Tyler Norwood of Antler

Welcome to the Puck Venture Capital and Beyond, a show that examines the changing landscape of our world. We'll have candid conversations with VCs, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders grappling with our current challenges and providing solutions to key problems we face as a nation. I'm Jim Beer, president of CMBG Advisors. This podcast brings change makers to the table to discover the inner workings behind their decision making strategies and ultimately to how they got to where they are today. The reality is like everything is always available for disruption all the time.

I don't care what your background was. We're looking for people who break the mold, for people who do big exciting things, who set great massive aspirational goals for themselves and are realistic about what it's gonna take to actually build a company that has an impact. It's gonna take a lot of hard work. It's gonna take a lot of sleepless nights. If you're willing to commit to that, you've got a pretty good chance of building a successful company and we wanna help you do so.

So. On this episode of the Puck, we talk with Tyler Norwood, a managing partner at Antler, one of the most successful early stage global investment firms operating today. Tyler shares his unique journey into venture capital, developing his entrepreneurial skills while creating marketplaces in Southeast Asia, and his commitment to finding exceptional founders with a focus on assembling strong, innovative teams. Tyler Norwood, we are excited to have you here at the Puck today. And as the managing partner at Antler, why don't we start with tell us a little bit about your background and how you got to Antler.

Yeah. Well, thanks, Jim, a lot. Really excited to be here. I grew up all over The US. My dad was a salesman entrepreneur.

So I lived in 14 different houses from birth to going to college. So I got a a master's degree in being the new kid in school. I think that nature versus nurture, I was probably born with most of the personality that I have, but it was really reinforced to always be the new kid and and learn how to integrate into a new group of people and experience that. I went to school in Western North Carolina, Appalachian State. So that was sort of tier two business school.

I really loved the mountains and CU Boulder was too expensive out of state. So Appalachian State was the closest I could get to the mountains and I absolutely loved it there. It was great. I got a really great education, made a lot of amazing friends. And then I remember I went to career fair my senior year and there was banks, insurance companies and that was it.

And I remember I left there and I went straight to my counselor's office and had like an existential crisis. I was like, if I spent the last four years trying to get a job at a banker insurance company, like I wasted my time. I don't know what I'm doing here. I can't do this. I'm not doing any of these jobs.

We got to talk about something else. And she said, Well, you know, I do a trip to Vietnam every year with some students. Would you be interested in doing that? I said, Yeah, 100%. I'm going to do that.

But I'm not going to go on the trip. I'm going to move to Vietnam. I'm just going to stay there. So when you guys leave, I'm staying in Vietnam. I'm just going to go on an adventure.

So long story short, the day I graduated, walked across the stage, went home, got on a flight, flew to Ho Chi Minh City, and I ended up spending four years in Vietnam. So I backpacked around Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and then decided that Ho Chi Minh City was sort of the most exciting place that I had been through that group. So I landed in Ho Chi Minh City, I think, with a thousand dollars in my pocket. And I I told myself the only rule is I can't go home because I can't make it. So if I wanna go home, it's because I wanna go home.

I can't leave here because I can't cut it. I sort of set off a challenge for myself. So I gotta figure out a way to survive here. So I started teaching English at, like, four different English centers and living in an air conditioned room in the Red Light District for, I think, it was $7 a week and just started meeting people and hanging out and having fun and experiencing the culture and learning the language. And long story short, I ended up after a year and a half of doing random teaching jobs and sort of scraping by with enough money to eat and drink beer, joining Rocca Internet.

So I got an opportunity to join Zalora, which is one of the fashion ecommerce companies inside of Rocca Internet's ecosystem. I knew the managing partner at that time and he told me, hey, I'm working on this marketplace project. I don't really have any idea what it's all about, but if you wanna come on and take a crack at it, I'd be happy to have you. So I jumped on, launched a marketplace essentially, like, they wanted to take inventory business and move it over to a marketplace. They said that the thing that's killing our business is all these clothes sitting in a warehouse, you know, dying on the shelf.

So we wanna actually have suppliers sell through our website and we don't hold any inventory. So, you know, I sat down with a pen and a piece of paper and try to figure out how to do this. And eight months later, I had a team and close to 30% of the total revenues of the group were now going through this marketplace business model, which we were like doing manually. Like everything was manual. It was all duct tape and bubble gum together, but it was a huge success.

So Zalora, we had operations in seven countries. Because of the success in Vietnam, Magnus, who's the CEO of Antler, who I work with today building Antler, he was the COO of Zalora at that time. He said, we need to launch this across Southeast Asia. So we built a team and launched it across the whole region. So then I was like traveling around Southeast Asia, getting to experience all these new cities and new countries.

I was actually making a salary that I could live on and could, you know, get my own apartment with air conditioning. And then Zalora got bought. It got rolled up into Global Fashion Group, which was, at the time, the largest fashion e commerce company in the world. It was $3,200,000,000 valuation at Rollup. And Magnus was promoted to the COO of that group.

He pulled me along. One of the key initiatives for the group, which is five companies with operations in 21 countries, was to launch marketplace across the entire group. And and Zalora was the only of those five companies that had marketplace. So Magnus pulled me up and tapped me and said, hey, let's take this team. Let's launch all of these marketplaces.

So I spent a year and a half working on that. And Global Fashion Group ended up IPO ing in Frankfurt. And all that happened over the course, like, four and a half years. So I went from, like, living in the slums of Ho Chi Minh City teaching English to, you know, flying to Moscow, flying to Berlin, flying to Australia, working on, you know, this massive fashion e commerce company and being sort of an internal expert on the marketplace. So I call that my real world MBA.

It took me four years instead of two. I think I got probably ten years of experience throughout that journey. So then quickly, I I was really burned out after that. I took a break. I moved to Colorado.

I spent a year full time as an athlete training for Ironman. So I ran marathons, did Ironman, just took a break and said, hey, I gotta give my mind a break, but I still wanna do something really hard. So I did that. And then right after my race in Boulder, Magnus called me and said, Hey, remember that VC idea we were talking about? I've got the team.

I've got the money. We need to launch it. Come back to Singapore and help me build it. So early twenty eighteen, I moved back to Singapore and Magnus, myself, and four other people launched Antler in early two thousand and eight. And then, the last four and a half years, I've been part of building Antler from the five of us in an office to we now have 14 funds, 23 cities that we operate in across the world.

We've invested in more than 500 companies on every continent in the world. And I now run The US. I'm the managing partner for all of our US operations. So that brings us to today. Me sitting here.

No. And that's crazy. And, you know, a lot of people when they think of venture capital, they think of Silicon Valley. Yeah. And kind of the traditional way of funding companies and so forth.

But I love the way you started out and basically throwing your backpack over the wall and going to Southeast Asia. Yeah. So as we're sitting here today, you know, one of the things that I know about you and Antler is that you've done something unique by bringing people together into your programs and helping young entrepreneurs find each other. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how that fits into what Antler's mission is? Definitely.

So Magnus and I worked together for a long time. And one of the things that we saw happen over and over again is really strong people that we worked with. By the way, to give a little context, so Rocket had multiple operations in Southeast Asia. Zalora, Lazada, which was purchased by Alibaba, were the two biggest. But you also had FoodPanda, like, a bunch of random other stuff.

Almost every unicorn to date in Southeast Asia has at least one founder who came from one of those companies. So what we saw is, like, for better or worse, you know, Rocket Internet I'm very aware of Rocket Internet's reputation. Some people love it. Some people hate it. And I think it's all deserved.

But the one thing you can't argue with is aside from the direct impact of those companies within the regions, the secondary and tertiary impact of all of the founders that came out of that ecosystem was huge. And what we saw is two things. One is really strong people would meet inside of this workspace and they would identify each other as like high achievers inside of it's like a high achieving culture. And then within that, you're like the high achievers of the high achievers. And they would leave and go build a company together and be very successful.

So finding who they wanted to work with was the beginning of the value creation. That was the inception of like all the success they had was that they met each other and knew that they wanted to work together. But we'd also see as people would leave by themselves and they would go out into the world and say, alright, I'm gonna build an amazing company. And if they hadn't yet found who they wanted to work with and who they wanted to build with, they would really struggle. So it was like, we'd see really awesome people.

We're like, man, I know they would be an amazing entrepreneur because of how effective they were within Rocket, but then they would go and it would take them, like, a year, a year and a half to, like, get things off the ground and raise capital and find their cofounding team, etcetera. So number one, we very strongly believe that against what I think the startup Zeitgeist says right now, which is come up with a great idea, build a team, take it to market. I actually think in practice, what we see in the real world is the opposite order is much more effective. And the best companies are almost always built opposite, which is great team first. And then that team figures out what are we uniquely positioned to build.

Right? Like, what you know, if, Jim, you and I decided to build a company, we'd sit down and say like, well, where do our Venn diagrams of interest and skills, etcetera, overlap? And if we build inside of that space by default, we're probably one of the best teams in the world who are trying to solve problems in that space. And that's a huge advantage. That's giving us a huge head start on actually getting a company on the ground.

So the first thing is, like, we very fundamentally believe that building a team first is a much more effective way to build startups. And then we asked ourselves, well, okay, how are people meeting cofounders then? And this is what we talked about, you know, earlier. I think the problem that we identified is there's not really any formal institution for people to say, I wanna be a startup founder. I want to build a company, and I want to start by finding somebody that I really want to build with.

There's nowhere for founders to go to do that. There are proxies. Right? And those proxies are universities. Right?

Either undergrad, you know, founders shared a dorm together, like the Facebook story, which is totally serendipitous and sort of luck of the draw. Or people go and pursue like an MBA or a master's degree in something and say like, Well, I'm actually going to meet my co founder. I just want to go meet the smartest people I can and try to find a co founder. It's like, Oh, that's pretty pricey way to try to find a cofounder. And then the other proxy institutions being used is like employers.

Right? So you hear a lot of stories of like, well, we work together at so and so. We work together at McKinsey or work together at Google. We identified and built a relationship of being high achievers within that organization. Then we left together and decided to start a company.

So the question is, is like, aside from those two things, if a founder says, well, neither of those have happened for me, I wanna find a cofounder because I agree with, you know, the thinking that I just discussed, which is having a strong team first is a much better way to start a company. There's nowhere for founders to go. You know, they go through their personal network. And what ends up happening is you have this, like, horrible adverse selection problem, which I go through my network or I start cold outreaching people on LinkedIn. And instead of finding somebody that I share interest with and has complimentary skills, actually, the number one criteria of who my cofounder would be is actually, like, who's available?

It's like, well, I asked the 10 closest people I have, and I ended up working together with this person because they were the only person who agreed to quit their job and work with me. And it's like, well, that's not the number one criteria I'd use to select a cofounder. And so what we saw is a gap in the market where we felt that it was an appropriate time. And I can talk about, like, the system constraints of innovation as a whole, but we felt like it was an appropriate time to focus on building an institution, which is specifically focused on giving founders a place to say, I wanna start a company. I wanna do it by first building a really strong team and us coming up with an idea together.

And Antler is now a place for founders to go to do exactly that. And on the back of that, we've built all the infrastructure that founders are used to, which is we have a fund, we do write checks into founders. We, you know, have all of the accoutrement that any early stage VC is gonna have in terms of funding and support and coaching and networking community, etcetera. But what we have that's very unique is the founder studio, which is a place for founders to go. Be surrounded by 40 to 50 of the best, brightest, most highest achieving people that we can find and find a cofounder that they really wanna build with.

When you're talking about in the world of accelerators or incubators where infrastructure is provided, would you say that one of your differentiators is that you are this founder studio that you're unique in that you bring people together to actually build a team as opposed to giving them the infrastructure? Yeah. For sure. The traditional incubator accelerator, that business model was built in a time where access to capital and raising capital was still like a massive constraint. Right?

There wasn't a whole lot of great firms out there, and they weren't writing checks as aggressively as we've seen over the past five years. And so their value proposition when they were first started was much different because what they were saying is essentially, well, we'll give you whatever it is, a $100,000 to $200,000 to give you a little bit more runway, and then we'll actually help you get to a place where you're ready to go out and pitch a real VC. And, oh, by the way, of the 20 VCs in The United States who are actually worth taking a check from, we know most of them. So we'll introduce you. We'll help you raise your round, etcetera.

Ten years ago, that was an amazing value proposition. Right? Because there were tons of teams who had good businesses and just didn't know how to navigate this fairly nascent venture capital world. It was a new asset class. It was sort of the Wild West.

There wasn't a whole lot of awareness and education around it. And so the Accelerator model, I think, was helping solve that problem. Like, we'll help make you ready to go out and actually interact with VCs is a small world of mostly coastal VCs. Now, fast forward today, we've gone from maybe like 20 firms that are worth taking money from to a thousand firms, maybe more, just in The US alone that are worth taking money from. So I very firmly believe that, like, capital is no longer the system constraint.

Right? If you have a great team, you have a company that is capital efficient, that is solving a real problem for a very specific customer set, and you have, you know, your wits about you in terms of you kind of understand the trends that you're following, you understand how to grow and scale that business. There's thousands of firms that you could raise from that you'd be very well off. They're good investors. They know what they're doing.

They have capital to allocate, etcetera. And so I think today, the traditional incubator accelerator, which is like you already have a team, you already have a business, we're just gonna help you fundraise. I generally don't think it's as valuable as it used to be. Because if you already have a team and you already have a good business, I think that if you really are gonna build a VC scalable business, you should be able to navigate that with the amount of choice there is out there and how much more accessible VC is than it was ten years ago. So for us, we sort of go upscale to say, well, then if capital is no longer the system constraint, then what is the system constraint?

And that's what we talked about is I really do think it's cofounder matching. It's like strong teams forming. So one of the big complaints that I think the general market has right now with venture capital is like, oh, like VC is still an insider's game. They throw these massive amounts of money at huge evaluations at these teams that don't have anything. They don't have a real business or business in that capital efficient, etcetera, etcetera.

And while that's true, I agree with the criticism. I don't agree with the first principle, though. I think that what people don't understand is that the reason VCs are doing that, the reason why huge checks are being thrown is because there is a shortage of really strong teams. There's so much venture capital money in the market right now. Even with whatever we're in right now, recession, a downturn, a correction, whatever it is.

We know that VC money is constricting. There's still hundreds of billions of dollars of money looking to come into the private markets, and it's not going anywhere. There's not another asset that's outperforming venture right now. So the reason why we're seeing this, I don't know if you wanna call it deplorable, but behavior of big checks being written, etcetera, is because there's a shortage of teams. Right?

It's like, look, when a VCC is a great team, they're like, hey. Jim and Tyler, for whatever reason, decided to build a company together, and they've got a pretty good understanding of where they could be operationally excellent. They really understand the market they're going into, and they have track record of being really good operators. That is a dream for a venture capital firm. You don't run across that very often.

So when you do, we see there's thousands of firms now and a bunch of them are gonna throw money, and that's gonna drive the valuation up, and that's gonna make it really competitive, etcetera. And so what we wanna do is try to solve the build a really strong team problem. Again, going back to, like, that's only really happening serendipitously on college campuses and within employers. We wanna create a place where people can say, no. I wanna start a company.

I wanna form a really strong team. Great. There's now a place that's dedicated to doing that. And by the way, it doesn't cost you a $150 like an MBA does. Right?

And you don't have to go and work for two and a half years inside of Google to try to find that right person and then convince them to leave Google with you. Say no. Everybody here is the best and brightest that we can find. They've already committed full time to building a company, and they are also here to try to find a cofounder. And I think that if we can increase the amount of great teams that are electing to become entrepreneurs and to build companies, And we can match that with the amount of demand there is from all the venture capital dollars for great teams for building companies.

I actually think that well, I do think that there has been a VC bubble. But a bubble is generally, you know, there's some out of whack supply and demand. So I see two potential outcomes of, like, the venture capital bubble. Number one is the amount of venture capital dollars that are being deployed stays similar to where it is right now. And we don't really fundamentally increase the amount of great teams that are being formed, in which case the bubble will collapse.

Right? This is like there's just not enough great teams for this money to go after. And so valuations are skyrocketing. There's not actually enough intrinsic value to back those valuations up. Or the future that I imagine and that we're committed to helping build is if we can catch the amount of great teams that are coming out to market and saying, we wanna solve a problem in this space, in this space, in this space, in this space.

If we can catch that up to the amount of dollars that wanna invest into venture backable companies, actually, I think you can stabilize the whole asset class. And so then instead of a bubble, you just have massive growth in the amount of innovation that's happening in a sustainable way. Right? Again, I think that makes sense. And, you know, part of what makes entrepreneurs successful is that they kind of are able to adapt depending on the challenge.

And as you said, whether or not we're in a recession or otherwise, we're definitely in a different environment right now. And so having the ability to adapt and have a good team, you're gonna stand out when you're out there trying to raise money. A 100%. If you can build a strong team, right, like, if you build a strong team, you're already way ahead. You're already really competitive to go out and raise the dollars you need to build a big company.

Yeah. And I think to bring this down for our listeners, especially for entrepreneurs who are looking for money or kind of deciding whether or not they wanna go out there and jump in, so to speak, To demystify it, I think there is this perception that you have to have a great idea, and then if you have that great idea and you just get in in front of somebody, they're gonna invest. And the reality is that it's less complicated than that. VCs look to track records, like first draft picks, and if you've come out of a Google or if you've had a successful exit, they then kinda know, oh, this person can execute, and therefore, I'm gonna put the money there and help them take that good idea and quote unquote and build it into something. You're helping create that ecosystem by allowing people to put a team together, so that when they go and pitch that concept to a VC, the VC realizes, wow, this team really gels.

They play well together. There's some synergy there. And I think that's just a very creative approach to this. Yeah. Exactly.

And that's why I think I'm, like, really massively fighting against this concept. Like you said, it's like, it's not I really don't want us to continue developing out the startup culture and world around, like, I just need to come up with a great idea and then everything will solve itself. It's like, no. That's not really the way to do it. It's like you could take the game plan of the 96 bowls and give it to 10 teams.

Right? And all 10 teams would still lose. Right? Because they don't have the players. They don't have MJ.

They don't have Scottie. They don't have Rodman. What matters is not the strategy that pursued is the team that they built. Right? The team that Phil built And that gave them the option to pursue many different strategies because they had the raw talent.

And I think founders should think about it more in terms of really good VCs, like the type of VCs that founders want to work with. I think all agree that mainly what I'm betting on is you as a team because the reality is, especially at a early stage, pre seed, even at seed, whatever you're pitching right now is not the end business. Right? Either what you're pitching you right now ends up being your first business. And for us to build this into something really big, you have to decide what's the next business we build on top of that.

There's gonna be a bunch of businesses built on top and around that, etcetera. Or and by the way, statistically, that's not very likely. What's more likely is whatever you pitch in the beginning, when you go out to the market and you start working with customers and really starting to understand how things work on the ground, you realize that, like, your original idea wasn't actually the right idea, and you end up pivoting and changing. And that's what good VCs are ultimately betting on is I'm betting on you as a team to be able to go and figure out where does this business actually land in the real world because there's a big difference between your idea and an actual business. An idea is subjective.

Right? You and I could subjectively say whether or not it's a good idea. And I think a lot of people get obsessed with, like, oh, Tyler said this is a good idea. And I tell founders all the time, it doesn't matter if I think it's a good idea. It's totally subjective.

My opinion is not any better than anybody else's. What's not subjective is building a real business because you have to go out and face the real world, and the real world will tell you whether it's a good business or not. That is purely objective. And I think what founders would do really well to internalize is what good VCs are betting on is the objective ability to go out and build a great business. You can't lie your way around building a great business.

You're either doing it or you're not, and the market will tell you. Yeah. And so, you know, that goes back and sort of dovetails back to focusing on building a great team. Because the other thing I'll say too and I see founders fall in this trap all the time. It come up with an idea.

I say, hey. I wanna build a media company. So I'm gonna go hire who I think is the right people for this media company. And it ends up happening as I go to market, and the market doesn't like my first business. It's like whatever way I tried to get in doesn't work.

It's not working. And so two things happen. One is I, like, stubbornly continue to bang my head against the wall, and I run the business out of money and it explodes and ends because I'm unwilling to adapt to what the market is telling me. Or two, as I pivot, you know, I'm listening to my customers and I'm saying, hey, I thought we should do a, but actually customers want b and there's a business there that they'll pay us for. You switch over to b and then you realize this is totally the wrong team for b.

I hired a team to build a and now I have the wrong team for b. And at that point, you might as well be dead. Right? So then the story goes, take some long abstracted process of the founder trying to unwind the incorrect team and founders arguing and sue each other and hurt feelings etcetera etcetera. Either way is a bad outcome.

If you build your team first on first principles, which is, hey, Jim. I wanna work with you because I like you. I respect you. I think we have shared interest in some areas, and I think we have complimentary skill sets. Let's work together and come up with an idea.

The fact that you've built a team based on that foundation makes us much more adaptable to the pivots that are inevitably going to come. Because if you and I sit down and say, hey. We thought a was the right idea, but actually b is the right idea. When we switch over to b, the reason why we're working together is still intact. We didn't decide to work together because of a specifically, so I think we're just as well positioned to build b together.

Let's do it. And so I think it makes the company much more resilient for the reality of building a business, which is having to go out and face the objective truth of the market either wanting or not wanting what you're building and having to adapt accordingly. So when somebody comes and goes through your program, they do have this opportunity to meet other people. Yeah. But in terms of knowing that they've got the right team and having some objective world feedback to that, do you help them determine whether or not there is the synergy there that they're looking for?

I would say yes and no. Like, so I'll caveat this with I wanna make sure people understand. Because a lot of people are like, oh, how do you match founders? And they're always like, we don't match founders. Our job is to create an environment where you can come in and meet a 100 times more qualified people who are ready to build a company right now than you would be reaching out to people cold on LinkedIn.

That's what we're focused on doing. The process of you deciding who you wanna work with, that's totally up to you. There's no magic algorithm. I'm not not the right person to decide who you wanna spend the next seven years building a company with. I'm just here to create an environment where you have a much better chance of finding the right person.

So I would say, yes, we can help steer your founders in the right direction. And I say the most effective way you can do that is just like asking really hard questions upfront. So saying like, hey, it seems like you guys don't want to talk through these things, so I'm just gonna ask you straight up. Why do you guys wanna work together? Seems like you guys have a very similar skill set.

How are you complementary to each other? How are you gonna solve x y z? How are you gonna do this? How are you gonna do that? Blah blah blah.

Fine. But we try not to super over emphasize that because what's more important is the founders having confidence that both of them are committed to, hey, we have shared interests. We respect each other. We share values, but we also have complementary skill sets. And I think really, truly, the only way for that decision to be made is by the founders.

You know, they have an internal compass, and I think it's very much gut based of, like, no. I feel good about working with Jim. I've gotten to know him. I like him. I I respect him, and and I think we built something really great together.

And I'm willing to commit to, hey, there's gonna be hard times. We're gonna have to have tough conversations through this process, but I'm willing to commit to doing that because both of us really wanna build a successful company together. It's the magic of the human context and intelligence, I guess. You got me thinking back to, like, for instance, when I went to law school and you had study groups or Yeah. When people in MBA school have teams that they work with.

It's not like you're assigned partners. You typically go out and you put those groups together. And as you said, because it's your intuition and everything else. That that makes total sense. And then again, what's unique about what you're doing is instead of going to UCLA MBA program to meet somebody, which is a great way to do it, you're giving them an alternative.

And let's talk about it. You also provide capital. Right? Yeah. Exactly.

I mean, part of the important part for us is, like, solving the finding your cofounder problem is only step one. Once you do that, there's a bunch of other things that you need to do to get to seed round raise. So the way we think about it is, like, we wanna create a better on ramp to successfully raising seed capital. Seed capital is arguably the largest inflection point in a company's life despite it seeming so early. But statistically, here in The US, if you raise a million dollars of seed capital, your chance of building a billion dollar company goes to one in 100, which is huge.

That's massive. Right? I would argue that pre seed, your chances of building a billion dollar company are probably one in 10,000, maybe one in a 100,000, at least in order of magnitude less than one in 100. And so our goal is, like, if we can help build a better on ramp to seed, right, and make it more accessible, more fluid, more enjoyable process for founders, then we can build a lot more successful companies as an economy. Right?

We can help empower entrepreneurship to be a career choice for many, many more people and not just for those with means and access to, you know, friends and family money or inheritance or whatever it is, and ultimately drive forward innovation. I mean, I'm a big believer in the free market, and I think that the most effective way we as a society have to solve problems is free enterprise, is having people who are willing to commit to building a company that has incentives to solve a problem for customers. And those customers are people, you know, it's like other businesses or consumers. And so I think the more fuel we can pour on that fire of innovation, even real innovation, true innovation, right, the better. The better everyone's quality of life becomes, the more access to services and goods that everybody has, the more efficient the economy will operate, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

So sorry. To come back to your question, we wanted to build that whole suite. So our sort of key differentiator is we wanna start at finding your cofounder. But where we wanna end is you successfully raise the seed round. So we do incorporate all of the things that a traditional accelerator and incubator offer, but we start at a much different place where you think there's more friction in the market than starting at.

You already have a team. You already have an idea. You have some traction. We'll just help you do the last final piece to raise your seed round and take 10% to do that? We say no.

If we're gonna take seven to 10% of your company, we wanna help you build your team. We wanna help you decide what space do you wanna build in. We wanna help you figure out what your first business is and validate that with real customers. We wanna give you the funding that you need to build your first product. And then we wanna help you go out and actually run the fundraising process, which by the way, very under discussed.

But like fundraising is a very specific skill set. And one thing that we see happen a lot is founders are great. They're super smart. They're thinking in first principles. They're executing well.

They've got the beginnings of what could be a really successful business. And it's like, alright. Great. Now we're gonna need to go raise a seed round. And they sort of fall flat on their face.

It's like, look, I fundraise. Right? Be transparent. I raised the fund for Antler. I fundraise sort of full time.

I have no firsthand. It is a very specific skill set. What ends up happening is the founders, they start the fundraise process and then one or more of the founders spends, like, six months not really being able to work on the business because they're so over encumbered by the fundraising process. And they end up getting in this trap, which is like, well, VCs wanna see traction, but we don't really have that good of traction because I'm not really that focused on the business because I'm fundraising. But because I'm fundraising is why the traction is not good.

And they get in this, like, death spiral and then it's like eight months later, the company's dead. And so the final piece of our value proposition is we wanna take you all the way to, look, the reality is is the founders are 90% of being able to raise a seed round. I can't find product market fit for you. You have to go out and find your customers and find the value proposition that works and prove that you can build a solution that they're willing to pay for. If you can do that, I, and I say I royally, we, Antler, have a dedicated team that can help you through the fundraising process, building your materials, doing pitch practice, building your investor CRM, getting interest to the right VCs.

I would also we sort of think about this anti demo day process of, like, demo day worked again ten years ago when there was 20 worthwhile investors, and you could invite them all to your room, have everybody pitch to them, and then the best select the best. I think demo day is, like, overdone now, and it's, like, the noise to signal ratio is way off. And so what we think about is sort of the anti demo day. It was like, hey. Instead of pitching a 100 VCs and hoping for one to say yes, let's go find the 10 VCs who don't have a competitive investment, invest in your sector, invest at your stage, and let's make a warm intro to them.

Like, let's massively increase your yes rate so that you can spend a lot less time out getting those. The reality is, you know, you hear founders say like, oh, yeah, fundraising is so hard. I got a 100 no's and one yes. And it's like, yeah, but maybe 50 of those no's, you could have not done because they had a competitive investment or they don't invest in your sector. They don't invest in your stage.

Right. So let's clean all that up because that's a huge waste of your time when you should be focused on building the company. So that's like the end point. Once one of our portfolio companies raise a seed, that's where we consider, like, our studio service as concluded formally, and then we become like any of your other investors. Right?

We're there. You can call us at any time. We're there to help. We obviously understand that founders continue to need support and guidance, but we're not meeting on a weekly basis anymore. You're not participating in town hall and updating on what's going on.

You've got more important fish to fry, which is, like, you now have $3,000,000 of seed capital that you need to go build your company with. So call me when you need something. I'm always here to help, but, like, you don't need to talk to me on a weekly basis. You got more important things to do now. So, Tyler, in The US today, as you said, you're responsible for the entire country.

When you want to apply to your program, are you applying from all the different 50 states? And then are you bringing these people together virtually, or do they actually come to a particular location? Yeah. So it's in person. So we very much believe in in person.

I think, ultimately, starting a company is a mostly creative process, and I don't think creativity flows well online. And so, yeah, we do have in person offices. We do require founders to come in person and work together. We think that, you know, that's where all the magic happens. And, look, the reality is is, like, you're not willing to come and work in person for six weeks, and I'm probably not super excited to invest in you in building a startup.

If you can even call it a sacrifice, I don't think it's a sacrifice. Like, you're surrounded by all these amazing people. There's an amazing community. So for anyone who's skeptical about that piece, I think it's actually one of the best parts of the program is you get to come spend time with all these amazing human beings and be a part of a community that's really strong and really additive to everyone who's a part of it. So right now, we have New York, Austin, Denver.

And so those are regional offices. And, you know, for founders who apply all over the country, they can sort of choose which of those locations they wanna go to. Over the next two, three years, we wanna launch Miami. We wanna launch LA, Boston, Seattle, Chicago. So we wanna continue to open up regional hubs and get, on average, closer and closer to founders all over the country.

That's sort of one of our big pushes for the future too is, like, we wanna help bring venture capital and access to venture capital. And ultimately, like, maybe not just venture capital. I wanna bring access to entrepreneurship as a realistic career choice to more people across the country. Right? I don't believe in a future where, like, if you wanna be an entrepreneur, you have to move to Silicon Valley and deal with the cost of living and the competition and sort of all of the accoutrement that goes with that.

If you want to, that's great. I don't have any problem with that. But I know that there's a lot of people out there that don't wanna do that. And so we wanna build a geographic footprint across The US where there's an Antler location within 250 miles of where you are and where you wanna build your company that you can go to find your cofounder to figure out the space you wanna build in, to decide on what your first business into the market is and who your first customers are, validate that, receive funding, work on finding product market fit, go out with us and raise your seed. And from there, decide if you wanna stay in our office.

We have a lot of portfolio companies who continue to work inside of our office. But, you know, if you wanna move back to Wichita, great. That was fine. If you feel like that's the right place to build your business, we're onboard. Are there prerequisites to getting into your program?

I mean, do you have to have a college degree? Do you have to have an MBA? No. What requirements, if any, do you have to get into it? No.

I think we have three founders in our summer batch right now, like, across the hall from me that only graduated from high school. So you don't need a college degree. There's a couple of, like, hygiene factors. You have to be able to legally work in The United States. I won't get into my thoughts on the current immigration policies in The United States, but you have to be able to legally build a company here and work here and operate here.

Right. I will say, like, we have helped founders get o one visas, but the founder needs to be pretty far down that process where, like, a letter of recommendation and your participation in the Antler will help your application, and and you'll receive a visa to successfully work in The US. Unfortunately, we don't have the capacity, and the red tape and bureaucracy are just too complicated and hard to understand right now for us to have, you know, foreigners relocate to The US to participate in the program. So number one is you have to be a citizen, have a working visa, have a green card in The US. Number two is you have to be committed full time.

Look, ultimately, like, this is not summer camp. Right? We're not doing this for charity. You know, we're not doing this to feel good about ourselves. We are doing this to help founders who are serious about building real businesses to do so.

And if a founder can't commit to pursuing this full time, then we're unfortunately not willing to support them at that stage. And there's no judgment around that. Right? If you're not ready to take the leap, like, by all means. Right?

Wait until you feel ready. But for us, what we found is working with founders who are part time, it just doesn't work. Like, we wanna work with founders who are, like, ready to go full speed and really pursue this and commit. I think in the beginning, all a founder can really commit to starting a startup is their time. And if you're not willing to commit all the time you have to doing so, then, unfortunately, it's not the right place for you.

So that's the second requirement. That's really it. I mean, you have to be willing to come in person. So if you're not in New York, Austin, or Denver, you need to be willing to come to one or multiple of those locations for the six weeks. It's really important for us from a community perspective and also a decision making perspective to be able to work together.

Aside from that, I mean, we have college dropouts. We've got engineers from SpaceX. We've got a former CIA analyst. I mean, we have people all across the board, all sorts of backgrounds and experience sets and everything. And that's one of the things that I think is really special is also breaking this mold of, like, look, it's not 40 Stanford engineers sitting in a room staring at each other.

Right? We do believe that the future of entrepreneurship and the future of innovation is also kinda taking a step back and saying, like, hey. If we continue to invest the same way into the same type of founders, we're gonna continue to just get the same stuff. So we also wanna expand the reach and invest more diverse geographically, more diverse demographically, more diverse from a background perspective to say, like, look. I don't care what you did before you you decided to be an entrepreneur.

I don't need you to have a degree in CS or be a wiz at computer coding. That's great. If you are a wiz at computer coding, great. Let's build a company that's core competency is being able to write really amazing code. But if you don't have that, then let's build a company which core competency is on something that you're really good at because, you know, I fundamentally believe that every corner of the economy is ripe for disruption all the time.

There is this sense that the trends that everybody gets excited about are the only areas that are available for disruption. And I could talk forever about why VC gets caught in this trap of, like, hyping up specific industries every year and then switching and switching and switching. But the reality is, like, everything is always available for disruption all the time. And so, like, I don't care what your background was. I'm not looking for just people who want to build Web three companies or just computer coders or just McKinsey graduates.

I'm looking for anyone who's willing to commit full time, has a background of excellence. Right? And the definition of that varies depending on what you've done. But we're looking for people who break the mold, for people who do big exciting things, who set great massive aspirational goals for themselves, and are realistic about what it's gonna take to actually build a company that has an impact, which is, like, it's gonna take a lot. It's gonna take a lot of hard work.

It's gonna take a lot of sleepless nights. If you're willing to commit to that, you got a pretty good chance of building a successful company, and we wanna help you do so. Yeah. You know, a couple of thoughts. I mean, there's a lot of talk with young entrepreneurs about kind of this work life balance.

And one of the things that I think people need to focus on is realism, which is that going back to your Chicago Bulls analogy, you're competing against other companies where these people are working twenty four seven. And so the reality is you can look for balance, but at the same time, as you said, you gotta be practical about it and work full time. So I love that, which is you're being practical about it in terms of if you wanna be successful, you gotta know what your competition is. The other thing I I wanted to come back to is I recently interviewed sir Paul Collier because one of the things we do at the Puck is we're looking at where the world is going and how kind of technology and technology leaders can be part of solving some of the global issues we're dealing with today. And what's wonderful about what you are doing is that we have underserved communities.

Yeah. And you're allowing people to come from anywhere in the country Yeah. To kind of get access to capital, access to talent, and then they can go back to their communities and actually build a company. And that is so important if we're gonna deal with some of the income inequality Yeah. And the lack of access.

So I I applaud you for doing that. And again, sir Paul Collier, I mean, he challenges the technology community to do what you're doing. He's saying, look, we've got to put something back and create these communities or the world is just gonna blow up. No. For sure.

Everyone needs to move forward together. And if the gap between the front of the line and the back of the line gets too large, then everybody comes crashing down together. Right? So I do believe in that. And I think and I like the way you put it.

Right? Which is like, it's not about charity. Right? It's not about setting up systems that don't have real incentives to be sustainable. I think it's about giving everybody the same economic opportunity.

I I mean, the biggest thing that I see is representation of problem sets. So, like, the over indexing of backing founders in the coastal area in New York and California. Right? I've lived in New York. Anyone who says living in the coast is not a bubble is crazy.

It doesn't take very long to live in New York to think that and you really do feel it when you live in New York. Like, this is the center of the world. Our problems are everybody's problems. You end up just feeling in, like, every atom that you have that New York is just the whole world. The whole world is just like New York.

And all the problems that you're facing in New York are the problems that everybody else is facing. And the reality is not true. Right? But it's very difficult human bias to overcome. I don't think you're necessarily gonna overcome that bias.

Like you're not gonna convince people who die hard live in New York and will never ever leave to change the way they think about that. And the way that affects is you have like this over indexing of problem set. So it's like you back so many founders from these coastal regions, New York, California, etcetera, and they bring up the same problems. Right? It's like grocery delivery.

Okay. I get it. Grocery delivery is a huge problem in New York and San Francisco. Totally get it. Anyone who's lived in those cities understands how inconvenient it is to try to go out and get groceries in New York.

Right? I always have nightmares of, like, carrying 25 pounds of bags, you know, seven blocks back to my flat and walking up the stairs, etcetera, etcetera. So it's like, okay, great. There's a really good explanation for why we keep getting all these, like, super fast grocery delivery companies. Because it's like, that's a problem set.

That's people's real problem that they're trying to solve better and better. The problem is is like it doesn't represent a very vast portion of the actual population. Reality is like most of The United States from a geographic perspective have absolutely no problem getting groceries and it's very convenient. You walk into an H E B, you buy groceries, you roll your car to your car, you put them in your car, you drive home. Austin, Texas does not need seven minute grocery delivery.

And so when I talk about representation of problem sets, it's like what we need is to create accessibility for people who come from different communities that have different problem sets than needing seven minute grocery delivery and giving them the tools and the support and the foundation to say, well, actually, the problem that's faced in my community is x y z. I think it's funny because you hear a lot of times you'll have founders come from underrepresented communities and, you know, they'll pitch an idea that's very specifically focused on their community and you'll hear VC say like, oh, yeah. But like how many people does that actually affect across The US? And I'm like, yeah. But that's exactly what you should be asking about seven minute grocery delivery.

It's the same problem. You're just excited about it because you also live in New York and people are willing to pay exorbitant amounts of money for seven minute grocery delivery. It's always gonna start off as a niche problem and you'll be able to continue to build solutions on top of that. So, yeah, I think everyone in The United States would benefit by driving a car from New York to California and seeing how unrepresentative New York and California are of the I don't know how long it would take you to drive across The United States, maybe forty hours. Thirty nine and a half of those hours are gonna be nothing like New York and California.

And it's important that we, like, accept that and start to build infrastructure to be able to solve a broader set of problems for a broader group of people. So as we're moving into this economy that's a little different than the last ten years, Does that affect what you're doing in any way? I mean, do you think about how you're approaching these challenges any differently in this new economy? I don't think so. I mean, ultimately, I think, like, innovation is pretty separated from the macroeconomic environment.

Like innovation trudges on regardless. Innovation fundamentally comes from a much different place than all the forces that affect the macro economy. I think if you boil it down to first principles, innovation comes from two things. One, there's a demand for things to be better. Right?

So there's sort of this infinite demand for improvements across all aspects of life and all corners of all the infrastructure that we live on. Right? I could sit here and look at my window and say, I could point out 10 problems that somebody could solve. Right? So that's the demand side.

On the supply side is, you know, I think is one of the most exciting qualities that humans have. Humans have this desire to do things, right, and to seek meaning. And there is a lot of meaning in solving a problem, building a solution to a problem like driving the world forward. That is in my opinion, the engine of innovation. Neither of those things are affected by the macroeconomy.

Yeah. The desire for humans to solve problems and the problems that we have in the world are not affected by the Federal Reserve at all. I think they are affected by education. They're affected by culture and accessibility, Specifically on the supply side, the demand side, I think, is relatively unchanged. Things can get better or worse, but even when things are going really well, then I think what happens is like the people get used to things getting better faster.

So the total demand for improvement doesn't actually change. But the supply side, I think, is heavily affected by education. Right? Which is like, look, at the end of the day, you have to help educate people and give people the tools to actually be able to solve problems and build businesses effectively. Accessibility, which is like building a business and solving a problem, is actually a process of accumulating resources and applying them to the solution.

The reality is is those resources are not evenly accessible. And then culture, right, which is one that we see right now. I think we're at sort of a cultural peak of entrepreneurship, but the culture very much affects like how cool is it to be an entrepreneur. And we've probably overheated a little bit on culture to the point where we've got a lot of fake people who like quit their job just to write entrepreneur on their LinkedIn. And they're interested more in the social signal than they are in actually grinding to try to solve a problem.

Then right now we're in like this peak. You know, you have almost, I don't know, one out of five successful shows or podcast or movies or about like startups. Like startups have become very mainstream. And so culture, I think affects how many people ultimately pursue that as a career choice. So that was a really long answer to your question, which was how does the current macro environment affect that?

I don't think at all in our business is really to drive forward innovation and there will always be money to be made in driving forward innovation. That's one of the things that powers the resources. Right? So the money is one of the resources that fuels innovation like I talked about. One of the reasons why money flows into innovation and continues to flow into the private markets is because it is very profitable to solve problems for the world.

Right? It's a great way to make money if you do it well. If you actually solve problems, it's a really good way to make money. And that's why there's so much money in the private markets. So, yeah, I mean, look, in terms of, like, my personal opinions, like, I try not to read the news.

Like, it sort of bums me out. Ultimately, I don't think things are that bad. I think if you watch the media, though, it's very easy to fall into a trap of being very pessimistic about the future because all the media wants to talk about is like, oh, things are terrible. Things are so bad. It's like, yeah.

But you don't tell both sides of the story. Gas is back down to $3.50 a gallon in Texas, which Texas is generally a leading indicator of gas prices around the country. Lumber has gone down 75% over the last year. The jobs report in June, 275,000 new jobs reported in June. That was I mean, I don't think they expected any new jobs in June.

You're not hearing you're not seeing Twitter articles about that stuff where it's like, hey, guys. Like, actually, there's a couple good things that are happening. It's all bad stuff. Generally, I think things are better than they seem. Secondly, I think founders are really well served to just ignore all of that and focus on solving problems, creating value.

You know, put your head down, build your company. The macro environment is the least of your worries when it comes to getting a company off the ground. If you're Google, then yes, you're affected by the macro economy because you have millions and millions of dollars of debt all over your balance sheet that's affected by interest rates, etcetera. If you're a startup with $150,000 of funding, the macro environment is probably past 100 on the list of things that you need to be worrying about. Generally, my message would be, like, I don't wanna encourage people to be overly optimistic.

I think there are real problems to solve. But I think taking it as sort of a sense of duty of, like, specifically my generation, you know, millennials, it's like I very much look at it as like, alright. Like, we are now becoming the leaders of the culture. We're becoming the leaders of the economy. Things are starting to shift to us.

Like, it's our duty now to figure out how to solve these problems. This is our life's work that we're gonna have to do as a generation. Their problems are in front of us, and we need to figure out ways to solve them just like every other generation. Jim, one thing I I just wanted to go back quickly because you had mentioned, like, work life balance because I'm talking about generations. And I struggle with this.

Right? Because, like, I think especially my generation and the younger generations were, like, inundated with this cultural conditioning of, like, work life balance and, like, you deserve this amazing life and, you know, you shouldn't have to work this hard and there should be three hour workdays and this and that. Two things that you said. One is like you can pursue that. That's fine.

But there are still people out there who are going to work really hard and they're going to get ahead. Ultimately, you're going to be frustrated because like, why do they have all this stuff? And it's like, because they're working hard, because they're willing to work hard. Secondly and I think, like, already some of your listeners have categorized me as, like, oh, Tyler's on the side of, like, we should just work and not enjoy life, blah, blah. And it's like, no.

I'm not at all. Right? But the generational gap is, like, take my job. I work sixty, seventy hours a week. I would say I'm pretty high up on the scale of, like, you know, I do struggle with work life balance.

I do work a lot. But if you compare my life to two generations ago, even in my same family, like, don't even change demographic groups or background or whatever it is. Like, two generations ago, my life, which is considered pretty unbalanced in the modern day, I'm on cruise control. Like I am absolutely having the best life possible. Anybody two generations ago would die for the average unbalanced life.

I really do think we're doing a disservice to people because a lot of this frustration with not having work life balance, I don't actually think it's about balance. I think it's about attitude. It's like you just have a bad attitude about everything. Because, like, if you went two generations ago and talked to your great great grandparents and you said like, hey, you know what? I'm really frustrated.

And you explained what your life was like. I can't imagine what their reaction would be. It's like they just went through the Great Depression. Right? They grew up in a house with a dirt floor with straw on the body.

It's like people don't understand that only two generations ago. Almost the entire country was poor and worked out in fields. Right? And picked corn on their family's farm or topped tobacco. 15¢ of candy was a huge treat for them.

That was most Americans two or three generations ago. So what we complain about today about not having work life balance, like, I think it's crap. I think we're being fed this bad attitude by the media and we expect to have more. But the reality is is, like, look, part of life is you have to work hard and you gotta figure out what you're working for. Maybe it's your family, maybe it's yourself, maybe it's because you wanna have a big impact on the world.

Like, if you fix your attitude about it, I think a lot more people would be a lot happier. It is a matter of perspective, and we have washing machines. We have dishwashers. We have drones. We have delivery stuff.

Exactly. I like refrigerators. I remember hearing about whether it's my grandparents or my parents saying that, you know, they walked three miles in the snow to get to school, and now you're on Zoom or whatever. So it is perspective. I agree with you.

And part of what I do for a living is I help restructure companies that do go through tough times because there isn't always unlimited capital. Yeah. And there is right now, but I think that is gonna shift. Yeah. For sure.

And it's amazing. So I meet a lot of entrepreneurs. It's unbelievable to me how it's exactly what you started out with. If you have the right team, I don't care what you start out doing, you can pivot that team and be successful because you've got Yeah. That entrepreneurial spirit and, you know, you're gonna throw your backpack over the wall.

We're gonna get to the moon, and you have that drive for success Yeah. And nine times out of 10, you're gonna get to the promised land. It's the people that kind of when they hit that, they fall off the horse, they don't realize, you know, you gotta get back on and and struggle a little. Grit, I think, is extremely important to being able to kind of survive these challenging environments. I 100% agree.

Part of our investment thesis is, like, kinda what you said that you say, like, if you have a really great team, you get the sense, especially people who work with companies. When you meet a really good team, there's a sense that, like, this team could build a lot of businesses successfully. Right? Like, you're not successful because of the specific idea you're building. That's secondary to the fact that you have a really strong team, and you could transplant this team into a lot of different businesses, and they would be successful.

They would find a way to make that business successful. So the inverse of that is a big part of our investment thesis and why we're willing to invest in founders so early is, like, if you form a strong team and you're able to decide the sandbox that you wanna work in, we apply apply that same lesson, which is like you're a strong team. There's a lot of successful businesses you could build. We don't need a full pitch deck. We don't need revenue.

Right? We don't need all the accoutrement of the actual business because we do believe that based on the strength of the team you have and what we've seen over the six weeks that we've got to work together is that like you guys probably build a lot of successful businesses. And we wanna give you the money to go out to the market and actually figure out what business does the market want from you. And so it's exactly what you said. It's just the inverse.

So Tyler, this has been fantastic. I thoroughly enjoyed this. Thanks a lot, Jim. It was really great to be here, and I, really appreciate the conversation and look forward to chatting soon. Terrific.

Alright. Cheers, team. The Puck Venture Capital Beyond is produced by CMEG Advisors. If you enjoyed the conversation and haven't subscribed yet to the show, you can find us on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. Check us out on Instagram and Facebook and let us know what you think about the podcast.