Entrepreneurs First

Everyone talks about how fast fundraising moves in San Francisco. But the customer speed can be just as transformative. @E_Molimpakis met a US customer at a conference. They came up to the @thymia booth, asked about their work on diabetes through voice, and wanted to explore a partnership. Two weeks later, the contract was signed. For founders, pace is often set by the customers they serve. Fast-moving customers force you to move faster. That’s one of the reasons we immerse founders in San Francisco: to experience that velocity firsthand. Full Waymo conversation with Emilia in the first comment.

Systems club is back! Next Tuesday, @botirkhaltaevv and I will be getting together a room of 20-30 of the best engineers in London that care about systems, hardware, and performance. Speakers ⬇️ •⁠ ⁠@rosstaylor90 , @GenReasoning - Inference techniques used for their RL library •⁠ ⁠Mutalib Mohammed, @fractile_ai - Performance modelling at Fractile for architecture exploration and verification Link to register in the comments 🔗

Uncovr has raised a $7M Seed round led by Index Ventures to build the system of intelligence for surgery and endoscopy. Founded by Ines Iraki, Johann Diep and Prof. Eric Vibert, Uncovr automatically generates operative reports and procedural coding directly from surgical video and intraoperative workflow data, helping hospitals improve documentation quality, reimbursement and coding accuracy. More than 400 million surgeries are performed globally every year. As more of them are captured on video through robotic and minimally invasive techniques, surgical video will become one of the foundational datasets for surgical AI, medical training and future AI-enabled surgical technologies. Uncovr is already working with leading hospitals and surgical robotics companies across the US and Europe, with a deployment pipeline covering 400 operating rooms and thousands of hours of surgery analyzed. Proud to back this team from day zero at EF.

@Alicebentinck youtu.be/a2wEETuK-o8

The speed of your environment becomes the speed of your company. In the latest Waymo Conversation, @Alicebentinck sits down with Emilia to talk about building thymia, meeting her cofounder Stefano at EF, and how the right environment can change the pace and ambition of a company.

When we first met Jean and Patricia, @BubbleRobotics did not exist. Jean was in Milan, Patty was in Zurich. They did not know each other yet, but they were both looking for the same thing: a cofounder to build a deeply technical, ambitious company with. In October 2024, they joined EF. They met at our kick-off weekend and teamed up immediately. A few weeks later, after exploring multiple ideas in agriculture and recycling, they landed on the ocean. That became Bubble Robotics: autonomous robotic systems that can stay at sea, inspect offshore infrastructure, monitor critical assets, and collect underwater data continuously. From ideation at EF, to San Francisco, to building their first robot in a pool, to raising a $5M pre-seed round, it has been incredible to watch the pace of this team. Proud to have backed Jean and Patty from the very beginning.

We're coming to Berlin this Saturday! @CherryVentures and @join_ef will host people seriously considering founding, but not quite ready to go full-time yet. Apply here: luma.com/satclub-berlin

Women's demo night III a few nights ago at the @airwallex offices Feeling blessed to host these with my team. This time round we met some amazing builders in: - Personal safety, working with UK police - Proactive voice for at-home care - Context for AI tools & two brilliant founders from our cohort building in space compute and personalised AI Vamos! ❤️‍🔥 @join_ef

May was another big month across the EF portfolio. Here’s what our companies announced: - Scope AI raised $20M led by Index Ventures to build the future of inspection and the AI-native paradigm for the 10x inspection engineer. - Standard Intelligence raised $75M from Sequoia and Spark to build models that explore and learn like humans do. - Certo raised a $4M Seed led by Daphni to build the AI-powered compliance operating system for beauty and consumer goods brands. - Asterix Health raised a £2.1M pre-Seed led by TriplePoint VC to expand remote GP services for UK healthcare providers. - Bluevia Health is collaborating with Mayo Clinic Platform to make perioperative care safer with AI. - Supahost AI exited stealth with Guest Messaging Autopilot, an autonomous AI agent for property managers, after handling 1M+ guest messages and saving 35k+ hours across pilot hosts. - Lucentia came out of stealth to build the “mammogram of the heart”: AI software that transforms routine cardiac CT scans into richer coronary diagnostics. Bring on June.

First-time founders are often quick to conviction and slow to validation. Second-time founders are usually the opposite. They’ve seen what it takes to build, they know how hard it is and they can validate fast. But choosing what to spend the next decade on can take longer. That’s what this evening is about: luma.com/entrep-egtl

Certo has raised a $4M Seed round led by Daphni to build the AI-powered compliance platform for beauty and consumer goods brands. Founded by Bastien and Jean, Certo helps regulatory teams review products across ingredients, formulas, claims, labelling and market entry, turning a process that can take days into minutes. The platform is already used by leading beauty and CPG companies across Europe and the US to navigate growing regulatory complexity across 40+ markets. Proud to back this team from day zero at EF.

Thanks @creandum for tonight! Good to bump into some @join_ef alum ❤️

Scope AI has raised $20M led by Index Ventures to build the future of inspection. Inspection is the most common way physical data is collected, underpinning the integrity, operation, and safety of every industry. Yet the software these inspections run on hasn’t changed in 20 years. Founded by Jonathan Low and Jakob Cassiman, Scope is building the AI-native paradigm for the 10x inspection engineer to speed up industrial inspection workflows, from reporting to asset integrity. Proud to back Jonathan and Jakob from day zero at EF.

We hosted 300 of SF’s best VCs in our office two weeks ago. 17 teams took the stage to share their story and ambition. If you missed our April 26 Demo Day, the full recording is now available: youtu.be/pbevtn0Beg4

Very few people have seen my childhood magic tricks. I found old clips of me doing judo, making random videos, and taking card tricks way too seriously. That obsession is the job. We’re hiring creators at @join_ef. London + SF. If you made holiday edits, Fortnite montages, or random internet videos before anyone cared, DM me.

@join_ef just kicked off one of its biggest cohorts ever last week. After spending the last 6 months carefully selecting and curating every individual in this batch, I now get to work closely with ~100 exceptional folks coming together to build from scratch.

Helicon is building autonomous factories to mass produce carbon fiber parts for unmanned systems. Their platform, Argos, runs the full composite engineering loop automatically, connecting DFM, mold design, simulation, quoting, manufacturing, and quality inspection into one system. It turns composite production from a manual, artisanal process into a scalable one, collapsing lead times and unlocking the industrialization of composites. Their mission: accelerate the world's transition to advanced materials. Meet @alexnhaus and Edmundo

Asterix Health has raised a £2.1M pre-seed round led by TriplePoint VC to expand remote GP services for UK healthcare providers. Proud to back Julian & Max from day zero at EF.

Lucentia (@Sahar_Jal) is coming out of stealth to build a new generation of heart imaging.

Excited for May.

- Icarus Robotics partnered with Voyager Technologies for JOYRIDE-1, its year-long free-flying robotics deployment to the ISS, scheduled for early 2027

The most important updates aren’t always fundraises. Here’s what else happened across the EF portfolio 🧵