Insights

In the early stages of a startup, growth is correlated to scaling, rather than perfecting minor details.

Meet the spacetech founder tackling climate change by setting the new global standard for precise and continuous greenhouse gas emissions measurements.

How can the world tackle the increasingly complex problems of our time? With a new global infrastructure backing the most driven founders. Listen to Antler founder and CEO Magnus Grimeland discuss this—and why we're building Antler—on the Capital Allocators podcast.

A brand new year, teeming with possibility. What can founders building from day zero expect in 2024? Antler partners share their on-the-ground expectations for the coming year, including sector trends, big shifts in VC, and the biggest headwinds and tailwinds affecting founders around the world.

Antler's global community grew larger, stronger, and more impactful this year, now including 8,000 founders, 800 advisors, and 249 Antler team members in 27 offices worldwide. Here's how we moved the world forward together in 2023.

As we close the door on 2023, what were the most valuable insights for founders on antler.co? Here is a roundup of five of our most popular articles this year.

In a fundraising environment that has been challenging for startups of all stages, how can you set yourself apart from the pack when approaching investors? Antler partner Tyler Norwood, Antler venture partner Robbie Crabtree, and post-investment platform co-founder Mike Preuss discuss the best ways to become a top-decile startup with investors.

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Meet Manuel Schönfeld, founder and CEO of PowerX, who's helping businesses save energy and money while combatting "the largest threat to our planet since the meteor wiped out dinosaurs.”

Meet Abraham Burak, co-founder of Airalo, who ditched an inefficient legacy system to make connectivity accessible and affordable to millions of world travelers.

Our Window into Progress digital event series continues with "Under the Hood"—a deep dive into the rigor and scale that makes Antler unique as we source and assess tens of thousands of founders across six continents.

On the heels of publishing A Window into Progress—a global report that looks inside Antler, the world’s day zero investor—we are excited to present a digital event series offering deeper insights into our portfolio, investment approach, and unique views of the world. Our first event is "The State of Building Today," featuring perspectives on the state of VC and the startup ecosystems in Europe, the US, India, and Brazil.

Against a backdrop of significant economic uncertainties and political challenges, one fact holds true: The dependent relationship between innovation and venture capital (VC)—with the latter financing and enabling the founders who create the biggest and boldest solutions around the globe—fuels the engine of progress. But what will the future of VC look like amidst so much flux?

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As unicorns and later-stage companies are battered by the economic climate, the overall health of the European tech ecosystem looks stronger than ever, with more founders coming from big tech and unicorns to build new startups with significant growth potential. Dive into our report and get to know the new generation of European tech founders.

As we approach the fifth anniversary of our first investments, we are excited to share A Window into Progress, a report that captures the breadth, depth, and impact of Antler’s global community, which continues to grow and strengthen through the downturn.

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Meet Carl Prins, co-founder and CEO of Pathzero, on personal quest to help avert the climate crisis through world-class carbon accounting.

Harry Truman once said: “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” The source of myriad mental and physical benefits, it’s no wonder highly successful entrepreneurs and business leaders frequently credit obsessive reading as instrumental to their outperformance. In honor of UNESCO World Book Day, Antler is excited to share books every founder should read in 2023.

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“People sometimes think the emotional and professional are conflicting, but what we believe is when people love their organization, the emotional value will actually make them productive. It will make them give their full self to the organization and make the organization grow for the long term.” —Sharon Li, co-founder and CEO of CHOYS

Meet Piet Hein van Dam, co-founder of Clear, who is using data—not pills—to help millions of people with type 2 diabetes eliminate the disease within three months.

Meet Tanika McLeod, one of the three co-founders of MinuteSkill, a Toronto-based social micro-learning platform that uses bite-sized content and knowledge-sharing communities to empower the next generation.

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More than 25 operators at leading tech companies share their top predictions for the year ahead.

At Antler, we're proud to back more than 600 companies across six continents doing great things in the world. During this season of giving, we are excited to highlight a selection of Antler portfolio companies whose products and services—from tech-enabled beauty products to luxury fashion mystery boxes—are sure to impress the most discerning trendsetters on your nice list. 

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Welcome to the 12 Days of Antler Gift Giving!

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Meet Yaumi Fauziah Sugiharta, a brand builder and growth marketeer on a mission to make people more comfortable in their own skin through Base, a digitally native personalized skincare company based in Indonesia.

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The Angle is a new content series from Antler, featuring perspectives from our team members on the biggest events and trends impacting founders and early-stage investors today. Every article is that person's unique angle on a hot topic—what they see from their vantage point in one of our 25 offices around the globe—not Antler's stance. In our first edition, Jeff Becker draws lessons from the demise of FTX and turbulent tech moments in recent years. This article first appeared in Jeff's Monday Morning Meeting on Substack.

Meet Jamie Bubb, co-founder of Twirl, who—on the back of defeating Hodgkin’s Lymphoma—built an SaaS-enabled marketplace connecting brands with content creators.

We are living two simultaneous realities: the uncertainty of the current downturn and the unstoppable wave of innovation disrupting every industry. Against this backdrop, Antler's Kevin Brennan shares perspectives on assessing your position in venture capital for the rest of 2022 and into 2023. Might 2023 be the best vintage for the coming decade?

Antler was founded on the belief that people innovating is the key to building a better future. To honor them, we are launching a new content series—”It All Starts with People”—spotlighting the exceptional founders we have the privilege of partnering with around the world. Each story is a window into their passions, motivations, and vision—the reasons they are building and the positive dent they are aiming to make on the world.

In our first spotlight, we sat down with Emilia Theye, the co-founder of clare&me—a mental health app that uses language-based AI to develop an innovative approach to virtual self-help.

Antler founders scale faster and more efficiently, backed by our truly global community that includes industry-leading companies. We are thrilled to collaborate with IBM to give our fintech founders access to world-class technology experts and cloud platforms.

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Why is a cloud strategy so critical for fintechs and why can it spell success or failure for a startup? We sat down with Prakash Pattni, Managing Director—Digital Transformation, IBM Cloud for Financial Services, to learn more.

Harvard Business School (HBS) recently published a case study about Antler’s fresh approach to early-stage venture capital. Antler Co-Founder Fridtjof Berge shares thoughts on how the case sparks discussion about the best ways to identify and support great people anywhere on earth.

In the past years, podcast listening has become more popular than ever, but with so many out there it can be difficult to know what will be the best podcast for you as an entrepreneur and startup founder.

We have created a list of over 30 podcasts to inspire your listening habits curated by our network - from founders building their business with Antler to our team and advisors. No matter whether you are a first time founder or have done it all before, this list is guaranteed to offer something new.

Looking for even more practical resources for founders? Recently, we also shared our book recommendations for entrepreneurs selected by the Antler founders, advisors, and our team. Check them out!

Looking for book recommendations for entrepreneurs beyond Zero to One, The Lean Startup, and The Hard Thing About Hard Things? We curated a list of 35 books to inspire your reading list for 2022 curated by our network—from founders building their business with Antler to our team and advisors.

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We created this list to help all founders—from first-timers looking for an informative and relevant read to ones who have seen it all but are curious to learn more. Expand your reading list even further by checking out our list of books every founder should read in 2023.

To better understand the complexities of mental health for founders, Antler teamed up with Female Founders, the leading European Eco-System for Entrepreneurial Women, to discuss mental exhaustion and how to prevent it as part of a fireside chat.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking to a group of aspiring angel investors in Australia. The theme of the presentation was about evaluating products. During the discussion, we explored the different ways to assess a startup, ways to evaluate ideas and products, and some resources that can help you along the way.

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Welcome to Antler's circles series, where we bring industry leaders,  founders, and experts working in the same sector together to problem solve,  share emerging trends and technologies. Through this series, Antler will  provide unparalleled access to closed room discussions around the challenges  and opportunities experienced by those innovating at the forefront of the  industry.

In this article, we discuss the things that you should not be doing while dealing with investors.

A typical pre-seed to seed fundraising process consists of the following steps: defining fundraising targets & timing, mapping target investors & fundraising materials, having first intros and coffee meetings, pitching to multiple investors, and finally, negotiating and signing.

When it comes to choosing investors, it depends on the stage of growth you are in, and on how much you want to raise. Find out what are the key considerations and benefits of reaching out to each type of investor.

This article is a 4th part of the "Startup fundraising 101" series - a  resource that has been created in order to help all founders in their fundraising journey. To learn more, read our previous pieces which are linked at the end of this article.

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This fireside chat with Rajesh Lingappa, former CTO and co-founder of RedMart was conducted by Bjorn Lindfors, Technology Partner of Antler Southeast Asia during the Antler Entrepreneurship Hour in June.

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Driven by a new wave of demand for better health tech solutions on both the consumer and medical professional fronts, Health tech has become a topic of renewed interest for investors looking to expand their portfolios. In this series, we discuss the future with Antler partner Kim Oreskovic and two healthcare CEOs on trends and how COVID-19 will affect the space in years to come.

With Antler's presence in 8 offices, 4 continents and counting, the team at Antler has been able to gain deep insights about startup ecosystems across the globe applying them through our partners and coaches to make our founders succeed everywhere.

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Chris Brooke, CTO at Hopster and Advisor at Antler in London, shared his insights about becoming a CTO during an event we organised in London. Having gone through these stages himself, he explains how the role of the CTO evolves from finding the idea to building a product for the global market.

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This is the question that in the last years a lot of people have been wondering, because no matter how we do the math that is not enough. Written by Antti Rantanen, Venture Partner for Antler Netherlands and Head of European Operations at Avanto Ventures.

One of the most common hurdles when setting out to build a new company is figuring out where to even start. It's sometimes overwhelming to frame things when the possibilities are endless. It's easy to get lost or frustrated without a clear framework to guide your thinking. Here, we share an easy-to-use framework to help think about new ideas in a consistent and comprehensible way.