The World Needs More Founders. Why We Are Building Antler.
It may seem like entrepreneurship is exploding in the U.S. and that we have more entrepreneurs than we could ever possibly need. The numbers in the news certainly suggest there is a significant amount of money being poured into startups. In 2021, $621 billion was invested in startups via venture capital, more than double the amount in 2020. ¹
Despite this explosion of venture capital funding in total dollars, I actually think too few people are building new startups. Of the $621 billion invested into start ups last year, only 7,713 new companies received venture capital funding in North America. ² Assuming an average two founders per startup, that is 15,426 founders who were funded in 2021.
That may sound like a lot of people, but I believe it’s at least an order of magnitude below the total amount of founders that should be building startups. This is arguably one of the biggest underutilizations of talent in the entire country. To put that number in perspective, the coal industry employed 39,000 people full time in 2021, there were two times as many people employed as coal miners than as new founders in the U.S.
Founders are essential to progress. They build startups that solve unique problems in the market. Every new founder increases the total amount of brain power society has trying to solve problems, and we currently have no shortage of problems to solve.
Startups are the best engine society has at solving new problems. The only way a new startup can make any money is to solve a problem people are willing to pay for, which means they have to solve a problem in a new, better way. Incumbent companies have a lot of other ways to make money as they grow and accumulate resources, which means their motivation to continue solving market problems diminishes over time.
If we don’t massively increase the number of founders in the U.S., the sheer number and complexity of problems we need to solve will outrun our ability to solve them. One of the most impactful things we can do to ensure a bright and hopeful future is to help more people become founders.
Some would argue, rather pessimistically, that we have already reached the total limit of founders, that all the people who “have what it takes” are already building startups, and those that can’t figure it out would never make it. I don’t think this is true. There is no reason to believe that 0.005% ³ of the population is somehow the total amount of capable founders in our country.
Being a founder is an incredibly hard job, but so is becoming a doctor or professional athlete. One key difference is the number of residency slots or NBA spots is fixed. There is no upper limit on the total number of founders who can successfully build startups. There is infinite demand for founders who can solve big problems because there are always new problem to be solved. There is also, notably, a lot of capital to support them downstream.
I would argue that there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people in the U.S. who have what it takes to be successful founders, but they just haven’t taken the leap. They are sitting on the sidelines, but we need them in. the. game. This begs the question, what’s holding them back?
The answer lies in the current pathway to becoming a founder, it’s unnecessarily difficult because we just haven’t built good infrastructure to support people from day zero. Here is what the average American has to look forward to on their journey to becoming a founder:
Ground zero. You leave your stable job to focus full time and brain power on your new startup, because it’s nearly impossible to build a successful startup part time.
Goodbye income, medical insurance, 401k, et al.
It takes a really good startup months to make its first dollar, and will take much longer to replace your salary. Hope you have at least 12 months of savings to burn through while you build.
Starting out you have some questions. You want to get up to date on the latest startup wisdom. You read as many books and articles as you can find on how to build a startup. You walk away with 1,000 different contradictory frameworks, half of which are written by people who have never actually built a company.
It would be nice to talk to a few people who have actually built companies who can help you organize your thoughts and priorities. You press on, confused by all the advice bouncing around in your head; still unsure exactly where to start.
To keep spending low, you decide to start working at home. After the initial excitement of your new adventure wears off, you find yourself staring at a blank wall in home office. The loneliness of building a startup sets in. You bounce ideas back and forth with your dog, who’s sitting contently under your desk. You think about how nice it would be to have a group of other founders to collaborate with — people who get what you’re doing. People to share with.
Weeks of grinding start to pay off. You start to refine a clear problem statement that you find meaningful. You ping a few potential customers on LinkedIn who love the idea. You hack together a quick MVP and ship. Your first dollars of revenue start flowing in. Things are starting to click, but managing this all alone is starting to become unsustainable; it’s time to raise some money to grow your team.
Raising money should be easy — $621 billion was invested into start ups last year, right? Your friends who work in tech tell you there is money everywhere. Sweet.
You build a deck and outline all you hard work. You polish your problem statement, define you customer segment, explain your solution and what you think your unit economics will look like. You make a slide with the best picture you can find of yourself and smash a bunch of logos beneath.
You send your deck to 100 email addresses that you found on a google sheet some charismatic tech human shared on Twitter. You don’t know what any of these people do in their firm, but how else do you break in?
95 never answer, despite multiple follow ups. You check if you got the emails right. Yep, they were right — no response.
Four answer with short notes,
“cool idea, come back when you have more traction.”
“have seen this before, don’t think the market is big enough.”
“sorry this is a little too early for us, put us on your newsletter.”
None of this is helpful. You spend hours reworking your deck trying to figure out what you aren’t communicating clearly. You start question if you “have what it takes”.
One VC answers back, excited and asking you for a five year pro-forma. You spend days plugging in wildly hypothetical numbers to an excel sheet that you slowly tweak, polish and smudge until your growth looks perfectly up and to the right.
You spend two hours on a zoom call with this VC arguing over completely made up numbers in an excel sheet. They email you three weeks later saying “it’s a pass.”
Slightly hyperbolic? Sure — but this is largely the path we have laid out for anyone who wants to become a founder.
This is what is holding people back. Yes, being a founder is hard, but it shouldn’t be this hard to get started.
Performing open heart surgery is hard, even for well trained, well financed surgeons. Imagine how much harder it would be if we just threw anyone who wanted to be a doctor straight into the OR in order to get into medical school. Also, imagine how dumb that would be.
The current “startup zeitgeist” often overlooks the incredible valley of death that lies in front of founders just to get to a VC pitch. It’s easy for investors to forget that when they meet a team looking to raise their first round of capital, that team has often already put in 6–12 months of blood, sweat and tears with absolutely no support.
Meet Antler. We are here to build a better pathway for founders. We are here to provide better support for founders in the first 6 months of launching a new startup. We believe that anyone that wants to dedicate their life to solving problems should have an opportunity to do so. There is so much capital in the U.S. market ready and waiting to invest in great founders downstream ($651bn a year to be exact) but we need more founders. Our platform focuses on solving three key barriers for founders who are building a new startup.
Funding. Institutional quality funding for founders in the first 6 months of their journey still hasn’t been built in a way that makes sense, or that is particularly founder friendly. This is mostly because the same methods used in assessing a later stage startup are being applied to brand new startups. In the beginning, a founder doesn’t have all the things that go into a normal VC pitch deck, and they honestly shouldn’t — so using that as a way to make investment decisions creates a misalignment. Worse, it lures founders into building “decks” instead of building their startup, which is bad.
We believe we can make great early stage investment decisions based on two things:
- Are the founders exceptional problem solvers and builders, and;
- Are the founders hell bent on solving a clearly stated, meaningful problem.
Neither of these require a “pitch deck” in the traditional sense.
We assess these two things by inviting founders to come and work with us in person for 6 weeks. During these 6 weeks, founders can fully focus on deepening your understanding of the problem you want to solve, speaking to potential customers, and starting to sketch out what a better solution would be and how you will build it. This intensive 6 week sprint gives us an opportunity to assess how strong you are at problem solving and building, and to better understand the problem you want to solve. It also, importantly, gives you the ability to get to know us before we join your cap table.
In week 7, all founders will have the opportunity to pitch our investment committee and present your idea and your hard work. Show us you’ve found a meaningful problem with real customers, tell us how you want to solve it, and tell us why you’re the best person to build it.
If Antler decides to invest, we will write you a check for $150,000 in a post money SAFE in exchange for 7% of your new startup. We believe this gives founders a healthy runway of 8–12 months to work on finding product market fit. If we decide not to invest, we will give you thoughtful and meaningful feedback on why and support you finding your next move. We believe transparency and candor are paramount.
That’s it. Seven weeks to raise your pre-seed round. No ghosting, no vague feedback and no made up, 5 year pro formas. Truly backing founders to solve big problems.
Coaching. Skip the countless articles telling you how to build a startup from people who have never done it. The reality is every new startup is different, which makes it incredible hard to give advice that applies equally to all startups. Our team and advisors have all been a part of building real companies, and are here to provide you with specific and relevant feedback and guidance on what you are building.
We always believe founders should be experts in what you are building, so we are here to help on how to build it. Whether it’s a brainstorming session to talk through ideas and have someone add perspective, or you need help in building out a cash flow model for your new business, we have you covered.
Our support doesn’t end once we invest. Antler startups will have access to our team and our advisors for the life of your company — just tell us what you need.
No bullshit, just real humans here to help you succeed.
Community. Building a startup is one of the hardest things you can choose to do. Doing it completely alone makes it even harder. We design our founder batches so that you get plugged in to an immediate community of 20–30 other founders in person who are also building new startups side by side with you.
We find this helps in multiple ways. First, it gives you an incredible social support system of exceptional and likeminded individual who get what you are doing. Second, it gives you an immediate network of people you can trade skills with. There is almost always someone in your batch that knows how to do that thing you are trying to figure out. We find building in a community helps everybody move way faster.
On top of your batch mates, you will also have access to the entire Antler network of thousands of founders around the world for the life of your startup. We find this to be incredibly helpful to provide founders quick and meaningful access to the people they want to talk to. Whether it be customers, advisors or new hires, our global network of 14 and counting funds across the world serves as a powerful tool to help you get in front of people that can help drive your startup forward.
As Antler continues to grow and add more exceptional founders to our ranks, the network value continues flowing in your direction. This part always makes me think of the famous proverb “if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together”. Communities of founders working together to solve problems is the future.
That’s what we are building, because we believe the world is a better place when people are using their talents to solve problems and become founders.
If you, or anyone you know, has ever thought about taking the leap and building a startup — and you are truly ready to dedicate yourself to doing so then we want to help you. Antler currently has two locations in the U.S. in New York City and Austin with plans to open more locations in Boulder, Miami, Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston and Chicago in the next 5 years.
