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Iceland is a black box when it comes to business reporting in english.
I got a reference to an article that was written by the Nordic Web about the funding scene in the Nordics in Q3. The data was quite sparse on the funds that have been raised in Iceland. I know Neil Murray the person behind the Nordic Web and I reached out to him to point out the following Icelandic companies that have raised money.
- GreenQloud Raises New Funding Round to Expand Operation and Market Reach
- NSA Ventures invests in Gangverk
- Kjarninn raises money from Prominent Icelandic Angel Investors (in Icelandic)
These are just deals that I know about. I was surprised that the Nordic Web team did not do more digging to find out deals that were announced in Iceland. Then I realized, it is not the problem of Nordic Web team it is an Iceland problem. We box ourselves out as almost all juicy local business news is in Icelandic. We are an island after all and this community is only 323,002 people. We get caught up in our own world in this tiny island. I think we are forgetting that more than 3 times the population of Iceland will visit Iceland this year and almost all of them don’t understand or speak Icelandic, however all news and reporting is in Icelandic. Hmm, do you think there is an opportunity to tap those who are visiting iceland through the new media channel?
There are some green shoots related to reporting in English when Morgunbladid one of the widely read newspaper in Iceland started reporting current events in english but if anything it is quite sparse. It has always bothered me that not much is written about the local business news in Iceland in english, The Grapevine does a decent job but they don’t write much about business or startups or entrepreneurs. I think there is a huge opportunity for any media company to take advantage of this especially when it comes to business news reporting.
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Bala, the specific cases of funding you mention occur in Q4 so would not have been included in our Q3 analysis anyway. HOWEVER, I am sure that even if it is not these deals we missed, there would have been some that escaped us due to the lack of information available regarding deals in Iceland (specifically in English) so I am in agreement with you. I would encourage startups in Iceland to get and update a Crunchbase profile, as well as reaching out to local media such as Arctic Startup to give more people outside of Iceland visibility as to what is going on there.
Regarding business reporting in English for Iceland, I would love The Nordic Web to be the vehicle for this and we are committed to helping all of The Nordic Countries receiving more visibility when it comes to entrepreneurship and startups, and conveying an accurate and fair portrayal of the ecosystems. Therefore if anybody wants to partner or assist on this, then please email me on neil@thenordicweb.com
For what it’s worth I also believe this blog is an excellent channel for getting an insight into what is happening in Iceland, and is one of our main resources for keeping an eye on Icelandic startup news.
Neil
@neilswmurray
Thank you for your comments Neil, we are in uncharted waters when it comes to getting these kinds of news out. I would love to help in whatever way I can to help you and anyone who brings awareness to the region.
News in English about the Icelandic energy business can be found here:
http://askjaenergy.org/
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