Stefanía Ólafsdóttir’s journey has taken her across oceans and back again, weaving together experiences from the fast-paced world of Silicon Valley with the creative, pragmatic spirit of Iceland.

Today, Reykjavík is not only her home but the headquarters of Avo, a data-quality platform she cofounded and leads.

Stefanía was born in the Westfjords of Iceland, a remote and sparsely populated region, but moved to Reykjavík when she was just five years old. “Most people in Iceland end up in Reykjavík at some point,” Stefanía says. “It’s the capital, and about sixty to seventy percent of the nation lives here.”

Stefanía Ólafsdóttir’s journey has taken her across oceans and back again, weaving together experiences from the fast-paced world of Silicon Valley with the creative, pragmatic spirit of Iceland. Her path led her to working as a researcher and then at QuizUp, the Icelandic mobile game that once broke App Store records by gaining a million users in just five days. This was her entry into the startup scene. “When I joined, it had just become the fastest-growing app,” she recalls. “We built the company here in Iceland, but it was funded by international and Silicon Valley investors.” As the head of data science, she played a key role in building the company’s data systems from the ground up. This included designing analytics infrastructure, developing internal tools, and helping the team adopt a data-driven mindset to better understand user behavior at scale.

However, in her roles at QuizUp, Stefanía repeatedly ran into the same frustrating issue: teams couldn’t trust their data. Whether it was product managers trying to understand feature performance or engineers tracking user behavior, the data they relied on was often inconsistent, incomplete or difficult to interpret. Events weren’t tracked uniformly, naming conventions were unclear, and definitions varied across teams. This meant decisions were made based on flawed or missing insights. Stefanía calls this the data-quality problem: the gap between what teams think they’re tracking and what’s actually being collected. It’s a widespread issue in fast-moving tech environments, where shipping features at speed often takes priority over structured analytics. Solving this problem became the foundation for Avo. “We spent three years trying to fix the data-quality problem internally,” she says. “And while we managed to revolutionize how we used data, it was painful.”

When QuizUp was acquired in 2016 by Glu Mobile, a mobile gaming company based in San Francisco, the acquisition marked the end of one chapter for Stefanía, but it also laid the groundwork for what would come next. Stefanía consulted for other companies, only to encounter the same data-quality problem again and again. Whether in Iceland or abroad, across sectors and team sizes, everyone struggled.

It was through this extensive user research, interviewing hundreds of people during her consulting work, that the idea for Avo was born. “We interviewed hundreds of product managers, engineers and data practitioners, from Spotify to Airbnb to Twitch,” she says. “Everyone was miserable about it.”

Avo was designed to help product and data teams ensure that their company’s analytics tracking is accurate, consistent and scalable. The platform has been adopted by companies that rely on trustworthy data to make product decisions fast, whether they’re launching new features, tracking user engagement or optimizing onboarding flows. Its tools streamline collaboration between product, data and engineering teams by allowing them to define and implement analytics events with clarity and consistency.

As data-privacy regulations tighten and customer journeys grow more complex, Avo’s value for its customers continues to rise. It has carved out a space as a trusted partner in the product-analytics stack, becoming a go-to for companies looking to scale without sacrificing data quality. It’s also become essential for larger enterprises that need strong data governance – that is, clear ownership, standardized definitions and quality control across complex teams and systems – including clients likeAdobe, Wolt, Moody’s and Sotheby’s.

Though its foundation is Icelandic, it is now a globally recognized company with customers from San Francisco to Sydney. “We knew from the beginning that this was a global problem,” Stefanía says, “so we never targeted Iceland as a market. From the start, we focused on building something that could serve companies around the world.” This mindset is what led Stefanía and her cofounders to San Francisco to participate in Y Combinator in 2019. Often described as the world’s most successful startup accelerator, Y Combinator has backed over 4,000 startups and counts more than 90 unicorns among its alumni, including Stripe, Airbnb and Dropbox. The accelerator provided Avo with not only funding but also momentum and access to a network of experienced founders, mentors and investors. “In San Francisco, every person you meet asks how they can help and what your company does,” Stefanía says. “It’s nonstop tech. And people genuinely want to help. It’s a community of people who want to pay it forward and give back. On some level it may be because they don’t want to miss out on supporting the next big thing.”

For all its innovation and opportunity, Stefanía found San Francisco emotionally complex. The city’s energy is electrifying, but the inequality is impossible to ignore. “San Francisco is both inspiring and troubling. The contrast is stark: you’re walking past someone shooting up in the shade of a Tesla. It feels like two parallel universes.”

After completing Y Combinator in 2019, Stefanía and her cofounder stayed in San Francisco to continue growing the company in the US. About a year later, they traveled to Iceland for a short visit – but then the pandemic hit. “We were supposed to be here for two weeks,” she says. “Then the US borders closed.” And what had been planned as a short detour eventually became permanent. “I’m glad it happened. Iceland is an incredible place to live, and it turns out we didn’t need to be in San Francisco to build a great company.”

The Avo team adapted quickly. “For years, we were remote-first work. We had teammates in the US, Iceland, and across Europe,” Stefanía says. But once she and her cofounder were both grounded in Reykjavík, they began to value something else: presence. “We started coming into the office more. Eventually, we realized how energizing it was to share space again. Today, we have a downtown office in Laugavegur, and it’s become a central part of our culture.” Now collaboration happens over coffee and whiteboards, often with views of the everchanging Icelandic weather. The office isn’t just a workplace: it’s a creative hub, where teammates debate ideas, iterate on product features, and share daily rituals that help build trust and momentum. Stefanía fosters a leadership culture that values transparency, autonomy and mutual respect. It was shaped by both her experiences in Silicon Valley and the Icelandic spirit of egalitarianism. “Icelandic people are not too good at hierarchy,” she says. “Everyone contributes ideas. Everyone takes ownership.”

Being in Reykjavík also reminded Stefanía what she loves about Iceland. “There’s something in our DNA,” she says. “Icelanders don’t wait for systems to work. If something doesn’t work for us, we fix it. We make it work.” That adaptability has deep roots. Iceland was settled more than a thousand years ago, primarily by Norsemen fleeing the political centralization and conflicts of mainland Scandinavia. Many of the early settlers left Norway to escape the authoritarian rule of King Harald Fairhair and seek a more autonomous life. The country’s geographic isolation and unpredictable climate shaped a culture of resourcefulness and creativity. “We all wear multiple hats here,” Stefanía says. “My favorite example is our former national football coach, Heimir Hallgrímsson. His main job was being a dentist. That’s just how it works here.”

She also points out that Iceland has the highest per-capita rate of published authors in the world: roughly one in ten Icelanders will publish a book in their lifetime. That includes everything from fiction and poetry to memoir and academic work. Notable Icelandic books include Nobel Prize-winner Halldór Laxness’s Independent People, Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir’s Butterflies in November and Andri Snær Magnason’s On Time and Water, just a few examples from a nation of prolific storytellers.“We just don’t let things stop us.” It’s less about formal recognition and more about mindset: a cultural tendency to bypass gatekeepers, pursue creative work without waiting for permission, and solve problems when systems fall short. But building a startup is still hard work, even in a place that celebrates doing. “Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying,” she says. The startup path, she adds, is like raising a child: painful but transformative. “There are really hard times, but the highs are so rewarding, you’re willing to walk through fire for them.”

One of her favorite pieces of advice comes from Stripe cofounder Patrick Collison: “It never gets easier, you just go faster.” Stefanía sees this as a core truth of startup life. “You’re always going uphill, always pushing yourself. Over time, your muscles grow. That same hill might still be steep, but it feels easier because you’re stronger. You go faster not because the work is easy, but because you’ve built the stamina to take on more. What’s hard today will feel doable next year, so you can focus on solving bigger problems.”

Resilience is key, because rejection is constant. “For every yes you get, you hear a hundred nos,” she says. Whether pitching to investors, selling to customers or hiring top talent, startup founders are in a continuous loop of persuasion. “You need to convince people to leave their safe jobs and join your risky vision. That takes belief.” Stefanía credits her team for carrying Avo forward.

“One of the most rewarding things is seeing people grow. When a new team member tackles something hard, and the next time does it faster and with more confidence, that’s everything.” Outside of work, Stefanía finds energy in the basics: walking to the office, spending time with her daughter, playing the piano (even if she doesn’t know how), and hiking in the mountains. “I try to have part of the day without a device,” she says. “Sometimes that’s music. Sometimes that’s just being in nature.” Reykjavík offers her that balance in life. It’s a city where you can work downtown, take a walk along the sea, and still make it home for dinner. “You can get things done here. You can build a company, be close to family, and live well. That’s rare.”

Today, Avo serves customers around the globe, including high-growth startups and enterprise giants alike. And while the team still travels regularly to meet users and partners in cities like San Francisco, New York, Berlin and Amsterdam, their roots remain firmly planted in Iceland.

“Nature slaps you in the face when you land here,” Stefanía says. “It’s cold, raw and reminds you exactly where you are. That sensation – of being small in something vast – grounds me. And that’s something I never want to lose.”

What’s your favorite book?
For something non-business, Know My Name by Chanel Miller is deeply powerful.

What do you have to do to start the day right?
I wake up to my daughter calling, “Mom, Dad, I’m up!” We get ready together, and I walk to the office.

What’s your favorite podcast?
Lenny’s Podcast by Lenny Rachitsky. I also love Sifjuð, an Icelandic podcast with 15-minute episodes on the etymology of words.

Favorite place to go for deep work or creative thinking in the city?
Anywhere with a view of nature – headphones on, zoned in.

What coffee shop do you recommend?
Reykjavík Roasters in Freyjugata. It shares a space with an art gallery that often has great exhibitions.

What museum do you recommend?
Kjarvalsstaðir (Kjarval Museum). If you visit on a nice day, you can sit outside with coffee and enjoy the view of the garden and trees.

One thing you should purchase on arrival:
Good shoes that can handle wet weather, salt, snow – and still look good. You’ll need them.