From student to startup founder

Entrepreneur First’s inaugural US cohort will kick off in Fall 2023. We’re bringing together exceptional recent graduates from across the US to build startups from scratch. The startups co-founded via our programs are now worth over $10B. EF itself is backed by some of the world’s leading founders and investors, including Patrick and John Collison (Stripe); Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Sara Clemens (Pandora and Twitch); Nat Friedman (GitHub); and Matt Mullenweg (WordPress). We exist to make great companies happen that otherwise wouldn’t.

Grant Deadline

2025-01-05

Funding Amount

Deadline not available

Type of Grant

Incubator Accelerator

Sectors

Fintech, Aerospace, Artificial Intelligence, Biotechnology, Clean Tech, Technology, Web 3.0, SaaS, Med Tech

Demographics

Incorporation

For Profit

Perks

Mentorship, Networking, Coaching

Region Restriction

This grant is restricted to whole of United States

Keywords

Age Restriction

This grant is age restricted from 18 to 100

Eligibility and Requirements

Start your career by doing the most ambitious thing possible – not by crawling up a ladder for 30 years.

We’re paying a small number of the world’s top graduates to turn down their other offers, form a community, and build startups together. They’ll receive access to the world’s best mentors and advisors; the opportunity to pitch for pre-seed investment; and introductions to our network of investors and founders. Over nine months, they’ll have the opportunity to go from student to startup founder.

Why join Entrepreneur First Graduate?

You probably have an idea in your head about what the most competitive or prestigious path to take after university is. Top students are told the most ambitious path for them is in consulting, investment banking, law or at a tech company. If you’re very academic, you might go for a PhD.

But if you’re one of the most exceptional, getting into one of these options will limit your ambition. The best graduates don’t want to spend years working on projects that don’t use their full potential, doing jobs they don’t get anything out of, chasing someone else’s targets or fundings. They want to build something big and impactful, they want to lead it, and they want to do it now.

Entrepreneur First Graduate is for them. We remove the barriers to founding a company, such as time, network and money, and give you what you need to build startups tackling the world’s hardest problems.

Not everyone who goes through the programme will succeed. But the ones that do could create over US$1M in value a week.

Who is Entrepreneur First Graduate for?

We’re not looking for a particular set of badges or achievements.

You could have come top of your class; you could be a dropout. We’re not particularly interested in the internships graduate programmes normally look for, and we definitely don’t care about experience. You can come from any walk of life, and be interested in building in any vertical.

There are however a few things we expect Entrepreneur First Graduates to have in common:

You’re obsessed with big ideas.
You’re always building. You don’t just stick to what’s on your degree course – you’re always looking for the next project, the next problem to solve.
You know that software is eating the world. You want to make impact and know that a tech startup is how to do this at scale. We’d expect those who aspire to be CEOs to have some technical abilities, and CTOs to be exceptional in their field.
You’re bored by anything that doesn’t have a real world impact.
Your peers don’t understand why you’re frustrated at traditional career options.

We’re accepting applications from:

Students currently pursuing Bachelor’s or Master’s degrees, or who have graduated in the past 2 years.
PhD candidates and recent graduates (PhDs are also welcome to apply to Core programmes where applicable).
Those who’ve dropped out in the last 1-2 years.
Those who never went to university, but are in the same peer group.
People with a small amount of professional experience.

Grant Application website

https://www.joinef.com/locations/new-york-city/