The Sydney Startup Hub opened to Antler in Australia’s 13th residency last week, bringing together over 90 ambitious founders from across Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane.
Over the next few months, these entrepreneurs – both experienced and new – will test, build, and launch ventures in these three cities hoping to create a new generation of global tech startups.
Strong Founder DNA
This residency brings together a diverse and well-balanced mix of commercial, technical, and domain experts that align with Antler’s notion of “Founder DNA”.
Some have come with pre-formed teams and validated ideas, while 26% are starting with a clean slate – ready to explore, experiment, and find the right co-founder(s) and problem to solve.
Among them are serial founders – 18% have previously raised over $1 million in capital – who are back to build again, 73% hold at least a bachelor’s degree, with some domain and tech experts holding PhDs in AI, biotech, and robotics, and many are first-time founders making the daunting leap from corporate paradise into the startup world.
Career backgrounds span prolific tech companies such as Google, Canva, Gilmour Space, Apple and Atlassian, consulting giants like McKinsey, Deloitte, and Accenture, the NSW government and federal government agencies such as CSIRO and the AFP, the Big 4 banks, and major law firms.
Beyond their professional credentials, these founders reflect Antler’s global reach, with the founder coming from 20 different countries of birth.
“This is a remarkable group of founders from all over the world,” said Antler in Australia partner James McClure.
“We’re excited to be their partner in growing globally iconic businesses”
Ideas are already taking shape
While it’s early days, the breadth of ideas being explored is already exciting.
Themes emerging include ever-popular augmented reality and artificial intelligence solutions and innovations across deep tech, fintech, medicine and health, sovereign capabilities, pets and more.
Many founders are riding the AI boom, looking to utilise LLMs, agents, vision computing, and machine learning.
Karen Freyer, who wants to harness AI to gather public sentiment intelligence, said the residency has given her a “rare opportunity to get brutal, high-quality feedback, stress-test assumptions, and sharpen my strategy in a room full of ambitious builders.”
Another founder, Adrian Yong, formerly director of space at Deloitte and a key leader at Gilmour Space, has played a pivotal role in shaping Australia’s space industry. Now he’s turned his focus to the future of in-space manufacturing – tackling inefficiencies in design-to-manufacture workflows both on Earth and beyond.
“As low Earth orbit (LEO) manufacturing and in-situ resource utilisation (ISRU) technologies advance, I’m excited to be building the foundation for a seamless, scalable process that will be critical for space-based infrastructure, orbital manufacturing, and next-generation supply chains,” he said.
It’s not just about the ideas being built, but the missions and purpose behind them.
Orrin Bedford, a former founder of a Dubai-based healthtech B2B SaaS platform, is now a dad and looking at building in the pediatric care space.
He wants to “prove that building a high-growth company can be both ambitious and fun, while also demonstrating that parents of young kids can do this too – challenging the notion that entrepreneurship and family life are mutually exclusive.”
The perfect time to build
With major economic shifts and technological breakthroughs creating new opportunities and opening fresh gaps in the market alongside early-stage funding reaching new heights in 2024, it’s a good time to build a pre-Seed startup.
Veteran fintech expert Matteo Calo
Matteo Calo, a fintech infrastructure expert with a decade in payments technology, said the current market has a higher focus on efficiency and profitability, which is great for early-stage startups.
“This cycle will likely change in the next 3-5 years to a more growth-focused market. This means companies starting in 2025 will be positioned to start with a lean mindset and unlock huge growth at a later and more optimal time,” he said.
Gosia Pack, who was at Google 14 years, including a decade in Silicon Valley, believes that the latest innovations in technology means that the barrier to entry for new founders to build a disruptive startup has never been lower.
“With machine learning and no-code platforms, more people will build and challenge more traditional verticals,” she said.
“I used to believe entrepreneurs were a group of lucky individuals with unique talents. Now I understand that successful entrepreneurs are those who deeply understand how to find and solve problems.”
What’s next?
Over the coming months, founders will go through a rigorous process, including matching with their respective technical, commercial, or domain co-founder(s) – if they haven’t already.
Karen Freyer said founding a startup can be a lonely road, so “having a community of like-minded, ambitious people who are facing similar challenges has been incredibly energising. It has reinforced that, while the founder journey is tough, you don’t have to do it alone.”
Founders with pre-formed teams or ideas like Karen Li now face the time-intensive validation process.
“I am looking to validate our early design assumptions by testing our ideas, prototypes and feature designs with the cohort, as well as crowdsource ideas to solve some of our toughest problems,” she said.
Vet and budding founder Bronwyn Orr
Others still developing their vision, such as Bronwyn Orr, a veterinarian and industry leader pioneering innovation in the pet sector, will benefit from the hours of expert-led masterclasses, design sprints, ideation challenges, and dedicated support to begin taking ambitions from paper to product.
Orr said the biggest piece of advice she received during the opening week was to “stay focused on the problem and the solution will naturally present itself,” rather than creating a solution looking for a problem.
Antler’s structure is designed to de-risk the earliest stages of the startup journey while helping founders build global-first businesses
The residency culminates in an investment committee, where teams pitch for pre-Seed funding from Antler.
Founders who secure investment receive $225,000 for a 12% equity stake. They can also opt into Antler’s new ARC investment structure, where Antler pre-commits to taking a third of their next round, provided at least $300,000 is raised from third-party investors within 12 months of the initial investment.
Expressions of interest about their next 2025 residency in the second-half of the year are open now. Learn more about it here.
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