As the global community reimagines a world post the pandemic there are many new catalysts for innovation – across all aspects of our lives. This session uncovers the characteristics of disrupters, how they collaborate and access capital to spawn future industries and companies that will be both profitable and sustainable in the new world order.
Speaker:
Magnus Grimeland, Chief executive officer and founder, Antler
Moderator: Laurence Parker-Brown, Institutional content producer, Conexus Financial
Key Takeaways
- Professional backgrounds matter less than three characteristics when screening for a startup founding team, says Magnus Grimeland, CEO and founder of global early-stage VC firm Antler, which evaluates around 50,000 entrepreneurs every year and ultimately invests in about one per cent of them.
- Grimeland said Antler looks for whether people have a “spike” or an area where they excel better than most others, whether they have drive, and whether they have the grit to keep going despite difficulty or failure.
- Grimeland said founders are literally in Antler’s office for about three months working on building the business before we decide whether we are going to invest or not.
- For those without this luxury of time, there are quicker ways to check for these traits, he said. A jumpy CV of many short-term endeavours might demonstrate a lack of grit, for example.
- A person’s spike can be ascertained in conversations about what he or she is particularly good at, he said.
- For organisations seeking to attract disruptive minds, the interview and sourcing process needs to make the organisation’s mission clear, Grimeland said, as disruptive thinkers and creators want to relate to what they are doing and believe it is for a good reason.
