At Entrepreneur First we pioneered paying you to find a cofounder — now we pay even more.
One of the barriers to founding a startup is having the funding to even get started — typically you need a team and an idea before you can access any type of investment. At EF, we flipped this model on its head — we fund you to find a co-founder over a three month period.
Living in London is expensive and in recognition of this we have increased our monthly stipend to £2,000. Then, we invest £80,000 into each high potential company we choose to fund.
This isn’t a salary. We know you could earn a huge amount more elsewhere; this is an investment in you personally to ensure you have the time and space to find a cofounder and develop an idea.
The new deal
Here’s what we’ve changed:
- The stipend has been increased to £2,000 a month. We now pay almost the average UK salary so that you can find a cofounder to build your company. London is an expensive city and this will relax the pressure on your finances.
- We now offer the £10,000 investment and £70,000 convertible note simultaneously. This increased capital allows our companies to grow sooner and reduces the distraction of multiple decision points. And as before, six months after the programme starts successful companies will pitch to external investors at Demo Day. The average seed raise after EF is just over £1m on a £3.5m pre-money valuation.
- We now take part in your seed round and Series A. We want to maintain a long term relationship with you as you build your startup into a company. We will provide 15% of the funding for your seed round (as long as you have a lead investor) and we’ll also take part in your Series A. On average this means an additional £150,000 of funding from EF at seed.
We think this is a better deal for our founders and will allow them to build more valuable and more important companies. The first cohort to receive it will be EF9, which starts in October 2017.
We’re accepting applications for EF9 — you can apply here.
