StepOne Blog

During the second week of December, StepOne and Barrabés hosted a trip organized by Fundación Banesto with the collaboration of ICEX the Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade. The “Global Business Trip” brought 10 Spanish tech to the San Francisco Bay Area.

This trip was seen as a success for the companies who had the opportunity to meet possible partners, prospective clients, VC representatives, while also enjoying group visits Google, Yahoo, The Plug and Play Tech Center, and the Intel Museum.

Imaste’s blog: http://blog.imaste-ips.com/?p=162

http://blog.imaste-ips.com/?p=169

Thanks to everyone who made this such a great event. We’ll be posting pictures and videos shortly. Stay tuned!

(In the meantime, you can follow us on Twitter.)

The Wall Street Journal had an interesting article about how former growing centers of VC funding (such as Dallas) are losing their edge amid this tough funding climate.  Only the VC clusters in Boston and Silicon Valley seem to be thriving.

From the article: Many of the VC firms in Dallas have run out of cash and stopped investing in new startups.  Only six new venture funds have been raised in New York this year, totaling $486M, down from 14 new funds with $1.9 BN in 2006.

http://bit.ly/le8Tl

StepOne’s US office just finished up hosting a very successful and enjoyable client visit by Marti Manent, CEO and Founder of elAbogado.  As we do with each of our clients, StepOne US arranged key logistical, strategic, and networking meetings for Marti, including meetings with other legal directories in the US, and top tier website companies, such as Facebook and Craigslist.

We in the StepOne US office were extremely impressed by Marti’s energy, entrepreneurial spirit, and “just-get-it-done” attitude that will fit well with Silicon Valley.

elAbogado.com is the top directory for law firms and lawyers in Spain.  elAbogado is currently working with StepOne to launch a subsidiary in the US market.

Marti’s blog: http://www.mmanent.com/desde-silicon-valley/

The New York Times recently published an article about the potential passage of a referendum in the Catalan Parliament against bullfighting.  Economic woes, combined with dwindling interest among young Catalans, has led to closures of bullrings all across Spain.  Political issue?  Animal rights issue?  Cultural issue  What do you think?

http://bit.ly/v9Qgt