Everything Alice Bentinck said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Mindset predicts founder success better than technical skill or intelligence
“Actually the biggest indicator of all much more important than intelligence or even technical ability is mindset and how they approach building a startup.”
Startup equity splits should be forward-looking, not backward-looking
“One of the important things to remember about equity is that it should be forward-looking, not backward-looking. So just because you started the company two months earlier or six months earlier or that it was your idea in five, 10 years' time will mean very li…”
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, …”
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.”
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.”
Founders waste months trying to craft perfect startup ideas
“They assume that unless they have the perfect idea, there's no point in even getting started. And they spend months, if not years, trying to craft the perfect idea, which just doesn't exist.”
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.”
Gathering product feedback from well-wishing friends and family is dangerous
“Getting a ton of random views from your friends, from your family, from well-wishers who don't actually who won't eventually be users of the product, but they just want to be kind and give you feedback. Friendship friends being kind and families being kind and…”
Founders should avoid raising capital from friends and family
“As a founder, you want to be taking money from people who understand how startup investing works who understands the risk and how long it takes to get a return. And often friends and family isn't the best place to find that.”
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.”
A founder's role fundamentally changes every six months
“When you found a startup, your job changes pretty dramatically every six months.”
90% of Entrepreneur First participants have deeply technical backgrounds
“So we're about 90% that come from deeply technical backgrounds, so either computer science or engineering backgrounds or we take a couple of self-taught developers as well.”
Almost all Entrepreneur First founders pivot their idea at least twice
“We find that pretty much everyone who joins EF changes their idea two or three times at least before they settle on what they actually want to work on.”
Alice Bentinck
20VC 4