Iceland review - 2013, Síða 104

102 ICELAND REVIEW
Invest
In Iceland
Leading the Race
NSA ventures is Iceland’s leading venture
capital fund, directly investing in innova-
tive, internationally-oriented Icelandic startup
companies which have the potential for substantial
future growth. It’s an evergreen fund, using the
proceeds from its successfully exited companies to
reinvest in the local economy and startup scene. “I
look at the investment process as a relay race,” says
NSA CEO Helga valfells. “We provide the first major
investment in a company, help with product develop-
ment and the first stages of export. Then we hand off
the baton to others when the company is ready to
really scale up.”
The majority of NSA’s investments are in the fields
of information technology and life sciences. Both
Marorka, a leading provider of energy management
technology for the shipping industry, and CLARA, a
software company which generates detailed analy-
ses of companies’ user communities, are among
NSA’s recent success stories; emerging pharmaceu-
tical companies such as the antimicrobial therapeu-
tics-focused Akthelia and Lífeind, a biotech company
which developed through research at the University
of Iceland, are still growing with NSA support.
NSA has invested in over 100 diverse companies
since its inception in 1998. NSA has success-
fully exited companies ranging from the popular
children’s Tv show LazyTown, to Nikita, a women’s
clothing company specializing in snowboarding
gear. Among the varied companies in their current
portfolio are gogoyoko, a ‘social music marketplace’
which prioritizes artists’ rights and has developed a
creative, musician-controlled marketplace for music
to be sold and streamed online. There’s also Andrea
Maack, a perfume company which draws its scent
inspiration from the founder’s own conceptual art,
and Star:Oddi, one of the world’s primary producers
of electronic signals and measuring devices used in
sea animal research.
“There has been a lot of grassroots activity [in
Iceland] since the crash,” says Helga, referenc-
ing such entrepreneurial organizations as Startup
Reykjavík and the upcoming Startup Iceland confer-
ence. “It’s an exciting environment to be in. Iceland
is known for its creativity and resilience and those
qualities translate well in the venture space.” She
believes that investors and entrepreneurs ben-
efit from a ‘value-added’ environment in Iceland. In