I took a long break from writing... I don't know why I do that because there are many topics of interest that I am constantly battling in my head and writing clears that up.
For those of you who have never followed what I have been doing, We invested in an awesome team in Iceland, the company is in the business of Text Analysis and Language Processing and Visualization. I want to document the history of how this company was transformed in a very short period of time with our participation and capital.
Clara, was a promising startup in the house of idea the incubator funded by the University of Iceland and the Government of Iceland. They had boot strapped their way with grants and charity to develop a language processing engine that understood Icelandic. I started working with them at the end of 2009, based on my input the team pivoted... updated their business plan, launched a new product, got some paying customers.
We closed a round of early stage funding their working capital... now the team has grown from 6 to 11. They have added 65+ customers and have started on a journey to setup an office in the Silicon Valley and are close to being cash flow positive. All this in the last 10 months! whoever said startups take time to grow!
This experience planted a seed idea in my head to launch a Venture Capital Fund coupled with a business accelerator program. I have been a student of some of the successful Venture Capitalists out there like Fred Wilson, Brad Feld, Mark Suster to name a few. I have been a avid reader of every word they have been writing... it has been a fascinating journey. I even took the courage to meet Fred Wilson when I was in NYC, he was gracious enough to meet with me and share some of his insights.
For those of you who have never followed what I have been doing, We invested in an awesome team in Iceland, the company is in the business of Text Analysis and Language Processing and Visualization. I want to document the history of how this company was transformed in a very short period of time with our participation and capital.
We closed a round of early stage funding their working capital... now the team has grown from 6 to 11. They have added 65+ customers and have started on a journey to setup an office in the Silicon Valley and are close to being cash flow positive. All this in the last 10 months! whoever said startups take time to grow!
This experience planted a seed idea in my head to launch a Venture Capital Fund coupled with a business accelerator program. I have been a student of some of the successful Venture Capitalists out there like Fred Wilson, Brad Feld, Mark Suster to name a few. I have been a avid reader of every word they have been writing... it has been a fascinating journey. I even took the courage to meet Fred Wilson when I was in NYC, he was gracious enough to meet with me and share some of his insights.
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