Where UK founders start and scale —Antler. Let’s make progress inevitable.
Antler backs the UK’s most ambitious founders to build impactful startups. Whether you’re an individual entrepreneur or part of an early-stage team, we provide the resources, funding, and support to accelerate your journey from day zero.
Antler’s UK Spring Residency kicks-off April 22, 2025.
Where UK founders start and scale —Antler. Let’s make progress inevitable.
Antler backs the UK’s most ambitious founders to build impactful startups. Whether you’re an individual entrepreneur or part of an early-stage team, we provide the resources, funding, and support to accelerate your journey from day zero.
Antler’s UK Spring Residency kicks-off April 22, 2025.
Take part in a ten-week residency with a community of exceptional entrepreneurs.
Backed by global founders, advisors, and investors with coaching from the Antler team.
We invest in founders at the earliest possible stage.
From day zero through the life cycle of your company.
Who is Antler in the UK for?
Antler runs a ten-week residency in the UK for ambitious builders and GTM leaders ready to create and scale impactful startups. Whether you’re an individual founder or part of an early-stage team, we provide a community of exceptional entrepreneurs, an ecosystem backed by global founders, advisors, and investors, an on-ramp to venture capital at the earliest possible stage and support through your company's life cycle.
The Scouting Process
Antler's next residency in the UK kicks-off April 22, 2025.
Sign up below for the step-by-step overview of our scouting process, which typically takes 2-3 weeks, during which you’ll meet with our investment team, including a Partner. We recommend applying as early as possible.
Download our brochure
The Residency
Antler's next residency in the UK kicks-off April 22, 2025.
The Antler residency in London is a full-time, in-person commitment, which means you are 100% dedicated to building. Most founders come in 4-5 days a week. Each residency runs eight weeks, if invited to the investment committee, this may extend to ten weeks or more. During this, you will build your team from a cohort of 80-100 founders and receive coaching to develop your venture-backable startup.
Sign up below to learn about our weekly Ask-Me-Anything sessions with a partner.
Our Investment Terms
Our documents and terms are designed to be founder-friendly. Sign up below to receive them. Antler is the first investor in the founders we support; our residencies allow us to earn the equity we take in your business before investing, allocating £120,000 for a 10% equity stake when the companies are typically weeks or even days old. At this stage, Antler receives a £40,000 service fee. Once we support you, our goal is to help you achieve the growth necessary to secure your pre-seed round within three to six months.
Meet an Antler partner Thursday at 1PM CET
Join us for an open session with one of our partners to discuss how we work with founders and what to expect
FAQs
By helping thousands of founders launch and scale the next generation of great companies that address some of the most pressing challenges of our time, we move society forward and make progress a certainty.
We are not an accelerator or incubator. We’re the inception investor, backing founders often before they’ve found their co-founder or developed their idea. We take massive pride in helping our founders identify, develop, validate, and start scaling their ideas and business models quickly through our residencies. We don’t launch and leave; we keep supporting our founders throughout their company's life cycle—from day zero to greatness.
Antler's Spring residency will be held in person in London for eight weeks starting in April 22, 2025. If invited to the investment committee, this may extend to ten weeks or more. We fully believe in meeting each other in person to develop meaningful relationships. Please consider your current notice period and the personal and financial investment required to start a business.
Yes. The Antler residency is a full-time commitment, which means you are 100% dedicated to building. Most founders come in 4-5 days a week.
You can only join our residency if you have the right to work in the UK. If you apply for a visa during the scouting process, your offer will be conditional until the visa is approved. An offer letter from Antler can expedite the timeframes for seeking endorsement from Tech Nation for a Global Talent Visa; learn more here.
You can apply without a clear idea. Above all, we invest in people. Every great company starts with a great team, and the best teams pursue the best ideas. Working with thousands of founders worldwide, we have found that a fantastic team with a mediocre idea will outperform a mediocre team with a great idea.
Great teams often pivot their ideas after seeing a more pressing or interesting problem. If we decide to invest, it is first and foremost because we have high conviction that the team we are backing will be future winners and because we can and want to work with the team.
Our cohort members are often pre-team, pre-idea and pre-funding. We look for the most exceptional builders and go-to-market leaders with:
- 🚄 Velocity: You demonstrate a strong bias for execution and a propensity to take action and make things happen. You possess strong communication skills, a proactive mindset, and strategic thinking skills to achieve goals quickly.
- 🧲 Magnetism: You have a proven ability to attract investors, customers, or top talent to your cause, as evidenced by the most impactful projects and teams you've led.
- 🔗 Relentlessness: You set ambitious goals and are obsessed with achieving them, demonstrating tenacity to overcome the most challenging obstacles. You rely on internal motivation and know when to pivot or persevere.
- ⛰ Spike: You stand out from your peers. You bring a track record of impactful contributions, deep industry insights, or expertise in a specific technology that creates a competitive advantage.
Furthermore, we promote diversity at every level: background, career stage and skills.
We focus on providing founders better access to capital at the beginning of their journey, so we back founders pre-idea and often pre-team. We'll invest as early as a clearly defined product statement and roadmap to your MVP, and we'll even help you incorporate your new venture if necessary. We are usually the first investor to back our founders. You will likely not fit our residency if you have already raised funds.
We back founders, so we are industry-agnostic and invest across all technologies. So far, we’ve supported companies in health tech, proptech, climate and sustainability, agritech, and more. We are usually the first investors to back our founders. If you have already raised funds, you will likely not fit our residency.
If you successfully pitch to the investment committee, you’ll join the Antler portfolio and be assigned a dedicated partner and coach from our Investment Team. We walk shoulder-to-shoulder with our founders, acting as an extension of your team. They’ll provide strategic guidance, problem-solving support, and valuable introductions to founders, customers, and investors. You’ll also gain increased access to Antler’s global community, early-stage investment partners, and perks worth approximately £1.4m, including services from OpenAI, AWS, Google, and more. In the months following the investment, you’ll have desk space at our UK offices and tailored support to clarify goals, refine your roadmap, and set you up to grow and raise your seed round.
If you are unsuccessful in pitching to the investment committee, you will remain a valuable part of the Antler community for life. You will retain access to office space for an additional week, stay in our Slack community and other platforms, and meet with our team to discuss the next steps for your startup. Previous residents have taken on feedback and returned to pitch successfully, joining Antler portfolio companies or the talent network or starting new companies and returning to Antler. The door is always open.
Apply now
—to Antler in the U.K
There has never been a better time to innovate and build a company that solves a meaningful problem. As society's issues become more complex, founders are more needed than ever to tackle them.
Founders in the UK that Antler backs are moving the world forward
Antler is one of the most active early-stage investors in the UK—and globally—backing exceptional founders.
Pathzero
Cloud Cycle
Antler portfolio companies raise capital from other leading VCs
Meet our team
Mike is a Partner at Antler Australia and co-leads the Australia operations. He's a seasoned operator and investor who kickstarted his career in equity capital markets and mergers and acquisitions.Mike's journey with Uber began as the second employee in Asia and the 121st globally. As the Head of Operations for Australia and New Zealand, he played a pivotal role in building a thriving multi-billion-dollar business locally. Over the course of six years, he witnessed the local team's remarkable growth, scaling it from just three members to a formidable team of over 500. This experience gave him invaluable insights into scaling businesses and driving growth in challenging markets.Following his time at Uber, Mike co-founded and led Kaddy, a B2B marketplace. Under his leadership as CEO, Kaddy was acquired for $34 million within three years. Mike also brings over 20 years of investment experience, including numerous direct and indirect angel investments. His diverse background and extensive experience have made him a sought-after advisor and mentor, offering valuable insights to early stage businesses.
Adam is a Partner at Antler, co-leading the UK fund. He is a Founding Partner and Chair of Houghton Street Ventures, a pre-seed and seed fund investing in alumni of the London School of Economics and a Non-Executive Director at Innovate Finance, the UK industry body for fintech. Previously, he was the Co-Founder and CEO of Scalable Capital, a fintech unicorn valued at $1.4 billion, backed by BlackRock, Tencent, and Hedosophia, as he recognized the opportunity to build a business to make investing more accessible, more convenient and more cost-effective by using technology. Earlier in his career, Adam served as an Executive Director of Trading at Goldman Sachs.
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Hannah brings over a decade of experience in the tech ecosystem, playing key roles in launching and scaling startups, developing products, and advising on fundraising strategy. Previously, she served as a Venture Partner at Antler UK and was a founding General Partner at Houghton Street Ventures, focusing on pre-seed and seed-stage investments globally. She is also a recognised leader in ESG within venture capital, having founded VentureESG and now serving as its Executive Chairwoman—a nonprofit supporting over 700 VCs and LPs with ESG integration. With a robust background as a founder, innovator, and investor, Hannah has built an extensive network that drives strategic growth for portfolio companies.
Jed Rose is a Partner at Antler and brings operator, advisor, and investor experience from Seed to Series C rounds. He was the GM of EMEA with Airwallex, a B2B fintech payments unicorn that is backed by investors such as Sequoia and DST Global. Prior to Antler and Airwallex, Jed was CEO at Paymentsense, where he led the fintech startup through a period of rapid growth with EBITDA growing from breakeven to £24m in just three years and to an exit. Prior to Paymentsense, Jed did product management for Microsoft Windows for six years where he focused on B2C, international expansion, and product pilots. Jed received a B.Sc. with Honours in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University and an MBA from the University of Cambridge.
Sarah is a Associate Partner at Antler. Having previously worked with Antler in Berlin, where she was a key part of Antler's operations in DACH and Eastern Europe, Sarah now leads supporting Antler's growing portfolio in the UK. Sarah brings experience from her previous roles in finance, early-stage technology companies, and venture capital, and she is an avid sports fan and world traveller.
Darren is a Vice President of Founder Experience at Antler’s London office and oversees our scouting and residency. Darren has over eight years of experience working with tech startups, helping them go to market and secure investment. He previously worked as Head of Innovation at Unbound, connecting 100s of startups with global corporations at events such as Unbound London, FinTech Abu Dhabi and Innovfest Unbound in Singapore. Darren has also worked at the UK’s leading advanced digital technology innovation centre, Digital Catapult, where he helped establish their first accelerators.
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Richard is a Principal in the UK, leading the sourcing and evaluation of investment opportunities. Before joining Antler, Richard was helping Israeli startups raise Series A funding from UK and US investors. He has also spent five years at an investment bank as an actuarial consultant. Richard has an MBA from Bayes Business School and an MSci in Mathematics from the University of Glasgow.
David’s career began in the GTM team at UK fintech Seedrs/Republic, where he played a pivotal role in driving growth from Seed to Series B. Transitioning to the investor side, he led deals from Pre-seed to Series A across Climate, DeepTech, and AI at the European Institute of Technology before joining Houghton Street Ventures. David’s focus is on the intersection of AI, healthcare, B2B SaaS, and climate initiatives. He passionately advocates for social mobility in UK tech, having founded 93% Ventures, a community-led initiative to support operators, founders, and investors from lower socioeconomic communities.
Bazil has over 10 years of experience as a founder and operator in venture-backed companies, focusing on digital health. Bazil was the founder and CEO of Breakthrough Health, maker of Emilyn - the #1 Multiple sclerosis (MS) patient support app. Breakthrough was acquired by Mymee, a New York-based personalised care company, where Bazil served as VP of Business Development. He previously worked at ResearchGate, the world's largest professional network for scientists, and was an EIR at Atlantic Labs, an early-stage VC.
Rakesh is Finance Manager at Antler, supporting investment and capital teams to drive investments, and founders during and after the investment process. He has previously worked as Finance manager for a PE backed multinational company, helping their European segment double its turnover to £50m in three years. Rakesh has an MBA from the City, University of London and an ACCA qualification.
Theo joins us from Republic (formerly Seedrs) where he spent 3.5 years an Investment Manager, supporting Founders raising Seed through to Series B investment. During his time there he helped manage over 80 successful funding rounds for startups, supporting Founders with their pitch strategy, conducting due diligence and assisting with legal execution. Working with companies such as Cuvva, THIS™, and SPOKE, Theo’s campaigns generated over £30M of investment committed through the platform. Prior to this he worked in advertising, supporting across Apple's marketing campaigns in EMEA. He graduated from University of Warwick with a BA in American Studies, focussing on American Literature.
Vitaly has a strong background in consulting and strategic research, working with major financial institutions at The Risk Advisory Group on integrity due diligence for large transactions. He contributed to economic research at the Wheeler Institute and advised NGOs and startups in emerging markets. Vitaly holds an MSc in Management from London Business School and a first-class BSc in Politics and Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science.