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 1,000+ startups across a wide range of industries and technologies, with the goal of backing more than 6,000 by 2030.
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.
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.
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.
Jed Rose is a Partner at Antler and brings operator, advisor, and investor experience from Seed to Series C rounds. He was the GM of EMEA with Airwallex, a B2B fintech payments unicorn that is backed by investors such as Sequoia and DST Global. Prior to Antler and Airwallex, Jed was CEO at Paymentsense, where he led the fintech startup through a period of rapid growth with EBITDA growing from breakeven to £24m in just three years and to an exit. Prior to Paymentsense, Jed did product management for Microsoft Windows for six years where he focused on B2C, international expansion, and product pilots. Jed received a B.Sc. with Honours in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University and an MBA from the University of Cambridge.
As Partner in Central Europe, Christoph supports exceptional entrepreneurs along their journey - from entering into a cohort to building and scaling their ventures successfully. He draws on his background as Business Angel and Partner with McKinsey & Company. Before joining Antler he served a range of leading technology organizations, amongst others from the mobility and transportation space, on disruptive strategy and building innovative business models. Building and nurturing top talent organizations is one of his key passions and a great source of inspiration for Christoph.
Adam is a Partner at Antler, co-leading the UK fund. Additionally, he is a Founding Partner and Chair of Houghton Street Ventures, a pre-seed and seed fund investing in the alumni of the LSE. He has been with Antler since 2023.Adam previously was Co-Founder and CEO of Scalable Capital (BlackRock, Tencent, Hedosophia), which is a fintech unicorn valued at $1.4B. Also previously an Executive Director of Trading at Goldman Sachs.
Ronald Jan is an experienced operator, entrepreneur and investor, with expertise in a.o. e-commerce, fintech and healthtech. He has spent over a decade with various C-level roles in tech startups including Rocket Internet and Delivery Hero. Previously he has been a strategy consultant at Booz & Co and an investment banker at ABN Amro. INSEAD educated.
Kristian co-leads the Norwegian operations at Antler alongside Anne, where he leads both our fundraising and partnership efforts. Kristian is also responsible for building the ecosystem around Antler in Europe focusing on partnerships with commercial companies that want to contribute through their services and idea generation towards founders in the programs. He is also working on raising the European funds that invest in Antler's portfolio companies.
.webp)
Michael started his career with The Boston Consulting Group. Since then, he has worked with building, scaling, and investing in startups. Michael has helped build and scale numerous companies as a co-founder, advisor, or angel-investor including two companies which have experienced exit events.
Livia is a full-stack marketing and communications expert obsessed with building brands. With 10 years' experience from startups in Stockholm and NYC, Livia previously ran fintech Tink’s marketing department and headed up community and content marketing at ecommerce platform Tictail. Livia is a lover of the Russian language, undercover interior designer and will help you set your marketing strategy, grow and attract customers.
Oscar, heading up Antler Stockholm, is an entrepreneur, expansion specialist and leader with 10 years' experience in building ventures across Africa, Europe, Middle East and Latin America. He previously co-founded BIMA, a global leader in mobile insurance, with 26M customers and has worked at Spotify, Kinnevik and Universal Avenue. He loves the outdoors and his favorite meal is freshly caught trout grilled over an open fire.
Nitin brings 12+ years of experience in global venture capital, having invested in 100+ tech startups across stages, from being the first believer all the way to pre-IPO. Nitin learnt the ropes of the VC business in the US at NEA (one of the world’s largest funds) and was also an early executive at EverFi (acq. by Blackbaud for $750M). Nitin was part of the founding team at Lightbox Ventures, one of India’s leading funds (now $400M AUM). He then created his own micro-VC (FirstPrinciples) as a thesis-driven, early believer in 40+ startups, and was the first VC in India to focus on Web3. A Wharton graduate, Nitin has served on advisory boards/groups for the USC Viterbi School, NITI Aayog, AngelList India and TheBetterIndia.
Melalite is a Partner in Antler East Africa, supporting the Antler founders on tech and strategy. Her prior experience includes Oracle, Bain & Company, and Princeton Consultants. Melalite holds an MBA from INSEAD and a BA/MSC in Computer Science from Smith College and Rutgers University.
Markus is a Partner at Antler sharing the overall responsibility for Antler’s operations in Southeast Asia. Markus has worked with technology ventures in SEA for nearly a decade. Prior to Antler, Markus was in Venture Development Roles at Zalora and Global Fashion Group (GFG) based in Indonesia, Philippines and Singapore. He holds a Master’s degree in Banking and Finance from the University of St.Gallen, Switzerland.
Originally from Sweden, Erik is a seasoned entrepreneur who has founded five ventures, including Zalora in Vietnam. Currently Partner at Antler, he leads the firm's investments and operations in Vietnam. Also known as 'Shark Erik', he is a judge and investor on Shark Tank Vietnam. Prior to this, he was an investment banker at London's Square Mile and Vietnam Investments Group. His entrepreneurial journey has earned him recognition as one of Sweden's tech super talents, as recognised by Dagens Industri. Based in Ho Chi Minh City, Erik is also fluent in Vietnamese.
Gabriel was Head of Corporate Venture Capital at GS Retail, the retail subsidiary of Korean conglomerate GS Group. He has led many notable investments, including Moloco, Inc., currently valued at over USD $1.5 billion. He started his career as a consultant at Accenture Strategy, founded a WiseBros&Company, a B2B SaaS company to help universities restructure, worked at Rakuten CEO's Innovation Office helping the Japanese company expand into global markets, and led Bravestone Venture Partners where he made notable investments including seed investment in ImpriMed in the U.S.
Alex has been a founder of VC funds. He has 12 years of experience working with outstanding founders throughout their life stages, from idea generation to IPO. He loves to discuss products, business models and global markets. His contribution helps founders to pivot into unicorns. He has been the lead early investor in three unicorns and two eventual IPOs. At Antler, Alex leads China theme investment: capturing global unicorns who leverage China strengths. Before Antler, Alex co-founded Alpha Startup Fund as Founding and Managing Partner. He was Co-Managing Partner at Sinovation Ventures and Partner at WI Harper Group, a San Francisco-Beijing-Taipei based cross-border VC. He was voted as China’s Top 100 Investors by Forbes China in 2021 and 2019.
Alex holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and serves as Co-President for Harvard Business School Association of Beijing.
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.
