MAKING PROGRESS
INEVITABLE
Antler is the investor backing the world’s most driven founders, from day zero to greatness.
MAKING PROGRESS
Founded on the belief that people innovating is the key to building a better future, Antler partners with exceptional founders across six continents to launch and scale startups that address meaningful opportunities and challenges.
Knowing that exceptional founders can come from anywhere with any background, we have offices in 27 cities across six continents, including Austin, New York, London, Berlin, Stockholm, Bangalore, Jakarta, Singapore, Seoul, Tokyo, and Sydney.
Our global community of builders, investors, operators, experts, and partner organizations backs people from the very start of their founder journey—pre-team or even pre-idea. Since 2018, we have helped create and invested in more than 1,300+ startups across a wide range of industries and technologies.
A better future will not happen automatically—the world needs determined, ambitious, and resilient founders to build it. We are committed to supporting them and pursuing our vision of making progress inevitable.
THE PRINCIPLES THAT GUIDE US
Put founders first
We prioritize finding and supporting exceptional founders
Build talent density
We create an unrivalled environment for exceptional people
Take 100% ownership
We take total responsibility and accountability for what we do
Be uncomfortably ambitious
We keep raising the bar of what is possible
Live off the land
We are creative and optimize the way we spend our time and resources
One Antler
We are one team, bringing the combined power of our global presence to everything we do
Our leadership
The Antler leadership team consists of serial entrepreneurs, experienced operators and seasoned investors.
Magnus will challenge your ideas and loves spending time in front of a whiteboard with founders. He previously co-founded Zalora, Asia’s largest fashion e-commerce company. It was later acquired by Global Fashion Group (GFG), where Magnus served as COO and Managing Director, rolling out the firm’s marketplace across 26 countries.
Magnus is an alumnus of Harvard University and McKinsey & Company in which he worked for six years. His last role at McKinsey & Co was as a Junior Partner, working across North America, Europe and Asia in the global telecom, media and high-tech industries.
Prior to joining the Nordic partner group, she led the end-to-end scouting and selection of founders. Previously recognized as one of Asia’s top talents within the communications field, she has spent the last decade working within the corporate sector with experience across 3 global markets working closely with the senior leadership teams of key financial services institutions and enterprise tech companies.
Tobias co-founded memmo.me—a marketplace for personalized videos from celebrities. Under his leadership, memmo.me raised >$25m from tier-1 US investors (Left Lane, FJ Labs, Luxor Capital), scaled to $10m in revenue in the second year, launched in 15+ countries, and built a team of 150+ employees. Before that, Tobias was an early employee at two Nordic unicorns, Budbee and Wolt, and had (co-)founded several other businesses.
Gen AI Consumer Tech
Mental Health Co-Pilot
Rajiv is a Partner in the Antler Bangalore office. He co-founded Urban Ladder (UL), India's top omni-channel furniture brand. Over ~8 years, UL raised over $100Mn in venture capital from top Indian VCs and changed the way Indians shop for furniture online. Prior to Urban Ladder, he served as a Senior Product Manager with Yahoo. He has been featured on GQ Influential Young Indians and repeatedly on the Fortune 40 Under 40 India list. Rajiv loves working with early-stage entrepreneurs on product, culture and brand to build scalable companies.
Alan Poensgen, now Partner at Antler, formerly co-founder at Westwing, a pan-European home & living e-commerce business, where he spent seven years as part of the executive team and saw the company go public in 2018. He also led a Southeast Asian e-commerce venture backed by Rocket Internet, NEA and others and was part of the early Rocket Internet core team based out of Berlin building out their global product development teams.
Bede was the Founding Managing Partner of Antler Australia and is now the firm's Chief Commercial Officer. 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.
With over 25 years of experience in tech and startups across Asia, Winnie is a seasoned operator with leadership roles at Alibaba, PropertyGuru, and Carousell. Currently Partner in Singapore, where Antler is headquartered, she shares responsibility for the firm's operations in Southeast Asia.
Tyler Norwood is Managing Partner for Antler in the United States, where he oversees the firm’s US growth and geographic expansion. Tyler joined Antler in 2017 as its fifth full-time employee and has been instrumental in launching and scaling the firm. Prior to joining Antler, Tyler was the Global Head of Business Development for Global Fashion Group (GFG), where he was in charge of launching a marketplace business model for GFG’s companies across 21 different countries; he also assisted with the company’s IPO in Frankfurt in 2017. Before GFG, Tyler was the Interim Head of Marketplace at Jabong, which he helped sell for $70 million in 2016, and Head of Marketplace Vietnam at Zalora, the largest fashion e-commerce company in Asia. Along the way, Tyler has also completed the Vietnam Marathon, Singapore Marathon, and Boulder Iron Man. Tyler is passionate about providing a better on ramp to Venture Capital for founders who want to change the world and hands on support for founders in the first 6 months of launching a new startup.
20+ years experience in tech investing, business building and digital transformation projects. Operating Partner for Redpoint eventures, Intel Capital LATAM director for over a decade and Innovation Director of public traded companies. Recognised digital advisor and board member.
Stennie is a highly skilled engineer and former founder with deep experience running and cultivating developer communities. He spent the most recent decade in various directorships across MongoDB, has built and operated his own development agency, co-founded and sold an online DVD rental business, and was the founding engineer of Yahoo! Australia & New Zealand. Stennie leads our innovative engineering and product team to architect, implement, and scale the vision for our global technology platform supporting founders from day zero through to greatness.
Marcelo was the founder and CEO of the credit fintech Lendico (www.lendico.com.br). He led the company through a full cycle of entrepreneurship: model creation, team building, product design, launch, scale up and a successful exit to Lonestar, when the company had +R$1billion in credit originations and 100+ employees. He has just returned from Stanford’s flagship senior executive program (SEP)
Jiho built his career working with South Korean tech giant SK Planet and ecommerce unicorn Coupang as lead product manager. Jiho is also well connected to Silicon Valley becoming the first Korean to be accepted into the 500 Startups accelerator program in 2010 and went on to co-found Soomgo, a Y-Combinator portfolio company(#153 of top YC portfolio companies) recently valued at over $200m. Jiho’s most recent venture was blockchain startup BxB which was acquired by the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange; Binance in 2020.
Marie is a Partner at Antler East Africa. She’s a past startup founder, exiting her paper recycling company in Ethiopia in 2021. Previously, she was an associate principal at McKinsey & Company and holds a master's degree in economic analysis from the Norwegian School of Economics.
Antoine is a partner at Antler France. He was previously a partner at Antler's London office. Antoine was also the cofounder, chairman and COO of StanPlus Tech, a VC backed startup leading the change in the Indian medical transportation market. Before his MBA at INSEAD, Antoine spent 8 years at Areva, the World Nuclear Energy leader and a growing OEM in Renewable Energy.
Jonathan is the Partner at Antler in MENAP. He has a proven track record of successfully building ventures across diverse markets. Before Antler, Jonathan founded Smileneo, a direct-to-consumer health tech business in the MENA region, which was acquired in 2023. He also served as the Co-CEO of Daraz, the leading online marketplace in South Asia, acquired by Alibaba in 2018. Additionally, Jonathan held the position of Managing Director at Jumia, the leading online marketplace in Africa that went public on the NYSE in 2019.
Press enquiries
Antler team members are available for speaking engagements or interviews with the media on technology innovation, our approach to venture capital, and other related topics. To find an expert and for all other media inquiries, please contact:
FAQs
What does day zero investing mean?
Day zero investing means backing founders from the very beginning—whether it’s pre-team or even pre-idea—and continuing to support them on their company’s journey to greatness. We are there when a founder is at the starting line, when everything is possible and nothing is certain. When they have made the life-changing decision to take the leap and build a company, leaving conventional career paths behind. When their belief, passion, and drive are often the only things fueling them. And we are still there after we make our first investment, as a long-term partner providing advice, introductions, resources, and follow-on funding—all the way to their exit.
Who is part of Antler’s global community?
Our global community includes founders, investors, operators, experts, and partner organizations across six continents. Antler founders scale faster—from winning their first 100 customers and marketing a new product to raising their next round of funding—with the backing of 8,000+ fellow Antler founders across six continents. They learn from the best in the business through our advisor network of 600 leading operators, our sector-focused communities, and our monthly socials across our locations. And they are powered by curated people and resources for hiring, going to market, and fundraising, along with perks from leading tech providers. Antler founders have a home with us for life—no matter what direction their business or career takes, we’re committed to winning together.
Is Antler an accelerator or incubator?
We are not an accelerator or incubator, we’re the day zero investor. While we take huge pride in helping our founders develop, validate, and start scaling their idea and business model in a short period of time through our residencies around the world, we don’t launch and leave. We keep supporting our founders for the full life cycle of their company—from day zero to greatness.
What is Antler’s investment philosophy?
Above all, we invest in people. We believe that every great company starts with a great team—and the strongest teams pursue the best ideas. Working with thousands of founders around the world, we have found that an amazing team with a mediocre idea in most cases will outperform a mediocre team with a great idea. And great teams will often pivot their idea after finding a more pressing or interesting problem to solve. If we decide to invest, it is first and foremost because we have high conviction that the team we are backing will be future winners and because we can and want to work with the team. Read our full investment philosophy.
