Antler - Day 1

Wed Mar 27, 2024

Impressions

So I'm starting at Antler. As far as I can tell, this is a massive networking event for potential cofounders.

• Surprisingly many business dudes so far (stats slide confirms this; we're about 55/45 split on business vs tech founders)
• Smaller-scale, and commensurably earlier YC-like arrangement
• The mixer is full of people from various backgrounds; scruffy nerds are the minority, which makes my feel a bit out of place
• There's at least one company here with existing cashflow, but people past the idea stage are a pretty tiny minority
• Also, got a superhero-esque photo taken. Hopefully I can live up to it.

Welcome Deck

• We'll get access to the co-working space
• Socializing is encouraged the entire way through
• There'll be "lunch roulette" each day. This involves getting randomly grouped in batches of 5 or 6 people to chat in order to maximize social exposure.
• 20 of us are going to be giving a 3-minute founder intro (no one told me I'd be up there, so I'm assuming I'm going tomorrow)

The Goal

• Bring together people with the potential to get a startup off the ground, but that wouldn't necessarily get the chance for geographic/demographic reasons (ie, don't live in San Francisco)
• This section is selling Antler to us. I'm... not sure it's necessary, but I'm known to be less big on pomp and circumstance than is strictly optimal

The Team

• Magnus Grimeland - founder and CEO (former navy seal with the Norwegian spec-ops. So I'm expecting a good amount of the Extreme Ownership mentality from the team here as a result of founder effects. Good; I'm into it.)
• There's a global network of executives that have information/connections to help out
• The current cohort is TOR 5 (the fifth cohort in Toronto), largest cohort to date at 70 founders. Show a bit of history, including the first cohort and the previous cohort
• We'll be hearing from some of the success stories from previous cohorts, including several non-software ones

How You Got Here

• "TOR5 is curated & selective" (there have been 5,231 applications and 70 of them got selected. There's slightly fewer than 70 people here; a few late arrivals apparently)
• Throwaway comment comparing exclusivity percentages to Harvard.

"Why are YOU here"

• Take a moment to think about why you're here
  • Three answers from the audience:
    • "Take a big swing"
    • "Go faster"
    • "To build my network"
• Natural question to investors: "What do you need to see to invest?" No straightforward answer here. "Ship product. Move fast and kill things that aren't working. Focus on what you want, and lean into it hard."
• The question we want you to ask is "What kind of founder do I want to become?". And yes it's a cliche, but goddamn it, it's a cliche that speaks to me at the bone level. Admittedly, entirely because of my background.
• Also, yes, big "Extreme Ownership" energy from the flavor.

Differences between VC backing and bootstrapping

• VCs are looking for big leverage
• Something that's not marginally better but exponentially better
• Large potential market
• Key thing here is "think big"
  • The level of risk
  • The urge to grow
  • Think in funding cycles, not years
• Three example companies are "Verafin", "ecobee" and "wattpad". I've only heard of one of these before, but given that these are their success stories, I'm assuming they went well.

Trajectory

• (lol at the name collision with Trajectory labs, although a quick search reveals several collisions here, not just the Toronto AI safety group)
• "Whether you find your right co-founder in week one, four or eight, it's about defending the opportunity and making progress"

But no, What Are You Really Looking For?

• At the end of the day, it's an art and not a science
• Solution & Problem
  • Clear Need & Pain, Scalable & Defensible, Innovation, Difference, Go-To-Market, Traction
• VC Fit
  • Fit for VC play, Unicorn Potential, CapEx, International Market & Growth
• Founder Fit
  • Experience & Knowledge, Team & Chemistry, Passion, Drive, Grit, Leadership
• Founder First
  • Credibility, trust and visibility are the key to securing investment
• So yeah, again, big ExOwn energy. Into it. #3 is a non-issue,

Parting Words

"A comfort zone is a beautiful place but nothing ever grows there".

"We all have powerful ideas. But an idea is powerless unless it comes outside of you" - Nancy Diarte

"Own Your Experience" - EO Maxim

(Yeah, there it is)

Local Team Intros

• Bernie Li (current speaker; also, one of the dudes I interviewed with, founder inspired by a couple of his friends, really proud of a Rick Mercer segment he was on with Mike Holmes)
• Naman Budheo (pronounced "Neigh-man", into travel tech, has started up a bunch)
• Alex Wright (Finance guy, and sounds like a hype-man :p Worked at NextCanada (which is like Antler, but earlier stage and with lower average experience). Dog named Creemore after his favorite beer. Has a pic of himself with his son next to a Cybertruck)
• Daphne McLarty (program manager, CPA, started at PwC, sounds like this is their risk person, really likes tennis and Taylor Swift)
• Shambhavi Mishra (pronounced "Shambovi", introduced as "Sham". Has like 10 years experience in VC investment. Inspiring, Yang/CEO energy. Like, picture a Type 1 personality in the form of an Indian woman, and that's her outward persona)
• Yohann John (director venture scouting, history of founding, started out as a tech founder himself during India's tech boom, moved over into VC later on. His professor is Chris Carder, started out from the beginning at Antler. "Don't be a 5pm founder". "You're going to have good weeks and bad weeks. You'll have a week where you're working hard and your clients are telling you your product is awesome, and you'll have a week where you broke up with your co-founder and your customers are telling you you suck. I'm a good person to talk to when you're having a bad week, but you'll have them and they'll be bad.")
• Hersh Gandhi (history of founding, former "Chief of Staff to an Assistant Cabinet Minister" (which at first glance sounds like something ridiculous out of Kafka or Hitchiker's Guide, but in terms of responsibility and impact seemed pretty intersting once he explained it))
• Alexa, Matthew and Sofia are also junior members of the team? "They'll be around to help you out"

Welcome to 111

• Local startup accelerator. They manage the space and help incubate startups here (there's a list of names coming out, the big stand-out I heard was WealthSimple. So, thanks guys, you're the reason I have a bunch of NVDA right now.)
• Most of their startups are at the seed/series A stage (an example is flosonic, which apparently just closed $25mil?)
• Rules of the space start with "Just... be cool to other people? That's all we ask. Just if you can be respectful of the people in the space."
• We'll be set up on the 111 slack
• This is apparently the first Antler cohort where they've dedicated space?

111 Team

• Nicole - marketing person
• Janil - operations at 111
• Janvi - manages the workshops/group event things
• Simba - ??? (missed this one because I was looking stuff up, guessing another OPs guy?)

General Rules

1. Only use meeting rooms designated for Antler. The Antler cube, the two corner cubes in the cohort corner and the Antler Zone (431, 433, 435).
2. Respect others' workspace. Slightly-less-restrictive-than-library rules; minimize noise pollution
3. Keep your workspace clean
4. No unauthorized guests (give your Antler guys a heads up if you want to bring in visitors who don't themselves have Antler access)
5. Shared Resources; mindful of others' needs when using shared resources. We try to minimize noise pollution, but that includes asking you guys not to have loud conversations outside the designated booths.
6. Security: do not give or share your Kisi pass to anyone
7. Respect privacy: Respect others' privacy and confidentiality in shared areas
8. Building hours: need special permissions to get in before 6:00 AM or after 7:00 PM. Talk to someone if you want 'em.

Building Amenities

• Accessible through another app, Otto.
• Bike storage, showers + locker facilities, pickleball court (??) and a patio. No gym, which is mildly odd given the showers.
• Underground gourmet cafe/lounge. Caf open 7:30am - 2:30pm
• Simba being the bad cop:
  • Do not take meeting rooms you didn't book
  • Do not go into offices you don't belong in
  • Respect the space (apparently they're full up this year, so there isn't spare space in any sense)
  • Please put the cups in the dishwasher

Questions:

• Why is it called "111"?
  • That used to be the old address, and they're working on it
• Can we book private meeting rooms for ourselves?
  • Just in the designated Antler spaces. We haven't really patrolled this before, but we're really full this time so we're going to be serious about enforcement

Final Notes

• The breakout rooms will have meetings/1-on-1s booked in them
• The hallways are all named after Toronto streets (eg, Bay Street, Spadina, etc). All meetings we'll invite you to are at 111, do not go to the Toronto intersections designated by those streets (apparently this has happened at least once in previous cohorts)

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Tour, social time and lunch. Impressions of the tour are about what you'd expect from this sort of thing. Large, open concept spaces and some designated space for their big clients. Decent break rooms, but unlike WeWork, they're not big on the non-dairy. I'll have to either bring my own or sneak over there during lunch to get my oat milk hot chocolate on.

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Random Impression Notes

• There's a lot of different people here, with a variety of ideas. Highlights:
  • A duo doing biotech/chem work to accelerate the speed of scientific research
  • A relentless prototyper that's put together a bunch of smaller apps using the current available AI APIs (mostly Gemini and OpenAI)
  • Someone looking to optimize the process of city design (both for existing cities, new construction projects and locations at the border of growing from suburb/town into a city)
  • Lots of business and tech people without a current idea, but willing to pick stuff up
  • Yield prediction for greenhouses and farms
  • A few people looking to build specialized AI companions
  • At least one person with thoughts similar to mine regarding the shape he wants out of the glorious robot future.

Backgrounds vary from "this is my second thing after doing one job out of college" to "I've had multiple exists and am looking to do interesting things with my time"

Founder Intros

Dan Perry

• UC Berkley
• Looking for a technical co-founder
• has a bunch of ideas (worth a chat)

Harish

• Dad power (confirmed, by the way, he's incredibly high energy)
• Has lots of ideas and is open about them, nothing picked yet

Mustafa Saeed

• Growth exec
• Hipster hustler
• Looking for tech peeps
• Currently hates marketing companies and wants to eat their lunch

Tony Lau

• Finance guy, idea agnostic, has done software engineering in finance (interested in W3 and AI, software is a footnote)

Justin Yap

• Lawyer
• Initial idea (seriously dating :p) involves AI agents for old age adults (AgeTec)

Gwen Lim

• Didn't know she was supposed to talk (oh, shit, so I might be up here too :|)
• Fintech from UofT
• Idea agnostic,

Steven Gans

• Yes, that's his actual last name
• Confident about presenting, unaffected by stage fright
• Confirms that the high level NATO generals don't have gears-level understanding about implementation details
• Idea has to do with synthetic data

Brendan McGivern

• Amateur carpenter
• "End-to-end ML based solutions"
• Father of two
• Really likes golf
• Yield prediction for greenhouses (specifically mentioned tomatoes and strawberries)

Elie Alam

• Biomediac Eng, but got hired because he knew FoxPro
• Current idea has to do with wealth advisory application empowered by AI/GenAI
• "Building native generative AI applications (as opposed to current companies that are sort of sprinkling AI on top of an existing application) for people to build their net worths"
• AI copilot for investors

Lylia Djat-Paulien

• French/Tunisian
• Serial consultant,
• Looking for a founder with chemistry
• Current idea has to do with "succession planning" for small businesses (businesses whose CEOs/owners are retiring)

Tim Thornton

• Agnostic, but looking into Fintech for the Creator Economy
• Also former graphic designer? (BA Comms)
• Looking for a co-founder with chemistry
• Built a gig work application called "spot work", also build Swarmio (which he pronounces "Swarmeo" not "Swarm eye oh")

Mythri Murthy

• Pronounced "My3"
• Resilient, has a marketing/sales background, flourishes in the B2B SAAS space
• Looking for a technical cofounder, no... particular idea?

Shad Uadiale

• Software designer with previous entrepreneurship experience
• Bachelor in mech eng
• Current idea/problem space: intersection of AI/Healthcare, open to ideas
• Specifically looking for technical cofounder ('A founder who believes in the "Doing things that don't scale" mantra')

Christopher Villegas-Cho

• "Recovering policy whonk"
• Interested in ideas around small/medium business (around an upcoming transition point coming up. Seems like he should talk to the small business succession person)

Karan Deep

• BS elec and comms eng
• Current idea has to do with enterprise AI search (like, have a model specialized on information internal to a company, fulfill requests for information/coordination about internal information/logistics)
• Looking for a technical cofouder

Me (surprise!)

• Caught between note taking and thinking about my direction, ended up giving the shortest intro so far. Yay. Got some positive feedback on it later; I deliberately wanted to avoid some specific tropes and think I succeeded.

Pratheek Adi

• Current idea: gamify the AI journey for non-technical folks(sorry about the shorter notes here; adrenaline rush from absorbing a room's full attention subsiding)

Nazanin (Naz) Behroozian

• Excited about travel tech
• Open to any ideas
• Looking for a co-founder with chemistry

Petro Czupiel (Chupio)

• PhD from UofT
• Glow life
• Current idea: doing work in pharmaceutical industry (actually has a couple patents in novel drug delivery?) Not a match for me, but still worth chatting to just to find out more about divergent viewpoints

AAAAand my battery is about to die, so I'm gonna cut notes out now :|

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We're back at 35% battery charge. Wish me luck.

Keynote by Kirk Simpson

• Co-Founder, CEO of Wave HQ and goConfirm. Heard of neither of these, but both apparently successful, so cool.
• goConfirm is currently in the early product fit stage.
• He's gone to university twice (and dropped out twice)
• Part of the early 2000s tech bust, no university education and ~$45k in debt
• Started a new business while expecting third child, accounting software that ended up being acquired (Wave financial inc doing business as waveapps.com)
• Point: "all about the people"
• Point: Highs are high, lows are low (describes an exit for ~$500million, as well as a period of time that their runway was like a month).
  • I think the thrust here is the general "don't compare their highlights to your blooper reel"; in the sense that every company is "a complete gong show" behind the scenes.
• "It feels like you're not making progress, but if you grind it out everyday then you might start making big progress"
• The heartbreaking story he tells here is that there are times during the lifecycle of a company where pieces of the current team aren't the right ones to take the journey to the next step. The first conversation you have is "here's where we're going for the next step, and here's what metrics matter, and here's what we need from your role". The second conversation you have, if things don't end up coming together, is to be honest about what you're seeing and what changes you need to see. And then the third (if things continue to not be what you need) is that you're going to make a change but are appreciative for everything they have done to help get the company to that point.

Q/A

• Micro/macro lessons from the dot-com crash as relates to current market situation?
  • The best time to be a startup is now, not during the boom times. One reason is that during the boom times, what you get is people jumping around looking for ever higher wages and more options, and not really making an effort to contribute to the business they're currently at. As much as it's harder to get capital now, it's easier to attract and retain top talent. And from the company perspective, you want to be able to retain talent because losing them ends up losing a bunch of institutional and process knowledge, and getting you into the situation where you're constantly hiring and onbaording new folks vs. driving the business forward at pace.
• You already had a successful exit, why do it again?
  • Short answer is starting a company pushes you into a growth state that's really hard to avoid once you've felt it. He makes it sound like a compulsion, rather than a rational choice. In fact, as an aside, a lot of this talk is praise for intuition, following your gut and in-built knowledge rather than a raw systematizing kind of relation with the world.
• You talked earlier about cultivating loyal people and not losing them. How did you do that?
  • There's a particular person he hired that improved retention a lot. The specifics he points out is a combination of standard "bedside manners" stuff that techs are notoriously bad at, and a degree of authenticity with people. He also rejects the idea of the shit sandwich as a communication tool. I think in practice there's no good general answer here; you need to develop really good social skills and keep your wits about you the entire time. You need to be able to read the room, and figure out how to motivate a person effectively while avoiding crushing their literal souls.
  • He points out that top ICs are rarely good managers. Promoting them to management
    1. Takes away your best IC
    2. Gives you a mediocre manager
  • This isn't an endorsement of only hiring leaders from the outside, just noting that it's not as easy as "Congrats, IC! You're a manager now!" You need to give these people a lot of support and training in skillsets that they absolutely don't have as a result of their existing professional life.
• Staying in Toronto vs going to Silicon Valley?
  1. talent pool here is deep, but in some areas has a natural ceiling.
  2. today, it's even odds whether you'd go to the valley or not, back in the day it was like 1 in 10 that stay, and you'd always have smaller access to funding if you stayed. It's much more even now.
• How to raise capital in the AI world?
  • I lived through a lot of dilution. Bootstrap as long as you can; your job is to create as much value as possible to raise as much capital as possible at as good a valuation as possible. That said, with Wave, we knew we were on the VC trail If you're building free software, you're not going to be able to bootstrap as well. Know the game you're playing, and play that game.
• At what point do you stop hiring visionaries and start hiring mercenaries?
  • "Don't. I never liked mercenaries; as soon as I got a mercenary vibe, I ended up having a negative opinion. Now, that said, I've never run a sales department. We didn't have one, so I don't have experience hiring sales people. And maybe, you need lots of mercenaries for sales teams?"
• How do you decide to co-found with strangers? Which stranger should you choose out of a room like this?
  • "Break bread together". Yeah, that makes sense, he basically gives the Ostrom answer here. And points out that you don't necessarily want full alignment. You need to think both short-term and long-term at once, and balance the two here, in the sense that you don't want someone who's just going to stick around for this initial startup phase, or only function well during the good times. You want someone who can grow along with your business.
• What have you done to improve your intuition?
  • "Listen to it. It's harder than you think, but you have to actively tune it and listen to it. It's a practice, but it's not a deliberate structured practice." A lot of the finer points he lists here come down to standard rationality training, and then "trust your gut".
• When do you know when to hang it up and move on to something else, vs doing one more iteration?
  • "Yeah, that's a hard one. It's a values question. My values were that I was never going to put my family at risk. So that gives me a place I can take this to. So for example, I had been deferring a family vacation, and finally went on it during crunch time for my company. And ended up hating it; I had to be online and finding wifi the whole time and being stressed. At that point, this thing was going to fly or fail in the next 60 days, so I kept at it, but if it was another 12 moths, I might have made a different decision because it was starting to have a very negative impact on my marriage and life with my family."
• What can you do to organize the rest of your life to effectively be a founder?
  • Have a really supportive spouse/partners. Set up your company so that it's friendly to the family structures your employees have. Do not stop exercising; you need the energy and wellbeing from this. Especially at this phase you are the number one asset of your company, you wouldn't neglect other assets, don't neglect your own body either.
• Feel free to say "no" to this question. Founders sometimes get into regret mode; some founders can get over it and others can't?
  • What is regret mode?
• Like, getting into a mindset of "Oh, I shouldn't have done this".
  • You basically need to get your mindset out of regret mode, or at least out of recursive regret mode. There isn't an easy answer here, no trick for snapping yourself out of it easily.

Then There Was The Pub

We went down to the local pub to drink, chat more in a highly raucous manner while talking about businesses and/or non-business pursuits. I didn't take notes on that part, but rest assured it was fun and high-intensity.