Former NSA Ventures investors raising new early stage fund: Crowberry Capital

CEO of NSA Ventures Helga Valfells, and two investment managers – Hekla Arnardóttir and Jenný Ruth Hrafnsdóttir – just announced that they will be leaving NSA Ventures to found a new VC fund: Crowberry Capital. They’re currently raising the fund.

“There’s a need for an early stage investor right now and we believe that our experience from working in this environment for a long time will help us with this project, Helga Valfells, departing CEO of NSA Ventures said in a statement.

NSA Ventures and the Ministry for Industry an Innovation have during the past several years discussed internally how to increase capital available to early stage companies. At some point there were ideas about raising an early stage fund – codenamed Silfra – as part of NSA to address this. Rather than following that route, the strategy set forth is to develop NSA Ventures into a fund of funds, that invests in venture funds, rather than directly in startups.

Crowberry Capital hasn’t finished fundraising, but according to Helga, the trio have several commitments and aim to raise 5bn ISK (~$45m). The fund will focus on smaller, earlier checks, to come after grants from the Technology Development Fund, but have the ability to follow on into later stages.