Antler invests in six early-stage tech companies in The Netherlands

Last week, the six phenomenal early-stage tech companies that received their pre-seed investment from Antler Amsterdam were revealed during the locations second overall and first virtual Demo Day.

All six were born out of the second Antler Amsterdam program. For six months, strong, complementary co-founding teams have been built and innovative solutions created. The six Antler-backed companies are now ready to tackle some of society's toughest challenges through innovations such as revenue-based financing for Saas startups, autonomous robots that handle meticulous farming tasks and software that maximizes the returns of building sites. The teams pitched their business to a virtual audience full of investors and industry leaders from the startup ecosystem, in the hope to secure follow-on investment. The startups selected span the domains of Saas, Robotics, AgriTech, FinTech, the Future of Work, PropTech, and Generative Design and include the following:

Atium

Remote work is exploding. Before the Covid-19 crisis more than 12.6 million people worked remotely in technical roles alone. In 2019, roughly 3.5m people in the Netherlands worked fully or partially remote - it's an increase of 0.5m compared to 2018. Managers and employees mention that fostering a human connection is the largest challenge faced in remote work. Atium is building a Saas platform where remote teams build connections and a culture of trust. The trio behind Atium. Consists of CEO Guido, CTO Giannis and CGO Mario.

Whereas Giannis is the software engineer of the team, Guido has intensive experience in product development and consumer analysis. Mario is the growth hacker, completing the team with his experience and skills in using data to find ways to quickly scale user engagement and commercial traction.

Watch them present Atium on Demo Day below:

Promore

Poor procurement costs businesses $1.98 trillion a year. Promore is looking to change this by using machine learning to automate the proposal comparison and deal negotiation. During the Antler program, co-founding team Galina and Denis, CEO and CTO of Promore, bonded over the shared vision to revolutionize procurement processes.

Promore is a B2B Saas tool that takes the historical info of enterprises, classifies the data following the procurement logic, and lets machine learning algorithms compare the deals and select the best one. They bring immense savings in a matter of seconds with zero human effort. Watch their pitch below:

Supafin

The SaaS market is booming. It is currently growing from around $300 billion in 2019 to over $600 billion in 2023 with a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 18%.

Supafin, founded by Dheren and Carlos, is a revolutionary revenue based financing platform that can help any SaaS startup get funded in as little as 24 hours.

Their credit solution saves founders and early investors equity dilution from traditional channels and time fundraising to focus on what matters. Within a few hours, companies can receive a cash advance without dilution to their cap table.

On September 2nd, they revealed their FinTech startup with the pitch below:

Trabotyx

EU regulations are applying pressure to reduce pesticides and increase organic production. However, organic farmers cannot find enough cheap labour to do manual tasks like weeding, applying fertilizer and planting. This makes it difficult to become profitable and creates problems to scale. Trabotyx is building a modular robotics platform to automate these tasks. The AgriTech startup's weeding solution covers 3-5 hectare per day, with an expected ROI for the farmer of 24 months.

Tim and Mohamed are the duo behind Trabotyx, who chose one another as their co-founder based on their shared vision and values and their complementary personalities. With their robots in the field, Trabotyx wants to be on the forefront of the wave of automation in agriculture - all while the farmer is provided with a decent living wage.

Watch them present the platform, including the robot the built below:

Vellum

Vellum is a Proptech and Generative Design startup founded by Joanne, Eric and Lennart - CEO, CPO and CCO respectively. The Amsterdam-based startup is a software tool that allows property development professionals to manage the complexities of early-stage real estate development and make rapid yet informed decisions. In property development, it can sometimes take weeks to carry out comprehensive feasibility studies that can majorly impact the value extracted from a building site. Vellum helps clients complete this process in minutes - all while saving 50% of the average design time at this stage.  

With Erik as the CTO with a background in computer graphics, Lennart being a natural salesman, and Joanne being the domain expert having worked as an architect for over eight years herself, the founding team is as complete as can be.

Watch their Demo Day pitch below:

Zopnik

Zopnik connects local boutiques with pop-up shows at home in India and was founded by Kritidipta, CEO, and Sukhmani, CGO. When it comes to online shopping in India, women face a number of specific problems. Products appear different to how they are presented online and it happens often that clothes don't fit properly. As a result, this leads to a lack of trust in online retail. Local boutiques also suffer from competition and difficulties expanding. Zopnik offers a solution to both pain points by connecting women with brands and boutiques to host pop-up shows for her social circle in the comfort of their home, solving both the supply and trust issues in the process.  

Though established in Amsterdam, Zopnik relocated to India and therefore did not present at Antler Amsterdam's Demo Day, but at the South East Asian equivalent hosted by Antler Singapore.

Watch them take the stage below:

Did you miss Demo Day? View a recording of Antler Amsterdam's first Virtual Demo Day here.  

What's next?

By removing the barriers to entrepreneurship, Antler helps skilled individuals create businesses from the ground up. Currently, the startups chosen for investment are working with Antler to grow and scale with the help of its international network of experts, investors and advisors. Antler Amsterdam is currently accepting applications for the upcoming program beginning November 2nd, 2020. If you are ready to build your next startup with the help of Antler, then apply to Antler Amsterdam's next program by clicking here.

At Antler, we strive to create a strong community of experts that founders can rely on for advice and mentoring as they begin to build their startup. Want to learn more about how we support our startup founders? Read more about it here.