This week, 83 founders arrived in Sydney with one thing in common: they've decided to stop waiting and start building.

They've joined Antler's residency, an 8-week program built to take a founder from day zero to a VC-backable company. In that time, they'll find co-founders, pressure-test ideas against real customers, and chase early traction. The ones who succeed leave with a cheque from a global venture fund.

Getting here required a decision most people never make: They quit jobs, they shelved side projects, and went all in. Some walked in with a working MVP. Others walked in with nothing but conviction and the hope that their co-founder is sitting a few seats away. A few have built companies before. Most haven't.

What they share, however, is the recognition that surrounding yourself with exceptional people and experienced partners who have been founders themselves provides you an unparalleled advantage to lock in on what really matters and do some of the most meaningful work of your life - and, hopefully, in the process, build Australia’s next unicorn.

Who's in the room

This was a bumper cohort, with Antler attracting more applications for the residency than we have in recent times. In total, we’ve received more than 2,300 applications from founders across Australia and New Zealand. Of these applicants, we interviewed more than 800 founders, of which 83 made the cut.

These founders span a variety of sectors, from deep tech to consumer, from climate to fintech, but represent three main founder profiles:

• 21% domain experts
• 23% business leaders
• 38% technical builders

* 17% of profiles were not recorded

The average age of founders in the residency is 26, and around 57% join as solo founders; the rest arrive with co-founders already paired.

Geographically, the cohort is spread:

• 39% from Sydney
• 35% from Melbourne
• 11% from Brisbane

But they all share the same obsession: build a world-class company.

James McClure, Partner at Antler, describes what he looks for in a good founder as, "I'm less concerned with where they 'cross the y-axis' and more interested in their trajectory.

“For most, this likely means early revenue or letters of intent,” he says. “For more frontier tech, proof-of-concept and scientific validation. But the core question is: are you going to be as excited about this problem three years from now as you are today? If no, you likely won't make it."

Here are some tips to stand out in the Antler interview process.

Meanwhile, Michael Kron, also a Partner at Antler, believes successful founders have a relentless drive and magnetism.

"When you look back at the founders who've done well, they share three traits: maniacal obsession, the ability to intoxicate others to join their mission, and the threading of a needle between big vision and surgically focused execution on the critical path."

Validate, build, iterate, and repeat

‍

It’s these traits that enable founders who possess them to move at speed and build momentum in a pressured environment.

"What makes the residency work is the forcing function," Kron says. "It's the environment that sets an insanely high bar on speed and quality, and forces you to do the reps at a clock speed you'd struggle to do outside of Antler."

In just the first week alone, founders have already started forming teams and validating ideas, moving from "interesting hypothesis" to "validated or invalidated" in days, not weeks.

For Rachel Guest, Program Director of the residency, those who adopt this process and mindset are often rewarded.

"The biggest predictor of who succeeds isn't who has the best idea walking in. It's about who is willing to find out fastest whether it's the right one. We don't expect certainty on day one. We expect founders who go looking for real customer validation before they've spent weeks building around an assumption."

The power of Antler

Broker & Binder Network co-founder Calum Thornhill, who participated in the 15th cohort, said he joined thinking the value of Antler was the capital, but quickly realised it was much more than that.

"The value of Antler isn't the cheque. It's the density of the program," he says.

The Antler Thesis

Antler backs founders all over Australia (and the world). We provide capital from inception to Series C, connections from a global network of advisors, investors and founders, an environment (the residency) to build a VC-backable business from inception, and the long-term support to scale it into a category-defining, global company.

With now more than 150 Australian companies in the Antler portfolio over, we’re one of the most active early-stage investors in Australia and across the world. And we’re only just getting started.

Applications for our upcoming Residency will open again soon. For now, if you want to follow our news and updates, hear from founders who are currently building, and read more articles from us, sign up to our newsletter here!

NOW READ: Why founders should start building before they are ready

‍