I have known Stefan Alfason for quite sometime while he has been building his startup Jivaro. I met Stefan in 2010, he used to be a Foreign Currency Trader in one of the failed Icelandic banks. He has raised money, built a team and they have pivoted a couple of times and I think they are starting to hit their stride on driving their metrics. I am always inspired by those startups teams that just refuse to give up, they continue to plod along and build something that users love eventually. Stefan and his team fall into that category, they just refuse to go away or give up and continue to focus on their value proposition and the problem of their customers. I believe very strongly that Founders need to be experts in only one thing, the problem of their customers. All other skills can be acquired by bringing the team on-board. I am not saying it is easy but it helps to know this. When I meet founders they tell themselves things like I am not good in technology or website development or the industry etc You don’t need to be.
Jivaro is community driven online platform for online poker players. They have been building a suite of products and services that serves the online poker player community with tools, education and entertainment. The online poker playing community is growing really fast, in addition to that I did a simple search for Poker Tools in Google Search Insights and there is a sharp rise in people searching for Poker Tools to learn and to get better at playing poker. I think Stefan and Team Jivaro are onto something.
I am not big in games or poker or card games so I cannot comment on the need for such a tool, however based on what I hear from Stefan in terms of the metrics that they are tracking, they are looking at some pretty interesting growth. I have always found online communities that coalesce around something unique like Poker or exotic travel or Massive Multiplayer Online games as interesting. I also believe that valuable companies are going to be built in the future that use technology to enable humans to do better. Computers or tools, they are complements so if we can make Machines and Humans to work with each other, valuable things can be done. I think Jivaro falls in that category. If you are a poker player and reading this article, check out Jivaro and give their Beta a try.
Jivaro will be one of the startups that we will be featured in the Startup Iceland Conference, you have bought your tickets right? Well, if you have not there is still time. The event is almost here! Don’t wait till the last day to book your tickets we will not have them.
