Finding a Co-Founder: My Experience with Antler

Looking back, Antler definitely was something that brought that excitement back for me. As adults, we tend to make responsible and calculated choices. Even though that makes all the sense in the world, there is a certain magic in leaping into the unknown. Entrepreneurship is very much an extension of that.

What you never see, is a group of 60 very experienced, ambitious and full of potential people saying f*ck it: I am going to commit 2 months of my life to this unpaid, full-time program which might not bear any fruit, but at least I will be able to tell myself I had the guts to take this leap of faith and try to start a company. For some this comes easier than others, some might be able to do it without a program, but one thing cannot be understated–the value of connections and sense of community is something you simply cannot replicate.

At the time of writing this article, it’s been 2 months since our cohort^[1] finished. I couldn’t tell what I did and how I felt 2 weeks ago, but I can tell you exactly how I felt during Antler’s program 2 months ago, since that experience really did leave a mark in my brain. So what follows is exactly that–a story of how I found my co-founder and we got our first investment.

Week 0—Anxiousness.

Yes, the Antler program starts before its official start day^[2]. People are doing intro meetings with one another, sharing their ideas and trying to get a sense of who they could work with. A week before Antler, I still had a full-time job. But as I was 100% committed, it was also my last week. As a common practice, I barely did any work that last week at my job. Instead, I was trying to learn as much as I could about what to expect, how to make the most of these 2 months and to generate at least a few very good ideas to get someone onboard. I was anxious. Both to start, but also, because most of the people from the program I had been talking with, had much more impressive resumes. I was definitely feeling like an imposter, but I thought it’s gonna be fine–I will just try to get people to like me and maybe then they will want to work with me. (Coping 101)

Advice #1: If you can commit full-time, you should. The advantage of not having any freelance, half-time job responsibilities was massive.

Week 1—Overwhelm.

It begins!! I am jobless, have a personal runway of six months, every tech company is laying people off and stopping all hiring, but I am ready. Ready to try and come up with an idea, find a co-founder and get €100k as an investment^[3]. First week was a lot of hand holding and Antler being nice towards us: you are so brave! We believe in you! Go get it! There are 60 new people who I saw for the first time in my life, so I try to dabble and talk with as many of them as I can. Every conversation feels exactly the same: where are you from? What is your background? Do you know how to write code? Did you come in with an idea? Next! 

Being socially engaged, meeting this many new people and going through Antler’s packed schedule definitely was overwhelming. But in a good way. At the end of the week I feel great and I came up with a strategy: instead of picking someone I want to work with, I will just keep a list of people I do not want to work with. I will use my gut feeling as the only source of truth and trust my instincts. Bulletproof plan, right?

Week 2—FOMO.

For the second week we change locations and head to Antler’s office close by at Edge Workspaces^[4]. I like the change of environment. It's brighter, more modern and has a bunch of spots to have private chats with people. For this week, the daily agenda is still packed and Antler is in full control–there is little room to improvise on your schedule. Yet, you already sense some participants are more sought after than others. It’s difficult to find them not talking to someone else. To keep my integrity intact, I will not tell you if I was one of them… (I wasn’t.)

Then, a tragedy happens. Tuesday morning I wake up with the flu. Naturally, I decided to stay home for a few days because that’s the best damage-control route I can take. If it gets worse I lose even more time. I lie in bed with a massive FOMO because it feels like everyone in there is becoming best friends and partnering up. I try to use this time effectively and come up with new ideas, since that has not been going as well as I hoped (coming up with a good idea apparently is not that easy). I fail to come up with something new. Hoping for the flu to go away and to come back strong on Monday.

Week 3—Go play kids!

The handholding is over—schedule is wide open. Antler stopped driving us to the kindergarten–we have to take public transport now. Ground floor of Edge [3] is consumed by the buzz of founders ideating, validating and sharing insights. It feels electric and I am happy to be back! I have a few conversations planned for the day with people I like personally. We are going to try finding ideas we both want to pursue. You feel that everyone is playing multiple fronts and having similar conversations with other founders, therefore there is no time to waste and if you want something to stick you really have to iterate fast. 

Third week is also a reminder–not everyone is 100% in. From 60+ people who were there the first day, I keep seeing the same 30 people in Edge. This was a surprise but also a learning for me–being present matters. You also see groups starting to form: fintech, wellness, ed-tech and so on.

Advice #2: being present and socially active matters a lot. Forget working remotely for a day, if you are serious about this, you will be there live.

Advice #3: decide if you want to build A company or ANY company. If you want the former, give yourself a strong label (fintech girl, “insert specific idea” guy) and for the latter, insert yourself in as many conversations as you can while not giving off a certain domain lock-in.

Week 4—Heartbroken.

This week begins on a very positive note. I really enjoyed the ideation and getting to know other founders last week. Lots of ideas are circling around, I enjoy working with all of these people and it feels that I am getting somewhere. But there are some dark, gloomy clouds on the horizon… The rate of people officially starting to team up is really starting to accelerate. I am torn. On one hand there is still plenty of time (at least I thought so and, boy, was I wrong), but on the other hand, some people that were on the top of my co-founders list started to team up between themselves. Traitors! That was double as painful because then not only one good lead disappears, but two. 

This week I noticed a few mental shifts starting to take place. First, personally liking someone is not enough to start a company because you need an actual idea as well (shocker). Second, having a chat with someone in order to get to know them does not really get me anywhere closer to building a successful company. I finish this week with a sense of disappointment, yet, I keep my head high and try to maintain a positive mindset.

Week 5—Big break.

Week five begins with a bombshell announcement from Antler: if you do not officially partner up with someone in the upcoming 5 days, there is no way you are going to fit into Antler's regular program schedule. I was shocked when I learned this. All this time I thought I had was never actually there?? I put all my stress and anxiety into a small box, lock it inside myself as any normal person would, and try to think of my next steps. Every single ongoing lead that I had is gone. All of them already officially teamed up with other founders. I have nothing going for me at this point. All these 6-7 people I was working and ideating with are teamed up, twice as many ideas are invalidated, so what are my options? All of a sudden, an idea comes to mind. It’s in a field I know nothing about, I need a super technically capable person to build it, but I feel it in bones that this is good. 

I reach out to my developer, machine learning engineer friend and pitch the idea and this program as hard as I can. He says a very unwilling yes but not gonna commit full time, and he doesn’t really want to participate in the program. Nevertheless, he will try and see whether it is technically viable. Next day after him saying yes, I bombard him with messages. 0 responses. He is clearly not as committed as I am. At the end of the day I call him and we talk the whole thing through again, we decide it’s best I try to hustle this by myself, so I am back to driving solo.

Then, an epiphany happens. I remember that during a solo-founders speed-dating event 2 weeks ago I met this super nice guy who was also a machine learning engineer from a previous cohort. I know the guy based on a 5-minute conversation, but he had this cool, calming energy to him. My gut feeling is saying we will get along just fine. I call him and pitch my idea. He says he loves it and will come tomorrow morning to discuss. 48 hours after my call, we officially pitched the idea to Antler and they allowed us to proceed with the program. We are in!

Advice #4: go to the speed dating event.

Week 6—Tunnel vision.

This week begins with an ecstatic note–we used the final possible session to officially team up in order to still be able to get an investment with a regular schedule. That feels like a huge milestone already, but work literally just started. All the other teams have been working on their businesses for weeks and we have to deliver a full pitch with a refined business model in 4 days at a Pre-IC  (mock Investment Committee), which is basically a general rehearsal before the main and final pitch that decides it all. Better get to work! 

My co-founder and I really don’t have time to argue and find compromises–we have to execute and we both know it. His input is invaluable, the idea evolves and grows into a legit business. We both feel it. The feedback from other founders and Antler is positive so far, which becomes a massive variable in managing the stress and a super tight schedule. Finally, the day of the Pre-IC  is here. It goes well, we are both very happy with the result and the work we put in. Antler’s feedback afterwards is fair, but vast–there are still major holes in our defensibility, go-to market, client segmentation etc. We have 12 days to address all feedback and to pitch in front of a panel of other VCs. We got this, right?

Week 7—Iterate.

Edge feels different during the last part of the program. The amount of new teams forming and ideating is decreasing substantially. It’s now mostly about already formed ideas and their refinement. Even though everyone is a bit stressed and anxious, energy is still great. We all know exactly what everyone is going through. There is massive support from one another and it feels exciting to finally have a direction. The founders in other teams truly start to become my friends and I feel as if I surrounded myself with people who make me better. I am learning things every single day. 

As I am going through this week I realize that this is going to be a time I reflect back to in the future. No matter if we are successful or not with our startup, this has been a massively impactful experience for me professionally. We continue to iterate and improve our pitch every day, we are talking with customers, getting more and more hands-on so the general feel is that we are moving into the right direction.

Week 8—Finale.

This is it, the pitch that decides it all is on Tuesday, so we take the weekend and Monday to make final adjustments. We enter the final pitch via Zoom and I am literally sweating as if I was in a spinning class. We do the pitch, panelists ask us a bunch of really hard questions, we improvise on some of them, we have direct answers to others. The meeting is done after 30 minutes. I close the Zoom link and I literally feel empty inside. 

There was so much angst, excitement and effort behind this short meeting that I felt like a massive boulder was lifted off of my chest. We did the best we can, now it is up to them to decide if that was good enough. After only a few hours we get a message from one of Antler’s team members to come up to their office. We don’t know what to expect and we try our best to monitor our expectations. The team that came into the office before us, left the meeting celebrating with huge smiles on their faces. 

The meeting begins without any small talk and they tell us immediately: “We cannot make a decision at this time”. They are impressed with our progress but the panelists brought up difficult questions that we were simply not able to answer. So what’s next? Antler is gonna send us questions that we need to answer in the next 24 hours and then they will be able to make a decision. 

This feels like a loss to me, since I feel so emotionally exhausted and I don’t know if I can do better than I already did during the pitch. We receive full feedback the next day and they are very specific questions about our defensibility, copyright and go-to market strategy. Meeting is planned the next day with the Antler team, and we need to send our answers beforehand, so we are back to the drawing board. My co-founder does wonders. His deep technical expertise is displayed perfectly in the tech-related answers with just the right  amount of confidence to calm any doubts the investors may have. I do my absolute best to match his level for copyright and go-to market questions. We submit them the next day.

Finally, the last meeting comes around. I try to introduce some small talk because I am literally afraid of what they are gonna say. One of Antler’s partners cuts it short and just goes to the point–we got the investment. It’s been 23 days from the first meeting with my co-founder to raising our first investment. Now it seems like it’s such a short amount of time, yet the emotional journey in these 23 days was absolutely insane and I loved it. I believe one of the biggest offenses you can make is to sleep-walk through life. Antler’s program definitely felt like I am living up to this standard I sought out for myself.

Week 9—Formality.

Last week felt easy after the rollercoaster that we just had. It was one big celebration of efforts and heart that everyone put into their businesses. I was so happy for every team that succeeded, since I really wanted to continue this journey with everyone from the program. Feelings are bittersweet, I am very happy with our progress and the fact that I actually get to go and build a company now, but I am sad that I will not be able to see most of these people on a daily basis.

To wrap it up, I just want to end by suggesting a way to make up your mind whether this program is for you or not–if even a tiny spark of curiosity has been inflicted on you by reading this article–go for it. Really, what is the worst that can happen? Taking a leap of faith in yourself is never a failure if you can honestly say that you tried your best.

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Additional explanations by Antler:

[1] In Amsterdam Antler organizes 3 cohorts (aka residencies or programs) a year, this number and its length differs between the locations. Read more about how it works in Amsterdam here.

[2] Pre-program is organized before the actual program starts. That includes program like ideation sessions and speed networking.

[3] Antler makes a €100k fixed-terms investment to the best teams from the residency. More here.

[4] Antler’s Amsterdam offices are located at EDGE Workspaces - Olympic in short Edge. It’s a co-working space where the program happens on the ground floor and Antler’s office is on the third floor.

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