After the panel, Antler in Berlin showcased their portfolio companies and revealed five new companies which are the latest addition to the portfolio. The founders presented their start-ups which they have been building in stealth for the past few months. The masterminds behind the new companies have been developing solutions to address major challenges and growth opportunities in a diverse range of sectors, including longevity, AI, B2B SaaS, and creator economy.
Christoph Klink, Partner at Antler, explains, “Every founders’ journey is truly a unique one, and we are proud to support the founders we work with right from day zero. We work with exceptional founders from a wide range of exciting backgrounds, which is reflected in the variety of sectors and the diversity of founders across the five new start-ups we have most recently backed. Whether it is fighting aging, reducing food waste, or making the jobs of developers easier and their work more effective.”
The day symbolizes the conclusion of the first chapter in a founder’s journey with Antler. Antler invests in entrepreneurs by inviting them to take part in a cohort where they are surrounded by like-minded founders to form strong co-founding teams, build on their ideas through intense validation, and prepare to scale their businesses globally.
The latest cohort in Berlin had over 1,300 applications with over 50 founders selected earlier this spring. Over the past months, the Antler team helped the founders refine value propositions and validate business models before making seven initial investments.
Alan Poensgen, Partner at Antler, comments, “Every cohort brings with it a new dynamic, and that certainly was the case here. We started out with over 50 carefully selected founders from a wide range of backgrounds, interests, and expertise. Now, just a few months later, we have seen ideas blossom into start-ups where technology is solving problems in a range of different industries. The energy throughout the past few months has been palpable in our offices and we are excited to share what our founders have been developing.”
Who are the new Antler portfolio companies in Berlin?
The five startups revealed originate from the fourth founder cohort in Berlin. They are the newest additions to a global portfolio that comprises over 790 start-ups across more than 30 different industries. A third of these companies have at least one female co-founder with founders representing more than 100 nationalities.
Meet the five new start-ups backed by Antler in Berlin:
YOUTH - HealthTech
What does YOUTH do?
YOUTH uses data collected from smartphone sensors and machine learning to make prevention easily accessible. With a face video, audio recording and an eye picture YOUTH can screen your health status in under 2 minutes, and detect early signs of health risks for multiple organs. With this information, YOUTH creates a personalized prevention plan for you and individual goals to optimize your health. Everything is trackable within the app to make it a no-brainer to follow up on your prevention.
Who are the founders?
The duo is passionate, dedicated and committed to make health prevention easy and accessible to everyone. Filippo Nigro is a biohacker with a passion for machine learning. He is active in longevity biotech communities and got a nanodegree as a Machine Learning Engineer. He is also an experienced builder who shaped the product strategy of HomeToGo. Before that, he gained experience in startups and investment banking. Johannes Kraus is a serial founder in the prevention and AI space. He previously co-founded LAIA together with Munich Re and launched a prevention app for low back pain. Originally a physical therapist, he further shaped his business skills in consultancies such as Oliver Wyman.
SkoneLabs - IoT, AI & Food tech 🌎
What does SkoneLabs do?
SkoneLabs is on a mission to combat food loss and wastage in the fresh food industry by leveraging IoT and AI. Their plug-and-play smart sensor technology, combined with machine learning, offers an easy-to-implement solution for reducing food loss. By accurately predicting when food is likely to spoil, SkoneLabs provides actionable insights that help minimize loss and waste. Through partnerships with IoT, AI, and food industry stakeholders, they aim to create a collaborative ecosystem that drives positive change, transforms the food industry, and contributes to building a sustainable world for future generations.
Who are the founders?
Meet the co-founders driving SkoneLabs: Nishit Agrawal, the driving force behind business and operations, boasts 5 years of entrepreneurial expertise, while Siddardha Koneti, a seasoned researcher and innovation consultant with 6 years of research expertise and 2 years of consultancy experience with multinational giants, leads the charge in product development and strategy, shaping SkoneLabs' cutting-edge offerings. Together, they combine their formidable skills to lead SkoneLabs on a path of unrivaled innovation and groundbreaking solutions.
Converta - B2B Saas 🔮
What does Converta do?
Converta guides B2B sales managers through their weekly pipeline review meetings and highlights the talking points with the highest impact. The SaaS platform extracts company-specific information mentioned during sales meetings such as pain points, desired goals, and competitive USPs, and recommends deal strategies with the highest chance of success.
Who are the founders?
The Converta team combines deep technical expertise with unique B2B sales insights. Marco Giannone is a serial entrepreneur with more than 12 years of software development experience. Matthias Kuhn is a sales professional and most recently headed the strategy department of a conversational AI startup.
Vision Cine X - Creator Economy 🖼
What does Vision Cine X do?
Vision Cine X is at the forefront of redefining collaborative and creative productions by developing an intuitive tool designed to streamline administrative and communication tasks, thus liberating creators to dedicate more time to the inventive process. Initially zeroing in on pre-production workflows in the film industry, such as meticulous location scouting and efficient equipment management, the aim of Vision Cine X is not only to innovate within cinematic creation but also to cascade this revolution across various content-producing industries, encompassing photography, broadcasting, event planning, and the broader creator industry. Renowned cinematographer of “Joker” and “The Hangover” series, Lawrence Sher, is one of the industry experts guiding the company to ensure their solutions are impactful and relevant.
Who are the founders?
CEO Arkadiy Kreslov has spent over a decade in professional filmmaking, working on countless sets for high-profile clients like Porsche and Nike, and with well-known celebrities. His extensive, hands-on experience in the industry shapes the functionality and user-friendliness of Vision Cine X, ensuring it solves real-world problems faced by creative professionals.
Agenta AI - Developer Tools & AI
What does Agenta do?
Agenta is a platform that enables developers to quickly build, evaluate and deploy Large Language Model (LLM) powered applications such as chatbots and Q&A bots. The current process of building these applications is slow and inefficient. Agenta streamlines the workflow and spares technical teams time and resources. It provides technical teams with the tools to do prompt engineering, version control, automatic evaluation, and allow them to optimize the cost and improve the reliability of LLM-powered applications.
Who are the founders?
Mahmoud Mabrouk and Akrem Abayed are the duo behind Agenta AI. Mahmoud, the CEO, is an ML expert with over a decade of experience and a pending PhD (defense scheduled for 10/2023) from the Technische Universität Berlin. Prior to Agenta AI, Mahmoud was the founding ML engineer in a generative AI startup. He has also developed a successful open-source project in the LLM space, with 3k+ stars. Akrem, the CTO, has a M.Sc degree in Computer Science, with 7+ years of experience in backend and cloud engineering. His professional journey includes a tenure at Just Eat Takeaway.com, where he built developer tools used internally by hundreds of engineers. Additionally, Akrem is a serial entrepreneur having previously co-founded a rental and co-working space marketplaces.
