Antler Vc I Will Not Promote

Antler is a good program in theory. However, as you go along the program, the same people who accepted you into the program actually don’t give you much advice and they don’t help you as much as they make it seem during the interview interviews and when you sign the SAFE.

They’re actually generalist most of the VC‘s there and if they don’t understand your industry, they’ll just tell you to keep on growing the business and they won’t help you get to the investable state so it’s like they just want a home run shot right away, but they don’t want to help you actually build out the business.

For example, someone working in government tech got accepted to the cohort. They found it great and then they ended up cutting the person from the cohort because they said government takes too long, so why did they accept them in the first place make them move and pay out-of-pocket to live in a different city when they knew that the government took long before they had accepted them. It’s a pretty poor structure of a program and honestly, it could be done a lot better if they had VC’s who actually wanted to get their hands, dirty and learn more about the industry.

If they don’t know your industry, they’ll just say that you don’t have the right pull for clients and the sales cycle in their mind should be rather short. Even though some cycles could be a few months long but could end up being five figures in revenue. They gaslight you the entire time and don’t actually give you the support that you need unless you become a portfolio company. Even with that they’re not very helpful and it’s kind of a circus.

Just my honest feedback, I wouldn’t advise to go to the program if someone on the team doesn’t understand your industry because they’ll just blow you off and say that you don’t understand or you don’t have any good signals in the industry.

Also, something that’s hilarious is that the partners who ended up selling a company one of them got lucky that they ended up receiving a grant and that’s how their company ended up being successful. A company in the cohort ended up finding a specific nation in order to help find grants for that specific niche that could help bring revenue back in to their users and the partner who made their success off of grant said no one cares about grants. So it’s really just a circus of people who just sold companies in their specific nation. They have no clue what’s going on in other niches so they’re just generalist and they just pick and choose who they end up liking rather than the concept of the business and execution.