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 27 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 900+ 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
Put founders first
We prioritize finding and supporting exceptional founders
Build talent density
We create an unrivaled environment for exceptional people
Take 100% ownership
We take total responsibility and accountability for what we do
Be uncomfortably ambitious
We keep raising the bar of what is possible
Live off the land
We are creative and optimize the way we spend our time and resources
One Antler
We are one team, bringing the combined power of our global presence to everything we do
Our leadership
The Antler leadership team consists of serial entrepreneurs, experienced operators and seasoned investors.
As co-founder and Managing Partner Asia for Antler, Jussi works with a global team dedicated to developing the next generation of world-changing companies and creating a global pipeline for top talents to pursue a career in entrepreneurship and innovation. Before joining the startup ecosystem, Jussi headed the Global Services Commercial Management sector of Nokia. He works closely with the founders to coach them and helps connect them with the right advisors to build their businesses.
Frank is a seasoned serial entrepreneur with 17 years of experience. As Country Head for Malaysia, he leads investment strategy and operations for the region. He founded a social networking service at 23 and established one of the largest Twitter directories in Korea. He also founded LivingSocial and Althea in Malaysia. With Frank's proven track record of building scalable businesses in Asia, his vast experiences will help Malaysians to think globally from Day Zero and expand Malaysia's entrepreneurial impact across borders.
Jamie is a Partner at Antler France. She is a former entrepreneur, having built the startup Vyable in the US and a social entrepreneurship start-up studio. She moved on to the investment side four years ago, as a Founding and Managing Partner at Narrative Fund, and as a Venture Partner at EF.
Antti started his career at OliverWyman and then McKinsey&Company with a brief stint to public sector in the middle. Since then, he has founded two start ups, exited one and worked for the last years in wealth management in leadership roles. During his career, Antti has worked across the Middle East, Europe, US and South America. Antti is also a passionate cyclist and outdoor enthusiast.
Jussi started his career in finance, but has since turned entrepreneur and investor. During the past 20 years he has worked or studied in Europe, USA and Asia and loves Antler’s international spirit. Jussi has founded and exited two companies and, in addition to doing a variety of sports and being outdoors, gets his kicks from seeing entrepreneurs thrive.
Previously, Patel was chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management based in London, and a member of the bank’s Firmwide Management Committee, holding leadership roles in two divisions across three continents. Before Goldman Sachs, Patel headed up Trading Strategy at Morgan Stanley for seven years. As the current Vice Chairman of B Capital Group, the venture capital firm co-founded by Eduardo Saverin, Sheila brings thirty years of experience in financial markets and investment.
Martell is an investment partner based in London who sits on a number of Antler’s Investment Committees. Prior to Antler, he was co-founder and CEO at Lazada, Southeast Asia’s largest e-commerce company, acquired by Alibaba Group in 2016. He was also a Global Venture Development Manager at Rocket Internet, where he was involved in rolling out and scaling business models globally. Martell holds an MBA from INSEAD and has been recognised on Forbes 30 under 30 list.
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.
Tore Myrholt is the chairman of the board at Antler and a senior partner at McKinsey where he has had a number of leadership positions - leading the EMEA region, chairman of the director's committee and long-tenured board member of the McKinsey Shareholder Council. He is a strong information technology professional with an MBA focused on International Business from Harvard Business School.
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.
David was previously Chief Revenue Officer at Facebook for 11 years, overseeing advertising and marketing for business products and leading the company’s global sales and marketing teams.
Before Facebook, David was vice president of global online sales and operations at Google. He was previously deputy chief of staff of the U.S. Treasury Department during the Clinton administration.
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.
Lawrence Summers is a Charles W. Eliot professor and president emeritus at Harvard University. He is also the former Secretary of Treasury for President Clinton. Previously he was Director of the National Economic Council, Chief Economist of the World Bank and President of Harvard University.
Nancy Zimmerman is co-founder and managing partner of Bracebridge Capital.
For over 25 years, Nancy has been a pioneer in absolute return investing and generating uncorrelated returns for endowments, foundations, family offices, and pensions. Before Bracebridge, Nancy managed the interest rate option group at Goldman Sachs.
In 2021, Nancy became a member of the Board of Fellows of the Corporation of Brown University. She also serves as the inaugural chair of the President’s Advisory Council for Brown’s Carney Institute for Brain Science.
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.
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.
