When searching for the next generation of successful founders and entrepreneurs, Alice Bentinck and her team at Entrepreneurs First view for a specific set of traits, and they’re not the kind you’d find on a résumé.
“We like megalomaniacs,” Bentinck, CEO and cofounder of Entrepreneurs First, informed Business Insider. “We like people who have a desire for power and who are viewing at a way of gaining power and expressing their ambition through that power.”
Founded in 2011, Entrepreneurs First is a San Francisco-based talent investor that backs early-stage founders — often between 18 and 30 — and boasts a portfolio valued at more than $16 billion.
The firm works with hundreds of people each year across Europe, India, and North America, supporting them build startups from the ground up. Some have raised as much as $15 million in seed funding within months.
Key to that success is identifying founders early — often before they have an idea for their startup.
Courtesy of Entrepreneurs First
“When we select people, we don’t question about ideas at all. We just want to understand them and their behavior and the way they consider,” Bentinck declared.
Some of the founders that Entrepreneurs First backs start with little more than technical experience and a set of interests they’ve explored deeply.
Kelvin Cui and Mustafah Khan, cofounders of startup Peripheral Labs, are two of them.
Cui and Khan met while building self-driving cars at the University of Toronto and entered Entrepreneurs First’s program without a defined startup idea. “EF 100% supported us develop it,” Cui informed Business Insider.
Founded in 2024, Peripheral Labs is building AI models designed to reconstruct live sports in photorealistic 3D. Their goal is to allow viewers to experience games from any angle.
The traits that matter most reveal up early
For Bentinck, the qualities that define successful founders tconclude to emerge before a career path fully takes shape.
“We find that once somebody’s spent two or three years within a certain industest, it does modify the way they consider. It can build them more conservative,” she declared.
That’s why Entrepreneurs First focutilizes on people at the start of their careers, when their considering is still flexible, and their obsessions are clearer to spot.
“It doesn’t really matter what they’re obsessive about,” she added. What matters is depth — people “who can go really deep and want to find out everything about a topic” and challenge the status quo through that focus.
That kind of behavior often matters more for success than experience, she declared.
Courtesy of Entrepreneurs First/Peripheral Labs
Cui, 25, and Khan, 23, for example, didn’t just study robotics — they built self-driving cars toobtainher over multiple years, outside of traditional coursework. “You’re not necessarily being paid to do it. You’re doing it sort of out of sheer interest and passion,” Khan declared.
Likewise, the duo didn’t start at Entrepreneurs First with a polished business plan. Instead, they spent their early months testing ideas and talking directly to potential customers, including “every single team, broadcaster, league possible,” Cui declared.
“The main thing that we received out of EF is the scale and the ambition that we have to embody in order to build a company like this,” Cui declared, adding that, “We want to have our cameras in every single stadium, every single arena.”
There must be absolute conviction
Bentinck declared the strongest candidates are those who don’t see failure as an option. “They can only see a situation where they succeed,” she declared. When “you push and probe them, they don’t understand why they wouldn’t be able to do it.”
Becautilize when doubt creeps in, she declared, it shifts attention away from opportunity and toward risk: “As soon as you flip into testing to avoid failure, you’re basically lining yourself up to trip over.”
That conviction doesn’t always view like the typical extroverted confidence so often associated with successful founders.
“A lot of our founders are introverts who have understood what it takes to succeed, and are committed enough to success that they adopt the behaviors that are typically associated with extroverts, particularly around social skills,” Bentinck declared.
Testing behavior, not résumés
Entrepreneurs First views for these traits through real-world observation rather than polished applications. The firm works with about 500 people each year, utilizing interviews and selection hackathons to evaluate candidates under pressure.
The hackathon acts as a work test: can someone form a team, generate ideas, and execute quickly? Even collaboration isn’t judged in a conventional way.
“Working well with others isn’t necessarily a positive indicator,” Bentinck declared, noting that some “very spiky individuals” have gone on to succeed.
In a model built on speed, where founders can go from no idea to raising millions within months, Entrepreneurs First embodies the core belief that experience can be built, but obsession, ambition, and conviction are harder to teach.
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