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This is one of the good news we started the year with: Caja Navarra has invested 400.000 euros as convertible debt, in the travel seach engine and social network Minube.

I’m very happy to share this news because I really appreciate Raul and Pedro and because I know that Minube is one of those projects that is going to take off in 2009. The current figures of 49.395 registered users, 27.752 corners (places), 1.094 blogs on travel, 133.907 photos, 1.369 videos, 147 countries and 5.466 cities, will go up to double or triple by the end of the year with all certainty.

Also important is the fact that the first investment announced in an internet company this year in Spain has been carried out by Caja Navarra, the protagonist of 2008. Many of us expect Caja Navarra to continue to bet on internet businesses in 2009 as it has done until now.

1) It must have been a very difficult decision that of changing the name of a web project after more than a year of launching and when it’s already relatively well known.

2) I liked Properazzi, but it’s true that it’s a complicated name. I like Enormo even more though. Without doubt, Yannick Laclau knows how to choose a good name for his projects.

3) Enormo is already available in 30 countries. When a model is tried and tested and the growth is based mainly on traffic coming from Google, launching the project in other countries is a natural way to expansion.

4) I love the lack of design. It’s as if they had done the design thinking according to my taste. And take a look at the advertising, where is it? A fantastic integration of Adsense Premium, that other vertical search engine companies focused on real estate classified ads, also appear to be achieving.

5) Seasonal advertisements is an option which has been added recently I think and that competitors Trovit and Nuroa don’t have as yet. Since Idealista acquired a stake in Rentalia and included it in its content, this option will end up being offered by all the vertical search engines.

6) Now that they have changed their name, wouldn’t they also have considered diversifying in other subjects? Especially, the theme of classified adverts for jobs seems to be working well for other search engines of this type.

I’ve just been informed of a new investment in the real estate vertical search engine Nuroa. The investment is from Dennis Bemmann, founder of the German social network studiVZ, who enters the company as a partner.

studiVZ is the equivalent of Facebook for Germany accounting for 6 million users and which was sold to the editorial group Hotzbrinck a year ago for about 100 million euros. Dennis Bemmann is one of the founders of studiVZ and continues to be the CTO of this social network.

The entry of Dennis Bemmann as an investor and partner will in addition serve for the development of a social network of real estate agents and people searching for a property, as an evolution of what is now Nuroa. It seems to be a logical evolution incorporating a social layer to a web application like this vertical search engine.

Dennis Bemmann came to know of Nuroa at the web 2.0 conference in Berlin where the German version of Nuroa was launched. He was impressed by their innovative and advanced technology and so decided to make this investment.

Vote for Nuroa in Loogic Rank.

Read de original post in spanish.

I’ve been awaiting this news for quite some time now. In July of this year, I wrote that Trovit was one of the three most interesting hipanic projects to invest in, and now we get the confirmation with investments from La Caixa, Luis Martín de Cabiedes and Nacho Gonzalez Barros (founder of Infojobs).

Until June I didn’t realize the great potential of this vertical search engine. When I was able to see how well it functioned, I thought that this project shouldn’t take long to find financing. Now Iñaki Ecenarro, founder of Trovit and the whole team would have a lot more resources to grow this service that already accounts for more than 2.5 million unique users per month.

Also I would like to emphasize that one of the investors in this first round of financing for Trovit is Nacho Gonzales Barros, who after the huge success of Infojobs, continues his career as an entrepreneur at the helm of Salir.com and now also as a business angel it seems. Looks like we are going to see more successful entrepreneurs investing in projects they find interesting apart from starting their own new ventures after successfully selling off their first company. In this sense, Albert Armengol is the best example.

My congratulations to the team of Trovit and now I eagerly await and hope to share the news of investments in Festuc and Eyeos so I can bring out the magic crystal ball again to bet for three new companies in which to invest.

Update: the investment has been of 600.000 euros.

Read the original article in Spanish.