Entrepreneur First, a London, UK-based startup accelerator, raised $12m in funding.
Backers included Greylock Partners, Mosaic Ventures, Founders Fund, Lakestar, Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Demis Hassabis and Mustafa Suleyman (DeepMind) Rob Bishop & Zehan Wang (Magic Pony Techonlogy) and Bryan Baum (Represent). In conjunction with the funding, Reid Hoffman will the EF board.
Launched in 2011 by Matt Clifford, CEO, and Alice Bentinck, CPO, Entrepreneur First invests in individuals before they have a team, or an idea.
The firm selects individuals based on their founder potential, a mixture of their ambition, skills, motivation and contrarianism, and surrounds them by a global network of potential cofounders, and gives each individual a stipend of £2,000 (UK)/S$5000 (Singapore) a month during the team building and ideation phase. This gives individuals the time and space to experiment while reducing worries about financial pressures.
EF is now in London and Singapore supporting hundreds of people each year to build their own startup. To date, it has built 100+ startups, had two >$100m exits and has seen 60% of its seed funded companies reach Series A.
FinSMEs
13/09/2017