The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 28 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Stebbings: Entrepreneur First 'sold out' by expanding to San Francisco
“EF sold itself out by going to San Francisco. It's a complete sellout.”
Matt Clifford: Incubators Should Pick Exceptional 21-Year-Olds Over Good 31-Year-Olds
“You got into the thing where it's very hard if you're new to what we do to compare the CV of like a thirty-one-year-old Who's actually good but not exceptional, and a 21 year old who's exceptional but has no experience, and choose the 21 year old. But you actu…”
Matt Clifford: Pivoted Focus at EF to Defense Tech Over Market Potential
“One of the reasons I've, Really pivot my time within EAF to working on defensive technologies is, I think there's an amazing commercial opportunity there, but I also think it's what the world needs. We need to build the technologies that mean that the negative…”
Matt Clifford: Entrepreneur First Raised More Capital in Michigan Than London
“I've raised more money in Ann Arbor, Michigan than I have in London, and I won't name the name of the pension fund, but, you know, one of my biggest investors is a sort of state pension fund in Michigan, and they've been amazing partners to us for a long time,…”
Lemkin: YC's batch fundraising model only works for Y Combinator
“They have a very effective, it's just, it only works for them. It doesn't work for anybody else. It doesn't even work for EF or certainly anybody else. It only works for them.”
Matt Clifford: VC Preference for Familiar Co-Founders Is Survivorship Bias
“You can start a company with a stranger. You know, I think a lot of the conventional wisdom on who you should start companies with is just survivorship bias.”
Clifford: Waiting to feel ready before starting a startup is a red herring
“I think it's very, very dangerous and very, very negative for people to believe that they need to wait until they're, in inverted commas, ready before they start a startup. I don't believe that anyone is ready. I think actually what founding a company throws a…”
Clifford: Entrepreneur First will never expand to Silicon Valley
“One thing people often ask us is, would it make sense to open EF in Silicon Valley? And we always say no. And the reason is, you know, go back to that idea I talked about earlier of default career paths. And our mission at Entrepreneur First is to shift the de…”
Clifford: Traditional VC criteria for evaluating founding teams are outdated
“So all the conventional wisdom about how good teams formed come from a world where very few people became entrepreneurs. But now we're moving into a world where many more people would be entrepreneurs and many more people should be entrepreneurs. And that actu…”
Clifford: Founder skills are procedurally generated by doing, not taught
“I mean, we, we've often talked at Entrepreneur First about your abilities as a founder are something that you discover by being a founder. I don't think they're either latent within you at birth and you know, you just, ah, you are or you're not, nor do I belie…”
Clifford: No psychographic test can identify if someone is a founder
“There is no test you can take. There is no you know, personality, psychographic, multiple choice quiz that will tell you whether you're a founder. Really the only way to find out is by trying because you get better by being one.”
Clifford: Ambitious Europeans treat careers as resume badge collecting
“What we believe founding thesis of EF is that The way that European society has evolved is such that the most ambitious people in our society almost see their careers as a succession of more badges to collect, you know, tick off doing well at schools, that you…”
Pre-idea investing was considered stupid when Entrepreneur First launched
“I think a lot of people thought that what we were doing was pretty, pretty stupid when we first started out. Investing in, in people pre-team and pre-idea was not the way it was done.”
Early founders should ignore company setup and focus purely on product
“Stop building a startup and just build a product. So instead of worrying about all of the paraphernalia that comes with building a startup, just focus on the product that you want to build and the customers that might want that product. So what that means is, …”
Matt Clifford: 66% to 75% of Pre-Seed Entrepreneur First Startups Raise Seed
“We now put in 250 care at that stage, and I would say of those, typically, like, two thirds to three quarters would raise a seed round.”
Clifford: Entrepreneur First invests in founders pre-team and pre-product
“Instead we say, if you're a great individual pre-company, then we, I think uniquely are willing to take a bet on you both financially and with our time purely on the basis of your talent and your ambition, not on the basis of your company or your team or your …”
Clifford: Top startup ideas emerge at the intersection of founder edges
“And what we've discovered is that by having the right environment and the right people and the right vocabulary so that people can say, well, I have an edge in deep neural networks. So I have an edge in agriculture. It's like, okay, cool. Is there any interest…”
Clifford: Startups will radically innovate social policy and immigration within a decade
“We've not yet had an EF company work in that space, but I believe that over the next 10 years we will see startups becoming radically innovative in fields like social policy immigration, and that sort of thing, and I think that's going to be absolutely extraor…”
Clifford: Entrepreneur First initially overrated raw intellect in founder selection
“I think probably one of the mistakes that we made at the start of this process of building Entrepreneur First was we probably overrated raw intellect.”
Entrepreneur First selects individual founders rather than pre-formed teams
“At EF, what we focus on primarily is co-founders. So we don't select teams, pre-formed teams. We select individuals.”
Entrepreneur First starts pitch prep just one week before Demo Day
“We only start a week before our demo day at Entrepreneur First actually helping them get the pitches together.”
Non-technical founders err by ignoring their existing domain expertise
“I suppose one of our frustrations with non-technical founders is that often we find people who have years of expertise in a particular industry, but they're not interested in using that to build a startup, and I think that can be an error.”
Almost all Entrepreneur First co-founder equity splits are 50/50
“So pretty much all of ours are fifty-fifty.”
Matt Clifford: 60% of Imperial CS Grads Entered Finance When EF Launched
“When I started visiting university campuses properly, when Alice and I started EF I think it was Imperial where 60% of computer science grads went into finance. That number is not that anymore.”
Matt Clifford: Entrepreneur First Cuts Half of Paired Founding Teams Before Funding
“For every hundred people that join at that stage, you know, probably something like 80 of them will pair up with someone, and sort of Come up with an idea that they, that they're excited about. But we then do a cut where we say, like, do you really want to spe…”
Stebbings: Entrepreneur First startups have raised over $100M
“Entrepreneur First startups have raised over a hundred million dollars of external funding”