It seems like that my post from yesterday generated a bit of bad blood from Carlos Blanco. Not totally unexpected, though it wasn’t my intention. I was only offering my honest opinion about what I perceived as a pattern of uncalled-for attacks, but in any case the conclusion was that in this case he was right about what he said on the panel (even if the form was less than ideal).

I have posted a comment on Carlos’s website letting him know that I stand by my opinions, but my intention wasn’t to offend him, or to request an invitation at First Tuesday to speak, or to have him mention us at events, or whatever. I think that we are probably our own best representatives as we are the entrepreneurs that started the project, and in any case, I’m not sure how much value it’d be to have as your representative someone who’s said very publicly that he wouldn’t invest in you. It just doesn’t make much sense. We’re not looking for Carlos to become our de facto spokesperson or to use First Tuesday as our preferred launch forum, if that’s what he was concerned about.

In any case, this issue is dead for me. I have to focus on our launch and on our business, and not on exchanging emails or posts. So I’ll post here my response to Carlos, which I hope will put the matter to rest.

And as for his comments about my kissing up to Intercom, etc., I don’t think he understood the message. I hope that someone understood my somewhat esoteric reference to Gods 1.0 — it was to differentiate the Old Testament God (in my parlance, God 1.0) from the New Testament God (God 2.0). God 2.0 is much more collaborative and friendly, and a lot less judgmental and angry than his Old Testament counterpart. His vision is to share and invite as many people as possible to share paradise, rather than his Old Testament counterpart who was often very angry and only spoke with regard to his “chosen people”. My view is many of the so-called, often self-appointed Gods of Internet are more 1.0 than 2.0, both in their use of technology and in their outlooks. But maybe the metaphor was too much of a stretch . . . .
In any case, here’s my response to Carlos. I’m confident that he will post it on his site as well. (I’ve written it in Spanish since Carlos notes that maybe I don’t understand the language well enough.)

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Carlos:

Hablamos cuando quieras sin problema alguno — con alcohol o sin :). El objetivo de mi post no era hablar de ti — era reflexionar sobre una charla en la que tu eras uno de los ponentes y concluir que estaba de acuerdo contigo en tus comentarios. Si, he dicho que no me ha gustado mucho el comentario que hiciste en Loogic ni tu manera de tratar a la gente en ciertas ocasiones. (Por cierto, como bien dices, no era necesario hacer un post ni en repuesta a la mia ni tu comentario en Loogic) pero para mi es casi igual.

Para mi el tema ya está muerto.

Todos tenemos cosas mucho mas interesantes e importantes que hacer, y realmente nunca he pretendido ser un ponente en First Tuesday. Ya hemos hablado con todos los inversores y muchos de los bloggers, tanto aquí como en el extranjero, así que si vamos a First Tuesday es mas para ver la opinión general de los otros emprendedores/inversores que asisten.

Por otro lado creo que no has entendido bien el post y mis comentarios de Grupo Intercom, etc. y no has entendido por que he llamado al post “Gods 1.0″.

En cualquier caso mi intención no era provocar una discusión publica sobre nuestra relación profesional casi no existente, era hacer una reflexion sobre mi experiencia hasta el momento en el mundo de Internet en España — “the good, the bad and the ugly”, con VCs, con otros emprendedores de Internet, etc., todo como una reflexión de varios comentarios expuestos ayer, y repito — al final, la conclusión es que estaba de acuerdo contigo en muchos puntos.

Y como tienes tantas ganas de probar la web, espero que podamos tomar una cerveza donde podrías darme tu feedback sobre la versión beta publica que lanzaremos durante el mes de septiembre.

Por cierto si quieres alargar esta conversación, mejor que tomemos esta cerverza que mencionas en lugar de hacer mas posts. Cuando quieras quedamos.

Un saludo

Gary

We found out a couple of weeks ago that we’d been selected as a Red Herring 100 Europe winner, but we were given permission yesterday to make the honour public. All of the winners will celebrate the Red Herring 100 Awards with VCs, other investors and business development, strategy and marketing executives from the largest public technology companies at Red Herring’s Venture Market Europe conference in Cannes from March 25-27 at the InterContinental Carlton. The theme of this year’s event is “The Politics of Disruption”.

To be honest, I’m both excited and scared. This is the second such honour we’ve received, even though we haven’t publicly launched our website. The first was Innovate!Europe 2006, where we learned that we had to focus our product more and make it more international. We had to be both more and less ambitious — in other words, we had to be smarter about positioning ourselves in the international marketplace and not just be content to win a small piece of the Spanish market. We learned a lot about how VCs work and think, some of it good, some of it less pleasant. But all in all, it was a great experience, and our company would not be the same if we had not gone to Innovate!Europe 2006. (I think that Chris and her group are already accepting registrations for the 2007 version.)

That’s why I’m so excited about Red Herring. There’s no guarantee of funding, and in fact, it’s unlikely that anything will come directly from our attending the event. But the feedback is great, and you also get the chance to introduce yourself to influential players and investors. Both of these factors only increase the possibility that you might eventually have a product that makes an attractive investment. And it also helps to generate a bit of buzz for your product.

These events are also great, because you make great contacts with fellow entrepreneurs with promising projects. On the one hand, we will have the chance to learn from a lot of the other companies have already generated a lot of favourable buzz, such as Plazes.com, Lastfm, and Joost.

That being said, it seems that the competition this year was particularly tough, given that great projects like Panoramio that have generated a lot of favourable local buzz apparently did not win the final award. That decision really surprised me, because Panoramio is so well-regarded. Maybe the editors placed special emphasis on the business model? I really don’t know, particularly as I didn’t read the proposal that Panoramio submitted to the evaluation committee. And I didn’t get the hear the interview that they provided to the journalist that contacted them from Red Herring. But I think that their project is definitely a part of the Spanish web 2.0 vanguard, and maybe the full extent of that innovation was not adequately translated in the interview process.

All I can say is that we’re really excited to go to Cannes and be in the presence of some of these other companies and VCs. The list of European VCs that will be there is amazing: Accel Partners, Atlas Venture, Benchmark Capital, Espirit Capital Partners, Grupo Financiero Riva y Garcia, Index Ventures and Ventech. Plus Martin Varsavksy will be a keynote speaker, meaning that one of Spain’s most prominent and entertaining entrepreneurs will be present. (Riva y Garcia is the sole Spanish VC that will be represented.) Really, it’s a great chance to see and be seen, both locally and internationally, and we’ve already been given our presentation slot, which we’re very happy with. There are a lot of lunches and dinners planned, which is nice, as it will give us a lot of opportunities to network with potential investors.

And on top of it all, the staff at Red Herring has been very nice to us with all of our questions, etc.

We’re driving to the conference on Sunday morning to be there for the cocktail dinner on Sunday evening. I’ll keep you all updated on how the conference goes and about if we make any interesting contacts.

Congrats by the way to the three other Spanish companies that made the cut: BitRock, Agnitio SL and Openbravo ERP.