Episode 29 | Part Two: Change the World

Gregory Shepard, an entrepreneur who's built and sold 12 businesses, a recipient of 4 private equity awards, TEDx speaker, and Forbes author. This is The Boss Podcast with Gregory Shepard.

Thanks for joining me once again for my talk with Magnus Grimlund, the founder of Antler, a global early-stage VC investing and enabling thousands of entrepreneurs worldwide to realize their dreams and change the world. So Magnus, you and your team do not define Antler as an accelerator because you don't incubate ideas, but rather support exceptional individuals on their journey to entrepreneurship. Can you tell us how it works, and can you talk a little bit about your Antler residency program?

Yes, so what we do is we invest in people. So if you're thinking about starting something or building something and you raise— you want to raise your first bit of capital or you want that kind of first partner to come on board, Antler is the right place. So what we focus on is very much that first money in, helping to build companies from scratch. Now, if you compare us to the rest of the ecosystem, you'll have, you know, accelerators such as Y Combinator, which typically invest in companies that are 1.3, 1.5 years old. So it's a little bit later on in the journey when the company's already incorporated and they will help kind of build early traction. And obviously you have VCs like Sequoia who invest at any stage of the journey. And then you have later stage investors. So what we are focused on is where that first money is. So we want to be the best partner to great founders as they're just getting started. So if you're thinking about building a business right now, you should go and check out Antler at antler.co. Now, what does that really mean? Well, so when you're starting a business, The number one thing is you need to build a kick-ass co-founder team.

When you, when you try to find your co-founders, everyone has their own network, so you need to obviously leverage that and get people on board that you know. But unfortunately, it's such that you tend to know a lot of people that are similar to yourself, and we know that the best startup teams out there are quite diverse teams, especially in terms of competencies. So if you're a great operator, you need the You probably benefit from a great technical co-founder. If you're a great technical co-founder, it's great to get a great operator on board. And we look at about 50,000 founders per year. We select the top 3% and have this co-founder network of about 3,800 co-founders from all across the globe that are working on disrupting specific industries. So you can get access to other great co-founders to build a kick-ass team. And that, I think, is the most important to succeed because the team really determines everything, what you're going to build, how you create that momentum. the next people you hire. So finding the best co-founder team really determines a lot of the success. The second thing you need is product-market fit validation. So let's say you're building a cancer drug. You want to ensure that, you know, as much as possible, the technology that you're working on is validated, that you break it down into milestones. You should talk to people who are, you know, deep into the industries, know what competitors are doing, know know what people tried that didn't work. So when you get started, you build on top of what every other person in front of you has built and don't start from scratch and reinvent the wheel. If you're building something in B2C or B2B, similarly, like how can you get as much momentum as possible early as you're building your business? You know, how can you get the product out there, get customers, leverage that momentum to hire great people, get more capital on board, get more customers on board. So those are the 2 things we're very focused on is like great co-founder team, great product-market fit. So you know that if you've been through kind of the Antler process and you've been accepted here, you will have access to a great amount of co-founders and spend a lot of time with the Antler team validating your business model. And then we also come in with the first bit of capital. So we invest in people and not in companies. We're also long-term investors, so if we back you in the first round, we want to back you all the way to your exit. So we can put tens of millions of dollars into your business while we start off with a few hundred K in the first investment. And we do that anywhere across the globe. So we're in South America, North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia, in 23 countries. So chances are, you know, wherever you're listening to this, we'll have a hub close to you. And if you're thinking about building something, We'd love to be a partner of you in that journey.

So the Antler residency program, is that like an internship program or can you talk a little bit about what that is?

Yeah. So let's say a founder's journey typically starts with them thinking, you know, let's say you're working at Spotify in Stockholm and you're thinking about, okay, now I want to leverage my competency to build something new. Then typically you would start thinking about what that is, start looking for co-founders, Then at some point you quit your job and you start building. That's the time when we want to start working with you is you can then come to our office, you can spend 6 months with us there. Most people come before they incorporated their business and there will be around 100 other people there working on interesting stuff. Plus we have 10 full-time Antler people in that city, plus about 70 advisors in that city, plus you get tied into the global network of founders who are also building. And out of that, you know, will come a co-founder team and a great business model that you're working on. And if you get to that level where you have a great team and you're working on something that really makes sense and you're solving a real problem, we will back you with capital. So that's how that process really works. It's like when you leave your job and you're thinking about building something, you know, you have a free office space. If you don't have— if you need money to pay your rent or living costs and you've been selected into Antler, we will also— you can apply for a grant. So you can also get paid throughout this process, which really helps, I think, democratize the whole entrepreneurship journey because you can access a similar type network that I was lucky to have after my McKinsey and Harvard career through the network that we built. And it's a true global network. So we end up just working with a very diverse set of founders, right? Like some people come from a very humble background. Some people have, you know, been to all the right places before. before they join. You know, we have 35% of our teams have a female co-founder, people from all nationalities and backgrounds. It's just a true kind of collection of exceptional people that are the top 3% that we could find who are there working for 6 months on getting their next thing off the ground with, you know, the best professionals we could find in the game.

So we started off talking about you and then we went into Antler, and I want to go back to you a little bit because I'm just fascinated. If you were to list the most frequent success stories, is there a pattern that you see when you look back on companies? Like, is there any pattern that's a recurring pattern that you notice with the successful startups that you guys back?

There are 2 big patterns. One is the right team, and there are 4 factors of the right team. So, A, the founders themselves have a spike. So, there's something that they're better on than most other people, and that spike can be Anything really. It's just something that you're better on than most other people. And, you know, you all have friends like this who perhaps they go into an elevator and there's 12 strangers there and they become friends with everyone before the elevator hits the bottom floor. And they have that personal connection or perhaps sales is their strength. Other people will like to go home on Friday night when other people go out and just spend time solving a deep technical problem. or they're experts within a specific field. So you need, you need, you know, A, that spike. B, you need drive, which is a combination of passion and ambition and the ability to execute. C, you need grit, which is the staying power, right? Like think about Elon Musk and how many times his companies always went bankrupt or, you know, SpaceX blew up all the rockets before they had success. He almost had to mortgage his house. Tesla went bankrupt almost 6 times. A lot of people would have just given up on the way, but he had that staying power and great power, great founders have staying power. And then you need 2 or 3 of those, right? Like most businesses thrive when you have 2 or 3 quite diverse founders, especially in terms of skillset. So that's A, B, C, D. A being a spike, B being drive, C being grit, and then a combination of these people. And then the second thing is you need that team to kind of address a real problem, Right. There are a lot of startups out there who are kind of building something because it's kind of cool to be an entrepreneur, or they're building something because they're very excited about that specific technology, or they're building something because they didn't have the kind of opportunity to do something else. We very often see that these companies don't succeed, and I think it's partly why 99% of startups fail. But if they're solving a real problem and they spend real time identifying that this is a real problem and they spend real time thinking about how technology could solve that problem, combined with an exceptional team, then you will succeed. Then actually the whole startup journey doesn't become very risky. And this is why you see some serial entrepreneurs, they're succeeding again and again and again and again because they think really hard about putting together an exceptional team. They think really hard about solving a real problem utilizing a new technology or a new way to solve that problem.

It makes perfect sense. As a leader for you, how do you measure your own performance? I mean, we use leading and lagging KPIs and the valuation drivers, et cetera, et cetera, for the business. And different project manager software allows you to sort of check performance on your people. How do you measure your own performance?

Great question. I do this in 2 ways. So one is, I believe there are kind of, there are 3 frames of life that are very important for me. So A is what I'm doing professionally. B is, you know, my family and friends. And C is, you know, health, wellness, excitement, adventure, right? So it's kind of 3 categories like this. And I think that— and I'm not recommending everyone to do this, but I at least think kind of on this lens is quite long-term. So there's— I always have like a 10-year plan, I have a 5-year plan, I have a 1-year plan, I have a 3-month plan, and a 1-month plan. And I want to ensure that what I'm spending my time on this month somehow will get me closer to where I want to be 10 years from now. I get excited about thinking about that, right? And, you know, what those things are are kind of different in each bucket, right? So I know what I need to achieve at work. I know what I want to achieve with friends and family and my children. I know what I want to do adventure-wise and how I want to challenge myself this month. But I also know how that is tied into kind of a longer 10-year journey. And that 10-year journey is always very— That's a big goal. It's almost like unachievable in a way, but exciting to think about. So, that's one aspect. So, I can very kind of clearly see how I'm developing towards that. And the second thing is, I'm at work, I'm quite data-driven. So, what we do is we try to ensure that we have a mission-driven leadership, myself included. There are 2 or 3 kind of KPIs that everyone should think about as their most important thing to achieve. And, and we check in on that on a weekly basis, and I do that on myself as well. And, and there are certain milestones when I hit them that we celebrate, uh, and if, if we don't, we try to kind of rethink how we, how we can get there faster.

One last question I want to ask you, and, and then I'll give your, your day back to you. And I really do appreciate you taking the time to talk, to talk with us. It's, it's, it's really fantastic for entrepreneurs and investors to hear from People like you that are thought leaders in the industry. As an organization gets larger, there can be a tendency for the institution to damper the inspiration. How do you keep that from happening as the company starts to scale up?

I mean, there is this expression that I think Jeff Bezos is most famous for, but I think everyone should think through is like, it's always day 1 or always day 0. I think you need to build an organization as it grows that maintains that type of mindset. The only way to do that is to, I think, talk about it quite consistently, is the targets are always to a certain extent unachievable, and you're always working on solving kind of new important problems in your journey as a business. So, for example, we obviously now operate across 23 markets, we invest into about 400 new businesses per year. You know, we've been growing pretty large and we are now, I think, the world's largest venture builder or investor into talent. So we're in a much different position than we were 4 years ago when, you know, we made 13 investments and we only operated in Singapore. But I don't think anyone feels that we are further than 1% on the way on our journey. I think everyone very much feels that we're at the same stage as we were 4 years ago. because we've lifted the ambition. Every quarter we create new OKRs, and the OKRs we create for everyone, both personally and for the whole organization, are almost unachievable. So, you know, we're quite happy if we hit 70% of our targets. And by maintaining that way of thinking and always kind of raising the ambition, you always feel you're very early on in that journey. So I think building that Day zero, day one type mentality into the organization and into everything you do and building the reinforcing mechanisms around that will ensure that you maintain that mentality. And if you don't, you're going to get outcompeted because it's just so easy to kind of replicate and attack, you know, any type of business model from anywhere in the world these days. You need to have that mentality no matter how big you are as a business. Otherwise, you will slowly become one of the ones that gets outcompeted.

Yeah, I agree 100%. Thank you so much for, for being on the podcast.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

You're welcome. He's Magnus Grimlund, the founder of Antler. And that wraps up this episode of the BOSS Podcast. If you enjoy the show, please make sure to take a second and subscribe so you automatically get updates on the new shows when they drop. Also, if you have a minute, I'd love it if you left us a review so more folks like you can discover the show. I'll see you next time. Namaste, my friends.

Learn more about the BOSS Business Operating Support System at bossstartupscience.com, or you can reach Gregory Shepard at gregoryshepard.com. This has been a production of Forbes Books.