I'm very excited to kick off the second part of our event today. I'm Adam French, one of the partners here at Antler, leading our UK fund. And I know Sarah was very excited about the last panel — elite athletes, obviously living several dreams of hers — but I feel like this is going to be the panel of the day. We have not elite athletes, but elite individuals who are also our peers. And so I am delighted to welcome to the stage two of our portfolio companies at Antler. We've got one, the founder of one of the fastest-growing software businesses in the world; the other, the founder of one of Germany's fastest-growing AI companies. And alongside them we also have one of the most influential voices and investors within the European ecosystem. And so please help me to welcome to the stage Anton from Lovable, Marius from PKI, and of course Harry from 20VC.
So welcome, gentlemen. Thank you so much for being here. Maybe also worth saying that Harry is also an investor in both PKI and in Lovable. But Anton, let's start with you. So right now you're running one of the hottest startups in the world, and today we're talking about this outlier mindset. So paint us a picture: what does a day in the life of Anton look like?
Yeah. Let me first just say, great to be here, and it's fun. Every second time I'm on a stage, this guy is also there.
You're on a lot of stages these days, dude.
You can have so much fun with this question, by the way. From a day in the life, you get up at 4:00 a.m., you do your journaling, then you go to the ice bath.
Yeah, I'm also there, obviously.
Yeah, we do. But that was cold.
And then I do my sauna. And then I'm still in — actually, I live in a co-living place, like a hacker house. And...
The truth as well before.
Yeah. So this was in the news. I was like, 'No, don't bring the news.' Breakit is the Swedish startup outlet. They came to that hacker house. I was like, 'No, no, no, don't do this.' But I wasn't there. So then the headline is like, 'This billionaire lives with 12 other people and that's really nice.' One of them is my wife.
Is that what your wife says?
Yeah. She brought me into this house. So yeah, I wanted her to move in with me, but she wanted me to move into this crazy hacker house. Anyways, that's before work. I also live with one of — I hired one of the guys living there. He's like me, physics background nerd, and we can always bike to work talking about work, bike home from work talking about work. And then at work I come in, I'm overloaded by Slack, and I never answer my WhatsApp. I'm sorry about that. And then I talk to the most senior people in the team, make sure they're empowered to be successful. And then oftentimes I run into a room and say, 'Why is this thing not more Lovable in the product?' And I think just focusing on making the product really good, understanding how users are using it, how it can become even better, is the most important thing of the company. So I still spend a lot of time on that. I work hard, so I oftentimes come home super late.
Yeah, I'm sure of it. But when you think about a year ago, has much changed in that period of time? Like, how do you think about what you're spending your time on?
Definitely. Like a year ago, we built a version of Lovable that started to take off with less than 10 people, and now it's 60. And I need to think about internal communication and making sure everyone is on the same page and thinks about trade-offs in the same way. And hiring — before I did all the hiring kind of, and now I'm doing hiring of specific people and making sure that the hiring machine works. And I almost always take the last interview and then troubleshoot how I could make the hiring engine more efficient.
No, for sure. So Marius, let me come to you then. You're, I guess, the newest founder on the panel. What's been, I think, the main learning on your journey so far, you know, particularly around this state of mind and what it takes to be an outlier?
Sure. Thanks for having me. Essentially, I think that what I really discovered is that in...
Thank you so much. So essentially, one of my biggest learnings is that in 2025 you have to find very, very intense edges that you can really generate, because you know, through software like Lovable, it's quite easy to like...
It's me. What am I doing wrong?
Clearly I'm not getting high performance.
Yeah, exactly. All right, I'm going to try to not [__] this up anymore. Yeah. So I think in 2025 it's so easy to generate an MVP and throw out a version of the software that I think you have to really focus on distribution. And I think that's what we've been really trying to focus on — just creating a brand people really, really, really like and appreciate, and just having really good UI/UX so that people just want to spend time in the software, and then also focusing on the software actually generating a lot of value to the user.
All right, Harry, what is it that when you've invested in these gentlemen that you see different in a lot of the founders? And I could have started this question with just one phrase...
Oh, right. But I guess one thing I would be interested...
There was this schedule of questions, guys, and it was like, you know, Marius, Anton, and then I'm like, I wonder who gets that one. But actually, I want to ask the opposite question: what's the least amount of effort you've seen a successful founder put in?
I have a very specific answer that will lose me a great relationship because they legitimately built like a multi-billion-dollar company in the UK. But what was it about that person that was able to do that by not...
Well, it became a multi-billion-dollar company when they left.
So everyone in my DMs being like, 'Oh, you can have the balance.' No, I really like it. It's so funny because whenever I post anything about 996, I just get this barrage of hatred. I mean, really, it's very inspiring to see such a response and such enthusiasm from LinkedIn. But what people forget with that is I also get 10 founders who are like, 'Absolutely, my whole team shared this. This is exactly how I feel.' And I think we love to think about the macro in Europe, which is like, 'Oh, we don't work hard enough. We all just sit and have espressos. We just have tube strikes.' And it's like, yeah, I agree that's the macro, but the micro is these two. And the micro also, bluntly, is where venture makes its money, which is very few outliers who build generational-defining companies. I don't care that people have the perception that they do of Europe in that way, as long as we keep having unbelievable founders like Anton and Marius building, that's all that matters. And so for every thousand people in my DMs, which it [__] is, 'You're a dick. You're a dick. Thank you so much. So kind.' There's like five that are amazing, and that's all you need. I think people forget that.
Yeah, and ultimately that's who you're talking to, right? So...
And actually, I think founders are nervous to do the 996. 'I don't want to scare people away. I don't want to seem like, you know, we're non-inclusive.' It's like, no, no, you should let people self-select into that culture. There comes a time when you're scaling when you need real leverage and you need real wisdom, and that comes from experience and great operators, and then you will have to neutralize your messaging a bit and you have to change it for them, and there's specific cases for that. But let people self-select into that culture. You know, Palantir and Anduril are two unbelievable companies, and they're unbelievable because they're cults, and they establish that cult-like mentality from day one. Let people self-select into your cult. That's the most important thing.
Yeah, we have obviously Magnus earlier, and when Magnus gives a talk to our founders in the UK, he always talks about the concept of front-loading. It's like, you're starting a business, you know, call your friends, call your families and say they're not going to hear from you for like a year because you're going to be working day and night on your business, and then at some point that balance can come back. And I struggle to find any other way to kind of get a business off the ground.
I just hide my family. No, seriously, I did. I hide my... If you think about life as like, you know, you've got family, you've got friends, you've got work, and you've got exercise — it's like four hobs in a kitchen, right? And you can only ever have two hobs on at the same time without it blowing up. Like, my best friends are my business partners and my founders. And then I hired my family. Great, they're all in the office. So I work and I gym...
And I guess your desk is a treadmill.
Exactly. Yeah. No, honestly, I do like four hours of walking meetings a day.
Yeah. Okay, let's talk about the other side of it, right? And I kind of open this up to you all. You know, it's all kind of great, I guess, talking about the glorification of working hard, and we do it because we know why we're doing it, because we want to build a generational-defining business. But what about the sacrifice, right? And maybe you can balance it through hiring your family, but maybe let the audience know kind of the flip side of it. You know, what is it that you had to give up to achieve what you've done today? And how do you think about that?
I think about it, and I said this before we started, that we're going to see the biggest shift in human history ever through this decade as we get machine intelligence. And that means it's the best time, the biggest return on your time to be building a company or to be working. So it has never been this good, and it's never going to be this good in the future once we have machine intelligence, arguably. So it kind of just makes sense to sequence things: work really hard now. And I've also let my family know that that's a bit of how I think about it. And then I just really hope that I get back to the second part of the sequence, which is to live a bit more balanced life and maybe have a family in like a few years.
Yeah, so I also hired my girlfriend.
Smart to do that. Well done.
Yeah, exactly. It also has been working out great so far. Excited for that to continue. And yeah, of course you can argue it's work.
I think about one-on-one between like...
Your feedback review not looking good.
I think between like personal versus work stuff. I mean, if it's work, she has to do what I have to say, and then the other one is true for the other part, I guess. No, but like for sure you give up a lot of things, right? And I think that's normal if you want to achieve something outstanding. It's also outside of the venture capital ecosystem, right? I mean, I used to play professional esports for a living, and I played 18 hours of League of Legends every day for four years, right, in my room. This is just what I did. I had no friends. This was my...
You can see why you invest in this guy, can't you? Like, just give him the money, like PayPal it.
