Meet the seven new startups backed by Antler in Berlin
Antler, the global early-stage VC firm, hosted a Portfolio Reveal Day in Berlin on September 29th. At the event, seven companies sourced from the third Berlin-based cohort took to the stage to showcase what they have been working on while in stealth mode over the past months. The founders behind these startups have been developing solutions to address major challenges and growth opportunities in a diverse range of sectors, including Climatetech 🌎, Web3 🔮, Marketplaces 🚗, Agetech 👨👩👧👦, Creator Economy 🖼, Proptech🏠, and Spacetech 🪐.
Portfolio Reveal Day in Berlin
Antler’s Portfolio Reveal Day is a significant moment for founders and portfolio companies as the first time they are presented to the ecosystem. The event celebrates Antler’s new investments, and the respective companies’ departure from stealth mode.
Beginning with a video stream to a global audience of more than 2,000 people, founders presented their ventures to investors, other founders, experts, and executives. The Antler team then hosted an interactive Q&A at the Berlin office where prospective investors were invited to meet the brilliant founders behind the companies to speak about their products, new insights, and the stories behind the companies.
Christoph Klink, Partner at Antler, explains, “The Antler journey is truly a unique one, and we are proud to support the founders we work with from day zero. The global platform we have established allows us to 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 seven startups we have most recently backed. Whether it is addressing climate change, supporting energy renovations, or realizing the potential of web3 communities, these founders are creating outstanding tech companies that are addressing some of the world’s biggest challenges.”
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 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 50 carefully selected founders from a wide range of backgrounds, interests, and expertises. Now, just a few months later, we have seen ideas blossom into startups 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 seven startups revealed today originate from the third founder cohort in Berlin. They are the newest additions to a global portfolio that comprises over 550 startups 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 seven new startups backed by Antler in Berlin:
Gomoto — Marketplaces 🚗
What does Gomoto do? Gomoto is building an unparalleled, digital auction platform for used car sales in Germany that offers consumers an instant, attractive valuation for their car combined with a quick sale turnaround and simultaneously provides dealers with a convenient, low-cost high quality stock acquisition channel. Gomoto is unique to Europe, because it is the first company working on bringing the asset-light auction model to consumers and dealers at scale.
Who are the founders? The trio boasts over 27 years of automotive, technical, and marketplace experience. Malte Kerssenfischer, head of sales and operations, is a second-time founder with significant experience in the automotive industry across Paris, Sydney, and Berlin, including Auto1 Sales and Operations. Product and engineering are spearheaded by Ahmed Abumoustafa, who has over 10 years of software development experience at major e-commerce platforms like MyTheresa and has prior experience founding and being CEO of his own tech agency. Ayo Adeyefa heads the marketing and fundraising with experience at two marketplace scaleups in London and Berlin, most recently as Zenjob Chief of Staff.
Maya Climate — Climate tech 🌎
What does Maya Climate do? Maya Climate accelerates investments into Nature-based Solutions (NbS) to unlock 1 Gigaton of high-quality supply for carbon markets. The project financing platform connects early stage NbS projects to institutional investors and digitizes their risk assessment and due diligence processes, therefore allowing investors and project developers to discover and interact with each other more effectively.
Who are the founders? Christian-Hauke Poensgen, leading product and tech, has a background in software development, product management, and law and has built complex B2B software products before. Till Tornieporth, who leads business and operations, has advised large German corporations in their carbon procurement strategy allowing him to build a deep network in voluntary carbon markets.
Comoon — Web3 🔮
What does Comoon do? Comoon is building the next generation of infrastructure for web3 communities. The Comoon team has set out to remove the guesswork from building a web3 community by building a no-code analytics platform for web3 community builders. The team found a unique way to capture and structure blockchain and social platform data to make it easily accessible for non-technical users like community managers. For the first time, community builders are empowered to use data to better grow and engage their communities while cutting out repetitive tasks.
Who are the founders? The Comoon team brings a strong combination of technical and business building skills both from the web2 and web3 world. Lucian Tugui has over 20 years of engineering leadership experience at Mytheresa & Watchmaster and recently built an NFT marketplace in the Cardano ecosystem, getting to know the challenges of building a community from first-hand experience. Alex Schätzel started his career at BCG building analytics solutions for global brands and spent the last years building ventures at some of the leading tech scale-ups. Both are extremely passionate about helping fellow web3 community leaders to build healthy communities.
Gleans — Creator Economy 🖼
What does Gleans do? Gleans is building the easiest way to share what you love in one place. This powerful content hub combines the reach and convenient experience of our favourite social apps with the benefits of a personal website. Combining human connection with non-addictive platforms can give people what they came for on social networks in the first place: the feeling of belonging. With Gleans you can collect, curate, and share anything from anywhere with just 1-Click. It has never been easier to pass on long-term value to your audience while extending the reach of your social channels. Your Gleans profile is accessible on any browser with your custom domain and enables you to organize content in private, public, requestable, and even paywalled collections.
Who are the founders? Andreas Sohns, the CEO, is a former founder and an award-winning designer who dedicated his career to creating tools consumers love to use like an app he created and successfully exited that generated more than 300K downloads. Max Schollum, the COO, is an operator, who expanded the first NGO he founded to multiple markets, and led the scaling of unicorn company JOKR as head of operations from 1 to 300 employees in his home market of Austria.
Reach — Age Tech 👨👩👧👦
What does Reach do? There are nine million seniors in Germany alone with physical and psychological limitations that hinder their ability to access tools that can provide them with safety, health management, therapy, and human connection — all of which are critical to their well being. Reach eliminates these limitations by offering a device that turns any TV into a smart hub for seniors with an extremely easy-to-use haptic interface that provides safety, Health Management, Therapies, and Connection to their loved ones.
Who are the founders? Teo Ortega and Simon Hafner are the duo behind Reach. Teo, the CEO, is a product guru with company building experience having founded two companies, one of which was an electric kick-scooter sharing company that was acquired in 2020. Simon, the CTO, holds a MoA degree in Natural Language Processing and has over 12 years of experience as a software engineer and tech leader. He was recently a functional compiler engineer at IOHK, a software development firm best known for the Cardano blockchain platform.
Airmo — Space Tech 🪐
What does Airmo do? Airmo operates at the intersection of climate tech and space tech in setting the new global standard for continuous and global greenhouse gas emissions measurement by using small satellite constellations and an innovative and novel LiDAR technology. Airmo provides precise and unbiased intelligence on CO2 and CH4 emissions globally. Through a small satellite constellation and novel LiDAR instrument, the data is delivered in near real time with accuracy to monitor single facilities around the world.
Who are the founders? CEO Daria Stepanova studied Electrical Engineering and, after completing her Ph.D in Theoretical Mechanics, worked as an engineer in the small satellite sector and has been a part of 11 small satellite missions including Earth Observation, IoT, and Scientific and Technology demonstration missions. COO Pavels Razmajevs is ex-Deloitte, ex-Rocket Internet, and has experience working as COO at several deep tech and space tech companies. CTO Errico Armandillo is an industry expert with over 45 years of experience in the broad domains of space optics, instrumentation, and technologies.
Novo — Prop Tech 🏠
What does Novo do? Novo speeds up building emission reduction at scale: by digitizing analysis, planning, and financing of energy renovation. Novo automatically outputs the planning of renovation roadmaps, connects seamlessly with financial institutions and subsidies and finally delivers complete technical planning. So that homeowners can understand, plan, and take action to help their home contribute to saving costs and the planet.
Who are the founders? Novo was founded by Mona Hornung and Julia Wadehn who worked together before and scaled a VC-backed marketplace. They have over 30 years of combined experience. The roots of Julia’s career were in a decade-plus at Siemens Energy. Mona spent her first career in consulting, driving growth for high-growth startups with a focus on the energy sector.
