Entrepreneur First’s inaugural Singapore cohort has VR, IoT, nanosatellites, and more

Entrepreneur First co-founders Matt Clifford and Alice Bentinck address the crowd at the company’s first Singapore demo day. Photo credit: Entrepreneur First.

Company builder Entrepreneur First completed its inaugural Singapore program in an Investor Day that saw 12 teams pitch to investors and industry players.

The UK-based company launched its first international branch in Singapore a little more than a year ago in partnership with Infocomm Investments, now SGInnovate.

Entrepreneur First’s twist on company-building is focusing on individuals instead of teams. People join on their own and are matched into teams through the course of the program. The idea is to get people with skills – technologists, academics, and more – who don’t necessarily know how to go about building a business and to help them do just that. The teams then form companies that will go out in the world to peddle their product.

“50 percent of the teams you see at the demo day are formed in the first two weeks [of the program],” EF co-founder Alice Bentinck tells Tech in Asia.

The Singapore cohort combines a lot of academic chops. “More than half the people here have PhDs,” says EF Singapore director Anne Marie Droste. The teams have focused on areas like virtual and augmented reality, nanosatellites, the internet of things, and more. The focus on hardware and AR/VR sets the cohort apart from previous London-based programs that have been stronger in areas like AI and software.

“Individuals we go after here in Singapore and Southeast Asia are super talented and very ambitious,” Alice says.

Greasing the wheels

The 12 teams that graduated this program will get seed investment from SGInnovate and Silicon Valley-based Sparklabs Global. SGInnovate will invest US$35,600 and Sparklabs will pour in US$30,300 into each startup. EF itself invests US$17,800 in each one.

50 percent of the teams you see at the demo day are formed in the first two weeks.

SGInnovate CEO Steve Leonard tells Tech in Asia that SGInnovate will support the graduating startups with customer acquisition, hiring, work space, and more.

EF Singapore is in the process of raising a US$11.4 million fund. Anne Marie tells Tech in Asia the company expects to close the fundraise by the end of April, which will allow it to build around 120 startups in Singapore over the next three years.

The company is now gearing up for its next cohort this summer, which it expects to be bigger than the first one. This time, it’s recruiting candidates from farther afield, including Hong Kong and mainland China.

Entrepreneur First had a major win last year, when its graduate, London-based AI startup Magic Pony, was acquired by Twitter for US$150 million. The startup builder claims its companies have raised over US$100 million in funding and achieved US$270 million of exits since 2013.

Meet the startups

Here are the 12 startups that make up EF Singapore’s first cohort, in the order they pitched: