[2] Under Espuelas' leadership, StarMedia launched a massive marketing effort to attract the very first Internet users, advertisers, and e-commerce companies across the Latin world.

[3] Called the "Espuelas Effect" by leading Brazilian news weekly Exame, StarMedia was the catalyst for the Internet industry throughout Latin America.

StarMedia is now owned by France Telecom subsidiary Orange, serving "more than 24 million" Hispanic Internet users per month, according to company statements[5] in 2008.

After a frustrating year and a half of approaching venture capitalists to invest in his vision, only to have them uniformly refuse, many avowing that Latins "did not like technology" and would never use the Internet, the company went on to raise $2.5 million in 1997.

It was David Rockefeller, retired head of Chase Manhattan, brother of Nelson, and a longtime pillar-the pillar-of corporate involvement in New York City life.

Investors such as WarburgPincus, Intel, GE Capital, Hearst and many other institutions and individuals sold their StarMedia shares at or near the peak of the market.

Espuelas writes in his book Life in Action: “Because I believed in our company and our mission, I had never sold a single StarMedia share or stock option.

Its pan-regional, horizontal portal was the first to target Spanish and Portuguese-language speakers on the Internet, registering 1.2 billion page views in the third quarter of 1999.

A picture of him on the cover of Internet World magazine--ripping his shirt open to show the StarMedia logo, like Superman, summed up the spirit of the company.

StarMedia launched web-based email, chat, and streaming video in Spanish and Portuguese before its U.S.-focused competitors such as Yahoo, Excite, Lycos or AOL did in English.

Other innovations included the first instant messaging system in Latin America; in partnership with HP the first out-of-the-box e-commerce platform for small businesses; and with IBM, the first free ISP in the region.

It was the first Latin Internet company to go public, creating what Brazil's leading business magazine Exame called the "Espuelas Effect", eventually reaching a market capitalization of more than $3.8 billion.

During the .com bust of the early 2000s, which coincided with the worst Latin American economic collapse in a generation, StarMedia lost almost all of its market value and was the subject of class-action shareholder litigation.

The following week eresMas, now claiming to be the leader of the Spanish-language Internet industry because of its acquisition of StarMedia, was acquired by France Telecom subsidiary Wanadoo SA (now called Orange after a rebranding in 2006) for more than $255 million euros.

In 2002, led by Board of Directors Chair Susan Segal,[18] StarMedia Mobile was renamed CycleLogic and shareholders approved a one-for-1,000 reverse stock split.