GET FUNDED BY Australia’s global early-stage VC

Akhil is responsible for Antler’s Pre-Launch delivery, overall improvement of investment processes, and is Melbourne’s lead founder-facing presence. He has over 7 years of experience in strategy and operations at Uber and Agoda and more recently leading the Scaleup Program for later stage startups at EnergyLab, one of Australia’s most prominent climate tech accelerators.

Cath is an experienced venture capital and private equity investor. She is a company Director including with ASX 200 AUB Group Limited and formerly McGrath Estate Agents and fintech Beem. Cath was one the first team members at AirTree Ventures through the deployment of >10x performing Fund I. Prior, she held investment roles at operational turnaround fund Anchorage Capital Partners and Masdar Capital.

Michael is responsible for Australia’s regional capital function, coaching portfolio companies and managing Melbourne based strategic partnerships. He has over 10 years of strategy consulting experience at a global full service consulting firm and has been an independent advisor for CEOs and global startups from seed to Series A. Michael also supported Square Peg with US$500m capital raising across two funds.

Rachel leads the community function and delivery for Pre-Launch founders at Antler. This involves managing all cohort operations for the Antler founders in the Formation and Validation stage of the process, curating learning and development content. Prior to joining Antler, Rachel had over 10 years of experience in tertiary education with the Australian Graduate School of Management.

Jennifer is the P&C Manager as well as EA to the APAC Managing Partner. She is responsible for providing secretarial support to the MP and his interactions with the Australian leadership team. Jennifer supports the day-to-day Fund operations. Jennifer’s background consists primarily of Administrative and Executive Assistant roles at global companies.

Xavier is the Finance Manager in Australia. He previously served clients as a Strategy, Finance & Risk Consultant across Public and Private sector contexts’ while holding leadership positions with KPMG and Coras. Prior to moving back to Australia in 2014, he was a Public Company Auditor with EY in the United States. Xavier is a Chartered Accountant and previously a Certified Public Accountant in the State of Illinois.

Yash is an analyst in the Investments team, ensuring the Pre-Launch delivery runs smoothly and supports the founder experience, with a focus on the Melbourne community. He is currently studying Bachelor of Science (Honours) at Monash University specialising in research commercialisation and impact entrepreneurship.

Jai, an Associate in the Investments team, is responsible the legal execution of Antler’s investment in its portfolio companies. He supports fund performance reporting and other strategic fund initiatives. Jai helps founders on their 0-to-1 journey by validating ideas, delivering masterclasses and providing coaching.Prior to Antler, he spent 3 years as a Management Consultant at Deloitte.

Zoe is responsible for leading Antler’s finance function across the APAC region, including our key APAC markets of Australia, China, India, Japan and Korea. She has 10 years of professional experience spanning Private Clients sector at PwC in Sydney, and working across Audit, Business and Personal Tax Service. Prior to Antler, she worked in London as the UK Financial Controller of a large multinational cybersecurity company.

Will is responsible for assisting founders with ideas and pitches, and general Pre-Launch delivery. He is also involved in fund performance reporting and analysis. In an APAC capacity, Will is responsible for assisting with the launch of new fund locations (i.e. Japan, Korea and China), and implementing new initiatives across the region. He has 3 years of experience as a Management Consultant at LEK Consulting.

Steve is a Venture Partner and Advisor for Antler Sydney, providing advice and guidance to founders in the program on corporate strategy, fundraising and strategic partnerships. Steve is the former co-founder, Chief Revenue Officer and EVP Corporate Strategy at aiPod, an Idealab company developing City Integrated Autonomous Mobility. He's also a mentor at 500 startups, Venture Partner at Forward Partners in London, and active investor and advisor to multiple startups in the UK and Australia.

Sam is responsible for all operations and strategy from Antler Australia's Melbourne Office, and also leads our Pre-Launch cohort. Prior to this, Sam was the head of Product Strategy and a Product Manager at Airwallex, the fastest Australian company to become a unicorn. He was also the General Manager of Airbnb UK and Northern Europe, Airbnb's #2 territory globally, throughout COVID-19 and Airbnb's IPO in 2020. Sam holds an MBA from the University of Oxford, and Commerce and Law degrees from the University of Adelaide.

Natasha is the Program Coordinator for Antler in Australia. She supports the Program Team in running an inspiring, motivating and engaging program for each of the Antler Cohorts. She has a background in Events, L&D and Education Outreach and has a passion for ensuring everyone feels heard, seen and empowered. Prior to Antler Natasha was contracting at Google where she was in the Education Outreach team and was also on the board of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Business Association as an Event Director.

Matthew is a Venture Partner and Advisor for Antler Sydney, mentoring and guiding Antler founders. Matthew is also the CEO and co-founder of Donesafe, a market leading governance, risk and compliance platform, co-founder of Whispli, a secure, anonymous, two-way communication platform and founding advisor to a number of startups including Ezi Debt Collection, Goanna Solutions and MeFleet. Prior to this, Matthew held senior roles in health and safety, strategy and governance with Commonwealth Bank, Leighton Contractors, Arrium and Nine Entertainment.

Markus is an Associate Director at Antler in Sydney. Prior to joining Antler, Markus worked as a Management Consultant at Bain & Company in Germany and previously spent his time across the globe to improve the business of early-stage investors as well as to support startups grow and get funded.

As well as being a venture partner at Antler, Lauren is a non-executive director of three online businesses Cashrewards (ASX:CRW), Carbar and iSeekplant. Previously Lauren has led start ups and scale ups. She was CEO of CarsGuide for five years during which time she grew the business significantly resulting in an exit to Cox Automotive (USA). She founded Getaway Lounge (for Nine Entertainment) which was sold and became Luxury Escapes. She has worked in digital for nearly twenty years with senior roles at BBC Worldwide (UK and Aus), Nine Entertainment and Fairfax Media.

Laura is the Director of Portfolio for Antler in Australia. She leads the process of providing post-investment support and resource allocation to enable portfolio company and fund success. She is also building new network relationships to attract an even broader range of people joining the Antler portfolio. Laura has founded several successful Australian and international deep tech accelerator programs and has been on investment and portfolio teams in early-stage venture capital.

Jeeva is a Venture Partner at Antler and is a founding partner of Helix collective, a software engineering consultancy and venture studio. Over the last seven years he has built and launched products for clients large (Macquarie, Canva, Sydney Airport, Scentre) and growing (around Series A: Qwilr, Veyor, PowerlinesPro, etc).

Jake is responsible for leading Antler Australia's Portfolio function, whose mission is supporting and scaling the teams across Antler Australia’s first and second Funds. He also leads Antler Australia's Pre-Seed investment steam. Previously, Jake held both product and structured credit roles at Macquarie Group, and was Principal of Investments at Investible where he was for 3 years, and led over 50 seed-to-series-A investments in 9 countries.

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India is responsible for leading the attraction, assessment and securing of all founders joining the Pre-Launch cohorts for Antler Australia. She has been with Antler for over two years, and has played a key role in recruiting the past 8 cohorts. Before Antler, India was a Managing Consultant at Robert Walters, a global recruitment consultancy, where she spent nearly five years specialising in building teams.

Grace is responsible for strengthening and bolstering Antler’s brand presence in Australia. With a passion for tech and innovation communications, Grace has over six years of experience in helping Aussie and global disruptors tell their stories. Prior to Antler, she worked at GoFundMe Australia and award-winning tech PR agency, Sling & Stone. She competed in SpaceX's Hyperloop Pod competition in 2016.

A 25+ year veteran of the tech' industry, Charlie has held roles from startup founder to global scale up leader. Currently, he is working on a few new startups/projects and advisory roles across Australian startups and scale ups and is the founder of a venture consulting business - NightBadger. As well as being Venture Partner at Antler, Charlie is Strategic Advisor at KPMG High Growth Ventures.

Akshat is an Investments and Scouting Manager at Antler Australia based in the Sydney Office. He was the first employee in the Antler Australia Office.He has led and supported several roles in startups ranging from fintech, edtech and SaaS. Prior to Antler he led a NFP, Textbook Ventures with the aim of educating all students in Australia about entrepreneurship.

Susie is a CEO with a track record scaling startups into market leaders. Focused on consumer, and consumer tech, with experience working across Southeast Asia and Australia.

Yingzao is formerly a Senior Associate at Antler. She is now a final-year Master student (majoring in teaching) at the University of Sydney and is a self-started marketer and copywriter.

Bede is the founding Managing Partner of Antler Australia. He brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in starting and scaling technology led digital businesses. Before Antler, Bede was the CEO of Sydney’s peak technology industry body, TechSydney, and prior to this he was the co-founder and managing director of Indonesia’s largest ecommerce site, Lazada, which was acquired by Alibaba in 2017 for US$3.5 billion.

Anthony is a partner of Antler Australia and a Global Partner, Co-Head of Antler Capital. Anthony is an experienced entrepreneur and CEO that has co-founded, scaled and sold market-leading businesses globally in the financial services and ecommerce retail sectors. Prior to joining Antler, Anthony was the co-founder and CEO of BrickX where he successfully launched the business, led it through $9m in Series A funding from high profile VC's including Westpac's Reinventure and NAB Ventures, and scaled BrickX to over 12,000 investors.

Sarah is responsible for scaling Antler’s presence in Australia by delivering operational efficiencies and frameworks across the firm. Sarah is also responsible for Antler Australia’s marketing and brand presence, partnerships and business development, and people and culture. Before joining Antler, Sarah was the General Manager at Business Insider Australia and Gizmodo Media Group, leading four globally renowned digital media brands in Australia.

Adele is responsible for leading Scouting and Angel fundraising. Scouting is a pivotal function for Antler to secure exceptional founders to build businesses with the Fund. Turning to fundraising, Antler holds a powerful angel community that deploys post Antler's initial investment. Prior to Antler, she was an early hire of now unicorn SafetyCulture and with corporate VC the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Digital Ventures.