My crusade at Confronte.com

September 25th was my last day at Confronte.com.

Confronte.com is a price comparison site for the Latin American market. Or, at least, that was our first idea :).

I finished college in 2004. I met Matías Garcia because he was teaching Operating Systems and Programming at the university. He was known as one of the smartest guys there. He was part of a group that came from Balseiro University in Bariloche, to teach in UADE.

At that time, I was working on my thesis with Ignacio López (Co-Founder of Wormhole IT), and we needed a tutor. Matías was our guy :). We talked to him, and he was happy to help us.

We finished it by March of the following year (2005), and we got our degree.

The following year, Matías started working on the idea of a comparison site. He traveled to the United States for work, and he thought that building an Argentinian site of that nature, would be a good idea. He started working alone.

Meanwhile, I was working at Hewlett Packard as Telecom Consultant, specializing on the latest technologies on the telecommunications market. The thing was, that none of the actual Latin American companies were buying cutting-edge technologies. We were talking about technologies like SIP and value added services, and the companies were stabilizing their SMS platforms. So, we were doing a lot of pre-sales work, but no action. I was getting bored.

We met with Matias and Ignacio for a "catch-up" dinner. Ignacio was working at Microsoft, and he was quite happy about that (JJ). Matiu told us what he was doing, and the bug got me. I sent him an email the day after, offering my help, and he replied with a TO-DO list. We didn't talk about money, shares or anything. We just worked.

I worked in both places for a couple of months, but my brain was overheating. Matiu needed more commitment to the project, and I saw an opportunity window. I grabbed my savings and jump to the pool. We worked 24x7 ... and we truly thought that we could go for the world.

At first, we were really focus on the Argentinian market. We thought that if we could reach that market, we could replicate our experiences. The thing is, that our mistake, helped to generate value for a local group. Clarín's media group was looking for a comparison site, and we were their option. They bought our company September 22th, 2008. But Clarin focuses only on Argentina, so we couldn't develop further to other countries.

I learned a lot. From legal issues, to the importance of having a partner. I'll always be thankful to that opportunity that Matiu gave me. I hope to enjoy my next startup as much as this one.

Social Networks side effects

I think we always start with curiosity about them.

We register on the web site. We first add the minimum info to be IN. We don't even put a picture in our profile.

As we begin to discover some cool features, I think we start to give up on the idea of privacy. We add some friend's picture, we complete our telephone number and address, and continue with the rest. So far, we are having so much fun.

Once we are full profiled, we don't know what to do. So if you are bored, you start seeing what's happening around you. Again and again. You click everywhere just to let the pain go.

It's the new television. You can see what's happening right here right now. You can watch all your friends' videos and be in touch with distant family at the same time. But like Seth says ... if your network is not based on real relationships, social networks lose some sense.

I think all social networks promote anxiety and frustration, because you become a follower. Since you see everybody's life events, or achievements, and you start to get bitter about getting your own. It would be different seeing status like "I studied for ten hours straight and still can't get my exercises right", or "I sent two thousand emails, and nobody is interested in my project".

I think everybody needs to spend some time offline. Stop being a follower. Think about your future without comparing yourself with others. Just do it, and you'll start to see a difference.

(ps: thank you ine ... you're so lovely with me!!)

Search Engines that don't work!

It's been a while since I wrote about Search Engines that do not work. You can see the original entry here (Spanish).

The thing is we all depend so much on Google. We really care about the SEO regarding our site. Every single day.

But the thing is, once you have a person in your site, you fail to help him find other stuff. He got there, he looked at the site, he didn't find what he was looking for, he tried the “search“ box but .... 0 results. Strike 3. You're out.

Do yourself a favor. Fix your search engine. There are very few people that use the “browseable“ option.

After all ... who is not in a hurry? :)