The venture capital firm led by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman has invested in Entrepreneur First, a London-based hub for startups, alongside Mosaic Ventures and Founders Fund.
Greylock Partners led the £9.5m funding, which also included Lakestar Capital, and Demis Hassabis and Mustafa Suleyman, the founders of DeepMind, according to a statement from Entrepreneur First. Mr Hoffman’s involvement was first reported by Bloomberg.
Mr Hoffman will also join the board of Entrepreneur First. The backing of Hoffman is a significant boost to Entrepreneur First, which finds technical and business talent — from computer scientists to banking analysts — and then brings them together in order to create startup companies.
Mr Hoffman is a partner at Greylock Partners, and in March joined the board of Microsoft, three months after the world’s largest software maker acquired LinkedIn. Hoffman is also on the board of room-rental startup Airbnb Inc.
Founded in 2011 by Alice Bentinck and Matt Clifford, Entrepreneur First follows a similar model to YCombinator, the California-based financier that has backed Airbnb, Dropbox and Reddit. At the UK company, accepted candidates receive a monthly stipend, followed by a small seed investment in return for an 8 per cent stake.
Magic Pony, a London-based artificial intelligence startup, is arguably Entrepreneur First’s most significant success story. Twitter paid about $150m for Magic Pony in 2016, earning Entrepreneur First around $6.5m from a $16,000 investment.
Bloomberg
