The past week has been fantastic for the Startup Community in Iceland. First it was the announcement of GreenQloud being acquired by NetApp, followed by the merger of Digi.me with Personal. In addition to the above news, Icelandic startups Viska and Ghostlamp raised meaningful capital from Icelandic investors. To say it never rains but it pours is an understatement. The Startup Community in Iceland has come a long way in a few short years and I can say for the first time, I feel we have cranked the flywheel to a point the momentum will carry us forward for some time. That being said, we have a lot of work to do, we are maybe in mile 6 of a marathon.
Startup Reykjavik Batch 6 had their demo day last Friday and I was inspired and impressed with the cohort. All the teams were working on interesting problems that have global impact and what is even more interesting is that all the teams were starting to think Global from Day Zero. I have plagiarised that statement from Ari Helgason from Index Ventures, the keynote speaker at the demo day. The teams that presented were:
The feature picture above is of Einar Gunnar Gudmundsson of Arion Bank showing the development of the Startup Community in Iceland (thank you Ari Helgason for tweeting this image). We have to thank Brad Feld for his encouragement and for writing the Startup Communities book. I am really happy to see how far we have come in such a short time.
