Jannis Hake

Jannis HakeSep 17, 2026

I’ve joined Antler ONE’s autumn batch 👇 Since I was 14 I've always wanted to build. I started reselling my Legos at 15 (yes, that's way more lucrative than you'd think), continued with sneakers & built my own hardware-enabled software for schools when I was 17. I failed every time 3x So I decided I needed to learn first. Not through university (I'm pretty sure my professors don't know what I look like). But by working with people who were way better than me: I joined prepmymeal when they were only 8 people, then thought I wanted to go into VC, joined a business angel network in Vienna, then a top 2.5% VC & then one of the 1% fastest-growing startups. And then I circled back to building. At night I built Inside/VC, and eventually went all in on media. But that wasn't enough for me. I wanted to build something bigger. So while sitting on the beach in Barcelona, I applied to Antler. They got more selective this batch (around 60 out of 8,000+ applicants got in) and I never thought I'd be one of them. Especially after Ronald Jan Schuurs completely grilled me in one of the interviews. But somehow I got in (Thanks RJ & Benedikt) And I'm not alone anymore. I told Tomer about my idea over a pizza at Standard Serious Pizza (Berlin people will know). He looked at me for about 5 seconds. Then he dropped everything he was building and said: let's do this together. (That story gets its own post in the next few days) Small sneak peek of what we're building: https://getemil.ai/ I'll share the whole journey here: successes, mistakes & the embarrassing stuff. If you're writing a newsletter, building something cool or just want to connect, I'd love a chat. 14-year-old me would be pretty hyped right now. 23-year-old me is too ;) PS: Inside/VC is obv. not going anywhere. It's growing better than ever!

Jannis HakeJun 10, 2026

San Francisco is cool, but have you seen... San Francisco? 😅 Every few days someone posts another “SF is over” take, and then a map like this drops and casually shows 595+ Bay Area startups that raised funding in the last 6 months. At this point the city is basically playing venture capital on easy mode. A few worth watching: > Clera: AI talent agent connecting candidates to startup jobs > Thomas (YC P26): the first YC backed AI founder > Fluently: AI English tutor: Your personal AI tutor that will make you progress in English speaking skills > Voker: analytics for AI agents > Orthogonal (YC W26): one API key to access 30+ tools your AI agent needs > Orange Slice: AI automation for sales and go to market teams, raised $5.3M > AgentMail (YC S25): email infrastructure built for AI agents, raised $6M > SimplAI: enterprise operating system for agentic AI > Skyvern (YC S23): browser automation with AI agents > Nectar Social: AI operating system for community management, social listening and turning social media into a revenue channel 🚨👉 Join 10k+ founders, operators & aspiring VCs reading Inside/VC. <> https://lnkd.in/dJM9V5dE <> <> https://lnkd.in/dJM9V5dE <> And about 587 others... Meanwhile, Anthropic is reportedly at a $47B run rate, Claude Code became one of the fastest growing dev tools almost overnight, every second startup is suddenly building AI agents, YC just backed its first AI founder, and upcoming OpenAI/Anthropic IPOs are about to create enough future millionaires to make the SF housing market even more cooked. The funniest part is that people have spent the last 5 years declaring San Francisco dead, while the city apparently kept ignoring everyone and continued producing an absurd amount of startup gravity. Map by fundable (Tj Richardson) 🧡 Follow Inside/VC & Jannis Hake for more VC & startup content!

Jannis HakeSep 21, 2026

Emil is live. Last Monday I joined Antler ONE. Seven days later, Tomer and I are on v3. We've been building and getting on calls. Over 70 conversations with some of the best creators and media companies so far. Those conversations changed the product twice. We started with an intelligence layer, then built a whole newsletter OS. But people kept asking: “Why can't you just run the whole thing for us?” So that's what Emil does. Give us your ad creative and budget. We find the newsletters, book the placements, track performance and report back. I've run Inside/VC for 20 months. Nearly every sponsor asked: “How do I know this will work?” Pretty good question tbh. I'd send screenshots of open rates, clicks and previous campaigns. At Peec AI, I was the one buying placements. I spent weeks digging through beehiiv, Substack, Kit and independent sites, comparing media kits and chasing rates. Once the campaigns finished, I still had to pull the results together (you really don't want to see those excel sheets hahah) That's what we built Emil to fix. Last week alone, our AI analyzed over 61,000 newsletter editions. We look at where your competitors advertise, which newsletters they book again, and how those audiences fit your brand. Repeat bookings are especially interesting. You can't see a competitor's ROI, but you can see where they keep spending. We use that alongside content and audience data to find suitable placements for your budget. Then we handle rates, availability, booking and scheduling. You get one invoice. We also track the campaign and analyze the results, so you know which placements performed best and where we'd recommend spending next. No monthly retainer. Our fee is 3.5% of your ad budget, included in it, not added on top. I wouldn't call us an agency killer. But if your agency bills you thousands to find newsletters, chase bookings and put the results in a deck, we should talk. Buying newsletter ads? Tell me your budget and who you're trying to reach. You get a campaign plan back. Writing a newsletter? Joining is free. Add your channels and we'll match you with sponsors. Week one done. Let's see what week two looks like. -> https://getemil.ai/ PS: The Tomer story is coming this week. I know, I promised.