How we built Antler

The mission

For a while I've been eager to share more about how and why Antler was built, our mission, and our vision for the future. After seven years dedicated to supporting the world's top founders – wherever they are or wherever they come from – it feels like now is the time to do so.

Humanity has always depended on the efforts of great people who are willing to spend their time innovating and problem solving. From revolutions in agriculture to democratised transportation, novel medical treatments to new sources of energy, behind each technological leap is an individual who has dedicated their life to making the world a better place.

For much of history, a large share of global innovation has been concentrated in only a few ecosystems. I’m pleased to say that over the past decade this has changed at a rapid pace. Where there were once about 30 cities capable of building billion dollar companies, now there are over 150. 

Incredible people from all backgrounds are now working on solving problems that we’ve never been able to solve before, and there is the potential for anyone – so long as they have the grit and drive – to conjure innovations that can change the world in quite fundamental ways.

The purpose of Antler is to enable that at a scale and breadth never seen before. 

Watch Magnus Grimeland and Bede Moore discuss Antler's origin story on the Further, Faster podcast:

The growth of global innovation

Before founding Antler, I had the privilege of helping to build one of the largest startups of its kind in a frontier market. Zalora.com would become the largest fashion ecommerce platform in South East Asia – and when we exited, it was the second largest exit of its kind in the region.

Zalora was a business success, but for me, one of the most inspiring outcomes was witnessing how many of my colleagues took what they learnt from growing it and went on to launch even more pioneering businesses that have contributed exponentially to the economic transformation of that corner of the world. 

These include superapps like GoTo (Indonesia’s largest superapp, which IPOed at a USD38 billion valuation in 2022); Shopee (Southeast Asia and Brazil’s leading e-commerce platform); StashAway, ShopBack, Ora, Locad, and many other brilliant companies. 

Seeing the growth of global innovation up close, as well as the impact it can have, inspired us to set up Antler in 2017. We wanted to support the next generation of great founders the world over to build incredible companies around solving important problems. 

Our approach was inspired by the challenges we saw in getting startups off the ground, both in established hubs and emerging ecosystems. Like how to find a co-founder, or iterate a business model around solving a real problem; and how to create early momentum and access capital from the world’s best venture firms. 

We made the decision to back founders before they had established their business — investing in people at the point of inception, when they are still figuring out how to take an idea to market. This strategy allows us to identify and empower talent where they receive the least support: at the critical foundation stage of their startup.

Finding and backing exceptional founders

At the heart of our strategy is a quest to find exceptional founders. When we were just launching in Singapore, we would reach out to hundreds of talented individuals across Southeast Asia  and the rest of the world, scouring through prior networks—friends from college, former colleagues, and people with a track record of building remarkable companies. 

Guided by our belief that exceptional founders can come from anywhere, we engaged with people across all ages, demographics, and professional backgrounds. During those months, nearly everyone on the team lost their voice at some point, but the effort paid off. In July 2018 - after what must have been 700 conversations – we welcomed 62 individuals to become founders in residence with Antler. This diverse first residency group, which gathered at Antler in Singapore, included individuals from their early 20s to late 50s and ranged from seasoned serial entrepreneurs to first-time founders. Some had deep domain expertise, others came with an impressive technical background. The best were the ones who were undaunted by big challenges, who would take them on, and succeed.

We poured our energy into supercharging these founders simply doing whatever we could do to ensure that we generated as much early momentum as possible. 

After two months we made our first investment into Staff Inc. Barely a few weeks later the startup received a seed investment from one of the region’s top funds, Golden Gate Ventures, and has since become Indonesia's leading outsourcing and workforce solutions platform, empowering millions of agents. In total we made 13 investments in 2018. 

This was the beginning of Antler’s journey in helping founders across the world in realizing their dream. Companies we backed in our first year are now doing more than $500m in revenue. 

We also set out to become an important addition to the global Venture Capital ecosystem, looking to other VCs – from the early stage to later stage – as partners, not competitors. Across six continents, we have only been able to do what we are doing by partnering with the exceptional VCs and angel investors that pioneered these markets. 

Hundreds of VCs and early investors pass through our offices every day, working with us in order to coach founders, hold mentorship and fireside sessions, and become co-investors. We feel incredibly lucky to be welcomed into any ecosystem that operates in this way. 

Now, after hosting more than 200 residencies, we have significantly enhanced our ability to attract, identify, and support exceptional founders. With every cohort we gather feedback, learn from the experience, and refine how we deliver value to the next wave of founders we work with. This is part of the reason the number of applications we receive has tripled since 2021, with over 160,000 founders applying each year. It’s an incredible, powerful, pipeline of talent.

To achieve this impressive global growth and scale, Antler has invested in technology and data innovation since its inception. We started building our own founder-first experience based on our early learnings and extensive founder feedback, and launched the first version of our founder-facing platform, Antler Hub, in January 2020. Later that year we launched our management and reporting interface, originally called Antler Fusion.

Since then Antler Hub and Fusion have evolved significantly into the proprietary Antler Hub platform which forms the backbone of our entire investment process with role-based access for founders, Antler staff, and external advisors/coaches. Our data standards, research, and insights enable Antler to enhance its investment and sourcing process, support data-driven decision making, and continuously get smarter about the attributes of successful founders & companies.

We wish we could back more of these applicants, but instead have had to become ever more selective. In 2021, we invested in just over four founders for every thousand applications. Last year, the number of investments per thousand applicants was just 2.5. 

Removing the barriers to entrepreneurship

We've discovered that the most effective investment model is one that actively removes barriers to entrepreneurship. By creating a global platform, we've enabled extraordinary founders from around the world to connect, access shared resources, and grow their ventures collaboratively.

It’s why we’ve significantly expanded our global presence, doubling our footprint to 30 locations and growing our team by nearly 50% since “peak tech” in 2021. Now we’re backing and investing in founders everywhere from San Francisco to London, Bangalore to Stockholm, Finland to Brazil, Nigeria to Vietnam.

Each Antler location is run by seasoned operators and investors, backed by local LPs and deep, embedded networks that give founders the critical edge early on. At inception, success often comes down to the warm, local introductions that matter most — your first customer, your first institutional investor, the conversation that sparks a breakthrough. That’s why we’ve built such strong networks on the ground.

At the same time, Antler offers the power of a global institution. Once founders have early traction, we help them expand beyond their local markets — whether that’s supporting Series A fundraising, or opening doors to international customers, partners, and talent. This combination of deep local support with global reach is what makes Antler uniquely positioned to back exceptional founders everywhere.

We started in 2018 with a modest $5m in assets under management (AUM), from core supporters that believed in our mission. Since the end of 2021 our AUM has more than tripled – from just over $300m to more than $1bn – showcasing our ability to back and concentrate capital in our winners up until Series C.  To date, we have invested more than $20m into a single company over multiple rounds, a number which will keep growing as our portfolio scales.

The number of investments we’ve made has more than quadrupled, rising to more than 1,500. This momentum has earned us repeated recognition at the top of PitchBook’s leaderboard as the most active seed-stage investor—a testament to the scale and impact of our work. While becoming more and more selective, we have increased our investment phase every year. 

We are also well positioned to back founders through any platform shift. Take AI as the most recent example. In 2019 we had already made 30 investments in this space. Just recently, Dealroom named us the world’s most active AI investor.  Their data is gathered by third parties and only captures a fraction of what we are doing in the AI ecosystem as a whole, but it does show Antler's impact backing the world’s best AI companies. What’s more, Antler isn't just an investor in AI startups — we are also leveraging AI & data to build competitive advantage in our own global platform and processes.

A partner from inception to exit

As we have scaled, it has also enabled us to do more direct investments from pre-seed to Series A. It means that if we didn’t know a founder at inception, we can back them later with capital, and provide a strong partner with them until their exit. In 2023, we closed Antler Elevate, a $285m growth fund designed to do just that; and this fund has already invested more than $160m into 60+ companies. This funding comes with strategic guidance from a dedicated team who are determined to grow a portfolio with impact. 

Some of the companies in our portfolio are already making waves. Lovable AI enables almost anyone to create a fully functioning web app — no coding knowledge required. It has 2.3m users, $100m in revenue and they have just raised $200m at a $1.8bn valuation, just 8 months after launch. Airalo has disrupted the market for sim cards, with its revolutionary eSIM store and recently achieved unicorn status — raising $200m from CVC, Peak XV and Antler Elevate. 

This growth has attracted increasing interest from institutional investors - today, 70% of our AUM is institutional, including 19 sovereign backers. This enabled us to partner with prominent names such as M&G, Schroders, Phoenix Group, Macquarie, New Mexico State Investment Council and the Export and Investment Fund of Denmark. Their support underscores the strength of our mission and the trust in our approach to backing exceptional founders.

While there are still a few locations we are excited to launch, we can safely say that Antler is truly global. It’s why, moving forward, our focus will be about providing a quality experience to our founders, while building our ability to back the best portfolio companies throughout the entirety of their journey. We’re also looking at how we can work more closely across regions, and build leverage for our GPs to most effectively support our portfolio companies. 

Looking ahead, I’ve asked our Partners across all locations to highlight the initiatives they are most passionate about. Together, we’ve made a series of commitments to support local ecosystems, identify the most impactful solutions, and maintain a robust, distributed global presence.

These include:

• Scaling Funds to Back More Founders: We are creating larger funds that enable us to invest in more founders and provide continued follow-on investments as companies progress through their lifecycle.
• Expanding Our Hub-and-Spoke Model: By strengthening teams in major hubs while maintaining a presence in regional cities, we can increase our geographical reach and support more founders globally. This model allows us to provide localized support while leveraging the resources of larger, central hubs.
• Strategic Market Entry: We carefully select new office locations that enhance our overall strength. Each new market we enter is aligned with our strategy to offer greater value to founders through strong hubs and closely integrated satellite offices.
• Innovative Financial Instruments: We’ve introduced tools like Antler’s Agreement for Rolling Capital (ARC), which allows us to commit additional guaranteed investments beyond our initial funding, ensuring robust support for startups through their pre-seed rounds.
• Advancing Technology Capabilities: We are developing sophisticated technological tools to empower our Partners and founders, streamlining operations and amplifying the impact of our platform.

The future will undoubtedly present new opportunities and challenges. As we expand our team and adapt to an ever-evolving landscape, I am confident that we will not only sustain our momentum but also achieve milestones that once seemed beyond reach.