Entrepreneurs First

Entrepreneurs First invests in exceptional individuals to build startups from scratch.

[Entrepreneurs First @join_ef]

What are the odds this post gets 1 million views?
@v4vihan's answer: make a market on it.

8 years after starting a quant trading firm from his college dorm and scaling it to nearly $100M AUM, he’s now building @Omnibook_xyz: a way to turn financial views into trades.

Already on testnet:
- 25,000 registrations
- 4,000 daily active traders
- 40% week-over-week volume growth

2 weeks ago, Vihan pitched Omnibook at Demo Day.
Watch the full pitch on the Demo Day portal.

[Akash Venkat @akashizzle]

Big congrats to @alexnhaus and Edmundo. Helicon is doing incredible work!

[Jannick Stein @jannickstein]

Congrats @alexnhaus & @Esanzgadea on announcing Helicon and their $16.5M seed.

These guys are obsessive and intense, and they’re industrializing critical components of our Western supply chain.

I'm incredibly grateful I got to back and work with them at EF.

[ben @benhclayton]

@join_ef portco news: Helicon (F25) raised a $16.5M Seed

They're building autonomous factories to build composite structures at scale

Massive congrats to @alexnhaus and @Esanzgadea

https://t.co/HHrCGhmxO7

[Ayman Ali @ayman__ali13]

I first met @alexnhaus in November 2024.

The intensity he’s taken on everything with @Esanzgadea consistently has been nuts.

We at @join_ef feel very fortunate to have been so close to the inception of Helicon.

[Alex Niehaus @alexnhaus]

Helicon is building factories to industrialize composites.

We raised a $16.5M seed round led by @alley_corp (@abemurray /@JonesBrannon) with participation from @joshbuckley, @chalfs, @gokulr and other top investors.

We’re ramping production at our factory in Los Angeles to deliver against millions of unmanned systems that need to be built domestically.

We're building a world class team. Join us. https://t.co/30DjajhOr6

[Entrepreneurs First @join_ef]

Helicon has raised $16.5M to industrialize advanced composites, with backing from AlleyCorp, Josh Buckley, Mike Chalfen, Charlie Songhurst and others.

Helicon is building a new generation of factories that combine specialised manufacturing models and robotic assembly to produce advanced composite structures at scale, making it possible to manufacture faster, iterate more quickly and reduce reliance on highly specialised manual labour.

Last April, we filmed @alexnhaus and Edmundo in San Francisco, just before they pitched at EF Demo Day, to hear about their vision for the future of manufacturing.

Six months later, they're taking that vision to the next level.

Proud to have backed Helicon from day zero at EF.

[Lovart AI @lovart_ai]

Lovart x OpenAI: Founder Vibe-Design Workshop

Thursday, Oct 22 · 6–8pm · San Francisco

Hands-on session for founders building with small teams. Bring a project to demo.

Top 3 projects win a year of Lovart Pro and a feature on our socials.

Spots are limited. RSVP ↓

[Entrepreneurs First @join_ef]

From underwater robots to solving one of the biggest bottlenecks in infrastructure: energy.

Grace and Vayu came to SF building underwater robots.

1 week later, they killed the idea.

Then they spoke to hundreds of people in 2.5 weeks and found a much bigger problem: getting enough power, fast enough.

That led to LOIs and a $500K contract.

Last week, they pitched Lattice Energy at Demo Day. Watch their full pitch on the Demo Day portal.

[tonio @antoineduchein]

I am a picture person

mostly the one standing a step behind:

a founder pitching 60 potential cofounders an hour after landing
a hardware lab built overnight in a residency
a cofounding team cooking side by side with a chef
a boiler room in the mission
a last garden lunch with founders who arrived solo and left with companies

most of these stayed in my camera rolls

[Entrepreneurs First @join_ef]

https://t.co/ZIp2EW1MBn

[Entrepreneurs First @join_ef]

They came to SF knowing they wanted to build in energy.

They just didn’t know what yet.

A few weeks of testing problems later, Bianca and Alessio found the intersection of energy and compute, and Ambra Compute started moving fast.

On the way to Demo Day, Mike Phillips jumped in a Waymo with Bianca to talk about finding the right problem, building in San Francisco, and why speed matters.

Full conversation in thread.

[Julia Denoly @juliadenoly]

“Instead of paying for my flights, can you cover my fuel?”

@omar_marv drove from Yale to SF for @jointhebridge, stopping at 30+ car dealerships on the way. He grew up on his dad’s dealership floor in Morocco.

Now he’s building @marvlabsai .

Read about his story in the article below.

[Entrepreneurs First @join_ef]

Axionic Labs is trying to put frontier AI in your pocket.

In 3 months, Archie and the team built a 1B-parameter model from scratch that is 500x smaller than other frontier models, fits in under 3GB, and has a 1M-token context window.

It already outperforms state-of-the-art open-source models on key long-context benchmarks.

Last week, Archie pitched Axionic Labs at Demo Day. Watch the full pitch on the Demo Day portal.

[aryan @aryannstarr]

i was the youngest one to pitch at @join_ef demo day

pitched hug to 300 investors

[Entrepreneurs First @join_ef]

“Your AI has a 3-second memory. You shouldn't have to.”

That's the idea behind Goldfish.

@joeledholm and his cofounder met just 5 months ago.

Since then, they've built an AI memory layer that understands your work context and helps you write in your own voice, from WhatsApp to LinkedIn.

Already 5,000+ users.

Last week, Joel explained the idea live on @etnshow before pitching Goldfish at EF Demo Day.

And they were ready to try it on the spot.

[Entrepreneurs First @join_ef]

https://t.co/E4pmC3DL8F

[Entrepreneurs First @join_ef]

At 2am, Vaibhav kept noticing the same person was still working: Amish.

They weren’t cofounders yet. They were building completely different things. But after enough late nights watching each other operate, Vaibhav knew Amish was the person he wanted to build with.

A few months later, they’re building Saturn Labs.

On the way to Demo Day, Isabel jumped in a Waymo with Vaibhav to talk about finding his cofounder, moving from India to SF, and why being here became essential to building the company.

Full conversation in thread.

[Entrepreneurs First @join_ef]

The West still builds some of the most important parts of robots by hand.

Caldera wants robots to build them instead.

Raghav spent four years at Tesla building electric motors. His cofounder Yeok spent three years in Shenzhen deploying robotics in real warehouses.

Now they’re combining both sides of that experience to rethink how actuators and motors get made.

Robots building robots.

Watch Caldera’s full Demo Day pitch on the Demo Day portal.