Source: Spyr.is

Source: Spyr.is

I attended the official opening of the Innovation House the initiative of Jon Von Tetzchner. I was excited and energized by the show up of the Startup Community, almost everyone was there and it was great to see the support of the Government of Iceland through the Minister of Industry, the Norwegian Embassy, the US Embassy and all other representatives from various other embassies. The keynote was delivered by Jon, the Minister of Industry and the Depty Chief of Mission for the US Embassy. The unanimous sentiment was the positive energy to support the entrepreneur and the startup community. I am really happy to see the momentum being built up for the coming year. We are starting to see success already in terms of participation, commitment and now more tools and avenues for entrepreneurs to start up, grow and build great companies and opportunities. As I say, there has never been a better time to really jump and do that dream company that you always wanted to do.

I think there are a number of unsung heros in these ventures, Kristjan Freyr Kristjansson and his team at Innovit+Klak, all the advisors and supporters who make things like this happen. I am really excited about what is happening in Iceland. As part of my give, we have instituted a Startup Program in GreenQloud. We are starting to see a lot of interest and application for this initiative as well. What entrepreneurs need is mentoring, infrastructure and bridge to bigger markets. Infrastructure could be in the form of Seed Money or Computing, Storage and Advice on utilizing the rocket fuel for Startups which is Cloud Computing. I believe very strongly that Software that is not built for the Internet and utilizing the Cloud is difficult to get into the hands of the potential customers. We are solving one of that problem through our Infrastructure in GreenQloud.

The really impressive thing about this Innovation House in Seltjarnarnes is that it connected to another one in Gloucester, Boston and to the one in Norway. It is a perfect bridge between the Nordic region and the US. It was inspiring to listen to Jon talk about how it is very exciting for him to have launched this Innovation House as he grew up in Seltjarnarnes and his belief that Iceland is the center of the world and great companies can be built out of the talent in Iceland. I am glad to see and hear more people start to believe in this notion. I have written about it when it was the craziest thing to say, but I saw it and I continue to believe in this crazy idea that we can build great companies from Iceland. So now there is no excuse to “Go Be An Entrepreneur!”

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