FAQS

At Entrepreneurs First, we believe today’s founders have the opportunity to shape mankind’s future in profound ways. It not only matters what companies get started. But it matters who starts them. 

We believe that for many of these talented future founders, entrepreneurship is not an obvious or entirely legible career path. 

We therefore exist to identify and invest in these exceptional individuals. Individuals with enormous potential, insatiable curiosity, and an impatience for impact.

We back these individuals to become the founders of tomorrow’s exceptional businesses.

We call this Talent Investing; every founder on our programs will work with a Talent Investor to maximize their chances of success during the program.

Cofounder matching

A tried and tested, systematic cofounder matching process to help you find a compatible CEO/CTO.

Exposure to a peer-group of exceptional, like-minded talent. We curate our batches from leading academic institutions and tech communities around the world, bringing people together to inspire and challenge each other.

Program

A dedicated Talent Investor to hold you accountable and guide you through your startup journey.

Company building advice from some of the world’s best experts and founders, helping to accelerate your ideas and development including how to pitch, fundraise, iterate, and hire.

Weekly hosted in-person events, pitch competitions, and meetups to facilitate cross learning and discovery.

Access to a shared office space in a prime location for the duration of the 12 week FORM program in your local hub and subsequent 12 week LAUNCH program in San Francisco.

Funding

An equity free Talent Investment (grant)*. This is part of our investment in you, designed to cover living costs so founders can fully commit. It does not need to be paid back.

Up to $250,000 of equity investment* for all teams that pass our Investment Committee and move to San Francisco as part of our LAUNCH program (visa assistance and relocation support provided).

Exposure to the world’s best investors in the Bay Area and across Europe through our in-person Demo Days in San Francisco and online investor platform.

Over $600,000 worth of free credits or exclusive partnerships with AWS, Stripe, Vercel, OpenAI, GCP, HSBC, Hubspot, and many more.

Additional resources to help you build, including compute, lab access, and hardware partners.

*Please see local program investment terms (U.S., London, Europe, Bangalore) for specific details.

Community

Exclusive access to the Bay Area startup ecosystem through our series of invite-only, fireside chats with world class founders and leading Silicon Valley investors.

Access to the global EF community and alumni network stretching back over a decade.

Internal hiring opportunities, either to build your own team or join another EF startup team as an early hire.

Our program brings together exceptional individuals to find cofounders and build startups from scratch. Within 8 weeks, 80% of participants will find a cofounder. This unique process works due to the cohort’s shared focus and commitment to founding right now. This works best in person, where ideas and relationships can be quickly forged and iterated on. 

That’s why we expect you to commit full-time to the program, and move to one of our hub cities to take part in person. We host a highly anticipated Kick Off Summit ahead of each program, where your cohort will be brought together for the first time for a residential weekend.

Our programs are most valuable for people in the early stages of their career, who can demonstrate that they’ve achieved exceptional outcomes relative to their peers. We call these people ‘outliers’, and look for two specific intrinsics that we believe enables founders to build globally significant companies:

1. Ambition, which amplifies an outlier’s talent, enabling them to build at a scale most can’t imagine. We know this because we’ve seen it. Our founders have an innate, determined urge to build. They are obsessed with big ideas, and bored by anything overly obvious. We look for those with the capacity to visualize how technology will shape the future, and the agency and skills to make it happen.
2. Founder Aptitude, which is the combination of intrinsic characteristics that transform an outlier into a founder. Those who have had others follow their actions and decisions. Those who have extreme bias to action and respond to new challenges by building. We’re for those with the intellectual excellence to anticipate, reimagine, and build the technologies of the future.

If you’re based in Europe, you can apply to our London programs or to our residency programs for Europeans.

If you’re based in the US, you can apply for funding and fellowships.

If you’re based in India, you can apply for our Bangalore programs.

Please only apply for one program, in one hub city, at a time.

No you do not need a cofounder to apply. Our program brings together exceptional individuals to find a cofounder and build a startup from scratch. 

We assess all applicants as individuals, before they have a business, cofounder or an idea. If you already have a cofounder, please mention this on your application, and ask them to submit one too.

No, you do not need an idea to apply. However, most applicants to EF have a range of areas that they’re interested in, or actively exploring. 

We do not assess individuals based on their ideas; we look for those with the talent, ambition, and founder aptitude to build a globally important startup. 

At EF, we build technology companies. The majority of individuals who join EF will have a technical background, from self-taught developer through to a Computer Science PhD. We do take a small number of non-technical individuals who demonstrate solid technical understanding, even if they don’t have the means of production. 

Although this is unusual, you are still eligible to apply if you have taken a small amount of investment or been awarded a grant.

In this case, please tell us more about your current situation in your application.

We review applications on a rolling basis. If we think you might be a good fit for one of our programs, we will invite you to meet our Talent Investing team.