Introducing Entrepreneur First Paris…
Today we’re excited to launch Entrepreneur First Paris.
It’s the fifth EF office and the third we’ve opened this year, following Berlin in January and Hong Kong in March.
When people ask me how EF decides which cities to open up in, my answer is very simple: we want to be wherever the world’s most talented and ambitious people congregate.
Paris is one of the world’s great cities and it has been a magnet for extraordinary people for centuries. Today it enjoys one of the most impressive concentrations of technical and entrepreneurial talent anywhere in the world.
Not only is its startup ecosystem on a tear — with multiple unicorn companies and a surging venture capital scene — but it is home to some of the best engineering schools in the world. We see a strong fit between EF’s deep technology thesis and the impressive French AI community (recently bolstered by our friends at DeepMind).
I’m delighted that Coralie Chaufour has agreed to lead our office as General Manager. A Paris native and former founder, Coralie is the ideal person to help us find the founders the world is missing out on and bring the best of EF’s global community to support them on their path to scale.
When we opened our first international office, in Singapore in 2016, it was an experiment. EF was working in London, but we didn’t know whether the model would translate well to a different culture and market. Today, our Asia programmes are half our business — and we know that EF’s mission is a global one. We’re excited to get started in Paris and take one more step towards fulfilling that mission.
Vive EF Paris!
Matt Clifford is Co-Founder and CEO at Entrepreneur First (EF.) EF runs full-time programmes that fund the most talented scientists, engineers, developers and industry experts to find a co-founder, then helps those teams grow their businesses and raise funding.
We currently run programmes in Paris, Berlin, Singapore, Hong Kong and London. You can apply here.
