Sun Rise

Picture taken in Reykjavik by me

2012 was eventful. The Startup Community in Iceland is starting to thrive, we are seeing green shoots everywhere. More optimism, courage and eagerness to start and build things of value. I have been quite off-line from the blog-sphere due to my current role of building a new company. It has been a very interesting last 6 months. However, Startup Iceland is live and kicking. We will organize a bunch of events starting with the Startup Iceland 2013 – A Conference on Building Antifragile Startup Ecosystems in the first week of June, more specifically June 1,2,3 and 4th. I have adopted the word Antifragility thanks to Nicholas Nassim Taleb. I have written a lot about his work and I do believe his latest book on Antifragility is his best compilation yet. This years conference is going to be a 4 day event. We will have a hackathon, an Unconference Event and a TEDx like format day of talks and lectures. The website is under development and should be launched soon. All the details, how to sign up etc will be shared through the website. I am really excited to start the new year with so much momentum based on the work the community here in Iceland has done the last year. If we look back, here are all the Startup Related Events that happened in Iceland in 2012.

  1. Startup Weekend – more than 10 startup weekends were organized by Innovit with sponsorship from Landsbanki
  2. Grass root book club and entrepreneurship discussions organized through Hugmyndaráðuneytið – Lean Startup was the book we discussed. I blogged about it most of the meetups.
  3. Startup Iceland 2012 – Conference that brought Brad Feld, Brad Burnham, Ted Zoller and many other entrepreneurs from around the world to Iceland. Here is a summary of the event. If you missed the event here are the videos.
  4. Startup Reykjavik 2012 – First mentorship based accelerator launched in Iceland and the first class graduated
  5. Seed Forum – has been happening in Iceland for quite sometime but the level of participation and the quality of speakers and investors took a turn for the better this year.

I believe through this blog I have documented all the major things that have happened in Iceland the past year. I will continue to do that in the coming year. There are very few thoughts that fundamentally change how you view the world and this year, my focus in on Antifragility i.e how we can become stronger by having an affinity towards the random, uncertain events. I believe that is the world we live in and I have embraced it. There are a few principles that I want to live by and Brad Feld wrote a very interesting post on LinkedIn about it “Give before you get“, I have always lived by this philosophy and I will continue to do more in the coming year. Startup Iceland is built with that principle. There is no transaction involved in all the effort that I have and a number of other volunteers put in to building this ecosystem in Iceland. It is a testament to the power of Giving.

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