Jump to:
North America

From student to startup founder.

Register your interest
Pre-programme starts Summer 2023

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. 

We’ll back you before you have a company, a team, even before you have an idea, based purely on your talent. Learn more about EF Graduate and who should apply here. 

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.

More from EF

Read the latest news and updates

Read more

Must-Reads

View all

People & Companies

View all
Our community

A community of ambitious future founders, hand-selected by our team.

Founders have left leading institutions and impressive jobs to join our cohorts.

From a wide variety of backgrounds, they all share a commitment to building innovative startups now. These are the challengers; the driven; the leaders; the ones with the potential to found globally important companies.
Companies

Our companies are building across a huge range of sectors, including fintech, healthcare and manufacturing.

EF companies are making cancer diagnoses faster; helping children around the world learn English and using AI to support accident and disaster recovery.

Featured Companies

Tractable

AI for accident and disaster recovery
Series D Automotive

Cleo

Cleo is the money app that has your back.
Series C Finance

Sonantic

Sonantic has built the world's most expressive and realistic artificial voices
Exit Media or Entertainment

AccuRx

Building the platform to power communications between patients and their healthcare professionals
Series B Healthcare

Magic Pony Technology

Machine-learning based approaches to video enhancement, prediction and compression.
Exit Media or Entertainment

Omnipresent

Making it easy to employ, pay and support global teams in 150 countries
Series B Future of Work

North America FAQs

Q

Can I join if I already have a co-founder or business?

A

You can apply if you already have a team, however each co-founder will have to apply as an individual, as we admit people to the programme on an individual basis instead of on their team/idea.

If you have an existing business, and you have taken a very small amount of investment or been awarded a grant, you are still eligible to apply. However, depending on the arrangement, it does sometimes prevent us from being able to invest in your company and therefore prevent us from offering you a place. We deal with these situations on a case-by-case basis and you should email [email protected] for more information.

Q

Do I need to be in North America during the cohort?

A

We do ask our cohort members to relocate to take part in the programme. People we select relocate to join us from all over the world.

Q

Do I need to speak English?

A

The programme is run in English, therefore you will need to be comfortable speaking and working in English.

Q

Do I get financial support during the cohort?

A

Yes – for the first three months of the programme, we pay you a stipend. If you pass our Investment Committee, and progress to the next stage of the program, we will make an $125,000 investment in your company in return for a 10% equity stake, and expect you and your co-founder to use some of this to pay yourselves.

Q

Do I need to stay in North America?

A

No – though of course you may choose to. For any company the most important thing is to be close to its customers and sometimes this means relocating to where these customers are. We have companies based in Silicon Valley and across the US, South Africa, Netherlands and China as well as many other locations.