337. How this VC partner backs from day zero at a global fund w/ Hannah Leach | Antler

0:00I'm Hannah. I'm a partner at Antler in the UK. And I also co-founded and sit on a board of a non-profit called WeFrame Venture. And we work with VCs and LPs on all elements of responsible investment.

0:11Amardeep Parmar:So with Antler, right, so different models from many other VCs. Yeah. Can you talk us through that and why you think that works? We work with founders at the very, very, very earliest of stages. So we call it kind of an inception stage. So when they're maybe they founded a business before, they've had an interesting side hustle, they've maybe been building products in a big corporate, but they have some level of founder instinct and ambition and hustle and grit. And we kind of identify them and bring them into a residency. And we work with them over a set period of weeks and we help them form teams and get their businesses off the ground.

0:45And then we kind of back them with their first bit of capital and kind of help them on their journey. and actually it's fairly unique for funds that do that in that we have the ability to follow on. So we follow on all the way through to Series A and then we have an Antler growth fund that can invest from there. So we're really building kind of partnerships with these founders from the very, very, very start of their journey which is really exciting.

1:07Amardeep Parmar:And you said you're looking for potential right? Yeah. How has that changed over the time you've been at Antler? Like for what you maybe looked at the beginning versus your experience and how your views maybe have changed? So I've only been at antler for a year and a half um i don't know i mean things move so quickly i can't remember having last week so a year and a half is a long time i'm like what did you eat for breakfast a cookie how did you okay well we'll talk about that later um how have things changed i don't think my view of i don't think my view of what's important has changed but um you get to see certain traits of successful and it's hard to say what success looks like in 18 months but the founders who are building faster shipping faster getting converting more customers expanding growing their teams you get to see traits of of success there and then get to play those back into the founders that you speak to and it's a really the main question we get whenever we interview founders and I had one this morning over email you know interviewed him yesterday sent a follow-up saying can you give me the three traits of successful founders and those that raise faster what do they look like and I think there are things around you know pace and hustle they just run at things they're not scared increasingly there's a split of founders those who don't like speaking to customers you know they know so much and they'll say oh we know this and you say how and they and you say have you spoken to anyone and they say yeah yeah we've spoken to like some some friends and you're like have you gone onto the street and stopped people and done that for five ten hours so that people who aren't scared to get in front of customers and also they're not scared of the good bad and the ugly you know they want to hear it all and they take on board that feedback and they they're learning loops feedback loops are fast and you can see that play out so you see what they did in week one and how that's changed and how they've pivoted and adapted and And I think being able to do that quickly with no qualms about accepting that you were wrong, you didn't know it at the beginning, but you're happy to take on board that feedback and be coachable.

3:12I think there's an element of that that extends like having confidence in what you're building, but being able to ask for help. And I think people are terrified of asking for help. And I think especially in our residency, I think we try and say at the beginning, we're building this with you. like I think VCs generally don't have the best rep and they see us as that on the sitting on the other side of the table and they have to kind of protect us from certain things that are happening and we say that we can only help you if we know the full story so founders who are happy to kind of bring us in and really work with us and understand where we can be helpful and that actually we can't help here because they know their shit and they've got it that's great so having confidence in one area but being humble to admit what they don't know and the list could go on but i think so like on that point about it said there's some people who would just go and get it

4:08Amardeep Parmar:and the other people who look for permission right yeah because i guess on the other side you have some founders who ask you too much and like they ask you before actually going to do the thing and like it's that goldilocks period right of like you go and try it you get some feedback and then you go and discuss it yeah exactly it's the balance but i think it's not necessarily just about um asking it's just over it's over sharing like taking them through your taking us through their thought process so we say to people always over communicate rather than under like we had one company who's been working with us for the last few weeks and at the end of every day they would send us a overview of everything they've done and for some people that might be overkill but actually there are loads of teams that we work with we're all in different you know parts of the office or out of the office so actually having that over at the end of the day and seeing what's worked and what hadn't was really valuable especially since we're trying to make these decisions over the course of you know a few weeks and but lots of people don't like that's not a habit you know i'm sure you have it with the companies that you're working with it's like six months go by and you've got no investor update and then suddenly they pop up and like hey can you help with this yeah so who are you again what and obviously with like there's like there's different roles you have to take right it's obviously at some point you're helping people in the residency but then also making the investment decisions what part of that do you enjoy the most like what's the bit of that i it i don't really i i don't see this the most kind of separate isolated parts of the process really i think the beauty is um interviewing someone at the very very beginning and then working with them all the way through.

5:47And actually we've kind of restructured our team to make sure that everyone sits horizontally now. So we used to have kind of people sitting in functions. But for us, it's so important that there's that continuity. So if one of our principals scouts someone, gets introduced to someone, interviews to them, they will work with them all the way through the residency. They'll take them to IC if we invest and they'll work with them from then on. And that's like the beauty is because you get to see exactly how um founders grow you get to see habits in their their weaknesses and their strengths you get to know these people they become you know like it's funny when we do our in the beginning we do our ways of working and adam jed and i talked through and you know this is how i like to work and i'm there saying you know feel free to like what's happening here and the others are like no um there's a slide slap me sure but um i think you do oh the the joy is getting to know these founders and what makes them tick and actually knowing where you can help move the needle and i think you can only do that if you have that kind of full view of of how they're growing so that's the bit that i love

6:54Amardeep Parmar:which areas do you think you're the most valued to founders as well like which bits like when founders are applying to antler why do they apply to antler or why would they want you as their mentor oh god um i i always say that if you have any form of like vague insecurity bc is so hard because you the feedback loop is so long that you need to you need to be aware of where you add value add value and not only that but you need to understand what you're motivated by and for me it's I'm a constant constantly questioning what that is which probably isn't brilliant but um I I've done a range of things over the course of of course of my career and Adam and I were running a fund together before Hatton Street Ventures in partnership with LSE one of the things that I guess that I'm very good at is I've worked in different parts of the world for different organizations and I have what I call like I call it a very like weird and wonky network so I know lots of people in disparate places and disparate fields and one of the things I'd love is being able to see the interconnections so you know this person talking to this person here and them not quite realizing that they should be speaking to this person here because they've had something in common across the course of their career and me being able to put those two people together and I guess you'd call that a connector so that's one element that I know that I'm good at and I love making that link and it's seeing seeing it flourish I've always done that putting people in rooms around certain topics.

8:22But I think also because I've worked with different types of organisations and worked a lot at the very early stages, so not necessarily in huge VC-backed companies, but helping get teams off the ground. I worked at EY helping build out their fintech team in the UK, and there was a lot of understanding different incentives across the firm, different stakeholders we needed to bring in, how to design the product, which was their new service book to service these fast-growing companies. So getting involved at that scrappy early stage and that's exactly what we do so I think I can be for most people just a really great sounding board you know like I know the questions to ask I know quite maybe like help them see a few steps ahead so I think it's really hard to say I'm like I can help you deliver x y and z but it's kind of that general um kind of friendly sparring partner I think I think what's

9:10Amardeep Parmar:interesting too is because you're interviewing people individually right and then their teams It seems afterwards. So both. Oh, both, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So we do, we've actually are trialing a newish model. And I think the beauty of Antler is whilst we have kind of 16 funds around the globe and we all started with the same model, there's so much iteration and experimentation, which we can do based on the ecosystem we're working in. So what we're doing now is we take what we call solo founders, but they're independent, someone said they're independent founders, or they come into the residency as solos and then they find a co-founder, whether that be a commercial, technical or domain.

9:48And then we also now bring brilliant teams who are already a team, who are already kind of running a product, and we bring them in straight away. And we call that our rolling residency. So our two formal residencies begin in spring and autumn. But now if we meet someone in the summer who's fantastic, it's funny because we've been running these two set residencies, we also talk about valuing pace and how fast you can run so it's so counterintuitive when you meet a great team and you say we love you you're brilliant but could you could you just hold on for three months until the residency begins so now we bring them in and work with them in teams so we're working with both teams and solos helping them find their co-founder but we still feel like i know that ef is very similar in this and helping bring together teams but we still feel that that I hate that we hate the term co-founder matching because we're not matching I use a really corny term um engineering serendipity because that's what I think we do I think like we know who the people are that need to meet and we create the forums and the circumstances and the surroundings to enable them to get the most out of each other and figure each other out um but there's so so much value for that there are brilliant individuals who just don't know where to find that co-founder and everyone talks about YC co-founder matching or Jack and Jill but they're kind of isolated they're online they're transactional so we still feel like there's such value in creating that forum for people to actually kind of come together and like all the people who do come together how do you and also I guess sometimes people come together

11:22Amardeep Parmar:maybe not work out too and when you're kind of dealing with that and like say somebody where obviously you might have said two co-founders come together and you can kind of tell that they're not really going to work out how do you kind of juggle that and what signs you look for so say somebody who's recently found a co-founder how do they know who's the right person or not so we do we have all of the um very framework driven things like the co-founder questionnaire which is all of the hard questions it's similar to the new york times article you know 30 questions or 100 questions to fall in love it's a similar thing so all of the things that we think are most important to that co-founding relationship get them to run through it but the problem is at that point you know you're still kind of I think in pretense mode you're still kind of wanting it to work my um my cousin has this funny phrase which is when you're um dating someone for six months you send a representation of yourself and then like it's not you until the six month point and I think with founders there's an element of that that they're still trying to kind of be the person that the other person wants them to be so you have to try and get them to a point where they lower their guard and barrier as soon as possible.

12:28But the reality is some people will make it work in eight weeks or you'll figure out that there's that that they get on. And then in other instances, you'll find that it won't. And I'll give you a recent example and I will try and abstract all identifying traits.

12:43Amardeep Parmar:That's like a challenge to kind of figure out who this is. I know, who could it be out of the hundred and something that we've backed? So two fantastic co-founders came together in the residency. They'd both been in other teams first, and this happens. People meet and then they realise that they're not working or they don't want to work together or there's something else, and then they churn out into others. And generally you see people go through kind of two to three teams, which just seems crazy when you say it out loud, but it works for a reason. They came together in really strong rapport.

13:16They both, one's very technical, one's really commercial. and in their IC we all said they had just and we bring external VCs into our IC and and the external said they're just you know they've got really great rapport like finishing each other's sentences you can tell they're really relaxed with each other and we were like yeah we're so excited and um eight weeks later they've they've hit a hit a roadblock something something has broken its trust has has gone out the window and and it's we we bring in external coaches to often work with them at the point we invest. And even just they'll do one session during the residency.

13:54And it's irreparable. Like the trust has broken so much and we've been trying to figure out, almost do like a retro on what happened. When did that break? What was it? But I think it's very much about their ways of working. One likes to work at home, the other likes to be in the office. One likes conflict, the other one really doesn't like conflict. And they're just, and you know, but I think analyzing that and seeing how you can play that back as to your point earlier, to then catch could we have seen something before but the reality is is that people's personal situations change you know some people get married and have kids some people divorce things happen and you've got to kind of build that resilience into the team and also check that there is that resilience that they're not going to run away the first hint of um hint of trouble

14:41Amardeep Parmar:yeah because i think like so me and gerva have been together for what nearly four years right And it's such a fluke because we didn't do any of this stuff. And I think sometimes when people ask me for advice, it's like, don't do what I did. Because it just worked out. Or do. Yeah. It sounds like it was organic. Hello, hello. I hope you've enjoyed the show so far. I'm Amiri Parma, co-founder of BayHQ and the host of this show. For those of you who don't know, BayHQ is the community for high growth Asian heritage founders and investors in the UK. Over 7 ,500 people have attended our events. 200 people have been for our impact programs.

15:22Amardeep Parmar:And obviously, there's been over 250 episodes of this podcast. If you want to join us and take part in the programs and come to the events, go to bayhq.com forward slash join. We also just released our first ever book called Startups for Outsiders, which you can get on Amazon now. And the link is in the bio. Hope to see you soon at our event. Hope you enjoy the rest of the episode. Yeah, and I think the other factors as well, because like me, I know his wife and I've known his wife for 15 years. So the element of like we can't really like at the beginning, especially like really butt heads because I know his like there's like a lot of like cross relationships.

16:02Amardeep Parmar:or we know a lot of people that each other know and then what I think we're good at is that if you've kind of got a problem we just say it straight away so it never builds resentment and I think that's the cause of so many kind of conflicts. Have you always done that or did you have to set that in? I think at the beginning it's like when you don't know somebody as well you in your head you're kind of like okay I need to frame like you overthink the framing like I need to make sure I word this in the right way and then when I say something when I said something if I was annoyed or if he's annoyed and we're like yeah that's fair like I agree and then it it just takes the whole wind out of it but you're kind of prepared like okay if there's conflict how do I deal with this and we've just been quite lucky that if one of us thinks the other one has done something wrong the other one just takes accountability straight away and it just kills it straight away and yeah I guess especially say on like Antler for example where would a lot of people maybe have just quit their jobs to be coming on Antler and is there sometimes that environment where people are feeling pressure on themselves like I need to make this work and that maybe yeah I think so I think it's um the people always say that antler is brings a level of um emotional intensity or psychological intensity that they don't anticipate that they can't anticipate and it's funny because we often try and introduce people that we bring onto the residency to people who've been through it you know just to say how what it's like working with us what they might want to think about going in and the one thing that no one is able to to really kind of express is that emotional intensity and that pressure you know we kind of get like the mix between a love island and hunger games as an analogy which is awful which way do you think you took more but you do ask that everyone people are like you haven't been through antlers so how do you know how it feels um but uh i don't know i think some people are just better prepared for that And I think it's a lot around how we're taught to communicate growing up in our jobs.

17:54We've all been in different working environments where people have valued different things. And I think no one takes stock of that really consciously. And I think, interestingly, I kind of think it's like how we go into personal relationships. But I don't know how many people have really strong, positive relationship role models. You know, can we all point to a number of relationships where we're like, well, that relationship looks like it works really well and it works really well for these reasons? Because we have no idea what happened behind closed doors. And I don't know, our parents might have a nuanced relationship, but it's not necessarily perfect.

18:31So I think sometimes people go into relationships generally thinking that they don't need to work at them because we should be able to do them. You know, like we should be able to make it work. and actually there's I think bringing on board someone to help you understand how you both communicate where your challenges are is actually really really healthy on an earlier on in the journey to kind of lay out that foundation like Adam and I have known each other for 10 years we met randomly through the fintech world and we kind of stayed in touch for no reason we weren't working together we didn't have lots of mutual friends and then started working together at Houghton Street Ventures five, five and a half years ago.

19:10And so now we're on our second fund together. We have a really easy, easy working relationship. You know, we're quite sarcastic with each other. We can lose our temper, but get over it. We have a very clear idea of where each other's strengths lie and why we're complementary. But there are moments where it doesn't work and where conflict is, you know, it's like this. And we've started seeing a coach. And I think that's great like i'm i think investing in our the relationships that mean so much to us and take up such a huge amount of our time should be something we do and i think founders need to recognize that that's not a scary thing it's not admit it's not admitting that there's a failure it's just admitting that it's something that's important and you should work on it i think it's

19:54Amardeep Parmar:also practicing what you preach right so if you're sending other founders like you should have a coach but we don't need a coach we know what we're doing yeah and i think sometimes there's that element that sometimes people in VC space or people in investor space, they can give advice they wouldn't take themselves. I think that's kind of a good thing, right? Say as I do as I say, not as I do. Yeah. And obviously, like, with the amount of people going through the cohorts, you're probably saying some of the same advice over and over again, which is probably really annoying. What's the advice you're sick of giving?

20:22Amardeep Parmar:So if somebody listens to this before coming on to Antler, then hopefully you don't need to tell them again. Maybe one of them is like go into, do your research across everything. Like if you're talking to a customer, if you're talking to an investor, if you're talking to a potential hire, anything, make sure you do your research first. Like that is so frustrating. And then the second one, here we go. I'm locked here. When you're asking for help, make it easy for someone to help you. My giant bugbear. Can you introduce us to this person? but we're not going to give you any context for the ask.

20:58We're not going to give you any intro material. We're not going to give you anything. So don't put the work on the other person. Make it as easy as possible for someone to help you. That is probably my biggest bugbear. Like when you're responding to an intro, send some time. So that's just, yeah, that's a thought of being thoughtful. And I think that comes with experience. You realize that the younger founders don't have that professionalized way of working yet. So you have to kind of embed that stuff.

21:27Amardeep Parmar:This is like a triggering thing for me as well, because it's where someone's like, oh, do you know any investors? Like, yes. And like, do I know any investors are going to invest in you? It's a very different question to do I know any investors. And then also, like you said, it's making me do the work of having to figure out who's relevant to you, what do you even do? And I think as well, when people say like, oh, like I'd love to like catch up or introduce myself. And it's like, I talk about myself so much. I really don't want to have a call about me to introduce myself. Like Google me. yeah and i don't think the same thing as well obviously you probably get a lot of people maybe reach out before and that opens being like oh can we have a good talk it's like well that's the point of the interview right i know yeah it's it's quite hard because you don't want you want to be the kind of person who's open to that but the process exists for a reason and i'm very when it comes to hiring when it comes to people coming into the residency i want to run a fully kind of open clean process like I don't want to be the person who got introduced to Hannah and had this call and knew everything and then do you know what I and I don't I don't really think it would actually change the outcome because no one's going to be able to change the way they are so much in the space three interviews but yeah I'm I'm the person who goes thanks so much for getting in touch but I'll direct you to our application link here and the hot things too is like it's hustle right it's them trying yeah but it just doesn't really fit with the process and it's like there's no harm in shooting your shot as long as you respect the no I think but it but it goes back to what do they why are they doing that do they think it's a way to build a relationship that's going to ease their way into the residency or are they doing it to do their research because really if they're doing it to do their research and to learn more about us and how we work and what we look for go speak to our portfolio there is we have a big portfolio globally as well so like that would be way more useful like say i've spoken to three people who've been through antler um and it's funny i'm on some like group chats and people will reach out saying oh does anyone know anything about antler and i'm like that's interesting but you have no idea who's saying anything back on what basis would it not be better to go through our list of portfolio founders who we've backed in the last 18 months two years fun to and and reach out to a handful of them and to get real So I think a lot of this gives you insight into how people think and why they make certain decisions.

23:48And the last question before I was a quick question is when it comes to AI and how things are changing now,

23:55Amardeep Parmar:does it change what you guys are looking for at all in terms of what kind of ideas people are bringing to the table? Because obviously people don't have to have an idea to join Antler, but I guess a lot of them do have some general... Yeah, we don't necessarily look for an actual idea, but we do ask them to talk us through something. And it could be a space that they're really passionate about, a problem area that they've become obsessed with or think they could be obsessed with. And then if they have an idea, we ask them to talk through that. And if anything, it gives you a sense of what they think is a meaningful problem to go after or a big enough problem.

24:31And often it's the way we identify that early target. thinking and we challenge them on their first principles thinking and why they've made those assumptions. So it gives you a little bit of insight. But to your point, we're seeing a lot of people, I always say that Antler is kind of a reflection of what's happening in the market. And we're seeing a lot of people move towards kind of the naughtier deep tech type issues. So a lot of kind of software for hardware, some increasing amounts of hardware and things around robotics, AI, physical AI, infrastructure AI, I hate that term, but a lot of people challenging the sectors that haven't yet been kind of brought into this new world.

25:14But we are moving away from the simple AI, AI optimization tools and AI wrappers and getting trying to get under the hood of what the technology actually is and how it's differentiated. But, you know, it's very, the thing about the process is that you we have a screen they do go through a principal interview and they go through a partner interview and it's half an hour yeah so you have to be able to get fairly deep in quite a short period of time um but more than anything it's testing those initial assumptions but i'd say i don't know ai where is where are we where are we going that can be for

25:52Amardeep Parmar:part two so wrap up question time now okay mainly because i need to run sorry yeah so So here are three Asians in Britain you think are doing amazing work. And do you want to shout them out? Yes. So I would love to. So one is Dharma from Bethlehem Green Ventures, a partner there. She also sits on our steering committee for Reframe Venture. She is just so thoughtful, so curious, so brings that kind of impact, the understanding of what it means to build an impact business. and she always seems to know exactly where the latest thinking is. And she's just a huge resource and she's a fond of knowledge and a wonderful human.

26:34I'm like a wonderful humans only rule generally. The other one is Bardan, the founder of First Work, which is a YC gradient-backed business that's just closing their Series A. We backed him at Houghton Street Ventures. So he's an LSE alum. We've known him since his kind of pre-founder operator days. He is also just brilliant, like kind of a huge brain, can get on with anyone, can code switch, can adept communicator, very cerebral and a hustler, which is a fairly unique combo. And then Talvin, who I think has been on your pod. He's the founder of Bleep64, one of our portfolio companies. He is, talking of hustlers, he is the ultimate hustler and just so passionate about what he's building for the medical industry.

27:30You kind of hear him talk about the product and you know when someone's face kind of lights up, that's it.

27:37Amardeep Parmar:And then if people want to find out more about you, more about Antler, where do they go to? You can go to our website, Antler UK, Google Antler UK. might take you to the luggage brand but you know uh or reframe reframe venture love community of 600 vcs and lps um and yeah that's that's and this after this this is and is there anything that the audience could help you if you are if you have an idea if you have a burning idea or burning passion for an industry or you've got you're chomping at the bit to get going and you kind of just you need you need a place to go to meet someone or a sounding board or come come chat to us.

28:18We're just up the road.

28:19Amardeep Parmar:Thanks so much for coming on. Thank you for having me. Any final words? You should be eating things other than cookies for breakfast. Okay, end of the recording.