Whew! It’s been a hectic month, which explains the delay since my last post. We’ve been very busy bees since the launch.

I’ll go item by item.

Right after the launch, we got contacted by various Spanish newspaper groups, which meant that we were travelling a bit within Spain to discuss possible collaborations.

Then we flew to Cologne via Frankfurt to meet with a potential investor.

Then we flew to Munich to attend the Demo Pitch Camp, which was cool because I met a lot of interesting German entrepreneurs. It was a challenge, because the basic rules of Demo are: i) no powerpoints; and ii) you have to do a live demonstration of your product. Given Murphy’s law, the result is that the experience can be nerve-wracking, but I had a lot of fun. It was also the last weekend of Oktoberfest, so I got to see people of all ages, races and sizes dressed up in traditional Bavarian costumes with men in Lederhosen and women in Dirndl. They even wore the costumes to the dance clubs! It made for a trippy experience seeing people dance to Rihanna in lederhosen!

After Pitch Camp, we flew to Budapest for ETRE. Without a doubt, I have to say that ETRE is THE best conference that I ever attended. Everything is over the top, but with good taste. All of the dinners were in fabulous, historic buildings in Budapest that were unbelievably beautiful. And on top of that, important people just sit next to you and chat. Simon Cook of DJFEsprit sat down next to me at lunch and we had a cool conversation about how start-ups should grow, and compared the approaches in the US and in Europe. I sat down on the bus to go the last dinner and decided that I’d be social (sometimes I prefer to just listen to my ubiquitous iPod). It turned out that the guy next to me was a general partner at Northzone Ventures and he’s also on the board of Schibsted, the parent company of Anuntis Segundamano. We met so many “important” people that it was unreal. When we were eating dinner, Michael Brehm, the co-founder and COO of StudiVZ came up and started chatting with us. At first, I had no clue who he was — there was no ego involved. And when he mentioned StudiVZ, I told him that I remember reading that they had just sold their social networking site for almost $100 million. He confirmed that and we chatted a bit about running a German start-up.

In addition to the luck we had just bumping into people, Farley and Oliver were great about introducing us to possibly interesting contacts. Since they know everyone, they just very informally introduced us to a lot of great people that we might not otherwise have had access to. And then when they weren’t available, we discussed European entrepreneurship while getting toasted with the Red Herring interns.

The truth is that everyone was relaxed and fun. Even some of the VCs that we’d seen at other conferences seemed more mellow, as they approached us to ask for updates as to how we’d evolved since the last time we met.

And the last night was a ball. We all danced to R&B and pop music in a small club that the people at Red Herring had rented out via a local promotor. The overzealous promotor also recruited about 20-30 young, blond girls whose only job was to make sure that the male guests had fun. Interesting, because unlike most events, ETRE is one in which spouses are usually taken along. And we’d just come from a black-tie event, so the wives were in formal gowns and the men were in tuxedos. And the female “entertainers” were dressed in cut-off tank tops and tight jeans with knee-high boots. A surreal way to end an amazing event.

From ETRE we flew back to Barcelona to recover over the weekend, and then it was off to Munich again for DEMO. It was also a wonderful event. I don’t think that it got the press coverage that it deserved, but it was a great opportunity to meet all of the major German VCs and media investors in one room. All but one of the ones that we wanted to chat with came to visit our booth. Some very interesting conversations have begun. And Stefan Herbert and his staff ran a great event that was on time. The keynote speech was by Oliver Samwer, which was cool since the Samwer brothers are among the coolest story of serial entrepreneurs that is out there. Three young German brothers who got internships in Silicon Valley, then went back to Germany to create an eBay competitor that was bought only 3 months later by eBay for a bit more than $40 million.

Stefan, the executive director of DEMO, in particular was very cool. He’s someone that I’ll definitely stay in touch with, and I highly recommend the event for anyone looking to break into the German market. And I definitely agree that a presentation without a Powerpoint and with a live demo is much more exciting and informative, both for the speaker and the audience. The challenge is definitely worth it if you do it right.

The only negative part was getting escorted out of the P1 Club, which everyone tells me is the most exclusive club in Munich. I asked for Beyoncé, and when the DJ wouldn’t play it (even though it was a private party and he was being paid supposedly to play what the attendees wanted), I told him that I thought the club sucked. I was promptly escorted out. I didn’t like the club anyway! The drinks were €17.50 a piece!

So now we’re back in Barcelona. We’ve met with a bunch of possible investors. Some interesting things should be happening to us within the next few months, if all goes according to plan. And I’ll be sure to write about it all on this blog.

Next week, it’s off to Amsterdam, where I’ve been invited to give a 30-minute presentation to the attendees of the International Classified Media Association’s conference. My task will be to explain why vertical search could be viewed as an opportunity for traditional classifieds players.

And immediately after we’ll be headed to the Web 2.0 conference in Berlin. I’m looking forward to that. We’ve made a lot of friends in Germany, and quite a few of them will attend the event.

The only disappointing thing about the last few weeks is that we were also supposed to attend the FOWA conference. Ryan invited us to present when he did the Roadshow visit to Barcelona. We were all ready to go. We exchanged emails until the Sunday before the conference, which was then followed by . . . dead silence. The last correspondence had been that they would confirm the details of our presentation (how much time we’d have, what slot we’d present, etc.). When no one responded to our emails, we called all the numbers on his business card and website, but no one would answer our emails or phone calls. About a week after the conference, Ryan sent me a brief email telling me that it was unfortunate that things had turned out as they had, but that he simply hadn’t had the time to get back to us. It’s understandable to a certain extent, but it definitely made me appreciate a lot more the professionalism of the DEMO and Red Herring people. I think it’s not so cool to do a roadshow, invite (without any solicitation on our part) entrepreneurs to present, exchange emails confirming the invitation, and then simply fail to respond.

But that might just be me.