Back magical people, not startup ideas
Investor Jeff Becker watches a midnight Slack reply and a founder's spike, a single standout strength, to judge people, not ideas.
Inside Startup Funding · Building Community in Startups: The Antler ApproachJeff Becker, a general partner at the startup investor Antler, was asked how he picks companies when his own passion is health, wealth, and happiness but his firm is known for backing what he calls maniacs. His answer was blunt.
"The thesis at Antler is to find and back magical people," he said.
By magical, Becker said he means generalists who prove themselves as outliers during weeks of working side by side in the office, often from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. He watches "how they communicate, how fast they work and build and ship, how good they are at selling, if other people are inspired to join them," Becker said. He tries hard, he said, to ignore the idea and the market, and to spend 80 percent of the time on the founder.
What he looks for, he said, is a spike, a single standout strength that makes someone an outlier. One person might be an asymmetric thinker, another an opinionated hard worker, another a domain expert or a world champion at something. The question is what makes this person an outlier, whether that collection of strengths inspires him, and whether the founder can recruit people like themselves who will reach their potential.
The judgment is tactile, Becker said, not a framework or a scoring system. One small test is to message a founder at midnight on Slack on a Saturday and see if the person is working, and whether the reply is fast, thoughtful, and concise. As a former sales leader, he prizes speed because a founder who is slow or off their game can hold back customers and staff, and that drag compounds. He also likes to work through an interesting problem together to test creativity.
Becker jokes about "vibe investing," a nod to his portfolio company Lovable and its popular idea of vibe coding. What he means, he said, is old fashioned pattern matching, watching what a person does and says to judge whether "they're going to create something of real meaning and be a good steward of our LP's capital," he said. He still wants the business to be venture backable and to show it might become something legendary, but he argues that magical people figure out when a business itself is not magical, and then they iterate and pivot.
Questions people ask
What does the Antler residency actually involve?
Antler runs an in-person residency, six weeks in the United States, where founders work and build together before Antler decides whom to back. The point is to watch how people work, help them find co-founders, and then back a small share of them.
What is a spike in a founder?
It means a specific strength that puts someone in the top tier on one dimension, even if they are ordinary on others. In hiring and venture investing, the idea is that standout strengths, like selling, speed, technical depth, or sheer persistence, can carry a company, while well-rounded people without a spike may struggle to do something exceptional.
Does backing people over ideas actually work?
Startup research generally finds that teams pivot often and that execution matters more than the first idea. Ideas are cheap to copy and usually wrong at first, while speed, clear communication, selling, and the ability to attract talent help a team discover a better idea and survive long enough to build it.