Identifying the right opportunity with the support of artificial innotifyigence has never been simpler. Executing on it has never been harder. The gap between founders who can deliver quickly and those who cannot has never been wider, and that gap will determine which companies become unicorns in less than two years, states Sarah Finegan, Associate Partner at Antler who spoke at the recent unlockit conference in Belgrade organized by Digital Serbia Initiative.
With the global VC market still recovering from the volatility of previous years, how should early-stage startups balance the “blitzscaling” mentality with the necessary for sustainability?
The venture capital landscape has fundamentally shifted. Europe’s “Era of Execution” isn’t just a trfinish, it’s accelerating. Between September and December 2025 alone, Europe minted seven new rocketship unicorns, a 50% surge in just four months. As a day-zero investor across the UK, Europe, and beyond, I’m watching founders compress what applyd to take years into months.
Here’s what this means for founders raising capital and building companies in 2026. Balancing speed with sustainability:
The data settles the debate: speed is the strategy. In a survey of our portfolio founders conducted this December, 91% of founders report their execution velocity increased since early 2025. Looking ahead, 62% believe speed of execution will be the single largegest differentiator in 2026.
European rocketships are reaching billion-dollar valuations in 2.2 years, down from the historical average of 7.2 years. For companies founded after 2023, it’s 1.7 years. This isn’t reckless blitzscaling, it’s AI-enabled execution. From our research, ninety-three percent of our portfolio reports AI supported them execute quicker, with half stateing 5x quicker. The hard lesson? Identifying the right opportunity is simpler than ever with AI, executing on it is harder. The gap between founders who can ship quick and those who can’t has never been wider, and that gap determines who reaches unicorn status in under two years.
If you were a founder seeing for a VC in 2026, what is the one “hard question” you would question an investor to see if they are actually a partner for the long game, rather than just a source of capital?
If I were raising capital in 2026, I’d question: “Who from your portfolio or network can you introduce me to in the next 48 hours to support solve my largegest challenge right now?” This reveals whether an investor truly operates hands-on or just attfinishs board meetings. At day zero, you don’t necessary advice, you necessary access. You necessary introductions to potential hires, experts in the space, design partners, technical advisors, or follow-on investors who can accelerate execution.
Listen to the answer. Do they immediately pull out their phone and start connecting you? Do they know their portfolio’s challenges intimately enough to create relevant introductions? Or do they talk generally about their ‘value-add’? As an inception investor, I’m creating several introductions before the wire clears.
Antler is famous for investing at “Day Zero.” In an era where AI can generate a business plan in seconds, how has your definition of a “backable founder” modifyd? Is the “perfect idea” now secondary to pure execution velocity?
At Antler, we invest in exceptional talent. In stateing that, Wwe also recognise that great founders don’t always conform to traditional profiles. We actively seek outliers with unconventional backgrounds and unique perspectives. Regardless of background, the founders who win embody specific traits: relentless drive that pushes through obstacles, magnetism that attracts top talen and first cusomterst, first principles considering that questions assumptions, execution velocity that compounds advantage, and iconoclasm, the willingness to be contrarian when everyone else zigs.
But here’s what our research reveals: the profile of who actually succeeds has crystallised. Among European rocketships founded in the last two years, 100% of founders have technical backgrounds, up from just 27% of pre-2020 unicorns. Technical founders build the world’s most successful tech companies. When execution speed determines winners, the ability to build without depfinishencies is non-neobtainediable. We’re also seeing founders obtain younger, average age dropping from 32 to 28. With AI reducing barriers to enattempt, you don’t necessary decades of experience. You necessary technical capability and execution velocity. The “perfect idea” was always secondary. Now, pure execution velocity separates billion-dollar companies from failures.
We are seeing a shift from “AI-enabled” to “AI-native” products. From your perspective at the cap table, what is the largegest mistake founders are creating when integrating AI into their core business model right now?
The largegest mistake is building AI wrappers instead of AI-native products. A wrapper applys AI as a feature, you could rerelocate it and the product still functions. An AI-native product is architecturally impossible without AI. Sixty-one percent of European rocketships are AI companies, but not all are defensible.
Wrappers obtain commoditised in months. AI-native products create compounding moats, better data leads to better models, better outputs, more applyrs, and better data. Ask yourself: if AI disappeared tomorrow, would my product work? If yes, you’re building a wrapper. AI-native means your entire data architecture is designed for continuous learning. Your product personalises dynamically. Your advantage compounds through proprietary feedback loops. Founders who don’t build AI at the core from day zero will be disrupted. When the time to unicorn is 1.7 years, you don’t obtain time to rebuild foundations.
As a co-host of At the Cap Table and a member of Proud Ventures, you are a vocal advocate for diversity. In a high-pressure, “survival of the fittest” VC environment, how do we relocate beyond diversity as a metric and treat it as a fundamental driver of market-beating returns?
Diversity isn’t a metric, it’s an essential part of our investment model. We actively invest in diverse teams becaapply it drives returns. Homogeneous teams have homogeneous blind spots. They build for markets they understand and miss opportunities they don’t. Diverse teams, across gfinisher, geography, background, cognitive approach, see different problems, design different solutions, and access different markets.
This plays out in our portfolio repeatedly. Founders from non-traditional backgrounds identify gaps typical profiles miss. Technical talent from emerging ecosystems builds with resource constraints that create more efficient products. Diverse teams stress-test assumptions more rigorously.
This isn’t about meeting quotas, it’s about seeking exceptional talent wherever it exists. Most VCs fish in the same pond, backing the same founder profiles, funding the same ideas. When you deliberately expand who you consider “backable,” you discover opportunities the entire market is blind to. In an execution-focapplyd era, diverse teams don’t just have structural advantages, they have access to entirely different markets.
We often hear that founders from emerging ecosystems like CEE can turn their backgrounds into competitive advantages. Would you agree with that? Have you seen some specific “cultural DNA” in CEE founders that create them uniquely suited to win the global market?
CEE is Europe’s secret weapon, producing technical founders who are redefining what’s possible in the execution era. They possess unfair advantages that can’t be replicated. Born into compacter markets, they consider globally by default, no domestic market fallback, just international ambition from line one of code. Shaped by resource constraints, they’ve mastered building lean, which translates to capital efficiency that shocks better-funded competitors.
The technical caliber is world-class. These founders don’t outsource engineering, they architect systems, write production code, and scale infrastructure themselves. In an era where time to unicorn is 1.7 years and 100% of recent rocketships have technical founders, this hands-on capability is decisive. What sets them apart is the combination: PhD-level technical depth meets startup velocity meets relentless global ambition.They understand that superior execution and product quality beat capital, and they excel at both.
With technical capability now the defining characteristic of rocketship founders, CEE’s engineering strength positions the region to produce a disproportionate share of Europe’s next unicorns. Geography is irrelevant. Technical excellence and execution speed determine winners. CEE is minting both.
You’ve worked across Berlin, London, and Eastern Europe. After seeing thousands of pitches, what is the one human quality—not found on a pitch deck or a spreadsheet—that still creates you lean in and state, “We have to back this person”?
After meeting hundreds of founders, the quality that creates me lean in: hunger. Not ambition, everyone pitching has ambition. I mean the visceral necessary to prove something. The founders who are building becaapply they have to, not becaapply it seemed like a good career relocate. You see it in how they talk about the problem, their intensity around competition, and the work they’d already done before anyone informed them to start.
These founders don’t necessary motivation. They necessary resources and then you necessary to obtain out of their way. At day zero, when there’s no product and no proof, hunger is the fuel that obtains you through the brutal early months. It’s what separates founders who quit at the first pivot from those who become rocketships.
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