Tobias Bengenstahl
12 Nov 2025EF’s Matt Clifford Specter CEO TechCrunch #1 hire Anthropic Europe a16z media SoftBank NVIDIA shift
Tobias Bengenstahl (Antler) on Stockholm's Third Wave
Antler GP Tobias Bengenstahl, wearing his famous linen blazer, outlines the platform: $1.4B under management, 30 locations, and his Nordic fund across Stockholm, Oslo, Helsinki and Copenhagen. He frames Stockholm's boom as the third wave after Skype and Spotify/Klarna, credits Lovable's Anton for lifting the continent's ambition with trillion-dollar talk, and notes US funds like a16z and Sequoia now hunting locally. He breaks down his three ways to win — build global from day one, go to the US fast, or make the region a genuine moat like Tandem Health — defends Jantelagen's flip side plus the Nordic safety net enabling risk-taking, and says his battle scars from Memo's $100M-to-zero ride are his edge as an investor.
12 Nov 2025etn. Episode 9
Antler's Tobias Bengenstahl on Stockholm's boom, going global & Jantelagen
Antler GP Tobias Bengenstahl introduces the firm — roughly $1.4B under management across 30 locations plus a Nordic pre-seed fund — and frames Stockholm's third tech wave (Skype, then Spotify and Klarna, now Lovable, Legora and Tandem Health) as the most optimistic moment in a decade. He lays out three ways for European founders to win — build global from day one, go to the US fast, or build a genuine regional moat — while warning against invented 'Europe is special' moats. He also unpacks Jantelagen's double edge, the Nordic student-loan system that lets young people take risks, and how his own company Memoed going from a $100M valuation to zero shaped him as an investor.