Entrepreneurs First

Excellence demands repetition. But first, you need to get into the room. On 31 March, Female Demo Night is back at @Google. 50 of the best builders and operators in London. 5 people demoing their products or research. DM me if that's you. @join_ef

During our Defense Tech Hackathon in El Segundo, one name kept surfacing: @ethanbarajas11. At the time, he was still at Caltech, not yet graduated, and already had no shortage of options in front of him: NASA on his resume, work in a lab with a professor, even the chance to spin technology out of the university. He still chose to found. Today, Ethan is building Icarus Robotics: the robotic labor force for space. Right now, that means dexterous mobile robots to augment astronaut crews in tasks like taking out the trash or unpacking cargo. Over time, it means enabling research, manufacturing, and everything else that makes a real space economy possible. Icarus came out of EF, pitched at Demo Day in San Francisco, and shortly after raised a $6M seed round. Now they are working with major players in the space industry and getting closer to testing their technology in space. Now it is easy to see why his name kept surfacing.

Congrats to @amaankahmad and Sid on their raise! An incredible team building a super important product

Learn more: pathfindercard.com/seed

Pathfinder has raised a $4M Seed round to put education back into the hands of parents. Founded by @amaankahmad and Sidharth Jain at EF in 2024, Pathfinder’s mission is to give families control over how and where their children learn, making it easy for parents to access education funds and decide how to use them to piece together their dream education for their kids. We’re proud to have backed Amaan and Sidharth from day zero at EF.

The best part of the raise announcement has been hearing from our alumni. People who came to EF with ambition, restlessness, and a sense that they were capable of more. People who found a cofounder, navigated the idea maze, and went on to build companies backed by the world’s best VCs. It’s been a privilege to back them before the world knows their names. Now it’s time to double down.

If I were raising a seed round and could choose just one person to be involved, it would be Charlie Songhurst. Charlie is the smartest advisor out there and at @join_ef, @Alicebentinck and I have been lucky to have him on our board for many years (though these days we have to share him with Zuck…) Alice and I sat down with Charlie to talk about what he’s learned about backing exceptional people - and why your 20s are more important than you think…

What does it really take to find the next generation of Zucks, Collisons and Perkins? I spoke to @dannyfortson and Katie Prescott about this on the @thetimes Tech podcast. Link in the comments

Customers move faster in the US. This means startups can move faster. This is something I previously massively underrated. @jonnyclifford on @ScalingEurope

Level Nine has raised a €4M Seed round to build the critical technology layer for fossil-free value chains. Founded by Seadna Quigley and Emily Sheridan at EF in 2023, Level Nine is developing next-generation industrial catalysts to unlock the production of drop-in chemical building blocks from locally biobased feedstocks that can compete with petrochemicals on both cost and performance. The round was led by Visionaries Tomorrow, with participation from IBB Ventures, better ventures, and continued support from Zero Carbon and Rockstart. Proud to have backed Seadna and Emily from day zero at EF.

What if 10 weeks could shape the next 10 years of your life? That’s the idea behind EF: giving ambitious people the chance to test who they want to build with, what they want to build, and what might actually be worth a decade of their life. Alice and Matt have worked with 3,000+ early-career individuals, helping them build companies from scratch. Charlie Songhurst has invested in 600+ companies and worked alongside founders like John and Patrick Collison and Mark Zuckerberg. Together, they share career advice for young, ambitious people trying to find their life’s work. joinef.substack.com/p/why-your-20s…

CAA scouts the next Hollywood stars. EF identifies the next generation of founders. > Before the company. > Before the idea. > Before the world knows their name. That’s our model.

Full discussion: youtube.com/watch?v=uB-93M… cc @ScalingEurope @SebJohnsonUK

“The only way to get good at founding is by founding.” A lot of ambitious people delay that moment by telling themselves they need to learn first, by: - becoming a founder’s associate - joining a startup as a founding engineer - working in a lab as a member of technical staff Great roles, but none of them are founding. If you want to be a great founder, at some point you have to actually start. As @jonnyclifford explains in the episode, EF’s model is to bet on people early and keep backing them over time, across their first, second, and third company. Backing founders who choose founding as a career path.

Lemrock has raised a $7M seed round to build the infrastructure for agentic commerce. As consumers shift to buying through conversational AI like ChatGPT and Perplexity, brands are seeing up to 30% drops in website traffic. The problem isn’t demand, it’s infrastructure. Founded by Roxane, Sasha and Clément, Lemrock connects product catalogues directly to AI agents, enabling real-time availability, transactions and performance tracking inside conversational environments. Proud to back this team from day zero at EF.

We hosted a big party in London to bring together the people who made @join_ef what it is today; founders, team past and present, and everyone who believed in EF when it wasn't obvious. An enormous thank you for your support, challenge and many, many contributions! Matt Clifford and I are so grateful. This new $200m of capital means we can do even more of what we do best - finding and working with exceptional individuals at the very start of their founding journey. If this was a demo day pitch it would be remiss of me not to throw in... And we're just getting started. 😆

Competition makes founders better. That’s why we relocate the @join_EF companies to the Bay Area. The result? Valuations more than doubled. Fundraising has been compressed from weeks to days. By being part of the most competitive ecosystem in the world, you get pushed to your peak. Thanks to @NYSE for hosting me to talk about our recent fundraise.

@Alicebentinck @amyrlewin @Siftedeu Link to the full article: sifted.eu/articles/entre…

Great to chat to @amyrlewin at @Siftedeu about our most recent fundraise: + $200m of new capital to back the next generation of great founders + Entrepreneurs First now valued at $1.3bn + The companies built through @join_ef are now worth $16bn, up from $3bn in 2021 when we last raised Link in the comments for the full write up.

@jonnyclifford will be live on @etnshow today to speak about EF's recent fundraise. Tune in.

Hadean has secured new growth funding to accelerate its expansion across the UK and US defence ecosystems. Hadean builds AI powered wargaming, command and control, and battlefield training systems used in live operational environments. The company has secured a £20M Enterprise Agreement with the UK Ministry of Defence and is delivering contracts with the US Department of War, positioning itself at the heart of mission critical defence infrastructure. This round will support deeper deployments, continued US expansion, and Hadean’s ambition to become the UK’s next defence and dual use tech unicorn. Proud to continue backing Hadean from EF. > joinef.com/posts/new-fund…