We Help Founders build —great companies
Antler founders are turning their visions into reality—tackling pressing problems, creating jobs, and unlocking their personal potential. As the world’s issues become more complex, founders are more needed than ever to solve them. What are you waiting for?
Antler in Canada works with solo founders who are looking to find potential co-founders as well as preformed teams that are already in operation.
We Help Founders build —great companies
Antler founders are turning their visions into reality—tackling pressing problems, creating jobs, and unlocking their personal potential. As the world’s issues become more complex, founders are more needed than ever to solve them. What are you waiting for?
Antler in Canada works with solo founders who are looking to find potential co-founders as well as preformed teams that are already in operation.
Join a community of ambitious builders. Connect with like-minded entrepreneurs who complement your strengths, share your vision, and are ready to build something big—together.
Turn your idea into a real venture. With expert coaching, a supportive founder community, and resources from day one, you’ll test, iterate, and launch quickly. We also offer $3,000 in founder grants to support you while you build—$1,000 when you join, and $2,000 after passing the pre-investment committee.
Start building what matters. Talk to users, develop your MVP, and sharpen your go-to-market strategy. At the end of the program, you’ll pitch to Antler’s Investment Committee for a chance to receive CAD $150,000 in pre-seed funding in exchange for 10% equity.
If you secure investment, you’ll join Antler’s portfolio and unlock access to a global founder network, fundraising support, and hands-on guidance as you scale. From Toronto to the world, we’ll back you beyond the first check.
Who Is Antler For?
Antler is for founders at the earliest stage—whether you're starting with just an idea, looking for a co-founder, or already part of a team. We back ambitious individuals who are ready to build from day zero. You'll be surrounded by a community of 60–80 driven peers, with the resources, mentorship, and capital to help you go from concept to company.
The Selection Process
We review thousands of applications from individual founders and early-stage teams, selecting the top 2% to join our Toronto Residency. We look for a strong combination of founder DNA—grit, drive, and clarity of vision—alongside exceptional skills in product, sales, or domain expertise. Whether you're still exploring an idea or already building, the Residency is designed to unlock value at every stage of the founder journey.
Download our information pack:
The Residency
The Antler Residency in Toronto is a high-velocity sprint built to help founders focus, execute, and reach key milestones. Each week, you'll define your top priorities and leverage the Antler community, expert coaching, and in-person energy to move your company forward. Alongside structured programming, you’ll also benefit from office hours, guest speakers, and curated events designed to spark insights and build lasting relationships with other exceptional founders—all from our downtown Toronto office.
The Antler Canada Investment
If you pass our Investment Committee, Antler invests CAD $150,000 in your company for 10% equity through a SAFE. In addition, we provide founder grants totaling $3,000 to support you during the early stages of building—$1,000 upon joining and $2,000 after clearing pre-IC.
Post-investment, you’ll become part of our Toronto portfolio and gain ongoing access to Antler’s global network, hands-on advisory support, and founder resources. We work closely with you on go-to-market execution, customer growth, and preparing for future fundraising. As you progress, we’ll connect you with downstream investors across Canada and globally, helping you raise your next round with confidence.
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.
You can apply to our Residency if you hold any type of valid CAD work visa.
We are industry agnostic and invest across all technology sectors.
The Antler residency is a full-time commitment. This means that you are 100% dedicating your time to building your company. That said, it is not “mandatory” to be in the office from 9-5PM daily. The intention is to foster an engaged and supportive community of founders building together in person. As long as you show up for cohort activities and receive value from the community, you can spend your time in any way you see most fit to build your company. Most founders come in 4-5 days a week.
If you successfully pitch to the investment committee, you will become part of the Antler portfolio and kick off Phase II. You will be assigned a deal lead to work closely with going forward, and go through a transition week where we will support you on incorporation, documentation, admin, and other items in order to receive the funding, clarify goals and milestones, and set you up on the path to scale and raise your seed.
If you are unsuccessful in pitching to the investment committee, you will still remain a valuable part of the Antler community for life. You will retain access to office space for an additional week, remain in our Slack community and other platforms, and can meet with our team to discuss next steps for your startup. Previous residents have taken on feedback and returned to pitch successfully, joined Antler portfolio companies or the talent network, or started new companies and returned to Antler. The door is always open 🔑.
We are focused on providing founders better access to capital at the very beginning of their journey, so we back founders at the ideation stage. We'll invest as early as a clearly defined product statement and roadmap to your MVP, we'll even help you incorporate your new venture if necessary. We always aim to be the first institutional check into our portfolio companies.
Yes - all accepted founders who are relocating for the residency may apply for a $3k living expense grant.
Not every founder or team will receive the opportunity to present to the investment committee (IC) during Pitch Week. This happens for a variety of reasons, including: dropping out for personal reasons or time commitment issues, pivoting your idea and requiring more time to validate, not demonstrating sufficient traction to put your best foot forward yet, deciding to join another founder or team, or deciding that your business is not venture scalable, amongst other reasons. If it is the case that you do not present to the Antler IC at this point in time, we will work with you on an individual basis to explore other options, such as joining our Talent Network, setting goals and a timeline for a delayed IC pitch, etc.
We would never force anyone to take our money 🙂 Technically, the Memorandum of Understanding (part of your DocuSign package) is an expectation-setting legal document. We expect teams to honor the spirit of the agreement as we do. The intent is that over the eight weeks, we will earn our equity, and you will see the value of having the Antler team on your cap table and as an active advisor for continued future support as an extension of your founding team.
Apply today to
—Antler Canada
We 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.
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Meet the Antler Canada 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.
Naman has founded and exited 3 travel technology businesses. He has built original small teams from inception and growing them to over 700 people. His companies were able to grow with great people building great products using technology. Developing people, products and technology to rapidly scale business and leading to successful financial exits for investors are the skills and experience Naman brings to Antler Canada.
Bernie combines his experience as a founder and investor to support entrepreneurs. He co-founded a technology based startup in the solar sector that grew from its homebase in Toronto, to over two hundred employees with an additional office in San Francisco, serving customers across the USA and Ontario. That company was VC backed and had a successful exit to a NYSE-listed acquirer. His experience as an investor includes working with premier VC funds, in addition to angel investing. Helping entrepreneurs think about value creation and building relationships with the capital markets are ways that Bernie enjoys working with founders.
Amy is a Director Capital at Antler, she combines her global experience in Investor Relations and M&A to support fundraising for Funds and early-stage companies. Most recently, she led Investor Relations efforts at a Venture Fund focusing on the capital raising process for the Fund as well as providing strategic advisory to portfolio companies on growth initiatives. Previously, she spent several years in Investment Banking in New York focusing on M&A and capital raising projects in Healthcare and Technology. Amy enjoys building relationships and attracting strategic investors to help exceptional entrepreneurs build impactful businesses. She is an advisor to a mental healthcare start-up and sits on the board of the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association.
Yohann leads Venture Scouting and Deal flow at Antler Canada. His entire career has been focused on growing early-stage Tech start-ups. In the past Yohann has worked for two of India's most successful unicorns - Zomato and Paytm, where he led their Strategic Growth Expansion. Yohann is also the co-founder of two Non-For Profit organizations that work towards the socio-economic enhancement of underprivileged families residing in the rural slums of India.
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Shambhavi has led several cross-border venture investments in the early/growth stages for a leading Corporate VC/Family office. She has executed high-value venture capital investments and exits globally across Consumer Tech, Education, Gaming and Enterprise SaaS across US, Canada, EU and SE Asia. She brings a hands-on operator mindset for portfolio growth, a strong network of global VCs, accelerators, and institutions, and has helped numerous companies with strategy and GTM to expand into global markets.
Her previous work experience includes management consulting at McKinsey and IBM. She has led several international consulting engagements for Fortune 500 companies toward global expansion and scaling.
She is passionate about gender inclusion, DEI in entrepreneurship and actively supports women, non-binary and underrepresented founders.
Alex is a relationship-driven finance professional with expertise in financial controls and project management. He is a Chartered Accountant trained through Ernst & Young as an Assurance Manager where he oversaw multinational public company audits. Recently, he gained senior leadership experience at a not-for-profit focused on founder education. Alex’s passion for entrepreneurship began at Queen’s University where he was an Ambassador for the Centre for Social Impact - a student group dedicated to social innovation and entrepreneurship.
Alexa is an MBA candidate at Schulich School of Business, specializing in entrepreneurship and equipped with over 4 years of financial analysis and market research experience. She is deeply passionate about business strategy and solving complex problems. Her background includes leading projects that demonstrate her analytical capabilities and innovative approach to challenges. With a collaborative mindset, she is eager to contribute to and grow within the venture capital sector.
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