Jeff Slobotski is the Co-Founder and Chief Community Builder at Silicon Prairie News. He also founded Router Ventures a Seed Stage Venture Capital company. Jeff is based in Omaha, Silicon Prairie News is a digital media company whose website and events are dedicated to highlighting, connecting and supporting entrepreneurs, creatives, and investors throughout the Greater Midwest.
Jeff posted that he was thinking of coming to Iceland, Brad Feld tagged me and asked Jeff to connect with me. I reached out to Jeff and invited him to participate in Startup Iceland and he immediately agreed. Jeff is a community hacker for the Midwest region of the U.S, he has brought attention to the startups and the startup community development there. Jeff has written for Time, has been featured in Fast Company and has been quoted in New York Times and created a News and digital media company to bring attention to the region. Chatting with him over messenger, I get the feeling he will fit right into our small startup community in Iceland.
I have written before the value of connecting with diverse startup communities all over the world. The way to build bridges is to get the leaders in the community to participate in our community’s activities. Startup Iceland is a perfect venue for this. Please get your early bird tickets now! could not resist the plug, as everyone waits till the last minute to buy the ticket, every year I beg people to buy the tickets early so I don’t have to say No when you ask me for a ticket at the end of May, anyways I digress, coming back to building bridges to other communities. We did this with Edmonton, now we have friends in Canada who can connect any startup founder who participated in Startup Iceland 2015 to look at Canada as a place to go and build a bigger market. I am happy that Iceland is making a connection into the Midwest region of the U.S., no one from Iceland thinks about Omaha when you think about Startups, but I am pretty sure there are some interesting founders building valuable things in that region. That is the nature of entrepreneurship, place does not matter, size does not matter and where you come from does not matter, the only thing that matters is the will to change the future.
Jeff is connected to some very interesting people, oh, do you know the Oracle of Omaha? yes, the one and only Warren Buffett, he happens to live in Omaha. Here is a chance for you to connect with someone in that community now. I don’t know if Jeff knows Warren Buffett or not but he knows Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos and who happens to still run Zappos. Tony has been featured in many media outlets so I am not going to write about him. I believe strongly that the journey to building a company starts with making connections to people. It is the people and their network who make things happen. Don’t lose this opportunity to connect with interesting people who are interested to learn more about Iceland and its startup community.
