I’m a North American who’s been living in Barcelona for the last 6 years. I grew up in New York City, before going to Yale College and then on to Yale Law School. I clerked (essentially worked as the legal assistant) to the Chief Judge of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals before moving to London to work at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett as a securities lawyer. I liked but didn’t love London, so I moved to Barcelona to work at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer as an M&A lawyer. Eventually I left Freshfields to start a couple of more traditional small businesses (real estate and legal services), but I missed being in the hunt. Life in Barcelona is great. It’s the perfect city for me from a personal perspective, but I missed being involved with a “big” project. So in November 2005, my business partner and I started a third company, Goa Internet Services, of which I am the CEO. Our product is a vertical search engine: www.migoa.com.

What is a vertical search engine? Well, it’s like Google, but specialised. As the web becomes bigger and more diverse, “horizontal” search engines like Google increasingly generate lots of imprecise results when looking for specific products. You get 8 million results, but then you have to weed through lots of excess noise. With a vertical search engine, you get a precise and filtered list of actual products, so you don’t get offers for mortgages when you type in the words “buy apartment in Barcelona”.

In the case of migoa.com, we offer 3 verticales: property, jobs and cars. We will launch in Spain, France, Germany and the UK. Our private beta version will be available in early March 2007 and our public beta will be available in Summer 2007. So far, we’ve been lucky enough to be named by Guidewire Group as one of 2006’s Global Innovators and have received various sponsorships from the Spanish and Catalan governments.

Please feel free to contact me:

• By email: garystew@gmail.com or gary@migoa.com.
• By skype: garystew.
• By MSN: garystew2001.