It seems that some conservatives hate strong women who happened to be married to strong Democratic political candidates. Or maybe it’s simply that strong women make easy targets.

Hillary Clinton has learned that the hard way . . . twice. First, she was reviled as Bill Clinton’s nerdy, ultra-feminist wife. And then she transformed into a bitchy, ball-busting candidate to be President of the United States who didn’t appeal to large segments of the US population until she teared up on camera and showed she was a “real” woman.

Largely for the same reason, Michelle Obama had to go on “The View” (a US daytime talk show with a predominantly female audience) to show her “warmer” side, though it should be said that she didn’t cry. It seems that many conservatives attack any woman in the political sphere who’s not as unassuming, dainty, non-threatening and “lady-like” as Laura Bush, who knows that her correct place is beside (or more likely, behind) her husband and who evokes the image of the good homemaker and mother (as opposed to strong career woman and intellectual equal).

Not that the two are necessarily contradictory. I grew up with both of my parents in a relatively happy home, but I have no doubt that a large part of whom I am is because of who and how my mother is. She was a force of nature in our family, inspiring all of us to get the best education possible and kicking our butts when necessary. My sister good-humoredly compares my mother to Mama Rose in Gypsy, but my mother also spoiled us, buying us Reeboks when we begged for them even though money was tight or cooking our favorite Jamaican foods whenever we returned home from college. And yes, calling at least once a week once we left home to know how we were doing even as we consistently evaded her phone calls. She did all of that, went back for an advanced degree after we emigrated to the US and worked a full-time job.

And it seems that Michelle Obama had a similar path. She has two young daughters and until the recent campaign, a full-time executive job. And let’s face it, being a mom is not for wimps, much less a mom with a full-time executive job who’s also supporting her husband’s political career and has degrees from both Princeton and Harvard.

So it’s a bit sad that people are attacking her for being too “tough”. And it’s a little bit sad that she needs to go on national TV to prove that she’s “warm”, even though she’s not the one running for president. Certainly a male candidate would never be criticized for being too tough or not warm enough, and I can’t imagine that if Hillary had won the nomination, Bill would be on “The View” showing his warm, fuzzy side. In fact, a lot of people were annoyed when Bill so vigorously and pugnaciously defended his wife, but up to a certain point I guess it was normal, maybe even “chivalrous”.

That made it all the more heartwarming when Michelle paid tribute to the battles that Hillary Clinton has had to fight over the last 16 years, to prove that she can be both tough and feminine at the same time. I was touched that Michelle noted that Hillary was a pioneer, a fighter, and that sexism had played some not unimportant role in the news media’s coverage of Hillary.

In Michelle’s own words: “It’s only when women like her take the hits and it’s painful, it’s hurtful, but she’ s taking them so that my girls, when they come along, won’t have to feel it as badly,” Mrs. Obama said.

See the full interview below.

Since we try not to take ourselves too seriously here at nuroa, we recorded a video that reflects the fact that people in Spain tend to leave home at a later age than in other European countries. The Spanish government is trying to create €200 subsidies to incentivize youngsters to leave their parents’ homes, but we’ll see how well that works.

So here’s our humorous take on the situation. Please let me know what you think!

nuroa.tv, canal de vídeos inmobiliarios

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about role models and how important they are.

Take, for example, the tennis world. Monica Seles (my childhood tennis hero and the reason why I play with a two-handed backhand) dominated tennis in the late 1980s, and 20 years later there is a generation of Serbian tennis stars inspired by her success — Ana Ivanovic (women’s number 1), Jelena Jankovic (women’s number 2) and Novak Djokovic (men’s number 3 and rising). Similarly, Anna Kournikova’s success inspired a lot of Russian tennis parents to invest more seriously in their daughters’ tennis education. The result is that 5 of the top 10 female tennis players are Russian.

There are, of course, role models who are not athletes. Entertainers also have the ability to inspire. Forbes just published its list of most powerful celebrities, and three of the top 5 celebrities are black and very well paid: Oprah Winfrey (number 1 with 2007 income of $275 million), Tiger Woods (number 2 with 2007 income of $115 million ) and Beyoncé Knowles (number 4 with 2007 income of $80 million). (Angelina Jolie is number 3 with 2007 income of $14 million, and David Beckham is number 5 with 2007 income of $50 million.)

I have no doubt that Oprah’s, Tiger’s and Beyonce’s success will inspire generations of future black athletes, entertainers and moguls.

I myself draw inspiration from their struggles and successes.

That being said, their success does little to undermine the common stereotype that blacks are just great athletes who can sing and dance. In no way do I want to downplay the success of stars like Beyoncé and especially not of Oprah. But my point is that while their amazing collective success and spending power show the value of hard work, God-given talent and clever marketing plans, and while they are trailblazers that still have to overcome remnants of racism within their respective industries, their success comes within an entertainment industry that has traditionally been relatively open to blacks.

That’s why I’m so happy that Obama won the Democratic nomination. I was rooting for Hillary, in part because I grew up with the Clintons and felt a certain amount of nostalgia. But even more importantly, I never thought that white people would vote for Obama, and I didn’t want to see another Republican in office. I thought it was impossible that a black man could become the Democratic Party’s nominee, and even more impossible that he would have a decent chance at becoming the next president of the United States.

I grew up surrounded by heroes, some of whom were famous black athletes and entertainers.

But the possibility of a black President never even entered into the realm of conscious thought, much less hope.

And it’s not like we’ll have to wait 20 years to see the immediate benefits of Obama’s trailblazing campaign. My mother, for example, is driving all over the East Coast to participate in the Obama campaign. He is causing black people of all ages to re-evaluate America and themselves. Before his campaign, my mother had never actively participated in the political process other than to vote. Now she’s giving donations, recruiting friends, calling me whenever there is an important Obama update . . . .

So I think that this is a really unique moment, not just because I can’t wait to get rid of George Bush and replace him with someone with a brain and a heart, but also because Obama’s campaign destroys one of the last areas where blacks have been denied access, where I thought it was impossible even to contemplate a possibility of success.

I mean, outside of Africa and the Caribbean, has a black person ever been elected to run a country in which blacks are a racial minority? Probably not, because there’s still a lingering suspicion/stereotype that blacks simply aren’t smart or capable enough (unless they’re Republicans, in which case they almost have to repudiate their “blackness” in exchange for political gain.)

On the other hand, there are already women running major Western countries and/or campaigning for the top spot, so we know it’s at least possible to dream of a female President.

But blacks have largely been unable to dream this dream. Until now . . .

Now it seems that maybe we can sing, dance, play sports and run countries too.

It’s official. Highgrowth Partners is the latest investor in migoa. Oriol, Albert, Dennis, Didac and I are obviously quite happy. (Si prefieres leer en Español ya puedes en mi nuevo blog, www.garystew.es.)

As Javier posted in his blog, we met Highgrowth about a year and a half ago when we were making the rounds to Barcelona-based business angels and venture capitalists. With a few years of hindsight, I can honestly admit that at that point we really didn’t have much of a clue about the Internet world or how we’d make our business work. But we were a couple of reasonably intelligent guys who were really hungry to leave our marks on the world. In addition, we had decent CVs, which meant that we were hopeful that the years of education and training at multinational organizations would translate into some possibility of success as entrepreneurs. And though we noted some interpersonal connection with Mercè and Jaume, they told us something equivalent to “keep in touch”, which is what all of the VCs tell you when they’re not really interested in investing in you at the moment but want to keep the doors open just in case you might someday become more investment-ready.

We knew that networking counts, and more than that, we thought Mercè and Jaume were pretty cool (it helps that we’re all more or less the same age), so we kept in touch with them, sending them updates about how the company was evolving, about new prizes won, new business angels who had come on board, etc. The response was always very polite, until one day out of seemingly nowhere they invited us to present our project to a network of business angels in Helsinki. So we went to Finland for 3 days, during which time we were able to confirm that we had good rapport with the Highgrowth team on a personal level. In addition, we were able to explain our ideas about nuroa in a lot more detail, and they were able to see how a group of international business angels responded to Oriol and me as entrepreneurs and to the project itself.

After Helsinki, I can’t say that we had any particular expectations about receiving an investment from Highgrowth. By that point, we’d been meeting with VCs in London, in France, in Germany — basically, any interesting investor who was interested in meeting with us. And then suddenly one day, Oriol told me that he’d received a call from Highgrowth saying that nuroa was now sufficiently mature to be investment-ready.

I guess what they liked was that ever since our initial contact, we’d explained to them our various short-term objectives and we’d accomplished them. Of course, the business model now has evolved a lot since our initial meeting with Highgrowth, which I think is pretty normal. Unless you’re Nostradamus, being an entrepreneur involves a lot of trial and error. But that being said, they saw that were progressing in a positive direction, and I guess they liked that.

Now don’t get me wrong. We’ve made a lot of mistakes in terms of hiring and with regard to our certain aspects of the product. And I’m still not 100% satisfied with where we are with either the product or our marketing efforts. But that being said, it’s not so easy to be selected by elite analysts for prizes and/or recognition from Red Herring, Essential Web, Demo Germany, Global Innovate, etc. or to receive lots of financing from the Spanish and Catalan governments via CIDEM and CDTI (funds reserved for “innovative” technologies), or to convince experienced entrepreneurs like Albert and Dennis that they should invest their hard-earned money in you. So despite some negative commentaries for a distinct minority of  bloggers, I think that we’ve generally shown that we’re not so stupid. In fact, it seems that the funds speak amongst themselves, and the general feedback that I’ve gotten from various sources is that some international investors think that our team is pretty decent and that it’d be the basis of any eventual success that we might someday have. Investors all want to minimize their risks, and one way of doing this to look at what other investors and analysts think about you, and in our case we were greatly helped by the generally favourable feedback.

So how do I feel now? On the one hand, I’m quite happy. It’s a lot of money, so we now have the luxury of a few months of not having to worry about making it to the end of the month, which means that we can really focus on perfecting the product and increasing our profile. And it’s always nice to receive monetary validation from investors. We have it 100% clear that the money that we received was not a gift. VCs have a lot of attractive candidates, and their job is to choose the projects that they view as the most promising. It feels good to know that we were Highgrowth’s first investment in 2008.

At the same time, I guess I’m a little bit more stressed, because we’re no longer in the minor leagues. VCs impose their conditions and set their objectives, which imposes a certain amount of pressure. That being said, negotiating with Highgrowth was a very humane process. I really can’t complain in that sense. I never had the sense that they were trying to take advantage of us. The final contract is pretty fair to both sides.

Nonetheless, it’s pretty clear that I now have a unique opportunity to do something interesting and/or important with my life. All of my studies and experiences (both good and bad) have prepared me for this moment. And if I fail, maybe I’ll never have another chance quite as interesting to realize my dreams and show the world of what I’m truly capable.

But in the end, I’m a pretty confident guy, and I believe fully in our project and in our team, so win or lose, all I’ve got to say is: “Bring it!”