In 2011, two 26-year-old management consultants at McKinsey had an idea that their colleagues thought was ridiculous. Matt Clifford and Alice Bentinck wanted to invest in talented people before those people had a startup idea, a cofounder, or even a business plan. Fifteen years later, their company Entrepreneurs First just hit unicorn status with a $1.3 billion valuation, a $200 million raise, and a portfolio worth over $16 billion.
Their story is a masterclass in building something the establishment said would never work.
The McKinsey Project That Started Everything
Clifford and Bentinck met in 2009 while working at McKinsey in London. During a consulting project designed to develop a technology cluster in East London, they noticed something that bothered them. Europe had plenty of brilliant engineers, researchers, and operators, but almost none of them saw entrepreneurship as a viable career path. The talent pipeline that fed Silicon Valley simply did not exist in London or Paris or Bangalore.
The McKinsey project proposed tapping talented graduates to create startups that would anchor the tech cluster. Clifford and Bentinck believed the model could work, but only if it operated independently from corporate consulting. So they quit their jobs and launched Entrepreneurs First in 2011 with a radical premise: find exceptional individuals first, help them find cofounders and ideas second.
The traditional accelerator model, pioneered by Y Combinator and Techstars, required applicants to already have a team and an idea. EF flipped that model entirely. They would invest in people based on talent alone, then help those people build companies from scratch inside a structured program.
How Betting on People Before Ideas Created $16 Billion in Value
The early years were a grind. EF’s first London cohorts produced promising startups, but the model was unproven at scale. Investors questioned whether backing individuals without ideas could generate real returns. Clifford and Bentinck spent years proving the concept one cohort at a time.
The proof came in waves. Magic Pony Technology, an AI company founded through an EF cohort, sold to Twitter. PolyAI, a voice AI startup, attracted backing from Khosla Ventures. Cleo, a fintech app that helps users manage their money through AI, became one of Europe’s most talked-about startups. Gensyn, an LA-based decentralized AI compute company, drew investment from Andreessen Horowitz.
By March 2026, EF’s portfolio included over 700 companies with a combined value exceeding $16 billion, up from $3 billion in 2022. The acceleration was not accidental. In 2024, EF made a strategic decision to relocate newly backed startups to San Francisco ahead of their seed rounds. According to EF, that single change cut the average time to raise in half while doubling valuations.
The $200 Million Raise That Made EF a Unicorn
On March 11, 2026, Entrepreneurs First announced a $200 million raise that valued the company at $1.3 billion, making it a unicorn for the first time. What made the raise remarkable was not just the number but who wrote the checks.
The investor list read like a who’s who of tech royalty. Reid Hoffman. Patrick and John Collison, the founders of Stripe. Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google. Claire Hughes Johnson, former COO of Stripe. Danny Rimer of Index Ventures. Matt Cohler of Benchmark. Greylock Partners came in as an institutional backer.
Of the $200 million, $130 million went into the management company rather than the fund, a signal that investors were betting on EF’s model itself, not just the startups it produces. Alice Bentinck, who took over as CEO in late 2023 after Clifford stepped down to focus on AI policy work, called the raise validation that talent investing has become a recognized asset class.
What EF Does Differently Than Every Other Accelerator
Traditional accelerators accept teams with existing ideas and help them refine their pitch, product, and go-to-market strategy. EF does something fundamentally different.
The program begins with a cohort of individuals, not teams. These are engineers, PhDs, product managers, and domain experts who want to start a company but have not yet found a cofounder or settled on an idea. During the first phase, EF facilitates cofounder matching through structured interactions and workshops. Participants test compatibility with potential cofounders before committing.
Once pairs form, they move into an idea development phase where they identify market opportunities, validate assumptions, and build initial prototypes. EF invests at the pre-idea stage with a small check, then provides follow-on funding as teams hit milestones.
The model works because it solves the single biggest bottleneck in entrepreneurship: most talented people never start companies because they cannot find the right cofounder or do not know where to begin. EF removes that friction entirely.
Alice Bentinck and the Next Chapter
When Alice Bentinck became CEO, she inherited a company with strong fundamentals but an opportunity to scale faster. Her first major move was the San Francisco relocation strategy, which placed EF founders in the heart of the world’s densest investor network. The results were immediate and measurable.
Under Bentinck’s leadership, EF expanded its India portfolio and deepened its presence in Bangalore, targeting the growing pool of technical talent in South Asia. The company now operates programs in London, Paris, Bangalore, New York, and San Francisco.
EF’s next ambition is to become what Sifted called the “CAA for startups,” a reference to Creative Artists Agency, the talent powerhouse that represents Hollywood’s biggest names. The parallel is deliberate. Just as CAA built an empire by discovering and developing raw talent in entertainment, EF wants to do the same for technology founders globally.
What Founders Can Learn From EF’s Playbook
EF’s journey from a two-person consulting side project to a billion-dollar company offers three lessons for any founder. First, the best opportunities often come from inverting conventional wisdom. Every accelerator invested in ideas. EF invested in people. Second, geographic arbitrage still matters. Moving founders to San Francisco was not romantic or trendy, but it doubled their valuations. Third, patience compounds. It took EF 15 years to become a unicorn, but the portfolio value grew from $3 billion to $16 billion in just four years.
For the next generation of founders who have talent but no idea, EF’s message is clear: you do not need a pitch deck to start a billion-dollar company. You just need to be in the right room with the right people.
