Invest in global innovation from the earliest stage
Antler has developed a repeatable model to provide LPs access to innovation from around the world.
Antler has developed a repeatable model to provide LPs access to innovation from around the world.
Our investors have the structural advantage of investing in global innovation at the earliest stage. Increasing investor allocations to venture capital are making it more challenging to access the best deals. At the same time, there is a growing understanding that the technologies underpinning innovation are global and borderless by nature. As a result, investors are moving to earlier stages and investing more globally. Antler investors have access to the highly curated deal flow we generate from inception across 25 countries and diversified across sectors. We scout for and partner with more entrepreneurs around the world, giving our investors exposure to a larger pool of innovators and the structural advantage of investing early and taking a global approach.
No one else has as thorough a diligence process for assessing pre-seed opportunities. Many investors in early-stage companies only spend a short period of time with founders before making the decision to write a check, rushed by the pressure of intense competition for deal flow. We spend hundreds of hours with each founder before making our first investment with virtually no competition. Through our structured investment approach, we gain a deep understanding of their strengths, scale of ambition, grit, and passion. Our global network of advisors and domain experts helps us further validate their business models. This gives us unique insights on each founder’s potential to create outsized impact and returns.
Our global community helps our portfolio companies scale faster. Our globally incentivized Antler teams, supported by our community of 8,000+ Antler founders and 600 advisors, accelerate our portfolio companies’ growth and expansion around the world—from winning their first 100 customers and marketing a new product to raising their next round of funding. From day zero we give our founders a clear advantage, providing the largest talent network, deep business model validation, a global platform for scaling, and capital—with personal passion that goes beyond traditional investing.
We have unprecedented impact. We believe talent is everywhere but opportunity is not. Antler democratizes access to entrepreneurship for the world’s most talented people, removing the barriers to entry to launching businesses that create employment and contribute to GDP. Anyone with enough determination and grit can build a great business, a philosophy that is reflected in the diversity of our founders—with 80+ nationalities represented, and 30% of companies having at least one woman founder. By integrating ESG and impact into our investment decisions and partnering with founders from inception, we lay the groundwork for building sustainable and resilient businesses addressing some of the most pressing challenges of our time.
We have a seat at the table of tomorrow’s winners. We invest at the earliest stage of a company’s formation where valuations are more attractive and there is less capital competition. Following the golden rule of venture investing—backing your winners—we use pro-rata follow-on rights to participate in subsequent funding rounds, often leveraging the strength of our relationship to secure larger positions. More investors moving into early-stage venture capital underscores the value of this strategic advantage.
We leverage millions of data points that give us a unique edge. We’re building a proprietary private company database collecting more than one million data points per year. We gather learnings from our first interaction with founders through the lifecycle of the company. We continue building them through every Antler residency we run, using a disciplined and structured process that we replicate in markets across six continents. This allows us to benchmark globally by sector and geography and make more informed investment decisions.
The Antler model is proving to deliver repeatable and consistent growth in all 27 locations around the world. With a five-year track record and over 1,000+ portfolio companies, we believe our approach offers something entirely different to what the VC industry has seen before.
The Antler team is made up of serial entrepreneurs, experienced operators and seasoned investors.
Here are a few:
Andrea will help you get in front of your next investor and help you to iterate your fintech idea. She has spent 20 years in the financial services industry, most recently at Goldman Sachs in the investment management division. Andrea heads up Antler's capital team and work with fundraising for both Antler's funds globally as well as supporting founders who are raising external capital. Before joining Goldman Sachs, Andrea spent over a decade at HSBC.
Anthony is a partner of Antler Australia and a Global Partner, Co-Head of Antler Capital. Anthony is an experienced entrepreneur and CEO that has co-founded, scaled and sold market-leading businesses globally in the financial services and ecommerce retail sectors. Prior to joining Antler, Anthony was the co-founder and CEO of BrickX where he successfully launched the business, led it through $9m in Series A funding from high profile VC's including Westpac's Reinventure and NAB Ventures, and scaled BrickX to over 12,000 investors.
TC is a Partner on Antler’s Capital team securing capital for Antler’s funds. TC has worked more than 16 years as an investment banker. He started his career in Carnegie, followed by Pareto Securities and most recently as a partner in Arctic Securities (since their establishment in 2007). TC focused on international corporate and project finance transactions mainly within drilling, offshore and oil services. He developed and managed multiple new relationships with Japanese/other Asian investors, trading houses and shipping companies enabling a range of deals and opportunities.
Charlie Hayley Bell leads Capital and Investor Relations for Antler US. Charlie has 20 years of alternative investment experience in the US, and Latin America across both public and private markets advising investors and raising capital for hedge funds, real estate, PE, and venture capital. Charlie is an investor in early and growth stage technology and CPG companies. He previously was with HSBC, Archstone Partners, and Old City Securities. He holds a MA from Edinburgh University.
Ros Bazany is Head of ESG and impact at Antler and currently based in Singapore. Ros is responsible for leading the overall strategy design and implementation of Antler’s ESG and impact proposition to deliver long-term value for Antler’s stakeholders. This includes oversight of firm level practices, founder engagement and investment decision making processes. Prior to this, she worked at the global asset manager Schroders for over 10 years, working with institutional and retail clients, including on a number of strategic ESG initiatives, across Europe and Asia. She started her career at the hedge fund BlueCrest and holds an MSc in Chemistry. She is passionate about making ESG and impact a tool to create value for our founders, Antler and the industry more broadly.
Amy combines her global experience in Investor Relations and M&A to support fundraising for Funds and early-stage companies. Most recently, she led Investor Relations efforts at a Venture Fund focusing on the capital raising process for the Fund as well as providing strategic advisory to portfolio companies on growth initiatives. Previously, she spent several years in Investment Banking in New York focusing on M&A and capital raising projects in Healthcare and Technology. Amy enjoys building relationships and attracting strategic investors to help exceptional entrepreneurs build impactful businesses. She is an advisor to a mental healthcare start-up and sits on the board of the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association.
Sunil is a Director on Antler’s Capital team in South East Asia. With more than 12 years of experience as a sales and investor-relations professional in the financial services industry, his focus is on building relationships with institutional investors and family offices in the region. Sunil started his career as a private banker in Morgan Stanley and then worked for Pan-Asian and Japanese Hedge Funds. Having a keen interest in impact-investing, Sunil was the founder of Singapore+Acumen Impact Circle, a volunteer-led group dedicated to building the ecosystem in SEA.
As Capital Director Fabian is responsible for securing capital and manages investor relations in the DACH-region. Previously he spent significant time within the media company Bertelsmann´s German advertising sales business. In his last role he led operations for a number of industry sectors as well as brands. Fabian graduated from University of St. Gallen with a Masters in International Affairs and Governance.
Susmit Patodia is the Capital Director at Antler India. Susmit started his career with Accenture Management Consulting.
After which he spent the last decade with Motilal Oswal, one of India's premier financial services company. He has held various leadership positions in Motilal from heading institutional equities sales business to portfolio management at the Asset Management Company.
He is a strong believer in India’s meteoric growth over the next decade and his focus is on “Antifragile investing in India”, “Don’t bet against India” and “Return to not normal but better”. Susmit is an alumnus of IIM Bangalore and Madras University.
Rafael was previously Head of Investors Relations and M&A of companies listed on the Brazilian Stock Exchange. Also worked as equities sales for banks in Brazil such as Merrill Lynch, Santander and Citibank and holds an MBA from Darden Business School. Father of Laura and Daniel.
Michael Kron is an Associate Partner at Antler and leads Australia's Antler portfolio and investor relationships. He led the raise of Antler's second Australia fund and global funds and now coaches Antler's founders on growth and fundraising to drive success, with a focus on the first 12 months. Michael is also a member of the Investment Advisory Committee for two Antler funds. Prior to Antler, Michael has 10+ years of strategy consulting experience, has been an independent advisor for CEOs and global startups from seed to Series A, worked at Square Peg and was the co-founder of a renewable energy startup.
Early in his career, Michael was an environmental lawyer, environmental engineer and was founder and CEO of an education business for 10+ years.Michael has a MBA from Melbourne Business School and Environmental Engineer and Law degrees from University of Melbourne.
Soledad is the Capital Director at Antler in Iberia. Previously the Head of Investor Relations at Kronos Investment Group, Sole led the real estate firm's fundraising activity, and was a member of the Strategy Committee. Before Kronos, she was an Investor Relations & Strategy Manager at Enagás, an Ibex35-listed energy corporation. Sole started her career at Accenture London as a Strategy Consultant. Soledad holds a BSc in Economics and Business Administration from CUNEF and an MSc in Advanced Valuation from IEB.
Peter is a member of the Global Capital Team based out of Antler's Sydney office. Peter works across capital raising, co-investments and is a member of the capital platform team helping manage the team's internal processes and systems. Peter primarily works with LPs in the Australian and US markets. Prior to joining Antler Peter was a management consultant at Kearney.
JaeHee co-leads Antler Korea with Jiho and Gabriel. Prior to Antler, JaeHee was in 500 Global Korea Fund/Ecosystems and worked at early stage startups where she led marketing and business development. Prior to her startup experiences, she was in Cheil Worldwide, Naver, and Booz Allen Hamilton, where her work was focused on strategy and business development. With her multicultural background, she has a mission to help startups go global.
Browse our collection of founder stories, industry insights, and latest startup successes from Antler
Why Venture Capital Journal picked Ros as one of the most impactful women in private markets.
Making progress a certainty—our north star goal at Antler—can’t happen if driven and visionary people aren’t firing at all cylinders with the support they need to tackle the pressing problems of our time. We’re marking International Women’s Day by asking women founders and team members in Antler’s global community why women are essential to progress.
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.
Antler's third annual ESG and Impact Report discusses our commitment to sustainability as a strategic principle that's fundamental to the success of our firm, our portfolio companies, and broader society.
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.
TC Høiseth spoke to Adrian Murdoch about why diversity and inclusion is important for founding teams. Visit Campden FB, Insights for Family Businesses and Family Offices, for the full article.
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 2023 draws to a close, we are proud to mark a special milestone: making our 1,000th investment in companies originating from Antler residencies around the world.
The businesses that go the distance are the ones that embed sustainable practices in their operations from day zero. But many founders lack the knowledge and resources to do that. That's why we created our online education platform, the Antler Sustainability Toolkit—exclusively for founders.
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.”
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.
Football scouts search all corners of the world to find exceptionally talented individuals. They look for skill, vision, mental strength, and character, which you could argue are similar to what VCs look for in entrepreneurs.
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?
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.
Antler is thrilled to have closed Antler Elevate, a $285 million emerging growth fund that backs the next generation of game-changing founders across 20+ technology ecosystems, propelling them on their paths to greatness.
Antler's second annual ESG and Impact Report shares learnings on how VCs can focus on creating sustainable value from the outset, and celebrates our portfolio companies' work in this space.
More than 25 operators at leading tech companies share their top predictions for the year ahead.
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?
A look back at 2022, a record year for the leading day zero investor in Europe—showcasing investment activity and key predictions for the early-stage tech ecosystem in 2023.
Now that the downturn is upon us, is it still the best time in history to build a business? Industry titans and Antler Board members James Anderson and Sheila Patel tackle crucial questions about the current markets, what they mean for founders and investors, and whether the golden age of innovation will persist through these rough seas.
No matter what the macro-economic backdrop, there is no force greater—and more essential—than founders determined to make a positive dent in the world.
A massive thank you to the entire global community—founders, advisors, investors, employees, and partners—who made the past year our best yet.
Here’s a look back at our 2022.
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.
At Antler, we believe exceptional people are the key to building defining companies. But what makes a person exceptional, and how do personal characteristics or experiences increase the chances of building a successful tech company? Through this Unicorn founder mapping series, we aim to identify patterns that led up to founding a Unicorn. This month, we explore Brazil, taking a look at the local Unicorn founders, which higher institutions they went to, how many years of work experience they had before launching their ventures, and more.
At Antler, we believe exceptional people are the key to building defining companies. But what makes a person exceptional, and how do personal characteristics or experiences increase the chances of building a successful tech company? Last month, we took a systematic look at the most exceptional founders of the 21st century in the DACH region to identify patterns that led up to founding a Unicorn. This month, we are doing the same across the African continent. Our findings reveal who Africa’s Unicorn, Soonicorn, and growth-stage startup founders are, which higher institutions they went to, how many years of work experience they had before launching their ventures, and more. Additionally, we have taken a closer look at the future state of the local ecosystem and put together data-driven predictions to provide more insight and understanding into the African startup ecosystem and the opportunities that lie ahead.
We believe ESG and impact can be a differentiator for both our firm and our portfolio companies. By integrating ESG and impact into our investment decisions and partnering with founders from inception, we lay the groundwork for building sustainable and resilient businesses addressing some of the most pressing challenges of our time.