MAKING PROGRESS
INEVITABLE
Antler is the investor backing the world’s most driven founders, from day zero to greatness.
MAKING PROGRESS
Founded on the belief that people innovating is the key to building a better future, Antler partners with exceptional founders across six continents to launch and scale startups that address meaningful opportunities and challenges.
Knowing that exceptional founders can come from anywhere with any background, we have offices in 25 cities across six continents, including Austin, New York, London, Berlin, Stockholm, Bangalore, Jakarta, Singapore, Seoul, Tokyo, and Sydney.
Our global community of builders, investors, operators, experts, and partner organizations backs people from the very start of their founder journey—pre-team or even pre-idea. Since 2018, we have helped create and invested in more than 600 startups across a wide range of industries and technologies, with the goal of backing more than 6,000 by 2030.
A better future will not happen automatically—the world needs determined, ambitious, and resilient founders to build it. We are committed to supporting them and pursuing our vision of making progress inevitable.
THE PRINCIPLES THAT GUIDE US
Founders first
We obsess about making our founders successful
Build our people
By developing each other, we build leaders that define the future
100% ownership
No excuses—own up and get it done
Best idea wins
We are a meritocracy—the idea matters, not who had it
Don’t tread water
Move fast and deliver high-quality results
Disagree and commit
We can debate fiercely—but when the decision is made, we commit and execute
Uncomfortably ambitious
We set improbable goals and meet them
Do more with less
Any cent spent is spent on the right thing
Give back
It’s not a zero-sum game—when all give back, all receive more
Our leadership
The Antler leadership team consists of serial entrepreneurs, experienced operators and seasoned investors.
Magnus will challenge your ideas and loves spending time in front of a whiteboard with founders. He previously co-founded Zalora, Asia’s largest fashion e-commerce company. It was later acquired by Global Fashion Group (GFG), where Magnus served as COO and Managing Director, rolling out the firm’s marketplace across 26 countries.
Magnus is an alumnus of Harvard University and McKinsey & Company in which he worked for six years. His last role at McKinsey & Co was as a Junior Partner, working across North America, Europe and Asia in the global telecom, media and high-tech industries.
Fridtjof oversees external activities across the firm globally and serves as a member on several of its investment committees. He is deeply committed to finding ways for founders to scale their ideas more effectively. Fridtjof obtained his MBA from Harvard Business School. He was previously in McKinsey & Company, where he focused his work on the retail, consumer goods and financial services industries across Northern and Central Europe. He was also part of the founding team for one of the leading digital health startups in the Nordics and led E-commerce at a Nordic footwear distributor startup. He is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honouree in Finance & Venture Capital.
Dilan has spent close to a decade managing key investment decisions on behalf of her clients. She has played a pivotal role in various acquisitions, exits, mergers, add-ons, and financings for some of the biggest corporations in the world. Dilan is based in Hong Kong, working on Antler’s international expansion. Dilan is an active board member at start-ups and later-stage companies, an investor in and advisor to Web3 companies.
Vegard’s passion is helping founders identify and solve large problems and design business models for scalability. He also leads our international expansion to bring Antler to founders in new geographies. Previously, he spent six years in McKinsey where he led teams of data scientists and consultants to solve complex problems in energy and infrastructure. Vegard holds a MSc. in Engineering from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
Bjarne ensures we handle our investors' money with great care and respect and that every dollar is wisely spent. He works closely with all Antler locations to ensure we share best practices on how to best support our portfolio companies financially and legally. He is a long-term finance professional with over eight years of experience from global investment banking. He was most recently operating as the COO for the SEB Solutions team in Stockholm.
KC is a serial entrepreneur and seasoned VC investor. He is the co-founder and former General Partner of Northzone Ventures - among their seed investments during his tenure are Spotify, Stepstone and Mas Movii, in addition to 50+ other tech and software companies. Northzone has become one of the leading European VCs backing many of the most successful startups in the region. KC is also the co-founder and former CEO of Hugin AS, and he has co-founded and chaired startup incubators StartupLab, Aleap, ShareLab and the seed fund Founders Fund. KC will lead investment operations and strategy, supporting our work across the Antler funds with his great experience.
FAQs
What does day zero investing mean?
Day zero investing means backing founders from the very beginning—whether it’s pre-team or even pre-idea—and continuing to support them on their company’s journey to greatness. We are there when a founder is at the starting line, when everything is possible and nothing is certain. When they have made the life-changing decision to take the leap and build a company, leaving conventional career paths behind. When their belief, passion, and drive are often the only things fueling them. And we are still there after we make our first investment, as a long-term partner providing advice, introductions, resources, and follow-on funding—all the way to their exit.
Who is part of Antler’s global community?
Our global community includes founders, investors, operators, experts, and partner organizations across six continents. Antler founders scale faster—from winning their first 100 customers and marketing a new product to raising their next round of funding—with the backing of 5,000+ fellow Antler founders across six continents. They learn from the best in the business through our advisor network of 600 leading operators, our sector-focused communities, and our monthly socials across our locations. And they are powered by curated people and resources for hiring, going to market, and fundraising, along with perks from leading tech providers. Antler founders have a home with us for life—no matter what direction their business or career takes, we’re committed to winning together.
Is Antler an accelerator or incubator?
We are not an accelerator or incubator, we’re the day zero investor. While we take huge pride in helping our founders develop, validate, and start scaling their idea and business model in a short period of time through our residencies around the world, we don’t launch and leave. We keep supporting our founders for the full life cycle of their company—from day zero to greatness.
What is Antler’s investment philosophy?
Above all, we invest in people. We believe that every great company starts with a great team—and the strongest teams pursue the best ideas. Working with thousands of founders around the world, we have found that an amazing team with a mediocre idea in most cases will outperform a mediocre team with a great idea. And great teams will often pivot their idea after finding a more pressing or interesting problem to solve. 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. Read our full investment philosophy.
