Meet the world class mentors of
Startup Reykjavík 2019
Our startups receive top notch mentorship from experienced entrepreneurs, VCs and angel investors, university faculty, and leading industry experts, who give them their insights, feedback and valuable connections.
Hjalmar Gislason
Founder and CEO at GRID
Curious about data, technology, media, the universe and everything. Founder of 5 software companies.
Aslaug Magnusdottir
Aslaug Magnusdottir is an entrepreneur and investor. She is the Co-Founder of several ventures within the fashion and hospitality sectors, most notably Moda Operandi. She has an MBA from Harvard Business School, an LLM from Duke University and a degree in Law from the University of Iceland
Stefanía Bjarney Ólafsdóttir
CEO and cofounder of Avo – preventing human error when implementing analytics. Mathematician and philosopher who has questioning things for a living for 7 years. The 1st data person and Head of Data Science at QuizUp, and has now fueled that into cofounding Avo (backed by Y Combinator and Heavybit).
Helga Valfells
Managing Partner at Crowberry Capital.
Helga is on the board of five technology company. She is the Chair of the Icelandic Venture Capital Association
Prior to co-founding Crowberry, Helga was CEO of NSA. She has an MBA from London Business School and a BA degree from Harvard.
Gummi Hafsteinsson
Gummi is a veteran of consumer product development, most recently as the product lead for Google Assistant. He's also an experienced founder and entrepreneur; Emu, the company he founded, was acquired by Google, and he was VP Product at Siri, which was acquired by Apple.
Georg Ludviksson
CEO & Co-Founder at Meniga.
Serial entrepreneur Georg Ludviksson is passionate about innovation at the intersection of technology and finance and started Meniga in 2009 to help people better manage their finances. Georg has over 20 years of experience founding, building and leading software companies with a global ambition.
Magnús Ingi Óskarsson
Independent Startup Consultant
Björgvin Ingi Ólafsson
Managing Partner - Deloitte Consulting Iceland at Deloitte
Broad business experience including a decade's experience as an investment banker in a full boom and bust cycle in Iceland, written and nationally distributed a book as a teenager, lectured in business school/college and hosted a weekly business TV show in my early twenties.
Svafa Gronfeldt
Svafa Gronfeldt is a venture designer working with teams to build and scale companies, brands, processes and experiences. She serves on the board of directors of 3 listed companies, is a founding member of MITdesignX at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a co-founder of the MET seed fund.
Ragnheiður H Magnúsdóttir
Head of Utility Maintenance at Veitur ohf
Leadership and management experience on a broad basis, foremost in Energy, Telecommunications and IT.
Specialties: Stragegy, Product Development, Management, New Business Development and Project Management.
Sigurlina Ingvarsdottir
Production at Bonfire Studios, Inc
Sigurlína Ingvarsdóttir - Lína - is a video game producer who's worked at CCP, Ubisoft and EA on franchises like EVE Online, Mirror's Edge, The Division, Star Wars Battlefront and FIFA before joining Bonfire Studios, a new gaming startup in California. She likes to run, travel and think about tech.
Andri Heiðar Kristinsson
CEO and Co-Founder at Travelade.
Andri is an entrepreneur at heart. He has led teams that build consumer products for over 400 million users at LinkedIn, where most recently he led newsfeed engagement. Prior to moving to the Bay Area to pursue an MBA at Stanford in 2011, he was the CEO and Co-Founder of Icelandic Startups.
Ásbjörn Sigurjónsson
Asbjorn works for Marel as Program Manager Key Accounts. Before joining Marel, Asbjorn worked for Valia Investments in Boston. Prior to that he founded Silverberg Technologies, an innovative hardware/software company in the fitness industry, delivering accountable data for improvement in the gym.
Gréta María Grétarsdóttir
CEO at Krónan
Gréta María is the CEO of Krónan a grocery chain operating 25 stores. Before going into the retail industry in 2016 she was in the banking industry for 10 years and before that the IT industry. Gréta has a passion for sports and played and coached basketball for many years.
Professor, Dean - School of Computer Science at Reykjavik University
Haraldur Þorkelsson
Partner at Investa
Has worked at the software company OZ since 1996 and worked closely with many of the world's largest technology companies to develop various communication solutions. He manages OZ's product development until the company was sold to Nokia. He worked for Nokia until 2010 and was, among other things, actively involved in policy management with Nokia.
Helga Waage
Co-Founder and CTO at Mobilitus
Helga Waage is an entrepreneur with extensive experience in project management, software architectural design and development. She is an expert in the fields of AI, mobile technology, real time data and ecommerce. She is also experienced in large-scale, high-availability, distributed systems.
Frosti Sigurjónsson
Chairman of the board at Dohop.
Entrepreneur and investor.
Helgi Már Bjorgvinsson
Director Partnerships & Corporate Affairs at Icelandair
Advisory Board Member, Cabo Verde Airlines. Board member; Lindarvatn, AICC and FRIS. Investment council; ITF I. BS Marketing & Management, USC. MBA, ESCP-EAP European School of Management.
Magga Dóra
Experience designer and digital strategist with 20 years of experience in software and digital product development.
Árni Sigurjónsson
General Counsel at Marel
Árni is an experienced lawyer with over 15 years in private practice, investment banking and currently as the General Counsel of Marel, the largest company listed on NASDAQ Iceland by market capitalization. He is also currently Vice-President of the Federation of Icelandic Industries (SI).
Einar Gunnar Guðmundsson
Corporate Entrepreneur at Arion Bank
Einar currently works towards entrepreneurs and investors in Iceland at Arion Bank through Startup Reykjavik along with internal innovation at Arion Bank, mainly with the bank's digital strategy and business development.
Jenný Ruth Hrafnsdóttir
Founding Partner at Crowberry Capital
Jenny is a Partner at Crowberry. Prior she headed Business Dev at BionX, a Boston based startup, exited to Ottobock. Earlier she was a Product Manager at Össur and CEO at Krumma ehf. She earned Dipl.-Ing. in Robotics and MEMS from KIT and B.S. in engineering from HÍ and holds registered IPs.
Jói Sigurðsson
CEO and Founder at Crankwheel.
Jói Sigurdsson is the founder of CrankWheel, a sales acceleration SaaS startup. Jói worked for close to 10 years at Google as a Tech Lead, on projects such as Google Desktop and Chrome. Prior to Google, Jói was involved with several startups in Iceland and abroad.
Karl Guðmundsson
Director of Trade and Export at Promote Iceland
An experienced leader with 20 years of international experience in strategic leadership roles, product development, product management, sales and marketing. Has participated in four start-ups in Europe and the US as well as working in large international corporations.
Magnus Arnason
CDO at NOVA
Magnus Arnason has had a wide exposure to different types of business activities since undertaking his first business venture in his late teens.
Kjartan Örn Ólafsson
Owner & Founder at Volta Labs
Kjartan Örn Ólafsson is an entrepreneur and angel-investor at Volta ehf., a private startup studio. He sits on the board of a handful of startups and organizations including Brunnur Ventures. Kjartan studied philosophy and logic in Iceland and Italy, and earned his MBA from Harvard Business School.
Kolbrún Hrafnkelsdóttir
CEO at Florealis.
Kolbrún is the CEO and founder of the pharmaceutical company Florealis. Kolbrún holds a M.Sc. degree in Pharmacy and Master in Business Administration and has an extensive managerial experience within the pharmaceutical industry for the past 20 years.
Ágúst Freyr Takacs Ingason
Owner, CEO, Value Creator, Executive Producer at Vertu ehf.
He is an experienced business development executive and Executive Producer and a firm believer in the importance of nurturing creativity in the development of a business, product or venture. Meaningful storytelling is also key in business development and selling an idea.
Lára Hrafnsdóttir
Data-Driven Marketing - Change Agent at Arion Bank
Lára is data-driven and marketing minded with a great passion for strategy, creativity, branding and business management. She specializes in user experience with a focus on cross-sales, loyalty programs, churn prevention and customer acquisition.
Kristján Freyr Kristjánsson
CEO & Co-Founder at 50skills
Kristjan is CEO & Co-Founder of 50skills.com. 50skills is an all-in-one recruiting platform designed to help employers qualify, hire and onboard job candidates using automation.
Prior to 50skills, Kristjan was VP of Marketing Products at Meniga, CEO at Icelandic Startups. He lives in Boston, MA.
Magnús E. Björnsson
CEO at Men & Mice
Magnús is the CEO of Men & Mice. Specializing in Big Data and product development, Magnús previously lead core development of the Big Data Discovery product at Oracle as Sr. Director of Development.
Magnús graduated with a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Brandeis University in Massachusetts.
Þórlindur Kjartansson
Founder at i2.
Thorlindur Kjartansson is the owner of i2 and serves as outisde counsel for tech companies. He focuses on sales negotiations and legal advice as well as marketing strategy.
Agnar Sigmarsson
COO & Founder at Datasmoothie
Agnar has been working in the startup scene in Reykjavik and London for almost 10 years. For the last 4 years he has been working on the startup Datasmoothie, that makes market research data come to life and enables anyone to create and share beautiful visualisations in minutes - not days.
Sesselja Vilhjalmsdottir is the CEO and founder of Tagplay, b2b software enterprise solution. Prior to founding Tagplay she co-produced the video documentary, The Startup Kids, and founded the mobile gaming social network, Kinwins. She’s an economist with Masters in Marketing.
Sigurður Arnljótsson
Founding Partner at Brunnur Ventures
Senior executive of numerous successful start-ups and high-growth companies. About 20 years’ of senior level executive experience, including general management, financial management, product development, corporate development, software development, business operations, and strategy.
Einar Sævarsson
CEO & Founder at Activity Stream
Einar is a serial entrepreneur passionate about people, entertainmant, disruptive technologies and data. Einar is currently the CEO / Founder of Activity Stream, the leading analytics solution for entertainment and sports.
Svana Gunnarsdóttir
Investment Manager at Frumtak
Arnar Þórisson
Co-founder/owner and Chairman of Íslensk fjárfesting ehf. (Iceland Invest). Chairman KILROY International A/S. Entrepreneur and investor. Has been involved in startups in various industries and countries. Cand Oecon from University of Iceland and MBA from IESE in Barcelona.
Co-Founder and Chief HR Officer at Meniga.
Viggó Ásgeirsson Co-founded Meniga in 2009 and also serves as its Chief HR Officer. He has extensive experience of marketing and managing financial web solutions. Before joining Meniga, he served as a Director of Marketing and E-Commerce at Landsbanki. He holds a BA degree in history MBA degree.
Erik Figueras Torras
SVP of technology and service at Síminn
I’ve worked in telco most of my business life. Networks at Siemens (DE & US), mobile terminals at Philips (FR & NL), and operator at Síminn (IS). I was co-founder of a start-up Amivox (IS & UK), and worked on business development in the SW company TM-Software (IS).
Patrick Halford
Patrick Halford is on the faculty of Singularity University covering mobility & drones. He is on the boards of drone and healthcare startups in Finland & Estonia & mentor for accelerators in Finland, Denmark & Basque region. He also teaches business model innovation at Nordic business schools.
Iða Brá Benediktsdóttir
Managing Director - Retail Banking at Arion Bank.
Since 1999, Iða has held various positions within the Bank including Head of a department within treasury, Head of Corporate Communications and Head of Private Banking. Ida Brá was the Managing Director of Investment Banking from 2016 to 2017. Ida Brá has served on the board of numerous companies.
Margit Robertet
MD private equity at Kvika hf.
Margit Robertet has worked in international m&a and investments across various industries for the past 25 years. She currently heads up the private equity team at Kvika and sits on the board of Íslandshótel and chairs the board of Securitas.
Hilmar Gunnarsson
Partner at Investa
Hilmar is the founder and CEO of Arkio. He founded Modio which got acquired by Autodesk in 2014. Prior to Modio he worked for OZ both in Iceland and then in Canada, where he led the company's sales and marketing activities, and managed the sales process when OZ was acquired by Nokia in 2008.
Thorsteinn Fridriksson
CEO at Teatime Games
Thor Fridriksson, CEO and co-founder of Teatime, is a serial Internet entrepreneur. His last company was Plain Vanilla that launched QuizUp in 2013 and became a worldwide phenomenon with over 100M players. Thor has a BS degree from the Reykjavik University and an MBA from the University of Oxford.
Hekla Arnardóttir
Founding Partner at Crowberry Capital
Hekla has been investing in startups since 2010 and founded Crowberry with her two partners, Helga and Jenny. Before becoming a VC she worked at the health tech company Ossur both in Product development and in S&M in Shanghai. During the 10 years with Ossur, the company grew from 10 - 350 m USD.
Herdís Dröfn Fjeldsted
Vice Chairman of the Board at Arion Bank
Herdís has vast experience in PE & VC as CEO and Investment Manager. She has acquired, restructured, negotiated and sold companies that span a field from manufacturing companies to financial services in a broad international setting. She has served as NED in both listed and non-listed companies.
Arnar Laufdal Ólafsson
CEO / OWNER at Kaptio, Founder at Datatracker
Gunnar Páll Tryggvason
CEO at Alfa Framtak
Gunnar has 18 years of experience in private equity and corporate finance. He has completed transactions, managed investments or been an executive board member in over ten countries. Previous board positions include Refresco B.V. (€1.5bn sales), Hame s.r.o. (€200m sales) and Laima and Nordic Partners Ltd. (€100m sales).
MBA, with honors, from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Jon Bjornsson
Retailer and board member with over 25 years of experience in the Scandinavian market. History of revitalizing brands, creating strategies and inventing new operational models. Skilled in pure play e-com, moving off line retail into the digital world, operations, buying, merchandising and sales.
Jón Páll Leifsson
Managing director at Dælan ehf.
20 years of marketing management, creative work, brand building and product development. Mostly in B2C, but both within corporations and startups. Alongside consultancy work he is directing a language technology project and finishing MBA in Reykjavik University.
Örn Valdimarsson
Managing Director at Eyrir Invest.
Örn Valdimarsson is the Managing Director of Investments at Eyrir Invest and Managing Director of Eyrir Invests VC-fund, Eyrir Sprotar. Örn has lead numerous investments on behalf of Eyrir. Örn sits on the Board of Directors in several start-up companies.
Guðrún Gyða Eyþórs Árnadóttir
Sales & Marketing Specialist at Þekking hf.
She started in Journalism and PR before moving into the tech industry as a Key Account Manager, Product Manager, Customer Relation Manager and Sales and Marketing Specialist. Technical innovation is her biggest interest.
Ólafur Andri Ragnarsson
Entrepreneur who founded his first company at the dawn of the Internet revolution in 1993, an ecommerce company that pivoted into an ISP and later sold. Founded Betware, a technical vendor in the lottery industry, in 1998. Adjunct at Reykjavik University for many years.
Agust Einarsson
Independent Strategy Advisor. Co-Founder and former CEO of Tempo. 20+ years experience as a CEO for high growth technology companies
Steinunn Kristín Þórðardóttir
Steinunn Thordardottir has 20 years of experience in corporate finance, management and strategy. She now serves on the board of Arion Bank, Iceland, Cloud Insurance, Norway and at the Norwegian Icelandic Chamber of Commerce. She is passionate about global affairs, architecture, travel and people.
Ingi Bjorn Sigurdsson
I´m on board of few startups. Previously I have founded few companies, helped tens of companies to get investable, been mentor and advisor to more then hundreds of startups. I have also worked with Scaling companies to grow and solve scalings issues.
Halla Helgadóttir
Managing Director at Iceland Design Centre
Halla has an extensive experience as an art director and a creative administrator. Halla worked in the advertising industry for 20 years running her own company.
Bárður Örn Gunnarsson
Owner at Svartitindur
Bárður Örn is a marketing & communication consultant. His focus industries are Tourism, AdTech, CleanTech and Social Enterprises. He has vast international experience from the Nordics, EU, US and the Middle East helping startups to scale.
Kjartan Gudbergsson
Founder/CEO at E4
I have gone through the startup cycle a few times and seen it all at least twice as a founder, co-founder and an employee. I am an optimistic pragmatist who constantly asks two questions. Who are your customers and why do they give you money. I ski, run and DJ. Yes, and fly fish. Fly fish too much.