Residency

Sitting down with Viktoria Prantauer: digital marketing expert, breast cancer survivor, and now working on making her mark on the world.

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Antler’s seventh Amsterdam residency has officially kicked off! Are you ready to meet them? Here is more about who we invited to join the residency and what you need to know about this group of exceptional people.

We are thrilled to lead the pre-seed round of Motif, a team formed at Antler India Residency as they transform the way SaaS is sold.

After receiving initial investment from Antler, our portfolio companies work with the Antler US team in a rigorous sprint to build and prepare for their next round of fundraising. We’re so excited to see what these tremendous founders accomplish next!

Founders are the life force of the startup ecosystem. They give their all, betting on their seemingly “crazy” convictions and executing on abstract ideas that can potentially make our lives and work easier, faster, healthier, and better optimized.

But sometimes they do this to the detriment of their health. Being a founder means being beholden to customers, employees, and investors while balancing personal life. Often founders trade their stable, well-paying jobs to prioritize the restless inquisitivity of their mind. In the quest to answer the question “what if?”, they sometimes sacrifice their mental and physical health, only realizing the effects on their state of mind once they have impacted their ability to function as a leader. We have also seen how the mental pressure on founders can cause distress to those who depend on them for their livelihood and direction.

A country of over 1.4 billion people and something as crucial as the medical emergency response system still remains unsolved. The numbers quantify the magnitude and gravity of this problem - over 50% of the ambulances do not arrive even after 60 minutes, 90% of ambulances do not have the basic equipment and 97% have no trained personnel. But here is the most staggering number of them all - over 50% of all deaths in India are preventable. While ambulances are a part of the problem, they are not the solution. The missing piece in creating a robust medical emergency response system is a solid digital infrastructure layer.

A fitting pairing of Hitesh Bhuraria and Nishant Singh, one that was formed at the first-ever cohort of Antler India Residency, is set to build the future of how companies approach their decarbonization goals.

India’s space tech industry is witnessing a paradigm shift driven by a factor common to most tech disruptions: a dramatic fall in cost. How will the confluence of multiple trends define the next era for space tech in India? Nitin Sharma (Partner, Antler India) and Rahul Seth (Scouting Director, Antler India) tackle these questions in the latest episode of Theory of Next. In a special section, Awais Ahmed (Co-founder and CEO, Pixxel) joins the team to talk about Mars colonization, asteroid mining, and space factories.

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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.

Antler Netherlands’ sixth cohort has kicked off in Amsterdam. Here’s more about who they are and what you need to know about this group of exceptional people.

Amsterdam Dance Event and Antler announced that the five-day long electronic music conference and festival and the early-stage venture capital investor have teamed up for the 2022 ADE & Antler Startup Competition.

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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 following is a transcript of an interview between the co-founders of Faba and Antler. It has been slightly edited for clarity and length.

Teo Ortega is a contrarian builder who is not afraid of deviating from what is considered common knowledge. He likes to take things apart and understand how they work and put them back together in a new way as a way to understand their fundamentals — a form of reverse engineering if you will.

Global early-stage VC Antler kicked off Q2 2022 in Berlin with their Portfolio Reveal Day on April 7th. As part of the second Berlin cohort, 8 teams took to the stage to showcase their innovation. The founders behind these startups work on addressing big challenges across Medtech🏥, Mental Health/Psychedelics🍄, HR Tech👩‍💼, Cleantech 🌊, Clean Energy⚡, Cybersecurity🔐 and in the Creator Economy🖼.

Antler Netherlands’ fifth cohort has kicked off in Amsterdam. Here’s more about who they are and what you need to know about this group of exceptional people.

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.

An interview with Austin Chaird, Chief product and technology officer at Alpha Impact

Theory of Next is a series by Antler India that decodes and contextualizes the spaces and ideas of the future. Using first-principles approach, it provides a window into the process by which a venture capital firm arrives at a particular sectoral thesis.

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.

Businesses need financial help — badly. That’s the core of what Rajith Shaji and I were trying to address when we founded our expense management platform — Volopay — in 2019. What started with the intent to help Singaporean businesses manage their money better, has now turned into a service scaled across the APAC region.

Several years ago, one afternoon in Hanoi city center, I sat on the terrace in a cafe, watching people pass by with their various activities. A city bus passed, and I want to try it on but I couldn’t understand all the information on the bus. It was written in the Vietnamese alphabet. I finished my coffee quickly and ordered a taxi through a costly ride-hailing app as I had no other choice because I didn’t want to gamble by renting a motorbike there.

Theory of Next is a series by Antler India that decodes and contextualizes the spaces and ideas of the future. Using first-principles approach, it provides a window into the process by which a venture capital firm arrives at a particular sectoral thesis.

Global early-stage VC Antler has kicked off 2022 by welcoming 90 Australian founders into its latest cohort to build the defining companies of tomorrow. With ambitions extending across SaaS, FinTech, AgTech, HealthTech and GreenTech, here’s what you need to know about this mix of aspiring and experienced entrepreneurs.

With their eyes set on solving some of the world’s biggest challenges by building new category-defining companies, these ambitious individuals are embarking on their founder journey with Antler Australia to secure Pre-Seed investment.

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

Rent hasn’t changed for several decades. In 2019, 36% of the 122.8 million households in the United States were renting their homes which is more than at any point in the past 50 years. The median price of a home is up nearly 70% in the last decade while median income has grown less than 30% in the same period. Homeownership and building wealth are increasingly out of reach for Americans. When homeownership isn’t feasible, more people rent, and rent prices skyrocket as they have done for the past 20 years. The multifamily housing industry is known for being slow to adopt new technology. However, increasing competition and the COVID-19 pandemic paired with generational shifts in apartment ownership to a younger more tech-savvy group has created many opportunities for technology companies to enter the multi-family housing market.

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.

Theory of Next is a series by Antler India that decodes and contextualises the spaces and ideas of the future. Using first-principles approach, it provides a window into the process by which a venture capital firm arrives at a particular sectoral thesis. In this episode, Nitin Sharma (Partner, Antler India) and Vineet Agarwal (Investment Manager, Antler India) brainstorm and lay out our thesis on the electric vehicles landscape in India.

A longread about the road to founding a company and finding the ultimate problem to work on, by Jeffrey Duyvesteijn, co-founder and CEO of For Youth.

A conversation with Gina Xydias Charmanta, MBA, entrepreneur, and former consultant.

We spoke with Dr Tommy Mermelshtayn about Zip's growth to date and what it takes to transition from startup to scaleup

A conversation with Rafael Alain Rolli, bioengineer and entrepreneur.

A conversation with Annika (Kreil) Breu, founder of OH MY! Fantasy and former Bain Consultant.

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.

A conversation with Mikhail (Misha) Bragin, founder of WireTrustee.

As the world screeched to a standstill in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, few sectors were hit as hard as the travel industry. Globally, international arrivals dropped to 381 million in 2020, down from 1.461 billion in 2019 — a 74% decline. According to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the crisis put between 100 and 120 million direct tourism jobs at risk. As lockdowns fell into place worldwide, investors and entrepreneurs in the TravelTech sector switched to “survival mode”.

Yet in the midst of it all, Airalo persisted.

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Rajith has the natural gift of making people feel at ease. But we’re not going to lie; this conversation was different. To make it happen, we stretched over three continents: North America, Europe, and Asia. While it was late at night in Vancouver, it was early morning in Rotterdam and noon in Singapore. However, Rajith injected the conversation with good vibes from the first second, making us feel awake and inspired. It was the perfect way to start and end our day!

At some point, most data scientists or developers have built something that they think has startup potential or dreamed of launching their own successful product. Yet, many developers end up sticking with their jobs.

So, what makes someone take the leap and chase the startup dream? We asked three developers-turned-founders what prompted them to leave their jobs and start a company. From lacking a sense of purpose to feeling uninspired, stifled, or unappreciated, learn what motivated these successful founders to leave their full-time jobs to start a business.

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.

Alpha Impact is a social media network built to give a crypto trader with $25 the same tools as one with 25 BTC.

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.

The founders series takes a deep dive into the journey of Antler portfolio  company founders and sheds light on the space they are building in. This week, we spoke to Zabrina Chew, Co-Founder and CEO of Soda. Soda is a social discovery platform to help millennial professionals find and engage with relevant and trusted communities around them easily. Soda is building the  future of discovery, co-creation, and collaboration, bringing its community together through streamlined content and small, intimate gatherings.

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Read on to learn more about what prompted Radu to start RePack, what he’s learned about himself since becoming an entrepreneur, and how to hire top talent. Check out his tips on the startup recruitment process and how to maintain a healthy working relationship with your co-founder.

Learn about what keeps Jessica motivated and inspired as a founder, and how she and her co-founder, Puteri Myrasandri, have built the startup culture of their dreams. Check out her tips on building an autonomous startup culture, and how to push through rejections, all while building a successful company.

This article is for my fellow founders who are entering the journey of building a startup in the UK. We had many discussions on different slack channels and I eventually was asked to share my experience of pre-seed fundraising without having any revenue — something which takes far more effort in Britain than in the US.

The founders series takes a deep dive into the journey of Antler portfolio company founders and sheds light on the space they are building in. This week, we spoke to Shubham Gupta, Co-Founder of Ivory. Ivory is an employee engagement platform that harnesses anonymity to create transparency, empower collaboration and capture unheard risks.

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Longtime friends Marie Louise Sunde and Isabelle Ringnes have always been passionate about equality and the power of technology in solving some of the most pressing issues of our time. Inspired by Emma Watson's powerful speech for the #HeForShe campaign, they joined the very first Antler cohort in Stockholm to build Equality Check - a platform for reviews about culture, inclusion and equality in the workplace.

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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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