Having a strong co-founding team is an important success factor for startups. In fact having the wrong founding team is amongst the top reasons why companies fail. Read more about how to build a strong team.

Without a strong team, the idea will just stay as that, an idea. However, finding the right co-founder can seem like a long and complicated process. There are many things that entrepreneurs need to take into consideration when making the decision of who to start a company with; starting with what to look for in terms of skillsets, compatibility and personality, followed by where to meet available co-founders, to making sure it will last in the long run. Based on our experience, there are 5 important elements that make a strong co-founding team. But before you start searching for someone, you need to ask yourself some key questions.

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In this episode of the Antler VC Cast, we have with us Patrick Lee, the co-founder of Rotten Tomatoes. Rotten Tomatoes has been around for over 20 years and is the entertainment website focused on movie reviews and news. Patrick is also a serial entrepreneur who has started six startups across the US, China and Hong Kong. His companies are largely focused on the technology and entertainment space, targeting consumers. He is very active in the startup ecosystem supporting and advising founders and startups.

Driven by a new wave of demand for better health tech solutions on both the consumer and medical professional fronts, Health tech has become a topic of renewed interest for investors looking to expand their portfolios. In this series, we discuss the future with Antler partner Kim Oreskovic and two healthcare CEOs on trends and how COVID-19 will affect the space in years to come.

Meet the Yayloh team! Nikhil Shikarkhane, CTO and co-founder, is a full-stack engineer and deep learning specialist as well as a serial entrepreneur. At Antler, he met his co-founder and CEO Sophie Aubard, who had the same entrepreneurial mindset but who could complement his skills well with deep knowledge about how to run and scale big businesses after having worked for big malls in the retail space.

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At Antler, we often get asked how we invest in startups. We believe that  startups belong in five different "archetypes" and we try to help our  founders frame their companies and ideas around these archetypes. This, in  turn, shall help them create a strong, compelling Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy  that will help them win in their respective spaces and selected  industries.So what are the five archetypes and how do they differ?

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In this episode of the Antler VC Cast, we speak to Abheek Anand, Managing Director of Sequoia Capital, a venture capital firm that has backed companies like Apple, Google, Dropbox, Airbnb, Whatsapp and Zomato. Abheek is an active and known Venture Capitalist and shares some sharp insights on navigating the current climate as an investor and founder.

It has been incredible to see over the last few weeks how our portfolio companies are supporting their customers and communities during this global pandemic. They are doing this either through their existing solutions or pivoting so they can more appropriately address one of the pain points of the COVID-19 crisis. We are very proud of them.

We have put together a (non-exhaustive) list of those companies and we will continue to update it to reflect these incredible initiatives. If you are interested in learning more about what they do or are in a position to help these companies in any way please reach out to them.

We spoke to 12 Australian angel investors - here's what they had to say.

What founders should be considering with the added complexity of the Covid-19 outbreak.

Antler Global Partner Andreas Birnik shares his tips for navigating through a turbulent time to successfully innovate.

As part of Antler’s mission to chart the path to recovery, we want to support teams working on solutions to these problems by investing in their startups.

The Covid-19 epidemic is now a Global issue and everyone is affected one way or the other. As most of us are remote working and in-person events are on hold, we want to continue to share some of the insights and sessions that we usually do for our founders with the wider startup ecosystem so that we can help and support entrepreneurs around the world.

Being a startup founder can be difficult at the best of times. Adding the stress and impact of a pandemic, crisis or recession, especially now, with the human tragedy of the Covid-19 doesn’t make it easier.

Some straightforward ways founders can help each other during turbulent times

There several ways in which entrepreneurs build their businesses and in recent years, quite a few startup ecosystem players have entered the journey in order to support Entrepreneurs in their endeavor. Antler, a startup generator and early-stage VC has brought a unique approach for aspiring entrepreneurs by creating a program that allows them to find their co-founding team, define their business idea and an opportunity to receive an investment all in 11 weeks. Check out the feature on #BBC Africa as we welcome our second cohort of the Nairobi program to #buildnextwaveoftech in the next 11 weeks.