Insights

India's approach to unbundle payments made the world look up and take notice. Now it's time to disrupt commerce with the Open Network for Digital Commerce or ONDC. In our latest Theory of Next deep dive we mapped, researched, and reached out to every network participant live on ONDC right now.

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And we're excited to share with you a comprehensive what could be India's next unicorn catalyst with inputs from Vibhor Jain (COO of ONDC), Sujith Nair (Founding member of Beckn Protocol), and founders building on ONDC!

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Co-authored by Nitin Sharma (Partner, Antler) and Gokul Kumaravelu.

At Antler, we believe anyone with enough determination and grit can build a great business. But we also know the startup ecosystem’s playing field is far from level. This International Women’s Day, we spoke with five women leaders at Antler about why embracing equity matters so much to our work, and what advice they have to be more inclusive in our everyday work and lives.

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It's 2023. Women should be able to pursue any career they choose and have an equal playing field to thrive in it.

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While we would like to believe this is true, the reality is very different.

Four years and one Fund on, a lot has changed at Antler Australia. In this new series, the global early-stage VC reveals how it's working with founders from day zero, path to its first 100 Australian investments, introduces two new Partners, and announces some of the best terms for founders in the country.

A team from the Antler India Fellowship cohort, Cattle Guru is building a one-stop shop for Bharat farmers.

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We are thrilled to back 16-year-old Tejas Ravishankar as he builds a robust productivity and experience platform for open-source developers.

Despite growing calls to create a more inclusive venture capital ecosystem and remove the barriers to entrepreneurship, only a fraction of funding is raised by founders from underrepresented communities.

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The first step towards change is quantifying the challenge. While in-depth research has been conducted about women founders and founders from ethnic minority backgrounds, data has never existed about tech founders from the LGBTQ+ community—until now.

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.

OnArrival is building simple, plug and play APIs that enable travel sellers (e.g. OTAs, corporate travel managers, travel agents, Airlines, hotels, etc.) bundle high-margin travel ancillaries (e.g. visa, insurance etc) in over a billion trips worldwide.

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.

Find out more into why we backed Novo, a Berlin-based company disrupting the energy renovation industry. NOVO automates analysis, planning, and financing of energy renovation for real estate, with the goal of decarbonizing homes and tackling climate change.

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

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.

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A massive thank you to the entire global community—founders, advisors, investors, employees, and partners—who made the past year our best yet.

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Here’s a look back at our 2022.

Exploring the link between entrepreneurship and emotional intelligence with Rafael Urdaneta, DACH Head of Finance at Antler.

In the second installment of our multi-part series we dive deeper into the different layers of AI value stack and how future founders can find their cutting edge in this rapidly evolving ecosystem.

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Note: This is part 2 of a multi-part AI series. If you are interested in understanding why AI will be an era-defining technology and the key terms associated with it, please read part 1 (click here) before you begin part 2.

One of the hottest topics trending on social media platforms in 2022 exploded in recent weeks with the release of ChatGPT and DALL-E, prompting furious debate about the implications for people, careers, and industries worldwide. What’s at the heart of the controversy? Generative AI (Gen-AI)—systems that can quickly create new content such as college essays, songs, and digital pieces of art. These capabilities are impressive, but they also raise important questions about the future of work and the role of humans in an AI-dominated world. As generative AI continues to advance, it will be crucial to consider the ethical implications and potential impacts on society. What would happen if creative jobs were largely replaced by AI machines? 

Generative AI is opening up a world of opportunities and Hexo is building the underlying infrastructure to enable that. We are thrilled to partner with Vignesh Baskaran and Kunal Bhatia to help build and scale Hexo AI.

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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In this multi-part series, we explore everything from the origins and evolution of AI to the future AI landscape and how future founders can be a part of it.

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The 2nd installment of the series (click here) is also live for anyone interested in jumping right to how the AI landscape will pan out and what future founders need to know.

As everyone anticipates the next wave of ultra-successful companies in Benelux, what does it take to get there? What do the successful founders of Benelux unicorns look like? This report is an in-depth look at the Benelux startup ecosystem and its brightest stars. And above all, it is for anyone who is helping build the next 50 unicorns in Benelux.

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.

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 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.

Investors and startups are increasingly making money and driving positive change at the same time, unwilling to make a trade-off. How are they achieving both? While IPO valuations and revenue multiples for VC-backed companies in Europe dropped significantly this year, investment in climate tech is growing faster than any other sector in the region. Energy prices and policy (e.g., the Inflation Reduction Act in the US) alongside changing consumer behaviors have increased pressure for innovators to accelerate the energy transition.

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To learn more about how investors and entrepreneurs are striking a balance between impact and profit in climate tech, Antler Amsterdam recently hosted a panel discussion with four experts—Hampus Jakobsson, General Partner at Pale Blue Dot; Lukky Ahmed, CEO of Climate X; Melina Sanchez, Principal & VP Impact at AENU, and David Oudsandji, CEO and founder of Voltfang.

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The Iberian ecosystem is attracting attention in the startup world with a staggering number of unicorns—startup companies with a value of more than $1 billion—and new funds in the past year. The combination of talent, capital, and startup-friendly governance has created a breeding ground for innovation.

In this article, we look at the creator economy from our perspective as investors. Drawing from learnings we have gathered over time, we offer guidance to founders on what to expect when they start, grow, and scale their creator economy platforms. In addition, we cover protecting the creator economy through the recession, go-to-market strategies, what creators think about when shifting to new platforms, and much more.

At Antler, we believe every massively successful business begins with an exceptional founding team. In our experience, factors and traits that make founders stand apart vary widely—from excellence in education and a previous place of work to an extraordinary personal journey.

Antler has taken a systematic look at the exceptional founders whose companies crossed the legendary US$1 billion valuation mark in ecosystems around the world—DACH (Deutschland, Austria, and Switzerland) region (2022 and 2021), Africa, and Brazil—with the goal of identifying founder patterns that led to founding a unicorn.

This month, we explore Canada, delving into the backgrounds of local founders, the higher institutions they attended, their work experience before launching their ventures, and more. Globally, 2021 saw a record number of venture capital (VC) investments with more than $650 billion invested, minting close to 1,100 unicorns across the globe. Canada has followed suit.

For the second consecutive year, we took a systematic look at the founders behind unicorn and soonicorn companies in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland). Just like in our inaugural DACH Unicorn Founder Roadmap released last year, we focus on the founders of the most valuable startups to better understand what makes these entrepreneurs and the companies they built so successful.

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.

A startup is like a child: in order to grow up big and strong, it needs proper nourishment — if the child is malnourished in its early years, its development can be hindered for life. Startups, too, need proper nourishment if they want to grow to their fullest potential. But instead of healthy food, startups need a capital pathway to sustain them and help them scale. When seeking initial investments, startups will often turn to venture capital (VC) firms. But while any willing VC firm can provide startup capital, each firm is different, and only some will be a good fit for your company.

Here, we cover how a VC can help your company grow and scale globally so that you can make an informed decision and carefully weigh your options when deciding which firm to partner with.

Three billion. That’s how many gamers there are globally who spend US$200bn a year on consoles and in-app purchases such as NFTs. The category is larger than movies and music combined demonstrating we are starting to spend more of our lives in virtual worlds. When we started to reflect on the days when millions of consumers played Mario Kart, Farmville and Club Penguin, we became captivated by how these planted the seed for the next generation of gaming platforms as we enter the new creator economy where all of us may become creators in the future and compensated based on our contributions towards platforms and communities. The next generation of emerging gaming platforms are putting the power in the hands of the players instead of confining them to one central authority.

It is always great to see more and more people willing to address mental health issues. Yet, as the conversation around mental health slowly expands, it also exposes the reality of crumbling support structures, lowered resilience levels, and the multiple failing points across our public and private healthcare systems. This is disheartening. The process of accepting that one needs help is difficult enough itself, the other steps needed in this journey should not add to the difficulty.

The power structures of the creator economy are rapidly changing - creators are now in the driver’s seat, being offered the opportunity to have greater individuality than ever before through Web3 creator platforms.

When we think of content creators, examples include YouTubers and TikTokers creating content for their fans. This often results in limited revenue opportunities such as merchandise, subscriptions, ad revenue or tipping which, in practice, is only sustainable for the top 1% of creators who have amassed large followings. Today, creator platforms are taking too much income away from the actual creator -  they do not provide options for creators to be discovered through their algorithms and few provide direct ownership where all stakeholders have a financial upside based on their contributions. This is, we believe, the next iteration for the category - a substantial shift since we published our first edition of the creator economy report in 2021. Creators are no longer just the product - they are the new economies.

This article is part of an Antler Berlin content series called ‘Call for Founders’. In this series, we will outline several exciting spaces in the startup and VC ecosystem that we see as opportunities ripe for venture creation. For this article we focus on marketplaces. These opportunities may emerge from an industry need, a trend, or indeed a prediction that we have had. If you like this series and you, or someone you know, is ready to build their own startup, apply to Antler.

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!

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.

Believing in our unlimited potential is one of the most powerful mindsets that one can possess to own our impact and ultimately win in life. It all begins with reframing limits and scarcity as opportunities for growth. At Antler, we invest in people by enlarging their capacity to not just be competent founders but also rise up as great leaders. In honour of International Women’s Day, we asked female founders at Antler and Antler team members how they overcame challenges to live out their true potential.

We hope you’ll find these stories as inspiring as we do!

The past two years in crypto have been absolutely astounding. From “DeFi summer” (now $250bn+ of total value locked) to “NFT craze” ($3.4bn monthly GMV on Opensea alone in August 2021) to Solana’s epic rise and various memecoin’s ultimate downfalls – the sheer pace of adoption and activity across the crypto ecosystem has been an incredible force.

Every venture fund in the world is currently deepening or developing a crypto thesis. Talent from traditional industries is pouring into crypto. And we now have an overarching, epochal narrative to define the movement: web3.

Amongst all the areas to focus on, I have chosen to write about Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). The reason for this is as follows:

• Incentive Innovation Rules All. Bitcoin provided a practical solution to the Byzantine Generals Problem by introducing an incentive innovation. In fact, much of crypto is about remixing existing technology with new incentives to create powerful new paradigms. DAOs are the natural frontier of incentive design in web3.
  
• Capital Power. The DeFi ecosystem, with $250bn total value locked (TVL), is the current “super-app” of web3. While only ~$10bn of DeFi TVL (~4%) is currently held in DAOs, this number will likely increase exponentially as more and more DeFi protocols progressively decentralize governance. More money, more power – DeFi Treasury DAOs have the potential for massively influencing web3 in 2022 and beyond as capital power grows.
  
• Web3 Promise. If the promise of web3 (versus web2) is to reduce centralized power in private, opaque corporate structures, then functional, community-led DAOs are a key prerequisite for the web3 promise to be fulfilled.

Tune in to our Web3 Insights Call to learn about the new internet: Web3!

First appeared in The Economic Times. Head here for the story.

The future of mobility is at a critical point of inflection. Every time oil prices spike or climate change is debated and discussed, Electric Vehicles (EVs) are inevitably mentioned as a part of the solution. Yet, despite several new Indian companies entering various parts of the EV value chain, significant capital infused in the space, and large-scale execution efforts, EVs are not mainstream yet. It is 2021 and it seems we have hit the inflection point for EVs to take off, finally.

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.

In this article, we explore how consumers’ attention spans are shifting, examine TikTok as a case study and explore the trends we are seeing in this space.

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.

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.

From inventive ways to leverage your network, to forming strategic partnerships, and more.

Have you ever wondered who the most successful entrepreneurs are? What career paths they pursued, what network they tapped into, and whether these stereotypical rules still apply today if you want to build the next billion-dollar business?

Taking a systematic look at the most exceptional founders of the 21st century in the DACH region, we have observed similar patterns that led up to founding a unicorn.

This new quarterly series leverages the insights of Antler’s Global leadership team to uncover real impact, explore sustainable measures, and identify future opportunities across the sector for investors and entrepreneurs.

This article is part of a new Antler Berlin content series called 'Call for Founders'. In this series, we will outline several exciting spaces in the local startup and VC ecosystem that we see as opportunities ripe for venture creation. These opportunities may emerge from an industry need, a trend, or indeed a prediction that we have had.

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Magnus met us with a friendly smile as if we had known each other for years. He immediately made us feel comfortable and transformed the conversation into a place where imagination and storytelling had no end. He created a perfect symbiosis between the two and painted a bright picture of a better world. It became clear that impact was his bread and butter. His electric energy was contagious, and at times we had to hold our horses as our question list kept on getting longer. An hour passed by in a split of a second. Delightful!