The Antler residency—run in 27 locations across six continents—is an intense, in-person program that condenses months of progress into a few transformational weeks. It hands you a platform to go from an idea to a global venture-backed startup in a matter of weeks.
Some essential ways the Antler residency has been the ideal starting point for ambitious founders:
- It helps you understand your why at the deepest level. The venture-backed founder journey is hard and you need to be very clear on why you're pursuing it. The Antler residency helps you determine if and why it's the right path for you. This will be your all-important foundation as you persist in building and scaling your startup.
- As an early team, the Antler residency is a high-intensity environment to execute and launch fast. It's also a support system to help you think about your problem statement, customers, and market thoroughly so you are not chasing the wrong idea for months. Simultaneously, the residency is a unique environment to stress test your relationship with your existing co-founder (and look for an additional co-founder), establishing a solid base for a long-lasting partnership.
- As a solo founder, the residency introduces you to a large number of ambitious people so you can find an ideal co-founder—based on values as well as complementary skills—to kick-start your journey. (Listen to Antler founder and CEO Magnus Grimeland talk about why meeting lots of potential co-founders is the best way to find your perfect co-founder match.)
What to expect from the Antler residency
Ideate
Ideas are everywhere. However, deciding to build one that evolves into a large outcome is hard. Through the Antler residency founders leverage the support of our global community—from office hours with the team to expert knowledge sessions with Antler advisors—to arrive at unique insights, articulate hypotheses, and crystallize an idea to build.
Support from an investor and domain expert point of view can significantly increase your depth of understanding of your customers and the addressable market—two critical foundational blocks of successful companies. We bring top industry experts to interact with your residency cohort on emerging spaces offering opportunities for founders to problem-solve and build in. In addition, we host "idea-killing sessions" that take a critical look at hypotheses to point out obvious gaps that may have been missed. These interventions save months of time.
Antler partners and team members have founded their own startups and understand the founder journey deeply—88% of Antler partners have served as a CEO, co-founder, or founding team member of at least one startup. We bring an operator lens as we work closely with founders.
In the 100+ residencies we have run around the world, we have observed the powerful serendipity the experience creates, with founders in the cohort helping other founders achieve clarity and inspiring each other to pivot or markedly improve their ideas within weeks of starting the program.
Validate
The biggest startups are painkillers, not vitamins. They solve a problem that solves a real pain point and materially impacts their customers. Most founders end up building vitamins or going after low-hanging fruit in an already crowded space due to a lack of solid customer validation. We often see founders leaning on their internal networks for idea validation, which can often result in bias as family and friends are keen to be supportive. The Antler residency not only helps founders with tried-and-tested frameworks and playbooks for validating an idea, but it also opens up new networks (both Antler's and other founders’) that lead to important customer and industry connections to aid in idea validation.
Post-formation of teams, every team is mapped to a dedicated coach within the Antler team for deeper 1:1 support in the form of weekly office hours. Existing teams have this support from the start of the program. We also open up our rolodex of domain experts for founders to have idea sparring sessions and build industry connections.
Attract (people)
Every startup's trajectory hinges on the strength of the founders and the dynamics of the co-founder relationship. For an early team, the Antler residency enables them to stress test the co-founder relationship and further solidify it based on shared values and an a unified vision. For a solo founder, the residency is the best place to find a co-founder from a hand-picked cohort of vetted, aspiring founders who are ready to build.
Build
The Antler residency enables founders to move fast through quick iterations, build an MVP, and craft a compelling narrative. Founders interact with each other, our network, and guest speakers during the residency and leverage the Antler team as a constant sounding board. All the while, your fellow founders and the Antler team keep you accountable to maintain a high execution pace and momentum, helping condense months of progress into a few weeks.
For existing teams, we may be able to work with you to reach an investment decision in an accelerated way. This varies from location to location.
Go further faster, from day zero
Antler is the only pre-seed fund globally that can back you from day zero throughout the life cycle of your company. Our initial investment amount varies based on currency and location for an equity stake, and continue to back you through local Antler funds and our US$285M global growth fund.
Post-investment, we work very closely with the portfolio to enable product launch, revenue acceleration, hiring and problem-solving with an experienced team. This is designed to accelerate towards early product-market-fit in a matter of months.
Launch with a global platform
Antler’s global presence in 27 locations, including major startup hubs such as New York, London, Berlin, Singapore, and Sydney, enables you to access a network of over 8,000 founders (and growing) and 800-plus advisors. This practical network can deliver real revenue, employees, and investors over time.
We believe the residency is the best platform to launch your business, helping you validate an idea faster or complete your founding team. Beyond the structured residency approach, we support you with significant post-investment, assisting you with product-market-fit, generous perks (1,000 Antler portfolio companies have already generated $44M in savings through our perks marketplace), and a vast global network.
We are looking for solo founders and early teams committed to building game-changing venture scalable startups. Join Antler to validate your idea, build your team, and access capital to launch and scale your company.
Our residencies vary from location to location—visit the Locations section of this site to learn more about one of our offices, or apply now.
This is a summary of an article published by Antler in India. It has been edited for clarity and relevance.
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