We are about to start the Antler program in the Nordics in just 5 days and I can’t wait. For the past 6 weeks, we’ve had the pre-ramp phase, where we already started chatting with other founders and Antler coaches, mentors and partners.

For those that don’t know, Antler is a 12-week program that helps you meet like-minded founders and work on ideas in a systematic way. At the end of the program, you present your progress to an Investment Committee to see if your startup will get funded by Antler VCs. If so, they also help you with raising more capital down the road, make connections with industry, validating ideas, etc. If you don’t get funded, you’d still be a part of the Antler community, which is also super valuable in my opinion.

The Nordics program runs in four cities: Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki and Copenhagen. So far, I think there are almost 200 people combined.

My approach to Antler

First, I feel very fortunate to be part of an extraordinary group that wants to change the world in positive ways. Getting to know the people around me feels like a super win already. Furthermore, I do feel that anything can happen in 12 weeks. Maybe you find the perfect team, a great idea, validation and get funded, but maybe you don’t. This is my first time that I try to raise funding from VCs so I’m not the most experienced in this area. But I do feel that beyond whether you get funding or not, the connections, people we meet, and even new friends we make here are so valuable in and on themselves. So I do hope to forge long lasting relationships with driven, ambitious people that want to have positive impact in the world.

What we’ve done so far

We’ve had two online Meet & Greets, where we’ve been introduced to the program and to other founders. On these calls, after all program intros, we’ve been assigned to different groups to start getting to know each other more. I’ve even met one founder that happens to live a couple of blocks from me and we’ve already met (families and all) and have had a great time!

Also, we have our own Slack Workspace for communications and intros. So every founder introduces themselves with background, mission, hobbies, Loom video, etc. Then, we start reaching out and start making connections. We also have an ideas channel for people to share what they want to work on, get advice, validation, questions, feedback and so on.

Lots of resources have been shared with us already. Some of it can feel overwhelming as there is a lot of information. Also, on the overwhelming feeling, trying to connect with 200 people is also quite the endeavour, but I’m planning to take one step at a time.

We’ve also had a couple of talks: one on Trends & Exciting Ideas and one on How to Discover Your Start-Up Idea, by Oscar Wetergård. Next up, we will have a talk on Building a VC Backable Company with Anne Solhaug Tutar. All super exciting!

I’ve also started some preliminary work with other founders on a couple of ideas. One of them around circular economy and another on helping people discover new knowledge with an AI-copilot. The latter one I’m very excited about.

Looking ahead

When I entered Antler, I wanted to work on solutions that can help climate change. I’m worried about how some regions can become inhabitable by droughts, extreme heat and extreme weather. Since my expertise is in Machine Learning and AI, I’d like to explore solutions that can leverage this tech. However, I do feel the tech (AI or not) is secondary in importance, rather the goal itself (e.g., reducing GHG, Helping the world transition to clean renewable energy) is the main driver. Currently, I don’t have the domain knowledge on how to best help the climate, but I’m learning. If anyone has ideas on this space, I’d love to hear them.

In any case, I’m super excited to be a part of the program. A huge thanks to all the organizers for making all of this happen. It’s been amazing so far, and we are only at the pre-ramp phase. I can’t wait for the actual program to start in just 5 days and see what we build together and how we change the world.

If you liked this update, let me know so that I can share further updates on the Antler program as we along.