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- jeff becker - antler
jeff becker - antler
"We work with founders for two months in person, and we back the maniacs."
Connect with Jeff
VC Uncovered's View
Jeff’s perspective, shaped by influences as diverse as being a "little brother" and obsessive baseball training, embodies the nimble, daring spirit we champion. He talks about backing "maniacs" at day zero. He looks for foundational traits, such as obsession and a bias toward action, assessed not through pitch decks but through two months of working side by side before investing. This isn't just writing checks; it's rolling up sleeves and building alongside founders from the beginning, providing crucial "culture at day zero" in what can be a lonely journey.
Antler's model (operating globally, investing at inception, and building a massive, diversified portfolio to engineer returns deliberately) represents a bold departure from traditional venture capital. It challenges the idea that venture is solely about later-stage pattern matching or relying on "legends" built on luck. By focusing intensely on the person and optimizing a system for finding and supporting them at scale, Jeff exemplifies the new wave of investors who understand that true innovation often emerges from unexpected places, driven by relentless individuals who refuse to be underestimated.
This is the future of venture we’re excited to spotlight.
Meet Jeff
Q: If you could be anywhere, eating, drinking, and reading whatever you like most, where would you be and what would those things be? |  |
Key Quotes
"We work with founders for two months in person, and we back the maniacs."
"Being a little brother. Being in someone’s shadow, being underestimated, wanting to be different, to be right when others are wrong."
"Traction, market size, momentum, it’s all noise. I think more investors are vibe investors than LPs realize."
"Inception is a different flavor of venture capital than most realize."
"When it comes to venture capital, there are many more legends than there are luminaries. The former are typically built on some form of outsized luck."
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Original Responses (Lightly Edited for Clarity and Flow)
Background and Personal Journey
Experiences Shaping My Investment Approach
Being a little brother. Being in someone’s shadow, being underestimated, wanting to be different, to be right when others are wrong. Not sure if that was nature or nurture, but either way, formative.
Moment Inspiring Venture Capital Career
Not really. For some insane reason, I keep choosing harder and more long-term games for my career as time goes on. I wouldn’t recommend it. Hopefully, in the future, I will.
Influences on My Worldview
I think early life and career experiences are formative. As a kid, I was an obsessive baseball player. At Xerox, I was given world-class sales training. At LinkedIn, I had a front row seat to some of the best leaders in the valley. So whatever those experiences are for you, if you take the mindset of ‘to be better than average, you need to be different,’ you can then proactively hold onto how the best people in your orbit operate differently, and build a novel and personal operating stack. My sales rigor and business acumen came from Xerox and starting a DTC brand. My values on culture and focus come from my time at LinkedIn. And my need to challenge the most minor details of how we operate comes from how baseball players obsess over every minor detail of the sport to gain an edge in competition.
Unconventional Belief
Traction, market size, momentum, it’s all noise. I think more investors are vibe investors than LPs realize. By investing at the inception stage, there’s a lot less noise. You’re simply asking yourself and observing, “Is this person magical? Are they obsessed? Are they ambitious? Do they have a bias toward action? Are they creative and optimistic? Do they work 7 days a week? Would I go work for them?”
Balancing Intuition with Data
It’s very different at inception. We don’t invest in founders until we’ve worked with them in person for at least two months. What you learn about a person in that time—being around them, communicating with them, seeing how they show up, build, and sell—is invaluable. The data should complement what you see, but at this stage, you must back the founder, not the idea. Slack was a metaverse game. Hugging Face was a virtual pet. There was zero chance Zoom could compete with WebEx. Inception is a different flavor of venture capital than most realize.
Best Advice Received
Where you’re at is either an amazing place to live the most amazing life, or the most amazing place to move your life forward. You have to decide if you want an amazing life or if you want to move your life forward, and if you’re in a place that’s neither, you need to move on.
Philosophy and Insights
Investment Philosophy
We work with founders for two months in person, and we back the maniacs. Inception stage investing is all about the people, so you need to spend time with those people to underwrite them as human beings and as operators.
Values When Working with Founders
Resilience, creativity, optimism, ambition, bias toward action, commitment, first principles thinking, and a strong work ethic.
The Perfect Founder Pitch
If I could do it, I would.
Approach to Risk
Inception stage investing is a different asset class altogether. It’s a formula, and broadly speaking, it’s not dissimilar to the fund-of-funds approach where you’re creating diversification to make the math work in your favor.
Here’s the thing I tell people, and it’s completely overlooked:
Price of Risk = Entry Valuation / Fund-Through Rate
Average Follow-On Valuation - Price of Risk = Systematic Alpha
Ultimately, and specifically at inception, you want to continually optimize for an offer that brings in quality founders, but businesses that are countercyclical to hype. You need to design this system in a way that improves fund-through rate and drives average follow-on valuation up. In combination, you’re manufacturing systematic alpha. And then, importantly, you need to get to a portfolio size that reduces the chances of not hitting the Power Law as much as possible. Traditionally, that’s 150 companies, but I think it’s much closer to 225 in practice.
For example, suppose you have 200 companies at a $2.5m valuation, and 50% of them raise their seed round at an average valuation of $12m. In that case, your resulting portfolio is 100 companies with a $5m price of risk, and systematic alpha is $7m.
Another way to say that is, “we have 100 seed-stage companies marked at 2.4x on average.” Or you could say “we have 100 seed-stage companies that we invested in with a 58% discount on their valuation.” The average seed portfolio is 20-30 companies, there’s very little diversification, but by comparison, an inception stage portfolio will have 100 shots on goal from seed onward, and already be marked in the top decile compared to their seed-stage counterparts.
At Antler, we do dozens of things to optimize these variables, and we’re always looking for edges and obsessing over how to continue to reduce risk and increase the odds of success. Everything from behavioral psychology in interviews, not investing without working with someone in person, to the agreement for rolling capital, and so on. The list is endless.
Measuring Success Beyond Returns
We want to back incredible human beings doing inspiring work. If we set 10,000 companies in motion that go on to change the world in their own unique ways, creating jobs and economic opportunity, that’s important work. Among those companies, many will surely become iconic and completely revolutionize how things are done and how people live their lives.
Trends and Future Vision
Exciting Trends and Technologies
I prefer that smart people tell me how the world should work, not the other way around. If I knew that answer, I would go build it myself. And maybe I do – that’s why Antler exists, in my opinion.
Misconception About VCs
When it comes to venture capital, there are many more legends than luminaries. The former are typically built on some form of outsized luck.
Improving the VC Ecosystem
We have created physical spaces all over the world where the smartest, most ambitious, and hardest-working people on the planet can come together to get culture at day zero, find cofounders, and unlock capital quickly. It’s never existed at this scale, and it is only getting stronger and better with each founder we support.
Challenges for Early-Stage Founders
Culture at day zero. Being a founder is a lonely journey.