Principal, Antler
Investment Team
More information about location
4+ days a week in office
Early-stage Venture Capital firm
Be an early applicant
Early-stage Venture Capital firm
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
More information about location
4+ days a week in office
1001+ employees
Company mission
Antler's mission is to improve the world by investing in the most exceptional people who are building the defining companies of tomorrow.
Role
Who you are
- We’re looking for someone deeply curious about people, ideas, and company-building - someone who can challenge founders’ thinking, support early strategy, and help turn ambitious ideas into high-potential businesses. This is a hands-on investment role spanning founder assessment, company formation, and execution
- We don’t expect you to tick every box. If this excites you, we’d love to hear from you
- This role is likely a strong fit if you’ve been:
- A founder
- An early employee or operator at a high-growth startup
- An investor, operator, or advisor with significant exposure to early-stage investing
- VC experience is helpful, but not required. Deep experience building, scaling, or supporting early-stage companies is. We care more about the substance of your experience than the names on your CV, and we actively look for talented people from non-obvious places
- Significant experience building, operating in, or investing in high-growth startups, with exposure to the pre-seed and pre-revenue stages
- Former founder experience is a strong advantage, particularly with firsthand fundraising experience and the ability to empathise with founders
- Strong commercial judgement with the ability to assess markets, business models, and founder potential
- An active and credible network across the UK startup ecosystem that can be leveraged from day one
- A proven ability to thrive in ambiguous, fast-moving, and resource-constrained environments
- Comfortable coaching founders and making sound decisions with imperfect information
- Clear, confident communicator who builds trust quickly and leads sharp, honest conversations
- Bias to action: proactive, takes ownership, and turns up with solutions rather than waiting for instruction or permission
- Curious, commercially grounded, and energised by early-stage ambiguity
- Highly independent and accountable for outcomes
- Fluent with AI tools and workflows, and quick to adopt new ones
- Direct but kind; intense, low-ego, and focused on better decisions
What the job involves
- This is a core role on Antler UK’s investment team, focused on identifying and backing exceptional founders from day zero
- You will work with Partners and the Investment Team to source exceptional individuals, support them through Antler’s residency, lead opportunities end-to-end from sourcing to IC, and represent Antler in the UK ecosystem
- The pace is intense and highly founder-facing. This role requires ownership, energy, presence, empathy and judgement under pressure
- Identify and back exceptional founders early: Build conviction before traditional signals exist by assessing founder potential, ambition, resilience, and founder–market fit
- Leverage trusted relationships within the startup ecosystem: Tap into trusted relationships you already hold across founders, operators, investors, universities, and industry communities to find and win exceptional individuals. We want someone with a genuine hunger to find founders - because we need to find a lot of them - as well as build and leverage the broader relationships required to power them
- Work AI-first: Use AI tools to identify founders, personalise outreach, analyse data at scale, and maximise time spent with founders
- Support founders from idea to company and beyond: Help founders frame problems, validate opportunities, refine business models, understand customers, and build the foundations of scalable companies
- Guide early company strategy and execution: Coach founders on prioritisation, go-to-market thinking, business strategy, hiring, fundraising readiness, and the key decisions that shape a company’s early trajectory
- Lead investment diligence and decision-making: Evaluate founder quality, market opportunities, business potential, competitive dynamics, and execution capability. Bring sharp recommendations to IC
- Support fundraising and growth: Shape investor narratives, prepare founders for pre-seed and seed rounds, leverage networks for talent, customers, and investors, and support successful fundraising processes
- Strengthen the platform: Improve how we assess and support founders, contribute to Antler’s ecosystem presence, and build scalable systems and processes that maximise founder-facing time
Application process
- We review applications on a rolling basis and encourage early submissions
- Introductory conversation to explore your background, judgement, and motivation
- A working session-style first interview, including preparation of either an investment memo or structured founder/product assessment (details provided)
- Final conversations with senior members of the UK team, concluding with an in-person discussion with a UK Partner
Salary benchmarks
Our take
Antler is a global start-up generator and early-stage VC company. The company aims to find innovative start-ups and assist the entrepreneurs in the first steps of establishing their business while providing them with pre-seed funds and a stipend for living expenses. The company usually accepts less than 5% of the applicants.
Antler is different from other VC companies through the fact that they offer a wide range of services that enable founders to thrive, such as helping founders find the right co-founder, validating companies' business models, and connecting founders with advisors. The company aims to build a diverse portfolio of startups that it chooses to fund - currently, Antler funded businesses in 17 industries, built by entrepreneurs from 36 nationalities, with more than 50% of companies including at least one female founder.
The current challenge faced by the company is finding new ways to continue its expansion plans and to attract funding, allowing it to support innovative startups. The company has recently raised considerable funding, which will fund the expansion of its operations in Amsterdam, London, New York, Stockholm, Sydney, Nairobi, Oslo and Singapore.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Funding (2 rounds)
Feb 2020
$26.5m
Jan 2020
$53m
Total funding: $79.5m
Company benefits
- Work from home opportunities
Company HQ
Bras Basah, Singapore
Leadership
Dilan Mizrakli Landgraff
(Co-Founder & Partner)Previously Associate - Acquisition and Leveraged Finance at J.P. Morgan for 4 years and Senior Investment Associate at Altor Equity Partners also for 4 years
Fridtjof Berge
(Co-Founder & Chief Business Officer)Previously Head of E-commerce at Why Not As for 1 year and Consultant at McKinsey & Company also for 1 year
Jussi Salovaara
(Co-Founder & Managing Partner)Previously Senior Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company for 5 years and Advisor at The Scale Factory for 1 year
Magnus Grimeland
(Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer)Previously Associate Principal & Junior Partner at McKinsey & Company for 5 years and Managing Director at Rocket Internet for 4 years
Prerna Sharma
(General Partner)Previously Software Developer at Tata Consultancy Services for 1 year and Recruiter at Uber Technologies for 2 years
Vegard Medbø
(Co-Founder & Chief Commercial Officer)Previously Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company for 5 years and Coastal Ranger at Norwegian Armed Forces for 2 years
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