Why I joined EF

In April, I joined the Entrepreneur First (EF) London 18th cohort. Here’s an unpublished blog post I wrote before joining EF.

I’ve always considered starting a company - I would love to take on a big challenge and build an incredible product. But I’ve always thought, can I be a founder, have I got what it takes? To know, I need to take the leap.

A few realisations have helped me to take this leap:

Founders are incredible, but they too were unproven talent in their early days.

Founders seem incredible, it’s hard to think you too could be one someday, but it’s important to remember they were also unproven talent in their early days. They didn’t know the success, failures or even the several pivots that would come. Unlike others, they leapt and had the grit to push through all the lows.

Take a read of “Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days”, just look at the PayPal story. The famous mafia started with seven pivots and nearly went bankrupt. Peter Thiel studied for seven years, followed by working on Wall Street before even founding PayPal.

Closely tied in with this point - don’t be intimated by founder’s stories. They benefit significantly from connecting dots in hindsight, making them sound extra incredible.

You’ll need a good co-founder. It’s important to place yourself in the right environment to find one.

Most startups happen in the innovation talent bubbles throughout the world - top US universities, San Francisco, Israeli army sections, research labs, EF cohorts. Placing yourself in these talent bubbles will greatly improve your chances of founding a startup.

All companies are heavily imperfect internally, duct tape is everywhere.

It’s important to realise startups are scrappy, as are large companies and even the most complex engineering companies. The environment for startups to succeed in almost pushes this point to the extreme where it’s difficult to build a non-scrappy product with time and funding limits. Therefore, don’t worry about not building a technically impressive product. Likely it’ll start and for some time consist of a simple linear regression algorithm botched together with many hacks.

Why not try something insanely ambitious?

If you can, why not try something insanely ambitious? The potential upsides are insane, while the downsides are recoverable. Particularly for young graduates, if you get yourself in the right talent innovation bubble, starting a company is great. In the worst-case scenario, there will still be many benefits. The biggest benefit will be the people you meet on your founding journey, where further opportunities will arise. Or you go back on to the ‘normal’ career path where good talent is always in-demand.

EF makes the leap easy; it provides the innovation talent bubble, streamlines the early stages, provides a great network, provides a cushion with a stipend and, for the badge collectors - EF has proven to be a prestigious program.