- They need organized Seed/Angel investors and capital to help them through the valley of death
- They need active Mentoring
- They need a bridge to a bigger market
I have been making the rounds trying to convince institutions in Iceland that in order to reboot Iceland we need new companies that are solving the problems of the future. We need an active privately funded Venture Capital company that helps entrepreneurs through the above stated 3 challenges. I have been working with the two incubators in Iceland Innovit and Klak, to partner with and launch a Tech Stars model through them. The biggest problem has been making people/institutions believe that something like this can be done here in Iceland. So what is new? every entrepreneurs goes through many nay sayers until the nay sayers are wrong.
The private VC company will fund the running of the Tech Stars program, and will fund 10 startups each year for a period of 3 intense months of mentoring, training and getting their idea formulated into a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) or an invest-able business plan. At the end of the 3 months, each company will pitch to an audience of accredited investors and get funded.
Image via CrunchBase |
Here is the presentation that I had made about why a VC company in Iceland would work.