Silicon Valley Internship Program, founded in 2013 with the goal of closing the talent gap whilst giving international engineers the skills they need to become successful entrepreneurs in their home countries, is partnering with Reykjavik University to offer internship positions to Icelandic developers.

From the press release:

The tech industry desperately needs great talent, and is under pressure to build a diverse workforce. The SVIP brings top engineers from all over the world  with 50% of the engineers being female – to work at Bay Area technology companies, making the whole process as frictionless as possible. With partnerships with top engineering institutions across 35 countries, the platform attracts the best engineers from universities such as Oxford and Cambridge to universities in Taiwan and most recently SVIP partnered with Reykjavik University, forming the strongest international network of entrepreneurial engineers.

The program has two tracks which bring newly graduating Software Engineering students from 35 countries around the world to work at a startup in Silicon Valley.  The first track accepts male and female software engineers with a STEM  degree (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) from any accredited European, Scandinavian, EEA University.  The second track, in partnership with GBx-x, accepts female engineers with a STEM degree from outside of Europe.

SVIP interns are paid a salary of $75K+ for the year. The program also facilitates the hiring process for companies by arranging all the immigration and legal documentation, taking care of interns flights and accommodation for the first month. Roam Analytics, an SVIP company that has hired engineers through the program  notes that “in a world of ever-more complex recruiting programs, SVIP is a blessing. They helped introduce us to some exceptional candidates and have always made the process a breeze”, says Carter Wilkinson, Head of Finance and Operations of Roam Analytics.

Find out more and apply on the Northstack Job Board. Application deadline is February 8th.

geoSilica, just announced a $425,000 Series A round led by pension fund Lífsverk, with earlier investors participating. This funding round follows a $330,000 angel round in September 2018. After the round, Lífsverk owns a 6,7% share of GeoSilica, valuing the company at roughly $6.2m. Spakur finance assisted with the funding round.

The company was founded by CEO Fida Abu Libdeh and Burkni Pálsson in 2012, with the idea of create silica based health products from the excess water from Hellisheiðarvirkjun power plant. Three years later they introduced the first products to market.

“We are thrilled that Lífsverk joined geoSilica as a shareholder,” commented Fifa Abu Libdeh, co-founder and CEO. “For geoSilica it is a huge mark where the involvement of Lífsverk is an approval that we are maturing in the right direction. Now we have the financial support needed to achieve our goals.”

On the topic of pension funds investing directly in startups, Fifa adds: “In my mind, it is time for our pension funds to start investing directly in startups and fill the gap of capital shortage for companies in rapid growth.”

The investment will among other things be used to market the product abroad.

“geoSilica is a very interesting innovative company, with a clear vision and strong leaders,” commented Jón L. Árnason, CEO of Lífsverk, to MBL.is. “We believe this is a good long-term investment for the fund.”

EpiEndo Pharmaceuticals announced yesterday a fundraise of €800k from a syndicate of local funds and angels including Brunnur Ventures, with participation from existing shareholders.

The funds will be used to advance the pre-clinical development of their lead program of proprietary products called “Barriolides” for the treatment of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).

That disease is the leading respiratory disease with over 70 million patients worldwide that has significant unmet medical need and is an increasing burden globally.

“I am extremely pleased to be joining such a great team to develop what could be the next generation of treatments for a number of important respiratory disease,” commented Fredrik Lehmann, CEO of EpiEndo. “[The] scientific team has meticulously developed the novel Barriolide technology over a number of years, and with this recent funding we will be able to advance this important program of work to choose our first clinical candidate (CD) in 2019.”

Reykjavik and Berlin based identity verification startup Authenteq, announced today a $5m first close in a Series A round. The round is led by Draper Associates and capital300. The company raised a $1.3m seed round a little over a year ago. In a statment, Kári Thor Rúnarsson co-founder and CEO comments that the company closed the round in just two weeks. He notes that the company is in discussions with a few investors that will take the second closing of the round.

“The reason we decided to do two closings, is we were introduced to an investor with a startup mindset of getting things done and felt it was a great challenge to try to finish all due diligence and paperwork in 2 weeks after the term sheet was approved,” comments Kári. “It was sort of a field test for us to see if they really were as agile and dynamic as they claimed to be during our discussions. We were honestly surprised how smoothly it went, despite a very thorough due diligence and legal process. ”

The company describes its product as the fastest onboarding process of an identity verification solution on the market and caters to companies that need to comply with KYC (know your customer) and AML (anti-money laundering) regulations. They launched their service in late 2018 and report signing up more than a dozen clients in the first months.

“I believe that Authenteq is the beginning of the solution to true and pure identity, which may eliminate many of the security concerns in the market today,” commented investor Tim Draper, known for seed investments in Skype, Tesla, SpaceX, Baidu, and Twitch to name a few. “Their product is simple and elegant.”

Authenteq has 21 employees working in their Berlin and Reykjavik offices and the new funding will in part go towards hiring for a range of new positions currently being filled. “We are lucky enough to have our offices in two of the coolest cities in Europe at the moment! So convincing talent from all over Europe and the USA to move to either Berlin or Reykjavik hasn’t been that difficult.”

“We are excited that Authenteq’s unique technology is disrupting the existing [identity verification] process,” Peter Lasinger, founder of Capital300, said, “and enables an affordable and fully automated identity verification, at the same time ensuring the privacy of users.”

Authenteq is hiring. See what they’re looking for on Northstack Job Board. 

Icelandic Crypto Fintech startup Monerium just announced a $2m seed round led by Icelandic VC fund Crowberry Capital. Also participating in the round were blockchain company ConsenSys and Hof Holdings. Tech EU reports.

In addition to a new funding round, the company announced that it had applied to become a licensed financial services company in the EEA.

Monerium, founded in 2016, aims to offer fiat money services and issue e-money. As Tech.eu mentions, more details haven’t been announced.