During the autumn startup program at Antler in Stockholm, among other things, an AI service was started to improve digital meetings, a visual search database for research content and a social audio service for women. Five out of nine companies that Antler has invested in from the last round have at least one female founder.

Some of the founding teams that were with Antler's startup program in autumn 2020 (from left to top): Co-founders of Allting: Fredrik Söderlund, Joachim Lerulf, Kathy Tian and Marcus Liljenberg – co-founders of Aline: Innocent Mugenga, Stephanie Darvill and Emanuel Ländell – co-founders of Envar: Tomas Sigurdsson and Johanna Kvissberg - the co-founders of Voiceher: Sanna Dahlin and Viktoria Elman.

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On Wednesday, nine companies from Antler's latest program last autumn showed up at a digital "demo day".

Antler - which was founded by the Norwegian Magnus Grimeland in 2018 - can be described as a mixture of a startup factory and a venture capital company. The business is located in 13 cities worldwide, including Stockholm, Singapore, Nairobi, New York and from this spring in Copenhagen.

Around 1,500 people applied for this autumn's program in Stockholm, and of those, 70 entrepreneurs joined, of which 60 percent have started businesses before. In total, 30 founding teams were formed and Antler chose to invest in nine of them.

Among the companies we have invested in during the autumn, four have mixed teams, one team with female founders and four with male founders," says Livia Moore, who is so-called associate partner and marketing manager at Antler.

The program in Stockholm runs twice a year and the goal is to have at least 35 percent women in each round.

"We have achieved that every time and for the program this spring the average is 40 percent, but we have not closed the application yet," says Livia Moore, who is so-called associate partner and marketing manager at Antler.

In total, Antler invested in 18 companies from the two programs in Stockholm last year, of which 56 percent have mixed teams or only women in the founding team. The investments are between SEK 800,000 and SEK 1 million each.‍

In Antler's total portfolio of 44 companies from the Stockholm program in the last two years, 48 ​​percent have at least one female founder. Antler also measures diversity and looks at the background of the entrepreneurs. Several of the entrepreneurs move to Stockholm to participate.

"In our portfolio from the Stockholm program of a total of 44 companies, we have founders from 22 nationalities represented," says Livia Moore.

A difference to other incubators is that the average age of the participants is often higher and that the majority have founded companies before. On average, they have ten years of work experience. Most of those who are selected have a business idea, but meet their co-founders on site.

At the beginning of last year, Antler took in approximately SEK 750 million in risk capital in two different investment rounds .

The nine companies that Antler chose to invest in from the latest program are:

Aline – a learning platform to discover, share, analyze and validate learning and training for individuals and businesses. Founders: Innocent Mugenga, CEO, Stephanie Darvill, operations manager, and Emanuel Ländell, technical manager.‍

Sciple – an AI-based research tool that visualizes scientific articles to quickly and easily find the most relevant sources. Founders: Rajiv Harimoorthy, CEO, and Mikael Backlund, CTO.

Envar - a marketplace that helps companies reduce their carbon emissions. Founder Johanna Kvissberg, CEO, and Tomas Sigurdarson, technical manager.

XPL – a machine learning platform for product managers and software engineers. Founders: Ali Razavian, CEO, Ivan Korol, technical manager and Matt Doerner-Miller, commercial manager.

Afterfx - enables investors to combine their experience and knowledge with data presented in a structured and user-friendly way. Founders: Rashad Hasan, CEO, Olof Sjöstedt, commercial manager and Ekram Ali, technical manager.

Logary Analytics - a saas platform that helps companies understand and measure the performance of their marketing both online and offline. Founders: Henrik Feldt, CEO, and Nima Ghamari, Marketing Director.

Legitify – a solution that, via audio and video technology, enables customers to verify documents digitally and remotely. Founders: Aida Lutaj, CEO, and Arko Ganguli, CTO.

Everything - a solution based on artificial intelligence and data science to measure meeting activity and thereby improve meetings. Founders: Joachim Lerulf, CEO, Fredrik Söderlund, responsible for growth and finance, Kathy Tian, ​​responsible for machine learning and data science, and Marcus Liljenberg, technical director.

Voiceher – a voice-based social platform for women with the vision of empowering women globally by creating digital social spaces. Founders Viktoria Elman, CEO, and Sanna Dahlin, technical manager.