Adam French, Partner at Antler, talks funding, startup trends, and the art of handling a ‘no’.

What are the top three things founders should focus on when preparing to raise their first round of funding?
Raising at pre-seed or seed stage has become more competitive and rigorous than ever. On average, it takes founders longer to raise their first funding round now than it did ten years ago. That’s because investor expectations are increasing and they demand to see higher levels of traction and revenue growth than ever before.

For their first funding round, founders need to focus on:

1. The team – don’t bury this slide in your deck. Why are you the ones to win this space? What do you believe or know that no-ones else knows? Why do you beat the 10,0000 other teams going after this problem?

2. Traction – can you validate demand? Can you evidence that this is a problem worth solving? Can you show your bias towards action?

3. Vision – VCs want to back ambitious founders. If everything goes right how big could this be? 10 years from now, how could this business be doing $100m+ in revenue?

That’s why we invite the best to participate in our founder residencies, that allows us to conduct an eight week due diligence process on them as individuals. We see how they operate under pressure, make decisions and problem solve. We are looking for outlier founders with the grit, determination and ambition to build generational-defining companies. The chances of achieving that are vanishingly small, but the best founders do it anyway.

How should founders handle a “no” from an investor? What’s the best way to build long-term relationships, even if they don’t secure investment straight away?
Every successful founder has faced rejection from investors. There are countless examples of the world’s biggest tech companies being ignored by investors at the start of their growth journey.

It is common for founders to start a fundraising process by building out a list of 200 funds and angels they want to approach. If you get four funds on your cap table, that’s a 98% failure rate to secure a great outcome.

Founders learn that ‘no’ often means ‘not right now’. Sharing monthly or quarterly updates with investors is a critical way of staying in touch, showing progress and warming up prospects for future funding rounds, and proving out, over time, what you say you are going to do

What startup sector or trend excites you the most at the moment, and why?
Founders in the UK and across Europe are building the application layer for AI. We’re seeing AI founders building AI-powered technologies to drive real innovation in numerous sectors and industries, ranging from energy consumption in homes through to the ways hotels interact with guests. Perhaps the most exciting trend is speed. AI software building tools are allowing founders to build and execute faster than ever before.

Which three start-ups funded by Antler this year excite you the most – and why?
Not an easy question to answer as we have so many companies in our portfolio who are just getting started, but if I were to pick three which are emerging very quickly, I would say:

• AskVinny: Automating property management with AI agents, AskVinny is streamlining tenant-landlord interactions and enhancing service delivery in the real estate sector.

• SAMMY: AI that explores your app like a real user to automatically generate documentation, onboarding, and testing

• Synthax: Automating healthcare admin, so doctors can focus on the patient