Hi everyone,
September always feels like the real turning point of the year, the point where you start thinking not just about what's happened, but what you want to close the year with. The biggest story of the past few months for me has been how much Periscope has grown. What started as an office conversation has grown into a platform with real momentum. We now have more listeners, sharper conversations, and guests who keep pushing us into new territory.
Starting from the next edition, we are moving to a dedicated Periscope newsletter 🎉. I would love to share all the amazing work we are doing at Antler Africa. If you’d like to continue following our work at Antler, please subscribe to The Antler Africa RoundUp here.
We wrapped up our Spring cohorts in Lagos and Nairobi with founders that we are very excited about. We will be announcing them shortly, please subscribe to The Antler Africa RoundUp to be the first to hear all about them. We are now in full gear getting ready for the Fall cohort after a brief summer break.
At Periscope, we released two new episodes exploring what it really takes to build, scale, and shape businesses and ecosystems across Africa.
Episode 8: How Tomi Davies Built Lagos Angel Network and Wired Africa’s Tech & Investment Ecosystem – I sat down with Tomi Davies, technology entrepreneur, angel investor, and ecosystem builder, to explore what it takes to build an ecosystem instead of just a company. From co-founding the Lagos Angel Network and the African Business Angel Network (ABAN) to investing in companies across Africa, Tomi shares lessons from over four decades of building technology companies, backing founders, and shaping Africa’s startup ecosystem. Listen here
Episode 9: Don’t Just Grow Your Business, Scale 10X – I spoke with Adia Sowho, former MTN CMO and growth expert, to unpack what founders need to know to scale their businesses. We explored the difference between growing and scaling, identifying the key equations that drive a business, understanding the operational metrics that matter, aligning incentives, and building the systems and infrastructure needed for sustainable scale. Listen here
Our audience really took off in the last two months, with a real spike in July off the back of a video that resonated well beyond our usual reach, a good reminder that the show is finding its own audience now, not just performing for one👌.
On Antler Global News
Antler continues backing Lovable through its $400M Series C
We've backed Lovable since its pre-seed round, before the platform was even live, and we've continued supporting them as they've scaled into a global movement that lets people create and transform businesses. In August, Lovable closed a $400M Series C at a $13.3B valuation, more than doubling its worth from December, led by Menlo Ventures and the EQT-managed Scaleup Europe Fund, with new investors including Balderton Capital, Kaszek Ventures, and Tencent joining returning backers like Antler. More than 60 million projects have now been built on the platform, drawing over 900 million visits a month.
Antler Africa
Applications for our fourth Lagos cohort are open now
A few reminders:
A co-founder is not needed to apply, we back both solo founders and teams.
Some of the founders who've raised out of our Lagos cohorts started with an idea that changed shape completely by week three!
We support our founders through subsequent rounds and invest up to $250,000.
Personal Updates
I was a guest on Episode 24 of Headlines by TechCabal, where we discussed a range of topics including how much startups are actually raising right now and which sectors and trends to look out for. Listen here
I also recently joined Rising Tide Africa to unpack how to evaluate conviction at Day Zero, before the product, before the metrics and before the proof, as a keynote speaker for the monthly member session.
Thanks for reading to the end. If you're building, investing, or have a founder I should meet, my inbox is always open.
Lola