Early Days
Early Days
Tyler Norwood, Antler
Ever wonder how your favorite companies were built? Early Days dives in with world class founders to unwrap the story of how they launched some of the planet's most influential companies. Early Days is created by Tyler Norwood and Antler.
Cedar - Kyle Vansice, Rahul Attraya, Nate Peters
Last week, Antler US portfolio company Cedar announced that it closed a $3 million seed round led by Caffeinated Capital, with participation from Tishman Speyer Ventures and a number of prominent individual investors. In this episode of Early Days, co-founders Kyle, Rahul, and Nate share their journey of building Cedar and discuss how their tools will help builders, developers, and the broader real estate community tackle the urban housing crisis.
Nov 8, 2023
1 hr 11 min
PowerX — Manuel Schönfeld
We're honored to feature the first founder Antler US ever invested in, Manuel Schönfeld, founder & CEO of PowerX, on this episode of Early Days.
Aug 23, 2023
1 hr 21 min
Kabbage, Keep Financial — Rob Frohwein
Rob Frohwein, founder of fintech startups Keep Financial and Kabbage, shares insights from his lifetime of entrepreneurship on this episode of Early Days.
Aug 17, 2023
56 min
bitewell—Samantha Citro Alexander
Early Days is back and we’re dropping our first ever episode featuring an Antler US portfolio founder: bitewell’s CEO & Co-Founder, Samantha Citro Alexander. bitewell is a B2B "food as medicine" marketplace that allows employers to offer healthy food as an insurance-subsidized benefit. The food health benefit startup recently raised a $4.0 million seed round led by Lake Nona Fund and Refinery Ventures.
Aug 3, 2023
1 hr 6 min
Supercritical—Michelle You
Michelle You is co-founder and CEO of Supercritical, one of the world's largest carbon removal marketplaces. But Supercritcal isn't the first startup Michelle has built and scaled. Before Supercritical, Michelle was co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Songkick, a company that helped fans discover concerts from their favorite artists. Songkick was backed by investors like YC, Index, Sequoia, Access and ultimately exited to Warner Music. Michelle shares how her experience at Songkick has influenced her approach to building Supercritical. We discuss the importance of user interviews, ascertaining key insights from customers, and how to structure an analytical decision making process. These are valuable, hard-earned lessons from a serial founder that you don't want to miss.Follow Michelle directly on LinkedIn and Twitter @wreckingball37.Curious how Supercritical helps businesses reach net zero through carbon removal? Learn more on Twitter - @gosupercritical - and Linkedin.Come build your next company in Antler's studios - more information at antler.co
Mar 27, 2023
54 min
Surf—Swish Goswami
Swish Goswami is the co-founder and CEO of Surf, a startup that helps consumers monetize their digital footprints through the world’s first extension that passively rewards people for everyday browsing. Surf has raised over $4M to date and also provides first and zero party data to enterprises like Netflix, L’Oreal, United Talent Agency, and Electronic Arts.In this episode of Early Days, Swish talks about his decision to drop out of the University of Toronto to work in startups, how he honed in on Surf’s ultimate value prop for brands and customers, and his thoughts on the future of consumer data privacy. Tyler grills Swish on how he recruited AAA+ talent to his team at such a young age and how he validated product-market fit with Surf's early (paying) customers. Swish is pretty prolific on LinkedIn - if you don't follow him already, you should. Here's his Linkedin profile, Instagram, and Twitter. Check out Surf if you're a consumer interested in passively earning rewards for browsing of if you're a brand looking to better engage with your audience (accounts: Instagram, Twitter, website, Linkedin).To learn more about Antler and how you can start your next company with us please come see us at antler.co
Feb 22, 2023
1 hr 10 min
Cameo—Arthur Leopold
Cameo is the world's largest celebrity marketplace. With Cameo, you can access thousands of celebrities and request a personalized video message for any occasion from your favorite stars. Arthur Leopold recognized the potential of selfies becoming the new autographs. He quickly joined Cameo as the first employee (COO) and invested in the startup's friends and family round. Arthur spent over 5.5 years with Cameo, serving as President through January 2023. While Arthur recently stepped down as President to start his own company, he remains a Senior Advisor and an ardent supporter of the team.We recorded this podcast while Arthur was Cameo's acting President. In this episode of Early Days, Arthur talks about the first Cameo that started it all, combatting the chicken-egg problem in marketplaces, finding near instantaneous product-market fit with fans, and Cameo's distinctive celebrity acquisition strategy. Check out Cameo and connect with your favorite stars here.  To hear more from Arthur, follow him on Linkedin and Twitter.To learn more about Antler and how you can start your next company with us please come see us at antler.co
Feb 8, 2023
1 hr 1 min
Bubble—Emmanuel Straschnov
Have you ever had an amazing idea, but struggled to bring it to life because you...don't know how to write code?  Today's guest wants to solve that, and put the ability to build beautiful applications at the fingertips of the entire world.  Emmanuel Straschnov is the founder and co-CEO of Bubble.io - a no code platform that let's you build without any experience in computer programming. To learn more about Bubble you can check them out and start building your own applications here.Also, you can find and follow Emmanuel on Twitter here.To learn more about Antler and how you can start your next company with us please come see us at antler.co
Nov 2, 2022
1 hr 1 min
Charity Water—Scott Harrison
Scott Harrison talks about starting Charity Water.
Oct 13, 2022
1 hr 3 min
Esusu—Samir Goel
Did you know that nearly 45 MILLION Americans don't have a credit score, and most are immigrant families that struggle with lack of access to basic financial services because of this.Meet Samir Goel, the son of two immigrant parents that grew up watching his parents struggle as they tried to get access to services most of us take for granted, like mortgages to buy a home, and financing for a car.Samir took this early lesson, combined it with an absolutely relentless optimism and work ethic and built Esusu.  Esusu is a platform that lets landlords report tenants rental payment to credit agencies, helping those who need it most get access to one of the most important numbers in American life — a credit score.In 2022 Esusu broke the Unicorn barrier with a Series B led by Softbank.You can learn more about Esusu here, and follow Samir on Twitter.
Oct 7, 2022
55 min
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