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Exclusive: Antler invests £840K in the startups that will shape tomorrow

Antler's latest London residency founders
Image credit: Antler

Antler, the leading zero-day investor, has announced an £840,000 investment in the companies founded at their latest London residency. The most active early-stage investor in the first half of 2024, Antler’s latest investment continues their commitment to supporting innovative startups. Their latest residency had more than 2,400 applicants, with 78 founders in the final cohort.

Adam French, Partner at Antler, highlighted the potential for these startups, as well as others in the Antler portfolio. “Whilst Europe’s first AI unicorns have come from France and Germany, we are seeing the huge potential of London’s world-class AI talent,” he said. “We are seeing a wave of highly skilled technical talent becoming founders of startups using AI to transform a broad range of industries.”

The seven pre-seed startups that have joined the Antler portfolio were all founded to solve real problems. They include:

  • Distillery, who provide on-demand product and marketing insights,
  • inntelo AI, who use advanced AI to automate hotel guest interactions and requests,
  • Omma, an innovative, AI-driven, insect incubator system that helps reduce pesticide use in commercial greenhouses, and
  • Vente.ai, which helps recruitment agencies by using AI to maximise opportunities by identifying roles and enhancing candidate pipelines.

TFN spoke to the founders behind the other three, Banqora, TradeStack and AskVinny to find out more about their startups and their journey.

Banqora’s AI-Powered solution to streamline post-trade processing

Banqora uses AI to analyse and manage complex financial contracts. Processes that are hampered by many institutions relying on old tech that struggles with today’s financial markets, wasting time in processing documents, and creating problems afterwards. “The post-trade activities are crippled by legacy systems and manual processes,” Ernst Dolce, co-founder, told us. “As an example, over $915 billion have been paid in fines and resolution measures over the last decade for settlement failures.”

Banqora aims to free legal and operations teams to focus on more valuable tasks. AI brings benefits through its ability to analyse. “Traditional methods are rule-based and rely on structured data,” Dolce explained. “AI can analyse both structured and unstructured data, utilising natural language processing to extract information from diverse sources.” Banqora is also trained exclusively on each client’s own data, providing an absolute assurance of confidentiality for everyone.

Dolce is enthusiastic following his Antler residency. “I am excited about building a solution that creates a positive long-term impact on the cost structure of our clients and their organisations,” he told TFN. “This is an amazing mission that brings some challenges, as we have to continuously build a diverse team with both financial and tech expertise.”

TradeStack: bringing AI-efficiency to quotes

TradeStack helps trades businesses to quote faster and win more work, using AI to improve efficiency.

Co-founder Alexandra Sutter said the tool helps tradespeople price jobs twenty times faster and with 80% less effort. Starting with painting and decorating, the mobile-first tool surveys spaces, scopes projects and prices jobs in seconds, producing a quote to send to potential customers.

TradeStack does this by handling the behind-the-scenes work. “We’re not here to replace expertise,” Sutter explained. “Turning rough estimates into detailed professional quotes is where many tradespeople face challenges. The process of calculating exact costs, itemising materials, and preparing a polished quote is time-consuming. That’s where TradeStack steps in.”

TradeStack provides details in the background, for example calculating material requirements and checking the prices online, helping identify issues early, and even asking the tradesperson key questions to ensure they have covered all the details they need.

Sutter is also succeeding as a woman at the intersection of two traditionally male-dominated sectors. However, she is used to working in property. “I’ve never been focused on or deterred by industry stigmas; instead, I’ve followed my interests,” she said. “My passion for real estate and construction was sparked by early exposure, with my family working in real estate and taking me to construction sites since childhood.”

Although tech was new to her, her co-founder’s saying, ‘everybody is a techie’, was a turning point, helping her realise that although she might not be the one building the tools, she understood the core concepts behind them.

She also offered advice from her career. “Throughout my career, I’ve been fortunate to work in teams that value diverse qualities and allow each person’s strengths to shine,” she said. “This is one of my key pieces of advice: the people you surround yourself with make a huge impact, so find cheerleaders who support and encourage you.”

AskVinny, helping landlords and tenants have a better experience

We often hear about the housing crisis, but even for those that succeed in renting, their problems may not be over if they struggle with an unresponsive landlord. AskVinny is there to help landlords and tenants have a better experience.

Rory Buchanan, co-founder, told us that part of the inspiration came from a real Vinny. “Our years of renting were constantly plagued by frustrating experiences with landlords, property managers and tradespeople; services were slow, unreliable and of poor quality,” he recalled, but that changed when he met Vinny. “He not only provided excellent service, but often did so remotely, helping us troubleshoot and resolve issues without even needing to come over. His approach inspired us to create Vinny, a service that embodies his expertise, convenience, and care. Our goal is to give every tenant that same exceptional service experience, whether they’re on-site or remote.”

AskVinny’s clients are the landlords and property managers themselves, who have to manage countless tasks, from finding and managing tenants, dealing with contracts, handling maintenance, dealing with move-outs, and then repeating the whole process. “This keeps property managers buried in paperwork and busy-work, instead of focusing on things that matter – like tenant relationships, adding value for landlords, marketing additional services, or finding new tenants,” Buchanan explained.

Buchanan compares AskVinny to giving property managers superpowers, but adds that it offers significant benefits to the tenants themselves. “With Vinny, we’re able to resolve issues instantly in many cases — 55% of the time at zero cost to the landlord,” he said. “That means tenants can have power restored at 3am without waiting for someone to show up (true story), or landlords can go on holiday knowing that tenant issues are being handled seamlessly.” Buchanan hopes that this will shift the sometimes negative relationship between residential landlords and tenants by helping tenants feel supported.

Buchanan also praised the Antler residency. “Since completing the Antler residency, we’ve been encouraging everyone to embrace entrepreneurship, even though it comes with its fair share of challenges,” he said. “But every bit of effort is worth it. The pace at which you learn in this space is unmatched, and there’s no better feeling than seeing your product out in the real world, making a tangible impact on people’s lives.”

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