Alice Bentinck

Who they are

Alice Bentinck is CEO of Entrepreneurs First — co-founded Code First: Girls in 2012, which has since taught over 250,000 women to code for free across the UK.

Person

Alice Bentinck co-founded Entrepreneurs First from scratch in 2011 — before there was a model, a portfolio, or a proof point that betting on individuals before they had co-founders or ideas could work. She read Management Studies at Nottingham University Business School, graduating with First Class Honours in 2008, then went into McKinsey as a management consultant before a stint as an intern in the Office of the Prime Minister (Tony Blair's Africa Governance Initiative). She stepped sideways from CPO at EF to CEO when Matt Clifford moved to Chair. Alongside the main track, she founded Code First: Girls in 2012 — now the UK's largest provider of free coding courses for women, having taught over 250,000 women to code — and in 2024 started Peripheral Labs, building AI models to reconstruct live sports in photorealistic 3D. She writes a Substack newsletter called 'Starting up from Scratch' at alicebentinck.substack.com, contributes to TechCrunch, and keeps a personal site at alicebentinck.com; her public writing and speaking — from Slush 2023 to Invest Like the Best — orbits co-founder dynamics, talent-first investing, and what separates a genuine founder from someone playing the part. The through-line: from McKinsey to Prime Minister's Office to company-builder, every move has been about identifying and unlocking talent at the earliest possible stage.

Company

Entrepreneurs First raised a $40 million Series B in 2025 at a $340 million valuation, following a Series A in 2024 — two rounds in quick succession that signal active growth after Alice took the CEO role from Matt Clifford, who moved to non-executive Chair. EF's model is unusual: it backs exceptional individuals before they have a co-founder, a product, or revenue, then puts them through a cohort process to form founding teams. The portfolio has grown to 600+ companies with a combined value of $11 billion-plus. Alice is now running the organisation as a fully-formed CEO rather than as a co-founder in a product role, which is a meaningful shift in how EF is being led.

Market

Entrepreneurs First operates in talent-first or 'pre-team' company building — a niche that sits between traditional accelerators (which back existing teams) and early-stage VC (which backs companies with at least a founding pair). Its closest reference points are programmes like Antler and Entrepreneur First alumni-turned-rivals, though EF claims the longest track record and the largest combined portfolio value in this segment. The broader accelerator and company-builder market is competitive and crowded, but EF's positioning around identifying individual talent globally — rather than filtering for existing teams — is a structural differentiator.

Network

Alice's closest named collaborator is Matt Clifford, EF's co-founder and now non-executive Chair, with whom she co-authored 'How to Be a Founder' (2022) and has built the organisation over more than a decade. Reid Hoffman is an investor and board member at EF. She also sits on Imperial College London's Computer Science Department Industrial Liaison Board and its Innovations Investment Committee, and is a board trustee at Generation, a youth employment charity.

Matt Clifford· Co-founder and non-executive Chair, Entrepreneurs First
Reid Hoffman· Investor and board member, Entrepreneurs First; co-founder of LinkedIn; partner at Greylock Partners

How they likely show up

Long tenure as co-founder from 2011 to present (14+ years, inception through two funding rounds) → thinks in institutional time-horizons, not sprint cycles.
Transition from CPO to CEO when Matt Clifford moved to Chair → comfortable stepping into the principal seat rather than the product seat; likely running the organisation with a strategic not an execution-first lens.
Founded Code First: Girls and Peripheral Labs alongside a full-time founder role → high agency, builds things outside the main job when she sees an unmet need.
Active public writing across Substack, TechCrunch, Medium, and a personal site, plus heavy conference speaking (Slush, Station F, Invest Like the Best) → comfortable being visible and opinionated; expects her counterparts to have done their reading.
Career arc: McKinsey → Prime Minister's Office → company builder → parallel social enterprise → AI sports startup → signals someone who moves toward hard problems and isn't anchored to one sector.

Conversation tips

→ Reference a specific piece she's written — her Slush 2023 talk 'Finding a Secret' or the Substack 'Starting up from Scratch' — she'll notice immediately if you've read the work vs. skimmed a bio.
→ Ask about the CPO-to-CEO transition and what changed in how she thinks about EF's direction — it's a recent and significant shift she's spoken about publicly.
→ Don't conflate EF with a standard accelerator — she's built her entire identity around the distinction that EF backs individuals, not teams; misusing the word 'accelerator' loosely will lose her.
→ Code First: Girls is clearly a source of personal conviction, not just a résumé line — if the conversation touches on talent or diversity, she'll have specific views, not platitudes.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on Peripheral Labs — she founded it in 2024 to build AI models that reconstruct live sports in photorealistic 3D, which is a sharp left turn from company-building; it signals she's still personally testing the founder experience, not just advising it.
Reference her Slush 2023 talk 'Finding a Secret' — it's a named, on-record articulation of her current thinking on what separates real founder insight from noise, and it's recent enough to be live doctrine.
Mention the $40 million Series B at a $340 million valuation in 2025 and the structural shift to her as CEO — it's a natural entry point to ask what EF looks like in its next chapter versus what Matt built.

Discovery questions

You've now backed 600+ companies by betting on individuals before they have co-founders — what does the failure mode of that model look like, and has it changed how you run cohorts?
Code First: Girls has taught over 250,000 women to code — how much of that talent ends up in the EF pipeline, and is that intentional?
With Peripheral Labs, you're back in the founder seat yourself — does running an early-stage company in 2024 feel different from what you were telling founders to do in 2015?

Avoid

Don't treat EF as interchangeable with Y Combinator or a standard cohort accelerator — her entire thesis is built on the pre-team, talent-first distinction, and flattening that difference signals you haven't engaged with what she's actually built.

Make it yours