Today, research released by global VC firm Antler highlights that a new generation of founders is reshaping European tech — younger, more mobile, and thriving under the pressure of the AI era.
Drawn from a study of its European portfolio of more than 400 startups, the data characterises founders as defined by international mobility, early high performance, and a relentless drive to build faster than ever before.
Across 30 cities worldwide — including New York, San Francisco, London, Berlin, Bangalore, Singapore, Seoul, and Sydney — Antler helps founders remove barriers to building by connecting them with world-class peers, validating their business models, and providing initial capital.
To date, Antler has backed more than 1,500 startups globally, including Airalo, Peec.AI, Reebelo, Wrtn and Benjamin.
According to the VC firm, startups founded in the last year in Antler’s European portfolio are reaching first revenue three times faster and generating up to ten times more revenue in their first year than startups founded just three years ago.
Check out an earlier interview with Antler Partner Christoph Klink to learn about Antler’s approach to supporting founders.
Meet the Velocity Generation
Antler describes the new founders as “strikingly mobile.”
96 per cent of founders in the study are building their startups in a city or country different from the one in which they were born.
According to Klink, the old model, in which a government or city could cultivate a startup cluster by investing in local universities and hoping graduates would stay, is under pressure.
“Munich is a good example of an ecosystem that has managed to maintain that, with the majority of its innovative power being built around Technical University Munich.
But the best founders today are asking the question: where can I build fastest, access the best co-founders, and be around people who are operating at the same level as me?"
He contends that the ecosystems that answer that question most convincingly will win.
“London is doing well on this. Berlin is doing well. Stockholm is doing well.
I actually think this is good news for Europe as founders consider quality of life, safety and culture alongside talent and capital density. Initiatives like EU-INC have the potential of building these bridges faster than ever.”
Founders are younger and top their peers in accolades, from sports to gaming
According to Antler's research, founders are also younger than ever. The average age of a founder of a European AI rocketship — companies founded since 2020 that have already achieved unicorn status —is now 28, compared to 32 for European unicorns more broadly. Before they built startups, many of these founders were already competing at the highest level.
Seventy-two per cent of the founders in Antler’s study were in the top 1 per cent of their peers growing up, whether in sports, academic performance or online gaming.
Founders in the study had competed nationally and internationally in sports including sailing, gymnastics, golf, and rugby, and had ranked in the global top 100 in games such as League of Legends, Counter-Strike, and Gran Turismo.
When asked what motivates them to build, 55 per cent cited being the best at what they do as their primary driver.
Seventy-one per cent said that proving doubters wrong was fuelling their daily execution speed. Notably, 60 per cent said financial reward was not a motivation at all.
Europe is now producing unicorns at near–Silicon Valley speeds
The gap is narrowing between European founders and those who build stateside. Klink attributes this to a number of factors converging. AI dramatically lowered the cost of building and accelerated the path to revenue by compressing feedback loops that used to take years into weeks or months.
At the same time, a generation of founders who had watched (and worked for) Spotify, Klarna and Zalando prove it was possible in Europe came of age — and raised the ambition ceiling. And the talent pool genuinely improved.
“We are seeing founders with deep technical backgrounds, international experience, and in many cases prior startup experience, starting earlier and moving faster.
Lovable and ElevenLabs are inspiring the current generation the way Spotify inspired the previous generation.
To scale that quickly, one needs to combine great market timing with very strong execution. The era of execution that we covered in research recently is very real.”
Over half can’t live without Claude
According to Antler, the Velocity Generation is harnessing AI to build at a pace that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. Ninety-three per cent have used AI tools to complete specialist tasks that would previously have required outsourced expertise, putting capabilities ranging from software development to legal drafting directly in founders’ hands.
When asked to name the one AI tool they couldn’t live without, 52 per cent of founders chose Claude or Claude Code — more than three times the share who cited ChatGPT (16 per cent). This puts high-quality coding capability in the hands of both non-technical and technical founders, dramatically expanding what small teams can ship.
According to Klink, three years ago, a non-technical founder who wanted to build a software product needed to either find a technical co-founder or raise enough money to hire engineers.
“Today, that same founder uses Claude Code and starts shipping the first products within weeks.”
At the same time, technical founders build much more in less time using tools like Claude Code.
He contends that the stack is no longer something you build around a team — it is something one person can operate across the full breadth of a company (add Claude Co-Work and Design, and you have a lot of ground covered).
“What is interesting about the Claude number specifically is that it points to quality. Founders are not just looking for something fast, they are looking for something they can trust with consequential work and actually become a lot more productive right away.“
Antler has tracked around 50 tools that create real value for founders today, and unsurprisingly, AI-powered tools vastly outperform conventional SaaS tools from a few years ago.
Supercharging agility
The results of an AI-first approach to building and entrepreneurship are evident in how founders work.
Klink explained:
“AI has reduced the barrier to entry for building startups, and competition is fiercer than ever. Which is why speed is so important — founders need to build defensibility fast to gain market share and beat competition.”
That said, I was curious about platform risk if so much of a company's capability sits on top of tools like Claude Code — especially at a time when a lot of Europe is trying to divest from US big tech like OpenAI, Google, and Meta.
But according to Klink, this is not a new phenomenon:
“Every generation of founders has built on top of platforms they do not control — AWS, Stripe, the App Store.
The question is never whether you have platform dependency; it is whether what you’ve built is defensible.
Founders are building moats from the quality of their data, customer relationships and domain expertise.”
He contends this is further reflected in the different players innovating at a very high pace, each offering migration services to people who want to swap around.
“That race is far from over, and people who stay agile will win.”
Don’t confuse velocity with vision
According to Antler’s research, today’s founders operate in an always-on mode. Seventy-nine per cent respond to messages from critical stakeholders within an hour; 16 per cent aim to respond within five minutes. More than two-thirds monitor growth metrics daily, with a quarter tracking continuously in real time.
One in ten founders say the average time between an initial idea and first live user test can be counted in hours – staggering when you think about it — and 43 per cent say they can ship new features in days.
That said, Klink has a more measured view of speed, contending that it’s not a strategy, but a capability.
“And if all you are doing is shipping faster than the next person, eventually someone ships faster than you.”
Instead, the founders building durable businesses are using speed to gain insight and, as a result, find what is genuinely hard to replicate, whether that is a proprietary dataset, a distribution advantage, or a domain so specialised that it takes years to develop real expertise
“The risk is real for founders who confuse velocity with vision. The best ones understand the difference.
Looking at the newest generation of European unicorns, I notice a high degree of technical sophistication, so I believe that both can be combined.”
Further, this new era of speed comes at a personal cost. Forty-seven per cent of founders describe the pace as addictive and say they are thriving in this environment - but 14 per cent say they find it stressful.
Forty-three per cent have not taken a holiday in the past 12 months. A quarter have reduced time spent on family life (25 per cent) and their own physical health (24 per cent). Some reported missing significant personal milestones - birthdays, weddings - to maintain the pace of building.
Klink admits that founders have always been obsessed with the companies they are building. But AI is taking that to new levels, enabling founders to ship faster, be more responsive, and make quick decisions based on data available immediately.
“Harvesting the potential of this new era of execution also means that founders have to prioritise their time even more ruthlessly. The best find ways to consistently perform at the highest level in a sustainable way.”
The team at Antler talks about time management and burnout more than they used to, and thinks the industry is genuinely evolving in this regard.
“The practical things matter - making sure founders are not fundraising constantly, structuring capital in a way that gives them runway to focus, and being honest when the pace they are keeping is not sustainable.
That said, you have to strike the right balance when discussing founders' mental health.
“These are adults who have intentionally chosen a path that is famously difficult. Building a startup is hard and demands a huge amount of time, blood, sweat, and tears. We can’t sugar-coat that.“
But working 24/7 for years isn’t sustainable.
“Founders who burn out make worse decisions. The companies that last are built by people who find a way to perform at a high level consistently, not those who sprint until they break.”
Antler tries to take inspiration from sports, with Klink admitting, “You wouldn’t tell Roger Federer to stop practising at the peak of his career. Athletes push themselves to their absolute limit, but they also take downtime seriously and build time off into their training routine. Founders need to do the same.”
Overall, Antler’s data suggests that AI has created a genuine window — a moment when the advantages that used to accrue to Silicon Valley by default — proximity to capital and deep engineering talent — matter less than they did.
According to Klink, “European founders have used that window well and adopted a very strong and execution focused mindset.”
However, late-stage capital is still thinner in Europe with a more complex regulatory environment. Further, Klink contends that the culture around failure, while improving, is still more risk-averse than in the US.
“So I would say: the velocity data is real, and the momentum is real, but we should not mistake a tailwind for a permanent structural shift. The work of building a truly competitive European ecosystem is not finished. We remain very bullish about backing more great founders on the journey of making this shift structural.”
Looking ahead, Klink predicts that the next generation will make this one look slow.
“The founders starting companies in 2028 or 2029 will have grown up building with AI as a native capability — not a tool they learned to adopt, but the only way they have ever worked."
What does this do to the shape of companies, he asks:
“If a team of five can do what a team of fifty did, what does a mature, scaled company look like? We are currently not seeing that companies stop hiring; they just hire differently.
That means that companies should become a lot more productive and produce greater output.”
The survey was conducted in March 2026. 120 founders responded to each survey. Respondents are building tech startups from Pre-Seed to Series A across the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland.
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