Bre was a keynote speaker in Startup Iceland 2014 and he will be a keynote speaker in Startup Iceland 2022. I have been a big fan of Bre and Bre has been a big fan of Iceland and has visited Iceland several times even before he came to Startup Iceland in 2014. Bre is one of the investors and investment board member in Iceland Venture Studio. Before all of that, Bre is an Entrepreneur, Teacher , Maker and founder of MakerBot, the 3D printing machine company. Bre successfully took a hacker and maker concept, build a worldwide community around it and made the concept mainstream. The 3D desktop printing movement has led to individuals weekend projects to major projects most notably the James Webb Space Telescope team using MakerBot to 3D print components. He has been one of my mentors and friend since the first time he came to Startup Iceland.
Bre has had an illustrious career, MakerBot was acquired by Stratasys for $604 million right after his trip to Iceland. He had told me in 2014 that if I was going to do anything around investing or building startups in Iceland, I should reach out to him and I did in 2017 and he was the first one to commit to invest in Iceland Venture Studio, which resulted in us investing in 11 startups and working with 25 founders. Iceland Venture Studio portfolio impact has been tremendous in the last 3 years the IVS portfolio teams have created over 500 jobs worldwide and our portfolio already have 3 fund makers. I am excited to get Bre back to Iceland and to connect with the startup community here again.
