It’s been a while since my last post, and I guess I have a bit of stuff to catch up on. It’s hard to get back into the swing of things. I’m happy that 2007 is over. It was great but tiring. We went from just me and Oriol with little more than a business plan to recruiting and working with a well-trained, international staff. We attended conferences in Budapest, Helsinki, Amsterdam, Berlin, Munich, Madrid, London and Paris. VCs went from being a theory to a likely reality. We did two angel rounds, got money from the Spanish government, launched the website and began planning the revised version of the web.

Whew! I’m tired just thinking about it.

Let’s hope that 2008 is even busier and more tiring! I’ve still got a lot more I have to accomplish!

Anyway, one of the last and most exciting things that I did in December 2008 was fly directly from Paris to Madrid right after Le Web 3 (thanks Loic for commenting on my blog! That was exciting!) to attend the American Chamber of Commerce’s in Spain’s 90th Anniversary. International commerce is cool and all, but the real draw was that Prince Felipe and Princess Leticia of Spain attended the event, and Prince Felipe gave the keynote.

Since I am a cheap entrepreneur, I used my Facebook account to reconnect with old friends who just so happened to be living in Madrid. Paco Polo, now a famed blogger, author and expert on international diplomacy, generously agreed to host me. Through Paco and Facebook, I also had the chance to re-connect with Pep Buades, who I met when I still a lawyer at Freshfields, but who has left the law and now is a banker at HSBC.

But back to the good stuff. Before going, it seemed that most of my female friends were more concerned about my confirming their fascination with royal gossip: “Tell me if Leticia’s really as skinny as everyone says.” (The answer is a resounding yes. She really looks borderline anorexic, and I say this with no ill will towards her. She’s had a tough year. I’m not sure if it’s the stress, the fact that her sister committed suicide or the pressure of being a royal, but that girl needs to eat a cheeseburger and some Doritos.)

Her secret service people — and there were like 20 of them that formed a barricade around her and the Prince even though I ended up less than 1 feet from them in the reception area — prevented me from taking any pictures. They stepped right in front of me when I tried to sneak a paparazzi shot. Luckily, I improvised and took a picture of her half-uneaten dessert instead.

My other impression was that the Prince is actually very tall and very good-looking. That surprised me, since I’m more familiar with the British royals who generally are not in contention to win any beauty awards any time soon. Leticia would be pretty if she weren’t so skinny. Her lack of weight makes her features a bit too extreme and birdlike.

At the dinner, I also made some interesting new contacts. Each table was given a name of a US state or landmark, with “The White House” being the central table at which the Prince and Leticia were seated. I was in Nebraska. Someone asked me at the table if I knew where Nebraska was, and my honest answer was: “I have no freaking clue.” I generally suck at geography, and being stuck at some no-name state/table took away from the overall experience. My goal is to be at least in New York (and hopefully the White House!) when the Chamber hosts its 100th Anniversary.

The other guests at my table were pretty cool, and I was extra happy to bump into a few folks from Barcelona (David Avilés and his girlfriend), who turned out to be friends of Oriol and Sophie and business partners with Jaime Mailet, who’s the current President of the American Chamber of Commerce. It’s such a small world! Everyone was pretty normal, if not a little star struck. It was a good beginning to the Christmas season.

Above I’ve attached some pics of my new friends Victor Alió and his wife Nieves, and below we took a picture with famed flamenco singer Antonio Carmona (not exactly a friend, but he was the entertainment — he sang a few songs to “Leti” and then agreed to take a picture with me and a few of my new friends).

This last picture of me shows me in the tuxedo I wore to the event. It was a black-tie event, so I had no choice.

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.