great potential for a sale or for further rounds of financing.
Bubok: e-commerce model, editorial theme, still hasn’t been launched but could have a growth and profitability sustained for a long term.
Trovit: search model, classifieds theme, already generating profits and could go on to be very profitable on its own through contextual advertising.
Nvivo: social network model, music theme, with a strong growth in number of users and very interesting with respect to further rounds of financing.

About the profitability of the investments of a business angel, one should think that there are many ways of obtaining it, the most basic being that the project invested makes profits, through sale to another company, and also one in which investors keep very much in mind an exit in a second round of financing obtaining important benefits.

Read the original article in Spanish.