Startup Iceland

I have spent seventeen years sitting with founders at their most honest moments. Not the moments they share on stage at Startup Iceland. Not the polished narratives on LinkedIn, the fundraising announcements, the launch posts. The other moments. They occur at the end of a long day. The metrics are wrong, and the board meeting is on Thursday. The ones that happen at 2am when something in the…

The King is dead. Long Live the King! There was a time—not that long ago—when building a startup followed a fairly predictable script. You raised money on a strong idea.You hired engineers.You bought yourself time to build something meaningful.And if things went well, you eventually found product–market fit. That world is gone. Completely. And yet, strangely, the essence of the game hasn’t…

I spend most of my professional life thinking about trust. As an early-stage investor, I’m constantly reminded that capital is never the scarce resource. Trust is. Just because an investor writes a check does not mean a founder owes them trust. Trust has to be earned—through consistency, alignment, and behavior over time. And once it is lost, it is almost impossible to recover. There is a…

Technology as the Lever to Unlock the Ocean’s Economic and Planetary Potential Introduction — The System We Depend On For millennia, the ocean was at the edge of human consciousness — vast, mysterious, and distant. We admired it, feared it, and fished from it, but we never fully understood its complexity or true scale. Today, that relationship has changed. The ocean is no longer a backdrop to…

Finding parking in downtown Reykjavik shouldn’t need a PhD in Icelandic parking rules. Yet for visitors—and honestly, even for locals—figuring out P1, P2, and P3 zones can be frustrating. When is it free? Which garage is closest? What will it cost? So we decided to fix that. And with AI as our coding partner, we built a working parking app in a single afternoon. The Problem If you’ve ever…

Gervigreind er ekki lengur fjarlæg hugmynd sem bíður einhvers staðar í framtíðinni. Hún er þegar orðin hluti af verkfærum okkar, þjónustunni sem við notum, og í auknum mæli ákvarðanatöku í samfélaginu. Fyrir frumkvöðla, stefnumótendur og almenning er spurningin ekki lengur hvort gervigreind muni móta samfélagið – heldur hvernig við tryggjum að hún styrki, en veikji ekki, þau kerfi sem við byggjum…

AI is no longer an abstract idea. It is embedded in our tools and services. It is increasingly noticeable in our decisions. For founders, policymakers, and citizens, the question has changed. Now, we must consider how to guarantee AI strengthens society. We must make sure it does not weaken the foundations we depend on. For a small, digitally advanced, high-trust society like Iceland, this…

Eftir Bala Kamallakharan (the original article in English can be found here) Í október 2025 komst íslenski fasteignalána markaðurinn á sögulegan vendipunkt. Hæstiréttur úrskurðaði gegn Íslandsbanka í fordæmisgefandi máli um breytilega vexti í íbúðalánum. Í kjölfarið varð óvissa á markaði, bankar frystu lán, Fjármálastöðugleikaráð gaf út viðvaranir og stjórnvöld hófu kapphlaup við að koma á…

In October 2025, the Icelandic mortgage market reached an inflection point. The Supreme Court ruled against Íslandsbanki in a landmark case involving variable-rate clauses in mortgage contracts. Overnight, one of the most important pillars of Icelandic household finance — mortgage credit — was thrown into uncertainty. Banks paused products, the Financial Stability Council issued warnings, and…

What It Really Means to Be Aligned with Founders Every VC on LinkedIn says the same thing: “We couldn’t have done it without our founders.” It’s the most common phrase in venture capital — and often the most empty. Most investors are nowhere to be found when it really matters. They show up for the ribbon-cuttings, the exits, and the headlines. They do not show up for the messy, confusing, and…