We Help Founders build great companies
Antler founders are turning their visions into reality—tackling pressing problems, creating jobs, and unlocking their personal potential. As the world’s issues become more complex, founders are more needed than ever to solve them. What are you waiting for?
Antler in Canada works with solo founders who are looking to find potential co-founders as well as preformed teams that are already in operation.
Toronto
Find Your Co-Founder
Join a community of ambitious builders. Connect with like-minded entrepreneurs who complement your strengths, share your vision, and are ready to build something big—together.
Validate and Build Fast
Turn your idea into a real venture. With expert coaching, a supportive founder community, and resources from day one, you’ll test, iterate, and launch quickly.
Build and Pitch Your Company
Start building what matters. Talk to users, develop your MVP, and sharpen your go-to-market strategy. At the end of the program, you’ll pitch to Antler’s Investment Committee for a chance to receive CAD $150,000 in pre-seed funding in exchange for 10% equity.
Scale With Global Support
If you secure investment, you’ll join Antler’s portfolio and unlock access to a global founder network, fundraising support, and hands-on guidance as you scale. From Toronto to the world, we’ll back you beyond the first check.
Who Is Antler For?
Antler is for founders at the earliest stage—whether you're starting with just an idea, looking for a co-founder, or already part of a team. We back ambitious individuals who are ready to build from day zero. You'll be surrounded by a community of 60–80 driven peers, with the resources, mentorship, and capital to help you go from concept to company.
The Selection Process
We review thousands of applications from individual founders and early-stage teams, selecting the top 2% to join our Toronto Residency. We look for a strong combination of founder DNA—grit, drive, and clarity of vision—alongside exceptional skills in product, sales, or domain expertise. Whether you're still exploring an idea or already building, the Residency is designed to unlock value at every stage of the founder journey.
The Residency
The Antler Residency in Toronto is a high-velocity sprint built to help founders focus, execute, and reach key milestones. Each week, you'll define your top priorities and leverage the Antler community, expert coaching, and in-person energy to move your company forward. Alongside structured programming, you’ll also benefit from office hours, guest speakers, and curated events designed to spark insights and build lasting relationships with other exceptional founders—all from our downtown Toronto office.
The Antler Canada Investment
We invest $250,000 for 9% of your company and can commit up to an additional $250,000 in follow on funding . There is no cost to you or your company to be part of the residency. As you scale, we will also provide follow-on funding up to $25M through Antler Elevate, our global growth fund.
Tanika McLeod
Co-founder
MinuteSkill
Pooya Mamaghani
Co-founder
Genuine Taste
Antler has played such a huge role in our growth. The team at Antler Canada believed in us at a time when all we had was the vision. They treated us like people first - that’s why we joined. They believed in our ability to figure things out as we go. They helped to give us the confidence to continue on our journey despite the barriers certainly we’d encounter. THAT’S what early-stage investment should look like. And that’s why Antler is among the best early-stage accelerators & VC funds in the world.
When you think about Antler, you should think of more than a fund to start your business or a three months accelerator program. Antler is an affiliation that translates to professional, continuous, and dedicated support, mentorship, and connection to a global network of world-class entrepreneurs for the lifespan of your company.
We helped put hundreds of founders on a pathway to global success
Fuelled by a passion that goes beyond traditional investing, we exist to increase our founders’ speed and maximise their success rate in solving important problems.
1,300+
Portfolio companies
$4.8B
Total portfolio value
12,000+
Antler founders
24+
Locations worldwide
FREQUENTLY —ASKED QUESTIONS
You can apply to our Residency if you hold any type of valid CAD work visa.
We are industry agnostic and invest across all technology sectors.
The Antler residency is a full-time commitment. This means that you are 100% dedicating your time to building your company. That said, it is not “mandatory” to be in the office from 9-5PM daily. The intention is to foster an engaged and supportive community of founders building together in person. As long as you show up for cohort activities and receive value from the community, you can spend your time in any way you see most fit to build your company. Most founders come in 4-5 days a week.
If you successfully pitch to the investment committee, you will become part of the Antler portfolio and kick off Phase II. You will be assigned a deal lead to work closely with going forward, and go through a transition week where we will support you on incorporation, documentation, admin, and other items in order to receive the funding, clarify goals and milestones, and set you up on the path to scale and raise your seed.
If you are unsuccessful in pitching to the investment committee, you will still remain a valuable part of the Antler community for life. You will retain access to office space for an additional week, remain in our Slack community and other platforms, and can meet with our team to discuss next steps for your startup. Previous residents have taken on feedback and returned to pitch successfully, joined Antler portfolio companies or the talent network, or started new companies and returned to Antler. The door is always open 🔑.
We are focused on providing founders better access to capital at the very beginning of their journey, so we back founders at the ideation stage. We'll invest as early as a clearly defined product statement and roadmap to your MVP, we'll even help you incorporate your new venture if necessary. We always aim to be the first institutional check into our portfolio companies.
Yes - all accepted founders who are relocating for the residency may apply for a $3k living expense grant.
Not every founder or team will receive the opportunity to present to the investment committee (IC) during Pitch Week. This happens for a variety of reasons, including: dropping out for personal reasons or time commitment issues, pivoting your idea and requiring more time to validate, not demonstrating sufficient traction to put your best foot forward yet, deciding to join another founder or team, or deciding that your business is not venture scalable, amongst other reasons. If it is the case that you do not present to the Antler IC at this point in time, we will work with you on an individual basis to explore other options, such as joining our Talent Network, setting goals and a timeline for a delayed IC pitch, etc.
Apply today to Antler Canada
Turn your vision into a world-changing company. Apply to Antler and start building alongside a global network of founders and investors.
MEET THE ANTLER CANADA TEAM
Bernie combines his experience as a founder and investor to support entrepreneurs. He co-founded a technology based startup in the solar sector that grew from its homebase in Toronto, to over two hundred employees with an additional office in San Francisco, serving customers across the USA and Ontario. That company was VC backed and had a successful exit to a NYSE-listed acquirer. His experience as an investor includes working with premier VC funds, in addition to angel investing. Helping entrepreneurs think about value creation and building relationships with the capital markets are ways that Bernie enjoys working with founders.
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Tammer was the co-founder and former CEO of Toronto-based financial data platform Quandl, a FinTech startup that was acquired by Nasdaq in 2018. He brings deep operator experience to Antler Canada, having built and exited Quandl, a venture-backed data platform serving global financial institutions.
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Shambhavi has led several cross-border venture investments in the early/growth stages for a leading Corporate VC/Family office. She has executed high-value venture capital investments and exits globally across Consumer Tech, Education, Gaming and Enterprise SaaS across US, Canada, EU and SE Asia. She brings a hands-on operator mindset for portfolio growth, a strong network of global VCs, accelerators, and institutions, and has helped numerous companies with strategy and GTM to expand into global markets.
Her previous work experience includes management consulting at McKinsey and IBM. She has led several international consulting engagements for Fortune 500 companies toward global expansion and scaling.
She is passionate about gender inclusion, DEI in entrepreneurship and actively supports women, non-binary and underrepresented founders.
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Alex is a relationship-driven finance professional with expertise in financial controls and project management. He is a Chartered Accountant trained through Ernst & Young as an Assurance Manager where he oversaw multinational public company audits. Recently, he gained senior leadership experience at a not-for-profit focused on founder education. Alex’s passion for entrepreneurship began at Queen’s University where he was an Ambassador for the Centre for Social Impact - a student group dedicated to social innovation and entrepreneurship.
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Naman has founded and exited 3 travel technology businesses. He has built original small teams from inception and growing them to over 700 people. His companies were able to grow with great people building great products using technology. Developing people, products and technology to rapidly scale business and leading to successful financial exits for investors are the skills and experience Naman brings to Antler Canada.
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