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.<\/p>\n
Greylock Partners led the $12.4 million funding, which also included Lakestar Capital, and Demis Hassabis and Mustafa Suleyman, the founders of DeepMind, according to a statement from Entrepreneur First. Hoffman\u2019s involvement was first reported by Bloomberg.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Hoffman is a partner at Greylock Partners, and in March joined the board of Microsoft, three months after the world\u2019s largest software maker acquired LinkedIn. Hoffman is also on the board of room-rental startup Airbnb.<\/p>\n
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% stake.<\/p>\n
Magic Pony, a London-based artificial intelligence startup, is arguably Entrepreneur First\u2019s most significant success story.<\/p>\n
Twitter paid about $150 million for Magic Pony in 2016, earning Entrepreneur First around $6.5 million from a $16,000 investment.<\/p>\n