The 4th episode of #FutureCast is a conversation with David Gunnarsson, the CEO of Dohop.com. I have known David for over a decade and I have watched the journey of Dohop from their early days. We talk about the challenges of startups in the early days of the development of the startup community and the startup ecosystem in Iceland. Dohop was founded by Frosti Sigurjonsson, a good friend of mine, David shares the story of why Frosti started Dohop. A couple of similar technology companies like SkyScanner and Kayak were started at the same time as Dohop, SkyScanner and Kayak became multi billion dollar companies whereas Dohop continued to be small and was growing slowly and had to pivot from their original idea to a meta-connection engine for airports and airlines. I believe the pivot happened because of a number of things and there is a lesson for Founders here it is important to scale once you figure out the business model. Dohop took a while to hit their stride to scale but in 2015 they pivoted and were off to the races. We touch upon what happened before COVID, during COVID and what led to the investment.
The Icelandic Government subsidies really made a difference and it has helped innovative technology based companies like Dohop to continue to build and operate out of Iceland. I think just like 2008 financial crisis, the pandemic is going to be another transformative event in the history of the startup community in Iceland. A number of break through companies are being formed and are being built as I write this blog post.
