Tonight at 8:30PM, Nuroa and Highgrowth Partners will sponsor TechCrunch Barcelona Meetup with Mike Butcher. We organized the event on very short notice, but it looks like it will be a success, with more than 100 people signed up to attend. Of course, there’s often some variation between the number of people that sign up and the number that actually attend, but in either case, we’ve pretty happy. And nuroa got mentioned in TechCrunch, which is always cool.

The event will be at a cool new hotel, Granados 83, which came highly recommended by my friend and fellow entrepreneur Santiago Porrero, who also helped put us touch with the public relations and reservations department.

All in all, no complaints. They were able to offer us a really cool option on very short notice and at a very good price - an open bar of wine and cava (Spanish champagne), plus some light snacks for 100 on their rooftop terrace with views of the Eixample.

I’m not sure if it’s the open bar, the views, or the chance to network with other entrepreneurs and with Mike, but in any case, the response has been surprisingly encouraging.

I hope to see you there tonight! And if not, I’ll be sure to post pics from the event in tomorrow’s post.

Happy San Jordi’s Day! I’ve gotten neither a book nor a rose, which kind of sucks, but I’m trying to keep upbeat.

For those you outside of Catalunya, Sant Jordi (”Saint George’s Day” for English speakers) is a special day, similar to Valentine’s Day, but not quite as commercial. All around the streets of Catalunya, there are small vendors with small, folding tables selling roses and books for a few euros so that couples (or friends or even bosses) can express their love for and appreciation of one another. Women walk around town with roses, men show off their books and everyone enjoys the beautiful springtime weather.

Sant Jordi’s Day is the Day of the Book and the Rose in Catalunya, and celebrates a martyred Roman soldier who was decapitated when he refused to kill Christians. There are popular stories of San Jordi and a dragon. Through a random lottery, the king’s daughter was chosen to be given as a sacrifice to a dragon that was terrorizing the village of Montblanc, but San Jordi arrived just in time to kill the dragon and save the beautiful princess.

Giving roses in celebration of San Jordi has been done at least since the Rose Fair began in the 15th century. The book part came into effect around 1930. April 23 was chosen as the official day in Catalonia, because it was the day on which Cervantes and Shakespeare, among others, died. Quite logically, it’s also the accepted date on which San Jordi died in 303 AD.

Speaking of love, Mariah Carey is the queen of the love song, and I’m really loving her new hit, Touch My Body. It explains what happens after you’ve given your partner the rose or book for San Jordi’s day. Touch My Body was the number one song in the US for the last couple of weeks, only recently replaced by Leona Lewis’s Bleeding Love. In addition to the mellow beat and sweet vocals, I like the reference to a web 2.0 start-up. It gives me something to which I can aspire.

First, Mariah tells her lover how she feels about him:

I know that you’ve been waiting for it
I’m waiting too
In my imagination I’d be all up on you
I know you got that fever for me
102
And boy I know I feel the same
My temperature’s through the roof

But then being the paparazzi-stalked star that she is (when she’s not begging for media attention, that is), she warns her lover not to try to embarass her on the Internet:

If there’s a camera up in here
Then it’s gonna leave with me
When I do (I do)
If there’s a camera up in here
Then I’d best not catch this flick
On YouTube (YouTube)

That’s when you know that you’ve hit the bigtime. Not when you get paid $1.65 billion for your not even 2-year old start-up. Not when important bloggers and analysts note that you dominate your category more than Google dominates search. It’s when a superstar like Mariah Carey name-checks you in her number 1 song without even asking to get paid for it or having to explain who you are. That’s when you know you have become an important part of popular culture.

I love Barcelona. As the people here say a lot, it has the perfect combination of “mar” (sea) and montaña (mountain). Beaches. Skiing. Great restaurants. Great food. Good-looking people. Great night life. What’s not to love? Carpe diem!

But lately I’ve begun to think that bohemian chic has its limitations. Let me explain. One of the things that I love most about Spain is that people here enjoy life. Too many people in the US have a 5-year plan they work like crazy to realize. On my very first visit to Barcelona, however, I realized that things here were different. I was 25 at the time, fresh out of law school. And I noticed that everyone here seemed so relaxed. Not a care in the world. They were all on the streets and partying. They embodied the Rent ethic that seemed so attractive after 7 years at Yale, busting my ass trying to be Maverick, trying to be the Top Gun. In this context, “La vie boheme! No day but today!” sounded especially appealing. You only have 525, 600 minutes in a year. How do you want to spend them? Forget all the bullshit and enjoy every day. Carpe diem!

That’s cool while you’re young and immortal. But as you get older, and you realize that you have fewer “todays” awaiting you, a long-term vision becomes unavoidable.

So what I loved about Barcelona when I first got here 7 years ago — the bohemian chic — looks more problematic as age gives me a little bit of perspective.

A few examples:

• Shitty service: One of my biggest pet peeves. The customer is the enemy, or at best irrelevant, in many Spanish businesses. If you want to come back, great. If not, who cares? Are you a loyal customer? That’s your problem! Just pay for your meal, and go — and I’m going to try as exploit you as much as possible while you’re here. Carpe Diem! For example, I eat at the same restaurant almost every day. For dessert, I usually get the arroz con leche, but one day I asked for the yogurt with honey. The waitress told me that they had honey, but I’d be charged extra for it. For a few drops of honey! Since then, I’ve been a little more reluctant to eat there. I don’t feel valued as a customer, so I’m trying to find my “Cheers” place — where everyone knows my name. And I’m not the only entrepreneur who laments this entrepreneurial short-sightedness in Spanish businesses. Yannick recounts a similar experience where a waitress charged for electricity when he plugged in his laptop! The title of the post says it all: A Catalan Starbucks, Impossible!

• Bye-bye 3GSM: A major international conference held in Catalunya? Impossible! Not quite, but given the oft short-sighted approach to business here, not far from the truth. A lot of blogs this week are lamenting that the organizers of the 3GSM conference want to leave Barcelona. The conference brings a lot of international prestige to Barcelona, but who cares? Let’s gouge the tourists! The petty thieves will rob them on the streets, the local businesspeople will rob them everywhere else, and the local government will remain largely silent because they’ll keep coming back, right? And all the taxi drivers that spend all day complaining in their smelly cabs about how tough life is will chat on their phones and drink coffee instead of attending to the surge of new clients, some of whom might even give tips. But who cares? Carpe diem!

Maybe it’s just a matter of getting old — from hippie to yuppie — or maybe bohemian chic really is an unsustainable way of life. Maybe as all of those long-haired, free love do-gooders of the 60s realized long ago, at some point we all have to grow up or suffer retarded development, both economically and personally.

People have been talking for years about how the Internet was going to  disintermediate real estate agents much in the same way that Internet has largely disintermediated travel agents. For the most part, things haven’t turned out that way. Here at nuroa we appreciate that real estate agents still play a critical role in the buying and selling of flats and houses.

But before I get too far ahead of myself, let’s define what “disintermediation” is. Simply put, it means cutting out the middle man; cutting out the (real estate) agents and putting the principals (the buyer and the seller) in more direct contact.

Why is disintermediation relevant? For the consumer, cutting out the middle man also means cutting out the middle man’s commission.

Take a look at the travel industry, for instance.  A lot of people buy their tickets or book their hotels online. No need to walk down to the local travel agent’s office and sit down while she searches through all of her catalogues. Now you can just do it yourself via Expedia or eDreams.

Real estate, however, has proven to be more difficult to disintermediate, because there’s so much more at stake than a €2000 vacation. For most people, their home is their castle. Buying a home is the most important financial decision in most people’s lives, and it involves lots of boring stuff like laws, numbers, notary publics and annoying sellers.

So here’s the big question: Would you really be willing to spend €400.000 online based only on pics and maybe even a video tour? 

I probably wouldn’t, and I bet that most people wouldn’t either. The notable exception is Spanish real estate giant Metrovacesa, which has proven that their clients are willing to buy new developments (obra nueva) online based entirely only on the specs. For second-hand homes, however, it’s likely that there is — and maybe always will be — a trust factor that can only be dealt with by physically inspecting a property and, in many cases, by receiving the expertise and guidance of a real estate agent.

That’s why I think that Redfin’s model makes a lot of sense. They decrease the importance of the real estate agent via the Internet, but don’t deny that the agent currently still has an important role to play. There’s a lot of interesting consumer advice online (whether in the form of Q&A’s, wikis, blogs, etc.), but real estate agents are still important for the part of the process that require human judgment and sensibility — all of the intangible stuff that might include body language, things like negotiating price, figuring out an owner’s urgency to sell, knowing when to kiss the owner’s ass, knowing when to ignore or threaten the owner, figuring out how to outbid a competitive offer without paying too much, etc.

Redfin, in effect, offers an Internet business with a human component — they call it the “Redfin Advantage”. Under this model, the customer does all of the parts that don’t need an agent — e.g., finding attractive homes online,  researching neighborhoods, scheduling home tours and making an offer. The agent only steps in an expert negotiator — a closer — is required. The agents are paid a salary by Redfin, and their bonuses are based on customer satisfaction rather than sales price, which means that agents’ interests are aligned with the buyers’ and everyone’s goal is to get the lowest sales price. (Under the traditional model, the agent’s incentive is to get the highest price possible, as her commission is usually a percentage of the sales price, so the agent’s incentive is probably more aligned with the seller or at best conflicted.)

As proof of their effectiveness, Redfin released a study yesterday noting that on average their clients saved $15,568. And at the end of the day, regardless of all of the bells and whistles related to different types of real estate sites, the bottom-line is the same: Home-buyers want the best property at the cheapest price. Whoever can accomplish that feat has a good chance at really disrupting the current marketplace.

Perhaps as a testament to the disruptive potential of Redfin’s model, the traditional real estate industry seems pretty much antagonistic towards Redfin, as the company only reinforces the idea that real estate agents are largely irrelevant, except maybe for certain later-stage parts of a transaction. And the take-home message is clear: Since agents are only needed at the last part of the transaction, they should cut their standard commissions dramatically.

What do you think about Redfin? Is it the future of real estate? Or is it more likely that at some point real estate agents won’t be necessary for even the latter stages of a transaction — will a clever algorithm someday be able to do it all? And even if a clever algorithm could do it, would you trust it with your life savings?  TechCrunch’s claims to the contrary notwithstanding, can a machine ever entirely replicate or surpass true expert knowledge?

As I transition back into my day job as the CEO of an Internet start-up, I can’t help but reflect on what I’ve learned from the Hillary-Obama Battle Royale. Both politics and business involve a lot of careful strategic planning by very talented people. But in both areas, few of these well-laid plans ever play out as they were originally intended.

For example, both Hillary and Facebook were media darlings a few months ago, before being deemed profoundly “unlikeable” or “untrustworthy” and entering into the fight of their lives. Both seem to have survived these scares, but it’s unclear what the public’s final decision will be in either case.

On a more general level, I think that there are 5 key truths that apply as much to politics as it does to business:

5. When the going gets tough, a lot of investors get going. As soon as it seemed that she might lose the New Hampshire primary after already having lost the Iowa Caucuses, a lot of Hillary’s investors started to get cold feet, forcing the Clintons to have a lot of reassuring chats with their investors. Even in politics, a lot of investors want sure bets. As CEO of a property search start-up, I’ve often been surprised when some VCs seem annoyed that there’s some risk involved with start-up ventures. My advice is that if you are lucky enough to get various offers from VCs or business angels, go with the one who will be around when you face an unexpected setback (like a loss in the Caucuses) or encounter an unexpectedly tough new market entrant that’s generating a lot of buzz. Go with someone who will stick with you through for better or for worse, within limits.

4. Karma is a bitch: Sometimes its easier to take ethical or legal shortcuts, but the truth will eventually come out. And it will take a big bite out of your ass when it does. There are lots of business examples here:

• Enron and their “creative” accounting theories;
• Martha Stewart, who thought she’d save a few dollars thanks to insider trading, but ended up paying a lot more in fines and jail time;
• Marion Jones, who disgraced herself and her fans when she admitted to using steroids. She too will see the inside of a jail cell; and
• Facebook, whose founder Mark Zuckerberg arguably lied and stole from former friends and colleagues to develop his mini-Empire. Some of the negative publicity about Facebook’s advertising platform (Beacon) arguably stems from the fact that Mark Zuckerberg seems a bit slimy.

Note that I didn’t say “Good guys finish last”, because I’m not quite sure I believe that. But the truth has a nasty and persistent habit of being discovered no matter how clever or careful you think you are. Just ask Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.

3. Keep it simple, stupid! One of Obama’s great gifts is that he’s able to communicate controversial and complicated topics — race and poverty — via visual cues and oratorical flourishes. He doesn’t really ever delve into a 100-point plan. There’s no need to. His aim is to sell his vision of America. Great Internet companies like Google use a similar strategy. Both Obama and Google could obviously explain their core concepts in painful detail, but do you really care how Google generates so many relevant results in so little time? Or do you agree that Google’s minimalist home page conveys a simplicity that enhances its user experience. Great communicators — and great products - hide a lot of the complicated stuff , because they know that most consumers/voters suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder.

2. It’s great to be strong and visionary. But sometimes it’s okay to admit that you have weaknesses and doubts. It’s okay to be human. This is one that’s particularly easier said than done for me. A lot of people expect leaders to be emotionless robots. Winners execute exceptionally well no matter what the personal circumstance or obstacle. Displays of emotion are for the weak. But I think that the Hillary crying episode showed that the public resists leaders that appear inhuman and inflexible. In reviewing why people tend to be railing against Facebook all of a sudden, for example, Duncan Riley of TechCrunch explained that Mark Zuckerberg would “be better off relaxing a little more and being more open and honest; Facebook must reach a tipping point this year in growth and people will feel a lot better about supporting him if he was little less robotic, and more importantly more open.” Closed and robotic is out. Open and honest is in.

1. Charisma and “likability” matter, particularly when you want to be the top dog. Hillary is probably very annoyed that, although she has paid her dues, a much more charismatic male candidate is threatening her for the top spot. Although Obama is a lot less experienced than Hillary, voters are willing to focus more on his likability factor. All other things being equal, people like to see nice guys or women do well. In his Digg case study, for example, Nisan Gabbay argues that the Kevin Rose persona has a lot to do with Digg’s success. He explains: “I believe that Kevin Rose’s personality and public persona played a big part in Digg’s success. Initial users wanted to see Digg succeed because they wanted to see Kevin succeed. When Digg was raising its first VC round, some well-respected Internet investors felt that better products were about to be launched that would unseat Digg. However, we have learned that having a superior technical product is not necessarily the determining factor for success. Consumer Internet services are both an art and a science. The Kevin Rose persona was a big contributor to the “art” side of Digg that is impossible to replicate by competitors.”

To paraphrase Hillary’s evaluation of Obama, successful leadership is as much about poetry as it is about prose.

A Wall Street Journal reporter interviews Dan Nye of LinkedIn (CEO of LinkedIn since Feb. 2007) to find out:

• How they differentiate themselves from Facebook and MySpace;
• Whether they have an inferiority complex since they “only” have 18 million users; and
• How they’ve grown over the last year (now over 200 employees).

It’s an interesting example of product differentiation and amping up a start-up.

Le Web 3 is now over. It was an awesome conference, about which I’ll write later.

The one comment that you get a lot at these conferences, however, is: “Wow! There certainly seems to be a lot going on in Barcelona these days.” I hung out a bit with Nicole Simon, formerly of Blognation Germany, and she told me that she thought it’d be cool to do a conference in Barcelona, given that Germans and French bloggers want to know more about what’s going on in the Spanish tech scene (and I suppose, in Spain more generally).

Well, now that should be a lot easier. Javier of Loogic has just launched Loogic in English. Loogic is kind of like Spain’s TechCrunch. I try to read it every day to see what’s going on in the Spanish tech scence. Javier is also a really nice guy and often willing to give you useful product feedback. His advice definitely helped make nuroa into a better product.

And Loogic is one of the most read Spanish tech blogs, so if you have a product that you’d like to launch, there’s no better place to do it.

Congrats, Javier! I think this is a great iniative and sign that the Spanish tech scene is going global!

In keeping with my lessons learned from Loïc Le Meur, I’m now going to promote nuroa a bit and ask for your help.

We are trying to get 1 month’s free publicity on a new website for start-ups. As a start-up with limited resources, you can’t imagine how important that word is — “free!”

All you need to do is go to this link — http://www.europeanstartups.com/company-index-european-startups — and click on the “vote” button next to our name “Nuroa.” It should take less than 5 seconds of your time, but you can’t imagine how important it would be for us.

Please remember that you can vote once per day.

Sorry in advance for this shameless plug!

Next week, Sophie and I will be heading to Paris for Le Web3 and a couple of business meetings. I will be taking my trusty video camera, with the hopes of posting some of the highlights. According to the folks at Le Web3, 1300 people from 40 countries will show up. I can’t wait to see what the party will be like!

Anyway, Loïc Le Meur, France’s best known blogger, video-blogging entrepreneur and organizer of Le Web 3 is now on a major marketing campaign to promote Le Web 3 (and his new project seesmic.com, which is still in alpha). I get daily video updates from him on Facebook about what’s going on at Seesmic, all of the major tech blogs are offering free tickets or discounted tickets to Le Web 3 to spur attendance, and major newspapers like the Financial Times are writing articles about Loïc and Le Web 3.

Watching his commitment to self-promotion is cool, because I’ve gotten some interesting lessons about what we can do to promote nuroa.

Highlights from the FT article:

• Seesmic.com, a video-blogging platform, is Loïc’s fifth start-up, and he moved from Paris to San Francisco, because he thinks that Silicon Valley is the only real destination for entrepreneurs that want to launch global Internet brands. It’s a bit ironic that the person responsible for organising one of Europe’s biggest Internet events firmly believes that the US is the only place to be if you really want to be relevant in the Internet space. But Loïc justifies it by saying that Europe’s 22 languages and geography complicates deal-making, while San Francisco is at the epicentre of deals. In his words: “The way you do partnerships here, everyone’s a block away or 20 minutes away in Palo Alto. If I need to set up a partnership with [micro-blogging service] Twitter, I call them, we have coffee, and two hours later the deal is done. If I were in France, there’s a nine-hour time difference and it’s like you don’t matter.” If even marquee-level European entrepreneurs with direct access to world leaders feel irrelevant if they are not in Silicon Valley, what does that mean for the rest of us?

• On a more optimistic note, Loïc provides his top 10 tips for entrepreneurs. I’ll re-post them here and comment on them in more detail in the future. In general, I’d just say that they are very insightful, but as with most things, much of it is easier said than done.
  1. Don’t wait for a revolutionary idea. It will never happen. Just focus on a simple, exciting, empty space and execute as fast as possible
  2. Share your idea. The more you share, the more you get advice and the more you learn. Meet and talk to your competitors.
  3. Build a community. Use blogging and social software to make sure people hear about you.
  4. Listen to your community. Answer questions and build your product with their feedback.
  5. Gather a great team. Select those with very different skills from you. Look for people who are better than you.
  6. Be the first to recognise a problem. Everyone makes mistakes. Address the issue in public, learn about and correct it.
  7. Don’t spend time on market research. Launch test versions as early as possible. Keep improving the product in the open.
  8. Don’t obsess over spreadsheet business plans. They are not going to turn out as you predict, in any case.
  9. Don’t plan a big marketing effort. It’s much more important and powerful that your community loves the product.
  10. Don’t focus on getting rich. Focus on your users. Money is a consequence of success, not a goal.

A few weeks back, there was athunderstorm at TechCrunch regarding an article about how to make videos more viral. The guest post was written by Dan Ackerman Greenberg, a 22-year old Stanford graduate student and CEO of a company that helps make videos viral. His stated goal was to give the reader an insight into how to make videos more popular — he likens it to SEO for videos, arguing that companies need to understand video virality optimisation strategies as part of their online marketing campaigns.

It seems like he knows what he’s doing. His company has helped six videos to achieve:

• 6 million views on YouTube
• ~30,000 ratings
• ~10,000 favorites
• ~10,000 comments
• 200+ blog posts linking back to the videos
• All six videos made it into the top 5 Most Viewed of the Day, and the two that went truly viral (1.5 million views each) were #1 and #2 Most Viewed of the Week.

Among his key insights is that content isn’t king (this is what makes his job seem a little slimy). In his words, although great content is cool, it’s not essential to making a video really viral. There’s a process to making a video viral, and that process is often a lot more important than the content itself.

This seems somewhat unmeritocratic and counter to the point of community-based voting systems. You want the see the best content, as voted by an objective set of your peers, not as manipulated by clever viral marketing experts.

The post got 515 comments, a second post in which Dan responded to the attacks that people like him corrupt the purity of video sites like YouTube by manipulating users into viewing mediocre content (I guess the general reaction was that it’s like those SEO people who try to trick Google and eventually get punished for corrupting the results.), and an interview with CNN.

Michael Arrington posted a somewhat dramatic comment noting that “frankly I’m disgusted by this”.

But as they say in politics, “all press is good press”. Controversy is an effective marketing tool. This kid is now on the map, and I’m sure that lots of companies will be calling him. Random people like me are blogging about him and thinking about how much we need someone like him for our companies, even if there is something slightly unsavoury about “artificially” making your video popular.

But isn’t that the definition of a marketing campaign? Artificially making something popular? Isn’t all marketing/advertising on some level invasive/misleading/untruthful/manipulative? Maybe that’s what Mark Zuckerberg is learning given the backlash against Beacon . . . .

When I first heard about SEO, I thought it was “shady”, because it tried to manipulate Google’s results for corporate gain. And I guess I have the same feeling about Dan’s company.

But now I realise that start-ups like mine live or die by SEO. Manipulating Google (within their self-imposed limits) is the name of the game. And the same will probably be increasingly true about videos.

That’s marketing, folks!

So with that in mind, I’ve posted two videos:

• Dan’s interview on CNN explaining his vision of SEO for videos; and
• a video that various French friends have been sending me about a musical group that performed on the subway in Paris. Their video already has more than 1 million hits on YouTube! It’s obviously a viral marketing campaign to promote an upcoming album, as was the performance on the train. It’s a cool little video that cost absolutely nothing to make, but who knows. Maybe Dan’s company helped them make it popular on YouTube . . . .

Naturally 7 (live on the Paris subway)

Dan Greenberg on CNN, SEO for videos