Uncertainty: #StartupIceland

Are you Validating the right Hypothesis?

2012-02-13T09:56:00.001-06:00

The above video is from the Stanford University's Entrepreneurship Corner. Alexander Osterwalder explaining his Business Model Canvas, with examples and Steve Blank joining him to discuss about Customer Development and how it all fits together. It is 53 minutes long but well worth it. There is an iPad App called Business Model Toolbox ($29) which you can buy, I think it is pretty neat

3 Great Global Challenges

2012-02-13T00:48:00.000-06:00

I have been a fan of Thomas L. Friedman since I started reading the New York Times and then his books, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, The World is Flat, Hot, Flat and Crowded etc He has a knack to say the things that matter in the simplest of words and gets your brain working. His latest opinion with title "We Need a Second Party" is a classic. Although the message of the article is geared

Startup Iceland in KickStarter

2012-02-12T10:28:00.001-06:00

So, I want to create a documentary of the journey of Startup Iceland. Who would want to see this documentary? I don't know and I don't know if I can get anyone to fund this either. I have been a big fan of KickStarter, thats when the idea broke out hey why don't I use KickStarter to fund the documentary? It is not new, it has been done before but I am sure anyone who wants to create a

Disruption in Education

2012-02-12T02:26:00.000-06:00

Education is one of the most valuable bequeaths that we can pass along to our next generation. It was hammered into my head when I was growing up that there is only one way out of poverty and that is education. I am doing ok following that advice, what is exciting to me with the advent of the internet is that education is no longer confined behind the walls of an institute. There are

Connectors, Mavens and Sales(person)

2012-02-11T08:09:00.000-06:00

The book Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell influenced my thinking a lot. I read the book as soon as it came off the press, I listen to it all the time when I am running and I had read most of Malcolm Gladwell's other books. An important point that Malcolm Gladwell makes in the book Tipping Point is the categorization of three groups of people and the role they play in making an idea into a

Snoop-Around.com vs mbl.is

2012-02-11T02:50:00.000-06:00

I saw this website snoop-around.com on the SVEF awards night, snoop-around.com is a Photo/Interview website in Reykjavik, where they visit creative people in their workshop or home and do a profile on them. The website won the award for being the Best Approach, Blog and Video Content category. It was really fascinating to see how creative one can get watching people doing creative work. The

Strategies to implement Validated Learning

2012-02-10T00:12:00.000-06:00

The meetup yesterday on the Lean Startup was very inspiring, so I am following up the post with some more thoughts on how can we implement the validated learning concept on various businesses and scenarios. I strongly believe that the Internet and all the applications that have been built on this global network provide us with valuable sensors to touch, feel and understand the dynamics of

Validated Learning - 4th Meetup

2012-02-09T15:46:00.000-06:00

We had a fantastic turnout today with over 40 people participating in Hotel Kex lobby in our 4th event related to the Lean Startup book discussion. Ari led the discussion about Validated Learning, once again the whole meeting was in Icelandic until I interrupted the flow with my 2 cents in English :) what can I say I am like that. Anyways, it was very exciting to see the level of participation

How to fund your project

2012-02-09T01:25:00.000-06:00

You may not know Tim Schafer but what he is doing is probably going to disrupt the Game development industry, i.e Game Publishers vs Game Developers. I think the Internet has changed how we do things, for example if you are want to make your own music and publish it? sure you can do that... you want to make your own Adventure Game and cannot get a publisher to back you, no problem use

Entrepreneurial Design

2012-02-08T01:09:00.000-06:00

Image via Wikipedia Fred Wilson blogged about "Building the Ecosystems" and how a couple of his colleagues Gary Chou and Christina Cacioppo in Union Square Ventures are teaching a course called Entrepreneurial Design at the School of Visual Arts. This is one of the reasons why I love where we are in the Internet adoption cycle. Just think about it... I am here sitting in Iceland, I love

Metrics that matter

2012-02-07T01:27:00.001-06:00

Building a business is hard, running one while you are building it is harder. No wonder there are all these metrics on the failure rate of startups. Try juggling 5 balls while you are on a mono-cycle on the freeway, that is what it feels like when you are in the early stage of a startup. So, how does one navigate this mine field? Well, if we go back to basics, we absolutely need to have defined

Valuation of a startup - the holy grail?

2012-02-06T04:56:00.001-06:00

I have been getting a lot of questions related to How does one value Startups. The best reference for valuation goes all the way to Warren Buffet's teacher Benjamin Graham and his classic book Security Analysis, I believe the principles taught in those books are timeless ie. they don't fundamentally change what does change is our perception of value. More recently, Aswath Damodaran's work on

Ying and Yang of Startup teams and Ecosystems

2012-02-05T05:04:00.003-06:00

One of the measures that I think is very important in building great teams is the balance of Ying and Yang, Creative and Analytical, Design and Engineering call it what you will. A great team in any field of operation needs to have a balance between the creative side and the analytical side. I think startup business development and management is a balance between

SVEF or The Association of Icelandic Web Masters

2012-02-04T12:56:00.001-06:00

I was invited to speak at the annual meeting of SVEF the Association of the Icelandic Web Masters. I was very impressed to see the Mayor of Reykjavik speaking about how he loves the Internet. Anyways, this was like the Oscars of Internet Web Page designers and implementors. I was impressed by the turnout and quite humbled to even be given a stage to talk about something that I believe in. I

Icelandic Institute for Intelligent Machines

2012-02-04T11:58:00.001-06:00

Had lunch with Dr. Kristinn R. Thórisson, and learnt a lot about the Icelandic Institute for Intelligent Machines (IIIM), fascinating stuff. The institutes mission is to accelerate adoption of academic work into the industry as it relates to Artificial Intelligence (A), Machine Learning (ML) etc. The institute is currently funded by Rannis, Reykjavik University and CCP Games. The institute is

Hacking, Hacker and Hackathon - words misconstrued

2012-02-03T01:19:00.001-06:00

Facebook IPO S1 paper filing has given a lot of material for all the journalists, blogger(yours truly included) and everyone's mom to take stabs at what Facebook is, can be or cannot be. In addition, every word of what Mark Zuckerberg says in the document is up for grabs. I saw this tweet "Reuters totally clueless about the meaning of hacking" in the @newsycombinator twitter feed. The article

Business Model Canvas + Lean Startup

2012-02-02T16:50:00.003-06:00

Cover via Amazon The third session for the grass root gathering of Entrepreneurs and learners of the Lean Startup book happened this evening in Cafe Solon @17:30. The topic of today's discussion was the Business Model Canvas from the Business Model Generation, the popular book written by Alexander Osterwalder which came out in 2010. The canvas is used by Innovit the incubator in Iceland.

Skema - A Startup Profile

2012-02-02T00:25:00.000-06:00

I am a strong believer that kids can learn to program very early in their lives. I have been a big fan of the late Dr.Randy Pauch and his legacy of Alice. My daughter and I have played with Alice a bit and I am planning to set some time with her every week to do Alice, she has all these screen plays that she creates in her note book and she is very motivated to be in the performing arts. Here

Locals Recommended - A Startup Profile

2012-01-31T23:53:00.001-06:00

Met with Helgi Hermansson, former TV program producer, now an Entrepreneur trying to create a platform for video curation for the travel industry. What is that you ask? well, it is quite simple they want to be the filter of the videos that you see on YouTube but the filtering is specifically for the Travel Industry, Hotels, Airlines, Restaurants, City councils, Historic Sites, tourist

Marketing on a Shoe String

2012-01-31T15:30:00.001-06:00

As Entrepreneurs we are always faced with constraints related to marketing and selling our products and services, that is natural and true for every company. Very few companies have a unlimited budget to spend on marketing. I have had my pet peeves with the Marketing departments while I was working for a bank. The problem I had was, I never knew whether the money we spent was worth it. This is

Skyr is the word - Icelandic Entrepreneur in NYC

2012-01-31T00:24:00.002-06:00

Bloomberg - Taking Stock With Pimm Fox from siggi's on Vimeo. Watch the video of Siggi Hilmarsson, an Icelander who took the concept of Icelandic "Skyr", which is a healthier version of Yogurt and built a business for it. I have found another mentor for our Icelandic Startups. Just think about the first day when he started making Skyr at home in New York, what boldness should he have had to

Who needs another Silicon Valley?

2012-01-30T08:14:00.000-06:00

Gunnar Holmstein, the Colorful CEO of Clara comes up with interesting perspectives. He has a question about if startup ecosystems should do what Eric Ries talks about in his book The Lean Startup. Rather than trying to build a "Silicon Valley" clone in every city and country, should we be asking How can we build Sustainable Entrepreneurial Ecosystems the same way we build a company. The

What does it take to be a great Mentor

2012-01-30T01:36:00.000-06:00

Mentoring is by far the most rewarding and challenging role anyone can take on. It is much like parenting, but in a mentoring relationship there is no hierarchy. It is mainly give from both sides. David Cohen had a fantastic post a while back about the Mentor Manifesto. David is the CEO of TechStars, Boulder and has had the experience to work with hundreds of mentors and entrepreneurs. I could

Why do Startups Fail?

2012-01-29T02:50:00.001-06:00

I saw this post on Business Insider with the title "Don't do a startup, You WILL fail!" based on a presentation by Dave McClure. Dave is a colorful Super Angel and invests with an interesting investment thesis. But what Dave says is spot on and he is one of those who don't Bull S#$%. Of course Dave goes on rant about all the wrong reasons that entrepreneurs start companies and then they

Autonomy-Mastery-Purpose Incentives that work

2012-01-27T00:00:00.000-06:00

Daniel Pink is a Career Analyst or that is what the Ted biography describes what he does. I have seen both the videos embedded here. Daniel has been studying what motivates people to perform at their best. If you have not seen these videos it may surprise you. Ask yourself what is your incentive and motivation to do what you do everyday. Entrepreneurship is a funny business your success