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\t\tAntler has backed over 1,900 startups across 27 cities\t<\/p>\n\t\t\tTuesday 21 April 2026 1:18 pm\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\tAntler has backed over 1,900 startups across 27 cities\t<\/p>\n
Antler\u2019s latest London residency opened this week with 80 founders in a single room, selected from roughly 10,000 applicants, each receiving a \u00a3500,000 commitment to build a company from scratch over eight weeks.<\/p>\n
Fewer than one in a hundred applicants make it through the selection process, which the early-stage investor weights heavily towards individual character, over business idea.<\/p>\n
Antler has backed over 1,900 startups across 27 cities, and invested in 146 UK firms since 2020.<\/p>\n
Also, 80 per cent of its UK portfolio firms raise pre-seed funding within nine months of investment.<\/p>\n
The firm\u2019s London partners Adam French, a former Goldman Sachs banker and co-founder of Scalable Capital, and Hannah Leach, founder of the UK\u2019s first alumni-focused venture fund, agree on prioritising the quality of the individual, over the idea they arrive with.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe usually ask really unusual questions \u2013 \u2018what\u2019s the hardest week you\u2019ve ever had in your life\u2019 \u2013 that kind of thing,\u201d French told City AM. \u201cIt\u2019s about trying to feel for the makeup of the individual and see if they\u2019re cut out to be a founder\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is very rare that someone arrives with an idea and are still building it now\u201d, Leach said, adding that the residency is designed to stress-test everything, and most ideas do not survive that process intact.<\/p>\n
Antler\u2019s founders<\/p>\n
That is well illustrated by the story of Listo. Its three Spanish co-founders, chief executive Andreu Paddack, chief tech officer Alejandro Navarro Garcia and chief operating officer Juan Destribats, arrived with a consumer music product eighteen months in development that did not outlast the first week.<\/p>\n
The company they built instead enables businesses to distribute and sell services through AI platforms including ChatGPT and Claude, and was among 13 UK startups receiving a combined \u00a32.7m from Antler\u2019s April 2026 cohort.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Antler team made us reconsider everything without actually telling us to pivot,\u201d says Paddack. \u201cIt was not easy \u2013 we are not from here, and it was a case of making this work or returning to Spain.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shaheer Aslam Joiya, co-founder of Synthax Healthcare, left a career as an NHS surgeon to address a problem he had encountered daily.<\/p>\n
His past career taught him that the UK loses an estimated \u00a39bn annually to clinical administration, with doctors spending more than three hours a day on documentation and referrals.<\/p>\n
In response, Synthax automates those workflows within existing hospital systems and is already deployed across more than 20 organisations, with tenfold month-on-month user growth and six letters of intent signed for commercial rollout.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tRead more<\/p>\n