Is Entrepreneur First Worth It? Part 4: My Brutally Honest Review of the Program
EF could be the best place in the world to find a cofounder - if you want to start a venture-backed deep tech startup
Welcome to Part 4 of 4 in my series about my experience at Entrepreneur First. If you’re new here, start with Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
Disclaimer
My review is based solely on my own experience participating in EF’s Fall 2022 cohort in Toronto as a commercial founder in residence.
The experience of a technical founder in residence would differ from that of a commercial one in meaningful ways. Each cohort is unique, and ours was short two commercial founders, which created some interesting dynamics. It sounds obvious, but I can’t overstate how much your experience at EF will depend on what specifically you’re seeking to accomplish. Are you determined to start a venture-backed technology startup? Or, is entrepreneurship more of a means to an end? Stage of life can play a big role too.
TL;DR
Participating in EF was a “no-lose” opportunity for me, so I had a great experience. I viewed it as the first step on my entrepreneurial journey where I would be guaranteed to learn a lot in a short amount of time with the bonus of potentially finding a cofounder and starting a startup. On those grounds, EF delivered.
I had hoped to leave EF with a startup, and I didn’t, despite working hard and showing up consistently, so that was disappointing. Intellectually, I knew that EF was not optimizing for my individual success as an entrepreneur - it was optimizing for its success as a VC - but I didn’t truly understand what that meant until I experienced it. In practice, finding a unicorn startup idea in three months requires a lot of luck for an individual entrepreneur, but a given cohort only has to produce a few such ideas for EF’s model to work. The odds are not in your favour (but they are in EF’s favour).
What would I do differently?
I - and almost everyone in my cohort - tried to “win at EF” - i.e. form a team (EF requires one commercial cofounder and one technical cofounder) and attempt to discover a startup idea that EF would invest in. This approach rules out a lot of viable startup ideas.
Instead, I would relax EF’s constraints and focus solely on discovering a real problem that I had an edge in solving while benefiting from the abundant, diverse talent that I was surrounded by. I knew from the outset that my decision to become an entrepreneur wasn’t predicated on starting a venture-backed tech startup. I wanted to solve a real problem and achieve an amazing financial outcome for myself. Starting a venture-backed tech startup is one way to achieve that goal, but it’s one with a binary outcome and unfavourable odds.
I made the decision early on to adhere to EF’s framework rather than to fight it, and paradoxically, that decision led me away from my edge. I would have accomplished more if I stuck to what I knew and what I was interested in, rather than trying to find an idea that met EF’s criteria. For example, there was a business problem that I discovered for which the solution was not technological but financial. In that case, forming a team with a technical cofounder - and giving up 50% of the equity to that person - didn’t make sense. The requirement to be paired with a technical cofounder before finding traction with an idea not only constrained the problems that I worked on, but it also added significant interpersonal overhead to my work. I couldn’t focus solely on finding a good problem to solve; I had to also ensure that there was a way for my cofounder to contribute, that he was excited about what we were working on, etc.
Evaluation
Finding a cofounder - ⅘
EF claims that it’s the best place in the world to find your cofounder, and I think it largely delivers on that claim if you’re determined to build a venture-backed deep tech startup. The quality of the technical talent - which was weighted towards deep tech - was impressive. I would never have met such a diverse group of talented aspiring CTOs outside of EF. Industry experience amongst the technical cofounders was limited though, which I found challenging.
Finding an idea - ⅗
EF believes that the team formation and ideation process should happen concurrently and that ideas should come from the cofounders’ shared beliefs about the future. I found this to be a reliably good way of generating initial ideas.
The most valuable skill that I learned at EF was what to do next, i.e. how to validate ideas quickly. The expectation was that within a day of forming a team, you would articulate a hunch about your belief that you could test within 72 hours. This process worked remarkably well.
Where things fell apart for me was with the next step.
We’d learn that our initial hunch was wrong. There was so much pressure to find the right cofounder and idea that we’d be tempted to drop the idea entirely and find a new one. This often resulted in a breakup. I’d then form a new team and come up with an entirely new idea. Consistently starting from scratch meant that none of what I learned about a given customer problem compounded. You can read more about the downsides about this approach and how to pivot properly here.
Knowledge and advice - ⅖
I liked EF’s framework - it was helpful because it provided the founders and the EF partners with a shared nomenclature to communicate about the work that we were doing. I especially liked how EF thinks about ideas (an idea is a belief + testable hunch) and how it broke down problems into subcomponents ([Persona] faces [Problem] because [Constraint] which results in [Implication]).
I found the workshops helpful and the presentations inspiring. Support was there if you asked for it.
The feedback and advice from the EF partners was helpful when it pertained to general topics. However, when it came to specifics, I found the feedback confusing and inconsistent. For example, early in the program, I was encouraged by one of the EF partners to leave my first idea behind and break up with my cofounder. Then, at the end of the program, another EF partner mentioned to me how surprised she was that I had dropped that idea because she had thought that I was onto something promising.
Investment - ⅖
EF’s terms are expensive, but I think they’re reasonable if EF delivers value (which it does if you find your cofounder).
Terms vary by location. In Toronto, if you were selected for investment, EF would make a $200k investment into your startup which is convertible to a 10% equity stake. Out of that $200,000 investment, you would only receive $125,000 because EF kept $75,000 to cover program fees. EF paid a stipend of $3,500/founder/month during the 3-month program, provides office space, etc.
Conclusion
EF is a great program if you think you might want to start a venture-backed technology startup and you don’t have a confounder or idea yet.
Though EF’s framework and my goals diverged, what I learned about myself and what I wanted from entrepreneurship was worth the price of admission. I learned that I didn’t want to spend years chasing venture scale startup ideas exclusively but that I was more eager than ever to start my own startup. I learned that I didn’t want to give up half of my equity to a cofounder at the idea stage unless I believed that he/she was uniquely suited to execute on it. I learned that I was open-minded about what type of business I would start - it didn’t need to be a technology startup (like I first thought it did). In just 3 months, I was able to clear several bad ideas out of my system, saving myself months - if not years - trying to start the wrong business. Now I know what a good startup idea looks like. Most importantly, I now have more conviction than ever in my ability to start a startup after having completed so many reps in such a short amount of time. Self belief is priceless. I wouldn’t have gotten this experience sitting alone in my home office in Vancouver.
Finally, as I mentioned in my last post, doors have begun to open in places that I didn’t expect. You don’t need to go through EF to expand your luck surface area in this way, but you do need to be in an environment where you can pursue something you are genuinely excited about with full intensity.