AI Disrupt: Igniting the Next Wave of AI Innovation

The founder 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 Anna Ratala, Co-Founder & CEO of Zvook.

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In this episode, we speak to Eilert Hanoa, the CEO of Kahoot!, the game-based learning platform that has taken the world by storm. As Norway's first and only unicorn, the company aims to make education more effective and accessible Globally. With the current remote learning and working situation, Kahoot!'s user base has been boosted to more than one billion active players annually.

Raising money is critical to fuel growth, build credibility, and stay afloat. Without external funding, the vast majority of startups won't survive or have very slow growth. The amount of money needed to take a startup to the next stage of growth is usually beyond the ability of founders and their friends and family to finance. Here is why, when, and how much to raise in order to succeed.

This article is a second part of the series "Startup fundraising 101" - a resource that has been created in order to help all founders in their fundraising journey. Read the first article "Fundraising: What to expect  from the journey? Stages of startup funding" here.

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The internet gave people a place to learn about sex autonomously, not just through family, friends and traditional education. Insight into how others feel and think about sex has created more openness around the topic. With this came a deeper understanding of sexual psychology, and as Sachin Raoul and Robbie Coomber started to look into this rather taboo topic, they discovered that billions of people were suffering in silence.

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In this episode, we speak to Rajiv Srivatsa, co-founder of Urban Ladder, an online furniture company that raised over 100 million dollars in venture capital from Indian and international investors such as Ratan Tata and Sequoia Capital. Prior to starting Urban Ladder in 2012, Rajiv spent over a decade working with a number of multinational corporations, including Infosys, Cognizant, and Yahoo. Currently, Rajiv is the country head and a Partner in India for Antler.

Meet Mast! Joy, Rob and Henry all joined Antler UK two weeks before the UK government announced the lockdown. Apart from informal discussions they had never brainstormed together in our offices. Everything happened remotely and they've never looked back!

Different nationalities, different backgrounds and different interests. Rob, the CEO, has seven years of experience working in Risk for Barclays in London and Frankfurt. Emmanuel, the CTO, has spent eight years in Academia. After his PhD in Artificial Intelligence (AI) at Sorbonne University in Paris, he joined University College London (UCL) as a Research Associate focusing on automatic persuasion methods for behaviour change. They probably would not have met if it wasn't for Antler.

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Environmentally conscious, commitment phobic, or just indecisive? In a market research survey conducted by Lab42 published by Adweek, most millenials today aged 18-38 prefer renting over purchasing goods. Today, thanks to the rise of rental subscription services ranging from clothing to furniture, tools to technology, millennials can now pick from best in class offerings and incur minimum cost for maximum gain, all while saving the environment. How's that for a mission?

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Antler held its fourth Singapore Demo Day and the first virtual one to an audience of investors, VCs and entrepreneurs from the global startup ecosystem. We had over 2800 people tune in to the live stream from our Demo Day landing page and YouTube. You can still get in touch with the new startups and rewatch their pitches through our post-Demo Day page.

Chris Fanucchi is no stranger to traveling for work. As the co-founder of beverage companies KOIA, a plant protein drink now available at Whole Foods nationwide, and Limitless, a lightly caffeinated sparkling water acquired by Keurig Dr. Pepper in January 2020, Chris spent years traveling the country as he built two successful businesses from scratch. But Chris encountered a persistent problem as he traversed state lines: he constantly struggled to maintain healthy eating.

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In this episode, we have with us Aditi Avasthi, Founder and CEO of Indian headquartered EdTech company Embibe. Embibe is an AI platform that is personalising the delivery of education in emerging markets. It uses AI and analytics to carve out learning programs for students and has raised over $190 million since its launch in 2012. Investors include Kalaari Capital, Lightbox Ventures, and Reliance.

What does it take to start a business during a pandemic and how do you adapt? Some of the founders from our new companies in the fourth Singapore cohort share their experiences ahead of Antler Southeast Asia’s first virtual Demo Day on July 16 at 5pm SGT.

Fundraising is not an easy walk in the park, it will be challenging. It always  takes longer than you think and has more ups and downs than you'd expect. Go into the process with an attitude that "you'll be successful". You need to commit to this process, even though it can be unpredictable and messy.

After attracting 2,800 registrations for the event a whopping 2,000 people watched the live event.

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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Now that the majority of the companies have seen that there is a way to work remotely, it looks like remote working is here to stay for a while longer at least and that more and more companies are going down this path even after the pandemic. We have listed some tools and services that startups and VCs we know recommended.

We invited four experienced CTOs to discuss how to build a successful tech platform, the process behind establishing a startup and some of the key things to consider when you are just starting to build the tech behind your product/service. They discuss key questions such as why is speed important and what to prioritise between your product vision and customer validation.

Antler Sydney Venture Partner Christian Wanner explores what is Demo Day and why it is important for founders, investors and the wider community.

Antler Australia received 1,400 applications in total, and spent 618 hours interviewing to identify and select this cohort - the largest to date, up 20% from the previous Sydney cohort of 80.

Launching your own business can be daunting. Launching your own business during a pandemic can seem downright impossible.

But with the help of Antler Australia, 26 entrepreneurs launched 12 startups spanning FinTech to Saas, HealthTech, DeepTech and more, and are flourishing in their early stages of growth.

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12 early-stage powerhouse tech companies will be revealed. Join us and help chart the path to recovery for the tech startup ecosystem.

This story is covered by Business Standard, Hindu Business Line, Economic Times, Business Insider, Business World, Outlook, Mint, YourStory, VC Circle and Tech in Asia.

Antler announced plans to launch in India to enable more entrepreneurs to build startups through their platform, support and global reach. The local operation will start in Bangalore and be led by Rajiv Srivatsa, co-founder of Urban Ladder, who is joining as Partner.

“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.

Antler is thrilled to announce a collaboration with global investment firm B Capital Group, founded by Eduardo Saverin and Raj Ganguly. The agreement allows our companies to join forces across multiple functions, leveraging the six continents and major technology ecosystems our global funds operate in.

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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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In this episode of the Antler VC Cast, we have with us Patrick Lee, the co-founder of Rotten Tomatoes. Rotten Tomatoes has been around for over 20 years and is the entertainment website focused on movie reviews and news. Patrick is also a serial entrepreneur who has started six startups across the US, China and Hong Kong. His companies are largely focused on the technology and entertainment space, targeting consumers. He is very active in the startup ecosystem supporting and advising founders and startups.

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.

Meet the Yayloh team! Nikhil Shikarkhane, CTO and co-founder, is a full-stack engineer and deep learning specialist as well as a serial entrepreneur. At Antler, he met his co-founder and CEO Sophie Aubard, who had the same entrepreneurial mindset but who could complement his skills well with deep knowledge about how to run and scale big businesses after having worked for big malls in the retail space.

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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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In this episode of the Antler VC Cast, we speak to Abheek Anand, Managing Director of Sequoia Capital, a venture capital firm that has backed companies like Apple, Google, Dropbox, Airbnb, Whatsapp and Zomato. Abheek is an active and known Venture Capitalist and shares some sharp insights on navigating the current climate as an investor and founder.

It has been incredible to see over the last few weeks how our portfolio companies are supporting their customers and communities during this global pandemic. They are doing this either through their existing solutions or pivoting so they can more appropriately address one of the pain points of the COVID-19 crisis. We are very proud of them.

We have put together a (non-exhaustive) list of those companies and we will continue to update it to reflect these incredible initiatives. If you are interested in learning more about what they do or are in a position to help these companies in any way please reach out to them.

We spoke to 12 Australian angel investors - here's what they had to say.

What founders should be considering with the added complexity of the Covid-19 outbreak.

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

As part of Antler’s mission to chart the path to recovery, we want to support teams working on solutions to these problems by investing in their startups.

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.

Some straightforward ways founders can help each other during turbulent times

There several ways in which entrepreneurs build their businesses and in recent years, quite a few startup ecosystem players have entered the journey in order to support Entrepreneurs in their endeavor. Antler, a startup generator and early-stage VC has brought a unique approach for aspiring entrepreneurs by creating a program that allows them to find their co-founding team, define their business idea and an opportunity to receive an investment all in 11 weeks. Check out the feature on #BBC Africa as we welcome our second cohort of the Nairobi program to #buildnextwaveoftech in the next 11 weeks.

Women make up 50% of the population but only 11% of capital is invested in female-led companies, even though data shows that diverse teams perform better. Antler wants to enable more women to launch and lead companies. Click to read the startup stories of 5 female founders and why they decided to become entrepreneurs.

Woman who participate in Antler’s program significantly increase their chance of leading their own company.

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.

Whoever said Science was organized knowledge most likely had a point. What is less organized is the immense volume of research that is annually conducted. 2.3 trillion US Dollars are spent globally on Research and Development in 2019. More shockingly, it still takes pharmaceuticals approximately 15 years to bring a drug to the market - despite the given funds. What if we told you there was a way to reduce not just costs but also time by up to 25%?

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Math, Physics, Chemistry... Chances are high, it is one of these subjects that embodies the source of all evil for many students. The vast majority of parents who want to help their children excel in school and connect them with a private tutor are financially unable to do so. Enlight Ed CEO Artur Lorincz and CCO Sartou Djibril are dedicated to put an end to students falling behind in the curriculum solely because of the lack of access to educational help. Antler Amsterdam's Yingzhao Zhu got to chat with Artur and Sartou about their leading-edge approach to ending this battle of frustration.

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If you were told that something as elementary, yet complex, as data has pushed oil from its throne as the world's most valuable resource, would you believe it? Data has indeed become such an essential part of our everyday lives that it is impossible for many to envision a world without it. Self-driving cars, diagnostic in medicine, security systems -  they all rely on labeling data so it can be interpreted and decisions can be made accordingly. But what does data labeling actually mean? Put simply, it means that a computer is able to tell a dog apart from a car in images. Applied to medicine, this could mean that the computer was previously told what cancerous cells look like. Later, it is able to detect similar cells in new patients without the time-consuming manual reviews. The greatest challenge with data labeling is the unfathomable volume that it comes in. But no need to despair, LabelFuse is coming to the rescue, so beware.

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Schroders, along with Johan H. Andresen’s Ferd, and other prominent investors such as FinTech Collective, have invested in Antler, as we grow our Global platform to support founders in building fast-growing technology companies.

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

In June 2019, 71 exceptional individuals, representing 32 different nationalities, were carefully selected to join our first program in London. After just 2 months we invested £1.56 million in 13 different companies that were generated in that program, 30% of which have a female co-founder. At our first London Demo Day, these companies pitched in front of a full house of 400 investors at the iconic Royal Institution in Mayfair.

During the day, we also had the pleasure to invite Reshma Sohoni, founder and managing director at SeedCamp, for a fireside chat together with our CEO and founder Magnus Grimeland. Moderated by Amy Lewin from Sifted, they shared their insights on the European startup and venture capital scene, how it has evolved in the last few years and what's to come. Get a first glimpse at the 13 companies below.

"You have 3 months to start your company from scratch. You have to find your co-founder, pick a problem, and validate your solution with customers. If all  goes well, you'll get 3 more months to complete building your MVP and generate traction before you pitch to investors. Ready? Go!"

In a global partnership, Antler is taking part in the Annual Investment Committee (AIM) Dubai summit in March. 6 Antler locations will hold a local startup pitch competition calling on all our portfolio companies in specific sectors.