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Magnus Grimeland

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2024-02-15
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2024-02-15
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  1. “Which ultimately has been the deciding factors for why so many other early stage large platforms have been able to generate really strong stable returns over a long period of time, like Y combinators, Sakoi and Andres and Horoz and so on, because they built really strong gravitas and a platform and the flywheel keeps getting stronger every year”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “And we reach out to them, and we might reach out to them one or two or three or four years before they actually decide to build a business. They might be working in Stripe right now, they might be working in Spotify, but they'll receive an email from us saying, hey, congrats on Billing Spotify. If at some point in time you want to leave and build your own billion dollar business, we'd love to support you. And that converts into a lot of applicants. And it's selective, so it's typically pretty high quality. And then we do events and we do a lot of content creation. We do some online education and so on, which leads to this tremendous growth in applicants. Our application basis is growing about 60, 70% per year. We get more applicants now in a year than Harvard Sanford and MIT combined. It's by far the largest funnel of founder applicants in the world, which also means that”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Applicants come from many places. The best location to get applicants these days is through referrals. We have a founding community of about 7,000 people who refer people to us. We have an advisory net for about 1,000 people. We have 2,600 angel investors in our network. We have 3,000 VCs in our network. And they tend to refer founders to us who are too early for them or they believe are really strong founders, but they haven't really gotten started yet. So there's no kind of business to invest into. So it's a tremendous referral network. And by far, that's where you get strongest founders. The second place is we do outbound headhunting. So index, for example, entire LinkedIn database, we built a tool called Haystack. We pulled all the data we could from public sources, combined it with our own data on now more than 400,000 applicants and more than a thousand portfolio companies. And it literally gives people a score based on how strong a founder they might be.”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “These locations, you have two partners, typically the partners are like me, so they've built something great in that region. So if you go to Bangalore, for example, Rajiv Sistro is there. He built Urban Ladder, which is one of the most successful companies there. If you go to Germany, Alan Ponskin built West Wing, which is one of the most successful companies there. The people around these locations are very successful founders in that region before, which is necessary to attract the best founders into that program. They also don't have a team of about six to eight people around them, depending on the size of the locations. It's a team there that ultimately are focused on two things, which is finding the very best founders in the region and then being a really good partner to them as they're just getting started.”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “To the other founders that are in the court. And then we also evaluate them because at the end of the three months, we need to decide whether we want to back these teams or not. That's when they come to the IC.”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “These locations are places like Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, Bangalore, and India, in Africa, most European capitals, we're in four cities in the US, South America and Africa. And each of them, we have space for about 100 people. Every half a year, about 50 to 100 new founders will come in who are top 2 to 3% of the founders we could find in that region over the last six months. And these founders can come from anywhere. So some of them are sourced locally and some want to come to that specific region to build companies. And we often see that the combination of people with an international background and local background works really well in building great companies. For example, in the US, I think 70% of unicorns have a first or second generation immigrant co-founder. 500 people will come into one of these offices. We work with them for three months where they have a coach.”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Basically, the fundamental mole is still the same. We look for amazing founders. And last year we got 131,000 applicants from founders who want to work with us who applied to come into one of our programs across 27 operating locations across the globe, plus three other offices where we have support networks. And we selected last year about 2,000 of these 131,000 applicants in batches of 50 to 100 people that joined one of our offices for three months to validate their business model and to get the first bit of capital. We make about 400 investments per year. We lead precede rounds, and then we have follow-on capital to back the very best founders in their subsequent rounds to concentrate capital in the winners. It split in two strategies preceded to Series A and Series A to Series C, where most of the decision making on Earth”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Better and better every year. So, the number one thing we focused on first was access. Now, obviously, that's also why we first launched in Asia, because that's where I built my last business. And through that, we had tremendous networks. So people also were quite excited about working with us given the success of my last business. And then we started off with that. We got about 1,000 applicants, we selected 62 people, and we started working with them for three months before we made our first 13 investments in October 2018. And then since then, we tried to improve on that model.”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “So, if you want to deliver tremendous returns in early stage venture capital, number one thing you need is access to the best people. Doesn't matter if you're an amazing decision maker, if you don't have access. Now, obviously in the public markets, it matters more to be an amazing decision maker because you have access to any company you want to buy. But in early stage and the earlier you go, the more it matters. The best founders in the location where you operate in need to think that you are a very valuable partner to them from day one. Why would they take your capital versus someone else? Because the best founders in the world have plenty of choice in terms of where they want to get capital. A is focusing a lot on how can we be the best partner to the best founders, which gives you access. Then once you have access, you need to make the right decisions on who you want to back. But that's easier and there's more well established what are the characteristics of an amazing founder team, prolonging market fit, and so on. Lastly, you need to create a flywheel where this gets better.”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Amazing companies coming out of the BlackBerry team. And the alicia can go city by city, and you can trace back a lot of the next gen great founders to these companies. And we got very excited about figuring out where does the next generation great people come from and how can you create the biggest opportunity for them to succeed in solving very important problems. So we got excited about backing people from the very”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “We saw in Southeast Asia this tremendous growth of the tech ecosystems where we had built this business which was pretty successful. And then a number of the people that we had hired and trained would go on to build a next generation great companies. So Shoppy, which is the largest e-commerce platform there now part of C Group, which peaked at more than $100 billion valuation was built by Chris Fang, who was part of the Solar team. And Michael Ferrari built Stashaway, GoJek, which IP builders go to was built by two Exlore people, shop back, or a local multiple really great companies in the region was built by Explore people. And then we realized similar thing is happening in ecosystems all across the globe. You go to Silicon Valley, we say you have the PayPal maf, the Facebook map, and so on. You go to Stockholm today, and there's five or six unicorns that came out of Spotify, Helsinki, a tremendous amount of great companies coming out of Nokia. Go to Toronto.”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “So we sold a business in 2015 at the time, it was the second largest exit in Southeast Asia. We sold a global fashion group, which later IPO'd in Frankfurt. I stayed on for two years as chief operating officer of that group, which operated across 27 countries in South America, Europe, and Asia and Australia. At that point in time, I obviously learned a lot about the construction and setting up large organizations and pulling out synergies and building unified tech across multiple locations. But I knew that after my two-year management look-in, I wanted to go on and build Antler.”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Quite interesting is it combines a little bit of creativity with hardcore execution technology. It was quite exciting that it wasn't only tech in execution we're talking about, but also winning in the creative space and ensuring that we have the right people on the creative side.”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “We were very passionate about the opportunity, not the field itself, but it was just 600 million people who didn't have access to some of the biggest brands in the world. It was a big trend around Korean fashion at the time, which you couldn't really access anywhere. So it just felt like this obvious problem that someone would solve at some point of time. If you think about building an e-commerce company, whether it's fashion or any other thing that you're selling, the core product that you're selling is a very small part of the value proposition. What you're ultimately building is an executional machine. You're building logistics networks, payment systems, you're building back-end technology, discovery system. You need the best performance marketers in the world, and you're optimizing a funnel. The fashion part of it, we brought in people who are way more passionate and also way better at fashion than I am. To ensure that we have the right products on the platform. Now, what made that particular...”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “But when we started, the only way you could really buy things online there is getting shipped in from Japan or from Europe or from the US or from China. And it was a terrible customer experience, right? Sometimes it would get stuck in custom, sometimes you had to pay much more. You never knew when it arrived. Me and a few other people from McKinsey decided to leave and set up fashion e-commerce business there. It later grew that to the biggest platform of his kind in the region.”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “I always knew that I wanted to do that. So for me, the plan was to sustain McKinsey for two years and then start something. But I had such a great time. I was learning so much. Also was on a quite rapid promotion trajectory with amazing colleagues. So I ended up staying much longer than I was planning to do. However, I did get exposed to Asia during that period of time. It had been growing already for a while, 6 to 8% rather steadily. And Southeast Asia in particular was the region that has been growing very fast. Digitalization was happening incredibly fast. But the tech space and the venture space hadn't really started yet. 2012 when I decided to leave McKinsey, 200 million dollars a year was put into venture in Southeast Asia, which is a population of 600 million, very fast growing. And we thought that this e-commerce revolution that you've seen in the US and Europe also would happen there, which obviously, in retrospect, is a pretty evident idea.”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “And got to see it across Asia, Europe, and the US. That was a tremendous learning journey. So I was there for five and a half years after college.”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “We actually exited the two that we started when we were there, so it was two small exits. We started another one, which was a property investment company, which was literally just investing into properties that one we kept for a few more years. But I was very focused on continuing my learning journey. I've become very interested in technology. But at the same time, I've been in high school and a full scholarship, then I was in the military for a few years, which is not the greatest pay in the world. And then I was in college also at a full scholarship, so I decided to go out and get a full-time job. So I joined McKinsey because I want to work with tech companies all across the globe. And at the time I joined, I was working in Europe at the beginning, but then quickly in Sashan organization, when you become an expert on topic, you are in the manual across the globe. So I worked in Europe, I worked in the US, I worked Lot in Asia with everything from deep tech companies to the consumer side of things. So the whole value chain.”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “The most visible one on campus was Facebook. So Facebook was launched, I believe it was in the early part of 2004. So I'd been on campus for six plus months. And this platform launch where in the beginning it was just an online website where you knew everyone on Facebook and you could poke them. That was what it was doing. But then very rapidly friends in other schools and also in Europe came onto the platform. You saw this tremendous opportunity to influence the entire world with one technological shift. At the time when you were studying and thinking about doing what you were going to do next, a couple of friends started a couple of small businesses at the time, including Clicker, which at the time actually was the largest social network in Norwegian universities. Facebook ended up becoming a trillion dollar business and we sold ours for close to $100,000. So it was obviously a different success factor. I learned a lot from doing these things on the side of studying at college.”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Similar actually to what you experienced after the global financial crisis and what you experience after the peak in 2021 and we're experiencing now. But I came as that new cycle started and the other combination of internet companies becoming more serious, but you also had the start of the mobile revolution and obviously some tremendously interesting companies came out of campus. So that's also what I got really inspired about tech.”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Came to college, I was 23, where most other people were younger. It was me and the Israelis and Singaporeans. Also some US vets who were the same age. Luckily, actually, a few of my friends from high school were in the senior year at Harvard at that point of time. I got to know all my freshman classmates, but I also had friends in the senior class. I think for me it was a great start of college. And it was also an interesting time. I came there in 2003. If you think about the tech ecosystem, you have obviously this waves of tremendous growth, very often driven by big platforms.”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “A number of books, including Franz Kafka, which was very hard to read at that point in time. My mother is more spiritual. And in the end, I started thinking a lot about what do you want to accomplish in life in an early stage and got inspired to make small difference because I lived. And I think that part was very important when I did the military training because for me, it just felt like an opportunity to become mentally much stronger my country, but at the same time it was a building block for something I could do later. It's also preparation for what's coming next.”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Most important thing when you grow up, the most important thing I think about when it comes to my own children, at some point of time, it's important to get inspired by something, which is also one of my favorite books, Man's Search for Meaning, where they were looking at people in the concentration camps during the Second World War and what made some of them able to survive this horrible conditions for a long period of time. And it was very related to having a purpose. Having a purpose early on in life is incredibly important to build an inner engine. And if you expose your children's opportunities where they can get that inspiration, that's one of the greatest gifts you can do as a parent. And my parents did that in various ways. And at some point of time, you never know when it will happen. But for me, it happened when my great-grandmother died. I started thinking about life and death and so on at a quite early age. My father come from a more communist type upbringing. He believed you live and then you die. And he gave me.”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Normal thing I learned is that mental resilience is one of the most important things you can take with you in life if you're trying to do something really difficult. So I think we're about a thousand people who tried out for the special forces when I was there for about half a year of selection. We were 10 people left. And when we started, there were people there who were Norwegian champion in this world champion in that incredibly athletic individuals who lasted much shorter than people who were just determined to succeed. And the ones who really made it all the way to the end were people with very strong mental resilience. And this mindset that failure is not an option.”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “I did a complete shift again as my father, my grandfather, many generations. I joined the military after high school and want to try out for the Norwegian Naval Special Forces, which is the equivalent to the Navy SEALs here in the US. It's called Marin ⁇ n Commandon. So first I did basic trailing, then tried out for the special forces Goren. The whole focus then was Norway and Norway security. So going from a very international environment to something completely different. But you learn a lot about yourself because it's a combination of mental challenge and a physical challenge.”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “It was super interesting because you got to meet people from a lot of different cultures. The other thing that was a bit of a shock is I'd always done pretty well in school in Norway. And in Norway, I think there was a few hundred people applying for this scholarship in India and in China. There was tens of thousands of people applying for the same scholarship. So people were incredibly academically rigorous. It took me about half a year to catch up. It's also a big change, but tremendous amount of founding you learned a lot outside of the pure subjects.”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Yeah, so I grew up in Norway on the countryside on a small farm there where we actually didn't have farm animals, but we had huskies. My father was a competitive dog sledger. So we had 36 huskies. Really in the middle of nowhere, lots of forest nature was outside all the time. It's about eight kilometers to the nearest door. Then at some point I got to hear about this school called United World Colleges, a high school where you can apply for a scholarship. It brings people together from all across the globe. I thought it was amazing to study with people from everywhere. So I applied for the scholarship Luck Ligorians ended up doing high school in the UK with people from eighty two nations. It's like a boarding school. He lived together for two years in an old castle. We didn't international baccalaureate there.”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Guest on today's sponsored insight is Magnus Grimelan, the CEO and founder of Antler Capital, the world's largest day zero investor. Antler's precede strategy canvasses 27 countries, 1,000 portfolio companies, 5,600 founders, and over 120,000 annual applications for 2,000 spots in its residency programs. Magnus founded Antler in 2017. After serving as the co founder of Zalora. Tech enabled fashion brand in Asia. Our conversation covers Magnus' journey from growing up in rural Norway to developing a global startup platform, characteristics of successful entrepreneurs, And the process for building the infrastructure for founders to solve important problems around the world.”

    2024-02-15 · Capital Allocators · Magnus Grimeland – Day Zero Investing at Antler (EP.369) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source