0 / 1.1: Veni Vidi Vici: an Antler journey
And I’m back!
I promised myself to continue writing as a way to help others that undertake the same path of leaving something stable for the uncertain startup world.
I took a leap of faith leaving London, my home, my friends and my job to move to Oslo to start my own business. All of this during a global pandemic. I have to admit, it required a lot of courage, something that I never considered to have enough but I DID IT. Throughout the past few months I made great new friends and together with my co-founders I landed an investment for our startup.
Initially it was very overwhelming and I thought I would have to ‘compete’ with the many other talented entrepreneurs. But I quickly realized that our diverse skills and backgrounds were exactly what was needed in combination with our shared passion for tackling challenging problems.
Most of us ended up becoming close friends and living almost like a family where we all supported each other with all other loved ones far away.
Antler, an international Venture Capitalist (VC), presented a world that I never knew about and it created an environment that became so challenging and stimulating that pushed our boundaries to be better. We were pushed to succeed.
I can’t sugar-coat it, it has been fucking hard.
The first few weeks were absolutely tiring, morning to evening, back to back meetings, workshops and industry sprints. The industry sprints are unique to Antler Oslo and the most effective way to come up with startup ideas.. Big partner companies come and present real-life problems and test all the participants with challenges to solve in 24 hours: whoever gets the best solution has the possibility to take their idea to the Investment Committee (IC) and work with the assurance of having a big player already on board for support and pilot projects.
An emotional rollercoaster
In just 10 weeks of the program I experienced the biggest emotional rollercoaster of my life. Highs and lows were a standard feature of every single day. Business ideas were built and destroyed within days with endless testing and cold calling.
Stress, Struggle, Joy, Sadness, Anger, Jealousy, Fear. These are just a few of the feelings that my friends and I experienced in such a short time. I thought so many times about surrendering and simply leaving, but I was lucky enough to have people pushing me harder. I got so much support from people that I didn’t know a few weeks earlier.
I struggled a lot to build my idea; I had to go through refusals, misunderstandings and I had to spend a lot of time explaining others about why the idea I was pitching was worth pursuing.
My first idea, after a few weeks, had to be killed (as we say here). It was devastating. All my thoughts and processes miserably failed. To take a break from that crushing moment, I was happy to join others on a weekend ski trip organized by one of my friends and co-founder of another great startup Oamly. There I learned quite abruptly that all the people there were already tracking out. I thought the weekend would be to relax after stressful weeks but instead everyone else was already teaming up and working on their own ideas with different teams.
I was shocked, I went to sleep with only one thought, if I were to succeed I would have to do everything on my own and I finally got it: I became angry. What I mean is that I became angry with myself for not being able to find the right people who would consider my idea and me good enough to team up. Many of the most important choices of my life were made in these ”angry” moments.
I went on LinkedIn and started to list the biggest real estate companies in Norway and started to reach out to every single one of them until I got someone to pick up. I ended up having several interviews and gaining traction on my idea.
Suddenly the tides started to change, I started to get positive reviews and the same people that were not interested before started to see the potential of my idea.
What has been a real struggle turned out to be the strongest motivation to succeed. I transformed all the anger against myself in a way out. A way up!
Finding the right co-founder
One big task has been to find the right co-founder to bring the idea to reality and get investment from the IC. I eventually found the right person in Wouter. He brought many skills that I was lacking and the grit that was needed to push further and improve the business plan. The real need is to find someone that can add those elements where I lacked experience and time at hand. Wouter has been really great and in a short time got up to speed with the development of the idea and further project improvements.
IC
This is the hardest moment in all the 10 weeks. After several pre-IC meetings where you get evaluated based on traction gained week-on-week we got accepted to participate in the final IC. This Is where every team is challenged by presenting in front of a real investment committee and surviving the questions afterwards. The minutes before our pitch Wouter and I had totally different ways to prepare. I was standing in silence thinking through what I was going to say. Wouter on the other hand was jumping around and doing push-ups(😂). We presented what was supposed to be a short pitch and Q&A ended up taking twice as much time. A highlight was when Trond, the most active angel investor in Norway and part of the IC, started answering questions for us explaining why our approach is the right one and why it will succeed.
The thoughts inside of me were so difficult to grasp. Did we manage to present well? Did I make any mistakes? All the typical questions that were spinning in my head that kept me from sleeping that night.
The Joy
The day after is always difficult; you know that in a few seconds many things can change. A victory may mean a total change in my life, a failure could mean just that I just wasn’t good enough 😓. Wouter and I sat in my favourite room in the office when we got called into a virtual meeting room and after a few minutes of suspense: the verdict.
You did your best pitch ever and Antler wants to invest in you.
I couldn’t believe it. Wouter started to jump and hug me, I was smiling but still too serious. Still incredulous of what had just happened. Øyvind, one of my biggest supporters ran into the room and started to jump as well while hugging me. I started to believe it. It actually happened. We did it. I did it. 🎊
It actually took me a few hours to completely understand the scale of what happened but then I realized I was now a co-founder of a funded PropTech startup and my life was going to change forever.
This is the beginning of my new life as an entrepreneur. From this point everything changed and a new chapter started. To infinity and beyond 🚀.
