Is Entrepreneur First worth doing for your startup in 2026 from a techstars founder?

Having been backed by Techstars and having interviewed at YC (see article below) and entrepreneur first i have a little bit of experince in building and selling startups. Prior to this i was also in finance working at a bank in sales trading.

Entrepreneur First is definitely a great VC and early stage investor that cannot be taken lightly and has to be taken seriously. One of their biggest startups is Cleo AI chatbot which is valued at over $1BN and so it shows that Entrepreneur first is a serious competitor in the VC space.

What would i consider as the best one?

Its definitely YC which has backed companies like Airbnb and Dropbox. This is the first one i would apply for but not to say that EF is bad in any way and that you should not apply if you are a first time founder.

Add me on LinkedIn here i am also on X.

Author Vlad Kozul

Vlad started his career in finance having done a bachelor’s at Bayes Business School in London and a master’s at ESCP specializing in finance. He speaks both French and English. He worked in asset management and within institutional sales and on the sell side at Lazard selling US equities to a European client base. He then started Europe’s first ondemand fuel company backed by techstars and plug and play. After this, he was consulting for BCG and others on the subject of fuel ondemand.

FounderBountyVlad Kozul

Here is my experience with the YC interview

My interview with YC and how you can do better in 2025

I’m sharing my experience from interviewing with Y Combinator accelerator, one of the world’s best Venture capital companies. The YC interview is short quick, to the point, and also a great learning experience. Just getting an interview you are in the top 1% of founders so count yourself lucky. We tried with Chefr and had a few learnings.

FounderBountyVlad Kozul