“Focus on Marking from the Very Early Stages of Startup” Antler Korea Acceleration Strategy

-Founder-first investment philosophy centered on entrepreneurs

-Antler program that closely supports the entire process of starting a business, from selection to team building and training

-The goal is to produce first movers in the global startup ecosystem.

Antler Korea's core value is to help people with passion and outstanding talent gather in the startup ecosystem and start a new adventure. It serves as a guide to help those working in so-called 'good workplaces' challenge themselves to start a business and find a second path. We met with Managing Partner Jeong Sa-eun to take a look at Antler Korea's special system that accompanies businesses from the very early stages and drives growth.

Moving forward with the “founder-first” philosophy

Partner Jeong Sa-eun explained, “Antler Korea’s ultimate success is naturally achieved when the founder and the founding team succeed.” Therefore, we check first and foremost whether the founding team is moving efficiently to achieve real growth (value-add) and design strategies.

When making investment decisions, the team's capabilities are considered most important. Even if the business and market growth potential are excellent, if the team's capabilities are not supported, we do not invest. On the other hand, if the team is judged to be excellent, we are willing to accept the regrets in terms of business.

Partner Jeong Sa-eun said, “Due to the nature of early-stage startups, there are bound to be moments when pivoting is inevitable, but if you have confidence in your team, you can trust that decision and push through to the end.” This culminates in Antler Korea’s core value of ‘Founder-first.’

Determine the team's growth potential through the capabilities of each member.

“We don’t hire people to be employees. We hire C-level people.”

Antler Korea's startup generator program closely manages and supervises from the team building stage. Based on the ambition to be with prospective founders from Day Zero, applicants are selected by capturing their potential even if they do not have a team or a proven idea. Since the risk of a member failing to faithfully fulfill his or her role in a small team is considered fatal, only those who can cover the entire business process are carefully selected.

At this time, potential is evaluated by considering leadership and initiative, not coachability. Even after actual selection, each participant is assigned a coach in charge, and data is continuously accumulated by tracking performance at the team level. Through this, Antler Korea's partners can deeply understand all program participants and provide customized feedback.

Partner Jeong Sa-eun said that although about 60% of the program participants have no experience in starting a business, there are no difficulties because of this. This is because when selecting applicants, they carefully examine whether they are professionals with a deep understanding of a specific industry. The participants gathered in this way share their failures and successes within the program, and naturally quickly learn and absorb know-how and what not to do.

Draw a steep learning curve with high-density training

Antler Korea's startup generator program creates an environment where participants can truly focus on starting a business. The Antler Korea team began with the meeting of co-CEOs Jeong Sa-eun and Kang Ji-ho. After that, Jang Jae-hee joined, and now consists of three partners and eight employees.

It consists of a marketing team that strives to attract talented individuals with a strong passion for entrepreneurship, a program team that plans content to help participants create successful teams and businesses, an operations team that oversees key events such as Demo Day, a manager dedicated to government projects (Tips, Seed-tips), and a finance manager in charge of finance. Each team specializes in a unique function and carefully guides the journey of early-stage entrepreneurs. Partner Jeong Sa-eun explained, “We work without holidays, so you can think of it as running a 100m sprint every day, excluding sleep time.”

Antler Korea's program aims to provide early-stage entrepreneurs with insights that they would otherwise have difficulty obtaining on their own. To this end, it provides high-density content to help them define good business problems. Furthermore, it helps participants effectively apply their domain expertise to actual businesses to produce meaningful results.

Aiming to produce startups that will become benchmarking cases

So far, successful overseas startups have served as role models for the domestic startup ecosystem, providing both large and small stimulation. Partner Jeong Sa-eun expressed her hope that startups fostered through Antler Korea’s startup generator program will be able to play this role.

Partner Jeong Sa-eun said, “Korean startups are leaping forward to become leaders in the global startup ecosystem. We hope to produce startups that are influential enough to prompt Antler founders in other countries to copycat or beyond the Antler Korea portfolio.”

In this way, Antler Korea has revealed a strong will to challenge itself to discover teams that will grow into first movers in the Korean startup ecosystem. Attention is focused on whether startups that will create new trends in the global market can emerge through Antler Korea’s program.