WELCOME TO ANTLER INSIGHTS

This article is part of an Antler Berlin content series called ‘Call for Founders’. In this series, we will outline several exciting spaces in the startup and VC ecosystem that we see as opportunities ripe for venture creation. For this article we focus on marketplaces. These opportunities may emerge from an industry need, a trend, or indeed a prediction that we have had. If you like this series and you, or someone you know, is ready to build their own startup, apply to Antler.

An interview with Austin Chaird, Chief product and technology officer at Alpha Impact

It’s no secret that cryptocurrency has always been known for its price volatility. Over the past year alone, we have seen Bitcoin achieve its all-time high (ATH) in 2021, as values exceeded over US$65,000, while also dipping to a range of US$30,000 earlier this year. As such, many hodlers have introduced additional methods to earn continuously with their crypto investments to hedge against market fluctuations.

In the past years, podcast listening has become more popular than ever, but with so many out there it can be difficult to know what will be the best podcast for you as an entrepreneur and startup founder.

We have created a list of over 30 podcasts to inspire your listening habits curated by our network - from founders building their business with Antler to our team and advisors. No matter whether you are a first time founder or have done it all before, this list is guaranteed to offer something new.

Looking for even more practical resources for founders? Recently, we also shared our book recommendations for entrepreneurs selected by the Antler founders, advisors, and our team. Check them out!

Theory of Next is a series by Antler India that decodes and contextualizes the spaces and ideas of the future. Using first-principles approach, it provides a window into the process by which a venture capital firm arrives at a particular sectoral thesis.

Football scouts search all corners of the world to find exceptionally talented individuals. They look for skill, vision, mental strength, and character, which you could argue are similar to what VCs look for in entrepreneurs.

Believing in our unlimited potential is one of the most powerful mindsets that one can possess to own our impact and ultimately win in life. It all begins with reframing limits and scarcity as opportunities for growth. At Antler, we invest in people by enlarging their capacity to not just be competent founders but also rise up as great leaders. In honour of International Women’s Day, we asked female founders at Antler and Antler team members how they overcame challenges to live out their true potential.

We hope you’ll find these stories as inspiring as we do!

The past two years in crypto have been absolutely astounding. From “DeFi summer” (now $250bn+ of total value locked) to “NFT craze” ($3.4bn monthly GMV on Opensea alone in August 2021) to Solana’s epic rise and various memecoin’s ultimate downfalls – the sheer pace of adoption and activity across the crypto ecosystem has been an incredible force.

Every venture fund in the world is currently deepening or developing a crypto thesis. Talent from traditional industries is pouring into crypto. And we now have an overarching, epochal narrative to define the movement: web3.

Amongst all the areas to focus on, I have chosen to write about Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). The reason for this is as follows:

• Incentive Innovation Rules All. Bitcoin provided a practical solution to the Byzantine Generals Problem by introducing an incentive innovation. In fact, much of crypto is about remixing existing technology with new incentives to create powerful new paradigms. DAOs are the natural frontier of incentive design in web3.
  
• Capital Power. The DeFi ecosystem, with $250bn total value locked (TVL), is the current “super-app” of web3. While only ~$10bn of DeFi TVL (~4%) is currently held in DAOs, this number will likely increase exponentially as more and more DeFi protocols progressively decentralize governance. More money, more power – DeFi Treasury DAOs have the potential for massively influencing web3 in 2022 and beyond as capital power grows.
  
• Web3 Promise. If the promise of web3 (versus web2) is to reduce centralized power in private, opaque corporate structures, then functional, community-led DAOs are a key prerequisite for the web3 promise to be fulfilled.

Businesses need financial help — badly. That’s the core of what Rajith Shaji and I were trying to address when we founded our expense management platform — Volopay — in 2019. What started with the intent to help Singaporean businesses manage their money better, has now turned into a service scaled across the APAC region.

Love is in the air! Yup, it’s that time of the year again. While some impatiently await its arrival because of all the fun things they have planned out, it is a day of confrontation with involuntary romantic loneliness for others. Valentine’s Day 2022 is here, which we took as the occasion to find five startups that will help you celebrate Valentine’s Day, with or without a partner.

Several years ago, one afternoon in Hanoi city center, I sat on the terrace in a cafe, watching people pass by with their various activities. A city bus passed, and I want to try it on but I couldn’t understand all the information on the bus. It was written in the Vietnamese alphabet. I finished my coffee quickly and ordered a taxi through a costly ride-hailing app as I had no other choice because I didn’t want to gamble by renting a motorbike there.

Theory of Next is a series by Antler India that decodes and contextualizes the spaces and ideas of the future. Using first-principles approach, it provides a window into the process by which a venture capital firm arrives at a particular sectoral thesis.