Input from a collection of veteran founders values the tech talent investor at $560m
EF moves into its second decade with a fresh Series C round of funding. Backers include LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, Stripe’s Collison brothers, Wise’s Taavet Hinrikus, and WordPress developer, Matt Mullenweg.
The cash will allow EF to continue to invest in early-stage startups. To date, more than 600 companies have been started through EF with more than 400 still going. This equates to a portfolio worth more than $10bn. Finance management app Cleo and remote work platform Omnipresent are counted among the credits.
In addition to the continuation of this work, EF has stated that it wants the “capacity to experiment and innovate on how best to fund the next generation of entrepreneurs”. They plan to launch new products with the goal of upending the traditional venture capital model.
“We are entering a new era for venture funding, with a new generation of global founders needing support to build iconic companies from scratch,” said Hoffman – a board member at EF.
EF co-founder, Matt Clifford, spoke about the role of data science within their processes, with experts evaluating past applications from around 17,000 case studies. “Now we have some good data points, and we can say which criteria is most indicative of future funding, for example. We’re wary of pattern spotting in VC in general, but we believe in how you can use data to collectively build better intuition.”
The company will also partner with local institutions aimed at supporting people with their entrepreneurship journey. They will act as a central player, connecting startups to Silicon Valley as they seek growth and success through meaningful partnerships.
“As pioneers of talent investing as a category, we are excited to reimagine founding as a career path, not only a single instance or milestone. Along these lines, we’re now building out a suite of products and services that meet founders, where they are on their individual journey of readiness,” said EF partner Bernadette Cho.
EF was founded in 2011 and it now employs 120 globally. With this recent news, the future looks very bright for the international talent investor.
