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Home > Secret Leaders > Entrepreneur First: How to build unicorns with Alice Bentinck
Podcast: Secret Leaders
Episode:

Entrepreneur First: How to build unicorns with Alice Bentinck
Category: Business
Duration: 00:42:44
Publish Date: 2017-04-24 00:15:00
Description:

In this episode you will learn;

  • Where the idea for Entrepreneur First came from originally, and how
    that’s evolved through the years
  • How to start a business with no
    business model whatsoever
  • The best and worst company ideas she’s ever
    been pitched.
  • What they look for in individuals that gives them the
    confidence to just give them cash and help them to develop valuable
    ideas

And lots more of course...

Key Quotes

  • As an entrepreneur - where do you stop and the company start?
  • I want
    people to eventually see me as the greatest AI leader globally (and
    fun fact she is pretty certain EF is currently the biggest investor
    in AI technology in Europe)
  • “We look for megalomania in our founders - this crazy belief that if everything else goes wrong, we’ll be ok - that’s pretty important for resilience.
  • Entrepreneurs always come up
    with the same ideas - so what we enjoy is trying to push people to
    think a bit more uniquely. But I’ve heard probably every single
    dating and food delivery concept you’ve ever thought of.

Top Advice:

  • Get a mentor or professional coach - it creates huge value for
    founders - so much so they use a bunch of them for their founders, to
    make sure they’re mentally balanced.
  • How important a ‘growth mindset’
    is for resilience and how she tries to embed that within her teams.
  • Strong beliefs, weakly held.
  • What makes you special? Think about that
    before thinking about what you want to do. And then think big.

Other Fun Facts:

  • Magic Pony Technology was 18 months old from Entrepreneur First and sold for £150m to Twitter, with only 15 people - the founders had never met each other before they started.
  • In one University they work with, more people join EF than join the financial services sector now!
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