Entrepreneur First

Jonny is General Manager of Entrepreneurs First in London. He has been at EF since late 2016, initially leading on building out their corporate network before taking over the running of the London programme in early 2018. He has supported companies that have raised over $100M in seed funding such as Atlas ML, FabricNano, Intropic, Sonantic and Unitary. He previously ran the sales team for Satchel, a Series A funded edtech startup in the UK, having joined them as one of their first employees.

Max is a Principal in the London investment team at EF. He’s responsible for finding potential founders who are early in their career or graduating from top academic institutions. Whilst at EF, he has helped to build companies like Scope, Level Zero Health and Wexler.ai. Max moved into the talent investing team after acting as EF’s in-house counsel, working on follow-on investments and M&A in the EF portfolio and helping EF raise its recent follow-on fund. Before EF, Max practised as a lawyer at Kirkland & Ellis focussing on private equity transactions for the likes of Carlyle, Bain, Cinven and Warburg Pincus.

Dominik is a Principal in London. He is responsible for identifying and attracting exceptional talent from across Europe to build globally important companies at EF. He spends most of his time building relationships with impressive technical individuals from leading universities across the UK and Europe. He originally joined EF in 2017 and has spent four years working with EF portfolio companies, across London and Berlin, and supporting their fundraising efforts with Europe's best early-stage investors. During his hiatus from EF, Dominik picked up software engineering and worked at a VC-backed startup building a product to enable large enterprises to track carbon emissions across their entire supply chain.

Isabel is the General Manager of Entrepreneurs First in San Francisco. She is responsible for delivering the second part of EF’s program, Launch, helping founders who have passed Investment Committee build in the world’s most established startup ecosystem. Prior to this role, having been part of the EF team in 2012 and 2013, Isabel worked in corporate strategy at BlaBlaCar, as an investor at Balderton Capital, and cofounded her own company.

Alice is cofounder and CEO at Entrepreneurs First, which she started with Matt Clifford in 2011. She co-authored the book ‘How to be a Founder’ with Matt as an essential guide on how entrepreneurs can identify, fund, and launch their best ideas. In 2012 Alice set up the non-profit organisation Code First Girls, which has since taught over 25,000 women to code for free while at university. Alice started her career at McKinsey & Co. She was awarded an MBE for services to business in the 2016 Queen’s Birthday Honours.

Matt is cofounder and Chair of Entrepreneurs First, which he started with Alice Bentinck in 2011. With Alice, he is also the co-author of ‘How to be a Founder’ and sits on the board of Code First Girls, which he co-founded in 2013. Matt is Chair of ARIA, the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency, which funds breakthrough R&D. In 2023 he was appointed the UK Prime Minister’s Lead Representative for the inaugural AI Safety Summit hosted by the UK at Bletchley Park. In 2025 he was appointed the UK Prime Minister’s Adviser on AI Opportunities, following the publication of Matt’s AI Opportunities Action Plan. Matt holds degrees from Cambridge and MIT, where he was a Kennedy Scholar. He was awarded a CBE for services to AI in 2024. He was also named in the 2024 TIME100 list of most influential people in AI.

Rahul is General Manager of Entrepreneurs First in India. He joins EF following six years at Swiggy, where he created and grew their private brands business from pre-idea to a business unit that scaled into tens of millions of transactions. Prior to his founding journey, Rahul started his career on Wall Street with Barclays Investment Bank and Capital One Financial Corporation. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and is an ardent football fan with a particular interest in exploring food from many different parts of the world.

Elspeth is Partner and Deputy CPO at EF. She joined in 2016, working on the first programs in London before moving to Paris to set up and lead the Program team. After returning to London, Elspeth led the Program team and then transitioned to Deputy CPO working alongside Alice to build out our programs in new locations. Prior to EF, Elspeth worked for Clifford Chance in Paris and at Change.org. In her spare time, Elspeth loves fitness and regularly takes willing team members to new crossfit and spin classes across London.

Ali is a Principal in the US, responsible for finding and backing the most exceptional individuals to become the next generation of founders. Since joining EF in 2018, she has worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs and built some of EF’s most successful early teams. For her first four years at EF, Ali was part of the London team, helping to identify exceptional individuals to build early-stage companies like Gensyn, Unitary, Omnea, and Scarlet. She then led EF’s Product team, working closely with teams across EF globally and with customers to design and deliver the most effective founder experience in every location. In this role, she also trained all new Talent Investors on how to identify outstanding early-stage talent and give the right advice at the right time. Since 2023, Ali has been in the US, launching EF and helping to build companies such as Icarus Robotics, Peripheral, and ZeroEntropy.

Julia is a Principal Investor based in Paris. Since joining EF in September 2024, she has helped build companies including Eigen, Uncovr, Certo, or Tellia. As a former founder herself, Julia leads the launch of EF’s newest U.S. residency product, The Bridge. She travels across Europe to build relationships with outstanding technical and commercial individuals and supports their transition into company building from EF’s San Francisco house. Prior to EF, Julia was a founder and commercial operator. She cofounded two tech ventures, including Newtone AI, an EF portfolio company where she served as CEO, and previously held sales and strategy roles at companies such as LVMH and Otrium. She approaches talent investing with strong founder empathy, delivering a programme between the U.S. and Europe.

Mike is a Partner in London, running our Core Talent Investing team responsible for finding and backing the most exceptional individuals to become the next generation of founders. Since joining EF in 2019, he's helped hundreds of entrepreneurs find their cofounder and build world-changing companies, like Omnipresent, Gensyn, Opply, and Ochre Bio. Before EF, Mike spent time across enterprise sales and partnerships at Dext, a Series C Fintech, as part of the founding team of a cross-continental P2P lending startup, and in management consulting.

Joe is the General Manager of Entrepreneurs First in the US. He’s responsible for identifying the most ambitious talent in the country, investing in them, and building startups with them from scratch. He has been at EF since late 2017, initially responsible for creating and expanding our company funding programs in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Bangalore. In 2019, he took responsibility for our Seed SPV, providing capital at speed and global ambition to top companies created by EF in emerging ecosystems. In doing this, he’s deployed over $20M of capital for EF, and worked with some of EF’s top companies including FarmLend, Scarlet, Seppure, Green Li-ion, Fello, Drip.ai, and Neptune Robotics. Before joining the EF team, Joe was a founder, software engineer, and early stage startup employee working in online games, edtech, and legaltech. He is also an EF alum, founding HowCloud as a member of our third cohort in London.

Tom is COO of Entrepreneurs First, which he joined in September 2019. Tom joined EF from the UK Civil Service, having served on the main board of two departments - as Director of Strategy at the Department for Education, and for the last three years as the director at DExEU coordinating the UK Government's domestic policy and technical implementation of Brexit. Tom started his career at McKinsey & Co., serving in the London and Middle East offices. He studied at the University of Oxford, where he was shortlisted for the All Souls prize fellowship, and in 2010 he cofounded a thriving Free School in south London.