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I find it quite amusing to give this news because I think it’s the first investment in a Spanish startup that has been announced directly from Twitter. It was on the 2nd of April when Fernando Egido of CAN and Hector Milla of Balzac TV made comments on Twitter about the meetings they were holding.

It has been since quite some time now that Hector Milla started working on the idea behind Balzac TV. In October, we talked about Balzac.tv, an idea, a voice and a camera. Gradually, the idea has turned into a company that now announces it has received funding.

Balzac TV is a videoblog about innovation. It’s not going to be as easy to make it profitable as a videoblog about cars or videogames, but the truth is that what we can see now is so well done that surely it will become a reference that companies would want to sponsor.

Another business model that surely they will be considering when the time is right would be to sell video content to the traditional media as it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the TV folks are running short of creativity and would like to count on novel content like the one offered by Balzac TV.

Via Carlos Blanco.

E-contratos is a Valencia based company that offers an online platform for the signing of contracts between two parties.

E-contratos has received the financing of Caixa Capital Risc and the support of IMPIVA. It positions itself as the direct competition of Tractis, one of the most valued companies of the new hispanic internet. We don’t know if Tractis has received any financing.

The support of La Caixa to a site like E-contratos could be decisive for the adoption of a service like this by public and private institutions, and maybe this could turn into a competitive advantage over Tractis.

Another aspect to consider is the design and structure of the websites of both these services. E-contratos is more the style of a typical corporate or institutional website (traditional design), while Tractis is much more modern and inspires user participation.

It would be interesting to see which of the two services is able to achieve a market share of more than 50% as Jesus Monleon writes in Blog de emprendedores

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 think that the first time I heard of Luis Martín Cabiedes was in the blog of Carlos Blanco a few months back. Since then, Luis Martín 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 Martín 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.

I’m especially excited to give this news, because Nvivo is a project that I practically saw being born and because Carlos Sanchez, its founder is a fantastic person with whom I’ve had very good communication all this time.

This is how the news of investment is released in Nvivo: We’re happy to announce that nvivo.es has closed a first round of financing with investments from Luis Martín Cabiedes, Europa Press, the Bergareche family through its business promotion company Berquet Desarrollo Empresarial (Berquet Business Development) and other private investors.

Since quite some time Carlos Sanchez was talking about the need for financing to further grow Nvivo and above all to take the model to other countries. I’m sure that with this investment, Carlos will turn his project into a point of reference for live music.

My congratulations to Txarly and to the investors who have confided in the project of Nvivo. This sure is a good present for Epiphany :)

Read the original article in Spanish