Advice for Founders from my time as an Analyst at Entrepreneur First

Why I’m writing this article

Over the past 1.5 years I have seen and supported ~250 (potential) founders through the Entrepreneur First (EF) programme in London, from when they first decided to join to when they got their seed funding after 6 months with a cofounder who was a stranger prior to joining EF, and a startup idea they had no clue they would end up building.

This is obviously a HUGE transformation — from an individual without a validated idea to (some) running a seed funded startup in 6 months that is swarmed by VCs from across the globe. This sounds incredibly hard. And it is.

Seeing this transformation first hand I wanted to share some of my observations and tips for aspiring, hugely ambitious founders. Hopefully, my learnings are useful for those who are intrigued by starting a startup in general, but especially via a program like EF. I want to share:

1. What I’ve seen founders that did end up getting seed funded do in the programme to beat the odds, and
2. How to make the most out of the programme regardless of whether you end up running your own company.

If you want to learn more about the structure of the programme and if it’s right for you — read this and this first.

If you want to read an excellent personal reflection from a cohort member who just went through the last programme, read this.

What I’ve seen the best founders do — some anecdotes:

Here are some general observations I have made about exceptional founders that went on to run a seed funded company:

1.Receptive to feedback yet able to cut through the noise

When you are a founder everyone will want to give you (unsolicited) feedback. Potential customers, internal champions, other founders, investors, advisors and EF team members to name a few. Your job as a founder is to identify actionable and valuable feedback at the right time.

Take every advice you get with a grain of salt, and examine how it fits in your list of competing priorities. Only after you’ve (quickly) judged the validity and actionability of the feedback, act on it.

One other thing to do with feedback is to look for patterns. Are different people from different groups telling you the same thing? Ask yourself why. Are they right (they probably are) or could it just be how you communicate your idea to them?

And, of course, examine this advice here as well ;)

2. Both CEO and CTOs are absolute hustlers, they never stop. And they don’t ask for permission.

Hustle in bursts, know how to recharge

Pre-covid and in between lockdowns when the EF office was partially open, I remember a dozen instances where I left the office late in the evenings or came on the weekend to set up an event — and saw the same founders, like Jevan from Better Dairy building a foodtech business or both Vatic founders constantly hacking away on their customer development, being on calls wherever you see them.

Now — don’t get me wrong — always working long hours doesn’t mean working efficiently. Especially over time, working long hours for the sake of it deteriorates your motivation and mental health and you can often find yourself ending up in a vicious cycle (this is one of the reasons my EF colleague Jonny Everett has been widely talking about this issue). Similarly, I have lived in China for many years and have seen the 996 and even 997 work culture in multiple companies and universities — and seen lots of time being wasted.

Rather than just working long hours, I would describe what I’ve seen the best founders do as working in explosive bursts. When they feel momentum, they are all in. When they need a break, they recognize it and know how to recharge. Recharge means something different for everyone so I would strongly encourage you to find your own recharge methods.

Don’t ask for permission

Building a startup has very few rules, and the few existing ones — are there to be bent. Don’t think of EF’s programme structure as a limiting factor or rules you have to follow — this is not university and not a tick-box exercise. So don’t ask and don’t wait for permission (from EF or others) to reach out to potential customers or to start getting advisors onboard etc. If you have your eyes on the prize and see an action you can take to get you to that prize, go for it.

I have seen some founders (particularly CTOs) somewhat shy to just do things, be it because 1) they haven’t done much of e.g. (cold) customer outreach before and/or 2) they are afraid of rejection. A great motivator to fight this is the book Rejection proof by Jia Jiang — or watch his Ted Talk for some extra inspiration.

Ultimately what EF wants to see are teams that drive and own their week-on-week progress and have a realistic plan on what they need to achieve to get to seed funding.

More tips for when you join the programme:

Over the past 3 cohorts , I have consistently seen individuals go through the programme making the same mistakes. The EF team flags all of them throughout, but loads of people don’t internalize it until it’s too late:

1. Start early
   As soon as you get access to other cohort members, start meeting them. All of them. But be strategic about it. For example, if you are a commercial, CEO-type candidate you would want to focus on meeting all CTOs. Meet them for longer times and schedule follow ups right away. Yes, meet other CEOs to say hi and connect (which could be done in 15 minutes) but keep the meeting time ratio to 80:20.
2. Keep up the urgency

Finding a co-founder and ideating go hand-in hand so you have to set yourself tight deadlines on both. For example, once you team up with someone, give it a maximum of 5 days to ideate together. If you can’t find a good idea to work on (more on this in my next point), break up the team. The EF team will keep telling you this but despite founders theoretically agreeing with this, in practice I have seen many founders staying in a team for way too long nonetheless.

Hard stops that you agree on once you team up are useful here — because prolonging the team by a few days barely ever makes a difference in how you feel about the team, i.e. you would have broken up anyway and so wasted precious time. Always think opportunity cost. And remember that productivity of you and and your co-founder is the traction you are looking for at this stage. So keep up the urgency in the team with your own, harsh deadlines, and stick to them.

Both founders benefit from starting over. One way to think about Form (the first stage of EF) is seeing it as an ever faster decreasing resource pool (of water). The earlier you are on top of your game and know what you want, the more resources (co-founders) are available to you. If you jump in the pool when it’s half drained already, the freshest water is gone. And the landing might hurt.

3. Always filter your ideas based on market size/growth. Understand VC economics

This has been widely covered elsewhere, and we discuss it with all founders who come through our programme yet we still see people making the same mistake: targeting markets with ideas that are not ‘VC backable’. VC backable means teams need to tackle massive, fast-growing markets and have the potential to become market defining businesses (i.e. index companies like the next Stripe or Zoom). Why are only those investable? VC economics.

If on average 75% of VC backed startups fail and don’t return any money, one startup will have to be wildly successful and return the initial investment thousands of times over and cover all those losses.

This forces VCs to only invest in companies that have the potential to return their investments, aka ‘the fund returner’, ‘unicorn’ etc.

So if you can’t convince VC’s (including EF) that you could be this sort of ‘fund returner’, they won’t invest. It just doesn’t fit their business model.

Yes, edge-based ideation works, especially when paired with the right mental model for your idea. But when ideating, you have to take VC economics into account. This might well be one of the very few rules in building a (VC backable) startup. Otherwise VCs might just not be the right financing vehicle for you to start and grow your business.

Leaving EF to join Omnipresent:

Omnipresent Co-Founders Matt and Guenther were on the first cohort I worked with (LD13)

After having worked with so many exceptional founders over the past 1.5 years, the urge to jump onboard finally overcame me.

Today, I’m super pumped to announce that I will be joining Omnipresent, that helps companies employ remote talent in over 150 countries, fast and easy, taking care of a usually painful process of payroll, benefits, compliance, taxes, and other admin.

Co-founders Matt and Guenther were on the first cohort I worked with (LD13) — I still remember one EF team debrief where their team advisor first explained to us how painful hiring full time people elsewhere is and how he experienced it himself when he ran his business. 3 months after that, Covid hit. Right at the time of their Demo Day, everyone went remote — and the rocket ship really took off. Since then Omnipresent has seen explosive growth, raising the fastest ever Series A funding by an EF company in 6 months.

Apart from its rocket ship growth, what excites me about Omnipresent is that it has the potential to become a category defining business; shaping the future of work and talent streams. And this very much aligns with EF’s mission: the belief that (founder) talent is distributed across the globe, yet (founding/funding) opportunity is not. If you are in Silicon Valley (SV), starting a company is the norm. Much less so elsewhere. Hence the pilgrimage to SV so many people take.

EF is changing that by de-risking starting a company somewhere other than SV.

Similarly, Omnipresent could help shape the future of distributed talent, giving smart & ambitious people anywhere in the world the choice to work from wherever, to improve their life quality with 0 commute, and to not need to leave their country and family behind in pursuit of a better life.

And goodbye EF — though I’ll always stay connected

It has been an absolute pleasure working at EF with the London team, and also working across teams and locations to help support & improve different parts of EF’s funnel, from Talent to programme to portfolio support.

As a strong believer in the mission, I will continue to support EF after leaving wherever I can. To recycle the words of Barney, CEO of one of EF’s top companies Cleo: “ [EF is] an incredible programme that I will always be proud to be associated with”. Can’t wait to see how EF will evolve!