The second quarter of the year brings the first funding report we do in 2017. The reason: we only recorded one investment in Q1, so there’s no need for a special report on that. This report also is the first one since we started our big Icelandic startups scene data project which means that the data we’re using now is augmented with data from Crunchbase.
Four funding rounds, $14m
This quarter we recorded four funding rounds: Meniga, Takumi, TripCreator, and Mink Campers.
This quarter was much more active than the one before (which only had one investment – Goodlifeme / SidekickHealth), and has the same amount of investments as the year before (Q2/2016).
The main difference between the years is the amount invested; the amount invested increased by over 240%, mainly due to two rather big rounds; Meniga and Takumi.
This leads to a (rather obvious) next chart: the majority of capital invested came from outside the country; around 70%.
The bigger picture
In 2015 we had a big influx of capital; three funds that started and were very active in the first quarters. Those rounds were in general fairly small (never above 500m ISK or between $4-5m) and early stage. As we’ve talked about for some time now, two of those funds have stopped investing in new companies, which leaves only one active Icelandic fund at the moment.
Naturally, the rate of investment will slow down. Hopefully for the ecosystem, the sizes of rounds will increase (because the companies that raised before are raising follow-on rounds). In fact, three of the four companies that raised money in Q2 2017 had at least 2 funding rounds before the one they announced this quarter.
There are also some interesting takeaways in regards of the capital coming in. It’s mostly foreign – when our startup companies need growth money they venture abroad to get it. Which makes complete sense; the Icelandic funds aren’t big enough to be able to go as big as the bigger foreign funds.
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