About me
I’m co-founder and Chair of Entrepreneur First (EF), the world’s leading talent investor, and Chair of the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), a new £800m agency for funding breakthrough R&D, loosely based on DARPA.
In 2023, I led the preparations and negotiations for the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park as the UK Prime Minister’s Representative (on sabbatical from EF). Previously, I led the design work for the UK Frontier AI Taskforce (now the UK AI Safety Institute, where I am Vice Chair of the Advisory Board).
In 2024, I was asked by new UK Government to create an “AI Action Plan” for the UK, looking at the AI opportunities for the country.
I serve on the boards of Code First Girls, which I co-founded (also with Alice), the Kennedy Memorial Trust and Accurx, one of the UK’s leading healthcare software companies.
I was awarded an MBE for services to business in 2016 and a CBE for services to AI in 2024 and named to the Time AI100 list of most influential people in AI.
Entrepreneur First
I co-founded and work at Entrepreneur First, the world’s leading talent investor. The companies built at EF are now worth over $11bn.
Entrepreneur First is the best place in the world to meet your co-founder and build a startup from scratch.
We bring together and fund exceptional individuals to help them meet their co-founder, develop an idea and raise money from leading investors - as fast as possible. I’m currently helping founders who want to build companies that make a future with powerful AI go well, which I call def/acc.
EF alumni companies include Tractable (a computer vision unicorn), Cleo, Aztec, PolyAI, Gensyn, Accurx and many more.
We’re backed by some of the world's best tech founders and company builders, including Patrick and John Collison (Stripe); Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Demis Hassabis (DeepMind); Tom Blomfield (GoCardless and Monzo), Sara Clemens (Pandora and Twitch); Nat Friedman (GitHub); and Matt Mullenweg (Wordpress).
I believe that enabling the best talent to maximise their impact is one of the most important problems in the world. I want Entrepreneur First to be the pre-eminent institution in making that happen.
You can read my manifesto for why the world needs Entrepreneur First, Technology Entrepreneurship and the Disruption of Ambition, here.
If you want to learn more, I’ve talked in more detail about our thesis and work on podcasts. I recommend this interview on Invest Like the Best, this one on SeedTable and this one on Exponential View.
Writing
With Alice Bentinck, I am co-author of How to be a Founder, which won 2023 Startup Book of the Year.
Between 2018 and 2022 I wrote a weekly newsletter, Thoughts in Between, on AI, geopolitics and metascience. The archive is available here
You can some of my other writing, primarily on startups and venture capital, here. I occasionally write for the media - you can see the pieces I’ve written for Wired here and for City AM here.
For fun, I occasionally write immersive murder mystery games. Two of them are available to download here.
I love to read. I’ve published reviews of the books I read in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019, as well as a ranking of the best books I read in the 2010s.
Speaking
I have given talks on a wide range of topics - including AI, technology policy and entrepreneurship - both at large conferences and private events, including for world leaders and at board level at some of the biggest companies in the world.
I regularly talk about AI and other topics in the media, including Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg and BBC Radio 4’s Today.
Contact
You can email me at matt@joinef.com or chat to me on Twitter.
I’m particularly interested to speak to:
People in the early stages of their careers who want to maximise the impact they have
Investors who are interested in growing a new asset class - talent investing
People who are interested in AI governance and policy