Launch your startup, get funded in 10 weeks with Antler in Australia
We’re a global VC with a unique investment approach: We back founders from day zero to greatness.
We support co-founder matching, idea validation and business building
We invest Pre-Seed and provide follow-on funding up to Series C
We provide coaching and access to a network of founders and experts
We are a global partner for future expansion with 30 locations worldwide
How Antler works
In Australia, we run a 10-week residency twice a year - in February and August - designed to promote early-stage company formation and enable founders to secure Pre-Seed funding
The Scouting Process
Our Scouts identify and vet ~80 founders to participate in each residency. These individuals come from varied backgrounds but all have 0-1 skills and demonstrate “Founder DNA”.
The Residency
The residency, which runs in February and August across Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, supports team and idea validation, and ultimately helps founders build a VC-backable business.
Our Investment Terms
If successful in the residency you may secure Pre-Seed funding of $225,000 for a 12% equity stake, at which point Antler receives a $68,000 platform fee.
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.
People rarely fit into neat categories, but broadly speaking it is those with the skills relevant to early stage business building combined with Founder DNA:
Backgrounds:
- Returning founders: Tried and tested founders who have valuable experience through successes and/or failures and are ready to build their next venture.
- Business leaders: Commercial pros with strengths in go-to-market, business model building, and securing customers and capital.
- Technology and product leaders: Builders with their hands on in the code base, architecting scalable systems, or setting and executing on the product vision and leading teams.
- SMEs or functional experts: Those with a specialised skill set that unlocks the idea behind a business usually from professional or academic experience. These individuals have identified an unmet customer need in their field, under utilised technology, or hold Intellectual Property that can be commercialised.
- 0 to 1: Seasoned in startups and highly knowledgeable in early-stage through to hypergrowth, these individuals have held defining roles in the growth journey of companies.
- Visionaries: Those that have exceptional, unique, and non-conventional backgrounds and see that world a different way, complemented with strong grit and hustle to be successful.
Founder DNA:
- Creative problem solving: Those who can intelligently and creatively navigate a pathway to an outcome.
- Inner drive: Self-starters that can motivate themselves and others to join and unite in fulfilling a mission. Often seen through a track record of reaching achievements earlier than expected or having set high, long term, goals and reached them.
- Grit: Those with an energy source that never runs low, able to find a window when the door closes. Seen via a willingness and ability to keep going when faced with obstacles.
Antler has a strong bias toward co-founding teams, with the average consisting of 2.3 founders.
We do have examples of solo founders in our portfolio but they are few.
Antler believes in co-founders because:
- As a Day Zero investor, a solo founder represents a significant key person risk to the company.
- We back complementary, non-overlapping teams. This means two or three founders who can own functions of the business fitting to their areas of expertise.
- For example tech + domain. This gives the founding team the breadth to execute at pace and clear ownership and decision making ability.
- It also negates the need to outsource costly areas of the business to increase run-rate.
- Founder health is vital and operating as a co-founder team enables you to spread not just the operational but also emotional load of launching and scaling a company.
Joining Antler gives you access to a vetted talent pool of potential co-founders. However, if you do not find a co-founder in your residency, you are not restricted to the four walls of Antler and we encourage you to do your own external search. In this case, we will ask you to introduce them to us and we will conduct an interview. If that goes well, we will send them a Letter of Offer to join you in the current residency.
Another option is that, via an invitation by us, you can join the next Antler residency as a returning founder. We have many examples where we have backed a team who have initially started in separate residencies.
- Over 80% of Antler portfolio companies raise external capital within 12 months
- Over 85% of companies that raise follow-on receive some of their capital from Antler fund investors (LPs)
- The top 5 Antler portfolio companies currently trade at 22x to 52x our post-money entry valuation
- 17 Antler portfolio companies are now valued at more than $10m
- Top valued Australian company is AU$80m
Select portfolio companies who are making strong headway: Xailient, Pathzero, Trace, UpCover, Vyro, Reach Alts, Tactiq, SiteHive, Sapyen, Upflowy, CloudOlive, SaaSGuru, Mys Tyler.
Antler is business model and industry agnostic. This can be seen via the breadth of our portfolio.
Globally, Antler has invested in over 1,000+ companies to date across many industries. In Australia, we have an active portfolio size of >100 companies that is well balanced across different sectors. We have:
- Enterprise SaaS startups operating in construction site management, cyber security, Talent management, and computer vision.
- Digital platforms in verticals such as health, learning, pet services.
- Services and D2C in waste management, consumer loyalty, fashion and personalised books.
- Fintech and Insurtech startups within SME lending and new insurance products covering a range of industries such as SaaS, FinTech, GreenTech, ConsumerTech.
- Deeptech startups from startups built and led by AI/ ML technologies, through to biotechnology, data analytics, space and aviation and more.
At Antler, we accept founders with and without ideas. We know that in early stage business building a lot can change, ideas pivot and business models are adapted, which is why we primarily back the team’s ability to execute.
This means you can join Antler with your skill set to bring to another’s idea. If you are wanting to work on a formed idea, we will test your founder-problem fit, i.e. what gives you the unfair advantage to win in your chosen area?
Equally, teams with formed ideas and initial validation can join. In this case, our fixed terms are the same so if you have already taken on capital this should be a consideration.
Absolutely. We encourage you to have preliminary conversations with other investors including but not limited to angel investors, friends and family as well as other institutional investors. That said, you should not be soliciting term sheets whilst you are in Residency. This process of raising a priced equity round or SAFE should happen after you complete the Residency.
The true value of building with Antler comes post-investment, as that unlocks our portfolio support consisting of:
- Ability to follow-on from the local fund
- Antler Australia has deployed additional capital into >80% of our portfolio
- We aim to follow-on programmatically up to Series A stage
- We have invested over A$1M into multiple companies over multiple rounds
- A global fund to back companies through their later rounds
- Antler Elevate has US$280M fund designed to back Antler businesses from Series A-C with average cheque sizes of $3-10M
- Warm introduction to external capital from angels and other institutional investors
- Ongoing business coaching and advisory from our global network
- International scaling support driven through Antler’s on the ground presence in 23 regions
- Introductions to partners, funding sources, key hires
- Antler’s ability to spot synergies and intel from over 700 global transactions to inform coaching
- Perks and partnerships that by the sum of parts now exceed $3M in value
- The Talent Network, Antler’s proprietary platform to connect Antler portfolio companies to vetted job seekers
- Community support via Slack and in-person initiatives
Apply now for Antler Australia
By founders for founders, our team is made up of entrepreneurs and early-stage experts.
We’ve helped put hundreds of founders on a pathway to global success
Fuelled by a passion that goes beyond traditional investing, we exist to increase our founders’ speed and maximise their success rate in solving important problems.
Pathzero
GoFigr
Enrola
Antler portfolio companies raise capital from other leading VCs
The Antler Australia team
By founders for founders, our team is made up of entrepreneurs and early-stage experts.
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.
James is a Partner at Antler Australia and co-leading the Australia operations. He is a seasoned C-level exec who brings over 15 years of tech operating experience across EMEA, APAC and the US.
Previously, he was the CCO for Adzuna, running its business across 16 global markets. Prior, he led the Enterprise business for SeatGeek and was GM for Airbnb UK and Northern Europe. James spent his initial tech career at Google in London, Sydney and Singapore; most notably launching local markets and YouTube across APAC.
Sarah is responsible for scaling Antler’s presence in Australia by delivering operational efficiencies and frameworks across the firm. Sarah is also responsible for Antler Australia’s marketing and brand presence, partnerships and business development, and people and culture. Before joining Antler, Sarah was the General Manager at Business Insider Australia and Gizmodo Media Group, leading four globally renowned digital media brands in Australia.
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.
Stefan is leading Antler in Australia's expansion into Queensland as Director of the state. He has a proven track record of leadership, innovation and results at companies such as ClimateSalad, AWS, GorillaStack, Telstra's accelerator, muru-D, and Dimension Data. Stefan has been in tech startups since the 90s, holding roles in development, systems engineering, product management, product marketing, business development, corporate development and sales. He has built customer facing teams, partner programs and channels globally for startups and enterprises.
Min is the Finance Manager in Australia. Min is responsible for leading Antler’s Australian finance function.Min is an experienced finance professional spanning over 15 years having held senior roles across telecommunications, fin-tech and banking industries. His most recent role was head of finance in a web3 stablecoin project.
Rachel leads the community function and delivery for Pre-Launch founders at Antler. This involves managing all cohort operations for the Antler founders in the Formation and Validation stage of the process, curating learning and development content. Prior to joining Antler, Rachel had over 10 years of experience in tertiary education with the Australian Graduate School of Management.
As the Marketing and Communications Manager, Maeve is focussed on bolstering Antler Australia's marketing and media presence while helping nurture and build robust digital and physical identities for their Australian founder cohorts. Working with startups for over 5 years, including the fintech Cape as their Marketing Manager and through her own digital marketing company, she has amplified a diverse suite of companies from their inception to global expansion.
Melbourne-based Community Manager Rani aims to widen Antler’s reach in the ecosystem. Her role involves attracting exceptional founders to the program and supporting the Antler community’s growth and success. Prior to Antler, Rani’s experience includes launching market and building communities for WeWork in Jakarta, working for Indonesia’s biggest angel investment network, a gender lens VC fund, and serving as Global Program Manager at She Loves Tech.
Seamus is a Portfolio Associate supporting active Australian portfolio companies, completing due diligence in follow-on investments, and fostering relationships with other investors in the VC ecosystem. Seamus previously worked as a Management Consultant at L.E.K. Consulting where he worked on a variety of projects across transaction due diligence, strategy and performance improvement, including high profile acquisitions in a range of industries. Prior to this, he worked for a biotechnology group and also completed an internship with KPMG in their Policy, Programs and Evaluation team.
Liam is a Manager in Scouting based in Sydney. He is passionate about community engagement, talent branding and business operations. He has worked in talent acquisition for six years, building technical and non-technical teams for businesses like Atlassian and Mr Yum.He holds a Bachelor of Business (Marketing, Human Resources Management.) from the University of Newcastle.
Leila Oliveira is a Scouting Manager. She has over 4 years of experience in startups, with a strong focus on capital raising and venture capital. Her journey has taken her from Brazil to Australia, where she has developed a passion for discovering and supporting great businesses, guiding founders through their capital raise journey from start to finish. Leila is also a correspondent for the Pulse Check newsletter and the host of The Growth Cartel podcast.She holds a Master of Business Administration - MBA in Business, Management, and Marketing from Brazil’s School of Advertising and Marketing (Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing) and an Advanced Diploma in Leadership and Management from the Australian Pacific College.
Josh operates across both the investment and program functions of Antler, supporting the wider operational activities of the firm and providing assistance to our founders. Prior to joining Antler, Josh consulted for a number of the world’s largest companies on market research, new product development, and overall strategy. Having worked across Big Tech, Finance, Beauty, and FMCG, Josh brings a wealth of industry insights and experience. Josh also worked in the water utility industry for 5+ years, across customer engagement, marketing, and operational functions. Outside of his professional commitments, Josh also founded and runs a non-profit addressing intersectionality in food relief, and provides free consulting services to early-stage startups and charities.Josh Graduated from Monash University with a Bachelor of Business majoring in Banking and Finance, and a Bachelor of Marketing.