Insights

“Out of every crisis, voices emerge from unlikely places to help us understand how we can build a better future” - Scott Galloway. In this opinion piece, Antti Rantanen, Venture Partner at Antler, draws inspiration from this quote and reflects on how tech collaboration between startups and giants will breed new innovative models of operation in the near future.

Having a strong co-founding team is an important success factor for startups. In fact having the wrong founding team is amongst the top reasons why companies fail. Read more about how to build a strong team.

Without a strong team, the idea will just stay as that, an idea. However, finding the right co-founder can seem like a long and complicated process. There are many things that entrepreneurs need to take into consideration when making the decision of who to start a company with; starting with what to look for in terms of skillsets, compatibility and personality, followed by where to meet available co-founders, to making sure it will last in the long run. Based on our experience, there are 5 important elements that make a strong co-founding team. But before you start searching for someone, you need to ask yourself some key questions.

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At Antler, we often get asked how we invest in startups. We believe that  startups belong in five different "archetypes" and we try to help our  founders frame their companies and ideas around these archetypes. This, in  turn, shall help them create a strong, compelling Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy  that will help them win in their respective spaces and selected  industries.So what are the five archetypes and how do they differ?

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Antler Global Partner Andreas Birnik shares his tips for navigating through a turbulent time to successfully innovate.

The Covid-19 epidemic is now a Global issue and everyone is affected one way or the other. As most of us are remote working and in-person events are on hold, we want to continue to share some of the insights and sessions that we usually do for our founders with the wider startup ecosystem so that we can help and support entrepreneurs around the world.

Being a startup founder can be difficult at the best of times. Adding the stress and impact of a pandemic, crisis or recession, especially now, with the human tragedy of the Covid-19 doesn’t make it easier.

There has never been a better time to start a technology-enabled business, given how much low-cost and high-quality existing tech infrastructure can be used, the digital business opportunity in Southeast Asia with exponential growth in smartphone usage and most importantly, localised problems that need to be solved in many parts of this region on a large scale.

Liz Kaelin is an entrepreneur in the second Sydney program. Here's her advice for others who are about to join.

Adam Ross is an entrepreneur participating in Antler's second Sydney program. Here's what he learned from participating in Design Sprints.

Sydney entrepreneur and PhD candidate Snow Li discusses what it was like to form new bonds in Week 1 of the Antler program

Many of us struggle to maintain boundaries from our work and our personal life. We discussed this with mindfulness expert Johanna Dahlman about how you can make sure you stick to your boundaries as 2020 get's underway.

Antler’s inaugural Demo Day in Sydney will take place on Thursday, November 7 at the iconic Sydney Town Hall.

Adeline Lee is a growth hacker, product marketer extraordinaire, and new mother. She's grown multiple applications and companies from thousands of users to millions. Here's how she grew these products to new heights...

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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Currently, only ~2% of all Dutch Venture Capital is invested in female-founded or female co-founded companies. Simply put, there is a huge population with phenomenal ideas but they are largely being ignored, misunderstood or brushed to the side. Now, what can we do to solve this problem?

According to Forbes, around 90% of startups fail. We don’t know about you, but that sounds like a large proportion of unsuccessful business ventures to us. We sat down with Antoine Poirson, one of our partners at our London office, to discuss his thoughts on becoming an entrepreneur in today’s Globally competitive market.

Antler's Director of Recruiting in Sydney, Adele Moynihan, shares her top interview tip and why.

Seventeen new companies from our second Singapore program presented their startups to over 500 people from Southeast Asia's regional startup ecosystem. The energy was upbeat and buzzing at the event held at the School of the Arts concert hall.

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A majority of people want to start their own company but only a fraction of them do. Amsterdam partner Kim Oreskovic shares her story on becoming part of the next wave of tech and how Antler is solving the issues hindering people from starting businesses.

Tips and tricks to remember when preparing to pitch to early-stage investors

Former Uber EMEA Head of Recruiting and Antler advisor, Nicolas Buteau outlines what he thinks are the most essential tips for hiring your first recruits for your startup, how to maintain team diversity at scale and hiring pitfalls to avoid. We sat down with Nic in London to discuss all this and more.

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Last week Fortify founder, Paul Musters gave a presentation to the Antler  cohort in Amsterdam about what it takes to build a successful startup team.  His presentation covered many aspects including the 5 reasons for  dysfunctional teams, psychological safety and more. Here are some of the  biggest takeaways we found.

On August 18, 2018, I had a realization. It was the realization that another life-changing opportunity had fallen onto my path. Earlier in life in similar situations, I didn’t realize the ripple effects that a decision has over time.

Don’t strive for perfection on your first go- strive to prove that the business works and customers are willing to pay for it. Think of building your product as a miniseries, not as a movie.

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.

You don’t need a startup. You don’t need a team. You don’t even need an idea. Antler helps with all of that.

They say you make your own luck in life, and historically, I think Australia has done that... but if we believe we can ride the sheep’s back into an affluent future, then we deserve to be the poor fools we will become.

In honour of International Women's Day, we want to highlight the importance of female presence in the working space. Therefore, we sat down for a chat with Saskia Rademaker, our recruitment director in Amsterdam, and asked her all about her vision on the importance of diversity.

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Nobody operates in isolation, especially when you’re building a company. It’s a challenging journey that you’re not going to accomplish if you try to go it alone. Learn the fundamentals to approach effective partnerships.

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.

Design thinking is a solution-based approach to problem-solving. It is a process that draws upon logic, imagination, intuition, and systematic reasoning, to solve complex problems by exploring possibilities of what could be and create desired outcomes that benefit the end-user (customer). Solonia Teodros, co-founder of The Change School*, breaks down the science of design thinking and how any professional can benefit from it.

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How can a $1 horse be sold for a hundred bucks? Pretty easy, there are multiple ways to weave a narrative around your product or service which can set you apart from the crowd. Anh Nguyen, subscription marketing lead at YouTube APAC, shares her valuable insight into the secret to good storytelling for any product or brand. Storytelling is a crucial skill to master for any startup as it helps to inspire potential hires, customers and investors - to believe in your brand. The aim is to cut through the noise and communicate succinctly but effectively. Inspirational stories form the bedrock of effective communication, and they help to convey the sheer passion and drive behind incredible ideas.

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"Try to make every lunch lead to a meeting with two new strangers" Lisa Enckell is a partner at Antler leading Marketing and PR. She shares how marketing for startups can be a challenge, but used right, the restrictions can be turned into a blessing.

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Finding and recruiting talented co-workers is one of the hardest tasks as a founder. Antler's head of recruiting, Prerna Sharma, hired hundreds of people to Uber's Southeast Asia operations, and at other companies like Flow Traders, a Dutch proprietary trading firm which has the same hiring values as any growing startup. She has several years of experience in recruiting talent for startups. Here, she lists the crucial prerequisites you need to consider before building your team.

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Jordan Dea-Mattson is a 35 year veteran of high tech, having worked at Apple, Adobe Systems, Yahoo and a number of Silicon Valley startups. He is now site director for Indeed.com's Singapore Engineering Centre, and recently he joined our Happy Hour to share some valuable advice with the Antler founders.

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We are all familiar with the startup worlds of Berlin, Stockholm and Silicon Valley, but where do we look for Asia’s startup hub? This could be your much-overlooked gateway into Asia, and here are some reasons why.

In a series of blog posts, we'll introduce the people behind Antler. First off is our founder and CEO, Magnus Grimeland. Read on to get his perspectives on why he started Antler and what his ambitions are for this new startup generator. He also shares some useful tips for aspiring entrepreneurs.

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Identifying talent is not easy; however, in saying this, specific attributes  have been defined that make a person more likely to be a great founder.  Academic research, coupled with the experience of startup investors and  founding teams, point to a set of critical traits and skills that great  founders should comprise.

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We believe that the #1 reason behind successful companies is the setup of the co-founder teams. The right mix of the right people is what transforms a great idea into a great company.