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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 :)

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Every time it’s getting more difficult to do such selections as the majority of the really interesting projects in the hispanic web 2.0 have received funding during the course of 2007 or are about to get funded.

Summarizing a bit we can see that I haven’t erred much in my selections:

The prediction of end of 2006 has been realized in its entirety. Panoramio purchased by Google, Econozco purchased by Xing and Mobuzztv hasn’t disclosed any information but I’m almost certain that they have received investment.

In the summer of this year, I dared to do a second selection with Festuc, Trovit and eyeOS. The only one that has been confirmed has been Trovit just a few days ago. At Festuc they still haven’t gone for the first round of financing, but I’m sure that they will find the money as soon as they decide to get funded. And eyeOS doesn’t lack suitors, Martin Varsavsky was very close to investing but it seems that they couldn’t agree on the valuation of the project.

I didn’t want to end 2007 without making another selection of projects in which to invest, so here are those who I believe will receive funding during the course of 2008:

Catodicos: it’s a social network for aficionados of television series, created by Ivan San Martín and has the support of Fivelab. With a rage for television series these days and taking into account how well designed this social network is, I have no doubt that VCs will be interested in investing in this project.

Ebuga: is a social network about the world of cars and motor, founded by Edu Bayo and John Shaw. As far as I know, it hasn’t received investment although it’s founders have had to put a good amount of money as the development has been of a high standard. When they do receive external funding, I’m sure it will be of several million euros.

Escapada Rural: is a directory of rural cottages which is slowly incorporating social functionalities. For the moment, it’s a simple project but it has been designed with such care that it could become a huge hit amongst its users. My advice for its creators is to keep going on the same lines and to be seen at events where projects are presented to investors.

Other projects worth following which I believe haven’t received any investment are: Kroonos, 20palabras, RedKaraoke, Omemo and Adnstream.

With this I conclude, and all that’s left for me to do is to wish you a Happy 2008!

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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.

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Online travel agency eDreams just presented the documentation to CNMV to get listed on the stock exchange in the first quarter of 2008 with a valuation of 400 million euros.

After the acquisition of eDreams by a venture capital fund for 153 million euros, there were rumors of the company going public and it seems that now the news is being confirmed. Experience in the hispanic internet shows that wanting to go public doesn’t mean that it will happen, but in this case we hope that it will be so because it could be an important push to the sector.

In 2006, the revenues of eDreams touched 300 million euros and the year before, the profits were 4.7 million euros, which demonstrates the important volume of business related to everything that has to do with the travel sector on the internet.

Besides, eDreams is one of the online travel agencies that is vouching the most for the Web 2.0, which we can see in its community and in the day to day management through Twitter. It’s clear that there’s little connection between the Web 2.0 and going public, but it’s a sign of the company’s evolution and the interest it shows in communicating with its users.

Via Nacho Giral.

More information in Bolsacinco.

Update: Marek Fodor also talks about this and notes that the stock listing will be made in two phases. The first phase will be to generate an exit for the stock of the founders and the venture capital fund, and the second phase will serve to raise capital that could be used for acquisitions or promotional campaigns.

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I’ve just been informed by Angel María Herrera about the people and companies that have invested capital in Bubok, the project to create “the hispanic Lulu”.

The companies participating in the project are: evoluZiona, Secuoyas, Grupo Intercom and Europa Press. evoluZiona and Secuoyas in particular will be in charge of developing the project, apart from being investors.

The people involved in the project are:

Rafael Casado, founder of Invertia.
Jose Luis Delgado Guitart, founder of Unaplauso.
Luis Martín Cabiedes, advisor to Europa Press.
Rafael Garrido, founder of Secuoyas.
Steven Joseph Posner.
Mauro Jose Martin.

As you can see, highly prepared companies and investors have become part of the project which can convert Bubok into one of the most powerful projects in the hispanic internet.

Read the original article in Spanish.