Antler

And a goal I've had for a long time

TLDR: I’m moving into a new role as a General Partner at Antler, co-leading the US fund.

Today’s MMM is a longer one, and I think it deserves to be.

Six years ago I received an offer from a fast growing startup to lead sales development globally. The pay was 20% higher, and the equity was even more enticing.

I turned it down.

Ultimately it came down to a conversation with a legendary leader at LinkedIn, who at the time was our head of sales. Naively, I just wanted to know what he thought I should do.

His response, loosely quoted:

Well, what do you want to do with your life?

It was the type of question, that when you hear it, you realize it’s the same thing you would ask someone else, but sometimes as professionals we’re so stuck in single player mode that we forget to reframe our challenges under the light of how we would advise someone else.

The conversation didn’t last very long, because as soon as I realized I didn’t have a good answer to the question, I also realized I had no business taking up his time.

I asked to reschedule so I could come back with a thoughtful answer.

A week later, I shared my view on the world:

Early stage venture is broken. I want to work with founders, and I believe over time we can redefine success in pre-seed. I want to build the best pre-seed fund on the planet.

That last phrase is one I’ve said quite a bit over the years.

His response, loosely quoted again, as I remember it:

No one is going to hire you at a VC firm.

He was right, I was a salesperson. No finance background, no experience building a software company from zero to one, no investing track record, nothing.

Well not nothing. I had started my own company, I had demonstrated I could deliver results, and I had grown up at LinkedIn with a front row seat to some of the most impressive and inspiring leaders in the valley.

That conversation was a forcing function, and now that I knew what I wanted to do, the context for my decision making completely clarified itself, leading me to turn down the job.

I stayed at LinkedIn another five years and started investing in companies in my free time—buying my way into venture capital through AngelList and the cap tables of founders I loved. I started meeting the syndicate leads and fund managers, developing my network, building deal flow, and refining my investment thesis. I also started mentoring, taking on pro bono gigs with funds like Forum (formerly Acceleprise) and Eniac.

Ultimately, that’s what led me to Forum full-time this past year, and what the team there has built is undoubtedly one of the best pre-seed funds there is. The portfolio speaks for itself, and in addition to world-class investment decisions, they’ve also built one of the best platform offerings in the early stage market. Founders get a fractional founder and every resource they need to build, grow, and raise capital.

It’s a homerun for founders if you’ve built a product and you’ve validated the market.

The truth is though, I wasn’t fixing the broken early stage ecosystem, I was investing in it.

So what’s broken in the earliest stages? So many things.

1. Starting a company is easier than it’s ever been, and yet it’s still far too hard.

2. Founders focus on the wrong things.

3. Being a founder is lonely and emotionally exhausting.

4. The 2/20 operating model is completely defunct for early stage.

I could go on, but that’s a good start.

Starting a company is hard.

To put it in context, there are 35,000 coal miners in the US compared to just 14,000 new founders backed by VC’s last year. That’s only .004% of the US population who were brave enough to start their own venture-backed company.

The reasons why this number is so low are endless—economic status and access to capital, lack of education, fear, and so many more.

I don’t think I have to explain this, just ask yourself, would you quit your job right now to start a company?

There’s roughly a 99.996% chance you answered no, and that you have your own reasons.

Founders focus on the wrong things.

Building the next great company is not about snapping your fingers and having it all figured it out, it’s about solving a clear and immediate need in a compelling and beautiful way. Then and only then can it start to compound into a world-changing business.

It’s about developing a unique insight on the market with both great conviction and great validation, and executing just enough to prove that you are both right and that it can become something meaningful in the future.

It’s not zero to one hundred, it’s zero to one.

The job is to execute well enough to earn an investment so that you can do the rest of it the right way, and with the right people.

Most founders focus on building features over finding product market fit.

Most founders focus on gaining traction with the wrong idea rather than validating that it’s the right idea in the first place.

Most founders under resource the business by not becoming exceptional at fundraising.

Most founders lack appreciation and practice of first principles thinking.

The list goes on.

The only two things a founder needs to do when starting out is Vision & Validation. That’s both more complicated than it reads, but less complicated than most make it out to be in practice. I’ll write another post on that in the future.

Being a founder is lonely and emotionally exhausting.

Whether you’re going at it alone or with a founding team, starting a company is isolating and psychologically tumultuous.

You don’t know if what you’re doing is right or if it’s good enough, you’re being judged by everyone, and you’re hearing “no” ad nauseum.

Try waking up every single day and questioning your life choices while not making any money. Sounds fun, right?

And of course, the broken structure of venture and the 2% management fee.

Say you have a $10m fund, like average emerging managers do. That’s $200K in fees that you can use to pay your salary, manage your overhead (legal fees alone eat you alive), and create an experience for founders that is not just beneficial, but better than other competing firms.

Good luck. You simply do not have enough resources.

The whole model is not only bad for founders, but it’s suboptimal for investors too.

This is where Antler comes in.

In just four years, Antler has grown to 20 cities spanning 6 continents, and we’ve recruited and evaluated more than 70,000 founders in that time. The business has also amassed 400+ investments with a combined market cap approaching $2B.

The model is exactly what I said founders should aim to do themselves: solve a clear and immediate need in a compelling and beautiful way.

In Antler’s case, the problem above is abundantly clear, so let’s talk about the solution.

First, invest in people over ideas.

You hear it all the time, from every venture capitalist worth their weight—invest in great people. The difference with Antler is not only that it has become a global powerhouse when it comes to data-driven recruitment, but we give founders the resources and first principles coaching required to develop and validate their ideas before they get off course.

Think of a rocket. If it’s off, even by the tiniest margins at launch, it will be miles off course in space.

The same is true of a startup, and Antler cuts right to the heart of the pre-seed epidemic where great founders are nervous to get started, aren’t working on the right problem, and/or don’t know how to apply first principles to keep their “rocket” on the right trajectory.

Antler brings the most exceptional future founders in the world together into co-working spaces for six weeks to build alongside their peers, while providing resources without taking any equity or providing any capital.

It’s beautiful because it connects insanely high caliber operators to each other, surrounding them with the tools and decision making help they wouldn’t otherwise have access to, and creates an experience that fosters a deep focus on the vision & validation that’s required to go from zero to one.

At the end of the six weeks, the best companies and founders have an opportunity to earn a $150,000 investment for a 7% stake in the company which is one of the best early stage offers on the market for any founder residency.

Second, the operating model challenges the status quo in a brilliant way.

The founding team is comprised of world-class builders, elite operators, and true visionaries—not traditional venture capitalists.

So when they capitalized the business with equity funding rather than going the traditional route of a 2/20, they were and still are able to frontload resources in a way that no other fund on the planet can do. And of course, like all great companies, now that the business is established and the model is working, there are multiple revenue streams being capitalized on which help to sustain the hypergrowth that has taken Antler to such deep global penetration in just four years.

I could go on about the broader leadership team and board of advisors too, but a quick Google or LinkedIn search and you’ll see what I mean. The business is packed with heavy hitters throughout every inch of the organization.

Third, asymmetric information.

Every fund is investing based on the same information. A pitch deck, a data room, searches on the internet, reference calls, and a general thesis on the market.

So not only do they have the same 2/20 model yielding the same resources for their founders and their LP’s, but they’re using the same information too.

Not Antler.

Antler is a recruitment machine, and because we make it so easy for the best people in the world to start companies in the right way and with the right resources without investing a single dollar, we get six weeks to underwrite founders and their ability to execute.

What other first check fund spends nearly two months working alongside a team before investing?

We’re talking continuity fund style information for a pre-seed check, which when combined with pre-seed valuations, also creates the most aggressively ambitious and non-linear returns for investors.

But Antler doesn’t stop there, we too have our own continuity fund and will invest from the moment we get to conviction on the team all the way until the Series C.

Taken together, Antler is not only the best product for founders, but the best one for investors too.

So that’s why I’m writing this post.

I believe I’ve found the best opportunity to chase a goal I’ve had for a long time: to build the best pre-seed fund on the planet, and I’m excited to share that I will be co-leading the US fund as a General Partner alongside an incredibly talented team who shares these same beliefs and uncomfortably ambitious goals.

Let’s go build.

See you Monday.