Daria Stepanova: The rocket scientist using data to combat the climate crisis

Welcome to Antler's circles series, where we bring industry leaders,  founders, and experts working in the same sector together to problem solve,  share emerging trends and technologies. Through this series, Antler will  provide unparalleled access to closed room discussions around the challenges  and opportunities experienced by those innovating at the forefront of the  industry.

Our team of venture capitalists, domain experts and entrepreneurs at Antler are always on the lookout for exceptional talent with the potential to build the defining companies of tomorrow. Read on to find out what we look for in a successful founder and how you can kickstart your entrepreneurial journey.

Working in venture capital offers insights into the problems, challenges, and new markets today’s entrepreneurs are addressing at the very earliest opportunity, a window on disruption and innovation. Business models are being redefined at an ever-quickening pace, and this is particularly visible in FinTech. We recently sat down with the founders of all of our FinTech investments with the following key learnings and insights.

Since 2017, Antler has created a distinct culture in the way it operates based on nine guiding principles. Women represent 42% of Antler's leadership team (including Partners, Associate Partners, and Directors), and we have over 30 nationalities represented in our 12 locations globally. Every Antler team member has a clear and easily identifiable strength --- the synergy of these diverse mindsets works really well together. Read about how we are striving to build this unique culture and how we apply it to thinking of diversity as a layered and multi-dimensional concept.

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Wisnu is one of the humblest of our visionaries. During our conversation, he never mentioned that he just raised $5 million or that his tools were used by 850,000 workers across Indonesia. Wisnu doesn’t care about impressive numbers; he simply wants to create a positive impact around him. The calm and optimistic energy surrounding him is magical and made us forget all our everyday life concerns.

Venture capital (VC) financing to startups founded by women exceeded $20 billion for the first time in 2019. This is up from $2 billion 10 years ago. Despite that, in Germany, just 16% of founders are female, while this number is steadily increasing, there is still much work to be done.

We invest in the defining companies of tomorrow. But we know it all starts with you. We help exceptional people build startups from the earliest stages. When you join Antler, you join a community of founders, get support from a global platform of experts, resources, and receive investments to scale your ideas.

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When the pandemic swept through the world in early 2020, many people were made redundant and forced to look for alternative revenue streams. Others had more time on their hands due to lockdowns and the radical shift in working from home. Born from a chaotic and deeply transformative event, these trends have resulted in people turning to their passions and interests in a career, and a boom for the Creator Economy.

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The founders series takes a deep dive into the journey of Antler portfolio company founders and sheds light on the space they are building in. This week, we spoke to Jiawen Ngeow, co-founder of DayOne.

DayOne is revolutionising offline operations for stores by providing a turnkey solution that optimises and streamlines frontline staff communication and collaboration. Their mission is to make offline businesses as easy to run as online ones.

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Following an investment of DKK 50 million into Antler's Nordic Fund from the Danish state's investment fund Vækstfonden, Antler is launching in Copenhagen to attract and support highly specialised founders from across the world and invest in the most promising 'green' companies of the future.

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We are delighted to welcome Karl-Christian Agerup as a Partner, focusing on the company’s investment operations and strategy Globally.

Antler welcomes Nitin Sharma, who is joining as a Partner and co-lead for all India efforts. To help accelerate the tremendous innovation and value creation in the Indian tech ecosystem, Antler aims to invest over US$100M in India across funds in the next 4 years. These funds will support exceptional founders from the idea stage, all the way to Series A/B. Nitin will co-lead the India efforts with Rajiv Srivatsa, co-founder of Urban Ladder.

Former Goldman Sachs Asia-Pacific CEO, Ken Hitchner, joins the Antler Global Advisory Board. He will also be the Co-Chair of the Greater China Advisory Committee.

In this article, we discuss the things that you should not be doing while dealing with investors.

In this episode we speak to Sten Tamkivi, the Chief Product Officer at Topia, where he builds products to break down the barriers between people and places. Prior to co-founding Teleport (acquired by Topia in 2017) he served at Skype as an early executive and played a key role in its transformation from a startup to a leading telecom player with 300 million active users and a whopping $8.5 billion exit to Microsoft. A native Estonian, Sten has entrepreneurship in his blood. He started his journey when he was just 18 by founding Estonia's first digital media agency.  

Behind every successful company, there is a whole team of great minds. Having a strong co-founding team is key but having incredible early employees onboard can be equally important for a company's success at the very beginning. Finding the right early employees can be hard as oftentimes they need to have a certain mix of skills, as well as be go-getter, have an entrepreneurial mindset, and be willing to operate both on a strategic level and doa the groundwork. We built The Talent Network - to help our portfolio companies scout and hire the best talent from the very beginning.

Starting a company is a big deal. At Antler, we believe in empowering entrepreneurial talent with the right tools to make an impact on the world. Here's a snapshot of what we look for in prospective founders.

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After 2,000 registrations, the world tuned in to hear from 13 local portfolio companies

The founders series takes a deep dive into the journey of Antler portfolio company founders and sheds light on the space they are building in. This month, we speak to Preet Gona and Alexis Zirah, co-founders of ARR Squared.

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Antler US portfolio company Werkit, which connects high-growth software companies to remote self-managed teams, received the Covid-19 Innovation Award from the Smart City Expo World Congress today. The Covid-19 Innovation Award recognizes companies that have contributed to the successful transformation, adaption, or response of the world's cities to the pandemic. Werkit has connected workers in Zambia to remote digital jobs, digital banking services, skill advancement assistance, and a virtual community of support throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.

Starting a new company is undoubtedly a rollercoaster. From finding the right co-founders, to ideation, validation, and fundraising, there are many different challenges to tackle. We started Antler to help you kickstart your founder journey in the best possible conditions, by providing a platform to meet other exceptional entrepreneurs, giving you access to our global network, and providing expert advice and funding from day one.

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New jobs are created by new companies - which is why we need more hungry, creative and inventive entrepreneurs in Sweden, as a response to the pandemic. Everything starts with an idea. With the right conditions, an idea can flourish and become the next Spotify. And to grow these ideas into businesses, we need founders from all backgrounds. What is your idea and how can we help it grow?

Let's build our future together.

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Antler opens its office in Berlin to strengthen the local start-up ecosystem, promising pre-seed investment at unprecedented scale.Partners of the fund covering Germany and Central Europe are Alan Poensgen and Dr. Christoph Klink.

A typical pre-seed to seed fundraising process consists of the following steps: defining fundraising targets & timing, mapping target investors & fundraising materials, having first intros and coffee meetings, pitching to multiple investors, and finally, negotiating and signing.

Antler US portfolio company Casting Depot, the professional network for media and entertainment, is emerging as the industry's premier marketplace for all facets of the talent booking process. Co-founders Lacey Kaelani and Brad Larson have led Casting Depot through a 446% month over month increase in talent user growth. The Casting Depot team is working with Antler to drive user traction and refine their product offering as they field casting calls from industry players like Netflix, HBOMax, Twitch, Bumble, Verizon, and MTV.

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In this episode, we speak to Anurag Srivastava, serial entrepreneur and founding partner of Jungle Ventures, Southeast Asia's largest independent venture capital firm. Over the last two decades, Anurag has played a crucial role in building and scaling companies in the tech and startup ecosystem Globally. Some of the companies in Jungle's portfolio include hotel booking platform, RedDoorz; cloud-based software provider, Deskera; interior home design platform, Livspace, and Thai fashion e-commerce startup, Pomelo Fashion.

Antler portfolio company Caria is the first AI-powered platform for women in menopause. To celebrate World Menopause day, they introduced Caria Premium Memberships last week. Co-founders Arfa Rehman and Scott Gorman collaborated with the Antler US team to build and refine this membership and launch several new features, which include a new digital behavioral health program and more advanced health tracking.

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We received 2600 applications for our second UK cohort, which was a 50% increase from the previous cohort. 71 founders were selected to join Antler, half of whom had previously launched a startup. After two months, we invested in seven startups which were built by these entrepreneurs. In keeping with our focus on supporting companies with diverse co-founding teams, over half of the companies that we invested in (four out of seven) had at least one woman founder, which is significantly above the London average of 21%.

In this episode we speak to Nir Eyal, a lecturer, consultant, and best-selling author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, and Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. Nir Eyal writes, consults, and teaches Behavioral Design, which is an intersection of psychology, technology, and business. He is also an active investor in habit-forming technology companies. Some of his recent investments include Kahoot!, Eventbrite, Anchor.fm, and Product Hunt. In our latest episode, Nir talks about his "Hook Model" to increase customer engagement, the internal trigger required to make your product a habitual one and how to plan your time to get the most of it without getting distracted.

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We're delighted to welcome to the Antler advisory board, James Anderson, co-manager of the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust at Baillie Gifford.

For many years, James has been at the forefront of investing in how economies have been shifting from being governed by the principles of diminishing to increasing returns, embodied in particular by technology companies, and the tremendous, non-linear opportunities this brings.

After interviewing hundreds of founders and working with dozens of teams to build and grow their startups from scratch, Antler Partner Winnie Khoo shares some insights on her experiences and doles out some advice to aspiring founders.

Watch the video to get to know the team behind BrightBee - an Antler-backed AdTech startup that continuously explores the best audience to fully optimize social media ads using Machine Learning.

These 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.

In this episode, we speak to Helen Wong, a partner at Qiming Venture Partners, about the fascination with social commerce, different cultural mindsets of founders, and the differences in China and Southeast Asia's tech ecosystems. Helen is a veteran in the VC industry, ranked among the top 100 VCs and top 25 female VCs in China in 2018 by Forbes. She has led investments into Akulaku, a new Southeast Asia finance platform, and Jingling Group, a Chinese social E-commerce platform, and was also involved in the investment into Alibaba.  

Due to the growing interest in responsible investment and therefore from VCs, the industry will need to become familiar with the concept of ESG. ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance which are a set of criteria used to measure an investment’s sustainability and societal impact.

Here at Antler, we are on a mission to fundamentally improve the world by enabling the world's most exceptional people to build the sector-defining companies of tomorrow. Here is our take on ESG from the VC perspective.

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When it comes to choosing investors, it depends on the stage of growth you are in, and on how much you want to raise. Find out what are the key considerations and benefits of reaching out to each type of investor.

This article is a 4th part of the "Startup fundraising 101" series - a  resource that has been created in order to help all founders in their fundraising journey. To learn more, read our previous pieces which are linked at the end of this article.

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Marco Financial, "the first tech-enabled financing platform built for small and medium-sized Latin American exporters," announced in TechCrunch that it has secured $26M in funding and credit that will enable the company to address the $1.5T global trade finance gap that disproportionately impacts small-and medium-sized (SME) businesses. Marco supports SMEs based in Latin America, where a $350 billion trade finance gap blocks many exporters from participating in the US market. The funding includes an equity round, led by Antler and Struck Capital, and a credit facility underwritten by Arcadia Funds, LLC.

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In this episode, we speak to Hande Cilingir, co-founder and CEO of Insider, an integrated growth management platform that is changing the game for e-commerce businesses globally. Backed by investors such as Riverwood Capital, Sequoia, Wamda and Endeavor Catalyst, Insider is helping over 800 global brands drive their digital growth through highly individualized multichannel experiences powered by AI.

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Sehreen NoorAli, an accomplished former education technology executive and  diplomat, joined Antler in September 2019 determined to improve medical care  navigability for parents raising young children with health conditions.  Sehreen was intimately familiar with the industry's shortcomings and its  lack of technological infrastructure. "As a parent, you're in the  driver's seat of your child's health," Sehreen explains. "There's a  moment you realize that you only see a pediatrician every so often.  Ultimately, a parent is in charge of a child's healthcare journey. This was  a pain point I felt acutely as my daughter was diagnosed with a condition that  required considerable therapies."

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We are delighted to be collaborating with Truecaller — one of the fastest-growing communications apps impacting the world, in a bid to strengthen our commitment to support our startup founders with their journey as entrepreneurs.

It is no secret that industry leaders face challenges when it comes to fostering innovation and growth. Take a closer peek into how Antler Norway has managed to unlock mutual benefits - by innovating at speed and creating a culture of entrepreneurship with the support of top entrepreneurs from all around the world.

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If you are an entrepreneur looking for investment for your early-stage startup, you may wonder “What is my company worth?”. The answer to this question can be quite difficult to formulate. Most valuations are a negotiation; a balance of setting a price that is acceptable to the founders but also agreeable to the investors. There is no general rule of putting a price on a startup, however, we have some tips that will make your valuation process easier.

The founder series takes a deep dive into the journey of Antler portfolio company founders and sheds light on the space they are building in. This week, we spoke to Anna Ratala, Co-Founder & CEO of Zvook.

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In this episode, we speak to Eilert Hanoa, the CEO of Kahoot!, the game-based learning platform that has taken the world by storm. As Norway's first and only unicorn, the company aims to make education more effective and accessible Globally. With the current remote learning and working situation, Kahoot!'s user base has been boosted to more than one billion active players annually.

Raising money is critical to fuel growth, build credibility, and stay afloat. Without external funding, the vast majority of startups won't survive or have very slow growth. The amount of money needed to take a startup to the next stage of growth is usually beyond the ability of founders and their friends and family to finance. Here is why, when, and how much to raise in order to succeed.

This article is a second part of the series "Startup fundraising 101" - a resource that has been created in order to help all founders in their fundraising journey. Read the first article "Fundraising: What to expect  from the journey? Stages of startup funding" here.

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The internet gave people a place to learn about sex autonomously, not just through family, friends and traditional education. Insight into how others feel and think about sex has created more openness around the topic. With this came a deeper understanding of sexual psychology, and as Sachin Raoul and Robbie Coomber started to look into this rather taboo topic, they discovered that billions of people were suffering in silence.

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In this episode, we speak to Rajiv Srivatsa, co-founder of Urban Ladder, an online furniture company that raised over 100 million dollars in venture capital from Indian and international investors such as Ratan Tata and Sequoia Capital. Prior to starting Urban Ladder in 2012, Rajiv spent over a decade working with a number of multinational corporations, including Infosys, Cognizant, and Yahoo. Currently, Rajiv is the country head and a Partner in India for Antler.

In an unprecedented year filled with uncertainty, we take a look at what lies ahead for entrepreneurship and venture investing in one of the most exciting yet competitive markets today. Antler had the pleasure of hosting a fireside conversation featuring Yu Wang, angel investor and the founder of Tantan, the leading dating app in China with over 15 billion matches to date, and moderated by Robyn Tan, Managing Director of KRAsia, the international arm of Chinese digital media company 36Kr.

Also in the chat were Antler China's Partner, Guan Wang, founder of Mandarin and English language learning apps Amanda and Seed (backed by Dr Lee Kai-fu's Sinovation Ventures) and founder of SayABC, one of the largest business units of leading US$4+B-valued edtech company VIPKid; and Andrea Hajdu-Howe, Head of Capital for Antler Global and former Executive Director at Goldman Sachs with over 20 years of investment management experience.

Here are some key takeaways and insights from the session. Quotes have been edited for flow, length and clarity.