By Luv el 11 March 2009
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.
By Luv el 16 October 2008
It seems that internet and the world of wines get along very well. Lately, there are a lot of blogs, online shops and social networks proliferating around this theme.
Vinogusto is one of those social networks about wine, which we talked of when it received a round of investment and now is worth talking about for the good results it is showing.
When i see cases such as the growth achieved by Vinogusto, I start thinking that there are internet entrepreneurs who have a kind of sixth sense and are capable of creating winner projects whatever they do. François Derbaix is one of those entrepreneurs who has made it with TopRural and is now helping this project succeed as an investor and advisor.
It’s worth taking a look at Vinogusto because i believe it’s a very good example of a social network with open content, where the users create value mostly through their comments. 100.000 user opinions in the community, a great example of what Jesus Encinar was describing the other day as businesses based on user opinions.
Another aspect that stands out is its simplicity, which in other words we call Usability, and that is the secret to gaining the involvement of basic users through their active participation in a web they find easy to use.
