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!”